Preppers, Are You a Hammer?
Kevin Felts 07.20.17
There is an old saying that goes something like, “To a hammer, everything is a nail.” As with other old sayings there are other versions, such as “If all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.”
So, preppers, are you a hammer?
In other words, do you have a canned response for various prepping situations? Has your prepping ideology been forced to a narrow path that everything has to conform to?
Let’s throw out an example.
Back in the 1990s a buddy of mine got into prepping. He had about one week of food stockpiled, an SKS and a couple of hundred rounds of ammunition.
When I asked about expanding his preps, his reply was, “I just need enough to last until I find someone with more than I have, kill them and take what they have.”
When the topic of the SKS in an urban environment came up, this was back in the 1990s and there were a lot of theories going around that Bill Clinton was going to use the United Nations to disarm the population of the United States. His plan was to take out anyone wearing a blue helmet with his SKS, then pick up their weapon.
Rather than being self-sufficient, his whole prepping plan revolved around taking from others. There were no plans for a natural disaster. such as a hurricane, or other short term situations.
Whether it was food, gear, firearms.. etc, his whole prepping plan was to take from others. His whole ideology was for a complete collapse of society, a world without rule or law.
Both of us lived in the Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange area of Southeast Texas. A few years after having those discussions, Hurricanes Ike and Rita made landfall in the area. His narrow prepping plans had excluded the very real threat of Hurricanes, but instead focused on something that never happened.
That buddy was the classic example of a hammer. Everything he saw fit his narrow idea of what a prepping plan should be.
Try not to be a hammer, be a tool box. Accept the fact that natural disasters do happen. But, there is also a very real possibility of a nuclear exchange, plague, new strain of flu… etc.
