I'M A PREPPER.......you hear this everyday all over the radio and Internet without explanation.

Why do we really spend so much time prepping?

Each prepper is prepping for a different scenario they believe will take place very soon if not tomorrow. The variety of prepper's is mind boggling. Here is a list of some reasons people prep.

WORLD WAR 3
ECONOMY TANKS
LOCAL DISASTER
E.M.P.
SOLAR FLARE
NATURAL DISASTERS GLOBAL
CIVIL RIOTS
ZOMBIES
ATTACK ON AMERICA
NWO


The list goes on with many more reasons but the ones above are a general idea of what fears American Prepper's have right now.

Families will spend a lot of their hard earned income to buy supplies for a time that may or may not happen. Even with those odds they still will spend this money that could go to bills on food, water, med's and survival equipment without a second thought. WHY?

Because they believe that when and if any of these should happen they are able to take care of their families. After so many disaster stories how the government (FEMA) has failed American citizens during a disaster crises, people are no longer trusting in the help and support of any government entity but rather in their own means of gathering supplies and protecting those they love.

Many American's have literally gone out on a financial limb to gather supplies especially this past few months with war looming on the horizon, a total economic collapse and the stock market crashing closing all chances of getting your money out of the bank.. They are willing to give up fast food, movies, vacations, and non important shopping even letting bills go a month later then they planned.. Many even pack lunches now, so they can afford even more supplies.

Addiction? Fear? or just plan Sensible Planning?
I pick the latter. To be prepared or call yourself a prepper it takes much more then just supplies. It takes time, money, dedication and a belief set that you and yours will be safer and have a better chance to live another day should something terrible erupt in a matter of minutes.

Their dedication goes even further to self preservation where as medical supplies are put up as well as protection devices and educational books library if the net goes down. They have maps and routes and strategies all in place and pick up points for family members. Yes they are more then dedicated  but not addicted.

They see what others fail to see whom we call sheeple and the name is not given lightly.Sheeple are made of two separate yet in common type of people. One is the type that knows what is coming but would rather not know and hides behind social media and entertainment to block out the truth. "out of sight, out of mind".

Then there are the sheeple that are truly ASLEEP.. yes these people are so dumbed down that if you ask them, "are you prepared?", they look at you glossy eyed and go "huh,what's coming?" They are sincerely out of touch with any reality around them and tend to live in a cocoon. Yes a cocoon where they are quite happy to be controlled and follow each and every order of the social networks on how to live their lives. Slaughter house awaits these and I have no sympathy for any of them. If you give them the excuse "no one ever told me" then you know full well they are either chronic lairs or simpletons on a string.

To prep and be dedicated is a life style now a days and a conviction. No longer crazy people waiting for the bomb to drop but a vast group of many types of people, from lawyers and doctors to engineers and the local grocer. Your neighbors may be preppers and you don't even know because many are now learning not to advertise and teach their children to keep what goes on at home private.

Preppers newest fear is being robbed of all their hard earned investment and so they should. Robberies are at an all time high and it wouldn't take much for you to lose everything in one night because you failed to keep your mouth shut instead of bragging what you do have. (Doomsday Preppers for example).

Times are changing and even your friends can and will become your enemy if they want what you have.

So now you understand just a little on why preppers spend so much time prepping.


IT HAS BECOME A LIFESTYLE.................

When the E.B.N. announcement comes on your screen, will you be ready?

Quote:For those interested in more great prepper
information I came across an awesome website called  www.prepperspost.com
It is now a place I go to on a regular basis. Chuck full of knowledge you will find no where else, all packed into one site.

Getreadyforum.com

Tomatos are near and dear to my heart.  With the arrival of the first seed catalogue, I thought it was time to get everyone thinking how best to use their upcoming garden space. I start with my mother's home grown tomato plants, approx 60 every year.  I plant them close together with 2 plants to a hole.  In a space no larger than 10 feet by 10 feet.  They are planted so they can be watered by a snaking weeping hose.  I may not get quite as many tomatos per plant as some of you, but once they are established they choke out all the weeds and my weeding is less than if they were far apart.  I usually don't put out cages, they are so thick they don't spoil because they don't touch the ground.  
From this last year I got 10 large boxes of tomatos before the frost hit and several batches of canned spaghetti sauce, salsa, and tomato paste, before the 10 boxes.  
The best tomato paste recipe I have found was greek style.  In it they press the washed cooked cored and quartered tomatos through a cone collander to remove the seeds and skins.  With the resulting juice they put it through a reverse jelly bag and kept the pulp and let the extra watery juice drain away.  (my mother thought she should keep said watery juice and found out the acid in it caused her severe heartburn when she used it in a soup) Once the pulp is thick enough for your liking can it as tomato paste or sauce if thinner.  I make the paste and use it to thicken my salsa and spaghetti sauce recipes.  A 15 quart batch of cooked tomatos results in about 3-4 cups of thick paste I think.  It reduces A LOT!!!
If there is a request for more info or more recipes, let me know and I will post more.  I just don't want to bore anyone if no one finds the tomato and garden as interesting as I do.:wink: I could likely fill a thread just on the tomato.  For a family of 5 this is how much I currently do, if things go south I may find it prudent to do more.

Considering how we are all trying to stretch food dollars, and how we are all getting tired of eating the same things, I thought it might be nice to start a thread to share recipes that were inexpensive to cook, but that tasted good ...
especially if it's something with a really different and unusual taste. I am sure we all have a few recipes that fit this catagory.

One point I would like to make up front is that we all really need to start planning meals ... like we don't have enough to do already ... but still, it really does save money. There are some cookbooks out with titles like, "Cook Once, Eat For A Month" and such. The basic concept that they are trying to bring across is a good one. When you buy groceries, plan meals
where everything is used. In other words, if you get a bunch of celery, plan your meals that week so you can use all of it. You can chop it all at once, and that saves washing more dishes, and then you have it to throw into all your recipes.
Same with a block of cheese ... grate it all at once, and use it in more than one recipe for the week, so it doesn't sit in the refrigerator and mold. If we can avoid waste, we are saving money.

Another trick I learned is if I am going to cook, I make a lot of extra, and then I make my own TV dinners, which I freeze for later. I recycle my old TV dinner plates and bowls, and cover them with Reynolds Wrap.

Here is an example: At Thanksgiving I always cook a Turkey, and I try to cook a big one. I put a lot of water in the roasting pan with it, so I have lots of broth for gravy. Instead of making some mash potatoes, I make 5 pounds. Instead of making one box of stuffing, which is always on sale around Thanksgiving, I make 5 boxes. I make most of the broth up as gravy, saving a little for Turkey Hash Soup that I make with the Carcass later. After we have Thanksgiving dinner, I
make up about 12 TV dinners complete with Turkey, Mashed Potatoes and Dressing with Gravy over everything and freeze them. Then when I am running late and need a meal, it is already done, and I don't have dirty dishes to deal with.

I also put a few freezer bags of cut up turkey meat in the freezer. Then when I am in the mood to make stir fry,
the meat is already cooked, and all I have to do is thaw it and throw it in.

I am going to put my first recipe in another post, because I already did it once, and the site lost the whole thing, so I have had to rewrite all of this once. I am going to copy it this time before I hit the submit button, cause it was saying that the session had timed out. In other words I am slow and took too long! ... I am old ... what do you expect! lol

Woke up today with the need to check my "lists" and check them twice, lol. You know that feeling you get when you forgot something and you just HAVE to go back and make sure you really turned off the stove, curling iron? That is how I felt. So I checked, hate how small it is and decided I need to do better. I can stretch my preps a year if we only get 2000 calories a day. Yeah right. We will all be working our butts off trying to survive and the last thing we will need is food rations. 4000-5000 calories a day is what each and everyone of you should be prepping for for each any every person in your group. Don't half that number for children, the silly things grow like weeds. Double that number if you have teen boys or soon to be teen boys.



Many prep for 6 months to a
year. When you think about it, if you are truly prepping for a SHTF
that is indeed TEOTWAWKI then you should be prepping for 2-5 years. So many of you just spit whatever you are drinking our your nose and then thought this chicky is nutsy. Really? Let's think about it for a moment using the world economy as just one of the many SHTF scenarios we are all facing right now.

Tomorrow morning the world economy just hit rock bottom. Boom it finally happened. Money is now useless and though the thought to use it to wipe your hiney is gonna cross your mind, don't. Think of all the creepy germs that is on it, and just use it as a fire starter instead. Remember, hospitals and doctor's offices will be raided and over ran in the coming weeks. You can't afford to get sick. The first thing you are going to do, it head to the store and buy everything you can with the money you have and the credit cards you have on hand. If you are lucky, it will still be good and you can buy a bunch of stuff and safely get it home. If you are not lucky two things could happen, the money isn't any good and the store is a riot zone. You will head home without anything in hand.

How could rioting happen that quickly? Just think about it. Anyone who has half a brain will be thinking just like you and know they need to stock up right now or there won't be a chance later. By the end of the first day the shelves at the store will be empty. I could be wrong, it could take 3 days, but I don't think so. Some of the clueless might be sitting around laughing at the rioting at the store until they head to their fridge and realize they are out of milk. The average American, keeps only 3 days of food in their house. When I learned that, I honestly thought it was an exaggeration, as I only do major shopping once a month with a few other trips for perishables, so even before I was "awake" I had at least two months of supplies on hand. Who keeps 3 days for crying out loud? College students, poor people, those living on welfare and older people who living on retirement checks, single guys with a fridge full of beer and some junk food, your neighbors who think shopping daily for their meals is cool.

Just in case it takes 3 days, day 4 will be hell. Rioting with law enforcement over run, hospitals in chaos and Marshall Law declared. People aren't going to work. Why bother if you aren't going to get paid. How long will the electricity last? How long will heating gas last? How long can you get gas for your vehicle? How long will that magically faucet turn on and have life giving water pour out? How long before gangs are busting down your doors to take your food, your children? How long? A week? Two maybe even three? Your food is gone in say two weeks. Water and electricity stop in 3 weeks.

Yeah, very depressing. So, how long will it last? When do things get back to normal? There are a bunch of people on this board and out in the world that don't believe it ever will. It's called a reset. Life as you know it ended and a few billion people could die before it all settles down again. Yes this is a worse case scenario and that is what you should be prepping for. Hell on earth.

You can't grow food during the first year of hell unless you are in a very isolated area and are positive roving gangs will not find you. Just think of all those valuable seeds going to waste if you are run off your isolated spot. Your job during that first year is to NOT be seen, NOT be heard and Not be smelled. Smell? What? Starving people will be able to smell food cooking over a fire/grill from a long long ways off. Just think how far your neighbor's BBQ carries. Your mouth on a full belly waters and you want to start up your own grill!!

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Now is the time to get ready. Right here and right now. Not tomorrow. The world economy REALLY is on the verge of collapse. There really are wicked viruses out that that could cause a pandemic and no, I am not going to go on and on about all the many horrible ways the world was we know it could cease to exist over night. My point is to get you moving to make sure you can survive or at least give you a better chance. Survival will be a matter of luck (even for those on their wilderness/isolated land) and by the grace of God. Yup, you best get yourself ready mentally, physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually. All of this is going to help you and yours survive.



For those new to prepping SHTF = stuff
hits the fan. TEOTWAWKI = the end of the world as we know it (it does
NOT mean the end of the world - just the one we are use to)