Prepper-worthy Identity Work: A Cultural Repertoire For Constructing A Secure Self...

Found this study from the Mid-South Sociological Association this morning, just published back in May. Seems balanced/fair to me, or at least they don't suggest preppers suffer from some neurosis anyway. Small sample size, 13 preppers from the midwest US, and apparently not of the "doomsday" variety.

 

I suppose I agree (from "mostly" to "slightly") with those, although not in that order, and I'd change the "other people" in #2 and #3 to "some people" instead. #6 seems to imply we are insecure as a group, personally I see it more as taking responsibility for my own family's security. On #7, if they replaced "fittest" with any of the following I'd strongly agree, "richest", "smartest", "first in line", or "luckiest".

 

This is interesting but I think that trying to put people into generalized boxes just doesn't work. Take for example the way different people on this board look at dealing with people. Lonewolf is a loner and prefers to have as little to do with people as possible. I plan to lay sort of low for a little while and then try to make contacts and form a group into a small community of connected families. Each of us is in our own way trying to prepare to live in a very different world than the one we live in now.

Each one of the points in the paper would be taken by individuals on a scale with some in total agreement and others equally totally disagreeing. People are seldom very consistent in their reactions to a thing so predicting their response is hard. Even things that we normally see as either or will often go off into another direction.

We all know about the fight or flight reflex. Well, that isn't the entire story in that sort of situation and the third choice is going to be a massively common one among certain groups of people. When something frightens you you may fly and run away, you may bow up and fight but a lot of people FREEZE and in the first few days of a disaster you will have am opportunity to act and get out ahead of the mobs. What I would offer is that there is the fourth move. If you are prepared and have forethought about what you need to do you can act instead of reacting. Fight, Flight or Freezing are all thoughtless reflexes. A prepared person can move in a way that is neither fight or flight but is still moving. They can sidestep the problem and then do things that the rest will have little opportunity to do.

I know that people are mercurial and it seems sometimes that the more you do and care for a person the more likely they are to stab you in the back. This sort of thing happens when you get too close to people. You can have friends that you still keep at a slight distance. they will come into and out of your life fairly painlessly. People change, if you get too close you don't want to see it and resentments build up. Friends need to be like butterflies that you catch in a net. You look at them and appreciate their beauty then you turn them loose.

People make up all sorts of things to allow them to have friends with a distance. In my experience small churches and various fraternal organizations are good groups and the connections later in a disaster can be very beneficial. It will offer you a small connection without many obligations.

The part of the paper about women was a little off. People both male and female that were born after the mid-1960s don't understand the unspoken rules of that and all generations before that. Many of the traditional roles of men and women were based on real physical necessities. Dependable birth control changed everything. Before that, a woman was either celibate or spent a lot of time pregnant birthing and raising kids. that didn't leave much time for careers. Men are bigger, stronger, and more aggressive. For women, this is a two-edged sword. They need strong men to provide for them and the children but they also need to be protected from over-aggressive males that would rather just take what they want. In a post-apocalyptic world when the pills run out the old ways are going to return. Good, bad or indifferent that pattern was the path that humanity has always had and the NEW ways are an artificial overlay that has only existed for 60 years. It isn't working well. People live in houses, not homes and the kids grow up without being civilized and being fully incorporated into our culture.

To some extent, preppers are outside of the norm. We are more pessimistic, paranoid and probably more aggressive in nature than the majority of the people. We see the majority of people as Sheeple. The truth is that they are better adapted to live in this world than we are. How many of us want to live in an apartment building??? We, in general, need more room and are sort of uncomfortable with being surrounded by people. I suspect that one reason that we are preppers and why most aren't is that we don't like this world very much and feel that we would be better off in a less civilized world. Most people view this sort of thing with horror and so can't bear to think about it as a serious possibility.

Maybe we are more than a bit crazy but as the old saying goes...Is it paranoia is someone really is out to get you???

 

I didn't open the information inlet , started to but got a bad feeling about doing that . Reading the list on the second post left me thinking whomever did the survey missed the boat entirely on what a prepper is or their line of thinking .