Did she go to school by school bus? Did the family buy things through the Sears catalog, or did her parents or friends drive into the city for shopping? The clothing they made - did they weave the fabric themselves, or buy it? Who made the canning jars, and the seals? Did they produce their own salt? Did they do everything by firewood, or did they use gas or electricity to cook the vegetables for canning?

But those are side-details, mostly to get you to thinking about the things she might not have told you about.

Consider the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which (quoting Wikipedia):

> destroyed many homes and devastated the agricultural economy of the Mississippi Basin. Many people were forced to flee to the cities of the Midwest in search of work, contributing to the "Great Migration" of African Americans in the first half of the 20th century. During the flood and the years after it subsided, it became the subject of numerous Delta blues songs, including "When the Levee Breaks",

I believe a goal of "prepper culture" is to be able to survive something like that significantly better than the pre-WWII American farmer household did, so I don't think these are the same cultures. There's overlap, certainly, but there's also overlap with modern urban life - my urban relatives in Florida have hurricane plans, which includes stocking reserve food, water, gas, etc., having storm shutters, trimming the trees before the season starts, and more.

Thus, if the overlap is enough for you to think that "prepper culture" is the same as pre-WWII American farm values, then I'll argue that it's also the same as modern urban Florida values, and thus rather meaninless - there aren't many TV shows on preparing for hurricane season.

> My point is that the reason why you don't see this in europe isn't because the behaviors are different but merely because the advertising techniques are different in America so the lexicon is different.

Another possibility is that humans, when they are insecure and threatened, often react by withdrawing and becoming defensive. The US does not have a good social safety net, so many people are worried all the time, about their job, health care, family, and retirement and possible lack thereof. Scared humans are more easily led, and many a firebrand have been able to take advantage of that fear for political and economic gain.

While if there is a strong social safety net (as in many places in Europe), and you believe the government will be effective at responding to a natural disasters, then there's less need of a belief to take on the heavier burden of individual planning.

I'm not sure how to explain that; urbanization? The expansion of the welfare state? Faith in the EU as the promise of enduring peace and prosperity? It happened in most of the Soviet Bloc countries, too, so perhaps the welfare state aspect is key.

In the US, my first guess is that it might have been kept alive, even in suburban and urban communities, because of the exposure to the Cold War paranoia, school drills, and so on. "The Russkies" and the specter of the nuclear apocalypse left an ominous mark on the American psyche.

But you are right, the desire to capitalize on the phenomenon might have played a role, too. On the flip side, Europe is not a very different market; the buyers are a bit more smug and you can't sell guns, but that's about it - so why aren't we seeing more of the "new" prepper culture cropping up on the other side of the pond?

I think that the paranoid culture has evolved relatively organically.

As an avid sailor, I've been looking into breaking one of the long standing records of doing multiple circumnavigations back-to-back and food preservation is one area I've been looking into.

It's been extremely difficult to find content that isn't interspersed with articles on weapons (and other paranoid subjects) found in a lot of content online, when all I am looking for is food storage ideas.