I am amazed at the lack of common sense by these types of threads, so I usually just ignore them and they usually go away. Unfortunately, with the prepping thing getting popular these threads are becoming more commonplace.
A lack of common sense, and probably people who do not have a math-engineering-science background.
There is trouble any time politics crosses science.
As for preppers, well, if fear of EMP causes people to be more self-reliant, they’ll be more self reliant when the blizzard-hurricane-earthquake hits.