This is perhaps the most often asked question heard in connection with the second coming, at least for Americans. It a reasonable question for any North American to ask, but it is far from easy to answer. I would be remiss if I were to say that the Bible expressly names America in any passage from Genesis to Revelation. That some passages may refer to America is very possible but not provable and that is the very kind of conjecture I will not entertain.
Naturally all the events surrounding the second coming of Christ are global or universal in nature so they necessarily include the United States. That the antichrist rules America for the same short period he rules the rest of the world is covered in Revelation 13:7. How he gets this powerful and fiercely independent nation to cow to his will is probably the more interesting question to try to answer.
Some people believe that America will be forced to comply with antichrist after an invasion of our shores by a great Eurasian pact of nations. Mostly, the invasion idea stems from the vision of George Washington. In that vision it is said that Washington told this story to his aide who in turn told it to someone else just before he died at about the time of the civil war.
Washington was told that three great calamities would befall the nation. Starting with the revolutionary war, following that the civil war and finally some future war where America would be invaded. My learned opinion of this vision is, “who knows?” That America would require force to he pushed into the rule of the antichrist is easy to believe but the force in question could be of a different nature. The remaining two views of how the United States is forced into the final pact of nations are probably more tenable.
The antichrist does not act alone but he is aided by one the scripture refers to as the false prophet. Rev. 16:13. 19:20. 20:10 We know little about who this person is today, hut what is known about him is that he doesn’t come from the same region, country and perhaps even the same hemisphere as the antichrist. The antichrist rises up from out of the sea according to Rev. 13:1.
The false prophet rises up out of the land. Rev. 13:1 1-16. The antichrist rules from the revived Roman Empire or The European Union. Where the false prophet is stationed exactly is not known but some think it will be America. This of course is speculative, even though it is very possible. The false prophet will probably not be connected to any religion, but it is most likely he will be a political figure or a minister of science. What he is may he uncertain, but the influence he wields over the world is not. He is able to produce signs in the heavens and draw fire down from heaven at will. Whether he does this supernaturally through the aide of the devil or engages some star wars type pyrotechnical display is also not known.
What is known is that his antics are very successful in persuading the people on earth to give antichrist both credence and rule. Some biblical scholars have thought that he could come from America and while this is not known for sure, it gives rise to the idea that America will he assuaged to join with antichrist by his direct influence. But again, while it is very possible, it is still only conjectural at this time.
A third and perhaps a far more likely scenario is that America will undergo a collapse of all of its markets and financial institutions. Following a collapse, a desperate nation may seek to join with antichrist’s emerging economic systems that will be so successful throughout much of the rest of the world at that time. Not long ago I asked some people the question, what do you think would be the most disastrous thing that could happen to America and what would change its nature significantly, an all out invasion of our shores or a complete and pervasive financial collapse? The majority answered that it obviously would be the collapse of our economy.
America is in the long stretch of the good times. We have many years between us and the dust bowl days and the stock market crash of twenty nine. World War Two is also far behind and the post war boom has become a post war glut. Any people that might decide to invade the shores of this powerful and fiercely proud nation would be in great peril. But take away what Americans really love, their affluence, money and material blessings and you could make them dance to just about any tune. This is the theorem that when applied to the question of how America joins the great evil new world order is the most believable, if not the most likely.
If the compunction to have more, drives a few to fraud, robbery and murder, then what will the lack of almost all consumer goods do to this nation? If history teaches us anything, the answer to this question is not a pretty one.
If you have any dissatisfaction with my content, you can tell me here and I will fix the problem, because I care about every reader and even more so about your opinion!
This article is my own creation and I have full copyright!
Although the actually letters “SHTF” contain a profanity, let’s just say that this term refers to some really horrible scenario happening when the “Sewage” Hits The Fan. For preppers and survivalists this means something like a terror attack, an economic collapse or a failure of the national power grid.
When the “SHTF” scenario unfolds, then some people, like most survivalists, believe that it will be every man for himself and the society will quickly disintegrate into something like the movie Mad Max.
However during this time people who prepare themselves for the urban survival lifestyles and survivalists believe this is the stage when a civilization is undergoing a complete breakdown and there’s a lot of unrest possibly from threats of civil unrest, a terrorist attack, war or an epidemic.
So you were confronted with a SHTF situation and you’ve still managed to pull through with great ease. Now that the situation is going back to normal and you may have to move back into your own home. But how do you deal with this SHTF aftermath? Who gives you the guarantee that you and your family won’t still be affected?
The fact is that it is still all in your hands to see that nothing happens to you and your family. There’s a certain way of dealing with the aftermath as well. And if that way is followed, you can be rest assured that nothing can possibly happen to you. Here are a few things that you can do to ensure that you life gets back to normal after the SHTF:
1. Before the SHTF, you’ll stock up on not only necessities but also “just in case items” if you have a safe place to do so. By doing so, you’ll be securing your future and, once the SHTF ends, you’ll have a more than normal stock of things that you will need.
2. Prepare yourself for a struggle and please don’t think it will be easy as living in the woods and hunting animals and having them for dinner. The aftermath will be such that once the bullets and the stored food are gone; you’ll be going back to the basics just like our ancestors did centuries before. It’s definitely not going to be a cake walk if that’s what you’re expecting it to be.
3. You have to be self sufficient. Learn how to grow your own food, how to make compost and biogas, etc. This will help you become self sufficient and not depend on others for the basic needs of you and your family.
4. It is said that 50% of people will be dead after SHTF. So you need to ensure that you don’t catch any infectious diseases. You can prevent this from happening to you and your family by maintaining your personal hygiene and avoiding contact with infected persons.
Be self sufficient by learning how to survive after the SHTF. There’s no substitute for training in urban survival. Rest assured that your money will be well spent in the long run.
Having an urban survival guide around when disaster strikes will make you and your family feel more prepared.
If you have any dissatisfaction with my content, you can tell me here and I will fix the problem, because I care about every reader and even more so about your opinion!
This article is my own creation and I have full copyright!
Although the actually letters “SHTF” contain a profanity, let’s just say that this term refers to some really horrible scenario happening when the “Sewage” Hits The Fan. For preppers and survivalists this means something like a terror attack, an economic collapse or a failure of the national power grid.
When the “SHTF” scenario unfolds, then some people, like most survivalists, believe that it will be every man for himself and the society will quickly disintegrate into something like the movie Mad Max.
However during this time people who prepare themselves for the urban survival lifestyles and survivalists believe this is the stage when a civilization is undergoing a complete breakdown and there’s a lot of unrest possibly from threats of civil unrest, a terrorist attack, war or an epidemic.
So you were confronted with a SHTF situation and you’ve still managed to pull through with great ease. Now that the situation is going back to normal and you may have to move back into your own home. But how do you deal with this SHTF aftermath? Who gives you the guarantee that you and your family won’t still be affected?
The fact is that it is still all in your hands to see that nothing happens to you and your family. There’s a certain way of dealing with the aftermath as well. And if that way is followed, you can be rest assured that nothing can possibly happen to you. Here are a few things that you can do to ensure that you life gets back to normal after the SHTF:
1. Before the SHTF, you’ll stock up on not only necessities but also “just in case items” if you have a safe place to do so. By doing so, you’ll be securing your future and, once the SHTF ends, you’ll have a more than normal stock of things that you will need.
2. Prepare yourself for a struggle and please don’t think it will be easy as living in the woods and hunting animals and having them for dinner. The aftermath will be such that once the bullets and the stored food are gone; you’ll be going back to the basics just like our ancestors did centuries before. It’s definitely not going to be a cake walk if that’s what you’re expecting it to be.
3. You have to be self sufficient. Learn how to grow your own food, how to make compost and biogas, etc. This will help you become self sufficient and not depend on others for the basic needs of you and your family.
4. It is said that 50% of people will be dead after SHTF. So you need to ensure that you don’t catch any infectious diseases. You can prevent this from happening to you and your family by maintaining your personal hygiene and avoiding contact with infected persons.
Be self sufficient by learning how to survive after the SHTF. There’s no substitute for training in urban survival. Rest assured that your money will be well spent in the long run.
Having an urban survival guide around when disaster strikes will make you and your family feel more prepared.
If you have any dissatisfaction with my content, you can tell me here and I will fix the problem, because I care about every reader and even more so about your opinion!
The “U.S. government” is comprised of a wide variety of different people, many of which are good and decent human beings. So this obviously does not represent everyone who works in the government. More importantly, this does not represent U.S. citizens either, so please do not fall into the trap of defending the crimes of your government, because you feel yourself personally under attack. Identify yourself with integrity, humanity and Truth, not a criminal government or group.
After the catastrophic attacks of September 11 2001 monumental sorrow and a feeling of desperate and understandable anger began to permeate the American psyche. A few people at that time attempted to promote a balanced perspective by pointing out that the United States had also been responsible for causing those same feelings in people in other nations, but they produced hardly a ripple. Although Americans understand in the abstract the wisdom of people around the world empathizing with the suffering of one another, such a reminder of wrongs committed by our nation got little hearing and was soon overshadowed by an accelerated “war on terrorism.”
But we must continue our efforts to develop understanding and compassion in the world. Hopefully, this article will assist in doing that by addressing the question “How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?” This theme is developed in this report which contains an estimated numbers of such deaths in 37 nations as well as brief explanations of why the U.S. is considered culpable.
The causes of wars are complex. In some instances nations other than the U.S. may have been responsible for more deaths, but if the involvement of our nation appeared to have been a necessary cause of a war or conflict it was considered responsible for the deaths in it. In other words they probably would not have taken place if the U.S. had not used the heavy hand of its power. The military and economic power of the United States was crucial.
This study reveals that U.S. military forces were directly responsible for about 10 to 15 million deaths during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the two Iraq Wars. The Korean War also includes Chinese deaths while the Vietnam War also includes fatalities in Cambodia and Laos.
The American public probably is not aware of these numbers and knows even less about the proxy wars for which the United States is also responsible. In the latter wars there were between nine and 14 million deaths in Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan.
But the victims are not just from big nations or one part of the world. The remaining deaths were in smaller ones which constitute over half the total number of nations. Virtually all parts of the world have been the target of U.S. intervention.
The overall conclusion reached is that the United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world.
To the families and friends of these victims it makes little difference whether the causes were U.S. military action, proxy military forces, the provision of U.S. military supplies or advisors, or other ways, such as economic pressures applied by our nation. They had to make decisions about other things such as finding lost loved ones, whether to become refugees, and how to survive.
And the pain and anger is spread even further. Some authorities estimate that there are as many as 10 wounded for each person who dies in wars. Their visible, continued suffering is a continuing reminder to their fellow countrymen.
It is essential that Americans learn more about this topic so that they can begin to understand the pain that others feel. Someone once observed that the Germans during WWII “chose not to know.” We cannot allow history to say this about our country. The question posed above was “How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?” The answer is: possibly 10,000.
Comments on Gathering These Numbers
Generally speaking, the much smaller number of Americans who have died is not included in this study, not because they are not important, but because this report focuses on the impact of U.S. actions on its adversaries.
An accurate count of the number of deaths is not easy to achieve, and this collection of data was undertaken with full realization of this fact. These estimates will probably be revised later either upward or downward by the reader and the author. But undoubtedly the total will remain in the millions.
The difficulty of gathering reliable information is shown by two estimates in this context. For several years I heard statements on radio that three million Cambodians had been killed under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. However, in recent years the figure I heard was one million. Another example is that the number of persons estimated to have died in Iraq due to sanctions after the first U.S. Iraq War was over 1 million, but in more recent years, based on a more recent study, a lower estimate of around a half a million has emerged.
Often information about wars is revealed only much later when someone decides to speak out, when more secret information is revealed due to persistent efforts of a few, or after special congressional committees make reports
Both victorious and defeated nations may have their own reasons for underreporting the number of deaths. Further, in recent wars involving the United States it was not uncommon to hear statements like “we do not do body counts” and references to “collateral damage” as a euphemism for dead and wounded. Life is cheap for some, especially those who manipulate people on the battlefield as if it were a chessboard.
To say that it is difficult to get exact figures is not to say that we should not try. Effort was needed to arrive at the figures of 6six million Jews killed during WWI, but knowledge of that number now is widespread and it has fueled the determination to prevent future holocausts. That struggle continues.
While we are all feeling the effects of the current economic recession many people don’t understand exactly what happens during a recession. In order to learn how to protect your financial future it’s important to learn all you can about the economic crisis. Keep reading and I’ll explain some key elements to a recession.
How It’s Defined
To define recession one has to consider the GDP, or gross domestic product, which is the main index used to measure economic health in any one country. During a recession there is a gradual but steady decline in the GDP over a period of several months. When a recession turns into a depression, the GDP has gone down by 10% or more over a period of several years.
Recession Phase
The following factors describe what happens during a recession and why. While it’s little comfort to understand why these things occur, it is important to education yourself about the effects, causes and likely outcomes.
1. Stock market dips and crashes in anticipation of the recession. Because economists are always carefully studying market and economic trends they are able to predict a recession. In response, the stock market slows with periodic crashes before the rest of us have felt any effects of the coming recession.
2. Interest rates will start to decline also in response to a market prediction of an impending recession. These cuts in interest rates are intended to stimulate consumer spending and off set the overall effects of an economic recession.
3. A sharp increase in unemployment and underemployment rates are one of the most difficult effects of a recession for most of us. Once demand slows, production follows and companies will typically cut jobs first to cushion the effects on their business.
4. Once a recession has dug in its heels, there will usually be some government response. For example, our federal government has responded in part by extending unemployment benefits. Governments will often instate new legislation to provide rebates, tax cuts and refunds in an effort to stimulate the economy.
How To Survive the Recession
Understanding what happens during a recession is only the first step in protecting your financial future. The next step is to find out where you should invest your money. Some of the newest marketing systems like those that utilize the top tier approach can provide answers to the most often asked questions about how to survive an economic recession.
If you have any dissatisfaction with my content, you can tell me here and I will fix the problem, because I care about every reader and even more so about your opinion!
People who appreciate the earth and everything we stand for can appreciate questions regarding the earth and its people and specifically the question, “When will it be the end of the world?” This life-altering question has been relavent from the beginning of recorded history and is a crucial question for Preppers and a prepper’s mindset and how they prepare for the inevitable disaster.
As preppers, we can see the “end of the world” as a predicament through which we will be brought into a survival situation and in which we will be forced to put our preparations and planning into motion. While this may not be the end of the world physically in the minds of many preppers, this is rather the end of the world and society in which we live and are accustom… and would obviously alter the way that we all live. For this reason, it is important for the prepared prepper to study what elements they believe to be the main factors that could cause the end of the world and plan accordingly for this event.
Many preppers are thinking at this time that the end of the world will come as a result of the unstable state of the economic and political situations in the United States and around the world, specifically in Europe. Specifically preppers look at the uneven nature of the economy as a contributing factor for their preparations. The idea behind this form of social collapse is that the economy completely crashing will lead to a breakdown of our society’s structure.
Other, possibly more pessimistic preppers, believe that the end of the world’s way of life as we know it will come as a result of a natural, or astronomical happenings. These fears can hypothetically result from a variety of sources from an ice age to hurricanes and fires to floods. Each person’s personal fears fuel how they choose to prepare for these planned disasters. You can view other posts in this site regarding information and methods on how to prepare for these individual situations.
Many people will want to know how to use this information in their lives… Even if you as the reader do not understand or truly believe many of the notions that lead disaster preppers to take such precautions as to prepare for such events, you can still use the information given to us by these people. You can apply this information by preparing for noted unexpected events, big or small, to protect yourself and those who you love. You cam do this by preparing stocks of supplies and information in the event of these unexpected events taking place.
You can choose to prepare for specific events usually based on your surroundings and your frame of mind. An example of how you can prepare based on your surroundings is to look at the most likely natural disasters in your area and prepare yourself accordingly. As an example, if you live on the southern coast of the United States, you would prepare for hurricanes, in the Midwest-tornadoes, West-Earthquakes. In addition, you can prepare for economic collapse by being financially pessimistic with your resources and not expecting and relying entirely on one investment or income source. Hopefully with all of this information, the answer to the question, “When will it be the End of the World?” will be a welcome unexpected event, but one to which we can hope for the best while living a life of fulfillment and courage.
So you are hunkering down. Now what? Here are 7 things you need when hunkering down when the SHTF.
We always talk about bugging out when the SHTF. It’s a necessity with certain disasters. But sometimes, it is best to stay where you are.
What happens when there is no need to evacuate where you are?
Going out may be dangerous…. then what?
Today we’ll focus on just that. What things you should focus on first if you need to hunker down.
Shelter
You need to check to make sure your home is secured enough for you to be safe. Things like sliding doors are particularly vulnerable to intruders as is unlocked windows and doors. Make sure your shelter is as safe as it can be.
Also, try to keep items out of the way to keep a clear line of vision around your home, if possible. Secure garages and make sure it will be hard for intruders to break into.
Lastly, keep your prepping supplies in an area where you can get to it easily. If you have your prepping items in an area that could be completely closed off such as a detached garage or a climate controlled storage shed, move them quickly inside if possible.
Food
Preppers are notorious for their food storage because it’s one of the biggest and most important concerns when the SHTF. Of course, we want to feed our families.
But I added this because a lot of preppers like myself forget to rotate my food out so it becomes expired or my wife needs something while cooking dinner and I give it to her out of my stockpile instead of driving to the store when I’m tired. (Come on guys, i know we’ve all probably done it!)
Remember to replenish what you have taken from your food storage, Keep up with expiration dates. Rotate them out. Do an inventory of your food to see what you are lacking.
Water
Storing water is super hard to store because is heavy and you will need so much of it for each family member. Because of this, I lean more towards water purification.
One of my favorite is the Lifestraw from Vestergaard products. They are compact and the ultimate in water purification. Read the fine print however because even though most Lifestraw products remove viruses, some don’t. (Lifestraw Personal & Lifestraw Go do NOT). For prepping purposes, I recommend you use a larger water purification device that meets the standard EPA standard for removal of bacteria, parasites, and viruses.
Medicine
OTC drugs will be few and far between when the SHTF. Buy up a stock of OTC drugs for pains, cold, allergies, and whatever else you think you may need while you can. Prescription drugs can often be gotten in a 90 supply just by talking to your doctor.
As a reminder, keep all medicines in a safe place where children, teens and persons with questionable judgement cannot get to them.
Protection
Have a way to protect yourself if needed. For some that may mean having a gun or even multiple guns and for others in may mean a knife, or a bow & arrow. Hopefully you have multiple ways to defending yourself.
But just make sure you have at least one way of protecting yourself and your loved ones. If you have guns, make sure you have plenty of ammunition stored. Make sure again to keep these in a safe place away from children!
Light
You need some form of light. It could be an LED or a rechargeable flashlight. It’s important for security such as it’ll help you keep an eye out at night around the perimeters of your shelter.
Entertainment
One of the most overlooked things by preppers. You don’t want to just survive. You want to thrive in a SHTF scenario. The means having a way to unwind, some refreshment.
Play cards. Read a book. Play UNO or Monopoly. Play charades. There are several things you can do to get your mind refreshed and relaxed.
Final Thoughts
Remember to keep any harmful items such as medicines and weapons away from children and in a safe place.
Have you ever wondered what makes a person snap? What causes a normal, quiet, everyday citizen, loving mother, or doting father to lose it all and fight like a caged animal? What can cause a small village to rise up and rebel against an oppressive police force and start killing them? What is the switch that gets flipped that causes a city to pour two million people into the streets, chanting and demanding to be heard by their government?
Lately it feels more and more as though we are on standing on the edge of some yawning precipice peering over the crest into darkness. What is more troubling to me is that we have been down this path before. The sense of unease is almost palpable to me sometimes; it is more evident if you are paying attention. If you are able to eliminate the white noise of the world for a minute; hit the pause button on the playlist of daily life for a while and look around, listen, you may start to recognize that you too are caught up in events that will soon change all our lives.
For several years I have felt an unsettling sense that we need to be prepared, that life is going to throw us a big, fat, greasy curve ball soon and we better not be caught napping. To try and proactively address that warning voice I started planning and taking steps to prepare my family to be able to weather events in the future. I am certainly not alone in this concern as you can easily see by the tremendous growth of the prepper movement. In the spectrum of probable events, there are a lot of potential scenarios. Natural disasters and emergencies occur every day all over the world, but you have to broaden your gaze and look to current events and history as well. One of the things that I think is a valid potential event to consider is a collapse of our way of life which leads to an authoritarian oppressive government.
This guide below can help you in a survival situation
If society collapses, you can bet that the foods the pioneers ate will become dietary staples
SS soldiers guarding the column of captive Jews in the Warsaw ghetto.
We have seen in recent events, by now almost too numerous to mention, the effects of a rising frustration with the way things are. It isn’t necessary to go into all of the individual reasons, but as a society there are more and more outpourings of frustration on a global scale. There are increasingly tightening restrictions against people. There is a manipulation of markets and the economy. There is a great increase in the loss of freedom and there is a more open antagonism and almost outright animosity by Government towards their people.
Governments exist either because they have come to power through force and violence or they have been elected and given power by the people. The force and violence crowd usually have their roots in the military and we like to call them Dictators. There have been a ton of them throughout history; Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong iL and now his son, Saddam, Gaddafi, the list goes on and on. Dictators don’t care about the people and usually kill anyone who gets in their way. It is a fact that government has killed more people than any other cause, disease or reason.
The other side of the coin is what is usually called Democracies. I am lumping a lot of governments in here I know, but the democracies are usually elected and formed with the consent of the people with the noble goal of securing rights or protecting the people over whom they govern. Almost without fail however, Democratic Governments eventually do not want to answer to the people and at some point they most certainly will not be told what to do by the people to the point of ignoring the will of the people (for the people’s own good of course). Now these governments that are supposed to secure the liberties of their people are becoming more openly hostile to the same people they have sworn to defend. Funnily enough the democratically elected governments now seem to want to hang on to power with the same methods of force and violence as dictators. How else can you explain arming themselves with ammo, ignoring the constitution, purchasing assault vehicles and preparing to confiscate firearms?
When governments will steal money outright from the citizens in order to pay bills that were not incurred by the people we have a problem. When government spies on its people and uses that information against them punitively we have a problem. When Government uses the force of the military that was supposed to defend the people that was paid for by the people, for the purposes of killing the people, we have a big problem. When someone brings to light crimes by the government and is labeled as the one who is a danger, we have a problem.
The problem is that governments around the world are viewing their people as the problem and there really seems to be only one way throughout history that this is ever rectified. My fear is that we are already set on a course that won’t be changed with laws, great political leaders, or a return to the values of a golden age in time long past.
The Fine Line – The Straw that breaks the camel’s back
The fine line between someone who is a law-abiding citizen and a murderer is one that exists purely in our souls. There is nothing physical that is different from a person who follows the rules and someone who breaks them. The urge to pull the trigger isn’t something you can see and it isn’t a trait to test for, so it must be our own individual sense of right and wrong. Of good and evil.
I know that some will argue that a psychopath is definitely recognizable by character traits and maybe even brainwaves or chemistry. That may be true, but you can be a psychopath (clinically) without ever hurting anyone. By the same token, you can take a life while being perfectly “sane”.
If you hold a knife in your hand, you are just as capable of using that to stab or cut someone as the murderer in the next town, but that thought never enters the mind of an overwhelming majority of people. A baseball bat in your hands can easily be swung with great force connecting it to the back of a skull, but this thought never appears in our heads; that is unless we are forced into a corner. When a person is in desperate fear for their lives, the unspoken rules of right and wrong are broken. The processes that we follow every day are overridden in the cause of rage or self-preservation. What was unthinkable before is now very real, necessary and even righteous with the right circumstances.
When the right buttons are pushed, anyone can lose it. When the fear of dying or of losing someone you love is so overpowering, the “fine line” that has been keeping us sane, law-abiding and good is easily shattered. When this happens, all bets are off.
We as a people, a country are still rather firmly attached on the good side of this line. We have not yet completely been driven to abandon all hope and lash out. We have not yet been so harmed, have not gotten to the point that we have nothing to lose and are ready to lose it, but this may be coming in the future.
The force and violence that is being used now to quell the dissatisfaction of people globally is increasing. The methods to cease the complaining of the rabble has been relatively minor with some exceptions. Tear gas, rubber bullets, mace and batons only work up to a point though. When the time comes that people can no longer abide, there won’t be enough police to stop them using riot control techniques. The military doesn’t have enough people to stop the entire population unless those people peacefully agree to surrender, so what will they do? Do you believe any government will quietly step down and admit that they are obviously not speaking for the people anymore? No. They will resort to more force and violence and people will die. Either that or you have a coup like they had in Egypt and guess who took over to “restore order”? Yep, the Military.
What will be the inevitable response by the authorities?
The Chinese people who started to revolt against the police in their town did so because the authorities were “placing restrictions on their culture, language and religion”. China is no picnic compared to America and we clearly know they have lived through far worse oppression than we have, but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for them?
The protests which turned into an estimated two million citizens of Brazil had started simply enough with a protest over a rise in the rates of public transportation.
In America, what will be the trigger that causes people to rise up and say we aren’t going to take this anymore and more importantly what will happen when/if we do?
What will happen if we don’t change the path we are on?
The execution of the last Jew in Vinnytsia, made by an officer of the German Einsatzgruppen
There is a quote that has always struck me as very sad and telling from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn was a Russian who was sentenced to 8 years in a Soviet prison camp for essentially writing things about Stalin that the government didn’t like. During this time in Soviet Russia, to stifle dissent, millions were killed or sent to prison camps. In this passage Solzhenitsyn is talking about regret that everyone felt because they simply went along with this tyranny and didn’t oppose it.
“AND HOW WE BURNED IN THE CAMPS LATER, THINKING: WHAT WOULD THINGS HAVE BEEN LIKE IF EVERY SECURITY OPERATIVE, WHEN HE WENT OUT AT NIGHT TO MAKE AN ARREST, HAD BEEN UNCERTAIN WHETHER HE WOULD RETURN ALIVE AND HAD TO SAY GOOD-BYE TO HIS FAMILY? OR IF, DURING PERIODS OF MASS ARRESTS, AS FOR EXAMPLE IN LENINGRAD, WHEN THEY ARRESTED A QUARTER OF THE ENTIRE CITY, PEOPLE HAD NOT SIMPLY SAT THERE IN THEIR LAIRS, PALING WITH TERROR AT EVERY BANG OF THE DOWNSTAIRS DOOR AND AT EVERY STEP ON THE STAIRCASE, BUT HAD UNDERSTOOD THEY HAD NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE AND HAD BOLDLY SET UP IN THE DOWNSTAIRS HALL AN AMBUSH OF HALF A DOZEN PEOPLE WITH AXES, HAMMERS, POKERS, OR WHATEVER ELSE WAS AT HAND?… THE ORGANS WOULD VERY QUICKLY HAVE SUFFERED A SHORTAGE OF OFFICERS AND TRANSPORT AND, NOTWITHSTANDING ALL OF STALIN’S THIRST, THE CURSED MACHINE WOULD HAVE GROUND TO A HALT! IF…IF…WE DIDN’T LOVE FREEDOM ENOUGH. AND EVEN MORE – WE HAD NO AWARENESS OF THE REAL SITUATION…. WE PURELY AND SIMPLY DESERVED EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD.” – ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
Will this be our fate too? Will we slowly be conditioned to accept atrocities like this and to be completely defanged so that we can be herded into camps without so much as a whimper as well? That’s crazy you say! Is it? Right now, our government is hunting down someone who simply exposed how they (government) were illegally spying on all of us. Our government is buying arms and stockpiling weapons for use domestically not in some war. Our government has the IRS actively harassing a single political/opposition party. Our government has shown that they will lock down a town and go door to door while making the citizens stay cowered inside. Our government has stated that they can imprison anyone without cause for an indefinite amount of time.
Can you seriously argue that we aren’t headed down the same path as others have in our not too distant past?
This is not a call to armed Revolution, but I do think we should all be very wary of this course we are on and the echos of history. We should not be silent in the face of increasing oppression. We should not simply go along quietly because of the fear that we may get in trouble, or worse that we believe the government is only looking out for our best interests. You only need to look at the people in Poland who quietly went into the Warsaw ghettos. You don’t have to look any further than the Holocaust to see what quietly going along will get you.
This is not a fate that I will be bringing on my family.
Coming the most severe financial crisis of our times. A financial crisis so severe 99% of all Americans will be financially devastated. They will in fact be far worse off than those who experienced the Great Depression of the 1930’s. And yet, even though some economists are sounding warnings about the impending financial catastrophe no one is even paying the slightest attention to the earthquake of economic doom. Not one presidential candidate or the media has even bothered to alert the public about a disaster of Titanic proportions unfolding right under our feet.
We have to go back to the time when stocks dropped by more than 12% losing over $3 trillion in value. We are being beguiled into thinking that our financial footing is all well and good when in fact the exact opposite happening. What is happening is our whole financial system is now just a house of cards where just one tiny cross breeze of inflation would send that whole house of cards tumbling down and with it wiping our practically everyone’s financial means of support. To put it more bluntly just imagine waking up and going to get gas for your car. Your credit or debit card will not work because the banks have already frozen your account. And, what little cash you have on hand won’t be enough to even buy a loaf of bread. Scary isn’t it? A real imminent full blown financial crisis will soon be at our front door.
To put this in perspective right now corporate debt is over $30 trillion and counting. American consumers are now holding over $733 billion in credit card debt. They hold over $1 trillion in auto loan debt. This while today student loan debt has reached over $1.4 trillion with more than 12% of these loans are in default or overdue by more than 90 days. All this debt is strangling the life blood of our whole economy.
Compounding this problem is the fact that the economy in the United States has remained flat for over four decades. But wait there is good news if you happen to be in the 1%. Your net worth just keep growing by leaps and bounds. While the 1% dine on caviar and champagne the rest of us eat hot dogs and stale beer. Without a growing economy or having the “Williams Theory of Economic Evolution being fulfilled there is no possible way for the United States to ever be able to pay back all this accumulated debt. Simply put The U.S. economy is withering and dying on that vine of lost opportunities. This, despite the biggest stimulus of new cash, think of all those Qualitative Easing programs the Fed pumped out and the exorbitant amount of and credit available. Yet, we have far fewer real living wage jobs being filled or even being offered today than we did just 15 years ago. Thus, the typical household has even far less income. This while the cost of living keeps increasing. Too many are trapped into a cycle of having to rob Peter to pay Paul just to make it through one more day. There are a lot of people out there who know deep down that something’s not right in America. Could it be that with all this debt increasing every day a great credit crash is inevitable?
This is only part of the monumental credit and debt crisis facing the United States. The national debt of this nation has reached a level unprecedented in the history of our nation. The government has to keep borrowing just to keep meeting it’s expenditures. But, with endless wars, and more people now than ever being relied of those meager safety nets just adds to the national debt. Yet, we still have our politicians offering band aid fixes to a monumental hemorrhaging society. With all this debt from our national to consumer debt the immediate problem we face is that there’s not enough real money in our financial system. Between $958 billion to $1.5 trillion changes hands in the U.S. every month. People buy milk, pay babysitters. They pay their mortgages and their taxes. Consumer spending alone is $11.2 trillion annually. But here’s the thing there’s only $1.2 trillion worth of actual dollars – physical money in the entire world. We can’t be sure how much of that is actually here in the U.S. Estimates are that some 50 percent to 75 percent of our money is in overseas bank accounts or held by foreign governments, and a lot of what is left in the states is called “dead money.” It’s stuffed in mattresses and safe-deposit boxes. In fact, the amount of U.S. dollars being hoarded this way that is to say the amount of dead money is now at an all-time high. Corporate America is by far the worst offender in hoarding cash. Think back to those QE1 and 2 bailouts by the fed with borrowed money to the financial sector. Instead of dolling out readily available cash to the public all they did was hoard it an let the public use credit to finance their daily expenditures. It was only recently that banks have put caps on all cash withdrawals. And you can see there really is a cash shortage.
Since the 1970s, the credit system in America has grown to become our biggest and our most crucial asset. Credit, not real money, is what people spend. Since 1971, the real money has been taken out of the system. Credit is what we have now. And, every credit dollar has a dark side to it, debt. And there’s more debt outstanding now than twice the value of every single home in America put together, more than three times the value of every single U.S. bank’s assets combined, more than 20 times the trillions of dollars the U.S. government collects in taxes every year. To put this in perspective let’s say you have one physical dollar, the one with George Washington. It doesn’t matter what other people think or what’s happening on Wall Street; it’s yours to spend as you like. But, with credit it is another ball game entirely. It can disappear before you spend it, because at some point all that credit can only exist if people believe they’ll get paid back, that is if they believe there’s enough money in America to pay back all that $60 trillion in outstanding credit. The sad fact there isn’t. Our credit system is insolvent. And when it fails, which it surely will do, it could wipe out more wealth than any other crisis in history.
During the financial crisis of 2008 over $10 trillion vanished. This next crisis will wipe out six times that amount. What we are saying is that our whole financial system will collapse. An economic disaster unparallel in the history of the world. Today, our whole society relies on credit. And, when any one link in the chain of production through distribution in economies is broken the whole credit system will implode. Businesses can’t run. Paychecks don’t go out. This credit crash not only destroys the mechanism that runs our economy, it shuts down our access to our own money. Just imagine what happens as lenders try to redeem $60 trillion worth of credit and there’s only $250 billion to go around. You go to your ATM; you ask for cash, but there isn’t any cash left. Suppose you have a $10,000 line of credit on your card. If the credit system doesn’t work, you might as well be flat broke. Dollars become ultra scarce. Prices skyrocket. Banks go under. In fact, it would only take about three hours for our entire country to shut down. The last time our credit system came to the verge of collapse was in 2008. This next crisis watch out.
To stop this impending disaster will take much more than open mouth rhetoric by our politicians. It starts with educating the public to realize that drastic reforms are urgently needed to stave off a disaster that would wipe out our whole financial and economic system. The implications of not addressing this urgent crisis will have global ramifications that will lead to a world war. A war which in all likelihood would send humanity back into the caves of the Neanderthal. The need is apparent and urgent action is required. And it starts with implementation of National Economic Reform’s Ten Articles of Confederation.
It’s one or two years after an EMP attack and you are safely tucked away in your retreat somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Your storage foods have mostly been used and your high tech electronics is useless. The really bad stuff is mostly past. Now it’s try to stay fed and alive and pray that civilization as you know it is coming back. You’re going to have to work your environment to live. Ever wonder what life might be like? What would it really be like to have no running water, electricity, sewer, newspaper or Internet? No supermarket or fire department close at hand?
I have a good imagination but I decided to talk to someone who would know first hand what it was like: my mother. She grew up on a homestead in the middle of Montana during the 1920s and 1930s. It was a two room Cottonwood cabin with the nearest neighbor three miles away. She was oldest at 9, so she was in charge of her brother and sister. This was her reality; I feel there are lessons here for the rest of us.
There was a Majestic stove that used wood and coal. The first person up at four thirty A.M., usually her father, would start the fire for breakfast. It was a comforting start to the day but your feet would get cold when you got out of bed.
A crosscut saw and axe was used to cut wood for the stove and after that experience, you got pretty stingy with the firewood because you know what it takes to replace it. The old timers say that it warms you when you cut it, when you split it, and again when you burn it. The homes that were typical on homesteads and ranches of the era were smaller with lower ceilings than modern houses just so they could be heated easier. The saw and axe were not tools to try hurrying with. You set a steady pace and maintained it. A man in a hurry with an axe may loose some toes or worse. One side effect of the saw and axe use is that you are continuously hungry and will consume a huge amount of food. Lights in the cabin were old fashioned kerosene lamps. It was the kid’s job to trim the wicks, clean the chimneys and refill the reservoirs.
The privy was downhill from the house next to the corral and there was no toilet paper. Old newspaper, catalogs or magazines were used and in the summer a pan of barely warm water was there for hygiene. During a dark night, blizzard, or brown out from a dust storm, you followed the corral poles-no flashlights.
There were two springs close to the house that ran clear, clean, and cold water. The one right next to it was a “soft” water spring. It was great for washing clothes and felt smooth, almost slick, on your skin. If you drank from it, it would clean you out just as effectively as it cleaned clothes. Not all clean water is equal.
The second spring was a half mile from the cabin and it was cold, clear, and tasted wonderful. The spring itself was deep – an eight foot corral pole never hit bottom- and flowed through the year. It was from here that the kids would fill two barrels on a heavy duty sled with water for the house and the animals. They would lead the old white horse that was hitched to the sledge back to the buildings and distribute the water for people and animals. In the summer, they made two trips in the morning and maybe a third in the evening. In the winter, one trip in the morning and one in the evening. They did this alone.
Breakfast was a big meal because they’re going to be working hard. Usually there would be homemade sausage, eggs and either cornmeal mush or oatmeal. More food was prepared than what was going to be eaten right then. The extra food was left on the table under a dish towel and eaten as wanted during the day. When evening meal was cooked, any leftovers were reheated. The oatmeal or the mush was sliced and fried for supper. It was served with butter, syrup, honey or molasses.
The homemade sausage was from a quarter or half a hog. The grinder was a small kitchen grinder that clamped on the edge of a table and everybody took turns cranking. When all the hog had been ground, the sausage mix was added and kneaded in by hand. Then it was immediately fried into patties. The patties were placed, layer by layer, into a stone crock and covered with the rendered sausage grease. The patties were reheated as needed. The grease was used for gravies as well as re-cooking the patties. Occasionally a fresh slice of bread would be slathered with a layer of sausage grease and a large slice of fresh onion would top it off for quick sandwich. Nothing was wasted.
Some of their protein came from dried fish or beef. Usually this had to be soaked to remove the excess salt or lye. Then it was boiled. Leftovers would go into hash, fish patties, or potato cakes.
The kitchen garden ran mostly to root crops. Onion, turnip, rutabaga, potato and radishes grew under chicken wire. Rhubarb was canned for use as a winter tonic to stave off scurvy. Lettuce, corn, and other above ground crops suffered from deer, rats, and gumbo clay soil. Surprisingly, cabbage did well. The winter squash didn’t do much, only 2 or 3 gourds. Grasshoppers were controlled by the chickens and turkeys. There was endless hoeing.
Washing clothes required heating water on the stove, pouring it into three galvanized wash tubs-one for the homemade lye soap and scrub board, the other two for rinsing. Clothes were rinsed and wrung out by hand, then hung on a wire to dry in the air. Your hands became red and raw, your arms and shoulders sore beyond belief by the end of the wash. Wet clothing, especially wool, is heavy and the gray scum from the soap was hard to get out of the clothes.
Personal baths were in a galvanized wash tub screened by a sheet. In the winter it was difficult to haul, heat and handle the water so baths weren’t done often. Most people would do sponge baths.Everybody worked including the kids. There were always more chores to be done than time in the day. It wasn’t just this one family; it was the neighbors as well. You were judged first and foremost by your work ethic and then your honesty. This was critical because if you were found wanting in either department, the extra jobs that might pay cash money, a quarter of beef, hog or mutton would not be available. Further, the cooperation with your neighbors was the only assurance that if you needed help, you would get help. Nobody in the community could get by strictly on their own. A few tried. When they left, nobody missed them. You didn’t have to like someone to cooperate and work with him or her.
Several times a year people would get together for organized activities: barn raising, butcher bee, harvest, roofing, dance, or picnics. There were lots of picnics, usually in a creek bottom with cottonwoods for shade or sometimes at the church. Always, the women would have tables groaning with food, full coffee pots and, if they were lucky, maybe some lemonade. (Lemons were expensive and scarce) After the work (even for picnics, there was usually a project to be done first) came the socializing. Many times people would bring bedding and sleep out overnight, returning home the next day.
A half dozen families would get together for a butcher bee in the cold days of late fall. Cows were slaughtered first, then pigs, mutton, and finally chickens. Blood from some of the animals was collected in milk pails, kept warm on a stove to halt coagulation and salt added. Then it was canned for later use in blood dumplings, sausage or pudding. The hides were salted for later tanning; the feathers from the fowl were held for cleaning and used in pillows or mattresses. The skinned quarters of the animals would be dipped into cold salt brine and hung to finish cooling out so they could be taken home safely for processing. Nothing went to waste.
The most feared occurrence in the area was fire. If it got started, it wasn’t going out until it burned itself out. People could and did loose everything. The most used weapon was the .22 single shot Winchester with .22 shorts. It was used to take the heads off pheasant, quail, rabbit and ducks. If you held low, the low powered round didn’t tear up the meat. The shooters, usually the kids, quickly learned sight picture and trigger control although they never heard those terms. If you took five rounds of ammunition, you better bring back the ammunition or a critter for the pot for each round expended. It was also a lot quieter and less expensive [in those days] than the .22 Long Rifle cartridges.
If you are trying to maintain a low profile, the odor of freshly baked bread can be detected in excess of three miles on a calm day. Especially by kids.
Twice a year the cabin was emptied of everything. The walls, floors, and ceilings were scrubbed with lye soap and a bristle brush. All the belongings were also cleaned before they came back into the house. This was pest control and it was needed until DDT became available. Bedbugs, lice, ticks and other creepy crawlies were a fact of life and were controlled by brute force. Failure to do so left you in misery and maybe ill.
Foods were stored in bug proof containers. The most popular was fifteen pound metal coffee cans with tight lids. These were for day to day use in the kitchen. (I still have one. It’s a family heirloom.) The next were barrels to hold the bulk foods like flour, sugar, corn meal, and rice. Everything was sealed or the vermin would get to it. There was always at least one, preferably two, months of food on hand. If the fall cash allowed, they would stock up for the entire winter before the first snowfall.
The closest thing to a cooler was a metal box in the kitchen floor. It had a very tight lid and was used to store milk, eggs and butter for a day or two. Butter was heavily salted on the outside to keep it from going rancid or melting. Buttermilk, cottage cheese and regular cheese was made from raw milk after collecting for a day or two. The box was relatively cool in the summer and did not freeze in the winter.
Mice and rats love humanity because we keep our environment warm and tend to be sloppy with food they like. Snakes love rats and mice so they were always around. If the kids were going to play outside, they would police the area with a hoe and a shovel. After killing and disposing of the rattlesnakes- there was always at least one-then they could play for a while in reasonable safety.
The mice and rats were controlled by traps, rocks from sling shots, cats and coyotes. The cats had a hard and usually short life because of the coyotes. The coyotes were barely controlled and seemed to be able to smell firearms at a distance. There were people who hunted the never-ending numbers for the bounty.
After chores were done, kid’s active imagination was used in their play. They didn’t have a lot of toys. There were a couple of dolls for the girls, a pocket knife and some marbles for the boy, and a whole lot of empty to fill. Their father’s beef calves were pretty gentle by the time they were sold at market – the kids rode them regularly. (Not a much fat on those calves but a lot of muscle.) They would look for arrow heads, lizards, and wild flowers. Chokecherry, buffalo berry, gooseberry and currants were picked for jelly and syrups. Sometimes the kids made chokecherry wine.
On a hot summer day in the afternoon, the shade on the east side of the house was treasured and the east wind, if it came, even more so. Adults hated hailstorms because of the destruction, kids loved them because they could collect the hail and make ice cream.
Childbirth was usually handled at a neighbor’s house with a midwife if you were lucky. If you got sick you were treated with ginger tea, honey, chicken soup or sulphur and molasses. Castor oil was used regularly as well. Wounds were cleaned with soap and disinfected with whisky. Mustard based poultices were often used for a variety of ills. Turpentine, mustard and lard was one that was applied to the chest for pneumonia or a hacking cough.
Contact with the outside world was an occasional trip to town for supplies using a wagon and team. A battery operated radio was used very sparingly in the evenings. A rechargeable car battery was used for power. School was a six mile walk one way and you brought your own lunch. One school teacher regularly put potatoes on the stove to bake and shared them with the kids. She was very well thought of by the kids and the parents.
These people were used to a limited amount of social interaction. They were used to no television, radio, or outside entertainment. They were used to having only three or four books. A fiddler or guitar player for a picnic or a dance was a wonderful thing to be enjoyed. Church was a social occasion as well as religious. The church ladies and their butter and egg money allowed most rural churches to be built and to prosper.
The men were required to do the heavy work but the ladies made it come together. The civilizing of the west sprang from these roots. Some of those ladies had spines of steel. They needed it. That’s a partial story of the homestead years. People were very independent, stubborn and strong but still needed the community and access to the technology of the outside world for salt, sugar, flour, spices, chicken feed, cloth, kerosene for the lights and of course, coffee. There are many more things I could list. Could they have found an alternative if something was unavailable? Maybe. How would you get salt or nitrates in Montana without importing? Does anyone know how to make kerosene? Coffee would be valued like gold. Roasted grain or chicory just didn’t cut it.
I don’t want to discourage people trying to prepare but rather to point out that generalized and practical knowledge along with a cooperative community is still needed for long term survival. Whatever shortcomings you may have, if you are part of a community, it is much more likely to be covered. The described community in this article was at least twenty to thirty miles across and included many farms and ranches as well as the town. Who your neighbors are, what type of people they are, and your relationship to them is one of the more important things to consider.
Were there fights, disagreements and other unpleasantness? Absolutely. Some of it was handled by neighbors, a minister or the sheriff. Some bad feelings lasted a lifetime. There were some people that were really bad by any standard and they were either the sheriff’s problem or they got sorted out by one of their prospective victims. These homesteaders had a rough life but they felt they had a great life and their way of life was shared by everyone they knew. They never went hungry, had great daylong picnics with the neighbors, and knew everyone personally within twenty miles. Every bit of pleasure or joy was treasured like a jewel since it was usually found in a sea of hard work. They worked hard, played hard and loved well. In our cushy life, we have many more “things” and “conveniences” than they ever did, but we lack the connection they had with their environment and community.
The biggest concern for our future: What happens if an event such as a solar flare, EMP, or a plague takes our society farther back than the early 1900s by wiping out our technology base. Consider the relatively bucolic scene just described and then add in some true post-apocalyptic hard cases. Some of the science fiction stories suddenly get much more realistic and scary. A comment out of a Star Trek scene comes to mind “In the fight between good and evil, good must be very, very good.”
Consider what kind of supplies might not be available at any cost just because there is no longer a manufacturing base or because there is no supply chain. In the 1900s they had the railroads as a lifeline from the industrial east.
One of the greatest advantages we have is access to a huge amount of information about our world, how things work and everything in our lives. We need to be smart enough to learn/understand as much as possible and store references for all the rest. Some of us don’t sleep well at night as we are well aware of how fragile our society and technological infrastructure is. Trying to live the homesteader’s life would be very painful for most of us. I would prefer not to. I hope and pray it doesn’t ever come to that.How long would it take us to rebuild the tools for recovery to the early 1900 levels? Beans? There was almost always a pot of beans on the stove in the winter time. Chickens and a couple of milk cows provided needed food to balance the larder. They could not have supported a growing family without these two resources.
Preppgroup 