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Editor’s Introductory Note: This young man is prayerfully seeking a wife. He is offering an after-marriage gift of up to $50,000 to whoever introduces him to his bride with $18,000 after their marriage and another $16,000 to the individual who provided the introduction after the first two births of healthy children born to him and his wife, for a total potential gift of $50,000. For further details, see this link to his article posted on July 13th, 2025: My Quest for a Wife: I’m Willing to Move.

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During the height of the most recent tensions in the Middle East, my family and I were having a discussion about a potential way people could start preparing today given a relatively large amount of money and to give them a possible path, so that is the genesis of this article series. The amount of money that I set as a budget for one of these levels is the same that I offer for success of a reader introducing me to my future spouse.

In my earlier article series, I wrote about Preparedness in the New Golden Age or Grimy Age. Since it has been over three months since then, I wanted to give readers a brief overview of where I see our country in its current historical cycle, provide a historical perspective to assist in understanding the current environment, to give readers insight into different levels of preparedness, and to give commentary on various items that could be useful to individuals who are beginning or on their preparedness journey. This is again a very future oriented piece, so please do not take anything I write as advice as this is only speculative. Consider this to be at best another Gedankenexperiment — a thought experiment. I may be very wrong in my conclusions.

Bottom Line Up Front: The country is still going broke (we recently surpassed 37 Trillion dollars in National Debt), deportations are nowhere near the level necessary to bring us back to pre-2021 levels (if there are only ten million individuals who needed to be deported currently in the country, then deportation would need to be over 200,000 people per month and currently is nowhere near on an annualized basis after nearly six months. Some estimates suggest that double or even triple that number of people need to be deported who arrived in the last four years just to return to pre-2021 levels), and our Republic is only one critical event away from foundering.

I want the nation to succeed, but imitating “Pollyanna” is not a valid path to surviving the future. The golden age is a lot grimier than is being advertised. I see increases in unemployment (in the high paying technology industry, companies are laying off American workers at the same time I have seen reports of them requesting and sponsoring cheaper foreign born individuals to be imported into the country as workers), international tensions that are not abated waiting to emerge like a “jack in the box,” and technological issues are especially troubling with the growth of generative artificial intelligence (AI). That surface that you think is gold is likely gilding and it appears to be getting grimy.

Study and Learn From History

It is critical for readers to be able to have historical appreciation. Since you cannot live forever, experience everything, and live to tell the tale and learn the lesson, you have to be selective in your experiences. The human lifespan is relatively short compared to a sequoia tree which can live for 3,000 years. Unlike the immovable sequoia, a human can move around, to find safe places.

A lot of young people today talk about “life hacks” meaning a way to do things more efficiently, especially those things that are done in an unconventional fashion. Whenever I hear about “life hacks,” it brings a chuckle in that most of these life hacks are just common sense. Common sense is in fairly short supply, so these seems like nuggets of incredible wisdom. In the next few days, maybe you will discover some “life hacks” for smoother sailing on your preparedness journey.

In this blog’s Preparedness Notes on Sunday June 22nd and Monday June 23rd, Jim Rawles mentioned: “My e-mail inbox has been full of queries from readers about the USAF bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear weapons development sites. Folks want to know if this might mean WW3.” I want to applaud readers who have the foresight to know that something important was occurring. The major problem is that if you do not have a farm/retreat and live in a major metropolitan area, you will not likely survive a nuclear war. Having a pre-established retreat plan with appropriate transportation is the second-best option with the best is of living full-time at your farm/retreat. I am not one to sugarcoat things. Developing a retreat or even a retreat plan for those beginning this journey is difficult, but with enough effort it can be accomplished. I have seen many families be able to become successful, living in the country. I encourage people to deurbanize themselves, decentralize, and ruralize (if they are not already rural) to have the greatest opportunities for themselves to survive the future.

Surviving in the city is not a realistic path in most long-term scenarios. I understand many readers are reading this article series from cities, but cities are a historical aberration. Cities are not sustainable and require massive imports of food, fuel, and are just one major event where the thin veneer of civilization will be torn off. Having a retreat or even the ability to retreat can be an excellent option, but all of this requires excellent timing to avoid getting caught in the maelstrom that will likely be occurring during a widespread chaotic evacuation during a time when order is breaking down.

Alarming Power Failures

My family has a large collection of survival books and materials from decades ago and when I was recently doing some reading, I noticed a discussion of the concept of power drop alarms to alert to potential local or national grid issues. My family has been running various alarm systems to detect intrusion or environmental events such as power loss or temperature issues for decades. Currently, we have over five separate power drop alarms that ring in the event of a power outage. We also have an alarm that uses a cell phone that calls us in the event the power goes out. I can be anywhere with cellular or satellite phone service and know that the main power is out with many critical components are on standby backup power all of the time. When I am home at the farm and the power drops, it is often a series of alarms going off in a cacophonous tone alerting us that something is wrong. It would be extremely difficult to sleep through more than five separate alarms ringing discordantly. That sounds means “Get up: something is happening.” Often, I know that there is a storm and then I would analyze nearby outages. I can flip various switches moving to alternative power without having to leave our home or shelter and turn on a generator. This is a distinct advantage in a lightning storm.

Years ago, people were rightly concerned that they could sleep through the opening stages of what Pat Frank wrote in his novel Alas, Babylon known as the “kickoff.” If an exchange happened at 2 AM inside of a target area, you probably would go from a deep sleep into a permanent sleep. You literally only have minutes to make a decision if you are near a target and the Third World War has turned hot. If you are within a target area of a nuclear weapon, you probably will not survive if you do not access within a very short time to a 200 psi blast shelter which would potentially allow you to survive a multi-megaton nuclear weapon arburst or within a few miles as a surface burst. Surface bursts are overall more destructive to a hardened target, but they are wasteful in terms of energy because there is not as much destruction of population centers. Given the mathematical probabilities, given that countries do not have unlimited megatonnage for strikes, it is reasonable to assume that most nuclear weapons would be utilized for airbursts to maximize destruction. Surface bursts would be reserved for hardened targets such as command and control bunker complexes or ICBM silos.

Every day that we are not six feet below ground is a good day. Some of us can put six feet or more of dirt and concrete over our heads and live to tell the tale in a proper blast shelter.

Since readers wanted to know if we are in World War Three, here is my historically informed answer:  We are probably in the opening stages of the Third World War. A careful study of this analysis, much prayer, and then carefully looking at your own situation are three initial steps that you could begin to take at this time.

(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)