The following article has been reprinted with permission from Thomas Luongo. Visit Thomas Luongo’s Face Book Page
Well, you torture yourself with what’s behind you
Torture yourself with what awaits you,
Dragging that guilt everywhere inside you
Anxious of the goals that always elude you
Your mind will find a way to be unkind to you somehow
But all we really have is happening to us right now.~ Marillion, Happiness Is the Road
Having spent years preparing and worrying about what the dreaded Day of Reckoning was going to look like had a subtle yet profound effect on me. When you live with something for long enough, you kinda get used to it being there, like some homunculus sitting on your shoulder urging you to do things you would never have thought to do previously. And there’s a danger in that. You become comfortable living in a heightened state of anxiety, forgetting to stop and remind yourself just how great being alive is and enjoying the people and things you have. Spending all your time devouring/researching different techniques for survival and resource gathering will muddle your priorities; making everything seem like the single most important task to accomplish right now…dammit.. OMG! I’ve spent years beating myself up because I haven’t been as successful as I thought I needed to be in gathering what I felt was adequate to the task. A lot of energy that could have been spent productively was spent in self-recrimination and self-doubt, compounding poor decisions with others. It is this realization of wasted time that has changed my attitude towards the ‘pocky’clipse’ and my place within it.
Simply put, I saw myself reflected in someone else and was a little scared.
My wife’s family has come together with us recently to embrace the vision of the future that I had and we’ve decided to pool our resources around our home and property. I’d like to think that we set a good example but it doesn’t matter, though it was a bit gratifying. What does matter is watching someone else go through the same stages of development you did and realizing where you are in relation to that and why it is that they thought you were bug-nuts crazy five years previously. All of a sudden, I found myself being the voice of reason and restraint prioritizing our task list from the flood of, admittedly, good ideas that were being proffered; playing the same role my wife did for me.
I fell back on my extensive self-training in basic economics and realized that everything has an opportunity cost. There isn’t enough time or money in the world to do all the things we’d like to do, be it learning the piano, playing with your kid(s) or preparing for the crack-up boom and bust. All the enthusiasm in the world cannot substitute for the time needed to acquire and become proficient with a new skill. As well, money cannot substitute for knowledge. It can help speed things along, but that is all. You have to learn how to grow food on your land, as every plot of land is different. You have to learn how to shoot your guns, no amount of reading can substitute for rounds put down-range. Etc.
As I like to say, all knowledge is fractal and the more you learn the more you realize just how little you know. Each new discovery opens up a host of new questions begging for answers. This is especially true when learning how to farm! Seeing the big picture is the easy part. Boring into the guts of what it takes to become even adequate at one or two particular tasks is where the work comes in. What a shock, becoming an expert at something you have no knowledge of takes a long time. Again, no matter how talented or intelligent you think you are, there is no substitute for time and attention to detail.
This brings me to the cottage industry of internet survival experts that has flourished in the wake of the Fed’s New Depression. My attitude about this has changed considerably as well. It is obvious that they are preying on those newly-minted Chicken Littles who are, rightfully, scared about the near-term future; hyperbolically describing their particular area of expertise as the most important thing you can do to prepare. They do have subscriptions to sell and Google ads to promote. The gun sites are the worst, in my opinion. Forever touting their personal choices (and love of guns and shootings) in terms of life and death, conjuring up scenarios, which have an infinitesimal chance of happening to any of us (unless we go looking for trouble), as things to rationally prepare yourself for. In my opinion, while you absolutely need to train with your gun, it is the right attitude and mindset you need to cultivate in order to use it properly. That can’t be taught in an article. It’s like these people have walked out of the mythical land of plenty promulgated by leftist-anarchists like The Venus Project and have forgotten that we have jobs, kids, dogs and what normal people call, “a life,’ when they talk about how much you need to train with your weapon. Ammunition is bloody expensive if you haven’t noticed.
To me, your gun must be first, comfortable to hold and shoot. Anyone who does not stress this is not worth reading another word from. My wife and I each have 20 ounce hammers, hers is an expensive, anti-vibration one, while mine was the cheapest one on sale that day, but it fit my hand perfectly. I can’t drive a nail straight with hers, while I can drive literally anything with mine. I love my hammer in a nigh-inappropriate way and without it, my house would never have gotten finished. I won’t start a project without it. Same thing with our handguns. I can leave my CZ-85 Combat lay around for years, pick it up, put some clay targets in tree branches, step back 20 yards and hit them all without thinking much about it. It is simply perfect, even with the stock plastic grips. I can’t hit the broad-side of a bull’s butt with her Beretta. Gods forbid you hand me some awful 1911! I know this is gun-sacrilege but I hate them. I know I’m using a ‘hole-poker’ (9mm) rather than a ‘man-stopper’(45ACP), but I’d rather poke a hole in a guy with my CZ than not stop him with a 1911. Pick a gun you like, get comfortable with it, practice with it intensely at first, do maintenance at the range and spend the rest of your time asking yourself when you’d be capable of pointing it at another human being and pulling the trigger, because that’s the biggest obstacle any still-rational person will have to self-defense.
Would I like my farm to be totally self-sufficient in the event of a complete breakdown of services and society? Sure. Do I have the money and time to make that happen? It is to laugh. I don’t have the time to become a sharp-shooter. I’m not prepping a ‘bug-out’ bag and I’m certainly not going to drop $20,000 on an off-grid solar power system. In the end, I’ve come to embrace The Pareto Rule. What can I do to 80% prepare for what I think I’ll need that will cost me 20% of my available capital? In other words, where can I get my biggest preparedness bang for the non-proverbial buck. This approach keeps my prodigious imagination in check.
More importantly, what am I preparing for? What do I really think is going to happen and given my circumstances what should I do to react? I can’t tell you how to answer that, but I can tell you that stockpiling 2 years worth of MRE’s is probably a waste of money. In response to my first article in this series, many of the people who contacted me offered to me that I wasn’t alone in this; that I had family and friends to rely on. They were, of course, right. I came to realize this through time. Our actions (and ideas) had consequences and affected those around us to want to find their place within our division of labor. I guess it is that whole, ‘if you build it,’ thing. Well, in my case it was.
I’ve decided that I can’t prepare for the total breakdown of all things good and decent. I won’t go there. Moreover, it’s not cost-effective and likely a waste of my precious time on this planet. The most surprising thing that happened on my way to the pocky’clipse is that I’m not preparing for it anymore. I’ve come to realize that I have to have faith in people’s ability to adapt and be resourceful; responding to the incentives before them. We’ve built so many great things because of our ability to press our personal comparative advantages, it seems silly to think that that will not continue in the face of some kind of monetary spasm. If capitalism truly did build everything good in the world, and I subscribe to that belief, shouldn’t I act accordingly? If I’m wrong. Oh well. There was likely nothing I could do about it anyways. The priorities we’ve set now involve shoring up the basics of food and water while having those preparations serve as good uses of our time/money in case we’re wrong, hedging our bets and changing the overall direction of our lives. I’ll go into the specifics in a future article. There is always that possibility that the Sword of Damocles will not fall as hard or as swift as we think it will. In such a case, all that bottled water and ammunition will look pretty silly won’t it?
Ta,
Thomas Luongo is a professional chemist, amateur economist and obstreperous recovering Yankee residing in North Florida.Visit Thomas Luongo’s Face Book Page.
This article was originally published at LewRockwell.com and has been reprinted with permission from the author.
Copyright © 2010 Thomas Luongo
“There is always that possibility that the Sword of Damocles will not fall as hard or as swift as we think it will. In such a case, all that bottled water and ammunition will look pretty silly won’t it?”
Yep.
But I’d rather be pleasantly surprised by looking silly than the alternative if the flip side of the coin lands up.
“Nah, we don’t need THAT many lifeboats. This is the Titanic, man !” ahahahahaaaaaaaaa
I call it gloom crack, others have started calling it gloom porn.  People getting so wrapped up in all the bad that they see coming they actually begin to thrive on it, which is very sad.  It is also very sad, as you pointed out, to be so focused on what lies ahead that you forget to live life today.  I’m not saying don’t take precautions (if you can, many people are in positions where there isn’t much they can do, though everyone can do something) to lower your risk factor if things get really bad.  But what I am saying is that I like you am so tired of people trying to fleece the flock as it were, all these little punks that want to bury themselves in an underground bunker and come out guns blaring, eagerly awaiting the chance to get their first kill. Sick.  Being ready for self defense sure, positioning to be  a mad max warlord is sad.  All the tanks, predator drones, assault helicopters aren’t going away idiots, and they won’t be in your little post apocalyptic clan’s hands either.  If the world goes mad max, you will be cut down and your stores looted.  Maybe look forward to the possibility of a second dark age a little less.
Still, potential for serious problems abound.  I think striking a balance between preparedness,  staying informed, and living a balanced life is all good.  I especially like this post here, as this blog is one of my favorites, but it does lean on the “we are all gonna die” side.  From what I’m seeing we are more in line for an Argentina or Chilean financial collapse, with a good potential dose of government fascism that won’t abate after the restructuring.  But it won’t be mad max.  And if I’m wrong and it is, I’m convinced it will be the end of the Earth as we know it, but Earth will continue on under new management of the King of Kings, uncorrupted and prosperous.  The best risk abatement any of us could ever take is to 1) Know we sin before God and will face judgement and hell 2) Accept that God in the form of a man, Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth and died for your sins, and that if you believe that Jesus did this and confess it before men, your soul for all eternity will be saved.  You might die in what comes, but life is fleeting anyway.  You will live again forever.  For those who don’t have this assurance, you have bigger problems to face in the future than a financial collapse, and I don’t say that lightly.  God is good, and life is fleeting.  You don’t know how much time you have, God’s offer of a pardon through Jesus is always available, but your time and interest are finite. Especially with all the indicators you see, don’t put off Jesus any longer.
But I digress.  Thanks for the reminder to live each day as a gift, to be thankful for what we have, and to not get over whelmed with what may or may not come to the point that the day passes by unproductive and joyless.
Flame away.
You prep. enough so you have peace of mind. This insulates you from shit. Example. the recent egg scare. If it got bad…I have a few buckets of powdered eggs. So the phsical prep. stuff is just Insurance. Nothing more. I get piece of mind. As of 2008 there were 6,697,254,041 people on the planet. That’s penty of land, oil, engergy, human systems, logistics and such. Sooner or later something will fuck up. On that day, I will roll over, go to sleep and know I have one year of food stocked. In addition to hunting, gardening and such…I’d be ok for a while. I do have concern that the Bilderberg scum are planning some type of global depopulation. It just makes sense. Too many people on the rock. My opinion. They will engineer some bad viruses. Those that get vaccinated, will be the educated, productive folks. The lazy folks will not…then they will die. Looking ahead….My plan is to buy a nice farm in the county. I’ll be old at that point, after slaving a lifetime for the new world order fuckers. At that point, I’ll kick back and watch it all fuck up. The govt. has to destroy the currency…they have no other way to pay the debts. Better buy gold and silver. It’s the only thing that be of value. Yeah, stock food and such.ÂÂ
Summary…kind of like when you went to a party…you know some fuck is going to get drunk and bang their head. You just make sure it’s not you.  ps. We are seeing the fallout of a “service economy”.ÂÂ
I’m behind the fucking boomer wave of humanity. So they fucked everything up for me. Example. Just bought an empty lot down the street. I just want to turn the water on for gardening. Ihave to get some fucking permit to turn the water on and be permitted for special use. I just want to plant a fucking tomato garden. Summary. the prior generation has gummed up everything. Too much govt. Too many stupid rules.   I DO hope it all collapses. On that day..when a boomer comes to my door for food….the door will slam. FUCK ALL YOU BOOMERS. YOU PISSED AWAY THE FACTORIES. DON’T THINK WE WILL WIPE YOUR ASS IN OLD AGE. FUCK…I DON’T EVEN GO SEE MY OWN PARENTS. THEY ARE PISSING THEIR INHERITED WEALTH AWAY ON THEIR THIRD RV. NO PLANS FOR THE GRAND KIDS. LET TIME TURN THEIR BONES TO DUST. I WILL PLANT HUGE SHRUBS ON THEIR GRAVE HIDING THEIR STONE FOREVER. BITTER. YES. I AM ENJOYING SEEING ALL THE BOOMERS LOSE THEIR MC MANSIONS. THEY LOOKED DOWN AT US FOR LIVING IN A DOUBLE AND RENTING THE UPPER. NOW WHO’S LAUGHING. AS FOR CHINA. KEEP STOCKING AMMO. WE WILL BE AT WAR WITH THESE FUCKERS ONE DAY.   FINAL THOUGHT….READ THE BOOK…THE FOURTH TURNING. THIS IS JUST HUMANITY FUCKING UP AS IT DOES. SPAM AND EGGS ANYONE?
infocyde:  Well said from A to Z
Amen! Brother, Amen!
When was the last time you saw a U-haul or Brinks truck following a hearse? Enjoying the gift of today and being prepared for the possible future and certain eternity is all we can do.
I personally try to live each and every day as if it is my last and then I am always pleasantly surprised when I wake up the next morning. I thank God each day for my life, health, family, home and security.
The folks out there pushing the ‘chicken little’ scenario are also usually pushing an agenda to increase their ‘bottom-line’ and promote the health of their bank balance.
Living in South Florida teaches you to be prepared for at least a half a year of hurricane season each and every year. In the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma in 2005, my family and I were without electricity at our home for almost 3 weeks. The company that I worked for brought in tractor trailer loads of caned food, ice and tankers of gasoline for distrubution to it’s employees. Not many firms did that and it really helped out.
I look at the “Happy days are here again” crowd and then I look at the Mad Max folks. I have an idea that we are headed for somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.
Life in the United States is definately changing for the worse and I don’t think that we are at the bottom yet. Time will tell. God Bless and good luck to all.
Thank you Mac. I especially, need to be reminded of this. Great article and full of Truth. Everyone have a great weekend and be grateful for what you have.
Well, you torture yourself with what’s behind you
Torture yourself with what awaits you,
Dragging that guilt everywhere inside you
Anxious of the goals that always elude you
Your mind will find a way to be unkind to you somehow
But all we really have is happening to us right now.
~ Marillion, Happiness Is the Road
Balance – in all we do. Encourage, not scare, yourself and others.
Learn, Train, Prepare — and Enjoy Life!!
What good is preparing for tomorrow if you do not live today?ÂÂ
As a longtime reader of this blog, I will say this is maybe the best post yet. The world is a great place to be. The financial crisis exists only in the banks, and only for the bankers.
Anyone else can get their money out of their worthless paper and into the things they need for everyday life. The bankers are stuck where they are, holding all of that worthless paper. They want you to believe it is your personal crisis so you will help them out of the hole they have dug for themselves.
It has been said that if you owe the bank a little bit of money, they own you. but if you owe them enough to break them you own them.
Perhaps the people are in charge again. How much money would the banks get if everybody quit paying their fake mortgages and bogus credit cards and invested their labor and income into real things they need now?
In the end, all you can really control is what you do and how you think. I am far better prepared mentally than I am with physical things because I am already poor. They have nothing to steal from me so. I am happy living with little because I don’t have to depend on the corporate world for survival.
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose (I just realized that’s a song lyric). The only thing I have to protect is myself and property that I own outright. If it is not in their corporate records, they can’t steal it.
Live poor and be happy. Material possessions only complicate what is best left simple.
Great article…I have at times been so wrapped around the axle on being/getting prepared for mad max time that I drove myself nuts.
I have stepped back from the brink on preping and taken the more conservative approach by slowing it down a bit. Also I stopped reading every single doom blog/article I could find.
That alone got me out of the vicious “get more stuff, read blogs, get more stuff” cycle.
This article just reinforced I made a good decision.
I have to agree with the article. With all the doom, gloom and boom stuff on the internet you could go mad.
That’s where faith comes into play, it will be; Gods will be done. I pray every day that I am wrong and years from now I hope my friends and family can have a good laugh on me and my Tin Foil Hat.
The Bible says it well. Eat, Drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall die. All we really have is a moment at a time. In the blink of an eye we could be gone.
Knowing I am basically prepared for disaster makes me sleep well at night and enjoy my days on this earth. Yes I have a good supply of bullets, beans and bandaids, but thats a security blanket, not life.
My spiritual survival manual; The Bible, has all the answers to all my problems and my short comings. It tells me how to go to war and how to love my wife and children. It tells me to live my life to the full, pressed down, shaken together and overflowing. It also tells me there will be trials and tribulations for which to prepare.
Infocyde said, “…all these little punks that want to bury themselves in an underground bunker and come out guns blaring, eagerly awaiting the chance to get their first kill. Sick.  Being ready for self defense sure, positioning to be  a mad max warlord is sad.ÂÂ
That is hilarious, and yet so true man. I’m sure there are more than a few “preppers” and chicken littles are as we speak, secretly fantasizing about the day when they shall ascend to Warlord Status. If things actually went anywhere in that direction, then I’m sure a few would succeed, if only for a short while.
I feel similar to the author and agree that you’ve gotta keep living your life one day at a time. Don’t get lost in Fear and Loathing in the New America. Will there be a “change” or shift in our lifestyles? Well it looks to me like the shift is already occurring every moment of every day, and its a gradual process with occasional strong shifts one way or the other(albeit these days the trend is mostly for the worse). Definitely keep an eye on the direction the world is blowing, and be prepared on some level for big change. Just don’t lose sight of the here and now, which is the real forever, not some self-imagined tomorrow that might not come. To each his own.
I really needed this…as the last few weeks I started to notice myself sliding into the darkness of worrying about a “crash”, whatever that looks like. It feels close. I am happy to hear I am not alone.
Balance. Always a little tricky and different for everyone.
Thanks, great post!
Comments….. I think the degree of chaos to come will fall somewhere in the middle. I don’t loook for a mad max scenerio, nor do I look for a free pass. Logically, when you look at history, and other comparable situations, most of the time, the answers lay somehwere near the middle.ÂÂ
    In the case of the economic trials to come, the middle is pretty bad, so get ready for pain. good luck all
So true , so true. Everybody has something to sell. I went through it in the 70’s and there is even more to buy today.
Everybody has a book or a set of CD’s to buy or a web site to subscribe to for $99 a month.
This book will save your life. This religion will save your soul. Don’t let the world end without this in your survival kit.
And in the end it is the mortuary that wins. They make a buck while you are going in the hole.
A friend of mine was all prepared for Y2K ( my favorite end of the world scenario.)
His house was the first to burn in a controlled brush burn 6 months before Y2K.
My animals are many, my grain barns are full. I am ready to take life easy.
He is just weak, weak in the mind, weak in the soul. Like a Y2k prepper who overdid it and then became dissolutioned when the disaster didn’t come on the appointed day.
Real men accept a truth and make it their own, they live by it!
Real men don’t seek comfort, either in mind or in a gun grip.
And most importantly, Real Men don’t waste time on crap like Facebook. Facebook was and is designed for women and kids.
He’s a girly boy.
luck befalls those prepared.
always…
.
Good article!
Toms sacrilegious speech about hating 1911s is, well, certainly not offensive to me. I can take them or leave them. 99% of those will not hit a clay at 60ft. For me, guns have been both a hobby (I shoot and reload regularly) and an investment strategy. My father (who is now 86) has always been interested in prepping.
I’m really sick of both the gun snobs and the doomsday/prepper snobs. Its about practicality, people, this is what Tom is talking about.
I recently wrote “NetRanger’s Mini-Guide to Survival Firearms”. In it I talk about how so many guys go to seed on guns. Certainly I see the same thing with preps. They seem to use them as a crutch or a “teddy bear” to hold for comfort instead of actually usage and planning.
I’ve spent a lot of money to get a large cache of guns and food. But, none of them just sit there. I eat the food and I shoot the guns and use both as a tool to make my life both more secure, more fun and more flexible.
As far as total collapse is concerned, I really don’t want to see total collapse. What I do want to see is the fat federal government leaned down a bit. Government needs to go on a diet. Its fat, lazy, and acts like a spoiled child. If that takes total collapse, then I’m for it. If it takes partial collapse, I’d rather have that. Whatever it takes, I’m ready to get to it. Just remember, living is living whether I’m buying the beans or growing them.
Good luck all. Who knows what we face in the future, but, remember, if TEOTWAWKI comes there is one guy on 30 acres of the midwest that will survive and still be praying for you long after most are gone. …and there is room for you if you can find me. Just don’t come empty handed.
Very good article. I have thought about issues like this, but could not have articulated it nearly as eloquently. I don’t think he’s saying not to be prepared. I just think he’s saying we must put things in perspective.
I believe the biggest transfer of wealth is about to take place and not just in this nation. Most people here open other people’s mind which we have Mac to thank. My grandparents shared with me what the depression was to them, to teach me. The Bible & the military continue to lay that foundation for me. Those that go to work each day on the front lines truly live each day. And one last note, many mortuary’s are going broke. Monty Python: Bring out your dead!ÂÂ
Private Joker: The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.
Great job Mac, I think you lifted a lot of spirits today and everyone’s comments say everything I would have said but better.
GOD BLESS ALL OF YA
I’ll close the gate, break out the night vision and shoot anything that moves. Good luck stealing my toilet paper
Someone commented that the collapse might be like Argentina and not Mad Max. Well, from what I’ve read of Argentina it is quite a bit more like Mad Max than many can accept, especially compared to parts of the U.S. today.
Perhaps Zimbabwe would be a good comparison also? For a time, life there looked a bit on the Mad Max side as well, unless you don’t think government thugs dragging framers wives out of their homes and doing away with them or putting them out on the curb like so much trash is a Mad Max scenario?
The author has decided he’s not going to have a bug out bag and he’s going to rely on others. I suppose that’s one way to do it, and his needs might get met. But for circumstances such as a common house fire at 4 a.m. where you wind up standing on the curb in your skivies, it might be useful to have a bug out bag containing a change of clothes and a pair of shoes that fit so you can go to work two hours later and avoid the loss in pay from taking a day off while you hunt for clothes that fit and try to withdraw some money out of the bank without an ID, a check, a debit card or a credit card because in the rush to flee the house you didn’t grab these things as you would with a simple lightweight bug out bag. Or you didn’t make it out at all because you spent too much time in the house looking for your stuff or the cat. Some people are ok with Not having your stuff together, that’s one way to do it.
Looking through the rear view mirror while going forward, earthquakes are rare in many places, so why be the least bit prepared for them? Many people in the U.S. might have had those same thoughts prior to the New Madrid earthquake swallowing their house whole in the 1800’s. Many more people today think that will Never happen again because it hasn’t so far, so why bother spending a minute to consider what you would do?
Kitchen fires in my house are rare too, so why have a fire extinguisher? That’s what insurance is for, right? Assuming the insurance company is still in business at the time. And of course you can depend on the fire department getting there quick?
People are always given an advanced warning and given plenty of ample time to get their things together when wildfires approach, or a train derails nearby, things like that, the unforeseen but possible that often affect entire neighborhoods.
A huge number of people in Argentina wished they would have bought gold prior to their economic collapse. I wonder if some of them, as they and their families eat from trash cans, are still of the mind, “What? Me Worry? Preparing for the unexpected is for others, right now the important thing is having fun.”
I make sure and keep a spare tire in my car, and I give my car a checkup before a long trip. How’s that any different than having a bug out bag and storing enough food to get through a Winter power outage or to avoid the price shock from a sudden increase in the price of wheat or corn?
Lots of people said housing prices would Never go down, so why concern yourself with the possibility they might? Go out and charge it up?
Those who stock up on food and rotate have found it to be Very cost-effective and it maximizes their free time while allowing them to take advantage of sales. Unless you expect huge deflation (even then, the result might be bare shelves in the stores) that’s good economics.
Sometimes trouble comes looking for you, and however minimal the chances are of it happening to anyone, when it happens to you, being prepared can be an advantage you might be glad you took.
The author says, “I’ve decided that I can’t prepare for the total breakdown of all things good and decent.” Many people are saying that in the U.S. we have tyranny Now because the laws are arbitrarily enforced or not at all, and That Is the total breakdown of all things good and decent, Today.
Relying on capitalism is a good thing, until it’s replaced by the boot of Socialism, what then?
The ones who look silly are those who are stranded at the side of the road without a spare tire or a jack while waiting for someone else to help them. That is the other side of the opportunity cost to not preparing.
Rotate those tires, and the spare too, that way they last longer It’s what.prepping is all about.
Comments…..@ Clark………..Well said & very true.  We have to prep, in everything we do, or we really don’t exist or can’t “have fun & live life”.  When people think I am crazy or ask why I prepare for what is coming, I simply ask them the following:  If the news said there was a hurricane coming right where you live, would you prepare, or just sit back & relax?  They all say “heck yeah I would prepare & maybe get out of dodge”.  So if the dollar collapses, stock market collapses, or any number of other scenarios happen (which most all will if you follow what is happening here & around the world), would you prepare?  Most never looked at it like that.  When asked, I tell people to prepare for a prolonged hurricane.  I prepare everyday & still manage to live life & have fun, it can be done.
There are many levels of collapse. The value of the dollar and the euro must “collapse” if these economies are every going to compete with China, India, and the Third World as the unfettered capitalists (banksters) will move their money to that location where cheap labor can be exploited and their profits maximised.
For you “new agers” Cayce and others predict serious, massive physical earth changes in America and the world. Some of these predictions are occuring now, and some to come promise to get worse.  This represents another level of “collapse”.
For the “Bible Thumpers” among you, revelation speaks of a time that: “except the days be shortened, no flesh shall be saved”. That IS clearly a Mad Max scenario. Lock and load and prep.
Life is a precious gift to be savored, protected, and encouraged in and through all circumstances. Divine Providence created this nation and Divine Providence will sustain it, if the American people acknowledge that Source and honor it again.
Recognize this time of transition as an opportunity to renew the American dream. Keep prepping. the S has not yet begun to HTF.
In defense of the many blogs springing up on prepping and it’s many variations; I read them searching for ideas. Things I haven’t thought about or forgot. I’m sure others do the same. Just because a blog exists and people read it does not mean they are converts to the authors belief system. I have gotten some good ideas and I have begun thinking about things I might not have considered had I never read the blogs.ÂÂ
What new age predictions for massive physical earth change do you see occuring now?ÂÂ
Great article, and I am at the same place – stopped prepping but work on my groupings monthly. I found prepping about two years ago and have missed a lot of life doing so. My beautiful kids got older and my wife got sexier with me “prepping for wtf” — I’m slowing down. I’m glad, though, that I did start two years ago. Frankly, if I “saw the light” today, I’d go insane with our lazy president vacationing while congress strangles our economy and true leadership is gone in our country. I do feel that we are awakening and moving towards the Liberty that God gifted us and our Country was built upon. We may just have to fight for it, though.
What I truly fear more than terrorists, thugs, tax men or solar flares is our own agencies, military and police. I absolutely fear that our government will try to slam us to our knees and ask our neighbors and heroes to enforce their lunacy. You don’t have to go far into history to see bad people leading good soldiers. I have ammo for the thugs and the hoodies – I ‘ll never have a bullet with a state troopers name on it… or national guard member… won’t that be the end game they seem to be chess playing us towards? They are squeezing our freedoms – comical at times – but if they ever try to actually enforce their fantasized “world order” – how can we prevail when no one wins at the standoff. There is no black hat and white hat… when we are all Americans.
If you don’t think it can happen – its happening today! They systematically abandon our Border Patrol “in country” under-manned and under-armed – how do we show up to help them w/out a federal weapons charge!!! Our own Patrol might have to arrest us for standing up to help. They are screwing with us. I just never want to hurt another Patriot and that fear alone is consuming. When “They” is Us or They is U.S… the folks in D.C. win no matter who gets hurt.
Maybe that is the moment when Jesus returns… if he doesn’t… then there will be Hell on earth. And I won’t be able fight back – and they may be counting on that.
God Bless you and your families tonight – and our troops, guard and officers.ÂÂ
GWTW:  I guess you are addressing that question to me. I could copy them here or you can check out SHTF America  which identifies and answers your question on the Teotwawki page. A Mac Salvo Must Read site, linked above and to the right.
Comments….. @ durango kid,
very nicely put. I like your thinking , I also agree with each of your points in the previous post. This period of time we are in offers something for virttually any set of beliefs. And I think we are seeing the beginning of a truly unreal period of time that none of us has ever seen before.
     it won’t be hard to look back at this period of time in the future , and see the fullfillment of prophecy from many sources.
   Also, your point about Divine providence is spot on. I believe as a nation, we are paying the price of a long time of “let it be” behavior. That’s just my opinion. I also believe that if we acknowledge the Source, and honor that Source again, we will get through this.
    One last thing to think about. Something that keeps coming back to me about this period of time we’re in. So many belief systems, so many prophecies, from agnostic, to Christain, to Mayan, or whatever, seem to be in agreement about what is to happen very soon. When this many people agree, surely we are in for a rough ride. everyone but the talking heads on Tv are saying the basic same thing. This makes me pause, and catch another breathe, wondering what will happen tommorrow. just buy some more food, PM’s, and guns I guess.
Seems to me that being prepared is never a bad thing unless you take it to such an extreme as to cause other problems. In other words, if you have 30 guns and 500 rolls of toilet paper, great. If in gathering all of that, you lose your house, not so great!
And I believe we must live in reality. Odds of a real depression are higher than total collapse. I personally think it will be more of a reset to responsibility. It will be very painful for those who refuse to reset to a simpler way of life. I mean I know folks who will freak out at not having DVR service (which I love, but can live without if need be).
Preparation is a part of life. You prepare for you retirement, financial future, your kids college, car repairs/purchases, etc. So why not prepare for economic hard times? Why not plan for the need to be more self sufficient? You actually can enjoy it and the peace of mind it brings and still live an active, quality life with your family and friends. Our forefathers did it and still created a pretty damn good Country.
A funny thing happened while going to the FDIC failed bank list for this last Friday. No banks failed unlike 8 banks from week earlier. Things must be getting better! FDIC is hiring. Free food delivery, must be willing to travel, work 3 days – get paid for 5, weekends only, must be good with numbers key pad!
What massive physical earth change do you see today. If you think the list is too long give me an example of the most significant one or one that supports your beliefs. I am unaware of any nefarious massive physical earth change. I am aware that every year the ice melts in the arctic and the plains states produce massive amounts of grain. But I have no clue what you are talking about except that you seemed to place some value on it and that it indicated bad things. Are we talking religion or the occult?? What? ÂÂ
GWTW: You answered your own question when you said “I am unaware” and “I have no clue what you are talking about”. Go to SHTF America, read those pages, and then ask some questions. You need to do your own research. It is the only way that you will come to understand the time we are in and the events that are about to unfold. I cannot condense a lifetime of inquiry into a couple of paragraphs for you.
Whether you interpret things through the eyes of the “occult” or the Bible, or through any other source, the events for the “end times”, “latter days”, teotwawki, etc, are pretty much the same, and the description that any prophet or pyschic gives will be through their particular frame of reference and / or experience, and / or visions; whether you are talking about any of the biblical prophets or N or Cayce, the mayans, Scallion, the I Ching or whatever: see?
All the answers you will ever need are within you. So are the questions. Go within.
Comments…..This is kind of a cheerful article..I suppose we all need to take a break and smell the flowers sometimes for our own well being. The author was talking about balance and getting good value for your money, more boom for the buck he said.. This is reasonable.. Now I have always had a question… exactly how many guns do you need? I figure one for each hand for every member of the family should be plenty…30 guns…that seems excessive to reality to me unless you and your wife have 13 kids… How much ammo do you need..trickier question..how many years can it sit on a shelf? You are not likely to get into a shootout and blow 2000 rounds a day…and live anyway..so plan for shooting as many deer and rabbits as you need to for X years, double that and you will have plenty for anything else too. MREs for ten years…no thanks…I lived on em in the military…barely… I had to eat em again for a month after a natural disaster… damn, they have not improved.. I think death is better than that..the only good part was tobasco sauce after a while. Stock food that has a reasonable shelf life, and that you enjoy..I suggest potato chips and cheetos .. Sure you need the veggies and meat and bread too, but we foget that comfort foods and favorite snacks have a critical role in this too. Prepping for WW3 is, in my opinion pointless.. If the SHTF I figure the people of the most creative and productive country on earth will figure out a workable system within weeks or months..why plan for decades holed up in your bunker of doom….How much gasoline do you have? That one is hard to answer..how much can you safely store???  I love my gasoline supply…I buy and refill whenever the price drops and I use my stored stocks when prices are rising…it allows me to have predictable prices if nothing else. As for a gun…I like the thinking of this author..buy what works for you. I still have the snub nose 38 saturday night special I bought years ago… Its comfortable, it is light and it is good enough for me. Sure I cannot hit a barn at 60 yards, but it is for people who are up close and personal…not barns or clay ducks..Sure its not a man stopper 45 APC, but I can pump 5 rounds into a man if I need to, which should discourage most of them.  The ones it doesn’t I am not going to be able to do much about anyway.. I know it seems wierd, but instead of bottled water, how many of you have considered a well? If you get one, you may want to consider a bypass manual pump you can engage by turning a couple valves..that way you can still drink without electric… Or you can go low tech and get a bucket and a rope…If a well is not an option, at least get some water purifying tablets or a little camper water filter from your local sporting goods store..cheap insurance..do what makes you happy
Here is some good news.Nothing will happen in 2012. In fifty years most of you paranoid pinheads will be dead. Jesus the fairy tale god won’t return.
Cheers.
Hmm. Some of the people who live in Argentina’s collapsed economy, where S Did hit the Fan already, suggest having lots of self-defense weapons and ammo,… family defense weapons like AK’s, and pistols larger than 9mm. And this is the situation many think is less than teotwawki and likely what the U.S. may experience. One might do well to take their advice.
For people anticipating such a process there’s Nothing paranoid about it, it’ a common cycle recorded by many people the world over throughout time. As in football, if the linebacker comes up the middle and sacks the quarterback five times in a row a person can probably anticipate that happening a sixth time. Of course it’s possible it might not happen a sixth time, but it might be a good idea to be prepared either way because there’s probably going to be a seventh time too.
Image of the boy in the Youth Corps ratting out the Von Trapp family to the “authorities” from the scene in the film, The Sound of Music, goes here x.
Several game changing processes taking place ending, “all that’s good and decent in the world” are the steadily increasing use of iris and face scanners for identification and the dangerous x-ray vans currently roaming the U.S.
Criminals steal ID’s and credit cards, don’tchya think they’ll steal irises and somehow attempt to steal a person’s face if they are used as ID’s and are needed to purchase items? Being armed to defend against such theft might be a bare minimum requirement someday soon, if not already, in certain parts of the world. Desperate criminals do desperate things.
The x-ray vans subject people out in public (or in their homes?) to not only the cumulative effects of dangerous x-rays, but they allow strangers to view your family members naked. Like many things, the details of what these x-ray vans do and the studies supposedly “proving” they are limited and not dangerous are Not available to the public. Why do you suppose that is?
If a person does not want to be exposed to these dangers it may be impossible to avoid, but being self-sufficient might help to reduce being affected or having to participate in the system which exposes you and your family to hidden dangers. The Amish are a good model for this and nobody’s calling them paranoid.
Whatever works for you,… the players are lining up for the next play.
Comments….. To say that people are getting a little nervous waiting for a suspected collapse is an understatement. The only solace in the wait, is more time available to prep some more. The prep seems to offer comfort that I’m at least doing something that will give me a chance to survive civil unrest. But when it comes to fighting mother nature, you can only do so much.
    What I mentioned in another post still hangs with me still. When so many diverse people agree that we are in for a very bad time, I take notice. When everyone from pagans to Christians to psychics, to economists, all agree on the outcome of our economic system, we are in deep SHTF. The only idiots saying otherwise are the talking heads on tv, who keep telling us things are looking up. What are they smoking??
   Good luck, you’re gonna need it.
I have to agree with Clark’s approach. To be unprepared for the calamities of life and hope that the government,neighbors,friends, and/or strangers will come to one’s rescue is going to leave one disappointed in their fellow man. While the article is correct that one should not sacrifice their present while focusing on the future, it is always wise to be prepared. We seem to live in a time where people have to go overboard in one form(housing, credit card spending,ect) or another (hoarding, living scared).This is what makes us so open to control by the BTP. The Taoist way of thinking is to live a life of balance. To be out of balance is to be out of control. If you are out of control,you have no control of your own  life. If you are not prepared for life’s basic calamities then someone else will have control of your life. Is that what you want?
Seriously, I can think of needing 5-6 different bullet types. Anything more is a waste of money (unless its for a hobby). I have an AK47 (so 7.62×39) a 12 guage, a Ruger 10/22 (.22) and I want to get a .40cal pistol along with an AR15. Those are mostly for fun guns or SHTF stuff. The shotgun and AR can be hunting but I do want a Remington 700 (7.62×51) for hunting (my friend has an M1A so we can share ammo then). I paid $900 and got 15,000 rounds of .22 so I am set for a while on that. I have 5000 rounds of AK ammo and 3500 of AR. I have 800 shotgun shells (mostly bird shot for home defense, so I don’t shoot my neighbor who is a Deputy).
But if it hit the fan I would be grabbing at best 3 of those to survive and their ammo (if the wife had a free hand I would have her grab the .22). Likely the AR, shotgun and Remington. Of course the pistol, that’s always with me anyways. I would likely drop the AK or give it to someone who was less prepared. Its a great gun and FUN to shoot (also cheaper then the AR by a little bit) but I don’t feel as comfortable with it as I do my AR.
30 guns though? Really? I know a guy who has over 400 but obviously he is a collector 🙂