“I get the feeling a number of people on this forum are hoping for a big breakdown...the better to shoot people.”
Funny I get the feeling that there are a number of people who are completely oblivious to what is going on around them.
Why don’t they realize it? It’s caused by a condition called ‘Normalcy Bias’ a mental state people enter when facing a disaster.
It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
A good article on ‘Normalcy Bias’ is on our own ChocChipCookies Blog The Survival Mom:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/12/29/normalcy-bias/
As for me I prepare because I don’t want to be beholden to anyone for providing what is needed for me and mine. I certainly don’t want to have to kiss some ‘gubberment’ third class bureaucratic to try and coax some help from them, I don’t want some ‘jack booted’ thug herding me in line and telling me where to stand, sit, eat or sleep. And last but not least I don’t want to be shut up in with a bunch of ‘zombies’ and have to worry about not only trying to get basic necessities but having to fight to keep what I manage to get.
But when ever there are one of this threads there are usually some even here on FR who seemed to be bound and determined to be the ones standing on a bridge waiting for FEMA to bring them a MRE, a bottle of water, a warm blanket and a kiss for their boo-boo’s. You know the the ones who proved the back ground money shot for the network news. How do you think that will work out for them?
I had a trial run on what happens during a disaster and realize that I need more preparation plus more money.
“I don’t want some ‘jack booted’ thug herding me in line and telling me where to stand, sit, eat or sleep.”
Because I live in the “boonies”, the sheriffs did not come to my home to evacuate me. Actually, I had no ideal that my little rural town was evacuated. Sheriffs were going house to house demanding people leave. I just watched the fires on a mt. top to see if I should bug out. It came close.
The best-prepared preppers, by themselves, will not survive much longer than the totally unprepared types if the former are living in high-populated areas. That's the unfortunate fact for the preppers. Of course they could have that fold-out helicopter ready to whisk them away what the shtf.