If Preppers are the Punch Line, What is the Joke?
What do you call a group of people that are prepared to deal with natural disasters, infrastructure collapse or a global disaster? Preppers. While that doesn’t sound like much of a joke, the mainstream media would like you to believe it is. Ready to discredit the community and dismiss them as “paranoid” and “crazy”, the media is only too happy to make preppers a punch line. But, when you look at the facts and take a hard look at what is happening in the world currently, the joke might be on them.
When preppers first started getting mainstream attention during the lead-up to Y2K, it was hard to imagine the growth that the community would see over the next decade. It seemed that the threat of a possible worst-case scenario was enough to make some people think twice about how prepared they were, if things got bad- even temporarily. The internet became the classroom and meeting place of the prepping community, while more and more joined the ranks of the prepared. Now, according to a recent poll, there are over 3 million preppers in the United States alone.
Despite the growth of the community, it is still viewed as a “fringe” group; mostly consisting of those with questionable mental health by most of the mainstream media. Consider this; when is the last time you saw or read anything positive about preppers or prepping in the mainstream? Even reality TV has gotten in on the act, pushing shows and specials about doomsday preppers – but with far from a balanced view. Focusing solely on the eccentric, and playing up anything they can to play up a caricature or the lengths and expenses some preppers go to. It’s all about extremes for the media.
However, a recent study has uncovered some very interesting numbers and opinions about the potential of disasters.
- 44% of Americans do NOT have a first-aid kit of any kind in their home
- 48% of Americans have NO emergency supplies
- 53% Do NOT have even a 3 day supply of nonperishable food and water at home
These are simple basic things that you would expect to find in any home; yet a staggering number of people are woefully unprepared for even the shortest of situations. It doesn’t even have to be the “end of the world”, it can be a snow storm that shuts down everything for days at a time, or storms that take out power and create panic. If there are this many that are unprepared for as minor an event as these, what does that mean for larger scale situations?
55% of Americans believe that the government will take care of them and restore order in the event of a disaster. You need look no further than Hurricane Katrina to familiarize yourself with how well the government handles a disaster. Even the storms in New York earlier in the year were a strain on government resources. FEMA, the governemental agency set up specifically for disaster recovery has shown their level of responsiveness in handling disaster situations.
An excerpt from a FEMA document brings to light just one of their limitations:
As referred to in paragraph (b) of FAR Clause 52.216-22, “Indefinite Quantity” of this contract, the guaranteed contract minimum is 21,000 packaged meals to include the base and option periods. The contract ceiling amount shall not exceed17,500,000 packaged meals.
That means in the event of a disaster, FEMA only will have access to 17,500,000 packaged meals. There are currently 317,281,000 people in the United States; those numbers alone make the prepping community a lot harder to laugh at.
Category: Mental Preperation
