Doomsday Preppers Week 3: Child Abuse
Dr. Tom Perez is a retired chiropractor in Houston, TX. He lives with his wife Monica, daughter Kat, and sons Tommy and Matthew, and they prepare for a terrorist attack (specifically, a radiological dirty bomb). If that happens, and society panics, Dr. Perez plans to bug out to a 700-acre ranch 300 miles to the west in Bracketville, TX, near the Mexican border.
Brackettville was once home to Fort Clark, home to horse-mounted cavalry units from the 1850s up until World War II. It is perhaps best known as the location in which John Wayne starred as Davy Crockett in The Alamo. The Perez family compound borrowed that name for their two limestone homes… rather macabre, when you consider the name is synonymous with a doomed last stand.
Doomsday Preppers, by it’s very nature (hint, the title includes “Doomsday”), finds the most extreme preppers, and the Perez family breaks the mold in more ways than one. The family has spent ten years and more than $2 million to build the compound into a prepper’s fortress, which is to my knowledge the most money spent by any prepper in any season of the show. He has a windmill and concrete cisterns of more than 2,000 gallons.
The two buildings boast bullet-resistant walls, steel bars over the windows, security cameras, and the entire compound is surrounded by a 7′ high barbed-wire fence. He’s “contaminated” 10 percent of the food and water as a trap for those who would steal from him. He has 46,000 rounds of ammunition, enough cartridges, as the narrator points out, to shoot everyone in the entire county 12 times.
He’s armed everyone… including the kids. Kat is 17, Tommy is 12, and Matthew is 6. He drills them weekly. This is where things get real. Watching and writing about the show this season has been something of a lark for me, but that stopped the second I saw the Perez family teaching a 6-year-old boy to shoot to kill.
Matthew seems like a fine youngster of reasonable intelligence, but a child of that age does not have the mental maturity to understand his actions or their consequences. I’m not sure his brother, who is twice his age at twelve, has the maturity to be trusted with life-or-death consequences. I speak to this from the perspective of once having a friend who, at the age of twelve, was forced to shoot and kill a man to defend his mother. He was never the same.
At best, he forces them to kill or maim at an age where they cannot remotely grasp the consequences of their actions. At worst, he turns them into threats needing neutralization. I understand that Dr. Perez wants his family to prepare to defend themselves, but arming children for combat is child abuse.
Steven Vanasse and his family have joined the Perez family at “The Alamo.” A former lawyer and undertaker who bears a passing resemblance to Randy Quaid in both features and mannerisms, Vanasse works as a corporate radiation safety officer. Like Perez, Vanasse wants to teach his teenage daughter Victoria and wife Gobriela to shoot so that they can defend themselves. This is different than deploying your children as soldiers.
Animal rights activists will likely have a fit over this episode of Preppers, and it isn’t difficult to see why. A “rite of passage” for the Perez boys is the slaughter of a trussed-up goat with a knife by slitting its throat. Some will make the argument that in a worst-case scenario, ammunition (remember, they have 46,000 rounds) will be at a premium, and they will be forced to use knives or otherwise “make do” to take game.
As a longtime hunter, I understand the taking of an animal’s life for sustenance, but killing for necessity isn’t what we’re watching here.
We’re watching an apprehensive 12-year-old Tommy slit an animal’s throat so daddy can live out some sort of sick fantasy, as a visibly shaken 6-year-old Matthew looks away from the spurting blood. Tom then wipes blood on their faces as a “symbolic gesture” of their “passage” into “manhood.”
It made me ill to watch.
After the goat-slaying, we’re treated to the Vanasse family bugging out from Houston in full personal protective gear. Houston, TX, is not the place you want to be bugging out from wearing bulky protective suits and without your air conditioner running, but the Vanasse family did so, even thought it left them drenched in sweat. Once they arrived at the compound to a bit of staged drama, the two patriarchs take the National Geographic camera crew to test some “IEDs” they’ve concocted for their defense.
These devices are nothing more or less than tannerite targets with a couple of plastic bottles of flammable liquids and some shrapnel added, detonated by shooting them. It’s the kind of amateurish defensive theater we’ve come to expect from the show, and the shot will be taken from an absurdly conspicuous lookout station, a hunting blind 20-feet above the south Texas scrub brush that is little but a target itself.
Unsurprisingly, there is a hitch.
While Tom Perez successfully manages to engage his target with his long-barreled AR-15 thrust through the window of the enclosed blind successfully, Steven Vanasse is armed with a Sig 551-A1, a Swiss rifle with a shorter barrel that is inside the enclosed space when he fires.
Tom goes down in pain, deafened and nauseous, and they are forced to call an ambulance.
The Preppers producers, with their expected ignorance of firearms, explain that the device on the end of Vanasse’s rifle is a muzzle brake, which directs gasses (and sound) to the side of the weapon to reduce recoil and “increase accuracy.” That is not correct. The Sig 551-A1 shown is configured with a flash-hider, which swirls the gasses to reduce visible muzzle flash, but does not direct the blast sideways. It wasn’t remotely the fault of the gun but of the idiot firing in an enclosed space.
In the end, despite the millions of dollars spent, Tom Perez was laid low by an amateurish decision that almost cost him his hearing. It was a circus of an episode, and easily the most disturbing so far.
****
Check out Bob Owens’ previous reviews of “Doomsday Preppers”:
Doomsday Preppers Week 2: How To Destroy Your Internet Marriage Without Even Trying
The Nuts on Doomsday Preppers Wouldn’t Last a Week
And see Chris Queen’s write-up from season one:
You forgot the business where they staged the off-duty police capturing the parents and older daughter and then having the cops yelling at the two boys to put their guns down or their parents were going to be shot.
These people are idiots, suckered by the Glen Beck survivalist types. They are being mocked with this tv show. Pathetic. Turn off the tv and get a life.
what dose glenn beck have to do with anything? so someone doing their best to prepare their family is stupid to you? i guess katrina victims and hurricaine sandy people are the brilliant ones who relied on govt …and are still without food, shelter, power? exactly how many disasters dose it take and how poorly dose the ‘intelligent’ govt or other DR service have to do to convince you? Can i ask you a question? do you work for a company? if you do chances are they have something called ‘disaster recovery”. its a sytem put in place so they can do full/limited business after a major disaster. it can involve everything from a seperate building and redundant systems to simple backups of data. it is present in every major corporation and many many small companies as well. are they stupid “glenn beck types”? if not then why are people preparing their family to survive stupid? why do you support more people waiting for help from the govt who clearly do not recieve it? do you have insurance? renters, life? then guess what you are a stupid glenn beck type too.
The failures of FEMA and the rest of the gov’t when it comes to disasters are too numerous to count.
That said, does teaching a 6 year old to shoot to kill or making him watch his brother cut the throat of a goat really do anything positive for this kid?
Don’t get me wrong, this show is socially corrosive. It takes a group of people that are VERY extreme and often focused too narrowly on a single disaster that they are exposed to the real problems that common things cause, and makes them look like the standard of disaster preparedness. This has the effect of making gun owners and the people who teach their kids to shoot and hunt look bad. It has the effect of making people who stock up on water and food to get through a power outage after a blizzard or ice storm look weird.
While I no longer watch this show due to my objections towards it, this guy seems like he needs a couple of sandwiches to go with his picnic.
Is it extreme my children have watched deer being gutted and butchered, that both have closely watched me clean fish?
Where do you think meat comes from? Do you think it is made in the back of the supermarket?
Kids are almost always old enough to deal with reality one their level if you see to it they develop the right skills. Knowing that to eat meat you kill an animal is such a truth.
Watching animals being slaughtered and dressed used to be called: living on a farm. Nothing harmful about it.
This show makes me furious because it is obviously intended to demonize “ignerrent right wingers”. Why don’t they just round up a bunch of people into a pile and pee on them? The message would be the same.
I don’t think it is child abuse to teach a child to protect him/herself. I think these people are carrying the notion of preparation a little too far but my own grandchildren have shot guns on occasion–on a regular basis, no. If we were making a stand in our home, it would be useful to have more shooters available. We won’t be bugging out under most circumstances but would be defending ourselves in our own home as necessary. Those children will not be scarred for life by the experience. Better they can take care of themselves than to be victims.
yes and no. its hard for us to understand, but the sad reality is there WILL be a new war soon and kids have been used before..infact ALOT. As SGB stated its not abuse to teach a child to protect themselves and we cant say they have the mental maturity to use a gun for hunting and not the other way. In fact i would state this is far far better than our current beliefe that the public education system is teaching kids to be dependant and weak. We laugh at preppers but in reality we are the fools as far far more of us teach our kids to be dependant and are dependant on the govt for everything including rescue. in fact we are SO dependant that any attempt to be self sufficient we see we must quickly eliminate and lable as bad or “abuse”. Sorry but when you have kids in the hood being raised to be thugs and gangstas, this preppers trainning of his kids to be self reliant is a breath of fresh air and i hope to emulate him with my son!
“I speak to this from the perspective of once having a friend who, at the age of twelve, was forced to shoot and kill a man to defend his mother. He was never the same.”
I’m sure if momma had died it would have been better. /sarc
When SHTF humanity will commit suicide. Murder, rape, looting, all sorts of other crap best not mentioned.
Crap that is worse than a child having to kill.
I think his point was that it would be for the best if the child were never IN the situation where he had to choose to kill or to allow harm to befall his mother.
I’ve taught self-defense to young teens. They’ve had to (successfully) use what I taught them. It has a very negative effect; The knowledge is useful but must be imparted carefully and in a controlled setting, not “Here, Jimmy, knife this immobilized critter so that I can smear blood on your face like we’re in Red Dawn.”
Orion
Ideally hey yeah no child would have to do that…but nothing is ever ideal.
So you plan for it. You plan for that scenario not because you don’t plan on putting as much between that child and danger as possible but because sometimes the worst scenario happens.
Hope for the best but plan for the worst.
“Um…All your careful preparations will be greatly appreciated by the folks who move in within the first day or two – when you’re still well over 200 miles away.”
First day or two of what exactly? The plan for just about anyone with a BoL would be to moniter things and be there before the crapstorm starts.
I speak from the perspective of once having to take a knife to my stepfathers throat because he was choking my mother to death. I was twelve at the time the Sheriff who took my statment looked at the knife I had, it was an 8in. bowie that my uncle had giving me and he said , “thats a pretty big knife for a boy your age”.
I grabbed it back from him and said “looks like I need it”. BTW i had resheathed it after our neighbor held my stepfather at gunpoint until the same sheriffs arrived twenty minutes later no 911 back then. the affect on me was to never trust the defense of myself or my family to anyone. Your comments sicken me, people have learned to lie down and just take it from our goverment when it should be the other way around. I am an honorable discharge combat vet formerly with the 318th FIS, USAF and yes I beleive in being prepared, anyone with a brain would be
“people have learned to lie down and just take it from our goverment when it should be the other way around”. A better term would be sheep. The American people are having their heritage and spirit taken from them in the name of ‘fairness’ and political correctness. Most are too anesthetized to even understand what is happening. My mother was against having a handgun in the house until a day or so ago, when three males were arrested for going house to house, in broad daylight, and robbing people, guerilla warfare. She now agrees to keep the doors locked and learn how to shoot, for her own safety. And if she is harmed by some thug, there will be hell to pay and a lot of it.
Yes – these idiots are doing _several_ things wrong – but “child abuse” is not one of them (for instance, the “IEDs” – an electrically ignited fougasse is easy to make and more reliable; obviously no range gun training, or they would know better than to fire in an enclosed space when not strictly necessary).
Both of my grandmothers were slaughtering chickens by the time they were eight – when they were able to do it reliably. Both grandfathers and my father (mom was a “townie”) were slaughtering pigs and cattle by ten. At least these two boys will realize that food does _not_ come from the little plastic-wrapped package in the reefer bin.
All of them were able to shoot common weapons as soon as they were big enough to handle whichever one it was – shotguns first, then rifles, and handguns last (smaller wrists are very vulnerable to damage with handguns). My children learned basic gun safety as soon as they could walk, and to fire and clean by sixteen – I have very few worries about them going out in the world. And they know the rule – never point a gun at any living thing unless you intend to shoot it – and never shoot it except to kill it (all animals, which includes hostile “humans”).
c/p repost from another comment i made but its a question directed to everyone including the author:
“Can i ask you a question? do you work for a company? if you do chances are they have something called ‘disaster recovery”. its a sytem put in place so they can do full/limited business after a major disaster. it can involve everything from a separate building and redundant systems to simple backups of data. it is present in every major corporation and most small companies as well. are they stupid “glenn beck types”? Has the govt, other institutions done such a fantastic job at helping people after a disaster, that all other attempts are not needed? if not then why are people preparing their family to survive stupid? why do you support more people waiting for help from the govt who clearly do not recieve it? do you have insurance? renters, life? then guess what you are a stupid glenn beck type too.”
As a government Program Manager I can tell you that our government contracts are required to have disaster recovery plans.
As a recent master’s degree graduate I can tell you in both the business Strategic Planning class and the Information Technology classes that disaster planning is not just a good idea, it is a requirement.
To say the truth, typical American homes are absolutely worthless in any disastrous situation especially in winter time. I can’t imagine a two week power outage and gas supply disruption on Midwest in January.
I think it’s somewhat funny that they believe they will find their lovely, prepared, well-stocked – and EMPTY compound still empty when they arrive after hoofing it 300 miles.
Um…All your careful preparations will be greatly appreciated by the folks who move in within the first day or two – when you’re still well over 200 miles away.
Orion
That’s a very, very good point.
It’s all about making them “rightwing extremist” TEA Party “bitter clingers” preppers look crazy… for ratings, of course (the media liberals who run the cable network just want to make conservatives look bad) ’cause Joe and Jane Suburbanite who watch this stuff for entertainment probably don’t know any better and will take this flake who’s seen Red Dawn too many times as representative of any Romney voter or Ron Paul fan.
Yep
I found this piece of writing repulsive and disturbing. This drivel would be best featured in Mother Jones and not on PJ Media.
You tell us a story of a friend forced to kill to protect his mother at a young age and you lament that he wasn’t prepared for the emotional consequences. I must ask, now that you are an adult, do you really presume yourself prepared for the emotional consequences of killing someone? Let me also ask, who do you think would be better prepared emotionally to kill to protect his family: You? Your friend? Or do you think that just maybe the kids in the video would be best prepared?
You also opine child abuse which is a serious and prosecutable offence. Please tell us, now that you have leveled the charge of child abuse, what do you propose we do? Should we go and arrest him? What if he refuses to surrender? Should we then threaten him with deadly force? What if he still refuses to surrender? Do we wound him? Do we kill him? In other words, do we confirm every suspicion for this man and his children that they need to protect themselves against the rest of society?
Your “arming children for combat,” line is pure bombastic duplicity. He is teaching his children how to defend themselves only. Unless you have evidence that Mr. Perez and his family are planning an assault, refrain from slanderous hyperbole.
You clearly wouldn’t teach your children how to use a gun to kill someone. This does not make you a more moral person. Forever, parents have taught their children how to fight, how to hunt, how to kill. That you would interfere in how this man lives his life and leads his family does not make you heroic. It makes you a bigot.
Well put.
Ditto.
Honestly.
If you haven’t caught the drift of what this series is selling, there’s little hope. DOOMDSDAY PREPPERS, which I’ve never watched nor probably will I, is a show whose purpose is to make anyone that is cognizant of the current “fluid” situation in the U.S. feel alone and peculiar.
I have no doubt that any numbers of persons on the frontline of the survivalist movement are…unbalanced. And they are the persons whom the producers of this show will seek out, because weirdness sells. Witness, FEAR FACTOR, another show I know about but never tuned in to. But weirdness is an attention grabber that can sell ideas, too.
Guns and ammunition are literally flying off the shelves with reason. The unease in this country is protracted and profound. We are being told that sovereignty is no big deal, that border and immigration enforcement are no big deal, that high unemployment and unchecked governmental power are just part of the new landscape. We are being told, essentially, that everything we ever believed about the U.S. was not that important and that if you think it is, you have a problem. We are living in a different time and all actions have consequences. For example, being an unwilling guest of your government indefinitely and no charge being levied against you…some would call that extreme.
The show is designed to denigrate, not the few oddballs among us, but the still-normal who are very, very uncomfortable with the dismantling of America as it has existed. The show isn’t about ingrates or the narrow-minded or the simply fearful. But, the show wants to make a comparison of these quirky, outsider misfits to yourselves. It wants to buttress support in the minds of the already converted that these lost souls are representative of all the persons who see the country in a tailspin. In short, the show is about YOU, this board, in the most unflattering terms.
Terence,
I agree with your assessment. The show appears intended to denigrate anyone who prepares, by only showing the circus freakshow side of that movement.
Much of reality TV is trash.
“Hoarders” shows people who collect way too much stuff. Should I then conclude not to ever keep _any_ stuff?
“Intervention” shows people who are hooked on drugs. Should I then conlude never to use medically appropriate drugs?
Various reality shows depict young people who inflict serious emotional pain on themselves and others through toxic romantic relationships. Should we then conclude never to court?
So most of these shows are trash, choosing to show the excess in one particular area of life. I don’t watch them. The difference here is that no one seriously believes we should stop buying things we need, taking medical drugs, or forming human connections in relationships, and the shows do not imply that. This particular show, in the general media/cultural context of contempt for self-reliance, implies that anyone who makes disaster preparations is a nutcase.
My question is why is PJM Lifestyle helping that narrative by fixating on Doomsday Preppers? Where is the discussion of rational preparation, so that it can be used to compare and contrast with the over-the-top theatrical situations shown in Doomsday Preppers? The same could be done with other shows.
This is poor analysis and authorship.
The other thing about those “reality” shows is that they come in with the attitude that they have to save the hoarders, the addicts, the sexual problems from _themselves_. The viewpoint is never from protecting people around them from the problems they may cause – and, in a couple of cases, I have seen that they are _not_ causing a problem for anyone – except the busybodies who can’t leave them alone.
Amusing thing about “Hoarders” – just about every show I see about “Pickers” visits somebody who would be fine fodder for “Hoarders” – but on that show, they are “preservers of history.”
I think with children it’s a very fine line. One that many on this show cross regularly. A lot of these drills go overboard and can embarrass or traumatize the kids. And it isn’t necessary. Instead, spend the time forging them into mature rational young adults who will respond to disasters effectively. Not marching them out onto the front lawn in front of friends and neighbors wearing a goofy looking hazmat suit. If your kid needs a drill to figure out something as simple as putting on an N95 mask he probably isn’t worth saving. What kind of twisted logic is this Perez character using where he thinks his sons aren’t mature enough to learn about terrorism but are mature enough to slaughter a goat. Better to teach them knot-tying or gardening. Forcing this stuff on kids too early can be harmful. Some kids take to it like a duck to water. But if your pre-teen daughter is terrified of guns don’t force her into a survivalist compound where she’s having rifles pointed at her in readiness drills. Like I said, focus on creating a kid with common sense and some grit. That way when a disaster does hit they’ll be ready for anything. Honestly, the only reason to look forward to this show is knowing Bob is going to be writing another excellent article about later in the week.
If your “pre-teen” daughter is terrified of guns – she is _not_ ready to handle “anything.”
However, I will agree that shoving her right into an intensive survival course is not the thing to do. You will have to do a _lot_ of upfront work to deprogram her irrational terror first.
I would bet a TV reality show about Anarchists would be just as weird, more concerning and ignored by the MSM because they would not want their shock troops recognized.
I will admit that forcing a child to butcher an animal when they have no prior experience doing such a thing is cruel. However if you have grown up seeing that sort of thing it is no big deal. If a child sees that on a regular basis, done by his parents, it will not scar his psyche in the least.
Having taken part in butchering farm animals and game since I was a pup makes it no more worrisome than doing laundry. It is a lot of messy work though.
Then again in today’s society I would be considered a total psychopath.
while I agree that this was a disturbing display of bad parenting and cluelessness on the part of these 2 gentlemen and it would have been more useful to know how such a misguided moron amassed wealth enough to retire early with young kids and buy his multimillion dollar compound, lets not fall into the Marxist/Alinsky trap that NatGeo is pulling to mock and marginilize preppers as nut cases. Looking past the theatrics, the threats are real and driving people off the deep end. NatGeoCommies have taken a serious topic that could educate people on boyscout/4H/etc emergency preparedness skills and instead choose a political statement. Even found someone of hispanic origin who did not vote for the Big Zero to do their Alinsky dialectics.
Has anyone considered that if something as catastophic as these scenarios happen….who wants to survive? These people obviously do-and they have made that choice. I agree with the author on the goat, and training a child as a soldier angle. The rest of the “Glenn Beck” stuff is not radical in the least. I wouldn’t do it, but then again there are millions of people in the US alone who have never fired a weapon, and never will. It is a free country, let your freak flag fly baby!!
The critique was fair.
In the first season there was a hippy family who wouldn’t own guns or weapons, instead they were focused on bringing their neighborhood together to be prepared by teaching gardening and other self-sufficiency skills, they said if TSHTF and society turns violent they would rather die than be a part of it. Noble, or stupid? I couldn’t decide.
Noble, or stupid? I couldn’t decide.
Too much pot piece and love. They have no reality based thinking. One of the most basic human actions is survival, that is how we climbed the food chain.
People like this will be the first to go when it happens. They seem to forget bad things happen to good people if they let it.
“..they said if TSHTF and society turns violent they would rather die than be a part of it. Noble, or stupid? I couldn’t decide.”
Said with righteous smiles and full stomachs. Complete bollux. After 2 weeks without food, they would be eyeing up their neighbor kids for dinner.
with the map shown on the program and bing maps it took about 2 minutes to find Brackettville, TX, United States. and five minutes before I was looking at the so called compound its just outside the town about 2 miles to be precise and 200 yards from the road on the left when travelling on 90 in an easterly direction looks lovely complete with burn smudge on the water tank…x
Actually, when TSHTF, the key to survival is banding together: creating a tribe. Pooling your resources for gathering food, fuel and shelter would be essential. The lone wolf has little chance of survival. Keep your knowledge base diversified: the elderly can be teachers, etc. It might be a good idea to learn folk medicine, or the healing powers of native plants. The Bible says the meek will inherit the earth. I have long concluded the Amish have the best chance for survival when TSHTF.
This is a suicidally stupid notion. Homo sapiens CANNOT be reliably tamed. All the meditation and “community” in the world will fall apart pretty immediately as soon as people realize that the world they felt safe in no longer exists and they must fend for themselves and their families. Read Robert Heinlein’s book “Farnham’s Freehold”. A lot of his other books are also relevant, but that one is most directly so.
The very LAST thing any prudent person would do is parade their “preparation” in front of a TV crew. If the worst happens, this family will be one of the first to go.
Most sensible comment in this entire thread.
comeon PJM “child abuse”…really?
I won’t watch the video, but my grandchildren all 7 of them plus Dad, plus daughter in law and daughter’s fiance and in laws all go out shooting before Thanksgiving meal. They don’t shoot animals, they don’t shoot people, but they do shoot clay discs, thrown in the air and targets on the ground. They all know how to handle a gun, take care of it, clean it and the guns are put away in a locked room. My 8 year old granddaughter was shooting targets and hitting them a lot better than I was able to do. The shot gun about took my shoulder off,but the 11 & 13 year old were hitting the clay discs without a problem. It’s a sport in the west and not unusual to do this. I’m glad they are learning how dangerous they are and how to handle them responsibly. I pray they never need them for protection or to use them for food, but if they do they know what to do.
In little towns around the west they survive on deer meat.
I’m a Bambi lover too, and couldn’t do it, but they would starve if they couldn’t and they are independent and would not depend on the gov’t.
Mr. Owens… not quite sure what to make of your piece.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again.
Simply put, this stupid show is put out by leftists who only want to make these people look stupid so that the rest of us will want to depend on but one thing… our beloved government.
Heaven forbid that real people might ever want to take the words “be prepared” seriously.
Good grief.
And let us not forget that the governing class all have tax-payer funded, fully stocked hidely holes. NBGO may mock the preppers, but people have yet to explain the purpose of the International Seed vault located above the artic circle nor the hundreds of thousands of body bags stockpiled by FEMA.
I second what #11 Chris said. Are you suggesting CPS get involved and remove all children from farms? Because it happens there too. Please.
What’s wrong with killing animals? Don’t you eat meat? They bleed animals out when they are slaughtered the kosher way.
TV is controlled by self-satisfied liberals and I unplugged cable a long time ago. Television, unless a documentary, is propaganda run by the liberal elites. Why repeat their talking points? People are put on television in this case to be made fun of or to enforce liberal stereotypes about conservatives.
I take issue with the authors statement that firearms training for children is automatically cast as child abuse. The settlers of the west in the 1800′s did the same out of necessity, and there is no record of anyone in that century labeling gun training as child abuse. The author is casting a liberal and demonizing mindset over the issue, and Bob Owens will be remembering (regretting) his words if ever there is a regional calamity that would cause this family to react in just the way they have trained. Where will YOUR family be Bob? And with what level of preparedness?
As a descendant of a “settler of the west” (my grandmother lived in a soddy as a child), I disagree. They taught their children to hunt, and to use weapons for defense of the home against rattlesnakes and other pests. They taught their children to get a long with the native americans and would routinely share food and other material goods with them (at least according to my ancestors). They didn’t shoot animals just to watch them die and they didn’t shoot people. Most of us who are descendant from these settlers were the children and grandchildren of people who strove to get along with everyone around them so if the SHTF, there would be people to help them.
As to your point about the liberal demonization of self-reliance, you are correct. This show is corrosive and should be taken off TV. If the producers wanted to talk about disaster preparedness, they would talk to people who are sensible and behave reasonably. They choose to talk to the lunatic fringe and then use them to achieve their political and social goals.
Watched several episodes of this show. Most of the preppers are so dumb that I keep watching for accidents to happen. And happen, they will.
Broad Email Spying in America Senate Bill Sets the Stage? By Tom Burghardt Global Research, December 01, 2012
http://www.globalresearch.ca/broad-email-spying-in-america/5312926
One important question: You say that your young friend who killed his mother’s attacker was “never the same”. Did the Mother live to thank her son? If so, she and her son were still “the same” in one over-riding respect, that is, they were both still among the living. Pass the ammo please, and yes, certainly do train your kids how to save your life if needs be.
Have not seen the show although I have seen the effects of Sandy and have met people who stayed despite being told to evacuate. They have damaged or destroyed homes, destroyed vehicles, destroyed businesses, no heat or power entering December in the northeast and are relying on bureaucratic FEMA, the Red Cross and the kindness of strangers to get by.
Who’s crazy?
Links from bad neighborhoods can hurt your rankings, especially in bulk.
Nothing but haters and have opinions on others good preparedness and jealous to see others succeed. Those probably drive purple cars with trojan wheels in glittered purple cars and of course park backwards. Those haters wish they had their stuff together and obviously the show got under their skin to elicite a response your the hook line and sink lol.
Please sign my petition on Change.org to get this show off the air. I watch TV to be entertained, not to be horrified watching a goat’s neck being cut by a 10 year old child. There’s something wrong when it’s ok to show this animal suffering with it’s blood and guts all over the place and you can’t say a swear word on TV.
https://www.change.org/petitions/national-geographic-channel-take-doomsday-preppers-off-the-air-for-slaughtering-live-animals