A new Diversions columnist, Pat McLene, joined the WND team in March.
McLene specializes in “practical prepping” – addressing preparedness from a no-frills, low-cost practical standpoint. He avoids the he-man macho Rambo take on the subject which has pervaded much of the self-sufficiency movement. Nor does he encourage readers to succumb to the expensive, budget-busting “necessities” some “experts” claim are essential.
Instead, McLene presents readers with cost-effective, useful techniques, skills and advice. Using humor and hands-on experience, his goal is to guide people through the morass of expensive and complicated preparedness options. He prunes through the unnecessary and useless, trims away the expensive and pointless, and gets down to the bedrock of what it takes to get a family ready to handle interruptions due to weather, civil unrest, natural disasters, unemployment and other medium-range (or longer) disruptions.
McLene brings 20 years of experience in food raising and preservation, water-supply development, off-grid communications, building and construction, tool-making, and more. His passion is educating readers with humor and common-sense concepts. He also recognizes that while prepping is a serious subject, the best way to start others on the journey to self-sufficiency is to address real and historical problems and situations, rather than “the end of the world as we know it” scenarios that are too easy for others to ignore or mock.
An avowed country boy currently residing in a rural area of the American Redoubt, McLene has served in the military, worked in a foundry, written numerous articles on country living, obtained degrees in a field of hard science, runs several small businesses, and engages in small-scale farming.
Read Pat McLene’s most recent column here, or visit his archive.
