The End Of The World As We Know It (Or What Happens After the SHTF)!

The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI)     Updated (see video at bottom)!

I have been interested in this subject since Jimmy Carter.  At that time I did not even know that there were millions like me: ready to "head for the hills" when things got really bad…

TEOTWAWKI is a big subject, so I am just going to write on two pieces of the subject.  This topic is likely to come up again in the not too far future here on my blog.

Fast or Slow?

A fast TEOTWAWKI is the big ugly one.  The grid goes down in an instant.  Chaos ensues quickly. 

Two of the four fiction books I have read re TEOTWAWKI feature an EMP (electromagnetic pulse produced by exploding a nuclear device in space, but near the atmosphere).  The EMPs fry almost all modern electronics, and so produce terrible effects like:

n  All modern aircraft flying then immediately crash

n  NO electricity at the hospitals, vaccines and diabetic supplies go bad quickly

n  All modern vehicles have their electronics fried as well, too many little computers

n  Transportation quickly breaks down

n  Our cities become like New Orleans after Katrina

n  The Golden Horde / MZBs (Mutant Zombie Bikers) head out of the cities, looking for food

n  75% of Americans die before one year passes

n  It apparently would take years to rebuild our country

n  Mass suffering and hunger

There are, of course, other ways the fast TEOTWAWKI could happen (nuclear war, a worm like Stuxnet takes down the Internet and causes factories, refineries, electric power plants and so on to fail, etc.).

The below book tells the story of what happens in a North Carolina town post-EMP:

One Second After  (William Forstchen) now available in paperback.  Newt Gingrich himself wrote the introduction!  Apparently our military is trying pretty quickly to harden their electronics.  But, Newt himself says that the USA is very vulnerable to this kind of an event: the EMP.  The book is great!  Dire things happen.

There is another book out on the Internet (only) about a TEOTWAWKI after an EMP, but it is hard to find.  It is called Lights Out, I do not remember the author’s name.  You will really have to look kind of hard for it, but Google is your friend.  I spent almost an entire weekend with my eyes glued to the monitor reading the +/- 400 pages.  Very bad things happen in that book too!  This one takes place in Texas, so that made it even more of a pleasure to read.

But a TEOTWAWKI could happen slowly too.  The economy declines as our debts get out of control. Important parts of the economy start to fail over time.  The “Decline of the Roman Empire Scenario” if you will.  The World Ends, just not right away.

Two more recent books out on a post-TEOTWAWKI:

The Road, (Cormac McCarthy)

Patriots, (John Rawles)

Apparently there is to be a sequel to Mr. Rawles’ book

I have read and enjoyed all four of the above books.

Are You Prepared?

Properly preparing for a TEOTWAWKI is a huge project.  First it requires a mindset that is really ready to do what it takes (including costing a lot of money) to get prepared.

The Mormons are all supposed to have a one year supply of food at all times stocked up.  How many non-Mormons do this?  Very few I would guess.  I do not.

Even more important in the short term is water.  In a TEOTWAWKI, it is likely that the water utilities would fail as well.  Who then has a water well or other handy potable water?  How do you clean the water?  “They say” that a person needs one gallon of water per DAY.

What would function as money?  Sure for a while paper money would be taken by vendors, but the credit cards would not.  No power…  But, even if paper money is taken, it likely would be only for a short while.  So, what would be taken?  Gold and silver probably would.  Barter too (eg, bourbon and cigarettes).

How prepared is your community?  Oh, please.

OK, so let’s say you are solidly prepared regarding the above.  What happens when the desperate come knocking on your door?  OK, better have guns and ammunition too.  More firepower than “they” do.

What else?  A Nineteenth Century skill set that could help to repair things (a friend of my brother and mine informed me once that he “was more prepared to live in the 1860s” than anybody he knew, some of you know who I am talking about, yes, he is the guy who fire 2000 rounds from his guns on zero notice without even having to reload…).  Doctors and nurses would be in big demand as there would be LOTS of accidents and epidemics.  Without heating and air conditioning the Winters and Summers could get rough.


Two blogs that cover this subject, there are many others:


www.survivalblog.com
www.shtfplan.com


Update:


A Youtube video, thanks FOFOA!  For some reason you cannot just click this, but you can "copy and paste" this into your browser at the top of your screen to view this very appropriate video.  You might want to start the song, let it play "on and off" for a awhile, then back up that little red cursor button all the way back to the beginning of the video for best results.


http://www.youtube.com/embed/_eyFiClAzq8


Another Update!  YES!  Click on any of the blue coding below!!!


Two of my friends sent along code that might work better re YouTube videos:


<object width="425" height="349"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_eyFiClAzq8?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><paramname="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_eyFiClAzq8?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="349" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>


<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eyFiClAzq8";>

It's the End of the World as We Know It</a>

YET another update!  If I did this right, see my wife and her sisters singing Italian, great fun!!


<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM1mIcbllXk";>

(People who know more about this stuff than I do, please chip in some helpful comments, also, how do I get a gold price widget (like kitco's) for my blog?)


Another Update!


I just saw (but could not copy it over to here) a world map (from Google's blog service stats) that I have had viewers from the below countries:


USA
Peru
Canada
Australia
Germany


How cool is that?  Thanks for visiting!

*****

I thank you all who read this article.  I would thank you even more to comment on it!

Be looking for another article in a few days!

I wish the very best as always to you and yours.