Be Prepared

1 Timothy 5:8 But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

I was asked recently to present to an audience of the Founders Freedom Forum (Kalamazoo, Michigan) on the subject of preparing, aka prepping. For Geri and myself I’ll say that this has become a lifestyle over the course of the past dozen years, especially with respect to the Homesteading and Subsistence Farming aspects of what we are doing. Even as recently as a hundred years ago in the United States, 48.6% of the population lived rurally as farmers.

“Prepping” per se was not a “thing” in 1920. From the Summary of Results of 1920 Census of Agriculture:

Only 30.7% of farmers had an automobile, just 2% had a “motor truck,” 3.6% a tractor, 10% had running water in the house, and only 7% had gas or electric lighting. Just 104 years ago things were much, much different than they are today.

Preserving food without refrigeration was a necessity. With phones on less than four of every ten farms, and automobiles on three in ten, no one but your neighbor was coming in the event of an emergency, and most of those that came would have been walking or riding a horse. Firearms were everywhere, and as had been the case since the founding everyone from a young age was taught to safely and effectively put those firearms to use in hunting for food, protecting the livestock, and for protecting the farm and the farmers themselves. These are the hardy souls who survived the Great Depression. Their children were The Greatest Generation that won WW II.

The Greatest Generation, also known as the G.I. Generation or WWII Generation, refers to those Americans born between the 1900s and the 1920s. This generation lived through the Great Depression and World War II, and is characterized by their resilience, resourcefulness, and patriotism.

Cyber-attack, and Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons; these would have had zero effect on the operation of the 1920 farm. Today conversely, almost the entirety of the farming population, which is now less than 2% of the total population, is totally reliant on electricity and electronics in the provision of our food supply. The other 98% of the population are likewise totally reliant on the 2%, the food processors, and the transportation network that brings the food to market; all of which rely heavily on electricity and electronics. The possibility of cyber-attack is all over the mainstream news, and 20 years ago Congress formed a commission to study the impact of EMP; some have estimated that a full-scale EMP attack taking down the U.S. grid would leave 90% of the population dead in 12 months, 10% of the population would be dead in the first two weeks. Our complete reliance on all things electrical and electronic has its potential risks.

Woolsey <R. James Woolsey, chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency> said, “It’s briefly dealt with in the commission report of [2008]. There are essentially two estimates on how many people would die from hunger, from starvation, from lack of water, and from social disruption. One estimate is that within a year or so, two-thirds of the United States population would die. The other estimate is that within a year or so, 90% of the U.S. population would die. We’re talking about total devastation. We’re not talking about just a regular catastrophe.”

So, some of us are preparing for such possibilities, using the approach necessary to The Greatest Generation, and a lost art to us

. In the attached presentation, which I will talk you through by voice-over, these possibilities and others are discussed, together with what you can do to protect yourself, your family, your property and your liberty. Live links to free informational resources are included in the PDF, as are lists of books both non-fiction and fiction, that are on-point.