The results are in. I surveyed my email list and friends, and over 78% of them admit to thinking about current events, shtf and prepping while in bed!
Next time your lover gets that starry-eyed look, better offer a penny for thoughts. You may be surprised that he/she is actually thinking of how to survive TEOTWAWKI.
I’m probably the worst worrier of the lot. Sometimes, I even worry that I’m worrying too much. But through excessive worry, I’ve thought of several great ideas each contributing to my overall self-reliance and preparedness strategy.
For example, a few nights ago while tossing and turning under the sheets, an idea for a new type of sand filter materialized. While I haven’t had time to test its effectiveness yet, the idea seems sound.
I’ll do a write-up explaining the idea, once I know it works. I don’t like the idea of giving you information, that I haven’t tested yet - the “it should work” or “it works in theory” isn’t good enough.
Even then, you should test everything you read here or anywhere else. Just because it worked for me is no guarantee it will work for you, at least not the first time.
By actually doing you learn and retain that skill more effectively than you would by just reading about how someone else did it.
Getting back to the idea of prepping in bed - since my original survey was relatively small (less than 100 people) I’d like to expand it by asking you. Yes you…
Do you think about prepping while in bed?
If your answer is yes please share with us in the comments some of the ideas you’ve come up with…
{ 16 comments }
doesn’t tend to make for a good night’s sleep…& then i pray the Rosary.
Sometimes I do think about prepping just before I fall asleep just as you do M.D. I will think of something that might add to or improve my prepping in some way. However, back in the days when I was with Civil Defense/Emergency Management, some of the issues I dealt with during the workweek would actually keep me up. Now, in retirement, the bedtime issues aren’t as nagging since I’m focused more on my own, my friends’ or my family’s needs.
To give an example of one of the things I came up with while falling asleep one night: I had a generator for use if the power went out. Now that I had moved to the suburbs, I realized the generator would make a lot of noise (not what my neighbors would appreciate), I would need to store gasoline and the reasonable amount of gasoline I could store would limit its use to a couple of days to a week. While trying to fall asleep I tried to think of what I would use the generator for and, if I didn’t have one, what would suffer. I realized that the main, and most important reason, for the generator was to supply power to the furnace in the event of a major ice storm or long-term power outage in the winter. I realized that if I installed a hearth-sitting fireplace insert in my fireplace I could eliminate the need for the generator and I could even cook on it (reducing the need for propane and butane for a separate stove). Also, I felt that most of the other benefits that the generator offered would be supplied by using solar panels with storage batteries. About the only thing I wouldn’t have was refrigeration, but in the winter up in the north it wasn’t a big problem. So I sold my generator to one of my Emergency Management friends and put in the fireplace insert. I bought enough split firewood and biobricks to heat the house for about two years. I sleep well now and I feel better prepared.
Yes.
It’s quiet at night and I can think better when it’s quiet, so I go to bed and think about what other preps I need to make. There is always something, right?! When I have a couple of things in mind, I’ll jot them down on a pad of paper I keep in the nightstand. Then I can go to sleep and not worry, I’ve got it written down and can address these things on the notepad in the morning.
I’m a born worrier, too. In fact, to make things worse, I have a cynical outlook and tend to look at things from a negative angle. Prepping, I think, is in my blood. Even when times were good, I’d still have some extra food on the shelf and some water stored in the basement.
Despite my outlook on life, I pray I never have to use my preps for emergencies or hard times. I much prefer the good times over the bad.
I do the common thing of keeping a small notepad with pen to write stray thoughts that occur to me as I’m dropping off. Sometimes prep related, other times not. Many time possible solutions to something that has been bothering me all day.
Preparing becomes a “Lifestyle”. Of course we think about it as we’re waiting to fall asleep. I run through scenarios, plan storage spaces, imagine group dynamics, all sorts of things.
As spring approaches I plot my garden. As harvest approaches I re-think my produce preservation. (dehydrate vs. can) When I hear of disaster in other places, I grill my plans to see if me and mine could withstand that.
I don’t fall asleep easily or quickly. I’ve got to do something.
That’s exactly what I do, and I was very pleased to read a study recently that says that people who rehearse scenarios in their mind, are the most likely to survive in a crisis.
The study involved people who’d been close to a bomb at an airport, and the majority of the survivors had thought about what they’d do in such a situation. Those who were badly injured (guess they couldn’t ask the dead ones) had never imagined what might happen.
i have a mental list of survival needs that i go over in my head. i think about each need and its priority.i then try and mentally plan the purchase of each need according to my other mental list of potential income streams,IE: selling a rifle i have no need for ,or a piece of yard equiptment. im working with a budget that is being pulled in a thousand different directions and some times i lay there trying to think of different ways to eliminate some of the less important demands to free up a little more money for the mental list of survival needs. then i realize how important my sleep is because im a trucker ,and cant fall asleep worrying about how bad the lack of sleep is going to affect my job performance then i,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ;)
Worry, worry, worry – what is it? Better than 95% of the time it is irrational & or a condition that is out of our control.
I had a recurring nightmare as a young child about getting eaten by a shark. I was walking on stilts, in the middle of the ocean – yea I know … sounds crazy, and a shark kept swimming by and taking bites out of my stilts that incrementally lowered me closer to the ocean surface. I always woke up just before I hit the water, scared to death.
In the summers we would go to the beach & I would NEVER wade more than knee high into the surf, why? Irrational fear. (Actually, I forgot my stilts.)
Some cures for worry:
1. Preparation – more prepared, less worry. Less preparation more worry.
2. Dealing with reliable, fact based information – My borther’s, brother-in-law has a cousin who knows this guy who has a friend that is a trash man near DC and found out from his best friend’s sister’s aunt who is married to a guy that delivered a pizza to the security guard at the FBI training facility gate and overheard him talking on his cell that he heard from the cleaning lady a terrorist crossed the border from Canada with a dirty bomb heading for Denver or Fort Worth. Or maybe it was C4 & a flare gun …
3. Understand what is in your control & more importantly, what is not. Every night I go to bed knowing that I am alive and well and a new day will greet me and hopefully an EMP did not shut off my electricity for non-payment.
4. Have all of my prep stuff organized in a logical order and have my list of what to do if I need to bug out or stay. It’s not that hard.
5. Avoid at all cost, “analysis to paralysis”. We can – far too easily, over think things. Do it and move on.
That’s my 14 cents ~
My son watched a movie about alligators in NYC when he was little, and was paralyzed by fear of the water. You think I could convince him there were no alligators in Colorado?
….. they live in the storm drains, waiting for little boys ….
It’s amazing how things can get to some and not others.
come on midge! surely youve heard of snow gators.they are white and blend with snow. you dont see them till its to late.
That’s why we have the big black dog. He keeps us gator-free. Of course, while he’s spending all that time sleeping smack in the middle of the kitchen floor he’s keeping the hippos out of the kitchen.
I admit I am part of that 78%
places were i mite consider going during a shtf event
hallow point vs fmj rounds
just normal stuff
Actually, since I’m one of those who are afflicted with the curse of not being able to sleep w/o reading something, I keep a stack of Prep books by my bed, and try to read something useful every night. If I need to test it or try it out, then I make time to do so over the weekend. By the way, since Fall and Winter will soon be with us, now would be a good time to check your Winter clothes, rotate meds, get the Winter Machines in order, caulk any cracks, be ready to Can the Fall Harvest (got Lids and Rings?), get some range time in for Deer Season, ……
I also keep a pad of paper and a pen next to my bed to write down ideas. It is said that if you write things down at work you’re a workaholic. Therefore I must be a prepaholic.
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