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Prepper or Survivalist

9K views 34 replies 34 participants last post by  jyo 
#1 ·
OK, I am new to the site and really like what I have found. Loads of great info here and I would like to thank all of you in advance. My question from what I have read is what you think is better, being a Prepper and having years of food and ammo and weapons and such stored in a basement or BOL. Or, do you think it is better to know how to build half a dozen or so improvised shelters from different materials, knee high fire in under 15 minutes in any climatic condition, how to purify water, how to build a handful of snares and such- you get the idea here. Personally, I have always thought that the man/woman who can survive mainly from the knowledge and skills aquired through study and training has the definate edge in most cases. Mainly I guess I am wondering what others have experienced and think on this topic. Thank you in advance! :)
 
#3 ·
I expect even the most knowledgeable Survivalist would be smart enough to prep in advance.
 
#5 ·
Skills and knowledge what you have are most important what you can have.
Without them, you do nothing with years of preparing and gathering stuff what you might need some day...
First of all, you must have some skills and knowledge to survive... Then some basic items make it so much easier and comfortable than if you don't have them around...

And for example desert survival... gathering little bit water only slow your dead, not maybe save you... So if you are prepared right, it again increase your change to survive...

You maybe don't need as much stuff as many people are stocking, but once again... with right knowledge and some stuff, your survival situation is nicer experience.

I know how to make fire with rubbing couple sticks, but still i rather use lighter or flint... :D:
 
#9 ·
Survivial is not an either or (preps/skills) situation. The more wilderness skill you aquire the more you realize the last thing you want to do is to have to use them. In a survivial senario I'll take walking to the pantry to get dinner over hours and hours in the woods/forest looking for edibles to pick or shoot. With that being said only a fool thinks skills are not needed if you have a full pantry. The more options(skills) you have the greater the likelyhood of your long term survival
 
#12 ·
I like your reference to the pantry. Lots of ways to keep it stocked and learn skills too. Even though I am in the desert, a dehydrator and produce from the local farmers market keeps the skills up. There are lots of ways to spread out the skill net and using the pantry as the backbone and discovering new ways to keep it full works. Thanks for your post.
 
#14 ·
I retired and tuck a job at Home Depot working the lot (I move carts and baskets in the parking lot & help people put stuff in there cars) I am 68 YO and I can't believe how many people cant even lift a 25 pound bag of dirt. Now I exercise every day and go for long walks with my dog. "People in a SHTF situation our strength and stamina is life and death"
 
#16 ·
Honestly I'm not a fan of either. I'm trying to become more of a homesteader/sustenance farmer. I just want a nice self sustaining place and some extra stuff in case I have a few bad years farming.

But it's nice and none threatening like, I wear overalls, workboots and raise chickens and cows. Just a nice friendly salt of the earth type that would love to share a fresh melon for the garden with you. Nothing crazy, nothing abnormal, just a peaceful dude. I just gotta get moved out to my farm already and stop being stuck in limbo.
 
#17 ·
I know its often difficult to separate the two but I feel many younger people have overbought into prepping as its a relatively frictionless means of ensuring ones mortality, as you get older survival in situ may be the best option and therefore a heavy focus on preps is good sense.
I know a good number of people on here are well acquainted with the basics of rough living and are probably very good in the woods but I kept seeing the same recurring themes of more guns and more ammo with big ticket items an obvious "must have".
Has rampant consumerism taken over the survivalist community.:D:
 
#18 ·
I'm neither. I am more of a simple try to live as self sufficiently as I can. Do I have guns? Sure. Do I have a lot of food? Sure but it's not so much as preparing for the end of the world as it is just being thrifty.

Alot of folks in both camps suffer from gear itis, and have huge stockpiles of stuff.

I'd rather invest in a garden and can some of the excess to put away the excess and go on a cruise with the money saved. Or invest it. Than live in a never ending cycle of buying things.
 
#19 ·
To me, a survivalist is someone who more focused on being able to throw their BOB on, head out, & live in the woods. A prepper has more of a focus on sheltering in place. I consider myself a prepper, not a survivalist but I suppose the terms are somewhat interchangeable. I prepare so I don't have to live in the woods with nothing. For us, we started out as preppers in '08 & but our current projects & goals would really be more described as sliding down the homesteading slope. For my family, heading out on foot with only a backpack of supplies is not likely to end well (we do have BOBs though). We have small children ages 4, 2, & 1 as well as a member with multiple serious medical issues. We live at a location where most people would try to bug out to.
 
#20 ·
Too many labels. Why do people insist on labeling people like they're different types of nuts and bolts on the hardware store shelf?

Self sufficient.

I'm a prepper because at the first sign of trouble I'll head to the woods and live off the land. No, you're naive and you'll probably die cold and hungry.

I'm a survivalist because I have my group who trains once a week, has ten years of supplies in our secret wilderness redoubt and some guns and stuff. Yeah...right.

What's with the labels? They mean nothing.

Self sufficient. If my toaster breaks, I can fix it. (or I have a spare) If the gas station runs out of fuel I have some to last a while. When that runs out, I have this neat system where I capture the methane gas from my chicken poop and use that to power my car. I keep it in a big plastic trash bag on the roof...(not me you understand, some other guy. My backup bugout vehicle is a three wheel bicycle with a third world plywood trailer and machinegun mount on the handlebars) :D:

Self sufficient. I have some stores put back so if the grocery down the street runs out for whatever reason I can last for a while. With that and my garden, I should be in good shape. (Garden won't fit in a backpack though) :eek:
 
#23 ·
Not everything has to be be backpackable. My friend.

Many people seem to live in a fantasy world of being the lone warrior fighting the golden horde. Or going to run into the woods and lI've forever out of their backpack.


Sure there is a possibility some of those far out plans a lot of folks prep for could happen. But it is not likely

I am more a fan of promoting general preparedness and self sufficiency than far out unrealistic fantasy scenarios.

Most problems will be regional and limited in scope and duration.

You would be better off planning for a meltdown if you live near a power plant than an emp.

Having a garden financially gives you security the avg American family spends 9-13k a year on food.
a 14x14 garden plot can save you 1300 a year on food. If you changed nothing about your lifestyle other than a well managed 14x14 garden you not only are protected to a small degree from food scarcity and price fluctuations but your positioned to have an overall better quality of life.
By either saVing the money in case you need to spend it in a emergency for whatever reason
or maybe take a cruise with the wife st the end of the year

The biggest issue I see is people get wrapped up in the notion the need mountains of stuff. And while having some stuff is great a 50 year supply of food us simply a mountain of money losing value
 
#21 ·
You seriously need both. It took a bit of trouble to show me that.

I am a self-sufficient type but when the power went out in an ice storm I discovered my lighting was insufficient, and the fireplace was inadequate and the pipes froze. I also went a bit bonkers because I had no news, and after a couple of days I REALLY wanted to know what was going on in the world, and how hard the Midwest had bee hit.

On the GOOD side we had fresh laid eggs every morning, which I cooked in the fireplace.

On the BAD side, I could really only really see for 6 hours a day, as the slanting light did not really enter the house. And the candle flickered so much that it was hard to read, even hen the book was held a couple of inches from the flames. I tried more candles, mirrors to reflect the light, nothing helped. I now have battery lights.

And it was cold inside.

And, HOW often a day can a person eat tuna???? I have an assortment of canned meats, now!
....................................................

Then there is the OTHER kind of SHTF. Too much month and not enough paycheck. And I do not know about you folks, but we feel deprived unless we eat well, not to mention that cheap filler food is bad for my diabetes and hard on my health! Well we can eat luxurious food, courtesy of my 1 acre backyard hobby farm and of my pantry. And because it is cheaper to buy on sale, our pantry costs us nothing as over the years we have saved more money than the pantry is worth. Also, if I am too busy or too sick to cook we just open some cans. And, just for the sake of feeling secure we also have a couple of buckets of rice down there.

Well I have set the sprinkler for the vegetable garden, let the chickens out, and now that I have cooled off I believe I will work my 2 new bee hives. After that I will cool off again, and see if I can do something about the flat on my riding lawn mower. The black raspberries are starting to bear, but I might not get too them today. I am, though, DETERMINED to pick the snow peas again, as I sit comfortably on a cheap stool while I pick. Later, when it is too hot to work outside, I want to hit the grocery store because they are advertising boneless pork loin at $1.69 a pound and I want a bit for the freezer. Yes, we eat well, even on those months when w are flat out broke!
 
#24 ·
My take on your question is that you associate prepping with stockpiling "stuff" and survivalism with the practical application of acquired skills. I suspect you also somehow associate survivalism with the outdoors and prepping with the indoors to some degree. But on the whole, I think your question if more about stuff and skills.

As others have stated, it's really a function of both. Having stuff is great, and there's no real substitute for it, but stuff isn't going to do you much good if you don't have the skills to leverage it. Consider ammunition, for example. It's all well and good to have several thousand rounds stockpiled, but if you can't shoot or operate your firearm or if you get picked off before you get a chance to shoot, the stockpile ammunition isn't going to do you much good. Or, let's assume you can build three kinds of shelters as you suggest. Doesn't do you much good if you don't have any "stuff" to use in the construction. I guess you could fashion something temporarily serviceable, but it won't be very good or last very long.

But I think a little more clarity in the thought process would help.
 
#25 ·
I end agree that a good self sustainability is far more important. However, learning the skills to survive wouldn't hurt, and if you stock pile some stuff (like food rations buckets and such) that in some really bad situation, that should be the last resort to eat.

Prepping, to me, would be a stock pile of stuff to use if nothing else was available. This way I would have a back up if I couldn't get food from hunting, fishing, foraging, ect. I would hate to sit comfy in my house, eat great for a few months, then starve to death because I didn't utilize skills early on.

Granted, that would be more for something crazy like a sharknado happening.

I am more interested in using what I am learning on my .13 acres with my 611 square foot garden, and the 200 square foot chicken coop and run, plus my separate potato patch, onion and carrots. I am learning how to can this year, as I have had the equipment and book knowledge for years, but 0 practice. I want to get better with my bow because I want that skill.

My longer term goal is to get a piece of property a few acres (hopefully like 10) where I can have some animals (definitely goats, I want to learn to make goat cheese) a bigger garden, little cabin that runs off of solar panels (basic ones I build[simple lighting and such]), a wood burning stove, and maybe some peace and quiet from the world of over-communication about nothing and constant contact.

That is my goal. Is it off-grid? I would like it to be. Why? Because when I am there, I wouldn't want to have to deal with anything, and just have a break from everyday life. Plus, in a bad situation, the perfect BOL, pre-set and ready to live.
 
#26 ·
Survival = doing what you need to do to live to see the next moment, then repeating. That's all it is. Nothing more. Apply it to the end of the world or chemotherapy. Survival is easy to define and hard to accomplish because it requires self-mastery and the ability to adapt. Two things humans find very challenging because their day-to-day lives don't require a lot of it. In the USA, we live in a time of over-abundance so the environment adapts to us in a lot of ways.

Prepping = Planning + Action + Continuous Improvement. It's a Kanban development cycle. It's a Six Sigma action plan that is iterative. Why do I use these terms? Because it gives you proven structure to base your "today preps" and "tomorrow preps" on. It gives you a data-driven method to plan, procure, produce and discard your prepping materials. And it controls your spending so that you focus on what is most likely to impact you.

Prepping allows someone to ride out a 6 month situation with relative ease in comparison to someone who did not prep properly. Survival is something much different but can be affected by how well you prep.
 
#29 ·
Go back to 150 years ago. I try to,purchase things that have a very long or indefinite shelf life and learn how to actually prepare things from scratch whether that is sterile normal saline for wounds, calamine lotion, or foods available in the forest. My tools do not run on power but I have everything I need to build a shelter and can fix the tools or traps if they break. About the only thing I cannot do is weld but I am working on the problem.
 
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