I'm a Prepper. It's Not What Most People Think.

In fact, it sounds boring.

Photo by David Adamson on Unsplash

Last night, I went outside at 4 am and watched dew form on my mailbox. I watched it form on my spouse’s car. I watched it form on some PVC pipe. I’ve done this for several nights, to confirm with my own eyes what science tells me.

I thought, “How do I drink that?”

This is prepping.

This is what I do now, instead of scrolling my phone for confirmation that we’re going to have a famine in 8 weeks, instead of stressing over headlines, instead of bashing Trump, instead of gloating about his humiliating defeats, instead of gossiping about the 25th amendment, instead of yelling about MAGA. I stay informed, and I work on systems. I speak my mind on the internet, but I don’t dwell there 24/7. I go. I work. It keeps me focused. It keeps me from spiraling.

It keeps me grounded.

That’s one reason I’ve decided to give my newsletter one last name change, to finally reflect everything I write about, everything that I believe in. I believe in staying informed. I believe in talking plain truths. I believe in prepping. But above all, I believe in staying grounded. More than anything, that’s what I want to help everyone do. I want to help keep them grounded. I want to help them stay grounded in reality, and grounded in themselves. So, this one will stick.

After thinking about dew, I also caught up on Benjamin’s videos over at GrowVeg. As you’ll see, he knows his stuff. He doesn’t need to spend ten minutes telling you why you’re going to starve in 8 weeks. He doesn’t just throw out words like “community” and expect everyone else to figure out what he means. He actually shows you how to do it: Not many people would call Benedict a prepper, but he’s very much in the realm that preppers should live. On a related note, he has a great video on eating weeds, in the same spirit of my illustrated guide, trying to help people (and my family) take advantage of what’s right in front of them.

It’s what I aspire to do. It’s a lot to take on. Even though Benedict and I will probably never cross paths personally, he is part of my community.

I’m thankful for him.

That’s why I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to scale up dew harvesting with common materials, with mixed results. I’ve had much more success with dehumidifiers and atmospheric water generators. Those work great, but they also require planning. Without solar panels, they’ll fail when the grid does.

I’ve also had success with cheap, emergency composting toilets. I’ve modified a kit from Johnny Compost. Again, it meant tinkering with things and trying ideas, not waiting until everyone freaks out over a headline or a sensational prediction, but doing the work ahead of time and trying to keep it interesting.

That’s prepping.

Now, I’m going to share something less positive, a note from someone (a dude) who explained why they’ve decided to leave my community:

There’s a lot going on here, more than just the loss of one reader. We’re going to talk about the beliefs embedded in this comment. It tells you what millions of other people out there don’t understand about any of this, whether it’s prepping, community, or resistance. They think they get it.

They don’t.

This guy believes that preparing for a famine or a forthcoming collapse means separating yourself from the system now and forming small, self-reliant communities in order to survive in a post-technology world. Nothing I’ve ever said or written has ever contested that. Yes, it’s what we should all be doing.

The problem is... how do you get there?

That’s where voices like this stop. They don’t know how to get there. If they did, they wouldn’t be shooting hot takes over email.

They certainly wouldn’t be “saying goodbye” to someone who shares 99 percent of their worldview. Does he expect 100 percent agreement? Sorry, but my spouse doesn’t even agree with me 100 percent of the time.

If that’s how you go about building community, well, good luck. You’re going to have a rough time getting along with someone if this is how you react over a 1 percent difference in opinion, after years of presumed alliance.

And yet, this isn’t just one person.

It’s a bunch of people.

A bunch of people think like this. They go around shouting “community” at the top of their lungs, and then they burn the communities they’ve got. I get emails like this every week, people packing up and leaving over a single sentence they disagree with. It doesn’t matter if they agreed with you for years, 90 percent of the time. If anything, they seem proud to part ways with someone, in search of their true “community.”

You don’t quit civilization overnight.

It’s a gradual process.

Many of you know Jeff McFadden, who runs A Systemic Approach. He doesn’t consider himself much of a prepper, but he’s been doing this kind of work for decades. He’ll tell you, as well, that you don’t quit the grid cold turkey. Maybe you don’t ever quit the grid. But you become less reliant on it.

It takes time and dedicated effort. It requires a plan. It requires research. It requires a long process of trial and error. It’s hard. You will fail, and when you fail, it’s awfully nice to have a grid to fall back on. When Jeff injured himself in a farm accident, he went to a hospital. He took advantage of civilization, what’s left of it. I believe you should do the same. That’s what I’m talking about. Don’t give up hospitals until you have to, but do what you can to prepare for that day.

As for “post-technology...”

Some of you already understand that we’re not going back to the 19th-century version of homesteading. That was an unsustainable fantasy. It seems to be what a lot of people imagine when they talk about “small, self-reliant communities,” but it’s not practical at all.

As someone recently told me, even Amish communities are installing solar panels. They don’t reject electricity. They don’t refuse technology. They’re using it to run their farms. And, I verified it.

So, consider that...

I’m not saying your survivalist future must include solar panels. I’m not even saying they’re a great idea for everyone, and plenty of climate activists have strong opinions about them. But it’s just rubbish to go around thinking you’re going to live in a utopian community, free from the grid, free from electricity, free from fascists, free from bills, free from property taxes.

That’s not how it works. And the more people who go around spouting that, the worse off we are. We don’t need everyone in the suburbs to abandon their homes and try to live on farms in the woods. That would be a disaster. We need everyone to transform the space where they are. We need them to work together to make the places they already live more sustainable and more resilient. If you want a plan, that’s a plan. That could actually work.

But only if people can cooperate.

Or at least coexist.

We’re going to be living in the remains of cities, and there’s going to be plenty of spare parts. We’re going to be using tech, it’s going to be junkyard tech. Our back yards aren’t going to be manicured blights on nature. The HOA helicopter neighbors will have to deal with it.

That’s our future.

I suspect that the ones leaving these comments have never actually tried to escape the grid. They’ve never tried to build a community. They’ve never tried to grow food in their back yard, or watched dew form in the middle of the night. Maybe they’ve never even gone camping.

They just sit back and pass judgment on the rest of us, who are trying, who know better than most how hard it is, and how much we still need the grid, even if we’re doing our best to get off it. Until you figure it all out, which may never happen, you need to keep your job. You need to keep a roof over your head. You need your internet connection, so you can watch Benedict over at GrowVeg.

At the moment, Benedict on YouTube knows more about growing potatoes than most of our neighbors. He’s going to be our source of information. He’s going to have the patience to explain it all to us. I doubt local farmers are going to jump at the chance to show me how to keep slugs out of my strawberries.

I doubt the kind of person who leaves comments about the importance of community is going to be much good either.

I’ll stick with Benedict.

Most of the public still doesn’t understand this.

Real prepping and community building is often not what it looks like on television. It’s about going outside and watching dew at night. It’s about trial and failure in a garage, or a back yard, or a parking lot.

It’s about listening to people you agree with 99 percent of the time, or 90 percent of the time, or 80 percent of the time, and not flipping them the bird because they said one thing that rubbed you the wrong way.

It’s hard.