The_Dunedan

Because when things get bad enough, that's what people -do-. See NOLA, see Serajevo, see almost any area where a major Natural Disaster has ploughed through and all the Inbreds have decided to -take- their "entitlements," since the Gov't isn't around to handle the dirty work.

Neither of which has anything to do with how people react when there's been no power for two or three weeks, grocer's shelves are empty, it's 10F -inside-, and the AFDC checks/cards stopped working.

I mean this in all seriousness. Good for you. Everyone should be so lucky as to have neighbors like you. However, none of this bears on a far more dangerous situation: what will you (or your diabetic neighbors) do when the store and pharmacy shelves are empty? Katrina showed us just how quickly that can happen. Now: imagine that there -is- no "unaffected zone." Where will the fresh water come from? The food? The medicine? When there -is- no Bailout coming, or when the Bailout comes at gunpoint? D'you grasp the difference in what we're discussing here? Or when the Crips, Bloods, Aryan Nations and MS-13 control all the aforementioned supplies for twenty miles in every direction? If you're Female, you have at least one thing they -might- take in "trade" for staple supplies...or they might just take it and then deny you or kill you. If you're male, you either join up or die. If you're the wrong ethnicity, you just die. That's how Reality works in places outside our nice, neat, WASP-y world here in the US and Canada. You want to see how a post-TEOTWAWKI USA would look? Hope that you get Bosnia, instead of Rwanda or Liberia. And if you don't think that America's inner cities can turn into Soweto or Sarajevo or Monrovia in a -big- hurry, I suggest you go for a walk, unarmed, through the poor areas of any city in America. You will learn the error of your thinking in a very short period.

Reality Check Time. In the US, Welfare Queens with -zero- wealth beyond flashy toys literally -kill- one another over Christmas shopping. What the screaming Hell do you think will happen when those people, with that mentality, suddenly find shelves empty? The same thing that happened in New Orleans and Los Angeles.

So is Pollyanna-ism. Good way to die when a "neighbor" kills you for the Ramen in your pantry. Think it can't happen? Look at NOLA. Living in fear is stupid. Living in denial is stupider.

---------- Post added at 01:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:40 AM ----------

Separate Post:

Always think, for preparedness terms, in the Five B's. The Five B's (5B) are the only things that will be tradeable in a true Collapse scenario. These are the things people will kill, raid, rape and loot for, because these are the things which carry value no matter the circumstance.

Beans: Food, or the means to produce it.

Band-Aids: Medical equipment, the means of purifying water and alleviating pain, and the means to conduct surgery or disinfection.

Bullets: Weapons and ammunition: the means to defend Bullets and Band-Aids.

Booze: Intoxicants, of whatever type or fashion. Alchohol, marijuana, "powder" drugs (esp. Cocaine and Opiates, which are also useful as an anesthetic).

Broads: Pussy. Men (who typically form most of your head-crackers/trigger-pullers divisions of any society) will do and trade a -lot- for a good ol' fashioned roll in the hay. Conversely, they will go to extraordinary lengths to secure Pussy by violence if nothing else. Ladies, this is why you should be stocking up on #'s 1-4.

These are the things which all societies trade and depend upon. These are the -only- things that will be worth a damn in a true TEOTWAWKI scenario. Gold and "junk" silver are helpful, but only insofar as a working economy exists to process/trade them. Beyond that, all that matters is the Staff Of Life. Beans, Band-aids, Bullets, Booze and Broads.

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"I personally think that America's interests would be well served if after or at the time these clowns begin their revolting little hate crime the local police come in and cart them off on some trumped up charges or other. It is necessary in my opinion that America makes an example of them to the world."

--Strange Famous, advocating the use of falsified charges in order to shut people up.