What We See And Believe Is Not Always Reality, by Old Bobbert

Let’s talk about reality and what we see and believe, but just for a moment imagine this scenario. Visualize the following presumably safe evening event at your home one day soon.

A Grateful Situation…Somewhere

You are reflecting on the terrible situation in (name any major city, state, or area) and you are very grateful that your home area is not severely affected by that power grid outage somewhere else in the country, specifically about 1,000 miles away from your home. Your area power system is functioning just fine. You’re feeling really bad for that area as you watch the video news after a pleasant evening meal. Your older children are teasing one another while working on homework. Your younger children are busily falling asleep watching television. As you see the videos of hospitals not accepting additional patients and wrecker trucks pulling cars off of the highways where they were abandoned when their fuel tanks went dry, you will be grateful! Remember that there will always be trials!

You are safe and you are an experienced and confident prepper. You helped to organize last year’s preparedness expo, sponsored by the power company and the city water division. Your name was on the brochure as an area preparedness leader. Your family feels safe, well prepared, and well protected. Dad and Mom know their stuff and are fully prepared if the power grid down event ever visits your area.

It’s Not Fiction

This is not fiction. This is real every day somewhere. This could easily be your nearly exact situation, someday, perhaps very soon.

These are the true facts, and these news items are actually happening over there, back in that other area, far from your home. So how do I know that you may be next? Remember that there will always be trials! I know because I have been where “they are” and where you are on multiple occasions in my seventy-six years. I have been that “next” guy.

It’s not funny! We have been through flood and storms, tornadoes, sicknesses, and family troubles. I spent 50+ years fighting an addiction to tobacco. It killed me for a few minutes on Christmas Eve 2005. I have a treatable but not ever curable condition, COPD, and I will not surrender.

Trials of Pre-Teen, Teen, and Soldier Years

As a pre-teen in suburban Cincinnati, during an August day in a 1952 summer rain storm, I watched a flash flood roll up the new sod in our backyard. Our home was on a sloping side street. We had no idea that there was a creek uphill from us and just two blocks away. We could not have ever imagined that a lazy construction crew had dumped left over junk from their job site next to that creek. It was not funny! Remember that there will always be trials!

Just a few years later, as a 17 year old soldier stationed in Hawaii, I personally saw the immediate after effects of just a small tsunami wave at the beach in Hilo on the Big Island. The beach was just completely gone. For miles there were only rocks and trash. That was the fall of 1958. The following two years, 1959 and again in 1960, we saw the eruption of Kilauea Iki volcano and hundreds of families became homeless. It was not funny! Remember that there will always be trials!

Trials in Career

Then in 1967, I watched as the entire cake-mix division of Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati got ready to send home 640 plant workers, if one special and vital ingredient didn’t arrive by tanker ruck within 25 minutes. Yes, I was the clerk who had forgotten to order the P & G Cleveland plant to send an emulsified oil shipment to the Cincinnati plant. I didn’t put a check mark in the box on an order form. One missing, lonely, little pencil scratch nearly caused a lay off of hundreds of workers. Just one little missing pencil check mark! We did get it in time!

Tornadoes

Just a few years later, a summer tornado hit a neighborhood in Harrison, Ohio. Our area was referred to as being “tornado alley”. We had friends living there, and we went to see the damage afterwards. Their home was gone, all of it, gone, nothing remained. It was just gone! We were interested in that particular storm because we had stood in our yard and watched the dark funnel cloud pass over our home. We prayed for safety and were grateful that the storm did not hit us. Instead, it devastated our friend’s life. It was not pretty!

These events were unexpected and terrible.They happen every day somewhere. They are seldom expected. These events are someone’s personal SHTF, every day, somewhere. I was there. I saw it happen!

In 1987 one of our sons and his new bride, happy good people, were away on their honeymoon when their new home was hit by another tornado. We waited until they returned home to tell them of the damage.

Again in 1992, after we had moved way from the terrible extremes of weather in Ohio to a peaceful quiet little western town far, far from the summer storms. My sweet wife was at work one afternoon and looked out of a window, remarking to her coworkers, “Come and look at the tornado funnel cloud.” They laughed at her saying there are no tornadoes here and went to the window. Then they saw a very real dark and frightening tornado funnel cloud flying across the town. They stopped laughing! It was not funny! That very evening there was a local newspaper headline about the tornado twister in Utah.

Severe Winds

Then finally it happened again, right here in our backyard. We have a wind turbine ^[1] on a thirty foot pole down the slope just a little from our solar panel array.

We installed that turbine in spite of being told by the weather experts that there would not be enough winds where we live to ever make it work correctly. I had seen good windage in our yard. I did it anyway.

We were sure they were wrong. While we were away from home for a few hours, a freaky wind storm hit our neighborhood and destroyed our wind turbine. The turbine itself was torn from the pole and embedded itself in the ground about 10 feet from the pole. We had 5-foot blades and one was still on the turbine. Another had been thrown about 200 feet away into the empty building lot next to our home. No one had seen or heard anything amiss. Nothing.

The third blade had been ripped from the turbine and then was first thrown over our home, then over the street, and then over our neighbor’s home and embedded itself in their backyard. Again, this was not funny! Remember that there will always be trials!

Trials of a Well-Prepared Family

All of these events happened to a well prepared family, mine! We were extremely fortunate that no one was injured. The property damage was enough to fully justify our prepper stages of regular re-planing and re-stocking. We came through all of these events with a good spirit and gave thanks to God for love and mercy.

Okay, now let’s go back to our essay’s beginning. You are safe and you are an experienced and confident prepper. We went through all of these terrible events.

Our Responses

We should have been devastated by at least one of them, especially the breakup of the wind turbine event. But we were not!

What we were was:

1. Strong in our trust in God’s protection,
2. Grateful for a very good property insurance policy, and
3. Thankful for a very knowledgeable friend in the alt power business. As required by the policy we asked him for a documented estimate of the replacement of the entire turbine system. He did and the insurance policy paid that full amount, minus a 10% deductible. My friend also taught us what to buy, where to buy it, and who to hire to install it. And that was fun!

Where’s the Lesson?

Okay, where is the “better prepper” lesson for all of us in this chronicle of sad reality soap opera events? The lesson is simple and is free and will always make your prepper efforts less burdensome and more of a good thing to do and teach. That’s true, provided we commit it to our memory.

“Bad things do happen to well prepared, good people, and they can recover and move on with a good attitude.”

How To Recover and Move On

Because they are well prepared, they can more easily recover, rebuild, replace, and redo their lives. Because they are “the good people” (and that is never a denominational status), God will enable them to find joy in overcoming difficulties. They will be enabled to see His handiwork in their lives, and He will enable them to be strong in the positive principles that guide their lives.

Searching Internet’s Unusual American Weather Events

Now, let’s go to the Google search results for “2017 UNUSUAL AMERICAN WEATHER EVENTS”. There we find these sub topics. (O yes, you’re gonna love this list.)

1. The Weirdest Weather Events of 2017 So Far -The Weather Channel Page 6 of 6
2. 7 Odd Weather Events Happening in Late July | The Weather Channel
3. 6 Out-Of-Season Weather Events We Have Seen This Spring | The
4. 6 Strange Things We’ve Seen in the Past Week’s Weather | The …
5. Natural disasters and extreme weather | World news | The Guardian
6. 4 weather events in history mistaken for the apocalypse
7. Expect more “xtreme and unusual” weather in 2017: report – National … and now finally ….the big one for today…
8. From Old Bobbert directly to and especially for you:And there seems to be more than enough weather information to make you just a little nervous, especially my “totally” favorite of today’s suggested reports, #4. Did someone say that the apocalypse, spelled as SHTF, will most likely begin Monday (tomorrow as I’m writing this) afternoon, right after the solar eclipse passes over Charleston, SC. at 2:47 P.M. exactly?

More Interesting Internet Searches

Here are a few more of the Google possible other interesting websites:

about the main topic searched “WEIRD USA WEATHER”:

• strange weather June 2017
• weather phenomenon 2017
• strange weather movie
• why is the weather so weird
• world weather news headlines

Good luck prepping for the certainly uncertain weather.

SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

This has been another entry for Round 72 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest ^[2]. The nearly $11,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

1. A $3000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public.
2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value),
3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses ^[3], excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper ^[4]. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
5. An infrared sensor/imaging camouflage shelter from Snakebite Tactical in Eureka, Montana (A $350+ value),
6. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees ^[5] in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
7. A $250 gift certificate good for any product ^[6] from Sunflower Ammo,
8. Two cases of Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value).

Second Prize:

1. A Model 175 Series Solar Generator provided by Quantum Harvest LLC (a $439 value),
2. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 ^[7] Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
3. A gift certificate for any two or three-day class from Max Velocity Tactical (a $600 value),
4. A transferable certificate for a two-day Ultimate Bug Out Course from Florida Firearms Training (a $400 value),
5. A Trekker IV™ Four-Person Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $250 value),
6. A $200 gift certificate good towards any books published by PrepperPress.com,
7. A pre-selected assortment of military surplus gear from CJL Enterprize (a $300 value),
8. RepackBox is providing a $300 gift certificate to their site, and
9. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses ^[8].

Third Prize:

1. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of ^[9] Directive 21 (a $275 value),
2. A custom made Sage Grouse model utility/field knife from custom knife-maker Jon Kelly Designs, of Eureka, Montana,
3. A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
4. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
5. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections ^[10], a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
6. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances,
7. Montie Gear is donating a Y-Shot Slingshot and a $125 Montie gear Gift certificate.,
8. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord ^[11] (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value), and

Round 72 ends on September 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail ^[12] us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.