Maybe if you spent more time with pois, er, venomous snakes.....In the overlooked category: No one lives forever........and frankly, if living a bit longer in horror, grief, and dismay at the loss of the world going down - who the hell wants to still be alive?
Not suicidal......realistic....I wouldn't care to still be breathing if the world was ending.
Of late, I've been watching a bunch of prepper documentaries.
The reasons to prep vary widely.
Each plan is so full of holes the biggest benefit I see in doing so is it reduces preppers anxiety regarding a bleak, riot filled, break down of law and order future, oh the list is endless to prep, a global endemic, nuclear war and on and on.....
If the shtf, no prepper is going to make it much longer than the unprepared......so you live an extra horror filled 6/12 months and then it's over.....prepping is a 'feel good' exercise in futility......
Taco Bell is your friend..... I need to get a good natural gas generator put up to run the house. .....
depends on the type of prepping i'm worried about on any given day...
i wrote this tongue-in-cheek list years ago to help friends understand what each type of prepper worries about (its since been borrow and adapted throughout the interweb):
SURVIVAL CATEGORIES
Working Citizen - Concerned with paying rent & utilities, keeping or getting health insurance, paying taxes, inflation, car repairs, leaky plumbing, back pains... May work two jobs, does without personal luxuries, hopes their children will do better than themselves. Emotional, physical and financial survival is the focus of daily life.
Upwardly Mobile - Concerned about aging, retirement investments, cholesterol levels, loss of employment, lawsuits, burglaries, bandwidth, clothes dryer lint fires, poor room service. Takes vitamins, exercises, eats oatmeal, wears seatbelts, has smoke & carbon-monoxide detectors, requests medical tests, has numerous insurance policies, files lawsuits, pampers themselves wherever whenever possible. “Survival” to them means living long enough to take full benefit of extensive retirement plans and long term care insurance policies.
Medical Crisis - Has very complete medical pack in house and in car. Donates blood and is active in the Red Cross. Has taken paramedic EMT & CPR courses, knows vital signs, stockpiles medicines, etc. Concerned with vehicle accidents and emergencies involving injuries. Focus is on helping family, friends & community survive medical emergencies.
Every Day Carry (EDC) – Just like the Boy Scout modo suggests: “Be Prepared”. EDC'er always have on them a number of necessary items to allow them to handle as many varied “everyday” situations as possible. From a handful of things like flashlights, multi-tools, pocket knives, fire starters and cell phones, all the way up to full disaster kits in day bags, with one in each vehicle. The search for perfect items is part of the joy. Usually is a contributing member on a number of EDC forums.
Safety Preparedness - Learns principles and techniques needed for surviving worse-case scenarios that can occur anyplace, anywhere. Makes preparations for such common calamities as structure fires, dog attacks, physical confrontations, snake bites, lightning strikes, car breakdowns, third-world travel problems, bear encounters, flash floods, home invasions and even train wrecks. Reads: Survive Safely Anywhere series, Worse-Case Scenario Handbooks
Wilderness Survival - Being able to stay alive for indefinite periods in life threatening wilderness scenarios. These can include: plane crashes, shipwrecks, being lost in the woods. Concerns are: thirst, hunger, climate, terrain, health, stress, fear. Prepares with: knowledge, training & practice. Kit includes: water purifiers, shelter, fire starters, clothing, food, medical supplies, navigation & signaling gear. Reads: Nessmuk, Kephart, Angier, Mears
Personal Assault Survival - Individuals concerned with surviving brief encounters of violent activity. Focus is on personal protection & it's legal ramifications, danger awareness, Boyd's cycle (also known as the OODA cycle - observe, orient, decide & act), martial arts, self defense tactics and tools (both lethal & less-than-lethal). Reads: Ayoob, Cooper, Jordan, Applegate, Sanow, Marshall, Taylor, Steele, Sun Tzu
Natural Disaster, Brief - People that live in tornado, hurricane, flood, wildfire, earthquake or heavy snowfall areas and want to be prepared for the inevitable. Investment in material for fortifying structures and tools for rebuilding & constructing temporary shelter, perhaps have a custom built shelter, food, water, medicine, and supplies, enough to get by until contact with the rest of the world resumes.
Natural Disaster, Years Long - Concerned about long term weather cycles of 2-10 years, unusually cold or warm periods, that have happened on and off for thousands of years. Might stock several tons of food per family member and have a heavy duty greenhouse with packed in nitrogen non-hybrid seeds.
Natural Disaster, Lifelong - Possible scenarios include: severe global warming and the coming ice age, the greenhouse-effect-gone-wild, warming/cooling of gulf steam waters, large meteor strike, magnetic solar storm, shift in earth's axis or reversal of geo-magnetic fields... Owns maps of previous ice age glacier patterns and hopes that where they live will be south of the permafrost line. May have purchased snowshoes. Reads reports by National Academy of Science and Woods Hole Physical Oceanography Dept.
WEC, that's quite the list of prepper typology.
I think you can pretty much put them all into three categories.... those who are preparing or prepared for some kind of physical disaster, those who target financial disaster and those who only worry about the spiritual...