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Sunday, December 16, 2012

Dissenting opinion

In response to my earlier blog post Silence is Golden on the subject of safeguarding prepping supplies from seizure, a reader had a dissenting opinion I thought was worth highlighting.

I'm sorry.....but this reeks of nothing but FEAR BASED propaganda.

Think of it....every crazy thing we have ever done as a people in this nation has been based on fear. (unwarranted destruction of Iraq. millions of lives lost to innocent civilians and Americans....an over zealous TSA, a homeland security that meddles in our e-mails and phone calls with no search warrants)....all massive fear based reactions.

Saw a documentary on how 780 people put 25 million of their own money and time for two years into massive self contained shelters in the late 70's because they thought a nuclear war was eminent. When no such thing happened.....they were humiliated, broke, exhausted and financially drained.




  1. Saddam was killing on average 20,000 of his own people every month. Saddam was exporting his killing to nieghboring countries. Should we have let him? I personally am not in favor of being the policeman for the world but if we are going to have a real and honest debate on an issue like this we cannot be dishonest from the start. BJ seems to think the U.S. just woke up one day and decided to kill people in Iraq. BJ seems to think Saddam and his cronies were just good guys whose hobby was killing and raping his people. If you are going to cite a historic event to support a position then at the very least get the facts right.

    1. Dear BJ,

      I hope you are right, that we will never need our preps, but the truth is SOMETHING is bound to happen, be it a natural disaster or a man-made one. It could be something as common as unemployment or as exotic as an EMP event. Wouldn't being prepared be benefical in both instances?

      Sure, right now it is pretty easy to say, "I chose death," but are you consigning your children to the same fate? What would you do when you children are starving? "Let the chips fall where they may?" Really?

  2. "I wouldn't even want to live in a world like that. "

    Neither would I... but if it were to happen, I am going to do my best to reduce any suffering by my family. You do not have to spend millions to be ready... knowledge combined with basic preparations creates a balanced approach...

    as for "living in fear" I have no fear of the worst happening.. I am prepared. Otherwise I would be scared witless.

  3. If you look at the example the fear was there we just expected the government to save us so we would not have to think about it.
    My preparing makes me fear less, not more except for how bad I suspect it might get just based on watching what is happening in the world and history.
    It seems BJ needs to justify what he is not doing and that is fine! No one is forcing him to prep, and I think he will get his wish "I wouldn't even want to live in a world like that."
    I think I'll keep trying to stack the odds in my favor on surviving.

  4. You say you don't want to live in a world where you would have had to prepare your family for an emergency/catastrophic event/etc. Personally I don't want to live in a world where I'm forced to roam from doorstep to doorstep, or from one gov't. line to the next so my children don't starve. It's all in the choices we make. Since this is a free country and my choices don't hurt ANYONE, I'll continue on that path, thank you very much. If in the "end" nothing happens, and I'm 'embarrassed,' I won't be hungry AND embarrassed.

    1. As I told my sister (who is so involved in her own life that she has no idea of world events):
      If I'm right about a coming crash (of any sort), then I'll have supplies to set up my new life.
      If I'm wrong, then I won't have to by food for a long time and have lots of neat stuff.
      BTW I maintain balance - I don't spend myself into bankruptcy.
      JW M

  5. Hmm, wonder how long it will take him to show up on his prepper neighbor's doorstep when his kids are hungry.

  6. Okay, we now live in a world where you can't go to the mall, send your kids to school, go to the movies or go hear your congressman speak without fear of being shot. Is that acceptable for the world you want to live in? Just how much worse does it have to get for you to not want to live in it? Personally, I'm not very impressed with the world we're living in right now. Doesn't mean I want to leave it though, or take my friends and family with me. I'm here and based on averages I've got about another 30-40 years to go. Sooo...I'm prepping. Not out of fear or worry but for shear comfort and convenience reasons. I live 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. It's a pain to get there and it's always crowded. Did I mention I don't like crowds....or traffic? I also live in an area where there are a lot of weather issues (i.e. tornadoes). Do you know what tornadoes do to power lines? Last year we were without power for over a week. The grocery store that I hate to go to was closed for eight days. Good thing I had preps. I had a gas stove and a percolating coffee pot. The neighbors came over and I cooked supper, we played card games and had a grand time....all in the glow of candles and kerosene lamps. We were comfortable, well-fed and happy, all because I took the trouble to prep. Fear? Nope, none at all.

  7. Fear is a normal and healthy human reaction...built into the genes. It is a kind of 6th sense that keeps people alive. The graveyards in Europe from the 1930s and 1940s are full of people who, for one reason or another did not take heed of the fear. Situational awareness is important.

  8. "I don't want to live in a world like that"...

    In the whole history of the world there was never a place that neared the comfort and plenty of the United States of America. We're a fluke in history. Do you get that?

    The Jews, Gypsies, and decent Germans didn't want to live in the world the Nazis created either. Many of them died, but the natural desire of mankind is to survive. There have been countless "holocausts" of all sorts in many lands (read some REAL history you never heard about in public school).

    It is amazing what people can live through. God gave us the nature of survival, and mankind has struggled to do just that throughout much WORSE times in history.

    You, my friend, will not choose to lie down and die when a natural or manmade disaster strikes. You, because it is in your nature, will fight to live, and you will do what you have to do to survive. You are part of what "we" are afraid of and have to defend our own families against.

  9. My prepping isn't about fear and never has been. One, it's fun to me. Two, it's about comfort - I need that genny because the power goes out regularly here, for days at a time, not because I'm expecting or fearing a 7 year outage. The food is all stuff we eat anyway, so if I can't get to the store, my family still eats well. I'm not a ten years of Mountain House kind of cook. I like to garden and I like to can, so I do. The side benefit is never having to buy jam, syrup, soup, salsa, or pickles. I like to hunt, and I'm not going to waste the meat, so we have an extra freezer. But for all this makes perfect fearless sense... I'm still a prepper, and therefore a nut to the current culture.

  10. Prepping isn't about living in fear. My Mother lived through the depression and yet she didn't starve. She wasn't homeless and while she didn't have the newest, let alone store bought clothing, she never went naked either. Why? Because her family always hoped for the best but prepared for the worst. Bad things do happen to good people. Oh, and my Grandparents also helped those who did not prepare in advance as much and as often as they could (within reason - they would not put their family in jeopardy to help other's)

    In addition BJ, get your facts right about why we went to war.

  11. I won't comment about the Iraq war - others have done so.

    What I will say is that I don't have seven years of food saved up. What I have is enough to get me through a crisis of rather extended length.

    I do, however, have the knowledge, tools and willpower to ensure that I won't go very hungry for seven years, or ten, or twenty, and that it was prepping for disaster that gave me those tools and know-how. And THAT is worth more than a pantry stocked for a year.

  12. During the summer of 1984, I was pregnant with my first child. My husband was a farmer, and I had a garden. That year we had a wet spring and we replanted our soybeans the third time on the third of July. We got very little rain after that and our wet spring became a long, hot, dry summer. By early fall, the spider mites had invaded the fields.

    I kept the garden watered. For some reason, unknown to me at the time, my due date came and went. I spent my mornings in the garden, my afternoons resting my swollen legs, and the cooler evenings were spent canning the produce with my mother; green beans, corn, tomatoes. I delivered a very overdue son the end of August. From that point on, we ate what the garden was producing, and it got us through August and September. I was rehospitalized in November during harvest. It was a desperate time for us. The crops had failed and I hung close to death in the ICU for a few days. I rallied and eventually returned home to my son and husband. We were all ready poor, but now we had farm bills and hospital bills. But we ate. It wasn't much, but we had vegetables and in October I picked up pecans to have some to eat and to sell the rest. A friend who was almost as poor, would come by with deer or goose meat and we'd have a veritable feast. Later we would play cards and enjoy the happy baby we were blessed with.

    We didn't have much but we had food because even though I did not feel well all summer (I now know what toxemia is), I worked in the garden and put food away for "later". Those were my first preps. I thank God for giving those extra weeks in which I kept myself busy waiting for the baby, by putting up food.

    BJ states he would not want to live in a world of abject fear. I can tell you PERSONALLY that you will do whatever it takes to LIVE. It's pretty difficult to just lay down and die. I had fear; we had no money, and the drought had killed off our crops and the bank was going to want their money just the same. I'd never had debt before. I had plenty of fear. But I fought to stay alive despite the fears I had. There was plenty to live for. Husband, baby, friends, another day in which to get up and try again.

    Don't kid yourself, BJ. You won't like the process of dying and will find yourself ill prepared to live. Why not fix that while you can?


  13. My level fear about the future has gone way down since I've put aside preps. Meanwhile, I'm working on skills. Nothing is guaranteed but we have a fighting chance to live between knowlege and skills.

  14. I think BJ is just lazy. Doesn't want to prep. Would rather have someone else take care of him/her and family. Yea, I'd rather die than to be unprepared! So, I will prepare to the best of my ability. Call me crazy if you want. I think I'm in good company!

  15. I don't want to live in that world, either. But I'd rather live in it, than DIE in it.

    BJ will be the first person to get dangerously violent when things get bad. He will grab a kitchen knife, or a gun if he can get one, and attack anyone he knows to be a prepper -- partly to rob preppers of the supplies that he wasn't provident enough to store for himself, and partly out of rage that the preppers were right and he was wrong.