Are you prepared to provide for yourself and your family if a crisis or natural disaster strikes tomorrow? 

If you said no, you’re far from alone. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), less than half of Americans (45%) believe they are prepared for an emergency, with supplies, skills, and a disaster plan in place. For many, an emergency means running to the grocery or hardware store to battle for supplies on rapidly emptying shelves.

FEMA’s Household Survey, which tracks preparedness across the country, identifies two major factors in unpreparedness: confidence and belief in the impact of preparing. While 42% of the country claims they plan to plan in the future, 14% say they do not intend to put together any kind of disaster plan.

“If you want to live a lifestyle of self-reliance without being too crazy,” says Thomas Icom, a self-described survivalist. “Go get yourself a nice New England farmhouse, a couple of acres, and you can play around with some gardening and maybe put a little shed in the back to play around if you’re mechanically inclined.”

Icom, a pen name, has been involved in the survivalist subculture for more than 30 years and is the founder of CyberTech, a cyberpunk technical journal and online zine. In that time, he has made preparedness a central focus of his life by merging his existing interests.

“I was actually a bit of an outdoors type and mostly spent a lot of time outdoors and did a lot of field craft stuff. But at the same time, I was also messing around with technology, you know, tinkering around basically with both mechanics and electronics, and of course that later turned into computers. And I’ve kinda, over the years, melded the two.”

Icom says some of his interest stems from growing up in the 1980s, experiencing the Cold War and the stock market crash at the end of the decade. This was followed by an increase in global terrorism. 

Icom isn’t alone. The modern preparedness movement traces much of its history back to Cold War paranoia. The possibility that the U.S. and Soviet Union could throw the world into nuclear Armageddon gave rise to emergency drills and home bomb shelters. 

By the time fear of nuclear war subsided in the 1990s, anti-government and separatist movements focused on self-reliance and sovereign independence were part of several major news events, including law enforcement sieges on Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The crackdown by federal authorities was followed by the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building on the Second Anniversary of the end of the Waco Siege.

Then came Y2K and a renewed widespread interest in preparing for impending disaster. Fears that the world’s computer systems – which had quickly become a cornerstone of modern life – would cease to function saw people stockpiling food and building bunkers. This trend was based on the belief that, since humans often referred to years by only the last two digits, when the clocks reset to 1/1/00, important systems would break down.

When those fears turned out to be overblown, however, public perception quickly shifted once again, recasting the paranoia as something only the most disconnected or extreme would fall victim to.

The cycle began again, most recently, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit American shores. As cases soared and lockdowns began across the country, many realized they were woefully unprepared for this type of situation. Supermarket shelves emptied rapidly as Americans stocked up on food cleaning supplies and, of course, toilet paper.

Runs on products of all types forced stores to ration the most in-demand items, and supply chain interruptions coupled with a continued need to restock supplies in homes have made some items scarce even three years later.

According to one survival supply dealer in Texas, the pandemic caused such a surge in orders for gear that he had to hire seven staffers just to answer the influx of e-mails.

“It’s kind of a customer service nightmare,” Roman Zrazhevskiy, owner of Ready to Go Survival and Mira Safety told National Geographic in 2020. “People are really flipping out.”

For Icom, though, prepping – or as he much prefers to call it, survivalism – isn’t about these major events or even about some potential future breakdown of society. It’s really about self-reliance.

“I have maybe a slightly different perspective than, you know, some yuppie with more money than common sense,” says Icom, listing what he considers potentially frivolous purchases like a mountain of food, guns, and ammo – though, he says, he does own firearms. “And then put all that aside because I’m getting ready for something that may or may not happen.”

Instead, says Icom, he prefers to be prepared without it taking over his entire life, leaving room for family and friends. For others, being prepared is one part of a higher calling.

Rebecca Perez, a Connecticut resident, says her parents always taught her to put things away for the future and to work hard to be self-reliant because you never knew what was coming down the road. Perez is also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), a religious doctrine also known as Mormonism that, among other things, preaches preparedness.

“One of the things that that the church has always taught is that if you’re if you’re prepared, if you have what you need, mentally and spiritually and physically. Physically, you’re centered in to not being afraid about what’s coming around the corner. You don’t always have to wonder, oh my gosh. What am I gonna do if this happens because you’re centered in your needs.”

Mormons teach preparedness as a means of dispelling fear saying, “With the guidance of Church leaders, individuals and families should prepare to be self-reliant in times of personal and widespread tragedy” and “It is not enough to hope for the best; we must prepare for it.” In other words, if you are prepared for things before they happen, you won’t be afraid of what’s to come.

“One of the things that that the church has always taught is that if you’re prepared, if you have what you need mentally and spiritually and physically, you’re not afraid about what’s coming around the corner. You don’t always have to wonder, ‘oh my gosh, what am I gonna do if this happens?’ because you’re centered in your needs.”

In his 2015 book Lights Out, which posits a fictional cyberattack that takes out the U.S. National Grid, journalist Ted Koppel explored the LDS Church’s doctrine of preparedness. He concluded that the Mormon religious history of persecution eventually led then Church leader Brigham Young to settle his followers in Salt Lake City, Utah, and encouraged early Mormons to develop a culture of disaster preparedness. 

That preparedness is bottom-up, starting with families and community groups. Families are encouraged to create an emergency plan and update it regularly. These plans include any possible disasters for your region (those in New England might prepare for hurricanes and blizzards but forego earthquake planning), communication planning, and the assigning of roles.

Families are also recommended to not go into debt, to achieve proper education, to keep a reserve of food and other supplies, and to learn first aid.

“No group of comparable size come close to matching the scale and organizational discipline of the Mormons’ efforts to prepare for whatever catastrophe may come,” concludes Koppel’s chapter on Mormons, “Their example is hardly an easy one to follow, but it serves as a model of what can be done.”

Perez says that what prepping she does while living in Connecticut has already come in handy in small emergencies. 

“That’s kind of how I look at it,” she says. “There have been times where we’ve had sickness, we’ve had lots of work and we weren’t able to go to the grocery store as often as we wanted to, but because we had a well-stocked pantry, we were able to not go without.”

Perez says she approaches her version of prepping more as a way to be adaptable in an emergency – any emergency – but she preps particularly for New England emergencies. These include blizzards and hurricanes, where she and her family might need to hunker down or, more likely, bug out.

Perez recommends pre-packed supplies for three days, even if where you’re heading isn’t that far away.

“Be prepared to go on a camping trip if you need to,” she explains. “If I needed to go see my sister because we have a hurricane here or something like that, and we just get in the get in the car and have the supplies that that we would need if we were going camping.”

For Perez, that list of supplies includes the obvious, like simple grab-and-go foods and water, as well as a personal grooming kit and first aid kit.

“I’ve got kids, so probably a few things for the kids to do, too,” she adds. “A change of clothes for everybody and maybe a blanket or two because the kids like their comfort blankets.”

Perez says her kits also always include cash, at least enough for several tanks of gas or food they might need to pick up on the way.

“If the power goes out and everybody’s relying on credit cards, you can’t run to the store and get gas because the credit card machines all work on electricity,” she explains. “But if you’ve got a small supply of cash on hand, you’ll be able to get wherever you need to go.”

Federal government guidance aligns with Perez and others in the survivalist movement. Among a long list of emergency preparedness recommendations, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recommends a well-stocked emergency kit kept in your home that can sustain you and your family for at least a few days. They recommend that each kit contains at least:

And that’s just the basics. If you or members of your family rely on daily medications, you should also keep a several-day supply of those on hand. Extra soap, hand sanitizers, and surface wipes would have been helpful for something like the COVID-19 pandemic. If you have pets, you may also have additional food and water needs. If heat is a consideration, you should have blankets or sleeping bags on hand. Infant formula for families with small children, and important family documents in an easy-to-grab container if your home is in danger of destruction.

These kits, often referred to as “go-bags” or “bug-out bags,” should be easy to grab if you need to leave your home quickly and should be repacked as food expires or your needs change.

In addition to a home kit, government officials recommend multiple bags with essential needs in case you need to shelter in place at your job or get stranded in your car.

If you don’t want to customize your kit piece by piece, some businesses will do that for you. These include everything from the American Red Cross — which sells simple first aid kits up to larger emergency medical kits – to survival programs that sell fully stocked bug-out bags (which you can also buy on Amazon).

The State of Connecticut also provides some additional resources for your emergency kit. The Connecticut Guide to Emergency Preparedness includes the same equipment recommendations as the federal guidelines but also includes checklists, an emergency card with important information to help strangers help you, a form to keep track of important names and numbers, and step-by-step guides to different types of emergencies. Since Connecticut is more prone to bizzards, hurricanes, and flash flooding, the guide also includes specific dos and don’ts for each, and a glossary of weather terms to keep you better informed.

But while you can spend plenty of time – and money – buying gear and stocking your pantry or basement with weeks’ worth of shelf-stable foods or dehydrated meals, no amount of stuff can make up for having the skills to use what you have.

Both Perez and Icom say that knowing how to do basic repairs or administer first aid can be life and money-saving. Perez, in particular, notes that the most important thing she’s learned is how to maintain a small garden and to preserve foods when they are in season. 

“That was probably the biggest, most important skill that I had had to learn,” she says, adding that she’s recently canned applesauce and sliced apples, as well as mandarin oranges. “We’ve also learned basic house repairs. My husband is really good at working on the cars, too. It makes it so nice to be able to have him fix the car Instead of spending $100 or $1,000 at the mechanic.”

Having a few basic tools and knowing how to use them is also top of Icom’s list of necessary skills.

“Around here in New England, having a small 10 or 12-inch chainsaw, even a battery-operated one, is like the equivalent of having a fire extinguisher in your house,” says Icom. “This way, if something happens, like a branch is blocking your driveway, you take out your chainsaw and five minutes later the branch is no longer there.”

Being the most prepared person in your community is also a way to give back in times of need. “I’ve had friends that have had problems, loss of job or something like that,” says Perez. “I’ve been able to help my neighbors. I’ve been able to help my friends.”

Indeed, opportunities to connect with and learn from others to build more resilient communities are growing. From crop sharing to survivalist classes to communities both digital and in person, those interested in becoming better prepared and more resilient in the event of a crisis have a variety of ways to share their knowledge and gain new skills.

Ultimately, for both Perez and Icom, prepping is less about being ready for an end of days scenario – whether that’s zombies or cyberattacks or nuclear winter – than it is about being ready for the everyday disaster. Recent events, too, have helped to soften some of the public perception of prepping.

“Before, people would think that preppers were crazy,” says Perez. “But I think that after COVID, they’re starting to realize that maybe it’s not such a bad idea.”

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