It’s hard to evaluate whether prepping was (or is) right or wrong. Although the article identifies Covid as a turning point in mainstream acceptance of prepping

It’s hard to evaluate whether prepping was (or is) right or wrong. Although the article identifies Covid as a turning point in mainstream acceptance of prepping, it’s still notable that even during Covid prepping wasn’t actually necessary. Despite the heavy supply chain disruption, the system did ultimately pull through. Also, Covid-useful items like masks, hand-sanitizer, dexamethasone and ventilators weren’t in the typical prepper inventory (but maybe social distancing was!). So I think we must imagine a significantly more dire scenario than Covid against which to evaluate how worthwhile any given prepping activity is. Also worth watching out for is the anti-society, extreme individualist fringe of prepping culture, which is not only an unproven mitigation against societal collapse, but might actually be one of the forces that causes it.