From SOTI, about SHTF-prepping properly:
“Stockpiling all the preserved food and medical supplies in the world won’t help when the first person to show up with a 12-gauge pump shotgun can take them all away.”
I know I’m pretty much preaching to the choir on this website, but it’s nevertheless a warning to pass on to others you may know who haven’t taken all the proper precautions. (I myself can’t think of any of my own acquaintances who aren’t armed to the teeth properly prepared in this regard, but that’s just me.)
Hell, I don’t even know any liberals where I might engage in a little impromptu property redistribution in a SHTF situation, but there must be a few out there, even in suburban north Texas. I’m just not willing to try to find out, for obvious reasons.
Even if I saw a “Guns Are Murder” lawn sign, they could just be hunting over bait (which is legal in Texas).
Look for the Love is Love and Hate has no Home here signs, PLUS a Cali license plate on the EV in the driveway. No one puts that much bait out.
Yeah, but all they’re going to have in stock, if anything, is frozen kaleburgers, “essential” oils and diet water.
My folks live down in Florida. A good part of Florida, but they’ve still been hit by two major hurricanes in 2 years. I keep telling them to arm themselves in case of looters, but Dad rolls his eyes and comments about how they live in a good neighborhood and won’t ever have to worry about looters. Mom, I think, takes me a bit more seriously but has already decide it that she doesn’t have it in her to shoot someone, no matter the reason. Oddly, she has no qualms whatsoever about braining them with her cast-iron frying pan…
As for me… I don’t advertise that I’m a “prepper.” I try to keep a week or so’s worth of canned goods, non-perishable foods, bottled water, etc. on hand in case of severe weather or other disruptive events (and in my old neighborhood, that made me a “prepper.”) When a now thankfully former coworker found out, he told me to my face that if there ever was a disaster, the first thing he’d do would be to come over to my place and take my stuff, and if I didn’t give it up voluntarily he’d shoot me and take it anyways. I quipped that it’s a good thing he didn’t know where I lived. Didn’t say that if there was any sort of “disaster” then I’d shoot him dead if I saw him.
I should add that the dumbass immediately asked for my address when I reminded him he didn’t know where I lived. I asked if he thought I was dumb enough to give it to him now that he’d announced his intentions. He called me selfish for not being willing to give up my stuff and not letting him shoot me dead because he and his family would need it more than I did.
Such attitudes, alas, were rather common in that area. There are REASONS why I moved away…
what is now called “being a prepper” and a paranoid packrat today was just common sense in my Grandparents’ day. they lived through the Depression and WWII. When shelf stable food was on sale, they’d stock up. They had a victory garden during WW2 and for years afterwards. Later, the garden was planted at the house I grew up at and we grew enough food for our family. We were prepped for the end of times apocalypse but we had plenty on hand for power outages due to storms that moved through several times a year. We didn’t have to run out to the store withe the schmucks when the weatherman predicted a hurricane or snow storm. Busy with life and can’t get to the market? no problem just run down stairs to the cabinet in the basement for canned vegetables and the freezer for meat for dinner.
When the nearest market is an hour away, and the possibility in winter of the highway being closed for an indeterminate time, let alone the now near certainty of unexplained power outages over large areas, you learn to keep a stock of non-perishable’s handy.