I've never been paranoid. I was raised my a child of the Great Depression. Mom could make anything from nothing at all, and made sure her children never took anything for granted. We were all taught to be prepared for the worst, while believing the best is yet to come. Even the boys had to learn to cook, sew, and keep a household. We plant gardens, know how to can food, and everybody had to learn to hunt & fish. This could come in handy pretty soon, the way things look now. I grew up in the '60s, under the constant threat of nuclear war. Seriously, the history books made the '60s & '70s look like a big party, but that wasn't the case for the lower middle class. It wasn't until the late '80s that I first heard the term "survivalist". Except for digging bunkers, and blowing stuff up, it was pretty much our lifestyle.