Do You Have an “After” Plan?

Here in the prepping and survival community, we talk a lot about surviving disasters of all types. That means a lot of our discussion centers around major disasters, what we refer to as TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) events. Those are much more interesting to talk about than more common disasters; and in reality, if we prepare for those larger events, we’re going to be prepared for hurricanes, winter blizzards, and other more commonplace disasters.

But from what I see, and I’ve been at this a long time, there is little thought given to creating an “after plan.” I’m not talking about our plan to survive after the disaster is over. We do that. A lot of preppers are thinking in terms of homesteading, so that they’ll be able to make it through the aftermath of the disaster. Listening to them speak, they will be living off their homestead forever, not worried about what has happened to the rest of society. They’ll be fine on their own.

In reality, they won’t be fine on their own. While there is a lot we can do on our own, becoming as self-sufficient as possible, we can’t do it all. We need the massive infrastructure and supply chain we’ve created, as well as all the millions of specialists out there, who provide products and services we can’t provide for ourselves.

Can you produce your own blood pressure medicine? How about medicine to treat diabetes? Chances are pretty high you can’t. Oh, you might know of a few herbal remedies which are reported to help; but that’s not quite the same as knowing how to produce something that has succeeded in making it through the FDA’s approval process. That’s like a whole other world.

What about making gasoline? Do you have horses for transportation? Again, there are few of us who can meet those basic needs. While we may be able to do a lot for ourselves, there will always be things we need from others; at least, if we want to stay alive.

Back when I was young, a half-century ago, the survival stories that people wrote always ended with people working to restore society. That’s not so common in more modern TEOTWAWKI survival scenarios. Most authors today, like most preppers, act like once we’ve made it through the first year, everything will automatically be all right.

Really? I don’t think so.

Allow me to put it this way. Do you want to go through all the trouble of ensuring your family’s survival, without there being anyone available for your children to marry? Do you want to be the last generation? If we’re not thinking far beyond our immediate survival, that’s exactly what we’re planning for.

True recovery from a disaster means more than just feeding our families through the following years. It means providing for their other needs as well, including spouses for our children and medical help for them as well. It means schools so that our grandchildren learn more than just survival and police to deal with the malefactors that always seem to manage to survive. For that matter, it means a functioning government, at least at a local level, because if there isn’t one, then the warlords will rise up and take over.

Now, here’s the question for you: Do you want to leave the responsibility of all that to the kinds of people who have made such a mess of society today? If you do, then you’re saying that you’re perfectly happy with the direction our country is going, with everything that society and the government is doing wrong. You’ll be glad to see all of it come back, in all of its messed-up glory.

From what I see, there are plenty of us in the prepping community who are at least partially looking forward to such a disaster happening, so that we can get rid of the mess that we’re currently in. There are a lot of us who look at a TEOTWAWKI event as an opportunity to fix everything that is wrong, and that attitude goes back to those novels which were written a half-century ago.

Preparing for the “After”

The only reasonable answer to restoring society in the wake of a TEOTWAWKI event, is for those of us who are preppers to restore it. We are the only ones with the skills and knowledge to rebuild any sort of reasonable society. That’s mostly because we are the only ones who truly understand what is needed in order to survive. Others will focus on things like “diversity” and “Inclusivity,” even to the point of endangering humanity’s survival.

But even while we are the best able to restore a reasonable society, where people have a reasonable chance of survival; that doesn’t mean that we’re fully ready to do so. There are still a lot of skills and a lot of knowledge that is lacking in the prepping community. In other words, we might know how to rig up solar panels and a battery backup system to provide power for our homes, we have no idea how to make the solar panels or the batteries ourselves.

Most preppers keep themselves busy learning survival skills. That’s important. We all expect to need those skills someday, when everything goes wrong and we’re facing that major disaster. But, while those skills may help our families to survive, they won’t be much help in rebuilding society. They especially won’t be much help in rebuilding the technology that our society is founded upon.

Many of us have some of those skills, due to our professional lives. But that doesn’t mean that we’re ready to practice those skills in a post-disaster world, where everything won’t be nice, neat and in order. It’s one thing to work on systems or even system repairs; it’s another thing entirely building those systems from the ground up.

That’s not saying that all is lost for us if the disaster is bad enough. Rather, it’s more like saying that we’ll need some references, to go along with the knowledge that we have, so that we will be able to build those systems.

I’ve been in the position of starting a factory from nothing. Since a factory is a big system, it makes a good example. I had a lot of knowledge about how factories ran, even factories that made the kinds of products we were going to make, as well as knowing about the products themselves. Even so, I needed to use a lot of references to design and build that factory. Nobody expected me to do it all out of my head, even though that’s the way everyone talked about it.

When it comes to rebuilding the systems we need, in order to restore society, we will need references too, in addition to our skills and knowledge. We’re also likely to need some sorts of tools, specific to whatever part of society we are working on restoring. It only makes sense to either have those tools or know where we can get them.

In William Forstchen’s trilogy, which started with the book “One Second After,” there’s a lot of talk about restoring basic communications and limited electrical service, especially in the second book. They had an abundance of information available to them, especially from magazines that depicted the invention process during the “war of the currents” between Edison and Tesla. Because nobody in the town the story took place in had knowledge of how to produce electricity, or the technologies that support it (such as drawing wire), all their knowledge had to come from those magazines, using that information to direct their own experiments and eventually a functional power turbine.

How much quicker would that process go, in real life, if it was being directed by people who knew something about generating electricity… or even knowing basic electronics? Even if they didn’t know how to wind a generator or electric motor, knowing how motors and generators work (they’re really the same thing, just different uses), would allow a person with that knowledge to take an existing motor apart and figure out the process.

What’s Your Part?

Don’t think that you’ve got to be prepared to do it all yourself. That’s not what I’m trying to say. What I am saying is that each of us should be ready to be a useful part in rebuilding an after the disaster society. That will be a unique opportunity, as we make an attempt at eliminating the problems in society today, while saving those parts that might be useful. But it can only happen effectively, if we are ready for it.

Yes, I know; this is just one more thing to prepare, amidst all the other things you’re already preparing. But it’s important too. Maybe you can survive without this one; but can your kids? Can their kids? If we want our grandkids to have a good life, then we need to be ready to salvage the good from society, even while we set the bad aside.

Expect there to be others; other preppers who are willing to lend a hand in the rebuilding process. In fact, get to know as many of them as you can, before that time comes. Just like we talk to other local preppers, sharing information, sources and ideas; we can share ideas for the “after.” After all, those are the people we’ll be working with, trying to restore some sort of society when that after time comes.

Written by

Bill White is the author of Conquering the Coming Collapse, and a former Army officer, manufacturing engineer and business manager. More recently, he left the business world to work as a cross-cultural missionary on the Mexico border. Bill has been a survivalist since the 1970s, when the nation was in the latter days of the Cold War. He had determined to head into the Colorado Rockies, should Washington ever decide to push the button. While those days have passed, the knowledge Bill gained during that time hasn’t. He now works to educate others on the risks that exist in our society and how to prepare to meet them. You can send Bill a message at editor [at] survivopedia.com.

Latest comments
  • That information really made me think about how the next generation would be able to function and thrive. Most only know to order the parts and haven’t worked in the factories or read the journals or manuals on how things work. I tried with my children, but they were more interested in video games and partying with their friends. I feel like I failed them. We’ll see.

    • The way my parents handled it was that they ran the house, we children did not. Age appropriate, if we wanted to eat we worked, we learned what they taught us and we put it to use. No we didn’t feel like slaves, we felt empowered, we were encouraged to think, to reason, and questions became family discussion. We went to the library (no computers in those days) and researched subjects that were brought up as questions, we learned to how figure out solutions, and by the time we children went to school we were leap years ahead of our school mates in knowing how to grow a garden, harvest and preserve, butcher animals for meat, pick and preserve fruit, and because of the trips to the library and family discussions were ahead in reading, language, english and math. When things required calculations we children watched and learned. Dad was super at math and taught high school math and science, though his teaching degree was in history. We children had age appropriate chores to do before and after school. We didn’t play sports at school, we came home and worked so the family could thrive. By the time we were in junior high we were chopping all the wood that got used in the wood burning stove that was used for heat, that could also be used as a cook top, and in the fall of the year we were helping our parents cut down snags in the national forest, limb and cut the wood into pieces the size that Dad/Mom/oldest brother could get into the truck, and we made as many trips to the forest to get wood as what we needed to survive for a good nine months of constant wood burning. Yes, there was always some wood left from the year before, it became the first wood to be used the upcoming fall/winter. We learned how to navigate in the wild, how to live off the land, and no household activity, such as gathering wood for fuel, was a single event. One of us children was left at the end of the day to make our way home on our own, required to live and sustain ourselves off the land, stay warm and hydrated, learning first hand the ways of dealing in reality with wild animals beyond the teaching of our parents, etc. We children would arrive home feeling more and more empowered and confident. We played games some during the winter, but we didn’t do much of that, there were other things that were required activities to do. We felt pleased and needed that our help was required to help keep the household running smoothly. Parents who said “thank you” to a job well done does a lot for a child. NO we did NOT get allowances, Mom and Dad didn’t have that kind of money to throw away. When we got into high school we could get an outside job for a couple of hours two or three times per week if we wanted to earn some money and during the summer if we could find a job to do we could earn some money too. We learned first hand the effort it took to earn money and we didn’t waste it on movies, bubble gum, candy and rubbish. Dad taught us bookkeeping at home as well as making sure we got “official” training in high school so we knew how to keep a budget and to live within it and how to save for the future, for retirement and for emergencies. Yes, we all got that training, but once away from home it became each child’s decision whether to stick with the training they learned. Two threw it away like garbage once they got into college and learned there’s an easier way to live with an entitled attitude that others can be responsible and accountable to give them what they want while they be irresponsible. One appreciated the childhood training and lived what Mom and Dad taught. As an adult, I, the youngest, have been approached by my two older siblings at various times through the years wanting me to bail them out because when they threw their training away they did a good job of it. They threw away self discipline, responsibility, accountability, honesty, and a lot of other aspects of quality character. Both ended up neck deep in debt. I’ve been forced to tell them “No”, they know how to make their own way and they are responsible to do so. The fact they chose to throw it all away was their choice and so are the consequences. That reality is something they have not appreciated. They got the same response from my parents as well. Sadly they found other people who would bail them out to some extent. Too easy to have an entitled attitude, nor have they wanted to accept that “No” is an acceptable answer and “No.” is a complete sentence all by itself. Children’s choices are their own regardless of how they were raised. They have minds, they know or can learn how to use them. It’s nice if parents can help them along the way, but if they choose not to accept or use it, is fully their choice and responsibility. Parents are not responsible for the choices their children make as adults.

  • Bill,
    Great article.. you’ve hit the elephant in the room. The prepper must be a true renaissance man/woman. While being a warrior, they must be a chemist, doctor, farmer, versed in animal husbandry skills just to name a few things. Perhaps do this:
    1. Military academy/Basic training
    2. Military Leadership Academy-Officer/Enlisted
    3. Military Occupation Skills Academy
    5. Medical Services School (CNA-EMT-LVN-PM-RN-PN-PA-MD)
    6. Trades School
    7. Public Safety Academy (Guard (unarmed/armed)-Police//Fire Services)
    8. Teacher Academy (K-16)
    9. Civilian Leadership
    10. Agriculture School

  • How many of you have lived year in and year out in a log cabin with electricity and only wood heat and haul your water by bucket or gravity feed it to your caving. Have you hunted and foraged amd fishes and trapped. Do you know the bare basics you need to survive.
    Because all the new dangled stuff you think is important will eventually fail you.
    The most important question to as yourself is “Do you really want to be a survivor?”
    We all die at some point. Does a few years here or there really make a difference. Are you strong enough mentally amd physically to watch the death and destruction on a massive scale. The filth. The contamination. The sickness. ????????????

    • Avatar photo

      Hey Valerie,

      As one of our experts tends to say “Don’t believe that in an SHTF scenario, you will just lay down and die” and that’s the truth of the matter. Some people will fail, some will survive, but the question “Do you really want to be a survivor” is one that at some point all people will face and it’s their determination and skill that will answer that question.

      Thank you for the comment,

      Ray from Survivopedia.

  • Excellent article on a subject I’d not seen discussed anywhere else..

    The only thing the author should have added is to define the acronym, TEOTWAWKI, the first time he used it. The objective of every article is to educate, ergo it cannot be assumed that every reader will know the meaning of that or any other abbreviation.

    • Avatar photo

      Thank you Christie for pointing this out to us.

      We’ve amended the article to include the explanation to the acronym in the first paragraph.

      Thank you again,

      Ray from Survivopedia.

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