Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion National Dialogue Hurting Or Helping?

I wonder whether I'm the only person here who, let's say, does some of what preppers do? It wouldn't surprise me if I'm not, as I think it can go with seeing what others don't, anxiety, overthinking, depending on your pov. (In practical terms what it means to us is that we don't run out of nonperishable food - I have stocks and a well-established system for using the oldest first - which actually, now that the system is running, is a big enough convenience to justify keeping it going anyway.)

Hmmm. I tend to over-order our bottled water - at any given time we have about 5-6 18.5 L jugs in the house. For me it's a) earthquake risk, or b) the occasional boil-water advisories we've gotten in the past (although they've always been too short lived to necessitate using up the water stores).

I'm not really a doomsday person though. I don't really fear catastrophes or violence (maybe because of where I live - which is ridiculous because we're in an earthquake zone - the coast of BC - but nothing ever seems to really happen up here).

Knock on wood.

My husband wanted to buy a gun, which I vehemently objected to. NOT going to happen. I'll never live under the same roof as a gun. NEVER. (It's different here though... no one else has them either.) The fact that the CT shooter used a weapon owned by a parent added clout to my argument.

Our problem is hurricanes, which knock out systems periodically.

Generally, the solution is to buy gasoline early, get into the car, and leave the path of the hurricane.

So you could stock up on gas, then. If we get our "big one" (earth quake that actually does something), our roads might be useless, but our stored water would be golden (assuming the bottles don't burst!! lol sigh).

Isn't it interesting how where we live determines which measures we take

I've only seen one episode of the show about these guys, and I'd say that any sensible family may be doing some of the things they're doing. For example, I keep a well-stocked pantry all summer, and about ten gallons of drinking water on hand... with an eye to my swimming pool as a backup source of fresh water, in a pinch. But I live in a hurricane zone, so I'm planning for a rational threat. Before that, I lived in an earthquake zone, and a lot of the advice public officials were giving on emergency preparation was the same.

I saw the preppers' show once, and from that limited sample size, I'd say those people are not rational:

One guy was upgrading his bunker in the mountains of Washington to survive a nuclear exchange with Russia. He lives in Nashville. Apart from the odds of a nuclear exchange, what are the odds that, should one occur, he can make it to remote Washington in time?

One guy was preparing his family to escape from a quarantine zone in case of a smallpox epidemic, which he described as a perfect biological weapon for a terrorist, since people haven't been exposed, and there is no vaccine. Good luck getting it in the hands of terrorists, though, because the last reported case was in the 1970s, and the only remaining samples are in high-security storage in the US and Russia. This would explain why people have no exposure, and why there isn't a widely-available vaccine.

Whether or not their preparations are being done well, the thinking that launched them into preparations in the first place is horribly flawed.

We're moderately prepped for hurricanes since we live in an area that gets them. We joke about the zombie apocalypse, etc., but I would never actually prep for anything severe/nonweather-related unless I had some indication of a very serious situation developing. It would take...I don't know what, but intimations of extremely dangerous mass chaos...for me to ever agree to having a gun in the home. The stats on that are virtually inarguable for me. (Owning a gun substantially ups your risk of someone in your home being harmed by one.)

I just couldn't agree with this more. I listen to the news and don't blame his Aspberger's to the crime. I feel like some people are just socio/psycho paths (or otherwise I would classify as evil). It exists.

Like JonLaw, I know of one child like this at my daughter's school. He may have some other LD tied into his peculiar behavior, but this child has bad vibes radiating off of him.

To the point where I have told my daughter to avoid him at all cost and if he ever does anything to her (assaults her physically or verbally) to get as far away from him as she can and not fight back.

If I read a story about this child in 15 more years, I would not be one bit surprised.

I hope that society won't label kids with LD, their struggles are hard enough without having to break down more walls to get the help that they need or the acceptance for who they are.

Please know that some of us see this situation for what it was, a gravely evil act.

Not sure what you mean here. "Evil" implies a simplicity that I doubt exists in this situation. I suspect that there was a complex combination of factors driving the shooter, including mental illness, guns at his fingertips, stress, and a lot of things that we may never know about, unless someone finds a suicide note or a diary or some kind of record kept by this guy.

IMO, the best way to reduce these kinds of incidents is to understand them thoroughly. You can't address the causes of something if you don't know precisely what they are. There are probably factors in common, and I will hypothesize that effective treatment of mental illness and sensible gun and ammunition control will help.

For a thorough examination of one school shooting, I recommend Columbine by Dave Cullen.

I reworded my earlier post a little bit mor coherently.
I'm of the opinion that the kindergarten killer (i cried fountains for days) might have been partially the result of a bad reaction to anti-depressants. (maybe the movie theater killer too) they were both male in their early 20s. The commercials on tv selling anti- depressants say, "may worsen suidicidal thoughts or actions in teens or young adults, consult your doctor immediately if your condition worsens". At first I thought it would be the bath salts (fake synthetic coke and pot that's sold legally in stores). Then I saw that he's super rich, his parents divorced, and he had mental issues, I'm thinking it was the side effect they advertise in the anti-depressant commercials for that age group.

And then I made a disclaimer not to make that fallacy where you take what I said and apply it to the extreme and think that I mean children shouldn't have medication or counseling if they need it. I just think it was a known and advertised side effect for that age group and side effects happen sometimes.

And my opinion is that it is jumping to conclusions. The side effects of anti-depressants are for suicide, not mass murder.

And while I have no personal experience with the stuff a friend with a long history of depression (up to being committed against her will while suicidal) once stated that the problem with anti-depressant was that they would lift her out of her deep funk just enough to give her the energy to walk to the kitchen and open the knife drawer. Suicidal thoughts were there aplenty before, medication would let her do something about it (hence the hospital, and starting the anti-depressants under medical supervision until she was past the "I am unworthy of living" phase).

Anecdotal case study of one, of course.