Thursday, January 10, 2019

Learning From Others

Life is full of experiences, and if you're lucky you'll take opportunities to learn from the experiences of others before you face the same conditions. This is why people write histories, to share what happened before in the hopes of educating future generations.

In the prepper world, there are lots of things that we prepare for and we have plenty of sources from the past to consult for ideas. What works and what doesn't are the basics we should be looking for, with acknowledgment that no two situations are exactly alike. Slightly different situations will have different solutions, and the more you look, the more options you'll be aware of. 

I'm a student of history, so I tend to look back 100 years or more for ideas. There really isn't much new under the sun, so most of what we have to deal with has been dealt with over and over in the past. This approach may not be for everyone, so let's look at some more recent events and the chronicles of those who lived through them. Yes, I'm going to link to other blogs; don't forget to come back here when you're done.

Selco
Selco is the pen-name of a survivor of the war in the Yugoslavia that started in the 1990s and hasn't really ended. Some of you may not be old enough to remember that mess, so let's just say that it was a civil war that shredded a moderately industrialized nation which led to it breaking up into something close to what existed before WW1 and the redrawing of the maps that followed it. This occurred shortly after the 1984 Winter Olympics were held in Sarajevo, so we're not talking about a third-world country.

Selco writes for several prepper/survivalist blogs and has his own preparedness training company now. He lived through a civil war in an urban setting, so he's a good source of information for those of us in similar areas.

Ferfal
Fernado Aguirre writes under the name Ferfal. He survived the “unrest” in Argentina that started in 2001, so his information is less than 20 years old. Economic collapse, runaway inflation, and a government in turmoil took a toll on one of South America's biggest economies. They're starting to pull out of the worst of the troubles, but it has taken them many years. Again, Argentina is an industrialized nation, not some third-world collection of starving peasants. Bad things can happen to good people.

Ferfal has his own blog and is a good source of information dealing with the aftermath of a financial collapse and how government can make it worse than it has to be.

Jose Martinez
Jose is a fairly new writer. He's being hosted at Organic Prepper for now, but I imagine he'll have a site of his own soon.

Since Venezuela is a situation that is still unfolding as I write this, Jose has good information on how a once-prosperous nation can fall apart in modern times. He is living through a nightmare and wants to make sure others have his perspective in case they ever have to face a similar nightmare. Look for parallels between the events and actions that led to his nightmare and what we're seeing in other places around the world.


I won't even try to list all of the “edge” preppers out there; the tinfoil hat industry is booming and the religious/political/ethnic divides have fueled more blogs and websites than I can keep track of. If someone has to rely on fear and hatred to get motivated, I don't believe they will last long once TSHTF. They'll only last until their “enemy” is defeated, at which time they'll have to find a new enemy in order to maintain their survival.

The other option is that their “leaders” will see to it that the “enemy” is never defeated, ensuring that they get to stay in their leadership roles. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, if you've ever read 1984.

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