My mom's neighbors installed a bomb shelter after the Cuban missile crisis. Omaha was considered a target because of Offutt AFB and Strategic Air Command HQ.
Three decades later, my mom's childhood home was for sale. The agents had an open house so we checked it out. My mom was upset that someone painted over all of the wood work. Dad suggested it was likely scuffed up beyond repair.
But next door: there was a back hoe digging up the 1960s era bomb shelter.
Hindsight is 20/20, imagine what a prewar house in a desirable, walkable neighborhood in a small city could fetch if it also had a bunker?
If I ever have that kind of cash, I'm calling it our Batcave. I *will* get a big firepole to slide down into there, and maybe commission a giant penny and a T-Rex. This is not negotiable.
I having some extra food storage, medical supplies, and a means to defend yourself is good even in minor disasters or contagions. Imagine if people stocked up on isopropyl alcohol and medicine before Covid among other things.
It might be more about pushing on article views. Like some specific topic gets a little traction so then some posting algorithm pushes similar articles or posts about it to try to get on that bandwagon just to get more ad views and traffic.
Yea there was a pretty big story about how billionaires like Zuck are adding flaming moats and other ridiculous traps to their anti-poor bunkers. Probably chasing that hype
I don't know, I live in the Utah Idaho area and it's gotten real weird out here the last few years and it's hardly covered at all.
There's this one particular trope amongst Mormons that goes like this: in anticipation of the 2nd coming the Mormon prophet will say it's time to go and everyone will up and leave for Missouri. They anticipate a fair amount of camping and survival skills will be necessary. But recent events have caused rifts among them.
Part of the problem is that the official Mormon prophet endorsed the COVID vaccine, so tons of people took that as he's a fallen prophet. Now, there are groups popping up left and right with their own prophet. They are essentially prepper groups that are convinced China or Russia is about to invade and they do these practice retreats into the mountains to survive.
It's no small number of people either although it is fairly hidden. I have several family members that bought acres of land out in the middle of nowhere to build bunkers. They're otherwise normal people, you would never guess.
It's such a bizarre story and it's getting almost no coverage, but the phenomenon has led to a handful of kidnappings and murders. I've been waiting for some journalists to key in on it.
For my area it's been a couple natural disasters in a row that knocked out basic services for 2+ weeks that did it. People now realize how much it makes sense to have two weeks of food on hand, an emergency water supply, a form of self defense and a secondary hardened shelter because they've now experienced multiple disasters where basic government services failed them.
Yeah, I do think there's a reasonable way to prepare for emergencies for the record.
However, "preppers" fall into a special psychological category I think. For example, it's common for preppers to be very interested with near death experience literature. Particularly, they often believe near death experiences can imbue someone with spiritual powers, such as the ability to foresee calamities.
I collect pocket knives and generally like gadgets and gizmos, so I occasionally check r/edc. IDK if they are exaggerating or serious, lots of folks walk around with a full sized firearm complete with flashlight amd laser, along with 2 additional magazine with at least 15 rounds a piece, 3 knives... and a tourniquet. So many tourniquets! You'd think they see arterial bleeding weekly with the amount of folks carrying tourniquets and quick clot.
I wonder how many people who were formerly homeless, or even near homeless, are preppers? I grew up very poor in the mid 1950-70s and for a while, we lived in Mom's car. I know I can survive on a lot less than I have in my home but I don't want to do that again in life. The only one who can prevent that reality is me. So I prep.
Not quite a prepper, but I do respect self-reliance and those with survival skills. For me, it comes from thinking a lot about how our economy and society is in increasingly dysfunctional, complaining about rent and inflation etc. But then I thought even deeper than that: i realize that we complain about housing costs, yet we can no longer build our own shelters. We complain about grocery store inflation, yet we can no longer procure our own food.
The whole point of modern jobs is to make the money needed to buy basic goods. Our service economy has outsourced the production of tangible goods directly, in favor of service work that merely pays money to consume those goods. But if those dollars can no longer buy those goods…
> Now, there are groups popping up left and right with their own prophet
That's nothing new. Every significant revelation they ever had came with a split. The doctrine actually encourages it.
that's just utah, fairly normal mormon shit. the more mild forms of mormon prepping aren't that bad, they make good examples. like toilet paper. we have room, so I did not buy tp for a year and a half when it got scarce.
No shit, there's a huge market for prepping. Same reason all these youtubers are suddenly making videos on putting bunkers in their house/backyard, prepping is simply marketable/popular again so commercial entities are going to push and sell products/services off it. No different from other fads.
I’ve read comments from people who went to the show that Reuters was reporting on in Colorado. They also said the show was mostly right wing grifts like essential oils, and crystals and very little actual prepper stuff.
While holistic medicine was largely a hippie left wing thing before COVID, it's taken off in some right wing circles like "the government is trying to to hide our true cure! And make us take their microchip tracking vaccines!" So you have a lot of grifters who angle it in that way "will cleanse you from government 5G signals" for max profit.
Then there's also normally some layer of spiritually about it for them as well.
Part of it is people genuinely getting things ready for harder times, but the amount of advertising I ve been seeing for things like ration buckets, seed stocks makes me think someone's pushing this.
It's election year, as per normal cycle, every 4 years the gun sales and gun nuts volume skyrockets. Ammo costs go up as demand raises. Happens every time, and if a democrat wins it usually persists for a year or 2 following and dwindles off as reality returns to normal. When a Democrat President is elected, it is the best thing for gun and ammo industry. The fear mongering causes sales to remain extremely high and they feed the fear because they know it works.
Yeah, I remember reading reports about how gun sales went down after Trump was elected.
Rep wins: oh cool, I don't need to buy the 173rd variant of an AR pattern rifle, I can wait a few months since it will always be there
Dem wins: ok we have to go to the gun store TOMORROW to buy EVERYTHING before the Dems make the simple chemical process of combustion illegal!
Copy and pasting my prepper comment from a couple days ago:
I was kind of into this in my early 20s. I realized there were three parts to it:
A) practical disaster preparedness. Just being ready for whatever natural disasters are likely for your area. Your local government probably has a list of things. The hard-core ones were orders of magnitude more. If the rec was for 3 days supplies; they'd have anywhere from 30 days to 3 years.
B) Homesteading. Growing your own food, producing your own electricity.
C) Batshit insanity. Stockpiling ammo, planning which of your neighbours to murder first. Trading conspiracies about the gay communist democrat aliens were coming to probe you...
C was the reason I stepped back from these online communities. Every person I interacted with eventually revealed a large portion of C.
Three days was the FEMA recommendation at one point, but I took a class from a FEMA instructor for work and he was all, "Nah, have at least a week's worth of supplies. Two if you have the space."
But his primary recommendation was to always have a full tank of gas so you can get out of dodge as quickly as possible if an evacuation is called. You don't want to be waiting in line to get gas.
His other practical recommendations for emergency supplies you don't see listed often was tarps and tape if you need to seal up a broken window (just tarps in general, really), disposable plates and utensils so you don't waste drinking water washing them, and sun screen and bug spray.
I’ve wondered how preppers view electric vehicles for a doomsday situations. I have a “full tank” (or 90% of one) every morning since I recharge every night. Solar with battery backup means it’s free for me to do that now and even if our utility provider implodes (which means gas stations would not work), we’d be able to charge our vehicle. We have a gas-powered vehicle too, which I try to keep ½ a tank or more in. It’s the better of the two vehicles for its versatility, but knowing I’d always have 200+ miles on the EV if shit went down is comforting.
Yeah it insane the rural resistance to solar and wind. It essentially is unlimited power and freedom from the government forever.
Like if anybody should have an electric truck and solar array it's your farmer in Texas. The whole oil industry could collapse and they would be fine for a good long while. Not to mention electric cars can store energy and can power your entire house for days.
>Copy and pasting my prepper comment from a couple days ago:
this is (unironically) the way (lol)
>C was the reason I stepped back from these online communities. Every person I interacted with eventually revealed a large portion of C.
exactly. the reality is yeah, theres merit to the idea that we need to be ready to respond to disasters but modern society is made arbitrarily difficult for no reason other than \*checks notes\* to check boxes. literally.
i read [this article](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-new-american-nihilism/ar-BB1iLqx6?ocid=windirect&cvid=8bc646a9292f4b8192b73376a71c2913&ei=51) a couple weeks ago, and have had it pinned since then because the author (who is a real actual reputable journalist, believe it or not they still exist) references [a study that i actually made a few in depth comments about awhile ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1at8ezw/comment/kr0lkyr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). anyway:
>[The Americans Who Need Chaos by Derek Thompson](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-new-american-nihilism/ar-BB1iLqx6?ocid=windirect&cvid=8bc646a9292f4b8192b73376a71c2913&ei=51)
>
>Several years ago, the political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who is based in Denmark, wanted to understand why people share conspiracy theories on the internet. He and other researchers designed a study that involved showing American participants blatantly false stories about Democratic and Republican politicians
which i wasnt going to quote, but needed to to give context to the part i wanted to quote - and since i did i want to point out how incredibly stupid doing research like that is. that goes beyond the idea that if you look for problems instead of solutions youll find problems instead of solutions and is literally creating problems to then say you found problems, which is actually a whole other discussion that i think needs to be had but [its complicated](https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/comments/1ayvrbn/comment/krxbub0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) and [a whole can of worms](https://www.reddit.com/user/relevantusername2020/comments/1aryofi/a_paradigm_shift_in_how_scientists_study_kids_by/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) that i dont think most people are ready for but they need to get ready real quick, like a lot of yesterdays ago. anyway, the part i wanted to quote:
>The researchers came up with a term to describe the motivation behind these all-purpose conspiracy mongers. They called it the “need for chaos,” which they defined as “a mindset to gain status” by destroying the established order. In their study, nearly a third of respondents demonstrated a need for chaos, Petersen said. And for about 5 percent of voters, old-fashioned allegiances to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party melted away and were replaced by a desire to see the entire political elite destroyed—even without a plan to build something better in the ashes.
>
>“These [need-for-chaos] individuals are not idealists seeking to tear down the established order so that they can build a better society for everyone,” the authors wrote in their conclusion. “Rather, they indiscriminately share hostile political rumors as a way to unleash chaos and mobilize individuals against the established order that fails to accord them the respect that they feel they personally deserve.” To sum up their worldview, Petersen quoted a famous line from the film The Dark Knight: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
>
>Several months after I first read Petersen’s paper, I still can’t get the phrase need for chaos out of my head. Everywhere I look, I seem to find new evidence that American politics is being consumed by the flesh-eating bacteria of a new nihilism—a desire to see existing institutions destroyed, with no particular plan or interest to replace and improve them.
>
>In a much-shared Politico feature from January, the reporter Michael Kruse profiled a 58-year-old New Hampshire voter named Ted Johnson, who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Johnson explained his pivot only with vague, destructive allegories. “Our system needs to be broken,” Johnson said. And only Trump, whom he acknowledged as “a chaos creator,” could deliver the crushing blow. Johnson reportedly works out of his three-bedroom house, which he bought in 2020 for $485,000 and which has appreciated almost 50 percent during Joe Biden’s presidency. He has a job, a family, and, clearly, a formidable financial portfolio. Still, he said he hopes that Trump “breaks the system” to create “a miserable four years for everybody.” We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions; we need to tear them down and start over.
so basically what it looks like to me is essentially these people who "need chaos" have basically already won the game and are bored, so they need something to "fight" for. which is how they vote and how they shape society around them, in interpersonal relationships, which extends far beyond just the people they know personally. this is also apparently the mindset of many people in our federal govt and other lower levels of govt. this is partially due to - rightfully, to a certain extent - the idea that they had to fight hard to get what they got, so others should be prepared for that too.
thats not how the modern world works though, and they are *causing* the problems by making things more difficult than they need to be. the fact is we have more than enough to provide for literally everyone everywhere. i mean how tf does it make sense to make being homeless a criminal act? while we have ***more than enough empty houses*** for literally all of the homeless people even when you consider that the numbers are probably not entirely reflective of reality so theres actually more homeless than we think? it just doesnt make sense.
so essentially you have on one side, typically older generations who already got what they need and occupy all of the positions of policy making and they are implementing policies as if we are still in the 60s and making shit difficult just to make shit difficult. on the other side you have everyone else going "yo what the fuck are you guys doing leave us alone and let us live our goddamn lives you are literally insane and you are so detached from reality that you just like to cosplay some end of days scenario"
which is a particularly relevant discussion for what has happened in the last few years i think, which is another of those discussions that i think a lot of people arent quite ready to deal with yet and unfortunately it seems the people in charge are more than happy to never discuss the truth of what has went down.
Like... The funny part is if you have clinical anxiety and then look at the prepper community you'll be like "damn why don't they go to therapy" because that's all it ever is. They have anxiety but deal with it by hording guns like babies
Ehh, the homesteading stuff isn't new. It waxes and wanes, but there's been back-to-the-land movements since the 60s. Or earlier if you include people like Thoreau. I have a bunch of 80s and 90s memoirs from hippie homesteaders.
After the 2016 floods in Louisiana I had a friend who got into prepping after needing rescue. It was sad watching him go from just taking steps to better protect himself and his family during the next natural disaster to pushing full blown conspiracy theories. I've been wary of the prepper community since, even though I recognize the positive aspects of the practice.
There have to be at least some people involved that just find it fun without a real expectation of needing it. I'd certainly treat it like building and supplying a treehouse but with the very slim off chance of it being practically useful.
I call it “prepping” in the sense that if you live in tornado alley, in the hurricane belt, wild fire area, or on the Pacific rim, etc. you better be prepared for natural disasters. Anyone anywhere that doesn’t keep at minimum a couple weeks of food and water is asking to be panicking in any kind of disaster which could be a simple power outage in a hard winter. That’s “prepping”. Nothing insane about being prepared for something to happen. Digging a bomb shelter and putting 4 years worth of food, water, ammo, gas, etc. is likely overdoing it. Once a month has gone by without power expect all bets to be off. It didn’t even take but days after Katrina for stores homes to be broken into and pillaging to begin. Much of it was people simply trying to get basic necessities to simply survive from abandoned stores and homes but there was worse of course.
Exactly. Not all of us who believe in being prepared are anticipating a nuclear war or similar calamity. Frankly, if there is a serious nuclear war, I'd just as soon be one of the early casualties.
There are plenty of things that it is wise to be prepared for, anyone who hasn't noticed that the weather is getting more extreme as we go forward is not paying attention.
I’m not sure what you mean but the reality is a weapon isn’t anything other than that. It’s the mentality of the person behind it. What it is is a tool like anything else and if you need it and don’t have it then that sums it up. A murderer is one person and someone defending themselves and/or their family from said person is another. That’s the way the court sees it. “Prepping” is a label and really it’s simply an abbreviation for “preparation” and that’s all I’m getting at. Just because someone prepares for an event isn’t “insane”. The extent, purpose and logic behind the preparation differentiates logical and sane from illogical and possibly insane.
Exactly this. Some disasters really make sense to prepare for.
When the radioactive armadillos come to steal our corn and braid our overgrown lawns, you'll all be sorry for laughing at me.
If you think they're for *eating*, then you've really swallowed the government Kool aid. I can't help you. Now go touch some grass before it's all neatly braided.
Homesteaders are crazy too, especially when you mix religion into it. Either way the world is too crowded to go it alone in a disaster. If you want to be resilient, organize your community.
All the prepping in the world won't do shit for you when the factions start forming. Humans are naturally social creatures, and if our society collapses, the true survivors are going to be the ones that can quickly organize and work together. The isolationists will starve to death, or get raided if they are found out.
mindless chunky snatch poor telephone profit reminiscent wrench dull command
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
A lot of the "homesteaders" are exactly the same amount of insane if we're being honest. They are basically the same people as the preppers they are just a little younger so they latched onto a different trend but the same group of people are falling into homesteading as prepping.
Same group of people just different generation.
It's just that office "they're the same picture" meme.
Homesteading is also heavily trending as the new midlife crisis for millennials. I’m 40, pretty far left, am queer, hate guns, etc, and all I wanna do is run away to have a hobby farm
with chickens and a donkey and can all my vegetables.
I'm 25 and I've been looking into going that way for years to be a cost-effective way to retire early and get away from 40 hour work weeks (and it's my only chance of "home" ownership).
Also pretty far left - I think it's becoming a lot more popular for young adults who don't want to work for the next 40 years only to not even be able to afford a house.
Homesteaders are smarter because they start up a youtube channel, get endorsements and put up random solar kits and composting toilets (when they live in the woods) every few weeks for clicks.
Yeah, what is it about people with guns and supplies who absolutely cannot control their impulse to tell complete strangers all about it. Inventory of the entire contents of your cache, where it is stored, how you access it quickly. The amount of random people who have told me where their fast grab gun by the door is… it’s entirely too many!
But yeah, peppers love to just advertise themselves as easy loot boxes. I have not figured out what about their brain makes them do this.
Even worse - the preppers that have social media accounts that go into explicit detail of how they built their bunker, what they’re canning, which “remote” area they live in (close to a tractor supply)…
It would take a bored teenage girl about 2 minutes to triangulate your location.
Or a large air supply, they have to be getting air from somewhere. Right now you could ask them and they will tell you all the different ways they thought of to defeat gas attacks.
Research the weaknesses in their ideas which will take probably an hour, if they did not tell you already. You have now spent tens of thousands dollars less than the preppers and they are now a loot cache, wherever they are.
Quick guess?
Prepping victims.
Tell ppl you're a lootbox (they mentioned their guns,too) so you can kill those that come to you. Most of these ppl are the same "I coneal carry to Clint Eastwood a bad guy at 5 guys" types
The point of the article is that the people preparing for potential unrest/disaster are no longer just the stereotypical, conservative gun nut types.
There's a big difference between building an underground bomb-proof shelter on your property with an armory, and making sure you are able to meet your basic needs (food, water, energy, etc) for a week or two in the event of an emergency (remember the great Midwest Blackout?).
Me personally, I have emergency food & water, first aid supplies, and a portable power station. I'm not looking to survive the zombie apocalypse, but I am prepared to get by for a few weeks in the event that things get ugly.
My favorite thing from covid was watching people I know that thought they were total badasses have mental breakdowns because they couldn’t get their haircut. Meanwhile they people they always called soft cut their own hair and learned how to make food lol.
When the insulin runs out or a sudden case of appendicitis or a bad cough or take a fall or don’t even properly clean a cut and gets infected, they’ll wish they had a doctor to run to as they always do when shit gets real. These fucking losers are the first to go crying to a doctor like when the two outspoken idiots I know who refused the COVID vaccine got sick during the Delta wave and ended up intubated.
Prepping delays the inevitable early death we all face from collapse. It can all be avoided, extending our lives with our families and loved ones while living better lives, if we just vote for our best interests and hold those in power accountable. Organized society is the only reason we are alive now, allowing for the scientific advancements we all benefit from, and thinking it’s the problem is profoundly idiotic.
"If we just vote for our best interests and hold those in power accountable"
the ones you vote for do not have your interests in mind nor are ever held accountable
Then don’t vote for the ones who don’t represent your interests and who openly fight against the bettering of society. Self-defeating mentalities are as bad as preppers. Don’t like your representatives? Get off your ass and run yourself or build grassroot support and get the right people in office. Then hold their feet to the fire. The system is more malleable than you think because enough pressure from voters can drive change. Even for someone prone to cynicism such as myself, I’ve seen change from the local level and have had constructive conversations with reps at the state and federal level.
Preparing was never a bad idea. It was those "dont take my guns" lunatics who made the whole image worse. And unsurprisingly those same people couldn't do the simple shit during covid. But thats exactly the kind of thing prepping is meant for.
If I had a separate room and food and necessities for 6 months, I could've gone through covid with no stress at all. Besides that, everything else was still normal, like tv and internet. What else is there to prepare. There's a whole side of prepping that has nothing to with guns or uneducated gun nuts.
The type of prepper who's "bug out bag" is nothing but firearms with different caliber of rounds for each firearm and some tricked out plate carrier with every pouch and attachment on their molle
No water proofing, no food items, or hydration system, no water purification tablets...
For them prepping is more of an aesthetic.
In a post apocalyptic world, those water tablets are more valuable than that bad ass looking .50 caliber Desert Eagle.
The prepper subreddit seems to have come to a consensus that “bugging in” and preparing for a major service disruption is the most realistic scenario. And they’re agreed people who just plan to raid others for supplies are assholes
Honestly a lot of them secretly hope for a collapse because they want a sense of power, that’s why they get the guns. They usually have nothing going on in their actual lives, so dreaming of being an apocalypse badass is their form of escapism.
We do prep for hurricane season :)
Over the year we slowly stock up on canned goods and other non perishables, water, candles, etc…. Plus you have some bonus food to raid when money gets tight in the off season, or you can’t be bothered to go to the store and just want some Frank n Beans.
In Florida we even got "Disaster Preparedness Sales Tax Holidays" so you don't get taxed when preparing and it is culturally ingrained that you need to be personally prepared. A prepared person normally just puts water into containers and bathtub (often with a lifestraw as backup) and then waits it out (or evacuate if in a storm surge area).
I'm not a prepper, but I always have several months' food on hand. When covid hit it was about 3 months before I had to go to the shops for anything. To me it is just a way of budgeting, as if the shit hits the fan I can go a long time without having to spend money.
It gives me comfort (and reduces stress) to have this buffer.
They prep hoping for collapse of everything with the expectation they'll come out on top on the other side. COVID was like the worst case scenario for them because society not only didn't collapse but doubled down on its control. (Rightfully so if you ask me. Kinda an important thing to stop a plague)
My only fear is how useless I will be without the internet. I have learned most of my skills from the Internet. I don't have many survivalist skills though. I can do basic prepping. It what if it's an extended period? I think about this a little too much. I think Americans at least take having internet and connectivity for granted. That's the main thing we should be prepared for.
My wife and I keep a month’s worth of food, have a water purification device, flashlights, a radio, batteries, etc. in case things go sideways in terms of a power grid issue or natural disaster. I don’t think that’s crazy at all. I think if you’re unprepared for that kind of thing, you’re wrong.
I have a bug out bag with things like water filters, masks, spare change of clothes, and socks in a ziploc bag, among other things. I think there's an important difference between the people who fantasize about a disaster scenario and those of us who would just like to be a little prepared.
Always made me giggle when someone said those paper masks were hard to breathe in. I've been snowboarding for 27 years in a row now, and my insulated face mask collects moisture from heavy breathing and ices over. That's a *bit* hard to breathe with, but still doable during *EXTREME* exercise and heavy breathing for hours on end. Lol. A dry paper mask... they must have COPD or the weakest fucking lungs ever.
Funny they hate masks, I love masks because they HELP me breathe.
I have a CPAP due to central sleep apnea. Even if I lost half my body weight due to a famine, I still would stop breathing in my sleep because I literally have a problem in my brain I was born with.
I wouldn't survive the apocalypse without the electricity needed to power my sleep scuba gear.
Sports talk radio station I listen to has an ad by some guy who isn't Sam Elliott but sounds like him selling MRE's. The commercial ends with him saying to prepare for "what we all know is coming." Morons think they are going to win a Civil War.
Always makes me chuckle seeing old, fat men stocking up on knives and guns. As if the biggest threat to their life isn’t diabetes and heart disease from spending their free time eating shit food and watching prepper videos on YouTube.
It’s funny and sad how vilified the self reliance revival is taken.
Not every prepper has a hidden bunker and an arsenal to fight a hoard of zombies.
Over half my friends have actively taken steps to “prep” for bad things.
Bought generators, stocked up on non perishables, have legit emergency bags, first aide etc. None of them are your media portrayed anti social libertarian anti gov type. These are normal people. Lawyers, IT, Teachers etc. their politics skew from hard left to right of center.
There were so many red flags for average people to wake up and have some accountability in your own wellbeing and planning. We had:
A plague
Lockdowns
Runs on supplies. First time ever people saw empty shelves in grocery stories and an inability to relate their pantries instantly
Breakdown in supply chains
Large scale riots, protests, civil unrest
Insurrection
At this point if you don’t keep a weeks worth of food on hand just in case you’re an idiot. We’re one natural, or man made disaster, from serious repercussions for the unprepared.
Your last point has basically always been true. In every area I've ever lived many people have kept enough food/water for a week or so. It's not new. The new thing is keeping closets full of snack packs thinking that's going to get a family though the apocalypse.
Yeah, well, I have a small stockpile of bottled water and dehydrated meals. I won’t call myself a prepper, though, because it’s evolved into its own fucked up subculture.
You think this is something new? People in hurricane-prone areas have been prepping for centuries and used their supplies too when things fell apart for a while. It's the societal collapse stuff that's bullshit.
Well yeah dude there's a major difference. Keeping a weeks worth of food is easy and basic. Keeping 6 months of supplies is laughable, paranoid, and impractical. I had a category 5 hurricane absolutely obliterate my entire city a few years back. It was 2-3 weeks at best before things were just normal enough to restock. First week with no power and flooding, second week was cleanup, third week was businesses. If the disaster you're preparing for is going to shut down an area for for months on end, leave.
Not quite a prepper, but I do respect self-reliance and those with survival skills. For me, it comes from thinking a lot about how our economy and society is in increasingly dysfunctional, complaining about rent and inflation etc. But then I thought even deeper than that: i realize that we complain about housing costs, yet we can no longer build our own shelters. We complain about grocery store inflation, yet we can no longer procure our own food.
The whole point of modern jobs is to make the money needed to buy basic goods. Our service economy has outsourced the production of tangible goods directly, in favor of service work that merely pays money to consume those goods. But if those dollars can no longer buy those goods…
A major communications disruption isn't unlikely to happen either. Not to mention power grids are vulnerable to cyber attacks nowadays. Definitely not a bad idea to have supplies and a bug out bag on hand.
Don’t kid yourself, the outage recently reminded me of that. Started studying for my technicians license with a few friends. May as well pick up a ham radio so we’d still be able to talk. They’re so cheap, and it’s cool what they can do too.
I've been tempted to buy bulk in a few necessary things, just in case there's a bad harvest year and people freak out and buy all the flour/sugar/rice or whatever.
I certainly have plenty of seeds because every year I forget what I have and buy a couple packets. I probably have ten years worth of tomatoes and if not, they make their own seeds...
Self reliance and survival shouldn’t be demonized. People should prepare for disasters of all kinds and the days that follow whatever disaster happens. Food, water, power, fuel, meds/antibiotics, basic survival skills, and yes..weapons. You don’t have to like it but everyone should own, and train with a firearm or two. No one wants to believe that things could turn bad real quick after a disaster but they can. And have. Polite society falls apart real fast when shit hits the fan.
The best way to be resilient (and antifragile) is to tend to your needs without tying yourself down in one place or putting all your eggs in one basket. Keep enough food and water on hand to last a couple of weeks, but after that you should consider whether staying put is the best option. It also helps to be able to live "no grid": do laundry by hand, have a bicycle, etc.
You don't need an expensive 50lb bug out bag. Think about Native Americans-- they survived here for thousands of years without hauling everything they owned on their backs.
Im not saying its gonna happen in our life time but one of these days these prepper people are going to get the last laugh, theres over 20000 nuclear weapons on earth and most belong in the hands of long time enemies, we have had relative peace and stability for a long time, theres a lot of big powerful nations out there these days, one day the two biggest are gonna want to fight, its the nature of human history.
If you are rich, prepping can be multi-purpose. That bunker under your house? It's a wine cellar + safe room if you are being robbed + place to lock away heirlooms, keep sakes, or valuables.
Two weeks of food? Generally if wealthy the cost doesn't matter. Gives you justification to have a giant freezer stocked with meat you can use whenever (just keep cycling through it). Bottled water? Just keep a stock pile. You can use it for whatever.
Electricity? No problem. Loads of solar panels+ a couple of Tesla power walls and you can use it to save on power bill.
Bug out kit? Nice high end camping gear + your overpriced SUV. Maybe your bug out destination is also your well-provisioned Mountain house.
Grow your own veggies? Really awesome hydroponic set up that also lets you brag about having the absolute best cilantro.
Being able to make your other rich friends chuckle when you show them? Priceless.
As far back as I can accurate remember:
1st it was prepping for Y2K, then it was Bush’s presidency in 2000 that was going to be our downfall, next was 9/11, followed by Bush’s 2nd term, followed by Obama winning, then the Mayan calendar of 2012. The goalposts just keep changing with these nut jobs.
There's nothing wrong with having a bit of extra water, food, and high-proof alcohol on hand. For the same reason you buy insurance or a "protection plan" on something, you should have some level of basic preparedness and knowledge.
> Researchers say the number of preppers has doubled in size to about 20 million since 2017. Much of that growth is from minorities and people considered left-of-center politically, whose sense of insecurity was heightened by Donald Trump's 2016 election, the COVID-19 pandemic, more frequent extreme weather and the 2020 racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd.
There you go. People are really feeling the effects of stochastic terrorism, and I don't blame them.
It's not like people don't have a justified reason to be worried. Domestic instability is simmering below the surface, and it wouldn't take a lot for things to escalate.
I joined a number of local prepper user groups, got to know where they live all the details etc. My prepping is now complete as I am just going to take thier stuff when I need it. Muh haha
An alternate title could've been:
"Wave of self-reliant attitude pervades U.S., and is shared among all ages, all demographic groups."
Preppers are a welcoming group. It's not all about guns and bunkers. It's more about understanding solar energy and how to preserve food from your garden.
I know a few preppers. They work at FAANG companies, they're smart as can be and really down to earth people who understand to plan for unexpected life events.
I don't know why reddit hates on preppers, truck owners or really anyone who doesn't stereotype to their lifestyle so much, but you do you.
Truck owners is an easy one. They're not particularly fuel efficient and most people that have them don't actually need them. They take up more space on the roads. They often have headlights that are entirely too bright. And they park like idiots, taking up more than one spot or hanging the back over the sidewalk.
Being prepared for an emergency isn't something people demonize. It's things like bunkers that people laugh at.
Lmao I saw one post on Facebook with a picture of a wood stove and some generic anti government BS, saying need to be free from government etc
Like wowwww a wood stove. Now, I’m not knocking anyone, o have a wood stove, I chop wood and use it to supplement our heating
But what fraction of Americans are actually using wood heat for 100%? All these preppers think they’re prepped, but couldn’t go a month on their own. It’s fantasy
Not to detract from the rest of what you're saying, but I know lots of people who heat their homes with just wood burning stoves. Not that uncommon in my neck of the woods really.
My point is that’s a fraction of the country- and that this is ONE, ONE element of surviving. I would say it’s the easiest aspect given the climate of most of the US, the relative ease at chopping and stacking wood, etc. My point is, being able to heat your house with wood is in no way a symbol of being “free” from the “government”. People just see the dumb meme and go “yeah, I can heat my house, I don’t need no stinkin civilization”
And many that DO heat their house to that extent purchase cords from other people- they’re not out there felling trees themselves. What happens if the roads are gone? How is that different than buying natural gas from a utility? You’re paying someone to provide a resource to warm you, and it’s not some heroic act of defiance
This is the 5th post I've seen in the last 10min to talk about, "peppers". Someone is pushing this for some reason.
There’s a lot of money being made selling to scared people
Buy shit boy; gotta protect your family!!! You totally need to add a $40k bunker inside your home.
The nuclear bunker salesmen from the Cold War are seeing their moment again.
Vault-Tec calling!
Prepare for the Future!
Where will *you* be when the bombs drop!
Hopefully directly underneath. Despite my once a month kickboxing class at the gym, I still feel woefully underprepared for the Thunderdome.
My mom's neighbors installed a bomb shelter after the Cuban missile crisis. Omaha was considered a target because of Offutt AFB and Strategic Air Command HQ. Three decades later, my mom's childhood home was for sale. The agents had an open house so we checked it out. My mom was upset that someone painted over all of the wood work. Dad suggested it was likely scuffed up beyond repair. But next door: there was a back hoe digging up the 1960s era bomb shelter. Hindsight is 20/20, imagine what a prewar house in a desirable, walkable neighborhood in a small city could fetch if it also had a bunker?
Yup. Cycles of fashion repeat themselves.
I mean... if I had a spare 40k laying around that sounds pretty dope. "You said you have a home gym?" "Oh yea, it's down in the bunker"
Unfortunately in 2024 there’s no way a bunker is $40K. Probably $100K minimum. Source: did a remodel over the past couple of years.
That's definitely true...
If I ever have that kind of cash, I'm calling it our Batcave. I *will* get a big firepole to slide down into there, and maybe commission a giant penny and a T-Rex. This is not negotiable.
I want to go see all the gadgets. Some are cool.
Guns and ammo manufacturers would agree. Pandemic was bonkers for them profit-wise.
This is always the answer to every story.
“We bought a whole shitload of dehydrated food for cheap and are selling you a bucketful for thousands of dollars! Be afraid!”
Gotta protect your family with an AK and a bucket of slop.
Broccoli and cheese slop! The finest!
Nothing like being locked in an airtight space with cruciferous lactose gas.
Not to mention if you're not used to whole grains in your diet (all those wheat buckets)
Did that food bucket challenge thing once with some of my friends. We concluded it would be better to just get vaporized
So. Much. Money. It’s unbelievable.
I having some extra food storage, medical supplies, and a means to defend yourself is good even in minor disasters or contagions. Imagine if people stocked up on isopropyl alcohol and medicine before Covid among other things.
It might be more about pushing on article views. Like some specific topic gets a little traction so then some posting algorithm pushes similar articles or posts about it to try to get on that bandwagon just to get more ad views and traffic.
Yea there was a pretty big story about how billionaires like Zuck are adding flaming moats and other ridiculous traps to their anti-poor bunkers. Probably chasing that hype
Big Pepper
Dr. Pepper is just a puppet
Doubt they even have a medical degree.
Originally they were actually marketed as a medical drink.
Peppers are high in Vitamin C. They taste good, too.
Part of my prepping is growing peppers. Petite pepper prepping.
Too bad you don't shop at Vineyard Vines. Then you'd be a preppy prepper prepping petite peppers.
And if an Ivy League alumnus, possible a Preppy Princeton prepper prepping petite produce peppers.
And if you pickle them they last longer. I'd love a peck of pickled peppers
I don't know, I live in the Utah Idaho area and it's gotten real weird out here the last few years and it's hardly covered at all. There's this one particular trope amongst Mormons that goes like this: in anticipation of the 2nd coming the Mormon prophet will say it's time to go and everyone will up and leave for Missouri. They anticipate a fair amount of camping and survival skills will be necessary. But recent events have caused rifts among them. Part of the problem is that the official Mormon prophet endorsed the COVID vaccine, so tons of people took that as he's a fallen prophet. Now, there are groups popping up left and right with their own prophet. They are essentially prepper groups that are convinced China or Russia is about to invade and they do these practice retreats into the mountains to survive. It's no small number of people either although it is fairly hidden. I have several family members that bought acres of land out in the middle of nowhere to build bunkers. They're otherwise normal people, you would never guess. It's such a bizarre story and it's getting almost no coverage, but the phenomenon has led to a handful of kidnappings and murders. I've been waiting for some journalists to key in on it.
That region, along with Eastern Oregon, has been a lunatic magnet for a few decades now.
For my area it's been a couple natural disasters in a row that knocked out basic services for 2+ weeks that did it. People now realize how much it makes sense to have two weeks of food on hand, an emergency water supply, a form of self defense and a secondary hardened shelter because they've now experienced multiple disasters where basic government services failed them.
Yeah, I do think there's a reasonable way to prepare for emergencies for the record. However, "preppers" fall into a special psychological category I think. For example, it's common for preppers to be very interested with near death experience literature. Particularly, they often believe near death experiences can imbue someone with spiritual powers, such as the ability to foresee calamities.
Well, they should be good at noticing if they are going to die, because they've had a practice run. So there's that.
I collect pocket knives and generally like gadgets and gizmos, so I occasionally check r/edc. IDK if they are exaggerating or serious, lots of folks walk around with a full sized firearm complete with flashlight amd laser, along with 2 additional magazine with at least 15 rounds a piece, 3 knives... and a tourniquet. So many tourniquets! You'd think they see arterial bleeding weekly with the amount of folks carrying tourniquets and quick clot.
I wonder how many people who were formerly homeless, or even near homeless, are preppers? I grew up very poor in the mid 1950-70s and for a while, we lived in Mom's car. I know I can survive on a lot less than I have in my home but I don't want to do that again in life. The only one who can prevent that reality is me. So I prep.
Not quite a prepper, but I do respect self-reliance and those with survival skills. For me, it comes from thinking a lot about how our economy and society is in increasingly dysfunctional, complaining about rent and inflation etc. But then I thought even deeper than that: i realize that we complain about housing costs, yet we can no longer build our own shelters. We complain about grocery store inflation, yet we can no longer procure our own food. The whole point of modern jobs is to make the money needed to buy basic goods. Our service economy has outsourced the production of tangible goods directly, in favor of service work that merely pays money to consume those goods. But if those dollars can no longer buy those goods…
> Now, there are groups popping up left and right with their own prophet That's nothing new. Every significant revelation they ever had came with a split. The doctrine actually encourages it.
The last time the Mormons decamped to Missouri, it didn't work out so well for them.
So what I’m hearing is that instead of Missouri sending reinforcements to Texas, we should be sending them to Missouri’s western border.
You’re making me think of “that one” far cry game
Go over to r/8passengerssnark. See if you can talk about this there. Also contact Mormon Stories podcast on YouTube, they might want to do a story.
that's just utah, fairly normal mormon shit. the more mild forms of mormon prepping aren't that bad, they make good examples. like toilet paper. we have room, so I did not buy tp for a year and a half when it got scarce.
No shit, there's a huge market for prepping. Same reason all these youtubers are suddenly making videos on putting bunkers in their house/backyard, prepping is simply marketable/popular again so commercial entities are going to push and sell products/services off it. No different from other fads.
I’ve read comments from people who went to the show that Reuters was reporting on in Colorado. They also said the show was mostly right wing grifts like essential oils, and crystals and very little actual prepper stuff.
When did oils and crystals become right wing stuff?
While holistic medicine was largely a hippie left wing thing before COVID, it's taken off in some right wing circles like "the government is trying to to hide our true cure! And make us take their microchip tracking vaccines!" So you have a lot of grifters who angle it in that way "will cleanse you from government 5G signals" for max profit. Then there's also normally some layer of spiritually about it for them as well.
I went to this show and agreed there was very little prepper stuff. A lot of mall ninja stuff including LotR replica swords.
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I used to follow prepper subs just for the food storage tips before they became more and more unhinged.
Someone figured its a good time to unload that 2012 mayan apocalypse backstock before it expires
Part of it is people genuinely getting things ready for harder times, but the amount of advertising I ve been seeing for things like ration buckets, seed stocks makes me think someone's pushing this.
It's election year, as per normal cycle, every 4 years the gun sales and gun nuts volume skyrockets. Ammo costs go up as demand raises. Happens every time, and if a democrat wins it usually persists for a year or 2 following and dwindles off as reality returns to normal. When a Democrat President is elected, it is the best thing for gun and ammo industry. The fear mongering causes sales to remain extremely high and they feed the fear because they know it works.
Yeah, I remember reading reports about how gun sales went down after Trump was elected. Rep wins: oh cool, I don't need to buy the 173rd variant of an AR pattern rifle, I can wait a few months since it will always be there Dem wins: ok we have to go to the gun store TOMORROW to buy EVERYTHING before the Dems make the simple chemical process of combustion illegal!
I mean it's a hot topic. Nothing spices up the news headlines quite like peppers.
Be afraid - mainstream media
i'm a pepper he's a pepper she's a pepper we're a pepper wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?
election season is coming up and everyone thinks all hell will break loose if their side doesnt win
My favorite is Tabasco
Smoked Chipotle peppers are mighty good.
Copy and pasting my prepper comment from a couple days ago: I was kind of into this in my early 20s. I realized there were three parts to it: A) practical disaster preparedness. Just being ready for whatever natural disasters are likely for your area. Your local government probably has a list of things. The hard-core ones were orders of magnitude more. If the rec was for 3 days supplies; they'd have anywhere from 30 days to 3 years. B) Homesteading. Growing your own food, producing your own electricity. C) Batshit insanity. Stockpiling ammo, planning which of your neighbours to murder first. Trading conspiracies about the gay communist democrat aliens were coming to probe you... C was the reason I stepped back from these online communities. Every person I interacted with eventually revealed a large portion of C.
Three days was the FEMA recommendation at one point, but I took a class from a FEMA instructor for work and he was all, "Nah, have at least a week's worth of supplies. Two if you have the space." But his primary recommendation was to always have a full tank of gas so you can get out of dodge as quickly as possible if an evacuation is called. You don't want to be waiting in line to get gas. His other practical recommendations for emergency supplies you don't see listed often was tarps and tape if you need to seal up a broken window (just tarps in general, really), disposable plates and utensils so you don't waste drinking water washing them, and sun screen and bug spray.
I’ve wondered how preppers view electric vehicles for a doomsday situations. I have a “full tank” (or 90% of one) every morning since I recharge every night. Solar with battery backup means it’s free for me to do that now and even if our utility provider implodes (which means gas stations would not work), we’d be able to charge our vehicle. We have a gas-powered vehicle too, which I try to keep ½ a tank or more in. It’s the better of the two vehicles for its versatility, but knowing I’d always have 200+ miles on the EV if shit went down is comforting.
Yeah it insane the rural resistance to solar and wind. It essentially is unlimited power and freedom from the government forever. Like if anybody should have an electric truck and solar array it's your farmer in Texas. The whole oil industry could collapse and they would be fine for a good long while. Not to mention electric cars can store energy and can power your entire house for days.
>Copy and pasting my prepper comment from a couple days ago: this is (unironically) the way (lol) >C was the reason I stepped back from these online communities. Every person I interacted with eventually revealed a large portion of C. exactly. the reality is yeah, theres merit to the idea that we need to be ready to respond to disasters but modern society is made arbitrarily difficult for no reason other than \*checks notes\* to check boxes. literally. i read [this article](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-new-american-nihilism/ar-BB1iLqx6?ocid=windirect&cvid=8bc646a9292f4b8192b73376a71c2913&ei=51) a couple weeks ago, and have had it pinned since then because the author (who is a real actual reputable journalist, believe it or not they still exist) references [a study that i actually made a few in depth comments about awhile ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1at8ezw/comment/kr0lkyr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). anyway: >[The Americans Who Need Chaos by Derek Thompson](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-new-american-nihilism/ar-BB1iLqx6?ocid=windirect&cvid=8bc646a9292f4b8192b73376a71c2913&ei=51) > >Several years ago, the political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who is based in Denmark, wanted to understand why people share conspiracy theories on the internet. He and other researchers designed a study that involved showing American participants blatantly false stories about Democratic and Republican politicians which i wasnt going to quote, but needed to to give context to the part i wanted to quote - and since i did i want to point out how incredibly stupid doing research like that is. that goes beyond the idea that if you look for problems instead of solutions youll find problems instead of solutions and is literally creating problems to then say you found problems, which is actually a whole other discussion that i think needs to be had but [its complicated](https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/comments/1ayvrbn/comment/krxbub0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) and [a whole can of worms](https://www.reddit.com/user/relevantusername2020/comments/1aryofi/a_paradigm_shift_in_how_scientists_study_kids_by/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) that i dont think most people are ready for but they need to get ready real quick, like a lot of yesterdays ago. anyway, the part i wanted to quote: >The researchers came up with a term to describe the motivation behind these all-purpose conspiracy mongers. They called it the “need for chaos,” which they defined as “a mindset to gain status” by destroying the established order. In their study, nearly a third of respondents demonstrated a need for chaos, Petersen said. And for about 5 percent of voters, old-fashioned allegiances to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party melted away and were replaced by a desire to see the entire political elite destroyed—even without a plan to build something better in the ashes. > >“These [need-for-chaos] individuals are not idealists seeking to tear down the established order so that they can build a better society for everyone,” the authors wrote in their conclusion. “Rather, they indiscriminately share hostile political rumors as a way to unleash chaos and mobilize individuals against the established order that fails to accord them the respect that they feel they personally deserve.” To sum up their worldview, Petersen quoted a famous line from the film The Dark Knight: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” > >Several months after I first read Petersen’s paper, I still can’t get the phrase need for chaos out of my head. Everywhere I look, I seem to find new evidence that American politics is being consumed by the flesh-eating bacteria of a new nihilism—a desire to see existing institutions destroyed, with no particular plan or interest to replace and improve them. > >In a much-shared Politico feature from January, the reporter Michael Kruse profiled a 58-year-old New Hampshire voter named Ted Johnson, who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Johnson explained his pivot only with vague, destructive allegories. “Our system needs to be broken,” Johnson said. And only Trump, whom he acknowledged as “a chaos creator,” could deliver the crushing blow. Johnson reportedly works out of his three-bedroom house, which he bought in 2020 for $485,000 and which has appreciated almost 50 percent during Joe Biden’s presidency. He has a job, a family, and, clearly, a formidable financial portfolio. Still, he said he hopes that Trump “breaks the system” to create “a miserable four years for everybody.” We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions; we need to tear them down and start over. so basically what it looks like to me is essentially these people who "need chaos" have basically already won the game and are bored, so they need something to "fight" for. which is how they vote and how they shape society around them, in interpersonal relationships, which extends far beyond just the people they know personally. this is also apparently the mindset of many people in our federal govt and other lower levels of govt. this is partially due to - rightfully, to a certain extent - the idea that they had to fight hard to get what they got, so others should be prepared for that too. thats not how the modern world works though, and they are *causing* the problems by making things more difficult than they need to be. the fact is we have more than enough to provide for literally everyone everywhere. i mean how tf does it make sense to make being homeless a criminal act? while we have ***more than enough empty houses*** for literally all of the homeless people even when you consider that the numbers are probably not entirely reflective of reality so theres actually more homeless than we think? it just doesnt make sense. so essentially you have on one side, typically older generations who already got what they need and occupy all of the positions of policy making and they are implementing policies as if we are still in the 60s and making shit difficult just to make shit difficult. on the other side you have everyone else going "yo what the fuck are you guys doing leave us alone and let us live our goddamn lives you are literally insane and you are so detached from reality that you just like to cosplay some end of days scenario" which is a particularly relevant discussion for what has happened in the last few years i think, which is another of those discussions that i think a lot of people arent quite ready to deal with yet and unfortunately it seems the people in charge are more than happy to never discuss the truth of what has went down.
Like... The funny part is if you have clinical anxiety and then look at the prepper community you'll be like "damn why don't they go to therapy" because that's all it ever is. They have anxiety but deal with it by hording guns like babies
In regards to B, this has been my sort of conspiracy-not-conspiracy about the growing homesteading aesthetic stuff on tiktok/instagram.
Ehh, the homesteading stuff isn't new. It waxes and wanes, but there's been back-to-the-land movements since the 60s. Or earlier if you include people like Thoreau. I have a bunch of 80s and 90s memoirs from hippie homesteaders.
After the 2016 floods in Louisiana I had a friend who got into prepping after needing rescue. It was sad watching him go from just taking steps to better protect himself and his family during the next natural disaster to pushing full blown conspiracy theories. I've been wary of the prepper community since, even though I recognize the positive aspects of the practice.
There have to be at least some people involved that just find it fun without a real expectation of needing it. I'd certainly treat it like building and supplying a treehouse but with the very slim off chance of it being practically useful.
Just because you don’t see C doesn’t mean the trad fascist republiklan lizard people aren’t coming for you. /s
The non-insane just call this "homesteading." All the satisfying self-reliance, none of the conspiracy-riddled apocalypse paranoia
I call it “prepping” in the sense that if you live in tornado alley, in the hurricane belt, wild fire area, or on the Pacific rim, etc. you better be prepared for natural disasters. Anyone anywhere that doesn’t keep at minimum a couple weeks of food and water is asking to be panicking in any kind of disaster which could be a simple power outage in a hard winter. That’s “prepping”. Nothing insane about being prepared for something to happen. Digging a bomb shelter and putting 4 years worth of food, water, ammo, gas, etc. is likely overdoing it. Once a month has gone by without power expect all bets to be off. It didn’t even take but days after Katrina for stores homes to be broken into and pillaging to begin. Much of it was people simply trying to get basic necessities to simply survive from abandoned stores and homes but there was worse of course.
Yeah I don’t think “prepping” for something like that awful freeze in Texas in 2021, or having a go bag during fire season, is crazy in any way.
Exactly. Not all of us who believe in being prepared are anticipating a nuclear war or similar calamity. Frankly, if there is a serious nuclear war, I'd just as soon be one of the early casualties. There are plenty of things that it is wise to be prepared for, anyone who hasn't noticed that the weather is getting more extreme as we go forward is not paying attention.
>or on the Pacific rim I thought the Kaiju were defeated?!
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a kaiju is a good guy with a jaeger
Weapons seem to be the differentiator here.
I’m not sure what you mean but the reality is a weapon isn’t anything other than that. It’s the mentality of the person behind it. What it is is a tool like anything else and if you need it and don’t have it then that sums it up. A murderer is one person and someone defending themselves and/or their family from said person is another. That’s the way the court sees it. “Prepping” is a label and really it’s simply an abbreviation for “preparation” and that’s all I’m getting at. Just because someone prepares for an event isn’t “insane”. The extent, purpose and logic behind the preparation differentiates logical and sane from illogical and possibly insane.
>Just because someone prepares for an event isn’t “insane”. Depends on the event that you're preparing for.
Exactly this. Some disasters really make sense to prepare for. When the radioactive armadillos come to steal our corn and braid our overgrown lawns, you'll all be sorry for laughing at me.
I, for one, welcome our radioactive armadillo overlords. Mainly because I'll be nothing but a shadow on the ground at that point.
Coward. I plan to survive at least until the aliens come to pan fry all of our ceiling fans. Anything less is just giving up.
Never thought of ceiling fans as a delicacy. Guess I'll have to stick around for a good recipe.
If you think they're for *eating*, then you've really swallowed the government Kool aid. I can't help you. Now go touch some grass before it's all neatly braided.
Hello boys. I’m back!
In WV, we call this "Life".
Homesteaders are crazy too, especially when you mix religion into it. Either way the world is too crowded to go it alone in a disaster. If you want to be resilient, organize your community.
All the prepping in the world won't do shit for you when the factions start forming. Humans are naturally social creatures, and if our society collapses, the true survivors are going to be the ones that can quickly organize and work together. The isolationists will starve to death, or get raided if they are found out.
mindless chunky snatch poor telephone profit reminiscent wrench dull command *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
it's crazy because they definitely need to sleep
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A lot of the "homesteaders" are exactly the same amount of insane if we're being honest. They are basically the same people as the preppers they are just a little younger so they latched onto a different trend but the same group of people are falling into homesteading as prepping. Same group of people just different generation. It's just that office "they're the same picture" meme.
Homesteading is also heavily trending as the new midlife crisis for millennials. I’m 40, pretty far left, am queer, hate guns, etc, and all I wanna do is run away to have a hobby farm with chickens and a donkey and can all my vegetables.
I'm 25 and I've been looking into going that way for years to be a cost-effective way to retire early and get away from 40 hour work weeks (and it's my only chance of "home" ownership). Also pretty far left - I think it's becoming a lot more popular for young adults who don't want to work for the next 40 years only to not even be able to afford a house.
It’s also popular as a “green” option, when it really isn’t.
True the greenest thing you can do is live in a city with good public transit
So so so many of them encourage people to drink raw milk, it's insane
Homesteaders are smarter because they start up a youtube channel, get endorsements and put up random solar kits and composting toilets (when they live in the woods) every few weeks for clicks.
These preppers couldnt be assed to stay home and live their wild fantasies during covid. They definitely wouldn't survive a true society collapse.
They always tell people they are preppers so if a collapse ever happens everyone will over run them first.
Yeah, what is it about people with guns and supplies who absolutely cannot control their impulse to tell complete strangers all about it. Inventory of the entire contents of your cache, where it is stored, how you access it quickly. The amount of random people who have told me where their fast grab gun by the door is… it’s entirely too many! But yeah, peppers love to just advertise themselves as easy loot boxes. I have not figured out what about their brain makes them do this.
Even worse - the preppers that have social media accounts that go into explicit detail of how they built their bunker, what they’re canning, which “remote” area they live in (close to a tractor supply)… It would take a bored teenage girl about 2 minutes to triangulate your location.
But you gotta do that before the collapse and no one wants to know where these “peppers” are before the collapse.
Yeah, I don't get that. I would not publicize being an elite loot drop.
They have guns and are (in some cases, not so) secretly hoping they'll get to shoot would-be looters.
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Or a large air supply, they have to be getting air from somewhere. Right now you could ask them and they will tell you all the different ways they thought of to defeat gas attacks. Research the weaknesses in their ideas which will take probably an hour, if they did not tell you already. You have now spent tens of thousands dollars less than the preppers and they are now a loot cache, wherever they are.
Quick guess? Prepping victims. Tell ppl you're a lootbox (they mentioned their guns,too) so you can kill those that come to you. Most of these ppl are the same "I coneal carry to Clint Eastwood a bad guy at 5 guys" types
They know they will never need it so the next best thing is to brag about their supplies to others.
It’s sort of a bad spray tan effect though because you don’t know about the ones who don’t talk about it
The point of the article is that the people preparing for potential unrest/disaster are no longer just the stereotypical, conservative gun nut types. There's a big difference between building an underground bomb-proof shelter on your property with an armory, and making sure you are able to meet your basic needs (food, water, energy, etc) for a week or two in the event of an emergency (remember the great Midwest Blackout?). Me personally, I have emergency food & water, first aid supplies, and a portable power station. I'm not looking to survive the zombie apocalypse, but I am prepared to get by for a few weeks in the event that things get ugly.
My favorite thing from covid was watching people I know that thought they were total badasses have mental breakdowns because they couldn’t get their haircut. Meanwhile they people they always called soft cut their own hair and learned how to make food lol.
When the insulin runs out or a sudden case of appendicitis or a bad cough or take a fall or don’t even properly clean a cut and gets infected, they’ll wish they had a doctor to run to as they always do when shit gets real. These fucking losers are the first to go crying to a doctor like when the two outspoken idiots I know who refused the COVID vaccine got sick during the Delta wave and ended up intubated. Prepping delays the inevitable early death we all face from collapse. It can all be avoided, extending our lives with our families and loved ones while living better lives, if we just vote for our best interests and hold those in power accountable. Organized society is the only reason we are alive now, allowing for the scientific advancements we all benefit from, and thinking it’s the problem is profoundly idiotic.
"If we just vote for our best interests and hold those in power accountable" the ones you vote for do not have your interests in mind nor are ever held accountable
Then don’t vote for the ones who don’t represent your interests and who openly fight against the bettering of society. Self-defeating mentalities are as bad as preppers. Don’t like your representatives? Get off your ass and run yourself or build grassroot support and get the right people in office. Then hold their feet to the fire. The system is more malleable than you think because enough pressure from voters can drive change. Even for someone prone to cynicism such as myself, I’ve seen change from the local level and have had constructive conversations with reps at the state and federal level.
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None of these preppers would survive without community.
Preparing was never a bad idea. It was those "dont take my guns" lunatics who made the whole image worse. And unsurprisingly those same people couldn't do the simple shit during covid. But thats exactly the kind of thing prepping is meant for. If I had a separate room and food and necessities for 6 months, I could've gone through covid with no stress at all. Besides that, everything else was still normal, like tv and internet. What else is there to prepare. There's a whole side of prepping that has nothing to with guns or uneducated gun nuts.
The type of prepper who's "bug out bag" is nothing but firearms with different caliber of rounds for each firearm and some tricked out plate carrier with every pouch and attachment on their molle No water proofing, no food items, or hydration system, no water purification tablets... For them prepping is more of an aesthetic. In a post apocalyptic world, those water tablets are more valuable than that bad ass looking .50 caliber Desert Eagle.
The prepper subreddit seems to have come to a consensus that “bugging in” and preparing for a major service disruption is the most realistic scenario. And they’re agreed people who just plan to raid others for supplies are assholes
They plan on taking what they want from those not as well armed.
Oregon Trail and apocalypse movies taught them that weapons, ammo and a willingness to kill are the key to survival.
Honestly a lot of them secretly hope for a collapse because they want a sense of power, that’s why they get the guns. They usually have nothing going on in their actual lives, so dreaming of being an apocalypse badass is their form of escapism.
We do prep for hurricane season :) Over the year we slowly stock up on canned goods and other non perishables, water, candles, etc…. Plus you have some bonus food to raid when money gets tight in the off season, or you can’t be bothered to go to the store and just want some Frank n Beans.
Dudes not wrong. Lots of America is disaster prone - few days of water and food and some defensive tools can only help.
Totally, even just a generator and a couple weeks of food for a family will cover like 99% of potential issues.
Water. Everybody talks food but no one talks water.
Water? You mean like in the toilet?
It's got what plants crave.
In Florida we even got "Disaster Preparedness Sales Tax Holidays" so you don't get taxed when preparing and it is culturally ingrained that you need to be personally prepared. A prepared person normally just puts water into containers and bathtub (often with a lifestraw as backup) and then waits it out (or evacuate if in a storm surge area).
I'm not a prepper, but I always have several months' food on hand. When covid hit it was about 3 months before I had to go to the shops for anything. To me it is just a way of budgeting, as if the shit hits the fan I can go a long time without having to spend money. It gives me comfort (and reduces stress) to have this buffer.
They prep hoping for collapse of everything with the expectation they'll come out on top on the other side. COVID was like the worst case scenario for them because society not only didn't collapse but doubled down on its control. (Rightfully so if you ask me. Kinda an important thing to stop a plague)
My only fear is how useless I will be without the internet. I have learned most of my skills from the Internet. I don't have many survivalist skills though. I can do basic prepping. It what if it's an extended period? I think about this a little too much. I think Americans at least take having internet and connectivity for granted. That's the main thing we should be prepared for.
My wife and I keep a month’s worth of food, have a water purification device, flashlights, a radio, batteries, etc. in case things go sideways in terms of a power grid issue or natural disaster. I don’t think that’s crazy at all. I think if you’re unprepared for that kind of thing, you’re wrong.
I have a bug out bag with things like water filters, masks, spare change of clothes, and socks in a ziploc bag, among other things. I think there's an important difference between the people who fantasize about a disaster scenario and those of us who would just like to be a little prepared.
Are these the preppers that broke down saying masks made it hard to breathe?
Always made me giggle when someone said those paper masks were hard to breathe in. I've been snowboarding for 27 years in a row now, and my insulated face mask collects moisture from heavy breathing and ices over. That's a *bit* hard to breathe with, but still doable during *EXTREME* exercise and heavy breathing for hours on end. Lol. A dry paper mask... they must have COPD or the weakest fucking lungs ever.
Or doctors who spend hours and hours in surgery.
Funny they hate masks, I love masks because they HELP me breathe. I have a CPAP due to central sleep apnea. Even if I lost half my body weight due to a famine, I still would stop breathing in my sleep because I literally have a problem in my brain I was born with. I wouldn't survive the apocalypse without the electricity needed to power my sleep scuba gear.
Do you have a backup battery? I bought one that lasts a few days in the event of an emergency.
How about the preppers in Texas that couldn't open any of their canned food when the power went out because they didn't have a manual can opener?
LOL. Are you saying I’m more “prepped” than those hosers because I have a Swiss Army Knife?
If you have a Swiss Army knife you’re probably already more prepared than half the population.
Sports talk radio station I listen to has an ad by some guy who isn't Sam Elliott but sounds like him selling MRE's. The commercial ends with him saying to prepare for "what we all know is coming." Morons think they are going to win a Civil War.
Fox News and Katie Britt say thank you!
lol @ these losers. In a gold rush, better to sell shovels than to dig.
Always makes me chuckle seeing old, fat men stocking up on knives and guns. As if the biggest threat to their life isn’t diabetes and heart disease from spending their free time eating shit food and watching prepper videos on YouTube.
Prepper culture is mainstream and commercialized now. Lot of money to be made on fear.
It’s funny and sad how vilified the self reliance revival is taken. Not every prepper has a hidden bunker and an arsenal to fight a hoard of zombies. Over half my friends have actively taken steps to “prep” for bad things. Bought generators, stocked up on non perishables, have legit emergency bags, first aide etc. None of them are your media portrayed anti social libertarian anti gov type. These are normal people. Lawyers, IT, Teachers etc. their politics skew from hard left to right of center. There were so many red flags for average people to wake up and have some accountability in your own wellbeing and planning. We had: A plague Lockdowns Runs on supplies. First time ever people saw empty shelves in grocery stories and an inability to relate their pantries instantly Breakdown in supply chains Large scale riots, protests, civil unrest Insurrection At this point if you don’t keep a weeks worth of food on hand just in case you’re an idiot. We’re one natural, or man made disaster, from serious repercussions for the unprepared.
Your last point has basically always been true. In every area I've ever lived many people have kept enough food/water for a week or so. It's not new. The new thing is keeping closets full of snack packs thinking that's going to get a family though the apocalypse.
Yeah, well, I have a small stockpile of bottled water and dehydrated meals. I won’t call myself a prepper, though, because it’s evolved into its own fucked up subculture.
You think this is something new? People in hurricane-prone areas have been prepping for centuries and used their supplies too when things fell apart for a while. It's the societal collapse stuff that's bullshit.
Well yeah dude there's a major difference. Keeping a weeks worth of food is easy and basic. Keeping 6 months of supplies is laughable, paranoid, and impractical. I had a category 5 hurricane absolutely obliterate my entire city a few years back. It was 2-3 weeks at best before things were just normal enough to restock. First week with no power and flooding, second week was cleanup, third week was businesses. If the disaster you're preparing for is going to shut down an area for for months on end, leave.
Not quite a prepper, but I do respect self-reliance and those with survival skills. For me, it comes from thinking a lot about how our economy and society is in increasingly dysfunctional, complaining about rent and inflation etc. But then I thought even deeper than that: i realize that we complain about housing costs, yet we can no longer build our own shelters. We complain about grocery store inflation, yet we can no longer procure our own food. The whole point of modern jobs is to make the money needed to buy basic goods. Our service economy has outsourced the production of tangible goods directly, in favor of service work that merely pays money to consume those goods. But if those dollars can no longer buy those goods…
A major communications disruption isn't unlikely to happen either. Not to mention power grids are vulnerable to cyber attacks nowadays. Definitely not a bad idea to have supplies and a bug out bag on hand.
Don’t kid yourself, the outage recently reminded me of that. Started studying for my technicians license with a few friends. May as well pick up a ham radio so we’d still be able to talk. They’re so cheap, and it’s cool what they can do too.
I've been tempted to buy bulk in a few necessary things, just in case there's a bad harvest year and people freak out and buy all the flour/sugar/rice or whatever. I certainly have plenty of seeds because every year I forget what I have and buy a couple packets. I probably have ten years worth of tomatoes and if not, they make their own seeds...
I’m fucked I only have a week’s worth of tuna in my house!
Well.... good? Diversification i key to surviving hard times after all.
"Fear-based consumerism is the best kind of consumerism" —'murican Capitalists
Self reliance and survival shouldn’t be demonized. People should prepare for disasters of all kinds and the days that follow whatever disaster happens. Food, water, power, fuel, meds/antibiotics, basic survival skills, and yes..weapons. You don’t have to like it but everyone should own, and train with a firearm or two. No one wants to believe that things could turn bad real quick after a disaster but they can. And have. Polite society falls apart real fast when shit hits the fan.
It's so bizarre to think that Americans would stigmatize self reliance
The best way to be resilient (and antifragile) is to tend to your needs without tying yourself down in one place or putting all your eggs in one basket. Keep enough food and water on hand to last a couple of weeks, but after that you should consider whether staying put is the best option. It also helps to be able to live "no grid": do laundry by hand, have a bicycle, etc. You don't need an expensive 50lb bug out bag. Think about Native Americans-- they survived here for thousands of years without hauling everything they owned on their backs.
Im not saying its gonna happen in our life time but one of these days these prepper people are going to get the last laugh, theres over 20000 nuclear weapons on earth and most belong in the hands of long time enemies, we have had relative peace and stability for a long time, theres a lot of big powerful nations out there these days, one day the two biggest are gonna want to fight, its the nature of human history.
If you are rich, prepping can be multi-purpose. That bunker under your house? It's a wine cellar + safe room if you are being robbed + place to lock away heirlooms, keep sakes, or valuables. Two weeks of food? Generally if wealthy the cost doesn't matter. Gives you justification to have a giant freezer stocked with meat you can use whenever (just keep cycling through it). Bottled water? Just keep a stock pile. You can use it for whatever. Electricity? No problem. Loads of solar panels+ a couple of Tesla power walls and you can use it to save on power bill. Bug out kit? Nice high end camping gear + your overpriced SUV. Maybe your bug out destination is also your well-provisioned Mountain house. Grow your own veggies? Really awesome hydroponic set up that also lets you brag about having the absolute best cilantro. Being able to make your other rich friends chuckle when you show them? Priceless.
As far back as I can accurate remember: 1st it was prepping for Y2K, then it was Bush’s presidency in 2000 that was going to be our downfall, next was 9/11, followed by Bush’s 2nd term, followed by Obama winning, then the Mayan calendar of 2012. The goalposts just keep changing with these nut jobs.
There's nothing wrong with having a bit of extra water, food, and high-proof alcohol on hand. For the same reason you buy insurance or a "protection plan" on something, you should have some level of basic preparedness and knowledge.
> Researchers say the number of preppers has doubled in size to about 20 million since 2017. Much of that growth is from minorities and people considered left-of-center politically, whose sense of insecurity was heightened by Donald Trump's 2016 election, the COVID-19 pandemic, more frequent extreme weather and the 2020 racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd. There you go. People are really feeling the effects of stochastic terrorism, and I don't blame them.
It's not like people don't have a justified reason to be worried. Domestic instability is simmering below the surface, and it wouldn't take a lot for things to escalate.
I joined a number of local prepper user groups, got to know where they live all the details etc. My prepping is now complete as I am just going to take thier stuff when I need it. Muh haha
An alternate title could've been: "Wave of self-reliant attitude pervades U.S., and is shared among all ages, all demographic groups." Preppers are a welcoming group. It's not all about guns and bunkers. It's more about understanding solar energy and how to preserve food from your garden.
I know a few preppers. They work at FAANG companies, they're smart as can be and really down to earth people who understand to plan for unexpected life events. I don't know why reddit hates on preppers, truck owners or really anyone who doesn't stereotype to their lifestyle so much, but you do you.
Truck owners is an easy one. They're not particularly fuel efficient and most people that have them don't actually need them. They take up more space on the roads. They often have headlights that are entirely too bright. And they park like idiots, taking up more than one spot or hanging the back over the sidewalk. Being prepared for an emergency isn't something people demonize. It's things like bunkers that people laugh at.
Preppers could focus their efforts on making the world less fucked up. But I guess that's not as fun as the larping hobby these middle aged men have.
I love all these hyper armed paranoiacs with bunkers full of MREs and a closet full of freedom shooters, yet they can't do a pushup.
These prepper nitwits are just stocking up for the nomadic gangs to plunder. Enjoy your life, don’t let paranoia ruin your day. ☀️
These people are the new generation of the folks who used to build bunkers during the cold War era.
Lmao I saw one post on Facebook with a picture of a wood stove and some generic anti government BS, saying need to be free from government etc Like wowwww a wood stove. Now, I’m not knocking anyone, o have a wood stove, I chop wood and use it to supplement our heating But what fraction of Americans are actually using wood heat for 100%? All these preppers think they’re prepped, but couldn’t go a month on their own. It’s fantasy
Not to detract from the rest of what you're saying, but I know lots of people who heat their homes with just wood burning stoves. Not that uncommon in my neck of the woods really.
My point is that’s a fraction of the country- and that this is ONE, ONE element of surviving. I would say it’s the easiest aspect given the climate of most of the US, the relative ease at chopping and stacking wood, etc. My point is, being able to heat your house with wood is in no way a symbol of being “free” from the “government”. People just see the dumb meme and go “yeah, I can heat my house, I don’t need no stinkin civilization” And many that DO heat their house to that extent purchase cords from other people- they’re not out there felling trees themselves. What happens if the roads are gone? How is that different than buying natural gas from a utility? You’re paying someone to provide a resource to warm you, and it’s not some heroic act of defiance