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Comment by one2know | Hacker News Reader

Within the past 9 months I've seen stores with almost bare shelves, no meat, no dairy, no paper goods. Entire neighborhoods near me have burned down due to forest fire. There were riots and looting within a couple miles. Power outages. Now we are looking at a hateful leftist government that could do things like implement communist price controls or unrestricted immigration. Price controls will create further shortages as that is basic economics. Job loss will mean no income for extended periods of ime.

The people who don't prep are also anti-gun and have always lived in the city. They live in a bubble. They need a concept of how vast the country is and that there are people that live an hour or more from food, gas, EMS, police. If you live in a rural area people WILL try to raid your barn, garage, vehicles, trailers, etc. It is a matter of time.

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> could do things like implement communist price controls or unrestricted immigration

I wish people would stop imagining nonsense like that. They did it with Trump too - he was supposed to start a nuclear war with North Korea or something ridiculous that never happened. Judge people by their actions, not some exaggerated fantasy of the future.

When you went to buy toilet paper in April, and all the stores said limit 1 per customer instead of making TP $100, that is exactly price controls. Why did they limit 1 per customer? Out of some flawed communist ideals that the authorities should determine who should get how much TP and at what price. Needless to say TP was gone for months. If it were $100, people that really needed it would have been able to get it. Now replace TP with insulin or other life saving drugs. Some would say it would be cruel to bump the price 1000%. However, if the price is held down, it will be hoarded just like TP. If the price is held down and quantity limited, those that really need it, like hospitals, and actual sick could not get the quantity they need at any price.

No doubt leftists will try this like Venezuelan price controls on food that did nothing but create a food shortages.

Have you actually seen any of it, or did you just watch it on entertainment news? And what leftist government? If Bernie Sanders ran for government in my country, we’d need to move our current scale to the right to even reach into how conservative he is compared to us, and we’re mainly social democrats, still really far from actual communists.

I don’t think prepping is actually that stupid. But the the thing is. Society never actually collapses the way American preppers think it will. Even in places like Syria or Liberia where you have really terrible situations, you’re just not going to make it on your own. People always gather in communities, gangs, whatever, and eventually the more stable of them tend to win. At least that’s how it’s been throughout the entirety of human history.

The traditional American prepper is just building a stockpile of stuff that’s going to get robbed, and would be much better of having learned some useful trade. So that even in the worst case of all the shitty cases, ISIS would have needed you, to keep the water running. Much more realistically, you’ll simply want to build and secure your local town and food production with the people from your local town, and being the paranoid loner with lots of guns and no useful skills isn’t who you want to be.

Have you been raided before? In the US raids are rare even during crisis times.

I wish you luck in whatever country you may be in, the US in exceedingly fortunate in the Biden has led crises management before instead of Trump who apparently wanted to let Covid run wild in states with higher Democrat voter percentages.

My rural experience has been that "raids" are typically people looking for cash or things to sell for drugs. But also neighbors help each other, churches and communities come together.

Society can always fall apart, but until it does I hope for the best and stay prepared for many potential emergencies.

Edit: I know it is poor form to ask for voting explanations, but I'm genuinely curious what folks felt was off topic and/or disagreeable in my response. I value feedback, which is hard to glean from a vote tally.

I live suburbs but family members that live rural generally keep a loaded gun ready for people who appear on their property at 2am. Areas that dont freeze in the winter in the PNW currently have encampments all throughout forested areas and empty homes will get squatters. Additionally if a large property is not policed, drug and/or squatter RVs will set up in the property. People that dont have dogs or alarms probably sleep right through visits. The feelings about prepping are often the same about guns. "Nobody ever needs an assault rifle!" Yeah, some people actually do need a rifle just like they need to prep as well.

Must be inhospitable land where I am. We do keep a rifle handy, but that is typically for the occasional coyote.

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