I’ve been involved, in one degree or another, with the various facets of survivalism (or preparedness) for over thirty years now. (Actually forty years, come to think of it…I distinctly recall reading ‘Alas Babylon’ around junior high school age.) I’ve seen a lot of ‘this is it! hunker down!’ moments come through that never amounted (to me) to anything more than a hiccup. Y2k, 9/11, Katrina, assorted ‘asteroid/comet may collide with Earth’, threats of war with Iran/Iraq/China/Russia/NorK/Cartels, Bird Flu, SARS, Ebola, Peak Oil, etc, have all come and gone and at no point have I had to shutter myself in the house, pull the blinds, load the 870, and pray no one comes to the door. .Not once.

But…that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

So here comes the statement that I’m sure you all saw coming: And then 2020 came along…….

This year has proven to be a chimera of several flavors of apocalypse rolled into one. I won’t go into the constituent components of it because any idiot can go to Drudge Report and find at least three of them on the front page. Will 2020 turn out to be another nothingburger in terms of generating the awaited Mad Max scenario that we all anticipate eventually occurring? The famed ‘Without rule of law’? In my opinion, no. Even with the swirling miasma of various dooms pervading the land, I am still 99.999% certain that at this time next year the lights will still be on, the trucks will still be running, and water will still flow from the tap.

“If you’re that certain, than why are you still roaming WalMart clutching a printed spreadsheet of things to stockpile?”, you may ask. Valid question.

In ‘Starship Troopers’, theres a scene where the recruits have to mud crawl through obstacles as a belt-fed gun fires just over their prostrate forms…even though only one round out of a hundred, or maybe a thousand,  in the belt is live that one round out of a hundred is enough to make you hug the dirt. Same reasoning.

But over all the time I’ve been at this, it never seemed like there needed to be as much ..deliberateness… in what I was doing as there seems to be a need for now. Now it seems like every task, every trip to the store, every usage of an item out of storage, every gun oiled, every round loaded, is done with the same all-consuming care as if you were packing your own parachute. (Which, really, you are.) It’s a time of careful considerations, deliberate actions, strategic movements, and heavily-weighed options…in short, its a season of caution.

As I say, I’m not necessarily doing anything different these days…it’s just that I’m doing them with a level of focus, intensity, urgency, and pace that, over the years, has been a lot less. The curtain hasn’t risen on the worst of 2020 yet, but I think I hear the band warming up.

I have a terrible history of forecasting the future. (Although, on some aspects of precognition I’m freakishly astute.) When I predict what the future holds it may as well be a coin toss. But, while I don’t think that a year from now we’re going to be fighting over canned vegetables and eating our pets, I think there’s going to be some economic turmoil, regardless of the election, and that it will be an economic turmoil worse than what 2020 has turned up so far. I suppose that, also, regardless of the election youre going to see continued ‘peaceful protests’ but those won’t affect me as directly as the economic events. (actually, come to think of it, all things being equal, I’d forecast worse economic turmoil under Biden than Trump given any set of circumstances.)

So, to sum it up, for me it is a time of caution and purposeful movement. My level of certainty that this time next year won’t be Max Max-ville is about the same level of certainty as me believing the sun will rise tomorrow. But, as the man says, Doveryay, no proveryay. I trust the ship not sink, but I look to see where the lifeboats are anyway.

Every so often you read about people who let their dogs run loose and those dogs start terrorizing neighborhoods and chasing down deer. These are, for the most part, “good dogs” who, once they start hanging out in groups, tend to let the pack mentality make them do things they otherwise would not. I suspect rioters are the same way. Put twenty college kids, who would normally shrink from violence, into a group and watch them egg each other on to things that they never woulda had the cajones to do on their own.

Thats why any group of people is more dangerous than a single person. Not because of the numbers, but because with others encouraging or ‘backing him up’ someone is more likely to behave in a manner that they would not have before. A rioting mob is an example of the ‘herd’ mentality at its worst.  A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals…and you know it.

I’d be curious to see if the election, regardless of how it turns out, convinces a lot of otherwise peaceful people to be less-than-peaceful because ‘everyone is with me on this’.

I expect plywood sales to explode in early November.