Category: Prepper

Real World Reality Check – We Are Witnessing the First Stages of Civilization’s Collapse: How Does an Emergency Crisis Affect a City

When you talk with people about crisis preparedness (be it in regards to natural disasters, war, economic collapse, terrorist attack, or whatever) you quickly realize that most folks have the same tendency to react with categorical denial of the obvious. We all create certain safe and predictable ways of dealing with the world that involve some slanting of reality. In order to cope with life, and make it more tolerable, we may distort, embellish, or ignore certain aspects of our environment, our feelings, or our memories. There are things we just don’t want to deal with because they are too painful, we fear them, or because we may get overwhelmed by such information. For most people, crisis preparedness topics fall into this category.

Curiously, the most common excuses for people refusing to prepare are also the most irrational. If you talk to people about this subject, you will most assuredly come across the following illogical reasons.

It is comforting to believe we would be safe if a city-wide crisis ever occurred. However, most of us are not prepared for living in a city without power and with low supplies if any of food and water.

If such an event happened, most people wouldn’t remain in the city they reside in for very long. Those of us who live in metropolitan areas are dependent on the things that come with it.

Cities Cannot Feed Themselves!

Every populated city is man-made. Towns are constructed so people can socialize, participate in commerce, and benefit from public services like water, sanitation, education, mail delivery, and much more. But just as we are dependent on the things a city provides, the city itself is reliant on a supply of resources like water, food, and power in order to provide that functionality. Even though water and electricity may still be available from outside of the city by means of pipelines and cabling, the population of a city still needs a regular incoming supply of food to live on.

No city is capable of feeding itself. Not one. Cities are ultimately reliant on food that is imported by farms. Without food coming in, grocery stores would run out of their stock within a week.

Risks in the City

The city can undergo a major crisis in the event of a water, food, or power shortage. In the event of a disaster, cities would face:

  1. Riots after the collapse of social order.
  2. Lack of water filtration or deliveries of fresh food.
  3. A food supply shortage.
  4. Long-term disruption of electricity.

Even though these outcomes won’t happen in every populated city, they could in yours. Let’s go over some of these scenarios:

The Collapse of Social Order

“Social order” is a fragile thing. It stands as a psychological obstruction that could easily fall apart. We have all observed massive riots in the news, many of them instigated by an unfairness of some kind that results in a dispensation of repressed anger and frustration. The L.A. riots that followed the verdict of the Rodney King trial saw Los Angeles citizens torch their own city. Residents were pulled from their own automobiles and literally beaten to death. Firemen trying to put out fires were shot at! In 2005, we all observed the violence, looting, and complete disintegration of civilization after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. We are days away from ending this year and 2020 wasn’t so different, and trust me when I am saying the problems are just starting.

What leads to such chaos in any of the above examples?

The concurrent disintegration of the psychological obstacle of order!

After people realized law enforcement wasn’t able to manage the chaos or weren’t around to help, the police were perceived as being incapable of protecting them. Some saw the police simply leave their posts behind to leave citizens fending for themselves, which canceled out the concept of “Law and Order”.

Nothing was stopping anyone from simply going to the local store and simply taking things without paying for them. They unleashed their frustrations about racism on innocent victims who were driving in the vicinity, and they ran amok on a path of ruin that only ceased when the National Guard, armed with rifles, arrived to restore order. As such, only the risk of sudden death brought violence and looting to a stop. It’s amazing what the sight of a rifle can do. Think about store owners seeking shelter on the roofs of their establishments armed with AK-47’s, shooting at anyone who came close.

Even worse, think about the reckless mob shooting at the rescue helicopters attempting to deliver supplies to helpless victims of the rioting. The National Guard ultimately restored order. This was an isolated incident in one city. Consider hundreds of cities going through a similar experience. Could the National Guard save them all?

Very unlikely, I’m afraid to say.

What about each town’s law enforcement divisions? They aren’t idiots; if things look bleak, they’ll choose to protect their own families first, and more than likely find safe refuge elsewhere as many officers did during the crisis in New Orleans. A pension isn’t worth dying over. Some towns could be changed into combat zones in one night. It would warrant complete military force and martial law to feasibly restore order to the area. There just aren’t enough people in the military to protect every city, should such events occur.

This downfall of social order is maybe the biggest risk to consider when contemplating remaining in a city amid a catastrophe.

What, then, would provoke this downfall of social order? An absence of three key necessities: water, food, and money. When people lack food, they may start to ravage their neighborhoods to replenish their stock. Before long, cities are under attack. Some locales may be able to keep things under control, and the Red Cross will be able to help them. Other cities will see their levels of violence escalate. Visualize the gang-ridden areas of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and St. Louis. It is unlikely people are going to behave in a civilized manner under chaotic conditions in those areas.

Already armed with guns, many people will feel the need to use them in such situations. Racial tensions have been building up to give people a reason to begin shooting at others of the same or of different colors in order to get what they want.

In the event that food and supplies make their way into chaotic cities successfully, a lack of money will lead to mass theft and looting. As crime increases, the social order will further collapse.

A lack of water will also lead to the “every man for himself” mentality, and perhaps very quickly. The disassembly of social order is disastrous since it doesn’t warrant any specific breakdown of telecommunications, a power grid, banking, or transportation. Social order is a psychological frame of mind, and any worldwide scare can hastily eliminate the mental barricade that essentially maintains order.

The Failure of Water Treatment and Delivery Systems

Can water treatment facilities prevail in the middle of a crisis? Some will and some won’t. The issue lies in determining whether the one you depend on will. Water treatment facilities rely on electricity, and experiments administered on several plants have already isolated some system weaknesses.

During one particular experiment, a water treatment plant discharged a deadly dose of fluoride into the water system. The computers mistakenly believed they were 99 years behind in distributing fluoride dosages, so they tried to adjust the difference. Anyone who was downstream and drank the water met an early death. Regardless of how much a dentist tries to say otherwise, fluoride is a lethal poison. A large disaster is probable in multiple cities.

The most vital question to ask here is what will happen if the water supply ceases to flow, or if it becomes contaminated. You might be aware that, even though individuals are able to remain alive without consuming food for as long as three weeks, ongoing consumption of water is mandatory for every human being. You can last as much as three days without drinking water, but past that, you’ll be struggling and could very quickly die.

With that said, it should come as no surprise that people will do what they feel they must to get water in order to stay alive. The hardest places to acquire water will be in populated cities. Most trusting people will assume any water stoppage will be temporary, and that the government will work diligently to resolve the deprivation. The panic will set in mere hours after a lack of flow of water, though.

A couple of days into the water shortage, people will become worryingly aware of the problem, and social order will start to collapse, as referenced in the prior chapter. People will start to scavenge for water, and they’ll immediately check retail stores first. Needless to say, in such scenarios, it won’t take long before all shelves inside these stores will be ransacked. Since the liquids won’t last for very long, you’ll see the population displace quickly, as people will relocate or go on searches for water outside of their own locales. Some will take to rivers and streams in the country, while others will go on looting sprees, stealing from homes and shops, using violence to take what they need.

Should a stoppage of water occur, you can expect the following events in run-down cities:

  • Small disruptions of violence while looting is happening. Retail shop owners will be inclined to defend their businesses with firearms, whether or not it is legal to do so.
  • Large traffic jams on outbound highways as a result of gas running out in vehicles, mid-transport, which will inevitably block main exits, trapping people in cities.
  • Grocery stores will be purged of all food by at least the third day of the crisis.
  • Farms and houses near major cities will be raided for supplies by people likely to be carrying weapons for protection and intimidation purposes.
  • Populations will dwindle down rapidly as a result of people abandoning their homes to find water supply sources.
  • A water-based epidemic will break out as people start to use rivers and streams as a bathroom. Those using streams and rivers as a toilet will infect the entire drinking water supply. Filtration units can only prevent so much and will become overrun, eventually shutting down. Once the flow of water stops, the disease will start to set in.

The Depletion of Food Supplies

Food supplies will probably diminish fast as the potential crisis draws nearer and residents will be stocking up for worse-case-scenario outcomes. After the crisis starts, anticipate disruptions in food replenishment. If food does arrive, it will be in short supply.

After this occurs, food will quickly become quite a commodity to people. As such, any shipment of food, no matter the size, will be immediately seized by the first person capable of taking it. It takes a mere 7 days of not eating before people realize how reliant they are on food, so the city will be in a state of panic if the food takes even more than a few days to be replenished.

The frenzy and hysteria to be expected will differ per city. Some towns might undergo minimal hardship obtaining food, while others will face situations involving potential starvation; cities rely on food sent from food processing companies and farms that are more often than not shipped in via road networks that may now possibly be severely disrupted if functioning at all.

Also be mindful that if there is an issue with the water supply, as referred to in the earlier chapter, bulk evacuations will begin, which will flood the highways, resulting in gridlock.

A deficiency of food eventually produces the same outcome as a shortage of water. Initially, people will feast on whatever is stored in their pantry. From there, they will loot whatever is left on grocery store shelves. Once those options are ruled out, they will start ransacking homes scouring for food. Most city folk won’t know how to hunt, so they won’t be able to acquire their own food. Anyone who is able to leave the city will do so immediately after the shortage of food kicks in.

The Failure of the Power Grid

Nothing has a greater impact on your psyche than the fear of living without something you take for granted – in this case, electricity. Without a power grid, everyone will start to panic the minute electricity conks out. Over the course of the first three hours or so of living without power, should such a disaster happen, most people will be under the mistaken assumption that the outage is only temporary.

After waiting for the power to come back on for a while, they’ll eventually grow frustrated and angry, not knowing what to do in such a circumstance. Without power, nothing operates as per the standards we’ve all become accustomed to.

The looting will begin within hours of such an outage in cities with a high crime rate. The social disorder will grow worse the longer the power remains off. The power loss will stop activity throughout the city. Automobiles will be able to function with the gas and power that remain within them, but commerce certainly won’t continue. Houses reliant on electricity to heat up their households will feel the draft the natural winter weather brings.

People who need air conditioning to remain cool in the summer will begin to feel the effects of the sweltering heat. This could be fatal, as the elderly and those with weakened immune systems could succumb to heatstroke. Police stations and hospitals will continue to run on generators, but those, too, will become depleted.

Without power, the water treatment plant will go offline, instigating the events referenced in the water section. Power is something we just can’t survive without unless we are properly prepared for such an eventuality. People might be able to survive on low levels of food supplies and water, but without electricity, the order goes completely out the window.

So what steps can you take if you live in the city in preparation for a crisis?

What you have read so far will have no doubt filled you with a sense of dread should your city ever have to deal with a crisis that results in some if not all of the problems that have been outlined previously. You will also be wondering, very wisely, what you can do to best protect you and your family if these types of situations threaten your safety.

You have two options; the first is to stay put and ride out whatever crisis is looming and the second is to leave the city at the first sign of a problem, Regardless of which option you decide best suits your situation, both will require a certain degree of planning.

The most ardent preppers will make plans to do both because with many urban crisis situations they will very often get past a critical point within a few days and recovery will often happen very quickly after that point has passed. However, there is always a chance that such a recovery is not going to be possible and it is at that time when bugging out of the city as quickly as possible would be the wisest thing to do.

Making plans for surviving a disaster or crisis situation, or prepping as it is commonly referred to, isn’t something that you can sort out in 5 minutes, it requires ongoing planning that can be quite meticulous and encompasses everything from storage of water, supplies, and medicine to communication, protection, and evacuation/relocation protocols.

It may seem like overkill to plan to this degree but when you consider that doing so could not only save your life but also the lives of your loved ones then it really does seem like the sensible thing to do, particularly in these uncertain and worrying times.

Surviving in the City

If you have decided that you don’t feel that prepping for a TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) type situation is for you but you still want to know how to be best prepared for a short term urban-type crisis then this list is the minimum you should have for surviving a two week period with no available food, water or power.

Water: You should have at least 1 gallon of water per day, per person stored. This is primarily for drinking and food preparation. Don’t forget that your pet dog or cat will need water too!

Food: You should look to store plenty of non-perishable foods that do not require cooking and that are high in energy and protein. Anything canned or in a jar is a great idea. Peanut butter is a high-energy food source that keeps really well. If you have a baby or toddler, remember to store formula or jars of baby food. Don’t forget pet food too. It’s also a good idea to write the contents directly onto all tins and jars with a permanent marker in case labels fall off, something that tends to happen a lot with flooding situations. Meals ready to eat, MRE are a great idea too as they can be stored for a long time, years in fact!

Important note: Always make sure you have a can opener or two stored away!

Medicines: You should always have a well-equipped first aid kit containing all the essential and prescribed medicines your family will need.

Lighting: If you are without power for two weeks then lighting will be essential. A hand-cranked lamp or kerosene lanterns as well as some torches with plenty of spare batteries are ideal. Before using always ensure your premises are light sealed; you do not want to draw attention to yourselves as having stuff others want.

Radio: A hand-cranked or battery-operated radio for getting essential updates. Don’t waste battery life by listening to music, if you can find any!

Warmth: Blankets, sleeping bags, thick sweaters, woolly hats, and gloves. You will probably have most of this in your home already; just make sure it is to hand for when you need it.

Communication: Hopefully mobile phone networks will still be up so make sure you have fully charged phones or spare fully charged batteries. Walkie-talkies are handy and can be purchased relatively cheaply nowadays. A whistle is a simple yet effective way to communicate and costs next to nothing.

Money: Cash machines will not be working at best, destroyed and ransacked at worst so always make sure you have a stash of hard cash available.

This list is what I would class as being absolutely essential for surviving two weeks in your own home and in all fairness I’m only scratching the surface of what you may need. I haven’t even mentioned sanitation, hygiene, and home and personal protection which in the city, depending on your neighborhood, could prove more important to your survival than anything else!

My hope is that by reading this article and putting into action some of the steps I’ve outlined for surviving a short-term urban crisis you will be more prepared and ready should anything happen to your city.

When War Comes Right to Your Door: Many People Will Wake Up to Reality and Struggle to Be Human ‘If I Had to Be an Animal, I Was an Animal. It Was About Survival’

Our friend Selco at SHTF School will change everything you may think about your life in a post-collapse world. For many of us, the idea that the world around us may fall apart and lead to the worst that humanity has to offer is mostly theoretical. For Selco, it was a reality. He experienced a total grid-down collapse in war-torn Sarajevo during the 1990’s – and he lived to tell the tale. He has shared his knowledge with our community over the last few years, and in the article below he changes our perceptions once again. Just because we are making preparations – stocking food, or supplies or guns – means nothing if the mind is not prepared to comprehend the absolute horrors that may come.

Do you want to know what it will be like when law and order break down, when people turn on each other, and when there is no one to depend on except for those in your inner circle?

Then keep reading.

THIS IS REALITY.

As many long term reader or members of my survival course know, I like to talk about important but some maybe call “not so spectacular” part of survival that is not so much fun like for example talking about latest guns and gadgets.

Today I want to talk about dignity and what it means in survival scenario. Before I talk from own experience, read the extract below from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin who describes what happened after his unit freed the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during second world war.

At the moment of his writing every day hundreds of people still died and it was place of pure horror.

It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Importance of still being human and not become complete animal is often overlooked part for people who prepare for long term survival. I had over one year to fight against becoming like rats around our house during war.

EXPECT TO BECOME MORE LIKE ANIMAL

You can have all equipment ready for SHTF, ammo, weapon, gear… you can even be perfectly good trained in lot of different skills and fields and still when SHTF you can end up dead in the first days just because you what i call „refuse to believe“ whats happening.

It is that state of mind when man simple do not want (or not able) to comprehend new situation.

It can be one quick life threatening situation like folks attacking your home and you just waited few seconds too long to shoot some attacker, and then you are dead, end of the story. Or it can be whole process of failing to recognize new world around you and new rules (or absence of rules) and then again you just not doing correct things for the situation, and again you end up dead.

Example would be that when SHTF you are trying desperately to have and use power generator and light all rooms in your houses just because it mean normal life for you. And that normal life is gone, and trying to bring it back in that situation usually means more troubles.

Holding onto all comforts and behavior you are used to can be dangerous.

To make long story short, what I am trying to say is that you may be trained and equip like SEAL member and still you can be killed easily from some 70 years old dude, with even older rifle just because you were surprised when SHTF with amount of destruction and violence and you did not seen that old dude coming (or being so evil).

On the other side that old dude maybe lived through couple of SHTF events in his life, and he knows when it is time to act without hesitation and mercy.

There is still fine line you have to walk between losing your human side and becoming pure animal.

One of the things that changed a lot when SHTF is fact that everything became really dirty.

It was something like slow process, first people tried to keep it as clean they could, but without all normal services, like garbage trucks, running water and all other community services that make normal living soon it simple became impossible.

Later all garbage was used somehow, but in beginning it started piling up everywhere, when you add to that ruins on the street, human waste and dead bodies it was very ugly picture.

After some time, we started to accept dirt outside and it then was priority to stay clean and keep clean only inside that small circle inside your home, and when I say „clean“ I do not mean „clean“ like today. Maybe as clean as we could be.

For example simply moving through the city in the middle of the night meant that you needed to crawl, jump, hide, walk or run trough all kind of things, and very often some real nasty and dirty things.

Many times I was hiding on places so dirty that stench was almost paralyzing, once in the middle of the night I jumped behind some wall because sudden shelling, and when I jumped there I realized that I landed on dead guy.

His face was smashed with broken wall, and partially buried, place there was so small that I had to actually lay on him for some 20 minutes. He died probably when wall from the house collapsed after some shelling, who knows.

Fire from the shelling was so strong that I actually loved that dead guy and that place in that moment. I almost hug him while I was trying to be as small as possible because pieces of steel and rock were flying around me just like some crazy rain, while my stomach was rising and floating from the detonations and smell.

All I was saying at that moment was „thank you, thank you, thank you“ like some magic words, and I even was not aware who do I thank to, that dead stinky guy, my brain for noticing that small space, or God for saving me.

Today years and years later I still carry that smell inside my nose. But I did not move from there before danger was gone. It is survival and luckily I was already used to dirt enough to just stay with that dead guy.

Some folks just stopped to care about cleanliness and hygiene completely. So for them washing and cleaning become something like not wanted luxury. They went complete animal.

They simply stopped to care about these things, so I also knew some guys with look and smell so awful that even dead guy smelled like parfume store.

It was easy to surrender to stuff like that, I mean in trying to keep yourself clean.

But it was stupid not only in terms of the hygiene and illnesses, also by surrendering yourself you admit that you do not care anymore, and when you admit that you are only few steps from becoming animal with what you do too. People give up on themselves.

For me being as clean as I could be had something like preserving one of the last connection with “normal” life, with life before sh!t hit the fan, when things like neighbors, breakfast, car etc, were just things we took for granted, like things that always gonna be there unchanged.

Of course I was aware that being clean is important in order to stay alive because all diseases problem, no doctors hospitals etc. but on some psychological level it kept me sane and it kept me normal man.

Even in survival situation you need to still care about few little things to keep your dignity, to keep spirit up, to not lose yourself. If you stop caring about everything it is like disease that eats you.

When I came back from trading or scavenging in the city, I would clean or wash myself thoroughly in my yard before entering my house, again of course because common sense, hygiene and diseases, but maybe even more important I tried to keep all chaos and violence, suffering outside of my home on some psychological level.

I try to stay out of the everything, or actually I tried to keep everything outside of my home, like some ritual. I would keep the clothes for outside in bag, my boots were in one corner, never entering my room in it etc.

One of my relative wears pink slippers (mittens) when he was home sometimes, he would say that he just felt that everything is fine when he wear it. It was spooky and strange to see him in pink slippers while outside world is going to hell, but we all have some strange ways I guess to keep ourselves sane. Maybe wearing those slippers after he was forced to shoot some folks kept him sane, reminded him on some normal times when grandma wear it in the evenings.

On the other side, like I said in beginning if you stick too much to old habits you are not doing best for survival too.

So if I had to be animal, I was animal. It was about survival. For example there was a period when I eat just to survive, like animal, without paying attention what I eat or how. If I found some food I ate it in quick way, if there was some food with worms in it, I would eat it in dark, without looking what I eat etc.

Point was (and still is) to be man, but to be ready to be animal if you are forced to be animal, and thats it. It comes down to being flexible, adapting to situation and I hope this helps to crush the idea some Hollywood or fantasy survival scenarios show that survival is about being complete animal. No, it is fine line to walk.

You can (and you have to) have as much hand sanitizers, soap, disposable face masks etc. as you can but you can still end up dead if you are not ready to accept fact that one day you might be forced to „hug“ dead guy in order to survive, or eat roast rat or pigeon.

Once next collapse comes many people will wake up to reality and struggle to be human like they were or become animals and as skilled survivalist I hope you will walk fine line in between. The people who were walking that path were and Im sure will be those who have biggest chances to survive.

What Happens When the Stockpile is Gone and There’s Nothing Available to Eat? It Can Be Hard to Imagine a Looming Food Crisis When You Can Walk Into Your Local Grocery Store and See Shelves Overflowing With Abundance

It can be hard to imagine a looming food crisis when you can walk into your local grocery store and see shelves overflowing with abundance. You can find easily find everything you need, and plenty that you don’t.

You might even ignore those around you warning you to stock up on food while you still can. In fact, they might seem like Chicken Little desperately calling out, “The sky is falling!”

But don’t let the full shelves fool you. While the sky may not actually be falling, the world is facing a food shortage. It’s only a matter of time until it hits. Until then, the government wants you to keep walking into the stores, feeling like everything is fine.

The world’s food situation is not fine. Here are just eight of the many indicators that it’s time to stockpile food, and start growing some of your own.

1. Raising Food Prices

Have you noticed the price of groceries rising in your area? I sure have here, especially for basic staple ingredients such as butter, flour, and rice. Every time I head to the store, it seems like I have to stretch my food dollars a little further.

It’s not just in my neck of the woods where prices are creeping up. According to a study by the USDA Economic Research Service, supermarket prices are expected to rise .25-1.25 percent during 2016, and 1.0-2.0 percent during 2017. While those percentage points may seem low, they’re still moving up.

But, since the price of gas and food are intertwined, those numbers could soar past predictions if gas goes up again. Most of the food in the supermarket wasn’t grown in your local area. It was shipped there, requiring fuel.

As food prices continue rising, it’s getting harder and harder for families to buy what they need. That means the number of families now getting food assistance from the government continues to grow. It’s not a healthy outlook for our food supply.

2. Drought

Plants need water to grow and produce harvestable yields. As temperatures around the world rise, droughts are becoming more common.

Widespread droughts are hitting fertile cropland across the planet. From California to India, low rainfall and high temperatures cause devastation on crop production. Long-term forecasts indicate these weather patterns are likely to continue.

3. Diseases Wiping Out Crops & Animals

It’s not just the weather wreaking havoc on our food supply, it’s also disease. From the virulent Panama disease taking out bananas to African Swine Fever that can wipe out entire pig farms, diseases are running rampant in the food supply.

Modern food production techniques such as CAFOs create the perfect environment for peril. In a natural setting, you’d see a couple of pigs on farms across the landscape. They’d be interacting with nature, and have other animals and plant life around to help keep disease causing parasites at bay.

Instead, the majority of today’s pig farms are just pigs and concrete all around. When a disease comes in, it quickly moves through the whole herd. Often entire farms have to execute their animals to prevent the disease from spreading.

The loss of that many animals plays a role in rising food prices. Supply can no longer keep up with demand.

These issues aren’t just a problem for pigs. Cows, chickens, and other animals are being raised in conditions that make them prone for disease.

Crops are being raised in similar fashion. Instead of farmers growing a variety of crops, you see corn growing in huge fields for miles around. There are similar fields for soybeans, wheat, and other crops.

4. Food Safety Concerns

Have you noticed how often food is being recalled? From peanuts to frozen vegetables, meat to processed foods, it’s hard to trust the establishment to deliver safe food to your table. Listeria, e-coli, salmonella, and a host of other food borne illnesses are harming and killing people around the globe. Modern food handling practices have led to these food safety concerns.

Factories play a part in the production of numerous food products. When one factory has a role to play in the bulk of the food system, a containment can quickly spread.

Add transportation, storage, and unsafe handling, and you’ve got food that’s ready to play host to multiple strains of bacteria. Then there’s that whole GMO debate. Some countries don’t believe that genetically modified foods are safe for consumption. Others have drunk the GMO Kool-Aid and are pushing them on the marketplace at an astounding rate.

That’s another reason to grow your own food. You can pick heirloom varieties that haven’t been modified. No matter what you grow and preserve, be sure to inspect what you stockpile to ensure it’s safe.

5. Crops Being Used for Other Purposes

Crops aren’t just being grown to feed humans anymore. A huge portion of our food supply goes to feed cows. Cows were never meant to eat grains in the first place! Let them eat hay, and that’ll relieve a huge burden on our food supply.

Then there’s the whole ethanol thing. About a quarter of US corn is being used for fuel instead of food now. With a food crisis already in the works, using food for other purposes adds to the problem.

6. The Death of Small Farms

The family farmer is slowly become obsolete. Small family farms are being bought out by large mega-farms.

When single companies have their hands in so much of the food chain, a blow to one can cause huge problems. Conversely, when you have hundreds of small farms producing, it’s easy for the others to step in and make up the difference if one experiences loss.

But with rules and regulations definitely favoring mega-farms, it’s no wonder that small ones are selling out and shutting down. As governments continue persecuting small farmers, the number of farms producing your food will continue to shrink.

7. Mistreated Soil

The Fukushima crisis spewed nuclear material onto much of Japan. That soil isn’t safe to grow food in, and probably won’t be for a long time.

Nuclear disasters aren’t the only thing polluting our soil. Farming practices that strip all the nutrients out and dump chemicals back in also play a role.

Mega-farms don’t tend to care about the soil. They just like the money. Until sustainable practices are used in the ag industry, our soil will continue being mistreated.

Bad soil won’t grow as much food. However, it will keep bringing the food crisis closer to our reality.

8. Dependence on Processed Food

The majority of food on supermarket shelves is highly processed. This is the food that many people rely on to supply their nutrition on a daily basis. This boxed and packaged food hardly resembles real food. Because of this, people are becoming further removed from the source of their food.

Many don’t know how to make bread. They don’t know how to cut apart a chicken. They don’t know what animal hamburger comes from. For many people, food just comes from the store. That’s all they know, and this attitude is dangerous.

The further people get from their food, the easier it is for a crisis to occur. They’re totally dependent on other people to supply what they eat. When those farms or factories shut down, they simply won’t have a clue how to begin feeding themselves and their family.

How to Prepare for the Food Crisis

It’s not too late to begin preparing for the coming food crisis. You can begin taking steps to ensure your family’s survival when the grocery store shelves are empty. Here are a few important ones:

Education

Ensure you know where your food comes from. If you are currently food ignorant, make friends with some farmers. Do some research. Learn all you can. Feeding yourself doesn’t have to be complicated!

To take it a step further, you can educate yourself about local food regulations. Be on the lookout for laws that are restricting your right to feed your family. Play an active role in the political process to end the regulations that are strangling small farms.

Buy Local

Source food that’s grown as close to you as possible. Not only will you be supporting your local economy and farmers, you’ll also be eating food that’s fresher.

Local sources of food are less likely to be affected by national food shortages. If you’re already used to finding food that’s not in a supermarket, you’ll be a step ahead when the time comes.

Start Producing Your Own Food

No matter where you live, you can begin growing your own food. If you don’t have much space, put a couple of containers in your windowsills. Learn how to grow food in small spaces.

If you have more space, consider getting some livestock. Rabbits and chickens are allowed in many cities, and you’ll be producing your own meat and eggs.

You can continue to expand your survival garden as space allows. 

If you grow too much, learn how to preserve your harvest. Freezing, dehydrating, canning, and fermenting are some of the methods used to save food for later.

Producing your own food will help you lower your food bill and gain self-sufficiency. Everything you grow better prepares you for the food crisis.

Learn How to Cook

Stop buying processed food and take back your kitchen. Learn how to prepare simple, nutritious food that your family enjoys. Good food doesn’t have to be complicated!

Stockpile Food

Each time you go shopping, make it a point to buy some extra food. But, you shouldn’t just buy any food. You really need to stockpile what you actually eat.

Otherwise your family will have to adjust to both a crisis and new food when the time comes. It’s much better to have food on hand that you enjoy.

You don’t have to spend a ton of money to stock up. If your budget is really tight, try allocating just $5 or $10 a shopping trip. While it doesn’t sound like much, you’ll begin growing your reserves.

Be sure you store your stockpiles properly to keep pests and bacteria out. You also need to rotate your stores, which is why you should be eating what you’re storing. When I add to my stockpile, I put the new in the back. That way I use the older food first.

Never in all of history until now has the technology existed for a world dictatorship to rule the world. All they need is the right conditions: a totalitarian world dictatorship to put it into effect

In the relentless race for military supremacy, the shifting sands of the global power balance have taken a sharp turn. With modern technology and advanced systems, computer chips and hi-tech surveillance, “Big Brother” is watching, and it’s now “all systems go!” Everything’s falling into place for the global economy to take off, and the technology and necessary computing power are with us now, the actual infrastructure is already in place, developed, tested and proven.

The Anti-Christ world leader will be the author of confusion, the master counterfeiter, and through his many images he will deceive the nations. The Antichrist will come on the world stage peaceably, with flatteries, via powerful persuasion and propaganda. By this means he is able to creep into houses and lead captive the masses.

Through his many images and idols he shows himself clever, for acceptance of his 666 mark of the Beast (Revelation 13:16-18) will be the fashion–the logical, the reasonable, the convenient, the safest, the securest, the vital, the norm, that which is accepted in the eyes of man, both small and great.

It’s getting darker and colder all the time, and many people in the world can feel it. They may not understand it, and they don’t always want to admit it, but it’s happening. The sun is setting, the darkness is falling, and the world is looking for hope, for some ray of light. The nations question “Why this and why that? Why all the pain and strife in the world? Why the slaughter of the innocents? Why troubles and sorrows?” These questions are being raised in people’s hearts and minds, and those whose foundations have been built on the sand, or others who had no foundations to begin with, have no answers.

Never in all of history until now has the technology existed for a world dictatorship to rule the world. All they need is the right conditions: a totalitarian world dictatorship to put it into effect. The Antichrist government will use the computer to rule the world in the form of an image to the antichrist. The image of the Beast!

REVELATION 13:14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast (Antichrist); saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast (Antichrist), which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

REVELATION 13:15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

REVELATION 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

REVELATION 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

REVELATION 13:18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. 666

The technology for the Antichrist’s One World monetary system and “Mark of the Beast” is already developed and ready to be put into effect. Just think, all the peoples of the Earth united, on the same wavelength, the same channel.

All around, every single day, there are signs of the coming End, signs of the Antichrist, signs of the coming One World Order. Man’s knowledge has also increased in these last two years, as it has in other recent years, but it now heads in more dangerous directions than in the past, including attempts to clone human beings, fuse man and beast in the embryo, or genetically modify man. As men seek to unravel the secrets of life, they also seek to combine it with machine. They seek new and improved robots to serve man, giving them artificial intelligence and mobility such as they’ve not had before. They seek to make man himself more of a machine, implanting chips, sensors, and electrodes to enhance man’s powers and intelligence.

These chips and implants come with many benign purposes: They increase security for children and protect them from abduction; they monitor criminals; they check the health of their subjects and release medicine into the body; they make identification quick and easy; they prevent fraud; they monitor and increase productivity; they make life more convenient in many ways. In the last two years we’ve seen a great increase in the knowledge that has made such things possible and public acceptance of the devices themselves.

Despite the promises of technology, modern comforts and conveniences, and affluence unknown in the past, poverty persists. War threatens. Disease stalks and kills many. The world thinks they’ve entered the great new age of technology, and the 21st century is going to thrust them into the greatest glories of their “techno-age.” The technology known as biometrics, for example, the process of collecting, processing and storing details of a person’s physical characteristics, has excited the interest of governments and companies because, unlike other forms of ID (cards, papers, etc.), it knows the target human as well as a mother knows her children. The most popular forms of biometric identification are retina scans, hand geometry, thumb scans, fingerprints, voice recognition, and digitized photographs.

This is the sort of power that will be needed to run the Antichrist’s computers and government. here’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the technology and being able to do things faster and better. But these will be useful mechanisms of the Antichrist’s New World Order. Technology has broken down borders and nations are becoming less important, which will make the creation of his one-world government relatively simpler. It’s happening so gradually that global government will just be a logical next step.

The world will accept him, only to find that the heaven on earth he’s promised them has become hell on earth, with hell hereafter for those who take his 666 Mark of the Beast. They’re trying to control living beings with technology, with chips that they’ve finally managed to incorporate in their brains. And they’ll go on developing that technology until it reaches its apex in the Mark of the Beast, with which evil men would seek to control and monitor men even more.

Are you ready for these great and final events of the end? You can get ready now by receiving Jesus into your heart. Simply pray this little prayer and He will come in: “Dear Jesus, I believe that You are the Son of God and that You died for me. Please forgive me for all my sins. I ask You, Jesus, to please come into my heart and give me Your free Gift of Eternal Life.

The End Is Coming Very Soon, and Few Americans Are Willing to Do Anything to Stop It: You Have Been Warned Many Times in the Past Few Years and to Have to Suffer in the Future Because You Did Not Know What Was Coming is No Longer an Excuse

What does it take to make you sit up and take notice of the problems surrounding society today? What will it take to make you respond to the many crises taking place today? You have eyes so you can see and ears so you can hear but for many people any negative news is a reason to tune out the world and only think good thoughts.

The problems we face continue to pile up and doing nothing is not an option if you expect to survive the next few years in tact. Prior planning and execution of a plan is now required to stay out of the flood zone when the dam breaks and everyone starts to drown. It does not matter what kind of person you are. You have to be able to save yourself before you have the ability to help others including your own family.

You cannot protect your family if you cannot protect yourself from dangerous situations or people. You cannot protect your family if you are too weak from lack of water or food to get others to safety. You cannot protect your family from the elements if you have no cover for them due to sudden loss of your shelter. 

You have car insurance just in case you have an automobile accident. You have health insurance just in case you get sick. You have life insurance to help your family just in case you die. You have homeowners insurance just in case your home is destroyed. There is unemployment insurance just in case you lose your job.

So where is your food insurance just in case you cannot find any food in the store? Where is your personal protection insurance just in case you are threatened and cannot depend on the police? Where is your water insurance just in case your water supply is shut off or becomes contaminated? Where is your communication insurance just in case the power is out and normal systems do not work? Where is your energy insurance just in case energy supplies are cut off and you need to drive to safety, cook your food or stay warm?

People think that the types of insurance for cars, health, home and life are just fine to have but the other ones listed are crazy and paranoid to think about. Even in the first case, your insurance policies depend on other people to fulfill them and those people depend on a system that is still functioning such as the banks, communications and the insurance company itself. So what happens to all those other types of insurance when the insurers themselves are no longer functioning. Any crisis that takes down the stock market, power grid or the banks will also take down all of the insurance companies.

The events of the past few weeks should have been a warning shot across the bow for many. Our financial and distribution systems are in a delicate balancing act right now and any sudden shifts could send them tumbling off the cliff rendering the services they perform extinct in a matter of hours. When that happens it will be too late to think about what you should have done when you still had the opportunity. 

You cannot get your money out of the bank after the doors are shut, the ATM is empty and the POS systems are no longer working. You cannot get the food you need after the stores have been cleaned out and the distribution system has stopped functioning. You cannot get fuel for your car after the gas stations are empty and deliveries have been suspended. You cannot get police help when everyone calls 911 at the same time and most of the police have gone home to protect their own families.

If your alarm bells have not gone off already what will it take for you to realize you are in serious trouble? When that finally happens what do you plan to do to protect and care for your family? Having no plan means having a plan to suffer and persist through unpleasant situations for no good reason. Not knowing something is excusable but you have been warned many times in the past few years and to have to suffer in the future because you did not know what was coming is no longer an excuse. Failure to prepare at this time will not only cost you but it will likely put an unnecessary burden on those that will have to help you in the future.

The warnings continue to go out. The situation continues to deteriorate. The mass of humanity continues to go about its normal daily business. The Earth continues to rotate with no chance of going back from here. The early warning alarms have sounded advising people to take a defensive stance just in case. Do you hear the alarms yet or have you hit the snooze button for a few more minutes of sleep?

So far in this plot to subdue and take over humanity, much has been lost. There is little freedom left, and what there is has been restricted and is constantly monitored, because any act of individuality or independence is now viewed as an uprising and is a bane to the state. Mass censorship of any opinion or truth concerning this scam is rampant. Everything of value is being destroyed, and speech has in most cases literally been disappeared. When the government and its fascist partnered henchmen hide or erase all free speech, what is left is tyranny. Families are being systematically decimated, and the purposeful spread of hatred is promoted at every level of society by the controlled media and the governing gang of criminals. The entirety of this government can only be described as organized crime, but is much more sinister and criminal than any mafia. This is what this pathetic population has created for itself, and blame should be placed on all those that continue to worship this nation-state and adhere to its evil demands.

Human nature is on trial today, and for very good reason. It is the human that controls his own fate. It is the human that allows others to control his thought and actions. It is the human that cowers in the face of adversity. It is the human that worships the state as God. It is the human that acquiesces to the demands of tyrants. It is the human that fails to protect the innocent. It is the human that applauds war. It is the human that causes his own and all other’s misery.

In conclusion, you may take this to heart, or you may ignore the warnings. You may continue to wallow in indifference. You may run and hide. You may cover your emotionless face with a mask. You may watch your family die in seclusion. You may turn in your neighbors to ‘authorities.’ You may follow every rule. You may in fact die at the hands of this heinous state.

Or you may curse this writer. This rant is for all or none; I care not anymore about those that have chosen to harm freedom!

“Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.” – Pericles

Sources for this article include: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/03/gary-d-barnett/why-do-americans-need-and-seek-masters-to-rule-them/

The Awful Consequences for Those Refusing to Prep: Historically Ignorant Generation,We Have Refused to Do What We Were Supposed to Do Should Evil Usurp Our Country, Many of Us Are Going to Perish

I have become personally so disenchanted with the way people fail to prep. People still don’t understand how important it is to put away. I have gotten into arguments over this and had cretins call me a fool because I put away food, water, and supplies. I thought about this and the frustration that other preppers have with this laid back idiotic attitude that there is no need for preparation. There are good people that just can’t/won’t start preparing. They have the money to do so, but just don’t want to. Many have only seen what happens to non-preppers on TV, but it still doesn’t make an impact.

In this article I detail some hard core realities to show just how awful it will be for those that don’t prep. Every one of these scenarios is something that has occurred to the non-prepper throughout history. While strong images come to mind, the purpose is to jar some people out of their inaction and into action before it is too late.

Preppers are good people and care much about those around them, and unless something does jar those around them that choose not to prep, their own survival chances could be reduced. For every bit of food, water, ammunition, or supplies you sacrifice to the non-prepper, the fewer irreplaceable supplies are left for you and your family in a crisis situation. It is hoped that the following can help certain people put into TRUE perspective just how horrific it will be for those that don’t prepare.

Here are the awful consequences for those refusing to prep.

By and large, the forecasts of these economic experts make it appear that the coming financial collapse will far outpace the problems of the depression that started in 1929. But is it possible that they’re ignoring the silent depression that is already happening today?

In this short VIDEO, I will unearth A lost super-food will bulletproof you against any food shortage or famine. It’s a food that vanished with the Incas over 6 centuries ago

In the next crisis these lost skills will be more valuable than gold, food supplies and survival equipment combined. These skills have been tested and proven to work for centuries.

Here’s just a small glimpse of what you’ll find in The Lost SuperFoods:

  • A lost super-food will bulletproof you against any food shortage or famine. It’s a food that vanished with the Incas over 6 centuries ago. This mysterious dish was just recently rediscovered by NASA who has been giving away rations of it to our brave men and women in their month-long space missions. The Incas stored it in pit holes for up to 10 years, ate it year-round, and actually used it to survive a 4 year long super-drought that wiped out their southern neighbors. So, if it managed to save the Incas centuries ago and it still works for our astronauts today, you can bet your last dollar it will keep you and your family well fed in any crisis. And the best part is that you probably already have the ingredients in your kitchen right now.

By definition, an economic depression is a “steep and sustained drop in economic activity featuring high unemployment and negative GDP growth.”

Based on that, the only thing that kept the COVID-19 pandemic from being considered an economic depression is that the drop in our GDP didn’t last long enough to technically qualify.

So, the economists only call it a recession, at least those who recognize what COVID did to the economy do. There are others who don’t.

It is amazing how people become good conversationalists with most others discussing all the gossip related news, while becoming mentally tranquilized into a totally deceptive state of denial of truly dangerous issues of the times. It’s the blind leading the blind… right off the cliff.

Rather than dealing with harsh reality, people surround themselves with easy to digest material that can be talked about without directly influencing anyone’s lives. Meaningless chatter. Even for those unwilling to even think to prepare for a societal catastrophic event, there is also no desire to even face the extreme possibility of a sudden loss of one’s employment. A personal SHTF.

Look at some of the terrible personal pain experienced in America right now – and it hasn’t even hit the fan on a grand scale. Those people who have lived it up on credit, who failed to put much of anything away for a rainy day, who’ve lost their job, and who eventually lost their unemployment benefits are experiencing the first level of collapse. This is happening to millions of people in our own country, all around us, as we speak.

These Americans, who once enjoyed the luxuries that modern living had to offer, are now at their wits end, with very little hope for a return to their previous lives. They are no longer able to pay most or any of their bills. Many have to humiliatingly turn to others for help to pay for food, or worse, to obtain old, unhealthy and poor tasting food from locally funded food banks.

Their credit cards are totally worthless. Many have been evicted from their homes and have uprooted their families to live either on the street, in tent cities, with relatives, or have been forced to live at homeless shelters, They’ve have had their vehicles repossessed, or simply can’t afford the gasoline anymore. Their living conditions often make it difficult, if not impossible, to look presentable for job interviews. For many, the life of stability they knew just a short while ago is gone, replaced with fear and a constant stress to the point of nervous breakdown.

A personal economic meltdown is confined to the individual or family, or at worst a few families. The human civilization remains intact and so do society’s safety nets.

With food assistance, rental assistance, homeless shelters, and family to turn to, even the most destitute are almost always able to find some sort of help – however menial.

It is no wonder with these known assistance programs, then, that people have forgotten or never thought to consider what happens IF and WHEN human civilization goes through a strong enough SHTF event. If that happens on a mass scale what happens to everyone that needs help that has not prepared ahead of time? What happens when governments are in such total disarray or destroyed altogether that they can’t help even if they wanted to?

The media and others have portrayed the good people that sacrifice much if not all “luxuries” of life to prepare themselves and their family and friends for extreme times, as chicken littles. Those who have made the choice to store up emergency food, water, and other necessities to avoid extreme life threatening risks, including suffering horribly during and after a widespread SHTF event, are laughed at and ridiculed often for “wasting” their lives on delusional paranoia.

But who is delusional? Those who see the signs around them and understand how vulnerable the system is, or those who believe that things never change, that politicians have their best interests at heart, and that if the worst happens the government will be there to provide everything they may need?

How many have considered the dire consequences of their failure to prepare in the event that the infrastructure and everything a country’s people depend on totally collapses?

The misery from long term unemployment and lack of money is like a walk in the park compared to the severe anguish and dangerous conditions that await those who have failed to prepare for the aftermath of a large scale cataclysm. The “minor” problems of unemployment that seem extremely major and painful to most today should serve as a wake up call to what life will be like when something much, much worse happens – when those proverbial safety nets are no longer there to catch us.

Many preppers have become deeply frustrated at those around them, especially those that truly mean something to them, because they simply refuse to put away anything at all for emergencies. The prepper is usually a person that cares a lot and it is often difficult for them to take a tough stance towards the people that they care about. However, unless someone changes the habits of those people that fail to get ready, decisions will need to be made, and they won’t be easy.

The choice of what the prepared prepper should do will boil down to either adding these people to their own circle or survival group and reduce the group’s safety, supplies and self sufficiency, OR, they will have to let the non-prepper fend for themselves. This is a very personal choice, and each of us will need to decide based on our own morals, ethics and personal relationships.

As a last ditch effort, discussing the following scenarios with the non-prepper may help them understand what life will be like without what has sustained them so comfortably for so long.

This is the hard reality the non prepper needs to understand:

Without power the water company cannot get water to their faucets. Without water dehydration occurs within 24 hours. Dehydration causes much suffering before death.

Toilets in homes, unless they have an incineration toilet that still need power to work, don’t flush without water. Where will they go to the bathroom and then where will they dispose of human waste?

There will be no clean water available anywhere, especially in major cities, and they cannot live more than about three days without it.

Drinking dirty and polluted water will make them incredibly sick and accelerate the dehydration process.

Polluted water must be purified and that means having a good filter, bleach or other disinfectant, or fuel and something to boil water with.

Understand just how fragile the power and the infrastructure is that pumps water to the public. A breakdown in our power infrastructure or a cyber attack against utility systems will render them useless.

A single event can rapidly lead to a cascade of other events that would certainly collapse almost, if not, everything. This is why major snow storms, hurricanes or solar events in the past have affected millions of people in an entire region all at once.

A single, seemingly unimportant event may become quite terrible as its repercussions spread; this can include a far and away disaster.

Understand that the economies of the world are so interwoven that when one major economy falls it affects everyone.

Not having any food in the house means that if the stores are emptied suddenly in a bad enough situation that there will be no food available for a long period of time afterward. Recent history during disasters around the world has shown that stores can literally be emptied in minutes.

Think about how totally horrible the feeling of being very hungry is and what circumstances would cause one to be desperate enough to eat anything.

All stores can be closed instantly under martial law.

Understand that you may not be able to purchase anything after it starts, especially with any credit cards.

Understand the complexity of food and water distribution; breaks in these chains can stop anything from getting to the people.

What life will be like if no toilet paper is stored?

Understand that without light sources, the night will be pitch black, often with zero visibility.

There will be no communications, other than probably martial law type of instructions over the radio, that is if they have batteries for the radio.

Other than ham and shortwave radio, any information that is available will be sent out by the government as filtered propaganda that “they” want everyone to hear.

Without power consider what it will be like to not have any heat to stay warm, or air conditioned air to stay cooler – with no way of alleviating the situation.

Travelling will likely be by foot or bicycle, as their will be no fuel and roadways may be blocked.

Realize that ANY travel outside of the home or neighborhood will be extremely dangerous as ANYONE who moves becomes a target

Non preppers will be pushed way beyond their limit because of lack of supplies.

The non prepper must realize their government does not really care about them individually, that they are a mere number and help will likely not come from them.

They have to figure out somewhere to get food. This can mean wild plants which they must know how to identify as safe, or risk poisoning themselves.

They have to understand that when we refer to “having no food” it doesn’t mean not having the food they are used to enjoying, it means no food to eat at all.

They have to understand that if they are fortunate enough to have any running water, they will probably have to bathe in cold water for lack of stored fuel to heat water.

They have to realize that the very strange and totally unexpected is going to be all around them, made that much worse because of lack of any reliable self defense stores or skills.

They might have to remain on the run constantly because of looking for water and food.

They must understand that bad will be magnified magnitudes to living misery because of lack of food, water, and other necessary items that they took for granted for so long.

Okay, now comes the “truly ugly and unthinkable” life that most, if not all, people that have failed and refused to prepare themselves will deal with. Clear vivid visualization is key here for anyone that ho hums the idea of prepping.

This presentation PROOVES WITHOUT DOUBT that America is in for a major fight that will put you and your family in the firing line, literally… So make sure you watch this presentation while it’s still online…

The reason why you should pay attention now is that is because these techniques don’t come from books, they’re taken from actual 21st century warzones, from lawless states where social chaos is the name of the game… … and where not having enough time or money to prepare doesn’t stop real-world preppers from creating virtually impenetrable defenses for their families.

What horrors they will likely face after a cave-in of their nation’s economy, war, geophysical upheaval, or whatever crisis is bad enough to disturb or stop their nation from working and functioning?

There are plenty of very potential SHTF events that are simply awaiting a catalyst to trigger them.

The Non-Prepper (NP) has to realize right off the bat that 911 and other emergency calls in will be met with silence or some recording telling the caller not to panic.

The (NP) that has no reliable self defense that can stop an attacker, will not get help from public services, and will become a victim of rape, assault, torture, or murder.

The (NP) that has no reliable self defense and will not only be at the mercy of criminal elements, but also have to contend with many desperate animals, some with rabies.

The (NP) that has no food will either have to find food or be ready to beg for food or worse, like sacrificing their bodies or other horrible acts or things to get a bite of food.

The (NP) will have to go through the worst, most rancid conditions of garbage to just maybe find what they should have stored up.

The (NP) will go through panic and near if not total psychosis looking for any water source right before their bodies begin shutting down during advanced stages of dehydration.

The (NP) will go through unbearable trauma when their children and other people around them are crying, screaming, and suffering with intense hunger pains in their stomachs.

The (NP) will have to deal with the awful stench of rotting wastes from many sources because they have not taken the effort to even store up waste disposal plastic bags.

The (NP) will have disease and pathogens everywhere, not only because they have no trash disposal means, but because they haven’t prepared how to deal with trash and waste.

The (NP) will have to live in very primitive conditions after things around them deteriorate rapidly, because they have neglected putting away anything to make life more bearable.

The (NP) and those around them will likely develop all sorts of infective skin rashes from the lack of insight of storing up toilet paper. Imagine the smell for a moment.

The (NP) will have to handle biting insects and other vermin that will collect amongst the filth that will pile up. No pest control stored up along with no other supplies.

The (NP) will have no way of treating sickness certain to follow a SHTF event, no first aid and likely no training or knowledge about how to treat the ill on top of this.

The (NP) will have sick and dying people around them because of not being able to treat minor injuries. Didn’t even stock up on disinfectants. Unsanitary conditions lead to infection.

The (NP) and others around them will experience much grief as they watch helplessly as their family members literally die of starvation right in front of their eyes.

The (NP) won’t believe how desperate hunger drives them and those that mean everything to them to “trying” to eat food that taste so bad it gags them and comes back up.

The (NP) will likely have family and friends around them that have also not prepared committing suicide because they can’t take it any longer.

The (NP) will witness some of those people around them lose any sense of civilized humanity in them and behave like wild animals after some time from lack of necessities.

The (NP) and family members, maybe friends also, will at some point end up barbecuing or eating raw the family dog, cat, bird, any pet dear to everyone for food.

The (NP) will likely get into physical fights with other family members over any scrap of food available as rational thoughts are lost to wanton hunger.

The (NP) as many other (NP’s) will eventually go out of any safety of their home looking for food and or water, become disorientated and lost, and die a hard death somewhere.

The (NP) that is “lucky” enough to find some government help will likely have to almost sell their soul, probably all their freedom, to get tiny rations – just enough to keep them alive.

The (NP) will see widespread violence and barbarism that will shock them to the core and will wish that they had purchased some form of firearm and stocked up on ammunition.

The (NP) better get used to attempting to explain the children and other adults why they wasted all that money on junk, and didn’t buy any emergency food and other supplies.

The (NP), no matter how positive they are will drop quickly into depression and lose willpower as having nothing to hold on to does this, along with lack of any nutrition.

The (NP) will feel the worst guilt imaginable as they hear their family moaning in anguish from lack of anything to eat, knowing they could have done something to prepare.

The (NP) will most likely not see the rebuilding and recovery after A SHTF event. They will, like almost all NP’s, be statistics. Some will die hours or a day before help arrives.

The (NP) from lack of food, drinking bad water, no light at night, the horrid smells, no good self defense, the overall horror, will often be paralyzed with fear and despair, blank stare.

The (NP) is totally helpless after SHTF, will have to rely totally on charity of those prepared to live. They will take all sorts of desperate measures likely to get them shot. They’ll attempt to eat hazardous foods like an animal trapped in a house will do, and get sick and suffer much before dying. The (NP) will likely die (ugly and hard) as they lived, unprepared for anything.

If we were to use one single word to describe the torments that someone who “chooses” not to prepare will go through after a true you know what hits the fan it would be “PREVENTABLE”.

Almost every single person, even a very poor person, has the capacity to put away emergency food and supplies. Even homeless people have stashes of something just in case things become so bad that the normal hand outs and thrown-away items dry up. Many people with good sources of income don’t even have an extra can of food or any water put away at all. This is stupidity beyond words.

Every day lightweight disasters happen in all parts of the world that disturb services enough that people are confined to their homes for a certain amount of time. While recovery is short, people are still uncomfortable during these times. Look what happens after a power outage at night and you will be mystified at how many homes are completely dark for hours. People have not even bought an extra couple of candles or any battery operated light sources. Even in well-to-do neighborhoods you may hear only a lone generator going after a blackout. This lack of preparedness is truly frightening and plays itself out again, again, and again every time services are disrupted for minor to major reasons. It’s as if there is something wrong with storing extra food, water, and supplies.

Even after “lessons” played out to what happens to those non-prepared, most people still feel that it just cannot happen to them, or won’t ever happen to them again. It should be proof enough to people what happens to those unprepared after disasters simply by looking at those that have gone through it firsthand. The difference, though, comes in that these disasters have had recovery periods and help from others. Even Haiti received some help and conditions remain putrid over there.

After a TRUE SHTF, it is presumable that government help and others coming to the aid of those in need WON’T happen for long periods of time. During that time those that have chosen to not put food, water, and necessities away are going to be in life threatening positions.

Most people just don’t get that when the supermarket shelves are empty they will stay that way for an extended period. When the utilities go down, especially water, it may be weeks, months, or longer before they come back, if ever. Without what someone needs to survive each day, it is not going to magically appear, and depending on the goodwill of others to feed them and sacrifice their own family’s survival chances is a terrible choice.

People MUST know what life will be like after SHTF in mega fashion if they refuse to prepare. This is NOT new. Terrible events have plunged people into the deepest levels of desperation and hopelessness, and they will happen again and again.

While the above consequences to the non-prepper are extremely abysmal for anyone to read, the simple fact of the matter is they have already happened time and time again to those that have nothing put away. People have resorted to cannibalism and gone to levels of primitive savage behavior out of shear desperation and out of literally losing their minds to the physical depletion of food and water that keeps the physical body operating. Sometimes showing the extreme severity and results of a person’s lack of action, such as failure of the simple act of putting away extra food, water, and supplies, can be the kick in the complacency that they need.

It’s really easy to put away food and supplies. All one has to do is add a little bit of extra food to the grocery cart for long-term storage. Over time this adds up to a well stocked pantry of supplies.

There is something that is in a can of food that everyone can eat and enjoy the taste of, so talk to family members about their nutritional preferences and start stocking up. Toilet paper and other supplies that really don’t have any expiration date can be put away and forgotten about ’til needed.

There MUST be common sense and intelligence to see what happens IF they don’t stock up for the future. There has to be the DESIRE to get started, and this is the real problem with so many.

Once started, however, prepping becomes a type of life saving routine or positive lifestyle habit. It is easy and can and will save one from misery. It may save their life and the lives of their family from ruin when SHTF, which is almost inevitably going to happen someday. Every month and year that goes by without a true SHTF event, makes it more likely that it will happen. Basic statistical chance shows this to be the case, but people continue the same pattern of behavior that has led them to the same devastation countless time before.

For those preppers that have people around them that refuse to prepare, you can at least have some degree of solace knowing that you tried to show the non-prepping person(s) what not having anything will mean to them and their families.

All we can do is try. Once we’ve given it our best shot, all we can do is let those who have been warned about the direness of the possibilities live their lives the way that want to. They will, unfortunately, live in a world of regret and suffering if the nation and the world falls apart around them.

To every action there is an opposite equal reaction. Preppers will see their efforts have been more than worth it. Objects that are motionless tend to remain motionless and non-preppers will find there are horrific consequences for their lack of effort and motion to put away “life insurance” preps for themselves and their families.

If you’re interested in learning more old remedies, you should read The Lost Book Of Remedies.

Lost Book of Remedies pages

The physical book has 300 pages, with 3 colored pictures for every plant and for every medicine.It was written by Claude Davis, whose grandfather was one of the greatest healers in America. Claude took his grandfather’s lifelong plant journal, which he used to treat thousands of people, and adapted it into this book.

Lost Book of Remedies cover

Learn More…

The Upcoming US Blackout:The Warnings Continue to Go Out as the Mass of Humanity Continues to Go About Its Normal!When This Occurs, Law-and-order Will Go Out the Window and Stores Will Become Overrun and Looted by People Desperate for Supplies and Necessities

There are many who believe that a future blackout impacting the United States is a matter of ‘if’ and not ‘when.’

The term ‘blackout’ itself is a rather vague word, but in general, it refers to a potential disaster that completely knocks down the United States power grid.

Whether this blackout is caused by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, a solar flare, a natural disaster, how wide of an area it affects, and for how long it lasts before things go back to normal are all questions that remain to be determined.

But that’s exactly why preparation is so important because we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.

And while you may think that the idea of a massive blackout impacting the United States is unlikely to happen, as the old saying goes, it’s better to pray for the best but prepare for the worst than not prepare at all.

Here’s what you need to do before the upcoming US blackout:

Have Emergency Cash On Hand

As a golden rule, you’ll want to have at least $1,000 in cash set aside in your home.

This is because in the event the internet or card processing machines won’t be working following the blackout, you’ll want to make sure you have cash on hand to buy things while you still can.

If a large-scale blackout occurs, it won’t take very long for there to be a massive societal breakdown.

When this occurs, law-and-order will go out the window and stores will become overrun and looted by people desperate for supplies and necessities.

The best time to go and buy food and supplies while you still can is immediately after the blackout has occurred. You’ll need to have plenty of cash on hand to make this happen.

Stockpile Food and Water

It may seem like a cliché to say, but stockpiling food and water is one of the most important things you can do to prepare for a blackout.

This is for two reasons:

1. Without food and water, we can’t live.

2. After a blackout hits, it will be very difficult for you to resupply yourself.

Think about how long of a disaster you want to prepare for and then collect enough food and water appropriately. For example, let’s say that you have a family of four and want to store enough food and water for the four of you to last for six months.

The Upcoming US Blackout

As a general rule, you’ll need to set aside one gallon of water per person per day (for both cleaning and drinking purposes). That’s four gallons of water for your family collectively per day, or around a hundred and twenty gallons a month. Multiply that by six for six months, and you get seven hundred and twenty gallons.

That’s a lot of water, and you’ll want to ensure you have enough storage space to hold that water. The best way to store this much water is to invest in multiple big water storage tanks, and then rotate the water out at regular intervals to ensure it remains clean.

For food, you can invest in emergency food supply kits, and pay close attention to the labeling on the kits to see how many days or months the food is intended to last for. Then stockpile appropriately.

Stockpile Other Essentials

It’s also a cliche to say, but it’s also no less important. Besides food and water, there are a lot of other important items that you’ll want to stockpile as well.

These include, but are not necessary limited to:

  • Ammunition
  • Clothing
  • Containers
  • First Aid Items
  • Gasoline
  • Paper
  • Personal Hygiene Items
  • Plastic Bags
  • Prescription Medication
  • Propane

Hide Your Stockpile

The Upcoming US Blackout

Or at least don’t make it obvious that you have a stockpile.

This is for two primary reasons.

The first is you don’t want people knowing that you have a stockpile, because doing so will put a target on your back once the blackout has struck.

The second reason is because if martial law is declared, the authorities will attempt to seize control over the production and distribution of food and water to ensure that the civilian population remains dependent on them to stay alive.

Don’t be surprised if law enforcement officers come knocking on your door and literally confiscate whatever they want. This is why having a ‘secret’ storage room is so critical.

Make Your Home More Defensible

Most suburban homes are not very defensible and incredibly easy for determined burglars or home invaders to break into.

And unfortunately, after all the stores in town have become looted and stripped of supplies, homes will become the next major target.

There are five big steps you can take to ensure your home is easier to defend to keep you and your family safe:

  1. Build DIY traps and alarms against looters and intruders.
  2. Replace all doors leading outside with heavy duty steel doors.
  3. Replace all locks and hinges to the doors with heavy duty locks and hinges.
  4. Replace all glass windows with acrylic glass windows.
  5. Install a hideaway safe room in your home with supplies that you and your family.

Have A Backup Plan

Always have a backup location that you can retreat to, and ideally where you can link to with other members in your circle of trust.

The Upcoming US Blackout What To Do Before It’s Too Late

Hopefully you’ll be able to bug in at your home and ‘wait out the storm,’ but if it becomes too dangerous for you to stay at home, you want to make sure you have somewhere to go.

Bugging out of town with no plan and nowhere to go is one of the worst things you can do in any disaster scenario.

Make sure the following conditions are met at minimum for your bug out plan:

  • You have a bug out location, preferably in a rural area. It should be shielded from view of anyone on nearby freeways or highways. The location should ideally be property that either you or someone in your circle of trust owns.
  • This location should have tents or buildings in which you and members in your group can live in.
  • It should have access to a natural source of water.
  • You must have at least 2-3 routes of getting to that location. If law enforcement blocks one route, for instance, you’ll need another way of getting there.
  • You must be in coordination with family and friends in your circle of trust during and after the blackout. Invest in CB or HAM radios so you can get in-touch with them after the blackout has occurred. You may not be able to rely on cell or internet service depending on what’s happened.

Bugging out on the open road is always risky. But bugging out with nowhere to go is always riskier than bugging out with somewhere to go and a plan of meeting up with other people you can trust once you are there.

For a final piece of advice, remember to not inform anybody of your preparations outside of the small group of people in your ‘circle of trust’ while preparing for a blackout. Doing so is an excellent way to put a target on your back.

Even though your unprepared friends and neighbors may be nice now, when the blackout hits and supplies dry up, these are the same types of people who will knock on your door demanding what you share with them…and they won’t be very nice then either.

What else do you think you should be doing to prepare for the upcoming blackout that hits the United States?

How Algorithms Will Rule the World: They Put Too Much Control in the Hands of Corporations and Governments, Perpetuate Bias, Create Filter Bubbles, Cut Choices, Destroying What Left of Democracy Societies, Without Any Legal Restrictions or Transparency, or Recourse

I am sure that unless you have being living on another planet it is becoming more and more obvious that the manner you live your life is being manipulate and influence by technologies.

So its worth pausing to ask why the use of AI for algorithm-informed decision is desirable, and hence worth our collective effort to think through and get right.

A huge amount of our lives – from what appears in our social media feeds to what route our sat-nav tells us to take – is influenced by algorithms. Email knows where to go thanks to algorithms. Smartphone apps are nothing but algorithms. Computer and video games are algorithmic storytelling.  Online dating and book-recommendation and travel websites would not function without algorithms.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is naught but algorithms.

The material people see on social media is brought to them by algorithms. In fact, everything people see and do on the web is a product of algorithms. Algorithms are also at play, with most financial transactions today accomplished by algorithms. Algorithms help gadgets respond to voice commands, recognize faces, sort photos and build and drive cars. Hacking, cyberattacks and cryptographic code-breaking exploit algorithms.

Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything.

Self-learning and self-programming algorithms are now emerging, so it is possible that in the future algorithms will write many if not most algorithms.

Yes they can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos, but when it comes both the commercial/ social world, there are many good reasons to question the use of Algorithms.

Why? 

They can put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, while exploiting not just of you, but the very resources of our planet for short-term profits, destroying what left of democracy societies, turning warfare into face recognition, stimulating inequality, invading our private lives, determining our futures without any legal restrictions or transparency, or recourse.

The rapid evolution of AI and AI agents embedded in systems and devices in the Internet of Things will lead to hyper-stalking, influencing and shaping of voters, and hyper-personalized ads, and will create new ways to misrepresent reality and perpetuate falsehoods.

———

As they are self learning, the problem is who or what is creating them, who owns these algorithms and what if there should be any controls in their usage.

Lets ask some questions that need to be ask now not later concerning them. 

1) The outcomes the algorithm intended to make possible (and whether they are ethical)

2) The algorithm’s function.

3) The algorithm’s limitations and biases.

4) The actions that will be taken to mitigate the algorithm’s limitations and biases.

5) The layer of accountability and transparency that will be put in place around it.

There is no debate about the need for algorithms in scientific research – such as discovering new drugs to tackle new or old diseases/ pandemics, space travel, etc. 

Out side of these needs the promise of AI is that we could have evidence-based decision making in the field:

Helping frontline workers make more informed decisions in the moments when it matters most, based on an intelligent analysis of what is known to work. If used thoughtfully and with care, algorithms could provide evidence-based policymaking, but they will fail to achieve much if poor decisions are taken at the front.

However, it’s all well and good for politicians and policymakers to use evidence at a macro level when designing a policy but the real effectiveness of each public sector organisation is now the sum total of thousands of little decisions made by algorithms each and every day.

First (to repeat a point made above), with new technologies we may need to set a higher bar initially in order to build confidence and test the real risks and benefits before we adopt a more relaxed approach. Put simply, we need time to see in what ways using AI is, in fact, the same or different to traditional decision making processes.

The second concerns accountability. For reasons that may not be entirely rational, we tend to prefer a human-made decision. The process that a person follows in their head may be flawed and biased, but we feel we have a point of accountability and recourse which does not exist (at least not automatically) with a machine.

The third is that some forms of algorithmic decision making could end up being truly game-changing in terms of the complexity of the decision making process. Just as some financial analysts eventually failed to understand the CDOs they had collectively created before 2008, it might be too hard to trace back how a given decision was reached when unlimited amounts of data contribute to its output.

The fourth is the potential scale at which decisions could be deployed. One of the chief benefits of technology is its ability to roll out solutions at massive scale. By the same trait it can also cause damage at scale.

 In all of this it’s important to remember that while progress isn’t guaranteed transformational progress on a global scale normally takes time, generations even, to achieve but we pulled it off in less than a decade and spent another decade pushing the limits of what was possible with a computer and an Internet connection and, unfortunately, we are beginning running into limits pretty quickly such as.

No one wants to accept that the incredible technological ride we’ve enjoyed for the past half-century is coming to an end, but unless algorithms are found that can provide a shortcut around this rate of growth, we have to look beyond the classical computer if we are to maintain our current pace of technological progress.

A silicon computer chip is a physical material, so it is governed by the laws of physics, chemistry, and engineering.

After miniaturizing the transistor on an integrated circuit to a nanoscopic scale, transistors just can’t keep getting smaller every two years. With billions of electronic components etched into a solid, square wafer of silicon no more than 2 inches wide, you could count the number of atoms that make up the individual transistors.

So the era of classical computing is coming to an end, with scientists anticipating the arrival of quantum computing designing ambitious quantum algorithms that tackle maths greatest challenges an Algorithm for everything.

———–

Algorithms may be deployed without any human oversight leading to actions that could cause harm and which lack any accountability.

The issues the public sector deals with tend to be messy and complicated, requiring ethical judgements as well as quantitative assessments. Those decisions in turn can have significant impacts on individuals’ lives. We should therefore primarily be aiming for intelligent use of algorithm-informed decision making by humans.

If we are to have a ‘human in the loop’, it’s not ok for the public sector to become littered with algorithmic black boxes whose operations are essentially unknowable to those expected to use them.

As with all ‘smart’ new technologies, we need to ensure algorithmic decision making tools are not deployed in dumb processes, or create any expectation that we diminish the professionalism with which they are used.

Algorithms could help remove or reduce the impact of these flaws.

So where are we.

At the moment modern algorithms are some of the most important solutions to problems currently powering the world’s most widely used systems.

Here are a few. They form the foundation on which data structures and more advanced algorithms are built.

Google’s PageRank algorithm is a great place to start, since it helped turn Google into the internet giant it is today.

The PageRank algorithm so thoroughly established Google’s dominance as the only search engine that mattered that the word Google officially became a verb less than eight years after the company was founded. Even though PageRank is now only one of about 200 measures Google uses to rank a web page for a given query, this algorithm is still an essential driving force behind its search engine.

The Key Exchange Encryption algorithm does the seemingly impo

Backpropagation through a neural network is one of the most important algorithms invented in the last 50 years.

Neural networks operate by feeding input data into a network of nodes which have connections to the next layer of nodes, and different weights associated with these connections which determines whether to pass the information it receives through that connection to the next layer of nodes. When the information passed through the various so-called “hidden” layers of the network and comes to the output layer, these are usually different choices about what the neural network believes the input was. If it was fed an image of a dog, it might have the options dog, cat, mouse, and human infant. It will have a probability for each of these and the highest probability is chosen as the answer.

Without backpropagation, deep-learning neural networks wouldn’t work, and without these neural networks, we wouldn’t have the rapid advances in artificial intelligence that we’ve seen in the last decade.

Routing Protocol Algorithm (LSRPA) are the two most essential algorithms we use every day as they efficiently route data.

The two most widely used by the Internet, the Distance-Vector Routing Protocol Algorithm (DVRPA) and the Link-State traffic between the billions of connected networks that make up the Internet.

Compression is everywhere, and it is essential to the efficient transmission and storage of information.

Its made possible by establishing a single, shared mathematical secret between two parties, who don’t even know each other, and is used to encrypt the data as well as decrypt it, all over a public network and without anyone else being able to figure out the secret.

Searches and Sorts are a special form of algorithm in that there are many very different techniques used to sort a data set or to search for a specific value within one, and no single one is better than another all of the time. The quicksort algorithm might be better than the merge sort algorithm if memory is a factor, but if memory is not an issue, merge sort can sometimes be faster;

One of the most widely used algorithms in the world, but in that 20 minutes in 1959, Dijkstra enabled everything from GPS routing on our phones, to signal routing through telecommunication networks, and any number of time-sensitive logistics challenges like shipping a package across country. As a search algorithm, Dijkstra’s Shortest Path stands out more than the others just for the enormity of the technology that relies on it.

——–

At the moment there are relatively few instances where algorithms should be deployed without any human oversight or ability to intervene before the action resulting from the algorithm is initiated.

The assumptions on which an algorithm is based may be broadly correct, but in areas of any complexity (and which public sector contexts aren’t complex?) they will at best be incomplete.

Why?

Because the code of algorithms may be unviewable in systems that are proprietary or outsourced.

Even if viewable, the code may be essentially uncheckable if it’s highly complex; where the code continuously changes based on live data; or where the use of neural networks means that there is no single ‘point of decision making’ to view.

Virtually all algorithms contain some limitations and biases, based on the limitations and biases of the data on which they are trained.

Though there is currently much debate about the biases and limitations of artificial intelligence, there are well known biases and limitations in human reasoning, too. The entire field of behavioural science exists precisely because humans are not perfectly rational creatures but have predictable biases in their thinking.

Some are calling this the Age of Algorithms and predicting that the future of algorithms is tied to machine learning and deep learning that will get better and better at an ever-faster pace. There is something on the other side of the classical-post-classical divide, it’s likely to be far more massive than it looks from over here, and any prediction about what we’ll find once we pass through it is as good as anyone else’s.

It is entirely possible that before we see any of this, humanity will end up bombing itself into a new dark age that takes thousands of years to recover from.

The entire field of theoretical computer science is all about trying to find the most efficient algorithm for a given problem. The essential job of a theoretical computer scientist is to find efficient algorithms for problems and the most difficult of these problems aren’t just academic; they are at the very core of some of the most challenging real world scenarios that play out every day.

Quantum computing is a subject that a lot of people, myself included, have gotten wrong in the past and there are those who caution against putting too much faith in a quantum computer’s ability to free us from the computational dead end we’re stuck in.

The most critical of these is the problem of optimization:

How do we find the best solution to a problem when we have a seemingly infinite number of possible solutions?

While it can be fun to speculate about specific advances, what will ultimately matter much more than any one advance will be the synergies produced by these different advances working together.

Synergies are famously greater than the sum of their parts, but what does that mean when your parts are blockchain, 5G networks, quantum computers, and advanced artificial intelligence?

DNA computing, however, harnesses these amino acids’ ability to build and assemble itself into long strands of DNA.

It’s why we can say that quantum computing won’t just be transformative, humanity is genuinely approaching nothing short of a technological event horizon.

Quantum computers will only give you a single output, either a value or a resulting quantum state, so their utility solving problems with exponential or factorial time complexity will depend entirely on the algorithm used.

One inefficient algorithm could have kneecapped the Internet before it really got going.

It is now oblivious that there is no going back.

The question now is there anyway of curtailing their power.

This can now only be achieved with the creation of an open source platform where the users control their data rather than it being used and mined.  (The uses can sell their data if the want.)

This platform must be owned by the public, and compete against the existing platforms like face book, twitter, what’s App, etc,   protected by an algorithm that protects the common values of all our lives – the truth. 

Of course it could be designed by using existing algorithms which would defeat its purpose. 

It would be an open net-work of people a kind of planetary mind that has to always be funding biosphere-friendly activities.

A safe harbour perhaps called the New horizon.   A digital United nations where the voices of cooperation could be heard.   

So if by any chance there is a human genius designer out there that could make such a platform he might change the future of all our digitalized lives for the better.   

DEATH OF THE DOLLAR – MILLIONS PEOPLE WILL BE PUSHED INTO EXTREME POVERTY AND CHAOS-ALL THESE THINGS HAPPENING TO AMERICA NOW WERE WARNED OF LONG AGO BUT MILLIONS REFUSED TO SEE

Source: https://outoflaws.blogspot.com/

Despite what our government’s actions would have you believe, the war in Ukraine is just a distracting sideshow, and of no real significance to America.

But there is another war going on, that may change our country forever. It began the day the last American military plane flew out of Kabul two years ago, leaving thousands of Americans behind enemy lines.

Strange as it may sound, this has nothing to do with the Taliban or the war on terror.

It is far more deadly but also almost completely hidden from the American public. And while the mass media does not report on it, this new global conflict poses the biggest threat to the US economy and the American way of life as we’ve known it for decades.

By my calculations, this crisis will reach its climax in late 2023, and if we are not on the winning side by then, America will simply stop being a world superpower.

Inflation will turn to hyperinflation and very soon years’ worth of savings will barely cover your next few meals and bills. “Too big to fail” companies and banks will go bankrupt, with millions of “secure jobs” vanishing overnight.

If you lose yours don’t hope you’ll find another one soon. If you are retired don’t think your pension will help you survive what’s coming. Homes will be foreclosed and flood the market causing a real estate crash worse than anything we saw back in 2008.

And the homeless and hungry will replace the well-off and prosperous. America will descend into a debt spiral, but unlike today, nobody will want to lend us any money. Our way of life will collapse, and the country might never recover.

I don’t make this prediction lightly. It is based on years of extensive research and recent economic facts, which I will lay out in the following paragraphs.

You can decide for yourself if I’m wrong, or if this is indeed the worst crisis we will likely face in our lifetime. And if you do reach my same conclusions, I’ll tell you how to take advantage of the small window of time we’re still afforded to prepare.

This presentation PROOVES WITHOUT DOUBT that America is in for a major fight that will put you and your family in the firing line, literally… So make sure you watch this presentation while it’s still online…

While this crisis entered its critical and final phase two years ago, its seeds were planted much earlier than that, just as World War II was ending.

Death Of The Dollar

In 1944 much of Europe and Asia, as well as parts of Africa, lay in ruins.

The cost of the war had been very high both in lives lost and industrial production capacity destroyed.

What was needed was money and lots of it.

But not the war-torn currencies of European countries plagued by hyperinflation. And there wasn’t enough solid gold to go around for the kind of massive rebuilding that had to be undertaken.

What was needed was a new kind of global money, that everyone could trust.

So, in July of 1944, over 700 delegates representing 44 countries met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to decide on a new world reserve currency pegged to gold, which would become the yardstick for all other currencies and the bedrock of international trade.

As America was the largest holder of gold, and practically the only economic superpower left at the time that currency could only be the dollar.

It was agreed at Bretton Woods that 1 ounce of gold would always be worth $35. You could go to the New York Fed and exchange your dollars for gold directly.

Any currency is only as strong as the demand for it, and this agreement created an enormous demand for dollars all around the world. Every central bank wanted them to keep in reserve to strengthen their own currency, minimize exchange risks, conduct foreign trade, and pay off debt.

Death Of The Dollar

The dollar was now just as good as gold only a lot more practical to use.

Following Bretton Woods, a lot of countries also sent their national gold reserves to Fort Knox, to be kept in custody and help enforce the new standard, receiving dollars to keep in their vaults back home instead.

By 1947, the United States had accumulated over 70% of the world’s existing gold reserves.

With the dollar in extremely high demand, the American economy, which was already strong after the war, started to really take off during the 1950s. And the United States became the lender of choice for many countries that wanted to buy dollar-denominated U.S. bonds.

The world ran on dollars.

America enjoyed what the French president De Gaulle called “an exorbitant privilege”. We were the only country in the world that could print debt without a ceiling. And we could pay all that debt with the money we made out of thin air, and nobody would be able to refuse it.

But with great power comes even greater responsibility – and our leaders proved anything but responsible.

They printed too much and ran the debt tab too high fighting in Korea and Vietnam, giving billions in foreign aid, and splurging on projects back home.

The rest of the world started to wonder if the US dollar was still covered one to one in gold reserves.

By 1971 the French had lost faith that this was the case and sent the French navy across the ocean to exchange dollars back into gold. The FED complied but the damage was done.

The great gold bank run had begun.

Realizing he would not be able to redeem all the dollars for gold, President Nixon shocked the world as he abandoned the gold standard that same year.

The dollar was now backed by thin air, faith, and trust in the US Government. Unsurprisingly, its value quickly started to plummet.

As an immediate result, there was high inflation in the early 1970s, putting the US economy in serious danger.

We had to figure out a way to stabilize the dollar and solidify it as the world’s reserve currency. This was not easy, because a currency backed by nothing is not very attractive.

And things would have turned ugly for the US, had Henry Kissinger not been dispatched to the Middle East to negotiate a deal that would force the dollar on everyone else.

In 1974—The United States and Saudi Arabia signed a wide‐ranging military and economic agreement that both countries declared “heralded an era of increasingly close cooperation.”

Effectively the US promised to keep the Saudi Kingdom safe from its neighbors, as long as the Saudis agreed to price and trade their oil in US dollars. This led many other important oil-producing OPEC countries to standardize their oil prices in US dollars – and so, the petrodollar system was born.

From that moment on any country that wanted to purchase oil would need to hold and use dollars.

Soon after the Saudi deal, the entire world was trading oil in dollars, even the Soviet Union!

The dollar might not have been backed by gold anymore, but it was now pegged to something just as precious – energy. This created a huge demand for US dollars around the world and the greenback was rescued as the world reserve currency.

Again, any currency is only as strong as the demand for it.

Since then, there have been a few threats to the Petro-dollar system most notably by Iraq and Libya that the US has dealt with accordingly.

America is the middleman for the most lucrative trade in the world and much of our prosperity depends on keeping it that way. With a high demand for dollars, we can keep our inflation under control, because all other countries subsidize our growing money supply when they buy oil. Effectively we are exporting our inflation to them. It has truly worked like a charm so far.

The US issued debt like crazy, and despite that, we have had super cheap debt, because everyone out there wants those precious dollars.

This has gone on for 50 years now. 50 years of fiscal deficits, continuous military interventions, artificially cheap debt, and manufactured dollar demand.

But the music must stop at some point.

And now, a much bigger threat to US hegemony is in play, and this one won’t be easily contained, if at all.

If you’ve been watching the news, it’s probably no secret that China and Russia have recently pledged a friendship “without limits”. Weeks after that Russia invaded Ukraine, but their friendship is not about that war. They’re aiming much…much higher.

Death Of The Dollar

As you may also know, both countries are part of something called the BRICS, which is an increasingly cohesive geopolitical bloc that also contains India, Brazil, and South Africa. Their governments meet annually at formal summits and coordinate multilateral policies.

The BRICS already accounts for 25% of the world’s GDP, so they matter. And that GDP figure is expected to increase to 50% by 2030, even if they don’t take on new members.

Death Of The Dollar

Expanding BRICS will immediately accelerate the process, and expanding they are.

In the wake of the latest BRICS summit held in June 2022, Algeria, Argentina, and Iran have applied to join the organization, and in the following month, we learned that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey also expressed interest in becoming members.

Now when a country says it expresses interest in something like this, it’s usually a done deal.

All those countries can prove important new members of the BRICS, but one will prove key – Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi Kingdom has been vital in creating and maintaining the petro-dollar system ever since the 1970s.

They were and officially still are our allies in the middle east.

But this ally is about to be a turncoat, and it will spell disaster for the dollar.

Make no mistake: the dollar is the biggest economic bubble there’s ever been. When it implodes, it will be terrible beyond words for the US. The dollar supply would far and away exceed demand. And all that inflation we’ve been exporting for decades will come back with a vengeance.

Everything – everywhere is connected to the dollar.

The way it starts is with the US losing control of the oil markets.

Death Of The Dollar

Just as America was retreating from Afghanistan, the Saudis signed a new military agreement that did not involve the US. This deal was made with Russia on the 24th of august 2021.

Saudi Arabia has grown tired of what they perceive as US disengagement from the Middle East.

They have repeatedly accused us of failing to hold up our end of the security bargain.

In 2019 rebel attacks temporarily cut their crude output in half. And America did nothing about it. But it was the way in which we left Afghanistan that probably pushed them over the edge.

They did not trust us after that and went on to find someone else to protect them.

Death Of The Dollar

China has also been heavily courting the Saudi Kingdom, investing more than in any other Arab country, and giving them everything they want from weapons to technology. When President Xi visited the country last year, he was received with the greatest fanfare, unlike President Biden whose pleas for higher oil production fell on deaf ears.

As the biggest importer of Saudi oil, China has already gotten them to sell part of their oil in yuan instead of dollars. Nigeria, another OPEC country is doing the same with more to follow.

And this is just the beginning. If things were not bad enough, something else happened which I’m sure you have heard about but may underestimate the full consequence of – the war in Ukraine.

Now, this should not matter for the dollar’s reserve status. Only it does, because of something the US decided to do.

When America and its allies froze over $300 billion dollars of the Russian central bank’s foreign reserve, it was seen as an unprecedented move.

It is also a very dangerous move.

Russia is not Iran or North Korea.

It is a major world power. And if you change the rules for Russia, no country is safe.

The rest of the world quickly took notice.

Other BRICS members and their central banks started to wonder if perhaps they’re not next on the U.S. economic hit list, and it will be their dollar reserves that get confiscated or frozen.

Faith that the dollar was a safe asset began to erode at an accelerated pace.

And instead of it, central banks are now diversifying their reserves into gold and other currencies, and some are cutting their existing dollar stockpiles drastically.

In this short VIDEO, I will unearth A lost super-food will bulletproof you against any food shortage or famine. It’s a food that vanished with the Incas over 6 centuries ago

In the next crisis these lost skills will be more valuable than gold, food supplies and survival equipment combined. These skills have been tested and proven to work for centuries.

Just take a look at how their purchases of gold have accelerated recently. And most of the gold is being bought by BRICS members like Russia and China, or candidate countries such as Turkey.

Death Of The Dollar

In 2022, gold has been leaving metal exchanges at the fastest rate in recorded history. This was an absolutely massive accumulation of gold by central banks.

And it’s not random at all.

That brings us to today and the biggest piece of news that was not reported by the mainstream media.

Russia and China have just announced the creation of a new BRICS currency that will be backed by all that gold they’ve been buying in a frenzy as well as other commodities like oil, gas, and other precious metals.

Death of the dollar

These countries and their ever-increasing number of allies are returning to hard money based on tangible assets. Foreign minister Lavrov of Russia confirmed just the other day that this new BRICS currency will be discussed (and probably adopted shortly after) at the BRICS summit that will take place in august 2023. (Source)

Right now, the US still has the petro-dollar to rely on, but when Saudi Arabia turns, that will quickly collapse. Once it happens, you’ll have a currency backed by nothing and held by the country with the largest foreign debt in the world, versus a new currency backed by gold and a basket of commodities.

So, let’s put all of this together and see how things might play out.

One day later this year, you’ll turn on your TV and you’ll see the crown prince of the Saudi Kingdom, Mohammed bin Salman, flanked by Putin, Xi Jinping, and the other BRICS presidents, welcoming Saudi Arabia into the fold.

He’ll make a nice speech saying thank you to the US, it’s been a great ride and we appreciate it but as you know we’re now being protected by China and Russia. In fact, we struck that deal the day you pulled out of Afghanistan because we realized that maybe you’re not the best ones to provide us with security.

So, we’ve now decided to open up our energy exports in yuan, rubles, euros, BRICS currency, and yes also dollars. The other OPEC countries, heavily indebted to China and reliant, on their investments will follow along shortly.

And just like that, it’s over for America.

It begins with the dollar. Every country that has had to own dollars since the 1970s to purchase oil begins to dump them. This is a downward spiral because as the dollar’s value collapses, it forces more people and more countries to convert their dollars to other currencies, gold, or commodities to preserve value.

Most US Dollars are NOT in the USOnce all those dollars being dumped hit the US shores this “historic inflation” we’re dealing with right now will seem like a walk in the park. America will experience true hyperinflation.

Death Of The Dollar

We’re talking multiple percentage points per day, not per year. Your money will soon become worthless, and a bag of cash will be traded for a piece of bread.So, what else happens because of this hyperinflation? The FED will spike interest rates through the roof! There is no other way, you need to have high-interest rates to compensate for that kind of rabid inflation.

Death Of The Dollar

When that happens stocks, bonds, and real estate, the other 3 pillars of American wealth all collapse at the same time.

The economic crisis that follows will be unlike anything this country has ever experienced in its entire history. It will probably make The Great Depression look like a time of plenty!

There will be no safe haven asset anymore or anyone to bail us out.

As the dollar is globally dumped your way of life as you know it will cease to exist.

And tens of millions of Americans will be thrown over the poverty line and into a bitter fight for survival.

Our irresponsible leaders have led us down a one-way road from which there is no turning back at this point.

As the curtain falls on the dollar, American primacy will also become a thing of the past. The world will move to a multipolar dangerous new order, where the main reserve currency will be the BRICS currency.

It will be China and its allies calling the shots from now on, not the US.

No more printing money to pay off debt for us. No more demand for dollars. No more overvaluation of the US economy.

Total Collapse

For decades and decades, we’ve lived on cheap debt and borrowed time, way above our means and productivity levels only because of the dollar’s reserve status.

And now it’s time to pay the piper, but we can’t cover the tab.

China knows what’s going to happen and that’s probably why they’ve been on an absolute fire sale of US treasury bonds recently, shedding their exposure from $1.3 trillion to just $870 billion in the last few months.

These bonds once considered as good as gold are now being dumped by other countries as well.

Death Of The Dollar

Meanwhile, the BRICS countries are pushing ahead with their plan to kill the dollar.

The US might never again recover, just as was the case with Great Britain once the pound lost world reserve status. And looking even further back in history, losing reserve status seems to largely coincide with the fall of empires.

The writing is on the wall, but there is still a little bit of time to prepare. The question is will you do it now or wait until it’s too late like most other Americans?

You cannot hope to stop the dollar from collapsing but what you can do is become less dependent on it. Saving soon-to-be worthless paper won’t help you or your family survive. But using your dollars to become self-sufficient just might. Let me show you 70+ DIY Projects That Will Help You Survive the Death of the Dollar. These ingenious projects do not cost much or involve hard work, but they will cover every one of your survival needs: food, water, electricity, security, medicine, communication, waste management, etc.

Select the ones you need the most and start building.

If you’re interested in learning more old remedies, you should read The Lost Book Of Remedies.

Lost Book of Remedies pages

The physical book has 300 pages, with 3 colored pictures for every plant and for every medicine.It was written by Claude Davis, whose grandfather was one of the greatest healers in America. Claude took his grandfather’s lifelong plant journal, which he used to treat thousands of people, and adapted it into this book.

Lost Book of Remedies cover

Learn More…

Discover The Forgotten Power of Plants: The Lost Book Of Remedies.

The S**t Just Hit The Fan And The World As We Know It Has Come To An End…Now What? The #1, absolutely, positively, you’re going to die mistake, is to take the ‘Lone Wolf’ approach.  

Lots of “experts” have covered this subject and depending on which survival forum you frequent the most, it will result in completely different and sometimes opposite advice.  In my opinion, some of the advice will prove deadly to most preppers.  So if the SHTF, the easy answer for what to do and where to go is….  there is no easy answer and there are too many variables to give you a definite, “hey, go do this!”  What I am going to try to do is to get you thinking and to show you what NOT to do.  You will have to come up with your own game plan for your family depending on where you live.  I am also going to address some ideas for those of you with minimal preparations.  Now remember, every family’s situation is different and there is no one size fits all advice or recommendation.

The first thing that you need to realize is that your plan of action will be different depending on what type of SHTF scenario you encounter.  As preppers, we know that things in this country are not as they seem.  We know that the stock market hitting all time highs while at the same time having a record percentage of Americans not in the work force spells trouble.  Fairly soon we will have a nuclear Iran and combined with the threat of North Korea, we face a realistic and imminent threat of an EMP attack.  The Pharmaceutical companies are no longer developing antibiotics and with the over-prescription of them by doctors, a nationwide or global pandemic could certainly be in our future.  With a porous southern border and verified terrorists entering our country at an alarming rate, a physical attack on the electric grid could be in the works.  We can see the writing on the wall.  In my last article I recommended that you prepare for the worst and hope for the best.  Same theory goes here as well.  The worst case scenario, would be a long-term loss of the electric grid.

Lone Wolf

So what should you do and where should you go if there is a long-term SHTF scenario?  First off I’m going to tell you what not to do.  The #1, absolutely, positively, you’re going to die mistake, is to take the “Lone Wolf” approach.  You know who I’m talking about.  The guy on the prepping forum that plans to move out to the national forest and “live off the land” like the Legend of Mick Dodge.  I would estimate that only 30% of those individuals actually believe they have the necessary skills to pull it off, while the other 70% are too lazy to actually make long term preparations and they’ve just convinced themselves that if Rambo can do it, then they can too.  Either way, none of them have ever stopped to actually consider what surviving in the wild looks like AFTER YOU FACTOR IN A SHTF SCENARIO.  While a small percentage of the 30% might make it through the winter in normal times, only a small fraction could do it during a SHTF scenario.

First off, I’m speaking from experience.  I’ve actually done it.  I’ve spent an entire month in the mountains of Washington State during January with six feet of snow, almost no food, and very limited supplies during my training to become a SERE Instructor.  During that month I lost over fifteen pounds of muscle (for a 6′ 4″, 190lb, 19 year old in peak physical shape, that is a lot!).  I can make a solid prediction that 99% of people that go this route will not make it through the first winter.  I can already see those of you who disagree.  You  are your sharpening your hypothetical knives and getting ready to crucify me in the comments section telling me about your amazing prowess as a half-man and half wildling creature that was raised by a pack of wolves in the forest.  Please read through my rational before you keyboard commandos comment.

To begin with, living in the wild during peak conditions is hard enough.  Very few Lone Wolf types have actually done it during the dead of winter for any extended period of time.  Hiking-in your Mountain House freeze-dried food doesn’t count and won’t get you far.  I’m talking about actually foraging for your food when there’s two feet of snow on the ground.  There are no berries to save the day and no dandelion salads to be scavenged.  During my training to become a SERE Instructor, we literally spent as much time during the day chopping and splitting firewood as we did training and instruction.  It takes an incredible amount of time, energy, and calories to maintain a fire in the winter.  It’s not like you can take a chainsaw with you.  Where are you going to get more gas?  Besides, using a chainsaw will bring in other hungry Lone Wolfs from miles around.  Even an axe will bring in unwanted guests from long distances.  Okay, so you’re going to use a handsaw… good luck with that, you’ll never be able to maintain the calories needed to use it long term.  So you have a magic supply of firewood stashed in the woods somewhere, pre-planned for this scenario…good for you.  It will run out faster than you think.

Fire

All this talk of procuring firewood doesn’t really matter anyways, because the second you light a fire, you are attracting attention from a long way off.  All the other thousands of Lone Wolfs and the locals who are hunting the big forests will be drawn to your camp like moths to the flame.  And the locals probably won’t take too kindly to you infringing on their favorite hunting spot.  How do you plan to warm yourself, dry your sleeping bag, boil your water, or cook your meat without a fire?  Some will try to convince me about using a Dakota fire hole or a rock ledge overhang etc. to hide their smoke and flame, but that doesn’t work either.  Those methods only minimize a fire’s signature not eliminate it.  When we train pilots who might get shot down behind enemy lines, we teach them that a fire is only acceptable in a life and death situation (i.e. you fall in a frozen lake).  I vividly remember during one of my trips to the mountains noticing a strange, slow pulsing orange glow about a half mile away on the next mountain over.  I asked the instructor what I was seeing and I learned that another element of trainees was on that hillside.  One of them was breaking the rules of evasion, and smoking!  In the dark cloudless night, the entire forest around him lit up faintly each time he pulled in a puff.  Don’t try to convince me how you’re going to hide a campsite, your fire, let alone the smoke and the smell of fresh meat from the thousands of other people wandering around the woods.

Meat!

That is the number one thing I hear from the Lone Wolf’s on how they will survive: by hunting.  What they don’t understand is that with thousands of other Lone Wolf’s roaming the forests combined with all the other locals who are also going to be hunting for their family’s sustenance, THERE WON’T BE A SINGLE DEER OR OTHER BIG GAME ALIVE within a month of the SHTF.  You might be able to survive off game during normal times, but not during a SHTF scenario.  You’ll be lucky to shoot a squirrel or a rabbit a month.  There are hunting seasons for a reason: to maintain the big game populations.  You figure in 350 million starving Americans and no game wardens; you’re going to find a hunter behind every tree and in every small patch of woods throughout this country during the first couple months following the collapse.  Let’s say you get lucky and shoot a deer.  Guess what, you’re more than likely to have a dozen starving hunters that heard your shot and show up while you’re gutting it out.  I hope you intend to share your prize or be ready to kill a fellow human being to keep what’s yours.

Desperation

I could go on for ten more pages on the reasons why you don’t want to Lone Wolf your way through a SHTF scenario.  But for now, I will add one more reason, and it’s the biggest one… desperate, starving people!  A very small percentage of you reading this MIGHT be able to convince me of your wilderness scavenging skills.  However, what you will never convince me of is the other 99% of Lone Wolfs who don’t have our skill sets.  Even though you might be able to survive the cold, the hunger, and the depression, you’ll never convince me that you’ll survive the desperate and hungry Lone Wolf’s who are not making it: the ones who have decided they’d rather kill you for your food then die of starvation on their own.  It only takes one starving Lone Wolf to creep up on you at night (don’t forget you are a Lone Wolf so nighttime security details don’t exist) and shoot you from 100 yards away with their Pappy’s 30-06.  I don’t care about your security measures or your hidden trip lines… it’s just a matter of time till someone pops you off from distance on the hope you “might” have something in your pack that they can eat.  Every second of every day in the forest, you run the risk of being shot from a distance.  All the tactical training in the world won’t save you from stumbling upon a hunter who is in a tree-stand or hidden in some brush.  If you Lone Wolf it through the SHTF, you will almost assuredly die!

Looter

The next type of survival strategy I would shy away from would be the “Taker” or “Looter” theology.  These are the types of survivalists I hate the most.  They are too lazy to prepare ahead of time and they plan to just take what they need from those of us planning for hard times.  Do not under-estimate these types of people.  This is another reason why it is so critical to keep your preparations private.  Even when sharing information with your closest friend, you can’t be sure who he is talking to about your plans.  Even in an innocent conversation, it only takes one looter to hear your name and the fact that you have plans laid out.  They will eventually show up to take your food when the SHTF.  These types of survival scum will become ruthless, and with no moral compass and no police to stop them, they will be the ones committing some of the greatest atrocities.  If you are a prepper, steer clear of these types on the forums and message boards and especially in real life.  Don’t engage them or try to change their thinking.  You want them to know as little about yourself and your plans as possible.  Matthew 26:52 (the Voice) clearly spells out a warning to these types, “People who live by the sword will die by the sword.”  Even if you aren’t into “religion” there’s still karma that is going to catch up to you.  Again, don’t under-estimate these types.  The “looters” who survive the first couple months without getting shot, will have figured out a pretty good game plan on how to assault a retreat.

Roamer

The next segment of preppers would be what I call the “Roamers”.  These are the people who plan to pack up their RV and hit the open road headed for some campsite or trying to drive to some remote area of Canada hundreds of miles away.  First off, if we are hit by a Super EMP, there is a good chance your RV may not even run.  Assuming it does, there are going to be traffic jams of people running out of gas all over this country you are going to have to bypass.  Unless you have a custom built 4WD rig with a winch and reinforced bumper, you may be driving hundreds of extra miles out of your way which takes extra gas (which you have to haul) and extra time (which you don’t have).  Again, during a grid down scenario, it is vital that you leave town immediately and you’ll only have two to three days before total panic develops in the bigger cities and four to five days before things fall apart in the small towns.  The last place you want to be is out on the open road with tens of millions of people fleeing the big cities.  If you are driving around in a big vehicle laden with food and supplies, you are a target.  I hope your vehicle is protected with AR500 steel panels because you are now a bullet magnet.

Suburban Bunkers

Another bad idea is typically by rich people who want to build bunkers in their back yards in suburbia.  Now, I am not against bunkers in general, just the ones in town.  Let me be clear here:  cabin fever is a real thing.  While it may not be as crazy as “Here’s Johnny!” from The Shining, it will still make you go crazy.  This is compounded if you have multiple family members and small children cooped up in a small space underground.  Humans were never meant to live underground.  While a good bunker is a great short-term fall back plan or storage location for your supplies, don’t plan to live there long-term.  You will get claustrophobic and start coming up more and more often for sunshine, fresh air and to grow your garden.  Eventually you’ll get caught.  Living in a bunker isn’t living, it’s marinating.

Pacifists

The next group I want to discuss is what I call the “Pacifists”.  These are the Mother Earth News types (don’t get me wrong, I love that magazine).  These are the preppers you often see on Doomsday Preppers who are building a sustainable off grid homestead in conjunction with the small town they live in.  They are the ones who actually have the skills in place beforehand and you would think they would have the best chance of survival.  Similar to the Amish, they grow their own food and operate a small farm stand in town selling and trading free-range eggs and grass fed beef.  The problem is, MOST of these types suffer from two fatal flaws.

  1. They operate out in the open and the typically the entire town knows where they operate from.  Unfortunately, once those townspeople who absolutely loved you beforehand start to starve to death, THEY ARE COMING FOR YOUR FOOD.  You can’t keep everyone fed no matter how large your homestead is and how badly you want to help people.  They will either consume all your winter stores from your charity or eventually they will take them by force.  Either way, you don’t make it through the first winter.
  2. “Pacifists” are typically the hippie types who don’t believe in guns and believe in the overall goodness of man’s human nature.  They are the ones you see on Doomsday Preppers running around with Super Soakers filled with pepper spray… clown shoes!  If you are faced with a starving and desperate mob of locals or transients and you bust out your Super Soaker, you are going to get shot and killed at some point in time.  You can’t bring a knife to a gunfight and expect to live.  You can have all the skills and preparations in place, but if you are unwilling or unable to defend them with force when necessary, you will lose everything… guaranteed!  The “everyone works together attitude” ONLY WORKS if everyone has enough food to eat.  Once people start to starve to death, there is no such thing as sharing.

Survive in Place

Okay, I’m taking a big breath here and exhaling slowly.  For all those Lone Wolfs who are going to react negatively to what I’ve said, there are going to be ten times more people that disagree with my next section.  I am probably speaking to the largest segment of preppers out there… the “Bug-in” or “Survive in Place” preppers.  These are the honorable middle class people who live in cities and small towns across the country and can’t afford to build a remote off grid retreat to bug out to.  I get it!  I was actually one of you at one point myself.  Most of the people that fall into this category are there because they don’t see another reasonable way out.  You know the city around you is going to explode, but what else can you do and where else can you go?  This is the most frustrating part for most preppers, and to some, it makes the point of prepping almost hopeless.  I know there are a lot of people who are storing up hundreds of gallons of water and hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds of survival gear and food in their basement in downtown suburbia.  Now, I am going to throw you “Survive in Placers” a bone here.  If your only fear is a short term disaster, hurricane, or small financial collapse then you will likely be okay.  For anything long-term where we lose the electric grid or there is a total collapse and mass panic for a long period of time, you are screwed.

Unfortunately, instead of thinking and planning your way through it, there are tons of “experts” out there that stroke your hopelessness and write books and articles explaining how to take the easy road and “hide in plain sight”.  They teach you things like “build a tall fence around your backyard”.  Yeah… like your next door neighbor isn’t going to hear you hoeing and digging up your backyard for a garden.  Also, the looters and raiders roaming around are going to notice a high fence right off the bat.  You might as well hang a sign on your fence that reads “Garden Full of Food”.  They teach you how to turn your suburban home into a “fortress”.  Please, catch me while I fall over laughing.  Your average home CAN NOT be made into a fortress.  Regardless of the action movies you’ve seen, walls do not stop bullets!  Your house is not fire-proof!  You are not Rambo!  And boarding up your windows or installing steel grates or shutters over them will only draw attention to your home.  These groups of looters and raiders are going to become really proficient, really fast at assaulting homes.  If they can’t force you out because every family member in the house was prior Seal Team 6, then they’ll wait you out with superior numbers.  How do you plan on stepping outside to maintain your garden?  You have just become a prisoner in your own home.  If you do go through the enormous expense to turn your home into a fortress, then you should have just bought a few remote acres and built a small off grid cabin!  The other thing you need to be aware of are “firestorms”.  A lot of the big cities are going to burn down to the ground, especially the older ones and city centers where houses are built close together.  It only takes one idiot trying to warm their home with a charcoal grill to set fire to entire city blocks.  If its a windy day, and with no firefighters to stop the blaze, the fires could grow enormous and spread to the suburbs.  These so called “Bug-In Experts” are going to be responsible for the deaths of millions of Americans because they don’t know what they are talking about and don’t understand the concept that a desperate and starving neighbor will eventually kill you for a can of peaches.  They have never been to a third world country and have never done any research or studied human desperation.

Fortify My Street

The same philosophy of the “Survive in Place” crowd also spills in to what I call the “Fortify My Street” preppers similar to the book Lights Out by David Crawford.  While it is an entertaining read with a few hidden gems of wisdom, for the most part, they never realistically explain how they feed all those people on a daily basis.  This is an area where a lot of preppers aren’t prepared at all.  Most preppers buy a years worth of freeze dried food not realizing that they are actually getting about seven to eight months of actual food (barely enough to make it through a single winter).  Very few preppers, aside from those that homestead already and are currently living off grid, have a clue how much food is actually needed to make it through a winter.  And I don’t mean make it until spring, but until your actual crops start producing a harvest where you can replenish your food stuffs.  If you plan to fortify your suburban cul-de-sac, you better be 100% sure that EVERY SINGLE PERSON on your block has the same amount of food, ammo, and seeds as you do.  What is most likely going to happen is everyone is going to talk the talk but very few of them are going to actually put their money where their mouth is and buy long term food.  At the end of the day, YOUR FAMILY’S FOOD is going to be distributed among the group once they figure out that you aren’t starving like everyone else.  The group WILL confiscate your food eventually… guaranteed!  Now granted, as a group you have some strength in numbers, but if your cul-de-sac is on the outskirts of town, I can assure you that eventually there are going to be raiding parties much bigger than your band of merry men.  The moral of the story here is: If you stay in the city, you will be overrun… eventually.

The overwhelming truth in all these scenarios, once again, comes down to a single focus.  It’s not the EMP, the cyber attack, or the solar flare that is going to kill you.  Your plans MUST include staying as far away from the starving masses as possible.  Aside from the resurgence of long forgotten diseases like cholera and dysentery from poor sanitation and hygiene, the starving and desperate masses (even the everyday Joes) are going to be the real killers.  So maybe I’ve convinced you to second guess some of your plans.  Now what?  Back to square one?  Not quite.  All the supplies and food you’ve already attained is still needed.  You just need to stage them far away from the population centers and you can actually do this on a budget.  Don’t bank on the fact that you are going to have a running vehicle or clear roads to load up all your gear and bug out of town.  Regardless, you must get out of town which means bugging out.  To do so requires a pre-organized plan of action though.  Here are my recommendations.

Some would say to find an existing survival group on a prepping forum, especially if you have some sort of skill or expertise to bring to the table.  That may work out for you if you’re a doctor or surgeon and I am not discounting the idea.  Just be careful.  The TV show Doomsday Preppers is a perfect example of how bats**t crazy some preppers are.  By the way, if you are getting the bulk of your prepping advice from the aforementioned TV show… you are doing it wrong!

If you can’t afford a bug out retreat location, I would first point you to family members (even extended family) that live well away from the city.  If you think discussing the whole prepping idea with them will make you the “crazy nephew” at family get-togethers, then just rent a storage unit close to where they live and cache your supplies there.  Once the SHTF is in full effect and you show up at their doorstep with food, your former preparations will make you out to be a genius and a forward thinker.  If you don’t have rural relatives, then I would suggest you take up renting cabins in the mountains for weekend getaways pre-SHTF.  Do your research and make sure the cabins fit within the retreat location parameters.  Also, try to find rentals that are corporate owned and not a cabin that some family rents when they are not using it.  A carefully worded casual conversation with the management company or the person renting you the cabin can go a long way to getting an answer to that question.  Don’t get me wrong, this is a time-consuming process and it may take you multiple weekends to find the right cabin, but it is a lot better option than staying in town.   Again, cache your supplies in a storage unit near that cabin.  On a side note, you are not taking that cabin from someone else, you are hoping it will stay abandoned.  If the owners do show up, please realize that YOU are the intruder, not them.  If you have any savvy whatsoever, you should be able to explain the SHTF scenario to the owners and explain the benefits of joining forces with them for security purposes and extra manpower growing a large garden.

Last bit of advice

Lastly, if you procrastinated your prepping and the SHTF before you are ready, follow the advice I lay out to my co-workers in chapter 3 of my first book.  It is risky, but it is still realistic and far better than hanging out in town waiting to get over-run.  Knowledge is power, and if you can articulate well what the future holds after a grid down situation, you WILL EVENTUALLY be able to find a rural farmer to take you in.  The key here is having something to trade for room and board, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot.  You need to have a pre-planned bug-out strategy with paper maps of the rural area you are headed for.   Your area should be away from a major city by at least 100 miles.  If you live in New Jersey or Washington DC, you may have to travel much further to get away from the sprawling cities and population centers.  Locate a rural, preferably elderly farmer or couple.  Explain to him what is going on in the world and persuade him that he needs you and your family’s help to survive the coming apocalypse.  The best way to get room and board from him is to have something he needs in trade. This goes back to your basic survival gear, having weapons and ammo to help protect his farm and hunt, offering you and your family’s younger muscles to plant and harvest (this will need to be done by hand, because a tractor will attract too much attention after the SHTF), offering to help keep 24-hour surveillance over the farm and crops, and most importantly having seed to plant the next harvest.  I grew up on a small farm and every farmer I know buys his seed two days before planting.  If you did have a stash of food in a storage unit down the road, it will make this conversation MUCH easier (but keep this information as a last resort, your ace card).  Also, this recommendation is ideally for the first week after the SHTF.  After that, people will be really on edge and approaching multiple farms and knocking on doors will be a far more dangerous of a preposition.  I realize that this is a scary scenario, and the perceived “safety” and “comfort” of staying in your own home is hard to let go of especially when you have lots of “experts” telling you you’ll be just fine.  You won’t!  Please head my advice and get out of the cities IMMEDIATELY while you still can!  The uncomfortable nature of this plan is sure better than figuring out three weeks into the SHTF that your decision to board up the windows in your duplex was a very bad decision, and by then it has become far too dangerous to travel on the open road.

All the recommendations I have laid out in this article are still SITUATIONAL dependent.  Every person’s location and circumstances are different.  If you live in Las Vegas and you’re surrounded by desert for hundreds of miles, Bugging-out by foot would be extremely difficult: almost impossible without caches of water and supplies along your route (hint hint).  Having a classic 4WD pickup to get of the city in this scenario would be almost vital and at the top of the list for your survival needs.  Maybe you do have an old RV that will get you where you need to go… great, than utilize it.  Maybe you’re a “Pacifist Homesteader” but at the same time, you’ve negotiated with a “security team” to come help you protect your farm after the SHTF… well that may work for you (make sure they’re trustworthy people).  What I’m saying is to stay adaptable and flexible, but at the same time, never underestimate the starving masses or what your next door neighbor is capable of once his children start starving to death.  Regardless of your circumstances, please don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can “hide in plain sight” in a big city.  You can’t!  It’s just a matter of time till they find you and your food!  Good Luck!