You can talk to all sorts of people, and as you talk to them, you will find a vast number of excuses and reasons to prepare, and why not to prepare. Now I have my reasons as to why I want to prepare, and they are by far different than what many preppers will say. Yet there are some fairly common reasons a person would want to do some prepping.

Oddly, there are also reasons why people fail to prepare. They have thoughts that will often boggle even the most casual prepper. However, they do see their reasons to be valid, while others see those thoughts to be a bit misguided at best. Either way, let’s start with those folks who do fail to prepare themselves, not as a means to humiliate them but to see into the thoughts of some people and maybe help you show them good reason as to why you want to have at least the basics for an emergency.

Common excuses not to prepare

As mentioned above, people have so many thoughts around prepping, some are from bias that sprouted up from those that don’t understand the reason why people start prepping, as they believe that this is just the work of a paranoid delusional person who is seeking to feel important or that they have a hero complex. That could be the case. Yet we won’t ever actually know because we do not know what is inside another person’s head or heart, so we can only guess. 

Now that guessing could also be very wrong. For much of the same reason. Yet I will dive into those guesses a bit later in the last section.

There are public services.

Sadly, many people depend on public services. Yes, those services are beneficial. You want to have the firemen show up when your home is on fire. You want the police to pull up when you have had your home broken into.

The problem that many places have is that they have been taught to rely solely on these services. They see the police as supposed to be the front line defense against crime and violence, yet. Those same places have more crime than the boys in blue can handle. 

People want to feel secure because of the police. Yet throughout history, you have seen that governments are not your friend. They will help, but often only to the extent of their capacity. If your problem is not as high on the triage list as somebody else you’re pushed down the line. So, someone breaking into your home is not gonna be as important as somebody who is being murdered.

The problem that so many people have is that the government will let you down. That is something our founding fathers knew about when they were creating our government., That’s why they wanted as much freedom as they could create and put as many limitations as they could on the government. 

Another issue with public services is that they are strictly reactive. They do not prevent crimes from happening. They do not prevent fires from burning down your house. That is your responsibility. That is why prepping is so important because you’re prepping for the times that emergency services can’t help you. It’s going to take 15 to 20 minutes for the ambulance to show up. It’s going to take 10 to 15 minutes for the police to show up. If you’ve ever been in an intense situation, that is the longest 10 minutes of your life.

I have plenty of time.

That people have about not prepping, that they believe they have plenty of time, they can do it tomorrow, they can do it next week. When it comes to time, we always believe we have more of it. 

The issue so many people have is that they don’t know when the emergency is going to happen. The saying, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” starts to really ring a bell when you go to the grocery store and they’ve had an electrical problem and all the food has spoiled. So, all of a sudden, it would’ve been nice if you had had your own garden set up in the back. You could’ve saved some of that precious time by preparing for an inconvenience.

Yeah, it may appear odd to actually be prepping for a possible problem. 

Yet we do prepare for stuff all the time. The issue that we commonly have is that we worry about how other people will perceive us because we are prepping for a possible problem. We worry that the neighbors will think that we’re being paranoid. Even if the neighbors do say something, that speaks volumes about what their thoughts are. Because they’re going to say something so that they feel better about the circumstance, which means they wish they were doing the same thing you were, but they don’t want to deal with the inconvenience. So they try to get you to stop so they don’t feel so bad.

You have a choice, and you can agree with them or you can accept that. There’s no better time than the present to start taking care of you and your family. That means collecting buckets of water, then letting the neighbors worry about themselves. Eventually, they will come and they will ask you for tips. If not, it’s because they also think they have plenty of time.

I will get around to it.

This actually goes hand-in-hand with the fact that I have plenty of time for line of thinking. These are people who kind of want to do it. They talk about what they want to do, but they have the excuse of. I’ll get to it sometime down the road. These are the people who don’t want to be bothered by this need. Though this blog doesn’t want to have panic and fear centered around prepping, there’s also a good argument for a sense of something like urgency. 

Many times, people who say they’ll get around to it say that because they really don’t want to do what they’re talking about. They actually do want to do the prepping route, yet it isn’t as high a priority as other things that these people perceive would bring more joy and happiness into their life..

I used this excuse many, many times. A long time with my kids. I’ll get around to taking them camping or going down to Central Texas and going tubing. I know these are things that I truly wanted to do; however, I thought that I would get around to it. I didn’t realize that getting around to it covered 20 years after my youngest left the house, and I missed so many opportunities. Just remember there is no someday in the week.

I’m too busy

This is actually a self-defeating thought. Are you really too busy? If you were to document everything you’ve done for the past hour for each hour in a day, for a week, and examine what was really important and what was just busy work, you would see how little you have actually done. Busy work isn’t productive work. It just feels like you’re doing something. This is often a distraction because doing what you know needs to be done. Often, it isn’t associated with feeling good emotions. Prepping sounds like a lot of work and a lot of planning, and a lot of decisions. These are things we don’t like to do. We would rather have fun, relax, and feel good about something. This is one reason why we use social media so much. Seeing that something we posted got some thumbs up gives us a feeling of connection and relevancy, which gives our brains a nice helping of dopamine. However, it does not move the needle forward.

Not enough money

They can get around to it when they have enough money. The funny thing is that prepping doesn’t have to be excessively expensive. Prepping doesn’t have to take that much extra time either.

While at the grocery store, you could start up your food stores by buying an extra can or two of the vegetables you’re cooking at that moment. Buy an extra pound of hamburger meat or pork chops or bacon, then put it in the freezer. Yeah, it may add a little bit of money to your bill that day. Yet that won’t cost as much as you going off and buying a whole food store system put together for you.

Many times it is actually cheaper to look into the future and buy what you might need than to buy at the spur of the moment. Look at bus tickets, airline tickets, and cruise tickets. These are all cheaper the further out you make plans. Buying storable food allows you to actually do it cheaper. 

The thought that I don’t have enough money is actually a scarcity mindset. This mindset causes you to see what you don’t have as opposed to what you do actually have at this moment. You do have enough money to buy a couple of extra cans when you’re at the store. You do have a few extra dollars. I could afford some bandages for a first aid kit. It is a matter of taking action.

My neighbor has plenty, and we are good friends.

Sadly, yeah, there are people like this. When I was growing up, and I was a young adult, these were called moochers. They would rather take from those who have actually done the work as opposed to doing the work themselves.

It’s easier for these folks to think that there is nothing they need to do because they often believe wrongly that their neighbors will take care of them. Now, is it possible? Yeah, it is, however, not likely the case. This is because of priorities. Now society often Has priorities upside down where you think you take care of your family, friends neighbors Community than yourself in all reality you actually need to put yourself ahead of other people which sounds selfish, but it’s very important because as in aviation when you’re flying and you have the yellow masks fall out of the ceiling, you put your mask on first before you help other people. You have to take care of yourself. Then you have to take care of your family. Then your neighbors get what’s left.

Not to go down the paranoid life is and society is going to crumble Line of thinking, but there are times when society has broken down at least temporarily. During those times, people will actually accuse you of hoarding food, though you are the one who’s taking the time to build up food stores. You saved up water. You and your family did the work to take care of your house. 

Thinking that your neighbors will take care of you means that you get the secondhand scraps. You get the stuff that the original collectors didn’t actually want. To think you’re going to rely on other people without actually asking those people if you can rely on them is a) rude and b) inconsiderate. If you didn’t have actual discussions about this arrangement, then in the future, when this might happen, there’s still actually no guarantee that they’re going to uphold their side of the bargain. So it’s always better to rely on yourself and not on other people. Now, if you can collect enough to be able to share with your neighbors, thank God, because there’s always gonna be those who don’t save up for the reasons listed above and below.

I don’t know where to start.

Many times, people like to get stuck in confusion. That’s a sad state of being a human. It feels safer to be confused and not be sure of where to start than to just take a step and learn that you started in the wrong place.

Confusion is what’s called an indulgent emotion. We often take action based on the emotions we feel. These actions aren’t normally good actions, but we take them anyhow. 

It is easier to feel confused and use that as an excuse as to why you can’t take action than to experience the discomfort of learning. So to avoid discomfort, which only leads to more discomfort, they take the easy route and choose not to take action. 

This excuse is often used in many aspects of people’s lives, but as the pressure increased, the more confusion they chose to feel. It is easier to feel confused than to just start with something. And that is the solution to knowing where to start, you start by just starting somewhere. Doesn’t matter where you start. Whether it’s homes, security food, growing food, harvesting food, storing, creating a go bag, or what, when it comes to prepping, just start somewhere. You don’t have to be grand. You don’t have to be a big project; start small, always start small, and grow from there.

Nothing bad is going to happen.

Finally, through those who just choose to bury their head in the sand. There are arguments to have cooler heads. You want to have thought applied to an action, not emotions. But to think that nothing is going to happen is just electively choosing to be ignorant.

If you live on the Atlantic coast, there’s always a chance of having a hurricane visit your front door. A good example of this is the people of Asheville, North Carolina. They used to blindly claim that they were in an environmental haven where hurricanes, tornadoes, or other bad weather normally didn’t happen. Because of this mindset, they were not prepared for Hurricane Helene to come barreling through and cause flooding, landslides, and disruption to their infrastructure. 

You can and will have devastating events happen in your life. You need to be at least modestly prepared. Having something like a go bag isn’t crazy, but at least know what you’re going to put in a bag if a tornado hits. What are you gonna do if there happens to be a blizzard and your electricity gets knocked out? What are you going to do then? What if you’ve had five days of steady rain? How are you going to cope with rising waters?

To blindly think that you’re not going to have any type of emergency crop up is foolish. And to think that you’re going to rely on other people is shortsighted. People always look out for themselves first, and so if you’re left in the dust, it’s not the other people‘s fault, that’s yours, so it is better to be prepared. Be ready so that you have the satisfaction of knowing you’re prepared.