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The debt ceiling is in the news again, and like all things in our mainstream media, there’s a spin depending on where you get your information. This alone can make it all the more confusing as to what exactly is going on. In this video, I will explain the five major things that will happen as this fight intensifies and we edge closer to the government not being able to pay its bills. Spoiler alert: if no resolution is found before the closely approaching deadline arrives on what Janet Yellen advises will be on June 1st of next year, it could propel us headlong, and I don’t say this lightly, into a depression or give a shot in the arm to a BRICS-based currency that could dethrone the dollar as a reserve currency. So before we jump into the specifics of what could happen, let me explain as quickly and unbiasedly as I can a little bit about what the debt ceiling is, what it is not, and why it should matter to you.

WHAT IS THE DEBT CEILING?

Almost every year, the government spends more than it collects in taxes — that’s the deficit. To make up the difference, it borrows money, which accumulates over time. That’s the debt. The debt limit is a legislative limit that caps the total amount of allowable outstanding U.S. federal debt. It was introduced in 1917 when Congress voted to give the Treasury the right to issue bonds for financing America participating in World War I. In other words, the Treasury can borrow money to pay for federal expenditures—but only as much as Congress lets it. Lifting the debt ceiling was once a fairly routine vote. Since 1960, Congress has raised the ceiling 78 times. 

Since 2009, America’s national debt has nearly tripled, with annual federal deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion since 2001. The National Debt is sometimes driven by legislative or world actions which require the government’s response, including tax cuts under Presidents Bush and Trump, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, entitlements like Medicare Part D, and spending in response to the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The debt ceiling is the budgeted limit of what the government can spend for every program, contract, person employed, building, road, or whatever. As we approach that limit, the Treasury takes measures to make sure we stay within that limit. With such deep divisions in government now, instead of simple passage, the arguments begin. The finger-pointing starts when each political party tries to paint the other as wanting to tax, spend, or cut programs. As the Treasury does its calculations, the actual point at which we cross the debt ceiling and can no longer authorize payments tends to move up. As we get closer to the exact dates, several things happen, each of which will affect you negatively.

On January 19, 2023, the United States hit its debt ceiling, beginning an ongoing debt-ceiling crisis. In response, Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, began enacting various accounting maneuvers known as “extraordinary measures.” On May 1, 2024, Janet Yellen warned that the United States may run out of measures to pay its debt obligations by June 1, 2024. There have been debt-ceiling crises in 2011 & 2013, so we have a glimmer of what will occur with this 2024 crisis. Unfortunately, this current debt-ceiling crisis may be far worse than in previous years. This year, we find ourselves supplying a war overseas, still not recovered from a global economic downturn, suffering through unprecedented inflation, deep in a series of significant bank failures, and with a looming commercial real estate bubble. These influences and others will be fuel on the fire. Here’s what happens in this debt-ceiling limit debate and how bad it could get if we ever reach the point of default.

1. TEMPORARY EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES

The first extraordinary measure the Treasury takes is to meet its spending obligations from the cash reserves on hand. As of January 17, 2023, the Treasury had a cash balance of $322 billion. That may seem like a lot, but your government spends a lot. Fish and Wildlife and Parks, Department of Homeland Security, Medicare Premiums, Social Security, Department of Agriculture, Federal Crop Insurance, Department of Justice, Railroad Workers Retirement, Federal Employee Retirement, Department of Veteran Affairs, the Postal Service, Unemployment Insurance, Defense Vendor Payments, Child Nutrition Program, Individual & Business tax refunds, barely scratch the surface of monthly expenditures. Hundreds of programs, contracts, and services are paid for each month, so simply surviving on reserves of cash on hand is like paying your bills with savings when you might lose your job in two months.

Still, these programs make up the first round of temporary extraordinary measures. The Treasury also halts the daily investments in the Exchange Stabilization Fund. Operated by the Treasury, the ESF stabilizes exchange rates by buying and selling foreign currencies. The suspension of daily reinvesting in this fund means the US has less influence on global exchange rates and the strength of the US dollar–the world’s reserve currency. Finally, the Treasury can suspend the sale of savings bonds and stop issuing State and Local Government Series Treasury securities. Once a debt ceiling impasse is resolved, these funds will be made whole so that beneficiaries are unaffected. 

2. PROGRESS IS PUT ON HOLD

Is your city repairing potholes or building a new traffic corridor? The chances are that it is being paid through Federal grants or with Federal money, so those projects get put on hold. Does your employer have a government contract or is trying to obtain one? Well, those are put on hold as well. New spending is suspended. Were you planning on retiring someday, but you work for the government, post office, or railways? No new money is going into that until the debt ceiling is lifted. Your state is going to have to wait on that Federal funding that may pay your salary in some small part. Nutrition programs and other social-safety programs get put on hold. Eventually, parks and other services close, and workers are furloughed several days per week or laid off.

In some ways, the government is forced to downsize and scale back operations. At this point, you start to realize all the little and big things the government provides you with. The economy, already struggling, suffers the most. The Treasury Department’s approach would be to postpone payments for all other liabilities until it accumulated sufficient funds to fulfill the whole day’s obligations. To clarify, it would postpone payments to agencies, contractors, Social Security beneficiaries, and Medicare providers rather than trying to selectively choose which payments to make on a specific day. If you work with any agency or under any contract with the federal government, expect cutbacks. If you remember the last significant debt-ceiling crisis, there were a lot of furloughed workers, national parks closed, and libraries adjusted their hours. Basically, everything slowed down, and many worried about their paychecks. Progress was put on hold.

3. THE DOLLAR FALLS

The most detrimental related consequences are not as readily apparent as a closed sign at the post office or programs put on hold. The debt-ceiling debate is a self-inflicted wound on the US economy. One of the major consequences of this debt-ceiling debate and the temporary extraordinary measures is reduced household wealth and business confidence. These are the macroeconomic effects of debt-ceiling brinkmanship. Any potential default on US debt has the potential to be catastrophic: credit markets could freeze, the value of the dollar could plummet, and U.S. interest rates could skyrocket, potentially resulting in a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse. Your employer isn’t likely to take on that new contract or employee and expand the business in such a climate. Neither are you likely to want to buy a house or make a similar big purchase with the US economy about to collapse.

Other countries see this continued in-fighting and failure to come to terms with our debt and shy away from buying US debt. They start to look for other currencies to transact in, shedding their dollars held in reserve for more translatable and reliable currencies. Maybe that’s the Chinese Yuan, Russian Rouble, the Euro, British Pound, or some new BRICS currency. Over half of the foreign currency reserves globally are kept in U.S. dollars. Hence, an abrupt decrease in the currency’s value can impact the treasury market as the worth of these reserves goes down. 

If a default occurs, the U.S. economy may face a recession more severe than the Great Depression. The international financial system heavily relies on the U.S. dollar and Treasury securities. If the impasse on the debt limit leads to a default on Treasury securities, it could be catastrophic, similar to or worse than the 2008 financial crisis. Even before we reach that point, other things can happen–like the slashing of America’s credit rating. That happened in 2011 when America’s credit rating was downgraded to AA+ from triple-A+ by Standards and Poor’s. As a result, American borrowing costs went up by $1.3 billion that year. When this slashing of America’s credit rating occurs, interest rates skyrocket, and people worldwide look for more stable investments outside America.

4. MARKET INSTABILITY

Even if you don’t have your own stock portfolio, your retirement account and financial institution do. As the debt-ceiling debate continues and edges closer to the deadline that the Treasury cannot cross, the financial markets steel themselves up and shift their strategies to highly-conservative and stable investments. Not all of them are successful, as we just witnessed with the disparities in the balance sheets of Silicone Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank, which collapsed this year. Venture capitalists are less likely to gamble in the future, so they withhold their funds. Goldman Sachs economists have estimated that a debt ceiling breach would immediately halt about one-tenth of U.S. economic activity. 

Credit requirements tighten as interest rates increase, so business, home, car, and similar loans become too hard to obtain. Social Security beneficiaries, some 69.1 million people, would suddenly have difficulty paying rent and utilities. That means 11 million landlords aren’t receiving an income, nor are utility companies receiving the revenue they require to operate efficiently and maintain profits. Even grocers are selling fewer products as prices increase and federal food assistance programs get put on hold. Just these two groups of social security recipients and landlords represent nearly a quarter of the US population that would immediately feel the financial impact of a potential US debt default.

All businesses stop expanding and put projects on hold, and the real estate market takes a significant downward turn. Market conditions would likely worsen with each passing day, and the collective economy would slow to a crawl. Since we are already in a deepening recession where we aren’t exactly sure where the bottom is, this could be the push that propels us over the cliff into another Great Depression. Significant instability in any one market can dramatically impact other markets from wall street to main street, from your elderly neighbor next door to your kid’s school lunch program.

5. UNEMPLOYMENT SURGE

Many estimates and studies have been conducted since 2013 to play out several different scenarios, from getting close to that debt-ceiling date to an impasse lasting more than two months where the Treasury only makes payments on interest. All the scenarios result in a loss of 1 to 5 million jobs across America. Many scenarios show only the slow recovery of those jobs over several months or even years. These unemployed people aren’t just federal workers. The ranks of the unemployed will come from all sectors and walks of life.

Businesses will protect their bottom lines by laying off some workers and tasking the remaining workers with extra work. Pay raises, and cost of living increases are put on hold. People spend less on services, entertainment, and manufactured goods. Construction slows. Restaurants lay off workers or close. Factories slow their production lines. Even the military will look to downsize operations and cut spending. A debt default would risk benefits for 2.4 million military members, retirees, and 400,000 survivors of fallen service members. Also, service members’ pay and benefits can be put on hold. In all sectors of the workforce, the rates of unemployment surge.

WHERE WE ARE AT NOW

In February, President Biden and Speaker McCarthy met for an hour in the Oval Office to discuss how to raise the debt ceiling. They couldn’t reach an agreement but agreed to continue discussions. In mid-April, the Limit, Save, Grow Act was presented by Speaker McCarthy, a 320-page House bill that proposed raising the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion, which would have sufficed until at least March 31, 2024. This act narrowly passed the House but is deemed dead on arrival when it gets to the Senate. 

There are only a few things that can occur here. First, the rancor could continue a little while until the public level of disgust becomes so great that the government is forced to let it go and raise the ceiling. Or, the debate could reach an impasse, and things begin to shut down, even as the rhetoric and blame game ramps up. Or, Congress could abolish the debt ceiling, but that’s so unlikely I won’t give it time here. None of these outcomes are suitable for the economy or regular consumers. The debt-ceiling debate is a shot in the arm for BRICS alternate currencies and diminishes the dollar’s strength globally. Rather than risking the full faith and credit of the United States, lawmakers should focus on the underlying reason we keep hitting the debt ceiling in the first place: the structural imbalance between spending and revenues. With the government functioning as it does right now, it isn’t likely that we will get the focus on the underlying reasons.

One thing is for sure. The margins are thin in this debt-ceiling debate. The Limit, Save, Grow Act may make it through Congress with Feinstein still out, but President Biden pledges to veto it. House Democrats are seeking a petition process allowing members to bring a bill directly to the floor without the cooperation of leadership. The critical date when the government can’t make its payments could arrive no earlier than the third quarter of 2023, which would begin in July. There’s considerable damage that will be done to the economy long before that deadline arrives.

As we collectively get closer to that critical date and the debate and blame game continues without any substantial change in how things are done, expect the accounting maneuvers of these extraordinary measures to become more sweeping and severe. Expect the US dollar and confidence in the US economy to decline, as will America’s global influence. Expect that progress will be put on hold, the recession will deepen, inflation will move to double-digits, and millions will suffer from employment insecurity. We are still in the early days of this, but the crisis is swiftly going to come to a head.

You can also access the latest news at this address: www.whatfinger.com

Tariff fears took their toll on stocks Friday with the Dow falling 444 points by end of day after President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs against any nation that imposes retaliation tariffs against the US for the tariffs Trump has just announced. In other words, this year’s tariff wars are already looping into a second cycle even though we’re less than a month into the Donald’s second term. This week’s tariff loop comes on top of the cycles of tariffs that were initiated in Trump’s first term, which continued under Biden. Friday’s market losses wiped out the entire gains from earlier in the week.

Prior to Trump’s latest tariff volley, reports on US jobs and consumer sentiment over inflation showed significant troubles starting to form. While one article in the barely conscious, mainstream media claimed the job deterioration was not enough to matter for some time, given that unemployment actually dropped from 4.1% to 4.0%, even as new jobs declined, I beg to differ strongly. As usual, I don’t think some of these financial writers could figure out how to open a soup can with a can opener if they were starving.

Even with the drop in new jobs and the simultaneous and seemingly contradictory decline in the unemployment rate, wages rose. The difference in direction between new jobs and unemployment can be attributed to the simple fact that the unemployment rate is calculated over a longer time frame, so does not move as quickly as weekly jobs reports. What that means is that the unemployment drop is the outlier because the monthly drops in new jobs will quickly stack up to turn that back around. The mainstream press should have been able to figure that out.

CNBC reported,

Nonfarm payrolls climbed by a seasonally adjusted 143,000 for the month, down from an upwardly revised 307,000 in December and below the 169,000 forecast from Dow Jones.

That was a fairly good-sized miss, but more importantly, it cleared away any notion that the 307k reported for December was a meaningful improvement in the labor market. There was not only no follow-through in that direction, but a very stark reversal.

Even more importantly, because it proves my point, something happened that I said about a week ago you could certainly expect. All the jobs reported by the Biden administration during an election year, suddenly got revised down … by well over half a million! Proving the whole thing was the electioneered construct that I said it was all year long.

That came as no surprise once Biden was out of the picture—as I told you to expect to see it—but I’m sure you had already figured that out for yourself, as well, and didn’t need my help to see it. Consider what I offered just reinforcement to what you had likely already figured out. The numbers were always cooked to try to make the Biden Admin. look good for the campaign trail.

(If you want granular detail on the employment report, you can find it HERE. My goal with this Deeper Dive it to focus on the broad sweep and what it means for my 2025 economic precisions.)

Rhapsody in the blues

Then we have this odyssey continuing to play through:

Respondents to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index also said they expect inflation to rise to 4.3% by year’s end, more than double the Fed’s target.

The cries over inflation are far from over. Consumers are starting to expect the pinch will get worse again.

The changes in jobs by themselves may appear not to be all that consequential, given that the unemployment rate has actually gone down after putting in the start of what looked last year like it was about to be a parabolic rise, but that may have been due to December’s 307k anomaly. Now we see the bigger picture is consequential for jobs, and we see once again that the inflation fight is far from over.

This is the economic background reality for the absolutely massive changes now happening in the world of tariffs, coupled with the colossal government shutdowns being carried out by DOGE with abandon and with nearly no government input. Elon Musk is acting like he is the supreme dictator over all things governmental with Trump’s imprimatur over all that his henchman is doing.

Where I am going with what may have just appeared to be a rant is actually to a logical projection: The Trump cuts to government were not yet in those sinking job numbers and certainly were not at all in the lowering unemployment rate because applications take longer than a week to get accepted by any state unemployment office and added to the unemployment roll. The cuts have been sweeping, so the coming unemployment rise will be, too.

Unemployment can be expected to put in a big upturn quickly as all those government workers join the roll call, but something equally important to realize is that that the rise in unemployment will be much higher than just the cuts in government employees. As big swaths of government payments are shut down at the Treasury by Musk & Men and even entire government agencies running contracts are shut down, contractors are already orchestrating their own shutdowns.

Private-sector employers and nonprofits are starting to lay off workers as a result of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts and funding freezes, unleashing a wave of job losses that economists say could pick up steam in the coming weeks, threatening the broader labor market.

(MSN)

Not a single job lost is connected to this week’s net new jobs or unemployment numbers; so expect a huge change in the next few weeks. Because so much mystery surrounds DOGE and how it is making its decisions, and each decision hits as an unannounced surprise (and maybe it has to in order to keep agencies from shredding all their misdoings), there is no way to know the scale or impact of what has already happened, much less what is coming. One can hope Elon, being a smart man, figured all of this out months in advance, but it looks more like Musk and his madcap crew unvetted surgeons are performing limb-amputation surgery using bombs, instead of scalpels and bone saws.

Here is an example to show how nobody knows what is coming and how the effects might be surprisingly detrimental to many people who had no idea anything like this was coming so no time at all to prepare:

So far, the fallout includes rescinded contracting jobs in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Austin; layoffs at an independent-living facility in West Virginia that relies on federal funding to pay staffers; and furloughs at after-school programs in Maine and community health centers in Virginia facing federal funding delays.

“Having funding yanked so quickly means government contracts are at risk, health research is on hold, and millions of employees are getting conflicting messages about their jobs,” said Harry Holzer, a professor at Georgetown University and former Labor Department chief economist. “We don’t know where this is going to end up, but we can’t dismiss its effects on the economy.”

If Musk and his Mighty “Big Balls” Men (as one of his teen-age geeks calls himself) are being smarter than things look, maybe the economic damage will be moderated; but their acts look like a wrecking ball swinging through the entire US economy. When contractors don’t get paid because payment systems get shut down systemically, not by line item, then they start laying off workers because they are concerned they won’t be able to make payroll.

When entire agencies go down, perhaps all the contracts they controlled go down with them. Will that be for a month or two until DOGE can sort out what it wants to keep going from what it really meant to shut down, or will it take months to sort it out, or will they turn any of it back on? No one outside of DOGE knows. I’m not sure even DOGE knows at this point.

So, we’re not just talking the loss of tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of government workers, all going on unemployment, but also the loss of hundreds of thousands of employees who work for government contractors. Then you have mass deportations, which will open up jobs for some of those displaced workers, but probably not in regions where they live or not at anywhere near the pay they have built their household budgets around.

On top of that, when you deport hundreds of thousands of cheap laborers, you have no idea what entire production lines (or crop harvests) might have to be shut down due to lack of sufficient labor because you cannot possibly find enough replacement employees or increase salaries and, hence, prices enough to get all the replacement employees you need in time to avoid shutdowns. Beyond that point, no one can have any idea how shutdowns in the first tier of production lines will impact other producers who are dependent on essential parts from the lines that just went down, causing those secondary producers to shut down. (Anyone remember supply-chain problems?) Even the producers have no idea what is coming. Since it’s all happening by surprise daily, they don’t know who will get hit with the deportations first.

The White House has warned that additional public-sector layoffs are “likely” if enough of the 2.3 million-person federal workforce doesn’t leave voluntarily. As of Wednesday evening, some 40,000 federal workers had agreed to resign, though a federal judge on Thursday paused the deadline for the buyout program. A hearing on the matter is set for Monday.

Trump has said he is looking to get, at least, 220,000 government-job terminations. Beyond that number, there is just no way to know if the repercussions from these massive shutdowns all over the place will spread though the private sector to become only moderately greater than the original number of government employees who get terminated or will become massively greater than the number or government employees terminated because you cannot calculate, with so many variables, what the collateral damage to supply lines and service people will be from all the government cuts that happened in just one week. Yet, it would be a ludicrous flight of fancy to believe the wholesale government cuts will not play through the private sector in some equally significant ways. And there are clearly more government cuts to come.

Again, as an example:

In the meantime, government contractors are scrapping projects and announcing layoffs. Chemonics International, an international development firm based in D.C., has furloughed more than 600 U.S. workers and cut hours for an additional 300 employees as a result of the government’s “stop-work order” for USAID-funded projects. A spokeswoman for the company said it is still waiting for millions of dollars in funding from invoices filed as far back as November. Another firm, DAI Global in Bethesda, Maryland, has furloughed nearly 400 of its workers, accounting for roughly 70 percent of its American workforce.

Multiply that a thousand times over to encompass all the business contracts with all agencies that are being stopped or seriously rolled back, and it can suddenly swell up to be an enormous number of layoffs. BUT WE DON’T KNOW.

The fact is that we have a society that has built up enormously around government contracts. It might be wise to cut out the belly fat with a lot of forethought like a skilled, carefully planned abdominal surgery and not with an atom bomb. I don’t know if you can do it that thoughtfully and still be able to accomplish anything, government being as entrenched and corrupt as it is. Surprise attack may be the only way, but just KNOW that the present approach will have far-reaching negative impacts that you have to expect, and they are going to be coming from directions you don’t expect.

For example:

Sarah Nichols was furloughed from her job at an economic development consultancy last week, after its contracts with USAID were put on hold. The 29-year-old filed for unemployment on Tuesday and is making plans to move back in with her parents after her lease expires this month. But even that feels rocky: Both of her parents work for the federal government and are worried about losing their jobs, too.

Does her situation represent mere hundreds of people, or is it this:

“My LinkedIn feed is just thousands of people in the industry who have been laid off or furloughed.”

We don’t know. They don’t know! That is, the people being fired have no idea where to turn that will be crash-safe. Just like this woman’s parents, they don’ know what is coming down next! New pink slips will be arriving en mass next week. So, I’d warn, “Get ready for this to become a lot worse than even the Donald knows because there is a domino effect here that I doubt anyone has done the math on.”

If Donald and his prophets were right in a recent article I wrote where Don and the prophets of his good fortune said God saved Trump’s life because God has chosen him, I’m still not so sure God hasn’t chosen him to become the greatest wrecking ball America has ever seen, and I have no idea if that is to make America great again or for its ultimate judgment. After all, equally many have been the self-proclaimed prophets who claimed America’s judgement was nye.

That works both ways. I’m equally not sure, once the destruction is all over, it won’t be mostly liberal institutions that went down that were sucking the life out of America to give its life energy to every other “more deserving nation” than us, and then we’ll rebuild from the rubble and have that recouped energy to work with. There are no clear reconstruction plans presented so far.

“I’m applying for jobs, but if I want to do something in education or public health that’s federally funded, it’s like, ‘Am I going to get this job and then just laid off again?’”

Probably. You don’t know. Right now it all looks like chaos. While I feel that many of the things that are falling deserved to fall (like USAID), I have no idea how many good things went down with those institutions that we don’t want destroyed, and I have no idea how many contractors will fall with them and how many subcontractors will fall alongside the contractors and how many service companies that provide lunches, uniforms, whatever to those hundreds of thousand employees might also shut down along with the companies that serve them. There is simply no way of knowing where the last domino falls in this kind of broad destruction.

I’m not sure Elon knows either. In fact, I doubt he does. When he hit Twitter like a wrecking ball, it never did recover (so far) to its former financial greatness. He did manage to turn it into a huge megaphone for certain voices. While it deserved to be bashed due to all its censorship, I don’t believe Elon had any idea the backlash he’d face from advertisers. He hadn’t thought that through. It still remains to be seen if X survives, but I THINK it will. I THINK America will, too, but I’m far from certain.

In a 2022 interview, then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg discussed how we was going to spend $1.2 trillion of taxpayer money from the recently passed infrastructure bill.

“The main thing I’m thinking about,” he said, “is how do we make sure we take all this money— you know it’s $1.2 trillion— and actually deliver $1.2 trillion dollars worth of value. . .”

That whole way of thinking is just astonishing.

If you invest $1 million in a business, you’re obviously going to expect that the CEO will deliver a lot more than $1 million in value from that investment. In fact a good executive will be able to turn a $1 million investment into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in value.

But a couple years ago, when he was still Transportation Secretary, Pete encapsulated the government’s approach to investing. They’re not looking to get a 100x, 10x, or even 2x return.

To them, it’s quite an accomplishment to simply get X, i.e. to spend $1 trillion dollars efficiently enough to simply see $1 trillion of value.

If Pete had been a private sector investment manager, he would have been fired that very day.

I bring this up because the Commerce Department released fourth quarter GDP numbers yesterday, and their report showed that the US economy grew in “real terms” by 2.8% in 2024.

2.8% “real” GDP growth essentially means that the US economy produced 2.8% more goods and services in 2024 than it did in 2023. It strips out any impact of inflation.

But remember— America’s population grows by about 1% per year. And those are just the people in the country legally. If you include the folks who waltz across the southern border illegally, then the total population growth rate is easily 2% or more.

Population growth matters here because a higher population drives more investment, more consumption, and more production of goods and services. In other words, higher population equals higher economic growth.

So, relative to population growth, a mere 2.8% increase in GDP is actually pretty pathetic, especially for the world’s most advanced, innovative, diversified economy.

“Experts” have managed to convince people that 3% real growth is some kind of huge success story. In actuality, it’s a joke.

With such extraordinary benefits at their disposal— America’s abundant energy resources, its talent pool, its world-leading technology, its deep capital markets— the US should easily grow by 5% each year.

That the US economy couldn’t even reach 3% growth is proof of how badly the government screws up the economy and restrains its potential.

On that note, the Commerce Department further reported that the size of the US economy is now $29.7 trillion— an increase of $1.4 trillion in 2024. The national debt, however, increased by $2.2 trillion in 2024.

So let’s go back to Pete Buttigieg— who couldn’t manage to invest $1 trillion while delivering at least $1 trillion in value.

By increasing the debt, the federal government essentially “invested” an extra $2.2 trillion in the US economy last year.

At a minimum, $2.2 trillion in extra government spending should have at least generated $2.2 trillion in additional economic activity. But instead the economy only grew by $1.4 trillion.

In other words, the government lost $800 billion of its $2.2 trillion investment— a loss of 36%.

Year in and year out these bureaucrats prove that they are terrible investment managers; if you give them a dollar, they’ll waste 36 cents of it. And the more you give them, the more they’ll waste.

The irony is that these are supposed to be easy, safe, ‘no-brainer’ investments… like infrastructure. It’s not like the government is investing in start-ups or some high risk moonshot venture.

They’re literally supposed to be spending tax dollars into the US economy… and they can’t even get that right.

We’ve talked about the consequences many, many times: if this trend continues, government debt will soon spiral out of control, prompting a nasty, long-term bout of inflation. Plus the dollar will likely lose its status as the global reserve currency, compounding the problem even more.

That outcome is still not a forgone conclusion. But it’s obvious that the key here is to cut spending. Dramatically. Again, the more money the government has to spend, the more they flush down the Black Hole of Waste.

It seems like the new administration is sincere about making deep spending cuts. And I truly hope they pull it off.

But in case they are not successful… it still makes so much sense to have a Plan B. And a big part of that is thinking about the potential challenges of inflation, and the loss of the dollar’s reserve status.

In our view, that means giving serious consideration to real assets.

And as we’ve talked about before, some of those real assets are as cheap as they’ve ever been right now. More on this next week.

You can also access the latest news at this address: www.whatfinger.com

Preparing for an economic collapse can be challenging, but it is essential in today’s uncertain world. By having a plan, diversifying your investments, stockpiling essential supplies, learning new skills, and paying off debt, you can increase your chances of surviving and thriving during a financial crisis.

It sounds like something out of a Cold War era movie. Boxes of medical supplies stacked high in government warehouses to help citizens in the event of a public health emergency.

However, this huge stockpile is very real. It is called the Strategic National Stockpile, and “Once Federal and local authorities agree that the SNS is needed, medicines will be delivered to any state in the U.S. in time for them to be effective. Each state has plans to receive and distribute SNS medicine and medical supplies to local communities as quickly as possible.”

For security reasons, the location and the number of warehouses that comprise the SNS are classified information – as is much of what is in them. “If everybody knows exactly what we have, then you know exactly what you can do to us that we can’t fix,” Greg Burel, director of the program told National Public Radio in a recent interview. “And we just don’t want that to happen.”

The SNS started in 1999 with an approximate $50 million budget. Since then, it has built an inventory in multiple warehouses that is valued at just over $7 billion. “If you envision, say, a Super Walmart and stick two of those side by side and take out all the drop ceiling, that’s about the same kind of space that we would occupy in one of these storage locations,” Burel said.

The SNS extensive inventory includes massive amounts of small pox vaccines, antivirals in case of deadly flu pandemic, medicines to treat radiation burns and sickness, chemical agent antidotes, wound care supplies, antibiotics and IV fluids.

NPR science writer Nell Greenfieldboyce recently visited an SNS. She was told she was the first reporter ever to visit the secret warehouses, and she had to sign a confidentiality agreement not to describe the location or the exterior of the facility.

A locked section of the warehouse stocks painkillers than can be addictive. A giant freezer is filled with medicines that need to be kept frozen. Greenfieldboyce described a humming sound that comes from the rows of ventilators that are charged once a month and sent out for maintenance once a year.

With an annual budget of more than half a billion dollars, the SNS is charged with deciding what to purchase for the stockpile. In order to do so, officials must determine which threats are realistic and which are not.

“That’s where we have a huge, complex bureaucracy trying to sort through that,” Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told Greenfieldboyce.

The government recently hired a firm called Gryphon Scientific to analyze how well the stockpile could respond to a range of health disaster scenarios.

Although he said he could not be specific on results of the study, Gryphon Scientific’s Rocco Casagrande told the NPR reporter, “One thing we can say is that across the variety of threats that we examined, the Strategic National Stockpile has the adequate amount of materials in it and by and large the right type of thing.”

However, he pointed out that the studies were based upon a single type of attack at a time or a single type of weapon.

The brief shelf life of some of the newer medicines is a problem for the SNS. “These are often very powerful, very exciting and useful new medicines, but they are also very expensive and they expire after a couple years,” explained Dr. Tara O’Toole, a former Homeland Security official who is now at In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit that helps bring technological innovation to the U. S. intelligence community.

Another problem is the time it would take to get the medicines from the warehouses to the people who need them in the event of real emergency. “It is not going to be easy or simple to put medicines in the hand of everybody who wants it,” O’Toole told NPR.

The warehouse Greenfieldboyce visited contains 130 shipping containers, but who will be on the receiving end of these shipping containers during an actual emergency?

“While they do have plans for emergencies, and lists of volunteers, they’re volunteers,” said Paul Petersen, director of emergency preparedness for Tennessee. “And they’re not guaranteed to show up in the time of need.”

Local public health officials have had severe budget cuts and are underfunded, Petersen told NPR. “Over and over, I heard worries about this part of the stockpile system.”

O’Toole said, “We have drastically decreased the level of state public health resources in the last decade. We’ve lost 50,000 state and local health officials. That’s a huge hit.” She commented that emergency drills would be helpful, adding, “The notion that this is all going to be top down, that the feds are in charge and the feds will deliver, is wrong.”

Meanwhile, the secret warehouses continue to stockpile supplies. “We have the capability, if something bad happens, that we can intervene in a positive way, but then we don’t ever want to have to do that. So it’s kind of a strange place,” Burel told NPR.

“But we would be foolish not to prepare for those events that we could predict might happen.”

You can also access the latest news at this address: www.whatfinger.com

First take a look at one of the most shocking videos in the world! This video actually shows us what the secret of the Trump family is related to their expressive health!!! –FULL VIDEO HERE

Aside from economic collapse scenarios, many countries are in the process of eliminating physical cash and coins. Instead, everyone has an account that holds their money. You cannot purchase goods or services without access to government-based cryptocurrency. Even if the currency itself is still backed by faith in the government, you have to use this electronic system.

The result is multiple problems that could leave you in a situation where you have the money in the bank to pay your bills and purchase goods and services, yet you cannot do so.

First take a look at one of the most shocking videos in the world!

Secret FEMA Report Warns: 4-10 Years WITHOUT ELECTRICITY. Video Below!

These threats include:

Attacks Sponsored by Foreign Governments

These hacks usually affect the bank or primary clearinghouse rather than a specific person’s account. You may be unable to purchase goods or services for hours or days. While this is inconvenient, it isn’t as bad as a full collapse, where the banks close for good.

There’s only so much you can do about this kind of hack other than make sure you can go two weeks without buying anything at any given time. It is also essential to keep a paper-based address book with phone numbers and account information so that you can contact utility companies or others who may be expecting payments from you while the bank or clearinghouse is down.

Let’s say you can connect to Wi-Fi independently of the SIM Card. Your phone app may not work with Wi-Fi. This is why I recommend having an app on your phone that doesn’t use the SIM card to dial out on Wi-Fi so that you can make the necessary calls. 

Attacks Sponsored by Non-government Groups

If the hacker was able to steal money from your accounts, it could take weeks to years before you recover the money. In the short term, you will have to shut down credit cards and so on, then wait for new ones to come in the mail. You may also have to manage restoring devices and regaining access to your accounts.

Here again, make sure you can go at least 2 weeks without buying anything so that you can manage your basic necessities.

Merchant Category Codes and Social Credit Scores

Merchant Category Codes are unique identifiers that put different products into separate categories. For example, food has one set of numeric identifiers, while clothing has other identifiers.

Even without looking at your receipt, the bank and transaction clearinghouse may have some ideas about what you bought. The transaction cost can then give some estimates about quantity and item type. One day, data from all banks and clearinghouses may pool into a central government computer.

Social credit scores work like your financial-based credit scores. Consider how your financial credit score enables businesses to “reward” you with credit or better interest rates if you pay your bills on time and have an optimal debt-to-income ratio. Your social credit score looks at how you act in society. For example, China has a system that rewards things like donating blood.

This same system “punishes” people who drive drunk or engage in other activities that aren’t “beneficial to society.” People with good social credit scores may get tax breaks, an increased chance of getting a promotion, or other benefits. 

When vaccines became available for COVID-19, governments worldwide were concerned because people hesitated to embrace mRNA vaccines. This led to people not complying with recommendations to get vaccinated. Social credit scores can be paired with cashless systems that will block purchasing from specific merchant category codes. It could become possible to deny people the ability to buy food, gas, and other essentials if they aren’t vaccinated.

When you can’t use cash, pressure campaigns like this will be almost 100% effective because you will have to comply or do without the necessities of life.

The only way to outlast a pressure campaign like this is to have a stockpile of food and other essentials that will last until the pressure tactics are stopped.

Moving Away From Hard Cash to Fiat Cryptocurrency

At first, you might think merchant credit codes will only come into play when the government seeks to limit, slow down, or prevent purchasing certain goods and services. The problem is that modern networks aren’t safe from hackers, including those who seek to disrupt trade for ethical reasons.

For example, the Internet Archive was recently targeted by a hacktivist group, Blackmeta. They claim they attacked this non-profit library site because it is based in the USA and, therefore, is aligned with Israeli activities. Ironically, the Internet Archive has been locked in multiple court battles with publishers that may be far more aligned with Israel. These publishers, in turn, are trying to shut down the Internet Archive because when people don’t buy from the publisher, it cuts into their profits.

Now imagine this kind of situation happening with the information stolen from the Heritage Foundation, and then used to target more granular data in banks and merchant clearinghouse systems. You could very easily see transactions declined for what appears to be “government” or other legislative curbs, when in fact, it’s some group attacking you because of a “social credit score” known only to them.

If you want to buy something right now, you can just put your credit card away and use cash. This won’t be possible once the only fiat currency available is electronic in nature. No matter how much you want to look at the potential for excess government imposition, the fact remains any group with sufficient skills and interest can cause serious problems.

AI-Based Curbing Impositions

AI can keep track of billions of records and patterns of activity. This includes determining if what you buy is “normal” for your location as well as for you as a consumer within a particular category. 

Right now, that’s likely beyond the implementation of the cashless centralized government cryptocurrency systems.

At some point, though, someone on something like the “no-fly list,” etc., could wind up unable to buy certain items or in certain quantities and not realize there is a curb based on a government-based list. Considering how many lists there are, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to resolve the problem and purchase goods in a timely manner.

This includes lists that may be compiled based on estimated political slant. Consider that even now, traffic cameras can match license plates with bumper stickers and yard political signs to determine your likely preferences.

When you factor in non-governmental groups, the situation gets even worse. Technologically speaking, it’s within the scope of foreign agents and hacktivists to bring together limits on how you spend your money and non-financial activities.

As we are seeing in various hacks, there is certainly a “social credit score” being applied to businesses that can be scaled to target individuals who may want to purchase extra supplies to manage an emergency.

Use Multiple Banks to Store Your Money

Right now you can protect your money while it is still in your control. First, it is very important to keep your money in different banks. Even if one goes down, the others may still be functioning.

This applies to credit and debit cards. If you have only Visa cards, ensure you have at least one Mastercard. You can do this with prepaid cards as well as more permanent accounts.

This method won’t work if every transaction must go through a centralized clearinghouse that includes every possible bank or other institution. At this point, it’s impossible to say whether that kind of system exists and how various groups would use or misuse it.

Second, if you routinely buy from certain stores, you can purchase gift cards and have the money ready and waiting in your account. If you cannot access your bank account, you can still buy from that store. This won’t necessarily prevent you from running into rationing or other limits that may be imposed by the government through the store or at the store level. 

Bartering: An Alternative to Using Fiat and Non-Government Currency

Preparing for small—and large-scale disasters is essential for your well-being and that of your family. You can still use bartering, provided you have a clear sense of the value of what you will offer and whether or not the other party needs what you have.

Make consistent contacts with small or local farmers and others who may be willing to take something in exchange for food. The trade could be anything from assisting with mechanical repairs to making garments. Everything will depend on the relationship you develop and the situation.

You can make barter arrangements for just about anything from tangible goods to training in various skills. Look for small businesses and local groups, as they may be more open to these kinds of arrangements. Spending a few dollars extra and supporting these people now may be very useful later on.

This is also a good time to form relationships with established flea markets and others with different kinds of products. These people may be very helpful when you find a way to barter for tools or other goods that you can no longer purchase using money. Here again, you have to know what their needs are and how you can meet them.

As hacks on banks, hospitals, water purification plants, and the government itself become more common, it should be obvious that a cashless society can pose significant risks if you aren’t prepared. Taking a few simple measures now may help you get through these situations as painlessly as possible.

FOLLOW BELOW THIS NEWS CAREFULLY!!! IT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

Major sites such as: BBC, FOX5, CNN, CNBC, NBC NEWS and many more are warning of an imminent collapse in the coming years!!!

Final Collapse Review – Elon Musk TERRIFIES Church Leaders (proof inside)

Source- http://www.survivopedia.com

This article is the story of a friend of mine.

Is civil asset forfeiture being abused by law enforcement in the United States?

I had what I thought was a good friend. We’d been friends for several years. We shared hangar, and spent hours a day chatting.

He is an airline pilot, and — or so I thought — ran a flight school. (Turned out flight school is entirely owned an operated in his wife’s name, but that’s a whole other story).

He would occasionally fly charter jobs and such, and once went on one such trip using a customer of mine’s airplane, a twin-engined 8-seat airplane.

Roughly a week later I saw him… he drove across the ramp to the hangar and called me. “Chris, get in, I gotta talk to you.”

I got into the passenger seat, and he hands me an empty evidence bag. WTF.

Begins telling me his story when his wife walks up, and he stashes the bag under the seat. After they make their smalltalk, we drive off, and the bag comes back out.

I right away away assume incorrectly and say to him “Drugs! Are you crazy!” And he replies, “No, it was full of money.” He then proceeded to tell me how he’d flown to Mexico, and brought in an undocumented group, and was caught when he landed – Texas or Arizona, I don’t recall. Told me he spent 12 hours in handcuffs in a cell with not-so-nice people, fearing for his life, and frequent attempted interrogations, to which he apparently only replied “lawyer”.

He was utterly relieved that they let him go, and (I believe) gave the money back to him.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered his wife had bought the entire hangar complex, and this gem of a witch evicted me. Without notice. Changed my door locks.

I was in the middle of performing a detailed inspection of the aircraft used.

I struck a deal with the only other semi-viable place on the airport to finish the inspection — a T-hangar where I could wheel half the airplane in, and work half in the sun and half in the shade.

After about two weeks, the Feds roll in. ICE. CBP. FAA.

And seize the aircraft.

As it’s still quite disassembled, I’m told to get it into flying condition, and that the Federal Government would pay me to do so.

I complied. And submitted my request for payment.

And never got a dime, nor an answer.

The owner of the airplane spent a small fortune on attorneys, and eventually got the airplane back — with a blown engine. Engine overhaul would cost him maybe another $50,000.

I did have one small moment of joy. After several weeks of the government shutdown, I texted the DEA agent, and asked him: “So, how does it feel to work for the government and not get paid?”

He called back. And didn’t think it was funny.

He eventually did get paid. I still lost my life savings.

BREAKING NEWS: All Americans Will Lose Their Home, Income And Power By March 17, 2025

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Additional- Can the government seize your house, car and cash, even if you’ve done nothing wrong? Unfortunately, the shocking answer is yes! Steve Forbes on civil asset forfeitures, and on how this process is being grossly abused and why it should be promptly ruled unconstitutional.

You can also access the latest news at this address: www.whatfinger.com

Silent Landscape

The year is 2058…

Skyscrapers, once symbols of progress and power, now stood as hollow, decaying shells. Entangled with vines and creeping vegetation, their frames of twisted steel clawed at the sky. Shattered windows gaped like empty eye sockets, staring blindly at the deserted streets below. The ground was a mosaic of cracked asphalt and decaying artifacts from a world whose demise had been long overdue. The air hummed with the eerie stillness of abandonment, broken only by the whisper of wind through empty buildings and the distant groan of swaying metal. The sky was a fever dream—a wash of blood-red and smoldering amber, where clouds boiled like molten iron, backlit by the sun’s dying ember as it sank into the horizon. This otherworldly sunset spilled across the ruinous landscape, casting long, crisscrossing shadows.

Cloaked in a tattered robe that seemed to merge with the surrounding wreckage, a lone figure walked where the remnants of human ambition had been swallowed by nature and time. His hooded face, half-lost in darkness, hinted at a respirator grafted from scavenged tech, wires snaking around his face like cybernetic veins. When not tending to his small garden of genetically modified crops designed to withstand the increasingly harsh conditions of a hothouse Earth, his days were spent reclaiming and repurposing fragments of the technosphere, curating the relics of a civilization that would never have historians. Clinging to such routines was vital to maintaining his sanity. He moved with a deliberate, almost ritualistic pace down the debris-strewn street as he remembered the stories his parents told him about the world before—when the skies were still blue, and the air didn’t burn your lungs if you breathed too deeply. From his journal…

“I was born into a world that was already unraveling. The air was thick with 435 ppm of CO2, and people argued over whether it was too late to change. They called it climate change, but it was more than that—it was the end of everything we knew. By the time I was old enough to understand, the storms had grown fiercer and the crops were all failing. As the food and water disappeared, wars became rampant. I didn’t understand why everyone was so angry, why they couldn’t just work together. But now… now I get it. Fear makes people selfish. And when the world started to die, so did we. Governments fell, cities drowned, and the skies turned gray. By 2050, the collapse was complete. The last messages from satellites stopped. The last voices on the radio went silent. And now, here I am, thirty years old, standing in the waste of a world that couldn’t save itself. I am the final survivor of a species that devoured itself in an orgy of greed and ignorance.

I don’t know how I’m still here. Maybe it’s luck. Maybe it’s a curse. I’ve walked through uninhabited cities, overgrown with weeds and silence. I’ve seen the bones of the old world disintegrating under the sun. Sometimes I talk to the shadows, just to hear a voice. Sometimes I wonder if I myself am even real.

I wish I could’ve seen the world the way it was supposed to be—green and alive, full of people laughing and living. But all I have are the ashes and the memories of what we lost. I don’t know if anyone will ever read this, but if they do… don’t make the same mistakes my ancestors did. Don’t take the world for granted. Because once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”

In the end, he clung to a fragile truth: Meaning is not found, but forged. Even here, in this desolate world, he chose to witness. To breathe. To exist as a testament to what once was. The universe may not care, but in his defiance—watering a lone plant, singing off-key to the horizon—he became both mourner and monument. A flicker of meaning in the infinite dark, until even that flicker faded. Let the cosmos shrug, he thought, Let entropy gnaw. For a fleeting moment in time, he was the curator of the absurd, the bard of the extinct, the gardener of ghosts.

The Final Revelation: A Symphony of Rot and Hubris

The man’s name was forgotten, even to himself. He had not spoken it aloud in years. Names required other people to give them meaning, and the only company he kept now were the ghosts that flickered at the edges of his vision—phantoms of crowds that once thronged these streets, their laughter now reduced to the creak of collapsing girders. His garden, a patch of sickly green defiantly clawing through irradiated soil, was his sole tether to purpose. The crops were grotesque parodies of life: tomatoes swollen like tumors, cornstalks oozing black sap, all engineered by desperate minds in the final days of the Biosphere Collapse. They kept him alive, though he often wondered if the mutations in his cells—the ones that made his fingertips numb and his heart race—would kill him before starvation could.

The man’s boots crunched over shards of glass and bone as he ventured deeper into the cavernous remains of what was once a cathedral of human ingenuity—a monolithic structure half-buried beneath the earth, its entrance yawning like the throat of some prehistoric beast. He had stumbled upon it weeks prior, while digging for uncontaminated soil near his garden. The door, though rusted and bowed, bore the insignia of a serpent coiled around a globe, its eyes twin rubies that glinted even through layers of grime. It took him days to pry it open, his muscles trembling with exertion, but curiosity had become a rare luxury in his barren existence.

Inside, the air was cooler, tinged with the metallic tang of preserved decay. Flickering emergency lights cast a jaundiced glow over walls lined with steel panels, their surfaces etched with the faded logos of long-dead conglomerates: Elysium Solutions. Prometheus Industries. The Gaia Initiative. His respirator hissed as he descended staircases spiraling deep into the earth, each step echoing like a funeral drum.

At the lowest level, he found them…

The Chambers of the Chosen

Like something from a futuristic sci-fi movie, rows of hibernation pods stretched into the darkness, each one a sarcophagus for the withered human husks within. Men and women in tailored suits, their skin parchment-thin, clung to the vestiges of opulence—gold and diamond cufflinks, silk scarves, faces frozen in expressions of smug serenity. Their pods were adorned with plaques: Architect Series. Project Lazarus. Rebirth Protocol Initiated 2045.

A holographic terminal flickered to life as he approached, its blue light slicing through the gloom. The face that materialized was pristine, golden-haired, and smiling—a corporate avatar with eyes like shards of ice. “Welcome, Architect,” it intoned, voice syrup-smooth. “Status report: Global cleansing at 98.7% efficacy. Surface conditions stabilized. Initiate Phase Three: Repopulation.”

The man’s breath hitched. His numb fingers brushed the screen, pulling up files—decades of encrypted memos, video logs, clinical projections.

“The herd must be culled,” declared a sharp-faced man in a 2035 recording, his suit worth more than a city block. “Climate collapse is inevitable, but we can sculpt it. A controlled demolition. Famine. Sterilization vectors in the GMO crops. The masses will blame themselves—their consumption, their wars. By the time the dust settles, only we will remain to inherit the Earth.”

Another log, 2042: a woman smirking over champagne. “The beauty of it is, they’ll beg for our solutions. Bioengineered crops to ‘save’ them? Perfect. Once ingested, the sterility agents activate. No more hungry mouths. And the mutations… well, collateral damage.”

Laughter, crisp and cruel, echoed through the chamber.

The man staggered back, clutching his chest. His garden. The swollen tomatoes, the oozing corn—he’d been eating them for years. He tore off his gloves, staring at the lesions webbing his hands, the black spider veins creeping toward his heart. They’d sterilized him. They’d turned his body into a tomb for a lineage already extinguished.

But the terminal’s final log gutted him. 2050: the same golden avatar, now fraying at the edges. “Critical error detected in Lazarus Protocol. Solar flares compromised hibernation and preservation systems. Revival sequence failed. All Architects deceased. Project Lazarus: Terminated.”

The elites had miscalculated. Their sanctuary became a crypt. Their grand design—a symphony of control—had devolved into a cacophony of blunders. They had orchestrated the apocalypse, only to be suffocated by their own arrogance, their pods now grotesque fish tanks for corpses.

The man’s laughter erupted, raw and jagged, bouncing off the walls and climbing into hysteria, then crumbling into sobs. All this death, all this pain—for nothing. No rebirth. No renewal. Just ash and irony, thick enough to choke on. You thought you’d be gods, he mused, but you were just rats in a maze of your own making.

He fell against a pod, its occupant’s skeleton fingers pointing at his face. The mutations were accelerating—his vision blurring, breath shallow. As darkness crept in, he wondered if the Architects’ ghosts haunted this place too, screaming into the void with him.

The Last Sunset

Aboveground, the man crawled to his garden and collapsed at the edge of the plot, his breath rattling through the respirator’s filters. With trembling hands, he unclasped the mask, letting it fall. The air bit his lungs, acrid and metallic, but he welcomed the pain. It was real. He was real. Above him, the sky burned—a molten tapestry of crimson and gold, the sun a bloated orb sinking into the horizon as though even it longed to escape the weight of this ruined world. He plucked a deformed tomato, its skin pulsating, and bit into it. Acidic juice dribbled down his chin. He slumped onto his side, cheek pressed to the soil. The ground pulsed faintly, as though the Earth itself still harbored a heartbeat beneath its scars. His mother’s face flickered in his mind—her calloused hands, her voice singing lullabies as fires raged outside their bunker. “The world’s just tired,” she’d lied.

In his final moment, he smiled. Not at the elites’ hubris, or the cruel joke of their failed Eden, but at the simplicity of it all. The Earth needed no Architects. It would fold their bones into its crust, dissolve their bunkers into sediment, and let the rains scrub their epitaphs from the stones.

When the sun dipped below the horizon, it took him with it. His body curled into the soil, a fossil among fossils in the barren ground.

The Earth, as ever, was unimpressed. They were here for just a short while, and she had survived her worst tenants.

Many people weigh their physical and mental health by how often they see a physician. Those who rarely find themselves in the presence of doctors tend to be better for it. This is strictly anecdotal but consider what Voltaire said in the 18^th Century.

“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”

All kidding aside, doctors are a very important part of our society. You will face an infection or virus that will require a doctor. This article is not intended to vilify your physician. In 2018 you have access to medical care at any moment. If you are suffering from a severe infection or illness, seek medical treatment.

What this article is intended for is to understand that there are prescriptions out there that are imprisoning people. I chose the word ‘imprisoning’ carefully because it best describes the life of someone who has become dependent on the various medications we are going to talk about.

There is a lot of money to be made in the business of medicating humans. It’s a massive industry that has bigger concerns than your health. Take this example by Chris Martenson from Peak Prosperity:

“Pharmaceutical companies quietly fund opposition to medical marijuana ballot initiatives because the data shows that the use of safe and effective marijuana seriously cuts into the extremely profitable sales of highly addictive and deadly opiates.”

Statins

These lipid lowering drugs are often prescribed to people with heart conditions and have seen a serious boom as of late. I am sure you know at least one person over 40 who is on statins. These drugs will reduce blood lipids but they come with a slew of other side effects. It seems statins can be linked to other life-threatening disease as well as negatively effecting the overall efficiency of the body.

To best understand the motivations behind statins you must get a grip on the industry. Consider this from the AHN-USA.com

“Heart disease, as many of us know, is one of the leading causes of death in the US, killing about 610,000 people each year. Big Pharma—in the belief that cholesterol is the primary factor in heart disease—developed statin drugs that would lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. The drugs, which have been accompanied by massive marketing campaigns, are huge moneymakers for the drug industry, to the tune of about $29 billion worth of sales in 2013. That’s the kind of outrageous money you make when you convince one in four Americans over the age of 45 to take statins.”

Alternatives:

Cholesterol is the glue that heals your endothelial wall. It is not a death sentence, it’s an important part of your body’s natural functions. The best way for you to get your levels in order is to exercise. There are things like oat bran, garlic and barley that have been shown to affect cholesterol levels as well.

SSRIS

We could start with the low hanging fruit and mention most of mass shooters who were prescribed these medications. That is an argument against them that is all over the web today. The deeper root of the issue with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors is the patient’s ability to manage the medication and the use of these meds as a long-term solution.

These medications become incredibly dangerous when the dosage changes sporadically i.e. if the person on them forgets or decides not to take so many or stops taking them altogether. There are no safeties in place to stop this. Instead, you have an individual who is struggling with their own mind and altering its chemistry as well.

The best examples of SSRI use come from folks who paid close attention to their bodies, used the as a rung to grasp and once they felt better weaned off them. The biggest problem is that it pays to keep people on them.

Flu Vaccine

The flu vaccine is a gamble. It’s a gamble every year. Doctors attempt to tell the future by guessing which strains of the flu will show up and do the most harm in the coming season. These strains make up the flu vaccine and are pumped into your body.

It’s a more precise than doctors pulling strains of the flu out of a hat but it’s still very much a gamble. I have only taken one flu shot and it was the year my first son was born. I didn’t get the flu but I haven’t gotten the flu in many years.

There are allergy concerns as well as other contaminants found within the makeup of the flu vaccine.

Alternative:      

The flu is a virus and I have found that the best way to deal with viral infections is by pumping yourself with high doses of ascorbic acid. Each day I take between 1-2000mgs of Vitamin C in the crystalized form.

Ibuprofen

You may not have expected to see Ibuprofen on the list. It is a benign pain reliever and anti-inflammatory, right? Low dose, probably something you take at least once a week. The truth of the matter is that prolonged regular use of Ibuprofen can wreak havoc on your body. Consistent use will do long lasting damage to internal organs like the liver and the kidneys.

The other important and less known issue is the effect ibuprofen has on inflammation and your gut. Anti-inflammatory OTCs have been linked to stomach issues and bleeding ulcers in the stomach.

Alternative:

One of the best ways to rid yourself of inflammation is to look at what you are eating. Things like gluten and sugars have been shown to increase inflammation in the body. Eating foods like ginger and turmeric along with things like fatty fish can affect the inflammation in your body. Look at your diet for answers to your pain problems before taking pills.

Prednisone and Cortisone

The steroids are being prescribed to people in America all the time. Some people who suffer from things like asthma, lupus and rashes are on these medications. You could get them prescribed for other issues as well. These meds mess with natural hormone production in your body. They also have negative effects on your immune system. They should never be taken for prolonged periods.

They have also been shown to affect:

• Blood Sugar
• Mood
• Weight Gain
• Fluid Retention

Alternative:

In most cases you are taking these meds for some sort of inflammation. It’s important to look at how your diet and exercise as well as daily activities and environment might be affecting your inflammation. Similar to what was recommended for the use of Ibuprofen.

Chemotherapy

If you have ever seen someone ravaged by chemotherapy its terrible to watch. Chemo is our answer to cancer right now and it’s a bad one. In most cases the chemo only makes the cancer recede before battling back with more voracity.

Alternative:

There are some incredible findings and case studies on CBD oil and the effect of THC on cancer cells. Consider the positive effects that CBD oil users are having in their battle with cancer. This is a much less invasive method in comparison to the devastating effects of chemo.

There are millions of dollars put into the effectiveness of drugs at the onset of their use. Will they fix the problem quickly? The biggest issue with Pharmaceuticals is that there is not the same money or effort put into understanding long term effects or long-term necessity of these drugs.

It is a question I keep asking myself. Regardless of where you stand on current events – their cause or validity, one thing must be clear and that is we are in for massive changes in our lives. 2020 will go down in my mind as the year everything changed, but the reality for me anyway is that we have been on a path that started long ago. What comes next?

For various reasons, we have given up freedom in the name of public safety, but it was prompted by and continues to flourish in a spirit of fear. We have let regional leaders unconstitutionally control our lives and my concern is that this was just the start. This was a test and even more, draconian enforcement will be needed for the next phase.

But what will that be?

Prepping for what comes next

Prepping for me has always been about taking steps to protect my family from unseen disasters in our lives. A natural part of the prepping process has logically been to consider the most likely events you could be faced with and prepare for those first.

A casual prepper might be concerned about a job loss or natural disaster. These happen every year for an untold number of people outside of any sinister plan. Someone planning for these events is logically going with the most likely scenario first. If you can be prepared for the most likely scenarios, you will be somewhat prepared for the unlikely scenarios too.

I have tried for years to spread this simple truth to the readers of the Prepper Journal and I think we have been very successful. Just look around and there are plenty of people who see the need for prepping and the appropriateness of having supplies, resources, and skills to handle these “common” disasters but as I said in my last article, that is just the baseline. We cannot stop at the bare minimum you need and even having a years’ worth of supplies may not be enough.

Increasingly I am concerned that we are headed down a path that many will look back on and consider a disaster but will go blindly along without realizing we are that frog in the boiling pot. The next event will almost certainly be exponentially worse than this COVID “pandemic” in terms of loss of life, the changes to our society, and our way of life. I believe that events are being orchestrated in a way and we are the subjects. Whether it is a by-product of this pandemic or something that originated before the pandemic, it’s still unknown. What is more certain is the consequences are strangely similar to other plans made previously.

The restrictions we see now are not going to be completely lifted, they will be increased, I think. Why? Isn’t the new vaccine going to solve everyone’s problems? No. Could things be much worse? Yes. Even the WHO admits what most sane people already know that “this is not necessarily the big one.”

“And I will say one thing, and that may come as a shock to people, this pandemic has been very severe. It’s spread around the world extremely quickly and has affected every corner of this planet. But this is not necessarily the big one. This virus is very transmissible, and it kills people, and it has deprived so many people of loved ones. But it’s current case fatality is reasonably low in comparison to other emerging diseases. This is a wake-up call. We are learning now how to do things better, how to do science better, how to do logistics better, how to do training better, how to do governance better, how to communicate better. We’ve developed a whole new science of infodemiology and advanced behavioral science in this way.”Dr. Mike Ryan

Additionally, he states that even with the vaccine “The likely scenario is the virus will become another endemic virus that will remain somewhat of a threat”

If the threat everyone has been using as justification for the actions they have taken does not go away, why would the measures they put in place be lifted? But what could be the next threat? What comes next? Could it be an even worse virus? Possibly, but I think they have other plans in place for us. This current event is letting them learn how we act and “how to do governance better”. The next event would build upon what they learned this year I think most logically.

What is a Cyber Pandemic?

It should be inarguable from the events of this year that a few things are true. First, we are all much more dependent on technology. I personally need it to work, to write and share this blog, to get paid by my employer, and to communicate with the people I work with. We need technology to stay in touch, to shop, some need it to buy groceries, to tell us where to go. Our reliance on technology is not going away, it has and will only continue to become more vital.

Another thing is true and that is certain entities get to determine what is truth and what you can say. Facebook, Twitter, and Google just to name a few “fact check” articles, censor speech that they deem is inaccurate or false, and silence voices on their platforms if they don’t like what they say.

Free speech is not “free” if you are only allowed to say what someone wants you to say. There are some options you can use besides those platforms though and nothing is preventing someone from creating a new Facebook or a better Google. However, total control cannot be achieved without completely owning all the systems. Think of how China’s great firewall would look in the USA.

A cyber pandemic could be the next thing that is unleashed upon us to completely change the systems we currently use today. An example cause for a cyber pandemic could be a worldwide computer virus that brings the entire internet down or renders many devices inoperable and for public safety, a new solution would have to be implemented.

“The only way to stop the exponential propagation of cyber-COVID would be to fully disconnect all vulnerable devices from one another and the internet to avoid infection. The whole world could experience cyber lockdown until a digital vaccine was developed. All business communication and data transfers would be blocked. Social contact would be reduced to people contactable by in-person visits, copper landline, snail-mail or short-wave radio.”

This new controlled solution that would be put into place in the face of that reality would ostensibly be more intrusive into your privacy, but it would be “necessary for the safety of our country”. A digital 9/11. You may not see that happening, but the World Economic Forum certainly does.

How can you prepare for the next thing?

It is important to clarify that there are events we can prepare for that require resources we would normally be deprived of in a disaster that we can put aside ahead of time for an emergency. The usual items are Food, Water, Shelter, and Security. If you are prepared for a job loss, you can store cash aside, sell stock or property to deal with the loss of income. You have some social safety net mechanisms to take advantage of.

A Natural disaster does not keep going. It has a beginning and an end. If you live through a hurricane, there is clean-up and rebuilding which can be made easier by preparations. You may have boarded your house up and stored provisions further inland where you and your family rode out the storm because you have been watching it and were prepared to leave days before it hit. These are the types of events preppers can purchase or plan their way of solving.

There are other events we cannot prepare for with resources I believe so we are not able to purchase anything ahead of time. All the beans bullets and band-aids in the world will not protect you in some situations. What you can do is observe and at least for now, research. You can be your own fact-checker. Prepping in this light will be more fluid and you will want to have options and information on your side.

How would we prepare to deal with the internet going down for a month?

• Would all shopping cease or would some internet brands still be deemed “essential”? (Amazon and Walmart) Even if they did, the systems UPS and FedEx use to deliver them need the internet – assume they would be essential too.
• Would all news be silenced and only the government would provide you with information? (Ministry of Truth)
• How would you work? Yes, many people still go to work, but I guarantee the internet is required for their business to run.
• How would you pay bills? – Could there be some form of debt moratorium?
• How would banks be affected? Could there be cash withdrawal limits?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. This type of event would be extremely hard to prepare for. Yes, you could take some steps. You could have cash on hand, you could have a Ham Radio to talk to people remotely but for a large portion of the world, this would be crippling. Do you think the suicide rate is high now?

I do not want to end on a negative note because I try to write articles that give solutions. This one has me stumped so far. I think something on this scale would cause widespread panic and violence. I could see martial law declared. I could even see UN forces in some of the major cities to quell the violence – partly because we have said the police need to be disbanded – another curious artifact of this year…Coincidence?

Let me say this to all of you who have been prepping so far. Keep doing what you are doing but cast your gaze a little wider than your local emergencies. Think about what would happen in less likely cases. Imagine slightly more bizarre scenarios because you need to think about what you could do, might need, to protect your family. If this year has taught us anything, it should be that nobody knows what comes next.

First watch this shocking video- All Americans Will Lose Their Home, Income And Power By March 17, 2025

Are you the kind of prepper that suspects that diesel and gasoline will become unavailable soon after a major social collapse occurs? 

If so, then you have to read this article!

You may have made any one of the following decisions that can spell absolute destruction once these fuels are no longer available.

Since diesel and gasoline were only invented in the late 1800’s, it will not be so hard to “go back” to a lifestyle without these fuels. Even though there are isolated groups of people throughout the world that survive without these fuels, they also dedicate their entire lives to basic survival. If you are not accustomed to this lifestyle, a few camping trips and survivor practice drills won’t make you ready to live without these fuels.

Knowing that you will need diesel for farm equipment or transport vehicles, you may have decided to store away as much fuel as possible on your homestead. No matter how carefully you store the fuel, or the additives that you use to keep it fresh, there is no guarantee that the fuel will be viable once you have no other choice.

To make matters even worse, storing large amounts of fuel will make you a target for anyone that wants to take it from you. Why bother to defend something in your stockpile that may not even work for the purpose intended?

Convert all equipment that runs on gasoline to biodiesel, methane, or some other fuel you can make for yourself.  This move may sound appealing to many people because it can be practiced now, and it make for efficient use of all sorts of materials.  As with storing large amounts of fuel, rest assured that you will become the target of an attack by anyone that discovers you have fuel on hand and know where to get more.

There is no such thing as a perfect way to address how you will survive once gasoline and fuel are no longer available. Each possibility has benefits and disadvantages that you will have to compare with your on specific skills, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. For example, someone that is handicapped or cannot easily live off the land will more than likely need to consider finding ways to make diesel or be able to defend large stores of it. 

Now let’s have a look at some ways to overcome both the social and tangible survival problems that will happen when diesel and gasoline are no longer available, or they are so expensive that no one can afford them.

5 Things About a Possible Starting Scenario

Instead of one “major” event such as a solar EMP or a major earthquake disrupting the entire planet, let’s say a bunch of smaller, unrelated events converge steadily to create a social collapse that will happen in year 2025.

In our time frame, the scenario might include:

• Less than 10% of commercial and wild bees remain to pollinate crops (bear in mind that commercial bee hives declined by 42% from April 2014 to April 2015 alone). Food shortages will lead to disruptions in oil, gas, and diesel production and transport.
• Texas and the mid states remain either chronically under water or crops fail because of constant hail storms and other disasters. Food riots combined with the need to adjust or move in other drilling equipment will disrupt oil production and storage in this vital area.
• California and the Western states become so hot and dry it is no longer safe to operate solar panels or drill for oil.
• Russia, India, Japan, and China join currencies and create a situation where the US dollar is no longer the standard for international trade. As a result, the US banks go on “holiday” and the currency is devalued to around 25%. Under these circumstances, the US will not be able to import enough oil for consumer needs.
• North Korea, Iran, and ISIS join forces to control the Middle East. A civil war across the land effectively shuts down almost all fuel exports to the United States.

Let me be very clear in saying that this “perfect storm” of seemingly unrelated events can easily happen in a 2 year time frame. When these events converge, the United States will run out of gasoline and diesel within 160 days (at the best case scenario, that’s about how long the fuel will last in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve).

At that point in time, the currency situation, geographic considerations, and other world events will make it impossible for the United States to buy enough fuel or find ways to continue extracting it from petroleum or plant based sources.

How Will You Know a Fuel Shortage is Coming?

Aside from watching for events similar to those listed above, you can:

• Look at the cost of gasoline and diesel in comparison to the actual production levels.
• Pay careful attention to the availability of food and other common household goods in popular stores. Are milk, eggs, flour, and other staples imported from outside the state running low?  Is inventory of first aid and health supplies on the low side?  How are the prices changing once new shipments come in?  These shortages and price increases may well have to do with actual production problems related to each product, or they may be related to problems with getting enough fuel to ship.  Remember how prices on just about everything jumped when gas prices went up just a few years ago?
• It is also always important to look at the FOREX exchanges and see how the US dollar (USD) compares to other currencies.
• I also watch the currency exchange rates and comparisons for key nations/currencies such as Russia (RUB), China (CNY), Hong Kong (HKD),  Japan (JPY), India (INR), Saudi Arabia (SAR), Iran (IRR),  the Euro (EUR), North Korea (KPW), Venezuela (VEF), Qatar (QAR), Iraq (IQD), Syria (SYP) and Israel (ILS).  Even though some of these countries have very little in the way of currency valuation, I still do the comparisons between them and other nations to look for changes.  To me, changes in currency among the smaller nations may indicate changes in trade agreements or something else going on that may not be noted in the news.
• Gain a sense and understanding of global crisis patterns.  This includes how earthquakes, floods, and other large scale disasters may be increasing in intensity or focusing on areas where it will cause major disruptions that affect prices and availability of crude and petroleum products.

Likely Government Responses to Fuel Shortages

When naive people hear about the Strategic Oil Reserve, they tend to believe that this oil will be  made available to the public until it is all gone. Contrary to that belief is the fact that the government has been making disaster plans for years on end.

In these scenarios, the government and military always take priority and always get primary access to the resources.  Even though your tax dollars pay for the Strategic Oil Reserve, in the end the government will consider itself a priority over the needs of the people.

Before drilling and access to foreign oil become limited, you can expect the government to do the following:

• They may release some petroleum from the reserves in order to keep prices low and keep the masses from catching on that there is a problem. Nevertheless, there is a point where the release of petroleum to the public will stop even though no new fuel is being obtained.
• Fuel rationing.
• Active seizure of fuel stored by preppers so that it can be redistributed to others that did not prepare for the crisis.
• Attempts to limit the storage of fuel by preppers or find ways to ensure that stored fuel locations are known and under strict surveillance.

What About Your Neighbors and Others?

There are a number of conflicting views about how individuals and groups of people will respond in a disaster. Based on relatively short term scenarios, we can say that there is a mix of good and bad responses. Inevitably, in larger scale disasters such as a complete collapse of diesel and gasoline availability, things may get far worse over time.

On the good side, we saw people work together and help each other in the aftermath of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. From tornadoes to blizzards, to other disasters, rescue teams and individuals that can help each other are often highlighted in the news.

We’ve also seen national guard, non-profit organizations, and other outside groups do what they can to deliver relief to people living in zones of sudden chaos and disruption. If we only had these responses to a major crisis, perhaps prepping would be much easier, or could even be scaled back.

As many have noted, there is also a very dark side that comes out in people during even a short term disaster. Here are just a few responses that every prepper must think about if diesel and gasoline become limited or completely unavailable:

• When gas prices rose, we already saw people stealing from other people’s gas tanks or leaving gas stations without paying for the fuel.
• After 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and many other disasters, people pretended to raise money in order to help victims, but then never used the money for that purpose. In a gas shortage, you will more than likely see all sorts of “charities” popping up to help people in the northeast “buy fuel” and so on.
• As people abandon their homes, looters will come in and look to sell off “souvenirs” or anything else that will turn a profit.
• Those who are panicked and desperate may start rioting or deliberately destroying any fuel reserves they can find. Contrary to popular belief, the riots may not start immediately or even during fuel rationing scenario. These riots may start slowly and then pick up speed in the weeks and months after fuel becomes more and more restricted. It would take a good bit of additional research to find out what the “magic” shortage level would be to generate a riot in any given city or community.
• Business owners will raise prices and do what they can to keep a reserve of fuel for “black market” or underground customers. In essence, if you have the money or something else worth trading, then fuel will be made available through these sources, and this includes diesel made from non-petroleum sources. Biodiesel may not be as good as petroleum based fuel, but a trust worthy seller can, and will make as much money off the situation.

What About the Impact on Society?

On the surface, it is safe to say that the loss of diesel and gasoline will lead to massive social disruption. That isn’t just the general opinion of people that will be affected by the situation, it also appears to be the opinion of government leaders and others that pretend they don’t want to see these shortages happen.

Yes… I said pretend. Why?  Read on.

It is no secret that the rich make their money by selling products at a profit. Up until the last two or three decades, the masses (i.e. customer base of consumers) could afford to buy these products.  In the last two or three decades, consumer debt paired with a lack of jobs has resulted in 75% of our nation’s money in the hands of 10% of the population.

Perhaps I am being a bit jaded or leaning towards a conspiracy theory outlook when I say that 99% of the people in our nation will soon be completely unable to give more money to the rich. What is left to be made must be obtained quickly and at the greatest possible profit.

Remember when Rhett Butler (in “Gone With the Wind”) said that the two best times to make money are during a social collapse and then during the reconstruction? Riots, civil war, and even guerrilla warfare make an excellent disguise for the final tapping of any money and resources left among the masses that must be… eliminated before a new growth cycle can begin.

Consider that we are also a nation filled with obese, sick, addicted, and drone like citizens that are not even suitable for the military. It’s a dire situation to the rich, and the quickest way out is to cut off the diesel and gasoline that people rely on.

In this scenario, chaos will ensue and all the government has to do is pretend to be concerned about local and global converging situations that will lead to a disruption in gasoline and diesel supplies. From there, all they have to do is put up a few token fights (in which they are the only ones with suitable weapons to defend themselves) to try and stop the 99% from caving in and destroying itself.

What Will Happen to the Land?

Contrary to popular belief, the Earth will not suddenly become “healed” just because oil drilling, refining, and usage stop.

Chemicals used for fracking will continue to lubricate rocks beneath the surface and continue to increase the risk of earthquakes. As the rocks under the surface continue breaking apart, water will also continue to be polluted. As equipment and chemicals get left behind, they will cause even more damage to nearby water supplies and land, and it could take decades to a century for these problems to slow down.

Even if you have a homestead or are planning to buy land, make sure that you know everything possible about the petroleum, natural gas, and other mining leases within 250 miles of your land.  The closer a drilling or mining operation is to your land, the greater chances of it becoming impossible to live on in a crisis.

It is no secret that burning gasoline leads to smog and other forms of air pollution. What most people don’t realize is that without gasoline and other fuels, people may burn things that cause just as many problems.

For example, wood also releases large amounts of soot and other pollution into the air. Desperate people will also take to burning plastic and just about anything else that will catch fire, and this will release all kinds of dangerous pollutants that will do more damage than diesel and gasoline.

Some people say that when diesel and gasoline are no longer available, the people will turn to solar and other forms of “clean” fuel. The sad fact of the matter is that commercially available solar panels are just as hazardous as gasoline and diesel. From strip mining for rare earth elements to rooftops catching fire, modern solar power is not a clean let alone viable replacement for diesel and gasoline.

That being said, the individual prepper can still do a lot of good and get away from diesel and gasoline with solar cookers and other products made from household scrap.

In the short term, a lack of diesel and gasoline will cause more damage to the environment than expected. Without finding truly sustainable and suitable alternatives, the damage caused by the production and transport of diesel and gasoline will only be shifted to other fuel sources. And anything commercially built is going to have hidden environmental costs, and this cost may have a heavy impact on your bug out location.

Is Social Collapse an End or a Beginning?

According to recorded history, human societies have been rising and falling for thousands of years.  As ugly as the decline and chaos periods are, eventually people begin forming a new social order and working together again on common goals.  From that perspective, a social collapse caused by diesel and gasoline shortages can be seen as the end of one chapter and the beginning of a new one.

The problem with this philosophical view of social rise and collapse is that there are millions of people that will not be around to see the new social order. As our society falls apart and decays from within, the greedy are locked into a struggle with those who realize what is coming and want to avert disaster for themselves and their family.

Is it such a surprise that independence, self sufficiency, the right to self defense, morality, and other prepper oriented cultural values are being systemically attacked? Without these values, those outside the elites that do manage to survive will form their own social order. This, in turn, will once again leads to a rise in population that threatens the utopia intended just for the rich or those with the right blood lines.

What Will Your Response Be as a Prepper?

When you think about diesel and gas shortages, remember that medicines and many other goods you take for granted may no longer be available. If you take a survey for just one week, you will be amazed at all the things you use that rely on diesel or gasoline for transport or production. Should you decide to end your reliance on diesel and gasoline, your plans must include the following:

• Viable and sustainable substitutes for cooking, transportation, farming, and heating fuels.
• The means to produce or make any product that you currently purchase. This includes shoes, clothes, weapons, medications, children’s toys, light sources, communication devices, tools, and personal care needs.  If you cannot make or produce a matching product, then you will need a viable substitute that does the same thing with an equal or near equal level of efficiency.
• You must be able to defend all of your production materials, supplies, and output
• you must be able to barter, trade, or make a profit on products now and in a crisis situation.

Many preppers think of a social collapse as something that will suddenly spring up and catch everyone off guard. Far too many people think about the kind of slow disaster evolving even as we enjoy the benefits of our modern world. A convergence of a handful of events can create a situation where diesel and gasoline are no longer available.

Without these fuels, just about everything you are accustomed to will unavailable. As such, if you are simply trying to stockpile diesel or gasoline, this may be the weakest part in your survival plans.

If you are not focusing on actively replacing diesel and gasoline in every area of your life, the looming social collapse may be something you are far less prepared for than expected.