The Proper Mindset

Joe at Suburban Prepping discusses the prepping (or realist's) mindset. He writes:

You might think some people are “preppers” if they “prepare” for some event. I’ve got news for you: they’re not. 

Remember the Y2K scare? The event that was supposed to cause banks to stop being able to process payments, make planes suddenly fall from the sky, and cause computers everywhere to burst into flames? Okay, maybe that’s not exactly what they said was going to happen, but it was dire. People bought gasoline, generators, and prepared for chaos! But Y2K came and went without much fanfare, and hardly any chaos.

He goes on to list other SHTF disasters that either didn't pan out, or have not yet occurred. Then:

If you’re prepping for something specific, you’re doing it wrong! 

Notice anything in common? They’re all specific events. They all come and go – if they come at all. 

Prepping isn’t preparing for something specific, it’s preparing for the unexpected… a thousand “unexpecteds”. 

... Prepping is taking everything that is “normal” right now, and asking what you’d do to handle a situation when “normal” isn’t normal anymore… 

… then making a plan, and improving your situation – both now, and if times get rough.

 Thomas Xavier, at More Than Just Surviving, makes a similar point in an article discussing bugging-in versus bugging-out:

No topic has proved as divisive on prepper and survival forums as the choice to bug in or bug out. The reality is that the choice is not always clean cut, and whether you bug in or bug out may actually be forced upon you based on changing environmental factors. 

Personally, I find the ability to adapt to be one of the key denominators in determining how well a prepper or survivalist does in bad situations. It’s ridiculous to get hung up on using a specific plan, as the future may not turn out how we imagine. Sometimes life throws a curveball in your direction, and in cases like those, you should be ready to change plans to whatever’s now best in a heartbeat.