Great idea to prepare and my wife and I have been doing it for the last five years. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, I'm not sure if our efforts will really do much. I think the situation may well be far worse than I was imagining when we started.
Some of my assumptions were likely too optimistic. The idea that there is a "we" in America and that our government is part of that we. The idea that huge conspiracies, of the kind that feels like its in full swing now, are unlikely. And, lastly, the idea that the worst case scenario was depression or economic collapse. I think I was naive with these assumptions.
Those assumptions led us to get a remote 50 acres in Alaska (helicopter delivered our building supplies over the years) and to dig a root cellar and to pressure can and dry store and freeze dry a sizable stash of food that will last my wife and me for about a decade if that's all we consumed. And, thankfully, to finally install 7KW of bifacial panels with 38KW of lithium and wire everything up to power our cabin. Still working on putting up the other 35KW of solar panels we have, installing a water collection system (right now we just collect rainwater into 55 gallon barrels but have to empty them in winter), building a greenhouse and chicken coop, and setting up our portable saw mill.
We don't see people unless we leave our property and it's a mile on a tracked ATV to get here from the nearest dirt road. We have moose, grouse, snowshoe hare, and black bear all over the place for meat. We have a large supply of ghee stored and consider it liquid gold since it will supply the fats that will be hard to come by on our property (outside of from future chicken eggs). We have tons of berries and edible plants in the summer, and we finally had a good potato harvest during our second summer as we're still learning.
We have a lifetime of wood to heat with, border hundreds of thousands of acres of huntable public property and rivers and lakes to fish from (would be a challenge to get to though, it's rugged here) and have almost completed the install of a Mitsubishi Hyper Heat to heat the cabin in the shoulder season using solar.
We own all this outright after two solid careers and liquidating our 401Ks, and yet because of my likely too optimistic assumptions, I'm not sure how much it will matter. It may even prove to put us in a poor position as things continue to deteriorate.
It seems to me that a real effort is being made to conquer the United States and perhaps "the West." We are taught never to attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, and while I think that applies when they get your order wrong at a drive through, I don't think it applies when discussing what is going on in our nation and world today. And I don't mean this administration, I mean since September 11th where something that has been happening for a much longer time has accelerated greatly.
I'm not concerned with partisan politics and I think that stuff is for show to keep us divided and fighting each other. I'm not saying there aren't real partisan differences, I'm just convinced that those behind whatever curtain exists are only concerned with those things for our public consumption. While they continue thieving from our nation, from our citizens, from future generations and they continue to suck the life out of our nation and perhaps the West.
I think my assumption that our government was the enemy we know, but was on our side, was incorrect. As we have had puppet governments that our government has controlled, I believe something like that has happened in America. Who is behind it? I have no idea. I'm sure the lines are blurry in our new "flat" reality. But I am not convinced those behind it are motivated by national identity as they once were. I think palms are greased internationally and strings are pulled in the same way. And I think those people are calling the shots.
What has me the most concerned is what seems overwhelmingly purposeful to degrade our nation economically and militarily. The security threats that are being introduced, the multi-faceted targeting of our military-aged citizens and those who would replace them, policies with our military leading to a recruiting crisis, the takeover of our media which has devolved from "biased" in years past to flat out propaganda today, and the great gains to control the Internet and turn it into a tool of tyranny that eclipses the old "kill your TV" days. I could understand our disastrous fiscal policy as being motivated simply by greed, but these other concerted efforts lead me to believe whatever is happening is worse than I had imagined. Because if what I think I perceive is correct, then the scary question is "why are they doing this." And the answer is truly frightening. It seems the way is being paved for an actual invasion and take over of the nation. I hope I'm wrong, I desperately hope that I am.
If I am not, then we are going to experience something truly horrific. We are a population that has been tracked, surveilled, analyzed, diagrammed and mapped for decades as we pay for multiple spy devices that we have allowed to collect on us. While I'm a fervent supporter of the Second Amendment, I am reminded that those words don't protect a right to keep and bear guns. They protected a right that was much broader, but is not exercised. While our nation argues over magazine capacity and plastic parts, the technology of warfare has changed immensely. While some are fond of saying "stack up" and Molon Labe under the illusion that their firearm will protect them, I think that assumption will prove as useful as a Native American's spear did in the face of gunpowder. The tools of violence have changed, they are cheap, they are numerous, and an AR-15, though useful against thugs and mobs, will do nothing to defend against what I fear might be coming.
Those in the cities will be easy to control. But those of us on the outskirts with our solar panels proudly boasting our independence, may find ourselves at the top of the most detailed list any invading power or tyrant might hope to have. We will be the first to experience the new cheap technological tools of violence that use the roadmap we have happily provided the data collectors along with satellite imagery and other technologies we're not aware exist. We are nowhere even remotely in a 1776 moment, Americans are nothing like any guerrilla force or defiant population of the past despite our folklore and bravado, and the weapons of warfare are much different than they were even a couple decades ago.
Because of this unprecedented disparity between us and whoever "them" may be, we are seeing the mask slip. The tyranny is becoming much more overt. All of our American sacred norms are being dismantled, and what is emerging cannot be described as American in any way. While our history is far from perfect and we have had serious issues in our past, something seems different to me. We like to say the pendulum will swing back, but when it comes to stopping a pendulum in its tracks, I think there's now an app for that.
Prepare as best you can, what else can you do. But I'm not sure any of us can truly prepare for what's coming.
en.wikipedia.org
But I doubt if they even understand this.
