Many preppers don’t believe in Dec. 21 Doomsday, but they’re ready just in case

TORONTO – Tim Ralston, Jay Blevins and Scott Hunt don’t believe Dec. 21, 2012 is Doomsday, but they have enough food, water and shelter to last them years if they’re wrong.

Not to mention weapons, like Ralston’s 13-tools-in-one folding shovel, called the Crovel.

“It’s a 10-gauge solid piece of steel,” explained 49-year-old Ralston in a phone interview. “The spike at one end, a pry bar, a hammer, and the blade itself is so strong it’s used as an axe… It’s very hardcore.”

The three Americans are preppers: living a lifestyle that prepares them for disasters ranging from environmental, to nuclear, to civil unrest.

“Prepping is different than survivalism,” said Ralston, a father of three children aged 13 to 16 years.

“Survivalists used to be that lone guy sitting up in the mountains by himself, counting beans and rice. The preppers are a little different, they build communities with networks of people that have like minds and goals, mainly to protect themselves and their families from whatever it be-whether it be a small power outage, to catastrophic things.”

Ralston says preppers don’t fall prey to what he calls the “normalcy bias,” when people think they’re invulnerable to bad things happening to them.

He cites the loss of power, security and destruction of homes that Hurricane Sandy caused as an example of when eyes were opened to the possibility of threats.

Jay Blevins, a 35-year-old former police officer, believes social unrest is the common denominator of any emergency he’s heard preppers talk about.

“Firsthand, I’ve seen people victimizing other people, and that’s under ‘normal’ circumstances,” said Blevins, also a father of three young kids.

“So when you add an emergency to that-specifically you add a financial collapse, where people are not getting their basic needs met, where they’re looking for food, or water, or shelter, whatever-people who might not normally commit crimes, commit crimes.”

Blevins has been prepping for more than a decade, and estimates he’s spent between $10,000-15,000 on his supplies: eight months worth of food (canned, dry, freeze-dry), hundreds of gallons of water plus filtration capability for more than 13,000 gallons, a backup generator, and weapons (handguns, rifles, stun guns, Tasers, and homemade pepper spray).

The Blevins family is part of a network of 20 prepper families with various skill sets. They have three “strongholds”-houses with additional supplies-as well as a “bug-out” location in a wooded area away from cities. They also have a contingency plan to leave there, and Blevins believes because of the network members’ skills, they could survive indefinitely.

While it sounds like a full-time job, Blevins explains it’s only part of his lifestyle, and that he thinks of his preparations as insurance.

“The average American family spends $500 or more a month on car insurance, on life insurance, on homeowners insurance… and they don’t think of that insurance all the time; and that’s how prepping is for us,” he explained.

Forty-six-year-old Scott Hunt is the co-founder and senior consultant of Practical Preppers, a company that advises people on how to prepare for disasters. He also sells and installs survival equipment.

A former engineer, Hunt always enjoyed “inventing and tinkering” as a hobby. He wanted to see if he could live “off the grid” and began experimenting with producing electricity from waste wood, creating a truck and a generator that run off of the wood.

“I love old-school technology-late 1800s, early 1900s-and so I’ve got all sorts of crazy gizmos that make life sustainable,” he said. “Without having to go anywhere I can produce my own electricity, my own food, I have my own water source. So it’s kind of been a hobby to see if I could do it.”

Hunt says many of his products are environmentally friendly, with solar water pumping as most popular, running from $1,500-7,000. He also mentions hand-crank generators, which are good for those living in cities who need enough power to keep their cell phone charged in an emergency, for example.

“Do you have water stored that would get you through a week in say, Toronto, if you’re in an apartment?” he asks, as an example of how he introduces clients to the process of prepping. “Could you stay in that location for one week? Just pick that as a goal.”

Hunt worries that the current average North American mindset is to demand to be taken care of when emergency services are unavailable or overwhelmed, but that if people are prepared, they can help themselves and are more apt to help others.

“Now long-term grid-down situations, things change. That’s when you say, ‘oh I only have so much food.’ Am I going to take food out of my son’s mouth and give it to you who hasn’t prepared? I really can’t do that,” he said. “I’m not being ugly, that’s just my responsibility to take care of my child.”

Caring for family is a theme emphasized by all three men. Ralston calls his prepper community “concerned fathers and mothers that want to protect their kids.”

Blevins says he wants to be the type of husband and father able to protect his family in an emergency, though he doesn’t consider Dec. 21 the due date for the end of the world.

“You know, it’s my wife’s birthday and I plan to celebrate it with her, and then wake up on the 22nd and go to work.”

And when it comes to how they’re perceived by those who question their lifestyle, the men remain confident in their choices.