Close your eyes and imagine a world without electricity:  no Fox News, no Facebook, no email, no Blackberry, no cold drinks, no heat in the winter, no automobiles, no food and no way to cook it even if you had it. It’s the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI) and you and your family are going to die.

Unless, of course, you are prepared.

I was at church last week, and I met a new friend. When I told him I taught concealed carry classes, his first response was “Oh, I’ve been meaning to buy a handgun, but I don’t know what to get. Can you help me?” I asked him why he wanted a gun, and he confided that he was concerned that society would soon collapse and he wanted to defend his family. I was nice and didn’t explain to him that he should have been preparing for years, better late than never I suppose. Instead, I told him that one gun doesn’t fit all, that he’d be better off buying a pistol, a 22 caliber rifle, a battle rifle in .223 caliber, a pump shotgun, and a large caliber hunting rifle and thousands of rounds of ammo. The look on his face told me he was overwhelmed. Like most people seeking to survive societal collapse, the actual nuts and bolts of how to do it, was totally foreign to him.

Ours is a world of steaming hot lattes on demand, ice-cold beer in the twinkling of an eye, and internet and phone connections in a nanosecond. We are the ultimate immediate gratification society. But what would happen if ….

The dollar bought nothing

A virus could not be cured

Terrorists exploded nuclear bombs across the country

Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanic activity all became more prevalent

There would be no more lattes on demand (not even coffee grounds)

No more ice-cold beer (not even a warm one)

The internet, television, radio, phone system, all dead as a door nail

Suddenly, America (and the world) goes back to the year 1794, only worse.

Why do I say it would be worse? Simply because people no longer have the skill sets needed to survive in a world without electricity. Most of the world’s population lives in the cities, where everything is shipped to them for their buying pleasure and convenience. But without electricity, there would be no way to communicate, no way to ship food, to process food, to buy food, to sell food. It would simply be “Law of the Jungle” and “Survival of the Fittest”. The strong would survive and the weak would perish.

Only one type of person would remain:  Those with the skill sets needed to survive.

In today’s culture, these skill sets are rare, almost lost from modern  knowledge. Skills like:

Gardening

Food preparation

Food preserving

Self defense skills

Finding potable water

Heating your home

I’ve been actively preparing for the end of the word as we know it for several years now. I’ve
been buying supplies left and right, collecting all the essentials people think of in a task like that:  canned goods, 50-pound bags of wheat, rice, cases of ammunition, medical supplies, reloading equipment, garden tools, precious metals, canning supplies, food smokers, dehydrating equipment, hand tools…and the list goes on and on and on.

Fall is a busy time for me. Just in the past month I’ve prepared dried vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, (same with fruit) killed and processed a pig and two deer, smoked salami, jerky and meat sticks, cut and stacked enough wood for the winter, practiced shooting my firearms and learned more about tactics and home defense.

I’ve been a very busy boy.

I used to feel like Noah, building an ark in the dessert, being jeered and laughed at by family and friends, but those times have come and gone. A growing number of people are like my new friend at church; they see the handwriting on the wall, and they scurry to make last-minute preparations. Because, deep down inside, in their heart of hearts, they know the crap is about to hit the fan. And it won’t be pretty.

There wasn’t much I could do for my new friend except invite him over to do some shooting. I also recommended he read two books by James Wesley Rawles:

A nonfiction book titled “How to Survive the End of the World as we Know it” and a novel titled “Patriots; Surviving the Coming Collapse”.

Both are excellent resources and will serve you well.
 
In retrospect, I have been preparing for societal collapse since my childhood and I didn’t even know it. I was raised in the country, in a poor family who worked very hard to scratch out a meager living. Back then I hated my father for making me cut, haul and stack wood, plow, plant, weed and harvest the garden, milk the cow, feed the chickens, and can the fruits and vegetables. About the only survival task I really enjoyed was “Son, take the gun and go hunting.”

You see, my parents had grown up during the “First” Great Depression, so they always believed that hard times would come again and they lived their lives accordingly. I always thought they were crazy, but I was wrong and they were right. Hard times have come again and it’s going to get worse.

Over the next month or two I’ll be writing a series of articles on “How to Survive The End of the World”. In it I’ll talk about the skills you and your family will need to live in a world without electricity and without the rule of law. I’ll talk about mental toughness, physical toughness, and a return to traditional values and hard work. I’ll even talk about God.

So I hope you’ll join me as we travel back in time to 1794 and begin to learn how to survive in a fierce new world that would have you dead. Relax, it’s not as bad as you think. In fact, once you get used to the idea, you might even enjoy yourself.

Editor’s Note:

Skip just published Lessons from Armed America by Kathy Jackson and Mark Walters! Click here to check out this great new book. It will make a wonderful gift.

~Mike P.