The Doomsday Prepping Crash Course (3 page)

Remember, not many people have the luxury of being able to go out and purchase their entire cache of food storage and emergency supplies all at once.  With this in mind, don't let yourself make the mistake of becoming overwhelmed by all the things that need to be purchased.  Keep in mind that Rome wasn't built in a day and your emergency supplies collection won't be built in a day either.

This is a good time to bring up a key point that can help keep many preppers from becoming discouraged.  If you are building a collection of something like stamps, coins, or baseball cards, you don't go out and buy the entire collection all at once.  Instead, you slowly buy items to add to your collection one or two at a time.  Over time, the items that you are collecting will grow into an impressively sized collection. 

If you'll keep this in mind when it comes to building a collection of emergency supplies, it will be easier for you to not feel overwhelmed by fixating on all the things that you would eventually like to have in your cache of supplies.

Save Money by Learning the Art of Couponing

Couponing has evolved considerably in recent years.  We're no longer talking about simply waiting around until the Sunday paper is delivered to clip a few coupons here and there.  The ways that coupons can be collected in this digital day and age are many times greater than they once were.

It's beyond the scope of this book to teach you to be a couponing master but rather to encourage you to learn to make the most of the couponing experience.  With the help of coupons that can be collected and printed from the Internet, it's now possible to find coupons for just about everything you want to buy.

It's not uncommon for master couponers to walk into a store and come out with unbelievable deals like a shopping cart full of free toilet paper for example.  Having a large stockpile of items like toilet paper could come in pretty handy someday and you can't get a better price than free!

It takes a bit of time and effort to learn how to get the best deals when using coupons but it's definitely worth putting in the work to master this skillset. Some of the most prolific preppers are master couponers and they are amazing at stretching their prepping dollar to get the most from their money.

Stocking Up on Medication and Medical Supplies

Many preppers have medical conditions that require them to be on some form of medication.  It's important that while you're building up your cache of emergency supplies that you don't forget to stock up on any medications that you take. 

This can be a bit tricky because many health insurance companies won't let you purchase more than you'll need in the short term.  That being said, you might try checking with your pharmacy to see if you can mail order several months worth of medications in advance.  In some cases, you can order three months of medication at a time and receive a discount for filling your prescription in this manner.

You might also consider speaking with your doctor and telling him or her about your prepping goals.  If you express your desire to stock up on supplies to be used in the event of a major emergency, he or she may be able to find ways of helping you such as giving you some free samples of the medications you take to put back for a rainy day.

Remember that like food, medication is a perishable item meaning that it will eventually expire.  If you stockpile over the counter medications such as aspirin or ibuprofen, you should rotate it out of your cache of supplies before it expires.

Don't forget that in the event of a major emergency, you probably won't be able to walk into your local superstore and buy things like bandages, antiseptic and other first aid supplies.  It's extremely important to keep in mind that the need for these types of supplies could be quite high depending upon the nature of the doomsday event that you find yourself trying to survive in. 

Even minor injuries could become life threatening if you don't have the necessary supplies to disinfect and dress wounds.  For this reason, emergency medical supplies should be near the top of your list in terms of the level of importance you place on storing them.

Money Saving Tip:
You can sometimes buy first aid supplies at a discount at military surplus stores.  You might also try contacting your local doctor's offices and/or hospitals to see if they have any supplies that they are throwing out. You might just find that they are willing to give you old medical supplies that they don't have a use for that haven't been used yet.

Remembering To Take Your Vitamins after Doomsday

As a prepper you're main goal is to stock up on the items that will make it possible for you and your family to survive when things get really bad.  This may mean that you might find it a bit difficult to serve up three well balanced meals every day to your family.

The longer you have to live off of your food storage, the less balanced your meals will be in terms of overall nutrition.  Not because you didn't prepare well but rather because your supplies will start to run low and you'll have fewer choices of food available for you to prepare.

One way to help yourself and your family stay healthy while you're in survival mode is for each of you to take a daily multivitamin.  Vitamins supplements are easy to store and they don't take up much space.  Better yet, they will provide you with essential vitamins and minerals that you might be lacking due to the nature of your diet.

Remember, you may not have the luxury of being able to waltz on into the doctor's office if you happen to get sick. Anything you can do to stay healthy will help you survive until society rebuilds and things get back to some degree of normalcy.  Taking daily multivitamins is an easy way to help your body stay healthy so be sure and store several bottles.

One tip regarding storing vitamins and over the counter medications is to look at the expiration dates on the bottles in the store.  Find the bottles that are the freshest and buy those.  This will increase the length of time that you can keep them stored with your emergency supplies.

Get the Upper Hand by Storing Bartering Items

If you find yourself in the midst of a major doomsday event, you'll likely have a very hard time buying the supplies you're in need of at a store.  Stores may not even be open or they may have already been looted by marauders who have completely cleaned out the shelves. 

Hopefully you'll have prepared well enough that you'll have the major necessities to survive stored away in your stockpile.  The reality is that regardless of how well you prepare, you may find yourself in need of some supplies or services that you just don't have.  This is where bartering can come in really handy!

Before the days of supermarkets on every street corner, trading or bartering was a regularly used method of obtaining the things that one was in need of.  During the aftermath of an event like a major natural disaster, this method of commerce will likely become much more common than it is now.  The basic principle is that if you have something of value that someone else wants or is in need of, you can trade it for something that you want or need.

If the doomsday event that you are faced with causes extreme hyperinflation, you may not even be able to use cash to get the things you need.  We've all heard the stories about how hyperinflation in Germany after World War I created conditions where people couldn't even buy a loaf of bread with a wheel barrow full of money.

Even though you might not be able to buy the supplies that you stand in need of, you may be able to trade for them IF you have the right kind of items to use for bartering.  Let's talk for a minute about what the "right kinds" of bartering items might be.

Of course, regular items from your food storage or medical supple cache could be used for bartering but items that might be more sought after are the luxury items.  We're talking about the types of items that aren't necessarily needed to survive but many people have become so accustomed to having them that they'll do virtually anything to get their hands on them. 

Items such as liquor, cigarettes, and chewing tobacco are three examples of items that will be in very high demand.  If you have these types of items stored away to use for bartering for supplies that you are running low on or items that you have run out of, you'll definitely have the upper hand during the negotiations.

Another type of luxury item that you might not think about storing is simple reading material.  If you are stuck in the middle of a doomsday crisis, it's highly likely that the power grid will be down.  We live in a world full of people who have become so reliant upon electronic gadgets like televisions, computers, smartphones, iPads, MP3 players, and video games that if the power grid does go down for an extended period of time, people won't know what to do with themselves.  Mass boredom will set in and they'll find themselves looking for ways to alleviate this boredom.

When this happens, they'll start searching for reading material to occupy their time and minds with.  This is where you come in!  If you have taken the time to stock up on books and magazines, you'll have a powerful bargaining chip that you can use to your benefit. 

If you don't believe that reading material will be in high demand, think about the last time you found yourself stuck in the waiting room at a doctor's office.  How did you pass the time?  If you're like most people, you spent it reading a magazine that you found on a table in the waiting room.  In many cases, you probably picked up a magazine that you would have never purchased in the store and started thumbing through it to find something to read.  You probably even read some articles that weren't really that interesting to you just to kill the time.

Money Saving Tip:
 Before you head on down to your local book store and start spending your prepping dollars on books and magazines, you should know that you can pick these items up for next to nothing and oftentimes free if you know a couple of simple tricks.

The first trick is to visit your local library and ask them if they have any old magazines or books that they are throwing out.  Believe it or not, libraries throw out old books and magazines all the time.  When their old books become tattered they will often throw them out instead of spending the money to have them repaired.  Libraries have limited space and magazines are usually distributed monthly.  They just don't have the space to store years and years of old magazine issues so they usually end up throwing them out or recycling them periodically.

The second trick is to visit doctor's offices and hospitals and ask them to save their old magazines for you.  Most of them subscribe to numerous magazines so their patients will have something to read while they are "being patient" and waiting their turn to be seen by a doctor.  If you tell them that you'll pick their old magazines up on a monthly basis so that they don't have to hassle with recycling them, you might just get your hands on quite a few free magazines that would be perfect to use when bartering.

The last trick is to visit yard sales.  You might not realize it but the best time to hit a yard sale is on the last day of the sale; just before they are getting ready to put everything away and clean up.  If you walk up and say, "I'll give you $5.00 for that box of books that you didn't sell", they'll often say yes.  They'll say yes because they're tired of dealing with the yard sale and they don't want to have to pack the books away and continue storing them.

Leverage the Power of Buying In Bulk

When it comes to buying food for your food storage, one of the best ways to get great deals is to buy in bulk.  If you shop at wholesale stores such as Costco or Sam’s Club, you’ll often get much better prices when you buy bulk quantities. 

One option for those of you who are on a budget is to get some of your pepper friends together and pool your money for making bulk purchases.  Then you can leverage the cost savings that come from buying in bulk without having to come up with all the money yourself.

You might have to repackage some of the items when you divide them up but you’ll be able to take advantage of bulk shopping prices without breaking your budget.  This is just one of the many creative ways that preppers can band together to help each other prepare for doomsday.

Get Back To Basics and Learn To Preserve Food Now

Another thing that many preppers have in common is that they know how to preserve their own food.  This is a skill that is rapidly being lost in today's society.  It's also a skill that is very much worthy of learning while you are preparing for doomsday.  We won't teach you how to preserve food in this book.  We will, rather, encourage you to develop the skills to be able to use the methods described below.

Canning
- If you're not familiar with canning as a way of preserving food, we're not talking about storing food in metal cans.  We're talking about storing food in glass jars that have been sterilized and sealed to lock in the freshness.  Fruits, vegetables, and even cooked meat can be preserved with this method and safely stored for quite some time.

Dehydrating
- This is a method of preserving food that can also be used to preserve fruits, vegetables, or meats.  Dehydrated food can be stored and eaten in its dry form or even reconstituted by adding water and cooking it.

Smoking
- This is one of the oldest methods of preserving food known to man.  Smoking meat is a way of increasing the length of time that it takes for food to spoil.  In a post doomsday world, meat that is obtained via hunting or fishing can be preserved by smoking it.  It won't last as long as canned meat will last but it is an effective method of preserving meat nonetheless.

Now would be a good time to talk about the importance of rotating through your food storage.  Don’t make the mistake of simply storing a bunch of food and forgetting about it.  Food storage isn’t like wine that gets better as it ages.  When you are storing food, make sure that you have the date that you stored it clearly written on each container.  Then, organize your food storage in such a way that you’ll know where the oldest food is.