In my lengthy post in October, Remember What We Are Up Against, I made an ill considered closing statement that my boy Engineer Jim corrected on Substack:
Is your mind and heart and body prepared for the sort of total war They seek to inflict on you and your family?
Jim said:
Ready? I don’t think that any of us can truthfully claim to be 100% ready in every respect. All I can claim is that I try to improve my readiness, bit by bit, every day.
Is that just quibbling? Not really.
Some of my readers have experienced some of the worst humanity has to offer. They have been in the military and seen little kids dead in war or bodies mutilated by jihadists, blown up by roadside bombs, on and on. I have only had the slightest taste of that during my very brief trip to Haiti.
Can we really be ready for that?
I was very shaken by the sheer magnitude of the disaster that is Haiti and I was staying in a gated, walled compound with razor wire and broken glass on the walls with our own generator so we didn’t have significant power interruptions and with bottled water to avoid contracting cholera. The worst of the inhumanity was viewed through the windows of our mini-bus where we saw collapsed buildings from the earthquake, tent cities and a dead guy in the street. It was really just disaster tourism. For the people living in Haiti it was daily life on the edge of starvation with the threat of armed gangs, rapists roaming the tent cities and absolutely no hope for the future.
Six months in Iraq with people shooting at you and roadside bombs? That is a different level entirely, the difference between me shooting baskets in the driveway and playing in the NBA. Nobody is “ready” for that and I am of the opinion that all combat vets other than sociopaths have some level of PTSD, even if they manage to cover it well.
Let’s be honest. In the event of a real black swan, end of the world scenario rather than a temporary situation or one where we experience mild conditions (rolling blackouts, interrupted supply chains, think Covid-19 empty stores but for years), most of us would probably die. We are heading for a stretch of very cold weather here in NE Indiana, barely getting above freezing for the rest of the month. My family could survive for a while with no power or for a very long time with unreliable. intermittent power. Without any power or propane to heat the house indefinitely? We would be in trouble.
That is true for most of us. The die-off in a real TEOTWAWKI situation would be enormous. Even a Tier One special forces Green Beret Navy SEAL operator with the best preps in the world can be felled by an injury or disease that is easily treatable today but fatal in a world without emergency rooms. The rest of us with? The odds of you surviving if the lights go out and stay out are pretty slim.
The problem with preparing for an unknown calamity is that it is….unknown. If we knew what was going to happen and when, it would be a lot easier to prepare but even then in a real disaster, with time to prepare for specifics, most people will still die.
As Jim said, we are never really ready. Our prep work is just that, preparing for a disaster with no timeframe or specifics. Prepping doesn’t mean foolproof, it simply is a way to improve our odds and that is the best any of us can do.
A cogent point.
One to keep clearly in mind.
The wife and I are as ready as amatures can be. We’re “ready” for death, why? Because there’s no shortage of “worse than death” scenarios out there. Nope, not gonna suicide, we’ll fight like banshees until we can’t, not going “gently into the night.” At some point, the cost/benefit/pain ratio, does indicate transitioning to the other side. We’ve been aware of the civilizational slide into chaos for decades.
I have been learning and studying these matters since back in the bad old days, when the worst thing we could imagine was a ‘nuclear conflict, toe-to-toe with the Rooskies’… I have been prepping and training and learning for two thirds of my life… I have sought instruction and training and been involved in a lot of education… I have made decisions based solely on the need to better position our family for when the inevitable happens… I have prepped and spent and stockpiled and amassed and accumulated an endless array of stuff, filling in the holes and trying to think of new ways to do things when I can’t do them the usual way anymore…
And I am not ready.
Not really.
Not even close.
I am readier than I was yesterday, or last week, or ten years ago.
But I am not ready.
I never will be.
There will come a time when I must take up certain duties, effect certain plans, and execute certain functions. I will do those things to the best of my ability. I will deal with the consequences as best I can. I will not falter in my duty, I will not flinch from what must be done, I will push through and seek the best outcomes possible.
I will not, however, be ready.
That will have to be enough.
Amen brother. In the boat on the same river.
Forged in hellfire during an ICU tour.
I fear no commie and can’t wait to make good ones.
By any means necessary.
As resourceful and skilled as I am, I don’t necessarily expect to survive a long term societal collapse. None of us really can, as survival of such a scenario is largely down to luck (in somehow avoiding the worst consequences of a civilizational crash and burn).
I’ll be happy to liquidate human pieces of shit wll day long given the opportunity, but ultimately I will not be captured and tortured by neo-bolsheviks if they manage to stage the revolution they really want.
And honestly, after a lifetime of modern comfort and convenience, I’m really not enamored of the notion of getting busted down to a pre-industrial era existence in the back 1/3 of my life (which would be further reduced by the realities of having to live under such conditions anyway).
If things get bad enough for long enough, most of us likely don’t make it, irrespective of accumulated preps and skills. That’s just reality, and thinking otherwise is hubris.
Took the old fuzzy pup for a long walk today. The woods are great these days. All the brush knocked down by the freeze. A soft palette of autumn underfoot. The crisp air carries sound just right. Old fuzzy bounding after all matters of critters. A few young whitevtails bolting. Prolly won’t live for long. Around here the over the hood hunters keep them well baited. Food and trail cams. Habits and hideouts and death around the corner. Maybe not today.
You know like us.
I’ve got some things. Preps and contingencies. But nothing that would overcome a full season of being hunted. Or that thing I never see coming. For no other reason than life is to be lived. Ain’t got time for all that what ifs.
I’d rather tend to my little patch and my animals and loves than fixate on the next hole to fill with things.
There are never enough things. But I get the instinct to solve problems that don’t exist yet. And learning new skills is just plain fun. That’s how our people got this far I reckon.
I could have spent the day wiring some shit for the end of days. Or stripping and cleaning my rifle. But I put up a Christmas tree in the barn and hiked the dog instead.
Whatever may come I’m ready to own it. The end times prepping is good for discipline but also slips easily into collapse porn and fomo dopamine chasing and status posturing. Which is a trap of a different variety.
If the end comes I will look forward to the week or so when raw necessity will inspire actual community and cooperation and maybe some commie heads on pikes before the cull comes.
Maybe a decent chap will inherit some of my stuff. That would be nice.
Excellent. Well said. The ‘what ifs’ will drive you mad, living for today is a much better way to go about it.
I was really, really wrapped up in the doom & gloom prepper mindset, trying to ‘wargame’ all scenarios and it sucked all the joy outta life. Now I just concern myself with the ability to hunker down for a spell and avoid the crazies when things go sideways – let most of the problems take care of themselves so to speak. I’ve got a decent enough skill set to live without all the niceties, but I’ve decided not to worry about it til the time comes.
Roger that! I figured out in the 80’s that I’ll never have enough ammo and dehydrated h20.
Excellent and the last line is more than excellent.
The very worst is the least likely since it often requires lots of bad to happen. TEOTWAWKI is based on degrees. No one is ready for a 10. 10% are ready for a 5. 50% are ready for a 2 (think to COVID).
You said an awful lot there. Some of it explicitly. Some of it very quietly. Power-goes-out scenario and everyone has their Generac and propane all lined out, everything’s cozy. What happens without running water? No flushee toilet for lotsa folks for one. No problemo…we gots shovels. And maybe the neighbors do, and maybe some don’t and the wet season comes and there is fecal matter floating everywhere and everyone’s already run out of soap and bleach and peroxide. Sanitation is given passing heed most of the time in the “prepper circles” cuz I got muh go bag and my AR and my lifestraw, bro. Take a two hour food safety course (because fundamentally, poop on food is the main issue with food safety) online and see if that spurs some thoughts as to how to not die ugly and painfully when the power grid goes down.
That’s kinda one of the most horrifying aspects of prepping. You get started with some dehydrated food and some water (we can’t afford dehydrated water, so we store the regular kind which takes a lot of space) and a case of boolitts and five years later you’ve stuffed a spare bedroom and most of the garage, attic and basement and you’re like “f*ck! We ain’t ready for sh!t!” We’ve been prepping/homesteading for about twelve years and seems like we’ve only scratched the surface with skills (the biggest area of prepping by far) and contingency planning and every other plausible-but-not-necessarily-likely scenario. I like to say “we’re not prepped, we’re prepping). And literally, everything is the most important thing all the time. Shelter, water, food, medicine, first aid, self defense, sanitation, replenishment (growing plants and animals, catchment/water storage, barter goods), manual tools, extra fasteners, extra building material, preparations to harden the home/homestead for when society goes full WROL, DIY vehicle repair and maintenance. The list is endless and time and budgets are not. And any one of those issues could kill you at worst if the right circumstances line up against you. The flip side is if you can hunker down and have enough stored goods to survive the first big wave of supply chain collapse/famine you’re in better shape than 99% of folks. Your only hope lies in recognizing the hopelessness of the situation. Which means no effing off.
The harsh reality is that without a crew, none of us would/will make it very long. We’ve been at it a while and are far more prepared to ride out hard times than we once were. I had hoped to be able to bring some folks along on this journey and build a tribe. Sadly, most simply laugh and say, “We’ll just come to your house when the zombie apocalypse happens.” While I could use the help, if they come empty handled, we won’t last long, especially since they are about as useful as tits on a boar. It seems most people simply don’t want to think about the future.
My MIL lives in NE Ohio and they are expecting…wait for it…snow! OMG it’s winter and it is going to snow. She said the grocery stores are crazy with people dashing hither and yon filling their carts like they had spent four years in Venezuela. I spent nearly two decades in Ohio. As I recall, it snowed. Every winter. Most of the populous isn’t prepared for that.
As Ozark Homesteader said, if we can hunker down and ride out the first 30 days of a major event, the world will be a completely different place when we come out. That may or may not be a good thing.
On the flip side, I’m trying not to get so obsessed with preparing for the whatever that I forget to enjoy the life I have today. Built a great wood shop last year and I need to spend some time just building furniture that’s been on the to do list for years (decades…). Just to enjoy building something. Sure, a modern Genghis Khan will probably kill us and take it someday, but we’ll enjoy it in the meantime.
As noted by the excellent comments above, none of us can prep for every contingency. Regardless of dollars spent (unless we spend a few $million on a ‘Zuckerberg Hawaiian Bunker’–which could be breached by pouring gasoline into those vent shafts) we barely can scratch the surface because the odds are that whatever scenario we prep for will not be the event that takes civilization down.
So, while covering such necessities as fresh water storage, storing proteins, having guns & ammo aplenty (and training with same), multiple food sources, etc, what I personally do not have is “Tribe.”
I cannot convince my widely-dispersed family to do even a tenth of prep for life under adverse conditions.
The lone wolf scenario is unappealing–and invariably fatal.
So, what to do? Live well, strike a balance, help where one can help. Be a decent person, but have the skills to duck & cover.
And, if the SHTF, take five bad guys with you.
Although I had heard of and read about prepping, and already had a habit of trying to keep spares of things around the house, I didn’t genuinely start purchasing and planning until the scamdemic. Both because of other people’s panic behavior and the times caused/coincided with a temporary but very welcome increase in household income. Add in the 2021 Texas freeze and my husband was fully on board. We’ve since traded the suburban Mcmansion (and too much debt) for a tiny cabin in the woods (and almost no debt). We love our well and our woodstove and our Generac, along with acres of trees and plentiful wildlife and blessed privacy. And we already had plenty of means of personal protection. But neither of us have any personal military experience, nor grew up camping, and we’re both old and have allowed ourselves to get out of shape. We don’t expect, plan, or want to live forever. But whatever we acquire will hopefully prove useful for the survival of our sons and grandson, because ultimately that’s what matters. We’ve been blessed with fairly comfortable and interesting lives, and we’re still learning things and grateful for the internet (even though we generally dislike/distrust the proliferation of tech and surveillance) from which we still learn new things from far-flung and interesting people.
One other thing to add to the excellent posts in this thread is that most of us are getting OLD and that most likely will spell our Doom in a SHTF situation.
For example, I now have some health issues in my late 50s and I’m OK on medication but the minute the SHTF the clock is ticking. I’ve been able to store up 6 months of my critical medication but after that it is game over for me.
My objective is to get my family safely to our bug out location, get them settled then I check out.
The most deadly black swan is very simple: The end of clean water.
If you have no water, you are dead in about 3 days. If you have dirty water, you are dead within a week to a month, depending upon the disease. Clean water is responsible for about all of our health advances over the last century or two. Without clean water for consumption and hygiene, everyone is toast, especially the very young and the very old.
As far as prepping goes, how is it defined? Collecting stuff? Having two of everything? Lots of Guns and Ammo? Gold? Is the point of prepping maintaining a middle-class liefstyle in the middle of an economic breakdown?
I suspect the most successful preppers will be those who have prepared themselves to maintain the lifestyle that was common at the end of the Civil War. Eating without refrigeration, for example. How many people have generators and solar, but lack a steam engine? How many have knives and axes, but not a whetstone? Who has set up a treadle or bicycle for power applications? Who has material too make belts for power transfer?
I think prepping is better achieved through a proper mindset and education/experience rather than ongoing purchases.
“Be prepared to live like post CWI” and skills rather than goods. Spot on.
Build Tribe Like Your Life Depends on It Because It Does… Otherwise you are just a resupply point for those who do…
“When the Lights go Out” seems to me as the most likely scenario – plenty of Enemies (and ‘our greatest ally’) have Nuclear Weapons and Missiles to put them into the Magnetoosphere, taking out most of the ‘Grid’, including most Communications. This means that the vast Majority of ‘useless eaters’ in the Blue Hives are Dead within 30 Days (less in the Winter) either from Starvation/Disease or (fast) Lead Poisoning when they spill out of the Cities.
After that, Survival of Individuals will depend on pooling Skills and Resources in Rural Areas.
The tribe we need, is a functional, prepared town, with a prepared, like minded population. Easy Peasy! /s
The best readiness is mindset, flexibility, tenacity, and adaptability, the rest is just feel good preparations in a way, sure you need some level of preps but at the end of the day you have no idea what or how much and how to protect it. A similar adage is, you never rise to the occasion, you sink to your level of training. Train your mind, and learn how to be creative, adaptive and flexible. SOF thrives on these principles, we used many training iterations designed around it, it can be taught, some are better than others at “McGyvering” find that guy and sit in his hip pocket a while.
Couple of folks mentioned getting older. Crazy how that happens. I’m in my six decade. Still recovering from serious thoracic surgery a few years ago. Constant pain. Limited endurance. Localized paralysis in some back and some arm muscles. My body’s ability to develop muscle tissue appears to be less than a tenth of what it was years ago. Nevertheless, we eat right. We use nutritional supplements. We eat organic as much as possible. And I lift weights twice a day, using a trad 3 day split for mornings, and then focus on lagging areas in the afternoons. Two-a-days are manageable because we invested in a small, inexpensive set of free weights we found on CL years ago. Not barfing all this up to boast, brag, draw attention to “my troubles” or any of that. I anticipate that things will in all likelihood continue to get harder and harder. Doing a little bit each day to help my body to stay in some kind of shape means if/when we go full grid down, or Red Dawn, or CWIII, if we survive the initial shock wave at our house I hope to have “optimized” my body’s ability to manage the herculean workloads that will surely come with all that. The big point I hope to make is “stand where your feet are”. Don’t feel apprehensive about “how tough its going to be to get in shape”. Put on your sneaks and walk a couple miles four times a week (walking and running sound horrible but if that’s your thing go for it). Or bike, or hike, or ruck or whatever your thing is. Work up to a decent level of exertion. Which is to say-burning muscles, increased respiration and heartbeat, getting a good sweat, getting near to muscular failure. The easiest way to do this is with intervals. For a beginner: walk a few hundred yards until you’re warmed up, then walk at a fast pace that you can only sustain for a hundred yards or so-get that heart beating and you should be breathing heavily, then walk at an easy pace until your respiration has returned to normal and then do it again 3 to 5 times. Hill repeats are another way to do intervals. If its been twenty years of little or no activity, don’t feel like you need to jump right in and do two a day sessions in the gym. Do feel like whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it hard enough and often enough to get a payday. At my age payday won’t ever come at the start of swimsuit season. Payday comes when I have to do extended stretches of labor when it all comes crashing down. Plus fitness improves longevity, brain function and immunity. It is also a mood elevator and can help getting restful sleep, and can ameliorate the onset of arthritis in some cases. Pain is just electricity. It hurts, but it can’t hurt you.