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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

The kind of prepping in "prepper" culture though is bullshit. People living and having actual experience in such dangerous places don't prep like that.

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I have lived in places like that, and absolutely prep like that when the environment calls for it. I'd expect a non zero proportion of the HN readership has as well. See: Burning Man, the fanciest refugee camp on Earth, where you need to schedule, plan, haul in, and haul back out again everything you need to survive.

(I've also spent time living in legit BFE where the closest store for something can be more than an hour away, YMMV)

The most important aspect of Burning Man and why it works is the thing most preppers/American Libertarians ignore: the community.

Burning Man isn't interesting because a bunch of individuals pitch tents in the desert, it's interesting because a society is built in the middle of the desert, spontaneously.

The "preppers" I encounter are on ham radio, and I'd say they are more community conscious then the average person. Many of them work in public services (EMTs and the like) or are retired and formerly did. Most have stocked pantries, gardens are common. Most are willing to help out when there's a power outage or a fire. The anti-social picture that popular culture paints of preparedness-minded people is entirely not true in my experience.

Right, I agree, basically my experience with preppers and libertarians is, the ones disgusted when you ask them if they're "leftist" are the ones with too many guns and not enough neighbors, and vice versa for those who embrace the label or don't care.

So you go around asking people if they're "Leftist"? Why? Either you get a non-answer or you start a fight with somebody for no reason -- what a strange thing to do

Discussing philosophy and politics is very normal in the prepper community.

I'm not just waking up to strangers and doing it. This is at meetups, dinners, that sort of thing. "Oh you're a libertarian? Is that more Kropotkin or Rothbard?"

At the gun range I'm just as likely to see a thin blue lives flag, punisher skull, or "don't tread on me" emblem on a gun or gun case as I am to see a hammer and sickle or trans flag. It's just part of the territory.

If you think the Burning Man is in any way representative to what people do in places like that (think war torn African states, the Middle East, etc) then...

But I bet they would've loved the opportunity to do so before it all went sideways.

I mean they practically know and prepare in different ways, because the popular idea of prepping is bullshit.

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