In a critical situation, would you rather make war or make peace? I think the idea of cooperating to live through a crisis is much better than a “kill or be killed” scenario. The main reason why we need to think on this topic is that if the unthinkable happens, we can more easily restore our society from scratch. Like the Founding Fathers, we will have a foundation to build on. A pile of dead people is not a good way to start.
Peace of mind is the key to happiness, and to have peace of mind you need resources. One of the most important of these is a solid survival plan. Resources and the land needed to support their production is true wealth, but respect for and preservation of life is priceless.
A major area that is often overlooked when considering the threat to our person is the sheer numbers of people who do not own land. In California, with a population of 39.4 million people, the percentage of non-owner occupied housing is 44%. That’s a lot of people who have no reason to prepare, and many will resort to taking by force from those who have a self-sufficient homestead. The numbers of people who are ready for a long-term event are few. Our society needs a huge paradigm shift towards building resiliency. From spare transformers for our grid to local police teaching appropriate use of firearms, community activism in emergency preparedness, and many other topics. In this uncertain age of terrorism, we cannot be too prepared.
So where do we begin? Obviously, personal preparedness must come first, before we can begin to strengthen our community. The poorest in this economy do not have the physical resources to move to a remote location, and a majority are disabled and in need of life extending treatments and medicine. These will be the first to pass on to the other side, needlessly. Do we want or need to deal with thousands of dead loved ones? The dignity of life must be preserved. Our American system, as flawed as it is, is the very best form of government on the planet, because it began with respect for human freedom, protection of life, liberty, and the constant desire to be happy. Whatever we do now to plan for the needs of our weakest will help to reduce the burden on our government when they are tasked with a reboot of our great system.
But I know you are thinking, why should I go beyond my personal needs or family’s needs? Shouldn’t the government provide for its citizens? Well, that might be too big of a task for our leaders who can’t even figure out how to have a fair and honest election in 2016. No, my friends, the job will most likely fall on all of us to make this society work in the event of a disaster. Our chance of success goes up exponentially if we get involved now with some sort of plan, even if we simply register as patriots with local police in the event they need men in a militia. That way, they might have an address book of trusted patriots to fall back on. However, I believe we can do much better than that.
All of the veterans who love this country will be a huge force to reckon with should a foreign nation plan to invade our borders, and with the recent election of Donald Trump as our president we might have an easier task of keeping enemies out of our country. It is clear that our borders are free-flowing inlets, ripe for breach by anyone with an evil intent to destroy our way of life and our principles of freedom. We even see the potential for destruction from within our own government with socialist and globalist policies that shave our sovereign rights into non-existence. The times are tough, but if we stick together we can save lady liberty for our children and grandchildren. The world needs a true ethical power to guide their destiny, and without all of us working together, the extinction of the human race is very likely. Is this enough reason to leave the comfort of your lazy chair and set up a community outreach or council meeting regarding emergency preparedness?
Developing a sharing mentality in society is key. Personal gain vs community gain is one of the primary issues for us to deal with correctly in any long-term, critical situation. If our goal is simply to have enough water, food, or ammunition to get our family through, what happens when those resources run dry? Can you reload bullets that you do not have? Can you drink water that no longer exists?
Wouldn’t it be better to have a network of local resources that you could count on? Let’s say for example that one neighbor has a gift of gardening; would it be wise to develop a cost or labor share? Maybe every neighbor on the block could contribute a bag of fertilizer, a Saturday pulling weeds, or a few hours a week on that shared backyard garden, or even a secure greenhouse to boost production? Maybe a neighbor on the block has an outdoor wood oven and a huge pile of firewood; could we begin to stock that pile and others for future cooking needs? Another neighbor might get a dollar a month from 30 people each contributing to the cost of chicken feed and watering of a coop, for enough eggs for everyone on the block. Another person who has solar panels might be able to secure a few extra deep freezers in their garage for community meat storage. Ideas like these will be the new currency when the ATM machine no longer spits out useless paper money.
Many preppers nationwide are building bunkers and buying rifles. Their thought process is that it’s too late to reprogram a society that wants everything easily or at the point of a gun, and there is a real need in many areas for a bunker or a safe room in your home. That is good insurance against foreign invasion, but we need to start building fallback plans into our local communities, so that we don’t have widespread violence and a loss of control. The scriptures teach that it is better to put others ahead of your own needs, and our current society is not even considering this, as if our political leaders are completely against this framework. Parasitic human culture and survival at any cost, putting ourselves first while others fend for themselves, will create a condition of constant strife and competition for scarce resources in a never-ending mass extinction. In a well-planned, survivalist society, the hierarchy must exist before the SHTF. We need to start setting up our resources now.
The ruling elites have defined who we are in society, and we have become very cynical towards each other. An industrial society of consumers will not work in a crisis. The people in power over these commodities, which we need to sustain life currently, have conditioned us to be self-centered consumers. The skills necessary for community survival are still ingrained in our culture but must be brought out and revitalized. We have been lead falsely to believe the government can take care of our needs. Social Security, banking, petroleum, Internet, commerce, electricity– all of these have lead to materialism of a dangerous kind, destroying our ability to thrive as individuals, families, and communities.
Think about this, huge populations where nobody except one or two neighbors actually goes out of their way to speak with each other, and we never talk about survival plans. There’s zero communication about working together or a group of families who might have to block off each end of the street to protect wives and children. Very few, if any, have a plan for self sustainability and none with a Ham radio shielded from damage by EMP. None know who has chickens or vegetable gardens and if there are seeds in storage or canned goods. How we would keep our food from spoiling in an extended loss of power, where drinking water would come from long term, and because many homes are on septic tanks, the groundwater, if any, is completely useless for consumption.
Our lifespan is dependent on technology; the threat is the loss of that technology. If the grid or the banking system were to fail, or any other sub-structure that the masses of people rely on, we all know what the result will be. People from the inner cities will drive out to the country as far as their gas tanks will carry them, and they’ll steal the resources they need until they run out of ammunition or they are killed. It’ll be a terrible time to be alive with mass extinction. The loss of many countless of otherwise beautiful human beings will be the result of a failure to plan ahead of time.
Our survival as a species relies on our ability to recognize the threat that we pose to ourselves, our over reliance on the capitalist system. The goal of this article is on where to begin and an answer to the question of how to get back in balance with the earth. How do we prepare as small villages of self sufficiency in advance of the potential failure of the system?
What should we do to develop strength in our infrastructure? Begin with recognizing different levels of threats to our survival. Some issues to consider:
- Personal Survival: Fresh sources of water, food storage, shelter from extremes of heat and cold, plants as medicines, proper weapons for personal safety and hunting, neighborhood cooperation, communications hardened from EMP for information updates, backup electrical power.
- Community Survival: Maps distributed to residents with the location of their personal emergency center of operations, food banks, and extra food production for the needs of others; seed banks; agreed rules for bartering goods, such as a list of suggested values (i.e. 2 chickens cooked = 10 lbs of flour); community shelters; cooperation in advance with local police and militia to include protection of community resources such as water tanks or sources, food banks, and alternate power sources; limits of government and a backup plan for peace and safety; setting aside acreage for people without soil of their own; emergency power distribution; and communications centers for officials to keep us updated.
A community must plan to be in balance before the SHTF. Reaching out to inner cities, the homeless, and other high risk groups is a starting point. Churches have volunteers and a good place for holding community meetings. Neighborhoods should be mapped into areas that each center will accommodate, because churches, senior centers, and foreign legion halls need to know what residents they can care for without being overburdened preparing for the needs of people unable to farm or grow their own food.
Setup city council hearings and workshops on emergency preparedness, maybe finding ways that community gardens can replace condemned buildings. Hold neighborhood meetings every month with a general plan for outreach and education. Can we task our government to re-purpose some of our tax money to a community solar panel for each city block that can be shared with local residents? Imagine that the worst has happened already. Do you want to see people shooting it out from behind barricaded doors as marauding bands of thieves and thugs search and destroy for their own personal survival? Or would thriving community gardens spread across multiple backyards be better? Some cities in England actually have entire public spaces filled with edible plants and fruit trees, so much so that people travel there as a vacation destination for a walking tour. Now that is smart.
The solution to the problem of survival begins with activism and also with your thoughts and prayers for our planet and our children, but along with prayer must also come actions. Start a local chapter on your city block, identify those most at risk, and get involved. Your family and your country is depending on you.
