The beginning

You may think TEOTWAWKI will happen somewhere else and not in your neck of the woods.  After all, you survived (you fill in the blank).  Whether you live in an area with hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, winter storms, or in my case, none of the above, few people have been inconvenienced for more than a couple of weeks at most.  People may have lost their homes due to a catastrophe but there wasn't mass starvation or total anarchy to go along with that home loss.  Even the LA Riots were relegated to a small area. 

 

I can't really say what made me start thinking about having a self sufficient household.  Perhaps it was in the 1980s when one of my friends belonged to LDS church.  I was fascinated by their food storage programs but I didn't like that they emphasized using four basic items: wheat, powdered milk, honey, and salt.  My friend had these items but they were stored away in containers and never used. I didn't think that a crisis time would be a good time to start trying how to make gluten.  I knew there had to be a better way. 

 

But it's not just about food.  It's also about your home, your safety, and your peace of mind - both physically and spiritually.  In the worst case scenario there may not be food, water, fuel, power, or civilized society.  Most sites tell you to head for a small town or near wilderness.  You are advised to buy a big chunk of property with a spring and a rarely used dirt road as your entrance.  For most of us this isn't feasible, yet we also want to be ready for whatever the future entails. 

 

Our family won't pack up and move – at least not for the next half dozen years.  I suppose I could quit my job and move away with not much money in the bank hunker down somewhere else.  But I have to weigh the value of us moving to a distant place or staying where we are, which is near family, friends, and our religious community.  There is value to having the kids spend time with their cousins each week and going to religious training each week.  So we stay on our couple of acres in this medium sized town in our highly populated state of California.