I’ve been looking at buying a few upper shelf folding knives lately and in looking at reviews of same that takes you to the knife boards which often have a number of survivalist orientedprepper members.
Preppers take very seriously the idea that we are at significant risk of a complete collapse of US society and have developed an extensive sub-culture based on ways to cope with this such as off grid power generation, food caches and emergency evacuation procedures etc. In some cases they have acted proactively by re-locating their residences out in the country and living the off grid life for real.
In this context what would it ACTUALLY take for the collapse of US civil society?
From the exterior war threat perspective in looking at comparative first world societies that suffered huge insfrastructure hits like the UK, Germany and Japan after WWII there was tremendous privation but I never got the impression that their societies were about to unravel and it was Mad Max time. Even so it was rough times with some actual death by starvation for those in the middle of these scenarios. We tend to forget today but for much of the 50’s well into the 70’s preparation for what to do in a nuclear holocaust was seen the duty of responsible citizens.
From the economic threat perspective you have the collapse of the US housing bubblein the US circa 2006-2007 that destroyed huge amounts of wealth and rippled throughout the world economy with devastating effects. All this caused by a relatively few large investment players gaming and exploiting the market.
If we only are only a few decades out from duck and cover dominating the zeitgeist and still have not fully dug ourselves out of the last huge recession are preppers really so crazy?
Well, there’s a very big difference between having a BOB and having a bunker filled with thousands of cans of beans. Prepping is a continuum, ranging from prudent on one end to paranoid on the other. Exactly what makes sense depends on factors that vary from person to person: location, occupation, income, etc.
It’s also worth thinking of prepping as a hobby, no different from stamp collecting or woodworking. Most of the people in the movement like doing it, and probably aren’t under any impression that SHTF in their lifetime. But they like prepping, and who’s worse for it?
Nothing wrong with being prepared for an emergency. Being prepared for armageddon, on the other hand, is pointless. For one thing, the world is unlikely to end any time soon. Even without a global apocalypse, the probability of civilization collapsing is also fairly small. And if the world does end, do you really want to hang around?
It’s wise not to scoff at them, if you have a business model that profits off their paranoid fears.
Otherwise, pointing and laughing is a sound approach.*
Having emergency supplies on hand to ride out several days to a week resulting from a natural disaster is, on the other hand, a pretty good idea.
*awhile back I read an article in a survivalist-type magazine about how to bury your guns in preparation for mass government confiscation. The trick is to do it in such a fashion as to 1) foil attempts by government agents to use ground-penetrating radar and other tools to detect them, 2) keep them from corroding so they’ll work when you dig them back up, and 3) bury them in such a manner that you can find them again. Seeing as how landmarks can be altered or disappear and memories fade, it would be quite embarrassing (and not unprecedented, as the author explained) to never be able to find your guns again.
I’d say that’s an argument against the Preppers. The Great Recession destroyed a lot of wealth, but the result of that wasn’t anything close to the social break-down the Preppers are preparing for. Crime rates even went down during the period! People generally limited their political unrest to the ballot box or in more or less orderly protests, the social safety net successfully prevented any sort of widespread loss of life. If anything, I’d say it was a demonstration of how robust our society is.
Obviously social collapse isn’t totally impossible, but a) its such a small risk that it isn’t really worth putting money into worrying about and b) the exact form it would take is so unpredictable that even if you put a lot of money into various “preparations”, its not really clear they’d end up being useful.
I disagree with this (to a point). I believe that the extreme survivalists sow a small amount of fear; get enough people with these attitudes and it can be infectious to others. I have a relative who has bought into some of this and she lives with a black cloud over her head, often afraid that the world will end soon. She has some other issues so I’m not blaming survivalists but I’m not willing to say it’s as harmless as stamp collecting.
The problem is that most preppers prepare rather erratically rather than systematically–they prepare in one area but not another.
For example I remember reading about one prepper who had guns, gold, etc but lost his job. Even though he had unemployment insurance his gold and guns were soon sold to pay his monthly expenses. Obviously a better preparation would have been to frugalize his life–to cut his usual monthly costs to the bone–and to develop additional skills so he could easily get a new job–rather than the guns, gold…
I guess I shouldn’t tease them so much. For all I know, they may over-run the local police & take over my town.
My town’s PD are all Really Great Cops, but they’re used to suburban families and their problems, not flash-mobs-with-semi-automatic-weapons.
If they don’t have a way to disable the cellphone towers, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
Sadly, with my sense of humor I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed.
Slight hijack: * The Economist* recently had an article about preppers. One paragraph heading was “First I was afraid.” The second header read “I was petrified.” Others were “But I grew strong” and “And I learned how to get along.” I’m sure that anyone with a little knowledge of 70s music can guess the title of the article.
I know this isn’t news, but the CDC’s tongue-in-cheek Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness program has been very successful in raising overall levels of disaster readiness, at least for some people. Let’s face it: all of us face some realistic level of finite doomsday risk, be it in the form of hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, blizzards, riots, or industrial accident. The prepper ideology might be nutty in its metaphysics and/or epistemology, but not necessarily in its execution.
Some of the people on the “Doomsday Preppers” show had gotten to a point where they weren’t able to take proper care of themselves and their families in the present day, and I wondered if some of them would try to precipitate a crisis so they could say “I told you so”.
I post on a board that has a few really hardcore people, and the creepiest are the ones who, among other things, homeschool their children because they don’t want outsiders finding out about their huge gun arsenals. Um, hello, if you HAVE one of these, you shouldn’t be talking about it online! :smack:
Right. Because it will be the Greenleaf County Consolidated School District that comes for your guns. But it’s not like there’s a large Federal agency one of whose major functions is to monitor online traffic…
By trying to prepare for the Apocalypse, the so-called “preppers” end up being prepared for nothing. The people who really are prepared for the Apocalypse are the ones who never even considered it, but instead prepared for things that were likely to happen, because all the Apocalypse really is is all of those little things happening at once.
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