When you visit prepping blogs or listen to survival “experts,” you’ll hear all sorts of advice. But here’s a shocker: a lot of this advice makes absolutely no sense in real-life situations – starting with the following conventional advice you should ignore.
Stockpile Dry Beans
Sure, dry beans last forever and are loaded with nutrients. But guess what? They take AGES to cook. Do you even have an emergency stove? And, if you do, is it worth wasting all your fuel on beans?
Instead: Stockpile precooked beans in cans or other proteins that don’t need to be cooked, freeze-dried meat.
Bug Out
Yes, you absolutely do need to have an evacuation bag packed and ready to go, (and here’s what to put in it!)—every second matters when a wildfire is coming towards your home or a hurricane warning is in effect.
But the idea that you must bug out into the wilderness at the first sign of trouble isn’t just unrealistic; it can be downright dangerous.
Instead: Know when it makes sense to bug out. Since it doesn’t, in most situations, have all the essentials you need to hunker down at home.
Learn to Hunt for Food
Learning to hunt is smart, but assuming you can hunt for food in a survival situation is downright foolish.
For starters, hunting takes a lot of time and energy – time and energy that’s probably better spent getting to safety or doing other survival tasks. And let’s assume that you even do manage to kill an animal. How would you cook it and preserve leftovers?
Instead: Build up a supply of emergency foods for home and pack calorie-dense nonperishables in your bug-out bag. And, if you realllllyyyy feel the need to source your own food in the wild, eating bugs is more reliable than hunting!
Get (Insert Name of Gimmicky Tool) for Your Survival Kit
A tomahawk with a spear built into the handle? A tactical pen? How about a folding grappling hook?
These all seem cool, but do you really need them in your survival kit? Chances are they will just weigh you down while emptying your wallet.
Instead: Focus on essential items first. Things like tarps and water containers aren’t as sexy but will be much more useful in real survival situations.
Stockpile Guns and Ammo
Preppers love their firearms, but I hate to break it to you: most disaster situations do not call for an armed response! Those guns and ammo are going to be completely useless when a massive blizzard snows you in your home or when a tornado rips through your community.
Instead: Spend your money on essentials first and only then focus on weapons.
Prepare for TEOTWAWKI
A massive EMP event taking out the grid and putting us all in total darkness. The Yellowstone supervolcano erupts and puts a cloud of blackness over the sun for months. Or the political situation devolving and creating a civil war….
These are all possible situations that could spell The End Of The World As We Know It. But you know what’s even more possible? Power outages, floods, blizzards, and heat waves.
It’s downright dumb advice to prepare for TEOTWAWKI if you haven’t gotten prepped for everyday disaster situations. You’ll end up overwhelmed and unprepared for what you need to be prepped for.
Instead: Research common disasters in your area and prep for these.
