- Some Bad Ideas For "Preppers"

I find this Zerohedge post about where to choose your "prepper hidey hole" about as monumentally wrong headed as can be.

The reason it is so (it seems to me) is that it imagines a circumstance where virtually all social structure disappears simultaneously along with most of the people. It imagines the prepper can simply hold themselves above the crisis whatever it is, and not be touched by it except as he chooses. It's a fantasy that starts after most of the people are already gone.

There is no megalomaniac ex congressman forming his own Army, or minister declaring a Jihad on the "people who brought us such suffering", or any of the things that would actually be likely to take place if either most of the people, or most of the government were to disappear all at once.

It's a lot like that nonsense I read a while back about "no one being able to buy anything after the power goes off" because the mystery of making change or extending local credit has been lost to the sands of time. It assumes the things preppers like will be in great supply, and the things preppers don't like (mostly people that they think are stupid), won't be. It's stupid romance not proper risk management.

It imagines either local only catastrophes becoming global (even though they don't scale) or global problems being manageable as a solitary decision maker (a dubious assertion for any non billionaire).

In short, it buys into all the romantic Hollywood ideas of how a civilization falters, and addresses none of the realities. It is, in my opinion, more a product of mental illness, and paranoia than effective risk management.

Mostly I like Zerohedge but this is just stupid... monumentally stupid.

Here's some stuff I've written in the past which I think summarizes my feelings why. It's probably best if you read these in the order I wrote them, since none was specifically designed to refute paranoid prepper nonsense.

The Myth Of American Self Reliance

Read the comments on this one too:

What if The S*** Never Hits The Fan

I think the comments for this one are worthwhile too:

SHTF-2, Revenge Of The Anti-Social

That should give you the basic idea of how I view the management of societal tail risk.

I know a lot of preppers seem to have this built in idea that they are smarter than everyone, but take it from a guy who is smarter than a lot of people, there is always someone smarter than you. I've met literally hundreds of people who I think are smarter than me. And if it was a push come to shove battle for survival against any of them I would want to be a part of the mob, not fighting them off.

A pack of wild dogs can kill any lion.

%%%%%%%%%%%%UPDATE%%%%%%%%%%%%

I see that this original thread has made it over to FreeRepublic, and to be honest I thought for sure they'd all buy into it's stupidity. If the comments I saw are any reasonable guide then it turns out it's too stupid for them as well. Good for them.