I see a common misconception pretty often (Well, it’s common, so I would. *heh*) It goes something like this:
“Preppers are individuals who believe that, in the near future, life as they know it will be challenged or changed due to a major event.”
No, cupcake. “Preppers” are people who think that being prepared to deal with a wide range of emergencies should they occur is just the intelligent thing to do. Heck, preparing in advance to be able to deal effectively with a wide range of possible natural or man-made disasters IF any of them should occur, is certainly better than playing grasshopper and then mooching off others should, say, an extended power outage from a winter storm or a major flood occur.
While I’m sure there are a few tinfoil hat wearers who meet the pejorative criteria stated in the misconception, but I believe them to be the exception, not the rule. Yeh, I know a few whose tinfoil hats seemed to cause brainwave malfunctions leading them to not just go “off-grid” but move to third world countries to escape “the coming collapse of civilization,” but I can count those few on one hand and have fingers left over. 😉