The Prepper World Has Become a Joke
The Sad Truth About Most “YouTube Preppers”
I’ve had my “new” YouTube channel (The View from Appalachia) up for over two years and have been constantly uploading videos there for over a year, and it’s grown to over 22,000 subscribers, with most of those subs being added over the past few months.
With that said, I still get comments from people who obviously think, for some reason, that it’s the same channel as my other M.D. Creekmore channel. With comments like, “Why did you stop posting prepping content here?” — well, because it’s not a “prepper” channel.
The View from Appalachia is about simple living, minimalism, personal finance, lifestyle design, living free, and doing things yourself — all from the heart of Appalachia.
No doom and gloom. No top ten beans to stockpile. Not the nukes are in the air… run, hide, duck, and cover. Not “grab your bug-out bag and run for the woods to hide.”
Why? Because, while I’m still a firm believer in being prepared and self-reliant after over 15 years of teaching it, writing books about it, over 1,000 videos about it, and having articles published in American Survival Guide and The Backwoodsman Magazine, I got tired of talking and 95% watching, reading, and listening — and still doing NOTHING.
Why waste my time and energy trying to help a bunch of people who will never do anything besides watch a video and post the occasional comment, usually to complain about something or to tell me how awful I am for having books for sale or posting an affiliate link to products that’s actually tested and approved by me?
And then there are the other YouTube “preppers,” with many being even worse than the do-nothing viewers. They set up a corner in a room, stack up a couple of food storage buckets and a few tools to use as a backdrop to show “they are prepared,” and start making “prepping videos” because they think it’s a hot niche they can make a lot of cash from by repeating what others are saying in the echo chamber of the prepper niche.
Unfortunately, the majority of “YouTube preppers” are posers who couldn’t survive anything more than a hard two-hour rain, and even then, if caught outside, they would probably melt while crying for the government to come save them.
Oh, while we’re on the subject of government and “preppers,” I wasn’t surprised when many of the most well-known — and some not so well-known — YouTube preppers fell for the whole COVID scam nonsense and then rolled up their sleeves for the injection. And I am even less surprised that most still believe in politics and politicians to save them or to make things better.
It’s a small, crowded niche that has become an echo chamber for people who want to pretend while doing nothing — and who do nothing because, deep down, they think either nothing will ever happen to dramatically affect them, or that politics or politicians will save them.
I know one prepping channel with the guy uploading videos nearly every day, yet on his one-acre property, he has done absolutely NOTHING to be more self-reliant. No garden, no fencing, no animals, no solar, not even a storage building or a workshop on his property. Nothing. Yet, he gets tens of thousands of views on nearly every video.
A total fraud being looked up to and listened to by other do-nothing people. Sad but true, unfortunately. The echo chamber of frauds and pretenders is what the prepper niche has turned into — or maybe it always was…
So, no, I don’t make prepping videos anymore. However, I do occasionally post a news-type video on the M.D. Creekmore channel when I have something to say, but I’m not going to tell you that you need to prepare because MOST won’t — and the ones who will, already are.
If you want to get my latest videos then subscribe to The View from Appalatcha, and be sure to turn on notifications so you don’t miss a video.
All the best,
M.D. Creekmore
P.S. and NO I’m not a doctor… never claimed to be. Crazy that so many assume that for some reason… it’s my initials!