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Comment by omgbananas | Hacker News Reader

Instead of being an interesting discussion about the mathematics of events worth preparing for, this is turning into a tired discussion about the merits of guns.

I was hoping for the former, because if I wanted the latter, all I have to do is go on Facebook.

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Discussions about guns here are generally better quality than anywhere else I know. While I don't try to hide my pro-gun bias, I do try to keep the conversation informative and ensure that any statements that I make that are merely opinions are labeled as such.

I've seen well reasoned pro gun arguments eat an army of down votes, while ignorant fudd level "who needs an ar15 all you need is ___" posts get all the upvotes.

Then there are the people who are lying about not wanting to take all guns they just want common sense gun control (that will ban ar15s, the most popular and available gun platform in America.)

I was not convinced by the 'stats' in the article. As an argument that there's a nonnegligible chance of armed uprising, okay, but I don't see any reason to believe the actual numbers.

It reminds me of Taleb's Black Swans and mediocristan-extremistan paradigm. We can predict gaussian and binomial events, perhaps even fires and floods if we have enough historical data. But extrapolating from two data points to a totally different time and place is worse than useless, it's misleading. I think Taleb would argue that it's a mistake to use quantitative methods here, but not a mistake to hedge or insure yourself against the possible negative black swan event.

Another issue I have is the assumption that, if there is some revolution in your country, that prepping will be either necessary or sufficient. But that's not about the stats.

That’s probably because, despite the title of the article, it’s almost entirely about guns.

Mentioned in opening because I imagine most people associate preppers with gun hoarders.

NOT mentioned in the subsequent sections about Hydrology, Math, Cheating, Horizon, and a brief mention in Disaster Planning. Then in the 6th major section we talk about guns.

"almost entirely about guns" if that's all you want it to be about maybe.

Those were all background to talk about guns. Prepping (whether for disasters, revolutions, or zombocalypses) is about far more than just armaments, but there’s almost no discussion of how non-gun supplies factor into it.

I reread the title and noticed it does have the word "gun" in it, so there is a little merit to your argument, but I stand by my belief it was just included because I think most people associate "prepping" with gun hoarders. The author clearly is more interested in the math than the guns here.

The beginning of the title is "The Surprisingly Solid Mathematical Case" and the author devotes a lot more space in the article about that than guns. So it's tiring when people jump on the gun bandwagon, than talk about the math of the disasters.

A mathematical case would discuss the benefit you get from prepping once disaster strikes. The article talks a lot about the probability of disaster, but takes the benefit of prepping as a foregone conclusion, and essentially equates prepping with stockpiling guns and ammo.

An actual solid mathematical case for gun stockpiling would need to show that 1) disasters are likely enough to prep for 2) the expected benefits of prepping outweigh the costs and 3) stockpiling guns is a better use of your finite resources than e.g. buying more canned beans.

It hits 1 pretty well, then it gives up and just assumes 3. No surprise that the discussion it generates isn’t very productive.

> An actual solid mathematical case for gun stockpiling would need to show that 1) disasters are likely enough to prep for 2) the expected benefits of prepping outweigh the costs and 3) stockpiling guns is a better use of your finite resources than e.g. buying more canned beans.

He kind of addresses that when he mentions the "raider" survival plan. "For an unethical zombie prepper, firearms may be all they need, if they can find someone else from whom to steal."

Maybe I'm deep enough into gun culture to see something as implicit where it ought to be explicit, but that suggests that it's worth having a minimum amount of deterrent against hostile parties once you have a few weeks food.

Many of the more interesting points in the article still would have been possible if instead of guns the author was discussing storing gallons of distilled water.

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