That title caught your atten­tion for sure!

But believe it or not, there are peo­ple out there who actu­al­ly want and hope for a mas­sive, nation­al SHTF event! You can see it in the way many peo­ple on a large num­ber of prep­per sites write or the videos they pro­duce. They are out­right git­ty at the idea of it. Very per­verse!

Yet when you ana­lyze the think­ing of some of these peo­ple (because some are just out­right kooks!) there is an odd sense that forms an image of scared, des­per­ate peo­ple for whom a nation­al cat­a­clysmic event is their only hope out. It’s very sad and dis­heart­en­ing, even fright­en­ing, that so many peo­ple see a col­lapse of life as we know it to be not only a viable but rea­son­able way to improve their own lives.

First, we need to put aside the kooks who think liv­ing in a SHTF WROL world will some­how be “cool” or fun. And those who think it will just be an extend­ed camp­ing trip. Have you seen “Mad Max”? “Book of Eli”? Or read “The Road”? Just to name a few…

Beyond them, there is of course the crim­i­nal ele­ment. The true, hard core “career” crim­i­nal would just love an SHTF WROL world! The real­i­ty is that crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, espe­cial­ly vio­lent crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, as bad as it is in many Amer­i­can cities (and it is bad regard­less of what the sta­tis­tics claim!) is held in check to at least some extent by law enforce­ment. Or, to put it anoth­er way, if it’s bad now just imag­ine how it will be with there is no law enforce­ment on the streets! Already in many cities law enforce­ment and police response to 911 calls is being reduced due to bud­get con­straints. As of writ­ing this, in Cal­i­for­nia there was recent­ly a mob gang fight out­side a MacDonald’s. It last­ed near­ly an hour. Many peo­ple called the police. No one came until much lat­er. And that is under “nor­mal” and “good” con­di­tions!

There are also peo­ple who aren’t crim­i­nals now but will turn to crime with­out the fear of law enforce­ment. Maybe your own neigh­bors. (A top­ic for anoth­er time)

Next there are the young peo­ple, the post‑9/11 gen­er­a­tion. These are late teens and 20-some­things who came of age after 9/11. The OWS crowd. They know only of inter­na­tion­al war and con­flict, high gov­ern­ment spend­ing, ever tighter secu­ri­ty in the name of safe­ty, a roller coast­er econ­o­my at best, and crush­ing debts (of their own doing but they don’t see it that way). Through the media at large, politi­cians, the net and a vari­ety of oth­er sources all they know about Amer­i­ca and the Amer­i­can sys­tem – i.e. cap­i­tal­ism – are “rich and evil” bankers and Wall Street types, “greedy” lenders who try (and per­haps have) tak­en their family’s’ homes, “self­ish” busi­ness own­ers who lay off their par­ents and per­haps them too, etc. They have lit­tle idea these are both only very very recent events in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca as well being a mere frac­tion of the oth­er­wise good things the Amer­i­can sys­tem and Cap­i­tal­ism have done (the iphone, ipad and Xbox for exam­ple would like­ly not be around for them to waste time on were it not for Cap­i­tal­ism!).

For these young peo­ple, a SHTF col­lapse is no big deal. They know no oth­er world. If/when an eco­nom­ic or oth­er nation­al SHTF event hap­pens most young peo­ple will embrace it for a long time. It may not be for years until they real­ize life after SHTF is no bet­ter, prob­a­bly worse, than what was post-SHTF. And some will nev­er real­ize it since, again, then know no dif­fer­ent.

Mov­ing on, next there are peo­ple who, for a vari­ety of rea­sons, are in very deep debt hard­ship. Per­haps they are on the list to lose their home, their car, or any­thing else they owe mon­ey on. For these peo­ple, a nation­al SHTF col­lapse rep­re­sents a poten­tial “reset” in their lives. They expect (hope) that debt will be for­giv­en if not for­got­ten after TSHFT. Ain’t gonna hap­pen!

The top­ic of debt after a major eco­nom­ic or finan­cial SHTF has been dis­cussed at length on many oth­er sites so I’m not going to rehash it here. I will say that when it comes to “mon­ey” no one is going to for­give or for­get you owe them – No one! Pay­ment may not be in U.S. Dol­lars after an SHTF event. Maybe gold or sil­ver or oth­er met­als, maybe prop­er­ty, maybe even forced labor! (e.g. a return to the con­cept of Inden­tured Servi­tude)  But either way I assure you, as clear­ly as the sun ris­es in the East and sets in the West, some­one some­where will even­tu­al­ly come look­ing for you to make good on your debts. And they will have the full weight of what­ev­er law enforce­ment (even pri­vate secu­ri­ty “con­sul­tants” if nec­es­sary) to enforce it.

There prob­a­bly are oth­er groups and types of peo­ple who would per­verse­ly embrace an SHTF WROL event. But these rep­re­sent the ones I can think of at the top of the list.

Very telling that our soci­ety has pro­duced peo­ple with this mind­set.

A self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy?

 

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