After three years of the epidemic, this is the change that has taken place in the “Survival Maniac” post bar

At the beginning of 2020, when people on the Internet were still confused and anxious about the sudden outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the old buddies of Baidu’s “Survival Crazy Bar” stepped into the spotlight.

At that time, many people heard of “N95 masks” and “respiratory valve masks” for the first time, but here it seemed that there was a box in hand; when everyone was still worrying about how to prepare dry food for the first home isolation, the friends here They are judging the various canned foods they hoarded early;.

At that time, a bar friend in Yichang, Hubei became a representative figure among them. He was isolated at home for more than 50 days, but he lived quite comfortably, relying on the survival materials he had prepared in the past, from staple food to There are all kinds of snacks, and there are even self-grown bean sprouts; even if he wants to go out, he has a full set of protective equipment including a disinfection mask, and the safety factor is much higher than ordinary people.

This post is still one of the “treasures of the town” in Survival Mania

Before that, outsiders usually regarded this behavior of hoarding goods as unfounded, thinking that the so-called “survival maniac” in the bar was just a secondary disease of reading too much post-apocalyptic web articles and playing too much “Resident Evil”. It wasn’t until the calm attitude of the survivalist buddies in dealing with the epidemic was shown to the world, that the prejudice that this post bar had encountered in the past was reversed to a certain extent.

People who worshiped and learned the experience of survival under the epidemic poured into the “Survival Madness Bar”, and the old buddies who were “repented of their grievances” were also pleased that their ideas have been understood by more people, and they poured out their money to pass on their experiences and insights.

In the past three years, the number of followers of Survival Mania has increased from the early 200,000 to more than 400,000. During this process, more and more people have personally experienced home isolation. From hoarding rice and vegetables to preparing water and medicine, some survival experiences that were once only mastered by a few people have now become “common sense”; the 50-day quarantine record that once shocked netizens has also become a bar Uncommon experience.

In recent days, the bar has become more lively for some reason, but the most heated discussion is no longer how to adapt to an independent life gracefully, but what tools can be used to break open the closed gate of the community.

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The epidemic has brought the “Survival Bar” into the view of more people, but this enthusiasm is not continuous.

After experiencing a burst of popularity in early 2020, the number of followers of “Survival Crazy Bar” has increased by nearly 100,000 in a short period of time, and there are also small documentaries such as “In China, 280,000 young people are preparing for the doomsday” Born to focus on this group.

The last time the bar was so lively was in 2012, when “Doomsday Prophecy” was popular.

But in fact, as the domestic epidemic prevention and control situation stabilized, most of the newcomers who came to Survival Mania to watch the excitement never came back here after clicking and following. The number of daily active people in the bar was only about a hundred people. None of the posts got more than double-digit replies.

Only a small number of newcomers have been transformed into a new generation of survivalist reserve army, who will take root here and learn from their predecessors for experience, and they will soon find that: compared to discussing specific survival skills, the two “preparers” and “survivors” The “line dispute” among major genres is the daily life in this bar.

“Survival freaks” are not a group with a common program of action. They have many camps and genres. “War preparers” and “survivors” are the two most representative branches.

“War preparers” are usually committed to building a self-sufficient small ecological circle, enough to support themselves and their families to live away from modern human society for a period of time. They usually build backup power generation and water storage schemes, and they never think that their home supplies are “excessive”, so they are often called “hamster parties”.

Building a safe house like the VIVOS bunker in the United States is the yearning of many war preparers

“Survivors” are on the contrary. They don’t raise too many “external possessions” in advance, and pay more attention to studying and mastering various emergency survival skills, so that they are prepared to wander around and rely on searching for supplies to survive when a disaster occurs. Supporters of this genre are always discussing portable self-defense weapons in the wasteland environment, so it is also called “chopper party”.

A fully equipped BOB escape backpack is a magic weapon for survivors to stay with when they go out

In terms of gameplay, “survivors” take the route of “eating chicken”, while “preparators” tend to “grow vegetables”. The latter is undoubtedly more in line with the public’s impression of the “survival mad” group, but in Here, the “survivor” faction has the upper hand, so that the first rule of the bar is “Prohibition of taunting and attacking ‘preparers'”. The daily atmosphere in the bar can be imagined.

The bar rules are quite a bit like the “Shaman Instant Hearthstone Act” in “World of Warcraft” back then

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The formation of such a situation can be regarded as a historical legacy.

The early “survivalist” fans in China were largely influenced by the “American survivalist” culture. The variety documentary “Doomsday Preppers” filmed by National Geographic was the inspiration for many people.

This program will interview several survivalist families every season. These people usually hoard supplies for the family to survive for several years, and equip them with equipment and plans to deal with various disasters; the experts invited by the program will rate them , estimating how long they can realistically survive in the event of a disaster.

In addition to cans, there are weapons and machinery full of warehouses

People who have come into contact with the concept of “survival madness” through this program can easily regard the “preparation faction” as orthodox and use it as an object of imitation.

However, compared to North America, where the land is sparsely populated, most families in the country do not have similar environmental conditions. They usually do not have enough living space to stockpile a large amount of supplies, nor are they equipped with heavy firepower to prevent looting. The behavior of building low-end “safe houses” in domestic cities will inevitably appear to be imitation.

In the words of the survivors, once troubled times really happen, the home of the war preparers is their supermarket.

The two sides often quarrel in the bar, and they both wish that tomorrow will usher in the end of the world, so as to see which faction can have the last laugh.

It stands to reason that after the Wuhan lockdown in 2020, some bar friends calmly coped with the quarantine life with the help of hoarded supplies, which can be regarded as a practical verification for the “preparation faction”, and they should have gained more voice in the bar.

But in fact, after more than a year, even most people in the Survivalist Bar still feel that this kind of isolated life is far from themselves. Rather than making a list of daily necessities, people still prefer to imagine a more extreme doomsday environment, discuss what style of tactical backpack to buy, or how to get a handy weapon.

Now the sticky post in the bar is still discussing self-defense tools

On the one hand, the big and small bar owners involved in the management of the bar hope to lead the two factions to a state of harmonious coexistence, and often protect and support the “war preparer” genre. The “survivor” group appears to be more active and healthy, which is conducive to the long-term survival of this post bar; but at the same time, the users of the “survivor” group are often more active in their daily lives, and they are the group that this post bar cannot do without if it wants to maintain traffic and vitality.

As a comparison, the more vertical and professional Chinese survivalist forum “Preppercn” has no such daily chatter, and the website is even more empty.

Just in March of the beginning of the year, the owner of the Survival Club catered to everyone’s preferences and contacted Chen Hegao, the “Founder of Unlimited Fighting” who was quite popular on the Internet at that time, and planned to let him come to the bar for live teaching.

But the event was quickly postponed indefinitely—in mid-March, when the epidemic broke out in Shanghai, a large number of newcomers who had encountered isolation difficulties flooded into the bar again, and even the bar owner himself was locked up at home.

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In fact, before this, some sporadic posts appeared in the bar. Bar friends from Shenyang, Shijiazhuang, Xi’an and other areas said that they have been in isolation for a long time, and some of them relied on the experience of hoarding goods learned in the bar. , the situation is acceptable, and some are regretting that they are still not prepared enough after all.

It’s just that these posts didn’t get much attention. It’s far from being the top priority in the bar like the Shanghai epidemic. Every day, the front row of the homepage is full of relevant content, and some posts have been added to high-quality recommendations one after another.

At first, the atmosphere in the bar was not that tense. After all, people who would be active in this bar, no matter which faction they belonged to, had stockpiled some goods at home. “Survival Bar” even became a “canned food bar” for a time: Bar friends who were isolated at home finally waited for the opportunity to taste all kinds of canned food they had saved, and took turns evaluating which canned pork was fresher and which brand of tempeh fish Taste correction.

But as time goes by, anxiety still spreads—no matter how delicious canned food is, it can’t stand eating every day. Although it’s not enough to worry about the next meal after eating the last meal, the thirst for fresh fruits and vegetables of survivalists is still unmatched by ordinary people. However, in the end, I still have to join the ranks of grabbing premium dishes every day like the neighbors around me.

This kind of situation has actually been mentioned in the record posts written by friends who encountered Wuhan quarantine, but two years later, the same scene is still repeated.

Three months later, the owner of Survival Maniac shared his experience during the quarantine in Shanghai on Zhihu, telling how he faced the 80-day quarantine life with sufficient preparations, and finally fell into embarrassment and fell into the trash Rummaging the bucket for food.

His speech was moved back to the Survivalist Bar, which attracted a lot of cynicism. Some people thought that he was purely embarrassing to the Survivalist group, but he would never have fallen into a similar situation.

And a few months later, bar friends in more cities were quarantined at home, and many posts in the bar were still “frequently viewed and always new”.

Relevant posts from nearly two years ago are often pushed up now

In the past few years, Survival Mania seems to have fallen into an endless spiral.

On the one hand, many netizens feel that the difficulties faced by the epidemic isolation are nothing more than this, and it is far from the end of the world. Everyone has already explained the coping strategies that can be said, and the real survivalist should face a more ambitious goal;

At the same time, posts discussing quarantine-related content appear more and more frequently in the bar, and neither the “survivor” nor the “preparation” can provide a way out for the current anxiety and predicament of the posters.

At the beginning of 2020, someone uploaded a video called “Preparing for the Third World War” on Station B. The UP master filmed the hundreds (maybe thousands) of steamed buns he had hoarded, and dubbed “For the Third World War” food prepared for World War I”.

In the past three years, the number of views of this video has exceeded 4 million, and it has become a classic masterpiece of “Chinese Survival Madness”. And not long ago, the UP master wrote a paragraph in the comment area of ​​the video, saying that after three years of the epidemic, he was increasingly unable to understand what the video represented.

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In 2021, a foreign developer made a game called “Mr. Prepper”. Simply put, it is a “survival maniac simulator”. Get out of the basement, grow vegetables, store goods, build various tools and weapons, and avoid being noticed by the inspectors who come to the door.

Survival fanatics’ “dream tour”

As an independent game, the gameplay of “Doomsday Prepper” is relatively simple and rough, but among domestic players, it is most criticized for its main process – the ultimate goal of the game for players is to build a rocket in the basement, Ride it to escape this gated community.

This unconstrained ending was criticized by many domestic players at the time as the producers did not understand the “survival maniac”: after finally creating a perfect secret base, how could the goal of a survival maniac be to create another rocket to escape.

In today’s survival madness, the angle grinder has become the most recognized survival artifact-because it has the best chance of helping you saw the door welded to death by iron bars.