Times like these always cause a little war between the two halves of my brain. One side says “This isn’t the big deal it appears to be. Stop overreacting.” The other half says “A year from now youre going to look back and say how did I not see this coming..all the signs were there.”

Such is the dichotomy and curse of being a survivalist.

You know, after 9/11 I remember thinking that while it was awesome to watch the military response and the amazing technologies that were deployed,  I also realized that those same technologies could be focused inwards at anyone .gov didn’t like…and, in several ways, that happened as the surveillance state finally sprang forth.

Now I’m watching cancel culture go global. Financial services like Visa and Mastercard are refusing to do transactions in Russia. Various industries are cancelling contracts with Russia. Online service providers are cancelling services in Russia. And I wonder how many people realize that the only thing standing between you and getting that level of cancellation directed at you is how you are portrayed to the public.

We saw this a few years back with Operation Chokepoint where ‘unsavory’ businesses were frozen out of banking services….and gun shops (and related businesses) had accounts frozen and closed. Now imagine the day when you’re considered a ‘person of interest’ or ‘enemy of the state’ or ‘a racist nationalist’ or whatever the bad-guy-du-jour is.

Maybe you run a gun shop, or a right-wing blog, or you ran for a political office on an ‘unpopular platform’, or you were on some ‘right-wing radio show’, or you protested a school board policy, or any one of the many ways you can offend the left. The unblinking eye of the media turns it’s gaze on you and suddenly your bank no longer wants to process your credit card transactions, your credit cards get frozen, your cell carrier drops you because you’re ‘a hater’ or ‘a climate denier’ or ‘an anti-vaxxer’, your local dealership refuses to fix your vehicles, your doctors suddenly cant fit you in their schedule. Congratulations, you’ve become what Orwell called ‘an unperson’.

So, observe how these industries, businesses, agencies, governments, charities, concerns, firms, and groups are all backing away like the Russians were radioactive. But remember, what they do to punish or compel others can just as easily be directed at you or people like you.

It’s probably not a bad idea to keep track of who these players are in this global cancellation project and be ready for them, when the media suddenly announces your designation as an enemy to [whatever] and you find that you no longer have a bank, phone service, a business, etc.

Whether its military hardware, police tactics, political pressure, or the court of public opinion…whatever can be used against others can be used against you. Plan around it….either stay so grey that they never feel the need to shine the light on you, or be resilient enough that when they do it doesn’t make a dent in you. But, regardless, be aware that it can happen.

You pull the trigger too soon and you have that awkwardness of trying to get your job back after you quit to run for the hills. Pull the trigger too late and you’re trapped with the sheep. How do you look at the news and what’s going on around you and decide when the time is to quit the job, yank out the IRA, spend the mortgage payment on canned goods, leave the bills in the mailbox, load the truck, and head for the hills?

Its a tough call….if I knew with 100% absolute certainty that tomorrow at noon a hot World War III was gonna kick off with nukes and all the trimmings, I would…not show up for work, not pay my bills, abandon my mundane obligations, pack my gear, and head for the Beta Site. Wouldn’t you?

Now, lets say that sort of thing happens and….you’re wrong. Well, crap…you really burned a few bridges there, didn’t you. Not the least of which is getting your job back that you abandoned.

So, now comes the real problem: you want to be sensitive enough to whats going on around you that you recognize the triggers of the ‘preppers point of no return’ so you can beat the Golden Horde before they clog up the WalMarts and interstates..but…you want to be realistic enough to not go full Burt Gummer in what turns out to be a false alarm.

I’ve seen this before, several times. Most notably Y2k where people burned a lot of bridges…sold prime property, cashed out retirement, etc, etc, to buy food and wasteland in the desert to drop a trailer on because they were convinced that ‘this is it!’. And….it wasn’t. Or people who were convinced the Fukishima power plant was going to poison the atmosphere, or some oil well explosion would taint the oceans forever with some microbial sludge dredged up from the center of the earth, or Obama was going unleash UN troops to bring in black helicopters…you get the idea. Short version: Pretty much everything you hear about on Coast to Coast AM never happened.

Current situation? Lets see – inflation, shortages, high gas prices, pandemic, race issues, balkanized population, polarized politics, Russians doing Russian stuff, etc, etc. And, from what I see on the internet, it appears some of the more….committed….survivalists are saying ‘this is it!’

My opinion, which is worth exactly what you paid for it, is that this isn’t it. It is my highly unprofessional opinion that this isnt the time to write off the career, mortgage, and life that you’ve built so far and head to the hills. That time may be coming, but this isn’t it. What it is, however, is a time to bump yourself up a notch or two in terms of situational awareness. Is not time to head for the exits, but it might be time to make note of where they are and what the shortest route to them is.

It’s kind of a joke but:

There have been a lot of moments in the last thirty years that had people saying “this is is it!” and…it wasn’t it. Not even close. I’m not saying everything is going to be fine, or that there aren’t things that are concerning. I’m simply saying that I dont think we are at the point where you throw away your ‘normal’ life and head for the hills. Remember that ‘In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass’ that we used to see on fire extinguishers or alarms? Well, IMHO, its nowhere near time to break that glass yet.

Of course, it helps if you live a life of half-in-half-out of the normal and preparedness world. Maybe you already live at your bugout location. Or you’ve already gotten 90% of our preps amassed. Or you already live a life of constant vigilance and self-reliance. Honestly, thats the best way to go, in my opinion – not a hundred percent Burt Gummer, but not a hundred percent soccer mom. Rather you live half in each world at any given moment with the ability to go one hundred percent into whichever one is right at the moment.

For now, I’m the person straddling the line between lifestyles. Half the time I’m the corporate 9-to-5, paying bills, watching movies, eating fast food, and shopping at CostCo. The other half of the time Im stacking ammo cans, buying storage food, checking batteries, networking with like-minded people, filling gas cans, etc. I think thats the best place to be right now. If it goes in one direction, I’m ready to commit to that lifestyle; and if it goes in the other direction, I’m well set to operate in that one as well.

Interesting times, indeed.

I remember reading news articles in the 1980’s about people fleeing Communist countries, getting to America, walking into supermarkets, and bursting into tears at the overwhelming abundance that was offered.

Were those stories true? Maybe. Coulda been Cold War propaganda. But, I’ve met quite a few refugees from Communist countries and, to a man, they’ve all a) said ‘yeah, this place is freaking awesome’ and b) they vote Republican. I had a neighbor from Poland back when Poland was still firmly stuck in the Soviet sphere. He could take potatoes and cook them up to taste like whatever you wanted…because where he grew up, potatoes were all you could rely on being available. As a result, you learned how to make potatoes taste like the million things you’d rather have been eating.

Had another neighbor, her and her parents fled Hungary back when Hungary was really kept on a tight leash. She spent a couple years living in a refugee camp in Canada before moving to the US and becoming a citizen. She told me stories about her mom struggling to get food and other necessities under the Communists.

And, naturally, I’d feel a little swelling of nationalistic pride…because, after all, this was the US…we have twenty flavors of Tang, two hundred channels, and fat poor people. Where else on the planet are poor people fat???

And yet…I walk into grocery stores, Home Depot, and Sportsmans Warehouse and the mantra is “supply chain issues”. Da, comrade….we have nyet inventory. Is supply chain.

There is nothing romantic, noble, egalitarian, or equitable about living in Third World conditions. At the moment there is running water, electricity, food to be had, fuel to be purchased, so all is good. Except….it’s slowly getting pinched off. Either the ‘supply chain issues’ empty the shelves, or creeping inflation and rising prices force you to leave those goods on the shelf. Either way, it winds up with you coming back from the store with less than youre used to.

When it takes $25 dollars to buy what cost $20 three months ago, but you’re still making the same wage, that is your lifeline being slowly choked off. And when you do decide to go ahead and pay the inflated price you’re told that, sorry, we’re out of stock. And that cinch tightens a bit more.

And, personally, I see it getting worse before it gets better. Even if there’s a political remedy, its going to be a while before the offices change hands. Thats plenty of time for your savings and retirement to be slowly dissolved by inflation. Assuming you keep your job as employers close because they cant hire people, or vaccine mandates cause them to fire people.

Me..I’m playing it close to the vest. I do my job(s), bank my money, buy some metals, keep the freezer topped off, and keep on top of the news. It’s only a matter of time before the morning comes where you stagger out of bed, put on your bathrobe, plop in front of the computer, and…Russia invades Ukraine, inflation peaks, someone shoots up a school, lockdowns are initiated, new taxes are levied, travel bans are brought to bear, etc, etc.

If there’s any advice I would offer to someone in these rather interesting times it would be this: be deliberate in everything you do. Think through the consequences several layers down of any action you take, or don’t take. Making mistakes in the current environment is a luxury that most people can’t afford too often.

Theres a false economy, of sorts, in preparedness regarding ‘backup’, ‘bugout’, or ‘last ditch’ gear and guns. For example, someone will have some cool Tier 1 guns and gear for ‘the boogaloo’, and then they’ll say that at their supersecret bugout location they’ve got a couple HiPoints, a few Mosin Nagants with cases of 7.62x54R, and a few Maverick 88 shotguns as their ‘backup’ in case they have to leave home with nothing but the clothes on their back and the gear in their vehicle.

Now, let’s examine that thought for a second. What is the circumstance under which you would be forced to use that ‘backup’ gear? Well, reasonably, that circumstance would be one where you needed your top tier gear but it was, for whatever reasons, unavailable. Makes sense, right? So here’s the likely scenario…[Big Event] occurs that you’ve been preparing for..but it happens when you’re away from your tricked out 1911, super razoo Wilson AR15, and you’re thunderous Benneli M4. But, ‘no problem’, you think. You were smart and cached some backup guns just in case. So, you trunlde off to HideyHole Mk.I and retrieve your Bersa, Mosin Nagant, and Stevens 311. Now you’re ready to take on the apocalypse!

See, here’s the problem – if you have hit the stage of life where you need your Tier 1 stuff and don’t have it, then your life is, by definition, at a point where your backups should be at least as good as your Tier 1. Or, put another way, if the stuff youre putting away ‘just in case’ isn’t good enough to be your everyday Tier 1 stuff, then when youre forced to use it you’re going into the apocalypse riding a Hyundai.

If a Mosin Nagant wasnt your first choice for the zombie apocalypse, why would you stash one away as your backup 2nd choice? Because, follow me on this, if you don’t have access to your first choice gun, then that 2nd choice gun becomes your new first choice gun. And a Mosin Nagant is no one’s first choice.

Me, mt ‘run out the door gun’ would be, in all likelihood, and AR and a Glock…just like 90% of survivalists and police across the country. And the stuff I stick away in a secondary location as backup? An AR and a Glock. And that remote, probably-never-need-it tertiary backup? AR and a Glock. Because when it’s some stormy, dark, wretched night and I’ve spent three hours driving back roads to the Beta Site hoping no one followed me, and I unpack the Pelican case under the floorboards, the level of comfort, reassurance, and confidence I’ll get from those guns will be several orders of magnitude greater than what it would be if that case contained an SMLE and a Makarov.

This isnt exclusive to guns, by the way. Your day to day “go to” flashlight might be a $175 SureFire or Streamlight, and then you tuck a $20 MagLite at your cabin. Or you buy a $100 Ka-bar or BK&T knife for your EDC bag and stash some Made In China crap in your ’emergency supplies’ that you keep at your uncles ranch.

It can be expensive. A reasonably reliable AR from a known manufactuer (not a ‘custom’ gun built in your kitchen from a ‘Vic’sPlumbing And AR” lower) is probably gonna be around $700. Figure that it’s a gun youre sticking away in the rafters in your shed, or hiding under a floorboard at Uncle Steve’s ranch, it can be kinda painful to just basically stick $700 in a hole and leave it there for possible perpetuity. But, if the day comes that you ever need it….you’re gonna be real glad you sucked it up and spent the money.

Does a person have a ‘duty’ or ‘obligation’ to another person? Or, put from another perspective, do you have a ‘right’ to someone else’s labors?

I was reading about doctors who refuse to treat people who are unvaccinated, and how those people are outraged that they are being denied care.  I understand that from a licensing standpoint, perhaps picking and choosing who you’ll help will result in you getting some sort of state sanction against. But do you, as a professional of any type (doctor, lawyer, dentist, etc.) have a right to refuse to assist someone for a reason as simple as ‘I don’t like you”?

I wonder about this because as the balkanization continues, we’re going to see more and more of what I call ‘bumper sticker apartheid’. Thats when someone comes to you for assistance, or commerce, or simply asking for directions and, when you see the bumper sticker on their vehicle describing their politcal beliefs that are fundamentally contrary to yours, you decide that you’re simply not going to engage them. At all.  Or vice versa…once they see your Trump sticker or NRA decal, you suddenly become some sort of untouchable troglodyte who is now beneath their contempt.

For better or worse, I’m starting to adopt that attitude. It used to be that I didn’t care what youre political, religious, sexual, racial, economic stripe was. You may be of a demographic I don’t like but I’d be willing to make a case-by-case determination if I wanted to deal with you. Sure, maybe you had a BERNIE 2020 sticker on the back of your Subaru, but you seem nice enough so I’ll help you change your tire. No more.

I used to feel that you and I could still get along even if we differed on political issues. Nowadays, though, politics has become a full-contact sport and when someone proclaims that people like me are the problem and that we need to be forced to conform/shut up/embrace the cause du jour/disavow a belief/support something we disagree with, it makes me want to simply not engage with that person. Like they don’t exist.

“But..people are, beneath it all, still people and those fellow humans deserve your help/sympathy/respect”, I hear the more moderate say.

Hey, you think Anne Frank’s dad would have pulled over to help the local SS guys when their car broke down by the side of the road? Because, you know, politics aren’t important when another person needs a helping hand….

So, if some doctor doesn’t want to treat me because I’m unvaccinated, do I have the right to be outraged and demand that he treat me? To my way of thinking, no. He’s a sovereign individual and doesn’t have any responsibility towards me at all. As an individual, he is free to refuse me treatment for any reason, as far as I’m concerned. And I’m free to take my business elsewhere. And, as an individual, when I see him getting curbstomped in his emergency room because a couple thugs didn’t think he was respectful enough when  their buddy was brought in from a drive-by, I’m free to step to the side and ignore his pleas for me to intervene.

I have no desire or intention to be the least bit supportive, assistive, or cooperative to anyone who, in my opinion, is actively working towards trying to discount me from society. Why would I interact in any beneficial way with people who want to censor, marginalize, deplatform, or ‘cancel’ me?

Thats the direction the world seems to be going, I’m afraid. First it was politics, then it was race, now its vaccination status. We never seem to find a shortage of things to fight amongst ourselves about, do we? Which is probably for the best since a cohesive nation would present a bit of a challenge to….

We’ve been calling it the Culture War for the last few years and it only shows signs of worsening. I have no desire to be on the front lines of it, but it appears that like many wars it’s going to be one I’m going to be forced to pick a side on. Perhaps sanity will be restored and we can all be civil while disagreeing, but I don’t see that coming for a while.

In the meantime, I’ll be happy to support those of my tribe, and I’ll, unfortunately, continue to shun those who work against it.

I’ve been through…let’s see….hurricanes, blizzards, forest fires, pandemics, economic turmoil, and just a generally bumpy existence. Number of rounds fired in total through all those incidents? Zero. Number of skulls cracked with a baseball bat? Zero. Number of gunshot and stab wounds incurred? Zero.

I mention it because, as I stroll through  my library of various ‘how to survive the end of the world’ books it seems like everyone is preparing for the final scene from The Wild Bunch.

I know the world is not a happy sunshine-y place. I know there are people who, even when the lights are on and the water is flowing, will still stomp your skull in for basically no good reason. I know that people, by and large, are dangerous critters. And yet…I’ve got fifty years under my belt and haven’t had to shoot anyone yet.

Yet it seems that a good 1/3 to 1/2 of any preparedness manual is about ‘self defense’ or ‘weapons’ or that sort of thing. Sure, it’s important… but when I think of the ‘disasters’ I’ve been through and what resources were used the number of rounds spent comes to…zero. On the other hand, the amounts of food, water, cash, batteries, toilet paper, radios, gasoline, light sticks, and tools comes out to non-zero.

“But..but Zero, it seems like every other post you have here is about guns and ammo!” This is true.But, to be fair, I don’t post about guns from the perspective of ‘get all you can so you can survive the new Mad Max world’, usually I post about them from the perspective of ‘get them while you can before they are banned’. Not quite the same thing. Guns are the low hanging fruit of preparedness blogging. People are far more interested in tweaked out ARs than they are the newest vacuum sealer or propane lantern. Not everyone, mind you….but most.

It reminds me of cop training…everyone gives cops a hard time for being unable to shoot straight. And while shooting people is part of the job, it is a microscopically small part of the job. Your average cop will use his Bic pen a bazillion times more often than he uses his Glock. Training often reflects that. Resources are directed where they are most likely to be needed, and your average badgewearer shoots people a lot less often than he writes reports, tickets, notes, accident forms, etc.

Guns are a part of any reasonably thought out plan to survive a disaster. However they are tiny part of the overall plan compared to things like water, food, gas, medgear, etc.

You know what I’ve discovered to be The Most Valuable skill for a ‘survivalist’ or ‘prepper’? Not having amazingly fast split times at the range….not being able to consistently ring the gongs at 200 yards…useful, but not as important as: being able to think logically, critically, and objectively. Your mileage may vary but I would say the most important skill I’ve picked up as a survivalist is… accounting. Once I figured out how to allocate, budget, and monitor my financial adventures it put me in a position to have all the other thngs that make surviving a crisis easier. But thats just me… it won’t be the same for you.

My long winded point is that guns are the supersexy common denominator of survivalism but they are not the most important. Don’t get so wrapped up in the boomtoys that you overlook the more used, more needed, more critical things like, y’know, food…money…fuel…water…meds…gear…etc. But don’t take my word for it…go read the AAR’s on the various survival forums for things that have happened over the last few years…riots, floods, earthquakes, etc. There was a lot less shooting than some of these preparedness manuals would have made you expect. Sure, having the Glock on the hip helped, but I have yet to read any encounter (except the classic Harry Beckwith Bullet Party) where someone went through more than a magazines worth of ammo.

Even in times of ‘non-crisis’ I still use gasoline, TP, food, water, clothes, toothpaste, soap, etc, every single day. I blow off 9mm and .223 maybe twice a month. While I stockpile guns and ammo, I probably stockpile just as much of the other stuff.

The classic meme is the survivalist with a mountain of ammo, a trainload of guns, and absolutely no food. An exaggeration, sure, but it makes a point. Buy the ammo, buy the guns, but keep some perspective.