I’m not a prepper, and I’m not an expert on prepping—and I’m not sure I want to be, for reasons you’ll gather as we go. Prepping is a fascinating, if sometimes dark, subject, and I’ve gone deep enough to share the broad outlines. Prepping, like resiliency, is about retaining functionality (and maybe comfort) for 1–3 months through mild-to-medium disasters. Those disruptions might include loss of power, fuel, food supply chains, internet, and transportation. But prepping also

The Great Depression followed the Roaring Twenties, a time, like now, when Americans believed the party would go on forever. During the Great Depression a lot of people did not have enough to eat. That situation was somewhat resolved by World War II.  But food remained in limited supply, especially for the troops, so the government started the Victory Gardens program. The program was very successful. By 1944, there were over 20 million Victory Gardens producing about 40% of t

The Inner Side of Resilience Whenever I get the chance to share something that matters to me, I often begin with the “spiritual” dimension. It’s not always appreciated, but to me we are nothing more than consciousness, expressed uniquely through each of us. We may appear to do this or that, but there is never really anything happening other than this consciousness. When one understands this, consciousness itself becomes the focus of attention. When I study “my own,” I see tha

Before diving into my prescription for food preparedness, I have a few caveats. Like 99% of Americans, I do not grow food for a living. I make my living as a contractor/laborer and my life partner is an online teacher. These vocations supply the money we need to be resilient in the information-technology world we live in. While we have time to garden, for fun and for fresh summer produce, we prefer to concentrate on higher value activities like renovating the house or exercis

The adage that fences make good neighbors was born of no small amount of heartache, I am sure. We have a fence around our house, albeit see through, and a gate, and they are very helpful for reasons you might not guess. Let’s start with the gate which has an automatic opener. The opener is as appreciated as the gate itself because it’s a drag getting out of the car to open and close the gate when tired, in a hurry, or in bad weather (some folks can control their gates with an

Many people recognize the value of generator backup. Quite a few have whole-house generators or small portable units that can power a few appliances during an emergency. That’s all good. But in most cases, these setups are designed for short-term outages, not extended ones. Whole-house generators can often run for a week or two before fuel runs out. Smaller generators may run for only a few days unless they’re connected to a larger, fixed propane tank instead of small portab

Setting Your Resiliency Goals To prepare for a loss of services, you’ll want to make an educated guess about what might happen and how you might weather it. Reality will never match your planning exactly, but a solid plan is still far better than no plan—or a weak one. Your plan will depend on your goal. In many cases, city dwellers cannot achieve ambitious goals, as renters and unavoidably reliant on outside services, but they can still vastly upgrade their resilience profi

The quality of your relationship with yourself, your partner (and children), your neighbors and your network trumps whatever resources and technical expertise you might possess.  You aren't resilient simply because you've got stuff. You need good relationships with reliable people. Its hard to get through childhood without some trauma and  most people live their lives in various forms of unconscious compensation.  In my case, I did not get the attention and approval I needed.

Quite a few residential solar power systems have been installed in the last decade. The vast majority (90%) are grid intertied without battery backup and are installed for the purpose of reducing power bills and power plant emissions. The average system cost is 28K. These solar power systems are a good thing, but all that green energy has not kept up with power demand and we are emitting more greenhouse gases than ever. Some of those same solar power households have genera

In 1993, I was recently divorced and broke but the homing instinct was strong, so I kept searching for land to build a homestead.  My companion found a listing for 24 well-endowed acres next to a small dairy farm, 20 miles from a university town.  The owner had lots of land and debts to pay so he financed the 24 acres for $2,000 an acre with 20K down. We borrowed the 20K down payment from our parents. and I later built a tiny straw bale house, now much improved, with credit c