That secret-squirrel, every-man-for-himself, “I’m just prepping for me and mine” approach is not a recipe for preserving liberty.  And in the long run, it also will not preserve your life or your property.  It is a recipe for eventual defeat, subjugation, enslavement, and death.

 Let’s say a prepper worst case scenario economic collapse happens.  The prepper hides away in his or her hidey-hole, bunker, retreat, basement, or whatever, and then comes out after the worst is over.  Exactly what will they come out to?  Many think they will emerge from the rubble and rebuild in a new society where there is no more government, and they can just start from scratch.  Not gonna happen.  Nature abhors a vacuum and SOMETHING will fill that space if all you do is hide away in your own private little refuge while your community goes to hell in a hand-basket.   When you emerge from hiding, you will find one of the following:

See a theme there?  You will end up having to fight or live as a subjugated slave and leave your children as slaves (if you choose that, then your children, if  they survive, will curse your name and you will deserve it). 

 There truly aint no such thing as a free lunch (TANSTAAFL), and if you just prep for you and yours, and don’t help your neighbors, community, town and county get ready, then you will suffer one of the above.   And that presumes you actually survive the initial looting by hiding away, which is also not a given if your perimeter is your four walls, or your fence line, and your security team is just you, your family, and maybe some friends (the smaller your security perimeter, the more vulnerable you are to raids, snipers, etc).  

 But even if you do survive looters, raiders, and sociopaths running amok, eventually, the wave of whatever fills that vacuum will reach you, no matter where you are, and no matter how “prepped” you are. 

 Yes, many of your neighbors are likely to be a bunch of lazy, ignorant, couch surfing boobus-Americanus that most preppers look down on with justification.  That still does not change the fact that if they are not prepped, and are not organized for mutual defense and security, then you will suffer one of the above no matter how prepped you are, and no matter how big a pile of guns and ammo you have.  Sooner or later, you will end up having to fight whatever comes along to fill that vacuum that YOU allowed to happen.   Go ahead and throw a tantrum about how dumb your neighbors are.  Scream and rant, and then get over it and get to hard task of resurrecting the American institution of a prepared, secure, resilient, strong, COMMUNITY. 

The Economic Neutron Bomb

 Frankly, with the current weakness and lack of preparedness among Americans, what I think is most likely to happen in the wake of an economic collapse is a combination of A and B above �" a foreign invader or invaders, AND a domestic dictatorship.  

 As the President of Oath Keepers, I had my National Board of Directors sit down and war-game what we think the domestic and international enemies of liberty would probably do to finally bring the American people to their knees and subjugate them (and my BOD is not collection of light-weights.  Among them are Army Rangers, Marine Scout-Snipers, Army Special Forces, infantry combat veterans, and seasoned officers well versed in logistics �" and ALL of them are preppers, going waaaay back). 

 Playing devil’s advocate, and looking at it from our enemy’s perspective, we figured the greatest vulnerability the American people have is a near total lack of food storage as individuals and as a nation.    That is the great Achilles heel of America.   Americans have lots of guns, a decent amount of ammo (though there is no such thing as enough ammo), but very little, or no, food storage.

 During the Cold War against Communism, the United States had a three year strategic grain reserve with enough wheat to feed every man, woman, and child for three years.  Why three years?  Because that is how long it was expected to take, at a minimum, to grow enough crops again to feed our nation after a nuclear exchange. 

 So, with no strategic grain reserve, and with most Americans having at best two weeks of food in their pantry (and some have far less), what do you think is going to happen in the wake of a catastrophic economic collapse?   Within a couple of weeks, Americans by the millions will begin to starve. How long can you live without food?   How can you fight the invaders, or the dictatorship, if you are dead from starvation?  Stalin knew this logistical reality, and used starvation as a weapon.  So did Mao. So has it been used throughout military history.  How do you defeat an entrenched castle filled with warriors?  You starve them out. 

 How do you defeat a well-armed American populace that can field a rifle behind every blade of grass?  You starve them out.  They have guns and ammo, but Americans have no strategic food reserve.  They don’t have caches of food behind every blade of grass, so all you would need to do is disrupt the food distribution system, such as by intentionally collapsing the U.S. economy, and just wait. 

 Just trigger a collapse, sit back, and wait a month or two while Americans starve and kill each-other. Let the cities implode, let the masses of refugees go out into the countryside, desperately searching for food, and let all the gangs and wanna-be warlords prey on their neighbors. 

 It is like an economic neutron bomb, that kills the people but leaves the buildings and land intact to be used later by the victors.   Or, perhaps a better analogy is an economic EMP.   Just as a nuclear exchange, or an EMP can knock out power and infrastructure and cause catastrophic disruption in food delivery, resulting in mass starvation and death, so too will an economic collapse. 

 After a month or two (or six months, if they really want to be sure) of mass starvation and Americans killing each-other for food, the elites come riding in “to the rescue” with a combination of domestic forces (which are at this time prepping like mad to ride out the storm) and foreign “Peace-keepers.”   Under those circumstances, your surviving neighbors will be begging for martial law, and indeed, they will demand it, and complain “why didn’t you declare martial law sooner!”  And they will welcome foreign troops and whatever else is imposed on them, so long as they and their surviving children get to eat.   In the wake of such an economic collapse, most Americans will gladly give up their guns for food, and will turn you in for food. 

 In fact, the elites can say “hey, the only reason we couldn’t get in here sooner is those RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS were fighting us, and stopping the trucks and trains from running on time.  Turn them in and you will get a bonus food allotment!” 

 And if you think the U.S. government will no longer exist in the wake of such a collapse, you must be smoking some damn good weed.  The U.S. government knows that an economic collapse is coming, and is preparing for it.  It is NOT preparing the people for it, but is instead focused on preparing to control the people in the wake of the collapse.  Hence, all the ammo that DHS is stockpiling all over the nation, and the MRAPS and other logistics that are being squared away.  They are not getting you prepared.  Just them.  There will still be a U.S. government, and it will still be dominated and controlled by statists, and they will still have armed men willing to do their bidding.  And in the wake of a truly catastrophic economic collapse, more of the remaining military and police will go along with martial law and whatever other “emergency” decrees that are issued precisely because they will perceive it as a “real” emergency, just like during Katrina (where peaceable citizens were disarmed), or during the manhunt for the Boston Bomber (where the Fourth Amendment was tossed out the window).   It’s just human nature.  The worse the perceived emergency, the more the chaos, the more military and police will go along with violating the Constitution and violating your rights. 

 And in the wake of mass starvation and death, you can bet that most of your fellow Americans, including in the police and military, will go along with confiscating your stash of food and survival supplies, and “nationalization” of farm-land. 

 So, how do you stop that from happening? 

The Liberty Movement Must Fill the Vacuum

 So, what to do?  Well, you need to realize that you, within the liberty movement, will have fill that vacuum of unpreparedness and do it now, ahead of time. 

YOU Must Build a Strategic Food Reserve for America

And in particular, you must build up a strategic food reserve to take us out of that strategic check-mate position of being vulnerable to mass starvation in the wake of an economic collapse.   You MUST store food not just for you and yours, but for your neighborhood, your town, your county, and state.   Food is number one.   Can’t live without it and either you got it or you don’t, and right now, as a nation, we don’t got it.

 Oh hell, you say, we can’t afford to do that!  Well, where do you think the three years worth of strategic food reserve we had during the Cold War came from?  It came from the American people.  Surely the current oath breakers in the U.S. government will not build up such a reserve again �" they want us weak, unprepared, desperate and dependent.  So we the people of the freedom/liberty movement will have to do it.   It is a strategic necessity.  It is a military necessity to defeat the forces of evil and tyranny.   It’s not an option, or something you may consider. Either you do it, so you have a chance of winning and surviving, or you don’t and you will be defeated and either killed or enslaved.   Yes, it sucks, and yes, your dumbed down neighbors don’t deserve your help. 

 Get over it, and get it done, because it is a necessity.  In the infantry, we had a saying �" “embrace the suck” which meant to recognize that yes, your predicament sucks, but get over it, and get to work, because the only way out is through.   Same here. You can stamp your feet and cry all you want, but that doesn’t change the strategic checkmate position YOU and your family are in, along with your dumbass neighbors. 

 

YOU Must Provide Community Security

 And you WILL have to provide the community security that will be necessary for you and your neighbors to be both secure and free.  Sound familiar?   Maybe this will ring a bell:

 A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.   

Catch that?   A militia of the people is NECESSARY for the security of a free state.  Without one, you will not be secure, and you will not be free.   Again, TANSTAAFL.  If you do not provide for community security made up of the people themselves, of as many within the community as possible, a true people’s militia, then you will not be secure, and you will not remain free.   Something else will come in and fill the vacuum. 

Right now, that “something else” is militarized professional police, SWAT teams that increasingly look to the Feds for orders (Fusion Centers, Regional Task Forces, etc), and a growing DHS and domestic military structure combined with domestic NSA and CIA structures that are being put into place right now.  The very kind of standing army and select body of armed men the Founders warned us against, and which they considered a bane of liberty. 

 

The above, preparedness and security, are the first two planks in our four-part initiative known as Operation Sleeping Giant (www.operationsleepinggiant.com), an effort to wake up veterans, in particular, and get them focused on strengthening their communities, towns, counties, and states, to restore our Republic from the bottom up.  But even if you are not a veteran, you may also find it useful.  Time is wasting, so we encourage people to focus on these four prongs of effort as a way to get as strong as possible, as a people, as fast as possible, in whatever time we have left.   In summary, the four areas of focus are: