This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper
Our world today would seem magical to our ancestors. Our needs are met almost immediately, we have clean water at the turn of a knob, heat at the push of a button, and light with the flip of a switch. Food is purchased in a box, ready to heat, and a person can prepare a meal in under 6 minutes using the microwave oven that’s a fixture in most modern kitchens.
Our world is clean, convenient, and loaded with abundant resources, things that took significant time and effort to produce in days gone by. And all of these resources are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We don’t even have to go out and get the resources if we live in a town of much size – Uber and Instacart will bring your conveniences right to your door.
But all of this convenience comes at a high price, one we don’t even realize exists until a situation arises in which the ready answers aren’t there, the food is not available, and the dial on the thermostat no longer has any effect at all.
Modern life destroys survival instinct. Most folks just buy the answers to all of their problems and they have lost the ability to think. Self-reliance is an act of epic rebellion against the status quo.
Quick solutions reduce problem-solving ability
In the midst of a challenge a few years back, I discovered I was out of oregano.
Normally, I’d hop in the car and go to the grocery store. I’d buy some oregano, some other interesting things that caught my eye and grab a coffee on the way home to fight that mid-afternoon crash.
But, since I’m participating in the Once-a-Month Shopping Challenge, running to the store was not an option, and wouldn’t be for 3 more weeks. Since the tomatoes I was processing wouldn’t last that long, I had to think about solutions – real solutions that did not involve running to the store. (I substituted thyme and basil, by the way.)
This got me thinking about how we usually solve problems in this day and age.
We buy the solutions to our problems. Slow food has turned into fast food. We replace instead of repairing.
We go to the store. We order a new whatever from Amazon and it arrives at our door the next day. If our central heat goes out, we plug in a space heater and huddle beside it until the repair guy arrives. When he does get there, he replaces parts instead of taking them apart and fixing them.
What does this mean?
It means that the solution to nearly every problem that occurs can be purchased. Almost anything we feel that we need can be purchased, often within 30 minutes of the thought popping into our heads.
The ability to solve problems is nearly extinct
We need to get out of this replacement-based instant-gratification mindset. Because sometimes, you can’t buy your way out of a problem. Sometimes you have to fix things yourself, come up with substitutes, and solve your own problems.
The trouble is, most folks are no longer wired that way. It’s been bred out of them over the past two generations of convenience. Children are sensitive weenies, everyone gets a trophy, and the phrase “This makes me uncomfortable” is like a magic chant that people use to protect themselves from an offense of any type.
People who can solve their own problems are becoming further and further in between. In another generation or two, if we continue on this track, it will go the way of the dodo. You might catch a glimpse of an independent person here and there, but no one would really believe you saw one. Sort of like the Sasquatch.
But in reality, it’s the inability to solve problems that will mean a person’s demise. Everyone will be great, even smug in the comfort of their conveniences, during good times, but when a crisis strikes, they’ll be helpless.
Case in point: remember when Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast a few years ago?
Within THREE DAYS, people were completely out of food and begging the government for help. Many were unable to survive without assistance for even a week.
Problem Solving 101
When a crisis strikes, you do not want to be in the situation of the folks mentioned above. Here are 4 things you can do to enhance your ability to solve problems.
1.) Repair and substitute.
Before purchasing a replacement for your broken widget, figure out how to fix the widget. Use a whatsit instead of a widget. Figure out how things work and really use your brain instead of waiting for others to solve your problems. Start now by learning to live without running to the store or logging on to Amazon to buy a solution.
Learn to repair and mend simple household items. Learn to change a tire. Learn to cook and figure out substitutes if you’re missing some vital ingredient. Learn to use tools.
Don’t just replace things – channel your inner McGuyver.
2.) Live it. Don’t just read about it.
Furthermore, try to figure things out without turning to the internet for an answer. This isn’t to say that I don’t use the internet a lot. (I can’t even tell you how much of my farming information comes from YouTube.) But, learn to observe and use your instincts and inherent skills too.
You can watch videos about raising baby chicks all day long, but until you actually raise them, you don’t develop that indescribable ability to assess when something’s wrong, the understanding of their needs, and the ability to resolve concerns. You can’t feel a chick’s crop to see if it’s full unless you’ve felt when it’s empty.
This holds true with a lot more than just baby chicks, of course. Most skills are not innate. You have to try, fail, and learn from your failure before you can succeed. A lot of people have magnificent plans to “live off the land” or “homestead” but they’ve never done any of these things and their inexperience will get them killed.
You have to live your life, not just read about it on the internet.
3.) Predict and prepare.
This is what prepping is all about. We think ahead about the worst case scenario. We build our supplies accordingly. We have a full pantry, a preparedness plan, and a host of supplies to help us through situations that cause a loss of the grid. We have a stash of natural home remedies and a set of survival tools to help us through a disaster.
By thinking beforehand about the things that might happen, we’re more easily able to accept them when they do occur. We’ve already prepared Plan B and can glide into prepper mode with confidence.
4.) Accept, plan act.
When disaster strikes, there are three steps you must take at any point in the crisis. You have to accept that the worst has occurred instead of retreating into cognitive dissonance. You must make a plan quickly. You must act immediately and decisively. And if your plan doesn’t work, you must start over with accepting it and move on to Plan B. Or C. Or however many letters it takes you to save yourself. (Click here to read about these three steps in more detail.)
In The Unthinkable, one of my favorite books on the psychology of surviving a disaster, Amanda Ripley wrote about interviewing the survivors who had been in the World Trade Center when the planes hit on 9/11. The main difference between those who lived and those who died was the ability to wrap their brains around the imminent danger immediately. The survivors described the last time they saw some of their coworkers. There were many people who simply could not accept the fact that a plane had crashed into the building and that they must immediately evacuate. They gathered their belongs, tidied their desks, finished reports. They didn’t feel the same sense of urgency that those who survived did, because the situation was so horrible that they just couldn’t accept it. Their inability to accept the scope of the danger caused many of them to perish in a tragic incident that other people, who acted immediately, survived.
Just think.
Think about our current society, obsessed with the latest family dramas on so-called reality television and the newest fast food restaurant. How high are the chances that those folks will be able to accept a dramatic change of life, one that means that they must produce their food, dig a latrine, and solve their own problems?
Don’t let our lifestyle of convenience spoil your ability to make decisions and rescue yourself. Take steps to make problem-solving your lifestyle. Be ready for the day when the answer is not as close as a 30-minute round trip to the store to pick it up.
Don’t wait for someone to tell you the answers. Figure things out, learn from experience, repair, substitute, and create.
Be in the minority.
Think. Just think.
What about you?
Do you think modern life is making you soft? Do you practice the skills on which you plan to rely when the SHTF? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.
Daisy is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting, homeschooling blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, and the pursuit of liberty on her websites, The Organic Prepper and DaisyLuther.com She is the author of 4 books and the co-founder of Preppers University, where she teaches intensive preparedness courses in a live online classroom setting. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter,.
LOL an entire month? Wow you… expert woodsman there you!
People buy the solution to their problems because 8 out of 10 times, buying the ingredients / tools / whatever to make shit themselves costs as much as or more than just buying it. Plus I mean you probably have a family. There’s this thing called “time”, you know?
Case in point: soap. I wanted to make soap. I looked into it. Then I realized I can get 3 soaps for 99 cents. And to make soap was like 3 bucks a soap. Um. Let’s see, what to do…
Computers, I’m on board, I usually rebuild from e-waste. Cars… basically the same deal. Electronics of any kind… usually similar.
Staple items well that’s rather different isn’t it.
Hell man even the Indians had the “buffalo grocery store”… there were only about a hundred fifty trillion of the things literally everywhere…
I don’t… see it man, short of an Amish style community with a defined division of labor.
Learn to change a tire…
mumble timing belt… wheel bearings… water pump…
Tragically true. The skills needed to “Survive” modern society are not the skills needed for surviving a disaster. Modern living requires “soft” skills – socializing, negotiation, time management. Disaster and 18th Century living requires “HARD” skills – construction, farming, repair, fabrication, and hard (possibly ballistic)negotiating. People in America today have been sold a bill of goods by Wall St – “buy this, and it will solve your problem”. i.e. – pull out this gun and the rapist will go away. Nothing could be further from the truth! Buy these seeds and you can survive SHTF. Wrong – you gotta KNOW how to farm and garden. The more I look around me, the more I want to organize a Block Watch on steroids.
I was greatly saddened to see the Boy Scouts of America debased by this trend. During the 1970s, the BSA established merit badges for “skills” like navigating an urban subway system and “citizenship in the world”. At one point, a Scout could have theoretically worked his way up to Eagle Scout without going camping even ONCE.
(Look up “the Improved Scouting Program” on Wikipedia.)
Fortunately, a gentleman named Bill Hillcourt came out of retirement in the late 1970s and restored much of the original scoutcraft that had been abandoned. The BSA is not 100% back to its roots, but the damage has been reduced.
Max, the only skill needed to survive in modern USA is money and be willing to “go along to get along”. In other words another cog in the materialism and consumption wheel of the status quo who are 75% + fat, unhealthy, lazy, apathetic and almost totally worthless ! So the control freaks have the titheads exactly where they want them and they are easily controlled by their own materialism in one form or another !
The article says all these convenient things like tap water and processed foods make life easy and suggest it is all good because it is easy ? The simple truth is the water is largely not good for you to drink, nor most of the supposed food and for sure the supposed medicine the doctors hand out like candy. And all of these things are rather easily side stepped and eliminated with just a little effort and brain capacity ! So as always everything is totally about how you think and then act on it.
All of it can be chalked up to your skills, just like the ability to fix things and make things. The other majorly important factor is to realize you do NOT need all the bells and whistles of todays tech junk to be happy and totally secure within yourself. In fact you are always much better off to keep all of it to bare minimums and realize we are all on our own merits and demerits as the case we be in every matter and event in our lives ! These answers are always inside YOU ! And it is always about facing yourself which most people are deathly afraid to do.
1.) Repair and substitute.
I am a firm believer that we will have to repair our own stuff because you won’t be able to buy replacement equipment. You will probably have to make your own parts.
Which is not a problem. Just this weekend I did some aluminum casting and milling on my Bridgeport for a part for my car. No need to go to the auto part store. Fixed my car with melted aluminum cans… Sweet.
Everything nowadays is disposal. No longer are products made for quality, they are engineered to fail. Just look at your water heater. 6 year warranty? It will fail on six years and one day.
John Stiner
That is ultra hard core third world Armageddon engineering to the max.
Kevin2
“That is ultra hard core third world Armageddon engineering to the max”
Not really, just common sense and practical skills and thinking, We have a serious shortage of both
John Stiner , me too, fix it or make your own is always a good thing. We simply do not need all the junk people think they need to be happy and secure anyway !
What is more important in the end, your health and physical capacities and well being, or more stuff ? So the original concept of you need this or that is also part of the problem here in USA today. You actually only need very few things to have a great life ! And your health and physicality is the most important. Without that you have nothing to work with, with it you have everything needed !
I often mention what J Krishnamurta said 50 years ago :
“It is no good measure of a man to be well adjusted to a sick society ”
He hit the nail on the head back than and it is even more true today as much more has deteriorated in society in many ways inn the last 50 years ? Is it not obvious most people are well conditioned to accept the societal norms that are in fact sick in many ways ? Doesn’t this actually go straight to the point and give the answers ?
Don’t worry about survival instinct if you don’t believe in Jesus as ultimately you will be in Hell.
Don’t learn ancestral skills, just buy stuff and open cans.
You can have twenty years of stored food and be in an underground bunker, and be the last survivor on the Earth, and it won’t matter because you are NOT good enough to get into Heaven on your own merit.
I am tired of sugarcoating it.
None of the girls I liked are going to get into heaven anyway so who cares.
If the Bible can be condensed into one word, that would be redemption.
If that could be explained in one concept, it would be marriage.
Are you just supposed to play harps, all day, and have nothing between your legs?
“Are you just supposed to play harps, all day…”
Only if you’re into that. From what I’ve read, there is a lot to do in the hereafter.
She considers this a problem; I consider it q God send. It isn’t new. Most people have just lived day to day forever. The good thing is they have also forgotten what few skills they had and after 3=4 days are just collateral damage, and no prob
My hats off to you McGiver types with modern stuff. Carbs, cams, distributors of old are do-able; chips, motherboards…….over my head. Much of what breaks today is in the electronics and a lot of the stuff is luxury anyway. Having a life long friendship with a “McGiver” auto, diesel, welder, machinist, electrician, gunsmith, carpenter, plumber, HVAC helps.
Maranatha, have you seen either the movie “Gosnell” or “Heaven’s War” , both are worth the money my brother in Christ.
How did Jesus describe hell? ” Weeping and gnashing of teeth”, doesn’t sound like fun to me.
Gosnell is one the evil men to have ever lived. But the only way to do justice to that film would be to show what the LEOs and investigators saw with baby parts haphazardly around the facility. There was no way they could do that in a Christian film as it would be deemed to intense.
Well, HELL is going to be INTENSE, VIOLENT, BARBARIC, CRUEL, etc because the ELOHIM are not there to shield the wicked. Lucfer can turn you inside out for eternity and rip you to hamburger.
Actually “Gosnell” was pretty graphic to both my spouse and I. We shed more than a few tears watching it.
I’m glad it moved you, but will it move any nonbelievers? I doubt it because they are used to watching Hannibal on tv…and are numb to violence.
The country is torn in two and the Democrats are openly pushing for abortion to the point of birth. So why would Gosnell touch those millions of Hell spawn? It won’t.
At this point, I’m going to focus on saving Christians by helping them prep for the Great Apostasy because why in the world would I help the oppressors?
Maranatha, just because everybody does not see your idea of God as the right one does not mean they don’t fully realize people like Gosnell and the DEM/DSA are quite evil in their acts and very destructive forces for humanity.
Have you ever even considered that heaven and hell are right here on this earth today and that God is not some white haired guy floating around in robes in the sky watching every move you make keeping track and making sure you live in fear and guilt rather than knowledge and understanding ? Or that the entire concept described is a self inflicted ruse to control you long ago ?
The truth is, a good case can be made that your God and religion have caused as much damage as the Gosnells of the world in the last 2000 years. It is all in our actual history if you would just read it, rather than relying completely on a censored source that is completely misrepresented and misunderstood. We are each a little piece of God, not the other way around ! Your concept is the same as we must obey the government because they are our rulers and know better than us ? Both are junk thinking and there is far better way to understand these things and live it !
Good luck with rethinking the junk.
Yeah and you worship Lucifer so why I would I even listen to anything you say?
You gnostics are so dishonest.
The Lake of Fire would be devoid of ANY Love and Truth. Darkness, no friendships, no goodness, no love, no light, the damned can hear other inhabitants but not see them. The KJV refers to them as tormented, not tortured. Torture need torturers.
It’s very different than the novel ‘Dante’s Inferno’, the typical high church concept of hell, being stabbed by demons with pitchforks. That was a novel, not a book of the Bible. In reality, the Fallen angels, eventually, will also suffer in the Lake of Fire, not be ‘prison guards’ theresuch as Dante imagines.
The ‘Light’ of Jesus is composed of Love and Truth, and fractals of that is showered upon the surface of the earth from above, making those things available to be experienced here. When Jesus is flat out rejected, then the damned are also rejecting the ‘vibes’ of Jesus, his virtues.
Since everyone’s soul is immortal, when the body dies, the soul has to go somewhere, and since they have rejected the King of heaven, they go to another realm, The Lake oof Fire/Hell.
I’m a certified scuba diver.
I used to own a 45 foot sail boat.
Nothing teaches you self reliance
better than those two pursuits.
When things go south, you can’t just
stop and gather your wits, there is only
one thing saving your butt, that is you,
and your skill set.
I’m sure there are some pilots on this site that
would say similar things as gravity is
far more dangerous than water. I can float,
I can’t fly.
The authors point is well taken. Unless you
stretch, you lose skills.
Fortunately for us prepers the people that will
fail are the ones we really don’t want
around anyway.
God will sort it out.
You don’t believe in God,
fine, that is your personal problem.
You can’t be bothered to grow anything.
You can’t be bothered to learn wild edibles.
You can’t be bothered to identify trees.
You can’t be bothered to hunt, trap, fish.
Why I should I be bothered to teach you?
You have decided that you are bad and that Jesus can’t love you and nothing I say will convince you, so you expect to go to Hell. And guess what? You persuaded yourself to end up in Hell…and Lucifer will mock you for ETERNITY.
Did I miss something?
Hey, if you are bound and determined to fail, then take all the drugs you want, sleep with whoever you want, do whatever you want. I mean, you’re going to Hell so might as well go for the worst possible eternal torture.
Just spend a million dollars and stay out of Hell as long as possible eating out of cans in your bunker. Just buy whatever gear you need and medicines.
Mara,
I really appreciate your faith.
I try to down play such Witness as
I believe your soul is your business
with God, Jesus, and not mine.
Lucifer is really only called by
name once in the Torah and
never in the Gospel.
Souls are really only lost when
cast into the “lake of fire”.
I’m watching a long time pet die as
I type so I may be a little dark today.
Wife would not let me shoot it or
take it to the Vet to kill it.
Rellik, My thoughts are with you. I’ve had to put down pets but just watching the light slowly leave would be awful.
Guns make it quick.
I’ve seen more than my share of slow death,
parents, pets, and bow hunted animals.
Nobody gets out of here alive, unless
they are God.
Great point. Ya hafta die to get off this rock. I cannot put a dog down anymore. It almost ripped my soul the last time, a beloved St. Bernard. That’s one of those memories I hafta keep in a box. I have a pyrenee with a serious tumor and I can see how it hurts him, but I could never put him down, just keep him comfortable, give him his treats.
Aw, Rellik, hugs to you. That’s a hard thing to go thru. Prayers that you will be comforted and that Petwill go peacefully and quickly.
Brother, every loving human being who developed a meaningful relationship with an animal companion has been in your shoes. I know that horrible loss. To this day, I grieve over a beloved pet and have a photo and I can’t even bear to look at that photo very much as it rips a fresh wound in my heart.
This is why I absolutely cannot trust people who dislike dogs or who mistreat their animals. In my opinion, it would be impossible to teach ancestral skills to such an obtuse soul who couldn’t connect and communicate with an animal. Some people never get over the loss of a horse here in Kentucky because the connection is so profound.
rellik, agree on every point except choosing to watch the pet suffer ? I would surely over rule the wife and shoot the pet so it would not suffer. The question of course is who is being helped, the suffering pet or ones own self weaknesses played out ?
Been down this road many times and it happens with people as well. And it is never easy or a good event to deal with, but neither is suffering with no escape from it as the end result. I had an old tom cat who got cat AIDS and had to be shot. So I took him to a place in the wilderness, petted and talked to him him and got him very calm in his suffering and laid the pistol next to him. When the alignment was perfect I popped him in the back of head and it was over instantly ! There was only two choices, let the vet kill him on the stainless steel table which he was deathly afraid of or me take him in a totally humane and loving style. So I made a kind of ceremony out of it and talked to him for a while and that was that ! Once I knew he had the disease I never even considered letting him suffer any longer. Again everything is always about how we think and the choices we make ! And I still often think about Stinker the cat ! He was a very cool cat and came to me under extreme circumstances and a lesson in life as well as his death.
If SHTF does come and we’re all wiping our butts with leaves, remember “Leaves three, leave it be”.
The woman was pitiful. I thought she was going to invite Schumer into her house to have him wipe her ass for her. Very sad, a grown person is too lazy to do for themselves.
On the other hand, she is exactly the kind of person I want competing with me for survival. Little extract of white wood ash and she will make fine soap.
if a lot of people like the woman in the video do not survive the next emergency, wont the country be better off ?
C,mon…that was a staged photo op for Chuckie showing him as the caring politician.
It’s too much of a coincidence that the cameraman followed up right behind the woman as she approached Schumer for the money shot.
Old Staged Fake News.
Just watched “The Survivalist” for the second time.
I finally figured out why foreigners don’t get it.
They are like the people that talk loudly in a movie theater pointing out historical or technical inaccuracies in a film.
That’s because they miss whats really important which is the interaction between characters.
I have always been appreciative of the fact this flick didn’t waste a lot of time with explaining the atrocities associated with a population explosion and cut straight to the chase.
Overall its a “B”grade but the resounding question is LONE WOLF or PACK…they both have their attributes but the time for deciding is growing short IMO.
BTW The guy with the double barrel and two shells wasn’t the Survivalist It was the lanky chick that tried to give herself an abortion with a coat hanger. JS
ht tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNADbtHsIU8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNADbtHsIU8
Rich people have wild animals, flowers, minerals, and gourmet meals named after them. Money is a crutch or useful tool. Tech should be used for a constructive purpose. Never quit asking questions about the world, right under your nose, and never quit making the most of it.
Survival instinct, The paranoid survive, What if it doesn’t rain enough next year, or the next, Maybe the Tribulation is about making your maximum personal circumstantial effort? If they tried their hardest they get in?They didn’t just pray. They kept their flasks full the best they could. Seems the overall message? And why? An elaborate plan? The burning of the Tares? The domestic enemy?
Everything about modern life is easy. Shit you want hot food just drive up to a window. You don’t have to get off your ass. You get sick run to a doctor and get drugs. You don’t have to suffer through it anymore. being civilized is weak. Humans are lazy and by nature will always choose the easy way to meet their needs. The gov knows this and uses it to foster a dependent society. People’s feelings are hurt over the stupidest shit. That is extremely weak. The sensitive feelings shit is indicative of being civilized. Grown adults playing dress up makes me sick. What about the perfect people. They get all butt hurt when petty shit is isn’t perfect. Being civilized is right in line with political correctness.
Asshat , the problem or answer as it may be, is that none of the things you mentioned are actually good for people. Maybe convenient, but not necessarily good for you in many ways ?
That realization is what makes all the difference always ! That is also what separates thinkers and doers from the herd of Wildebeasts jumping off the cliff into the waiting crocodiles willingly.
18 Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying, 19 Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man’s brother die, and leave his wife behind him , and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 20 Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. 21 And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise. 22 And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also. 23 In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife. 24 And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?
25 For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.
26 And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.
Mark 12:18-27
sunday night i encountered a car-full of college kids that had their OWN crisis. it was snowin’ cats n dogs, so i went up the mountain in my jeep, like i often do. not much snow yet on the road, so not TOOO slippery yet, but as i round a bend, there’s a slightly steeper part, with a couple inches of snow on the road now. and right smack-dab in the middle was this car full of oriental people just sitting there in the middle of the road, with emergency flashers going. so i go around them(could have gone left OR right), turn around on a safe part of the roadside, and walk down to see wuts up. so i ask if they want me to get them out of there. the driver gets out of the car as another car is laboring up the hill, passing within 2 feet, with him STANDING IN HIS DOORWAY. i scream at him to get back into the car, and he tried, but the car was already past him. so he says there’s a tow truck called, and they need no help. i tell him i can get him out(all he needed to do was BACK UP and turn into the bank, slowly, with direction from me), and he would be out, easy peasy. i tell him to get out of car, and i will SHOW him how i will get them out, but he now won’t get out anymore. so, nope, they got help coming. something was very weird, as if they were scared of me or sumthin’. i even asked if they spoke english, and i was assured they DID, so…..whatever, good luck. i go on up to top, make the circle, and now going back down, about 30 mins later. i round the bend, and i see a DIFFERENT car where they were, and a hundred feet down the road is the first car now. so i walk to car 2 and say, “you want some help getting out”? yes, he says, so i direct him to back up slowly, and after he moves a few feet, to start turning the wheel slowly. “don’t crash into that other car” i said, and he didn’t. i got him turned around, and off he went. so off to my jeep i go, and i’m gonna head home, but i see lights flashing at me from behind, so i go over……”sup?”…….”could you PLEASE help US get out?”…..”well, before i could have got you out just like i did THAT guy, but you made it a WHOLE LOT harder when you ran up on the bank”. what was amazing to me was how there was NOTHING any of them could think of to get out of there…….so i tell them “out of the car”. youse guys gotta push the front end of the car down the hill as he backs FURTHER up the berm on side of road. so they all pushed, and the front slid down the road, and all he had to do from there was crank it hard-right, and step on the gas, and he was out. “now gimmee 20 bucks, if you can spare it”, i said. every single one of them reached for their wallets, and the driver produced a 20. so i led them down the mountain to safety. i’m sure they thought they were spendin’ the night there, and they had no snow type coats or anything. after i left, i thought i should have asked “don’t they teach ANYTHING in college any more?”……SOMEDAY you’ll NEED to know how to drive in snow, and there’s only one way to learn it……it’s like my scouts and their firebuilding….they ALL “know how to build a fire with a firestarter”, but when tasked to actually DO IT…..not so much. like little kittens learning to eat catfood, sometimes you got to rub their lil faces in it…..
This is why every prepper has to just put an emergency bag in their kid’s vehicles because young people ain’t got a lick of common sense. They don’t dress for bad weather and when stuck, they most don’t know what to do.
The only thing they have going for them is cell phones.
The point of life is not to survive. Survival itself can be taught, but’s pointless. Why? Because if there is no one to share life with and you live in isolation, most people in prison lose their minds.
The point of life is to freely choose to worship YAHWEH with all your being, mind, body, and soul. For YAHWEH LITERALLY BEING I AM WHO I AM and thus is the CREATOR of the Universe. And having done so you realize that YAHWEH is the source of all love, and thus all loving relationships arise from YAHWEH. That is romantic love, parental love, the love in friendships, the love for all that is altruism.
This is why loving your neighbor as yourself is the second part of your responsibilty. Your being loves their being. You are a steward of the Earth so you care for the creatures and species under your charge. You help your suffering neighbors who are sick, homeless, naked, thirsty, and in prison.
If you don’t get these then you have utterly failed to understand why you are here. You are just pointlessly and selfishly surviving. What a colossal waste.
It all started with pop-top cans. Before these cans, you had to open your beer cans and coke cans with a church key. If you didn’t have a church key, you had to rely on your survival instincts and think up another way to open your cans. After this, it was all downhill. Open your cans caveman-style with a rock!
Song Church Key from 1960:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fusj7QxEXTg
bxw4KFxPcoY
Z for Zachariah is a rare Hollywood film that improves on the original story. A lovely Christian lady with ancestral skills on a honestead manages to survive, but goes through a dark period where she almost starves in winter and just about quits because life becomes pointless.
Then she meets two men, both liars and unworthy of her affections. Frankly such explemplary traits as she displays are commonly found in Western Kentucky Christian ladies in the rural regions. I guess that’s why the story is so poignant and so truth and realistic.
There is a massive winter storm in the North affecting 200 million citizens. We just had hours of steady rain here, but lots of y’all have snow and ice this morning.
After it dries out, it’s probably early spring planting time here, but we sometimes will get a freak storm even the last two weeks of February. So far we’ve only had four inches of accumulation all winter so it’s been unusually mild.
I’m looking at an inch of snow this morning, with more falling and ice on its way. They planned ahead and closed everything down here. So, without “early warning” weather predictions, how would we have done? Not as well. Yesterday was a balmy 52 degrees. Folks have no idea how dependent we are on simple weather forecasts. I grew up in Florida before all of those nifty satellites went up. We flew planes out and into hurricanes to “see what we could see”. Our predictive models were not so great.
My point is, despite the best prognosticators here, we’ve never had this many people totally unprepared for what is about to happen. Add to that they we’ve never had so many untrained, dependent and (Dare I say it? Yes, I shall) USELESS people around with violent streaks. I doubt any of us can predict (models are useless) just what “tomorrow” will look like it.
The only prediction I will make is that it doesn’t look “good”. The best things you can have in your arsenal are a sure and certain knowledge of Jesus as your savior, a Bible, a source of water and food, and a good attitude. After that, it is all luck (at least for the first few months).
XxG-cIiaKeg
The Japanese 2016 film, The Survival Family, shows just how inept the average urbanite is when facing a mass power outage. They all thing it’s temporary, but it ends up lasting three years. The goofy family only survives because while bugging out, they try to steal a hog that’s loose, and the farmer takes pity on them.
8WY5wRJLLpo
The Trigger Effect is a now forgotten 1996 B movie about an inexplicable power and communications issue in California. Things rapidly go awry with theft, shootings, violence, etc. It’s worth watching.
In the late seventies, Idaho was the state where survivalists went to start homesteads. Well, now the state senate has passed a gun confiscation bill.
htt ps://www.ammoland.com/2019/02/idaho-senate-opens-door-to-gun-confiscation-orders-with-sjr101-vote-video/#axzz5g5ZmxKPR
I can beleive it. Idaho was always my fallback state if Iowa went deep blue. Thousands of Californians are moving into Idaho, bringing their liberal stupidity with them.
Whats making this easier is the massive internet marketing of land and homes to people far away, complete with panoramic pictures. The price of land and himes has greatly increased in rural areas because of the pressure from “Urban Money”. This harms the locals and runs them out of their own backyard market.
It really has drawn millions from blue areas to red areas, but liberals have responded to the interstate marketing as well. Colorado is gone and I think Idaho is next.
That’s why I am no longer encouraging people to come to my state as we are getting excellent gun rights and abortion may be banned and there are lots of patriots and preppers here.
Liberals avoid my state, and I’m glad. We have almost no illegal aliens here and it’s the Bible belt and one of the most armed states per capita.
In the last ten years, we’ve really turned around homelessness as well. Heck, coal mining may come back.