Articulating the Future - Home

Physical Preps and Tools

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 20:27:41 GMT

This is the article about “stuff” you can buy.

What we are facing is not going to be short term, and it's not going to affect one small area. The duration is forever. It will affect literally everything, in progressively compounding ways. First we’ll go through ever-increasing, and unending, scarcity and downscaling. People everywhere are going to be disabused of their previous expectations of abundance within a few months. The decline of globalized industrial civilization will lead to a collapse of the global economy. We are at the cusp of rapid and severely disruptive changes. The infrastructure of our civilization will break down, giving rise to a predicament that will swamp the government's ability to manage. It will lead to widespread disorientation, anxiety, and social breakdown. Eventually within your area grocery stores won't exist, hospitals won't be open, firefighters and police won't come to your aid, etc. And this decline will happen far faster than people expect.

There will always be a continuum of best practices that give you a higher probability of survival. As I’ve written about before, the realistic absolute best would probably be some intentional community of highly skilled people on a great amount of land (adjoining a national/state park or BLM land on 3 sides maybe) and having the ability to grow enough food for all of those people year-round, as well as provide your own top-notch security. In such a situation (with a lot more expanding of ideas), you'd probably have the best chance of surviving pretty much anything besides all-out nuclear holocaust. On the other end of the spectrum is someone who lives a normal life and has a few extra things they think could be useful in an emergency situation in the garage or the closet, but who hasn't thought or planned beyond that and has no contingency plans.

I have talked a lot about how survival is primarily not about stuff - not about cool gear you can buy. A reliance on stuff will lull you into a false sense of complacency and get you killed. It is astounding how many people simply buy cool stuff that helps ease their cognitive dissonance. Plus, there are numerous circumstances when you won't be able to get to your 'stuff' that you've so patiently acquired and spent all that money on. Health, knowledge, skillsets, and psychological preparedness are much more fundamental in a collapse scenario than stored stuff.

With that large disclaimer out of the way, having the right tools for the job is far more desirable and efficient. I said in my last post that physical preps like food and water are essential, but woefully inadequate compared to the necessary psychological preparation. That’s the best way to think about it. We know the price of food is going up and about to explode in a few months time, we know shortages are going to occur in unprecedented ways - it is ludicrous to continue acting as if it won’t.

“Get prepared with those physical preps as much as you can while you still can. What good will your money in the market do you when the stock market collapses, the money in your bank account when the banks shut down, the grid goes down, or the prices of goods and services rises so much that your funds become increasingly worthless?”

I’m going to give a rundown of some basics for every main category. I think the best minimum will cost roughly $5,000 at current prices (for one person), though of course you can spend an immense amount more than this. But if you have about 5 grand to set aside, you can sleep a lot more soundly and ease that cognitive dissonance a bit. The level of cognitive dissonance you can regulate with the things previously mentioned (health, knowledge, skillsets, and psychological preparedness) is much greater and more important though. Even the people with a ton of physical preps will eventually run out of it, be separated from it, or have it destroyed.

Categories:
Water and Sanitation
Food
Medical
Security

1) Water and Sanitation

These are going to be your absolute top issues. More than food, more than medical supplies, more than security. If you have all that and don’t have water and sanitation worked out, it won’t matter. For water, you have to be able to store it, collect it, and filter it. For sanitation, you have to be able to stay clean, and dispose of the stuff that isn’t.

First up is water storage. Obviously you can keep a few 24 or 32 packs of bottled water in a cool dry place in your home. If stored properly, these can last for literally years. If it tastes funny just run it through a filter. There are many misconceptions about expiration dates. Do a quick google search. If you’re overly concerned, there are emergency drinking water cans that are made to last 20, even 50, years. For bigger (and cheaper) options, water barrels/drums are easily found used on various sites like marketplace and ebay for anywhere from $15-40 with capacities ranging up to 100 gallons. Watch youtube videos on how to clean them, store them (they must be raised off the ground/cement), seal/unseal them, purify the water for long-term, and suction/siphon/spigot the water out when you need it. I prefer 55-gallon blue plastic water drums for my home situation. Remember that when filled with water these will weigh almost 500 pounds, so they cannot be moved from the location you put them in once they are there.

My area of the US receives some of the most rainfall in the entire country (6 out of the top 8 rainiest cities are on the Gulf Coast). This makes collecting rainwater a no-brainer. This can be done easily with tarps, directed into buckets or barrels. There are many other methods for collecting rainwater as well.

The other item I suggest is a WaterBOB. Holds 100 gallons (though you’ll probably only get 60 in there, depending on the size of your bathtub). There’s an alternative called an AquaPod that is $5 cheaper and has decent reviews, but it is 4 mil thick, whereas the WaterBOB is 10 mil and is easier to use.

For filtration you’re going to need at least two levels: personal and family. My top recommendations in this category I went over in my last post, but I will relist them here:

Personal use: Sawyer Squeeze ($30)
Small Group Use: Katadyn Hiker Pro ($65-90)
Family/Kitchen Use: Lifestraw Mission 5L ($90-100)
Large Group Use: Katadyn Gravity BeFree 10L ($125)

(Be aware that 1 liter of water weighs about 2.2 pounds. So 5 liters weighs 11lbs, 10 weighs 22.)

There are two Sawyer options, and as someone who has used both the Sawyer Mini as well as the slightly bigger Sawyer Squeeze.. get the Squeeze. The Mini takes a good bit longer to push water through, and, even more time-consuming, it requires backflushing after pretty much every use in order for flow rate to remain steady. They filter down to 0.1 micron and get rid of all bacteria, protozoa, E. Coli, giardia, vibrio cholerea, Salmonella typhi, and microplastics.

Sanitation:

Second on the list is sanitation. When you can’t flush your toilet and weekly garbage collection has ceased, you are going to have to find alternatives. You can stock up on things like wetwipes and soap and toilet paper and trash bags, but eventually these will run out. You should probably get some extras anyway though.

You can buy bulk toilet paper. 2-ply Scotts 80 rolls is going for $67 as I write this. That’ll last a small family a couple months if you’re super conservative and use a bidet to clean your butt beforehand. After the TP runs out, use a rag that you wash off, or some kind of paper (crumple it up for like 5 minutes to get it softer) that you throw away (and then burn or compost away from your house). You can go crazy with composting toilets and bidets, but a 5-gallon bucket with a pool noodle cut to size and a small travel bidet bottle works too. If you have a kid in diapers, get cloth diapers. Remember, cleaning is going to require water. Baking soda is a cheap cleaner.

Category 1: Water and Sanitation (prices are rounded estimates)

24-pack of water bottles (x10): $40
55-gallon plastic blue water drums (x4): $200
WaterBOB: $35
Sawyer Squeeze: $30
Lifestraw Mission 5 liter: $90

Bulk TP (2-ply 80 rolls): $67
2-pack portable travel bidet bottles: $10
Luggable Loo portable toilet bucket: $32 (+bags)
or 5-gallon bucket with pool noodle: $7 (+seat with lid: $17)
Baking soda (12-pack of 1 pound boxes): $12

Total: about $516. Could be lower (5 gal bucket), could be higher (bags, or multiples of items).

2) Food

You can get really deep into this subject. Canning, storing big quantities in food grade buckets, vacuum sealers, the rabbit hole is deep. Let’s assume you can figure all that out on your own and I'll just focus on long-term food storage that you can buy. If you buy all your food this way, it will cost a large amount - easily $3,000 a person, per year. And that’s not likely stuff you normally eat and it doesn’t include snacks. The point of these packages is decent-tasting food that takes very little time to prepare without electricity and can be stored for a very long time (20+ years). So figure out how to do the previously mentioned things from your local bulk food stores like Costco or Sam’s Club. You’re going to want to supplement those things with long-term emergency food. Either way though, it’s not going to be cheap to purchase large quantities, all at once. But it’s sure going to be a LOT cheaper to do it now, in August of 2022, than it will be to do by the end of this year - or, god forbid, you wait until 2023. Prices are going to absolutely skyrocket and tens of millions around the world will starve. Even in the US we can expect prices on many things to rise way above most of our budgets. Some meat manufacturers in the US are warning to expect $50 for a pound of ground beef, and to expect huge price increases for other types of meat as well. Literally everything is going to go up. If you have some extra funds set aside, there’s no point to waiting till a year from now when prices will be much higher and shortages will be back.

There are a few long-term emergency food companies out there. MyPatriotSupply is the best one for bigger packages (3 months or more) in terms of calories per cost. For instance, MyPatriotSupply’s 3-month supply is $647 currently and 4Patriots is $697. The former is cheaper and has more calories. These companies all sell products other than food as well, and have different smaller food kits.

Remember too that you’re going to have to cook all this stuff without electricity. You need to invest in cooking options now. Camping stoves are great, but they’re getting pricey these days. Coleman gas camping stoves are $35-50. That’s the cheapest I’ve found. They used to be much cheaper ($20-30 just a few months ago). They take propane gas cylinders. Those are about $6-7 each. I see 2-packs at Walmart sometimes for $10. That’s not a lot of gas - you’re going to need a lot of these to last you very long. Alternatives are gas grills that take big propane tanks, or charcoal grills. You’ll still need to stock up on propane or charcoal though, and it gets pricey. There are also solar ovens available (decent ones are about $100, really good ones are about $250). The best plan is to have each of these options as a layered system, and then have a solar oven and a fire pit to cook with when supplies run out.

There’s really no way to calculate cost for this category. Buy what you can. Buy as much as you possibly can, as soon as you can. Costs will go up, then there will be shortages, and then money won’t even matter. Those are the three stages we can expect. How long will it take, and how high will prices go? I don’t know and neither does anyone else. Will they be restocked eventually, at reasonable prices, maybe in a year or two or three after the global economy goes through a collective heart attack? Maybe. But I’d bet against it.

3) Medical

Get training, don’t buy prepackaged kits, and get books. Those are my general recommendations. Basic first aid courses won’t cut it, and neither will those CERT (civilian emergency response training) courses. They’re either too basic or too reliant on supplementary help from government services. Prepacked kits are almost always, outside of very few specific needs, complete crap and should only be used to supplement and create your own. Books like ‘Where There Is No Doctor’ and ‘Where There Is No Dentist’, among many many others, may be invaluable as reference guides.

You’re going to need to build kits for various applications. Small basic kits should go in every GONE Bag (Get Out Now Emergency). These would include gauze and bandaging material, nitrile gloves, a few different types of bandaids, antibiotic ointment, maybe some steri-strips, over-the-counter medications (ibuprofen/acetaminophen), some laxatives and anti-diarrhea meds, and a few benadryl tablets. You need a gunshot/trauma-based kit for your security/defense/firearms setup. It would be very useful to have a larger medic bag for your family that can be easily organized, accessible, and able to be put in the trunk of your car if need be. I also came across this antimicrobial wound care spray for animals (humans are animals) that I think might be useful, along with these infection capsules.

4) Security

I’ve written about this topic in considerable depth over the years. <Firearms and Defense> <Firearms and our Future> <Tactical Gear Considerations>

For the purposes of this article, I’ll just stick to a few things. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog, you’ll understand that without a way to defend what you have there’s no sense in even stockpiling. Violence will become endemic. In a Severe threat scenario, we will be without rule of law (WROL). Your community will become the local justice system, the local police, and every other job that needs doing. All the systems we rely on today will have to become smaller localized versions, and it’s up to us and our neighbors to do it. We need to be able to protect ourselves, our families, and our community. It won’t be long after a crisis until your neighborhood organizes to protect itself, and all able-bodied people will be called upon to do rotating sentry/guard duties. Eventually you will have to protect your family and your community with lethal force, like it or not.

You will want to arm every competent person with at least a handgun. That may include your kids, if they are old enough and competent enough. You’ll need extra ammunition, magazines, and a holster. This will likely cost about $1,000. Maybe a little less, but that’s a good estimate to wrap your head around. You’ll likely want at least one member of the family to have a battle rifle. This can be whatever your preference is, or whatever you have on hand. It could be an AR (.556 or 7.62) or it could be a hunting rifle (.308, 30-30, 6.5, etc). This will also need ammo, extra magazines, some kind of rig to carry it all, and a sling. There’s roughly another thousand dollars. Then you might also want a .22 for training and for hunting small animals. Everyone loves to spout opinions about types, and I have my preferences, but the real answer is you need to do the research and rent/borrow one at a gun range and get what you feel comfortable with. Find out how to use it - if you don’t have one, make it a priority to get one, but it won’t do you any good if you don’t know how to use it. The quicker things come apart, the quicker defense takes priority. We need to start framing our conversations about firearms with the understanding that in the future these societal structures we've come to rely on will be intermittent at best, and eventually fail completely. If we don't frame it that way, we get lost in divisiveness. The future will not be like the past, so let's stop pretending it will be.

Conclusion:

Let’s stop pretending that the future is going to be like the past when we know it won’t. Let’s cut the cognitive dissonance by doing the hard things necessary to thrive. Having the right expectations, the right mindset, and the ability to adapt to a radically different way of life are far more fundamental than having a bunch of ‘stuff’. Not prioritizing these things is putting yourself at a distinct disadvantage, and all the cool guns and gear and stockpiles in the world aren't going to help you for long if you neglect them. If you have the opportunity to do something about the inevitable high price shocks and shortages, then take advantage while you can. Do it now, do it today, don’t wait until it’s too late. Money in the bank, let alone the stock market, is a fool’s game at this point. Put it into tangible assets as much as you can, while still being able to pay your bills.

Prepping Priorities - Physical & Psychological

Wed, 10 Aug 2022 21:43:46 GMT

Adapting to a new world will test everyone’s limits. Managing the transition well means exposing yourself to the things you are likely to experience, as much as you can. The sooner you and your family accept that things have changed and will never return to the way they were before, the better off you will be. This mental acceptance must lead to physical preparatory action so that you can get yourself ready for the inevitable hard times to come.

Physical Preps

Most people have heard of the “rule of 3s”: you can go 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. This is of course very generalized. If you actually go 3 full minutes without oxygen, you’re going to need medical attention and possibly have brain damage. If you go 3 days without water, you are going to be dying of thirst and completely useless in terms of activity - dehydration can disorient you and cause body weakness within hours. If you go 3 weeks without food you are likewise going to be extremely sluggish and incapable of doing simple tasks.

Air:
In a Severe Threat scenario, where all major public services cease, you are going to have to deal with unclear air due to piles of garbage and dead bodies. If you and your immediate community are smart, you will band together to burn these away from where people live - but the stench may well still permeate the air, and you will have to deal with it when transporting. A 20-pack of N-95 masks costs $17 on Amazon if you want the easy route, but it won’t help the smell much. You need to think about this, and ways to mitigate it and improve the air you’re breathing. With no electricity, people will be cooking using alternative methods. You need to be aware of and mitigate any impacts from that as well in terms of clean air. Cooking on a gas stove inside a structure that is not well-ventilated can cause carbon monoxide, a deadly combination that you cannot smell. Watch for the signs of disorientation and confusion in yourself and others. There are many other scenarios, but these should be enough to get you started thinking in the right direction.

Water:
The common refrain is that you need about a gallon of water per person per day. This is very difficult to store adequately for any length of time without expending quite a bit of money. You need to think about ways of collecting it and filtering it. Are there any ponds, rivers, creeks, or lakes in your area? If so, how would you collect, transport, and filter it? Do any of your neighbors have wells? Do you have a way to collect and store that water, or the water sources in your own home (toilets, pipes, water heaters)? Do you know how to open and collect the water from fire hydrants in your neighborhood? Do you know how to filter rainwater in barrels or pools or other containers using sand, rocks, and plastic sheeting? Stackable water containers that are 5 gallons each (light enough to carry) seem like an ideal prep to put in a closet somewhere, able to be grabbed quickly and put in the trunk of your car if you needed to “bug out”, but this method is pretty expensive: about $150 for 30 gallons worth (6 containers at 5 gallons capacity each). And that would only last for one person a month at a rate of 1 gallon a day, it would barely last over a week for 4 people. To get even a single month’s supply stored this way for 4 people would cost $600. That’s just not economical for most people, not to mention it would take up an immense amount of room. If you have the money and the storage capacity, have at it. Most of us will have to look at various alternative methods though. Big 55-gallon drums are an option, and can be bought used sometimes for cheaper than the $150 or so that they are going for these days. You will still need to clean it, elevate it off of the ground, treat the water supply you put in it, have a way to seal/unseal it, and have some kind of spigot/hose attachment. There is plenty more to be said about water, but I think that covers the basics. The last thing I’ll mention is filtration. You need to have a personal filtration method for a liter or two of water at a time as well as a way to filter larger amounts of water. This can be relatively expensive but water is literally the number one priority to any prepping plan. You can get really deep into this subject, but after many years of backpacking and leading backcountry expeditions and actually using these products - and ridiculous hours comparing/contrasting (I’m a gear junkie and I love spreadsheets) - my quick recommendations are these:

Personal use: Sawyer Squeeze ($30) (not the Lifestraw or the Sawyer Mini)
Small Group Use: Katadyn Hiker Pro ($65-90)
Large Group Use: Katadyn Gravity BeFree 10L ($125)
Family Home Use: the Big Berkey ($400-500)

Food:
Not only are the previously short-lived shortages in your local grocery stores coming back with a vengeance, inflation is at a 40-year high as well. In 2023 it’s going to get immensely worse. Like everything else, we need to have short-term emergency planning and longer-term adaptation. The first few days of a High or Severe threat level will be confused and panicky. It won’t take long for people to riot, be violent, and loot. Within the first few weeks the reality will settle in for most people and looting and violence won’t be contained to just the stores, which will be stripped bare by then - they will be coming into people’s neighborhoods and homes. After a few months things will have settled into demarcated areas of control, with heavily guarded trading posts. After a few months at most there will come a stage where communities will need to be very proactive about acquiring, growing, breeding, slaughtering, and protecting their longer-term food sources. We need to have food plans for each successive stage.

Stage 1) Everything in your kitchen right now. If/when the electricity goes out long-term you may be able to keep the stuff in your fridges/freezers good for a few days with some pre-planning but you’re going to have to cook/eat it pretty quickly. This is a good time to get with the neighbors and have a community cookout together. Before and after though, you use whatever is on your shelves and in your cabinets. Lights out day 1-2: everything in your fridge, day 2-3: everything in your freezer, day 3-after: everything on shelves/cabinets. Some people will have some small amount of off-grid electricity systems or gas-powered generators that will allow a larger timeframe, but this is the general idea. Most people will have to eat all this stuff before they break into any food stored for emergencies, and have enough that they don’t need to be in town being panicked while people are violently rioting and looting the stores.

Stage 2) You should store extras of most of the shelf-stable things you normally eat in totes somewhere in the home in a cool, dry, dark place like a closet or spare bedroom or under the beds.

Stage 3) This is the long-term food preps, the stuff that’s sealed in food-grade containers in mylar bags that’s good for 20+ years. Pay attention to how it’s packaged, if it’s resealable, and how many calories are in each serving size. Two of the biggest companies out there are PatriotSupply and ReadyWise. There are also immense resources out there on making, sealing, and storing your own, just like these big companies do. It’s more time-consuming, and more costly up front for the materials and equipment, but is overall cheaper in the long run and allows you to continue doing it into the future even if the grid goes down. There are also great resources out there on canning and building root cellars. Even if you don’t do it now, there are books that you can buy showing how it was done pre-industrial civilization that you can implement many months into a major collapse scenario.

You’re also going to have to think about alternative methods of cooking your food. And remember that a lot of the long-term food preps are dehydrated and will need a few cups of water per serving. Propane gas camping stoves are common enough, as are charcoal grills. Eventually you may need to set up something outside over a fire pit with a hanging pot or a raised metal grate when your propane and charcoal are used up. There are even solar ovens you can buy. Lots of options to look into.

Medical:
First of all, it is extremely rare to find any prepackaged first aid kits that actually have what you need, outside of some targeted applications (gunshot wounds). The best advice is to build it yourself according to what it will be used for, and to have multiple different ones for different applications and locations. IFAKs (individual first aid kids) can be small, and can go on your belt or in your backpack. Group kits can be placed somewhere in the house and in the car. You can make one for tactical applications. The list is endless and the contents will vary depending on function. Don’t just buy a prepackaged kit and think you’re all set. Get some advanced medical training, and not just a basic First Aid course. Think about prescription medications here as well. There are two books that are often-recommended: ‘Where There Is No Doctor’ and ‘Where There Is No Dentist’. I’m sure there are plenty of others as well.

The very basics include gauze and bandaging material, nitrile gloves, a few different types of bandaids, antibiotic ointment, maybe some steri-strips. Add some over-the-counter medications (ibuprofen/acetaminophen), some laxatives and anti-diarrhea meds, a few benadryl tablets, and a pair of EMT shears and you've got yourself a basic first aid kit.

Protection:
This includes personal protection, home protection, and community protection.

Personal protection can be put into two categories: non-lethal and lethal. For the first, I like pepper spray. The good stuff costs about $20-25 per container. For the second, it has to be firearms. In my perfect minimum scenario I’d like every reasonably mature person over the age of maybe 12 in the family/tribe/group/whatever to have at least one. In a slightly better scenario I’d like every adult to have one pistol and one defensive rifle of some kind. Remember that there are a bunch of secondary and tertiary things you need to add on when purchasing firearms: ammo, magazines, sights/optics, lights, holsters, slings, bags, carriers, locks, etc. It can/will get expensive. Likely around $1,000 per firearm, per person, give or take a little. Go to gun shows, purchase used, try to find deals. The true minimum is a functioning firearm and ammo, without all the accouterments. Get training if at all possible. If you’re going to invest in going this route, which I think is essential for our future, you’re going to need to know how to use it. You can make due, maybe like the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto fighting the Nazis - they ambushed and killed solitary Nazi soldiers in the dark who were pissing or taking a smoke break, slit their throats, and took their firearms to be used against their unit later - but very few of those people made it out alive. Much better to get them now the conventional way and become familiar with them. I won’t make any specific recommendations here; anything is better than nothing. Do your research, get what you can.

Home protection means both “hardening” your home against intruders as well as developing a safety plan with whoever lives there for different contingencies. Like all categories of prepping, you can get really detailed here and spend a ton of money. The minimum idea is to make your living space difficult for someone to access. This is obviously going to look different depending on how and where you live. For me this means something to jam the doors with and wood, hammer, and nails to bar entry through the windows. You can go way beyond this, but that is a good minimum.

Community protection is a whole different category unto itself. Basically you’re going to need to meet with your neighbors and come up with group solutions to a range of potential problems/threats. From internal neighborhood matters to people trying to come in, from garbage collection to food distribution, from dealing with water procurement to gardening. Your community will become the local government, the local police and firemen, and every other job that needs doing. All the systems we rely on today will have to become smaller localized versions, and it’s up to us and our neighbors to do it. We’ll need to delegate tasks to different groups, we will need to have communication methods other than computers and cell phones, and we will need to have clearly defined group goals and cooperate on how to achieve them.

Psychological Preps

Brainstorming scenario sessions with your family are a great evening-time discussion activity. Make it a Q&A, or have index cards with various topics on them. Try to visualize and talk out the best responses to various scenarios you may have to deal with. Do practice drills for everything you come up with during these brainstorming sessions. Deal with the things you think you’ll have to deal with in a High or Severe threat level for a period of time - whether that’s 10 minutes, a day, or a weekend.

Think about your vices and comfort items and what you can use as alternatives and/or how you can respond without them. For me that’s cigarettes, for my mother-in-law that’s coffee, for my wife it’s coke, and for my daughter it’s her tablet. We need to be mentally prepared to deal without these things, and find ways of managing the inevitable stress when we don’t have them.

Go for a day without your phone or computer. Go for a day without electricity in your house. Do it for an entire weekend. Most people will balk, hard, but do it for even longer. You will learn through experience how you react, how you can adapt, and what alternatives exist for your daily comfort zone activities that may not be there in an emergency. If we’re not prepared to do even something so simple as that while we still have the ability to turn it all back on the next day then we already know that we’re not going to fare well when we have no choice about it.

Start small and build your way up. Get used to different things. Do mini-drills. Turn your phone off and walk a few miles together with your family around your neighborhood, taking note of everything that could be useful during a grid-down scenario; and when you get back home, talk about it. Take out all your physical preps and organize them all, together. Go on a car camping trip to a local KOA campground. Don’t eat anything out of your fridge/freezer for a day and use alternative cooking methods. All of these things will help, and have different degrees of pre-planning, delegation, and cooperation required. Plan out how you will react to different situations that will come up so that everyone knows what their role will be, what’s expected of them, and how they can best help. Develop rally points to meet up at under various circumstances, as well as code words or phrases so everyone knows how to respond.

The list of things to do is endless, but we have to actually do them and do them together with our tribe in a spirit of cooperation and mutual assistance. These are the primary people you will be relying on under life and death circumstances in a High or Severe threat scenario.

Summer 2022 US Threat Assessment Part II

Wed, 10 Aug 2022 21:28:36 GMT

Part II: Expectations and Psychological Framework

Part I laid the case for the US, and the world, progressing into a HIGH threat level, with the implication that a SEVERE threat level would eventually emerge from it and/or override it completely due to a “black swan event”. Part II will focus on what we can generally expect at each stage, and the psychological framework that often gets overlooked.

1.) Local Breakdowns LOW to HIGH threat level

This is the most basic stage, and could be due to any number of factors. Breakdowns are already occurring in many places in the US and around the world but will continue to get worse, as outlined in Part I. Effects at this stage are unevenly distributed, but can include such things as rising prices, deteriorating social order, disruptions/shortages, and adverse weather events - which can/will lead to an increase in confrontational violence and fear, and much more evacuations, refugees, and local emergencies. At this stage it is still possible and more likely to have the ability to drive to a relative or friend’s house outside one’s usual area and “group up” or end up at a hotel/motel, a church, or a refugee camp or aid station. Even in extreme cases where one’s home or community is destroyed or unlivable they will still be able to relocate.

2.) Major Collapse - HIGH threat level

In what I am terming a ‘major collapse’, most major public services cease, but only in one geographic area. Examples could be failing infrastructure, high impact weather events, a terrorist attack, and/or hacking/cyber warfare taking out parts of the electrical grid. At its worst, this stage could cause mass displacement and migration. Areas with access to resources could become targets of resource wars for energy, food, water, and material resources. It could cause the dominoes of economic and social collapse - which would cause political instability, revolutions, failed states, social unrest (riots and civil wars), increased crime, military action, and other conflicts. This is easy to imagine when thinking of the world stage - it could happen “over there” - but is more difficult to imagine happening in the US. In Part I of this Threat Assessment we began by quoting the IMF Managing Director, who warns of a major new threat: the “complete fragmentation of the global economy into geopolitical blocs, with differing trade and technology standards, payment systems, and reserve currencies”, saying that this “will send shockwaves throughout the globe.” This is what we mean by the worst case of the Major Collapse stage. These things are on the near horizon for the US.

3.) Total collapse - SEVERE threat level

All major public services cease. This could be due to a total grid-down scenario, due to cyber attack, a nuclear EMP terrorist attack, or something equally fundamentally widespread. If this occurs quickly it will only be days until we are in a true WROL (Without Rule of Law) scenario. If it occurs more slowly (over the course of weeks, affecting region after region), there will be massive migrations and a likely rebuilding of the US into geo-political ‘blocs’ controlled by various parts of the military who each claim themselves to be the law of the land. This would be the IMF Director’s vision overlaid onto American soil - different trade and technology standards, different currencies and laws. This vision seems unlikely, due to the interconnectedness of our banking, trade, and energy systems. All major public services ceasing in an entire geographic region would no doubt spread to the entire nation within days. Think of the federal response to big hurricanes in a single state, or riots in a single city. There is no hope that in a much protracted and wide-ranging scenario affecting multiple states it would be resolved.
This will invariably lead to a WROL scenario. National Guardsmen would not report to duty stations, nor would police officers or anyone else. Those who do would find themselves overwhelmed and without resources leading to desertions. Stores would be unmanned quickly if banking systems stayed down. In a WROL scenario no one will be out there to help you or to call if you get in trouble - no police or military or firemen coming to your aid, cell phone service spotty or unavailable. This could occur fairly quickly from a grid-down scenario, or something like a significant oil price shock, a total banking failure, or a total market meltdown. The swiftness with which social order will erode will be far more shocking in person than it is on your favorite TV program.

Psychological Expectations and Framework

Events of a HIGH and SEVERE threat level will throw all of us into a severely shocking, unpleasant, and disturbing reality. We naturally want to avoid ideas which cause pain or discomfort, but we must admit the possibility of certain events. We must acknowledge our fears, anxieties, and grief, and channel our thoughts and energy into a productive path forward. We will experience loss on a scale not seen before in living history: the loss of a way of life, the loss of comfort, the loss of normalcy, the loss of dreams for the future, the loss of expectations about the way life is or should be, the loss of status, and the loss of physical wealth. You will see your neighbors, your loved ones, even yourself, go through the stages of grief: denial, isolation, anger, bargaining, and depression, in various ways, until the best of us come to acceptance.

On a fundamental level, this is why people become preppers: they realize that the one thing they can control is their response; and their preps become balms for that underlying tension. Nevertheless, the vast majority of people like this simply buy cool stuff that helps ease their cognitive dissonance rather than do the psychological preparedness necessary to actually survive. A reliance on stuff will lull you into a false sense of complacency and get you injured or even killed. Most people who have a sense that they should prepare for a hard future have a shed full of survival gear (or a garage, or a closet, or an attic, etc) and no contingency plans. They think simply having it makes them prepared. Prepping is a booming business model - they want to sell you stuff; but their focus loses sight of practical expectations. Inevitably, having the right tools for the job is far more desirable and efficient, but having the right expectations, the right mindset, and the ability to adapt to a radically different way of life are far more fundamental.

What Will Happen:

It’s hard to contemplate, but here’s a short list of the things you won’t find most other places, (rehashed from ThePrepperJournal): Hopelessness will lead to skyrocketing suicides. With no police security or court systems, violence will become endemic. With little or no hospitals or ambulance services, bodies will pile up. When toilets no longer flush and garbage collection ceases, garbage will pile up. And that’s only the first week or two. In the next stage, lice, fleas, flies, rats, stray animals, pestilence, diseases, and infection will be rampant. People will drink unclean water, eat rotten food, and live in unsanitary conditions. Hiding away from it all may work for a couple of weeks at best, but there will come a time far sooner than you think when hiding isn’t enough.

Within a month at most, most people will run out of their medications. Almost 77 million people in the US are on prescription psychiatric medications - the vast majority of them between the ages of 25 and 65. This includes ADHD meds, antidepressants, antianxiety, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers. Think of the implications of this on a mass scale. There are even a great many people who have issues but are not on medication for it. In a SEVERE threat scenario people will go insane because they lack the coping skills to deal with it. They may be dealing with it at a lower but adequate enough level with their medications, but when they run out it will be a different story entirely. Side effects of stopping these medications can last for months or even years in some cases.

And that’s just the normal day-to-day expectations that aren’t all that shocking. Even normally “good” people will eventually become looters and do things they otherwise would condemn, but it is the more brutal and sinister and barbaric tendencies that will be more concerning. Some people will actually look forward to opportunities to riot and have crime sprees. Not only will displaced people evacuating large population centers become a significant problem, criminal gangs will predominate as well. The entire idea of ‘ownership’ of one’s house, food, possessions, and land will be reevaluated by mass numbers of people who think ownership is earned through taking what they want. Cults and religious extremists will proliferate, sexual exploitation and human slavery will make a comeback, even cannibalism will likely affect some areas.

After a Major Collapse, all semblance of society and with it our understanding of law and order will be destroyed and rearranged. There will be a return to less tolerant systems of justice. Your community might be the police force, the judge, and the executioner. You may find yourself along with your neighbors in the role of dealing with the bad guys. There will be more of an ‘eye for an eye’ way of thinking in society. Small groups will team together and create a strict, enforced code of ethics. Public executions may become much more common, and swift.

Psychological Preparation:

There are certain expected but damaging and harmful types of emotional reactions that will become liabilities very quickly: things like indecisiveness, sentimentality, machismo, panic, and fantasy. We must combat these through pre-planning, checklists, humility, calm, and reasonable expectations. The number one thing to do is deeply contemplate this stuff, to adjust your mentality before an event occurs, and focus on your attitude.

As GreyWolfSurvival puts it:
“Poor attitudes can directly affect your group’s survival. Do you like hanging around with people who have a bad attitude? Well in a survival or SHTF scenario, that’s going to be even worse. You need to work together to survive. If you or someone in your group has a bad attitude, the others won’t want to hang out with them, will be less likely to take risks to help them, and won’t want to bring them into the decision-making process as easily. You need everyone’s input and everyone’s effort when surviving in a group.”

Small communities of like-minded people are safer and much more productive than a single person or family. Depending on how they form though, these groups may be good or bad. If a group of people are able to provide what someone needs to survive, people will join them regardless of their ethics or how they treat people. It is our responsibility on the individual level to figure out who will be an asset and who will be a threat. And we will have to make life-and-death decisions about it on a daily basis. Decisions we make today while everything is “normal” will be far different than decisions made when your life, or the life of your loved ones, is on the line. Dale, at The Survivalist Prepper, puts it this way: “The rules for ethics and morality will change. In general, people are followers and will do what society deems correct. In a disaster situation, people (including us) will have to live by a different set of rules.” When a situation is life or death, a person will easily rationalize stealing and even killing if it means their survival. We ourselves may have to do this. In prepper circles there is a morality scenario talked about where a woman and her children come to the door asking for food, while her husband is hiding around the corner waiting in ambush waiting for you to drop your guard.

Future Outlook:

These are things most people don’t realize, and it will be up to you to get together like-minded folks and convince your neighbors that certain things are necessary to cooperate on. You are going to have to think about concentric rings of security - your living space, your building, your block, your neighborhood, your community. You will have to drastically, probably very quickly, change your ethics and moral standards. You will have to balance your priorities very differently. This will be a huge adjustment; if you are reading this then you will certainly be ahead of that curve, but it will still be difficult beyond what you expect, and you will have to deal with family members and friends and neighbors and community members who are going to be way behind the curve. How you deal with it, and how you deal with them, will ultimately impact how - and if - you survive. For most people, what’s coming will blindside them. The severity will shock them beyond anything they’ve ever experienced before, no matter how deep their previous trauma. Industrial civilization itself is ending, and there has never been anything like it in the history of the world. All the systems that are geographic (grid systems), national (the economy/banking), and global (trade, imports, etc), will inevitably fail and we will have to make due with local solutions. We will have to face a world-changingly profound loss of energy, even as demand continues to increase and our population is about 8 times what it was only 200 years ago. When these systems fail we will go back to a pre-industrial way of life, except we will have 8 billion people rather than 1 billion, the vast majority of which are completely dependent on these systems to sustain us.

This unprecedented and extraordinary growth has allowed a lot of technological marvels and enabled the society we live in today. But it is doing unthinkable damage to our planet. And it will not be, historically speaking, long lasting.

At this point it should be abundantly clear that we are going to experience a crash/collapse of "the way things are." The only thing to do now is talk about how we can manage the transition to a far different future that is rising up to meet us whether we are ready or not and whether we have prepared or not. We can make this transition overall easier, if we willingly radically change… but make no mistake, it will require radical changes. More and more individuals will equip themselves to be able to handle the transition and can make their communities more resilient and prepared to deal with a world that is very different from the one we inhabit now. There is no solution, though there are some paths which are better and wiser than others. What we need is rapid emergency planning coupled with a plan for longer-term adaptation.

Final Thoughts:

Facing our dire future can be overwhelming, but at some point we must accept it and act. The usual first step on the preparedness ladder rung is to store some extra food and water. This is essential, but woefully inadequate compared to the necessary psychological preparation previously outlined. While we are still in the GUARDED threat level, get prepared with those physical preps as much as you can while you still can. What good will your money in the market do you when the stock market collapses, the money in your bank account when the banks shut down, the grid goes down, or the prices of goods and services rises so much that your funds become increasingly worthless? Again, this requires radical changes to our thinking. Readjust your expectations and make your actions aligned with what has been presented in this assessment. Our lifestyles of going to the grocery store every week or multiple times a week is absurd when we know the price of food is going up and about to explode in a few months time. When we know shortages are going to occur in unprecedented ways, it is ludicrous to continue acting as if it won’t. When the threat level rises to HIGH it may be too late - a crisis has already hit. Be vigilant towards that in-between ELEVATED threat level and be ready to act when it is warranted. Once the threat level has gone to SEVERE it will only be days before madness consumes the world, weeks until all life as we have ever known it will be turned on its head. At the beginning stages of that, we must be prepared to face the hard questions: Will we kill otherwise innocent people to keep our loved ones and our trusted community members alive? Will we sink into indecisiveness until we watch them starve or become slaves? Will we have too much grandiosity or sentimentality to abandon our home base, all our physical preps, to avoid a roving gang of looters we have no chance of defending ourselves against? When the mother and her child come to our door begging for a can of beans with her armed husband waiting around the corner, will we doom our family by giving her a bunch of food (thereby indicating we have stuff worth looting), or by screaming at her to go away (thereby causing resentment which can lead to violence)?

We must face these scenarios now, talk to our tribe about them, and come up with solutions and plans of action - for every scenario we can conceive of. We will need to be disciplined in a way that is fundamentally altered from the way we routinely live our lives today. We have been able to be lax in our behavior and generous in our ethics while we lived in abundance, but that laxness can get us and those we love killed quickly in a SEVERE threat scenario. The way people live their lives keeps them emotionally occupied while their health deteriorates and their minds grasp at vague shadowy threats they cannot define or adequately prepare for. Let's change that dynamic and start filtering the bullshit out. Get healthy, get a plan, know your threats - and then go about the business of responding to and preparing for those threats.

Summer 2022 US Threat Assessment Part I

Wed, 10 Aug 2022 20:27:03 GMT

Summer 2022. Threat level increase from LOW to GUARDED.

“To put it simply, we are facing a crisis on top of a crisis.”
- Kristalina Georgieva, IMF Managing Director, Washington DC, 2022

The International Monetary Fund has cut its global growth estimates for 2022 and 2023 and has downgraded its growth outlooks for 143 economies representing 86% of global economic output. Managing Director Georgieva gave a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington this past April, giving the dire warning that “the world is in a very dangerous time.” The IMF assessment is that the global order has been severely impacted, and warns of a major new threat: the “complete fragmentation of the global economy into geopolitical blocs, with differing trade and technology standards, payment systems, and reserve currencies”. This “will send shockwaves throughout the globe.” She also stressed that these multiple crisis points are aggravating food insecurity across the globe, with disruptions to grain and fertilizer supplies that are driving up food prices: “Without urgent, coordinated action to bolster food supplies, many countries face more hunger, poverty and social unrest.” She went on to say that “since January, the outlook has deteriorated substantially, largely because of the war [between Russia and Ukraine] and its repercussions”, including “bottlenecks in global supply chains”. Georgieva warned that fragmentation of the global economy is the biggest threat since World War II, saying that “such a tectonic shift would incur painful adjustment costs,” that “supply chains and production networks would be broken and need to be rebuilt,” and that there will be massive “dislocations."

Introduction and background:

Here’s the short version of why things are the way they are, at their fundamental roots. Everything is a measure of energy - specifically, extra (or “net”) energy.
Total world oil production peaked in November of 2018. The US accounted for 98% of global oil production growth in 2018 due to the “shale boom”. These unconventional oil sources - fueled by ridiculous debt, artificially held low interest rates, trillions of dollars of “Quantitative Easing”, etc - pushed the peak further into the future even though conventional oil peaked worldwide in 2005. This largely discredited the whole idea of “peak oil”, and the term, for the mainstream. The only reason total production did not peak beforehand was because of shale, which notably does not give anywhere near the same net energy we've come to rely on for the complexity of civilization. The cheap, easy to extract, high yield conventional oil peaked worldwide in 2005 (2006 according to IEA data). What we were left with was unprofitable and gave paltry net energy comparatively. This is what some have called a "civilization shrinker." We saw this playing out across the world as stymied economic growth, a gutting of the middle class, and lower living standards - as well as skyrocketing debt, little to no savings, and inability to financially handle unexpected bills. Peak oil's restraints have been here for a while. They come from these byproducts of having used up the majority of the low-hanging fruit - the easily extracted high yield oil. And now we are past total production peak, and have had two major global issues that have combined to create a lot of trouble for trade and economies: the Covid pandemic and the Russia/Ukraine war - which is why things will continue to spiral rather than get better. The geopolitical shenanigans we see playing out today are based on these consequences, seen through the lens of energy, services, commodities, and food. It’s not going to get better, no matter who people want to blame, or elect. Expect a lot of volatility followed by scarcity. Things are going to get a lot more local. A lot of people rely on these systems and services, and there will be a lot of dissonance and anger as they come crashing down like dominoes.

Inflation, Interest Rates, and Debt:

The problems have gone mainstream. Major news outlets are inundated with the news that inflation is at a 40-year high. Prices for some goods and services have jumped to the largest one-month increase on records dating to 1967. Warnings of a 70’s-style energy price shock and shortages situation in the near future have been made repeatedly, outdone by other mainstream media outlets projecting that the next financial crash will be “worse than the Great Depression.” US household debt now exceeds the peak in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis at $13.3 trillion. Outstanding student loans were $611 billion in 2008 during the GFC, now they are over $1.5 trillion. Auto loans, at nearly $1.25 trillion, have exceeded the 2008 total, while credit card balances are just as high now as before the Great Recession. Global debt is now $247 trillion, up from $177 trillion in 2008 - close to 2½ times the size of the global economy.

The Federal Reserve has made fighting inflation its number one priority this year, and has reversed their artificially-held low interest rates policy which they have had in place for decades; they are now raising interest rates, aggressively, to combat inflation. The problem is that these previously mentioned debts must eventually be repaid, and the tipping point will come when a wave of defaults by overwhelmed borrowers - squeezed by rising interest rates - leads to a widespread reduction in spending and incomes. There is an inevitable reckoning ahead in the stock markets.

Energy Crisis:

At a global energy forum in Sydney, Australia, a few weeks ago (July 12, 2022), the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol said:

"The world has never witnessed such a major energy crisis in terms of its depth and its complexity.
The unprecedented global energy crisis threatening the world economy is likely to get worse in the coming months."

Market Insider has reported extensively on this:

“Soaring energy prices have rattled economies around the globe after Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered a string of Western sanctions on the country's oil and gas supplies, ultimately leading to severe supply constraints. In the US, the rising cost of energy has contributed towards high levels of inflation stinging all corners of the economy and specifically hurting Americans at the pump.

Russia meanwhile, has been raking in bumper profits from its oil and gas sales to Asia, as countries like India and China double down on cheap Russian energy. To that effect, Russia stands to earn $285 billion this year from its oil and gas sales.

With the European winter just a few months away, Birol said the region will face great challenges as Russia rattled energy markets even further.”

While gas prices at the pump have noticeably decreased recently, oil on the world market remains over $100/barrel, with projections by big banks such as JP Morgan saying it could rise stratospherically to over 3 times that number. In response to high gas prices and high inflation, the Biden administration has been releasing more and more oil from the US Strategic Oil Reserves. (We currently have only about 480 million barrels of oil left, which at a US daily consumption rate of 20.6 million barrels, means we have about a 23-day supply. But this is crude oil - it must be refined and then distributed, which takes months. Meanwhile, the government continues to sell it off.) Biden himself paid a highly-publicized visit earlier this month (July, 2022) to the Middle East in order to plead for increased production to ease supply problems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the only OPEC members who have spare production capacity – at least on paper. But Biden’s visit revealed a hard truth - there is much less space capacity than believed by many western leaders. Saudi Arabia has said for years now that its maximum production capacity is 12 million barrels per day. They have only hit that figure once (in April of 2020) since 2019, even before the Covid pandemic. They were at about 11 million in August of 2022. In Biden’s visit pleading for an increase in production last week, the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said: “The kingdom has announced an increase in its energy capacity to 13 million barrels a day. After that the kingdom will have no further capacity to increase production.”

This announcement has had a revelatory effect: we can no longer rely on the Middle East to supply the world’s oil. They say that they will slightly increase production capacity, but there is significant doubt that they can do even this - and capacity is not the same as production.

Food and Climate Change Impacts:

Despite protestations that price increases are all the fault of the double-whammy of the Covid pandemic and the Russia/Ukraine conflict, prices were rising for systemic reasons even before then. In March of 2019, 38% of all US soybean, corn, and wheat went off the market due to catastrophic flooding in the Midwest. In May of 2021, China bought an astounding 37% of corn exports from the US. In fact, China bought and imported 28.35 million tonnes of corn from around the world in 2021 - before the invasion of Ukraine. In 2021 they also harvested nearly 5% more corn and 2% more wheat in their own country, in a push to increase storage amounts. Then the invasion of Ukraine began, and commodity prices soared. Russia and Ukraine accounted for about 31% of world wheat trade, 30% of world barley trade, and around 29% of 'sunoil' trade. The Russia-Ukraine crisis created a realignment of world trade, resulting in bottlenecks and price volatility.

Sadly, many people in the West have forgotten the importance of commodities, industry, and energy in terms of geopolitical leverage. There’s a food crisis coming this winter, along with a host of other predicaments.

In the Western US, an unrelenting megadrought has been worsening, causing lakes and reservoirs to dry up and wildfires to spread in an unprecedented way. In fact, a new peer-reviewed study titled "Rapid intensification of the emerging southwestern North American megadrought in 2020–2021" says the last 22-year dry period is the worst since the Vikings and Mayans ruled parts of the world, or about 1,200 years ago. The study’s lead author, Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, said: “Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the west has been dry for most of the last couple decades… Rather than starting to die away after wet years in 2017 and 2019, the 2000s drought ramped up with authority in 2020-2021, making clear that it's now as strong as it ever was.” Water levels in Utah's Great Salt Lake and Lake Powell have dropped to their lowest levels ever recorded. This summer's extreme drought and compounding heat waves have triggered a water crisis in the Western half of the U.S. The lake is a crucial holding tank for outflow from the Colorado River Upper Basin States: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Lake Powell alone (the second-largest reservoir in the U.S) supplies water to up to 30 million people and irrigation of 5 million acres.

Just a week or two ago (July15th, 2022), mainstream media (Bloomberg) reported that “California’s historic drought may leave the state with the largest amount of empty farmland in recent memory as farmers face unprecedented cuts to crucial water supplies… Fallow farmland could reach roughly 800,000 acres.” They remind us that California accounts for 25% of all US food production.

Heat Waves:
All over the world this year, record-breaking heat waves with long periods of temperatures well over 100 degrees fahrenheit have been baking the population and causing unprecedented wildfires, water scarcity, grid failures, and deaths - not only in the US, but also large swaths of Europe and the Middle East. Especially in Europe, lifestyles and infrastructure are not adapted - less than 5% of the population in the UK have air conditioning. Solar panels are literally melting in the heat. In London, houses are combusting and catching on fire. Their largest military base shut down because their airport runways melted. In Britain, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and Belgium, thousands of fires are burning out of control. These fires have destroyed businesses, houses, schools and churches; they have caused significant travel delays and public transportation problems due to wires, tracks and signaling systems catching fire or melting. As The Guardian reports:

“The climate disaster is here, with temperatures soaring across Europe, the US and much of the northern hemisphere – and scorching summers becoming the norm. As scientific predictions become reality, the emergency is becoming palpable, indisputable and widespread, with dramatic weather events reported with an ever-increasing frequency. Such patterns have disastrous, far-reaching effects –for the natural world, global food supplies, health, infrastructure and more.”

And this is not exactly new, though it is now on the front pages of Western media it has been happening in Africa for a while now. In fact, the blistering heat now affecting Europe is part of a weather system that has moved up from North Africa. The World Health Organization said this month that over 33% of people in Africa are facing extreme water scarcity. The World Bank announced that in the coming years at least 86 million Africans will be forced to leave their homes and find someplace else to live. Africans are already suffering brutal impacts: rapidly intensifying hurricanes, devastating floods, and withering droughts. While north Africa has been intensely dry and hot leading to drought, south Africa has had severe flooding which destroyed crops and farmland, and east Africa was invaded by swarms of locusts that devoured crops - brought on by heavy rainfall and abnormally hot temperatures.
Bottom line: The frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves is causing greater impacts, not just to infrastructure but also to food production around the world.

Conclusion Analysis:

My general thought is that clearly Russia and China know about ‘peak everything’ and Russia decided to make the first big move to consolidate power in a post-peak world by invading Ukraine. It’s a bold move, and it puts Russia as the global scapegoat for worsening consequences, but the long game here is that this is an assertive action to take control rather than be a victim of circumstances - even if that means being perceived as the bad guy on the world stage. They can do this because 1) they control some powerfully key things, such as natural gas to Europe, grain commodities like wheat, pipelines, and have robust cyber attack capabilities, and 2) they are forcing a global division between east and west - which really started way back with Syria - where Russia and China cooperate against the U.S. and Europe. It’s exceedingly interesting how the western media has immediately tried to change the narrative to blame Russia, even though all these trends started way before Russia invaded Ukraine. The average American or European will now look at Russia as the source of their economic woes and completely forget that any of these trends were happening before yesterday.

It seems certain now that the invasion of Ukraine by Russian was the lynchpin, the cornerstone, the big domino, the black swan - and that sanctions were expected and taken into consideration in their effort to divide the world. I’m convinced that there is a group of people who are very aware of ‘peak everything’ and energy trends, who have the insider knowledge to have understood and planned for this. And I lean towards the theory that Putin and Xi are some of those people. The whole Russia and China and allies versus the US and EU and allies has been going on for at least two decades. China has bought up commodities like wheat and gold and gotten out of US treasuries for years. They’ve been preparing. Russia knew that their invasion of Ukraine would lead to crippling sanctions, they knew they would be the West’s scapegoat on the world stage, and yet they acted. The balance of global power has massively shifted, and it’s been coming for a long time. They picked the right moment, strategically. And they (Russia and China) hold almost all the cards. We offshored production manufacturing to China decades ago. They have the food, the gold, and control access for much of the world to all the things we need for a functioning global/national community. American imperialism is coming to an end, and so is industrial civilization. This is “it”. From here on out we can expect everything to erode, fairly swiftly. Illusions will be shattered, outrage will be shouted, and propaganda will run rampant. I wrote in 2017 that “scarcity will be the buzzword of the future” and that is about to be true in a way the vast majority would never have believed could happen to them. But despite causes, the unraveling has begun in earnest. And there’s no coming back. It’s hard to act as if things are normal or that they will surely return to normal, knowing all the while that they absolutely are not and will not. We’d better take a moment, soon, to take a deep breath and process it - and prepare in whatever ways we can. While the world spirals in a way none of us have ever before witnessed firsthand but some few of us foresaw coming, we must face a personal choice: we too can spiral into uncertainty, fear, obsession with blame, and propaganda - like the world at large seems to be doing - or we can tune out the irrelevant and focus on the things we can control and gain confidence, community, and peace of mind.

CBS News: Russia says it's building a new "democratic world order" with China
NY Times: What if Putin didn’t miscalculate?

Lately, the population at large has been lulled back to sleep from these issues this summer because a lot of excess inventory is being sold, much of it at discount - gas prices have lowered, furniture and home goods are being discounted, and all the stuff you couldn’t find on Amazon or on store shelves seems to be back. This has caused a lot of people to sigh in relief, but it will be a false hope that will quickly turn to outrage. These trends may continue for a few months, but many warnings have popped up that should cause concern right before the midterm elections in the US in November. The stock market is expected to “price in” these expected shocks by October, and we are likely to see big price spikes and shortages again. Afterwards, this winter going into 2023, we will see incredible food shortages and subsequent violence around the world, along with a stock market meltdown worse than anything we’ve seen yet. The big dominoes will fall this winter. Don’t get lulled into complacency. This is the optimistic scenario, barring any “black swan” events to make it happen sooner (which seem more and more likely).

The Coming Months:

In preparing this Summer US Threat Assessment I believe any rational person must conclude that we should be Guarded - precautions are warranted, we need to monitor anticipated threats, and set up preparations. As we monitor conditions, I anticipate at some point over the next few months we will move quickly to an Elevated level - where an emergency is imminent, we must be prepared to act, and have all safeguards in place. Now is the time to prepare. We cannot dither or get distracted or complacent. Even if there are no “black swan events”, which is highly unlikely, there doesn’t seem much hope of going beyond early 2023 without proceeding to a High threat level - where an emergency has occurred that has significant impact to health/safety across the nation.

Black Swan Event: A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight.

GONE Bag - Get Out Now Emergency

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 22:54:47 GMT

Let’s just start this off strongly by saying that if you google “bug out bag”, everything the search engine returns for you will be bullshit. That’s right, I said it. It’s a bunch of armchair fantasies coupled with capitalist marketing. I’ll even go so far as to say that if the article you’re reading about it contains a bunch of product links it’s almost certainly garbage. To be fair, no one seems to come at the subject from the standpoint of the staggered collapse of industrial civilization. In this rundown, I will.

A Get Out Now Emergency is a reaction that occurs when you have no other options. If you have enough stability to make decisions, then this isn’t tailored for that. This kind of bag is distinct from others talked about such as a survivalist bag or a tactical bag. The armchair fantasies are plagued with unrealistic expectations - both in what to expect as well as what to carry. The more realistic and useful bag will include the things you actually can use and none of the things you don’t need - and the latter is a much lengthier list. Your home, especially if you’ve made any preparations whatsoever, provides far more comfort and security - and contains a whole lot more useful stuff than what you can carry on your back.

Though I’m older now, I did go to college for Outdoor Education. I have taken various NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) and OB (Outward Bound) courses, did WFA (Wilderness First Aid) and WFR (Wilderness First Responder) certifications, and have led and co-led numerous wilderness expeditions, outdoor therapy, and environmental education programs for groups ranging from grade school to college. The last decade or more as an older adult I delved very deeply into global energy issues and geopolitics, leading me to the inescapable conclusion that industrial civilization was poised for collapse. Everything I said 5 to 6 years ago was going to happen is now happening, right when I (and a few select others) said it would. [If you’d like the whole backstory to the “why”, maybe start with this link.] Taken together, these two topics color my perception of “bug out bags”.

Effects will be unevenly distributed, but we can expect rising prices and frustration, deteriorating bank accounts and social order, and an increase in adverse weather events. This will lead to massive disruptions and shortages, an increase in confrontational violence and fear, and much more evacuations, refugees, and local emergencies. The effects of global collapse will be varied - they will not be consistent everywhere at the same time. People are far more likely to drive to a relative or friend’s house outside their usual area and “group up” or end up at a hotel/motel or a refugee camp, than they are to live off the land in the woods or fight zombies or whatever. That said, probably somewhere further down the priorities list than is usually reckoned, at some point it actually is prudent to get together a go-bag of some kind.

To be clear, this article is written by an American from a US-perspective. Your mileage may vary, as they say, if you are reading this in another country. I’m choosing to label it your GONE Bag (Get Out Now Emergency), in lieu of it being lumped into the same category as the ubiquitous junk being peddled under the usual title.

Alright then. Let’s get into the specifics. This will not be a product list, but I will throw in some examples and recommendations. Here’s an overview of the categories for consideration, in general order of importance:

Pack

Clothing

Hygiene/Sanitation

Administrative/Communication

Health/First Aid

Water/Food

Tools

Sleeping

Self-Defense

Pack

This article is written for the average American. I myself am over 40, have two autoimmune disorders, and a wife and a 2-year-old. I have no delusions about carrying a 45-pound pack over mountains on weeks long expeditions like I used to. That’s not this article, and that’s not what this pack is intended for. It’s also not a tactical combat pack, though I do think at some point in the near future I could very well be walking a neighborhood security patrol or standing at a community security checkpoint. Again, this is not that article or that kind of pack.

Just remember this axiom: “As your weight goes up, your endurance goes down.” Despite your ability or mobility, the load will stress your body, increase your chances of injury, and cost you calories. For most of us it will increase our stress levels and shorten our tempers, make us grumpy and not as alert, and cause us to tire and get hungry much more quickly. We want a pack with the minimum amount necessary to get us to where we’re going and to be the core of what we need once we get there to procure more stuff. We want it to be light, easy and accessible, and primarily functional for survival for a short amount of time - a few days at most.

As for the type of pack, obviously you will use whatever you have. Ideally, I highly suggest a hiking-style backpack with a hipbelt and a 35-45 liter capacity for adults. If you have small children, you may need to be on the higher end of that so you can carry a few things for them. You may also want to have a smaller kids backpack with perhaps a 10 liter capacity for them to carry a few of their own comfort items, a change of clothes, and documentation in case they get separated from you. Notice that the capacity almost always refers to internal capacity only and does not include external mesh pockets or the capacity to strap things to the outside. In my examples below, the two adult packs have long, adjustable double loop straps at the bottom intended for a sleeping bag or pad (or whatever else you want to use it for) as well as deep mesh pockets and bungee compression straps (I usually strap a fleece or rain jacket onto that area - any kind of layer I'm going to be taking off and on a lot, depending on the activity and weather).

A note on waterproofing: Many adult packs come with a rain cover, but they are 1) usually not very good, and 2) sometimes brightly colored. You can purchase better rain covers separately that are more muted in color, but be sure to get one sized for the liter-capacity of your pack. That said, rain covers are a first layer of protection; you must expect that in sustained rain they will "wet out" (allow water to seep through). Consider a rain cover to be only a first-level prevention measure - there should be at least two more water protection layers inside the pack if you are in an area or time of year experiencing frequent rain. The next level is what is called a "pack liner", which is a waterproof bag large enough to fill the inside of a backpack. Inside the pack, for organization purposes, people usually use differently-colored "stuff sacks". The next level for water protection is to individually pack the items you really can't afford to get wet into a compression sack specifically designed to keep ALL water out - called a "dry sack". Usually a sleeping bag and a dry set of clothes and socks go in there at the bottom of your pack. Again, these things are optional and the ideal - you do not need to prioritize this sort of thing all that highly in a GONE bag.

Company: Diamond Candy
40-liter internal capacity
$47 currently on Amazon
9 color combination choices

Company: Maelstrom
40-liter internal capacity
$40 currently on Amazon
7 color combination choices

Company: Mountaintop (Children's)
10-liter internal capacity
$27 currently on Amazon
19 color combination choices

One last brief note on packs: The examples given here are the best "cheap" options. Clearly the cheapest option is to use whatever you have on hand. On the other hand, there are plenty of higher-end packs of the same general size if you are a gear junkie like me. If that interests you, I would highly recommend looking into companies such as Gossamer Gear, Mountain Laurel Designs, Six Moon Designs, or Ultralight Adventure Equipment (ULA). You can also get quite a lot of great accessories from them.

Clothing

If there's one vitally important thing to include in your GONE bag, it's an extra set of clothes. When crisis hits, you could be in your work clothes, a t-shirt and sandals, or dressed up for an event or something. You will want a dedicated set of clothes, an extra pair of socks, and a good sturdy pair of shoes. In many conceivable scenarios - though not all - you may be able to simply hit up a local thrift store to acquire some cheap clothes. Churches and aid organizations may also have donation programs running. The only other non-obvious thing I might add to this category is a belt.

Hygiene/Sanitation

Go as minimal as possible in this category, while still covering all the basic needs. I recommend shopping in the travel section of your local stores for these items. A basic list would be a travel-sized toothbrush and toothpaste, a small bottle of Dr Bronners soap (can be diluted with water to last longer), a small pack of wet-wipes, small hand sanitizer, floss (surprisingly tough thread, can be used for other things than teeth), and lotion/aquafor/lip balm if you have dry or flaky skin. If you have small children, you're going to have to get a larger pack of wet-wipes as well as diapers (though remember that this is only for a few days - pack a cloth diaper or two for longer-term).

Administrative/Communication

Some of this is potentially critically important. You're going to need documents, in every pack for every member of the family. Make copies of everything you normally keep in your wallet - that way if you forget to switch it over or grab it when emergency hits, at least you have something. That includes an ID, your insurance card(s), your social security card, etc. Identification may be required at checkpoints during a disaster, it may be required to get back home after the event has occurred, and it may be needed at any outreach or donation/aid program or refugee facility.

A passport, if you have one, is probably the best option. You don't normally carry it around anyway, so just tuck it into your GONE bag rather than wherever it currently is.

You may want to also include a backup credit card and a concealed carry license, if applicable.

Put some cash in here too. The amount is up to personal discretion, but prices are rising these days. I would suggest $100 in every bag - that should be plenty for this kind of a bag that is designed to get you through only a few days.

Possibly the most important thing to put in this category is a list of contacts - their relationship to you, and their phone numbers. If your phone is broken, lost, stolen, or just plain out of juice, you're going to need it. (And let's face it, you don't remember anyone's number by memory these days anyway.) If you have kids and they are separated from you, this will allow a good samaritan to contact you.

Speaking of which, you will want to include an extra phone cord and wall charger/adapter. You may also want to consider a small pre-charged battery pack like Anker so that you can charge your phone once or twice without having to connect it to an outlet. Keep your phone off or on airplane mode until you need it.

I suggest some of this go into a small dedicated waterproof pouch, inside freezer zip-lock bags. There are RFID-blocking pouches you can get as well if that concerns you. I use a cuben-fiber waterproof zippered pouch (from a backpacking company called ZPacks), two quart-sized freezer zip-lock bags, inside of a gallon-sized freezer zip-lock bag (with all the documentation folded so the important information isn't showing).

Health/First Aid

The absolute number one thing in this category is prescription medication. Extras, not the ones you have in your medicine cabinet at home. Rotate them out every month if you have to, but put a supply in your bag in case you have to grab it and go. Everyone's needs here are different, but this is an area you absolutely must take extra care of.

If you wear glasses or contacts, you'd better have an extra set. You can buy cheap glasses online for $100 - sometimes less. They'll be plastic and cheap, but they're better than nothing. If you wear contacts, in almost all cases you're better off getting glasses for your GOOD bag. Contacts are much more work, easier to lose, and require a lot more maintenance. (Can you tell I hate contacts? Still, I think it's solid advice.)

My perspective on first aid for your GONE bag is admittedly colored by my backpacking experience, and the fact that this bag is supposed to be for a few days at most. "Thru-hikers" of the Appalachian Trail - a trail that goes for over 2,180 miles (over 3,508 kilometers), through 14 different states, takes 4-6 months to complete, and has a total elevation gain/loss equivalent to hiking Mount Everest 16 times - have notoriously small first aid kits and do just fine. As an expedition group leader for various programs I had to carry a good bit more first aid equipment, but never used anything beyond the basics except once. A GONE bag methodology is one of simplicity and brief time limit. Accordingly, I don't recommend overdoing this category. Some gauze and bandaging material, a pair of nitrile gloves, a few bandaids, some antibiotic ointment, maybe some steri-strips. Add some over-the-counter medications (ibuprofen and acetaminophen), some laxatives and anti-diarrhea meds, and a few benadryl tablets and you've got yourself a basic first aid kit. You can either get your OTC medications at a gas station in the little single-serve packets or go to a craft section at walmart and get tiny ziplock bags. Throw in one of those tiny Victorinox Swiss army knives and you're good to go.

The last thing I'll mention for this section is an exhortation: Please, for your loved ones and yourself, get some advanced first aid training. Your basic first aid course is a good start, but I would highly encourage you to go further. And try to take all the various opinions with a grain of salt. Keeping a cool head and working the problem is worth more than mere knowledge of advanced techniques.

Water/Food

If you listen to the multitude, you're going to be bogged down with Mountain House meals, a full-on backpacking stove with fuel canister(s), and at least two Nalgenes (32 ounces each) full of water. You really don't need anywhere near as much as the armchair theorists tell you. You're certainly not going to be pulling out your camping stove and cooking your dehydrated meals in a disaster scenario where you have to Get Out Now. You need enough to get you to a resupply, which even in a bad situation shouldn't be more than a day or two. You need some snacks, and a liter or two of water, and maybe a way to filter water sources you find along the way. It's far more likely that you'll just pick up another bottle of water on the way, or get one from a donation center, or a hotel vending machine or something. This isn't the bag for a Red Dawn scenario.

That said, I do have some recommendations. Since this is a pack that will likely be sitting in your closet for emergencies, the packed food snacks need to be shelf-stable, durably packaged, and ready to eat (doesn't require cooking). Again, rotate this stuff out once in a while. I'll tell you from experience that even Cliff Bars are inedible after a year or so.

Backpackers overwhelmingly favor SmartWater water bottles - they are 1 liter, they are tall and skinny allowing them to easily go in the side pockets of a backpack even when the interior is packed to the brim, and they have an easy-flip cap. They also have the same threading as Sawyer water filters, another experienced backpacker favorite, allowing you to easily filter water. You can even scoop up some water, screw the Sawyer filter on, and drink right from it without bothering to pour it into a separate bottle. There are two Sawyer options, and as someone who has used both the Sawyer Mini as well as the slightly bigger Sawyer Squeeze.. get the Squeeze. The Mini takes a good bit longer to push water through, and, even more time-consuming, it requires backflushing after pretty much every use in order for flow rate to remain steady. It's just not worth it. Get the Squeeze, it's only $10 more (30 rather than 20), and definitely worth the extra 10. Either one are far better than the ubiquitous LifeStraw recommendations. They filter down to 0.1 micron and get rid of all bacteria, protozoa, E. Coli, giardia, vibrio cholerea, Salmonella typhi, and microplastics.

Generally, you need at least a liter of water per person, in whatever water bottle you can get ahold of. You're going to need something, and have a plan to acquire more. The key for food is that you need rations, not full-on meals in this kind of bag.

Tools

If you're a guy in the US, chances are fairly high that you carry around a pocketknife or at least know some that do. If you're into the whole "EDC" (every day carry) thing, you almost certainly have one and a flashlight and maybe even a small multitool on you at all times. For a GONE bag these aren't really high priority items, but they might be nice to have. I personally especially like the small swiss army knives since they have a small pair of scissors and tweezers. Those and the small knife actually come in quite handy for a lot of small tasks (cleaning, cordage, fires, fingernails, first aid). When I would go on long backpacking expeditions it was the only thing I'd carry. When I was leading bigger groups I usually added a Morakniv Companion (usually just called a Mora) or an MSR Alpine for kitchen tasks. I like to have these in bright colors after spending far too many evenings in the dark looking for which rock I put it on. The Alpine is a good bit lighter than the Mora, but the Mora is still very light for a full-tang blade and much sturdier (I've even used it to chop firewood). The Alpine also doesn't have a safety stop for your grip, so it's more suited to lighter tasks. Honestly you're not going to need any of this in a GONE bag, but people love their knives.

There is one tool I would definitely recommend for a GONE bag though, and that is a flashlight. I would go with one small but powerful (150-250 lumens) handheld and one headlamp with a red-light filter. I'd also suggest that both run on AA batteries because they are the most popular and easily replaceable, but USB rechargeable will work for this type of bag in most cases as well - especially if you don't overuse it or have packed an Anker charger. Flashlights, like knives, are a deep rabbit hole of options and opinions. They also range from cheap crap to ridiculous sums of money. The most popular best companies out there for pocket flashlights are probably Surefire and Streamlight, and Fenix and Petzl for headlamps, but there are alternatives that are also good. These options range from $10-$30:

The only other things in this category I might mention in passing is a way to start a fire and a pair of scissors. Absolutely not necessary though. Just throw in a Bic lighter into your first aid gear and maybe some EMT shears. There's a lot of other tools that may be nice to have in niche situations and you can really weigh yourself down with unnecessary stuff. Resist the urge. Usually people don't though, and they have to learn through experience.

Sleeping

This isn't the bag for a shelter - a tarp or tent or hammock. Honestly you probably don't need to worry about this category at all. That said, I personally think it would be nice to have a sleeping bag or quilt. The problem is that the cheap options don't compress well and take up a lot of space, and they're heavy. You can easily spend $200-$450 on a decent option if you buy new. Fortunately there are deals and sales, and you can buy lightly used.

I'm not going to get into the unending details on choices - I could write an entire book on the subject. But for this kind of a bag, if you are keen on adding a sleeping bag/quilt to it (which again really isn't necessary and just nice to have), I can give a few suggestions on choices. I would look at Enlightened Equipment, Mountain Laurel Designs, and UGQ Outdoors for both synthetic and down bags/quilts around the $200-$300 mark (again, that's full price, new, which no one should really be purchasing). If you're buying one from a chain outlet like REI or Bass Pro Shop or Academy Sports there are very few if any good options. I'd steer clear of those places for this particular category.

Remember that if you want this option in your GONE bag, I'd highly recommend putting it in a dry bag compression sack. The best one on the market has been the same for over a decade: the Sea to Summit eVent Compression Dry Sack. Note though that there are different sizes, and without experience with different types of sleeping bags/quilts (not to mention adding a clothing layer and socks) it can be difficult to find the right one. I'd suggest buying two different sizes, putting your gear in it, putting that in your pack, and then returning whatever size didn't work as well.

Self-Defense

I hesitate to even talk much about this category for a GONE bag. Firstly because if you're into this sort of thing you have already have likely planned for it. Secondly because storing a handgun, holster, magazines, and extra ammunition is going to add at least two and a half pounds to your pack. The third reason is that even in an emergency where you have to Get Out Now you're still going to have a few minutes to grab a few things (otherwise you're not even going to grab your GONE bag in the first place), and you should have easy and quick (but secure) access to your sidearm, holster, and extra mag, which you can either shove in the pack or secure on your person. I would suggest a can of pepper spray though, as a non-lethal option.

Last words

Bear in mind that survival is primarily not about stuff - not about cool gear you can buy. A reliance on stuff will lull you into a false sense of complacency and get you injured or even killed. It is absolutely ludicrous how many people simply buy cool stuff that helps ease their cognitive dissonance. There are numerous circumstances when you won't be able to get to your 'stuff' that you've so patiently acquired and spent all that money on. Or it could be stolen, confiscated, lost, or damaged. Inevitably, having the right tools for the job is far more desirable and efficient, but health, knowledge, and skillsets are much more important in a collapse scenario than stored 'stuff' that you have come to rely on and can't do without.

I hope this rundown has given you a lot of specific information that you can use to make yourself more resilient. I tried to be thorough and place a lot of emphasis on paring down what you think you'll need balanced with items and the mindset that will actually help.

Tactical Gear Considerations

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 19:45:16 GMT

"When Americans awake from the corona coma like millions of Rip Van Winkles... this will be a different country."

- James Howard Kunstler

Welcome to the Seneca Cliff, folks. Coronavirus, the black swan that is ushering us off the cliff, has only just begun and already mainstream media is saying this'll be "worse than the Great Depression". Of course, while the quarantined masses follow the rabbit-holes of a confusing morass of information and vehemently scoff at those who disagree online, "the way things were" zooms ever smaller in the rearview mirror.

There's so much Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias out there, it's enough to make even an otherwise 'normal' person question the collective sanity of these other quarantined "experts" across the ether, whether they agree with our opinion or not. Whatever the case, the paradigm of infinite growth in our society has ended - and we should start seriously considering the consequences. We're in it, now. No more theorizing on the interwebs. The limits to growth are here, and they will level all previous expectations of a thriving global society.

In specific, I decided to dive deep into one small aspect of these consequences. Already we are seeing cities where police departments have significantly cut back 'services'. In NYC, thousands of police officers have called in sick indefinitely. This is happening now, the beginning months of 2020, and it will only get worse. Years ago on this blog I wrote the following:

"... what happens in a future where there are no police answering your emergency calls, in a future where there is no court system administering justice? And why are we not preparing for that future? Because if you believe as I do... all things will become more and more localized. If we admit that we need localized solutions to food production, then it's not much of a stretch at all to say that we'll also need to prepare for localized solutions to justice. And the only way that works is if we have a community composed of at least a segment of individuals who are willing to respond to dangerous situations involving firearms. Having firearms ourselves and being trained in their use gives us a level playing field against the likely threats posed to us in a collapse scenario ... "

This article is for those to whom that may apply. If you have a Sheepdog mentality, then you will want to get prepared tactically. Not just buying a gun for home defense or to shoot looters or squirrels, but someone who sees themselves taking an active role in the security of their family/community. The future I envision is one where all fit members of your local community will be at least possible tertiary combatants, and it is easier to get the gear now than to 'make do' when the time is upon you and your community asks you to patrol the neighborhood or nearby town, or to operate a guard shack or a checkpoint, or any number of possible tactical roles that will occur when civilization breaks down to that point and justice is a much more local concept.

Scouring the internet in search of advice for post-collapse localized solutions to justice and what a person should have on them netted endless "tacticool" results. Apparently you need to buy the same things that warfighting combat veterans with 10+ years in the special forces used overseas. Which honestly does make some sense, if you're part of some highly trained militia force. But I assume those guys already know that and the 'prepper' culture is simply trying to make boatloads of money on guys who can't even do 20 pushups, nevermind wear/carry 30+ pounds of gear on their person not including any kind of water, food, or rucksack.

So, the caveat to this is that while other things in our life should be prioritized over "stuff", the right tools for the job do make the job easier. And while you can't use the tools without being very physically capable, you also might not have the tools available when you are physically capable - so getting them now despite health issues might be prudent. Hell, get them for others in your tribe or in your community. Spending your funds on something you have no intention of using though is irrational. It's a conundrum. Do what you wish, but if you want to survive after law and order has deteriorated then it is up to you and your group to protect yourselves and to do that effectively you need organization, personnel, and gear.

To put this in context I am not a 'gun guy'. I never owned a firearm before 4 years ago. I had shot a few times at gun ranges over my life, maybe a dozen times at most. I've still never been hunting. I may be a veteran, but I'm not a combat veteran. I don't envision myself as some revolutionary or some guerrilla warrior against a tyrannical government, but I know that these things will likely be necessary and I want to be able to defend myself and those I love and build a secure community where my wife doesn't have to live in fear and our daughter can thrive.

Even before considering post-collapse community security roles I had thought years ago that it was finally time to get serious about this gun stuff and over the last few years, and after intense research, I purchased a S&W Shield 9mm pistol, a Sig 5.56 Patrol rifle, and a Ruger 10/22 rifle. I got my concealed carry permit, I went to 3 pistol classes and 3 basic rifleman courses, and I became familiar with how to use them. Today, if I had to do it over again and could only get one from each category, I would choose the Glock 19 pistol, the same AR rifle or something similar, and the 'breakdown' version of the Ruger 10/22. Overall I made good choices, I think. Of course, all these things come with man-cessories: you have to get holsters, slings, scopes, magazines, bags, ammo, etc. It's endless. I chose a basic 4x magnification scope for the AR and a 3-9x 'bugbuster' scope for the .22 and am happy with these choices. I am not one of those people who gets into accessorizing their weapons, honestly. Again, I'm not a gun guy really. I hope I never use any of them beyond the range, but I'm afraid that won't be the case in the near future.

In any case, I think it would be a minimum ideal that those three categories of firearms are covered - pistol, rifle, and a .22 for small game and as a backup. Notice I said minimum ideal. If you have less, you do with less. If you have more, share with trusted members of your tribe. But this brings up the point of the article (hey, I'm finally getting to the point): you will need more tactical equipment, and more places to put that equipment, in any kind of community security role. To confront this problem, warfighters and soldiers have a tier system. The first tier is the personal tier, or what you carry on your person. In the currently unfolding drama when it deteriorates enough this will mean your EDC (everyday carry): ideally at minimum a pistol and extra magazine and a trauma IFAK (individual first aid kit). It would include other things like a flashlight and perhaps a multitool and/or knife. As you go about your business during the collapse, whether that was gardening or eating, you would always have these things, and likely a rifle, on or near you in a 'minute-man' concept, ready to be in action quickly. The next tier for a community security role would be a Patrol or Assault tier. Here you would ideally be part of a group (preferably minimally a group of 6, with two 3-man fire teams, and possibly many others) and would be serving in various roles from community patrols or blockades to guard gates or even repelling other armed groups. For such activities you need to carry much more with you, including quite a bit more ammo loaded into magazines. For this you need some kind of chest rig or battle belt and a decently sized backpack. There are endless combinations and options that are frankly staggering for an average joe, but I've been told by actual professional warfighters who know such things to stay away from cheap brands like Condor and Voodoo that you find everywhere online. I bought a Viking Tactics VTAC Chest Rig. It was on sale for $195 after taxes. That's a hefty price for someone like me, but I am convinced that it is a good investment. Certainly cheaper than the $340 one I was looking at on BDS Tactical. If anyone cares, the brand most used and recommended by actual SOF guys I know is Mayflower. I also got a fairly cheap ($50) backpack that has 40 liters capacity. When doing patrols or standing guard or any of these various security measures a person will need to have supplies for at least a few hours before they can expect resupply or shift changes.

The next tier is known in the military as a Combat Order. This means all gear for an operation that could last 24 hours. This means overnight and camp-making gear. This requires some kind of large (usually 60 liter capacity or possibly bigger) pack or rucksack in addition to your rifle, pistol, ammo, pouches, first aid kit, radio, clothing layers, and all the rest of the things you're already carrying. For an average joe civilian in a post-collapse world where justice is local this sort of thing will ideally likely be reserved for a sub-group of the community who would make up the combat-oriented part of the militia at large. Those who are the most qualified, educated, trained, and fit would be the ones in this sort of group. In the military the next tier up from this is the Marching Order, which is up to 2 weeks of provisions without resupply. For us this does not really apply very much. Everything will be local and if you're in a stable enough community after collapse that they're sending out groups to walk to other communities a week+ away then maybe you'll have to worry about it. Until then a walk that long will continue to be called a refugee crisis, and you won't be bringing along your tactical gear.

Conclusion: We need to make rational decisions about tactical gear. If you are in an active security role in your community you will need a minimum of a gun and a place to store rapidly-deployable ammo and supplies. Anyone thinking about this subject who wants to have a minimal setup should have a pistol, an AR-style rifle, ammo and magazines, and a rig to hold it all. Of course you need to train with it, know how to use it, and more importantly be fit enough to use it as well.

Interview with Derrick Jensen

Sun, 26 Nov 2017 21:02:25 GMT

My interview with Derrick Jensen for Resistance Radio aired today on the Progressive Radio Network.

This was the first time I've ever been interviewed, so forgive the shaky voice and nervousness. The last half was better than the first half, and the last 10 minutes really ended on a particularly strong note I think.
For those who like podcasts, take a listen here: http://prn.fm/resistance-radio-guest-david-casey-11-26-17/

Mostly in this interview I talked about the things I wrote about in my article Thermodynamic Failure: Phrase 2. So, if you're more of a reader as I am you can get the same information in a more concise package there. It may even help listeners to have that open while listening. Other articles heavily referenced were Historical Perspective and Explaining Peak Oil.

Give it a listen and tell me what you think. Hope this helps a bit for the audio learners out there.

Fun fact: Derrick likes to open and/or end his interviews with nature sounds. In mine he used the Carolina gopher frog. This website tells you a bit about them and the sound file is toward the bottom of the page:
http://herpsofnc.org/carolina-gopher-frog/

2020: A Marker For Collapse

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 21:04:33 GMT

The issue of timing is a bit complicated. Asking when collapse will happen is way too broad.

When people ask when we will see serious impacts I start by telling them we have been seeing very serious impacts in a broad sense since the early 70's. Think about it. Since 1971 the only way the industrialized West has roughly maintained their standards of living is through massive accumulation of debt. I say "roughly maintained" because we have seen an epic gutting of the middle class and a huge trend towards being a service economy - rather than making more, better, stuff, we've added waitress and bartender jobs exponentially. Then there's the very serious impacts of the fact that conventional crude peaked in 2005. We've been moving to unconventional sources that have way lower EROEI and are fundamentally inadequate to provide for our growing demand, as well as economically not viable - and have only been able to be accomplished through huge amounts of debt. This is coming to an end. And then there's the fact that economies around the world are crashing and there are riots and austerity measures in nations across the globe.

The point is that “collapse" is such a broad umbrella. Collapse in the sense of steady and ever-increasing decline is happening and has been since the early 70's. It's been papered over with debt for a long time but now net energy realities are hitting and those financial measures are no longer nearly as effective. Breakdowns in the system will invariably hit different places at greater frequency and duration - no two places will be alike in how it plays out.

Someone recently asked me: "When will we see the inevitable decline of GDP, and living standards due to the rise in the price of oil?" But the problem with this question is that we've already seen a world-wide growth (GDP) slowdown/decline. And I’ll be damned if it’s not obvious that living standards have certainly dropped significantly. Even in the US living standards have extremely eroded - there is a ridiculously large and growing gap between the rich and the rest of us who have to work two jobs to get by. The vast majority of Americans can't afford a $200 emergency, the vast majority are living paycheck to paycheck.

The lowest income groups in terms of nations have already dropped off. Inequality is skyrocketing in every industrialized nation. In terms of the US, the lowest income groups have already decayed. This can be seen in the destruction of the middle class. The middle class has become poorer and poorer, effectively becoming the new poor and adding many millions to the ranks of the lower class. The massive increase in reliance on government aid such as unemployment and food stamps show that the only reason the majority of Americans have not already dropped off the trough as the pie gets smaller is because they are increasingly dependent on the government to get by and live at their standard of living.

Take a look at Greece last year. There have been reports of pensioners - people who are past retirement age - rioting in the streets and overturning vehicles because of the forced "austerity measures." When the people on the street are effected in mass numbers like this, they will riot. Doesn't matter who they are or what country. Soon enough, this sort of thing will be common even in the West.

But of course the question you're really wondering about is when this going to be felt by the "main street" the "normal people" of the rich industrialized Western countries? To that question I would wager that barring any black swan events that might make it come sooner, we are inevitably going to face massive systemic change between the years 2020 - 2025. The update to the Limits to Growth study showed the "business as usual" or "standard run" scenario playing out pretty rapidly by 2025.

Source: One of the graphics from the original Limits To Growth study, showing the "Standard Run" scenario model. By 2020-2025, things start getting serious.

Source: One of the graphics from a follow-up study done in 2000 of the Limits To Growth study. This shows about 3 decades worth of actual historical data (in purple dots) plotted along the lines of the "standard run" scenario modeling. This proves that the "Standard Run" model is the model that actual historic data tracked up until the year 2000, instead of other models that ended in a "stable world scenario." Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

The real question is when will the next big event occur that shocks the system significantly? And the answer to that, as far as I can discern, is a massive oil price shock and shortages situation that should occur around 2020, give or take a year, according to all the industry top dogs. Saudi Aramco, Haliburton, the CEO of Shell, and many others have been warning about this lately. The other concern there is that this could precipitate another global market meltdown. In the '08 global financial crisis, oil prices spiked to $147/barrel and then we had the market meltdown. After that, well, I expect things to start getting ugly quickly, though it's not like all public services will cease overnight.

As I have said before, "about 2020" is the approximate heart attack. The deathstroke will be more like 2025, or a few years later. And the final red line beeeeeeeeeeep to signify death will likely be a few years after that, say around 2030. But remember, the patient is in extraordinarily bad health, and symptoms during the final years of life won't be pretty.

Here is a list of additional resources to support the fact that price shocks and massive shortages are on their way by about 2020. This is being reported all over even the mainstream media, if you pay attention.

IEA: Oil Price Spike Coming In 2020
ZeroHedge, Sep 19, 2017

Citi Says Get Ready For An Oil Squeeze
Bloomberg, Sep 25, 2017

IEA Forecasts Oil Shortages and Sharp Price Rise by 2020
Forbes, March 7, 2017

Oil Shortage Feared By 2020 as Discoveries Fall to Record Low
Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2017

People Are Almost Completely Ignoring A Looming Crisis For Oil
Business Insider, Sep 7, 2016

Brace For The Oil, Food, and Financial Crash in 2018
Insurge Intelligence, Jan 16, 2017

Firearms And Our Future

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 19:08:19 GMT

Let's change the narrative. The hard truth is that the next 10 years won't look anything like the past 10. Industrial civilization will fall, and any further delusions about it continuing are accompanied by circus music. All our conversations concerning firearms should revolve around that, rather than excluding it. My opinion on firearms shouldn't be controversial at all. I'm not a Republican or an NRA member or even a big gun guy. I just bought my first one a little over a year ago and had huge trepidation about it. But I think they'll be necessary in our future if we want to defend ourselves.

The current inundation from the media and politicians seems to be always focused on gun control laws, almost always only voiced after a public shooting event, by people who seem to have no idea what they're talking about. Through various conversations online, I'm becoming more and more convinced lately that people think that the "AR" in "AR-15 rifle" stands for 'assault rifle.' Just an observation, but the avid gun control types seem to have no real understanding of firearms. They also think that suppressors are "silencers" and that they make the firearm silent, and that having a retractable butt-stock makes them more deadly. *rolls eyes* How can we have such ignorance at the forefront of the pedestal proclaiming their opinions on guns and what we should do with them? Politicians holding up rifles on the floor of Congress with their finger on the trigger, pointing it at the crowd while making their speech that people are too irresponsible to own such things, all while their personal security detail stands armed and ready should they be assaulted.

Do a test, and let me know the results. Next time you are at a social gathering and you hear someone talking who is against gun ownership, ask them to name the 4 gun safety rules. And/or ask them to name 4 current gun control laws. I've asked this numerous times and not one person I've asked has been able to answer. They might get one or two, but they're mostly hesitant and completely unsure.

Source: http://www.studentofthegun.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/family-training.jpg

Today, we rely on retroactive justice. By that I mean when an event happens, people call the police - who are, after all, just minimally-trained people with guns strapped to their hips and in their vehicles - to come handle the situation. Those police then take the person to jail and from there they are taken to court to face whatever penalties are handed down. But what happens in a future where there are no police answering your emergency calls, in a future where there is no court system administering justice? And why are we not preparing for that future? Because if you believe as I do, that such a future is coming, then all our conversations about more gun control laws are just buying in to the illusion that the future will not be a drastic departure from the past. All things will become more and more localized. If we admit that we need localized solutions to food production, then it's not much of a stretch at all to say that we'll also need to prepare for localized solutions to justice. And the only way that works is if we have a community composed of at least a segment of individuals who are willing to respond to dangerous situations involving firearms. Having firearms ourselves and being trained in their use gives us a level playing field against the likely threats posed to us in a collapse scenario. Because you can bet that a whole lot of other people are going to have firearms, and you can't fight three or six or twenty people who have firearms with sticks or with kitchen knives.

All I really know is that, especially living in the US, in the coming times of chaos I'm going to want to be able to defend myself with firearms because it evens the playing field and I'd be at a huge disadvantage if I didn't own some and train with them. Everything else seems like it's impractical or idealized politics. We need to start framing our conversations about firearms with the understanding that in the future these societal structures we've come to rely on will be intermittent at best, and eventually fail completely. If we don't frame it that way, we get lost in divisiveness that presupposes something we don't even believe to be true in the first place. The future will not be like the past, so let's stop pretending it will be.

Thermodynamic Failure: Phase 2

Wed, 19 Jul 2017 16:25:37 GMT

Most people aren't paying attention. Most people have no idea what's going on. Industrial civilization is already having serious health problems and heart palpitations. By 2020, industrial civilization is going to suffer a massive stroke. By 2025, it will be in hospice. By 2030, it will be dead.

Which catchy phrase best captures the pot of boiling water we find ourselves in? Time is running out. We are at the tipping point. The dominos are falling. Whichever one we use, one thing is clear: a fundamental shift in fossil fuel use is underway. Phase 1 was the peak of conventional oil in 2005, with the ensuing GFC (global financial crisis) in 2008, papered over by massive debt conjured out of thin air by the financial manipulator magicians at the Federal Reserve. Phase 2 starts with the growing ineffectiveness of these financial measures against stark net energy realities.

Let me set the stage, and reiterate the premise for those who haven't read other posts of mine. There is a great deal of difference between conventional and unconventional sources of oil. The former was cheap and relatively easy to extract, the latter is much more difficult and costly. Underlying this though is the EROEI (energy return on energy invested). If you kept giving someone a dollar and continually got back 100, you'd be making money so fast your head would spin. Imagine if you then used this money to invest in a lavish lifestyle with multiple houses, a garage full of amazing cars, a fleet of super-yachts, and staffed hundreds of people full time to take care of all your properties and cater to your every whim. Then imagine that as time went on you got back less and less money for every dollar you gave. Eventually you wouldn't be able to afford all those lavish things. You'd have to cut back. You could, perhaps, once things got seriously tight, go into debt to keep up your lifestyle, but you'd have to go into the red on the ledger books in order to do so. And this could not continue indefinitely so long as you continued to receive less and less money back for every dollar you gave.

This is precisely the situation we as a civilization have come to. We built industrial civilization on high EROEI ratios. Numbers generated from multiple studies give estimates of 100:1 returns at the beginning. Today we are down to a total global ratio for all liquids at about a 14:1 return rate. Which is interesting because this is actually the ratio that Charles Hall, one of the founders of the EROEI methodology, concludes is about the minimum needed to prevent collapse. And the ratio numbers inexorably decline no matter what we do.

After the peak of conventional oil in 2005, we were given breathing room from a total production peak through unconventional sources of oil such as tar sands, shale, fracking, and deep offshore wells. But these sources are far more energy-intensive to procure as well as prohibitively expensive; the only way companies were able to extract from them was by going into massive debt. The unconventional oil that we have gone so in debt to acquire notoriously provides a small fraction of the net energy we've come to expect from conventional oil sources.

"The problem of eroding energy profitability is hard to deal with partly because the decline is happening so fast... Oil no longer provides as much of a stimulus to the economy, which just can’t grow as it did before, and this in turn sets in motion a self-reinforcing feedback loop of stagnating or falling labor productivity, falling wages, falling consumption, reduced ability to re-pay debt, failure to invest in future energy productivity, falling energy supplies, falling tax revenues, and so on. How long can debt continue to substitute for energy before the next traumatic phase of this feedback process begins in earnest?" - Richard Heinberg [Source]

So now we come to the core of the issue. The industry is plagued by two main things: discoveries and future investments. Both are by-products of the two things already mentioned: we are out of the cheap, easy to extract oil, and what is left has an ever-lower net energy return.

We've been building civilization on the huge discoveries between 1950 and 1980 or so depicted on this graph. Clearly production cannot continue apace for much longer.

Notice that the trendline starts really going up at about the year 2005.

This graphic shows how, as energy costs of exploration, extraction, transport, processing, and distributing rise, the net energy left over for economic growth decreases.

In this chart we can see that after the global financial crisis in '08 there was a historic amount of spending towards more and more oil production. All of which was debt-based, as I showed in this article. But as we saw with the earlier graph, there has not been a commensurate amount of discoveries. We've spent all that money to dig out horribly low net energy unconventional oil because we are not discovering any better sources. This is clearly ending. Companies are realizing that they cannot profit from it, and are no longer investing in it - most are going bankrupt, some are treading water.

Conclusion:

All of this adds up to one thing: we're about to head into a new era. The thermodynamic collapse is hastening a day of reckoning, way sooner than most people think. But don't just take my word for it. The CEO of Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, was recently (July, 2017) quoted at the World Petroleum Congress in Istanbul as saying that the world is heading towards an oil supply shortage before too long as a result of falling discoveries of new conventional oil reserves and steep drops in new investment. At that same conference, Mark Richard, who is the senior vice president for global business development at Halliburton, said that the industry's slashing of about $2 trillion in investments will weigh heavily on the market in a few years when oil supplies fail to keep up with demand and will lead to massive oil price shocks when the market catches up - according to him, somewhere around 2020-2021.

Remember, in 2008, oil prices spiked to $147 a barrel; then we had the global financial crisis. This is the "massive stroke" I said industrial civilization will have by about 2020. Once this thing hits, things will start deteriorating much more quickly. The second phase of the thermodynamic collapse starts when the growing ineffectiveness of these financial measures against stark net energy realities hits a brick wall. Are you ready for phase 2?