Sure we’ve watched the new television series Revolution, with their heroine and her post-SHTF world amazingly perfectly coifed hair-do. The series based loosely on an end of the world scenario built around a “Sudden” abrupt change” a la the Dies the Fire
novel series [by S.M. Stirling]. All power suddenly goes poof, and nothing electrical works, society collapses, and we’re all back to the age of bow and arrow, knives, and, weirdly deviating from the Dies The Fire premise, good old black powder front-stuffing rifles. Militias, which are all always portrayed by Hollywood, as evil, dictatorial, and brutally repressive, run the country, which has broken down into “serfdoms” in a giant feudal system.
On the other hand, there’s the somewhat realistic TEOTWAWKI scenarios that revolve around, pick one: A comet, asteroid or other huge space body smashing into the earth, an EMP or thermonuclear exchange, explosively fast spreading viral pandemic, or some mysterious alien military force attacking the planet, or the simple world economic currency meltdown.
These all propose, and assume, a sudden, rapid world-wide calamity rendering large cities places of mob rule, fire-ravaged, food-looted wastelands of desolation, forcing us who’ve prepared ourselves and our homes, into hunkering down to await hordes of refugees ascending upon our rural retreats like a Biblical plaque of locusts. The local law enforcement authorities, and maybe the federal military and Homeland Security goons absent, or forcing us to live under an imposed version “Martial Law”.
What if the end of the world as we know it, arrives like the proverbial frog getting slowly boil to death in a pot of water-scenario? What if we see the currency, over a period of weeks, months, or even years, slowly erode, inflate, deflate, or simply disappear, and be replaced once, twice, or three or more times, with other currencies, like in post-WWI Weimar Germany?
What if, God help us, Obama gets re-elected, maybe by hook, or by crook, and our Constitutional rights are taken away one by one, or all at once. Cities, counties, and/or individual states can’t maintain their basic road, public work, water, electricity ,or other technology that powers our infrastructure. Things stop working, break down, employees quit because they don’t get paychecks anymore, or their paydays shrink, and they all decide, one by one, to go home, plant a garden, fish or otherwise feed themselves and their families by themselves.
What if, and just maybe, things take a slow spiral regardless of the scenario, down into an abyss of one of the afore-mentioned scenarios, and not an abrupt calendar-marks-the-day event?
I believe that we can carefully observe just what is happening in the EU countries, and draw information, knowledge, and even hope from what those countries are going through right now, to guide our preparations on an adjustable basis.
We need to scour news sources for Intel, and plan for contingencies here in America, as they inevitably follow, in some ways closely, in some ways not very similarly, what is occurring in Greece, Spain, Italy and the Irish Republic.
I see in the United States, a pattern of behavior, brought, and almost bred into our culture some differences that set ourselves apart from what may occur in Europe and other second and third world countries. However better organized, culturally superior, or due to the same spirit (2)
that allowed America to gear up, build up, and suit up, and win WWII, we stand a way better chance of applying knowledge from observing the inevitable mistakes, or tragic errors the EU governments make to keep our country from the same fate.
Say for instance, Romney gets elected President, the economy stops the slide down hill, some manufacturing coughs to a slow forward push, the dollar is stabilized by reverting partially, or by a full reversion, to the gold standard, and American finds some small reserve of braking power in our countries slide towards that economic “cliff.“
Further speculation might be that the economy continues plodding along, joblessness slows,
gas and food prices fluctuate, but still continue to plummet. States and municipalities see a worsening of their infrastructures, and power supplies fluctuate, becoming more and more unreliable. Some folks see the water quality of public utilities eroding, and many drill wells on their property and yards. Chickens and goats start becoming the standard homesteads’ yard fixtures. Maybe, we all start turning our yards into gardens, relying less and less on the supermarkets and grocery stores. The dollar continues to lose its value, and barter, and hard currency, silver, and to some extent gold, become the mode of payment.
We all stop the annual huge Christmas gift buying sprees, and even birthdays and anniversary gift-giving becomes a thing of the past. The police departments, and sheriffs offices responses become sporadic, and people start going “heeled”, and taking a more pro-active vigilant look at their neighborhoods safety. Gangs do become an issue, and Homeland Security does man checkpoints across the country, maybe to quell the movements of these organizations, and we like that.
My point is, that given the observable course, and actions that the citizens of Greece are taking, sans the rioting, we might just find the end to morph into that scenario. Speaking of civil unrest, aside from some nasty potentialities in most of our urban cities, I don’t think that Americans will tolerate, or allow the kind of rampant rioting and disorder one saw in Greece. That’s just not how our culture acts as a whole. We’re not the kinds of folks one see’s in footage in the middle-east, after an IED or car bomb goes off. There we see hordes of wide-eyed screaming people jumping atop the car parts, and running crazily through the crimes scenes willy-nilly.
I still see folks in the post office, standing well back of the counters, observing an imaginary line painted on the floor, not wanting to appear rude to the folks ahead of them buying stamps. I see our local volunteer fire departments organizing CERT teams and training like crazy across the country, planning to help in the event of an unforeseen natural, or whatever, type of emergency.
I read, and pour over news accounts every day dealing with the European monetary, and banking crisis, and I haven’t seen yet, the total rapid TEOTWAWKI slide into cannibalistic, zombie over-run catastrophe that we’ve all read about being a surety.
I firmly believe that we can take a measure, however small, and optimistic, of comfort from watching the EU meltdown, and steering our plans accordingly. Call me a skeptical optimist, but I am garnering a bit of hope from observing what the common citizenry are doing in those countries, where the cliff edge has zipped by, and are dealing with the food, fuel, and other shortages.
I would like to see the readers of SurvivalBlog in the EU countries affected, start posting their own personal accounts so we can plan our own strategies her in the United States. I hope that measures can be taken by folks here, who read this blog, to keep the information highway from those regions flowing.
Clearly, even though we might all agree that the pessimistic timeline of End Time prophecy is probably correct as it relates to the economy, that Gods’ providential working in our countries affairs can spread out the inevitable end-time scenario into many more months, and maybe years.
Hopefully we all can read, research, and gather information from news sources, friends and family living abroad, in order to more effectively prepare for hard times, and even the worst-case scenario of TEOTWAWKI.
I believe that our Heavenly father has, and is providing a way through the Internet, and it’s sources, of sparing us some measure of downright hopelessness, and giving us tools to both save our friends, family and ultimately our nation, from Satan’s’ evil plans. This provision is the ability we have of watching Europe, and making better plans for our families safety.
