The current political situation isn’t what caused me to start “prepping” and I’m not a hardcore prepper. We live close enough to Watt’s Bar Dam nuclear plant that I can see the condensation coming off of the cooling towers. The sirens start a mile from me. So...I keep a bugout bag ready for us and the pups. They have their own duffle with spare collars, leashes, and food. I keep their dry food in gallon freezer bags in the freezer to grab and go.
I started doing this after we were riding the horses in the mountains above the dam a few years ago. We were on a barely-there trail that only locals knew about and ran up on a camp full of middle eastern men camping where they could see the nuclear plant. They just stared at us and didn’t speak. We didn’t speak. We took a different trail back. That made me nervous so I made the bug out bags. We reported it but nothing was probably checked out.
That is truly frightening TC.
You have Watts Bar, I have the Sequoyah plant nearby. We get to hear the test sirens at noon on the first Wednesday of every month. Haven’t seen any congregation of middle-easterners around here, but I don’t get out on horseback either.
That would have made me a bit nervous, even though I know that the security force at a nuke plant is armed to the teeth (and rumor has it that the ones at Watts Bar have been known to accidentally shoot their own patrol car). Things that don’t fit in, a group of middle eastern guys in the woods near a nuclear plant in eastern TN would be pretty odd.
I could see a rowdy group of good ol’ boys with a campfire or something, but not that.