Preppers Are Hoarders
Being a prepper can be hard work. You have skills to learn, tools and supplies to collect and maintain, a vegetable garden and maybe livestock to tend. You’re trying to make your household budget extend to cover emergency reserves as well as daily necessities.
It’s a hard road to walk – and it doesn’t get any easier if, when you tell people you’re a prepper, half of them immediately assume you’re crazy.
Sadly a lot of people have the wrong idea about preppers, and that isn’t because of what actual preppers do. The problem is there are a lot of myths going round about what prepping is and what kind of people do it.
If someone hears too many of those myths, and doesn’t know the truth, it’s no surprise they think preppers are crazy. Hell, I’ve been researching them to write this article and I’m starting to worry about myself!
OK, here are some of the craziest things people believe about preppers:
Watch any reality TV show about preppers and you’ll get dramatic shots of barns, basements and bunkers crammed full of supplies.
Racks and shelves packed with food, medicines, tools, seeds and ammunition are part of every prepper’s life, right?
Wrong. Could you afford to stockpile five years’ worth of food? Exactly; neither can we.
A lot of preppers have enough food reserves to keep them going for a couple of weeks if there’s a bad winter storm, and even then we’ve often built up that stockpile slowly, by adding a couple of extra cans of soup to the weekly groceries when we can afford it.
Some do have more, but what you see on TV is the most extreme examples. Most preppers aren’t sitting on an underground warehouse full of stuff.
If you’ve told people you’re a prepper, you’re probably used to being asked where you plan to bug out to when disaster strikes.
There’s a common myth that we all have bug out locations already prepared, and probably stocked with even more food, tools and ammo.
In reality, while a BOL is great to have, very few of us can afford a parcel of land somewhere – never mind a fully supplied survival retreat.
Yes, some preppers do have a prepared BOL, and a lot more have one or more locations they can head for in a crisis – although these usually don’t have much (or anything) in the way of supplies.
For most of is, though, the reality is that we plan to stay right where we are. That’s where our supplies are, it’s the place we know and, for the average prepper, it’s where we have the best chance of survival.
Related: My Personal Bug In Plan
Why do you spend all that time and money on preparedness? You must be scared of everything, right?
Wrong again! Preppers don’t want to be ready for a crisis because we’re afraid all the time.
We want to be ready for a crisis because we’re realists who know they can happen, and optimists who plan to survive if one does. If we were afraid we’d just be planning to run around screaming when something bad happens.
We’ve all seen on TV how preppers live.
They have big compounds surrounded by old school buses and concrete walls, and half of their house has been turned into a massive armory filled with ammo crates and racks of rifles.
Except no, we don’t live like that. OK, a tiny number do (and of course they’re the ones you see on TV) but 99.9% of preppers live in perfectly ordinary American homes.
Mostly that’s because those are the homes we have; we live there because we have jobs and families and social lives, and moving to a compound in the desert is neither practical nor attractive.
Most of us aren’t heavily armed either. We do tend to have guns, because guns are a great asset in surviving a crisis, but we’re much more likely to have a shotgun or hunting rifle than an arsenal of tacticool firepower.
Preppers live in compounds with lots of guns. Weirdo neo-Nazis live in compounds with lots of guns. Therefore preppers are weirdo neo-Nazis, right?
Well, no, wrong again.
For a start, we just covered half of this; most preppers live in a farmhouse, a suburban home or even an apartment, and don’t have lots of guns.
And for another thing, preppers can be anywhere on the political spectrum.
Is there a little bit of a conservative bias?
Maybe, because preppers often hold values like self-reliance that are more associated with the political right, but you’ll find every opinion. I know plenty of centrist and liberal preppers, as well as conservatives.
Hey, we live in a democracy. You can safely assume that about half of preppers – along with about half of everyone else – are opposed to this government, but are we opposed to the idea of government?
For most of us the answer is a resounding no. Why do you think we’re preppers in the first place?
It’s because we know that, if society collapses, the consequences will be dangerous – and we want to be ready to survive them.
We’re not really into the idea of anarchy, and that’s what you’ll probably end up with if you don’t have a government. Preppers don’t usually have any philosophical objection to authority figures, as long as they don’t violate our rights.
Honestly, preppers don’t always help ourselves with this one. We often joke about being ready for TEOTWAWKI – but most of us aren’t, and never will be.
Related: 5 Prepping “Rules” That Are Actually Myths
Would we like to have all the skills and resources we’d need to survive the total, irrevocable collapse of western civilization, and rebuild a thriving little community that preserved as much of our way of life as possible for future generations?
Of course! Who wouldn’t?
In reality, most preppers are quite happy if we’re ready to survive for a few months – or even a few weeks – on our own resources. We’d love to be ready for Doomsday, but what we’re really preparing for is a major natural disaster or civil unrest and the temporary social collapse that follows.
We’re better prepared for a permanent social collapse than most people, but we’re under no illusions about how hard surviving that would be.
Let’s finish with one that isn’t funny at all – in fact it’s extremely annoying.
Many people seem to think preppers actually want the world to fall apart.
Maybe they believe we don’t want our preparations to go to waste. Or they think we believe we could build a better society than the one we have now. Maybe they just think we’re selfish monsters who want to sit on top of a bunker full of MREs and guns, watching everyone else starve. Whatever they think, they’re wrong.
Preppers don’t want anything bad to happen.
We don’t want society to collapse, because that would be a terrible experience even for the most prepared among us. Also, we don’t want the power grid to fail so we can have the fun of running all our appliances off a noisy, smelly generator. We make all our preparations and then we hope we never need them.
Think about it this way: You have insurance on your house, so if it burns down you’ll get the money you need to replace all your belongings. Does that mean you want your house to burn down?
No, of course it doesn’t. Prepping is an insurance policy on the future. We’re not crazy Doomsday extremists who want to watch the world burn – just people who bought a different kind of insurance.
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Lamest article written yet
Thanks for putting all the silly things down into one place. I was thinking about needing to dispel prepper myths for some people I know. This will help a lot.
It is really very simple
Being prepared for an emergency is being a responsible adult. It is true for everyone however if you have a family, wife, husband and or kids and you do not prepare for emergency it is really tough to call yourself responsible or a good provider. Everyone in this country should be at least minimally prepared for blizzards, floods, tornadoes, power outages etc.
It would be helpful to state why you think this article is lame. If you have something of value to add by all means bring it otherwise don’t embarrass yourself and bore everyone else.
The only LAME thing here is YOU.
Just don’t come back loser.
Lamest COMMENT ever….
Raven.Are you off your meds??
grow up !
Funny to think about, but today’s preppers are just yesterdays parents & grandparents who grew up in the depression……
That’s such a great comparison!
Thank you for including liberal preppers in this article. There are many of us. Sometimes it’s hard to explain to people that being prepared is being a responsible citizen. The all or nothing attitude doesn’t help either.
Great article, especially the last two paragraphs.
I am considered a prepper because I am “prepared” for when something happens.
Been through a few hurricanes, everything from sometimes the power is out for a couple of days, to the power is out for two weeks and the water is out for a week. (all the other variations)
Having emergency supplies so I don’t have to fight the crowds buying up the last of the toilet paper at the stores is nice.
Having food you don’t have to cook is nice. Having first aid supplies is nice.
Do I have a huge barn full of supplies? No, just a corner of the living room with a small stack of boxes with emergency supplies. (yes a pack of toilet paper)
If the world ends, well I will be just as screwed as everyone else after about two weeks. If a natural disaster hits, I can safely stay at home and away from the madness till things get back to “normal”.
So, in a sense, I am a prepper. Not ready for the big one, but for all the little ones that have a much higher chance of happening. As the saying goes; it is not IF a hurricane is going to hit Florida, it is WHEN a hurricane is going to hit Florida.
May not be today, but it will happen. So a few boxes of canned food and comfort supplies is just being ready.
In the event of an end of the world event, I think none of us will be totally prepared, no matter how extensive our preparations. Even if one were wealthy, life in the 18th century was difficult at best.
Consider travel. Most roads were little more than rough two rut trails. An improved road was “corduroy” which was logs laid longitudinal to the direction of travel. Talk about hard on the kidneys! Every time I drive I-15 from Las Vegas to San Bernardino and scope out the scenery along side the highway, I am moved by the fortitude of the pioneers who traversed that distance in covered wagons. It is a long, boring, tiring drive at 70 mph. I can’t imagine the feelings of the pioneers who made 10 miles a day. I travel in one hour what took them a week if they made good time. Looking at the landscape alongside I-15 I am amazed that they made 10 miles per day. The landscape is covered with heavy brush, rocks and gullies. Coming down the “passes” the wagons had to be let down backwards with the brakes set and the teams holding the wagons back so they didn’t careen down the mountainside and smash.
And all that was with the life skills that they had developed to deal with hardships like that. I have a vague idea how to hitch a team of oxen to a wagon. The first problem is finding a wagon, the next is finding a team of oxen and the last is finding the yokes and lines and other paraphernalia necessary for a team to pull a wagon cross-country.
Okay, I got them all assembled and I think they are hitched up correctly. Now what? While I have seen teams of horses pulling a wagon on occasion, in all my life I have never seen a team of oxen pulling a wagon.
Now you may have all that equipment and knowledge and can easily handle a team of two, four or six oxen. Bravo. I feel you are one in ten thousand or even rarer.
That’s just one tiny facet of life in the 18th century – land travel. There are so many skills that we don’t have. I have enumerated them in previous posts. My grandfather was born in the 19th century. While living was easier in the 19th century than the 18th, he still had many life skills that I don’t have. My father had life skills that I don’t posses. Some skills that I possessed at one time I have lost. In my teens I did most of the work on my car myself. That is a skill I have lost. I have not kept up with car repair. As a teenager, I could look under the hood and knew what every part therein was. Today I can identify the radiator assembly, the fuel injection assembly and the engine assembly. It ends just about there. Yes, I know that some of the followers of this list can do all their auto work themselves. Again, they are perhaps one in 500 or one in a thousand. Maybe not on this list but in the general population.
Do you think Uncle Two-Blast knows where one puts gasoline in an automobile? How about Aunt Nan or Uncle Chuck? Do they even know how to open the hood of whatever vehicle they are in? I would not be surprised if the first question was, “You can open the hood?”
LCC: Yeah, but at least we do not have those problems. Draft animals were the self-guiding vehicle. Tell them home and they would take you home. After losing their drivers licenses for drunk driving a couple of Penna farmers did that. The bar owner (very rural village) even put up a shed for the horses. Saddle up, head over the mountain to home. The only time a cop gave chase, the car wound up in a strip mine. Sit back, relax, make sure there’s plenty of hemorrhoid cream, and let Nag do his job.
The major 19th century problem, aside from a lack of Preparation-H, was people who overloaded wagons. That likely caused more deaths than reeves, road agents, and ticket scalpers. While a good yoke of oxen or team of mules had little problem on the flats, once they tried to haul over a desert or on a steep trail, wooden brakes gave out. Heat wood to smoking and that charcoal turns to black grease. Even truckers find some of those hills too steep.
Learning to hitch and drive isn’t difficult. Learning to survive the animals can be. Trying to drive and defend yourself is about impossible. My word of advise SHTF travelers is, stick to that travois, chico, and stay off even state roads if you can! niio
Ralston – Working from time to time on projects in Florida over the years, was a real eye opener for me, especially when under the threat of a major hurricane. You folks are well prepared and ready! There are actually detailed long term and short term programs and plans in place to protect Floridans and help them move through a storm. There is nothing like that here in NYS. When Sandy hit in 2012, the National Guard was called up by the governor. When they reported to the state Armories, they were empty buildings. There was nothing there. There were no supplies what so ever. They didn’t even have a table, a single chair or a generator to set up shop! And it was some time after the storm before they were called up and ready to do something.
“Preppers Are Opposed To Government”
I’m just opposed to the idea of TOO MUCH government.
“The government that governs best, governs least.”
As far as being a far-right political extremist, I’m far-right but not an extremist 🙂
Omega: It always comes back to liberal labels. Preppers can’t be labeled, so in frustration, they tag us with extremist. Note, tho, that there are 3 fingers aiming right back at them, always. Preppers are rich, poor, white, black Asian, American Indian, middle class, liberal moderate, conservative. Never underestimate the power of dem stupidity. niio
If the moment of catastrophe is there, the people who used to fool preppers come knocking on our door for help and food.
In the absence of everything, they will then call on our insurance.
Greetings from the Netherlands
Thank you, well said. niio
unless you self-identify yourself as a prepper >>> What individual activity would tip anyone off???
do you run around telling people your personal bizness – personal preferences – secrets – financial status – hobbies>>> then why in the world would anyone divulge information that undoubtedly will come back on you ….
It would be helpful to state why you think this article is lame. If you have something of value to add by all means bring it otherwise don’t embarrass yourself and bore everyone else.
Yep. Prepping isn’t about politics or extremism. It is about realistic expectations for the systems our society has created to sustain us.
Hey, we live in a democracy.
Actually this is incorrect.
We live in a Republic as guaranteed by the US Constitution.
Majority is not supposed to rule (aka be a dictatorship).
Look up Tyranny by the Majority.
About prepping –
How many of you have a spare tire? Smoke detector? CO detector?
Prepping is about preparing for an unforeseen future event (like a flat tire or fire for example).
Even the Boy Scouts (when they were actually BOY SCOUTS) were taught to always be prepared.
Exactly. I earned my Eagle Scout about about 35 years ago, and I have always felt that prepping is just a natural extension of that “life skills” training.
Congratulations on earning your Eagle, not an easy task.
If and when the SHTF scenario ever happens, I know people who call themselves preppers that have no extra food, just firearms and ammo. They claim, that when not if the SHTF … they will just take everyone else’s food, to survive … using guns. My pointing out that people who prep, likely have their own guns, to defend their food and supplies. To which they say … we’ll take food from those that aren’t prepared. So crazies do exist.
I had a cop tell me that while patting his pistol. I’m glad he forewarned me. Now I know at least one individual I need to be prepared against.
Cops are the worst
Raven, the worst what? If you fail to provide at least a tiny bit of information why you post like you do, and insist on behaving like an ignorant snowflake preparing for your next meltdown then you are on the wrong website. I think MCNBC, CNN, and even PNS have a Troll blog just for immature idiots desperately seeking attention.
i suggest you purchase an older Webster’s Dictionary and study up, you really need to learn some communication skills.
Oh look you assume the thin blue line likes you.
Good explanations. Your right about that, because that is how how the majority (not extremists) of us think.
I like telling the Doubting Toms: Yeah, Yeah, there was quite a crowd standing in the rain, pointing and laughing, when the door of the Arc was closed for the last time, too.
Reminds me of my neighbor asking why I was going to all the effort of a vegetable garden when you can just go to the store and buy them.
Mikek793:
Just tell them that you find gardening relaxing, then hand them a juicy homegrown tomato. I’m completely spoiled for store bought having grown my own – they taste sooo much better! Maybe you’ll make a gardening convert!
Gardening…Good for the body…good for the soul…lots of good exercise…bending, stooping, squatting, stretching, straining… not to mention getting to enjoy the fruits and vegetables of your labor…like the Toby Keith song says get up & get outside, don’t let the old man in.
Fresh air & sunshine is very good medicine.
I prep the same way the people buy insurance. Just in case something happens.
A good article to share with those who don’t see the need for preparing.
Well said. I’d love to have an amazing BOL but that’s a little beyond my budget for now. The same with a compound full of cool stuff. I’d love that. Not because I think they’re coming to get me (whoever “they” are) but just because it sounds cool.
As far as what I prep for, I’ve been saying for years we should prepare for the most likely events for our situations and location. Preparing for an EMP when you’re on the edge of a heart attack or job loss doesn’t make sense.
I know no other way,I was brought up this way in a big family and we could have survived about 6 months to a year on what we had even though we were poor, ( not much money) in the spring we would put out a big garden and we had animals for our meat. So for me that’s what I have been taught
I think in an end of the world event the people already living a total off grid lifestyle will be the ones who will survive the longest. Providing it’s not a nuke event and there is no concern of radiation poisoning.
Communities like the Amish and Homesteaders that still live as people did over 100 years ago will be way ahead of the majority of “civilized” societies if TEOTWAWKI occurs. Hopefully they are prepared to defend themselves from raiders and slavers that may become very prevalent if Anarchy becomes the “norm”.
Unfortunately I think, some of them are real pacifists and are likely not going to resist forcible attempts to take their goods.
If I were in the vicinity, I think I’d try to work out an arrangement of some sort to offer them SOME kind of protection. It’d be well worth it to both sides.
If you really want to see survivors go on YouTube and watch the farming villagers in places like Vietnam. Philippines, Thailand ect. These people live on nothing but what they grow, forage or fish. They are completely off grid and know how to survive.
It is true that Preppers can be left or right, and very true that Preppers are big fans of having a Govmint that reflects the Constitution. Of course none of us are ever happy…but the idea behind Prepping is that the Gov, left or right, ain’t gonna help after SHTF. The recent Texas snow disaster was a 3-4 day joke compared to SHTF but over a hundred people died, not only did the State Govmint not help they caused the disaster by allowing the power companies to raise rates at will and invest all the money in the markets instead of winterizing and upgrading their equipment. My goodness most people didn’t even have emergency supplies of water or backup heat. It’s so weird, because I’m prepared that week was a party at my house. In fact, every week is a party…
During the Texas freeze many people did not have food,electric,water or supplies. I know cause as a ham radio operator i had people text my phone needing help. I used my ham radio to send messages too. Stores were cleaned out and people could not drive cause of the ice on the roads and streets. Stores could not keep supplies due to trucks unable to drive around Texas. It got so bad people had to burn furniture in their fire places to keep warm. I was called a hoarder cause i had food water heat and could communicate.
MARKW – You did great! My Texas kinfolk, on the other hand, not so much. There was a Grandmother on oxygen at home and no home generator, so they were reliant on an small emergency supply of oxygen. EMS was able to bring one tank, but told them there was no more to be had anywhere in Austin. When that ran out, they would have to medivac her to a nursing home out of state as there was no way she could be supported at a hospital facility anywhere in Texas. Luckily, they had electricity restored just in time! Food, water, heat or in the case of you all in Texas ac, are all essential, but when you have a special needs person at home be it young or old, you can have a life or death critical emergency on your hands in no time. What they had available for an emergency was not enough. We must remember to take special care to really plan and prepare for our most vulnerable family members. My Dallas, Houston and Ft Worth family members did much better!
Oh, my gawd, having an extra bottle of ketchup and a fire extinguisher is gonna label me a prepper? Oh, how will I ever live it down?
As a boy scout child, with a son who made Eagle, The very IDEA of “preparing” just makes sense to both of us, and even the reluctant Mom has finally gotten on board.
If the last year hasn’t gotten more people on board with the concept of preparing ahead of time, then I just don’t know what will.
Ya know what? If they come knocking on my door after just a few days, I’m gonna offer them one thing, that extra bottle of ketchup. And that’s it.
If it takes them several weeks to ask, I will see what I have left, and only THEN consider sharing, since it likely means they at least TRIED to be ready. But,,,,,,, family comes first, and I mean mine.
While some people may think we are crazy, we are crazy like foxes! Pandemic, blizzard in the deep south, no electricity for 2 weeks in Texas, solar flares, etc.etc..
Yup, crazy like foxes!
I am in Houston , lots of people here never were really ready for the deep freeze and or Texas folks either. Things went south fast. no water,food or electric for days.Local stores were emptied out and traffic and deliveries stopped due to ice on the roads. In fact some people around Teas had to burn furniture in fire places to stay warm
Those people need to become preppers. I did just fine during the storm. No prob.
Do y’all think anyone learned anything. Will see come summer time. No power No A/C. Going to be a bitch fest when that happens.
Don’t laugh it just might be the whole country this next time.
Yes Texas is full of power happy scum bags that care for nothing but money and power.
Just like the rest of the world .
We can’t really conplane about any of this. We created this monster by way of trust.
We trusted them and they stabbed us in the back.
The new norm.
I take issue with your comment that we are a “democracy”. We are most certainly NOT a “democracy” under our current system of Constitutional “government; we are a CONSTITUTIONAL REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC, and that is a far cry from a “democracy”. A “democracy” is nothing less than majority rule; a CONSTITUTIONAL REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC is structured to protect INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS. Do your due diligence and research.
If anyone keeps bugging you for information about your activities beyond a casual interest, tell them you are trying to do something at home that is good for your family, community, and the environment, which in fact, you are.
I tell folks it’s a long time hobby of mine to learn how to garden properly for my local conditions, including container and raised bed gardening, without relying on a lot of chemicals, including learning natural composting of kitchen and yard plant trimmings (I have one of those revolving composting bins that works fairly well without attracting vermin), and using as much natural pest control as II can figure out how to do. I really do want to be able to grow fruits and vegetables and know exactly what has been applied to the soil and plants, but yes, we still buy most of our produce from commercial outlets.
As my first attempt at growing grapes, I bought a green grape and a red grape starts from WalMart last year, with both growing in large containers in locally produced potting soil, and using heavy duty tomato cages as a trellis, that the leaves fell off and they went dormant for a few months during the winter, that started leafing out again about three weeks ago, and it looks like a lot of flower buds are starting to grow also, so we might get a few grapes this summer. I also started some Fuji apples last year from seeds taken from fruit we bought at the store, that are now about six feet tall (in one year!!!), that are also in containers and are also just starting to produce new growth. My wife and I are hoping they will flower, but I have no idea if or when they will, our winters may be too mild and summers too hot for apples.
I live in growing Zone 9, and In Feb & Mar I planted various types of cold weather vegetables like Bok Choi, broccoli, spinach, snow peas, squash, and swiss chard that have come up nicely, but it’s my first attempt at some of them so hopefully they don’t “bolt” like my broccoli keeps doing. I have to get my cold season planting timing down better for broccoli, so maybe I should try planting broccoli in Nov and see how it goes. Our onions, tomatoes, bell peppers, and eggplants from last year have carried over through winter, the eggplants are flowering, and we have already picked a few small but ripe tomatoes with a lot more growth and flowering. If my gardening attempts produce well, I think my next learning project will be how to use the small food dehydrator I bought last year.
Prepping? Yes!
Healthier living? Yes!
We live in zone 9a. This year we decided to plant in 5 gallon buckets. Planted tomatoes,broccoli,cauliflower,green beans,corn,summer squash,kale,green leaf lettuce,romaine lettuce,bell peppers in February. Along with curly endive and bok-choy in the ground for our desert tortoise. So far everything is coming up nicely.
MikeK: We’re in 9A, and all the cabbage family is going to seed now. Most was planted in November or January. Black radishes are all over, they chase off a lot of bugs and kill nematodes. Cereal rye stops small seeds from sprouting and suffocates more. Green peas are now almost done. Quail ate off the rest, what they could reach, including garlic (Creole varieties, bred for the heat). Onions are tohono bunching and potato onions. Some white bermudas, but they make better green onions than bulbs for us. God to figure out where the summer stuff will go, but chimayo chilis weathered winter pretty well. niio
Red: In the fall I want to try a three sisters arrangements. I’ll get the seeds from native/seeds in town.
living in Central New York , we get really nice weather , just some snow , ice , wind , the blizzardy stuff ! but the people who complain about loss of power and heat , or water , you know them ! were is MY stuff , and who is going to turn on , and fix MY stuff !!!! . Knowing that my family , close neighbors , and people that come to help , but need a little of it themselves, are all set . We don’t have a military Armory , or a warehouse full of dry food . we have simple American values of … WAIT FOR IT !! helping yourself , and those close to you that help you , and …. THINKING for yourself. If you’ve ever been caught in a 1 CNY blizzard and ice storm , and you don’t have fuel , food and water for a month , for the next one ! well , Ignorance is bliss I guess.
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