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Is the Average US Soldier Prepared For TEOTWAWKI? by S.A.
They are not personally prepared at all. The average soldier is no more prepared than the average civilian.
If this is a concern (you live by a military installation), a curiosity (you have a relative that serves), or if you just want a glimpse of military life, let me tell you why the average soldier is not personally prepared. I must first establish my credibility.
I have a BA degree from a major university, and various civilian job experiences under my belt, mostly in food service and then social services. I am an older soldier, low ranking on the totem pole. I am a truck driver in the US Army, and on the front lines where the rubber meets the road so to say. As in all the clichés, I joined the Army to serve my country and learn about the Armed Forces, but somewhat selfishly, I joined also to learn about first aid, shooting, field sanitation, and the plethora of training that many a survivalist craves and practices, not only gaining these valuable skills for free, but getting paid to learn them. I have been in the Army for four years, and I was into preparing for TEOTWAWKI years before I enlisted. I have deployed twice, with many a mission outside-the-wire.
Bird Flu was my gateway drug into the prepper/survivalist community. Upon discovering this new reality that things can and will go south, I was on the zombie apocalypse bandwagon for a long time. I still enjoy the movies and the books. The reasoning was “if you are prepared for zombies, you are prepared for anything”, and if you want a lighthearted icebreaker to discuss prepping, zombie talk will break it. In the Army, arguing all things undead is a fun way to pass the hours and hours of hurry up and wait, in between the rock throwing and myriad one-uppers. Early on in this stint of national service, I would talk about zombies and survivalism a lot. I was under the impression that the Army was full of preppers and survivalists. I was deployed straight out of AIT, and saw very little of my wife and kids for my first year and a half of service, so SHTF scenarios that would be natural conversations in my own family continued as daily conversations in my surrogate family. I soon found out that there was very little interest in prepping, but fortunately, while breaching OPSEC in an effort to convince others about the benefits of preps, soldiers PCS and ETS, and those I stand beside now are completely different soldiers than those I stood beside early on.
The military has higher rates of suicide and divorce than the general population. This is an unfortunate reality. You might think they also have higher rates of preppers/survivalists than the general population. This is an understandable misconception. If we assume only 1% to 5% of the civilian masses are preppers, IMHO, no more than 1% to 5% of military are preppers as well.
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excellent… thanks for the info.