



On Saturday, the editors at the New York Times decided to print Alan Feuer’s story of his odyssey into the fringes of society — the “preppers,” those people who are preparing for some type of national collapse, often the insolvency of the U.S. financial system.

Feuer, a reporter for the Times who has determined for himself that the U.S. economic system is set for a major shakeup, including high levels of price inflation, said he became concerned about his financial future somewhere “between the fall of Lehman Brothers [in 2008] and the corresponding rise of quantitative easing when it occurred to me … that the financial system was appallingly unstable and that the realm of the possible now included a disruptive reduction in the value of our money.”

With only occasional barbs thrown at “preppers,” such as derisively commenting about people who believe that “bug out bags” — kits or backpacks filled emergency supplies — were somehow sufficient to see people “through the collapse of civilization,” Feuer reported on a vast network of people and corresponding websites devoted to the idea of “preparing for the worst,” or The End of the World as We Know It, each with differing views of the coming cataclysm.

What he found was vastly different than he expected:

To the unprepared, the very word “prepper” is likely to summon images of armed zealots hunkered down in bunkers awaiting the End of Days, but the reality, at least here in New York, is less dramatic.

Local Preppers are doctors, doormen, charter school executives, subway conductors, advertising writers and happily married couples from the Bronx. They are no doubt people that you know — your acquaintances and neighbors. People, I’ll admit, like myself.

Of course, as is fitting with “The Newspaper of Record,” a leftist lean was clearly evident. Feur showed his disdain for people who believe that many of the world’s wealthiest people work in a concerted fashion to influence the direction of international politics — even though the wealthy often admit to doing that very thing: “Prepping” to the uninitiated or deliberately misinformed, he said, “continues to be thought of as a marginal and unseemly business, something on par with believing that the Bilderberg Group controls world events.”

But he determined that, for the most part, prepping was a very rationale endeavor, even participating himself. He started his journey by purchasing some silver coins as recommended by a friend, and then some freeze-dried food (in both the standard and vegetarian options), and then “began the conversation about acquiring a gun.”

He found intelligent people of sound mind to help him along his journey to understanding not only how to prepare but to also understand the mindset of those further along the same journey. He interviewed Aton Edwards, a prepper with credibility and a membership of 30,000 people belonging to his International Preparedness Network. Edwards is also the author of Preparedness Now which is into its second revision, and a frequent guest on radio and television in New York City. Edwards disabused Feuer of any idea that “preppers” were aliens from another planet. The prepper “movement,” as he now calls it, is simply a “mishmash of people you could … find — black, white, men, women, everyone. It looks like America.”

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You can never be to prepared.It’s best to play it smart and have a long lasting food reserve for the nightmare that is coming and the people that sneer at that could very well be the ones starving to death in the end .[From SHTFplanThat day will soon be upon us, and one way or the other life in America as we have come to know it will take a drastic turn for the worse. When civilizations transform in this way it often results in violence, starvation and bloodshed. Prepare for it, because it will be on our doorsteps soon enough.]