Preppers’ PING!!
It’s the normalcy bias.Most people will refuse to believe that their lives are about to be turned upside down in a day,or a few minutes.
Mark for Later (just before it becomes obvious).
I remember Hurricane Rita. My (legal immigrant) wife couldn’t figure out why I was packing up and plotting routes out of Houston. She said that everything was fine, nobody but me was panicking...because her friends weren’t panicking and the weather was fine.
Then her friends started panicking, and so did she. It was pretty funny...but that is the normal bias. We ended actually staying until the mad rush died down, but still before the storm, as they were opening reverse-flow highway lanes at the end. So we made it out with no problem (8 hours to San Antonio, rather than 24+ hours to go 50 miles, like most people).
By the way, the wife is re-upping her foreign citizenship, so we can have a bug-out option, assuming we can make it out before things get really bad.
I would be lying if I said the move has not be without its share of trauma.
Better to leave early and feel like a fool, I think, than to miss the opportunity and really be one.
A lot of preppers have the basics in clothes, shelter, food+water, and firearms.
I have a buddy with a giant underground bunker (hardcore survivalist) who showed me that his new $995 FLIR is vastly better than my old, hand-cranked Soviet-era night-vision (still, something is better than nothing...even a $30 IR automobile “dashcam” offers *some* night-vision if your budget is extremely tight).
And I showed him my body armor.
FLIR and body armor offer advantages that you can buy today over what you will typically be expected to encounter during TSHTF.
You might want or need those advantages, or you might not. FLIR needs a solar charger or wind charger or generator to keep it charged. That might be more than you expect to be able to carry in a bug-out situation...and who wants to be left with *only* the bug-in option??
I’m also a fan of caltrops for mobile defense and orchards instead of crops that need re-planting every year. I’ve got apple trees and pear trees and masses of muscadine grape vines for my bug-in option. I’m working on growing kiwis, likewise.
A still for alcohol (medicinal, sanitary, trade, and recreational value) and a tin-can refinery for turning waste motor oil into gasoline.
If you can’t afford simple body armor to stuff inside the interior panels of your bug-out vehicle, then at least consider filling up the empty space with those thick Yellow Pages books that you would otherwise throw away.
Bonus points if you put a small grate over your exhaust (prevents car-jackers killing your motor with a potato up your tailpipe at a stop) and deep sea flotation bags under your bumpers for fjording on top of the water instead of trying to drive underneath.
Other than that, think clean and sanitary. Latrines far away from food and water. Use lime juice or soap or alcohol or iodine for sanitary hands and wounds. Boil your water after filtering through a white towel by soaking from a high placed jug to a low sitting clean container.
Learn CPR, cardio-thump, and how to set broken bones (pull first!). If a wound bleeds, then clean plus apply pressure to stop the bleeding. Tournacut as a last resort only.
Use raw honey daily to build up your immune system. Use sambucus (black elderberry) in the throat of anyone who has caught a virus to slow its reproduction.
Carry an N95 cheap $1 surgical mask in your wallet and in your various automobile glove boxes in case you see coughing outbreaks.
I am of the opinion that there are several “markers” that happen or will happen that are good clues to the need to bug out. These markers come in three main areas:
political / economic / transportation
political markers include everything from the first warning (massive wave type elections) to declarations of martial law.
economic markers include early warning signs of core goods price increases and soup lines (food stamps) getting longer to banks collapsing, bank runs, and a MAJOR warning sign of when people start raiding/breaking into ATMs. I am of the opinion that we in American are pretty far down this road
Transportation deals with the movement of people and goods. As a general rule, as long as goods and services can get tot he population, the situation is recoverable. When ships, trains and trucks stop movign, there is a rapid escalation in the SHTF meter. This is much more of an “over the cliff” indicator. Right now, there are a LOT of cargo ships that are sitting at “dock” with no cargo to move. Strike one, the next strike will be a significant drop off in train traffic. The “last” warning sign will be when the trucks stop rolling.
On a scale of 1 to 10 with one being everything is fine and 10 being SHTF yesterday, I would put America at a 5/6/3 right now. I am planning for it to get worse of the next 2 to 4 years. My goal is to have my own land, my completed house, completed food supply (aquaponics), an assault weapon and ammo for every member of my family and support group, a years supply of food and one primary and one secondary bug out position, first aid and lastly trade skills and crafts for barter.
I have a start on some of these, finished a couple of them. Still have a long way to go.
could you please add me to your ping list. thanks