Our Core Belief

We firmly believe that every American family should strive to become Self-Reliant, enabling them to better weather the day-to-day disasters, catastrophes and hardships that we all experience.

Our Secondary Beliefs

We believe in Public Virtue and that communities should draw together through Preparedness and develop friendships, trust and loyalty within their neighborhood through discussing and developing support, evacuation and safety measures.

We believe that every family should have a personal storage of every needful thing in the event of a local disaster to enable them to help themselves, help their neighbors and help their community.

We believe in the “goodness of man” and that our responsibilities lay first to ourselves, second to our families and then to our neighbors and communities.

We believe that with proper preparation, disasters can be overcome on a personal, family, neighborhood and community level.

The APN is a Christian, Pro-American, Pro-Republic, non-Conspiracy Theory and Conservative PRIVATE Organization. As such, we will not promote content that disparages those positions (debate is allowed and encouraged as long as it is civil).

We do not promote or support Conspiracy Theories.

While we are a Christian Organization, we do not strictly promote Christianity or any particular Faith. This means that we have no problem publishing Faith Promoting articles from non-Christian perspectives. Similarly we also will not publish any content that disparages any other particular religion.

We support the U.S. Government as a Republic under The Constitution as intended by the Founding Fathers. We support reform and repair of both. While we have our own opinions of many politicians, The President, Policies, etc we do not and will not promote anything that bashes, disparages or rants about them. We believe in reform through education and understanding.

If you are unclear about these positions, please refer to The Mission, Beliefs and Function of The American Preppers Network. The APN does not promote Preparedness based on “End of the World” scenarios. We promote and believe in Preparedness as a philosophy for every-day life. For more on this, refer to the 5 Principles of Preparedness. This does not mean that we ignore or dismiss “End of the World” scenarios. By promoting Preparedness as a lifestyle and being prepared for Natural, Man-Made, Economic and other Disasters – every “End of the World” prep is by default covered.

Our Mission

The Mission of the APN is:

“To bring knowledge and understanding of living a Self-Reliant lifestyle into the mainstream and teach it to every household in America.”

We want to see every American household properly prepared for any negative or difficult event that may come in their lives that would cause the world as they know it to change. This type of event is most commonly on a personal level: the death of an immediate family member, an all consuming house fire, debilitating sickness or injury or a sudden devastating financial change such as losing a job.

These events also can and do occur on a local community, state, region, national and world level. They most commonly come in the form of natural or man-made disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, ice-storms, earthquakes and so on. Less frequently and often less likely, they occur as a consequence of poor leadership, bad governmental decisions and poor policy. These type of events can wreak havoc for anywhere from 24 hours to years on end.

We are adamant in our belief that any of these things can be overcome! With proper preparation and “Standard of Living Insurance”, we believe that humans have an amazing capacity to assess, adapt and overcome any obstacle that falls before them! We created The American Preppers Network so that we could help teach others the skills, theories and tools of Self Reliance and Preparation. We earnestly believe in every person’s ability to survive what may come – and come out on top!

We invite everyone to come join us on The Path of The Prepper: to question and learn from mentors, to study and practice together, to adapt and change through sharing progress, and to finally master and become an expert mentor to those who are beginning on the path!

What We Do

The American Preppers Network is not only a network or community of people working together towards a common educational goal, it is also a vast network of sites and services that is ever expanding to bring our members a breadth of information in a variety of formats and from multiple voices.

While we produce a large amount of content in multiple formats, we do not believe that we are the only authorities and we do not try to create an ‘island’ of content. We not only believe in educating the world in Preparedness, we also believe strongly in promoting those who share our beliefs and actively promote them.

National Prepper Network

We actively create and provide content on a National level through the and through the . The goal of the APN Blog is to provide information that we believe everyone in the country needs to read. Readers are able and encouraged to comment and interact on the blog. The goal of the APN Forums is to provide Preppers all over the country with a place to meet and discuss Preparedness topics and to share and learn Preparedness information. We actively encourage everyone to participate in the forums and get to know other Preppers!

We also manage a that we encourage you to join.

State Prepper Networks

One of our major goals is to provide Preppers with a way to come together with others in their area. We encourage those who are interested to organize and host get-togethers for other Preppers in your local area. To facilitate this, we provide many tools:

: on the APN Forum – there is a sub-forum for every state and you are encouraged to introduce yourself to your state network and get to know others in your area.

: We maintain a blog for every single state, you can find it by entering “State Name”.PreppersNetwork.com into your browser for example: www.alaska.preppersnetwork.com (note: we are in the process of changing these blogs over to this format. If this doesn’t work, try using: StatenamePreppers.com)

: We have Facebook groups for every state as well! You can find your local state facebook group by searching on Facebook for “(State Name) Preppers Network”

: We maintain a newsletter for each state as well

All of our State Networks are run by volunteers – usually from the state – who are willing to be the moderator for that network.

Who We Are

Tom Martin, Founder | Co-Owner

In 2008, Tom recognized his calling to build a national community of Preppers and to provide multiple online resources to help Preppers come together and share ideas, techniques and experiences with each other. To begin building this community, he contacted those who were already creating islands of Prepper information such as Riverwalker from Texas, Jayce Hall and Phil Burns from Utah and a few others across the country. He let them all know his goals and invited them to join in.

Having started a blog and forum, Tom began expanding into other media areas such as podcasting, video and newsletters. He also began having conversations with lots of other people who were exploring survival and emergency preparedness online. Tom was instrumental in evangelizing the newer term “Prepper” and teaching people what it meant to be a Prepper. Many who now prominently call themselves a Prepper can trace their original understanding of the term back to Tom.

While working as a cross-country trucker, Tom continued to pursue building the APN and in 2011 took on new partners to help take the concept to the next level. In 2012, APN was re-organized and new plans were put in place to help expand the reach of the APN to fulfill the goals of bringing Prepping to the mainstream.

Hugh Vail | Co-Owner

Hugh is the Founder of Tomorrow’s Harvest Food Storage, after Presiding over TH for 5 years Hugh stepped down as President for the opportunity to work at the American Prepper’s Network.

As a Products Expert, Hugh has used freeze dried, dehydrated, canned, spray-dried, air-dried foods throughout his life and adventures hiking, rock climbing, scuba diving and trail running all over the U.S and internationally. Aside, from Hugh’s personal experience with outdoor/prepper products Hugh’s greatest strength is his ability to develop family preparedness solutions for Americans. Having personally produced millions of dollars in product sales, Hugh knows what works, what does not work and how to help families prepare properly.

Hugh is the Co-host of the most widely downloaded podcast in family preparedness that can be accessed on Preparedness Radio Network, Prepper Podcast (KPRN-DB), Off The Grid News Podcast, Prepper Broadcasting. The new name for his podcast is “Preponomics | The Economy of Preparedness”

Twitter |

Phil Burns | Co-Owner

Phil is a Software Engineer and Project Manager by trade and has spent 20 years building multiple back-end business systems and many websites for companies.

Phil grew up in a Preparedness Oriented family, living a self-sustaining lifestyle as a third generation, LDS, Prepper. He grew up farming, canning and learning to live off the land in the forests, mountains, rivers, oceans and cities of Missouri, Tennessee, Hawaii and Utah. In early 2008, Jayce Hall approached him with the idea of creating as a blog to talk about and teach Prepping. Over the next couple years, they produced hundreds of articles about Preparedness. Prior to UtahPreppers, Phil had been actively blogging elsewhere about building his self-sustaining farm and raising his 8 children in a preparedness lifestyle.

Shortly after, Tom contacted Phil about helping to start APN, his youngest daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia and he basically went off-grid for about 3 years while taking care of her. Since his daughter was declared “cured” in 2011, Phil has come back on the preparedness scene and has been actively blogging, podcasting, youtubing and writing a book on Preparedness. He also has been working on a TV show about preparedness for over a year called “Meet the Preppers” which aired on Animal Planet in February of 2012.

Towards the end of 2011, Tom asked Phil to officially join APN and become a co-owner of the effort. Since then, Phil has been working with Tom and Hugh to strategize and roadmap a way to bring Prepping to the mainstream and into every home in America. Phil currently oversees all technology for The APN and is putting multiple new systems in place to improve the American Preppers Network.

Glen Martin, APN Radio | Co-Owner

Glen was raised at the base of the Cascade Mountain rage of Oregon where he spent his youth as an avid hunter and fisherman. Knowing well how to live off the land it was not uncommon for Glen to head up the mountain solo on a weekend or week long hunting or fishing trip with little more than his rifle or fishing pole.

Always restless, after college where he earned his degrees in architecture and mechanical drafting Glen spent the next 30 years in several western states and Alaska as a design consultant. Now living in Northern Idaho Glen has settled but is still restless.

Founder and operator of the Prepper Broadcasting Network Glen now focuses his energies in sharing with others the importance of self-reliance and independence. When not behind his desk, or caring for the animals or splitting wood for the next snow you may or may not find him hiking in the mountains of Northern Idaho.

Phil at the Self-Reliance Expo



