Any Preppers out there?

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Any Preppers?

A Prepper is someone who is preparing for some major calamity. Some concerns people have are world war, pole shifts, energy crises, financial collapse and so on.

A Prepper can be as simple as someone who is reducing debt or moving to a location that enables them to grow food and keep away from larg population centres where they perceive the trouble will hit first.

For some, dependent where they live and their circumstances, its way past the Prepper concept; their reality is crisis and calamity.

In my case, I am reducing debt, watching the media and general economic trends like a hawk. I am slowly working myself into a position to disappear into the countryside sometime in the next 10 years.

I am a Malthusian meaning that I believe that resource depletion will finally cause our undoing. I also don't believe we will be able to innovate our way out of it this time. We invented steam engines, electricity etcetera in the past, but I think this time we are stuffed. Hey, I hope I am wrong but I believe we will see the collapse of modern civilisation in my lifetime and I am 44 years old.

I've been very interested in "survivalism" for just this reason... in the event of society collapse I'd like to be able to survive. There've been plenty of recent examples of how quickly humans become feral beasts who'll gladly murder a whole family over a can of beans.

I forget who said, "Total anarchy is never more than nine missed meals away."

Na, there will be plenty of half-dead humans to be eaten

And um, realising that those with AS might take my idea of eating half-dead humans as a serious statement. Hereby declare that I was joking; I think ... I will never know if I would actually eat a human unless I actually get so hungry that I would die unless I went cannibal. There is a famous story about the Uruguayan soccer team who ate their dead team mates when their plane crashed in a remote part of the Andes in 1972. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Andes_flight_disaster

The movie/book "The Road" went into that at length... with the world dying all around them and plants no longer grow, the survivors quickly formed into one of two types - those who would and would not be cannibals. Needless to say, a world of "every man for himself" is an extremely ugly one.

The best and worst of humanity was revealed in crises like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans... and there was more evil than there was good.

I hate the idea of guns... but I might want to consider survival rifle training including maintenance & repair. I'd also like to learn lots of other survival techniques like how to get/filter safe drinking water, find edible plants in the wild... maybe even get some important gear. Part of me has always wanted a Geiger counter, though wide-spread nuclear war is still unlikely (small-scale car/suitcase nukes are the big threat now...)

The ex-wife may not love me, but she might finally appreciate my ability to keep the family alive!


Did you know there's a number of whack-jobs out there actually trying to engineer the collapse of civilization? They see all corporations as bringing on a massive collapse, so they want to blow things up and make a collapse happen on their terms. Somehow they think that, with anarchy under their rule, the world will return to a lush and green paradise... they say in no uncertain terms, they want mankind to return to the stone age in order to save the planet. Really.

One of the key reasons I moved to New Zealand is its geographic location and low population. I am originally from South Africa.

Oh yes, must add (about those people who want to bring down civilisation) that they will be back peddling real fast when they see what civilisation collapse looks and feels like. However, I think that banning gold mining (for example) would be a responsible and civilised step in the right direction; I mean the stuff is pretty but rather useless. The damage caused by gold mining is incredible. However, I don't think blowing up mining operations is the way to go.

A nice and civilised deconstruction of our massive urban cities would be a good idea. Can't see this happening, but people will be needing to grow their own food. Can't see the population of inner New York coping when the food and drink stops getting transported into it.

Pretty much the same. I think it's important to focus on what we know is happening and keep a keen eye on what some of the 'conspiracy' theorists belive is happening, whilst maintaining a healthy degree of scepticism about anything we don't have personal experience or direct proof of. Everyone has an agenda - whether personal (eg just to survive at all costs) or as part of their wider ideology. If it's possible to work out the real wider ideologies behind those who are most vociferously advocating certain courses of action (whether that be the governement or Ian R Crane telling us we should all max out our credit cards in order to stock up on tinned goods), then we could all take whatever action we feel appropriate with confidence. The problem is that there's a big game being played out at the moment and I don't htink it's any coincidence that it's hard to work out exactly where the truth lies!

Personally, I've no intention to put myself further in debt to stock up on dried peas and powdered milk, but if I can secure myself a piece of land, grow veg that aren't sprayed with chemicals, become more in tune with the rhythms of the seasons and the planet I'm lucky enough to inhabit, whilst at the same time managing to avoid all those crazy NTs and the rat-race that makes me so unhappy anyway, then I figure I should go for it.

I should add, I agree apart from the Malthusian bit......I think the planet probably has quite enough resources to support us all, provided we're all willing to adapt our lifestyles accordingly. The problem is there are too many who would be unwilling to give up their lifestyles - they, and we, by our innaction, and willingness to adopt these lifestyles to a greater or lesser degree have created the potential for a Malthusian dystopia, but I don't believe it was always inevitable......and although we could say it's already happening if we look at life expectancy, infant mortality and living conditions for many in the third world, this isn't down to overpopulation - just mismanagement. I'd like to believe the trend could be reversed and this could all still change.....but find it hard to stay optimistic.

I'm big into prepping. I was trying to reduce my reliance on SSI for years, only to discover that yes, I am really too disabled to work. That left me with debt to pay off. Once I get the debt paid off, I plan to buy a little land in Oregon and move there and start in on producing my own food, as much as possible. I am a member of survivalistboards.com and invite anybody with an interest in prepping to check it out. Did you guys know that for six of the last 11 years, the world has consumed more food than it produced? Population will eventually have to come back into line with available resources, and that will be quite ugly, involving famine and war, even in the US. Being able to produce one's own food will be a valuable skill. I think it will be a combination of resource depletion and financial calamity that eventually delivers the knockout blow to civilization.

Back before Y2K I got into it bigtime. Had all kinds of things because I was sure the grid would go down for weeks if not months and all hell would break loose. When nothing happened at midnight I was actually disappointed and eventually sold or got rid of most of my stuff. We used up the food I had stored, and the water, etc.

I'm interested in it, but so far nothing has got me excited enough to do anything again. For a while I was worried about nuclear war and North Korea but now I'm not.

I also live way out in the middle of nowhere in a tiny town, 40 miles from anything in any direction, so I imagine I'd be pretty safe, especially since everybody here is armed. No looters would survive past the county line.

So long as your townsfolk don't also turn on each other in the quest for food and... other animal instincts.

A tiny town of people willing to work together might be absolutely ideal - keep away the inevitable raiders and work together to grow food. Heck, team together, you could even have a solar/wind/battery system for basic electricity and a good cookhouse (won't be enough power for everyone to use their own stove.)

Maybe we can all still work on "Aspie Island"...

People in this town, while very judgemental and rigid in their religious and political views, are really very helpful and neighborly. Nobody would starve or freeze here. Also, nobody goes through my town to get to anywhere. It's off all major highways and you have to go out backroads to get here, so unless you took a wrong turn, you wouldn't go through town you would just go past it about five miles outside it. No worries of anybody just passing through causing trouble. Thats one reason nobody gets robbed here at stores and such. Even if there were people inclined to rob stores here, and I'm sure a few of the meth heads are, they wouldn't do it here because everybody knows everybody else.

Sounds like an awesome place

If you are content with having nothing at all to do outside church or school functions and you fit in with everybodys politics and religion, it is. If thats not the case, then it's not so awesome. However, I haven't locked my door in years and don't even have a door key on my key ring.

What types of disasters do you guys suspect? I've been watching survival shows for MONTHS so hopefully I'll be ok as long as it's not some catastrophic natural disaster in my area.

I've watched a few episodes of Doomsday Preppers and I would LOVE to get some of the bunkers and things that are on the show. But that takes LOADS of money. For the preppers that don't have bunkers, are you doing anything to fortify your basement/ safeplace?