16 ms·

Confessions of a Former Apocalypse Survival Guide Writer

86 points by jackgavigan 10y ago

dkokelley 10y ago
A related question: Where do you, as a marketer, draw the line between producing a product to serve the needs and interests of a particular market and enabling activities you disagree with or believe to be harmful (even if only harmful to the consumer)? In this case, writing for the "prepper" audience seems to fall near the line of providing content relevant to the consumers' interests and enabling/encouraging paranoid 'end-of-times' behavior that at best prepares the consumer for a natural disaster and at worst entrenches distrust of society in the audience. Is it possible to ethically market a product that relies on a belief system or set of values you disagree with?
- maxerickson 10y ago
  It depends on your ethics. Which I think is more than a trite rejoinder. You don't have to go very far back in history to see how slippery received wisdom can be. Here's a vaguely on target real world example: There are doctors who perform surgeries for people that refuse blood transfusions for religious regions. Presumably some of the doctors disagree with the belief, but they perform the surgeries anyway. In that situation it isn't a huge conundrum, choosing to engage the patient on their terms can be better than letting them suffer or die (so while your predicate is true, it's also the case that there is strong alignment of interests). It's had an impact on how medicine is practiced otherwise: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-jehovahs-witnesses-are-changing-medicine http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-jehovahs-witness... Anybody have any better real world examples that more directly get at the tricky part of the question?
- jwhitlark 10y ago
  I think it is more than a possibility, and sometimes a moral imperative. Is it ethical to refuse to engage with people who you disagree with? It is always a possibility that it is your ethics/world view which is mistaken. That said, your question was "is it possible?", not is it the right thing in this or any particular case. Just be wary of thinking than anyone who doesn't agree with your ethics is unethical, for there be dragons.
Animats 10y ago
So the current worry is an electromagnetic pulse? [1] The "prepper" version of this usually confuses an actual EMP attack (which requires an atomic bomb) and solar magnetic disturbances. They're totally different. An electromagnetic pulse is a big RF pulse with a rise time in nanoseconds. A solar magnetic disturbance results in DC currents being induced into the ground over a period of hours. An EMP attack is a threat, but if someone is firing atomic bombs at you, you have a bigger problem. That's the military view. It's mostly a threat to things which have long wires attached to them. Mobile devices are too small to be affected. It also doesn't affect fiber optics. A solar magnetic disturbance is mostly a problem for AC long-distance power transmission on circuits which use a ground reference. This is a big problem for power grids, and they have ways to deal with them. There was a big event in 1989 which caused a blackout.[2] It appears as DC in AC circuits, causing partial transformer saturation. If this isn't detected, it can cause transformer overheating and burnout. But the big grids have detection for this, and reduce power levels in some transformers when necessary. This happens at a low level a few times every year. [1] http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/2016/07/emp-electromagnetic-pulse-part-one.html http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/2016/07/emp-electromagnet... [2] http://www.pjm.com/~/media/training/nerc-certifications/re6-weatherenvironmental.ashx http://www.pjm.com/~/media/training/nerc-certifications/re6-...
- fulafel 10y ago
  There also exist dedicated EMP weapons, both conventional and nuclear, you can have your gadgets fried without being subject to nuclear fallout.
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    What are some of the conventional weapons that can generate an EMP to cover a large part of our country? It has to be a high altitude nuclear blast for the physics to work from what I know. > being subject to nuclear fallout. Well, it is a high altitude blast, so fallout will be minimal. The point is after a such a blast the next likely step is icbms start flying. If your toaster is working or not, make a huge difference after that. > you can have your gadgets fried without being subject to nuclear fallout. Yes on a small scale they can have "your gadgets" fried. But others' gadgets will still be working. You can go to a hotel to another town and still get your morning toast there
Alex3917 10y ago
Statistically, you're more likely to die in a post-apocalyptic scenario then you are in a car accident, so if you worry about things like wearing your seatbelt or driving sober then it's hardly irrational to be a prepper.[1] That being said, given that according to JAMA only 1.2% of Americans meet all seven guidelines for cardiovascular health[2], spending your weekends preparing for the apocalypse isn't necessarily the best use of time for most people in terms of increasing their life expectancy. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-human-extinction-isnt-that-unlikely/480444/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-huma... [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22427615 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22427615
- ufmace 10y ago
  It's not irrational IMHO to be prepared to live a couple of days or so without power or grocery stores, as that's happened dozens of times all over the US for a variety of reasons. A total collapse of civilization on the other hand, not so much. I will also say that I've wondered how many of the people prepping are capable of spending a day hiking in the woods with a decent pack on their back. Having a ton of stuff may not be very helpful if you don't have the physical capabilities to adapt to unexpected circumstances.
  - Alex3917 10y ago
    > Having a ton of stuff may not be very helpful if you don't have the physical capabilities to adapt to unexpected circumstances. The actual amount of physical stuff you'd need to survive some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario really isn't more than a few hundred bucks, e.g. a year worth of crystalized iodine for purifying water and a flint & steel fire starter costs all of $25. What's more expensive is learning the edible plants and mushrooms in your area and their medicinal properties, plus whatever other miscellaneous survival skills you'd need.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Iodine is probably a good idea, but unless you're the only one left you probably ought to save up some ammo as well.
gooseus 10y ago
I thoroughly enjoyed this article... as someone who does believe in an eventual collapse I really appreciated the balanced approach while still making some fun of the fringe elements. For the record, my belief is in a non-specific collapse based on the increasingly built-in fragility and complexity of civilization as espoused by Joseph Tainter[1] in his book "The Collapse of Complex Societies"[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter [2] https://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/Tainter_Joseph_The_Collapse_of_Complex_Societies.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/Tainter_Joseph_The_Collapse... https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/B001AOZ3PM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469399383&sr=1-1&keywords=collapse+of+complex+societies#navbar https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Ar...
- GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
  The science historian, James Burke, had a sobering walkthrough of the consequences of a large-scale failure of technology in the first episode of the first of his classic "Connections" series: "The Trigger Effect" http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnwpsp_veetle-connections-s01e01-the-trigger-effect_tech http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnwpsp_veetle-connections-s... (Even more sobering is that, nearly 40 years after this series was filmed, we have a new layer of technological dependence: telecoms networks and data services. This would greatly amplify a lot of the things that Burke describes.)
ValleyOfTheMtns 10y ago
Anyone know of good survival/prepper guides. Ones written by reputable authors/experts, well researched, and practical? I'm not particularly paranoid (I suppose that's what paranoid people say...), but I do think there's a certain fragility to our civilisation that we're happy to overlook.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Consider Back to Basics: https://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Skills/dp/1602392331 https://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Skil... It's sort of a homesteading guide, starting with what sort of land is suitable and discussing the construction of buildings and farming and various crafts. It has a lot of information that would be handy in a world where energy is no longer incredibly abundant. A 2 year prep isn't going to mean shit if the oil stops flowing.
- edkennedy 10y ago
  Neil Strauss wrote a good one, that's pretty amusing too. EMERGENCY: This book will save your life. https://amzn.com/0060898771 https://amzn.com/0060898771
- hga 10y ago
  The thesis of Life After Doomsday by Bruce Clayton (get the Dial Press paperback edition if you want to look at it, it has annotations following the original), is that if you're prepared to survive a major nuclear war, you're pretty much set for anything less than that (modulo of course each threats particulars, like storm surge for hurricanes). He (and I, who started becoming a nuclear war survivalist in 1968-9 in 2nd-3rd grade when my mother became a Civil Defense Block Mother, I still have the sign) recommend you read another book on expedient nuclear war survival, which is a lot more timeless. It's based on serious research at Oak Ridge, up to and including handing a set of printed instructions to an "average" American family, video taping them trying to follow them, and iterating on them. Oh, yeah, in the traditional fashion, the author(s) tried out this stuff themselves: Nuclear War Survival Skills Check out the official on-line copy here: http://www.oism.org/nwss/ http://www.oism.org/nwss/ but if you're worried about a nuclear weapon event, get the dead tree copy, for the Kearny Fallout Meter needs better precision than you'll get from digital -> computer printer. For that matter, you almost certainly want dead tree (or microfiche, there's a company that used to do that) copies for when the light go out. After that, there's a lot more, but I don't have time to go into it (in the middle of renovating a house built in 1910), check my previous postings on the subject if you can find them, 5 minutes with Google and the built in search engine were useless and I have precise search terms, e.g. the obscure Bad Times Primer by C.G. Cobb. Or email me for more (address is in my info).
maga 10y ago
Reminds me of an area historically known for its sword makers where I met people stockpiling swords in preparation for the coming doomsday. Apparently, there is a belief among religious locals that before the actual end of the world, God is going to stop all the modern machinery (including guns) effectively throwing everyone back indo the middle ages. Silly thing, but it keeps local blacksmiths at work allowing to continue old traditions for what it's worth.
DoubleGlazing 10y ago
My wife hails from a little rural village a few miles outside of Syracuse, NY. A place that when the weather gets bad, it REALLY gets bad. There have been snow storms where they have been without power and blocked in for a few days. As a result of this my in-laws have become preppers without realising it. They keep a supply of petrol, dried food, water, fire wood, batteries, gas bottles and have various types of radio at their disposal. They also have a backup generator for the house. They are in the process of fitting solar to try and avoid using the generator when things are bad because in a snow storm a generator sound really creepy. They could live for a week without any lifestyle changes if the power went off and the roads were impassible. When we were getting married and all the extended family arrived at the house for the big do, some relatives turned out to be preppers and were fascinated with the setup. One phrase I kept hearing was "We read in this book that if you do this, then..." and my father-in-law would respond with "Well, when we were actually without power during the 93 blizzard we learned that..." Basically experience trumped mass produced prepper books.
- technofiend 10y ago
  To a certain extent weather makes preppers of us all. I daresay people in Syracuse can rely on harsher weather coming more regularly than down here on the Texas coast. We get hurricanes and tropical storms but they have the entire Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard to choose from. Every time a storm comes we get the usual advisories to stock up on a few days of food, check flashlight batteries, fill a clean tub with tap water for drinking, etc. Those things are drilled into your head from grade school and are repeated on news broadcasts before every major storm. What's interesting is the unexpected byproduct of outages. Particularly here in the South home construction techniques have changed over the last 100 years. Older homes have lots of large, screened windows, whole house fans and vented attics to help move large amounts of air and help with heat. Even without power you can open all your windows and get a cross breeze. New construction is heavily insulated, has fewer windows and makes no concessions for mass airflow outside the air conditioning system. Hurricane Katrina was an epiphany for many home owners down here as power was out for weeks afterwards; previously comfortable homes became sweltering hotboxes. The effect on local generator supply was immediate and obvious: sold out everywhere. I heard through the grapevine of entrepreneurs driving down truckloads of them to make a quick buck. Even so gasoline-fueled generators can be difficult to keep fueled after a hurricane - people leaving the city have a tendency to deplete supplies and gas stations may not have power to pump. But natural gas tends to stay on even when power fails since gas distribution systems can have their own generation and some use the fuel they're moving to maintain pressure. All the anecdotal evidence I have points to a heavy uptick in natural-gas-fired whole house generator sales after Katrina. In fact there was a trend for a while of new construction actively advertising whole house generator inclusion. I think it happened to a lesser extent again after Ike. Life really stinks down here without air conditioning. I guess my point is most preppers seem to concentrate on food and water, but at least down here electricity is high on the list. :-)

86 points by jackgavigan 10y ago

A related question: Where do you, as a marketer, draw the line between producing a product to serve the needs and interests of a particular market and enabling activities you disagree with or believe to be harmful (even if only harmful to the consumer)? In this case, writing for the "prepper" audience seems to fall near the line of providing content relevant to the consumers' interests and enabling/encouraging paranoid 'end-of-times' behavior that at best prepares the consumer for a natural disaster and at worst entrenches distrust of society in the audience. Is it possible to ethically market a product that relies on a belief system or set of values you disagree with?

maxerickson 10y ago
It depends on your ethics. Which I think is more than a trite rejoinder. You don't have to go very far back in history to see how slippery received wisdom can be. Here's a vaguely on target real world example: There are doctors who perform surgeries for people that refuse blood transfusions for religious regions. Presumably some of the doctors disagree with the belief, but they perform the surgeries anyway. In that situation it isn't a huge conundrum, choosing to engage the patient on their terms can be better than letting them suffer or die (so while your predicate is true, it's also the case that there is strong alignment of interests). It's had an impact on how medicine is practiced otherwise: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-jehovahs-witnesses-are-changing-medicine http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-jehovahs-witness... Anybody have any better real world examples that more directly get at the tricky part of the question?
jwhitlark 10y ago
I think it is more than a possibility, and sometimes a moral imperative. Is it ethical to refuse to engage with people who you disagree with? It is always a possibility that it is your ethics/world view which is mistaken. That said, your question was "is it possible?", not is it the right thing in this or any particular case. Just be wary of thinking than anyone who doesn't agree with your ethics is unethical, for there be dragons.

Animats 10y ago

So the current worry is an electromagnetic pulse? [1] The "prepper" version of this usually confuses an actual EMP attack (which requires an atomic bomb) and solar magnetic disturbances. They're totally different. An electromagnetic pulse is a big RF pulse with a rise time in nanoseconds. A solar magnetic disturbance results in DC currents being induced into the ground over a period of hours. An EMP attack is a threat, but if someone is firing atomic bombs at you, you have a bigger problem. That's the military view. It's mostly a threat to things which have long wires attached to them. Mobile devices are too small to be affected. It also doesn't affect fiber optics. A solar magnetic disturbance is mostly a problem for AC long-distance power transmission on circuits which use a ground reference. This is a big problem for power grids, and they have ways to deal with them. There was a big event in 1989 which caused a blackout.[2] It appears as DC in AC circuits, causing partial transformer saturation. If this isn't detected, it can cause transformer overheating and burnout. But the big grids have detection for this, and reduce power levels in some transformers when necessary. This happens at a low level a few times every year. [1] http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/2016/07/emp-electromagnetic-pulse-part-one.html http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/2016/07/emp-electromagnet... [2] http://www.pjm.com/~/media/training/nerc-certifications/re6-weatherenvironmental.ashx http://www.pjm.com/~/media/training/nerc-certifications/re6-...

fulafel 10y ago
There also exist dedicated EMP weapons, both conventional and nuclear, you can have your gadgets fried without being subject to nuclear fallout.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  What are some of the conventional weapons that can generate an EMP to cover a large part of our country? It has to be a high altitude nuclear blast for the physics to work from what I know. > being subject to nuclear fallout. Well, it is a high altitude blast, so fallout will be minimal. The point is after a such a blast the next likely step is icbms start flying. If your toaster is working or not, make a huge difference after that. > you can have your gadgets fried without being subject to nuclear fallout. Yes on a small scale they can have "your gadgets" fried. But others' gadgets will still be working. You can go to a hotel to another town and still get your morning toast there

Alex3917 10y ago

Statistically, you're more likely to die in a post-apocalyptic scenario then you are in a car accident, so if you worry about things like wearing your seatbelt or driving sober then it's hardly irrational to be a prepper.[1] That being said, given that according to JAMA only 1.2% of Americans meet all seven guidelines for cardiovascular health[2], spending your weekends preparing for the apocalypse isn't necessarily the best use of time for most people in terms of increasing their life expectancy. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-human-extinction-isnt-that-unlikely/480444/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-huma... [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22427615 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22427615

ufmace 10y ago
It's not irrational IMHO to be prepared to live a couple of days or so without power or grocery stores, as that's happened dozens of times all over the US for a variety of reasons. A total collapse of civilization on the other hand, not so much. I will also say that I've wondered how many of the people prepping are capable of spending a day hiking in the woods with a decent pack on their back. Having a ton of stuff may not be very helpful if you don't have the physical capabilities to adapt to unexpected circumstances.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  > Having a ton of stuff may not be very helpful if you don't have the physical capabilities to adapt to unexpected circumstances. The actual amount of physical stuff you'd need to survive some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario really isn't more than a few hundred bucks, e.g. a year worth of crystalized iodine for purifying water and a flint & steel fire starter costs all of $25. What's more expensive is learning the edible plants and mushrooms in your area and their medicinal properties, plus whatever other miscellaneous survival skills you'd need.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Iodine is probably a good idea, but unless you're the only one left you probably ought to save up some ammo as well.

gooseus 10y ago

I thoroughly enjoyed this article... as someone who does believe in an eventual collapse I really appreciated the balanced approach while still making some fun of the fringe elements. For the record, my belief is in a non-specific collapse based on the increasingly built-in fragility and complexity of civilization as espoused by Joseph Tainter[1] in his book "The Collapse of Complex Societies"[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter [2] https://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/Tainter_Joseph_The_Collapse_of_Complex_Societies.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/Tainter_Joseph_The_Collapse... https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/B001AOZ3PM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469399383&sr=1-1&keywords=collapse+of+complex+societies#navbar https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Ar...

GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
The science historian, James Burke, had a sobering walkthrough of the consequences of a large-scale failure of technology in the first episode of the first of his classic "Connections" series: "The Trigger Effect" http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnwpsp_veetle-connections-s01e01-the-trigger-effect_tech http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnwpsp_veetle-connections-s... (Even more sobering is that, nearly 40 years after this series was filmed, we have a new layer of technological dependence: telecoms networks and data services. This would greatly amplify a lot of the things that Burke describes.)

ValleyOfTheMtns 10y ago

Anyone know of good survival/prepper guides. Ones written by reputable authors/experts, well researched, and practical? I'm not particularly paranoid (I suppose that's what paranoid people say...), but I do think there's a certain fragility to our civilisation that we're happy to overlook.

maxerickson 10y ago
Consider Back to Basics: https://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Skills/dp/1602392331 https://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Skil... It's sort of a homesteading guide, starting with what sort of land is suitable and discussing the construction of buildings and farming and various crafts. It has a lot of information that would be handy in a world where energy is no longer incredibly abundant. A 2 year prep isn't going to mean shit if the oil stops flowing.
edkennedy 10y ago
Neil Strauss wrote a good one, that's pretty amusing too. EMERGENCY: This book will save your life. https://amzn.com/0060898771 https://amzn.com/0060898771
hga 10y ago
The thesis of Life After Doomsday by Bruce Clayton (get the Dial Press paperback edition if you want to look at it, it has annotations following the original), is that if you're prepared to survive a major nuclear war, you're pretty much set for anything less than that (modulo of course each threats particulars, like storm surge for hurricanes). He (and I, who started becoming a nuclear war survivalist in 1968-9 in 2nd-3rd grade when my mother became a Civil Defense Block Mother, I still have the sign) recommend you read another book on expedient nuclear war survival, which is a lot more timeless. It's based on serious research at Oak Ridge, up to and including handing a set of printed instructions to an "average" American family, video taping them trying to follow them, and iterating on them. Oh, yeah, in the traditional fashion, the author(s) tried out this stuff themselves: Nuclear War Survival Skills Check out the official on-line copy here: http://www.oism.org/nwss/ http://www.oism.org/nwss/ but if you're worried about a nuclear weapon event, get the dead tree copy, for the Kearny Fallout Meter needs better precision than you'll get from digital -> computer printer. For that matter, you almost certainly want dead tree (or microfiche, there's a company that used to do that) copies for when the light go out. After that, there's a lot more, but I don't have time to go into it (in the middle of renovating a house built in 1910), check my previous postings on the subject if you can find them, 5 minutes with Google and the built in search engine were useless and I have precise search terms, e.g. the obscure Bad Times Primer by C.G. Cobb. Or email me for more (address is in my info).

maga 10y ago

Reminds me of an area historically known for its sword makers where I met people stockpiling swords in preparation for the coming doomsday. Apparently, there is a belief among religious locals that before the actual end of the world, God is going to stop all the modern machinery (including guns) effectively throwing everyone back indo the middle ages. Silly thing, but it keeps local blacksmiths at work allowing to continue old traditions for what it's worth.

DoubleGlazing 10y ago

My wife hails from a little rural village a few miles outside of Syracuse, NY. A place that when the weather gets bad, it REALLY gets bad. There have been snow storms where they have been without power and blocked in for a few days. As a result of this my in-laws have become preppers without realising it. They keep a supply of petrol, dried food, water, fire wood, batteries, gas bottles and have various types of radio at their disposal. They also have a backup generator for the house. They are in the process of fitting solar to try and avoid using the generator when things are bad because in a snow storm a generator sound really creepy. They could live for a week without any lifestyle changes if the power went off and the roads were impassible. When we were getting married and all the extended family arrived at the house for the big do, some relatives turned out to be preppers and were fascinated with the setup. One phrase I kept hearing was "We read in this book that if you do this, then..." and my father-in-law would respond with "Well, when we were actually without power during the 93 blizzard we learned that..." Basically experience trumped mass produced prepper books.

technofiend 10y ago
To a certain extent weather makes preppers of us all. I daresay people in Syracuse can rely on harsher weather coming more regularly than down here on the Texas coast. We get hurricanes and tropical storms but they have the entire Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard to choose from. Every time a storm comes we get the usual advisories to stock up on a few days of food, check flashlight batteries, fill a clean tub with tap water for drinking, etc. Those things are drilled into your head from grade school and are repeated on news broadcasts before every major storm. What's interesting is the unexpected byproduct of outages. Particularly here in the South home construction techniques have changed over the last 100 years. Older homes have lots of large, screened windows, whole house fans and vented attics to help move large amounts of air and help with heat. Even without power you can open all your windows and get a cross breeze. New construction is heavily insulated, has fewer windows and makes no concessions for mass airflow outside the air conditioning system. Hurricane Katrina was an epiphany for many home owners down here as power was out for weeks afterwards; previously comfortable homes became sweltering hotboxes. The effect on local generator supply was immediate and obvious: sold out everywhere. I heard through the grapevine of entrepreneurs driving down truckloads of them to make a quick buck. Even so gasoline-fueled generators can be difficult to keep fueled after a hurricane - people leaving the city have a tendency to deplete supplies and gas stations may not have power to pump. But natural gas tends to stay on even when power fails since gas distribution systems can have their own generation and some use the fuel they're moving to maintain pressure. All the anecdotal evidence I have points to a heavy uptick in natural-gas-fired whole house generator sales after Katrina. In fact there was a trend for a while of new construction actively advertising whole house generator inclusion. I think it happened to a lesser extent again after Ike. Life really stinks down here without air conditioning. I guess my point is most preppers seem to concentrate on food and water, but at least down here electricity is high on the list. :-)