Do you remember the comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s famous line of jokes that started out with “you might be a Redneck if…?” His popular zingers that poked fun at rednecks everywhere made it cool to be one. Since the Foxworthy-coined phrase hit the airwaves, hundreds of labels quickly popped up to replace the word redneck: “you might be from Kentucky if” or “you might be a city slicker” and countless others. Foxworthy probably had little idea how much that phrase would resonate with so many different people. The truth is that most of us like being known for our hobbies, passions, lifestyle choices or places of birth. So the phrase “you might be a” is kind of funny when you place yourself in certain groups. Preppers are certainly no different from any other group, although we may have enough food on hand to feed a small army for a year. Most preppers I know have good senses of humor; so with that in mind, I pose the following.
You might be a prepper if you …
- Are constantly checking expiration dates on your pallets of canned green beans.
- Hide sealed boxes of ammo or other valuables deep inside your filled dried-rice containers.
- Have recurring dreams about building an underground bunker the size of a small city.
- Constantly are turning or rotating every item in your home in to prolong shelf life.
- Never throw away anything that could be used as a container no matter how small it is, such as empty prescription bottles and plastic lids, tubs and containers.
- Buy items at flea markets, yard sales and thrift stores that you may be able to use as bartering tools in a SHTF scenario.
- Laugh out loud when someone complains they just spent a fortune on groceries because you have discovered co-ops, bulk buying, gardening and canning, and you know how to hunt or raise your own meat.
- Know how to clip, stack and maximize coupons.
- Have maxed out every square inch of storage space in your house.
- Think the perfect gift is getting or giving a book with informative subtitles, such as “How to Churn Your Own Butter” or “How to Survive Nuclear Fallout.”
- Hear people say “you’re crazy for doing that” on a regular basis.
- Know 40 different uses for vinegar and salt.
- Know how to make your own vinegar.
- Can quickly access a back-up supply of anything you or your family may need, such as gasoline, batteries, matches, food, ammunition, and your list goes on and on without having to make a trip to the store.
- Consider “self- sufficient” one of the greatest compliments you can receive.
- Know what the acronyms SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, BOB and GOOD mean.
- Know how to laugh at yourself when someone says, “You might be a prepper if you answered yes to any of these.”
Can you add any “you might be a prepper if …” comments to our list? Share them in the comments section.
[lisa]
You might be a prepper if you look forward to inclement weather just so you can test out your gear.
You might be a prepper if: the meteorologist’s visible panic at the impending severe weather event makes you chuckle.
You might be a prepper if you add up your assets and most of your net worth are guns and ammo.
You might be a prepper if you add up your assets and most of your net worth are guns and ammo.
Joane:
I like your idea, but believe me if you say something here people don’t like they’ll let you know.
I wish they had it set up so that we could edit our own responses after the fact to be able to correct the errors some of us made before posting. It would also be helpful if we had a way to use our keyboards to be able to underline and italicize for emphasis.
I wish there was an “like” button on comments here. I would have liked most of your comments. HINT HINT for the Blog leader.
;
You might be a prepper if……you have read books like mine: Surviving Urban Crisis, available at Amazon
Hank–I think we live on the same fault. For most people life seams too busy to prep. These are the same people who don’t listen to news {KFI} but still vote.The low info voter. The P.C. brain dead zombi invasion has already happened. To change the subject I saw a quote from Ben Franklin today. ” Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.”
Here’s what worries me the most: after the Northridge Quake there were some areas that didn’t have water or electricity for about a week. Many were homeless. Wouldn’t you think that people living here, having seen that would have enough sense to be prepared to survive for at least that long? My mother in law is from Michigan and she has seen ten days to two weeks without electricity, Here that means no water, no fuel and no ability to buy necessities because everything is computerized and electrical. Look what happened in the south after Katrina.
In the late eighties I had to go through a week of in-service Earthquake Preparedness Training in L. A.. The idea was that when I returned to O. C.I would deliver it to our organization and others. When I did, frankly it scared the hell out of me because I couldn’t believe the stupidity of my educated co-workers who couldn’t see the necessity of being prepared even after living two major earthquakes in ten years.
I’m semi-retired now, working part time at adult school and when we cover this topic we have maybe two or three students out of thirty-six at the beginning of the lesson who are even aware of the problem. I encourage them to set aside an extra can of food every time they buy groceries and start collecting enough water and meds for at least three days as recommended by the ARC. By the end of the lesson there may be another two or three who have seen the light and started preparing. The rest seem to think somebody is going to take care of them.
On my block I think my wife and I and the Mormon family across the street are the only ones who have made any preparation.
When the S does finally HTF I hope I’m out of here, (Southern California) because there are way too many people and not enough emphasis on preparedness. I have visions of having to hold off my thirsty, hungry neighbors after just a day or two who have done nothing to prepare. Life for them is going to be very different and not pretty.
This computerized generation is going to really be up the proverbial fecal creek without a paddle. Those of us from the typewriter and slide rule generation, if we were lucky enough to have had some military training will at least know how to dig a cat hole and start a fire. The rest of these kids are going to really be: S. O. L.
To avoid conflict and buy time lay in a couple extra cases of beans.When the hungry come looking for food you can through them a can of beans instead of a load of buck.This is self serving not out of the goodness of your heart.This may buy a little time.
With All Due Respect, O&G. Your suggestion is probably the worst I can think of. Throw a piece of bread to a seagull and within minutes you have a hundred gulls present. I suggest, play dumb, in that, dress like them, talk like them, “smell” like them to facilitate being inconspicuous and the hords will go elsewhere. In other words, make yourself “Invisible”, much the same as living totally off the land. If the animals in the forest don’t know you are there, providing yourself with food is “relatively” easy.
Thanks Larry I should have been clear. After a TOTAL breakdown you are right. But after a earthquake or other large regional disaster help will come at some point.This just gives another option short of shooting some one . After law and order comes back we will have to justify pulling the trigger. Being invisible in a city is not as easy as in a rural place.
Agreed Sir, but being inconspicuous, “Invisible” isn’t as hard as you may think. I, personally, have disappeared in plane site for ten years, same name, social security number, from family that was actively looking for me over a moral disagreement. At this time only my brother, sworn to secrecy, knows my ware abouts, but I am in no way hiding. My moral character is on the highest level as well my honor and integrity.
To add to the “You know you are a Prepper if” lines requested in the main post and playing on what Old & Grumpy said:
You know you’re a Prepper if your son announces he is marrying a Mormon and you all celebrate!
Joane–At last a woman posting! I’m not LDS but have lived among them all my life.Salt of the earth people and one of the last groups of women who know how to do stuff. Check out the blogs Lisa posted on the BOW org.
Women are really the ultimate preppers. Seems funny there are not more responding on this site. Living in Utah, one always thinks about being prepared whether Mormon or otherwise. I agree totally about our fathers’ Greatest Generation but we Baby Boomers are not exactly clueless ourselves. As for our kid’s level of preparedness — what would you have thought in 1970 if your father had told you to prepare for TEOTWAWKI? hahaha. I tried to get my sister, who lives in Raleigh NC, to read One Second After. She told me, “You are beginning to worry me, Sis”. She did not mean that in a good way. My response: “Look at it this way. If you are right, then I am just having a lot of fun getting in shape, shooting guns, making new friends and spending your inheritence. If I am right, you and my brilliant nephews with their Ph.Ds, are dead.” Kind of puts things in perspective doesn’t it.
After the solar flair or EMP old guys who can do stuff or know stuff will rule the world.Watch a 20 something try to use a map or compass.My kids have high IQ and good degrees but can’t believe the things I know about or how to do.In scouts it was ‘be prepared’. Prepper is what America was.Mormons had to have a year of supplies on hand. The big loss of the old guys is what they knew, the small tricks of the trade.
O&G,are you familiar with the ” Foxfire”series of books…..I have an entire set and the old timers knowledge they contain is beyond belief.
Worth checking out and the story behind them is worth the effort in itself
Thanks I will check it out. Sorry about the double post I thought I hit cancel the first time.Still in the garage.
You might be a prepper if you are too paranoid to post about being a prepper. Even spell check rejects the word prepper. Turns out my Dad must have been a prepper.OR that is just the way quiet Patriots raised in the depression were. It took weeks and 5 yard sales to clean out his garage and most of it was not hoarder type junk.He had a plan for every old screw, or part. MANY times I have had to go buy stuff he had in his garage! They are almost all gone–The Greatest Generation!
Grumpy, my dad was the same way. He had a box of tools he left me when he died; some were passed down to him when his father died. They are so old that I have no idea what they are for…..they are probably from horse & buggy days. The leather punch still works, though.
As for the depression, both my parents went through it, and they never tossed anything away. My kids will more than likely say the same thing about my stuff, but I’m not betting on it. They are both computer nerds who work Silicon Valley. Frankly, I don’t think they know how to change a tire, although I showed them many years ago. But, maybe they aren’t too worried about it since the answers they need are probably found on Google.
When we cleaned out my Dads shop there was, among many interesting items,a WW2 era Sherman Tank Whip Radio Antenna…he”might need it one day”….along with an artillery angle finder,a some-kind-of-something,brass and beautifully crafted,that no one HAS EVER identified,and a 100 other pcs of such.
My Dad was an engineer and a pack rat of the highest order….His fav phrase was ” go ahead and let me have that..I’ll use it for something”…
Flick–I am siting in my dads empty garage as your post came in . I can’t read the key board!
Flick-I am siting in my dads empty garage as your post came in.Can’t read the keys on the keyboard!
Smitty: That’s okay it was still funny because Sheesh doesn’t compute either. Seriously, do you know what TEOTWAWKI means?
Acronyms are fun but you have to be on the inside to understand most of them. I regularly use PLMHYWTDTW on my student’s homework assignments to save time. It means: please let me help you with this during the week. But none are as direct or at times funny as the ones we used in the Marine Corps: USMC, uncle Sam’s misguided children, RHIP, rank has it’s privileges and WTFS!. That’s the one we never used around the wife and kids.
The End Of The World As We Know It.
Hank, the only acronym we used was ASAP, and it was so long ago that I think we used it before it became popular. For some reason, I find it almost impossible to keep even the acronym letters in my head, but then again, I am from a different generation than are today’s kids.
You might say that I am from the “typewriter generation.” We had no computers, pocket/hand calculators, or even transistors. We made do with vacuum tubes in our radar set (they got hot and frequently broke down), typewriters and slide rules. We frequently did math calculations in our heads because it was faster than doing them with pencil and paper.
When I was in the Navy 40 years ago I had an actual copy of the DICNAVAB It was an inch and a half thick
Dictionary of Naval Abbreviations.
Hank, I should have said, “Sheesh.” Maybe I’d better accompany Lisa to the blackboard.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sheesh
My idea of being a good prepper is to keep the extra refrigerator in the garage well-stocked with my favorite Costco beer.
Smitty:
Don’t be too hard on her. Did you spell check your spelling of Jeesh? I couldn’t find it in the dictionary or the spell check on my lap top.. Seriously I wish they had a editorial feature here where we could correct mistakes we made after the fact.
Also on a serious note: is there a standard dictionary or glossary of prepper terms? I know what SHTF means but TEOTWAWKI is a new one to me. I assume that BOB is bring your own bottle, (or booze), and GOOD would be average or better than but the first one really got my spell checker in an uproar.
Hank-Lisa posted a talk like a prepper blog on 6/15.It gives a glossary. It all sounded Greek to me! I learned some Greek yesterday on the 4th of july blog.MOLON LABE!!! Read the posts on the 4th for the translation.I also wish I could pull back some dumb stuff I posted. I spent lots of time at the blackboard in school.
Bug Out Bag.
Get Out Of Dodge.
The end of the world as we know it. (TEOTWAWKI)
Jeeesh, Lisa, did you proof-read the article before you printed it? It has some serious punctuation errors. Other errors include your using “your” instead of “you’re?” And you don’t need hyphens between the words “how to.”
Go to the blackboard and write “my bad” one hundred times.