About Next Step Survival

Welcome To Next Step Survival?

_{Last updated: Mar 30, 2025}

Next Step Survival is here to serve as both your library of information and a helpful guide to help you sort out the truth from the fluff and focus on what matters most.

You will find practical information, tactics, and resources for survival, bushcraft, prepping, homesteading, protection, and gear reviews.

Next Step Survival Mission Statement

“To help fellow preppers of every level survive and enjoy the life they deserve by instruction, inspiration, and example.”

Mission Statement Next Step Survival

Why Another Survival blog?

My first post addresses that very issue—”Another survival blog? Really?” Basically, I am convinced I can add value to an already crowded space by reducing the noise and guiding you in the direction you want to go at a pace you set.

Who Is Behind Next Step Survival?

Hi, I’m Brian Hawkins. I’m a father, grandfather, Veteran, law-abiding taxpayer, homeowner, trucker, and a United States Citizen.

Since we’re applying labels here, I’m also a prepper, gardener, beekeeper, responsible gun owner, and hiker.

I was a truck driver in the Army during peacetime in the ’80s. For you fellow veterans, I was a 64C, but my MOS was later changed to 88M.

I never saw combat, and I didn’t train with the cool kids in the Special Forces, Delta Force, Rangers, or even the Infantry. I was a gear grinder and proud to support the 197th Infantry, 82nd Airborne, and 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.

I wouldn’t call myself a wannabe, but I was one of the guys who loved the field and training in the woods. I loved the challenge, the gear, and the experience.

Little did we know the next war, which I missed by a year, would have few trees and a lot of sand. I feel fortunate to have missed it, but I have respect for the brave soldiers who did go.

I spent over six years in and left in 1989 as a sergeant with two honorable discharges. I wanted to try driving a shiny truck for more money.

It didn’t take long to start missing much of the Army’s way of life. The transition into the civilian lifestyle was difficult. I didn’t really care to spend a lot of time with the other truckers, and I still don’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a ton of respect for those guys, and honestly, America would fall flat on its face without our truckers. True story.

I wasn’t the perfect fit for telling trucker stories at the diners and spending days on end keying the mic.

I was better suited to grab some gear and find a quiet spot in the woods to relax and explore. Antisocial? I guess, but it is what it is, and I don’t pretend to be something I’m not.

For the next decade, I drove for several companies coast to coast, including Canada, and spent many weekends in the forests, mountains, lakes, and even the desert. I loved hiking and the wilderness, and I had no idea what a survivalist was.

If you had started talking about prepping, I wouldn’t have known what you were talking about, yet I squirreled months of food and supplies away almost instinctively.

This was before personal computers, cell phones, and GPS. But the top bunk of my truck cab was loaded to the ceiling with food, water, and survival and hiking gear.

Later, in 1999, I went local (driving locally) and discovered computers. I didn’t lose interest in hiking, but the opportunities certainly dropped away. All the while, I began focusing on new adventures—online.

I eventually lost a lot of gear, gained a lot of weight, and lived an easy life for a while.

A few years ago, I started getting back into hiking and outdoor survival, but now, a wealth of online information complements and complicates these activities.

Now, I have enough gear, food, and supplies to fuel my renewed passion for a very long time. I’ve learned more in the last few years than I have my entire life regarding survival – and I feel a strong need to share it. Maybe it has something to do with 20 years of blogging, but that is just a guess. 😉

I hope you’ll join me as we sort through the confusion and make the best decisions based on our and our family’s needs.

Especially if you’ve read this entire story because now I owe you – you’ll never get that time you just wasted back. LOL

Let’s Get You Started Prepping, Shall We?

Next Steps:

When Did I Start Prepping?

One of the questions I often get is, “When did you start prepping?“.

That was always a tough question for me because I hadn’t noticed a set time etched in the universe that set me off on my prepping journey. It felt like it just happened organically.

Now, I realize that was not entirely the case. Sure, little seeds were planted over the years.

I remember hiding cans of soup and boxes of cereal in the walls of my Father’s house as a teenager so I’d have something to eat after the other kids raided the kitchen.
Kept a real 72-hour pack (Standard issue Army rucksack) with gear and food within reach for years as a member of the 72-hour Ranger Support Element (RSE) in Ft. Benning, GA, in the 1980s.
Months of driving a tractor-trailer across the Sinai desert, moving gear and cargo between camps as a United Nations Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) member, and gaining a real-life understanding of what true dehydration feels like and how dangerous it can be. Carrying an ample supply of food, and especially water, was critical along the MSR (Main Supply Route) between North Camp and South Camp, where the sand dunes literally changed to roads daily, with daytime temperatures above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit and dropping into the forties at night.
Living out of a pack for a decade as an over-the-road truck driver and carrying enough food and survival gear to make Art Bell proud.
Sitting for hours and hours (18 hours at one point, if memory serves) in four separate interstate shutdowns with thousands of stranded vehicles. Once each, in Wyoming, Illinois, and Indiana, and an ice storm in Kentucky that shut down the state for three days. In Indiana, on either I-90 or I-80 (I don’t remember which), I had people and families climbing into the cab of my truck on several occasions to get warm, a bottle of water, and sometimes a little food. I was well-equipped with food, water, a microwave, a refrigerator, and even a TV and VCR. Oh, and hundreds of gallons of fuel, so idling wasn’t an issue.
Experiencing firsthand the little hiccup now called the Northeast blackout of 2003 and several other power outages over the years, both in the heat of the summer and during Michigan snow storms.

Sure, those experiences had a lot to do with being a prepper today, like watching my parents garden and can, hunt and fish, and live more frugally than most do today.

Then I ran across an old post (Why I Cooked Ramen Noodles In My Backyard – September 20, 2015), almost 6½ years old, that helped me realize that that was probably the pivot point when I started prepping in earnest. It’s pretty cool to be able to skim back and see my thought process because it was recorded on a personal blog.

I’m not going to discuss that blog post; you can read it for yourself, but it led me to yet another blog post that I wrote over seven years ago (What Is Freedom To You? Is Your Freedom Secure? – January 3, 2015) that was, at the very least, another stepping stone.

So, when someone asks me, “When did you start prepping?” I can confidently say it depends. Prepping in a general sense? Decades ago. Writing about prepping? Around ten years ago, in 2015. Calling it prepping and building an official prepper pantry? A decade ago.