A few years ago, there was a show on cable television called Doomsday Preppers. I saw a few episodes of it a long time after release, and a basic episode usually focused on one or two families and their retreat setups and the scenarios they were preparing for. As expected, the show was mostly composed of stereotypes and odd or eccentric examples, not to mention the obvious glaring OPSEC issues for anybody who would dare to appear on television. But one aspect seemed true-to-life: Each family the producers interviewed seemed to be preparing for something specific. They would say, “I’m preparing for an EMP” or, “I’m preparing for economic and social collapse.” Every example was related to the expectation of a specific large-scale crisis. Perhaps the smallest example was a person preparing to escape from a volcanic eruption.
Maybe it is shocking to say this, but I believe that real life is different from television! I am unsure of the extent to which television and novels have influenced people’s expectations, but I am sure these forms of entertainment have had an effect. They have certainly introduced the concept of “preppers” to a new generation. What is the purpose of a prepared lifestyle? What threats are likely? Can you overcome those threats? How do you prepare for more than one thing at a time?
I grew up at the close of the 20th Century. The Cold War had ended, although vestiges of it remained. Cell phones changed from something bricklike to something truly portable. Cars lost their carburetors and gained fuel injection and circuit boards. The internet changed everything. Big technological changes and big social changes are normal, and the rate at which we experience those changes has been increasing. I have concluded that crisis is normal as well, and possibly an increase in the number and frequency of those crises. Here is an example timeline of my own last 30 years, to put things in perspective:
1995-1997 – Personal / family health and employment crisis
1998-2000 – Y2K computer bug potential crisis
2001 – 9/11 and social changes
2002-2003 – SARS potential crisis
2004-2005 – H1N1 flu potential crisis
2005-2006 – Major local weather-related problems
2008 – Swine flu potential crisis
2008-2010 – Economic / employment issues, financial crisis
2012-2013 – Personal / family crisis
2014-2015 – Ebola potential crisis
2019 – Personal / family / employment crisis
2020-2021 – COVID crisis, social changes, civil unrest
2021 – Personal / family crisis
2022 – Personal / family / medical crisis, employment crisis
And, new for 2024 – Family / medical crisis? Civil or political unrest?
Looking at my own event timeline, there are only a handful of years of relative peace and prosperity out of the last three decades. And I am pretty sure I may have forgotten a couple of scary events in there somewhere. Most years seem to involve an anticipated or actual crisis, either national or personal. No wonder I am tired of it! I am sure that if you made a timeline of your own life, it would look similar to mine. Nobody gets out of life unscathed, because crisis is the rule rather than the exception.
Looking at my own timeline of events, I begin to ask some important questions. For example, does being prepared help me to survive some anticipated cataclysm? If the cataclysm is survivable, is there a point to surviving it? Take nuclear war as an example – if everything is irradiated and messed up, is surviving merely a miserable attempt to put off one’s inevitable death as long as possible? Or, if you are a Christian, is there a point to surviving the Apocalypse or Tribulation described in the Book of Revelation? After all, isn’t the life after this life supposed to be better? Even if I assume that there will be a normal world and normal life after a major cataclysm, can I adequately plan for a specific event to the exclusion of others, or is a more general (and balanced) preparedness stance a better plan? What happens if I take that balanced, general approach and I end up blindsided by something very specific instead?
Overall, I have chosen to embrace the balanced approach. I own some items that are event-specific – for example, a Geiger counter and wearable dosimeters. But the majority of my preparedness is generic. You could consider the prepared lifestyle as “living in depth.” How do you accomplish this? First, lists. Lots of lists. People who have gone before us and lived this lifestyle have words of wisdom, left for us in books, blogs, and videos. Everybody has a list, and you can study them. You can get inspiration from people who have survived events in other nations – survivors of Soviet-era Eastern nations, people who endured the collapse in Argentina, etc. Since human nature is common, human events have a pattern.
We can also get advice from ancient sources, and even the Bible has helpful hints. For example, in Ecclesiastes 11:2, King Solomon reminds us to “give a portion into seven or even eight, for who knows what evil may come upon the land?” That is sound advice for a diversified investment portfolio, but also for food production and storage.
Learning from others is essential, but more importantly you learn to survive crisis by going through crises of your own. Rahm Emmanuel, former Chicago mayor (and overall leftist, totalitarian, New World Order bad guy) is famous for saying, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that is, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” That statement seems to be a variation of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s saying, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” The power structure uses these concepts to gain more power and manipulate people. We can use that concept, but use it for the beneficial goal of strengthening ourselves and those around us.
Crises come in small and large doses, and we can learn equally from each. Here are a couple of examples of lessons I learned in crisis. First, a small crisis: In 2019, I lost my job twice. The first time, I was able to transition to another job less than a month later, as I had already been looking for different work. But the second time was a complete surprise. I was faced with the choice of continuing to work in the field I had been in, or transition to something new. How would I pay the bills during that transition time? Would the result of that transition be guaranteed? Luckily, I had savings, I owned my home and cars, and I had a garden. I took unemployment benefits, which were more than enough (for most people, they are insufficient). I also spent some time doing car work for friends and acquaintances. Actually, I did those things for free, but I learned that if I had needed the cash, it would have been a source of extra funds. A few hundred dollars extra each month can make the difference between paying the bills or doing without.
This crisis taught me that employment is often uncertain. Maintaining contacts, and having several ideas for how to pivot to something different can make a person more resilient. An employment crisis reinforced the importance of things I was already doing – saving money, storing food, living beneath my means, avoiding debt, and possessing the means of production. It also reinforced the necessity of acting quickly when something happens, rather than waiting to make a decision. When I was laid off, I went to the labor office that same day and filed my paperwork. I started looking for work that day, and before that week ended I had committed to beginning a training program for a different job. As there were only a couple of spots left in the program, if I had waited it could have cost me two months. As the saying goes – to the swift go the spoils.
While you can learn a lot from a small crisis, a big crisis (or the potential for a big crisis) has even bigger lessons to teach. I recall the 1990s very well, as my parents prepared for the possibility of the “Y2K” computer problem. Would everything stop running on New Year’s Day, 2000? Would there be any food or transportation? Heavy questions when you’re still a kid. But I learned about storing canned food, putting beans and rice together to make a complete protein, how to put bleach in water barrels to keep them fresh. And most importantly – to store what you eat, and eat what you store.
There are some things I do not bother to buy – like canned tuna or salmon, or canned corned beef. After nearly a decade of those things sitting on the shelf, a lot of it became cat food. Yes, I could eat it in a truly hungry time, but why buy something for your stored food supply that tastes too nasty for everyday use? I also learned that some brands of food store better than others, and that a “bargain” brand that doesn’t last on the shelf is no bargain at all. I learned that it is essential to test every product that you store, and hopefully have years of experience using it and observing the results before you have to rely on it. Now is better than later.
Beyond food storage, I learned some things about weapons and security. Specifically, things that maybe my parents overlooked at the time. We lived on the edge of a city. The more I thought about the glass windows in our house, wood frame construction, the nearness of neighbors of dubious quality, and the size of the local population, I concluded that preparedness in an urban area is difficult to impossible, and that preparedness without significant firepower would not be particularly successful. I also came to the thought that life without any kind of electricity would be extremely difficult. I learned these lessons early in life, so the experience shaped how I began my own preparedness efforts in my teens and 20s. I focused on filling in the gaps I had observed growing up, even before I started reading books on preparedness and survival. You can gain a lot from long-term observation and common sense.
You can also learn from small and large things that did not happen, or that were not as bad as they could have been. For example, I had a little incident loading a tractor on a trailer on a frosty morning. It lost traction on the ramp that was only slightly slick, and slipped to the side. I came within a hair’s breadth of flipping over – an incident that could have seriously injured or killed me. I managed to remove the tractor with no damage, and I put sand on the trailer and completed the loading process. The lesson? Try not to do difficult stuff by yourself, and do not get complacent or hurried about normal tasks. Little things can kill you!
So, what do these examples mean for you? “Expect the unexpected” is not a cliché! Danger lurks around every corner. The only things that should truly be unexpected are times of peace and plenty, as those are infrequent. A lot of smaller crises can take you out just as surely as a big crisis, like a pandemic or an EMP….and while the big ones may not happen, the small ones are guaranteed. Approach each problem that happens to you with a notebook in your hand, ready to learn. Life’s classroom is tough, but the hard knocks you get today make tomorrow easier.