Great to see your post, Taurus. God bless and we cannot wait until your excursion is over and you are safely back.

Your post is a wonderful reminder. The primary purpose of survival preparedness isn’t getting gear… it is planning. You could have a U-Haul full of gear, but unless you’ve put the thought and planning into what you have and how it is going to help you, that gear is useless.

The goal is not to download some list of the crap you should have off the internet, go buy all of it, and say, “Mission Accomplished.” That isn’t preparedness… that is a shopping spree.

The fact of the matter is that you either plan now before a disaster happens, or you have to try and plan while under the pressure of being in the disaster. After the crap hits the fan is too damn late to begin making survival plans. Wondering whether or how much water was on the survival list you downloaded two years ago, trying to remember where your stored it two years ago, or wondering if the water is still suitable to drink are not good things to be thinking about when you need water now!

The very first piece of gear that should be on your survival lists is your brain. And that is not some coy statement that you can respond to by saying, “Well, as long as my head is still attached when the disaster happens…” and blow off. You need to think, evaluate, and make plans about possible disasters before you ever buy gear for a possible disaster.

There are no shortcuts to being prepared. The only easy way out of survival is accepting death. Deal with it.