89 Tips That Will Help You Prepare For The Coming Economic Depression

Michael Snyder

What do we need to do in order to prepare for the coming economic collapse?  Are there practical steps that we can take right now that will help us and our families survive the economic depression that is approaching?  As the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, I get asked these kinds of questions a lot.  Once people become convinced that an economic collapse is coming, they want to know what they should do.  And so in this article I am going to share some key pieces of advice from some of the top experts in the entire country.

If you are not convinced that economic disaster is on the way, this article might not be for you.  Instead, I would encourage you to go to my website where you will find more than 1,200 articles that set out the case for the coming economic collapse in excruciating detail. For those of you that are interested in getting prepared, I apologize in advance for the outline format of this article.  To examine each of these points in detail would take an entire book.  In fact, I am the co-author of a book that will soon be published that discusses many of these things in great depth.  But you don’t have to wait for a book to get prepared.  Mostly, it comes down to common sense.

In this article, I share 89 common sense tips that will help you get prepared for the coming economic depression.  Hopefully a lot of people will find these to be very helpful.

The King Fire Chronicles: Life on the Edge of a Natural Disaster

Daisy Luther

For eleven days now, forest fires have raged around us. Worsened by the drought on the West Coast, a seemingly unquenchable inferno is eating up the trees, the brush, and anything that gets in its way. It’s like the fire is a living thing, one that wants to get free and consume everything.

I’m rarely forthcoming about even our general location, for the obvious privacy reasons, but I want to share what it’s like for a real family – mine – to live on the brink of disaster for an extended period of time.

For the past week and a half, we’ve wondered on a daily basis if THIS will be the day that our home burns to the ground, consumed by wildfire. We’ve wondered constantly if we will have to evacuate in the midst of cooking dinner, if someone will pound on the door in the middle of the night, or if the fire will jump the creek at the bottom of the next canyon over.

The Grocery Store Rebellion: Here’s What We Ate During Week 3

Daisy Luther

The Grocery Store Rebellion continues…

This week, we didn’t buy much in the way of weekly food. Instead, I invested my money and time in prepping tomatoes for the year ahead.

We learned several things this week, one of which is the vast importance of networking. Very few of us can self-sufficiently provide every bite of food we eat. There are a variety of reasons for this.

Perhaps you don’t have enough (or any) land for growing produce and raising meat. Maybe there are restrictions from your HOA regarding what you are allowed to do in your own yard.  You could be living through a drought or just having a bad gardening year.

But if you know others who have a surplus, this can help you on your way to breaking up with the grocery store.  By getting to know your local growers, sometimes the stiff regulations laid out by the government can be circumvented legally, without risk to either party. By using your skills to turn other people’s goods into delicious edibles, you can still provide valuable commodities, even if your own garden lies wilting behind  fence. (Find local farmers HERE)

The Austerity Diaries: Making Hay While the Sun Shines

Daisy Luther

Over the past couple of weeks, I haven’t been around my computer much.

That’s because we are working hard to live a more agrarian lifestyle. And to do that, you have to “make hay while the sun shines.”

That little proverb was first recorded in 1546, in John Heywood’s “A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue” (This is the updated version)  Heywood wrote:

Whan the sunne shinth make hay. Whiche is to say.
Take time whan time cometh, lest time steale away.

Back when Heywood wrote down that little pearl of wisdom, every Medieval farmer knew that if the hay was ready, it was time to  cut it down, dry it, and gather it in order to feed their livestock throughout the winter. Not to do so was certain death, for without the livestock, they would potentially starve. (source)

Of course, with the advent of “progress” we now live in a society in which nothing is really that urgent to most folks.

The Austerity Diaries: The “Whole Buffalo” Theory of Food Economics

Daisy Luther

In Native American lore, it is often said that hunters made use of the entire animal that they had killed in order to respect the sacrifice that sustained them. They considered the buffalo to be sacred, and felt it was an offense to be wasteful. They ate anything edible; used the hides for shelters, shoes, and clothing; they strung bows with the sinews, they used the stomachs as water canteens, and they used the horns for weapons and tools.

The other day when I was preserving some peaches, my daughter pointed out that I was letting some parts go to waste. She said, “Mom, you need to use the whole buffalo!”

Lessons from Ferguson: Prepping for Civil Unrest and Martial Law

Daisy Luther

Any prepared and informed person knows that the threat isn’t always the event itself, which could be anything from a natural disaster to a rioting spree after a sporting event to an economic collapse. It’s the chaos during the aftermath of the event.

If you ever had any doubts about that statement, you need look no further than Ferguson, Missouri.

Today, Governor Jay Nixon called in the National Guard.

Martial law has officially arrived in Ferguson.

Of course, this only makes it official. The past week has shown a militarized police force driving around in tanks, wearing body armor, and brutally responding to citizens. Martial law was already there and the Constitution was already suspended.  Nixon just made it official.

This is just the icing on the chaos cupcake, however.

The Big Blackout: Why I’m Going Low-Tech to Prep for an EMP

Daisy Luther

This might be stating the obvious, but in the event of an EMP, things will not be the same, no matter how great your generator is.

Aaron Dykes of Truthstream Media wrote an excellent article about the extreme likelihood of a catastrophic event that could take out our power grid:

Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer is warning investors – and more broadly, lawmakers and leaders – about the potential destructive power of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, which could be triggered by solar events or artificially, via blasts in the atmosphere.

According to Singer, research shows that no other incident, including a nuclear bomb, has the potential for such wide-scale devastation, coupled with the relative likelihood of occurring. While a nuke would primarily impact on the location of a such (such a city), an EMP could occur globally or across large-scale regions, wreaking havoc on the entire electric grid and devices…

Strategies for a Neighborhood Prep Cooperative

Jon David Miller

Now that we are in a time of growing awareness of the potential for a societal breakdown disaster, forming a preparedness cooperative among your neighbors and friends is a crucially important idea.

As one of the founders of an urban natural foods cooperative in 1975, that continued to operate for 30 years through many changes, I understand the value and the challenges of such a venture in normal times.

At a time of easily perceived possibilities of chaos arising from either an economic collapse, an earth change, a power outage or some other social disruption event, forming a shared cooperative project with neighbors in a strategic geographic sector is essential.

The primary topics of concern are food, water, shelter, first aid and security. It is important to have thorough plans and adequate supplies of good food, pure water, first aid items, nutritional supplements, herbs, essential medications, clothing, flashlights, batteries, candles, alternative lights, matches and other fire starters, tools and off-grid heating, cooking, air quality and waste disposal equipment.

Simple Steps Toward Security in the Suburbs

Tess Pennington

If you live in suburbia, security starts from the inside out. Your home should be a fortress, although not so blatantly that it catches the attention of casual passers-by, making them wonder, “What’s in there?” Some simple updates can harden your domicile against intruders.

1. Doors should be sturdy and steel core. The frame around the door is equally important. Even the strongest door will not hold up to a determined intruder if it is seated in a flimsy frame. Look for a sturdy steel door-jamb. Always use at least 3-inch screws to anchor the components of your door and its frame.
2. Install hardware for a door bar. Envision the bars reinforcing doors in medieval castles or on barns. By installing brackets into studs on either side of doors to the exterior of the house, you can have a bar that goes across the door from side to side. The bar can be a very heavy piece of wood, or it can be iron or another metal. Unless you are in a high-crime neighborhood, this barricade would not be necessary under normal situations. However, during a SHTF scenario, it will make your doors virtually impenetrable without the aid of a battering ram with a team of burly men behind it.
3. Secure your windows. Particular attention should be paid to windows on the ground floor. Install a sturdy piece of wood cut to fit so that the window cannot be raised from the outside. Consider coating windows with a shatterproof film. Keep valuables out of sight from the windows. If your door has a window in it, or if it has sidelights, a piece of decorative metal grid work can easily be screwed in over the window, making it impossible for an intruder to break the window and reach through to unlock the door.

The 5 Things I Learned When I Fell Down a Ravine

Daisy Luther

You can learn a lot falling down the side of a mountain, stunt-woman style, but honestly, I don’t recommend it. I’d suggest that you read books and articles instead, as it is far less painful and traumatic.

Last week, my daughter and I went hiking with my good friend, Tess Pennington of Ready Nutrition, and her family. It was a nice sunny afternoon and we were going to hike a short way down off the main trail to the river to go tubing with the kids. As someone who writes about preparedness it is a little embarrassing to admit this, but because this was intended to be just a step up from a leisurely stroll, we weren’t as prepared as we should have been for a major traumatic accident.

Our first aid supplies were uselessly sitting a mile away in the van when our walk turned into an unfortunate scene from an action-adventure movie...

39 Fantastic Prepping Tips

Gaye Levy

People often ask where my ideas and where my knowledge comes from. When that happens, I chuckle a bit to myself because just like the person asking, my knowledge comes from a variety of sources: first hand experience, books, online forums and of course, Backdoor Survival readers. So you see, it is not that I am smarter or more clever than everyone else but rather that I have taken my passion for preparedness and made it an active part of my life.

That leads me to the topic for today’s article. Following my own article on Five Minute Prepping Projects, I asked readers to submit their own tips – namely something that we all can do to prep that takes 10 minutes or less. There were some really good suggestions and so I thought I would share some of them here so that everyone can learn from them.

THE BEST TEN MINUTE PREPPING TIPS FROM BACKDOOR SURVIVAL READERS

Are You Prepared for a Water Emergency?

Earl Griffin

Listening to the radio on the way into work this morning I learned that hundreds of thousands of people in southern Prince George’s County in Maryland will be without water for “days.”

How many days? The official speaking on the radio would not say.

It would be difficult to come up with a worse time to deprive hundreds of thousands of people of life-giving water. Today’s heat index is expected to hit 105 degrees Fahrenheit! Similar heat indices are expected throughout the remaining week.

According to the report, the problem is found in a “Fifty four inch main that is without redundancy.” Monitors indicate that the main is going to blow. It is believed by the water provider that allowing the main to blow and then performing the repair would mean the end user would be without water even longer and that the repair would be more expensive.

How many of the people who will be affected by this water emergency will hear this warning? How many of those who do hear it will do so in time to act before the water is cut off and what little water is available in stores is gone?

FEMA Pushes Prepping for Pets and Disabled

Message from FEMA: "Prepare as if nobody is coming to rescue you" and "microchip your pets".

Activist Post

FEMA just released two new videos encouraging pet owners and the disabled to prepare for disasters. FEMA refers to them as "Preparing Makes Sense" instructional videos.

The YouTube description for the Preparing Makes Sense for Pet Owners video reads, "A unique instructional video containing information for pet owners and suggestions for proactive pet emergency preparedness."

One of FEMA's strong recommendations for prepping with pets is to microchip them.

"Microchipping is a particularly effective way to identify pets separated from their owners in an emergency," Jordan Crump of the Humane Society claims in the video.

Dorm Room Preppers: The Next Generation of Survivalism

Daisy Luther

It’s an exciting time, preparing for your child to leave the nest. Your young adult is enthusiastically anticipating the independence that is so near, but you, as a parent, are most likely running scenarios in your head of all of the mishaps that could befall your son or daughter.

As a prepper, you want your child to also be prepared for any crisis that might occur when they are out on their own. My lovely eldest daughter has just graduated from high school, and we put together a dorm-room preparedness kit for her college apartment. Following, you can see the list of supplies that we have assembled. Different climates will, of course, require different types of preparedness items.

Food and water

If there is a long term power outage, you want to be sure that your student stays fed and hydrated until you can get them home.

Getting Started: Prepping For a Two-Week Power Outage

Daisy Luther

If you’re new to preparedness, you may be reading some of the excellent and informative websites out there and feeling quite quite overwhelmed. While many sites recommend a one-year supply of food, manual tools, and a bug out lodge in the forest, it’s vital to realize that is a long-term goal, not a starting point.

A great starting point for someone who is just getting started on a preparedness journey is prepping specifically for a two-week power outage. If you can comfortably survive for two weeks without electricity, you will be in a far better position than most of the people in North America.

Even if you aren’t convinced that hardcore preparedness is for you, it would still be difficult to argue against the possibility of a disaster lasting for a couple of weeks. Major natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy down to lesser storms like last year’s derecho in the Metro DC area are incontestable – storms happen and all you can do is be ready to weather them. As well, a large western US power company recently announced that they did not foresee the ability to keep up with electrical demand this summer, and may institute rolling blackouts to cope with it. If you are prepared for two weeks without power, you are prepared for a wide range of short-term emergencies, including quarantines, interruptions of income, or civil unrest.

Roadtripping, Prepper Style

Daisy Luther

We’ve embarked on a road trip that will be over 2500 miles. I’m driving with a kid, a dog, and 2 incredibly unhappy cats, and pulling behind us a trailer full of all our stuff. We have a cooler full of snacks, good tunes, books on CD, and a camera and journal at the ready to help us to enjoy the trip.

However, if you happen to be a prepper, I’m sure you can completely sympathize with the uncomfortable feeling of “What if something happens while we are between homes?” Think of your prepper version of a worst case scenario and then think of it happening while you’re in a vehicle in the middle of a cornfield, the mountains, or a desert. Not only would we be dealing with an event like a natural disaster, an EMP, or some other catastrophe, we’d be doing it in unfamiliar territory.

Since this isn’t just an optional vacation, but a necessary journey to reach our new home, it’s a measured risk that we are willing to take. Unlike traveling for a vacation, we will have the unique benefit of having a rolling bug-out bag behind us with tools and supplies. I took some additional preparedness measures to create the safest journey possible.

Top Survival Items At The Supermarket Besides Food

Activist Post

Previously we have written about the best survival foods found at your local grocery store. But food is not the only thing in supermarkets that can be useful for surviving potential crises. In fact, since large supermarkets have a huge selection besides food, they can provide most survival essentials outside of tools and weapons.

Here are just some of the important survival items to buy in bulk while grocery shopping.  Please add any items we missed into the comment section below.

First Aid Kit: Most grocery stores these days will have pre-made first aid kits which are usually worth buying because they're easy to store and have diverse items.  However, picking up extra bandages, antibiotic creams, band aids, bug spray, aloe, and other items will be helpful.

Medicine: If you have prescriptions, it's best to have at least one month's worth on hand. Over-the-counter items like Ibuprofen or Tylenol, Benadryl and others are also wise to stock up on.

Vitamins: If you're in a deep survival situation, the selection of food will likely be less nutritious than you require. Therefore, to stave off illnesses and infections, having a good supply of multivitamins will come in real handy.

The Most Often Forgotten Survival Preparations

Image source

Brandon Smith, Contributor
Activist Post

I think it’s safe to say with some conviction that in the year of 2012 the concept of survival prepping is NOT an alien one to most Americans.  When National Geographic decides there is a viable market for a prepper TV show (no matter how misrepresentative of true preppers it may be), when Walmart starts stocking shelves with long term emergency food storage kits, when survivalism in general becomes one of the few growing business markets in the midst of an otherwise disintegrating economy; you know that the methodology has gone “mainstream”.  There is a noticeable and expanding concern amongst Americans that we are, indeed, on the verge of something new and unfortunate.  

Is it the big bad hoodoo of the soon to expire Mayan Calendar?  For a few, maybe, but for the majority of us, no.  That jazz is a carnival sideshow designed to make the prepping culture appear ridiculous.  We don’t need to believe in magical prophecies to know that there is a catastrophic road ahead; all we have to do is look at the stark realities of our current circumstances.  It does not take much awareness anymore to notice looming fiscal volatility, social unrest, the potential for unrestrained war, and the totalitarian boldness of our government.  I’ll take the wrath of Quetzalcoatl any day over the manure storm that is approaching us currently.  

Top 10 Items For New Preppers

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