No Prepper Murder-Suicide Pact For Me, Thanks.

The other day I was talking to a fellow prepper who stated that he would save the last rounds of ammo for himself and his family if “things didn’t work out” (talk about needing some clarification). Prepper murder-suicide is a morbid thought, but we were talking about end-of-days scenarios. It’s still off-kilter, though, and it’s not the first time I’ve heard it. Got me to thinking, and now to posting, against that vein of thought.

Spoiler Alert & Trite Movie Reference

Definitely not from the movie The Mist.
By Osvát András (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I’m about to tell you the ending to the not-so-great movie The Mist. If you’re a horror buff like me and haven’t seen it, turn right back around and get on out of here, I don’t need any angry rants about giving away endings to mediocre movies.

In The Mist, Marcia Harden plays a religious extremist a little too well, the military inadvertently brings on possible world-ending destruction by opening a portal to some dimension where spiders are the size of pit bulls and giant tentacled beasts and mega-crabs wander about, and there’s definitely an issue with climate change.

Yet, even though I can’t say it was great, there was some interesting exploration of how people react under extreme disaster scenarios in The Mist. People became fervent about religion, people hung themselves, and romance blossomed. Sounds about right.

A ways into the movie, the little boy of the main guy asks his Dad to promise him that the uglies won’t get him and Dad so solemnly swears. Later on, Dad, Son, Romance Interest (no, not Marcia Harden), and two Old People flee the supermarket everybody is holed up in and drive off into the mist, trying to escape the zone of contamination. They run out of gas and Dad only has four bullets, so he kills everyone else and steps out into the fog to be eaten. Fog clears, the military trains through, and Dad starts some WTF screaming. Yup, good thing he saved the last four rounds.

Prepper Murder-Suicide? Nah, Dishonorable Capture Sounds Good

Do not allow yourself to be captured, even if the alternative is death. Bear in mind that capture disgraces not only the Army but also your parents and family, who will never be able to hold up their heads again. Always save the last round for yourself.
“Japanese Hints for the Individual Soldier” from Intelligence Bulletin, June 1944

You’re playing soldier if you’re getting ready to cap your friends if they’ve got bad radiation burns after TEOTWAWKI. You might even be playing samurai. Or ninja turtle.

Live to fight another day, that’s how me and mine roll. We leave the Jihadist ultimate death-plunges and the idealism-seekers alone, and just ask the same in kind. And if by some circumstance we’re hanging in a mall surrounded by hordes of zombies, go ahead and shoot the zombie that looks like Jay Leno with the last bullet. Thanks, much appreciated.

Okay, So It Probably Won’t Be the Army.

Look, preppers plan and looters scheme, but those are just idea snares you’re setting to catch some furry little future circumstances that might not even be in the area. You never know if the military’s about to roll through the mist, so stop thinking about keeping some emergency murder-and-suicide rounds. Or at least, stop talking about it.

It’s not humane to let people or animals suffer needlessly; if it’s a sure death and the way there is slow and horrible, then yeah, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. But unless Old Yeller’s contracted rabies, don’t go shooting anybody. There’s a line between “almost definitely, probably doomed” and “guaranteed to die” that you’re preparing to misjudge by saving up the last rounds. Why on earth do you want to make sure the end scene only requires the pull of a trigger? If it comes to that, let it require more effort, don’t you think?

It probably won’t the army, but help could be just over the hill in any number of forms. Hell, it could even be your buddies from the American Preppers Network. Just as likely as needing to off yourself.

At any rate, I’m sure there’s plenty of ex-army Last Samurai out there dreaming up situations where they might be obliged to kill off their loved ones and themselves. Cool, go on and figure out how to rationalize prepper murder-suicide ahead of time, I guess. Don’t save the last rounds for us over here, though, please, we’ll take our chances with the monsters in the mist.