
The Surprisingly Solid Mathematical Case of the Tin Foil Hat Gun Prepper - DanAndersen
https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical-case-of-the-tin-foil-hat-gun-prepper-15fce7d10437
======
wcunning
I'd like to modify the statistical argument against the author's conclusion --
if we take his yearly probability of violent regime change in the US and take
the yearly likelihood as i.i.d., then the probability that it will happen in
the remainder of my statistically likely life is significantly reduced by it
not having happened in the first 1/3rd. And every year that I procrastinate
prepping, I'm more and more incentivized to skip it the next year. That's the
math that the average person is unconsciously doing...

To extrapolate to a rural/urban divide, the number of times I've lost power
and the average length of that loss is _massively_ lower in the city that I
now live in vs. the country farmstead I grew up on, both within 100 miles of
one another. Similarly, the number of times I've been unwilling to leave my
house because of a major snow event or the like is much lower in the city than
it was back home because the speed of road clearing is much much higher here.
These sorts of infrastructure things build into the heuristic that produces
"trust in the system" in a person, and the likelihood that you'll prep for a
week without power or three days snowed in. Once you've prepped for that,
prepping a little more is easier because you're already storing extra food and
toilet paper, keeping a generator on hand to keep the well running since
you're not on municipal water or sewer, etc... It all adds up to different
populations feeling very differently about how sane/necessary this activity
is.

~~~
thaumaturgy
This is the problem with extrapolating a linear trend from nonlinear data. I
think few people would argue that the probability of revolution in the US in
any given year is as high now as it was in say 1800.

When you take two data points over a period, and use those to establish a
linear trend, you get misleading results. I'm nowhere near smart enough to re-
crunch the numbers, but I hope someone else on HN will.

Setting aside the scenario of revolution though, there are lots of other
scenarios that justify "prepping" even more. Katrina is a great example; those
people who chose to stay behind were left without civilized infrastructure in
some areas for quite a while. Puerto Rico, too. Here in California, we have
the prospect of a devastating earthquake for which we're long overdue, and
we're right on the hairy edge of our firefighting resources being overwhelmed
each year.

I've taken a different approach to prepping. I'm a search and rescue volunteer
and I have basic medical training. In case of major disaster, I hope to be a
resource that can be sent into those areas. It's a different mindset from the
stereotypical prepper, but we're really both working off of the same
assumptions: that there's a significant chance of experiencing first-hand a
collapse of civil infrastructure.

~~~
bluesnowmonkey
> I think few people would argue that the probability of revolution in the US
> in any given year is as high now as it was in say 1800.

Are you saying it's not? Were they cavemen in 1800, and now we are a
thoughtful civilized breed?

The United States has been at war most of my life. My parents lived through a
war with a draft. My grandparents experienced World War 2. Seems like war is
normal and peace is the aberration.

~~~
labster
The Indian Wars were fought pretty much constantly from before the creation of
the United States until Wounded Knee in 1890. Even for a relatively young
nation, it's spent the majority of its existence at war with someone.

------
jawns
> all he must do to ensure it doesn't hurt anyone is not shoot anyone with it

That assumes his gun will never be stolen, or that an accidental shooting is
out of the question. Some stats:

"According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), during the
four-year period from 2012 to 2015, nearly half a billion dollars worth of
guns were stolen from individuals nationwide, amounting to an estimated 1.2
million guns."

[https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-
crime/reports/2...](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-
crime/reports/2017/07/25/436533/stolen-guns-america/)

"From 2006-2016, almost 6,885 people in the U.S. died from unintentional
shootings. In 2016 alone, there were 495 incidents of accidental firearm
deaths."

[https://www.aftermath.com/content/accidental-shooting-
deaths...](https://www.aftermath.com/content/accidental-shooting-deaths-
statistics)

And those stats only consider deaths. Think about survivable injuries on top
of that.

Also, keep in mind that even people who receive some sort of basic firearm
safety training typically don't receive training related to how to respond to
violent confrontations. The NRA, for instance, offers several Personal
Protection courses, but typically you've got to take home firearm safety and
shooting courses before you can take a Personal Protection course. The problem
is that some people take a firearm safety training course and then think
they're fully qualified to act in a violent confrontation. And, unfortunately,
that misplaced confidence can put themselves and others in harm's way.

~~~
madengr
"In 2016 alone, there were 495 incidents of accidental firearm deaths."

In 2015 there were 1250000 incidents of violent crime. No need for further
math. I'll keep my guns.

~~~
pmyteh
Peh. I've been a victim of violent crime five times.

I was punched in the chest on my way to school age 11. I was chased by a gang
of kids and punched several times in the back aged 16. I was pelted by eggs
while crossing a park twice aged 22 and 23, and was fairly badly mugged aged
25.

Not one of those would have worked out better had I been armed. The first time
I was surprised, and the best that would have happened would have been that
some guy got shot in the back walking away. Satisfying, but unhelpful. The
second might have been stopped if I'd brandished, but then again I might have
dropped the gun getting it out and been shot, or overpowered before I fired. I
was shit scared and vastly outnumbered. The third and fourth I was both
surprised _and_ outnumbered. And anyway, who the fuck pulls a gun in
retaliation for an egging? The final and most serious time, I was attacked
without warning from the back, and was knocked down to the floor trying to
protect my head against my assailants' kicks long before I could have thought
to draw a firearm.

Shittons of violent crime is like this: it mostly neither justifies nor
provides opportunity for gun use.

Of course, I live in England, so at no point did I have to fear being shot.
But I don't think that's in favour of owning firearms just-in-case either,
frankly.

------
ared38
Campbell is tremendously overestimating how much extreme prepping actually
increases your chances of survival. Keeping a week or two of food, water, and
energy is smart, but "zombie prepping" is useless:

Revolutionary War: Unless they chose to fight, the "middle class" of
independent farmers wasn't much affected (though I'll admit they were already
zombie-prepped). The poor did the dying, and the elites got kicked out.

Civil War: Much more calamitous, but little that could be done about it. If
you were displaced, your stocks of supplies were reduced to only what you
could escape with. If you were killed violently, well, no point buying a gun
when you'll be given one before sent charging into artillery fire.

Russia: See Civil War above. And just for fun, remember that having a large
private store of grain wasn't exactly smiled upon during collectivization.

France: While farmers were undoubtedly more food-secure than their urban
compatriots during occupation, those who cached guns and joined the Resistance
weren't exactly making the safe choice.

China/North Korea/Vietnam: See Russia above

Africa: Is an entire continent, and reducing its 1.2 billion inhabitants to
"where to begin" is incredibly insulting to their individual histories and
experiences. But if we're talking colonialism, advising people to buy land is
a bit out of touch, don't you think?

~~~
ticviking
> Is an entire continent, and reducing its 1.2 billion inhabitants to "where
> to begin" is incredibly insulting to their individual histories and
> experiences.

Acknowledging that they aren't currently equipped to adequately cover this in
depth is insulting?

You also seem to be ignoring the premise that being armed is a key part of
these plans. The goal isn't just to be food secure, it is to prevent being
victimized while the crisis is ongoing or you escape the crisis.

~~~
ared38
> Acknowledging that they aren't currently equipped to adequately cover this
> in depth is insulting?

Except he doesn't acknowledge ignorance, he plows ahead and puts the entire
continent in the same category as Syria and Afganistan. Less than 2% of
Africans live in the countries he does deign to mention.

> You also seem to be ignoring the premise that being armed is a key part of
> these plans.

Good luck singlehandedly fighting off the Venezuelan/Russian/Union/rebel army
when they come to appropriate your assets. There's a reason insurgents use
hit-and-run tactics, they'd be slaughtered in a pitched battle.

~~~
wcarron
I don't think you're discussing the same threat model as the author. You're
talking about fighting an army. He's talking about other dangerous, non-
military people (e.g. Another gang of survivors, who happen to have guns while
you just have food)

To be fair, military presence is certainly a problematic situation, but it
seems more likely you'd encounter other, uh, less-than-savory people out there
in an apocalyptic scenario, who are more likely to be dangerous to you than
military personnel.

------
panglott
The problem with this article's defense of firearms for disaster preparedness
is that firearms are among the least urgent disaster-preparedness items. If
what people were really concerned about was disaster preparedness, the things
they would obsess over would be flashlights, water storage and purification, a
few weeks of food supplies, backup power sources, medical supplies, portable
radios. Some preppers do spend time and energy thinking about this, it's true.

But usually what you typically have is a person who enjoys guns and is trying
to think about a situation where it might possibly be useful to own an AR-15.
It's a terrible self-defense weapon in an urbanized area (compared to a
shotgun or handgun), and they're illegal to hunt with in lots of areas. Owning
such a gun requires a major investment of money and time (for practice and
training), and encourages this kind of paranoid outlook. So you have interest
in guns driving interest in disaster preparedness, rather than interest in
disaster preparedness driving interest in guns.

~~~
brandall10
I got a whiff of this mindset when I found out about peak oil circa 2005 or
so.

There were folks who had transitioned off the grid in a sustainable way. The
point of these weapons is to protect their families against roving gangs
looking to scavenge resources ala Mad Max. A family of four will not be able
to fight off dozens with shotguns, even against a large unarmed group they
will be quickly overwhelmed after taking out a few - semi-auto weapons though
they have a fighting chance.

This is also the primary reason they tend to move far away from cities - it's
not that they don't like people or civilization in general (they may or may
not), it's just that it thins out the number of people who could reasonably
access their homestead.

I feel the vast majority of folks who have these weapons have them because
they're 'cool'. But for the hard-core preppers convinced that the world is
going to end they're an essential survival tool in a post-apocalyptic future.

~~~
omgbananas
Roving gangs won't stick to cities, they will branch out and then that family
alone on their homestead won't stand a chance. However if they are in a
neighborhood and work together with their neighbors, then they have a fighting
chance.

~~~
brandall10
That's near term thinking. Longer term thinking had the # of people who were
living sustainably OTG to be a vastly small minority of the populace, hence
everyone aside from immediate family members were your enemies.

In regards to population density, the further groups had to travel on limited
resources the more dispersed and weaker they would be, and in turn the amount
of resources available would be more dispersed relative to lack to nearby
neighbors, all of which would be reasonably well protected.

Basically, you want to be relatively well fortified slim-pickings that are
hard to reach.

------
gowld
The major point that the author misses is that by being obsessed with upcoming
catastrophe, you lower your quality of life _now_ (not only with prep
expenses, but also with stress and paranoia) in exchange for surviving a low-
probability disaster in the future, where even surviving would be a pretty
miserable existence.

There's a surprisingly solid mathematical case for living in the present and
near future, and accepting the risk of catastrophe that you'd only have a
marginal chance of surviving and thriving in. In WWII Austria and Poland, a
huge catastrophe, the people who escaped suffering weren't the preppers, they
were the people who saw writing on the wall and moved away.

~~~
jerf
"in exchange for surviving a low-probability disaster in the future, where
even surviving would be a pretty miserable existence."

You're assuming the very worst case there; there's a wide range of outcomes
between "everything's great!" and "there's a supermutant banging on my door".
Consider France, mentioned as place where many violent events have occurred,
but which most people would still consider a nice place to live.

Prepping for 2-4 weeks of independent survival can also assist in the event of
a power outage, major snow event, or any number of other mundane events.

It also has social benefits. It's nice if a small burp in food shipments
doesn't produce rioting in the streets because there was no slack in the
system. Prepping is putting slack in the system. Even if done for what may
seem like a dumb reason, it really should still be encouraged to some degree.

~~~
godelski
Or consider a much more common catastrophe such as weather. Clearly there are
more places prone to these types of disasters (like hurricane prone areas),
but it is not hard to cut off a supply chain for a few days. Even when there
are forecasts of heavy snow or something the grocery stores empty real fast.
Prepping is for events like this.

------
colemannugent
Slightly related to the article: Does anyone else feel like the general
public's inability to extract information from statistics is a huge problem?

I think that any sort of "standardized" education should include at least a
class worth of teaching on how to interpret statistics.

~~~
Bartweiss
> _I think that any sort of "standardized" education should include at least a
> class worth of teaching on how to interpret statistics._

This is sort of a fantasy of mine - having every public school teach a brief
course on "not getting tricked".

In my fantasy world, it's a several-week guide to common ways people lie and
mislead the public. One section is on interpreting statistics. Another is
probably on comparing scientific papers to the news stories they spawn.
Another on 'paltering' and all the things a given statement _doesn 't_ say.
The 'fun' section covers cold reads, famous hoaxes, and a general sense of how
to not end up believing in every silly story you hear. You could use _The
Demon Haunted World_ as a readable source textbook for a lot of it.

It's a pipe dream, of course. You'd need teachers who could teach it, which is
a tall order to begin with, and then you'd need to find a way to give out
examples without offending half the parents in the school when every examples
(astrology, crystal healing, and so on) is going to cross _somebody_.

But damn, even if it didn't take completely, wouldn't it be nice to at least
have a shared framework to talk about this stuff?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
When I was in middle school, my home economics class had a week on media
literacy, and while I only remember one sentence:

“Is a song played on the radio because it is popular, or is it popular because
it is played on the radio?”

...it told me everything I needed to know at a young age.

Ten years later I’m introduced to Adam Curtis’ “Century of the Self” and that
filled in a few gaps.

------
mnm1
Until the same bans are applied to police and military forces operating on US
soil, this isn't even a discussion. It's incredible to me that even some gun
owners do not realize that the primary purpose for the right to own guns is to
keep the police and military at bay. I'm certain that without the huge number
of guns, we would be in an even deeper police state than currently. A gun
owner has no need to even unpack or assemble a gun in order to have a positive
impact on society, namely keeping police somewhat in check through the
possibility that they may use their gun should police get out of line. Our
police and military are the likeliest enemies these days, but foreign forces
invading cannot be completely ruled out, though extremely unlikely. Guns, and
the ability to own them, are the only thing keeping us from complete tyranny.
In that sense, the thousands of lives lost due to guns, while a tragedy, are
not a reason to change our gun laws and never will be.

------
omgbananas
Instead of being an interesting discussion about the mathematics of events
worth preparing for, this is turning into a tired discussion about the merits
of guns.

I was hoping for the former, because if I wanted the latter, all I have to do
is go on Facebook.

~~~
mikeash
That’s probably because, despite the title of the article, it’s almost
entirely about guns.

~~~
omgbananas
Mentioned in opening because I imagine most people associate preppers with gun
hoarders.

NOT mentioned in the subsequent sections about Hydrology, Math, Cheating,
Horizon, and a brief mention in Disaster Planning. _Then_ in the 6th major
section we talk about guns.

"almost entirely about guns" if that's all you want it to be about maybe.

~~~
mikeash
Those were all background to talk about guns. Prepping (whether for disasters,
revolutions, or zombocalypses) is about far more than just armaments, but
there’s almost no discussion of how non-gun supplies factor into it.

~~~
omgbananas
I reread the title and noticed it does have the word "gun" in it, so there is
a little merit to your argument, but I stand by my belief it was just included
because I think most people associate "prepping" with gun hoarders. The author
clearly is more interested in the math than the guns here.

The beginning of the title is "The Surprisingly Solid Mathematical Case" and
the author devotes a lot more space in the article about that than guns. So
it's tiring when people jump on the gun bandwagon, than talk about the math of
the disasters.

~~~
mikeash
A mathematical case would discuss the benefit you get from prepping once
disaster strikes. The article talks a lot about the probability of disaster,
but takes the benefit of prepping as a foregone conclusion, and essentially
equates prepping with stockpiling guns and ammo.

An actual solid mathematical case for gun stockpiling would need to show that
1) disasters are likely enough to prep for 2) the expected benefits of
prepping outweigh the costs and 3) stockpiling guns is a better use of your
finite resources than e.g. buying more canned beans.

It hits 1 pretty well, then it gives up and just assumes 3. No surprise that
the discussion it generates isn’t very productive.

~~~
ticviking
> An actual solid mathematical case for gun stockpiling would need to show
> that 1) disasters are likely enough to prep for 2) the expected benefits of
> prepping outweigh the costs and 3) stockpiling guns is a better use of your
> finite resources than e.g. buying more canned beans.

He kind of addresses that when he mentions the "raider" survival plan. "For an
unethical zombie prepper, firearms may be all they need, if they can find
someone else from whom to steal."

Maybe I'm deep enough into gun culture to see something as implicit where it
ought to be explicit, but that suggests that it's worth having a minimum
amount of deterrent against hostile parties once you have a few weeks food.

------
jmcphers
I'm not sure I buy this statistical justification for gun ownership, because
if you're into statistics then you owe it to yourself to look not only at the
odds that you will need a gun at some point in your life (which is what this
article argues) but _also_ at the odds on what that gun will be used for while
you own it (which this article totally ignores).

Adding a gun to your house increases the odds of successful suicide, of that
gun being used against you, and of that gun being involved in an accidental
death of a loved one. Gun ownership isn't as simple as "don't shoot anyone
with it." Every year that you own a gun, there is a nonzero risk of it being
part of a tragedy. You can mitigate and reduce this risk, but it's just as
dumb to set it at 0 (because you're responsible) as it is to assume that the
odds of a revolution are 0 (because one has not happened in your country in
your lifetime).

A more thorough assessment would use the same Bernoulli Process to calculate
the lifetime odds that the gun will be involved in a tragedy, and compare it
to the odds that it'll save your life in a disaster of some kind.

FiveThirtyEight has a great writeup on gun deaths here, if you haven't seen
it. 2/3 of the gun deaths in America are suicides.

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-
deaths/](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/)

~~~
leephillips
The probability of a civil insurrection can be roughly estimated, and is
completely external to me. My decisions have no effect on that. The average
rate of gun suicides have nothing to do with the probability that I will turn
my gun on myself, which is zero. As the author says, if you think you're going
to use your rifle for murder or suicide, you should get rid of it.

People are always conflating population averages with individual
probabilities, as if the behavior of other people has some magical nonlocal
interaction with an individual's behavior.

The rate of alcohol-related sickness and death is probably much higher for
people who keep hard liquor in the house. But I can fill my cupboards with
whiskey and never take more than one drink a day. Know thyself.

~~~
astura
So you're completely discounting that you'll ever have suicide ideation just
because you've never had it before?

And many people have spouse and kids.

------
Clubber
Another reason is if for some reason we have an oil crisis. Most of what you
eat is delivered on trucks. No oil means no food in about two weeks. Hunting
used to be par for the course just a few decades ago.

~~~
Frondo
From personal experience, from a social circle that spans a wide variety of
types of people, the venn diagram of "people who are Into Guns" and "people
who can effectively hunt their own food" has no overlap.

My friends who are Into Guns are into feeling tough and powerful, like they've
always got an upper hand in any situation. When they go into the great
outdoors, it's to drink beer and shoot their guns into the woods. (Yeah, it's
stupid and dangerous and shitty. I stopped camping with them some time ago.)

My family members who hunt never talk about their guns, they just hunt with
them a couple times a year and fill their chest freezers with deer.

~~~
lainga
What does enthusiasm for guns have to do with this discussion?

~~~
panglott
The linked article is about rationales for possessing rifles such as the
AR-15.

~~~
lainga
You can own an AR-15 without being compelled to enthuse about it to everyone
(as the grandparent mentioned their poor-hunter friends do).

~~~
Spooky23
The AR-15 is the key word. Subsistence hunters aren’t buying expensive guns.
You can get guns for that purpose for 80% less money.

AR-15s are like toy light sabers for adults.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> You can get guns for that purpose for 80% less money.

AR-15s are by far the least expensive they've ever been right now, and are
substantially less expensive than any reasonable alternative.

You can get a complete AR-15 for <$500, easily. If you're willing to put the
parts together yourself, you can do it for ~$350.

You're certainly not going to get a new hunting rifle of similar quality for
$70-$100.

> AR-15s are like toy light sabers for adults.

Sure, they can be. It's a fairly common cliche that they're "Barbie dolls for
grown men" \- but I fail to see how that's relevant. The article was about
preppers, not firearms enthusiasts.

~~~
Spooky23
That’s crazy — I’ve been out of this world for a log time, basically since
graduating college. Back in the 90s, I had friends who spent multiples of that
on AR-15 type rifles!

Personally, I’m not someone who will survive long in a combat situation, so I
don’t spend much time thinking about guns.

~~~
LyndsySimon
Yeah, a _lot_ has changed since the 90s. The '94 "Assault Weapons Ban" made
them popular; when it expired in '04, production shot through the roof.
Various panics have happened since then that kept them relatively expensive,
but since Trump's election prices have fallen through the floor.

These days you can easily get a lower receiver (the part that's considered a
firearm by the ATF) for <$100.

------
skywhopper
Lots of straw men, poor assumptions, bad analogies and more in this article.
He starts with some weird dumb swipe at "the Left" for thinking tyranny is
impossible. And ends with a something I've never heard of: a class of people
"vehemently demanding the confiscation of rifles". He ticks off countless wars
to prove that states of violence is common, but conflicts that reach the state
of "war" are going to roll over you and your family and all your prepper gear
whether you have one, ten or zero AR-15s.

And the author is extremely naive in his assumptions about the relative risk
of having an assault rifle in your home versus the marginal increase in safety
said assault rifle would grant you in the case of a massive societal
breakdown. If anything, at best it would be a wash: Carrying the rifle openly
would just get you targeted by military, militia, gangs, or other preppers who
would at such a point have nothing to stop them from employing pre-emptive
lethal violence against you. You might be able to protect your home from
random lone-wolf raiders, but organized groups could overwhelm you pretty
quickly.

As for his two-data-point calculation of the likelihood of violent rebellion
based on the history of the United States, the Civil War was a fairly
straightforward war between government-equipped armies, not a period of random
anarchy. And the Revolutionary War was relatively small-scale given the
expanse of the American colonies at that time.

The sadly common European wars up until 1945 were horrific wastes of human
life, but again, I'm not sure how having a rifle handy would appreciably
change the lives of the folks impacted by the wars. I don't know about earlier
wars but I'm pretty sure most every healthy fighting age male in Europe was in
their respective military, not holed up in their basement protecting their
tins of sardines from the looters across the street.

Point being, the chances of a societal collapse where your AR-15 will make a
difference for the safety of your home and your family is miniscule. And the
risk of the gun's presence in your home over the decades you wait for the
apocolypse which never comes is much, much greater.

------
dicroce
A few years back I became obsessed with securing a server (a previous one had
been hacked). I noticed after a while that what started out reasonable
(updating software, closing ports, etc)... had become unreasonable (writing
custom code to detect changes to any file on the machine)... and I realized
that each step normalized the next step in the sequence. The same thing is in
effect with preppers.

You start with the thought "I should have some canned goods and water on
hand."... 5 years later you're locked in your bunker in south dakota... each
step seemed reasonable, but the destination is unreasonable.

That said, you should have some canned goods and water on hand. :)

------
kasey_junk
To me, the problem I have with 'preppers' or the 'gun lobby' is that the over
extend their arguments past the point of reasonable-ness.

You may have a very valid reason for owning an AR-15 (even if that very valid
reason is 'its rad at the range'). But for basically every valid reason, you
can extrapolate a valid reason to own a pickup truck. In fact, there are
_more_ valid reasons to own a pickup truck. Pickup trucks, and the materials
for making them work, are exposed to all manner of regulation and no-one but
the most extreme anarchists make a peep.

Try applying the same sorts of regulations to AR-15s and you get 'slippery
sloped' out of existence. So, to me, gun control advocates of the 'left' have
not abandoned logical arguments, they've been out lobbied/pr'd by the gun
extremists on the 'right'.

This is all coming from someone that does not own any AR-15s, but has fired
them enough times to understand how much fun they are at the range.

~~~
Density
Pickup trucks aren't protected by the constitution. Individual militia arms
are.

Our government simply doesn't have the legal power to regulate ar15s like they
do trucks.

IANAL but "right to bear arms shall not be infringed" sounds pretty
bulletproof to me.

~~~
kasey_junk
Why is it exactly that when people quote the 2nd ammendment they don't quote
the whole thing. It's relatively short: "A well regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and
bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

IANAL either, but the courts have changed their position on it over the years.
For instance in United States v. Cruikshank (1875) the Supreme Court ruled
that the 2nd amendment only applied to the federal government and states could
restrict gun rights. Different parts of that decision have come under scrutiny
many times.

In any case, its a very modern and specific reading of that amendment that
suggests that none of our governments can regulate ar15 ownership. Further
Amendment 10 is fairly clear that if it isn't mentioned then the federal
doesn't have the right to regulate something, yet here we are with federal
regulations on pickup trucks.

------
squozzer
Thank you author -- I knew cumulative / long-term probability had a name but
did not know it -- Bernoulli Process.

>He could leave [his gun] in his attic with a couple of cans of ammunition,
just in case something horrible does transpire where he might actually need
it.

Please keep your firearms and ammo out of attics and crawlspaces, unless the
alternative is underwater. The key to longevity is climate control, at least
within reason.

~~~
shifter
Yep. They also need regular "exercise" and lubrication if you want them to be
worth anything in a WROL situation.

~~~
Clubber
Back when my uncle was in the army, they stored all their weapons dry so the
oils wouldn't trap all the dust. So I guess the attic is ok as long as you
store it try, or in a gun case or something.

~~~
shifter
There's enough oxygen floating around in various forms that the _lack_ of an
oil layer can allow rust to form. There are other ways to treat it, as your
uncle alluded to, but they are probably very sensitive to following the
appropriate maintenance schedule.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Cool. I hadn't thought of risk calculation as a Bernoulli process. Hey, I know
next to nothing about risk calculations!

However. If we work backwards in time and keep to the same reasoning, the
yearly probability of a violent revolution goes up for every year you get
_closer_ to the last event (because there are fewer years to sample from). For
example, the chance to have a violent revolution in 1866, after the US Civil
War, was at its maximum for the period after the Civil War (0.57 by my
calculation). That is intuitively wrong. Surely, the probability to have a
violent revolution must be _minimal_ right after the end of the last one, when
the new status quo is in its most well established, everyone is tired of
fighting, etc etc.

I guess you can argue for and against that- but the point is that revolutions
cannot be accurately modelled as a Bernoulli process, with a constant
probability depending on time, else there is a risk of wildly over- or under-
estimating the chance of having another one.

Finally- I think it's very dangerous to assume that just because you can model
someone's reasoning as a rational process, that person will actually follow
that process and reason rationally. Or in other words- someone else might be
able to come up with rational arguments to back up preppers' actions, but that
doesn't mean preppers themselves are thinking rationally. You can get to the
same behaviour through very different lines of reasoning, not all of which are
necessarily consistent.

~~~
cc439
_> That is intuitively wrong. Surely, the probability to have a violent
revolution must be minimal right after the end of the last one, when the new
status quo is in its most well established, everyone is tired of fighting, etc
etc._

Is that intuitively wrong? How many civil wars and revolutions have we seen
spiral into madness after the official end to hostilities between the
"governments" involved? Iraq, Libya, and South Sudan are among dozens of
examples we can pull from recent memory. The defeat of a government or other
high level of societal organization does not imply the defeat of the reasons
why the war began in the first place. The rise of the Jim Crow laws and the
incessant waves of black emigration fron the South after the collapse of the
Union state's Reconstruction efforts speaks to the inherent instability of
post-war societies. There are more historical examples of "post-conflict"
societies which almost immediately descend into further conflict than one can
count. Once the seal of peace is broken, it's incredibly hard to recreate.

------
cpsempek
Can the author justify the accuracy of estimating revolt using a Bernoulli
process? At minimum he should provide sufficient reason to believe that the
random variables he is using as components of his Bernoulli process (which are
1 if a revolt or revolution occurs in a given year and 0 otherwise) are
independent and identically distributed Bernoulli trials. These assumptions in
the situation he is describing seem unlikely, or at best hard to establish.
The author is being deceptive by not providing some sort of warning stating
that there are good reasons to believe this is a bad model and the
probabilities computed are inaccurate (no confidence intervals provided for
instance).

~~~
madengr
He's working off a sample of 2, which he clearly stated.

~~~
cpsempek
Agreed, but then continues to go into larger data sets, of which his analyses
suffer from the same erroneous model application.

------
splitrocket
This only makes sense if they are willing to expend a similar, if not greater
resources into pro-social, civilization strengthening activity.

Otherwise it's barbaric. Literally a bet against civilization and your fellow
human.

~~~
LyndsySimon
I believe that a population that is proficient with firearms does in fact
strengthen civilization. My experience is that it almost always results in the
person seeing the world in a different, more individualist, way.

~~~
splitrocket
Firearms alone do not a civilization make.

If you are investing some portion of your income/wealth to individualistic
self-preservation in the event of societal breakdown, one should, from a
purely rational perspective invest in the prevention of such a breakdown,
which means the social safety net, democracy, community engagement, etc.

To not do so is, in fact, a bet against civilization, which is, in my humble
opinion, literally barbaric.

------
simonh
Well of course many people in the US are worried about violence. They see
frequent cases of mass shootings on TV, sometimes in places they know or
places much like the place they live or work. They see the Police officers
getting gunned down, or gunning unarmed people down on an almost daily basis.
If I live in a society like that I’d be pretty paranoid too.

But is the solution to this problem mass gun ownership? I think more and more
school children in America are beginning to realise that actually no, that’s
not the right way to think about this.

Is it really sound to compare the USA to Somalia and Afghanistan as though
that comparison is just as relevant as a comparison to the UK or Australia or
Canada? How many democratic countries have suffered revolutions and mass
social breakdown? All of a sudden you end up with a very short list, and
usually within a short period of time of coming out of a dictatorship of some
kind, before democratic institutions and processes have become established.
How many that have been democratic for more that 50 years? I can’t think of a
single one.

Finally about 30,000 Americans die by the gun every year, many by suicide but
that just goes to show the risks of easy access to guns. (If you disagree -
people could stab themselves to death instead - compare death rates with other
stable affluent democracies. You might be able to explain away some of it but
I’m already rounding down to the nearest 10k.) Let’s say you have one uprising
every 150 years. To pay it’s way in blood gun ownership would have to be
responsible for saving over 450,000 lives. That’s about half the total of the
Civil War. I think it’s far from clear that this would be the case, and surely
isn’t having huge numbers of firearms in circulation more likely to make such
a tragic breakdown of society even worse?

~~~
JBReefer
Agreed. The whole point of elections are not to elect perfect people - they
are a revolution, every two years. Trump might not be perfect, but he's a lot
better than people in Wisconsin having to rise up against people in
California. It's likely that in 2020, the people of {Insert Swing State Here}
will not violently murder the president, like they had to during the French
Revolution, but will instead vote him out of office.

There's a reason the preponderance of his examples came from countries that
were transitioning to democracies, and there are very few examples of violent
overthrowing of democratically elected governments.

------
maxerickson
_Two qualifying events in 340 years is a 0.5882% annual chance of nationwide
violent revolution against the ruling government._

That's not an accurate characterization of either the Revolutionary War or the
Civil War.

Immediately availability of small arms is also unlikely to be all that
important in similar scenarios (just lie when the local revolt asks if you are
against them).

It's an interesting thing to consider how likely things are to fall apart
though.

------
JKCalhoun
> There’s the “you can’t fight the army with small arms” bucket, which is
> increasingly unsound given our ongoing decade and a half war with Afghani
> tribal goat herders.

Has either side "won" the "decade and a half war with Afghani tribal goat
herders"?

There are certainly no invading forces of "Afghani tribal goat herders" in the
U.S.

Sounds like small arms will, at best, hold off the army.

~~~
flyingfences
Small arms will hold off the army if the army has a supply chain that isn't
vulnerable. If the army's supplies originate from the contested territory then
it becomes possible for the insurrection to sever that chain.

------
LinuxBender
Without even reading the article, I would suggest that people should do
whatever makes sense to them to protect themselves and their loved ones.
Waiting for real world statistics to back you up is additional risk. I would
suggest it would be pragmatic and entirely logical to be proactive and prepare
for the worst.

~~~
gowld
How do you know what makes sense if you don't know the statistics? Any action
could be more harm than help.

~~~
LinuxBender
Experience has shown that common sense can augment or even replace statistics.
Statistics are great for confirming or rejecting what you knew using common
sense.

~~~
delecti
Literally the entire point of the field of statistics is to augment our highly
fallible "common sense" with objective measures of assessment.

------
fwdpropaganda
This isn't to address the argument, but I just wanted to point out that the
guy writing this article chose to describe himself with "I think a lot."

~~~
CompanionCuuube
I'd take that over "I feel very strongly"

------
yongjik
> There’s the “tyranny can never happen here” bucket, which the Left has
> mostly abdicated in the wake of Trump winning after they called (and still
> call) Trump a tyrant. There’s the “you can’t fight the army with small arms”
> bucket, which is increasingly unsound given our ongoing decade and a half
> war with Afghani tribal goat herders. And there’s the “what the hell do you
> need an AR-15 for anyway?” bucket, which by its very language eschews a
> fundamental lack of understanding of what those people are thinking.

Yeah, and where's the bucket for "If you have to bring out a gun to shoot
police officers, your nation has failed, _YOU_ have failed at protecting your
nation and what it stands for, and I'm not interested in your political
fantasy where you become a hero to save the day after abdicating your
responsibility while everything collapsed"?

If these guys realistically believed America would turn into another
Afghanistan, what they need is an airline ticket. Why prepare for a doomed
fight when you can retire in Bahamas? If they realistically believe that
America is going down and they need to stop it, what they need is to get
involved in politics and fight, NOW, to turn the country around.

But no, they want to believe they can be heroes, while at the same time don't
want to believe they can do anything about it now, because then they will be
responsible for their inaction. So they keep talking about guns, and how
everyone else will feel sorry once civilization collapses.

~~~
graedus
You can organize and vote all you want, but being one person out of 320
million, sometimes things aren't going to go your way. It is not a bad idea to
have a backup plan, even for unlikely events. So then what? "Retire to the
Bahamas"? Assuming you have enough money laying around to do that, and don't
have elderly or less-mobile family/friends, is running away to a foreign
country where you have no connections really so preferable to having the
option to defend yourself and your family/friends?

------
crankylinuxuser
Not trying to go all anti-2a..

Many people have guns. I think the numbers are that there's more guns than
there are people in the USA.

However for those numbers of guns, there's nowhere near that amount of
training to teach proper firearms handling and usage. The hunters probably
have the most experience, outside law enforcement and military.

I personally don't have enough time to dedicate to mastery of firearms. Just
going and buying a handgun seems like a splendid way to either injure yourself
or have it taken from you and used against you. This decision is personal.

However I'm pretty good at: electronics, design, reverse engineering,
software, power, chemistry, and many other areas. I may not be a master at
firearms, but I know metalsmithing and chemistry to make the bullets gun
owners need.

And frankly, if shit goes haywire, they'll be enough guns to go around.
Because I could see another country moving in, and guns being passed around
like candy to defend us. And barring that, I'll know enough tech and have
enough scrap to be needed.

~~~
Clubber

      1. Always assume it's loaded and the safety is off.
      2. Don't point it at anyone, ever, even inadvertantly.
      3. Don't put your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
      4. The rest is in the manual.

