While preppers are sometimes characterized as “kooky conspiracy theorists,” nothing makes more sense than preparing for tough times. In his new book called Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide: Food, Shelter, Security, Off-the-Grid Power and More Life-Saving Strategies for Self-Sufficient Living, author Jim Cobbs warns his readers about certain events that could send us all into a collapse.
The excerpt quoted below details two of these events:
“PANDEMICS
“Pandemics are epidemics that cross national or international boundaries and affect great numbers of people. In other words, a whole lot of people living in a wide area have all been infected with the same disease.
“For many people, the first thing that comes to mind when discussing pandemics is the Black Death, sometimes called the Black Plague. While it is impossible to cite an exact death toll, historians believe the Black Death claimed up to 200 million lives from roughly 1347 to 1350.
“In just three years, it decimated up to 60 percent of the entire population of Europe. This pandemic of the bubonic plague originated in or near China and spread over the Silk Road to Europe. Fleas, carried on the backs of rats that infested all the merchant ships, helped spread the disease everywhere they went.
“About 200 million people perished as a result of the disease. To put that into perspective, in 2012 the estimated population of the United States was roughly 314 million people. Can you even imagine what life would be like if two-thirds of the US population all died within a few years? How long do you think it would take for life to return to anything close to normal? According to some experts, it took Europe about 150 years to get back on its feet.
“A more recent example is the flu pandemic that occurred in 1918-1919, during World War I. This was the first major outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus. It is sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu, only because of the distorted news reports back then.
“Government censors worked hard to keep wartime morale up by not allowing much negative news to hit the airwaves. So, as the early reports came in about the spread of the deadly flu in the countries at war, these censors did what they could to keep it hushed up. Spain, however, was neutral during the war and didn’t bother keeping things quiet. The result was that news reports seemed to indicate Spain was being hit harder by this flu than the rest of the world, hence the name Spanish flu.
“What was particularly chilling about this flu outbreak was how it targeted healthy segments of the population. The deaths were not centered among the elderly, the infirm, and children; rather, it was the strapping young adults who were hardest hit. This was due to how the flu virus worked, by causing what’s called a cytokine storm in the body.
“Essentially, the virus would send the patient’s immune system into overdrive. The healthier the patient was at the outset, the more powerful the body’s immune response, resulting in a cytokine storm of such force that it killed the patient.
“This flu pandemic hit just about every corner of the planet. While numbers are still sketchy, estimated death tolls range from fifty to one hundred million. No matter how you look at it, that’s a lot of dead bodies, but bear in mind that most of them perished within a nine-month period.
“WAR AND TERRORISM
“Leaving the politics out of the discussion, terrorist acts and outright declarations of war remain a constant risk. A couple of guys in Boston set off two bombs and managed to effectively shut down the entire city.
“That’s exactly how terrorism works. It spreads fear, confusion, and chaos. In some ways, it is like watching a magician who is particularly talented with misdirection. Only instead of a dove appearing in one hand while you’ve been watching the other hand do card tricks, it is the sniper distracting you from seeing the car bomb.
“Ever since 9/11, Americans have seen many of their rights slowly erode away in the name of security.
“Believe it or not, there was a time not too long ago when visiting the tax assessor’s office at the county courthouse didn’t require you to all but strip down to your skivvies just to get past security. Some believe we’re not too far away from seeing martial law enacted in some areas, complete with soldiers at every street corner asking to see your papers.
“Something that is rarely taught in public schools is what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II. On February 19, 1942,
“President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the military to remove all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast of the United States and place them into internment camps. It did not matter that many of these people were full-fledged American citizens. The US Census Bureau assisted in this program, opening its records to the military. As many as 110,000 to 120,000 people were detained in these camps.
“This all happened as a reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Our nation certainly has a habit of overreacting to situations, doesn’t it?
“Of course, we still face the possibility that another nation might openly attack us, using nuclear missiles, conventional weapons, or even [EMP devices].
“While we would, I have no doubt, prevail in such a conflict, we’d likely suffer at least some damage. Odds are pretty good too that the effects of such an attack would be longstanding. Generally speaking, weapons get more, not less, powerful as technology advances. If some foreign entity were to send a missile strike, and even one or two managed to sneak through our defenses, the damage and loss of life could be enormous.”
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