There's a segment of the population that looks at "preppers" as loons, and much of that comes from the reality that there are some real loons counted amongst the preppers. There's a larger segment of the population that would be reduced to starving lunatics in even a minor natural disaster.
On the other side of the spectrum, environmentalists have taken on a cult like status, with demands that modern conveniences be stripped of everyone to satisfy their doomsday priests of Gore and others.
A man that caters to the high minded environmentalists with more money than sense once told me that the homes he charges more than conventional builders for, can be built by the homeowner for just a few thousand.
Many of those things that have become fashionable and hence expensive are not new at all. They are a return or modification of just plain old Southern common sense. One of the big difference between preppers and environmentalists is how much they pay, and want you to pay, for the same results.
Take organic foods for example. First, what kind of food is non-organic? Yeah, a tomato is organic, whether you buy it at Kroger's or at the Farmer's Market, but if you grow it yourself, you pay about $1/100 lbs instead of $1/lb. More importantly, if you grow it yourself, it has taste, as opposed to just color and texture.
Add a small greenhouse (say 10ft by 4ft) and you can have some fresh vegetables all year round. How expensive that is, is dependent on whether or not you use old windows, or decide to buy a model from Lowe's. How much you pay for dirt depends on whether you buy 5 bags and throw them in the bed of your truck, or have your bed filled up with less than a single scoop for the same price, or have a garden load delivered for the price of 40 bags.
But what about the huge water bill for watering your garden and grass? It's fairly cheap to save your rain for a sunny day. A very small amount of rain on your roof fills a lot of barrels of water. Simply putting some 55 gallon drums on the backside of your house, and connecting them to the downspouts can mean that you have free water during the droughts. Vegetation responds better to rainwater than it does chorinated water out of the city pipes. I'm simplifying it, but your water reserves can be as much or as little as you're willing to build, and you can build roof and walls around it, if you don't want to see it every day. Elevate them a few feet if you don't want to have to use a pump. Gravity is your friend.
If you live in the city, you would probably get fined by the city if you put a chicken coop in your yard, and aren't likely to have space for a cow, but you most likely do have room for enough tomatoes and green peppers to feed you and all your guests (along with any other vegetables you like). If you supplement that with trips to actual farmers instead of overpriced farmer's markets and more expensive upscale grocery stores with "organic" tags requiring 50 page applications to the government, you can add another low cost component of Southern tradition: canning your own food. Pressure cookers aren't just for Islamist terrorists. Pressure canners are low cost one time expenses that lets you can your own food. The jars last for decades and are re-usable. The lids are cheap.
While most households don't have enough food to last a week, by canning fresh vegetables one week a year, you can feed your family for a year, for about the cost of a few weeks' grocery bills.
Freezing meat or even vegetables is another way (and easier) to stock up on food and save money. My family used to buy a side of beef and a pig every year. Chicken was bought whole and frozen at the grocery store, when it was on sale. At the bottom of the freezer were several gallon jugs of ice. In the event of a power outage, it kept the frozen stuff frozen, and supplied potable water if the city supply was contaminated. During parties, we would chip it up for drinks, but a gallon block of ice lasts a lot longer (days) than a bag of ice. Freezers are most efficient when full, and if at least half full will hold the cold for the first few days of a power outage. (Stop looking inside and it'll stay frozen longer.)
A side of beef costs about $300 these days, plus processing fees if you're not willing to butcher it yourself. (That could be well worth the costs.) That's a years worth of meat for a good sized family, for a weekly grocery bill.
Freezers are one of the few things you can still buy that are made in America. Please, take the time to find one made here. That means the smallest you can get is 8.5 cubic feet, but that's still fairly small. And please, make a point of asking where it's made, even if you know the answer. Make the salesman learn that Americans still care, and where to find out the answer. The busy time for freezer sales is in the fall, when others are putting their vegetables up. Think ahead. And freezers have few moving parts. They last decades. Even 30 or 40 year old freezers are pretty efficient. You can buy a used one and likely need to do no more than replace the seal, which is fairly easy and cheap. The best time to get a used one will likely be in the winter or spring, when the year's harvest is being emptied. A lot of times, the seller is moving to the big city and doesn't have room for it in the apartment.
But, if you decide to freeze food, it's a good idea to have a generator on hand. Don't wait for the news to announce a pending catastrophe. Buy yourself a generator at a time of your choosing when they go on sale and people aren't running scared, and when you have a few extra bucks to spend. You may not need your generator for a while after you buy it, but be sure you have all you need to run it: power cords/connections, oil, gas, etc. Do yourself a favor and get one rated at 5500 watts or more. Those little 1000 watt jobs won't even run a space heater or coffee pot.
Speaking of space heaters, pick up a couple. If it's a winter storm that knocks out power, you'll be able to heat a room or two with some 1500 watt heaters. If it's summer, it'll keep your freezer frozen, and run some box fans, and the fridge. I use a 1500 watt space heater in my bathroom. It means I only heat up a small space to not freeze my balls off when I get out of the shower. I crank it up to 75 and when I step out of the shower, the small room is toasty, while the rest of the house is comfortable.
I'm a big fan of putting work in on the front end, so I don't have to do as much in the future. That's why I like fruit trees. Plant them once, and after a few years and for decades, it literally drops fruit in your lap (if you put your chair under it). Do a little research and find out which types of the fruit you like that will grow in your area, but whether you like peaches, pears, or strawberries, there is likely a variety that will thrive in your yard. Blueberries make a beautiful privacy hedge. Combine this with freezing and canning, and you'll have healthy treats and desserts all year round. Plan it out right and you can have fresh fruit from spring until fall.
It's not a bad idea to add the component of dry storage to your plan. Grains like rice can last years if stored right. Rice is pretty cheap and despite the lack of common knowledge in America on the variety of recipes for rice, most of the rest of the world literally lives off the stuff. There are places in the world where a meal without rice is not considered to be a meal at all. There's probably enough different rice recipes to eat a different version every day for a year. If you buy the 100lb bags, you can get it cheap and literally have enough to eat for years. Add some broth cubes and the rice will be tastier without adding a lot to the storage requirements. Add some sugar storage and you have room for dessert recipes.
Do you realize that only a few decades ago, air conditioning was considered a luxury, even in the deep South? Today, people rarely open their windows. They go from heating the house to cooling the house. Ceiling fans are one way to get some air flow, but simply opening windows at the top on one side of the house and at the bottom on the other side will keep it cool, and with fresher air than the best filter you can put in your HVAC system. And if you want to speed that up, put a box fan in the window on the North side of the house.
The norm in the South used to be to have a kerosene heater in the living room. For the most part, this was sufficient and was a lot cheaper than the cost of HVAC or the energy used by it. In the North, they needed a wood stove. Today, you can get a wood stove that is outside the living area and supplements the HVAC. Not only does it save a bunch of money, but it works whether the electric company is or not. Other models of wood stoves, double as a stove. That's a great way to purify your water. Kerosene may be a good backup system, but the fumes can be deadly, or at least depressing.
Rarely do you see stone homes built anymore and they're usually reserved for the rich and famous, but stone is not only more durable, but retains heat. You need to know one primary thing when building with stone: gravity. Everything else builds on the fact that gravity is pulling the stone straight down. If you're willing to put in the work, you can build an awesome sun room on the south side of your house that acts as a passive solar heating system for your house. The deeper you make the stone floor, the better it will soak in the sun's heat during the day, and release it through the night. Keep your south facing walls full of windows to let the light in to heat the floor. Put some fruit trees south of that to shade the sun in the summer, and include a wide soffit (two foot) and when you open the windows in the summer, it'll be an enjoyable place to be, as well as in the winter's warmth. The most expensive part of stone structures is the labor. The next most expensive part is the cost of transportation which is passed off in the cost of the stone. Stone is heavy, but is often found just inches under the dirt, where people complain that it makes digging difficult.
When you live in the country, you learn to embrace Nature's Laws, because Nature doesn't care if it hurts your feelings. The Laws of Nature don't care if you want water to run uphill or for lions to lay down with lambs. Lions will eat and water will run down hill. It's a lot easier to catch water on the down side of the hill and for lions to feed on gazelles at the watering hole. If you find yourself fighting nature, take a step back, look at Nature's way of things, and see how that will help you get what you want.
Now, many live in the city, and even in apartments, and much of this can't be done while renting, particularly while renting an apartment. It's why I've never liked living in an apartment and felt like a caged animal when I have. It's not healthy and it breeds the kind of short term thinking and futilism that big government thrives on. It creates dependency. Some will tell me that they have no choice, but that's simply not true. There are still places in this Nation where you can rent a house, a decent house, for $400 to $500 a month or buy land for less than $2000/acre. These are generally places where people believe in Individual Liberty and Personal Responsibility, but often are distant from the big city and "high paying jobs." Of course, if you cut your bills down by $12,000 a year, then you're still keeping more money if you take a $10,000/year paycut.
And if you just can't cut your ties to the big city jobs, well, there's always the possibility of commuting. Getting just a few miles out of the suburbs can make it financially worthwhile to spend more money on gas. That's what caused the suburbs to grow. One place I know of is 20 minutes from 2 small cities and one medium sized. It's literally easier for those small town folks (and the surrounding countryside) to get to anything they could want "in town" than it is for a New Yorker in the urban jungle. Along one of the roads, there's a natural spring the locals get their free water from, that is purer than anything you can buy in a store. They buy most things locally, but when needed will make the trip to Wal-Mart or Lowe's in the big city 20 minutes away, on the way to or from work.
Being prepared doesn't make you a loon. Saving money doesn't make you an environmental whacko. Doing a few little things can make your life a lot more stress free and comfortable. Though solar power may still be more expensive than the power company, it's not a bad idea to have a few panels, and some devices that run on 12 volt DC, or a power inverter for those things that only come in AC. It may mean the difference between having lights when the power is off and the gas is sold out, or not. When you're shopping for things for solar systems, look at auto parts and truckers supply stores. Truckers live in their rigs and there are a lot of 12 volt appliances. It's more efficient that trying to invert it to AC. More efficient means fewer batteries and fewer panels.
And those solar lights are a lot easier to install than the AC versions anyway. If the power is out, you can literally bring them inside at night.
Candles are another cheap source of light (and potentially heat) as well. Store them in the basement, not the attic, and they'll last until you need them.
Today's society is very dependent on technology. The more "advanced" it gets, the more likely it gets that a small snafu can cause widespread outages and panics. The list of things that can cause a need to be prepared grows along with the number of people that become dependent on technology. But when a hurricane or programming error knocks out power across entire regions is not the time to prepare and even your wireless tablet will be useless in a matter of hours. Add to that, the component of those calling for revolutions, as well as the long running terrorist threat, and disasters can be natural, man-made, or stupid errors of a low level bureacrat or utility worker. Be prepared, not paranoid.
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