Survivalists go mainstream. It might be interesting to chart the progression of Newbie becoming some urban Jeremiah Johnson. Whole lot of attitudes are shed with new ones sprouted, nourished and bloomed. Harvest time will be an event.
A bit long as I searched for all three parts...that led to copying over ALL 3-parts. Well, I gots to thouroughly read it!
Preppers - Part I
Prepping for disaster
10/23/2011
EDITOR'S NOTE: Today we begin our three-part series on "preppers," those who believe in being prepared for whatever calamity befalls us by setting aside food, water, emergency equipment and even guns. Preppers who spoke with the Journal did so with the understanding that their names would not be used for fear that their supplies might become targets.
To a growing contingent of folks, signs abound that all is not well in the world.
Y2K.
9-11.
Hurricane Katrina.
Joplin, Mo.
Fukushima.
Solar spasms.
Overpopulation.
Peak oil.
Food scarcity.
Economic collapse.
Societal breakdown.
Zombies.
Zombies? OK, not in a literal sense, but as a metaphor for some horrific, walking-dead-like scourge.
A sense of unease has them scared, worried and frightened. They envisage an inevitable cataclysmic shift, a "when," not a "what-if," scenario.
But rather than wringing their hands, sticking their heads in a dark place and trying to convince themselves that the future will be all blue sky and birdsong, they are taking action, but not by marching, flamboyant public protesting or overt political activism.
They are preparing by, well, preparing.
Water.
Food.
Shelter.
Weapons and ammunition.
This is the basic shopping list of those known collectively as "Preppers."
Never heard the word?
So, what is a prepper?
Google "preppers" and watch as more than a half-million sites pop up.
At the top, or near the top, will be Prepper.org. On its homepage, it offers a definition of a prepper: "An individual or group that prepares or makes preparations in advance of, or prior to, any change in normal circumstances or lifestyle without significant reliance on other persons (i.e., being self-reliant), or without substantial assistance from outside resources (govt., etc.) in order to minimize the effects of that change on their current lifestyle."
On the side is a link to an organization called the American Preppers Network.
There are chapters in all 50 states and in Canada's 10 provinces and three territories. In fact, the movement is global.
National Geographic has aired a television documentary on the prepper movement. The Discovery Channel has one in the works. The phenomenon has appeared in online media and in print publications. It even was the subject of a Sunday Dilbert comic strip.
So, who are these people?
And, a few on the fringe
Anyone who has a well-stocked, oft-used pantry could be considered a prepper. The definition can extend to those who preserve their garden produce. The ice storm of a few years ago that brought down power lines and darkened a large segment of Kansas for days probably turned many into preppers. Post-storm homes probably now have more food, flashlights, batteries, candles and perhaps a gas generator.
What they, as a group, are not are anarchist militia types training to overthrow the government, nor are they likely to be overly paranoid survivalist whack jobs.
That said, the prepper phenomenon, as do all movements, has its lunatic fringe. There are those who espouse extreme right-wing political views, who believe President Obama is, at best, a Kenyan, and at worst, the antichrist. There are the gun nuts, whose website posts suggest their collection of weaponry has grown beyond the basement firearm cabinet into an arsenal more befitting a military armory. There are the hard-core conspiracy believers who take to heart the 2012 world-ending Mayan prophecy. These folks largely expect the apocalypse and have established hardened rural redoubts from which they plan to ride out the end of the world as we know it.
A lot can go wrong
Mostly, though, preppers are much more ordinary. Janet Liebsch has her own definition of a prepper: "Survivalist Lite."
Liebsch and husband, Bill, run Fedhealth, an Arizona company they founded to help people prepare for a variety of catastrophic events.
Their book, "It's a Disaster! ... and What Are You Gonna Do About It?" covers everything from A to Z: avalanches to -- well, not zombies, but almost. Chapters deal with earthquakes, fires, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, tornadoes, cataclysmic storms, terrorism, nuclear threats, radiation, hazardous materials, infectious diseases, poisoning and chemical and biological agents. There are tips on basic first aid and instructions on how to assemble a family emergency action plan.
"Preppers have always been around," Liebsch said. "They never had a name for themselves."
What preppers are not
Liebsch has seen an uptick recently in the number of people who fit the prepper mold.
Not that they are willing to talk about it, mainly because many don't want to be confused with hard-core survivalists, the weaponized loners hunkered in a bunker somewhere.
"Preppers in general are not like that," she said. "They are average Joes, with kids, families. They live in suburbia, they don't have 'bug out' land to go to. Some do, but a lot of them don't."
One website offered an illustrated difference between a prepper and an over-the-top survivalist. Beneath a photo of a camouflaged, rifle-toting G.I. Joe type was a smiling, Betty Crockerish woman standing in front of a packed shelf of canned goods.
"We hope people realize it might take two weeks or longer for people to get help," Liebsch said. "If something traumatic hits them, would they be able to make it 72 hours?"
Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency suggests a three-day stockpile of food, water and other necessities. Visit fema.gov and click on "plan and prepare" for suggestions on dealing with a multitude of hazards.
"If you look at the numbers, there are only about 2.1 million first responders for over 300 million (people)," Liebsch said.
She said this includes about 800,000 law enforcement personnel; 1.1 million firefighters, more than 70 percent of whom are volunteers; and 210,000 paramedics.
Longer than three days
In severe disasters, help may take longer than three days, but Liebsch said preparing for a longer period can become a burden for some people.
"Three days is not as overwhelming as three weeks or three months," she said. "You go into prepper forums and they are intimidated. They throw up their hands and say, 'I can't do this.' "
The other barricade is the topic itself.
"People are resistant," she said. "They don't want to talk about it (because) it's not going to happen. We have to break that barrier."
But some are talking, although they are not shouting it from their rooftops. For these stories, they agreed to discuss their preparedness as long as their names were not used. They might have as much as a year's worth of essentials -- food, water, medicine, money, precious metals, guns, ammunition -- stashed in basements, sheds, or in remote locations and they worry that in the event of a major event, such as a partial or complete economic collapse, unprepared neighbors will raid their cache.
Is Dilbert a prepper?
A recent "Dilbert" cartoon spoke to this concern. Dilbert is chatting with Alice, his triangular-haired coworker: "I'm preparing for the complete meltdown of our financial system. I've got six months of food and water. I have batteries, flashlights and gold coins."
Alice replies: "I'm prepared, too. I have your home address and I noticed that your preparations are light on defensive weaponry. Can you add some protein bars to the shopping list?"
Fear of the whacko label
Those agreeing to talk asked that only their online names, the appellations used in forums, such as the Kansas Preppers Network, be used.
Here's Mad Coyotee, via email: "If people know you are a prepper, then guess who will (be) sitting on your doorstep waiting for handouts? Some say to be out in the open, that way everyone can see who you are as an individual or as a group. With the mindset of people today, all it takes is someone's ignorance of the law or their fear to label someone as a whacko."
Mad Coyotee grew up on a farm and sees his prepping simply as a continuation of his rural family lifestyle.
"I would say that the events of the mid-1990s encouraged me to begin preparing my family for future events where self-sustainment would be necessary in order to survive," he wrote.
--Gordon D. Fiedler Jr. can be reached at 822-1407 or by email at gfiedler@salina.com.
http://www.saljournal.com/news/story/Prepper-Main
Preppers II
Preppers a diverse group
10/24/2011
By GORDON D. FIEDLER JR. Salina Journal
* EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second of our three-part series on "preppers," those who believe in being prepared for whatever calamity befalls us. Preppers who spoke with the Journal did so with the understanding that their names would not be used for fear that their supplies might become targets.
Smoke curled from the modest campfire and wafted aloft through the cottonwoods. An aluminum coffee pot warmed over some coals. The day was sunny, cool, with just a whisper of wind, a near perfect Kansas fall.
Relaxing around the fire on this Saturday in early October were almost two dozen folks, many meeting for the first time. They had journeyed here -- to Ottawa County State Fishing Lake north of Bennington -- from all over Kansas.
It was a diverse bunch. All different shapes, sizes, ages, gender and political persuasions.
Some were ex-military. Some never served. Some were unemployed, some had jobs. A few were retired.
But they all shared a common bond: They call themselves Preppers, and they had gathered to share ideas, demonstrate various skills, enjoy each other's company and to put faces to the online names they use to disguise their identity.
Lionheart, Trekker, Kanman, MoEngineer, Guntech, High Hopes and others -- all asked their real names not be used. They are trying to keep their passion for prepping hidden from neighbors and, in some cases, employers who they said would frown on their association with such a group. Two admitted their appearance here would probably get them fired if their companies found out.
A few held deeper suspicions. While there didn't seem to be much love lost among them for the current administration judging from comments, the more wary found the Patriot Act contemptible for giving the feds license to confiscate weapons. They also feared the act could be used to ferret out preppers as food hoarders.
Katrina and 'Red Dawn'
They came to this place, literally and figuratively, from different starting points. Hurricane Katrina was a motivator for some.
A desire to become more self-sufficient stirred one to action.
One's eyes were opened by the movie, "Red Dawn," a 1980s flick about a Soviet Union invasion of the United States.
Peak oil awoke another to action.
A souring economy and its possible consequences also received knowing nods.
"For me, it started with Katrina," said Lionheart. "I saw a lot of failures on different levels. Many people trusted the government. They weren't self-reliant."
He wasn't caught up in the disaster personally but watched it unfold on television.
"I saw people get in their car, thinking of escaping to be safe. They spent three days on the damn turnpike trying to get out of New Orleans. These people weren't prepared. Many didn't have gas in their cars, or food or water for their family. That was my inspiration."
Katrina also was Trekker's motivation.
"There are going to be situations when the authorities and the government can't help you out. You are going to have to help yourself. You need to be better prepared to have a better chance."
It's about self-reliance
A desire to live more sustainably moved MoEngineer to take stock of his situation.
"I don't put as much focus on the economy as other people," he said. "My whole thing is self-reliance. That's my hobby and what I aspire to."
Kanman once lived in Florida and always had essentials close at hand during hurricane season, but it wasn't until he moved to Kansas that the prepper bug bit.
"I've been a closet survivalist for several years," he said. "I've always been worried about the economy, the way the world situation is, with terrorists, wars. I really came out of the closet this past summer and really started stocking up."
Despite his online moniker, High Hopes doesn't have much hope at all for the world's resources, particularly oil.
He subscribes to the Peak Oil theory, espoused by observers in and out of the oil business, that claims the world's oil supply is approaching its zenith, that production is on a decline or at least is unable to keep pace with consumption.
"We're not going to run out, but we'll blaze through it very fast, overusing it faster than we can pump it," he said.
Exploding world population
A growing world population also is on his mind.
"What I know about ecology, we are way above bounds, population-wise. We are taking way too much advantage of our resources, and that's probably going to kick us in the butt."
He believes the world will achieve equilibrium at the expense of the human race.
"A lot of people will have to perish in order to set the balance right," he said.
He's sold many of his electronic appliances, because he doesn't believe eventually they will be of any use.
"My preparations revolve around taking us to the early 19th, late 18th century type of living," he said.
He's investing in a rural homestead where he plans to grow his own food and survive whatever comes his way.
72-hour preppers
Trekker doesn't see a future quite that dire. He and his wife live in a city and plan to stay put.
"We consider ourselves more suburban preppers," he said. "We're looking at a 72-hour situation where we may have no help from the government or we have to leave the area for a tornado."
However, they have more than a three-day supply.
"We've always had 30 days of groceries on hand," he said. "We started looking long-term within the last year and started stocking up beyond that," he said.
"We're not looking at more than 90 days. We're not looking at a complete collapse of society."
Worst case, if they have to leave, they have at the ready "bug-out" bags, backpacks loaded with food, water, first-aid supplies and other essentials.
Guntech's eyes were opened the first time he saw the movie, "Red Dawn."
The scenario was a popular one at the time.
"It was always an outside force that would invade America," he said. "I never looked at a natural disaster or economic disaster or anything like that."
Those calamities now are on his radar.
Buy a little at a time
He didn't want to reveal how much he's stored, except to say he didn't stockpile it all at once.
"Nobody can afford right off the bat to buy 20 years of dehydrated mashed potatoes," he said.
He would buy a little extra every time he went to the store. Peace of mind increases as the larder grows, he said.
"If you stock food for a year and lose your job, you can at least eat for a year," he said.
Besides food and water, his stash includes certain medicines and some cash -- "If it's worth anything in the end" -- and important documents, some of which he's duplicated and stored off site.
"You can't be prepared for everything, but for whatever you can," he said.
'Thought dad was crazy'
The youngest at the gathering was 16. While most teenagers can't see beyond the next weekend, "iPhone" joined the prepper bandwagon after watching her father.
"At first, I thought my dad was crazy because I believed he thought the world was going to end," she said. "In reality, prepping is all about preparing for a disaster, big or small. To be completely independent."
While she hasn't come clean to her friends about being a prepper, she has tried to discuss sustainability.
"Some thought I was a little crazy. Others thought I was completely correct."
What scares her most is what she can't see: the future. "All I know is history tends to repeat itself and the world has so much bad history such as global disease, solar flares and economic government collapses."
A few years of food
One who didn't make it to the lake that weekend is "Christy," who in a phone interview said she and her family have been serious preppers for about a year.
They live in the country and routinely put food by.
Her focus now is on long-term food storage.
"We've done well," she said. "We probably have a few years of food stored."
A larger concern is access to money if the electrical grid goes down and ATMs and other banking options stop working.
"What happens without electricity? You can't do anything."
Her worst scenario is society devolving into a barter-and-trade economy.
Think that can't happen?
The solar flare danger
There's a slim chance an angry sun could belch a solar flare powerful enough to do just that.
"If we get now what happened in the Carrington event, you're looking at no power for six months to five years," said Brian Camden, principal of Hardened Structures, an engineering and design firm specializing in bomb shelters.
The Carrington Event is named for Richard Carrington, a British astronomer who in 1859 witnessed the largest solar storm ever recorded.
"It caught telegraph offices on fire," Camden said.
According to the National Geographic, the northern lights created by the flare were bright enough for people to read by.
If such an electrical disruption occurred now at the same intensity, it could cause catastrophic damage.
"It's never happened since we've had the power grid in," Camden said.
Worst case? Food riots
Worst case? "Water runs out in 48 hours, food in three or four days, then you have food riots," Camden said.
If all the mega transformers get fried, don't expect electricity to be restored any time soon. The Carrington event occurred during a maximum of solar activity similar to the period the sun now is entering.
Although the odds of another Carrington event are extremely low, those with the prepping mindset say they would be ahead of those who believe systems will remain in place, which is why they are relentlessly gathering supplies while the infrastructure remains intact.
Where do preppers go to acquire all this stuff?
-- Gordon D. Fiedler Jr. can be reached at 822-1407 or by email at gfiedler@salina.com
http://www.saljournal.com/news/story/Prepper-Part-2-FOR-MONDAY-S-PAPER--OCT--24--2011
Preppers - Part III
Bad times mean good times
10/25/2011
By GORDON D. FIEDLER JR. Salina Journal
* EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third of our three-part series on "preppers," those who believe in being prepared for whatever calamity befalls us.
A recent gathering of preppers at Ottawa County State Fishing Lake, north of Bennington, drew folks from all over the state. They were alerted to the "meet-up" because they are members of the Kansas Preppers Network, which is part of the American Preppers Network.
They go by such online names as Lionheart, Trekker, Kanman, MoEngineer, Guntech and High Hopes. They didn't want their real identities known for fear of home invasions by the unprepared and also, in some cases, to hide their efforts from suspicious employers.
As forum members, they can post questions and comment on queries from others, rant about current events and share an occasional joke among their prepper peers in every state and in all of Canada's provinces and territories. There are even groups in Britain, Italy and New Zealand.
APN's co-founder and current director is Tom Martin, who maintains the site from his Idaho home.
He launched the site in January 2009 and patterned it after online forums in Texas and Utah. Others began popping up and he and associates decided the time was ripe for a larger, more cohesive organization.
"We saw the writing on the wall some time ago," he said.
He could see ominous signs in the housing bubble, the federal debt and other events.
The movement's infancy
But when he started the site, the prepper movement was in its infancy.
Back then, there were fewer than a 1,000 Internet sites that answered to a search on the word, and many of them dealt with such subjects as auto body restoration.
"There were only four or five at the time that dealt with preparedness," Martin said.
A search of the word now delivers more than a half million sites.
There are even preparedness videos posted on YouTube.
Martin's forum also has swelled, with more than 9,000 registered members, and it is growing daily. But he admitted the prepper/survivalist movement is much larger than that.
"Even though we were the first major website, we're by no means the leader in the movement. I don't think there is a leader."
He said people are being drawn to the site for varied reasons and bringing with them a broad spectrum of philosophies.
"We've got people on the left, on the right and everything in the middle," he said. "We've got people preparing for things as simple as a job loss to people preparing for natural disasters, economic disasters. A few people believe in the 2012 (Mayan prophesy) theory. Anything and everything."
Self-reliance the key
Despite the differing political persuasions of his forum members, Martin said they seem to rally around a common cause: self-reliance.
"Almost nobody that I know (who) is a prepper thinks they can rely on the government to help them in a disaster," he said. "Even FEMA comes out and says we have to have three days of food and water. They know they can't get to you immediately."
Martin said he's traced the origin of the word "prepper" to the Y2K scare, when people taking precautions against the anticipated computer collapse were known as Y2K preppers.
While Y2K was an end-of-times bust, it was instructive, Martin said. Perhaps, he said, the precautions by businesses and individuals on the eve of the new millennium prevented a larger catastrophe.
The prepper term simmered on the back burner for nearly a decade before being picked up within the past few years by people worried about the souring economy, the housing and banking crises, oil and food prices and political gridlock in Washington.
And business is good
As the movement has grown, so have businesses that cater to the prepper crowd.
Forum chatter from preppers on such topics as sources for food-grade containers, home canning and processing, gardening, water filtration, alternative energy, backyard livestock, defensive weapons and ammunition, rural property, hunting, post-collapse coinage and wilderness survival has spawned a growth industry.
Pam Molloy is general partner of Mayflower Trading Co. in North Fork, Idaho, a 14-year-old business that supplies not just preppers, but others seeking a self-sufficient lifestyle.
It offers emergency food, housewares, first-aid and alternative energy products.
"I have seen a huge increase in storage food and the first-aid stuff, disaster kits, trauma kits," Molloy said.
"When we first went online, people were interested in food, survival stuff, tents, knives, outdoor cooking," she said. "It was real popular as people prepared for Y2K. Then when that was over, we started seeing a lot more business in alternative energy. Even though Y2K didn't go down the way it was going to happen, they were awakened. This whole place is fragile."
She said her clientele now includes homesteaders; latter-day back-to-the-land types; the "greens" who want to lessen their carbon footprint, and the survivalists.
" I use that term for people who believe that if things go bad, they can run off into the woods and survive," Molloy said.
Multiyear food supplies
The storable food business was first generated by rural dwellers who simply wanted a garden backup to get them through the winter and early spring.
"Now, people are buying multiyear supplies," said Molloy, who wonders where people are putting all of it.
"I don't know if they're remodeling houses, storing it in crawl spaces, clearing out the lawnmower shed."
She knows of one customer who has chosen food as his investment of choice.
"One guy told me he's spending his retirement savings on food. He thought he would need it because his (money) will buy twice as much."
He said he'd rather buy a bucket of wheat now for $20 rather than $40 later on as food prices rise.
Creating thriving lives
Another business preppers have tapped is Shelf Reliance, a Utah company that first catered to the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who are commanded to maintain a year's supply of food.
Marketing director Sebastian Nilsson said the company got its start in 2005 manufacturing and selling shelving that automatically rotates the stock.
Now it's tapping into the prepper movement by offering, besides the shelf systems, dehydrated and freeze-dried foods and emergency kits and supplies.
"We have the tools to help people build up a home store," Nilsson said.
"We're trying to find a vision to help create thriving lives. We feel to be prepared gives you peace of mind for whatever hits."
Ready for the really big one
And if the big one -- the really big one -- hits, then Brian Camden should have been at the top of the preparedness list.
He's principal of Hardened Structures, a manufacturer of bomb shelters, including high-end models that go for up to $600 a square foot. His company is building them all over the world for private, commercial and military clients.
"A lot of people are scared about the economic collapse," Camden said. "That's 50 percent of our business. In the last four to five years, it's picked up, definitely."
These are not the septic-tank-like backyard structures of the Cold War. Not for $600 a square foot.
For that kind of money, you're getting "a reinforced concrete underground bunker with blast overpressure protection with full NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) filtering," Camden said.
"We build them with hydroponic food growing systems, barns underground for livestock, water generation, sewage disposal," he said.
Shelter dwellers could survive for five years in one of them, he said.
Selling freeze-dried food
After 9-11, Victor Rantala was another who saw an opportunity.
"The buzz was that the world had changed," he wrote in an email. "Danger was around every corner. I wasn't necessarily buying into that thought process, but I had always been into preparedness to some degree and have always believed it just to be common sense to be ready for the unexpected on any number of levels. What I saw was that folks were not being well-served in the preparedness marketplace, in spite of the sudden surge in interest."
So in 2002, he founded Safecastle Royal in Prior Lake, Minn., and started selling freeze-dried food online, then expanded into storm shelters.
Other entrepreneurs, seeing an opportunity in the prepper market, also jumped on board.
"Market niches ... have steadily, and sometimes suddenly, grown through the 10 years I've been materially involved," he said.
He declined to reveal sales figures but said business is growing.
"What I will say is that our annual revenue growth each of the last 10 years has easily exceeded expectations most investors or business owners would have for an average business in today's environment. We are growing, expanding, and hiring (part-time people) from time to time," although he's not adding staff at this time.
"In a sense, I welcome the fact that preparedness is so much more mainstream today than it was several years ago," he said.
Take care of yourself
One who would agree is Tom Martin. If his American Preppers Network does just one thing, it is this: "I'd like to see every able-bodied American become self-reliant, to be motivated and capable to take care of themselves."
The preppers who met at Ottawa County State Fishing Lake hope they will pass that test when the "whatever" hits.
In prepper-speak, this event is referred as "WTSHTF," an abbreviation involving a profanity and a fan.
Another thrown about is "TEOTWAWKI." That mouthful stands for "the end of the world as we know it."
There is also the acronym "G.O.O.D." -- short for "Get Out Of Dodge."
It's understood among the group that WTSHTF likely will lead to TEOTWAWKI, and at that point it will be high time to G.O.O.D. While they pray it never comes to pass, they want to be ready.
Prepare for the worst
"Hope for the best but prepare for the worst," is how Kanman put it.
Some jokingly applied the zombie test to their preparations. Those supplied well enough to survive a swarm of undead will probably survive anything.
MoEngineer had a more serious litmus test.
"Take the ice storm. If I can't make it through an ice storm, how can I expect to make it through an economic downturn?"
--Gordon D. Fiedler Jr. can be reached at 822-1407 or by email at gfiedler@salina.com.
http://www.saljournal.com/news/story/Prepper-No--3-FOR-TUESDAY--OCT--25--2011
No comments:
Post a Comment