Counting on the status quo? Do you have a plan in case things collapse?

By David McElroy · June 16, 2011

I believe we’re going to see some form of social, political and economic collapse in the next few decades. Most people reading this probably don’t believe that. But do you have a plan about what to do in case you’re wrong?

People predict doom all the time. No matter what world economic conditions are like, you can find someone who’s predicting the end of the world and the collapse of life as we know it. Most of them turn out to be wrong. Every now and then, though, they’re right — as was the case at the start of the Great Depression. And every time things collapse, most people are caught unprepared.

If you want to read the case that things are going to collapse, there are plenty of articles, so I’m not going to try to scare you by linking to a million of them. (Here’s one that I was reading earlier today that made me starting thinking about the subject, though.) I’m not trying to convince you that I’m right. I’m just asking if you’re prepared in case the worst happens.

Even though most people have vague feelings of worry about the economy (in the United States and in various parts of the rest of the world), most people are still acting as though things aren’t going to change much. People are still buying houses and going into debt and spending money for consumer goods. They’re still making plans for retirement and kids’ college education and all sorts of other things — all based on the unspoken assumption that the economic and political world as we know it will continue.

But what if that assumption is wrong? Do you have a plan for what to do then?

For a number of years, I’ve been thinking that bad times were coming. Compared to the kind of bad times I’m thinking of, the economic slowdown of the past few years has been a mere hiccough. (I think what we’re facing in the future is going to be a restructuring that will make the Depression look like a picnic as well.) For a long time, I’ve considered where to go and what to do, but it’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve started to do more than idly speculate. I don’t want to get caught up in what I expect to happen. I want an exit strategy.

I think there are two reasons why people don’t plan for a collapse. First, they’re not convinced it’s coming. Second, they’re not convinced there’s anything realistic they can do about it. I’ve been convinced for years on the first point. It’s the second I’m working on now, which is why I’m looking to meet more and more people who are also planning for the changes coming in the future. The more people I talk with, the more I realize that lots of people want an exit plan. They just don’t know where to look.

Where am I going to go and what am I going to do? I don’t know yet. I’ve considered several places that might be safer, but I’ve generally come to the conclusion that the safest thing is going to be is to have a place where other people are looking for escape, too. It might be an island in the Caribbean or the South Pacific. It might be a free city in Honduras. It might be a floating platform in an ocean. It might be something else. I don’t know.

The only thing I’m sure about is that I’m actively engaged in finding an escape plan — and I’m actively looking for others who want such a plan for themselves and their families. If you’re one of those people, I want to get to know you. We might need each other soon.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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