Guest Post by Ol’ Remus
Charles Smith at Of Two Minds has posted strategies for surviving tough times. He does not claim to deal with a collapse of civilization, but rather the slower and uneven “devolution” he sees as more likely. He advises developing multiple skillsets and social networks, cutting expenses and relying on health and social wealth.
Mr. Smith is not just one of my regular reads, he’s one of those few I often reread. His particular “take” on events is worth close attention, always well thought out and grounded in fact. However, he’s not talking about survival, he’s talking about enduring tough times. To this end he suggests avoiding extreme preps as “predicated on a decisive ‘end of the world as we know it'”.
I believe he’s an optimist.
Being a generous nice guy with community connections is not a viable strategy for surviving the emerging catastrophe. And emerging it is. Understand what we’re looking at. Shopping became raiding as the collapse visibly accelerated. Civic compliance is being quietly withdrawn as government leaders and their credentialed experts reveal themselves as corrupt opportunists and inept posers.
No one “survived” the Great Depression any more than they “survived” the good times. They bore up, endured and got through. People “survived” real catastrophes; Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde or the homicidal slave labor camps of the last century.
Survivalism is unpleasant and difficult, but it’s the only alternative in unpleasant and difficult times. It won’t be about becoming a handy, well liked member of a cozy little community. Open handed nice people with their Norman Rockwell settlements will be ruthlessly exploited and left for dead. Viable communities will emerge, but more like the Bielski or Forest Brothers woodland partisans, minus the antique politics.
Preparationalism—known as “prepping”—is part of survival, not survivalism itself. Preppers posit hard times and scarcity. Survivalists posit destitution, murderous chaos, pestilence and famine. Survival is prepping’s precondition, not visa versa.
Mr. Smith talks like a nineteenth century idealist with a stock portfolio. It would please me if he were right, but betting the other way is wiser. We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
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Unfortunately, this is correct. Do you really think with the entire country collapsing you will be able to retreat to a pleasant little place, peaceful, wholesome, with everybody in straw hats and bib overalls planting okra? I don’t think so. All sense of community in the United States has disappeared, with insignificant exceptions here and there. There will be areas where authorities with an iron hand impose order and there will be No-Man’s-Land. Big cities? Stuck in them with your family? New York, LA, Chicago, Baltimore for God’s sake! Do not be that guy. Some bad news for white liberals When the Titanic gurgles beneath the surface, your fellow whites who did not drink the Kool-Aid of diversity, multi-culturalism, and all the other gibberish of the Woke crowd, will turn on you like Washington on Benedict Arnold. The reaction to the “jogger murder” bullshit is an early indicator. That train left the station long ago and nobody will be buying excuses for the behavior of criminals, or their enablers.
“New York, LA, Chicago, Baltimore”
Left out a few over half the US but oh well, guy.
Ever heard of lines of drift? The golden hoard?
Unless you’re significantly distant from the joggers you’d best be under arms to fend them off.
If you’re not networking with likeminded folk you’ll not “fend them off”. Keep in mind many “inner city kids” are already organized into gangs, whether official gangs with flags or local groups, they’re networked. After they take down the first 4 or 5 poorly defended houses, they’ll learn how to do it more tactically. This will happen within days not months if there is a serious societal breakdown , and they’ll travel further and further afield to scavenge for supplies (and possibly for fun).
sayins believing.
And they will have the blessings of the government as they do it.
The first was implied.
Closest “inner city kids”, over 500 miles from here, will meet significant resistance prior to their arrival if they make it this far.
Perhaps you remain in jogger’s lane.
Best to you.
Just sayin.
A link to the article would have been good. Hungry and desperate people are dangerous. The beer virus has shown us how little savings everyone has and how little food they have. and how out of touch the folks in DC are.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/05/surviving-2020-3-plans-b-and-c.html
His approach seems reasonable to me. I will be very happy to not wind up driving around the desert in a beat up police interceptor with a shotgun with no shells sharing dog food with my dog.
So far everything I have done has worked out well. Like most plans it would go to heck in a hurry if bullets start flying on a regular basis.
Yashure, you’re one of the dumbfuck white liberals Sage is pointing at. Are you too stupid to understand that?
Yahsure, I think the reality is just the opposite. All the nonsense we read again and again that people couldn’t scrape together five hundred bucks in case of emergency was fiction. Everyone in this country who didn’t have resources has had to do that. And they all did it. There’s no one thrown on the streets. People aren’t starving. There’s been so much fat in our system for so long we don’t know what poor is anymore
The old woman renting the house north of me has had over 10 relatives move in with her as they have no money or jobs. Mostly because they worked for cash, filed no taxes., and didn’t get 1200 dollars.
Most folks speak of things which they have no idea of or knowledge of. Those that have lived through these situations or conditions understand just how f’ing serious things will get. The herd will be thinned. Some will just be thinned sooner than others should this go full retard.
One can look sat the future as a great opportunity,feel a lot of govt. will collapse due to lack of funds,prep locally/help others/have relocation lists for your area,you know the drills.
Yes,times will be different,does not have to mean worse(though prepare for it),as the song says,”Do You Wanna Get Rocked”!
Enough with the negativity,time to thrive!
I recall the young well off couple with 2 children , mom and dad were 6 figure government employees living in Virginia . They purchased some property a few hours drive from the DC area and built a survivalist type shelter . They brought in a consultant to help design and equip this country get away in case of some mega issue where they and kids could survive and thrive . The consultant asked how they plan to defend this get away and they both “FLATLINED” !
The bewildered glazed over eyes said all you need to know . These two thought their prepping for some cataclysmic event would change human nature and all would be working together caring and sharing . The consultant had trouble not busting out laughing ! He recommended several firearms and a large ammunition supply !
The reply was priceless : We do not approve of guns !
I hear unarmed liberals are tasty when properly prepared !
you nailed it, too many “no guns” folks will be targeted for their “kindness and humanity” when it gets ugly.
The bugmen think that by tracking people with apps, they will somehow deter violence. That is not the purpose.
The tracking is for after the event, so that the useless .gov drones can then put a model together and study the event so they can learn how to track better, and maybe watch you get killed endlessly in a video loop.
you are on your own.
the .gov is there to clean up your spilled guts and then potentially lock up the animals, if there was some video or other electronic surveillance evidence left behind
In Virginia before the real estate bubble popped I saw a very interesting local house for sale.
It had it’s very own bunker built underneath with storage and sleeping quarters. The entrance reminded me of the sealed bulkhead doors on a modern ship. The place wasn’t far from George Mason University.
Wish I would’ve kept that ad.
You really have to wonder how dim these big city Prog fools are. In their distorted view, shouldn’t they stay where there are lots of AGW’s to protect them? Do they think the feral bands won’t try to go foraging? They obviously don’t realize the value of a couple of shots through a windshield from so far away you cannot be seen.
If you’re proposing taking goods from the unarmed, then your “law & order” bluster was just a charade.
It sounds like the only thing keeping you from being a stick-up man is fear of legal consequences.
Perhaps Joey Gallo was right: “society secretly respects the criminal because he has the courage to do what they secretly want to, but fear to.”
Several of my fellow gun owners have said we are the last line of defense in the event of foreign invasion. Given that, is it unreasonable to suggest we should be the last line of law & order in the event of societal collapse?
I hope we rise to the occasion and don’t exploit the vacuum to behave like marauding brigands.
Also, please don’t underestimate us liberals. The first gun I fired was an M-16. I own guns, and I know how to use them.
“I hear unarmed liberals are tasty when properly prepared”
I think this is called sarcasm, and is not meant to be a prelude to a triggering event. However, I suppose about half of the country have a poor sense of humor and irony.
Are you shit’in me bunny wabbit???
Anonymous says: “The reply was priceless: We do not approve of guns! I hear unarmed liberals are tasty when properly prepared”!
That triggered your diehard liberal lawyer reply?
You actually fired an M-16 once upon a time…you are GASP…an ARMED LIBERAL!!!
You have the ovaries to say:
“Please don’t underestimate us liberals. The first gun I fired was an M-16. I own guns, and I know how to use them”.
Well isn’t that special…as we say in the South… “Well bless your little Lawyer liberal Maryland gun/heart”.
So a miniscule handful of you ‘destroyer locust liberal lawyer idiots’ have a gun, and once upon a time went to boot camp or had someone with sense enough to show you how to operate the great equalizer, and now you…a Liberal lawyer…are going to: STAND IN THE GAP???
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa….wait a second…..Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…..one more time, Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
I suspect whatever liberal lawyer neighborhood you live in…will last in the coming shitstorm a little longer than dew on the grass.
Make sure bunny you remind the Golden Horde (while you are frantically changing magazines) the Constitution is a ‘Living Document’ just before they send you south…(where all lost liberal lawyers seem to be destined) and I’m not talking South Carolina.
And guess what else…when the Golden Horde comes for you and yours…your lost liberalism will be one of the main reasons.
Don’t you just love irony?
I’m not sure what triggered your emotional response. But seriously, what did you think of this part?:
“Several of my fellow gun owners have said we are the last line of defense in the event of foreign invasion. Given that, is it unreasonable to suggest we should be the last line of law & order in the event of societal collapse?”
Marsh,
You’re getting your ass handed to you today. This comment of yours is particularly harpy.
The above is common sense in a TEOTWAWKI sitiation. I may not have to steal from others but others surely will. Not only that but I’m sure 99% of starving people would/will given no other choice.
Ya know, common sense.
LAW DON’T GO ROUND HERE LAWDOG.
A misguided optimist
The makeup of COVID-19 America now constitutes the following classes:
1) Previously armed previous preppers
2) Previously armed new preppers
3) Newly armed new preppers
4) Unarmed new preppers, lovingly referred to as “targets.” Bless their heart.
Nobody’s not a prepper anymore.
I guess another way to look at this issue would be, think of people as fruit hanging on a tree. There is low hanging fruit, middle hanging fruit, high hanging fruit and finally the fruit at the top. Who do you think gets picked first?
“Being a generous nice guy with community connections is not a viable strategy for surviving the emerging catastrophe.” I respectfully disagree. A paper plate of comb honey dropped off at the lumber yard every year has saved me from ever paying delivery charges. Installing a 4oo amp electical service at the tire shop in exchange for (so far) a set of tires, alignment, safety inspections and they still feel they owe me. Swap out a water heater on a Sunday for a widow and charge her $20. Most older people balk at not paying, but they remember when $20 was a lot of money and they will accept that. One neighbor comes by every spring with his big tractor and 5′ rototiller and tills the big garden out back. Another neighbor left his dozer here for a month last summer and all I did was make sure it went back with a full tank of fuel. For the most part around here there is more give than take. People look out for each other’s children, parents, and grandchildren. No one has a pile of the money that everyone seems to obsess about on this blog and others. Once you lose the mercantile zero sum mindset your definition of wealth and value take on a whole new meaning.
More doom porn. Just as you can’t vote yourself out of what is coming, you also cannot shoot your way out of it; regardless of what the purveyors of doom porn try to convince you.
I was very close with many family members who lived through the depression and listened to their stories intently. The Doom Porn writers, either by intention to sell shit, or unintentionally have confused Depression with Armageddon.
If being wise with money, saving and storing in times of plenty, and learning to grow and harvest food is the how we define Prepper, than I suppose I am one. I don’t reject that but instead choose to live a simpler life closer to what those Depression survivors taught me.
Now is the time to build community with those around you, not after people are broke, scared, and hungry…if it ever comes to that. Helping a neighbor fix their car or build a fence will take you much further than living in fear of them stealing your stash of MRE’s. If you fear your neighbors you don’t have community.
Think Waltons instead of Red Dawn if you want to understand how the past generations came through.
“19 People will flee to caves in the rocks
and to holes in the ground
from the fearful presence of the Lord
and the splendor of his majesty,
when he rises to shake the earth.
20 In that day people will throw away
to the moles and bats
their idols of silver and idols of gold,
which they made to worship.
21 They will flee to caverns in the rocks
and to the overhanging crags
from the fearful presence of the Lord
and the splendor of his majesty,
when he rises to shake the earth.
22 Stop trusting in mere humans,
who have but a breath in their nostrils.
Why hold them in esteem?”
“you also cannot shoot your way out of it”
very many will try.
There are very many who believe they will come and take what you have. Can you defend against hordes of armed takers? I am beyond and done with worrying. I can’t control everything, I can’t foresee the future and I have neither the time, money or desire to build a bunker and hide.
My good and spiritual friend has covered it best, trust in the Lord, prepare as best you can and leave the outcomes to the Lord.
“Can you defend against hordes of armed takers?”
no. though it is unlikely they will all come all at once.
the biggest threat will be small teams of survivalists who were planning all along to survive by taking others’ retreats.
Too much Survivalist fantasy from both Smith and Remus. None of it is based on what recent history indicates. Read Selco if you think Remus is right. Smith seems to think he will be investing his imaginary winnings in a market that doesn’t exist anymore or if it does he won’t be in the club.
There is a reason military men and military historians make frequent mention of raw untried troops and “Blooded” troops. In platoon they show how newbies weren’t trusted in the bush and with good reason. I have explained here half a dozen times how we methodically eliminated you survivalists in the delta. We simply removed their families and farms and villages. Do you think CNN or FOX will be televising your removal with sarin gas or destroy your farm with defoiliants?
How was it done in Libya and Syria. With mercs and rag tag militias and air cover. Meanwhile you have no orginazation or communication set up to prevent you from being shut off and eliminated. Meanwhile they are telegraphing that they intend to give Antifa and disgruntled minorities cover while they wear you down and burn up your ammo and supplies before they take over. Why all the brown hordes still coming over when there are no jobs. It ain’t to shine your shoes. Most of you have not even gotten somewhere alone undisturbed where you can seriouly ponder when, why, and how you will kill your first human and what it might do to you.
You are however, very good at discussing and identifying fivolous events and symptoms of imaginary problems and enemies.
This is a war against all humanity and you won’t get through with your soul intact without “Prepping” your faith.
Well said.
Mormons been prepping from the get-go.
I believe you.
Flea: My mother survived WWII in Germany. She was a child when it broke out and it affected her in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways. She described the screams of her best friend who burned to death in a white phosphorous bombed building, she described people so hungry they risked being shot to death in order to grab food off of railroad cars. She described people fighting over slivers of soap and having lice infestations that caused infections on the skin and having no means to wash or clean clothes and having no winter clothes, of taking clothing from bombed out apartments when they could find any. She described shoes that were barely there and no way to heat a home, of stealing coal, food and whatever else one could find.
People have no fucking clue…..Americans especially. We don’t know what want is, we don’t know what real strife is, we complain because we don’t have massive selections of whatever available. We complain because we can’t get our nails done or hair cut. We have food, shelter, clothing and everything needed to sustain life, we aren’t being bombed out or starved out and we won’t be. Nope, what we will be is cowed into submission by Orcs and corrupt politicians, faux scientists and medical ’emergencies’ that destroy economies to promote a New and Progressive World Order. This planned and controlled. The propaganda is thicker than oil sludge and anyone with a brain can see where it’s headed….think USSA.
This was my mother’s world….see any similarities to today in America?
Mygirl.
Is that your phantom downvoter? Don’t know why anybody would downvote that.
You’re right, we are and will wimp out. This was part three of a rant today here and on “Coexistance with China and Lord Sumption. Two scenarios but pretty similar. I trying to show the hopelessnes of waiting to donate our organs at a Fema camp.
In this one I wanted to make plain how unprepared the armchair survivalists are.
I have smelled buning flesh and seen Napalm up close. I watched as we methodically leveled the entire city of Cholon into something even more Desolate that Hiroshima and saw the string of refugees I helped create, trudge the highway to saigon after being stripped of everything including clothes by the Militia goon squads on our payroll. When you’ve walked by an 80 year old man in an alley trying desperately to solicit sex with his equally old wife for a bowl of rice you don’t forget it. It’s going to happen here sooner than we think. Our government and their bosses in the NWO are evil beyond evil and offer our suffering to their Gods from the underworld. I know because I once served them myself. If no one want to take old uncle frankie seriously I’m powerless to make them. Pollyanna is dead.
I believe you and Mark, Flea. You’ve seen it.
and you will never, ever, be able to unsee it.
I pray I never have to see it.
“I pray I never have to see it.”
(shrug) here it comes.
I agree with Remus’ assessment. In fact, I had intended to post a response of my own to Charles Hugh Smith on his blog, but no comments are allowed there, so I will post it here instead:
Detroit: Transmissions from the Ghost of America’s Future
Charles,
I am a long-time reader and fan of your blog. And after reading your post, I felt compelled to throw in my two cents regarding the slow-motion economic decline which you foresee occuring in America.
The future you speak of has been happening ever since the 1967 riots in Detroit — inner city violence, drug problems, and blight — have been an ever-expanding problem, destroying everything in their path. With each new financial crisis and Recession , the ranks of the middle class are further thinned and characterized by a loss of personal equity and earnings power that simply cannot be recaptured. There is no possible way for millions to climb back to their previous levels of net worth and standard of living.
The offshoring of industrial manufacturing and The Great Recession of 2008 accelerated this decline, and middle-class jobs were again lost and a torrent of foreclosures began to destroy the ring of neighborhoods bordering the inner-city.
I would like to invite you to come to Metro Detroit, where I will give you a first rate tour of the city, complete with its history from its early inception as a French fur-trading outpost, to its classic art-deco architecture when it was known as The Paris of The West, to its apex as The Arsenal of Democracy when tanks and planes were manufactured for WWII, through its Golden Age when teenagers had classic cars to customize and discretionary income to spend. All these grand prior achievements — who could have imagined it would all fall apart mere decades later to its current state of decline and ongoing state of destruction?
Detroit IS the blueprint for the slow-motion American Collapse that you speak of. It is the blueprint for the Future of America. Most people in America simply cannot believe it could be true without first coming here to witness the destruction first-hand. You have to see it to believe it. No book, no photograph, or news expose will give you the full perspective of the sheer devastation of what was once one of the most powerful industrial cities in America. Where entire blocks of houses look like an atomic bomb has exploded, and other blocks where the houses are completely missing, instead having been reclaimed by fields of waist-high weeds and an occasional tree. This is the rot and decline of the Empire that you speak of, and it has been occuring over the course of 50+ years in the City of Detroit.
In this New America, you won’t be able to find neighbors who share your interests, because everyone has bars on their windows and is afraid to come out or speak to their neighbors. Rather than organizing community, people are thinking, how may I fortify my home against home-invasion? Do I have weapons and ammmunition to defend my family against criminals who are kicking down front doors at night and lighting the room up with bullets? Will I have to keep the kids in the bathtub tonight so they aren’t killed in the drive-by? Dare I open the curtains lest someone see what is inside my house, and come back to kick in the door in late at night and steal anything they may have observed?
There already is a war in Detroit, and it is waged every single day. Drive-by shootings and extreme violence are everyday vignettes on the nightly news here, with their geographic scope steadily increasing in concentric circles ever outwards from the city center. It is so pervasive that the suburban population has become desensitized from hearing about the murders over and over again, every single night like a broken record, every single day of the year. And it is getting worse…and starting to spill over into the suburbs, forcing families to move again to ever futher locations where neighborhoods are safe for their children to play.
From 1967 onwards, the mass exodus and white flight from the City of Detroit to the suburbs was possible because the economy of the United States was still grinding forward, despite ever increasing levels of government debt. But this time is different, and this new Greatest Depression will obliterate Americans to the point financially that they will not be able to afford to move. A Global Financial Reset is in the cards, and complete elimination of what is left of the American middle class.
So while some may think that turning one’s home into a fotress is extreme, it is done here in Detroit neighborhoods as a matter of mere survival. To try and live another day without being murdered.
The cities of Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, Baltimore, Philedelphia, St. Louis, are all on similar paths, and are the bellweather of the New America. In the coming economic calamity that is upon us, there will be no where else to run. People will be so destitute that they will not be able to afford to escape to the ever-retreating suburbs, away from the decay and violence, because there will be no economic engine to build more outer rings of suburbia. Like a giant clock, the wheels of industry and commerce as we know them today will come to a stop, and a new Dark Age shall begin.
This, in my opinion, is a much more realistic future for America than the one you foresee. It is here, happening right now, and worsening. A future in which this rot of The American Empire from the inside-out cannot be stayed. This is not some apocalytic movie scenario…it is happening right now, as we speak. I would invite your readers to drive the streets of Detroit and learn what the future holds. The collapse of Detroit and larger urban metropolitan areas is accelerating, and the coming ‘Greatest Depression’ that has been coined by Gerald Celente and described by Doug Casey will pound American cities into dust.
So my advice to those looking to prepare for this future is to look at how the people in those neighborhoods are surviving RIGHT NOW for clues as to how you and your family might survive…when the storm reaches your neighborhood. Fortified houses. Bars on every window. Razor wire fence. Pittbulls. Weapons and sufficient ammunition.
Most people turn away, they do not want to acknowledge what is happening because it is so shocking and depressing. It is a grueling existence, where people struggle to survive. In many cases, no electricity or water service. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see what America has become when looking through the lens of The City of Detroit.
The neighbors turn a blind eye, and no one dare speaks when questioned by police about shootings or crime, for fear THEY might be targeted next. You trust your family. Maybe a couple good friends. All the others in the neighborhood are unknown and keep to themselves, curtains drawn. You stay away from the drug houses and known gang houses and hang outs. You hope they don’t come for you next time.
As I said previously, in the inner-city of Detroit, entire blocks of houses are missing as if a bomb detonated — instead grown over by waist-high fields of weeds and an occasional tree. The last Recession caused this explosion to expand to the inner-ring of neighborhoods, and the scope and magnitude of this next crash will in my opinion cause it to burn through to the edges of suburbia. What will be left will be scattered clusters of houses. Small strongholds. A new fuedalism.
This is the New America. It has been and is rapidly entering its terminal phase. I do hope you prepare your family accordingly, and leave any fantasies about community behind.
We see today thousands of jets grounded worldwide by this virus, and the virtual absence of air travel. Airlines will disappear in bankruptcy. Shall we ever fly again with such frequency? Who will be able to afford to fly or even buy something at the mall when when millions of jobs have been lost and there is no commerce? Only a very, very few.
It will be a very long time, perhaps hundreds of years, before good men and women are able to lead us out of this darkness. And until then, keep your family and any friends strong. And your firearms close at hand.
If you have means to escape the cities, then by all means, get as far away as you can. Grow your own food. Try to be self-sufficient. But for the millions of those who will be newly destitute as a result of this Greatest Depression, there will be no financial way out of the metropolitan areas, where crime and murders will skyrocket.
This is the final leg of the collapse of our American Atlantis, and will be replete with its own mythology of an advanced technology and civilization, and an accompanying loss of knowledge comparable to the knowledge that was lost when the libraries of Alexandria burned. And the hulking, overgrown mass of abandoned American skyscrapers shall stand as empty as the Mayan and Egyptian pyramids, and like all past great civilizations, their ruins will hauntingly remind us of a once previous grandeur and glory.
You lost me at “…..virtual absence of air travel…”.
Log on and take a look:
https://www.flightradar24.com
It will make you go “Hmmmmm…”
Da P
“its current state of decline and ongoing state of destruction?”
do whites play any role in this?
“There already is a war in Detroit”
waged by who? against who?
“Most people turn away, they do not want to acknowledge what is happening”
when they do, what will happen?
Makes me grateful I was born with a tin spoon in my mouth.
You got tin!
Mine was plastic…and cracked…I had to walk uphill both ways to kindergarden…barefoot…in the snow!
You had snow?
Okay Boomer.
Now, this is an short and efficient response dripping in sarcasm.
HF is just jealous that we had the run of the town, we grew up with heroes like Steve McQueen. He grew up in the mall with heroes like Thelma and Louise. We John Glenn, he had Sally Ride.
I just had too…