Prepped and ready
Being prepared has gone from a hobby to a lifestyle for a family who say they’re ready for anything. By Virginia Fallon .
This is only the beginning. There is a room in a house north of Wellington that has everything the supermarkets don’t: a mountain of toilet paper, hefty containers of medication and huge bags of flour, sugar and rice.
Shelves creak with tins of soup and fish and fruit, cleaning products are stacked ready, piles of nappies and milk wait patiently for when they’re needed.
And the room is only the beginning.
Maarty and Shenah Lintern are preppers and proud of it. For the past
15 years they have researched, stockpiled and trained themselves and their family to be ready. For anything.
Should the time come, their room and their house will provide everything more than a dozen people will likely need to survive for at least three months. And there’s been no panic-buying involved.
Being prepared starts off as a responsible thing to do and then becomes a hobby before it turns into a lifestyle, Maarty says.
‘‘It also becomes a choice, you can choose to be a grown up or you can choose to be a victim.’’
For the past few weeks the couple have watched New Zealanders try to catch up on their own lack of preparation as the coronavirus pandemic worsens. There’s no sense of ‘‘I told you so’’, but a feeling of exasperation at the panic.
‘‘Civil Defence has been telling people for years to get ready and they’ve been ignored. Now everyone is frantically trying to catch up and doing exactly what they’re not meant to – panicking.’’
There’s no panic in the Linterns’ house. Like a Hogwartsesque room of requirement, the bedroom of supplies has been ready for ages and Shenah says it’s just a small part of their stores.
‘‘This is just the inside room.’’ While a journalist’s prying eyes are kept from scoping out the rest of the house, Shenah drops a few hints. ‘‘There’s two big freezers and more of the same, but just in a bigger capacity.’’
It’s not just food and toiletries either, the family are ready with, well, everything: tents, a portable hand basin and toilets, handheld and CB radios. Even the indoor house lights stay on when the power goes off.
‘‘We had a powercut the other night and the neighbours were all in darkness while we were lit up.’’
Floor rugs can become blankets, furs on the walls the same. A generator stands at the ready and a barbecue – ‘‘it burns wood because where are you going to buy your LPG from?’’ – does the same.
Even Shenah’s handbag is a study in preparedness. Within it are three or four different types of multi-tools, an extendable metal rod – ‘‘handy for lots of things’’ and a bracelet that unwinds into a length of rope.
Her Northland childhood began her path to prepper-dom but it was a move to the earthquake-prone Wellington region that really made Shenah think about being able to see a disaster through. ‘‘It was also having the kids, we have 12 of them so we always had to be prepared.’’ Regardless of income, through the years the couple always kept things stocked up: a cheap can of food here, a pack of batteries there, prepping doesn’t need to be expensive.
The couple involve their children and recommend it as a way of helping kids cope with anxiety about disasters. They also run family days on their property where people can learn the basics – light a fire, dress a wound, make a shelter.
As Maarty talks about how easy it is for children to learn simple life-saving skills, his 11-year-old son Simeon races off to the lounge keen to show his recently acquired skills.
Both Simeon and his 9-yearold sister Skylah can tie tourniquets to stem bleeding, courtesy of a course they attended a few weeks ago.
‘‘It’s not a bad thing to know,’’ Simeon says from under his cowboy hat. ‘‘It’s actually pretty good.’’
Skylah says making shelters, fixing wounds and learning to safely start a campfire is especially important for children. ‘‘It’s probably most important for the youngest member of the family.’’
Maarty and Shenah say the family is always learning and always keen to help others, which is why they started an online support group.
New Zealand’s pre-existing online prepper groups have swelled in numbers since the coronavirus outbreak and new prepper groups continue to pop up.
The Linterns’ group began just after the 2016 Kaiko¯ura earthquake when Marty noticed more and more people on community Facebook pages asking for advice on how to get prepared.
More than 2000 people have joined the group in the past few weeks. Most are looking for advice and encouragement, and experienced preppers are happy to give it.
Maarty says he runs a tight ship, which isn’t the case in many other online groups where misinformation and conspiracy theories run rampant.
Coronavirus advice recently seen in other groups includes unusual home remedies to avoid the sickness: a favourite was to constantly suck cough lollies and drink hot water to stop the bugs attaching to your throat. (Theories include aliens, cellphone networks, and dark forces planning world domination.)
Maarty says there’s a difference between what he does and doomsday preppers, who tend to indulge in conspiracies and paranoia. There’s no bunkers on his property, but he knows of them.
‘‘Most preppers are very quiet about what they do. They’re people you wouldn’t usually expect but prepping is about being realistic and sensible... it’s about being able to take care of yourself and your family.’’
Another prepper, who didn’t want to be named, says he’s been prepared for something like the coronavirus pandemic for years.
‘‘It amazes me that we’re thought of as nutters when in fact we’re the only sensible people here. It only takes a quick look through history to see this stuff happens all the time and for some reason everyone else has forgotten that.’’
Like the Linterns, he’s taught his children basic survival skills from when they were little.
‘‘That’s your responsibility as an adult, look after yourself and your family – and part of that is educating the kids how to take care of themselves if we can’t.’’
Shenah says that when it comes to being responsible, there was a noticeable trend in who does what.
‘‘About 99 per cent of people we see asking for advice or actually getting prepared are women. There’s this attitude among Kiwi men that everything will be all right, and that’s not realistic.’’
As far as the best advice for would-be preppers, Shenah says it’s never too late to start. ‘‘Just buy a little bit extra every week, only buy food you’re actually going to eat and don’t panic.’’
Whether it’s coronavirus, an earthquake or something else that means we’re on our own, Maarty says prepping is rational and responsible.
‘‘It’s not about the zombie apocalypse... although I wouldn’t mind that.’’
‘‘It amazes me that we’re thought of as nutters when in fact we’re the only sensible people here.’’