Hello Preppers.

I'm Highstrung both in name and nature. I'm a whopping 25 years old and have been married for seven years to Mrs. Highstrung. We've have a highstrung two year old and a very highstrung baby in Mrs. Highstrung's belly that just won't come out till January. I'm an electrician at a major steel corporation. I got that job mainly because I served in the Navy for six years as an electrician on board the USS George Washington, three of which were in Yokosuka, Japan. We live in the Memphis area now and that's where Mr. Highstrung became Mr. Very Highstrung. We didn't exactly find any oases right away. We got our healthy dose of fear served to us by the local populace who find it amusing to take by force what they want, be it physical items, sexual intercourse or your very life. After three years in Japan with the most subdued and generally polite people I think I'll ever meet, watching the news here was like a slap in the face.

And so, being a good husband and father, I worried about my family. We are over nine hours from the nearest family and have yet to make any close ties here. I bought a pistol and got my CCW. I've been teaching myself about personal defense in everyway I can think of. After a while though, another idea began to consume me. 'What will these people do if something big happened?' Be it a loss of power due to a storm or an economic collapse, I think I'm safe in assuming that they'll do 'whatever they want.' So, I started buying some food and making plans to get out of apartment living. I now own a house and although it is in subdivision, it's outside the city in a safe little town. I've always been an avid backpacker and practice primitive survival skills often. My goal now is to prepare to bug in and build a makeshift fortress when the SHTF. I've got no one to turn to and the idea of 'planning' to travel nine hours is just stupid. We plan to stay quiet always and dark at night.

Now we'll stock up on firewood and food, diapers and medicine. I'll keep enough lumber to board up the doors and black out the windows. We have a garden we keep up. Not much, but it'll be nice to have. I'm setting up a rain catchment system. As far as security goes, I just pitty anyone who tries to take us on.

If anyone is in the area and would like to network a little, feel free to drop me a PM, even if we never meet. It'd just be nice to bounce ideas around with someone in the area. Escape routes and stores to buy prepping items would be among the first few questions.

Nice to be here. Hope to learn a lot.