There are hun­dreds if not thou­sands of prep­per video on YouTube. If you haven’t already tried it, just do a search for SHTF or WROL and you’ll see what comes up (and that doesn’t include “sur­vival­ist”, “prep­per”, “sur­vival”, “eco­nom­ic col­lapse” etc). The videos range in qual­i­ty from some­one with a PC cam and a head­set micro­phone just talk­ing about var­i­ous top­ics to well made hands-on dis­cus­sions on a range of top­ics. And many YouTube video prep­pers have large fol­low­ings. I will say that I have sub­scribed to a cou­ple of prep­per chan­nels and have learned sev­er­al good things from them, as well as say­ing that I don’t always agree with the opin­ions expressed.

Recent­ly I watched a video from a non-prep­per woman that was a response to a well known and fol­lowed prep­per. I won’t men­tion the prep­pers’ screen name since I do not want to be crit­i­cal of him per se (the com­ments in the video and that fol­low can and do apply to many oth­er YouTube prep­pers as well), though if you have seen any of his videos you will like­ly know who he is based on the descrip­tion.

I also will not be post­ing the response video in ques­tion nor a link to it because it is a very pro­fane, racists, reverse-dis­crim­i­na­tion, extrem­ist (to the left) point of view.  I don’t have to give her fur­ther audi­ence. There­fore I will need to describe her crit­i­cisms for you.

How­ev­er, putting those neg­a­tives aside for a moment (and I am not dis­miss­ing them), I do think she makes an inter­est­ing point. And one that I too have won­dered about while watch­ing some of these videos, see­ing the types of equip­ment and quan­ti­ties of equip­ment these prep­pers show.

In the response video the woman was very crit­i­cal of how the prep­per presents him­self based on his appear­ance in the video, as well as his sur­round­ings and props, and man­ner of speak­ing. In short, her point was she doesn’t believe he can be for real. She believes that he (and I pre­sume some oth­ers) are just ‘too good to be true’ (my para­phrase).  She believes that he and oth­ers are a ‘set up’ to pur­pose­ly give false or mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion. A “pat­sy”. Or to make oth­ers come out of anonymi­ty and expose their beliefs and preps for pos­si­ble legal action late if/when a dis­as­ter hap­pens

 And she rais­es sev­er­al good ques­tions.

The par­tic­u­lar prep­per she was respond­ing to usu­al­ly presents him­self sit­ting in front of a wall-size Amer­i­can flag, on a wood­land pat­terned sofa, hold­ing a large AK style rifle that is adorned with all sorts of high-end acces­sories (holo sights, front grip, drum mag­a­zine, etc), and wears a bat­tle vest with each pock­et burst­ing with loaded 30 round mag­a­zines (and is that body armor under the vest?). Clear­ly the cam­era is on a tri­pod in front of him as he does his pre­sen­ta­tion.

The woman rais­es sev­er­al points of which the 3 main ones are:

  1. Where does he get the mon­ey for such a weapon setup?He is a young man, best guess in late 20’s. By his own words he recent­ly was dis­charged from a tour in the mil­i­tary which is noto­ri­ous for poor pay. The woman “doubt’s he’s an invest­ment banker” (her quote). While I pre­sume he’s sin­gle and no kids (any­one mar­ried and/or with kids will tell you they have no mon­ey!) that bat­tle rifle and out­fit alone must cost at least $2,000. And that’s before all the ammu­ni­tion he shows in his preps.Plus, that isn’t his only weapon. And that is in addi­tion to oth­er equip­ment and preps he shows in his videos.

    So where does a 20-some­thing who appar­ent­ly only ‘worked’ in the mil­i­tary get the funds to pur­chase such equip­ment and sup­plies? And when did he have the time while serv­ing in the mil­i­tary to shop for, pur­chase, and orga­nize these things?

    I sup­pose he may have had help from friends or fam­i­ly with the pur­chas­es. And who knows – maybe he is inde­pen­dent­ly well off! (Though at the risk of judg­ment, I doubt it) Nor­mal­ly I would say it’s no one’s busi­ness where some­one else gets their income (unless you’re going to try to prove they got it from illic­it activ­i­ty). But I do think this is a legit­i­mate ques­tion. Not just of this par­tic­u­lar prep­per but oth­ers as well.

  2. Why would he present him­self in such an open and clichéd man­ner on YouTube?In all his videos his face is clear­ly shown, he isn’t try­ing to hide or be anony­mous. That and his ‘bat­tle ready’ char­ac­ter is such a cliché for any­one who wants to believe sur­vival­ists are noth­ing more than good ol’ boys with big guns that can’t wait for a fight with the government.In this day and age of near para­noid secu­ri­ty, one would think he’d be a lit­tle con­cerned for get­ting a vis­it from DHS, FBI, NSA, ATF or a dozen oth­er Fed­er­al (or local) agen­cies. Not that he is vio­lat­ing any laws per se (that I can tell, I don’t know the details of the sta­tus where he lives – for all I know that gun and acces­sories might just be a good look­ing fake movie prop!) nor has he made an overt threats but some of the things he has said can, in today’s world, at the very least get him on a ‘watch list’.

    He is clear­ly express­ing very patri­ot­ic ideas. So as a patri­ot he may feel he is pro­tect­ed by 1st and 2nd amend­ment rights as well as the spir­it of the Con­sti­tu­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in this day and age that and $1.00 will get you a small cof­fee at best. While you and I may not care, or at best just roll our eyes, such an appear­ance is a very strong and extreme imag­ine in today’s PC word.

    It’s a del­i­cate sub­ject: Stand for what you believe in and face the pos­si­ble harsh con­se­quences, or, try to remain under the radar and be part of the prob­lem instead of the solu­tion. I can’t answer that. But I do I agree it is curi­ous. Very very few oth­er on YouTube take it that far.

  3. He speaks too clear­ly, too well pre­pared to be an ‘arma­ture’ video producer.The prep­per is always well spo­ken, clear, no stut­ter­ing, no “um” or uneven speak­ing. He seems extreme­ly well pre­pared with what his is to say, almost professional.This too is a very sub­jec­tive crit­i­cism. Some peo­ple are just bet­ter pub­lic speak­ers than oth­ers. You can’t tell that by appear­ance alone. And he does seem to have notes in front of him, which is a very com­mon speak­ing tech­nique taught in every high school.

For these rea­sons she pon­ders if this prep­per and oth­ers are legit­i­mate­ly just the guy-next-door or are ‘pasties’ to pro­vide dis­in­for­ma­tion and false efforts. A bit tin-foil-hat-ish but you have to con­sid­er the source.

Nev­er­the­less, points 1&2 I tend to agree with in so far as won­der­ing those points too. I am much old­er than many of these prep­pers with more of an estab­lished pro­fes­sion­al career. Yet even so I can’t afford the kinds and quan­ti­ties of equip­ment and preps these peo­ple seem to have. Even if I cut all enter­tain­ments and any­thing extra out of my life I wouldn’t be able to afford these items in the quan­ti­ties they seem to have. It would take me years to accu­mu­late all the items, if at all, pre­sum­ing I paid for them all myself.

At the risk of putting on the tin-foil-hat myself, there is some log­ic to the idea that maybe, just per­haps, in today’s world prep­pers are seen by some to be a threat. Or per­haps a “prob­lem” to be addressed. In that light, it is a time proven tech­nique to place mis-infor­ma­tion and false lead­ers inside such com­mu­ni­ties.

I am not mak­ing any accu­sa­tions about this or any oth­er prep­per on YouTube. In fact, the above crit­i­cisms aside, I find lit­tle wrong tech­ni­cal­ly with that these prep­pers are say­ing. Cer­tain­ly well with top­ics of dis­cus­sion.

I believe the point is a warn­ing to prep­pers: Be care­ful about who and what you see on YouTube. And who you asso­ciate with. Always be cau­tious.

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