If you are located in Volusia County, you can use our Contact form to let us know your approximate location, and we might be able to connect you with a local group. No guarantees, but we can try.
“What can I do at this point?” Good question. Gather resources. Make connections with like-minded people in your immediate area. Strengthen your family. Pray. Most importantly, take action. The time for thinking about it, weighing pros and cons, careful consideration of minor points – all of that is gone. Analysis Paralysis is a very real thing, and the results are potentially deadly. Act now or wish you had. Time’s up. The door has closed.
Advice from the past for the predicted (planned) food shortage.
Our focus is on making the kind of balanced and realistic preparations that used to be considered ordinary common sense in an unstable and unpredictable world. That means being able to carry on without being dependent on external systems for the basic necessities of life – regardless of what happens – or what doesn’t happen.
Our focus is on both Preparedness and Awareness.
Preparedness is about independence and self-sufficiency rather than obsessing over any specific scenario.
Awareness is about understanding potential threats to our way of life and how to deal with those threats. Think of it as an expanded version of Situational Awareness.
Program topics are aimed at real-world prepping, and we avoid “arts and crafts” prepping topics. With that said, we aim to do more than merely survive, so where appropriate, we sometimes include topics that help us retain what makes us human rather than merely existing. Quality of Life matters.
Volusia County Prepping exists to provide our members with a strong base of preparedness. We also “deep dive” into some topics, but our primary focus is on getting every member to a basic level of self-sufficiency – a level that is well within reach of nearly everyone.
Are You Prepared to be Wrong?
If being wrong means:
ꔷ grocery stores are empty?
ꔷ the electrical grid is out?
ꔷ the water mains are dry?
ꔷ the rule of law no longer applies?
ꔷ chaos and violence are the norm?
ꔷ governmental services are no longer available?
Are You Prepared to be Wrong?
If being wrong means:
ꔷ we have peace and prosperity and financial stability?
ꔷ life continues pretty much as it has for the past 50 years?
(Not likely, but possible)
Criteria for our program topics:
- Can this be done or made at a time when the raw materials are not available in stores and cannot be locally harvested?
- Does this skill directly improve our chances for survival or significantly improve comfort, rather than just being a minor “nice to have” item (i.e., no “arts and crafts” topics).
- Can this be more effectively bought and stockpiled now rather than made later?
- Does this provide a needed material in quantities enough to be practical?
- Does this require a skill level that can be reasonably attained, or is it beyond the average prepper capability?
- Does this raise awareness of real situations that require active preparedness in order to survive?
This is our basic criteria. Exceptions may occasionally be made, but our focus is on learning real-world solutions to serious survival issues. We do not have time for “arts and crafts” prepping at this point.
A few thoughts to keep in mind
“Paranoia is a survival tool. Panic is not.”
“Ole Remus”“Crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.”
Rudiger Dornbusch, MIT Economist“…nuclear warfare is not necessary to cause a breakdown of our society. You take a large city like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago–their water supply comes from hundreds of miles away and any interruption of that, or food, or power for any period of time, you’re going to have riots in the streets. Our society is so fragile, so dependent on the interworking of things to provide us with goods and services, that you don’t need nuclear warfare to fragment us anymore than the Romans needed it to cause their eventual downfall.”
Gene Roddenberry“When paranoid, you can be wrong 1,000 times and you will survive. If non-paranoid; wrong once, and you, your genes, and the rest of your group are done.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and Fooled by Randomness. On Twitter concerning the Covid-19 threat, February 23, 2020.
Meeting photos
Meeting topic – radio comms. (faces blurred)
Meeting topic – defensive strategies.
Meeting topic – long term food storage.
You might be at a Volusia County Prepping meeting if…
… there is a cage of chickens just outside.
… you see cases of MREs stacked by the front door.