I don’t prepare for anything, my whole life I’ve winged it but as of yesterday I’ve become a prepper!

What is a prepper you ask? It’s apparently people who are just a tad less crazy than the Ted Kazinskis of the world. A prepper is someone who is prepared for the end of the world or at least the demise of civility when our infrastructure goes down due to incompetence or terrorists.

Noun — a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.

Last week the NYSE was suspended due to a computer glitch, United Airlines grounded all flights also due to a technical glitch and while no one in the US paid much attention both the Greek and Chinese economies were in free fall.

That’s the kind of shit they make movies about. In fact they did, it was called Live Free or Die Hard and starred Bruce Willis and a bunch of other people. The gist of the movie is that with just a few lines of code a hacker could basically render our country frozen because we rely so heavily on computers for our infrastructure. Our electrical grid, gas lines, water supply, and communications can be disrupted easily and when that happens it takes about three days for civilization to cease to exist.

After about three days most of food that is in your fridge will spoil so after that you’re eating canned food or fresh food. With food in short demand you have to either kill your own or start to scavenge for it. I don’t care what William Devane say – when the shit hits the fan all that gold you’ve been buying will be worthless. If you want to survive in a post apocalyptic world you’re going to have to know a few basic skills like how to find water, how to find or kill food and you’re going to have to know how to protect yourself from the people who aren’t prepared and want to take the shit you prepared from you.

I watch The Walking Dead and I know exactly what it takes to survive when the world goes to shit. So, I ordered a Go Bag online and some of those envelopes of dried food and figured we’re good at least for a few days. Hopefully when the apocalypse happen I’ll have a full tank of gas and will have charged everything.

My daughter is not happy about my becoming a prepper – and I use that word loosely. Preppers to me are like the characters played by Reba McEntire and Michael Gross in Tremors. Those were people worthy of the prepper moniker. I have no guns, not even a flare gun. I have a multi tool thing with a cork screw so basically if there’s wine to be opened I’m your man.

Getting back to the kid – she isn’t happy about this. She thinks by preparing for bad stuff that it makes it more likely to happen. I felt the same way when I was a kid so I get it and tell her the stuff is for camping. It’s got a shelf life of two years so if the apocalypse doesn’t happen by 2017 we’re going to camping for a couple of weeks.

I haven’t tried any of the dried packages of food, though I have looked at the nutritional information. Basically if you have a nut allergy, you’re screwed when the apocalypse happens. And the daughter has a nut allergy so in addition to stocking up on food, water and gear now I have to start hoarding benadryl and epi pens.

They make gluten free survival food but not nut free?