Posted on 01/21/2012 9:20:17 AM PST by Jet Jaguar
When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon.
"In an instant, anything can happen," she told Reuters. "And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared."
Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as "preppers." Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.
They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government.
Preppers, though are, worried about no government.
Tegeler, 57, has turned her home in rural Virginia into a "survival center," complete with a large generator, portable heaters, water tanks, and a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently gave her as a birthday present. She says that in case of emergency, she could survive indefinitely in her home. And she thinks that emergency could come soon.
"I think this economy is about to fall apart," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
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bfl
Funny how three years of “Hope” and “Change” will do that to people.
No doubt about it.
The government has no money. Government charity will come to an inevitable end. Huge government budget cutbacks mean huge government layoffs.
The free market is a good thing. Big business is (mostly) a good thing -- but corporations are not your friend and they don't owe you a living.
Things are changing, and in the world which is being born, being able to stand on your own two feet and be self-sufficient is a good idea. The old way of life was show-cased after Katrina: people sat around and waited for someone to show up and rescue them. The smart people today are ready to take care of themselves.
This article emphasizes "the end of civilization", which is part of the concern, but hardly the whole picture.
The same thought process(es) that induce one to be educated to get a job, buy life/health insurance, fix the flat even though you have a spare .. etc., should expand to the other areas of life and living .. shelter, warmth, food, medical prevention/protection .. etc.
I confess to storing water prior to Y2K and stocking up on canned goods.
We ate pretty good for almost no money for the first 3 or 4 months of 2000
The three on the left of the picture will. They can stay with me.
“following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s”......
I call BS on that one...hippies “tuned out”. I see preppers like myself and other like minds very “tuned in”.
Prepare for the worst hope for the best can not be repeated enough
Survive or not but I would love to be in a bunker with the three on the left :)
Well, now expect the government to send in new recruits (police) to surveil. Jeeez, people just never think these things through.
At least one out of the three will gladly and willingly trade herself for security.
Yeah, can’t see those two “guys” on the right splitting wood without mussing their hair.
The 3 on the left might have a shot ...
I started getting concerned about six years ago. Two weeks before Obama was elected, I bought a small farm with a new home on in in central Kentucky. We moved to it as our permanent residence in August on 2011. We moved here from Seattle, which was my home since 1966. We are preparing our garden for next year, a pasture fore livestock, and a 40x80 building. We put all discretionary income into PM’s that we have in our possession or can get to in a few minutes.
We are preppers, and we expect the beginning of the SHTF to be this year. It becomes clearer and clearer with every news story. And lately, exposing the lies of the government and press are as easy as exposing the lies of teenagers.
—Funny how three years of “Hope” and “Change” will do that to people.-
That was just the icing on the cake for me. For me it has been about six years.
It only makes good sense. It doesn’t take anything out of a science-fiction novel to put your world upside down.
A Katrina, an earthquake, a mid-west-sized flood can take down normal supply lines and utility lines for even weeks.
And the most obvious is the loss of your job. If in the present economy you lost your job, how long will it be before you go back to work? You should work toward having enough on hand to see you through.
If you can survive a couple months out of work from whats in your pantry, you can also survive a bank collapse, or a Katrina for about that same period of time too.
Whatever happens, you should prepare for the family members who show up at your doorstep. You aren’t going to turn them away, so you’d better have a little extra.
To be fair, there are really only two people in that picture. I’d still take the one on the left, though. ;)
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