Posted on 06/13/2013 4:56:04 PM PDT by Kartographer
On December 1, 2001, Argentina’s economy was in trouble. Unemployment was high, debt was high, and recession had taken hold. But life was somewhat ‘normal’.
Basic services still functioned. And no one had to really worry about… food. Or water. Then it all changed. Literally within a day.
On December 2nd, our bankrupt government imposed measures that essentially froze everyone’s bank accounts. You can just imagine– one day having access to your funds, and the next day being completely cut off.
Within a matter of days, people were out in the streets doing battle with the police. The government soon defaulted on its debt, and the currency went into freefall.
I was doing some post-graduate work in Boston at the time. As a foreigner in the US, I wasn’t really able to work… so I was living on a tight budget from my savings.
Yet, overnight, I went from being able to pay my rent and living expenses to being completely cut off from my funds. I had nothing.
But when I spoke to my family back in Argentina, I realized that they had it even worse.
Everything became scarce. The electricity went out all the time. Even food on the grocery store shelves ran low. You would eat what you had available at home.
(Excerpt) Read more at shtfplan.com ...
Preppers’ PING!!
History repeats itself because human nature is static.
I’ve read FerFAl’s blog about Argentina foe several years, it can happen here.
The economies of virtually all the leading nations are operating on the knifes edge.
“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream. That’s my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor … and surviving”
Colonel Walter E. Kurtz
Apocalypse Now
Just a matter of time.
5.56mm
Some people will say it wasn’t that bad there. I think it depends where you are, how much cash you have and a myriad of other variables.
When it gets bad in the USA, I might not survive — I own up to that fact. But I can think of entire classes of peopel who will definitely not survive. And the country will be the better for it.
Look what is happening right before your eyes and take heed. There’s a Great Storm coming you can feel it.
Listen to what the bible says: A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it. NIV Proverbs 22:3
One of the things Selco covers in this article is the fact that many will not accept that a breakdown is occurring even as they watch it happening before their eyes. Why don’t they realize it? It’s caused by a condition called ‘Normalcy Bias’ a mental state people enter when facing a disaster.
It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
A good article on ‘Normalcy Bias’ is on our own ChocChipCookies Blog The Survival Mom:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/12/29/normalcy-bias/
You either prepare and stand on your own beholden to no one or you become dependent on others to provide your basic needs and become their ‘serf’. Me I don’t want to be beholden to anyone for providing what is needed for me and mine. I certainly don’t want to have to kiss some ‘gubberment’ third class bureaucratic to try and coax some help from them, I don’t want some ‘jack booted’ thug herding me in line and telling me where to stand, sit, eat or sleep. And last but not least I don’t want to be shut up in with a bunch of ‘zombies’ and have to worry about not only trying to get basic necessities but having to fight to keep what I manage to get.
Its your choice you can prep or you can stand around on a bridge waiting for FEMA to bring you a bottle of water, a MRE, a warm blanket and a kiss for your boo-boo and maybe you can even get your picture as you stand there on the national news.
For those who are just starting or are old hands at prepping you may find my Preparedness Manual helpful. You can download it at:
http://tomeaker.com/kart/Preparedness1j.pdf NOTE! THIS IS A FREE DOWNLOAD. I DO NOT MAKE ONE CENT OFF MY PREPAREDNESS MANUAL!
For those of you who haven’t started already it’s time to prepare almost past time maybe. You needed to be stocking up on food guns, ammo, basic household supplies like soap, papergoods, cleaning supplies, good sturdy clothes including extra socks, underwear and extra shoes and boots, cash Imyself have been putting up change for the past few years both for the metal content and the fact that using change places you down the the list of possible marks during shtf, tools, things you buy everyday start buying two and put one up.
As the LDS say “When the emergency is upon us the time for preparedness has past.”
Again I like to recomend FReeper’s ChocoChipCookie Blog The Survival Mom (Please Blog Police let this one slide!) Where you can get lots of useful information like:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2011/11/20/8-morale-boosters-for-any-worst-case-scenario/
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/02/02/survival-priorities-the-rule-of-three/
And More
Also there is Ferfal’s Blog a survivor of Argentina’s first collapse:
And there is Selco’s Blog a Bosnian War survivor at:
“There is no greater disaster than to underestimate danger. Underestimation can be fatal.”
Same thing with the Great Depression. It's only a depression when YOU don't have a job. When your neighbor doesn't have a job it's just a recession.
Toilet paper it sounds like, not ammunition.
"And so are those who can" - schm0e
Sounds like his dad would have been better off putting their life savings in Krands than into dollars?
Actually if you have job during a depression you’re doing quite well.
Excellent resources. Thank you for posting.
It’s ‘’those who do not remember the past’’. Even so, one can remember the past and still have it bite you on the ass. Perhaps a more prescient thing to say might be “As the dog returns to it’s vomit so the to his folly’’.
“And the country will be the better for it.”
Yep.
It nearly happened here one August or September day in 2008. There was a huge withdrawal of money from the money markets in this country. If our government had not frozen the funds, there would have been a collapse.
What’s funny is that Argentina likewise froze a bunch of accounts in 2001, and that PRECIPITATED a collapse. Of course, Argentina froze everybody’s bank accounts, rather than some money market funds.
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