4 ms·

I think reality TV has ruined what normal preppers are trying to teach us. There are many, many realistic situatiations, where you might end up without power,

I think reality TV has ruined what normal preppers are trying to teach us. There are many, many realistic situatiations, where you might end up without power, outside, or even locked at home (like going abroad when the neighbouring country is in a "green" covid state, and your government changing their mind overnight, how they decide 'colors', and classifing it as "red", and you need to quarantene for 14 days). Plus all the "i have the flu, I don't want to go to the supermarket today" situations. Having some supplies at home (canned food, pasta, etc.) and some extra other stuff, a barbecue or something to cook stuff in, and an extra pair of socks & a shirt in your car is a very smart thing to do. Our grandmothers, living in villages had full cellars of food not that long ago, with sacks of flour, salt, and knowledge how to bake bread, and it was a totally normal thing to do and have (and people outside of big cities still do that). And reality TV? Show a nutter, thinking about rapture, with a cellar full of some dry freezed crap, some 5 year food supply pack on a couple of pallets, still unopened, with an expiration date two years in the future, a huge amount of guns and ammo, and a "tactical" toilet bag, with a tacital, camo colored emergency toilet paper cutter, ...just in case. This makes preppers look stupid, their prep cases look unrealistic, people having half a slice of toast and a jar of mouldy mustard as only food items in their house and people literally starving when their delivery driver cancells their order due to icy roads.

lazide 6y ago
FYI.- This is what reality TV does for literally everything it covers. Pawn shops don't run the way it shows. Gold miners don't work that way (if they want to stay solvent), etc.
- ajsnigrutin 6y ago
  Of course not... but most people don't have a pawn shop and don't mine gold. On the other hand, with prepping, (just to point at a weird, funny case), a huge amount of people were without toilet paper this spring, both due to media panic and not having an extra pack in the basement, for "just in case" scenarios (for me it was my gf using it all, and me being too lazy to go to store that day, so I have two packs (20 rolls) just for that...). Because people here (in slovenia) watch international news, they bought all the toilet paper here too, and it was hard to get it for like three days (luckily, slovenia is small, and distributon is not hard). And toilet paper is easily replaced by a bidet or a shower... food isn't.
  - earthboundkid 6y ago
    Toilet paper is normally bought in multimonth increments because it doesn't go bad and isn't that large. How often do you buy toilet paper in a year? Maybe two or three times unless you're extremely liquidity constrained or unable to transport an 8-pack. The prospect of a lockdown prompted people to buy toilet paper off cycle which disrupted the whole thing by having everyone buy toilet paper in a month, instead of 1/4 of people, and then the residential demand increased while commercial paper demand dropped. It's not as simple as blaming a media panic.
    - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
      I buy it tw, three times a month. While i lived alone, once, maybe even less. I don't know how large an "8 pack" is, but buying 10 rolls in a package is normal here, and usually you buy one pack, together with other groceries. Media panic made people buy 5, 10 packs (full carts), because they saw americans and australians do it, and other be left without, so they hoarded the stuff.
    - foopod 6y ago
      I don't know how big your place is, but I just don't have room in my apartment to justify keeping these kind of quantities of anything. My partner and I buy an 8 pack once or twice a month.
      - earthboundkid 6y ago
        If you’re two people and you go through more than eight rolls a month, you may have a stomach problem.
- toddmatthews 6y ago
  what do you mean about the gold miners? is Parker not legit? what have i been watching?
brightball 6y ago
All the prepped were feeling pretty good back in March/April. But I agree with you. I always make sure we have some emergency food, water, basic power needs, heat and communication options.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  Why did they feel good? I was in the middle of a lengthy move in March/April. Ended up at my new destination at the height of the panic buying/supply chain disruptions with nothing in my pantry and a single roll of paper towel. Literally as unprepared as possible. Needless to say, I managed to stay alive... I completely stocked a new pantry with no problems, except flour and yeast, which was easy enough to find after a week or two of calling around. I did use paper towel as toilet paper for a whole week. Completely. Disastrous, let me tell you :) I did have masks that I use for wood working, so that was nice, but cutting up a shirt wouldn't have been the end of the world. And I did buy the very last thing of hand sanitizer at the store, so that was lucky, but in a pinch my 2 bottles of cheap tequila would've done the trick. Tbh if I had spent years prepping for a pandemic I'd be pretty disappointed with how this one went down... afaict zero prepping was necessary.
  - burkaman 6y ago
    Because going to a grocery store was and still is a lot more dangerous than usual, and it would be nice to have a two week stash of food so you could quarantine and then go visit your family or something without worrying about infecting them. I don't have a stash, and obviously I think going out to buy food is an acceptable risk, but I definitely would have felt better in March and April if I could have avoided the grocery store for a while. > Tbh if I had spent years prepping for a pandemic I'd be pretty disappointed with how this one went down... afaict zero prepping was necessary. I mean, come on. You and I have both ridden this out with little to no disruption to our lives, but hundreds of thousands are dead, and many more are out of work, unable to afford food, close to being evicted. "I'm fine so I guess it was never a big deal" is not an appropriate attitude.
  - myself248 6y ago
    Because it meant not contributing to the crowds. Not burdening the grocery workers. Not worrying about where to get masks, or gloves, or hand sanitizer. Having the right masks, and not having to wonder if a cut-up t-shirt would work. (Remember early on, that wasn't clear.) Because preparation meant being able to actually stay at home during the stay-at-home orders, not "stay at home except for the grocery store and the pharmacy and the gas station and the warehouse club and the pizza joint", which largely moots the point. You survived, which is great, but whatever you were doing to stock your pantry was riskier than sitting at home eating from an already-stocked pantry. It's a game of numbers and odds, and some of those same folks you were shopping alongside were sick, and did get others sick, and did contribute to the first surge in cases that swamped the hospitals. Being prepared meant being able to completely sit out every one of those dice-throws. The more people who are prepared, the better the odds for everyone, not just the prepared.
_jal 6y ago
You can say this about anything of public concern. We have had TVs in nearly every home for multiple generations. Expecting TV to be anything but a funhouse mirror is similar to expecting people to stop stealing. The nutters are real - I have one in my family. At some level, this is just arguing about fringe enthusiasts lacking professional PR agents.
brainzap 6y ago
you guys watch TV?
ahnick 6y ago
For some reasonable prepping ideas and product reviews the HN crowd may enjoy The Tech Prepper (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCacth3foPsjqgV4wW4kuDDw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCacth3foPsjqgV4wW4kuDDw/vid...)

lazide 6y ago

FYI.- This is what reality TV does for literally everything it covers. Pawn shops don't run the way it shows. Gold miners don't work that way (if they want to stay solvent), etc.

ajsnigrutin 6y ago
Of course not... but most people don't have a pawn shop and don't mine gold. On the other hand, with prepping, (just to point at a weird, funny case), a huge amount of people were without toilet paper this spring, both due to media panic and not having an extra pack in the basement, for "just in case" scenarios (for me it was my gf using it all, and me being too lazy to go to store that day, so I have two packs (20 rolls) just for that...). Because people here (in slovenia) watch international news, they bought all the toilet paper here too, and it was hard to get it for like three days (luckily, slovenia is small, and distributon is not hard). And toilet paper is easily replaced by a bidet or a shower... food isn't.
- earthboundkid 6y ago
  Toilet paper is normally bought in multimonth increments because it doesn't go bad and isn't that large. How often do you buy toilet paper in a year? Maybe two or three times unless you're extremely liquidity constrained or unable to transport an 8-pack. The prospect of a lockdown prompted people to buy toilet paper off cycle which disrupted the whole thing by having everyone buy toilet paper in a month, instead of 1/4 of people, and then the residential demand increased while commercial paper demand dropped. It's not as simple as blaming a media panic.
  - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
    I buy it tw, three times a month. While i lived alone, once, maybe even less. I don't know how large an "8 pack" is, but buying 10 rolls in a package is normal here, and usually you buy one pack, together with other groceries. Media panic made people buy 5, 10 packs (full carts), because they saw americans and australians do it, and other be left without, so they hoarded the stuff.
  - foopod 6y ago
    I don't know how big your place is, but I just don't have room in my apartment to justify keeping these kind of quantities of anything. My partner and I buy an 8 pack once or twice a month.
    - earthboundkid 6y ago
      If you’re two people and you go through more than eight rolls a month, you may have a stomach problem.
toddmatthews 6y ago
what do you mean about the gold miners? is Parker not legit? what have i been watching?

brightball 6y ago

All the prepped were feeling pretty good back in March/April. But I agree with you. I always make sure we have some emergency food, water, basic power needs, heat and communication options.

throwawaygh 6y ago
Why did they feel good? I was in the middle of a lengthy move in March/April. Ended up at my new destination at the height of the panic buying/supply chain disruptions with nothing in my pantry and a single roll of paper towel. Literally as unprepared as possible. Needless to say, I managed to stay alive... I completely stocked a new pantry with no problems, except flour and yeast, which was easy enough to find after a week or two of calling around. I did use paper towel as toilet paper for a whole week. Completely. Disastrous, let me tell you :) I did have masks that I use for wood working, so that was nice, but cutting up a shirt wouldn't have been the end of the world. And I did buy the very last thing of hand sanitizer at the store, so that was lucky, but in a pinch my 2 bottles of cheap tequila would've done the trick. Tbh if I had spent years prepping for a pandemic I'd be pretty disappointed with how this one went down... afaict zero prepping was necessary.
- burkaman 6y ago
  Because going to a grocery store was and still is a lot more dangerous than usual, and it would be nice to have a two week stash of food so you could quarantine and then go visit your family or something without worrying about infecting them. I don't have a stash, and obviously I think going out to buy food is an acceptable risk, but I definitely would have felt better in March and April if I could have avoided the grocery store for a while. > Tbh if I had spent years prepping for a pandemic I'd be pretty disappointed with how this one went down... afaict zero prepping was necessary. I mean, come on. You and I have both ridden this out with little to no disruption to our lives, but hundreds of thousands are dead, and many more are out of work, unable to afford food, close to being evicted. "I'm fine so I guess it was never a big deal" is not an appropriate attitude.
- myself248 6y ago
  Because it meant not contributing to the crowds. Not burdening the grocery workers. Not worrying about where to get masks, or gloves, or hand sanitizer. Having the right masks, and not having to wonder if a cut-up t-shirt would work. (Remember early on, that wasn't clear.) Because preparation meant being able to actually stay at home during the stay-at-home orders, not "stay at home except for the grocery store and the pharmacy and the gas station and the warehouse club and the pizza joint", which largely moots the point. You survived, which is great, but whatever you were doing to stock your pantry was riskier than sitting at home eating from an already-stocked pantry. It's a game of numbers and odds, and some of those same folks you were shopping alongside were sick, and did get others sick, and did contribute to the first surge in cases that swamped the hospitals. Being prepared meant being able to completely sit out every one of those dice-throws. The more people who are prepared, the better the odds for everyone, not just the prepared.

_jal 6y ago

You can say this about anything of public concern. We have had TVs in nearly every home for multiple generations. Expecting TV to be anything but a funhouse mirror is similar to expecting people to stop stealing. The nutters are real - I have one in my family. At some level, this is just arguing about fringe enthusiasts lacking professional PR agents.

brainzap 6y ago

you guys watch TV?

ahnick 6y ago

For some reasonable prepping ideas and product reviews the HN crowd may enjoy The Tech Prepper (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCacth3foPsjqgV4wW4kuDDw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCacth3foPsjqgV4wW4kuDDw/vid...)