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This article was posted on facebook by one of my friends (who happens to be a rather interesting conspiracy theorist, but that is neither here nor there), and I love it. My mind is sometimes blown by how dependent my generation is on the government, and on commerce. Is that the right word? Meaning--if Walmart and Stater Brothers shut down tomorrow, who would be okay in a week?? If the government had to regulate our food supply in an emergency by handing out staples (say a sack of flour and a bag of potatoes)--who would know what to do?? This first came to my attention about six or seven years ago when Ridgecrest had a two-day blackout. No electricity. People left the city in droves. No, seriously, people packed up and left to wait out the time in a hotel room, in "nearby" cities an hour and a half away. When we did get power back, there were lines outside the gas stations with panicked people waiting for their gas. Wow. Got me thinking. My parents' generation (not necessarily my parents, mind you!) would know what to do if things just stopped working. Ours? Some people would be in a lot of trouble. Is that scary to anyone else??
Anyway, self-sufficiency, along with avid reading of pioneer settlers accounts (usually women's journals from the late 1800s who came to settle the west coast) are a bit like my hobbies. I often wonder at a time when these hobbies were methods of survival--if you didn't garden or raise livestock, you would die. Could we do it?? Out here in the Mojave?
In this article, the thing that I not so good at is the concept of debt. Credit cards make it easy for me to buy things on a whim. A goal of mine would be to pay only cash or not pay at all. Do you have a goal to make your life-style more self-sufficient? In this day and age, can "normal" families achieve a measure of self-sufficiency? What about true self-sufficiency? (Not talking about the hippie guys living in RVs on BLM land--although I'm totally jealous.) Marla Wants to Know!!!
You should watch on youtube, the show Preppers. or something like that. Its about a bunch of people taht are becoming self sustained (good) for some kind of crisis that is coming (ehhh okkkkkkkkkkkk) and they ahve some good ideas and ways that you can prepare yourself. Again, the show is kind of, weird, but it does have a lot of good ideas. Including a trucker that has his whole preparedness in the back of his truck cab. So it is plausible. :)
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