The Funny Looks I Get

Whenever I can fit prepping into a conversation, I find a way to wiggle the topic in.  With all the news networks spewing about worldwide disasters, this has become easier every day.  You know, around the office water cooler conversations about the Japan crisis or some other horrible event.  Well, I’m the guy who always jumps in to say “that’s why I keep extra food & water on hand”.  Most of the time you can actually see that someone is trying to size you up for a tin foil hat.  Geez, what would they think if they knew what was in the trunk of my car outside in the parking lot?  The saddest part of all of this is that being prepared still seems to be something that whack jobs do out in the wilderness….you know, the unibomber types living off the land with an arsenal of weapons and cammo gear.  By the way, it surprises me that I haven’t seen cammo tin foil for hat making yet.  I would really love to jump up on a soap box in the middle of the town square and yell out to people asking them why they don’t have a clue!  But then again, I would probably be run out of town or taken to a rubber room somewhere.  The fact is that preppers are still being considered extremists…paranoid survivalists eager to meet TEOTWAWKI.  The fact of the matter is, we are just as sane as our grand parents were, and their ancestors before them.  Why, my own mother can remember her father returning from a hunting trip with a dear on the hood of the truck and her mother getting out the knives and canning jars to put it up for the long winter ahead.  That is what she grew up eating, and that, not so long ago if you think about it.  Too many people have turned to the purchase on demand option of shopping for dinner on the way home from work every evening.  Ask the average Joe how much water they have on hand at home and more times than not, the answer will be “I turn on the tap and it’s there”.   Why do so many people assume that that will always be the case?   What does it take to convince people that having a few basic supplies to last you through even a few days is a smart idea?  Maybe they don’t want to be seen as the tin foil hat wearing types.