Okay. Is it just me, or are the rest of you freaking out too? Do you lie awake at night worrying about TEOTWAWKI? Do you wonder when the zombies will come? Are we heading for Obamageddon? And if so, are we prepared?
I’m not talking about Halloween scary here, folks. I’m talking a dollar crash, hyperinflation, food and gas shortages, riots, Martial law: you know, full blown Mad Max meets The Road hell. It’s difficult to read reports from the likes of Peter Schiff, Gerald Celente, Jim Rogers, and Marc Faber–his newsletter is called ‘Doom, Boom and Gloom,’ not exactly the harbinger of sunshine and roses–and feel, if not positively terrified, then at least negatively terrified. These guys have got it right thus far. What if they’re right about the future too?
Lying in bed, I take stock of the Big Four: Money/Finances; Food Storage; Security; and Self-Sustaining Lifestyle. I try not to think about my first veggie garden this summer, in which I raised an entire crop of ONE tomato. I stare at the ceiling as I run through my survival list, taking a moment to digest that I–a self-professed big city gal–even knows what’s on a survival list. Emergency food rations? Check. Water for 30 days? Check. Medical kit? Check. Guns and ammo? Check. Ability to use said guns and ammo? Mini-check, but getting better every day (discovering you can hit a head shot at 400 yards is strangely empowering). Bug-out bag? On the ‘to-do’ list. Booze? Well, since I keep dipping into the whiskey supply, I probably need to learn how to distill my own. Spam recipes? Check. Dog food? Er, this would be a check except it ran out last week and I dived into the emergency supply. [Aside: An actual conversation with Hubby: "If you were starving, would you eat the dog?" Further aside, me: "I'm gaining weight on purpose, Babes. Precautionary measure, yanno?"]
You see my dilemma. On the one hand, I want to be prepared. Proper preparation prevents poor performance, as Miss Mullins, my headmistress at Pretoria High School for Girls used to say. But, on the other, it seems, well, so melodramatic. Having grown up in a third world country–although, ostensibly, South African whiteys lived a first world existence–I wonder whether things in the United States would actually get ‘Oath Keepers vs. FEMA camp’ bad, or whether the average citizen would just have to deal with the same crappy stuff swathes in the rest of the world do: high crime; terrible infrastructure; foreign exchange controls; some restrictions on movement; nothing too severe, basically, a life of toilet paper shortages. But then again, this would be–forgive me–shitty enough. Ladies, imagine a world–with all due respect to John Lennon–without tampons. And gentleman, don’t shrug, trust me, you’re going to care about this too. I know how miserable I was on a trip to India where it is almost impossible to buy said feminine hygiene products, and trying to mime “Do you carry tampons?” at a pharmacy in Goa ain’t no picnic neither.
Sigh. Add tampon-stash to list. Also add: toilet paper; bicycle; more whiskey (for medicinal purposes, of course); more water and purification tablets; barter goods; fishing kit; sewing kit; poncho; bolt cutters; radios; rappelling lines; fire starting kit; hatchet or machete… hatchet or machete??? Aaaargh! Will I ever sleep again?
Plan for the worst, hope for the best, and prepare to be surprised, I think as I punch my pillow. Well, okey-dokey:
- Plan for the worst: Let’s say the United States does crumble like a piece of ripe Roquefort (the likes of which you won’t be seeing for a good long while then).
- Expect the best: In order to beat the zombies, we need a plan. Nature abhors a vacuum. We need a way to spread our message. We need a way to reach the kind of people who elect–and keep in office–the Barney Franks of the world, otherwise the zombies will just rise again. If I was writing the screenplay for this scenario, a heroic hacker–preferably Angelina Jolie circa Gia–would write a virus that spams the whole world with a message of freedom, self-reliance, and personal responsibility. Think viral talking-head video–again, more hot chick, less John Hurt as Adam Sutler–espousing the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Sovereignty for all!
- Prepared to be surprised? This is where you come in. In the interest of catching some ZZZs, I thought we could get a little interactive here at Fr33 Agents… Imagine you could write that message. What would you say? If the proverbial crap hit the proverbial fan–assuming we still had electricity and the internet–ack, don’t get me started again!–what would your message of freedom be? How would you convince the zombies to become undead? How would you convince them to give up their parasitic existences in favor of free markets? How would you entice them to join the land of the liberty living? Keep it on the short side–remember it would be a stealth video or email–and… go!
Live free or die, baby! Surrealpolichick is a liberty activist and a Free State Project first 1,000 mover. She is the Porcupine Freedom Festival organizer, and has the quill crown to prove it. Surrealpolichick hails from South Africa, where, under the apartheid regime, her ideas about the evils of state power formed. Her personal mantra, which she coined on a beach in Goa, and which she believes encapsulates the ideals of voluntaryism, is: Chill Don't Kill. 
I think there would be pockets of lawlessness, probably not as bad as you’d expect. There might be regional differences. It might be better to be in the west than the east. ‘Better to be in New Hampshire than New Orleans, to state the obvious. A lot of the country still cherishes their pioneering roots. In Utah and Alaska the idea of being frontiers people is part of there character. We might be surprised by which areas do well and which don’t. One would think the big California cities would collapse into chaos, but Los Angelinos are survivors and the most effective vigilante movements ever happened in San Francisco.
I just read the new Bruce Sterling novel, The Caryatids, which was about post global collapse. One thing that stood out was the idea that even after collapse there were many parts of the world that were hardly affected at all. This really rung true to me. Think about if you lived in Zimbabwe, Somalia, or Myanmar the apocalypse may as well have already arrived.
It interesting to think about and good to be somewhat prepared but its not something I worry much about. It’s the creeping assaults on my liberty that keep me awake at night.
@Ed Wood, your name makes me think I should switch to vampires instead of zombies!
(And now I have Bauhaus’s “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” stuck in my head.) Your point about Zim, Somalia etc, is exactly what I’m thinking too… That if it gets “bad” in the U.S., it’s still not going to be all that bad. I’ll check out The Caryatids, thanks.
@Kristen, I like the positive attitude! I usually operate from an optimistic perspective, guess I just needed to get the zombies off my chest.
Great, now I have Bauhaus’s “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” stuck my head. Thanks.lol
No, I am not freaking out. I think John Stossel was onto something with his Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death special.
I met a fellow here in Montana a couple of years back who deals in real estate. He told me that if he had not been acting for the past twenty years on the assumption that we were on the verge of total collapse, he would be a rich man. I have kept that in mind since and actually made a conscious decision shortly thereafter to make my life decisions primarily from a place of optimism and love rather than from a place of fear. It has worked out well so far for me.
The individual may fear or not fear. But this reality we share has something serious taking place. Many people are only aware of a fraction of what has been going on leading up to now. This tends to be where people shrug off the parts that are very crucial to their own physical being. Sure, they can admit there’s something going on, but they can’t fathom the need for the imperative actions necessary.
It’s true we should not live in fear. But digging deep into the entourage of shit that brews around us is how we pull out evidence of the quickly covered Overt Operations that lead up to this debacle.
Fear is only the act of submitting to the dangers that could be. In this case, people who have a clue best describe this scenario in light with a Zombie movie. Why? Because the plot to a Zombie movie is generally a Government interference with the people’s health, the virus mutates, people become rabid, struggle for survival. In todays world, Government is doing just that.
There’s been a leading up to this NWO/Socialist economy, this Swine Flu/N1H1 scenario happened 30 years ago around the same time, it’s been well known the dollar was going to crash, ‘been well known there was going to be a “recession”…, plots of interference with our farms, health care, this scenario of a pandemic had been in motion for years, and yet, there’s still people willing to ignore the severity of this? Even denying this?
It’s already happening. People have been administered the nasal spray, which the disclaimer warns of the potential to become airborne and mutate if that person sneezes, mailboxes are being marked, soldiers are drilling for road blocks, mandatory vaccinations have become the law…
So why shrug it off. Why fear it? Why not at least learn from every fucking history class you’ve ever taken, and just prepare yourself for another repeated crisis.
Yes, there’s hype, but there needs to be for the sleeping majority of America.
(The rest of the world seems to see all of our problems, but we aren’t.)
The extent of severity only depends on how much we allow to happen.
Surfing this morning, I stumbled across a website called creators.com, which apparently syndicates articles and cartoons worldwide (although they do everything in hard copy and take six weeks… ???). Anyhow, I came across this article and wanted to share: http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/the-zombie-zeitgeist.html
Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJQ_lE6UL1o
I find it interesting and amusing, that most people think they can hunt, fish, and grow a garden successfully. Many people think primitive man completed these task and he didn’t even go to collage, so why can’t I?. Well guess what, these are skills that take years to hone and a lifetime to master. I’m 50 years old and have been hunting, fishing and gardening most of my life and I still learn new things all the time. Waiting until you really need to use these skills will be to late.
If the system should collapses quickly, there will be a lot of people with not enough food to go around, which will be unpleasant for everyone. I don’t believe the ones who best anticipated will be the survivors – it will be the ones who best adapted to unpredictable circumstances, and the ones who are furthest away from the cities.
I have no message for the rest of them. In their blindness, deafness, self obsession and refusal to engage as citizens they have allowed the situation to get this bad. There have been more than enough words, and they do not understand. The point can only be driven home to them at the emotional level, but it can’t be done in the corporate media, nor government, nor violence, nor screaming, nor threats. That means it’s going to take a long time, and it will be too late by the time the message gets home. It’s already too late for climate change, and it may be too late for the USA.
But as Michael Ruppert says. You can’t change anything without changing how money works. I think changing the money system could present humanity with a chance to redeem itself. But it can’t happen without mass engagement.
I will go out on a limb here and say that I think there is a significant element of self-absorption to this end-of-the-world style obsessing. We are so much better off in the United States than most people on the planet both. In fact, most people are much better off in the United States now than they were at the inception of this country. And from those worse conditions, we flourished and improved. The big freedom picture may be worse off today than we were 10 years ago, but I think that is very short-sighted.
Systems collapse, paradigms shift, times change. That’s life. And that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.
Good balance of points pf view. Making decisions from a place other than fear cannot be a bad thing, one should still prepare for the worst, without living in a state of abject daily fear that someone is going to break your door down, take your guns, beat you up and chip you. Be ready, but be at peace, as well.