Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.

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Don’t despair—prepare.

In our last post we talked about getting your mind right for what’s to come. Actually, we talk about that a lot! We also talk about the items you should have handy in order to be prepared. The other important ingredients in our survival recipe are your body and practice. Having all the cool prepper stuff won’t do much good if you’re not healthy enough to endure the hard times ahead, or able to carry that gear. Don’t underestimate how tough hard times can be on your body, in so many ways! I’m somewhat hardened (for my age) from a year and a half of woodland pioneer living in an RV, yet our recent move put me down for part of a day. Let’s talk about ways to mitigate that concern. It’s not that hard. We’re not going to push you to become a CrossFit junkie.

Pioneer Update

We’re mostly settled into our new digs in this small apartment. An attractive feature is the layers of security. I’m impressed that the other residents didn’t blindly allow us to tailgate in past security, as we were new and they didn’t recognize us. One new concern is that we’re on a higher floor (for security reasons)—too high to jump in case escape is needed. Always, always visualize the worst happening. What will you do? What will you need? We immediately purchased a collapsible fire ladder long enough to reach from our balcony to the ground. Problem solved (along with fire extinguishers and blankets, of course).

We have a prepper inventory Google sheet that lists every item we own, where it is, and what its priority is (for fast decision making). That’s been updated for our new location. You should do the same—things happen fast in a disaster, critical thinking skills are compromised, mistakes could be deadly.

I worry we’ll get soft in this new environment. It happens quickly! Yesterday I visited our wonderful White House covered wagon RV, to say hello, provide some TLC, and clean a bit. She’ll go to the RV spa for some routine maintenance in early April, then to her new nearby location to serve on standby in case we need an emergency bug out, or just for some of our fun summer festivals. Good, fun practice!

Get Your Body Right

It looks like Americans won’t have access to flu shots next winter, as the meeting of scientists to agree on and devise the formula has been canceled by the Trump administration. Our new “health czar,” the former heroin junkie who had part of his brain eaten by a worm, has told kids dying from measles to drink cod liver oil. New (to us) diseases, oldies but not goodies, are spreading around the country.

These spoiled, entitled folks in charge now are well known for their intolerance for those they view as the “great unwashed.” You know, those tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Trump has expressed his displeasure at being seen with disabled veterans, saying it’s “not a good look” for him. What they’re doing is a form of societal chemotherapy. Chemo attacks and kills cells throughout the body in hopes that the “bad stuff” will die off before the good stuff dies along with it. They’re stripping away Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, veteran’s disability benefits and health care in order to kill our elderly, our poor, our disabled.

That strategy will also kill off many folks who, in the eyes of the wealthy, “suck off the teat of government” for their “entitlements.” Narrator: far more money goes to corporate welfare and tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. After the bottom level of our society is dead, the middle class will effectively be moved down to the lower caste of Americans, albeit a healthier and prettier version of the “rabble” we had before, in the eyes of people like Trump and Musk. A kingdom of peasants and royalty will then be achieved, to our doom.

Things could get real hard in a hurry, especially if they then trigger a global war to help cure the deep recession we’re heading toward. This time, the bombs will fall here. Parts of the USA could be the new Gaza or Ukraine as our powerful former allies fight against us and our new Axis of Evil partners. Medicine may be hard to come by, which is why we recommend the excellent Jace Cases. We’re so happy we found those, it was a big gap in our medical preparedness.

Hopefully you’ve been following our advice over these seventy-seven posts and you have an emergency bugout bag near your door, and one in your car (perhaps a get-home bag). Imagine a circumstance where you’re forced to carry them (standstill traffic, vehicle trouble, etc). How far will you get? There’s one way to know—practice.

If you’re not already taking regular walks, now’s a good time. The weather is warming in these cold regions! Start the habit, build that muscle. Once you get in a routine, practice with your bags (one at a time!). Routine is good, but not always the same route at the same time—that can be a security problem. Especially if your pack looks military or valuable. We’ve recommended quality pepper sprays, alarms, and portable weapons for that purpose as well.

Need to drop some weight? It’s not unusual coming off a long winter of lower activity. Look, we obsess over body image. We all can’t or don’t want to look like the latest Hollywood action hero (they’re fake, anyway). We don’t need to. The healthy weight for you is the healthy weight for you. My BMI is 28 but there are plenty of folks with a much higher BMI that could run circles around me. Talk to your physician. The key is, can you carry that pack a reasonable distance? More robust body frames are likely be more successful, given they’re in shape.

Body type is built into DNA. Contrary to what society teaches, it's not bad to be any body type, just to manage that and be healthy. Do that. There's a whole lot more to someone than what shape they are. Your good soul will live on long after your body is back to dust.

This is important in person-to-person conflict as well. You can study all the boxing or martial arts, a great way to get in shape, but in reality most fights dissolve into on-the-ground grappling within seconds, and the victor is often the one who can outlast the other stamina-wise. Submission tactics are quite useful, however!

Same with extreme weightlifting. Fun story—in my younger days I worked installing chain link fence. We did that day in, day out, all year long in blistering heat and frigid cold—digging holes by hand with posthole diggers, mixing and lugging unbalanced wheelbarrows of cement, carrying huge rolls of metal fencing on our shoulders across uneven terrain. It was brutal work. Most of us were skinny but wiry from it. One time a new guy came on, fresh from the gym, massive mounds of muscles in his shoulders, arms, legs. Quite impressive. He couldn’t do the work—he was too used to the comfortable, balanced loads he’s been using in the gym, and wasn’t up for that level of pain and discomfort.

It’s a good lesson—apply it to your preparedness. Don’t just choose nice sunny days for your walks. Walk in all kinds of weather. It’s a good chance to make sure your all-weather prepper gear is comfortable and functional. Take your comms along and make sure they work at different distances and environments while you’re at it.

I keep myself at my desired weight with a very simple, inexpensive practice. It’s worked for my entire adult life. We have a good bathroom scale that measures all kinds of body metrics, including BMI. I get on it almost every time before I take a shower. If it’s not where I want it to ...