Hacker News Reader

Comment by stutterSpeaker | Hacker News Reader

Surely being economically prepared as well would be useful. Having the gear both for bug out scenarios and bug in scenarios.

I know it's fun to rag on preppers, but in what way is keeping a year of food stocked and rotated through a bad idea? How is having solar panels a bad idea?

View on HN

Food for a week? Good sense, although plenty of people in supposedly rich first-world nations struggle to have enough food for now, never mind a week spare.

Food for a month? Maybe if you live in a region that could easily be cut off in the event of disasters.

Food for a year? Listen, if things turn so badly to shit you need a year of food, food is going to be the least of your worries.

>if things turn so badly to shit you need a year of food, food is going to be the least of your worries.

I don't see why this is the case -- saying "doing X is going to be the least of your worries" seems to imply that there are going to be other priorities and "X" will be ignored -- i.e. "charging your phone is going to be the least of your worries." But food... you _need_ food, even if there are other crazy things happening all around you. If that's the case, I can't help thinking it would be better to do the things you CAN do to prepare. One less thing, etc.

It's a reflection of the idea that if civilisation collapses to the point you can't obtain food except by pulling it out of your emergency store a year later, you're probably going to have died of disease, injury, thirst, violence or a number of more pressing concerns.

Seriously, if the ability to get food to people has been down for a full year, you won't have medicine. You almost certainly won't have fuel, electricity, public order, sanitation, or clean water.

One thing that I think is frequently overlooked is that a person with a year's worth of food stored up also has enough to feed the whole neighborhood for a week if necessary, which might make a really big difference for a lot of people. Having the goods gives you a lot of flexibility and might take some of the pressure off of emergency relief services. I try to keep far more of the basic things on hand (first aid, food, and water purification stuff) than I think I'll need just because I know most people don't, and I live in a place with a moderate risk of catastrophic earthquakes and tornadoes.

If food supplies haven't been restored for a year, it means there's probably been some extreme collapse of society and loss of life. Never seeing your friends/family/loved ones again, just surviving day by day for no purpose. I'd rather die quickly in the early stages than survive in such a bleak world.

Practically everybody has food for a year. Few have food for a week and less for a month. When you need food for a year you can safely assume that nobody will ever care if you break into all your neighbor's houses. Their canned soup is part of your food for a year. When you need food for a week all your neighbors are looking at the pantry at the same time and trying to figure out if they can last two weeks.

Food for a month doesn't really exist as a need. Either emergency supplies from around the world arrive in less than two weeks, and you are safe, or they don't and you need food for a year.

Probably because the most prudent thing for someone with means to do in circumstances which would drive them to live under their house for a year would not be to live under their house for a year.

It's "not a bad idea, just a pointless one" when times are good, and a distraction from better options if something does happen.

But w/e

It's not a bad idea per se, it's just probably overkill. I mean I keep a bug out bag and a tub of supplies, so I don't disagree wholly, but it gets out of hand quickly if you aren't thinking critically about it.

What's in your bug out bag?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com