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Agreed, but if you read accounts of people who have lived through, say, war, you'll find that that works out a lot less swimmingly than the right-wingers always assume it will be. They quickly become social pariahs, and it doesn't matter that they have the guns, because they can't stay organized due to infighting of people internally vying for power. There have been entire books written on this, but I think this great comment from Dee Xtrovert on MetaFilter 15 years ago about the siege of Sarajevo really sums it up.

https://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep-getting-worse#2430771

Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.

Of those who couldn't leave my city, Sarajevo:

Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the "long haul" - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.

Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of "preparation" to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don't know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity. Today, that still feels like it's worth something.

But here's the main point: "Preparing" for the disaster really didn't do anyone much good. Those who "prepared" ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces. The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams. Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.

We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren't attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I'd take a bite of a friend's salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I'd never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.

Within the domain of those trapped in the city, civility greatly increased.

You often hear how Holocaust survivors felt guilt at surviving. Well, during war, that was a feeling everyone was aware of - people started dying right away (my parents were killed near the start of the siege, for instance) - and there was a palpable enough common sense of karma to make everyone into good Samaritans. None of us understood why we survived while others didn't. I shared food when I had it, even though I often knew I wouldn't have a crumb the next day. Which was no big achievement, because nearly everyone did the same.

Those who'd prepared, well, the majority of them shared their food and whatever else they had as soon as someone else was clearly in need. I can't swear it, but I think they felt a little foolish to have been so self-obsessed, and giving away that stuff might have lessened that feeling. There were a few people who hoarded things until they ran out of stuff - eventually everybody ran out of anything worth hoarding - and they soon became wishful beggars like the rest of us. Again, I can't swear it, but I hear stories, and it seems that these people suffer from post-war trauma, guilt and nightmares more than the rest of us.

Those survivalists, I feel sorry for them. It's no way to live.

I know how to build a windmill out of busted car parts. If the jackals steal the windmill we've built.. how do they know what to keep an eye on? How much can they demand from it?

Ultimately, working against a community is failure. Not even the economic power of the US could break Afghanistan, or Vietnam, etc. Almost all of us want peace and stability.

Without a deep understanding of electronics and energy, the cobbled-together windmill will ultimately provide neither.

Yeah, I suspect this is right. Far be it from me to give right-wing preppers too much benefit of the doubt (that maybe there is some logic to their illogic), but I suspect their fantasy is just to survive until all their neighbors are dead of earthquake or chemical weapon attack or political unrest or the biblical tribulation or whatever. Once all their neighbors are dead, they can take their stuff. Land, more canned and shelf-stable goods, first aid supplies, etc.

I'm going to survive doomsday by surrounding my compound with boxes labeled "AR-15 ammo" but they contain deadly snakes.

Takes care of the bad element, and as long as I figure out a plan to deal with the snakes, I get some free guns too.

At that point aren't they just farmers? 👀

Prepping for a natural disaster is a good idea.

Having some non-perishable food, batteries (and candles), water, meds/important documents, etc tucked away for an earthquake or tornado is a lot different than stockpiling guns and ammmo; hoping for the end times so you can become a raider or something. That seems to be what a lot of these guys are fantasizing about.

This was one reason I chose a career path in fibre arts. I like knowing how to thread a loom and weave a basket. But it also comes with the question of who's going to spin all the thread? That shit is booooring and you need a metric fuck ton of it.

That's why you shoot the poisoned area, duh.

No. I didn't say you weren't a prepper unless you did specific things. Some peppers do just fill a cabinet with guns and call it a day. But seeing as how much of a prepper someone is completely due to how prepared they are, the ones with seeds, animal husbandry skills, water management, air filtration, renewables, are obviously more of a prepper than man with lots of ammunition.

Now like all meems, I stole this And the person I stole this from seems to be someone who understands what actual prepping would look like, possibly even someone who's done it, and is making fun of all the "this is my bunker, I have 200 guns and 40 kilograms of canned food. What? First aid? That's for womens." type preppers.