Had a phone conversation yesterday with a cousin who listens to prepper audiobooks while commuting to work. He gets enthusiastic and likes to share the scenarios; I listen for a reality check, to make sure he isn’t getting scammed into buying overpriced gold commemorative coins. He’s enough into that scene to have several flats of bottled water in his laundry room and a ham radio in his bedroom.
He described a world where society collapsed after an electromagnetic pulse. Although he didn’t name the Carrington event that was probably the inspiration. After a while, a beep beep beep sound came through the line. Then the sound of a microwave door opening. He said he had to sit down and eat.
As we said goodbye, the thought came to mind: this guy can hardly cook anything. The only things he makes from scratch are spaghetti and scrambled eggs. He would go hungry soon if the power grid went down and he had to get by without his microwave. And he has no plans to expand that extremely limited skill set.
Yet he owns a shelf full of books about how to build a cabin and survive in the woods.
There seem to be a lot of people like him in the prepper scene.
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I agree. I stumbled upon this prepper subreddit the other day and they were literally discussing how they were excited that the “end is coming” and that they’ll finally be able to use their gear. It’s honestly just another way the brain makes people feel better about themselves. Doesn’t make them bad people for it but definitely LARP-esque behavior
Serious pepper here
We also laugh at the LARPer type preppers. Just about every serious group of preppers laughs at them.
Gear and hypothetical skills are valuable but practiced, functional skills are priceless.
Personally, I read the transcript of an interview with a survivor of the famine of 1921 and that absolutely traumatized me. Too many mouths to feed and not enough food is a very realistic scenario compared to a Carrington event to want to prepare for, and that’s what the majority of serious preppers spend their time thinking about.
It’s also a lot less “fun” to think about. A neo-luddite utopia society free of technology is a “fun” scenario to think about. Cannibalism and starvation aren’t fun no matter how you slice it.
Most prepper food requires very little cooking. It’s usually either MREs, which come with a water-activated heater, or dehydrated food that’s prepared by adding hot water.
That side of prepper culture doesn’t bother me. It’s the guys who get excited fantasizing about all the people they’ll get to shoot after society collapses.
Agreed. I think one of the biggest lies they tell themselves is that they will be able to make it work all by themselves, or with just their family. Which goes against a core survival maxim.
There’s safety in numbers.
Not only in terms of dissuading would be attackers, but also specialization and skill allocation. In a post apocalypse scenario, being a nurse or a trained surgeon is an incredibly useful skill to have, but sending a cardiac surgeon out to farm potatoes or scavenge is a waste of resources, relative to the value they can bring to a group in doing what they’re best at.
The reality is, the biggest groups that can self organize and re-specialize fastest will end up being safer and more successful in the long run than the rugged individualist in a cabin. Because all it takes is one broken leg, or bad infection to take them out most of the time. Doesn’t matter how many books you’ve read, how good a marksman you are, or how deep your stockpiles are, the single individual is one bad break from being fucked/an easy target for raiders.
Its 100 percent fantasy. Learn how to cook and farm. Learn how to hunt and field dress. Build. The rest is bullshit. Youre not going to stop anyone from killing you because you have a battle rifle and a bug out kit. Someone will likely kill you just to get it.
hahahhahaha. oh this is spot on
As an ACTUAL prepper: we make fun of guys like this.
Most of being a “prepper” is being prepared for a power outage.. or a toilet paper shortage, or a natural disaster situation, or a medical emergency, and developing skills to help out your family and community in those situations. Actual end of the world shit takes years to happen, social collapse is glacially slow. Even food problems during ww2 in Germany didn’t happen until 4 years into actual warfare, and by then, everyone else had started gardening to make up for the differences.
And guess what yall? Society has “collapsed” a million different times, and we’re still here.
Every real (aka serious) prepper will tell you that #1 prepper action item is “be REAL friends with your neighbors.”
When TSGD you’ll have only the people on your street or in your cul-de-sac to rely on. It’s easier if you all know and like each other.
Any prepper that isn’t friends with their neighbors is really just prepping for the neighbors, because they’re going to come and take what they need when TSGD.
Non-preppers have pew pews too.
The only prepping im really interested in is prepping for blackouts and long term illness, bc those are easier and realistic. I rely on a lot of medication to function so I know full well in the event of an apocalypse im cooked, but based on what I learned from covid I could manage another pandemic, and I do need to buy crank radios, Torches and power banks, especially as in the next few years I olan to move to an area with a lot of power cuts (people in that area predominantly use gas to cook bc of it, so id be fine on the cooking front)
I think at a certain point it becomes a fantasy/hobby.
That point is when you go from having a big pantry with months worth of food to running military exercises in your back yard and burying supply caches like a squirrel.
My ex boyfriend was like this 😂😂😂 I honestly think it’s some kind of bizarre genetic trait if not a disorder. He would go into these weird phases where he would order buckets of prepper food and tons of bottled water that would fill our pantry. And I was so confused and he’d get mad at me for not ordering my own food buckets because “I won’t share any of my food with you if there’s an apocalypse YOU NEED TO GET YOUR OWN!” I had never met anyone like that before and didn’t know how to deal with it.
We lived in an apartment and had been together a few years and when talking about houses, his absolute fantasy was to get a property where he could build a bunker. It almost seemed to excite him like he wanted the world to end. Should have been a red flag early on but yeah clearly we are no longer together.
He also had ZERO survival skills and wouldn’t last more than a few days without electricity.
Never heard of prepper or larping
We already lived through a prepper-lite scenario of pandemic lockdowns a few years ago and, if society’s reaction to it was anything to go by, the vast majority of people are not capable, either skills-wise or mentally, or surviving a total collapse of law and order.
A lot of these types are really just fantasizing about a world without law and order where they can do whatever they like and where, due to a modicum of preparedness, they now have the hoard of resources that makes them the new wealthy upper class in society. So essentially, people who aren’t wealthy, powerful or prestigious fantasizing about being winners and the kind of society where they believe they would be exactly that, plus where they would be able to take revenge, either in the form of violence, or the denial of resources, to the sections of society who they seem responsible for their misfortunes.
A lot of “preppers” think of it as just guns and tactical equipment. There’s no long-term thinking from them, like agriculture, homesteading, food preservation and storage, medical care, etc.
In reality, homesteaders have a far higher chance of survival than your average prepper.
*Edited some words
This isn’t an unpopular opinion. Most “normal” people view hard-core preppers as weirdos.
That being said, I do like to stay prepared for natural disasters or short-term economic disasters. 2 examples when that paid off come to mind.
Prepping for an apocalypse is dumb. I don’t want to live if society collapses after a nuclear exchange. But thinking ahead just a little bit can keep you from a short-term hardship.
Something interesting that I remember hearing was on NPR’s I think Throughline (or Hidden Brain) podcast that went into the idea that civilization is a thin veil that holds everyone together to prevent us from all tapping into our “true” barbaric selves. The reality is that humans tend to be more inclined to be orderly and stick together in times of crisis rather than go full on savage. I’m no expert on the prepper community, but what I have seen tends to give me to impression that they lean towards the “thin veil of civilization” notion of humanity.
There’s a significant split in prepped philosophy. A good chunk, maybe the loudest chunk optimize for basically fighting off roving gangs. This usually involves guns and camping gear.
Another philosophy is to prepare for the average Tuesday. This involves making sure your home is in good working order, making friends with your neighbors, gaining basic handy skills like sewing, learning to grow and preserve food, and developing a well stocked pantry.
The second is just useful life skills anyway, that will be extra valuable in the case of natural disaster, civil unrest, or supply chain disruptions.
“the Carrington event that was probably the inspiration”
Blade Runner 2049 has such an event in its lore – where all electronic records, videos, audios etc was completely wiped out. “The black Out”.
These dorks don’t speak for the people who just believe in being prepared for a worst-case scenario. Not to mention that most people who are serious about prepping don’t advertise their plans and what they have prepped.
Most of us just hike/backpack (usually because we have a place to go), learn sustainable practices like hunting and gardening, and keep buckets of freeze dried foods and MREs in the cellar.
The quiet majority of us are overshadowed by the loud majority of people who collect microwaves to protect their electronics. What the majority is prepped for is the collapse of the dollar and the energy crisis coming to a head with blackouts, not airburst bombs to wipe out our DVR
If prepperism (?) was a real thing and not just ammo-sexuals expressing their deep love of all things pew pew, then it would be filled with discussions about gardening and creating communities and key relationships.
These psychos assume that their relationship to their neighbors in the apocalypse will be shooting them for even thinking about looking at their stuff.
In fact, I like to think of preppers being individualism brain-rot. A similar individualist brain-rot is homesteading. In both cases, we have people propagandized by American rightwing culture to think they are an army of one, that they can’t and shouldn’t depend on anyone or help anyone.
It’s also a sick fantasy….like with many gun-nuts, that a scenario will happen that will give them license to just start shooting people.
I was really big into steampunk and post-apoc costuming back in the day. I can work leather, build tools from scratch, raise a house, cook, sew, and a thousand other little things. We did an entire week in a desert and have shown up to rebuild hardsites after floods. My group has a bit more preping going on than most because we live along the gulf coast, but I would take a bunch of Rennies, wastelanders, and punks over the guys cosplaying the end of the world.
Take it from someone who litteraly cosplayed the end of the world, they aren’t ready.