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
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.
The one doomsday prepper I knew had to weigh at least 400 pounds. I often wondered if he knew how to make insulin for when the apocalypse happens.
He was actually a nice enough guy, but not the brightest bulb in the box.
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
The irony in the "prepping" movement these days is that it was never intended to be this thing about having an 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".
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or ever bother learning something to benefit society now and in the case of a rebuild. Great, you have food, shelter and guns. Do you know how to dress wounds? Do you know how to build a generator? Fuck electricity actually- do you know how to build a steam engine? Wait before we can get here, do you know how to make steel? Cast iron? There should be plenty of it after an apocalypse. Wind copper?
What about welding? Not the kind you need modern tools for, you won't have those. Do you know basic chemistry to get what you need to restart society? No? Well good luck.
Turns out survival in an apocalypse isn't all that difficult if you payed attention to anything in school. It pisses me off people get bent out of shape about "useful practice skills like doing taxes aren't being taught."
I can remember a ton of important ass survival shit from school. Crop rotation! Agricultural practices from thousands of years ago! Steam power, basic electricity, Simple chemistry. Oh, and Math! How many Preppers can't do basic fucking math that would save them?
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.
Me, buying some extra rice, pasta and salt, watching my neighbor buying large game butchering knife kit (we live in the suburbs)
I had a few shirts made with this.
Avoid it like ~~the plague~~ any sense of personal responsibility.
I get all sorts of reactions.
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 that'll never happen. Pepper's get fucking insane. The number of people who start digging down without any understanding of structural integrity is insane aswell. Especially in places near fault lines. Building firebreaks, storing food and water, forming a microgrid if you live in an area where they might turn off the electricity, etc... those are all realistic and important. Also, fuck anti-maskers.
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.
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.
All the solar panels, ARs, and "Patriot" food kits won't prep them for when the pollinators die off.
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.
You lost them at considerate.
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.
I have to sit at home and watch TV??? The horror!
Piers Morgan, famous conservative, on how you have to sit on your ass https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/piers-morgan-good-morning-britain-rant-coronavirus-people-outside-a4394466.html
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