Preppers

There’s a Simpson’s episode about preppers where they assume the big bad thing happens and fuck off to their bunkers, stuff happens, and they eventually come back to town. When they come back everyone is happy and doing fine and Marge says something like “things were okay after the first few hours. We all worked together and made it work. It was like all the mean, angry, and resentful parts of the town had just disappeared!”
- See also Emergency Skin by NK Jemison.
- preppers don't want to be dependent on society because they don't like society, but they're not bright enough to realize they will always be dependent on society

- But have you considered that going to therapy and dealing with their intense insecurity is scary?
  Bros will have nuclear armegeddon before seeing a social worker and it shows.
  
  Therapy would pierce the veil of lies and ignorance that they've made their Identity.
  People will burn down their house before admitting they were wrong their whole lives.
  
  Too bad therapy seems to cost an arm and leg in this country.
- I felt silly for buying a 63 gallon, foldable/portable water tank for my small farm because the vast majority of the ones I looked at were marketed towards preppers.
  I just want my animals to have water in case the power goes out for a few days.
  But the way things like that are marketed makes it sound like your the smartest, bestest, most prepared person to ever walk this earth. I don't need you to stroke my ego, just sell a foldable water tank with no leaks please.
- What did you make for them? I may capitalize on this lucrative market lol
- Take every dime you can from those dingdongs.

Saw an episode of doomsday preppers years ago. These dudes had a whole property out in Oregon or Washington state designed to endure a potential onslaught of zombies.
They had to quickly evacute their property and leave all their fancy stuff, because of a very real forest fire that came to visit, for which they were entirely unprepared.
- I've been finding the crazy building in arid environments odd, because even aside from forest fires, if your water supply dries up, you're going to have to uproot and move to a state or location with a reliable water source. And you'll be part of a big mass of climate migrants at that point.
- "Zombies". If you let them talk, it'll be pretty obvious that they're looking for a legal loophole to kill somebody. "Zombies" just means city people, which just means black people. They'll kill a white guy if that's what their lifelong dream comes to, but they'd feel bad about it later.
  
  I'd rather not talk to them, unless it's for camping supply recommendations.

Imagine living such a privileged life that the closest you've ever come to feeling oppressed was when you had to wear a mask to pick up dino nuggets at Walmart. Preppers have always been clowns, but COVID definitely ruined what little facade there ever actually was about the "movement" being anything other than a masturbatory LARP.
- Nothing wrong in a good LARP, or masturbation for that matter. The problem with preppers is everything else about them.
  
  And apparently they forgot to stock toilet paper or invest in a bidet...

I'm in the "be prepared" group where we usually have a couple weeks of food and water around. We also have two forms of heat for when the power goes out.
Will we survive WW3 on this? No, but it has been very helpful after big winter storms that took out the city power.
Having some supplies to use in the short term is good for everyone. Being ready to go out to help neighbors and get the community back on its feet is how we get through to the next good times.
- I wouldn't call that being a prepper. That's just sensible preparation for something like a natural disaster. Preppers think they'll survive whatever their conception of "the big one" is.
  
  I'm neither American nor a native English speaker so take it with a grain of salt.
  That's where I'd put the line between a regular prepper and a doomsday prepper.
  Not to forget the very elusive Sergent Prepper.
  
  Preppers think the pencil nose accountants will all die screaming in regret while all the high school jv cheerleaders come begging them for help, in full uniform, and everyone finally recognizes how they were right all along.
  I have tons of food, a generator and other backup power and a gun, and if shit really hits the fan I know I'm not living 5 minutes longer than everyone less prepared, the resources actually make me a target.
  But then again, I have Pge, so it's not doomsday prepping, it's just 'Wednesday, or whenever they next screw up resulting in 100s of deaths, weeks without power, and massive rate hikes resulting in huge bonuses to their upper management'.
- You should always have enough supplies for a short term emergency. That’s not doomsday prepping, it’s just common sense.
  I’m not a prepper IMO, but I have rooftop solar with battery backup, a few smaller portable batteries and UPSes on my critical stuff, and some oil filled radiators since my heat pump isn’t connected to the solar setup.
  At any given time we generally have a month or more worth of food in the house in frozen and dry/canned goods. Also, several gallons of bottled water.
  I also keep some stuff under the back bed of my car’s hatch, first aid kit and emergency blanket, and battery jumper kit as well as a battery powered tire inflator.
  I live in a semi-rural area, and in an emergency, getting out and/or getting food and necessities may not be possible. And if there’s a wildfire I may need to evacuate fast, so important to have what’s needed. This sort of thing is like… If you have the means, why wouldn’t you?

If you just went hunting, fishing, and living in the woods COVID wouldn't be a problem for you though.
- Tell that to all the gay frogs I heard coughing in the woods last night
  
  starts penning unauthorized sequel to Where The Wild Things Are titled Where The Gay Frogs Cough

What a lot of right wing preppers and a lot of 'militia' guys (the tacticool heavy infantry kind) seem to completely lack is the willingness to be inconvenienced at all.
They buy or craft whatever stuff seems cool to them (some of which sure can actually be quite useful), train some skills they find fun to do (usually shooting/hunting) but most seem to ignore anything they don't like, find difficult or uninteresting to do (such as keeping reasonably fit). It also usually includes being willing to take orders or cooperate.
The lack of some skills/equipment/preparation could be overcome but not with the mentality that lead to it on the first place.
- The being cooperative thing is the key.
  Id be willing to bet my left testicle those that survive an apocalypse are those who work together to grow food, build shelter, etc. and not the goobers who lock themselves in a crate with some beans.
  
  Classic scene at the end of the movie "Leave the World Behind.
  
  There's no point having some survival shelter unless you're already in it when you need to be.
- The one doomsday prepper I knew had to weigh at least 400 pounds. I often wondered if he knew how to make insulin for when the apocalypse happens.
  He was actually a nice enough guy, but not the brightest bulb in the box.
  
  That's because they're planning against the fall of civilization. Realistically that wouldn't happen. The bank stayed open during covid, the supermarket stayed open during covid. All that really happened was that life became very difficult for everyone and some people died.
  If your enemy is a virus then your front door is more than enough protection. You don't need a big underground bunker you just need some pasta. But that's boring so they don't care.
- A lot of these militia guys also don't learn the survival tasks they consider feminine. How many know any sort of gathering skills, cooking anything not meat based, laundry, mending clothes? Those are probably more day to day useful during the apocalypse than rifle shooting or how to wear camo paint.
  
  Yeah, I think the idea there is if you point a gun at someone and tell them to cook and wash the clothes, it's likely to get done. It's that male power fantasy again. They desire civilizational collapse because then they think their love affair with guns will give them the authority and respect that can't find in the real world.
  Meanwhile, it's just likely to make them a target. And since most of the people I've come across like this are typically overweight morons, they're just more likely to be killed in the extremely unlikely scenario they're preparing/hoping for. But they see themselves as the main character.

my dads a mild prepper and had his 'told you so' moment when he brought up 2 boxes of n95 masks. he donated a box to hospital and the other box got the family through the worst months
- Cute, but it's just a single hit on a lifetime of misses for most. He got lucky once and could easily use it to reaffirm a bunch of nonsense instead of crilically asking himself what all the other wasted shit is for.
  But hey, I have hobbies too, and I'm glad he's smart enough to listen to science. So he's about a million miles ahead of most

The irony in the "prepping" movement these days is that it was never intended to be this thing about having an inexhaustible supply of resources just for you and your family (if you're still on speaking terms with them) to live off of when the nukes fall.
It's not about sitting in your attic and picking off starving people who are looking for a meal while you sit on a cache of food and ammunition.
It's supposed to be about being a useful person in your community who can help each other weather the worst in life. You will get much further in a disaster if you have skills than if you have stuff. You might have an entire Home Depot to yourself, but it's far too late to learn carpentry when the rain starts to fall.
- It’s not about sitting in your attic and picking off starving people who are looking for a meal while you sit on a cache of food and ammunition.
  Unfortunately for many it is.
  I don't really generally circulate with far right wing folk. However this is one place that overlaps with my interests. One of the most unlikely intersections between the far left and the far right is home solar power. When you start to stray way from purely commercial groups trying to sell you stuff, you get to the DIY solar community.
  Here you'll find multi-gun toting, hardcore Randian libertarians, that "want the damn government control out of their lives" right next too tree hugging, LGBTQ/feminist equality supporting, carbon-neutralling liberals. Both groups squint hard not to see who they're talking to or asking for advice on Charge Controllers, panel interconnects, AC inverter config settings, or off-grid battery solutions. Every now and then one person from one side or the other won't be able to help themselves and they'll make reference to their particular extreme political views. Everyone just holds their breath hoping a fight doesn't break out and most of the time its just ignored by both sides.
  In here you'll find those far right preppers and they are convinced that they'll have to be 100% self supporting when the government falls "real soon now".
  
  Unfortunately for the gunmen in this example, their guns will wear and tear. A crucial part or two will fail and not be replaceable. Then their entire strategy of "kill everyone else" will fall apart. And that's aside from the fact that human societies have always flourished because we have worked with rather than against each other.

So… Yeah, doomsday preppers definitely showed their true colors.
But I think we also saw that there’s a lot of merit to being a reasonable prepper.
I’m lucky to have a reasonable prepper in my friend group. Because of their insistence, I had masks, a full tank of gas, and a comfortably-stocked pantry way ahead of time so I wasn’t yet another person adding stress to a lean/just-in-time/low-margin distribution system that can’t handle even minor hiccups.
Much like the goal of lockdowns was not to completely stop the spread but just slow it so our healthcare system could handle it, the goal of prepping should be to avoid causing shortages when our productive capacity is lowered.
- Drag thinks prepping is about learning useful skills and building community. A prepper should know how to sew, how to garden, how to repair and operate a radio, how to make friends, how to organise labour, and first aid.
  Drag wants to see a zombie show about a grandma who looks after her community, resolves interpersonal disputes, fixes clothes, and looks after the little ones. Drag thinks grandmas are the demographic best prepared for an apocalypse.
  
  Kickass apocalypse grannies, fuck yeah

There are "Preppers" and there are people who actually prepare for when things go wrong. Preppers seem to me like someone who watched a few too many survivor man and YouTube clips and decided to make a personality out of it.
- Right. "Prepper" vs. "being prepared." The former is almost like a subculture.
- Peppers take a good idea, having extra supplies and tools for an emergency, and take it to 11.
  I’m not a prepper, but I did read my local government’s disaster preparedness list and have everything on it that applies to my family. I keep 3 days or so of extra, shelf stable food in the house; bought a home water cooler and keep an extra jug of water that I rotate when we use the one in the machine so that we have a few days of clean water at all times, which is way more practical and safe than a camping water jug that will sit and stagnate in the basement; I have a battery “generator” that I keep topped up with a solar panel because we have a sewage ejector pump and a sump pump to stop the basement from flooding in bad weather; and I have good first aid kits for the house and cars.
  The only thing not on my local government list are the emergency car kits, which is really just a basic vehicle toolkit, jumpstart kit, flares, sweater and space blanket, all in a cheap bag that lives on top of the spare tire.
  I don’t live in the most disaster prone area, but we do get tornados and nasty thunderstorms that knock out power for a day or 3. We don’t exactly have the lights on when that happens, but we do have food, water, a non flooded basement, and even some heat in the winter, and both cars have something to keep you warm while you either fix the car or wait for the tow truck.
  I kind of understand peppers, because planning all of this out after we lost power a few years ago for 4 days in fall was interesting, and there was just so much shit the internet was saying I needed: weeks or months of dried beans and rice, a generator for the whole house, enough guns and ammo to ward off a small army, etc. my local government list was hard to find compared to all of the forums and YouTube videos, but I’m glad I found it, it’s sensible and if spread out over months, very affordable. I highly, highly recommend you poke around your local government website for their natural disaster page, they’ll have resources of who to contact if you need help, and what you should have on hand. If it’s not on your city’s page, try your county or state government. One of them should have a page about disasters and how to prepare for them.
- The issue is that you can't prepare for everything. Having extra food and water, sure. Maybe buying a generator so you can use electrical equipment, that's generally useful. But, aside from that, your preparations for a flood will be very different from your preparations for a military invasion, which would be different from preparing for a pandemic.
  Also, the more extreme your preparations are, the more it matters when you pull the trigger and activate your emergency plans. If your preparation is simply having a cupboard with extra toilet paper and some extra canned food, it's no big deal to pull that stuff out if the store runs out. But, if you have some kind of bunker in the mountains, it's a bigger decision when to "bug out" of the city and go live in the mountains. You're basically quitting your job, so if the emergency is something like the COVID pandemic, when do you decide things are so bad that you can take that extreme step?
  
  I was trying to get myself prepared for realistic disaster scenarios. For us, that is earthquakes and cold snaps. And in my mind, realistic means how do I both ready myself and work with my community?
  So I got a book on prepping. The titled seemed innocuous enough. Unfortunately, it was one of the crazy bug out into the woods and go eat squirrel stew sort of prepper books. Totally worthless for anything practical. The best thing I can say for it was that it was an e-book, so it didn't cost much.

Preppers: I'm ready for anything; economic collapse, zombies, apocalypse, sinkholes, foreign invasion, aliens...anything!
[covid-19 hits]
Preppers: fuck this i'm not wearing a mask! it's all a hoax!
Also preppers: I need to go to the store and buy 27 cases of toilet paper!

I'm proud that in that time of crisis I was strong and served my country and fellow citizens, simply by staying home and not bothering anyone.

Real peppers never stop eating beans. You buy new and eat the old ones. Oh and real peppers buy a truck they can repair themselves, not a 2024 Ram Clownsmobile.
- Real peppers never stop eating beans.
  Remind me not to stay in one of their enclosed bunkers with them for an extended period of time.
  
  The more you eat beans and fiber, the better your digestive system becomes at digesting them.
- Did you know that if you keep eating the same vegetable/food it can become somewhat toxic to your system? Also, different people have different tolerances.
  
  No I didn't! Like allergies or like "poisonous buildup of nutrients deficit/oversaturation?

Not just listening to scientists. Listening to nerds.
- Smells a bit like American exceptionalism.
  "America is so important, we singlehandedly forced scientists to accelerate with developing the vaccine because we are so important and big."
  
  Um, huh?... vaccines are how you stop viruses... It's as if you said "scientists rushing to stop COVID because Americans refuse to try to stop COVID", which is just silly.

I'm a person that most people would consider a prepper. What am I prepping for? Unemployment. Being able to survive with as few possible inputs as possible.
I'm a hard core skeptical nerd that doesn't believe a single conspiracy theory. I'm like an anti doomsday prepper. Making life easier even if things don't go bad.
- I think when most people think of a prepper, they think of someone preparing for everything to collapse. Badly. So I wouldn't consider you a prepper.
  
  I have chickens, ducks and geese, raised beds, just built a solar battery charger, can my own food, dehydrate food, cook everything from scratch, etc etc. I go through all the same steps. My friends refer to me as a prepper despite me saying I'm a homesteader. They keep saying they are going to show up at my place if everything collapses. I started shutting this down by saying they need to be pre-approved, pay a $150 non-refundable deposit and $50 a month so that I can make sure I have food and other essentials for when they show up. Because it's really annoying to hear someone say "I'm totally not doing anything about my fears so I'm going to impose on you when the time comes."
  I'm just trying to reduce the amount it takes for me to survive. It happens that if you are ready to be unemployed for a few months that a lot of the same prepa come in handy for a collapse of the economy. The same things needed to hunt squirrels are helpful against zombies.
  
  Well, according to Gray Man theory, this is actually good that you don't recognize. But no...that man you're talking to is very clearly a prepper.
  The best way I can tell you is prepping... is a rainbow. A varied spectrum of people, with many different beliefs & motivations. Actually, I guess we can compare it to the current Democrat Party! The crazy ones get all the attention, they make the news and everybody points at them and says, wow, that's crazy. That's too far. I can't get behind that. It's the same with preppers. You have preppers that prepare for "zombies". Or, as you said, when everything collapses badly. There are many more preppers that are just sensibly preparing for very real scenarios. Stockpile a little today for a better tomorrow. A simpler, stronger life.
  The real preppers, the best preppers, don't just hoard; they incorporate their preps into daily living. It is a lifestyle. You have tools for working the land, tools to move stuff around, you build out the life you think you'll want & need. Not just stored in a bunker, but to use next week. The zombie shit is really dumb, most of the products are cheap & low quality gimmicks. Probably because they know you're a sucker, anyway. As Canadian Prepper says... eventually...all preppers become farmers.
  I prep, in part, for short to longer term no-power scenarios. Those assholes up in Chicago threatened to cut off power to downstate...2-3 years ago?...and I never forgot that. I said, okay. Guess this is something I need to think about now. ¯°_o)/¯ Prepping is much like a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). System fucks up, no power? Well I'm going to be okay for a while, anyway. This isn't the exact article I read, but here's a source, anyway. People don't understand how dangerously fragile, old our power grid is. It is susceptible to attack by foreign entities, or simply overload during peak usage.
  Calling preppers selfish, idk where in the ever-loving fuck these guys get off...if I don't require assistance in an emergency, that's more assistance that can be sent to other people in need. I'm actively preparing, spending my own time, money, and efforts to help myself and others. In Israel, everyone is required to have a safe room & 2 weeks of food, water in it. They have inspections! And don't even get me started on Switzerland.

I know a guy who owns a retired nuclear missile silo that he made into a doomsday bunker/business. The top several floors or so with the old control rooms and stuff has been converted into his bunker, but most of the main silo is flooded with water, so it's a scuba diving attraction.
Anyway: when Covid came his bunker and years of food and fuel, so he and the wife went out there and used it for their lockdown. I'm happy for him that he got to use it.
They took out the old control rooms and completely remodeled the inside into a pretty comfy house. It's just underground and has 3-ton blast doors.
- that guys living my dream
- Flooded with stagnant water? Do you want brain worms? This is how you get brain worms.
  
  If there's no sunlight energy providing for phytoplankton, there's probably not much of a food chain in there to support parasites.
  Else cave diving sites would be equally dangerous.

They weren't ready for a SHTF scenario where survival means personal hygiene.
Same people who won't get a vaccination are the same ones who take huge dumps and don't wash their hands. Venn diagram is a circle.

Or ever bother learning something to benefit society now and in the case of a rebuild. Great, you have food, shelter and guns. Do you know how to dress wounds? Do you know how to build a generator? Fuck electricity actually- do you know how to build a steam engine? Wait before we can get here, do you know how to make steel? Cast iron? There should be plenty of it after an apocalypse. Wind copper?
What about welding? Not the kind you need modern tools for, you won't have those. Do you know basic chemistry to get what you need to restart society? No? Well good luck.
Turns out survival in an apocalypse isn't all that difficult if you payed attention to anything in school. It pisses me off people get bent out of shape about "useful practice skills like doing taxes aren't being taught."
I can remember a ton of important ass survival shit from school. Crop rotation! Agricultural practices from thousands of years ago! Steam power, basic electricity, Simple chemistry. Oh, and Math! How many Preppers can't do basic fucking math that would save them?
- There was a really good 1970s post-apocalyptic show in the UK called Survivors that dealt with those issues. One episode involved the fact that the only person who knew how to take care of their livestock committed rape and what to do about it. Others involved the just basic drudgery of returning to a medieval life. Really good show (apart from the last episode, which subverts the whole fucking show).
  
  Having never heard of this show until now, I'm gonna assume the subversion lies in "it was all a dream" territory?
- I feel like a lot of stuff from ancient times wouldn't be all that useful. A lot of stuff back then was optimized for a society that didn't know anything about electricity.
  We know how electricity exists, we know that with some magnets and copper wire we can turn mechanical energy into electricity. It seems like making a wind turbine is something they could've made in ancient times, but they didn't do that simply because they didn't really know anything about electricity. Some more copper wire and some more magnets and you could drive a pump. Some chemistry and you have a battery, maybe not Li-ion but something that'll work well enough. Resistors and you can have an electric stove and a heater.
  It always strikes me as odd that preparers aren't all-in on green technology. If you had some wind turbines and/or solar panels and electric vehicles almost nothing other than communications would really change much. Dependency on complex oil refineries is the biggest weakness of our society. If you live in a rural area that has some farming and has green energy and electric vehicles you're dependent on very little that's not produced in your community.
  
  I meant more how agricultural practices haven't changed much. New tools have been added, but it is still clear land, plant seed, add water, wait. Don't plant the same thing two seasons in a row.
- You would like Doctor Stone. It's about a high school science geek who has to restart civilisation from scratch.
  
  I'll check it out

I don't consider myself a prepper, but I do prepare for unlikely scenarios with highly negative outcomes. In terms of expected value vs. investment, I think having a "go" or "get home" bag is cheap and useful. I have two weeks of food and water supplies to shelter in place. I have face masks and hazmat suits (they came vacuum sealed so they just sit in the bottom of the shelter in place Tupperware bin). A solar generator and battery. A few medkits and some basic medicines including prescription antibiotics. And then my camping/hiking stuff: so more mres, water purification, water filter, fire kit etc.
All in all, it didn't cost much, it doesn't take up much room, and it's good to have. I'm not necessarily worried about a revolution so much as, in order if likelihood: a bad storm, electrical grid issues, natural disaster, or mild civil unrest. All of which I've been through before, so I guess they're not exactly black swan events. I wouldn't really call those "SHTF" events, since, again, I've experienced each one and yet things are now fine.
What I consider "preppers" are thinking about (and seemingly hoping for) civilizational collapse.
- Yeah, I feel much the same. Shit happens sometimes and it's good to be prepared. That goes for situations where civilization is collapsing and also in day to day life too. "Preppers" are so hyper fixated on one particular hyper-individual fantasy outcome. The merits of, say, integrating into a mutual aid network are completely missed.
  It's always so much more useful to have AND KNOW WHERE every one-off necessity you might need is. A flashlight and spare batteries. First aid supplies. Spare medication. Superglue. A good utility knife. Emergency bedding. Enough shelf stable food for a few days. Some card games to pass the time. A few creature comforts that are easy to keep on hand. An appropriate weapon you practice with regularly. Some space an unhoused friend could crash for a week.
  You get whatever you can together and organized and then you SHARE IT, because these things will all solve day to day problems for people in your life who maybe don't have them on hand. And then you pay attention to other needs that come up and make small additions so you're prepared for the needs of people you care about. And then boom there you go you've done actual fucking preparation! And get to sleep a little easier knowing you're ready for a lot more that life could throw at you.
  Margaret Killjoy has a great podcast on effective preparation that comes from a very practical community readiness perspective. Definitely worth a listen. Live Like The World Is Dying
  
  My weapon of choice is my razor-sharp wit!
  I'm going to die, aren't I.
  
  An appropriate weapon you practice with regularly.
  You know someone's American when...
  
  I suppose it depends on where you live and the sorts of things that are likely to happen. For me personally where I live I can't think of anything that would really require that level of preparation.
- Make sure the antibiotics don't expire. Most of them just become useless when they expire, but Tetracycline becomes poisonous when it expires. Also, not all antibiotics are good for all infections, so make sure the ones you have are useful for the kinds of infections you anticipate.
  
  Good to know about tetracycline, but drugs don't magically become useless after an arbitrary expiry date.
  Most prescription medicines are still quite effective after the expiration date. Various studies have shown they're still effective even decades after the expiration date.
  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7040264/
- Yeah I fill up some whisky bottles with tap water and keep them in the cupboard. I guess in an insane scenario I might need to use it as drinking water, though I'd probably want to figure out how to boil that water first since it's been sitting there for awhile.
  I have actually used that water... but just to wash my hands when they turn off the water in the building when they're doing some maintenance.
  Sometimes some disaster preparedness is just useful for relatively banal circumstances.

Me, buying some extra rice, pasta and salt, watching my neighbor buying large game butchering knife kit (we live in the suburbs)
- Sounds like a smart guy. He gets meat AND all your dried goods!

I had a few shirts made with this.
Avoid it like ~~the plague~~ any sense of personal responsibility.
I get all sorts of reactions.

https://youtu.be/t3lFHqWELE0?si=u3GoHTxEt83KYgbJ
I do have to admit, I'm prepared for fires and earthquakes. Doomsday seems crazy, though. I have a bug out bag, etc... I'm not going to live under the preconceived notion that I'm going to survive a nuclear attack or race war that'll never happen. Pepper's get fucking insane. The number of people who start digging down without any understanding of structural integrity is insane aswell. Especially in places near fault lines. Building firebreaks, storing food and water, forming a microgrid if you live in an area where they might turn off the electricity, etc... those are all realistic and important. Also, fuck anti-maskers.
- I lived in a small town on the New Madrid fault line in the middle of tornado alley most of my life and yep, we stocked up because we knew if a sizable enough earthquake hit the area, we were small enough to not get any attention for a long time while the nearby cities were recovering. There's definitely point of wisdom for sticking back supplies for a few months, but stacking a cellar full of tactical mil spec fishing poles and the like is mental masturbation for delusional assholes with less sense than money.
  
  a cellar full of tactical mil spec fishing poles
  Given how often my fishing poles seem to break with only light use, that's not entirely unreasonable.
- Technically just having a preparation in place for fires or earthquakes does make you a prepper. There may be varying degrees of it, but prepping for natural disasters is actually a much larger section of preppers than "zombies" or whatever bullshit. Hurricanes too in those areas is another common one, and you'd be surprised how many people carry and IFAK just in case of a car crash or shooter.
  But any way you slice it, building firebreaks, storing food and water, and forming a microgrid, those are some good preparations my prepper friend.

What's funny is that antimaskers still blat on about how they won't wear a face diaper for anything or anyone, two years after such requirements ended. These people just need negative attention like tantruming toddlers.
- And then some of the same people will wear actual diapers in public while holding signs proclaiming that "real men wear diapers". Can't make that shit up.

COVID didn't have a solution based around people being the main character.
Unless you wanted to cause trouble. Then you could be the main character.

All the solar panels, ARs, and "Patriot" food kits won't prep them for when the pollinators die off.
- Did you know that honeybees were not in America until they were brought here from Europe? Many other flies and bees did the pollination previously.
  
  That specific species of honeybee wasn't in the Americas. There were native species that are being outcompeted and dying out.
  "Killer" bees are an example of a native honeybee species.
  
  Luckily, thanks to the magic of modern chemistry, we managed to mostly get rid of those damn bugs.
- Put more money into tacticool guns than they did ammo. Spent more time making them look Gucci than they did at the range.

What you're not seeing is that it's also a dick-measuring contest. He who dies in a megastorm with the most hoarded toilet paper wins.
- The toilet paper thing is fascinating to me, because everybody went to the store, saw the empty shelves, and assumed that their neighbors were freaking out and hoarding toilet paper. People actually needed more TP during lockdown, because they were doing all their pooping at home instead of at work.
  Businesses have a completely different supply chain for toilet paper, and you had a deficit in one and a surplus in the other. You can't just move product from one supply chain to the other, either.
  
  How much shitting are you doing? Just learn to wipe correctly.

You lost them at considerate.

I have to sit at home and watch TV??? The horror!
Piers Morgan, famous conservative, on how you have to sit on your ass https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/piers-morgan-good-morning-britain-rant-coronavirus-people-outside-a4394466.html
- Piers Morgan was one of the few horrible British people America shipped back.

I don’t think preppers are a monolith. There are people from different backgrounds, different politics, different concerns, and different methods (and degrees) of preparedness. People who make it about hoarding goods and resources are probably just doing it wrong.

I was always under the impression we'd go nomadic if things got bad, traveling to where it is habitatable year round and food is more available. I'm keeping myself mentally and physically healthy enough to walk long distances while not being picky about what I eat or where I sleep. I find the whole concept of hunkering down indefinitely is itself untenable.
- You live like a nomad hunter-gatherer if you like. Count me out.
- If the problem is going to last significantly longer than a month, then no one is really "prepared." Those preppers then just become resource targets.

I would add to this that covid did cause a major resurgence in a different flavor of prepper: "back to the earth" people who strive to, among other things, produce more of their own food (be it growing produce, raising livestock, or even doing more cooking and baking using raw ingredients rather than relying on premade food). Interest in gardening, homesteading, baking, and learning to live off the land skyrocketed during peak covid. Sure a lot of that interest has subsided, but much like how the great depression permanently changed the attitudes of people who lived through it in regards to reusing things instead of tossing and replacing, the experience of scarcity and uncertainty regarding basic goods (for most first-world folks, for the first time in their lives) made a permanent mark on at least some of the population. And this is a much more practical type of prepping, because instead of coming from a fantasy of what disaster might befall the world, it was a direct response to a disaster that actually happened.

I'm an inverse prepper I guess
- Always ready to just give up and die

Pretty much, just a power fantasy disguised as being prepared

Hair cuts of all things made people lose their god damn minds. That was wild
- Whereas I hate getting my hair cut and I will just shave it all off when it gets too long.
  Actually, I can't think of anything during COVID I actually found to be a huge imposition other than wearing a mask at work got hot after a while.
  
  I felt bad for enjoying it. Worked from home, hardly expected to go out, much less traffic. Most service related jobs I prefer to do myself (like haircuts like you mentioned) or am perfectly fine with minimal contact. In general I feel bad for service workers so even if they aren't friendly with me (not that I ever really experienced that much) I wouldn't mind, and also don't mind self checkout and automation.
  I may sound like I'm accusing others, and maybe that's part of it, but the way service workers are expected to act certain ways with us feels like trying to perpetuate class based servitude. As long as they're relatively professional and not outright insulting, I think it's fine.

Why the hate on prerppers in this comment section? It sounds kinds fun tbh, and the skills of living in the woods are useful even outside of apocalypse.
- Sounds fun. But there's a huge Venn diagram overlap between them and the sovcits, covid-hoax, various types of "truthers" and doomsday cult types. So the target market, if you're marketing to preppers, is not just the clever Doctor Stone cosplayers.
- Do you think it has anything to do with, like, the entire text of what I posted above?
- Because a lot of them are far right nutjobs.
  I’m not hating on all preppers, one of my partners is one. She has a massive food garden, quite a few guns (though that’s largely because her ex is armed and violent), and cultivates skills useful in dangerous situations, such as woodwork and textile work. That’s not the judgement.
  The judgement is for the ones who openly fantasize about city folk dying in a disaster and dream of using their hoarded food to buy human beings.

The only thing the paranoid preppers did was raise the price of ammunition.
Going back to COVID. one had to wear a MOPP IV suit and decontaminate everything you touch 24/7, including the interior of your car and the ultimate petri dish, your mobile phone. For the folks who grew a beard and wore a mask, FU, you compromised the mask.

My prepping involves knowing how to make beer/whiskey from the dirt up. I figure anything else I can trade from there. Including your women.
- I feel like if we've got to the point where we go back to bartering, I've kind of lost interest in surviving because that means pretty much all of the civilization is gone.
  
  "I need to borrow your gun and one bullet. Actually, I'll be keeping the bullet, but you can have your gun back when I'm finished."

this is so fucking spot on, whew

In hindsight it doesn't feel like it was a proper SHTF moment. Some of the early reactions did make it feel like one but in the end not that much happened where I live. Try to stay away from people for a while and use a mask seemed like the extent of it. Spent a lot more than outdoors than I usually do.
- SHTF doesn't have to mean the end of the world,.
  When hospitals have to use refrigerated trucks to store bodies because the morgue has filled up, I think the shit has indeed hit the fan.
- Nothing that doesn't knock out power or wipe out humans quickly on a wide scale will qualify for an apocalypse, and thus only annoy preppers.
- I've heard people say they honestly miss it. They're quick to say that people dying was awful, but they have honest nostalgia for the covid days.

So if a zombie outbreak occurred these people would fuck us even worse
- As Weird Al sang in Tacky, "if I get bit by a zombie, I'm probably not telling you."

Was there actually news indicating that preppers, as a group, were more likely to be against masking than for it?
I wouldn't be too surprised, but I haven't actually seen any evidence to this effect.

On a deeper level I think it's mostly a framework of acceptability some people have built around being antisocial and afraid of everything.

"Prepper" and "prepping" sounds like kink terms...
- Prepping is just a normal gay/anal sex term, no kink necessary
  
  Prep me harder, daddy.
  
  For some, anal is too kinky, for obvious reasons.

The middle-aged man knows that's exactly what every other middle-aged man and those older than them are thinking.
The snake eating its tail in preparation. Or, preparing for the snake eating its tail.

I love it when people who very clearly are not preppers put words in the mouths of preppers, loudly espouse the beliefs of preppers, and label them all as bad & selfish people. They talk about something they don't actually understand.
The overall tone reeks of quiet arrogance, like a cologne. The smug accomplishment of...taking no action at all? It is ignorant. Disrespectful. Foolish. Enough of the comment section isn't much better.
Disappointing, but not surprising.
- Or maybe you don't like being lumped in with a bunch of conservative reactionaries who dream of running their own post-apocalyptic fiefdom. It's not our fault that those are who people think of when they think of preppers. I guess you should pick a new name for yourself.
  
  That post definitely has got a strong "not all preppers" vibe to it.