My grandparents were born at the turn of the century, right around 1900. They were married around 1920, and my grandmother died in 1923, a year after my dad was born.

Their entire life was, in a snapshot, the epitome of today's prepper beliefs. If it didn't happen virtually without the involvement of anybody except the immediate family and what was there at the farm, it didn't happen. It did help that they were far in the woods on top of a mountain in Vermont.

The funny thing is that when you really look into it, they had everything we have today, everything that matters anyway. Maybe they didn't have the medicine, doctors, or technology that would save my grandmother from a far-too-young passing, but for day-to-day living they had the necessities. Even the lack of today's medicine was a trade-off. In ther day, the reality was that they might die from things that are pretty easily cured today, but then again the dangers of fast cars, air travel, overcrowded cities and loose borders, as well as the new and inventive ways to harm ourselves and each other weren't nearly what they are today.

When I was young, in the 1970's, there was still no running water or electricity on top of "the hill". That's right, I'm talking about the 1970's. They didn't miss it; rather, my grandmother said "Why would we do that?"

Their technology was marvelous. The wood stove in the middle of the kitchen not only heated nearly the whole house (there was a large steel grate in the second floor above the stove, which was a terrific "duct" for heat upstairs), but it also had virtually every kitchen appliance that we have today. It was a monster, about seven feet long by four feet deep. It had six griddles, two reservoirs on the sides always full of hot water, a cooking oven in the middle, and a warming oven on the top. Of course the fuel system was unstoppable: a mountain of firewood that accumulated and dried all year long, which saved them from -20 degrees Vermont winters.