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Doomsday Conspiracies, Prepping and...I'm scared

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There is nothing at all wrong with having a healthy respect for life guys! Just because you have squeamish feelings about killing something does NOT make you a wimp or a wuss.
But to try and put some perspective on this....animals kill and eat other animals all the time and have been doing it since the dawn of time.
If you get into a situation where you have to kill for food, treat your kill with respect. It will help allay a little bit guilt you may have.
Cultures for thousands of years have thanked and honored animals for feeding thier families and giving them clothing and shelter and the means to survive. Think on that when you feel squeamish.
 
Nicely stated exo-doc. I hate killing anything, not even mosquitos, ants, spiders, etc etc.. But I will kill something if I need to eat.
 
I suppose if it came down to my kids starving or a chicken dying, the chicken would lose out in that particular case. I remember having to shoot a rabbit in our back yard, one time, and feeling horrible about that. Our cat had lamed it and it was going to die. Bah, maybe I'm just too much of a wuss.

On a side note, this weeks episode of Doomsday Preppers was lame. They had a guy on there who had bought a retried US missile silo and was looking for a wife to help him convert it into the "ultimate bunker." They showed him go on three dates in one night, each girl he almost immediately told what he was planning to do. Utterly pathetic as he nearly opened with, "How good of a shot are you with a gun?" or "I bought a retired US missile silo and I'm preparing for the end of the world. I need someone to prepare with me. What are your thoughts on that?" One girl was stupid enough to go on a second date with him the next night. That date consisted of him taking her to the bunker (blind folded, of course, so she wouldn't steal of his food if doomsday came and things hadn't worked out between them) and showing her around. Now, I've ghost hunted in some pretty dilapidated and scary places, but this bunker trumped all of them with sheer crappiness. The show ended with a prologue. He never saw the girl again but was still going into extreme debt fortifying the bunker.

I suppose that show is my version of white-trash "low-hanging-fruit" entertainment. Though I prep for what I would call reasonable disasters, watching that show just makes me laugh and yet I'm fascinated by it at the same time.

Reminded me of this

wanted-good-woman-must-be-able-to-cook-clean-sew-dig-worms-and-clean-fish-must-have-boat-and-motor-please-send-photo-of-boat-and-motor.jpg
 
There is nothing at all wrong with having a healthy respect for life guys! Just because you have squeamish feelings about killing something does NOT make you a wimp or a wuss.
But to try and put some perspective on this....animals kill and eat other animals all the time and have been doing it since the dawn of time.
If you get into a situation where you have to kill for food, treat your kill with respect. It will help allay a little bit guilt you may have.
Cultures for thousands of years have thanked and honored animals for feeding thier families and giving them clothing and shelter and the means to survive. Think on that when you feel squeamish.

Life feeds on life and has done since time out of mind.

But to set the record right where this thread concerns me.. I am prepared out of convenience and not what you would call a classic prepper. Hell a series of really big quakes right under where you live has a tendency to wake you up a little I can tell you. But like Mike I hate the supermarket thing and tend to keep spares of stuff as it is.. I don't know but it feels like an old school Kiwi way of doing things anyway as my grandfather etc all did the same and growing your own food is some what of a tradition as well.
 
seriously. if you were worried about doomsday, and bought like loads of water and guns and some space food well thats not going to last you for any serious amount of time.

If i was serious, I would live above a survivalist store, large survivalist store. or i would manage my own supermarket and have some titanium shutters.

alternatively i would get a job at the Eden project
eden-project.jpg

and sleep in a bio-dome nd keep a secret stash of weapons in the begonias.
 
Anyway isnt the people in Doomsday Preppers like the people in Hoarders but who are anally retentive?

Yeah, but that's kinda the point. It's funny because they keep advertising for people to come on the show. I think it's actually a case where the ratings and success of the show are high enough to well keep it going but that they don't have enough preppers who believe in doomsday taking extreme measures to fill the hour every week.

Seriously, if I had the money to by a bunker and such I would go on the show. My doomsday scenario? Alien invasion/contact. No joke...well maybe half a joke.
 
I read an interesting article about the history and origin of prepping; from back in the 1950's, stemming from the fear of atomic/nuclear attack. That fear inspired people to bury underground shelters or put dirt around the windows of their basements and store up on food and water. Once people started looking into that rather real threat, others started coming out of the woodwork, inspiring paranoia and fear.

The biggest list of prepping fear is the collapse of the global, or national, economy, polar shift, super-volcano eruption, effects from global warming, nuclear exchange, pandemic, etc.... Eh, I'm just trying to prep for the next tornado outbreak, or brown-outs from the next moderate heat wave.
 
Crap, yes I forgot meteors.

Ya know, I love The Walking Dead and a decent zombie movie but damn, there are people out there who sincerely believe that a zombie apocalypse could happen. I do not get it.
 
secretly i would love a zombie apocalypse. er i think..:(.

i'm not sure if i can watch ddpreppers as i just rock the free view, but i'm sure it would be something that i would be obsessed with.
 
No, you keep the weapons in the lilies. The extra food goes behind the begonias.

Jees. Amateur!

:rolleyes:


as a side note imagine an event happened that wiped out the entire human race but trapped in the bio dome you were given birth to in the Eden project, your mother dies but names you Adam and and you grew up trapped in the Eden project with only yourself a female companion and access to a visitor's computer which happens to be an Apple. ..
 
Crap, yes I forgot meteors.

Ya know, I love The Walking Dead and a decent zombie movie but damn, there are people out there who sincerely believe that a zombie apocalypse could happen. I do not get it.

I don't get it either, I spoke to my sister awhile back who is in her first year of college and she was telling me about a class she took (I forgot to ask what the class was actually supposed to be about) where they were discussing possible end of the world scenarios. The teacher divided the students up according to how they believed the world was going to end and the two largest factions were, and I'm not making this up, zombie apocalypse and God. I was flabbergasted to say the least. One wonders what was being taught, it certainly wasn't critical thinking.
 
The biggest list of prepping fear is the collapse of the global, or national, economy, polar shift, super-volcano eruption, effects from global warming, nuclear exchange, pandemic, etc.... Eh, I'm just trying to prep for the next tornado outbreak, or brown-outs from the next moderate heat wave.

It would never work as a TV show, but I would be interested in seeing people who, as you say, prepare for regionally probable/possible disasters rather than preparing for a specific and statistically unlikely end of the world scenario. Doesn't it make sense to prepare for things that have or may happen where you live?

The topic of survivalism always fascinated me. When I was a kid in the 80s, there were all these Soldier of Fortune and survivalist/paramilitary magazines on the market. I loved them all. Were they appropriate for an elementary school student? I don't know. I turned out normal (ha!). But one mag, I think it may have been Eagle, had a comic strip called, I think, The Survivalist. I really dug it.

As an adult, I still find it an interesting topic, and here are my armchair survivalist thoughts on it:

Regarding militia groups and such, that sounds like a dismal prospect. I suspect that, should a disaster strike, the people who will be helping you survive will be the same people who help you move. The last time I moved, there were a few people who said they wouldn't help move stuff, but they could help us organize. They are the administrators of life. They are dead weight. The people who carry boxes or at least pick up beer and pizza? These are your mates. They will help you survive.

That brings me to my next point. The odds of a lone survivor or small group making it alone seem pretty low, the worse things get. You can have the best bunker or fortified abandoned missile silo in the world, but if you're the only one in it, you have to sleep some time. You can be burnt out or smoked out of the best fortress. Having friends, family, and community would be crucial in a long-term emergency.

I should probably emphasize stable and sane family and friends. While I don't have any experience with prepper groups, I do have experience with a number of other subcultures. All of them tend to have a certain number of people who have basically failed in the real world, and so they try to carve a new identity for themselves in a microcosm. Will these people actually become more socially adaptable in a crisis? I doubt it. You don't need people who are burying school buses to use as shelters. You need people who can drive buses or better yet, repair and maintain them.

That is to say, I would emphasize the value of skill sets. I'm probably pretty screwed in a long-term social meltdown, but the further back I go in my family tree, the more I see people with skill sets. There were liverymen, butchers, and farmers. Most of them had skills which would have improved their survival odds. They could take care of horses, properly prepare meat, take care of livestock, and farm crops. They brewed beer. Or they were physically hardened from mining. My office job, and many other modern jobs, does precious little to provide a useful skill in a crisis. Maybe instead of dumping money into highly improbable shelters, some of these preppers should take automotive repair classes, or learn some other skill that may be of value to others. In a long-term crapstorm, one will need to be part of a community, and it would probably be good to be of some benefit to that community. Charity only lasts for so long.

But what sort of crisis situations might occur? While I don't know what say, a polar shift or 2012 will bring (oh, wait), we can certainly look at what happens in other parts of the world. What happened during Hurricane Katrina? What's going on in Central America or sub-Saharan Africa? These probably provide some clues for what a realistic survival situation might be.

The topic of hunting often comes up in regard to survivalism. I have limited experience with hunting, and I was only successful when hunting with a group of experienced people. Even then, it was a lot of work and you burn a lot of calories. And that's the issue. If you're spending more calories than you are consuming, you have a problem. Even if you're in a tree stand, if you wound the animal, you now have to track it. And if you're spending the day in a tree stand or blind, you're not spending the day raising livestock or growing crops or doing services for people in exchange for supplies. There's a reason we moved away from being hunter-gatherers. It's really hard, and if you screw up, you die. I'm sure people can and do survive off hunting, but I suspect they mostly do it in groups and have fairly advanced skill sets. While I cannot speak from experience, I imagine trapping to be a much more energy efficient process, and raising livestock or crops to be even more efficient. Or really, if you can have enough poultry eggs, I think eggs are the most efficiently used protein source.

But when it comes down to it, I think that most of the prepping stuff is more of a hobby or game for people. And why not? Target shooting with gun or bow is fun for many people. Many people find hunting, fishing, gathering, farming or gardening to be fun, and at worst you've learned a skill, had a nice day outdoors, and hopefully have a more natural and healthy source of food. Much of the equipment can be used for camping. I'm a big fan of homebrewing cider. It's way cheaper than buying beer and I like it much more (which might not be a good thing). I look forward to gardening in the spring and want to start canning some stuff. Life doesn't have to be about fear and paranoia. We can also prep for good things.

Sorry for being long-winded.

By the way, it's also good to get a hockey mask and dune-buggy PA system:
 
Thanks for the input Konrad. It was entertaining and brought up solid points. The show Doomsday Preppers use a consultation firm called Practical Preppers to 'rate' the prepping tactics guests on the show employ. One of the biggest recommendations they give is having a plan to network with other preppers. They believe, and stress, having a prepping community where people with, as you stated, different skill sets combine to increase the odds and chances of survival. I think there is an argument for a lone-wolf reply in some instances, at least, but over all being a community and working together is a much better method of weathering a storm. After all, human beings have been living in communities since the inception of our species, and that's because it works so well.

Myself, I'm taking what I learn about prepping to the camp site. I'm getting into outdoors, camping and hiking more and a lot of that skill set blends into prepping itself....skills such as fire building and knot work. For me the serious side of prepping is the natural disaster aspect (local, rather real threats), and the rest is learning new things as well as marveling at the over dramatisicm involved in the interest. There are so many parallels between the prepping world and UFO/Paranormal interest it's not even funny.

It is fascinating, though, and blends in with several of my other more recent interests; 1950's life, early modern UFO research, b-rated UFO movies, atomic/nuclear development, and conspiracy theories involving all that stuff.
 
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