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Disunion, Union, Preachers and Doers

Only dead fish follow the stream -old Scandinavian expresion

It has been a while since my last post but I have been pretty distracted, I must admit. In this post I focus on some psychological lessons I have learned watching the past couple of weeks. This are lessons I already knew but the past few weeks have really been a reminder of them.

Many, maybe most, people have a very counterproductive threat assessment and response process. Initially, they fail to see a threat coming, then flip a switch and react in a rigidly doctrinaire manner (in a sense, overcorrection) and become increasingly rattled at anyone suggesting threats or costs emerging from that reaction.

I have a public health background, with a particular focus on the statistical measurement of health risk. I had experience with the fight against SARS. So I have to confess that I might have had a leg up on many folks in terms recognizing the Covid-19 threat early.

Nonetheless, it was stunning to witness how reluctantly folks recognized and admitted the Covid-19 threat. It was basically the flu, they insistently explained, and any suggestion of adjustment or modification of behavior was ridiculous. It was as if they were at the waters edge on the beach, noticed the water receding from the shore a moment ago, and now stare at a tsunami coming at them and think “what a pretty wave”.

Now many of those same folks have become lockdown zealots. The lockdown has become this kind of safety blanket for them, and they react with anger at any suggestion of costs, sustainability or growing cracks. To hell with civil liberties. You cannot criticize what has been obvious overrreach by a bunch of local petty tyrant officials. And if you are concerned about the loss of your job and how you will feed your family, you are selfish. This is taken from a recent post on my NextDoor network:

The worst part of this pandemic is seeing how many of my neighbors will happily sacrifice people they don’t know, because they lack basic empathy unless a situation impacts them directly. It’s disgusting and horrifying. They see no problem with sending all medical staff through a meat grinder of endless months of viral load and lack of PPE, as long as it’s not their spouse or family member. It’s totally cool to let old people, diabetics, asthmatics, and cancer patients die as long as they’re total strangers. I mean, as long as they can wander freely around Target, what’s wrong 2-3% of the US population dead, right?

Clearly fear is pulsating through this. But at the same time it hints at an inability to think simultaneously about multiple threats. This person is clinging desperately to the lockdown as a kind of safety blanket. The problem is this could end up being quite unsafe, including for health care workers (how much PPE do you think we’ll have when the economy collapses?).

And her fear has rapidly translated into anger. We can simultaneously have compassion for people who are scared like her and realize that they are a threat. But compassion should never allow us to look past threat.

Another element of this angry post is an implicit appeal to collectivism. You should be ashamed for worrying about yourself or your needs. And to prove it, here are your needs in shameful straw man terms.

We have seen this as well in the face of massive Covid-19 buying. If you don’t buy what the mob regards as a reasonable or appropriate amount of groceries, toilet paper, etc. you are “hoarding” and selfishly “taking from those who need it”. When reasonably challenged about the logic of this accusation, emotional hysterics quickly follow.

This is society as suicide pact. We face intense emotional pressure from angry and scared people who are trying to form coalitions to strip of us of our most basic human sovereignty: to do what we need to take care of ourselves. This is the peril of collectivism.

These people are dangerous. Some of them are our neighbors. Which means that in a crisis some of our neighbors are downright dangerous to us. In a bad situation, you need to learn how to say “no” even at the cost of a local relationship. Your family and their needs come first, and you need to careful, focused, calculating and frankly ruthless about this. Your child is your first priority, not your emotionally hysterical virtue signalling angry neighbor.

And you really cannot form useful allegiances with these folks. Burrowed in their angry den, they also now cannot see (or maybe insist in being denial about?) the inbound economic tsunami. These are people who are forever scared, emotional and behind the curve. You can’t work with them to identify threats and respond. Regardless of how many talks you enjoyed with them in the cul de sac on trash night before this all began.

Naturally, one implication of this anger is that folks are retreating into familiar trenches. Half of the discussants on NextDoor these days speak of “MAGA maggots who love money but hate other people’s lives” (literal quote) and “libtard assholes who want to destroy the economy probably to help vegetable Joe Biden in November” (another literal quote). In other words, this is devolving into the normal and expected channels of our national dialogue.

Which I think hints at something else I have seen in this. Despite all of the talk of how “everything has changed” and “the world will never be the same”, in fact the pre-existing faultlines of life actually grow stronger as we retreat into fear and anger. So I guess the lesson here is that, at least for a while, SHTF society will be kind of like pre-SHTF society, only more so.

The common thread through all of this is that these folks are the “preachers”. They are scared and externalize. That is how they handle crisis. It is toxic, counterproductive and dangerous.

Its not all bad though. Survival is partly about attitude. And we are also seeing “doers” emerge.

We’ve seen folks do things like take it upon themselves to buy groceries for at risk folks. Or sew masks. Or start humor threads on places like NextDoor. Or coordinate planning for what comes next (more on this in a post to follow).

People are revealing themselves in this crisis. They did so pretty quickly. Survival is going to partly be about identifying and differentiating the preachers and the doers. Form alliances with doers and ignore preachers.

Let the right ones in.

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Decoupling

These articles and others like them that have been making the rounds have been spinning around my head in recent weeks:

We Need Hard Decoupling

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/cheap-manufacturing-be-damned-sentiment-builds-for-moving-u-s-companies-out-of-china

In short, decoupling basically means in practice a shift away from international supply chains. These chains emerged in part because outsourcing to foreign nations has some advantages: cost savings, technology transfer, etc. But there are obvious risks involved.

In terms of international economics, decoupling is not exactly a new idea, or at least new in terms of the timespan of the Covid-19 crisis:

Decoupling: A Permanent Change Is Underway

However, the disruptions from Covid-19 have made clear exactly how vulnerable we are. It seems likely there is going to be a new urgency to the notion of decoupling. Whether that translates into actual decoupling remains to be seen, but some degree of decoupling may already have been happening so there may be some momentum.

For our purposes decoupling is a more immediate and personal concept. In some sense prepping is an act in anticipation of forced decoupling. You might not get supplies you need, for instance, so you have stores of them. You may not be able to rely on public security services, so you have to think about your own defense. And so on.

It is possible that this instinct to be ready for personal decoupling will be strengthened by this crisis. More folks probably will start looking to reduce their reliance on society, at least in terms of reliance on continuously functioning social structures. They will build up their stores of food, ammo, key pieces of equipment, medicine, etc. Some will start looking for property with survival in mind. And this is a good thing: we will be a more de-centralized society where fewer folks will operate under the assumption of constant support from larger social structures.

Above all, folks will probably start thinking more and more as units decoupled from, and not necessarily aligned with, society. This won’t just manifest itself through prepping: the next few months will probably accelerate an already present trend toward isolated lives based on a bespoke virtual existence. Bearing witness to the way that their fellow Americans have reacted to the crisis, many are probably now concluding that they cannot count on at least some of their neighbors to be smart in tough times: we have also witnessed an epidemic of denial, statistical illiteracy, arrogance, etc.

This reaction is natural, but may also be the wrong move. First, the more atomized and dysfunctional our society, the more likely we are to face some types of crises that would put preps to the test.

Second, the lone wolf model of prepping is a risky. Yes, it allows for faster, more streamlined decisionmaking. The appeal of this is obvious: who wants to spend time convincing the obstinate in times of emergency? The only catch here is what if you are the one that is wrong or not quite right? What if there is some consideration you missed? Sometimes dialogue leads to better decisions. There are clearly limits to this, but a small group of reasonable folks aligned in their goals often delivers better decisions that balance risks better.

Yes, you can develop skills for many things you need to survive. But small groups allow for some degree of specialization. The truth is, some people’s minds are better bent toward thinking about health and medicine. Some are just better at cooking, or sewing, or shooting, or hunting, or just telling stories by the fire that, believe me, might be your psychological salvation on the darkest nights.

This is why I have rule 6 for my personal preps:

6. Community

Yes, a lot of big, long standing vulnerabilities in our society are being revealed now. But don’t go to the other extreme, throwing the baby out with the bathwater in the process.

Its not just about feeling good about yourself. Its also a safer bet in lots of circumstances.

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Notes on a bug in: week 3

So mi casa just completed three weeks of near total bug in. In the absence of a therapeutic emerging that transforms everything (its pretty clear at this point that it would have to cut way into the case fatality rate and, more generally, the ventilator use rate) it looks like this might be the situation for months.

  1. Have larger stocks of toilet paper, paper towels, trash bags

We have large stocks of all of these but, if there was a weak point, it was toilet paper and paper towels. We had a lot compared with the average household (probably about 100 rolls) but not necessarily enough to feel comfortable about a prolonged bug in. We topped off a little in February so we are fine, but what if this had been a sudden event? I am always a little skittish about having a ton of paper goods in the house since we live in the South and bugs might be an issue. Maybe I was a little too conservative about this.

2. Canned goods, pasta, dog food

Our stocks of these are good. Probably 3 months of canned food (mostly vegetables, tuna, salmon, fruit), 60 or so pounds of pasta and 2 rotations of dog food. We added a bunch to this in February but I think this is going to push us toward maintaining a 6 month supply of cans, maybe 100 pounds of pasta and 5 rotations of dog food as a regular thing.

3. Inventory, inventory, inventory

We have an inventory control system for our food and other prep items, and we maintain it pretty well. This proved really crucial for knowing exactly where we would need to top off in February. That said there were some lapses. For instance, I had been lazy about inventory checking on our less than lethal weapons, particularly pepper spray, a bunch of which had expired and needed to restock. So maybe the lesson here is don’t forget the “little” stuff.

4. Switch to 1 gallon water containers

I have had a long standing debate with myself about the correct size for water storage containers. If I had a prepper compound somewhere I’d probably have cisterns (as well as multiple wells, a pond and access to streams). But I live in a suburban development. I have a 55 gallon barrel of water in my garage, but living in the South this has been a less than successful experiment (pretty much no matter what I do crap starts growing in it in the heat of the summer heat and humidity). So I have the fall back of storage in the house. For this I have been torn between 5 gallon water bottles (the kind at your office water fountain) and 1 gallon containers (I usually buy the Kirkland ones from Costco in 6 packs). After a month of trying to find space to pack extra stuff in and still have our house look good, I am sold on the 1 gallon option. Their smaller size just gives you more options for packing stuff in.

5. Pails, pails, pails.

I have a lot of long term stuff in smaller packets. For example, we have a lot of Mountain House Backpacker meals, smaller cans of Augason Farms stuff, etc. This smaller size (particularly the Mountain House backpacker meals) have the killer advantage of portability. That said, I think we are likely to increase our larger container storage inventory after this. We already had some big pails. For instance, we have a 14 pound pail of Augason Farms powdered milk (this makes maybe 18 gallons of milk). I think in future we will have 2 of these, as well as a big pail of salt. These big containers can be thought of as our last bug in fall backs and it is nice to have some big central reserves of some core stuff. They are a pain to store (they are bulky and dont pack in easily) but I have concluded that they are worth it.

6 . Gasoline

I have long maintained a 10 gallon reserve of gasoline and just kept rotating the reserves through my vehicles. I did this in anticipation primarily of a grid down type situation. That said this was a very reassuring backup in this situation because it allows me to avoid gas stations. I have long had a theory that gas stations are important spread points for the flu, and you can see how this would work with covid-19: you handle the gas pump and then touch your face as you drive away. I am also very glad we have had our long standing habit of maintaining full tanks of gas on our vehicles.

7. Battle ready guns

Here I get a C. I have a good inventory but I am lazy about cleaning and checking things like batteries in lights. I plowed through this in the past week and I am now good to go. But I need to be better about having some absolutely battle ready guns at all times. I was lucky this is a so (comparatively) slow moving crisis and could address my failures at my leisure. Next time we might not be so lucky.

8. Vitamins, vitamins, vitamins

We have a bunch of these, but I think that in future we will store even more. When you start thinking about possible food shortages, gaps that could open up, etc. knowing that you have vitamins is a tremendous reassurance. I think we will have a several year supply when this is done.

9. Meat

We have tons of meat and I’m not worried about it for this crisis. But if this was a power loss kind of situation I wouldnt feel so good. Too much of our meat is in freezers. I am not suggesting we will reduce the stock of frozen meat, but I think we need to add more things like No. 10 cans of Mountain House ground beef and chicken. We need more. We need stocks that rival our freezer stocks. Lets say 5-6 months of this.

10. Keep house repairs current

On the Nextdoor social media site I have seen people asking about things like recommendations for roofers. They need a new roof and had been sitting on it for a couple of years. I think that urgent repairs like these are now going to be pretty dicey. In the last year I replaced my roof, HVAC and water heater short of their sell by date. Yes, that costs money. But not having to worry about that now is priceless.

11. Mail in medicine

One thing I procrastinated on was rearranging to have all of our household’s prescriptions arrive by mail. I have now straightened this out but should have done so earlier. It would probably be better to avoid unnecessary trips to the pharmacy (or any kind of trips for that matter) during this crisis. In the event that we have a crisis where this kind of delivery mechanism failed, it is unlikely that we would be able to get prescriptions directly from the pharmacy anyway.

12. Batteries

One thing we didn’t have to worry about is batteries. We do a huge once a year battery inventory in our household, usually timed to the beginning of hurricane season. It was so nice not to have to think about this in the past month or so and focus on other last minute preps.

13. Fruit

Fruit is a major issue. We have a bunch but with everyone bugged in we are going through it at a stunning rate. There may come a point where it is too dangerous to go out at all or get deliveries and we will be down to dried fruit (which we have a bunch of). But in future I plan to revisit this issue with more canned fruit and more dried fruit.

14. Doritos.

Let’s get down to brass tacks: even adults can agree that Doritos were bestowed on us by the Gods. All kidding aside, we have a kid in our house and this is going to be a rough experience for them. One thing we did after core top off preps were done is to buy a bunch of fun food for kids. In our case this included Doritos, potato chips, bake mixes, pancake mix and syrup, etc. This is more about the psychological side of the equation and creates some crucial happy moments for kids. Adults need these things too (I made sure certain key bourbon and sipping wine stocks were flush). You will have opportunities to address some of this online in coming weeks (see point 15).

15. Never stop prepping. Never stop building.

I don’t need to tell anyone that Amazon, Costco, etc. are out of a lot of essential stuff. This morning I looked at Ammoseek and they have exactly one (one) option for 77 grain 5.56 ammunition. But every morning and late every night I am surfing a bit and here and there stuff pops up. Last night I scored some number 10 cans of Mountain House breaksfast skillet and 2X6 packs of Mountain House beef stroganoff meals. Two nights ago I actually found 2X50 round boxes of Black Hills 77 grain SMK 5.56 ammunition. By hunting and pecking here and there you can find stuff and everything you find is deepening your preps and extending your bug in run way.

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Prepping isn’t just about the prepper

Hundreds of people wait in line at Costco in Cypress, CA, on March 13, 2020.
Shoppers in line at a Costco in Austin on March 12, 2020

In the past two days, during which the images above were captured, the covid-19 walls caved in on ordinary Americans. These images match reports I have heard from the local Costcos in my corner of the South. A father of a friend at a local Costco yesterday estimated the line was 150 (give or take) shoppers deep. Many, many are now belatedly and furiously prepping. Many are also probably having a hard time finding the things they need.

Covid-19 is almost without doubt far more widespread now than a few weeks ago. Put simply, the risk that you would acquire or spread Covid-19 in a visit to your local Costco was almost certainly far lower even a few weeks ago and nil before that. So those now jamming the Costco’s are putting all of us at greater risk because they simply don’t plan or think ahead. Now I know that for some people the financial burden of what they are doing now caused them to hesitate, but that does not excuse all or even most of the people in those lines and even then it still isn’t reasonable that ignoring the risks from their behavior for others was part of their calculus.

And some people will now come up short. Those who depend on them (kids, pets, etc.) will suffer. And they will probably have to take risky supply runs in weeks to come, adding risk to their families and others. Some weeks ago someone said to me that in a deep crisis the only moral thing is that kids come before pets. I agree, but that also completely misses the moral point: goddam you if by the smallest effort in advance you could have avoided such a terrible tradeoff. You were responsible for all of them, your kids, your elderly in-laws who live with you, your pets etc.

Some preppers are crazy, but a lot of non-preppers have let themselves all too easily off the hook by focusing on the tails of the prepper distribution. Yes, an 80,000 square foot bunker is a bit much. That doesn’t explain why you did not have some reserve food for your poor dog.

I am sorry if my tone is angry, but these people have wronged those who depended on them. And they have put us all at greater risk by their frantic efforts now.

Prepping is the responsible thing to do. Not prepping at all is crazy. Far crazier than the craziest crazy we find in the prepper community.

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Bugging out is generally a bad idea

“We’re driving a U-Haul out to the Hamptons. Which means I’ll probably be the first to die”

So it turns out that covid-19 is messing with the Spring Break plans of our betters and instead they are doing what any sensible prepper would do in an emergency like this: bug out out to the Hamptons. To wit:

https://pagesix.com/2020/03/12/nycs-elite-fleeing-coronavirus-by-decamping-to-the-hamptons/?_ga=2.156338171.1163401007.1583758216-163615656.1583518478

All kidding aside, bugging out is central to the plans of a lot of preppers. When the SHTF, they are going to hit the open road.

Now when I refer to “bugging out” for the purposes of what follows in this post I mean leaving your home in a major, society-wide SHTF social disruption. I am not referring to, say, driving to your brother’s house 200 miles away because your own is in the path of a Category 3 Hurricane or something like that. To me the better word for that is “evacuation” and the key distinction with “bugging out” is that if you evacuate in a timely, sensible fashion, your journey will be one aided by the fact that most of the support mechanisms of the modern world (e.g. gas stations) are still intact and your jorney will end in a place where they operate as well.

I cannot help but to think that roughly half of preppers who seriously contemplate bugging out so defined as an attractive option are stirred to do so by romantic disaster porn book covers. Exhibit A:

Most of the other half are probably motivated by images of the ultimate road trip from movies like Zombieland.

Columbus and Tallahassee marvel at the cargo room of a ’99 Ford Ranger

Here’s the most important thing to know about bugging out: it is generally a terrible idea that should be pursued only as a last and unavoidable resort.

First, let’s be honest: it would be physically grueling. You are most likely going to have to undertake a major part of your journey on foot and living out of a bag. In a real SHTF scenario the roads are likely to be challenging to say the least. Abandoned vehicles clogging the lanes. We know this is likely because it routinely happens in certified non-disasters. Consider the picture below that gave birth to a thousand internet memes, from an ordinary (and light) snowstorm in Raleigh, NC a few years ago. And most of you have vehicles that mostly confine you to roads (no, a Toyota Highlander is not a post-apocalyptic off road war machine).

Snowmageddon, Raleigh NC style.

So get used to the idea that bugging out will probably mean walking. Test yourself sometime by taking a 10 mile hike with a 50 pound pack and something heavy enough to simulate carrying a rifle. I bet you are in serious trouble by mile 4. You will also learn why blisters are such an obsession for those of us who recreationally put pack to back and ramble around the woods. If you would have to bug out in any kind of hilly or mountainous area I give to mile 2 before you are in trouble.

And here is an instrinsic problem: realistic physical conditioning will only go so far in getting you ready for this. The only real way to get ready for this is to hike constantly with a pack on, but that is a very time inefficient method of exercise. Even folks in pretty good shape will struggle with the practical physical realities of a long forced march with a lot of weight on their backs.

And if you are thinking about bugging out then you better think hard about gear. For instance, the dude on that book cover (“Founders”) above is wearing an “Alice” pack.

An “ALICE” pack

The Alice (as in All-Purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment) pack is a US military design that was adoptd in the early Seventies. Alice packs carry a lot of nostalgia weight. They were a foundational piece of kit for generations of US soldiers. And they are a comparatively very affordable pack (I bought one off of Amazon for evaluation maybe 7-8 years ago for $50 bucks or so). But here is the most important thing you need to know about Alice packs: they are not so good at carrying actual weight. With more than around 35-40 pounds in them they are a torture device.

You need a pack with a high speed frame that distributes the weight in a sustainable way (that is, away from your shoulders and toward the Iliac crest of your hips) that works with your body. Finding that pack is a financially and time expensive undertaking.

Bugging out is also a security and resources nightmare. You will likely be pushed into essentially unfamiliar operational environments for which you have little ability to anticipate risks or know where to look for things you might need. The locals know that new environment better than you. They know where to get food, water and resources better than you do. They know, frankly, where to ambush you.

Bugging out is also rooted in the idea that the grass is greener over there. While that is always possible, in many realistic disaster scenarios limited information flows will probably make it hard to determine whether this is really the case. And you are probably going to be betting a lot that conditions are better in your bug out destination.

Yes, these folks leaving for the Hamptons do not have the image of the book cover above in mind. But what makes them so sure the Hamptons isn’t actually ground zero for the next huge Covid-19 cluster? Would anyone have guessed the Orthodox Jewish community in New Rochelle would be the first huge cluster?

We are going to talk about bugging out but make no mistake about it: it is likely a desperate choice in most real SHTF scenarios. Your first line of defense should be bug in: stay where you are and try to ride out what is happening.

This is so important, and flies so strongly in the face of a type of prepper escapist fantasy, that it deserves a rule of its own:

Rule 23. Try to bug in

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Covid-19 and society

This evening the local news had a special on covid-19. An economist opined that this could cause a recession. On the other hand, if there was some good news, such as a fall in cases in Italy, it could rally people’s spirits and make them think everything was going to be alright. I got stuck on the thought of people’s “spirits” and how they shaped personal trajectories thus far in this story.

Though I have prepped for a decade, this has been the first really big crisis I have experienced as a prepper. We’ve had weather threats and stuff like that, but those were all at best local threats. This is the first really big disruption I have seen. Put differently, this is the first dry run for something even remotely approaching SHTF.

Now, before proceeding, let’s characterize this event. It is the biggest thing that has happened to many of us, but there have been some saving graces. It happened slowly enough that anyone who was paying attention had the time to make at least adequate preparations for, say, bugging in to ride it out (whether they have the resources to do so is admittedly a different story). Moreover, this is a crisis that has not so far impacted vital systems: the lights are still on, the gas pumps are still running, the store shelves are still more or less stocked, etc.

This has been a comparatively forgiving event, at least compared with some plausible and serious alternatives (such as the grid going down, a virus that had a higher “Rho naught” combined with much higher mortality and morbidity, etc.).

One of the major lessons I am going to take from this experience is how badly so many folks process risk. The won’t see obvious threats approaching and then will react in a fashion that does nothing (angry Tweets really make a difference!) or, in a smaller and more intimate social unit where they might have more influence, is actually counterproductive. On an intellectual level I already understood this, but it somehow looms much larger in my thinking after watching the past few weeks.

The vast majority of people I encountered did not see the Covid-19 tsunami coming, even as they were obviously in its shadow. Really, their falure to pay attention was just incredible and could only be explained beyond a certain point by denial. And now when they have finally acknowledged this great, awful wave..

Anger. The dominate gear for many is anger. They are angry and want someone to pay. Some blame China. Some drove ever deeper into the labyrinth of “Orange Man Bad”.

Some of the angry are simply panicking. Some are disappearing into blame game escapism. Many instant public health experts explain that this is only happening because we don’t have enough test kits. The shortage of test kits has been really lamentable, but no, this was going to happen regardless because we were never going to detect most of the cases in time due to the nature of this virus. This morning I heard someone on YouTube explain slightly caustically that Italy is in trouble because they did not have total surveillance immediately: you see, as he so plainly explains, a nation needs to detect all with cough, fever, myalgia, aches, etc. and quarantine them and they need to do that before the health system even notices cases. Lets not focus on complication, such as that there is literally no way to do this in a Western democracy.

Others suddenly and angrily push “solutions” that are just punches in the air. And they can never understand why they those solutions haven’t been implemented yesterday (back when they were personally still in denial, that is). Some argue that we need immediately to test everyone and that will solve the problem, but that would likely put us in an entirely different crisis as we drowned in a sea of false positives. Others argue that we need to adopt China’s “get tough” measures. Mind you many of these folks split their time between this demand and insisting that Trump is a dictator, but what I think all sensible people can agree on is that Chinese solutions probably wouldn’t work in the U.S. You’ve got that who nagging problem of a different society with different political and institutional structures, culture, history, laws, etc.

Then you have a final, and rather amazing group: those who still think there is no problem, even as they feel the first mist of the tsunami upon their cheeks.

The problem with people who process risk poorly is that they are a liability when difficult, evidence-based decisions need to be made. Emotion and psychology enter too deeply in their process, and that more often than not leads us to do stupid things that enhance risk.

A lot of lone wolf preppers are probably nodding in approval at this point. They plan to rely on no one but themselves. This has the advantage of insulating yourself from dependency on people who make poor risk choices. But there are probably instances where all of us make poor decisions and one of the great things about a social unit is that it provides a check on our errors and excesses. Moreover, socieities cast a broader net in terms of information gathering. And society is really critical to things like specialization, emotional support, defense, etc.

A core assumption behind lone wolf prepping is that you can make better decisions than others (or, alternatively, better at making them in isolation) and execute them better on your own. The first assumption is questionable. At a minimum lone individuals are probably generally at an information disadvangtage. Per the second, while there is probably some speed advantage to being alone, the Rambo myth is just that: in the tactical arena individuals rarely if ever defeat teams. There is no reason to believe that gathering resources, performing tasks, etc. would be any different.

So where does that leave us? As preppers we need to build a social network for mutual support in a massive disruption. But we clearly have to be a little selective about who we choose. A lot of folks are a liability in bad times. This happens to perfectly encapsulate my person rules 6 and 7:

6. Community

7. Let the right ones in

Lone wolves will probably not make it. But neither will a society of clowns. Strike the balance between the two.

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News: Judge Not, Finger Wavers

Today I ran across this Tweet:

The dog whistle target of this Tweet and the comments that follow should be clear enough to anyone who has witnessed our increasingly savage culture wars.

In case it wasn’t, one of the comments provided a helpful re-Tweet that translates this for the Bible thumpers among us:

After seeing this I ran immediately into this:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/asian-americans-terrified-of-coronavirus-backlash-stock-up-on-guns

I know, I know: this is silly on one level. Twitter is becoming the last refuge of folks from the Left and Right who express themselves with so little art and so much condescencion that they Tweet with all the time they saved by getting dis-invited from social events, family gatherings, etc.

But I think it establishes an important ground rule: don’t judge other people’s preps. You can offer advice, but in the end their circumstances are not yours and you cannot understand all of the elements of their decisionmaking. We are a nation of, what, 330 million people, with possibly as many individual sets of constraints, strengths and liabilities before them.

For instance, how do these two posters not know that some of these sales are in anticipation of the all too real possibility that emergency services are going to be overwhelmed by a surge of cases? How do they know they aren’t rural people, for whom protection by security services may have been a thin shield even before this current crisis happened?

I am guilty of breaking this rule. When this Covid-19 panic began I questioned, maybe even a little dismissively I am now embarassed to say, the folks who were stocking up on so much water. After all, municipal water supplies (the source of my own water) haven’t even been interrupted in Wuhan, China.

But now that I am sitting here shaking my head at these Tweets I wonder: were some of the people purchasing water on wells that might need service that might not be possible if we go into lockdown?

Tecumseh, whose image requires little excuse to embed in a post

Tecumseh once said “trouble no one about their religion”. Well, I think an analogous mandate should apply in the prepping discussion.

And even if some preps are silly, they probably do provide psychological reassurance that steadies a person emotionally, allowing them to make better decisions in the face of crisis. And that can be as important as material preps.

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Seeing danger

It’s always the same old story. No one wants to see the danger until it’s staring them in the face.

The quote above is from the diary of Anne Frank, which I consider required reading for a prepper. (For the interested this is from the Thursday, February 3, 1944 entry.) I’ve been reminded of this quote as I have watched Covid-19 gather steam in the last week or two.

Many folks reflexively consider preppers to be crazy. And to be fair, some preppers are perhaps just a touch crazy (“I’m preparing for a hyperinflation that will set off a super volcano, which will cause a tsunami that will trigger a constitutional crisis which will lead to an earthquake by stockpiling 1.4 million rounds of 7.62X39mm ammo and 775,000 cans of tuna fish in caches I’ve hidden in my local park”). But I can’t help but to think that some part of the reaction by non-preppers is that they are pathologically reluctant to face the possibility of risk.

We also need to be fair about the speed with which this disease is moving: it doesn’t leave much time for stages of grief. But even then it would seem that many of the authorities have demonstrated a kind of gross inability to make obvious projections even a few days in advance. (Some are undoubtedly lying as well.) This is no “Orange Man Bad” rant: even our local public health authorities sound like clowns, to say nothing of local school officials and employers who appear to functionally have their head in the sand. And let’s face it: our leaders are partly a reflection of us. Most people still won’t turn and face this, and instead have retreated into denial.

Its almost as if preppers (at least some) are the people who chose to take a kind of red pill, while a lot of non-preppers are addicted to the associated blue pill.

This is already an important lesson I am going to take away from the Covid-19 episode. Yes, some preppers are nuts. But many, many non-preppers are suffering from an altogether different, and probably more dangerous, species of nuts. After all, what is the risk from caching 775,000 cans of tuna fish compared with not being prepared at all? * I suspected this already on some level, but it has become painfully obvious how true it is.

Anne was right.

* I am not advocating caching 775,000 cans of tuna. For one thing, I would probably rather be killed in the melt down than live to eat 775,000 cans of tuna fish.