they would be attacked by groups of people who are starving and if they somehow survive that, they don't have the skills to survive, such as growing food, raising livestock or treating medical conditions.

I kid you not.

Dad's a trapper, had a pit-trap out in the desert where he took the two young boys for a "right of passage".

The goat was, I'm sure, planted there.

Dad jumped in and tied it's little legs, pulled it out, and forced the older son to slice it's throat while the younger one watched.

He then smeared blood on both boys' cheeks!



Now, isn't that special?

blood-paint rite-of-passage thing.

I mean, back when fox hunts were LEGAL there. (How do you do the Nelson Muntz laugh with a posh-English accent?)

I don't know how common it was, but I've seen it referred to, in documentaries.

eg

Of all the things I've seen on Doomsday Preppers, that's one of the least disturbing things I've seen.

I was chopping off chicken heads and shooting pigs in the head for slaughter on the farm when I was 10. Millions of children go hunting and fishing with their parents every year as well.

the youngest looked so freakin' sad. Did you see him pet the goat after it was dead?

I'm all for knowing how to survive, but damn let them be kids for a while. That made me sad.

where some geezer says prepping is all about "backup plan, upon backup plan, so I married a TWIN!1" Plus, are you saying these preppers are supplied with all their elaborate house and crap as props, that they don't really build it themselves?

How about you do a drill for us?

How about we stage something with your whole family involved?

Which of the kids are good for a one-on-one to show us how to load a rifle?

If you had unlimited funds, what else would you do as a prepper, could we go into that in detail on camera?

Let's have your wife tell us how she was really against it at first but then she "learned" the truth of the World...

Is that your dozer over there? Oh no, well see if you can "borrow" it so we can make it look like you are adding onto your bunker.



It doesn't take a rocket scientist to be a reality tv show producer

Reality on TV is not quite reality.

It is all still so very fake. If you think that the family participated in a live fire, or at least live weapon simulation without their knowledge of what is going on, you're very gullible, since there would be no way in hell the show could get insurance in such a case.

As far as living in a compound, that is not child abuse.

Again, please remember, this is all TV, the land of make believe and unreality.

I'm assuming from the show. Is that supposed to be some sort of backing for the claim of child abuse? I guess you haven't been on a farm lately, or at all. Kids on a farm have indeed killed many animals, including chickens and goats, castrated hogs, etc. That is part of living on a farm as a kid, you learn how to do these things. Millions of kids have had that experience and came out just fine, it isn't abuse.

And again, please, remember, it isn't real, it's TV.

We didn't raise goats on the farm, but we did raise cattle, hogs and chickens. We would shoot a hog or steer between the eyes with a .22-cal. rifle to kill it quickly, then hang it by it's hind legs from the bucket of the loader tractor and slit it's throat to drain the blood. The blood was saved to make blood sausage (I hated that stuff by my grandfather loved it, so we gave it to him). Then, you proceed to gut and quarter it out.

Farm kids do this all the time. Hell, it's how the large majority of the world gets it's meat. It's amazing how disconnected people have become from the food they eat.

think about the cycle to get it there. I didn't grow up on a farm, but I did grow up in farming country realizing what the process is ...

them into the local butcher to have the steer killed and the meat flash frozen. We bought our pork and chicken in the grocery stores, same as the town kids' families did.

My Dad did kill a rooster or chicken the first year we were there (when I was in 6th grade). It's a major pain in the ass killing a chicken and plucking the feathers. Although once you've seen a chicken literally run around with its head cut off . . .

I don't think there is much real about reality television. It's a misnomer from the start. Really, just turn it off.

away from the preppers (who actually exist and believe) and just call it the old Stage Mother/Parents Exploiting Child Stars form of child abuse, everybody happy?!1

how much reality television influences our reality? A&E airs a series call "Flip This House" and the housing bubble bursts. I guess that show is still on the air, and I wonder how that is even possible.

Maybe these shows really are just a reflection of our society, but I wonder.

As to your original charge of child abuse, I suppose that might be valid. I don't think the kids will be removed from their home though, so it doesn't fit the legal definition. Seems this family has the connections to make that a highly unlikely outcome. Still, it's reality tv, not a documentary.

I didn't mean to be critical with my previous post, really. These kinds of shows seem such a waste of airwaves that I do get impatient with it all.

made for TV reality shows is enough to determine abuse....

You also apparently believe that all of us who grew up on farms, and know where our food comes from were abused.

Do us a favor, and skip the Dickens' TV special "Oliver Twist" this Christmas.

and I agree that if Preppers we aren't seeing on this show are treating their kids like they do on this show, it is a form of child abuse. If not abuse, these folks are raising these children to have severe psychosis and/or paranoia. It can't be healthy for kids to grow up in an environment such as this. I mean, most folks thought that the Davidians were bad for the kids, this type of thing isn't much different.

in fear of an economic collapse. His mom was ok with it but here's the deal, he has no reason to have all of those weapons and guns because the whole idea of doomsday prepping is guarding your stash of life saving food & supplies, none of which he had. SO basically he was just a kid with alot of weapons. If doomsday happened no one would be coming after him because he has nothing. His mother is an idiot.

they've lead. i just can't imagine feeling that kind of fear every waking moment of my life.

It's in training these children to become paranoid and fearful, distrustful of community, to go through life friend-less.

Learning to kill animals quickly for food is not abusive. Teaching them to grossly hoard and be stingy is.

I thought it was a bit much.

Now keep stockpiling canned spam and AR-15 ammunition in your basement. Those North Koreans won't know what hit them.....

I'm a Prepper. You should be too.

I keep about two weeks worth of camping food and two weeks of water in my basement. I have bags packed with the stuff so I can grab it and go, too.

Never know when a natural disaster will require I use the stuff. I rotate it out before it expires, too.

Taking it to extremes is bonkers, but everybody should prep for a natural disaster scenario.

Trust me, I live in Florida and I know it is common sense to keep some supplies on hand in the event of a hurricane strike.

But turning one's house into a fortress in fear of some bizzare fantasy scenario is not the same thing as keeping supplies on hand if a hurricane or earthquake strikes.

Natural disasters are a fact of life. Being prepared for unexpected events increases your chance of survival and lessens the burden placed on government. You know, the more prepared you are, the more government can help those who cannot be prepared.

And if you are going to try to mock something, you will look less foolish if you have some knowledge about what you are talking about. There are much better things to "stockpile" than spam and ARs.

We're talking about people who are obsessed about paranoid fantasies about events almost certainly never to actually unfold. And who are needlessly bringing their own familes into those paranoid fantasies.

will be the ones with the genes being preserved, meaning that future species will have that lovely *edge* to them!1

Hanging around with such a choice crew ain't appealing, tyvm. I'll pass and be satisfied with what time I've had strutting this stage.

When he died, he left a ton of crap behind him that his girlfriend had to clean up. He was still as dead. I think what these people are sensing are their own personal apocalypses. They feel death drawing near as they get older, and they project it outside as some kind of social phenomenon. If it's not physical death, then it's great sweeping change that often feels like personal death. Most are control freaks. They often have their own personal anti-social skeletons, too.

And yeah, it's a reality show, but it's based on the real pov of these people. They do exist.

Real doomsday preppers would run the producers of a show like that off at gunpoint.

you missed the best part - the end interviews. This episode that 2 families who were prepping together. The retired chiropractor with the 3 kids and another family of father, mother and 11 year daughter. The doctor considered the other guy, who was some sort of environmental technician as best I could tell, his apprentice, while the technician considered himself the doctor's equal. They almost parted ways however when, during a test of IEDs they planned to put around the compound - some 700 acres - the technician shot his large-capacity, semi-auto gun inside a hunting blind and temporarily deafened the doctor. They made up however over the barbecued goat. At the end of the episode each of the male preppers had a chance to "update" viewers on their activities since the show was shot. I can't remember what the technician said, but the doctor and his wife had withdrawn their children from school and were home-schooling them. He called the home-schooling something like Preppers Academy or some other stupid moniker. Did you also see the poker game the doctor's family was playing betting with ammo?

...but then children are abused everyday in so many ways. It's just another very weird form of it.

Teaching kids to join your own paranoid cult with Daddy as dictator. Forcing kids to participate in adult insanity.

Child abuse, definitely. Pity the kids. They will be some messed-up adults.

...you mention.

It was a couple in their late 30s early 40s with an only child (a girl about 8 years old) and the basement of their regular house was stocked with supplies, they did emergency routines with gas masks etc etc.

What was disturbing is the way the parents filled their daughter's impressionable young mind with how scary the world is/is going to be with various nightmare scenarios.

She's a KID for cripes sakes!

She should be playing with her friends, with her dolls, baking cookies with her mom, learning how to swim, coloring in pictures with crayons, etc etc.

NOT being forced to worry about the future like adults do, and certainly not being forced into being as extremely paranoid as her parents obviously are.

That poor little girl is being seriously psychologically damaged by her parents, possibly permanently.

Do these people realize they are wasting a good portion of their real in the moment life on this craziness? I think they have too much time on their hands and would probably poop in their pants if something really happened. I mean they are playing around with explosives like its world war 3!!! And to boot dont even know what they are doing.

I mean these people need to GET lives! We are here for a blink of the eye and they revolve their lives around something that may or may not happen. Do they actually think that driving to a ranch is going to protect them from radiation in the air?

This doctor guy is sitting there with his gun as they give the assessment like he's going to blow the guy away if he says the wrong thing while the other nerd is sitting beside him making weird faces.

BUG OUT?? I think they both bugged out a long time ago.

standing around with a dumb look on your face.

Something I noticed many people seem to do .

its pretty ENTERTAINING.

I agree that we ALL should be prepared for basic natural disasters. I live in NJ and was affected by Hurricane Sandy, so the idea of having enough food, water and fuel doesn't seem as comical as it might have before.

HOWEVER, what is comical about the show is the farfetched theories for why the entire world will collapse which makes it a bit laughable. Theories such:

- as an EMP attack (which would cause us to fall into a state like the TV show Revolution - a world without electricity),
- the melting of Greenland Ice sheet rapidly melting such that the state of Florida would completely disappear,
- an impending smallpox breakout
- Yellowstone spewing a smoke cloud so bad that it will cut off life as we know it.

The common theme tends to be: have at least one year of food available (box mixes are ok to some), have an arsonal of weapons large enough to make a gun factory jealous, some basic to advanced hunting and defensive training and for the money is not an issue group - a second or third place to run if necessary to hide out (i.e. bunker or place in the woods/desert/remotely located).

There was the retired cop with 200,000 rounds of ammunition.
The guy who had 11,000 kinds of heirloom seeds so he could restart the world (and shot a couple of dudes over the summer in a pot deal gone bad).
The super-obese guy with a bunker in Colorado (and lives in Nashville).
The fringe Mormons with the warren of tunnels and the home-jarred, 20 year old "meat."
The guy with the Colombian mail order bride was our favorite. After she got to the US and they went on their honeymoon, she discovered that he owned no furniture (sold to pay for swampland) and that the honeymoon consisted of taking their bug-out vehicle (an RV) to their swamp, where she would learn to shoot guns. And the guy was sooo unintentionally racist. I felt terrible for her, but not so terrible that I didn't laugh (because if I don't laugh, I cry).

I mean, what the shit?! I went down to Skeeters Bait n Beer to pick up another 10,000 rounds of .223, just like I do every week, and Skeeter sez they clean out!

Every caliber, every store. Big box retailers and the aforementioned Skeeter's Bait and Beer. I've never been able to define "gun nut" precisely, but I know it when I see it, and I've seen it first hand. It's not everyone who owns a gun, or even collectors of guns, and not even survivalists. They're the loonies that feel the proper response to a terrorist attack 1500 miles away is to buy out the entire gun store, because you never know when Al Qaeda is going to attack Crotchhole, Arkansas -- or, like you said, Obama's coming for them.

The survivalist in the OP? His bug-out ranch was seven miles from the nearest habitation in far west Texas, with a bomb shelter, two layers of fencing, homemade IEDs, and 7 inch thick solid concrete walls. There were enough guns for all eight members of the families/team to have four each (not crazy in and of itself), with enough ammo to shoot every single man, woman, and child in the county twelve times (that was the exact number given).

Mostly they need to buy everything they're hoarding, they don't really know how to make anything.

In addition, all that ammo has left no room for penicillin, antibiotic and steroid creams, bandages, and other things the rugged individualist is likely to need. Every single one of them would be crying in sheer desperation at the first sign of toothache.

As for the kids and guns, teaching kids safety and proficiency with firearms isn't going to hurt them, although they did look a bit less than thrilled. Daddyrabbit's ridiculously paranoid scenarios are just more roleplay to them, like playing cops n robbers.

In a real collapse, skills will be more important than popguns: how to spin fiber and weave cloth, how to make footwear, how to grow food, how to build forges and sand cast spare parts, how to take care of wounds, and most of all, when and how to ask for help.

Without a lot of very basic skills and with only purchased food, these people are not going to last very long with only their paranoia to guide them.

if people who are interested in post-apocalyptic survival watch the show, then they know exactly who to target in their raids and several of their defenses. If what they feel would happen actually does, they've actually shot themselves in the foot by going on the program.

how to use his own fucking gun, feinted, and was rescued by the camera crew and taken in for emergency surgery. His tweenage kids just stood around looking stunned. I'm thinking they didn't have scout level first aid skills, and couldn't drive. Real prepared.

In an actual emergency those people would be so fucked.