Is prepping dead? or just prepping forums?

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Aerindel

Aerindel

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Oct 20, 2020
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I notice this place is almost a ghost town. So I went and checked back on survivalist forums, (MIBH) and its a tiny vestige of what it once was.

So, is prepping dying lately? or prepping forums? or has everyone just moved somewhere else....and if so...where did everybody go?
 
Aerindel said:
I notice this place is almost a ghost town. So I went and checked back on survivalist forums, (MIBH) and its a tiny vestige of what it once was.

So, is prepping dying lately? or prepping forums? or has everyone just moved somewhere else....and if so...where did everybody go?
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They all came here! I moved here when an old site got bought out and the well loved admin got fired. You could count on one hand the number of posters left, and they weren't very active. I've wondered if they might have been the owners operating old names from when the site was busy. Most of those members moved here. That site went from very active to nothing in a week or so.

Other sites have faded slowly or quickly and we have benefited.
 
Caribou said:
I moved here when an old site got bought out and the well loved admin got fired.
Click to expand...

Same. Well, I moved here and then got banned during a certain night when for mysterious reason most of the most active members got banned.....but it doesn't seem there is much happening here anymore either....I don't want to speak ill....but seriously....its all but dead here. It actually made me wonder if everyone went back to SB....but no....pretty dead there too.
 
Aerindel said:
Same. Well, I moved here and then got banned during a certain night when for mysterious reason most of the most active members got banned.....but it doesn't seem there is much happening here anymore either....I don't want to speak ill....but seriously....its all but dead here. It actually made me wonder if everyone went back to SB....but no....pretty dead there too.
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Really? More threads are active here than I can keep up with. Perhaps we read different areas. Every site I've ever been party to had more lurkers than members and most of the posts have been by a core membership.

I believe that recent events have turned many more people into peppers. That doesn't mean that they are active posters. I know that I drop off because I am traveling, often without access to the internet. I also run into computer issues. This happens without notice and I have no way to notify anyone. Life has a way to draw others away for various amounts of time.
 
Caribou said:
More threads are active here than I can keep up with.
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hmmm, well, I don't know what to say about that. Most sub forums here seem to only have a few threads even made this YEAR let alone on a daily or even weekly basis.

It seems 1/10th as active as it was a couple years ago. SB seems 1/1000th as active as it was. I'm just wondering if 'foruming' is dead these days, or just the forums I go to. (A couple other forums that I used to be active on seem to have died in the past couple years too)
 
So many people are into tiktok, youtube and instagram and twitter now.
They may not even know message boards exist. They aren't of that "generation" (cuz you know only "boomers" do the message boards :rolleyes: ).

Gab has an amazing amount of groups. I know I've seen different homesteading and prepping groups on there.
And they have groups that are sort of subsections of preparedness like chickens, cooking/baking, canning, other livestock, weapons, etc.
 
Everyone is a "Master Prepper" expert now. Six or 8 y/o children (with internet access) are "Master" level knowledgeable reference Advanced prepping knowledge and skills.

Prepping is now a huge mental masturbation. Personally, for myself, I am happy this happened. There is a "pure" prepping theory that is "valid" but avoided (especially on internet).

Internet destroyed "prepping". Prepping was raped from 1980 forward by marketing "STUFF".
 
I agree with sourdough!! To add to what he said, everyone who grows a few vegetables or has a couple of chickens, or has an over full pantry claim to be prepared! That's all great, and I am all for stocking emergency food! But who is TRULY prepared if the SHTF? Most of the people yaking about it on social media will be more concerned that they can't get on social media and will expect handouts from the government that purposely failed them!!
 
I've a few thoughts on this, the first on the back of a comment someone made when I asked about larder photos- would it be because those who are doing it are less happy to share what or how they are doing it?
2. Information is so easily accessed, especially with blogs etc, that folks don't have to ask questions anymore?
3. With costs rising are folk less inclined to be paying for internet / computer maintenance etc, and are more off grid.
 
SB is more of a current events forum than a prepping forum.

I am not necessarily blaming the death of prepping and survivalist discussion on Covid, but it was during this era that the online discussion changed. A lot may have gone underground.

This forum is where the better discourse exists, but the frequency and depth of discussion simply isn’t at pre pandemic levels.
 
I don't think prepping or this forum is dying.

On this forum, I'm guessing that at this point, many are searching the forum for a particular discussion item or answer instead of starting a new thread.

Below is the forums stats. Just using the "Messages" item to get an idea, that value shows there's an average of around 80,000 posts/messages per year. Pretty sure most questions or tidbits are already posted.

Threads 19,238
Messages 595,787
Members 1,181
 
I have started to play my card closer to my chest and I actually build and experiment, I don't ever buy "Prep stuff" like some certain brand of knife, etc. Knifes are a convenience an axe or hammer is a tool.
It is hard to video "unboxing" a new skill
 
Alot of stuff has been covered + you cannot expect a boom like what happened when these sites started popping up and becoming popular- especially since the format is becoming more and more outdated- long format text conversations? Nah people want a picture with and 80 character caption nowadays.

Discussion? No. Blind positivity is the name of the game.

People prefer to see some broad with a cameltoe doing chincy "lifehacks" in the woods or cooking the most absurd meal they can dream up "survival" style for about 60 seconds before they swipe up to watch someone else watching something else and showing their brainless reaction.

Preparedness? No, the government will take care of you- survival/prepping isn't popular anymore because the algorithm decided it wasn't.

There is still some discussion, but the group of people who do it AND are willing to talk about it will grow increasingly fringe as time goes on.
 
Canon29 said:
Alot of stuff has been covered + you cannot expect a boom like what happened when these sites started popping up and becoming popular- especially since the format is becoming more and more outdated- long format text conversations? Nah people want a picture with and 80 character caption nowadays.

Discussion? No. Blind positivity is the name of the game.

People prefer to see some broad with a cameltoe doing chincy "lifehacks" in the woods or cooking the most absurd meal they can dream up "survival" style for about 60 seconds before they swipe up to watch someone else watching something else and showing their brainless reaction.

Preparedness? No, the government will take care of you- survival/prepping isn't popular anymore because the algorithm decided it wasn't.

There is still some discussion, but the group of people who do it AND are willing to talk about it will grow increasingly fringe as time goes on.
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Well said
 
I mostly stopped posting on the survivalist board because there are too many idiots posting stupid crap. They just argue endlessly about nothing and if you write something they disagree with you are "a troll" whatever
Plus I don't have as much time to post as I used to when we lived in Orlando and had office jobs
We are already living a prepper lifestyle, not much more I can do at this point
 
I don't know about "prepping" or survivalist forums being dead or alive or just in rigor mortise and really don't care.

I do know the modern prepping movement, by most claiming to be preppers, is ill thought out and more of just being part of a group and a movement. That is why any forum specializing in just being a prepper for hard times to come is on its way out.

Once a few topics are discussed and beat like buzzard beaks on a sun parched horse corpse, then the decline in interest starts by those of real experience and knowledge.

I joined this forum because it deals with country living in todays world. I think the "homesteading" label has little meaning except to those that lived rural in the 1960s- 80s when the term was reintroduced to describe rural living with some self dependency. This was before the internet that now consumes time better spent getting the chicken poo out in the garden.

Maybe some of you remember Jerry Bellinger's magazine, Countryside. I subscribed to it for years, during my remote mountain living days, several off the grid. It was the most down to earth magazine out on subsistence living and didn't have the communal hippie living vibe that plagued Mother Earth.

From what I see is many of the self proclaimed experts on prepping that rule the internet forums, don't know Jack Frost from Jack Poo. They wouldn't last very long in a true survival situation.

One question I pose to would-be-preppers is, what are you going to do if the big crash comes and 100s of hungry folks come to your place because they know you have food. Will you invite them in and soon be out of food or start shooting them? What about the ones coming armed to the teeth that will have no problem in killing you? Think all the senecios through before you go crazy over making vast preparations and think you are secure.

My suggestion is to learn basic survival skills like fishing, hunting, and gathering food. Learn to use basic tools. Knowledge is the key to survival, not hoarding or doing modern prepping as the expert key pounding preppers will tell you. Live in a place with good neighbors and get to know them. It might surprise you how folks can come together in a community when disaster strikes.

Gardening and raising (including butchering) small livestock and poultry, is always a good skill to have. The time to learn is before disaster, not after. Having a pile of gold and silver, lots of guns and ammo, and an impressive array of solar cells, won't keep you alive if you lack the basic survival living skills.

One reason I returned to this forum was because I noticed the "prepping" nonsense was dying down. I have prepared for winter all my life, as do most rural living folks. The idea that some gadget will produce vast amounts of electricity from nothing, or a hand crack flashlight is a necessity, or having a two way radio could save your butt in a crisis, if the internet and cell phones go down, is just more than those that have years of rural living experience can handle.

In todays world, true self sufficiency is impossible even if you try to return to the ways of the early American Indians. If you have land, then taxes will have to be paid. I think common sense and those on here that post about their daily living and things they have done that depend more on their efforts than those of others, are the ones that will survive hard times.

I enjoy reading about home skills and repurposing by those that have done it. Doomsday prepping started back in the 1960s with all the Armageddon talk about nuclear war. I prefer the constructive aspect to more self sufficient living, than the destructive doomsday predictions.
 
havasu said:
A forum is only as good as members who help make it good. If someone holds back valuable information that could be shared but don't, then nobody benefits.
Click to expand...
I agree...only by posting will make it better or get better.

@Aerindel theres many things on here thats..using @Sourdough term..advance prepping...just one is @Peanut posts about making medicines and tinctures etc. from the wild and more.

If you work out prepping to its logical conclusion..you are a producer or hunter/gatherer type to combination of the two..so you either going to farm,garden,tend livestock,crop farm or live in wilds with least amount of people and kill fish and game.

theres is a huge portion of people who bought land and now have herds of livestock and much more...just one example is @sonya123 who moved to very rural area and has a pretty large herd from what i can tell.this is just one example..its a modern version..of historically the various peoples around the globe who for 100's and 1000's of years lived semi nomadic lives lending herds and seasonal crops both domestic crops and wild ones...mainly looking in east as Americas had no domestic livestock till introduction of them...one example is Spanish introduced sheep,goats and horses to Navajo and they instantly seen the value of them for meat,fiber for blankets and clothes to not freeze at night in area with low rainfall and not heavily timbered for fires and so much more.

SB the last few weeks is going through a culling and clean up it seems...all the sticky posts at top of each forum has been deleted or moved..and it should..place looked and was cluttered up a bunch in my opinion. grizzgals posts as moderator warning folks of how rules would be enforced are gone and they changed up various forums a bit as well.

blah blah blah..maybe more later
 
Aerindel said:
I notice this place is almost a ghost town. So I went and checked back on survivalist forums, (MIBH) and its a tiny vestige of what it once was.

So, is prepping dying lately? or prepping forums? or has everyone just moved somewhere else....and if so...where did everybody go?
Click to expand...
I disagree with you.

This forum is 6 years old, and certainly has never been as busy as other forums where I have seen you, Survivalist Board Forums, especially. We have grown slowly and steadily and have built up our posts over time. This forum was started with people who had known each other on PS had invited their friends they got to know there. There were some very active people there who never got invited because they weren't especially as friendly and couldn't have discussions without putting others down. (Know-it-alls)

How old is SBF? I believe it started before 2010. It was one of the first such forums.

The one thing about this forum is that people are closer to one another, friendlier, and are expected to be kind and respectful to one another, unlike Survivalist Board forums, where I have seen you. There are people here who talk to one another on the phone and who have met each other in person.

SBF is probably the busiest forums and where some people are know-it-alls, so self righteous and just plain nasty to one another. Some people there cannot disagree with you without being snarky and putting others down. I will never be active in places like that, and I rarely go visit those sites. When Kevin sold SF, it probably changed things, but he was never really about stopping drama.
 
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quick test to see if you have survival skills

Time 1am
Place your driveway

You turn the key and the vehicle will not start

What do you do?
Call auto club?
Call Daddy?
Pop the hood?

My answer is simple
I am going back to bed, aint no place I need to be at freaking 1am
 
I know I posted above about my perception that about the time of the pandemic dialogue changed.

One big thing that happened about the time of the pandemic was the loss of Ol’ Remus. I think I was transitioning to this board from SB about the time of his passing. There were easily a dozen threads each week generated on SB as a result of Ol Remus’ weekly blog, The Woodpile Report. Almost none of the threads gave Ol Remus the credit, but those threads were easy to spot as they came right from the report. Many of those threads were legendary often stemming from Ol’ Remus’ in depth opening blogs or from the “more stuff to think about” section where he would simply take you to a ledge, point in a direction and say you ought to think about this or that. It’s hard to replace the loss of the volume of in depth dialogue result from Ol’ Remus.
 
Prepping is a massive mental masturbation. It is currently each individual picking and choosing "ONLY" the parts that appeal to them. Think guns or knives, or BOB, etc.. No one wants to discuss the flaw in that.

The ugly truth is those serious about prepping accept that it involves arduous manual labor, serious physical fitness. Most preppers just want to "FEEL" good in their being better prepared than someone totally clueless about prepping.

No one wants to acknowledge the glaring holes in their preparations. Water is the fatal flaw in most prepping programs.

When you look honestly the serious preppers, are actually living it (or trying and failing to live it).

It is the transition that will be fatal. A bitter & painful lesson I learned Nov. 18, 2023.
 
Sourdough said:
Prepping is a massive mental masturbation. It is currently each individual picking and choosing "ONLY" the parts that appeal to them. Think guns or knives, or BOB, etc.. No one wants to discuss the flaw in that.

The ugly truth is those serious about prepping accept that it involves arduous manual labor, serious physical fitness. Most preppers just want to "FEEL" good in their being better prepared than someone totally clueless about prepping.

No one wants to acknowledge the glaring holes in their preparations. Water is the fatal flaw in most prepping programs.

When you look honestly the serious preppers, are actually living it (or trying and failing to live it).

It is the transition that will be fatal. A bitter & painful lesson I learned Nov. 18, 2023.
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Well, not everyone prepares for the same thing or chooses the same lifestyle/local, and nobody can be prepared for everything-

When I was a teen I lied my way into a car ride out to new Hampshire thinking I could take on the white mountains with a knife.. literally just a knife 🤦‍♂️

I barely made it out if there alive and thats not even the dumbest thing ive done since... I got humbled very quickly. Point being the "real" ones tend to be the folks that learned the lessons the hard way-

Ive noticed you've been a bit sour (no pun intended) since your most recent lesson. No judgement here, I believe I know a similar feeling- there's just no way to pass it onto other people- warning just doesn't do much good. Some things only experience can teach and not everyone survives the gauntlet of the transition.

you did.
 
Wait.. I'm a "Prepper"? 🤔 I thought I was just Finally able to follow / implement all my Grandparents' Excellent Example(s) in how to just Live Wisely - in Whatever 'circumstance' / context I Find myself - while I - work arduously and tirelessly to change those 'circumstances' for the Better / Wiser. :cool:
Aerindel said:
..Well, I moved here and then got banned during a certain night when for mysterious reason most of the most active members got banned.....
Click to expand...

Huh? 🤔 Yer talking about the 'Night of the Long Knives', yonder.. Right? (not, 'You / Others got Banned, Here'.. Correct? That'd be - odd - news to Me..)

Honestly, when there are 'long spells' where Members don't post, I just assume it's because they are Busy 'Living It' / Doing stuff - not disinterest, etc. Not sure 'posting' is the best 'metric' of peoples' preparedness / interest in the 'Lifestyle', and everyone has 'varied bandwidth' (ie: Peeps with Babies in cribs will usually have Less time to 'post' than, say, the Retired ol Sea Dogs, etc.. ;)

Alaskajohn said:
...It’s hard to replace the loss of the volume of in depth dialogue result from Ol’ Remus.
Click to expand...

Aye, and Ol 'Bunkerbuster', there, Sir Jim. Guy was Truly one of the 'Live like it Already Happened's (and yet, even He had a 'lapse of reasoning' (Broke OPSEC pretty bad - which led to him nearly getting killed during a Home invasion, which most-certainly did Not help better his cancer-situation, etc) but.. LOTS of great things learned from his ideas / thinking, regardless. :cool:

jd
 
Canon29 said:
Ive noticed you've been a bit sour (no pun intended) since your most recent lesson.
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I agree.......100%. There is not going to be a good solution. Me thinks death is the only solution to getting old.
 
Sourdough said:
I agree.......100%. There is not going to be a good solution. Me thinks death is the only solution to getting old.
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I'm sure you'll earn a good one and make it interesting- hopefully youll manage have some fun in the meantime. Idk if that's somethin' to be sour about though, i agree theres no good solution- but i also dont think thats the point anyways. all the men from history that I admire (the ones who lived to that age anyways) ran into the same problem that you're facing. Their greatness always made that particular part of life harder... i figure the less interesting folks can fade out easier because theres just less contrast in ability- less vivid memory of what they were and would continue to be if their bodies didnt break down- its unavoidable, but I think its trial worthy of your appreciation if you can manage to think of it like that. Remember who's watching- the harder it gets the brighter you shine... as they say- gettin' old ain't for pussies
 
various things and thoughts...

facing facts is we have an aging population. Many of the survival boards was driven by former military.....dont take this wrong way yall...but straight from many of their mouths...i am now in my late 50's to early 60's and i am not the 20 year old..this jumping in foxholes etc. takes a toll on the body...in fact i am seeing younger vets from 9-11 in their 40's saying the same thing.

people are struggling in real life money wise and much more,spouse deaths,divorces,deceased kids and the list goes on and on and all of this does take a toll...especially later in life.

sourdough and akjohn had biggest fight of their lives with changing weather and heavy snows...just like grizzgal did with katrina. these type events coupled with aging or lack of gas powered machinery,which is force multiplier on many levels it could be way worse...sourdough could be dead and john could be winter bound..truth is thats way it use to be..i mean theres a reason in heavy snow areas..take maine for example...houses had attached barns..just as example...if and when weather changes certain building techniques will happen again..especially if fuel gets super high priced or gets hard to find or is in lower production in future..it will be stay put and deal with ya paths with a shovel..period. i myself would miss my tractor with FEL on many levels.

death...just looking at my little local paper...man are people of all ages dying off..its unreal to be honest. all going to say about that..yall know why!

i have done all i can do..sorta...at age my ability to get around is far more important than anything...aging might just be one of the most over looked preps...especially if you look at percentages of possibilities of various events even happening.

changing things around myself..i have to really really think it out before spending money..not talking gadgets and crap..talking land,vehicles and more..big ticket items ya know.the reality is i cant replace the cash as easily PLUS...i am not as willing to just do hard ass grunt crap for dollars..i get more benefit from doing things different and i am viewing things different too.

one example..i would like to change something i have around a bit..to do so..its going to cost $1,000 to $1500 minimum. i keep asking myself..do i really need to do this...so far..its been NO.
 
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