Welcome back again to another episode of Doomsday Preppers Diary with our two writers Cornelia and Pat. Each week we watch Doomsday Preppers and provide a little commentary on the episode and how each prepper is portrayed for fun. This week’s episode is a re-run, but we started late in the season so we are giving this the same treatment as usual.
Last week’s episode was probably my favorite to date with preppers in Alaska and Hawaii. Talk about contrast and compare! This week is a repeat of another interesting show with 3 different preppers so without any further ado, let’s get rolling!
“Johnny O” moved his family from the city to a rural prepper fortress in Pennsylvania. His fear is that radioactive fallout from the Indian Point power plant in New York State will result in the end of the world as we know it. At the very least it will be a bad day. Johnny always follows the rule of redundancy and believes that it is the key to surviving.
CA: Why doesn’t he move? Wouldn’t that be the best prep when near a nuclear plant?
PH: I am calling it right now that the narrator will tell us, ”The experts believe there is zero chance of nuclear fallout ever happening in our lifetimes.”
Johnny’s motto is redundancy, redundancy, redundancy and he has multiple options for any plans he makes. From food storage to water to weapons and escape routes, Johnny has it covered. He has a backup plan to every backup plan. He has three different escape vehicles and even a backup for his wife—her twin sister, who lives with the family in their remote house hidden on a high hill in the woods.
CA: He has a live-in back up wife. Creepy.
As part of Johnny’s preps, firearm training for everyone in the family is mandatory. Johnny uses .22 rifles because the ammo is cheaper and everyone can gain proficiency. Johnny is teaching his 4-year-old daughter to shoot also.
To test both his ability to sneak up on an intruder and his family’s response to someone invading their house, Johnny dresses in a ghillie suit and prepares to sneak into the house.
PH: Johnny is playing out in the woods and planning an attack on wife one and two. That is what I call a fun Friday night!
CA: Isn’t there a Dr. Seuss book with wife one and wife two?
To test his family, Johnny is going to bug out and make sure his wife and her sister are ready. They have devised a system of signals to alert everyone. These are text messages and simple signs at their home that will let anyone know what the plan is. Johnny is the first to leave and he packs all of his supplies and a boat onto a trailer and heads into the woods.
PH: Awww, he left the dog behind.
Johnny goes deep into the woods to a predetermined location and climbs into a tree stand to await the rest of his family. He is fully camouflaged with a vantage point high in the trees which will allow him to make sure his wife and sister aren’t followed. After meeting up, the rest of the family dons camo and prepares to float down river to safety. Johnny says that with everyone in camouflage, they will look like a big log and avoid detection.
CA: Where are the children in his camouflage river scenario? I guess Johnny didn’t figure on the baby crying.
PH: And, no, they don’t look like a log. They look like ghillie monsters in a boat.
The experts, practical preppers give Johnny a score of 68 which is enough to last him 12 months. And as predicted, the experts really don’t believe anything bad would ever happen to a nuclear facility. Nothing to worry about…
Update from Johnny is that he has met a larger group of preppers since the show aired and is planning to consolidate resources.
Doomsday preppers in Missouri
Next are Wilma and her family in MO. Wilma, a born city girl turned country girl recently moved from Dallas, Texas to an off-grid location in Drury, Missouri with her husband Gary, her daughter, and granddaughter. They are all preparing for an F5 tornado that will end the world, as we know it. Wilma has canned and dehydrated at least 6 months of food and constantly cares for her garden and livestock on their 24 acres of land.
Wilma strongly believes that global warming is causing an increase in the number of killer tornadoes so she is preparing her family to survive if one comes to her home.
CA: I don’t see the problem with tornadoes. Everything worked out for Dorothy. She even got a cool pair of shoes to boot.
Wilma has their food preparations in a shed on their property, but this shed is not underground or climate controlled.
PH: Their food supplies are going to be sucked up in a tornado. What is the point?
One aspect of Wilma’s house is that they do not have running water so frequent trips to a creek are necessary.
PH: They are used to getting water and they do have a source which is more than you can say for some people.
CA: How are they treating the water they have to get?
Wilma and Heather are diabetics and they have to store up insulin in order to live. They currently have 6 months of insulin stored for both of them. They may have to reuse needles in a grid-down scenario. In order to keep their insulin cold, they plan to store it in the creek.
CA: They are stockpiling insulin. Good idea.
Wilma already has animals on her property that include chickens and goats. The plan is that this will provide them all of the protein they need to supplement their food storage. In order to make this work though, chickens have to be butchered and Wilma looks at them more as pets. To make sure she will be able to feed herself if there is any emergency, Wilma’s husband is showing her how to kill one of the chickens they have raised.
PH: I don’t know why they always cut away (no pun intended) from the actual scene of the axe coming down, but they show the bloody head right after that. Are we supposed to think the head comes off by magic?
CA: Won’t the animals blow away too?
Realizing the effects a massive tornado would have, Wilma and her husband are planning to build an underground bunker on their property. This will give them safety and a climate controlled place to store their food preparations. Wilma also wants enough room for all of their animals.
CA: I hear chickens are snuggly.
PH: She wants Noah’s ark underground.
CA: I think Gary kind of looks like Noah.
Wilma and Gary have hired explosive contractors to blow up some land on their property so they can begin building their underground shelter. The entire family plans to retreat underground when a deadly hurricane strikes there home so the contractors are here to make the work of digging the bunker easier.
CA: Four hundred pounds of explosives and you have a very big hole.
PH: They have enough money to pay for the explosives, but they are going to dig the hole with shovels?
The experts say that Wilma’s family does not have any security in their preparations. Hearing this, their daughter’s responds, “We’re all crazy. We’ve all done some crazy stuff.”
PH: I can see that and I believe her.
The score from the practical preppers is 64 which give them an estimate of 10 months of survival. The daughter says that is basically a bunch of hooey. Wilma’s family has 2 months less than Johnny above and the rating system seems arbitrary to me.
Update from Wilma is that she and Gary are divorced and fighting over the “prepping stuff”. We wish them both the best.
The last preppers for this show are Robert and his wife. Robert Earl is living with his wife in the “ultimate bug out location”. They decided to leave their retirement-friendly southern Florida to an off-the-grid desert area in the hills of Texas. Robert fears a sudden rise in the sea levels that will eventually melt the Greenland ice sheet, so his goal is to take refuge at a high elevation.
PH: Robert saw Greenland and said it is melting. Nuff said.
CA: If that’s true then why not build a boat, it worked for Noah. And Noah was in the last episode, so he should be easy to contact.
The Earls live in the high desert to escape all the water that they feel will flood the coastal areas if the Greenland ice sheet melts. They moved to an elevation over 3000 feet above sea level. The narrator says that is 2 times higher than the Empire State Building. The Earls have gone remote to avoid the swarm of refugees that will be moving inland in the event of this flooding.
CA: I see a lot of liquor and beer bottles lying around. Who needs water in a desert?
Robert and his wife are living in a mobile home because they are building a self-sustainable property out of empty beer bottles and cat litter boxes.
CA: Oh, okay, he has collected all the bottles for building materials. Smart!
Robert has collected enough kitty litter and beer bottles over the last two years to build their dream home. He plans on using the kitty litter filled with dirt as bricks and the glass bottles will transfer heat into their home in the evenings. Robert’s first project is a smoke house where he plans to make jerky and says that if other humans get too close, he can make “human jerky”.
PH: I guess they don’t have a close circle of friends to prep with. Or did they? Is that a piece of human jerky on Robert’s lip?
One of the biggest issues with living in the desert is water. Where they live the average rainfall is 10 inches per year. To supplement their water supply, they must go and draw water from pools that collect in the low spots.
PH: They have a problem with water? Living in the desert will do that.
CA: That creek is their water source? It looks like a puddle to me.
Because of their remote location, the Earls must be careful they aren’t ambushed when they are away from their home. They play out scenarios with their neighbors who try to sneak up on them in order to practice a more hostile force.
CA: This is like a shoot-out in the Wild West. Oops, the bad guys won.
PH: Robert’s neighbor Davis looks like Daniel Faraday from Lost.
Robert has a creative use for the water that they consume. He recycles all of the brown water into an underground fertilizer system for his vegetable garden.
CA: Yuck
Snakes are plentiful in the desert where Robert lives and could be a potential source of protein. Robert consults with a local snake expert, who teaches him how to trap and kill rattlesnakes for food. The local expert snake wrangler is a woman named Kat Stevens.
PH: Kat Stevens should be a rock band. She has that look.
Kat has been bitten by a rattlesnake whose venom is highly toxic and has the scars to prove it. They find a snake under a rock. She said if you see one you will see two and demonstrates how to milk a snake for its venom and how to kill it.
PH: Why does National Geographic hide the actual slaughter of animals for food? This is a prepping show for crying out loud!
CA: Robert and Debbie are sweet; I like how they hold hands. I am curious though if Robert and Debbie would be willing to eat their dogs if there is no food? That is a conversation that needs to happen.
The score from the Practical Preppers is 63 which give them 9 months to live. All three scores are very close but there is a disparity in the time estimates.
That’s it! I hope you will come back next week when we have an all-new episode of Doomsday Preppers to review (Fortress at Sea). This next one even features someone who has written a guest post on our blog!