Not even a week after the S&P down­grade of Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment debt, and the finan­cial mar­ket reac­tion to it, and a very clear set of lessons for prep­pers is emerg­ing clear­ly. As the sce­nario unfolds more analy­sis can be applied and more con­clu­sions drawn. But right now there are a few lessons that are glar­ing and need to be dis­cussed.

Tim­ing

Notice the tim­ing of this event. That is, it is not by acci­dent or coin­ci­dence that S&P made its announce­ment on Fri­day evening long after the mar­kets closed for the week and most Amer­i­cans have start­ed their sum­mer week­end get-aways.

By the time the announce­ment was made there was lit­tle chance for peo­ple to go to their bank and make big cash with­drawals (though I’m sure many ATM’s were emp­tied over the week­end). Or call their mutu­al fund or stock bro­ker and cry “Sell! SELL! SELL!”

By the time Mon­day morn­ing rolled around and the banks and mar­kets opened, the bankers and bro­kers and mar­ket movers and shak­ers and gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy wonks had a whole week­end to think this through and come up with their own strate­gies and respons­es. They already decid­ed what trades to make, what con­trols or pol­i­cy changes to imple­ment, what their con­tin­gency plans were if this or that hap­pened next, etc.

For them it was a smart move. Deci­sions made in haste are rarely good ones. Try­ing to man­age a sit­u­a­tion to keep it from becom­ing too much a pub­lic pan­ic. Not an unrea­son­able goal.

But the les­son here is the tim­ing.

The next time there is a major eco­nom­ic events (and there will be anoth­er major event – That I will bet the farm on!) if the pow­ers that be have any con­trol over it, the event will hap­pen over a week­end. You won’t be able to go to the bank or your bro­ker or mutu­al fund for a with­draw­al (or at least be very lim­it­ed).  This also includes vault ser­vices. If banks are closed (a declared emer­gency “bank hol­i­day”) access to your doc­u­ments in the bank vault won’t be avail­able.

Speed

Take notice of the rate of change that events unfold­ed from the start of the S&P announce­ment. The fact as men­tioned above that it hap­pened on a Fri­day night helped slow the rate. But once the world came back to work on Mon­day events took of at over­drive speed off the start­ing line.

If this event hap­pened mid-week or even just mid-day the rate of esca­la­tion could have been at warp speed. That means you abil­i­ty to respond, even if you are total­ly planned and ready at a moment’s notice, is cut that much short­er. More­over, you (and prob­a­bly the major­i­ty of the unpre­pared pub­lic) will be in “shock & aw” over the rate of event change.

This means that when the next eco­nom­ic event comes you will not see it com­ing and will lit­er­al­ly hit you from out of the blue. And you have to quick­ly over­come the shock of the event, even to take advan­tage of their shock paral­y­sis to pur­chase extra sup­plies, go to the bank and oth­er insti­tu­tions you need to col­lect, even evac­u­ate if you feel nec­es­sary.

Wake Up Call

The events of the past week are like­ly not the piv­otal moment of col­lapse. (Then again, what do I know?!)  If this is all that hap­pens the nation will sur­vive. Black&blue but it will sur­vive and clean­ing up the mess for a gen­er­a­tion to come at least. But will go on.

But if this is the piv­otal moment, the sin­gu­lar event that peo­ple will look back on and say was the start­ing moment of the eco­nom­ic col­lapse, then time is tick­et­ing down fast.

If you believe as I do then take this week’s events as moti­va­tion to renew your efforts for prep­ping.

If you believe but haven’t start­ed prep­ping then take this as your kick-in-the-ass to get up and get start­ed.

I think the alarm clock has been heard by more peo­ple than you think. I hope so.