Sharecropping The Apocalypse: A Prepper is Cast Adrift (2 page)

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NOW IMAGINE IT!

David the old prepper/farmsteader considered that his community was only just now starting to experience the kind of chaos, mass confusion and social difficulties he expected from a power failure of only a few weeks duration in his part of the southern United States. Several of the large northern states industrial cities had already been off grid much longer than his state and those over populated cities had already begun to succumb to mayhem, smoke and death as society began to panic after the great cyber attack took the electrical grid down.

“Just imagine what will happen when the power stays off for many MONTHS! Common folks normally take electricity so much for granted that they fail to fully realize for themselves  that without it, we are literally soon to be thrown back a century in time. I am positively sure myself, that by now a lot of people sitting are home in the dark have had time for a few minutes careful personal reflection on that particular reasonable assumption and are scurrying their asses off now to get the hell out of the cities and get themselves and their family to whatever safer place they could imagine. Didn’t much matter to some where that was, just get out of the big city and go anywhere that seemed like a more likely place to have a chance to survive. No gas (pumps) or heating oil, no more transportation of food, water shortages, failure of computers, medical equipment, banks and the monetary system, no ATMs, no TV, limited radio and other communications -- in short absolute and total chaos and panic is setting in for good and the fuse is lit. Society was going to implode.” David thought to himself a bit alarmed and wondered exactly just what indeed was the state of mind of his neighbors were in at this moment. Thinking about going, thinking about staying, thinking about robbing, thinking about looting, hunting, prepping, going crazy hell there was no telling.

“Were they still thinking more Sane than insane? “David wondered to himself.

“Were the neighbors on this dead end road remaining relatively rational or perhaps they were becoming foaming at the mouth dangerous folks to be around as starvation began to affect their minds? For that matter what was his state of mind? How was his thought processes holding up compared to those other folks whose normal realities were being shattered? He knew one thing though for himself, he was sure he could switch or adapt faster than most people to this crappy existence. He had already developed his own personal kind of “situational acceptance” of the disaster and went into his survivalist mindset and by doing so, he let his ideas of normal life and expectations of soft living go, thus greatly increasing his own chances for survival. Choosing to be a survivor is an action step that creates a mental change in the way we think and the way perceive or act towards a situation.  When one chooses to be a survivor they have made the decision to distance themselves or step out of  a” victims role” and are using  positive energy to actively pursuing alternate means to live through the problem.” David reflected, confident his knowledge and preps would allow him to hang on as long as it was humanely possible while waiting for the electricity to come back on some year...

He squinted and adjusted his old brown eyes to the suns glare and then somewhat causally looked out the window across the old drink glass stained oak dining room table for the umpteenth time today. He looked out about 50 yards towards his driveways entrances in quasi alertness and was feeling a bit forlorn and apprehensive about his sorry state of affairs. His mind churned and it wandered constantly back to the subjects as to what he could be doing, or what he should be doing to prepare his home further for long term survival.

He dreaded the routine of keeping up this boring, as well as nerve racking, peek and watch, paranoid or not so paranoid vigilance today. He was trying to stay focused and keep an eye on the main points of access to his property. He continually grumbled all the while about the need for him to be watching out for strangers or friends to approach his prepper shack.

“Damn your soul David! You just had to go and tell a bunch of folks around here that you were some kind of a prepper didn’t you? Oh yea, you made a buck or two doing it as a marketing technique.  You also enjoyed informing other folks to prepare for calamities like this and you knew the risks before hand of advising them that you practiced what you preached in regard to preparedness. Now, all of his dispersing that advice for whatever reason other than also trying to make a buck off selling prepper supplies to build up his own preps didn’t sound so smart for him to have done at this moment
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No, he should have been more careful. The less interaction he had with people outside of his prepper shack, the better off he would have been now.” David muttered, while admonishing himself gloomily. He then adjusted the balance of a green camo 12 gauge pump shotgun he had leaning against the table next to him and looked back towards kitchen window in case anyone might just come in from the woods.

There are many ways to “spread the preparedness word” or get the message about prepping out without unnecessarily endangering your family by being less public. He could have been a bit less lazy and more resourceful in lowering his profile. But he had always figured that it’s kind of hard to do anything secretive at all if you want to advertise products or sell articles about survival and preparedness to the prepper community. You got to get known as an expert for it and you got to live it as a lifestyle. Also for kind hearted survivalist fools like David, it is just a simple fact that it is hard for some people to just shut up and prep and try to keep a low profile. A bunch of drinks with the boys or girls and parties on regarding survival tricks or what it takes to get an article published. For some folks like David it’s counterproductive to their incomes or their psyches to just hush. Some people make survival so much a part of who they are, that they want to share every little experience with others, just like campers or hunters often do. For many people who enjoy talking publicly about prepping and sharing survival knowledge, it is something they do to help spread preparedness warnings or mitigate a perceived risk, for others it’s just a teaching or sharing moment. In David’s case it was all the above and more as he considered it partly pure interesting entertainment to participate with the community.

Many times some people see or hear something about preppers in media, then give that thing a name such as when we break the supposed prepper taboo of operational security (OPSEC) and that’s it. The speaker is belittled and is chased away by internet trolls or sternly warned by other preppers of their impending doom by neighbors coveting the speaker’s goods in a disaster. Loose lips bring the zombie hoards or whatever. The worst thing about prepping for disaster is the stigma it gives if you let labels affect you.

Oftentimes there is much more sense behind the way that you yourself have chosen to spread the word of preparedness and prepare for yourself, than observing some top secret doomer rational. CERT training, Red Cross, Prepper Conventions, Forums etc. are all good places to learn and interact in, just use some common sense.

David’s in your face, I am a prepper rationale was based on his belief that if you are thinking about gathering preppers in your community for when SHTF happens, then start doing it today. You do that task by talking to people and talking about how to prepare for disasters. He figured it was better to end up being with (close like family) people when SHTF or failing that, at least be known by other likeminded people that prepped and might cross his path someday, then for him to be left all alone and a stranger to others. At least they knew him as someone who cares to prepare.

David had no way for himself of knowing, or for that matter even finding out the actual magnitude of the cyber attack that had taken out most of the U.S. electrical grid. He didn’t have anywhere near enough information for him to even try to hazard a guess about the effects of the media reported scalar or cyber terrorist attack on the electrical grid. He himself wondered like many other preppers if this could end up being the real deal true cataclysmic event that ultimately caused the actual destruction of all the power grid hubs in the US. But with out any hard facts, his speculation was about as good as anyone else.

If it was the feared big grid down, double” damn damn” apocalypse occurring in the country and all of the power plants were fried beyond 6 month repair.. Then he knew things would spin out of control quickly and with a swift and definite finality. The outcome of what once was a technological and civilized world would soon be a smoking ruin in no time and of that he was sure.

However, the event he himself personally was experiencing of a darkened world without power could easily be nothing more than a localized disaster or a geographical grid down thing. You know one that could be recovered from in a few months if a concerted organized effort amongst the utility companies could get the grid back online even a few blocks at a time. The type of event that some radio announcers might say after a major disastrous event, don’t worry, the power will only be out for X many months in certain areas of the country until the problems were isolated or fixed.

Some more skeptical or informed scientists and engineering experts were saying perhaps the power would be out at most a year until efforts to restore it were successful on an attack of this magnitude. Of course one significant tangible thing to consider strongly and also, it is one strategy or theory that for some reason strangely no one in authority was talking about publicly, was that as the electrical power distribution stations are repaired, or as they were being repaired, these were the same facilities that can also be hit and attacked, time and time again with either cyber-attack or physical destruction. The choice of keeping the grid down just depended on, but was not limited to, how the original power disruptive attack was done the first go round by whoever had the ax to grind and said lights out America.

“I can’t believe this government was actually being foolish enough to think that the impacted and darkened cities could try to survive an entire year without power. Really? No freaking way anyone is that stupid. There have been plenty of their own studies performed and by all kinds of Federal agencies as to expected causalities and costs occurring after an EMP attack takes out the grid for example. That type of a dark world scenario is basically the end of our modern civilization as we know it and according to most scientific predictions and assumptions a staggeringly enormous number of the population will have died in the first six months from starvation, dehydration and violence. As well as one must stop and strongly consider the devastation and aftermath from the unstoppable fires generated from societal unrest and ignorance. These types of things will force a bug out on you. Look at how much of LA burned from the riots and that was when electricity, water, communications, National Guard, Police and Firemen were on duty to handle one segment of one big city acting the fool.

I think the estimate in the government sponsored studies for the United States casualties was something like 300 million dead or 90% of the population dead within a year if a EMP strike took out the power grid.. Put a fork in it folks, we are done and our butts are baked!” David though morosely. He knew that the turmoil and chaos of a long term grid down situation could not be contained and would be spilling over this country like a plague of flaming locusts.”

A 119-square-kilometer (46-square-mile) swath of Los Angeles was transformed into a combat zone for 6 days in one riot called the Watts riot in 1965. Times have changed and so has weaponry and attitudes. The government is going to have to be everywhere showing they are doing something about the cause of this disaster and will pick out a focus to scapegoat on at first before the food riots start. People are angry, they want revenge, better to direct this energy towards some other enemy than the racial, rich or anti government grievieances that will get expressed with fire and destruction. A distraction or a real need response will be used by the President to try to call the nation unsuccessfully together to fight a common cause. Problem is everyone’s common cause is to live for themselves another day.

“I wonder just what in the hell the government has in its devious little mind as to what it is going to do for, or to the general populace? Well they are going to first fill up the detention camps and prisons most assuredly and I bet they start with the various foreign terrorist cell member watch lists DHS has somewhere. Those are long subjective lists filled with religious radicals, terrorist wanna be`s, subversives etc. Probably that list will include a whole lot of south of the border illegal immigrant folks who will be trying to come in to this country now in droves because that now, even our lax but somewhat effective hi-tech  security is down. No grid power to run surveillance cameras and sensors on the border, greatly reduced border guards, fuel shortages, armed drug cartels, oh yea we will have all kinds of unwanted visitors aplenty. Hurray, now it’s easier than ever to get into the U.S.A, gringos are such dumb asses.

Mixed in with all the would be poor but descent hard working immigrants taking advantage of the situation will be disaster refugees seeking to leave their countries who are also without power etc. and the terrorist like or state sponsored foreign military special forces who somehow manage to get through the borders everyday anyway and they are not coming as tourists anymore. There will be a whole fresh new shit load of assorted terrorist cells moving up their troops from their bases in South America to create more mischief and a actual militaristic invasion of the U.S. of sorts which is not out of the question A few hundred dedicated soldiers or terrorists could easily keep us tied in knots as they blew power stations, upset shipping etc.