One of the things a generator can’t make, however, is toilet paper. The Sears catalog was, at one time, popular for use in outhouses, but I don’t want to use it now, even if there was still such a thing. Time to stock up on TP for the future, as it’s a very valuable commodity.
Still, there are worse issues. If there is a disruption of water and sewer service in the cities or suburbs, then diseases like cholera once again begin to raise their ugly and deadly heads. Dysentery, too, will become commonplace, because living situation in many place will suddenly drop to third-world standards. Handwashing with anti-bacterial soaps will become crucial and ensuring the safety of your water and food supply will become paramount. The Soviet Army lost their war in large part, a very large part, in Afghanistan, because their soldiers were never taught that it was a good idea to wash ones hands after defecation. They lost more troops to dysentery and related conditions than they did to enemy bullets.
In any event, the collapse will not be a pretty sight for anyone, even for the most prepared. But those people, people such as my friend “Bill,” people who may have been looked askance at by others, will be the only people living in anything near what we once called comfort. Bring on the ridicule, but don’t come running to me for help once it happens. As I recall from the Bible, Noah was ridiculed by people who later ended up waterlogged, so you and those who believe in what we’re doing are in the best of company.
Communication
Depending on how bad things get and what the cause is for the condition, it’s likely cell phone communications and the Internet will be gone for an extended period of time. If the chaos is due to a 1929-style economic collapse, there will be no cell phone communication, simply because of the number of people trying to access it, just like on 9/11. In the longer term, things will cascade down. Landlines may be available for a while, but there’s no telling how long. Shortwave radio communications may also be a possibility, but it’s most likely that primary communication is going to be mouth to mouth and direct contact and observation.
No matter how sophisticated we seem to get, the first casualty of a widespread natural or man-made disaster is the loss of all communications. It is the major chink in the armor of public safety forces everywhere, unless they have a quantity of extremely expensive satellite radios that will work in any situation short of a missile attack on satellites.
If you have access to some line-of-site radios for your group, they could mean the difference between life and death. Marine band or commercial radios will give you the longest range without the public being able to listen in like they would if your radio system was a CB radio. Motorola multi-band commercial radios can be had for $250 to $500 a pop. They are more expensive, but are of better quality than any handheld CB radio you can buy.
This is the type of radio that public safety forces in the Katrina aftermath relied on. Their daily use repeater system, that is the system of towers that provides signal boost to handheld and vehicle-mounted radios giving them extended range (this is a really basic explanation), was knocked out. Thus, the only communication these public safety people had to use with each other (and it took awhile to get these operation), was a limited number of commercial line-of-sight radios.
Recovery
Aftermath recovery is hard to predict, because we’ve been discussing armed preparation for a very wide variety of potentialities localized, statewide, multi-state, national, and even international in scope. Obviously, recovery depends on the severity of the incident/s. The thought of the United States of America suddenly finding itself in the status of a third-world country has been beyond the realm of thought throughout the majority of time our country has existed—but that’s not the case any longer. We are pushing closer to that status with the passing of every day it seems. If there is not a change of attitude and fortunes soon, I fear we will end up there. If not, and I hope it’s not, then I’ll get to do what I truly want to do, and that is reach a healthy retirement age and relax. But if it is going to come down, I want to be as ready for it as possible. I want to be able to protect my wife and family and my trusted friends if I can until things can return to a better state of normal—and I hope we never have to endure that wait.
Silver, Not Gold
Here’s a little bit of advice that I picked up from the novel Patriots, a Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse, by James Wesley Rawles. If you have never read this book, I highly recommend you do, for there are a lot of good ideas contained therein.
If times come to what many people are expecting, a total societal collapse, the only things that will be worth money are the tangibles. Your stock portfolio and retirement fund will be out the window, at least for a while and maybe permanently. This means guns, ammo, food, and cash in the form of solid gold or silver (i.e., not paper).
For several years now, the gold market has shown explosive growth, with prices going from $300 or so an ounce at the start of the Obama administration to nearly $1,700 now. Pure silver is sitting around $28 per ounce. The point that was made in Rawles’ book is that you won’t be able to buy much gold to barter with at current prices and you will certainly not get an equal amount of goods in return for what you paid for the gold. Silver, on the other hand is a much better choice for barter, as you can receive fairer value.
Instead of trying to save up for a few pieces of gold, I have been purchasing silver rounds in half- and one-ounce sizes from APMEX (American Precious Metals Exchange, Inc.). The company offers a variety of forms the gold and silver can take, and in that includes old coins for their silver content. I say this, because paying for silver coins that have an added value for rarity beyond the actual silver content doesn’t make sense and it won’t count for anything more in collapse conditions. Do what you want, but I would purchase silver in the form of rounds (and not just for collapse, but to supplement your retirement portfolio). Make sure you are buying actual physical gold or silver, not some sort of promissory note, and keep what you purchase in that fireproof Liberty safe you took home for your guns.
The Shape of Things
Speaking of your physical condition, what kind of shape are you in? One episode of Doomsday Preppers featured a gentleman who had all the right ideas and, as I recall, a pretty good level of preparedness, but who must have weighed in at 300 or more pounds. To me he was reaching the point of morbid obesity.