About Steve Fraser
I’m Steve, founder of 72 Hour Prepper.
I am an expert in outdoor survival and emergency preparedness. I have many years experience and have consulted both companies and private clients in risk mitigation, penetration testing, survival techniques and a variety of security-related matters.
Dogs are a particular focus for me, mostly for security uses but also for other working purposes from explosives and drug detection to hunting and personal protection.
Personal Life
I live in Alaska with my wife, children, and our fair share of dogs.
I made the choice to live up here quite a few years ago when I decided I wanted to stay away from large metropolitan areas, not just for the serenity of the mountains but also for my children to grow up with a healthy knowledge and respect for the outdoors, away from the many negative influences found in densely populated areas.
I don’t mean to offend any city-types here. I’ve had a lot of fun in some of our nation’s great cities and I know that ‘buzz’ that attracts so many to enjoy living in them. But when the fun stops, I want green quietness around me rather than grey noise. I also love to hunt and fish, so big city life wasn’t exactly providing for my leisure needs very well!
This is my idea of a nice place to spend the weekend:
Education and career
I originally lived and studied in Massachusetts, where I came to the first big decision of my life: whether to go into further education or go straight into the workforce.
I chose the latter despite having a very strong interest in the sciences at the time. I guess the outdoors was just too attractive for me to want to spend 10 hours a day riding a desk.
So instead I joined the military and after that I spent over 10 years in law enforcement which was, shall we say, ‘interesting’! I went on to become a trainer covering physical defensive tactics and enjoyed being involved in various other areas from surveillance and reconnaissance to covert entry techniques. (Lock-picking is a fun hobby too!)
Those experiences taught me a lot, not just expertise and experience in dealing with the obvious challenging situations you’d expect, but also about other things like human psychology and people’s often strange responses to risk or danger.
I was completely fascinated by how people behave under stress, especially when events happen unexpectedly. In fact I was so intrigued that I nearly went back into education to study it formally.
Interests & Motivations
Having always had a deep interest in global politics and economics, I’ve gradually become more aware that the US (as well as many other western countries) could be heading for disaster.
Remember that cleverly-spun phrase they starting using in 2008: “Quantitative Easing”? Well that was when my concerns about the future were confirmed. My suspicions that hard times were ahead instantly became an assuredness that, financially at least, the US and the western economic system was now doomed. The only question was “When?”
When they started firing up the printing presses to print our way out of any problem, doing it repeatedly while ‘playing politics’ at the same time, I knew our fate was sealed. And it is. It may take months, years, or possibly decades, but one day we will pay the price for such extreme fiscal irresponsibility.
Or worse, our children will foot the bill despite the fact they had no no part in the insanity that led to it or the decision to do it. Your children. My children…
Printing money to escape debts and evade recession does not work. History confirms it.
Even the Romans tried to ‘print’ more currency by chipping away at their old coins to melt down for new coins. Of course all that means is that the old coins are gradually worth less and less, and eventually the house of cards collapses, though not before the ‘leaders’ have extracted their little nest eggs and secured their own future safety and well-being.
“Twas ever thus” – as my old friend, an English stock trader and economist used to say.
You’d think by now we’d know where the process leads. Hyper-inflation and ultimately, collapse of a civilisation. Do people really think there’s something different about humans today which makes us immune to the results of ’cause and effect’?
Sadly I’ve learned that the answer to this question is a resounding “Yes” for most people. The same who people who still believe in government being the “fix-everything-fairy”.
I fear for these people. In fact I fear for most people because what I see ahead of us is a very dark and dangerous time. One look at the population levels of today should make it fairly easy to see how much turmoil and violence lays ahead if civil unrest breaks out, never mind a full scale war. And as far as I am concerned, that’s a ‘when’, not an ‘if’.
Why I started 72hourprepper.com
Combining my own personal choice to prepare for hard times with my family, and my enjoyment of helping others do so, I thought a website would be the best way to share my knowledge and help others get their ‘prepper’ hats on. And so 72HourPrepper was born.
You’ll notice that I choose to focus on ’72 hours’, and it’s for good reason.
It shocks me that despite many people being heavily into prepping these days, most still don’t have any kind of plan to survive just for the first 3 days after a sudden economic collapse, let alone other emergencies like earthquakes, extreme weather, power grid failure, civil unrest, not to mention (and God forbid) another world war.
As well as the growing number of possible causes for disaster, there is a compounding factor of modern times. That is people’s reliance on technology, all of which relies on electricity, and 99% of which comes from China, a nation we could be at odds with literally any moment.
In short, Americans have never been so exposed and ill-prepared for life without technology, yet the chances of that happening are rising constantly.
After years of reading and researching past emergency situations, one good example being the financial collapse in Argentina around 2000 (link). (Edit: They are in a very similar scenario now in 2023), I decided to focus on teaching people the importance of ensuring you stay alive for that first 72 hour period. Your chances of surviving long term increase significantly, if you have just the basics for food, shelter and security for 3 days.
It’s also a whole lot easier for people to learn, implement, and afford a 72 hour survival strategy, rather than go the whole hog in trying to prepare for the ‘mad max’ style doomsday scenario. It reminds me of the question “How do you eat an elephant?”
The answer being: “One bite at a time”!
By ‘chunking’ down the task of preparing for a SHTF scenario, my hope is that ‘average Joes’ will actually do something, rather than nothing. And by doing so, their ‘survivability score’ increases exponentially with each small move in the right direction.
This was the motivation for choosing the domain 72HourPrepper.com, and I will try to stay focussed on the ’72 Hour’ element. Maybe you can help me do so. I’ll probably need it!
Get in touch
Please help me stay on track and focussed on the objective here by sending me your suggestions, ideas, thoughts and comments. Get in touch if you have any topics you’d like to see covered on the site, or if you have any information you think my readers would benefit from.
We’re in this together, whether we like it or not.
You can email me at steve.fraser@72hourprepper.com or via the form on the contact page.
I hope this site helps as many people as possible to prepare for the trouble ahead. With sensible prepping, our objective is not just to survive, but to thrive. And you owe it to yourself, your family, and your fellow Americans, to be someone who can help others do so when the time comes.
Here’s to our survival. Whatever the odds.
