Most everyone has heard this one: What’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle? The answer: The person who is playing it. So what’s the difference between a Prepper and a Survivalist?

Here’s my humble opinion. A survivalist makes plans for a widespread apocalypse including societal, governmental and economic collapse. He stocks up beans, bullets and bandaids. He has a plan for every contingency. He owns a bug-out vehicle, fully stocked to take him and his family to his ultra-secret bug-out location where he will hole up and ride out the storm.

For him this is nothing short of a sacred calling. His passion is kept in check only by his concern for “op-sec”, that is operational security, otherwise he will be doing his best to convince everyone in earshot of his amazing skills, plans and inventory of supplies. His guns, his food, his skills and his supplies are going to carry him through until sanity is once again restored.

The prepper knows that someday the lights may go out and he will be required to get by on what he has on hand. Power outages, wind storms, tornados, blizzards and earthquakes are more his concern. He knows if an event disrupts the normal flow of life around him, he will have what it takes to get him, his family and yes, maybe even some of his neighbors through the crisis.

Ultimately both guys are planning for the same thing. And that is to come out the other side of whatever happens to interrupt the status quo.