The thing I never quite understood about the prepper thing is, even suppose you are a real master of hoarding lots of long-shelf prepackaged food and ammo - beyond a certain point, you are going to have to become a FARMER if you are going to sustain you and your family (and neighbors? A lot of the prepper mindset seems to presuppose zero cooperation with anyone and that everyone will be a homesteader straight out of American Western mythologies).
I’m going by the typical things that preppers tend to say online and IRL - as if they’ll just “live off the land”. That they’ll just subsist off of shooting rabbits and deer. I always ask them, and I think most people don’t know - how many acres do you think it takes for a hunter-gatherer to sustain themselves, per person? Even in the most ideal of habitats?
And yet - many of the things being hoarded and the skills being talked about most often seem to revolve around guns and ammo and storage of (pre-packaged) food, and not a whole lot about growing food.
I dunno, maybe the people more serious about it realize the emphasis would have to be on having seeds ready and deep knowledge about farming. But the more vocal just seem to think all they’ll need is many rifles, lots of bullets and bars of gold or something…lol, what the fuck would the value of gold be in the most dire of circumstances, but I digress… 🤣
Really you have to outlive 99.9999% of the population to have a chance at surviving as a hunter-gatherer. Industrial agriculture has increased our population well beyond the actual carrying capacity of the land.
That might not be enough nines. There’s a lot of humans.
Industrial agriculture has increased our population well beyond the actual carrying capacity of the land.
We could feed everyone on earth with a fraction of the food the world produces, capitalism forces most of it to be thrown out because someone can’t make money from it. Just go look at the dumpsters behind every grocery store, restaurant, etc. - they will be full of food that the store has deemed unsellable.
Yeah, that’s another whole kettle of fish, but you are right. And it is sickening when you learn about intentional measures being used by various businesses to prevent dumpster diving/freeganism.
They don’t just do that with food, by the way…IIRC, the “Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy” doc covered both purposefully ruining food and consumer products…
If the disaster is bad enough you only have to survive off of your hoard until enough other people die off that one can scavenge. COVID showed us how brittle JIT supply chains are. How many people die in 3 months without access to daily medication? How many broken arms or ankles go septic or heal badly? How many staph infections, bad teeth, tetanus, botulism or whatever that used to kill and now we can get ready treatment for? Just got to stay in the bunker until all the more dependent and unlucky die then you can come out and spend the rest of your short life fighting over the remains of technological civilization with the other preppers.
The thing I never quite understood about the prepper thing is, even suppose you are a real master of hoarding lots of long-shelf prepackaged food and ammo - beyond a certain point, you are going to have to become a FARMER if you are going to sustain you and your family (and neighbors? A lot of the prepper mindset seems to presuppose zero cooperation with anyone and that everyone will be a homesteader straight out of American Western mythologies).
I’m going by the typical things that preppers tend to say online and IRL - as if they’ll just “live off the land”. That they’ll just subsist off of shooting rabbits and deer. I always ask them, and I think most people don’t know - how many acres do you think it takes for a hunter-gatherer to sustain themselves, per person? Even in the most ideal of habitats?
And yet - many of the things being hoarded and the skills being talked about most often seem to revolve around guns and ammo and storage of (pre-packaged) food, and not a whole lot about growing food.
I dunno, maybe the people more serious about it realize the emphasis would have to be on having seeds ready and deep knowledge about farming. But the more vocal just seem to think all they’ll need is many rifles, lots of bullets and bars of gold or something…lol, what the fuck would the value of gold be in the most dire of circumstances, but I digress… 🤣
Really you have to outlive 99.9999% of the population to have a chance at surviving as a hunter-gatherer. Industrial agriculture has increased our population well beyond the actual carrying capacity of the land.
That might not be enough nines. There’s a lot of humans.
We could feed everyone on earth with a fraction of the food the world produces, capitalism forces most of it to be thrown out because someone can’t make money from it. Just go look at the dumpsters behind every grocery store, restaurant, etc. - they will be full of food that the store has deemed unsellable.
Yeah, but we couldn’t feed everyone in the world if we had to rely on the natural environment.
There’s just too many of us and not enough good living areas, so we’re stuck in the trap of agriculture.
Yeah, that’s another whole kettle of fish, but you are right. And it is sickening when you learn about intentional measures being used by various businesses to prevent dumpster diving/freeganism.
They don’t just do that with food, by the way…IIRC, the “Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy” doc covered both purposefully ruining food and consumer products…
Yup, especially shoes and clothes.
If the disaster is bad enough you only have to survive off of your hoard until enough other people die off that one can scavenge. COVID showed us how brittle JIT supply chains are. How many people die in 3 months without access to daily medication? How many broken arms or ankles go septic or heal badly? How many staph infections, bad teeth, tetanus, botulism or whatever that used to kill and now we can get ready treatment for? Just got to stay in the bunker until all the more dependent and unlucky die then you can come out and spend the rest of your short life fighting over the remains of technological civilization with the other preppers.