Author: cityprepping-author

At the time of writing this blog, looking on the horizon of what is coming in twenty twenty-one, we are personally preparing for a period of economic hardships, which we believe our nation will face.  We think the writing is on the wall, and if you’re not preparing now, you should start as soon as possible.  But is it too late?  That’s a hard question to answer for everyone watching, but we don’t think it is.  What can you realistically do today to prepare for the uncertain financial future coming tomorrow?   In this blog, we will cover three main points that each build on top of each other.  We encourage you to listen to each item.  By the end of this blog, we believe if you’ll hear what we have to say, understand what I am saying, and apply the principles outlined; you can weather this storm that is brewing on the horizon, and not just for 2021, but beyond.   But we have to warn you.  This blog will not give you the typical “just live below your means or save up an emergency fund,” all things we believe are essential when starting down a path to financial preparedness.  We’ll go beyond the standard financial gurus’ conventional talking points to more critical matters that many never learn.  We believe the next five to ten years will require a necessary financial intelligence that if you don’t gain now, you’ll be at the mercy of the monetary policies which currently govern our world, trapping you in a cycle of fear and anxiety of what may be coming next.  If you don’t gain the financial intelligence you need now, you will always be reactionary and never pro-actively prepared.  So stick around. On this website, we discuss emergency preparedness and how you can prepare for an uncertain future.  While we are not a financial advisor, we will share lessons we learned on my financial journey that took me about fifteen years.  If we had known at the beginning of our journey what we know now, we think we could have shaved those fifteen years of hard life lessons down to three to five years and probably be retired now.  While many people are worried about what may happen this coming year, if you don’t make the changes we’ll cover in this blog, you’ll be concerned about the following year and the next year and maybe for many years to come.  But you can break that pattern, and we’ll share with you how we did.   Here are the three main points we will examine:   Number one is the financial problem we will all face in twenty-twenty-one and beyond.  Number two is my financial journey to give you context leading into the final point.  Number three is the solution and plan you must begin to develop.  Let us warn you.  What we’re about to share with you took us years of hard work.  we think someone can achieve the same as we have on an even shorter timeline.  While some around us have applauded us for our successes, what they rarely saw were the hours spent grinding very hard early in the morning and late at night.  Kevin Hart once said, “It took me 20 years to become an overnight success.”  After what we’ve gone through, we get what he’s saying.  And let me say, I don’t think I’m some big shot or this shining example of success. Still, I have built two businesses that have allowed me to take care of my family and put us on a path to financial independence.  While we’re not entirely there yet, we are on a track that has a clear end in view, and we’re working on a strategy that we believe will pay off.  For those that are willing to venture in to change their financial future, are willing to put in the hard work that this requires, and don’t want to be constantly worried about what’s coming next, even a potential economic collapse, let me take you through these three points. The Problem If you don’t understand what we’re about to explain next, the rest of this blog won’t be useful.  If we don’t start by explaining the problem, you’ll likely continue through life not making any real changes while the house of cards, which is our nation’s monetary policies, collapses around you.   The Federal Reserve is printing money at an alarming rate in an attempt to prop up our nation’s economy due to the impact of COVID nineteen.  The result is that it is destroying the dollar’s value.  The Fed is propping up the stock market and buying up billions of dollars in corporate bonds.  Our national debt to GDP ratio is about to hit one hundred percent, and the U.S. debt is set to exceed the size of the economy next year.  Due to the coronavirus spending, shrinking GDP, and a tax-revenue decline, we are being propelled toward a milestone we haven’t seen since World War II.   Guaranteed pension plans and entitlement programs in the coming years likely won’t be payable.  We think we’ll see a UFO with our own eyes before we collect Social Security, and we’re not building my financial future on the hope the government will help us during my retirement years.  You shouldn’t either. At the moment, we currently are the world’s reserve currency, and maybe we will remain so for a while longer. Still, we’re devaluing the dollar printing at an alarming rate causing other nations to look for alternatives.  If countries begin to move off the dollar as the reserve currency due to the active steps we’re currently taking to devalue it, we will face a massive problem.  Discussing this is beyond this blog scope, but we’ll cover it in the coming weeks, so you’re educated on the issue.  It’s something you do need to be aware of.  Even once we get this pandemic under control and the country can return to work, things won’t bounce back immediately or potentially ever.  In 2008, during the last major market crash, the Fed had to use whatever means necessary to keep the markets from crashing, employing such techniques as quantitative easing.  The result is that the tools we have available sitting on the table are no longer present.  We’ve effectively backed ourselves into a corner with practically no options other than the one we’re using now– printing money. Now, if you’ve followed our website for any length of time, we try to explain issues we’re facing, but we don’t like leaving our readers with no solutions that they can apply.  Before we jump to the solution, let us give you a quick back story to provide you with context explaining the journey we had to go through personally.   Personal Journey Growing up, we were fortunate to see one of the best examples of a hard worker–our dad.  He had an unbelievable work ethic.  His generation worked through the end of the modern Industrial Age.  He worked the same job most of his life and was fortunate to retire with dignity several years ago and is currently able to take care of himself and our mother.  We  consider him one of the fortunate ones.  That model is all but gone.   Our generation was one of the first to transition into this new Information Age.  We were raised in an education system that taught the model that, unfortunately, many still live in today.  This system leaves many people behind and frustrated because things have changed quickly in recent years, and those who have not figured it out are left out.  It’s what they teach you in high school, college, and it’s the blueprint for success that the system raised us on.  Are you ready to repeat it with me?  Here it goes.  Go to school.  Get good grades.  Go to college.  Get a good job with a retirement program.  Save your money.  Live below your means.  Pay your taxes.  Work 40 plus years and hopefully get to spend the last ten years of your life for yourself, if you are still healthy after giving the best years to employers.  Sound familiar?  This is how we’re taught, and it worked for the most part for the previous generation.  But that model is dead now, manual labor has been shipped overseas, and it’s not coming back.  For many, they are stuck in between the old and new system and haven’t been able to shift their paradigm, which we’ll touch on momentarily. Today, we are in the Information Age, where information is leveraged by technology and inexpensive resources like silicon, producing wealth. This means that the price of getting wealthy has gone down.  For the first time in history, wealth is available to just about everyone, but many don’t understand how to access it. In 2004 when my wife and I got married, we didn’t have any money.  We came across Dave Ramsey’s course, and it changed our lives.  If you’re not familiar with Dave Ramsey, you may have heard of Suze Orman or any of the many other financial gurus. They promote very conservative economic approaches of saving money, living below your means, and investing in several financial products like Roth IRA’s.  Following his plan, it enabled my wife and me to get out of debt.  While I don’t regret following the Dave Ramsey approach, I wish I hadn’t stopped there.  I realize now those plans are just the first step.  Most people don’t realize that following a plan like what he lays out creates several problems, the biggest of which is that you live a life of living just below your means and hoping for the best.  It’s a bit of a defensive financial position.   The next ten years, we believe, will require you to think differently.  If you’re not actively trying to stay a few steps ahead, you’re going to get hammered.  Savers will be losers as the dollar will be vulnerable to the forces we laid out a moment ago.  You’ve got to be smarter.  There’s a move you will have to make that will take you to the next level to survive, which leads me to the next point, the Solution. The Solution So how do we prepare for a potential economic collapse in 2021? What we share with you in a moment may throw you off a little bit.  Most people are looking for a blog that tells you the five steps to follow or a hot tip for where you should invest your money, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.  This is a prepper website, and the advice we always give starts with making sure you have the basics in place. Store food and water, so you’re prepared if something significant happens, and we’re not going to rehash that point here as those that follow this channel already know that’s the starting point. But we’re talking about preparing for a financial collapse, so how do you prepare for something like this to make sure you can live through it?  What can you do to prepare for what’s coming next?  We think there’s the typical thing every household must do at this point, which is to evaluate your finances to determine how you can best cut back to make sure you can weather the approaching storm, work extra if you can, or pick up a side hustle.  In a recent poll, more than half of Americans plan on getting a second job in twenty twenty-one just to pay the bills after the financial disaster of twenty twenty.  While that approach may be necessary for now, it will leave many burnt out and only take people so far.  Whenever the next storm comes or the next ugly financial problem arises, you’ll be back at square one, having to play defense and figuring out how to financially survive. We wish we had realized back at the beginning of building our first business fifteen years ago what we’re about to share with you.  At that time, I was in the rat race of working hard, trying to save money for a rainy day, and hoping our Roth IRA will get us through retirement.  We hoped that one day if the stock market didn’t crash, wiping out our savings in our Roth IRA, we could eventually retire.  One day, after reading a book for a second time that I had read years prior, I finally figured out what the wealthy understand. The light came on: dump all your liabilities and invest in assets that put money back into your pocket to create cash flow.  Let me repeat that.  Dump all your liabilities and invest in assets that put money back into your pocket to create cash flow.  This concept was a simple seed that got planted in my brain.  And once that seed took root in my mind, everything changed quickly, and I started taking big, bold actions based on what I had learned.  But for anyone that plants seeds know, seeds require certain things to grow, and apart from those necessary items, they never mature into a plant.  The most important thing to grow that seed, that idea of investing in assets, comes from becoming financially literate.  I started devouring investment books, listening to audiobooks on my Audible app covering investing while driving and slowly changing my entire outlook for my financial future.  I took a simple concept and spent time educating myself, looking at examples of others that have succeeded, the steps they followed and implementing those approaches into my own life.  I would list out all the books in this video that have changed my life, but for the sake of time, I’ll put them in the description section and pin a comment below for many of the books that have radically changed my views in the last year and one half.  I’ll put notes next to each of the books, giving you a little insight into what I learned from each of them, and I would recommend them to you now. Before I lose some people saying, “what about saving money for a financial collapse” or “it’s all gonna crash soon,” hear me out.  A financial collapse could take my hard-earned savings, but it can’t take the most valuable resource I now possess: financial knowledge.  Once I had that paradigm shift, once I unlocked that part of my thinking by investing heavily by becoming financially literate, everything changed.  You see, in the U.S., and I’m sure it’s the same around the world, we are conditioned to buy, and our education system is really only designed to teach you enough to be a good worker.  We’re told buying things will make you happy, and when you look back over your life, you’ll see you own these things that no longer have value and are more of a liability.  But when you become financially literate, you understand what actions will put you on a path to financial freedom.  It removes the fear of an economic collapse because you know you now have the tools and knowledge to make it when a storm rages around you.  And, I’ll admit, it took me years to figure it out as I was raised on the industrial revolution mindset: just work harder.  That will only take you so far, and I’ve watched people burn themselves out with this approach because they never become financially literate. So what should you be investing in after listening to this video?  The single best investment you can make is to invest in yourself by becoming financially literate.  Once you understand the principles of money, how it works, and how to build recurring revenue streams, you open something that most never do in their lifetime.  If I had a time machine and could go back ten years, there are a few books I would read, re-read, and read again.  The first book I would grab is “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki.  It’s a book that has radically changed my view of how finances work.  The next book, an audiobook, which I listen to again and again on Audible, is “The Ten x Rule” by Grant Cardone.  This book has caused me to dream at levels I never thought were imaginable and has pushed me out of being complacent with the status quo.  From there, if you can grasp the concepts laid out in these books, I can guarantee you that you will begin finding other books to consume.  I started buying all the Robert Kiyosaki books I could find and devouring them one at a time.  Maybe his books work for you, perhaps they don’t, but I’m willing to wager you can find books or an author that will speak directly to you. I’m sure some will ask, “ok, you gave us a starting point, but what real assets should we invest in?”  I’m a bit hesitant to outline them here as some may criticize what has worked for me, or they may try the same and fail miserably.  After all, I am not a financial consultant.  I’ll share some of the assets I’ve built and invested in that are paying me back just to give you some general ideas of what has worked for me, but again, you need to find your path after first investing in your financial literacy.  The first and, without a doubt, the most valuable assets are the two businesses I own.  They didn’t just spring up overnight.  They took years of hard work and sacrifice, building them from scratch.  I didn’t inherit them, and I don’t have a business degree.  The first business I started is a web development agency, which I’ve mentioned a few times on my channel.  The next company I’ve built is this YouTube channel.  For the first several years, this YouTube channel didn’t produce hardly any income.  I had to put in a lot of sweat equity, but I knew that the information I could share as I learned would be invaluable to someone, and I’ve been fortunate to build a community that values this type of information.   I do plan on investing in Real Estate in the not so distant future, and I have been investing in Cryptocurrency this year, which is a very speculative investment.  What I will say about Cryptocurrency is only to invest in it if you’ve got a high-risk tolerance and only invest what you can afford to lose.  I’ll do another video in the future covering my thoughts on crypto later.   But how would I advise anyone who is either just starting or has no idea where to begin and feels trapped in a dead-end job or is worried about a potential economic market collapse?  Here’s my advice: again, invest heavily in yourself.  I purchase books non-stop, as I realize that an idea taught in a five to fifteen dollar book could change my life.  I listen to audiobooks through the Audible app when I’m in the middle of something that doesn’t tie up my cognitive thinking, like driving a car on a long trip or when I’m winding down at the end of the night.  Educating yourself and becoming financially literate will be critical in the years ahead.  We are in the beginning stages of this Information Age.  If you can position yourself now, you can weather the coming economic storms we will inevitably face in this coming year, decade, and beyond.  

Outline

1. A Hunger Crisis
2. Finding Food
3. Stretching What You Can Get
4. Keep Your Head About You
5. Open Your Pantry

With more lockdowns on the horizon and a fragile large-scale food production system and distribution, food insecurity will continue to rise.  Hunger is a harsh reality in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Even during times of economic stability, schools provide millions of hot meals a day to children, and desperate elderly Americans are sometimes forced to choose between medicine and food.  The newly hungry have similar stories: unemployment, whole industries collapsing, reduced hours, illness, and benefits unavailable or running out entirely.  You or someone you may know could be facing the hard choice between paying the rent or feeding yourself or your children.  This blog will look at the food insecurity problem in America today and what you can do to get through this crisis. 1) A Hunger Crisis Drive-by any food pantry in America, and you will see that measures to combat this pandemic have taken a severe toll.  Millions of Americans have become unemployed.  Millions more are on limited unemployment insurance benefits or are facing those benefits running out completely.  With schools closed, parents have had to adjust to finding care for their children and supplying them with the meals they would have gotten through school lunch programs. Food pantries across America have experienced a dramatic surge, as Americans who were by most estimates living paycheck-to-paycheck before the crisis are finding themselves without the means to put essential foods on their dining room tables.  Simultaneously, the Consumer Price Index for food rose 20%, effectively pricing many people out of grocery stores and searching for bargains to stretch their dollars. This year also had some severe supply chain disruptions.  There were runs on stores from March through April.  SARS-CoV-2 hit the pork industry and several critical agricultural areas, which closed processing plants and left crops rotting in the fields.  The August 2020 Midwest Derecho was referred to as one of the largest “land-based hurricanes” in recorded history, spawning 17 confirmed tornadoes across Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. Ten million acres of crops were damaged or destroyed, accounting for roughly a third of the state of Iowa’s agricultural area.  If we emerge from this pandemic in the coming year, the economy can recover from its losses, if production and distribution can remain stable through the first half of 2021, we should see plentiful supplies and the high demand at food pantries to, at least, shrink a little. 2) Finding Food Even with all the elements that compose this hunger crisis in America, you wouldn’t know it’s happening unless you saw the lines or heard the individuals’ stories.  If you go to the store right now, you would see stocked shelves and a cornucopia of choices.  Even with the disruptions to the supply chain this year, food is abundant.  It just isn’t in the hands of those who need it most. So, how do you find food when you can’t afford it?  Food is essential to survival, so it is a cornerstone of prepping.  Next to water, it should be one of the most critical prepping supplies you have on hand.  If you have been prepping for even a short time, food insecurity is less of an issue for you, even if you suffer major income setbacks.  Buying in bulk, buying staple items, and learning how to cook for yourself, will keep food on the table through hard times; but what if you are only now coming to prepping?  What if you find yourself staring at empty cupboards and hungry faces? The first thing to do is find the non-profit food pantries in your area.  Some will require that you prove residency or show identification.  There is no shame in going to a food pantry.  Many distribute food in boxes.  Many have freestanding stores where you can receive free items and also purchase food at significantly reduced prices.  Area grocery stores from your average chain to high-end organic stores donate their close to expiration products to these food pantries.  If a careless swipe of a box cutter rips open a bag of chips when being stocked, some stores have a policy of donating the whole box of goods.  The stores receive a tax deduction and write-off for the donation, and you can receive quality foods at incredibly low prices.  Many pantries also receive donations from area farmers and grocer produce sections, so there are usually fresh fruits and vegetables available. When food is a scarcity, fad diets are replaced by core nutrients.  If you haven’t bought in bulk and learned to cook before, you have to now.  A 20-pound bag of pinto beans will cost around 20 bucks. A 45-pound bag of rice will cost just under 40 dollars.  With that much beans and rice, you could make 570 cups of hearty food at the very least.  To visualize that, imagine 285 pint-sized to-go containers full of food.  Stretching it out and supplementing it with vegetables, meats, and seasonings will expand it even further.  You will probably get very tired of these two staple foods, but they can sustain you for a very long time and are nutrient and protein-rich. Flour can also be obtained in bulk, and yeast can be stretched with starters and sponges.  On average, one pound of flour can make one loaf of bread.  Man does not live by bread alone, but it doesn’t hurt to fill you up when times are tough.  Ramen and some other highly processed foods might not have much nutritional value and will have loads of salt in them, but they can sustain you and fill you up when you need them.  If you get a windfall of apples or anything else, now is the time to learn how to dehydrate them so not an ounce of food goes to waste.  When times are hard, you should strive not to throw away an ounce of usable food.  From carrot top pesto to boiling chicken carcasses or bones, learn to squeeze every last morsel of nutrients from every scrap of food you can bring into your home. You can also learn to bargain shop.  Ask anyone who grew up in a family without a lot of money, and they will tell you that they shop at several stores because one has better bargains than the other.  In our area, we can buy produce super cheap at one, sundries less expensive at another, and meats less expensive at another.  Coupons tend to be on products that are already marked up considerably compared to generics, but store circulars can be a guide to your best values and meal planning.  Even dollar stores have some not very well known brands you can get on the cheap. There are hundreds of ways to stretch even a dollar into a hearty meal, but many people have never learned how.  Only 30% of Americans eat every meal at home. That is precisely what you have to do when times are tight.  Restaurants mark-up the price of food by around 300%, which will drain your budget quickly.   What’s your favorite low budget meal?   3) Stretching What You Can Get Between my grandfather’s catfishing and gardening, there was always food on their table.  It was not unusual to see him trade catfish out of his big freezer in the basement for money, to get a car repaired, even for someone else’s venison meat.  Trading what you have or what you can produce for what you need is the first step in bolstering your supplies.  Stretching it out is the next key. Many restaurants stopped putting out condiments, sugar, and salt because people grabbed it by the handful for use at home.  My friend once told me that he used to make a basting sauce for chicken out of ketchup and taco sauce packets.  During the Great Depression, people put a small amount of ketchup in a cup and add hot water to make a ketchup soup. When possible, they would add cream or milk to make it more palatable and nutritious. Foraging is possible even for urban dwellers.  If you have a pesticide-free area, there are probably plants there you can eat.  While there won’t be enough to sustain you, you will get enough to supplement your staple foods and possibly turn one meal into three meals.  Take a look at the other videos on this channel on edible plants and see if that is possible for you.  Maybe this is the year to try a dandelion and clover salad. If you know another family in a similar food scarcity situation as you are suffering through, consider meal swaps or combining resources.  This can stretch your food supplies and fill in the gaps of what you may be missing.  Ask yourself with every bit of food you bring into your house, “How can I get more out of this?  How can I stretch this into more meals?”  You will have to get creative, but you will begin to develop some tricks of your own.  Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. 4) Keep Your Head About You So much of survival is mental.  It is easy to feel like a failure in life or ashamed of the circumstances you find yourself suffering through.  You have to keep your head about you.  Hopefully, hunger will be the worst thing you suffer through in your life but keeping positive by knowing that lives do turnaround will keep you moving powerfully in the right direction.  In rough times, we remind ourselves that we are not the first person to suffer through what we face.  We remind ourselves that others have suffered more through the same or worse.  And we remind ourselves that we don’t suffer alone.  The 2020 recession has been a relentless wave after wave of high unemployment and economic uncertainty, and it only appears to be getting worse. The government stimulus that kept millions of Americans from falling into poverty earlier in the pandemic is long gone, and new aid is still held up by congressional inaction. Hunger is chronic, at levels not seen in decades. Remember that your great grandparents may have suffered through two world wars, a pandemic of their own, and a great depression.  They made it, raised children of their own who eventually brought you to where you are at today.  Throughout history, people have persevered through horrible tragedies and lived to see brighter days that they appreciated with greater gratitude.  You can too.  Don’t lose heart.  Don’t lose faith.  Develop the mental toughness to make it through to the brighter days. 5) Open Your Pantry You may not be suffering from any food insecurity, and you may not see it in your future.  If that is the case, consider yourself truly blessed.  You should still shoulder some of the responsibility of this crisis.  There are many, some you may know, who are newly unemployed and possibly newly hungry.  Now is the time to accidentally cook a little extra and offer to deliver that extra food to friends, family, and neighbors.  Bake an extra loaf of bread or an extra batch of cookies.  Make too much stew that’s so good, but you just simply can’t eat it all.  Buy too much of something that was just too good of a deal and then figure out how to give it away.  Giving to those who might be i n need allows them not to feel ashamed of the circumstances they are in by no fault of their own, and they will remember your simple, secret kindness. If you want to go all out for the holidays, make the biggest pot of food you can and go to any homeless encampment in your area and start serving it up.  You will find that those you feed are not too different than yourself.  Most people are just a few paychecks away from homelessness or food insecurity.  It’s even more challenging during these times to find people in need because we are all supposed to keep our distance, so you may have to get creative.  Though the food may be in short supply for some, our hearts have a never-ending supply of nourishment when we give from our abundance to those who are less fortunate. Conclusion The year 2020 has been a year of challenges and struggles for many.  High unemployment and economic uncertainty have led many to food insecurity for the first time in their lives.  As paltry as it was, the government stimulus kept millions of Americans from falling into poverty earlier in the pandemic, but those funds are long gone.  Hunger in America is at a level not seen in decades.  With more lockdowns on the horizon and a fragile system of large-scale food production and distribution, food insecurity will continue to rise, but there are ways you can still make it work. We would love to hear how you stretch your food and dollars, and we know our subscribers would value your tips and tricks to keep food on the table.  Is there a hunger crisis in your community, and what’s being done about it?   As always, stay safe out there.

Outline

1. Type of Disaster
2. Abandoned Buildings
3. Off the Road or Under It
4. Down or Up River
5. Caves and Mines
6. Into the Woods
7. Boats and Caves

One of the common questions when we discuss evacuating to a bug out location is how can anyone afford this option?  When making rent is hard enough, owning a bug out location with a nice cabin and food stores is a fantasy.  After all, the landlord or deputies aren’t likely to come and try to evict you for late rent during the active aftermath of a horrible disaster.  The reality is that most people may not ever be able to afford a bug out location of their own, but they still may need to bug out in an emergency when their survival depends on it.  In this video, we will look at several considerations you will have to make when planning to bug out after a disaster and places you can go where you can survive if you know what the new location’s dangers are. 1- Type of Disaster The first consideration when thinking about bugging out is the type of disaster you are in and its severity and reach.  If you are forced to evacuate from a natural disaster like a hurricane, fires, or flooding, you may only need to bug out temporarily in a nearby region until the threat has passed.  These localized events allow you to simply bug out to a hotel in a nearby area. Often, disaster funds are available from the government or your insurance company that would allow you to stay for an extended period in a hotel.  If hotels are not an option, there are typically temporary shelters to accommodate these localized disasters.   However, a disaster on a national or global level would not allow you to simply move temporarily to a nearby region.  Disasters of this larger type require you to assess where you are starting from and where you can find the resources you need to sustain yourself.  The environment you are in at the time disaster strikes may not contain the resources you need for long term survival.  Your long term survival may require you to travel to a safer area.  If this isn’t feasible, you may have to bug out of your location but remain in the area somewhere. Any bug out location will have to have these same basic requirements: food, water, and shelter.  When it comes to food, you will need to consider if you can harvest and forage from nature or grow small quantities of food to sustain you.  When it comes to water, you ideally want a replenishable natural supply that may require boiling to drink but is plentiful.  Regarding shelter, you will need to think of the tent or tarp or lean-to structure you might build and whether you can defend that location if others try to rob you of your resources.  Do you have a nice tent but no way to protect it?  Likely in an SHTF situation, you will not have that tent for long.  Will you need a structure, or do you already know of one you can occupy with relative safety? You will have to consider how you will get to the location.  If you have a vehicle, your engine noise will let people know you are traveling through, making you a target.  If you are on foot, you can keep a lower profile, even traveling by night if that is the safest means, but you will expend thousands of calories, and progress will be slow.  There are many coves and bends around many lakes and rivers and coastal regions almost entirely inaccessible by land if you travel by waterway.  And though sound travels further and clearer across waterways, large bodies of water provide a natural barrier between you and would-be thieves. When it comes to traveling, realize that fires, the discharge of firearms for hunting and defense, and vehicle noise all tip off residents that you are moving through their land or on their ground.  Wherever your final destination is, and all along the way, you will have to consider who owns the land, thinks they own the land, asserts their power over the land, or who may be passing through like you.  Conflicts could arise from any interactions with these people.  When laws cannot be enforced, you may have to pay a toll to pass through some areas safely, or it could cost you everything of value you have. Once you have considered all that, you can turn to the locations.  Here are the best bug-out places when you can’t afford a bug-out location, but you have to head out. 2- Abandoned Buildings From abandoned buildings in or near your town to old worksites, mining sites, drilling sites, and logging sites, there are many places far off the beaten path where you can provide yourself the basics of shelter.  One caveat to this is that there are probably many others who also know about it if you know about it.  If you’re planning on hiding out beside the old abandoned quarry, there’s a good chance a dozen or more people given the same options to survive are also planning on doing that.  If you plan to take the old forest roads up to a long-ago abandoned forest ranger shelter, you might find it to be safer.  If you plan to bug out to an old barn, it may still be on someone else’s land. In an abandoned building scenario, you have to consider whether you can defend the structure.  You will either be practicing OPSEC by keeping fires low and smokeless and keeping silent, or you are going to be part of a small group that can look out for one another. 3- Off the Road or Under It After a disaster where thousands or millions of people are bugging out, traveling on large highways may allow you to travel in groups.  Smaller roads and county roads may allow you to dip off into wooded areas, down creek beds, or even under bridges.  Roads that are even slightly maintained mean that someone either lives in the area, travels through the area, or works in the area.  Many long gravel roads are really driveways for some people, as residents may live miles apart from each other in some areas. Traveling under bridges will allow you to access brooks, creeks, streams, and river banks.  When you are ever directly under a bridge, realize that people may still be traveling on the bridge above you.  Many abandoned bridges may provide a safer long-term environment.  Going under a bridge can take you to the banks and animal trails you can traverse to reach more secluded areas, free from others’ prying eyes and sometimes inaccessible but by the same path you traveled. 4- Down or Up River If road travel isn’t feasible, traveling along the rivers’ banks, nature’s natural roads can be a safe means to travel.  Game trails routinely run along and to and from waterways, and there are many regular sinuous curves, bends, loops, and turns that roads don’t follow.  The river banks, rock structures exposed by waterways, caves, and small islands around and in rivers provide potential secluded and safe bug-out locations.  Rivers also offer running water and potential food sources. Your primary consideration when bugging out up or down rivers is that they are natural ways of travel.  People may be floating through to get to other locations as well.  It is doubtful that they will be traveling against the current without you knowing, as they would require an engine.  If they are traveling down the river, they would be coming from a particular direction and floating silently down the river.  If you found the spot because it had a nice bank where you could put in, or you walked in, and there’s a nice beach or inlet where others could come ashore, make efforts to conceal it with brush or debris that blends in with the rest of the banks.  Covering your trails and hiding your shores will provide you a little extra security. 5- Caves and Mines We know of around 17,000 caves in the United States.  If you’ve ever been far off the typically traveled paths, you may have found a cave that is still undocumented.  They do exist.  Add to that the many deep nooks and rock structures that aren’t indeed caves, and you have hundreds of thousands more natural rock structures that could provide you long term shelter.  Add to that the over 500,000 abandoned rock mines in the United States, and there are plenty of potential bug-out locations.  However, the better known the site, the more likely someone has already considered it or some local has already set up camp there. You have an added layer of safety concerns with any mine or cave that range from falling rocks to gasses to wild animals.  Still, it worked for early man for thousands of years, so it makes the list here for bug-out locations when you can’t afford or get to anywhere else.  6- Into the Woods We think this is the favorite fantasy of many a prepper.  Many claim they will just go off into the woods and live off the land when the world turns south.  W call it a fantasy because it is incredibly difficult to survive in the wild.  If you want a taste of it, go for a week or more camping trip but leave the s’mores and hot dogs at home.  You will find that living–just surviving–is more challenging than you imagined.  The basics of food, water, and shelter have to be established relatively quickly if you are going to have a chance. You will have the added security of isolation since most won’t be able to get to you in the deep woods or forest, but genuinely being off-grid and ultimately providing the food you need from hunting and foraging is a considerable challenge.  Many find it easier to do with experience and practice, but you will likely just find yourself in the border regions of wooded areas if you’re new to it.  7- Boats and Coves If the land is too hostile, you may find refuge in the water.  You can, technically, live on a raft, boat, or houseboat.  Some inlets and coves provide significant protection from the hostile world.  Living in Southern California, I know several people who plan on just loading up their sailboat and setting out to sea in an SHTF situation.  The challenges of food and water still exist, but taking to the water can provide you with a temporary bug out location until things get better or a more permanent location can be found.   Yes, pirates would probably be a thing after an SHTF situation, so being prepared to defend yourself is necessary.  Even with that problem, navigating waterways allows you to travel by floating five to seven miles per day.  That gives you an excellent opportunity to find the hidden spot, perhaps up an unused tributary, to set up a long-term camp and wait for safer times.  If things turn ugly where you are at, you can always travel another five to seven miles the next day to find someplace safer. Conclusion Bugging out is never a great option, but sometimes we are out of options.  Your survival is the most important thing.  When choosing a bug out location, give credence to the considerations and locations discussed in this blog.  We would love to hear what some of your bug-out locations will be.  As always, please stay safe out there.

Outline

1. Migratory Dynamics
2. Moving and the Pandemic
3. A Changing Landscape
4. Where is Your Next Safe Home
5. An Opportunity

This year has resulted in a general sense of unease and uncertainty. The events of the past 9 months have flipped traditional systems upside down and have caused a restructuring, the likes of which we may never again see in our lifetimes.  This chaos and resulting uncertainty have already caused many to give up urban lifestyles for greater seclusion or all-out move to suburban, exurban, or rural environments.  What some may have considered normal, as we have known it, isn’t likely to return.  Will you be a part of this new Global Relocation, willingly, reluctantly, or not at all?  In this blog, we will examine the coming Great Relocation from the perspectives of migratory dynamics, movements during plagues and other disasters, your next safe home, the changing landscape of our world, and the real opportunity you have to be the decider of your fate while you still have a choice in the matter. 1- Migratory Dynamics Migrations of people are not new.  There was a great migration West in the early days of the United States.  After the Civil War, many migrated North.  During the industrial revolution, people moved to the cities.  Eleven million people migrated from rural to urban areas between 1870 and 1920.  During the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, people migrated to find work and food.  Even in times of relative stability, people have migrated.   You can look at the entirety of history and see the dramatic effects of people’s mass movements throughout the world.  It seems when we look at it with historical eyes that these movements happened overnight.  In reality, they occurred over many years.  Until very recently, the populations of urban areas were increasing.  More and more people were moving to dynamic urban areas and the excitement and opportunities they offered.  The migration and growth of cities and suburbs with smaller and smaller lawns and no real land ownership has been happening for many decades. The current signs, however, indicate a shift in another direction.  It isn’t a voluntary shift, as much as it is the economic conditions beginning to force people’s hands.  Families are consolidating households to gain a higher quality of life.  People are starting to either pool their resources to leverage more power or realign what assets they have to build a better life in a new location, as alien as that new life may seem to them.  This migration will change our country’s landscape in many ways, which we’ll discuss later in this video.  For now, though, it helps to have an understanding of why this change is happening.  What are the causes of this new migration we may be on the cusp of right now? Question: Have you been forced to move or are you currently considering moving? 2- Moving and Lockdowns The most significant catalyst for this movement has been the SARS-CoV-2 virus and how we have reacted to it.  Vast swaths of the economy have been shut down as physical distancing and other measures have been introduced and even mandated.  Unemployment skyrocketed to over 10%, and well over 70% of Americans were already living paycheck-to-paycheck.  8 million Americans have slipped into poverty since the summer.  To say that it has driven many to deep introspection and evaluation of how they are living their lives dependent upon a system that cannot support them is an understatement. Many in hard-hit areas like New York pulled up stakes.  More than 300,000 New Yorkers have bailed from the city in the last eight months alone.  The coronavirus was just the tipping point for many who were already frustrated by economic worries, dropping school quality, and rising crime.  Los Angeles has seen a similar exodus as 70% more people have left the Golden State than moved in since March of 2020.   It’s not just on the coasts, though.  All across America, city dwellers have eyed the more affordable suburbs, exurbs, and countryside for a more significant piece of arable land, less crowding, and a much bigger bang for their bucks.  People are moving from cities with populations in the hundreds of thousands to less crowded smaller cities of just over or under 100,000 people.  People will leave bigger cities in favor of smaller metros.  The impact of this year will possibly forever change the traditional commute and the 9-to-5, 5 days a week work structure, as businesses have found new and better ways to maintain productivity, rapidly shift their business models, and accommodate workers from home.  Businesses that have technologically ramped up to accommodate these workers and realize productivity is increasing in their latest models will not be willing to suddenly shift back to the old ways of doing things, either.  Those who were able to maintain employment but are now working from home ask themselves if where they are at is safe and the best value for their dollars considering a looming economic depression on the horizon.  Not everyone can attend a Zoom meeting for a living.  This migration crosses all economic lines.  Those who lost their jobs this year may still struggle to find work when businesses are holding on to their wallets and not taking on new hires.  These people may be eyeing other places to begin a new and better life.  Those who were living paycheck-to-paycheck or were just starting out in the world of work, are now reassessing their entry or re-entry into the workforce.  From events coordinators to construction workers to business people, the economic slowdown has displaced millions of workers.  Employment is one of the most significant indicators that we are on the cusp of a significant relocation event. The other great indicator is the economy as a whole.  Just like during the industrial revolution, where we witnessed a shift to the cities, there is another shift going on right now.  Manufacturing jobs have been going overseas for years.  The whole economy has suffered from slowdowns and lockdowns.  If we have even seen the worst of it yet, the recovery period will last for several years.  Again, people are examining their current location, life, and livelihood and asking themselves, “Do I want to try and stay here?”  You may be currently asking yourself that very same question.  Is it the right time for you to make a change?  Is it too late, or can you get ahead of the herd and benefit even more? Question: has the events of 2020 forced you to re-evaluate your life plans? 3- A Changing Landscape This Great Relocation will change the American landscape.  Urban areas tend to have more liberal-leaning views.  Rural areas tend to lean more heavily to the conservative side.  While Red and Blue states are never always one color, even Alaska once voted for a Democrat president, red areas receiving an infusion of blue city folks will, at the very least, create some purple zones.  So, politically, the landscape of the country could change dramatically. Economically things will shift as well.  Rents in cities will drop as vacancies increase.  The cost and value of suburban homes will rise as inventory decreases.  New construction will see a dramatic increase as people cash out their stake in high cost of living areas and move to less expensive areas.  These city folks will bring considerable more capital with their emigration than the local residents may have had.  This will determine the goods and services that will be in the highest demand.  It will bring more purchasing power, and local merchants will see a significant economic boost in the next few years. After the pandemic of the 50’s, there was a surge in travel.  Trailers became more commonplace, motels and roadside inns sprang up all across the country, and airlines expanded.  All travel services realized a surge.  Like now, people tired of being cooped up and able to spend and travel hit the road.  As that high travel begins in this current decade, more people will contrast where they live now with what they are seeing elsewhere.  Have you ever traveled somewhere and marveled at the lower prices there for the same things you pay twice as much for where you live?  So will many others once we all start traveling again, but now they will also have the added insight into how fragile systems let them down. The landscape will not be without friction, though.  It’s not a pure win-win for the economy of suburban and rural areas and the city dwellers discovering greater value for their money.  The country is deeply divided already.  It’s not likely country mice will just accept their city cousins like a comedic episode of the popular show Schitt’s Creek.  There are many stories of people from urban settings not received well in smaller metros or rural areas.  For years, an exodus out of California’s high cost of living for the more affordable coastal states of Oregon and Washington has occurred.  Ask anyone who moved north, and they’ll tell you they don’t let it be known that they’re from California.  They get their license plates changed fast.  While nothing too horrible happens, the locals don’t care for the Californians moving into their areas.  This dislike won’t be tied to just the west coast, but the dynamics will play out across the country as city dwellers are viewed as invading forces. So, at the front of a wave of emigration from high population and high cost of living areas to more affordable and less populated areas, we can easily see that the American landscape is about to change dramatically.  It isn’t really that new, but our ability to recognize this inevitable change allows us to make significant, life-altering decisions now before those behind us are forced to make desperate choices. Question: for those living in the country, are you concerned about the influx of “City” folk? 4- Where is Your Next Safe Home? Where will be your next safe home?  If you are struggling, lamenting, and longing for the pre-COVID days, you should ask yourself if things ever will return to “normal,” whatever that is?  Will things go back to the way they were, and were you really, truly happy with the way things were?  If you answer these questions for yourself now, before they have to be answered in desperation, you will find yourself on a much better footing down the road.   Whether you stay, adopting a new lifestyle based upon the lessons learned, or you go in the hope of building a new world for yourself, mindful prepping can help you build solidly into your new life.  Building your next, fresh, safe home is made stronger when you take the lessons learned from the times of uncertainty and challenge, and you seek to insulate yourself from having to make choices at the moment–in the chaos of a crisis.  There are other videos on my channel about how adopting even a few immutable prepper principles will position you better in the future.  There are also videos on what to prepare for, how to prepare, and how you will be better off even if nothing bad ever happens. However, it’s pretty clear from the year 2020 that our lives’ stability is not guaranteed.  Any consideration, however, of a new location should come with a few assessments on your part.  First, how prone is the area to natural disasters?  You don’t want to move into an area that routinely floods, for instance.  Second, what is the stability of the water sources?  Are you solely dependent upon municipal water supplies?  Is there a well with adequate levels and a low number of surrounding agricultural areas?  Are there clean rivers, lakes, or streams? Third, will the new location provide you the opportunity to become more self-sufficient with your food supplies?  Can you grow some or all of your own food?  Put these three considerations right up with “Can I live here?” “Are the schools good?” and “Do I like it here?”  They are that important to your long term survival.   Question: If you’re moving, what are your priorities for your new home? 5- An Opportunity Whether you stay or go, this is an opportunity for you to become more solidly positioned in life through beginning to apply some basic prepping principles you acquired from observing the world turned upside down.  As you relocate or rebuild, turn your attention to a longer-lasting food supply.  We watched in real time how our fragile just-in-time delivery system buckled under the weight of people panic buying.  Now imagine if a massive event or several at one time occurred preventing food deliveries.  Whether you stay or go, you are presented with an opportunity to realign your finances.  If you’ve been left with nothing, and are struggling right now, realize that things always have the potential to get better.  You can approach your financial restructuring as you build back with the real opportunity you have.  You can be more stable and apply prepping lessons and self-sufficiency to gain better value for your work.  If you emerge from this economic shift and downturn relatively unscathed, you can now turn your attention to the truly meaningful things in your life, and away from the things you now know are meaningless.  You can focus your energies on insulating yourself from the next disaster, large or small, which may befall you in the future.  Why do you think the “Greatest Generation” was called that?  It is partly the way they approached life.  They suffered through pandemics, world wars, and the Great Depression.  It hardened them.  It made them more apt to roll up their sleeves, dive in, and get it done, even though they may not have known what to do right away.  They saw a dramatic increase in college attendance, housing, and the baby boom, so they too experienced an economic recovery. You can anticipate three major waves of this Great Relocation.  The first is composed of those who are making the decision now, which is already emerging as a record shift.  The second and largest will be the early group who move right as things begin to appear more stable.  If the economy is still somewhat stable and the property values have remained high, people will take the chance and cashout.  These are the settlers who are willing to take a chance that their read of the landscape is accurate.  The final waves are composed of those who are forced to make the decision.  Unfortunately, they will also be accompanied with an increase in homelessness.  The people in these latter waves can still reap the benefits from a new life elsewhere or by rebuilding where they are, but they start out with considerably less and have more work to do.  In each wave, regardless of whether a person stays or goes, opportunities exist.  If you stay, at the very least when rental vacancies occur, you may be able to renegotiate or move to get a larger place for less.  If you move, you may be able to take advantage of new housing programs and recovery programs to close on a home for yourself. This Great Relocation provides you with the same opportunities, insight, and wisdom of previous generations.  We are made wiser and increase our ability to adapt to the struggles we face.  See our struggles now as a means to illuminate opportunities for you later.   Conclusion Are you considering staying where you are?  Are you considering settling in a new location and changing your life completely?  Will you be part of the coming Great Relocation?  As always, please stay safe out there.

Outline

1. How the Flu Vaccine Works
2. How This Vaccine Works
3. Danger #1: Rush to Distribution
4. Danger #2: Unknown Side Effects
5. Danger #3: Herd Immunity?

Are we to believe that since the first reported case of SARS-CoV-2 in December of 2019, we miraculously have a cure?  Are we also to assume that after 70 years of flu vaccines that have an estimated 40-60% efficacy rate, we suddenly developed one that has an efficacy rate of around 95%?  It seems too good to be true, and maybe it is.  This video will examine how vaccines work, how this new vaccine works, and look at three dangers of taking or not taking the vaccine.  So let’s jump in.

1- How the Flu Vaccine Works

There are three methods of developing the standard flu vaccine: egg-based, cell-based, and recombinant.  Egg-based production has been the most common method for the last seventy years and accounts for most of the vaccines in use.  Essentially, various strains of flu viruses are isolated and incubated into fertilized hen eggs.  Doctors choose strains based on the ones they think are most likely to show up that year.  The fluid containing the virus is harvested from the eggs.  The viruses are then killed, and the antigen is purified. Once the refinement process is complete, the vaccine is ready for use.  The vaccine is said to take about two weeks to work. You can get sick even if you get the shot, but your illness will likely be milder than if you skip the vaccine.    

An antigen is a molecule or molecular structure, like what is on the outside of a pathogen, that can be bound by an antigen-specific antibody or B cell antigen receptor. In layman’s terms, it’s like a nametag for the virus.  It isn’t the virus. It’s just sort of a label on the outside of the virus that the body can read.  The presence of antigens in the body normally triggers an immune response.  Your body’s immune system reads the nametag and then sends in the bouncers to kick the virus out.  In a more scientific explanation, your body recognizes some of the foreign proteins and molecular components of the dead virus and says, “Hey, that guy isn’t supposed to be here.”

The flu vaccine’s effectiveness varies from year to year and may depend upon the age and health of the person receiving the vaccine.  Every year, the CDC conducts studies about how effective the flu shot is at protecting people against the virus. Recent statistics show that the vaccine is forty to sixty percent effective in reducing the risk of flu illness.  

So, if you take forty to sixty percent of the people who get the flu vaccine, almost fifty percent of the population, and add all the people who already had that strain or a similar strain of the flu and built some natural antibodies to it, you almost have enough to claim some primary herd immunity.  At least, you have enough to reduce the seasonal flu from being a pandemic.  If you add to that the SARS-CoV-2 safety measures of mask-wearing, physical distancing, hand washing, sanitizing, and reduced gathering sizes, we may have the lowest seasonal flu numbers we have had in a long time.  Record low seasonal flu numbers were realized by many countries in the southern hemisphere this year that have already gone through their flu season.

To achieve a higher efficacy rate from the flu vaccine alone, scientists would first have to do an excellent job of picking the exact strains and variant strains of the viruses that will go around the globe that year, so their candidate vaccine viruses grown in the eggs have the right mix of peptides, proteins, hemagglutinin, and neuraminidase subtypes.  And if you think that sounds complex and tricky, that’s because it is.  It is a guessing game.  Second, you need more people to take the vaccine.  The CDC estimates that the number needs to be closer to seventy percent of the population.  

So, can vaccines be effective?  The answer is “kind of” for people who get them, and maybe every little bit helps.  This new vaccine is different, though.

2- How This Vaccine Works

This new vaccine works very differently and is very specifically targeted to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.  Specifically, it looks at the protein SARS-CoV-2 uses to attach to healthy cells in the human body.  That protein is foreign to the body, but because the virus is “novel” or new, the body doesn’t immediately recognize it as a threat.  When it does, it can dramatically overreact, causing a cytokine storm.  A cytokine storm is a life-threatening systemic inflammatory syndrome involving elevated levels of circulating cytokines and immune-cell hyperactivation.  Another way to say that is your body panics and makes the situation worse.  I mention the cytokine storm here because those who had COVID-19 and recovered will likely be ineligible for the new vaccine because of the hyperactive immunological response they could have to the vaccine.  With this respect, enough isn’t known about the potential response in these individuals.  So, if you have had the virus, you likely will not be eligible for the new vaccine.  This is okay, though, because if you have recovered, you should have some immunity built up for at least a few months, according to current research.  Fortunately, a T cell test is coming out that can more accurately measure a person’s immune memory, for lack of a better term, for fighting SARS-CoV-2.

By focusing on the singular protein the virus uses to connect to healthy cells, the body focuses its immune efforts on that one foreign protein and doesn’t panic.  If a person is exposed to the virus, the virus has a much harder time getting established.  Moderna claims an almost ninety-five percent efficacy rate from their phase three clinical trials, which is astounding if true.  This vaccine is like a laser versus a shotgun when compared to the typical flu vaccine.

The vaccine’s uniqueness doesn’t stop there, though.  This vaccine is called a messenger RNA vaccine, or mRNA vaccine.  An mRNA vaccine, a vaccination method first tested in animals 30 years ago, instructs some of our own body’s cells to make a specific protein.  This harmless protein is called a spike protein, and it is the same protein found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.  In this case, the protein that allows SARS-CoV-2 to attach to healthy human cells is produced in some of the body’s cells.  This alerts the immunity systems bouncers to the foreign protein and kicks our immunity response into gear.  Once the cell produces the protein, the cell breaks down the instructions and gets rid of them.  Imagine the whole thing like an early scene in a spy movie where the person to find is revealed to the agent, and then the tape self-destructs.  At the end of the process, our bodies have learned how to protect against future infection.  There are no long periods of incubation in eggs, no inert virus, and none of the costly and lengthy processes involved in the shotgun approach.

As we said, this technology was first tested 30 years ago.  The problem then as now was that the mRNA breaks down so quickly.  That’s good to assure us there aren’t likely to be long term effects in the human body.  That’s bad because the virus has to be shipped and stored at such incredibly low temperatures.  The real upside of this technology is the potential to use this in the future to dial in and customize a readily available cure to, potentially, a whole host of diseases.

With COVID-19, we had the world’s great minds collectively working on a solution.  We had a complete genetic profile of the virus in record time.  We turned the world’s collective greatest minds and computers into exploring and finding weaknesses in the virus.  We had an unprecedented sharing of research and findings.  Imagine what we might do if we turned all that energy to other world problems once this one is solved.

Does it sound too good to be true?  Maybe it is.  What’s the distribution schedule and plan, and will people get in line to take it?

3- Danger #1: Rush to Distribution

The first real danger is the rush to distribution.  First in line for the vaccine will be healthcare workers.  This round of vaccinations will take place in the January to February timeline.  Then essential workers and those over sixty-five years of age.  This will take place in March and April.  Beginning around late April and May, the vaccine will be available for general use.

Rushing to production anything can have unforeseeable consequences.  Will people voluntarily get a vaccine that hasn’t seen enough clinical trials?  Maybe they will, but will that be enough to reach the seventy percent of the population required to develop some herd immunity and slow the virus’s transmission?  The virus itself may be the determinant of this.  If SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread and infect at the current exponential rates, very few people will remain untouched by this virus if the numbers are to be believed.

In some states, we could see mandatory vaccinations for anyone wanting to enter the public schools, government buildings and jobs, and for the military.  Do you want to go to Mexico, Canada, or on vacation to any foreign country?  Your taking the vaccine before 2021 is over could determine your capability to move freely in 2022.  The government might require you to carry vaccination proof.  It depends on how effective the vaccine is for those who choose to receive it and whether ICU beds fill up close to capacity.

4- Danger #2: Side Effects

Many a sci-fi plot line begins with people being inoculated against one virus only to create another far worse side-effect.  While we will go ahead and rule out the zombie apocalypse with this one, the lack of data of any long term side effects is at least cause for concern.  We can look at the science on the page and evaluate the risks.  Right now, 73,000 people were in stage 3 clinical trials of the vaccines.  We can look at the known side effects: fatigue, muscle aches, joint pain, headache, pain, injection site pain, redness at the injection site, and weigh those against the con of getting the virus.  These types of side effects were reported in fewer than 10% of the recipients.  Again, the success rate of the vaccine against getting COVID-19 is reported to be over 95%.

In the past, there have been medicines that have led to severe events, life-threatening events resulting in death, hospitalization, residual disability, and even congenital malformation.  These have sometimes resulted from bad batches of medicine or isolated cases of a few individuals who have had a reaction to the medication.  These are the stories that grab the headlines.  You don’t hear of the millions of people who were spared the illness because of the vaccine.  So far, 73 thousand people with no problems is a good track record.  As this mRNA breaks down rather quickly and the vaccine requires two shots spaced apart to be effective, it looks like our bodies can handle it pretty well.  While effective, it doesn’t seem to be overwhelming any of the body’s functioning systems.

5- Danger #3: Herd Immunity?

Herd immunity is perhaps not the best of terms.  We are talking about disrupting the disease’s ability to transmit from one person to another–breaking the chain of transmission.  If an infected person comes into physically distanced contact with five other people and three of those people have been vaccinated or have already recovered from COVID-19, the chances of transmission go way down.  When that one infected person finally becomes symptomatic and stays at home self-quarantining, the virus can’t effectively spread through a community.

So, one would think that a vaccine with a 95% efficacy rate would solve all our problems, and it would if everyone received it, but this is America, and this herd hasn’t been moving as a unified body in quite some time. Suppose by September or October of 2021, a substantial percentage of the global population is vaccinated, and it works as prescribed, and we add in the people who had COVID-19 and recovered. In that case, there is a good chance that we will have the virus under control.

Will we have herd immunity?  Will the virus be gone?  No.  The same Influenza virus that went around in the 1918 pandemic, H1N1, is still circulating.  Our treatment methods got better, and enough people got it and built up some immunities to it.  As aspirin is a blood thinner and doctors once treated the Influenza virus with up to 3,000 milligrams a day, it’s no wonder one of the reported side effects was hemorrhaging.

While we won’t have herd immunity, all of the factors combined will make SARS-CoV-2, hopefully, as harmless as the common flu.  The 2% fatality rate could drop even lower, and the new cases could drop to more manageable levels.

Conclusion

Should you take the vaccine?  If you are on the front line as a healthcare worker, you likely will have to take it to be on the job.  If you are a regular person and you choose to wait a little while and see what happens to the million or so people ahead of you in line, I can’t blame you.  You have to assess the risks of contracting SARS-CoV-2 in your community, but you also have to weigh the evidence of the vaccine’s efficacy and see if there are any prolonged side effects.  If you live in the woods with your nearest neighbor miles away, you are probably good to wait on it a bit and see what happens.  If you have already had the virus and recovered from it, you will likely be advised against getting the vaccine.  If you work in a public or government job, you likely won’t be provided the option to wait.  If you are in the military, you won’t have a choice.  If it works as well as they say it does, and no long term side effects emerge, the number of people in ICUs or coming down with the virus will decrease to more manageable levels.  COVID-19 will still be around, but it really will be no worse than the common flu.

Do you plan on getting the vaccine?  What is your take on it?  Based on the information in this video, do you think it’s safe?  

As always, please stay safe out there.

 

Outline

1. Unemployment, Finances & Savings
2. Retire Early
3. Always Supplied
4. Self-Sufficiency
5. Connecting with the Past
6. Transportation Failure (Elevator, Car, Train, Bus)
7. Situational Awareness
8. Stress Reduction – Calm in a Crisis
9. Be Able to Make the Right Decisions When Others are Panicking
10. Health & Fitness

Many people come to prepping after learning a hard life lesson like sudden unemployment or a sudden disaster for which they weren’t ready.  Some come to prepping because they anticipate troubles in the future.  For many years and perhaps for many more years in the future, the prepping lifestyle has and will continue to be synonymous with conspiracy theories.  In recent years, however, prepping has become more mainstream.  There is greater awareness of the need to prep, but what happens when we prep for the worst and nothing ever happens?  Have we wasted our time and energy? Here are the top 10 benefits to prepping, though you may find yourself lucky enough to skirt disaster your whole life. 1- Unemployment, Finances & Savings One in ten Americans were unemployed or otherwise out of work in 2020.  If you were 1 of those 10, you had a heap less to worry about if you had some preps in place before the day came when you got laid off.  It is estimated that over 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.  Sudden unemployment and frustration of the paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle are two big reasons many start prepping.  The number one reason to prep even if nothing happens is that you reap the benefits financially.  Having food stores on hand, buying in bulk, preparing your food, living within your means, and practicing good fiscal management practices all mean less money going out and more money in your pocket. The average American spends around $3,000 a year eating out, and I think that is a low estimate.  Considering most restaurants mark up the price around 300%, it is a huge savings just to get a handle on your food security.  Add to this fewer last-minute trips to the store and buying in bulk when possible, and you add even more to your savings.  Learn how to preserve, dehydrate, or can food, and you will ensure that your food doesn’t go to waste, and you will add hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars more to your savings. It’s not just food, though.  Add the “do-it-yourself” approach of prepping, and you’ll be more inclined to look up on YouTube how to change your car’s air filters and bulbs, how to garden, how to repair and upcycle items, maybe even how to mend or make your clothes or install your own solar.  Once you start learning, it is hard to stop.  Once you begin planning for the uncertainty of the future at all and removing both your dependency upon a fragile system and your indebtedness, both fundamental prepper philosophies, you will start to realize more money in your pockets and accounts.  You will find life more comfortable, more certain, and more steady. 2- Retire Early On average, you only get a little over seventy-five years on this planet.  The more stress you take on from living in the chaos of the rat race, always trying to get to that next hill or to get that last apple, the further you reduce that life-expectancy.  When you prep, you reap a lower stress level and higher savings.  That could, potentially, allow you to retire earlier.  This will enable you to enjoy those golden years rather than worry about the day-to-day.   According to one recent report, almost 64% of Americans will retire broke.  That means almost 2/3rd of Americans aren’t sufficiently prepared.  This also assumes that social security will be there forever and that the cost of living will be steady, and there won’t be any period of hyperinflation.  It assumes the dollar will be stable and robust and that no national disasters will befall us.  That’s a lot of assumptions if you ask me. The prepper, though, is planning for the future, more apt to get finances in order and saving for the future.  This allows many to retire earlier than 65 years of age.  When done well, prepping can set you up to enjoy potentially more than just ten years post-retirement. 3- Always Supplied When you prep, you are always supplied.  You don’t have to worry about running out of anything.  Think of all the time you will save not having to run out to the store once or twice a week.  The planning you put into your supplies and food stores keeps you out of peak shopping hours, so you’re less stressed and better able to focus your shopping on the things you truly need.  Imagine never having to make an emergency trip to the store for toilet paper, shampoo, or medicine. When the power goes out, or you have to stay indoors even temporarily, you don’t have to panic about not having anything to eat, electricity, or running water.  You have supplies to carry you through any minor disturbance and the peace of mind that you can sustain you and yours through greater tragedies that may emerge. You will find that sometimes prepping leaves you with more than you can even handle on your own.  Being well supplied puts you in an excellent position to help or share with others.  In return, you may find that they are inclined to give back to you or share with you.  You can build a sense of community when you prep, and we all get through life better when we do it together. 4- Self-Sufficiency Being self-sufficient is one of the most satisfying aspects of prepping.  Knowing that you can do things for yourself and you will be okay regardless of the situation brings an incredible sense of peace.  When you see other systems fall apart, you know you will be able to work around those things.  Prepping allows you to be more confident in life, more assured of yourself, and calmer. Decreasing your dependency on systems that might someday fail or people who may one day let you down and leave you hanging means you plod along in life, continually making progress.  What stops others in their tracks is merely a minor impediment to you that is easily overcome.  Self-sufficiency allows you to continually improve your life while others struggle and muck about in the day-to-day.  Whether you move to the woods to live deliberately or you live in a sky-rise urban apartment, adding a layer of self-sufficiency onto your life, even a thin layer, will improve your life immeasurably. 5- Connecting with the Past Your great-grandparents, by virtue of the way they lived, were technically preppers.  Only in modern times have we become overly dependent upon others and have lost much of our “can do” and “will do” approach to problems.  It seems we rush to the future and disregard our past.  Many of us need to look no further than a generation or two back to find ancestors who got it done, milked every ounce of sunlight out of a day, and worked both smarter and more efficiently. Look to their notes, their recipes, their equipment, their words, and their wisdom.  Don’t let all they learned and did go to waste and disappear with your generation.  That doesn’t have to be your family alone, though some of us may have had grandparents that could fix or mend anything.  You can study old books, old methods of doing things, seek out elderly experts, and connect with our collective past.  You will find that prepping in this way will make your appreciation of today even richer. 6- Transportation Failure Do you ever fear breaking down in your car or being lost somewhere?  If you prep and carry an EDC bag in your car or with you, you won’t be afraid of those things any longer.  They may happen, or they may never happen, but you’ll have what you need on you to walk with aplomb right through them. Others will suffer from elevated stress, anxiety, or even panic attacks, but you will know your prepping has bought you some time to make it through this little setback.  You will be able to think more clearly and return to your safe life since you will have the basics of what you need right with you. 7- Situational Awareness Prepping is about looking into the future.  It’s about figuring out what is a real threat to your safety and what isn’t.  Most people don’t think of the world like that.  The fact that you do allows you to look at the world with greater situational awareness.  Haven’t we all wished we saw something coming before it happened?  Do you wish you could have foreseen the actions of that person who did you wrong?  Do you wish you could have read the writing on the wall to anticipate your company’s last round of layoffs?  When you increase your situational awareness, you increase your chances of anticipating what is coming your way. The prepper’s eyes are cast to the horizon.  You are looking into the future by clearly looking at the present world and your current circumstances.  You are more in the moment, so your sense of situational awareness is increased.   You won’t see everything because that is not possible. Still, you will, hopefully, be aware enough to avoid any danger and possibly have sufficient enough forward vision to stay a step ahead of any setbacks. 8- Stress Reduction – Calm in a Crisis There is a sense of peace that goes along with prepping.  You have already run possible scenarios in your head as you have prepped, so you aren’t surprised when life throws you a curveball or a screwball or one to the head.  This sense of peace reduces your overall stress in life.  Reducing stress can lower the harmful levels of cortisol in your body.  That can, according to lots of research, lead to a longer life. Being calm in a crisis is another benefit of prepping.  When others begin to panic, you are already well into the implementation of your survival plan.  Minor troubles become mere setbacks and are less likely to shock your life.  Again, imagine losing your job as a prepper versus losing your job living paycheck-to-paycheck with a high cost of living and daily expenditure.  It’s still going to be stressful because uncertainty in life always is, but there is a calmness when you know some of the basics are still going to be there. 9- Make the Right Decisions When Others are Panicking Even if a disaster is perceived, there will be runs on stores, and fragile infrastructure systems can go down.  We saw that clearly in the year 2020.  When you prep, you remove yourself from that chaos.  You can see the real threats while others are in a fierce fight for the last rolls of toilet paper or the last bottle of disinfectant. While others are looking for the basics, you can be grabbing up those things you know you will need that others won’t immediately think of.  If you need to bug-in or bug-out, you will be more likely to know when to do that.  You probably won’t have to make a panicked decision about it.  Your life choices will be better when they are not life or death or fused with an element of panic.  Your level headed thinking will lead to better decisions. 10- Health & Fitness Health and overall fitness are some of the most overlooked aspects of prepping, but they are one of the most significant benefits to you, even if nothing ever goes wrong in your life.   As I have said in some of my other videos, no tool will get you through a crisis better than the tool of your body and mind.  Your well-being is tied to your health and fitness, and your health and fitness should be intrinsic to your prepping. Many people have neglected their health and fitness when it naturally seemed in abundance in their youth to find themselves unable to enjoy their mid to late years.  When you spend time making a point of walking every day, meditating, swimming, jogging, or any other things that build your health and fitness, you store up for yourself reserves of energy to be used later on in life.  You are more apt to be able to chase those grandkids or teach them how to fish or bake or otherwise do for themselves in life as you have done.  The rewards of that are immeasurable. Conclusion So, if the big one never comes, if life never throws you anything worse than a curveball, will it still have been worth your time to prep?  Well, there are just ten reasons why it is in your best interest to do so.  From getting in touch with your past and deepening the meaning and purpose of your life to saving money and possibly retiring earlier, there are many benefits to being thrifty, self-sufficient, and prepared for the difficulties that inevitably are a part of life. What do you see as the most critical reason to prep though nothing may ever happen?   As always, stay safe out there.

Outline

1. The Great Reset
2. The Five-Point Plan
3. What Does a Post-Reset World Look Like
4. Prepping & Individualism

In recent years, many conspiracy theories have gained traction in ways never imaginable that are beginning to play out on the world stage.  We have always sought to bring order to the chaos of the world by assigning everything that seems to be going wrong to powers moving in the shadows.  What if something like the Global Reset, however, was hiding in plain sight?  What if a global elite beyond the constraints of social, national, and fiscal barriers has at last emerged?  It’s not a thing for conspiracy theorists alone anymore.  Many individuals have become more powerful and influential than some sovereign governments, and that just wasn’t possible at other points in our historical record.  So what is the Great Reset, is it something you should be concerned about, and if so, what can you do about it? 1- The Great Reset We don’t usually give any significant air time to theories that lie on the fringe, which some may call conspiracy theories, choosing instead to focus on the art of prepping; however, the Great Reset concept has recently made a comeback, and so many in our community are concerned about its validity.  When beliefs like this crop up, we do think it’s worth discussing in relation to how prepping provides you with self-sufficiency and individualism–two of the greatest weapons in your arsenal to fight even the most powerful of global cabals.  So, let’s start by answering the question: what is the Great Reset? The Great Reset has conceptually been around for some time.  It has recently been given more credibility when proposed and published through the World Economic Forum–WEF.  According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to shape an economic recovery and future global relations, economies, and priorities.  It was unveiled in May 2020 by the United Kingdom’s Prince Charles and WEF director Klaus Schwab.  It seeks to improve capitalism by making investments geared toward mutual progress and focusing more on environmental initiatives. It has been criticized for using the pandemic to implement a risky experiment.  It is feared that this Great Reset will bring about socio-economic and ecological changes and usher in a New World Order. The theory alleges that “global financial elites” and world leaders planned the pandemic and deliberately let loose the coronavirus to cause the conditions that will allow a restructuring of the world’s governments. It alleges that the main goals of the Great Reset are to take global political and economic control by instating a dependent society and, by extension, the New World Order.  It is claimed that such a regime would abolish personal ownership and property rights, send the military into cities, impose mandatory vaccinations, and create isolation camps for people who resist.  Evidence of a conspiracy includes a 2016 WEF piece describing what life might be like in 2030, Joe Biden’s campaign slogan “Build Back Better,” and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s September 2020 speech where he references the WEF’s “Reset.” A few years ago, you might have been laughed at for proposing such a premise, but today it seems more probable than improbable.  Some ultra-rich have grown far beyond the constraints of national borders.  The first form of government was religion.  The next was kingships, then democracies. We are potentially returning to being governed by a loosely connected group of ultra-rich who share a similar vision of how resources should be allocated and used but needn’t recognize national borders and nation-state sovereignty and allegiances. For the Great Reset plan to work, population, emissions, and resource usage need to be dramatically decreased.  The pandemic has created an atmosphere of desperation and dependence, so the conditions are there.  Are we willingly accepting of this global restructuring?  Perhaps through our actions or our inactions, we are willing participants.  After all, we often passively trade our individualism and self-sufficiency for dependence on systems that continually prove to fail us.  As much as what we see when we look at the world can be summarized as part of this larger controlling global elite, we tend not to believe that any group of individuals is wise enough or in orchestrated agreement with each other to hold and sway such a high level of control over the planet. However, we have to accept that individuals have become stronger and more influential than some nations, and they hold unparalleled power.  If they collectively work towards any individual goal or exert similar influence, they very well can direct the outcomes on a global scale.  As Thomas Friedman pointed out over 20 years ago in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, the “balance that you have to pay attention to in the globalization system—the one that is the newest of all—is the balance between individuals and nation-states. Because globalization has brought down many of the walls that limited the movement and reach of people. Because it has simultaneously wired the world into networks, it gives more power to individuals to influence both markets and nation-states than at any time in history. So you have today not only a superpower, not only super-markets but … super-empowered individuals.”  And, in the last 20 years, the conditions to support a small group of global elite beyond the control of national borders has only grown, so we have to take the Global Reset plan with some level of seriousness. 2- The Five Point Plan Prince Charles outlined five points of the Global Reset plan:

1. To capture the imagination and will of humanity – change will only happen if people want it.  To this end, the pandemic has cultivated a sense of desperation in people.  Desperate people are more willing to accept any solution offered.
2. The economic recovery must put the world on the path to sustainable employment, livelihoods, and growth. Longstanding incentive structures that have had perverse effects on our planetary environment and nature herself must be reinvented.  Here it is suggested that individual profit should be replaced with communal wealth.  Add to this the recent rise in cryptocurrency, and the fiat currencies of nation-states could quickly be rendered worthless as businesses move to instant cashless transactions.
3. Systems and pathways must be redesigned to advance net zero transitions globally. Carbon pricing can provide a critical path to a sustainable market.  Lowering global emissions cannot happen in any meaningful way without reducing consumption and possibly even population.  
4. Science, technology, and innovation need re-invigorating. Humanity is on the verge of catalytic breakthroughs that will alter our view of what is possible and profitable in the framework of a sustainable future.  Here science is suggested as the more prominent path over both religions and government.
5. Investment must be rebalanced. Accelerating green investments can offer job opportunities in green energy, the circular and bio-economy, eco-tourism, and green public infrastructure.  Some indicate this point is already being implemented through the Green New Deal.  Big oil has lost its position globally, and countries are competing to outdo each other with green initiatives.

Those are the five essential points.  I would encourage everyone to go to the World Economic Forums website and peruse the positions and decide whether you think their plans are nefarious or not.  Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Arnault, Musk, Buffet, Page, Ellison, Ambani, Brin, or anyone of the unimaginably wealthy people in the world today…how many would you need to bring on board with a plan to make it a reality.  It was the Gilded Age Industrialist John Pierpont Morgan, after all, who saved the United States from bankruptcy following the Panic of 1907.  Imagine many such super-wealthy working together for a common purpose and free of the constraints of nation-states.  Let’s say it’s all true.  Let’s say there is a global strategy, a detailed plan for the subjugation of the masses, and a powerful New World Order of the global elite.  Is there anything an individual can do to stop the reshaping of society?  If you were to ask the journalist who published and exposed the Panama Papers– documents that revealed the illegal activities and money laundering of the ultra-rich, she would tell you the global elite can’t be stopped.  She was killed by a car bomb in 2017, so there’s that. 3- What Does a Post Reset World Look Like? Let’s run through what those that see a nefarious plan being implemented believe.  What is the core belief? The culmination of the Great Agenda is communitarianism.  Communitarianism is a philosophy that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community.  Communitarianism usually opposes extreme individualism and disagrees with extreme laissez-faire policies that neglect the overall community’s stability.  The goal is to transfer power from local individuals to a global governance system.  The entire plan is to be fully implemented by 2050.  The United States would be broken into 11 mega regions.  Other countries would ultimately lose their autonomy as national borders crumble.  Social networks will be dissolved wherever possible.  The world will be a cashless society where earnings are based on contribution and behavior in the community.  All citizens are tracked, and all activities are recorded.  Money flows to poorer nations to attempt to create equality amongst people.  Green energy is generated for the communal good and dispersed according to perceived merit. Depending upon your perspective, that sounds like either a utopian or a dystopian world of a science fiction novel?  In many ways, it is quite imaginative, yet the fundamental aspects are in place.   3.5 billion people, a little under half of the total population estimates of the Earth, carry a smartphone.  That smartphone tracks and records their every movement.  Microchipping people isn’t necessary when people so willingly allow themselves to be tracked.  Cashless transactions are exponentially surpassing cash transactions.  Along with each of those transactions are bits of informational data about you and the products and services you purchase.  Algorithms interpret what you watch and seek out on the internet and feed you information based upon those compulsions.  Like an addicted gambler in a casino, our base minds are fed a steady stream of lights and bells that stimulate our base emotions but bypass our higher minds.  So, some would say we are already well on our way to this dystopian or utopian society.  But are the people who look at the world and see a Great Reset just ascribing and overlaying a structure of their own design to define what they are witnessing?  The psychological term for this is “pareidolia” — the same phenomenon that makes some people see the face of Jesus in burnt toast, a face on Mars, and bunnies in clouds.  Is it real, or do we make it so? 4- Prepping & Individualism You could disconnect from it all and choose to live a simpler life.  You could let the world go by you and stay to your piece of it.  I think that might be extreme, though.  If it is all true, your best defense is not to be tied to a system that forces change by failing wholescale.  When food supplies are disrupted, and the larger population is forced into a specific behavior. As a result, you can remain relatively unscathed by this if you are prepared.  Preppers are training, stockpiling, and gearing up for a collapse or a catastrophe large enough to dramatically alter people’s ways of life. Any global cabal depends on the large scale disruption of the population to enact their changes. Prepping is about creating stability for yourself and those around you.  If the food supply lines are disrupted, the prepper steps in a different direction, adjusts their stores, and compensates for the change.  The world often dismisses preppers as hysterical overreacting people, but when instability comes, and it always will eventually, it is the prepper that knows what needs to be done and how to do it. Prepping is about individualism, autonomy, self-sufficiency, and reduced dependency on fragile systems.  If those systems are being used to gain and maintain control over the masses, the best thing you could be doing right now is tending to your preps.  Tending to your health and wellness in preparation for disasters that may befall you positions you to survive on your own when others are forced to be dependent on whatever help or handout they can get. Prepping is not a denial that forces will act upon us. It is an acceptance that we can adjust our way of living and survive despite these changes.  It is an acceptance that if we change our lives, we have done our part to change the world we live in as well.  Individualism is defined as the “habit or principle of being independent and self-reliant.”  The moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, and social outlook emphasize the individual’s moral worth.  It is the absolute bane of globalism, and it comes from learning how to prep and being ready for whatever life throws your way. From self-defense to food and water stores, to energy dependence, to fiscal independence and zero indebtedness, the prepper cannot be easily led in any direction they don’t want to go because there is no need to adopt a path that runs contrary to their individualism.  If forces unseen are pitting left against right, mob against mob, the prepper doesn’t have to be a willful participant in that chaos. Conclusion So, is there a Great Reset already underway?  Is there an orchestrated effort by the global elite to subjugate us all and dissolve sovereign nations worldwide for communitarianism where our individualism and work are traded out for the global community?  Maybe it is underway, or perhaps we are just trying to ascribe meaning to what we see happening around us. Perhaps the concept comes less from an orchestrated plan and more from our desire to have something simple, we can understand to make sense of it all.  Regardless of what you believe, prepping provides you a means to remain a steadfast individualist.  It ensures you are neither easily swayed nor a willing participant of a system that would cannibalize you to sustain itself. Are we being manipulated and shepherded, or is it all just theories?  Does prepping even the score and keep us out of the global plans?   As always, please stay safe out there.

When disaster strikes, the time to prepare has passed. – Steven Cyros 2020 has been a wake-up call for many Americans showing how things can quickly take a turn for the worse.  We experienced prosperity and calm for quite some time before this year but we have quickly seen how that can change.  One disaster or perceived calamity can cause panic.  More than one catastrophe at the same time could lead to a prolonged grid down situation.  While a region might recover after a few days or weeks, a national incident could leave you on your own with no help coming.  If a significant enough event were to occur that completely disrupted our supply chains and resources, the results would be catastrophic.  Most people don’t have enough food and water on hand to survive much more than a week.  In this blog, we’ll cover what you can expect when a national disaster over 90 days occurs and how you can prepare now. Any disaster on a national or global scale can quickly turn neighbor against neighbor.  The calm social order you enjoy will be flipped on its head after just a few days.  The sad reality is that most people aren’t prepared to survive to next week if supplies were cut off, let alone for ninety days or more.  There is, however, a timeline that generally follows disasters.  Knowing this timeline can put you one step ahead of the herd and can keep you safer amidst the chaos.  This blog will analyze the days, weeks, and months following a catastrophic national disaster.  We will tell you what you can expect along the way and provide you with solutions you will need to remain safe and survive. The First 3 Days What to expect Depending upon the disaster, the first 24 hours can be relatively calm.  If you are in the aftermath of a storm or earthquake, this is the period where people are emerging from what is left of their shelters and making sure they are unscathed.  If it’s a disaster like a national power outage, most people are still relatively calm.  We put a great deal of faith in our government, public services, Guard, and military to restore our world following a disaster. This period of calm can last for about two days.  After that, things begin to reveal how broken they actually are.  Stores that cannot process credit and debit transactions cannot sell to people without cash, and banks that can’t process deposits and withdrawals stop functioning.  Just-in-time delivery services that regularly replenish grocery and pharmacy inventories can’t do so and shortages of some items begin to occur.  This fuels even more panic buying, which further exacerbates the problem. After 72 hours, people will begin to realize that help is not coming and systems will not be restored.  The stress level of the community will start to boil over.  If stores haven’t been looted yet, it will assuredly begin by the third day as those who failed to prepare will desperately try to grab up the resources they now realize they need.  If you have prepared, you can avoid being caught up in this dangerous time of desperation.  If you have not, expect to be stuck with the herd making runs on stores.  Likely, the police will not be able to keep ahead of the crime. Local curfews will be established, perhaps even martial law. What to do So what should you know about and do in the first 72 hours?  Your first 24 hours is a little bit of a Golden Window for you to act.  You will need to decide if you are going to shelter in place or bug out.  You should immediately fill every container you have with water in the likelihood that pumping stations will cease to operate.  Your water may be gravity fed with those enormous tanks you see on the hillsides around your town, but those will not be replenished in a prolonged grid down situation.  If possible, you should gas up your vehicle.  Within the first 24 hours, you should go to the store with cash if there’s any supplies you need to top off, but again, only do this if you have no other option as it is likely that people will be in a state of panic.  So don’t plan on this being your primary plan if you failed to prepare.  Evaluate accordingly based on the knowledge of your local stores.   In the first 48 hours, you should check in with your Mutual Assistance Group if you’ve established these types of relationships.  If you live in an apartment complex, you should coordinate a floor or building meeting to discuss posting guards at the entrances and other strategies to keep your building safe.  Though phone and internet systems may be down, Apps like Bridgefy that utilize mesh networks may still allow you to communicate with others or get news.  CB or Ham radios can provide you with critical communication abilities.  A CB should be part of your prepping supplies because they are very affordable and vital to communications capabilities.  You should also monitor your emergency radio channels to assess the extent and area radius of the disaster and base your decision on whether to bug out or bug in based upon this information.  If you have a police scanner, you can monitor the chatter to determine how the disaster’s aftermath is unfolding.  Don’t give too much credibility to the word of mouth rumors and gossip, especially don’t base your decisions on this type of communication.   Assuming you have prepped in advance, your most significant decision in the first 24 hours is going to be whether you should stay or go.  Your window of opportunity will begin to close after the first 24 hours.  Roads will begin to fill up, and travel will likely not be a safe option any longer.  Ask yourself, “can I make it 90 days where I am?”  Even if the answer is yes, have a bug out plan and bag ready if the situation forces you out. Your solutions for the first three days are to have some preps in place already, along with a bug-out plan.  All members of your network or family should implement the communication plan you’ve already put in place before the disaster.  You should monitor any potential compounding problems like nuclear power plants or dams.  Most importantly, you need to assess whether staying in location or getting to a safer area is possible, which is your best choice during this golden window of opportunity. The First Week What to expect Within the first week, supplies will be gone– either purchased or stolen.  Medicines will begin to run out, and people with medicine dependent lives will turn to hospitals for what they need.  Hospitals may not be able to admit and help many people if their power cannot be restored.  Police, medical, and fire services will be overwhelmed, and you cannot rely on them.  The declaration of martial law is very likely, as governments attempt to keep the peace.  As we saw from the citizenry in 2020, people will likely not accept martial law.  Vigilante security groups will probably spring up in neighborhoods and communities.   Clean water may cease to flow, and trash and human waste will begin to pile up.  As sewage plants fail, municipal water supplies or local rivers may become contaminated.  Natural gas and electricity will cease to flow.  By the end of the first week, the levels of circulating cash will be very low, and bartered items like food, water, and durable goods will begin to rise in value. People will be either trying to leave populated areas or, for those stranded away from home when the disaster struck, they will just be arriving back to their city home, if they decided to return home, to find that the landscape has changed considerably.  Remember, the golden window to either stay in place or bug out is really in the first 24 hours.  After that, you are competing with the herd every step of your journey. What to do Your solution for the first week is to take a mental inventory of your supplies and try to get all family members or groups in one central, defensible position.  Do not share, even at community or building meetings, the extent of your supplies.  If you do, your supplies will likely be taken and divided up by the second week.  You will need to use a large bucket and trash bags to remove waste from your living area.  If it’s more than just you, a 24 hour watch system at your home must be established.  The night will bring the greatest conflicts, as desperate people will try to use the cloak of darkness to keep them hidden.  Martial law or local police may still provide some protection during the day.  Beyond just your home, know what is happening in your neighborhood and community.  Stay in the well-trafficked areas if you have to venture out during the day. Second Week What to expect By the second week, crime, looting, and marauding will rise.  Stores and pharmacies will have already been looted.  Mutual assistance groups will spring up in some communities, neighborhoods, and buildings.  These will vary from street gangs to militias to armed citizens.  There could be conflicts between these groups, though they will likely be pretty respectful of boundaries in the early weeks.  Your opportunity to travel has passed.  Roads impacted by people fleeing population centers will be littered with abandoned vehicles and will be far too unsafe to travel.  Many will be living out of their cars on rural land they could get to, and they will suffer being kicked off that land by locals.  International borders will be closed to stop the flood of refugees, and governments will issue stay at home orders, curfews, or attempt to relocate people en masse.  With no sign of recovery, hospital and emergency workers will turn to their own families and communities. What to do You will want to keep as low of a profile as possible.  Make sure the windows are covered.  Avoid cooking and lights at night.  When cooking, add any spices after flameout to avoid releasing scents into the air.  You will need to purify any water you obtain that isn’t part of your stores.  Stay put, and stay hidden.  You will not find food or medicine anywhere, so there is little point in venturing out. Your solutions for this period are to have the foods and medicines you need in your preps.  If you’ve formed relationships with your neighbors, now is the time to start discussing food rationing and how you’ll work together if they’re not prepared.  At this point, you have all decided to hunker down, so you are all in it together.  Never reveal all your supplies, but it will be critical for you to have a large supply of food stored as you may be the only resource your neighbors have.  Always barter a cup of beans or rice or a couple of Ramen noodle packets for things you know you will need in the weeks ahead.  If someone wants to charge their item with the solar generator you have, you should try to have some cost associated with that.  Otherwise, they will be at your door repeatedly using your resources.  Avoid giving away your valuable preps for nothing in return.  You should have medical kits and books to allow you to care for yourself and others.  The loaning of prepping books you have already read and do not need to reference is the only exception because you want your neighbors to be knowledgeable and not a burden.  If sewage is down, you may need a community plan for removing waste from your living areas. Third Week What to expect If you and your group are to survive, your solutions are to delegate responsibilities based upon areas of expertise.  Any current or former LEO or military should be in charge of implementing a security plan.  Anyone with medical training will have to provide those services.  Again, don’t reveal all your food stores but contribute maybe a pound of beans and a pound of rice.  Those will feed several people and keep people from getting desperate.  The reality that you are all in this together will sink in for many, so you will need to provide direction to steer your community.  Maybe loan a book or two to people who show that they have some expertise.  As a community, you will need to obtain water by draining water heaters or pipes or setting up a rain collection system.  You will need to lead the thinking on these things.  The ability to provide survival knowledge to your community will make you an invaluable asset.  Tough decisions will have to be made, rationing of food within your home, roles will have to be established, and skills brought to the table for everyone to work together.  Many envision that after a significant disaster and no help is coming that they’ll simply be an island to themselves.  The reality is that this will not be the case.  People will know what you have, and if you haven’t started forming ways to help others near you that can help you in return, you may have an angry mob at your doorstep.  While many in the prepper community envision that they’ll be fine making it independently, if you live in an urban or suburban area, this simply will not be the case.  Remember, manpower will be critical for survival.  The notion of just sitting on a stockpile of food is simply not realistic as others will figure out quickly who has food and who does not.  It is in this moment that working with, and not against your neighbors will enable everyone to survive. Three Months What to expect After three months, it will be apparent that rescue isn’t coming. Governments won’t restructure. After such a long national disaster, any government that shows up in your city will not be there in a friendly, helping capacity.  It will be more feudalistic– community against the community as they compete for natural resources and remaining resources. You are stuck where you are and may be subject to whatever jurisdiction rule holds the most power. You will likely no longer be in a populous area. Either you left, or they left. The death toll from a prolonged SHTF situation can only be estimated, but even at the low estimates, fully 1/3 of all people will die within the first 90 days. Gone will be the elderly and anyone with a significant medical condition, those receiving medical treatment, or anyone in fragile health. Expect others to die from violence, starvation, dehydration, illness, travel, and exposure to the elements.  The reality is that most people can’t walk ten miles, find food or water, or have the knowledge and skills to survive outside the fragile systems they rely upon. The world will look very post-apocalyptic, and either small communities will band together and rebuild by sharing labor, knowledge, and resources, or it will remain very fragmented.  By now, you contribute something to the sustainment of your networked community, and your community may have established trade or alliances with other communities.  As much as it is common to think that, as a prepper, you will be able to go it alone, the reality is that you will need a community to survive unless you are completely off-grid in the wilderness. For most preppers, that type of wilderness survival isn’t a possibility.  For most, survival will depend on the cooperation of others. Understand How It Breaks Down to Understand How To Survive What to do There will be no electricity, no water, no hospital, no government, dead telephones, and no internet in a prolonged grid-down situation.  Know your location and assess your place before you find yourself in such dire straits.  Ensure you have paper maps and know the areas of nuclear power plants and dams, which may also fail.  Knowledge is power, so having police scanners, radios, television, CB radio, Ham radios, and some word of mouth will be critical. Any information you can obtain from these resources will be useful. Running water will stop. Pump stations will stop. Gravity-fed water, those big tanks on the hills you see, will continue to flow for a while, but they will run out since they are not being replenished. Fill the bathtub and every container you have, as water flow may stop. Water heaters typically hold around 40 gallons of water, so you may need to tap this resource to sustain yourself.  You will need the absolute minimum of at least 90 gallons of water per person to get through the first 90 days.  That includes all drinking, washing, and cooking.  You simply cannot survive on less than that.  If feasible, strategize, and implement a rainwater collection system.  From day one, start rationing your water and your food.  Don’t be a healthy fat person after people have suffered for a month. You will be alerting people. The same is true for cooking food. Make sure the scent isn’t carrying, or you will attract others. You need months of food. Most view this as caloric needs alone. Make sure you are looking at the nutritional qualities of the food. Understand that if you are hunkered down, you will not be burning a ton of calories. If you are on the move, you will be burning lots of calories but will be unable to carry all the calories you will need for a journey of a week or more.  Ensure you have 90 days of pet food on hand and remember their water needs are different. They can drink rainwater without ill effect. Cash will only have an initial value.  After the first couple of weeks, water, food, and durable goods will be of more importance.  Bartering will hold more value in a prolonged or indefinite collapse.  Supply chains will stop. The just-in-time delivery system with lean inventories will collapse relatively swiftly. Supply trucks will cease to deliver. Expect stores to be looted before the end of the first week.   Take advantage of any supply handouts for appearance and necessities, but don’t sacrifice your safety if they turn into chaotic mobs grabbing resources. Even if you don’t need the food or water, you can trade it for items you need like winter coats, blankets, or other critical things. Conclusion Prepping for a national disaster that will last more than 90 days may seem extreme, but it should be your goal.  If you can survive the first 90 days after a collapse of that magnitude, you will likely be able to survive the long haul and make it to the rebuilding phase.  A return to the way things were before a collapse of that magnitude just isn’t a possibility after 90 days.  Survival is possible, but you’ll inevitably have to rely upon your community and your networks.  Apart from the items you’ve stored up, your significant assets will be your knowledge that you can bring to your community. Take a look at our other blogs to understand the things you will need, and set your prepping goals for a target of 90 days out.  You will find that the longer the time you can prepare for, the more your chances of survival increase.  At each significant phase of the 90 days, a week out, two weeks out, etcetera, assess whether staying in location or finding someplace new is in your best interest.  Likely, the window of opportunity has closed, but you may find a caravan of people planning to move. Your best bet after the first week or two is to stay put. As always, please stay safe out there.

Outline

1. Fire Starter
2. First Aid Kit
3. Medications & Chemical Disinfectants
4. Water Filter
5. Solar Powered Radio & Portable Solar Battery
6. Personal Protection Items
7. Flashlight or Headlamp
8. Durable Blankets
9. Duct Tape
10.  Protein Powders, Electrolyte Powders & Hard Candy

No economy in the history of the world has ever sustained a constant rate of growth.  Recessions, depressions, and complete economic collapse is inevitable in even the most advanced of societies.  As people move to find valuable food resources, safety, or jobs, they travel in every conceivable way and with anything of value they can carry.  As a prepper, you should always have an EDC – Every Day Carry bag and a more thorough Grab-and-Go Bug-Out-Bag.  That can be two separate bags or the same bag.  While we have done blogs on 10 items to survive an economic depression and one on 10 cheap items to survive an economic depression, we want to focus here on just the 10 essentials for your Grab-and-Go bag that you will need should you need to migrate to safety or resources following an economic collapse.  If our economy collapses and you are forced out on the road, what items apart from standard items we cover in bug out bag blogs would you want to have?  In this blog, we’ll cover items that you may not see in traditional bug out bags that could make a big difference. 1- Fire Starter Fire is the most essential element to survival on the road or in the bush.  We take it for granted because we’ve tamed and channeled it.  Whether our furnace kicks on, our water heater, our stove, even our car engine, we don’t often reflect upon how critical fire is to us in our everyday lives.  But when gas lines fail and electricity can’t create a spark for us, will our little lighter do the job?  We like to make sure that we have a reliable backup that we know, while not as primitive or difficult as a bow drill, may take some work but will reliably ignite a fire for me.  Do make sure you have a simple wheel lighter in your grab-and-go depression bag, but also make sure you have a reliable Magnesium rod fire starter.  If you are forced to stay clear of roads at night and retreat to wooded or otherwise covered areas, fire will be essential to you.  It will make sure your water is safe to drink when boiling it, your food is free of bacteria, and will provide you some level of safety, so long as you remain situationally aware of your use of light and smoke. 2- First Aid Kit Most first aid kits are not very useful at all.  We’ve seen some where the bandaids barely stick and the tweezers were really just cheap pieces of plastic.  You may have seen these kits or received one as a promotional freebie yourself.  It is worth investing in a higher quality first aid kit.  You will also want to stock it with some basic medications like ibuprofen, aspirin, benadryl, topical ointments, and even a tourniquet.  These extra items are typically not included in standard first aid kits because they typically have expiration dates, whereas a kit may sit on shelves for years before it is sold.  Take the time to beef up your first aid kit.  Make sure it is in a rugged and durable container, and make sure that you have some basic medical procedure guides, pocket-sized, and laminated.  Traveling can be dangerous in both small and large ways.  Injuries from large wounds to insect stings to blisters are common.  Being prepared now will make sure you’re prepared later when you really need it. 3- Medications & Chemical Disinfectants While we just mentioned beefing up your First Aid Kit, we think it is important to mention here the range of medications and disinfectants you should have portable and available to you to grab and go.  Most first aid kits are, as we mentioned earlier, a little basic and generic.  They may tout five hundred items if you count every low quality band aid and alcohol wipe.  In addition to the basic medications like ibuprofen, aspirin, benadryl, topical ointments, and even smelling salts that you will want to beef up your kit with, there are other items you should carry.  You should have at least one bottle of topical disinfectants and wound disinfectants like Isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide.  A fifth of cheap vodka in a plastic bottle can provide you a nip of courage or a means to sanitize wounds or items.  A small gel hand sanitizer can serve several functions if you find yourself in the wild.  If it is alcohol based, while not recommended, it can be used to sanitize items or even light fires.  Any medications that you regularly take, you should try and have a month’s dose on hand.  Toothache medicine is super small and lightweight but could be what you need to get you through a prolonged period without dentistry.  Concentrated herbs with medicinal attributes can help to relieve minor problems when medicines run out or unavailable.  Extra inhalers if you are ashmatic or have any breathing problems will be a critical addition to your kit.  Depending upon your area, bee sting kits and an Epi pen may be a lifesaver.  The list goes on and on.  You really can’t overthink your medical kit because most people who die in the elements die as a result of small injuries or dehydration.  Your first aid kit will also provide you with a useful tool for others you may encounter along the way. 4- Water Purification & Filtering The effects of dehydration can set in very rapidly, especially when you are hiking or walking when not used to that type of activity.  Many people are on the cusp of dehydration in their everyday lives and don’t really realize it.  Just like we start dreaming about foods when we are hungry, your body will start thinking about a drink of something (soda, coffee, water, wine, a smoothie, and so on) when you are thirsty.  It’s that primal.  The problem if you are on the move, however, is that water weighs a little over eight pounds per gallon.  You can’t carry too many gallons with you because of the weight.  You also may not be in a secure location that allows you to have a fire to purify water.  If you can, something like a personal water filtration system has significantly dropped in price over the years.  A low cost water filter can provide you over one hundred gallons of water from streams, ponds, lakes, or otherwise undrinkable water sources you find along your journey.  Remain aware of possible chemical pollutants, however.   Oftentimes, finding water on your journey isn’t the problem.  The problem is finding clean drinking water.  An intestinal infection like that caused by the giardia parasite under the best of conditions may clear up on its own in a week.  Extreme cases may require medications.  Time and medications may not be things you have if you’re on the road.  The easiest way to keep moving is to prevent getting an intestinal infection from water by filtering or boiling it. 5- Solar Powered Radio & Portable Solar Battery As infrastructures falter in an extended economic depression, a reliable energy source is critical.  The energy grid in our country is already unreliable and will become more so as it is maintained less in a depression.  Add to this the fact that people will not take kindly to you just plugging into their power outlets, and you should consider a solar powered radio or portable solar battery of some kind or combination in your grab-and-go bag.  The one we are recommending is both.  Being aware of inclement weather or hazards on the road ahead of you will keep you from moving from an already bad situation to an even worse one.  Being able to charge other small devices with natural and free resources will also be useful to you. 6- Personal Protection Items Let’s face it, traveling on your own or even in a small group through strange areas filled with equally desperate people is a legitimate security and personal safety threat.  You will need PPI, personal protection items.  Open carrying a rifle or shotgun isn’t going to go well through some communities, and concealing a weapon may also land you in trouble.  There are many options beyond firearms.  Police strength pepper gel, a Kubotan type tactical pen, even a fixed blade knife, or tactical flashlight with a built in tazing feature are all very small but extremely effective at stopping an attacker.  Law enforcement will probably not give you a hard time if your personal protection item is in a sort of gray area of the law but still legal. Whatever PPI you choose, do make sure that you have something to provide yourself greater personal security on the road.  Desperate times lead people to desperate measures and criminals are opportunists.  You cannot rely upon law enforcement if they are being stretched thin or addressing other issues in the community you are moving through. 7- Flashlight or Headlamp When forced to travel through sketchy areas, you may need to travel at night or in low light situations.  Having a flashlight or headlamp is a must.  We are a big believer in redundancy and multifunctionality of your survival tools.  Anything with multiple uses increases your effectiveness, and the old saying two is one and one is none is good advice.  So, the headlamp we recommend in the comments below has motion sensing, USB recharging capabilities from your solar battery, and a red light mode.  There is a lot of misinformation out there about red light.  Some people will tell you that it doesn’t travel as far.  That simply isn’t true.  The facts are that light is interpreted in our eyes through our rods and cones.  Red light is specifically interpreted through the cones, and cones are concentrated in the center.  So, the immediate area in front of you in your field of vision is illuminated well for you through red light, but not well for people looking in your direction from any distance.  Red light is most effective for the center of the eye, so only illuminating a spot in the direction of your view would benefit you and not others.  Confining the light to one part of the spectrum also decreases detectability.  It’s just as bright, there is just less for people at any distance to discern versus a full spectrum or white light.   If you are forced to travel at night or in low light situations while keeping a low profile, a flashlight or headlamp of some kind will be your most effective means to do so. 8- Durable Blankets At least one durable, lightweight, but warm blanket per person will also be an essential item you will want in your Grab-and-Go bag.  A regular bed sheet or typical bed blanket will not do, as these are bulky and provide very little protection from the elements.  An emergency thermal blanket, on the other hand, will help you retain ninety-percent of your body heat and can be carried in your pocket. Because of their low cost and lightweight, they also provide you a tradeable item for you to barter for things you need along your journey.   At an average of two dollars a piece and a negligible weight, you could easily carry a dozen of them in a pack and not even feel the weight of them.   A more durable option is a survival blanket.  It can provide you a wind and waterproof shelter.  When combined with the paracord we mention in our other blogs on items to get you through a great depression, you can easily build a protective shelter in just a few minutes. 9- Duct Tape Commercial grade, seven or eight millimeter thickness duct tape is the universal solver of problems.  There are many cheap versions, so make sure you have a roll of commercial grade duct tape in your bag.  Whether it is patching holes in your shelter, rigging your shelter, holding your clothes together, or patching a hole in your shoes, duct tape is known for being the problem solver.  Since an Illinois mother first came up with the idea for a waterproof cloth tape in nineteen-forty-three, duct tape has been used in millions of ways to save the day.  A quick search for the uses of duct tape will make it quite clear why you need to have a good quality, commercial duct tape roll in your bag before you are forced out onto the road. 10- Protein Powders, Electrolyte Powders & Hard Candy In an economic depression, food supply lines may be interrupted and waiting in long soup lines may not be the best option.  Storing some protein, electrolyte restoring powders and hard candies will provide you a lightweight nutritional go to.  The protein powder will keep you away from starvation’s door.  When the body lacks protein intake it begins to catabolize itself.  There are many options for protein powders, and this may just mean you have to remember to grab that big jar of it in your pantry.  Small vacuum sealed packets of protein or a dehydrated egg powder like we are recommending can provide you critical proteins and a long shelf life when food sources are sparse.  The electrolyte powder will help you stay hydrated.  The hard candies, while only providing a little quick burning sugar, will keep for a long period of time and can provide a small morale boost for yourself, children you may be traveling with or others.  Most people remember their grandmother’s hard candy dish.  That candy was very, very old, and had probably molded into one giant piece, but it was still edible.  There’s only about two grams of sugar in one piece of hard candy, so you won’t be able to survive on it alone, but it might get you through and keep your mind clearer to make better survival decisions. Conclusion Even the most robust economies can sink into deep and long lasting economic depressions.  Be prepared by knowingly prepping these 10 lightweight items in your grab-and-go bag.  When an economy collapses, your shelter security could evaporate.  You may find yourself needing to travel to a safer location, a location where other family members or friends are, or a location where you can find the resources you need to survive.  We encourage you to take a look at my other videos for critical items that you will need to survive a great depression, but don’t forget these ten lightweight items in your grab-and-go bag.  Proper preparation now will carry you through safely to an eventual recovery.   Even if you never need these items for road travelling during an economic depression, when natural disasters strike, you will have them all at the ready and have some basics of what you need to survive. As always, please stay safe out there.