All intelligent people prep. Fires, floods, high winds and civil unrest demand it. it depends on what you are prepping for. Sane people keep batteries, water, fuel, food and some cash. The insane right mainly stock up on guns, ammo, explosives and more guns.
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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I have prepper leanings that I satisfy by knowing my neighbors, having multiple ways to start a fire, a good supply of bottled water, and enough shelf stable food for a few months. I keep enough gas in my car to get me to Canada, have an overnight bag with a change of clothes, toiletries, and my passport. I could go more into prepping, but this is where the balance lies between my anxiety (over being in multiple politically disfavoured groups) and my partner's differently flavored anxiety (over getting things we don't need.)
Same. I have all those items in a (mostly) constant state of ready to go if shit hits the fan.
It's more like, I don't expect a zombie apocalypse or a full warzone in my neighborhood, but if power goes out or water becomes unsafe or goes out, or whatever bullshit happens, I've got enough basic items to survive and not have to worry too much.
I have dried beans, rice, water and enough other things to be ok.
COVID showed us some of the insanity that can happen when just toilet paper ran out for a week or two. Imagine if food or electricity were unavailable that long.
Do you remember when rumor had it that fever reliever A made you more vulnerable to covid, so the stocks of fever reliever B were emptied?
We did lose power for a week and that both sucked and helped inform my preparations going forward.
Yeah exactly. You can prep all year long, but sometimes it's the most silly and unexpected things. Wonder how many full "preppers" had enough TP? 🤣
“Preppers” are not tied to one set of politics or another.
You’re describing an imagined caricature.
In OPs defence, they tend to have a lot of guns. That creates implications in my mind, even though now that I actually think about it doesn't really mean anything.
Still part of the caricature.
The notion that firearms ownership is a conservative / MAGA thing is also a farce imo. You don’t even have to go full leftist to find armed progressives.
Ultimately, there’s more to the “prepper” mindset than the catoonified arsenal of weapons for the zombie apocalypse.
Having a deep pantry is prepping. Hell, owning a fire extinguisher is a form of prepping.
As a leftist with a prepper mentality, this is not blanket true. But many preppers are, in fact, just exceptionally dramatic right wingers as you imply, so I'll give you half a point.
Also a left-winger who has adopted some prepping mentality and created a “go-bag.”
In my opinion, “proper” prepping is/should be more about educating oneself, i.e. basic survival skills, navigational skills, how to find food and drinkable water, and if possible how to grow your own food and build a shelter — in essence boy scout stuff.
Once you know about the basics of survival, acquiring some essential tools (think axe, water purification tablets, and fire starter), and creating a rendezvous point with your loved ones is all that’s left.
The, usually right-winger, “preppers” are in reality just apocalypse fetishists. They buy MREs in bulk, create basements to bug-out in, and buy a stockpile of guns as if the concept of “community” will no longer exist in collapse scenario. They alienate everyone around them and focus entirely on the survival of their nuclear family with the insane belief that they could survive in a bunker under their home until chaos blows over.
That's exactly it.
I prep by stocking rice and beans and water and basic tools and supplies.
MAGA preps by stocking ammo and guns and concrete bunkers.
That is NOT the same.
If shit goes down I'm going to be out there helping my neighbors, not shooting them. WTF MAGA?
I prep. Did you just call me MAGA?
Do it again and I'll hit you with my bong
Better prep a bowl. It's about to get real.
Misread this as peppers and was very confused lol
Well peppers also fulfilled their own prophecy. The theory I like on their evolutionary traits (being spicy) is that they had generally low seed dispersion rate through animal ingestion. Upon the development of capsacin, leg-based mammals avoided the pain from the spicy. Birds do not have receptors in their mouths that react to that (side note, capsacin is not actually harmful and doesn't injure your mouth. It just tricks your heat receptors.). So with much greater mobility, birds carried the seeds much further than mammals. Pretty good for a plant to get around, right?
Well, not as good as humans getting addicted to the stuff and spreading the plants across the entire planet. Actually, further. Astronauts have a bit of a desire for additional spice because food flavors are dulled up there. So the animal group the plants wanted to avoid became their greatest proponent.
You got most of it. I'd only add; Problem for the pepper is that herbivores grind up the seeds where birds swallow them whole.
Old White people can't handle the spice.
They think ketchup is spicy
Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?
Johnny 5 is alive!
They prepared the catastrophe.
Prepping is a fad popularized by the zombie movie wave of the 2000s.
99% of "societal collapse" scenarios are going to be like 1946 Germany or 1989 Soviet Union, not 28days later. And in the 1% scenarios, people who care about their loved ones should keep euthanasia supplies, not food and guns.
Good God. When will you Americans realize Democrats and Republicans have been ruining the country. While you all fight each other you are slowly destroyed by your government who BTW works together against you