More Trials & Tribulations in Next Four Months
- Presidential Election
- Natural Disaster
- Economic Collapse
- A Worthless Dollar
- The Coronavirus Continues
The first eight months of twenty-twenty have been a crazy roller coaster of politics, civil unrest, economic declines, a worsening coronavirus pandemic, and much, much more. Just when it appears we are about to turn a corner, something else appears in our news feeds. After so many negative things this year, we have to ask ourselves what the rest of twenty-twenty is going to look like. It’s hard to be prepared for all the possible outcomes and to lose focus on what is important. We have just a few short months until twenty-twenty-one. Will things be better then? What should we ready ourselves to face? How can we prepare to survive this year and into next year?
In this blog, we will examine the five most pressing issues facing our country and world today. The good news is that we can prepare ourselves to survive even worsening conditions, and that there are actions today that can influence our ability to have a better outcome tomorrow. If these negative trends continue, we will need these valuable remaining months of twenty-twenty to hunker down and prepare ourselves for possibly even more turbulent times ahead. There is the strong possibility that twenty-twenty-one could be even worse.
- Presidential Election
Just like every four years, the news is full of this president said this and that presidential candidate said that. Everyone has an opinion on how your vote will be a vote for one thing or another. Regardless of who is elected to the position of president or which party ends up controlling the House or Senate, this election year is very different than any in recent memory.
Without a vote being yet cast, there are already doubts being cast upon the voting process, the fear of foreign intervention, vote tampering, and the validity and security of mail-in ballots. When asked if President Trump would accept the election results of 2020, President Trump responded “I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.” Rising protests, and in some cases riots, in the streets, as well, and it is safe to say that we may be heading toward a Constitutional crisis in America within the next one hundred days.
How does this play out in the Constitution? The Twentieth Amendment, commonly known as the “Lame Duck Amendment” to the United States Constitution moved the beginning and ending of the terms of the president and vice president from March fourth to January twentieth. At noon on January twentieth, the person carrying the nuclear football launch codes accompanying the incumbent president either sticks around or walks off to the new president. Either the incumbent president presides in office for another four years, or he is escorted from office and then it gets really grey. The amendment reads: “If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.”
It is true that President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence would be out of the office at that point. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be next in line. However, she would also be out of the office on January third, if federal elections were delayed. Next in line would be the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, which is Sen. Chuck Grassley.
Confused yet? That’s exactly the point. We’re not a constitutional lawyer, so we can’t definitively say how this would or should play out. America has always prided itself on its ability to peacefully transfer power from one president to another. It is very possible that this year’s election may have complications and question marks or be delayed entirely. The resulting constitutional crisis is what we should be worried about. Whatever the election’s outcome, the less than eighty days leading up to the election will be wrought with continued protests and mudslinging. Tempers will continue to rise and flare and will, in many ways, boil over in the media, the government, and in the streets. The thirty days after the results of November third will stress the system even more, and the days after that will boil over into some conclusion. What conclusion, we cannot know, but we can reasonably suspect from the indicators now that a smooth transition of power may not happen this year. If that’s the case, you can expect increasing civil unrest, possible looting, and increased criminal activity. Be prepared for the complete disruption of any normal routines. Even going to the grocery store may be a challenge. To be safe, be alert and physically move away, immediately, from any conflict areas. It is one thing to have a political stand, but you also need to ensure your personal safety and survival. If you are required to travel frequently or need to move around in public, you may want to consider getting a concealed handgun permit if your state allows it. Things may get dicey post-election when tempers may flair the most.
What do you think will happen?
2. Natural Disasters
Don’t get too distracted by the politics. While all that craziness is happening, it would be easy to drop the ball on our normal preparedness activities. If you live in a hurricane zone, hurricanes aren’t going to just skip us this year. Hurricanes on the East coast peak in September but are highly likely in August as well. If you live on the West coast, fire season runs from around May to October. The usual firefighting inmate infantry, by the way, has been hit hard by COVID-nineteen, and that will continue to stymie efforts to mobilize an effective fighting force. The virus could exacerbate the aftermath of a hurricane or relief efforts too. Also, earthquakes occur year round, and even though we are leaving tornado season, we are entering winter. As radical as weather patterns can be, don’t lose sight of preparing for the eventual natural disaster and not just the probable natural disaster.
Any natural disaster in the next one-hundred-twenty days will be complicated by politics and stymied relief mobilization efforts. FEMA won’t be able to help you if there’s also civil unrest in your area. Prepare yourself and your loved ones for the possibility that you may need to be self-reliant for a long period of time. Use this relatively calm time before a potential storm to make sure you are prepared. Please check out our other blogs on emergency food, water, and other supplies you will need to have ready.
3. Economic Collapse
Number three on the list of things to expect in the rest of twenty-twenty is economic collapse. The numbers are in and GDP has shrunk to historical lows, unemployment remains extremely high. The CARES Act also placed a moratorium on certain evictions but they expired on July twenty-fifth (after which renters should get thirty days notice of any eviction proceedings); many states also enacted evictions bans, but nearly half of those have already expired. Are a wave of evictions and foreclosures on the horizon or will a polarized congress provide economic relief to individuals in an economy seemingly in free fall?
Whether you agree or disagree with the closures, you have to prepare yourself and your family for a deepening economic depression. The economies of many countries have suffered greatly and there are not clear signs of significant corrections in the market.
We may well be living in the days and months preceding a massive economic depression. We have recently done a number of blogs about this, so we encourage you to watch those to understand what you can do now to prepare yourself for this possibility. We will include links to those at the end of this blog, or you can see them by clicking the CityPrepping icon below this video. Remember, being prepared goes beyond ideology and to the core of your self-reliance, your independence. You can prepare now to survive an economic depression.
Are you worried about the economy collapsing?
4. A Worthless Dollar
The U.S. dollar has been a global currency because of the strength of our economy. A global currency is simply one that is accepted for trade throughout the world. Another way to refer to a global currency is reserve currency. Although the US dollar, Euro, and Yen are the most popularly accepted transaction mediums, the US dollar is the most popular and makes up over sixty-four percent of all known central bank foreign reserves. This has made the American dollar the de facto global currency, even though it’s not an official title. The value of the US dollar is supported by the relative strength of the American economy. America’s supremacy as the world’s largest economy makes its currency the strongest as well.
For many years now, the Federal Reserve has printed money to bail the economy out. Currently, the Federal Reserve is creating dollars from scratch at an unprecedented rate, one of many tools to rescue the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic. One possible outcome of this creating money at the push of a button are overheated financial bubbles fueled by too much easy money in the system – a bubble that could burst with painful fallout. Creating too much money that chases too few goods also leads to price inflation, decreasing the purchasing power of the dollar.
If the US does continue to fall into a deepening economic recession or depression, it is possible that countries that do not suffer as badly and recover more rapidly will see their currencies strength and value increase substantially over the US dollar. A slashing of America’s credit rating and worthiness or too many dollars in the system diluting the strength of the dollar along with low consumer confidence and reduced spending, could cause the larger global markets to flee to more solid currencies, precious metals or crypto currencies. Precious metals and crypto currencies allow people with money to rapidly move their funds from country to country and aren’t tied to a fiat currency. Gold and silver prices have already sharply risen, and crypto currency prices are showing signs of entering a bull market. In a deepening, lingering economic crisis, the US dollar could very well lose its stature in the world. This would further stymie any recovery efforts and significantly stretch out an economic depression.
If you have a portfolio, you may want to take a look at our other blogs on precious metals and our future blog on crypto currencies which we’re currently working on. Having some, maybe ten percent of your dollars invested in this direction may prove valuable to you. We are not an investment counselor, by any means, so do your own research, but do take from this the possibility that the once highly valued dollar could lose it’s number one spot in the world, and have a plan if it does. We would encourage you to also study more about the dollar index to understand what’s happening. You may want to take a look at my other videos on skills you can develop now, how to barter, or items to have during an economic depression.
5. The Coronavirus Continues
Finally, and we could have led with this, the coronavirus, SARS-CO-V-TWO, will continue through next year. There are many, many theories on this: that there will be a second wave, that we can return to normal and open everything up, that we should wear masks, that we shouldn’t, even that it doesn’t even exist. There’s a lot of information out there and a lot of misinformation as well. What we know we can expect are some schools opening and then closing again. We can expect outbreaks and closures. We know we are many months away from any vaccine, and we know that a large percentage of Americans have indicated they won’t be vaccinated. We know the virus can mutate because of its RNA replication. That means it could become more dangerous to us, or it could become less dangerous to us. It means that there are multiple strains of the virus out there right now.
Some people in the prepper community who have warned about a possible pandemic for years, continue to downplay the significance and danger of this virus. At one-hundred-fifty-thousand deaths in the US and no flattening of the curve appearing in the data, it is at least safe to say that we may not have even crested with this first wave of the virus. And that assumes that this virus functions like viruses from previous pandemics. Being a novel virus, there are still a lot of unknowns.
Wishfully thinking this virus will disappear in February, or with Summer’s heat, or in November, doesn’t seem to be a good plan. Arguing over the lethality, methods of spread, drugs used for treatment, or whether businesses and schools should open or close, won’t change the inevitable fact that SARS-CO-V-TWO will be with us and the effects of it will be with us through the rest of twenty-twenty and probably into twenty-twenty-one and beyond.
Will there be a second wave? Has the first wave crested? We don’t know. Is the virus becoming less or more virulent? Are we becoming better capable of treating it? Are children safe? These will be the questions we will have answers to in the next few months, regardless of whether we want those answers. We are going to have to science the heck out of this until we get some relief.
You should prepare for the lasting effects of this pandemic. Prepare your supplies. prepare yourself physically to endure the virus should you become infected, and prepare yourself for the economic impact of the virus.
Conclusion
Twenty-twenty has been a crazy year, but we are not out of it yet. With greater political conflict, a possibly highly contentious election, a worsening economic climate, the normal natural disasters we are still to face, and a relentless virus, there has never been a more important time to prepare yourself and the ones you love to survive.
What do you think 2021 will bring? What do you see in our future?
If you found this blog useful and informative, please feel free to share on social media. We learn a tremendous amount from you as well, and together we stay prepared for whatever the world throws at us.
As always, stay safe out there.
Food shortages are one of the first things to appear after a society collapses. Farms may still be producing crops at the same rate, and ranchers may be raising animals at the same production levels; however, the ability to harvest crops, process meats, manufacture foods, and transport food from farm or ranch to your store or table may fall apart at any step in the process. Whether farmers can’t find laborers to harvest crops and they rot in the fields, or ranchers can’t get their meat processed because plants are closed, just one failure in the food supply chain can have a ripple effect across industries. In this recent pandemic we have begun to see cases where meat packing plants shutdown, farmers were unable to harvest their crops, dairy farmers were forced to dump their product because distribution chains no longer allowed them the opportunity to bring their product to market. Though this initial chaos quickly passed and store shelves were restocked in short order, it should have been enough for you to realize the need to prepare for potential food shortages.
When an economy collapses, paper currency becomes worthless. High-demand products, products in short supply, and products with supply disruptions skyrocket in price. Products become so expensive that the relative value of currency becomes much lower. It takes more and more dollars to purchase previously inexpensive products.
With the 2020 CARES Act set to soon expire in the United States, the nation may be facing a homelessness crisis even before the year is out. Already, politicians and economists are warning that the added income on top of unemployment benefits may be the only thing keeping people in their homes and apartments. Pro-opening and pro-quarantine factions continue to debate the merits of their causes, but with unemployment at historic highs and consumer spending dramatically slowed, the economy is not likely to add the millions of jobs it has lost. When the benefit packages, retirement savings, vacation hours, and personal savings run out and congress argues and debates over what, if anything, should come next, it’s not unlikely that the evictions and foreclosures will follow.
Large scale migrations are inevitable as people seek out places rumored to have jobs or food. Just like during the Great Depression and the dust bowl, people finding themselves homeless will seek locations where they can work, eat, or find stable shelter. As people search for jobs and resources they move across the land and through your community. They may move across or through your area, which can cause safety issues for you and the security of your resources. They may try to homestead near you and forage from the same areas thereby reducing your available resources.
The fifth inevitable occurrence when a nation’s economy collapses is the interruption of utilities. As utility services are cut off for non-payment, pirating of utilities becomes more commonplace. This can divert power from your location or cause large-scale, regional outages. As prices rise or money becomes worthless, utilities will never be a free service, so they’re just shut down. The United States power grid is very old and in constant need of maintenance and repair. As utility companies are unable to meet maintenance schedules or are forced to cutback on their labor force, extended periods of utility interruptions are inevitable.
Crime and lawlessness increase tremendously after any nation’s economy fails. Kidnappings, muggings, robberies, and looting all become commonplace. If local law enforcement is unable to keep pace or keep a police force in the field, criminals and desperate people will prey upon the weak and seize by force whatever they feel they can safely get away with. In some cases these crimes will be individuals taking advantage of the circumstances, but as the nation continues to decline, roving gangs and armed groups can become more commonplace. As others see the normal societal rules and laws only applying to some and in some areas, a growing desperation emerges. People begin to ignore laws to make sure they have the resources they need to survive.
When an economy collapses, the threat of militaristic rule rises from potential to probable. When police are unable to control the lawlessness, local, state, and federal governments will do whatever they can to restore peace, maintain some semblance of stability, and retain power. This can lead to greater armed confrontations, which can then cause an even greater military presence.
The 8th thing that occurs during any nation’s economic collapse is the limiting or complete failure of fire, police, and health services. If there’s a building fire but the streets are blocked, no fire engines will be coming to put out the fire. If police are trying to quell a riot, none will be available to stop the robber at your back door. If hospitals are inundated with wounded, sick, or short staffed, will anyone come for you if you accidentally cut yourself or suffer a medical emergency? When local economies fail, these workers may be laid off or let go. They won’t work forever for free.
In addition to the failure of local fire, police, and health services, realize that our 9th thing to go is disaster relief. An economic downturn or depression can turn deadly after any natural disaster. Federal relief and rescue sources may not be available at all or may not be able to get to you. Any natural disaster would result in a greater death toll and would intensify the economic collapse.
The final thing that occurs after any nation’s economy collapses is an eventual recovery. All economies are cyclical. What holds and retains value may change as the circumstances change, but a new world does emerge. While governments may change, economies continue in one way or another. Power may change hands at the highest levels. Whole systems of democracy can swiftly become feudalistic societies or authoritarian reigns. Eventually, some stability returns to a region. What that looks like is impossible to know, but if you prepare for the immediate things which occur when an economy collapses, your chances of riding out the storm and surviving to a time of recovery increase. 
In these troubling times or during or after a disaster, when seconds matter, the police may be many minutes away or unavailable at all. While an intruder trying to enter your bedroom window is an immediate threat and high priority to you and your loved ones, the police may be tied up with other multiple pressing issues and simply can not get to you. That, unfortunately for you, is going to put you squarely in the position of having to defend your home. 
When thinking about home security, remember this acronym, 
Neighbors are a great alert system. There are people who become great friends with their neighbors. There are people who never know their neighbors, and there are most of us in between. Regardless of the type of neighborhood you live in, being a part of a formal or informal neighborhood watch group can ensure you are well-informed of the hotspots of crime in your area. We have an account with nextdoor.com solely for the purpose of monitoring activity in our neighborhood. When crime issues happen, people tend to post about it and it gives you the intel that’s necessary to make sure your home is prepared. Knowing where the problem apartments or houses are in your area, homes where the police frequently have to visit, might be important to your overall safety. Even joining a neighborhood group on a social media platform might give you the intel on your neighborhood. Do be aware, though, that crimes have always occurred. You, likely, just didn’t hear about them even when they happened a block over from you. Apps and social media can make it seem like crime is growing all around us, even when it’s at the same steady rate it always has been.
You have to prepare for the fact that it may just be you defending yourself. Depending upon what is legal in your state, brass knuckles in your nightstand, a $10 can of mace from the automotive store in your kitchen drawer, a self-defense keychain in your pocket, can all be enough of a defense to defend yourself against an assault.
Finally, one of the keys to operational security of your premises is to be able to see the threats without them seeing you. Well placed exterior lights can cause a night blindness in anyone trying to see into your home as well as conceal the dimmer environment within. A light placed in a window let’s people outside know someone may be home while also concealing the dimmer sections of the house within. Lights can be triggered remotely, on a timed schedule, or through motion sensors. They can give your home an occupied feeling, even when it isn’t, or they can alert you to movement in your home. Quite the opposite but also important is the absence of light. Blackout curtains or blinds can conceal your presence from the outside world in dire situations where you are forced to bug-in for a long period of time.
Before we discuss what starvation is, let us first talk about how many calories an average person needs in a day to properly function and what will happen if they go below that level.
This means that a person who is starving is already suffering or close to death because they’re consuming a minimal amount of food or no food has entered their body for a while. A person can usually 
Ketosis is a natural metabolic state of our body that it activates when the blood sugar levels go down, preventing the brain from accessing glucose for fuel. During the initial phases of 
Another short-term effect of starvation that could lead to people becoming more aggressive and even violent is when they are “hangry” or hungry and angry. I mentioned earlier that once glucose is depleted, people become irritable, moody, and angry. 
Marasmus is a 
The crisis in Syria began in 2011 when citizens protested for a democratic government. But things turned for the worse, with reports of human rights violations and an ongoing food crisis.
Venezuela is another country where the majority of its citizens are suffering from malnourishment and starvation. Unlike Syria, Venezuela’s crisis is more economical, as the country’s economy, which is reliant on oil, experienced a massive collapse when oil prices plunged, coupled with other factors like political issues and sanctions from the international community. One of its effects was hyperinflation that made its currency near worthless, making people rely mostly on bartering to exchange goods and services.
The first thing you need to do is to prepare for a long-term food storage. Earlier I established the importance of having enough supply of food since you can’t expect to be able to buy any sort of food in a grid-down scenario. You also don’t know how long the situation will last, so having enough food that can feed you and your family for months will be critical.
The second thing you need to prepare for is stocking water for the long-term. Like food, water supply will be scarce in a grid-down scenario and you can’t expect water facilities to continue to provide clean water to your faucets. You’ll need to have an option to stock water in the long-term so you won’t have to worry about it during a collapse. 
It is also important that you have the capacity to purify or filter water since there will come a time that you’ll need to find a water source or start gathering rainwater. Boiling water is the best way to purify them, but if gas is scarce and electricity is not available, having a purification or filtration option is handy.
The last thing you need to prepare for is to build a community. In a prolonged grid-down scenario, having a community or group of like-minded people will be critical in surviving a collapse. You can pool all of your knowledge and skill sets together and help one another make the dire situation manageable and livable for everyone.
In 1918, it took a person at least two days to travel across the United States by railroad. Today, a person can circumnavigate the entire planet by jet plane in forty-five hours– just slightly less than the same two days. Given the slow travel time of our ancestors, the rate of geographic spread was likely slowed; however, longer periods of time in close quarters with fellow travelers, likely resulted in a higher rate of community spread. So, when soldiers finally reached their destination back home or back on the front lines, there were more carriers of the virus. Had the world not been engaged in a major war, requiring extensive travel, close quarters with people and animals, and millions of concentrated areas of troops on the move, this particular virus may not have reached global proportions.
When the governments actively seek to suppress the true facts about an outbreak, they put their populations at risk. In 1918, the city of Philadelphia, perhaps uninformed about the true threat of the Spanish Flu, sought to sell bonds to pay for the war effort through a parade. As the Great War raged and American doughboys fell on Europe’s battlefields, the City of Brotherly Love organized a grand spectacle. To bolster morale and support the war effort, a procession for the ages brought together marching bands, Boy Scouts, women’s auxiliaries, and uniformed troops to promote Liberty Loans –government bonds issued to pay for the war. Within 72 hours of the event, every bed in the city’s 31 hospitals was filled with a sick patient. After a week, 4,500 people had died from the flu or its complications.
The third major lesson of the Spanish Flu is that governments, seeking at all costs to avoid public panic and any disruption to public order, will knowingly and unknowingly suppress the truth and tell people what they want to hear. Like a parent that avoids certain topics or dances around a sensitive subject from an inquisitive child, governments avoid too heavy an expression of truth.
To keep a level-head current perspective, we have to put the 1918 outbreak in its historical context. We are beginning to realize that the Spanish Flu was not the result of some super doomsday strain of a virus. While it certainly had a serious lethality to it, it’s now thought that many of the deaths were due to the development of bacterial pneumonia in the lungs weakened by influenza. The flu and complications after the flu can have serious consequences depending upon when a person is treated, how they are treated, and how much exposure risk they put other people during their infectious period. 
The biggest lesson we absolutely must learn from the Spanish Flu of 1918, is that the flu travels in waves. What we are seeing today may only be the first wave of a more dramatic wave yet to come. There were three significant waves of the Spanish flu. The death rates in the first of the year in 1918 were relatively low compared to the second wave during the typical flu season of that year–October through December. There was also a third wave in 1919 that was more lethal than the first but less so than the second.
The first critical component that you need to know when it comes to bartering is understanding the value of the items and supplies that you already have and the value of the items that you will need. This is important to know since the concept of what is valuable and what is not will drastically change depending on the situation that you find yourself in. Items that usually have high value during normal times like jewelry and currencies become of less value or useless during a collapse. People are likely going to want items that are useful for their survival. These are items like food, medicine, water, bullets, batteries, and so on. The value of these items will vary, depending on the situation. If you’re in a situation where food is abundant and water is scarce, then water will be the most precious supply people will look for. In an area like the United States southeast, though, water is typically in abundance, and food resources may hold more value. It’s important to note that skills like carpentry work, plumbing, medical services, and so on are also part of the bartering process as many people will likely need certain services during a disaster. So if you don’t have the necessary supplies or items to barter, you can trade them for a service that you know. 
This brings us to one of the most critical security aspects of bartering. Whenever possible, only barter with those you know or people you can trust, which could be your neighbors, friends, or a mutual assistance group or their direct referrals. They are less likely to provide lopsided deals or rob you since they are beholden to the referring friend or family. Starting with someone familiar is also a good way for you to practice the bartering process and have a feel of how it goes. But you still need to be wary, as desperate people can still turn against you, even if they are a friend. This is why the rule of not revealing your entire inventory still applies to them as well.
When the day of the exchange finally arrives, awareness and security will be critical. For those that were raised on Westerns like myself, you probably remember how these types of events went. During the negotiation and exchange, the bad guys would typically try to take hostages in exchange for items. Once the exchange was about to happen, the good guy had a partner hiding behind the rocks with his rifle in case the exchange fell apart, and wait for it…it always does. You have to be prepared properly during the day of the exchange to ensure that all possible scenarios are covered.
It’s not unusual to feel stressed and anxious on the day of the negotiation process, especially if you’re dealing with a new party to trade with. Bartering and negotiating with friends or people you know well can eliminate stress and anxiety. But this doesn’t mean that you should relax. Remember that troubled times usually bring out the worst in people and people you thought were good are no exception. You must be situationally aware and suspect of any behavior that seems out of the norm.