The author of this piece actually says some nice things about "preppers" by way of introduction. Overall, the picture is dismal.
*What is right about preppers?*
*A prepper loves his family*. No matter what is wrong or what is right about a prepper's actions, his or her motivation is pure: to protect family.
*A prepper is resourceful*. Survival depends on developing clever solutions and alternatives, and preppers are quite ingenious in making the most out of whatever they've got on hand.
*A prepper is prepped*. Despite being unnecessarily prepared for imaginary scenarios that won't happen, a prepper is excessively prepared for /likely/ scenarios like fires, blackouts, or storms.
*What is wrong with preppers?*
*A prepper is ignorant*. Woefully ignorant of science. And economics. And facts. And reality. A prepper's justification for their activities is some kind of catastrophe: meteor impact, crop failure, fuel shortage, nuclear meltdown, biblical apocalypse, financial collapse, WW3, natural disaster, or supernatural phenomenon. To anybody with a grade 7 education, this sits somewhere between "improbable" and "impossible". But due to a prepper's inability or unwillingness to participate in reality, their fears become very real and imminent.
*
A prepper is a murderous sociopath*. A recurring theme among preppers is being prepared to kill anybody who represents a real or perceived threat to their post-apocalyptic paradise. Now don't get me wrong, we have a duty and a right to defend ourselves and our families from harm. To a moral and responsible adult, the act of taking another person's life is a difficult, serious, and unfortunate incident. But a prepper seems to relish the opportunity to terminate any hapless stranger or acquaintance who wanders past their crosshairs. The fact that many preppers hoard more bullets than beans betrays their desire to designate fellow man as targets in their personal shooting gallery.
*
A prepper is compensating for failure*. Having failed to live up to society's expectations or to self-imposed metrics, the prepper lives in an alternate fantasy world with different goals and success criteria than conventional society. Imagine a child who is terrible at baseball suddenly inventing a game called "flumpball" in which he is the best. This is the prepper's delusion too.
/Unemployed and poor/ transforms into
/full-time prep organizer/, and
/Neglecting your children/ becomes /securing your children's future./
*
A prepper is arrogant*. In the aforementioned fantasy flumpball world, the prepper invariably declares himself grand infallible flumpball champion for life. In preparation and realization of their fateful futures, they demand more status and respect than real society would ever have offered them. They are the petulant alpha male whose decree must never be challenged, and the emperor whose invisible clothes must never be questioned.
*
A prepper is paranoid*. In addition to
/"I must be prepared to kill everybody before they can kill me"/, a prepper's paranoia causes them to veil their preparation activities in secrecy. They imagine that someone would envy their laughable ambitions enough to mimic or sabotage them.
*
A prepper is delusional and insane*. Perhaps sustained substance abuse or head trauma is responsible for their broken perspective on reality. Or perhaps a mild case of ADHD, OCD, or autism. But most likely, they suffer from an actual mental illness. It's a pity that this is so difficult to identify and treat.
*
A prepper is a terrible parent*. We only get one childhood. We only get one
/life/, but childhood is the first, most important, and most precious part of our lives. And a prepper robs their own children of proper, normal lives by neglecting them while carrying out delusional plans or by recruiting them into participating in those plans. A child should visit Disneyland on spring break, not help dig an underground doomsday fortress. A child should play XBox on a rainy day, not learn how to manufacture the ammo he'll need to shoot neighbors and ne'er-do-wells with. Most prepper families should be Child Protective Services cases.
*
A prepper is inferior genetic material*. Another common theme among preppers is the desire to survive a near-extinction event and personally sire humanity's future generations. The prospect of a new society seeded by idiot nutjob preppers makes me pray that this mythical catastrophe is a
/total/ extinction event. If these preppers want to do humanity a favor, empty out the jars of pickled eggs and fill them with Nobel Laureate s
**en instead.
*
A prepper is due for disappointment*. After waiting an entire lifetime for the catastrophe that would have justified their existence, they pass away on their death beds having wasted the only life that we are granted. If they haven't totally ostracized their friends and family yet, perhaps the prepper takes slight comfort in seeing them safe from imaginary disaster.
I'm prepared to admit that /Doomsday Preppers/ makes me ashamed to share this earth with people who would squander their precious lives. It makes me afraid that normal-seeming neighbors could be sociopathic maniacs. It makes me pity these faulty, broken people who don't want help and who probably won't get help that they desperately need.
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