Over the last few years the credit crunch, bank bailouts, volcanic ash clouds, homes flooding and so on, to name just a few, everyday people in the UK have started to think more about how to best prepare for these types of situations, big or small.

In many cases recently, Joe Public has learned about prepping the hard way, by having their home flooded or loosing their job and having been ill prepared for it in advance.

This is what the ‘Prepper’ movement is all about, Prepper being a play on “Preparedness”

Preppers come in various forms however, depending on your concerns for the future,  some of us are looking for ideas to keep ahead of the game in case of losing our job perhaps, while others are concerned about much bigger scenarios that may come our way such as H1N1, economic collapse of the EU, peak oil and global warming.

How much you feel you need to prepare all depends on your awareness of what is going on in the world, and how much you perceive that you are at risk from these events.

Prepping in some peoples minds is essentially a form of Survivalism, however the general term Survivalist has a lot of stigma attached to it, primarily from visions of a stereotypical extreme US citizen that has an underground concrete bunker filled with enough amo to fend off the US army for months.  Preppers are not gung ho gun toting maniacs living in remote forests.

Prepper cannot be loosely pigeon holed into this ‘Survivalist’ category.  Preppers are just ordinary every day families, individuals and groups seeking to better insulate and protect themselves from the problems the world faces now faces with ever growing alarm and uncertainty.

A Prepper will primarily aim to have all the knowledge and preperation done in advance so he/she can survive for as long as possible without the need for supermarkets, water supplies, electricity or gas supplies.  A prepper is usually a more enlightened, better educated but equally concerned member of society that the image of a US survivalist might portray.

More and more people across the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK and Europe have reacted in response to the huge rise in global terrorism, natural disasters and massive economic and social instability affecting the world.

Internet communities or hubs of Preppers have flourished in the last five years, and from this trend a  ‘Preppers’ Network has evolved, first as is so often the case in the USA, then expanding into Canada, Europe and now in the UK with UKPreppers.com.

The UKPreppers.com website is primarily aimed at families, so that they can plan in advance to minimise the effect of any potential problems that may come their way.  In it’s basic form this can mean having the best First Aid books at hand, having other irons in the fire in terms of employment or family income, stocking up on storable food, having appropriate fire extinguishers or even learning about cooking and gardening so that if money gets tight, it doesn’t evolve into a complete disaster.

Please feel welcome to join the UKPreppers.com forum to learn more about us.

Al – Admin