I went nuts preppering the day before yesterday - I bought four cans of fruit cocktail rather than my usual two!
Every prepper I’ve met operates on the assumption that the collapse they’re preparing for includes a collapse of the power grid. That’s a baseline of what they’re preparing for. Them bragging about how they’ve opened the top cereal box on their stack of fifty is just trying to sound smart because their lunatic overpreparations make them…no better prepared than I am, with my habit of buying four boxes of cereal at a time for the sake of variety.
I probably have skewered view of what would be considered normal by other people(particularly those living in the city). I have lived in a rural area of Northern New England my entire life. It would be fairly common for people to have a week(or even two weeks) worth of food on hand so we wouldn’t have drive 40 to 60 minutes out of town to the nearest grocery store during winter. And it wouldn’t be unheard for some people living way out in woods to lose power in an ice storm or blizzard and not have it restored for up to two weeks. (The ices storms are the worst because the ice builds on power lines and can bring them down for miles. So each pole has to “re-strung” with wires which is time-consuming. Mercifully ice storms that bad are uncommon.) So a lot of people already have generators, woodstoves, and a huge pile of wood.
I don’t read prepper pages, but prepper-adjacent interests, and I haven’t seen much gloating. I will be doing better prepping in the future, I was just waiting to get a bigger place.
Hey now, Mountain House is pretty awesome at least the ones I’ve tried. Food has come a long way since C rations.
It shocks me that anyone doesn’t have two weeks of food on hand. I guess people who eat every meal out maybe. But I have probably 3 months*, maybe more. But preparedness never entered my mind at any point. It’s just cooking supplies, combined with stocking up on sales when they present themselves. It’s just there so I can make food under normal circumstances.
Focusing on caloric masses:
In Dry, I probably have 10 boxes/bags of pasta of various forms for different dishes. I have probably 4 pounds of Brown Jasmine rice, about half the same of Basmati and boring white stuff. Probably 3 pounds combined of Pearl and Hullless barley. Maybe 3 pounds of various lentils, and gotta be 15 pounds of beans between garbonzos(for humus), Black and pinto(for Mexicanishness) Navy and Great Northern(for soupage). At least 4 boxes of cereal.
Cans maybe 12 various tomato forms, 10 more beans for ready to go, 6 corn and hominy, at least 3 pre-made soups, several baked beans, chilies, boxed stock
In the freezer. Probably 20 pounds of Chicken, Pork, Beef, and Turkey, 6 pounds of fish, 10 of veggies.
But, none of that is there to preparing for the Cthulapocalypse, It’s just preparing for dinner, and being cheap.
*If I lost the freezer with a long term electrical issue it would cut by a 1/4 or so.
Nukes? Naw! I was worried about the Zombie Apocalypse!
Well, other than I know I wouldn’t live through it. Much like with this new virus that targets my cohorts. I’m not over age 70 but Diabeetus* 2 and asthma, yep. Throw in live vaccine trials and all the Zompoc books that go with a vaccine are spot on!
The ones that have: aliens, parasites, magic … well, still didn’t happen!
*that spoofed commercial still hits my funny bone!
** If zombies happen I’m heading to wolfman’s house
Survivalists / preppers are obvious targets for starving hordes. Shoot all your ammo and they’re still coming. Sad. It’s like the nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction era. Don’t let on that you’ve built a fallout shelter because hungry mutants will find and abuse you and yours. Zombie Apocalypse gonna getcha!
A smart prepper might buy a remote convenience store, keep it stocked, and close down when The Crunch comes and restocking stops. With some planning, they can subsist almost forever on packaged sandwiches and canned beans. Not to mention the booze. Just be sure to maintain that robo-minigun on the roof to dispel raiders. More ammo!
Those were very extreme examples. A lot of them clearly had some kind of mental health issue, to say the least.
I post on a board that has a small but extremely vocal contingent of extreme preppers, to the point where some of them do things like homeschool their children so authorities won’t find out about their huge unlicensed arsenals. (Hmmmm, are you really sure you want to post online that you have them, if you don’t want ANYONE to know about them? Think about it.) It’s mostly about agriculture and even though mine is limited to patio gardening, there’s a place there for me and that’s why I post.
I was thankful when I saw that the people we bought our house from had discarded the ancient-looking mason jars full of canned beans that had been stored in the basement. Now I’m not so sure. :dubious:
Well actually I wouldn’t have touched them anyway. We do have a ton of mason jars they left us, should we want to get into home canning.
By sheer happenstance I have maybe a week of food -maybe- on hand. As in, I had previously bought a few boxes of cereal, some frozen pancakes, some frozen burritos, and a dozen yogurt cups, and about half of all that is left. My usual practice is to buy a load like that -or less- and wear it down to nothing before replacing it.
I don’t cook, see. There’s no reason to keep a ton of fixings around since I’m not qualified to fix them, and since I’m buying prepaid stuff there’s no reason to pile it up rather than buy it when I need it.
