Is Prepping a waste of time?

The term “Prepper” is generally applied to people who are preparing for some kind of world or society changing event, such as a devastating pandemic or a huge natural disaster, but also includes those that some may consider crazy, like people preparing for a zombie outbreak or something that couldn’t possibly be survived.

So is being a prepper a waste of time and money?

It all depends on what the person is preparing for and how much they have invested into their level of preparedness. Statistically speaking it is indeed a huge waste of both time and money preparing for one of the doomsday scenarios because not only are the chances of some of them happening close to impossible, but if they did happen it wouldn’t matter how much food you have stored or how many weapons you had.

Massive stockpiles of food have to be cycled according to their expiration date and constantly replaced, leaving someone with having to eat several month or even years old food they didn’t need, only to replace it with fresh food and all “just in case” whatever they are preparing for happened.

Surely a huge stockpile of food is never a bad thing?

In the event of an apocalyptic event, it wouldn’t take long before the utilities went down, leaving you in the dark with no electricity and no clean running water. All the freeze-dried food in the world wouldn’t help unless you have access to clean water, which means having access to solid fuel to burn which in turn means having to leave your safe house on a regular basis. Tinned goods are always a good option, but are very heavy in any useful amount and would be difficult to take with you in large quantities. Having a stockpile of food also makes you a prime target for anyone that’s hungry, so simply having the food in the first place would put you at risk if other people found out.

(An estimation of the damage an eruption from the Yellowstone Volcano would cause in the initial blast, all the food in the world wouldn’t save you unless you were already hundreds of miles away)

So when is prepping “not” a waste of time?

If prepping is done on a sensible level it is never a waste of time. Having certain goods stored to last you for a realistic amount of time can only be considered good planning, with the recent coronavirus demonstrating this. As you’re probably aware, the local supermarkets and even the smaller street stores all put restrictions on things like pasta, rice and toilet paper, but as long as the queues were and with buying limits placed on things, there was still plenty of food available. Being prepared for an event like another virus is a very sensible thing to do, but stocking enough food to last a family for an entire year or two, especially if you live in a large built-up area is not only expensive and a lot of work, but would make you a prime target for the whole town and would be impossible to take with you at a moments notice if you had to leave. If an event occurred that would require a family to live off nothing but the food they had stored, they would be guaranteed to be robbed by looters or killed by whatever the actual event was.

The single most sensible act of prepping

The Bug out bag

Six months worth of heavy tinned food won’t do you much good when you have to flee the area to escape a disaster, but a bug out bag most definitely will. A bug out bag is something you can just grab and leave on the spot with, and it should include all the equipment and things you need to survive while on the run. A full range of survival gear should be taken along with some food, medical supplies and basically everything you could possibly need.

Being prepared can make the difference between life and death, but there is a certain point where it becomes a waste of both time and money. Preparing for something that you simply couldn’t survive or stocking up on things you’d never use cant be considered anything other than a waste, so before you go stocking your pantry with 3 years worth of dehydrated food, ask yourself if you’re ever realistically ever going to use it.