For those of you without cable television, you may not have heard much about preppers. Despite what the sensationalized reality shows would have you believe, most so-called preppers tend to be focused on practical solutions to unforeseeable problems. While some preppers focus more on one particular disaster they believe to be possible or likely, many dedicated preppers look to prepare themselves for all varieties of maladies that might come before them. Backpackers stand to learn from the prepping community by taking stock of the likely risks that a hiker might face on the trail while recognizing that it is entirely foreseeable that the unforeseeable will happen.
Preppers like to talk about three modes of disaster preparedness: 1) bugging in; 2) bugging out; and 3) everyday carry.
"Bugging in" is the process of preparing one's home for a disaster. This is accomplished by thinking about the sorts of things that one might need in an emergency and making sure the house is well stocked. Stockpiling food, fresh water, even ammunition or weapons is common in the preparedness community. Lasting through a severe snow storm is a prime example of a situation where someone might choose to bug in. Bugging out is the process of taking the things needed to survive and going out on the road. If expecting wild fires or floods near your home, you might choose to bug out. Everyday carry, perhaps self-explanatory, is simply whatever you have on your person on a daily basis.
We will focus mostly on bugging out for now, since it is the most directly applicable to hiking. The key piece of equipment when bugging out is called a bug out bag. A bug out bag is a bag that is pre-packed with equipment and supplies that you might need for life on the road. The prepper's bug-out bag is not identical to what a backpacker might carry with them, but it's worth comparing.
A prepper's bug out bag is usually intended to provide roughly three days' worth of emergency supplies, although this may vary from person to person. Military operators also like to stick with a 72-hour bag. Your average bug-out bag is going to be much heavier than a lightweight backpack. These bags are not necessarily designed for thru-hiking, and are often set up to accommodate multiple people.
That said, comparing your pack to a good bug-out bag will help round out your gear, and does not have to significantly increase your pack weight. For example, consider packing a small radio transceiver, or walkie-talkie. Packing something small that can help you send and receive communications can be a matter of safety in some cases. More often, a few walkie-talkie among friends is just another source of entertainment on the trail. Of course, you can pack a cell phone instead, but cell phones rely on proximity to a cell tower, and often run out of batteries. Preppers tend to look for ways to create redundancy in their preparations.
Be careful though, maintaining redundancy can sometimes add unnecessary weight. The lightweight backpacker should consider whether weight trumps redundancy in each instance. Multiple sleeping bags or tents are probably too bulky to be practical. However, multiple tools to start a fire (in places where that is allowed) could make the difference between a warm jolly evening by the fire or a dark, damp, chilly night.
A backpacker thinking like a prepper about their pack is going to ask, what if this item doesn't work, what do I do then? What if this resource is closed to me or unavailable, what will I do then? Planning is critical for backpackers, but the prepper wants not just a plan, but a plan for what happens when the plan fails. For instance, I suggest having three different methods of fire making, e.g. bring matches, a lighter and a magnesium fire starter. Of course, you should know how to use these items if you are going to pack them. Practice is critical for developing backup plans and for learning to foresee some more common problems. For instance, practice fire starting and you'll quickly learn that starting a fire after a heavy rain or during high winds is significant more difficult.
Here is another example, think about what you are going to do if your water cache does not pan out. This could be a serious problem in certain places, so make sure you have thought it through. Are there alternate water sources nearby? Perhaps it is a good idea to maintain a small reserve for emergencies. If traveling in a group, communicating about food and water can help to ensure that everyone has enough.
There are so many unforeseeable things that could go wrong, make sure you are following basic safe procedures to mitigate damage in the event of an unforeseen problem. Being injured out on the trail can go from harrowing to deadly if no one knows where you are or how long you plan to be away. Part of that planning process involves what you carry and the skills you have developed to use those tools, but your plan should also include informing friends or loved ones of your plans so someone can come to your aid in case of an emergency.
The takeaway from thinking like a prepper is to ask yourself: what could possibly go wrong and how do I plan to deal with it?
ARTICLE OUTLINE
- Preppers
- Primitive Skills
- Military
- Hunters
- Conclusion
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Companion forum thread to:
What we can all learn from each other: A cross-disciplinary approach to backpacking skills
I agree, there is a lot we can learn from any discipline in the woods. Carpentry, engineering skills will let you easily build a small shelter. Or make a quick repair in an emergency by pinning stuff together (and melting the poly or nylon around the edges.) Holing your canoe can be repaired by boiling some pine sap and coating over a piece of sheet bark (or just slathering over a duct tape patch to make it last the day.)
Knowing what is good to eat and what is not can allow even a light weight hiker supplement the things he brings. From wild carrots to cattails, all can provide a meal. Birch bark can be made into tea with aspirin like properties. A green apple can supply many vitamins you might be missing on the trail. Get familiar with them in your hiking area.
Anyway, a good article, Thanks!
Reading about the Evenki people made me realized how we substituted skills for gears, and I started trimming weight away from my pack because of that.
Reading about them also made me realized how traditionalists hold onto old gears out of nostalgia and not necessarily practicality because those people would not be reluctant to adopt new technology if offered. Innu and Cree of northern Ontario and Quebec behaved in a similar fashion too.
I used to think wool blankets have some function still thanks to the bushcraft community's insistence on following the old texts, until I read about the Kazakh nomads and how they have these sleeping bags slash bivoac made of leather to endure nights colder than the lower 48.
This was a particularly excellent article! Not only does it offer insight/put into words some of the things I have already been doing (esp. in cross-applying prepper and survivalist concepts/solutions to backpacking), but it is a good reminder of the overlapping folks who spend time in the outdoors and their motivations…
Good one – thanks!!!
Enjoyed the article and totally agree, everyday you can learn from someone else!
Tony
glad to see some out of the box considerations. Although many of the people who prescribe to these other groups are in a box of their own. Coming from my no gear, taking my wool bed blanket and a poly tarp, early 20's I slipped into bushcraft not because I heard about it, but because I was subjected to journals filled with the ways of old pioneers when I was young. Great resources to observe the daily complaints and creative preperations to avoid those issues.
I do hope you weren't squirming in your seat to bad trying to make this subtle enough to not turn off those who appose all else but bpl. I think you did a great job and could help the other forums discover lightweight mindset, because I never understood the practicality of why anyone would pay for an old, 50lb military surplus load that brandish an ego on a large axe, they are misled and need to be woken up from their iconic gear worship. but hopefully they wouldn't just drill holes in the axe handle.
" Coming from my no gear, taking my wool bed blanket and a poly tarp, early 20's I slipped into bushcraft not because I heard about it, but because I was subjected to journals filled with the ways of old pioneers when I was young"
That's why I like reading about modern nomads and aboriginals: many of them come from an environment which gave birth to our explorers, pioneers, cowboys and mountain men; but at the same time, we have to acknowledge us westerners voluntarily adopt the old gears and old methods by choice; they didn't for a variety of socio-economic and political reasons and not to mention many were and continue to be victims of racist and paternalist institutions. So, to me, it's quite eye-opening to see that numerous nomadic groups in the world are quick to embrace newer technology if they could get their hands on it.
But at the same time, those aboriginals and nomads are still using skills we don't have on a daily basis. So, they haven't abandoned the old ways at all.
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