Doomsday Preppers – What’s Your Score?
Doomsday Preppers, National Geographic Channel’s new hit series – is awesome.
The show follows various survivalists through their daily lives as they prepare for the end of civilization as we know it, whether it be from massive economic collapse, nuclear war, the melting of the polar ice caps or the failure of the power grid.
Each prepper, and sometimes their families, friends and neighbors has undertaken serious precautions, from stockpiling months of non-perishable food and water, to training in self-defense to building bunkers in the desert. All based on their belief that at some point – in their lifetime – they will need it.
They are then scored by survival experts in five categories of survival; water, food, shelter, security and an x-factor.
Some score quite well. Others? No.
Most people find it entertaining due to the uniquely odd and dysfunctional nature of the preppers themselves.
I recall one episode specifically where one prepper had stockpiled nearly 50,000 rounds of ammunition, built a sniper nest in a tower, and then proceeded to have his ear blown off because his companion was had no experience with firearms and because he wasn’t wearing appropriate ear protection.
Sometimes it’s the little things.
But I find it entertaining for different reasons.
First, if you ask the experts that are closest to these scenarios – financial collapse, cyberterrorism, chemical and nuclear weapons – they’ll tell you that the likelihood of them making a significant impact on our lives is higher than most think.
The joke’s on us.
Second, human beings aren’t very good at identifying the real threats in any situation.
In the event that water, food and shelter become scarce due to some epic disaster, the threat isn’t going to be the flood waters, chemical agents or viruses. The real threat will be your neighbor.
People are always the biggest threat.
Hurricane Sandy was a massive storm, but one could argue that the worst damage was fairly localized. If you lived on the Jersey coast, lower Manhattan or Long Island, things were very bad, but outside of those areas you may have only gotten a little rain.
Yet inside of two weeks people were pulling guns and knives on each other, just to get in line for gas. What would it have been like if the damage was more widespread and the shortage sustained?
We saw the same behavior during Katrina. People were killed for food and guns. Society started breaking down. Quickly.
By nature we are all survivalists. It’s why we have a massive brain and opposing thumbs. The human race has endured for thousands of years because this is how we’re programmed. In many ways, we’re all Doomsday Preppers.
What’s your score?
Reg Harnish, GreyCastle Security 
Nice post, and very true. I wrote a poem about this type of thing back in ’05. It’s called Dark Vision:
Innocence plays while experience prays
You have no idea of the coming dark days
Through life’s sprinkler you run in the heat of the day
But don’t look behind you- there’s fear on the way
Where will you go when smoke fills the skies
When the last of civility surrounding you dies?
Blacks in gray camouflage, whites with shaved head
They’ll burn and they’ll loot while you tremble in bed
Portfolios ruined, bank accounts gone
Dead bodies bloating out on the front lawn
So where will you go when the cruel ones arise
When the suburbs explode with the cities’ demise?
Thunder storms foretell the wars
That travel from the distant shores
So many dead, you ask what for?
It’s Judgment Day you see.
Dwight Jenkins (Syd’s dad)
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Sorry, forgot the original intent: I’m about to finish reading a fabulous new book, called APOCALYPTIC PLANET, by Craig Childs. He’s a nature writer of some renown, but his prose is brilliantly rendered, and the dire sum of his planetary ‘what-ifs’ is so gorgeously and humbly written that it almost makes the seemingly inevitable doomsday scenario(s) not quite so scary. Highly recommended.
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