Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

Fella comes to the door yesterday, clipboard in hand, to take a survey for a political candidate. Among the questions was “What is the most important issue to you this election?” and he rattled off things like the economy, debt, jobs, immigration, etc, etc.

Among that list was jobs, federal spending, the deficit and the economy. To me, they all pretty much roll together into one big category of “the economy”.

I was talking to the wife later about the questions and she asked me why I said the economy. To me, that encompassed the most amount of things that directly and indirectly affected our lives. Bad economy? Higher prices. Bad economy? Higher unemployment. Bad economy? Business failures. Bad economy? Higher taxes.  Bad economy? More desperate people.

Once in a while, I get asked why I would prepare with fuel, food, ammo and that sort of thing against what I forsee as an economic disaster. After all, if it’s an economic disaster then all you need to guard against it is an economic defense…such as a big ol’ box of cash and gold, right?

Nope. Here’s todays example..a fella laid off from his job comes back with a gun and shoots former coworkers. And although the story is still very fresh, and the details will probably change, what remains true is that in a bad economy more people are getting laid off, putting them under more stress as they try to keep their homes and their families together and some of those folks are just gonna snap under that stress and take some folks with them. And that doesn’t even include the folks who don’t snap but simply start knocking over 7-11′s, daylight burglaries and doing stickups at ATM’s to keep their houses they couldn’t afford.

So, indirectly, thats how a bad economy affects your safety. It creates a larger group of desperate and unstable people who at some point are just going to go off the rails and commit acts of violence. And this is why in a bad economy it isn’t far-fetched to believe that your preparations and plans against that bad economy should take into account some serious personal safety plans…like things that have triggers and magazines.