Posted on 12/11/2012 3:37:42 PM PST by Kartographer
Don’t forget that in addition to skills, more people had manners, and less people had an entitlement attitude.
LOL. Most of my immediate family is really skinny - gonna have to invite a few friends.
When socialists talk about "redistbuting stuff for the greater good" they're not talking about their stuff.
I think hatred is the wrong word outside of the few idiots that build up stereotypes specifically for the purposes of hating them.
I think the prepper movement is looked down upon by the same urban elite types that look down on “rednecks” and other folks not like them.
The media often defines prepping as being a bunch of extremists that don’t come off much differently on television than hoarders.
Too many preppers are publically engaged in survival fantasy that romanticizes life after some kind of unknown armageddon event or a collapse of law and order. That plays into a stereotype that already exists.
There are plenty of men and women who quietly go about their business understanding that the government is not a reliable safety net and having three days of food in your pantry is stupid. I don’t advertise what we do because it’s my responsibility to provide for my wife and children. The person who would suffer the worst if my children were hungry or did not have adequate shelter or clean water would be me.
Prepping is about personal responsibility and too many of our fellow citizens no longer understand or respect that concept. Articles like this will become more common because people dislike ideas they don’t understand. The basic premise of prepping destroys the bubble in which they live.
I read these threads because I want to learn from others and enjoy perspectives outside of my own. I will admit that many of the people who posts about prepping scare me. Too many of them are keyboard commandos that talk about shooting people, living like hermits in the woods, surviving with a bugout bag and a can of seeds, or other highly unlikely narratives.
I view my hobby farm as a chance to grow our own food. We can and preserve our harvest and enjoy it year round. I want my children to learn life-skills that I pray they never need such as gardening, caring for an orchard, canning, raising livestock, and other skills that are disappearing. That is more important to me than any skill in a video game.
I don’t care what anyone else thinks about me. I don’t want anything bad to happen, but history and life tells me that things can change overnight and the comfortable life we currently enjoy could disappear or fundamentally change in the blink of an eye. We live in an uncertain world and people would be wise to ask themselves “what if?”
They will have to live with the answer.
HEY! I did that for over a year. At least while I was gone, the girl that wanted to get married, did, and it wasn't to me (yay). It was a good chance to practice skillsets. ;)
/johnny
I have a reprint of the guide book the Donner party used on their trip west. It was interesting reading. Learn from mistakes and all of that.
/johnny
You never cease to surprise me Johnny. I grew up with enough exposure to country living that it does’nt take much to keep me satisfied. My little kids on the other hand.......
Every once in a while a thread pops up that is embarrassing to read, and almost more embarrassing to acknowledge enough to respond to.
The premise is a total, clueless misreading of reality, hence an ongoing joke against the critics of the critics themselves.
The so-called "Preppers" who are ridiculed (NOT hated) are the delusional exhibitionists who revel in the TV exposure, the interviews and the gung-ho macho posturing.
Fortunately, the real Preppers are invisible, have an IQ of over 70, and are loath to allow any hint of visibility or exposure.
And they outnumber the exhibitionists by a factor of 1000 or more. Just my opinion, but time will tell.
You make good points about the difference between angry mobs back then and angry mobs now.
I guess the difference between angry mobs now and angry mobs of the future will be the beards on their faces.
-PJ
I think the equation for the hatred against preppers has a lot to do with why they are showing the tv series on “hoarding”: to make the case in the general populace that all those who are tarred with the “hoarding” brush are immediately branded as nutcakes....and judged as mentally incompetent.
Remember how the Soviet Union controlled many of its dissidents? That’s right. They used the diagnosis of psychological deviation of some kind to send them to “mental health” centers.
I get that “change in the blink of an eye” when a hurricane comes in at or near Galveston. I'll have a couple of days notice to bring out my preps. When it comes through, power goes out in the “blink of an eye” and I'm back to the powerless 1800s and my standard of living depends on my level of preps and I don't know how long this condition will last.
Most people here live on bread and tuna and bottled water and use candles. If a larger event happened that lasted more than a week, they would have to have government MREs and government water and their candles will be gone. If the government couldn't provide their water and MREs, they would be in serious trouble and the government isn't going to give them more candles.
I'm sure I can last and live well for a very long time without power because I have experienced how it is without it. I learned.
Unfortunately, the vast amount of people don't learn from these experiences. Every time it's rush to the store for bottled water, tuna, and bread.
If I am an over prepared prepper, I don't care because I can weather whatever happens, natural or man made disaster - AND I FEEL FINE.
I saw a documentary of the Donner family. The people who traveled west across this country had major guts.
However, in my work I've been to places where things have gone to sh!t. I've been to the memorials. I've seen the skulls in Rwanda and walked in the places where multitudes of people went zombie and started attacking each other like some bad Romero movie. I was in Kenya during the post election violence. During my university days in the US several of my friends and one of my ex girlfriends were from the Balkans in Europe. In all those situations they wouldn't consider 'running to the hills' to be cowardice, especially when it is to save their family.
I have absolutely no romantic thoughts about how such an event would happen in a bigger scale. I also know that it is not just protecting myself but also about protecting my family. It is not cowardice striving to ensure my family can eat. It is not cowardice trying to make sure my family is not killed. Or raped. Or any number of other nasty stuff that would happen in a real shtf scenario.
Theoretically I actually agree with you. Theoretically. As in, I'd love to be in a close knit society where everyone has prepared and we can all communally ensure we, as a unit, are greater than the sum of our parts. This is why on other threads (some months back) I espoused the importance of trying to find a community - say in a rural area - now so that when the shtf one is in a group of people that can assist in getting food as well as protecting the group. Numbers count. This was in several posts I've made where I show why remaining in suburbia, even when you have the prerequisite 'hundreds of bricks of ammo' will most likely get you killed since suburbia will be a veritable killzone by week two. Thus, I agree with you that one should help their neighbors'. It is just that I also know that many will not take their prepping seriously (and will think it is crazy), and like a lifeboat trying to save too many people, trying to save the community may be at the cost of my family.
I will not accept that. I have no qualms about putting myself at risk, but I will not put my family at risk over people too dimwitted to take care of themselves. Even Noah didn't open the Ark once the rains started.
Anyways, I theoretically agree with what you have to say, sir. However, I've seen actual shtf scenarios, and been close to people who have experienced their own shtf scenarios. This covers Africa and the US. The closest I've been to in the US are some tornadoes in Oklahoma, and the chaos following those natural disasters is nothing close to what happens when it is a human/killing-spree disaster. I do not consider running away to the hills to be cowardice, but even if it was I would rather be a coward with children not molested by the rabble rather than a 'brave person' who went through the hell many people go through when the shtf.
For me prepping is about my family. By myself I don't need to prep - I am a young man who can (very easily) fend for myself. If I didn't have morals, and I was all by myself, I could simply join/start a group of marauders and feed off those weaker than us by raiding their homes. That will be quite common after week two. Thus, for me prepping is for my family. I will not expose them to risks based on trying to help those who refuse to be helped. Some may consider that cowardice, but I consider it wise.
This covers Africa and the US = This covers Africa and Europe
I felt a warm smile in you as you remembered those days.
“One thing Mother and Daddy learned and the children to a lessor extent was hard work.”
It’s only work if you view it as work. It’s fun if you view it as fun.
When you get older, you realize that everything you try to control, actually controls you. The grass needing mowed, or the pot holes in the road, it just doesn’t bother me like it used to. As we grow and look at the bigger picture, the small details like what we are wearing just doesn’t matter that much.
Although I joke about it, there is a lot of truth in the statement, “I knew I found my strength in God when I could wear plaid pants with a striped shirt and care less what anyone else thought!”
“Because after the collapse, preppers will become the new “wealthiest 1%.””
One bag of alfalfa seed and a few gallon jars for sprouting can make a lot of green gold for a long time. I agree with you.
“All of us kids would pick poke salad and take it home for Mom to cook for supper (only pick the tender top leaves)”
As long as the stalk does not turn purple and get hard, the entire polk shoot can be prepared and eaten just like asparagus. It really tastes good. We used to can it.
Eating all those wild plants must have been healthy for us. My mother is alive at 94 (lived alone in the farmhouse past age 90) and my father died at age 90. He would have survived much longer except for the medical system killing him!
In all of those countries that have famine, dictatorships, communism is it not apparent that those that have supplies are usually those with higher positions of power?
So as I see it communism sees any person who has more than his neighbor a threat as that individual then is elevated and thus a threat to socialism, unless they aspire to be a political prty member.
But you cannot have preppers in the news because they are a threat to socialism, they will have an unbroken spirit because they won’t have crying hungry children.
A nation of hungry families will do anything to insure they get food, and they will do it passively first by asking for handouts when the feds are giving it out.
And then they will band together and demand their socialist leaders to arrest and confiscate those that are prepping. All it takes is a break in the chain to disrupt some part of the food chain.
“I can lose every bit of my stuff, and still make it just fine.
Skills are more important than ‘stuff’.”
We must be related. I have always found it a fun challenge to “improvise.” My philosophy has always been, “Where there is “will” there is always a way.”
My 15 gallon soup kettle is a 304 stainless beer keg that I cut the top off with a plasma cutter. My lathe gear box is an old Ford transmission with the floor shifter still on it! Most of my woodworking equipment can run on a drive line powered by the tractor PTO. It’s amazing what you can do with a bit of ingenuity and what ever resources are available. I have always found it a challenge to tear apart things that are broken and fix them. Far more fun than crossword puzzles! (started when I was real young when my father cut the rear axle off a 48 Plymouth, buried one end of the axle in the ground and bolted a plank on the other rim for my backyard merry go round)
I can lose every bit of my stuff and still be fine, as long as I don’t lose my mind! (And if I do it really won’t matter much either!)
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