What is going on?

Have you noticed that the television shows are showing more and more shows related to future possible catastrophies?  Some shows such as Doomsday Preppers are straight and to the point about it and they have their place in bringing awareness to the general public.  Unfortunately, with the true ordinary preppers who are trying to be prepared for any possible catastrophe they throw in a few who are out of the mainstream.  I don't mean to say that they are extreme in a bad way necessarily but that they are more than a little overboard on their idea of what may happen and then prepare for just one type of thing that may happen.  When they do that they put all of their money into specialty items and stop being rounded in their preparations.  I hope that my blog doesn't give people the wrong idea about "Prepping".  I feel that everyone should prep for a general catastrophy in their personal life. 

What is a general way of prepping?  Well, you need to sit down with the important people in your life and talk about what is happening in the world, in your employment situation, in your own economic situation, and in your own feeling about the state of affairs around you and your family.

Let's talk about it a little bit.   I watch quite a bit of news to keep up on what is happening in the world, our country and in our area.

The world is in a pretty dire straight economically.  Greece is bankrupt and the people there are in a great turmoil.  Ireland, Spain, Italy, and many other countries are in a freefall economically speaking.
The U.S. is in catastrophic debt of over 15 trillion at this time.  Politics are totally screwed up and it seems you can't trust any of them.  Politicians say one thing and do another after they are in power. They seem to get punch drunk with power and serve themselves and their own pockets instead of the people whom they are supposed to be representing.  I have gotten to be pretty skeptical about their ability to change the economy, employment problems, and in fighting for our freedoms against the terrorists of the world.   Unfortunately they used to focus on terrorism as being from outside our country and our allies countries and now they are taking away our freedoms in the so called protection of us.  How can removing our freedoms give us liberty and freedom as our Constitution  granted us.  They seemed to have just thrown out the rights, liberty and freedoms guaranteed us by that precious document.  They say it is outdated, old fashioned and doesn't apply to people of this century.

Our constitution is a document that is living and can be changed only by our Congress amending it. If it needs to be amended it should be done as if it were our precious baby with consultation and good judgement and then with a scalpel and not a wood axe as they seem to think is the right way to operate on our dear Constitution.  Unfortunately the last 4 or 5 administrations believe that the President has more power than Congress and they just put "Executive Orders" into place and they pre-empt Congress unless the Congress decides to overrule him and throw it out.  Which they don't seem inclined to do.  So we as a people are now subjected to being treated as the enemy of our government.  I really do want things to go back to the way they were when I was growing up.  I guess that is a pipe dream though.

So what can we do to protect ourselves?  The government is not going to come to our rescue no matter how much they seem to be trying to.  What kind of things could happen to the ordinary hard working American?

1.  You could lose your job.  Unemployment is much higher than what they are reporting because when people reach the end of their unemployment benefits they fall off the charts.  Also many people take jobs paying minimum wage that can't really keep their family fed properly or even pay their mortgages much less pay utilities or credit card bills.  The only people who are guaranteed their jobs are in elected offices and even they are only there as long as we don't kick them out on the next election cycle.

2.  Our country could face more natural disasters.  Just watching the news you see on a constant basis all of the natural disasters that can face any of us at any time.  The devastating tornados, floods, droughts, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, blizzards, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions are happening on massive scales in the past few years.  It sometimes affects large regions of the world and sometimes is more local.

3.  Wars are being fought all over the world, sometimes they are civil wars, sometimes regional, but we are not far off from the possiblity of a world war if things don't improve with some of the countries such as Iran, North Korea, China, and all of the Islamic nations turmoils.  We are only possibly hours or days away at all times of an incident between Iran and Israel setting off a world wide crisis.

4.  Our country is very close to an ecomomic collapse which will be many times worse than the Great Depression!  We are a very spoiled country because we have enjoyed one of the strongest economies in the world in the last 70 years.  We have an instant gratification society that is lazy and  has lost our way as far as being able to sustain our lifestyle without credit and debt. 

5. Agriculture is no longer maintained in this country to feed our people.  We import over 1/3 of our food.  Big Agra has taken over most of the small local farms and the big companies like Monsanto have genetically modified our food until it is no longer nutritious or even safe for us to consume in many cases.  We fill our bellies but we are ingesting pesticides, herbicides, and Lord only knows what else in our everday foods that are grown in this country.  The government is manipulated by these big companies through the Lobby system to destroy our food supply.  They now use much of our farmlands in the U.S. to grow corn for fuel for our cars.  Their are great subsidies paid to farmers to grow things that are not food such as tobacco, corn for fuel, and also some farmers are paid not to grow any food because they don't want to lower the price of certain foods.  Organic foods are being outlawed little be little.  They are now calling foods that are genetically modified "organic" which are full of poisons.

6. Our water supply is in very poor condition.  We dump chemicals by the truck loads into our water and call it safe to drink.  Some of these chemicals are necessary and useful to keep us from getting many cysts, parasites, and diseases that we could get by using the system we use of centralizing our water and then sending it through thousands of miles of dirty pipes to end up at your home and coming out your faucets.  Did you know that they also put the by products of the nuclear plants that they cannot legally get rid of in any other way into your water?  Yes, they put Flouride into your water that they cannot afford to dispose of in any other way because it is against EPA regulations to dump it in landfills because it is one of the most toxic substances on Earth.  Read up on it and I think you will be surprised.

7.  Cosmic events are also something to plan for.  What if our Sun throws a temper tantrum and send out another solar flare like the Carrington Event that happened in the 1800's?  Our scientists are saying that our sun is going into one of the most active periods in the past 100 years.   The event is called a Coronal Mass Ejection or CME for short.  It would cause the same problems that an EMP would cause.  Mass failure of the electrical grid and electronics will also become useless for the most part.  Our country has been warned and our Congress decided in their great wisdom to harden our military nuclear facilities and some other Government systems to the effects of a CME/EMP problem but the infrastructure of the U.S. is totally vunerable. Which means we will be thrown back into the 1800 lifestyle without the knowledge or ability to survive because we no longer have the knowledge or local resources to do so.  No local farms, water wells, septic systems, or law enforcement ability with no communication or transportation.  No trucking to deliver food from California to your grocery store.  How many items that are in your grocery store are from the local area or even your state? 5 or 6 percent would be my guess.  How many people live in apartments and couldn't even grow their own food even if they wanted to?

8.  Pandemics are a likely scenario sometime in our future.  Influensa killed 4 people in my family in the late 1800's and it is still around and loves to mutate so it can create a major problem each year.
100,000's of people have died from the lowly flu and that is only one disease.  There are many other natural diseases around the world which could be brought into America by people who could be called "Typhoid Mary's".  Either by accident or on purpose.  Aids was brought to this country by accident by a single person and then became an epidemic.  Hepatitis has many forms, and has infected many people either through dirty needles in the illicit drug culture or by being in professions like health care or working in the Fire Department dealing with bloody injuries, or by funeral homes who deal with blood everyday from taking care of our deceased.   I have someone in my family who got Hepatitis C by working in a hospital operating room dealing with scalpels, needles and bloody sponges.  We don't realize how vunerable we are to disease today.  They give a few innoculations against some diseases but since we have few cases of Cholera, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Polio and so on now we have a whole generation of people who are able to contract these diseases and spread them rapidly before we know what is happening.

9.  Breakdown of law and order which many called "Without Rule of Law" or WROL.  If any of the above happen law and order will fall apart almost immediately.  The local law enforcement will be almost helpless to stop it.  There is only 1 law enforcement officer per 1000's of people in big cities and not a lot better in small towns.  If food was not being delivered to your grocery store any longer for any reason the shelves would be empty in days or even in hours.  People who are not prepared will panic and riot and loot then they would turn to anyone that they knew had food.  People will not tolerate hunger well in this country.  Remember we are spoiled by having 3 meals a day and snacks and junk food when ever we want it.  That is evidenced by all the fast food restaraunts and aisles of snacks and non nutritive foods in our stores.  Cigarette smokers will not be able to buy their cigarettes and alcoholics won't be able to buy their booze.  People addicted to legal drugs won't be able to get their prescriptions, people with chronic illnesses won't be able to get their life sustaining medicines.

10.  Any or all of the above or any combination could lead to the death or major problems for you and your loved ones.  I for one can not stand the thought of my grandchildren starving to death.  How can any of us imagine living in a country where people all around you are starving or dying from diseases that we have not been used to seeing.  What if there was no water coming out of the faucets anymore?  What if the grocery stores were empty and would be for the foreseeable future?  What if we were being attacked by a foreign enemy and we were told to remain in our homes for our own protection because martial law was declared.  What if there was a nuclear accident because of the aging nuclear plants and the possibility of a terrorist attack on them.  I just would like to be prepared for anything that I can prepare for and then depend on God for the rest of what I can't prepare for......

Think about what you would do, what you could handle, how you would feel if your child or grandchild was begging for food and your cupboards were empty because you never kept more than 2 weeks worth of food in them.  What would you do if a terrorist poisoned our water supply?  Or if a CME came along and shut down the pumping stations for the water and sewerage.  We might be able to survive the loss of electricity with a little inconvenience for awhile but what about the water?  I for one want to survive but more specifically I want my grandchildren to survive so I try to prepare.  We don't have the money to do a huge amount with the expensive freeze dried foods but we have done what we can by canning our foods when we can grow them, buy them on sale or are given game that has been hunted.  We try to have a few weeks supply of water set aside to help until we can collect rainwater or dig a well.  We try to have a garden, medical supplies for injury or illness, we have tried to learn how to do a lot of things the old fashioned way like learning how to make homemade bread, cheese, yogurt, and how to cook on an old fashioned fire or woodstove.  Knowledge is priceless, and it doesn't cost anything.  Go to a library, research on the internet, and ask people who know how to do things the old fashioned way to teach you.  Learn to knit or crochet, cook from scratch, hunt, to preserve your food, garden, sew, and anything else you think my be useful. 

I think that you need to prioritize your preparations and do it logically to get the most prepared you can before it is too late and you are living on your preps.  I will write my next article on doing it logically and as inexpensively as possible. 

I will leave you here with this thought, "Every journey begins with the first step, but you will never get to your goal without taking that first step!"