So let me say a little, but just a very little, about me.
I have been a prepper for around a decade. There were series of triggering events for me (e.g. watching the chaos and disruption in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, social distrubances in our increasingly polarized society, witnessing increasingly severe climate events, etc.). But I can’t really point to a particular moment when I became a prepper. It was more like an instinct that became more acute as time passed.
The birth of my son a few years after Katrina was a major milestone. I was responsible for the welfare of that little, dear life, and I realized I had a responsibility to anticipate and protect him.
I was quite lucky in that my wife was following a similar trajectory. (Spousal support and agreement has been an issue for some other preppers I know.)
As for my particulars:
I am middle aged. Gen X. I have an advanced degree in a technical field, but that doesn’t make me an expert in everything. Or maybe even anything.
I am unexceptional in appearance. A bit tall but that’s it. You wouldn’t think twice if I walked past you on the street.
I live in the suburbs. My neighborhood is a planned development of fairly recent vintage.
I am located in what some call the Southern Part of Heaven (i.e. south of the Mason-Dixon line) in an area that is an epicenter of the “knowledge economy”. In practice that means many of my friends, associates and acquaintances are reasonably smart people who also have acronyms after their names, are very focused and technically (if narrowly) skilled and tend to be hypercompetitive.
Most of them are also blind in some respects. The arrival of Covid-19 has burst many of their personal bubbles in very an unsettling way.
And that’s it. That’s all you get, or need, to know about me.
And maybe therein lies the most important rule of prepping: be secretive. Some refer to it as being “The Gray Man”: the one who doesn’t stick out.
So maybe that is the point of this post:
Rule 1. Be the Gray Man.