A month or so ago, Libby and I stumbled upon a show called Doomsday Preppers (on the Science Channel, I think--though I think that was a bit of a stretch for appropriateness). Normally, I am not a fan of reality programming. At all, really. I can't think of a single reality show that I've watched more than an episode of and thought, "I'm going to watch that again and genuinely enjoy the experience!" And I'm not one of those people who will watch a show like that Honey Boo Boo show because "It's like watching a train wreck." I wouldn't watch a train wreck, either. I would probably try to call emergency services or make my way to the wreckage to try to help people out. But that's just me.
But this doomsday show kept my attention for a couple hours--through three or four episodes, anyway, so however long that took. The concept is pretty straight forward. A crazy person or crazy family makes preparations for one of the various end of times scenarios floating around. The episode is spent describing their preparations and introducing us to the family and their crackpot theories. Then, at the end, they are given a grade based on how likely it would be for them to survive the disaster of their choosing and they are given constructive criticism on how they might improve their survivability.
I'm not sure what caught my interest. Possibly that particular kind of crazy/paranoid appeals to me. I mean, what kind of experiences must a person have endured to come under the unwavering notion that the magnetic poles are going to shift. Seriously. One of these people had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars preparing for exactly that catastrophe. There is a one in several billion chance of that happening ever, much less in this guy's lifetime. And if it DOES happen, it's difficult to see how it is going to have catastrophic effects on much of anything. I guess his theory was that it would unleash a powerful EMP field that would kill all electronic devices? Yet he installed CCTV cameras all over his little bunker. Truly remarkable.
Apocalypse IS a kind of fun topic to think on. And there are so many options these days. Financial collapse. Asteroid strike. Zombies. Plagues. Aliens. Pole shifts? You name it and it can wipe out humanity! Really, with all the things we can be scared of, it's pretty amazing that we can get anything done in an average day.
But I have neither the obsessive-compulsive personality nor the financial means to dedicate myself to such an undertaking. Of course, I could still mentally and physically prepare for such time as modern civilization ends. I could be training my body and teaching myself valuable skills to help my family survive. But, meh. What if there ISN'T an end of days during my life time? Then all that effort would have been wasted. Better just to hope that my neighbors or someone we happen upon has been making preparations and is willing to let us join the community they have formed behind their walls of stacked SUVs and corpses.
OR I can rely on the survival skills my son is learning at the school we're sending him to.
This morning we were going through our morning routine of periodically nagging him to get ready while he distracted himself with anything nearby and then getting him ready for him after a few frustrating minutes when, rather out of the blue, he started talking about working in the school's garden and he mentioned propagation. He used that word, specifically. Libby asked him what it meant and he said, "Making a new plant by using part of an old plant." Pretty much spot on. The kid can't put slip-on shoes on reliably. He can't remember to wipe himself after he takes a dump 1 out of 5 times. But somehow he can remember this horticultural terminology. Boggles the mind.
And after he said it, after the shock of him knowing what such a complicated word meant wore off, my first thought was, "I'm glad he is learning this stuff about growing food. It will come in handy after the apocalypse because I suck at gardening." So, maybe my interest in the Doomsday Preppers show wasn't sideshow curiosity so much as it was a kind of kinship striving to come out. Too bad I don't have a few hundred thousand dollars lying around so I can build a suitable bunker.
Its probably okay for Gabe to be talking about learning about propagation at school at this age. By the time High School comes around he might be talking about something else.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of gardening one thing that I have learned is that Kansas' sucky soil did not help our gardening cause. I am sure one can still do it well there with work, but here I have a much better chance for my garden's survival. So move to Kentucky if you want to survive the apocalypse. We will have plenty of Bourbon to get us through.