This article discusses some of the thoughts I’ve had about the different stages of post-SHTF life while writing my upcoming article, “A Realistic Top-10 Prepping List.” Consider this a preface to that article.
Everything presented here is my opinion of course. As I’ve prepped and worked towards living a self-reliant lifestyle, I’ve thought a lot about things over the years. Many of my conclusions are based on history, ideas presented in some of the post-apocalyptic novels and movies, reading daily SurvivalBlog articles for the past seven years, and concerns about my current situation if the Schumer hits the fan next Thursday. Some of the possibilities presented here may come to pass if we were to end up in a long-term grid-down world.
My goal is to get those preparing for a long-term TEOTWAWKI event to tweak their thinking and take a closer look at what exactly we should be preparing for. While researching various top-10 TEOTWAWKI prepping-item lists, I discovered two things. First, almost all of the list makers weren’t quite sure what the goals were. Second, I came to the realization that many of us are preparing for the first two stages of life after the SHTF but not the third and final stage, the New Normal.
So here are my thoughts on those three stages.
The three stages of TEOTWAWKI are: the Emergency stage, the Survival stage, and the New Normal stage.
STAGE 1: EMERGENCY STAGE
The emergency phase will either be a slow-motion event taking weeks, or a more sudden realization that the Schumer has officially hit the fan.
Types of Emergencies
Slow-motion event – A slow-motion situation would be watching the world rapidly falling apart before our eyes, knowing the S is probably going to hit the fan in the very near future. Watching a war unfolding which involves the US, getting worse by the day, or an overnight turn of events, could inspire many to make some last-minute preparations. For the better informed, it could be an indication that it’s either time to get out of Dodge, or for those of us already out of Dodge, to go buy that last case of Thin Mints, top off the gas and propane tanks, and buckle in for the ride.
During this slow-motion collapse, most people will be in a state of apathy or ignorance, not really understanding what’s going on other than what Fox News and CNN are broadcasting. As some of them start to realize that perhaps things can get a whole lot worse, the majority will still be in a state of denial, also known as normalcy bias, believing the possibility of something big happening isn’t likely. If it does, no worries, the government will get everything fixed soon enough. That ignorance and denial will cause further wasting of time and resources. By the time the majority does finally realize their life is about to change, it’s too late to do much. From then on they’ll be in constant emergency mode trying to figure out what happened and how to cope with the unknown. Many will never get past the emergency phase since they’ll lack the basic means to live for more than just a few weeks with what little food and water they have on hand. Water will be the single largest issue for most.
Another type of slow-motion event would be a pandemic with far worse results than the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918 which would cause many of us to self-isolate. If any of the possibilities explained below were to occur, enough people self-isolating could not only disrupt supply chains, but also affect basic public services. Were enough of the workers who make water and electricity available self-isolate, small (or large) grid-down types of results cold occur.
The alternative media (including some science journals) was two months ahead of the mainstream media when the covid epidemic first started. Generally, disease-causing organisms stay within a certain class of animals such as birds or mammals. Occasionally, they can jump from those groups of animals to humans in an event known as zoonotic spillover. Sometimes the results are disastrous and have on more than one occasion caused an epidemic or even a pandemic. The Spanish flu epidemic occurred after an avian flu jumped from birds to humans. Roughly 500 million people were infected which was a third of the earth’s population, and between 50 and 100 million people died. In other words, one in five people who were infected with the Spanish flu virus died. Those kinds of numbers would have a serious effect on today’s supply chains. Ebola and bird flu are also from spillover events and both have a nearly 50% death rate. The Hendra virus in Australia moved from bats to horses with an 80% mortality rate, then into humans with a 60% mortality rate..
The argument can be made that the Spanish flu killed so many because antivirals hadn’t yet been invented. The fact that it spread so rapidly from coughing, had such a high mortality rate, and modern-day antivirals take so long to develop (Covid, 11 months), to me are compelling evidence that the next pandemic could be far worse than the Spanish flu. A virus similar to Ebola or Hendra needs just another tweak or two before it fits the bill. That’s not to say that either of those two will ever get to that point, but if a combination of the above factors plus the Ebola/Hendra death rates all happen in the same currently unknown flu virus, the results could cause a pandemic far worse than the Spanish flu.
Gain-of-function labs are still legal in many countries, even after the covid pandemic. All the evidence points to the covid virus escaping one of these labs. Gain-of-function is a valid and effective method to study viruses and other microorganisms, but is illegal in many countries for the exact reasons that an accidental escape can have the same disastrous results as the covid escape had.
It would take too much space to cover all the whys and hows but the conclusion is the same: covid would be considered a mild pandemic when compared to the potential which exists for not only man-made organisms, but naturally-mutated Spanish flu types. In modern history the Spanish flu pandemic was far worse than any of the flu pandemics. There’s no question that another virus will someday break that record, and another one after that. Records are always broken, it’s just a question of when.
With those kinds of death rates, we’d be foolish not to self-isolate in our own mini TEOTWAWKI. The Spanish flu epidemic in the US consisted of several waves over a two-year period. My own grandfather was at death’s door in the spring of 1918.
One last point. Many people aren’t aware that during the Spanish flu pandemic, most of the same covid mandates were in place: required masks, no public gatherings, forced private funerals, quarantines, and closure of schools, churches, theaters, and sporting events among others. And yet, as with covid, the Spanish flu still spread rapidly.
Sudden Event – A sudden event which could trigger a TEOTWAWKI event would be something like seeing mushroom clouds on the horizon. Or it could be watching a news story rapidly unfolding about a large portion of the country losing the grid. In 1965, the Great Northeast Blackout caused 30 million people to lose power in a fast-moving domino event. This time around, many will be sitting with their fingers crossed hoping it’s not just the first domino of 1965 all over again. Next, another portion of the grid browns out, then fails just as our televisions and computers go dark. Pretty soon the whole house of cards has fallen. Within a few hours we’d go from happy to holy cr*p, to harrowing.
Foreign governments or terrorists would only have to take down 9 of the major substations in the US to cause the national grid to fail. The FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) report on the topic indicates that should it happen, “the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer.” Many of our largest grid transformers come from China, at least one of which was recently discovered to have contained hardware that could allow China to switch it off remotely. These threats aren’t just idle speculations in fiction books.
In a sudden-event scenario of any type, the masses will quickly realize that maybe it’s time to get to Walmart before everyone else does. There’ll be total mayhem, not nearly enough food and water for everyone, and most of those people won’t live long enough to transition from the Emergency Phase to the Survival Stage.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)
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