So, yes­ter­day, I had a thought, after a brief encounter at the front door of my home. Two slight­ly old­er women showed up at my front door. Invari­ably when two women show up at the front door with pam­phlets in hand, you think, Bap­tists or Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness­es. As my dog is bark­ing non-stop, and my daugh­ter is yelling for me in the back­ground, I am try­ing to be polite. And of course, they keep talk­ing and talk­ing over my dia­tribe about not being inter­est­ed, etc. I final­ly sim­ply said, “I am Jew­ish, ladies.” And at that moment, The thought, “F*CK!” went through my mind. The one thing that I would like­ly say in the past that would give them pause to go on talk­ing…

Back­ing up for a moment, I have been watch­ing the news non-stop.  Watch­ing fringe news, watch­ing YouTube news, etc on the Israeli/Palestinian con­flict, etc.  I can­not even put into words how I feel about it.  As a coun­try, our gov­ern­ment seems to be fund­ing both sides of this con­flict, and it is esca­lat­ing very quick­ly in the Mid­dle East to some­thing that has us dis­tract­ed from the Ukraine/Russian con­flict.  This is by design, of course with the Iranian/Russian alliance in place for many years.  We’re fund­ing both sides of this con­flict.  Chi­na has moved its navy into posi­tion, Rus­sia has sent assets to the region, and WWIII feels immi­nent.  This is not the world I was hop­ing our beau­ti­ful six-year-old would be grow­ing up in.  It is very scary to watch and expe­ri­ence from the arm­chair…

That said, my spidey sens­es are tin­gling, and my gut is doing flip-flops.  I am try­ing to remain some­one who is not vis­i­bly affect­ed by this, but for the first time in my life­time, I feel like with wide open bor­ders, mil­i­tary-aged men from ene­mies of the state com­ing over the north­ern and south­ern bor­ders in mass, that there are sleep­ers all over the coun­try just await­ing the ‘offi­cial word’ from their lead­ers to acti­vate for what­ev­er nefar­i­ous bullsh!t that they are going to per­pet­u­ate.  I hon­est­ly believe it is not a mat­ter of if, but when at this junc­ture, and I fear the fight will be brought the aver­age cit­i­zen on our soil, some­where, some­time… I may be wrong.  It may be an attack on the 9 major sub­sta­tions that man­age pow­er for the coun­try.  It may be some­thing else.

Back to the nice Jeho­vah’s at the front door.  At that sec­ond, I real­ized I need­ed to scan the imme­di­ate area to see if there were any oth­er indi­vid­u­als stand­ing over­watch to see who they might be. Are they in a car, are they stand­ing on the cor­ner, in the street, etc.  Some­thing I usu­al­ly do pri­or to open­ing the front door (the storm screen door was in between us).  Despite this…OPSEC blown… Now, I did­n’t say I was Jew­ish sim­ply to get them to stop talk­ing. I am Jew­ish, albeit more spir­i­tu­al today than prac­tic­ing.

As I watch the news, I watch the protests, the stu­dents protest­ing, the protests of the pro-Pales­tin­ian ral­lies, not to men­tion those in our own gov­ern­ment who are sup­port­ing and not con­demn­ing the Pales­tin­ian hor­ror show.  This is where the fear and the thoughts come from.  It could be any­one from a mis­guid­ed high school kid to a sea­soned mil­i­tary-aged for­eign oper­a­tor who came over the bor­der ille­gal­ly.  By this, I mean, an ambush, and attack, etc.  Anti-semi­tism is at an all-time high.  How is this pos­si­ble?  Six mil­lion Jews were exter­mi­nat­ed dur­ing World War II.  My Grand­fa­thers, both who fought in WWII must be rolling over in their graves.  My Dad’s Dad, on the Jew­ish side of my fam­i­ly, was a POW dur­ing the Bat­tle of the Bulge, inter­ro­gat­ed by the Naz­i’s.  As the sto­ry goes, he threw his dog tags away pri­or to being cap­tured, and they inter­ro­gat­ed him about his last name. “Why would some­one with a Ger­man last name be fight­ing against the Ger­mans?”  He’s rolling over in his grave.  I nev­er met him, but have to believe his fight for his coun­try and the Jew­ish peo­ple should not go unrec­og­nized.

Back to the ladies at the front door.  As I thought about it after they left, this could have been any one of the below bul­let point sce­nar­ios:

• This sce­nario could have eas­i­ly been Jihadi’s map­ping out the Jews for future attacks.
• Ambush attacks on Jews on a home-by-home basis.
• Ambush attacks on Jews as they leave their home to sim­ply go to the gro­cery store or drop their chil­dren off at school
• And there is so much more swirling through my head.

OPSEC… I revealed what I feel should be kept qui­et to those who do not know me.  I did it because I have done it so many times in the past. Sigh…

The world we live in today is filled with uncer­tain­ty and fear, espe­cial­ly giv­en the cur­rent glob­al polit­i­cal cli­mate. The Israeli/Palestinian con­flict, along with the involve­ment of major world pow­ers, has cre­at­ed a tense and volatile sit­u­a­tion that feels like it could esca­late into some­thing much larg­er and more dan­ger­ous at any moment. This is not the world I want my daugh­ter to grow up in, and it is not the world I want for any of us. The fear of the unknown, of what could hap­pen, is pal­pa­ble and affects us all in dif­fer­ent ways.

Fur­ther­more, the inci­dent with the Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness­es at my front door was a stark reminder of the need for vig­i­lance and cau­tion in these uncer­tain times. It is easy to let our guard down, to become com­pla­cent, and to for­get the poten­tial dan­gers that exist in our world. How­ev­er, we must always be aware of our sur­round­ings, be cau­tious of those we inter­act with, and be pre­pared for any­thing that might come our way. In a world that feels like it is tee­ter­ing on the brink of chaos, we must do every­thing we can to pro­tect our­selves and our loved ones.

I’ll leave you with this… Where uncer­tain­ty seems to be the only cer­tain­ty, the impor­tance of prep­ping and being a prep­per can­not be over­stat­ed. The glob­al cli­mate is cur­rent­ly fraught with poten­tial dan­gers, with polit­i­cal unrest and the threat of war. And I think the attacks on Israel have remind­ed us that our world can change in an instant, and that being pre­pared can mean the dif­fer­ence between sur­vival, suf­fer­ing, or even death. Prep­ping is not just about stock­pil­ing food and water, but also about being men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly pre­pared for what­ev­er chal­lenges may come our way.

Being a prep­per means tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for your own safe­ty and the safe­ty of your loved ones. It means hav­ing a plan in place for emer­gen­cies, and the knowl­edge and skills to car­ry out that plan. It means being self-reliant and resource­ful, and under­stand­ing that in times of cri­sis, we can­not always rely on oth­ers to help us. In a world that is increas­ing­ly unpre­dictable, being a prep­per is not just a lifestyle choice, but a nec­es­sary step towards ensur­ing our sur­vival and the sur­vival of future gen­er­a­tions. As we face the chal­lenges of the exist­ing world cli­mate, the impor­tance of prep­ping and being a prep­per has nev­er been more clear.