'Medium' columnist critiques the "Bug Out Bag" and prepper mentality.

[ArcadiaGP]

These Photos of Prepper Bags Hold a Mirror to Society - Medium (Archive link)

Not content with merely imagining disaster, preppers lurch toward it. They play out fearful futures, buying survival goods and stockpiling basements with supplies. They have bought in — spiritually, financially, and politically — to the worst worst-case scenarios. Motivated by an array of politics and theories, preppers do seem to be united, at least, by anxiety and alarm, and Allison Stewart’s Bug Out Bag puts this national portrait of fear on display.

A “national portrait” might seem a grand claim for a collection of bird’s-eye photos of arranged items. But Stewart’s simple methods shouldn’t fool you into thinking that these images convey something simple. Sure, they function at a literal level (wittingly mimicking the common, fetishistic “What’s In Your Bag” profiles of industry photography magazines), but more crucially, these photos serve as a window upon the caprice of American culture. Bug Out Bag shows us both clues to misinformation circulating the U.S. as well as a booming industry. The issue, for me at least, is not really whether preppers’ fears are warranted but rather what it means for doomsday delusions to be increasingly part of the American psyche.

Honestly, the photos are pretty good, and interesting. The writing, on the other hand, just silly.

Why get so irritated by how other people spend their time and money? Perhaps you just don't understand or care how the "prepared" people think?

The smugness in the article is ripe and thick.

The author is living in San Francisco and glosses over the usefulness of an earthquake kit...

Don't worry about giving them clicks. The link is an archive.

 

[actaeon277]

Yup. People think being prepared is "silly".
Until a natural disaster strikes.

You'd think with all the stuff in the news (hurricanes, mudslides, earthquakes, tornados, etc.) one wouldn't need much of an imagination to be prepared.
But I guess this reporter has ZERO imagination.

 

[avboiler11]

Somebody ask .gov what they think about it...

https://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit

 

[actaeon277]

The issue, for me at least, is not really whether preppers’ fears are warranted but rather what it means for doomsday delusions to be increasingly part of the American psyche.

Oh really?
"... it is not really whether preppers' fears are warranted..."
I think it is kinda "warranted".
By throwing that out, you've just about thrown out any other opinion you throw out.

 

[actaeon277]

Yet, most Americans openly mock those who gear up with canned food, flares, and fire-starters. Preppers are often cast as conspiracy theorists with insular worldviews and self-inflicted paranoia.


Sigh

 

[actaeon277]

Like it or not, preppers are more like you and me than we might think.

Duh!

How about Like it or not, reporters are more like you and me than we might think?

 

[actaeon277]

She asserts looting is not crime, but that it is for need and only emerges when government buckles and leaves citizens to fend for themselves.

Yet, look at what people are looting.
Doesn't seem to be "necessities" to me.

 

[actaeon277]

The persistence of the gender pay gap, the Supreme-Court-sanctioned curtailment of voter rights, the ongoing assaults on LGBTQ rights, and old men legislating on the reproductive rights of women show discrimination is still routine in U.S. society.

 

[actaeon277]

Trump had already shown fear and discord were part of his bombastic style. He’d already drawn out his “us” and “them” and had shown there’s plenty of room in his patriotism for prejudice.

In Trump’s world, we don’t all rise together and we cannot all be empowered; we’re pitted in a zero-sum battle in which for every winner there is a loser.



Nothing like a little anti-Trumpism to throw in​

 

[Ark]

Nothing like a little anti-Trumpism to throw in
​

It is impossible to publish anything on any subject in 2018 without making it about Trump.

 

[churchmouse]

OK. So we choose to be prepared. Not exactly for Armageddon but any catastrophe that may come along. This includes a devastating illness to an earthquake. I am not seeing having 30 days of survival rations on hand an issue.

 

[cosermann]

There seems to be an effort to make preppers look, well, a bit "off."

Here's an article on the revision of the inconvenient history of the aftermath of natural disasters. - https://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/09/daisy-luther/no-looting-no-panic-no-hunger/

 

[GIJEW]

In Trump’s world, we don’t all rise together and we cannot all be empowered; we’re pitted in a zero-sum battle in which for every winner there is a loser.






​

The author had to go to Trump for that world view? That seems to be the left's ideology from economics to politics--from the antifombies to congress.

ie:
"you didn't build that business"--fauxcahauntus warren and B.O.

"...we can have civility again when the (DNC) is back in power" HRC

 

[bwframe]

Bat crazy preppers, don't you just hate 'em...

...especially when they're right.

 

[eldirector]

I've heard this sentiment a lot: "Why are you so afraid?" Like, it is FEAR that drives us. Like we WANT bad things to happen.

I don't prep because I am afraid. I prep so I don't have to be.

 

[actaeon277]

I've heard this sentiment a lot: "Why are you so afraid?" Like, it is FEAR that drives us. Like we WANT bad things to happen.

I don't prep because I am afraid. I prep so I don't have to be.

 

[DeadeyeChrista'sdad]

One more good reason I dont feel much sympathy for grasshoppers when we have a nice little ice storm, they lose all the food in their refrigerator and freezer, (if they even have a freezer) the house goes cold, and their wife has the good sense to bug out to Mama and Daddy's house with the kiddies, leaving them to wallow in their own excrement.

When it happens again a couple of years later, with the exact same results, I just shake my head. You can't fix stupid.

 

[rhino]

Marginalizing and belittling those with whom you don't agree by using accusations of "fear" is a tried and true tactic. It's a forerunner of labeling racist/fascist/Nazi/literally Hitler. They even invent inaccurate words to use as labels that end in "phobia" or "phobic."

 

[actaeon277]

Going through old threads.


I wonder how people feel now, what with the virus and "protest" going on.

 

[DeadeyeChrista'sdad]

Pretty much about the same for me. Trust in the Lord, AND keep your powder dry. But your point is well taken. I imagine hundreds of thousands have been, and will continue to be, shaken off of the fence by all of the antics. I imagine the great t.p. shortage alone created a whole new wave of basic preppers.