Ten years ago, if you told someone at a barbecue that you kept three months of food stored at home and had a backup generator, there was a specific look you would get. A slight pause. A subtle recalibration. The person would mentally file you under a category and the conversation would either end or get weird. That does not happen much anymore. Something changed, and it changed fast. What Shifted After COVID The pandemic did something to the cultural perception of preparedness that decades of pr