"prepping" is a specific term for preparing for the collapse of society, it is not a generic term for preparation. Preparing for a natural disaster is not prepping.
"prepping" is a generic term for disaster preparations. I'm not sure why you think its appropriate to advocate for a narrow usage of the term, but none of my prepper friends would agree with you.
I think the number of people who actually perform prepping is vastly larger than the number of people consuming media trying to redefine the term, so that campaign will be an uphill climb.
If a snowstorm blocks the roads and takes out your power for a week, what is that if not a local collapse of society? Utilities, emergency responders, access to grocery stores... these are things we take for granted that can and have been temporarily disrupted by natural disasters.
"16,000 Canadian Forces personnel deployed, 12,000 in Quebec and 4,000 in Ontario at the height of the crisis."
Many people were left without electricity, heating and even food. Alarms were disabled, police couldn't reach some neighborhoods and there was a lot of crime. Law and order were put on hold, until the army got to us.
Law and order were put on hold, until the army got to us.
I'm Canadian, grew up in the area, was living in BC during the ice storm, and returned soon thereafter.
No one I know would describe it this way. I've never heard the ice storm described this way.
Yes, many people were without services for extended periods of time. Yes, the Army was required to clear roads, removed downed trees, and was in play to help calm the public.
Yet "Law and order" on hold, paints a picture I do not believe as accurate. I sounds as if hoodlums and criminals were running rampant in the streets. Can you find any news articles, any info collaborating this, or some variation?
Certainly, I know of many people with snowmobiles, which made trips to get supplies and so forth for neighbours. I also know stories of people sharing, helping their neighbours.
I've been without power for 2 weeks where I live, due to a massive windstorm, and living in a very rural location.
Where I grew up, in the mid/late 1970s, our entire county's substation blew up, when covered with one of the largest snowfalls of the century (snow was literally to the top of telephone poles, I recall my father having to climb out of a second story window, and dig a path so we could get out of the back door and start digging out...).
The storm was already big, but it was coupled with lake effect snow in my area. Needless to say, it took weeks to get power back, clear the roads of 10+ feet of snow, which fell over a few days.
In none of these cases, did everything break down. People just stuck together.
NOTE: I fully agree that eventually, things will break down. If people have no food, and there is no food available, people will ensure they have food.
But none of these events seem quite like this.
Even a city apartment often has more than a week of something to eat. Even if it's old lima beans. :P
In short, increases of crimes and then declines of crimes once the army is deployed.
> "Analyses indicate that there is a direct effect of increased public enforcement on the number of infractions reported in the affected areas."
> "The Montérégie region: [...] a relative increase of about 50%, while it is only 15% in Montreal."
> "For the Montreal region, we observe that the deployment of police forces has resulted in a significant decrease in property crime and crimes against persons. In addition, the deployment of military personnel has also led to a decrease in property crimes."
They explain the increases in criminality with: "In other words, while the door-to-door operation would reduce property crime, it would at the same time increase the visibility of certain offences such as burglary".
I am not certain if their conclusion is accurate. But whether or not, this explains the rumors of people breaking into people's homes/cabins during that initial period and how the presence of the army calmed people's fears.
Never was it gangs roaming in the street (knowing the organized crime scene of Montreal, getting caught looting by the leading criminal elements during such an emergency would result in sever punishment) but small criminals working in the shadow.
The article also agrees with one of your points: "The work of Quarantelli (1960; 2001) shows that one of the main characteristics of human behaviour in times of disaster is not to flee, but to stay and persist as long as possible in daily activities (preserving their environmental reference)."
I have to agree with Cory Doctorow: when shit hits the fan, it's solidarity what happens. "The fact that we remain here today, after so many disasters in our species’ history, is a reminder that we are a species of self-rescuing princesses—characters who save one another in crisis, rather than turning on ourselves"[0]. It certainly has been the case in my city of 20-something million, total collapse due to earthquake, overwhelming self organizing and mutual help. People will probably turn on the rich and powerful, though, and the narrative of law and order breakdown if no police/government is likely coming from them
I lost power for a few days during that ice storm. And a number of years later, another storm only knocked me out for about a day but there were people without power for 2-3 weeks. People stayed with relatives and friends, presumably there were emergency shelters, etc. But there was no armed gangs roaming the street in the Northeast and I doubt there were in Canada either.
And they had the tools to deal with it. I can't make a fire with my spare wood in my city apartment. A society where a large portion of the population dies is a societal collapse.
I think "prepping" can be generically any act of preparing ("I'm prepping for the new deployment," "I'm prepping for my trip to Mexico", "I'm prepping for the show tonight").
I have heard the term "prepper" used pretty much exclusively for people who prepare for societal collapse, though.
There may be a media push to constrain the meaning, but that has not been the common American English usage for the 20th Century at least. Prepping for an exam. Prepping a turkey. Common usage.
Odd that an attempt is made to distort the meaning of “prepping” in a forum called Hacker News. I remember about 20 years ago when there was an attempt by the media to limit the term “hacking” to unethical IT practices, instead of the whole range of creative ad-hoc system and product fixes. The community was annoyed...
Often during an acute natural disaster people help each other out and are more mutually supportive than normal. People usually find ways to get the basics up and running, such as shelter and food, pretty fast.
Relying on your neighbors to be prepared and able to help you out does seem to be a very popular way to 'prepare', but I don't think it's an approach to encourage...
But in practice natural disasters are rarely a "collapse of society" sort of thing. It's more that you should have supplies and shelter, and a way to communicate. In the middle of difficulties where people work together, I'd say that's "society" in action.
"Collapse of society" tends to be more descriptive of human-driven disasters such as war and civil war, where people start turning against each other and there's high levels of mutual distrust and violence.
We all live in a society. If folks need help in an exceptional time and you do not help them, folks will remember that you spent the time locked in your bunker instead of helping the neighbor whose supplies were flooded. Someone is always going to be forced to rely on others: A wheelchair cannot easily go over downed limbs, for example, and the user won't necessarily be able to flee a fire without help.
Additionally, if you want folks to be prepared, they need both the means to prepare and the space to do it - which basically means having a robust safety net and/or minimum pay laws.
Being prepared has nothing to do with it. Nobody was prepared for the Anchorage earthquake of 1964, but within minutes people had self-organized into firefighting and excavation teams, set up emergency response relays with a hodgepodge of walkie-talkies, police radio, and AM broadcasters, and within hours there was a centralized volunteer dispatch and food bank.
Relying on your neighbors in a disaster doesn't mean hiding out in their anti-zombie bunker. It means knowing that the entire community will respond together to overcome the emergency.
Being prepared doesn't have to mean being a loon hiding in a bunker. Elsewhere in this thread I have recommended having some canned food, water, and a flashlight. These are very easy ways to prepare for a wide variety of unlikely scenarios.
If you're preparing for a natural disaster that prevents society from functioning normally for some time, then you're a prepper.
Prepping, means preparing for situations where you will no longer be able to rely on society to provide the services it normally does, regardless of the reasons.
It's sort of a spectrum, though, isn't it? I mean, we had a sorta/kinda "collapse" in April for a few weeks. There were genuine shortages of some stuff.
And more topically: let's be honest, right now the US is on a crazy train heading straight for riots and a general strike come December 14th. Are nationwide giant protests against a stolen government a "collapse of society" too? A little, yeah.
Natural disasters and societal collapse are totally separate things.
They're similar, but similar in the same way a paper cut is to a life threatening laceration. It's a spectrum to be sure, but you need dramatically different strategies to deal with them.
