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NatGeo Channel has a new show Doomsday Preppers. It puts attention on a serious topic of prepping, however, not in a positive light.

Where do you find these preppers who:

• shoot up their house with 22 rifles
• can’t own enough knives
• think they are going to run their way out of the city
• are going to run through the bushes eating berries
• looks like they couldn’t climb a flight of stairs
• blow their thumb off during the show.
• have their planned defense strategy as kindness
• bring their preacher in to bless their gun room

Lots of people would call preppers “crazy” doomers who live in fear, cheering on the coming of a catastrophe, so they can say they were prepared and “told you so”. Those that ultimately prepared for the event that never happens.

Katrina always seems to be used as a justification by preppers for why you need to prep. Preppers regard it as as a case study in how FEMA can kill you. However, roughly 1/3 of 1 percent of the population of New Orleans died in Katrina. Every life is precious, and if you lost someone in Katrina, then I am truly sorry for your loss.  However, when you look at Katrina as a worse case scenario, many more people could have died, than actually did.

People have predicted the end of the world throughout time, yet here we still are. It seems every generation comes up with something that is somehow going to kill everyone. It’s almost as if life is too long, and people get bored and need some excitement to keep them on edge. Maybe it’s a self fulfilling religious prophecy where the world must end, and people are wired to support or coming up with ideas how it happens.

Some would even say that these preppers create their own reality by stockpiling, reducing supply, and increasing demand. For some it’s seen as evil, that people are able to stockpile food stuffs, or supplies. For many Americans who are barely putting food on the table, it’s seen as excessive and greedy. Almost a jealously of sorts drives this envy, that people would be so heartless to stock up food, water, guns, ammo, etc… in a time of need for so many.

Some would call it a mental disorder, a progressive delusional paranoia, that never ends. Why is it there always seems to be one more thing that a prepper needs to buy, build, or store.

I am playing the devil’s advocate here a lot, because I don’t necessarily agree with any of the points I made above.

I have heard all kind of ideas which preppers have tied themselves to, like:

• Nuclear attack
• Planet X
• End of the Mayan Calendar
• New Madrid Fault
• Earthquakes
• Super Volcano
• EMP Strike
• Coronal Mass Ejection from the Sun
• Polar Shift
• Alien Invasion
• Pandemic

One of the issues with preppers is that many have systematically tied themselves to some event that may potentially happen. The question may be simple like “What are you preparing for?” In some cases, however, these ideas are far fetched, and out of the realm of most sane people, and emphasizing the unstable mental state of said prepper.

I look at preparing for your own survival as a very sane act. However, I don’t need to pick some crazy event with which to attach.  I think it’s very sane to depend on yourself for your own survival, and everyone needs to be self-sufficient or working towards it. If we were all prepared to work locally in our communities, fellowship, trade, and be self-sufficient, then I don’t think there would really be a catastrophe. We have catastrophe’s because people are “weak” and they depend on everyone else to take care of them. They rely on their Government for handouts.

Being a prepper is not about necessarily preparing for doom and gloom or some event, it’s exactly the opposite, it’s about preserving life, and continuing, it’s about getting back to a stronger way of living, where people can take care of themselves.