Hacker News Reader

Comment by x86x87 | Hacker News Reader

The main thing for me is that prepping only work if there is a transitory situation where a buffer can make it easier to navigate.

If we are going full steam ahead towards the collapse of civilization your prepping just delays the inevitable.

Also, if shift hits the fan, communities that are able to band together and work together will more likely do way better.

I don't care how much food and guns you have stockpiled if I can just take them away from you when I need them. If things are dire other will come for your stockpile.

View on HN

Everyone should do some basic prep, because you are virtually certain in your life to experience "a transitory situation where a buffer can make it easier to navigate" at some point in your life.

This meme where if you prep at all, you must be worried about the zombie apocalypse is harmful. I do quite a bit of basic prep, but I am fully aware that in a total collapse situation it may not matter much.

I prepare because I have been in situations before where a buffer is helpful. I've been without power for 5 days before... and I live in a reasonably dense area, not the rural backwaters, a storm just hit me three different ways and there were repairs blocking the necessary repairs. I've been unable to get to the store for a couple of days. My furnace has gone out in the middle of winter. I've been in a "boil water" advisory. Who knows what else may happen? I don't prepare to live my life unchanged in these scenarios, but because I prepared I was not uncomfortable, and no social resources had to be expended to bail me out.

I particularly think every socially-aware person ought to have basic prep on hand for that last reason. Be ready to live in your own due to some disaster so that the people who really need the help can get it.

Having a couple of weeks of food,a few days of water, backup heating plans, and whatever else you need to survive for a couple of days is not paranoia. It's preparing for things that have happened all the time, and will continue to happen. Don't pass up on cheap, basic, pro-social readiness because you're worried someone will accuse you of being crazy and worrying about the Alien invasion. Be reasonably ready. Be reasonably resilient. Don't be totally dependent on a day-by-day basis on everything going perfectly that day.

That's all. This is cheap, easy, effective, and very likely to be helpful at some point.

yeah that's fine. i have food and water to last me 3 months. it's not the type of stuff I want to eat (classic emergency food that lasts for 30 years) but it's there. i also stock up on food regularly and i have a buffer where i could cook 2-3-4 weeks out of food that has a reasonable shelf life (think flour).

but this is just to absorb small bump. and i think it technically is called an emergency plan, not prepping.

You're a perfect example of what jerf is talking about. "I'll get the dog and you get the kids and we'll meet at Aunt Sue's place" is "an emergency plan." Stockpiling 3 months of rations is more prepping than 90% of Americans are likely to have ever done. But because of the stigma of "crazy preppers", you don't want to call it prepping.

That stigma is a problem. People need to be prepared for both short-term emergencies and long-term disasters, and they need to stop being made to feel that doing so makes them social outcasts.

In my experience, preppers miss or outright avoid the last part. Humans survive as communities. There's too much work involved and not enough redundancies with just a few people. Extreme preppers are anxiety induced hoarders.

I think there are different varieties of preppers, and some have communities.

Frankly, by some definitions, I'm a prepper which is rather surprising. I think if you live rural you tend to have a lot more supplies on hand. I used to keep 3 full days, but I now have a 7 day supply, and friends feel fairly justified in have a year's worth of goods. Heck, some of the base prepper playbook are rural hobbies (micro-farming) or just basic winter prep (generator).

Now, solar and wind have gotten a lot more convenient with people doing battery walls. I get the feeling that those folks just got tired of listening to the power company say wait.

Coincidentally most preppers are American.

Source?

I find it highly unlikely that people in Europe don't plan for any events, especially given the current situation in that region. I would guess many have a month worth of food and some sort of plan is the heat goes out.

No source. I'm not referring to the act of prepping itself. That's not limited to America lol. I'm referring to the "prepper" culture that is most vocal on the english internet. The american prepper who fantasizes about living in some remote bunker stocked with foods and guns.

I'd imagine (and heard) that characture of a prepper exists in other areas too.

Of course it does, but the OP said "most". I'm also keeping a decent stock of food and other useful things, but when I compare to what US calls "prepper" I realize that's going on a whole different level. And it's not about stigma as other commenter assumed, its simply way less extensive and way less philosophical - I'm not preparing to survive the armageddon, just preparing to bridge over some flood days.

It sounds like you mean your stereotype of preppers.

Isn't the point of the guns that kind of person stockpiles specifically to prevent people taking them? If you're already at the point where you're violently taking things, then they've pretty effectively made themselves much less appealing targets than like, supermarkets or great depression survivors.

The gun stockpile itself is a valuable resource and being armed is of little use defensively.

how do you figure it's of little use? big difference between breaking in to loot a house you know is unarmed, versus one known to be armed and possibly keeping watch

Source for the latter statement?

Vietnam ambushes, WWI trench warfare, etc. It seems very counterintuitive casualties where often lower for the attackers and counter offensive than the defenders.

First, an ambush is not a traditional attacker role. The ambusher has the pre-prepared position and is leveraging an intelligence advantage.

A counter attack similarly isn't assaulting a prepared position.

Otherwise this is an ignorant view. Attackers can have advantages because of initiative. They can pick their place, time, and methods, find the weakest point, etc.

They can also choose to not attack at all. Which they do all the time. The number a times attackers have been repelled and destroyed despite possessing the initiative is innumerable.

Assaulting a prepared defensive position in it's strength is widely acknowledged to be a really stupid idea and you don't do it unless your other options are worse.

And yet after the invention of the gun attacking a prepared defensive positions often results in fewer casualties.

Defensive structures offset but don’t eliminate the advantage of initiative, especially when you start talking about a lone defender who needs to sleep etc.

Manoeuver has always been useful. Modern mobility and arms haven't changed that. Gaining superior firepower or leverage at the decision point is the real take away, not who is attacking or defending. Fixed structures are always an asset, but you still have to recognize that it doesn't eliminate the need for intelligence and superior strategy.

Your conclusion about defense being essentially useless is still dead wrong.

Once the first few home invasions, rapings, and pillagings of sleeping residences have occurred. Word will spread. The would be invaders will encounter a round the clock watch setup by a neighborhood or family that invited all their cousins and can afford a 24/7 watch, with dogs, home made alarms, and man traps.

And those attackers will have the fight of their lives on their hands. Once their surprise element is gone, they lose the initiative to things they can't anticipate without serious new intelligence and all advantage is now reversed and you enter the counter attacking and ambush scenarios which you pointed out, are very effective.

> defense being essentially useless is still dead wrong

That’s not my conclusion, it’s that defense roughly counters the otherwise overwhelming advantage of attackers.

> round the clock watch watch setup by a neighborhood

That’s assuming a great deal of cohesion in your post apocalyptic scenario. I have no problem saying large communities provide a significant benefit, but that’s a product of a working society not something you would see after say a disease kills off 99.9% of the population.

Why do police, soldiers, etc. arm themselves if it is of such little use defensively?

Police and soldiers do a lot more than just arm themselves.

What does that have to do with the defensive effectiveness of being armed?

The value of the stockpile comes from the fact that being armed is useful.

You may be saying that whoever is coming for you has enough firepower and training to make your arms irrelevant. In which case your stockpile is just trade goods?

It’s not about skills, let’s take two people of equal training. A is living his life in a fortified location with a huge stoke pile of guns and tons of ammunition. B has a rifle, time, and the element of surprise.

Who do you think has better odds? How about if B has friends who also want what A has? Don’t get me wrong defensive positions are useful, they are simply less useful than groups of people working together. The best prep is a few supplies and a community of people ready and able to support each other think walled town not fortified nuclear bunkers unless you’re actually willing to live underground and have a lifetime of supplies at which point hiding is more effective than guns.

I would agree that a single person defending a fortification probably not benefit from more than, say, two or three guns. One gun that has a decent automatic magazine size, and fast reloading, plus lots and lots of ammo. You need backup equipment in the face of possible failure.

A group or community that has some arms is definitely in a better position than a loner with an arsenal. A group with an arsenal and good social skills to make alliances with other groups, and the tactical abilities to acquire whatever they lack and defend themselves from others, will be in the best position.

There's probably an ideal minimum of ammo to go with the guns. But more ammo is better.

Absolutely the opposite. If you have time to prepare your defense position, the effect of your firearms would allow you to beat larger crowds/enemies.

WWI trench warfare casualties often favored the attackers. And that’s large numbers of trained men in defensive positions with machine gun support.

Why do you say this? The front lines were almost static and only moved small distances at huge cost, suggesting a defence advantage.

Analysts of actual WWI battles by experts. Don’t get me wrong early in the war attacking in daylight over no man’s land was ruinous, but tactics evolved and eventually favored the attack and counter attack.

Not that post apocalyptic battles will involve artillery and tanks, but it is still informative.

Have you got a link or book or something on this?

WW1 trench warfare was dominated by artillery, which caused the majority of casualties, more than machine guns, rifles and disease combined. That is why casualty rates favored the attacker - they were sweeping up the suppressed remains after an overwhelming artillery barrage.

The same applies in modern warzones, what works as a defensive position against a gun-armed mob doesn't necessarily work against infantry with military weapons including mortars and grenade launchers, and vice versa - if you know your opponents don't have proper equipment, you can effectively make deadly defensive positions which modern militaries wouldn't be able to use against their opponents.

Artillery and mortars where hardly limited to attacking or defending. Sweeping up after an overwhelming artillery barrage presupposes the attackers having artillery supremacy. In a true stalemate both sides just get hammered by artillery with neither receiving a net advantage while both rack up casualties.

As to a gun armed mob, it really depends on how capable they are. A defensive position is of limited value vs a well trained sniper using even a simple hunting rifle. The basic issue is it’s difficult to actually defend yourself without also exposing yourself. This is further degraded when talking about a single defender who can’t benefit from overlapping fields of fire etc.

Our hypothetical survivalist would benefit from training, but they don’t receive the primary benefit that keeps modern military casualties low, access to trained and well supplied medical personnel.

Being armed is a dramatically effective way to improve defensibility.

How many effective defensive fortifications can you name that ran intentionally without any arms because they are of "little use"?

You've got to sleep eventually and I wonder how well all your fancy security systems will do once us-east-1 is down?

There's actually already a story of one (insane) prepper type infiltrating a Kentucky state representative's bunker to take it for himself (and killing a person in the process).

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/us/kentucky-bunker-civil-...

Though obviously advertising that you have a high-end survival bunker is probably breaking rule one of survival bunkers.

I'm a techy leftist opposed to guns. I'm absolutely not talking about myself.

And I don't mean a fancy security system. I mean a paranoid prepper with a basement full of canned food and a stocked gun case. The kind of person who is itching to live through a zombie apocalypse, and would eagerly start shooting at people that even vaguely suspected were coming for their stockpile. Their guns are a deterrent to taking their food. That's it.

I didn't think you meant yourself, but yes, the prototypical prepper in the basement with an apocalypse stockpile. It'll hardly be an impregnable fortress.

One way to approach answering this question is looking at history. Do individual people with a nice stockpile and contemporary weapons tend to survive the collapse of their civilizations (or even local, short-term famines for that matter)? I don't think so. For example, in Europe the social/physical structures that successfully faced these situations were walled cities & towns. Castles. Entire communities and decades of planning and construction.

IMO, no way this scales down to a single household - I'm chuckling right now picturing a knight and their family in a house-sized castle.

Another angle: if things get bad even just food wise, people who have nothing to lose will keep coming - starving people who will die unless they get to your resources.

To me prepping to survive by yourself is a dumb fantasy and a waste of resources that would be much better spent building resilient communities.

Are there instances of individual people (or small families) with stockpiles of weaponry in civilizations that collapsed? Yes, as you point out, there are historical nobles with armed guards in their castle/fort/estate, or just cities with militias, but I don't know of anything historically comparable to a modern prepper with a dozen guns and thousands of rounds for them. And even if there were, no amount of swords makes 1-5 people a match for a couple dozen assailants, but 1-5 people with loaded guns are much more of a deterrent.

And I agree that a community spending their time and resources working together is likely way more effective, but that doesn't mean the prepper's stockpile is easy pickings.

> IMO, no way this scales down to a single household - I'm chuckling right now picturing a knight and their family in a house-sized castle.

You just have to outlast them

Do you want to be killed by the 1st zombie or the 20th ?

Only way to survive is to delay death

it works to a certain degree but what's your plan for sleep? what about if an organized group is trying to get to your supplies?

so guns work to prevent simple attempts, in the early stages. when you are in the anything goes stage you need a community and a way to be protected and protect others.

> If we are going full steam ahead towards the collapse of civilization your prepping just delays the inevitable.

We all die in the end - isn’t a delay of then inevitable all we do everyday ?

Yep, although I think the spirit of that point is that surviving the apocalypse may not be all that desirable.

I’d rather find out and decide for myself

Society only exists as is today because people went through that "undesirable" period.

> The main thing for me is that prepping only work if there is a transitory situation where a buffer can make it easier to navigate.

Everything on this planet is a transitory situation. A buffer will always make situations easier to navigate.

Case in point: having a social or monetary safety net is a buffer against e.g. unemployment.

> I don't care how much food and guns you have stockpiled if I can just take them away from you when I need them.

You need to have at least your own guns in order to take away resources from people with guns. Ideally though you would just have skills that are valued, so you can trade resources for skills and not shoot each other. People (grown men of sound mind, especially) tend to go to far lengths to avoid violence, especially if they've been exposed to it in the past.

Sure. Everything is transient but if something lasts for the rest of your life is it though? Especially if it impacts everything around you.

I get the meta point but people are just not wired this way.

> work together will more likely do way better

Yup.

My then teenage son was obsessed with the zombie apocalypse and therefore prepping. I tried to convince him that being handy and not being an asshole were the two best survival skills he should focus on.

At least he's handy. Maybe that'll be enough.

Good advice to give.

https://boingboing.net/2015/12/21/a-survivalist-on-why-you-s... (Cory Doctorow: A survivalist on why you shouldn't bug out)

https://boingboing.net/2008/07/13/postapocalypse-witho.html (Cory Doctorow: Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition)

Exactly. Prepping is not just stocking tuna cans and staying a nerd. It’s being physically fit, having a network of neighbors, and so on.

now we need to workout? booooo /s

Lol, cans of tuna. I laugh because the was a brief while that I was eating far too much tuna, having realized how cheap and lean a source of protein it was -- only to realize a few weeks later that you really are advised to avoid eating it more than once a week or so, at least with any regularity, thanks to the presence of high levels of mercury these days. Now I really want to see a post apocalyptic film featuring mercury poisoned lunatics running around in a Cormack McCarthy landscape.

Were you never taught that it is wrong to steal? It's attitudes like this that make the collapse of civilization even possible. People who willingly, even eagerly, go feral and abandon their civility.

Taking by force, stealing from others, is a great way to dramatically shorten your life expectancy.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Many preppers DO work to create parallel structures -- the "bomb shelter" approach is pretty plainly just a way to buy a little time in the event of catastrophe (but it does come in quite handy in the event of the far more common blizzard, hurricane, tornado, or heck, pandemic). Prepping on basic skills will likely outlast any stockpile of Chef Boy-ar-dee (and besides...after 6 months of that stuff and nothing else, do you really WANT to survive?).

But all that aside, the issue is, nobody is quite sure what exact scenario they're prepping for. Simply having a buffer so you can avoid needing to panic while some direction is felt out is worth having, but the limitations of it are worth being aware of as well.

"Also, if shift hits the fan, communities that are able to band together and work together will more likely do way better."

I'm not sure if you're just using prepper in a derogatory way, or general way. If people aren't practicing some self reliance before an event happens, then it's unlikely they can contribute to the group survival.

It's not derogatory. Also there are various degrees of being prepared.

My point is that past a certain point having some sort of community (other people that have prepped somehow) is key

I don't know many preppers, but it seems the shows and articles I've seen showed that preppers know they need a community. It seems that this thread is mostly discussing a characture.

Like Bill Burr said, you are just gathering stuff for the biggest guy on your street.

Which special was this from?

https://youtu.be/x9iYvyffAh4?t=35

I think Bill seriously underestimates the value of defensive fire. Or, most people actually prepping will also think of defense.

I once watched a youtube video of a guy talking about the offensive uses of flamethrowers who said they actually kill most people via carbon monoxide poisoning in bunkers rather than burning them to death. I think it was meant to try and make them seem less macabre, but it had the opposite effect for me. Certainly didn't make a bunker sound all that appealing as a defense.

I mean, he's a comic. Often time comics make fun of the very beliefs they hold and exaggerate points of reality.

Yeah, their goal must be to make us laugh. If it makes us think, that's just bonus.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com