Reader Questions: Military Families when SHTF
Son #2 obviously has a pretty long drive. Without a lot of personal knowledge of that area or doing any research I would say the drive could be better and could be worse. On the plus side the population density is pretty low but on the downside there may be some real terrain issues with choke points, particularly in winter.
I hesitate to use the word luck but there are certainly risk factors inherant of such plans. While carrying enough 5 gallon cans to make the drive is possible it is a long way and I would at least look at setting up a cache or two along the way. Also keep PLENTY of cash on hand, who cares if gas is $50 a gallon if you can drive the whole way. Assuming sufficient fuel is available from storage/cache/purchase, the weather is not an issue and that things are not totally crazy with every municipality setting up road blocks and gangs of roving criminals ambushing cars this sort of plan stands a fair to reasonable chance of success.
As to the military and how it relates to this whole thing. There are a couple posts in my head which address larger issues so this will be relatively narrow in scope.
Whether he would be ordered to stay on duty would depend on a lot of factors. If he should decide to comply with these orders or to desert is another question with it’s own set of factors. For the sake of this discussion let us briefly hit the high points of each options.
He stays on duty. This is the most realistic answer for most situations. This may mean staying local or it is quite likely that he may leave to be part of some sort of military response. This means that his family can either stay in the area bugging in at home or on post or bug out without him.
He deserts. If things get totally absolutely crazy nobody is going to come looking for him any way. He comes home with the family. Then agan if things get that bad it might not be the time for a 1,500 mile family road trip. Staying with a huge cohesive group of well armed and trained individuals might not be a terrible way to go anyway.
As a middle ground he might be able to wrangle a period of leave or a pass to run the folks up to you and then come back. If his boss likes him and the area is quiet it might work and is certainly worth asking about. Should he happen to infer that one way or another he is driving the fam up to Idaho they may like the option where he comes back afterword.
In any case getting out of Dodge before things go nuts is seriously advisable. Waiting long enough makes a decision by default. The fam can always go up for a “vacation” if some of your warning signs start getting met. At least they would be secure and he could reassess and decide what to do for himself down the road.
As to the military’s particular challenges as it relates to this discussion. We move all over the place. If I wasn’t in the Army we would live in the quiet and empty part of the PNW which would make a lot of things much simpler. To further complicate things we move often which necessitates changing or reinventing plans every few years. This is just a hassle and complicates the time and expense of things. Let us say that Son #2 was a home depot manager or whatever in Colorado for the long term or essentially permenantly. Son #2’s emergency plan is to come to your place. He plans some routes and buys a couple of conveniently located but discrete pieces of junk land along the way. With some time and energy you could probably do it for a couple grand. He stashes a bunch of fuel, some fluids, water, food and ammo at them. While the long bug out problem is not fixed it is greatly simplified because you do not need to haul everything for the trip or (a long shot) buy it enroute. See where I am going? Doing that once wouldn’t be a big deal but every 2-3 years it might get a bit crazy.
At some point, a point I think Son #2 is approaching but not quite at, you have got to be realistic that getting home is not a plan with a reasonable, let alone good, chance of success. Getting from FT Drum, New York to Arizona is not likely. Getting from FT Lewis, Washington to South Carolina is not likely. In this sort of situation I would put time and energy into developing plans that are in ones current region. While that isn’t a fun answer it is probably reality.
Anyway those are my thoughts on that. I hope it helps or at least drums up some useful conversation.
Welcoming Our Newest Advertiser- Joshua
Today I would like to welcome our newest advertiser Joshua. It is a book about a man and a young boy trying to make it during a long term collapse. The first 5 chapters are available free to read which is pretty cool. The book bears some slight similarities to The Road in that a man and a boy are making their way through a crazy total end of the world type situation but it really ends there. As a distinct difference this book doesn’t make we want to drink a bottle of scotch and stick a handgun in my mouth.
Please go check out the free chapters and see if the book interests you. I do not think you will be disappointed. I will be reading the whole thing once I finish up a couple other books which have been waiting for awhile.
Reader Question: SHTF Hygiene and Clothes Washing
Book Review Shatter by TC Sherry
This is book two of the deep winter series. To recap the last book began in the winter with a massive earthquake and ended with some other problems. This book sort of skims over the tail end of winter and covers the spring and summer. During this book bad turns into worse. It becomes apparent that the Spokane region and the PNW in general are not going to receive help from the outside and things are not going to return to any sort of old normal.
The Good: This book, as well as the previous book, lays out a compelling vision for a very bad future.
To me it is sort of a “and then what” kind of book. So things went to heck in a hand basket, you get stuff set up initially and after a couple months most of the looters have been naturally selected AND THEN WHAT. Folks start figuring out how to feed themselves in the long term, trade, reorganize society and move forward. That is what this book is about.
MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR THE NEXT COUPLE LINES.
Basically in the first book after the earthquake things internationally then nationally go to hell in a hand basket. The dollar collapses and there is war. In this book things get even worse, and then worse again, like dealing with all that had happened in the first one wouldn’t be enough.
END SPOILER ALERT
The book brought up some interesting stuff when it comes to property rights, scavenging and ethics. What has been bothering me in a couple books I have read recently, and to some degree the first book in this series is hypocrisy. In this book the main characters actions on the whole were IMO were pretty close to what they expected from others. I won’t say that I agreed with every thing that happened but on the whole it wasn’t offensive and was very thought provoking so that was good.
I think this issue gets complicated if there is a significant die off or long term population shift. There are definitely more questions than easy answers as far as I am concerned. If folks are dead or gone and heirs are not able to be located who does the property belong to? If your neighbor was visiting his cousin in Maine and the balloon goes up at what point do you decide he isn’t coming back? What happens to his stuff?
I think it is pretty clear that stuff which belongs to people who are present or realistically may be present is theirs. However if things get nuts enough that big companies fall apart and such who do their buildings, stores and equipment belong to? Some level of nationalization albeit at a city or county level is likely, at least with this sort of stuff and is probably fairly ethical.
I liked that government didn’t magically go away. It is really a pipe dream to think that some sort of government won’t exist, especially at the local level of city and county. It will hopefully change and help set the conditions for people to take care of their selves, or at least not cause any real problems in a new world though it could get nasty and totalitarian.
In this book there was a sort of barter network that morphed into a sort of general store. For somebody with a knack for that sort of thing, access to a suitable space and some stuff to sort of seed the effort it might not be a bad idea to take some notes about that part. That people were more interactive vs just staying at their homes alone was good I think. People have a tendency to be social animals and it is difficult if not impossible to produce everything you could need or want. It definitely reinforced the desirability of being able to produce, above and beyond your own needs, something which people want.
Personally I do not stock things specifically for barter. However that is at least in part because I am not quite there yet. If one was so inclined they could probably do pretty well with a few hundred dollars of the right stuff. Stuff like kerosene, lamps, .22 LR and small game shotgun loads, sewing stuff, matches, booze, etc.
This book is a good reminder that in many ways local government is more important than at a higher level. To paraphrase Ragnar Benson the county zoning or agricultural commission is far more likely to cause problems in your life than men dressed in black carrying MP-5’s from an alphabet soup agency. This is probably far truer in a long term serious situation as they will have a lot more freedom to maneuver. Bad local governments could turn into little fiefdom’s or Stalinist collective experiments very easily. It was also illustrated in the book that if people don’t stand up to these things as a group they will inevitably get dealt with piece mill and picked off accordingly.
The Bad:
There was a distinct flavor of population and resource control. Think checkpoints and fuel usage restrictions, curfews, etc. I think these would likely be reality in this sort of situation but it isn’t something I particularly like.
Checkpoints I think would be a fine idea, probably a necessity so long as they didn’t hamper the free movement of individuals in the area and allowed some sort of through passage through for those who need to get someplace. It kind of rubbed me the wrong way that there were passes for people who were deemed special which of course included the main characters. Personally in that situation I would be awful curious about who the heck decided which people were special and what the heck they thought gave them the right to say they could move around freely but I could not. They really didn’t go into detail on exactly what these restrictions were or how they affected people who, unlike the main characters, were not deemed to be special, so I can’t say if I really have an issue parse.
Fuel restrictions I have a hard time with. Now if the local government has fuel and is distributing it then some prioritization to EMS, food production, etc makes sense. However telling someone what they can do with fuel they have is another thing. If someone has a 300 gallon fuel tank in the barn and a 74 stingray and wants to go drag racing down their driveway it really isn’t anybodies business but theirs and their neighbors.
A few things happened that were just a little bit too convenient. The main characters stumbled into some stuff in a way that was awful darn lucky. Not so much as to really mess up the book but enough not to show the benefits of having some things squared away beforehand or the downsides of not having them squared away.
The author talks badly about politicians and government officials who are anything other than perfect public servants and folks who said public positions carry privilege. However the main character definitely uses his position to his advantage a few times getting favoritism or special treatment that Joe down the block wouldn’t. It was government choosing winners and losers at a small local scale. Nothing nasty parse, more like good old boy stuff.
The Ugly:
Not really anything ugly about the book in the usual sense that something is worse than the bad. However the book did expose (which is a good thing and thus doesn’t really belong in the bad part) a couple of ugly and very real possibilities. The first is that a default on our debt would cause all sorts of international problems. It is the kind of thing that starts wars. Even if our country fell apart we have a huge and awesome military. Somebody who thought we were weakened and that they could take advantage or attack our allies might be making a very serious mistake. Even if we were pretty tired and confused we could wipe the floor with most countries.
The next is that some places would try to continue suckling from the teat of government. Big, blue rustbelt and New England cities come to mind.
Lastly the balance of government would go all out of whack. Everyone more or less marches to the same drum in normal times and any pull from individual organizations or departments is canceled out by checks and balances or equaled out by pull from other organizations. However as people and agencies had competing visions, conflict over resources and such things might get crazy. The usually boring game of whose budget and staffing will go up by 3%, whose will stay the same and who might (though it rarely happens) face cuts could turn into serious infighting, like 3rd world stuff. Also in a die off scenario the whole line of succession thing could fall apart pretty easily leaving the US without a clear leader.
The vision of massive cascade failures laid out in this series is compelling, disturbing and seemingly plausible. I was familiar with that concept but had never heard the phrase before.
In closing I enjoyed this book and recommend it to readers. It is definitely worth paying $5 for the electronic edition.
Does Preparing For TEOTWAWKI Cover All Other Scenarios?
I have heard it said that if you truly prepare for a genuine full on mad max scenario all the other scenarios are covered by default. I used to say that wasn’t quite true. Now I would clarify by saying that it covers you for a lot (versus all) other scenarios.
Obviously if you are prepared for a genuine end of the world event then a power outage or even a Katrina like mid length regional disaster is just a practice drill. Having serious depth in food you normally eat will let you wait till sales to resupply and thus get more food for less money. If you have 15+ mags per gun, cases and cases of ammo as well as plenty of spare parts you are well positioned for any sort of gun ban.
However it is also worth noting what the TEOTWAWKI plan doesn’t cover.
It completely ignores all sorts of highly likely financial/ unemployment/ slow slide issues. That Cold War mentality where the only option is that everything will go just fine until the world ends misses this one. You need to be concerned about your overall debt as well as savings for a rainy day. Can you afford your super spiffy retreat if you lose that high paying job? Even if your ‘retreat’ is paid off it is only yours so long as you can pay the property taxes.
Also I have a concern that this sort of planning can lead one not to worry about the progressively more violent world we are living in because you’ll just carry a rifle everywhere if TEOTWAWKI happens. That sort of mentality isn’t realistic. My real concern with this bionary approach is that it heavily weights things like owning rifles and stashing sand bags n barbed wire against more practical concerns like concealed carrying a pistol whenever possible and other more realistic home/ personal defense stuff. You need to be worried a lot more about 2-3 armed criminals who are probably on drugs breaking into your place tonight a lot more than EU/ Russian/ Mexican soldiers enforcing world government upon you.
I think that if you keep a solid financial footing and put plenty of effort/ energy into preparing to defend yourself today then there is nothing wrong with the majority of your energy going toward the kind of worst case scenario deserving of a fiction novel.
Unconventional Family Housing
Different cultures and periods have dictated cultural norms that vary widely in terms of who lives with each other, when and for how long. For the sake of this discussion I am going to consider conventional housing being one or two adults that are married or otherwise together living with the minor (or close to minor) children of that couple. The other norm is adults that are friends or acquaintances (or just random’s) living together to share expenses.
There have always been some exceptions to this relative cultural norm of contemporary post WWII America. In particular many immigrant groups and Hispanics have tended to stay together much longer and adult children living with parents. Three generation households are common if not the norm for these groups. Also among Americans young ‘adult’ children maybe living with their parents for awhile and older adults who need some assistance living with family have been consistent themes. The latter for economic subsidization and the former for help with everyday stuff. Toss in random fairly short term life circumstances like job losses, breakups/divorce, relocation, leaving the military, etc and you have captured most of the reasons people have traditionally chosen to reside with family. Sort of like there have always been a certain percentage of home foreclosures there have always been some unconventional family housing. Also like home foreclosures unconventional family housing is (I don’t have statistics but I sure think) on the rise.
The Great Recession is proving to be particularly hard on young adults. Even the best laid plans for getting meaningful skills on the non college path takes time and generally starts with low wages. These days kids just starting out are often the first to get fired AND they are far less likely than in the past to get the kinds of jobs that allow for upward movement. You would have to be blind to not see a lot of young adults graduating from college and moving home because they can’t find a professional job; or even a job that will pay rent and let them live independently.
These coupled with an increase in the overall rate of unemployment have put unconventional family housing on the rise, at least in my circle of friends and family. Some observations from successful and rocky situations are why I am writing this today.
Here are some considerations for unconventional family housing. It is important to remember that much more than a generic roommate situation there are social factors in play and it is a different dynamic. I think the biggest and most important thing is coming up with a detailed and specific written agreement prior to beginning living together or immediately after moving in. I just don’t think this can be overstated as it will, if well thought out, prevent so many issues. Obviously in a case where one person is subsidizing the other (free or reduced rent, etc) the one doing the paying has a lot more say. I will refer to the two parties as supporting and benefiting for convenience. There are many different variables and factors in play and it matters less what is agreed upon than that there is an agreement. Here are some considerations.
-Do you even want to live with family? I’ve known family who have instead helped someone out financially. Also I know folks who have couch surfed or been the 5th guy in a 3 bedroom paying $50 a month to sleep on the floor (guy 4 had the couch). My advice is that if it is going to really be an uncomfortable situation to avoid it if at all possible.
– For approximately how long do you plan for it to last? Somebody staying for a couple weeks or a month until whatever happens is very different than a plan that could last months or years. This is important because how long it is anticipated to last really affects the amount of planning that should be done. On the short end a two minute conversation can work and on the long end some forethought and a series of detailed discussions could be wise. (More on this later.)
-Under what scenario are you willing to enter into this sort of arrangement? Are you willing to help the supporting party while they are in school or doing an apprenticeship or internship? Are you willing to support them until they earn enough to support their self? What about if they make an OK living but choose to spend their money on other things? What if they are between jobs? What if they are are in a low paying dead end job? What if they are waffling, sleeping late and partying a lot. I would strongly suggest thinking about this and talking about it with your partner BEFORE it comes up because odds are it will come up. My only advice on this is don’t be afraid to lay down ground rules. If you are OK with someone living with you while they are in school, trying to find a job, saving for a down payment on a home or whatever then say so.
-Social arrangements are the next big sticking point. This is probably the most noticeable difference between living with family and a generic roomie arrangement. Broadly speaking it would benefit the supporting party to realize that everyone involved is an adult and it would be good for the benefiting party to remember they don’t just have a roomie. This is particularly important if someone is single and actively dating. While a random person in a bathrobe drinking coffee in the kitchen when a family member is over makes for a great scene in a sitcom it would not be so funny in real life. Well it might be funny in someone elses life but not your life. If house guests are cool or not is a very personal discussion but you should have it early instead of late.
Also family generally want to have a lot more vision on each others whereabouts than roommates do. When I used to have roommates I worried about what it would seem like if something happened to them. They could be gone for a week or two and unless bills were due or something I wouldn’t call them. I had a vision of a cop asking where they were and me being like “I think I saw him last Tuesday” and it not going well. At the various times I have been home as an adult; what we have done is that if we are going to be gone overnight we let the other person know where we will be. Just a phone call saying “I’m staying at Bob/Tom/Sally’s place” was sufficient though I did try to call before 9pm. If the folks went somewhere they told me where also. Coming up with a workable plan for social arrangements isn’t hard provided that you show some forethought and have an honest if slightly unpleasant conversation before things start coming up.
-Financial and household arrangements are next on the list. Just figure out who is going to pay for what. For the supporting party be advised that there will inevitably be some cost, if just utilities and a bit of food and not to get into this anything you can’t afford comfortably. My observation is that in this area it isn’t so much big picture stuff but little things that create problems. We aren’t talking about hundreds of dollars in rent so much as who ate the last pepperidge farm chocolate chunk cookie and didn’t buy more. The supporting party generally knows that the benefiting party needs help and they are willing to provide it. Also I think that if you have figured things out to the point where everyone knows who is supposed to replace the chocolate chunk cookies the big things like rent and utilities have long been covered.
I have two more thoughts on finances. First is if the supporting party has any sort of financial expectations for the supporting party they should make then clear. It might be paying off debt or saving to be independent, etc just lay it out in advance. The second thought is that (I’m not a lawyer so this is not legal advice and consider yourself disclaimed.) in a lot of places paying rent entitles a person legally to certain rights a house guest does not have. If things get bad that could turn out to be a real pain. Maybe there is a way they could help out with groceries or something and still be a house guest. If that is a concern (or you are looking at a real long term situation) then it might be worth talking to a lawyer.
In terms of household arrangements. Figure out space and if possible clear up some storage for stuff that exceeds said space. Spell out very clearly (not just ‘help around the house’) what you would like the benefiting party to do towards the total household workload.
– Lastly I think it is worth being clear on what circumstances and or time frame is going to bring an end to the cohabitation. This sort of ties in with the scenario under which the supporting party is willing to enter into this sort of thing. For example you might be cool with a full time student but aren’t so cool with a student taking a class or two at a time with no real direction. At some point (and many articles have been written by people experiencing this) helping can definitely become enabling. Case in point I recently saw a guy I know who graduated with a BA two years ago and has been at home unemployed since. We all know a kid who graduated high school and just sort of hung out partying, sleeping a lot and playing video games until eventually the rents lay down the law. To risk being redundant it doesn’t matter so much what the conditions here are but they should be well thought out, specific enough to be meaningful and understood by all parties involved.
Beyond the Great Recession I see this sort of unconventional family housing becoming more and more common. The numbers and demographics make it an easy call. Kids today on the non college option have serious problems. They used to get a low paying job then as they learn and gain some skills wages improve over time. To be blunt this model is not working so effectively any more. It takes longer for most to move to a wage where they can live independently and some aren’t moving there at all. When GM paid anybody the equivalent of $17.50 an hour and grocery stores paid living wages it was easy to get a job then an apartment and pretty quickly be middle class. Now the kinds of jobs many of these kids get make $9 with no benefits and little room for upward movement. Those who get into union, trade and tech jobs will likely fare the best.
Don’t worry the college option (this reminds me of the game Life) isn’t much better. When many folks take a bump down the ladder and there is high unemployment then hiring a person with a few years experience, or someone you had to let go when things were rough, over a kid just out of college is a no brainer. This plus student debt hitting record levels (somewhere over 20k on averagea terrible time to be young.
Don’t worry the baby boomers some issues also. Many of the boomers are in serious trouble when it comes to retirement because they haven’t saved a darn thing or in any case nowhere near enough. They saved like they have a cushy defined benefits retirement plan and social security is totally secure. As you may note they generally do not have a defined benefits retirement plan and getting social security (with decent purchasing power) is a long bet. To make matters worse instead of buying a modest home, paying it off and staying there like the Greatest Generation did they traded (while moving some distance or in the same area) their homes up several times and often tapped any equity which had been somehow accidentally created. The amount of people who are looking at retirement who do not have their primary residence paid off surprises me. On a whole lot of these retirements the math just doesn’t work. In the economy we have now with older workers being expensive to employ, expensive to insure and absent from work more often they are likely to get laid off sooner instead of later. In any case it would be optimistic to assume they will be able to have full employment for as long as they want. Also along the surprising theme some boomers seem to be in la la land in terms of how long their money will last. They must be figuring on 20% annual growth in their money or something. These folks think they will be able to at least maintain their lifestyle forever when in reality they might be able to live a very basic subsistence existence.
Of course not all 20 and 30 somethings are boomeranging back home and plenty of 55-65 year olds did plan adequately for retirement. My point is that between those two groups the amount of people in a situation where unconventional family housing is necessary or desirable is going to dramatically rise. Best of all this scenario is if the economy keeps going more or less without significant changes. If the great recession gets worse and turns into the late 70’s- early 80’s or America’s lost decade or even worse then all bets are off.
Along those same lines a TEOTWAWKI or significant security change could lead to a non economic motivation for this sort of thing. Even if you make a fine living or saved well for retirement it is pretty darn hard for a couple or a normal family with a couple teenagers to have decent 24/7 security; let alone have decent security and get anything done. Extended families and or friends would be well advised to gather at the best location they have available. I think it is worth putting some planning and forethought into this unconventional housing situation also. This however is a whole other series of posts for another day.
Anyway I have been writing this off and on all day and it is way longer than my average post so I am not going to bother to carefully read it twice for small grammar and convention issues. Anyway I hope you enjoy it and maybe even get something out of it.
Goodnight and good luck
When Are You Done Preparing?
FerFAL was recently asked the interesting question “When Are You Done Preparing?”. I found the question interesting and it sort of stuck in my head. I don’t disagree with FerFAL’s answer but I do see it from a different perspective. Here is how I see it.
It is worth discussing the difference between maintenance and growth (though not strictly money, also time, energy, etc) of your preps. Maintenance of your preps would be stuff like rotating foodstuffs, practicing to keep your skills fresh, etc. Growth would be stuff like increasing your food storage, learning a new skill, taking a class, buying guns, gear, etc.
I think a certain amount of maintenance is necessary lest your food goes bad, your equipment degrades and your skills atrophy. You’ve got to rotate food and clean weapons. Car kits and GHB’s need to be periodically inventoried and have perishable contents rotated. Even the best shot will get rusty if he doesn’t touch a handgun for a year. Personally I wouldn’t classify this kind of maintenance as continual preparations. Now that we have that covered.
To the fundamental question “when are you done preparing?” I would reply “preparing for what?” Everyone has different concerns and worst case scenarios they are preparing for. If we imagine white being a very limited power outage and black being a full on genuine One Second After/ Mad Max/ Jericho TEOTWAWKI scenario there are almost infinite shades of grey in between. What you are preparing for has a lot to do with when/ if you can ever be done.
Lets say you are an average guy who lives on the Gulf or southern Atlantic coast. You are justifiably concerned about a hurricane. You know it can be difficult to get fuel in the run up to evacuation time so you keep a half dozen 5 gallon cans in the shed and make sure your vehicle is topped off during hurricane season. You know that the smart thing to do is to leave and you’ve got a plan with your Uncle who lives a few hundred miles inland to come crash there. You have maps and alternate routes planned out just in case.
Since Katrina showed you that it can be weeks before help can arrive and services are restored you keep 90 days of shelf stable, easy to cook foodstuffs around. A couple extra propane cans will let you cook just about forever on the Coleman stove you use for camping. Keeping a few extra big boxes of batteries will let you run the various flashlights in your house for some time. For water you picked up a filter at the local camping store. After seeing the madness of Katrina you ordered 500 rounds of buckshot for your 12 gauge in addition to whatever hunting loads you have lying around. You also purchased a handgun with a few spare mags and a couple extra 100 rd white boxes from Walmart. Last year you stashed a few hundred dollars in the gun cabinet just in case. Could this guy say that he is done preparing? I think so. Of course there might be a small hole here or there but the broad strokes are covered and he is in a decent spot for the scenario he is concerned with.
Someone worried about a genuine full on Jericho style collapse is probably never going to be done. They will just move from more likely and immediate concerns such as ‘how will we eat next winter’ to the more obscure and unlikely ‘how will my grandchildren make metal tools to replace those which wear out’. A person worried about this kind of scenario is always going to be thinking of something new and trying to deal with progressively more unlikely scenarios.
Personally I do not think I am every going to be done preparing. I am going to have times where the growth slows or stops until I get to another stage (buying a home, having more space, getting some land, etc) over time. However in the big picture over time I am going to progressively work from likely situations to more unlikely ones. It is more likely that we will have to ride out a short to mid term disaster then that we will suffer an EMP or a super aids bird flu pandemic. Assuming the world doesn’t end in a few more years I will likely be focused almost exclusively on relatively unlikely scenarios. It is just my nature to want to improve my situation.
It is the very last day to enter our Awesome Ammo Giveaway Contest. Hurry up and enter now so you can get a whole bunch of free ammo.
When are YOU going to be done preparing?
Real World Effects of EMP on Motor Vehicles
You must read this. I am going to dig into the stuff on the website next week.
quote of the day
“Everyone has unrealistic expectations, so no one is satisfied.”
–TEOTWAWKIAIFF
As with all generalizations this isn’t entirely accurate but it does ring pretty darn true. If you weigh 300 pounds then a bikini is not going to attract positive attention. If you make 20k a year then a 100 acres of productive land with water, trees and a nice big house isn’t realistic. Starting with realistic expectations is a good start to having a decent shot at happiness.
Fantasy vs Reality
It occurred to me just a minute ago how much of a role fantasy plays in survivalism/ preparedness.
Part of it is that while we don’t want to admit it preparedness is in many ways a hobby. Yeah it could be real important some day but on a normal everyday basis it is a thing we allocate resources and time to because it gives us enjoyment/ entertainment in some form or another. In that respect it is not so different than being in a softball league or bass fishing or stamp collecting or any other hobby. Seriously you can sharp shoot that statement all day long but it has at least some truth.
We can also want to be vindicated and thus entertain very specific worst case scenarios that let what we like and prepare for shine. A guy with a super fancy tricked out rifle envisions it saving his life and whatever. A guy with a closet full of Mosin Nagants imagines arming/ forming a large neighborhood guard or a militia. An avid gardener imagines their massive crop feeding the whole neighborhood. A person with great preps envisions being able to be the neighborhood hero. Somebody who has an awesome “retreat” but debt up to their eyeballs sees things falling apart and them being in a great position.
More concerning is the inverse of this fantasy worst case scenario. Simply put by focusing too heavily on this tailor made scenario they ignore a variety of other scenarios, much to their detriment. The guy with a super fancy rifle who also doesn’t have any food ignores the possibility that we will not be attacked by a bunch of thugs and will sit there bored and very hungry. Instead of another sweet mil spec wanna be accessory he should get some frickin food. The very nice friendly gardener lady (The ones who go whole hog preparedness but totally ignore defense tend to be women) ignores the distinct possibility that she could need to protect herself from violence or theft. Somebody might want all of her food instead of a basket full or they might even want her. Instead of another garden bed she should buy and learn to use a defensive firearm. The guy with a basement full of preps doesn’t have any savings. He somehow sees complex and unlikely worst case scenarios playing out but not say an unexpected emergency car or home repair. I wonder how these guys plan to push a homeless guy cart around with a years worth of food and a dozen guns in it after a fairly normal life event leads to their financial situation falling apart.
The guy with the awesomely setup and well stocked retreat but debt up to his eyeballs sees scenarios where his debt is almost magically washed away but he still has all the cool stuff and preps. This guy is probably the most idealistic and fantasy fueled of all. He is almost wishing for (a narrowly and conveniently defined) TEOTWAWKI. He talks about how the “sheeple” will get their due and he will finally get to live free and untroubled by money concerns. He really thinks it would be great to not have to pay back the guys who loaned him the money for the land and the house and all the stuff. He thinks about how his sucky money situation would be washed away but fails to see that in significant ways people who have never even heard of preparedness but just keep their financial houses in order are probably more likely in the long run to have good outcomes than he. Instead of looking at his massive mortgage (possible an ARM) he sees a wonderful “retreat” on a nice piece of productive land and instead of a huge visa bill he sees a pair of night vision goggles and a pair of cool rifles.
When doing a final edit on this I realized that in all but one of the above scenarios the individual was specifically identified as a man. This wasn’t conscious but is definitely significant. Upon 5 seconds of reflection I realize something. Aside from the (predominantly liberal and pseudo environmentalist) woman who make great preparations in many ways but completely ignore protecting themselves; women tend to take a pragmatic and realistic stance toward preparedness. It is us guys who seem to fall into these at least partially fantasy fueled preparations.
I am certainly not going to claim perfection. I have fallen into a stereotype or two myself as I started with a pretty solid gun collection and went from there. However as time goes by I am allocating a majority of my resources in a more reasonable manner which is the goal.
It is fine to day dream now and then. Just don’t take the next step and focus too heavily on scenarios that involve buying toys you like, hobbies you enjoy or happen to just work out real conveniently for you. At a minimum at least consider your vulnerability to scenarios that do not happen to be tailor made to your interests and position. I urge you to be realistic and prepare for a variety of scenarios, not just the one that happens to be convenient and ideal.
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