Did anyone else watch this show? This was a reality show on NGC about survivalists preparing for Doomsday.
The first segment was the most awesome: A retired couple and their little community of hangers-on who have built a fortress that resembles the refinery in The Road Warrior. They expect a time of catastrophic earthquakes following a reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles. Their compound is built out of reinforced shipping containers, features windmills and solar collectors, and contains over 50,000 pounds of preserved food. They have backup caches of supplies laid out across a hundred miles in case they need to bug out, with several school buses to transport them and their stuff (and to form a defensive phalanx when they stop overnight).
The other segments were individuals. One guy lives in LA, and to prepare for the big earthquake, he’s learned to eat weeds and so forth. A woman in Houston expects an oil crisis, and she’s prepping bugout backpacks, honing her personal fitness Batman-style, and learning to shoot.
I did find it a bit morally questionable that the show had a panel of experts provide each Prepper with an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of their plans. Arguably, this seems like they’re feeding delusions. The show never presses these people about what they’re giving up in life in order to follow these obsessions. On the other hand, if they’re supporting themselves, staying at least minimally social and clean, and seemingly content with their doomsday prep, maybe there are worse ways to be crazy.
I’ve got the series set to dvr. Watched the fist two episodes last night. It’s interesting to see what the folks are doing, but frankly I don’t think they stand a chance in hell. They might last longer than the average person, but not much longer. The resources these people are accumulating will be mighty attractive targets for the roving bands of raiding parties, high value targets after the stores and pharmacies are emptied.
The shipping container couple was testing the walls for gunfire resistance, a good plan. Using a 22 cal rifle from 100 ft/yds (can’t remember) didn’t seem realistic. That compound is going to get hit much harder than that. Of course, they probably have defenses that they didn’t want to mention but I just don’t think two people can hold out that long.
The weed guy may fare ok for a time, but he doesn’t have any weapons. His supply of wild plants may, depending on the event, be short lived or contaminated/destroyed from the get-go.
Oil-crisis girl will die on the first day.
The gourmet people may last longer, it seems like they had quite a few people to align with. I think that’s the key, having enough people to defend your stuff.
Another thing is all these people seemed to be preparing for a specific catastrophe and I think that narrows their focus.
I’ll keep watching for a while. It reminds me very much of the backyard bomb shelter craze during the cold war era.
Myself, I’ve done nothing to prepare for post-apocalyptic other than than reading a couple of Max Brooks books.
Hold on, a woman in Houston expects some sort of crisis and is preparing bugout backpacks? Reminds me of Heinlein’s advice on surviving nuclear war. First strategy would to not be there when there is a problem. If you expect world ending catastrophe, do not live in a big city or its close suburbs. Live somewhere with an adequate freshwater supply, something Houston is going to lack with days of major catastrophes - hell a hurricane is going to be real bad news.
Prepping ahead of time is great. But isn’t the real trick going to be mental? Ok, the world has ended as you know it, time to make your own rules. Whoever makes that switch will survive.
Reminds me of a documentary I saw about people prepping for Y2K.
One guy was a software engineer. He convinces his wife to sell all of their earthly possessions and go live in a big concrete bunker in the middle of some desert. All I could do was laugh at the thought of the wife giving him the stink-eye on January 2nd 2000 saying “What now Mr. Smarty Guy?!”
Heh. I kept reading it as “Doomsday Poppers” and wondered if they used stuff hotter than jalapeños. Anyway, we’ve also got this saved on DVR, I just haven’t watched it yet. I’m sure it’ll be great fun, says I, who’ll be the first one eaten come the zombie apocalypse.
I watched part of one episode and like a prior post says, I felt dumber for watching and switched to something else.
The segment I saw showed this large guy stockpiling grain and showed him on his youtube channel discussing home-made antibiotics and such. He is worried about electromagnetic pulses from the sun disrupting the electical grid. The guy must be at least 350 lbs. He may succumb to weight-related health issues long before the next electromagetic pulse.
Seems like people do not do a very good job assessing risk. But hey, they are on TV!!
If you live anywhere, it is guaranteed that there will be some sort of natural or unnatural disaster of varying levels of intensity.
So you might face earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, blizzards, wildfires, mudslides, floods, tsunamis, tornados, hurricanes, civil unrest, nuclear accidents, chemical spills, industrial explosions, bridge collapses, power outages, terrorist attacks, gasoline shortages, and so on.
So how prepared are you for any of these inevitabilities? Like, if you live in California, what will happen to you when the next earthquake happens? Is the only thing to eat in your house a half a box of Corn Flakes and a couple of ketchup packets? If you lose power during the winter, will your house be uninhabitable within a few hours? If there’s a wildfire, how will you evacuate your house?
If the answers to these questions is “dunno, it’s someone else’s problem” then you’re an idiot. It is extremely unlikely that you will go through your entire life without experiencing one natural disaster or another. So betting your life that nothing bad will ever happen around you is extremely foolish.
From the article:
Justin Griffith (the interviewer): I don’t trust people who make it a point not to swear, or use alternate words – it’s like they have something to hide.
I read an interview with Penn Gillette in which he said he used to swear like the circus carnies he admired. Then he realized that was a cop out, it was too easy. I agree. IMO, it takes much more education to think of an insult such as, “…may your fetid, fly-blown corpse rot in the eternal flames of the seventh circle of Hell” than, “fck you, you mtherfcking fcker”.
So feck you, Griffith, you mather-fecking, anti-intellectual.
There is a point where taking it overboard happens, like the first folks with the shipping container bunker. Heck, to each their own.
Seeing how there isn’t but a few day’s in the supply chain of food and neccesitys, and the means to call for help are electronic and vulnerable these days. (for the first time ever in mankind’s existence composed of the last 80-100 years? we don’t have supplies for the winter, or know our neighbors in the same capacity…) a bit of food, some firearms, first aid and a plan to “escape and thrive” wouldn’t hurt any of us.
We saw how well FEMA handled New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. We saw people trapped in their homes with no means of defense during the London riots last summer.
To not have some degree of preparedness is foolhearty.
A recent episode featured a Prepper entrepreneur who had built – I kid you not – an underground “high-rise” condominium building in an abandoned missile silo. He was marketing (to other Preppers) luxury apartments several stories underground. No view, of course, but amenities included an on-site store, gym, restaurant, and bar. The selling point was that the still-formidable fencing around the silo and the reinforced cap at ground level would offer layers of protection against bands of marauders. No one mentioned that these people were living in a site that once was, and might still be, specifically targeted for destruction by a Russian nuclear weapon.
Tonight’s segment mentions that old school buses are favorites of Preppers, because they can store large capacities and can be purchased surprisingly cheaply. The narrator said that such buses can run as low as $300. Presumably, at that price, all you’re getting is an undrivable shell, but still, if they’re that cheap, I might set up a couple in my back yard.
They also showed a psychiatrist whose Prepper obsession has led him to stockpile a few thousand dollars worth of antibiotics. He indicated that he was obtaining these via prescriptions that he was writing, which seems ethically … questionable. He was also buying fish-tank antibiotics from pet stores because supposedly these are the same drugs that are prescribed to humans, and they’re available over the counter. This guy picked out a cave as the bugout site for his family, but it turned out that his wife, as a little girl in Cambodia, spent a lot of scary time in tunnels fleeing from the Khmer Rouge. She refused to live in a cave (and the experts disapproved of the moist, moldy environment), so he was having to come up with a Plan B.
I can’t even watch the commercials for this show without wanting to throw something. It brings back memories of an idiot coworker who was sure the world was going to melt down in Y2K. He laid in supplies of guns, ammo, jerky, water, and who knows what-all. It took all I had not to ask him about his stash when we got back to work that January.
I fully endorse having a few weeks worth of supplies at home in case of some emergency, but my question is this: if there is some kind of apocalypse which lasts longer than a few weeks and kills off 99% of the human race, do I want to survive it? Sounds… unpleasant.
Anyway, we’ve also got this saved on DVR, I just haven’t watched it yet. I’m sure it’ll be great fun, says I, who’ll be the first one eaten come the zombie apocalypse.