I don’t want to face being driven from my home by the likes of Mike Bloomberg, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. No more two Americas. This has to end. We need to stop these people and ruthlessly crush them.
Sebastian
June 18, 2013
40 Round PMAGs
[This is what is required and, at least on the gun issue, there is a reasonable chance of success (for some values of “success”).
The bigger problem is that repression is much more than just guns. Currently it includes soft drinks, light bulbs, collecting rain water, how many gallons flushing your toilet requires. In another year it could include restrictions on owning gold and/or silver, TSA groping at train stations, and rationing of health care.
Although I’m a pretty optimistic person I’m essentially convinced (the Obama Care ruling on health care was the last straw) we are getting out of this without tremendous pain. The question is how to optimize the chances for my immediate family in the various scenarios.
I have have ancestors that go back to pre-revolutionary war (Barb L. even has Mayflower ancestors) and most steadily moved west in as the country opened up. They escaped the big cities with the corruption and repression associated with them. There isn’t much further we can move. Maybe Alaska could offer some respite but Alaska has to import a lot of goods which means they can’t really be self-supporting in many cases.
I fear collapse with the associated risk of a rise of a dictator is possible. Or would such a collapse follow the USSR model where the individual states regain power as the Feds go broke? Or would the Feds confiscate the wealth in such a way that it destroys the infrastructure as it goes down?
There are far too many “columns on the spreadsheet” to predict. I think what needs to be done is write up the plausible scenarios and plans for dealing with them. Prepping with food storage, “bug out locations”, and low level medical training until the economy recovers? Learn blacksmithing and soap making, acquire draft horses and horse powered farm implements and prepare for a return to technological world similar to 1900? What’s common to most scenarios? What’s likely and what is implausible?
The looters are destroying the country and, really, the world. The only question I see is how much will be left when they are stopped. The answer hinges on whether it is because they ran out of things and places to loot or is it because the producers finally stood up to them and said, “No. Stop. No further. Looters will be shot.”—Joe]
I also am concerned for the future in which my children will live.
I was even considering selling everything, buying a former ICBM silo & bunker with some land, and working on going completely off-grid.
Unfortunately the one that seems to have the least work left to do is in – you guessed it – upstate New York. 🙁
Doing research for a scientifically and engineering plausible carpocalypse movie, it turns out that diesel is actually pretty easy to make. So I don’t know if we’d have to go back to horses, but petrol devices are probably goners in a sufficient infrastructure collapse.
A community might spring up around a independent diesel refinery, with sufficient liberty from the government to build such a thing. Though, you end up with a lot of waste. Basically everything that’s not diesel or lubrication oil. Though some of it would be useful for heating purposes, you’ll still get a lot of very long chain “bunker crude”, and if you were in, say, Idaho, there’s no convenient shipping industry to use that stuff up pushing their ships around.
Actually, Lewiston Idaho is a seaport. There is lots of barge traffic to/from Portland Oregon.
I stand corrected. 🙂
Hydro power isn’t all that hard to envision, either. A waterwheel or two on a reliable stream, and you’ve got the makings for a generator, which can supply power to a limited area, maybe another one for grinding. Steam power isn’t that far-fetched, either, if one can find a reliable heat source…all of those nuclear power plants are really nothing more than a closed-loop system that produces high-pressure steam inside a second loop, which drives the turbines. Finding a reliable heat source might be more difficult, especially if the reactors are hit, but its still a dim possibility.
*nod*
Electricity is damn good, don’t get me wrong, but diesel gives you tractors.
I base my Survival Planning on this simple Fact: If I don’t have a means to Defend myself 24/7, I lose. And I don’t mean a Gun Safe full of ARs. A good Pistol within Arm’s reach is MANDATORY in my book. And if I have to deal with those places that are Gun Free Zones like Banks and Pharmacies, I use the Drive-Thru Window and/or Online Services. I even Vote Absentee so I don’t have to Disarm in my local School. On those Rare occasions where I have to Disarm, like Gooberment Buildings, Airports, Hospitals, etc, I keep SOMETHING locked up in my Car, and I retrieve it ASAP.
It’s a Simple Fact: One can’t Survive if one is Dead. And Goblins don’t care.
The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse is a pretty good book. He went through the 2000 Argentina collapse, and has a perspective that’s both more optimistic AND bleaker than you might expect. A lot of it is “well, yeah, now that you point that out, it makes sense” sort of observations.
But I get your point. That’s why I need to finish my book soon.
I think it’s funny this guy wrote a book. He used to post on one of the gold forums years ago (under the name Ferfal). I remember him saying that small pieces of jewelry were more valuable in a collapse than gold/silver bullion coins.
Yup. He talks about that in the book. For the average guy-on-the-street, evaluating bullion is not something in their comfort zone. A small gold necklace is much more in their realm of understanding. Makes sense.
You touched on the intangible: “looters will be shot”. There will be a lot of looters: conservatively 40% of the population in most cities, maybe 15% in rural towns, and they WILL form feral gangs. Survival in that case depends on forming clans/militias for defense, and THOSE plans depend on support logistics. Aside from orthodox Mormans who store food against an apocalypse and are prepared to form clans, I see little of the preparations for forming the new conservative society that will be necessary.
We’re dropping the ball, and I know why: no one wants to be the nail that sticks up, because we all know that the hammer WILL fall on us if we are.
In some scenarios a case can be made that the local sheriff’s department and the National Guard will still be functional. It depends on having local businesses that have survival benefits for the local economy.
“The looters are destroying the country and, really, the world. The only question I see is how much will be left when they are stopped.”
I see large corporations as the real looters in this world. There is very little that takes place without some form of corporate activity — and corporations are in bed with our politicians. So how do you stop these huge corporations who are really doing the looting?
The large corporations are the MAKERS. It is people consuming far more than necessary, and taking from producers without giving much in return that are looters. Government makes nothing, but takes a HUGE amount. In order to make up for this waste/loss, working people need to make/produce/use more, resulting in greatly increased production on a global scale. Obama, with a totally unnecessary $100,000,000 trip to Africa, is a looter. Requiring the use of ethanol requires Americans burn food, raising food prices, increases maintenance costs, decreasing fuel efficiency, increases vehicle costs, increases farming fertilizer (etc) demands. The EPA is a looter. Overall, the GOVERNMENT is the biggest looter of all.
Yep.
California is moving away from corn ethanol. http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/2013/06/ethanol_producers_vs_california_air_resources_board.html
http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/transportation/bill-bars-corn-ethanol-from-state-alt-fuels-program.html
It will be interesting to see if corn prices fall, but I doubt they will.
Corn prices won’t fall until the government price controls and other regulatory efforts to warp the market in order to encourage enthanol production are eliminated.
Amen.
“So how do you stop these huge corporations who are really doing the looting?”
Stop the politicians.
Or you can stop buying anything that was recovered, grown, processed, or sold by a business organized as a corporation. Have fun with your 4th Century lifestyle.
I’ve been thinking about “revolutionary collapse” too. Typically when a society collapses it goes the opposite direction of whatever it was before (in a relatively modern sense of revolution). Considering how socialist the US has become I don’t think we have fallen far enough into “tyranny” that should the collapse come people will grasp for freedom. I think that should the collapse come now, people will grasp for chains.
Required reading:
Patriots by James Wesley, Rawles. And his blog. He’s pretty over the top, but it lets you understand how much is required to have a viable plan for surviving TEOTWAWKI.
One Second After. More realistic, how a town responds after EMP.
299 Days. A ten book series written around the conflict between producers and looters. Optimistic view of the society that will emerge.
In some versions of TEOTWAWKI I’m given credit as “Huff the dynamite shooter”.
I finished One Second After month or two ago.
I’ll check into 299 Days.
Thanks.
Both TEOTWAWKI and OSA hypothesize sudden crashes. I think a sudden crash is unlikely. I expect more of a gradual unraveling of society fabric. That makes some things more difficult (such as decisions as to when/if to “bugout”) and other things easier (adapting to changing conditions is easier because change is happening slower).
Joe,
I would be very opposed to allowing the Sheriff’s dept, or any LE group, be the focus of local control. That whole “us vs them” attitude that is so pervasive in Law Enforcement would tend to lead them into a master/serf ideology. “Control” is their focus, and that will not play well in a collapse environment. In this country, at least. It would generate way too much conflict, which is the exact opposite of what you want. I’m not saying that every current or former LEO would act/think that way, but the majority would, I suspect. Spend enough time around them, and this type of thinking is very obvious. (Which is why I think cops should be part time, not full time badge holders. Too much immersion in the climate of cops/criminals. Not good for them, which consequently is not good for the rest of us.)
National Guard should be ok, I think, as they are citizen/soldiers. As long as they don’t screw with the civilians arms. They try that disarming bullshit, it’s on, and they are toast as far as I’m concerned.
+1 on Rivrdog and his blog(s). I seldom disagree with his thinking, and I wish more current/former LEO’s had his perspective.