Summary
Rational Preparedness will be a defining movement of the 21st century in the face of rampant techno ruralism behaviors amidst upper middle class and wealthy Get X and mil lineal populations. I have studied a lot about preparedness and still have a lot to learn. I depend on the media platform The Prepared and it’s a total wtf to me that this isn’t their moment in the sun. The idea of rational preparedness has to become the default for everybody all the time — at least for a while.
https://theprepared.com/prepping-basics/guides/rational-reasons-why-you-should-prepare-emergencies/
Urban Diaspora and the Can Afford a Techno Homestead Crowd
We now live in an era of urban flight - at least for a little while - and as people in my demographic and psychographic group move to the country, they are going to have to learn preparedness skills. Of course, those who stay in the city equally have to learn those skills, but at a different level with a different capacity. The new frontier “techno-rural” homesteaders - like me - have a lot of catching up to do. That has been true for me, and I’ve spent years living on and off between a forest-boundary property with significant acreage and an Appalachian waterfall that attracts a lot of wildlife — and West LA. Going back and forth has taught me a lot, and led me to believe empowering people with preparedness was a brilliant idea. And to fail. Hard.
Because, about seven years ago, I went from working in advertising on Wilshire Blvd in LA to working in agriculture, I went back to what is mostly home, Western North Carolina to build a facility. That company ultimately failed, but for many reasons we have kept roots here. Also - thanks AirBNB for the ability to do so, financially. Now, because of the pandemic we’re here all the time.
I was already comfortable with a shotgun to shoot snakes and scare bears, and winter tools to deal with living on the northeast face of a mountain. When I would go back to LA, the sense of not being safe pervaded my thinking. With two little kids, I began to prep. A lot. So much so I built a spreadsheet my friends could use to determine their own living in an apartment in LA preps. That grew into a startup concept.
My Venture into Preparedness Startups
We launched Supply Drop with the idea of building a system that evenly replicates the video game experience of a supply drop, as best as it made sense in the real world. But basically, right when you need it, a kit would show up. For example, as a Supply Drop subscriber, you would get restocks of N95 masks if there was a wildfire gaining traction nearby. In LA, the infrastructure is there to do same day delivery through micronodal networks. We were going to build an API that could analyze the data about an address, information from user surveys, and user preferences to be the default, automated provider of preparedness supplies for most people. Like Uber, if you were worried about something you could just open the app and get it dropped.
We built fairly high gloss marketing, validated the concept with startup investors and corporate partners, and met with the head of security for one of the biggest energy companies in the world about handling Work From Home Preparedness for the company writ large. We planned a big launch campaign, with a launch at We Work Culver City where our offices were based. We were then going to do a popup wellness themed preparedness training for women called Survival Studio. Yoga mommies meet preparedness.
The actual post announcing our promotional popup…
We literally couldn’t give away N95’s for free in 2019
It was a total failure. We literally could not give away but one N95 mask at We Work in Spring 2019. We could not close a deal. We could not sell a single umbrella on a sunny day. The only major beneficiary of the whole project is our friends in LA who got our surplus promotional N95’s from the closet by the dozen when COVID hit.
We even made a podcast with an Emmy winner and a badass female rancher. I think 12 listens? https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/supply-drop/episode-2-surviving-Dd6kozYUv0N/
All that remains is this link to the alpha app we built, which suggests preparedness tools based on your answers. Sitting on a dev server, thankfully. This was a two day build, but it proved helpful, much more so than our more sophisticated designs.
https://alpha.supplydropkits.com/
One day people are going to cultural shift to prepping as a life responsibility like banking
Eventually, people are going to wise up to wanting the media they need, and then The Prepared (and OSD) are going to be famous. CNN isn’t teaching people how to prepare for the world to come. The Prepared is.
The Prepared in no way knows about this post, so they definitely don't endorse it or provide any feedback or kickback. In fact, I make it a point to buy about anything I don't have that they post to support them like the knife sharpener I just bought that I now have to explain to my wife is different than the stropping kit I bought which I also described as a knife sharpener — and I support on Patreon. I hope my very small but super awesome community of readers will check them out and do the same.