How to Find a Prepper Group in Your Area or Online!

How to Find a Prepper Group in Your Area or Online!

Prepping is similar to “Fight Club” in that the main rule about prepping is “you don’t talk about your preps”. Talking about your preps to other people in your local area, like neighbors, cashiers, or co-workers can actually come back to bite you when SHTF. Those acquaintances may remember all your talking and show up to either beg for or steal your stockpile. Yet there are tons of prepper groups, locally and online that are springing up every day, so what’s the deal?

Benefits of a Prepper Group or Online Forum

Is it that important that you prep in complete isolation and secrecy in order to avoid becoming a target in a post-SHTF scenario? When it comes to people who you don’t know well, yes it is. Never reveal information and details about your preps with someone you don’t know well or with someone that you don’t trust. Telling co-workers, cashiers, or neighbors about your preps can make you a target later.

So, there are some really good reasons to join a prepper group either locally or through an online forum:

It’s not so lonely. The reality is that being a prepper can be a little lonely if you don’t talk to other people. Online forums can be a great way to share limited info with people who don’t really know who you are or where you are located.

Find out about preps you missed. If you are dependent on only what you know or can research, there may be some skills or important categories you haven’t thought of.

Practice and Share Knowledge of Skills. There are so many survival and homesteading skills you need to master in order to increase the odds you and your family will survive. Sharing how you do something and seeing first-hand how someone else does it can be beneficial. You can learn more practicing in groups, improve upon your own techniques, and it’s often more fun.

Recruit survival group members. Some preppers have begun to recognize that going off in the woods all alone may not be their best chance for survival post-SHTF. For this reason, survival groups or survival communities are forming all over the country. These are people who agree that when SHTF, they will work together as a group to survive.

Whichever side of the fence you come down on when it comes to prepping, there are some benefits to becoming part of prepper groups, either locally or anonymously as part of online forums.

But how do you find a prepper group and how can you be sure that the groups you find are a good fit for you?

Things to Look for in a Prepper Group

Make sure you know what the overall mission or vision is for the prepper group or online forum. As you participate in the group pay attention to whether or not it seems everyone is on the same page.

Pay attention to the leadership of the group and make sure that you are in agreement with the process of handling issues. You don’t have to agree with every decision that is made but you should be confident that the process, for handling issues that come up, is fair and logical.

Be wary of a prepper group that immediately require a fee to just be a member. There are plenty of free support groups out there and paying to be part of a support group is typically a warning sign that something isn’t on the up and up.

If your prepper group will eventually be your survival group in a post-SHTF situation, make sure that you have discussed and planned for a way to fairly distribute expenses and supplies among members.

Tips When Joining Prepper Groups

Even though these groups are advertised as prepper groups and so they seem like they are like-minded people, they are still strangers. There can be people within prepper groups who are simply there to observe and collect personal information and use it for criminal purposes.

Be conservative about sharing personal information with a new prepper group or any of its members.

For local prepper groups, only agree to meet in public places. Always let someone you trust know where you are going and who you are meeting up with. Remember that people can be one thing online and the complete opposite in person.

Some groups will require you to create a profile in order to join, but don’t give away your home address or details about your location to a new group. Use an email address is not easily associated with your real name.

If you are joining a prepper group to find future members of your survival group or community in a post-SHTF situation, focus on the character and skillsets of individuals and not just on numbers of people. Create a group with diverse skills, instead of five guys who are all good at hunting for example. Recruit people with medical training, military experience, or farming and gardening. People who are experienced with specific skills such as construction, engineering, ham radio, or alternative power can also be valuable additions to your group if you don’t have those skills.

Make absolutely certain that you can trust members of your survival group with your life. It’s important to understand how people will react when things get desperate and when things don’t always go as planned.

Where to Find a Prepper Group

There are many, many prepper groups and online forums. It all depends on what kind of group you are looking for, local meetup or online forum. You can start your search with groups like Preppers Meetup, American Preppers Network, or Prepper Link. Other online places to look for prepper groups include Craigslist and Facebook.

If you are looking for a local group or wanting to recruit survival group members, try bringing up the subject to members of your Church or other organizations you belong to. Depending on the type of organization, you might not want to just outright ask about a prepper group. Ask if there are any members of the church interested in emergency preparation or disaster planning, etc.

You can also search online for groups of people who are homesteaders, organic gardeners, or interested in canning and food preservation, wilderness living, etc. If you can find someone locally who has a large garden or even a homestead, see if you can arrange to visit for a day. You can learn more from spending a day or two visiting a homestead than you will from reading entire books of information about how to do things.

Regardless of how you locate your prepper group or online forum, please remember to follow common sense safety tips to avoid becoming a criminal target. If a group or members of a group don’t seem to be on the same page you are, move on and try another group. With a little bit of searching and some patience, you’ll find a prepper group or online forum that will meet your needs.

What’s your favorite prepper group on online survival forum? Share it with us in the comments below.