betiko wrote:So what is this american obsession with survivalism?
Looks like they just love to imagine the apocalyspe and get ready for it. Apparently countless midwest kind of guys create their several years supply of food + shelter + basic material...
It's cool to be prepaired in life and shit... But seriously, are these guys nuts? too much bible reading and zombie movie watching is no good for your mental health.
I get that there are a lot of natural hazards though (tornados, earthquakes...). But it doesn't look like survivalists get ready for that.
The world is too fucking crowded. In the industrialized countries, 2% of the population feeds the country. Even a small interruption of the food supply chain could bring millions of starving city dwellers out to pillage the countryside. It makes sense to be prepared.
Of course there are all the usual scenarios -- nuclear war, runaway global warming, asteroid impact, epidemic, communist revolution, asteroid impact, supervolcano, major tectonic shift, etcetera -- but a scenario doesn't have to be that dramatic globally to be cataclysmic on a local level. About 10 or 12 years ago we had a large-scale power outage here. A main power line went down in Ohio, caused a pulse through the system that blew transformers and forced power plants into emergency shutdown across Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario. In some areas power was back up quickly, but in others it took days or in a few cases weeks. It was the middle of summer, and across Ontario people lost something like 60% of the food in their freezers. It was a good kick in the stones for anyone, especially if they had a well-stocked freezer like we did. Wasn't quite enough to trigger hunger since there were enough alternate sources available, but if it had been just a little more widespread... hmm. I think few people realize how close we came to actual hunger in one of the wealthiest places in the world.
betiko wrote:I heard the gama ray of a supernova could kill us all. So i d rather not have any supply ready.
All things are relative. Yeah, if the supernova was close enough, it could kill all of us and make all our preparations irrelevant. But what if it was just a tiny bit outside of the guaranteed death radius? What if the the supernova was just far enough that it killed 20% of us, perhaps, and gave the rest of us debilitating but non-lethal radiation sickness? A world of people walking around, moaning in pain, puking and shitting on themselves, too sick to work but needing to do something to stay alive. Not that different from the zombie apocalypse, really.
That said. They are nuts. Who would want to live in such a world. Oh!wait, we already live in the US.crap! ConfederateSS.out!(The Blue and Silver Rebellion). 
