Love it or hate it, Doomsday Preppers has brought a lot of attention to the post-collapse preparation community and arguably brought it to the mainstream. The numbers back it up, Doomsday Preppers was able to become one of the top rated shows on the National Geographic channel before even finishing the first season. It’s no surprise, it’s great entertainment to the average watcher.

There has been some backlash in the prepper community over the show. Sharp Entertainment, the company responsible for Doomsday Preppers has not shied away from portraying the subjects of the show as close to the edge, if not fully over it. This is what brings in the ratings and this is what people will continue to tune into, regardless of whether it portrays the community accurately or not.

Regardless of whether the show is doing justice to the prepper community, the fact that it’s reaching such heights of popularity are evidence to the fact that people all around the world are tuning into the concept of preparation. For putting a name to the fears that a lot of people knew they had but couldn’t categorize, I would argue that Doomsday Preppers is doing a lot to help out the average Joe. At the end of the day, a true prepper should be happy that others have the foresight to be more prepared in the case of a disaster, and if the show is bringing people to do that, then good on it. To criticize the show for portraying preppers as a bit over the edge is a bit snobby. I like to think the community is more welcoming than that.

Putting a gun to your daughter’s head may be questionable parenting, but those robin noises are unquestionably awesome

So with that being said, I would like to announce the introduction of a new series on the doomsday preppers. At BugOut Nutrition, we’re building a certain philosophy on preparation based on nutrition, optimal health and mobility. The goal of this series is to view Doomsday Preppers through that lens and see what sort of insights come out. There are many ridiculous moments on the show, but also moments of unique genius, and we mean to examine them all with an episode by episode series to explore what can be taken of value.

Equal parts user guide, critique and cliff notes, I hope by the end of the series we will all have learned something about preparation, had some laughs and bridged the gap between reality TV and reality. Stay tuned for more updates.