to:martinfocazio

I was watching a Ron Hood video about his home prepardness a while back. Early in the video he discusses the idea of "should he really show everybody his own stashes?" He debates this idea with the educational value of showing the viewers how he preps his home. Then a few minutes later his camera is running around the house showing the locations of all his stuff; 2 cases of MRE's under his bed, bed lockers, living room blanket lockers, closets, kitchen cabinets/pantry, basement stock room, BOBs, weaponry/ammunition, etc.

I was a little perplexed that would deliberately indicate all his hiding places when he could have simply have given examples of places and not give out his secrets. All during his house tour though, I couldn't help but think that he was only showing his small potatoes stuff and that in the back yard he has a huge cache of materials that he wasn't letting on to. This is the same guy who spent min. $200k on a bomb shelter after he got back from Vietnam in the '70s, then sold it, and now wishes he still had it.

The whole idea of stockpiling several months supply of anything is a bit mind boggling to me. Never mind the "logic" or rationale for the stockpiling. I guess it takes a different mindset than what I have. During the Cuban missile crises there were plenty of people who created their own bunkers; during the Y2K craze, stockpiling hit another peak and post 9-11/Katrina you still find this urge for independent self preservation.

I saw a link to a starvation experiment article a while back. One thing that caught my eye was that during the experiment, the subjects took to hoarding whatever foodstuffs they could get their hands on, a few even took to "cheating" on the experiment. This food hoarding sometimes continued after the experiment was over and the subjects returned to good health. So I am curious as to the psychological conditions that set off this impulse.

What I am saying is that stockpiling foodstuffs and arsenals, etc. is more than just a good prepardness reasoning. Being prepared with supplies is always a good thing but realistically what are the chances of requiring a 12 month stash? There is also a irrational, more complex emotion going on in the background of people's minds. Fear. Fear of being attacked. Fear of not being able to defend oneself. Fear that is spawned from previous events like the cold war or 9-11 or a major catastrophe.

A female friend of mine walks around all the time with the fear getting raped. To the point of it being an irrational fear. Being a guy, I don't relate to this intimate thinking. In fact I can honestly say I don't an irrational fear of anything (except ladders). Likewise growing up on the Canadian prairies, knowing that my country has never been attacked or been the object of planned nuclear attack or that we haven't had a local major catastrophe in many many years, it's possible I may be lulled in a feeling of being safe all the time.