Scenario Prepping and why I do it

I have heard over and over why it is stupid to plan for a shtf scenario and while I think this may be true for beginners, I'm going to say why I do it.

I have been a prepper since I was 8 years old and set up a couple metal garbage cans with sleeping bags, food, and water in my parent's barn so I could stay with the horses if there was a blizzard while I was out mucking the stalls. I really have never stopped, with my farm now as a place for friends and family to go to in case of a natural disaster. We raise, hunt, forage a good deal of our own food, we are off grid electronically, I have my own gun range, and I don't even look to others to provide me work.

For the last few years I have worked with other long term preppers to build a more self sufficient community as a whole. In this area many "non-preppers" have solar panels and wind turbines, many raise their own food, we have a community canning center now turning into a food preservation centering with the addition of two freeze drying machines. We set up an off grid business incubator and now have a cobbler, blacksmith, a seamstress and midwives.

Basically my life has been built around the hobby of being self sufficient.

But as I read the landscape of human history, I see a financial collapse looming on the horizon. Now I am good at being wrong, so I am not here to preach this as what is coming, but it is what I feel is a coming disaster. And there may not be enough people left this time around who can care for themselves to roll up their sleeves and not look for a handout to get us out of a financial disaster.

Now, why is scenario planning a good idea for this? Well, if I somehow knew the Russians were going to invade in a week, I would max out every credit card, take out the biggest mirage possible and find a way to make my family disappear. If I though the Yellowstone cauldra was going to blow, I would again max out every financial gain I had to keep my family eating and safe until food could be grown again. If I was preparing for a hurricane or forest fire I would buy a BoB and everything that was needed to evacuate my family to a safe place. If I was planning for a blizzard I would buy an alternative energy source and a way of staying warm along with enough of everything my family needed to hunker down and not leave until it was safe.

. But we don't buy ourselves out of a financial disaster. We save our way out of one. Paying off any loans we have is actually more important than liquidating all our assets to create more buying power. Having enough of "stuff" will not be the problem. Farmer's will have too much produce because people will not have enough money to pay for it. In the Great Depression farmers drove their pigs over cliffs because they couldn't afford to pay to feed them and it cost more to ship them to market than they could make selling them. Crops were plowed under because no one could afford to buy them. Gas prices will bottom out and then shut down because it is too expensive to bring it out of the ground and process it for the price people are willing to pay.

No, having tons of stuff is not the problem. Paying taxes will be the problem. Finding work will be the problem. Buying gas for our cars will be the problem. And all those loans and mortgages out there will be the problem. To scenario plan for a financial disaster is much different than the shop-a-holic prepping that comes from other disasters. So for the time being I am going to scenario plan. As of January 9th my final mortgage was paid off and now I would love to learn more about disaster saving, which I know isn't as fun as buying new prepper things, but in my mind, it is what I feel is needed at this time.

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Scenario Prepping and why I do it