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Whenever I see people talk about how they are planning for a societal collapse, I get the sense that deep down, a lot of these people want to see it happen duri
by kbos87 3y ago
Whenever I see people talk about how they are planning for a societal collapse, I get the sense that deep down, a lot of these people want to see it happen during their lifetime (or at least they think they do.)
If you look for hints about their motivations, it often strikes me as a way for people to feel like they have some sense of control over their future in a world they are disillusioned with. They sleep a little better at night thinking that they are going to get the last laugh while the boss that embarrassed them three years ago starves somewhere. The whole thing then morphs from “I’d better be prepared on the off chance something happens” to “I hope I get to show all of them before I die.”
- keiferski 3y agoI don't think it's necessarily that vindictive. Large-scale civilization is a very recent thing in human evolutionary terms and from a certain angle, a survivalist prepper life in nature does have some appeal, even if it's no doubt over-romanticized.
- badwolf 3y agoanecdotally, every prepper type I personally know falls under that category (the petty vindictive hope of everyone else getting screwed while they have the last laugh)
- eightysixfour 3y agoBit of confirmation bias, no? The other people that have prepared don’t talk about it because it isn’t a big deal to them.
- mgkimsal 3y agoOr definitional? A "prepper type", by definition, is one that talks about it (a lot).
- keiferski 3y agoWhile Reddit is hardly a representative sample, it's not a bad example – and there is basically zero vindictive content on https://old.reddit.com/r/preppers/ https://old.reddit.com/r/preppers/
- convolvatron 3y agoas a counter-opinion, to the extent that I think about such things - it gives one a sense of agency. Almost certainly a false one. But the notion that I could have some control over my own life as my trust in the support network around me erodes is a small comfort.
- creeble 3y agoSee also: toilet paper shortages at the outbreak of a pandemic, etc.
- talldatethrow 3y agoThe toilet paper thing/general hoarding is heavily misunderstood. I was/am a massive covid skeptic. None of the data made sense to me, from February into the summer of 2020. Im also unvaccinated for covid now. But when lockdowns were starting... My family bought tons of supplies. Amounts you'd call insane or who knows what. Do you know why I bought a lot of toilet paper and food and salt and flour?? In case I was wrong about covid. If covid turned out to be as bad as the media was talking about (videos of Chinese people shaking in the streets, newspapers in Italy full of obituaries, morgues full and digging mass dirt graves on islands), I wasnt about to go back out into ebolla-ville and buy paper to wipe my ass. Everyone presented it like hoarders were stupid to think supply lines in America would break down. That wasn't the point. If covid was actually deadly and easy to transmit, I wouldn't want to go into the streets to restock items even if they were technically in the stores.
- mikestew 3y agoIf covid turned out to be as bad as the media... And the unwritten point being, if it turned out to be not so bad, your worst case is that you have a bunch of toilet paper that doesn't have an expiration date (or food you were going to eat anyway, or salt and flour that keeps for a long time, et al.). COVID skeptic or not, it seemed to be the smart hedge.
- 3y ago
- scruple 3y agoWe had this tropical storm in SoCal last weekend. It was confusing to see people crowing that they didn't suffer any damage as some sort of victory in being right (which is also confusing, because they were conflating awareness of the storm with panic) rather than luck that the storm changed paths, etc.
- hotpotamus 3y agoI try and search my feelings a bit for this sort of thing, and what you describe probably does play a bit of a factor - I'd say it's more of an "I told you so" feeling. But the thing is that I am truly worried to my core about global warming and I have been for more than a decade at this point. This year has brought anomalies that are terrifying and I think the majority of people at least now feel that something is going wrong. I don't want to see collapse - I like my showers and air conditioning as much as anyone. But the way things are just looks more and more precarious to me.
- tenpies 3y ago> global warming The fun realization for me has been that we're in a no-win scenario now. Even if climate change (which has been re-defined) is overly-stated, the policies that are being and will continue to be enacted as a response to it, guarantee immense suffering for billions and a general decline in quality of life. The good news is that you can mitigate for much of the consequences by simply not being in the West, ideally in a commodity rich country.
- PeterisP 3y ago> The good news is that you can mitigate for much of the consequences by simply not being in the West, ideally in a commodity rich country. That's interesting, my impression has been entirely the opposite, that Global South is going to suffer the worst of the consequences; as most parts of the West can afford to mitigate the effects with large investments in infrastructure and for western countries these consequences are outweighed by secondary-order effects i.e. migration and conflicts due to the more affected places.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoIf we do nothing about climate change the everybody's quality of life is going to fall off a cliff. We can fix this problem without going back to the dark ages.
- abenga 3y agoExactly what has been enacted to reduce anyone's quality of life? Electrifying appliances and transport? Most of the alternatives are literally strictly better than the fossil powered equivalents.
- lezojeda 3y ago[dead]
- homlihopil 3y agoI think youre projecting. I think they do it because it's fun. A hobby. Just add a challenge to daily life for literally the fun of it.
- anonzzzies 3y agoMany I know just want to be the last ride. So no regrets. No pointing and laughing just ‘after me who cares’. Most I heard that from are parents.
- dvh 3y agoThey want to live in a world without consequences.
- talldatethrow 3y agoWrong. They're planning for when SHTF, which is the ultimate consequence to the stupidity they feel is present in modern life and government.
- yabbs 3y agoThey want to live in a world with severe consequences.... A world to make up for the last 70 years.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- barrysteve 3y agoYour obversations might be true, the cynical bend is offputting. The problem is living 'off grid' is not new. Monasteries have been doing it for a while. Boomers have been doing it for a while. The article drives home a sense of hopelessness about the whole affair. If a war ever broke out, I'd much prefer to be living in the countryside like a ww2 british mom in a roald dahl novel, than sitting next to the local recruitment office and thirsty government official making "no, sir" a very difficult proposition indeed. I know ww2 references are basically irrelevant in this day and age, but given the articles bleak outlook, it seems that the Hope of living offgrid in world war 2 and the infinite religious commitment of a Monastery, though difficult, is somehow more realistic and a tonal 'step up' from an American blogger in 2023. I don't know how that happened, but here we are.
- dagenleg 3y agoWould you never consider actually serving in the army, if the war breaks out?
- danans 3y ago> The problem is living 'off grid' is not new. Monasteries have been doing it for a while To the contrary, monasteries were very often at the nexus of trade, serving as the middle-men between peasants who produced goods and markets in larger cities [1][2]. Monasteries were on every grid available in their day - road, communication, etc. They were even connected to social grids to recruit new monks. 1. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1301/trade-in-medieval-europe https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1301/trade-in-medieval-... 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_yQ0VGuQDo&list=PL5opbjxUR5-1sshs2-ghD0d_LmWO6PZ0O https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_yQ0VGuQDo&list=PL5opbjxUR5...
- yencabulator 3y agoMonasteries also had chaplains whose literal job was to interconnect with the outside world. A monastery near a city could have half a dozen chaplains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaplain
- 3y ago
- poulsbohemian 3y agoI've got a whole hypothesis around this, but without getting too political... your statement "a way for people to feel like they have some sense of control over their future in a world they are disillusioned with" fits really well with the people I've met via real estate who are looking for these types of properties. At the root, they are scared and this kind of lifestyle is a way for them to channel that fear. Ironically though, every cabin in the woods / prepper camp that I've seen as a real estate agent, wouldn't even last someone through a winter. Still way too many reliances on the modern world. Oh you've got a giant water tank and a well, but the pump (or your generator) runs on gas? Yeah good luck with that. Ok you've got a year's supply of freeze-dried meals, but no greenhouse, no setup for animals, no access to hunting, so... how are you going to produce more food? So you've got woodpile, but no more trees on your property and your only source of heat is a wood stove, so... It's good to be prepared - earthquakes, tornadoes, and certainly fires are going to continue to be a thing. But I feel a kind of sadness for a lot of these folks who have survivalist fantasies that are a manifestation of their fears.
- NumberWangMan 3y agoThere's a part of me that feels the urge to prepare for disaster. And yet I know it's a reaction to fears I have that won't be helped by being prepared. My main concern is that one of many possible AGI disasters will come to pass. None of them are really solved by prepping. But I can speak to this being driven by fear, at least for myself. To be honest, I have fantasies -- but they are fantasies of a simpler life without all the craziness of the world. Or rather, if I had to spend all my time getting food and staying alive for the next few days, I wouldn't have a lot of mental energy to worry about all the ways that things could go really badly that I don't have any control over.
- poulsbohemian 3y agoI see what's being described in this thread as at least three different things: 1) Disaster preparedness, like you are describing, as a sane and prudent thing for many people and places. Know your local conditions and put in place some resources you could use if there were a fire / tornado / earthquake (whatever your local threat) for some period of time. 2) Simple living. That is, if there are things you can do that make you more self-sufficient and create pleasure, then go for it. Many people plant a garden, raise some chickens, etc not because they are prepping for the end of the world but because they enjoy it. 3) Actual off-grid preppers - people who for one reason or another plan for some time in which they will need to be entirely self-sufficient and may even wish to explicitly separate themselves from other people (war, zombie apocalypse, etc). I think it's really just this third category that raises eyebrows and questions.
- caeril 3y agoThis happens, yes, But oftentimes preppers start off from rational or at least semi-rational bases, but then entrench themselves in the psychology you describe due to the sunk-cost fallacy. For example: let's say you bought into Matt Simmons' peak oil hypothesis in 2008. The data is there. Hubbert's peak is a real phenomenon and mathematically, it will eventually happen. So you moved off-grid, spun up a sustainable, regenerative ranching effort, and started rolling over long-dated NYMEX crude contracts, losing your savings slowly for a decade and a half, while tight oil technology expired your options worthless, every single month. Some people might say ok, I was wrong. Shit. Time to get back to the real world. But many more of them will convince themselves no, it's just the timing, I was just a little early. See the Bakken and Eagle Ford production is already peaking, and the Permian Basin will peak in just a couple more years. THEN I'll be right. I have to be right. July 2025 will be my swan song. I'm going to go watch The Big Short again. Humans are gonna human. And I suspect you're going to see a LOT more of the left-leaning, tech-bro type of this prepper emerging due to climate change concerns than you will of the traditional Bible-beating Soviet-EMP style of prepper in the coming decade.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoIt will be quite amusing if peak oil comes about because demand has fallen rather than supply.
- wizofaus 3y agoThat seems to be almost certain now. I'll admit I'd followed the debate fairly closely for a while and was convinced by the arguments that an oil supply crunch was going to have a fairly dramatic effect on civilisation as we knew it. It may still happen, but it seems a fairly minor risk compared to many of the others. But I never really considered prepping - if some sort of dramatic collapse does occur I'd rather just ride it out as best as I can with family and friends and local communities going through the same thing. I don't expect it to be at all pretty but nor do I think it'll be all bad.
- toofy 3y ago> And I suspect you're going to see a LOT more of the left-leaning, tech-bro type of this prepper emerging due to climate change concerns… while i’m sure we’ll see an uptick, i don’t think we’ll see anything like we did with the previous batch of paranoid types. the modern left is much more about “we need to rely on and help each other” rather than the “im gonna become a survivalist and die alone in the woods.” and honestly, anyone who thinks going off alone is somehow the intelligent move is fooling themselves and obviously hasn’t thought it through. we know this. we have thousands of years of evidence of this. when we come together we thrive. when we go off in the woods to show how “strong-boot-straps” we are, we die of an infected toe nail or something equally as stupid. that’s why every survivalist disaster “expert” recommends to prepare for disaster with your neighbors in your town to help each other and distribute the load. it’s not rocket surgery. again, i’m sure we’ll see a slight uptick in every type, but nothing like we did in the past, i think we learned too much from watching their mistakes. we’ve seen too many shows and videos of people with even strong survival skills be absolutely miserable off on in isolation.
- dudul 3y agoLaugh all you want, but during the worst months of covid, when some items were impossible to find, I was all stocked. And my neighbors were very grateful that I was able to help them procure some necessary things. Most preppers don't do it to be ready for the zombie apocalypse, but just for when the SHTF just enough that you can't count on the government showing up this very week.
- Rant423 3y agoIt could be an extreme version of FOMO: you see the end of humanity, nothing left afterwards. That's nice, sense of completion, I followed until the end.
- eulgro 3y agoFor me the dream stems more for the realization that there is almost no way of living an environmentally sustainable lifestyle while participating in society. I want to have a zero carbon footprint now, not in 50 years. This is just not possible if I have to buy food at the grocery store, take fossil fuel powered transport or just generally participate in the economy of a system which still strives for infinite growth. Meanwhile, when living in a self sufficient community, it becomes absolutely possible to reach that goal, or even be carbon negative. Of course collapse is a very real possibility. But collapse is often asynchronous, occurring at different times in different places. In first world countries, I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't even happen within my lifetime, or at all In that case, will I feel bad that I decided to disengage early from a destructive society and live by my own beliefs? I don't believe so.
- xnx 3y agoUndoubtedly lower status/income individuals wish for higher status from some tragic event that reshuffles the deck. "Your book smarts aren't worth so much now are they?"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]