Mrs. Bell
Advance English 10
March 26, 2014
Pros and Cons of Doomsday Prepping
The cries of siren across the nation, bombs dropping left and right, people yelping for salvation; are you ready for doomsday? Prepping for doomsday has its positive and negative sides. First of all, not a lot of people know about doomsday prepping. Next, the barren wasteland left from the apocalypse force you to learn some useful skills. Prepping could be expensive, but if you look for the best deals it will just around your budget. Some of the doomsday situations out there won’t even happen in a lifetime.
Doomsday prepping is people preparing themselves and their surroundings for the worst to come. Anybody can become a prepper, from civilians to ex-military to mailman. They can get so afraid of various world-ending scenarios that they start prepping. Two main keys to prepping are …show more content…
stockpiling supplies and bugging out (Ellis 1).
Stockpiling supplies is really important to preppers to start doing immediately. Whether it to be stockpiling food, weapons, ammunition, or even gardening seeds. Preppers like “…. Southwick and his wife, Kara, also 40, and their six children, ages 13-21, have stored 700 pounds of flour, 600 pounds of sugar, 800 pounds of wheat, water, gas diesel fuel, chemical suits, coal, charcoal, 14 guns and eight chickens” (Raasch 1). The supplies that the prepper has saved up will help them survive and hold a stable fortress. Something that may be as import as stockpiling is having the right place to rebuild after the worst has happen (Bast 1).
Having a great place to rebuild is really important. An ideal place to start anew wouldn’t be an apartment, but a more isolated secure place. Robert Bast, who preps on his off time, bought about an acre of land that’s an hour and fifteen minutes away from Melbourne. It’s also 1,500 feet above sea level just in case a flood or tsunami happens. On the acre of land he bought, Bast built a house and bunker for an emergency (Bast1). Before bugging out or stockpiling, preppers might ask themselves what’s the chance that some of these life threatening situations might happen.
Some of the common scenarios out there that preppers prepare for are solar flares taking out our power grid, gamma ray bursts, and even the zombie apocalypse. Though some speculations out there sound reasonable, others just sound redundant. People even prepared for the end when President Obama was re-elected (Raasch 1).
In a interview John Pearson asked Markus Aschwanden how frequent do solar flares happen and if any harm can happen to people on Earth, Aschwanden responded by saying solar flares happen every eleven years and that the worst thing that can happen is the Earth’s power grid will get interfered with and communications will be down for some hours (Pearson 1). Even though the solar flares only interfere with the power grid it doesn’t fully bring it down to cause much damage.
Pearson later on interviewed Jonathan Katz on gamma-ray bursts and if it’s a threat to the Earth. Katz responded by saying the common question is what would happen if one went off in our galaxy. He went on to say one doesn’t happen often and it could happen every million years. Our solar system has seen 5,000 of them in a span of ten billion years. Even though the numbers are poor we can say it’s up there in the thousands (Pearson 1). Preppers who prepare for gamma-rays probably won’t even live to see what they have prepped for so long.
A holocaust that caught the media’s and preppers’ attention is the zombie outbreak.
The zombie theory would have been foolish ten years ago, but today many people believe it’s possible. All the movies, TV shows, and video games out there got people thinking zombies will rise and devour every human on Earth. Even though it’s believed damage to one of the walking corpse’s brain might finally eliminate it, preppers still prepare for the worse. There are a lot of speculations on how the outbreak will happen, but none of them are stick and stone. It’s really slim that the zombie outburst will happen it’s still probable due to all concepts of diseases, rabies, etc (Cunningham and Meehan 1). The skills learned from prepping can be useful for the apocalypse and everyday life if the holocaust doesn’t happen. For starters being physically fit can take someone really far. Then, self defense of the prepper and his/her surroundings will help them survive and live longer. Finally, learning surviving skills from hunting, making a fire and gathering water will be essential for any prepper (Hahne
770-771). “In preparation for such a time, most serious preppers feel that becoming physically fit is very important. The fitter you are, the better prepared you’ll be to cope with manual labor that you’ll be forced to endure” (Hahne 450). Being out of shape and not physically fit won’t help anybody during the apocalypse especially during the zombie outbreak. Not being able to run from zombies will just make a person a nice meal for any zombie. Being physically fit is just something good to be even if the apocalypse doesn’t happen. Self-defense can help someone who is fighting off a thief or fighting off raiders trying to take a prepper’s land. Guns can prove to be a sense of safety when around a prepper. When everything hits the fan the police won’t be there to help and guns will make a prepper and his/her family feel more comfortable with a gun. Having a gun around would also give a presence to anybody that the person is ready to defend themselves. This will make those marauders move on to a more helpless person (Hahne 409). A person who has a gun and ready to defend can help both a prepper and everyday people. A useful set of skills a prepper can learn to benefit themselves are hunting, starting a fire, and gathering water. First, many people probably already know how to hunt, but during doomsday this will be important if a person didn’t stock up food to last him or her. Next, being able to gather water and boiling it to filter so it can be sanitary is a skill that a prepper would need to know to survive (Hahne 174). Finally, being able to start a fire using tinder and something dry and combustible can help a prepper who’s camping for the night (Hahne 538). Something that will affect someone who is prepping is their budget. The preppers who have the most money are more prepared unlike the ones who are a tight budget. However, there is something a prepper must think about and that is, is it worth spending all their money on prepping (Raasch 1). Robert Bast has stocked $5,000 worth of food and water, $11,000 worth of equipment such as batteries, cookers and generators, and $10,000 on a pickup truck to his bug out safe spot. Including his land he bought, Bast has spent more than $350,000 for doomsday (Ellis 1). Bast has become well prepared for doomsday and all that money spent will help him in the race of staying alive. To some preppers money isn’t a problem when it comes to being ready for doomsday. On a tight budget a person who is preparing will be looking for the best deals to benefit them. A good way to get those deals is to start couponing. “It takes a bit of time and effort to learn how to get the best deals when using coupons but it 's definitely worth putting in the work to master this skillset. Some of the most prolific preppers are master couponers and they are amazing at stretching their prepping dollar to get the most from their money” (Hahne 240). Another way to save money and still be prepared is to reduce, reuse, and recycle and plastic bottles or gallons to salvage water in or even food. A prepper can also start gardening vegetables and any fruits. Besides gardening a person can start buying foods that are canned or last for a while (Hahne 320). The possibilities of the Earth perishing are slim to people living today. Spending all the money on supplies and acres of land can be a waste if doomsday doesn’t even happen. However, if apocalypse does happen all the preparation wouldn’t be a waste to the preppers. Prepping can go anyway because the future is inevitable (Pearson 1). Doomsday prepping has its upsides and its downsides. It doesn’t hurt to learn certain skills, know the possibilities of the post-apocalyptic world happening, and being prepared on a budget or no budget. Even if a giant asteroid doesn’t hit Earth or zombies don’t eat every single human it’s always good to be prepped and ready.
Works Cited
Cunningham, Madeleine and Meehan, Gavin Robertson “Dead Likely? The Science Behind The Zombie Apocalypse” the-gist. Web. Accessed On 21 Feb 2014. <http://the-gist.org/2012/05/dead-likely-the-science-behind-the-zombie-apocalypse/>
Ellis, Blake. "My doomsday tab: $130K on bunkers, guns and more. Money.CNN.,13 Mar 2012. Web. Accessed On 1 Nov 2013. <http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/13/pf/doomsday- cost/index.htm>.
Hahne, Patty. The Doomsday Prepping Crash Course: The Ultimate Prepper 's Guide to Getting Prepared When You 're on a Tight Budget . New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013. 165. eBook.
Pearson, Jesse. “Doomsday Scenarios, Considered.” Vice. Sep 2010. Web. Accessed On 8 Jan 2014. http://vice.com/read/doomsday-scenarios-considered-510-v17n9.
Raasch, Chuck. "For 'preppers, ' every day could be doomsday." USA TODAY. USA TODAY, 13 Novemember 2012. Web. Accessed On 1 Nov 2013. <http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/12/for-preppers-every-day-could- be-doomsday/1701151/>.