At long last, prepping has become mainstream due to runs on supplies, shortages, and stay-at-home orders throughout the country. More folks than ever before are seeing the wisdom of having extra food and household goods on hand. It can help you through not only disasters and pandemics, but also through personal financial problems.

But delve into most preparedness websites (including this one) and it can start to get overwhelming when you read articles about civil unrest, EMPs, and existential catastrophes

And more than that, it's kind of overwhelming. It can make you feel like, "Wow, I will never be able to have a bunker in Montana with 150,000 rounds of ammo. I don't even know how to build a fire. Why even bother?"

Before we get started with the "how to's" here are a few things you should know.

All of us started at the beginning.

It's important to know that all of us started somewhere. We all had some event that awakened us to the need to be better prepared. (To learn how some readers were inspired to get started, go here.) We all had to learn the ins and outs, read the books, and acquire the stuff.

Most of us don't have thousands of dollars to drop on buckets of food and secondary locations. We began by just getting a few extra things when we could.

. You'll see articles about guns and outdoor survival and all sorts of things in which you have absolutely no interest.