We prep some but not to an extreme like some we know do. Big concern is those who don't prepare for an emergency. Read a story years ago about how mad <ax society turned in Argentina a few decades ago that got us to think more about it. I'll see if I can find it, it was like "Night Of The Living Dead".
Even the government at Ready.gov advocate at least limited prepping. Alaskans do it as part of life since we have so many threats and outages here. I have lived through earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and wildfires since living here, as well as a number of weather related power outages. No hurricanes and not many tornadoes, but we sometimes get the remnants of typhoons that dump copious quantities of water on us. Argentina has gone through this a couple times in recent years and the fall of the Soviet Union was especially bad. Don't know if things will get that bad, but it never hurts to be a little prepared.
Well at least yall learn from them. Look at some of the shmucks in Texas, most of them almost froze and starved from a ice storm last year.I hope they learned from it. I leaned in 1971 to never give out of food.
I think Texas learned from it, but we could ask @Beth Gallagher or @Thomas Stillhere how things are there now. I know Beth was trying to get a backup generator installed. Coastal Texas has hurricanes ala the Galveston disaster and several since.
Freezing would be much better that burning to death. There was a time you could buy an Army surplus cold weather sleeping bag for next to nothing. I am pretty sure all those are already sold. I don't care how cold it is, crawl inside one of those and zip it up from inside and you will be very comfortable. I used one at Fort Campbell mid winter and when I woke up there was a foot of snow covering me but it was very cozy inside. I've heard those fire fighters who work for the forestry fire service have good things to say about those protection sacks they carry, it keeps them alive if they get caught in a flash over. Those military meals used today are really pretty good compared to the old C rations. If you plan right and spend a limited amount of money you could survive for a lot longer than most people could. There are 0 answers to survive CAT 4 or 5 hurricanes, just get out of dodge when they tell you to leave. During hurricane Carla in the mid 60s all the snakes on the island decided to use the causeway bridge so sheriffs deputies on the high end of the bridge were shooting them to keep them from reaching landfall and infesting the little areas opposite side of the bridge. I guess the snakes in some cases are smarter than humans.
We schmucks were inconvenienced by the freeze but didn't come anywhere near "starving" or "freezing." We have a fireplace, natural gas stove and water heater, and plenty of food and candles, so three days without power in winter was an annoying inconvenience but not nearly as bad as being without power after a hurricane in summertime. (We have experienced that hell a few times.) Also we have a fully stocked motorhome with a generator. As for the thread topic, we are not "preppers" by any stretch of the imagination but I do keep plenty of canned goods, flour, beans and rice in a little stockpile.
Also some of the so called survival food is just a one way ticket to doom for diabetics. its 99% carbs. So be careful what you buy.
i've assisted with several off grid survival installations here and abroad. a few bunkers are even in urban environments. many disregard my dietary advice and chose to stock chef prepped freeze dried rations. mine are simple but palatable plant based adaptogens in nutrient dense meals.
@Marie Mallery We are not schmucks - thank you very much! It may not pertain this thread, but a generalization of the fact so many people who claim to put their trust in God seem to be the very ones who are so worried about doomsday stuff.
I let history be my guide. If I haven't ever needed in the past to prepare for the worst, I probably don't have to now. My cupboards are always pretty full anyway.
I don't have caches of food buried out in the woods or anything but we could probably survive a year on what we have without hurting too badly. We don't have a lot of water stored, though. I can't imagine a situation in which we will be able to get fuel oil to heat our home but be unable to get water, anyhow. If that kind of thing occurs, we'll probably do better at camp, where we have a hundred acres of firewood and no pipes to freeze. We don't have a well there but there is a brook and we can boil or filter water. Otherwise, we use a water cooler here at home, and we usually have a few full bottles on hand.
We are not preppers in the actual sense of the word, such as someone who does have a lot of food and supplies stored somewhere in or near their house. I have been doing about the same thing as @Beth Gallagher mentioned, and stockpiling some storable foods. We aren’t good for a whole year, like Ken said they are, but at least for a few months we should be okay. Since we live inside of the city limits, if there were to be a long term shortage of food, the rioters and looters would all be out and take anything that people have stored up anyway, so it would not likely do us any good to have any more than what we already have stored away. When we had the bad tornadoes here a few years back, we had no power for almost 2 weeks, although we did have water. The street were blocked with downed trees and power lines, and no stores were open anywhere, even if we could have driven on the roads. We would have to find a way to cook outside if we had an extended power outage like that one, but I do have canned foods stocked which can be opened and eaten cold if necessary. At this point in time, what I am most concerned about is more shortages, as well as the skyrocketing prices of food, fuel, and most everything else.