2012 ~ Apocalypse Postponed ...Again

One of the first posts I wrote on this blog back in March 2012 was about the National Geographic TV show "Doomsday Preppers." I had watched a couple of episodes and was amazed at the level of fear and paranoia in these hoarders of spam, rice and guns.

Prepping for the Doomsday Olympics

I wrote:

. . . these people longing for Armageddon don't laugh very much.They are deadly serious about everything and just want to show off their mad survival skills in the end-of-the-world Olympics. They've given up on life, music, and fun in favor of fear mongering.
. . . I couldn't help but feel a little disturbed that one family has enough food for the next 20 years while other people are eating out of dumpsters. But this philosophy isn't about helping the "other people" - the belief is that the weak ones are going to be destroyed by the next disaster while the self-sufficient strong survive. Doomsday Prepping begins at home and ends at home. Like their brethren in the Republican Party who don't believe in "sharing the wealth" or "that dang socialism," Doomsday Preppers live in the Narcissistic States of America.

At the time I was thinking about Paul Ryan's budget and the whole Ayn Rand philosophy as something that drives these clannish survivalists. But now that both the election and the Doomsdays - Dec. 12 or Dec. 21 - have come and gone with nothing unusual happening, these folks now seem like regular old Tea Party members to me.

Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, they fit right in with Todd Akin and the other anti-science people, the unskewed polls people who reject the math in front of their eyes and believe what they want to believe. Their love of ammunition hoarding is second only to that of Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, and if they aren't vapor-locked in their underground bunkers right now, they are cheering on the Congressman who refuse to do anything while a great country takes a dive over a man-made fiscal cliff.

Many now say it's a "New Age" instead of the end of the world. Where will the Doomsday Preppers fit into that scenario? They don't consider "peace and quiet" a plausible future, so I imagine that they really are doomed to be marginalized just like the anarchy-based Tea Party and the Gun-Loving GOP. The New Age will sail on without them, and good riddance.

Prepping for the Doomsday Olympics

Out of boredom, I watched a few episodes of the show Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic Channel. Instead of hoarding junk or kittens, these folks stockpile food and ammunition for when the "Government Declares Martial Law." Well, at least that's what one woman in Utah said was doing as she proudly showed off her stun gun, her tower of boxes full of food and water, and her emergency backpack in case she needed to head for the hills.

 In another episode, a man was driving his wife and daughter crazy by cluttering their house with huge plastic jugs full of rice. Funnily, his wife was an expert on survival, having grown up in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror. Her remarks were a nice counterpoint - she said she would survive differently in an emergency, by killing a rabbit, catching fish, or stealing food if she had nothing to eat. And having escaped from an evil internment camp to come and live in the United States, I can see why she doesn't really want to hear about her husband's visions of Armageddon, or give up and live in the underground bunker (cave actually) with a big metal door into which he proudly led his reluctant family. It looked like a death trap to me, some place a control freak could lock up women basically and feed them rice till they all die. I think that poor woman should take her daughter and go find a husband who likes to tell jokes.

 That's one thing I noticed - these people longing for Armageddon don't laugh very much.They are deadly serious about everything and just want to show off their mad survival skills in the end-of-the-world Olympics. They've given up on life, music, and fun in favor of fear mongering. Yes, they may think they are the logical ants who are working hard for an inevitable future while we foolish grasshoppers fiddle and play, but even from a religious standpoint they are forgetting that the Bible says to "take no thought of what you eat or drink." Or how about the story of the Loaves and Fishes? I couldn't help but feel a little disturbed that one family has enough food for the next 20 years while other people are eating out of dumpsters. But this philosophy isn't about helping the "other people," the weak ones who are going to be destroyed by the next disaster. Doomsday Prepping begins at home and ends at home. Like their brethren in the Republican Party who don't believe in "sharing the wealth" or "that dang socialism," Doomsday Preppers live in the Narcissistic States of America.

Don't get me wrong - I want to take care of me and mine, too. I shiver at thoughts of the Yellowstone Super Volcano, Nuclear Fall-Out or a Viral Pandemic. But having lived through horrible tornadoes and hailstorms this year here in Tennessee, I know that when it is my time to go, I'm gone. God isn't going to ask permission before he blows away my house, and no stun gun can stop that either. I am much more worried about strong winds than the "Gummint."

We have a very simple emergency box: some canned goods, matches, charcoal, aluminum pans, candles, and a radio. No stun gun, sorry. My husband and I figure ordinary life is scary enough with making our kids paranoid enough to shoot any human who "threatens" the family compound. That's the ultimate in-crowd/out-crowd Group Think that leads to another Waco massacre or Jim Jones Cult mass suicide. Us versus Them - survival of the fittest. It's interesting that most of these folks probably don't even believe in evolution even while preaching social Darwinism, and they also forget that maybe God has a sense of humor. If they had any introspection at all, they might smile inwardly at the absurdity of their actions. Don't they recall the Millenium 2000 scare when civilization was supposed to grind to a halt? Never happened, and millions of people had to eat crow - whoops, sorry - had to eat stale cereal and canned tuna for years because they had used up all their money while "prepping."

I'm sure this show gets good ratings for National Geographic. But I wonder what they are highlighting here? Is it the social phenomenon of our divided society or the psychological phenomenon of people drinking too much Wingnut Kool-Aid?