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There’s a Simpson’s episode about preppers where they assume the big bad thing happens and fuck off to their bunkers, stuff happens, and they eventually come back to town. When they come back everyone is happy and doing fine and Marge says something like “things were okay after the first few hours. We all worked together and made it work. It was like all the mean, angry, and resentful parts of the town had just disappeared!”
In hindsight it doesn't feel like it was a proper SHTF moment. Some of the early reactions did make it feel like one but in the end not that much happened where I live. Try to stay away from people for a while and use a mask seemed like the extent of it. Spent a lot more than outdoors than I usually do.
What a lot of right wing preppers and a lot of 'militia' guys (the tacticool heavy infantry kind) seem to completely lack is the willingness to be inconvenienced at all.
They buy or craft whatever stuff seems cool to them (some of which sure can actually be quite useful), train some skills they find fun to do (usually shooting/hunting) but most seem to ignore anything they don't like, find difficult or uninteresting to do (such as keeping reasonably fit). It also usually includes being willing to take orders or cooperate.
The lack of some skills/equipment/preparation could be overcome but not with the mentality that lead to it on the first place.
The being cooperative thing is the key.
Id be willing to bet my left testicle those that survive an apocalypse are those who work together to grow food, build shelter, etc. and not the goobers who lock themselves in a crate with some beans.
What you're not seeing is that it's also a dick-measuring contest. He who dies in a megastorm with the most hoarded toilet paper wins.
I'm in the "be prepared" group where we usually have a couple weeks of food and water around. We also have two forms of heat for when the power goes out.
Will we survive WW3 on this? No, but it has been very helpful after big winter storms that took out the city power.
Having some supplies to use in the short term is good for everyone. Being ready to go out to help neighbors and get the community back on its feet is how we get through to the next good times.
I wouldn't call that being a prepper. That's just sensible preparation for something like a natural disaster. Preppers think they'll survive whatever their conception of "the big one" is.
Preppers think the pencil nose accountants will all die screaming in regret while all the high school jv cheerleaders come begging them for help, in full uniform, and everyone finally recognizes how they were right all along.
I have tons of food, a generator and other backup power and a gun, and if shit really hits the fan I know I'm not living 5 minutes longer than everyone less prepared, the resources actually make me a target.
But then again, I have Pge, so it's not doomsday prepping, it's just 'Wednesday, or whenever they next screw up resulting in 100s of deaths, weeks without power, and massive rate hikes resulting in huge bonuses to their upper management'.
Honestly, if the great civilization-ending disaster they think they're prepping for happens, I hope I die in the first wave. I don't have any Mad Max fantasies.
I'm neither American nor a native English speaker so take it with a grain of salt.
That's where I'd put the line between a regular prepper and a doomsday prepper.
Not to forget the very elusive Sergent Prepper.
I guess in my mind, 'prepper' is just short for 'doomsday prepper' and it's not the same thing as doing, like I said above, sensible preparation for natural disasters.
I had a few shirts made with this.
Avoid it like ~~the plague~~ any sense of personal responsibility.
I get all sorts of reactions.
I would add to this that covid did cause a major resurgence in a different flavor of prepper: "back to the earth" people who strive to, among other things, produce more of their own food (be it growing produce, raising livestock, or even doing more cooking and baking using raw ingredients rather than relying on premade food). Interest in gardening, homesteading, baking, and learning to live off the land skyrocketed during peak covid. Sure a lot of that interest has subsided, but much like how the great depression permanently changed the attitudes of people who lived through it in regards to reusing things instead of tossing and replacing, the experience of scarcity and uncertainty regarding basic goods (for most first-world folks, for the first time in their lives) made a permanent mark on at least some of the population. And this is a much more practical type of prepping, because instead of coming from a fantasy of what disaster might befall the world, it was a direct response to a disaster that actually happened.
The irony in the "prepping" movement these days is that it was never intended to be this thing about having an inaccurate l inexhaustible supply of resources just for you and your family (if you're still on speaking terms with them) to live off of when the nukes fall.
It's not about sitting in your attic and picking off starving people who are looking for a meal while you sit on a cache of food and ammunition.
It's supposed to be about being a useful person in your community who can help each other weather the worst in life. You will get much further in a disaster if you have skills than if you have stuff. You might have an entire Home Depot to yourself, but it's far too late to learn carpentry when the rain starts to fall.
It’s not about sitting in your attic and picking off starving people who are looking for a meal while you sit on a cache of food and ammunition.
Unfortunately for many it is.
I don't really generally circulate with far right wing folk. However this is one place that overlaps with my interests. One of the most unlikely intersections between the far left and the far right is home solar power. When you start to stray way from purely commercial groups trying to sell you stuff, you get to the DIY solar community.
Here you'll find multi-gun toting, hardcore Randian libertarians, that "want the damn government control out of their lives" right next too tree hugging, LGBTQ/feminist equality supporting, carbon-neutralling liberals. Both groups squint hard not to see who they're talking to or asking for advice on Charge Controllers, panel interconnects, AC inverter config settings, or off-grid battery solutions. Every now and then one person from one side or the other won't be able to help themselves and they'll make reference to their particular extreme political views. Everyone just holds their breath hoping a fight doesn't break out and most of the time its just ignored by both sides.
In here you'll find those far right preppers and they are convinced that they'll have to be 100% self supporting when the government falls "real soon now".
Unfortunately for the gunmen in this example, their guns will wear and tear. A crucial part or two will fail and not be replaceable. Then their entire strategy of "kill everyone else" will fall apart. And that's aside from the fact that human societies have always flourished because we have worked with rather than against each other.
Unfortunately for the gunmen in this example, their guns will wear and tear.
Their guns will be worthless long before they wear out. They are going to run out of ammo eventually. None of these folks are capable of manufacturing modern nitrocellulose gun powder or primer caps necessary to reload their fancy rifles and handguns. I don't even see them taking a more pragmatic path of learning how to make old school black powder for muzzle loaders which they could conceivable made in their bunkers. Admittedly, I'm on the tree-hugger/equality side and don't even own a gun. These are just my observations from outside their group.
Were these preppers more honest with themselves, there would be another area they would overlap with many on the far left: Cosplay.
And that’s aside from the fact that human societies have always flourished because we have worked with rather than against each other.
100% agree. Our survival as a species has always depended on us working together.
I have acquaintances that would definitely be considered classic preppers. One told me that he has 10k plus (each!) of rounds for multiple calibers of weapons, and a years worth of food for each of his family members in a “bunker” on his property. It’d take a LONG time to burn through that many rounds.
True, but remember they don’t think that way, because it messes up their fantasy.
Have you heard the nonsense the owner of Reddit spouts constantly? About how he was so good at hoarding that he’ll have a private army and slaves and people will come crawling on their knees to serve him for a little food and he’ll be a king? These losers all think like that, and facts like tools break and bullets run out and you have to cast more and get the supplies to do so just ruins their dreams of being an unstoppable tyrant.
Saw an episode of doomsday preppers years ago. These dudes had a whole property out in Oregon or Washington state designed to endure a potential onslaught of zombies.
They had to quickly evacute their property and leave all their fancy stuff, because of a very real forest fire that came to visit, for which they were entirely unprepared.
I've been finding the crazy building in arid environments odd, because even aside from forest fires, if your water supply dries up, you're going to have to uproot and move to a state or location with a reliable water source. And you'll be part of a big mass of climate migrants at that point.
Why the hate on prerppers in this comment section? It sounds kinds fun tbh, and the skills of living in the woods are useful even outside of apocalypse.
Sounds fun. But there's a huge Venn diagram overlap between them and the sovcits, covid-hoax, various types of "truthers" and doomsday cult types. So the target market, if you're marketing to preppers, is not just the clever Doctor Stone cosplayers.
Do you think it has anything to do with, like, the entire text of what I posted above?
The middle-aged man knows that's exactly what every other middle-aged man and those older than them are thinking.
The snake eating its tail in preparation. Or, preparing for the snake eating its tail.
https://youtu.be/t3lFHqWELE0?si=u3GoHTxEt83KYgbJ
I do have to admit, I'm prepared for fires and earthquakes. Doomsday seems crazy, though. I have a bug out bag, etc... I'm not going to live under the preconceived notion that I'm going to survive a nuclear attack or race war or that they'll happen. Pepper's get fucking insane.
Technically just having a preparation in place for fires or earthquakes does make you a prepper. There may be varying degrees of it, but prepping for natural disasters is actually a much larger section of preppers than "zombies" or whatever bullshit. Hurricanes too in those areas is another common one, and you'd be surprised how many people carry and IFAK just in case of a car crash or shooter.
But any way you slice it, building firebreaks, storing food and water, and forming a microgrid, those are some good preparations my prepper friend.
I lived in a small town on the New Madrid fault line in the middle of tornado alley most of my life and yep, we stocked up because we knew if a sizable enough earthquake hit the area, we were small enough to not get any attention for a long time while the nearby cities were recovering. There's definitely point of wisdom for sticking back supplies for a few months, but stacking a cellar full of tactical mil spec fishing poles and the like is mental masturbation for delusional assholes with less sense than money.
Imagine living such a privileged life that the closest you've ever come to feeling oppressed was when you had to wear a mask to pick up dino nuggets at Walmart. Preppers have always been clowns, but COVID definitely ruined what little facade there ever actually was about the "movement" being anything other than a masturbatory LARP.
Nothing wrong in a good LARP, or masturbation for that matter. The problem with preppers is everything else about them.
I have to sit at home and watch TV??? The horror!
Piers Morgan was one of the few horrible British people America shipped back.
As a guy who built shit for preppers (because some of them are stupid as fuck and have gobs of money from some shady bs) this is spot on.
Preppers are fucking losers. The cunts who want WW3 deserve no love.
But have you considered that going to therapy and dealing with their intense insecurity is scary?
Bros will have nuclear armegeddon before seeing a social worker and it shows.
Therapy would pierce the veil of lies and ignorance that they've made their Identity.
People will burn down their house before admitting they were wrong their whole lives.
Too bad therapy seems to cost an arm and leg in this country.
Like the other person said, the people that do and say all this crazy shit spend thousands on rifles, rods, and trucks when a Crosstrek would probably be perfect. And that’s fine I guess it’s just they have the money(or the willingness to spend it anyway) and could probably squeeze a bi-weekly session in there.
Love how their idea of surviving the collapse of society is driving a huge ass truck, 'cause gasoline apparently falls from the sky
For what these doomsday prepers spend to compensate for their small manhood, they could easily pay for multiple sessions of therapy, even in the US.
If you just went hunting, fishing, and living in the woods COVID wouldn't be a problem for you though.
Tell that to all the gay frogs I heard coughing in the woods last night
starts penning unauthorized sequel to Where The Wild Things Are titled Where The Gay Frogs Cough
Not just listening to scientists. Listening to nerds.
Smells a bit like American exceptionalism.
"America is so important, we singlehandedly forced scientists to accelerate with developing the vaccine because we are so important and big."
Um, huh?... vaccines are how you stop viruses... It's as if you said "scientists rushing to stop COVID because Americans refuse to try to stop COVID", which is just silly.