Writing The Future

Can you feel the temp rising?

There are a lot of people, entities, organizations, and governments, trading (and profiting mightily) on fear. Specifically, your fear. While this has always been so to one degree or another, our particular time and place has its unique qualities and characteristics.

Generally speaking, in the decade prior to 911 (after the collapse of the Soviet Union), the primary fears of most Americans were relatively mundane. It was a boom-time and things were pretty good. We worried about our appearance – and so we joined gyms and bought expensive clothing that made us look fashionable. We worried about retirement – and so we contributed generously to our 401ks, bought houses, and invested in the markets. We worried about getting old – and so we had plastic surgery. We consumed. We were optimistic. The high tech explosion that was ushered in with the late 90’s, brought us into the Information Age with gadgets and games that entertained us, amazed us, and lulled us into a comfortable sense of our own superiority.

And then, of course, everything changed.

We can debate later about why it changed, who changed it, and what their motivations were. What is not debatable is that on the morning of September 11, 2001, everyone in America was snapped into a moment of horrible wakefulness – and fear.

If only we’d managed to stay awake – and gotten a grip on those fears. We could have been better prepared for the next decade. It wasn’t to be.

It’s nearly ten years later now – and like frogs in a pot with the heat gradually being turned up – we’ve been lulled into a sense of complacency about our circumstances. Our circumstances are dire. The world has changed – and not for the better.

We can also debate later about why this is so, who is responsible, and if it can ever be reversed. The reality is that right now, today, our lives and our essential experience of being American, is radically transformed from what our experience of it was on September 10, 2001.

This web site does not intend to trade on your fear. Instead, our goal is acknowledge the facts of the world today, punch holes in the propaganda so you can make intelligent and rational decisions, and give you the tools and knowledge you need to address the world as it is (as it may soon be), so you can proceed confidently – without fear. We believe that the greatest remedy against fear is preparation.

Division & Fear Mongering Are The Tool of Tyrants

When the person on your television or speaking to you from your radio uses the word “Conservative” or “Liberal” or “Muslim” or “Christian” or “African-American” or “Neo-Con” or “Pro-choice” or “Pro-Life”, you need to very consciously grasp that their selection of words is not just convenient or accidental. Words – particular words – have been intentionally, purposefully invested with a great deal of meaning – cleverly crafted meaning – designed to illicit a gut-level response from the listener. No one is immune.

Sixty years ago and more (and even today in some parts of the world and even in enclaves in America) the word “Jew” was just such a word. It was a word that was invested with so much weight, with blame, and with vindictive hatred, that it moved a nation of people to assault their neighbors on the street with clubs and pipes – just as it gave a government permission to seize property and end the lives of people who bore the label “Jew”.

Some people still believe that the Jews were universally reviled because of their faith. The fact is – as history has borne out – the Jews were targeted for two crucial reasons. The first is that they were wealthy. The second is that they were vulnerable. It’s easy to steal from any group of people who have not worked consciously to secure themselves. The Jews of Central Europe were an easy mark for confiscation and elimination. The Holocaust was all about money. It was all about the transfer of wealth.

A decade later, there was another label almost as reviled as “Jew”. It was the label of “Communist”.

Here in America, not long after the horrors of WWII, some of our leaders sought to create the specter of an enemy that would keep us occupied while they profited on our fear. That enemy became the “Communist”.

Thousands of American Citizens were marked with the label. They were threatened, intimidated, and harassed. Some went to jail. Some were executed. Most only lost their jobs and their livelihoods, were ostracized from family and friends, and left to rot on the periphery of society. (Meanwhile, unimaginable fortunes were expended – and gained – while we built war machines to combat the “Communist Threat”.) This period, now known as the “McCarthy Era”, is still a dark cloud on our nations history. It was exposed very publicly by one honorable man. His name was Edward R. Murrow. Murrow paid the price for his honor, and history has been kinder to him than his opponents (Joe McCarthy and the “House Committee on Un-American Activity”, the witch-hunters of the the 1940’s and 50’s.)

Even though McCarthy was brought down, the dreaded fear of Communism and the war machine that gorged on our fear did not end until the Berlin Wall fell in 1990. When it happened, the world rejoiced. You might remember it. It was an amazing time. The whole world seemed renewed with possibility. Remember?

They Could Not Stand It.

Without the threat of Soviet nukes, and expanding communism to throw our money at, we (America) reduced military spending and balanced the budget. We paid for more kids to go to college than ever before. We poured billions into high tech R&D with amazing results. Except; all those other folks that had been sucking at the tit of the American taxpayers’ fear of Communism, were suddenly caught empty handed; no easy enemy to spend money on.

Is it any wonder we had to invent a new one? This one even more insidious than the last. Unlike the Jews or the Communists, you can’t see the “Terrorist“. He could be anyone. He’s squirmy. We can’t catch him. Just have to keep throwing money at the endless game of hide and seek. Have to keep bombing caves and stone age villages occupied by destitute people.

The point of this history lesson is to simply inform you that what you hear on the news, and the “stuff” you are fed on a daily basis by the larger media, by politicians, and by people and organizations who have a profit motive (there is always a profit motive) is rarely what it seems.

The next time you hear the word “terrorist”, remember that it is a word – just a word – that has been carefully crafted by larger powers with unseen motives, in order to illicit a specific response in you. They want that response. They profit from it.

In the last ten years those powers have profited from Americans’ fears of “terrorists” to a degree never before seen in human history. And more people – innocent people – have been displaced, injured, maimed, and died as a result, than in any military action since the last World War – a War that quite literally – encompassed every developed nation, on every continent on the planet. Think about that.

Think about who has made a profit on so much misery – and fear. Your fear.

Just to be clear, our fear, our misunderstanding, our hatred of others who are different from us, does not in any way contribute to the quality or abundance of our lives. Quite the contrary. When our nation involves itself in wars and conflicts, the only people who profit are those that create the machines and infrastructure for conflict. Oil fuels wars. Aircraft make it possible. Bombs and bullets and idealistic, strong, young men and women who are propagandized to believe that its honorable to “serve”, keep it active. And fear feeds the money that pays for all of these. Your fear. My fear. Our collective fear. And our money.

What Are We Afraid Of?

Prominent leaders of both parties, as well as so-called Independents, would have had us all believe that the greatest threat America ever faced was the threat of terrorists attack on US soil. September 11, 2001 made this a really palpable reality. But the fact is that while there was great loss of life on 911, it was infinitesimal compared to the realities of every day life in post-9/11 America.

The 21st century has brought us a whole new crop of things to fear:
- Financial collapse (catastrophic deflation followed by hyperinflation)
- Pandemic outbreak (sickness, death, civil unrest)
- Climate change & resulting impact (diaspora, food & water shortages, systemic collapse of civil society, starvation)

Diversion & Disinformation Keep You Paralyzed

Here’s the thing. A dirty bomb may be set off in the port of Long Beach, Miami, or New York. But as September 11th demonstrated, that’s not going to shatter life as you know it. If it happened, a lot of people would die and some real estate would be cordoned off & returned to green space to wait out the half-life (Chernobyl is a national park in the former Soviet Union now.) But things would go back to pretty much normal within a few weeks or months, for the majority of us out here in the provinces.

But lets take something a little more mundane; like Ben Bernanke’s printing press and the Chinese nation’s impatience with America’s 30 year reign of profligate spending and debt accrual.

What happens when (when, not if) the Chinese decide to finally cut their losses and unload all those worthless Treasury Notes they’ve been holding as IOU’s in exchange for cheap plastic crap that Americans are now – suddenly – not so terribly fond of buying? What happens is that the dollars in your bank account suddenly become capable of far less (way, way less) purchasing power. A loaf of bread is ten dollars. Filling up your cars’ gas tank, three our four hundred dollars.

The talking heads on mainstream media are busy keeping you occupied with the latest snips and snipes the democrats and republicans are hurling at one another, with dramatic theater about this auto-recall or CEO mea culpa, meanwhile the guys at the giant squid investment firms who got bailed out, are shorting the dollar. Your dollars. My dollars.

They are taking their billions in bonuses (Billions) and they are converting them as fast as they can into commodities and property of real value. No one in the mainstream media is reporting on that.

No one in the mainstream is reporting on the fact that while the Dow has reached epoch highs since the little correction we had in March of 2009, that insiders (CEO’s, executives, and the folks that know what is coming) are unloading their stock at a break-neck pace, and converting their earnings into commodities and property of real value. (George Bush bought and entire watershed in Brazil shortly after leaving office. Did you hear that on CNN?)

The mainstream media is not reporting on the fact that the Federal Government is floating an idea (as of January 2010) to convert your 401k investments into annuities that the Fed controls, taps, and regulates – just like Social Security (which is bankrupt, by the way.) This is the second biggest wealth grab since the Bank Bailout – and no one is talking about it.

Is anyone in the mainstream media reporting that most of the states are completely bankrupt? No. Not really (except California – which is awkwardly freelancing under the guidance of the Governator.) The facts about the fifty states fiscal health is just astonishing. They’re all (almost all) completely broke, leveraged to the Fed and just one crisis away from collapse.

The fact is that the “news” that they are reporting (disinformation, focused on irrelevant scandals and gossip) is keeping you distracted in a dependent state of semi-paralysis. They tell you that recovery is just around the corner. You keep spending even though something doesn’t feel quite right about it. They profit. You loose.

What happens if they are wrong? What happens if the Big Lie catches up to them and the economy simply sputters to a halt? Your job goes away? The unemployment checks do not show up because the state you live in is bankrupt? Are they going to suffer homelessness, hunger, lack of healthcare? Nope. They’re covered. How about you?

Fear

We have the threat of global pandemics (real or manufactured for effect.) We have climate change. Regardless of what the data tweakers did or did not do, there is clearly something going on. It may or may not be man-made. It doesn’t matter. If we go into another mini-ice age (like the one experienced about the time of the formation of this great nation), or we bake like the Sahara, either way – we’re screwed. Something is shifting out in the solar system. Could be sun spots (or lack there of). Could be carbon build-up in our atmosphere. Could be too much UV coming through the Van Allen Belts. No way that folks like you and I will ever know for certain. The only thing we can do is take the news with a grain of salt – and prepare, prepare, prepare.

Define Your Fear. Don’t Let Them Define It For You.

Human beings – even Americans – only have a few essential requirements for survival. These include: food, water, shelter, safety, and sex. This web site deals with four of the five (we’ll leave sex for someone else to cover. It’s pretty well represented on the net.)

Despite what we have been led to believe, we do not absolutely have to have iPhones, iPads, Wii’s, breast implants, Viagra®, whiter teeth, fresher breath (though it is nice), designer jeans, Italian shoes, Gucci bags, or racing striped SUVs with twenty-seven cup-holders and a full media center for the kids in the back.

Similarly, we just as likely don’t need Stealth Bombers, smart bombs, High Frequency Active Auroral Research Programs, NASA, carbon trading schemes, TAARP funds, Credit Default Swaps, Limited Liability Corporations, or lawyers.

We could also probably get by just fine without off-shore internment facilities, rendition programs, water-boarding (whether you define it as torture or not), and scatter-bombing villages in remote regions of Afghanistan (it’s ten thousand miles away – at least!), where hundreds of children and women are mauled and killed, along with the “Terrorists” (real or fabricated.)

Oh, and we can – despite what they have told us – get by just fine without Debt.

Here’s what you need to be really afraid of:

- Something occurs (hurricane, earthquake, civil breakdown event) that causes the grocery store shelves to go empty for weeks or months (estimated 3 to 7 days from a natural or man-made event that disrupts transportation from the field to the processing facility to the Food Lion / Trader Joe’s in your home town, and your cupboard is bare.)

- You loose your job, your income, and as a result your standard of living (your car, your house, and anything else that is “on credit” and can be repossessed or foreclosed on.)
- Something occurs that makes it unsafe or unwise to go “out” to work, to school, to shop (pandemic, civil breakdown event, terrorist or “false flag” attack.)

- Transformative Change (dust bowl, civil war, thermonuclear event, asteroid or cosmic event, Yellowstone eruption, or something we have not yet conceived.)

These are all really scary things. The odds of any of one of them happening are pretty good at some point in your life. So I’ll say it again; we believe that the greatest remedy against fear is preparation.

Food Security. Shelter. Clean water. Personal safety.

These are the basics that we as Americans have learned to take for granted. We are raised to believe that they are inalienable rights – enshrined in some document – sacred. The fact is that it is not so. Our system gives us the right to “the pursuit of happiness”; but it does not give us the guarantee of three healthy meals a day, under a roof that is free of leaks, between four walls that are warm, in a neighborhood free of violence and victimization.

Our Founding Fathers lived in a world in which it was assumed that everyone had such knowledge and was capable of providing those essential basics for himself.

What would they think if they saw us today? They’d think we were the most clueless, helpless, irresponsible slaves that ever walked upon the Earth.

So here we are. Addicted to grocery stores, shoddy construction, imports, and 911. Incapable of laying a foundation or conjuring a tidy, moisture sealed roof line. We don’t know a soffet from a tomato seed and could not germinate the idea of how to construct a low tunnel for early season germination if our life depended upon it. And the clincher is – our lives do depend upon it.

One more time; we believe that the greatest remedy against fear is preparation.

Becoming Prepared

Once you make the decision to become a “Prepper”, you accept the fact that the answers and the true prep do not come overnight. There are stages. I like breaking things down into easily doable exercises. Being prepared is easy to break down into doable bits:

- 30 Day Plan – immediate situational readiness & planning ahead
- 90 Day Plan – bug out & transportation, as required
- 6 Month Plan – final location arrival & preparations
- Long Term Plan – maintenance & self-reliance

If you’re new to the site, you’ll want to investigate the links above and determine where you are in the planning phase. We’ve got lists and To-Do’s, and plenty of advice. We also welcome your additions, comments, and contributions.

Beyond the basic Prepper Plans, we offer a wealth of information to the folks out there who are already on their way toward self-reliance, and just need a little bit of guidance on specifics. Plus we have lot’s of opinions on what’s happening in the world at large, and what it means to us as individual Americans (what they won’t tell you on the evening news.)

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Welcome. Spread the word. We’re Writing The Future. A more sustainable, self-reliant future for all Americans who are awake enough to listen and prepare.