new favorite tv show

is doomsday preppers broadcast on the national geographic channel. oh yeah. last weekend i was doing a little channel surfing and found a couple of reruns of this program. ostensibly it's a docu of ordinary people who are preparing for mass catastrophes, both either natural or human-made, and the resulting collapse of society and surging civil unrest.

my what do we find here we used to call survivalists. and survivalists around 10 or 20 years ago were usually depicted in the popular media as extremists whose common sense went south. nowadays with global warming, economic instabilities, growing civil agitation via the occupy movements in response to rising disparities of wealth, and the very fact that we have a global population that is getting larger and larger, individuals who are preparing for the collapse of civilization are getting more respect. and their own show.

what's interesting to me is why some people believe something like massive solar flares that knock out our power grid, or hyper-inflation leading to collapsing global economies, will create panic and violence in society that will bring upon its own collapse. shit's happened in the past and society withstood intact. no matter, obsessions remain that their preparations for the end of the world becomes like a religion.

perhaps that's why i love the show. these people's lives become details of preparations. guns, ammo and food are the connective tissue to their metaphysical, nee spiritual, malaise. if the end comes they want to be the persons who will say to the rest of us, told ya so.

a few individuals profiled are indeed prepared while most are rather deluded into thinking that a few cans of food, some water, a gun, and the hope of living thru their worst fears, are enough for survival. time will only tell. as for the rest of us, we have a new show to watch and gauge our own thoughts of survival against those whose lives are emblems of an attempted arrest against entropy and decay. long live the american dream.