'Net Loss

In the news today, there was an article about some 20 year old dying from a blood clot that formed after he had been sitting in the same position playing X-box for hours on end. I thought it was an interesting way to die, if really pathetic. I immediately leapt onto my Facebook page to make sure all my friends knew about it. Ditto for MySpace and LiveJournal….

Except that I didn’t, because I don’t belong to those social networking sites. Aside from the blogging I do here, and a presence on a few discussion boards, I don’t use social media. I don’t have a YouTube channel, and I don’t want one. Personally, I think they are detrimental to being properly prepared.

Overall, I think that many aspects of social media and the internet as a whole are negatives when it comes to preparedness. I agree that the net is an excellent way to meet other preppers and share ideas, but at some point it becomes too much of a good thing. If you wanted to, you could spend your entire day surfing survival sites. A dozen different web pages will teach you how to make fire, the best B.O.B. to build, and a thousand other things.

Unfortunately, you’re sitting there reading about it and not doing it. For far too many people, reading and talking takes the place of actually getting things done toward achieving a certain level of preparedness. Worse yet, while they might well read articles about how important it is to be physically prepared, they are sitting in front of a computer screen instead of being active and getting fit.

We’ve become a culture of observers and not doers. We have come to believe that answering our e-mail is equivalent to accomplishing a task like growing a garden or building a shed. Reading about gardening or woodworking is as far away from actually practicing those skills as you can get.

It is likely that you have all the info you need, and that more surfing, discussion boards, and downloading will just get you more of what you’ve already got. Now you need to take that information and put it too use: grow a garden, build a chair, learn to weld, or whatever else makes your socks roll up and down. Turn your damned computer off and get out there. The more time you waste here means less time to practice and prepare.

The other aspect of social media and the web is illustrated by the picture that heads this article. While it’s great to find others into survivalism and prepping, it’s unlikely that they live next door or even in your town. In a major crisis, it is the people living across the alley, next door, or down the block that you really need to know, not some faceless net friend. Contacts and your social network in real life are the ones that will be there to see you through, not all the people you ‘friended’ on Facebook.


It’s just common sense