“Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations.”
― Cody Lundin, When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikes
Survivalism is a fascinating subject. There is a certain sense of achievement when you’re able build your own fire, build your own shelter or make your own hammock with rainforest vines and banana leaves.
You did it on your own, and that’s a great feeling.
Don’t get me wrong, I honestly believe that after a few weeks of doing your business in the woods, you’ll miss all the comfortable amenities that modern civilization has to offer.
They say that if we took someone from the middle ages and brought them to our era, that they would say that indoor plumbing was the best invention in human history.
Personally, I rather have Wi-Fi and pee in the bushes, than the opposite.
That’s the problem with medieval people, they’re too short-sighted.
Jokes aside, with the 2008 recession, prepping and survivalism has effectively become a trend.
Some people still think that it’s a crazy phenomenon. Personally, I think it’s totally understandable.
You know what they say, with every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
How come no one was getting mad at the Dollar store stocks going up in the midst of the recession?
So I paid attention, I thought it was going to be a trend for the years to come.
Back at the time, I couldn’t envision that crypto-currencies were going to emerge, and I didn’t trust politicians with finance.
Call me crazy.
After watching innumerable videos, reading several books and tons of articles, an interesting thought came to mind.
It’s not what you know, it’s what you do with that information.
Suddenly as the trend kept growing, the types of content started shifting as well.
While the bulk of content (or maybe in my own confirmation bias) was mainly about purifying water with sand and charcoal, building a Dakota fire pit, rigging a Dead Fall trap, starting a fire with Glycerin and Potassium pomegranate, or with a steel wool and a small battery…
And a myriad of other interesting lessons for the inquisitive mind.
Well, that type of content started quickly get overshadowed by all sorts of people displaying their BOBs, their EDCs, their INCH bags…
(in case you’re not familiar with the lingo, it refers to Bug out Bags, Everyday Carry kits, and I’m Never Coming Home kits)
Don’t get me wrong, an emergency kit can save your life. It’s smarter to have one than not. In fact, you probably should get one of those if you don’t have one.
Cause let me tell you, I know an idiot who got stuck in a tropical storm totally unprepared just a few weeks ago.
That idiot is typing this thing right now.
Which means that you should grab your bug out bag, reach for your cooking kit, snatch one of them precious little salt packets, and take what I say with a grain of salt.
Back to our story, most of the content on the web then started to shift from survival lessons to content about gear and bug out bags, and everyday more people started stating that building a bag out bag is a never ending process.
Buy, buy, and buy.
I think Walmart agrees.
Replace the old $300 knife, with a new $400 knife that two months from now you’ll replace with a newer @300 knife.
The total combined usage of all knives? 5 times.
And just like that, the word “Gear-head” became a cool word and people started identifying themselves as gearheads with pride even.
One of the reasons behind the culture shift is that buying stuff is easy, spending the night among the monsters in the jungle is hard - And by monsters I mean mosquitoes. I hate those little fuckers.
So inevitably, most people started going with comfort and before long, survivalism became a multi-million Dollar industry.
When people would brag that they spend north of 10 grand a year to update their bug out bags (3-day survival kit) I tend to feel rattled.
I tell them that for that sum they could buy a small farm in Nicaragua (that was around 2010, prices were way lower back then) and then let a local family work the land, buy some chickens, add some solar the next year and in case the shit finally gets to meet the fan, they would have a nice place to fall back to.
This way, they could set themselves for a whole lot more than those three days of supplies they carry on their backs. Since You’re willing to spend the bucks on a plan B, why not make them count?
My arguments usually meet a blank stare.
“You don’t understand”, everyone tends to tell me.
They show me some black flashlight with a price well within the three digits range and proudly they explain that it’s the same type of flashlight used by mercs in warzones.
And I ask myself:
How many lumens do these motherfuckers need?
As Scott Adams always says, the minute you realize that people are irrational, you’ve won.
Once they get hooked by a brand, it’s hard to find a logical grounding to their decision.
Do you really want to survive what you fear will happen, or do you wanna buy flashy stuff?
Because maybe, just maybe, there is a better allocation of money out there.
It gets interesting, some people with more money spend more cash in prepping equipment, which is fantastic.
They transition from Bug out Bag, to Bug out Vehicle to a Bunker where they would ride the emergency.
Now all of that is perfect, I just like to add a new suggestion:
If the most prevalent concern among preppers is that the government would go rogue – or roguer – and turns into a full-blown police state…
How come so many people are spending a million Dollars or more on a state of the art bunker, and then they go and place that bunker it at the heart of the conflict?
Why not diversify a small part of that prepping money in another location outside the country, or at least have friends who live overseas that can help you if things turn bad?
It makes sense to diversify, doesn’t it?
“The problem — your problem — is that any country can turn into a 1970s Rhodesia. Or a Russia in the ‘20s, Germany in the ‘30s, China in the ‘40s, Cuba in the ‘50s, the Congo in the ‘60s, Vietnam in the ‘70s, Afghanistan in the ‘80s, Bosnia in the ‘90s. These are just examples off the top of my head. Only a fool tries to survive by acting like a vegetable, staying rooted to one place, when the political and economic climate changes for the worse."— Doug Casey.
Prepping is like many other great things is better to have it than not, but also like many other great things, it’s even better if you could diversify a a small part of it somewhere else.