Do you know a Doomsday Prepper?

Ever since Katrina, and after reading One Second After, our family has been slowly been building systems to allow for a sustainable lifestyle off the grid.

One Second After was a riveting book. It made me look at my power outage preparations in a whole different light.
 
SaraJayne said:
Actually, watching DoomsDay Preppers makes me feel completely sane and not the least bit paranoid. :)

I tell my husband that we watch because the folks on that show make me look so very reasonable. All I want is a big ol' garden, an itsy bitsy backyard orchard, rain barrels... Nothing extreme. ;)
 


I tell my husband that we watch because the folks on that show make me look so very reasonable. All I want is a big ol' garden, an itsy bitsy backyard orchard, rain barrels... Nothing extreme. ;)

I know that may be a bit TIC, but really, most rural people used to have big gardens, small fruit trees and rain barrels, when you had to be more self-reliant. :)
 
Nope, we are not at all. I usually have about 2 weeks of food in the pantry/freezer - if we ate efficiently AND it was winter so I could put the freezer food in coolers outside when the power went out. I usually have a couple of cases of bottled water, because the kids like to drink it. We usually have 2 bottles of propane for the BBQ, so we could cook till those ran out. I have up to 3 months of prescriptions meds, because that's how KMart fills the generics, but you can't refill controlled substances until you are close to running out, so I'd be out of those pretty quickly too. We have candles, but no matches, because we use the click-style lighter to light them! :lmao: DH has 3 guns, one hunting, one .22, and one BB, but no ammo in the house at all except a box of BBs because that's the only one he ever shoots regularily when he goes out to shoot cans in the woods with his buddies. :confused3 He also has a compound bow and arrows, but it would probably need re-strung as he hasn't used it in years.

As for the "living in the woods, off the land" end of the world scenario - oh HECK no!! My idea of "roughing it" is a motorhome in a campground with flush toilets and paved walkways. I am NOT camping-out material. I would stay in my own bed till the house fell down around me.

We do have one set of friends - more acquaintances really - who are serious preppers. They have enough wood for the woodstove for three years at least, a whole menagerie of animals including chickens for eggs, goats for milk, and pigs that they raise for meat. Each year they slaughter, cut up, and freeze all the pigs and lots of the chickens, and they hunt for ALL the rest of their meat. She can make goat cheese and butter, they drink goat milk, and they grow a garden and can everything. She makes her own bread, and last I heard, was experimenting with pasta. I think the only things they actually buy are flour, rice, baking supplies (salt, baking powder, etc) and dry grain cereals. Her husband owns so many guns and so much ammo that I think even he has lost track. They are serious anti-UN, anti-government paranoid "the black helicopters are watching us" types, and they homeschool their kids, so the kids believe the same thing. DISCLAIMER: I have no problems with homeschoolers, but it is kind of sad when a kid can lecture on the evils of the UN but can't tell me what 9 X 2 is.

I would like to say that these people are extreme, but in my area, they aren't. :worried: They are more the norm and think that WE are foolish and unprepared. That's Ok though, I firmly believe I have nothing to fear but random weather events, and I am Ok with those.
 


I know that may be a bit TIC, but really, most rural people used to have big gardens, small fruit trees and rain barrels, when you had to be more self-reliant. :)

Totally TIC. :thumbsup2 We live in a small town and around here most people do have at least some of those things (and did before they became trendy/green, back in the days when you hung laundry to save money not to save the earth! :lmao:). Our location would probably be our biggest asset in a "doomsday" situation - a small, close-knit town with lots of old school rural types who know how to "get by" without a lot of modern conveniences. That's something that has come to annoy me about the Doomsday Preppers show - with the exception of a couple segments in the first season they all seem to be focusing on isolationist, me-against-the-world methods rather than community building, and I don't think any amount of stockpiled ammo can replace having friends/neighbors/family watching out for each other.
 
Actually, watching DoomsDay Preppers makes me feel completely sane and not the least bit paranoid. :)

Think about it. when it happens, THOSE are the people that will be left. Do you want to be left on Earth with them? Ummmm, NO! :rotfl2:
 
I have a relative whom I think is a prepper, stockpile of weapons, ammo, wife cans, they grow their own food and they also make their own furniture, do their own home repairs, etc. But then again, they live in the land of the free and that seems to be a way of life for everyone who lives there.

i have small kit prepared... i do have some odd things in there that emergency kits usually dont have...

aka throwing knifes and throwing axes... :P
Too poor for a handgun.

Yes, but when they run out of ammo (and unless they have the skill and tools to make their own, they WILL run out) you'll still have a usable weapon. :thumbsup2
 
I have a relative whom I think is a prepper, stockpile of weapons, ammo, wife cans, they grow their own food and they also make their own furniture, do their own home repairs, etc. But then again, they live in the land of the free and that seems to be a way of life for everyone who lives there.



Yes, but when they run out of ammo (and unless they have the skill and tools to make their own, they WILL run out) you'll still have a usable weapon. :thumbsup2
Wife cans?????
 
Think about it. when it happens, THOSE are the people that will be left. Do you want to be left on Earth with them? Ummmm, NO! :rotfl2:

Beau, can I come and hang out in your bunker? :flower3: I know you said I could friend you on FB. Since I don't do FB, I couldn't do that. But, I'll eat some of your canned goods if that's alright? :yay:


:rotfl:
 
I don't know anyone IRL that is a prepper, but the TV show is interesting! Prepping takes a lot of $$ and time! My dd likes when they say "bug out vehicle." :rotfl: Dd and I laugh, but if the stuff does hit the fan I told her that the preppers will be having the last laugh! :)

The extent of our prepping is that I do stock up a little bit on food when it's on sale (that's more of a financial thing and not a prepping thing) so I might have more of an item, such as soup, on hand than usual now and then. If we know a hurricane or ice storm is coming, we'll make sure we have supplies to get us through that. That's about it.

It would be hard to be a prepper where we live. I think it's harder to be a prepper in the city than in the country where you have space to prep.
 
Totally TIC. :thumbsup2 We live in a small town and around here most people do have at least some of those things (and did before they became trendy/green, back in the days when you hung laundry to save money not to save the earth! :lmao:). Our location would probably be our biggest asset in a "doomsday" situation - a small, close-knit town with lots of old school rural types who know how to "get by" without a lot of modern conveniences. That's something that has come to annoy me about the Doomsday Preppers show - with the exception of a couple segments in the first season they all seem to be focusing on isolationist, me-against-the-world methods rather than community building, and I don't think any amount of stockpiled ammo can replace having friends/neighbors/family watching out for each other.

Absolutely. In pioneering days there seem to have been rugged individualists who would've felt right at home with the preppers, but there were a LOT of people who built communities out of whoever came along and settled within 5 or so miles of them. The people who built communities tended to do better when there were serious emergencies - I've done a LOT of research into one such community from about 1850 to 1880. There was a drought in this area during the Civil War when outlaws, the Confederates and the Union ALL came through and took everything everyone had. They should've all starved to death, but I've found records where everyone in the community was recorded along with their assets and foodstuffs so what little there was could be distributed to keep the entire community alive. (One community member, who had about 20 kids that he married off to almost every other family in that community, was actually on the lam for a murder, but I'm discovering seems to have been an orderly to a general in the Mexican War - his homestead apparently was NOT raided by the Union or the Confederates in the war and seems to have been off limits to both - I think his supplies probably kept a LOT of people from starving.)

It's a much better, much stronger survival technique than trying to out supply everyone else and go it alone. If it ever came down to the the end of civilization, we'd go to a piece of land we know of that isn't populated, and so would most of the people we know well. The farming there isn't the greatest ever, but it's tolerable for small gardens, and there's enough wild game and wild foodstuffs to survive. (After all the American Indians in the region built nice civilizations pre-farming; it can be done.)

A community will survive better than one person - preppers seem to be fixated on the notion that no one will come and try to take their foodstuffs or that 2 people can fend off a hundred. . .maybe, but that would be a sad way to survive.
 
Absolutely. In pioneering days there seem to have been rugged individualists who would've felt right at home with the preppers, but there were a LOT of people who built communities out of whoever came along and settled within 5 or so miles of them. The people who built communities tended to do better when there were serious emergencies - I've done a LOT of research into one such community from about 1850 to 1880. There was a drought in this area during the Civil War when outlaws, the Confederates and the Union ALL came through and took everything everyone had. They should've all starved to death, but I've found records where everyone in the community was recorded along with their assets and foodstuffs so what little there was could be distributed to keep the entire community alive. (One community member, who had about 20 kids that he married off to almost every other family in that community, was actually on the lam for a murder, but I'm discovering seems to have been an orderly to a general in the Mexican War - his homestead apparently was NOT raided by the Union or the Confederates in the war and seems to have been off limits to both - I think his supplies probably kept a LOT of people from starving.)

It's a much better, much stronger survival technique than trying to out supply everyone else and go it alone. If it ever came down to the the end of civilization, we'd go to a piece of land we know of that isn't populated, and so would most of the people we know well. The farming there isn't the greatest ever, but it's tolerable for small gardens, and there's enough wild game and wild foodstuffs to survive. (After all the American Indians in the region built nice civilizations pre-farming; it can be done.)

A community will survive better than one person - preppers seem to be fixated on the notion that no one will come and try to take their foodstuffs or that 2 people can fend off a hundred. . .maybe, but that would be a sad way to survive.

Yes, I think after the initial shock & hub-bub, it will be back to the ways of the pioneers trying to settle the West again. The best books, movies & research to do is to read up on how all the pioneers & settlers survived.


Even in Road Warrior, Mel Gibson was able to defeat the enemies circling around the compound by the whole group banding together and distracting them while someone saved what was left of the gas.

4 Days after Hurricane Sandy, gas was one of the first things we ran out of. :eek: It really reminded me of Road Warrior, with people fighting over gas. One guy in NJ even pulled out a gun on another person in line. :sad2: Luckily the police arrived. Except later, they started making rules that the gas needed to be reserved for police, fire & emergency vehicles while regular people waited in lines for hours to get some gas. :eek: Things will not end well at the end of the world. :(
 
Beau, can I come and hang out in your bunker? :flower3: I know you said I could friend you on FB. Since I don't do FB, I couldn't do that. But, I'll eat some of your canned goods if that's alright? :yay:


:rotfl:

:flower3:
Bring craft stuff. We can keep busy. :D
 

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