Tag: Prep

Daily Life, Government

Be Prepared, A Motto

Does anyone remember the Boy Scouts? I know I’m dating myself, but I did the whole scouting thing. Eventually we moved to a different city so I never finished my Eagle Scout, but I was pretty involved as a kid. If you didn’t know, the scout motto is “Be Prepared”. When the scouting founder, Robert Baden-Powell, was asked “be prepared for what?” He replied, “Why, for any old thing”. This way of thinking was drilled into me even further when I was a member of a Search and Rescue team. I saw first hand what happened when people wandered into the woods without adequate preparation. (hint, it was never good)

A looooong time ago I lived in California, in the Bay Area. The possibility of the big earthquake was very real. Having a minor part in my cities emergency management system, I realized what a shit show things would be if the big quake really did hit. Trust me, your government is not ready. If a couple of overpasses came down, say goodbye to your food supply (grocery stores only have 2-3 days on hand at any given time). As a result, I had a fair amount of food and water stockpiled. I felt pretty good about my ability to ride out multiple weeks of no power, water, or food.

I no longer live in California (thank god). My little part of the world is reasonably immune from natural disaster. We have plenty of water sources, don’t suffer from droughts, don’t have earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, or hurricanes. We don’t have the civil unrest plaguing so many cities right now. While we’re starting to see some homeless and a bit of increased drug traffic… snowy winters tend to keep that somewhat in check. Basically our main threat is the Yellowstone super volcano blowing. If that happens, we’re all screwed so it’s not really worth worrying about.

So as you can probably guess, my “prepping” has gotten somewhat lax. I still stock quite a bit of food and things that go bang to defend the aforementioned food. Water is not an issue. So the question is, should I be preparing more?

It’s been a long time since I gave this question any thought. But lately… the political, social, and geopolitical situation has me more nervous. We’re closer to WWIII kicking off than we’ve ever been. An EMP strike is a very real possibility. Side note, read “One Second After” if you want a realistic picture of what that would look like. Complete South Africa-like social collapse is certainly in the realm of possibility. I’d like to think my part of the world is isolated enough to avoid much of it, but you never know. China is nearing a collapse. Inflation, fuel prices and fertilizer shortages are skyrocketing the price of food. The price of cattle futures has doubled. Supply chain interruptions and food scarcity generally lead to bad things. A terrorist attack on our power grid? Yeah, that would be bad. So far this year, 160 people on the terrorist watchlist have been stopped on the border. How many snuck through?

The point is, I think it’s time to starting thinking about worst case scenarios. I filter “prepping” down to the following:

  • Does my family have enough food, water, and the ability to cook it for several months? Can we function without electricity for that length of time? Do I have the ability to defend it from people trying to take it?

That’s it. No more, no less. Nobody’s bugging out or going on the long march. We’re not setting up radio communications or coordinating neighborhood assault/patrol teams. I’m not digging a fallout shelter. None of that’s realistic. If something really bad happened, could we hunker down for sixty days and survive? If it’s still really bad beyond that… well, it’s probably end of days and Mad Max time. Nobody but the gangs and most brutal will survive that. I’m not sure I’d want to be around at that point.

My personal weak points are cooking, heating, and light. The hard part is that the solutions to those problems are somewhat expensive. It’s hard to spend money on something you hope to never use. Depending on what happens in the world this next year – it may be time to pony up and prepare.

How about you? Could your family survive a couple months without power or government infrastructure? One month? A week? It’s worth thinking about.

Whether contemplating the societal breakdown scenarios, or going backpacking, fishing, or riding a motorcycle into the backcountry, there’s a saying I like:

“Expect to self-rescue. No one is coming.”

Keep that in mind when planning stuff and you’ll be better off than most of the population.

Daily Life

No More News

Decade after decade without a natural predator to trim the deadwood has turned Americans into herd animals. All they want to do is chew their cud and watch television.

Clay Martin, Wrath of the Wendigo

It used to be a routine. Read the paper in the morning. Sundays were the best. A full three pounds of newsprint (I still remember delivering those big boys on my bike as a little kid). Hours of reading. Plenty of longer form content, opinion pieces, the comics, Parade magazine, sports. Evenings was a half hour of local news (mostly watched for the weather), followed by an hour of a “serious” evening news program so you’d know what happened in the world. If you were a real news junkie, you’d subscribe to at least a few other national newspapers as well as some monthly magazines. Throw in a few publications like Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Powder Magazine (Ski Magazine wasn’t cool enough) so you could be hip, and boom – you’re reasonably in touch with the world.

Then came CNN. 24 hours of news? Who in the world would watch that? I distinctly remember watching Bernard Shaw reporting from Iraq at the start of the first gulf war. Wow. We were seeing war in real-time. What the news industry could morph into was mind-blowing and exciting. Fast forward to today and 95% of all news media, video and print, is now basically a news version of the early Maury Povich or Morton Downey Jr. trash TV shows.

The point of “news” today is to generate clicks, likes, and engagement. Like Maury Povich’s “who’s the daddy” segments, the point is to get that gasp or cheer from the audience. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not as long as you capture the eyeballs. Turn on any of the alphabet news channels and you’ll see one of two formats. The most popular is to give a twenty second intro, to a hopefully controversial topic, and then turn to a panel of media personalities that yell at each other. Your other option is a thirty second description of a story, then bring on an “expert” calling in via Zoom from their living room and give them twenty seconds to babble before cutting them off. Whoo hoo, journalism bitches!

It is becoming exceedingly rare for me to watch any sort of news channel. It’s pointless. Not only for the aforementioned trash TV format, but because I’ve already read or watched anything news related that day via Twitter. Twitter, as Elon has said, truly has become the public square for information. Anything that happens in the world shows up on Twitter long before the mainstream media outlets begin reporting on it. Want long form opinion? It seems everyone with a pulse now has a Substack or podcast. I can read opinions on any subject under the sun.

The beauty of Twitter? I get to curate what I see and have the freedom to decide what I think is truth, opinion, or tin-foil-hat conspiracy. If you are sad enough to only consume CNN… you get a slick used car salesman, Joy Behar version of the news.

So, here’s the million-dollar question. Is the media doing it because that’s what they think we want, or have we truly become that dumb? Have we reached the start of the Idiocracy era? I’m not naive enough to think the early versions of the news I grew up with didn’t have an agenda. Government absolutely attempted to influence the nightly narrative we were fed by Walter Cronkrite. But at least back then, they had to tread somewhat lightly… people still practiced journalism from time to time. Today, the government has an actual private pipeline to all the social media platforms (as revealed by the Twitter file dumps).

My gut feeling? We (the US) have become that dumb. We all want nothing more than to be Instagram influencers, buy cheap shit from Amazon, and binge the latest celebrity expose series on Netflix. If the government tells us we all need to subscribe to a national digital ID, well super! It will make everyday life so much easier. Just make sure I know what the latest thing is, so I can post my solidarity flag on Facebook.

Clearly, I’m feeling a bit cynical today. But for good reason. The crash is coming. Deglobalization is happening, and the Ukraine conflict will produce ripple effects in oil prices, energy scarcity, fertilizer supply, and food prices that are going to hurt. Very quickly, everything that comes from someplace else… is going to be harder to get and more expensive. Oh, Don Lemon isn’t talking about this on CNN? Hmm. The gap between the haves and have-nots in this country is going to accelerate rapidly. Throw in a non-stop media barrage of racial division and, well, you get unrest. People who can’t afford to buy eggs or fill up their cars will want to vent their anger towards someone. And when you split the country like we are now… whoever the other side is a perfect target.

Or maybe not. Maybe we’ll defeat Putin (whatever that means). Everyone will have an electric vehicle. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion rules will solve all those pesky social issues. We’ll tax the rich enough to solve our budget and inflation problems. We’ll finally get around to replacing the police with conflict therapists. AI will free us from the mundane of day-to-day jobs. Peace. Love. Harmony.

Maybe.

Or, become a Contrarian. Question everything. Become ungovernable. Oh, and prepare. You’ve been forewarned.

Politics

I’m Worried

I’ve been worried before. Big world or national events happen and it’s natural to wonder what the fallout will be. But time moves on and things get back to normal. The worry dissipates. However, this moment in time feels different. There are so many things that have taken a turn for the worse, it’s hard to see a path back to stability. For the first time in my life, I’m actually concerned about where we’re headed. Not just a yell at the TV and vote the bums out concern, but an oh shit I can see things turning very dark kind of worry.

I’d been thinking about this in an abstract way as we’ve watched the events of the last few years unfold. But I just recently finished a book that really made me think. It’s called “The Fourth Turning“. It’s not new – it was published in 1997. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon it, but I devoured it. I read it on a Kindle, but wish I’d had a paperback version. It’s the kind of book you write in the margins, go back and re-read tables and charts, and place copious post-it notes.

In a nutshell, the premise is that human history runs in 80-year cycles that are broken up into roughly 20-year blocks, or “turnings”. What’s fascinating, and prophetic, is that the four turnings have repeated consistently from the beginning of human history. The four turnings are as follows:

  • High – A period of stability, growth, prosperity, and conformity
  • Awakening – a period of spiritual awakening and rebellion against conformity
  • Unraveling – a period in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions
  • Crisis – This is the fourth turning. War, revolution, and a profound loss of trust in institutions

The three recent crises in recent American history are the revolutionary war (1776), the civil war (1861), and WWII (1941). The last High period was the post WWII boom, the Awakening was the ’60’s to the early 80’s, and the Unraveling was 90’s to the 20’s. It certainly feels like we’re currently in or at the cusp of a new Crisis.

This was the author’s prediction in 1997:

“History is seasonal and winter is coming. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and the twin emergencies of the Great Depression in World War II. The risk of catastrophe will be high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.”

(The Fourth Turning, Strauss & Howe, 1997)

It’s not hard to see that our ruling class has led us to an abyss – financially, politically, and culturally. Bonds, treasuries, and stocks are in free-fall. We’re $31 trillion dollars in debt. The debt service alone will soon be eating into any entitlement or discretionary spending. And yet, we keep printing and spending money like drunken sailors. Inflation is quickly wiping out any savings and wage growth for most of the population. We’re clearly in a recessionary period, probably heading towards stagflation.

Politically, the world is extremely dangerous right now. World powers are jockeying for position, power, and control over global resources. We’re probably the closest we’ve ever been to a tactical nuclear engagement. Meanwhile, the public face of our own government is an inept octogenarian with dementia. It’s unclear who’s actually running our government, but that cabal has mismanaged (either via utter incompetence or on purpose) virtually every aspect of the American fabric. While I wasn’t thrilled with the election of the current administration, never in a million years would I have thought things could unravel as fast as they have.

And finally, we’ve lost the culture that maintains a society. I honestly believe we’ve abandoned any sense of ourselves as “Americans“. We’ve been driven into loose groups separated by race, gender, and political ideology. Wokeness and the onslaught of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity has driven a wedge into society that I don’t think we’ll recover from. There is no common ground anymore. Pick your camp and defend at all costs (via mean tweets and cancel culture).

We’re at the end of the Unraveling period. Society is divided, we’re at the brink of a financial collapse, and weak leadership invites global power shifts. The scope and scale of government overreach and authoritarianism we’ve seen the last few years really frightened me. Not so much that government would do it, but how willing many in society accepted it. The loss of trust in law enforcement, health services, and public officials is not recoverable.

So, what will the trigger be for the fourth turning? A nuclear move by Putin in Ukraine? The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines? A new “George Floyd” moment that spawns civil unrest? A resurgence of Covid and new lockdowns? The next 2008 financial crisis? Food or energy shortages? All seem possible right now.

This country, and the world, just doesn’t feel stable right now. I honestly don’t remember feeling that before. I don’t know what the answer is. I’m not sure if there is one. History sure seems to be good at repeating itself. We’re just not very good at recognizing it. But maybe that book is hogwash? There’s no doubt that the danger of pattern matching is that it’s very easy to start seeing patterns everywhere to reinforce your desired outcome.

I just don’t know. But I’m worried.