I work with the State’s Emergency Management agency, the local city agency, and I volunteer with a Ham Radio RACES organization. My daughter has a Masters Degree in Emergency Management.
I am around a bunch of people who make their living planning for and practicing for emergency situations. They have every conceivable situation and the response in a binder in their offices.
None of them call for an emergency that is going to stop food production and transport for six months or more.
These “doomsday” preppers plan for an apocalypse that is so unlikely as to be wasteful of their resources. Many of them plan for gun toting survival in the local woods (as if there would be anything to eat there after two weeks of apocalypse.). The problem is they don’t practice and most of them are so fat they cannot walk 1/2 mile.
When they show up on Ham Radio field day and want to know how to join our organization…we direct them to another town’s group. They are a liability.
Prepping is fine. Having food around is great. Knowing how to fire a weapon and hunt are good life skills. Focusing on events that are not the least bit likely to happen is just a waste of your time. Focus on the things that WILL happen, and practice.
Community is the best tool a prepper can have.
The highest big risk in my area is a large earthquake. Our wood-framed home would probably still be livable, but natural gas and electricity and water would be out. For quite awhile probably.
Bridges on highways would probably be out. The state plan is to have supplies brought in by air to an airport 150 miles away. Then trucked another 100 miles to where they think the farthest bridge will be damaged. Then choppered in the last 50 miles.
And most of that would probably go to Seattle, and not the suburbs. I’m not going to do the math on bottles of water times number of choppers divided by population of Seattle.
If our house was still livable we would be fine. If not it might get a bit uncomfortable living in a tent in the winter in the backyard, but doable.
Of course those supplies are also good for the week-long power outages we get every few years. And enough room to have the elderly neighbor couple live with us as they didn’t have heat or power for his oxygen machine.
While I 100% agree with most of your post, I have a question...
Did any of your contacts prepare for the government creating depression and mania in our young people, shutting down the economy and destroying thousands of businesses, forcing experimental medical treatments on unwilling citizens, etc... all because of a government created virus?
I'll bet that wasn't on their bingo card.
Licensed amateur and gmrs. Our area has a vibrant gmrs radio fire watch which works well—we hVe weekly nets to keep equipment and people practiced. We are in the foothills of the gold country where wildfires have already done their damage. For most “neighborhoods” gmrs is great, especially if it’s tied into the local ARES. Information can be passed up and down
Do you think the government would have plans for such a devastating event that it, being the government, would cease to have any power to control the populous? Do you think that the government would publicize such things that would certainly heighten the anxiety of their servants? I think no.
An emp attack in concert with nuking cities and other strategic locations in our country would bring things to a complete halt. Those officials and the elite will be well taken care of in our tunnel systems. The rest of the population would be on their own.