Point-Counterpoint: Doomsday Preppers

I just started watching this reality television program Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic channel. It’s about people that are preparing for a cataclysmic event. These people then get graded by a team of survival specialists on their likelihood of surviving said event.

I’ve got a lot to say on the subject of Doomsday prepping.

In the two episodes I’ve seen, most of the fears are based on natural disasters, disease outbreaks, massive oil shortages, etc. I have to be honest, part of the reason I like the show is the suspense before each vignette, because eventually someone is going to just straight up say, zombie apocalypse. I’m preparing for the zombie apocalypse.

When that happens, I’m going to do a Tiger Woods’ fist pump, then call Joe Daniels and talk to him about it.

Point: Doomsday Preppers are on to something…

These people are nuts, but not THAT nuts. Yes, it seems mostly silly to live your life planning for the end of days as a full time endeavor, but I don’t think it hurts anyone to have a contingency plan in place.

1. The first segment was about a retired couple that created a self-sustaining compound out of shipping containers. They had a mini farm, built backup solar powered generators, ran evacuation drills, and shot a bunch of guns for target practice. Unusual, yes, but when my Grandpa retired, he sat around and watched bowling all day. At least these people found a hobby.

2. Experts don’t know shit. The show always ends a segment with the likelihood of the event happening. They’ll say something like, this blah blah blah event has 1.3% chance of occurring. Bullshit. No one knows when the next super volcano is going to erupt or the next asteroid is going to hit the earth. Some egghead is just pulling numbers out of his ass. I know, we can smell our own.

And I don’t care if the probability of an event is .0000013%, it could still happen. The odds of winning the powerball are like 1 in a billion but eventually someone always wins.


Counterpoint: Nope, Doomsday Preppers really are Looney Tunes.

1. The show gets weird when they show the outwardly-normal suburban families preparing for disaster. These people have basements and bedrooms packed with food and supplies and seem to spend most of their free time stockpiling even more rations. I bet the camera people double dip and recycle the footage for the next episode of Hoarders. Winning, said the Nat Geo TV Executive.

2. I think it is really funny when these people claim that they hope their event will never happen, they just want to be ready for it. Again, bullshit. Nothing would make these people happier than to be vindicated from all the dirty looks of their neighbors. If said event never happens, then they are delusional and possibly have OCD. If said event does happen, BINGO.

3. Methinks that some of these Doomsday Preppers are making too many pre-emptive raids on their food pantries. The majority of the people seemed to be terribly out of shape. Perhaps they should worry more about heart failure and less about the Earths north and south poles reversing.

Conclusion

The moral of this blog is to not judge these characters so harshly. Maybe keeping a couple cases of water and a few weeks of canned goods in the basement is a good idea. And it never hurts to challenge yourself with hypothetical scenarios and mental exercises for an armageddon event. What would you do, where would you hide, who would you save, what would be your reason to keep on living?

Not to get too sentimental, but with that special time in mid-February fast approaching, I don’t need to tell you what I’d be fighting for...