Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
I think its interesting to note how preparedness has gone mainstream. Right off the bat, the fact that the poisoned term ‘survivalism’ has been rebranded as ‘preparedness’ says a lot. Although you and I know that there is no difference between the two, in the eyes of the public survivalists are confederate-flag waving, gun-toting, misanthropic racists who wear combat boots everywhere they go while preparedness conjures up images of a kinder, gentler Martha Stewart style of survivalism. To the general public, preparedness is survivalism without the guns and camo.
I generally go with ‘preparedness’ just because, for better or worse, its less inflammatory. I cannot, however, bring myself to use the term ‘preppers’. Don’t know why, it just sounds so….I dunno. Geeky? Dimunitive? Dorky? I do, however, have no problem with ‘prepping’ to describe the activity of becoming prepared.
Prior to my own interest in the subject (which I’ll put at around 1980 when I was 13) I’d never met anyone (at least, not that I was aware of) who was a survivalist. I did have a distant relative who, I think, dabbled in it a small bit but other than that I never met anyone I’d consider a survivalist. In retrospect, I had one neighbor when I was a kid who was very handy with tools, did all his own automotive work, grew a small garden and that sort of thing. I doubt he was a genuine survivalist as we came to think of them back in the 80’s but he was probably the closest thing I knew to one. It is interesting to note that he retired to the great survivalist dream – a nice place on a piece of property out in the sticks where he could take care of himself as he saw fit.
Moving to Montana, those many years ago, changed all that. Being something of a hardcore gun crank, I eventually wound up meeting and befriending other Ballistic-Americans and through those connections discovered that many people who take their firearms seriously are of the same mind as myself when it came to notions of preparedness. I’ve met ‘casual survivalists’ and some pretty hardcore ones. I’ve probably met many more that were simply so low profile I didn’t know they were survivalists.
Back then, being a survivalist was like being a member of some sort of slightly-illegal and very ridiculed club. To some degree it’s still that way. But nowadays it’s become far more accepted to be prepared as long as you don’t go too far and start doing things that are ‘out there’…like buying guns or precious metals. That remains the line-in-the-sand separating the ‘Security Moms’ (remember that term?) from the tinfoil-hat-wearers like myself.
The ‘Golden Age’ of survivalism was probably the late 70’s and early 80’s. (Although some might argue the real Golden Age was the bomb-shelter and Civil Defense movements in the 50’s and 60’s) As we all know, it waxed and waned until coming back with a very brief vengeance in the pre-Y2K hoopla. When that fizzled it seemed headed back into obscurity until the 9/11 attacks took place. When that happened it came back with a slightly new twist to it – there was a much greater sense of urgency and reality. The Cold War survivalists were, classically, preparing for the big Soviet-US nuclear missile exchange but that seemed very abstract…mostly because no one had nuked anybody since WW2. But this, the 9/11 events, was real. There really were people who wanted to pull off violence on a grand scale and here it was happening live on TV…reality, not theory….it was really happening and could happen again. And the face of survivalism changed. People still laughed and rolled their eyes at the topic of survivalism but more and more people started thinking about it a little more carefully. After Hurricane Katrina the pendulum had swung firmly into the camp of those who thought that maybe being cautious and taking a few steps to prepare might not be a bad idea. Survivalism became preparedness and even the .gov jumped on the bandwagon with it’s lame ‘ready.gov’ program.
That brings us to today, stuck in one of the biggest economic messes since the Carter administration. People are again thinking about what they need to do to be safe in troubled times. Those of us who came to this party early are, by and large, quietly sitting back and watching things unfold.
In the almost thirty years I’ve been following this interest I would say now is the time when survivalism has become most accepted. Also, it the best time I’ve seen in terms of availability of gear and information. The internet has made a huge, incalculable difference. A million years ago the only way you met other like-minded individuals was through personal ads in sketchy magazines. Nowadays theres dozens of forums, thousands of websites, and even YouTube channels. Exotic gear that normally was impossible to locate is moments away on Ebay or GunBroker. Its practically a renaissance.
I’ve mentioned that when the dust finally settles from this economic crisis that people will probably, for a very long time, have their behavior changed in regards to spending and saving money. I think this will also have the affect of making more and more people ‘come around’ to the basic ideas of preparedness – being prepared for a crisis, including economic ones.
