Quote Originally Posted by Omicron View Post
For my wife the epiphany came during hurricane Katrina, when New Orleans flooded and society went to shit down there almost overnight. Runs on stores, looting run rampant, police confiscating guns from people just trying to hunker down and protect their property, people forced into evacuation shelters where crime ran rampant, etc. She realized then just how thin and easily broken down our infrastructure is, and got 90% behind prepping. We've been accumulating supplies ever since.
The one thing we try to lean toward accumulating though is stuff we normally use in every day life, so that we're always rotating our stock. Water was an issue until we figured out a system for rotating through that too.
My wife has been slowly coming on board with the idea of stocking up over the last year. However, she has recently been pushed into overdrive because of the fires. Our hometown, Woodland Park, had a tiny bit of trouble getting gas and other things because the main highway was shutdown. Nothing major, but enough to be apparent. We don't live there anymore and it didn't affect us directly but it reminded her that our supply chain is extremely fragile. Now she is making lists too. It's great to have a second set of eyes looking at our prepping priorities. Her organization skills are far superior to mine so her input will be extremely valuable regarding how we can store the things we use everyday.

Example: we drink a lot of milk at my house. A lot. We are currently evaluating different bulk dried milk options for flavor and price. If the price beats what we get milk at the grocery store for, and we like the taste, my home will likely soon only drink milk from powder and then we can justify buying a ton of it.

Our philosophy is "it will cost more tomorrow, so why not buy as much as we can now."

Don't believe this? Google "cost of beef rising" for one example...

Although, the missing piece in our preps is her shooting skills. She is OK with guns and knows the basics but she won't practice.

My "group" consists of my family. We're a bit too spread out to offer support in a major, instant type of SHTF scenario, but we bounce ideas off each other almost daily. If things were to slowly degrade (like a major depression) the family would merge and provide direct and mutual support.