I’m not really a “prepper”, I’m just prepared.
I’ve always refused to call myself a “prepper”, finding it easier to be a nutjob than to admit to being a nutjob. The term “prepper” just carries a lot of baggage, at least for me. Always too closely connected with “survivalist”, and we all know those folks are just plain whacked.
But while survivalists are whacked the unprepared are roof-sitters. You know the archetype: disaster strikes and they scramble to their rooftops waiting to be plucked to safety by the government. Apparently it’s popular in the prepper community to call non-preppers “zombies” (something I just learned the other day and confirmed with a quick buzz of the net).
There is a mini theme going on here: Labels. Less than flattering labels. It was not something I planned but something that jumped out at me as I finished the paragraph above. Ironic when you know the reason I started this post was the NY Times piece (here) by Neil Genzlinger whining about the quality of programming suffering on the National Geographic and Discovery channels due to the airing of two new series, “Doomsday Preppers” and “Doomsday Bunkers” respectively.
In fairness, and before I get completely wound up in what might develop into a snarkfest, I sat and physically cringed when I watched the first to episodes of “Doomsday Preppers”. My husband heard more than a few mutterings of “what a nutjob…” or, “Ack! Are you kidding me!?” Even with that though I nearly spit my coffee all over my laptop when I read the second to last sentence in the NY Times piece:
Hmm. Apparently “inspiring people to prepare a personal fortress and pray for cataclysm so they can start blasting away at their neighbors”
Genzlinger made his disdain for firearms quite clear in the piece as a whole but that sentence left no doubt of his obvious ignorance of the “prepper” phenomenon in the US. I suspect Genzlinger just needed to feel superior to those who think differently. Yet another glaring example of the lack of tolerance and mean spiritedness so frequently seen from the “Enlightened” Left.
Or maybe Genzlinger is a “roofsitter” and just wants as much company as he can possibly have. Perhaps his version of equality, everyone should be equally hungry, equally miserable, equally at risk, equally dependent. Taken to the extreme one could even say he believes everyone should be equally dead which these lines go a long way to suggest:
More seriously, what is the attraction of continuing to live in a world that forces people to cower in an underground box and spend all their time fending off those who want their freeze-dried apricots?
Even more seriously, what is the attraction of continuing to live in a world that will almost certainly not have television or the Internet, depriving doomsday types of the shows and Web sites that fuel their paranoia and sell products exploiting it?
Would it be safe to assume that he believes we should all very meekly just roll over and die? If anyone expresses a complete lack of respect for life it is Genzlinger.
For a neutral article on the Prepper movement quietly going on in the US, hidden from most, MSNBC had this piece in the fall of 2008: ”Hard times have some flirting with survivalism: Economic angst has Americans stockpiling ‘beans, bullets and Band-Aids’” [link]
As rational thinking human beings we should try – real hard – not to paint all with the paintbrush of any extreme subset. An example I’m rather fond of using: All eco-terrorists are environmentalists but not all environmentalists are eco-terrorists. Did a few of the people shown on the show exhibit behaviors that strongly suggest mental health issues? I’m no psychologist or psychiatrist but I would hazard the opinion that a few did. No different than any of the other reality shows I’ve happened to catch here or there. They kinda make for interesting viewing so they are sought after by the show’s producers.
And “Doomsday Preppers” has made for “interesting” viewing. Thus far it is the highest ranked show in their history based on viewership numbers [here, here]
Sadly Neil Genzlinger took the easy shots of the intellectually lazy but ultimately those that feel it’s their personal responsibility to prepare to face those extremely rare outlier disasters so as not to be a burden on over strained resources will prepare anyway, or more likely, continue to prepare quietly. And those that had no intention of doing so will take comfort in Genlinger’s words, perhaps even feeling smugly superior in their choice.
And that’s the crux of it all – it’s a personal choice. Something we are regularly reminded to be respectful of.
