What is a Prepper? Why do you prepare?

The following are replies by Laythar and Goose Arrow to a post by Eastlake titled “Here To Pick Your Brains” on American Preppers Network

Laythar:  If you want to get down to the root of prepping I believe you will find that most people prep so that they will have the ability to control their own destiny and have the resources to steer their own course, rather than to be under the control of someone else or subject to the winds of fate.

Oh sure, the End of the World type events get all the focus ’cause they are sexy and create good drama and lots of discussion for the media. But a true prepper is someone who has the wisdom to say ‘what if’ and the courage to act upon that ‘what if’ despite the intense peer pressure to conform by not prepping. Prepping is an insult to government because it says you don’t trust it to take care of you and government hates not being the center of your world. Being prepared make you less dependent on government and therefore you are a greater potential threat to government.

In today’s world almost everything is under the watchful eye of government. From the electricity, water, gas, telephone, cable etc that come in to your home to the waste water and refuge that goes out. The same is true for your vehicle; from the formula of the gasoline to the contents of the exhaust and for the food you buy, the clothes you wear, the places you go to eat, the government tells you when where and what you can hunt, how you will raise your livestock or grow your crops. It tells you how you will raise your children and most important it reserves the right to decide what your children will be taught.

People often wonder, how is it that every topic of conversation always gets back to government? It’s because government has grown and grown and grown to the point that it controls almost every aspect of our lives in some fashion. A prepper sees this and says, “what if government weren’t here to do all those things, how would I do them for myself?”.

All disasters are personal; you are your own “First Responder” in any crisis. You are your own “World Bank”. You have a choice, you can panic blindly when something falls apart, or you can sit, wait and hope help reaches you in time, or you can prepare resources and skills before hand – prepping. Disasters don’t have to be Earthquakes, Hurricanes, or Volcanoes, EMP or even a Meteor strike. They don’t have to be Pandemics or Civil Unrest and while all those things a possible it is their probability that you must consider. The more likely scenario could be as simple as Bubba on a backhoe who cuts a utility line, a financial collapse can be as personal as losing your job or they can be as devastating as a serious personal illness.

As a prepper I long ago abandoned the lifestyle of relying on a weekly paycheck and I am now prepared to live the rest of my life without one if need be and if I should die from illness or some other cause in the near term, then I will leave my children the resources they need so they will not be slaves to a weekly paycheck either. We prep because we want to control our own fate, to make our own destiny, to have our own choices to make, in short we prep because we want to be Free.

Goose Arrow: I am prepping because I think God gave me the knowledge to understand I shouldn’t be relying on a broke bureaucracy to take care of me. It has nothing to do with 2012, the Mayan calendar, Armageddon, etc. I prefer to be independent and free to make my own choices. I also did not want to have to answer to my children that I had nothing to feed them in case times are bad. Every day if you will open your eyes you can see that our government is running on borrowed time. The signs are blatantly there if you are willing to look at them. If nothing else, the continuous increase in the price of goods & food should be enough to make anyone take pause.

You may think we are obsessive, I prefer to think of us as independent, intelligent, concerned citizens who care enough about our families to want to take care of them as best we can. We care enough about people we don’t even know to want to gather here to share information & help each other. To me when I see this, it is the true American spirit at work. The thing that made us a great nation to begin with. I truly think this nation has been such a success because we were so willing to help others, accept new ideas, & work hard. Somewhere along the way we have lost all of this.

Let me ask you this, if you ran your household in the same manner that the government runs theirs, how long could you sustain yourself? Would the bank come & take your car, home, etc? Would you have respect for someone who drunkenly wasted their money & resources at the expense of others? Do you still trust the politicians to do an adequate job? So if the current financial crisis, unemployment numbers, foreclosures, and businesses fleeing overseas don’t concern you, then you shouldn’t even consider preparedness. If any of this concerns you then maybe you should consider becoming one of the obsessed. Thanks for your interest.

To read the original post and all replies on APN Go Here