Buy in

[Kmanbay]

I have always had an interest in survival planning and storage. My problem is how to my wife to participate and buy in?? plese let me know what worked for your wife significant other. I am especially interested in the women in the forums point of view, and how you came to your comfort level of preparing.

Thanks
Kman

[blacklabel]

One common tactic is to have them read One Second After or Lights Out. Let their imagination run with the worst case scenario so that their natural tendency to care for their family comes into play.

[two shoes]

One common tactic is to have them read One Second After or Lights Out. Let their imagination run with the worst case scenario so that their natural tendency to care for their family comes into play.

^^^This works!!!^^^

[DOC]

Get her hooked on smack. Then tell her if she wants a fix she is going have to let you go camping.

[hollohas]

Mine is starting to come around. This may sound funny or go without saying but avoid any talk about zombies. Yes, we all know that there will never be zombies and that when we talk about zombies it's just an easy way to discuss TEOTWAWKI without describing a specific "event" that triggers it. I made this mistake once and she thought I was crazy. I wasn't being serious but it set me back a couple years in getting her on board. Every time I mentioned prepping she said "oh, in case we get zombies?" Truly what I'm worried about is economic collapse and a subsequent collapse of society. Far from zombies...

Anyway, assuming you are starting from ground zero, start slow. Start by working up to a few days supplies. Remind her what happens before hurricanes. The store shelves empty in mere hours. We have ALL seen that on the news. The same happens here, kind of...We're in Colorado so we can (and do) have winter storms that shut down everything for days. Stores simply don't open. So you should have enough food, water, batteries, light, warmth, extra fuel, etc. in case we do see a storm that big. The power can go out, the roads can be impassible. This a great time to ask for a kerosene heater. That's a bigger item but if your house is anything like mine it can't hold heat worth a ****. Turn your heat off right now and leave it off for this storm to simulate a power outage and I bet by Thursday she'll let you buy one.

What worked for me to get her interested in prepping for more than 3 days...I didn't even base it around an "event" at first. I made it about being frugal.

-Tell her it's a good idea to buy extra food when it's on sale so you save money. Who doesn't like saving money? Little by little...
-Make your food storage just a big pantry. You both will love having everything you need in the house and not having to run out to the store all the time.
-Discuss how the economy worries you and how everything costs more these days. Stock up now before it gets more expensive.
-More people get laid off everyday. You never know if you may be next so you want to prepare by buying food and supplies while you can. So if something does happen and you lose work your family will still be able to eat, etc. If you don't have a grocery bill then it will be easier to keep the roof over your head should jobs be hard to come by.

All these discussions will start to get her thinking about different scenarios and with only a little extra effort you can get her on board for full scale prepping.

And I'll leave it with this...I avoid focusing on doomsday stuff. That seems to get my wife to go the other direction. Leave your reasons for wanting to prep to "just in case of hard times", "to save money", "severe storm", "massive inflation", "economic depression" and the like. Hey, our grandparents did it and they certainly weren't worried about EMPs, mobs or looters. They just wanted to make sure they had everything they needed should they need it.

But if she does read the books mentioned and they scare her then you shouldn't have a problem.

[Bootifus]

My wife's growing paranoia about 2012 allowed me to buy a new Super Nova. A woman's imagination can go a LONG way.

[ChunkyMonkey]

My wife's growing paranoia about 2012 allowed me to buy a new Super Nova. A woman's imagination can go a LONG way.

hahaha.. works for me on a 1966 Mercedes Diesel.. now I am trying to convince her that we need a mog.

[Omicron]

Definitely avoid doomsday stuff, and talk of zombies also immediately makes her think you're not really serious "because everyone knows that's never really going to happen." Instead focus on being prepared for natural disaster.

Hurricane Katrina was what brought my wife around... she saw how all the stores closed, supply lines dried up, and anarchy ruled for a while. She was the one who decided it would be a good idea to have enough supplies stored so that we could hunker down here for an extended period of time. Of course I'd been socking in other things for years, and she was on board with that, but Katrina pushed her over the edge so to speak to become a full partner with me in the effort. Didn't take much explaining on my part of how fragile our nationwide power infrastructure is, or how simply the transportation infrastructure can be disrupted, for her to buy into it fully.

There's enough natural disasters in the news almost daily to use that as a starting point. Begin with a casual conversation and build on it from there as she gets used to the idea. Food and water wise, we started with only stocking up on the stuff we know we use all the time, then expanded into other supplies as time went on.

Hope this helps. Great topic.

[birddog]

Next time there is a major storm and the trucks cannot get in take her to the grocery store after the second day and see what's on the shelf. She will quickly see how reliant you are on the supermarket and quickly buy in to having some supplies on hand.

[jerrymrc]

Next time there is a major storm and the trucks cannot get in take her to the grocery store after the second day and see what's on the shelf. She will quickly see how reliant you are on the supermarket and quickly buy in to having some supplies on hand.

The canning and buying of many items mine never had an issue with. She did kind of raise her eyebrow a little when the #10 cans started showing up but when the trucks could not get to the springs for 3 days I took her to king soopers and showed here what was left.

3 days and the store was 3/4 empty. No dary, no bread, shelf's empty of everything but auto supplies and air fresheners. She understands now.