People who think preppers are crazy have obviously paid no attention in history class. There are so many things that’ve happened and continue to happen in this huge planet of ours, one would have to be crazy NOT to prep.
In today’s piece, I want to take a sneak peek into our troubled, bloody history and learn a few things. I won’t go into boring details, I’ll mainly be focused on the teachings we can extract. Hopefully, you’ll see this piece as refreshing and a break from boring how-to survival articles out there.
#1. Learn to live like they did during The Great Depression.
Many people, including myself, believe an economic collapse is very likely to happen. What happened in 2008 was just a dress rehearsal if you ask me, so to figure out what life would be life after such a collapse, let’s take a closer look at what people did during the Great Depression of 1929.
Among other things:
- they learned to recondition their clothes and anything else that they could to avoid spending money on new things;
- they would barter a lot more than they used to (to avoid using money)
- they would cook simple meals using simple recipes, based on whatever ingredients they could find, given that many were unavailable or very expensive
- they gave up their telephone
- some small businesses moved into their own homes to avoid paying rent
- and, of course, many just left the city to leave a self-sufficient life on their own land
Basically, they did a lot of frugal things that didn’t involve money. So the lesson to be learned here is to get out of debt, start living self-sufficiently and find alternate means to continue to enjoy the things they used to.
#2. Learn to heal and survive like the Native Americans.
Native Americans were known to have great respect for nature. They learned to live without damaging it, to care for its creatures and, of course, to use its resources in a non-wasteful manner.
A very important category of resources for preppers consists of medicinal plants. While they can’t treat everything, the do work for alleviating or curing things like spider bites, heartburn, high blood pressure, fever, bronchitis and even pneumonia.
Some of the plants they used include the bark of cherry tree, Purple Coneflower, White Oak bark, dandelion roots, mullein and many, many more.
Herbs and wild edibles are just the beginning, you need to learn to use every resource Mother Nature puts at your disposal. Pine sap, bird’s nests, plants, dew – everything can be used one way or another, whether it’s to light a fire or to quench your thirst.
Perhaps the most important lesson the Native Americans can teach us is about camouflage. They knew how to hide very well in the wilderness by wearing browns and greys, in order to sneak up on their prey or their enemies. They would paint their faces in strakes of green. Some people actually say they “invented” camouflage.
#3. Lessons from Sparta
Sometimes you just have to grow a pair of you-know-what, stop making excuses and take action, particularly when it comes to physical fitness. While planning is very important in survival, the things that you actually do are what really matter.
Some of the things you can learn from the Spartan warriors:
- take action even when you don’t feel like it
- have someone coach you and measure your progress, whether it’s losing weight, gaining strength or even prepping
- face death and injury without fear, because when SHTF, you’ll most likely see people get injured or experience it yourself
- develop a strong mindset, prep to thrive, not just to survive
Final Words
If you’re going to study history in order to become better prepared, this article is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many things different peoples can teach us, it would take years or even decades to go through it all and practice. You could learn:
- preservation techniques from the Ancient Egyptians, to keep your stockpile fresh if you live in arid zones
- from the Eskimos you could learn how to dress to stay warm, how to make quinzees and igloos
- General George S. Patton can teach you how to stay focused and disciplined in order to teach your bug out location or whatever survival goals you have in mind
- Sun Tzu can teach you the art of war, but you can easily take those lessons and apply them for survival purposes
- Napoleon can teach you about strategy and bugging out with little supplies so you’re FAST
…and on and on. Pick up any history book and, since your mind is already in the survival mindset, you’ll quickly figure out what you can apply to your situation.
Boy this is really old and tiresome. They’ve been preaching this for over 10 years.
Nut job.
They’ve been teaching this stuff much longer than that Dutchman. I went to my first preparedness expo in the early 80s. There are many who agree with his assessment that we are headed for collapse. Not just here, but globally. Zero interest rates have staved it off for the Obama years. But, the fed res bank says that is about to change in a big way.
Personally, I like a refresher on prepping now and then. It keeps my head in the game. It’s not only gov’ts that are cause for prepping. There are plenty of natural causes that warrant such attention as well. Just ask those people who witnessed the twisters yesterday what they think about prepping.
Blessings:-}
” I went to my first preparedness expo in the early 80s.” Well that’s over 30 years ago. How’s that canned food doing? How many flash lights and knives can one have?
Remember Y2K – and it was going to be the EOTWAWKI – never happened. Now buy gold, no silver, no ammo. It goes on and on. Freeze dried water is the next big seller.
If you read the history of the American Economy one will see that the bad times were over and the 1920s were referred to as the roaring 20s. Herbert Hoover guaranteed during his inaugural address that nothing but ‘blue sky’ lay ahead. It is easy to say all we have to fear is fear itself if the author (Roosevelt) of such gibberish is holed up in the Oval Office living the good life at taxpayer’s expense…quite different if your one of the 10,000,000 the didn’t live long enough to be counted in the census of 1940, or one of the 5,640,000 out of 14,000,000 that were turned away during the September 1940 military draft due to various diseases caused by prolonged malnutrition of ten years or more. Moral of the story…smart people prep…good times or bad. And make no mistake…very, very bad times are coming. Worse than our most horrible expectations. Guaranteed!
Yep,
I remember y2k. It was an interesting time in the prepper community that’s for sure. I watched them hustle around to make sure they were ready when the clock turned 2000.
Thing is, I live where shopping is done once a month or so. We don’t make trips into town without planning all the stops we need for at least that long. So we are usually pretty stocked up anyway.
Canning from the garden, meat from the field, are standard operating procedure around here. I haven’t bought a steak from the store for a couple decades now. Living the simple life:-)
Blessings:-}
The Boy Scouts of ‘Murica have taught it since 1910. My father grew up rather poor following his father, who worked heavy highway construction, around the western USA. He was a great “scrounger” and could MacGyver just about anything and he lived life as a prepper in terms of varied skills. Thankfully he passed them on to my brothers and I. The Boy Scouts just reinforced it for me.
It is always a good idea to be prepared to face catastrophe and disaster, but it is a wise idea to prepare for the ones that are most likely to affect you before the ones that are unlikely.
For instance, are you building nuclear bomb shelters and buying Geiger counters and radiation pills before you have enough money and essentials of daily life put away to survive a year without employment and income?
Think pragmatically about the things you will be most likely to face first, the unlikely ones can wait till after you’ve prepared for them.
FWIW, what do you think is the most overlooked essential practical item to have in your preparations that almost no one thinks of till they need it and don’t have it? And the one almost everyone has but is unlikely to ever have an actual need for?
Well, what are they?
Canned beans.
Where I live, snow shoes.
Got caught in a blizzard once during the Christmas season when I hadn’t been shopping for food yet and had almost nothing on hand. The streets became impassible to both vehicles and pedestrians in about an hour and remained that way for a week. I was getting really hungry by the time the streets got cleared enough to make it to a grocery store, on foot, and all I was able to find there was some stale stuffing bread and a couple of cans of something I don’t even recall what was. It had been cleared out before me and the supply trucks couldn’t get through to restock it. FWIW, and the reason for my suggestion, the snow to the store was well tracked by the show shoes of those that got there first.
Second to that, I’d say shoe laces. Sure you can use string or rope or something as a makeshift substitute, but if those were as good as real laces they’d be what we’d be using in the first place.
YMMV, in some places I think a cheap inflatable raft would be more appropriate.
I’ll guess water; one can go without food far longer than hydration.
toilet paper.
didja ever shit in the woods without it?
sure there are a few plant leaves you can use, and there are some you should never use,
but if you want the chicks to come to your bug out location, your gonna need some creature comforts.
just look at Venezuela, to see what life will be like in a libtard wet dream.
Our nation was still 90% white and mostly Christian in 1929.Jim Crow was still the law of the South .All four of my grandparents told me there was very little crime during the Great Depression .Very few people were depending on government.Most could grow their own food.Now everything has changed.There will be a hurricane of crime and violence hit this nation. You had better be prepared to kill without mercy if you plan on surviving.
Learn to live like they did in the Great Depression. Guess he does not know about the Dust Bowl.
There ws child labor – my father was working full time for pennies when he was 9. My grandfather was shoveling coal for a dime a day. Gave up their phone? Are you fucking kidding me? In 1929, only 9% of farms even had electricity. I have intimate knowledge about the Great Depression out of the Dust Bowl, and it is nothing as pristine as this guy suggests.
Despite what BB’s grandparents said – crime was rife in the Depression. Petty theft blossomed. Bootlegging. The Mob. Prostitution took off. Crowd violence and rioting. Strike related violence. Etc.
Re food – many did grow their own food. But the Dust Bowl was not a place to do it.
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Some things cannot be prepared for. The Dust Bowl was one such.
Just bullshit. Complete phobic bullshit.
Advice that is based in 100 year old problems. The next problem, what ever it is, will be different.
Could also say: Live like a cave man. Just as valid.
Your pictures…just more white privilege…sorry, had a liberal moment…it was disgusting!
Matches, Lighters, Tobacco, Liquor, Coffee, Candles, First Aid Kit.
I agree with your list, except add grains and some canned beans. (Dry beans take too much fuel to cook.)
http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/01/23/mexican-cartel-stockpiling-grenade-launchers-texas-border/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
What part of the dust bowl was your family from?
Tampa – Oklahoma, concentrated around Durant but generally anywhere in N Texas or OK. Choctaw Nation area around Durant mostly, though.
Both sides of my mom’s family were from east of Little Rock but during the Depression they scattered all over the country with many going to Oklahoma.
I still have a bunch of relatives in OKC,though I have not been back since my granddad died in the early 90s.
Have a bunch in Pryor also,though I’ve never been there-they’d either be in OKC or Arkansas when we were visiting.
Oklahoma is nice country.
Greetings,
I have a simple plan: take stock of what you use and put enough away to last you for a month.
If after a month the terrible thing that happened is still happening then the lack of supplies will be the least of your worries. At that point you enter some Hobbesian nightmare of All against All and hiding out with your last can of beans an extra day isn’t going to make any difference.
It really isn’t that hard.
When I run out of my last bottle of Scotch I know the shit done got serious.
I increase that to three months with just the basics of what I use and will need without electricity.
That was me!
What bob said.
Here’s an article from a guy who went thru the Bosnian situation in the early 90s.
http://www.naturalnews.com/040249_Bosnia_preppers_survival_strategies.html
Thanks for the tip:-)
Blessings:-}
What the actual fuck is this about? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxx_9HRG-m8&feature=youtu.be
K,
I hope that this is true .Stay on this & try to confirm it thru a reliable source,will you.The CDC is a good place to start draining the swamp.
I only listened to a couple of minutes of this but I suspect that it is true.
We know that Trump is not convinced of the safety of vaccines and might even be an anti vaxxer.
A couple of months ago there was speculation here that Barron Trump might be autistic.There is at least a casual link,possibly definitive,between vaccines and autism.I would bet that he is slightly autistic.With Trump’s $ and access he would be in contact with cutting edge research & treatment doctors who would also be able to offer an informed opinion as to whether or not the CDC has been covering up for vaccine manufactures who are harming people,especially kids.
If you believed that your kid had been harmed by something that was known to cause harm& you had the power to go after them, what would you do?
Whoops,I jumped the gun-when I went back & started to listen again,he is announcing the date as Nov.,2017.
Not sure what his angle is here but I’m not listening to any more of it.
However,I will not delete my first comments because I do believe that this could be a possibility in the future.
Hard as it is to believe, this is only part of the truth. It would be so wonderful if true, I’ll be monitoring the news stream. In the mean time here is one I fully accept as true, what do you think?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWvzKgZuZAU
This is where I learned about the above:
I find it odd that people who buy life, health, car, property and various other forms of insurance without a second thought, will point and smirk at those who prep for shortages of real life essentials.
No one ever wasted a moment of their lives learning a new skill or preparing for the future. To suggest otherwise is so silly as to not require a response, but from the quotes of the day, I will repeat-
“I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”
Skill sets and consumables that we all use daily are always valuable. When you become too old to use your skills, you can teach them to someone younger, when you no longer need food or toilet paper, then you’ve shuffled off this mortal coil and simply aren’t aware of it yet.
The more self-reliant and self-sufficient you become the less dependent you are, n’est ce- pas? What kind of adult wants to be dependent upon others?
Like my Grandmother used to tell me about her experience growing up in the depression, she didn’t remember there being much money, but they never went hungry.
If you can accurately predict the future 100% of the time, you only need to prep when disasters are on top of you. For the rest of us we must be ready to face adversity all the time. Storms, political assininery, financial disaster (this can be personal), war, crop failure, earthquake, pandemic, flood, pestilence, can all come to you in the blink of an eye. To be unprepared is akin to doing a high wire act in a wind storm without a net.
In the words of a great man, “What the hell do you have to lose?”
I asked my neighbor whether he had prepared for an economic downturn by stocking food and other essensials. He said no. I asked him what his survival strategy was if the currency failed. He said Smith & Wesson. Hmmm! Going to keep him out of the loop.
plenty of video out there showing police blatantly stating they would use the Smith & Wesson method
Know Farmers, Know Food
No Farmers, No Food
It never fails to bring on an outright belly laugh when I see the postings by those who think they are going to throw on their back pack or jump in the bug out vehicle and go live off the land. Apparently they don’t realize that every single square inch of land in this country is owned by somebody and usually that somebody does not want to see them, especially during a SHTF moment. So any of them who think they can come out here and use the Smith&Wesson method, all I can say is come on down. If any of them should actually get past my neighbors (most of whom have been on this land for 10 generations or more) actually find me and dispatch me and steal all my stuff, they won’t have the necessary skills or patience to use my stash. So unless they know how to use my hand selected and saved vegetable seeds and know which ones to plant when, unless they know how to connect the components of my solar power system and connect the freezer with the one year supply of locally grown, and butchered meats what are they going to eat? The only preparations any of us ever really need to make are in building community and acquiring useful skills.
But hey what do I know lots of you city folks probably figure us country cousins are just bumpkins anyway. I have been expecting a full on grid down failure for more than a decade and there are no components in my food stash that are not part of my daily diet, no freeze dried anything, got some dehydrated (did it myself thank you) got lots of home canned organically grown veggies. Would the city cousins even know how to prepare them in a tasty and sustaining manner?
I just like to be sure the popcorn stash is full for when the movie really gets interesting. You all should do whatever you think is best for you, I certainly do that for me.
Having enough to get by until sanity returns is one approach. But how do you know how long it will take until sanity returns?
Having more than you need for a month is probably a minimum. Three months, fairly good. Longer, better.
The bandits and barbarians will loot and steal as long as they can. The warehouses might supply a city with most needs for a month, then they’re empty for good. The bandits and barbarians will need to survive too: that is, with several million firearms out there in America, the bandits and barbarians will need to fight, every day, and never lose in order to survive. Now consider their opposition: the producers, makers and defenders who will be equally well armed, probably as well or better organized (start now!) and who will be defending their families. Eventually, the bandit and barbarian types will be defeated: bandits and barbarians don’t build, which is what a successful producer MUST do in order to produce! We will lose a lot of good, honest people to the bandits and barbarians; THEY will lose all their troops.
The next version of government (if one is made) will need to be small, agile and inexpensive; there won’t be resources to spare for a while.
Do you ever wonder what other cultures are preparing for?
Ok, Coyote you challenged me to have an idea the other day and since there was not an open thread where I had any particular expertise I didn’t really have much to say. However I did feel that sharing what I had learned from those who I do consider more knowledgeable than me to be a worthy effort. Apparently not well received. That’s how it is when you’re always the new kid on the block and in general a heretic.
So here’s my idea. Climate is controlled by the sun, all climate, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, etc all those climates are controlled by the sun. There is a pulsing of solar output on several different frequencies, the most commonly recognized being the eleven year sun spot cycle. There is also a 205 or is it 207 year cycle, see the work of John L Casey for an in depth discussion:
Is it hyperbole? I think not, the records of all the ancient cultures all over the world show these cycles. Don’t believe me, do your own research.
I suspect that DJT may well be aware of this view.
And just so you don’t think this is just an American scientist view lets take a look at one of my favorite Canadians.
Sorry but I can’t summarize these complex issues in a few paragraphs but I find the multiple hour presentation approach provides adequate coverage and good depth of detail.