Are they crazy?
Define your terms first, then we can have a meaningful discussion of it.
What about someone who has a “go bag” to get out of their house with in case of emergency like house fire, tornado, forest fire, earthquake, flood? Someone with a couple weeks of water stored in the basement in case of boil orders/busted water main? Someone with a generator? What does it take to qualify?
That’s just what the government would like you to think…
Fair enough. I’m referring to people who have whole portions of homes dedicated to the storage of food or guns. I should have phrased my question differently. Are they paranoid, specifically about total economic collapse?
Food, not at all, particularly if they cycle through it so it’s all fresh, rather than having a year’s supply of food that’s six months past its expiration date: all the people in New Jersey et al. who found themselves unable to buy food after Katrina, if they had stockpiles of food, they didn’t have a whole lot to worry about, so long as the house was still standing. Having extra food on hand in case of natural disaster (or governmental/societal collapse) is a good thing, because natural disasters are likely to happen once in a long while.
Guns & ammo, it’s probably been a while since anybody actually needed more guns than the family members could reasonably carry, since I don’t think the sheriffs have been putting together posses lately to go chase down the guys what done Ol’ Man McClinton wrong. So, having extra guns & ammo on hand in case of natural disaster (or governmental/societal collapse) is not such a useful thing, because natural disasters which can be resolved with lots of guns are not so likely. And, last I checked, the government hasn’t collapsed in the past couple centuries, at least, not in the north.
You’re begging the question there. I think it’s fair to say that people who are paranoid about total economic collapse are paranoid about economic collapse.
Is is considered paranoia if they are justified? If not, then I am not begging the question.
I stockpile food because it is habit, my mom grew up on a small family farm in south central Iowa during the depression, and kept the habit of having a large garden and canning the fruits and vegetables. I have some annoying food allergies and sensitivities, and I prefer to make and can many of the regular use foods in the house like tomato sauce, salsa, pickles and such, and we like legumes and grains of various types, and cooking much of our food from scratch and the survivalist stuff is frequently less expensive because it is bulk packaged. If you get your grains and beans nitrogen packed in metal cans, you don’t get bugs in the pantry 
mrAru’s mom grew up a split generation later than my mom in north east Missouri, on a small family farm [and she didnt have electricity either] and again raised mrAru with gardening and preserving and stockpiling food.
It is really nice having a more or less 7 or 8 month stockpile of preserved food, and a 25 cubic foot freezer of meats and stuff like glace des viandes, 1 cup and 1 quart containers of brown and white stock and assorted other base ingredients.
That habit was a lifesaver one deployment - our roomie couldn’t drive, and I ended up with pneumonia severe enough that I spent over a month unable to focus enough on reality to drive a vehicle. [chronic low grade fever hallucinations are interesting.] We lived off the stockpile of foods without needing to leave the house or risking malnutrition.
I misread the title and thought what could survivalists and preppies have in common?
I’m not even remotely organized enough to be called a survivalist but if I was trapped in my house we could eat for several weeks on the contents of the pantry and freezer. We would probably be bored it wouldn’t be well balanced but we’d eat.
Oh I don’t stockpile water though so I’d need enough notice to fill some containers or food wouldn’t matter.
I would characterize them as people who have taken a reasonable idea to unreasonable lengths.
So I guess my answer is yes, they are at least a little bit crazy.
After Hurricane Sandy, my SO and I were staying at my parents house. I flipped on Doomsday Preppers and she’s like “those people are so crazy”.
I’m like “they seem a lot less crazy after spending a week holed up in our appartment in Hoboken like Dr and Mrs Robert Neville.”
The serious answer is that it makes sense to be prepared for the types of emergenices you would likely encounter. In the Northeast, that would be blizzards, nor’easters, perfect storms, superstorms, and the occasional hurricane with the corresponding short-term disruptions in power, fuel and other essentials.
Preparing for a Day After Tomorrow weather event, asteroid strike, total economic meltdown or zombie apocalypse probably is a bit extreme.
Again, these sort of people seem to tend to lean to the far right, which has become the domain of the wildly paranoid.
What msmith said. There’s nothing wrong with being prepared for a natural disaster. In fact, it’s the opposite of wrong. I’d actually say it’s being responsible. As far as the total economic collapses, or asteroid impacts, no amount of stockpile is going to matter. So that’s certainly bordering on crazy/paranoia?
Perhaps the question should be phrased are we all crazy for not having some kind of stockpile of food just in case?
I think preparing for an invasion/zombie apocalypse/collapse of civilization is… at the very least, wildly pessimistic. But yeah, being able to at least feed yourself for a couple weeks or a month, have spare lighting, stored water, etc., and to cope with most natural disasters common to your area is smart. Like msmith537 said, going through something like Hurricane Sandy (much less Katrina) will make you think realistically about being prepared for stuff. You probably actually have less food in your cupboards than you think, for instance.
I have some comparably minor preparations, but it’s better than many people. For instance, a small generator would be nice. Two summers ago a small generator that could have run (off extension cords, even) a fridge intermittently would nearly have paid for itself considering we had 3 power outages lasting over a day. Loss of power for 4 hours ruins most stuff in your fridge, 24 hours for your freezer. Last summer? No outages.
Yes.
I misread it as being about “peppers.” Huh? Survivalists are stockpiling dried chiles or something?
No it doesn’t. Keep your fridge closed, and it will stay cool for a long time. And most of the stuff in your fridge won’t go bad even if it’s on the shelf.
Warm temperatures increase the rate at which food will degrade, but if your mustard is perfectly fine after a month in the fridge (which it is) it will be perfectly fine after a couple of days on the shelf. Even raw meat will be fine after hours at room temperature, if you cook it afterwards.
Open up your fridge and make a list of the things that would be ruined after four hours of room temperature. It’s going to be a very short list.
Mustard and many other condiments? Yes. Raw veggies? Sure. Otherwise? The USDA begs to disagree. And raw meat at room temp for hours…? :eek:
The power outages I’ve dealt with have been a day or more, so all dairy (except for hard cheese like parmesan) and meat got tossed. Opened mayo, any prepared food, tofu, salads, a bunch of stuff. These power outages were all in blazing summer weather (system overloads + storms) so the house and fridge heated up fast. Salad greens wilted. No-longer-crisp veggies got turned into soup. I’ve been lucky enough during those times to have access to ice, so as the safe time in the freezer compartment got close to expiration, we filled coolers with hastily-purchased ice and packed the contents of the freezer inside, sacrificing stuff that we ran out of room for. But in conditions when we wouldn’t have had ice, we would have lost that as well.
I guess I am.
-Two generators (Large square-wave, and small sine-wave for electronics)
-70 gallons of gas (Yes. It’s in safe and vented tanks. In storage building well away from house)
-Ability to switch over part of the house to generator (rather than run extension cords).
-Between 40 and 60 gallons of water (depending on how I’m cycling it thru)
-Three fridges (one propane that will run for 3 weeks on my supply)
-Roughly 4 weeks of food
-Propane (see above)
-Guns/Ammmo (enough. but not survivalist-in-Idaho enough. small caliber for edible critters)
-Cabin in the woods (just in case. With well and small septic)
Example of me:
Several years ago, we were caught in a near blizzard while traveling. Traffic completely stopped for many hours. I opened the back of the pickup, started the small genset and kept everyone toasty with electric blankets. Later we started the portable stove and had coffee and warm food. When the gals needed to “go”, I set up the portable potti for them. After several hours, I put on my hiking boots and explored for a way out. Then got out my hydraulic jack, lifted up the truck and installed my tire chains. We left the crowd, headed overland, and traveled back/off roads to our destination. Three cars tried to follow, but without 4WD, chains and clearance they were soon lost. We went on to our original destination (but 7 hours late). News later said the folks we left behind were stuck for over 12 hours.
I guess I’m a little weird, but I don’t like being caught unprepared.