Clark’s response to the survivalist mentality

Do you have a plan? Are you prepared if you need to go hide in the wilderness someday? I’ve heard way too much from people about their survivalist plans.

Even my executive producer Christa wants to buy a vegetarian emergency food package at Costco and have some water on hand just in case anything happens. She even knows people who are expecting full-scale rioting in the streets with guns and all the rest in the next two or three years. According to Christa, those folks have even pooled their money together in a co-op and gotten an underground bunker from the government!

Meanwhile, my other producer Kim was surprised to learn that a friend of hers in Oregon attended a survivalist retreat with a group of others who own farmland in the Beaver State. Their plan, in the event of something catastrophic happening, is to live on the land as self-sufficient farmers and never come into contact with the outside world.

I understand the general fear people are feeling. We’ve lost trust in institutions and we live in a world of worry, fueled by a 24-hour news cycle. Yet at the same time, we are living in the least violent era perhaps in many, many centuries right now around the world.

I know that may be hard for you to get your head around. Yes, there are low level conflicts in a lot of countries and you have the threat of Iran going nuclear. (The latter is very scary.) But the reality is we are living better, safer and longer in most of the world, and we’re doing it in in a way that would be alien to those who lived through much of the conflict of the 20th century.

So if being prepared in some way helps you overcome fear, then fine. But don’t do it just to live in fear.

Making preparations for a day when I have to hide in a hole in the ground, well, that’s just not for me. You have to follow your own instinct. Don’t let the constant drum beat of the news of the day create unnecessary fear in you.

It’s true that we have so many financial worries to focus on, including Greece. But remember that day to day, most of us are in pretty good shape. And we in the U.S. have had, in spite of the last few years, quite a great run and we’re not done yet.