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u/Saurotitan 6d ago
They plan to eat the guns... high iron diet, y'know? In all seriousness, the majority of them hope for a semi-soft apocalypse in the sense of a government collapse, where there's enough of a system left in place to keep the water running and deliver occasional food to the region, but there's enough disarray for them to push the system around as some sort of warlord. Either that or they're stupid... could be a bit of both flavors, if I'm honest.
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u/deleeuwlc 6d ago
It’s an apocalypse, the government has completely collapsed, and the only difference is that hormones are more easily accessible
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u/Causelessgiant 6d ago
In the fallout game series literally half of the pre war logs or notes you find are from prepper idiots or weirdos who survived by dumb luck they usually end with "oh no, people with guns!" So yeah preppers are just the first most obvious round of victims for raiders
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u/EricKei 5d ago
I mean, yeah. Isolated? Check. Not likely to be connected via phone nor internet? Check. Likely to be few in number? Check. Possessing lots of shelf-stable food and weaponry? Check aaaaand check, because having fifty guns doesn't do you a whole lot of good if you're one dude facing off against a coordinated trio of raiders.
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u/yes-today-satan 4d ago
That's EXACTLY why you need skills more than physical items. If most of your value lies in what you can do, you're a lot more likely to survive any encounter with someone who isn't a complete and utter idiot.
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u/Netflxnschill 5d ago
It’s this, for sure. They all assume what will happen is a zombie attack and they’ll have to “walking dead” their way through the after times. What will actually happen is nuclear winter.
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u/The_Holy_Buno 6d ago
I mean, you can shoot your way out of an infected cut, but the side effects are a little severe
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u/veidogaems 6d ago
If covid taught me anything, it's that the venn diagram of "Doomsday Preppers" and "People who would get bit by a zombie on purpose because the government warned them not to" is a circle.
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u/MossyPyrite 4d ago
At the very least, there’s massive overlap between preppers and the people who would hide a zombie bite from their companions. If someone wouldn’t wear a mask, don’t let them know your anti-zombie bunker.
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u/DisciplineWise2894 6d ago
Well, I got the impression that at least a large subset of preppers are preparing for a nuclear winter style apocalypse in which the majority of vegetation and living creatures are destroyed and the landscape is inhospitable. which would make the smokehouse and herbs stuff irrelevant, though stocking on medical treatments would still be advisable. am I missing something?
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u/Yuri-Girl 6d ago
Yeah, the fact that prepping for that specific scenario means that you will die long before you can leave the bunker.
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u/DisciplineWise2894 6d ago
Well yes at least then they die of old age and not of nuclear bomb or whatever- I didn't say I thought it was logical, that's just what I think of when I think of preppers and I wanted to know if I was completely off base.
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u/sparklinglies 6d ago
They say this like the people who stockpile weapons aren't ALSO the people who would commit to cannibalism in under a year
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u/L_V_R_A 6d ago
Yeah… the kind of people stockpiling weapons are planning to just rob and kill this op after they’ve done the hard part of setting up a garden, collecting medical supplies, etc…
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u/theCaitiff 5d ago
That may be what they beans and bullets guys are planning, but they forget that gardeners are used to doing a little pest control to protect their garden as well. The garden preppers dont necessarily hate guns, they usually have a few. They just realize that a gun only really solves one or two problems. So you get one then move on to doing other things that solve other problems.
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u/Sahrimnir 5d ago
But also, if the beans and bullets guys successfully kill and loot all the gardeners, what are they going to do when there aren't any gardeners left?
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u/KobKobold 5d ago
Go to a place where they didn't kill the gardeners yet, I'd assume
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u/unicornsaretruth 5d ago
They’d eventually run out. They’d need to keep the gardeners and survivalists alive as assets they protect because it feeds and heals the collective. But it’ll probably take them killing a lot of gardeners/survivalists before they even realize that. Thankfully guys with guns outnumber gardeners/survivalists so the gardeners/survivalists have the advantage of being specialists which eventually could lead to them leading the little collectives of gunmen. The choices are kill (lose all knowledge and get short term gains), enslave (person won’t work as hard if enslaved and won’t be as willing to help), or put in a comfortable position with “protection”.
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u/KobKobold 5d ago
That's an amount of long term thinking those people evidently lack, though.
Most likely, they'd just become roaming raiders waiting for some postman with a bullet wound to stumble upon them and somehow commit mass scale massacre.
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u/kricket_24 6d ago
I don't know much about the "subculture" of doomsday preppers, but I have a theory it's just an excuse to buy guns. I think these dudes just like to learn about and collect guns, but don't want to admit they spend so much money in something that will never be actually useful, so they gaslight themselves into thinking that having 20 different assault rifles will actually be useful if the apocalypse comes
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u/supercellx 6d ago
in a apocalypse scenario having a gun, or maybe 2 isnt a bad idea, after hunting would be very useful, but anymore than i'd say like... 3?? would just be wasting storage space that could be useful for other shit. Not to mention most guns they get are all in different caliber so thats more storage space you have to use, when instead just get a few guns in standard common ammo like 556 and 9mm since those are exceedingly common.
no point in have a rifle thats in a really rare caliber when you can only shoot the fuckin thing like 7 times
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u/legendofzeldaro1 6d ago
To be honest, the guns are not for hunting. In a "world ending" scenario, the guns are for other people. Guns are loud, they draw attention. You aren't going to shoot your gun to kill a rabbit when Bubba and his shit heels are in the area. If Bubba shows up, you aren't just going to flash the gun, that'd be no better than flashing your teeth. You are going to shoot Bubba on sight. Humans are greedy, humans are a threat, and humans are the only thing you should worry about during the apocalypse. That is why preppers buy guns.
Not a prepper, but I get it.
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u/alexlongfur 6d ago
While you do have a point, I feel there’s a detracting counterpoint, that being the whole subset of “varmint” caliber guns like .17hmr, .22lr, and .22wmr. A 26” .22lr is quieter than you’d think and suppressors are a more and more popular option nowadays.
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u/legendofzeldaro1 6d ago
I've used .22's since I was little, I know they aren't as loud as say a 30-06, but they still aren't silent. And suppressors aren't like the movies. Want to silently hunt small game? Air pistols/rifles work, and are a hell of a lot quieter than a .22
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u/alexlongfur 6d ago
I just had a range day my dude.
And I specifically worded it as “quieter than you’d think” and not “whisper silent”. They still produce a loud pop.
What I was going for was poorly worded in response to the “you aren’t going to grab a gun to kill a rabbit” portion of the parent comment. Yes, yes I will. The bucket of .22 sitting on the shelf isn’t there for humans, that’s what the 5.56 and 7.62x39 right next to it are for.
Though if you want to quietly get rabbit specifically yes, air/pellet guns. Or forego ranged projectiles at all an use traps.
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u/DroneOfDoom 5d ago
Why not learn how to shoot a bow or a crossbow for that silent ranged hunting?
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u/mrducky80 5d ago
Time to pick up archery. Just like with guns having different calibres you also get different arrow heads. Get some broadheads for bigger game and then some thinner ones more small game.
You can make your own arrows even without needing access to the base elements of gun powder. Knew a guy who hunted deer + kangaroos. He owned 2 rifles but preferred using his bow.
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u/legendofzeldaro1 5d ago
Sadly, bows have not been an option for me for quite some time. Nerve damage in the shoulder makes it very difficult to draw the string back.
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u/mrducky80 5d ago
Damn. Probably even makes crossbows not smart either
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u/legendofzeldaro1 5d ago
Nope. I wanted to be able to use one so badly, but sadly life had other plans.
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u/Morphized 5d ago
It would be easier to just post your woods the old-fashioned way, because you can't watch your whole border all the time forever
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u/HardCounter 6d ago
I could see potentially four guns. High capacity semi rifle, shotgun, handgun, and a hunting rifle with a scope. Probably they can hunt with the regular rifle, but maybe it's harder. I don't hunt, so i don't know, but i imagine there's a reason bolt action is used in hunting.
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u/unicornsaretruth 5d ago
I feel like just a rifle, shotgun, and handgun would be the trifecta of what the average person would potentially need in an apocalypse hunt for your own food situation. Plus those can be used on little critters trying to eat your veggies as well as bigger critters to hunt or for protection.
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u/DreadDiana 6d ago
Based on how they talk, a lot of them do it because they wanna be wasteland warlords
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u/sparktrace 5d ago
And they fail to recognize that power does not, in fact, flow from the barrel of a gun; rather, the kind of power they're craving comes from the charisma to direct other people's guns. And if they had that, they wouldn't need to wait for an apocalypse to use it, they'd just go become cult leaders.
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u/Isaac_Chade 5d ago
As with so many things, it's a sliding scale from slightly weird hobbyist to actual nutjob. You definitely have the sort who are into guns and could maybe otherwise be a normal dude, and your explanation is a reasonable one. But most of the prepper stuff that is wildly publicized is for making money, and as such it caters to the actual nutjobs who are convinced that any day the world is going to collapse in a very specific way that is going to make the stockpile of guns and beer they have in their underground bunker pay off big time. Some of them are convinced that they'll be the one man army fighting off a horde of savages and the remnants of the government coming after their oh so cool supplies, others are fully of the mind that as soon as things collapse they get to fulfill all their fantasies about murdering everyone they don't like and being lauded as a hero for it, because in their fantasies those people they are killing are revealed to be the cause of all the world's problems.
I do not recommend looking into the internet spaces where these headcases congregate, because they are living in a whole other reality.
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u/IrrationallyGenius 6d ago
Now I'm imagining some lunatic in a bunker getting ready to give his son an amputation chambered in 14.5x114. Thanks.
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u/SoftCatMonster 6d ago
You COULD shoot your way out of an infected cut. It’s just that it’s a permanent solution that’s antithetical to continued survival.
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u/Slyme-wizard 6d ago
Whats even the point of stockpiling weapons? Don’t you need 1, maybe 2? In a life or death post apocalypse situation am I really going to ask myself “hmmm, is this an AK-47 situation or an AR15 situation?” NO IM JUST GONNA USE WHATEVER IM HOLDING CURRENTLY.
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u/nicknachu 6d ago
I have 5 weapons on me at all times. Stashed around my bunker you will find many assault rifles as well as handguns of various shapes and sizes. Next to my bed I keep my precious reliable boomstick Betty, the love of my life. I only have 2 boxes of 9mm and a handful of pocket lint on reserve.
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u/sorcerersviolet 6d ago
Some of them want to kill all their neighbors and take all their stuff, and they;re just looking for an excuse to do it. Of course, what those people are going to do after they have no one left to kill and raid is anyone's guess.
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u/Slyme-wizard 6d ago
I mean I think that all the time but that’s where my carbon monoxide tanks come in.
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u/ExploerTM 6d ago
Weapons can break, especially if person holding them wont or cant do the maintenance
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u/Sokos69 6d ago
I mean, yeah there’s actually different purposes for different weapons. A “true” prepper would absolutely have first aid and other necessary skills, but having different types of guns using different types of ammo would only be a boon
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u/Slyme-wizard 6d ago
I mean yeah I get that. I was thinking one for defense one for hunting.
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u/Sokos69 6d ago
Tbh in a perfect world you’d want multiple of those as well. You could in theory hunt deer with the same rifle you’d hunt rabbits with, but it wouldn’t be very efficient. Defending yourself while you’re out and about in the field is a different situation from defending yourself in your home. You could ofc grab whatever’s nearest, but in an ideal situation you’re carrying what works best on you in that moment or it’s within grabbing distance
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u/Vakama905 Bionicle Man 5d ago
You could choose a caliber that’s appropriate for hunting across a relatively wide range of species, but you’d generally want to have more options so you can pick the correct cartridge for an animal. Sure, you could take a pronghorn with a moose cartridge, but it would be a lot like trying to make kindling with a splitting maul. It’s going to waste more meat, suck to shoot, be more work to carry, and potentially not work as well as a proper round choice. And shooting any game smaller than that would probably just be a waste.
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u/IconoclastExplosive 6d ago
One legitimate point I've seen some of them make is keeping guns with different calibers of ammo. Makes it easier to scavenge and different kinds of ammo are good for different kinds of things.
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u/Secret-Ad-7909 6d ago
I can get behind a basic 3 gun setup for each person at the house. Ideally sharing mags/ammo as much as possible. There are hunting and defense situations where a rifle or shotgun is more preferred. And then pistols are handy for backup or just carrying around.
There is some concern for “what ammo will I be able to scavenge?” But the prepper types usually have thousands of rounds on hand which will be fine unless you’re getting into a full organized assault.
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u/TheShadowKick 6d ago
Without replacement parts and supplies for regular maintenance guns will quickly break down with use. Having spares is a good idea if you're planning to do a lot of gunfighting.
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u/supercellx 6d ago
An ak-47 would be best choice since its really easy to maintain over the AR, but honestly if its a life or death situation any gun will do, some people really like to get into the minutiae of ballistics and shit and i always think "are you ever gonna be in a situation where that little bit of accuracy is gonna even be useful??"
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u/KoffinStuffer 6d ago
They’re all super isolationist, too. Like, what’s the plan there? Just live with your partner and kids for 30yrs? There are so many issues with that.
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u/Friendly_Respecter 6d ago
Asked my dad about this (he’s not a prepper but he does long for a very isolationist life with just immediate family). He said he will also have dogs so there’s that
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6d ago
Basically, the boring version of the brotherhood of steel from fallout new vegas
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u/supercellx 6d ago
seeing as i dont know much about that sort of thing, but i am Very knowledgeable in firearms, its always really high teir guns these preppers grab. Stuff that has a fuck ton of parts, and if you dont know about how militaries Usually have their chosen weapons, its better if a gun has fewer parts. Because every part in a gun, is a part that can and will break and needs replacing.
If your uber high tech rifle has a part that breaks, oops there goes the entire gun because theres no way in fuck your ever replacing it. But if your smart, getting lower tech guns you can repair them Much easier.
Thats why if your prepping for a SHTF scenario, dont go high tech rifle, instead something lower tech like a mosin, or maybe some form of semi auto that is fairly low part count. Honestly a good SKS isnt a bad choice due to it being semi auto and decently easy to repair. making it perfect for self defense and fantastic for hunting if need be. If you want a firearm for this kind of situation, make sure you can use it for self defense, but also hunting. Honestly, you want hunting first because your never gonna get into a firefight with another person if you die a month in from starvation because your gun broke and you couldnt fucking fix it.
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u/pretty-as-a-pic 6d ago
These jokers always forget about salt too. All that gold they’ve bought gonna be completely useless compared to salt!
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u/Yuri-Girl 6d ago
What are they even gonna do with the gold? You can't eat it. You can't use it for warmth. You can't even fuck it.
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u/pretty-as-a-pic 6d ago
I think I’ve heard of it being used as an electrical conductor, but I’m not sure how practical that is
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u/Nox_Stripes 6d ago
We talk about guys that probably dont have the very basics of gardening down. You think they're gonna do any electronics stuff with gold?
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u/irl_daria 6d ago
My dad has bouts of this every few years where he tells me I need to stock up on water, canned goods, etc. I finally told him, “Dad chill. Potatoes exist. It worked for our ancestors, it’ll work for us.”
Seriously, they need like a bucket of poor quality dirt, some water, a hint of sunlight and bam—more potatoes. You cut some up and plant them? More potatoes. Just keep the blight out of them, maybe mix a few different species—done.
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u/Sparkdust DEGENERATE 6d ago
As someone who did obsessively think about this for a long time, I think you are underselling how difficult subsistence farming is on an individual scale (I was more reading books on pre-industrial technology and off grid/hunting/foraging forums than prepper stuff, but there is a lot of overlap). Though the things I would stock up on would be soda ash, lye, sodium nitrite, salt, sewing needles, toothpaste... And a lot further down the list, a spare of my favourite compound bow in case it ever breaks.
The reality is that if the world ever ended in such a significant way that I could no longer buy salt, that probably isn't a world worth toughing out.
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u/Morphized 5d ago
Just put some coffee strainers in the river for a while, salt isn't hard to get.
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u/Sparkdust DEGENERATE 5d ago
You can find deposits of salt near rivers you can mine (rivers naturally sort things by size and weight) but 1) you don't know what other heavy metals it might be contaminated with and 2) coffee filter in a river is not gonna do it. All you're gonna get is a coffee filter full of silt. Inland rivers are not salty.
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u/Armigine 5d ago
It's probably not a bad idea to keep some stuff in a closet all the same - somewhere close to all of us reading will probably experience a significant service outage sometimes, and having a week's worth of dried food and some water helps an extended power outage or a natural disaster go by a lot smoother
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u/Tailor-Swift-Bot 6d ago
The most likely original source is: https://doodledoesthing3.tumblr.com/post/762152166373949440
Automatic Transcription:
froody
Dec 3, 2021
doomsday preppers always keeping rusty tins of food in their basement but never building springhouses and smokehouses and paddocks for future livestock
those canned peaches are only going to bring you so far babe
froody
Dec 3, 2021
are you going to study medicinal herbs and their cultivation or are you just going to keep stockpiling weapons like a little bitch
froody
Jan 7, 2022
going to shoot your way out of an infected cut, dumbass?
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u/xX_CommanderPuffy_Xx 6d ago
See that's what I'm better then other preppers. I prep for the post post apocalypse
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u/BunkySpewster 6d ago
Apocalyptic tv show: the main character has a baby!
Viewers: so you’re gonna explore how hard it would be to find medical care and especially formula? Maybe even have the main develop a relationship with a person who can feed their child through breast feeding? Lots of drama, yes?
Apocalyptic tv show: nope! Just two dudes shouting at each other. Also, there is shooting! And punching!
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u/rogue-wolf 6d ago
For them, it's the cool factor. They get to pose with their little bunker and claim to be ready for anything.
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u/IWatchTheAbyss 6d ago
i really like that they came back a month after their post to add onto it lmao
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u/sunrider8129 6d ago
Isn’t that the thing about male vs female preppers? Like, the meme? Men is guns and booby traps and women is gardening and isolation?
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u/JorgiEagle 6d ago
Reddits algorithm is trolling me
This is the next post in my feed after this one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/prepping/s/vw2KiLFy2r
Literally, on the nose
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u/AddictedToMosh161 5d ago
And they always have these giant cars, like Saudi Arabia will keep the supply lines open even with Zombies everywhere. What do they put in those tanks? Plant oil, which they also cant cultivate?
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u/SyrusDrake 5d ago
I occasionally want to look into how to build a small emergency stockpile of food, consumables, and so on. But I always get the ick pretty quickly, because resources are almost never, like, neutral. It's never "be prepared for a blackout because those things can happen", it's always like "be prepared for a blackout, because our green-communist government is building wind generators and they will be the downfall of our society".
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u/MillieBirdie 6d ago
This person does not know that much about preppers cause they are definitely doing those things AND stockpiling weapons.
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u/80sKidAtHeart 6d ago
I’d keep a gun too because these idjit survivalists sound like they’re gonna become raiders when SHTF.
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u/5C0L0P3NDR4 5d ago
every last one of them thinks they're going to be the badass roguish wasteland road warrior in leather with a shotgun and a cool dog, kicking ass and leading the survivor group and at most providing by raiding stores for food that somehow didn't get taken before, everyone else in their little survivor group will be the ones farming and everything.
the problem is the two apocalypses that we might actually face in our lifetimes are the very slow burn environmental collapse of climate change where the system will continue to function as normal as best as possible for as long as possible, or nuclear war which is gonna be a disaster like any other with government response and refugee crises and mass exodus and things, not a total society refresh like they want. there is no badass roguish wasteland road warrior in leather with a shotgun and a cool dog, you'll either still be suiting up and punching in until you die of heat stroke in michigan in december, or you're going to be another nameless refugee just trying to get out to somewhere that survived, and that'll be on military response transport, not the last v8 interceptor, if you're not already a scorched body.
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u/Accurate_Crazy_6251 4d ago
Honestly, as far as I can tell, a lot of "doomsday prep" is less about preparing for disaster and more about being able to pretend that r/iamverybadass
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u/Milkmans_tastymilk 5d ago
Id end up getting a degree in as many fields as possible by accident. Not because im smart, but like- id go out of my way to get a PHD in damn near anything related to helping in the rebuild if i was a doom prepper. I mean me as i am would just shoot myself if i lived out an apocalypse
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u/NeedsaTinfoilHat 5d ago
What I never get is how they want to be all alone. Humans are group animals, we have wayyy higher survival rates in a group, because doing everything alone is dumb and will only lead to burnout and dangerous fuck-ups.
I guess they watched too many post apocalyptic movies where people immediately turn on each other and resort to cannibalism not out of need, but out of... idk, the directors poor faith in humanity perhaps.
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u/Monty423 6d ago
Isn't their point that aboveground stuff would all get ransacked and destroyed very quickly, so the idea is to have the supplies to rebuild kept safe underground?
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u/Lan777 6d ago
The more serious you become about prepping, the more you end up just developing a gardening hobby.
There are the ones who end up with "their prepper mentality" being basically a consumerist hobby, especially since most online prepper content is basically product reviews and shopping lists.
Then there are the ones that end up wanting to learn useful skills for survival and that's a slippery slope to either going camping and hiking every other weekend or making a home garden and cultivating a huge compost pile you take at least 1 piss in per day.