What Are You Preparing For?

Cthulhu awakens! (Source)

In the most recent edition of the Backwoodsman magazine, the editor asks what, exactly, are preppers/survivalists preparing for? He understands the self-reliance thing, and he understands wanting to prepare for natural disasters. But he still thinks that there is something more that differentiates a survivalist or prepper.

He raises a fair question, but not one that is easily answered because there is no clear demarcation between someone merely wanting to be self-reliant (i.e., the modern homesteader) or preparing for natural disasters, and someone that would consider themselves a "prepper" or a "survivalist". When do you progress from someone preparing for disasters and becoming a survivalist? Is it when you have three weeks rather than two weeks of food and consumables stored away? Or when you pass the 6 month mark? Is it when you buy a backup generator? Or when you augment the pistol you keep tucked in your nightstand with a defensive rifle? Or is the difference something less definable, such as your motivation for storing food and other supplies.

If that latter is the case, I would like to know what that motive needs to be, because I do not discern a universal reason for prepping.

Back during the Cold War it would may have been accurate to state that most survivalists were naturally worried about a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. However, even in the 1970s and 1980s, there were a significant number of survivalists worried about socioeconomic collapse, with the cities becoming battlegrounds for mobs (an understandable worry given the race riots and protests of the late 1960s and 1970s), or an environmental disaster--Love Canal writ large. In the late 1990s, of course, there were a lot of concerns of a final Apocalypse as the end of the second millennium approached, and worries over the Y2K computer bug. Fast forward to today, and it is clear to me that a lot of preppers worry about peak oil, solar flares or EMP attacks destroying the electrical system, financial collapse, pandemics, etc. And, yes, some pick one potential disaster or scenario and fixate on it.

But notwithstanding shows like Doomsday Preppers which feature preppers planning for a specific disaster (or at least are portrayed as such), I'm not convinced that a majority of people that consider themselves preppers or survivalists focus on a single type of disaster. The Survival Blog is informative in this regard because there are a lot of articles from people relatively new to prepping that describe their conversion, if you will, to survivalism. I have noticed that many who have an epiphany regarding preparations do so because of some personal or local disaster that reminds them of how precarious our way of living can be--for instance, loss of a job, a major illness, or a local disaster. Others, however, never have such a moment, but seem to simply have a general unease of where we are headed.

This non-specificity is a good thing. I think that the survivalist movement, if it can be called such, has matured because more people are preparing for the sake of being prepared, rather than fearing some particular or specific earth-shattering cataclysm. It probably helps, in this regard, that we are exposed to better news reporting, and video, of actual disasters striking other countries. It makes one conscious that "there, but for the grace of God, go I." But it also means that preparations are well rounded.

The primary difference between a survivalist/prepper and one who merely sets aside some extra food and water for a tornado or bad winter storm is really one of magnitude. The latter understands the need to prepare for common events, but subconsciously believes he or she is immune from anything greater or the government will step in and take care of everyone; whereas the survivalist/prepper can envision something on a larger scale, or even a gigantic scale, such as the great famine of Maoist China, the purges and genocides that has happened in so many communist and socialist countries, devastating wars such as WWII, pandemics such as the Black Death, or natural disasters such as the New Madrid Earthquake--and understands that the same could happen to him/or her. It doesn't require the end of the world or the collapse of civilization to throw you on your own resources for an extended period of time.

The same applies to self-defense. Most people understand having a pistol or shotgun to protect yourself and your family from a burglar. But what about a hungry mob? Or a mob that has decided that people of your race, religion, or political party should be exterminated? Could it happen? Unlikely. But it does happen with a fairly depressing frequency all over the world, and survivalists understand this. To look at this issue from a different perspective: our local, state and federal government take issues of civil unrest seriously and train for it, so the real question a citizen should be asking is why he or she is not doing the same.

So what do survivalists prepare for? I think that the appropriate answer is that they prepare for life and what it can throw at them.