Posted on 11/13/2015 2:05:45 PM PST by w1n1
My first real exposure to the world of prepping came in 2008, when I became a new father and we moved to San Francisco, an earthquake zone. A lot of people in the Bay Area keep stockpiles of food and water on-hand for when The Big One hits, and since my wife was super nervous about earthquakes and I'm a former Boy Scout, we picked up a few cases of MREs and a water barrel.
Later, I added double-barreled coach gun for defensive purposes, making it my first time to live with a gun in the house since I left home for college at 17. But after that I called it a day. As far as I was concerned, we were ready for an earthquake, and that was that.
I didn't take things much further for a few years. I didn't even own anything that qualifies as a "survival knife" until 2012. I had dipped my toe in the waters of prepping, and I started to read more about it online. Prepping has two peculiar aspects that I found completely compelling: 1) it involves shopping for and acquiring Really Cool Gear, and 2) it has a community that longs for a world where we're no longer compelled to work jobs we hate so that we can buy Really Cool Gear that we don't need. In other words, prepping is hyper-consumerist in practice and anti-consumerist in outlook (sort of in the way that war is frequently justified by the desire for peace). Both aspects appealed to me, especially the gear part.
But this isn't a treatise on prepping. Rather, it's about why I don't prep for The End Of The World As We Know It, TSHTF, the apocalypse, the collapse, or whatever else you want to call it. Read the rest of the story here.
Buzzards gotta eat, same as the worm...
Oh yes there is. It starts about 1/2 tank of gas for the average car or truck away from major cities about 2 days after the lights go out.
Similar categories includes many people who cannot prep. My nearest neighbor farmer is a friend and a good man - one who despises both Obama and welfare. He's also not the temperament to prep and doesn't have enough food to make it through the winter, probably not enough to make it to Thanksgiving without getting hungry. I would certainly give him ammo (he has weapons but keeps less than one box of ammo in his home), and I would trade food for the winter in return for a promise of more food at harvest.
It comes down to who I want in my community five years later, and it is certainly my place to decide that. Anyone who would assume the problem was not enough socialism won't get anything from me voluntarily. Anyone with conservative values is worth having around, if I can help make that happen. There is strength in numbers.
I understand your position. I’m just concerned that for so many, prepping today seems to grow out of a powerful matrix of ‘fear and foreboding’, instead of a simple, healthy awareness of potential emergencies; and I just don’t think that’s constructive or healthy.
Best,
JT
I’m okay with a little fear and foreboding, as long as it’s not eagerness. The people who are eager for the world to collapse are the ideological twins of Obama voters. Both groups are far more likely to be evil than anything else.
When I look at Amnesty, Obamacare, gun grabbing, the Paris attacks, political correctness, fascism from delicate university snowflakes, and the march of socialism, I’ve got more than a little fear. I think that’s healthy.
The ‘eagerness’ you reference is exactly what I mean. It’s all over the Internet: so many people who seem to be actually *living in* their imagined apocalypse, instead of living now. One can only interpret that as a kind of ‘eagerness’, on an underlying level.
-JT
Baker’s Creek Seeds maybe?
Will send you a Freepmail to answer that. :-)
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Ok, I have and am doing that, I have found it. So what, I should stop purchasing food? Stop paying mortgage.
I'm prepared for going to work in the morning and I am prepared for an ice storm if it comes. I'm prepared for a loss of electricity whether it be a few hours, few days, few weeks or a few years.
I don't spend “extra” money prepping. When I purchase food I try to purchase twice as much as I need. I eat one and the other goes to storage. Next time I do the same thing only now I have two in storage. Soon you have 20 in storage and when you go shopping it all goes in storage and you use the storage to keep it rotated. It is like having a grocery store in your basement. It saves a ton of gas, you aren't constantly having to go out to get something, you already have it. When there is a special sale or special purchasing opportunity I take advantage of it, if it is something I can use I get it perhaps many of whatever it is.
My solar electric cost money but it pays for itself over time. Gardening is a pain but it produces good food and keeps the knowledge base up. I plan for living every day but don't plan on changing much if shtf except for more security.
When others come to my door and want to eat they will IF they have something I want or are willing to work for it. I will not be a soup kitchen.
There was a book that came out a few years ago called “The Host”. Aliens took over the world and there were a few remote groups of humans left. In the story there was one older guy that had a pretty neat cave that he had worked on prepping for decades and now there were about a hundred others that were staying with him. Each had to pull his weight in order to eat.
If you want my food you better have something pretty good to trade or be willing to work.
Prepping saves money.
I think you’re doing very practical prepping, much like my household does.
If you’ll read my posts on this issue, you’ll see that I think it’s very important to prepare for disasters and emergencies. My problem is with the people who seem to live in the sure, powerful - and frequently very paranoid - belief that disaster and the destruction of our Country is surely coming, even imminent; and then get sort of ‘lost’ in that imagining.
I don’t think it’s healthy. We all buy auto, home, and health insurance, but we don’t go about thinking that any day we’ll have a crash, a tornado, or contract a disease; we just buy it, and put it away. I think prepping should be the same - and it always was, for our agrarian ancestors, before we became so comfortable with modern convenience.
-JT
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