Again with the polar shift. I don’t know if these preppers haven’t done their homework or if Doomday Preppers is trying to get extra mileage on their magnetic field animation. Anyways, Kevin O’Brien brings some interesting points to bear with his segment especially with homesteading and prepping as a family.

1. Going rural

Whether it’s for a polar shift or not, Kevin has made the wise decision to relocate to a rural area, specifically the highlands of Tennessee. Moving to a rural area is a great idea for any sort of disaster to protect one’s family from the unpredictable effects of a disaster on the population. Speficially, Florida is also a bad place to live when it comes to natural disasters of all kinds.

When it comes to surviving over time, homesteading is by far a healthier way to provide for yourself. Maintaining crops and livestock will provide your body with the important nutrients it needs. Shelf-stable food and grain staples can lack in this. You don’t want to end up with deficiency diseases like the Japanese sailors who were living off of rice.

2. Moving with kids

The kids in the O’Brien family are really not turned on by the idea of prepping. It’s a stark contrast to Tim Ralston’s boys who are into prepping, survival and all the drills that go along with it, or the Evers family who go at it together. The evidence to the contrary would suggest that it isn’t prepping that is unappealing to kids, it’s the way in which it’s presented.

It looks like the kids aren’t having fun with the whole experience. Granted, few children are happy when a move is on the horizon, but to go from zero to sixty on literally heading to the hills could have been made easier. There are countless ways to get kids interested in prepping from camping trips to helping cook to going fishing. It was clear from the amount of food that the O’Briens had stored that prepping had been a part of life for a long time. Getting investment from the kids earlier on could have made the transition easier.

At the end of the day, it’s all about attitude. The O’Brien’s said that they were crazy and accepted it. Tim Ralston’s boys felt that their dad was going extra lengths to protect them. They were doing the same thing. It’s a matter of perception with how you talk about survival with friends and family which can make all the difference.

3. Sustainable tactics

Kevin had some pretty interesting tactics when it came to energy for the house. I liked the idea of using pickle barrels as a solar battery for a greenhouse. This has been seen to increase the growing season within the greenhouse by several months. If you don’t have access to pickle barrels, it’s possible to use basically any hollow vessel in the same way, people have even used beer cans! If you needed an excuse to knock back a few brews, you can do it for survival.