Everyone's a prepper

Yes, even you.

Do you wear a seat belt while driving a car? Why bother? After all, the odds of you being in an accident on any given day are extremely low, so you're doing it just in case something very unlikely happens that might harm you. The average person is in a car accident every 18 years. If you drive most days, say 250 days a year, that means you're wearing a seat belt for something that happens 1 in 4,500 times. The odds of you being hit by a hurricane in some parts of the country are much higher than that.

Do you have smoke detectors? What about health insurance? Car insurance? A few hundred bucks in case you lose your job but still have bills to pay?

What about your front door? Do you lock it when you leave for the day, or come home? Why? It's not like the odds of someone breaking into your house on any particular day are that high.

Most people do all of these things, and more. They have daily habits and spend money every month to prepare for a low likelihood but sometimes catastrophic event. In other words, most people are preppers.

Yet for some reason, as soon as you start stocking up on a few weeks of food, water, and medical gear for the next hurricane or power outage, people make fun of or glare at you. Why? It's not like the news is filled with stories of FEMA's competence, and even if it were, isn't needing a government agency to bail you out, oh I don't know, childish?

If you're reading this and you don't consider yourself a prepper, odds are you actually are, and maybe that'll make storing a bit of food, water, and prescription medication less of a taboo.

And if you're a prepper already, next time someone thinks it's silly to prep, point out they're preppers too, they're just prepping in a different way.