As we have been reminded on a number of occasions this year, from a range of directions, the end of the world is coming. We have been reminded this to the point that the end of the world comi
As we have been reminded on a number of occasions this year, from a range of directions, the end of the world is coming. We have been reminded this to the point that the end of the world coming is pretty cliché.
A documentary on National Geographic this week followed the lives of some people in the UK, known as ‘preppers’, who are preparing for the end of the world. However, the line between being prepared for an apocalypse and the idea of it totally taking over your life becomes heavily blurred very frequently in the programme.
It is quite enjoyable watching a handful of people devote their lives (and presumably quite a bit of their money) to hypothetical situations that they have created in their heads, supporting it with vague scientific theory.
It feels a bit like watching a mockumentary by Chris Morris. In fact, if you had asked Chris Morris to make a show with this theme, the characters he’d come up with would probably not stray too far from those we encounter. Particularly an ex-soldier, who served in the Falklands and Northern Ireland. He keeps a truck ready in his back garden at all times in case a disaster happens. Then we meet another chap who runs the most popular apocalypse survival radio show in the UK (the only one). You get the feeling if there was an apocalypse, his number of viewers wouldn’t drop too drastically.
One prepper, Edward, holds a rabbit upside down, and kills it with a swift judo chop to the head. After a few seconds of awkward silence he confirms ‘..yep, he’s dead.’ He has moved to into Eastern Europe in order to become totally self sufficient, a policy which was also mildly successful for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in the early years of World War 2. His daily life includes giving his three young kids lessons in how to properly use a rifle, which at least will stop them from being bullied at school (if anything they are more equipped really to be a pretty ruthless bully), as well as spending time with his Slovakian wife. She is a kind of a dark ages, pseudo-trophy wife of sorts. Either that or she came with the land.
A middle aged American woman then showed her survival kit, which she prepared after the London Riots. It included a hair brush, lube and condoms, explaining her choices by saying something along the lines of: ‘You just never know, if there is a disaster perhaps men will abandon the last smidgen of sexual standards they have, and when they do, I’ll be right there with this little tube of lube and a tin of condensed red wine’ (I paraphrased slightly).
All of the people featured are absolutely terrifying. The majority with lethal skills in traps and weaponry (and condoms). I find it horrifying that, in the event of some sort of disaster, these creepy individuals will be roaming the woods, like some sort of perverted paintball champion, picking off the rest of us with a rifle whilst nursing a muddy semi.
Each ‘prepper’ keeps saying ‘of course I don’t want to use these skills, but it is better to be safe than sorry.’ You can tell that each of them would love to use their skills. They are absolutely dying to let the words ‘I told you so’ tumble endlessly from their mouths like the world’s simultaneously most violent and smug avalanche. You watch a middle-aged man put on a gas mask, sail down a river in a blow up canoe and explain ‘I’m doing this for my kids’ and you think, no you’re not. You’re quite clearly doing this for you.
