Have any of you watched "Doomsday Preppers" on NatGeo?

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jennypenny
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Post by jennypenny »

I finally got a chance to watch the episodes I recorded. I was looking forward to the show. I knew they'd have some extreme people on, but I was hoping to pick up some tips since there is so much crossover between ERE and prepping. Well, I'm a little surprised by the show.
*Most of the people are closer to normal than I expected (except for the bullet guy who has already been declared incompetent by the government and stripped of his arsenal).
*I'm a little shocked by how much money they spend on prepping and stockpiling. One couple spent $10K a year. That's my whole grocery budget for 5 people, 2 dogs, and stockpiling.
*Everyone seemed too focused on bugging out. Bugging out is a last resort and rarely successful. People should live somewhere where they can meet there own needs easily (whether through homesteading or a supportive community).
*Most of the people they showed would be done in by lack of medical care. This also seems like a common thread between prepping and ERE. Medical care is expensive, and if you need care for a chronic illness (even if it's just daily medication) it will lower your standard of living and would be your downfall in an emergency. The only guy who looked healthy ended up almost shooting his own thumb off during filming (confirming my thoughts on medical care). Seems like taking care of your health--even if it means a higher budget for food, exercise, and preventative care--makes a huge difference in the long run. And if you have an untreatable illness (like we have here), medical care should be a major focus of your planning.


HSpencer
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Post by HSpencer »

I watched the one last night on the guy who used to be a truck driver, now retired and doing the prepping at some location. The guy was into ham radios, guns, etc.

The guy looked like he could run 15 feet and have a massive heart attack.

Physical fitness, IMHO, would be one of the large measures if one tried to survive an end of whatever thing. I don't think this guy in the show had a prayer of doing that. Maybe he can just sit on his four wheeler and shoot people with his 12 ga shotgun. If no one bothers him at the end of days, and he has enough salted back for a daily calorie count of "ten zillion calories intake", then he might make it until the old blood veins get totally clogged.
My impression is they are all a bunch of nutjobs with, however, a pretty focused idea.


George the original one
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Post by George the original one »

I haven't watched it... no cable/satellite TV at home :-)
Yeah, the emphasis on bugging out seems to be the current marketing tactic now that Obama hasn't taken the guns away and you can still buy ammunition. It amazes me that the doom & gloomers haven't figured out that they're just a cog in the marketing machine.
In my own scenarios, bugging out is what you do well ahead of time. It is using the currency of choice to leave behind the political instability, slipping across a border to live the life of a political refugee.
The nightmare scenario that is tough to survive is akin to the rampage in Rwanda where one is oblivious to the explosion of orchestrated neighbor hostility. Heading to the hills will likely only prolong the terror rather than rescue you from it.


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C40
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Post by C40 »

I haven't seen it but I've heard Jack Spirko talking about it on his Survival Podcast. He's said that for the show they are just finding idiots to make look bad for entertainment.
I find this fitting with a large portion of TV documentaries and reality shows. Most are extremely far from real or actual life. There was a reality show filmed where I went to college. I knew a member of the cast (Matt Ellis, his "roomate") and he told me how ridiculous it was. One example I remember is that they bought a condo in a downtown building that has nothing to do with campus, and built a fake dorm room inside the condo to use for filming scenes which supposedly took place in the campus dorm room that Tommy lived in with Matt.
This also occurred during my last semester when I had only easy/fake classes and was loafing around campus a lot. I witnessed some scenes being filmed. I'd see an hour or two of setup, preparation, and practice for a 30 second film clip. I'd see Tommy Lee in three different outfits in one day. This is how reality shows work.
I'd find this to be fitting with other TV programs (including a reality show that was filmed at my college campus, which I knew some of the cast of... they explained to me how ridiculous it was)


jacob
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Post by jacob »

One of my friends worked as a tech for a reality show. He pretty much confirmed that it's called a "reality show" because it has nothing to do with reality. (Similar reasoning behind the naming of political bills, but I digress.) In essence, the show is made post-production.
Anyhoo .. I think prepping may fall prey to the consumer-paradigm where the prepper is thinking in terms of stuff and technologies and that the solution is simply to buy stuff. It's a form of gadget-geekery. I even think this is pretty normal/average. It's far easier to buy a $200 field surgeon kit thinking yourself prepared than to spend 50 hours getting advanced first aid training.
A lot of survivalist thinking is also still mired in cold-war thinkingL Just bug out to the wilderness to avoid the nuclear fall out and the roaming zombies. (Meanwhile you can spends dozens of hours and thousands of dollars spec'ing and upgrading your bug out vehicle and your massive arsenal of guns.) Then return six months later when the silly city-dwellers have all eaten each other. I think this paradigm is changing quite fast these days though. It's turning into a combination of "how to survive the 1930s" and "how to survive your country turning into a banana republic"-survivalism.


Roark
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Post by Roark »

There is no point in watching almost any television show because everything is made into a circus, even if it is a legitimate topic. This is because many people would rather be entertained or feel good about their lives when they see people inferior to them on the television when they get home from work.


Marlene
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Post by Marlene »

@HSpencer: I´ve seen this link on Hackernews wehre research with rats seem to indicate that physical fitness affects how much energy is delievered (stored) in the brain.


Marlene
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Post by Marlene »

erm - sorry for the long link.


Dragline
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Post by Dragline »

I tend to agree that TV is just a drama/entertainment factory and a lot of this "prepping" is just an excuse to buy some "really cool stuff" and acquire a sense of self-importance.
In fact, what you would most need in a societal breakdown scenario is a community of some kind -- even if its just a gang. Think of all the apocalyptic movies you've seen like Last Man on Earth/Omega Man/I Legend (yes, that's all based on the same story -- watch the original sometime with Vincent Price) or Mad Max/Road Warrior trilogy, etc. Sure, the protagonist is some loner/prepper with really cool junk, but the zombies/mutants/gangs always seem to have the upper hand because there are simply more of them organized into some framework. And the loner guy is always looking for that "community at the end of the rainbow", which often magically appears at the end of the saga.
Why not start with the community and stop accumulating junk? I guess that would be boring TV -- people being nice and helping each other learn new skills. Not enough conflict/drama for prime time.


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jennypenny
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Post by jennypenny »

The people on the show are pretty close to normal for extreme preppers. Most people in the bug out business are much crazier, trust me. I guess I was hoping for more since it's natgeo instead of TLC.
@George--"I haven't watched it...no cable/satellite TV at home"

Now you're just bragging :)


Dragline
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Post by Dragline »

I wistfully remember when TLC used to show educational programming like the James Burke "Connections" series. Of course, they actually called it "The Learning Channel" back then.


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jennypenny
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Post by jennypenny »

I agree about the demise of The Learning Channel. It's a long way from "Connections" to "Princesses and Pedofiles" or "Toddlers and Tiaras" or whatever it's called.


JasonR
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Post by JasonR »

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Last edited by JasonR on Sun Mar 17, 2019 7:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Chad
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Post by Chad »

I agree with HSpencer. These people are incredibly out of shape, whic was their biggest issue. I'm not even sure the one guy could hold a gun up long enough to track and shot someone who was running around.
I found the one lady amusing. She was 300 lbs. and had never done a day of exercise in her life (there was no muscle buried under that fat), yet was teaching a self-defense class. She could know every BJJ and wrestling move in the book and she still wouldn't have been strong enough to make those moves work (and you don't need to be super strong to make them work). Plus, it would have taken her 20 minutes just to do the move.
Jacob's correct in noting that these people are all Cold War nuclear fallout survivalist types. All they did was change "Russia launced their ICMB's" to something like "the sun is shooting out giant flares!" Prep for this type of disaster isn't very helpful for the more likely, though still not common, scenarios such as another Great Depression or ultra-corrupt government.


JohnnyH
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Post by JohnnyH »

I've watched the show (I watch TV when eating) and it's getting progressively worse... The pilot special had some truly competent people (wood gas truck was impressive). Now it just seems like they're picking rubes to ridicule the entire movement.
Does seem highly illogical to "bet it all" on a disaster, let alone a specific event like catastrophic polar shift... Still, I sleep better having enough food to live through 1 winter, guns/ammo, tools, garden, so on.


Mo
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Post by Mo »

I haven't seen the show. Whenever I think the ERE community is a bit fringe, I just bug out over to a prepper/doomer site and suddenly I feel refreshingly normal.
It amazes me what people think will be useful to them. Many seem to plan for some sort of cross between nuclear winter and being stranded on an uninhabited island, or lost in a forest. It doesn't seem to make much sense to me. How exactly will glow sticks help me in central Indiana?
Physical conditioning (preparation), as mentioned above, is markedly under represented.


JohnnyH
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Post by JohnnyH »

The constant repetition of the prepping community buzzwords gets so irritating... Seriously, "bug-out" or "hit the fan" is said about 4 dozen times an episode.


Chad
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Post by Chad »

Ok, I've watched this a few times now. It appears these are really people who want to be "special", but aren't special. So, they become "Doomsday Preppers" to attain this status. The majority of these people pick completely ridiculous doomsday scenarios. The one I just watched was prepping for a pole switch. It may have happened once 800 million years ago. What are the odds of it happening while you are alive? It's probably more likely you will win the lottery twice if you don't play.
Of course, it's not bad to put together a little prep for something like Hurricane Katrina if you live in the south or for a big quake if you live in California, but these scenarios are ridiculous.


tylerrr
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Post by tylerrr »

I agree that "community" would be very important in a catastrophic situation and these people are finding a reason to accumulate stuff, but not necessarily skills to survive.


Dragline
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Post by Dragline »

Wanna join my Army of Post-Apocalyptic Zombies? First thing we'll do is make a map of all of the Prepper compounds . . . Easy pickins!


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