I don’t know if you’ve come across this series or not? It’s on National Geographic and it’s called Doomsday Preppers. It’s short documentaries about people in the US who are preparing for global destruction or financial crises or plagues or a series of dirty bombs or whatever’s caught their attention. Initially when Senior Chirpse sent me a link to an episode, I thought it was a one off programme, but this bastard has been going on for 3 seasons!

Each show features 3 or 4 families/ people. That’s a lot of mad boxes. Not all of them seem that mad at first glance either. In America this sort of behaviour is actually not that mental compare to others.

The episode below includes a song writer who has built his own bunker. He’s terrified that Russia are going to attack America. Jeeeezus. That shit is OLD. One of his reasons for this fear is that back in the 60’s they detonated a massive atomic bomb, bigger than any other before or since. He omits the fact that they blew up the bomb on home soil and conversly that America has actually atom bombed real live people in their own army and abroad. It’s a bit rich to start worrying about a country attacking you, when your own homeland has slaughtered so very many people for so very little.

This guy spends months at a time in his bunker to make sure he can handle it. It’s not right. He’s massively fat too. Surely a good fitness level would be a good way to prep? No? And that’s the theme throughout all of the episodes I watched (and I’ve waded through quite a few episodes) – they’ve kind of got the wrong end of the stick.

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Yes, there may be a huge earthquake, yeah there might be a huge terrorist bomb attack in Philadelphia, yeah there might be a plague. But you know what? There probably won’t be in your life time. How many terrorist attacks have there been in the US in the last 50 years? Very few, only one that killed any number of people. How many earthquakes in America have killed over 100 people in the last 100 years? ZERO. How many epidemics of infectious diseases have broken out in the US since 1900? ONE. It’s not worth spending your whole life prepping for something that is so crushingly unlikely.

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One of the weirdest things about this show is that the later episodes of the programme actually rate the Preppers survival chances at the end of every show; basically they’re condoning and encouraging this madness. It seems to spur them on and perpetuate the myths. It seems a bit shit that a channel as respected as National Geographic are supporting and promoting a behaviour pattern that is at best unneccesary and at worst pathological. America has quickly become known as a paranoid nation and it’s no thanks to America’s big time media. Panic sells and it seems that they are selling hard. The narrator says that “51% of Americans believe that we might face an economic melt down in the next 25 years”. Yeah? So fvcking what? probably 51% of people in the whole of the western world thinks that the sun shines out of their own puckered arse. Does that mean we should start preparing for some sort of blackole/anus event? No it does not. Not at all.

On one of the episodes a guy called “Mr Wayne” is worried that China is going to steal all of America’s money and send them into a convulsing fiscal spiral, triggering mob law and mayhem. So what’s he developing to keep his head above water in these scenes of futuristic bedlum? Wine. Yeah, he’s growing wine because he figures that if everyone is poor they will want more booze. Figures I guess. Maybe he’s not 100% mad after all.

It’s kind of child abuse too. One guy says “if my kids can’t fend for them selves they’ll be dragging me down”. Imagine being brought up with the threat of imminent death, I mean, I know that generations in any war torn country has to deal with that and that’s horrible; but why would you put your kids through that if you are in one of the richest, most comfortable countries in the world? Plums.

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Their argument is often something like this – “people say I’m wasting my time because this event might not happen, well what if it DOES happen? Then it wasn’t a waste of time”. That is a non-argument. I could spend my whole life preping for the onslaught of a lobster army and use the same defence. It is not logical.

If you watch this prog while stoned you may well find yourself starting to worry and thinking things like “well…. maybe I shoud have some stuff sorted….” Then you realise you’re being an idiot and the LOL fest commences.

It’s easy to point to America and call them all numpties, but that’s too easy. They are homo sapiens like we are. So why have all of these people gone bonkers?: they’ve gone bonkers because of the information they are fed. If they are only shown panic and worry on the telly box, then that’s all they will know. Thankfully in England people are mostly just brain washed by Eastenders and Corrie. In the states they are white washed by propagandist local radio muppets and state sponsored worry-mongering.

Here’s my fave episode, but they’re all there for the watching. Just google the frig out of ’em:

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