ANOTHER VISIT TO THE PREPPERS

In a Reuters article entitle “Subculture of Americans prepares for civilization’s collapse,” writer Jim Forsyth interviewed “preppers” stockpiling goods for the end of the world.
 

I’m the first to say that having an emergency kit on hand and preparing, as urged by the Center for Disease Control, to be ready to survive for a few days without power, water and access to a grocery store is smart. Many people in Florida, the Outer Banks and along the Gulf Coast have emergency plans and supplies in the event of a hurricane. Similarly, people living in “Tornado Alley” have root cellars and basements equipped with survival supplies in which to stay if tornado sweeps through.

On a less dramatic scale, people living high in the Rockies or in remote areas of Alaska and Canada prepare for extended periods in which they might be snowed-in.

However, such prudent preparations can be carried to an extreme. For example, Forsyth interviewed a woman in the Appalachian Mountains who has turned her home into a “survival center.” She has a good-sized generator, water tanks, portable heaters and “a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently gave her as a birthday present.”

Now that’s preparing for more than the sudden disaster, the fire, the flood, the tornado, and so forth. That’s preparing for “the end of the world as we know it.”

The woman in question believes, or perhaps hopes, that the economy is about to collapse and all hell is going to break loose.

Of course, as I mention frequently, there are people profiting from all this doom and gloom, anxiety and hysteria. They sell all manner of survival gear and supplies. Again, having an emergency kit on hand doesn’t hurt anything and is prudent. Having a two-year supply of freeze-dried food on hand may suggest someone has listened to the insane and inane ranting of Glenn “Don’t-Cry-for-Me-America” Beck who frequently tells his radio talk show listeners that it is “never too late to prepare for the end of the world as we know it.”

Another prophet of doom is James Wesley Rawles who has a blog about surviving that is “the guiding light of the prepper movement.” Not to be crass, but Rawles writes non-fiction and fiction dealing with the end of the world. Could his blog be a handy-dandy marketing tool?

He told Reuters that: "We could see a cascade of higher interest rates, margin calls, stock market collapses, bank runs, currency revaluations, mass street protests, and riots. The worst-case end result would be a Third World War, mass inflation, currency collapses, and long term power grid failures."

“Dogs and cats living together! Totally anarchy!”