'Doomsday Preppers' review: Apocalypse soon

A doomsday prepper, of course, would scoff at our discomfort -- just wait, they would say, for a real flood to arrive when Greenland melts. And you're afraid of a little dark? How afraid will you be when the entire worldwide power grid collapses -- forever. (Preppers are natural-born absolutists -- everything will be very bad for a very long time.)

For preppers, the apocalypse is nigh, while television and audiences have embraced their prophetic paranoia. A plague of zombies ("The Walking Dead") lies at one extreme, a mother of all blackouts ("Revolution") at the other.

Occupying the unscripted middle ground is "Doomsday Preppers" -- so earnest and so dedicated to the proposition that the end of the world is near that grades are assigned to preppers' various survivalist schemes. A high grade means they'll survive a year or longer; a low one means they're toast. All in all, it's kooky, but still.... BOTTOM LINE These oddballs and flakes -- with their "bugout" hovels, obsessive fixations on food stockpiles and love of high-powered weaponry -- may not seem like ideal companions, but there's little doubt they're better prepared than you or I for the next time the lights go out.

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