Doomsday Preppers

Doomsday preppers is the shit , I prep not too the extreme like some of the cast but I do have a garden in my backyard plan on buying chickens, me and my wife can fruits veggies and meat , we have mylar bags of food in the basement , collect rain water and are able to filter and purify with pills , or a drip filter. We hope to buy 1 or 2 solar panels just to run the fridge and buy a rocket stove for cookling.lving in nyc getting a gun is a pretty hard long process , but not impossible , in the mean time i have a crossbow , knives , bats , and vodka to make molatov cocktails, plus all the windows on the first floor have metal bars .

I've been impressed that the show will post a correction to what someone has said if it is factually incorrect. I have had two things catch my eye, which didn't seem .

On one of the most recent shows, the person was taking about inflation of 1300%, so it would cost 1300 times more. This is not correct, it would have been 13 times more. OK, this is still a lot, but he was off by a factor of 100. The show did not catch this.

Another thing the "expert assessor" did not comment on was the firefighter in NY. He indicated his air tank held 45 minutes and his food cache was 20 minutes away. This gave him just enough time to get to his cache, have 5 minutes, then get back. He didn't give himself any extra time. He was just perfect. In fact, during his test run, they said he made it under 45 minutes. I have a feeling it was just under, otherwise they might have highlighted the fact he did it in "35 minutes or 40 minutes"...
Two problems
#1: In a real situation, he would probably be breathing heavier, thus consuming more air and reducing his tank level.
#2: What if he is delayed by someone in the street...

Solution: Carry a second tank or have his cache closer to home.

Perhaps I'm naive to the nuclear power plant, but even if it did not power plant itself and was in fact by diesel generators, I'd really like to think the people planning would have more than enough diesel, plus lots of extra, to have a controlled shut-down.

@Denny:

Just because the grid will go down does not mean there will be nuclear fallout. First off, the cooling generators in nuclear powered plants are powered by.....the nuclear power plant. When cooling capacity is lost, a shutdown occurs and control rods prevent the core from heating up. If all-out Armageddon occurred and the plant was abandoned, the core would be flooded with water and neutron-absorbing rods/chemicals to keep the reactor from ever going critical. Therefore....no mushroom cloud. I used to operate nuclear power plants for the Navy. God bless you for serving, Marine.

I've been enjoying the show and look forward to each Tuesday to glean some information each time. Some of the ideas are not realistic, but someof these ideas aren't that crazy...Look at Hurricane Katrina, Mount Pinatubo, the Volcanic dust cloud over Europe disrupting air travel. Also, if you noticed some of the filler material for the guy in LA segment talking about the riots...Doesn't seem so far-fetched!

I, for one, am a closet prepper. The most likely concern is a big earthquake in California. I do not have the monetary or time resources some of these people have -- 7+ hours a day! Wow! The very first people they shows building up a fortress made out of shipping containers --- these people ARE ALREADY living in a post apocalyptic world!

My plan after watching this show is to begin building up more water and rice. I have been acquiring some freeze dried food in the 10# containers. With a 30 year shelf life, I figure it is a good investment! I already have seven 20# bottles of propane. Yeah, not too much, but it is a start! Water is next ... start buying the 6 packs of 1 gallon jugs. I'm not looking for a long-haul, end of the world stuff, but prepping to be able to survive for at least 1 month is prudent for anyone!

My wife and I have also considered the purchase of a shotgun and perhaps a small arm.

NatGeo --- if you read this --- perhaps a few stories on "real people" planning for less cataclysmic scenarios, such as getting caught in the snow for a few days, an earthquake, hurricane, tornado...

Im a Marine and Desert Storm vet, I watched your show and was impressed with your supply and logistics. You say u r preparing for massive power grid failure and such. Well sir one thing u forgot is after a grid failure the generators that keep core water cool at nuclear plants will kick on once u run out of diesel they shut off core heats up , big boom. Look up nuclear plants and projected fallout zone, ur location is no good for ur theory. Most have enough reserve fuel for 10 days,then kiss it goodbye if u live in TN.

He asked me if I have any survival plans and I said “Yeah…. I know where you live”

That's why operational security (as some survivalists call it) is important for the thoroughly-prepared. If you're ready to face the end of the world as we know it, don't tell anyone.

I agree with Bell Pepper focus on the "green energy" stuff , and how did they find these survialist anyway?.
Wouldn`t a real survialist kinda just keep a low profile not put all their gear on TV ?

It looks like the pilot (?) was aired summer 2011, and is on TPB... Glad they're running a series, if a short one.

While I don't think that the world will end, I still watched it. But this show kinda pissed me off. It really showed the wacky end of the survivalist spectrum. Like the fort made out of shipping containers and glanced over the small windmills the guy had built to power the joint. That was the part I wanted to learn about! Green energy and sustainability! But I suppose that was the point, the ratings are in the weirdness factor.

I have a coworker that has spent his entire life savings and children's college funds (he thinks the world will end before they are old enough to go to college) building up his property into a fortress complete with booby trapped tunnels and secret entrances disguised as tree stumps / transformer boxes. He has buried PVC pipe capsules with clean clothes, a old russian bolt action rifles + ammo and food / med supplies all over his property so that if he has to flee his property or if the Apocalypse goes down while he is away from his home he can arm himself to fight his way back into his home. Couple that with the 10 laptops loaded with survial manuals and other info he has buried in pelican boxes all over his property and the fact he purchased special military uniforms for his family to wear so he can identify them at a distance I think he has lost his mind.

He asked me if I have any survival plans and I said "Yeah.... I know where you live"

That guy will have to lose a lot of weight to beat the zombies to his shelter.

I read survival blogs now and then. They're fascinating for both the mindset and the ingenuity on display.

Although I'm prepared to shelter in place for two weeks and defend my home against a minor breakdown in civil order, that's about all that I can afford to do without financially compromising myself. Mostly, I try to take a moderate stance, which was nicely expressed by Les Jones when he encountered a survivalist blog post on guinea pig recipes:

I try not to judge. Different people fall at different points on the preparedness spectrum. Some people surely think I’m paranoid because I own guns and my 401K has silver and gold instead of stocks. Others surely think I’m an innocent little lamb because I don’t have a collection of AR-15s and a bomb shelter filled with MREs and gas masks. But brother, if you ever find yourself collecting chili recipes for guinea pig you should take a long, hard look at your life and ponder how you ever came to give up on the world.

And above all, let every one know your survival stash is in your garage...on wheela, with a trailer hitch.