Are you prepared for Doomsday...Preppers the new crazypants show on NatGeo?

I have often thought about starting a prepper thread, but this will work nicely

BTW I checked and that photo is apparently Mykel Hawke himself. http://www.mykelhawke.com/.

I would v much like to learn to craft my own fighting stick.

1) Break a medium-sized branch off of the nearest tree.
2) Grip the base of the branch firmly and wail on the nearest passerby.

I love prepper talk

Winco has this little prepper section with mre’s and bulk freeze dried foods and seeds and huge buckets etc and I always eye them but Mr Veg has vetoed me from bringing them home :(

and i want a handcrank radio so bad

luv2be on my deathbed and lamenting the thousands of hours and untold dollars wasted preparing for my role as a fallout npc instead of engaging with my family or doing literally anything constructive with my life

'bury me with my iodine pills and engrave FUCK YOU GOT MINE on my headstone'

but but... i have a bunker

i can’t deny these guys are fascinating but there’s no getting away from the fact that madly prepping for an oncoming apocalypse instead of, y’know, trying to work collectively to prevent it happening in the first place is an utterly poisonous mindset

and also, dare i say it, kinda uniquely american

uv2be on my deathbed and lamenting the thousands of hours and untold dollars wasted preparing for my role as a fallout npc instead of engaging with my family or doing literally anything constructive with my life

This is what goes through my mind too. You've spent (ie wasted) a good deal of your actual life preparing for some hellscape shitty version of your life that probably won't materialize. What is so great about your life that you need to go to such extremes? "Well my family and I must survive the apocalypse, cause otherwise we won't get to enjoy our full lives. Which consist in large part of preparing for the apocalypse".

plus if it comes down to eating canned foods and living underground, and then hopefully being able to emerge out into a post-apocalyptic hellscape...uh I'd rather myself and my family be dead.

yeah, i was gonna say the same thing

like if the end of the world is coming, hell yeah i wanna be in the first tranche of the dead tbh, i’ve seen enough postapocalyptic fiction to know i don’t wanna be fighting other starving wretches for the last morsel of raw human baby

I'd like to draw a clear distinction between standard "preparedness" for an earthquake, hurricane, etc. and the kind of hoarder-type "full prepper" mentality. Preparedness makes sense and I'm interested in it. You should have water and food for emergencies. Full on paranoid stockpiling... not really my thing. Ideally I'd like to discuss both here.

These covers are great. "Bugging out" vs. "hunkering down" seems to be a hotly debated topic for preppers.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/719kXhywLWL.jpg

haha I bet! that mag is out of control.

kinda uniquely American

first society in history to be built on the mindset that "we're all here together to fight each other on our way to the top".

well, yeah

seems to be working out well for u guys too

"When Is Amputation the Only Option?"

Feel like a poll of Recoil Offgrid headlines could be useful.

i don’t wanna be fighting other starving wretches for the last morsel of raw human baby

Yeah, but if you prepare you'll be able to cook that baby!

I've already canned a few fresh babies using my stick made tinning kit.

Imagine being lodged in that scrum of torsos, each with their limbs neatly sheared off via unfortunate-but-necessary self-amputation, teeth gnashing wildly in the hopes of latching onto just a scrap of that sweet infant flesh, only to eventually realize that you're raking your incisors against the surface of a half-melted Betsy Wetsy doll. And gnawing a hunk of that waste-soaked plastic because, hell, what else are ya gonna eat.

insufficient respect ott for the potentially life-saving information provided by this magazine

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71luZlte6WL._SX522_.jpg

https://www.offgridweb.com/preparation/bugging-out-with-a-baby/

https://2rdrtx4bt29lo91s31mjhkji-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/bugging-out-with-a-baby-001.jpg

It's really no different than keeping a stash of rations in your rucksack, when you think about it.

brb gonna pitch my ‘lone wolf and cub meets the road’ screenplay

Lone Wolf's Cub Meets My Belly, morelike.

What does post-apocalyptic man subsist on once the inevitable infertility phase kicks in?

other post-apocalyptic men

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWrLmoBIIig

I had a guitar lesson a few days ago, and my teacher pal surprised me (in a funny way) with a copy of "Survivor's Edge" magazine that he picked up while he and his son were bored waiting the 15 minutes at the drug store after the latter's covid shot. We found it fascinatingly stupid in its ott-ness. There were reviews of new guns, how to prepare a "go bag" for work, recipes for "medicinal mustard," a feature on how to navigate the new world of radical violent protestors, and so on. It was truly nuts, and also predictably scary, because the answer to just about any hypothetical was a weapon. Still, it raised so many questions. Like, why would one need more than one issue? (I wonder the same thing about wedding magazines.) The other question we had was, does this magazine have competition on the newsstand, and if so, are they arch rivals that stock weapons in cast the other one comes at them? (The answers are "yes" and "dunno, probably".) We also wondered how long someone would last at work if they actually had a "go bag," and who would be the HR hero to have the balls to fire them.

This was the issue, btw:

https://img.discountmags.com/products/extras/50531-survivor-s-edge-cover-2021-october-5-issue.jpg?auto=format&cs=strip&h=509&lossless=true&w=387&s=dbd070f67fc610b73d7828a3ce2bfb2c

The irony is that this magazine is I suppose designed to help guide and protect you in the end times, but its audience is probably the number one threat should the shit go down. Very "are we the baddies?", minus the self-awareness.

Thanks for that. I've been trying to figure out how to fit 17 Lifesavers in my pocket for a while.

My favorite might have been the tips for fending off a "Komono" Dragon. First, how often has that ever happened? Second, it's Komodo, you idiots.

But assuming you wanted to fend off a Komodo Dragon attack, let me save you the trouble with a ridiculous video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3H2uZUDHlg

Step One: Don't wander around Komodo National Park.

So this go bag doesn't just have important papers and a change of clothing, like a disaster go bag has?

I didn't read it, but given the cover of the magazine I assume it has, like, money, MREs, weapons, etc. I suppose the bare minimum would be enough gear to survive the hordes en route to your shelter and/or real stash.

lol I just had a vision of a bearded dude in a suit on the train with a camo bag full of guns and energy bars, nervously bouncing his leg on the commute home as he watches the world burn out the window. "Almost there, almost there ..."

Kimono dragon sounds like a terrible ‘70s euphemism for a penis.

A girlfriend and I went to a prepper convention in town and I quickly learned I’d rather be dead than live on rehydrated stroganoff.

Better dead than fed

So just what is "medicinal mustard?"

There's a bunch of weird survivor mags in the grocery stores these days... also more toned-down 'mountain man' type mags. Paranoia runs deep.

xp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_plaster

the mindset represented by this genre of magazines and TV shows (anticipation anxiety, paranoia, obsession with magical protective devices, credulous attention to self-proclaimed experts) seems like the exact opposite of what's needed to cope to unexpected crises

It’s a lone wolf action hero fantasy when you need to establish a mutual aid pack.

There was a sleeper film a few years back called Take Shelter that ably explored this part of the American male psyche.. "I and I alone can protect my family from the horrors that await us."

I saw one of these magazine covers last year and it depicted an armed dude ready to off what clearly appeared to be some sort of shadowy antifa terrorists ready to invade his home and take his women folk.

How is that NOT a parody? STOP THE BLEEDING (with no exclamation mark) and 'lessons learned from the Mormons'. Magnificent.