Non prepper inspirations for preppers.

In some ways, I've been what they call a prepper these days since I was a kid, but in other ways, I didn't start really thinking about it as a lifestyle until ten or so years ago, and its only in the past few years that I've really embraced it fully as the foundation of how I live.

But I've as I fall further down the rabbit hole, I realize that there have been various things that have influenced me to think about prepping for a long time, even though most of these sources predate modern prepping concepts and may not have been prepper focused at all.

I also put these stories in a different context than movies like Threads, The day after, Red Dawn, etc...which where mostly cautionary tails designed to make you afraid of the end of the world rather than to prepare for it.

The Lord of the Rings: the fellowship of the ring.

My parents read this book to me years before I could read for myself...and even to this day my favorite part of the whole LOTR thing is the first part, when the hobbits are leaving the shire.

And I realize now, that this is really the story of a bug out. Not just hero's fleeing their home, a pretty common story in fantasy, but characters who are warned the world as they know it may be coming to an end and that they personally may be in danger, and then over a period of time, those characters preparing and arranging for a bug out....complete with heavy OPSEC, arranging to pick up supplies on the way, take back routes, make their departure look like something else....its all there. The whole first half of that book is a bug out story.

This is the book mind you, the whole sequence is compressed to take place in just a few minutes in the movies but in the books is much more elaborate and prolonged. They don't just run out the back door one night but make arrangements to leave weeks (months?) in the future (under the pretense of moving to another home) and then spend weeks sneaking out of the shire heading for a BOL.

Something about that part always stuck with me...the idea of the tension and planning that would go into not just an escape...but a deliberate, planned escape from your home conducted in the open but with your true motives kept secret.

Tremors (1990)

This comedy/horror monster movie was the first popular culture representation of survivalists that I can remember seeing as a kid. Burt and Heather where mostly played for laughs but their gun room and pillbox like house was iconic and something my pre-teen self found really interesting. But mostly, it was my introduction to the idea of people focusing their entire lifestyle around prepping...the first example I remember of someone building their whole house around the end of the world.

My Side of the Mountain.

I read this book for the first time around the same time I saw Tremors..

Its about a fifteen year old newyorker boy who runs away from home to live in the mountains. Unlike some other YA wilderness survival books, he isn't lost trying to get back to civilization, he is in hiding, within a days walk of town but living on what he can hunt and gather while also hiding out from people who are often all around. He builds a concealed shelter, learns to hunt, tan hides, build fires, ect, all while avoiding detection.

Its really a perfect bug out story without actually being a bug out story.

Dean Koontz novels.

Watchers, Lighting, Fear Nothing, Mr. Murder. I read these all around the same time when I was in highschool. Although the plots vary and have different paranormal/sci/fi elements, and none concern the end of the civilization, they all have something that I feel was pretty unique in paranormal thriller books at the time...a siege theme. In Dean Koontz books there is often a theme where the characters are hunted, escape, and learn about whatever horror is after them...and then realize that the best thing to do is to stop running, knowing that it will someday catch them anyway, and instead, hole up, fortify some location, stock it with guns and ammo, and wait for the monster to come for them.

Sometimes its only hours, sometimes its months or years, but there is always a theme of the characters learning about the threat and then preparing for it, not just fighting it off while trying to escape, but actually sitting down and planning for it, getting training, building fortified homes and vehicles...all the prepper standards.

I found these stories particularly satisfying to read compared to your standard slasher novel because rather than just a random struggle these people thought out what they would do and how to turn the tables so when the monster, pyscho, etc showed the protagonist had the advantage. Most of these stories where also about normal people transforming themselves into fighters, which I always find a more interesting story than that of someone who is already prepared when the story starts.

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Non prepper inspirations for preppers.