prepper arguements

[akgriffin]

I recently had a very heated discussion about prepping with my oldest son. He is in the army intel business, also working on a masters in areonautical engineering, so he's pretty smart (he got it from his momma's side). It was around thanksgiving and the natgeo show doomsday prepper was on, an he asked me if i was one of those idiots. I told him i lookin at different ways ppl prep up, and said i already have a stash going of food and other stuff. He laughed and said people in the US would never starve / the country won't go the way of greece. He pointed out of the people from SS sandy in the NE US are not starving or doing without. I am a history buff, so my hackels shot up fast. I harken to him learn about the depression era/ dustbowl ere, back when ppl would grow thier own food, and not run to wal-mart every other day, and how nature didnt feed everyone during the dust bowl, or the government destroying millions of hog's for price fixing during the depression. He just cant see stores or ppl running out of food, or necessities for a long period of times anymore. It started making me wonder why people are so agianst prepping for some problem, ie, tornadoes in this area. I for myself prep alittle extra for his family if he was to come home in a troubling times. People dont can food, garden or live a self sustaining lifestyle anymore, granted by self sustaining country living, not hippy communial, tree hugging type. only tree im gonna hug is if a hog run's me up one. Do you keep tryin to show them the rightness or do you just not say anything anymore?

 

[Johnjosiah]

I'm not a hard core prepper but believe that some degree of self sufficiency is prudent. Odds are against a long term collapse but historically it has happened many many times in the past. I don't argue. I just give my opinion and try to plan for some extra for my immediate family.

 

[BadgeBunny]

He's young. I'm not too far removed from the attitude he has now. He'll learn. He has you to learn from. As long as you don't try to teach him what he's not ready to learn. (I know ... I learned this lesson the hard way.)

Prep for him and his (if he has a wife and/or kids) as best you can and try not too be judgemental, even if he is being a horse's arse ... Remember when you were young and knew it all??

 

[shooterdave]

^^^^^^Still am,still do!!^^^^^^^

 

[Lurker66]

Good advice from BB.

My son n laws, daughters an wife think i go overboard with talking about prepping. So im bringing them around slowly. I started with guns because they all like to shoot(except my wife). Theyre getting BOBs for Xmas.

Because of the ice storm and power outage, a 2010 Tornado and power outage and the wildfire, my family is comming around pretty good.

I dont really prep for a total government collapse/rebuild type of shtf, rather, natural disaster type preps. BTW i do have a plan for govt collapse, i just dont talk about it with my little sheeple family.

 

[jstndrfr]

I prep some, and am really worried about our govt's spending. If China ever stops buying our dollars, look out, this could un-ravel in a hurry and might take months to get back to some sort of normalcy.

Lots of my friends think im nuts talking about this, but I contribute it to one thing.

Normalcy Bias

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias

 

[30BulletHoles]

I recently had a very heated discussion about prepping with my oldest son. He is in the army intel business, also working on a masters in areonautical engineering, so he's pretty smart (he got it from his momma's side). It was around thanksgiving and the natgeo show doomsday prepper was on, an he asked me if i was one of those idiots. I told him i lookin at different ways ppl prep up, and said i already have a stash going of food and other stuff. He laughed and said people in the US would never starve / the country won't go the way of greece. He pointed out of the people from SS sandy in the NE US are not starving or doing without. I am a history buff, so my hackels shot up fast. I harken to him learn about the depression era/ dustbowl ere, back when ppl would grow thier own food, and not run to wal-mart every other day, and how nature didnt feed everyone during the dust bowl, or the government destroying millions of hog's for price fixing during the depression. He just cant see stores or ppl running out of food, or necessities for a long period of times anymore. It started making me wonder why people are so agianst prepping for some problem, ie, tornadoes in this area. I for myself prep alittle extra for his family if he was to come home in a troubling times. People dont can food, garden or live a self sustaining lifestyle anymore, granted by self sustaining country living, not hippy communial, tree hugging type. only tree im gonna hug is if a hog run's me up one. Do you keep tryin to show them the rightness or do you just not say anything anymore?

Actually people living in the aftermath of Sandy are doing without, mostly because people didn't prepare. I have a friend that used to live in Hoboken,NJ and has a lot of family that lives there. I asked her if her family and friends had made preparations for the storm several days in advance. She replied that all they were worried about was piss poor weather for Halloween. When the storm hit they were screwed, no power, no heat, no food other than what they had at home, no gas.

Bottom line, when a disaster happens locally, region wide, nationally or globally you are all alone and no one is going to help you. People on the news during the Sandy aftermath weren't praising FEMA for their help, they were raising hell because they couldn't get help fast enough if at all.

 

[shotty]

Younger adults have never been without the net, or cell phones. I think we are actually getting dumber generation by generation. Skills other than texting and posting videos are pretty much in decline. Just because the s**t hasn't hit the fan yet, doesnt mean it's not going to in the future. Saying everything is OK and always will be is not realistic. Rant over.

 

[rmark]

'and how nature didnt feed everyone during the dust bowl, or the government destroying millions of hog's for price fixing during the depression.' These contradict themselves, you're claiming both under and over production. Historically speaking, the number of people producing their own food has fallen as it was a good trade off, making more money at other tasks while purchasing food at the market. Famines have usually been man made with food shipments restricted (china late 1940's)or as a result of an area being dependent on a single foodstuff for most of their calories (irish famine 1840's).

And a lot of people after Sandy are in trouble, as after every hurricane. It's hard to bring supplies in when the roads a covered by debris.

 

[rmark]

Probably we won't be Greece, they are constrained from devaluing their currency due to being in the Euro. Our debts, public and private, are in US dollars, inflation is more likely, or something like the 1970's stagflation.