Welcome to the newest category on Beans, Bullets, Bandages and You, PrepperHealth.
PrepperHealth is a concept that speaks directly to the “you” part of our website (and mission’s) name. The first entry in our PrepperHealth category appeared earlier this week, the article on hygiene written by Paranoid Prepper.
Let’s take a look at the kinds of articles that will end up being posted PrepperHealth
First, we expect to be doing a lot more general fitness and related posts from a prepper’s point of view. In the past, we have mostly lumped these sorts of articles under the PrepperMed 101 area, and we may end up moving some of those not specifically about medicine over here under PrepperHealth, to provide easier access for people interested in overall prepping fitness.
Enough of the housekeeping, let’s get started.
What we need to do is to stop and make an honest evaluation of where we are, our current fitness level, and how that relates to our overall prepping plans.
Obviously, if the Stuff Hits The Fan (SHTF) things are going to get a lot more physical for all of us. We may be walking instead of driving. We may be on bicycles. I may have to carry water, or other heavy loads. I may be having to bug out with our gear.
Waiting until the day the SHTF to start getting ourselves physically ready for this isn’t a good idea, and that’s a key fundamental of PrepperHealth.
Let’s take a look at a real story and then a hypothetical to explain
There have been several times in my life that a medical emergency has happened near me. I remember one time when Spice and I were riding our bikes on the Katy trail near Rocheport, and we came across guy who looked to be in his 40’s. The day was warm, but it wasn’t blazing hot. He was surrounded by a group of people, one of whom (thankfully) was an emergency room nurse. Pale, sweating like you wouldn’t believe, the guy couldn’t breathe, and he was complaining about chest pains. Somebody was on the phone with 911 and help was on the way. We were not needed at the scene so we went on our way.
OK, now let’s say times are different… the stuff has just hit the fan and the roads are parking lots. The same man needs to strap on his get-home bag and walk the 8-miles form work to home. After putting that 35 pound bag on his back, he starts walking… about a mile down the road, he feels a chest pain, feels weak and sweaty… and there is no 911 to call. This is a very bad thing.
We’ve got to keep it real in our activity
I wrote a bit about keeping it real in my post on me not being a SuperPrepperSurvivalistNinja™. I’m kinda old, I’m carrying around far too many pounds (I’m working on that), my knees are bad and I’m not an aggressive go-getter killing machine.
But do you know what else? I just spent 45 minutes on the bike at the gym doing cardio before I sat down to write this. My knees didn’t feel up to an around-the-town ride outside today, but rather than just wimping out and skipping it, I went and did what I needed to do.
People my age who don’t exercise have high blood sugar, high cholesterol and really bad blood tests. I’m not down for that. If it takes 45-minutes a day on the dumb bike, so be it.
PrepperHealth in action!
We’ve got to keep it real in our planning
Here’s the thing, I know what I can do and I know what I can’t, physically. I can ride a bicycle a long way. I can’t climb a mountain (I do OK on the “going up” part, but my knees absolutely HATE me when I go down).
Story time: About 10 years ago more or less we were in New Mexico. We visited Carlsbad Caverns (highly recommended) and decided to go down the “natural entrance”. There was no up, it was all down, about 600 feet of vertical drop over a fairly winding but sometimes steep well-maintained path. I was in no way winded or tired, but my knees nearly exploded on the trip… and I was stiff for a month after that.
I know that any plans I make can’t realistically include a lot of downhill walking without injury. SO… we make plans to not be in situations where that comes up.
Needs vs Mechanisms
Here’s the thing and this comes up a lot in Spice’s job… something we, as preppers, really need to wrap our heads around.
Needs are not mechanisms. They really aren’t. We may NEED to do something, but that doesn’t mean we posses the ability to do it.
Want to know a secret? Well, whether you want to know it or not, here it is. When the discussion turns to “needs are not mechanisms” it’s time for me to turn it over to the expert, Spice.
Without further fanfare, I’m turning this “intro to PrepperHealth” post over to her.
Adjusting your plans to fit your abilities
“Needs are not mechanisms” means that the fact that you need to do a thing doesn’t make you capable of getting it done. I *need* oxygen, but if you put me twenty feet under water in nothing but a swimsuit; I’ve got no mechanism to get that oxygen, so I drown.
So if I need to do something twenty feet under water, I plan to bring my scuba gear. *Now* there’s a working mechanism to fulfill the need, and Life Is Good.
If you’re going to *need* to potentially get home when driving isn’t happening but you don’t have the ability to walk that far, one option is to arrange the plan to not have to walk it. Salty’s response to his ‘can’t walk that far’ knees is to keep a bike in the back of the car whenever possible, raising the probability he’ll have a different route of transport if the need arises.
Think about what you can do and how to make that serve your needs.
Adjusting your abilities to fit your plans
There might be another option to changing the plan: Changing your capabilities. We can learn and in many cases we can develop new skills and better fitness. If you need to be able to plan and follow a route without a GPS but ‘you stink at reading maps’…
That’s not a life sentence. Practice, and if necessary get someone who reads maps better to help you learn. If you can’t walk twenty miles with a thirty five pound pack, maybe you’ll be able to do that in a month or two if you start getting in more hiking with the pack. Humans are adaptable creatures.
The key event is to fix the plan, or your abilities, or some combination of the two. A plan you can’t fulfill is false security, at best. Sometimes you can just ‘gut something out’ if you have to; but sometimes you can’t, too. Consider the hot water you could be in if the plan fails halfway through before you accept your own blithe optimism about what you can do, and if that’s hotter water than you can stand, Make A New Plan, Stan