• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t really understand preppers. Why would you want to survive after society collapses? That sounds awful.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      A lot of them aren’t planning for the end of the world, just for “something bad” of indeterminate but finite length that’s longer than a lot of people think reasonable.

      It’s a spectrum, with routine “emergency preparedness” on one end, and “self sufficient lifetime bunker filled with reusable water and canned food” on the other.

      It’s normal for people to have a flashlight, a few days worth of shelf stable food, a first aid kit and a couple of tarps. It doesn’t even need to be intentional, it’s just normal, but it still forms a basic emergency kit.
      A rational response to a normal risk.

      A lot of the more extreme peppers who aren’t radical are in more rural areas, where something like a tornado could actually knock out power for a week or more.
      A rational response to an uncommon, but real risk.

      Others just have a disproportionate estimation if the risk of something like Katrina or the 2003 blackout happening, that can knock utilities out for a protracted period of time, or some esoteric and unlikely beliefs about civil unrest.
      A rational response to an uncommon, unlikely risk.

      At the far end you have people who want to survive the literal end of the world. I don’t necessarily get why you would want to survive for a bleak and empty life either.
      An irrational response to an unprecedented, infinitesimal risk.

    • Jack Hughman@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      The chance to create a new society in our own image. With government subsidised cocaine and hookers.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The problem is “our” image is not something we all agree on. I see no reason for that to be different for the handful of survivors. The survivors will most likely end up wishing they had died quickly.