The negative effect is that people will equate prepping with anti-government ideology and then refuse to prep, thereby creating more problems when an emergency occurs. That will increase the load on us that do prepare for real world emergencies, as we are generally social people and care more about our communities than the non-preppers do.

The article referred to two books that define survivalist as anti-government. This is the hazard and why we need to be cognizant of how we approach certain subjects.