Author of How to Prep When You’re Broke and Bloom Where You’re Planted online course
We are living in absolutely crazy times right now. What with the crashing economy, the potential of world war getting closer and closer, looming terror threats, our fragile power grid, and frequent heated demonstrations about Gaza, Israel, the President, and ICE, it’s difficult to focus your prepping energy. A lot of folks have said they currently feel incredibly helpless because they don’t know what to do. Today, we’ll talk about what to do.
It’s overwhelming.
Our present situation is nothing if not overwhelming. Threats are coming at us from all different directions. How can we focus on just one without missing an important indicator?
It’s easy to get sucked into the cycle of fear, but that is paralyzing.
You may need to limit your access to news to get beyond it. I’m certainly not saying to completely ignore it – just to carefully select your sources and not scroll on newsfeeds and X all day long. We need information, but I’m not sure we need constant, every-second-of-our-lives information. I think that makes things seem even worse than they are in an already bad situation.
Find some trusted sources and limit yourself to those. Also, you may want to put a time limit on this.
There’s a name for spending hours reading negative news. It’s called “doom-scrolling,” and Merriam-Webster defines it as “spending excessive time online scrolling through news or other content that makes one feel sad, anxious, angry, etc.” If you’re already in the habit of doing that, it can be difficult to escape the cycle, but it’s essential if you want to be effective. Focus more on spending those hours being productive rather than immersing yourself in bad news.
As a news junkie myself, and also while I’m recovering from surgery, it can be extra tough not to get sucked in. I finally had to make a rule for myself to check three places for news in the morning and then three later in the afternoon. I spend the rest of my time working on other projects, reading books, learning skills and languages, and enjoying some shows on Amazon Prime.
I strongly suggest you limit your news time as well. You may also want to seek out some more positive stuff. There are a lot of fun channels on YouTube with good news, how-to videos, nature documentaries, cute puppies, and adorable kittens. Yes, I know some people are going to say this is an idiotic way to spend your time. And obviously, it’s not productive. But it’s far better for your mental health than doomscrolling.
What should you be prepping for?
You know, I’ve always kind of hated that question. That silly show, Doomsday Preppers, was always edited to make it look like the guests were hyper-focused on only one looming event. That’s not how real people prep, and I’m pretty sure it’s not how the guests prepped, either. But if you sound well-balanced and rational, it doesn’t make for good television.
I like to recommend general preparedness. Selco also recommends “going back to basics” when you don’t know what to do. So, think about your pillars of preparedness.
- Pillar One: Water
- Pillar Two: Shelter
- Pillar Three: Fire
- Pillar Four: Food
- Pillar Five: Signaling | Communication
- Pillar Six: Medical | Hygiene
- Pillar Seven: Personal Safety
No matter what emergency you are facing, you can’t go wrong by focusing on these areas. Here is a bundle of products that addresses some of the basics. You can get it for as low as $5 this weekend.
Another option is this Prepper’s Interactive Bundle, that will help you go through the different areas of preparedness and make sure you have your bases covered.
Another area I’d recommend focusing on is financial preparedness – paying off debt, investing wisely in tangible goods, and putting your savings into a medium that won’t lose its value.
Physical fitness cannot be overlooked either. In some situations, we are trapped in our own bodies, but most folks can work to become more mobile and fit. The more active you are now, the less difficult it will be for you later. If you’re new to this, start off slowly with just a simple, short walk at an easy pace. (Here’s an article on the topic.)
If you have mobility issues like I do, you can look on YouTube for seated exercises. One of my legs doesn’t work, but my arms have never been so ripped. While this may not make you more mobile, you can never go wrong with extra strength and stamina.
Some productive things you can do
Another thing that helps a lot is to do productive things. If your productive things are related to the pillars or your financial security, then this will help you to get through basically any kind of emergency.
Some activities cost money, while others don’t.
- Use containers you already have to store more water.
- Make sure you have multiple ways to purify water you acquire.
- Take a walk around your neighborhood or property and seek out additional sources of water.
- Grow your own food.
- Preserve food.
- Stockpile long-term storage food.
- Make any necessary improvements on your homes – good windows, perhaps some off-grid power sources, needed repairs, etc.
- Make sure you have a way to cook that doesn’t require electricity, and then practice. I used to take my girls out into our backyard in the city and we’d have a fun cookout over a campfire. They loved it, we learned stuff, and it was a nice way to bond while learning skills.
- Think about how you could stay warm if your power went out, then proceed to prepare for these alternative methods.
- Consider getting your ham radio license and practicing for communications purposes.
- Learn medical skills. You can often find free local courses at your fire department or YMCA. You can also find a plethora of excellent videos on YouTube to help you learn to handle medical emergencies. Look at both First Aid and longer term options for care, in case help is not coming.
- Learn about natural remedies.
- Work to make your home safer. Are there any easy access points for criminals to breach your home? Fix them before things get even crazier.
- Learn self-defense skills. These skills are perishable, so if you already know them, practice them.
- Head to the shooting range. This is also a perishable skill. If you don’t know how to shoot, now is the time to learn. If you do know how, now is the time to practice.
- Work on building a trusted community of people nearby. It’s great to have a plan to go across the country to meet up with family, but if you can’t get there, you’ll need a like-minded community nearby.
- Learn survival skills for extreme situations from folks who have experienced such events.
- Learn what to do in the case of certain events, like a nuclear disaster, civil unrest, or economic collapse.
- Teach your children how to handle emergencies in case they ever have to face them alone.
- Teach your children and grandchildren the skills you possess – things like making a loaf of bread, the joy of planting a seed and watching it grow, being outdoors in nature safely – don’t let these skills and arts be lost to the next generation.
These things may seem very small but in the grand scheme of things they’re significant. We are all limited by something – things like our health, our finances, our mobility, our locations, or something else. But if we’re diligent and use the resources we have to improve our situations, we can focus on productivity instead of panic.
The key here is to do something.
Don’t get sucked into the doom cycle. It’s paralyzing, and no matter who you are, or where you are, or what your situation is like, there is always some small thing you can do to improve your chances of survival. Focus on the basics when you don’t know what to do and you’ll always be better off.
What about you? How do you focus on productivity? Do you have any hacks for learning skills inexpensively? Do you find yourself doomscrolling online? How do you prepare when you don’t quite know what to prepare for the most?
Let’s discuss it in the comments section.
About Daisy
19 Responses
Dear Ms. Daisy: I am a long time reader of your articles and am very grateful that you take the time to share your knowledge, experience and pragmatism. Today’s article brought a lot of calm into my mind as it is a profound reminder that we are not powerless and that focusing on what we can do is so empowering.
Thank you for all you do, Ms. Daisy……you totally rock!
I read the news all the time. I do not see it as bad news or good news but just information. It is information that I use in my decision making process of how I act. Taken from that perspective, then most if not all of my decisions have been for the betterment of our preparedness.
Dear 1stMarineJarHead,
You’ re right. The way the information is displayed these days, ppl can make poor choices based on fear.
That is a good point Jose. Never make a decision based on emotion.
Perfectly put. I do the same.
Yep, information but even so, not dependable but just something to take into consideration. For me, i limit my “news” reading as there is so much garbage and with the AI coming on nothing can be taken for granted, especially photographs and film images…in the end, what is on my doorstep is my reality and there i can make a decision that counts….
I wonder how we are going to see voting in the future, as nothing can be trusted, not written or in vision. In my opinion we are at the end of society as a whole , time to make our own with those that think and act the same. If any time in history needed people to unite, now there was never more a need than for that. Only trust for those in our inner circle, and even then with caution.
Such as all is now is not equaled in history. It takes a new look at everything to be able to go into the future and not be grinded to zero…..
If you can’t afford anything else, you can always sort through what you DO have. Start by going through your kitchen cabinets. You will refresh your memory on what you have and what you need to get. Next, sort out your closets and drawers. You will feel better.
Excellent! It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and doing something is better than doing nothing.
Agree with this, you can purge as necessary and donate or give away. You can even make a notebook or spreadsheet with details to help. As get older and have been prepping for a while in the same place, we have totally forgotten some stuff!
pillar one: water, food, gun/weapon, tools ( knife, pry bar.) We live in a world of plenty, there is enough, there are many that want to take because they will have none.
In my opinion if you have something someone will take it. If you have food or valuables, either police, military or some other shitbag will take what you have, unless you can defend your stuff.
Why i have such low trust; in the winter of 1944 the police took people food and valuables here in the Netherlands…soldiers will always take anything, in WW2 al lot of plundering in Normandy and all around Europe was done by allied soldiers, properties of French people were still spoils of war, this is a fact. The second husband of my granny was ground personall in the English army, he had loads of stuff from being first anywhere. This is what happens if there is turmoil and some are in a position of power….in WW1 plunder was normal as many armies had to scrounge their own food together…medical care was next to none and came from volenteers….military medical treatment started in 1861/1865, before that those following armies would do the bandaging and the amputating and such….the barkeepers and the whores….the families following the armies because their men and sons and brothers were in it….
The whole of history is full of plunder by groups, both regular armies and police and hired ones….
Then there are those who steal and rob both in the past and today, when SHTF they will not convert to law abiding helpfull people. So a deterrent/ effective protection is needed.
In my opinion others are the biggest threat, all else will have a solution….it is others who will reduce your chances of survival in order to make theirs better…
so pillar one is the very basic…..and maybe the means of mobility…..better gone out of harms way than being harmed.
So this is why i think All else is a luxury and an asset. Bug out bag should be pillar one….
….safety is definitly next to food and water, so after that comes the filters, the bandages and such…
All else in skills you can add is your gold, and stuff that will make life easier like food and other stocks will soften the blow, give you time to adjust to the new shit.
If you could only take 10 kilo’s of stuff in a backpack and having run for your life, what would you have…?
O, i just love all the input, i keep seeing and reading stuff i did not know so this prepping site is gold on its own. THX !
Try a list. Look up “prepper list” or “survivalist list” or “survival list”. Or look up “how to deal with ____” using various disasters instead of “____”.
If you are already a prepper, look at your research history or one of your baseline sourcebooks. (I suspect The Anarch’t Cookbook isn’t a good sourcebook. I default to the/a Boy scouts Handbook or one of the Foxfire books.)
Last option, assuming that you have brain-dead-itis, is to rethink “what is a prepper” or “what is survival”. (I, for various reasons, default to “What do I need to do to get past the stone age? Assume I’m here” (wherever that is when my brain flakes out).)
Another option (I guess my “last” wasn’t) is to look at your day-to-day and try to translate it into a crisis day-to-day. Like “wake, morning prep, off to work, work, home, play, sleep” becomes “wake, think of what needs doing, remind self of what is done, eat something, drink something, work on a next step, rest/eat/drink, work some more, evening eat/drink, evening chores, sleep”. (Oh, heck. That’s what I do anyways, aside from morning mealtime.))
When I was in college, a long time ago, I walked into a friend’s dorm room and found him watching the news with the sound off. I asked him what he was doing and I never forgot what he said; ‘I am watching the emotional manipulation part of the news.’ That left a deep impression on me. He said the nightly news (this was before the internet) is all about manipulating us. They take facts or stories and layer on the ‘OMG, I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY DID THAT!!!’ to convince you of something without actually thinking for yourself.
When I got married, my wife and I got rid of the TV (+20 years ago) and would read our news. We can still be manipulated with print, but it’s more difficult because only your eyes and brain are engaged.
The internet brought back access to video, but it also offered us a huge advantage. I can read all the writers that disagree with me about any topic! This is a big advantage because I can read the best reasoning for points of view I disagree with. Doing this forces me to understand exactly why I think the way I do. Reading ‘the enemy’ has in some cases changed my mind or allowed me to see exceptions to my opinion.
Doing this does not eliminate any emotional manipulation, but it cuts it down so much that I can see it clearly and dismiss it. (Most of the time).
How do others here manage all the media manipulation?
Years ago we moved to a new neighborhood. Most of the people there were from the opposite political party that I supported. I was young and thought maybe I was missing something. So – I looked at many things from that party. Nope! I held my beliefs because I looked at the other side. Today, a much older me has changed my views entirely. But – I have to say the world view of most politics has changed too.
T.C.
Yes, looking closely at the other side is so important. It can be more difficult now than in the past because so many people, on both sides of political questions, no longer practice rational thought or critical thinking. I am convinced powerful people do not want us to be critical thinkers. They want us focused on the shiny new thing in the news rather than the real risk to me and my family that is all around me. By that I mean increasing criminal activity, political violence and disease.
Amusingly, my wife pointed out that most of the pictures and videos of the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations across the country were of gray-haired, boomer burn-outs that long ago lost the habit of rational thought, likely due to CNN and MSNBC blasting in their homes 24/7. This is exactly what turned my in-laws from Goldwater Republicans into raving lunatics. My FIL could not discuss any politics with me rationally; he would lose his mind and bellow at me, even though there was some common ground. To be fair, there are some rational liberals, like Bill Maher, but not as many as years gone by.
All the more reason to hold tight to the habits of reading widely, using critical thinking skills, and always extending an olive branch.
Ms Luther One of my legs doesn’t work, but my arms have never been so ripped !!
Been a very long reader of your Site
And to read the
News your Arms are
Ripped
Simple your proving
NEVER GIVE UP NEVER SURRENDER
Ms Luther please say this simple prayer every morning
PSALM 91
The Soldiers Prayer
Why
Seek your Guardian Angels
For he commands his Angels in regard to
YOU
Ms Luther your a source to many of so much
COMMON SENSE
To the many
Psalm 91
For the Sprit is Alive and well in all who
Abide in the Shade of the
ALMIGHTY
Where we live there is a working historical farm & if you volunteer the will teach you every thing there is to do. Like blacksmith, animal care , how to handel wool from start to finish , how to garden & how to run a home the 1850 way.
Plus they let you keep what every you made or harvested that day.
It’s not for everybody but it sure is a way to get free training.
NEO CONSERVATISM IS THE POLITICAL MIC
I confess I have NO SUPPORT for the inflationary that would make Joe Biden blush [if he were coherent] and transfer trillions of [covert] deficit spending embezzled value to New York Rothschild and BIS financiers. Nor to assist their globalist agenda by supporting Netanyahu in the mideast. Only Net claims Iran is trying to make a bomb.
I am surprised to not hear of challenges to the judicial appointments by Biden after it was confirmed his tenure was filled with documents signed by autopen and concluded to be invalid. The immediate suspension of invalid appointments would appear to result in dismissal of numerous indictments and judicial confusion. The same dismissal might apply to ruling by Obama appointed judges if he did not fully comply with Constitutional eligibility requirements.
Have you ever wondered where far left politicians get friendly judges to twist judgments and thwart cleaning up corruption ? Or how the politicians receive all their campaign money and lavish life styles ? Have you thought that maybe globalists have funded and covertly ‘contributed’ to screened candidates ? Such politicians surely would not wish to change the Fed operation.
Do you want to Make America Great Again ? The price is clear. It is written in history and in the legislation of the Nation. The following may be of interest.
In 1913, the Rothschild Eastern European bankers, who had previously bankrupt numerous European nations and left the citizens impoverished, were able to successfully legislate the Federal Reserve Act with a clause that all profit of it belonged to the government. For approximately 20 years they extended fiat book entry credit, identified as Federal Reserve Notes [FRN] labeled as Redeemable in Gold or Redeemable in Lawful Money, that was circulated in parallel with interest bearing government debt identified as United States Notes. The Fed received deficit spending Treasury securities for the book entry credit they created and then auctioned the security in the market and covertly pocketed the profit. The practice continues. All profit of the Fed legally belongs to the govt.
By 1933, the Fed had successfully legislated 31 USC §462 which identified their FRNs as a Legal Tender and a debt of the Nation. That Ponzi scheme debt has grown to $37 Trillion. It requires a perpetual roll-over of principal debt with a payment of interest that is only created from more principal. The current annual roll-over of approximately $17 Trillion and the auction are exclusively handled by the FRBNY and has never been audited. Ref. 31 CFR §375.3. [The BOG sets parameters for audits.]
The debt can never be paid. This same scheme undoubtedly was successfully used by the Rothschild clan centuries earlier to bankrupt European nations. The sale of the deficit spending Treasury security is a component of the auctions. It is submitted that the value is covertly funding the Globalist World Economic Forum among many other entities as evidenced by WinRed’s endless surveys. The debt is undoubtedly destined to be similar to the National Debt recently foisted by Goldman Sachs upon Greece for Sovereignty to be abrogated by the Rothschild Troika.
The only possible escape appears to require the 1933 legislation to be evidenced as an act of fraud and void from its inception.
Yep, the impending doom feeling is strong today as yesterday.
I feel I need to do more, limitations are space and money.
I wanted a rifle but saving for it is taking months.
Doom porn.. that’s a problem .
I don’t need to go looking, alot arrives in email, the rest is ytoob
Awaiting the bunker buster news, it will happen.
Pillers, all done, comms are a bit weak, nothing long range but that’s not a real problem.
I have several sw receivers.
I have 2 news blogs I follow once a day. Lifesite News and a catholic uoutube channel. That’s it. I did happen to go to conniving non news (cnn) last night for a split second n then snapped back to reality. 😂
I’ve been pretty sick last few months n also have mobility issues so I’m using up all my sick n vacation n fmla at my work, the building of doom. There’s mold in my office building and we’re all getting sick. Board of health won’t do nothing cuz they’re all good Ole boys. I’m trying to hang til August there but it’s looking like our client , Devil rideshare aka I signed a non disclosure but I’ll give yall 2 guesses on whose my client 😂 is fixing to pull the contract. Which I don’t care because I hate my job.
Any who, since I’m laid up “sick” cough cough , sneeze sneeze, I’ve called the junk man to haul off all this junk in my yard, put alot of crap at the consignment shop to try to recoup my losses , mulched my veggie plants and some of my yard, cut branches off power lines, filled up water containers, bought another house in another state….sweet home Alabama, and all this without breaking my cute 4 inch stiletto fingernails.
If I don’t laugh I’ll start screaming and there’s no sense for that. I truly pushed myself to my bodily limits though the last few days and I’m feeling the pain in my left leg so I’m getting ready to go rest and watch my 2nd favorite prepper, Father Mark Goring, this wonderful cancelled priest who got banished from Houston back to the wilderness of Canada.