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People Who Grew Up With 'Doomsday Preppers' Explain What Their Childhood Was Like

Always be prepared. But for what exactly?

People Who Grew Up With 'Doomsday Preppers' Explain What Their Childhood Was Like

The end is near! End of Days are upon us! Prepare for Armageddon! How many times have we heard all those over the years? Prediction after prediction foretold us that doom is within reach. So many gullible people have sadly given into the rhetoric. Many children had to grow up preparing for the end of humanity. Now preparation and survival skills are important but one can also go a smidge overboard. For instance....

Redditor u/taxidermied_unicorn wanted to hear how some childhoods went when the plan was always about plotting for the end of times by asking.... People who grew up with "Doomsday Prepper" parents, what was it like?


"coming wars and end times" 

My mom hoards a ton of canned food everywhere in the house, along with random tools she's been told will be helpful and so many paper towels and rolls of toilet paper. The guns are another thing. Everyone in my family is content to let her do her thing and spend thousands of dollars prepping. There are so many useless things that take up a ridiculous amount of space there, all while she complained that we had too much stuff and needed to get rid of our actual belongings to make more room.

Everyone she knows gets printouts of the newsletters she's signed up for with prophecies about the end times. When I was still living at home, she'd walk into the room at random times to give me hour-long lectures about the "coming wars and end times" and how sinners are responsible for it. It was really stressful, especially because I have anxiety (which I'm sure isn't because of growing up in a paranoid atmosphere at all /s), and I still have nightmares about apocalyptic scenarios.

I've forced myself to develop a more accepting view for my own sanity, which is essentially, "There are too many options to prepare for all of them, and I don't know how much I want to survive in a post-apocalyptic world anyway, so I'm going to enjoy the time I have without stressing too much about what-ifs." Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has been really helpful for dealing with the paranoia that still pops up sometimes, and I really recommend it for anybody who grew up in that atmosphere and has anxiety stemming from it. starlet25

Regular Days....

it was pretty much the same as any other normal family I assume, we just went bulk shopping every few months, the only strange-ish thing is that we'd have a week out of every month that we'd have to kind of fast, we could have a pack of raisins and a bottle of water every day and that's all. Beaudet90

The JW's....

Not quite that extreme, but I was raised JW (Jehovahs witness) they didn't have a specific date but it was always 'within the next decade, for sure', so I grew up thinking that all my non-JW friends would be dead within 10 years, which was not a pleasant thought for a 6 year old. In class I used to worry that armageddon would strike and I'd be stuck in a classroom of dead people till my parents found me. Religion. Smh. yehlas

Self-Sufficient.

I was raised Mormon. So I personally have learned how to take care of myself and trust neighbors I'd crap hits the fan. I have some food saved but the best system is to set up farms and try to have things like chickens to make more food. If the world goes under, your neighbors are very important. But I grew up with a stash of seeds in our food storage if help didn't come within the time it was out. ShadowOfEnder-YT

"Watchmen of America" 

My parents didn't get into it until later in my life but in three years they have

-Built a Farm. Chickens, Turkeys, Rabbits, a goat at one point, a pig.

-stocked up on ammo, like thousands upon thousands of bullets.

-subscribed to all right wing groups possible, whether it be facebook, or the "Watchmen of America" which regularly do doomsday drills.

-tried to get me in on everything.

-are convinced Obama is the antichrist.

-listen to Glenn Beck everyday

I try to avoid all conversations about anything like that with them. It usually ends in a fight, and I do not want to hate my parents. alwert

Mostly normal.

Mostly normal. My dad just showed me what to do just in case doomsday ever came. Taught me how to camp/survive, use camo, ration food, shoot guns, and other basic survival skills. He taught me it's always better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. sevven07

Use the Bushcraft! 

My uncle was a prepper. He taught me bushcraft as a fun hobby. Never really imprinting the idea of prepping. My parents were fine with that. Now, almost 12 years later, I rediscovered that hobby. He taught me a lot about navigation, improvised first aid, the ethics of survival and firelighting.

I'm not a prepper in anyway whatsoever. I don't believe it is a sustainable way of emergency survival on the scale of populations. However, if I ever find myself without a working vehicle in the middle of nowhere, I have no reason to panic, with my skillset. whatsamawhatsit

Taking Cyprus....

My folks have enough food for 3 months.

Their motivation is not to prepare for a doomsday, but for a financial collapse.

They took Cyprus as an example. There was money, but people couldn't withdrawal and buy food.

I'm planning to stock food for like 2 weeks. Who knows what can happen. I think we sometimes forget we're screwed if the supermarket doesn't have any stock.

Or a more realistic situation: when I make stupid financial decisions. Rockima

it seems so crazy to me....

My mom was/is convinced that in the apocalypse toilet paper would be as good as currency... she has an entire room in her house that is filled from wall to wall, floor to ceiling with toilet paper.... it's like a damn Costco isle.... we were/are forbidden to talk about it (because she doesn't want to be killed over it... keeps it in the down low) growing up it didn't seem weird because it was "normal" but now that I'm an adult and a mother myself.... it seems so crazy to me. txjr5

Hey Jesus... 

Mormon parents. We're instructed to have seven years worth of food for when Jesus comes. The entire basement of our house was just food and water supplies. Literally stacks and piles of food and water bottles. All kinds of non-perishable goods, like freeze dried foods. My dad also always used to say "our neighbors have received the same warnings we have. If they come here looking for handouts, we're going to tell them to look elsewhere."

Edit: I'm no longer Mormon. pterodactylbros

Quakes. 

I'm a bit of a prepper myself, but just to the extent of having a 2-month food and a 1-month water supply. I live in Manila, and the idea of an 8+ earthquake that wrecks the infrastructure of a metropolitan area with 13 million people is the stuff of nightmares. Advo96

Soothing Trauma....

This makes me think of the mother of a friend of mine. She had a small room off the side of the kitchen, shelves filled floor to ceiling with tins. it wasn't about 'doomsday'. She had starved as a child in Holland during WWII, aged around 5. She didn't do any other prepping, I don't believe she thought it would happen again. She was a smart, capable woman living a continent away from Holland by the time I met her. I suspect the tins were a psychological safety net, a way of soothing childhood trauma. blackcloudcat

"just in case"

Dad wasn't a full on doomsday prepper, but he was a paranoid schizophrenic. He had a stock of MREs that I had now and then. They weren't bad. Also canned ensure back when it came in cans. Also learned a lot about stuff like maintaining salt after sweating, dad used to have me lick a teaspoon of salt after our walks.

Tons of flashlights and batteries in the house. I remember him teaching me how to use a gas mask "just in case." We live in upstate NY, so yeah not exactly a war zone. He had a generator just in case the power went out (honestly not a bad idea because he lived in a place where winter could get pretty hairy). I will say Y2K had him totally spooked.

We used to joke that he was Burt from Tremors minus the guns. Chazkuangshi

For its milk.....

Bottles and bottles and bottles of water in the garage. My mom bought the bulk packages from Costco and stuffed them there; I wouldn't be surprised if there were over a hundred plastic containers in there.

The "the world's gonna end" panic-mentality mostly comes from my mom's side, and it usually happens in waves. Things will be chill for a while, and the all of the sudden packages with no-electricity hand-crank radios and portable generators will show up at our door.

She claims that she makes "ambient purchases" while half-asleep, but I think she really just that paranoid.

A few times, she's mentioned buying a cow. For its milk. Incase we're forced to live off the land or whatever, so we can still have milk. And after explaining to her that no, we absolutely do not have the room or faculties to take care of a whole-ass cow, she starts up with the same line of questioning, but asking if we can get a goat instead. We don't even have a front or backyard. InvisibleMurderChild

Find the Surplus.

My dad stocked textiles, toiletries, non-perishables, and water to an extreme amount. Our entire basement was basically a bunker. It could be locked from the inside at both the top and the bottom of the stairs, and we had huge drums of potable water that probably stood to about stomach-high on me now as an adult. We also kept old 2-litr bottles (old pepsi bottles) for non-potable that we stacked like wine on heavy shelves, as well as rice and dried beans in vacuumed sealed containers. He was constantly buying things at old surplus outlets.

Gas masks, iodide tablets, rucksacks, etc, and taught us how to make bullets using a shell-cleaner and powder packer. Like that one poster above mentioned, we also typically had about every few weeks a few days where we ate next to nothing, and were taught a lot of both local and non-local plants that could be edible (clover, acorns, dandelion, etc) and how to prepare them, as well as things that could be health-beneficial (clover, cherry bark, mullein, etc) and how to prepare them.

We rarely got to go hunting, because of where we lived at the time, but he did teach us how to set various snares and traps, like figure fours and pitfalls, and any time one of our traps succeeded, he would use it as an opportunity to teach us how to clean and prepare meat not just for that day, but how to cut and dry it for future use. I have to say, knowing how to brain-tan a rabbit skin is not something I ever expected to come up in conversation as an adult as much as it actually does! nxtstagee

To the Bones....

I learned how to hunt when I was six. For my eleventh birthday, I learned how to make a bow and arrow with the contents of my hiking kit and caught a rabbit for lunch. I was then shown how to use said rabbit's bones and internal organs to fish, and we had trout and perch for dinner.

My dad is of the mind that doomsday preppers who just stockpile food are idiots, because even if they survive the apocalypse all they're doing is turning themselves into particular fat swines for the inevitable bandits to look for. Better to be able to hunt and gather food.

My doomsday "kit" is just a bugout bag in my walk-in pantry. TemptCiderFan

7 Years. 

We were always too poor to fully prepare for the end times although my mom still believes they are coming. Fun fact, if you don't have food storage of your own create a map of all the mormons in your town so when crap goes down you can take theirs! This was actual advise from my mother.

She grew up in Utah and it's a well known fact that mormons are supposed to hold onto 7 years of food storage at all times in case of jesus. It was also a plot point in an S.M. Stirling post apocalyptic novel that a group of people stumbled across an abandoned mormon house which set them up nicely for food for a bit. So yeah, make a mormon friend for the end times. coffeetish

No Christmas. 

I grew up southern Baptist. We were taught that the rapture was going to happen any day. Every night I was afraid to go to sleep because I might be raptured before I woke up. I wasn't going to get to grow up, get married or have children. As I went through my teenage years, I didn't plan for my future as I should have because we weren't going to be here next year. My mother never bought Christmas wrapping paper on sale because next Christmas wasn't going to come.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have done many things differently. notableea

Canned Plans. 

My parents aren't doomsday preppers by any stretch of the imagination, but we did live in an area where getting to the grocery store would be difficult if it snowed in. As such, we always had a pantry full of home-canned stuff that we made together, and a huge vat of sauerkraut we make once a year when I go home for Christmas. notadoctor123

Bunker Down. 

My father had crates full of non perishable food, camping gear, gas cookers. you name it, he had it.

he stored that in a "bunker" he built, which was really just a big anderson shelter. TheSoviet-Union

REDDIT

People Describe The Most Historically Significant Event They've Ever Witnessed In Person

Reddit user FictionVent asked: 'What is the most historically significant event you witnessed IN PERSON?'

Aircraft losing control
Richard R. Schünemann/Unsplash

Do you ever wonder what it must've been like to experience major events throughout world history when reading about them in text books?

But if you take pause and actually think about it, we're living through many newsworthy current events that succeeding generations will be talking about long after we're gone.

Reading about them online or in newspapers is one thing. But seeing them happen unfold before our eyes is another.

Curious to hear from those who'll have anecdotes to tell in the future, Redditor FictionVent asked:
"What is the most historically significant event you witnessed IN PERSON?"

People recall the natural disaster events they've witnessed.

Tremors

"1964 Good Friday Earthquake 9.2 Richter. Was a boy in Cordova, Alaska at the time."

– KitchenLab2536

"My father was skipper of the USCG cutter stationed there. He was inport, and when the quake struck shortly before 5:30pm, he and my mom gathered me and my three siblings on the front porch. At first, it felt like the house was crumbling at the foundation, but on the porch we could plainly see our whole world was shaking. I remember watching telephone poles swaying, and the wires snapping and crackling in the street. The quake lasted about five minutes initially. My dad got his ship underway to avoid the tidal wave which was sure to come. We had several aftershocks in the coming weeks, some of which were quite strong, though nowhere near as strong or as long as the quake itself. I was seven at the time."

– KitchenLab2536

Collapsing Freeway

"October 17th, 1989. I watched the 880 Nimitz freeway collapse during the San Francisco earthquake. The Honda in front of me had the upper deck crush her front-end engine compartment. The mother and her daughter were shaken up but completely fine."

"I was driving a convertible Triumph Spitfire, which was scratched up slightly from debris. However, I walked away unscathed. Aside from the fact I pissed my pants, which I didn't notice until much later."

– CatDaddyWhisper

Thar She Blows

"I sat on the roof of our house and watched Mt. St. Helens erupt less than 100 miles away."

– stinkykitty71

"This must have been fascinating and terryfing in equal measure. What a thing to witness."

– runrossyrun

"It was amazing! The ash that covered everything like snow was interesting to kid me, but less so to my parents."

– stinkykitty71

People recall seeing major catastrophes as a result of malfunctions or judgement errors.

Bomber Crash

"The b-52 crash that led to changing what large military aircraft are allowed to do for airshows."

"I didn't see the plane, but immediately saw the fireball. It was just a perfect, bright red turning to black mushroom cloud."

"Fairchild is a nuclear air base and there were a few minutes there where I was sure the world was about to end."

"A few years before a KC-135 doing the same thing crashed near the school while we were in class."

– goffstock

Tragic Takeoff

"I was standing on my front porch watching the launch of the Challenger."

– StarChaser_Tyger

"Was riding in my parents car to a basketball game in the next town over in north texas when we saw a shooting star and thought that was neat."

"It was the Columbia..."

– Misdirected_Colors

Demolition Gone Wrong

"The failed implosion of the Zip feed mill in Sioux Falls, SD in 2005."

"They hyped it up, sold tickets to it, had a big 'BOOM' marketing thing, and broadcast it live on TV."

"The explosives took out the main supports on the first floor, and the rest of the building above it just plopped down 10ft or so and came to a rest. It was a massive failure, and was a funny little blurb on news stations around the world that day. Definitely not major news, just the rest of the world taking 20 seconds to laugh at us."

"The building sat like that (the leaning tower of SuFu) for quite a while until they figured out how to safely demolish it."

"Here's a clip of the failed demolition."

https://youtu.be/I8DEDUqd0RU

– KitchenBandicoots

These well-known historical events were seen by very few who are alive today.

Historical Remnant

"The tumbling of the Wall in Germany… along with people selling bits and pieces of it on tables in lobby in front of commissary and px in the following weeks and months. I had picked up a chunk about the size of an oreo and kept it… has blue spray paint on the flat side. Wonder if anyone is buying them now?"

– SingedPenguin13

Major Upheaval

"I would have to say the LA riots. I lived about two blocks from where it started. I was on my way home from school and saw someone throw a brick through a window. I didn’t even wait. I just started running the whole way home."

– Scarlaymama0721

Day Of Infamy

"9/11, I could SMELL the collapse of the towers."

– go4tli

"A friend of mine was there. One day in the warehouse we worked in together there was an odd electrical burning smell. He stopped in his tracks and went 'this is what 9/11 smelled like.'"

– mantistoboggan287

I didn't physically witness the fall of the World Trade Center but I was living in New York City at the time.

However, I did see the smoke.

I was living up north in Washington Heights at the time and knowing what happened, uncertain of what was to come, and seeing the plumes of smoke from the attack site was the most ominous sight I've ever seen in my life to date.

Have you ever lived through a historic moment or witnessed something sure to be noted in history books? Let us know in the comments below.

man in business suit standing near the stairs
Hunters Race on Unsplash

A job search is not fun, so most people will tolerate a lot to keep a job.

But everyone has their limit.

Sometimes that limit is reached right in the middle of a work day and people are forced to walk off the job with no prior notice.

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groom in gray suit kissing bride in white dress
NIKITA SHIROKOV on Unsplash

Many weddings involve months of planning and thousands of dollars.

But the one guarantee in life is that poo happens and weddings are not immune to sh*t storms.

Natural disasters, unexpected illnesses, accidents or animosity can derail even the best laid wedding plans.

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When I was in seventh grade, I had aspirations to be a poet. I made a Mother's Day card for my mom with a cute (but now, cringe-worthy) poem inside, and a hand-drawn picture of a rose that took me hours to perfect.

A friend saw the card and said they wished they could do the same. Then suddenly, she asked if she could buy the card from me. I said no, since I needed to give it to my own mother, but I said I could make her a copy. From there, my friend got the idea for me to make copies of the card to sell. I went along with it, mostly because I didn't think it would actually work.

Turns out, it did. After making sure people would actually be interested, we went to the library after school and made several color copies of my card for 10 cents each. The next day, we sold each card for $1. Not only did we make enough money so that my friend and I could both afford to get our moms an actual present in addition to the card, but we had enough leftover to put us over the top for the money we needed to buy the matching faux leather jackets we'd been wanting all year.

The next year, many people who bought cards asked me to do it again, so I did. Once again, we made a killing. We didn't try to do it again once we got to high school, but it was definitely fun while it lasted.

When we tell people this story, they think it's a pretty crazy money-making scheme. Maybe it is, but we're not the only ones who ever did anything like this. Redditors know all about crazy money-making schemes, and are eager to share their own stories.

It all started when Redditor primeiro23 asked:

"What are the craziest ways you’ve heard of people making money?"

Tumble Into Business

"In college, I take a class on how to start & run a small business. Prof tells us to think of ridiculous business models for our fictitious businesses as we will get more out of the class that way. Stupid ideas ensue. Selling paperclips door to door, refilling car gasoline tanks in people's driveways, service to read & summarize the newspaper to executives etc."

"One classmate decides he is going to sell tumbleweed."

"Guess who quits college and started a successful business? Tumbleweed guy. Takes a van to the desert, collects tumbleweed and sells them to Hollywood movie & TV studios who need them. Keeps the tumbleweed in a warehouse and since they never spoil, his only costs are gasoline, storage & a website. He eventually becomes the number one tumbleweed provider to studios around the world, shipping tumbleweed globally."

"Made a heap of money selling what millions of people drive by and ignore every year."

– Accomplished-Fig745

Synopses

"I did have a job reading and summarizing newspaper articles to the boss. Literally only task I was hired for."

– Draigdwi

"An actual union job in the film industry is reading scripts and summarizing them in short mean book reports."

– Trixiebees

Jump!

"Heard of crazier, but a guy I know, friend of my mother's, went to Texas 30+ years ago. (we are from Norway), and he noticed every single garden had a trampoline. And it was almost always "jump king" - the circular with blue mat ones."

"So he went to the HQ, bought 10 and took back to Norway. Within days they were sold, and he ordered 50 more, same thing. So he became the only importer and has God knows how many millions to his name today."

– alexdaland

"This IS wild. I went to Norway recently and one of the first things I noticed was that almost EVERY yard had a trampoline in it."

– TrulyMadlyCheaply

Working For A Home

"Back when Dogecoin took off I wrote a guide on recovering old lost wallets and it got so popular I was flooded with requests for further help. Some corrupted wallet files, some lost passwords, etc."

"I have a background in computer science and experience in data retrieval and password cracking, so I started helping people in exchange for a percentage cut (industry standard for wallet recovery). All above board with a contract and everything."

"For a while I was getting new clients every week and making hundreds up to thousands of dollars on every successful recovery (with a fairly good rate of success). The biggest one I ever recovered was a 19 letter long password someone had lost. The work dried up when the price of doge dropped but it got me the down-payment on a house."

– internetpillows

Horsing Around

"A cabbie in Dublin once told me a story about one of his fares who had a brilliant hustle."

"The guy was a sculptor. He would watch horse races, then when a horse won, he'd use social media to contact the owner directly with a digital mockup of a life-sized sculpture of the winning horse. Now, the people who own winning racehorses tend to be very rich - we're talking sheikhs, oligarchs, billionaires. Every now and again, one of these owners would bite, and spend €100,000 euros or so on a statue commemorating their animal's win."

"Dude only did a couple a year, and spent the rest of the time living the good life."

– escoterica

Sweet!

"Richest guy in a rich town near us makes enormous amounts of money buying Hershey bars and rewrapping them with customised retirement celebration designs or corporate logos to be given away at events. Literally just rewraps them in pieces of paper and doubles or triples his money."

"Every time I try to start a company or invent a better product or something, I ask myself why I’m not just rewrapping candy bars."

– perchance2cream

"F**k man, I think I found my new niche."

– LibertyPrimeIsASage

Slightly Used

"I went to college in a capitol C college town. A friend of mine bought an old school bus, fixed it up and took out all the seats."

"At the end of every semester she would drive around the neighborhood that was the fancier side of off campus living and collect whatever the rich kids were throwing out before they moved / went home for the summer. Flat screen TVs, couches, computers, tables, it was wild to see what people would chuck out and replace the next semester rather than having to deal with getting a storage unit or moving themselves."

"Sold it all on Craigslist over the summer or the beginning of the next semester and made a killing."

– sam_neil

Credit Where Credit Is Undue

"When I worked in a really busy, upscale restaurant my coworker would put all of his cash-paying customer’s bills on his credit card and keep the cash which he used to promptly pay off his credit card."

"He did this all day, every day for quite a while and the points started to add up and he was getting free airfare, etc."

"Worked great for a while until management notice a rise in credit card processing fees with an emphasis on one employee and they shut him down real quick."

– blinkysmurf

We Found Gold!

"My buddy worked his way through college by panning for gold. This was in 2009 in California. Most days he made nothing, occasionally he would come home with a couple hundred bucks worth and I think once he found a night worth over $1k."

– discostud1515

"My cousin had a metal detector when he was in HS. He would go every weekend down to the lake and take it with him on vacation. He found all kinds of things. He did find gold jewelry and would sell it online. He made so much money he bought his own car."

– Content_Pool_1391

Sleeping For The Job

"I knew a woman whose job was literally to sleep."

"A local office building owner wanted somebody on-site 24/7 to be the point of contact with first responders if they ever needed to be called. So they hired her to come in to the building in the evening when the maintenance crew was finishing their work. And she would settle up to sleep for the night in a bedroom they'd set aside for her. In the morning she'd hand the building back over to the office employees and go on about her day."

"No first responders were ever called. It's about the least stressful legitimate job I could ever imagine."

– CaptainTime5556

The Secret

"Back in the 90s, I knew a guy who put an ad in the classified section of the newspaper which read something along the lines of, “For $10, I’ll tell you my secret to making easy money. Send $10 cash to (address) to find out how.” People would send him $10 & he would then instruct them to put a classified ad in the newspaper telling people to send $10 & how to make money."

– freudianfalls

Accident Payment

"I was pushed down the stairs by a teen girl who told me to "pay attention and get out of her way" i ripped my dress during the fall and was getting back up when some guy rushed up to me, apologized for his daughter and handed me $500 as compensation."

– thebrilliantcounc

"LOL - years back, I was in a parking lot during a snowstorm. A guy was trying to pull around me, slid on the snow/ice and hit into my passenger side door. It really and truly was an accident. He was all apologies. We exchanged info - he said to get a quote and he would pay for the damage."

"Well, the car I was driving at the time was a crappy old Ford worth maybe $500. But, I went to a body shop, got a quote on the repair and it was $900. I faxed it to him (this was back in the 90's, LOL) thinking he'd tell me to go through the insurance company and just have the car totaled out."

"To my surprise, I had a bank check for $900 from him in my mailbox three days later. Now, I already owned another car, so I pocketed the $900, sold the smashed car for parts for $300 and ended up with $1200 on a car that was worth only $500 before the accident. I was very glad that he ran into me!"

– Deleted User

Only Feet

"I have a friend who sells pictures of her feet. In heels. Barefoot squishing cake. In mud. She charges extra for special requests. Has strict ‘no go’ rules. Never shows anything above the calf so she can’t be identified (no tats). All proceeds go to her kid’s college fund. Has made enough to fund a PhD."

– NotACrazyCatLadyx2

The things people do for money! But, I guess it works for her!