Preppers

So, these preppers keep talking about the end of the world, and how they are the only ones who will survive it. But for every strategy or plan you see, you see two more preppers saying its a bad idea. Every gadget is nothing you couldnt get from a hardware store for a few bucks, or tweak yourself from clutter around the house, but they want you to pay top dollar for it. Hell, they cant even agree on what to prepare for; earthquake, fire, famine, government collapse. Some fools claim they're prepping for it all, which is impossible. Many of the preparations you make for one disaster are useless and can actually be harmful in other cases. And the preppers all forget several basic facts:

1) You need lots of non-related people to survive. All this movie bullshit about "the last six people on earth"; yeah, if they're related, sterile, gay, or the same sex, then the species is dead anyway. It takes something like a thousand people or more (all unrelated) to maintain a safe gene pool that guarantees no inbreeding defects; 80 of each gender is the smallest, and you need VERY careful bookkeeping then to prevent accidental cousin-f*cking.

2) "But the rioters and looters are gonna..." Yeah. right up until the people that actually care about living in society (unlike preppers) step up and do something about it. Which takes less time for a more civilized population; in African shitholes, the longest it lasts in a few months. As civilized as we are, well, The cops get a few days to settle that shit before people start stepping up.

3) "No one but me is gonna know how to..." Ok. Assuming you're the only prepper for a hundred miles in any direction, and there are no veterans, former boy scouts, farm boys, or any other outdoorsy type people, we still have libraries. Row upon row of books telling us how to do all this stuff. A disaster doesnt create mass amnesia and make people forget how to read or where to look up information.

4) Man abhors a vacuum more than nature, and I aint just talking about a vacuum cleaner. Someone will rise to power if the current order really cant cope (which is highly unlikely) Mankind functions best when someone else is in power. Too many people just dont feel right unless they are being "governed" by someone else. Study history, no matter how noble or criminal, all governments end up around the same place before they collapse; the population pushes for certain rights, the rulers demand certain powers, and the game goes on until it topples and resets.

5) Civilizations reset. The ancient Greeks had a mechanized computer. The ancient Egyptians could recognize malignant and benign tumors, and surgically remove them. The Romans could pump water uphill.  The Indus Valley Civilization had flush toilets and sewers at 2500BC. This we know from physical things we found; who knows how much knowledge was lost with all the book burning over the centuries. Sometimes the old has to fall to make room for new. Not saying new is better, but the only constant in the universe is change.

6) As a species, we are nearly impossible to kill. If you're a Biblical Literalist, we've got 6000 years of recorded proof. If you prefer science, we have millions of years of proof. Mankind survives almost as well as cockroaches. We've survived ice ages, floods, volcanoes, meteor strikes, earthquakes, global depressions, world wars, bad Mexican food; short of a solar supernova (at which point everything inside the asteroid belt is ash) whats left that we havent already survived several times before?

I get it, preppers. You're scared. This is your security blanket, like a three year old's woobie. You feel tough and strong and ready now. Except that every actual disaster or collapse that you claim to be preparing for has shown that what you're doing is actually detrimental, both to you and to society. Look at Russia of the 90s, look at Venezuela, look at East Germany; see what was really needed. Then, if you want to prep, prep to be an aid, instead of "bugging out". Like the hippies of the 60s that decided to "drop out" of society, the only one you'll hurt is yourself.