One thing that bugs the hell out of me is the constant mindfuck of trying to foresee what form the future collapse will take. Hard crash begs one plan, slow crash another. And all points in between warrant different approaches to maximize the odds of survival.
So here, in increasing order of probability, is My Plan for the Apacolypse.
Mega Whack. Includes everything up to Nuclear War. Martial law is declared and the Camps are forcibly populated. This is actually the easiest scenario to deal with – you either run and hide and eat grubs or present yourself as a docile sheeple at the fedghetto induction center to get your food chit. You get the RFID tag implanted and trade slave labor for your daily bread. Me? I’m heading for the weeds. Pellet gun for rabbits and squirrels, hori-hori for digging roots and general grubbing and a japanese timber saw. Got a bug out bag full of bug out stuff. Wait out the rounding up process – I give the cops 3 months at the most before their containment measures crap out and they just abandon the machine. I can surface in an anarchic situation where help is needed and appreciated.
WTF Happened? Middle Ground Bazzooness. That’s when the power goes out and there are paper bags on all the gas pumps. People just stop going to work and engaging in commerce. The stores will all be looted, lots of people arrested and thrown in detention centers, but no martial law. The kind of shit that happens when our Gov’t detonates a few high altitude airbursts and the EM Pulse stops civilization in its tracks. Nobody knows jackshit and it gets rough in places but my local neighbors aren’t so demonic as to eat me or kill me for the stupid goat herd and a dozen hens. This is where the cache piles come in handy. Keep all the good stuff hidden away until the situation stabilizes. I’m still spending most of my time hidden away and foraging, but I can use the 30/30 to take down deer. This is where the topo map comes in handy. I plan on slithering around under cover making my way around to see who is still around. Also, since the internet will be down I’ll have lots of time to guerrilla plant all these seeds I keep piling up.
Slow. Boring, and Uneventful Contraction. I figure this is the way it comes down. Vole-Mart closes from lack of profitability in a 5 buck a gallon world. 1 in 3 people are permanently unemployed. The exurbs are abandoned and the hippy squatter types set up camps there to be periodically devastated by Mutant Zombie Bikers. Suburbia tries to grow enough stuff to eat on their pathetic yards, but midnight raids take quite a toll. Gov’t sends relief trucks whenever they can, and we finally get to see the formerly dazed x-box generation get off their ass and voraciously scoop handfulls of spilled rice into their rotting maws. The cities are extra filthy but the pigeon and rat population are finally brought under control.
Since the slow burn is at least a 3 year operation, sustainable small farms in the rural areas will have plenty of time to get their shit together. When some place is abandoned, it is stripped by the remaining locals and put to good use. Community will form. ammo will be stockpiled in these parts, and expended in the more havoc prone areas. Attrition and a slow ramping up of gov’t detention centers will remove the worst elements. Local newspapers with AP bylines will splash front page stories of some uprisings and how they were quelched by the feds, but for the most part all will be quiet. People will wonder how they went from the fastlane of life to a 1930’s Southern Poverty living arrangement. Just another day at the breadline, boys.
I have a high survivability factor in any one of these three situations. Cuz I don’t live in an urban environment. You folks in the cities better pray for cold fusion or abiotic oil. Even the slowest of slow burns will make the best of the prepared long for the good old days.
