There are few segments of the prepper population who are more prepared than the Latter-Day Saints. Personal preparedness is part of their core beliefs. Their LDS Preparedness Manual has been around long before events like the Great Recession, National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers, and the coronavirus pandemic brought waves of people to prepping.
You can download the manual toward the end of this post.
The LDS Preparedness Manual
I’m not a member of the Latter-Day Saints, but I do know of their belief in preparing for difficult times. Members of the church have been advocated preparing for difficult times for man years. To that end, while not an “official” publication of the church itself, members have assembled a book by various authors that is very popular among preppers – the LDS Preparedness Manual.
The manual may be freely reproduced and distributed so long as all of hte copyrights of the original authors are respected, and such reproduction is never done for commercial gains.
The manual is a whopping 509 pages of preparedness advice. I agree completely with one of their opening statements:
This book is WORTHLESS if you put it in your bookshelf with the intention of only reading it after an emergency strikes. It is NOT a survival manual intended to be used after the fact. This is a PREPAREDNESS manual that can only help you if you read it in advance and follow its suggestions to prepare and get ready for an emergency BEFORE IT HAPPENS!
The LDS Preparedness Manual Sections
The book is broken into sections by topic. This is just a sampling of portions under each topic area:
Section 1 – Emergency Preparedness. Why?
- Normalcy Bias
- The Five Principles of Preparedness
- Mental and Spiritual Preparations for Survival
- How Long Until You Starve?
- General Preparedness Survey
- Five Levels of Preparedness
Section 2 – Getting Started
- Food Storage Tools and References
- Grains and Legumes
- Sugar, Milk, Fats, and Oils
- Cooking Essentials
- Processing and Preservation
- Sprouting
- Storage
Section 3 – Every Needful Thing
- 72-Hour Emergency Kit (Get Out of Dodge / But Out Bag)
- Evacuation
- Communication
- Financial
- Medical
- Defense
- Heating, Cooking, Lighting
- Clothing
- Shelter
- Sanitation
- Testing Your Preparedness
- Babies and Small Children
- Pandemics
- Terrorist Attack
Section 4 – Preparedness Outside Your Comfort Zone
- 100 Emergency Items That Will Disappear First
- Fears of a Prepper
- Unprepared: Welcome to the Promised Land
- Thoughts on Disaster Survival
- A Look Back at Katrina
- Lessons from Argentina’s Economic Collapse
Criticism of the Book
I try not to be too harsh a critic of others’ writing, but this preparedness manual does come up short in a few areas. It is very heavy on food preparedness. Also, if you don’t subscribe to LDS beliefs, then you’ll have to deal with the religious overtones throughout the book.
The book is not the be-all and end-all of survival manuals. The fact that it is not written by a single author, but rather a collection of various authors’ pieces, gives the book a disjointed feel. The order of articles do not flow seamlessly. Also, the actual grammar of the book… well, let’s just say it’s riddled with errors.
However – the book is packed with valuable information, and best of all, it’s free! My advice would be to pair this book with another, more well-rounded preparedness book like Dr. Arthur Bradley’s best-selling book Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family. For the beginning to intermediate prepper, the two books combined could put you off to a very good start.
Download the LDS Preparedness Manual
If you go through the Latter Day Saints book website to download the manual, they’ll make you give them your email address. I would encourage you to sign up for our emails, but it’s not a requirement to downloading the book. You can download it for free here:
Download the LDS Preparedness Manual PDF
I hope you find it useful, and prep on!
