Selco

Are you ready?

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You may say that question „are you ready (for some big s..t)?“ is either nothing new and that we always in something very bad or you may say that I simply do „fear shoveling“ with that question.
I strongly believe that you are wrong, and now is perfect time to ask that question.

Bad times

Depending where we are living and how old we are bad times are periods in our lives.
No matter how my „bad times“ might be different from your „bad times“ fact is that we are all survived or will survive some in our life time.
And no, I do not talk about those „bad times“.
I am talking about something that we are slowly sinking in, during last few decades, you can name it with many names, and it is combination of many things…things like devaluation of core (human) values, confusion with fact who we are and what we want to be, or how we want to be seen from other people.

Or you can call it slow deterioration in each field of human activity…anywhere from what real democracy should be to call for actual dictator ship because „we know what is best for you, and we know it better they you“.
Bad times are part of our lives, but if you somehow manage to distance yourself from your own bad times, or in other words if you distance yourself far enough to see bigger picture you can see, or at least see blink of bigger picture, that bigger picture says that we are deterioration slow, but we are kind of catching up speed too.

These times are truly bad times.

SHTF what and when?

Let s skip whole volumes of nonsense what actually SHTF is, and what is not, and please let me say one of my favorite explanation what (real) SHTF is: it is time when people realize there is no repercussions for their (bad, evil, wrong, violent…) actions, or at least those repercussions are months away“

So, yes, SHTF might be floods in your area for few days, but I do not talk about it, I talk about more intense event, or event with more duration…usually it is combination of both.
If we want to take let s say educated guess when and how it will happen (at larger, or world scale we can say that either it is gonna be result of long or prolonged bad times (like we described bad times above) or it is gonna be result of some very bad (and big) event.
In reality again it will be combination of both.
If we have prolonged bad times, that big large spark does not need to be very bad or catastrophic (example could be some disease that is not deadly but overwhelm medical systems) but people do not need too much after prolonged bad times right?
Now can you imagine situation when and where we are after prolonged bad times faced with possibility of nuclear escalation?
You do not have to imagine it too much, we are living that situation for some time…it is just most of us have been trough lot of bad things that we are seeing it as a one more period of bad times that will go away.

Are we and how many of us aware that truly SHTF is close, and that we might be facing something that is really big and bad?
I am following some news and actually want to see moment and information when and where I will see start of that spiral of retaliations from very small and limited to full scale thing.
Are we going to dodge it this time too?

Are you ready?

So, are you ready for possibility of world involved in nuclear war, with all „fun“ that war brings?
Can anybody be ready for that?

I think we are facing events in close future that might be ranged anywhere from:
very bad-world where there is no universal rule of law, where there is only law of stronger, and that will be introduced anywhere from small local level where you ll be forced to live based on agenda of „real democracy“ which means cancel culture, absolute inversion of freedom of speech, in world where your kids will be encouraged to sell you to authority because you are relic of some old time and you do not comply. On state and nations level who ever have more power will oppress smaller nations in hunt for resources, in the name of own nation.
Or horrible- world where in lack of communication or lack of will to accept defeat we all gonna end up in nuclear holocaust and something that I always kind of laugh at-Mad Max type of survival.

Are you ready?

This blog post is an introduction and overview on this specific question, but I’m going to talk about it in more detail over on Patreon, feel free to join me there:

Resilience Hub

Selco

Alone…

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I want to ask, I wish you would elaborate more about what kind of qualities the lone wolf preppers you knew about that were able to survive those times, I get the impression you considered them weirdoes could you give more details? It could be important for those of us that cannot find community of people to prep with at the moment.

Richard

Thanks Richard!
I wrote and mentioned in articles and interviews more than once that “lone wolf” plan of surviving serious SHTF event is bad idea, but yes, I admit, sometimes simply being alone is only option for some folks.
Here is the links to my previous two articles about “lone wolf” , or being alone idea:
going it alone
lone wolf

First thing for me here is to be sure that we are talking about same thing, when I say “lone wolf SHTF survival” I talk/write about prolonged event, because being alone in SHTF that last for few days is doable thing.
In dependence of violence (danger) outside together with bunch of other circumstances there is probably point in time (probably week or two) when it become very hard to be alone.

Time and effort

I would add one more thought (or reinforce) to those articles (besides problems of guard or spotting the threat, or being alone while sick and similar) and that thing is often overlooked in discussions about collapse of society.
It is simple fact that once when system (with all its support) is gone, your common day will look much different from the point of your invested work (effort) vs. what you get for it.

Now I am not talking about gunfire, violence, diseases and similar when SHTF.
I am talking about simple human work when SHTF.

For example on average day, in normal time amount of effort to obtain 5 liters of drinking water is probably physical work of getting up and opening water faucet and filling container.
When SHTF it may require full day of physical work of founding, collecting, carrying, disinfecting, storing that same amount of water.
Same might go for heating, food, hygiene and everything else.

Simple day may require lot of work, and simple task may be much more time consuming.
All that is much easier if you are not alone, less hard, and may require less amount of time.

Weirdo

Impression of me thinking that those who want to survive SHTF alone are weirdoes comes probably from few things.
First there are lot of folks, who take SHTF as something romantic and movie like, and they want to be alone simply because it looks cool, those folks are living in fantasy.
Second, lot of guys who actually went through collapse alone become weirdoes, simply because they had very hard times, they had lot of hard choices to make in order to survive (maybe even to sacrifice lot of their humanity and morality), and they went through everything without close mental support from members of their group (friends, family) so they end up completely “burnt out”.
And then there are people who are gonna be alone because legit reasons.

People without group support

I will not call them weirdoes, if you are after all consideration end up alone, well you ll have to work with what you got.
Basically all that you got is you alone.
Here is thing that I mentioned in that post years ago but it is really important so I will mention it again.
Actually there are two things, and on first look they might look contradicting, but if you check it in depth they are not.
First thing is: have stuff prepared, here I mean physical stuff.
I would love to say that you can overcome all troubles with your skills and knowledge, but it is impossible, because you alone cannot know and own all needed skills, knowledge and techniques needed to survive serious event. (of course you will learn as much as possible)
One of the reasons of forming the group is group knowledge.
So, since you are alone you will compensate that with having more preps for SHTF, more items.

Second thing is: Staying mobile.
Or being ready to become mobile in any given moment. Why? Well you are alone, so there is much higher chance that you will lose any physical confrontation with possible enemy then folk with group.
Actually there is more chance that you will not even spot danger on time ,maybe you ll simply sleep in that moment, and there is nobody on guard because you are alone…
In other words you must be much more ready to run, hide, avoid…in order to survive.
You actually need to stay hidden and small much more and much often.
As I mentioned having more physical items and being alone and being ready to run or hide can go together by having plan to have more caches hidden everywhere in your area,

Try to plan for that today in a way that you can make some kind of strategy where are the best places to hide stuff.
I advocate in one of the post that you have to be master in skills, or to have all skills if you are alone.
Let s face it, 99 percent of us are not gonna be able to have alone all skills.

Please do not take this words as a advice to stop learn and buy stuff for SHTF, because physical stuff will be alone enough-it is contrary, skills and knowledge is better, but you ll never be able to have all knowledge that one group formed on smart way have, so you ll simply compensate with physical items and with being small and mobile.

Group

Huge majority of folks who start SHTF event like “lone wolf” will form some kind of group during the event, simply because they will have to cooperate with people sooner or later, and trough those cooperation and connections they will form groups who are in range everywhere from knowing some guy in other part of city who have connections for food, shelter of information to forming the group of like minded people in the middle of event because it is easier for defense.

Huge difference of forming the group prior event and during the event in fact that for a group formed prior the event you have time, months or years of carefully getting to know each member (if they already not family) his skills and mindset…so you ll know what you got when SHTF.

Forming the group during SHTF might be matter of simple circumstances that last for a days, or weeks, or in other words if some circumstances change your group member may become easily your enemy, you do not have clue because you do not know him.

So, be very careful!

Selco

Truth?

/4 Comments/in /by

From time to time there is need for all of us to sit down  and kinda look back to events that we lived trough and then to look in forward (in future) in order to try to see what is coming.

There is interesting things with important historical events -they mostly were not reckognized as „important historical events“ in that moment from average folks.

Or in other words for most of the folks it is not easy to reckognize events that are actually life changing, events that chanege or destroys societies, nations…

As a  continuation of previous post (Full circle) we should all try to reckognize what is going around us, and what is going with us personally in the light of prepping and survival.

 

Knowledge is out there?

 

Preppersphere 10 years ago was mostly whole bunch of pages where people discussed ridiculous topics about imagined survival scenarios that never happened or will not happen-because they ridiculous.

It was something as i see it mostly for fun, places on line where people mostly came to join endless discussion about bug out bag or which caliber is better.

There were good pages and people with knowledge yes, but those were minority.

Preppersphere was big shiny place where you could read thousands of pages, see thousands of videos and advices of survival and buy bunch of physical items that will „save your life once when SHTF“.

Most of those were junk, and industry of money making with exception of few nuggets.

Few years ago things started to change, and continue to change to this day, thanks to pandemic, war, horrible economic situation and similar.

I would like to say things went to better, but it is not truth.

Many in preppersphere dissapered simply because they face reality and suddenly realized stuff that they write record or teach are non sense-reality show them that.

Minority of those who have idea and knew whats going on and knew how they can help have other problems-they jump in the „area“ where they talk, write or did thinks that system did not like, so they suddenly having problem with being labeled from system as a layers, people who spread misinformation or false news…they were into cancelling.

So, we  are coming to the moment when if you are big enough, and have enough followers in survival world and if you want to talk free and discuss things at your wish you are risking to be cancelled, which in essence means you are not gonna be big enough, and at the end you are going to dissapere from online world.

I have seen close friends in preppersphere being stripped from income just becasue they said (wrote) things freely-as they want to wrote, that was their everyday job and they were just one day labeled as a troublemakers.

As a result, we might be in situation where if you want to be big, and have enough followers, and have good and strong „voice“ that is gonna be heard far in survival world you actually need to play by numbers, and some of those numbers are absolutely agains basics of survival.

There is statement that today is much easier to find correct information then let s say 25 years ago, simply because with few clicks you can find it.

On the other side, and it is paradox, as years passing by it is going to be harder and harder to find right information simply because there is too many information, and those information with „biggest headlines“ and flashing letters that you find after only 2 clicks are pages of people who are playing by numbers.

And remember, thoise who play by numbers can not always speak (write) freely.

Finding information is not problem, finding correct and true information is.

And let s face it, we are living in the world where everyone is „hooked“ on fast information, everyone wants to know immediatelly what is going on about something or some event that is interested in, of course those informations are there-just few clicks away, with big and flashy letters remember.

I am not talking about conspiracy theory here, i am talking about forming the „truth“ trough the carefully planned opression, not only in online world.

So…is knowledge still out there?

Yes, you just have to dig more for it, which is sad, because as time go on right information will be harder to find, and it should be opposite with all technical improvments.

Personaly i want to stay „small“ and invisible for big radar, i want to have ability to curse, swear, or simply to write things way i want to write.

Perspectives?

 

For all of us, those who provide and those who seek survival/prepping information perspective is not really bright.

We are all more and more in danger of getting labeled as a „troublemakers“ simply because preppers and survivalists are (or should be) by nature people who look for truth and independence.

People who look for truth and independence,that sounds nice and cool, but stop for the moment and see where, in what direction whole world is going.

We are going in direction where we are gonna be told which truth is true, and independence (being independent) is not something that system knows to work with.

DEPENDENCE is what is desired from system, so you can play by their numbers.

So, again and again, stay sharp, stay silent, be smart.