prep « Robin Writes

Hey, SHTF peeps – it’s been a while, huh? Well, I’m a little busy with a lot of this-and-that going on, but I’m back now, and posing a question:

If you believe that a collapse (fill in your preference) is imminent, would you start a business? Would you continue to run your own business – probably yes, considering you know, income and all that? But most importantly, would you try to increase and build that business?

Okay, that was more than one question, but seriously – what I want to know is why, if you believe civilization as we know it could come to an end, you’d continue to strive to reach particular goals.

We opened our bookstore almost two and a half years ago, and now that we’re facing closing up shop in the next few weeks, I’m trying to pull together those two things: why struggle to stay open, if SHTF is coming? I mean, books aren’t going to be a priority right after an apocalypse, although I can safely say that E-books are going to disappear as the grid goes down and “charging a device” becomes obsolete. All those folks who proudly disdained paper books are gonna be really, really sorry!

Now, depending upon how long the immediate crisis lasts, and for many people it will be an ONGOING crisis, just to obtain food, water, and shelter – not to mention medical care, self-care of course – and others will work long, hard hours just to survive, but eventually books will be back in vogue.

And needed. After all, I doubt school will be session, right? The schools we have now, that is. And kids will still need to learn, adults will still need entertainment as well as lifelong learning. And new skills.

So at some point, books will be back, and popular, and necessary.

In the meantime, how do you reconcile what you do now with SHTF? If you work for someone else, obviously it’s a paycheck. Which you can use to prepare for the future. But a business? What’s the point?

Here’s some er, food for thought:

What do you stock up on for SHTF? Of course, we’re all familiar with the food groups – however many the US Gov has now decided upon – and we know we need a variety. For example, you might look in my freezer and see bags upon bags of green beans (apparently, it was a bumper year) and think I’d lost my mind.

Perhaps, but that’s not the point.

My garden can be rather sporadic, huge crops of one thing, virtually nothing of another, but it might not have just been me: my co-op group had scads of green beans this year. The point is that it’s a good thing my family likes green beans – lima beans, for instance, and at least two out of three of us would be suffering for lack of vegetables. No, I don’t have any lima beans socked away, or cauliflower. Same issue, different vegie.

On the other hand, at least they’ve gotten used to fresh or frozen green beans, and not those disgusting commercially canned . . . things. Ick.

From all this, we can definitively state that whatever foods you choose to stock should be something your family will actually eat.

Now, of course, if/when things really get bad, I doubt anyone will be picky. Heck, I might even make an exception for chicken or some other bird. It could happen. Maybe. At this writing – no freakin’ way! Regardless, I digress . . .

You can’t cave in to the picky eaters, but there’s no point in stocking foods no one likes. Initially when SHTF, you’re going to need all the positives you can muster, and decent food is certainly one of them, along with physical comfort, i.e., warm clothing and dry shelter. Being well-fed and fairly comfortable will go a long way toward helping you and your family cope.

But in the meantime, introduce more variety, particularly of native foods. And don’t forget to plan for your garden, now and after SHTF – you will certainly need to replenish over the months or years; prepping and stocking are, after all, only meant to get you through the initial period of unrest.

However long it lasts.