Doomsday Preppers

This show has many issues but here are the main ones.

1- It exploits ignorant and misinformed people. This is more voyeurism of a very small fringe of the population and depresses me if I watch it. At some point this show is equal or possibly worse than Hoarders. But in the case of Hoarders these people suffer from mental illness not ignorance.

2- Listening to these people is an exercise in restraint. They are largely uninformed and base their life-decisions on anecdotal information they glean from the internet and other like-minded people as equally ignorant. They lack the imagination to redirect their energy and efforts to endeavors that could benefit society. Their apocalyptic view of the world is unsupported by real-world events, think Katrina, Sandy, and Fukushima, and provides them with a platform that simply reinforces a mistaken belief that all Americans adhere to or support this behavior.

In the end, even if they are right, most people would prefer to die than live in the world these people are preparing for. This is probably this biggest omission they make when preparing for a doomsday scenario: Would you really want to live in such a world?

The reviewers trashing the people in this show are the people fist-fighting you right now during the covid scare while filling their cart with their 50th roll of toilet paper. Some of the folks portrayed may have carried things a bit far, but none of them were wrong in exercising some preparation. They are the ones getting the last laugh now. Give this a watch in case the world doesn't complete it's descent into mad max dystopia, then you'll be working on your own prep!

This show is full of very inspirational people that will motivate you to bring your prepping to the next level.

The production is very dishonest though. They will mislead you so you keep on watching the episode. I even suspect that they distort the story of some of these preppers to make it more spectacular (by introducing drills, explosions, arguments, etc).

The Practical Preppers assessments are kind of weak. Some preppers don't hesitate to point that out during the show!

TLDR; You can learn a lot of stuffs about prepping watching this show but the production is kind of weak.

Before we judge whether or not the people on this show are crazy, let's just remember that this show is like any other documentary, it explores a culture or a belief system completely foreign to our own.

Doomsday Preppers gives us a telescope into the lives of people who think the world's end is right round the corner, whether it be from an oil shortage, a giant earthquake, or the world spinning upside-down. While the apocalypse theories vary in their plausibility, what is certain is that these people BELIEVE it will happen very soon. And this makes for a very interesting show.

Families literally dedicate their lives to building defenses and stocking up on food supplies for when civilisation comes to an end. Whether its a legitimate fear or just a desire for a new life, you can't get past the slightly romantic notion of being the only people equipped to fighting off hordes of starving civilians with your homemade fortress. However the entire notion that you live your life to prepare for the offchance that the world ends is completely ridiculous.

These people give up the majority of their time and money to dealing with an apocalypse that almost definitely won't happen. But who are we to judge, whatever helps them sleep at night.

And examining these people makes for a very interesting show.

The reality is that modern society is incredibly fragile. Most people are drastically underprepared for even being without electricity for a few days, let alone any kind of more serious societal crisis. This show provides a great exploration and evaluation of different ways of approaching crisis preparedness...but at the same time it definitely highlights the fine line between sensible preparedness and madness. The result is thought provoking and highly entertaining at the same time. Don't pay attention to the bad reviews...this show is brilliant.