Maybe this explains the live for today, who cares about the future attitude of so many Americans. I don’t think so. I think we are just a nation of dumbasses. We’ll be working on our vegetable garden this weekend. We must be crazy preppers.
Preppers: ‘Anywhere from Incredibly Practical to Practically Certifiable’
With the 2012 Doomsday date quickly approaching, anxiety and fear are gripping more and more people across the globe. According to a recent survey of individuals in over twenty countries, 15% of people worldwide believe the end of the world as we know it will happen in our lifetime.
“Whether they think it will come to an end through the hands of God, or a natural disaster or a political event, whatever the reason, one in seven thinks the end of the world is coming,” said Keren Gottfried, research manager at Ipsos Global Public Affairs which conducted the poll for Reuters.
“Perhaps it is because of the media attention coming from one interpretation of the Mayan prophecy that states the world ‘ends’ in our calendar year 2012,” Gottfried said, adding that some Mayan scholars have disputed the interpretation.
Source: Reuters
People aren’t sure what it is or when it may happen, but there is a strong sentiment of unease among the general population. And it’s not all Mayan Prophecy centric.
The end of the world can come in lots of different ways. Over half of Americans, for example, think that a financial collapse is imminent. While such an event wouldn’t shift our geomagnetic poles or cause five thousand foot high Tsunamis, a collapse of the world’s economy, the US dollar or the international banking system would have implications so severe that it could cost millions of lives in its wake through food shortages and global conflict over resources.
The end of the world means different things to different people and can include a variety of scenarios. Man-made events like hyperinflationary global depression, chemical or biological attacks, cyber war, nuclear fallout, or electro magnetic pulse (EMP) could render our entire infrastructure obsolete by collapsing our nation’s just-in-time transportation services, causing widespread blackouts, and contaminating our food and water supplies. Natural disasters like solar flares, mega-quakes, super volcanoes, pole shifts, climate shifts and near earth objects have changed the face of the earth quite regularly since its creation – often with cataclysmic consequences.
While each of these possibilities is unlikely, when taken cumulatively the odds of disaster having a direct adverse impact on our lives successively increases – so much so that one in seven people around the world believe they’ll see such a Doomsday before they die.
You’d think that with all of the potential threats we face as a civilization more people would be preparing, but recent statistics indicate that just three million Americans (about 1% of the population) are preparing to weather the storm by stocking so-called doomsday supplies like long-term food storage, water, firearms, off-grid tools, and developing skills to live in a world where modern day technology has all but disappeared.
For those preparing for the scenarios discussed above it’s business as usual – a completely rational response to the mounting threats we as a society and as individuals face in this complex, interdependent and unsustainable consumptive paradigm. For onlookers, acquaintances, friends, and family who may have been exposed to prepper ravings of a system-on-the-brink, the idea of readying for TEOTWAWKI or SHTF is nothing short of lunacy in desperate need of professional medical assistance.
Via Steve Quayle:
Many would view Marston’s mindset as a form of radical paranoia, but he’s not alone — not nearly. He is what’s known as a “prepper,” someone who readies for the possibility of significant change, and there are millions across the country.
Preppers, also referred to as survivalists, have a dubious, often unfair reputation. They’re generally labeled right-wing kooks, although they come from all walks of life. Cable television series “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel and “Doomsday Bunkers” on the Discovery Channel have put them in the spotlight.
Such fictional characters as Robinson Crusoe and, less classically, MacGyver romanticized survivalism. But the ideal has been stigmatized by infamous real-life survivalists like Theodore Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) and Timothy McVeigh, who were also terrorists.
Preppers frequently are ridiculed because of the oddball fringe that believes the Mayans might have been onto something with their 2012 Armageddon forecast or that a horde of zombies will overtake the planet.
But the prepper spectrum is expansive. The needle can point anywhere from incredibly practical to practically certifiable.
Some preppers merely cultivate a backyard garden to stock cellar shelves. They might be on alert for nothing more than an emergency weather situation, with a generator at the ready and enough provisions to last a week.
Others, such as members of the Mormon church, store food and supplies as faith-based policy.
There also is a group that takes the prepping lifestyle to an extreme, literal diehards who maintain underground bunkers or isolated backwoods retreats.
“Many people think the worst when they hear certain comments about survivalists,” said Bill Heffron, a retired National Guard colonel from the Town of Tonawanda. Heffron spent much of his career as a commander at the Connecticut Street Armory.
“It’s just comfort for some people. When you’re prepared ahead of time, then that’s just good planning. That’s never a problem.
“But when you start getting guns out, you start to wonder.”
Regardless of commitment levels or reasons for doing it, a critical component to a prepper’s lifestyle is anonymity.
Preppers want to stay off the grid to avoid social persecution and for one particularly important, sensible reason. When the SHTF (an abbreviation preppers commonly use for “stuff” hitting the fan) or TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) is at hand, they don’t want panicky nonpreppers trying to crowd their space or raid their reserves.
“We’re not into exposing ourselves even to close friends and family,” said the 31-year-old Marston, who asked that his real name not be used in this story. “People might be shocked to learn a family member is a prepper, an uncle, a cousin.
“The fear of being rejected is there. Yeah, there’s a lot of crazies out here. But there are crazies into everything else. There are legitimate, upstanding people doing this. It bothers me that when you say ‘I’m a prepper,’ you get the eye roll.”
Source: Buffalo News
We know that the system we live in is unsustainable and a significant alteration to our way of life is coming – this is inevitable. Fully half of Americans believe a massive financial collapse is imminent and some 15% of the world’s population is expecting the end of the world over coming decades.
Yet, when one takes steps to insulate themselves from the possibility of these very disasters they are looked at by most as paranoid, fringe lunatics who are acting completely irrationally.
This begs the question: What’s rational about expecting the end of the world, or a black swan event, or a natural disaster, but taking no practical steps to prepare for it?
One could argue that it’s those very people, who are aware of the possibilities but refuse to make preparations, that should be labeled the practically certifiable ones.
ThePessimisticChemist says:
Preparing for the downfall of the things we take for granted (supermarkets, fresh water, electricity) is just forward thinking to me.
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4th May 2012 at 3:12 pm
Mike says:
Who coined the term, preppers?
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4th May 2012 at 3:32 pm
Dragline says:
I think the term “preppers” is made for TV. Americans will still do anything to get on TV, like fatso in the picture.
Fatso should spend some time trying to lose weight if he wants to have any future. He looks like he can’t even walk. I predict he’ll die alone of a heart attack and his dogs will eat him. And he won’t be prepared, because he can’t live without modern technology.
And my mob of zombie-people is going to kick your survivor ass just like it did to Charleton Heston and Vincent Price in their versions of “I am Legend”. I know exactly where your bunker is and I’m coming for you. You have to sleep sometime, fatso. Hope you have one eye open.
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4th May 2012 at 4:21 pm
AWD says:
That fat slob on the 4-wheeler dropped dead from a heart attack. Prepping over.
If your health is shit now, how much worse is it going to be when things collapse and the fatties can’t get their insulin, BP meds, pain meds, cholesterol meds. They’ll be dropping like flies.
What people are the most worried about:
Economic Collapse: 63%
Natural Disaster: 46%
Terrorist Attack: 44%
Global Disease Outbreak: 33%
Global War: 27%
Nuclear Accident: 25%
Global Warming: 22%
Fuel Shortage: 15%
Cyber War: 8%
Famine: 8%
Oil Spill: 6%
Industrial Accident: 5%
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-number-one-catastrophic-event-that-americans-worry-about-economic-collapse
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4th May 2012 at 4:33 pm
AWD says:
One things for sure, the global central bankers will cause the collapse…
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4th May 2012 at 4:39 pm
Administrator says:
I’m most worried about what I might see on my next trip to Wal-Mart.
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4th May 2012 at 4:44 pm
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
ONLY 1 in 7 people think the world will end?
We need to educate more people, cuz not enuf of them are with the program. I will run out of bullets before we run out of FSA-Zombies, lol, when TSHTF.
@Jim: If you are gardening on your house lot, your soil is probably not very good, like in most subdivisions. You might want to look into the “square foot” gardening method, which uses a raised bed approach and lots of potting soil. Otherwise you basically have to till up your ground to a depth of about 3 feet and bring in some mushroom mulch to create good soil. The only other advice I can give you is that your garden is on ITS schedule, NOT yours. You have to tend it every day, sometimes twice a day. But there is simply nothing more satisfying than tucking into your own homegrown tomatoes!!! Good Luck!!!
Oh, and get some chickens for all the weeds and veggie scraps you will be generating. They just need a little coop to roost at night and you can leave then in the yard if you clip their flight feathers. Once you eat a farm fresh egg, you will never eat those pale tasteless boring factory farmed store bought yuckies again.
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4th May 2012 at 4:59 pm
sensetti says:
End of the world? No way, all this debt is going to be paid off, the free shit army is going to get off their backside and go to work. Boomers will be able to retire with ease. It’s all sunshine, unicorns and rainbows.
AWD all the fat people are going to end up fit and trim in the end.
I am sure
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4th May 2012 at 5:30 pm
Kill Bill says:
The world will end im my lifetime…because I am going to die sometime during it.
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4th May 2012 at 6:46 pm
Administrator says:
HZK
I bought a power tiller and ripped up the soil real good. The lettuce crop is coming in real good.
We also bought two of the square foot raised gardens you mentioned. The freeze possibility has passed, so we can do some planting this weekend. Tomatoes and peppers.
We’re not allowed to raise chickens in my neighborhood. It’s against the law.
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4th May 2012 at 7:14 pm
ThePessimisticChemist says:
@Admin –
Slightly off topic here…
Our community is loaded with unused plots of land, but also happens to be loaded with many “food desert” areas.
One of the not-for-profits my wife works for wanted to buy up some of the plots in the worst “deserts” and plant gardens etc to help provide some fresh food for people. Turns out the city council has taken care of that already by blocking every single way you could possibly utilize the land in a useful manner.
Its either buy from their stores or go without. Odd, that corruption seeps into even the smallest of things. Even the simple act of growing food has been written out of existence by heavy handed laws.
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4th May 2012 at 7:24 pm
Administrator says:
TPC
The foolishness of our “leaders” is breathtaking to behold. Just a three day disruption in our oil supply and grocery store shelves would be empty.
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4th May 2012 at 7:57 pm
ecliptix543 says:
Easy fix, guys. Kill and eat the city council members first. They taste like pork chops, not so much chicken. Makes good jerky too.
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4th May 2012 at 11:01 pm
Anonymous says:
Fukushima Is Falling Apart: Are You Ready?
You might wanna read this
The most preliminary reports of soil contamination are starting to come in from the USGS, who has seemed reluctant to share this information. Los Angeles, California, Portland, Oregon, and Boulder, Colorado, so far have the highest radioactive particle contamination out of the entire US
If they are MOX fuel, containing 6% plutonium, one fuel rod has the potential to kill 2.89 billion people. If this pool collapses, as Senator Wyden is now saying too, we would face a mass extinction event from the release of radiation in those rods.
That is, if we aren’t in one already. Nuke experts like Arnie Gundersen and Helen Caldicott are prepared to evacuate their families to the southern hemisphere if that happens. It is that serious
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/2055/256/Fukushima_Is_Falling_Apart:_Are_You_Ready.html
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4th May 2012 at 11:57 pm
sensetti says:
Above post was mine
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4th May 2012 at 11:59 pm
sensetti says:
Black Swan just landed
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4th May 2012 at 12:18 am
Zarathustra says:
Sensetti, I live in Portland and there is scant coverage in the local media and no alarm. Is there a coverup to protect local agricultural products? I dunno. Here is a recent article:
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2012/04/radiation_levels_in_portland_a.html
I do think the reactors at Fukushima are a ticking time bomb. I’m not sure most realize that the spent fuel in those early GE reactors is stored in tanks located near the top of the structures.
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4th May 2012 at 12:23 am
Dragline says:
I am very impressed by the efforts described above to grow and raise food in small and urban settings. While I confess I have done nothing in that department (and am jealous), I feel like this is part of a huge and important underground movement to go back to supporting ourselves. Simply and honestly. And there are many involved across all political spectra.
I read an article the other day about Millennials and other former Occupiers getting involved in urban gardening. I really hope this coalesces into something that is more defined as a frugality or self-sufficiency movement. This really goes back to the Jeffersonian “nation of farmers” idea.
There is a huge untapped yearning here that crosses many personal philosophies and could get us back to a new consensus:
“And people will come. They’ll come to frugality and self-sufficiency for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up at this website and others like it not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. For it is money they have and peace they lack. The memories and stories of frugal and self-sufficient beginnings and ancestors will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come. The one constant through all the years has been frugality and self-reliance. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But the old ideas of frugality and self-reliance have marked the time. The values are part of our past, They remind of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh… people will keep coming. People will most definitely keep coming.”
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4th May 2012 at 12:24 am
AKAnon says:
I’m a prepper, she’s a prepper, don’t you want to be a prepper too?
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4th May 2012 at 12:48 am
AKAnon says:
sensetti, here’s your black swan soundtrack; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMO-yAB4MZs
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4th May 2012 at 12:50 am
AKAnon says:
I was in training with some co-workers a couple weeks back, and while visiting, the subject of Doomsday Preppers came up. Personally, I find the idea of being featured on TV for your “secret” preps the ultimate oxymoron, but whatever-I joke that my survival plan is to watch Doomsday Preppers and take notes, and take their shit. Although I would never really do that, I expect many would. Anyway, one guy jokes that he told his wife they should go buy 50 pounds of pinto beans, ha ha ha. I didn’t feel compelled to tell him I had (way) more than that already stashed. Count me in among the 15%.
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4th May 2012 at 1:04 am
AKAnon says:
WordPress doing some weird shit-12:48 & 12:50 are dopples.
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4th May 2012 at 1:05 am
SSS says:
sensetti
Is your other screen name Channel Serfing?
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4th May 2012 at 1:35 am
Kill Bill says:
Look, over there. Iran has some medical grade plutonium!!! Nothing to see here in Japan folks, its just a little radiation from American made ingenuity, a natural disaster, that will disperse around the globe when the radioactive pools are doused with diesel and set afire. Move along folks, nothing to see here. Nothing to worry about. Its not a mushroom cloud.
/snark
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4th May 2012 at 2:59 am
sensetti says:
Zara
Lack of coverage is concerning, I hope that report is BS. I just don’t know,
SSS
I have about ten web sites that I read daily, I watch little TV. I watch no sports at all; I try to make everything count. I work on my farm and work with my horses for recreation, as a family we take a boat and motor home to the lake that’s about it. I work a job three days a week twelve hours a day and take one college class a semester. So I do a little more than surf the web, but nothing more important (I think).
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4th May 2012 at 7:43 am
sensetti says:
SSS
Would you teach me to play golf? I could caddy for you till I learned the difference between a putter and a driver. I just don’t know if I could handle the distractions on the course
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4th May 2012 at 7:54 am
More on Preppers (“If you’d really like to depress yourself some evening, watch “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel.”) « CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL says:
[...] 1 in 7 People Think the World Will End in Their Lifetime (theburningplatform.com) [...]
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4th May 2012 at 8:00 am
Llpoh says:
RE still hasnt convinced the other 6 out of 7.
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4th May 2012 at 8:10 pm
300 Blackout and 5.56 Ammo Specials for Friends of Patriot Promotions! | PATRIOT PROMOTIONS says:
[...] 1 in 7 People Think the World Will End in Their Lifetime (theburningplatform.com) [...]
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4th May 2012 at 11:48 am