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Most people have no idea that the federal government (FEMA) instructs all Americans to prepare for hard times. Ready.gov recommends that every household in America have at least three days' worth of food, water, medical, and other supplies stored away in case of an emergency. Essentially they are saying, “We, the US government, are totally unable to come and rescue your family in a timely fashion should there be a localized natural disaster. Please take care of yourselves for at least three days until we can come to your rescue!” Comforting, isn’t it? Have you done that already? Do have three days’ worth of supplies for a potential disaster in your area?
You should prepare for hard times NOT because it may take the government three days to mobilize, but because there are multiple, verified scenarios that would cripple the US government leaving you on your own for months...or possibly years. That is not fear-mongering; it is the truth. Why is it that those of us that choose to prepare for potential hard times are so maligned and stigmatized in the media? All we are doing is planning ahead and taking precautions to ensure our family is fed should a collapse scenario come to pass. Shouldn’t planning ahead and safeguarding your future be considered virtues? Per social norms, aren’t we supposed to own home insurance, car insurance, fire insurance, flood insurance, medical insurance, and life insurance to protect us from potential calamity in the future? Aren’t most people encouraged to have a savings account or “rainy day fund” in case they lose their job or come under a financial hardship? Why is it that putting some extra food in your basement to feed your family during hard times be considered so irrational?
The fact is, the reason people look down at “preppers” is that they don’t see the threat of hard times ahead and in a lot of cases, when presented with concrete evidence, they still don’t want to believe it. There is plenty of evidence and reliable information available to you, but most have never seen it and a lot of people don’t want to. The information about a grid-down scenario, pandemic or financial collapse never enters the “information bubble” most people surround themselves with. What I mean by information bubble is the people, places, and media sources that most people surround themselves with is what dictates how they think and feel about the various issues facing our country. If they don’t have a friend or co-worker who’s into preparedness, their thoughts and opinions on “preppers” can then only be formed by their media and entertainment sources. Shows like Doomsday Preppers don’t help our cause either. I believe they intentionally pick the craziest people they can find for that show.
Every single client I have ever worked with has been an absolute, down to earth, normal and sane individual. I have never met a single prepper like some of the nut jobs I see on Doomsday Preppers (though I obviously know they exist). So let’s be honest. The main reason preppers and survivalists are thought of as crazy people is because that’s how they are portrayed in the news and entertainment establishment. Believe me or not, but it’s true. In fact, most of the things people believe and care about today are carefully crafted by those who set the “media narrative” and that includes every source of news, liberal and conservative.
People’s opinions and worries are completely controlled by a media who TELLS YOU exactly what you should and shouldn’t care about. Don’t believe me? I can prove it with a single question. Has gun crime been on the rise over the last 20 years or has it decreased? What is absolutely astonishing is that 56% of respondents to the Pew Research study think gun crime is on the rise, while 26% think it has stayed the same, and only 12% think it decreased. The truth: the gun homicide rate has dropped 50% in the last twenty years! Over 82% of people were absolutely and totally dead wrong in their understanding of gun crime in America! How did they get that way? The media and academia has an anti-gun agenda which they have been pushing hard for a long time. It’s not like gun violence had dropped a few percentage points over the last twenty years; gun murders were literally cut in half in only 20 years and yet nearly 60% of people think it’s going up! Think about how unbelievably wrong these people’s thoughts are about a simple provable fact (even the 26% who think it has merely stayed the same are way off). The point I’m making doesn’t have anything to do with guns, gun control, or gun crime. The point is that the media and academia are capable of completely brainwashing a large percentage of the American population into believing things that are completely untrue and easily debunked by spending two minutes on Google! Look it up yourself. The gun crime data I just cited comes from a Pew Research study from 2013 titled, “Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware.”
Let’s take the example of Cecil the Lion, which was killed by a hunter in Africa in July of 2015. Now before I begin to talk about Cecil, it’s important to realize that hundreds of lions have been legally killed every year in Africa by trophy hunters and almost NO ONE HAS EVER CARED! The media whipped up the entire US population into a frenzy with 24 hours-a-day coverage for a week straight of Cecil the Lion. The national outcry as a result of the sensationalized and emotional news coverage was amazing to behold. People organized marches, organizations raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in record time to protect lions, Twitter and Facebook were filled with emotional meme’s and memorial photos for the poor feline, and the hunter who shot Cecil had to take his family and flee, losing his livelihood and going into hiding for weeks after receiving numerous credible death threats. The outcry even affected the laws in Africa when, under pressure, they banned hunting lions. What happened next? Nothing. The next media story came out a week later and all of a sudden no one gave a flying monkey about the lions in Africa anymore. Everyone was then concerned about terrorism, or the plight of transgenderism, mass shootings, or something some politician said. The craziest part of the story is that just before I sent this book to print in February 2016, while researching information about Cecil, I stumbled across a current story about how Africa is literally getting ready to kill over 200 lions in a single wildlife preserve because the population of lions has grown completely out of control since they have eliminated trophy hunting after the outcry over Cecil. You can’t make this stuff up! They are calling it “the Cecil Effect.” Where is the media and national outcry? Not a single major news outlet covered the story. All the hand wringing over lion hunting, and now Africa is getting ready to literally mow down a couple hundred lions at one time as a direct result of the Cecil reporting. It’s insane!
The news stories come and go and people are off to taking up the next cause or caring about something else. It is next to impossible to know what to believe anymore and nearly EVERY SINGLE news story from EVERY SINGLE news outlet cover their stories with a pre-planned bias; they all push their own agenda. America, wake up! You are being used, manipulated, and intentionally brainwashed in a lot of cases. There is a really good chance that a fair percentage of the things you hold as truths are actually completely wrong and you’ve just been manipulated with misinformation for years into believing it as fact.
Preparedness and the risks of societal collapse are nowhere on the list of narratives the news media outlets regularly plug. On November 20, 2014, Admiral Rogers, who is the Commander of US Cyber Command, testified before the Congressional Intelligence Committee that America’s critical infrastructure (including the electric grid) is completely vulnerable to attack by multiple enemy nations and groups who currently have the knowledge and the ability to literally “flip the switch” on our electric grid at any time. It is his biggest fear as the Commander of US Cyber Command and he fears a traumatic attack in the very near future which will result in massive loss of life and property. You can watch his testimony on CSPAN.org. It will blow your mind that you’ve never heard of this or the fact that the media didn’t feel it was important enough information to tell the American people. Do you know what the major media story was on Nov 20, 2014? The Supreme Court affirming same-sex marriages in South Carolina. You have the man in charge of US Cyber Command warning congress about an imminent cyber attack against the US that would result in millions of Americans dying in the aftermath, and the media is more concerned about who is marrying whom in South Carolina. Again I say it’s time to wake up, America! It is up to you to do your own research on these various threats to our way of life because no one else is going to tell you about them.
In this guide, I will present the evidence and make the case that our country will experience hard times in your lifetime. I will help you prepare for a societal collapse and show you how to survive after things have fallen apart. What you do with that evidence and information is completely up to you.
If you don’t heed my advice and prepare now, you will most likely die. Frank Gaffney, the President of the Center for Security Policy, had this to say about America losing the electric grid for an extended period of time after an EMP attack: “Within a year of that attack, 9 out of 10 Americans would be dead, because we can’t support a population of the present size in urban centers and the like without electricity.” Seriously think about that. Think of ten people you are close to and try to imagine nine of them dying of starvation or being murdered over the course of a single year.
If you are reading this and you haven’t started preparing, it is most likely for one or more of the following three distinct reasons:
1 - You aren’t convinced that the threat is real.
2 - You’re overwhelmed and you don’t even know where to start.
3 - You don’t want to be stigmatized by your friends and family as a “Survivalist.”
If point 1 is your reason, I can assure you that if you continue reading this book, go to my website and click on the hundreds of links to supporting documentation, as well as DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, you will come to the same conclusion that many others have come to. The threat of losing the electric grid is VERY real and VERY likely to happen in our lifetime. In the first few chapters of this book, I will lay out the evidence behind the threat of losing our national electric grid. Any words or text that you see underlined in the following chapters have supporting documents and videos available on my website (GridDownConsulting.com) where you can find the supporting evidence for yourself.
If point 2 is your reason, you have two options. You can buy dozens of books on the subject and try to decipher what your next step should be from the various survival experts (with varying levels of expertise and conflicting opinions), or you can hire an Emergency Preparedness and Survival Retreat Consultant like myself to guide you on your way. If point 3 is your reason, then you are doing it wrong. I cannot stress this enough. The number one rule of preparedness is “DON’T TELL ANYONE THAT YOU ARE PREPPING!” There are many more important reasons for this that we will get into later, but if no one knows about your plans, then you can easily avoid the label of being a “survivalist” or “prepper.” How many of your friends know the value of your life insurance policy? Survival Insurance (prepping) is in all actuality a life insurance policy. Treat them the same way.
Please do not be one of the 95% of people unprepared when that day comes: starving, sick, and huddled in the corner of your house wondering when the government is coming to save you. You will discover that no help is on the way with deadly consequences for you and your family. However, before you make a hasty leap and buy into some monthly long-term food scam thinking you are covered, please educate yourself on what it will really take to make it through a long-term SHTF (S**t Hits The Fan) scenario. It’s a lot more than storing up some food and water in your basement.
So, if you absolutely knew that there was a very real possibility that hard times would come in your lifetime, wouldn’t you prepare for them? If you knew that a flood was coming, would you head to higher ground or would you put your faith and trust in our government to come and rescue you like so many did during Hurricane Katrina? If you heard a tornado off in the distance, would you take cover or continue whatever you were doing? Think of prepping as “Survival Insurance.” The reason most people don’t prep is because they don’t see the need or understand the risk factors.
What are the chances that your house will burn down or flood? What are the chances that you will die an early death? These are all very unlikely events, yet you probably have car insurance, medical insurance, life insurance, home insurance, flood insurance, and probably even insurance on some of your more expensive electronics... all to protect yourself against unforeseen tragedies and accidents. Why do you have all these insurance plans? At some point, someone convinced you that it was the responsible and wise thing to do. My main desire would be that my book helps you see the threat of a SHTF scenario in our near future and convinces you that putting together a “survival insurance plan” for you and your family is the responsible thing to do. I am not saying that you need to drain your savings account and your child’s college fund, but you should at least make it part of your monthly budget. Start getting a couple items each month. If you look at the amount of money you spend on those other insurances throughout the year, “Survival Insurance” will be considerably cheaper.