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I always saw planning for a social collapse as a way to not actually resolve issues because you feel helpless. "people gonna attack us? IM PREPARED!" you are n

I always saw planning for a social collapse as a way to not actually resolve issues because you feel helpless. "people gonna attack us? IM PREPARED!" you are not. You know what's better than prepping? Fighting tooth and nail to make sure the grid is rock solid and free of corruption. And every day is a battle, because there's always a schemer who will try to get in and hoard for himself. If preppers got depressed from thinking how things are in collapse, and how they need to improve things, as a society, in order to improve things for themselves, they'd actually maybe act. I see preppers as poor "throw money at it" rich folks. Rich folks don't care if the education system isn't working, they can find a private school which costs $100k a month to give their child the best education possible. They can get a bunker professionally built so if anything happens their thick doors and automated guns will take care of any people trying to get in. They can hire a chef and have the best food possible in an ideal diet to keep them happy, sated, and healthy all their lives while most of us have to suffer from over-sugared foods and affordable food being incredibly poor in nutrients Preppers are similar, they don't want to solve societal problems, they want to feel like _THEY_ are insulated from societal problems because they are "off the grid". But they are not. No living up in the mountain is gonna protect you from a bad harvest, or from a crop disease, or from a fucking splinter. I love something someone said recently "if you're in a zombie apocalypse, you won't get to have the cool hair, the cool bat, and go smash zombie brains. You'll likely die from diarrhea pretty early on."

ryandrake 3y ago
If society actually collapses, a lone libertarian in a bunker with truckloads of fresh water and food supplies is not going to survive. A warlord with as few as 10 guys with guns roving the hills will be able to just kill the preppers and take whatever they need. They're not going to care that you have the deed to your land and you even built a fence around it to show everyone you own it.
- trogdor 3y ago
  The one serious prepper I know has a legally-owned belt-fed machine gun - among many other arsenal items - guarding the entrance to his "bug out room." Good luck to the warlord :)
  - defrost 3y ago
    The warlords will do just fine .. after a year or two or three your buddy with his rapid-pop gun will either play nice, die alone, or get killed when least expected. See: Heavily armed Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands post WWII.
    - trogdor 3y ago
      I'm not sure most preppers are preparing for a world war, but if that's the context, your point is well-taken.
      - defrost 3y ago
        "Societal collapse" if that is what we're talking about, isn't just for christmas .. it will persist for some years. It's a funny old thread in any case - I'm a >60 year old Australian who grew up in the Kimberley region in a minority amoungst people who truly lived off the grid and had done so for tens of thousands of years. The people that raised me were born in the 1920s and 1930s and many had survived the collapse of European society in South East Asia and Japanese internment, some having formed long range insurrgency groups to spy on | terrorise Japanese soldiers and coordinate long range bombing of oil extraction points and depots through SE Asia (all a bit before I was born, obviously). I'm related to people that charged on horse back belt fed machine guns across four miles armed with bayonets. They 'won'[1] Where I am now my neighbour shoots ULR at 24 inch targets 5,000 yards distant [2] US preppers are pretty funny. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_(1917) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_(1917) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
- gochi 3y ago
  It also feeds into this idea that you can prepare for the worst, but the human condition when pushed to its limits does not abide by rules. Everyone loves to think about how they'll handle attackers, but never spend much time thinking about the lack of sleep and how that'll severely impact them. Never how much isolation will destroy so much of their mental state. Popular media influence of lone wolves surviving and other such content can really prevent people from being aware of the realities of such collapse I suppose!
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    People watch too many zombie movies where the protagonist is this lone, handsome, rugged individualist with a gun that has infinite bullets, and every patch of humanity they run into are these nice, civilized survivor camps full of their church friends. Everyone thinks when society collapses, they're gonna be that lone badass. Newsflash: You're not going to be that badass. If you can shoot straight, you'll be forced to become a soldier-slave in some warlord's roving army. If you can't, you'll either be killed or become a sex-slave for that roving army. Either way, 99.9% of the non-murdered population is going to become a slave of some sort if the shit really hits the fan.
marssaxman 3y ago
> Preppers are similar, they don't want to solve societal problems It seems more likely to me that they have a realistic awareness of their level of influence over society, which is to say effectively none.

ryandrake 3y ago

If society actually collapses, a lone libertarian in a bunker with truckloads of fresh water and food supplies is not going to survive. A warlord with as few as 10 guys with guns roving the hills will be able to just kill the preppers and take whatever they need. They're not going to care that you have the deed to your land and you even built a fence around it to show everyone you own it.

trogdor 3y ago
The one serious prepper I know has a legally-owned belt-fed machine gun - among many other arsenal items - guarding the entrance to his "bug out room." Good luck to the warlord :)
- defrost 3y ago
  The warlords will do just fine .. after a year or two or three your buddy with his rapid-pop gun will either play nice, die alone, or get killed when least expected. See: Heavily armed Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands post WWII.
  - trogdor 3y ago
    I'm not sure most preppers are preparing for a world war, but if that's the context, your point is well-taken.
    - defrost 3y ago
      "Societal collapse" if that is what we're talking about, isn't just for christmas .. it will persist for some years. It's a funny old thread in any case - I'm a >60 year old Australian who grew up in the Kimberley region in a minority amoungst people who truly lived off the grid and had done so for tens of thousands of years. The people that raised me were born in the 1920s and 1930s and many had survived the collapse of European society in South East Asia and Japanese internment, some having formed long range insurrgency groups to spy on | terrorise Japanese soldiers and coordinate long range bombing of oil extraction points and depots through SE Asia (all a bit before I was born, obviously). I'm related to people that charged on horse back belt fed machine guns across four miles armed with bayonets. They 'won'[1] Where I am now my neighbour shoots ULR at 24 inch targets 5,000 yards distant [2] US preppers are pretty funny. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_(1917) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_(1917) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
gochi 3y ago
It also feeds into this idea that you can prepare for the worst, but the human condition when pushed to its limits does not abide by rules. Everyone loves to think about how they'll handle attackers, but never spend much time thinking about the lack of sleep and how that'll severely impact them. Never how much isolation will destroy so much of their mental state. Popular media influence of lone wolves surviving and other such content can really prevent people from being aware of the realities of such collapse I suppose!
- ryandrake 3y ago
  People watch too many zombie movies where the protagonist is this lone, handsome, rugged individualist with a gun that has infinite bullets, and every patch of humanity they run into are these nice, civilized survivor camps full of their church friends. Everyone thinks when society collapses, they're gonna be that lone badass. Newsflash: You're not going to be that badass. If you can shoot straight, you'll be forced to become a soldier-slave in some warlord's roving army. If you can't, you'll either be killed or become a sex-slave for that roving army. Either way, 99.9% of the non-murdered population is going to become a slave of some sort if the shit really hits the fan.

marssaxman 3y ago

> Preppers are similar, they don't want to solve societal problems It seems more likely to me that they have a realistic awareness of their level of influence over society, which is to say effectively none.