So what’s on the agenda after this “revelation” crept up on me?  Reading, research, re-reading.  I happen to have a kindle unlimited subscription, and there are tons of ebooks on Amazon about prepping and preparedness and homesteading skills.  Most are just a few dollars, but there are SO MANY of them, and the quality of the information and writing varies GREATLY, so I am quite glad that I could peruse them for “free”.   I also checked out books from the library (I particularly enjoy borrowing ebooks that I can download on Amazon and read with my kindle as well).  And of course, browsed online for more information. I played a lot of web site leapfrog.  Pinterest has lots of great preparedness boards, which would lead me to a site, which would link to another site and so on.

A word of warning — a lot of those sites are fear-mongering.  And then they want you to buy their ultimate prepping information materials.  I am particularly “fond” of the guy claiming his list of 37 must-have items when the SHTF is different, and the best.  He has professional looking videos, and then you get to the punchline.  He wants you to buy his ebooks for ONLY 49.99, and assures you that it normally sells for 200$, but he feels he must “do the right thing” and take a loss to get this information out there.  I found his list of 37 things online.  It’s no different than free lists all over the place.

Most of the sites have product links to their “favorite” supplies.  This water purifier or that survival knife or the freeze dried food kits from over there.  They undoubtedly receive a small amount of referral money if you buy from their sites.  And maybe it IS the best item for you.  Maybe it isn’t.  Research your options.  Don’t click and buy because they’ve managed to convince you the end of the world is nigh.

And those ebooks I read on Amazon? When it comes to “how to prep” or “the beginning prepper” or anything like that – I wouldn’t spend any money on those.  They are almost all the same.  And the information in them is no different than you can get on any prepping site.   They tell you that you need water, food, security, sanitation, medical supplies, communications, backup power and financial security.  They tell you how to calculate your needs and how to store them.  This info is out there on the web, I promise.

The exception I found were books providing information on projects and useful skills.  You give a fish to a man, he eats for a day, but teach him to fish and all that.  For instance, I found The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide to Whole Food on a Half-Price Budget  by Daisy Luther (note this is not an income generating link for me) to be a fairly useful resource, especially if you have no experience building a pantry.  She touches on topics I have researched in the past on frugal living, such as keeping a price book, the various types of pantries (i.e. hardcore bunker pantries, versus our day to day pantry that lets us eat well now on a budget), has not only lists of food to store, but how to store them, and several weeks of menus to eat out of the pantry.  My food storage and cooking skills are beyond what her book offers, so I wouldn’t purchase it to add to my hard copy library (because let’s face it, all the ebooks in the world won’t help if the SHTF and I have no power) but I did end up reading it cover to cover and added a few bits of information to my Emergency Preparedness Notebook (a topic for another day). And it inspired me to FINALLY clean out my pantry, re-organize it and take an inventory.

My pantry looks nothing like this. But a girl can dream 😉

Books on gardening, canning, how to build an outdoor oven, raising backyard chickens, and other homesteading skill books — these can be worth the money where the basic Newbie Prepper books, IMO, are not.  You can find all that skill information online as well.  But unless you want to copy and paste and print it all out, or fully learn the skill NOW, those type of books are ones I will add to my physical library over time.  Borrowing them from the library or through kindle unlimited, several on the same topic, let’s me compare and see which one I want to add to my Amazon wish list to pick up as funds allow.

Finally, don’t visit one site, assume they are all knowing, and leap from there.  Researching for me has taken several months, and its astonishing how much conflicting information there is out there. (One site recommends a gallon of water a day per person.  another says 10 gallons per day — that kind of thing.)  And even when the information is solid, it may not be relevant or appropriate to your situation.  Take your time, don’t get overwhelmed, and then when you have a general idea of how you think things should look, dig deeper.