Prepper

[Sean Hayden]

Are you a prepper? If not then why not? Do you think it's too unlikely that you'd ever need to go to the lengths of a prepper to save yourself or your family? How does your belief in the consequences of global warming square with your lack of preparedness? How many years out from an existential threat are we?

American Preppers Network https://americanpreppersnetwork.com/get ... n-prepping

[laklak]

I'm down with the Preps. Got a big boat, a 4x4, lots of guns and ammo, bag of rice and a 6 pack of Spam. Oh and I got some Vienna sausages too.

Come at me, bro!

[Sean Hayden]

Do you have a network of spider holes spanning several hundred kilometers? What kind of depth charges is your boat packing in the event of a submarine attack? You didn't think of that one did you?

Come, let us talk preparedness...

[laklak]

The bottom of the boat is painted blue, so the subs won't see me. If I'm attacked by aircraft I've got a shotgun, one load of buckshot and those jet turbines are toast, man. Besides, I'm a sovereign citizen and I don't recognize their right to attack me, because there's gold braid on their flag. For spiders I bought a 3 pack of Raid at Costco, got a deal at $9.99. I've got a ziplock bag full of pre-64 silver coins so I'm ready to barter.

This ain't my first rodeo, I've thought it through.

[NineBerry]

I've got several packs of toilet paper and enough tin food for a month stored at home.

Also I have an old school battery-operated radio and enough batteries to operate a flash light for some days.

That's the maximum preparedness I am willing to invest in.

[Rum]

I'd rather die frankly...depending on the nature of the catastrophe of course.

If it was an invasion by the Amazon Vixens from Delta 3 on a mission to harvest man juice to take home and repopulate their planet I might just hang around a while..

[NineBerry]

There are different kinds of events that mean you can't go to the supermarket for some days without a permanent collapse of society:

Extreme weather conditions, a stock crash or bank run, some fault in the electricity network, ...

[Forty Two]

Are you a prepper? If not then why not? Do you think it's too unlikely that you'd ever need to go to the lengths of a prepper to save yourself or your family? How does your belief in the consequences of global warming square with your lack of preparedness? How many years out from an existential threat are we?

American Preppers Network https://americanpreppersnetwork.com/get ... n-prepping

Any preparation that I do, beyond some basic, commonsense stuff, like making sure there are some quantity of non-perishables in the house to live off of, having some extra money around, having a plan as to how to get some fuel, water, etc., for a week or so. Anything beyond that is a fool's errand.

If an area in the US is without power for a month or more, that area will cease to be governable and it will descend into violence quickly. The prep needed will be firepower and a way to keep people out of one's house.

When people have to find food for their hungry kids, they get desperate. Neighbors will take what they need and kill to get it. So, let's say you have a basement full of food. If one of your neighbors knows about it, you can bet they're going to demand to share, and the word will get out. And, people will start going house to house, first asking for stuff, then demanding it. Etc.

The only preppers that will survive are the heavily armed, and the ones that have good transportation to get away from populated areas and remain hidden.

[Forty Two]

There are different kinds of events that mean you can't go to the supermarket for some days without a permanent collapse of society:

Extreme weather conditions, a stock crash or bank run, some fault in the electricity network, ...

"some days" is easy -- people will be happy to help each other through a few days. But, when it stretches to weeks, and it's John Doe's three hungry kids that he has to feed, and Richard Roe comes calling and says i need what you have, then there becomes a problem.

I saw the blackout back in like 2003 in the northeast US, which kept my area out of power for a few days. It only takes a couple of days or less for the supermarkets to be empty and close. the water is gone in three. Then people are boiling what they can get out of their pipes.

Gasoline lines form immediately, and people gas up completely, and fill spare tanks. Gas is gone in a couple of days. Some stations at the time could not operate without power.

We live in a fragile structure. I have great belief in the inherent goodness of human beings. However, I also have a realistic approach to know that when it becomes one person's kids vs another person's kids, we all make the same ultimate analysis, and we will not watch our own in pain or die without acting.

[Rum]

There are different kinds of events that mean you can't go to the supermarket for some days without a permanent collapse of society:

Extreme weather conditions, a stock crash or bank run, some fault in the electricity network, ...

True enough I suppose though in the last 12 years in this house I have had to get candles out exactly twice for an hour or two because the electricity went down.

Personally I'm not going to do more than have a few candles and a torch handy. I'm not willing to spend the relatively short time I have left on the planet worrying about it coming to an end. I did enough of that during the Cold War years.

[NineBerry]

Having enough food for a month at home doesn't require much effort. Spending an hour once every year to renew the stash.

[laklak]

John Doe's kids are next months long bacon.

[rainbow]

There are different kinds of events that mean you can't go to the supermarket for some days without a permanent collapse of society:

Extreme weather conditions, a stock crash or bank run, some fault in the electricity network, ...

We in Africa have learnt to cope with all of that.

Why would we want to worry about an inconvenience to the spoilt First World middle classes?

[cronus]

The important thing is to keep manners during a collapse, from that civilization survives.

[pErvinalia]

Are you a prepper? If not then why not? Do you think it's too unlikely that you'd ever need to go to the lengths of a prepper to save yourself or your family? How does your belief in the consequences of global warming square with your lack of preparedness? How many years out from an existential threat are we?

American Preppers Network https://americanpreppersnetwork.com/get ... n-prepping

I was a mild prepper, to a degree. That's part of the reason why I bought the farm. Unfortunately I couldn't afford to keep it, and now can't afford to prep for next week's sustenance let alone some widespread disaster 10 or 20 years from now. I have no option but to put the idea of a disaster out of my mind. It's part of dealing with my depression. Mindfulness and all that. Living in the moment. In fact it's surprisingly easy to live in the moment when you can literally only afford to live in chunks of a couple of days at a time.

I remember a friend in the Occupy Movement asked me about 7 or 8 years ago how long I thought our current corrupt political/social system could last before collapsing, and while I said it's total guesswork I figured it might be something like 10 or 20 years. I could still be right on the early number if we have GFC 2.0, as the signs are there for another crash. But I suspect it will be closer to the second number, unless we improbably get a utopian robot revolution and we all end up living lives of abundant leisure...

I think pandemic has still got to be a significant threat, although things like that tend to fuck the 3rd world harder than the first world with advanced medical facilities and practices. I think I read the other day that one strain of gonorrhoea has gone super-dooper bug status. Soon we could all die with festering genitals. That should please Crumple no end.

But it will be global warming that will fuck us well and truly in the end. I say we build sea walls, fertiliser, and shade cloths out of the bodies of conservatives who have caused inaction on global warming.