10:10 – Costco run and dinner with Mary and Paul yesterday. We had a small list and they had a big one, so for the first time ever we ended up waiting near the checkout lanes for them to finish instead of them waiting for us. Also for the first time ever, the guy who checks your cart against your receipt stopped Barbara and asked her what she had in the box. It was a box of 1,000 Thank-You/t-shirt bags, which we use by the thousands in packing kits. I was getting ready to shout “She has a big-screen TV in there!” but I figured Barbara would kill me if I did that.
On the way into Costco, I gave Mary and Paul each an Ultrafire Cree AA flashlight, which I give to everyone who matters to me. Other than perhaps a Swiss Army Knife, this is probably the most important small item you can carry in your pocket. It can save your life, literally, and relatively few people routinely carry a flashlight other than perhaps one of those pathetic little keyring lights.
At dinner, I did what I’d resolved to do: talk to them about why I’m a prepper. It wasn’t easy, as any prepper who’s done it knows. I value Paul and Mary as friends, and the last thing I want is for them to think I’ve lost it and gone far around the bend. But the threats are very real, very serious, and one or more of them is very likely to materialize over the next few years. In fact, something horrible could happen later today or next week, which is why I have a sense of urgency. It could be widespread rioting and looting or a pandemic or an EMP or a CME. I don’t know, so I try to prepare for anything. And when something does happen, I don’t want Barbara and me to be on our own, which means we need to be in a position to help family and friends.
The big issue is normalcy bias, which affects all of us. Wherever you are on the prepping continuum, from completely unprepared to a Doomsday Prepper, you think everyone who’s distant from you on that continuum is nuts. If you have only a few cans of food in your pantry, an extra case of bottled water, and a spare pack of batteries, you consider that normal and prudent. If you have a 10-year supply of food and water, you consider that normal and prudent. In either case, you think the other guy is nuts.
Normalcy bias operates within families as well. For example, Barbara has no problem with maintaining several months of food and other supplies and a good stock of defensive weapons and ammunition. She’s also as in favor of relocating away from the city as I am because she’s concerned about serious widespread rioting and looting. As she said yesterday, it could happen right here tomorrow. But she’s concerned that I’ll go too far or become “obsessed” with prepping, as she puts it. Ironically, Barbara’s place on the prepping continuum means that most people would consider her a nutcase prepper. She’s not nuts. Nor am I. Nor are those of our friends who are completely unprepared. It’s all a matter of normalcy bias.
I’ve been reading history for 50 years, so I’m very much aware that it can happen here. So is the federal government. Why else would they be buying hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition and burying them in hidden caches distributed in fields and forests all over the country? Why are they distributing MRAPs and other armored vehicles to small-town police forces and even college police departments? The feds are expecting bad things to happen.
The feds are also aware that they’ll be completely unable to deal with any widespread disaster. Consider Katrina. We had a relatively minor emergency that was confined to a small part of the country with the rest of the country unaffected and able to help. We had plenty of warning. And what happened? The federal response was completely useless. Many people were without power for weeks or even months. Many went for a long time without even food or safe drinking water. The emergency communications system failed completely, leaving federal responders to depend on ham radio operators for all comms. And thousands of people ended up being housed long term in trailers and sports stadiums, which were hell holes. And all that from a minor emergency. Imagine what would happen in a major long-term emergency like a pandemic or a grid-down situation that affected most or all of the country, or indeed the world. We’d be on our own, with just what resources we, our families, and our friends could bring to bear. That would concern me even if I knew for a fact that the probability of such an event was only 1% over the next decade. But I think the probability is considerably higher than that, and that opinion is shared by an awful lot of very bright, well-informed people.