The Mayan calendar supposedly runs out this year on 12/21/12. The movie “2012” had us all on the edge of our seats wondering “could this happen to us.” Global Warmists tell us if we don’t stop driving our cars the world will implode. We are told the Polar Ice Caps are melting, we hear about earthquakes every week now and the weather seems to have run amok lately with everything from flooding to massive amounts of tornadoes to droughts and wildfires. Everywhere we look these days there seems to be doom and gloom. In comes The National Geographic Channel with their new show “Doomsday Preppers.”
“Doomsday Preppers” is a show about people who are united in their fears that some cataclysmic event is going to occur that will end the world as we know it. There is even an acronym for it: TEOTWAWKI. There are numerous books, Youtube videos and websites dedicated to this topic. A recent visit to several Army Surplus stores in the Houston area shows that business has increased and items like ammunition, gas masks and dehydrated foods are in high demand. Surprisingly, the people in these stores looked just like you and me. They weren’t the unkempt, camo-wearing, anti-government spouting individuals you might imagine.
Popular theories on how and why the world is going to end include a shifting of the magnetic poles, economic collapse, solar flares, terrorism, global pandemics and the ever popular global warming that will cause all of the fish in the sea to die and tsunamis that will wipe out everyone on the coasts of America. Wait a minute, I think I read that in the bible way back when too!
Regardless of the theory imagined by these “Doomsday Preppers,” normal people like you and I are preparing for some event that may or may not happen and business is booming for those that got in on the action. I was recently invited to a Doomsday party in which products from Shelf Reliance were being touted as the product of the day similar to the old Tupperware or Pampered Chef parties where the consultant explains how you must have this product or you are going to die. Ok, so maybe it wasn’t that dramatic but you get the point.
I ordered my case of dehydrated food and left feeling like I had embarked on a journey of no return. A journey in which you forget about the latest purse or shoe fad and instead wonder if your bug-out bag is big enough, if you have enough closet space to store a years supply of Spam and whether or not your family will think you’re crazy for buying into all of this. I don’t think I’ll be asking my husband for a gas mask for Christmas (that’s if the Mayans were wrong and we actually have Christmas this year) but when the next hurricane hits the Texas Gulf Coast, this family will be ready for it.
