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I have been an avid SurvivalBlog reader for a couple of years now, and I have been a lifelong prepper, although never like I am now.  Through this blog and other excellent sources, I have gained immeasurable information and comfort, and the feeling that by the grace of God and diligent effort, I am finally obtaining a level of preparedness which ensures a very good chance of providing safety and security for my family and me through whatever the future may bring.  Though I have made many personal preparations, I don’t feel that I have done enough to help others prepare, which is why I decided to submit this article.
Over the last 3 years I have reached the conclusion that most of the problems in our society are caused by a lack of thinking about the future and then planning for it.  This is true for individuals, for families, local and national governments, and for humanity as a whole.  Although our individual preparations such as storing up “stuff” for the future are extremely important, these are only one part of our responsibility.  It is, of course incumbent upon us as responsible individuals to prepare individually for TEOTWAWKI, but it is just as important to try to prevent that event from occurring in the first place.  Those who think that TEOTWAWKI will just be some exciting adventure will be sadly disappointed.  It will definitely be challenging and doing things for ones’ self can be extremely satisfying, but all in all it would be far better if we can avoid experiences the worst case scenarios.

There are certainly many things that could necessitate the preparations that we (the preparedness community) are all making.  These include natural disasters, war, chemical or industrial accidents, pandemics, food production failures due to too much genetic manipulation, floods, fires, climate change (if there is such a thing), EMP bursts, nuclear war, meteor showers, financial meltdown, zombies, aliens, or crazy bird attacks.  Some of these could be an inconvenience; others could throw us into TEOTWAWKI, others are not even remotely realistic.

A Key Concern:
Personally my biggest fear is a national or even international monetary collapse caused by the United States debt and monetary policy.  Let’s face it, our government has been borrowing and printing money from thin air to support our collective spending habit, and it is bound to reach a boiling point sooner or later.  Such a monetary collapse would completely upset our comfortable lives of extreme specialization, simplified trading via our currency, and an almost infinite array of goods and services virtually at our fingertips.  Moreover, it would throw our society into complete chaos almost overnight.  Let me pause here to provide some background about myself – I have almost 15 years experience as a law enforcement official for a large agency in a large metropolitan area.  I have had countless opportunities to witness what people will do when they are pushed against a wall, be it physically, emotionally or financially.  People who are otherwise well mannered, generally reasonable individuals are capable of horrific behavior.  The group I am most concerned about is the ever growing entitlement class.  These people generally have poor upbringing, low education, a low level of practical skills, and are therefore not generally very capable of taking care of themselves.  Due in part to their own shortcomings, and in part to our willingness as a society to continue supporting them they are stuck in a mode of expecting and demanding that things be provided for them at the expense of someone else.  I will expand a bit more on this later on.  Suffice it to say that these are the people that will cause the major portion of the civil unrest that will certainly follow a monetary collapse.  One needs only to look at the examples of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or the L.A. “Rodney King” riots for a small sampling of what we can expect.  The difference in the complete monetary collapse scenario I am worried about is that law enforcement had virtually inexhaustible resources at its disposal to restore order and protect the innocent citizens in these cases….not at first to be sure, but in both of those cases backup poured in from other agencies in nearby and even far away jurisdictions to provide relief for the first responders.                    

Even with all this backup assistance, particularly in the case of New Orleans it was weeks before order was restored.  Now imagine if civil unrest simultaneously occurs in every large and medium sized city across the country.  There simply will not be enough police to protect everyone from those who feel that they are entitled to whatever they need, irrespective of who it belongs to.  Many officers will not report to work, as they will be busy protecting and attempting to provide for their own families.  Many other officers who are less dedicated than they should be will figure “what’s the point, I’m not getting paid for this anyway.”  I have heard that sentiment under far less exigent circumstances than a total monetary collapse.  Understand that if money is no longer any good, many police officers will not report to work, and good people everywhere will have to rely on themselves and each other for their mutual defense from the unsavory elements of our society.

Strategy 1. Getting educated and staying informed:
If you are reading this blog, you are well ahead of the curve.  Be encouraged that you are being joined by more people every day.  The question is, will enough people start educating themselves and then work to change the problems before things spin out of control and we reach a state of TEOTWAWKI?
Learn the issues – political, monetary and social, they are all related.  Study and understand the events that have taken place to get us to the point where we are.  Find out what caused our current problems.

Read articles on the internet (as I mentioned this blog is a great start), read books, and talk with people who know more than you do.  Listen to talk radio every time you get in the car rather than listening to music. Philosophize on your own, with careful consideration; you can reach many truths which are self-evident.  Watch the News, and for anyone that hasn’t figured it out yet, the most reliable source of television news is FOX News (the cable network, not necessarily your local affiliate station).  If you only have time to watch one News program per day, then I suggest the Glenn Beck Program.  Although it is not exactly a pure news program, it will inform you of a lot of the current events, but also teach you about the unreported stories that no other show reports, about history, it will expose conspiracies (real one’s not the crazy alien ones), and even help you build your own faith.  You will also gain encouragement by watching this show.  Don’t take any one source and believe it without questioning.  Do your own research and reach your own conclusion.

Learn the skills to deal with the problems that you can foresee, both the self reliance skills as well as the investing and monetary skills.  Learn to make the very best use of your funds, and squeeze the most possible value out of a dollar.  Learn how our government system works, who is responsible for what, how it is arranged and so forth, so that you can do your part to help effect political changes.
Share what you learn with your friends and neighbors.  Don’t go crazy forwarding every article you read to everyone you know, if you do then they will just start deleting them without reading them.  Instead pick and choose the best ones and selectively direct the information that you find to the person that you know will get the most value from the information.

Strategy 2. Changing our political course, cutting out our collective government waste:
So what can we do to prevent the monetary collapse I am so worried about?  Government must shrink in a huge way if it is to survive.  I am not endorsing the complete dismantling of government, only proposing that it be limited as our founding fathers intended, especially at the federal level.  Primarily the federal government was established for our common defense from foreign invasion.  There are several other constitutional responsibilities of course, but they are miniscule by comparison with all the roles that the government has illegally assumed. 

As a people, we have become too comfortable and too lazy.  We have come to rely on the government for far too much.  I know this might upset a few people, but we need to each be willing to sacrifice whatever it is that is dear to us that is being provided by the federal government.  If that is Medicare or Social Security, we must be willing to give that up.  If it is department of education money going to our local school system, it needs to go to.  If it is government assisted housing, endowment for the arts, college grant money for our kids, tax refunds for having more children than our neighbors, whatever our own special entitlement program may be, it needs to go, regardless of how painful it is.  It is easy to point at wasted money that benefits someone else and say eliminate that, but it requires real moral character and sacrifice to give up our own favorite program.  If you are reading this and thinking that you have paid into social security for your whole life and you deserve to keep it, then please consider that the money you paid in is gone.  We have spent it long ago on other things – this is the collective fault of all of us, not just the politicians who sign the checks.  Remember we the people are the government… the bosses in this society.  Yes the politicians were reckless and irresponsible and deserve to be prosecuted for what they have done, but at the same time we have hired them over and over and over to continue doing it.  Some of us have been directly responsible by voting for them, and some of us indirectly by perhaps not voting against them, or by not paying attention to what they were doing.  For those of us who were paying attention all along and consistently voted the right way, we are guilty of not doing enough to educate our friends, neighbors and co-workers about it and by not crying foul loud enough.

Once we come to the realization that we all collectively got ourselves into this mess, we must resolve to get out of it, but we must do it without doing so at the expense of someone else.  I have heard many theories that we can simply never pay the money back to the Chinese and the others that we have borrowed from.  I have heard lots of people say that we can simply inflate the currency and pay it back in inflated dollars, which is the path our politicians seem to be taking currently… of course it won’t ever be paid back because despite this tactic, they are still spending and borrowing more than they are repaying.  This is morally reprehensible.  We borrowed this money from other nations and from little old ladies in the form of government bonds and it is our responsibility to pay it back.  We must demand this of our politicians.  If they want to keep up the spending and avoid repayment of our debts then they are not worthy of managing the money and resources of this great nation and must be fired immediately.  It is our job to understand exactly who we are voting for when we go to the polls.  Voting for the [D] or the [R] is not good enough – there are lots of bad apples, and a few good apples in each group.  We must also notify everyone we know every time a politician makes or embraces a reckless fiscal policy.  Whether it is at the federal, state or local level and we must tell that politician how displeased we are with him or her.  Emails to their offices are good, letters and faxes are better because a staff member must handle a piece of paper rather than just hit the delete key.  Phone calls and personal visits to their offices are best because they know that people are really watching what they are doing.  When we take time out of our hectic lives during regular business hours to contact them they know we are serious.  Attending a town hall meeting or a Tea Party rally is a very powerful way to get their attention.  These events usually receive news coverage too, and the larger they are, the more coverage they receive.  If you get there and the place is too full to get any more people inside, then don’t feel like you missed out, hang around anyway and take comfort that you helped get the message across by your presence.  When the place is standing room only, again the politicians know that people are watching their every move.

Strategy 3. Putting all Americans to Work:
If we get our spending under control, then I am convinced that we can work our way out of the hole we have dug for ourselves.  Yes it will be an uphill climb, yes it will take a generation, but I would rather work very hard and sacrifice for the rest of my life rather than leaving this massive debt problem to the next generation, and if you are reading this blog then I suspect you would too.  Once we eliminate the government programs that encourage people not to work by providing them with enough to make them comfortable in their poverty, they will find ways to become self sufficient, and by working they will begin to contribute to society by creating wealth – goods and services that can be consumed by their neighbors.  Perhaps all these newly created goods can even be exported to other nations to help with the trade deficit that we have.  Moreover, all the government employees that are administrating these myriad spending programs can then also devote their skills and talents to innovating and producing in the private sector as well.  Then instead of being net tax consumers, they will become net tax contributors and assist in repaying our massive debt instead of adding to it.

I mentioned the trade imbalance we have in the United States; this brings me to my next point.  One thing that we can and must do as individuals if we are to reverse the financial mess we are in is to buy American goods.  I know you’ve heard this before, and I know it’s easier said than done sometimes, but I have made a concerted effort to do this for over a year now and the more you do it the easier it gets.  Yes sometimes (although not always) you end up paying more for a product that is American instead of Chinese, but if you help to keep one of your neighbors employed then they will have more money next week to come and buy something from you, keeping you employed.  This keeps everyone earning and paying taxes so that we can repay the money that we owe to so many debtors.  Sometimes it’s very difficult to go to a big box store such as Home Depot or Target and find things that were actually made in the USA; Wal-Mart is particularly difficult.  I make it a policy that if I am looking for a luxury item and they don’t have an American made one, then I pass on it, and look for it on the internet instead.  I have had great success locating web sites that sell USA made products using Google, and I have really enjoyed my experiences with all of them.  Here are just a few I have found:

• http://www.usab2c.com/
• http://www.allamericanclothing.com/SFNT2.html
• http://madeinusaforever.com/
• http://www.texasjean.com/
• http://www.shopnewbalance.com/information/madeinusa.asp
• http://www.peterborobasket.com/default.aspx
• http://batesmillstore.com/
• http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/
• http://www.bestbelt.com/
• http://www.madeinusaproductsstore.com/
• http://www.madeinusawarehouse.com/index.html  

I also recently found a grain mill that is made in Montana by a small company.  I am saving up my money and look forward to ordering one in a couple of months.  Buying USA made goods is extremely important, but if you haven’t noticed a common thread in all my strategies yet, I need to point out that it is just important to get your family and friends on board doing the same thing!

Strategy 4. Individual preparedness:
I won’t spend time here going into all the things that each of us can do to prepare our own households because there are thousands of articles on this site and others about that already, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the importance of that individual preparation.  In case all of the above strategies fail and we do arrive at one stage or another of TEOTWAWKI, we should be simultaneously preparing for it, even as we continue to carry out these other strategies.

Strategy 5. Encouraging our neighbors to prepare:
Why is this so important?  As I mentioned previously, most problems in this world are caused by a lack of thinking ahead and making preparations.  All the social chaos that I am concerned about that will follow the monetary collapse would be avoided if everyone was prepared, or even if most people were prepared.  If everyone has the things they need stockpiled and a plan in place to take care of their families for an extended period of time, then no one will have any reason to panic when the lights go out.  We will have cooler heads, which will allow us to develop plan B to get our society operational again.

As many of us have experienced, it is difficult to come right up to someone and tell them that TEOTWAWKI is coming so they need to start saving their beans, bullets, and Band-Aids, because if you do then many people will think you are crazy.  There are many tactful approaches that you can take to introduce this concept gradually to your less informed friends and neighbors.  I have found that most people these days are very concerned about the economic direction of the country right now, and since this is a more realistic problem to them than a nuclear war or a pandemic, it is easiest to approach them on this basis.  I usually start by feeling a person out about their financial situation, often by sharing something about my own situation.  You don’t have to tell them you are poorer than dirt or anything, you can say something like “boy the prices of clothes sure are going up lately”.  If they share your sentiment then you can introduce the basic concepts of how our monetary system works and what causes inflation.  Next you can point to the moves being made by our federal government and the Federal Reserve and educate them to the fact that massive inflation is imminent.  Once you get to this point it is a very simple leap to get them to understand that buying extra goods right now is a way for them to save money, and almost everyone is looking for ways to save money these days!  Of course these conversations may happen one at a time over an extended time frame.  I usually don’t tell people that I have piles of things stored away for a rainy day immediately, I say something like “every time I go to the grocery store I buy 2 of anything that is on sale, because I know I’ll use it sooner or later and I would rather get it cheaper now”  then I explain to them that the more I have in pantry the more I have found that I never need to buy anything until it goes on sale, and never paying full price means  I have more cash available to buy sale items!  I have many friends that have said “I could never do that, I don’t have a single dime to buy anything extra”.  At that point I loan them one of my books like America’s Cheapest Family or Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half with America’s Cheapest Family.  Sometimes if they have a Kindle, I give the book as a gift.

For those that you really care about – perhaps a close friend or family member -that just refuse to do it, there are other ways to help them get prepared.  As we all know saving up piles of stuff is by no means all there is to preparation.  Probably the second most important thing to do is to learn new skills, or some would even say that gaining skills is the most important thing to do.  You can invite a friend or family member to learn a new skill with you such as working on an engine, sewing or mending clothes, going on a hike in the woods, gardening, canning, woodworking, doing some basic machine work, doing some home repair or improvement, helping to tend to animals, taking an EMT class at a local community college, or any number of other important skills.  Of course the best skills to concentrate on are those that you can do with limited raw materials and whether you have electricity or not – in case of the worst scenario, but all self sufficiency skills are important.  Even if the total society collapse never comes, at least you will be able to save money by doing some of these things for ourselves that in our modern world we tend to source out to someone else.

Strategy 6. Preparing to be charitable:
No matter what we do to get others more involved and to become more prepared, there will still be those who don’t listen.  Some of them will certainly perish if TEOTWAWKI comes, either by their own inaction or during altercations with each other, with police, or with prepared persons and groups who they will try to rob and steal from.  Others will pick themselves up, be resourceful and become productive members of society and outstanding citizens.  Still others will be able to make it, and will want to do it without stealing from or hurting anyone else…..they may be very willing to work hard but they will need some help initially moving into the new era that will ensue.  It is for this group that we should prepare to be charitable and helpful.

We should prepare to be charitable, but we need to understand why the government’s “charity” give away plans have failed so miserably.  Things like government housing, welfare, disability payments, food stamps, and all the other myriad “social benefit programs” have just encouraged people to stay in them. 
Benjamin Franklin said “I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” I have personally observed this effect on people over my lifetime.  What Mr. Franklin said was very insightful, especially considering he didn’t have the benefit of observing the wildest government giveaway charity system that the world has ever seen, like we are able to see.  All these government programs, even when well meaning have been ineffective because they fail to address the long term problem and create more dependency and irresponsibility than existed making the “charity” necessary to begin with.

We should prepare to share to meet someone’s immediate needs but it is more important to help them achieve long term security and self reliance skills.  For example, plan to give away enough potatoes for this week’s soup, but also enough to plant to grow a whole row of potato plants, and a shovel to plant them, and some of your time teaching the needy person how to raise the plants.  Be prepared to share raw materials as well as valuable life skills with those who are prepared to learn.
Bartering can be charitable too.  For example, let’s say TEOTWAWKI hits – you are an older person with some resources like tools and property, but you can’t do everything for yourself because of physical limitations, then taking a plot of your land and sharing it with a needy family who made no preparations, but have the ability to work could be very beneficial to all parties.  Any reasonable self respecting person would be far happier with an arrangement like this instead of just having things given to them anyway, so in the long run you are encouraging them to be self sufficient, but making sure their self esteem is not destroyed either.

If you have a large home, especially one that is owned free and clear, and have made a lot of other preparations already, then you could consider sectioning off an area now as a separate living area for that family member that just refuses to prepare.  It will be far easier to do it now than later when building materials may be much more difficult to come by.  In many cases, this will also be infinitely better than sharing one living space with your extended family, especially under the stressful circumstances that TEOTWAWKI will bring.  It will be good to have that extended family close by for mutual cooperation and defense, but you may all want some space at times too.  If the worst never happens then you have created an area you can rent out or use as a guest area for the mother in law when she comes to town, and you have added value to your property, which is quite likely a better and more responsible investment than keeping the worthless green paper that we call money.

Final Thoughts:
These strategies only work if you implement them.  The first strategy, educating yourself and studying are very important, but no more important than the second strategy of affecting the political change.  If you spend all your time educating yourself and never get to any of the other strategies, and everyone else does the same thing, then TEOTWAWKI will come for sure because things will continue to deteriorate as we all sit around just reading books. 

I am implementing my multi-pronged approach across the board, devoting a reasonable amount of time to each part whenever I can.  It makes sense, just as it makes sense to build your food storage evenly with not only wheat, but beans, honey, meat and vegetables too.  If you only eat wheat for the rest of your life your body won’t get all the nutrients it needs.  Similarly, if we don’t try to change the future for the better and encourage the rest our community to prepare, educate themselves, and learn good moral principles, then what is the point of surviving, unless you are planning on being a hermit and never interacting with anyone in the future after TEOTWAWKI.