articusblue said: "is becoming less of a fringe group."

aww-w-w, I liked being part of a fringe group. 😆
Kidding, like paintergirl says, the more the better.

Huh, I thought I answered this one lol
I am 36, 2 teenagers and 1 preteen with special needs, he will never progress past the mental age of 4 yrs old.
My teen boys get it, they help, have learned and watched closely. I have done drills with them, cut the power to the house and said "OK I am sick, can't get to hospital and must rest, power is out, what do you do?" and they do fairly well.

My Mom was a farm kid and abandoned everything she learned, she now is relearning a lot, very quickly, and sees my point of having supplies for 3-7 days plus. (she lives in a small apartment so more than that is impractical unfortunately). I put a $20 4 tier plastic shelf from walmart in her front closet and placed 2 cans of soup on it. She said "Well, I have to fill it now, it looks ridiculous with just a soup can or two!"That was all it took lol I told her to rent a 2 bedroom and I would fill the second bedroom with supplies, she told me to shut up. So I stopped at a shelf 🙂
When I lived north, we went 3 days without power at a time a few times a year. People just expect you to take care of yourself... you learn fast!
I had a great stockpile until my separation and divorce 4.5 years ago, then went through a rough patch a year ago, now I have taken a few dollars every week.. not a lot sometimes as little as $10 to prep something for us to survive whatever can be thrown our way. I am more prepared now than I ever was. Smarter from life's curve balls. And I have learned to do just bout anything a man could do or would be expected to do around the house/out in the wild, someone had to teach the boys.... they are still mastering the art of deboning a fish... it would help if the fish didn't freak them out lol

I think the more germaine question is how mature or intelligent or skeptical are preppers? The other people at work may think we're nuts. If they ask you if you're a prepper or a survivalist just respond. "As opposed to what? What is the alternative? A victim?" And let them think it through. The smart ones will get it.

It's not an age thing in my mind. Nor is my age a restriction to what I do.

32 myself and wifes 31, 3 kids ages 10,5,2. Both of us raised in cities but myself I was raised constantly camping and outdoors as a child. I still to this day would rather be out in the bush somewhere or around a fire then anywhere else. I am really trying to get my other half more involved but its a slow pace, i finally have her picking up a few extra items each time she grocery shops. So thats a good start i think... Everyone else around me thinks im wasting my time... Ive given up on talking about anything, think thats best.

I will be hitting the big 50 😮 this year, God willing.

I spent most of my youth with my dad's side of the family, on my grandparents farm (veggies no critters), my aunt's dairy farm, an uncle's sheep farm and a friend's pig farm. Everything that could be canned was canned. Nothing was wasted. Due to lack of funds, my mom learned all of the skills from canning, gardening, sewing, etc. Mom pasted those skills to my sisters and myself. My dad being disappointed in not having a son, made a point of teaching me all the "boys" things. Until I saw a show on TV about prepping, I had no idea I was one. I just thought I was being cheap by making, growing, building my own things and storing them to last at least a year.

I can not however bring myself to make head cheese like my grandma used to but I do still eat cow heart and tongue when I can get it.

Until I saw a show on TV about prepping, I had no idea I was one.

I saw part of a show about hoarders. It scared me so I turned it off fast. I didn't want to think I was one.

I think the main difference between a prepper and a hoarder is the use of the product and the reason of "collecting". The one food hoarder that I saw had no idea of what they had, the expiry dates and no thought to use the food, it was just a matter of having "it".

I'll turn the sarcasm off now, just seems I have so much stuff all over the place for future projects. Moving from a huge shop to a one car garage has crap stashed all over the place. The plan was always buy my parents house and shop, everything was settled, papers signed. Then one of my siblings backed out and left me with 30 days to move everything.

Sorry to hear that. Maybe a thread on how to get organized and stay that way may be an idea

58 this year. 4 children, 8 grandchildren

52 and happy flying solo. I have 1 young adult and an elderly mother to take care of.

Perfesser - Time will sort out your overcrowding issue. You obviously have plans for the stuff you've collected - any idea's you'd like to share???

Nothing fantastic but say you have a one car garage.
You're standing there looking at a generator, snowmobile, snowblower, riding mower, 2 canoes, a couple of outboard motors, 2 table saws, a radial arm saw, a metal bandsaw, MIG welder, arc welder, torches, drill press, wood stoves, work benches, 3 large rolling toolboxes (full), 2 cabinets of power tools, chain saws etc.
And you can't bear to part with ANY of it because you know in a few years you'll be moving to a (yet to be built) homestead and will need it all.
Not to mention all the other stuff that's "cool, I can use that for >insert fun project< someday.

Fun project example: look for the thread in this board titled HEAT. I posted a pic of a wood stove I made to heat the shop. Another thing I just couldn't bear to leave behind. It's sitting up north under cabin right now, hoping for a home before it rusts away.

Perfesser - That is a serious heater!!!

Hi All

I am a happy healthy 68 yr old new preppy. My husband is 61 this month, so guess that makes me a cougar. I think thats what they call old broads married to younger men. I dunno. It's some kind of a cat. He's a bit of an ostrich and doesn't think there's a necessity to prep so i just go on my merry way. He never goes into the comp room, good thing. It's slowly shrinking. LOL

I had just written a long comment, clicked submit, and the website was asking me to sign in again - lost all I wrote. Oh well, should highlight and "copy" long posts every-so-often.

Anyways, it seems MOST folks here are 40+?

I'm barely quarter of a century old (25 in a couple of weeks), my wife {very recently married} also turning 25 soon. We're also expecting to be first-time parents in September or October.

I'm a mixed-race, first generation Canadian, born and raised in Toronto. Raised camping, fishing, visiting my maternal grandparents old family homesteads (in Sweden), enjoying urban nature {there are in fact deer, beavers, foxes etc. in Toronto}, little bit of exposure to gardening, canning; went to a canoe-tripping camp in teen years, and loved it. Around 18 years old I became somewhat of an environmentalist; turned half of my parents lawn into a veggie garden; became an avid cyclist; worked my first summer at a canoe tripping camp; took a Wildness First Responder (advanced first aid) course, and started carrying first aid gear with me all the time. I took a year off after high school to travel, and ended up volunteering-living on multiple farms/homesteads in New Zealand for a couple of months. Stayed in Toronto for university years, doing ecology and urban studies; gardening and leading canoe trips in summer; becoming obsessed about peak oil and permaculture. Around 2008/2009 became more aware of possible rapid-collapse scenarios, and became acquainted with the terms "prepper" "shtf" "bug-out-bag" etc. Also realized I wanted to spend more time on farms/homesteads, so spent the summer of 2009 volunteering-living on various places around Ontario. After finishing university in April 2010, went and got an even better education than 4 years of lectures and essays: 6 months straight on a permaculture-organic farm near Hamilton, Ontario.
Also in spring 2010, through the internet got involved in the start-up of an ecovillage: a group of us bought land together with intention to form an off-grid community; not much happened with it in 2010 though.
Summer 2010 at the farm near Hamilton, met my (now)-wife. She's like me: city-girl (from Boston) who has spent her early 20s becoming a country-woman. We spent the 2010/11 winter on her friends farm in Georgia (USA). We moved to the ecovillage in spring 2011, and alongside other co-owners, lived in tents while growing an acre-and-a-half of veggies and herbs, going to farmers markets.
Mid-summer 2011, my special-lady had to go back to Boston: her sister had suddenly become a widowed-single-mom-(of three young kids), and needed help. Since summer we've been "long distance," seeing eachother once a month. Got married in January because we want to raise a family and grow old together, so one of us needs to immigrate across the border, and it's easier when sponsored by a spouse.

And yeah, now we're expecting a baby by October. She'll come up here in June so we can at least be together for the last trimester and have the kid here.

It's amazing what being expectant parents can do to a couple like us. From wanting to be low-income homesteaders ASAP, to "Oh we really need to save up money for the future," so we're not going back to the land in 2012, or 2013 likely, but I am going for a higher-paying career: instead of selling veggies and seedlings (what I want to be doing), I'll be selling life insurance, and various financial-investment products. We still want to be out on the land ideally by the time kiddo#1 is walking and talking... But before we can get there we need pile of dough for investing in the ecovillage, materials for our future home, and capital to start something entrepreneurial.

So... any other 20-something-year-old preppers in this online community?