Damn you've just described my dad lol. I always thought it was weird that he seems to be aware that things are unsustainable and will collapse, yet at the same time he concludes that this will lead to "city people flooding into our neighborhoods to steal and kill everything", and seems to think the solution is to "prep" with food and supplies and fortify his house into a bunker to hide away from everyone, instead of like... working together with community to survive? The more likely thing to happen? But yeah I know now that it's just the racism talking.
Preppers never made sense even by their own logic. If they're so worried about a sudden collapse and post-apocalypse raiders coming to steal everything, they're going to immediately go for stockpiles of food and guns. Yeah, it's got to be racism. Preppers see their potential enemies (probably caricatured as black/latino gangs) as less than human and less capable of making plans. They see other people as zombies or animals. They can only imagine a future where every single person on Earth is against them, but are also incapable of defeating a single old man in a bunker. It's a twisted mindset that could only have come from American suburbia.
My uncle is a prepper type too, although he's slightly more community oriented in a certain way. He's convinced the apocalypse will be a religious war, with a coalition of atheists coming together to murder all Christians (also when he describes atheists he uses the same terminology and framework that antisemites use when describing Jews). He's convinced the local Methodist church to build panic rooms and long term storage into their community center, which otherwise just hosts school dances and basketball games. He teaches gun stuff through the church too, and he spends a lot of time gardening and doing carpentry, which he also says will be important. Honestly if the weird racist apocalypse stuff weren't involved, my uncle would have pretty healthy hobbies and a good relationship with people in his church. It's too bad he's also a racist, transphobic lunatic.
I've always considered writing a post-apocalyptic story based around this. One where it's actually a group of survivors doing community outreach that manage to survive and have to deal with violent lone wolf freaks every now and again. Instead of the usual Burgerland story take where the community centred survivors are weak, small bean gentle folk who can't deal with the harsh reality of the wastelands.
Damn you've just described my dad lol. I always thought it was weird that he seems to be aware that things are unsustainable and will collapse, yet at the same time he concludes that this will lead to "city people flooding into our neighborhoods to steal and kill everything", and seems to think the solution is to "prep" with food and supplies and fortify his house into a bunker to hide away from everyone, instead of like... working together with community to survive? The more likely thing to happen? But yeah I know now that it's just the racism talking.
Preppers never made sense even by their own logic. If they're so worried about a sudden collapse and post-apocalypse raiders coming to steal everything, they're going to immediately go for stockpiles of food and guns. Yeah, it's got to be racism. Preppers see their potential enemies (probably caricatured as black/latino gangs) as less than human and less capable of making plans. They see other people as zombies or animals. They can only imagine a future where every single person on Earth is against them, but are also incapable of defeating a single old man in a bunker. It's a twisted mindset that could only have come from American suburbia.
My uncle is a prepper type too, although he's slightly more community oriented in a certain way. He's convinced the apocalypse will be a religious war, with a coalition of atheists coming together to murder all Christians (also when he describes atheists he uses the same terminology and framework that antisemites use when describing Jews). He's convinced the local Methodist church to build panic rooms and long term storage into their community center, which otherwise just hosts school dances and basketball games. He teaches gun stuff through the church too, and he spends a lot of time gardening and doing carpentry, which he also says will be important. Honestly if the weird racist apocalypse stuff weren't involved, my uncle would have pretty healthy hobbies and a good relationship with people in his church. It's too bad he's also a racist, transphobic lunatic.
I've always considered writing a post-apocalyptic story based around this. One where it's actually a group of survivors doing community outreach that manage to survive and have to deal with violent lone wolf freaks every now and again. Instead of the usual Burgerland story take where the community centred survivors are weak, small bean gentle folk who can't deal with the harsh reality of the wastelands.