There’s a Simpson’s episode about preppers where they assume the big bad thing happens and fuck off to their bunkers, stuff happens, and they eventually come back to town. When they come back everyone is happy and doing fine and Marge says something like “things were okay after the first few hours. We all worked together and made it work. It was like all the mean, angry, and resentful parts of the town had just disappeared!”
See also Emergency Skin by NK Jemison.
preppers don’t want to be dependent on society because they don’t like society, but they’re not bright enough to realize they will always be dependent on society
As a guy who built shit for preppers (because some of them are stupid as fuck and have gobs of money from some shady bs) this is spot on.
Preppers are fucking losers. The cunts who want WW3 deserve no love.
But have you considered that going to therapy and dealing with their intense insecurity is scary?
Bros will have nuclear armegeddon before seeing a social worker and it shows.
Therapy would pierce the veil of lies and ignorance that they’ve made their Identity.
People will burn down their house before admitting they were wrong their whole lives.
Too bad therapy seems to cost an arm and leg in this country.
For what these doomsday prepers spend to compensate for their small manhood, they could easily pay for multiple sessions of therapy, even in the US.
Like the other person said, the people that do and say all this crazy shit spend thousands on rifles, rods, and trucks when a Crosstrek would probably be perfect. And that’s fine I guess it’s just they have the money(or the willingness to spend it anyway) and could probably squeeze a bi-weekly session in there.
Love how their idea of surviving the collapse of society is driving a huge ass truck, 'cause gasoline apparently falls from the sky
To their defense, if there’s a sudden collapse, there will likely a surplus of oil laying around that will be available for a while.
I felt silly for buying a 63 gallon, foldable/portable water tank for my small farm because the vast majority of the ones I looked at were marketed towards preppers.
I just want my animals to have water in case the power goes out for a few days.
But the way things like that are marketed makes it sound like your the smartest, bestest, most prepared person to ever walk this earth. I don’t need you to stroke my ego, just sell a foldable water tank with no leaks please.
What did you make for them? I may capitalize on this lucrative market lol
Take every dime you can from those dingdongs.
Saw an episode of doomsday preppers years ago. These dudes had a whole property out in Oregon or Washington state designed to endure a potential onslaught of zombies.
They had to quickly evacute their property and leave all their fancy stuff, because of a very real forest fire that came to visit, for which they were entirely unprepared.
I’ve been finding the crazy building in arid environments odd, because even aside from forest fires, if your water supply dries up, you’re going to have to uproot and move to a state or location with a reliable water source. And you’ll be part of a big mass of climate migrants at that point.
“Zombies”. If you let them talk, it’ll be pretty obvious that they’re looking for a legal loophole to kill somebody. “Zombies” just means city people, which just means black people. They’ll kill a white guy if that’s what their lifelong dream comes to, but they’d feel bad about it later.
I’d rather not talk to them, unless it’s for camping supply recommendations.
Even then I wouldn’t do it because they’ll recommend the most over the top version of every product. When really all you want is a cheap camping stove which you’re probably going to use for 2 weeks out of the year.
Imagine living such a privileged life that the closest you’ve ever come to feeling oppressed was when you had to wear a mask to pick up dino nuggets at Walmart. Preppers have always been clowns, but COVID definitely ruined what little facade there ever actually was about the “movement” being anything other than a masturbatory LARP.
Nothing wrong in a good LARP, or masturbation for that matter. The problem with preppers is everything else about them.
And apparently they forgot to stock toilet paper or invest in a bidet…
I’m in the “be prepared” group where we usually have a couple weeks of food and water around. We also have two forms of heat for when the power goes out.
Will we survive WW3 on this? No, but it has been very helpful after big winter storms that took out the city power.
Having some supplies to use in the short term is good for everyone. Being ready to go out to help neighbors and get the community back on its feet is how we get through to the next good times.
I wouldn’t call that being a prepper. That’s just sensible preparation for something like a natural disaster. Preppers think they’ll survive whatever their conception of “the big one” is.
I’m neither American nor a native English speaker so take it with a grain of salt.
That’s where I’d put the line between a regular prepper and a doomsday prepper.
Not to forget the very elusive Sergent Prepper.
I guess in my mind, ‘prepper’ is just short for ‘doomsday prepper’ and it’s not the same thing as doing, like I said above, sensible preparation for natural disasters.
Anyone that has been through even a bad blizzard knows it’s important to have some basic supplies. Depending on where in the US you live, it would actually be considered unusual and irresponsible to not have some basic preparation for weather and related stuff. Not having a cold-weather car kit and home preparations for losing power in a blizzard in the upper Midwest, for instance, would be considered stupid.
No one thinks tornado shelters are that weird if you live in tornado alley. I’m sure hurricane prone areas probably have their own set of ready prep stuff that would seem weird in other parts of the country.
You’re not talking about doomsday preppers.
Yeah that’s what I’m saying. The stuff I mentioned is just reasonable preparation for, like… life. Sometimes stuff gets disrupted for unexpected reasons. Like toilet paper during a pandemic lol.
How about the Red Hot Chili Prepper?
Need to apply some Prepper-H after eating Chili Preppers, that’s for sure
Yeah I think Dr. Prepper can write a prescription for that
Preppers think the pencil nose accountants will all die screaming in regret while all the high school jv cheerleaders come begging them for help, in full uniform, and everyone finally recognizes how they were right all along.
I have tons of food, a generator and other backup power and a gun, and if shit really hits the fan I know I’m not living 5 minutes longer than everyone less prepared, the resources actually make me a target.
But then again, I have Pge, so it’s not doomsday prepping, it’s just ‘Wednesday, or whenever they next screw up resulting in 100s of deaths, weeks without power, and massive rate hikes resulting in huge bonuses to their upper management’.
Honestly, if the great civilization-ending disaster they think they’re prepping for happens, I hope I die in the first wave. I don’t have any Mad Max fantasies.
Mad Max fantasies will never equate to Mad Max realities, anyways.
Definitely not. And anyone who thinks that it is the reality isn’t going to be Immortan Joe, they’re going to be one of the people at the bottom of the cliffs begging for water.
Or a human-shaped piece of sex furniture rented out to the water marauders in exchange for food and supplies. I’ll take not making it through the initial disaster, please and thank you!
You should always have enough supplies for a short term emergency. That’s not doomsday prepping, it’s just common sense.
I’m not a prepper IMO, but I have rooftop solar with battery backup, a few smaller portable batteries and UPSes on my critical stuff, and some oil filled radiators since my heat pump isn’t connected to the solar setup.
At any given time we generally have a month or more worth of food in the house in frozen and dry/canned goods. Also, several gallons of bottled water.
I also keep some stuff under the back bed of my car’s hatch, first aid kit and emergency blanket, and battery jumper kit as well as a battery powered tire inflator.
I live in a semi-rural area, and in an emergency, getting out and/or getting food and necessities may not be possible. And if there’s a wildfire I may need to evacuate fast, so important to have what’s needed. This sort of thing is like… If you have the means, why wouldn’t you?
If you just went hunting, fishing, and living in the woods COVID wouldn’t be a problem for you though.
Tell that to all the gay frogs I heard coughing in the woods last night
starts penning unauthorized sequel to Where The Wild Things Are titled Where The Gay Frogs Cough
I expect a royalty check in the mail upon publication
Sure thing!
Do not ask for whom the gay frog coughs;
it coughs for thee
What a lot of right wing preppers and a lot of ‘militia’ guys (the tacticool heavy infantry kind) seem to completely lack is the willingness to be inconvenienced at all.
They buy or craft whatever stuff seems cool to them (some of which sure can actually be quite useful), train some skills they find fun to do (usually shooting/hunting) but most seem to ignore anything they don’t like, find difficult or uninteresting to do (such as keeping reasonably fit). It also usually includes being willing to take orders or cooperate.
The lack of some skills/equipment/preparation could be overcome but not with the mentality that lead to it on the first place.
The being cooperative thing is the key.
Id be willing to bet my left testicle those that survive an apocalypse are those who work together to grow food, build shelter, etc. and not the goobers who lock themselves in a crate with some beans.
Classic scene at the end of the movie "Leave the World Behind.
Spoiler
The survivors finally find respite, a fully stocked, super-luxury survival shelter, left wide open, because the people that built it died in the initial collapse.
There’s no point having some survival shelter unless you’re already in it when you need to be.
There’s no point having some survival shelter unless you’re already in it when you need to be.
I’ve often wondered about the millionaires who invest in these things. Then spend most of their time on a yacht in the Caribbean, thousands of miles away from the bunker. What exactly are they expecting to happen, do they think they’re going to get a week’s notice?
The one doomsday prepper I knew had to weigh at least 400 pounds. I often wondered if he knew how to make insulin for when the apocalypse happens.
He was actually a nice enough guy, but not the brightest bulb in the box.
That’s because they’re planning against the fall of civilization. Realistically that wouldn’t happen. The bank stayed open during covid, the supermarket stayed open during covid. All that really happened was that life became very difficult for everyone and some people died.
If your enemy is a virus then your front door is more than enough protection. You don’t need a big underground bunker you just need some pasta. But that’s boring so they don’t care.
A lot of these militia guys also don’t learn the survival tasks they consider feminine. How many know any sort of gathering skills, cooking anything not meat based, laundry, mending clothes? Those are probably more day to day useful during the apocalypse than rifle shooting or how to wear camo paint.
Yeah, I think the idea there is if you point a gun at someone and tell them to cook and wash the clothes, it’s likely to get done. It’s that male power fantasy again. They desire civilizational collapse because then they think their love affair with guns will give them the authority and respect that can’t find in the real world.
Meanwhile, it’s just likely to make them a target. And since most of the people I’ve come across like this are typically overweight morons, they’re just more likely to be killed in the extremely unlikely scenario they’re preparing/hoping for. But they see themselves as the main character.
The best tactic to deal with them would be to simply hang around on the periphery until they do something dumb and die of some preventable infection, then move in.
my dads a mild prepper and had his ‘told you so’ moment when he brought up 2 boxes of n95 masks. he donated a box to hospital and the other box got the family through the worst months
Cute, but it’s just a single hit on a lifetime of misses for most. He got lucky once and could easily use it to reaffirm a bunch of nonsense instead of crilically asking himself what all the other wasted shit is for.
But hey, I have hobbies too, and I’m glad he’s smart enough to listen to science. So he’s about a million miles ahead of most
So… Yeah, doomsday preppers definitely showed their true colors.
But I think we also saw that there’s a lot of merit to being a reasonable prepper.
I’m lucky to have a reasonable prepper in my friend group. Because of their insistence, I had masks, a full tank of gas, and a comfortably-stocked pantry way ahead of time so I wasn’t yet another person adding stress to a lean/just-in-time/low-margin distribution system that can’t handle even minor hiccups.
Much like the goal of lockdowns was not to completely stop the spread but just slow it so our healthcare system could handle it, the goal of prepping should be to avoid causing shortages when our productive capacity is lowered.
Drag thinks prepping is about learning useful skills and building community. A prepper should know how to sew, how to garden, how to repair and operate a radio, how to make friends, how to organise labour, and first aid.
Drag wants to see a zombie show about a grandma who looks after her community, resolves interpersonal disputes, fixes clothes, and looks after the little ones. Drag thinks grandmas are the demographic best prepared for an apocalypse.
Kickass apocalypse grannies, fuck yeah
This was also the plot of Mad Max: Fury Road, by the way
The irony in the “prepping” movement these days is that it was never intended to be this thing about having an inexhaustible supply of resources just for you and your family (if you’re still on speaking terms with them) to live off of when the nukes fall.
It’s not about sitting in your attic and picking off starving people who are looking for a meal while you sit on a cache of food and ammunition.
It’s supposed to be about being a useful person in your community who can help each other weather the worst in life. You will get much further in a disaster if you have skills than if you have stuff. You might have an entire Home Depot to yourself, but it’s far too late to learn carpentry when the rain starts to fall.
It’s not about sitting in your attic and picking off starving people who are looking for a meal while you sit on a cache of food and ammunition.
Unfortunately for many it is.
I don’t really generally circulate with far right wing folk. However this is one place that overlaps with my interests. One of the most unlikely intersections between the far left and the far right is home solar power. When you start to stray way from purely commercial groups trying to sell you stuff, you get to the DIY solar community.
Here you’ll find multi-gun toting, hardcore Randian libertarians, that “want the damn government control out of their lives” right next too tree hugging, LGBTQ/feminist equality supporting, carbon-neutralling liberals. Both groups squint hard not to see who they’re talking to or asking for advice on Charge Controllers, panel interconnects, AC inverter config settings, or off-grid battery solutions. Every now and then one person from one side or the other won’t be able to help themselves and they’ll make reference to their particular extreme political views. Everyone just holds their breath hoping a fight doesn’t break out and most of the time its just ignored by both sides.
In here you’ll find those far right preppers and they are convinced that they’ll have to be 100% self supporting when the government falls “real soon now”.
Unfortunately for the gunmen in this example, their guns will wear and tear. A crucial part or two will fail and not be replaceable. Then their entire strategy of “kill everyone else” will fall apart. And that’s aside from the fact that human societies have always flourished because we have worked with rather than against each other.
Unfortunately for the gunmen in this example, their guns will wear and tear.
Their guns will be worthless long before they wear out. They are going to run out of ammo eventually. None of these folks are capable of manufacturing modern nitrocellulose gun powder or primer caps necessary to reload their fancy rifles and handguns. I don’t even see them taking a more pragmatic path of learning how to make old school black powder for muzzle loaders which they could conceivable made in their bunkers. Admittedly, I’m on the tree-hugger/equality side and don’t even own a gun. These are just my observations from outside their group.
Were these preppers more honest with themselves, there would be another area they would overlap with many on the far left: Cosplay.
And that’s aside from the fact that human societies have always flourished because we have worked with rather than against each other.
100% agree. Our survival as a species has always depended on us working together.
I have acquaintances that would definitely be considered classic preppers. One told me that he has 10k plus (each!) of rounds for multiple calibers of weapons, and a years worth of food for each of his family members in a “bunker” on his property. It’d take a LONG time to burn through that many rounds.
Ammo starts to degrade after about 10-20 years assuming your storing it well. Which is less likely to be true in the “end times”. 2 decades is a long time but depending on your age it’s not a life time, and firing damaged ammo can be dangerous.
Very true. I get the feeling that he cycles through a lot of rounds, but not a close enough friend to have shot on his land more than once.
So, he’s one of the people who drove ammunition prices up.
I think he’s had a stockpile since forever, but probably yeah.
Fire (and more importantly, smoke) is a powerful tool. Displace enough air and people start either getting away or dropping.
None of these folks are capable of manufacturing modern nitrocellulose gun powder or primer caps necessary to reload their fancy rifles and handguns.
This gave me a thought, would having equipment for ammonia and other chemicals (for fertiliser as well as explosives) be useful for preppers?
Useful in what what? Farming? Sure.
Most people like this that I’ve ever met have several thousand rounds of ammunition. They’ll run out, but it will take a while.
True, but remember they don’t think that way, because it messes up their fantasy.
Have you heard the nonsense the owner of Reddit spouts constantly? About how he was so good at hoarding that he’ll have a private army and slaves and people will come crawling on their knees to serve him for a little food and he’ll be a king? These losers all think like that, and facts like tools break and bullets run out and you have to cast more and get the supplies to do so just ruins their dreams of being an unstoppable tyrant.
Also just praetorian shit happens. Having resources is insufficient, your guards have to like you or fear the consequences of banding together to kill you
Oh, they have a plan for that too. Making them all wear shock collars and holding their families hostage.
That’s what they say.
What they think is all the underaged girls will come running to willing beg to do anything for protection.
That’s the true prepper fantasy, it’s just a middle age crisis made manifest.
That can be delayed for a long time by stockpiling spare parts.
There are “Preppers” and there are people who actually prepare for when things go wrong. Preppers seem to me like someone who watched a few too many survivor man and YouTube clips and decided to make a personality out of it.
Right. “Prepper” vs. “being prepared.” The former is almost like a subculture.
Peppers take a good idea, having extra supplies and tools for an emergency, and take it to 11.
I’m not a prepper, but I did read my local government’s disaster preparedness list and have everything on it that applies to my family. I keep 3 days or so of extra, shelf stable food in the house; bought a home water cooler and keep an extra jug of water that I rotate when we use the one in the machine so that we have a few days of clean water at all times, which is way more practical and safe than a camping water jug that will sit and stagnate in the basement; I have a battery “generator” that I keep topped up with a solar panel because we have a sewage ejector pump and a sump pump to stop the basement from flooding in bad weather; and I have good first aid kits for the house and cars.
The only thing not on my local government list are the emergency car kits, which is really just a basic vehicle toolkit, jumpstart kit, flares, sweater and space blanket, all in a cheap bag that lives on top of the spare tire.
I don’t live in the most disaster prone area, but we do get tornados and nasty thunderstorms that knock out power for a day or 3. We don’t exactly have the lights on when that happens, but we do have food, water, a non flooded basement, and even some heat in the winter, and both cars have something to keep you warm while you either fix the car or wait for the tow truck.
I kind of understand peppers, because planning all of this out after we lost power a few years ago for 4 days in fall was interesting, and there was just so much shit the internet was saying I needed: weeks or months of dried beans and rice, a generator for the whole house, enough guns and ammo to ward off a small army, etc. my local government list was hard to find compared to all of the forums and YouTube videos, but I’m glad I found it, it’s sensible and if spread out over months, very affordable. I highly, highly recommend you poke around your local government website for their natural disaster page, they’ll have resources of who to contact if you need help, and what you should have on hand. If it’s not on your city’s page, try your county or state government. One of them should have a page about disasters and how to prepare for them.
The issue is that you can’t prepare for everything. Having extra food and water, sure. Maybe buying a generator so you can use electrical equipment, that’s generally useful. But, aside from that, your preparations for a flood will be very different from your preparations for a military invasion, which would be different from preparing for a pandemic.
Also, the more extreme your preparations are, the more it matters when you pull the trigger and activate your emergency plans. If your preparation is simply having a cupboard with extra toilet paper and some extra canned food, it’s no big deal to pull that stuff out if the store runs out. But, if you have some kind of bunker in the mountains, it’s a bigger decision when to “bug out” of the city and go live in the mountains. You’re basically quitting your job, so if the emergency is something like the COVID pandemic, when do you decide things are so bad that you can take that extreme step?
I was trying to get myself prepared for realistic disaster scenarios. For us, that is earthquakes and cold snaps. And in my mind, realistic means how do I both ready myself and work with my community?
So I got a book on prepping. The titled seemed innocuous enough. Unfortunately, it was one of the crazy bug out into the woods and go eat squirrel stew sort of prepper books. Totally worthless for anything practical. The best thing I can say for it was that it was an e-book, so it didn’t cost much.
Preppers: I’m ready for anything; economic collapse, zombies, apocalypse, sinkholes, foreign invasion, aliens…anything!
[covid-19 hits]
Preppers: fuck this i’m not wearing a mask! it’s all a hoax!
Also preppers: I need to go to the store and buy 27 cases of toilet paper!
Real peppers never stop eating beans. You buy new and eat the old ones. Oh and real peppers buy a truck they can repair themselves, not a 2024 Ram Clownsmobile.
Real peppers never stop eating beans.
Remind me not to stay in one of their enclosed bunkers with them for an extended period of time.
The more you eat beans and fiber, the better your digestive system becomes at digesting them.
Beans beans the magical fruit The more you eat the more you toot
The more you toot the better you feel, so eat your beans at every meal!
OK now I’m scared.
I never heard that before, and just now YouTube showed me this: https://youtube.com/shorts/4Lxtssc1RVo
The more you toot, the better you feel, so let’s eat beans at every meal!
Did you know that if you keep eating the same vegetable/food it can become somewhat toxic to your system? Also, different people have different tolerances.
No I didn’t! Like allergies or like "poisonous buildup of nutrients deficit/oversaturation?
I think he meant an over time aquired food allergy. Esp. Older folks seem to get them -like me- one can test with a Serum specific IgE in vitro Test. There are over the counter test one can buy relatively cheap.
I did one recently, turned out I was allergic to garlic of all things (among others). Advice is to stay off it for 4-6 months then slowly reintroduce. Life is wild sometimes.
Not just listening to scientists. Listening to nerds.
Smells a bit like American exceptionalism.
“America is so important, we singlehandedly forced scientists to accelerate with developing the vaccine because we are so important and big.”
Um, huh?.. vaccines are how you stop viruses… It’s as if you said “scientists rushing to stop COVID because Americans refuse to try to stop COVID”, which is just silly.
Vaccines aren’t the only way to stop viruses. There’s also masking and social distancing and hand washing.
I think that’s the point. We could have taken the pressure off scientists and doctors and nurses and service employees and everyone else by doing simple things that a vocal, ignorant portion of society decided was too inconvenient to tolerate.
I don’t consider myself a prepper, but I do prepare for unlikely scenarios with highly negative outcomes. In terms of expected value vs. investment, I think having a “go” or “get home” bag is cheap and useful. I have two weeks of food and water supplies to shelter in place. I have face masks and hazmat suits (they came vacuum sealed so they just sit in the bottom of the shelter in place Tupperware bin). A solar generator and battery. A few medkits and some basic medicines including prescription antibiotics. And then my camping/hiking stuff: so more mres, water purification, water filter, fire kit etc.
All in all, it didn’t cost much, it doesn’t take up much room, and it’s good to have. I’m not necessarily worried about a revolution so much as, in order if likelihood: a bad storm, electrical grid issues, natural disaster, or mild civil unrest. All of which I’ve been through before, so I guess they’re not exactly black swan events. I wouldn’t really call those “SHTF” events, since, again, I’ve experienced each one and yet things are now fine.
What I consider “preppers” are thinking about (and seemingly hoping for) civilizational collapse.
Yeah, I feel much the same. Shit happens sometimes and it’s good to be prepared. That goes for situations where civilization is collapsing and also in day to day life too. “Preppers” are so hyper fixated on one particular hyper-individual fantasy outcome. The merits of, say, integrating into a mutual aid network are completely missed.
It’s always so much more useful to have AND KNOW WHERE every one-off necessity you might need is. A flashlight and spare batteries. First aid supplies. Spare medication. Superglue. A good utility knife. Emergency bedding. Enough shelf stable food for a few days. Some card games to pass the time. A few creature comforts that are easy to keep on hand. An appropriate weapon you practice with regularly. Some space an unhoused friend could crash for a week.
You get whatever you can together and organized and then you SHARE IT, because these things will all solve day to day problems for people in your life who maybe don’t have them on hand. And then you pay attention to other needs that come up and make small additions so you’re prepared for the needs of people you care about. And then boom there you go you’ve done actual fucking preparation! And get to sleep a little easier knowing you’re ready for a lot more that life could throw at you.
Margaret Killjoy has a great podcast on effective preparation that comes from a very practical community readiness perspective. Definitely worth a listen. Live Like The World Is Dying
My weapon of choice is my razor-sharp wit!
I’m going to die, aren’t I.
We’re all gunna die, so no worries! Right? 😮
You were destined to die the day you were born. It’s all just a matter of when and where.
But if you were born and raised in an urbane urban city, yep, the odds are probably pretty high you are going to be among the first to die.
But I do salute you wit Sir/Madam!
Hey don’t underestimate it! If that’s what ya got, lean into it if you need to. If you can be quick on your feet and convince someone you’re not worth the trouble that can already keep you out of danger. You can always pick up a more physical weapon later, or that just might not be your thing, you’ll figure what works for you.
Learn to play the recorder, people love music. (Hopefully enough to feed the musician, otherwise I’m gonna starve.)
An appropriate weapon you practice with regularly.
You know someone’s American when…
Well yes, but I don’t even necessarily mean a gun :P
Either way, very American attitude.
I suppose it depends on where you live and the sorts of things that are likely to happen. For me personally where I live I can’t think of anything that would really require that level of preparation.
Make sure the antibiotics don’t expire. Most of them just become useless when they expire, but Tetracycline becomes poisonous when it expires. Also, not all antibiotics are good for all infections, so make sure the ones you have are useful for the kinds of infections you anticipate.
Good to know about tetracycline, but drugs don’t magically become useless after an arbitrary expiry date.
Most prescription medicines are still quite effective after the expiration date. Various studies have shown they’re still effective even decades after the expiration date.
As someone who works in medicine, I would just caution you to take that with a grain of salt, especially since they repeatedly mention the storage of said medications. Not all pill bottles are airtight, and if you keep them somewhere that isn’t always less than 75 degrees Fahrenheit or so, I wouldn’t trust them more than a year past the expiration date. Note also, when they say “cool, dark place” that is not accounting for freezing temperatures which can also mess with the medications.
All this to say: if you have emergency medications, cycle them out with new ones as often as possible, and store them in airtight containers in a climate controlled area of your house.
This strikes me as a classic early-med-student response. Your appear to be missing the point of the study and the broader research behind drug expiration. The journal touches on storage conditions twice, but largely in the context of resource-limited areas. The researchers, with advanced degrees and extensive knowledge in medication degradation by the way, have supported their claims with evidence from multiple studies. For example, a review by Lyon et al. (2006) and the Shelf-Life Extension Program (SLEP) studies echo similar conclusions. There are also additional peer-reviewed articles that come to the same conclusions.
Blister packs, like those my medication is in, provide an airtight seal, so your blanket advice on storage is off the mark. Even if they weren’t in blister packs, the article and sources note that degradation is generally minimal, even if stored in a non air-tight-sealed container. Additionally, guessing a random one-year rule ignores peer-reviewed science. For someone in medical school, it would be better for you to focus on understanding the research and deferring to it when appropriate rather than stretching to offer input on irrelevant conditions. I appreciated your point on tetracycline and noted it, but beyond that, your comment seems more about proving you know something than contributing to this specific conversation.
The article you listed reads more like preliminary research more than anything else, and aside from medical school, I have done research into drug expiration on my own given that I have multiple complex health problems and I need to know how long I can count on my medication being effective if I needed to stockpile it. My background education in organic and general chemistry tell me that the two biggest concerns are humidity and temperature. You can also get information from the drug manufacturers about storage recommendations and cautions about efficacy following improper storage. If humidity or extreme temperatures (like where I live in Minnesota) come into play, the guidelines get a lot more fuzzy.
Also noted in there, a concern with antibiotics in particular is, that while they will retain some efficacy, the diminished effects over time can lead to more problems with resistance, and that can become important in a single individual depending on their colonization status and how often they end up needing to use the antibiotics.
Don’t get me wrong, keeping a stockpile of medications is important (I’m trying to build up a buffer that I cycle out for some of my more critical medications) but it has to be done with cognizance and awareness of the pitfalls of such a practice. Personally, I would not trust my life to medication that has been expired for more than about 3 years if it is at all avoidable which is why I cycle my stockpile each time I get a refill. (i.e. putting the new meds in the storage container and taking the ones that were in there so that the storage is never more than a couple months old) I’m on a couple medications that stopping them suddenly for even a few days has the potential to put me in the hospital if not end up being lethal depending on the severity of the withdrawal.
👍
Also, I have a very strong suspicion that the medication you have on hand is Azithromycin (because very few medications come in blister packs), so here’s a list of infections that a Z-pak is good for:
If it’s not on this list (like pretty much any gram negative, anaerobic, or gram positive with resistant features like MRSA, among others) I wouldn’t count on the Z-pak actually being useful.
Yeah I fill up some whisky bottles with tap water and keep them in the cupboard. I guess in an insane scenario I might need to use it as drinking water, though I’d probably want to figure out how to boil that water first since it’s been sitting there for awhile.
I have actually used that water… but just to wash my hands when they turn off the water in the building when they’re doing some maintenance.
Sometimes some disaster preparedness is just useful for relatively banal circumstances.
