It’s interesting how people change over time. Most of us, I suspect, will never change drastically, but we can sometimes “see the writing on the wall,” so to speak, as one of my good friends is doing recently.
We had them over this weekend, and, to my surprise, he’s becoming more interested in what I’m up to. Specifically, he’s becoming interested in our gardening, chickens, and general preparedness, but he hasn’t yet chosen to “pull the trigger” as it were. That got me to thinking: what preparedness resources do we most take for granted?
Most of us would probably say food. After all, it’s an easy preparedness resource to pick on; I won’t preach to the choir much here as I’m sure you’re well aware of how important food is to our survival. Suffice it to say that attempting to become truly self-reliant with respect to food is awfully difficult. Even growing your own vegetable garden won’t amount to anything fruitful for months, and then there’s the canning, freeze-drying, and whatnot to save for winter. And I haven’t mentioned a word about growing food for calories (like grains) or protein (like rabbits or cows) and how much work all that would be. It would become a full time job for sure!
What about water? That’s a resource which I believe we, even as preppers, take for granted more so than food. After all, what happens if they turned off the water spigot right now? I’d be fine for a few weeks, maybe a few months if we truly conserved, but I would have a real hard time acquiring any real amount of clean water. Yes, I’ve got filters, and I know about SODIS (solar water disinfection), and I’ve got bleach and other stuff for water treatment, but it’s the gathering of water that would be the real problem. Even rainwater collection isn’t as easy as I wish it were. We can get weeks without collecting a drop here in the Midwest, and even then we might not gather much to get excited about. I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but water is certainly overlooked by most of us.
I’d further argue that our health is a resource that we often overlook. I believe that most of us assume we would be perfectly healthy if/when SHTF and that nothing would go bad, but that’s far from the truth. Odds are good that our health will change drastically if for nothing other than poor sanitation practices, restricted diets, unmanaged stress, as well as a drastic change in physical activity. SHTF will be a real eye-opener for most of us, me included. And that’s to say nothing of the serious potential problems we might face, such as accidents (like falls or deep cuts), 3rd degree burns (from starting fires), acute illness (bad food or water or sanitation), and damage from others (like gunshot wounds). This will be a real mess.
Speaking of which, how about your security? Right now, your neighbors are relatively peaceful, but what happens to their civility if/when they have no food and, worse, no expectation of finding something to eat anytime soon? And what happens when they glance over your privacy fence and notice you’re living high on the hog? My guess is nothing good, that’s for sure. But it’s not just neighbors; friends, family, and even people you’ve never met will surely be knocking on your door when they get desperate, which begs the question: how far would you be willing to go to defend your resources? I know people who say they would shoot anyone on sight, no questions asked. I also know people who say they wouldn’t harm a fly if it came down to it. I don’t know where I stand on the issue, and I suspect I won’t know until I’m forced to choose. Regardless, security will become a big deal, and I suspect that by mere virtue of where we live that it will be an absolute nightmare. Sometimes I wonder if all of my preps are a waste of time because, let’s face it, I doubt I could truly defend our home in most circumstances. It’s a fact that I’m beginning to accept more and more. What about you?
But even our security doesn’t hold a candle to one resource that I fear most of us fail miserable to appreciate, and that resource is time. Although I’ve warned about it for years, and I’ve written about the coming collapse, I’m afraid that nearly all of us, me included at times, continue to downplay just how little time we have left. The truth is that I don’t know when we will collapse. It could be tomorrow or ten years from now, but I do know it’s coming, and there’s likely nothing we, as a nation, can do about it. That means it’s up to you and I to prepare ourselves and future generations to persevere so that we can rebuild from the ashes. Let’s just hope those ashes aren’t the result of a nuclear exchange, something I’m suddenly increasingly concerned about.
Assuming things don’t get quite that bad, time really is running out. Even if you don’t believe in the devaluation and (purposeful?) destruction of the dollar, you have to admit that the items we need are becoming more costly. Yes, prices fluctuate, but the general trend is upwards nonetheless. But that’s not really the problem I’m concerned about. You see, I firmly believe that we are running out of time to even acquire the tools and resources necessary to survive any real collapse or SHTF scenario. This could include almost anything you already know is useful for survival, like water filters and gardening tools, but it might also include a variety of other items that might not seem quite as necessary, like a manual laundry wash, durable outdoor clothing, and cast iron cookware. You know, stuff that will last for years to come for when times get hard.
It’s my firm belief that these types of items will not only be in high demand as we collapse, but increasingly expensive and likely even impossible to acquire at any price. This is why I’m a huge proponent of stockpiling such useful items now (links to my latest book on the topic). But even having the above resources and tools might not be enough. The truth is that there’s so much more we can and should be doing with our time that we probably aren’t. We could be learning more skills (something I’m trying to do right now), developing relationships with people who have skills (something I need to do more of), and preparing for a time when life as we know it just doesn’t exist (something I’m terribly lacking) because that time is coming.
I think it was Mark Twain who said during a dialog exchange, “How did you go bankrupt?” one man asks. The second man replied, “Gradually and then suddenly.” I’d say the same can be true of our collapse. “How did your country collapse?” one man asked the other. “Gradually and then suddenly,” I replied. Let’s just hope we get our act together before the suddenly hits us square in the face.
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