10 Tips for Preppers to Prepare for SHTF Situations
Being prepared really isn’t that complicated. It just takes a willingness to do something about your situation instead of talking about it. Most people who call themselves preppers have a closet full of gear and zero plan for using it. That’s not preparedness — that’s hoarding with extra steps.
If you haven’t started prepping, it’s time to stop reading other people’s bug-out bag lists and start taking the decisive actions that actually keep you and your family alive when things go sideways.
Here are 10 ideas that can help get you started:
1. Threat Assessment
Part of truly being prepared for anything means knowing exactly what threats you’re going to face, not the threats you’ve seen in a movie. By performing a realistic threat assessment, you get a clear picture of what’s actually likely to hit you — your region, your job, your house, your family — and you can stop wasting money prepping for things that will never touch your life.
Most people skip this step entirely. They buy gear first and figure out what it’s for later. That’s backwards. A threat assessment forces you to sit down and ask the boring questions: What disasters actually happen where I live? What’s my evacuation route if the highway’s jammed? What happens to my income if my employer shuts down for two weeks? Do that work first, and every dollar you spend on gear after that actually means something.
2. Planning for the Most Likely SHTF Scenarios
When you’re just getting started in the world of prepping, building a bunker for an asteroid strike is probably not the best use of your first $500. Both EMPs and asteroid strikes are terrifying to think about, but the probability of either one hitting your specific household this year is low. That’s not a reason to ignore them entirely — it’s a reason to prep for them last, not first.
Start with what’s statistically going to happen to you. Power outages, job loss, severe weather, regional supply disruptions — these aren’t dramatic, but they’re the ones that show up. A guy who spends $3,000 on a Faraday cage setup before he has two weeks of food and water in the house has his priorities backwards. Prep for the boring stuff first. The boring stuff is what actually happens.
3. SWOT Analysis
Performing a SWOT Analysis is a great way to find out how prepared you actually are instead of how prepared you feel. A SWOT Analysis is a simple but useful method of pinpointing your Strengths and Weaknesses, while also identifying Opportunities you can exploit and Threats you might face in an SHTF situation.
This isn’t a corporate buzzword exercise — it’s a gut check. Sit down with a notebook and actually write it out. Strengths might be that you’ve got land, a truck, and basic first aid training. Weaknesses might be that you’re 40 pounds overweight and haven’t fired your rifle in two years. Opportunities might be a neighbor with a well, or a skill you could trade. Threats might be that you live in a flood zone or that your only exit route crosses one bridge. Write it down. Most people never do, which is exactly why their plans fall apart at the first real test.
4. Living Debt Free… Is It Part of Your Survival Plan?
It’s great to be prepared for an end-of-days scenario, but what happens when you’re faced with foreclosure or the real possibility of losing your house over a stack of bills? Is that not a survival situation? Because it is — and it’s one a lot more people will face than a grid-down event.
To be truly prepared for the worst, you have to think about your financial security with the same seriousness you think about your bug-out bag. That means paying off debt, living within your means, and starting an emergency fund instead of dumping every spare dollar into gear. A fully stocked pantry doesn’t mean much if you lose the house it’s sitting in. Three to six months of expenses in cash or liquid savings will get most families through almost any short-term disaster — job loss, medical emergency, regional disruption — better than another case of MREs will.
5. Get in Shape NOW
No matter what survival situation you ultimately find yourself in, there’s one thing you’ll discover fast: survival is hell on your body. One of the best things you can do to improve your odds in just about any scenario is make sure your body and your mind are trained and ready to handle stress, exertion, and sleep deprivation — sometimes all three at once.
That means motivating yourself to get off the couch and get in shape, starting now, not after the next disaster makes the news. You don’t need to train like a Navy SEAL. You need to be able to carry a loaded pack a few miles, climb a flight of stairs without gassing out, and lift something heavy without throwing your back out. If you can’t do that today, that’s your starting line, not a reason to put it off another year.
6. Train with Repetition
To really be able to rely on your knowledge when things go bad, you need to run through your survival techniques in real-world scenarios and real environments, not just read about them online. The more you train under actual conditions — wet, cold, tired, frustrated — the more likely it is that you’ll be able to perform those skills when it counts.
Reading about how to start a fire with a ferro rod is not the same as doing it in the rain with numb fingers. Watching a YouTube video on water filtration is not the same as setting up your filter at 6 a.m. before you’ve had coffee. Skills you’ve only practiced once, in good conditions, in your backyard, are not skills you can count on. Repetition under realistic stress is what separates someone who can actually survive from someone who just owns the gear.
7. Train Your Mind
Survival isn’t glamorous, and it’s nothing like what gets shown on TV survival shows. It’s brutal. It will wear you down physically and emotionally in ways that are hard to predict until you’re in it. Don’t overlook the importance of cultivating a mindset that can face life’s worst days without falling apart.
This is the tip people skip because it’s the hardest one to shop for. You can’t buy mental toughness on Amazon. What you can do is deliberately put yourself in uncomfortable situations now — cold, hunger, exhaustion, frustration — in a controlled way, so your mind already knows what that territory feels like before a real emergency forces you into it. People who fall apart in a crisis usually aren’t lacking gear. They’re lacking the mental rehearsal.
8. Survival Intelligence – Power of Information
In a survival situation, knowledge is going to be a critical factor in determining the outcome. The ability to predict what’s coming, and react before everyone else does, is one of the most underrated parts of being prepared. Start building a list of trusted resources and information sources now, before you need them in a hurry.
That means knowing where to get reliable local emergency information, having a way to receive it when the internet and cell towers go down, and knowing the early warning signs for the disasters most likely to hit your area. A NOAA weather radio costs less than $30 and doesn’t care if the power grid or the cell network is up. Information you can access without the internet is worth more than information you can only get with it.
9. Be Prepared to Bug Out
Many preppers talk a big game about bugging out, but how many of them actually have the skills or the physical strength to pull it off? It’s one thing to talk about it over coffee. It’s another thing entirely to carry a loaded pack 10–15 miles a day, on foot, in dangerous and unforgiving conditions, with people depending on you.
If you’ve never actually shouldered your bug-out bag and walked five miles with it, you don’t know if your plan works. You know if your plan sounds good. Those are different things. Test it. Walk it. Find out your pack is too heavy or your boots aren’t broken in before a real evacuation teaches you the hard way.
10. Bugging Out with Kids
During an SHTF situation, maintaining a sense of normalcy becomes a serious concern when you’ve got children depending on you. Comfort items can go a long way toward helping a kid feel safe and in control when the adults around them clearly aren’t. Don’t overlook how important it is to give them stability during a stressful situation — a familiar stuffed animal or a deck of cards weighs almost nothing and can be the difference between a manageable night and a meltdown you don’t have time for.
Kids also need their own gear, sized for them, that they’ve practiced carrying and using. A bug-out bag built only for the adults in the family is a plan that assumes the kids are dead weight. Build them in. Practice with them. They’ll handle the real thing better if the gear and the routine already feel familiar.
Ten tips. None of them require a bunker, a generator the size of a refrigerator, or a four-figure gear haul. What they require is the thing most people avoid: actually doing the work instead of buying your way around it. Gear sitting in a closet doesn’t know how to use itself, and a fat emergency fund doesn’t build itself either.
Working on the bob’s and pretty resourceful. Gleaning what I can. TY for all the terrific tips!
We’ll be camping on and off. Getting ready to start carrying the bobs in the trunks of the cars…we’d have to do a bit of driving then hiking. Tobacco is key for trades. The Potassium Iodide is key too. Small med kits and dried food.
I live in the mississippi delta this is the best place to bug out when SHTF lots of game and fish i lived here all my life and taken camping trips for weeks at a time
MOVE TO THE COUNTRY GET OUT OF THE CITY
What about Government drones spying far and wide.
As an Australian living in a wealthy country we are hundred of miles away from threats. Or so we think. The Australian Government is one of the most intrusive nanny states in the world. The media is left wing, the Politicians are lying left wingers. And the population is disarmed. We are screwed down under.America sees Australia as some sort of utopia, but it aint, its overtaxed, super expensive and corrupt. I implore Americans to fight for your freedoms and retain your gun rights. We have fallen asleep in Australia ( a dangerous thing to do considering 300 million Muslims and China is on our doorstep) Both left and right of politics collude to make gun ownership extroadinarily difficult. My family has started preparing with food and survival equipment. Australia cannot continue down the path its going something will give sooner or later. Good luck and dont take your right to self protection lightly, In Australia the criminals and Police are armed to the teeth, ordinary Australians do not, we are sitting ducks.
If the world falls apart, china will storm Australia and colonize the country and extract the resources.
What you said is SO true Trog. Australia is the most red-taped country in the world. America, fight for your right to bear arms! There is something wrong when a government, like Australia, disarms its own law abiding citizens so they can’t defend themselves.
Hope it never happens but I have told both my Daughters If someone touches off a nuke anywhere in the world head for home. I live in the country. They both live in large cities. Also told them on the way home pick up any non pershibable items they can get thier hands on like cookies,soup,crakers convenience store type stuff. Everyone else will be sitting on thier hands wondering what will happen next. They have (My Daugters) been told by me dont wonder just head for home. I have GNS&AMMO.
How can I stop my girls from moving to a huge city?
My missus is one of the biggest threats to mankind, I’d like to know how I can prepare myself for when she get up in the morning. Cheers.
Tombs – that was funny! But in all seriousness, I think people get carried away as the article points out about trying to prepare for some massively, catastrophic event, rather than something a little more realistic. This was good information just for getting people more focused again.
I have found just tackling a few items on the list every week, eventually leads to being further along than a lot of others.
Practicing some basic scenarios, or heck, even doing some camping at least gets you a little more prepared then the average joe.
okay i am a otr driver. i may be over a thousand miles from home when shtf. what recomendations if any do ya’ll have besides water
I work about an hour from home in an outdoor environment with travel consisting of equal curvy country roads, gravel roads and interstate. When considering getting home after an event a few of the best decisions I’ve come to is to have a bug out bag in my vehicle with contents to sustain me during light travel to keep me moving. Emphasize items like the sawyer micro water filter for $20 that allows me to filter and purify water while I move instead of having to stop and build a fire etc… Also since a person in good physical condition can walk about 10 miles a day it is a plus to own a simple trail bike that can be peddled through traffic jams etc. and will greatly speed up your travel.
I’m presuming you want to get home above but you could just as easily stay put and live out of your truck if you have a sleeper etc… Invest in a mobile solar power kit from harbor freight to keep your batteries charged as much as possible after fuel is depleted. Buy a $5 metal oil lamp/ lantern from Walmart and a few liters of lamp oil. This would heat / light a truck cab for weeks / months. Stock pile canned meat packed in oil such as tuna. Keeps for years and oil can be pushed in lantern.
Of course before settling in to your rig try to locate it somewhere safe near a good natural water supply. Keep fishing gear on hand etc…
If you can’t afford a solar kit maybe buy a few of those yard lights that use solar power to charge AA batteries for its light. Buy equipment that use AA batteries. Take a long time to charge but can be used sparingly.
Sorry… Meant used in lantern not pushed. :-)
Hey everyone, I am new to this world of prepping. I feel completely overwhelmed on how to get started. The list provided seems like a start. What would be considered the most important task to learn first? I live in the city, I’ve never been camping, fishing, never shot a gun. I’m completely lost. Hopefully it’s not to late.
It’s never too late Tiff, I was in your shoes a few years ago. Just start slowly and go steady…as Karen Hood says “buy just one or two extra cans of the food you regularly eat every time you do groceries and date and rotate them..use the oldest first ect..” That way it isn’t too expensive and it is useful even if SDHTF. It’s easy to get into, Just read the SAS survival guide and watch some Woods Master Videos and you’re all set to start. It is not something that you learn all at once. Practice makes perfect…practice whenever you can…practice starting fires (with spark, flame and friction), making different knots and how you would use them (reef, hitch, bowline ect)..get your hands dirty practice snares and stalking prey, food preservation, wild edibles ect. Slowly learn everything you can about medicine, food, defense and you will be fine…Life is 10% what happens and 90 % how you react to it.
AOC
First aid course
One of the things I have done is to download apps from Itunes onto my Iphone. Example- Army Survival manual, air force survival manual, weather channel,wiki how, berries & herbs,flashlight, rec cross first aid, police scanner and a gps. All apps were free. They may come in handy as long as I can use the phone. I am also a 23 yr army vet, 15 yr scout leader, marksmanship instructor and certified archery instructor. Ii live in the MS delta.
what good is an education if you dont apply it. what you dont know could kill you. so what these people are saying is knowledge is power in times of despair. armed with nothing but knowledge, and surviving the longest. skills that can find food water weapons shelter and avoidance when threatened.
When SHTF, you can presume that society will pretty much be lawless. Possession is 9/10ths of the law, and the other tenth won’t matter.
Whether your rent your home or own it, in the end it will come down to what you can defend.
If you can’t defend it, you will inevitably end up bugging out.
It’s like anything we learn; just take baby steps and you’ll get there! There are still lots of things I feel I need, but I try ti just keep at it. I also have to consider that I’m handicapped,live alone and am not young any more. We all have to take into consideration what our own situation is first and then move forward.
I live in North ms 100 miles from the nearest large city I’ve been prepping for years I have chickens hogs cows fish ponds two large creeks with dams on my property barns and a shop filled with tools and underground facilities . I’ve installed solar power at my shop which also has living quarters . I’ve stored food seeds I’ve built an electric tiller with solar recharging .I have wood and natural gas for heating and cooking and convection a/c at my shop medical suplies spare parts for my jeep ham radio and I still add somthing every week plus a WELL stocked arsenal . I ain’t bugging out nowhere !!!!
I am new to the site and unprepped. I am a single mother and I do not have a lot of money. I feel that its coming – a SHTF situation. And I am overwhelmed. I need to be prepared to take care of my 9 yr old and myself. My mother who is 65 and father who is 55 live about 15 miles from us. We are located in the panhandle of northwest Florida. Surrounded by water and military bases. I feel if we were bombed we would be hit first. But if it were a power grid situation, maybe it would be easier to get to my Mom and Pops. They have guns and ammo. Their neighborhood is prepped to some extent. My neighborhood is mostly military and family. I know the land. We are close to a couple cities but far enough out to not be in immediate danger. Bridges would have to be passed by city people to get out here. I have been through every hurricane that has hit the Gulf Coast in the last 40 years…never left and survived up to two weeks with no power…on my own then. After reading all the posts and the article, my first step is buying potassium iodide tablets, Sawyer Micro Water Filter, source of solar lighting powered by AA batteries with a solar charger(?), canned food (note expiration date rotations), medicines, 1st Aid class, learn how to start a fire, know how to tie knots and when to use them, have fishing gear, know herbs and uses, basic tools, radio, read & learn, what else??? Like I said I am new to this. But I know I need to start preparing.
Faith, hey relax a bit and realize where you are at, resources you already have at your disposal. I live in Pensacola, and the entire woods around this area and Alabama are completely edible, you can just about look everything you need up online, great books out there. Do not panic, its a killer, fear is a good motivator though. Start small, look for others near you that have skills, also as far as making fires, things like that there are so any resources out there, online, books on amazon, survival card decks, edible plants card decks, make it a game for you and your child …..
I’ll soon be 70, need a knee replacement, and don’t get around very good anymore. I won’t be able to bug out, and I’m sure there are many others like me. I live in the city, in an apt. complex highest floor. I imagine everyone will have the same ideas you post on this site. How can any one place be safe, really? If the enemy wants you, they’ll sure find you, using infra-red lights for those hiding in the woods, don’t you think? Maybe the safest thing to do would be hold down wherever you happen to be, for several weeks, until things become a little safer. With everyone panicking, the enemy will know exactly where to look for you. The only thing I know to do, given my circumstances, and with no place to go, is to store up on water, canned/freeze-dried food, lanterns, matches, potassium iodide pills, baby wipes, the usual first aid stuff, won’t name them all, and stay inside, off the streets. But that is pretty scary, in itself. People will go crazy and do anything to obtain water or food when things shut down/close. I wonder if they will bust in my door. That is a possibility, I think, and I cannot defend myself. Any other suggestions for this type situation? I’ve heard the gov. will be checking for hoarders, and if they are found, they will take every bit of the things you stored for survival. Really, no one will be able to trust Anybody during a time like this. People will turn against each other. It will be crazy, to say the least. We won’t even recognize this world. Sure, I could shoot somebody if they force their way in, but really…I’ll just get shot back, anyway, against a mob. Please tell me the best I can do in a situation like this. I am trying to prepare. Not freaking out. Just trying to survive like everyone else. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. I’m still trying to figure out how I could cook safely without electricity. Need help on that.
Sounds like you’ve thought of a lot. At the end of the day all you can do is your best. Unless you have means of relocating out of the city now, maybe a relative in the country? Or gardening skills? Sewing? Something like that might be welcomed with like minded folks you could reach out to. Just a thought. Good luck. We’re all just doing what we can, nobody knows the future.
As for cooking I’ve got a Sterno stove with several Sterno cans. Pretty easy to set up, but it’s basically good to heat up thinks like soup or water. If you have a balcony get yourself a grill. Some apartments don’t allow grills but I’d get one anyway, even if it’s just a small one that uses charcoal., which would be easier and safer to store than propane. My dream item is a solar cooker. If you can swing that (about $400) you can use it whenever it’s sunny. That would depend a lot on your climate though. Check them out online.
Sir, I like the article, one thing though, I know you talked about SHTF w/kids…..myself personally wont leave y dogs behind, cats go feral and can fend for themselves….what is your take on that???? thank you.
I love my dogs too, and would welcome them with me, I would also eat them both if I had too! Not as a hunger pain, but as a starvation preventer
Good article. Many great comments. If you survive the initial event of any SHTF scenario, your biggest long term threat will be other people. For this reason, the most important prep in my opinion is a remote property that is easy to defend. All other preps will be much safer, you greatly reduce your need to bug out, and you don’t need to transport your preps with the Golden Herd roaming around. One other very important thing that is not mentioned much is the need to psychologically prepare for the wide scale death and gore that will occur. You need to be prepared to commit violence without a thought because hesitation will get you killed. Bodies could lie in the streets for a long time. Packs of dogs will eat them. Cities could easily burn when fire departments are defunct. There will be little to no law. Gangs will rape and pillage. Be prepared to see, hear, and smell death first hand. Remember, if SHTF, it will be worse than you can imagine.
You all tactishits