The upside isn't the important part - the downside is. It proves that you really believe what you say.
This happens all the time with countries when they are negotiating. E.g. Russia is pretty unimpressed when countries say they are going to give ukraine weapons unless there is a ceasefire. Its all cheap talk. If one of the countries bought the weapons first (that they otherwise would not of) and then threatens to give them to ukraine, its much more credible since they have sunk money into it.
Or you could look at the animal kingdom with energy expensive mating rituals. The point is to waste resources in order to prove your commitment.
Examples of this sort of thing show up all over the world.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/374704/share-of-global-p...
If you believe in the literal statement about only 144,000 people being saved and in a pre-tribulation rapture, then “the world is done” only applies to a trivially small number of people.
Are you sure you would even notice? Especially not for long.
Supernatural things won't start occurring again for 7 years, and in a fairly slow drip. Unexplained loud trumpets in the sky? Natural disasters that already occur?
This isn't an issue regarding the existence of money and markets. That still functions. Maybe even in more degenerate ways than before, which is super exciting!
Its far more likely that everyone is practicing the wrong path to salvation. Given how much its been retconned just to be appealing and palatable as the religion grew, most differences between sects are arguments about the retcons, while ancestor versions of the religion are ignored and too unattractive to consider.
The recent doge tax refund is a good example. If you want to be guaranteed payment you could bet on no even if you think it's a coinflip.
Polymarket propositions purportedly powerless as pure poles for popular predictions?
There is evidence of this everywhere, in nearly every person you meet. Including yourself. If even skeptical atheists act that way, why would the bible-thumpers be different? If they weren't different, how would that be an indictment of their belief?
Which makes no sense at all. There is an evil conspiracy to kill everyone with a vaccine but then the conspiracists (guess doctors?) just give everyone a fake dose instead.
Rations will not help you or your family if civilization breaks down. Without a literal army, you are no more powerful than the ones who did nothing to prepare. All rations do is ensure that you starve to death a month later than expected.
Even better, those of you that collected guns and ammo as a hobby are about as prepared as the people who jokingly collect bottle caps in reference to Fallout. You have ensured you die first.
If you are not currently capable of planting, tending, and harvesting an entire acre of potatoes every year, you will not survive post civilization. If you do not have a stable of oxen and a simple machine shop to repair the old fashioned steel plow you own, you will not survive. If you do not already have fully formed pest control, without chemical inputs or external solutions, you will not survive.
It took humanity thousands of years to develop agriculture. Farming isn't a game. You will not pick it up after the end of civilization. You will not get it right on the first try. You will not reinvent it while hungry. Even if you get lucky and nothing goes wrong for a few growing seasons, you WILL have a failed crop eventually, and you will starve. Even successful farming is an eventual death sentence without civilization.
People who prep for "after the end" are not serious people. If you had a serious concern about the potential fall of civilization, you would not buy food and bullets, you would be throwing every resource you have at improving democratic representation and access, to prevent civilization from falling.
It might not be possible to restart if we kill it.
Prepping is like trying to develop a backup strategy after the datacenter has already burned down. Even if you are successful, have you really, honestly, considered what success looks like?
I don't see civilization collapsing overnight. I see it playing out as a series of scarce times that ebb and flow. I don't think the supermarket will go away, but I do think there will be times when it looks like those videos of Soviet groceries, where there's not much selection.
And I'm aware that natural disasters are increasing in frequency and cost/impact to a degree that the government won't or can't do anything about them. So I need to be able to weather the storms for a few months at a time.
As an aside, I also prepared by living in a neighborhood where people take care of each other and is close enough I can walk/bike to places.
Basically, I picture the USA collapse as turning the place into Puerto Rico, not Mad Max.
Seems to me we already saw that in 2020.
You learn a surprising amount in that first day. I.e., being stuck without power/internet/cell service/water, and realizing you can't watch DVDs on your laptop because they haven't come with disk drives for years. After the weekend, you end up with a list of issues to address, i.e., you buy a portable dvd drive and put together a Plex server with a bunch of locally-hosted media.
Honestly, I feel more capable and resilient than I ever have before. We had some tornadoes come through and we didn't even need to think about what to do, we went into our safe room which contains our go-bags, hiking food, critical docs, usb backups of key pass, battery backups and some ipads, and we chilled out watching a weather channel and listening to the emergency radio. Had a tornado hit our house, I'm confident we would have survived, been able to help the neighbors, and manage a few days until aid could come.
Depending on where you are, food beyond the rations might be easy or hard. Where I live, we've got seasonal berries, and plenty of wildlife of various sizes. Potatoes grow easily, if you happen to have any to plant. Probably too many people around here to avoid detection though, but a couple hours drive in the right direction and you'd be in a better place for that. Plenty of fresh water if you know where to look; if the surface wells stop running, it'll simply come out of the ground most of the time.
If there's all of a sudden a lot less people, nature's abundance starts becoming more apparent. Indigenous peoples thrived in my area without modern technology. I'll have a damn hard time, but if I can find a peaceful community to join, we can probably make it work.
I see you have not yet been blessed by the gospel of Supply-Side Jesus:
Doesn’t the Bible frown on gambling anyway?