The Organic Prepper

Lots of preppers are convinced that they’re going to “live off the land” should the world as we know it come tumbling down around our ears. Seed banks are stockpiled, books are purchased, and people are confident that they’ll be able to outlive everyone else based on the sweat of their inexperienced brows. But no matter how hard working you are, farming takes time. Time for learning, time for mistakes, and time for your plans to come to fruition. A prepper homestead is something that must be built over a period of time – it’s absolutely not a plug-and-play solution, regardless of the extent of survival seed packets you have carefully stashed away. Farming for survival is not a good plan if you have never done it before.   Continue reading “Here’s Why a Prepper Homestead May Not be a Good Plan for Survival”

The Organic Prepper

The East Coast is bracing for a hurricane that may rival the ferocity of Superstorm Sandy. Hurricane Joaquin is expected to reach Category 4 proportions today, as it gains strength in the Bahamas.

Current projections have it heading due north, and it’s predicted to make landfall in the US this weekend.

If you happen to live in South Carolina, North Caroline, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, you’re likely to get hit, particularly in the coastal regions.   Continue reading “Prepping for a Hurricane: Are You Ready for Joaquin?”

The Organic Prepper

We live in a convenience-driven society. Fast food businesses thrive while home cooking flounders. Trips to the pharmacy can now be undertaken without getting out of your car, using the handy drive-through. Standard cleaning products are quickly being overtaken by disposable items you toss in the trash after one use. We’ve been brainwashed by the marketing companies to believe that the simplest things are wildly inconvenient, and that in our time-crunched society we must pay for shortcuts.   Continue reading “12 Ways to Save Money with Reusable Stuff in a Disposable World”

The Organic Prepper

When it hits the fan…I mean REALLY hits the fan in a permanent kind of way, the most likely outcome is death.

That’s not pretty, and I’m well aware of it. I always try to be positive and optimistic, because for me, preparedness is the ultimate act of optimism, but sometimes we have to look at the numbers and face some things that are pretty terrifying. The first reality check is that some research says that only 3 million Americans are preppers.  That means that 315 million Americans are notpreppers. Some experts predict that within 30 days of the power going out, 50% of Americans will be dead. Within a year, an astounding 90% of the population will be dead.   Continue reading “Here’s How You’ll Die When the SHTF (and How to Prevent Your Untimely Demise)”

The Organic Prepper

Our world of convenience has caused most Americans to lose touch with the work involved in food. Self-reliance takes a lot more than throwing some seeds on a patch of dirt and then magically being fed for a year. Grabbing a “quick” sandwich or bowl of cereal belies what it actually takes to procure those ingredients.

We take a lot for granted. We don’t think about life without things like specialized supply purveyors, large-scale agriculture, cheap labor, machines for manufacturing, and the transportation system.  Very few people can imagine life without the accessibility provided to us by grocery stores and processed food. Even in the circles of those who stick closely to a non-processed diet, few go all the way.   Continue reading “The Work It Actually Takes to Make a Homemade Chicken Sandwich”

The Organic Prepper

We often talk about having a bugout bag that includes a folder with important documents, but despite your preparations and efforts to protect them, sometimes disaster strikes quickly and unexpectedly, and those documents are lost.

For example, the fires last week in Northern California moved so rapidly that some people fled from their homes without even a moment to put on their shoes. (See these videos for an idea of how dramatic the escapes were for many families.)   Continue reading “Replacing Documents After a Disaster”

The Organic Prepper

The ink is still wet on a brand new executive order that reads like a cross between the Reich’s Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda and George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.

Of course, in true propagandist form, President Obama isn’t calling it anything related to Nazi Germany or a dystopian novel.   He’s calling it “Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People.”   Continue reading “Psy-Op: Executive Order Creates an Orwellian Policy of Enlightenment and Propaganda”

The Organic Prepper

However prepared you think you are for an emergency wildfire evacuation, when it looks like you’re driving through the outer edges of Hell, it’s going to be a scary ride.

Wildfires are a real threat every year in California, but this season seems to be especially dramatic and uncontrollable. Chalk it up to the severe drought that has caused the grass and trees to become well-seasoned fuel for the fires.   Continue reading “Wildfire Evacuation as a Small Town Burns to the Ground”

The Organic Prepper

Gas shortages could be coming to America…and quickly.

An unexpected fuel crisis has hit Canada. According to a Canadian blogger andauthor, not one, but two, fuel tankers were inexplicably delayed last week, and shortages ensued alarmingly quickly, with numerous gas stations running completely out of fuel within a matter of days. Marie Beausoleil wrote:   Continue reading “Are Gas Shortages Coming to America?”

The Organic Prepper

I have a confession to make. Kick me out of any possible minority group I might be a part of but didn’t know it, but any word ending in “-ism” annoys the daylights out of me.

  • Feminism
  • Racism
  • Sexism
  • Tokenism

Words to express our affront are being made up left and right by the mere addition of “ism” to the ends of what were formerly perfectly neutral words. It seems like pundits can take basically any word and add “ism” to the end of it and that means they’re being slighted. The list of isms could go on and on, but instead of promoting more equality, all they’re doing is promoting more division. Isn’t that divisionism?   Continue reading “The Great American Butthurt”

The Organic Prepper

Years ago, I was reading the book Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs. (Great book that I highly recommend!) The premise of the book is that our future economic woes will be based on the scarcity of oil.

The author, Wendy Brown, makes an excellent case regarding our dependency on oil, but the thing that really stood out in my mind was how she had changed her family’s diet well in advance of this economic crisis. She focused her efforts on local food for self-reliance in the long run.   Continue reading “Why Preppers Need to Focus on Local Food for Self-Reliance”

The Organic Prepper

Last week, our stock market began to freefall. By Friday, August 21, the market was down more than 1300 points. Over the course of two days, it dropped further than any single-day crash in American history.

But it wasn’t just the US stock market that had a bad week. According to Zero Hedge, markets across the globe are going to heck on a greased slide:   Continue reading “How to Survive a Stock Market Crash”

The Organic Prepper

Let’s talk about poverty.

I don’t mean the kind you’re talking about when your friends invite you to go shopping or for a night out and you say, “No, I can’t. I’m poor right now.”

I don’t mean the situation when you’d like to get a nicer car but decide you should just stick to the one you have because you don’t have a few thousand for a down payment.   Continue reading “How to Survive When You Can’t Pay Your Bills”

The Organic Prepper

The government of Venezuela is playing Monopoly, but it isn’t the kind with those little plastic hotels.

They’re controlling essential goods like food, and putting the retail establishments of the country out of business.

According to a UK Telegraph report, the government is now forcing farmers and food manufacturers to sell anywhere from 30-100% of their products to the state, as opposed to stores and supermarkets.   Continue reading “Government of Venezuela Forces Farmers to Hand Over Food”

The Organic Prepper

There isn’t much that feels more self-reliant than going out to your backyard hen house to get fresh eggs for breakfast.  There’s no need for USDA approval, you know what your hens have been eating, and you don’t have to pay a premium price and hope that the farm who raised the chickens that laid those grocery store eggs actually treated the hens humanely.  Bonus points if the bacon you fry up comes from a local farm, and bonus BONUS points if you raised that little piggie yourself. Raising backyard chickens is incredibly rewarding.   Continue reading “Backyard Chickens Must Be Registered in North Carolina for Your Own Safety”

The Organic Prepper

Everyone knows that when you fall on hard times financially, you tighten your budget.  But it’s one thing to go through and examine your own personal spending, making decisions where to cut and where to continue spending, and quite another to have someone personally unaffected by those cuts make the decisions for you.

As the collapse of Greece accelerates, the most vulnerable citizens are paying for the bad decisions of the government.   Continue reading “Austerity Measures: Who Is Really Paying for the Bailout in Greece?”

The Organic Prepper

As many of you know, we recently moved to a small home on a farm. Our house is about 900 square feet, and I live there with my youngest daughter and all of our preps.

One of my favorite things on Pinterest is the Home Tours. I really enjoy seeing how other people live and how they meet the challenges presented by their spaces. I thought you guys might enjoy a tour of our new place so that you can see how I stash all our prepper stuff in a very small house. We like to set things up so that we can easily shift to functioning off grid should the need arise, and we are also on a pretty tight budget. Because of the size of the space, we try to make everything as multifunctional as possible.   Continue reading “Prepper Home Tour Laundry Room: Healthy, Homemade, and Ready to Go Off-Grid”

The Organic Prepper

There is a lot of debate on whether Wednesday’s computer issues that shut down the New York Stock Exchange, the Wall Street Journal, and United Airlines were just a very strange coincidence (very strange) or a deliberate cyber attack.

This isn’t the first possible cyber attack on the United States this year. Heck, it’s not even the first one this summer. On June 5, Reuters reported a breach occurred that comprimised the personal information of millions of federal employees, both current and former. This breach was traced back to a “foreign entity or government.”   Continue reading “How to Prepare for a Cyber Attack”

The Organic Prepper

Did you hear the news? “Greece Says No to Further Austerity Measures!”  Did you shake your head and say, “Wow, the nerve of those people refusing to cut their expenses in the face of all that debt”?

I’m no financial expert, but I don’t think that tightening up the budget was really what they were turning down.

I think that they were turning down the opportunity to continue under the tyrannical rule of the EU. They were breaking free.   Continue reading “Greece Didn’t Refuse Austerity: They Refused Further Debt Slavery to the EU”

The Organic Prepper

It’s Independence Day! The 4th of July! Burgers! Picnics! Fireworks!

That’s what it’s all about, right? Go, America!

Actually, no, there probably weren’t any hotdogs cooking on the grill on Independence Day in 1776. When the founding fathers of our nation signed the Declaration of Independence, they probably weren’t wondering if the beer was cold yet, if Ben was going to burn the burgers again, or whether Thomas remembered the lighter for the fireworks.    Continue reading “Independence: The Ultimate Act of Insurrection”