Are you a prepper?

[Quintillus]

I also voted no. There are other things I'd rather do than be concerned about the possibility of societal collapse. My basic plan is:

- If there's a serious pandemic, stock up before it reaches my part of the world and become a hermit until it boils over.
- If there's a zombie invasion, get together with friends and improvise. Hopefully my knives and cast iron skillet will get me to that point.
- If there's a nuclear strike nearby, get away from it as quickly as possible and away from other likely targets.

I don't have any significant stock of supplies at home, however. I've probably got enough food for a couple weeks on a bland diet. I don't have significant water reserves in an apartment, but the beer stash ought to last the better part of a week, and more than that if I had just bought milk before the disaster at hand. Living in an apartment, it'd be silly to waste significant amounts of space on such an unlikely scenario.

I do have some fiscal reserves, but that's as much because I've never been much of a spender as because I'm saving it for an emergency. It's great if I do need it, but I'm not saving it because I expect to have to spend it when the zombies invade.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Doomsday Preppers == American Food Horders
I like that Democrat who said he could poison people and cut there throats while they slept.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

The options don't seem to make much sense, such as:

"Not really but I have stored food, a gun, and a hiding spot.
Yes, I am, but I haven't done much to prepare. I have no bunker."

The former seems to be much more prepared than the latter, and yet claims not to be while the latter does.

 

[CavLancer]

It took me all of a couple minutes and most are satisfied.

Btw 15 say outright 'no' while 17 are varying degrees of yes, and that's interesting.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I'm in the process of becoming more prepared; I have extra food and lamps in various spots around the house, but no water saved. Prepping isn't just about resources, though, it's a state of mind, a belief that the systems we depend on daily can fail. I've lived through Hurricane Ivan, so I've been without power long enough to realize how dependent we are on it. I like the preppers for their self-responsibility ethos. In a world where people sue others for their own negligence, or expect support for every fall, their ruggedness is a welcome and admirable change of pace. I listen to a prepper podcast several times a week, ("The Survivalist Podcast", host Jack Spirko) but he's popular enough that he airs five times a week with information on subjects like gardening, economics, hunting practices, and so on. He's also a raging libertarian, with emphasis on the rage from time to time.

 

[Senethro]

Most preppers seem to have this vengeful awaiting-the-rapture type attitude where they will get to see everyone who isn't them and theirs die horribly for their obviously wrong choices. And afterwards there will be no government to stop them shooting those people. You know. Those people who will run amok. They're animals. Oh, you know I'm the first to say something good about them but its in their nature, they can't help it.

 

[Synobun]

The options don't seem to make much sense, such as:

"Not really but I have stored food, a gun, and a hiding spot.
Yes, I am, but I haven't done much to prepare. I have no bunker."

The former seems to be much more prepared than the latter, and yet claims not to be while the latter does.

Intent. The former option implies that the individual has no desire to be prepared for a typical societal collapse scenario but that they are prepared for a natural disaster or extended power outage. The latter implies that the individual has a desire to be prepared for a typical societal collapse scenario but that they have nothing to show for it.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Most preppers seem to have this vengeful awaiting-the-rapture type attitude where they will get to see everyone who isn't them and theirs die horribly for their obviously wrong choices. And afterwards there will be no government to stop them shooting those people. You know. Those people who will run amok. They're animals. Oh, you know I'm the first to say something good about them but its in their nature, they can't help it.

On what are you basing this, television shows? I've never gotten that vibe from survivalist forums. The general attitude there is one of tough-guy "Hell YEAH we can do this" chest beating. A lot of them are libertarian, so they're not altogether interested in running over people.

 

[CavLancer]

Intent. The former option implies that the individual has no desire to be prepared for a typical societal collapse scenario but that they are prepared for a natural disaster or extended power outage. The latter implies that the individual has a desire to be prepared for a typical societal collapse scenario but that they have nothing to show for it.

Thanks Synsensa, well said.

Smellincoffee, looking at youtube and searching 'prepper' it does seem like the media has picked out the worst wackos among the preppers, and there are wackos in any group. If buying insurance against calamity makes one a nut to some, oh well. For people who have actually done something according to the poll, there are 15 nuts on this forum.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

I've started prepping. Well, not so much more than looking over what basic tools and kits I'm missing. A hand axe could be good to have for example.
Not having this in my car has been a stupid oversight:

Not sure what laws other nations have, but in Sweden you can get caught and fined for having basically anything in your car that can be used as a weapon - knives, baseball bats, etc (yes, guns included).

edit: I found this guy too:

Link to video.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Not sure what laws other nations have, but in Sweden you can get caught and fined for having basically anything in your car that can be used as a weapon - knives, baseball bats, etc (yes, guns included).

So in Sweden, people are not allowed to transport baseball bats to games in cars?

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Well, we don't play much baseball here. There are exceptions to the rule. Military people may carry knives, as can rug-layers/carpenters and if you've got a hunting license and clearly are off hunting. I know this law is somewhat ambiguous. You're likely not getting fined if you've got a good reason or the police officer is in a good mood, but you could. "The High Court"(?) in Sweden has ruled that baseball bats are considered potential weapons and people thereby may be fined for keeping them in their cars or carrying them in public places.

 

[Cutlass]

The solution is to carry:

Will break the window if you cannot otherwise get out of the car. Is not generally considered a weapon, but can be used as one, and you don't want to get hit with one. And they're common enough owned by just about any household that you can always claim a reason for having one. As to why it's in your car, you were helping a friend do some chore and left it there afterwards.

 

[Traitorfish]

The limits of British disaster-preparedness are possession of a sturdy umbrella and raincoat, and I fall some distance short of even that. So chalk me up as a "no".

 

[CavLancer]

I'm in the process of becoming more prepared; I have extra food and lamps in various spots around the house, but no water saved. Prepping isn't just about resources, though, it's a state of mind, a belief that the systems we depend on daily can fail. I've lived through Hurricane Ivan, so I've been without power long enough to realize how dependent we are on it. I like the preppers for their self-responsibility ethos. In a world where people sue others for their own negligence, or expect support for every fall, their ruggedness is a welcome and admirable change of pace. I listen to a prepper podcast several times a week, ("The Survivalist Podcast", host Jack Spirko) but he's popular enough that he airs five times a week with information on subjects like gardening, economics, hunting practices, and so on. He's also a raging libertarian, with emphasis on the rage from time to time.

It is something different to have the electricity go out isn't it? More difficult than I'd imagined it would be. When Yolanda devastated Leyte and took out the high voltage lines in Samar we were without power with no info as to when to expect it back until a couple of days in. The governor of Bohol said sometime after Christmas which was over two months off! So I dug out my small solar panel kit still in the box and was generating 80 watts with it. I bought a truck battery, only thing available, and was able to run a 12V fan I'd picked up in a junk shop years ago. That made the nights more tolerable for the wife and kids. Also about 10 days in I fired up my comp with the inverter I'd stocked and played Civ IV for an hour or so. Brought back memories of better times. Had some 12v water pumps I'd bought for a catamaran project I dream about and was preparing to use them in series to pump water to the 3rd & 4th floor water tanks. When those had ran dry the water had to be brought up in buckets for toilets. Showers still worked on the ground floor at night due to gravity feed. I'd stocked hand crank flashlights and lanterns so we had light, and what a difference a little light makes! Try taking a shower at night with no light... The power came back after 16 or 17 days, much to everyone's surprise. I was very pleased that I'd done something to improve the condition of the family, though I know I must do better next time.

It was interesting how self sufficiency became important. In the first few days all the generators got bought up at huge markups, but not by me. The malls already had them and its reported that ICM, the big mall, spent $6000 a day on diesel. Everyone was buying fuel for their generators and just before the power came on the paper ran a story about how the island would run out of fuel in two weeks due to increased demand, and how new orders for fuel would take time to arrive. So, in a prolonged outage folks with generators would also go without. Interesting how things start unraveling. There had been a 7.2 quake here on Bohol in the weeks prior to the typhoon and it had taken out lots of bridges. So, the trucks that nightly rumbled through bringing products for the local stores could not deliver anymore. Prices went up locally until after maybe 6 days a route into the main city, Tagbilaran, was opened up. I had started stocking food, not much, but enough to make it for a while. My wife had looked at me funny when I'd bought the stuff, mostly a few cases of spam, but not said anything. The multiple disasters put us on the same page as far as preparedness I'm happy to say. Still, even now we could only last maybe a month unless a rice harvest had just come in. Enough to augment but not provide everything. Not enough for a pandemic where we could not go out for instance. Plans though...reality has dawned around here. Excepting the 12v truck battery which I bought the last one of, I had everything on hand though luck or preparedness. If you don't have the stuff stocked when things go wrong you can forget picking it up. One example was 12v bulbs from the automotive stores. I tried to find some to wire essential parts of the house but they had sold out quick. So, a person is either ready or not. Stuff a person might walk by in the store without a second thought today might become a mission to acquire tomorrow, but its the same mission for everyone. You either get when the getting is good or do without. Interesting experience!

 

[IglooDame]

Well, we don't play much baseball here. There are exceptions to the rule. Military people may carry knives, as can rug-layers/carpenters and if you've got a hunting license and clearly are off hunting. I know this law is somewhat ambiguous. You're likely not getting fined if you've got a good reason or the police officer is in a good mood, but you could. "The High Court"(?) in Sweden has ruled that baseball bats are considered potential weapons and people thereby may be fined for keeping them in their cars or carrying them in public places.

*crosses Sweden off his "places to retire to" list*

That aside, it's all risk assessment, isn't it? Some neighbors thought my gasoline-powered generator was way into doomsday-prepper zone, but revised their opinions during an 11-day power outage (caused by an ice storm) a few years back. You figure out the odds of this, that, or the other disaster/catastrophe, how much effort/expense is involved in mitigating it, and make the call. I'm not running my own personal "get-your-ass-to-Mars" project in order to survive an eventual Earth-ending event, but clearly Elon Musk has decided to do so. On the other hand, storing some extra food and water in my basement seems like a lot of risk mitigation for very little expense or effort.

 

[bhsup]

*crosses Sweden off his "places to retire to" list*

Just switch to Svalbard. "While protected, anyone outside of settlements is required to carry a rifle to kill polar bears in self-defence, as a last resort, should they attack"

 

[CavLancer]

Some of my fellow Americans tend to worry about everything including what their neighbors buy way too much. If you buy a gun you're a gun nut. Judgmental too, all of the petty labels knock others down so they might raise themselves up. If you buy a generator you're a prepper. So what's wrong with being prepared? If I buy a generator I'm a guy with a generator and to hell with weak, judgmental people and their media programming. I'd bet when the power went out, IglooDude, the neighbors quickly forgot the political implications of your generator and really took it to heart that your lights were on and theirs were not.

 

[Grisu]

I have a few days worth of food and water in the basement as well as about a stere of wood to heat in case of power outage.

I have never experienced an outage of more than one hour though at home, so it's rather unlikely I'll ever need it...so I just keep using the wood for BBQ