The good life enjoyed in western countries for decades, is in peril. The certainty of a prosperous Canadian economy, social supports that can help the downtrodden, the freedoms of the so-called free world and safety from foreign threats is gone. The current potential for dramatic cataclysmic events and the foreboding of longer-term trends beg us to get ready..Consider. Ukraine has blown through billions of dollars of military aid and resources from the West, and they are begging for more. The war with Russia has now become NATO’s proxy war and that puts NATO countries like ours at risk. It’s like when Canada sent all its personal protective equipment and masks to China, leaving none when the pandemic came here, too..If World War I blew up from a single assassination (okay, not entirely), it’s easy to see how we could get to World War Z (for Zelensky) in the coming months. Imagine a spent-out U.S. suffers a nuclear or EMP strike with a scandal-ridden, dementia-suffering president at the helm. Supply chains get severed, panic buying clears store shelves in days, a run on the banks limits withdrawals, important drugs become hard to acquire..Seizing the moment, China moves on Taiwan, Arab nations attack Israel, Turkey invades Syria. Oh, and maybe Bill Gates’ predicted next pandemic escapes from a biolab, or someone eats a bat and worldwide hell ensues —whatever scenario you find more believable..If all or even half of that happened in 2023, what would you wish you had done?.The warning to prepare has been sounding regularly for years on the YouTube channel Full Spectrum Survival. Show hosts Brad and Kelley are never short on material on the precarious state of the world, nor on tips to prepare..“The world sits on a knife edge over the deadliest conflict and the largest one in Europe since World War II… This has of course, stoked new fears that World War III is being escalated right now,” host Brad said in recent episode..“Please get ready. Do some research. Learn what you should do if you see a mushroom cloud…That starts with gathering materials.”.What might a person prepare? Stocking our home shelves is quite doable, it just takes initiative. You’ll eat that food, drink that water, use those band aids, eventually anyway. Buying now prevents inflation from stealing your money later. The more you buy in advance, the more true that will prove..The challenge for some is finding space in their home, but smart storage solutions can address that. I know one family in Weyburn, Saskatchewan that has a full year of food on a partial wall of shelving in their kitchen. Even a month’s supply would put anyone well ahead of the desperate..Another option is to buy a tower garden. It allows people to grow food with no soil and less water in a small indoor home space. Anything but a root vegetable is fair game..We should keep or find a home for everything useful, like anyone did who lived through the Great Depression. Sheer necessity drove them to this approach and to grow their own food. The problems that ensued after the 1929 stock market crash were partly due to bankers who limited the money supply, making assets available at cheaper prices for the wealthy poised to buy them..The drive for zero emissions and digital currencies is steering us towards similarly contrived scarcity. Technocratic planning by the power-hungry could turn the own-nothing-and-be-happy motto into our living reality. Energy production, industry, agriculture, textiles, pretty much living and breathing cause emissions. Regulation and control of all purchases in the name of the “greater good” of “saving the planet” could leave little latitude for excess or personal choice..In mid-2021, the World Economic Forum announced that owning fewer clothes was the most sustainable option. “Efforts to create a more circular fashion economy include using digital birth certificates for items of clothing,” the WEF said on its website. Believe me, they want to regulate everything..We should start saving everything while it can still be made, keeping everything we yet own, or making a home for it elsewhere if we can’t. The Salvation Army store is a good place to donate, though from working off a traffic fine there, I discovered that most items are taken from there to the dump if they’re not purchased within five or six weeks..If a charity, church, or farmer wanted to be a refuge to many in the future, they would fill up a warehouse or Quonset with clothes, non-perishable food stores, discarded but useful items, and the like. They could start doing that now. We are 7 years from 2030 and 27 years from 2050, two time posts likely to turn prosperity into subsistence in the name of “sustainability.”.The late pastor John Paul Jackson recommended “Real food, real money, real energy, real needs,” to prepare for a “perfect storm” of troubles. He foresaw times so desperate that upper-class neighbourhoods are ransacked and thieves break into food delivery trucks with cutting torches..If the grid goes down, your household doesn’t have to. In Saskatchewan, John Graff of Living Streams Institute is one of a few people mobilizing people for effective preparation. Workshops in Whitewood, Swift Current, and Regina are equipping people with off-grid energy options. These solutions are scalable..In B.C., Jeffrey McCaskill is training people for both urban and wilderness survival. If you live near Princeton, where the North Vancouver resident usually travels to teach, you have ample opportunity to learn. “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail,” is a Ben Franklin quote that McCaskill takes to heart..The preparation required is both individual and collective. Every reader must decide for themselves what they will do for their household or even cooperate with others to do even more. If you agree with this article, yet fail to respond with action, you’ll share the same lot as those who never read it at all.
