By M.L. Lewis

We all have a bad habit we need to break. Some are harmless like buying the occasional scratcher at the gas station or mine which is biting my lower lip. But, some could be dangerous, and potentially fatal even in the best situation. In a disaster, we’ll become more dependent on these bad habits for comfort reasons. These bad habits are something you need to break NOW before the SHTF because any way you slice it they’re dangerous!

5. Consistently Snacking
By consistently snacking you throw off your body’s natural hunger signals it uses to tell you when you are actually hungry and when you are full. By not eating properly when you’re actually hungry you can develop a series of health conditions and put on a lot of extra weight because instead of burning fat your body stores it. When the zombies raise up there’s going to be an extreme lack of food causing you to feel light-headed, dizzy,
and develop a growling stomach.

To combat this put yourself on a time eating schedule and pre-plan all meals and snacks. Learn to eat healthier and lighter. For the first two weeks, you’ll feel hunger pains but fight through them since the goal is to re-setup your body’s natural processes.

4. Watching TV
Who else besides me loves a good binge-watching marathon on Netflix or Hulu? Little do you know that too much TV can be a bad thing. The average person should watch two hours or less of TV a day to not develop an addiction too it. Yes, you can easily develop a TV addiction and it won’t be fun when the power goes out for good.

Watching too much TV can cause you to develop an antisocial personality and that leads to no friends to help you out during a crisis. It has been scientifically proven to speed up memory loss in many adults making you forgetful and easily distracted during the crisis.

Watching TV can also prevent you from learning the survival skills you need to live. To learn a skill, you have to implement it in real life, just watching Bear Grylls do it isn’t really teaching you anything. We humans learn better and faster through hands-on activities.

To combat this, you should get out more. Walk thirty minutes a day playing The Walking Dead: Our World. When I was younger I use to go on bug out camping trip with my fellow prepper friends to learn hands -on survival skills, get accustomed to carrying my bug out bag, and learn through trial and error what supplies I needed and what I didn’t.

3. Drinking too much alcohol
For many Americans, nothing is more calming the kicking back with a cool beer with your best friends. One even two drinks are fine with me if your good at handling your alcohol, but too much can be very bad.

Being drunk slows your reaction time, putting you more at risk of being taken out by a zombie. It also makes you look like a zombie which may confuse other drunk members of your team causing them to shoot you  thinking you’ve turned.

You may also develop alcoholism. This is when your body becomes dependent on alcohol. So, when there is an alcohol shortage your body will attack you in violent ways. Your heart rate will increase, your whole body will shake, and you’ll have the worst headache in your life distracting you from the real threat at hand.

To combat this in a perfect world just don’t drink ever, but at the end of the day we’re still humans and I suggest you limit your drinking to a maximum of two drinks. If you do suspect you already have a dependence on alcohol I suggest going to an outpatient center or visiting your local AA meeting to get started kicking this bad habit. To find a nearby chapter visit http://www.aa.org for more information.

2. Smoking
Like alcohol, your body can become dependent on this as well. We have all been told since we were kids not to smoke and how bad it is. Smoking can cause a lot of damage to your throat and lungs causing you to become winded faster than your fellow team members.

It can also lead you to develop a horrible, hacking cough which will most likely attach zombies to your whereabouts. Not to mention the fire risk cigarettes impose on your safe house. Smoking is the leading cause of civilian fire deaths in the country, and a cigarette ember can burn for up to seven minutes.

If you decide to wait for the apocalypse to quit you’ll have to suffer withdrawal symptoms while fighting to live. Withdrawal symptoms include body aches, fever, disrupted sleeping patterns, and mood swings.

To combat this, you should slowly wane yourself off of smoking. There are many products available to the public from patches, to gum, to even hypnosis tapes to help you kick the habit. Many smokers who want to quit wane themselves off nicotine using E-Cigs because they have a lower dosage of the chemicals and every month users get a smaller and smaller dosage. There are even smokers’ anonymous groups available. To find on visit nicotine-anonymous.org.

1. Not Being Disaster Ready
This is by far the worse bad habit overall. We all have that one friend who swears nothing bad will happen and the government will be there to save us. But, when there is a total social collapse there won’t be a government to hand out bottled water or to rub your belly. You’ll be on your own to fight zombies and gangs fighting for power.

There is an old saying that we are tree meals away from anarchy and that couldn’t be more accurate. Watch the news a week before a disaster hits an area, it’s always the same empty store sad story. People think they are untouchable and bad things will never happen to them. Experts claim that we will go through at least one traumatic disaster in our lives. We may not be able to save all of our loved ones, but if you can get one friend
disaster ready that is one life you saved when SHTF happens.

To get disaster ready is really simple. When you go to pick up your morning coffee from your favorite convenient store grab an extra bottle of water and a granola bar and put them in a plastic box in your car. When you go to the corner store to grab an extra battery for your favorite electronic, grab two. When your grocery shopping, grab
a couple pull-tab cans of veggies on sale and put those in the box. Take five minutes out of your day and visit ready.gov and print off their check sheet and every payday grab one your two things on the list. These little steps will have you disaster ready in no time.