Prepping And New Year Resolutions

Prepping is not just for New Year but lasts throughout the following 12 months.

Since this is the season for well-intentioned resolutions, however, let’s add prepping to the list of things you promise yourself you’ll do – and make a point of sticking to these potentially life-saving precautions.

So, if you’re ready to make a New Year’s resolution to set about prepping – for keeps – what is likely to be involved?

Gear

This includes everything from equipment and gadgets to supplies and stores of food, water, and other essentials.

The basics will typically include:

• water;
• fire;
• food;
• shelter.

Our blog Survival Equipment Kit: What Do I Need? goes in to this a bit further. Once you have the basics, then you can think about what Bags for Prepping are needed. This may include a bug out bag (also known more commonly in the UK as a grab bag) that is filled with the necessary equipment to help you survive, that you simply grab and go.

Unless it is already included in your grab bag, you will need a medical kit bag, too.

Further down the line, you may also want to think about having a bag that you store somewhere – either in your car or hidden somewhere.

TIP: Make sure you understand how to use your equipment, so that should you ever need it, you are confident using it.

Once you have your prepping gear sorted, you may want to think about skills.

Skills

As we argued in our blog on the 10^th of May, 2021, skills will win out over any amount of kit any day of the prepper’s week. If you don’t know or feel comfortable with how, when, and where to call upon your prepping skills, then no amount of sophisticated or expensive gear is going to make much of a difference between survival or otherwise.

The more you put into practice the skills you’ll need to weather any crisis or emergency, the better you will understand how much gear is going to prove useful.

We have a number of blogs around prepping skills on our website that delve further into this area of prepping.

Training

Training is important to the acquisition of skills and the development of the appropriate attitude. It typically comprises two basic components – learning and practice.

Training involves learning skills and techniques you are likely to rely on in any emergency situation. You can do much of that learning from watching, talking with, and listening to an expert in the skills you need and by reading and studying techniques you can discover in books or on the internet.

Far and away the most effective training regime, however, is likely to be through practice – putting into action every aspect of the techniques you are learning as you go along.

That combination of learning and practice is one of the advantages in signing up for one of the many survival, bushcraft or backwoods courses currently available in the UK – which we also referenced in our piece on the 28^th of January 2021.

Mindset

Coping with an emergency or crisis is as much about your mindset and preparedness as it is any amount of equipment, stores and supplies you have laid down, skills you have acquired, or training courses you might have attended.

The prepper’s mindset is an attitude of mind, therefore, and certainly not the kind of goal you’re likely to achieve through any short-term New Year’s resolution. You can read more here: Prepper Mindset – Be Prepared.

The components combined

When you’re thinking along the lines of any New Year’s resolution, therefore, avoid the temptation of focussing on just one or two of the elements we’ve identified – whether that is laying down stores, buying equipment, or even acquiring new skills by attending survival training courses.

Instead, develop a mindset that combines a little of each of these essential components – combination is likely to prove more valuable than concentrating on one area in favour of any other.

Finally, remember that trying to tackle all these things at once is setting you up for failure. Start small (with the basics) and gradually build on your skills as the year progresses.