I wonder though, do we really have a "prepper culture", or is that phrase merely a rebranding, of traditional (pre WWII) American farm/household values ?
For example when I talk to my 80 year old grandmother about what it was like growing up 20 miles outside of a major American metro, she speaks about canning, maintaining a very large pantry, community agriculture, raising animals, making their own clothing, hunting deer and preserving the meat long term, making their own bullets, etc.
My suspicion is that what you're observing in rural america is merely a continuation of the ordinary way of life that has always existed here. What I suspect is that over decades PR firms and major brands have executed a rebranding of the old ways, attempting to recast it as 'paranoia culture' or some form of political radicalism. Their campaign likely involves emphasizing the small paranoid faction of this much larger culture on their TV shows and pop media.
I hope that doesn't sound like a conspiracy theory, because that's not at all what I mean, it's just an effective marketing technique. After all families who are oriented towards saving for a rainy day don't come into the grocery stores to buy the expensive pre-packaged foodstuffs which drive all the margins. Therefor in order to increase shareholder value you have to find ways to break down the traditional values (and way of life) so that it can be replaced with predictable consumer behaviors and 'brand loyalty'.
My point is that the reason why you don't see this in europe isn't because the behaviors are different but merely because the advertising techniques are different in America so the lexicon is different.
All of this is starting to change though. A new culture is forming thanks the Internet, and people are starting to care again, about issues like community agriculture. You can start to see it being recognized (in satire) even on the major TV networks. Their airwaves are starting to be jammed by our Internet meme culture, and as a consequence people are beginning to care, again.
Did your grandmother's family have a tractor? If so, where did it, and the fuel, come from? Were they using artificial fertilizers? 80 years ago was 1936 and for her to remember things it was more likely during WWII, so they most certainly weren't using guano.
Did she go to school by school bus? Did the family buy things through the Sears catalog, or did her parents or friends drive into the city for shopping? The clothing they made - did they weave the fabric themselves, or buy it? Who made the canning jars, and the seals? Did they produce their own salt? Did they do everything by firewood, or did they use gas or electricity to cook the vegetables for canning?
But those are side-details, mostly to get you to thinking about the things she might not have told you about.
Consider the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which (quoting Wikipedia):
> destroyed many homes and devastated the agricultural economy of the Mississippi Basin. Many people were forced to flee to the cities of the Midwest in search of work, contributing to the "Great Migration" of African Americans in the first half of the 20th century. During the flood and the years after it subsided, it became the subject of numerous Delta blues songs, including "When the Levee Breaks",
I believe a goal of "prepper culture" is to be able to survive something like that significantly better than the pre-WWII American farmer household did, so I don't think these are the same cultures. There's overlap, certainly, but there's also overlap with modern urban life - my urban relatives in Florida have hurricane plans, which includes stocking reserve food, water, gas, etc., having storm shutters, trimming the trees before the season starts, and more.
Thus, if the overlap is enough for you to think that "prepper culture" is the same as pre-WWII American farm values, then I'll argue that it's also the same as modern urban Florida values, and thus rather meaninless - there aren't many TV shows on preparing for hurricane season.
> My point is that the reason why you don't see this in europe isn't because the behaviors are different but merely because the advertising techniques are different in America so the lexicon is different.
Another possibility is that humans, when they are insecure and threatened, often react by withdrawing and becoming defensive. The US does not have a good social safety net, so many people are worried all the time, about their job, health care, family, and retirement and possible lack thereof. Scared humans are more easily led, and many a firebrand have been able to take advantage of that fear for political and economic gain.
While if there is a strong social safety net (as in many places in Europe), and you believe the government will be effective at responding to a natural disasters, then there's less need of a belief to take on the heavier burden of individual planning.
> there aren't many TV shows on preparing for hurricane season.
You're making my point for me. Statistically speaking hurricane prepping is much bigger deal in America than survivalism but yet the TV media campaign leaves outsiders with an exaggerated impression of the situation. Some think this occurred just because it makes for good TV, but I think it's also part of a larger campaign to sell more hamburgers and wal-mart stock.
> While if there is a strong social safety net (as in many places in Europe), and you believe the government will be effective at responding to a natural disasters, then there's less need of a belief to take on the heavier burden of individual planning.
I don't think that the social safety net is as strong in Europe for the exact reason that you think it is. In other words in Europe nobody has a choice but to rely solely on the government to stabilize the situation after a major emergency because they don't have the firearms they would need to restore peace on their own.
In America however it's a different story because hundreds of thousands if not millions of veterans currently own rifles strikingly similar to those they carried in the armed forces, lacking only the full-automatic selector switch. Their brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and neighbors who did not serve in the military are often just as familiar with the weapons, if not the tactics.
Many of these Soldiers and Marines have special operations training. They are former warriors with experience at conducting irregular warfare and counter-terrorism operations in dangerous urban environments. In the Middle East these troops were frequently tasked with restoring order to urban areas exploding in internecine strife. Today these former military men and women understand better than anyone the life-or-death difference between being armed and organized versus unarmed and disorganized. One could even say it's part of our culture.
That's a real social safety net in my view, and since we have this safety net we like to enhance it, by taking simple steps to be more prepared, while in Europe I get the feeling that some people feel like 'why even bother' ?
I am European.
I think that you are right about the fact we expect to rely on government support more (there are civilian groups for emergency, but when they "mobilize" they report and take orders from government representatives, at least in my country).
What I find a bit odd is the fact that you seem to imply that "having access to firearms" is really the main priority.
Ok, there is a flood and we are forced to take refuge on the roof of our houses.
When (if) someone comes to rescue us do we go with them because they have rifles, or because they have a boat, food, first aid, and a plan about how and where to take us until the flood subsides?
It's more like.. a disaster happens, so police response times have lapsed, dropped to days. Not everyone is stranded on their roof, tons of people have food but the real problem is that now heavily armed and well organized drug gangs are able to operate with impunity, and brutality, seizing whatever they wish (including the food)... It's a power-grab situation for a few days, or for however long the power stays off, or it would be, if combat veterans and ordinary Americans weren't so well armed.
Your scenario is not very common, at least in the West. (Even more so in Europe because we have higher population density, so a whole region getting "lost" to the national government would be really extraordinary).
Let's talk instead of real cases, ok? Marauders and Warlords were really a big problem during Katrina Hurricane? Was New York able to survive Sandy only because Frank Castle was patrolling the streets?
In comments below you cite Kosovo. I think that in cases like that there was already plenty of social unrest so if a city was cut off from the powergrid or the main roads I can imagine that someone would have tried to get the upper hand.
Something similar could also happen in some areas of Mexico, where the government presence is already pretty weak.
I can see how a veteran or ex-serviceman could always be very handy in a natural disaster, but that would be because they are able to lead, to follow orders, have plenty of practical skills and are trained to be self-sufficient. But the actual combat training or experience - nevermind the weapons - is not necessarily the most important thing to have when you are hit by a flood or a earthquake or a tsunami.
In the last 50 years of European history, has something like this happened?
For example, in 2014, southeast Europe received record levels of rain, which lead to wide-spread flooding and landslides. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Southeast_Europe_floods which points out that it was the most rain in 120 years of recorded history. Some areas were isolated for a few days, 300,000 households were left without electric power, etc.
How close were they to having drug gangs or other groups take over local power? Do you have any evidence to back up your thesis?
How would additional weapons have helped the situation that actually did occur? What mix of weapons should they have had?
Are there any lessons from other European floods (the recent British floods, the North Sea flood of 1962, the 1953 storm and floods, etc.) to show how perilously close things were to total discord, which would have been solved by more weapons backed by combat veterans?
(Of course, in the 1950s and 1960s, most of Europe lived through WWII and many were combat veterans. But they didn't have the weapons you think are essential. Yet somehow they survived.)
There's ample evidence in particular if you study the Kosovo War outbreak there were situations where regions were cut off from supplies, power was lost, but yet there was no invasion or shelling. Ireland comes to mind, there are some examples..
Could you be a bit more definite about those? What were they, how would more arms have helped, and which side should have had the arms?
Would you characterize them as being part of the respective civil conflicts? Or were they more like the aforementioned "now heavily armed and well organized drug gangs"?
You can do your own homework, there are well documented historical accounts. There are situations where a large city was cut off, for weeks no supplies in or out, the lights were off.. and the "shit hit the fan" for those people well before the shelling began. You can read for yourself how important the requirement to have at least a single firearm was for households.
I think it's the other way around. You gave an incomplete answer and now imply that I should be doing your homework for you.
You wrote:
> if you study the Kosovo War outbreak there were situations where regions were cut off from supplies, power was lost, but yet there was no invasion or shelling. Ireland comes to mind, there are some examples..
For Kosovo, the closest I could find was the Izbica massacre, where FRY and Republic of Serbia forces stole from several thousand villagers then killed 130 Kosovo Albanian men, and the Battle of Junik, where Junik was under siege for 20 days. However, both actions were carried out by partisans, and don't show sign of a third party filling a power gap.
There were 10 or so shell fired in Newry, and unpredictable power during the Ulster Workers' Council strike of 15 to 28 May 1974. Otherwise I found nothing like a city or village being cut off for weeks with no supplies or power in Ireland, and being shelled.
Certainly there are historic instances of cities being cut off, like the Siege of Leningrad or the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII, and the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. The German tally after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising suggests that there were fewer than 100 firearms in the ghetto, and nowhere near one per family, so that's not more a counter-example to your point. In any case, third party "drug gangs" or the equivalent power grab do no appear to play any significant role.
So I ask again, can you point to any post-war European examples?
This guy's material is genuine and it goes into great depth, but its only one example. The are other stories of course from this conflict that you can dig up which back up his account.
this video goes into some of his information about gang warfare. It backs up everything I was saying:
Thank you for the followup. The siege was one of the alternatives I considered earlier, but it didn't fit your description. You wrote "cut off from supplies, power was lost, but yet there was no invasion or shelling".
There appear to have been several types of gangs. The Selco link you gave talks about gangs in the size of 15-50. These appear to be different than the organized "drug gang" style of gangs you mentioned before. Selco writes that being alone, even armed, wasn't enough. He was part of a large family of 15, and that being in a group was the key to survival, not so much arms alone.
Do note that he also wrote that there was a lot of grey, not white on black. I don't think there's a good lesson from this. Having more arms might change the balance of which group gets which resources, but there's no good or bad side in those winners, only "me" instead of "you."
"The gangs control the thriving black market, which accounts for virtually all the trade in food, alcohol and vehicle fuel in the besieged city. Working with similar gangs operating on the Serbian side of the siege lines, the gangs run a nighttime smuggling operation that brings truckloads of contraband over the bridges across the Miljacka that separate the Serbian-held suburb of Grbavica from the center of Sarajevo. ..."
"The gangs' power is so great that the leaders of the Bosnian Government and army said recently that they dared not challenge them directly for fear of setting off an internal war in Sarajevo that would weaken the city's defenses. Bosnian Army commanders have acknowledged that key sections of the front lines around the city are under the control of militias loyal to the gang leaders and that challenging the gangs could cause the militias to abandon their positions."
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismet_Bajramovi%C4%87 , "When the war began, criminal groups were among the first to offer resistance the Yugoslav National Army besieging Sarajevo." Other criminal/military defenders include Ismet Bajramović include Ramiz Delalić, Jusuf Prazina, and Mušan Topalović.
That said, I'm still not clear how more pistols and rifles would have changed what happened in the city, in regards to how people lived. (Weapons were useful in defending the city, and the tunnel was able to supply more of those. That, however, is a quite different topic than what you suggested.)
I can see how this is good example of "shit hits the fan". I don't see how it's at all a good example of your original scenario, which was:
> a disaster happens, so police response times have lapsed, dropped to days. Not everyone is stranded on their roof, tons of people have food but the real problem is that now heavily armed and well organized drug gangs are able to operate with impunity, and brutality, seizing whatever they wish (including the food)... It's a power-grab situation for a few days, or for however long the power stays off, or it would be, if combat veterans and ordinary Americans weren't so well armed.
Case A (Sarajevo): there is a massive unrest, basically what amounts to a Civil War, then yeah - having access to firearms and military training is probably a key factor in your survival (you also have to decide what side you are on, though, which in the long run will also become a key factor in your survival, no matter how well trained you are).
Case B (Kathrina): there may be individuals or small groups that take a chance at looting deserted buildings. But they will have basically the same problems as everyone else (surviving the storm peak, being able to move around after the worst has passed). Situations where large, well-armed gangs siege you in your home which has remained intact and holds some kind of resource which is valuable outside of the disaster area (i.e. large amounts of cash, valuables) and you have to fend them off for days until the cavalry finally arrives seem to be extremely unlikely outside of a movie script.
You seem to imply that all "disasters" will end up like Sarajevo, my idea is that your reasoning applies only in cases of a natural disaster hitting a region where a civil war is already going on.
I am confused about your response. This document, which is titled 'Doomsday planning for less crazy folk' and starts 'The prepper culture begs to be taken with a grain of salt..' appears to include hurricane preparations as part of 'the prepper culture', making hurricane preparations a proper subset of the prepper culture.
Yet with "Statistically speaking hurricane prepping is much bigger deal in America than survivalism" you imply that 'survivalism' does not include hurricane prepping, so is not the same as the 'prepper culture' from the paper.
Since you identified pre-WWII farm culture as being close to prepper culture, could you explain how survivalism fits in, and how it's different from hurricane prepping? Because I think you are talking looking at the similarities in self-sufficiency. In that case, isn't the back-to-the-soil movement of the 1960s more similar to pre-WWII farming culture than the prepper culture, despite the lack of interest in weapons in that movement?
> I think it's also part of a larger campaign to sell more hamburgers and wal-mart stock
That seems like rather weak evidence. Statistically speaking, presidents on TV get killed a lot more in real life, and space aliens visit Earth a lot. Once upon a time I thought the popularity of all of the SF shows was part of a larger campaign to get us used to the idea of extraterrestrial life, before making the announcement that aliens existed.
I appear to have been wrong, as I had no idea at the time that space aliens had been part of TV culture for decades, and it's been decades more without announcement.
How will you know if you are wrong?
> because they don't have the firearms they would need to restore peace on their own.
Do you have any idea of how may firearms (per capita) are needed for that? Because Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and France are still in the top list of countries in per capita gun ownership. How many more will they need?
> after a major emergency
That is a very broad topic. Sweden, for example, had many preparations for a nuclear exchange, including tax rebates for people who built bomb/fallout shelters in their homes. Switzerland still requires households to maintain a year supply of food, and a bomb shelter.
How is it that in all these preparations, they've forgotten to ensure a large enough supply of weapons for post-nuclear internal peace keeping?
> hundreds of thousands if not millions of veterans currently own rifles strikingly similar to those they carried in the armed forces
Yes, and Switzerland "The vast majority of men between the ages of 20 and 34 are conscripted into the militia and undergo military training, including weapons training", though they don't keep ammunition at home.
In the 1990s, my European co-workers in the US, who were all of draft age during the Cold War, had been conscripted, including from Germany, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria - from both sides of the Iron Curtain. My Army wife and an Iranian ex-co-worker swapped stories about serving in the same part of the Middle East, just on opposite sides of the border.
So plenty of Europeans have some experience in the military, at least for some countries.
> In the Middle East these troops were frequently tasked with restoring order to urban areas exploding in internecine strife
Now you're going on a tangent that seems little to do with pre-WWII farming culture.
What sort of military training, and more importantly special forces operation experience, did your grandmother's family have, and how was it useful for their farm life?
> Yet with "Statistically speaking hurricane prepping is much bigger deal in America than survivalism" you imply that 'survivalism' does not include hurricane prepping, so is not the same as the 'prepper culture' from the paper.
There is a distinction in America between prepping for medium to long term service disruptions, and preparing for a hurricane. The later merely involves nailing boards onto your house's windows then driving north for a few hours whereas the formed is commonly dubbed 'survivalism'. I should have been more clear about what I meant by the terminology.
> In that case, isn't the back-to-the-soil movement of the 1960s more similar to pre-WWII farming culture than the prepper culture, despite the lack of interest in weapons in that movement?
I think the back-to-the-soil movement of the 1960s is very similar to pre-WWII farming culture. I think that even in the 1960s statistically speaking wherever there's been farms and middle class in the United States there's been guns. I think that today tons of people who back in the 1960s would have been characterized as "back-to-the-soil" are being roped into the "prepper" category by a media blitz that wishes to discourage the transmission of those pre-WWII values to a new generation of Americans.
I think that all we're seeing here is a back-to-the-land movement by a generation that is growing up in a time where the spectre of 'terrorism' looms large. Also you can see it in the artwork and music, these younger generations were more likely influenced by Kurt Cobain, Henry Rollins, or Biggie Smalls than Carlos Santana or Jimi Hendrix, so naturally they're going to exhibit a little more 'hard core' tendencies when they do go back to the land.
> I appear to have been wrong, as I had no idea at the time that space aliens had been part of TV culture for decades, and it's been decades more without announcement.
Maybe for your generation it was space aliens and this generation has zombies and vampires, go figure. There do seem to be some ominous continuities between the two pop culture phenomenon, but that could just be my imagination.
> Do you have any idea of how may firearms (per capita) are needed for that? Because Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and France are still in the top list of countries in per capita gun ownership. How many more will they need?
Thats the problem with trying to talk about Europe as a whole, there are several important exceptions, most notably the Swiss. You forgot the Czech Republic add them to your list.
> Yes, and Switzerland "The vast majority of men between the ages of 20 and 34 are conscripted into the militia and undergo military training, including weapons training", though they don't keep ammunition at home.
The Swiss have their shit together what more can I say.
> So plenty of Europeans have some experience in the military, at least for some countries.
I certainly didn't meant to imply that they didn't, I hope I didn't offend.
> In the Middle East these troops were frequently tasked with restoring order to urban areas exploding in internecine strife
>Now you're going on a tangent that seems little to do with pre-WWII farming culture.
> What sort of military training, and more importantly special forces operation experience, did your grandmother's family have, and how was it useful for their farm life?
my bad! Let me reiterate the point: In my view there is both a back-to-the-land phenomena and a prepper phenomena going on in the modern United States which are distinct although there is some overlap. The back-to-the-land movement is much much larger than the prepper movement statistically, but you don't get that picture from watching the TV.
The media doesn't want to acknowledge the back-to-the-land movement because it's not seen as good for business, so they try to paint everyone with a pickup truck as a prepper. In computer programming there is a movement towards "remote work". In the 1960s the status symbol for having made it in your career was having your own office secretary and a reserved parking spot, but in the modern era perhaps the new way to know you have arrived is when you are free to work from home... or even from the farm.
Thank you for your answer. However, I am still curious as to how many guns (per capita) you think are needed to maintain peace should police and other civilian authority break down.
well everyone should be armed of course, and have gone through firearms safety training, but it's not just about the sheer number of guns it's also about their capacities but most importantly it's training that matters.
I definitely don't think that in order to provide security everyone needs an AR-15 or an AK-47 which is how some people over here think. Today in America the AR-pattern rifle (the semi-automatic civilian version of the familiar full-auto-capable M-16 or M-4) is the most popular model of rifle, with millions sold in the past decade. Virtually all of them produced in the past decade have abandoned the old M-16’s signature “carrying handle” rear iron sight for a standardized sight mounting rail, meaning that virtually every AR sold today can be easily equipped with an efficient optical sight. Firing the high-velocity 5.56×45 mm cartridge and mounted with a four-power tactical sight, a typical AR rifle can shoot two-inch groups at one hundred yards when fired from a steady bench rest. That translates to shooting eight- to ten-inch groups at four hundred yards.
Four hundred yards is a long walk. Pace it off on a straight road, and observe how tiny somebody appears at that distance. Yet a typical AR rifle, like those currently owned by millions of American citizens, can hit a man-sized target at that range very easily, given a stable firing platform and a moderate level of shooting ability.
But what a lot of people don't realize is there are a far greater number of scoped bolt-action hunting rifles in private hands in the United States. Keep this number in mind: based on deer stamps sold, approximately twenty million Americans venture into the woods every fall armed with such rifles, fully intending to shoot and kill a two-hundred-pound mammal. Millions of these scoped bolt-action deer rifles are quite capable of hitting a man-sized target at ranges out to and even beyond a thousand yards, or nearly three-fifths of a mile. In that context, the 500-yard effective range of the average semi-auto AR-pattern rifle is not at all remarkable.
I suppose what I'm getting at is that you don't have to break the bank to arm your society in an effective way. Your country will be doing just fine if most people simply have a bolt action scoped hunting rifle but what they really need is firearms training.
The US doesn't fit your recommendation, as most of the population hasn't had firearms safety training. Why do you think it will be able to handle types of civilian disturbances you mentioned earlier, when not everyone is so trained?
Earlier you said "in Europe nobody has a choice but to rely solely on the government to stabilize the situation after a major emergency because they don't have the firearms they would need to restore peace on their own."
Therefore, which scenarios do you think the US, with its armed citizenry, will be able to handle more successfully than the equivalent in most European areas? If more Finns per capita have had more training than Americans, wouldn't that be a safer country still? How is a policy maker supposed to figure out what level of gun ownership and training is optimal?
I honestly don't know; it's interesting that in Europe, the same culture - certainly present in the nineteenth century - has atrophied very quickly after WWII.
I'm not sure how to explain that; urbanization? The expansion of the welfare state? Faith in the EU as the promise of enduring peace and prosperity? It happened in most of the Soviet Bloc countries, too, so perhaps the welfare state aspect is key.
In the US, my first guess is that it might have been kept alive, even in suburban and urban communities, because of the exposure to the Cold War paranoia, school drills, and so on. "The Russkies" and the specter of the nuclear apocalypse left an ominous mark on the American psyche.
But you are right, the desire to capitalize on the phenomenon might have played a role, too. On the flip side, Europe is not a very different market; the buyers are a bit more smug and you can't sell guns, but that's about it - so why aren't we seeing more of the "new" prepper culture cropping up on the other side of the pond?
> so why aren't we seeing more of the "new" prepper culture cropping up on the other side of the pond?
Maybe it's because there's not as much individual land ownership in Europe because there isn't as much land. In America we have a vast frontier so to speak, plus we've had the act of homesteading as a the cornerstone of our traditional values for a long time.
There's room for everyone to have their own little homestead, at least thats been the feeling culturally for a couple of hundred years, and so people today are also prone to think along the lines that traditional homesteaders thought.. well water, garden, dogs, fishing, shotgun, shovel, plow, etc.. maybe even horses if you can afford it. One difference is today people also care about an Internet connection. In my view these people aren't paranoid at all they're just passing on the traditional values.
> On the flip side, Europe is not a very different market; the buyers are a bit more smug and you can't sell guns, but that's about it - so why aren't we seeing more of the "new" prepper culture cropping up on the other side of the pond?
It is, slowly. We have a lot of gun enthusiasts, even though they're not gun owners. They visit the shooting range regularly instead. ASG is a popular sport too, and that's pretty much as much firearms combat training as you can get without actual firearms. In my country (Poland), there was a visible uptick of survivalist narratives when the war in Ukraine started (after all, we're next-door neighbors). And while HAM radio is not very popular (though my friends are doing some serious work in changing that), a lot of drivers have CB radios (installed primarily to facilitate breaking traffic laws).
> What I suspect is that over decades PR firms and major brands have executed a rebranding of the old ways, attempting to recast it as 'paranoia culture' or some form of political radicalism. Their campaign likely involves emphasizing the small paranoid faction of this much larger culture on their TV shows and pop media.
I think that the paranoid culture has evolved relatively organically.
As an avid sailor, I've been looking into breaking one of the long standing records of doing multiple circumnavigations back-to-back and food preservation is one area I've been looking into.
It's been extremely difficult to find content that isn't interspersed with articles on weapons (and other paranoid subjects) found in a lot of content online, when all I am looking for is food storage ideas.
In America firearms aren't considered 'paranoid subjects' because hunting (and fishing) has always been a part of this traditional "wholesome" American culture of which I spoke.. right along with smoking meat, canning vegetables, taking care of animals, etc. After all how else can you keep your chickens and sheep free from natural predators ? To me that's not paranoia
And I don't consider firearms as a broad subject paranoid. It's when talking about the use of firearms to injure other human beings alongside the best way to store flour is where I draw the line.
I'm just looking at food storage. I'm not interested in surviving apocalyptic-level events via good old wild-west justice.
You're thinking of circumnavigating but yet you're not psychologically prepared to push back against a boarding party ? Doesn't that mean even a small skiff could overtake you ?
> You're thinking of circumnavigating but yet you're not psychologically prepared to push back against a boarding party ? Doesn't that mean even a small skiff could overtake you ?
I suspect you're blatantly trolling, but I'm going to answer you for the sake of completeness
Pirate activity is most often limited to certain parts of the world. I have no desire (or real need) to visit the Gulf of Aden anytime soon to respond to that image you posted as that is one of the hotspots. Another hotspot is the Straight of Malacca, where it occurs against shipping and less against smaller pleasure craft.
Circumnavigations adhering to WSSRC rules typically dictate that each circumnavigation needs to be 21,600 nautical miles and crossing antipodal points. To stay within these guidelines, I can quite easily plot courses that avoid most pirate hotspots, since most of the time will be spent in the Southern Ocean.
I'm more concerned about colliding with whales, squalls and suffocation from leaky gas hoses than I am with pirates.
To be honest I didn't mean to troll I just know very little about modern sailing, but I'm truly in awe of individuals who have what it takes to attempt that kind of an extreme adventure.
Never the less, and perhaps it's my American bias coming through here, but I am astonished to discover that some adventure sailors travel great distances without even a single AK-47 on board. In my imagination a revolver wouldn't suffice as a deterrent since it can't be recognized as clearly at a distance, and since many pirates are ex-military they may not be particularly afraid of a pistol.
I personally wouldn't consider navigating the Mississippi delta in a boat at dusk without a shotgun, because there's more than just pirates to worry about, you've got paranoid drug runners looking for their drop zone, hell what about alligators.. it's illegal to harm one, but if a big one's somehow gotten on deck you better believe I'm reaching for my protection.
Carrying firearms on board would significantly limit the places a world-hopping yacht could stop at; at best inconvenient, at worst deadly when you choose not to put in somewhere because you don't want to have to drop your AK-47 over the side. A lot of countries really do not want sailors turning up with AK-47s.
Did you know bear spray is better then a handgun for bear protection? The rate of injuries, from bears, is a lot lower with bear spray, because it turns out no reasonable caliber will actually stop a bear before it gets you whereas the spray only needs to be well, sprayed in the general direction.
The point being, you might want to re-analyze "high seas gun battle" for its actual downsides.
> The point being, you might want to re-analyze "high seas gun battle" for its actual downsides.
I agree that there could be tremendous downsides, but at the same time I wouldn't want to reach for any type of safety gear and not have it.
What if it's not even "real pirates" but rather a haphazard raid by what are obviously hostile teenage boys from a nearby village operating a raft with a single outboard motor armed with only machetes ? These kids couldn't afford a gun and this could happen anywhere where there's poverty not just in areas known for piracy
Another scenario, what about the stranded boat that looks like it's stuck on a sand bar relatively close to port and is begging for a tow. There could be a pretty girl on board. It could be an opportunist type situation where they really did just need a tow, but when they sense you're unarmed they might try to commandeer your craft since maybe they have warrants, or a shaky visa situation inland or whatever.
The professionals, namely the crew of cargo ships, avoid having guns on board, even when their route takes then to pirate-infested waters. (They also avoid having girls on board.)
I think that was the case until a few years ago. Nowadays, Reuters reports, cargo ships have "massively" increased the number of guns on board along with people who know how to use them:
"Like many merchant vessels, the QM2 now carries armed private contractors when passing through areas of pirate risk... M-16-type assault rifles and sometimes belt-fed machine guns...
For many in the shipping industry, the fall in attacks is a vindication of the decision to massively ramp up the use of armed guards. So far, not a single ship with armed guards has been taken by pirates..." http://www.reuters.com/article/us-somalia-piracy-idUSBRE91B1...
For example when I talk to my 80 year old grandmother about what it was like growing up 20 miles outside of a major American metro, she speaks about canning, maintaining a very large pantry, community agriculture, raising animals, making their own clothing, hunting deer and preserving the meat long term, making their own bullets, etc.
My suspicion is that what you're observing in rural america is merely a continuation of the ordinary way of life that has always existed here. What I suspect is that over decades PR firms and major brands have executed a rebranding of the old ways, attempting to recast it as 'paranoia culture' or some form of political radicalism. Their campaign likely involves emphasizing the small paranoid faction of this much larger culture on their TV shows and pop media.
I hope that doesn't sound like a conspiracy theory, because that's not at all what I mean, it's just an effective marketing technique. After all families who are oriented towards saving for a rainy day don't come into the grocery stores to buy the expensive pre-packaged foodstuffs which drive all the margins. Therefor in order to increase shareholder value you have to find ways to break down the traditional values (and way of life) so that it can be replaced with predictable consumer behaviors and 'brand loyalty'.
My point is that the reason why you don't see this in europe isn't because the behaviors are different but merely because the advertising techniques are different in America so the lexicon is different.
All of this is starting to change though. A new culture is forming thanks the Internet, and people are starting to care again, about issues like community agriculture. You can start to see it being recognized (in satire) even on the major TV networks. Their airwaves are starting to be jammed by our Internet meme culture, and as a consequence people are beginning to care, again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIWQE4ZpMWI
YES IT'S LOCAL GODDAMNIT