Nathan_Bell
07-12-10, 10:35
Didn't know if putting it here or GD would have been the best. Went here because a lot of what we are discussing stocking up on or finding; our grandparents kept on site due to their view of life being what I used as a thread title.
They really did live by those words. "Plan for the worst, hope for the best". This directed all of their purchasing and storing. I am guessing it is because they were closer to a time when if you screwed up with your planning there was a chance that you would be hungry come winter time. My grandmother was born in 1919 and her mother in 1889, so they both knew people who had to make hard choices to make certain their family was fed and sheltered.
I see it that we began to lose this mindset in the 1950's. We got over the post war production reshuffling recession and it was looking to be that we were on easy street. The Baby boomers were raised in this environment.
In addition to growing up in this environment, they also had the 1960's counter-culture revolution with its anti anything that was established. For the over grown adolescents that made up much of this 'movement' the funnest thing to overthrow was the stodginess of their parents' mindset of: "save until you can buy it", "buy quality and buy once", "have no debt", etc. I think that rebellion against authority is largely to thank for our culture being one of worrisome fragility.
Entirely too much of the world's economy and our infrastructure systems are based on almost everything working as designed. Look at manufacturing and food for examples.
The just in time manufacturing is a great example of this. The idea is to take all of the slack out of the supply chain so that a manufacturing plant isn't also a warehouse with that attendant additional overhead. The weakness of this in the automotive industry has been shown several times in my memory, twice due to strikes and once due to flooding. A downstream supplier struck and the car plants were on limited production within a week, saw that twice at the plant near me. A multi-billion dollar company hit hard due to the decisions of approx 5% of its employees is an efficient design?
Think about your non-prepper friends and family. How many of them could roll for 3+ days without power without having to throw out or fast prep about 60% of the food in their house? One long weekend worth of no power and they are going to be staring at cans of kidney beans and diced tomatoes and trying to eat as much of the meat that they just grilled before it goes bad. I know that, even into her late 70's, my grandmother always had enough canned food to roll for a few weeks and only a bare minimum of frozen/refrigerated staples. The inside of her fridge always reminded me of a display model, as there was so little inside of it that you could see all the details.
Just a few rambling thoughts on how our society has 'developed' into one that has some systemic flaws and they can all largely be traced back to ignoring that maxim. "plan for the worst, hope for the best"
They really did live by those words. "Plan for the worst, hope for the best". This directed all of their purchasing and storing. I am guessing it is because they were closer to a time when if you screwed up with your planning there was a chance that you would be hungry come winter time. My grandmother was born in 1919 and her mother in 1889, so they both knew people who had to make hard choices to make certain their family was fed and sheltered.
I see it that we began to lose this mindset in the 1950's. We got over the post war production reshuffling recession and it was looking to be that we were on easy street. The Baby boomers were raised in this environment.
In addition to growing up in this environment, they also had the 1960's counter-culture revolution with its anti anything that was established. For the over grown adolescents that made up much of this 'movement' the funnest thing to overthrow was the stodginess of their parents' mindset of: "save until you can buy it", "buy quality and buy once", "have no debt", etc. I think that rebellion against authority is largely to thank for our culture being one of worrisome fragility.
Entirely too much of the world's economy and our infrastructure systems are based on almost everything working as designed. Look at manufacturing and food for examples.
The just in time manufacturing is a great example of this. The idea is to take all of the slack out of the supply chain so that a manufacturing plant isn't also a warehouse with that attendant additional overhead. The weakness of this in the automotive industry has been shown several times in my memory, twice due to strikes and once due to flooding. A downstream supplier struck and the car plants were on limited production within a week, saw that twice at the plant near me. A multi-billion dollar company hit hard due to the decisions of approx 5% of its employees is an efficient design?
Think about your non-prepper friends and family. How many of them could roll for 3+ days without power without having to throw out or fast prep about 60% of the food in their house? One long weekend worth of no power and they are going to be staring at cans of kidney beans and diced tomatoes and trying to eat as much of the meat that they just grilled before it goes bad. I know that, even into her late 70's, my grandmother always had enough canned food to roll for a few weeks and only a bare minimum of frozen/refrigerated staples. The inside of her fridge always reminded me of a display model, as there was so little inside of it that you could see all the details.
Just a few rambling thoughts on how our society has 'developed' into one that has some systemic flaws and they can all largely be traced back to ignoring that maxim. "plan for the worst, hope for the best"