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Agree 100%. A big barrier to those discussions is the view which society has of anyone expressing preparedness/resilience viewpoints. "You're not one of those t

Agree 100%. A big barrier to those discussions is the view which society has of anyone expressing preparedness/resilience viewpoints. "You're not one of those tinfoil, gun-hoarding prepper hillbillies, are you?". You have to navigate carefully past that, slowly, to make any headway and get to the conversations you ultimately need to have to progress. So right now you see most efforts concentrated at the individual and family levels, with isolated pockets of preparedness 'societies' emerging. But even those wider efforts are regarded as pretty kooky by society as a whole. I'm thinking specifically of the American Redoubt movement when penning this, but there are others - LDS, Amish are examples of groups making wider preparedness efforts but still very much siloed. I think these discussions and wider preparedness efforts are unlikely to gain any ground without some events occurring that demonstrate a clear need for improvements in preparedness. Of course, nobody should be willing such events to occur because people will die. But the longer we go without such an event, the dimmer society's memory gets as to how to survive them. What's that poem? Something like: Hard times create strong men, Strong men create good times, Good times create weak men, Weak men create hard times. It seems appropriate.

Retric 9y ago
Governments make rather large investments in preparedness. The massive food subsidy is one such example where a vast drop in yields would not harm the food supply. CDC does quite a bit to prevent epidemics which are historically the second major wide scale disasters. In third place though most expensive is war / defense spending. They tend to do less preparation for very rare disasters, but it's not clear that personal preparation for such things is all that reasonable or useful.
pjc50 9y ago
> A big barrier to those discussions is the view which society has of anyone expressing preparedness/resilience viewpoints. "You're not one of those tinfoil, gun-hoarding prepper hillbillies, are you?" How people's disaster preparedness is viewed depends on three things: - are the disasters being prepared for plausible or not? - do they give off the impression that they're somehow looking forward to the disaster, either as vindication or the opportunity to deem people "looters" and murder them without repercussion? - is this a form of preparation that theoretically everyone could do, or is there an implication that, in the manner of Jehova's Witnesses, only a subset of the population can be saved? So, if someone in Florida is preparing for hurricanes by securing their property, moving valuables out of the basement, and preparing for the possibility of evacuation? That's a plausible disaster with no talk of violence, and almost everyone could attempt, so that's a "normal" activity and won't get someone deemed the bad kind of prepper.
- slamdance 9y ago
  1. "any" disaster is "plausible", some just more probable than not. 2. Looking forward to a disaster? Do you mean like a firefighter "looks forward to" fires or EMS "looks forward to" MVAs? While I can't speak for the 'preppers' you generalize, I can speak for fire fighters and EMS in that they feel that when TSHTF, they want to be there.... unless the 'preppers' you know are straight up lunatics. 3. "Jehoavh's witnesses 'mentality' has nothing to do with 'prepping'. They think (IIRC) that only a certain number of people will be 'saved', preparations be damned. So... what does that have to do with 'prepping'? Also, why do you inject 'no talk of violence'? as if all the survivors of a catastrophe will be peace-nicks? have you not read any of the studies put out by think tanks or books on previous governmental/environmental collapses? Violence is almost a certainty (in long-term, wide spread catastrophic anomalies). Why do you feel it isn't in your best interest to also prepare for that as you would food, water, etc... ?
  - FooHentai 9y ago
    >3. "Jehoavh's witnesses 'mentality' has nothing to do with 'prepping'. They think (IIRC) that only a certain number of people will be 'saved' That's a little unfair. While one aspect of LDS preparedness might be their take on the rapture and how that'll play out, their teachings on preparedness are not solely aimed at that one scenario to the exclusion of other more likely/immediate scenarios. They also don't guard their preparedness teachings and learnings for exclusive use within the church, it's all quite openly shared to all without any reciprocation expectations. That's admirable, IMO. Also, as a concept the LDS take on rapture as a reason to prepare, is very similar to how 'zombie apocalypse' is used as an engaging concept to drive home very practical preparedness thinking, while at the same time being in itself patently absurd. Myths and legends of old served much the same purpose. All these things are fantastic tools if applied appropriately, and don't require being taken seriously/literally to be useful.
    - slamdance 9y ago
      so are you talking about the Mormons (LDS) or Jehovah's Witnesses? they have two very different views on how the 'world ends' and what to do about it.

Retric 9y ago

Governments make rather large investments in preparedness. The massive food subsidy is one such example where a vast drop in yields would not harm the food supply. CDC does quite a bit to prevent epidemics which are historically the second major wide scale disasters. In third place though most expensive is war / defense spending. They tend to do less preparation for very rare disasters, but it's not clear that personal preparation for such things is all that reasonable or useful.

pjc50 9y ago

> A big barrier to those discussions is the view which society has of anyone expressing preparedness/resilience viewpoints. "You're not one of those tinfoil, gun-hoarding prepper hillbillies, are you?" How people's disaster preparedness is viewed depends on three things: - are the disasters being prepared for plausible or not? - do they give off the impression that they're somehow looking forward to the disaster, either as vindication or the opportunity to deem people "looters" and murder them without repercussion? - is this a form of preparation that theoretically everyone could do, or is there an implication that, in the manner of Jehova's Witnesses, only a subset of the population can be saved? So, if someone in Florida is preparing for hurricanes by securing their property, moving valuables out of the basement, and preparing for the possibility of evacuation? That's a plausible disaster with no talk of violence, and almost everyone could attempt, so that's a "normal" activity and won't get someone deemed the bad kind of prepper.

slamdance 9y ago
1. "any" disaster is "plausible", some just more probable than not. 2. Looking forward to a disaster? Do you mean like a firefighter "looks forward to" fires or EMS "looks forward to" MVAs? While I can't speak for the 'preppers' you generalize, I can speak for fire fighters and EMS in that they feel that when TSHTF, they want to be there.... unless the 'preppers' you know are straight up lunatics. 3. "Jehoavh's witnesses 'mentality' has nothing to do with 'prepping'. They think (IIRC) that only a certain number of people will be 'saved', preparations be damned. So... what does that have to do with 'prepping'? Also, why do you inject 'no talk of violence'? as if all the survivors of a catastrophe will be peace-nicks? have you not read any of the studies put out by think tanks or books on previous governmental/environmental collapses? Violence is almost a certainty (in long-term, wide spread catastrophic anomalies). Why do you feel it isn't in your best interest to also prepare for that as you would food, water, etc... ?
- FooHentai 9y ago
  >3. "Jehoavh's witnesses 'mentality' has nothing to do with 'prepping'. They think (IIRC) that only a certain number of people will be 'saved' That's a little unfair. While one aspect of LDS preparedness might be their take on the rapture and how that'll play out, their teachings on preparedness are not solely aimed at that one scenario to the exclusion of other more likely/immediate scenarios. They also don't guard their preparedness teachings and learnings for exclusive use within the church, it's all quite openly shared to all without any reciprocation expectations. That's admirable, IMO. Also, as a concept the LDS take on rapture as a reason to prepare, is very similar to how 'zombie apocalypse' is used as an engaging concept to drive home very practical preparedness thinking, while at the same time being in itself patently absurd. Myths and legends of old served much the same purpose. All these things are fantastic tools if applied appropriately, and don't require being taken seriously/literally to be useful.
  - slamdance 9y ago
    so are you talking about the Mormons (LDS) or Jehovah's Witnesses? they have two very different views on how the 'world ends' and what to do about it.