Prepping Hyperbole
Everybody hears from the government on down about being ready to “bug out”; implying if there is a disaster coming such as a hurricane, snowstorm, zombie invasion or perhaps the mother-in-laws annual visit you need to be prepared to go to a safe haven. To this end I want to discuss some thoughts on this wide and varied topic.
Only you can assess what is the danger to you and yours if given an advance warning. All your general preparations may disappear in a tornado, or flood; maybe an insurrection, with swarms of the hungry. Let us first examine one of the most popular National Geographic entertainments on the tube today: National Geographic’s “Doomsday Preppers”.
Each segment is an introduction to individuals, or families FEAR of eminent doom, and their preparations for this grim scenario. Some are concerned about Yellowstone blowing up, others about nuclear war exchange and terrorists. Viral contamination by mutant secret governments of sloppy laboratory conditions allowing some level 5 virus out of the bottle is always popular. Then there are the basic fears: loss of the job, finances, and the national debt. Total economic collapse is the most popular theme in the news media and on the show. If you listen long enough you become a believer.
Throughout history mankind has been sweating something, but these Preppers are stocking up readying themselves for doomsday.
At the end of the show there is the wise one stating facts and figures about fears and lack of preparations. I might even agree with the asteroid crashes since we just had a meteor crash in Russia and another big rock zoom past us, and the moon. The bottom line is not that the Prepper is crazy, but then again not well thought out either. One cannot, when viewing the series add their own advice and comments.
From my rock I would like to feel invincible, after all I have been gaining knowledge and building a self-sufficiency potential lifestyle for 30 years. Every year something just happens to remind me how puny we humans are with our plans for catastrophic survival in the end days.
Perhaps the biggest weakness we have is ego and pleasant-soft living. We extend great energy in time, labor, and especially money, attempting to sustain ourselves at the same standard we had before the castrophy. WRONG THINKING! In a worse case scenario do you think your 15-year-old mall-shopping daughter is going to live on grubs and roots? Is your teenage son big enough and willing to dig out a garden? Unlikely. Is your wife, who usually does all the housework and cooking, ready to bake bread from chaff weedy GMO wheat on a campfire?
One has to assess clearly if you have the proper location for your retreat, or arrange in advance where you will be destined to go if you can get there. Considerations must be made for travel, fuel allocation, food stocks enroute, seasonal clothing and next season’s clothing too. Perhaps your retreat is already stocked? I doubt it. Meth Heads have already looted it.
Most of the Prepper shows view a couple stocking their stairs and basement with foods. There is usually a big gun safe full of guns. They hold drills on poison gas attacks, virus attacks, and mutant zombie attacks, expounding their views as a religion among the neighbors. Everyone knows where the food, guns and medical supplies are located now. WRONG THINKING!
During Y2K some of my religious friends really went overboard and became angered at their pastor because nothing happened except a flood of money in the market place for the would be preppers buying modern convenience aids to support them selves in comfort while everyone else was scratching for grubs and roots. This seems to be an orchestrated-year cycle to maintain agitation, or at least news media laughs at the fearful and desperate.
Oh my God, there will be an electro magnetic pulse (EMP) from the sun, or North Korea, and we lose our national electrical grid and the millions of computers we use including the one under your car hood, will not function. No deliveries to Wal*Mart, no trucks on the road.
So without further ado the Question is why? Why is this a growing phenomenon of fear in the greatest country in the world? People have two instinctual emotions, fear and fight/flight.
The current sweat and hyperbole is North Korea firing nuclear missiles at us and China and Russia joining in. So the sweat and worry increases as the prophets of doom herald: WWIII. This could happen, so if it does and you escape the blast and fall out zones what will you and the millions of others do?
Go live in the woods! That is an option, maybe some remote unpopulated area that you can homestead with your Prepper axe and freeze dried foods. The only problem is getting there, if you know where to go just as the other several thousand refugees head to the hills also. Nobody makes plans.
Maybe you have already built an underground bunker, stocked and hidden in a remote area. This might afford some time to hide but others will follow your tire tracks and you will be feeding the refugees because if you do not, they will overpower you and take what ever you have.
So you drag out firearms, which is a big political issue currently. Let us suppose you have all the evil AR 15 platform semi-automatic rifles you think you need and (like Home Land Security and Social Security), millions of rounds of ammunition. Let us be realistic you are not, I repeat NOT going to be trained to quick response to engage mobs of starving desperate women, men and children descending upon your retreat. First of all, even if you are trained, a semi-automatic rifle, as an effective battle rifle was shown in Korea (1953) to be useless-you needed full automatic weapons, which you do not have, plus a lot of cousins and buddies. Also training your sons and daughters to throw tomahawks structures time and focus, but let’s get real.
Another scenario on the Prepper shows was teaching and assisting the community with guidance and spiritual love so you all could rebuild a new social order. So the masses are living outside your cave waiting months for the carrots to grow. Just wrong thinking. Within 3 weeks people without Wal*Mart shelves are starving and not very nice to be around.
You get my drift. On a more practical note, as an individual family, I suggest a reasonable stock up of canned foods and necessities for hurricanes and short-term disruptions of service. Our Back2theLand.com series for the past several years is full of related articles. Check the archives. If you have questions you can always e-mail me at back2theland@swva.net. I will respond.
FEMA to the rescue is one option, but I think individual self-reliance is important. No man is an island to himself. No Single Mom either.
Considering that anything is possible, it is wise and prudent to have some extra stocks on hand. It is wise and prudent to keep your auto in good shape and full of gas, with spare gas cans-full if you are in harms way, (think Hurricanes). Also have a plan of where you can go, perhaps a relative in a more secure area. Of course that relative has problems too, and lots of forgotten friends knocking on his door.
There have always been catastrophic events that disrupt our lifestyles. Focusing on just one major event in a hundred possible scenarios is WRONG THINKING.
Briefly, assess your worries and write them out. Discuss them with the family and create options with more discussion. Finalize the concerns with goals. Work together. Believe in the system of government, after all that is what we have.
God Bless,
Old Timer,
CIOPYRIGHT: Back2theLand.com, all right reserved, April 2013
