> TEOTWAWKI Blog: Anyone else sick of the prepper label?

Pages

12/7/12

Anyone else sick of the prepper label?

Before there were preppers, there were survivalists. Survivalist came into common usage in the 70s on into the 80s. Eventually, survivalists came to be associated with threatening anti-establishment types who wore camo, ran around with evil black guns and blew stuff up. Scary stuff to the average person.

So prepper came into the vernacular - I'm not sure who coined it, but it became the warmer, friendlier term for someone who put back food, water, medical supplies, and of course guns'n'ammo. But maybe without the camo and some of the extreme political views. Less scary to the average person, or at least a fresh start.

"Prepper" of course now has all of it's own new negative stigma associated with it. See the NatGeo TV show Doomsday Preppers. People made to look like loons. Today, if the average person knows what a prepper is, they're probably thinking the overweight, delusional white folks with guns they saw on cable. Yay! Big step up! Really, watch a couple episodes and tell me if you still want to be associated with the label.

And, if they haven't seen the NatGeo show, prepper is not a particularly clear label for the uninitiated. A prepper is what - one who preps? Preps for what? Going to college? Going on a cruise? Really, I've gotten feedback from average every day people who are interested in learning more but are confused by what the heck "prepping" is and what "preppers" are.

Why the confusion? Prepper is not a real word. Look it up in the dictionary - it's not there! It's a lame made up word. Seriously, it's quite lame sounding--prepper ranks up there with "Trekkie" and "Twihard". Action hero cool it will never be.

So, while I have used the prepper label occasionally in the past, it's not been with a lot of fondness for it. More like a feeling of "man, am I compromising in terms of being politically correct?". If you're really bored and want to go back and check, you'll see I usually associate prepper with survivalist or survival.

But, "prepper" been the common descriptor for what we do for the past several years, so I've used it, despite my mild distaste for it.

Screw that. I'm done with it.

Forget about political correctness or latent memories from the 80s--I'm a survivalist, not a prepper. If that gives liberals panic attacks, then oh well.

Survivalist is descriptive of what we do - a survivalist is one who survives. Pretty clear--no questions asked.

Survivalist is also actually a real word. It's even in the dictionary. See! Here's the copy paste:

Definition of SURVIVALIST

: a person who advocates or practices survivalismespecially: one who has prepared to survive in the anarchy of an anticipated breakdown of society
Hmm, that sounds a lot like what we do, doesn't it?

So, I'm done with "prepper"--you won't find me using it around here, and I encourage you to evaluate whether you think it's a label that suits you.

Me? I am a survivalist and proud of it. How about you?