Archetypes of the Gun Owner: Prepper Pete

At long last, we have the final installment of my Gun Owning Archetypes series. Click here for the Intro page for the series, and to catch up on the entries. Now, without further ado…

Who is Prepper Pete?

Prepper Pete is a ‘Doomsday Prepper’, as introduced to the general public on National Geographic’s TV show of the same name. He’s a guy who is anxiously awaiting the collapse. He may be the archetype that is the most well-known to the non-gun world, because of the TV series. He may also be the least populous archetype, because of the fairly radical lifestyle changes required to fully realize this archetype in one’s life.

Prepper Pete is a man who is willing to compromise his current situation to give himself an advantage in a future situation that may never actually come to be.

Preparation Peter is a unique archetype because how he owns and interacts with guns doesn’t define him. He, for the most part, treats guns just like he does the rest of his stores of supplies: as a means to an end. In this way, he is very similar to Fred the Fudd. That’s where the similarities end, though, as Fudds own guns for purely recreational purposes and preppers own them for purely ‘social’ purposes.

If this was Tactical Timmy, this would be guns, ammo, & gear

Prepper Pete is similar to Tactical Timmy in that they are both over-preparing for very unlikely situations. Whereas Tim is over-preparing for a violent, gun-centric event specifically, Peter is preparing for a civilization-wide event. Another big difference between the two archetypes is that Timmy’s puts a heavy emphasis on skill and quality of gear. Pete’s are far more likely to get cheaper weapons of more dubious quality, because Prepper Pete’s are very gear-focussed. To their credit, Preppers are interested in the whole person’s survival and not just what they can do ballistically. In this way Petes are more well-rounded and wholistic than the gun-skill-focussed Timmy.

Prepper Pete and Gamer Gary have very little, if anything, in common.

Know Them by Their Phrases

“SHTF”

“Bug-Out Vehicle/Bag/Location”

“WROL”

“TEOTWAWKI”

“WTFLOLBBQ”

“Two is one, and one is none.”

Using the word ‘preps’ unironically

Who is Not a Prepper Pete?

Basically, people who have ‘preps’ for normal occurances, once that are likely to happen in a given, arbitrary amount of time. What a person considers enough of a life-changing situation that it needs to be prepared for now is different from person to person, how it should best be dealt with even more so. As you can probably imagine, who is and who is not a ‘prepper’ can get very vague, and fast!

Yeah, just a normal dude with a normal car. Nothing to see here…

The general rule I use is the following: If a person’s preparations have a noticeable impact on their normal, everyday lives, then they might be Prepper Pete.

I do not consider Boogaloo Bob to be a prepper. Boogaloo Bob isn’t preparing to survive the collapse of society, he’s planning on being an active participant. That is a distinct difference between Bob & Pete. I may address this in more detail in a later post.

The Problem with Prepper Pete

You wanna bet that this family has enough saved for retirement?

The problem with Pete is that he’s not grounded in reality. How many times has the entire power grid gone completely, irreversibly offline? How many times have we engaged in nuclear war? When was the last time Yellowstone erupted? Or a dinosaur-killing-size steroid impacted Earth? Yes, those are all possible, but what is the likelihood that they’ll happen within our lifetime? Pedro de la Preparation is worried about things that are so unlikely to happen that they might as well be a fairy tale.

What We Can Learn

Prepper Pete isn’t off-base, conceptually. Pete is looking around himself, considering what could go wrong, and actually taking steps to improve his chances of survival in such a situation that differs from ‘business as usual’. What will you do if your power goes out for more than a few hours? What if you get snowed in? What if your heater breaks? Do you live in a flood plain? That’s what we should take away from this archetype. Not the doomsday, end-of-the-world, EMP/nuclear winter/zombie apocalypse nonsense, but things that actually happen to real people living in the real world. I’ve started doing that myself, and have documented it in my winter preparedness series (content generation is a cruel mistress).

Digging a massive tunnel from your house to your bug-out vehicle so you can escape in the event of being besieged by a murderous mob is a bit much, though.