We all have them loved ones, be they family or close friends, who just don’t get prepping. They are reliant on the system and the infrastructure that is in place and they simply do not believe that any of it is vulnerable, that any of it could fail. If you go to them and talk to them about it, they just think you’ve watched one too many zombie apocalypse movie and that you need to get back to reality. Nothing is ever going to happen to our society or whatever will happen is so far in the future that it isn’t an issue right now.
As preppers, we know the potential danger to our way of life is very real. We might be able to sway some loved ones, but there will be those, perhaps the ones closest to us, that just won’t budge. These are the people we want to protect, but who won’t do anything to protect themselves. After unsuccessfully attempting to talk them into prepping, it is time to help them in such subtle ways that they aren’t even aware of it.
Talking to Loved Ones
Since I mentioned talking to loved ones about prepping, perhaps we should start here. You won’t even know whether or not they are open to it if you don’t talk to them about it. The key to talking to loved ones about prepping is to not bring all the doom and gloom into it. Don’t just throw it all at them in one fell swoop. Start small and start with a real-world and relevant example of why they need to be prepared. Get them to create their 72-hour kit. If they argue with that, you have plenty of backup from the authorities, all of whom say every family needs a 72-hour kit.
Once you have the family onboard with this, you can then push them a little farther. Talk about a recent weather event during which the power was out for days. If you live in the northeast, this shouldn’t be a problem. Just bring up the ice storm of 2014, during which the power was out for as long as two weeks in some places. Tell them you are concerned that type of event will happen again and convince them to extend their preps to ensure they are warm and comfortable for at least a couple of weeks.
You can keep talking to your family, subtly getting them to push the boundaries of their preps, but ultimately, you might not be able to convince them to keep prepping beyond that major weather event. After all, why would they? As soon as you go beyond credible natural disasters, they might become more resistant. They might want you to stop talking about it. You do not want to push them away, so this is when you have to take their prepping into your own hands – sort of.
Prepping on the Down-Low
When you can’t talk your loved ones into prepping for anything more than the next big ice storm or hurricane, you need to go about things a little more subtly. Rather than telling them they need to prep or trying to instill fear in them about what might happen in the near future, don’t talk about it at all, but instead stock up extra for them and try to help them learn skills that will benefit them in the long-term. Here are a few tips to follow when prepping for loved ones that don’t want to prep.
Stock Extra
If you have loved ones that refuse to prepare for long-term hardship, then you have to make a decision. Are these people who, when the SHTF, would come to you for help? Are they people who are close enough to you that you would take them in when disaster strikes, even though they did not prepare?
Some preppers have family members that they have blatantly told, you can prep with us, but if you don’t and you show up at my door with nothing, I will turn you away. Then they have family members and loved ones that they would help no matter what, such as a spouse, parents, adult children, and childhood friends.
Essentially, you will need to decide who you are willing to stock extra for, even if you don’t get their financial or physical help. Choose the people who matter the most to you, who you really feel you need to look after. Then you include those people in your numbers when you stock food, water, medical supplies, and anything else that is required.
If you are prepping for parents that won’t participate, then you need to consider their medical needs, particularly if they are older and take medications, need specialized equipment, or have mobility issues.
Building Skills
You can get your loved ones prepared for hard times by helping them learn useful skills. You can casually ask them if they want to learn a martial art or how to make candles. You can choose something you can do together and use it as a way to bond.
Take your family camping and get them outdoors where they can learn many of the skills they will need when society collapses, such as starting a fire, identifying wild edible plants, and building a shelter. Start a family garden that you can all work on together. Take a family member to the shooting range with you. Once they get a chance to fire a .22, they might just fall in love with shooting and want to learn the skill.
If you can’t convince your loved ones to learn a skill with you, you can still go ahead and learn these skills on your own or with those who will participate. Do it out in the open. Show your loved ones the results of what you have been doing.
They might pick up on some basics, and when you produce results, it might pique their interest enough that they want to be involved. At the very least you might help them find one or two new hobbies that they will enjoy, but that will also become a valuable skill they might need in bad times.
Gift-Giving
If you have loved ones who do not believe prepping for bad times is a necessity, you can always help them prepare under the guise of gift-giving. Christmas and birthdays are great opportunities to give someone something that will be useful to them in rough times. A Swiss army knife, compass, flashlight, LifeStraw, and other small items make great stocking-stuffers. Get your parents a portable propane or kerosene heater.
Make sure they have a full First Aid Kit and an emergency kit for the car. Give them good outdoor clothes and shoes for the holidays or make them up a bug-out bag and give it as a gift. It will show them how serious you are and how committed you are to their safety and well-being.
If you want to be more subtle with the gift-giving, then you can give them extra of what you know they love. Give the coffee drinker in your life six months’ worth of coffee.
Give them a case of a type of food they love, something that will last a long time. Give the gardener vegetable seeds or a couple of fruit trees for the backyard garden. These are gifts they will appreciate in all their innocence while you are crossing things off your list.
Here is a list of some other great gifts for the non-preppers on your list:
- Oil lamps
- An emergency radio
- A good-quality wool blanket
- A high-quality watch that includes features such as a thermometer, compass, and barometer
- A fishing kit
- Solar chargers
- A high-quality flashlight
- A multi-tool
- A gravity water filter
- Hand-warmers
- Plant growing kit
- Solar lights for the yard
- Good winter outdoor clothing
- Good rain gear
Make Your Life an Example
At the very least, you can make your life an example for your loved ones. No one responds well to being preached to, but they do respond to seeing the benefits of how someone else lives their life.
Go about your prepping and make it obvious in whatever ways possible how your preps and learned skills are benefiting you. When you do that, you might just have loved ones come to you one day out of the blue and ask you to help them get prepared.
Dan’s Note: Take Them Hiking
Taking your family out into the nature is a great way not just to build some skills (making camp, gathering wood, starting a fire etc.) but also to get them to respect Mother Nature a little more. This way, they’ll better understand what she’s capable of.
Have Fun!
Most of all, when it comes to prepping, both on your own and with your loved ones, keep it light and fun! It is incredibly satisfying to see a stocked pantry. It is also incredibly satisfying and fun to learn a new skill and get better at it.
You can turn what you are doing into a game or into some family time on the weekend. You can get outside and create something that will ensure everyone is happy and relaxed. They will be learning important skills even if they don’t realize it and you can rest easier knowing they are at least partly prepared.
An urban prepper and rural wannabe, Karen has been working as a freelance writer for a decade and prepping for about half that time. She has gathered a wealth of knowledge on preparing for SHTF, but there is always more to learn and she has a passion for gathering and sharing that knowledge with other like-minded folk. Karen lives in London, Canada with her two children and plethora of cats.
(Get them to create their 72-hour kit.)
Been there, tried that and it doesn’t work. They just don’t see the need.
(Once you have the family onboard with this, you can then push them a little farther.)
They won’t get onboard, you can’t push them as they are the ones that need to wake up, you are likely not going to awaken them, sleep is too comfortable to them.
(Once you have the family onboard with this, you can then push them a little farther. Talk about a recent weather event during which the power was out for days. If you live in the northeast, this shouldn’t be a problem. Just bring up the ice storm of 2014, during which the power was out for as long as two weeks in some places. Tell them you are concerned that type of event will happen again and convince them to extend their preps to ensure they are warm and comfortable for at least a couple of weeks.)
All this will get you is the tired response of “ If anything ever happens I’m coming to your house.”
(Essentially, you will need to decide who you are willing to stock extra for, even if you don’t get their financial or physical help.)
What happens when they eat their 1/2 of the food you put up? Are they going to then move on, or are they going to expect to keep eating food, your 1/2 of the food? I think we all know the answer to this!
(You can get your loved ones prepared for hard times by helping them learn useful skills. You can casually ask them if they want to learn a martial art or how to make candles.)
Most of them feel they are too busy to learn new skills that don’t benefit them today.
I also see preppers say that they will just make them work for food, this is foolish as they lkely have very limited to no useful skills. I prep a lot and am learning new skills (and practicing them every day as prepping is not a weekend project, it’s a lifestyle you live if you want it to work.) so I know how to do most everything around my home. I fix anything that breaks, I make what I need, I grow medical herbs (and have stocked a lot of medical items and herbs) I just don’t need untrained people bumbling around waiting for dinner and contributing little to nothing to justify them being there. I want people around me that work and have worked hard to prep and live a prepper lifestyle, not useless slugs.
As far as Gift-Giving, I did that with my son. He doesn’t have a lot of money (but he does have 2 Playstation-4’s, a $2,000.00 gaming computer with 3-monitors and the fastest internet on the planet) and drives beater autos. I built up a good set of tools and gave them to him. 8-months later I was over his house and saw the toolbox and tools sitting outside. The box was open and all the tools (the ones that weren’t lost) rusted like crazy. The box had been sitting outside open for months. I also bought him a camp stove, sleeping bag, cook set LED lantern, a small tent and a few other camping items. He has no idea where they are, after 2 moves they are just gone. I spent a few hundred dollars on the camping supplies, the stove alone was $75.00. I love my son, but I have decided I will not buy him any more prepping supplies, tools or anything expensive as he abused the stuff. So last birthday I just got him a gift card for on-line gaming.
I want him to prep and buy food, but he sees no need for it. He’s married to a woman that has been on Welfare (along with her sister and their alcoholic for life mother) so they do nothing. If he came over for food he would bring along all of them. My food and supplies would be used up in no time by a bunch of useless people that have never and don’t know how to contribute to the good of others. And it’s a SURE BET they would move on once the food was gone leaving me in a world of hurt.
(Give them a case of a type of food they love, something that will last a long time)
All this will achieve is to give them money (the money they would have use to buy the food) to blow on other non-prepping items. In my son’s case he would buy more on-line games to play with the extra money.
I read once that if you took ALL the money the rich have and gave it to the poor it would ALL BE GONE in 4-months as the poor for the most part don’t know how to manage money, they live for today and plan not at all for tomorrow. Why give them supplied that support this way of life?
(Make Your Life an Example)
I do, and it doesn’t take with them as I’m sure it doesn’t with most of us preppers. All it does is convince family we are crazy.
If they see no need to prep and have extra food I have trouble feeling sorry for them. I sacrifice a lot to have the preps I have put up. I don’t do things others do. I don’t have a smart phone and it’s $90.00 a month bill, I don’t have a $80.00 a month cable bill, I drive well used (but good running) autos that were paid for the day I bough them, I don’t go to Vegas every year, I don’t have a 50-inch HD TV, I don’t have a $4,000.00 zero-turn mower (my mower is a used push behind one) I don’t have a super high-speed net connection so I can play games in real time with my $2,000.00 gaming computer (with 3-monitors on it)
All these things my family members do, but at the same time they have no extra food in their homes at all.
I do none of them but have a LOT of food and preps put up and am not in debt at all.
When or if it hits the fan bad why should I give them food, and they will want and demand it for free as I have it and they must have it. SHTF comes there is nothing more valuable then food and preps that will keep you alive. What can someone trade for food when nothing is worth as much as food? Nothing is the answer. People will expect your food and supplies for free and never think that they are not due them.
I long ago decided that I will keep my preps hidden and have done a good job of it. It’s not possible for me to feed all the people that would come for food, so I won’t. And even if I did share my food they would consume it all and then move on (like a plague of locust consuming everything in their path) leaving me in a bad way with not enough to live on.
I’m not the bad one in this situation, the people too stupid to prep and put food up are the bad people as they will leach off those of us that are smart enough to prep.
No good deed goes unpunished and trying to wake people up and get them to prep will come back to bite you as they won’t prep and now you have told them you do prep.
Better buy some ammo and guns and decide how far you are willing to go to live because, make no mistake, it will be you or them.
You can’t fix stupid!
My husband has a fit if I buy something that is not on the shopping list. I will buy 1-2 items more than he says to buy but he has a fit about that. Last Saturday I met a person who knows a family member that the Government is telling the farmers they won’t get their government check unless they plow under their crops. This is all to cause food storage. I gave him a example. In walmarts you could not find any type of vinegar. I went to Albertsons and all they had was 2 gallons of Cider Vinegar and 2 1/2 gallons of white vinegar. I bought both the white vinegar and didn’t push with the Cider Vinegar but just bought 1. Price was crazy.
I buy everything I can with coupons from Smiths and Albertsons. I can sometimes get coupons from Sprouts. When I can get coupons I use them to keep stocking up. I won’t let my family (5 people) starve.