This is a common and valid argument SB. Many today who criticize preppers and claim they have faith in God may actually have faith in Wal-Mart and the power company. Take away the power grid and the local grocery store and people start to panic. Consider Sandy and Katrina victims.
I have researched my ancestry back to the 1600s. The people prior to the 1880s prepped every day of their lives... including Christians. If you did not prep for the future it was you who were considered weird and irresponsible. It is only this modern age that thinks prepping is not something we should do. If an EMP were to take place, 90% of the population would die within 3 months. That is not a fear statistic, it is a factual one. Most people simple do not know the simple skills required to survive on a day to day basis. Today we live in an artificial economy and culture that is propped up by easy energy and easy money. Take away either and you are back in the 1600s striving to survive off the land.
I really do not prep for my self. I and my wife do not prep for ourselves. We are in our 60s and we have grandchildren. We prep for them No way I am going to watch my little ones starve. Nothing to do with fear... just a solid knowledge of the Bible, history, and signs of the times.
Peace
You're absolutely right.
My dad's family were real, honest to goodness, Appalachian hillbillies. My dad grew up plowing fields behind a mule. Our grandparents, who still lived on the farm he grew up on, had a neighbor who still plowed his field that way (this was around the mid-70s) and did demonstrations at a local living history museum and state park. Not that my dad ever thought we would use those skills, but because he wanted us to know where we come from and to teach us the value of a day's work, he asked the man to teach us how to do that, just the way he taught my dad forty years before. So I can honestly say I know how to do that. I doubt I'll ever have to, but it's better to have a skill and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
Likewise, my uncle was a master butcher. I apprenticed under him. Between what he and my dad taught me, I've been butchering and dressing chickens, livestock, and game for forty years. My grandfather taught me to clean a fish in a fraction of the time it takes most people and not leave a hint of bone.
My dad and my maternal grandfather taught me how to fix anything and build just about anything out of spare parts. They grew up in the Depression and WWII, where you didn't waste anything and if something broke, you just kept on fixing it until it couldn't be fixed anymore, and then you salvaged what you could for parts.
Back in the 70s, there was a magazine and a series of books called Foxfire. They were about the old time skills and knowledge and folk songs and stories. Mr. Bailey, the man I mentioned with the mules really got under my skin and I really took to it. I bought these and memorized just about every one of them. I was lucky because this was back when a lot of these people were still alive and I lived in an area where I could take advantage of their knowledge. Most of it, I'll never use. In modern day, a lot of it really doesn't have much practical application. "Hey, baby. Want to see me insulate a lean to with cattails?" doesn't really have the cache with women it once did.
My kids roll their eyes when we walk through the woods and I say, "You can eat that" or "if you're camping and you run out of toilet paper, you can use this" or "drop this in some water and let it steep and drink it if you've got a cold". They think it's silly, but at least they have the skills.
Also, it doesn't have to be an EMP. About five years ago, we were snowed in for about three weeks by two back to back blizzards. We lived so far out in the country that they didn't plow our roads, so if we hadn't been preppers, we would have been up the creek. While I neighbors were trying to keep warm and find something to eat, we were out sledding and playing in the snow.
Bad weather, inflation, even a truckers' strike or a spike in oil prices can all interrupt supply lines and disrupt out daily lives.
If we're right, and I hope we're not, and something terrible happens, then we're covered. If it doesn't, then what's the worst that's happened? We saved a ton of money, we're not in debt, we've eaten much healthier, and we've taught our children how to work and spent time with them. That doesn't sound so bad.
