# 07 - What's Your Mindset?
Today I want to talk about some things that are going to be difficult to think about, much less talk about.
If you are like me, you are setting aside supplies of food, water, medications and other essential supplies so that we can be prepared for an emergency, disaster, or other hard times that will one day come upon all of us in one form or another. We prepare for these possible situations so that we can keep our families safe and provide for them when these situations happen.
Unfortunately, most people however do not do anything at all to prepare for these events. Even though our own government has been advising everyone for years to do exactly what we are doing, they still do not listen.
The federal government has been advising every citizen to start stockpiling these supplies, yet every time a hurricane, or flood, or other localized natural disaster hits, the citizens of the affected areas are completely unprepared for it and rely on the government to save them.
Everyone seems to have the mistaken belief that nothing bad will ever happen to them. Apparently their karma is so good that it will repel natural disasters away from them like some sort of Jedi force field.
I have actually had people say to me, "that kind of thing happens in third-world countries, we live in the United States, nothing like that could ever happen here".
Apparently these people have their heads buried so far in the sand that they can't even watch the news to see that these things ARE actually happening right here in the good old USA all the time.
Lets look at Hurricane Katrina as an example. Within 4 days of the storm hitting New Orleans, societal links had broken down. It was an every-man-for-himself mentality with mass looting and gang violence running rampant throughout the city.
Everyone expected that the government would come to their rescue on a white horse to save them, but as we all know, that is not what happened.
The Federal Government actually prevented a lot of supplies from reaching the victims by not allowing the delivery trucks to go into the city with the necessary food, water, and other much needed supplies that they had carried from areas across the country.
They also prevented the victims from leaving the city to reach the supplies. They were threatened with violence if they attempted to cross the bridge to leave the city.
Then as an added insult, they stripped the Constitutional rights of the citizens by going door-to-door confiscating weapons that the citizens needed to protect themselves because there was no effective police force there to keep them safe.
FEMA sent hundreds of firefighters from other areas who had volunteered to help rescue victims to Atlanta for 2 days of training classes on topics including sexual harassment and the history of FEMA instead of having them on the ground in New Orleans helping in the rescue. I mean, we all know that sexual harassment training is much more important than actually rescuing people.
Local police and other EMS workers also found the situation very traumatic; at least two officers committed suicide, and over 300 deserted the city after gang violence and "turf wars" erupted around the city.
The government did not come to the rescue of those citizens when they needed it. What makes you think they will come to your rescue when you need it?
Our survival depends on us, and how prepared we are before the even happens. As we already know, over 85% of the population does not even have the necessary supplies on hand for a 3 day disaster situation. Do not expect that percentage to change much either.
I want to look at a couple SHTF scenarios to get you to start thinking about some things. Be honest with yourself when answering the questions, the long-term survival of you and your family may depend on it at some point.
Scenario #1
We are going to use a highly unrealistic hypothetic scenario, just to get you thinking.
Let's say North Korea decided to launch an ICBM against the United States. Instead of taking out one of our major cities and immediately vaporizing thousands of citizens there, they decide to have it detonate at high altitude in the ionosphere, so that it creates an EMP which would immediately take out part of power grid below it.
The rest of the power grid would kick in to try to supply power to the affected area which would cause a cascading failure across the entire national power grid. Government experts suggest that this process would only take approximately 18 minutes for the entire power grid to go down nationwide after an EMP under the right conditions.
So now the power is out everywhere throughout the entire country all at once. That would mean food production and shipments would stop (even if the vehicles were working, which is debatable).
Most communications nationwide are also out making it impossible for the average person to even find out what happened.
Remember, over 85% of the population does not have the supplies to even last a 3 day event, so they soon start to run out of food. ATM's are useless without electricity, so they can't get more money to buy more food from, even if they could find a grocery store that hasn't already been looted and the shelves cleared out.
You were well prepared and have enough food, water, and other supplies that you would need for your family for a full 2 years.
On about the 9th day, your neighbor from down the street, you know the one that ridiculed you for being a "crazy prepper", knocks on your door with his wife and 2 children which are emaciated and starving to death and asks if you can help them out with some food for their children.
What would you do? Would you turn them away knowing that they will probably starve to death without your help, or would you take food from your own family to feed them with?
Scenario #2
A catastrophic 9.0 earthquake has happened in California along several major fault lines which caused the majority of the greater Los Angeles and San Francisco areas to sink from the resulting liquefaction.
San Diego was devastated by both an earthquake from the Rose Canyon fault that was triggered by the San Andreas fault as well as the resulting tsunami from the Rose Canyon earthquake.
The California earthquakes triggered the long overdue New Madrid Fault which runs through parts of Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas to also produce a 7.5 earthquake there as they have been predicting for years.
It also triggered a massive eruption of the Super Volcano in Yellowstone National Park resulting in 90,000 immediate deaths.
Volcanic ash has been shot into into the atmosphere and has covered buildings and crops throughout the entire country causing widespread failure of electric plants across the country, leading to cascading grid failures for the entire country.
The ash in the atmosphere blocks the sunlight causing the temperature to drop dramatically around the world as we enter into a Nuclear Winter.
Now the same family as before comes to your door needing food.
What do you do? Do you turn them away, or do you give them food from your supplies?
The chances of either of these events actually happening are extremely low, but I wanted to use extreme apocalyptic type events to get you to start thinking about what you would do in a major disaster situation before a smaller one happened to disrupt your families lives.
Would you be the type of person that would chance your own families safety to help others, knowing that there may not be a way for you to replace the supplies that you give away?
Many preppers have the belief that they will hoard their supplies and if someone else did not stock up before the disaster, that's too bad for them.
I have even heard them say things like they will shoot anyone who comes to them for help. and "a bullet is cheaper than a meal".
Fortunately those people will not last for long after a real major disaster situation.
You can not do everything yourself, it takes many people working together to survive and rebuild. Unless those preppers change their mindset, there may be no long-term hope for them.
I will not only give that family food, I will bring them in and give them a place to sleep, and put them to work at a job that would benefit us all. I would treat them as my own family so that together we could all survive a bit easier.
So, which mindset do you have? Are you a "Lone Wolf" that will take on the world to keep your supplies for yourself, or are you a true leader that others will turn to after a disaster for guidance and help as you try to rebuild a community?
Previous Episode:
Coming Episodes:
In the next episode I will do an "SHTF Mystery Box Subscription Review".
In upcoming episodes we will also take a look at "Water Purification & Sanitization" as well as "Vacuum Sealed vs. Mylar Bagged Food Storage". We will also take a look at the shelf-life of "Home Canned Foods" and the viability of using them in our emergency supplies.
Also we will have an episode on the need for a Wilderness First Aid training even if you live in a city. We will also take a look at the need for "Sanitation After A Disaster".
