Most preppers that I know train and prepare for short, sharp, relatively limited-duration events. Getting caught out in the wilderness for several days, a natural disaster like a tornado or hurricane, an outbreak of rioting in your city—all are good reasons to get prepared, make no mistake, but if it’s all you’re prepared for, you might come up way short when the SHTF.
Consider that there are lots of plausible scenarios that could turn into a long-term survival situation. And I mean really long-term: months or even years. In these scenarios, sustainment, self-reliance, and preservation become paramount.
The skills you’ve cultivated so far will come in handy, as will your material preps, but if you want to not just survive but thrive post-SHTF, you’ll need the following 20 skill sets. Read on, and we will get right into it.
Mental Resilience
The first skill set you’ll need on our list is arguably the most important. I emphasize it because, simply enough, most preppers that I’ve ever met are not truly prepared for the uncertainty and demoralization associated with a long-term survival scenario.
Most of us prep so that we may survive until help arrives, the cavalry comes, or things get back to normal. But what if that doesn’t happen, and it’s not going to happen?
What if you are entering a new era in society, one set against the backdrop of a massive EMP, nuclear exchange, or total economic collapse? What if your current hardscrabble survival situation becomes just… life?
Are you ready to cope with that? If you aren’t, you won’t even want to go on living. You’ve got to prep your mind to survive so you can be the rock for people who need you and for yourself.
Water Procurement and Purification
No surprises here—water will be just as important in a long-term, post-SHTF survival situation. Actually, it will be even more important.
You’ll need to know where and how to source water for long-term sustainment and also how to purify it to make it safe for drinking and washing. The answer, as ever for preppers, is in water filtration technology and chemicals.
Great things to have and have in abundance. But those things don’t last forever, and you might not be able to replenish them under the circumstances.
A better plan is to learn how to filter water the old-fashioned way, using natural materials like charcoal, sand, clay, and more.
You can even use the sun and clear containers to help you sterilize water contaminated by bacteria and viruses. There’s also the tried-and-true solar still method which is covered here in detail.
Hunting, Trapping, and Fishing
As with the water filtration chemicals and tech we just talked about, your packaged food and survival rations will eventually run out in the aftermath of a society-crushing crisis.
When it does, the pressure will really be on to supply yourself and your loved ones with high-quality animal protein. The best ways to do that, as ever, are to hunt, trap, or fish.
If you’re already accomplished with these skills, you’re all set, but you need to take things a little further and anticipate trouble: you and a whole lot of other people will be doing the same thing, and chances are there won’t be any game wardens or other organizations around to prevent overharvesting.
Soon you’ll need to go farther and stay out longer to come back with less food in the end. My prediction is that many species won’t survive! Nonetheless, these skills will prove invaluable until you can establish more sustainable sources of protein yourself.
Foraging
Nature supplies mankind with plenty to eat, but the vast majority of people have no idea what’s safe and nutritious if it doesn’t come out of a bin at the grocery store.
You should prioritize learning how to identify, harvest, and safely prepare every plant, and every part of every plant, that’s edible in your region. Acorns, for instance, are tasty, protein-packed, and highly nutritious, but they must be soaked repeatedly to make them safe.
If you need food right away, foraging is often the best way to get it, and far fewer people know how to forage properly compared to hunting and fishing, meaning you’ll have an edge when it comes to the acquisition of calories.
Gardening
Hunting and gathering will only take you so far in the type of situation we’re preparing for. You must, and I mean you personally, establish your own self-contained food supply.
For fruits, veggies, herbs, nuts, and more, gardening is how you do that. Even a quarter-acre garden, properly managed, can supply more food than a family of four will know what to do with.
You can also scale up your gardening efforts into proper small-scale farming, allowing you to help out friends, extended family, and neighbors, as well as establish a vector for bartering and trading.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking all you’ve got to do is throw some seeds on the ground and water them while you wait to collect perfect produce.
Gardening is a science and a lot of work, and accordingly, it takes a ton of practice. Start now and get good so you don’t suffer later.
Food Preservation
Getting your food during a terrible scenario like this is only half of the battle. Preserving the excess so it’s fresh and safe when you need it later is the other.
There are lots of ways to preserve food, but relatively few are regularly used today, and even then most depend on electricity and advanced technology.
You should definitely be learning how to home-can fruits, veggies, meat, and more so you can start padding your survival pantry. Canning can also be done without the benefit of any electricity in a pinch.
Other worthwhile methods you should look into include drying and freezing, though these are dependent on your local environment if you don’t have electricity. Lean times will come no matter how successful you are at sourcing and producing your own food: prepare!
Animal Husbandry
Instead of hunting for protein out in the wild, raise it yourself. No surprise here, keeping livestock and poultry is the ideal way to keep your family supplied with delicious, high-quality meat and other animal products besides.
Cows, goats, sheep, chickens, geese, and more: all have advantages and disadvantages, and all require a certain amount of space and specialized care.
While it’s easier to care for these animals than you think, generally, people can and do spend an entire lifetime mastering these skills. In the case of larger animals, you’ve got to know how to handle them and behave around them so you don’t get hurt.
If you are in doubt, get chickens: chickens are easy to care for, not dangerous, and very versatile in that they supply you with both eggs and meat. They’re also easy to breed, meaning you can keep your flocks genetically healthy and viable long-term…
First-Aid and Medical
If you are very fortunate, you’ll still have access to expert medical care in the aftermath, or at least certain segments of society will.
However, considering what everyone is going through, it will be far from dependable and, likely, not nearly as good as it was. My prediction is we will go back to a sort of town doctor model.
In any case, preppers must become their own first responders and care providers. First-aid skills for dealing with injury, illness, and trauma are absolutely mandatory, and the more you can learn about long-term care and various diseases and other ailments, the better off you will be.
This skill is especially critical if you or anyone in your family is already dealing with chronic health conditions.
Fire Starting
Fire provides light, warmth, the ability to cook, the ability to sterilize water, and opportunities for signaling. Making the most of fire and maximizing it while minimizing wasted fuel is a prerogative for every prepper.
I think it’s important to maximize this skill set for long-term survival because, no matter how well off you are regarding other sources of heat and various types of fuel in the beginning, they will start to run out in the end.
Shelter Principles and Construction
One of the most crucial survival skillsets is keeping yourself warm (or cool) when the weather is hostile.
Whether you are out in the wilderness or sticking around what’s left of society exposure is, statistically speaking, the single biggest killer across all kinds of survival scenarios and other factors. So you must know what you are doing.
And you might not be out in the backcountry when you need these skills: The necessity of shelter is obvious when outdoors, but if your home is damaged, the power is out, or the gas isn’t flowing, it’s going to be really hard to stay warm enough.
Wet weather and even a mild breeze are enough to send people into hypothermia in very short order.
You need to understand how to construct effective, weatherproof shelters, ventilate them, and insulate them to make maximum use of body heat and other sources of warmth.
Even inside your own home, learning how to weatherize it and create smaller, warmer microclimates inside can make the difference between life and death in colder regions or in the wintertime.
Self-Defense
Sadly, chances are very high that you’ll have to defend yourself from other people during a post-SHTF timeline.
Aside from the truly desperate, who will do anything—anything—to get what they need for themselves and their families, you’ll be dealing with organized or opportunistic criminals who will take advantage of disruption and weakened rule of law to ply their trade.
You must be prepared to protect yourself, your loved ones, and your holdings if you want to survive. This is serious business, and not something to take lightly. You need to prepare for this mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
Find out what you’re capable of and make peace with it, then become skilled at armed and unarmed self-defense.
Scavenging
Just because supply chains and commerce have broken down doesn’t mean you won’t be able to find what you need outside. You’ll just need to get comfortable, and skilled, at scavenging and salvaging.
No, I’m not talking about thievery, and you shouldn’t steal anything from anyone, even if you appraise it as junk. But there will be plenty of items left to drift, and lots of damaged goods and equipment that can be repurposed if you are crafty.
This is a nuanced, intricate topic, one that we’ve talked about before here on Survival Sullivan, and it’s one you should start learning about now before you need it.
Navigation
Wherever you are going in times of trouble, and however you’re trying to get there, you’ve got to know how to get there! Land navigation skills, whether you are traveling by vehicle or on foot, are essential.
You should keep in mind that GPS systems might not be functional or reliable, and even with the benefit of a map, the landscape you are traveling through might be clogged with detours or radically changed, meaning you can’t just navigate by landmarks.
You’ll still need maps, a compass, a comprehensive road atlas, and more, but you should also start developing now multiple routes for getting to all places of interest and bug-out locations in case you need them.
Bartering
I think it goes without saying that any event bad enough to result in a real long-term survival scenario in society is likely to result in an economic collapse. That means the dollar is going to go bust and will only be suitable for kindling or toilet paper!
The ripples and domino effects of a dollar crash will lead to a near or total cessation of commerce.
Accordingly, mankind will revert to an earlier economic system, even if only at the local level and for the short term, relatively speaking.
Learning how to haggle, wheel-and-deal, and use soft- and hard negotiating techniques is part and parcel of bartering. It truly is an art form, and one that is all but extinct today in the West.
Your bartering skills will not only help you get what you need but also help you make friends and contacts along the way. Being bad at business and alienating people will affect your future prospects under the circumstances…
Basic Carpentry
Basic carpentry skills are a must-have for coping with the post-SHTF world. Whether it is repairing a busted roof or whipping together a crude but serviceable shanty as a temporary shelter, understanding joinery and other construction techniques can save the day.
It can also make you a person that is in some demand, and that can help you get what you need from other people in the form of food, gear, or favors.
You don’t need to be Bob Vila, but knowing how to do the job with power or manual tools to accomplish a goal or erect a structure should be your baseline.
Primitive Tool-Making
Speaking of tools, if you’ve ever wanted to take up blacksmithing, now you finally have a justification…
Even crude, backyard blacksmithing done with the most elementary of improvised forges can turn out durable and useful items like nails, knives, chisels, hammers, spears, and more.
All of these items will come in handy for your own sake, and there’s no shortage of scrap metal out in the world that you can repurpose, but this is another skill set that will make you a valuable commodity yourself.
Sewing
The supply chain situation on clothing in America is really a joke. America doesn’t make clothes anymore, not really. It’s all imported from third-world sweatshops, and that means there will be no clothes being made in the aftermath.
Learning how to make clothes, even rudimentary ones, takes quite a lot of skill. A better use of your time and resources is probably learning how to repair and patch the clothes you have to make them last longer.
Learning how to sew by hand or with a machine is easier than you think and pays dividends out of all proportion to the time you spend practicing.
Repair
Funnily enough, disasters of all kinds leave destruction and devastation in their wake. I won’t belabor the point except to say that the more systems, tools, vehicles, and technology you know how to repair, the better off you’ll be in the wake of such events.
Keeping your gear running and your possessions repaired will improve your situation dramatically, and you can make use of other things that people have abandoned or given up on.
Off-Grid Energy Generation
I know most preppers plan on living in a post-electricity, post-SHTF world…
This is understandable and logical, and whether electrical service is intermittent, barely there, or totally absent, you can make a great case for not giving up your electrical appliances, tools, and gadgets.
That is if, if, you can generate your own electricity. Having a generator is great, but more sustainable options like solar, wind, hydroelectric, and thermoelectric are better.
Understanding how to best implement, use, and maintain these systems is an entire set of skills unto itself, as is improvising solutions from alternators, car batteries, and more.
Leadership
Last, but certainly not least, you’ve got to level up your leadership skills.
Being likable, being skilled—that’s not enough: getting people to go along with you, believe in you, and work together is hard enough even in the best of times, and it will be geometrically harder in times of trouble.
Covering leadership as a skill set will take up a whole lot more room than I have here, but the good news is there’s no shortage of info out there on it, both on and offline.
The short version is this: leaders are accountable, dependable, and capable. People will follow a person like that. And your attitude is another huge component: panic, fear, and anxiety are all contagious. But you know what else is? Calm, confidence, and fortitude.
Tom Marlowe practically grew up with a gun in his hand, and has held all kinds of jobs in the gun industry: range safety, sales, instruction and consulting, Tom has the experience to help civilian shooters figure out what will work best for them.