Prepping: 227 signatures and a decade without a subforum

Prepping: 227 signatures and ten years waiting for a subforum

The petition was launched on 7 September 2016 and remains unanswered a decade later. A group of prepping enthusiasts called for a space of their own to exchange survival techniques, food stockpiling and plans for what they call the Mad Max scenario. The initial list of supporters closed with 227 names. The subforum never came.

The argument wasn't a whim. They maintained that a specialized space fit the site's tradition, accustomed to prophesying the end of the world every weekend, and appealed to practical utility: people with limited resources or on the verge of eviction could find ideas to improvise. Training, they said, takes up no space and becomes barterable services.

What a prepping subforum asks for and with what precedent

The proposal sought to gather scattered advice under one heading: storage, energy self-sufficiency, first aid, contact networks. The model was the History subforum, peine years earlier by popular demand after gathering 157 supporters. That space had three times as many threads as “Cooperativa, alquileres y acciones” and twice as many as “Expatriados”, according to the promoters. The conclusion seemed obvious to them: if that worked, this would too.

Much of the backing came in the form of short endorsements. Others added detail. Someone offered their experience in hoe farming applied to collapse scenarios; another promised advice on what to loot if it came to that. Several raised methodological doubts: opening an empty subforum can be counterproductive; better to create content first and request the category later. That tug-of-war over strategy never ended.

The pandemic as a trial by fire

The issue returned to the forefront when the scenario stopped seeming theoretical. The health crisis revived interest and, according to the posts, a specific category was created for the bicho—the “coronabug”—while the prepping request remained shelved. The paradox was pointed out bluntly: the entire community had spent years waiting for collapse, and when something similar arrived, the promised category didn't appear.

The promoters doubled down. Threads were bumped, people were urged to leave messages on the administrator's profile, and it was recalled that the co-op subforum had only three posts in an entire March while it remained open. The argument, repeated ad nauseam, was that prepping would have more activity than ghost categories. The answer never came.

Discord as an alternative to the eternal wait

Faced with silence, part of the community created its own Discord group. The reception was lukewarm. Several admitted that, despite the stated interest, switching platforms breaks the routine and doesn't have the same pull as staying on the usual site. The community itself read it as a symptom: plenty of enthusiasm until it's time to move.

This is where the most honest diagnosis of the whole appears. Some argue that repurposing abandoned subforums would be the realistic route, rather than demanding a new category that the administrator has ignored for years. Others defend that the classic format remains ideal, but setting it up from scratch with your own domain and hosting is a hassle. Nobody has won that battle.

Unproven theories that slip into the curriculum

The material mixes useful popularization with content that is not backed by evidence. References circulated to an electromagnetic pulse attack attributed to a U.S. commission, links to executive orders and warnings of an alleged imminent martial law. These are claims from unverified blogs and websites, which the curriculum intersperses with practical advice as if they carried the same weight.

That detail explains part of the outside resistance to the idea. A paranoid label attracts both someone looking for a crank flashlight and someone selling iodine pills. The line between prepping and alarmism is, in practice, blurred.

Why the enthusiast profile doesn't help

One of the most sincere messages in the set defuses the cliché. There is no desire for the end of the world: there is a love of survival just as there is for mountaineering or youth camps, where you had to find food along the hike if you wanted dinner. It is discipline and entertainment in equal parts. Those who don't understand it, it is said, usually confuse it with fanaticism.

And there is the commercial trap. A space like that attracts easy traffic, but also miracle products. The community knows it and that's why it insists on the educational approach: training takes up no space and can turn into barterable services or useful repairs when logistics fail.

What to expect

The most reasonable bet is that the category will still not be created. The petition has accumulated years, signatures and an external alternative running at half steam, and the administrator has turned a deaf ear every time. Nothing points to a change of criteria.

Even so, interest doesn't die completely. Every time the world gets interesting—a pandemic, an energy scare, anything—the topic revives and adds new names. If that isn't enough to move an administrative decision, maybe prepping is right about the essential: it's wise to always have a Plan B.