It was the playwright George Bernard Shaw who said that Britain and the United States are two “nations separated by a common language”.
Little did he know that the sentiment is likely to be shared by new generations of preppers in those two countries – the language is often the same, but the practice and reality of preppers UK and preppers US can be wildly different.
Bigger and brasher
A fair bit of the difference can be put down to that stereotype of all things American being somehow bigger and brasher. Whereas nothing seems to be done by halves, the UK, by comparison, can appear understated – and some might even say half-hearted.
That is not at all the case, of course. The caricature of the red-neck, wild-eyed, and gun-toting American prepper is set up in contrast to the milder, measured Englishman. Neither is completely true.
The right to bear arms
The right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution of the United States – it’s the fiercely defended, and often quoted Second Amendment.
Usually, we think of that right to bear arms in terms of guns, but it also extends to knives. Although the details vary from one state to another in most parts of the US you can carry a fixed-blade (as opposed to folding or multi-purpose) knife so long as it is not a “concealed weapon” but carried openly – in a sheath worn on your belt, for instance.
In Alabama, for example, there is no limit on the length of the blade you carry, and the knife can even be a switchblade – also known as flick knives or automatic knives.
Contrast this with preppers UK who will find themselves in a great deal of trouble with the law if they carry a knife – up to four years in prison and a ruined life, warns the Mayor of London.
Where the buffalo roam
The UK is a fairly small, and especially crowded island; the US is a home where the buffalo roam – and they need plenty of space to do just that.
The US offers vastly contrasting landscapes, climates, and environments, with wide tracts of open and undeveloped land including deserts and mountain ranges. The life of the backwoodsman is far easier to experience than in the UK, where you never feel all that far from civilisation – even in the face of a natural emergency or disaster.
The huge differences in terrain across the US also result in more extreme weather events than we have in the UK – hurricanes, wildfires, snow, and ice can all make conditions in parts of North America extremely challenging. Preppers UK, on the other hand, can typically rely on more or less consistent patterns of mild weather from one year to the next whatever the season.
Infrastructure
A clement climate, with fewer extremes of weather, and the smaller distances involved all combine to give the UK what is probably more efficient and effective infrastructure than large parts of the United States.
During any crisis or emergency, of course, the resilience of the (remaining) infrastructure can make the world of difference to your chances of survival or ability to cope – and that difference will feed into the nature of your prepping.
Preppers UK in training
Your prepping is only as good as the real world for which it prepares you. As we’ve seen, those conditions are likely to be worlds apart when you compare the UK with the US. The training you need to prepare for any crisis or emergency, therefore, needs to be tailored to the circumstances and conditions you are likely to encounter in these different environments.
As we put it – in a nutshell – in our blog on the 2nd of June 2021, you should learn prepper skills for where you are. There’s little point in learning about survival in the steamy heat of the jungle or the frozen wastes of the north if you’re most likely to be found pottering around in English suburbia when a natural or manmade disaster strikes.
Fortunately, therefore, there is a growing number of survival and bushcraft courses these days run in the UK. These will help you acquire the skills and talents you’ll realistically encounter if and when anything untoward goes down in the neck of the woods where you live. As we’ve also said time and again, there’s no mileage at all in acquiring all manner of sophisticated – and expensive – survival gear and equipment unless you have the skills, knowledge, and talent to employ some of the most basic lessons required by any prepper.
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