June Gun Show Meetup

It’s been a while since we’ve had any public meetups, and I know I have a few supplies I need to top off on. So what a better chance to meet some other preppers than to get together at a gun show.

On Saturday the 16th a few of us will be attending the Rocky Mountain Gun Show. It’s always fun to browse the various shops, negotiate a few deals on supplies, and take some time to mingle with other folks. Let us know if you’ll be there so we can meet each other, and let’s plan on a 12:00 lunchtime at the crown burger across the street.

Following their link, you can pre-purchase tickets to avoid a line, and you can also get coupons for $1 off entrance.

FEMA guidelines and instructions for CERT drills and exercises

CERT Logo

FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has long supported CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams) in locales large and small by providing training material, grants and other support. This week they released a new set of FEMA guidelines and instructions for CERT drills and exercises. These exercises cover the gamut and include tabletop exercises, functional exercises, full scale exercises, and competitive events.

Find out more about these drills and exercises after the jump.
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Preppers in the News

Recently there has been a nice uptick in news articles referencing prepper sites like ours. In just this past week, Reuters published an article about the “Subculture of preppers” that trended, especially after it was featured on the Drudge Report. The article did include well known prepper/survival resources such as James W. Rawles, editor of the oft-linked Survival Blog.

Adding to the news, our national affiliation APN (American Preppers Network) was one of the highlighted links in a Blaze article focusing on preppers as those “Stockpiling for disaster“.
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Social Preppers

Interested in a little more discussion with the preppers here, and elsewhere?  In our association with the American Preppers Network, you now have several ways to interact with other people that like to talk preparedness.

Forum

For people interested in forum discussions, we have two available places to talk.  The APN forums will allow you communicate with the other utahpreppers, as well as other state prepper groups.  Also available is the new LDS Preppers, a similar concept but geared for the LDS readers.  By keeping with the rest of the groups, you can participate not only in the Utah discussions, but also any other regions, or specialty topics you wish.  It’s a great resource to communicate with other preppers, without having having to come out of your well-stocked mountain retreat (ok, a little humor there).  If you need to understand a little bit more about what a forum is, check out the wikipedia description.

Chat

If you like real time discussions, you can now join us in our chat rooms.  These chats are accessible to computer novice, as well as the geeks among us.  For the novice, you can easily go HERE and join the chat rooms in your browser (no software to install).  Just click the link, and you will be prompted for a nickname to use, then it’ll log you in and you will have a page to  There are several rooms available, the most important ones being the #preppers, and the #utahpreppers rooms.  Chat rooms are an ‘always-open’ type of room where you can go in and interact in real-time.  Just clicking that link will open a page with a small bar on the top that lists which rooms you can listen in (just click on one to see the activity in that room).  On the right hand side will be a list of people currently in the room, and at the bottom, you can type in a message, and just hit enter for everyone to get it.

For the Geeks, we’re all using the rizon IRC network, and you may use any IRC client (such as XChat, WeeChat, or others) to connect.

Pandemic Preparedness Lecture in Spanish Fork 25-Jan-2009

BE PREPARED NOT SCARED

Topic

How to Prepare for a Coming Pandemic

Learn:

What your family needs to do to prepare. Pandemics can be survivable with proper preparations – learn those guidelines NOW.

Where:

Spanish Fork East Stake Center
870 East Canyon Rd. Spanish Fork, Utah
(major cross streets – Main and 300 South
300 South transitions into Canyon Rd.)

When:

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Time:

6 – 8 pm in the Chapel

Dress:

Church Dress – We are meeting in the chapel.

Speaker:

Kenneth Moravec

Kenneth Moravec’s professional training and reputation makes him an excellent instructor for Pandemic Training. Joanne and I have heard him speak several times, he is great. Please come and listen to him, gather this important information for your family and ward. You may want to invite others (age 18 and older), your family, friends, neighbors, business associates and etc.

We look forward to seeing you there

Hosts:

The City of Elk Ridge – Spencer Sheets

American Preppers Networks

The idea of regional/state preparedness networks seems to be catching fire.  Just like what has happened with a couple friends and I, people are looking out to how they can begin to share the information they have about preparedness of all forms to their neighbors.  The early networks such as Texas and us here in Utah started as simply a couple bloggers looking to network together a little more.  Now in our amateur attempts to help ourselves and our friends, we seem to have started something, as we began to see other states such as Kentucky, Idaho, and Colorado start their own groups.   As it should be, each is independant, representing local bloggers trying to share their experiences in life with the local flavor.usa

Well, several people have been wondering how they could possibly start a group for their own state.  Some even stooping to asking us (talk about a rewarding feeling, as if this is successful :) ) how to get a group started.  I’m glad to say that somebody has stepped up to make this process even easier.  Check out American Preppers Network, which is an umbrella blog.  He’s also created blogspot blogs for each of the 50 states, and will hand them out to anybody who’s willing to step up and lead the charge.  Interested in seeing something for your state, step up and help out, it’s never been easier.

Of course, if you have the technical aptitude, feel free to use other means.  This site here just happens to have a bunch of geeks running things, so we run our own software, on our own server.  But as all things preparedness related, use your own strengths. :)

Continue reading “American Preppers Networks”

New Author: Wade

Hello, I’m Wade. I am an avid outdoorsman. I respect and honor nature. I like to keep things simple. I take great pride in the size of my annual REI dividend. I love gardening, cooking, backpacking, mountain biking, road cycling, snowshoeing, and photography. I enjoy working with my hands, being self-sufficient, and solving problems. I am a graphic artist, interaction designer, and software engineer.

I grew up in Utah and currently reside in Lehi with my gorgeous wife and children. I am a member of the North Temple Group where I work as an interaction designer and user advocate for web applications. I also started and administer the Utah PHP Users Group, the Utah Graphic Artists Forum, and the Utah Apple Users Group.

I’ve always considered myself to be fairly prepared. But as of a few months ago, I don’t any more. I have a lot of work to get done. The change in opinion comes from a change in perspective. I spent a week over the holidays filling 340 ten pound cans in my garage. I had a lot of time to think. I thought about how few people are prepared—whether by choice, ignorance, or because they are unable. I enjoyed the good feeling inside (that came with knowing I had another twelve months of food tucked away) for a bit but then started asking myself a lot of questions.

I realized that I was not prepared. Generally, when people talk about being prepared, they talk about having the necessary supplies to sustain their current lifestyle through a temporary emergency (whether that be a natural disaster or simply a personal financial hiccup). There is a difference between having supplies and being prepared though. Having supplies is important, but being prepared is more important. We might have stored wheat but do we know how to cook it? What am I going to do once my storage runs out? Do I know how to hunt? If I am able to kill an animal, how am I going to store it? If I run out of water, do I know how to dig a well? Once my propane runs out how am I going to cook? Where am I going to go to the bathroom? How am I going to heat my house? Can I grow a garden? Am I prepared to protect my family?

I believe the greatest weakness of our current society is that people have very few skills. We purchase everything we need and rely on technology to sustain us. If Walmart was gone tomorrow, what would people do? Even if we choose to not live a self-reliant lifestyle, I believe it foolish to not have the skills to provide for ourselves and families if we needed to. I have a to-do list that I am putting together of things that I need to learn. I need to learn how to store food short term without refrigeration. I need to build a root cellar. I need to learn how to hunt. I’d like to buy a wood burning stove. I need a solution for waste disposal. How do you milk a cow? How do you make candles? How do you make soap? People talk about a year’s supply of food all the time, but what about toilet paper?

I am excited to be included as an author with the others here and look forward to hearing about your adventures and preparedness efforts as well.

Crossroads Co-op: December Deadline

Just a reminder to folks, that the December deadline for orders to the Crossroads co-op is Friday the 5th. What’s the co-op you might ask? Well, in their own words:

IT’S A SIMPLE IDEA, REALLY – provide quality, healthy food at a substantial savings through cooperative purchasing; and build a sense of community by bringing people together and promoting volunteer service.

The Community Food Co-op is for EVERYONE. Whether you are struggling to meet your basic food needs or are just looking for a way to share in community, you can be part of this simple exchange: giving and receiving.

groceriesSo the Co-op is just individuals, and community groups working together to buy the best quality food, directly, at the best price for the group. Costs are kept as low as possible by buying only a select set of items, at the best negotiated price point, then distributed via donated resources of the co-op members.

Continue reading “Crossroads Co-op: December Deadline”

Blogger Highlight: Riverwalker

In an effort to help recognize some of the great preparedness bloggers out there, and help people find some of the other great resources on the web, I’d love to introduce folks to a blogger I’ve been reading for a while now. Riverwalker maintains a couple of blogs himself, the Stealth Survival, and Riverwalker’s Survival Gear.

Riverwalker has a great way of presenting very useful information in an appealing, direct manner.  He’s also been great at helping other preparedness bloggers get their start, and get connected to other folks.  Please take some time and read up on what he’s already published.  A lot of nice, simple, to the point posts that will go far in helping anyone be ready for any kind of emergency.

A few recent topics of interest from his blogs:

Welcome To Utah Preppers

Welcome to the blog for Preppers in Utah.  Just like the old Dr. Pepper theme : “I’m a prepper, he’s a prepper, wouldn’t you like to be a prepper too?”.

We’re a group of Utahns that share various interests in preparing for whatever the future may hold.  From TEOTWAWKI, to the common extended layoff.  We hope to share resources found among our members that will help everbody get ready for whatever the future may bring to each of us.

We’re off to a good start already with some helpful posts, hosted content, and links to other preparedness networks like us.

If you are interested in helping out from any way, from authoring original content, cross-posting from your own blog, or just commenting, let us know.  Join us and get your own @utahpreppers.com email address :)

Also, add our RSS feed to automatically receive content as it’s published.