We’re Prepared for the End of the World (and didn’t even know it)

As I’ve said before, I’m a freelance writer by trade. I have ongoing contracts with several publishers and news agencies and I’m constantly getting guides and prompts from my editors telling me what I should be writing about. I’m not a hard hitting news writer, mind you, I’m proud to be a ‘Fluff Writer”. I write about food, health, gardening, and whatever else I can think of. I write articles like “The Art of Making a Milk Free, Egg Free Coffee Cake” (click the link to read that one). I usually stay away from things like politics, unless I feel very strongly about something.

Every once in a while something comes across my desk that makes me laugh, sometimes hysterically. Like this one prompt that came in from a publisher a few days ago about “Doomsday Prepping”. I don’t write about such things for this publisher, and never really considered writing about it for any publisher (other than the lady that publishes my scifi books). But, I always read the description of the prompt before putting it in the circular file.

This particlar one was described as how to go about storing things like water, food supplies, guns, fuel, etc. I went to one of the suggested source sites and read the list of things they (professional doomsday preppers) say one needs to in order to survive the end of the world. The list included: 200 gallons of water, private well, diesel generators, 3 cords of firewood, one firearm for each person in the family, ammo and relaoding equipment, foot powered sewing machine, 10+ bolts of fabric of different weights and function, an assortment of knives, gardening tools, full set of cast iron cookware, wood burning stove, outdoor and indoor farming facilities, anti-venom, road salts, and more.

As I read the description I forgot what the list was for. It was only when I finished that I looked back at the top that I was reminded “Doomsday Prepping for the End of the World”. My first reaction was “Huh! We do that here. But we call it “preparing for winter”.

It just blows my mind that these things are considered end of the world type stuff. It reminded me of a scene in a book by John Ringo where the kids are playing hide-and-seek in gilly suits they made themselves in school. My reaction to that was “Doesn’t everybody?” And yes, I really did play hide-and-seek in gilly suits, but we didn’t make them at school. We just took old burlap rice sacks and stuck whatever vegetation we could find into them. But that’s just what farm kids do, especially when you have 25 acres between you to play hide-and-seek on.

And the really funny part is, I know that all the city slickers reading this think I’m exaggerating. People, I’m not.