What Does Preparing Mean and Who’s Someone Who Prepares?

People who prepare are more common than you might realize. We’ll explain what preparation involves and who these individuals are.

BY James Barker, UPDATED:

April 2, 2025

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What Does Preparing Mean?

Preparing means crafting plans, collecting resources, and honing skills to handle emergencies, disasters, or survival scenarios. Its scope varies by individual, spanning from minor power outages to end-of-the-world events.

In the U.S., 73% of people have taken at least one step toward readiness for a natural disaster or emergency. Some dive deeper, and those folks are often known as preppers.

Dictionaries describe preparing as:

The act of getting something ready or gearing up for an event.

In our context, it expands to:

Amassing supplies and planning for potential catastrophic disasters or emergencies, typically by stockpiling food, ammo, and essentials.

While accurate, these definitions only scratch the surface.

Preparation comes in many forms and motivations, fully customizable to the person. “Minimalist” types focus on skills and community resilience over stockpiles. “Doomsday” folks prepare for apocalyptic risks. “Liberal” or “Conservative” preppers tie their approach to politics. Across these variations, core themes of readiness, self-reliance, and toughness persist. Anyone preparing can pick a label, skip it, or carve out their own style.

Lately, preparing has gained traction—maybe due to the pandemic, rising disasters, political shifts, or pop culture. More people are embracing readiness for life’s curveballs.

And those who go beyond a single step? They’re the ones called preppers.

Who’s Someone Who Prepares?

Someone who prepares is an individual who develops plans, collects resources, and builds skills to better handle emergencies, disasters, or survival scenarios.

These folks are everyday people from all backgrounds who see the value in planning ahead to avoid trouble.

They aim to rely less on systems like infrastructure, using tactics such as:

Stocking up on extras (like food, water, and tools)
Mastering survival skills
Strengthening community resilience
Or living off-grid

Most blend these approaches to ready themselves and their loved ones for various threats. The mix they choose often reflects how far they’ve taken their readiness.

Levels of Readiness

Labels for those who prepare often tie to their motives or methods, but all fall into distinct levels of readiness that reflect their commitment. Most progress through these stages until they reach their target level. Since everyone views risk differently, preparation styles and timelines vary widely.

Essential Readiness

Governments, militaries, churches, businesses, and community centers all encourage individuals and families to be ready. While a pre-disaster grocery rush is common, most people already have some readiness basics in place. Staples like food, water, first aid, gas, and toilet paper vanish fast.

Typically, people can manage solo for a few days. Whether power cuts out, food runs low, or water stops flowing, they either have essentials stocked or enough around the house to weather a brief crisis.

Even at this entry level, those preparing usually have a simple emergency plan.

2. Preparing for 30 Days

Readiness for 30 days is often where people begin labeling someone a “prepper.” Truth is, preparation starts much earlier, and not everyone at this stage is set for a full month—whether they realize it or not. Longer-term readiness demands more space, which can challenge those in apartments or small homes.

Though 30 days is ten times longer than 3, it’s still manageable with the same basic tactics scaled up. Boosting your stockpile of food, water, and gear is the simplest way to last a month, and smart planning keeps costs down.

At this stage, most who prepare have a home survival kit and start looking into everyday carry options for readiness anywhere.

3. Preparing for 3 Months

Three months without food, water, power, or modern conveniences is a serious stretch. Stockpiling remains the simplest way to reach this readiness level, though food and water storage gets trickier—rain capture or sustainable food sources can help if space is tight but options exist.

This marks a turning point where advancing further demands deeper planning. At this stage, most who prepare have a All-In-One Bag or get-home bag and begin exploring additional survival kits.

4. Preparing for a Year and Beyond

Preparing to survive over a year without modern society is a tough goal, often seen as the peak of readiness. The strategies for a year’s survival overlap with those for indefinite self-reliance. Many at this level eye bug-out locations for emergencies (especially urban or suburban dwellers) and may invest in a bug-out vehicle for mobility or on-the-go survival.

For staying put, big upgrades like infrastructure improvements and high-capacity storage are key. Bunkers, advanced home security, and sustainable resource systems become priorities for those reaching this stage.

5. Going Off-Grid

This level goes beyond just unplugging during a disaster—it’s a major lifestyle shift. Living off-grid, often called homesteading, is a path to maximum self-sufficiency. Approaches differ widely, but most homesteaders outpace even the most committed urban preppers in readiness for disasters and survival scenarios.

A Short History of Preparedness

To understand “who’s someone who prepares,” history offers context. Looking back shows us where we stand today and hints at what’s ahead. Preparing stretches as far back as humanity itself.

Before supermarkets and modern food tech, preparing wasn’t a niche—it was life. Early humans survived by gathering, farming, hunting, and raising animals. As societies grew worldwide, survival skills adapted, with many once-common practices fading into hobbies or vanishing entirely.

In the 20th century, preparing surged under the banner of “civil defense.” World Wars sparked campaigns pushing readiness, with survival skills widely taught for wartime needs. This morphed into a Cold War-era civil defense system, complete with fallout shelters and nationwide education on nuclear risks and how to face them.

By the internet age, interest dipped as tech boomed and government-backed preparedness education waned. The 9/11 attacks briefly reignited focus, exposing terrorism’s global reach, but personal readiness still wasn’t a national focus.

Surprisingly, a TV show spotlighting extreme doomsday preppers has been one of the biggest modern boosts to the movement.

Doomsday Preppers premiered on February 7, 2011, and skyrocketed National Geographic Channel into cable TV prominence with blockbuster ratings. The show ran four years but ended abruptly, overshadowed by backlash over amplifying the extreme views of its fringe subjects.

The tipping point came when the mother and shooter in the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre were linked to avid preparing. Even a faint connection to such a tragedy mattered, leading to the show’s cancellation. The fallout tied preparing to both the show’s oddities and unhinged mass shooters in the public eye.

Yet, despite today’s negative spin, preparing keeps growing as people recognize its core: self-reliance, survival, and community strength.

Common Misconceptions

Misinformation hits nearly every group today, and those who prepare are no exception. One of the biggest spotlights on them—Doomsday Preppers—also dealt some of the worst blows to their image. The show fueled key misconceptions baked into its premise:

They Prepare for One Apocalyptic Event
While producers chased quirky characters for good TV, the notion that each person prepares for a single doomsday (financial crash, invasion, famine, EMP, pandemic) doesn’t hold up. Most don’t even stockpile for apocalyptic scenarios, and when they do, they weigh overall risks sensibly, not fixating on one plotline.

They Only Prepare for the End of the World
Yes, some have bunkers, fallout shelters, a year’s supplies, or live off-grid. But they’re the minority. Most focus on everyday hiccups, regional disasters, or national emergencies.

They’re Lone Wolf Types
The Mad Max vibe exists, but it’s not practical readiness. Self-reliance matters, yet community ties do too. History shows people unite to beat tough odds—dismissing that often stems from inexperience or overconfidence.

They’re Crazy, Conspiracy-Obsessed, Rich, and Heavily Armed
There’s some crossover (maybe more than average), but these traits don’t define most who prepare. The loudest voices in public might fit this mold, yet they’re outliers—not the majority, who focus on practical disaster readiness.

For the real scoop on who they are and what they do, check out prepper demographics and statistics to start:

Today’s Prepared Individuals

Today’s prepared individuals form a more varied crowd than in past decades. A fast-shifting world brings risks to all sorts, and the internet has simplified access to info on preparedness, those who practice it, and how to get started. Thanks to the web and sites like ours, readiness is going global. Modern folks have unprecedented ease in learning skills, building communities, and staying updated.

The dialogue’s evolving too—politics is being sidelined, opening the door for more to adopt a ready lifestyle. Liberal-leaning preparers are a fast-growing group, driven by rising disasters and awareness of global uncertainties.

For years, the last decade pegged them as fringe oddballs, but society’s starting to see them clearly: everyday people planning ahead.

The Future of Preparedness

The future for those who prepare is anyone’s guess, but with a world dishing out diverse threats, resourcefulness, adaptability, and solid info will only grow more vital. Big events like pandemics have fast-tracked mainstream interest in readiness.

For those staying sharp and in tune with shifting risks, the outlook is promising. Some dangers are timeless, but new ones pop up as the world evolves. Embracing challenges with flexibility keeps life thrilling and full of potential.

Preparedness suits everyone—and everyone benefits from being ready.

The Next Step

Now that you grasp what preparing entails and who does it, let’s explore why it matters. Reasons differ and can be personal, but everyone has a motive to get ready for what’s ahead.

Discover why everyone (yep, you too) should be preparing:

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