Conan’s Strategies for SHTF Fitness & Nutrition, Part 1: Introduction

(Photo courtesy of: https://supernatural.fandom.com/wiki/The_Apocalypse?file=Apocalypse.jpg)

Greetings, Partisans! First, please pardon my lengthy absence from this site; it’s been a good while since I last posted! I’ll just say that I’ve been through some extremely demanding times since mid-last year, and these things kept me from being able to post on American Partisan. But I’m back with more commonsense fitness and nutrition posts for our awesome community of patriots!

To my existing readers, particularly readers getting into my series on testosterone, I do intend to resume that series in the coming months so please, bear with me!

Right now though, with the unfolding of domestic disorder and the prospect of war literally right in our faces like never before… I’d like to switch gears and get into the more immediate and timely concern of SHTF (i.e., “Shit Hits The Fan”) preparations as they relate to fitness and nutrition. See, a patriot stocking up on MRE’s (or freeze-dried foods or whatever) and calling it a day, or thinking he’ll somehow magically remain in the appropriate physical shape during any SHTF / Off-Grid / WROL scenario is overlooking the continuing and critical roles of fitness and nutrition for health in the “post-apocalypse” world. In fact, attending to fitness and nutrition should take on an even MORE critical role in a true SHTF situation, because of the toll the extreme adversity would already take on those who survive, making it essential to at stay fit and nourished; it ain’t no time to be getting sick!

Let’s set up the SHTF scenario real quick, to get an understanding of the radically altered landscape of our fitness and nutrition efforts. First off, any SHTF scenario is obviously going to be one of great and unimaginable deprivation. Think: Stone Age. No supermarkets, no restaurants, no supplement stores, no gyms, no NOTHIN… except what you put away while you still could. And one should also expect that the situation of general deprivation and scarcity will only get worse for a good, long while if we’re in a true SHTF / Off-Grid / WROL world, and not just dealing with a week-long blackout caused by some substation getting destroyed by Commie insurgents. Bottom line: a very lengthy period of scarcity of food / water, along with a lack of places / equipment to work out – let alone the serenity to do a normal workout! Now what?

Clearly, how to most reasonably stay healthy in a SHTF world needs to be thought out a bit and planned for by the thinking Partisan. After all, you’re no good to your fam or MAG if you’re out of shape and / or suffering from deficiency-based malnutrition, right? Now, nobody’s talking about being prepared with a warehouse filled with shelves of vitamins / minerals, and also containing workout equipment (although that would be nice, if you can swing it). However, there most certainly IS some reasonable bare-bones minimalist approach to fitness and nutrition preparedness that is also possible on any budget, and the smart American Partisan (redundant, I know LOL) will be able to best adapt to the new extreme circumstances with a well-prepared fitness and nutrition strategy. Said strategy would contain a combination of both a situation-appropriate physical training regimen together with nutrients for staying adequately nourished; or, in other words, a plan for staying as strong and vigorous as possible while also avoiding vitamin / mineral deficiencies (and constipation) that would certainly cripple you eventually. As Partisans operating in the perilous, restrictive, and scarce environment that we imagine a SHTF world to be, we should seek to at least be adequately nourished and fit in order to maximize our prospects of survival. That’s what it’s really all about, right?

Thus, when it comes to SHTF fitness and nutrition for health, we need to be particularly mindful of one very critical thing both spheres of health have in common: they are consumption-based efforts. That is, engaging in any type of exercise (i.e., fitness) consumes energy, and energy is itself created by consuming nutrients (i.e., nutrition). Keeping in mind the consumption-based nature of staying fit and nourished though, the Partisan must also be sensible about maintaining his health as resource-economically as possible in a SHTF scenario, and this is extremely important! Think about it: in a SHTF scenario, you’ll need to be as minimalist as possible in order to conserve energy and resources (food, water, etc.) while still remaining operationally effective; as such, the minimalist approach will also apply to fitness and nutrition, and this must be kept in mind when creating your own SHTF Fitness and Nutrition Strategy.

So the purpose of this introduction is to get Partisans thinking about how they’d approach fitness and nutrition in a SHTF scenario. This brief series on my Strategies for SHTF Fitness & Nutrition – indeed, how I myself approach the subject, fwiw – will cover concepts for readers to keep in mind so that they can formulate their own SHTF fitness and nutrition strategies, and will draw on my previous posts and knowledge series for reference. Again, I always seek to empower AP readers to be more independent with their fitness and nutrition, via a combination of transmitting my experienced-based knowledge, as well as giving specific prescriptions for action; this series will keep with that tradition.

The Strategies for SHTF Fitness & Nutrition Series will take a harshly realistic and minimalist approach to consider:

• Food recommendations and eating concepts for SHTF that go beyond typical MRE’s, canned / freeze-dried foods, etc.
• Essential SHTF micronutrition: vitamins, minerals, and other accessory nutrients to stay adequately “micro-nourished”
• Exercise concepts and workout ideas that would likely apply in SHTF
• Sample SHTF workout programs

Again, when Partisans are finished reading this series, they should be able to formulate their own comprehensive strategies for addressing fitness and nutrition during a SHTF scenario. When the world turns upside down, being fit and healthy is truly all the MORE important! Stay tuned for the next post, in which I’ll get into the minimalist approach to physical fitness training in the Off-Grid, post-apocalypse world. Thanks for reading!