(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.)
During winter, even the U.S. Embassy monitored the grid closely. The possibility of a complete system failure was taken seriously enough that commercial flights were placed on twenty-four-hour standby for potential evacuation of official personnel. We were nongovernmental residents. Those plans did not include us. Our planning had to be personal.
Cold changed how time felt. Days stretched and compressed unpredictably. Waiting became a skill. Movement slowed, not from laziness, but from necessity. Mistakes in cold were costly. Dropping something, misjudging exposure, forgetting a step could mean numb fingers, wasted effort, or worse.
At night, the building sounded different. Pipes knocked and shifted. Wind pressed against the structure. When the power was out, darkness was complete in a way I had not experienced before. There were no ambient glows, no distant streetlights filtering in. You adjusted your movements carefully, counting steps, memorizing layouts.
Cold also reached into transportation. Fuel was rationed, and we carried ration cards that represented access more than ownership. Much of the fuel supply moved through black-market channels, quietly and informally. Even with fuel secured, access was never guaranteed. Gas lines were long, unpredictable, and often fruitless. You could wait for hours only to be told nothing was coming that day.
You learned to plan movement around availability rather than need. Errands were consolidated. Trips were delayed. Distance became something you negotiated rather than assumed. In extreme cold, some fuel thickened and gelled. Engines that had run the day before refused to start the next morning. Vehicles parked outside simply failed, silently and completely, as if opting out.
Our car could not be left outdoors. It had to be stored in a local garage equipped with radiators heated by the Central Mongolian power system. Those radiators were mounted directly in front of the engine grill, warming the compartment just enough to keep the fuel usable. Without that heat source, the vehicle was useless.
Fuel alone did not equal mobility. Mobility depended on heat, power, timing, and access. Each depended on something else. When one failed, the entire chain failed with it. Cold forced you to see systems as interconnected rather than independent. Heat depended on power. Power depended on fuel. Fuel depended on access. Access depended on information. Information depended on people.
When any part of that chain weakened, life narrowed.
Winter also narrowed social life. People stayed home more. Conversations shortened. Movement slowed. Scarcity and cold together encouraged efficiency, not friendliness. You learned to observe quietly, to listen more than speak, to move with purpose. Living through those winters taught me that preparedness cannot be based on average conditions. Systems are not tested by normal days. They are tested by sustained pressure. Cold applies that pressure patiently, without drama, until weaknesses reveal themselves.
By the time spring hinted at returning, the lessons were already ingrained. We moved differently. Planned differently. Assumed differently.
The cold did not feel like an enemy by then. It felt like a teacher, one that offered no encouragement and no forgiveness, only consequences.
Information did not fail all at once. It thinned. There were newspapers. There were television broadcasts. They existed, but they did not speak to the realities that shaped our days. They did not tell us whether food had arrived at the market, whether fuel would be available, whether power was likely to fail, or whether it was wiser to stay home. They carried narratives, not guidance. For anything practical, they were noise.
We relied instead on a small, portable world-band (shortwave) radio. It sat on a shelf in our kitchen, its presence unremarkable until you realized how often it was consulted. Through it, the wider world arrived intact and uninterrupted.
I remember standing there one evening, listening to Voice of America describe O.J. Simpson driving slowly down a Los Angeles freeway in a white Bronco. The announcer’s voice was calm, measured, almost intimate, narrating a spectacle unfolding thousands of miles away. The report was detailed. Continuous. Easy to follow.
At the same moment, we were managing cold, power uncertainty, and scarcity. The contrast was unsettling. Global events were accessible in real time. Local, actionable information was not.
What mattered most to us rarely came through official channels. It came through people. One of the Mongolian parishioners was a ham radio operator. His equipment was modest, but his reach was not. Through him, fragments of situational awareness arrived. A shipment delayed. A market quiet. Fuel harder to find this week. Power was unstable in certain districts. Nothing comprehensive. Nothing certain. But enough to adjust plans.
Most information traveled by word of mouth. Conversations in passing. Observations shared quietly. Comments offered without emphasis. Often, it traveled through our wives, who were more relationally connected and better positioned to hear what was changing before it became obvious.
Information did not arrive on a schedule. You learned to listen carefully, to ask questions without drawing attention, and to verify what you heard through more than one source whenever possible. Rumors were common. Some were wrong. Some were exaggerated. Some were accurate but incomplete. Learning to tell the difference became a skill. When credible information surfaced, you acted. Delay was costly. Hesitation often meant missing whatever narrow window of opportunity existed.
Phones were assumed to be monitored. Faxes were assumed to be read. You spoke carefully over systems you did not physically control. You learned to separate what could be said from what should not be transmitted at all. As scarcity persisted, behavior shifted. At first, the changes were subtle. Items left unattended disappeared. Doors were closed more often. Conversations shortened. People watched each other more carefully. Trust became selective.
Crime did not arrive dramatically. It arrived as opportunity. One afternoon, my daughters and I were lightly assaulted on the street after being mistaken for Russians. The encounter was brief and disorganized, more opportunistic than violent, but it clarified something immediately. Under strain, people are not seen as individuals. They are seen as symbols, or as resources, or as risks.
Later, our home was burglarized. The loss amounted to roughly ten thousand U.S. dollars, a significant sum under the circumstances. There was no confrontation. No sound that announced what was happening. Just the realization afterward that someone had entered our space and taken what mattered to them. The aftermath was quieter than the event itself. We did not expect recovery. We did not expect intervention. We adjusted. What was visible became concealed. What was predictable became irregular. Routines changed. Safes were installed. Not as an act of fear, but of recognition. Security became personal.
Scarcity does not create chaos so much as it erodes restraint. It narrows choices. It pushes people toward decisions they might not have considered under stable conditions. Preparedness, I learned, includes the ability to protect what you have without escalating tension or drawing attention. You do not announce resilience. You practice it quietly.
The combination of limited information, rising scarcity, and altered behavior reshaped daily life. You moved differently. You listened more. You planned with fewer assumptions. The world felt less transparent, not because it had changed entirely, but because the systems that once explained it no longer applied.
Living under those conditions taught me that information is only as useful as its context, and security is only as strong as your willingness to adapt before necessity forces your hand.
The most unsettling failures were not physical. They were administrative. Loss does not always arrive as theft or violence. Sometimes it arrives as erasure. In Mongolia, I learned that identity is not something you simply possess. It is something that exists only as long as systems continue to recognize it. When those systems strain, identity becomes fragile in ways most people never consider.
There was a widespread belief that government institutions would take care of citizens, and that records were kept somewhere safe. That documentation could always be retrieved if needed. On paper, this belief made sense. In practice, it unraveled quietly.
Offices closed without notice. Administrators changed. Records were misplaced or delayed. Sometimes they simply could not be found. Nothing dramatic had to happen for access to disappear. It vanished through routine dysfunction. We felt this vulnerability personally. Our presence in the country depended on paperwork that could be questioned, ignored, or revoked without confrontation. When our initial work became legally ambiguous, our standing became uncertain almost overnight. The risk was not arrest or spectacle. It was administrative silence.
There were no explanations. No timelines. No clear path forward. Just waiting. When I initiated the medical project and assumed a formal role as a medical projects director, legitimacy returned abruptly. Not because we had changed, but because our documentation had. Access was restored, and doors opened. Conversations shifted tone. The contrast was sobering.
Identity, I learned, is leverage. Records are power. Without them, you exist only at the mercy of whoever controls access on any given day. This fragility extended beyond visas and work permits. It affected healthcare, property claims, financial access, and movement. If you could not prove who you were or what you were entitled to, you waited. Sometimes indefinitely.
People adapted by relying less on institutions and more on personal networks. Copies were shared. Information was duplicated. Paper mattered. Redundancy mattered. Physical possession mattered.
Phones were assumed to be monitored. Faxes were assumed to be read. You learned to be deliberate about what you transmitted and cautious about what you retained. Control over your own information became a form of quiet security.
What struck me most was how early records failed compared to other systems. Food scarcity was visible. Power outages were obvious. Fuel shortages were tangible. But documentation failed silently. Access disappeared without alarms. Identity eroded without confrontation. When we eventually left Mongolia, I carried these lessons with me, though I did not yet know how deeply they would shape my thinking.
Returning to the United States was disorienting in ways that I did not expect. The infrastructure felt invisible again. Power came on reliably. Fuel was abundant. Stores were stocked. Information flowed constantly. Institutions felt permanent.
And yet, having lived elsewhere, I could see the assumptions beneath it all. I noticed how much confidence rests on continuity. How deeply we trust systems we rarely examine. How much certainty we borrow from uninterrupted function. We assume records will always be available because they always have been. We assume access will exist because it always has. We assume recovery will be possible because it always has been.
Living in Mongolia taught me that these assumptions are luxuries. Preparedness, as I came to understand it, is not about anticipating a specific crisis. It is about acknowledging that systems fail quietly and often irreversibly in the moment. It is about reducing dependence on assumptions and increasing control over what truly matters. In essence:
- Food, I learned, is not about preference. It is about availability and competence.
- Cold is not seasonal. It is structural.
- Mobility is conditional.
- Information without context misleads.
- Security is personal.
- Identity is fragile.
None of these lessons arrived dramatically. They accumulated slowly, shaped by cold mornings, empty markets, long lines, quiet losses, and small acts of adaptation. They settled into habit before they ever became philosophy.
Preparedness is not fear-driven. Fear is reactive. Preparedness is sober. It is the discipline of taking responsibility before urgency forces your hand. The people who endured best were not the most equipped or the most informed. They were the most adaptable. They understood their environment, accepted its limits, and adjusted accordingly. They did not expect rescue. They did not wait for permission. They built resilience quietly, inside the margins of daily life. That model has stayed with me.
Preparedness is not a lifestyle or an identity. It is a posture. A way of engaging the world that values competence over comfort and foresight over convenience. It is choosing to know how to feed your family when supply changes. How to stay warm when power falters. How to stay informed when official channels fall silent. How to protect what you have when scarcity alters behavior. And how to preserve proof of who you are when systems forget.
None of this requires fear. It requires honesty. We do not prepare because we expect collapse. We prepare because continuity is never guaranteed, and responsibility belongs to those who wish to endure with dignity.
Mongolia taught me that lesson long before I had language for it. It remains relevant not because conditions there were extreme, but because they were real. Preparedness is not about living in anticipation of disaster. It is about living without illusions.
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Disclaimer: This essay reflects the author’s personal experiences and observations while living in Mongolia in the early 1990s. The author currently owns and operates a company specializing in data security and the protection of sensitive information [1]. The conditions described are contextual and historical and are presented for narrative purposes rather than instruction or prediction.