Gaye Levy
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Back in the day, I was considered somewhat of an activist. Although normally quiet, unassuming, and nerd-like, I fought for the end of political tyranny, the power to the people, and women’s rights in the workplace. I was a small voice in a big sea of voices, but, to this day, would like to believe I have made a difference.
Now, years later, in my own quiet way, I have proudly labeled myself as both a “Prepper” and a member of the Prepper Movement. In addition, I have gone so far as to publicly define prepping as a form of personal activism.
Along the way, it has been my intent to create Backdoor Survival as a kinder and gentler prepper website. This is a site that welcomes everyone without political or religious overtones. It has also been eclectic in content covering a wide range of topics spanning preparedness, homesteading, healthy living and life in general.
With that introduction, today I am going to step outside my normal comfort zone and suggest we define the prepper movement with a call to action. I do so knowing that this opens up a level of personal responsibility for which we may not be ready.
This latest think piece from contributing author Richard Broome, asks that you to open your mind and your heart to the realities of who we are and what we are trying to accomplish as forwarding thinkers in the 21st century.
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THE NIGHT
“Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.” –Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
In my last contribution to Backdoor Survival, “Mind The Gap,” I talked about the global, structural “assurance gap” that I think exists. The essence of my argument was the assertion that the growing threat to all of us, outmatches the countermeasures we have in place.
In all of my articles this year, as a contributing author for Backdoor Survival, I have offered similar thoughts. So, on this cold, snowy morning in Montana, I decided to address this once again, but with some additional thoughts. As a like-minded community of preppers, we can no longer be so gentle, but must rage.
I have, in previous articles on Backdoor Survival, talked about “The Coming Cyber War” something I feel is no longer just looming event, but starting to happen all around us. With all that is in the press recently, how could anyone not feel this way?
Just ask the executives at SONY, as the impacts the cyber attack on them continues to unfold. I subsequently wrote about “Building a Culture of Preparedness.” In that article I beat the drum, urging us to change our national mindset about personal preparedness and readiness, also advising more political activism by preppers.
All three of these articles had one common theme. Mainly, we all need to be thinking more deeply about our true state of preparedness, both as individuals and as a nation, and we must do it now before we run out of options.
Speaking of trees, my two recent novels, Leaving The Trees, published in July 2013, and Good Crazy, published in November 2014, were created to depict what the cascading effects could be if a cyber event in the financial markets did spin out of control, freezing our financial systems and ultimately the supply chains we all depend on. A cyber event, such as this, really could undo us all, and like in my novels, have us living in camps within the trees trying to survive with what would be left.
However, in addition to the cyber attack scenario, many other scenarios could undo our society, such as an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack, Pandemics (think Ebola) or an ISIS gone wild. All of these could have similar devastating results.
In short, I believe the “assurance gap” which I frequently write about or discuss on radio shows, is still there and just getting worse. If the SHTF moment really does happen, any of these scenarios could cause it. As the witches in Macbeth predicted, something wicked this way comes. We all just guess about “what” and “when.”
So…where do we go from here?
Almost forty-five years ago, as a brand new army lieutenant, I was asked to teach a class to a group of young soldiers about the correct technique for throwing a hand grenade. Properly throwing a hand grenade is something you really want everyone in a military unit to completely understand.
The instructions are simple enough.
“Hold the hand grenade with your hand over the safety band.”
“Pull pin.”
“Throw.”
“Take cover.”
Seemed easy, yet many soldiers would do things like:
–Throw the grenade before the pin was pulled so it would bounce harmlessly at the feet of the enemy. This would allow the enemy to pick up the hand grenade and toss it back at you. However, with the pin pulled this time.
–Pull the pin, release the safety band, and then look at me to tell them what to do next.
–Fumbling the throw and having the damn thing rolling on the ground at our feet getting ready to go off.
Yet… despite all of that here I sit, alive and well. I survived the experience and, by the way, I should have told you we used dummy grenades to practice with first. (Whew!)
Thinking about that experience as I ponder the state of global affairs, my central question does remain: “Where do we go from here?” I ask this question, very mindful that with the multi-level complexity of all the potential threats that beset us these days; these possible events could already be too much for us to understand how to cope with.
If even such simple instructions like throwing a grenade could become so misconstrued, what is to become of us with more complex challenges that could suddenly occur? Will we fumble around while the grenade is getting ready to explode?
As the recent Ebola crisis unfolded before us in the news, I kept having the same thought, “What a debacle!” The procedural steps we asked medical professionals to follow appeared to be flawed. Finger pointing erupted. No one seemed in charge.
The result of this inept leadership was the public lost confidence in our government’s ability to handle a pandemic. It was all very unsettling and pointed out to me that the Prepper Nation is right to be skeptical about what we can expect from government.
If our elected leaders cannot do any better than what we witnessed with the handling of Ebola, maybe the Prepper Nation can? We do, after all, spend time thinking, preparing and doing more than most of the people around us.
We talk on sites like Backdoor Survival, sometimes argue, but always try to share ideas and help each other. We also talk straight to each other and do not hide behind comforting, but vapid platitudes and homilies that we see politicians use to reassure citizens, but actually mean very little and solve nothing.
However, even with all of the good information preppers share, I feel something is missing.
There is an old story about a young boy walking with his grandfather through the family garden. The grandfather was carrying a bullwhip. Every time he spotted some kind of bug eating his plants, out came the bullwhip and SNAP! The bug was gone. At the end of the garden they came to a tool shed with a large hornets nest built in the apex of the roof, right over the shed door.
The boy turned to his grandfather and said: “Grandfather! What about that hornets nest?”
The grandfather turned to his young grandson, looked at him thoughtfully for moment, and then finally said: “Boy. Let me tell you something. Bugs is just bugs. But…hornets…they’s organized!”
I feel we are now at a defining moment where the prepper community must start to step up and become an organized movement. Yes, I said an organized movement. We need to stop feeling the need to explain ourselves as a community but rather embrace more publicly and assertively our different perspective from others. We are right about what we think and what we do. They are wrong. Like a grenade going off, there will be no “do-over” to get things right if we ever really face one of the many serious events that could occur.
This is essential. I feel we must start to make some forward progress dealing with all the emerging threats facing us and close the “assurance gap” that I believe exists. If we don’t, considering the current trend of global events, I am quite concerned things will suddenly unravel all around us.
Ayn Rand once said: “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.”
So let’s be honest, if you follow the news and politics at all, you can see our country is now being sold to the highest bidder who has the money, the votes, or both, for our politicians on either side of the aisle. To counteract this reality, preppers need to be able to move the needle on the political Richter scale. At the end of the day a more structured and organized prepper movement increases our power as a voting bloc. We need to seize the attention of political leaders with a prepper agenda for change that has some political muscle behind it.
I know this idea is a fairly prodigious, complicated undertaking; yet, we do have the power of the Internet behind us to share ideas and find a way to make a nation of preppers come together.
My belief is we should start this conversation about how to build an organized prepper movement on Backdoor Survival. Right here. Right now.
I think we start with the question: “What should be the Prepper Nation agenda for change?” Then, let us see where this conversation takes us. Let us all talk about how to make this a safer country. Let us all come together and try to do a really big thing.
Before… we all become that bug in the garden.
Richard Earl Broome . . . All Rights Reserved . . . December 13, 2014
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Richard Earl Broome is a contributing author to Backdoor Survival. He has lived an extraordinary life rising from an Army private to an Army colonel who served on the White House staff at the National Security Council for two Presidents of the United States as a member of their National Security Council staff.
He is considered a national expert on the subjects of crisis management, disaster recovery and survival. He is a frequent contributor of articles about the many threats facing our society, appearing frequently on radio shows to discuss issues such as pandemics, ISIS, and the cyber threat.
Now living in a small community in Montana, he is a member of the faculty at Montana State University where he teaches leadership. His two books, Leaving The Trees and Good Crazy (Leaving The Trees Journey) (Volume 2)
The Final Word
Without question, this is the most difficult article I have shared with the Backdoor Survival community. I have thought about it, struggled with, and ultimately embraced it for indeed, it is a think piece of the highest order.
The call to action is this: please consider responding with your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below. Do you agree, disagree, or are you somewhere in between? This is my website but it is your forum. Let us continue to be the best we can be.
Enjoy your next adventure through common sense and thoughtful preparation!
Gaye
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86 Responses to “Define the Prepper Movement With A Call Action”
I wholeheartedly endorse the basic point of this article: that we need to become organized. All too often, we talk about “the banks” or “the government”… well friends, there’s no such thing as “the government”: its just a bunch of other people trying to spend our money so they can run our lives for us. THEY are already organized, so if we mean to survive — and I’m pretty sure that’s where the word survivalist comes from — we had better get organized too.
As for the “differences” among preppers — especially differences in matters of religion — these must not and should not matter one whit. When a tyrant holds you under his boot, you want the foul thug off your windpipe. If someone offers to help, are you going to check to make sure he’s the right religion? And if the situation is reversed, do you abandon a human being and a potential ally to be devoured by monsters?
I stand ready to help in the fight for our liberties. I refuse to believe that our generation will be the one that takes the final step into a thousand years of darkness.
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I feel somewhat unqualified to contribute my two cents worth to this because even though I definitely identify myself now as being a prepper, I recognize that I am still in the early stages of my journey and far from being where I would stamp on the label as “prepared.” However, I do feel that I can offer at least my once cent worth because I have lived nearly my whole adult life as a homesteader. As I read this article I found that little seed of hope in my spirit trying to sprout, but alas the acid rain of reality has halted the germination process. I ask forgiveness in advance if my so called data is off but who knows where to get real truthful info from these days. It is my understanding that the percentage of the US population that could remotely be classified as preppers is about 1%. Even if each one of that 1% would unify completely that wouldn’t be much of a powerhouse to make an impact, but even that is highly unlikely because from what I’ve seen of prep blogs and sites is that there are many different types of preppers who are all coming to the table from different directions for different reasons and expecting different outcomes. As other comments have already pointed out that OPSEC is deeply rooted in many factions. I would make a safe bet that given my geographical location I am in an area that very likely has a higher concentration of preppers than the average area, but I can only base that on subtle signs that only another prepper would recognize to base this off of because none of them would admit to it. I would also add that it would be like pullin hen’s teeth to get the word out to the masses unless of course we could get a Kardashian to tweet it or Miley or Bieber to autotune about it. The few people that I know of that still make the attempt to keep “informed” by watching the network news broadcasts don’t even realize that the alphabet soup of “news” broadcasters(abc,cbs,nbc,etc..) are all bought and paid for by the powers that be and only report the fluff that the CANCER that is our government will allow. It will be hard to believe that I am actually an optimist by nature but I cannot play ostrich and ignore the fact that that light at the end of the tunnel is really the headlight of a massive unstoppable freight train. Our country has gotten soooo far off base that I don’t see how it can find it’s way back. Now that congress has just increased the campaign contributions allowed by ten times, I really think the chances just got astronomically smaller. Uhg I could keep going but I fail to find the benefit. Gaye, thank you for all you do and teach us. I admire and appreciate you very much. I hope you don’t end this day feeling dejected. I find myself in the same class as some others have mentioned…I have had little(as in none) success in my attempts to be a leader to others to begin to take the first baby steps to prepare. However, I am a workhorse of the highest order. If I felt like I was following a true leader I would put my shoulder to the plow and go with all my might. You seem to me to have great leadership skills as well as it seems that Mr. Broome does too. If ya’ll do find a way through this muck and guide us to do X or Y or Z with step by step instructions then I will be cheerfully in line to do my part.
I will probably never feel ‘prepared enough’. Which is actually a good thing because it’s a drive to always do more, learn more, be more. My headset now is totally different then when I went to the Gulf in 1990-91. Before there were a lot of variables, a lot of fears: what about my belongings? Will I have a job that pays enough to keep my life style stable? Things like that. Now it’s ‘So long as I have shelter, food, something to keep me warm and my cat, I can get through anything.’
Life under fire burned away the shiny coating of living and showed me that all you really need are the basics. The rest is nice, but not essential. It left me with a head set of ‘I can do anything if I try.’
Though I have never been in the combat you describe, I do know the shiny vs the needful. 🙂
no…you can’t do ANYTHING if you simply try hard, a fallacy we tell our kids for some reason. Go outside, pick up your car over your head and throw it 100 yards down the street. You’ll be able to do it if you try hard enough. After you are done with that go to your local bank branch and ask the branch manager to open the safe and legally give you all the money inside, if you try hard enough you can do it.
But wait…didn’t Michael Jordan get cut from his JV basketball team? Isn’t that the story of perseverance that we tell all the little kids? And how did MJ fare when he tried hard at pro baseball…he sucked.
Be a realist and accept your limitations, do the best you can with what you have been given.
@ Dee here’s a kind of thought provoking article. //www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/strategic-relocation-the-reality-of-survival-communities-and-ready-retreats_11012014
Leftists (you mention the Occupy movement) stick together like glue, because their paradigm is all about the collective – the needs of the collective are more important than those of the individual, which is why individual rights are anathema to the progressive/statist agenda and they are always hacking away at them (1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 10th amendments, you can pretty much pick any one of the Bill of Rights and find evidence of the progressive attacks and the billions left leaning fat cats throw at campaigns against them today). Look at how those on the left circle their wagons when any one of theirs comes under attack – no matter WHAT they have done, or how blatantly it flies in the face of decency or reason. Yet, let a conservative do anything that can even vaguely be spun as a stumble, and the long knives are out, the feeding frenzy commences, and we are expected to (and usually willingly comply) sacrifice our own on the altar of political correctness. Given that most preppers are conservative by nature, we tend to exhibit a more typical rugged individualism. We tend to be more headstrong, opinionated, and bullheaded. Preparedness groups and communities often fail because of this. On the right you have to look no farther than the current civil war within the GOP between the party machine and the Tea Party. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s too realistic to hope that the kind of cohesion that binds the Occupy movement, and any coalition on the left (look at who lines up behind their banner – Islam with gays and feminists, unions with illegal immigrants…it’s a pretty strange set of bedfellows) will hold together a bunch of individualistic contemporary conservatives and preppers. And that’s been confirmed to be again and again in my relations with many in the preparedness community today. IMHO.
You have a misperception, I believe. It doesn’t matter left or right to me. Even small differences can be blown to enormous proportions. Perhaps because I am neither left or right, I have the opportunity to see within both and other sides. All those labels you speak of, I have seen in any group of people. I used the Occupy Movement as an example. I could have used any group. I realize I may be in the minority among preppers. I see things, then instead of criticizing or putting labels, I seek to see how to build even with the differences. It’s who I am. I find putting labels on people only allows people to see what they choose to see on that label and not find what else may be there to assist in a way not known yet. Even though you and I see things differently, I suspect in a crisis, we could get along because the goal would become more important than our differences. 🙂
I agree but at the same time I’m scared. I don’t feel prepared enough, which I’m really not as we just started prepping. I worry for my son’s future & of my future grandchildren and how they will grow up and in what kind of society. Sometimes I wonder if anything can be done. I look back at how I grew up and felt safe and secure with no worries about things like this. Never imagining that what I’m witnessing today could happen. I’m scared for our country, the moral decline. It’s both shocking and appalling. But I do know that SOMETHING has to be done and I’m willing to fight for our country and our families and will gladly stand beside others who want the same things that I do.
Thank you all for your responses to my article so far. I have to admit I like the discussion we are having, and admire the very honest reactions, both pro and con. I feel I truly “get” this idea seems too hard or quixotic to some. In moments of weakness, it does to me too.
Except, I have four children and grandchildren and cannot bear the idea of sitting idle and doing nothing when I know I could at least try to make things better for them. That does make me press on.
Respectfully,
Richard Earl Broome
@ Irene – they gave Noah a pretty hard time too. Hang in there, girl!! 🙂
I think being a lone ranger prepper is a risky proposition. Community is key. Recommend Charley hogwoods book on MAGs.. If you don’t have one I would spend my effort putting one together rather than writing about politics. I have put one together from mostly like minded friends at church and a few of their friends. So we have about a dozen families and our own group of “ranger kids”; we do a family camp every year where we ask learn and practice skills together… My son said it’s like scout camp for families. I am taking the cert training this spring and working with fire department education person to offer monthly classes to our small community on different aspects of prepping. Aside from that, be a rounded prepper. Know that if you prep word will get around and you need to invest as much time and resources into protecting your family as providing for them. And you can’t do that alone.
My “neighbors” and I have lived around each other for almost a year in my new place and, try as I might, I have had to drag even a “hello” out of them as they rush inside. The woman next door finally told me her name at the beginning of Nov and I haven’t seen her since. Now, maybe it’s me, but I feel like people are so shut off from each other in some communities (my last one was NOT like this) that all I would be doing is upping the number of people I have to defend myself against when SHTF. Do I need to find a better community? Absolutely, and it’s in the works, but I’m sure I’m not the only person who doesn’t even know the names of the “neighbors” much less their level of open-mindedness about TEOTWAWKI.
What I have done-and not everyone can-is stock up on water and ways to prepare it because this will be what makes people listen to me when the time comes. As well as prepare myself mentally to lead if need be, because I suspect no one will know much more than they learned on prime time on my block.while that will not be the best time to form a community team, it will certainly be when people stop long enough to listen.
There are pros and cons to becoming proactive politically. You are no longer “anonymous”, you could become a political target, you become “known” in your neighborhood as that prepper person…while now you are just the normal Jane or Joe next door growing a garden & raising a few chickens.
On the other hand, I think people have turned to prepping because they see the world around them devolving into idiots and orchestrated chaos. My views are simple…look at your local, county, state, national elected officials, not just those who are commissioners or mayors, legislature, congress or president, look at them ALL…because your local sheriff is elected, and they’re the ones in charge of accepting or declining militarized equipment, gun control, they respond to rural emergencies, etc., etc. STOP VOTING FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS! Vote your conscience, not what’s going to affect your wallet the least (as an example, I know a teacher’s family who voted Dem when they are registered Rep because the Dem promised higher teacher salaries yet was VERY PRO ABORTION…which this family was completely against) Did they vote their conscience? No, they voted their wallet. This is just one example. I recently heard an aspiring politician (may be running for president) who said people didn’t want to vote for Romney because he was Mormon…I beg to differ, some of my best friends are Mormon…we didn’t vote for him because we saw NO difference between him & the current president. Sure, they may talk the talk, but if you look at voting records, there’s not much difference. Heck Obamacare was modeled after Romneycare. I could go on and on. Sigh…
Anyway, the only way out of this mess is for average Janes & Joes to realize that Liberty is a CHOICE, the prepper movement is about LIBERTY…Self Reliance, depend on yourself not anyone else, especially the government and a “leave me the heck alone” attitude. If you can find those kinds of people running for office, vote for them…if you can’t, then run yourself. And even if everyone says that person can’t win, vote for them anyway, send a message, you’re sick of the status quo…you’re sick and tired of voting for the front man because he MIGHT be better than the alternative, or he might not. Stop listening to the media telling you someone can’t win…when did it EVER become their call to tell YOU who to vote for. Doing nothing or doing the same old thing over and over (insanity anyone?) just leaves those in power…in power. Stop rolling over and letting the money and power keep corrupting the system, if you don’t see the handwriting on the wall, I suggest you take a closer look, it’s plain to see.
In many ways, though, it may be FAR TOO LATE, with no turning back, and you become a target for those in power because you disagree…so maybe you do nothing but sit back in your easy chair, all prepared for the coming crash, EMP or disaster, you and your family are ready, and you’ve got your guns & bullets to defend yourselves and your preps.
I don’t believe there is a simple solution, the county gov’ts are controlled by the states via $$, the states are controlled by the Federal gov’t via $$, the Fed gov’t is controlled by big money (find one person in congress who isn’t rich and isn’t tied somehow to big money or big business).
BTW voting for Liberty is not the same as voting Libertarian or any other party, it involves research…and most Americans aren’t willing to do anything but listen to the political hacks on TV & radio telling them who to vote for. Sigh….I’ll get off my soap-box now.
Now, now Sharon. You are off your soap box, now step back and take a deep breath. You are so right in everything you say. A woman with a head on her shoulder. Are you married, if not, would you like to be?
I was taught at a very young age it was my duty and privilege to vote. My forefathers fought and died to give me that right. I have tried to do as you say and look into all that are running. I did go along with one thing you said. I threw away one of my votes to tell the other candidates they dont get a free ride. I voted for a third party candidate.
Girl, you get on that soap box anytime you wish.