Thursday, February 16, 2012

You Might be a Prepper if.....


Last week, I was running low on tea.  In our family, this is a catastrophe of epic proportions.  We have tea every morning before Sir Knight leaves for work and every afternoon when he returns.  The tea pot makes its appearance the moment a guest graces our home and whenever we are feeling a little low.  Often, we end our evening with a short pot of gunpowder green tea and a cozy, oil lamp illuminated living room.  The long and the short of it is - we have a tea addiction.

Alarmed when he noticed our almost empty tea canister, Master Hand Grenade said "Mom, can we get tea in a 5 gallon bucket?"  This is not a "normal" statement.  At least I don't think that it is.  And so that got me to thinking -  what other unusual occurrences happen in the house of a prepper?  What follows are a few of the things we came up with.

You Might be a Prepper if......
  • You buy your tea in 5 gallon buckets
  • You know when you've broken into the stored toilet paper because it smells like pickles
  • You know the contents of a bucket simply by the sound
  • The folks at the Mormon pantry know you by name
  • You can cook better with your wood cookstove than you can with your conventional range
  • You have more antibiotics on hand than the local clinic
  • Your 4 year old asks for a pink bug-out bag for her birthday
  • Your neighbors call you instead of 911
  • You can jump-start your 24 volt generator with a 12 volt car battery
  • Your favorite car trip game is "When I bug out, I'm going to take with me....."
  • Your 12 year old daughter instructs a 53 year old lawyer how to properly use his AR-15
  • You honestly think closets are for food
  • You let your dentist know what antibiotics you put your son on to combat an infection (including dosage and duration) and he tells you to call him when you actually need something
  • You know that plastic is not an oxygen barrier
  • You use the acronym EMP in regular conversation
  • You know what a Faraday Cage is
  • You pause Zombie movies in the middle to point out tactical errors
  • You think the movie "Tremors" is a classic
  • Your son's favorite color is camouflage
  • You think you've hit the jackpot when somebody offers you free food-grade buckets
  • You think your lensatic compass is immensely more reliable than your GPS unit
  • Your currently using toothpaste that hasn't been manufactured for 5 years
  • All your food has dates on it
  • You're on a first-name basis with Lehman's Non-electric hardware
And the list could go on and on.  Now, where do I find tea in 5 gallon buckets?

39 comments:

  1. Not in 5 gallon buskets but you can buy them in 1 pound bags from frontier. I hope that helps!

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  2. Don't know about 5 gallon buckets, but the folk at Celestial Seasonings buy their tea in large bales. Most of the teas they sell are herbal, and apparently most herbs can be stored in bulk in a warehouse, but the actual tea they buy has to be kept in an isolation chamber to prevent the tea from absorbing aromas from the environment. The other thing they isolate is the mints because the mints will spread their aroma to everything around them.

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  3. Enola,

    We all belly-laughed with you on this post...because we could identify with every example given...lol

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  4. You might be a prepper when your wife opens a can for a meal, sees the code date is 2010, and asks "Are we running low on ...?"

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  5. I like Tremors also, its a classic, Burts elephant guns a little small for my taste. They need to do a remake and update Burt with a Barret .50 and .338 lapua.

    You know your a nutty prepper when.

    The UPS driver gets a hernia from a box from "Cheaper than dirt" (and you know him by his first name too)

    The Fedex driver does not dare throw a box onto your porch (see recent youtube video's) I know that guy too, he's cool.

    You know your a prepper when you order food online that wont expire for several decades.

    You know your nuts when you come home late and night and sit in the car for a few minutes with the door locked with a .45 checking for a possible "Home Invasion" or possible ambush.

    You know your a prepper when you make frequent online visits to providentliving.org and your not a Mormon.

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  6. You might be a prepper when you're 8 yr old daughter wants you to make her a new nightgown in camo so she can blend in with the scernery, but it did have to have eyelet on it ;-).
    You might be a prepper if your 8 yr old daughter takes pride in her dad calling her Little Sure Shoot because she is already obsessed with hitting the bullets eye when the family goes out shooting.

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  7. I buy mine from www.herbalcom.com. Everything is sold by the pound. I haven't been disappointed by any of their products. Their products don't come in sealed bags so you have to take care of long term preservation. Perhaps you could call them and see about bulk discounts.

    You might be a Prepper if...
    You see a bucket with a lid that is not completely seated in a picture on someone's blog and it stresses you out to the point that you feel compelled to mention it because you know that that bucket is not fully protected.

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  8. You might be a prepper if...

    You go to the store early on Friday morning, barely had time to brush your hair let alone put on makeup, because you know today is a good day to check for mark downs on meat. You find great deals and load up the cart. Now you cancel all plans for today, tonight, and tomorrow because you've got canning to do!

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  9. Ha! Great post, identified with your points, lol!

    You might be a prepper if when you're up reading in the middle of the night, you look up and think to yourself, "I really need to make black out curtains."

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  10. Hey, I've built three Faraday Cages(from thin sheet brass and old roofing copper). Dunno about five gallon cans, but the cafeteria of my last job got it in pound or so bags.

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  11. Patrice buys from Upton in kilo lots, check with her.

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    Replies
    1. The tea question was tongue-in-cheek. I have bought my tea from Upton's for 22 years in the kilo or by the 5 kilo bag. I did get a kick out of your comment!

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    2. Ha! No fair asking a question you already have the answer to, LOL! I was wondering since you and Patrice are friends and fellow tea drinkers, why you didn't know about Uptons. Cheers!

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  12. Loved your post! Ha Ha Ha... We are doing our best to become more prepared and we really enjoy your posts.

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  13. tea, check...you might be a prepper if you show up at the gas station with more than five five gallon containers for gas enough to see you through the spring/summer and fall gardening. you might be a prepper if you have started growing tobacco.

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  14. Don't know about the tea but I am the 'go to bucket' guy in my area. Get them from the local Wal-Mart bakery (both 5 gal and 2.5 gal sizes) with lids; these are 'food grade'. Surprising, the workers sometimes apologize for not cleaning them (believe me 'Butter Cream' frosting does not (repeat not) have either butter or cream in it) which I do here at the house. One can not ever have too many buckets!

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    1. Good clue on the WM buckets!

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    2. My WalMart NEVER cleans them...just hands them over dirty. And you are right about no natural ingredients in those frostings...disgusting! We scrape out all the frosting we can, then scrub them with Dawn dish detergent, which really does cut the grease!

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    3. WM frosting is nasty. I never buy cakes or anything like that there. Ick. Our local WM doesn't have an inhouse bakery, so I started collecting the 2.5s that the little bakery in the grocery store uses. I plan on making a special trip (70 miles) to the nearest big town to gather as many buckets at WM and restaurants as I can. Wish me luck!

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  15. This was great! I enjoyed the comments as much as the post! I want to be a prepper too! ;)

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  17. You know you're a prepper when...
    ...you consider the biggest unresolved threat to your wealth to be wool/grain moths.
    ...you discover that the storm knocked out power in the area. Two days ago.
    ...out-of-towners with special dietary needs visit, and you 'run out to get' a particular item for them, returning within 5 minutes.

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  18. lol! Guilty as charged :)

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  19. pickle-smelling toilet paper? I don't get it...mine's still fine...

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    1. We store our toilet paper in 55 gallon barrels that used to have pickles in them. Although we have washed them out, they still have a slight pickle odor, therefore, any time we pull tp out of those barrels, they smell like pickles!

      Enola

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    2. You know that you're a prepper when you KNOW you have to store your TP in a pickle barrel so the mice don't destroy it over the winter making nests, right?

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  20. You might be a prepper if you don't give a second thought about using canned goods with expiration dates of 5 years ago...

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  21. You might be a prepper if you know Wal Mart will limit you to puchasing six boxes of ammo each store visit and
    you can not buy ammo after 8 pm

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  22. I got a good chuckle this past Dec. when we wanted to make Christmas cookies. Instead of grabbing the bag of flour and small bag of chocolate chips from the cupboard shelf like a "normal" person, I hauled in 5 gallon buckets full of flour, sugar and chocolate. I also enjoy that I don't really have to prepare well in advance to make our meals. I used to read a cookbook, make a list of what I needed to make the recipes, then shop for the ingredients before I could begin my cooking. Now I just flip through a cookbook and find almost everything I need in a bucket, jar, or freezer nearby.

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  23. I am a recently new CANADIAN prepper...and have been real excited reading all the comments and visiting this site! Really got me moving on collecting buckets and storing lots of "stuff" ..so much to learn!!

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  24. I love your list. I've got another to add. When I tell the kids we need to go shopping they automatically know that means going to our food closet or out to the garage.

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  25. you know you're a prepper too if in walking between worlds (yours and the outside) your income tax refunds are always pre earmarked for larger ticket prep/survival items.

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  26. I laughed when I read through these and identified with the majority of them!

    I don't have a 4 year old girl... so the pink bug-out-bag was for me...

    I order all my tea online through UptonTea.com by the 1000 gram bag. When I open one, I put what I will be using into my tea tin and use my vacuum sealer to seal 'the other half' of the bag. I then leave that one alone and order another 1000 gram bag when I am running "low" on what is in my tea tin. I store all the vacuumed sealed bags of tea in ... 5 gallon buckets. That way the tea will stay fresh for years as it is in a silver bag, which is inside of a vacuumed sealed bag... NO light and NO air exposure except for the few moments when I fill my tea tin.

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  27. Mr. wray wanted to know where you got your antibiotics? We would live to find a source for that.

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    1. Dear Gracie Wray;
      So sorry not to have gotten back to you sooner! If you wouldn't mind emailing me privately, I would be happy to give you that information (our email is: providencefarms@rezmail.com )
      Enola

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  28. I would also love to know that one.

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  29. Dr. Bob on survivinghealthy.com (he's a doctor, his wife is a RN) sell human antibiotics (multiple types, enough for one person--pretty pricey, but available).

    The other option, which preppers have been using for LOTS of years, is fish antibiotics (not horse, pig, dog, etc.--just fish). Can google the internet for on-line vet services that sell them, or can usually find them locally also. But first read the prepper doctor sites: armageddonmedicine.com, survivinghealthy.com, and doctorbonesandamyshow.blogspot.com

    All three of these doctors write very good articles geared towards preppers and how to survive in the future if medicine/medical doctors are not as prevalent as they currently are. They all think our way.

    Alinna

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  30. You think the movie "Tremors" is a classic

    Burt Gummer for President.... He would turn this country around :)

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