Sharecropping The Apocalypse: A Prepper is Cast Adrift (14 page)

I believe preppers should be thinking about the government and corporations just turning on and off the lights slowly and purposefully and you should feel that most of the time you can pretty much see it coming.

Nowadays, just like it was before the cyber-attack, you see that people are slowly accepting the various miseries of their daily lives and they are thinking that it is normal for them to do without some things and that they have to improvise or are forced to work harder for what they used to have with less effort.

The human psyche can get used to a lot of depravation around them if they have enough time to make the adjustment. But remember this and remember it well, “When people lose everything, they lose it” so consider that a immediate loss can send many into deep depression, fear, anger, jealousy and a host of other emotions.

The government and corporations seem to like to use this take away this and take away that until you feel like sometimes they are just leaving you enough air to breathe in order to keep you alive and paying taxes. Smaller packaging, smaller servings, more fine print, lower quality, increasing taxes, higher cost of living etc. Stores won’t be offering you green stamps any time soon to get your business and kitchen towels are not attached to sacks of flour anymore. Dish night at the old local movie theater or a free glass in your laundry detergent is an ancient hard to grasp notion in marketing that most have never heard of from bygone times. The days of getting a bit more for a dollar have been replaced with a continuous assault of a bit less, every year a little less.

What I am getting at here my fellow preppers is that for many of us economic challenges makes it feel like the poo was already hitting the fan long before this cyber attack was unleashed. Far too many of us were dealing with our own personal, financial.employment you name it problems that are now even more greatly magnified by this event.

The disaster of not being able to pay for their daily food has already previously hit quietly to your friends and neighbors with job losses and bankruptcies. A national disaster has already insidiously hit the Constitution which impacted all of us with losses of rights and freedoms under the so called Patriot Act along with destructive presidential emergency powers and executive orders that were passed.

All these restrictions, all these economic woes, all the manufacturing shipped overseas, the militarization of our police etc. are only going to get worse and those calamities are slowly gaining in momentum. Most people are not going to realize any of this until martial law, societal break down and fascism blows up in their face. Many of us prep now for such events, most don’t. Prepping for a job loss doesn’t usually include buying high priced battle rifle scopes and such.

Consider what is the state of your own local infrastructure? How about your individual feeling of safety with increasing criminal activity and elements in your area? Are you finding it hard to cope with Gas prices, food and utility prices? How many folks still have decent jobs and if not what are their chances of getting one?

How does this current slow collapse look to you? It is happening you know. Are you going to grab your bug out bag and head for the hills? No of course not, so why fixate on that aspect of survival now? What preppers are most likely lamenting about at this very moment is not having a piece of dirt and some shelter to call their own with some off grid sturdy cooking and heating resources they can rely on.

David’s solution was

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Preppers are infatuated with the exciting aspect of bugging out. Face it, it just sounds exciting and romantic. If you want to lose that notion quickly, just try it for a few days. The idea of grabbing a pack and heading to the woods sounds adventurous and somehow glamorous to the unaware or beguiled. Be able to do it, but prepare for everything you can in order not to have to. After that, lighten the load in your rucksack and just start with a soldiers basic, poncho, sleeping bag, shelter, mess kit, canteen and socks. Get the silver impregnated socks that are part wool for summer and winter. They also do underwear this way but at the moment it’s hard to find silver impregnated cotton drawers from the military.

6

EXIT STAGE RIGHT

“What type of advice do you think you can offer me regarding those FEMA relocation camps, David? I remember that you said you had worked around some and studied a couple of those trailer parks that were put up by the government after Katrina and other Hurricanes displaced people. I really hate to bother you today but my Grandpa said for me to come ask you about them and he also said if it wasn’t too much of an imposition, that he wanted you to come over to the house and talk to him. His breathing is bad as you know and he doesn’t want to risk the exertion of walking over here and having to walk back up that hill.” Will said as cordially as he could.

“I will be happy to come over and talk to him Will in an about an hour or so if that’s alright. I have a couple of chores I am involved in I need to finish first if that would be alright. Will, Are you planning on trying to get to one of them places maybe? Have you thought it through?” David replied scrutinizing the young man.

“Well David, me and the family got together and talked it over some and we come to a conclusion. We concluded that we need to consider for ourselves a backup destination to go to if where we are planning on going doesn’t work out as expected. We could encounter a glitch or two, it just depends. You see David we have got us some kin folk that live about a hundred miles from here as the crow flies and they raise maybe 15 head of cattle a year, sometimes a few goats or a hog or two occasionally. They actually live the farm life and have been doing it for generations so it sounds like our best bet to try and see if they will take on as boarders. We haven’t been real close at all to them for a long time, but they are kinfolk and Grandpa thinks that they will take us all in if we just show up on their doorstep with our hats in our hands and a growling belly. Grandpa grew up around there and his stepbrother Mani and he used to be kind of close. When I was real young I can remember my Uncle Mani taking me and his boy fishing on the properties pond, but I haven’t probably talked to the boy twice since then and pretty much only to answer the phone to Mani. Thing is David, Mani`s daughter got cancer years ago and they had themselves some serious financial hard times to cope with. All the kinfolks and family helped Mani out to some extent on those outrageous medical bills, but because he and Grandpa were a bit tighter back then my Uncle seemed to depend upon Grandpa financially a lot more than the others.

Mani hadn’t found that St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital the girl finally ended up at that time; you know the one that never charges parents a penny?  None of us knew of that option then and the other bills caused family rifts. Grandpa didn’t have much money and him and Mani sort of got into it over Grandpa saying it looked like the child was going to die soon no matter what they did and he needed to keep his cash money for his own family. They didn’t talk for a week or so after that and depending on who is telling you the story, Grandpa signed away his interest in the family farm because Great Grandma said everyone should sell off a little acreage from what Great Grandpa had allotted in his will to try and get Mani out of debt. They made Mani executor to take over the real-estate sale and everyone gave him power of attorney and that’s where things seemed to go sideways and different versions of the story change...

Great Grandma Elberta died within about three months of that document and since Mani had everybody’s power of attorney he sort of did what he wanted to regarding the estate. Needless to say he and Grandpa didn’t agree about his actions and to make a long story short they only speak on holidays and once in a great while to yell at each other about money.” Will said evidently feeling the cold air while he was standing with his ungloved hands shoved in the pockets of a thin light weight dark blue, almost black mechanics jacket.

“That’s a hell of a story, my condolences to you. Money can come between the best of brothers they say. You’re sort of between a rock and a hard place I guess Will. I can see why you all have some reservations about going to a camp or to your Uncles. I would suggest to you strongly though that if you can any way work it out with your Uncle, I would suggest that. Work on strategies for staying with your Uncle and try avoiding the relocation assembly areas if possible. As for the camps, well I don’t know what conditions are like now. I can tell you about the type of parks evacuee centers and conditions of the ones I am familiar with. Some of them still exist in one form or another or have been repurposed. They are not that bad but you should avoid them if you can. No telling who you going to be living next door to and where the camp will be located often times. You are always subject to transfer, relocation or further processing. One big thing to know about them places is that from county to county and from state to state you can’t compare them to each other. It’s a too many chiefs and too many tribes of Indians to deal with thing. Think of it as, who is in charge of whom and which tribe has the majority influence under whose authority. Each official or administrator running those places has various levels of experience and various mandates to follow or superiors to answer to and they create different camp rules or types of accommodations for the so called guests or refugees to bed down at.

I am going to give you a paper I wrote in college for Sociology, the Theory of mass Disasters later on if you want, its about 20 pages of how I suggested to fix what was wrong with a particular model of a type of camp that a lot of people don’t realize was both an experiment as well as a policy makers influence on the future of disaster reconstruction efforts. This camp I am referencing was in Florida and it was particularly chosen as a field of academic as well as federal agency targeted studies for many reasons. My reasoning for examining it in great depth was mostly based upon my need of graduate credits. It was also part of my Masters Displaced Persons certificate so that I could get the level of degree I needed to advocate for more holistic methods versus the prevailing judicial way of addressing the needs of displaced people.

In the United States or for that matter the World, field experience, opinions and wisdom does not seem to matter in policy reform unless you can evidence a higher degree of learning to be allowed a voice in their august decision and lawmaking forums. You have to evidence your expertise by citing other peers that are already recognized as having some expertise whether or not you agree with them.

In other words if you don’t have the accredited sheep skin seal emblazoned diplomas in your resume as a common man or as a speaker then you don’t get a voice or consideration as an individual that is worthy of being considered by political appointees for setting policy. Simple as that, uneducated officials, tenured professors, all fulfilling all the qualifications to the letter listed on the job application, or appointment. How the way the public will politically fund or support an independent advocates efforts etc. all depends on a worthless piece of paper that only means you can talk in the stiff regulated voice that has enough literary rules in it to rewrite the King James Bible in order for them to even consider for themselves to deign reading your stuff before dismissal to a dusty file cabinet.

I wanted to change those emergency assembly areas and trailer parks really bad and thought that by me gaining degrees and submitting my scholarly papers it could make some kind of a difference and save some people some unnecessary grief. I have older and wiser eyes and ears now and can pretty much tell you that nothings changed. Good camp commanders use common sense and bad ones try to look good by enforcing bad regulations. Apple and stick routine, stick and apple.

“By the way which of the compass directions are you planning on going in, Will? “David said, while sort of pointing his finger up in the air and wiggling it towards several cardinal points inquisitively, looking like the Wizard of Oz scarecrow.

“I don’t know, we are going back roads and heading sort of south west, I guess. Is there a camp that’s better or worse down that way that you maybe can suggest?” Will said, confused all the while trying to take in the fact that a one size fits all aspect had nothing to do with an emergency Relocation Camp.

“Well, if you are going south west then it appears to me that are you leaning more towards the panhandle of Florida around Panama city or did you mean more central southwest like towards Mobile, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida? I would advise staying away from Pensacola” David admonished, studying him.

“More towards Opp and Andalusia, hey that’s a question for ya, you old veteran prepper!” Will said joking at what he thought he could get by with regarding David’s discomfort with the word.

“David you were a soldier, what do you think is going to happen with those damned chemical weapon destruction sites down by Andalusia the Army runs? I know they been incinerating old munitions stores like mustard and nerve gas artillery shells for years down there for various disarmament agreements, but do they perform that with electrical power or natural gas?” Will said enjoying that look David was wearing that he evidently hadn’t thought about that particular risk and it vexed him.

“SHEEEEEET! You got me brother! Give me a second here to wrap my head around that particular threat for a minute. Holy smokes boy you just pissed in my pudding, let me think about what might go along with them things being shut down that might pose us some kind of a risk. Ok I can see myself in one mentally as a laborer or operator, working, working and zap the power goes out. What now? Never having worked in one of those facilities before I got to just guesstimate what happens now. There is an official prescribed shutdown procedure and it is rehearsed better than most business continuity plans rest assured. No lights, no problem the emergency lights will automatically come on with backups. I can not see what I am doing as a worker in the dark to perform my regular duties, but I have access to battery operated exit lights and I have mission critical lights illuminating key areas that run on batteries, generators or both, response crews, security, civilian responders ok I am copasetic. No problem, probably the plant workers have practiced the emergency shutdown or clear the area drill a hundred times, its military operated right? I say nothing happens untoward, no gas leaks, no problems the engineers already covered all known toxic safety issues. The plant is shutdown and secured safely and we are now in emergency response mode awaiting further orders.” David concluded.

“That assessment sure does make me feel a whole lot better, David. It is bad enough we that might be trying to avoid fallout from nuclear plants, but we also got chemical factories and military bases to think about to I reckon. What exactly is that school paper you were saying that you wrote about FEMA Camps? Were the conditions really bad or something?” Will asked looking very interested at what David had written as the outcome of his studies and research.

“I didn’t write much on the actual living conditions like the livability of the trailers or the palatability of the food, I concentrated more on the mandated strict seclusionary polices that were being enforced by private contracted security elements. You see FEMA wouldn’t let the media or even any charitable organizations representatives into the gated enclaves to interview the residents for benefits or to inspect and report on living conditions. The people in the camp had to follow very strict rules regarding any type of interactions with anyone out side of the camps fenced perimeter and it caused a lot of problems both for the guests and the non profits trying to help the residents. I will tell you about some of the ridiculous rules that can get you in trouble when I come over to see your grandpa in a bit.