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comment by c_hawkthorne
c_hawkthorne  ·  6 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: December 11, 2024

At a conference right now. Did a presentation yesterday on local strategic stockpiles. It's not part of my job but it went well enough to catch attention of the feds in the room so that's neat. Caught up with a counterpart in a nearby county and we got to bond over how much of a sexist racist shithead the director of my department is too so that was nice. I can't wait to get a new job in a new industry, emergency preparedness ain't for me. Too much cop energy whole way through.

Otherwise all is going well. Real busy but good overall. Trying to plan vacations next year. Partner finished and submitted her PhD applications and got 4 letters of recommendation all submitted on time. Excited and anxious to see where that goes.





steve  ·  15 hours ago  ·  link  ·  

    Too much cop energy whole way through.

it's weird isn't it? I heard a comedy bit the other day talking about preppers and how they're just waiting for the world to end - but then a pandemic hit and they were like "psshhh... that ain't real"

There are pockets of sensible people in the e-prep world, but more often not, the first things that people store are bullets.

usualgerman  ·  7 hours ago  ·  link  ·  

Most prepping is basically LARP. They aren’t preparing for survival in an actual emergency, they’re preparing for Walking Dead or Red Dawn. If you pay attention to the stuff they emphasize, it’s weapons, hardware, solar panels for long term power loss, and tons of survival food. It’s probably more a masterbation to the image of themself as a tough, manly survivalist who can take care of his family alone and can absolutely shoot someone in the face.

The problem with the pandemic is that it’s was a feminine disaster. The solutions did not feel masculine. It wasn’t “go shoot something”, it wasn’t go out to the woods and hunt. It wasn’t man craft kinds of stuff using tools and high tech gear. The power didn’t even go out. It was basically boring. And the stuff you had to do outside of the mask were normal things. Stay home, wash your hands, and so on. And the mask didn’t feel manly. So they decided the real threat was something more like the movies — the big bad government doing a psyop. Now they could be brave and defiantly demand their rights. Now it looks like 1776.

I think real prepping (and you can find sensible ideas on ready.gov or any site that gives advice on getting ready for natural disasters) has some usefulness. You don’t want to be down to your last can of beans when a disaster strikes.