I try to be supportive and open but there are times when you have to call a spade a spade. Preppers have been online since the first bbs communities sprung up in the 1980s. And as soon as they did a bevy of of bad ideas sprung from the small minds of people with big egos who always phrased their bad ideas as a “serious question” to a community.
Make no mistake, as soon as you see “serious question” prepare yourself for what will often be the most hilarious, or disturbing things you’ve ever read. Here’s some examples:
Why can’t I take over a Wal-Mart after SHTF and build a civilization inside? This was the beginning of one of the most hilarious thread ever created in the prepper community. The unfortunately now defunct Zombie Squad forums ended up stickying this thread so all could see the madness. A user named “Lord Rahl” posted a “serious question” calling on users to critique his apocalypse plan. That plan being that he and several friends would immediately run to their nearest Wal-mart (armed of course) where they would take it over, disarm everyone inside including patting them all down then they would (like the benevolent rulers that are) give everyone the choice of leaving with nothing or joining their new kingdom. The kingdom of Wal-Mart.
Of course when people pointed out that shoppers minding their business getting held at gunpoint while some pawed at their love ones to check for weapons weren’t going to have a great relations with the pawers, Lord Rahl argued the point that they’d be OK with it when they realized how awesome he was. When people asked how you build a kingdom in a store that will never be resupplied the answer was simple. They could ration! Also Wal-Marts have lots of extra food secretly hidden or something.
At some point people pointed out that if things were so bad he could take over a store that police or security would also want to secure those resources. Lord Rahl, in true Internet fashion, began to talk about the tactics he and his friends would use to indefinitely defend Wal-Mart from hoards of SWAT teams, mercenaries and gangs. We were treated to descriptions of anime style combat that put cartoons to shame.
I’m not doing it justice but it was a magnificent display of entitlement, narcissism and lack of basic logic skills.
The answer to this his question is simple – it’s logistically impossible, it’simmoral and doesn’t make sense because any store only has three days worth of food for the community it serves. Just buy supplies now.
Is a Tesla a good survival prep for a grid down situation? This was a real question on the Reddit prepper forum. And yes, though I’m paraphrasing the user asked exactly this. He decided that he could run his house of a Tesla if the grid was down and then would use solar panels to charge the Tesla. Because it was Reddit no one pointed out that he could do the same thing with a $500 generator instead of a $70,000 car. Or he could use the solar panels for the car for his house.
Bless his heart for being flush enough with cash to drop what most people don’t make in a year on a car just to keep his lights on in a blackout.
Insert random disgusting fantasy here: This one is more disturbing than funny but if you don’t laugh you’ll cry. If you scroll through any forum enough you get to that post. Recently I saw a supposed woman asking “How do I prep for becoming a sex slave” (!?!) and the body of the message was a long, gross roleplay about how “she” was hot, smart and has a high sex drive thus would be “in demand” after SHTF. I stopped reading so I could get my eye bleach. I assume this was some lonely dude pretending to be a woman.
The prepper community attracts people who long for the end times because they have some sick, usually violent fantasy they want to live out. Posts by these people would be funny if they were so creepy. I once saw a post on a forum where a woman said she wanted to prep birth control because she “knew” that people in her neighborhood would be looking to rape others if there was a grid down scenario. Am I wrong but if you think the only reason your neighbors don’t rape you is because the lights are on isn’t it time to think about moving? When people pointed this out to her they were called – I kid you not – prudes for not understanding people’s sex drives.
Anyway, since I was preparing a Q&A I had thought of these and wanted to share. You ever see a really stupid idea of question? Let me know at https://www.instagram.com/oldtimeypistolero/
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Author Rob Taylor
