Prepared to Bug Out or Totally Paranoid?

My husband's latest fascination is the Nat Geo hit show, Doomsday Preppers. The side effect of him watching this show every chance he gets is MY fascination with it. It's on all the time. How can I not watch? Since day one of our courtship, he has been telling me how important it is to be prepared in the event of any emergency. I used to think he was nuts. In my imagination, he was that guy who was folding aluminum foil hats so the aliens who were about to invade couldn't read our thoughts. Of course, there are realistic emergencies to prepare for: house fires, floods, power outages...zombie apocalypse. ;) Once I made myself realize that my husband did, in fact, make a good point, I came around to the idea.

A few years ago I let him teach me firearm safety and how to properly fire any weapon we have in our home. (I'm still working on how to clean our weapons. Not gonna lie, I hate that part.) For Christmas last year I got him a starter B.O.B. (Bug Out Bag) and several items to stock it with. I'm slowly, but surely, becoming a prepper.

The issue I take with our new favorite show is that it tends to focus on those people who take preparedness to a whole new level. (Not to mention the folks who don't know their terminology, weapons safety, or actual facts. You can't see me right now, but I'm rolling my eyes SO HARD.) It is one thing to have a realistic plan of action, a plan B, and a reasonable supply of food and survival gear. It is another thing entirely to force an obsession of paranoia onto your completely unwilling and uninterested family members.

Since I am so new to the concept of prepping, I started a new board on Pinterest. I wanted to gather more information on how to efficiently "bug out" or "bug in" as the situation deemed necessary. We have an infant, two cats and a rabbit. Those are variables to pay attention to when coming up with a plan. My husband, being a soldier in the US Army, has a much better idea of how to get this SHTF ("sh*t hit the fan") plan rolling, so I turn to him most of the time to ask his opinion on whether or not something is a good idea.

The plans that we are putting together are:
Fire Evacuation
Power Outage
Tornado (We live in Kansas, ya know.)
Home Invasion
Illness or Injury
Financial Problems
Other (You never know when you will need to flee for whatever reason. Have a backup plan.)

Many people are of the opinion that this is silly. I was once one of those folks. Then, we had Piper. The idea of something happening and her being in danger scared the reality into me. I'd much rather have an escape route or emergency plan and have people think we're ridiculous, than to live in an illusion of "it will never happen to us" and reap the consequences.

My inner organizational nerd loves being in charge of researching new ideas for our SHTF plans, BOBs and stocking our food supplies. I get to use lists, charts, worksheets and COUPONS!! These are some of my favorite things. One blog that I found, No Ordinary Moments, has several worksheets for organizing your medical, insurance, and other important information in an Emergency Binder. Other sites had a PDF file on how to prepare evacuation kits for infants and toddlers and fire safety for pets. Of course, they are all printed and about to be put into our own Emergency Binder.