Talking With friends And Family About Collapse And Prepping

One of the big questions out there in the prepper space is actually one that doesn’t get enough attention, and that is building community. It’s a critical thing, but it usually seems pretty hard to make those kinds of friendships and build such relationships with other preppers. And trying to talk to your existing friends and family about prepping or collapse-awareness? Usually a conversation stopper, right?

So, that is our topic for this article. We will discuss some of the ways you can approach the subject of prepping and collapse with people you already know, as well as a little bit about how to go out and meet some more like-minded people that you don’t know, and turn them into friends.

And for these things, we are going to take a look at some of the hard truths that no one wants to think about when it comes to all this. Truths you have to come to terms with if you want to succeed. For those who would rather watch or listen to all this, there is a companion video for this article on my YouTube Channel, so go check that out.

The Need For Community Relationships

When we are talking about the base beginnings of building a prepper community we are also talking about how to talk your friends and family into becoming a part of it. Or, how to make new friends that aren’t so fickle about things as soon as you mention prepping. That can be a tough one for a lot of people, and for a variety of reasons.

Now, this article isn’t going to focus so much on  the “making new friends” part so much as it will focus on how to approach the people you already have in your life and bring them into the realm of collapse-awareness and all that. Because yes, while you do need to create a community and all that, you also probably already have people in your life that you care about, people that you don’t want to leave behind when SHTF goes down, right? How do you bring up these topics of prepping and collapse and all that without having them shrug it off, or worse, alienating them?

Talking to your friends, coworkers, and even family about prepping… that can be rough. Especially if you are coming from a point of view with the collapse of civilization as paramount. Most people end up simply not talking about it at all, and that can be a big mistake. That is how preppers become isolated loners, and that is counterproductive. Despite the popularity of the whole “lone wolf” prepper ideal or the solitary mountain-man survivalist, those ideas are mostly fantasy. 

The reality is that a close knit community of prepared survivors will have much greater odds of long-term viability than any solo preppers, and I don’t care how skilled or tough they are. It isn’t about being tough, it is about raw capability. About the strength of collective knowledge and manpower being greater than any individual capacity can ever be, and about a group of people so close and loyal to each other that they behave more like a wolf pack than a social club. As an example, one man can certainly build a house, but can he do it as fast as 10 people? And what about doing it safely, does he have more or less chance of suffering an injury? And, if he is injured, who will help him? What if others come to take what he has, can he fight them alone?

You see where that goes. Having a solid community, or at least a team of like-minded and prepared individuals, will be of paramount importance. Both for total collapse and also for the everyday little collapses that happen to all of us over time. Job losses, floods, fires, bad storms, illness… all of these can be forms of collapse for the individual. Community building is one of the most completely overlooked preps there is, right up there with physical fitness and personal knowledge and skill. Too many preppers are very long on guns and gear, but very short on friends and teammates.

The problem is that it can be a mess trying to talk to people about this stuff. Most just flat out don’t want to hear it. Others will think you are a nutjob, worrying about wars and pandemics, the rise of AI and climate change, dystopian politics and economic catastrophe.

There are a lot of reasons why people don’t want to talk about it, with delusion and denial being chief among them, and those “whys” will be the subject of an upcoming article. But today, I want to focus on how we can work to get around some of those issues, and how we can approach the subject of awakening the people around you to the value of prepping and the reason why they need it.

Because knowing that we need to have friends and communities that prep and build collective resilience is one thing… but figuring out how to make that happen is something entirely different.

Perspectives

My new friend Mike over on the MikeTangoWhiskey YouTube channel is doing a great series of videos on building trust and friendships with other preppers, and if you haven’t checked those out, you should definitely give them a look. I feel like he is actively exploring the journey towards building such a community now, and you will probably be able to get a lot of good insight out of joining him for that journey as he is figuring out some stuff. His series has a lot to do with making new friends that you can trust and depend on, rather than developing existing friends and family, and pretty much everything he is saying there is what I would say or agree with, so go check those out.

Always good to get multiple perspectives on things, right? I am at a different part of that journey myself, I have a little group of very close people that I have been prepping with for some time, but I kinda had an unfair advantage early on with forming that group. I made a variety of close friends as a child and a teenager, and i kept up with those relationships. That doesn’t seem to be the norm anymore, as people are turning more online and abandoning the childhood friendships, which I think is a mistake…

Over my life, I have always stayed in close association with those childhood friends we all had. Maybe back in the 80s and 90s we just formed closer bonds or something, I don’t know. It seems to me that a lot of younger people today lack those lifelong friendships. Social media is partly to blame for that, I am sure, along with the push to move activities online and away from the real world, but that is also a gripe for another time.

My point is that, when I became truly collapse-aware, I did so along with the participation of a few very close friends. People I had known for a very long time. Like real close, “sharing a foxhole” type of friends. So, I had a base to work with right from the start. Most people do not have that, and it can be a huge barrier to effective prepping on a large scale. 

At any rate, more perspectives are better because everyone’s experience is different. But, I do have a decent amount of experience talking to other people about collapse and prepping and all that, given my activities trying to spread awareness and all that. So, I do know how frustrating it can be, especially when it comes to a reality that you can see so clearly when others laugh and act like it’s all a joke or just silliness.

The Hard Truths

So, there are a couple of points that I want to talk about here, and I call them Hard truths. I refer to them that way because these are things that everyone tries to bypass or ignore when trying to talk to others about prepping and collapse, and they ignore them specifically because they can be uncomfortable. But, sometimes the answer to a question is something that you don’t want it to be, and that is something you are better off accepting early on rather than trying to fight with.

Many people I have talked to over the years about this stuff say that they get frustrated trying to convince the same people over and over, and often that is the result of trying to ignore some things that… well, that just can’t be changed. 

Not everyone can be helped along to collapse-awareness. In fact, not even a majority. Not only is there a lot of scientific understanding that needs to happen, but there are social issues and parts of basic human nature that need to be overcome as well, and that can be extremely hard for people. Especially those who are set pretty fast in their own ways and beliefs.

You may have people in your life, people that you care about and want to help, but the simple fact is that they just might not be capable of understanding these things about the world. And that isn’t always an intellectual failing, there are religious and cultural issues that can impede it, and also the simple subconscious defense mechanism of denial. 

There are several hard truths about people and their own mentalities that you will have to grasp before you can effectively start trying to build relationships around the idea of collapse-awareness, so let’s take a look at them.

People Simply Won’t Like It

My first Hard Truth is that you will lose friends and alienate family. That sucks, but it is a truth you have to recognize. When you start broadcasting collapse-awareness or pushing the ideas of prepping too hard, you are going to lose folks. Maybe even folks that you are close with, or who are important to you. That just is what it is, and there is nothing to be done about that.

Now, a lot of people either fight this extra hard, wasting time and effort, or else they let such resistance infect them and their own thoughts and ideals, and get pulled away from preparedness and back into the trap of societal dependence. 

But you can’t fight this resistance in others. Not with any real success, anyway, and it really isn’t worth the time and effort to do so. If someone can’t see it, or simply doesn;t care or doesn’t want to believe, there is almost nothing you can do to change that. And the harsh reality is that you shouldn’t bother to try. 

As far as the other side, letting their own resistance affect your decision making process, that is a trap you have to avoid. And it is a very warm and comfortable trap, like a tar baby. We want to believe that everything is gonna be okay. We want to hope that things will get better, and that all our dreams will come true and that life will turn out great if we just keep plugging along… but really, look around. Check your situation. How well has that served you? Have things gotten better for you these last 5 or 6 years of keeping your nose to the grindstone? Or, are things getting worse? 

That is what you need to trust when making your decisions, right there. Your life experience. Not what I say or what anyone else says, but what you can feel and observe yourself, in your own observation of the world around you. And hey, if you see the world and your life and your friends lives getting better, more prosperous and less dangerous, hey, man, that’s great. You should just click away from this article right now, because you’re good to go…

For everyone else, don’t let such delusions infect your mind and your instincts. It is even harder when these things come from the direction of people we love or care about, friends, family and the like. That is what makes it so hard to resist. Because more than anything, we just want things to be as they say… we want prepping to be a silly thing, totally unnecessary. We don’t want to imagine a world ravaged by climate chaos or nuclear war. We want to feel as if those things aren’t real, aren’t possible… because then we are safe.

Hard truth. It’s harsh, but it is real.

So, while you are for sure going to lose people trying to bring them into this whole collapse-awareness thing, that isn’t really a bad thing. Yeah, you heard that right. It’s not a bad thing. It is a sad thing, for sure, and an uncomfortable thing, but in the end, it is a good thing. Like a foul-tasting medicine that makes you better in the end, you won’t like it, but it is good for you.

Why is that? Well, let’s look at your community group or friends group like a tool. This is a tool you will be able to use to get things done in the world around you. You will be a part of this tool. But at the start, you have all these people that you know, that are a part of your life, and this is something I call your sphere of influence. This is the thing that you use to influence the world around you, and conversely it is the thing which influences you and your actions in turn. Your family, your friends, your coworkers, all of them make up one big thing that influences everything about your life and the decisions that you make each day.

So, this thing, this sphere of influence, is a tool. But at the start, it is a crude one. Unshaped, like a big chunk of raw wood. Now, this wood is still useful in basic ways, yeah? You can wield it like a hammer or a club, use it to bash things into crude shape, even defend yourself with it somewhat, you know, maybe use it as a weight to hold down some things… It’s way better than nothing.

But, it isn’t really a precise tool, or a multifunctional tool, right? You have heard the saying, “when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail?” Well, that plays here too, because all you have is this big, clunky societal tool, same as everyone else has, and so all you can really do with it are the same things everyone else is doing… and that isn’t good for prepping. It certainly isn’t good for a post-collapse world in which tools used in society have very limited application.

So, in order to make that tool into something more useful, something better suited to specific applications needed in a world without civilization, you have to shape it into something else. That means whittling it down, carving away some of the unnecessary material, some of the weight and unwieldyness that makes the tool so clunky to use. Sure, you are going to lose a lot of material in the process, lots of wood ends up cut away, but you end up with a lighter tool, more balanced and effective for the task at hand. That is always what happens when you cut away dead weight…

Did I just refer to some of your close friends and family as dead weight? I sure did. Hard truths, indeed.

So that’s the first one. That you won’t be able to convince everyone of what’s real, and you shouldn’t even try that hard. At the end of the day, if someone’s heart isn’t in it, they won’t be giving their all to it anyway. Keeping parts like that on an otherwise sturdy tool can be a mistake. Like a flaw or crack in an ax handle, the presence of those who are not devoted only makes the tool weaker overall.

Now, there is something to be done about that when it comes to the direct family that you have a love and responsibility for, and that is… you just have to shoulder the extra weight. If you can’t convince your wife or children to prep with you, oh well, you just have to bear that burden and do their share as well, because we do not abandon our families… But, the friends? The coworkers? The distant aunts and uncles or brothers and sisters with their own familial obligations to manage? Well, as much as it sucks to say it, they can’t be your concern. You have your family, your wife or husband, your children, and it is they for whom you are doing all this prepping to begin with. Everyone else… dead weight if they do not get on board. There is only so much burden you can bear. Hard truth.

There Is No More “Normal”

Moving on, the second hard truth is that you can’t be normal anymore. If you have truly embraced a prepper mentality, and awareness of the impending collapse of civilization, you just can’t be normal any more, at all. Your very nature will begin to put you outside of many of those social norms right from the start, and that distance from society only grows the more you progress on that prepping journey.

The thing is, while this was always the case, it is really only extra pronounced in these more recent days. Because we aren’t so much preparing for the possibility of collapse anymore, we are starting to live with the early signs of its onset every day, all around us. Collapse is now…

Some of it kinda started around the pandemic. It was growing before then, of course, but the pandemic was a tipping point of sorts, a stress significant enough that it collectively pushed civilization over the edge a little faster than it was already going. The pandemic started the worst of the political division. It set the stage for our current economic uncertainty. It forced the acceleration of the normal progression towards the next inevitable world war, and it showed us the first signs of government overreach here in the US that we would have laughed at just a couple years prior.

Admit it, nothing in the world has been normal since.

And that includes people. But, the vast majority are still trying to be normal. They are still either pretending things are okay, or deluded into really believing that they are. You see it all the time, and the closer you yourself are to awareness of collapse, the more pronounced it seems.

Just the other day, I was struck by the question someone posted on reddit: “What will the internet look like in 100 years?”

What will it look like in a hundred years? Buddy, at the rate we are going, in a hundred years the internet will look like a word scrawled on a cave wall that no one remembers the definition of.

But I seem crazy saying that. Definitely not normal. Even many of you reading this article right now are laughing at the funny little joke I just made there… except I’m not joking. Because I’m not normal anymore.

And, if you are seriously prepping for some very bad times to come, you won’t be normal anymore either, and that is going to have a major negative impact on your interactions with those who still are normal.

A lot of those normal things people do, you are going to view as counterproductive. Normal people will be doing normal things that will seem either dangerous or a complete waste of time and resources to you. Should I really be putting all my family’s plans and activities on facebook when people out there could be using that information to plan future raids on homes that have good stocks of supplies and resources? Is it a good idea to have another child when the world they grow up in is going to be closer to Mad Max than it is to A Wonderful Life? Should I be worrying about the credit debt and scores held by companies that won’t even exist after the entire financial system crashes and gets wiped out? Do I really want to spend 7 thousand dollars taking my family to Disneyland, when there is a good chance we will be eating mice in 5 years rather than watching them dance and sing? 

And the mother of all revelations, do I really want to keep going to work at some job that has nothing to do with building resiliency or teaching me post-collapse skills and only monopolizes the vast majority of what little time I have left?

These aren’t normal thoughts. But they are collapse-aware thoughts, prepper thoughts.

So, even when you don’t voice things like this out loud, it is going to start to show. In your actions and on your face, people will see it. And, if you decide to start talking about it, well, that is going to make you the odd one out in your social circle pretty damn quick. Your casual social interactions will take the biggest hit first, but slowly it will spread to your closer friends, and even your family.

To continue being normal, you are going to have to fake it. Fake it till you make it. But, once you start talking to people about it, there is no more faking it.

As an example, my wife still works a conventional career for a multinational corporation, and she is kind of a bigwig, if I do say so myself. However, as many of my original followers know, I don’t work at all any more, not at a job, anyway. So, when I occasionally go to some corporate event with her, I’m just trying to be normal. I have to put my sheep costume back on so that I can blend in and mill around with the rest of the herd. When asked, I keep my business vague, saying I am an author and such, although sometimes I get a bit cheeky and say something like I work in societal risk assessment or I am a disaster mitigation engineer, and then I move away while they are still trying to figure that out.

My point is that while I am in normal company, I have to be full of shit. When people are talking about the future and all the great things to come, I just have to nod politely and mumble vague stuff that sounds positive in  nature.

If I didn’t, they would realize real quick that I wasn’t a sheep at all, that at best I was a goat in their midst, a judas goat, there to let them all go ignorantly off  to slaughter as long as that served the needs of keeping myself and my family safe. And that is true.

So yeah, when Bob or whoever talks about making director in 10 years and then buying his dream house on the lake, I don’t say that the lake won’t be anything but a dry dusty bed by then, or that his company will have disappeared with the rest of modern civilization after nuclear war wipes out 90% of humanity. That’s a real buzzkill. Nope, I just say something like, “Oh, I love the lake,” or “I’m sure you’ll be a great director,” and then go back to sucking up free drinks.

So, hard truth. Being collapse-aware means you can’t be normal anymore. It will actually feel like a burden, and be frustrating to try and maintain as an illusion. You know that normal is gone forever, and that can make it very hard to talk to, or interact with, people who are not aware of the state of the world. 

Right now, every day, things get worse. I see it. Maybe you see it. The things we are dealing with on a daily basis now would have seemed ridiculous and unlikely to our pre-pandemic selves, for sure. And that is how you will seem to others when you try and talk about what is coming. You will seem ridiculous. Because most people just don’t see it. Either because they can’t or because they won’t, it doesn’t matter. And that makes it very hard to broach the subject of prepping without immediately being labeled as nuts or otherwise cast out from the norm.

So, what we got so far is that, when you talk about prepping and collapse with other people, the first truth means you run the risk of losing them entirely from your own group of friends and acquaintances, from your sphere of influence. And, on top of that, our second truth means you run the risk of having word of your weirdness spread, and finding yourself cast out of the realm of normal, and that can affect your sphere of influence even more.

At this point you are probably realizing that opening your fat mouth about prepping to your friends and coworkers is probably a pretty bad idea, right? You will end up losing a bunch of friends! Others will think less of you at work! No one is going to invite you to their birthday parties anymore! That’s gonna suck!

And you know what? You’re right. That brings us to our third Hard truth: It sucks.

Things Really Suck Now

Yes, Hard truth number 3, being a prepper kinda sucks. Talking about being a prepper sucks even more, at least when it comes to your social interactions. You have taken the red pill and freed yourself from the delusions most people still live under, and because of that you see the world as it really is, not just as you wish and hope for it to be.

Bringing this stuff up to other people will, at the least, get them to laugh it off as a joke, but often they will get upset too, how dare you! How dare you spread such fearmongering stuff, don’t you know it makes people uncomfortable?

Fearmongering, that is one of their favorite accusations. As if you want them to be afraid of things for some reason. Really, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Fear is what comes as a result of seeing the world as it truly is, and not understanding it or knowing what to do about it. Fear comes from telling people that bad things are going to happen, and then offering nothing to offset that news. Prepping, by its very nature, makes you prepared to deal with these bad things, to understand them and to anticipate their coming occurrence, and thus it removes the fear and replaces it with peace of mind. As soon as someone accuses you of fearmongering, you know that beating that particular dead horse will be a waste of your time, because they lack even the conceptual framework necessary to understand what you are talking about in the first place.

But it still sucks. It’s like trying to tell someone that quitting smoking will be better for their health, and they just laugh at you and tell you about their grandma who smoked stogies like a chimney and lived to be 100 years old.

Yeah. Some do. Some people also win the lottery, or get big inheritances, or stumble upon gold deposits on some little piece of property they bought, but that doesn’t mean you plan your life around those outliers. Planning properly means you go along the lines of the most likely, and whenever there is something you can control to make your odds better, you go for it. Like quitting smoking. Financially, healthwise, even socially, there are lots of benefits. Very little negatives.

Just like prepping. Lots of upside, very little downside. At least practically. Socially, however, it is a major negative. In truth, it sucks being a prepper in a world of the unprepared and unaware. It can even be a bit depressing, especially when you are dealing with people you actually like or care about. It’s like you know a secret prophecy about the future, but you can’t share it with anyone because they won’t believe you and will probably laugh at you for daring to bring it up. Actually, it is even worse than that, because it isn’t a prophecy, it is cold, hard science and rational extrapolation of factual data. If it was a prophecy, hell, maybe I could laugh it off too.

So, when it comes to talking to people about prepping and collapse, and trying to make the kinds of friends you need to build a truly prepared community, this is what we got; There’s nothing normal about it, it sucks trying, and most of the time it will cost you relationships with people.

Being The Bad Guy

There is one more truth I want to touch on that can be a pretty hard one as well, and for this one we are gonna take a bit of a different tack, okay? Because this is something a little bit more personal to me, and it doesn’t entirely apply to a much larger group of people. Still, you may get a little value out of hearing it, so there it is there.

This hard truth is that I can be a real POS. That’s right, and that is how people outside my own little sphere of influence sometimes see me, at least these days. Because unless you are in that sphere? Unless we are friends or associates, or some level of connected individuals, then I got nothing for you. 

“Behold the field in which I grow my fucks. Lay thine eyes upon it and see that it is barren. Indeed, I have not a fuck to give…”

This is a real hard truth for me personally, and it is something that I don’t necessarily like about myself. But I take collapse seriously. I take prepping seriously. And I take the safety of my family and my own group more seriously than I do any other thing in this world. If you are within my own tribe or community or whatever you want to call it, then you get everything that I have to give, up to and including my life. But if you are outside of that? If you are just another person in the world that I don’t know and have no specific connection to… then you got nothing coming.

Global civilization was never a thing we evolved to handle. That’s just too many people, and for millions and millions of years, we existed in a tribal state. Small, independently existing groups that only occasionally interacted, either for trade or conflict. And really, that is the natural and sustainable way of things.

Take the idea of “Dunbar’s number.” You may already know, but this is the scientific hypothesis that humans can maintain a maximum of about 150 stable social relationships, based on the cognitive limit of the brain’s neocortex. Proposed by anthropologist Robin Dunbar, this number is thought to represent a limit on meaningful social connections, with evidence from primate social group sizes and the structure of human communities like ancient villages and modern military units.

In essence, it just means that we are naturally inclined to not give a damn about anyone that we do not have close, personal bonds with. Now, like in a lot of unnatural ways, society and civilization have worked to condition us to a different way of living. An unnatural way, for sure, but a necessary one for organized civilization to function. The social contract is a part of it, but none of it is natural. Ideas such as inalienable rights, the rule of law, and all that stuff, those are societal functions only, and they simply won’t last long outside of a societal setting.

Better to rip the Bandaid off now…

There just won’t be much of a social contract for much longer. Or society, for that matter. In a post-collapse world, civilization is going back to its tribal roots, and the best we can hope for in our lifetimes, and probably the lifetimes of our children, is for a series of small, independently governed and managed little villages that are able to remain sustainable with the reduced carrying capacity of the planet. Cities of millions, with food brought in after being grown on one side of the world and processed on the other, those days will be gone. And actually, so will most of that food.

I firmly believe that we are reaching a point, as a civilization for sure, and possibly as a species, that there is no more plenty. Beyond that, not only are we out of plenty, I think that soon, we won’t even have enough. And what I mean by that is a lot of things, from the more abstract stuff like safety and security, freedom and liberty, to the real concrete things like food and clean water, medicine and shelter. I am quite convinced, beyond all doubt, that these things and more will soon be at levels that cannot sustain the population that remains after whatever collapse befalls us first.

It is all well and good to talk about helping everyone, and coming together to try and find a way, and all those good, Christian values, but you know what? Sometimes life isn’t like a good dream about good things. Sometimes life is a nightmare, and there is only a single letter of difference between being part of a dinner party, or part of the Donner party… 

Now, in times of good and plenty, yes, I am always going to be a helpful and giving sort, but I do know how to be an animal too. Some of you out there may know what I’m talking about, and that sucks for you just as much as it does for me, but the essence of it is that we all have a savage inside us. 

Evolution is a thing of millions of years, not hundreds or even thousands. We haven’t changed as much as we would like to believe we have. What we have done, through civilization and through technology, is we have driven back all the natural dangers of the world so far that most of us have never had to deal with them, or even be aware that they exist. But, when the curtain gets thrown over the light and the darkness gets to swoop back in again, our biology and genetic memory knows what we need to know. We will become savage again… for those who don’t have certain life experiences, that transition may take a little while, but for some of us, we already went through it. I myself am not that guy anymore, but I do keep him there, down deep, and I can pull him back out of my pocket at a moment’s notice when things start to go bump in the night again.

Because that is what collapse will be like. And while you absolutely must have a community to survive it all long-term, it has to be your community above all others. None of this global community crap, and all that, no. You and yours. Them and theirs must be left to deal with their own chances, you have an obligation only to you and yours. And that means you will have to make hard choices and do hard things.

I’m saying all this because it is important for you to recognize that not all people are the same in those deep seated ways. You need people who will truly have your back, and who have the personal courage to understand what that means. People that will not sacrifice you and your family for some societal ideal of a greater good. People who will stand up and be counted when the time comes, and who will fall right next to you if need be rather than go on somehow without you. People who have loyalty as animals understand it…

So yeah, when it comes right down to it, if I have to make choices between my own people and other people, well, I won’t give you too many guesses about how that’s gonna go. And that is something that you have to look at when you are cutting down your chunk of wood there, and whittling away the dead weight of various friends and acquaintances. Once you really get into the math regarding collapse, you will understand that there just isn’t going to be enough room in the Ark this time, and not enough global carrying capacity afterwards. Some people are just going to be too resistant to the truth of what’s coming, and they will just drag you down with them when the flood waters start rising. You might have to be enough of a POS to cut them loose now in order to save your efforts for those who will work with you rather than against you.

And yeah, this is one of those things that often makes people not like hard core preppers very much. And I don’t feel too good about it myself. In part, that is why I do what I do now, with the books, the blog, the YouTube channel and all the rest of it. I want to help as much as I possibly can now, while such a thing is a luxury I can indulge in. But anyway, enough of that, let’s get back on track.…

Principles For Successful Communication

So, those are the hard truths I have for you. And maybe I’m going to generate a little hate mail for saying some of the things I’ve said. That sucks, but oh well. I think I’ve made it clear that we can’t save everyone, and something I won’t ever do here is sugarcoat things that I believe are true and correct in their rawest form. 

You’re not always going to like the truth, that is often how you recognize that it is the truth… But guess what my friends? Like many important things, you don’t have to like it, you just have to deal with it.

And you gotta have that community.

Why? Because prepping alone is… well, it’s lonely. Furthermore, it isn’t nearly as effective solo as it is as part of a collective effort. So, you need to talk to people. You need to put yourself and your knowledge out there, painful and uncomfortable as that may be, because you need those friends, and they need you even more because they don’t even know there is a need.

Knowing about why people are so resistant to prepping and to thinking about collapse is an important part of things, but I am going to save the “why” explanation for another article, as this is already going to be long. For now, don’t worry about the why. We need to examine the how when it comes to doing what we don’t really want to do; talking to people about prepping and collapse. Knowing why doesn’t fundamentally change how you should go about it, so we will cover that one later.

So, how do we talk to our friends and family about prepping and collapse? Well, slowly and carefully, to start. I am going to give you a series of principles that I have found to help with all this.

And easing into it is the first of those principles.

Start Slow And Easy

The truth is, you have to begin fighting an uphill battle. Many people already have media-inspired misconceptions about what it means to be a prepper. The very term still has negative connotations when used in conversation, and usually as soon as you mention it people immediately start to think about rednecks with trucks full of guns living deep inside backyard bunkers and hating on the world.

So, you know what? Don’t even say it. Prepping, preppers, all that, just leave those words out, at least at the beginning. I use terms like getting ready, or just in case, and so on. In addition, don’t just jump into it out of the blue, try and find a time when a person is already thinking about some incident or issue, and ease into it then. Maybe it is hurricane season where you are, and there is a storm coming with the news talking about it. You can use that opening, and the existing worrisome mindset of the person, to bring up some things.

“Man, I hope we are as ready as we can be for that storm.” A statement like that can get the conversation started. Also, you can broach the subject as you asking them a question, rather than trying to preach preparedness to them, ask what they think of some prep of yours.

“Do you think these cases of bottled water are enough if the water gets shut off from the storm?” This puts them in the driver’s seat for the beginning of the conversation, at least so they think, and that will allow you to work into other areas of your preps, and maybe get them thinking that, perhaps they should have some more water too… just in case.

That’s the first step in making a non-prepper into a prepper. You have to get them to “just in case.” If you can get them thinking that way about something simple, like a storm or a possible job loss, or maybe wildfires or whatever, then you can slowly ease into bigger subjects. If you do it well, you might even get them curious first, and they start asking you questions about things… and then the ball is rolling.

Make Things Practical And Relatable

The next principle here would be to keep things small, practical, and relatable when you get into the ideas around prepping.

By that, I mean don’t just jump right in with your societal collapse scenarios and doomsday predictions, okay. It is great that you got an opening with the first principle, but let’s not jump in with both feet.

So, instead of leading with full collapse-related material, connect prepping or “being ready” to more common and realistic events that people can easily visualize. Weather events, like our aforementioned storm, are always good. Everyone is familiar with the events of their area, and so they all remember that time the tornado wiped out the hardware store, or when the wildfires made people on the outskirts of town have to evacuate, or when the hurricane came through and cut everyone’s power. So, wherever you live, frame the discussion around being prepared for a relatable storm that might cause a power outage for a few days. Something like that, people are familiar with it, and they may even have some memory of going through it they can use to think about things that would have been nice to have… just in case.

You want to begin by framing preparedness as being resilient. You can discuss the importance of emergency savings funds or having a food pantry to cope with job loss or economic instability, which are familiar concerns for many.

Another part of being practical and relatable is talking about smaller events that happened to you before. Maybe a neighborhood water main break, or an illness that required you to stay home, or even experiences due to the pandemic and how that affected your life. Explaining how your preps have made such events less stressful for you can be a powerful and relatable example. It brings up things that they may have experienced, and helps them see how things could have been better with just a few small preps…

That leads to our next principle, which is showcasing your own personal experiences.

Personal Experience Is A Key Educational Tool

Your own experience is one of your most powerful tools for persuasion. Better than bringing up big events and possibilities like wars and climate change, focus on stories of yourself and your life. Bring up bad things that happened to you, maybe even incidents these people will remember such as a home burglary or the loss of your job or something. Talk about what you have learned from that, and how prepping has made the possibility of a repeat less likely or easier to deal with… because now you are prepared for such a thing, whereas you weren’t before. 

Explain the real motivations behind prepping that you personally have. Help dispel the idea that prepping is done out of fear by showing that prepping can actually alleviate fears and bring about real peace of mind. When you talk about something like a recent power outage, tell them how being prepared for it made you and your family feel calm and confident.

Finally, highlight the “why” behind your own prepping journey. Share the specific reasons you started prepping. For example, if you began to prepare for wildfires after hearing about them, or after having a friend who lost everything in one, share that story. This helps to make the concern for preparedness seem logical rather than sensational.

By this point, you should really be getting into it with this person, assuming they didn’t shrug you off right from the start. You have shown them what Just-in-case looks like, and you have told them stories and examples of how it has all positively impacted your own life. Now you are getting somewhere.

So, our next principle begins to step things up a bit. Now you have them open to some basic ideas, and aware that you aren’t some gun-toting biblical doomsday nut (even if you are, they should be unaware of it). 

The next principle is to get them involved with a prep in some small way.

Get People Involved

The key here will be to make it collaborative and non-overwhelming for them. If they have demonstrated their interest in how you prepared for our hypothetical power outage, as an example, maybe help them get started in some small way with their own prep. You can even get them a small gift to open it up, like a small home lantern light or something. Keep it simple, and easy at first.

A key to having a positive conversation about prepping is to make it seem approachable and based in practicality. Whatever the preparation task you open with, it should be simple and manageable, not like a monumental task. Like having that light on hand, as opposed to trying to get them to install a solar power battery bank system in their home. 

Baby steps for your newborn prepper, okay? Emphasize that preparedness can begin with simple actions like stocking a few extra cans of food or having a basic first-aid kit. This counters the misconception that people need to buy land and a bunker, or spend a fortune on guns and ammo to be prepared.

Depending on your relationship with the person, you can frame some beginning prep as a fun activity. Suggest doing prepping-adjacent activities, like gardening and canning, or hiking, kayaking or even archery. Things that are fun to do, but that also build useful skills. This makes the process less intimidating and more enjoyable. In fact, you don’t even have to tell them about the prepping aspects of it until the activity is done for the day! They could be prepping without even knowing it, and that makes it all the more effective for dispelling some of the traditional reluctance that might be present otherwise.

Now, we have things going a bit, but you still want to avoid the “doomsday” talk for now. Steer clear of concepts like “collapse” or “SHTF,” at least for now. Instead, use neutral and practical language like “emergency preparedness”.

Another way to get them involved is to invite them to participate in one of your preps. Maybe offer to  buy them dinner if they can help you set up your new… whatever. Or, you can also offer to help your friend get started, whether by sharing resources, going in on a bulk purchase with them, or making it a project to build a starter kit together. 

The idea here is to get them doing something towards prepping that is part of working together. 

Managing Reactions To Collapse Concepts

The next principle here is one that isn’t really part of a specific order, as it applies across all the stages of talking with people about prepping and collapse. 

I’m talking about managing their reactions in a positive way.

What I mean by that is you may face different challenges from a person’s reactions to the concepts and information as you present these things. How you respond to those reactions is important to the success of the conversation.

When you start talking about prepping, your friends’ reactions may vary from interest to anxiety, dismissal and even possibly hostility. Now, if the reactions are too intense, well, like we talked about earlier, this is probably wood that needs to be whittled away, unfortunately. 

But, for the less intense, you need to have a positive plan for different responses that can help the conversation stay productive.

For example, if they become anxious, you want to acknowledge and validate their feelings. Reassure them that feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world and all the crap going on is normal. Shift the conversation toward positive, tangible actions they can take to feel more in control.

If they are skeptical or dismissive of the dangers, or the need to be prepared, don’t try and argue that. Instead, maybe reference government-endorsed resources like Ready.gov or the Red Cross to lend credibility to the idea of emergency preparedness. Frame it more as following official safety recommendations rather than “prepping.”

Maybe they joke about it, or try to laugh away the dangers you tell them about. Humor is often a psychological defense or coping mechanism. Something their subconscious is throwing up to steer them away from painful possibilities. In this case, try and meet them with a lighthearted but firm response. If they say something like “When the boom comes down, I’m coming to your house, bro” you can respond with, “Great! What are you bringing with you?”

This can both prompt them to think more seriously about the topic, and also subtly let them know that handouts aren’t likely, and they should think about that…

In the best of cases, they will seem interested in your prepping activity. But be careful. You may feel relieved and hopeful by their interest, and that can cause you to jump in too hard and too fast. Nothing will kill the curiosity of a fledgling prepper faster than someone who immediately starts sharing longpig recipes and talking about defeating our reptilian overlords on the Mad Max battlefield of a nuclear shattered wasteland.

Easy… remember our other principles here. If a friend shows curiosity, offer to share your beginner’s checklist or walk them through some of the most important first steps, like storing water or stocking up the pantry a little. Start it simple, and gradually move them up into new things.

Where Are All The Likely Candidates?

So, those principles can serve as something of a step by step process to start getting someone interested in prepping, okay? Now remember, this will be one of those things that you will try with, say 10 different people, right? And 5 of them are going to drop out at the start, before you even get past talking about the concept, that is just how it is, and you are whittling down your wooden tool here, remember? So, don’t get discouraged by the people that don’t respond well. That is going to be most of them, and that sucks, but oh well. 

Now, after those 5 go, you will probably lose another one each step of the way, until you are left with 1 or 2 people who can now be called newly-minted preppers. And that is the basis of your group beginnings.

It is nice if you can start with a friend or two, or perhaps your significant other or a sibling, but let’s face it, that doesn’t always work out. For the most part, you are going to have to actively look to find, meet, and befriend the people of your future group, and these days that seems like it isn’t as easy as it was back when I was growing up.

Nevertheless, they are out there. And, it is best to try and meet people that already have their heads at least partially in the game.

My standard advice when it comes to that, at least regarding where to find these people, is outside… People that are out in the world doing things. Whether that is hiking, camping, or exploring, someone out doing that sort of stuff stands a good chance of being inclined towards at least a bit of budding collapse-awareness. Look for events and clubs around your area as well. Archery clubs, shooting clubs, 4×4 offroad clubs, even environmental groups or volunteer meetup groups for different things. 

The best way to find people who are into prepping, or at least a little collapse-aware is to find them out doing the sorts of things that preppers and collapse-aware people tend to do. Don’t always look right to your neighbors, or your coworkers, or people at school or the gym or whatever. Those people may seem like they are your pool of available prospects, but in reality, almost none of them are people that you choose. Work, your neighborhood, school, whatever, those are random collections of people that most likely don’t even share basic interests or other aspects of life with you, such as politics or religious ideas. You didn’t pick your neighbors. Unless you are the head of HR, you didn’t pick your coworkers either. 

But, if you choose to go specifically to some activity like, say, a Jeep owners club meeting, you are already starting with a pool of people interested in something that you share, in this example it would be Jeeps. And, when you consider Jeep people, chances are most of the people in that club will be interested in 4-wheeling, and lots of other outdoor activities. Then we start getting into political leanings and so forth, but my main point is that you have already created a large pool of similar people into some of the things you are into.

And that is important. A person may be the best prepper around, but if you can’t get along on a personal, political, or religious level, then it doesn’t matter how great you both are at prepping, your partnership won’t work. Furthermore, you need to be able to put in real time with these new friends, because it isn’t just about getting along. You have to create a bond, and come to really trust each other, and to develop loyalty to each other… and that takes work and time. A lot of time.

Something else that I’ve seen talked about on YouTube and other places, is something like a 100-hour rule for building trust. The idea is that you have to spend at least 100 hours with someone in very close contact and engagement in order to begin building trust, and I agree with that for the most part. 

But, even that 100 hours doesn’t just mean playing games and having fun, okay. When it comes to 100 hours, I think that is just where it starts, okay? And you can’t just spend those hours on the good times, you have to be willing to put in the work, and use hours to help each other, to be there as support and assistance when needed, all that stuff. A 100 hour rule is excellent for building the basis of the trust and loyalty of a real relationship, but in my opinion that is the bare minimum of time.

So, find your people, preferably a pool of them. Then, spend some time in that group or club, hanging out, engaging in activities, all that. Talk to folks. Make genuine connections and friendships there. Whatever you have in common, work to bond over that, and spend real time doing it.

It is hard to make friends without those commonalities of interest and culture. I hear people all the time say they can’t find other friends who are into prepping, or who understand collapse or whatever, and almost every time it turns out that the person is looking only within those random ass groups like work, school, or the geographical neighborhood they happen to live in. So yeah, with a random pool like that, you are going to get random results. And while prepping and collapse-awareness is becoming more common, it is still a huge minority of the overall population. You just aren’t going to do as well finding other prepper friends if you stick to the random groups of people that come into contact with you in your everyday, societal life.

You’re making a lot more work for yourself that way.

And Now, I Digress…

This actually brings me into one of the biggest societal dependencies that I believe limits people’s capabilities and awareness when it comes to prepping and collapse knowledge. Fair warning, I’m about to veer somewhat off topic.

Almost everyone allows their life to be dictated by work. Your daily activity, most of the people you know, where you live and even how often and how far you can travel away from home, all of that is severely restricted by your work, your career. Even your skills and knowledge-base is heavily influenced by your job and what you need to know and do to complete it each day.

When you add up the actual work hours, it already takes up half of your entire time awake. Just like that, half your time is gone. Now, let’s add in your commute, the time you spent and continue to spend in career education, the off-hours preparation you do for work before you go and even after you come home… It’s a significant portion of your time. 

But it doesn’t end there, oh no, we are just getting started. Think about the fatigue you feel after a hard day’s work, right? Pretty exhausting stuff, at least it is if you work hard. That really reduces your motivation to do much after getting off and finally getting home… Then, let’s think about when you do have a little time… how much time? A day? Two? Do you even get to choose those days? And what if you want or need to go somewhere far away, or for a longer time? Then, it is a whole hassle trying to get PTO approved, and if you don’t have any PTO left…

Screw all that. That right there is specifically how civilization is keeping you latched onto the societal teat, unable to fully disconnect. Most people in the US think they have freedom… but that’s not freedom. That is obligation and restriction, and more than that, it is also killing your chances to be as prepared and capable as possible to survive collapse and ride out the chaos long-term.

Work doesn’t work. In a functional society as part of a civilization not at risk of collapse, sure, it works alright. But this isn’t a functional society anymore. It is still functioning, for the moment, but it is not functional. There is a difference. Things began to change rapidly after the pandemic and the pressures that brought to bear on the world and on society. Now, yeah, most stuff is still functioning, although at reduced capacity and effectiveness. But for how much longer? How much longer can we continue with the inflation and speculation? How much harder can average people be squeezed economically? How much more pressure can we put on the nations in control of our global nuclear stockpiles? How much more talk of political and social division and civil war can we put up with before we just kick it off out of sheer frustration? How much harder can we lean on the limits to growth, and how much farther past the ecological planetary boundaries can we extend our civilization before the climate becomes too unstable to grow enough food to feed us all.

And finally, how much longer until we all start fighting over those things for real?

I get that to some people, it all sounds far-fetched. Like the collapse of civilization, nuclear war, climate chaos, it all just seems… too crazy to really be real, right? And you know, I think a lot of people feel that way, not because they aren’t aware of the problems, but because they just haven’t had the time to really spend studying the whole big picture in real detail…

Too distracted by work, and not enough time left over, probably.

In any case, my point is this: the more dependent you are on societal functions like employment, city utilities, and the social cohesion of your neighborhood, the less you will be able to function when those things suddenly stop providing you with the things that keep you alive and well. And if that happens, you won’t be alive and well for long…

But I digress… I did warn you, though.

But this does have some bearing on our issue today, which is making prepper friends and talking to your existing friends and family about it all. All that building community stuff that we know is critical.

How do you do all the things we talked about if you don’t have the time? There is that ugly societal monster again, rearing up its head to take a bite out of your options… gotta go to work, gotta pay those bills, got reports due and credit scores to watch and… just no time for friends and family. Right?

Wrong. You may think you don’t have time, but I’m here to tell you that you need to make that time, because time is the one thing in this world that we are truly running out of. Not money, to hell with money. No one ever laid on their deathbed wishing they had spent more time hugging their money and hanging out with their credit cards or their mortgage bill. They wish for more time with their family. More time enjoying the company of their friends, and the action of their hobbies and interests. We all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but I believe that when they said the word pursuit, it was defined as the vocation of, not the chase after.

The first, and biggest, step you can take to help you make friends and build a prepper group community? Give yourself the time. And then devote that time to the pursuit of building the life and relationships you want and need for the future, whatever that future may bring. Even if collapse comes for you tomorrow, do you want to meet it alone at your desk, or do you want to meet it surrounded by your family and friends?

So, the core lesson of today’s long-winder prepper article? Take back your time, use it to find your people, and bring together a real community that is resilient and dependent on itself and its members alone, not the outside world.