The concept of Doomsday Preppers is pretty cool - a "prepper" shows you what they've done to get ready for a particular disaster, and then an unnamed panel of survival experts evaluates their preps and makes recommendations. It's fairly well done and unbiased - there's no attempt to portray the preppers as crazies, though some of the preppers are certainly a little bit more, err, eccentric than others. The expert recommendations are usually pretty spot-on, too.
National Geographic reached out to me last week to see if I would be interested in an advanced screener copy of the first episode of Season 2. I guess we've hit the big time here at T-Blog! Hard to say no to a sneak peak - the DVD was at my door on Friday.
Overall, looks like Season 2 picks up where the previous left off - generally pretty good prepper TV. If you get NatGeo, tune in or set your DVR to record. While I'm not allowed to give detailed spoilers, I can you guys a sneak peak, right? The episode - entitled Bullets, Lots of Bullets - looks at:
- Paul and Gloria, the Retiree Preppers
- Christopher, the Street Survivor
- Megan, the Young Urban Prepper
Christopher is interesting--a "bush hippy" who lives in the middle of Los Angeles. Lots of knowledge of wild edibles, but some clear holes in his plans...like trying to survive around L.A. post collapse. Not where I would want to be!
Megan is an interesting character - a self-professed "party girl," dramatic and a bit loopy. She gave the producers more than a few quotes to use in promos - the episode's title, for example, comes from her. My wife found her mildly offensive, but your mileage may vary. Certainly a change of pace from the more traditional prepper demographics.
For all three, the panel of "practical preppers" give good, solid advice. Heck, they recommended that one of the preppers needed to suck it up and buy some guns! It's a rare TV show that recommends people go out and purchase guns for protection post-collapse - thumbs up there. They do a "follow up" with the preppers a few weeks after the film, and the preppers have usually actually taken the expert advice into consideration and made some changes to their plans.
One complaint - the producers make each prepper pick one particular end of the world event that they're preparing for - from coronal mass ejections to economic collapse. While I think most of us have a top few problems that we're concerned about, I think we're more broadly focused in our preparations. Having such a singular focus makes the preppers seem a bit more out there/paranoid - like they're preparing ONLY for a polar shift, earthquake, solar flare, etc. - when that's really not the case. Minor nitpick.
Anyways, it's very interesting to see the plans and preps that other preppers have made - there's a really broad variance in level of preparation - some are very well prepared, and some think they're well prepared but have some obvious holes in their preps. Not good practice of operational security for even the best prepared, but hey, some people will trade discretion for some time on TV.
Overall, Doomsday Preppers is refreshingly pro-preparedness and worth checking out. This episode premieres on the National Geographic channel on Tuesday, February 7th at 9pm ET/PT.
In the meantime, there are video clips and profiles on the show's website - natgeotv.com/preppers.