Probably not bad advice. My apologies to Lurker.
I just find this prepper stuff pretty toxic and I don’t like seeing it around here. Unfortunately I think I’m more right than wrong about the psychology behind it. Their own writings give it away.
And I have to disagree about the wisdom of preparing for the worst — worst as in SHTF. There’s a point where the risk doesn’t warrant the preparation. There’s such a thing as being too prepared, where you’re trading off too much of your life in the here and now — your time, your energy, your money — to manage a given hypothetical. It’s directly analogous to being overinsured on, say, your car.
People are of course free to make their own decisions about this stuff and to be as prepared as they want to be — and it would nice if guys could spare those of us who don’t see SHTF as a relevant factor the judgementalism and the fantasies about our deaths, rapes, etc. Thanks.
...But it really isn’t even that stuff that bugs me, truth be told, since that stuff is just words on a page. What really bugs me is the bugout, let it burn mindset — the idea that the country is lost and can’t be recovered. To me it’s emabarrassingly out of character for Americans to sit back and hope for an epic disaster to come along and hit the ‘reset’ button. We shouldn’t be counting on SHTF to do our work for us.
needed saying. Full Attention and Salute!
You are talking about two different things here.
There is also nothing wrong with being prepared and having a place to go of temporary refuge should a disaster strike, or should the government go wrong and be hunting you. It can happen. Many people felt it couldn't happen in various countries in the 1930s through the fall of the Soviet Union...and sadly, in some places to this day...but it did and it does. So, having the forsight to be prepared in such circumstances is not a bad thing.
I agree that is it a bad thing to have a hole in the ground mentality and basically decide that the nation cannot be saved so it's "every man for himself." That will simply insure the loss of the country.
But trying to group all of the first in with the second is an equal fool's errand.
There are a lot of patriotic Americans who have no intention of giving up on the country, either now while we can still civilly react and work and hope and pray that the other is not required, and yet who see the excesses and illegal, unconstituional things happening so prepare also against the worst when they would join with all of us and fight if necessary to retain the constitution and our Republic.
Thosem people are very numerous and we must be careful not to throw out the baby with the wash and lump them in with people who do not care. In fact, our common and mutual enemies would hope that we would do just that.
Once again, the reason for finding out about people and their motivations before being too judgemental of them. The fact is, the SCHTF (C is for "Could") and if it did, and we wanted to retain our Republic, we would have to fight and would be thankful if a whole lot of people were preapered to do just that.