Advice From a Prepper Mom on Surviving the Unthinkable

How a ‘survival mom’ who began storing food after the financial crisis prepares for the worst-case scenario

Mira Ptacin
GEN

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Photo illustration. Image source: Frederic Lewis/Getty Images

InIn the recent wake of the coronavirus, everyone seems to be stockpiling. Bags of rice, beans, and lentils are running low at stores from suburban Atlanta to Berlin. How and why and for how long we should accumulate food, and stuff in general, no one really seems to know. In fact, most of us admit that none of us really seem to know what we’re doing; we’re junior woodchuck survivalists — we don’t know who to follow, what to imitate.

In early 2009, as the economy tanked, Lisa Bedford saw her husband and the majority of people around her lose their incomes, their livelihoods, and their security. She decided to take action and self-educate, diving headfirst into survivalist studies, taking her homemaking to the next level. She’s now a self-taught pro: a survivalist, homeschooler, and urban homesteader who runs a popular survivalist website called The Survival Mom, which teaches other moms how to do everything, from making soap to evacuating one’s family from a hurricane.

GEN: When did you first start prepping and how did you first learn about it?

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Mira Ptacin
GEN
Writer for

Award-winning journalist and author of Poor Your Soul and The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna. www.miraMptacin.com