You might be a prepper if…

You might be a prepper if…

I remember the old “you might be a redneck if” jokes were all the rage, and sometimes I think you can look at our family and fill a whole comedy routine with nothing but “you might be a prepper if” stories.

Here’s a recent (true) example.

Salty messages Spice: “Your three pairs of new pants arrived today”.

Spice: “Yay! I can bug spray them tomorrow evening. Thank you!”

Folks, I’m here to tell you that’s not a normal response from most 50-something professional white-collar females. It’s just not.

You might be a prepper if you see this pretty flower and think “I could make a herbal medicinal remedy out of that!”

Of course, there’s always more to the story than meets the eye

Spice is pretty picky about the fit of her pants, and we’ve looked long and hard to find the right set of technical hiking pants. Finally, after a ton of searching, I found a pair for her that she liked. Light weight, fast drying, ripstop materials with zip-off legs and plenty of pockets.

I bought a pair for her, she gave me her “two thumbs up” so I bought three more pairs. Why mess around, if she likes them, they fit, they are available, just get it done. I did choose different colors at least.

She’s off in a few days to spend a couple of weeks with Doc hiking in the mountains of Wyoming & Idaho, and these pants are going with her.

So… those pants get the anti-bug treatment before the trip because, and I quote Spice, “Some of the hiking spots are mosquito-enriched, and I don’t want Rocky Mountain Spotted fever from the ticks either.”

Her new hiking boots also got the full treatment, to be fair… fortunately, the stuff doesn’t stink up the backpack, so that’s good.

It’s not the first time we’ve felt the need to say “you might be a prepper when”

I’ll never forget the “look” I got from Spice several years ago when a few 5-gallon buckets of wheat arrived via UPS.

You know you might be a prepper when your wife walks through the front door and, literally, cannot walk through the front room because it’s too full of 5-gallon buckets of hard red wheat (and other grains, to be fair).

I’ll admit it, I missed. I missed badly.

An online retailer had an amazing deal on hard red wheat set up for long-term storage in buckets. If I recall correctly, if you bought 20 buckets at a very cheap price, they would include free UPS shipping. The sale ran for a week so I ordered 20 buckets one day, and a few days later another 20. I also ordered some sliced potatoes a week later, and some freeze dried veggies and fruits a few days after that.

I spaced them out so that it wouldn’t be obvious… have to maintain that ole opsec, right?

What could possibly go wrong with that?

Of course, they shipped EVERYTHING together. UPS ended up sending an additional truck to deliver it, and whoever the driver was just piled everything up in the front yard right in front of our house.

I went home for lunch and… well… let’s just say, it was bad. I had one hour to get all this stuff inside and out of sight of the prying eyes, so I literally just piled it all in the front room… not really paying attention to the fact that I blocked off the front of the house entirely from the back of the house. To go to the living room and kitchen, you literally had to walk around to the back door.

Here’s another “you know you are a prepper when” moment… you know you are a prepper when you pull a stunt like this, spend a couple of thousand on a huge supply of long term storage food, and your prepper wife is most concerned not with the food, not with the quantity, but rather “why is this sitting in the front room of my house?”

Don’t worry, it magically made it’s way down to the basement all by it’s self. (I can just see Spice’s glare when she reads this, since there was absolutely NOTHING magic about all the work she did taking that stuff downstairs…). It’s OK, though, she’s staying out at The Place tonight, so I don’t have to worry about the explosion. Besides, again, what could possibly go wrong?

So… you might be a prepper if

Without further delay, here are a few “You might be a prepper” thoughts.

You might be a prepper if:

• Your gun collection is worth more than your cars
• Your ammo collection is worth more than your house
• You see rainwater spurting out of a gutter and you wonder why the C-Store doesn’t use rain barrels
• You have more five-gallon buckets than Home Depot
• You consider getting down to a year’s supply of anything as “being out”
• You have paracord shoelaces
• When for you, buying a new handgun also means buying a new holster, magazine pouches, 8 additional magazines and a new set of web gear.
• When every trip to the store ends with at least one more box of canning lids in your cart.
• When you look at the 12-packs of TP at the store and think “isn’t it cute they come in such small packages?”
• When instead of looking at the trim packages and music system of a new vehicle, you open the back and visualize where you can store the 4 5-gallon gas cans, the cases of food and the camping supplies for the bug-out.
• When you stockpile a large collection of antibiotics just in case you ever decide to put in a fish tank… we all know how important fish-health is.

Feel free to add some more “you might be a prepper” thoughts in the comments