There are "Preppers" and there are people who actually prepare for when things go wrong. Preppers seem to me like someone who watched a few too many survivor man and YouTube clips and decided to make a personality out of it.
Right. "Prepper" vs. "being prepared." The former is almost like a subculture.
All the solar panels, ARs, and "Patriot" food kits won't prep them for when the pollinators die off.
I love it when people who very clearly are not preppers put words in the mouths of preppers, loudly espouse the beliefs of preppers, and label them all as bad & selfish people. They talk about something they don't actually understand.
The overall tone reeks of quiet arrogance, like a cologne. The smug accomplishment of...taking no action at all? It is ignorant. Disrespectful. Foolish. Enough of the comment section isn't much better.
Disappointing, but not surprising.
Or maybe you don't like being lumped in with a bunch of conservative reactionaries who dream of running their own post-apocalyptic fiefdom. It's not our fault that those are who people think of when they think of preppers. I guess you should pick a new name for yourself.
Real peppers never stop eating beans. You buy new and eat the old ones. Oh and real peppers buy a truck they can repair themselves, not a 2024 Ram Clownsmobile.
Real peppers never stop eating beans.
Remind me not to stay in one of their enclosed bunkers with them for an extended period of time.
The more you eat beans and fiber, the better your digestive system becomes at digesting them.
Beans beans the magical fruit The more you eat the more you toot
COVID didn't have a solution based around people being the main character.
Unless you wanted to cause trouble. Then you could be the main character.
Preppers: I'm ready for anything; economic collapse, zombies, apocalypse, sinkholes, foreign invasion, aliens...anything!
[covid-19 hits]
Preppers: fuck this i'm not wearing a mask! it's all a hoax!
Also preppers: I need to go to the store and buy 27 cases of toilet paper!
I'm a person that most people would consider a prepper. What am I prepping for? Unemployment. Being able to survive with as few possible inputs as possible.
I'm a hard core skeptical nerd that doesn't believe a single conspiracy theory. I'm like an anti doomsday prepper. Making life easier even if things don't go bad.
I think when most people think of a prepper, they think of someone preparing for everything to collapse. Badly. So I wouldn't consider you a prepper.
I have chickens, ducks and geese, raised beds, just built a solar battery charger, can my own food, dehydrate food, cook everything from scratch, etc etc. I go through all the same steps. My friends refer to me as a prepper despite me saying I'm a homesteader. They keep saying they are going to show up at my place if everything collapses. I started shutting this down by saying they need to be pre-approved, pay a $150 non-refundable deposit and $50 a month so that I can make sure I have food and other essentials for when they show up. Because it's really annoying to hear someone say "I'm totally not doing anything about my fears so I'm going to impose on you when the time comes."
I'm just trying to reduce the amount it takes for me to survive. It happens that if you are ready to be unemployed for a few months that a lot of the same prepa come in handy for a collapse of the economy. The same things needed to hunt squirrels are helpful against zombies.
That sounds like farming to me.
There is fine line between farming with guns and prepping.
I'd say that 'fine line' is 'doomsday bunker + Immortan Joe fantasy post "the big one."' vs. just having a farm and guns.
So not all that fine a line.
I don’t think preppers are a monolith. There are people from different backgrounds, different politics, different concerns, and different methods (and degrees) of preparedness. People who make it about hoarding goods and resources are probably just doing it wrong.
So… Yeah, doomsday preppers definitely showed their true colors.
But I think we also saw that there’s a lot of merit to being a reasonable prepper.
I’m lucky to have a reasonable prepper in my friend group. Because of their insistence, I had masks, a full tank of gas, and a comfortably-stocked pantry way ahead of time so I wasn’t yet another person adding stress to a lean/just-in-time/low-margin distribution system that can’t handle even minor hiccups.
Much like the goal of lockdowns was not to completely stop the spread but just slow it so our healthcare system could handle it, the goal of prepping should be to avoid causing shortages when our productive capacity is lowered.
Drag thinks prepping is about learning useful skills and building community. A prepper should know how to sew, how to garden, how to repair and operate a radio, how to make friends, how to organise labour, and first aid.
Drag wants to see a zombie show about a grandma who looks after her community, resolves interpersonal disputes, fixes clothes, and looks after the little ones. Drag thinks grandmas are the demographic best prepared for an apocalypse.
Kickass apocalypse grannies, fuck yeah
This was also the plot of Mad Max: Fury Road, by the way
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!”
preppers don't want to be dependent on society because they don't like society, but they're not bright enough to realize they will always be dependent on society
I don't consider myself a prepper, but I do prepare for unlikely scenarios with highly negative outcomes. In terms of expected value vs. investment, I think having a "go" or "get home" bag is cheap and useful. I have two weeks of food and water supplies to shelter in place. I have face masks and hazmat suits (they came vacuum sealed so they just sit in the bottom of the shelter in place Tupperware bin). A solar generator and battery. A few medkits and some basic medicines including prescription antibiotics. And then my camping/hiking stuff: so more mres, water purification, water filter, fire kit etc.
All in all, it didn't cost much, it doesn't take up much room, and it's good to have. I'm not necessarily worried about a revolution so much as, in order if likelihood: a bad storm, electrical grid issues, natural disaster, or mild civil unrest. All of which I've been through before, so I guess they're not exactly black swan events. I wouldn't really call those "SHTF" events, since, again, I've experienced each one and yet things are now fine.
What I consider "preppers" are thinking about (and seemingly hoping for) civilizational collapse.
Make sure the antibiotics don't expire. Most of them just become useless when they expire, but Tetracycline becomes poisonous when it expires. Also, not all antibiotics are good for all infections, so make sure the ones you have are useful for the kinds of infections you anticipate.
Yeah I fill up some whisky bottles with tap water and keep them in the cupboard. I guess in an insane scenario I might need to use it as drinking water, though I'd probably want to figure out how to boil that water first since it's been sitting there for awhile.
I have actually used that water... but just to wash my hands when they turn off the water in the building when they're doing some maintenance.
Sometimes some disaster preparedness is just useful for relatively banal circumstances.
Me, buying some extra rice, pasta and salt, watching my neighbor buying large game butchering knife kit (we live in the suburbs)
Sounds like a smart guy. He gets meat AND all your dried goods!
I know a guy who owns a retired nuclear missile silo that he made into a doomsday bunker/business. The top several floors or so with the old control rooms and stuff has been converted into his bunker, but most of the main silo is flooded with water, so it's a scuba diving attraction.
Anyway: when Covid came his bunker and years of food and fuel, so he and the wife went out there and used it for their lockdown. I'm happy for him that he got to use it.
They took out the old control rooms and completely remodeled the inside into a pretty comfy house. It's just underground and has 3-ton blast doors.
my dads a mild prepper and had his 'told you so' moment when he brought up 2 boxes of n95 masks. he donated a box to hospital and the other box got the family through the worst months
I'm proud that in that time of crisis I was strong and served my country and fellow citizens, simply by staying home and not bothering anyone.
They weren't ready for a SHTF scenario where survival means personal hygiene.
Same people who won't get a vaccination are the same ones who take huge dumps and don't wash their hands. Venn diagram is a circle.
I'm an inverse prepper I guess
Always ready to just give up and die
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