A Practical “where to start” Guide to Prepping

A Self Managed Insurance Plan is a way to build household capability in layers. The goal is simple: reduce dependency on fragile systems by covering essentials first, then improving depth, redundancy, and skill.

This page is the starting point. It’s designed to give you a clear order of operations, plus links to deeper guides on this website so you can keep building.

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Step 1: Run a fast audit before you buy anything

Before you spend money, identify your weak points. Walk your house and property and look for dependencies you haven’t tested.

Use a simple structure:

• What fails first if the power goes out
• What breaks if water pressure drops
• What you can’t do without the internet
• What you can’t do without a store run
• What creates a safety issue if response times are long

If you want a structured checklist built for this exact process, start with the walk-around audit and use it seasonally.

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Step 2: Water

Water problems escalate fast. Your plan needs storage and purification, and it needs to work without power.

Build your water system in this order

1. Storage for immediate use: Store enough water to buy time and reduce panic.
2. Transport capability: You should be able to move real quantities from a local source.
3. Filtration: Gravity filtration scales well and doesn’t require power.
4. Chemical treatment: Chemical methods are compact, long-lasting, and work as a backup.

Tips that matter

• Water is heavy. Plan around weight and stability. Your “carry system” matters as much as the filter.
• Sanitize containers periodically. Biofilm becomes the quiet failure point of otherwise solid water storage.
• Keep a long-term sanitizer that doesn’t degrade like liquid bleach. Calcium hypochlorite is the cornerstone compound for that job.

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Step 3: Food

Food preparedness is logistics and rotation. Start with what you already eat, then add long shelf-life items that hold value for years.

Build food capability in layers

• Short disruption layer: extra of normal groceries
• Medium layer: shelf stable staples you rotate
• Long layer: foods designed for multi-year storage
• Cooking layer: ability to cook with limited power and fuel

Food storage goes wrong when people skip safety and shelf life realities. The Survival Foods Guide is a good hub for storage methods, lifespan, and risk management.

Practical tips:

• Track what your household actually consumes in 14 days. Stocking becomes obvious once you have real numbers.
• Add foods that require low water and low fuel. In disruptions, those constraints matter as much as calories.
• Store the boring basics well. Containers and environment usually matter more than brand.

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Step 4: Light and power

Power loss creates compounding problems: no lights, no charging, limited cooking options, reduced comms, and less awareness.

Minimum baseline

• Multiple flashlights and headlamps
• Spare batteries or rechargeable batteries
• A way to recharge essential devices
• A plan for longer outages

Solar is the cleanest path to daily reliability because it doesn’t depend on fuel resupply. Your solar and home backup power content supports readers who want to go deeper than “a generator and some gas.”

Practical tips:

• Treat lighting like redundancy planning. One light is none. Put lights where problems happen: bedrooms, kitchen, entry points, garage.
• Identify your critical loads. Charging phones and running a freezer are different problems and require different planning.

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Step 5: Medical

Medical preparedness includes supplies, documentation, and the ability to act calmly under stress.

What to cover first

• Bleeding control and wound care
• Infection prevention
• Pain, fever, allergy, and GI support
• Prescription medications and continuity
• Storage methods that protect meds long term

Practical tips:

• Build a “house kit” and a “mobile kit.” They serve different purposes.
• Write down med dosing guidance and store it with the kit (the Jase Case has med deck cards that make that very easy). Under stress, memory fails.

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Step 6: Firearms and personal defense

Include firearms in your preparedness plan and treat them as a system.

The practical approach

• Choose reliable firearms that are effective for the purpose
• Train enough to be competent and consistent
• Store securely with reasonable access
• Maintain an ammunition baseline appropriate to your training and realistic scenarios
• Integrate defense into home layout, lighting, and communication

Practical tips:

• Training beats gear upgrades. A simple, reliable setup used consistently matters more than variety.
• Home defense planning includes physical hardening, visibility, and practiced movement at night.

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Step 7: Chemical compounds

This is one of the highest leverage categories in long-term preparedness because stable compounds solve multiple problems across water, hygiene, cleaning, preservation, and pest control.

How to build a chemical compounds baseline

Start with compounds that are:

• Stable in storage
• Useful across many tasks
• Simple to apply safely
• Replace products that degrade or are hard to resupply

I will be releasing my chemical compounds for preppers book soon. More details to come!

Practical tips:

• Store dry, sealed, labeled, and separated from moisture. Most compound failures are storage failures.
• Keep a written quick-reference for dilution and use cases in the container, not in your phone notes.

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Step 8: Communication and information

Build a communication plan that still works when cell service is unreliable, congested, or down. The goal is consistent coordination, clear check-in rules, and multiple ways to send and receive information.

What to set up first

1) A written communication plan
Put this on paper and store copies in your home kit, vehicle, and go-bag.

Include:

• Names and phone numbers for family, neighbors, and key contacts
• Addresses for meet-up locations
• A simple check-in schedule
• Clear fallback steps if someone can’t be reached

2) One out-of-area contact
Choose one person outside your region that everyone uses as the first call or text. Local disruptions often make local routing unreliable, while out-of-area routing still works.

3) Local comms that don’t rely on cell towers
Two-way radios provide short-to-moderate distance communication without internet or cellular infrastructure. Terrain and buildings control range, so test in the places you actually move around.

Practical setup:

• Standardize on one channel plan for your household
• Label radios and keep a simple quick-reference card with them
• Keep spare batteries or a battery pack dedicated to radios

Add a cellular booster layer when you have weak service

If you have some signal outside but it drops indoors or you’re stuck at one bar, a cellular booster can make calls and texts more reliable by pulling in weak signal and rebroadcasting it.

Practical tips:

• Test signal strength before and after using your phone’s field test mode so you can verify improvement
• Mount antennas cleanly and keep cables protected because physical routing is usually where installs fail over time
• Treat boosters as a “make weak signal usable” tool, not a guarantee in true dead zones

Add a portable internet layer when you need online access

Satellite internet adds a separate path for messaging, maps, updates, and coordination when cellular networks are down or you’re outside coverage.

Don’t let power be the weak point

Communication fails when devices die. Keep these inside your power kit:

• Charging cables for phones and radios
• A battery bank sized for your devices
• A recharge method that doesn’t depend on outlets, solar is the cleanest option for daily reliability

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Step 9: Bug-out, everyday carry, quick-find storage

Most people don’t need a fantasy loadout. They need a practical ability to move essentials, handle short disruptions, and stay functional away from home.

Practical tips:

• Build around scenarios you actually face: vehicle breakdown, evacuation due to fire, grid outage, travel disruption.
• Pack for time and distance. Those two variables dictate everything.

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A simple timeline for new preppers

If you want a clean order of execution:

Day 1 to Day 7

• Run the audit and fix obvious gaps
• Establish water storage and at least one purification method
• Establish lighting and power redundancy

Week 2 to Week 4

• Expand food buffer and improve storage approach
• Build a basic medical kit and documentation plan
• Start chemical compound basics, starting with sanitation

Month 2 and beyond

• Add power depth, including solar
• Train skills: water, medical, navigation, home drills
• Expand comms and mobility systems

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A Self Managed Insurance Plan is a practical way to build household readiness without getting overwhelmed. Start by removing the most fragile dependencies first: water, food, light, power, and medical basics. Once those are covered, add layers that extend capability, including communication, mobility, and a reliable way to protect yourself and the people in your care.

The goal is a system that keeps working when conditions change. That means redundancy, simple equipment that’s easy to maintain, and written plans that reduce decision-making under stress. It also means practicing the basics, such as lights-out drills, water handling, radio use, and cooking without relying on the grid.

Use the links throughout this guide to go deeper on each category and build your plan one section at a time. If you follow the order on this page and keep improving the weak points you discover, you’ll end up with a setup that’s realistic, sustainable, and built around how you actually live.

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