A colleague of mine is an attorney. No, he’s not a shuckster from the firm Dewey, Screwem, & Howe. He’s actually a pretty sharp guy with a great heart and a ton of experience with prepping and such. He’s been at it damn near as long as I have.

Given his background and education, he comes to the table with perhaps a bit of a different take on prepping than the average person. I thought I’d share with you his perspective and see what you think.

What it boils down to is this — parents have a legal obligation to protect and care for their children, right? I mean, on top of the emotional desire to keep our kids safe, we as parents are required by the law to feed and clothe them. Failure to do those things leads to visits from child services, at the minimum.

With that in mind, would those obligations extend to prepping?

Rest assured, I’m not at all suggesting any sort of legislation be written to codify such an obligation. The last thing we need in this country is more laws on the books. However, this sense of a sort of legal requirement to provide for your children, whether we’re talking normal day-to-day stuff or in a crisis, could be rather useful as a talking point.

Many preppers complain that they have people in their lives who just plain don’t get it. While in my experience the numbers of people who remain completely uninterested in prepping seem to be declining (your mileage may vary, as they say), there are folks out there who still believe in their heart of hearts that someone will always step in to save the day, typically someone wearing some sort of uniform.

Rather than argue until you’re blue in the face about how even a minimal amount of stored food and water could make a huge difference in an emergency, take a different approach. If you talk about the obligations we have as parents to provide for our children’s safety and well being to the best of our abilities, perhaps that might be just enough to help them see the light, so to speak.