The Nuts on Doomsday Preppers Wouldn’t Last a Week
The summer of 1996 was a rough season for eastern North Carolina. Hurricane Bertha roared ashore as a Category 2 storm in July, and a soggy month later Hurricane Fran hit even harder as a Category 3 storm. I was with my girlfriend (now wife) and saw 100-year-old oaks drop all around us, crushing cars and apartment buildings. We were without power for most of a week. It left an impression.
We’d graduated and moved to Durham, NC, survived the hysteria of the Y2K scare, and had no reason to expect much of consequence when the local weather told us there was going to be “a couple of inches” of snow the evening of January 24, 2000. When it finally stopped falling the next day, we had 22 inches on our back porch, and I had a very pregnant wife in her third trimester. For most of the next week, we were prisoners in our home.
Shortly after our daughter was born I pursued an opportunity in New York. We were in New Windsor, near Stewart Airport, when American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 almost collided overhead. I’ve always thought it would have been better if they had. Shortly afterward, they smashed into the World Trade Center towers and changed our world.
I relate all this merely to establish that my own life experiences have made me very aware of the fact that catastrophic disasters, both man-made and natural, can happen at any time, and anywhere, to anyone. Because of these experiences, I’m sympathetic to the concept of disaster preparation, or “prepping” as a form of life insurance for those you love.
And then there is Doomsday Preppers, the National Geographic Channel hit that returned this week with the premiere episode of its second season (which, bizarrely, is the second episode … don’t ask why). For those of you unfamiliar with the show, I’d describe it as the paranoid version of MTV’s Jersey Shore with dumber livestock.
Preppers is in the very loosest sense “reality television,” in that those people starring in the show aren’t actors, but the scenarios and editing are both contrived and far-fetched, or at least you hope they are. Last season was a train wreck, and if last night’s premiere (second episode?) was an omen of things to come, we can expect more of it this season.
The format of the show breaks an hour-long program into segments focusing on three different sets of preppers, each preparing for some sort of catastrophe.
Last night’s episode was appropriately titled “Am I nuts or are you?” The characters featured were much what you would expect from the title.
In ninth grade science class (1979, so it wasn’t so far fetched) the teacher asked all of us students what we’d do in case the Russians nuked the nearby city (Middletown, NY). We were out in the country so we’d probably not be vaporized. Most everyone got under the desks. My friend and I just looked at each other and kept sitting in our seats. If there was a US-USSR nuclear exchange, I’m not sure I’d want to be a survivor.
On the other hand, there are probably a few people in the greater NY area who wish they had put a bit more thought into disaster preparedness.
If you’re out in the country and not near a military target, you’d survive the blast whether you hid under your desk or not, but hiding might reduce your injuries. What happens next depends which way the wind is blowing.
Nah, we made the decision that we wouldn’t want to survive.
And to be fair to Nat Geo, a show about normal people doing normal prepping wouldn’t get as much interest. So they have to pick the more extreme folk.
I take it you aren’t Jewish.
Historically, people were able to kill large numbers of people with nothing more than knives and clubs. Jewish history is full of being on the receiving end of such massacres. If we had that attitude, I would not be writing this to you from Israel. (Our shelter fills with water in the winter by the way, but at least I have an idea where to sit if missles start coming in from Lebanon, heaven forbid. (One minue warning. In Nahariya the warning time is 0.))
Here’s something else to think about. Right before the Black Plague, there was a Great Famine which wiped out entire towns in Europe from the map. Can we really assume that there cannot be a similar change in the climate – not man-made, just a fluke – today?
I got this same question in 1965 from a seriously wonky 2nd grade teacher. (Think “convinced plants can think”- level wonky.) She made each student answer the question, standing at their desk.
When my turn came near the end (I was in the back row because she seated students by lot), I said, “it depends which way the wind is blowing.”
At her (confused) reaction, I explained that;
1. We were outside of the blast/fireball/shockwave radius of any weapon below 25KT yield, assuming it were dropped on one or the other of the only two worthwhile targets nearby (Lockbourne AFB, later Rickenbacker ANGB, or North American-Rockwell), both about 30 miles NNW of us in Franklin County, and neither of which would warrant a bigger weapon;
2. If the usual winds in the area prevailed, we wouldn’t have much to worry about, as they blow SW to NE, and so would blow fallout mostly away from us (but I wouldn’t have wanted to be in Marion or Akron);
But if we were in the throes of a winter nor’wester (what’s called an Alberta clipper today), the best course would be prayer, as fallout from that level would probably contaminate the Lancaster area to the human fatal level in about two hours and there wouldn’t be much anyone could do without enough warning to get to a proper shelter.
I also added that the basement of the school which was posted as a fallout shelter, didn’t meet the minimum standards. (Yes, I’d read them.)
No, she didn’t like my answer.
And yes, even then, I was known as the “weird kid”.
cheers
eon
Heh, cool story.
I should add that we were in Orange County, NY. Opposite end from West Point, but still near NYC (about 60 miles as the crow flies) so there’d be heavy fallout.
While the people on this show are without a doubt way, way over the top – there is something to be said for being prepared for “the unknown.” Now, I’m not advocating building a bunker or anything, but keeping a stash of food and water, along with some guns, ammo, a generator and some hygiene products never hurts anyone. A currency crash or civil unrest can happen anywhere, but in all likelihood – a power outage will be when these things may come in most handy. It did for me in June, when a derecho tore through and knocked out power for 8 days. Just sayin…..
Of course, liberal entertainment/media folk got the craziest/dumbest preppers they could get to come on TV (see also Mountain Men on the History Channel)… sheesh.
Like most NGC shows, this one seems to be styled around what the average media type from LA or NYC thinks is “edgy”, a nebulous term roughly as easily definable as “hip” used to be. More to the point, it’s intended to portray anyone who even thinks about the possibility of a nuclear event as an end-of-the-world loony with a Bible in one hand, a fully-automatic AKM in the other, and a list of minorities they intend to wipe out to “purify their precious bodily fluids” immediately after Der Tag.
The primary purpose of shows like this (plus HC shows like Ice Road Truckers, Axe Men, etc.), is to reassure all those “enlightened” types in the blue states that all those rednecks in the red states are just as brutal, stupid, trigger-happy, and just generally f**ked in the head as they’ve always believed them to be.
It helps reassure them that they really are the Chosen Rulers Of the Future, on the grounds that once they’ve gotten The Evil Guns away from those red state stupes, they’ll be too busy picking things out from between their toes to give their enlightened betters any more trouble.
Like, say, voting for somebody who isn’t a clone of The One in any future election.
No, they don’t “just” hate those the regard as “unenlightened”. They have utter and complete contempt for them, too.
Shows like this just confirm- in their minds- how right they are in their beliefs.
clear ether
eon
Think of a worst case scenario : your country is attacked by 15 powerful nations after 10 years of most brutal embargo / there is no way you could hoard food , clothes or fuel / . If you want to survive like a lone wolf watch doomsday preppers . If you want to socialize and live normal life , be good to others and keep ethic values high even in bad times .
Having been in the military during the Cold War and “playing” at post-first-strike stuff… The entire program is SILLY to WORRISOME. Really, some of it is good, and steps that ANYONE can do, other things – wow! Just wow, people can be dangerously crazy.
More likely events to prepare for are:
1. POWER OUTAGES AND POWER GRID COLLAPSE from a variety of sources that can last a week or longer (like Super-Storm Sandy).
and
2. WIDE-SPREAD FLOODING, like the Mississippi watershed, or Super-Storm-Sandy.
It has true during Katrina that the general population in the worse affected areas were on their own for about 72 hours, Super-Storm-Sandy, upped it to 96+ hours. Skills and knowledge needed to survive are the same ones that both the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts once encouraged.
With so few adults and kids that have never been exposed to the rudiments of “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” … disasters are worse. (1st: Physiological needs, Air/Water/Shelter/Food/Sanitation Elimination of Wastes. 2nd: Safety needs: Personal Safety/Security/Resources/Health and so on.)
“For most of us, that fear began fading with the end of the Cold War”
Well then, most of us are ignorant of what’s actually going on in the world. Russia didn’t transform overnight from communist police state to freedom-loving constitutional republic. Putin (who has installed himself as permanent PM) and all of the leadership in Russia are ex-KGB. The primary function of the KGB was not espionage – it was disinformation and subversion. The KGB’s primary mission was to prep enemy nations for overthrow. How do you think so many nations became soviet satellites?
Russia still has nukes, and the Obama administration has been reducing our arsenal without requiring reciprocity from Russia.
Additionally, we have Hezbollag active in South America and in Mexico, and if Iran successfully acquires nukes, they won’t rely on just an ICBM to hit us. Our porous border with its numerous cartel smuggling routes traversing it is a much cheaper option. And then there’s our largely-unsupervised ports of entry where container ship cargo gets about as heavily inspected as luggage at a TSA checkpoint (I’ve gotten fluids and sheathed electronics through numerous times).
A smart prepper aims to prepare in such a way that covers as many scenarios as possible. Food, water, blankets, guns, ammo, firestarters, and respirators will cover most scenarios fairly well. Short term supplies like a 72-hour bag are most important and likely to be needed, whereas long-term (months or years) supplies are less likely to be needed, but still a good idea if you can prepare them. Many people save for adversity strictly with money in a savings account or retirement portfolio. I think this is a mistake. In real disasters, you can’t buy access to supplies when the supply chain has been interrupted. Everyone should have some long term food and water stores. How much is up to you. And even in peacetime, I recommend everyone keep at least one firearm.
Well said.
Preps don’t have to cost a fortune, either. Basic food supplies are actually very cheap in the US, it’s the “comfort food” and convenience food that costs.
The most likely disasters to hit any given individual are personal: break a leg, messed up in a car wreck, get fired, etc. Most true long term preps for whatever will effect thousands of others have being supplied with the day by day stuff covered for the individual (it’s the meds that pose a problem).
“How do you think so many nations became soviet satellites?”
Occupation by Soviet troops: Mongolia, Poland, Romania. Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, North Korea.
Yugoslavia and Albania were taken over by Communist-led partisans at the end of WW II. Soviet agents had little to do with it. Nor with Mao’s victory over Chiang in the post-WW-II Chinese Civil War. Nor with Castro’s victory in Cuba. Actually, for all their efforts, Communists had remarkably few successes.
Oh, and the KGB’s primary task was suppression of internal dissent. The Foreign Directorate was just one part of it.
As to Soviet/Russian nuclear weapons – tens of thousands of them have been dismantled (at U.S. expense, and the damn Russians milked the program for millions in graft). In fact uranium prices were depressed for years by the sale of all the salvaged fissionables.
The Russians still have thousands of nukes, but there is no real likelihood of them starting anything big. The gang running the place have a very good thing going; why should they risk it? Moslem crazies are a whole ‘nother story, though.
Although the Soviet Union itself had a great deal to do with the fall of Nationalist China. then again, so did the United States.
I’m not sure I get your point. Subversion doesn’t involve Soviet agents? The USSR tens to give instructions t olocal COmmunist parties; they certainly do in the US.
Oh please, Bob… why do you think the leftists on Natl. Geo. are running this stupid show with all these people…???
Heavens forbid if the American people ever started taking the words “be prepared” seriously.
I mean, what would all those nice government workers filling out their forms in triplicate to give us back our money (excuse me, govmt. money) do for a living?
Joseph Goebels, is that you I hear laughing…???
1) They’re editing it to purposefully make the subjects look bad. They did this with the first season; why are you surprised they’re doing this with the second?
2) They’ve intentionally sought out people who make prepping look bad. They did this with the first season; why are you surprised they’re doing this with the second?
The problem isn’t with the show; it’s with your expectation that the far, far, far left National Geographic would give an honest story about people who aren’t organizing their lives around government dependency.
Exactly..
This program is to re-enforce the groupthink of the left in the Media/entertainment saturated coastal enclaves.
It is meant to help control Dissenters in those areas…by showing them these are the Crazies in “fly-over” territory that didnt vote for Obama, and how frikking wierd they are.
Seriously….Can any of us imagine a program that delves into the paranoia of “the generic Left”….show Socialists, animal rights freaks and vegans trying to prop up their impossible self-contradictory lifestyle in the “mechanical” real world, and what a misreable failure it would be?
My basic response to anything on TV is:
Who cares. I dont watch it.
You don’t have to imagine it. You can buy it on DVD.
Penn & Teller; Bulls**t! did several shows on just such subjects. Only the ones on “Fung Shui” and “Second Hand Smoke” were more hilarious. (The one on “Recycling” was a genuine hoot.)
Keep in mind that P & T are stage magicians. They know all the tricks of misdirection, deception, and “pulling the wool over the audience’s eyes”.
And they know when somebody else is using them.
cheers
eon
Both those guys are bona-fide objective geniuses –the real thing.
It is not hard to be ready. Look at the Northeast. Some are without power still. My prayers have been with the women, and children there.
I thought everyone had water pure tablets, weapon system and ammo, MRE’s, face paint, first aid kit, fishing kit, head light and batteries, extra BDU’s, blankets, stove and propane, boot polish, trip wire…
Second place is first loser. Don’t don’t wait for your Mommie, or G-d to do it for you!
With the way the CFR American controled government is helping the Muslim Brotherhood grow stronger, I bet a pay check America will be cursed with more over the top storms, and earthquakes.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go read my Bible, and clean my weapon.
My “disaster preparedness” plan (much to the dis-humor of my wife) is simply my high threshold for discomfort….
I just dont care..
No power? Bummer.
A week? THREE? Been there done that.
Slept on wet ground before too. Whah whah whah.
Water, Food?…I can always FIND water, and having a little less food handy at my age and, *ahem* “activity level” would probably be a GOOD thing.
Gun? Yeah.
Nothing fancy, its a tool like a screwdriver or a hammer.
Optics, batteries and such dont make it better, just add more “liabilities” you have to depend on.
Ammo? Two magazines is enough..
They’re like seeds…plant them in the right spot, you’ll grow more…
Just make sure your “panting tool” is in a top 3 common caliber, so you can USE THEIRS when Harvest Time comes, if you know what I mean.
Good pair of boots and extra laces…everything else can be got as needed.
It aint that complicated.
I used to be a Prepper. I stock piled food and water. Thought about disaster plans. Worried about unlikely scenarios constantly. Then I realized that the only true prep you can do is mental prep. What good does having 3 years of food under your house do you if you have to leave your house? If you have to leave the state? How are you going to take that with you? How are you going to keep it at all if there are people stealing or looting? You’re gonna have to kill people to protect it. That much STUFF is not easy to move or transport. It’s impractical. Being a prepper is impractically preparing for impractical and unlikely scenarios–and actually it’s hoarding (yet another train wreck of a show about people with mental disorders). Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a 72 hour pack. I’m not saying you shouldn’t know survivalist skills. But hoarding food and water and living on bunker stew for 3 months a year–not gonna save your hide in an emergency.
That’s nice.
I keep a week’s supply of no-prep, no-heating-or-refrigeration required foods on hand, mainly due to power failures. (Our last one, due to a windstorm the last week in June, took the power company a week to repair.)
Since I live in town, water generally isn’t a problem.
Since I live in the county seat, my “first line of defense” against crazy people is the county sheriff’s department, backed up by the city police.
If it gets by them by stealth or trickery, my “Final Protective Fire” is 9-1-1. Plus a P-35 Hi-Power 9mm.
Oh, useful tip; in a power failure, cordless phones don’t work because they require AC power. And cellphones only work if the towers have power.
Your “fallback” should be a plain, old-fashioned, mule-stupid hard-wired landline with no “extras”. They run entirely off the 64V DC system of the phone company itself, power supplied over the lines. As long as they’ve got generators, or even batteries, you’re good.
cheers
eon
Didn’t bother to watch after viewing the promo last week, with assorted “knuckleheads” out of the shallow end of the gene pool, but I was surprised that they didn’t chose “Dueling Banjoes” as the background music to the series, though since I didn’t watch, perhaps they did. In any case, this was obviously an attempt to totally discredit the prepper idea and preppers, and it looked like NatGeo was going to do a good job of it.
Look, we live in an increasingly interdependent and, in my view, a fragile rather than a robust, high technology civilization.
Spread out as we are over a huge continent, but with most of our population concentrated in a number of great urban areas on the east and west coasts, and employing ever more technology and using ever more energy, as an essentially urban civilization we are increasingly dependent on all sorts of critical infrastructure, computer-driven systems, and potential failure points that have to work if our civilization is to function.
We have a just barely adequate national power grid that already has regional or local failures, omnipresent computers and chips that would be destroyed by the electromagnetic pulse from an EMP event—either from natural solar flares or man-made attack–and which are now the essential directing and controlling agents of almost all current power generation systems, weapons systems, telephone and other communication systems, petroleum, natural gas, electricity, and water distribution systems, refrigeration systems, petroleum pumping systems and refineries, sewage and water treatment and distribution systems, our financial and banking systems, radars and air traffic control systems, ignition systems of all sorts for cars, boats, aircraft, trains, and generators, for medical equipment, for home and municipal lighting, water, and electricity, traffic control and monitoring systems, and mass transit. In short, at the heart of and critical for all the essential equipment, services, and paraphernalia without which our civilization would quickly devolve to 19th or even to 18th century levels.
Moreover, the massive amounts of data and control these myriads of vulnerable computers provide also make possible the “just in time” inventories and deliveries of food and other essentials that this intricate system allows i.e. many stores no longer carry the heavy—and taxable–inventory they used to, but just what is sufficient for a couple of days and, outside of regional distribution centers, individual stores–dependent on constant “just in time” deliveries–are much less likely today to have backrooms full of food or other stock as they did in the past.
Then, there are the laboratories, hospitals, and all sorts of high tech medical devices—heart implants, contact lenses, eye glasses (ever try to grind new lenses without electricity, or the machines and measuring devices electricity powers?) and various eye, heart, brain, and all sorts of other intricate surgeries, and various computer-electricity based tests, and all the various implants, immunizations, drugs, and injections—insulin (that needs refrigeration) likely the first to go in any long drawn out power failure. Pick any other vulnerabilities you wish to add to this very long and disturbing—once you stop to think of it—list.
Bottom line, truth be told, in terms of existing technology we do not have any great reserves or margins for error, going along “singin’ a song” and mostly blissfully unaware that we are living on a knife edge here, and any event—natural or man-made–could trigger a cascading series of failures, and if such a massive failure of our technological systems should occur-especially long term, very few people living today here in the U.S. could readily fall back on all of the knowledge and experience our forefathers had about how to survive and live without all of our technological gadgets when we are cold and wet, no food deliveries arrive, water doesn’t come from our taps, we are hungry, we can’t just call the police, fire department, or our family doctor, everyone is dependent on their own grit, wit, ingenuity, and resources, and FEMA may or may not show up or show up in time, with the necessary supplies and help—see the recent cases of New York and New Jersey after Sandy for a very small real life example.
Add to this the increasing instability caused by our current financial and economic mess, the incipient decadence and violence we see all around us, all of which looks like it will get a whole hell of a lot worse, plus the current inflamed state of the world, and it seems to me that you’d be both blind and crazy if you weren’t thinking that it might be a good idea—“just in case”–to have some cash in hand, store some extra food and water, buy a gun and some ammunition and learn how to use them, learn a little first aid, and some survival techniques, and to perhaps give a little thought to identifying and scouting someplace that might be safer than where you and your family might live now, if it should all hit the fan.
P.S. It couldn’t possibly be that any of the considerations I mentioned above could be one of the driving forces behind our “skyrocketing” U.S. gun and ammunition sales, or the fact that COSTCO is now selling buckets of emergency survival rations, could it?
Funniest thing about these “survivalists:” if you have all of this assorted gear, food, low-tech equipment to give you electricity, and so forth, and with the purported understanding that we’re gonna need it immediately, why in the hell would you advertise your stash and publicize your face?
I didn’t know that “survivalists,” had a death wish….odd, that…..
I am waiting for Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) to chime in here…
I think the survival shows and their high ratings are great!
They prove an extremely high idiot quotient across the land.
Idiots usually kill themselves early in the course of disaster events.
Leaving more for everyone else.
For a few days.
Then things start to get tough.
There are two basic scenarios that have a high probability of happening to anyone: Weather events and personal economic hardship.
As to weather events, can you survive for a few weeks without power? Can you heat your house if the power if off? Do you have enough food to last a few days if you can’t get to the store? If you need to evacuate, are you prepared with what you will bring with you? Very simple stuff.
The next possibility is personal economic hardship. This has already happened to millions upon millions of people. It is not a nutty or crazy thing to think it can happen to you. Best prep: get out of debt. Start saving. Make your bills as low as possible. That may take years to accomplish, so start now! Learn how to save money. Think about what you will cut out (cable, expensive phones) if your income is lost or reduced. Most of this is mental prep. You don’t need to waste weeks or months being angry and depressed about such things. When you lose your job, you just say, oh well, there goes the cable. Makes it a lot easier when the time comes.
Figure out what is the absolute minimum you and your family can live on. Work towards that goal. While others will get angry, depressed or go rioting in the streets, you just go calmly about your life.
You either “prep” or you do not. Makes no difference to me.
However, I do think a limited nuclear exchange might be a really good thing. I can think of at least a dozen US cities America would be far greater without. It would also be far more humane than what is coming, sooner or later, under what those retards just voted for.
Now lets see.. where did I put those Iodide tabs? AH there they are.
I think it’s useful to have basic supplies for 3 or 4 days of disaster disruption. Refuel when the car gets down to half a tank. Buy canned goods when they go on sale and periodically give the cans to charity before they expire. Keep a little extra soap, shampoo, toothpaste, etc. so you don’t run out at an inconvenient time.
Besides basic supplies, it’s useful to learn skills that could come in handy. Do basic DIY home maintenance so you can repair the stuff that breaks unexpectedly. Help your neighbors and accept their help. Learn to work together. Own some tools. It’s impossible to anticipate everything that could go wrong, so it pays to be able to improvise a solution using the skills and supplies at hand. I find that my mental state is better if I’m playing MacGyver and helping others instead of waiting for outside help.
Buy canned goods you like anyway, just buy a few more than you use and keep cycling first in first out so you use it all yourself but build up a 2-4 week cushion.
Used to think 3-4 days was sufficient, then a wall of tornadoes took out power to most of North Alabama for eight days. Had battery power, an inverter to recharge electronic devices off the car battery, and luckily we never lost water pressure, but towards the end was scraping the back of the pantry. It’s funny how after several days of essentially camping out in your own home anything out of a can heated over a fire tastes like the finest gourmet meal.
Well, I always carry my Chase Visa card AND my debit card. ‘Cause you just never know….
Doomsday Preppers is awesome. If you ain’t doin’ it you haven’t been paying attention or don’t really believe in conservatism. USA is going bankrupt.
There is nothing at all wrong with being prepared to take care of yourself without the trappings of society. I’ll bet there are no few folks out on the East Coast who are learning that lesson the hard way at the moment.
I haven’t watched the show, but wow — you’re really accusing a 15 year old kid of being a budding serial killer? You really think it’s fair for that to come up whenever someone googles his name?
When I was 10, my family moved to Lincoln Nebraska. Since my father was a Senior Master Sergeant in the USAF, we lived in the base housing. It was very entertaining. My school was the “General H. H. Arnold Elementary School”, which was in the middle of base housing. Our school was on just enough of a hill for us to be able to see the B-47s taking off and landing, and I used to idly count the seconds from one slat of the venetian blinds to the next.
We did the “duck and cover” drills, even though it wouldn’t have helped; at the time, Lincoln Air Force Base was a major bomber and missile repair base of the Strategic Air Command. The CEP for Soviet missiles back then was pretty large, so the missile aimed at the center of the runways had an equal chance of hitting the passenger terminal on the other side of the base, or landing on the desk I was huddling under.
The base also hosted a wing of Atlas ICBMS, buried in silos around out around the city. The Atlas was a LIQUID-fueled ICBM, different from the later solid-fuel Minutemen, but not as hazardous as the hydrazine and red-fuming-nitric-acid propellant used in the older rockets. There were 12 silos, but 13 missiles; one missile was being refit each week. A transporter would pluck the oldest bird out of the silo, another would slide the newly-rebuilt bird in there, and the convoy would come back to base. Once, a bridge across the creek was being repaired, and the missile transporter had to take a short detour around the bridge, right through our neighborhood – and right past my house. We were all Air Farce brats, and thought it was great fun to fun alongside the missile.
In October, 1962, there was a little bit of excitement; in the middle of the night, all the bombers took off ALL AT ONCE. There were sirens and klaxons, and the insane roar of a LOT of jet engines screaming up their maximum, and then is started to get quiet. Then the phone rang, dad packed his B4 bag and he was off, for about 10 days.
At the end of that tour of duty, my father got a little of the “prepper” fever. but the best way to survive a nuclear war is to not be anywhere near it when it goes off, so he picked recruiting duty (in 1963!) and we moved to a little town VERY far from any military targets. The nearest city was Springfield, Illinois, and we were well outside the blast radius. Until I joined the Navy, and had to start remembering which was the proper distance to run…..
You are not going to get any rational preppers to show up on Nat Geo.
First- they know better than to let everyone know who they are, and what they have. Thats just dumb.
Second, they know the MSM and Hollyweird are biased against those who take care of themselves, and the truth is that taking care of yourself is boring, mundane, and low-key simple frugality.
Third, theres no incentive for producers to tell the truth- like working hard, paying your taxes, coming home to family instead of dealing drugs on motorcycle, shooting rival mafiosi in Queens, overinflated plastic yuppies Surviving in Hawaii, or skinny emos having a hissy fit over what shred of cloth works best on Runway Wrecks R US.
Doomsday Preppers is just the latest incarnation of Un-reality D’Jour running this week, brought to you from the Wise All Knowing Snark-Minds of the Left. ZZZZ.
Let’s face it, these people have been cherry picked by Nat. Geo. for the very attributes you lampoon. And rightly so. (both you and Nat. Geo.) they’re entertaining and the make the whole idea look ludicrous so as to make the idea less appealing to too many people.
And that’s okay. but really, does any one think for one minute that Nat.Geo. would attempt to find a serious and rational “prepper” and if they found one, do you think they would grant Nat. Geo. permission to film their preparations along with locations and such? I seriously doubt it. I’m sure they would have to offer me more than they’d be willing to pay for such permission. And even then I’d have to think twice about the tradeoff involved.
It’s not farfetched to expect that within 10 years or less, there will be a systemic financial shock that will at the least disrupt the income, the food and supply chain and the security of the United States. Anyone who’s been paying attention, does a tiny bit of research and has a low level of economic understanding (and math) knows we’re living on borrowed time and it doesn’t look like anyone’s trying to effect any real solutions.
Ah well, I tell people who doubt me or look askance: buy water(storage)food, ammo and guns plus anything that will be usable in a 19th century level of technology. Make sure it’s stuff you would normally use or can use if you don’t want to go too far. You’ll thank me.
Regarding 19th century technology, you might want to check out Skyhorse Publishing;
http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/
They have a genuinely huge catalog of reprints of books useful in this area. Everything from U.S. military manuals to actual “in-era” books dating to before World War One, on subjects ranging from barn-raising and blacksmithing to water purification and windmills, and everything in-between.
One of my favorites is Homemade Contrivances And How To Make Them; 1001 Labor-Saving Devices for Farm, Garden, Dairy, and Workshop, a reprint of a “Farmer’s Handbook” first published in the late 1800s. Over 600 pages in a “Farmer’s Almanac”-sized format for $14.95. (Like this one, most of their books are quite reasonably-priced trade paperbacks.)
You might also check out
http://www.hamiltonbook.com/
Edward R. Hamilton Booksellers is one of the biggest backlist/remainder booksellers in the U.S. They stock a lot of books on DIY, crafts, cooking, etc., from many publishers, including Skyhorse. (Their prices are even more reasonable.) They deal only by mail, and turnaround is rarely more than two weeks.
Finally, if you can find them in a used bookstore or antiquer’s den, look for the old 1950s-era Popular Mechanics and/or Popular Science Do-It-Yourself Encyclopedia sets, that used to be sold by the magazines by the “mail book club” method. They are standard-sized hardbacks, and were 20-volume or so sets. Expect to pay about $50 for a complete set in nice shape.
They were alphabetically-arranged reprints of DIY articles from the magazines, many dating to before WW2. If you want to know how to set up a safe septic tank system for a farm, or build a hunting crossbow from scratch, this is the place to look it up. And these books tell how to do all of the above without recourse to “modern” technology, because when they were written, the technology that won’t be around after things fall apart didn’t even exist yet.
And of course, keep in mind that as long as there’s light to read by, “real” books don’t need batteries.
cheers
eon
good tips –remember the ‘whole earth catalog’ –you’d have to be a graybeard –but it ws great –wonder what happened to mine …oh yes, i remember –i forgot to read it, and had to burn it for heat
This series wasn’t mean to be a documentary. It was meant to ridicule the “prepper” movement. Ridicule was one of Alinsky’s main vehicles of attack against the enemies of his revolution.
So, the producers of this show have found the farthest out examples, and particularly ones who don’t entirely know what they are up to, so they can be more easily lampooned. By ridiculing these people, many, in particular the liberals and moderates, will laugh at the whole movement, while others will be less likely to try to prepare for bad things that may or may not be coming.
It also serves the purpose of lampooning very real threats such as storms, power outages, anarchy. Even if temporary these conditions can be very dangerous and some preparation is a good thing. However, preparation is a threat to government control since people could look after themselves rather than rely on government. We’ve seen how this has worked out with Sandy, Katrina, etc. So again, by ridiculing not only the preppers but the very things they are worried about, people will be less likely to take any measures to help themselves in the first place.
The preppers on the show are violating the first rule of Operational Security for a prepper: No one should ever know you are a prepper.
Exactly so. Those people on the shows are going to need their guns because their neighbors now know what they have. More to the point, so will the more dangerous elements in the area.
If there were a few more self-reliant individuals like these preppers here on the East Coast who were not waiting for Grandma Bloomberg or Nanny boy Christie to bail them out, I think the aftermath of this chaos would have diminished a bit. After all, our country was founded on self reliance and hard work. Over the top? Maybe. But when you have so few alternatives to the Statist in chief as he one by one takes away our freedoms, I will grant them some slack as they try to take their future back into their own hands. They are not asking for the government to fund their stores are they? If they were libs/marxists, you can bet they would be doing just that. In fact, I’m just a bit disappointed with the snarky attitudes in this thread. If anyone is erring on one side or the other,I’d much rather it be on the side of self-reliance and independence,rather than doing nothing and waiting for the “govment”to solve all the problems. BTW, anyone heard if those generators in Central Park have been moved and started yet??? Or are they still sitting in darkness….so to speak. HMMM. I’ll bet the preppers would have had generators up and running…Just sayin’….
One has to remember that the true first responder in any serious situation is the person to whom it happens – not the police, fire, and other government agencies. A person needs to be able to provide a modicum of basic care for himself and his loved ones. The victims of Sandy can attest to that fact, for many of them waited for and expected prompt government action to help them. Some are still waiting.
Governments are by their nature slow and inadequate to quickly alleviate pain and suffering. For a person or family to have some level of preparation for disaster relief is perfectly normal and rational thinking. To think otherwise is foolish woolgathering.
nat geo has produced this show to try to persuade people that these folks are conservatives and all conservatives are like this. Just another liberal media propaganda attempt to marginalize those that don’t agree with them. If I were to prepare for some sort of disaster I sure as hell wouldn’t put it on national television.
I’m hoping that next year Nat geo will do a series about New Yorkers waiting around for the government to come to their rescue. (Oh wait! That’s already on the air!)
Think “Source of drinkable water”.
Maybe the reality has sunk in for a few New Yorkers. The second coming of Obama doesn’t mean you have electricity, or running water, or food, or shelter. FEMA closed because of the snow. The Red Cross showed up, but their plan to confiscate donations specifically earmarked for the families of the 9/11 victims told you what you need to know about their relief efforts. How’s big government working for you? Mayor Big Gulp did one heck of a job keeping sodas out.
Go ahead and ridicule those who prepare to survive, National Geographic. I’ll bet a few New Yorkers would be happy to be alive to be laughed at.
I watched the whole of the last season and only a couple of the people showcased had any good ideas. The first episode of the new season taught me nothing. I don’t have a bunker, I don’t see the point of one, but I do have some food & water stored up and bugout bags for the whole family. Preparing for something specific is a waste of time, as nobody knows what might happen, when or how. But natural disasters happen, and wars happen, and being reasonably prepared is a good idea. I remember when watching ‘Cloverfield’ and all the people came out of their tall apartment buildings to stare at the monster throwing a piece of Statue of Liberty at them, nobody had a bugout bag. I can’t imagine living in a place like that, #1 target for terrorists of the world, and not having a 72-hour kit close to hand.
I’ll keep watching the show in hopes that I’ll learn something useful, like dousing eggs in mineral oil to get them to keep for several months from the first season, but since I always watch it on DVR I won’t bother to wait through the useless sections.
Even the real preppers are deluded about government plans for the types of scenarios they attempt to prepare for. Every president since Eisenhower has signed executive orders, and every government agency has drawn plans to implement such orders, that purport to deal with life after doomsday or a huge calamity.
“Hoarders” are targets. All these preppers with months’ worth of food, fuel, etc., will be made to give it all up to troops at gunpoint doing door-to-door searches, and your .38 or whatever just doesn’t stack up to the weapons a platoon at your door will have.
If others nearby are starving and it appears that you and your family are somehow surviving with plenty of food, they will snitch to authorities if they aren’t in a position to take it themselves. And don’t fool yourselves: there will be some sort of authorities, even if they are de facto criminal gangs. Also, if your kids ran their mouths to friends or schoolmates about Mommy and Daddy having lots of stored goodies before the stuff hits the fan, these others will remember—and snitch.
Goodness help the poor loudmouth “preppers” on shows like this. Indeed, they won’t last a week if stuff really happens. And whatever government bodies survive will see to that.
No matter what you’ve stashed, unless you live in fortress with standing guard, anyone with patience can get the drop on you or yours –and the gun pointed at you is gonna take it all –including the gold coins in the safe, which you will open.
The shows main purpose is to wake people up a little. Since the recent hurricanes it is quite apparent that we all need to have some type of food storage and survival gear. I recommend starting out with a simple first aid kit followed by a 72 hour survival kit for each member of the family. When that is complete then storing a week’s supply of water is crucial. Being prepared should start with you.
Read the early 60′s book”Alas Babylon”by Pat Frank and the mid70′s book “Lucifers Hammer” by Niven and Pournelle then make ip your own mind…as for those people showing their stuff on TV,3 from ladtyear have paid a price that I know of…1was committed by his doctor,1was put in jail by the feds for making bombs and1 had his bunker filled in with concrete for zoning violations…huh,go figure
I’d survive for a while on my own with my supplies, then I would die……….a free man!
LOL –GREAT sentiment, Walt!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeLZ6BWpEBY
(only 31 seconds: Old Lodge Skins challenges Death to come out and fight)
Thane has it right. Nat Geo, TLC and the rest of the human zoo collection are about entertainment first, last and in between.
The people who watch them and the writers who mock them are the kind of people who think their lives are perfect and anyone whose lifestyles and choices differ from them are somehow screwed up and worthy of criticism. I have always felt that the need to interfere in others lives with advice and criticism really masks a deep-seated disatifaction with their own lives and an acute inability to face their own shortcomings.
It’s one thing if the “nutjobs” portrayed on Nat Geo et. al. are really screwing up your life, but no MYOB
I’ve carried a spare tire in my vehicle ever since I first started to drive over 50 years ago. I’ve only had one flat tire in all that time, but when it happened I was really glad to have the spare. I see prepping along those same lines in that we try to foresee likely scenarios and plan ahead to make them comfortably survivable. Here in the People’s Republic of California our likely disaster scenario is a really big earthquake that would involve infrastructure collapse and a supply interruption. We keep food, water and fuel supplies on hand so that we can keep operating when that happens. We rotate our stocks to keep the backups fresh and don’t consider ourselves to be “nutobs” for taking those precautions. In my opinion the “nutjobs” are the ones who make no preparations and expect the government to show up and save them. When you look at even a fairly localized disaster like Hurricane Sandy then you can easily see that just isn’t going to happen. Take a lesson.
The quality on the show has definitely gone down since last season. Most serious preppers wouldn’t risk showing themselves on television for a paycheck. The only ones they can find anymore are these trenchcoat mafia types.
On a different note:
http://www.iceman.it/en/equipment
(be sure and navigate around this (cough) Nat Geo/Germany site –that’s a sub URL –i went straight to the ‘equipment’ for a link to print)
Somebody above mentioned Glenn Reynolds’ interest in the overall topic –this morning he has a hotlink up:
CLAIM: Human intelligence ‘peaked thousands of years ago and we’ve been on an intellectual and emotional decline ever since.’
Mr. Larsen, your words commend themselves.
I have to laugh when I hear people quote that horsecrap about Smallpox having been eradicated because the”last naturally occurring case of smallpox was in 1977, and it was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1979.”
Purely apart from whatever unbalanced obsession may be exhibited by certain preppers, we have learned to put LITTLE FAITH in the pronouncements of the incompetent bureaucrats of governmental organizations. The notion that every single case of smallpox in the great wide world has been or CAN BE noted, treated, and recorded is INSANE. You might as well claim that every single individual of all known species has been identified, catalogued, and tagged. It is just another entry in the encyclopedia of monstrous acts of hubris by humans.
Sorry, guys, but there is no WAY of proving that smallpox can only survive in a Human Host. Even if you could — sorry, I just had to chuckle for a while — EVEN if you COULD prove beyond any doubt that Smallpox bacilli no longer reside within any human on the planet, that doesn’t BEGIN TO account for all other possible vectors.
Science has turned to an enormous stinking steaming fetid pile of crap in this century. We entered a new DARK AGE sometime in the last 3 decades.
I’m going to go plant some pease and begin observing the patterns of inheritance, in case anyone still cares.
Sorry, I enjoy the show. When I trave,and if I recognize these fine folks, I will know to avoid them. Yeah it is ridiculous but fun to watch. There was a couple last year burying silver all over their yard. I could imagine the neighbors waiting for them to go to twon and then swarm the yard with metal detectors.