A crippling ice storm that left Travis Maddox and thousands of other Missouri residents without power in 2007 had an “almost apocalyptic feel to it.” “No one could move. It just shut the whole region down for two weeks. I wasn’t as prepared as I thought,” said Maddox, a burly man of 43 sporting a long black beard, T-shirt, cargo pants and baseball cap, while tending his garden. Those two weeks made Maddox realize that being prepared—“prepping,” as it’s called today—was the key to a life of self-reliance and personal freedom. As an Eagle Scout, he never forgot the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. “To me, the ultimate level of prepping is being self-sufficient. You’re still being modern, but you’re in control,” Maddox told The Epoch Times in a phone interview on Thursday. In 2009, Maddox launched his YouTube channel, “The Prepared Homestead,” which now has over 32,000 subscribers. People, …