Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to prep I go...

Not actually Erin.
Picture by KJ Photography
& is used with permission. 

Hello, everyone!  My name is Erin Palette. Many of you know me from my nerd-hobby blog Lurking Rhythmically, but here's a quick introduction for those who don't:

I am a pro-gun, pro-gay marriage geeky goth girl.  I like science fiction & fantasy, zombie horror movies, and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (which I enjoy in a sincere and un-ironic manner). I am a concealed pistol carrier and my Glock 26 rides in this sweet Princess Luna holster. When I'm not at the gun range, geeking out over ponies, or playing RPGs, I am working on my disaster preps. Sometimes this involves reviewing particularly cool pieces of camping or survival merchandise. 

I'll leave it to the other blog contributors to introduce themselves.

So, what is the purpose of Blue Collar Prepping? Funny enough, it started out as a status update on Facebook (the text of which is mirrored on my blog, here, for those who don't Lederhosen*) and that sparked a mighty conversational thread.

As it turns out, there are lots of folks who are turned off by the current prevailing atmosphere of "To have sufficient preps, you must first have a successful business which allows you sink hundreds of thousands of dollars into a reinforced bunker, an armored bug-out vehicle, and enough food and arms to equip a platoon for a year." It is my belief that, while having all these things are good, holding them up to be the gold standard of prepping (rather than as a nearly-unattainable ideal) leads to unrealistic expectations on the part of the prepper. Inability to achieve these goals can often result in a sense of failure, which lead to thoughts of "Why bother if I can't do it right?", and the eventual cessation of prepping as one spends the time and money on things or activities which are more rewarding in the short term.

It was felt by many of us that not enough prepping sites focused on the "working poor" aspect of prepping. Just because we cannot prep to the standards of James Wesley Rawles doesn't mean that we aren't preppers. We just need to approach things differently: incrementally, with financial shrewdness (some might say "stinginess") and with a view to meeting realistic goals.

To mangle a quote from Portal, We do what we can, because we must. 

Therefore, this blog was created. We all have different skills and approaches to prepping (and indeed, to life itself).  It is my sincere hope that this "stone soup" style of blogging will become greater than the sum of its parts and, through all of our efforts, we will create something useful and beautiful. After all, one of the core tenets of prepping is to create a community, because all of us are stronger and smarter than one of us.

So grab a beer, pull up a chair, and join us. Welcome to Blue Collar Prepping.





* In a conversation sometime last year, my mouth couldn't quite spit out "Facebook" because my brain refused to think of the word. In a panic, it grabbed the closest word it could find, which just happened to be "Lederhosen."  No, I've no idea why. Ever since then, my brain has wanted to conflate the two, and for some bizarre reason I think that the phrase "Lederhosen de Facebooken" is hilarious.  Lately, I've been shortening that to just Lederhosen, and that makes it even funnier to me.

I think something is broken inside my brain.