The Most Dangerous Prepper - and How to Not Be That Person

[Music] today i want to talk to you about the most dangerous kind of prepper in fact i think they're probably more dangerous than someone who has not prepared at all and i want to talk us through kind of a list of some considerations that all of us should make to make sure that we aren't guilty of becoming that very dangerous person ourselves don't go away before i get too far into this let me just tell you that today i'm preaching not just to you but to myself i am guilty of at least most of every single thing i mentioned today so i'm not pointing at you as the bad guy and me as the person who has it all together but let me start back a few months ago when i was traveling through the streets on an extremely rainy day and i was almost to where i was going and i was recalling had i prepared and yep i had prepared i had put an umbrella in the car but you know where that umbrella was it was in the trunk how prepared are you if the umbrella that you are prepared with is out of reach and you have to get outside in the rainstorm to get to that umbrella and it got me thinking and so i started reviewing all of my preparedness and realized i was really not cutting the the list very well i'll give you a couple of examples i started thinking and realized you know what i have extra gas cans and yes they're even filled with gas but they're not in the back of the car where i might need them if i was traveling somewhere and they are expired and not with any kind of stabilizer in that gasoline to even make them viable so it's useless gas and they're stored in the garage back at home that's another example of not really being prepared when you think you're prepared another one i thought okay my k bar knife which is my favorite prepping knife right if i was out in the wilderness that's where that's the one knife i would want with me but it's not in my go bag it happens to be in a storage box underneath the love seat in the back bedroom now how is that going to be accessible if i were to need it another example i have faraday bags but they are empty now yes some of them are filled but i don't have all of my electronics protected even with the provisions i've made to protect those electronics pepper spray i ran and checked my pepper spray and you will laugh at me i realized it was over 20 years old i had the giant can of bear spray pepper spray that at that time it was novel because it sprayed over 10 feet well now they they all spray at least that far and when i went and checked my industrial sized bear spray pepper spray it didn't even have any propellant left in it it was full but it was just too old i'm hoping that you're already having the wheels turn in your mind of where you might have have been guilty of a few of these things like i have another example i went and checked my flashlights and many of them had batteries in them that were brand new at the time have not been used and sure enough the batteries have gotten that fizziness on them they have completely lost their charge and the flashlights are virtually useless even if they're in the right place and filled with with batteries that were new at one time another example is a firearm if you have one but it's in the attic and it's not just in the attic but in some sort of a safe up there and the ammo that goes with it is out in the garage or some other place that's probably not going to be anywhere useful to you if there was an emergency another example for a while i carried hiking boots in the back of my truck and you could say boy that's good of you you are prepared but not if they are brand new hiking boots that have never been worn in and you don't have the nice good hiking socks that need to go with those boots if you did have to hike home from work what i'm wanting to start having you think about is many of us lull ourselves without even realizing it into a false sense of security thinking we're prepared but in reality we are not at all prepared in fact we have possibly hindered ourselves from quickly being able to acclimate to a new environment and and turn on a dime and get out of of the dangerous place we might find ourselves because we're busy looking for the k-bar knife in the back bedroom underneath the love seat i don't want that to happen to you so i want to talk through just a few more considerations that might be worthy of you thinking about to make sure you're not guilty as i have been guilty at times in the past the first uh example of this and i am not sure the name i should give it but i'm going to call it prepper narcissism and that is someone who has gotten so tired of what they're hearing on tv they've turned off the news and then furthermore as they've done their research and done their preparedness they've started to grow confident in their own ability and their own mindset and their own thinking and their own politics and their own religion so much so that they have augured down into somehow thinking that they are the only one that has the revelation that's correct they're the only one with the truth they're the only one that's sure of themselves and knows what they're doing and everybody else is wrong sometimes even we blame our family members the closest ones to us as being somehow off balance but we are the only ones that know really what's going on behind the scenes we've got the inside scoop that's a very dangerous place to find yourself and it's easy to get there because as you watch important information that might be disclosed to you but your other folks around you don't know about it don't blame them don't be resentful toward them but in humility you've got to just hold that knowledge and wait for it to to bear out as being truth okay be careful of becoming a narcissistic prepper um on the other side of the spectrum from that that's also very dangerous is assuming that your neighbors think like you or that your family members you all grew up together so surely they think the same way you do about x y or z don't fall under that assumption that is extremely dangerous and it could put you in a very compromised position if you were in an emergency and you haven't spoken about things and then all of a sudden here you are with a neighbor that thinks very opposite of you or even family members who are not at all on the same page don't assume definitely keep the communication lines open and have those difficult conversations where you listen closely to what other people have to say and find out right where they're at all right here's another one that's very important we've covered it slightly in one of our episodes before about the importance of simplifying before stockpiling i can't tell you how important this is but i want to remind you that if you were to happen to be a very prepared prepper you've got your pantry stocked you've got your back your car stocked with go bags you've got everything going on and every kind of provision made for yourself you can actually build a little empire without realizing it that's more like the titanic in that if an iceberg came into view you can see it out there but you don't even have time to turn the titanic to get out of its way because you have encumbered yourself so greatly this is where i'm telling you it's much more in your benefit to be able to turn on a dime turn quickly adjust quickly change with the environment or the crisis at hand because you don't know when it's coming or what kind of crisis it will be so so prepare and keep yourself at peace but simplify and and simplify long before you stockpile and even once you've stockpiled have a way to keep it simple alright one one thing many of us are guilty of is the more you think of oh this is a good thing to have you end up having a get home bag or a go bag whatever you like to call it that is far too heavy for you to even carry you would have to put it on rollers or you'd have to to have some sort of strategy to get it to where you were going i don't want you to fall into that trap because i have done it myself and i have so often times weighted my down myself down so much so that it's actually more of a hindrance than it is even a help at that point next let's go on many folks are guilty of preparing for one disaster or just a couple of disasters perhaps you perhaps you live in an area that is prone to tornadoes and so you have got your plan down you know how to deal with the tornado or you lived through hurricane katrina back in the day and you are never going to let that happen to your family i want to encourage you that you need to have a more modest approach that considers many different kinds of crises or scenarios that could play out and you to be at peace and to be prepared you need to plan for more than one crisis that might just be unique to your area you might find yourself traveling in the opposite end of the united states or some other country when there's a natural or national disaster or something that you need to adjust for and if you are only prepared for hurricanes you're going to regret it all right going on planning for yourself and not for others now if you are single it's very easy to say yep i've got my go bag but what about the people around you i would recommend for all of us that you at least plan for one other person and have a complete set of everything that could be needed for a second person with you all right whether that's a man or a woman or or a child or an elderly person that might need extra care think about it and you plan accordingly but at least have enough for someone else beside yourself i would just also recommend if you have pets or livestock or the neighbor has pets that you might want to at least take into account for have at least a small amount of preparation made for them as well now i've just said i want you to prepare for someone else beside yourself but i also want you to be careful that you aren't guilty of this next thing and that is expecting a spouse to take up the slack there's a very high probability even if you are married with a very capable spouse that you might be in two separate places when an emergency occurs and if you are so entirely dependent on them making up for the difference of where you are weak you're probably going to regret it i want you to consider becoming strong in whatever your weakest areas are and for all of us there's a whole suite of things we could practice because we're probably weak in a whole lot of areas but it would be to our detriment to expect someone else of any kind to come along and take up the slack forest even the closest loved one to you right now all right let's talk through a few more having seeds but not ever having a garden do you know how many people i talk to that say oh yes we have never had a garden before we don't grow stuff well here but we've got our heirloom seed pack of a thousand seeds that will be our garden if there is ever an emergency and i just shake my head internally and think that is not going to work out well you need to practice you need to know how to grow things what to grow you need to be able to harvest your own seeds and learn from last year so you can prepare for next year don't fall victim to the idea that having the preparations in hand is the same as actually being prepared for the crisis i hope that makes sense not dealing with addictions i wrote this because there are many people and and this is a a broad term so just go with me here you might be guilty and not even know it but many of us are addicted to say our morning coffee or a smoke or prescription drugs for the pain that we use that we have on a daily basis and and prescriptions get us through or perhaps you are addicted to a certain television program or just a certain comfort in your home i want you to think carefully about all of the things that you are so sure you have to have to be okay and carefully strip them away one at a time for at least long enough that you can break that cycle and know that you're going to be all right if a crisis took out the hot water and you had just had to bathe in cold water for a while or whatever it is that is what i am calling an addiction or a necessary item that makes our life worth living now let's talk about money first of all living in debt is a very dangerous place to be so you might think you're prepared and have everything stashed away around you but in reality if you have no certificate of ownership for anything because you have loans that are paying for those things that means you really don't own that vehicle you really don't own that land or that or that home and in the event of a ornery kind of adventure that you might have to go through with an emergency there could be somebody that calls that note and you would be out of what you think you have ownership of so keep certificates of the things that you do own get out of debt as quickly as you can even if it means just stashing away five dollars every single day until you can chip away at that debt and get completely free of it i encourage you to do that but if you also are used to those paperless statements from your bank so you do all your banking online and and don't ever get those paper statements you really don't have a record of anything if there ever happened to be a situation where that bank shut down your ability to log into that account online or if or if the internet went down so consider that as well and always keep cash on hand so that you have a means of paying for some things if there were any kind of glitch in the system that makes it impossible for you to use credit cards all right consider this many of us are guilty of this storing a food that has either very little nutrition to it or is simply something we don't eat if you have family members who are gluten-free do at least your best to have some gluten-free food of course i would say man train your body to to somehow get over that difficulty because if there was some sort of a disaster scenario you can't really be a picky uh eater at that point so do what you can to get rid of those intolerances in your diet but where it is valid and important you've got to make preparations for that so just storing 50 50 pounds of rice and 50 pounds of flour in at some back storage room of your house is probably not the ideal if you need to have a family that is fed with nutrition and rich foods that they're going to eat and also that are going to give them energy and health i know i'm going to catch some flack from some of you on this next one but this is very important and i want you to hear me out cheap and poor quality supplies could really absolutely backfire on you if you think you are prepared if you have lulled yourself into thinking yep i've got what i need but if you have bought everything from from another country that is foreign made that is not quality that is not tested and true you may absolutely regret it and let me just say this i have many of you write in and say you have not taken into consideration those of us who are poor and if i told you what i have lived on myself personally i think i would amaze you that it is it is possible to still buy quality and live far below even the poverty line i'm telling you the truth i want you to be very careful know what is important and know what you can scrimp on okay there are a a huge number of things and we'll have an episode coming up of just what you what i do recommend that you can get at the dollar store and do well with but there are many things that you might have purchased or perhaps you want a free giveaway where they gave you say a fake leatherman tool or a fake swiss army knife and you threw it in your bag and thought now i'm ready i want to encourage you if you have not gone out and tested that in severe environments you're going to be absolutely disappointed is the very least word i can think of the the very calmest way to put that it could save your life if you had saved your money and bought quality buy a real leatherman tool buy a real knife that is made with a good quality um everything about it the blade the handle the sheath that it goes in you want you want the most important tools that you are going to have with you need to be high quality and a caliber that is not to be compromised another example are those little tiny compasses that you can buy and i'm guilty of it every time i find another survival bracelet that has a little compass on it or you can get walking sticks with a little compass on top you can get all kinds of things carabiners with a compass on the side and they're those little tiny ones that it's just hilarious if you hold them up to anything metal or magnetic it just the north and the south just go crazy on it there is very little to be counted on for those extremely cheap supplies and if you were in an emergency situation that's when your life is at stake or the lives of your loved ones so knowing which direction to go is pretty important invest in the right kind of compass and not just rely on those little tiny ones that you find on the survival bracelets that's you know maybe a penny or or two pennies to make wherever they came from all right here's another important one and i'm not pointing any fingers at anyone because i am guilty of this i'll just speak from personal experience i am guilty of dieting to lose weight so that i can travel more quickly as a means of preparedness isn't that good and noble of me but if i have not done any kind of resistance training or endurance training if i have not lifted weights how do i think i'm going to say have a 30 pound backpack on my shoulders that i'm going to hike in an emergency 30 miles to get home from work it would be ridiculous of me to think that way so to just be thin is not sufficient it doesn't mean you are fit and even if you are fit in some ways it doesn't mean that you are prepared for any kind of endurance or resistance that you might come up against in a survival scenario so think about that consider it in your mind what do i need to do to prepare my body physically to be able to endure a harsh environment to be able to carry a heavy weight on it for as long as i can just think through that a little bit all right here's a big old one to think about technology this is where you might think you're prepared you might think you have everything going on but if you falter here you've probably been a little bit too presumptuous i want to give you a couple of examples using your phone as your only means of navigation like that gps that you can easily just punch in an address and your phone's gps comes up it knows right where you are of course and it can lead you home well if that is your only way of navigating boy you're going to regret it if that ever gave out learn how to navigate without that and besides that know that when you use the location on on your phone you are absolutely encouraging and inviting them to track you wherever it is that you happen to be going so consider that another thing about technology to consider is using google or youtube as your knowledge bank all of us are so blessed to have the greatest search engine in the world so if we have any question no matter how great or small or obscure you can just punch it in and it has an answer for you but if that went down and you did not have that as your brain what are you gonna use do you have books do you have um storage devices that have stored uh knowledge on them books and manuals and how-to videos i would encourage you take stock of where you are lacking in this area and quit relying on technology for your smarts and wisdom and for sure i would tell you just because you have watched a video on youtube does not mean you know now how to do that thing that you saw somebody else do you don't need me to remind you of that but i probably need reminded another thing social media we can easily um we can join groups on say facebook that are all about some sort of conspiracy theory that might be rather legitimate and you want to prepare for it but know that everything that you do on that social media platform is being tracked it's being recorded and when you are private messaging or direct messaging somebody through facebook as you forward on some conspiracy theory to them it's being recorded that you have approved of that that you have sent it on and fostered that information to somebody else i want to encourage you to not trust social media as your means of communicating with people you need to come up with other ways that are not even related to the internet at all okay not just choosing a different social media platform that sounds more obscure but you've got to come up with ways to communicate that are not even related to the internet and yes there are more secure search engines you could try duckduckgo you could use other social media platforms that are not mainstream that are not being censored as much but you're still being watched and people can still find out what you are communicating back and forth just keep that in mind it kind of is a false sense of security that it can give you and don't be careless in what you're forwarding on and communicating through social media to others we're almost done but let me tell you this no no plan for the future is a very dangerous place to be and no practice of that plan is even more dangerous if you have a plan but you've never tried to walk through it or put it into play you're probably going to be disappointed when you're actually tested by a real scenario that would test your endurance and you have none so plan and prepare by going out and physically forcing yourself to practice the different scenarios and the preparations that you need to make for a scenario also just a reminder not having a will is a very bad thing you need to have a will at least some kind of written document that tells your family members what your wishes are if something happened to you and having that family binder of important documents all in one place that would be um titles to your car insurance certificates birth certificates your will copies of your driver's license and your passports those are all important and we have an episode right on that i have fixed the link so yes if you go over to that episode you can download that list of important family documents that i recommend that you have in that binder what i want to encourage you to do is consider that that false sense of security that can come from having things but not knowledge having a plan but no practice all of this can make you think you're prepared but in reality very very far from it that's an incredibly dangerous place to be so here are my final tips to give you this day and that is think creatively encourage and celebrate your family being ingenious and coming up with ways to jury rig things that might be broken learn how to fix stuff and and celebrate the humor of making do instead of going out and buying new all the time i want you to consider that two is one and one is none so if you have one way of preparing or one means of making fire or one disaster that you have just really got your act together to prepare for i want you to consider that probably is something else that's going to need your attention so prepare for multiple disasters prepare for multiple ways to make fire or purify water or create shelter for yourself or warm yourself have a plan that has multi facets so if plan a doesn't work you've got a plan b and c and d okay incorporate preps into your daily use that means if you've got 50 pounds of flour stored figure out what what your plan is for that do you know how to bake bread do you know how to make it extremely nutritious do you have a way to take something that doesn't have a lot of nutrition value to it and and turn it into something that's going to give a lot of energy and value nutrition wise to your family have you decided to go ahead and plant that garden even if half of it dies that means half of it lives and you have got a victory garden totally helping you learn so that next year you can have something even better just take stock of where you might have cut corners in the past take stock of possible false assumptions and false expectations of maybe the people around you or your supplies even think about all of those things so that you don't become that dangerous prepper all right it has been my pleasure to be with you i hope you join us next week we're going to cover some other great stuff up ahead and spring is on its way here in tennessee so we'll be sharing a lot more outdoor videos like this one thank you for joining us until i see you next time go out and be a blessing to someone today bye bye [Music] before you go i would love to share with you just a short little prayer that david wrote that's also the prayer of my heart and it can be of yours this is in psalm 106 just verses 4 and 5. it says this remember me o lord when you show favor to your people help me when you save them that i may look upon the prosperity of your chosen ones and that i may rejoice in the gladness of your nation that i may glory with your inheritance that's my prayer today now will you go spread the word [Music] [Music] you

Channel: PREPSTEADERS

Views: 129,051

Rating: 4.9090796 out of 5

Keywords: Survival, Homesteading, Prepping, Preppers, prepsteaders, wisdom creek, survival challenge, survival skills, wilderness survival, dangerous, fire, garden, prepper narcissism, EMP, Faraday Bags, Pepper Spray, Leatherman, ka bar, SHTF, teotwawki, storing gas

Id: dKlkYPYn_D4

Length: 29min 1sec (1741 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021