We’re not just inching toward a cashless society—we’re sleepwalking into it. And for those of us who value independence, privacy, and real preparedness, that’s a damn problem.
The push for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)—like the “digital euro” or the potential U.S. “digital dollar”—isn’t just about modernizing the economy. It’s about control. Governments want total visibility—and eventually control—over how, when, and where you spend your money. This is the antithesis of everything this country was founded on.
CBDCs Are a Prepping Red Flag
Once cash is gone, so is your financial privacy. Every transaction tracked. Every purchase logged. Your economic identity, habits, affiliations, even your prepping activities—exposed to anyone with access to your digital footprint.
For the prepping and off-grid community, this is not a hypothetical scenario. This is the kind of centralized control grid we prepare against. And yet, the system is being built—not with jackboots—but with convenience and apathy.
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Bitcoin, the Feds, and a “Strategic Reserve”
On top of that, there’s now a growing concern that even cryptocurrency—once a symbol of financial independence—is being absorbed into the state apparatus.
In March 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile. These reserves are made up of seized crypto assets, primarily bitcoin, now being managed and hoarded by the federal government. Treasury and Commerce are developing acquisition strategies, and agencies are required to inventory all digital assets they hold.
On the surface, this might sound pro-crypto. But centralized government control of decentralized assets is a massive red flag. When the government begins amassing and controlling bitcoin—while simultaneously exploring the rollout of a fully trackable CBDC—you should be asking yourself: who really owns crypto anymore?
The strategic narrative might be about national prosperity, but for preppers, it reeks of consolidation, surveillance, and manipulation. Especially when we’re being told the U.S. won’t sell these assets—only “strategically steward” them.
Digital Payments, Social Scores, and the Road to Tyranny
What most people don’t understand is that digital payments are more than just convenient—they’re the perfect vehicle for surveillance and behavioral control. Once every transaction is digital, centralized powers can not only see everything—you’ve also handed them the tools to manipulate and control your actions in real-time.
Look no further than China, where the government runs a social credit system. Citizens are rewarded or punished based on their behavior—travel, online speech, purchases, even who they associate with. People with low scores have been banned from flying, taking high-speed trains, enrolling their kids in good schools, or even booking hotels. In other words, they’ve been digitally erased from society.
Think that can’t happen here? Wake up. Once CBDCs are in place, the infrastructure is already built. Just like with censorship on social media, the narrative will be wrapped in “safety” or “misinformation control”—but the effect is the same. Speak out, buy the wrong book, donate to the wrong group, or just prepare in ways the government doesn’t like—and suddenly, your access to your money is throttled, or gone altogether.
In a fully digital economy, financial access becomes a privilege—not a right. And privileges can be revoked.
That’s not freedom. That’s digital feudalism.
The Digital Dollar and Negative Rates
If physical cash is eliminated and you’re locked into a digital-only system, you lose your last escape hatch from government monetary policy. Want to withdraw your money to avoid negative interest rates? You can’t. Want to donate to a cause the government doesn’t like? Good luck.
Digital dollars can be frozen, throttled, restricted by algorithm, or devalued at will. And if you think that’s extreme, just ask Canadian truckers what happened when they protested the wrong way.
This isn’t economic policy—it’s economic programming.
No Privacy, No Freedom
Cash is anonymous. And that anonymity matters. It’s not about hiding illegal activity—it’s about living freely. When every cup of coffee, gas station stop, or ammo purchase is recorded, you’re not just a customer. You’re a data point in a social control matrix.
A government that controls your money controls you. And if that money is programmable, they can decide what you’re allowed to buy, when, and how much. This is Orwell-level stuff. And it’s happening.
Prepping for a Cashless Control Grid
This isn’t about resisting technology—it’s about resisting centralized power.
Here’s how to get ahead of the coming clampdown:
Keep Physical Cash on Hand: It’s already getting harder to use, which means it’s getting more valuable in a crisis.
Diversify into Tangibles: Precious metals, barter goods, long-shelf-life supplies. Assets that don’t require a digital handshake.
Use Privacy-Focused Crypto Cautiously: Monero, Bitcoin Lightning, self-custodied wallets—but assume surveillance is increasing.
Build Local Barter Networks: Trust and trade systems that bypass central banks and keep value in your community.
Stay Vigilant: Government policies on crypto are shifting fast. What’s legal today could be criminalized tomorrow under the guise of “safety” or “national security.”
This country was founded by people who said hell no to government overreach. It wasn’t about comfort—it was about freedom. And freedom isn’t safe, sanitized, or convenient.
Is a cashless society about progress—or is it about power. Preppers know that when the system gets too centralized, too controlled, and too damn arrogant, the only solution is to be ready to live outside it.
Recent world crises and the resultant weakening of the global economy has left many fearing the worst. There is talk of a global recession, or worse yet, a complete collapse of the economy.
While it is impossible to say whether such a severe economic downturn is upon us, understanding how to survive a potential economic collapse (whether now or in the future) could save you and your family when the times get tough.
WHAT IS AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE?
An economic collapse is defined as a severe breakdown of the economy at a national, regional, or territorial level. It is a broad term used to describe bad economic conditions that are not part of the ordinary business cycle of expansion and contraction.
An economic collapse usually signals the start of a significant economic contraction, recession, or depression, which can last months or even many years.
WHAT CAUSES AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE?
There are various events and circumstances that can trigger an economic collapse, which makes it difficult to attribute it to a single cause. An economic collapse can happen suddenly as a result of an unexpected crisis such as the onset of a war, natural disaster, political unrest, and various other events.
It can also be the culmination of a series of events or ongoing circumstances which signal a weakening and fragility of the economy.
WHAT ARE THE RESULTS OF AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE?
The results of an economic collapse are equally difficult to predict, as the ripple effects of a severe economic downturn are widespread and impossible to accurately track. Some general and obvious results of an economic collapse are:
A rise in job loss and unemployment.
Loss of value of investment markets which results in the average investor losing significant value in their portfolio.
Slowing of production, and therefore less new innovation, fewer startups, and so forth.
A potential hyperinflationary environment in extreme cases where the cost of basic items increases dramatically.
An increase in poverty which can also lead to crime, civil unrest, and various other social issues.
Widespread business failures leading to shutting down of companies and laying off of staff.
HOW TO PREPARE FOR AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE
Preparation is key in order to successfully survive an economic collapse. It is important to not become too complacent when the good times are rolling, as you never know when the situation may change for the worse.
Follow these practical guidelines to ensure you are well prepared :
1. KEEP AN EMERGENCY FUND
Having liquid cash safely deposited in a savings account with your bank can be a lifesaver in times of economic crisis. First of it all, it will retain its value while market linked assets such as equities deteriorate.
Secondly, it will provide you with the best liquidity so that you can quickly access your money during a time of extreme need. It is recommended to keep at least 3 – 6 months’ worth of expenses in an emergency fund.
2. BECOME DEBT FREE
The additional pressure of carrying debt if there is an economic collapse can put you in an extremely difficult situation. You should start working towards becoming debt free today.
This will reduce your monthly expenditure and will keep you from landing up in a precarious position should you lose your job in the future. Begin by paying off your highest interest debt such as credit cards and other short-term loans, and then move onto lower interest debts such as house mortgages.
3. CREATE ADDITIONAL INCOME SOURCES
The risk of losing your primary job is elevated during an economic recession or collapse. You can mitigate the negative consequences of this by creating additional sources of income now before the bad times are afoot.
We live in an age of boundless opportunities to make money on the side remotely. You can start your own web business or do freelance consulting work.
Even if you have a great job, it is well worth diversifying your income sources and establishing other ways to sustain yourself. Even a few hundred dollars a month can make a big difference in a time of need.
4. REDUCE UNNECESSARY SPENDING
Most people tend to spend recklessly when times are good and then suddenly try to adjust when there is a downturn or they lose their job. This is a big mistake for two reasons:
Firstly, if you make overspending a habit in your regular life, it becomes extremely difficult to adjust your spending habits when you need to do so. If you practice living with less even during the good times, it will be much easier during a financial squeeze.
Secondly, wasting unnecessary money on a regular basis means you have less to put into savings each month. We spoke about the importance of having an emergency fund, and living off less now can help you keep that fund growing for when the rainy day comes.
5. MAINTAIN A DIVERSIFIED INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO
Entire markets and industries can deteriorate during an economic collapse, while others might be more protected. Maintaining a diversified investment portfolio will ensure that you are not overexposed to one specific asset class, sector of the economy, or graphical region.
While your overall asset value might still decline significantly, you will be more protected from the risk of complete financial ruin if you keep your eggs in different baskets.
6. STOCKPILE FOOD AND OTHER SUPPLIES
During severe economic collapses, like the one experienced by Venezuela in current times, or the Great Depression of the 1930s, even things like basic food and other supplies can be in shortage.
Even if supplies are available, a hyperinflationary environment can make basic necessities completely unaffordable. It is always a good idea to keep a stockpile of food and other essential supplies (e.g., medicines, toiletries, paper supplies, tools, etc.) that can last you more than a year in tough times. This may also protect you from other crises such as natural disasters, war, etc.
One step further is to learn to grow your own food. If you have a small garden in which you could plant a few crops, start learning how to prepare the soil and grow some basic fruit and vegetables. Not only will it make you less reliant on a potentially failing economic system, but will be an extremely rewarding process too.
7. LEARN BASIC SKILLS
Basic DIY skills are invaluable during an economic crisis. Instead of paying someone to repair your car or fix your house, you can do it yourself for free. You could even earn some additional income by providing these services to others. Examples of basic skills that can save you money and bring great fulfilment during difficult times include things like:
Baking bread and making other foot items from scratch (e.g., pickles, jams, fermented vegetables, yoghurt, etc.)
Growing your own vegetables and herbs
Sewing
First aid and caring for a sick child
Mechanic work such as fixing cars, motorbikes, bicycles, etc.
Building and repairing household items such as furniture and shelves
Basic electrical and plumbing work
8. ESTABLISH STRONG CONNECTIONS
One of your most valuable resources are the people who are close to you. When times are difficult, it is important to work together with close friends and family to overcome the challenges.
You will have a much better chance of making it through compared to trying to tough it out alone. Start building strong relationships with those who are close to you, like neighbours, friends, and family. Having the mutual understanding that you can depend on each other in difficult times is a great comfort.
You can also practice the habit of mutual exchange (i.e., bartering), where you offer your skills in exchange for something that the other can give. This can help you circumvent the traditional economy and help you move more towards the “sharing economy”. This also reminds us of the importance of learning as many basic skills as possible, so that you may help others in need and receive their support in kind.
HOW TO SURVIVE DURING AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE
Hopefully you will be well prepared to deal with an economic collapse when it comes having followed the above steps. However, it is impossible to perfectly predict how a collapse in the economy will play out, and you will need to deal with the situation that is presented to you at the time. Here are a few additional steps you may need to take when you are actually faced with an economic collapse:
1. DISCUSS THE SITUATION WITH YOUR HOUSEHOLD
The very first thing you should do is sit down with the members of your household and discuss the situation with them. Go over your finances together and work together to come up with a plan of how you will navigate these difficult times together.
It is important that you are all on the same page, but also to know that everyone has their own approach and attitude to dealing with money. How you resolve these differences and work together will have a big impact on your ability to deal with the challenging times, and strengthen your relationships in the process.
2. FURTHER REDUCE EXPENSES AS NEEDED
In preparation for a recession, you would have practiced living off less. When you are faced with an actual economic collapse, you may have to further adjust your spending habits to be able to cover your monthly expenses. In most cases, it is quite possible to maintain a good quality of life while cutting out unnecessary expenditures. Start by cutting out spending on all the things which are not necessary for you to live on, and finding ways to reduce the costs of the things you do need. Some ways that you may be able to reduce your spending include:
Cut out discretionary spending (i.e., stop buying things you can do without) like luxury items, new clothes that you don’t need, new gadgets, etc.)
Reduce transportation costs by carpooling, using public transport, walking or cycling, etc.
Reduce housing costs by moving to a cheaper area, subletting out part of your house, or even moving in with family until your financial situation improves.
Reduce food costs by cooking at home instead of going out to eat. Also refrain from buying too many luxury food items that you don’t really need and instead buy simple, healthy food.
3. GET MUTUAL SUPPORT FROM FRIENDS AND FAMILY
We spoke about the importance of building strong relationships when preparing for an economic collapse. Well, here is the time to lean on the solid bonds you have created by not being afraid to ask for support. You should also help and share your skills and resources with others who are in need.
4. PROTECT YOUR HOME AND FAMILY
Extreme economic collapses and recessions can lead to social degradation such as more violent crime, petty theft, scams, and so on. This has been clearly demonstrated in Venezuela and is one of the reasons why so many citizens have fled the country. You may need to take action to safeguard your home and protect your family from criminals and other dangers during a severe recession.
5. KEEP EARNING
If at all possible, make sure to keep the money flowing in. If you have a job, go the extra mile to prove that you are a valuable employee. You should be seen as the last person to be laid off in your employer’s eyes.
In the meantime, keep networking and working on generating alternative income streams so that you are not left stranded without any income if your employer does need to shut down.
6. DON’T STOP ENJOYING LIFE
Finally, and most importantly, don’t allow yourself to be ruled by fear and sadness. There is no reason to stop enjoying and appreciating life just because you are faced with economic difficulties.
Be grateful for the things you do still have and keep having fun in the ways you can with those you hold dear. You should try to see the situation as a challenge on your creativity and flexibility, and encourage friends and family to come up with inventive ways to have fun without spending money all the time.
CONCLUSION
Of all the disasters which can face a society, an economic collapse is one of the most challenging to deal with. Due to its nebulous nature and widespread impacts, it is very difficult to escape its effects. Being adequately prepared to deal with a sever economic downturn before it arises, and knowing how to respond when you are faced with it, is vital in order to make it through intact.
You will probably have to accept that you will be impacted one way or another, but the severity can be greatly reduced with the right approach. Most important of all is to continue living with joy and hope in the midst of the difficult times, and not get sucked into needless fear and anxiety.
It started early—just another Monday morning. You rolled over, hit the alarm, and asked Alexa for the weather. Silence. Your Ring camera was dead. The banking app wouldn’t load. Even your coffee maker’s “smart” setting was useless. You figured it was the Wi-Fi, until you saw the headlines: Amazon Web Services had crashed.
For a few hours, the modern world froze. Flights delayed. Payments stalled. People locked out of their own homes, cars, and accounts. Then, just as fast as it went down, everything started coming back online.
But what happens when it doesn’t? What happens when the fix never comes, when the “temporary outage” becomes the moment everyone realizes just how dependent—and vulnerable—we’ve all become?
For Anyone Paying Attention: The System Just Proved How Fragile It Really Is
Early this morning, Amazon Web Services went down—again. For several hours, the backbone of the modern internet collapsed, knocking out everything from Snapchat and Reddit to airline systems, payment apps, and even Ring home-security cameras.
This isn’t hyperbole, Amazon controls 30% of the global cloud-infrastructure market.
What happened today wasn’t just a “glitch.” It was a wake-up call for a world that’s gotten lazy, dependent, and too damn trusting of big tech. One internal failure inside Amazon Web Services—and suddenly banking apps, airlines, delivery systems, home security networks, and half the entertainment world froze in place. That’s not progress. That’s a single point of failure on a global scale.
People talk about preparedness like it’s a hobby. But this is why it matters. When one company’s servers hiccup and millions of people can’t communicate, shop, or even unlock their doors, it shows how fragile the entire digital foundation has become. This is about a culture that’s forgotten how to function without the cloud holding its hand.
One Company Pulled the Plug — and Everyone Felt It
At around 3:11 a.m. Eastern, Amazon’s U.S.-East-1 data region went down, taking huge portions of the web with it. Within minutes, major platforms started crashing. Snapchat, Reddit, Signal, and Roblox vanished. Airlines couldn’t process check-ins. Banks and payment apps froze. Even Amazon’s own warehouse systems stopped working.
By sunrise, engineers were still scrambling to fix it. The cause turned out to be internal network and DNS failures—the backbone that tells the internet where to find itself. In plain terms: one mistake inside one company temporarily erased access to a massive piece of modern life.
They got it back up, sure. But for hours, millions were blind and disconnected. And if a few lines of bad code can cause that kind of chaos, imagine what happens when it’s not an accident.
The Cloud Isn’t Your Backup — It’s Your Weak Point
Amazon controls about a third of the world’s cloud infrastructure. Add Google and Microsoft, and nearly 70% of the internet depends on three companies. That means your email, your security cameras, your payment app, and probably your medical records all live in the same few server farms.
People like to think of “the cloud” as this infinite, magical place where their data is safe. It’s not. It’s just someone else’s computer, sitting in a warehouse, run by people you’ll never meet, bound by policies you’ll never see. And when that warehouse goes dark, so does your life.
We’ve reached the point where even basic day-to-day living—locking doors, paying bills, reading news—relies on a few private corporations never making a mistake. That’s not security. That’s dependency disguised as progress.
If They Can Turn It Off, You Don’t Own It
This isn’t just about losing access to a game or a website. It’s about control. When every device, app, and payment runs through centralized digital systems, you no longer own anything—you just have permission to use it.
Today’s outage should make people think hard about what happens in a fully cashless world. If a company glitch can lock you out of your money for a few hours, imagine what a Central Bank Digital Currency could do. It’s not just about convenience—it’s about surveillance, compliance, and control.
Outages Are the Dress Rehearsal for What’s Coming
This time it was an internal error. Next time, it could be a coordinated attack, a rogue update, or an intentional shutdown. We’re not talking hypotheticals here. Over 85% of America’s critical infrastructure is privately owned—banks, grids, telecom, data—all of it. Oversight is inconsistent, security is weak, and attacks are increasing.
We’ve already seen what one company’s mistake can do. Now picture a targeted hit on several at once: payment systems jammed, communication networks failing, supply chains freezing in place. It wouldn’t take long before panic, shortages, and violence follow.
And that’s not fearmongering—it’s reality. When the digital leash breaks, society snaps with it.
Prep Like the Internet Doesn’t Exist
If today’s outage didn’t convince you to take prepping seriously, nothing will. This isn’t about stockpiling for the apocalypse—it’s about building a life that still works when the system doesn’t.
Keep cash on hand. Use devices that work offline. Print maps, contacts, and vital info. Back up what you actually need on hard drives you control. Get radios, solar chargers, and barter items. Build local connections and trade networks.
Don’t wait until a “temporary” outage becomes a permanent problem.
Because if today proved anything, it’s that the world isn’t as connected as it thinks—it’s just balanced on someone else’s server, and all it takes is one mistake to pull the plug.
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London, June 18, 1982. A postal clerk is walking to work across Blackfriars Bridge. He looks over the edge and sees a man hanging from the scaffolding. The man is wearing an expensive gray suit, but his pockets are weighed down with bricks and nearly $15,000 in cash.
The man was Roberto Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano. The press called him “God’s Banker.”
Days earlier, Calvi was frantic. He told anyone who would listen that he wasn’t a criminal mastermind; he was a pawn. He was trapped in a massive game involving the Vatican Bank, the Mafia, and a shadowy Masonic lodge called Propaganda Due (P2). The authorities didn’t listen. They ruled it a suicide.
But look at the details. They scream ritual. Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge. In Masonic lore, the “Black Friars” are significant symbols. And those bricks in his pocket? They weren’t just weights to drown him. In the rituals of the P2 Lodge, initiates were often told that traitors would be weighed down by ‘stones of masonry.’ As investigative journalist Rupert Cornwell noted in God’s Banker, the scene was too theatrical to be a simple hit. It was a signature. The P2 Lodge wasn’t just silencing a witness; they were excommunicating a heretic.
If you’re a film buff, you know this scene. It’s the climax of The Godfather Part III. We watch the corrupt banker swing from a bridge as the Corleones settle their family business. But Coppola didn’t invent that scene. He reenacted it.
Here’s the paradox I want to explore with you. People watch these films for the violence and the opera. But look closer. These films are telling us something uncomfortable about how the world actually works. The Godfather, Casino, and The Irishman aren’t just escapism. I believe they’re Predictive Programming—a glimpse into a world where the line between the criminal underworld and the “legitimate” overworld dissolves.
We tend to think of Organized Crime as a cancer on a healthy society. We imagine the Government on one side (Law & Order) and the Mob on the other (Chaos).
But the best movies reveal the truth: these two aren’t enemies. They’re mirror images.
Look at the structure of a Mafia family. You’ve got the Boss (CEO), the Consigliere (Legal Counsel), the Capos (Middle Management), and the Soldiers (Labor). It’s a perfect corporate hierarchy designed for one purpose: to compartmentalize liability. The Boss orders a hit but never holds the gun. Layers of buffers shield him.
This corporate ambition wasn’t subtle. Meyer Lansky, the financial genius behind the Syndicate, viewed his operation as identical to any Fortune 500 company. He told his biographer:
“We’re bigger than U.S. Steel.”
He wasn’t bragging about violence. He was bragging about scale.
Intelligence agencies use this exact structure. Legendary CIA counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton described his world as a “wilderness of mirrors”—a landscape where deception is so layered that truth and fiction blur. In this wilderness, the “Good Guys” and the “Bad Guys” use the same tactics. When the CIA needs to move funds off the books to finance a coup, or when they need “heavy lifting” done in a foreign port, they don’t send a bureaucrat. They use assets who operate in the dark.
The Mob isn’t an enemy of the Deep State. It’s merely the Deep State’s outsourcing partner.
Operation Underworld and the Handshake
Let’s dig into some history. The partnership began during World War II with “Operation Underworld.”
Naval Intelligence feared Axis saboteurs on the New York waterfront. They reached out to the only man who controlled the docks: Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Luciano sat in a cell in Dannemora, but he gave the order. The docks were secured. In return, the government commuted his sentence.
The “Good Guys” shook hands with the “Bad Guys,” and they never let go.
You might ask: Why on earth would the government do this? Michael Graziano answers this in Errand into the Wilderness of Mirrors. He argues that the early CIA didn’t just view religion as a belief system, but as a “strategic weapon.” As OSS chief “Wild” Bill Donovan popularized, religion was seen as “everywhere, free, and individual: a natural ally in war and diplomacy.” In a holy war against Godless Communism, you use any weapon you can find.
This relationship deepened during the Cold War. As you see in The Irishman (and as the Church Committee hearings confirmed), the CIA recruited mafia figures like Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante Jr. to kill Fidel Castro. Why? An intelligence agency can’t be seen killing a head of state. But the Mob? They kill people every Tuesday. It provides the perfect cover.
The government didn’t even hide this philosophy—if you knew where to look. General Walter Bedell Smith, an early Director of Central Intelligence, admitted to the sheer scale of the deception needed to fight the Cold War. He told a government commission that the CIA had to operate with a completely different moral rulebook. He said:
“We have to be just as clever, just as unadvertised, and just as ruthless as they are.”
“Unadvertised” is the key word there. It’s the bureaucratic term for ‘illegal.’ And who is better at unadvertised violence than the Mob?
The lines blurred. Mobsters often felt like patriots. Sam Giancana, the Chicago Outfit boss, vented his frustration when the government turned on him:
“Listen, I’m an American citizen, and I’ve been a good one… The CIA and the FBI, they’re all the same. They use you when they need you, and they throw you away when they don’t.”
The P2 Lodge: Infiltrating the Church
This brings us back to Roberto Calvi and the bridge.
The most disturbing part of this matrix isn’t that the Government uses the Mob. It’s that these networks infiltrate the sacred.
In the 1970s and 80s, the Propaganda Due (P2) Lodge rocked Italy. This clandestine Masonic lodge functioned as a shadow government. It included journalists, generals, MPs, and spies. Their goal: shift Italian politics to the right to stop a Communist takeover—a goal shared by NATO and the CIA.
But they needed untraceable money. They found it in the Vatican Bank.
Through Roberto Calvi, the P2 Lodge used the Institute for the Works of Religion (the Vatican Bank) to launder mafia money and fund political operations. This is the ultimate inversion: men of power hijacking the sacred symbols of the Church.
Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the Chicago-born prelate who ran the Vatican Bank, summarized this cynical attitude best. When reporters pressed him on his aggressive deals, he retorted:
“You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys.”
The rot was internal. Before his death, Roberto Calvi gave a desperate interview warning the public about the forces inside the Vatican:
“The Vatican is a microcosm of the world… It is a state within a state, and it has its own laws, its own police, its own secret service. But it is also a bank.”
Francis Ford Coppola centered The Godfather Part III on this dynamic. The Corleones try to “legitimize” their billions by buying into the Vatican’s massive property company, Immobiliare. The movie suggests the corruption inside the Vatican ran just as deep as the corruption in Las Vegas.
The film is fiction. P2 was not. Calvi’s death reminds us that when you play with the devil’s money, you pay with your life—even if you are “God’s Banker.”
The Myth of Extinction
It’s easy to look back at the grainy footage of John Gotti in his double-breasted suits, smirking at the cameras, and think: Well, that’s over. We saw the handcuffs. We watched the RICO trials dismantle the Five Families. We patted ourselves on the back and told ourselves the “Good Guys” finally cleaned up the streets.
The crackdown in the 80s was effective at one thing: clearing out the “noisy” elements. The street bosses who loved the limelight—the ones who couldn’t stop preening for the tabloids—were liabilities. They had to go. But while the feds were celebrating the end of the “Mustache Petes,” the industry was simply shifting gears. The vacuum was filled by something far colder and more sophisticated: Cartels, Russian syndicates, and digital networks that treat crime as a logistics problem rather than a turf war.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Look at the receipts:
The Digital Street Corner: The Silk Road proved you don’t need a street corner to sell heroin. You just need Tor and Bitcoin. The dark web decentralized organized crime, allowing anonymous “vendors” to move product with the ease of Amazon. It removed the physical violence from the transaction but scaled the reach globally.
The Bank as the Launderer: In 2012, HSBC admitted to laundering nearly a billion dollars for the Sinaloa Cartel. This wasn’t a mistake—it was a service. The cartel designed boxes of cash specifically to fit the bank’s teller windows. The bank paid a fine, and no one went to jail. The “Mob” didn’t disappear; it just acquired a Board of Directors.
The Evolution of the Mafia: While the NYC “Five Families” shrank, the Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, quietly became one of the most powerful criminal organizations on earth. They don’t do flashy hits in steakhouses. They control the European cocaine trade and operate with the efficiency of a logistics multinational, pulling in an estimated $60 billion a year. They traded fame for silence and profit.
The Blackmail Economy: In 2023, JPMorgan Chase paid $290 million to settle claims that it knowingly facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. The bank didn’t just hold his money; they ignored the red flags of a man running a blackmail ring linked to intelligence agencies.
Honestly, the “defeat” of the Italian Mob looks less like a victory for law enforcement and more like a hostile takeover. The black market didn’t shrink; it merged with the global economy. Today, the line between a Hedge Fund and a Laundromat isn’t moral—it’s just paperwork. The flashy gangsters are gone, sure. But the Syndicate? It’s still here. It’s just operating quietly in the background, exactly where it prefers to be.
The Technetronic Mob
This is where the story gets modern. If you stop at Gotti, you miss the revolution. The new Don doesn’t wear a fedora; he wears a hoodie. He doesn’t hang out in social clubs; he hangs out in servers.
We are witnessing the rise of the Technetronic Mob.
The structure of organized crime has evolved to match the structure of the internet. It is decentralized, encrypted, and peer-to-peer. And just like in the days of Meyer Lansky, this new structure has become deeply intertwined with the financial and political elite.
Let’s look at three pillars of this new underworld:
1. The Offshore Casino: Tether & Bitfinex In the old days, if you wanted to move illicit cash, you had to physically fly bags of money to Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. It was risky. Today, you just use stablecoins.
Consider the controversy surrounding Tether (USDT) and its sister exchange Bitfinex. Critics and regulators have long scrutinized Tether for its murky banking relationships and lack of transparency. It effectively functions as an unregulated offshore bank—a “Eurodollar” market for the crypto age. It provides massive liquidity that exists outside the direct purview of KYC (Know Your Customer) laws.
For the modern cartel or syndicate, this is a dream. You don’t need a corrupt Vatican Bishop anymore. You just need a digital wallet. The “Laundromat” has been digitized.
2. The Shift to Blackmail: The Epstein Model The old Mob sold “protection.” You paid them so your shop didn’t burn down. The new Mob sells “compromise.”
This is where the Jeffrey Epstein case reveals the dark heart of modern Deep Politics. Epstein wasn’t just a pervert; he was a node in a network. As Whitney Webb details in One Nation Under Blackmail, his operation functioned exactly like an intelligence honey pot. He gathered dirt—video, audio, financial—on the most powerful men in the world.
Why? Kompromat.
In the Technetronic age, information is more valuable than territory. If you have video evidence of a Senator or a CEO committing a crime, you own them. You don’t need to threaten violence; you own their reputation. This is the privatization of intelligence tactics. The “Mob” has moved from breaking kneecaps to breaking careers. It’s cleaner, quieter, and infinitely more powerful.
3. The Cartel-State Finally, we have the terrifying evolution of the physical territory. Look at Mexico. We often hear about the “War on Drugs” as if it’s the State fighting a criminal gang. But that’s a category error.
Groups like the CJNG (Jalisco New Generation Cartel) aren’t gangs; they are parallel governments. They have drones, armored vehicles, advanced communications, and social welfare programs. In many regions, they are the State. They collect taxes (extortion), enforce laws (violence), and provide security.
This is the end state of the “Symbiotic” relationship we saw in Operation Underworld. The parasite has consumed the host. The line between “Official Government” and “Criminal Enterprise” has vanished entirely.
Cinema as Social Engineering
So, why does Hollywood make these movies? Why show us the handshake between the Senator and the Don? It isn’t just cynical bragging. It’s social management. Julian Huxley, the first director of UNESCO, would have called it essential for “evolutionary humanism.”
Huxley didn’t mince words about how this would work. In his 1947 manifesto UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, he explicitly stated that the new global order couldn’t be built by force alone. It had to be built in the mind. He wrote that the agency must utilize every form of media to prepare the public psyche:
“The press and the radio and the cinema… must be used to promote the growth of a common outlook shared by all nations.”
Think about that. The cinema isn’t just entertainment. In the eyes of the technocrat, it’s a delivery system for a “common outlook.” When you watch the Corleones, you aren’t just watching a movie. You’re being trained.
Huxley and the architects of the post-war order understood a simple truth: you can’t command a population; you must enculture them. You have to shape their imagination. By framing these stories as “fiction,” the system achieves two goals:
Normalization: You see corruption so often on screen that when you see it in real life—in the Panama Papers or the Epstein flight logs—you shrug. You’re desensitized. The “Underworld” isn’t shocking; it’s just a genre.
The Safety Valve: You watch Michael Corleone navigate the Vatican and the CIA. You eat your popcorn. You feel catharsis. You feel like you’ve “seen the truth,” which ironically makes you passive. The movie theater becomes the designated space for rebellion, so the streets don’t have to be.
This is the dark brilliance of Predictive Programming. They tell you exactly what they are doing, but they place it inside a frame labeled “Entertainment.”
For those with eyes to see, the message is clear. The “Underworld” is not under anything. It is right there on the surface, sitting in the boardrooms and the lodges, running the show. As the movies tell us: it’s strictly business.
More specifically, gold is a useful investment during times of inflation of paper currency or, paradoxically, deflation caused by either industrialization or a shrinking money supply.
For example, the paper currencies of the North and South in the U.S. Civil war had vastly different “gold premiums,” which refers to the differential value between a gold dollar and a paper dollar when the two were both in circulation. The South started printing paper currency which, basically, was to be convertible to gold dollars once they won the war. The South also was confiscating supplies with what amounted to paper IOU’s which, due to their defeat, proved to be ultimately useless. As you can imagine, the longer the war went on, the less faith people had in Confederate paper money. Confederate dollars eventually reached approximately 1/50th of their worth and, then, nothing, compared to real gold dollars.
In the North, the gold premium reached about 250% at its maximum, but every greenback was eventually fully convertible into a gold dollar, and the two fully equalized in the late 1870s. Paper money, after all, is far more cost effective logistically than bags of gold dollars. If you, hypothetically, spent the war charging $1.50 on average for your wares or services for every $1.00 you charged in gold dollars, then everything you got paid for in greenbacks would have been far more profitable for you if you held onto the money till 1880.
Gold in general is also prone to supply and demand as a commodity which, historically, has led to some odd results. In India, during British domination in the age of mercantilism, British taxation and exportation of gold out of India led to a lessening supply a specie in India. This resulted in massive deflation which increased the local value of gold exponentially. Indians who hoarded gold saw its value increasing year after year and decade after decade even as industrialization began reducing the real costs of many imported goods. This phenomenon makes economic data about India’s real GDP during the period and its PPP very contentious, and looking at just how much “money” was in the economy in the form of gold or silver would suggest that everyone alive at the Battle of Calcutta should have been starving to death by the late 1800s.
As far as the Great Depression is concerned, I would first ask you “Where?” The answer for Germany would be different than the United States or France or Argentina because of the complicated implications of monetary theory and policies in different countries with different systems. As a non-perishable good, gold and silver are as good an investment any. On the other hand, it’s not as good an investment as other appreciating assets such as fine art. And like fine art, gold was not used much by individuals for barter, but it was an asset you could sell to get money.
In general, though, had your family invested in gold in 1780 and kept it till now, it would have been one of the worst hypothetical investments you could have made back then. Even recently, countries with histories of high inflation typically will see people keep their savings denominated in one of the world’s major reserve currencies like the U.S. dollar.
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The truth is dark, but it’s something everyone needs to hear.
“Collapse” requires definition. Here it means rapid, large-scale loss of central government control, major state institutions failing, or descent into widespread civil war and state disintegration within ~2–3 years. Predicting exact collapse is impossible; instead, identify countries where credible risk of severe state failure by 2027 is meaningful based on current trajectories of political fragmentation, economic shock, elite fracture, external intervention, and insurgency. Factors considered: weak state capacity, severe economic crisis (inflation, currency collapse, debt default), active or escalating armed insurgencies, elite splits, loss of monopoly on violence, humanitarian breakdown, and major external interference.
High-risk cases (elevated probability of collapse or severe state failure by 2027)
Libya: Persistent fragmentation between rival governments, powerful militias, foreign backers, and a stagnant political process. Renewed fighting or collapse of a fragile power-sharing balance could produce rapid state failure.
Yemen: Ongoing multi-sided war, collapsing institutions, and chronic humanitarian catastrophe. A political or military shock—renewed large-scale offensives, foreign withdrawal, or fragmentation—could accelerate collapse in the near term.
Somalia: Longstanding governance gaps, fragile federal-local relations, and an active al-Shabaab insurgency. Setbacks in international support, internal elite splits, or major military defeats could tip parts of the country into broader loss of state control.
South Sudan: Deep elite polarization, recurring localized conflict, weak institutions, and economic distress. Renewed large-scale ethnic fighting or breakdown of power-sharing arrangements can lead to rapid unraveling.
Haiti: Severe political vacuum, gang rule in Port-au-Prince, economic collapse, and limited state capacity. Continued inability to restore security or credible governance creates a substantial near-term risk of de facto collapse in major population centers.
Significant risk (not imminent collapse but materially elevated chance of serious state failure)
Sudan: Though a major collapse occurred after the 2023 military–militia war, the country remains at high risk of further breakdown, wider fragmentation, or long-term partition depending on conflict dynamics and foreign intervention patterns.
Afghanistan: Taliban controls territory but faces economic collapse, governance legitimacy deficits, insurgent pockets, and humanitarian crisis. Renewed insurgency, external shock, or loss of central cohesion could produce deeper state failure in certain regions.
Lebanon: Economic collapse, dysfunctional politics, and Hezbollah’s armed autonomy create risk of institutional paralysis, local state-within-state dynamics, and potential escalation into broader collapse under a severe shock.
Burkina Faso / Mali / Niger (Sahel states): Military regimes, insurgencies, economic strain, and eroding public services increase the chance of deeper state failure or de facto fragmentation if insurgent gains accelerate or coups produce prolonged delegitimization.
Ethiopia: Tigray war and other internal conflicts undermined national cohesion. Broader spread of ethnic violence or renewed large-scale interstate war could precipitate severe loss of central control in regions.
Moderate risk or conditional vulnerability (vulnerable to collapse given severe shocks)
Pakistan: Economic crisis, political instability, and tensions between civilian elites and the military create vulnerability; outright collapse remains less likely absent a catastrophic chain of events, but regional destabilization could produce severe governance failures.
Venezuela: Deep economic collapse and institutional erosion have created de facto state dysfunction already; full institutional breakdown or fragmentation is possible if supply chains, security structures, or elite bargains break down further.
Myanmar: Military junta controls much territory but faces an increasingly effective armed resistance and economic collapse; prolonged insurgency and loss of control in border regions could produce de facto partition or collapse in parts of the country.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): Chronic localized violence, weak state capacity, and resource-driven armed groups make certain provinces liable to state failure if conflict intensifies or international response weakens.
Argentina / Sri Lanka cases: severe economic crisis combined with weak institutions increases risk of deep instability, though collapse into total state failure is less probable within this timeframe.
Key caveats and framing
“Collapse” is a spectrum: full territorial collapse is rarer than regional state failure, institutional paralysis, or prolonged civil war. Many countries slip into de facto fragmentation without formal dissolution.
Time horizon matters: 2027 is near-term; most state collapses result from multi-year deterioration plus triggering shocks (civil war spark, elite split, economic default, major external intervention, natural disaster).
External actors and international responses matter: foreign military support, sanctions, peacekeeping, or emergency assistance can prevent collapse or, conversely, exacerbate it.
Prognostic uncertainty: forecasting political violence is inherently probabilistic. The listed countries are those where existing evidence—ongoing conflict, governance failure, economic collapse, elite fragmentation, and foreign entanglements—produces a meaningful near-term risk profile.
Practical indicators to watch through 2026–2027
Loss of government revenue or hyperinflation/currency collapse.
Major defections in security forces or breakdown in command-and-control.
Large-scale internal displacement and humanitarian access collapse.
Significant territorial gains by non-state armed groups.
Public elite fragmentation (competing governments, rival capitals).
Withdrawal or escalation of foreign backers and peacekeepers.
Examples of typical collapse pathways (illustrative)
Rapid military defeat of central forces by insurgents combined with elite flight and international disengagement (e.g., scenarios similar to 1990s state failures).
Fragmentation of the capital into gang-controlled enclaves, paralysis of national institutions, and humanitarian breakdown (Haiti-like trajectory).
Prolonged siege/war between rival factions with foreign proxies turning the conflict into de facto partition (Libya-like).
Summary judgment By 2027 the countries with the most credible near-term risk of collapse or severe state failure are Libya, Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, and Haiti, with Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sahel states, and Myanmar carrying significant conditional risk. Many other fragile states remain vulnerable to collapse if compounded by major shocks. Continuous monitoring of the indicators above will give the best short-term signal of accelerating failure.
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More recent figures suggest that violent crime seems to be decreasing from the recent peaks, with the local police department using new camera technologies such as ‘Flock’ cameras to bring rates down. These cameras can detect license plates of cars that are of interest to law enforcement and alert the police instantly.
I study these trends, so I can give you the real statistics. Too many writers focus on the most populated cities and fail to consider all U.S. cities.
Readers often ask me such a question- which are the most dangerous places in America?
Of course, since I am asked such a generic question, it depends on what you consider dangerous. You’re probably thinking of crime rates. But I once wrote a about why Miami, Florida, is statistically the city in which you are most likely to die an untimely death, including characteristics such as vehicular accidents, weather, and crime. East St. Louis ranked second, largely based on crime.
The following research confirms that East St. Louis is probably the most dangerous place in the U.S. for criminal activity, which I’ve often written about. It dispels the common myth that Camden, New Jersey, and neighboring Philadelphia are among the most dangerous American cities (but they certainly have their problems). New York and Los Angeles aren’t even close to the most dangerous U.S. cities based on crime rates, which debunks another widely held myth.
Murder rates
If you only want a list of the top 10 U.S. cities with the highest homicide rates (based on the most recent data), here they are. East St. Louis is double Gary’s murder rate!
1.) East St. Louis, Illinois (164.88 homicides per 100,000)
2.) Uvalde, Texas (144.58 homicides per 100,000)
3.) Jackson, Mississippi (102.16 homicides per 100,000)
4.) Gary, Indiana (83.42 homicides per 100,000)
5.) St. Louis, Missouri (66.48 homicides per 100,000)
6.) Baltimore, Maryland (58.46 homicides per 100,000)
7.) New Orleans, Louisiana (57.83 homicides per 100,000)
8.) Detroit, Michigan (48.86 homicides per 100,000)
9.) Baton Rouge, Louisiana (38.26 homicides per 100,000)
10.) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (35.65 homicides per 100,000)
Of course, the tragic massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has skewed their homicide data over the past 365 days. But if you weren’t in that building on May 24, 2022, your chances of being killed in Uvalde are practically 0%. This actually serves as a metaphor when it comes to American crime, something that is very centralized and almost never puts the average American at risk, nor visitors from other cities, states, or countries.
Violent crimes
If you consider danger to include murders and non-fatal assaults, here are the top 10 U.S. cities with the highest violent crime rates (again, mostly occurring in localized areas):
1.) Detroit, Michigan (2,475 violent crimes per 100,000)
2.) East St. Louis, Illinois (2,155 violent crimes per 100,000)
3.) St. Louis, Missouri (2,145 violent crimes per 100,000)
4.) Baltimore, Maryland (2,021 violent crimes per 100,000)
5.) Memphis, Tennessee (2,003 violent crimes per 100,000)
6.) Kansas City, Missouri (1,724 violent crimes per 100,000)
7.) Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1,597 violent crimes per 100,000)
8.) Cleveland, Ohio (1,557 violent crimes per 100,000)
9.) Stockton, California (1,415 violent crimes per 100,000)
10.) Albuquerque, New Mexico (1,369 violent crimes per 100,000)
In a typical year, about 91% of the homicides in the U.S. are committed by someone the victim knew. In general, if you don’t consort with nefarious characters, your chances of being murdered, or even attacked, are extremely low. Even when crime skyrocketed in 2020 during the pandemic, only 1 in 170,000 Americans were killed by a stranger. The vast majority of those deaths by stranger occurred in impoverished neighborhoods, while very few American citizens living outside those neighborhoods ever become a victim of a violent crime. It’s an unfortunate issue.
On that note, one of the scariest statistics is to rank the top 10 U.S. cities with the highest rate of random attacks by an unknown assailant, eliminating the majority of crimes which are committed by individuals known to the victim and focusing on our worst fears, the unexpected random assault. I’ve estimated the rate of assaults, rapes, robberies, and carjackings committed by assailants unknown to the victim. This data changes dramatically from the previous list of cities with high violent crime rates.
1.) Baltimore, Maryland (1,021.0 violent crimes by strangers per 100,000)
2.) Cleveland, Ohio (828.9 violent crimes by strangers per 100,000)
3.) Oakland, California (723..9 violent crimes by strangers per 100,000)
4.) St. Louis, Missouri (719.7 violent crimes by strangers per 100,000)
5.) Memphis, Tennessee (620.0 violent crimes by strangers per 100,000)
6.) Albuquerque, New Mexico (606.2 violent crimes by strangers per 100,000)
7.) Milwaukee, Wisconsin (563.4 violent crimes by strangers per 100,000)
8.) Minneapolis, Minnesota (556.8 violent crimes by strangers per 100,000)
9.) Chicago, Illinois (504.4 violent crimes by strangers per 100,000)
10.) Cincinnati, Ohio (497.5 violent crimes by strangers per 100,000)
When crime between family members and affiliates is eliminated, Baltimore and Cleveland rocket to the top, Chicago and Oakland jump into the top 10, and Detroit drops to 11th. Most surprisingly, East St. Louis and Gary plummet beyond the top 25. Although, I suspect much of that is influenced by the fact that few outsiders in their right mind would intentionally travel into East St. Louis or Gary, both notorious places for citywide danger with essentially no safe sections. So maybe it isn’t a surprise that two smaller towns where few people dare to go has crimes that predominantly involve individuals who know one another.
Poor health
All of the rankings above take into account places that are dangerous for anyone, including both residents and visitors. I consider that true danger. But if you’re curious about the cities that are most dangerous for only their residents, with visitors not necessarily incurring any sort of elevated risk, we can analyze the top 10 U.S. cities that are most dangerous for their residents based on the probability of heart disease, the number one reason for death in the U.S.
1.) Flint, Michigan
2.) Camden, New Jersey
3.) Reading, Pennsylvania
4.) Youngstown, Ohio
5.) Detroit, Michigan
6.) Cleveland, Ohio
7.) Dayton, Ohio
8.) Trenton, New Jersey
9.) Canton, Ohio
10.) Gary, Indiana
Even more shocking, these are the 10 U.S. cities with the lowest life expectancy for their residents.
1.) Beckley, West.Virginia (average resident loses 6.14 years from the American life expectancy)
2.) Gadsden, Alabama (average resident loses 6.12 years from the American life expectancy)
3.) Anniston, Alabama (average resident loses 6.11 years from the American life expectancy)
4.) Charleston, West Virginia (average resident loses 5.83 years from the American life expectancy)
5.) Pine Bluff, Arkansas (average resident loses 5.52 years from the American life expectancy)
6.) Ashland, Kentucky (average resident loses 5.49 years from the American life expectancy)
7.) Springfield, Ohio (average resident loses 5.22 years from the American life expectancy)
8.) Florence, South Carolina (average resident loses 5.03 years from the American life expectancy)
9.) East St. Louis, Illinois (average resident loses 5.02 years from the American life expectancy)
10.) Alexandria, Louisiana (average resident loses 4.54 years from the American life expectancy)
Conclusion- Typically within the U.S., the farther you can stay from the mega-cities, the safer you are. These seem to be the locations of the majority of violent crimes, property crimes, and murders.
All in all, if we can boil it all down to one point, it would be this: It’s safer away from the city.
What are your thoughts on all this? Are there other variables you believe we should have analyzed? Do you think this is a pretty fair shot given the current data at hand? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
You have to define “economic collapse”. The Bush Recession of 2008 was a serious economic collapse and came close to being a major catastrophe. The Trump Recession of 2020 was also quite bad and we experienced economic hardships not seen since the Depression.
So, what would be an economic collapse to you? Could those things happen again? Sure. As bad as those times were, it could be worse. I think the economic collapse of 1929 was much worse because we didn’t even have the tools or the knowledge we now have. At the time, Herbert Hoover’s solution was to raise taxes. No one would ever raise taxes in a collapse now.
The US has, through it’s history, suffered many major economic collapses. If not for the war of 1812 it’s possible the US would have dissolved as the result of economic crisis.
In the old days there were absolutely no mechanisms to ease the pain of collapse – no unemployment insurance, no CCC, no food stamps or welfare, no tax breaks or rebates – nothing. When the economy collapsed it stayed broken until it fixed itself, something that took a long time and a great deal of hardship requiring enormous sacrifices.
The first big collapse in 1819 changed the fabric of the nation. It was caused by land speculation, lack of any banking regulation and the crazy inflationary practices of banks that printed their own money. When the crash occurred, they refused to honor their obligation to trade gold for their worthless currency. In addition, the US government defaulted on 19 million dollars of war bonds it issued to pay for the War of 1812. The crash was precipitated by world economic woes after the Napoleonic wars and exacerbated by poor government polices and inaction by President Monroe. The impact was major migrations of people who lost everything, notably to what later became “Texas”. Without the collapse, there would be no Texas. It also created the understanding that the country needed a national school system and began the policy of the “One Room Schoolhouses” as an organized, metered and supervised government activity.
Other huge collapses happened in 1837 and 1857. In 1837 the lack of a central bank and any bank regulation led once again to runaway inflation and the lack of real gold and silver to back the money. The major banks in the US refused to honor the gold commitments again and there was no regulation of bank of last recourse. The panic was started by a worldwide collapse in the price of cotton, America’s biggest export and resulted in a domino effect of unemployment, stagnation and deflation. In those days, the US was a resource exporter dependent largely on Europe to consume our resources and when a recession hit Europe, it crippled the US. Once the deflation set in, the collapse fed on itself. There were food and flour riots by people who had no money for food and no jobs. However, at the time, the US was undergoing a technological transformation and railroads, steam power, industry, and so on began an explosion that suddenly employed people at good wages and literally saved the United States. At the same time, the Gold Rush began which caused migration and forced a lot of specie into the system that was starved for gold and silver. The sudden need for lumber, coal, steel and so on outstripped the power of cotton on the economy and great fortunes were made. However, no banking regulations or central bank was created to help solve future problems.
In 1857, the first worldwide Depression occurred. The US had rapidly over expanded to meet the needs of local and international needs and when Europe fell onto hard times, the newly invented telegraph sent the news around the world which caused rash financial decisions the were bad for the economy. The telegraph was the main cause for the rapid and massive collapse as all over the US people became immediately aware of the crisis, which allowed it to feed on itself. It was exacerbated by the loss of the SS Central America caused great panic because New York, the financial controller of America, was depending on that gold to pay off its debts and back its specie. The US still had no monetary controls, central bank and all the banks printed their own money, as much as they wanted, resulting in local inflation. The Panic of 1857 was remarkably similar to the crash of 2008. The nations biggest food supplier collapsed, precipitating the collapse of the insurance companies backing it resulting in the collapse of credit and the bankruptcy of many railroads. Midwestern farm communities collapsed as commodity prices fell to pennies. Entire towns went bankrupt, but compared to the North, which was dependent on railroads and supplies coming from the South and Midwest, the Depression was much less felt and helped lead to the Civil War by making southern politicians realize the power of their products and the weakness of the Northern financial system. Some banking regulations were put into place and all paper money 20 dollars and over was ordered destroyed to help quell inflation. There were also limits put on fractional lending. It became among the first time the Federal Government exerted its authority over the banking system, something Lincoln would expand during the Civil War.
One thing we have learned is that nations need strong central banks; there needs to be tight monetary control and that we are all interconnected across the world, moreso than ever now. The US has 3 trillion dollars in exports – 1/8th of the economy. Should exports fail due to world crisis, America would fall into a self-perpetuating collapse of all its interlocked systems. Unemployment would skyrocket. The other thing we’ve learned is that no matter how bad things get, they always seem to recover. People have to eat, they have to live somewhere and they have to move around. This means some minimum level of economic activity will always be supported.
One need only look at Russia in its current circumstances to see how resilient nations are economically. The US could sustain its economy through government intervention alone. There would be hardship but it would be cushioned. So a total collapse of the US is highly unlikely. The US can grow all the food it needs and can produce all the oil it requires. Based on those two factors alone, the US can survive any major economic cataclysm albeit at some seriously reduced circumstances and with enormous hardship, homelessness, migration and pain. In a major economic collapse it would take enormous national will to prevent a dictator from seizing power – will we probably don’t have. A dictator could command the economy with all the pitfalls that entails, but it would also feed the people and in the end, bread and circuses have always served dictators.
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On the morning of January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti was shot and killed in broad daylight on a Minneapolis street by a U.S. Border Patrol agent. His death marks the second fatal shooting by federal agents in Minnesota this month, following the killing of Renée Nicole Good on January 7. Even as the details were still emerging, something far more disturbing than the incident itself was crystallizing in its aftermath: the number of Americans rushing to defend why shooting him was justified.
I’m not just talking about official government statements or legal defenses. I’m talking about ordinary citizens—people who claim to love freedom, who post about the Constitution, who say they support the Second Amendment—arguing that this man somehow deserved to die.
Their reasoning follows a disturbingly familiar pattern. I’ve heard it before. So have the Holocaust survivors I know. It’s the logic that precedes every slide into authoritarianism, and it’s being normalized in American discourse right now, in real time, by people who think they’re defending law and order.
They’re not. They’re defending tyranny. And they don’t even realize it.
“Why Was He There?”
This is always the first question. Not “What did he do?” Not “Did he break any laws?” But: “Why was he there?”
The implication is that mere presence in a location where law enforcement is operating is inherently suspicious. That being a witness to government action is, itself, a provocative act deserving of consequences.
Think about what this means.
If “being there” is justification for being shot, then no one can ever observe law enforcement. No one can document federal operations. No one can serve as a witness to how government power is exercised against citizens. The very act of watching becomes criminal.
This isn’t law and order. This is a police state.
In a free society, you have every right to be present in public spaces. You have every right to observe government officials performing their duties. This isn’t interference—it’s the foundational check on government power that separates democracies from dictatorships.
When people ask “Why was he there?” they’re really asking “Why didn’t he just look away?” And when citizens learn to look away from government action, atrocities become not only possible but inevitable.
“He Should Have Just Complied”
The second argument follows quickly behind the first: Whatever happened, he should have just done what the agents told him to do. Immediately. Without question. Perfect obedience to any command from anyone wearing a badge.
I’ve been in emergency services for over 40 years. I’ve been a firefighter, a paramedic, and a Fire Chief. I understand the need for scene control and the importance of following directions from emergency responders.
But here’s what civilians saying “just comply” don’t understand: Compliance is not the same as surrender of one’s constitutional rights.
When I’m working a fire scene or a medical emergency, I can ask bystanders to step back for safety. I cannot demand they stop filming me. I cannot order them to identify themselves without cause. I cannot shoot them for having a legally carried firearm.
The fact that someone is law enforcement does not give them unlimited authority over citizens. The Fourth Amendment exists specifically because our Founding Fathers understood that “just comply with the authorities” is how free people become subjects.
Every authoritarian regime in history has demanded perfect compliance. Everyone. And in every case, people like my friends defending this shooting would have said the same thing: “If you have nothing to hide, just do what they say.”
Until, inevitably, they came for someone those people cared about. And by then, there was no one left to object.
“Don’t Interfere With Law Enforcement”
Here’s where the logic gets truly Orwellian: The claim that observing law enforcement is “interfering” with law enforcement.
One person I know actually compared witnessing a federal raid to jumping out of your car at a traffic stop and yelling at the officer. As if these situations are remotely equivalent.
But let’s take his analogy seriously for a moment. Even at a traffic stop, you absolutely CAN film the officer from a safe distance. You can stand on the sidewalk and document what’s happening. Courts have repeatedly affirmed this right. The officer cannot arrest you for it, cannot confiscate your phone, and certainly cannot shoot you for it.
Now apply that to a federal operation in a residential neighborhood. Citizens have exponentially MORE reason to document what’s happening when armed federal agents wearing body armor and masks without identification or warrants are operating in their community. This isn’t interference—it’s the most basic form of accountability that free societies maintain over government power.
He also asked me: “How would it go over if you were working on a patient and I came over and interfered with you saving a life?”
Here’s my answer: If I’m working on a patient and you’re standing at a safe distance filming me, that’s not interference. That’s documentation. And if I shot you for it, I’d be arrested and prosecuted, badge or no badge.
The difference? I’m accountable to the public. I work in the light. I don’t demand that citizens look away while I do my job.
Why should federal agents be held to a lower standard than a small-town Fire Chief?
“Try That In Another Country”
This might be the most accidentally revealing argument of all.
“Try interfering with police in another country and see what happens!”
Yes. Exactly. In authoritarian countries—China, Russia, North Korea, Iran—you cannot question law enforcement. You cannot film government operations. You cannot be present as a witness to how state power is exercised.
That’s the point.
The fact that authoritarian regimes don’t tolerate public oversight of law enforcement is not an argument for why America should follow their example. It’s a reminder of why we fought a revolution to establish a different system.
When Americans start saying, “Try that in another country,” they’re expressing envy for authoritarian power structures. They’re admitting they want the government to have the same unchecked authority that dictatorships enjoy.
They think they’re being tough. They think they’re being patriotic.
They’re being neither. During World War II and after, at the Nuremberg Trials, they had a name for those people. Collaborators.
The Firefighter’s Perspective: Accountability Makes Us Better
I’ve run fire scenes where bystanders filmed everything we did. I’ve had people second-guess my decisions, question my tactics, and yes, sometimes get in the way.
You know what I did? I dealt with it professionally. I explained what we were doing when appropriate. I asked people to step back when necessary. I documented my decisions so they could be reviewed later.
Because here’s what 40+ years in emergency services has taught me: Public accountability makes me better at my job, not worse.
When I know citizens are watching, when I know my decisions will be reviewed, when I know I might have to explain my actions later—I make better decisions. I stay sharper. I remain professional even when I’m exhausted or frustrated.
The same principle applies to law enforcement. Agencies that welcome public scrutiny, that accept the presence of witnesses, that operate transparently—these are agencies that maintain public trust and constitutional legitimacy.
Agencies that demand citizens look away, that treat observation as obstruction, that respond to witnesses with violence—these are agencies that have something to hide.
What The Holocaust Survivors Recognize
I know people who survived the Holocaust. Not family members, but individuals whose stories have profoundly shaped my understanding of how civilized societies collapse into barbarism.
They recognize the pattern in arguments like “Why was he there?” and “He should have just complied.”
They heard these same arguments in the 1930s. Not about concentration camps—those came later. But about the early stages, when the Gestapo started conducting raids. When SA troops began “maintaining order” in Jewish neighborhoods. When ordinary Germans were told to look away, stay inside, don’t interfere with authorities doing their jobs.
Good Germans asked: “Why were they there?” “Why didn’t they just comply?” “Don’t interfere with law enforcement.”
By the time those good Germans realized where this logic led, it was too late. The machinery of state violence had been normalized, step by step, argument by argument, until atrocities became administrative procedures.
I’m not comparing ICE to the SS, although they do appear to run the same playbooks. I’m not comparing immigration enforcement to the Holocaust.
But I am absolutely comparing the logic patterns that enable state violence to escalate unchecked. And those patterns are identical.
When a society accepts that mere presence justifies violence, that observation equals obstruction, that compliance must be absolute—that society has laid the groundwork for tyranny.
Every single time. Without exception.
The Constitutional Firewall
The Founders understood this. That’s why they didn’t write the Constitution to say “You have rights unless law enforcement is doing something.” They wrote absolute prohibitions on government power:
First Amendment: The right to observe, document, and speak about government action is fundamental. It’s not a privilege granted by authorities. It’s a right that exists whether authorities like it or not.
Second Amendment: The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Not “unless you’re near law enforcement.” Not “unless federal agents are uncomfortable.” Shall. Not. Be. Infringed.
Fourth Amendment: The right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. Government agents cannot simply grab people off the street because they’re present during a raid. They need probable cause. They need warrants. They need constitutional authority.
These amendments exist because the Founders had lived under a government that demanded perfect compliance, that treated observation as obstruction, that used violence against citizens who questioned authority.
They fought a war to escape that system. They wrote a Constitution to prevent it from taking root here.
And now, 250 years later, we have Americans arguing that the Constitution doesn’t apply when federal agents are “just doing their jobs.”
Where This Logic Leads
Let me be absolutely clear about what’s at stake.
If we accept that being present near law enforcement justifies being shot, then:
No one can film police activity
No one can document ICE operations
No one can serve as a witness to government action
No one can exercise their Second Amendment rights in public
No one can question whether authorities are operating lawfully
This doesn’t create law and order. It creates unchecked government power.
And unchecked government power, historically, leads to the same place every single time: Abuse. Brutality. Atrocity. Not because every government official is evil, but because humans with unchecked power eventually abuse it. Always.
That’s not cynicism. That’s the entire lesson of human history.
The Founders understood this. The Holocaust survivors understand this. Anyone who has studied the collapse of free societies into tyranny understands this.
The only people who don’t seem to understand it are Americans who think authoritarianism only threatens people they don’t like.
The Warning
I’ve responded to disasters on three different continents. I’ve seen what happens when institutions break down, when social order collapses, when violence becomes normalized.
It never starts with concentration camps and mass graves. It starts with arguments about who deserved what happened to them. It starts with people saying, “He should have just complied.” It starts with citizens learning to look away when government agents use force.
And it ends—always, without exception—with people asking “How did we get here?” and “Why didn’t someone stop this?”
Someone is trying to stop it. Right now. That someone is the people saying, “Wait, why did federal agents shoot a man with a legal carry permit? Why is that acceptable? Why are we defending this?”
But they’re being shouted down by people who have embraced authoritarian logic without even realizing it. People who think they’re defending law and order when they’re actually defending tyranny.
People who would have been “good Germans” in the 1930s, asking why those Jews were there anyway, why they didn’t just comply, why they had to interfere with authorities just doing their jobs.
I never thought I’d see this logic take root in America. But here we are.
A Final Question
To everyone defending this shooting, everyone arguing that presence justifies violence, that observation equals obstruction, that compliance must be absolute:
What will you say when they come for someone you care about?
When your son is shot for legally shooting video at a protest? When your daughter is detained for filming a raid? When your neighbor is beaten for asking questions?
Will you still argue they should have just complied? That they shouldn’t have been there? That they interfered with law enforcement?
Or will you finally realize that the logic you’re defending doesn’t protect you or anyone else—it endangers everyone, it makes you the next target.
Because by then, it will be too late. You’ll have already normalized the very authoritarianism you thought only threatened other people.
That’s how tyranny works. It convinces good people to defend bad logic. And by the time they realize their mistake, the machinery of state violence is already operational.
We’re not completely there yet. But we’re closer than we’ve ever been.
And the people enabling it are ordinary Americans who think they’re defending law and order.
They’re not. They’re dismantling the constitutional firewall that stands between citizens and tyranny.
And they’re doing it one “He should have just complied” at a time.
In an emergency, you can only survive as long as your food does. Luckily, building a stockpile is easy with these valuable tips on the best long-term food storage practices and choosing survival foods.
How preppers choose food to stockpile
Preppers have criteria that they follow when they stockpile food for emergencies. These foods don’t have to be gourmet, but they need to be safe to store for long periods, can be eaten with minimal effort, and provide adequate nutrition. Long-term food storage is essential to prepping, and this survival guide gives you everything you need to know, from food safety to essential items.
You can only survive as long as your food can in an emergency. By stocking foods with long and indefinite shelf life, your only problem will be finding enough room to keep them.
Another tip to maximizing your food’s shelf life is understanding that the predetermined expiration date is more of a guideline for most foods. For example, man foods like cereal can be eaten up to 8 months after the “best if used by” date (they just won’t be peak quality).
Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats age differently. While carbs will remain mostly stable, proteins and fats can break down and spoil. With time, you’ll learn to look for the right signs of food spoilage and know when your food is safe.
Calories
When stocking your pantry, look for foods with the most calories per serving. Calorically-dense foods are key for survival since they provide the most bang for your buck in terms of energy. Foods like sugar and protein bars are lightweight and easy to store, yet pack a punch with a burst of energy.
You’ll also save space in your pantry and be able to fit more meals into your stockpile if you choose calorically dense foods.
Types of survival foods
Before disaster strikes, you’ll want to have three main types of survival foods in your emergency pantry. They’re great options for long-term food storage when preserved properly in ideal conditions.
Pantry foods
Pantry foods refer to the base ingredients for all your recipes and other dried foods with a stable shelf life. If you have your pantry foods stocked, you’ll be able to make a wide variety of tasty and nutritious meals. Things like beans, honey, and rice are stable pantry food items and can last very long.
Canned foods
Commercially canned foods are cheap, easy to stock in bulk, and a favorite among preppers. If you’re feeling really ambitious, you can even can your own food and keep it for up to a year!
Canned food is a broad term, but there’s guaranteed to be something in it for you. Because there are many kinds of canned foods and methods to can your own food, their shelf life can vary from a few months to a few years.
Frozen foods
If you’re able to keep a freezer running in an emergency, it’s great to know that frozen foods remain safe indefinitely, even meat. The quality and taste may be lacking, but bacteria are unable to grow on frozen foods (so long as it is below 0º Fahrenheit).
Frozen foods are not to be confused with freeze-dried foods, however. Most freeze-dried food has a safe shelf life of up to 25 years or more and doesn’t have to be refrigerated to stay safe.
This is because freeze-drying foods removes up to 99% of their liquid content, preventing bacteria and microorganisms from growing in your food.
Best survival foods
Now that you know the basics preppers look for, here are our top picks for the best survival foods and why we put them on this list.
Kitchen essentials
No kitchen is complete without salt and sugar, and neither is your stockpile.
Pure salts without additives, such as pink Himalayan salt and sea salt, have an indefinite shelf life and many survival uses. You can use it to cure meat, extend your milk’s shelf life, and stay hydrated with sufficient electrolytes and minerals.
Some salts with additives, such as ionized salt, are still a good idea for shorter-term stockpiles that are often rotated, but be aware they only have half a shelf life of about 5 years due to the additives.
Having sweet treats is important to balance out the salty, savory meals from your salt cache. When stored properly, sugar has an indefinite shelf life and has more uses beyond baking. While brown sugar is also stable, it contains a lot of moisture, meaning the texture can change or turn into a rock-hard lump after about 2 years. This is still safe to eat but makes it less desirable than sugar.
Sugar can be used as a preservative in jams and jellies or as a key ingredient in comfort food. Medically, it can prevent Hypoglycemia and can be dressed around a wound to be used as an antibiotic.
Grains are a stable pantry good for several reasons: they are high in protein and nutritional value, they’re highly versatile, and most varieties can be stored for as long as 25 years if packaged in airtight, oxygen-free containers.
There are 2 primary grain groups: soft grains and hard grains. Soft grains include things like oats, rye, and quinoa. They are stable for about 8 years on average, but this can be increased to 20 years in ideal conditions.
Hard grains include buckwheat, corn, flax, mullet, wheat, and more. These grains can last from 12 years to 30 or more!
However, avoid grains with long processing methods, such as brown rice and barley. These processes can cause them to go bad after only 6 months.
Beans
Under the right conditions, dry beans can last more than 10 years! Beans and legumes are also bountiful in key nutrients, proteins, fibers, and calories and can create a variety of dishes.
Not all beans are created equal, however. Kidney, pinto, and black beans are the most common, making building a stockpile easy. They’re also packed with 15 grams of protein per cup – not bad for a pantry food item. When they’re combined with grains, they also provide complementary amino acids for a complete protein meal.
If you want to expand your options, split peas, garbanzo beans, and azuki beans are great for soups, dips, and curries and store well long-term. Just be aware that beans high in oil, such as soybeans, won’t last as long as their counterparts.
Honey
While honey maintains its peak quality for up to 12 months, it is safe to eat indefinitely, according to the USDA. This makes it an invaluable food item, but preppers often forget it’s also a great tool in your first-aid kit.
More effective than sugar, studies show that honey can be used as a wound dressing to promote quicker healing as it contains anti-bacterial and anti-oxidant properties. This may not be as effective as modern medicine, but it’s better than nothing in an emergency.
Nuts
Although the high-oil contents of nuts make storing them long-term difficult, their high levels of essential fats and proteins keep them on our list. Pistachios, almonds, peanuts, and pecans are a few of the many options available.
With numerous ways to process and preserve nuts, you can make them fit your pantry needs.
Protein bars
Protein is vital for survival, but keeping perishable proteins like milk and meat isn’t viable in most disaster situations. This is where protein bars are very important.
These protein-filled bite-sized snacks pack a punch, are one of the most calorically dense foods you can keep on hand, and are loaded with fiber and vitamins.
When kept refrigerated or in a cool, dark, and well-ventilated pantry, they can last up to a couple of months after their pre-determined best-by date. Just be sure to check them regularly for freshness and replace them as needed.
Dried produce
Most dried fruits can be stored for up to a year, and vegetables can last about half that. They can be packed in serving-size portions for each recipe for quick and easy meals and maximize the freshness of the food. For these reasons, dried foods are an essential item in any stockpile.
Canned products
Since commercially canned foods are generally safe to eat after long periods of time, they’re great options for preppers. According to the USDA, canned foods that are high in acid, such as tomato sauce, are safe to eat for up to 18 months, and low-acidity foods can last up to 5 years!
However, keep an eye out for bulging, leaking, or badly rusted cans – these can become contaminated with Clostridium botulinum and should be avoided at all costs. Botulism is the biggest danger concerning home canned goods if moist products are stored in low-oxygen packaging.
If you’re dry canning goods like crackers, wheat, and pasta, don’t forget to add oxygen absorbers to the mason jars to maximize longevity and freshness.
Spices
Long-term food storage doesn’t mean tasteless food. Enjoying your meal can provide great comfort in disasters and emergency situations. Herbs and spices can quickly transform your meals and can effortlessly be stored for long periods of time.
Ground spices can last 2 to 3 years, while whole-dried spices and herbs have a longer shelf life of 3 to 5 years. Store them in a cool, dark place, and preserve them in mason jars or vacuum-sealed bags if possible to extend their freshness.
They are safe to store in the freezer if they are in an airtight container, but you should avoid storing them in the fridge due to the higher humidity.
How preppers store food
Storing food long term looks different than what typical homeowners may be used to, unless you’re a homesteader. Stockpiling food can require strategy and work to ensure everything is accounted for and doesn’t spoil. Here, we’ll show you how this is done using 2 main strategies.
Containers
The container material and quality can make or break your pantry. If your container allows moisture or air to enter, your food could spoil unexpectedly.
You’ve probably heard mason jars are the holy grail in food prepping, and for good reason. They’re popular for canning food and general food storage because glass is an effective pest and moisture barrier.
Not packing your food properly can also cause your pantry to fail. To keep them dry, you should wrap cookies, crackers, and dry foods in plastic bags inside an airtight container. Similarly, store your loose powers and sugars, nuts, and fruits in secure containers to protect them from pests.
Other popular container options are 5-gallon buckets for bulk foods and mylar bags to block out light, moisture, and oxygen (with oxygen absorbers). Dedicated water storage containers should also be in your stockpile.
Labeling
Labeling your foods before storage is a surefire way to protect yourself against spoiled and forgotten goods, which can be detrimental in an emergency. Label all your foods with their purchase date and expiration date. If you can your own food, label the container with the name of the food and the date it was canned.
Ready-made survival buckets and kits
Emergency food buckets, also known as survival food buckets, may seem like a quick and easy way to build a stockpile of food. However, you often pay for convenience over quality, taste, and nutritional value.
With just a little planning, you can create a tastier and healthier survival bucket for a fraction of the price.
Best food storage practices
You should use the First In, First Out, or FIFO method when storing food. It’s an efficient way to rotate your food, ensuring nothing expires. It can keep your pantry free of spoiled foods by preventing older food from being shoved to the back, where it will be forgotten. Since you’ll also label your foods, FIFO is an unbeatable practice.
Build your survival pantry in a cool, dark place like a dry basement, laundry room, or closet if possible. If you’re limited on space, don’t be scared to get creative with your pantry!
Unfortunately, receiving your necessary daily vitamin intake can be hard using only shelf-stable foods. Keeping a stockpile of vitamins with your food is good practice to supplement any missing vitamins and nutrients.
Final thoughts
With strategic planning and a little time, you can start building your long-term food storage pantry using everyday groceries. Many foods have a longer shelf life than what we’re led to believe, and many more foods can easily be prepared to store long-term. Become familiar with your pantry, build a FIFO system you can follow, and get creative with your stockpile. You never know when disaster will strike, but now you have everything you need to know to stay fueled.
Preppgroup 