In the 1980s a new board game, Trivial Pursuit, was released. I became very fond of that game and in later years I acquired other versions. The game broke down trivia into six categories, Geography, History, Literature, Entertainment, Sports, and Science & Nature. Within my family I was the reigning queen of trivia. Entertainment and Sports were my weakest categories, but History and Literature were my strongest.
So, what on earth does acquiring knowledge of trivia, which is defined as bits of information of little importance, have to do with emergency preparedness? Well, most people consider acquiring emergency preparedness knowledge and skills they might never need to use, as a “trivial pursuit” – literally. They assume catastrophes or big emergencies won’t happen or will happen other places – the “not in my backyard” mentality.
In this blog post I’m going to share two prepper YouTube videos, which provide ideas on how to approach emergency preparedness and make it part of your lifestyle. The first video by Prepper Potpourri offers a perspective on why learning to be a jack-of-all-trades, acquiring many diversified skill sets, rather than becoming a specialist in one area, will boost your emergency preparedness success. At the top of this blog post is Prepper Potpourri’s video, The Key To Boosting Your Emergency Preparedness Success. She mentions a Prepper Matrix chart, with different categories pertaining to emergency preparedness, which can be used as a guide to help you explore and learn about various topics in each category.
That Prepper Matrix chart reminded of the Trivial Pursuit gameboard, where you start in the center of the board with a round game piece that will hold six pie pieces representing each category. As you roll the dice, you choose one of six paths to move down. At the end of each path is a pie square for one of the six categories, which earns you a piece of the pie in one of the categories, if you answer the question from a deck of trivia cards correctly. Along the way to get to the pie squares at the end of each path, you have to keep answering trivia questions. With each correct answer, you get another roll of the dice.
In emergencies, you will likely be faced with all sorts of challenges that might require you to travel down different survival skill paths to deal with them. The more knowledge and skills you have in these various survival skill categories, the better off you and your loved ones will be.
The second video I want to share is How To Have Hope In A War Torn World, by Alaska Granny, which offers some common sense advice on daily life skills. She always breaks down emergency preparedness into easy to understand bits of knowledge:
Both of these You Tube channels have years worth of videos on a wide variety of preparedness topics and how-to videos, which have helped me on my preparedness journey. I also like that they’re not constantly trying to sell all sorts of products, even though I’d understand if they decided to make more money with merchandising, like many other YouTubers do.
Even in the worst of times, people have to take life one day at a time and you can still find joy in small things. So often people surprise me with unusual skills or talents they developed in their life – a summer job they had or volunteering or from an elderly relative, even from watching how-to videos online. I learned how to pressure can in the past few years by watching YouTube videos and I’m in my 60s, so you’re never to old to learn new things. Prepper Potpourri has a lot of excellent canning videos. Alaska Granny has numerous videos on fire-starting and managing outdoors and although she’s in Alaska and I’m in Georgia, many of these skills can be used anywhere in the world. Be open to new ideas and learning new things, but most of all be open to new people.
Once a month I have lunch with some ladies I used to work with at Walmart. We’re in our 60s and 70s and one lady is over 80. We were sitting in a restaurant yesterday when the FEMA emergency alert test occurred. Phones went off and for a few seconds people looked at their phones. One lady in my group had heard (and bought into) right-wing conspiracy chatter, so she was a a bit jumpy and she had turned off her phone. Another lady hadn’t heard anything about it, because she has a lot of other things going on in her life and doesn’t pay much attention to the news or spend time online. The others were aware of the test, but were not concerned at all. We quickly went to talking about other topics and enjoyed our lunch after the test.
Last night I saw a nice older homesteader lady’s video from yesterday morning – she, like my friend, was turning off her and her husband’s cell phones and unplugging her computer. We all have enough worries, especially with the inflation that’s causing many people, especially many elderly people, to struggle to make ends meet, that we don’t need more worries.
For people on the right, it’s very easy to see the far-left crazy and the extremism, in whatever tangent of their “intersectionality” causes that hits us, from the green crazies chaining themselves to trees or gluing themselves to artwork in museums and pavement, to all the gender insanity, to women raging about #MeToo, or BLM’s defund the police, and the list goes on. However, I don’t think most people on the right are willing to admit that a whole lot of the political stuff right-wing pundits and people on social media get worked up about are increasingly just as crazy as the far-left craziness.
I was irritated that my friend was worried about an emergency alert system test, because emergency alerts are intended to give people advance warning in emergencies and save lives. The lesson from Maui wasn’t the government used space lasers or something to start the fires, which I saw a video of Steve Bannon spreading that craziness. It was a story about some government failures and bad decisions, including not sounding emergency alarms. Getting people alarmed and conditioning them to not listen to FEMA emergency alerts or to try to find ways not to receive them is craziness. If there was a serious emergency – we should want everyone to pay attention to emergency alerts.
A whole lot of the people who spread these conspiracy theories, do it because they get a whole lot of clicks from it and make money off of spreading conspiracy theory garbage, that harms other people. Yes, these conspiracy theories inflict harm and they also fuel more divides in our country. The big name people who spread this stuff know these conspiracy theories are garbage and they deliberately want to get people riled up, in fact, they’re counting on it – because they’re making money and advancing political agendas off of this. If someone always wants you to get angry and upset, that person is not operating in a way that is good for you or good for our country. People who are always fired up and “fighting mad” aren’t really making sound decisions.
The right has always been big on preaching responsibility and accountability, so as this latest right-wing conspiracy theory now gets memory-holed and brushed aside, perhaps the people who race to get online and spread these wild conspiracy theories should own up to that they fell for another conspiracy theory and not only got worked up themselves, but rushed online to get other people worked up too.
If you take the attitude, well this time it wasn’t true, but you know how our government can’t be trusted on anything, well that’s also a refusal to admit you fell for another conspiracy theory. Each time you buy into crazy stuff and refuse to admit it, the next time you’re likely to buy into even crazier stuff.
What probably won’t happen is most people who bought into this conspiracy theory won’t look at who all they listened to online or in-person, that were selling them the FEMA conspiracy theories, and stop listening to those people or at least be more skeptical about the information those people put out.
The wisest thing would be to start treating all these online hysterical hot takes conspiracy theories like you do scammers calling you on your phone or getting scamming emails – don’t buy into any of it and start looking for information. A lot of of the big name people who spread conspiracy theories operate just like scammers – they try to throw you off balance and get you alarmed – like, “You owe the IRS $2,000” or I’ve had several calls telling me there was a very large purchase on my Amazon account and trying to tell me how to take care of it. The first thing I do with scam calls and emails is I start searching for information and I put “scam” in my search description. I usually quickly find search results matching the exact theme of the “scam” call or email I received.
With my blog post about Deborah D. Moore novels a couple days ago and my politics rant post about the right-wing conspiracy theory hamster wheel, I may have come across as flippant about preparedness and that was not my intent. I believe learning how to cope with uncertainty and staying calm and focused on the things that really do matter is more important than obsessing about financial “collapse” hysteria or the latest right-wing conspiracy theory that everyone’s talking about on social media or right-wing media – or even some hyped list of possible shortage items.
A “collapse” in America has already happened, but it’s not the one I see the online prepper community talking about all the time.
Our American news and information systems have already collapsed. This collapse has been in progress for decades. The political spin information war, corrupt media, corrupt politicians, hostile foreign information operations, social media and probably a whole host of factors have played a role in this collapse- including we the American people. When I keep adding links, it’s because I try to verify as much information as I can and it’s gotten harder over the past decade. I’ve found Google isn’t always where I find a reliable way to search for information.
When I keep warning conservatives and right-wingers – trying to debunk the conspiracy theories or warn about guarding against trusting the right-wing media echo-chamber as much as they distrust the liberal media echo-chamber, I’m not trying to pick on online preppers and homesteaders for believing in conspiracy theories. It is virtually impossible not to fall prey to some incorrect or bogus information online. I’ve fallen for information that was bogus many times. I’ve encountered the same thing with emails in the past.
I’m alarmed, because if the only people who are proactively working at being more self-reliant and urging people to be prepared for emergencies are constantly hysterical, trust in a failed information system, and so easily race down one conspiratorial rabbit hole after another, who on earth is left in America to help lead and hold anything together?
We’ve all been along for the ride as America’s information systems collapsed and it’s been an integral factor in the escalating divisiveness and instability in American society.
What concerns me is so many people are invested in getting worked up based on information they saw or read online (and yes, I was doing a bit of that in my rant, I know, and I’m trying to stop doing that), because we’ve all been conditioned, for decades, to respond to 24/7 media incitement theater, that now masquerades as news.
In my blog post a couple days ago about the Deborah D. Moore apocalyptic/prepper novels, there were some some very important preparedness themes in her stories. We all should be buckling down and be more like the Wonder Woman Survivalist, Allexa Smeth, the main character. Smeth had practiced a lifetime of preparedness and building all sorts of skill sets. She had her supplies organized and inventoried. She also was always forward-leaning and not waiting around to take action to become better-prepared. She was always trying to motivate everyone around her, even her 12-year-old granddaughter, to learn skills and take some responsibility for their survival. And she was always trying to adapt and thrive no matter the circumstances – even as she was reacting to crisis situations, she kept looking ahead. Preparedness and self-reliance were fundamental parts of her mindset.
In my book review blog post, I mentioned the collapsed information systems Smeth and other characters kept dealing with and that part struck me as totally realistic. She kept focusing on the situation around her home, family and community that she had some control over and that seems like a sensible approach. This is a sensible approach for us too, I think.
Quite a few of the other characters in Moore’s novels reminded me of people I know – people who don’t know how to do much of anything, people who are always blowing money on fun stuff, but don’t have even a week’s worth of food stocked up, people who believe the government will take care of them in an emergency, people who will show up expecting you to take care of them. I had a neighbor years ago, who talked to me in my driveway, the day before a hurricane was expected to hit. We chatted and I asked her if she was ready and she didn’t even have a flashlight, so I gave her an LED camping lantern and extra batteries. I have some close friends and family who think even stocking up extra food is a waste of money or crazy, because they believe the stores will always be open and full of merchandise. I also have family and friends who are well-prepared.
Somehow though, I suspect the people who are totally unprepared for any kind of emergency far outnumber the people who are even a little bit prepared. However, one thing I’ve seen in my life is often people possess skills, knowledge, experience on all sorts of stuff that can surprise you. They might not be a “prepper,” but they might provide a vital skill set or knowledge, so it’s always important to be open to blessings that come in unexpected ways.
In the first Moore novel one of the first problems Smeth encounters is an unprepared local man, who knows she’s a prepper, showing up at her door – trying to forcefully take her stuff. She shot him when he tried to force his way into her home. While many of the natural disaster situations and events in these novels seemed far-fetched to me – that situation with an unprepared man seemed very realistic to me now, after seeing the rise in crime and violence around parts of the country. I always had a very Pollyanna type attitude toward helping people and not thinking about personal/home defense much, but since the 2020 Summer of Love rioting and watching that chaos, I’ve done some major rethinking.
I hope we never have to deal with an apocalyptic crisis, but we can lose our country in many ways beyond some apocalyptic event, if we have citizens with no clue about our American history, our American heritage and most all the virtues of hard work and sacrifice that built our nation. Finding ways to preserve our American ideals is as important as preserving all of our other vital items. A country that can’t pull together on anything is in as precarious a situation as a massive financial collapse and unfortunately we are already there.
I don’t have a plan for defeating the spin information war or a means to build a reliable information system. I’ve debated trying to comment and provide verified information on sites in the past and then I decided against doing that, because people consider that trolling if you post a comment disagreeing with the content creator. I’ll continue to try verifying information, doing some research and writing my blog. Whenever I see a lot of social media hysteria churning, I start trying to figure out what’s going on – I try not to buy into it – no matter which news organization, pundit, politician or whoever is spouting it.
The information chaos and confusion will only grow, as AI becomes more widely used. Manipulated images and videos are everywhere online now. Just being aware that our information systems aren’t reliable – especially the political news – can help us become more skeptical and learn to take a wait and see approach rather than running around yelling, “The sky is falling!”
It’s gotten to the point where if I click on a prepper/homesteading YouTube channel and the content creator is worked up about financial catastrophes and/or antigovernment hysteria, their news source is more often than not – Zero Hedge (or some other YouTube content creator who relies on Zero Hedge), which I’ve mentioned many times. I can’t speak to the motivation for the Zero Hedge fearmongering and why their themes consistently fuel distrust of the US government and spawn wild conspiracy theories, and hysteria.
My views about Zero Hedge predate the Trump years.
Back in 2016, Drudge Report was still a big news aggregator among right-wing America. The Drudge Report became a thing among the American right back during the Clinton impeachment drama. In 2016 I noticed some big changes in the news Drudge highlighted – like mainstreaming Alex Jones, a total nutcase. In late 2016, Drudge dropped the link for RedState a conservative political blog, and added Zero Hedge. I noted this change in a blog post back in 2016 and on Twitter, that’s why I remember it.
If your trusted source always sends you into panic mode and down endless conspiratorial rabbit holes, perhaps that’s something to seriously ponder.
Things have gotten very crazy among the American right-wing echo chamber since the Obama years. This current Oct 4th hysteria reminded me of the 2015 Jade Helm hysteria .
Beyond Zero Hedge, there are several liberal reporters, who for many years I felt, that if they weren’t on the Kremlin payroll, they should be considering how consistently they aided Russia’s anti-American propaganda efforts, especially trashing the US military, and now these reporters are darlings of right-wing media. One, Glenn Greenwald, was constantly selling the traitor, Eric Snowden, as a hero and this guy is now a right-wing media darling… Truly, a whole lot of conservative and right-wing America has gone off the rails.
I also can’t fathom the right-wing embrace of Elon Musk as some sort of savior of free speech in America. Musk is all in on the green energy transformation – heck, he manufactures EVs, for crying out loud. He also personally visits Russian leaders and Chinese leaders, to advance his own business. And as far as his commitment to right-wing causes, well, that’s dubious. He didn’t become the richest man in the world by being stupid and X is a platform he intends to transform into an online site where people can do everything – digital banking, socialize, entertainment, shop. Here’s a July article, For Elon Musk, X equals everything.
Left-wing America went off the rails long, long ago, which leaves me wondering what on earth is going on. When right-wingers are selling Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. a far-left environmentalist loon as a sound choice for conservatives, something is totally nuts. I had a close family member, a sensible person, send me a RFK Jr. article a while back and this brought to mind how a whole lot of the right has become just as reactionary and hysterical as the left. Many jumped on the Trump bandwagon in 2015-2016, willfully ignoring his liberal views, his liberal morals in his personal life (sleazy), his close associations with prominent Dems and liberals and even two of his his kids couldn’t vote for him in 2016 GOP primary, because they were still registered Democrats – but, millions of angry right-wingers willfully turned a blind-eye to all those facts. Just like they ignore that all the bad people in Trump’s administration, whom he blames for any and all problems, were chosen by him. This same willful blindness extended to the GOP filling up with assorted weirdos and frauds, all Trump-endorsed.
Yes, of course our nation’s finances are a train wreck and of course, we should always be wary of government overreach, but none of this constant online fearmongering and endless right-wing conspiratorial hamster wheel actually helps anyone become better prepared for emergencies or hard times and frankly, it can propel people to make reckless and ill-advised decisions. It fuels more divides constantly.
The hard truth for most Americans is they are just as bad at handling their own personal finances as the government is at handling our nation’s financial house (over $1 trillion credit card reported in US – Aug 2023). I faced that personal reality check when I was accumulating more credit card debt than I felt comfortable with and then I decided to make big changes in my money habits. It was hard and sticking with it is still a challenge at times, when I want to overspend. If people, who have been financially irresponsible all of a sudden decide to run around “preparing for the end of the world” and even attempt to buy a fraction of the “prepper” stuff hyped online as “vital,” well, they would be way more likely to be wiped out by a personal financial tsunami than an actual one.
First step toward being better prepared is to get out of debt and put some money aside for an emergency fund, then start working on building up basic preparedness supplies, as you can afford them. I’m not going to advise where to put that emergency fund or in what type of assets you choose, but I’m still using a bank, although I prefer to have some cash on hand too. I’m not into the precious metal stuff, but if that floats your boat – have at it. If you can’t learn the self-discipline to commit to long-term responsible choices and saying no to having everything you want now, well, chances are you’ll have a very hard time in a serious emergency.
The reality check is you have developed a huge sense of entitlement, when you are living way beyond your means. How well, do you think people who have never practiced any self-discipline and self-restraint would do at carefully managing their food, water or other supplies in a serious crisis?
Packing up your family and moving into the wilderness is not advisable if you have no experience or know-how about how to navigate that lifestyle. The same goes for moving from an urban lifestyle to rural. People are certainly adaptable and can learn to thrive in all sorts of situations, climates, and locations. but people who overreact and get worked up easily usually encounter more difficulties – and make bad decisions. Plus, if you rush around in a panic or keep changing course with your own preparedness plans based on online hysteria, well, you’re reacting – not being proactive or planning ahead. Small, steady steps at building up basic emergency food and supplies can add up quickly in improving your readiness and developing a preparedness mindset.
I do believe in emergency preparedness and working to learn new skills, but beyond all that we should all learn to develop some resilience and a positive mindset. If all you do is worry about the end of the world or some other catastrophe people online are yammering about, you can end up in a self-limiting box. Even with all the societal and political chaos, we still live in very good times in America. We are a land rich in resources and potential. Despite the inflation and supply issues, we also still have access to so many goods and opportunities, that our ancestors who toiled and struggled could not have imagined.
Again, I wrote off the left in America, as overtaken by far-left extremists and especially the Democratic Party as irredeemably corrupt decades ago, but I’m feeling that a large portion of the right and the GOP is now also a total basket case of extremism, corruption and truly batshit craziness too.
The degree of right-wing crazy in recent years disturbs me a great deal, because I’m wondering if there are calm, principled leaders anywhere to be found in America… and if the worked up mobs on either side would even listen to them.
In the above YouTube video, Prepper Potpourri, a very practical-minded prepper, put together a list of apocalyptic fiction to consider. In her video she collaborated with some other preppers in the YouTube prepper community about their favorites in the dystopian genre.
One of the other YouTube preppers in her video, Cold War Prepper, offered a great tip for reading dystopian novels and it’s actually the way I read non-fiction books too. He suggested having large index cards, post-it flags and a pen handy, to mark pages and jot down notes. This is how I’ve been reading for decades.
This year has turned into a departure from my usual type fiction reading choices, as I’ve wandered into some dystopian fiction this year, which I’ve generally skipped. I’ve also been reading a lot of non-fiction on totalitarianism, Mao and Soviet communism and other serious topics, trying to make sense out of our rapidly changing world. I even watched the first season of The Last of Us, an apocalyptic series about most of the world being wiped out by a rapidly spreading fungal infection, that attacks the brain and leads to, well, a zombie apocalypse.
I prefer happy endings and historical romances have always been my top fiction choice, but I’ve taken this reading detour lately, as I realized how many things I don’t know about preparedness and other very serious topics. I vaguely knew what an EMP event was, but once I learned more, well, that led to the William R. Forstchen novels and more reading on that topic.
Back in March I wrote a blog post about reading William R. Forstchen’s 2009 novel, One Second After (the John Masterson series). I then read his follow-on novels, One Year After and The Final Day. I also read his novel, 48 Hours. I recommend all of these, because even though a few things in the plots seemed unrealistic and a lot of Masterson and the town doctor dialogues often sounded more like they were regurgitating some “worst case scenario” information from some government report, overall I learned a great deal. The 4th book in Forstchen’s John Masterson series, Five Years After, was released in hardcover a couple days ago. The paperback will be released in May of next year and on Amazon, there is a Kindle version available.
Last year, I reread, George Orwell’s 1984 and a lesser known 1960s dystopian novel, A World Without Men, by Charles Eric Mann, which I saw mentioned at some conservative site several years ago, so I had ordered it and read it. Orwell’s masterpiece continues to be the easy go-to comparison for every extremist thing happening in the world.
The Mann novel delves into some of the extreme societal shifts within a world that, over time, through man-made reproduction problems, becomes literally without men. It’s a world maintained via artificial insemination using harvested sperm from males, as male babies were dramatically decreasing. Then male babies stopped being born and the last male on earth died off, leading to a secret global race for scientists to get male fetuses to survive. The story begins far in the future, then jumps back in history to set the stage of global events that explains how this all-female world came about. All of the characters felt hollow and forgettable to me. As the story returns to that future world, the protagonist figures out some important truths and she starts making waves.
The Mann novel would be totally forgettable, except some of the criticisms of early modern feminism the author touched on are worth considering, especially since modern feminism has moved into some very extreme mutations (they refer to them was “waves) with #MeToo and the ever-expanding gender movement. Seriously, LGBT is now 2SLGBTQI+ in Canada. The Canadian government explains: “2SLGBTQI+ terminology is continuously evolving. As a result, it is important to note that this list is not exhaustive and these definitions are a starting point to understanding 2SLGBTQI+ identities and issues.”
I developed an interest in all the Cold War era stuff back in the 1980s. Then the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and most people brushed aside all the things we had learned. Back then I had developed an interest in learning about propaganda and as we moved from one Army post to another, one of the many blessings of life around the Army was Army post libraries. Those libraries catered to military-themed topics and I found piles of interesting books to read. Perhaps, that earlier interest in propaganda is what sparked my interest in the American spin information war developing in the 1990s.
Recently, I read Reagan’s favorite dystopian novel, The Journal of David Q. Little, about the US falling under the control of an international organization controlled by the Soviet Union. Although the Soviet Union is long gone, many of the themes of Marxist ideology and Soviet operational methods described in this old 1960s novel, didn’t feel so antiquated when thinking about all the Marxist-tinged ideology that’s taken hold in America in recent years, especially among the far-left and in academia.
Now, we keep hearing about Russian and Chinese disinformation, AI generated information, fake news, digitally-altered images, bot attacks, algorithms used to distort perceptions, etc. and I’ve realized that I need to, not only try to understand the new things, but go back and brush up on older history. Influence operations went from being a thing government intelligence agencies or big corporations masterminded to now being a social media influencer” is a coveted career path and anyone with an internet connection can become an “influencer.”
Many people don’t enjoy reading non-fiction books, that’s why a dystopian fiction list like Prepper Potpourri put together can come in handy. While some of the plot twists and events may be unrealistic, the authors generally put a lot of effort into research and present scenarios, you might never have considered.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm planned a short summer trip from North Carolina to Tennessee, with the intent of hyping the marvels of travel using electric vehicles. Her convoy ran into problems quickly due to there not being enough fast-charging stations that worked along her carefully planned route. Her trip drew headlines when staffers drove ahead to a planned recharging stop and found there weren’t enough working chargers for Granholm’s convoy of electric vehicles. The staffers parked a gas vehicle in front of an EV charging station to try to hold it for Granholm’s convoy, which resulted in an angry electric vehicle owner, waiting to charge up, to call the police.
Beyond the obvious PR disaster aspect of Granholm’s road trip, the glaring problem, which the green dream crowd refuses to acknowledge is America does not possess the infrastructure to support this electric vehicle conversion they’re pushing. Globally, the infrastructure for this forced green energy transformation does not exist and the World Economic Forum bigwigs, like Klaus Schwab know this. Schwab stated in his book, COVID-19: The Great Reset, that this envisioned transition will take many trillions of dollars and it’s not only a matter of building infrastructure – much of the technology has to be developed.
Their big plan is to dismantle the current fossil fuel energy system rapidly and transfer the fossil fuel funding to renewable development. Why would you go about dismantling the current workable energy system before you have the newer technology even in place to replace it? Well, the green energy transformation is only part of the green dream and its their concomitant DEI agenda of transforming every aspect of our daily lives that they’re relying on to make this green energy transformation happen. They are going to try to force global changes to how we eat, how we live, where we live, and try to regulate every person’s daily consumption – all in the name of saving the planet and building their vision of a diverse, equitable and inclusive world. This plan is really a plan for a self-selected group of elites to control the world. Individual freedom will be ground into the dirt, if this “Great Reset” happens.
The common sense approach that you should never destroy your back-up system, especially when your new system isn’t even functional doesn’t even enter into the thinking, because the elitists pushing this agenda keep profiting from these massive transfers of wealth and they live within a self-reinforcing bubble. No objective criticisms are allowed within their exclusive group. If someone challenges their beliefs, they’re cancelled and banished from their elite circles.
These global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies do portend terrible outcomes, but it’s going to be the foot soldiers of state and local officials in this movement who will be implementing all these new rules and programs… We’ll all be dealing with more and more local bureaucratic tyrants in our daily lives, as the new rules and regulations pile up.
For this forced green energy transformation to fit within the timelines being dictated by the Biden administration, there will be a central-planner economy taking shape, with the federal government trying to seize more and more control over the American economy (plus control of 30% of American land under the Biden 30 X 30 Plan). And while the pandemic economic policies hit small businesses the hardest, while many big businesses made record profits, this Great Reset being rolled out will completely decimate the middle class. We’re going to end up dealing with more red tape, more rules, more idiots empowered to control more aspects of our daily lives – like if we have electricity, how much we can use and when we can use it will be controlled. The headlines about bureaucrats within the Biden administration pushing states to ban gas stoves, add new regulations on ceiling fans, lightbulbs, and a host of other appliances have already started. Some countries in Europe and Canada are already working to implement even more radical changes.
The terms Neo-feudalism or Feudalism 2.0 are floating about to describe this 2030 Agenda, that encompasses the green & DEI agenda at the UN, Some WEF elitist spouting, “you will own nothing and be happy,” has become the shorthand slogan for this concept, where there will be the elites ( the expert and political class) making all the rules and the peasants doing as they’re told by their betters. I watched this video this morning. Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen is in Norway and his videos are often themed around learning to be self-reliant. He also mentions the 15-minute city idea being pushed at the WEF and unfortunately for Republicans in America – Trump loves that idea. In this video. Bjorn discusses some new laws being pushed by the green crowd in the UK and for Americans, the trend has been the most radical green and social justice policies start in Europe and Canada, before being pushed hard here. Our constitutional rights in America create obstacles for the Great Reset agenda:
The idea of moving off-grid, which Bjorn suggests, gets mentioned frequently among the prepper/homesteading online communities a lot in America and the problem with that is even most of the people who decide to homestead (with electric or off-grid) fail. They often have no realistic understanding of the difficulties, the amount of physical toil and discomfort required, the costs, and aren’t physically or psychologically prepared to deal with the multitude of adversities they encounter. Too often they were inspired by all the bucolic bliss they’ve consumed on social media content, when the reality is dealing with manure, flies and being sweaty and dirty most of the time, as you toil away.
If you’re not ready to take the plunge to live off-grid or make some dramatic change, I think working to simplify your life right where you’re at now – from your finances to your daily life would be a better starting point, than making a radical off-grid move. My grandmother when I was a kid did not having running water in her house – she carried it in buckets from a nearby spring and she had an outhouse. She also cooked on a wood-burning stove. Yes, she raised her family and was an amazing cook and baker, but it was a very hard way to live. Plan carefully, if you’re going to make a dramatic lifestyle change and be prepared for hardship and failures.
The truth is there aren’t going to be any easy solutions to pushback against this radical transformation, but as long as we can still speak openly, that’s something we can do. Just knowing you’re not alone in your concerns can give more people courage to speak up.
Victor Davis Hanson wrote a short piece in The Daily Signal, Post-Postmodern America, Meet Mao’s Cultural Revolution, where he mentioned the Granholm road trip fiasco. He mentioned CA planning to destroy four dams, which was news to me:
Pre-civilizational greens in California prefer blowing up dams to building them.
They couldn’t care less that their targeted reservoirs help store water in droughts, prevent flooding, enhance irrigation, offer recreation, and generate clean hydroelectric power.
Now an absurd green California is currently destroying four dams on the Klamath River. In adding insult to injury, it is paying the half-billion-dollar demolition cost in part through a water bond that state voters once thought would build new—not explode existing—dams.
What seems like common sense, like pausing big transformational plans, if major systemic planning problems become obvious and try to figure out solutions, before rushing ahead, isn’t going to happen with this “Great Reset” and their set-in-stone deadlines. Come hell or high water, they’re going to forge ahead, because they fear acceding on any part of their timeline or plans, which might allow the evil naysayers power to organize, pushback or block their grand world transformation. In America, with a presidential election a little over a year away, the pace of the radical green transformation will accelerate, as Dems work to ram through as many green policies as they can- as a bulwark, in case, the unthinkable happens and a Republican wins the WH.
Unfortunately, I often wonder if the opposition on the right in America even has a clue what they’re up against or really cares to try to put the brakes on this green energy transformation or the social justice transformation with all these DEI efforts. Mostly, they waste their time on Congressional investigations, which go nowhere. The House can’t indict anyone – they send criminal referrals to the Biden Justice Department, where they’ll sit. With impeachment, the House can impeach, but then the trial is in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats – so here again nothing’s really going to happen or change. With our deeply divided country and the media playing such a major role in how people view events, any partisan action will be embraced by one side and completely dismissed by the other side, as just a “partisan witch hunt.” The angry part of the GOP, which is the part addicted to outrage theater and the Trump/Hunter Biden dramas seems happy to rage about Stolen election, Biden or Hillary or Obama, but they’re slow at countering the green agenda, except for a few GOP state governors, who have gotten laws passed in their states to pushback.
I finished reading the novel, The Journal of David Q. Little, and towards the end there’s a conversation between Dr. Rodgers, a wise professor, who early on became a target to be silenced and labeled an “extremist” and David Little, who is seeking to understand what happened. Rodgers explains:
“I did my weeping a long time ago, and for a long time, too. I fought it… this drift to insanity, this flight from reason. Tell them, I thought. Sound the alarm, and they will respond. But few did, and I could only resign myself to the inevitable.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why didn’t they listen?”
He was silent for a long moment, folding and unfolding his heavy hands. “I finally tumbled to it. They did not understand what I was talking about, because I was unable to communicate with them. You see, each of us has a language all his own, and this is because each of us has values all his own, of one sort or another, even if one of our values is to have no values. Everything we do or say or think stems from these values. If your values and mine are reasonably well aligned, then we have a fair chance to communicate our respective thoughts with some effectiveness, provided we are of a mind to. But if our systems of values are different, then our interpretations of words and thoughts and deeds are different, too. Try as we might, communication is impossible under those conditions.” (pages 504-505)
If you often feel like you’re talking to the wall when you try to encourage a loved one to consider any kind of lifestyle change or talk about being prepared or mention the dramatic political and social changes happening and they reject what you say or dismiss it as just crazy “conspiracy theories” or “you worry too much” the chances are that person and you have completely different value systems. Even if you end up being right – the dramatic politcal and social changes happening lead to terrible outcomes – many people will still cling to their own delusions and values.
Speaking freely is important, but beating your head against the wall trying to reach people – even sometimes people close to you – probably won’t work. The truth is though that in times of great social and political upheaval, most people can’t keep their heads buried in the sand forever, because the upheavals end up at everyone’s door. In the David Little novel, even as tyranny grew and people from different social classes ended up in the same desperate conditions, they still held very different views (and values) – blaming different things or people.
Trying to work calmly and determinedly now to become more resilient, more self-reliant, and more proactively positive – looking for smaller things you can do, rather than getting caught up in big ideas to change the world might be a better approach. At least that’s the approach I’m taking – small steps every day.
So, the important things to be aware of are ransomware attacks can cause chaos and delays in medical care, but also these types of cyberattacks aren’t resolved in hours or even days sometimes, but can take weeks. When the phones and computer systems are down for days or weeks, it creates endless problems for medical personnel and patients.
My primary care doctor’s medical group experienced some sort of cyberattack issue towards the end of June. On June 22nd I received a text msg. that their phones were temporarily offline and then another text msg. on July 12th, that the phones had been restored. I had two issues that required medical attention during that period and my doctor’s phone number was answered by an answering service, where the person told me that I would need to go into the office to make an appointment. I did go into the doctor’s office to schedule an appointment – both times. I needed to see my doctor. Aside from the text messages, I don’t know any actual details other than someone in the office told me they shut down the computer system out of concerns of a breach. A disgruntled person also notified a local newspaper, who ran a short piece about the phones and computers being down for that medical group, but there was no additional information.
I am concerned about the NYT report last weekend about Chinese malware buried in US computer systems, but there’s been no information that I’ve seen attributing these ransomware attacks against medical systems to China. I don’t want to make that leap of blaming China, because I haven’t seen any reports stating that.
In just the past couple months, I’ve experienced this cyberattack situation with my own primary care doctor. My power went out during a thunderstorm for several hours recently and that’s happened many times over the years. Last month, my water pressure was very low one morning and only a trickle came out of the faucet. Hours later the water pressure was back to normal, but my local water department issued a “boil water” advisory until they completed testing of the water. I got COVID and was sick a few weeks ago, so having plenty of food and medical supplies came in handy. I’m still encountering items at the store that are out-of-stock at times (often for a few days, but sometimes longer). Granted, so far these are minor inconveniences in my life, but each incident reinforces my belief that working on emergency preparedness matters a great deal. And, yep, I’m going to continue to beat the emergency preparedness drum, even if it often feels like very few people take this seriously..
This is just a small object lesson on preparedness. Yesterday when I got up the water in my bathroom sink came out in a trickle, so I went to my kitchen sink and turned the water on there. Same thing with just a trickle of water and low water pressure. Next I went outside to check that there wasn’t a leak in the pipes coming into my house. Everything looked normal.
After 9 am, I decided to call my local water department, as I’m on municipal water, and the lady told me there was a water main break and they were working on that. Later, the water pressure returned to normal, but then came the announcement of a boil water advisory until the water department completes testing of the water. Here’s the quote:
“The advisory is being issued out of an abundance of caution – there is the potential a health hazard may exist due to microbial contamination in these areas without positive pressure.”
Once again it’s been driven home to me that having emergency drinking water stored is important. I didn’t have to run to the store or alter my daily routine, because I have drinking water stored and a Berkey water filter. I have lifestraws and other water purification means too.
I certainly wasn’t expecting a water main break near me when I woke up yesterday, but having bottled water and other water purification options on-hand was a relief. You never know when some type of incident or emergency will happen, so even small preparedness efforts can bring peace of mind when something out of the ordinary does happen. And the thing is all sorts of things out of our control can happen to create problems. Just a small bit of preparedness effort can mitigate a whole lot of inconvenience and worries.
Last night I watched a YouTube video by MIgardener, who has a very popular organic gardening channel. He also runs a seed business and I have ordered seeds from him. I feel what he said should be shared. He’s not a fearmonger or someone who puts out alarmist content. In this video he’s urging gardeners to plant more food now and he stated that the heavy smoke from the large number of Canadian forest fires is impacting plant growth for crops and in home gardens in a large portion of the US.
We can add this looming problem to the drought situation in parts of the country too and it’s obvious our food supply system will be challenged in coming months.
“The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 triggered a change in the global climate. The heavier material fell to the ground and the ocean’s surface. However, when lighter particulates reached the stratosphere, they spread out and created an aerosol cloud the size of Australia.The cloud blocked sunlight from reaching the earth and changed the global climate by 2-7 degrees Fahrenheit, the effects of which devastated much of the world in what should have been the summer of 1816. Crops failed across Europe and the U.S. due to the cold or lack of sunshine causing grain and oat prices to soar, torrential rains flooded crops in Ireland, novel strains of cholera killed millions in India, crime became rampant, and people starved in many countries.”
There are rumors galore about the cause of these Canadian forest fires, with the far-right media ecosystem putting forth that these fires were deliberately set by the infamous “THEY,” to starve “us” to death, but I don’t have the time or energy to invest in the constant conspiracy theory hot takes.
Heck, I even saw some conspiracy theory on Twitter, after reports of NYC was dealing with heavy smoke a few weeks ago, that the Canadian forest fires aren’t real, but it’s some evil US government plot that’s creating all this smoke in the US. I believe the Canadian forest fires are real and it’s neither here nor there about what caused these Canadian forest fires. The issue is these fires are burning and the smoke situation is impacting the US in many ways, including food production. There are drought conditions and crazy weather events galore in the US this year too.
So what can we do to lessen the impact on our families?
The video above is not alarmist. He’s urging people to grow more in your garden now and to keep planting. Trying to find ways to encourage people to take steps to be prepared for more potential shortage situations and more food inflation seems common sense at this point. You don’t need to get hysterical or jump into panic mode, but even small efforts to work on building up some extra food supplies in your pantry and trying to learn to grow some vegetables and herbs are better than sitting there doing nothing.
I know plenty of people who are resistant to “prepping” and have a million and one excuses for why they don’t do things that could lessen their worries and bring them more sense of control in rapidly changing times. However, calmly urging people you care about to take steps to be able to feed their family – no matter what crisis comes our way – matters.
Since the 4th of July is right around the corner here in America, perhaps explaining that working toward personal food security really is an integral part of personal freedom might work better than warning about doom and gloom events. Every little bit you do to learn more skills and work at becoming more self-reliant really means you’re on the path to personal freedom. I’ve got some of my family agreeing with me on basic preparedness now, so I feel like that’s progress.
This is just a prepper sort of post – no politics, but assuredly I’ll be writing more about politics soon. I went to Indiana for my second oldest granddaughter’s high school graduation a few weeks ago and ended up catching some bug. After about a week and a half, with no improvement, it was time to see the doctor. With a round of antibiotics, I’m now finally over the coughing fits and sinus infection, but now I’ve got a different infection starting and will likely have to call my doctor next week. This little bout of sickness got me thinking about preparedness in several different directions.
First thing, I realized was while I have a few pets to care for, which isn’t strenuous, keeping up with watering my little container garden was a challenge. I felt weak and exhausted for over two weeks. In a real crisis situation, well, you can’t neglect your garden for a few weeks or you could end up losing most of your plants. If I had other animals to care for, I would not have been able to keep up. So, despite the main theme of buying this and that around the online emergency preparedness community, I believe preparedness has to include some thinking about how to manage when things start going wrong, which will inevitably happen, no matter how prepared you believe you are. An injury or protracted illness could really throw all your preparedness efforts into disarray. Something’s going to happen that you hadn’t considered or prepared for, because that’s just how real life is.
For a lot of people with existing health conditions, having an assortment of over-the-counter medications isn’t really an ideal solution. I did take some over-the-counter cough and cold medicine, but when I finally saw my primary care doctor, he advised me not to take any of the over-the-counter cold medications or decongestants, because of my medical problems. I assume there are a lot of older people, in this same situation where over-the-counter medications aren’t advisable with their medical conditions and/or prescription medications. My high-level of reliance on the medical system was brought home to me again. Many healthier people could also require more advanced medical care, depending on injuries or illness, so trying to stay healthy and working on fitness should be a key preparedness focus too.
Having gone further down the road on emergency preparedness, especially since 2020, being open to making adjustments and changes is part of my journey. I don’t want to pick on an online prepper guy, but as I watched a few of this one guy’s videos, he comes across like he’s got his isolated ranch all set up and is prepared for every contingency. He has all the answers. Name a type of SHTF type event and he’s got the total plan for survival at his fingertips. I watched a few of his videos and then realized I’m probably more like this guy, with my strong opinions, than unlike him sometimes – especially with his political hot takes, even though my views are different than his. I’ve seen several male prepper online experts, who are like that about self-defense too, some with military backgrounds and some with other backgrounds, but they come across to me as overly confident that they’ve got everything handled. I hope they do have all the answers or some other people do have the answers and survive even the most catastrophic crisis, because I truly want human life to continue on earth, regardless whether I survive or not. For me, the more I’ve thought about preparedness and actually worked on projects to become better prepared, well, it’s been humbling in many ways.
I’m one of those people, who doesn’t have all the answers. My preparedness efforts are full of mistakes, setbacks, having to rethink things, trying other ways to do things. Often things that sounded simple, turn out to require a lot more practice and skill than I thought they would. Watching other people do things on videos is no substitute for actually doing them yourself, so I keep working on projects myself and trying to learn more as I go. There are some successes, so that’s encouraging and it reminds me how much worse off I’d be if I hadn’t worked on preparedness at all.
After this latest bout of sickness, I also realized that I want to prepare and have more freezer meals stocked up for when I don’t feel like cooking or if something happens where I’m sick and having some quick meals, beyond soup, would be handy. During the weeks of having that crud, I ended up buying some meals in the frozen food section at the grocery store. Disappointment followed, both with the high cost of frozen meals for what you actually get and they really weren’t very good. Whenever I hear happy economic news, I feel like I’m living in some alternative reality, because I haven’t seen any sort of great drop in prices at the grocery store, beyond a few items, like egg prices have come back down. It’s still sticker shock at the register every time I go to the grocery store. My freezer dinner experience prodded some rethinking a small part of my food storage and pulling out old and not so old cookbooks to read.
As a young wife, back in the 1980s, I began making some freezer meals and referred to the Special Helps section at back of my red Betty Crocker cookbook, pictured at the top, for guidance. I’ve always frozen extra prepared food, but rarely made a concerted effort to cook with that in mind. Now, I’m going to focus on having an assortment of frozen homemade meals on hand and more easy to heat up homemade soups and stews too.
Getting some freezer meals put together is a small project and I’m not doing some massive freezer meal prep days, like I’ve seen some ladies online do, where they put together dozens of freezer meals at one time. Cooking an extra meal here or there when I’m preparing supper and then sticking one in the freezer will work just fine for me.
While it’s a good feeling to build a prepper pantry and have emergency supplies on hand, I keep trying to use my food and supplies to improve my everyday life. After all these years living with access to online recipes galore, I never thought I’d be back to browsing through my old cookbooks, but thinking about freezer meals brought me back to the 1980s when as a young wife, I was first learning how to manage my own kitchen. My mother gave me that Betty Crocker cookbook in 1980 when I got married and it’s still my favorite cookbook. It’s also still a useful reference to have in my home.
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