Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Are people already going back to sleep when it comes to prepping?

By Timothy Gamble

5-6-2020 - The current coronavirus pandemic caused by China, and the resulting economic problems, seemed to have been a wake-up call for many Americans who previously looked down on preppers as weird or paranoid. Suddenly, preparedness was no longer a joke. The sight of empty shelves and the fright of hearing rising death tolls everyday, caused a change in their opinion on prepredness. Now, they wanted to be preppers. But, is that change only temporary? Are people already going back to sleep when it comes to prepping?

I have a friend in real life (meaning "not just online") that I have known for 20+ years. He is a good guy with a wife and family. He knows that I am a prepper, but I've never been able to get him into prepping. He is one of those people who thinks that nothing really bad will ever happen. Sure, he knows that minor things happen all the time, and he has the very basics covered - a first aid kit at home, puts fresh battries in the smoke detectors a couple of times a year, probably even has a little cash in a savings account for emergencies...  He does those kind of things, but as far as any serious prepping goes, he simply isn't interested. He thinks I am being paranoid to worry about bigger events that "will never happen."

As the coronavirus panic started here in the US, I had a conversation with my friend. His wife had gone shopping earlier that day, and returned home without several items, including toilet paper, that she had intended to buy as part of her normal shopping. They were still not thinking about stocking up. He was surprised that the store had started to run out of things. I explained to him about the problems with the supply chain, and that stores everywhere had started to run very low on stock. I told him about Amazon being out-of-stock on medical facemasks, hand sanitizer, and other items.

Suddenly, my friend became a prepper. He spent the next several days going around to a bunch of stores, and shopping online, trying to buy items he and his family needed. He was able to find some things, others he was not.  He was also asking me all sorts of questions about prepping, and I let him borrow a few of my books (Jame's Rawles' How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, and Peggy Layton's Emergency Food Storage and Survival Handbook). I also urged him to check out my Dystopian Survival website, where I have over 160 articles covering all aspects of preparedness. He seemed eager to do so. My friend was finally awake. Or, so I thought.

Flash forward to yesterday. I had another conversation with my friend. I asked him how the preparedness was going, if he found the books and my webzite useful, and if he had any questions. His response stunned me. He admitted he hadn't visited my website, had only skimmed through the books, and really wasn't doing much prepping. After all, the pandemic and quarantine is "almost over" and things will be "back to normal" in a month or two.

I tried to explain that there was a real probablity for a second coronavirus wave, and a second set of lockdowns at some point. I told him that the economic damage done was serious and it will take more than a couple of months for things to return to normal.  I explained to him the problems with the supply-chain and our over-dependence on China that the pandemic exposed. I pointed out the growing calls by politicans and others in the West for retailation against China. I tried to tell him about the political situation in China, and how a desperate Chinese leadership might lash-out at the rest of the world in an effort to maintain their power. I even tried to tell him about the Thucydides Trap, and how China considers war with America and the West as inevitable. The more I talked, the more irratated he seemed to get with me. He had decided that the current situation would "be over soon", and he simply didn't want to hear anything to the contrary. My friend, who woke up so briefly, has now gone back to sleep. I fear many Americans who briefly woke up, have also fallen back to sleep.

Now is not the time to stop prepping. The current situation is not "almost over," even if the situation with the virus itself improves. We are not out of danger. The pandemic has both uncovered, and caused, a lot of problems. We will be dealing with those problems for years, maybe decades, before things ever completely return to normal. Most of our political and corporate leaders have not learnecd any lessons from this stuation, and many seemed determinded to take advantage of it for their own ends. This will only make matters worse in the long run. The pandemic is only the start of our problems.

I believe things may get somewhat better in the next month or two, especially with the virus itself. But this will only be a temporary relief. Use it to prepare for much worse times ahead. We have a massive amount of problems to address, and I have no confidence with our leadership to do so effectively.  Now more than ever, we need to prepare like our lives, and the lives of our families, depend upon it. Because they do.

If you haven't already, please read my article, My NEW Recommendations for Preparedness and Survival, which I posted May 2.  It contains my new recommendations based on what I've learnbed from this coronavirus pandemic.

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https://amzn.to/2EUw0Ub
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times, by James Wesley, Rawles.  Rawles is a well-known name within the survivalist community, and this book gives coverage of most topics within survivalism and prepping, not just food storage and bugging out.


  


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