U.S. ‘prepper’ culture diversifies amid fear of disaster and political unrest
The number of preppers has doubled in size to about 20 million since 2017, due to more people or color and progressives joining the community, experts say.
My grandmother had her own vegetable garden, and kept a full pantry, rotating out canned, preserved and dried food properly, had candles, water collection, all sorts of stuff.
What they call prepping nowadays was once simply common sense.
I feel this will become more mainstream in decades to come.
The mallninja knives and other such fluff are bizarre though.
That's because these people do not want to actually live this way. They are cosplayers. They want to buy $50 worth of freeze dried food and go to McDonald's.
Your grandmother learned to live like that because she had no choice. That's what growing up in the Depression will do to you. No grandma would ever have freeze dried ice cream. Better learn how to milk a cow! Free milk, cream, and butter every day. But it's not easy.
Living in Southern California, my mom always had a trash can outside filled with dried/canned goods and water that she periodically rotated. She called it our earthquake supplies.
It will become more mainstream as people in the west become poorer. Most rich people don't know how to preserve food because they can just buy it made for them.
we garden, hunt and keep a pantry of canned goods because the food is better. self-sufficiency is just a nice perk.
I'm prepped to just fucking kill myself when society collapses. I'm not living through that shit.
You're living through it right now though. Increased disease, poverty, institutional break down, more conflict, more movement of peoples towards various social or environmental refugia. 'Collapse' is a process that takes decades.
Glad to know I'm not the only one.
Every time I watch a post-apocalyptic film, I'm left wondering why anyone would want to live for that.
I hope that day never comes.
At least someone will get a meal out of it, assuming your screen name is true.
people or color
Who let this crap get published?
The people without color gang, of course (you cant see them tho)
Ha! Here in Australia we don't 'prep'. But I reckon I could comfortably survive in the bush for a good year with what I could throw into my ute with 5 min warning.
I could do alright for a few months if I found a remote enough place with a nice stream. I've got a garden and my tackle box is already in the truck for reasons unrelated to the apocalypse. I'd be living off fish, a small variety of veggies, and garlic.
If I could reach back far enough in my memory I could make a bow, fletch some arrows, and go hunting. I have the woodworking tools and with a bit of trial and error could probably remember how to make a string from animal gut or hide. Bonus, more fish hooks.
I would really enjoy that until it stopped feeling like a vacation and started feeling like work. I love hunting and used to love making tools for it.
I’ve been thinking more and more about Australia as a safe haven, but I’ll have to learn to be an Australian to live there. Lots of things that will kill you there.
I think it's smart to have some emergency supplies on hand, but building a whole ass bunker like it's gonna be Fallout is where it gets crazy. I think for a lot of these people it just becomes a hobby lol.
