The answer is pretty well self-explanatory. Prepping is the activity of preparing for something. That something is typically unexpected and otherwise unplanned, can cause disruption and damage to lives and property, and may be the result of a natural phenomenon or because of man-made causes.
Following on from that definition, you get the title of “prepper” for someone engaged in the activity of prepping.
It’s as simple as that. But the terms “prepping” and “preppers” are still relatively new and are not immediately recognised by some people. Yet preppers still seem to have gained a whole back-catalogue of stereotypes – many of which verge on the ridiculous and recently mentioned on the Storage Prepper website. In the popular mind, therefore, preppers are typically:
- paranoid conspiracy theorists;
- bent on surviving completely off the grid;
- hoarders;
- anti-government activists;
- militant and gun-crazed.
That is something of the myth that has grown up around the subject. Like many a modern myth, at least some of it is based on fake news. For there is nothing in the words prepping or prepper that relies on anything like these stereotypes.
Let’s look again at prepping and preppers.
Everything changes – and nothing changes
Clearly, the world today is a vastly different place to the one of just a decade or two ago. Many more natural and man-made disasters, emergencies, or simple disruptions to everyday life appear to be forever just around the corner.
In reality, though, there is nothing so very radical or different in the need to think ahead and plan for the unexpected. A generation or two ago, Backdoor Survival reminds us, there was no online shopping or stores that opened 24 hours a day. Shops may have been few and far between. Not only did food have to be stored but it may also have had to be dried, smoked, or canned to keep it from perishing.
In many parts of the world that planning for the future was something that needed to be done to prepare for the changing seasons – there was little chance of getting out to hunt or to harvest food in the dead of winter. So, there is really very little new if today we also plan ahead and prepare for the vagaries of nature and the extreme weather it can often throw at us.
A realistic picture of prepping
Rather than seeing the whole business of prepping as some weird pursuit by extremist loonies, therefore, come to picture it as a perfectly normal and realistic way of preparing for the natural uncertainties the future may bring.
Take it as an opportunity to get back to basics in your thinking about what essentials you really do need to survive from one day to the next. In the event of some crisis or disaster – however long it may last – where is your water and food going to come from?
Let yourself be challenged by the fact that the supply chains on which you’ve probably been relying to bring your food from every last far-flung corner of the world may not be the best sources for everyday sustenance when the chips are down. When water is no longer something you can take for granted by just turning on the tap, what will you do?
In a word, how well have you prepared? For that is the secret of prepping.
Further reading: Everyday prepping: it’s not just about Doomsday.
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