The Emotional Truth About Prepping

Most people don’t avoid prepping because they’re clueless or lazy. They avoid it because it forces a brutal admission: the life that feels stable and predictable can be up-ended fast, and nobody gets a guaranteed rescue timeline. We go straight at that emotional wall, unpack the “reasonable” excuses we all hear, and explain why those lines are often coping mechanisms that keep fear at bay rather than plans that keep families safe. 

We talk about the real emotional cost of preparedness: accepting that jobs can disappear, grocery shelves can stay empty longer than you expect, and emergency services may be stretched thin when a crisis is widespread. Drawing on real events like hurricanes, freezes, and wildfires, we explore how quickly normal routines can break and why even capable people get caught off guard when the speed and severity spike. 

Then we bring it down to an everyday image you won’t forget: someone driving for months on a temporary donut spare tire, worn thin, hoping it never fails. That small story captures the psychology behind procrastination, risk denial, and why “knowing” you should prepare is not the same as accepting reality and acting on it. If you’ve ever felt the weight of being the person who thinks ahead, we also talk about that burden and why it can become a quiet kind of strength. 

If this hits home, subscribe, share the show with a friend who needs a gentle wake-up call, and leave a quick review so more people can find practical, clear-headed preparedness.

Transcript

Welcome And Listener Roll Call

SPEAKER_01 0:02

You are listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper, sponsored by Duct Tape, the real Duct Tape. It fixes everything except that decision. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America. From border to border, coast to coast, and all ships at sea. Here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Hello again, everybody, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast for June the 23rd, 2026. I'm going to take care of a few housekeeping items at the front end. As you know, every once in a while I like to provide everybody an update on how quickly the audience is growing on this podcast. And again, all the thanks go to you all. This podcast is heard in 123 countries, 4,814 unique cities. Let me give you the top 10. Sydney, New South Wales. So Sydney, you have just eclipsed Dallas, Texas, as the number one ranked listening, listening people in the podcast. Dallas, you're number two, Charlotte three, Chicago four, Houston five, Seattle, six, Perth, Western Australia, number seven, Atlanta, Denver, and Los Angeles, California, rounding out the top ten. Now, for some new locations, hello to Ferndale, Michigan, Pleasant Grove, Utah, Urbana, Illinois, which I've been to several times, and Albertville, Alabama. So thank you to those new listeners, and thank you to everybody who tune in on the podcast. All right, so this is a little different. And a lot of times I talk about the prepper mindset. Don't do a lot of gear reviews. I I know you guys can go to YouTube and oh, here's a new tent, and here's some new boots, and here's a new solar generator. You guys can find that all over the place. I like to go a little deeper. And today we're going to

The Real Reason People Avoid Prepping

SPEAKER_00 2:06

talk more about the prepper mindset in the sense of the real reason people don't prep. And it may not be what you think. So the real reason people do not prep. If you want to know the real reason why people don't prep, it's not necessarily because of money, it's not necessarily from laziness, and it's not ignorance. The real reason is much deeper and maybe a bit darker at times than that. Most people don't prep because they don't want to emotionally accept that their comfortable, predictable life could be up-ended and taken away at any moment. See, I told you we were going to get kind of deep and kind of dark here pretty quick. The lies we tell ourselves, we've all heard the excuses. If something happens, I'll just go to the store. The government or the police are going to come help us. This stuff only happens in other countries. These are not logical statements, they're emotional coping mechanisms. Your brain is protecting you from having to face a scary reality. This could be about prepping, about crime in your neighborhood, the economy. It could be about anything, but obviously we focus on prepping. The emotional cost of being prepared.

Denial As A Comfort Strategy

SPEAKER_00 3:30

So when you start prepping, you're accepting some very heavy truths right from the start. You're accepting that your job could disappear overnight. You're accepting that grocery store shelves could empty for weeks, that your kids might actually go to bed hungry if you don't prepare. You're accepting that the police might not come if you need them. That's a brutal truth that most people just refuse to acknowledge and don't want to live with. Let's talk about denial. Denial is very comfortable. The first one to admit it. In the interest of full transparency, denial feels good in the short term. Out of sight, out of mind, not gonna happen, not gonna happen to me. You don't have to spend any extra money on food you hope you'll never need. You don't have to figure out where to store water, rice, beans, additional canned goods. You don't have to explain to your wife, husband, partner why there's suddenly 50 cans of soup in the closet and why you're buying cases of water, quote, for some reason, end quote. In denial, you don't have to think about what you would actually do if the power went out for two weeks. You don't have to think about how you would feed your kids if the shelves at the grocery store were suddenly bare after three or four days. And let's be real, you don't have to think about the fact that if things get bad enough, law enforcement and firefighters may not come when you call. Because at the end of the day, police officers and firefighters are people too. They have families. And if a situation becomes extreme or violent enough, I would not blame them one bit for going home to protect their families first. And this is coming from a retired cop. I understand that. Denial lets you stay comfortable in that little bubble where everything stays normal forever, meaning there's no change. It's easy, it's comfortable, and that's exactly why most people choose that. Now understand, I'm not being judgy, I am probably guilty of half of these things, so nobody get their knickers in a twist because I'm not being judgmental. These are just my opinions on why most people don't prep.

A Donut Tire And Everyday Avoidance

SPEAKER_00 6:00

So here are some real-world examples of how the prepper mindset actually exists, and you don't have to look very far. We saw it during Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina, the Texas freeze, and the recent wildfires in Los Angeles that took out entire neighborhoods. Even the most prepared people were caught off guard on how fast and how severe these situations became. But here's a similar example, an everyday example that I always think about. A couple years ago, as I went to work, I saw the same vehicle almost every day. And you guys might have the same type of experience. You always see the same truck, or you always see the same brightly colored car at about the same time, at about the same stoplight. You guys know what I'm talking about. So for nearly six months, I saw this little car running on one of those temporary donut spare tires, you know, those real small ones, the ones that there's a big sticker on it that says don't exceed 45 miles per hour. And this tire was completely worn thin. I saw this vehicle two or three times a week for several months, and they were just ripping it down the road 55, 65 miles an hour. I have absolutely no idea how that little tire stayed attached to that car for that long. So I don't know their particular situation. Maybe they actually could not afford a tire at that time. Maybe they had a spare, but they used that a year or two ago and they never replaced it, and then had to put the doughnut back on. But this is a perfect example of how most people operate. They'll put off being prepared for even the smallest problems, hoping that nothing bad happens.

Knowing Versus Accepting Reality

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Let's talk about knowledge versus acceptance. So, this is the biggest gap that I see in prepping. I've met several people who intellectually know they should be prepared. They know, they know what's happening in the world, and they know that they should be prepared or better prepared than they currently are. They've watched the same videos I have, they listen to the same podcasts that I do, they know about supply chain issues, interest rates, the economy. They know most of what everybody else knows if you keep up with current events. They know about natural disasters, they know they should have food stored and maybe have a little extra cash on hand, but still they don't do anything. So even before I called myself a prepper, before I got into preparedness, I always had the mindset that my job could go away. When I was a police officer, I knew that budget cuts could eliminate my position overnight. Now I work in a tech company where AI is so deeply intertwined in my work, the vast majority of my day-to-day tasks involve interacting with AI. I'm not that naive. I can see the writing on the wall, and I would not be surprised if the company I work for has another round of layoffs in the next year or two that are directly tied to AI. So therefore, I am mentally and financially prepared in the event that happens. If it happens to me, will it suck? 100%. But at least I am mentally and financially prepared in the event it does happen. That's the difference between knowing something might happen and actually accepting it.

The Weight Of Awareness And Closing

SPEAKER_00 9:46

The prepper's burden. Once you truly accept how fragile life is, you can never really go back seeing the world the same again. So that is both a blessing and a burden, in my opinion. There are times that I wish I could be blissfully ignorant, like some people, just living life without having to think how quickly it could fall apart, but I can't because that door was closed a long time ago. It reminds me of a line from the movie Departed, which is an excellent movie. Jack Nicholson's character, he's some bad guy, kills people all the time, drugs, you know, very bad guy. So Jack Nicholson's character is talking about the weight of responsibilities that he has trying to keep his crew together, trying not to get arrested, all the crazy things that happen in this movie. And he's talking with Leonardo DiCaprio, who in the movie is an undercover cop, he's infiltrated the gang, blah, blah, blah. And Leonardo says to him, Heavy is the head that wears the crown. And for some reason, that line has always stuck with me when I talk about situations like this. Because once you wake up to reality, you carry a certain weight that most people never have to. You have a level of situational awareness that becomes a part of who you are. It's a heavy crown to wear, but once you've accepted it, you can't take it off. So the next time you see someone roll their eyes about prepping, not necessarily make fun of you, but kind of make light of your situation, or they're wondering, always wondering why you have extra food and extra water stored up, understand something important. It's usually not about the supplies. It's not about the money or the time that it takes to be prepared. Most of the time, it's because some folks simply are not emotionally ready to accept that their world could change overnight. Again, not being judgy. Some people believe this, and that's fine. They're not ready to accept that their relatively comfortable, relatively normal life is more fragile than they really want to believe. Prepping isn't about buying stuff, folks. It's about having the courage to look at reality in the face and say, I see you and I'm ready for you. So that's a much harder thing to do than most people realize. And maybe that's the real dividing line between those who prepare and those who don't. Folks, as always, thank you so much for stopping by.com if you want to reach out. Prepper Camp August 14th, 15th, and 16th in North Carolina. I am teaching all three days, and I am teaching run, hide, fight. As always, please be careful out there. Take care of one another, and until next time.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

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