PREPPING ... who was already doing it?

That's it, exactly. Farming skills are always going to be the key .. plus the physical fitness to do that work.

 

No doubt among the fifty million people who voted for Trump, there is someone who thinks that all government ownership is 'socialism'. Even more likely to find such a person among the Libertarians, who are not conservatives although we love them.

But conservatives, in any normal use of the word, have always been happy with various sorts of government ownership. The American Armed Forces own billions of dollars worth of property .. and although during my own experience in the military I witnessed some of this government property being converted into private property, ideology was not the motivation.

Our view is this: for various reasons, private ownership of property is the best foundation for personal independence, for liberty, and for an efficient economy. But sometimes state ownership is the lesser evil. Our Libertarian friends would auction off all the National Parks. Not many conservatives would go along with them on this.

Civil Defense was a kind of extension of the military situation. Government intervention here -- to dictate modifications to building regulations, for example, or to construct and own air-raid sirens -- was (and is) seen by all conservatives I know of as a perfectly proper function of government, in principle.

I don't think this is an important difference between sensible Left and Right. It's not even a difference.

We're not against government ownership in principle. For example, we would love it if our Leftwing friends would join with us in demanding that the government build and maintain a great big wall between the US and Mexico. How about, comrades???? Shall we unite our forces and demand that we 'Build that Wall'?

Well, it's that much over-used word 'community' ... as in 'the pedophile community'.
I think we're talking about the same thing, actually. Not just anyone who lives near you. But those who live near you and who live like you, with your values.

Which brings us to an interesting theoretical problem.

Reality is the best teacher. But she's not a progressive educationalist. No concern about hurting the feelings of her pupils. But teach she does, and there will be some people who get 'woke' by this. And even more who will get 'woke' by what's to come. (You no doubt recall the defintion of a conservative as a liberal who's been mugged.)

So one must have a plan for the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots in reverse ... who turn up at the last minute... beyond just saying 'I told you so' and looking smug.

There's safety in numbers, and 'fortress troops' as they were called in the Civil War, do have their uses. (Hell, I've got liberal friends in California who, when I visit with them, cannot hide that, way down deep, they agree with me about American social reality. They've escaped to lovely Petaluma, but they see what the Progressives are doing to once-beautiful San Francisco -- it was my favorite American city!!! -- but cannot integrate it into their kindly liberal natures, so they live with the cognitive dissonance. But he's a gun owner and I'd be very happy to have him beside me in a SHTF situation.)

 

You are forbidden to own them? If not, you should.. Just in case. An off-the-shelf AR15 can be had for 400 bucks, or so it was a few weeks ago. Forget the fancy optics if you're not flush with cash. Get a dozen magazines, a couple of thousand rounds of ammo.... that's another 500 or so. Burn up two or three hundred rounds at the range, if you need to familiarize yourself with the thing. Forget all the macho stuff about marksmanship, the Russians sussed out long ago that's the quantity of hot lead you can get downrange quickly that counts.
But if you're forbidden, or highly restricted, I understand perfectly, because I'm in the same situation.

 

Yes, but that's what the division of labor and specialization are for. That's the idea of the market.
If we ALL have to become farmers, it will mean that civilization has essentially regressed five thousand years.
Liberal intelligentsii laugh at 'Red State America', those ignorant deplorables who don't know their Foucault from their Derrida.
All those racist unwoke Neanderthals, who can only fix cars, repair your central heating, lay cable, drive trucks, run turret lathes and continuous miners, build houses, operate milling machines, forge iron ... but these folks will, given even a minimal framework of law and order and protection for private enterprise, get an economy going again, and trade for food.

I recall, long ago, reading -- in a socialist tract, actually -- about some situation -- I forget the exact circumstances -- where a group of a few dozen unemployed American men, during the Great Depression, were on some sort of make work Civilian Construction Corps project, cutting brush. I can't remember what happened, but suddenly, they needed to construct a large shelter (? something like that). And it turned out, from this random group of fifty guys, there were all the skills they needed ... carpenters, bricklayers, welders ... of course the socialist conclusion was that capitalism was irrational in condemning these skilled men to makework, whereas a planned economy would have taken advantage of their skills.. You can see how persuasive this was to many people in 1938, when the USSR (and Nazi Germany) had everyone employed.

Anyway, I think those 'survivalists' who believe we're all, or some of us, going to be able to run off and live in the woods with our little gardens, and catch rabbits and deer, are just living out a fantasy. Good luck to them, especially if MS13 comes looking for a meal and some romantic entertainment. I want to be in a place with a few hundred neighbors who have organized themselves, some of whom have the knowledge you get either from the right Field Manuals, or, far better, in the Field, plus the right tools, including the kinetic ones.

 

I'm disabled, so I can't really prepping, but I always took care of having at least one or two week of food at home, it's not very hard, just get enough rice, pasta, tin cans. Because of my condition, it's a little bit hard for me to get enough bottled water at home, in case tap water could be contaminated.

It's very funny, because lately in France, there were a lot of reports of parisian journalists mocking "survivalists", and now that we have to live confined, people who do prepping are seen in another way.

 

The French have much more direct experience of what happens when the people ruling you turn nasty. I've just been reading a book about the Paris Commune, and am moving on the Resistance during WWII. So you probably have some things to teach Americans.

 

I'm not that sure, french people became very dependant of the centralized state. Unfortunately, we forgot quickly.

With the Covid-19, I heard many old people says that "it make me remember the war".

 

Sure, that's a problem in Europe as a whole. It's probably the chief difference between the US -- which is basically an off-shoot of Europe -- and Europe.
It's why Europeans can't understand American 'gun culture'. The issue of self-reliance, the suspicion of the state. (Actually, many Europeans -- the part of Europe that is half Third World -- have a paradoxical relationship with the state -- since it has been in the hands of fascists at various points, they REALLY distrust it, don't pay their taxes, etc. -- but are also dependent on it.)

But everything changes. For decades, for most of my life, French politics was the PCF and the SFIO and the Radicals and the Gaullists .... now everything has changed. There is still Right and Left, but so different from the past! Even harder for those of us outside France to understand.

 

Everything change as you says, until the 40's, having a gun was much easier in France, it's the vichy state that enforced more strict gun laws. Furthermore, before 1945, there was already a strong communist/socialist presence in France, but the country was more pro state.
You made a very good point on why european have difficulties to understand the gun culture.

 

It's a kind of paradox, actually.

I keep telling my fellow American patriots that if they want to study the kind of war we might have in the USA, they shouldn't bother with Mao and Che and Ho Chi Minh. Rather, they should study France first of all -- 1830, 1848, the Paris Commune; then Germany post-WWI; above all, Russia 1917. And some minor struggles during the 1920s, in the Baltics and Central/Eastern Europe, as discussed in A. Neuberg's Armed Insurrection. And Greece post WWII. It's the Europeans who have had the relevant experience for Americans.

 

Just not anyone outside your collective, actually.

There is always safety in numbers. That's the point of collectivism.

 

Not just the French. My country is also full of people who are entirely dependent on a centralised state.

It's not that they've forgotten (they weren't born yet), it's that they bought into the idea that the good times were perpetual. And in most of their lifetimes, that's held true. I can understand taking the easy option, given that. Especially if you're the sort inclined to avoid labour and restrictions to lifestyle.

 

Good for you. That's all it takes

Meantime, those mocking journalists are exactly the types who lose their minds when the SHTF, because they suddenly realise how incredibly vulnerable they are. It's 100% hubris on their part, to mock.

 

I wanna put blades on the tires!

 

The virus required zero extra trips to the store for me. I have bought what I used and that's it but didn't require stocking up on anything.

Who's laughing now? That's the question.

 

That's not true; besides the fact that having a box of bandaids makes someone a real prepper.

Some preppers are fully prepared for survival if the grid goes down but are enjoying the benefits of our great nation and it's economy, and technology while they can.

 

We've always been prepared, for decades before the term, "prepper" came into popularity on the Internet.. in fact, we've been prepared for decades before there was an Internet.

We've practiced preparedness. We're prepared. We're not preppers.

 

Dave Ramsay, people like me, yourself, Preppers. The list goes on

 

We've been at it close to 30 years. For us it was always the logical way to live. The least stressful, and the most empowering. We never questioned it, or researched, or did anything in the way of intellectualising it prior to moving to this life. It was just blindingly obvious from the get-go.

 

Things that many preppers don't think of, that I was prepared with:

1. Toilet paper
2. Paper towels
3. Hand sanitizers
4. Kleenex
5. First-aid supplies (minor and severe injury)
6. Cleaning and sanitizing supplies, including food-handling area sanitization.
7. Baby wipes
8. Water
9. Alcohol
10. Seeds
11. Food - canned, canned meats, veggies, etc., as well as long-term storage foods.
12. Snacks
13. UHT milk - we drink it almost exclusively so no change in taste, etc for us.
14. Condiments to make food more interesting (people with food have died of starvation because they got tired of what they had to eat)
15. Prescription medications and medical supplies
16. Canning jars to fill from my garden (we don't can a lot now but we do some every year just to enjoy our own products and to keep our skill and equipment up to date.

We use what we store, or more accurately, we store what we use.

I had chili this weekend made from a can of ground beef, an can of diced tomato, a can of Wolf's chili (that also has ground beef), and a can of red beans... I prefer two cans of beans but my wife likes less so we went with one. This is not a disaster or a pandemic meal for us... this is something we eat because we like it; we have it at least once a month for as many years as I can remember. If I go to the store and buy canned goods, it's not because of the pandemic; it's what we have always eaten.

Oh, I have mine over rice - something I became adjusted to in the Navy.. My wife likes hers with bread and butter.. The canned butter is expensive so we only use it rarely to check it so we had store-bought butter.

Even my kids used to laugh at me.. I made them apologize before giving them toilet paper when the rush first hit.

 

Canned butter sounds slightly better than no butter... but only slightly.

My medical supplies are pretty basic. Just IV fluids and antibiotics. For cleaning and sanitation I try to stay stocked in vinegar.

 

Nah... anyone who didn't have all the ammo they need were lazy, slothful even. Not Mr. Paladin; he was JIT. Those who wanted some but can't get it now should have been prepared and are SOL. It's not like this is the first gun or ammo shortage in the past 20 years.

Should the SHTF, Mr. Paladin is prepared to be part of the solution. Are you?

 

Search for Red Feather. It's actually pretty good. Not as good as fresh and it's unsalted so even fresh would be a bit flat in many foods. But it melts; it spreads.. It tastes far better than powdered butter.

 

I think (opinion, not research based) that the French and the English have been under the thumb of their governments for so long that they forgot what it meant to be independent and stand on their own two feet. The United States, when I was young, hadn't forgotten those things but the memories are fading fast.

We're not far from being in the same boat as Europe, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Guns Bad; Government Good.

 

Sounds to me like you are preparing as best you can. As Paladin said, a couple extra cans a week or a couple bottles of water and pretty soon you have enough to survive a pandemic. This one will likely pass... When things start to get back to normal, don't tell yourself you're going to get started "real soon now". Do it. It only takes a day to go from "I'll start tomorrow" to being too late to start at all.