Posted on 08/10/2019 10:19:27 PM PDT by familyop
CANTERBURY, England — “Doomsday prepping” or stockpiling food, medicine, weapons and other supplies in case of an apocalyptic scenario has long been considered peculiar behavior only exhibited by conspiracy theorists and other extremists in the United States. However, such prepping has actually been steadily on the rise in the U.S. over the past decade. So, what’s causing this surge in stockpiled rice packets and underground bunkers? One group of researchers say it is an ever growing sense of impending doom in American culture.
Many have speculated that this surge in doomsday preppers over the last 10 years was linked to an extreme political reaction among many conservatives to Barack Obama’s initial election in 2008, but a new study out of the United Kingdom finds that neither the Obama presidency nor extreme right-wing conspiracy theories in general are the main cause of this growing phenomenon.
Researchers interviewed preppers from 18 U.S. states and asked about their motivations for stockpiling food and supplies. The results indicated that, although most did seem to be conservative and fear liberal policies, the main reason behind their motivations was the overall sense of fear currently dominating U.S. culture across a variety of media channels. Most Americans can’t seem to log online or turn on the television without being hit by a grim view of the future being reported or speculated on.
Potential occurrences commonly worried about by preppers include possible economic depressions, terrorist attacks, cyber-attacks, pandemics, or environmental disasters.
Furthermore, researchers say that frequent recommendations from the U.S. government on how to prepare for potential disasters, such as when residents of certain communities are advised to stockpile water in preparation for a hurricane or blackout, have also contributed to the rising number of doomsday preppers in the United States.
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The study’s authors say their findings paint a more nuanced picture of doomsday preppers and their motivations, especially since up until now most were simply considered crazy or delusional. According to their results, most preppers don’t believe the world will end tomorrow or a giant meteor will hit the earth at any moment, they simply want to be prepared for anything “just in case” something terrible happens.
Researchers note that while extreme right-wing ideologies don’t seem to be the main cause of these fears and preparations, the general idea among many conservatives that if a Democrat regains control of the White House it will inevitably lead to chaos remains very much connected to the phenomenon of doomsday preppers. At the end of the day, though, that is just another possible event for conservative preppers to fear, and not the main cause.
“Fear is now deeply entrenched in modern American culture and is the principal reason that so many citizens are engaging in ‘prepping’,” explains lead author Dr. Michael Mills in a release.
According to Mills, these preppers believe that if the worse were to happen, the government’s response simply wouldn’t be adequate and many people would be left to fend for themselves.
“Rather than seeing prepping as an exception within America’s right-wing political culture, we ought to see it as being reflective of increasingly established and popular outlooks,” Mills comments.
The study is published in the Journal of American Studies.
A violation of the Second Amendment might well lead to chaos by ushering in an enormous increase in the intensity and frequency of violence committed by Democrats after the election.
No doubt a leftist study ... prudence is labeled fear. LOL they so predictable.
Long before it was called ‘prepping’ my family stocked up on water, canned food, firewood and other items. We suffer, to this day, many electrical blackouts due to the high number of mature trees in the area. When you can’t flush a toilet, shower, or get water to cook, you tend to prepare. With the Democrap demonization of traditional American beliefs, whites, Christians, etc., and their environmental scare tactics, I’m hardly surprised that it’s spreading.
Question, why is there a study by someone in England about prepping in America? Americans have been prepping for years. The pilgrims prepped for winter, citizens prepped for wars and depressions. I know people prepping for the SHTF event now. We always prepped. I hoard precious metals, you know lead, brass, and copper among other things. I even grow a garden and prep food. I think some of the English are wound a wee bit tight sometimes.
No it’s true!!
I’ve amassed 12 cases of JD in the basement just waiting for the apocalypse .
Now I have to start buying the pretzels.
I didn’t have time to wait for them to let it sit in the second barrel!! What if nuclear war comes?!?
:)
We have a huge pantry, most of us out here do, but we don't even normally think that having our own little personal store is unusual. When the family runs out of ketchup I dont want to pay double at a local store and have no intention of making a two hour trip to get some so to keep everyone happy there is a dozen bottles in the pantry along with a couple cases of green beans, a couple of kidney beans, a couple of lima beans, a couple of...well, you get the idea. Its cheap in town and I cant drive to get it if we were to just run out especially in the winter so you need to keep a lot of everything on hand.
If youre rural then theres a good chance that someone in the family is raising stock for slaughter and hunting and fishing. All of that years processing and harvesting needs to go somewhere much of it at almost the same time so you wind up with freezers or youll run out before next year.
At that point why wouldn't you keep extra cleaning supplies and a few medical supplies on hand.
Oops, now youre a prepper. You are in England anyway. It takes a bit more effort to be considered a “prepper” in America.
That’s good planning because it goes faster than people think. At one of my going away parties we went through 8 gallons of Jim Beam. What if a person had a party and then doomsday hit? You would be down to near nothing and have nothing to trade for extra toilet paper.
So the whole federal government civil defense program, and all who participated in it during the Cold War, were "crazy or delusional"?
Get the Snuder’s Butter Snaps ... BTW, what is JD?
My wife used to think I was slightly nuts because I insisted on having cases of bottled water and some canned food on hand.
Last summer the water supply had a blue/green algae bloom which contaminated the city water with cyanotoxin. You can’t get rid of the toxin with bleach, or boiling. Some people say that an activated charcoal filter would take it out. Anyways, we had plenty of water to cover drinking and cooking for over a month. The stores sold out of water in one day. It took about 3 days for them to ramp up the supply chain and get re stocked. Note that this was in the Summer without any other natural disaster.
The wife and I just chuckled at the panic going on. On about day three she looked at me seriously and said “I see now why you always made me stock water. Thank you”. She is now fully on board with me and actively discusses rotating out old stuff, ideas for easily stored food, etc....
On her suggestion we got a Brita filter system (activated charcoal) and multiple spare filter cartridges that we use now for filtering our tap water. She bought an extra one for her office at work. I also have had some .02 micron filter systems for a couple years but they wouldn’t have worked for the cyanotoxin.
Jack Daniels? A German WWII survivor woman that posted on a prepper forum said the best things to have in large quantities are toilet paper, vodka, and canned food. The vodka is for bartering, disinfecting wounds, and purifying questionable water.
Jack Daniels
Or if you go back in time, a sundae at Friendly’s called the Jim Dandy.
I worked there as a kid :)
Even then I wanted the Jack Daniels more.
ROFLMAO!!!!
Now I gotta buy more.
And if I have a party, NONE of the doomsday stock gets touched! :)
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