Rhio Reviews: Grant Cunningham's "Prepping For Life"

Recently, our dear Editrix Erin asked who within the group of writers, both part time and full time, identified as a Bibliovore - someone who feeds on books. I was the one who answered and raised the proverbial hand in class.

I say "proverbial hand in class" because for my trouble I was tasked with a book report. Fortunately, digesting books is easier on my system than digesting some of the Emergency Foods that I've been asked to test and review!

Grant Cunningham is familiar to many of us as a Gun Guy - an instructor and author in the field of firearms safety and firearms-based self-defense. It seems that Cunningham, like many of us, also doesn't believe in the concept of a "One Size Fits All" approach to being prepared for whatever life happens to throw in your general direction.

http://amzn.to/2vBbZvK

His new book, Prepping for Life: The Balanced Approach to Personal Security and Family Safety, is what's under review today. It's a comprehensive look at his system and methodology of maximizing your preparedness, developed over the course of several years. His writing style is relaxed and easy to follow, and he lays out how he developed his system, and what sorts of trial and error went into getting it to the point its at today.

His system, which he refers to in the book as Adaptive Personal Security (APS), revolves around that key word: Adaptive. Everything about this system is flexible and intended to make your life easier by being adjustable to suit your own needs.

APS is broken down into four separate, easy to comprehend parts:

1. Anticipate - figure out what your personal risks/dangers in life happen to be, and build a plan around them. He even provides a framework for a simple, logical method of prioritizing the risks you face, so that you can concentrate on the ones that are most likely and ignore the "fun to think about but highly unlikely" scenarios such as zombies.
2. Deter - this is where you figure out the most likely and effective methods of avoiding those previously-identified risks, and adjust them to suit your preferences, income, and desired investment of time and money.
3. Detect - noticing and acknowledging those risks you identified, and (hopefully) attempted to deter, when they actually arrive on the doorstep of your life.
4. Respond - this is where your actual preps come into play, be they a sidearm to protect yourself from criminals breaking in, or those cases of bottled water, blankets, and extra clothes you have stored in your storm cellar for when a tornado hits.

Cunningham gives plenty of examples of what sorts of things you should be considering, while making it very plain that Your Mileage May Vary! He manages to lay out a system that is easy to follow, easy to adapt to personal finances and circumstances, and is suitable for everyone from the single individual to the retired couple to the young business couple with 6 kids, 3 dogs, and a mother-in-law living with them!

While I enjoyed reading this, Cunningham does manage to lay out a few truths in this book that, as a longtime member of the preparedness community, I found difficult to come to grips with, such as how many preppers overestimate their abilities. There's no getting around the fact that some truths are unpleasant; however, a healthy dose of realistic expectation is required in life, especially when considering what things we honestly need to be prepared to face. It took me several days of arguing with myself before I could finally come to terms with everything, but logical, rational, dispassionate, and objective analysis finally won in the end.

All in all, I'd say this one is a Must Read. I'm definitely going to be keeping a copy in my library, and will most likely take a closer look at the system to see how it would work for me.

Grant Cunningham's Prepping for Life: The Balanced Approach to Personal Security and Family Safety  is available in Kindle format for $6.99 and in paperback for $14.91 with Prime shipping.


As a general side note - all opinions expressed in this post are strictly those of OkieRhio, not necessarily those of my fellow writers, or the editorial staff of this blog.  I was not paid to write this review, nor was I given any input as to what should and should not be covered.