Doomsday preppers: Are they crazy, or are you?

[Black Blade]

Doomsday preppers: Are they crazy, or are you?



Snippit:

People stockpile food and other essentials, learn to purify water, and learn other survival skills for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons seem crazy, but when you consider the fragility of our food distribution networks, power grids, and other complex systems that we depend on, this kind of preparedness does not seem so crazy after all.

If you do your own shopping, you’ve noticed that every trip to the grocery store costs a bit more than the one before. The core inflation rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been under 2 percent for the last couple of years, but to many Americans that seems low. The primary reason for that is that food and energy are not included in core inflation rate.

The BLS claims that the price volatility of these commodities creates unrealistic and erratic inflation statistics. Last year the food inflation rate was twice the core rate, and the growth of energy prices much greater than that. I don’t know about you, but energy and food make up the majority of my non-housing personal expenses (the average American spends 15 percent of her budget on food).

From a purely financial point of view, then, stockpiling staples makes sense. It is a way to save money, especially on items that do not expire, or have a very long shelf life.

Continued: [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]


Black Blade: Prepping has evolved into a movement. Now with over 3 million Americans calling themselves "preppers" (or lightweight "survivalists") it has become mainstream. Preppers are not as nutty as what you see on television (that's staged for entertainment value). You wouldn't know a real "prepper" just by looking at him or her. They are your neighbors and even colleagues. As the world becomes a more uncertain place and with the majority of Americans dependent on handouts, the rest of America is increasingly concerned about the future and are "prepping" to take care of themselves if and when it becomes necessary. This is the new reality.