Where to start?

welcome to the forum Whyvez,
Yes, figuring out where to begin can be a daunting task.
I would suggest starting out with food & water storage.
Simply buying a few extra items of non perishables each grocery trip will start you off.
You will be surprised how fast it adds up.
Water can be stored in used soda bottles that have been washed well.
Look to get a 3 day stockpile to start.
This would mean 3 days worth of food and water (minimum 2 liters per person per day, but try to get as much as possible...at least double that)
From there you can work towards 3 weeks, 3 months, etc.
Having a source of information is also a good idea, so a battery or crank powered am/fm radio would also be a good starter item.
AM will give you lots of news regarding the current disaster, and FM will help break down the craziness from the quiet.
Flashlights would be another one...preferably crank powered, but if battery, that is OK, just keep lots of spares.

This is of course only a few very basic items. Start with that and read on in the forum to find out more. Don't be afraid to ask questions...that's why this place exists.

Take a step back and breath. Most of the people here make progress slowly and carefully. There are problems that worry you more then others but think in terms of food, water, shelter, heat, protection, gasoline, communications etc. (In no particular order) Above all do not go into debt trying to prepare.

Start by buying double of the daily items your family uses. As much or as little as your budget will allow. Store what you eat and eat what you store. You must rotate foodstuffs. Eventually you will begin to feel a little more comfortable as you will not be the one running to the store for bread milk and eggs before the next storm.

As for the other items needed do not cheap out on the things that will keep you and your family alive. (big money items ie; water purifiers, generators etc.) Buy the best on the market that you can afford and you will not be replacing the item or have it fail when it is needed most.

Prepping is actually a lifestyle and not easy as it involves skills as well as food. Think in terms of cooking, first aid, general DIY skills, communication possibly Ham Radio, and protection. Fortunately there are a host of people here that will answer any of your questions and help you along your quest.

Remember that the only stupid question is the one unasked.

I hope this helps, good luck, and keep us posted on your progress.

HTP

First thing I'd advise is to learn to produce your own food. Even city dwellers can do it. Go buy a copy of Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening, and live it. You can raise quite a bit of food in small spaces, perfect for a city resident. It's not a magic answer, but it's a start. Raise food, learn to do it BEFORE you NEED to. Save some money at it as well. I think its on of the most overlooked things a new person is told.

Denob and the others have great advice as well for starters. Although, I'd say a week to 10 days is no harder to attain then 3. Learn to cook food without relying on your stove/oven. Learn about keeping a light or two on or generating heat in the event of a power outage.

I think the hardest part for me - I was getting crazy overwhelmed and obbsessive with prepping at the beginning too - was nailing down exactly why I was doing it to begin with. It becomes much much much easier to do, when you have a plan for why your really doing it. Think it through more thoroughly, as your preparing and planting your square foot gardens 🙂

Get your PAL firearms licence and atleast one firearm. A hunting licence & experience hunting is important also. If shtf bad, police/military cannot be counted on to keep you safe. You can store 2 years supply of food & water, but if you can't prevent a desperate group of looters from harming your family & stealing your supplies, then your 2 years worth of supplies won't last long. If shtf bad, then law enforcement will be concerned about their own families, and there may not be no other person to provide security except for yourself. Firearms will make yourself a hard/risky target to go after. If there are 10 houses in a row, then looters will go to the soft undefended vulnerable homes first. Everyone wants to survive, so trying to over run a house defended by firearms will be the last choice, if 9 houses beside you are armed with a baseball bat or knife....Even if you are a anti-gun hating liberal, and know that you could never use a gun to defend your family from a dangerous group of criminals, just showing that you have a shotgun and pumping it as they walk towards your family will cause looters or criminals to run away pretty fast after they hear the shuck-shuck sound of the gun pumping...you don't need to spend $10,000 on guns & be rambo...One single $300 shotgun or even a $150 .22lr rifle will increase your families chances of survival quite a bit.

You don't need a insurance policy to drive a car technicaly, but you better....A firearm is your families and supplies insurance policy if shtf...you technicaly don't need one, but you better.

Good day here is my story, hope it helps
For me it started with saving food/water then moved on to getting a plan if something were to happen “like walking around my soundings to find natural springs and rivers”.
I then started to look for alternative foods like getting garden and hen’s for eggs
I then looked for security and have compound bow and sling shot also have firearms but they run out after a while.
I then started to look on sites to inform/teach myself for signs. Examples of sites below.
NDBC Buoys: http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/
Tropical Storms: http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/
HurricaneZone Satellite Images: http://www.hurricanezone.net/westpaci ...
Weather Channel: http://www.weather.com/
NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory: http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/Default.php
Pressure Maps: http://www.woweather.com/cgi-bin/expe ...
Satellite Maps: http://www.woweather.com/cgi-app/sate ...
Forecast Maps: http://www.woweather.com/weather/maps ...
EL DORADO WORLD WEATHER MAP: http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/ ...
TORCON: http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-t ... [Tornado Forecast for the day]
HURRICANE TRACKER: http://www.weather.com/weather/hurric ...

US WEATHER:
Precipitation Totals: http://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/List ...
GOES Satellites: http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/
THE WINDMAP: http://hint.fm/wind/
Severe Weather Threats: http://www.weather.com/news/weather-s ...
Canada Weather Office Satellite Composites: http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/satell ...
Temperature Delta: http://www.intellicast.com/National/T ...
Records/Extremes: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/rec ...

SPACEWEATHER:
Spaceweather: http://spaceweather.com
SOHO Solar Wind: http://umtof.umd.edu/pm/
HAARP Data Meters: http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/dat ...
Planetary Orbital Diagram - Ceres1 JPL: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr ...
SDO: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/
Helioviewer: http://www.helioviewer.org/
SOHO: http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-b ...
Stereo: http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/i ...
SOLARIMG: http://solarimg.org/artis/
iSWA: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/iswa/iSWA.html
NASA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/IswaSy ...
NOAA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/
GOES Xray: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sxi/goes15/i ...
Gamma Ray Bursts: http://grb.sonoma.edu/
BARTOL Cosmic Rays: http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu//spac ...
ISWA: http://iswa.ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/I ...
NOAA Sunspot Classifications: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/lates ...
GONG: http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/
GONG Magnetic Maps: http://gong.nso.edu/data/magmap/ondem ...

MISC Links:
RADIATION Network: http://radiationnetwork.com/
LISS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/monitoring ...
QUAKES LIST FULL: http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/s ...
RSOE: http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php [That cool alert map I use]
Moon: http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pac ...

This next step is extremely important
It’s becomes a lifestyle but your worst enemy will be stress, because you do not want to panic then u make wrong decisions and you cannot forget your family in all of this so you do not want to become overwhelmed, ease your way into it and follow you instinct (gut feeling) and you will not go wrong.

welcome!

The biggest thing to remember is not to try and do it all at once. Going from zero to a hundred in no time at all is going to do nothing but leave you frustrated and angry.

I started prepping a couple years ago, and while there's always more to do, I'm happy with where I am and the level of prepardness I maintain right now.

The first thing I did when I decided to do some prep work was sit down and work out my budget. How much money was I willing to spend on this? Were there lifestyle changes I wanted to make that didn't impact on my day to day living? What preps could I do that would be useful, and more importantly, sustainable? I didn't want this to be something I was gung ho about for the first six months then didn't think about again.

Once the budget was done, at the time I had a mere $20 a week I could shake loose to spend on this. It wasn't much, but it was a start. The next step was to figure out what I was preparing for. Like Denob mentioned, I decided food and water was the first priority. Even the government websites ask that you have three days supplies on hand in case of emergency or natural disasters. And given the obsessive news coverage that exists now we've seen many examples, both here and abroad of the amount of time it can require for order to be restored. If you feel that something will go so wrong that order won't be restored, it still doesn't invalidate the idea of stockpiling some basic necessities.

I toodled along with my budget for about six months, slowly building food and water supplies and more importantly, learning to cook with it. It's all well and good to have 40lbs of wheat and a grinder stored away, but if the only thing you can do is make lumpy bannock out of it, you'll get tired of it pretty quickly.

As my disposable income grew, I slotted more of it for preperation stuff. Never huge amounts, but steadily. I took several first aid courses, including wilderness first aid which is designed for when you can't get to a doctor in the next half hour, I learned how to use a pressure canner so I could vary the foods I was storing, I researched sanitation, outhouses and latrines both for the short and long term. When I moved into a house, I planted a garden, then canned the contents of it for the winter.

The long story short, start small. Plan for three days. Food, water, clothes, heat, sanitation and entertainment. See if you can stretch that to a week of supplies, and start looking carefully around you for ways to create sustainable options. I hope this helps!

Nice info fiuzzy2011. Thank you.

Whyvez,

Welcome to the Forum. I hope you still visit us from time-to-time. Please post some more about your concerns and progress. Maybe you can discover other like-minded folks near you who may be willing to share their knowledge with you and your family.

If you are checking in........check out this thread. It has 52 great ideas to get started. You do not have to follow any of the ideas in order, but it gives you a possible sequence to follow, so you will not be overwhelmed. Start small and build up as you can. 72 hours > 1 week > 1 month .....etc.

http://internationalpreppersnetwork.net/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=3290

Cheers,

Mountainman.

I would start with a risk assessment. What types of natural disasters are likely? Flooding? Tornado. Hurricane? Will you be forced out by natural disasters? Then you'll need a bug out kit.
Then the risks of where you live? City? Lots of things depend on electricity, how long will there be water pressure?
Whatever happens you'll need to eat and drink. Today, repeatedly.
Can you obtain clean water? Do you need to filter water or store it?
Can you cook the food you have?
Do you have some emergency cash?

Start by working on one day. If the regular systems don't work what will you need to make it through today? (some frozen water bottles will keep your fridge/freezer fine for a day or two- then what? will you cook it all - how? - some go for a generator - I went with a small freezer and no generator - after 2 days we'll cook + eat everything)
Then a week, then a month etc.

Where to start, well here at CPN, is one great start. Where else can you get more information from people with actual experience.

very good advice, if you can find a neighbour or someone close you can increase your monthly budget. thats what we did there are now 4 of us contributing to the fund every 2 weeks, and I've been doing this for just under ten years,the others are relatively new, but this expanded income has greatly increased our stores, security capabilities,and of course the shared work load. Just remember baby steps.

I have been doing a lot of surfing and cam across a site that uses aquaponics for sustained food production.
Has anyone heard of or is using the aquaponics system from Backyard Liberty?