Monday, December 10, 2012

"Doomsday Preppers are Socially Selfish."

“Not sure if this is good or crazy good? A little prep is good, too much prep, maybe not so good, some of those Texan's can be quite scary," he said. "Good grief; just reinforced that there can be too much of a good thing ..."
You might wonder why someone like me, who has been in the business of encouraging disaster preparedness for a very long time, is so critical of people who are doing just that. It’s because they are being socially selfish – preparing themselves and the hell with everyone else. Instead of spending time and energy making changes that would benefit the larger community, in their very narrow focus of loyalty they are more concerned about themselves.
Emergency Managers can’t afford that kind of attitude. It is diametrically opposed to everything we do. Our job is to prepare individuals and communities and jurisdictions and regions and – ultimately – the globe for disasters, knowing we won’t always succeed. I could find statistics about how unprepared some citizens are, and then show you hundreds of active and volunteer CERT teams preparing whole communities. In major disasters (think 9-11 or the Christ Church earthquake or Superstorm Sandy), survivors for the most part WANT to help each other.

10 comments:

pyrewyrm said...

One of the comments makes an interesting observation.

" Robert 16 hours ago:
Okay Preppers, this is the type of person who needs to be taken out first if/when the SHTF. These petty local tyrants armed with their "emergency powers" will more than happily confiscate what you've worked so hard to obtain for you families and friends. And they'll do it without feeling a shred of shame or guilt. She'd happily steal everything you've worked so hard to put back and then shove you and yours into some FEMA camp in the name of "fairness to the community". So when the time comes you know what needs to be done. Do it without mercy or remorse."

Thank You Robert.

Pete said...

The point being, Emergency Managers are not spending their own dollars here.

Anonymous said...

Geez, am I the only one that thought what was posted here was a good point? Isn't that what's always being harped on; tribe, community? If you're prepped, you're a target; if you're neighborhood is prepped, it's a line of defense. Would you really want your neighbors to die in the deluge? What's the difference between helping them then and helping them to prep now?

luagha said...

Well grasshopper, you can come over here and be an ant with us, or you can stay over there and hop around like a grasshopper.

When winter comes, we might not have enough to be nice this year. Things are tough all over.

Anonymous said...

Really depends on your neighbors when you talk about the prepped community being stronger. Are your neighbors good people that will stand up for each other and contribute to a common defense? I know maybe 1 in 5 of my immediate neighbors would. The rest would more than likely be the zombie hoards we would need to defend against.

DevilDog
III

Anonymous said...

Ahhh. Once again, the tyranny of the obligation. I see my neighbors spending their money on stuff all the time. Yeah I notice the boxes they stick out on their curb for trash pickup day. So if they didn’t prep for the just in case, then I’m pretty sure that my modest prepping would swindle rather quickly if I opened my pantry to them. So taking these Collectivist’s thought of Darwinism to task, let us just go ahead and practice it.

Anonymous said...

I found the responses to this collectivist Nitwit on that site, quite encouraging.

Anonymous said...

hmmm, thought that not being a burden on others was a good thing.

kinda difficult to help others when one is a helpless imbecile, or emergency "manager" - but i repeat myself.

so go ahead, form a committee, have meetings, a poster contest,
and develop a cool logo with jingo chant & slogan to follow.

and if the weather should turn bad, just close up shop.


Paul X said...

I tried to post the following comment there, but it didn't take:
--------------
Whenever I hear the codeword "selfish" coming out of the mouth of a government employee, I figure the individual is just cobbling together some kind of justification to go on another round of theft and violence. Something to soothe the conscience while doing so. Par for the course.

Anonymous said...

Straight out of Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged" (recently re-read).

B Woodman
III-PER