The Boy Scouts may have the most powerful slogan of any organization on the planet. It’s seems so trite and childish that we don’t really consider what it’ s suggesting for all aspects of life, at any age. BE PREPARED.
My biggest fear with Americans being able to survive the 2012 apocalypse is they are in no way, shape or form, PREPARED to handle their own survival. We are freaked out when our computers take seconds to compute — as opposed to nano-seconds. A dropped call — oh the humanity! What the hell do you mean the power’s out? Call up the electric company and get ‘em on it!
Americans live most of our live’s under the delusion that we’re uncast hero in some Hollywood underdog film. We’re the geek that’ll get the girl. The looked-over nice girl who will eventually marry the Prince. We’re that un-assuming “normal person” who CLICKS into action when the time comes to anhiliate the entire Ukrainian Mafia and make America safe again. We feel this way because we want to think of ourselves this way. We want to think of ourselves as important, clever, cunning, capable and decisive. In truth, the great majority of us wouldn’t have a clue as to how to find food if grocery stores didn’t exist. In truth we have no idea about potable water because (unless we’ve visited Mexico) — that elixir of life has always flowed clean and cold from a tap at our beckon call. When’s the last time you survived in the wilderness using just your knowledge and some modern era tools to get you by?
The largest contributing factor to our incapacity to survive like our ancestors is the very real fact that we’ve never ever considered we would ever have to. For us, life was promised to get better and better. Techology would make things easier and easier. Capitalism ensure our futures would be ever-more comfortable. Sure, the plane may go down the Rockies… but we’d tough it out a few days and the rescue will show up. If it takes longer, there’ll be someone to take charge and show us how to do it. We’ve also considered tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc… but should we survive, the real world is usually just an hour away, insurance will help rebuild, and of course… rescue is on the way.
When 2012’s disaster strikes the planet, there will be no help on the way. There will be no insurance adjuster picking up the pieces of your shattered reality. The in-laws air-conditioned home won’t be the refugee center. Food won’t be shipped in on schedule, water may not flow, sewage will get backed up, people will find themselves in a psychological bubble. A self-absorbed thought cloud, questioning the reality before their eyes. Can this be? This ain’ t really happening? The entire world will be different — for the rest of their lives, everything they knew about life and the world will be FOREVER gone. No one who is reading this can even come close to fully understanding what that psychological shock level will be like. Many may have experienced shock in times of their own trajedies — lost loved ones, fatal prognoses, physical catastrophes… but they all had a bedrock of familiarity — past remnants of normality to balance this upheaval. They were a twisted mess, but surrounded by normality. All they needed was time.
In 2012 — more time will only deliver more desperation. Not only will you be a twisted mess, but everything around you will be twisted. Destruction will be everywhere. Disease and sanitation conditions from the masses of rotting corpses will not remind one of brighter and better days to come. The psyche will be continually confronted with the schism of the old world and the stone age reality of present day. Fear, desperation, depression will further thin the herd. All human motivation will be oriented toward one single goal: survival. The meaning of your life will distill down to simply surviving…hard and difficult survival until you die. This realization in and of itself will convince many there is no reason to go on… and the surviving herd will thin again.
Of those that survive any planetary cataclysm, I content that weak minds will be more devastating to the survivors (in terms of subsequent deaths) than any plague or Mad Max villiany. Religion, or helping others, may be the only two mental constructs that allow someone to function within this new paradigm.
Anyone can learn how to hunt or build a shelter. Hell cavemen did it. Basic first aid is taught in elementary schools. Gardening, scavenging, purifying water… those things will be easy.
Those who came to this site looking for information on how to smoke meat, or build water filtration systems, will skip over this post because it lacks that manly testosterone appeal that makes them feel like the hero in that movie in their head. And they will do so to their own peril. Medicine will vouch for the potency of mindset. Mental strength or attrition has been a deciding factor in most of the battles waged on this planet. Therefore DO NOT take lightly the mental preparation needed to take place before 2012’s great catastrophe. That preparation will give you foundation for the mental strength you’ll need both during and after the fallout.
In order to SURVIVE 2012…. be prepared. Mentally prepared. Which means consider the possibility of it actually coming to pass!
