{"id":59427,"date":"2020-08-08T03:00:41","date_gmt":"2020-08-08T07:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=59427"},"modified":"2020-08-07T13:58:07","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T17:58:07","slug":"the-show-exploits-the-most-extreme-disaster-larpers-but-their-visions-of-the-apocalypse-are-typical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/08\/08\/the-show-exploits-the-most-extreme-disaster-larpers-but-their-visions-of-the-apocalypse-are-typical\/","title":{"rendered":"“The show exploits the most extreme disaster LARPers, but their visions of the apocalypse are typical”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jen Gerson<\/a> does a bit of disaster-watching, or rather not so much watching disasters as watching people prepping<\/em> for disasters:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you spend a few hours devoted to consuming episodes of the reality TV show Doomsday Preppers<\/em>, it becomes impossible to avoid this obvious conclusion: doomsday preppers are probably the least prepared of any of us to survive the apocalypse. <\/p>\n

Take Season 2, Episode 14, for example, in which a 44-year-old man in Hawaii believes that he will use his intuition and limited backcountry skills to survive a tsunami \u2014 his first such intuition is to get into a boat. <\/p>\n

More typically, the television show documents Middle American families who believe they can buy their way out of society’s collapse by burying bunkers and stockpiling food, weapons and tactical gear. <\/p>\n

Most of them seem paranoid. A few come off as genuinely disturbed. All of them seem sad. <\/p>\n

Ask them what they’re so afraid of and they will list their apocalypse of choice: electromagnetic pulse, financial collapse, famine, drought, coup, a population-devastating plague. <\/p>\n

The show exploits the most extreme disaster LARPers, but their visions of the apocalypse are typical. We were all prepared for zombies, and aliens \u2014 the surround-sound end-of-the world in which we would take up arms against invading forces and ferry our children to the bug-out Eden in the mountains. <\/p>\n

Nobody pictured the apocalypse would like this; stuck at home for months at a time, pounding Oreos and beer at 11 a.m. and watching Doomsday Preppers<\/em> on Netflix while faking a work day on the couch. For most, heroism has been an act of idleness. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jen Gerson does a bit of disaster-watching, or rather not so much watching disasters as watching people prepping for disasters: If you spend a few hours devoted to consuming episodes of the reality TV show Doomsday Preppers, it becomes impossible to avoid this obvious conclusion: doomsday preppers are probably the least prepared of any of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,13],"tags":[299,248,376],"class_list":["post-59427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-usa","tag-paranoia","tag-realitytv","tag-survivalism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-fsv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59429,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59427\/revisions\/59429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}