Do Doomsday 'preppers' have a point? Here's what we can learn from them.

Amid Costo’s already stocked shelves of oversized jars of peanut butter and 12-pack macaroni and cheeses, there’s a hardcore new addition that is lighting up social media: The Readywise 150 Serving Emergency Food Bucket. For $100, the bucket includes 80 dinners, 30 breakfasts, and 40 energy drinks with a shelf life of—prepare yourself for this—25 long years. 

“In a world where unpredictability has become a constant,” reads the description, “our assortment takes on a vital role in emergency preparedness. Imagine the sudden onset of severe weather, the challenges of unexpected job transitions, or the unsettling thought of food shortages.” 

This isn’t hard to imagine, as recent years have given us plenty of examples: the COVID-19 pandemic, obviously, but also Californian wildfires, the Great Texas Freeze, Kentucky floods and mudslides, and hurricanes Beryl, Idalia, and Ian. Extreme weather events are happening more often and with more severity; even the American Government’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which used to recommend every American home have a 72-hour self-sufficiency plan, quietly tweaked its minimum to at least 72 hours and its recommendation to a full week.

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All this is vindication for the so-called “Preppers,” once dismissed alongside Flat Earthers. But there’s no need to grow a full beard, don head-to-toe camouflage, and move off the grid. There’s much to be learned in reasonable middle-territory about preparing for natural disasters. Here’s what everyone can learn from preppers in a time of extreme weather.

How much water is enough to stockpile for a disaster?

If you’re going to get one thing and one thing only to prepare yourself and your family for an extreme event, it's water. “You can’t live more than three days without water,” says Jim Cobb, author of Prepper's Long-Term Survival Guide.

Most of us are spoiled with fresh clean water flowing freely from a tap, but everything from hurricanes to fire to frozen pipes could cause your water supply to stop or, more likely, become contaminated. Even in a flood, for example, where you might think water’s a-plenty, it’s not. “Flood water has sewage, garbage, nasty chemicals, and bacteria in it that cause so many health-related issues,” says Cobb. If you’re already in an emergency, you don’t want to get giardiasis or E. coli on top of everything else. 

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Exactly how much drinking water should you stockpile? “Oh, that’s a loaded question,” laughs Cobb. FEMA recommends one gallon, per person, per day for the length of the emergency—which of course nobody knows. If you have the space to spare, Cobb says more is better: “Nobody has ever come out of an emergency saying, Man, I had way too much water on hand.”

Even better? Find some way to filter or purify additional water from whatever source you have nearby. 

Do you actually need dehydrated food for an emergency?

As consultants on Doomsday Preppers, Scott Hunt, head of Practical Preppers, was tasked with scoring participants on a scale of one to a hundred. Most American homes, notes Hunt, fail spectacularly in a disaster not because of water, but because of food. “Across the board, the weakness I see is food,” he says. “Most homes have basic condiments and crackers in the house. If you suddenly couldn’t shop, how would you feed your family? How long could you last?” 

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Using the government’s (minimum) recommendation of 72 hours’ worth of food to keep on hand for an emergency, do the math: “Think about 2,000 calories, per person, per day,” suggests Hunt. Choose a dedicated storage room if you have it as a pantry, and stock it with shelf-stable, nonperishable, familiar food items.

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“An emergency isn’t the time to try new strange foods you’ve never had before,” says Cobb, warning of this particular nightmare: “The last thing you need is to be two days into a hurricane without a working toilet and your food’s not agreeing with you.” In an extreme situation, notes Hunt, you’ll be sufficiently stressed as it is and will want “high-energy, high-calorie nutritious food that’s easy to prepare, doesn’t require power or a fire, and that you know your family will eat.”     

Food’s imperative, but resist going overboard with heavily marketed survivalist foods. “You don’t need dehydrated, freeze-dried meals fit for astronauts,” says Cobb. They’re super expensive, you don’t get much for what you’re spending, and you probably won’t like them anyhow. Stock up instead on food your family already eats and enjoys, and consider your non-human family members too: “Don’t forget about your pet, who's relying on you,” cautions Cobb. 

How do you stay connected if the power goes out?

To ensure a nightmare tonight, watch the Netflix film Leave the World Behind. Scarier than a hurricane or asteroid, perhaps, this film’s terrifying not because of what’s coming, but for what's mysteriously, inexplicably gone. “Imagine a world where the grid’s down and nobody knows why—was it a cyber attack? Terrorist attack? An EMP?" asks Hunt. (That last one’s an electromagnetic pulse, which could disturb and disable all our computers and smartphones.) Whatever’s happening out there, you won’t know it. 

Skip this hell on Earth with a lower-tech gadget from yesteryear: An emergency radio with an antenna that winds up by hand. “They’re cheap, simple to use, and will keep you from flipping out because you don’t know what’s going on,” says Hunt. Newer models double as phone chargers, flashlights, and a flashing SOS strobe light should you need to signal a rescue team. 

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Without electricity, say goodbye to your lights, air conditioning and heating, refrigeration, and hot water. To keep any of the above in working order, you’ll need some kind of generator. “A whole-house generator is awesome but that’s beyond the price point of most people,” says Cobb. Solar-power generators are environmentally friendly and whisper quiet, but priced accordingly—Cobb’s is about $4,000, and admittedly over-the-top for most. 

“Everybody’s needs are different, so I’d think about which conveniences you really need and invest in a generator that can operate those,” he says, citing your refrigerator and heat and air conditioning as likely priorities. If you’ve lost the latter in a heat wave, consider relocating temporarily. “Maybe you go somewhere else for the day: your local library, the mall, something like that.” 

How much prepping is too much—or not enough?

Climate change continues to produce more extreme weather events, from tornados to heat waves to ice storms to hurricanes, but the good news is, preparing for one largely means preparing for all. “Very few things are disaster specific,” says Cobb. “Probably 90 percent of the prepping we do for any specific disaster is going to be applicable to all of them.” 

If you’re squabbling with your spouse about how much prepping is too much prepping, you’re probably really fighting about storage. “You need a dedicated storage space,” says Cobb. “Not necessarily a whole room, because most of us don’t have that kind of space in our home, but under a bed and the backs of closets are great.” Don’t buy so much that you can’t commit everything’s location to memory. “If you can’t find the stuff you need in an emergency, then it doesn’t matter if you own it,” says Cobb. 

Most people, however, land on the far other end of the prepper spectrum.

“The biggest mistake is not prepping at all,” warns Hunt. Instead, embrace prepper practices and make your goal a sweet spot right in the middle: Nothing worthy of a reality show, but enough preparation that you’re comfortable for whatever’s coming next.