Nat. Geo. Doomsday Preppers

National Geographic also had a show on doomsday preppers. I've only seen the first 2 featured families so far. While I don't agree with Nat Geo's "experts" advice, some of what the families are doing is definitely interesting to see. The first guy turned his pool into a greenhouse by covering it but left water in the deep end and made it into an aquaponics system.

You can watch it on You Tube. This forum won't let me post it as a link??!?! so just go to YouTube and search for "Doomsday Preppers" and it should be the first match.

That was a great show. In fact, I did a review of it on the podcast yesterday. Talk about great timing for your post!
I thought they (Nat. Geo.) did a fairly positive overview of these families by letting the people talk about their concerns, prepping efforts and general outlooks without trying too hard to skew it to make them look wacko. I learned a little from each of the families:
#1 Family (Phoenix, AZ). The swimming pool conversion you mentioned. I'm interested in Aquaponics and this showed a first-hand way to go about it.
#2 Family (also Phoenix, AZ). The fact that many families are starting to buy food in bulk because of prepping. So much so that the supply store they showed was beginning to cater to preppers. I call that a good sign. Also, the mom was wanting her kids to have a "normal life" but also learn "the things that really matter". I liked that approach.
#3 Family (Big farm in somewhere like North Carolina-I forgot exactly?). The overall planning and setup of that farm was very interesting. Perhaps a little heavy on the defensive side of things but they were certainly striving to be self-reliant. Reminded me a lot of the main group in Rawles' book "Patriots". I believe that group has a YouTube page with lots of prepping videos, but I don't have the link in front of me.
#4 Family (Utah). This was probably my favorite, probably because I've always thought it would be cool to have a bunker. It was well-stocked and all that but the guy was on the road for work so much that he was too far away from it much of the time. I think it drove home the point, however, that all your preparedness efforts are for naught if you can not get to your place of safety.
Overall, great show and thanks for recommending it CulexPipiens.
Chip Monk
Host of "The Chip Monk Family Survival Podcast"

It was a good show, I just notices something about all of the groups/families that participated. None of them had enough people to survive a TEOTWAWKI event. The only ones that even came close were the two families that had the farm in South Carolina. Just my observation. I hope they make more.

One thing that I thought watching those folks was that they may be TALKING TOO MUCH! You know that a lot of people in that area are going to know these people and if a crisis comes up, I wonder where everybody will go? Also, the government has a lot of big eyes and ears and they keep track of EVERYTHING! I'm sure that they have requested a tape of this program and what ever other information that National Geographic has on those folks. Everybody has a mouth, but they need to use it wisely! Just my opinion. Dario

MrDario541 wrote: One thing that I thought watching those folks was that they may be TALKING TOO MUCH! You know that a lot of people in that area are going to know these people and if a crisis comes up, I wonder where everybody will go? Also, the government has a lot of big eyes and ears and they keep track of EVERYTHING! I'm sure that they have requested a tape of this program and what ever other information that National Geographic has on those folks. Everybody has a mouth, but they need to use it wisely! Just my opinion. Dario

I agree and was thinking the same thing. Although the two people with the farms were neat to see. That would be my ultimit goal to get to that point. I am very surprised they gave as much info about there location as they did. And although the first family with the pool had done some neat stuff I could never see myself going that far. Especialy to end up eating fish EVERY DAY. No thanks but props to them for being creative and resorsefull.

In this day of Google Earth and the internet you really do have to be careful.

Think about the guy with the covered pool. A corner house. Suburb of Phoenix if I remember correctly. Shouldn't be too hard to find a corner house with a large covered area in the yard in Google Earth. If someone was really motivated you could probably find it in 30 minutes or less. In one scene they even pan past a stop sign with a street sign above it. If that's their corner then you could find the place in seconds if you have enough resolution on your display to make out the sign.

And the guys with the farm... that pond in the background should give you something to look for if you wanted to find their place. Now if Nat Geo was truly concerned about opsec for these people than they would not have given locations... or perhaps they gave false locations... who knows.

And to put my money where my mouth is, i just watched literally 30 seconds of one of the videos and was able to find the address, phone and google map image of the exact location shown in the video... and I did so in about 3 minutes total. Not exactly keeping your preps private... again if they actually showed the real location.

Being as how we've been talking about Doomsday Preppers, I decided to bring this one back to the top. It kind of goes along with the other one on a different thread.

Heck, I forgot we already had this thread going!