Coulda Been Me

Doomsday Preppers

I'm looking forward to the premier tonight of Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic channel.  SouthernPrepper1 and Engineering775 from YouTube are two of the preppers featured.

I haven't shared this story yet, but I might have been in the running to join them.  Back in the early spring, I was approached by a reality show producer who was developing a pilot for The Learning Channel.  It would have been a documentary about preppers.  I was a bit leery at first because she spoke of bunkers and family drills and didn't seem interested in some of the more mundane aspects of prepping.  I Googled her and found that she was legitimate... credits ranging from The Biggest Loser to Road Rules to some other reality show silliness.  As we spoke on the phone, she said they wanted to film in late spring, and the show would be on in July.

She sent a questionnaire as the first "audition."  I answered the questions that involved my prepping history, what family think of prepping, things we have and do to prep, etc...

Apparently, that went well, because the next step was that she sent me a Flip cam and several pages of what they wanted me to film.  I showed my food stores, generator and fuel, reloading press, gun safe, shot some in the back yard, showed off my garden, and even interviewed my wife about her thoughts on the matter.

The producer liked what we sent in and said that we were in the finals, and that The Learning Channel folks were doing the final selections.  She asked me for some open dates over the next two weeks when they could come out and film us...  never heard another peep out of her.

So, I don't know if Doomsday Preppers is what the show was, and it moved from TLC to NatGeo, or if TLC dropped the idea because NatGeo already had something in the works.  Frankly, I'm a little surprised she seemed as interesting as she did.  Compared to the guys on Doomsday Preppers, I'm still batting in the minor leagues.  I think one thing I had going for me is that I'm involved in emergency management professionally as well as personally, so that might have been a bit of a "hook."

I hope Doomsday Preppers shows David and Scott, and prepping in general, in a positive light.  From my experiences with the producer, I'm not too disappointed that I didn't make the cut.  Getting ready for the video audition was a great motivator to get my stores much more organized, and top off some of my supplies.

I won't be able to see the show until I get home tomorrow night, it comes on too late for me and we are DVRing it.  I'll be interested to hear what you think of the show.