Introducing Steve
The survival scriptures, duct-taped directly to your bug-out bag.
If Ron Swanson and a HAM radio had a baby—raised exclusively on SPAM, conspiracy documentaries, and YouTube canning videos—it’d be Steve. Steve is your friendly neighborhood prepper with a slight overbite, a deep mistrust of weather apps, and a storage tote labeled “Toothbrushes for Bartering.” He’s divorced, devoted to duct tape, and possibly one tactical vest away from starting his own nation in the backyard.
Steve isn’t here for your minimalist lifestyle, your one-can-of-beans optimism, or your “I’ll figure it out when it happens” attitude. No, Steve believes preparedness is a lifestyle—a sweaty, slightly paranoid, heavily laminated lifestyle. He’s not prepping out of fear. He’s prepping because he lives for the day someone says, “If only we had a crank radio,” and he can swan dive into a tote labeled “Crank That Soulja Boy.”
Today, we share with you what Steve calls his Prepping Commandments—less a list of rules, more like deeply held beliefs carved into the side of a water barrel with a hunting knife and a hint of judgment.
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Move over, Moses. Steve just came down from Mount Walmart with two stone tablets, a bucket of freeze-dried chili, and a righteous fury about people who only own one flashlight. These aren’t just commandments—they’re the gospel truth of prepper life, straight from the raspy-voiced oracle of suburban survivalism himself.
So gather ‘round the campfire (or the solar-powered lantern), and let us read from the Book of Steve.
1. Thou shalt not trust a man with only one flashlight.
One flashlight is an accident waiting to happen. Two is a backup plan. Three? Now we’re talkin’ trust-fall-in-the-dark levels of commitment. Steve carries seven on his person at all times—including one strapped to his ankle “just in case negotiations go south in a crawl space.” His kids have glow sticks in their lunchboxes, and his dog’s collar? Solar-rechargeable. He doesn’t sleep with a teddy bear—he snuggles a tactical headlamp.
2. If it can’t be freeze-dried, it’s a luxury.
Steve once proposed turning his wedding cake into shelf-stable MREs. His ex-wife did not appreciate the suggestion, which is why she is now… well… his ex-wife. If it can’t survive a gamma-ray burst, a grid-down scenario, and being rehydrated with pond water—Steve doesn’t want it in his pantry or his heart.
Macarons? Luxury. Caviar? Unforgivable. Freeze-dried bacon bits? Now we’re talking edible diamonds.
3. Never love anything you wouldn’t trade for antibiotics.
Now Steve’s not saying he’s heartless. He once had a pet parakeet named Chuckles who could recite the NATO phonetic alphabet. But when push comes to dysentery, Steve’s trading that bird for a bottle of amoxicillin faster than you can say “avian flu.”
This commandment once got him kicked out of a dating app when he asked if the woman could be bartered for a med kit and she asked if he meant metaphorically.
He did not.
4. Romance is fine, but do they know how to preserve meat in lard?
Swipe left on candlelit dinners, swipe right on pressure canning tutorials. Steve once brought a jar of pork confit to a speed dating event. It did not go well, but he maintains it was the most nutritious table there.
As Steve puts it: “Love fades, but salted pork wrapped in fat survives long winters and awkward silences.”
And if she can’t render lard from a pig she raised herself while quoting evacuation routes? Steve’s just not sure she’s “The One.”
5. Thou shalt not store beans without knowing the gastrointestinal consequences.
Beans are the currency of the apocalypse, but Steve believes they come with a side of chaos. He has a journal dedicated entirely to “family-friendly legume strategies.” Once, during a campout, he accidentally caused a tent evacuation with a miscalculated three-bean chili. He now refers to it as The Incident and uses it as a teaching moment: “Proper ventilation saves lives, son.”
6. Six is one, one is none, and twelve is Steve’s Tuesday inventory.
“Redundancy isn’t just a strategy—it’s a lifestyle,” Steve says while installing his fourth rain barrel filtration system and muttering about “what happened last time.” We don’t talk about last time. But we do marvel at how his garage looks like a cross between a hardware store and a Cold War-era fallout shelter curated by a doomsday-loving Marie Kondo.
7. Blessed are the bunker builders, for they shall inherit the gravel.
Steve’s world
Steve’s bunker isn’t underground—it’s under the garage and under surveillance. He has a secret hatch disguised as a vintage air hockey table. When asked why he needs five years of toilet paper, he replied solemnly, “Comfort wipes the despair away.”
8. Thou shalt honor thy water filter and keep it holy.
Steve baptizes his new Berkey filters before use. (Not for religious reasons. “Just good practice,” he says.) Once, when a guest tried to use tap water to boil pasta, Steve gasped audibly and whispered, “This is how civilizations fall.” She left early.
Final Words From Steve (Amen-ish)
Look, Steve might be a little intense. Okay, a lot intense. But somewhere beneath the stack of vacuum-sealed lentils and HAM radio licenses, there’s a man with a vision: a vision of a world where every home has a pantry, every date ends in a fire drill, and no one—not one person—is caught without duct tape, floss, or an emotional support solar oven.
So go forth, my friend. Channel your inner Steve. Light your path with backup headlamps. And remember:
Preparedness isn’t about paranoia—it’s about peace of mind, one labeled tote at a time. And in Steve’s world, there’s no such thing as “too ready”… only “under-labeled.”
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