I had every intention of writing this particular article on Thursday, but…well, it turns out I practice procrastination in more matters than just doomsday preparations. I have spent some time on the road in the past few days taking my wife and two small sons down for a brief stay at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel. Taking in the sights and sounds of one of our nation’s historic landmarks reminds you how quickly the time passes and things change in our world. It was not that many years ago that train travel was the luxury mode of transportation and the outdated laptop that I am typing on now would have been enough to blow the minds of even the most forward-thinking citizens. It is easy for us all to assume we have a good grasp of what our future may hold, but technology, public opinion, and global economic forces could easily reshape the coming decades in an instant.
Every segment of Doomsday Preppers on National Geographic Channel begins with the person being profiled disclosing what impending catastrophic event it is that they are personally preparing to survive. Several of my skeptical friends and many of the casual readers of this site have sent me emails and text messages asking me that same question. What sort of doomsday scenario do I really believe we could be faced with in our lifetime that is imminent enough that I feel the need to devote time, energy, and resources to preparing for? The question is perfectly reasonable, but my answer in response is imperfectly vague.
The societal collapse scenarios that I envision are almost exclusively manmade in origin. I do not live in fear of an extinction-level natural disaster or weather event. I have no concern about the poles shifting or the icecaps melting or any super-storms annihilating our society. The people I see on television preparing for volcanoes or tsunamis or cyclones seem to fall on the crazier side of the fence to me. Perhaps I am being naïve or maybe even optimistic to the point of denial, but I do not see a natural disaster precipitating society’s breaking point. My belief in the Bible and trust in God’s promise to never again destroy the earth by flood give me confidence that I can rule out at least one scenario. While I may not see natural disasters as the eventual downfall of our society, I certainly see them as events that we clearly face from time to time and perfectly good reasons in themselves to have preparations and plans in place for their immediate aftermaths and consequences. If you and your family are prepared for life without power or other modern amenities for any amount of time, it will enable you to more quickly focus on necessary repairs and lending assistance to others who were less fortunate than you.
Personally, I just have to casually watch the news for the past week or so to conclude that evil and unwise men have the means to bring our society crashing down long before a solar flare finds a way to bring down our electrical grid. A quick scan of recent headlines shows that a tyrannical leader dies in Venezuela and he is mourned by Hollywood liberals and memorialized by a handful of American Congressmen. A retired NBA basketball player with an extensive history of drug and alcohol abuse visits North Korea and only days later they declare their willingness to strike first in a nuclear showdown with America. All the while, a madman in Iran continues to do his best to generate hate for America and destabilize the Middle East in hopes of expediting his desired end time’s scenario. If you do not want to look overseas for your source of doom, how about the trail of zeroes amassing behind our national debt? What sort of suspension of reason does it take to believe our society can continue to de-value its currency and promise its citizens more and more benefits without the bottom falling out sooner than later? Lucky for us, the man leading our nation has this exact ability to suspend his reason in favor of his politics. Even luckier for us, the hundreds of other officials we have elected to serve in Washington are far more concerned with keeping themselves employed than doing what it takes to correct our economic slide and keep regular Americans employed.
The last paragraph took a decidedly dark turn, I realize, but there are very few facts in there that can be disputed. Aside from offending a few Hollywood elites and Keynesian economists, I doubt that I laid out any information that all of you were not already aware of and informed about. Those 258 words of warning laid out enough potential sources of global instability to keep a team of federal agents busy around the clock. A single erratic decision by any one of a laundry list of global actors could lead to a hasty unraveling of normalcy in society. North Korea could throw the entire Pacific region into chaos or even draw America into conflict very quickly. Iran could light a match in the center of the powder keg that is the Middle East and simultaneously cut off our oil supply and force us into another Gulf War. These are just the obvious dominoes capable of falling over in short order. In this day and age, a growing anti-American and anti-capitalist sentiment is alive and well in many other corners of the globe. Even if none of them ever reach critical mass for our everyday lives here, our own spending and entitlements are sure to catch up to us as a nation before long.
Coming back to the answer I would give if I was standing in front of the Doomsday Prepperscamera crew…”I am prepping for a societal collapse precipitated by the evil or unwise actions of mankind.” Maybe I can not pinpoint if those actions will come from Washington, DC or Iran or some other end of the earth, but I believe they are coming in my lifetime. I want my family to be in the best position it can be to survive whatever form of civilization emerges in the aftermath. Call me crazy if you like, but I have become convinced the really crazy people are the ones neck-deep in sand, refusing to monitor these global events.
#DoomsDelay Tip of the Week:
As you begin down the road to food storage, do not forget to invest early in good and reliable containers. Before you have a spare closet stacked with food, make sure you have airtight and waterproof containers to store your preps inside. These containers will not only help protect your items, but they will also help extend their shelf life in many cases and keep them in uniform sizes that are easier to stack and relocate as necessary.
As you begin down the road to food storage, do not forget to invest early in good and reliable containers. Before you have a spare closet stacked with food, make sure you have airtight and waterproof containers to store your preps inside. These containers will not only help protect your items, but they will also help extend their shelf life in many cases and keep them in uniform sizes that are easier to stack and relocate as necessary.
