Superstorm & Doomsday Preppers

[Nimbus]

I experienced May 1998 riot first hand. A couple 'gallon' size containers, a carton of indomie, and a full LPG cooking gas tank will last you a week. Your biggest worry in Indonesia is not food & water, it's the looting masses, spontaneous or artificial. This time Prabowo has no incentive to seed the riot, so hopefully nothing bad will happen.

[waarmstrong]

Which one? Some may think the preppers are crazy, to enjoy watching the show, maybe one has to be a little crazy too. But regarding Indonesia, you will not understand it unless you have experienced the May 1998 riots in Jakarta. A "perfect storm" is now brewing, we have several elections and campaigning for the Presidential election will start next year. There is plan to cut subsidy for fuel & electricity which will cause inflation. Labor unions are demanding, with threat of mass protests, unreasonable salary increases of up to 90% in Jakarta and more than 100% in Bekasi. Unemployment will go up, and more will fall into poverty. More poverty means social unrest, not to mention problems now with religious radicals and weak government.

I was in Jakarta during the riots of 1989. Conditions today are nothing at all like it was then. Indonesia has difficult problems to deal with, but the country is more prosperous than it has ever been. There is going to continue to be a lot of jostling for position among the power holders and power seekers, probably demonstrations, some violent, and of course the usual neighbor on neighbor violence stemming from trivial ethnic and religion jealousies and ignorance, but not mass collapse of order.

In short, if there are Indonesian preppers, they are as crazy as the loons in the USA.

[Hombre de Maiz]

You analysis is premised exclusively on the belief that the disturbances in 1998-2000 were solely caused by economic hardship and dislocations. Your analysis does not contemplate the role that the armed forces and factions thereof played on those disturbances, the fact that the armed forces and the police remain, more or less, as corrupt and outside civilian control (particularly the former), and the fact that economic interests are often behind disturbances. Your analysis fails to take into account that a most potent deterrent, effective and impartial administration of justice, remains unaddressed and dysfunctional. Finally your analysis does not contemplate the fact that the Islamic genie is more out of the bottle now than it was in that period.

[jstar]

if there are Indonesian preppers, they are as crazy as the loons in the USA.

Just bought 50 cans of Sprite Zero (in the only shop where they still seem to sell them). Does that make me a prepper?

[Howie]

Just bought 50 cans of Sprite Zero (in the only shop where they still seem to sell them). Does that make me a prepper?

Yes. You're a weekend prepper

[waarmstrong]

Carrfour sells Sprite Zero in cans, but I want the 1.5 liter plastic bottles. Those, as I have noted earlier, have disappeared from the shelves. Must be a sign of the impending doom.

[Nimbus]

I just got me a carton of Indomie Kari Ayam. I'm prepared.