To really succeed as a prepper, you have to have a plan.
Prepping is a lot of hard work, it takes a lot of time and a significant chunk of your available money… and one of the keys to being a SUCCESSFUL prepper is a coordinated overall plan… whether it’s written down or in your head, you have to have your priorities set, goals… and you need to stick to that plan.
One often overlooked part of planning is what we want to talk about today… much is said (and rightly so ) about all of the “nuts and bolts” of prepping, but we haven’t really seen much mentioned about is the very first part of the planning process… visualizing what will happen, so that we can form the roots of a successful plan.
Let’s look at an example, using the biggest cliche in fiction, “It was a dark and stormy night.”:
“It was a dark and stormy night. The power went off just as the tornado siren started to wail. Salty and I got up and dressed down to the sturdy shoes. He handed me one of the two charged solar flashlights while I grabbed the fire box with our necessaries in it. Less than a minute and we were ready and at the door of the shelter. I only realized later that neither one of us had said a word. Didn’t need to; we knew what to do and everything was where it belonged.”
A tornado on the horizon outside of Salty’s car window. Taken at 55mph through a window, and yes, Salty stopped driving towards the tornado until it had passed.
Of course, these resources didn’t “just appear,” we had visualized the need for them, purchased the supplies, discussed what each of our roles would be, and then we executed the plan to be ready for when the lights went out.
Exactly how does one do this? Let’s use this “dark & stormy night” example to work through the problem.
A challenge for you: Imagine during a nasty storm your power goes out as the tornado alarm goes off. Visualize exactly what you and your family would do to deal with the problem promptly and effectively. Really, take a moment and watch it happen, step by step, from the moment the siren awakens you until you and yours are safe in shelter.
Light sources….can you find them in a moment in the dark, and will they fizzle and die when you take them out in the rain? You don’t want your kid to be going out in flip-flops; are her boots close enough to hand? Is the dog’s leash there so he doesn’t panic and run off into the dark and stormy night? If the house gets damaged beyond use, do you have your IDs, some cash, important papers?
Now you’ve made it to the shelter…do your kids have something to do Other than harass each other or think about being scared? Did you bring you the asthma meds?
We’re not talking visualization such as athletes do, where you get to imagine everything going just right. That’ll help produce a better high jump, but it won’t help you make the big, important step between “I’ve got what I need here…somewhere” and “I’ve got what’s needed right to hand” in the moment of truth. This is a technique that helps you anticipate the snags and plan how to negotiate them.
Visualizing in detail how you might have to proceed will help you think about where you want to place your preps so they’re useful when you need them, and remind you to keep them maintained. It will help you discover the knicky-knacky details which might otherwise become major roadblocks. I’m glad you’ve got that nifty bug-out-vehicle…do you have a spare key if one got dropped into some inaccessible space as you were loading your bags? (Visualize things going wrong too; because they will.)
If you can’t clearly visualize how to do a thing…congratulations; you’ve discovered you don’t know how to do it Before it became a critical failure. I love You-Tube tutorials as much as the next not-naturally-mechanically-inclined person, but we can’t trust that to be there when the situation is bad or time is short.
This technique has saved me from several work disasters when I couldn’t afford a failure on a first try at doing something new. If you’ll practice it, it may save your bacon too.
The takeaway: Make the first step of planning visualization, then incorporate what you have seen in your mind’s eye into your plan and get it done.
