preppers don't want to be dependent on society because they don't like society, but they're not bright enough to realize they will always be dependent on society
Like the other person said, the people that do and say all this crazy shit spend thousands on rifles, rods, and trucks when a Crosstrek would probably be perfect. And that’s fine I guess it’s just they have the money(or the willingness to spend it anyway) and could probably squeeze a bi-weekly session in there.
I felt silly for buying a 63 gallon, foldable/portable water tank for my small farm because the vast majority of the ones I looked at were marketed towards preppers.
I just want my animals to have water in case the power goes out for a few days.
But the way things like that are marketed makes it sound like your the smartest, bestest, most prepared person to ever walk this earth. I don't need you to stroke my ego, just sell a foldable water tank with no leaks please.
Saw an episode of doomsday preppers years ago. These dudes had a whole property out in Oregon or Washington state designed to endure a potential onslaught of zombies.
They had to quickly evacute their property and leave all their fancy stuff, because of a very real forest fire that came to visit, for which they were entirely unprepared.
"Zombies". If you let them talk, it'll be pretty obvious that they're looking for a legal loophole to kill somebody. "Zombies" just means city people, which just means black people. They'll kill a white guy if that's what their lifelong dream comes to, but they'd feel bad about it later.
Even then I wouldn't do it because they'll recommend the most over the top version of every product. When really all you want is a cheap camping stove which you're probably going to use for 2 weeks out of the year.
Imagine living such a privileged life that the closest you've ever come to feeling oppressed was when you had to wear a mask to pick up dino nuggets at Walmart. Preppers have always been clowns, but COVID definitely ruined what little facade there ever actually was about the "movement" being anything other than a masturbatory LARP.
I'm in the "be prepared" group where we usually have a couple weeks of food and water around. We also have two forms of heat for when the power goes out.
Will we survive WW3 on this? No, but it has been very helpful after big winter storms that took out the city power.
Having some supplies to use in the short term is good for everyone. Being ready to go out to help neighbors and get the community back on its feet is how we get through to the next good times.
I wouldn't call that being a prepper. That's just sensible preparation for something like a natural disaster. Preppers think they'll survive whatever their conception of "the big one" is.
I guess in my mind, 'prepper' is just short for 'doomsday prepper' and it's not the same thing as doing, like I said above, sensible preparation for natural disasters.
Anyone that has been through even a bad blizzard knows it's important to have some basic supplies. Depending on where in the US you live, it would actually be considered unusual and irresponsible to not have some basic preparation for weather and related stuff. Not having a cold-weather car kit and home preparations for losing power in a blizzard in the upper Midwest, for instance, would be considered stupid.
No one thinks tornado shelters are that weird if you live in tornado alley. I'm sure hurricane prone areas probably have their own set of ready prep stuff that would seem weird in other parts of the country.
Yeah that's what I'm saying. The stuff I mentioned is just reasonable preparation for, like... life. Sometimes stuff gets disrupted for unexpected reasons. Like toilet paper during a pandemic lol.
Preppers think the pencil nose accountants will all die screaming in regret while all the high school jv cheerleaders come begging them for help, in full uniform, and everyone finally recognizes how they were right all along.
I have tons of food, a generator and other backup power and a gun, and if shit really hits the fan I know I'm not living 5 minutes longer than everyone less prepared, the resources actually make me a target.
But then again, I have Pge, so it's not doomsday prepping, it's just 'Wednesday, or whenever they next screw up resulting in 100s of deaths, weeks without power, and massive rate hikes resulting in huge bonuses to their upper management'.
Honestly, if the great civilization-ending disaster they think they're prepping for happens, I hope I die in the first wave. I don't have any Mad Max fantasies.
Definitely not. And anyone who thinks that it is the reality isn't going to be Immortan Joe, they're going to be one of the people at the bottom of the cliffs begging for water.
Or a human-shaped piece of sex furniture rented out to the water marauders in exchange for food and supplies. I'll take not making it through the initial disaster, please and thank you!
You should always have enough supplies for a short term emergency. That’s not doomsday prepping, it’s just common sense.
I’m not a prepper IMO, but I have rooftop solar with battery backup, a few smaller portable batteries and UPSes on my critical stuff, and some oil filled radiators since my heat pump isn’t connected to the solar setup.
At any given time we generally have a month or more worth of food in the house in frozen and dry/canned goods. Also, several gallons of bottled water.
I also keep some stuff under the back bed of my car’s hatch, first aid kit and emergency blanket, and battery jumper kit as well as a battery powered tire inflator.
I live in a semi-rural area, and in an emergency, getting out and/or getting food and necessities may not be possible. And if there’s a wildfire I may need to evacuate fast, so important to have what’s needed. This sort of thing is like… If you have the means, why wouldn’t you?
What a lot of right wing preppers and a lot of 'militia' guys (the tacticool heavy infantry kind) seem to completely lack is the willingness to be inconvenienced at all.
They buy or craft whatever stuff seems cool to them (some of which sure can actually be quite useful), train some skills they find fun to do (usually shooting/hunting) but most seem to ignore anything they don't like, find difficult or uninteresting to do (such as keeping reasonably fit). It also usually includes being willing to take orders or cooperate.
The lack of some skills/equipment/preparation could be overcome but not with the mentality that lead to it on the first place.
Id be willing to bet my left testicle those that survive an apocalypse are those who work together to grow food, build shelter, etc. and not the goobers who lock themselves in a crate with some beans.
Classic scene at the end of the movie "Leave the World Behind.
::: spoiler Spoiler
The survivors finally find respite, a fully stocked, super-luxury survival shelter, left wide open, because the people that built it died in the initial collapse.
:::
There's no point having some survival shelter unless you're already in it when you need to be.
There's no point having some survival shelter unless you're already in it when you need to be.
I've often wondered about the millionaires who invest in these things. Then spend most of their time on a yacht in the Caribbean, thousands of miles away from the bunker. What exactly are they expecting to happen, do they think they're going to get a week's notice?
That's because they're planning against the fall of civilization. Realistically that wouldn't happen. The bank stayed open during covid, the supermarket stayed open during covid. All that really happened was that life became very difficult for everyone and some people died.
If your enemy is a virus then your front door is more than enough protection. You don't need a big underground bunker you just need some pasta. But that's boring so they don't care.
A lot of these militia guys also don't learn the survival tasks they consider feminine. How many know any sort of gathering skills, cooking anything not meat based, laundry, mending clothes? Those are probably more day to day useful during the apocalypse than rifle shooting or how to wear camo paint.
Yeah, I think the idea there is if you point a gun at someone and tell them to cook and wash the clothes, it's likely to get done. It's that male power fantasy again. They desire civilizational collapse because then they think their love affair with guns will give them the authority and respect that can't find in the real world.
Meanwhile, it's just likely to make them a target. And since most of the people I've come across like this are typically overweight morons, they're just more likely to be killed in the extremely unlikely scenario they're preparing/hoping for. But they see themselves as the main character.
The best tactic to deal with them would be to simply hang around on the periphery until they do something dumb and die of some preventable infection, then move in.
my dads a mild prepper and had his 'told you so' moment when he brought up 2 boxes of n95 masks. he donated a box to hospital and the other box got the family through the worst months
Cute, but it's just a single hit on a lifetime of misses for most. He got lucky once and could easily use it to reaffirm a bunch of nonsense instead of crilically asking himself what all the other wasted shit is for.
But hey, I have hobbies too, and I'm glad he's smart enough to listen to science. So he's about a million miles ahead of most
The irony in the "prepping" movement these days is that it was never intended to be this thing about having an inexhaustible supply of resources just for you and your family (if you're still on speaking terms with them) to live off of when the nukes fall.
It's not about sitting in your attic and picking off starving people who are looking for a meal while you sit on a cache of food and ammunition.
It's supposed to be about being a useful person in your community who can help each other weather the worst in life. You will get much further in a disaster if you have skills than if you have stuff. You might have an entire Home Depot to yourself, but it's far too late to learn carpentry when the rain starts to fall.
It’s not about sitting in your attic and picking off starving people who are looking for a meal while you sit on a cache of food and ammunition.
Unfortunately for many it is.
I don't really generally circulate with far right wing folk. However this is one place that overlaps with my interests. One of the most unlikely intersections between the far left and the far right is home solar power. When you start to stray way from purely commercial groups trying to sell you stuff, you get to the DIY solar community.
Here you'll find multi-gun toting, hardcore Randian libertarians, that "want the damn government control out of their lives" right next too tree hugging, LGBTQ/feminist equality supporting, carbon-neutralling liberals. Both groups squint hard not to see who they're talking to or asking for advice on Charge Controllers, panel interconnects, AC inverter config settings, or off-grid battery solutions. Every now and then one person from one side or the other won't be able to help themselves and they'll make reference to their particular extreme political views. Everyone just holds their breath hoping a fight doesn't break out and most of the time its just ignored by both sides.
In here you'll find those far right preppers and they are convinced that they'll have to be 100% self supporting when the government falls "real soon now".
Unfortunately for the gunmen in this example, their guns will wear and tear. A crucial part or two will fail and not be replaceable. Then their entire strategy of "kill everyone else" will fall apart. And that's aside from the fact that human societies have always flourished because we have worked with rather than against each other.
Unfortunately for the gunmen in this example, their guns will wear and tear.
Their guns will be worthless long before they wear out. They are going to run out of ammo eventually. None of these folks are capable of manufacturing modern nitrocellulose gun powder or primer caps necessary to reload their fancy rifles and handguns. I don't even see them taking a more pragmatic path of learning how to make old school black powder for muzzle loaders which they could conceivable made in their bunkers. Admittedly, I'm on the tree-hugger/equality side and don't even own a gun. These are just my observations from outside their group.
Were these preppers more honest with themselves, there would be another area they would overlap with many on the far left: Cosplay.
And that’s aside from the fact that human societies have always flourished because we have worked with rather than against each other.
100% agree. Our survival as a species has always depended on us working together.
I have acquaintances that would definitely be considered classic preppers. One told me that he has 10k plus (each!) of rounds for multiple calibers of weapons, and a years worth of food for each of his family members in a “bunker” on his property. It’d take a LONG time to burn through that many rounds.
Ammo starts to degrade after about 10-20 years assuming your storing it well. Which is less likely to be true in the "end times". 2 decades is a long time but depending on your age it's not a life time, and firing damaged ammo can be dangerous.
True, but remember they don’t think that way, because it messes up their fantasy.
Have you heard the nonsense the owner of Reddit spouts constantly? About how he was so good at hoarding that he’ll have a private army and slaves and people will come crawling on their knees to serve him for a little food and he’ll be a king? These losers all think like that, and facts like tools break and bullets run out and you have to cast more and get the supplies to do so just ruins their dreams of being an unstoppable tyrant.
Also just praetorian shit happens. Having resources is insufficient, your guards have to like you or fear the consequences of banding together to kill you
So… Yeah, doomsday preppers definitely showed their true colors.
But I think we also saw that there’s a lot of merit to being a reasonable prepper.
I’m lucky to have a reasonable prepper in my friend group. Because of their insistence, I had masks, a full tank of gas, and a comfortably-stocked pantry way ahead of time so I wasn’t yet another person adding stress to a lean/just-in-time/low-margin distribution system that can’t handle even minor hiccups.
Much like the goal of lockdowns was not to completely stop the spread but just slow it so our healthcare system could handle it, the goal of prepping should be to avoid causing shortages when our productive capacity is lowered.
Drag thinks prepping is about learning useful skills and building community. A prepper should know how to sew, how to garden, how to repair and operate a radio, how to make friends, how to organise labour, and first aid.
Drag wants to see a zombie show about a grandma who looks after her community, resolves interpersonal disputes, fixes clothes, and looks after the little ones. Drag thinks grandmas are the demographic best prepared for an apocalypse.
There are "Preppers" and there are people who actually prepare for when things go wrong. Preppers seem to me like someone who watched a few too many survivor man and YouTube clips and decided to make a personality out of it.
Peppers take a good idea, having extra supplies and tools for an emergency, and take it to 11.
I’m not a prepper, but I did read my local government’s disaster preparedness list and have everything on it that applies to my family. I keep 3 days or so of extra, shelf stable food in the house; bought a home water cooler and keep an extra jug of water that I rotate when we use the one in the machine so that we have a few days of clean water at all times, which is way more practical and safe than a camping water jug that will sit and stagnate in the basement; I have a battery “generator” that I keep topped up with a solar panel because we have a sewage ejector pump and a sump pump to stop the basement from flooding in bad weather; and I have good first aid kits for the house and cars.
The only thing not on my local government list are the emergency car kits, which is really just a basic vehicle toolkit, jumpstart kit, flares, sweater and space blanket, all in a cheap bag that lives on top of the spare tire.
I don’t live in the most disaster prone area, but we do get tornados and nasty thunderstorms that knock out power for a day or 3. We don’t exactly have the lights on when that happens, but we do have food, water, a non flooded basement, and even some heat in the winter, and both cars have something to keep you warm while you either fix the car or wait for the tow truck.
I kind of understand peppers, because planning all of this out after we lost power a few years ago for 4 days in fall was interesting, and there was just so much shit the internet was saying I needed: weeks or months of dried beans and rice, a generator for the whole house, enough guns and ammo to ward off a small army, etc. my local government list was hard to find compared to all of the forums and YouTube videos, but I’m glad I found it, it’s sensible and if spread out over months, very affordable. I highly, highly recommend you poke around your local government website for their natural disaster page, they’ll have resources of who to contact if you need help, and what you should have on hand. If it’s not on your city’s page, try your county or state government. One of them should have a page about disasters and how to prepare for them.
The issue is that you can't prepare for everything. Having extra food and water, sure. Maybe buying a generator so you can use electrical equipment, that's generally useful. But, aside from that, your preparations for a flood will be very different from your preparations for a military invasion, which would be different from preparing for a pandemic.
Also, the more extreme your preparations are, the more it matters when you pull the trigger and activate your emergency plans. If your preparation is simply having a cupboard with extra toilet paper and some extra canned food, it's no big deal to pull that stuff out if the store runs out. But, if you have some kind of bunker in the mountains, it's a bigger decision when to "bug out" of the city and go live in the mountains. You're basically quitting your job, so if the emergency is something like the COVID pandemic, when do you decide things are so bad that you can take that extreme step?
I was trying to get myself prepared for realistic disaster scenarios. For us, that is earthquakes and cold snaps. And in my mind, realistic means how do I both ready myself and work with my community?
So I got a book on prepping. The titled seemed innocuous enough. Unfortunately, it was one of the crazy bug out into the woods and go eat squirrel stew sort of prepper books. Totally worthless for anything practical. The best thing I can say for it was that it was an e-book, so it didn't cost much.
Real peppers never stop eating beans. You buy new and eat the old ones. Oh and real peppers buy a truck they can repair themselves, not a 2024 Ram Clownsmobile.
Did you know that if you keep eating the same vegetable/food it can become somewhat toxic to your system? Also, different people have different tolerances.
I think he meant an over time aquired food allergy. Esp. Older folks seem to get them -like me- one can test with a Serum specific IgE in vitro Test.
There are over the counter test one can buy relatively cheap.
I did one recently, turned out I was allergic to garlic of all things (among others). Advice is to stay off it for 4-6 months then slowly reintroduce. Life is wild sometimes.
Um, huh?... vaccines are how you stop viruses... It's as if you said "scientists rushing to stop COVID because Americans refuse to try to stop COVID", which is just silly.
Vaccines aren't the only way to stop viruses. There's also masking and social distancing and hand washing.
I think that's the point. We could have taken the pressure off scientists and doctors and nurses and service employees and everyone else by doing simple things that a vocal, ignorant portion of society decided was too inconvenient to tolerate.
I'm a person that most people would consider a prepper. What am I prepping for? Unemployment. Being able to survive with as few possible inputs as possible.
I'm a hard core skeptical nerd that doesn't believe a single conspiracy theory. I'm like an anti doomsday prepper. Making life easier even if things don't go bad.
I have chickens, ducks and geese, raised beds, just built a solar battery charger, can my own food, dehydrate food, cook everything from scratch, etc etc. I go through all the same steps. My friends refer to me as a prepper despite me saying I'm a homesteader. They keep saying they are going to show up at my place if everything collapses. I started shutting this down by saying they need to be pre-approved, pay a $150 non-refundable deposit and $50 a month so that I can make sure I have food and other essentials for when they show up. Because it's really annoying to hear someone say "I'm totally not doing anything about my fears so I'm going to impose on you when the time comes."
I'm just trying to reduce the amount it takes for me to survive. It happens that if you are ready to be unemployed for a few months that a lot of the same prepa come in handy for a collapse of the economy. The same things needed to hunt squirrels are helpful against zombies.
I've done the same thing. Was already living off grid when I was surprise unemployed last year. Made it about 3 months with no outside input, but eventually got sick from previous medical issues, so had to file for unemployment so I could have enough money to see a doctor.
A year later I'm now back in regular society with a regular job, trying to save up and start over.
I've learned that I can be prepared physically to go months on my own. But mentally is a different game altogether. Most of the prepper types would likely struggle without a support group. Being by yourself for long periods of time is FAR harder than most people think (myself included). The first few weeks are pretty easy, but it gets significantly harder every day.
One of the more popular arguments from preppers during covid was that these hyper-independent minded people were suddenly demanding the ability to go out to stores and meet up with people in large groups.
After years of "I don't need nobody" they went hard core "people need interaction!". It was a beautiful thing that not one of them will admit.
I don't know that the actions are the same though. That's sort of the point of the thing I posted. People like you are actually doing shit. What most people think of as 'preppers' are people who have a closet full of MREs, two giant jugs of water, and a massive guns and ammunition collection, people who tell you about how the world will end if Trump isn't elected and they're ready for it.
I think if those people were like you, even if they had stupid motivations, there wouldn't be so much derision. But they don't actually put the work in. They essentially think if they buy enough ammo and Jim Bakker rapture survival food buckets, they're ready for every eventuality.
Homesteading is really cottage-core plus self-sufficency. Little House on the Prairie.
Gardening on crack. Not commercial farming.
Honestly...I got 9 hens now, and they are amazing. Literally the best pets. My wife wants to become a homesteader and live that life. Get some acreage, build a nice home and a nice area for the birds. Maybe Get a goat or two. Step up the gardening game.
The wife would probably have to quit her job, but she's only working part time at a grocery store. Her employee discount (20%) is more valuable to us then her paycheck, and we don't need that if we mostly living off our own grown food.
Would likely have to wait until the kids are a bit older and can help out more, too.
And for interest rates to go down...I refi'd in early 2022, I ain't given that up.
But it would be nice to be able to sell off a portion of land of we find ourselves hard off for cash. Or to know that my kids will have a place to build a home if the market falls flat on its face.
Like I said, the person I am talking to is not what people think of when they think of 'prepper.' Maybe it's not fair that the word means something different than it should to most people, but that's just how language works. 'Woke' no longer means being aware of inherent racial injustices. 'Liberal' no longer has anything to do with classical liberalism.
Like I said, the person I am talking to is not what people think of when they think of ‘prepper.’ Maybe it’s not fair that the word means something different than it should to most people, but that’s just how language works. ‘Woke’ no longer means being aware of inherent racial injustices. ‘Liberal’ no longer has anything to do with classical liberalism.
You're kind of proving my point. You're trying really hard to defend a word that no longer means to people what you want it to mean. The language has moved on.
Or ever bother learning something to benefit society now and in the case of a rebuild. Great, you have food, shelter and guns. Do you know how to dress wounds? Do you know how to build a generator? Fuck electricity actually- do you know how to build a steam engine? Wait before we can get here, do you know how to make steel? Cast iron? There should be plenty of it after an apocalypse. Wind copper?
What about welding? Not the kind you need modern tools for, you won't have those. Do you know basic chemistry to get what you need to restart society? No? Well good luck.
Turns out survival in an apocalypse isn't all that difficult if you payed attention to anything in school. It pisses me off people get bent out of shape about "useful practice skills like doing taxes aren't being taught."
I can remember a ton of important ass survival shit from school. Crop rotation! Agricultural practices from thousands of years ago! Steam power, basic electricity, Simple chemistry. Oh, and Math! How many Preppers can't do basic fucking math that would save them?
There was a really good 1970s post-apocalyptic show in the UK called Survivors that dealt with those issues. One episode involved the fact that the only person who knew how to take care of their livestock committed rape and what to do about it. Others involved the just basic drudgery of returning to a medieval life. Really good show (apart from the last episode, which subverts the whole fucking show).
No, nothing like that. More of a "we're going to take all the lessons learned through the course of the show and throw them out and act like it's all going to be okay."
I feel like a lot of stuff from ancient times wouldn't be all that useful. A lot of stuff back then was optimized for a society that didn't know anything about electricity.
We know how electricity exists, we know that with some magnets and copper wire we can turn mechanical energy into electricity. It seems like making a wind turbine is something they could've made in ancient times, but they didn't do that simply because they didn't really know anything about electricity. Some more copper wire and some more magnets and you could drive a pump. Some chemistry and you have a battery, maybe not Li-ion but something that'll work well enough. Resistors and you can have an electric stove and a heater.
It always strikes me as odd that preparers aren't all-in on green technology. If you had some wind turbines and/or solar panels and electric vehicles almost nothing other than communications would really change much. Dependency on complex oil refineries is the biggest weakness of our society. If you live in a rural area that has some farming and has green energy and electric vehicles you're dependent on very little that's not produced in your community.
I meant more how agricultural practices haven't changed much. New tools have been added, but it is still clear land, plant seed, add water, wait. Don't plant the same thing two seasons in a row.
It's a lot more than that. Soil chemistry will teach you where to look for viable grow sites and what kinds of inputs to add as you go to keep the yields abundant. Ag/chemistry will also teach you about nitrogen fixing plants like legumes and how to crop cycle effectively (if you are monocropping which has its own downsides). Ag will teach you about how climate affects what you can plant and for what times of the year they will be worth growing. Genetics will teach you how to acclimatize non native plants over multiple generations of selective breeding. This is barely touching the surface of the knowledge that can empower you in an off grid setting regarding food production from plants and trees.
I don't consider myself a prepper, but I do prepare for unlikely scenarios with highly negative outcomes. In terms of expected value vs. investment, I think having a "go" or "get home" bag is cheap and useful. I have two weeks of food and water supplies to shelter in place. I have face masks and hazmat suits (they came vacuum sealed so they just sit in the bottom of the shelter in place Tupperware bin). A solar generator and battery. A few medkits and some basic medicines including prescription antibiotics. And then my camping/hiking stuff: so more mres, water purification, water filter, fire kit etc.
All in all, it didn't cost much, it doesn't take up much room, and it's good to have. I'm not necessarily worried about a revolution so much as, in order if likelihood: a bad storm, electrical grid issues, natural disaster, or mild civil unrest. All of which I've been through before, so I guess they're not exactly black swan events. I wouldn't really call those "SHTF" events, since, again, I've experienced each one and yet things are now fine.
What I consider "preppers" are thinking about (and seemingly hoping for) civilizational collapse.
Yeah, I feel much the same. Shit happens sometimes and it's good to be prepared. That goes for situations where civilization is collapsing and also in day to day life too. "Preppers" are so hyper fixated on one particular hyper-individual fantasy outcome. The merits of, say, integrating into a mutual aid network are completely missed.
It's always so much more useful to have AND KNOW WHERE every one-off necessity you might need is. A flashlight and spare batteries. First aid supplies. Spare medication. Superglue. A good utility knife. Emergency bedding. Enough shelf stable food for a few days. Some card games to pass the time. A few creature comforts that are easy to keep on hand. An appropriate weapon you practice with regularly. Some space an unhoused friend could crash for a week.
You get whatever you can together and organized and then you SHARE IT, because these things will all solve day to day problems for people in your life who maybe don't have them on hand. And then you pay attention to other needs that come up and make small additions so you're prepared for the needs of people you care about. And then boom there you go you've done actual fucking preparation! And get to sleep a little easier knowing you're ready for a lot more that life could throw at you.
Margaret Killjoy has a great podcast on effective preparation that comes from a very practical community readiness perspective. Definitely worth a listen. Live Like The World Is Dying
Hey don't underestimate it! If that's what ya got, lean into it if you need to. If you can be quick on your feet and convince someone you're not worth the trouble that can already keep you out of danger. You can always pick up a more physical weapon later, or that just might not be your thing, you'll figure what works for you.
I suppose it depends on where you live and the sorts of things that are likely to happen. For me personally where I live I can't think of anything that would really require that level of preparation.
Make sure the antibiotics don't expire. Most of them just become useless when they expire, but Tetracycline becomes poisonous when it expires. Also, not all antibiotics are good for all infections, so make sure the ones you have are useful for the kinds of infections you anticipate.
Good to know about tetracycline, but drugs don't magically become useless after an arbitrary expiry date.
Most prescription medicines are still quite effective after the expiration date. Various studies have shown they're still effective even decades after the expiration date.
As someone who works in medicine, I would just caution you to take that with a grain of salt, especially since they repeatedly mention the storage of said medications. Not all pill bottles are airtight, and if you keep them somewhere that isn't always less than 75 degrees Fahrenheit or so, I wouldn't trust them more than a year past the expiration date. Note also, when they say "cool, dark place" that is not accounting for freezing temperatures which can also mess with the medications.
All this to say: if you have emergency medications, cycle them out with new ones as often as possible, and store them in airtight containers in a climate controlled area of your house.
This strikes me as a classic early-med-student response. Your appear to be missing the point of the study and the broader research behind drug expiration. The journal touches on storage conditions twice, but largely in the context of resource-limited areas. The researchers, with advanced degrees and extensive knowledge in medication degradation by the way, have supported their claims with evidence from multiple studies. For example, a review by Lyon et al. (2006) and the Shelf-Life Extension Program (SLEP) studies echo similar conclusions. There are also additional peer-reviewed articles that come to the same conclusions.
Blister packs, like those my medication is in, provide an airtight seal, so your blanket advice on storage is off the mark. Even if they weren't in blister packs, the article and sources note that degradation is generally minimal, even if stored in a non air-tight-sealed container. Additionally, guessing a random one-year rule ignores peer-reviewed science. For someone in medical school, it would be better for you to focus on understanding the research and deferring to it when appropriate rather than stretching to offer input on irrelevant conditions. I appreciated your point on tetracycline and noted it, but beyond that, your comment seems more about proving you know something than contributing to this specific conversation.
The article you listed reads more like preliminary research more than anything else, and aside from medical school, I have done research into drug expiration on my own given that I have multiple complex health problems and I need to know how long I can count on my medication being effective if I needed to stockpile it. My background education in organic and general chemistry tell me that the two biggest concerns are humidity and temperature. You can also get information from the drug manufacturers about storage recommendations and cautions about efficacy following improper storage. If humidity or extreme temperatures (like where I live in Minnesota) come into play, the guidelines get a lot more fuzzy.
Also noted in there, a concern with antibiotics in particular is, that while they will retain some efficacy, the diminished effects over time can lead to more problems with resistance, and that can become important in a single individual depending on their colonization status and how often they end up needing to use the antibiotics.
Don't get me wrong, keeping a stockpile of medications is important (I'm trying to build up a buffer that I cycle out for some of my more critical medications) but it has to be done with cognizance and awareness of the pitfalls of such a practice. Personally, I would not trust my life to medication that has been expired for more than about 3 years if it is at all avoidable which is why I cycle my stockpile each time I get a refill. (i.e. putting the new meds in the storage container and taking the ones that were in there so that the storage is never more than a couple months old) I'm on a couple medications that stopping them suddenly for even a few days has the potential to put me in the hospital if not end up being lethal depending on the severity of the withdrawal.
Also, I have a very strong suspicion that the medication you have on hand is Azithromycin (because very few medications come in blister packs), so here's a list of infections that a Z-pak is good for:
If it's not on this list (like pretty much any gram negative, anaerobic, or gram positive with resistant features like MRSA, among others) I wouldn't count on the Z-pak actually being useful.
Yeah I fill up some whisky bottles with tap water and keep them in the cupboard. I guess in an insane scenario I might need to use it as drinking water, though I'd probably want to figure out how to boil that water first since it's been sitting there for awhile.
I have actually used that water... but just to wash my hands when they turn off the water in the building when they're doing some maintenance.
Sometimes some disaster preparedness is just useful for relatively banal circumstances.
I know a guy who owns a retired nuclear missile silo that he made into a doomsday bunker/business. The top several floors or so with the old control rooms and stuff has been converted into his bunker, but most of the main silo is flooded with water, so it's a scuba diving attraction.
Anyway: when Covid came his bunker and years of food and fuel, so he and the wife went out there and used it for their lockdown. I'm happy for him that he got to use it.
They took out the old control rooms and completely remodeled the inside into a pretty comfy house. It's just underground and has 3-ton blast doors.
It's basically aquifer water. When the silo was active they had to run pumps to keep it from flooding. It's actually one of the ways silos could be identified by satellites. They'd have oversized drainage ponds in the middle of nowhere where they'd be pumping the water.
What's funny is that antimaskers still blat on about how they won't wear a face diaper for anything or anyone, two years after such requirements ended. These people just need negative attention like tantruming toddlers.
And then some of the same people will wear actual diapers in public while holding signs proclaiming that "real men wear diapers". Can't make that shit up.
I do have to admit, I'm prepared for fires and earthquakes. Doomsday seems crazy, though. I have a bug out bag, etc... I'm not going to live under the preconceived notion that I'm going to survive a nuclear attack or race war that'll never happen. Pepper's get fucking insane. The number of people who start digging down without any understanding of structural integrity is insane aswell. Especially in places near fault lines. Building firebreaks, storing food and water, forming a microgrid if you live in an area where they might turn off the electricity, etc... those are all realistic and important. Also, fuck anti-maskers.
I lived in a small town on the New Madrid fault line in the middle of tornado alley most of my life and yep, we stocked up because we knew if a sizable enough earthquake hit the area, we were small enough to not get any attention for a long time while the nearby cities were recovering. There's definitely point of wisdom for sticking back supplies for a few months, but stacking a cellar full of tactical mil spec fishing poles and the like is mental masturbation for delusional assholes with less sense than money.
Technically just having a preparation in place for fires or earthquakes does make you a prepper. There may be varying degrees of it, but prepping for natural disasters is actually a much larger section of preppers than "zombies" or whatever bullshit. Hurricanes too in those areas is another common one, and you'd be surprised how many people carry and IFAK just in case of a car crash or shooter.
But any way you slice it, building firebreaks, storing food and water, and forming a microgrid, those are some good preparations my prepper friend.
The toilet paper thing is fascinating to me, because everybody went to the store, saw the empty shelves, and assumed that their neighbors were freaking out and hoarding toilet paper. People actually needed more TP during lockdown, because they were doing all their pooping at home instead of at work.
Businesses have a completely different supply chain for toilet paper, and you had a deficit in one and a surplus in the other. You can't just move product from one supply chain to the other, either.
I feel like that dude on the left used all of his and at some point had to make a second trip. If he was American instead of British, I would say maybe even a third. He has that look.
The dude on the right is definitely doing it because his wife forced him to.
I don’t think preppers are a monolith. There are people from different backgrounds, different politics, different concerns, and different methods (and degrees) of preparedness. People who make it about hoarding goods and resources are probably just doing it wrong.
I was always under the impression we'd go nomadic if things got bad, traveling to where it is habitatable year round and food is more available. I'm keeping myself mentally and physically healthy enough to walk long distances while not being picky about what I eat or where I sleep. I find the whole concept of hunkering down indefinitely is itself untenable.
I would add to this that covid did cause a major resurgence in a different flavor of prepper: "back to the earth" people who strive to, among other things, produce more of their own food (be it growing produce, raising livestock, or even doing more cooking and baking using raw ingredients rather than relying on premade food). Interest in gardening, homesteading, baking, and learning to live off the land skyrocketed during peak covid. Sure a lot of that interest has subsided, but much like how the great depression permanently changed the attitudes of people who lived through it in regards to reusing things instead of tossing and replacing, the experience of scarcity and uncertainty regarding basic goods (for most first-world folks, for the first time in their lives) made a permanent mark on at least some of the population. And this is a much more practical type of prepping, because instead of coming from a fantasy of what disaster might befall the world, it was a direct response to a disaster that actually happened.
I felt bad for enjoying it. Worked from home, hardly expected to go out, much less traffic. Most service related jobs I prefer to do myself (like haircuts like you mentioned) or am perfectly fine with minimal contact. In general I feel bad for service workers so even if they aren't friendly with me (not that I ever really experienced that much) I wouldn't mind, and also don't mind self checkout and automation.
I may sound like I'm accusing others, and maybe that's part of it, but the way service workers are expected to act certain ways with us feels like trying to perpetuate class based servitude. As long as they're relatively professional and not outright insulting, I think it's fine.
I always try my hardest to look a service worker in the eye at least once during our transaction. Just an unconscious way to let them know I see them as an equal, not as a servant. I realize that's not making a major change in the world, but I figure they don't get that much.
That definitely helps from anecdotal information I was told, and I do the same. One of my younger sisters worked at a sorta prominent restaurant in Atlanta, and she complained that some of the high end clientele refused to look her in the eye. Sometimes she found it so insulting she'd act like she didn't realize they were talking to her until they made eye contact.
Why the hate on prerppers in this comment section? It sounds kinds fun tbh, and the skills of living in the woods are useful even outside of apocalypse.
Sounds fun. But there's a huge Venn diagram overlap between them and the sovcits, covid-hoax, various types of "truthers" and doomsday cult types. So the target market, if you're marketing to preppers, is not just the clever Doctor Stone cosplayers.
I’m not hating on all preppers, one of my partners is one. She has a massive food garden, quite a few guns (though that’s largely because her ex is armed and violent), and cultivates skills useful in dangerous situations, such as woodwork and textile work. That’s not the judgement.
The judgement is for the ones who openly fantasize about city folk dying in a disaster and dream of using their hoarded food to buy human beings.
I feel like if we've got to the point where we go back to bartering, I've kind of lost interest in surviving because that means pretty much all of the civilization is gone.
The only thing the paranoid preppers did was raise the price of ammunition.
Going back to COVID. one had to wear a MOPP IV suit and decontaminate everything you touch 24/7, including the interior of your car and the ultimate petri dish, your mobile phone. For the folks who grew a beard and wore a mask, FU, you compromised the mask.
In hindsight it doesn't feel like it was a proper SHTF moment. Some of the early reactions did make it feel like one but in the end not that much happened where I live. Try to stay away from people for a while and use a mask seemed like the extent of it. Spent a lot more than outdoors than I usually do.
Or maybe you don't like being lumped in with a bunch of conservative reactionaries who dream of running their own post-apocalyptic fiefdom. It's not our fault that those are who people think of when they think of preppers. I guess you should pick a new name for yourself.
See also Emergency Skin by NK Jemison.
preppers don't want to be dependent on society because they don't like society, but they're not bright enough to realize they will always be dependent on society
As a guy who built shit for preppers (because some of them are stupid as fuck and have gobs of money from some shady bs) this is spot on.
Preppers are fucking losers. The cunts who want WW3 deserve no love.
But have you considered that going to therapy and dealing with their intense insecurity is scary?
Bros will have nuclear armegeddon before seeing a social worker and it shows.
Therapy would pierce the veil of lies and ignorance that they've made their Identity.
People will burn down their house before admitting they were wrong their whole lives.
Too bad therapy seems to cost an arm and leg in this country.
For what these doomsday prepers spend to compensate for their small manhood, they could easily pay for multiple sessions of therapy, even in the US.
Like the other person said, the people that do and say all this crazy shit spend thousands on rifles, rods, and trucks when a Crosstrek would probably be perfect. And that’s fine I guess it’s just they have the money(or the willingness to spend it anyway) and could probably squeeze a bi-weekly session in there.
Love how their idea of surviving the collapse of society is driving a huge ass truck, 'cause gasoline apparently falls from the sky
To their defense, if there's a sudden collapse, there will likely a surplus of oil laying around that will be available for a while.
I felt silly for buying a 63 gallon, foldable/portable water tank for my small farm because the vast majority of the ones I looked at were marketed towards preppers.
I just want my animals to have water in case the power goes out for a few days.
But the way things like that are marketed makes it sound like your the smartest, bestest, most prepared person to ever walk this earth. I don't need you to stroke my ego, just sell a foldable water tank with no leaks please.
What did you make for them? I may capitalize on this lucrative market lol
Take every dime you can from those dingdongs.
Saw an episode of doomsday preppers years ago. These dudes had a whole property out in Oregon or Washington state designed to endure a potential onslaught of zombies.
They had to quickly evacute their property and leave all their fancy stuff, because of a very real forest fire that came to visit, for which they were entirely unprepared.
"Zombies". If you let them talk, it'll be pretty obvious that they're looking for a legal loophole to kill somebody. "Zombies" just means city people, which just means black people. They'll kill a white guy if that's what their lifelong dream comes to, but they'd feel bad about it later.
I'd rather not talk to them, unless it's for camping supply recommendations.
Even then I wouldn't do it because they'll recommend the most over the top version of every product. When really all you want is a cheap camping stove which you're probably going to use for 2 weeks out of the year.
Imagine living such a privileged life that the closest you've ever come to feeling oppressed was when you had to wear a mask to pick up dino nuggets at Walmart. Preppers have always been clowns, but COVID definitely ruined what little facade there ever actually was about the "movement" being anything other than a masturbatory LARP.
Nothing wrong in a good LARP, or masturbation for that matter. The problem with preppers is everything else about them.
And apparently they forgot to stock toilet paper or invest in a bidet...
I'm in the "be prepared" group where we usually have a couple weeks of food and water around. We also have two forms of heat for when the power goes out.
Will we survive WW3 on this? No, but it has been very helpful after big winter storms that took out the city power.
Having some supplies to use in the short term is good for everyone. Being ready to go out to help neighbors and get the community back on its feet is how we get through to the next good times.
I wouldn't call that being a prepper. That's just sensible preparation for something like a natural disaster. Preppers think they'll survive whatever their conception of "the big one" is.
I'm neither American nor a native English speaker so take it with a grain of salt.
That's where I'd put the line between a regular prepper and a doomsday prepper.
Not to forget the very elusive Sergent Prepper.
How about the Red Hot Chili Prepper?
Need to apply some Prepper-H after eating Chili Preppers, that's for sure
Yeah I think Dr. Prepper can write a prescription for that
I guess in my mind, 'prepper' is just short for 'doomsday prepper' and it's not the same thing as doing, like I said above, sensible preparation for natural disasters.
Anyone that has been through even a bad blizzard knows it's important to have some basic supplies. Depending on where in the US you live, it would actually be considered unusual and irresponsible to not have some basic preparation for weather and related stuff. Not having a cold-weather car kit and home preparations for losing power in a blizzard in the upper Midwest, for instance, would be considered stupid.
No one thinks tornado shelters are that weird if you live in tornado alley. I'm sure hurricane prone areas probably have their own set of ready prep stuff that would seem weird in other parts of the country.
You're not talking about doomsday preppers.
Yeah that's what I'm saying. The stuff I mentioned is just reasonable preparation for, like... life. Sometimes stuff gets disrupted for unexpected reasons. Like toilet paper during a pandemic lol.
Preppers think the pencil nose accountants will all die screaming in regret while all the high school jv cheerleaders come begging them for help, in full uniform, and everyone finally recognizes how they were right all along.
I have tons of food, a generator and other backup power and a gun, and if shit really hits the fan I know I'm not living 5 minutes longer than everyone less prepared, the resources actually make me a target.
But then again, I have Pge, so it's not doomsday prepping, it's just 'Wednesday, or whenever they next screw up resulting in 100s of deaths, weeks without power, and massive rate hikes resulting in huge bonuses to their upper management'.
Honestly, if the great civilization-ending disaster they think they're prepping for happens, I hope I die in the first wave. I don't have any Mad Max fantasies.
Mad Max fantasies will never equate to Mad Max realities, anyways.
Definitely not. And anyone who thinks that it is the reality isn't going to be Immortan Joe, they're going to be one of the people at the bottom of the cliffs begging for water.
Or a human-shaped piece of sex furniture rented out to the water marauders in exchange for food and supplies. I'll take not making it through the initial disaster, please and thank you!
You should always have enough supplies for a short term emergency. That’s not doomsday prepping, it’s just common sense.
I’m not a prepper IMO, but I have rooftop solar with battery backup, a few smaller portable batteries and UPSes on my critical stuff, and some oil filled radiators since my heat pump isn’t connected to the solar setup.
At any given time we generally have a month or more worth of food in the house in frozen and dry/canned goods. Also, several gallons of bottled water.
I also keep some stuff under the back bed of my car’s hatch, first aid kit and emergency blanket, and battery jumper kit as well as a battery powered tire inflator.
I live in a semi-rural area, and in an emergency, getting out and/or getting food and necessities may not be possible. And if there’s a wildfire I may need to evacuate fast, so important to have what’s needed. This sort of thing is like… If you have the means, why wouldn’t you?
If you just went hunting, fishing, and living in the woods COVID wouldn't be a problem for you though.
Tell that to all the gay frogs I heard coughing in the woods last night
starts penning unauthorized sequel to Where The Wild Things Are titled Where The Gay Frogs Cough
I expect a royalty check in the mail upon publication
Sure thing!
Do not ask for whom the gay frog coughs;
it coughs for thee
What a lot of right wing preppers and a lot of 'militia' guys (the tacticool heavy infantry kind) seem to completely lack is the willingness to be inconvenienced at all.
They buy or craft whatever stuff seems cool to them (some of which sure can actually be quite useful), train some skills they find fun to do (usually shooting/hunting) but most seem to ignore anything they don't like, find difficult or uninteresting to do (such as keeping reasonably fit). It also usually includes being willing to take orders or cooperate.
The lack of some skills/equipment/preparation could be overcome but not with the mentality that lead to it on the first place.
The being cooperative thing is the key.
Id be willing to bet my left testicle those that survive an apocalypse are those who work together to grow food, build shelter, etc. and not the goobers who lock themselves in a crate with some beans.
Classic scene at the end of the movie "Leave the World Behind.
::: spoiler Spoiler The survivors finally find respite, a fully stocked, super-luxury survival shelter, left wide open, because the people that built it died in the initial collapse. :::
There's no point having some survival shelter unless you're already in it when you need to be.
I've often wondered about the millionaires who invest in these things. Then spend most of their time on a yacht in the Caribbean, thousands of miles away from the bunker. What exactly are they expecting to happen, do they think they're going to get a week's notice?
The one doomsday prepper I knew had to weigh at least 400 pounds. I often wondered if he knew how to make insulin for when the apocalypse happens.
He was actually a nice enough guy, but not the brightest bulb in the box.
That's because they're planning against the fall of civilization. Realistically that wouldn't happen. The bank stayed open during covid, the supermarket stayed open during covid. All that really happened was that life became very difficult for everyone and some people died.
If your enemy is a virus then your front door is more than enough protection. You don't need a big underground bunker you just need some pasta. But that's boring so they don't care.
A lot of these militia guys also don't learn the survival tasks they consider feminine. How many know any sort of gathering skills, cooking anything not meat based, laundry, mending clothes? Those are probably more day to day useful during the apocalypse than rifle shooting or how to wear camo paint.
Yeah, I think the idea there is if you point a gun at someone and tell them to cook and wash the clothes, it's likely to get done. It's that male power fantasy again. They desire civilizational collapse because then they think their love affair with guns will give them the authority and respect that can't find in the real world.
Meanwhile, it's just likely to make them a target. And since most of the people I've come across like this are typically overweight morons, they're just more likely to be killed in the extremely unlikely scenario they're preparing/hoping for. But they see themselves as the main character.
The best tactic to deal with them would be to simply hang around on the periphery until they do something dumb and die of some preventable infection, then move in.
my dads a mild prepper and had his 'told you so' moment when he brought up 2 boxes of n95 masks. he donated a box to hospital and the other box got the family through the worst months
Cute, but it's just a single hit on a lifetime of misses for most. He got lucky once and could easily use it to reaffirm a bunch of nonsense instead of crilically asking himself what all the other wasted shit is for.
But hey, I have hobbies too, and I'm glad he's smart enough to listen to science. So he's about a million miles ahead of most
The irony in the "prepping" movement these days is that it was never intended to be this thing about having an inexhaustible supply of resources just for you and your family (if you're still on speaking terms with them) to live off of when the nukes fall.
It's not about sitting in your attic and picking off starving people who are looking for a meal while you sit on a cache of food and ammunition.
It's supposed to be about being a useful person in your community who can help each other weather the worst in life. You will get much further in a disaster if you have skills than if you have stuff. You might have an entire Home Depot to yourself, but it's far too late to learn carpentry when the rain starts to fall.
Unfortunately for many it is.
I don't really generally circulate with far right wing folk. However this is one place that overlaps with my interests. One of the most unlikely intersections between the far left and the far right is home solar power. When you start to stray way from purely commercial groups trying to sell you stuff, you get to the DIY solar community.
Here you'll find multi-gun toting, hardcore Randian libertarians, that "want the damn government control out of their lives" right next too tree hugging, LGBTQ/feminist equality supporting, carbon-neutralling liberals. Both groups squint hard not to see who they're talking to or asking for advice on Charge Controllers, panel interconnects, AC inverter config settings, or off-grid battery solutions. Every now and then one person from one side or the other won't be able to help themselves and they'll make reference to their particular extreme political views. Everyone just holds their breath hoping a fight doesn't break out and most of the time its just ignored by both sides.
In here you'll find those far right preppers and they are convinced that they'll have to be 100% self supporting when the government falls "real soon now".
Unfortunately for the gunmen in this example, their guns will wear and tear. A crucial part or two will fail and not be replaceable. Then their entire strategy of "kill everyone else" will fall apart. And that's aside from the fact that human societies have always flourished because we have worked with rather than against each other.
Their guns will be worthless long before they wear out. They are going to run out of ammo eventually. None of these folks are capable of manufacturing modern nitrocellulose gun powder or primer caps necessary to reload their fancy rifles and handguns. I don't even see them taking a more pragmatic path of learning how to make old school black powder for muzzle loaders which they could conceivable made in their bunkers. Admittedly, I'm on the tree-hugger/equality side and don't even own a gun. These are just my observations from outside their group.
Were these preppers more honest with themselves, there would be another area they would overlap with many on the far left: Cosplay.
100% agree. Our survival as a species has always depended on us working together.
I have acquaintances that would definitely be considered classic preppers. One told me that he has 10k plus (each!) of rounds for multiple calibers of weapons, and a years worth of food for each of his family members in a “bunker” on his property. It’d take a LONG time to burn through that many rounds.
Ammo starts to degrade after about 10-20 years assuming your storing it well. Which is less likely to be true in the "end times". 2 decades is a long time but depending on your age it's not a life time, and firing damaged ammo can be dangerous.
Very true. I get the feeling that he cycles through a lot of rounds, but not a close enough friend to have shot on his land more than once.
So, he's one of the people who drove ammunition prices up.
I think he’s had a stockpile since forever, but probably yeah.
Fire (and more importantly, smoke) is a powerful tool. Displace enough air and people start either getting away or dropping.
Most people like this that I've ever met have several thousand rounds of ammunition. They'll run out, but it will take a while.
This gave me a thought, would having equipment for ammonia and other chemicals (for fertiliser as well as explosives) be useful for preppers?
Useful in what what? Farming? Sure.
True, but remember they don’t think that way, because it messes up their fantasy.
Have you heard the nonsense the owner of Reddit spouts constantly? About how he was so good at hoarding that he’ll have a private army and slaves and people will come crawling on their knees to serve him for a little food and he’ll be a king? These losers all think like that, and facts like tools break and bullets run out and you have to cast more and get the supplies to do so just ruins their dreams of being an unstoppable tyrant.
Also just praetorian shit happens. Having resources is insufficient, your guards have to like you or fear the consequences of banding together to kill you
Oh, they have a plan for that too. Making them all wear shock collars and holding their families hostage.
That's what they say.
What they think is all the underaged girls will come running to willing beg to do anything for protection.
That's the true prepper fantasy, it's just a middle age crisis made manifest.
That can be delayed for a long time by stockpiling spare parts.
So… Yeah, doomsday preppers definitely showed their true colors.
But I think we also saw that there’s a lot of merit to being a reasonable prepper.
I’m lucky to have a reasonable prepper in my friend group. Because of their insistence, I had masks, a full tank of gas, and a comfortably-stocked pantry way ahead of time so I wasn’t yet another person adding stress to a lean/just-in-time/low-margin distribution system that can’t handle even minor hiccups.
Much like the goal of lockdowns was not to completely stop the spread but just slow it so our healthcare system could handle it, the goal of prepping should be to avoid causing shortages when our productive capacity is lowered.
Drag thinks prepping is about learning useful skills and building community. A prepper should know how to sew, how to garden, how to repair and operate a radio, how to make friends, how to organise labour, and first aid.
Drag wants to see a zombie show about a grandma who looks after her community, resolves interpersonal disputes, fixes clothes, and looks after the little ones. Drag thinks grandmas are the demographic best prepared for an apocalypse.
Kickass apocalypse grannies, fuck yeah
This was also the plot of Mad Max: Fury Road, by the way
There are "Preppers" and there are people who actually prepare for when things go wrong. Preppers seem to me like someone who watched a few too many survivor man and YouTube clips and decided to make a personality out of it.
Right. "Prepper" vs. "being prepared." The former is almost like a subculture.
Peppers take a good idea, having extra supplies and tools for an emergency, and take it to 11.
I’m not a prepper, but I did read my local government’s disaster preparedness list and have everything on it that applies to my family. I keep 3 days or so of extra, shelf stable food in the house; bought a home water cooler and keep an extra jug of water that I rotate when we use the one in the machine so that we have a few days of clean water at all times, which is way more practical and safe than a camping water jug that will sit and stagnate in the basement; I have a battery “generator” that I keep topped up with a solar panel because we have a sewage ejector pump and a sump pump to stop the basement from flooding in bad weather; and I have good first aid kits for the house and cars.
The only thing not on my local government list are the emergency car kits, which is really just a basic vehicle toolkit, jumpstart kit, flares, sweater and space blanket, all in a cheap bag that lives on top of the spare tire.
I don’t live in the most disaster prone area, but we do get tornados and nasty thunderstorms that knock out power for a day or 3. We don’t exactly have the lights on when that happens, but we do have food, water, a non flooded basement, and even some heat in the winter, and both cars have something to keep you warm while you either fix the car or wait for the tow truck.
I kind of understand peppers, because planning all of this out after we lost power a few years ago for 4 days in fall was interesting, and there was just so much shit the internet was saying I needed: weeks or months of dried beans and rice, a generator for the whole house, enough guns and ammo to ward off a small army, etc. my local government list was hard to find compared to all of the forums and YouTube videos, but I’m glad I found it, it’s sensible and if spread out over months, very affordable. I highly, highly recommend you poke around your local government website for their natural disaster page, they’ll have resources of who to contact if you need help, and what you should have on hand. If it’s not on your city’s page, try your county or state government. One of them should have a page about disasters and how to prepare for them.
The issue is that you can't prepare for everything. Having extra food and water, sure. Maybe buying a generator so you can use electrical equipment, that's generally useful. But, aside from that, your preparations for a flood will be very different from your preparations for a military invasion, which would be different from preparing for a pandemic.
Also, the more extreme your preparations are, the more it matters when you pull the trigger and activate your emergency plans. If your preparation is simply having a cupboard with extra toilet paper and some extra canned food, it's no big deal to pull that stuff out if the store runs out. But, if you have some kind of bunker in the mountains, it's a bigger decision when to "bug out" of the city and go live in the mountains. You're basically quitting your job, so if the emergency is something like the COVID pandemic, when do you decide things are so bad that you can take that extreme step?
I was trying to get myself prepared for realistic disaster scenarios. For us, that is earthquakes and cold snaps. And in my mind, realistic means how do I both ready myself and work with my community?
So I got a book on prepping. The titled seemed innocuous enough. Unfortunately, it was one of the crazy bug out into the woods and go eat squirrel stew sort of prepper books. Totally worthless for anything practical. The best thing I can say for it was that it was an e-book, so it didn't cost much.
Preppers: I'm ready for anything; economic collapse, zombies, apocalypse, sinkholes, foreign invasion, aliens...anything!
[covid-19 hits]
Preppers: fuck this i'm not wearing a mask! it's all a hoax!
Also preppers: I need to go to the store and buy 27 cases of toilet paper!
I'm proud that in that time of crisis I was strong and served my country and fellow citizens, simply by staying home and not bothering anyone.
Real peppers never stop eating beans. You buy new and eat the old ones. Oh and real peppers buy a truck they can repair themselves, not a 2024 Ram Clownsmobile.
Remind me not to stay in one of their enclosed bunkers with them for an extended period of time.
The more you eat beans and fiber, the better your digestive system becomes at digesting them.
Beans beans the magical fruit The more you eat the more you toot
The more you toot the better you feel, so eat your beans at every meal!
OK now I'm scared.
I never heard that before, and just now YouTube showed me this: https://youtube.com/shorts/4Lxtssc1RVo
The more you toot, the better you feel, so let’s eat beans at every meal!
Did you know that if you keep eating the same vegetable/food it can become somewhat toxic to your system? Also, different people have different tolerances.
No I didn't! Like allergies or like "poisonous buildup of nutrients deficit/oversaturation?
I think he meant an over time aquired food allergy. Esp. Older folks seem to get them -like me- one can test with a Serum specific IgE in vitro Test. There are over the counter test one can buy relatively cheap.
I did one recently, turned out I was allergic to garlic of all things (among others). Advice is to stay off it for 4-6 months then slowly reintroduce. Life is wild sometimes.
Not just listening to scientists. Listening to nerds.
Smells a bit like American exceptionalism.
"America is so important, we singlehandedly forced scientists to accelerate with developing the vaccine because we are so important and big."
Um, huh?... vaccines are how you stop viruses... It's as if you said "scientists rushing to stop COVID because Americans refuse to try to stop COVID", which is just silly.
Vaccines aren't the only way to stop viruses. There's also masking and social distancing and hand washing.
I think that's the point. We could have taken the pressure off scientists and doctors and nurses and service employees and everyone else by doing simple things that a vocal, ignorant portion of society decided was too inconvenient to tolerate.
I'm a person that most people would consider a prepper. What am I prepping for? Unemployment. Being able to survive with as few possible inputs as possible.
I'm a hard core skeptical nerd that doesn't believe a single conspiracy theory. I'm like an anti doomsday prepper. Making life easier even if things don't go bad.
I think when most people think of a prepper, they think of someone preparing for everything to collapse. Badly. So I wouldn't consider you a prepper.
I have chickens, ducks and geese, raised beds, just built a solar battery charger, can my own food, dehydrate food, cook everything from scratch, etc etc. I go through all the same steps. My friends refer to me as a prepper despite me saying I'm a homesteader. They keep saying they are going to show up at my place if everything collapses. I started shutting this down by saying they need to be pre-approved, pay a $150 non-refundable deposit and $50 a month so that I can make sure I have food and other essentials for when they show up. Because it's really annoying to hear someone say "I'm totally not doing anything about my fears so I'm going to impose on you when the time comes."
I'm just trying to reduce the amount it takes for me to survive. It happens that if you are ready to be unemployed for a few months that a lot of the same prepa come in handy for a collapse of the economy. The same things needed to hunt squirrels are helpful against zombies.
I've done the same thing. Was already living off grid when I was surprise unemployed last year. Made it about 3 months with no outside input, but eventually got sick from previous medical issues, so had to file for unemployment so I could have enough money to see a doctor.
A year later I'm now back in regular society with a regular job, trying to save up and start over.
I've learned that I can be prepared physically to go months on my own. But mentally is a different game altogether. Most of the prepper types would likely struggle without a support group. Being by yourself for long periods of time is FAR harder than most people think (myself included). The first few weeks are pretty easy, but it gets significantly harder every day.
One of the more popular arguments from preppers during covid was that these hyper-independent minded people were suddenly demanding the ability to go out to stores and meet up with people in large groups.
After years of "I don't need nobody" they went hard core "people need interaction!". It was a beautiful thing that not one of them will admit.
That sounds like farming to me.
There is fine line between farming with guns and prepping.
I'd say that 'fine line' is 'doomsday bunker + Immortan Joe fantasy post "the big one."' vs. just having a farm and guns.
So not all that fine a line.
I agree that the motivation portion is entirely different. But the actions are the same.
I don't know that the actions are the same though. That's sort of the point of the thing I posted. People like you are actually doing shit. What most people think of as 'preppers' are people who have a closet full of MREs, two giant jugs of water, and a massive guns and ammunition collection, people who tell you about how the world will end if Trump isn't elected and they're ready for it.
I think if those people were like you, even if they had stupid motivations, there wouldn't be so much derision. But they don't actually put the work in. They essentially think if they buy enough ammo and Jim Bakker rapture survival food buckets, they're ready for every eventuality.
Homesteading is really cottage-core plus self-sufficency. Little House on the Prairie.
Gardening on crack. Not commercial farming.
Honestly...I got 9 hens now, and they are amazing. Literally the best pets. My wife wants to become a homesteader and live that life. Get some acreage, build a nice home and a nice area for the birds. Maybe Get a goat or two. Step up the gardening game.
The wife would probably have to quit her job, but she's only working part time at a grocery store. Her employee discount (20%) is more valuable to us then her paycheck, and we don't need that if we mostly living off our own grown food.
Would likely have to wait until the kids are a bit older and can help out more, too.
And for interest rates to go down...I refi'd in early 2022, I ain't given that up.
But it would be nice to be able to sell off a portion of land of we find ourselves hard off for cash. Or to know that my kids will have a place to build a home if the market falls flat on its face.
How much acreage does it take to feed a person? How does it scale?
Like I said, the person I am talking to is not what people think of when they think of 'prepper.' Maybe it's not fair that the word means something different than it should to most people, but that's just how language works. 'Woke' no longer means being aware of inherent racial injustices. 'Liberal' no longer has anything to do with classical liberalism.
Did you read any of what I just wrote?
None of that is in the comment you replied to.
This is the comment you replied to:
You're kind of proving my point. You're trying really hard to defend a word that no longer means to people what you want it to mean. The language has moved on.
Or ever bother learning something to benefit society now and in the case of a rebuild. Great, you have food, shelter and guns. Do you know how to dress wounds? Do you know how to build a generator? Fuck electricity actually- do you know how to build a steam engine? Wait before we can get here, do you know how to make steel? Cast iron? There should be plenty of it after an apocalypse. Wind copper?
What about welding? Not the kind you need modern tools for, you won't have those. Do you know basic chemistry to get what you need to restart society? No? Well good luck.
Turns out survival in an apocalypse isn't all that difficult if you payed attention to anything in school. It pisses me off people get bent out of shape about "useful practice skills like doing taxes aren't being taught."
I can remember a ton of important ass survival shit from school. Crop rotation! Agricultural practices from thousands of years ago! Steam power, basic electricity, Simple chemistry. Oh, and Math! How many Preppers can't do basic fucking math that would save them?
There was a really good 1970s post-apocalyptic show in the UK called Survivors that dealt with those issues. One episode involved the fact that the only person who knew how to take care of their livestock committed rape and what to do about it. Others involved the just basic drudgery of returning to a medieval life. Really good show (apart from the last episode, which subverts the whole fucking show).
Having never heard of this show until now, I'm gonna assume the subversion lies in "it was all a dream" territory?
No, nothing like that. More of a "we're going to take all the lessons learned through the course of the show and throw them out and act like it's all going to be okay."
Ahh, the ol' Executive mandated happy ending.
With a touch of British classism.
I love the bit where they went and hid in the Eden project. Mostly because they couldn't think of anything else to do.
We could go and live in the woods but now let's go and live in a giant greenhouse filled with tropical plants that you definitely can't eat.
I feel like a lot of stuff from ancient times wouldn't be all that useful. A lot of stuff back then was optimized for a society that didn't know anything about electricity.
We know how electricity exists, we know that with some magnets and copper wire we can turn mechanical energy into electricity. It seems like making a wind turbine is something they could've made in ancient times, but they didn't do that simply because they didn't really know anything about electricity. Some more copper wire and some more magnets and you could drive a pump. Some chemistry and you have a battery, maybe not Li-ion but something that'll work well enough. Resistors and you can have an electric stove and a heater.
It always strikes me as odd that preparers aren't all-in on green technology. If you had some wind turbines and/or solar panels and electric vehicles almost nothing other than communications would really change much. Dependency on complex oil refineries is the biggest weakness of our society. If you live in a rural area that has some farming and has green energy and electric vehicles you're dependent on very little that's not produced in your community.
I meant more how agricultural practices haven't changed much. New tools have been added, but it is still clear land, plant seed, add water, wait. Don't plant the same thing two seasons in a row.
It's a lot more than that. Soil chemistry will teach you where to look for viable grow sites and what kinds of inputs to add as you go to keep the yields abundant. Ag/chemistry will also teach you about nitrogen fixing plants like legumes and how to crop cycle effectively (if you are monocropping which has its own downsides). Ag will teach you about how climate affects what you can plant and for what times of the year they will be worth growing. Genetics will teach you how to acclimatize non native plants over multiple generations of selective breeding. This is barely touching the surface of the knowledge that can empower you in an off grid setting regarding food production from plants and trees.
You would like Doctor Stone. It's about a high school science geek who has to restart civilisation from scratch.
I'll check it out
They weren't ready for a SHTF scenario where survival means personal hygiene.
Same people who won't get a vaccination are the same ones who take huge dumps and don't wash their hands. Venn diagram is a circle.
I don't consider myself a prepper, but I do prepare for unlikely scenarios with highly negative outcomes. In terms of expected value vs. investment, I think having a "go" or "get home" bag is cheap and useful. I have two weeks of food and water supplies to shelter in place. I have face masks and hazmat suits (they came vacuum sealed so they just sit in the bottom of the shelter in place Tupperware bin). A solar generator and battery. A few medkits and some basic medicines including prescription antibiotics. And then my camping/hiking stuff: so more mres, water purification, water filter, fire kit etc.
All in all, it didn't cost much, it doesn't take up much room, and it's good to have. I'm not necessarily worried about a revolution so much as, in order if likelihood: a bad storm, electrical grid issues, natural disaster, or mild civil unrest. All of which I've been through before, so I guess they're not exactly black swan events. I wouldn't really call those "SHTF" events, since, again, I've experienced each one and yet things are now fine.
What I consider "preppers" are thinking about (and seemingly hoping for) civilizational collapse.
Yeah, I feel much the same. Shit happens sometimes and it's good to be prepared. That goes for situations where civilization is collapsing and also in day to day life too. "Preppers" are so hyper fixated on one particular hyper-individual fantasy outcome. The merits of, say, integrating into a mutual aid network are completely missed.
It's always so much more useful to have AND KNOW WHERE every one-off necessity you might need is. A flashlight and spare batteries. First aid supplies. Spare medication. Superglue. A good utility knife. Emergency bedding. Enough shelf stable food for a few days. Some card games to pass the time. A few creature comforts that are easy to keep on hand. An appropriate weapon you practice with regularly. Some space an unhoused friend could crash for a week.
You get whatever you can together and organized and then you SHARE IT, because these things will all solve day to day problems for people in your life who maybe don't have them on hand. And then you pay attention to other needs that come up and make small additions so you're prepared for the needs of people you care about. And then boom there you go you've done actual fucking preparation! And get to sleep a little easier knowing you're ready for a lot more that life could throw at you.
Margaret Killjoy has a great podcast on effective preparation that comes from a very practical community readiness perspective. Definitely worth a listen. Live Like The World Is Dying
My weapon of choice is my razor-sharp wit!
I'm going to die, aren't I.
You were destined to die the day you were born. It's all just a matter of when and where.
But if you were born and raised in an urbane urban city, yep, the odds are probably pretty high you are going to be among the first to die.
But I do salute you wit Sir/Madam!
We're all gunna die, so no worries! Right? 😮
Hey don't underestimate it! If that's what ya got, lean into it if you need to. If you can be quick on your feet and convince someone you're not worth the trouble that can already keep you out of danger. You can always pick up a more physical weapon later, or that just might not be your thing, you'll figure what works for you.
Learn to play the recorder, people love music. (Hopefully enough to feed the musician, otherwise I'm gonna starve.)
You know someone's American when...
Well yes, but I don't even necessarily mean a gun :P
Either way, very American attitude.
I suppose it depends on where you live and the sorts of things that are likely to happen. For me personally where I live I can't think of anything that would really require that level of preparation.
Make sure the antibiotics don't expire. Most of them just become useless when they expire, but Tetracycline becomes poisonous when it expires. Also, not all antibiotics are good for all infections, so make sure the ones you have are useful for the kinds of infections you anticipate.
Good to know about tetracycline, but drugs don't magically become useless after an arbitrary expiry date.
Most prescription medicines are still quite effective after the expiration date. Various studies have shown they're still effective even decades after the expiration date.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7040264/
As someone who works in medicine, I would just caution you to take that with a grain of salt, especially since they repeatedly mention the storage of said medications. Not all pill bottles are airtight, and if you keep them somewhere that isn't always less than 75 degrees Fahrenheit or so, I wouldn't trust them more than a year past the expiration date. Note also, when they say "cool, dark place" that is not accounting for freezing temperatures which can also mess with the medications.
All this to say: if you have emergency medications, cycle them out with new ones as often as possible, and store them in airtight containers in a climate controlled area of your house.
This strikes me as a classic early-med-student response. Your appear to be missing the point of the study and the broader research behind drug expiration. The journal touches on storage conditions twice, but largely in the context of resource-limited areas. The researchers, with advanced degrees and extensive knowledge in medication degradation by the way, have supported their claims with evidence from multiple studies. For example, a review by Lyon et al. (2006) and the Shelf-Life Extension Program (SLEP) studies echo similar conclusions. There are also additional peer-reviewed articles that come to the same conclusions.
Blister packs, like those my medication is in, provide an airtight seal, so your blanket advice on storage is off the mark. Even if they weren't in blister packs, the article and sources note that degradation is generally minimal, even if stored in a non air-tight-sealed container. Additionally, guessing a random one-year rule ignores peer-reviewed science. For someone in medical school, it would be better for you to focus on understanding the research and deferring to it when appropriate rather than stretching to offer input on irrelevant conditions. I appreciated your point on tetracycline and noted it, but beyond that, your comment seems more about proving you know something than contributing to this specific conversation.
The article you listed reads more like preliminary research more than anything else, and aside from medical school, I have done research into drug expiration on my own given that I have multiple complex health problems and I need to know how long I can count on my medication being effective if I needed to stockpile it. My background education in organic and general chemistry tell me that the two biggest concerns are humidity and temperature. You can also get information from the drug manufacturers about storage recommendations and cautions about efficacy following improper storage. If humidity or extreme temperatures (like where I live in Minnesota) come into play, the guidelines get a lot more fuzzy.
Also noted in there, a concern with antibiotics in particular is, that while they will retain some efficacy, the diminished effects over time can lead to more problems with resistance, and that can become important in a single individual depending on their colonization status and how often they end up needing to use the antibiotics.
Don't get me wrong, keeping a stockpile of medications is important (I'm trying to build up a buffer that I cycle out for some of my more critical medications) but it has to be done with cognizance and awareness of the pitfalls of such a practice. Personally, I would not trust my life to medication that has been expired for more than about 3 years if it is at all avoidable which is why I cycle my stockpile each time I get a refill. (i.e. putting the new meds in the storage container and taking the ones that were in there so that the storage is never more than a couple months old) I'm on a couple medications that stopping them suddenly for even a few days has the potential to put me in the hospital if not end up being lethal depending on the severity of the withdrawal.
👍
Also, I have a very strong suspicion that the medication you have on hand is Azithromycin (because very few medications come in blister packs), so here's a list of infections that a Z-pak is good for:
If it's not on this list (like pretty much any gram negative, anaerobic, or gram positive with resistant features like MRSA, among others) I wouldn't count on the Z-pak actually being useful.
Yeah I fill up some whisky bottles with tap water and keep them in the cupboard. I guess in an insane scenario I might need to use it as drinking water, though I'd probably want to figure out how to boil that water first since it's been sitting there for awhile.
I have actually used that water... but just to wash my hands when they turn off the water in the building when they're doing some maintenance.
Sometimes some disaster preparedness is just useful for relatively banal circumstances.
I know a guy who owns a retired nuclear missile silo that he made into a doomsday bunker/business. The top several floors or so with the old control rooms and stuff has been converted into his bunker, but most of the main silo is flooded with water, so it's a scuba diving attraction.
Anyway: when Covid came his bunker and years of food and fuel, so he and the wife went out there and used it for their lockdown. I'm happy for him that he got to use it.
They took out the old control rooms and completely remodeled the inside into a pretty comfy house. It's just underground and has 3-ton blast doors.
that guys living my dream
Flooded with stagnant water? Do you want brain worms? This is how you get brain worms.
If there's no sunlight energy providing for phytoplankton, there's probably not much of a food chain in there to support parasites.
Else cave diving sites would be equally dangerous.
It's basically aquifer water. When the silo was active they had to run pumps to keep it from flooding. It's actually one of the ways silos could be identified by satellites. They'd have oversized drainage ponds in the middle of nowhere where they'd be pumping the water.
Me, buying some extra rice, pasta and salt, watching my neighbor buying large game butchering knife kit (we live in the suburbs)
Sounds like a smart guy. He gets meat AND all your dried goods!
What's funny is that antimaskers still blat on about how they won't wear a face diaper for anything or anyone, two years after such requirements ended. These people just need negative attention like tantruming toddlers.
And then some of the same people will wear actual diapers in public while holding signs proclaiming that "real men wear diapers". Can't make that shit up.
I had a few shirts made with this.
I get all sorts of reactions.
https://youtu.be/t3lFHqWELE0?si=u3GoHTxEt83KYgbJ
I do have to admit, I'm prepared for fires and earthquakes. Doomsday seems crazy, though. I have a bug out bag, etc... I'm not going to live under the preconceived notion that I'm going to survive a nuclear attack or race war that'll never happen. Pepper's get fucking insane. The number of people who start digging down without any understanding of structural integrity is insane aswell. Especially in places near fault lines. Building firebreaks, storing food and water, forming a microgrid if you live in an area where they might turn off the electricity, etc... those are all realistic and important. Also, fuck anti-maskers.
I lived in a small town on the New Madrid fault line in the middle of tornado alley most of my life and yep, we stocked up because we knew if a sizable enough earthquake hit the area, we were small enough to not get any attention for a long time while the nearby cities were recovering. There's definitely point of wisdom for sticking back supplies for a few months, but stacking a cellar full of tactical mil spec fishing poles and the like is mental masturbation for delusional assholes with less sense than money.
Given how often my fishing poles seem to break with only light use, that's not entirely unreasonable.
Technically just having a preparation in place for fires or earthquakes does make you a prepper. There may be varying degrees of it, but prepping for natural disasters is actually a much larger section of preppers than "zombies" or whatever bullshit. Hurricanes too in those areas is another common one, and you'd be surprised how many people carry and IFAK just in case of a car crash or shooter.
But any way you slice it, building firebreaks, storing food and water, and forming a microgrid, those are some good preparations my prepper friend.
COVID didn't have a solution based around people being the main character.
Unless you wanted to cause trouble. Then you could be the main character.
All the solar panels, ARs, and "Patriot" food kits won't prep them for when the pollinators die off.
Did you know that honeybees were not in America until they were brought here from Europe? Many other flies and bees did the pollination previously.
That specific species of honeybee wasn't in the Americas. There were native species that are being outcompeted and dying out.
"Killer" bees are an example of a native honeybee species.
Luckily, thanks to the magic of modern chemistry, we managed to mostly get rid of those damn bugs.
Put more money into tacticool guns than they did ammo. Spent more time making them look Gucci than they did at the range.
What you're not seeing is that it's also a dick-measuring contest. He who dies in a megastorm with the most hoarded toilet paper wins.
The toilet paper thing is fascinating to me, because everybody went to the store, saw the empty shelves, and assumed that their neighbors were freaking out and hoarding toilet paper. People actually needed more TP during lockdown, because they were doing all their pooping at home instead of at work.
Businesses have a completely different supply chain for toilet paper, and you had a deficit in one and a surplus in the other. You can't just move product from one supply chain to the other, either.
How much shitting are you doing? Just learn to wipe correctly.
I feel like that dude on the left used all of his and at some point had to make a second trip. If he was American instead of British, I would say maybe even a third. He has that look.
The dude on the right is definitely doing it because his wife forced him to.
Text in the back says "Tyre Centre" which makes it distinctly not American... Maybe you should stop judging people, it's not healthy
That's why I said "instead of British."
Sorry for hurting your feelings.
Good job editing your post after the fact, you know there's an icon that shows that right?
No need to double-down on being an asshole either.
Thanks, I did know that. I edited it for clarity and to add an apology for you since you seem upset.
You lost them at considerate.
I don’t think preppers are a monolith. There are people from different backgrounds, different politics, different concerns, and different methods (and degrees) of preparedness. People who make it about hoarding goods and resources are probably just doing it wrong.
I have to sit at home and watch TV??? The horror!
Piers Morgan, famous conservative, on how you have to sit on your ass https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/piers-morgan-good-morning-britain-rant-coronavirus-people-outside-a4394466.html
Piers Morgan was one of the few horrible British people America shipped back.
I was always under the impression we'd go nomadic if things got bad, traveling to where it is habitatable year round and food is more available. I'm keeping myself mentally and physically healthy enough to walk long distances while not being picky about what I eat or where I sleep. I find the whole concept of hunkering down indefinitely is itself untenable.
You live like a nomad hunter-gatherer if you like. Count me out.
If the problem is going to last significantly longer than a month, then no one is really "prepared." Those preppers then just become resource targets.
Pretty much, just a power fantasy disguised as being prepared
I'm an inverse prepper I guess
Always ready to just give up and die
I would add to this that covid did cause a major resurgence in a different flavor of prepper: "back to the earth" people who strive to, among other things, produce more of their own food (be it growing produce, raising livestock, or even doing more cooking and baking using raw ingredients rather than relying on premade food). Interest in gardening, homesteading, baking, and learning to live off the land skyrocketed during peak covid. Sure a lot of that interest has subsided, but much like how the great depression permanently changed the attitudes of people who lived through it in regards to reusing things instead of tossing and replacing, the experience of scarcity and uncertainty regarding basic goods (for most first-world folks, for the first time in their lives) made a permanent mark on at least some of the population. And this is a much more practical type of prepping, because instead of coming from a fantasy of what disaster might befall the world, it was a direct response to a disaster that actually happened.
Hair cuts of all things made people lose their god damn minds. That was wild
Whereas I hate getting my hair cut and I will just shave it all off when it gets too long.
Actually, I can't think of anything during COVID I actually found to be a huge imposition other than wearing a mask at work got hot after a while.
I felt bad for enjoying it. Worked from home, hardly expected to go out, much less traffic. Most service related jobs I prefer to do myself (like haircuts like you mentioned) or am perfectly fine with minimal contact. In general I feel bad for service workers so even if they aren't friendly with me (not that I ever really experienced that much) I wouldn't mind, and also don't mind self checkout and automation.
I may sound like I'm accusing others, and maybe that's part of it, but the way service workers are expected to act certain ways with us feels like trying to perpetuate class based servitude. As long as they're relatively professional and not outright insulting, I think it's fine.
I always try my hardest to look a service worker in the eye at least once during our transaction. Just an unconscious way to let them know I see them as an equal, not as a servant. I realize that's not making a major change in the world, but I figure they don't get that much.
That definitely helps from anecdotal information I was told, and I do the same. One of my younger sisters worked at a sorta prominent restaurant in Atlanta, and she complained that some of the high end clientele refused to look her in the eye. Sometimes she found it so insulting she'd act like she didn't realize they were talking to her until they made eye contact.
Why the hate on prerppers in this comment section? It sounds kinds fun tbh, and the skills of living in the woods are useful even outside of apocalypse.
Sounds fun. But there's a huge Venn diagram overlap between them and the sovcits, covid-hoax, various types of "truthers" and doomsday cult types. So the target market, if you're marketing to preppers, is not just the clever Doctor Stone cosplayers.
Because a lot of them are far right nutjobs.
I’m not hating on all preppers, one of my partners is one. She has a massive food garden, quite a few guns (though that’s largely because her ex is armed and violent), and cultivates skills useful in dangerous situations, such as woodwork and textile work. That’s not the judgement.
The judgement is for the ones who openly fantasize about city folk dying in a disaster and dream of using their hoarded food to buy human beings.
Do you think it has anything to do with, like, the entire text of what I posted above?
My prepping involves knowing how to make beer/whiskey from the dirt up. I figure anything else I can trade from there. Including your women.
I feel like if we've got to the point where we go back to bartering, I've kind of lost interest in surviving because that means pretty much all of the civilization is gone.
"I need to borrow your gun and one bullet. Actually, I'll be keeping the bullet, but you can have your gun back when I'm finished."
Actually, I'll be keeping the gun and giving you the bullet back... at a really high velocity.
The only thing the paranoid preppers did was raise the price of ammunition.
Going back to COVID. one had to wear a MOPP IV suit and decontaminate everything you touch 24/7, including the interior of your car and the ultimate petri dish, your mobile phone. For the folks who grew a beard and wore a mask, FU, you compromised the mask.
this is so fucking spot on, whew
In hindsight it doesn't feel like it was a proper SHTF moment. Some of the early reactions did make it feel like one but in the end not that much happened where I live. Try to stay away from people for a while and use a mask seemed like the extent of it. Spent a lot more than outdoors than I usually do.
SHTF doesn't have to mean the end of the world,.
When hospitals have to use refrigerated trucks to store bodies because the morgue has filled up, I think the shit has indeed hit the fan.
Nothing that doesn't knock out power or wipe out humans quickly on a wide scale will qualify for an apocalypse, and thus only annoy preppers.
I've heard people say they honestly miss it. They're quick to say that people dying was awful, but they have honest nostalgia for the covid days.
So if a zombie outbreak occurred these people would fuck us even worse
As Weird Al sang in Tacky, "if I get bit by a zombie, I'm probably not telling you."
Was there actually news indicating that preppers, as a group, were more likely to be against masking than for it?
I wouldn't be too surprised, but I haven't actually seen any evidence to this effect.
On a deeper level I think it's mostly a framework of acceptability some people have built around being antisocial and afraid of everything.
"Prepper" and "prepping" sounds like kink terms...
Prepping is just a normal gay/anal sex term, no kink necessary
For some, anal is too kinky, for obvious reasons.
Prep me harder, daddy.
The middle-aged man knows that's exactly what every other middle-aged man and those older than them are thinking.
The snake eating its tail in preparation. Or, preparing for the snake eating its tail.
Or maybe you don't like being lumped in with a bunch of conservative reactionaries who dream of running their own post-apocalyptic fiefdom. It's not our fault that those are who people think of when they think of preppers. I guess you should pick a new name for yourself.
That post definitely has got a strong "not all preppers" vibe to it.