[Portland Jimz’s [1] comments in brackets.]

James,

I would guess that most of the people you travel to and stay with are prepped but for those that aren't and are trying to figure out what to get and what to know I highly suggest to get The Bug In Guide. It goes over all the essentials and will help someone who just realized that the "on time delivery economy" has a lot of points of failure. It goes over putting together a multi month food base, water (including how to make a simple well if the water table is near enough), seeds to have on hand, preserving meats and eggs, necessary items to have a stockpile of, thwarting thermal imaging and cctv, fortress defense and a lot more. I highly recommend it and have found it really helpful.

[Colorado Matt, who hosted me for the writing of Humanitarian Daily Ration and MRE is a highly prepped individual, who realizes that he is alone. He has cultivated good relationships with the dozen neighbors. One old dude saw me raking needles in Matt’s yard and came down on his ATV to make sure I wasn’t Matt with cancer. Matt knows that most of his neighbors are retirees or Stage 1 runaways from modernity that are still chained to it. He lives near a freshwater source. Like most preppers, he has way more than he could use. He explains to me that he sees himself as the supply depot quarter master for his small enclave, if the World Goes Brown. This strikes me, an anti-prepper who usually travels with zero food, as highly practical. The Utah Mormans, are WAY prepared. Staying with The Major, where MRE is set, in the high desert of New Mexico, well water quality is so variable that neighbors already trade water for food. The Major has repaired a wind-powered well.]

I went to a local sporting goods store recently and the firearm section was mobbed. There were so many people it was hard to even look at the firearms through the glass counters. Most people here think being prepared for what comes be it a natural disaster, or an ebt riot, is having 2 dozen firearms. They act as if Red Dawn is gonna happen and it probably isn't. I'm not saying one shouldn't have firearms just that being prepared is a multi pronged effort of which firearms are only a small part.

[It is interesting—fascinating—that the geniuses who run this economy, and they are levels of intelligence above us, have convinced us that they are our servants and we their chief concern, though we be their ultimate enemy, a horde of hundreds of millions of emotive eaters… As they time our ultimate demise, we have been set at each other on civil war footing so they can duck for cover when whatever they know is coming, or are manufacturing, comes to pass. Most keenly, I noted that the post-brovid response to the on time, 3 day supply chain that collapsed retail food in a day in 2020, had the opposite effect that it would rationally have. In response to that 3 day wholesaler-retailer-consumer supply chain I worked in for 38 years, what we have is a same day wholesaler-consumer supply chain. This appears to be like magic. But the delivery system is more brittle than any logistical system of the past. Millions of poor folk, who barely have a car, are making just enough to keep the car running be delivering food. Then, the light van services owned by ONE entity are staffed by people who do not make enough money to own a house. I was on busses with these people when they were headed to the job fair to compete for that Babylon deliver company job. They are mostly people of low agency ethnicity in urban areas. They are certainly the high agency family member. The type of pressure that these people come under during natural disaster—like a snow storm—shuts them out of the work force. Their dependents are numerous and needy, emotionally crippled from birth, and not able to support a working man venturing out to earn bread. She needs him home to quiet the demons in her head. So, the natural aversion of the Murkhan Land Whale to venture out during dire times, intensified by the collapse of the 3-day cycle in 2020, has resulted in people voluntarily sheltering in place and locking down under the shelter of a 1-day supply chain; which is a smoke and mirror gambit, as the same 3-day rule applies to selling-ordering-delivering. Also, instead of being fronted in 100 retail outlets, this stuff is warehoused in a single regional building that, if struck by some event, like a Creep State NORAD Microburst, would be devastating. Since we are an emotional, and not a logical, herd, the collapse of our brittle feed trough has demanded a more brittle feed plan.]

In the early 2000's I bought a dehydrated 6 month supply of food and some friends made light of it until I asked them if their grandparents had a root cellar with food, or did canning etc. Then one of them said he was on the interstate going north from Denver to Wyoming when a bad snow storm hit. The interstate was closed and he had to stop and get a hotel. He was stuck for multiple days and the only food was what was left in a vending machine. His family was snowed in at home and couldn't make it to the store though they had enough for a few days. The ridicule was quelled when they realized that being prepared didn't mean you were some homotactical mil larper. It just meant you can keep yourself and your family healthy if the trucks can't get to Kroger's.

[We are programmed to feel first, think second in support of our emotions, then feel more strongly along the same line, then act along that emotive arc with our mind reasoning only in support of that emotive arc. Without a trusted person there, like in the above conversation, to suggest a break in that cycle, then the emo-logos feedback coop (keeping that typo) triggers us to self-cull, beginning with the most reasonable minds.]

Other guys think they are going to "Bug Out" and they have a bag with weapons, paracord and some mres but where ya going? Have you trekked to areas that would provide water, sustenance (game in the area) and a way to hide? What are you going to eat? Can you even walk 20 or 30 miles? It's gonna be better for most people to bug in where their resources are.

[To me, the bug out pack is to get home from work, to get from your shitty suburban pod to a relative’s actual home, or to evacuate one of those many places we live, that are not livable under crisis conditions, like the vast burbs and shithole urbs.]

I've heard people say that if the food supply goes down most people will be dead in 3 months. After observing the disgustingly obese norm of americans I would venture a guess that the average american could still be alive for 5 to 6 months if they had access to water. So one might need a 6 month supply of food to be fresh when country starts looking like 90s supermodels. But maybe not.

[Landwhale sustainability! My novel Writ Hate was in large part a narrative ode to various prepared ostracides I stay with superimposed under/by the herd of flabby eaters at Ocean City, MD in July 2022. More seriously, I have considered that earthlings might be, like feedlot cattle, being fattened for a feast. Our ancestors were lean, grazing on the range. We are fattened in feed stalls. Look at the new death-by-square eatery/under apartments rentals going up all over the nation. For those considering the cannibalism option, might I suggest starting the hunt up front, while the herd is still well marbled?] [2]

Notes

-1. Jimz is what the cute Chink barmaid calls me.

-2. See Holiday Blue for my execution of the human herd concept.