Posted on 06/08/2012 7:59:51 AM PDT by Kartographer
Yesterday on a thread FReeper marron was very good to discribe her very own Financial SHTF experience. Seeing what is more than likely coming our way I believe her post to be extremely valuable information and I am posting it here again to make sure that as many FReepers read it.
Thank you marron the firsthand expereince and the information you shared is priceless to those currently prepping and should be eye opening to those that aren't.
In Ecuador I didn’t see food shortages but since the currency suddenly lost 80 percent of its value, for ordinary people the price of food went up 500 percent.
In Venezuela, when they made scapegoats out of grocery chains, food disappeared off the shelves instantly. The stores couldn’t re-order since they couldn’t charge enough to pay to re-order.
In Ecuador, the grid was always iffy, so all major buildings, stores, malls, upper class homes even, had generators on automatic switches. They would go on and off all day long seamlessly. The reason was, electricity was subsidized and the government wss broke. So, blackouts for the people without backup.
In Caracas water shortages were common and are more common all the time. When you have the president telling you not to take long showers, something is wrong.
As for credit cards, I’ve already mentioned the banks closing for weeks while they re-organized.
Crime? Rioting? Actually, riots were commonplace, organized by the Left to make the country ungovernable. If we crash, you can expect the same thing. The Left will get people whipped into a frenzy in order to take advantage of the situation; probably many of your own kids may get caught up in it. They’ll especially organize thugs from the slums to take out their enemies; when someone needs to be taught a lesson it gets written off as simple street crime.
Average citizens bartering? Absolutely. The underground economy is the real economy after all. During the crash bartering and neighbor helping neighbor is exactly how you get through. And you start your own little handyman service helping your neighbors, who pay you in whatever they have of value. In a crashed economy, again, people become very entrepreneurial.
And, no, the government won’t save you. They are the reason things crashed in the first place. The government is the ultimate prize and there will be constant turmoil as various factions duel for control. If you need help from a government clerk who hasn’t been paid in three months, you need to find another alternative. People who know how to navigate that problem set themselves up in business doing just that. You’ll hire a guy to work the system for you. He knows the right people. After the collapse you’ll need someone like that from time to time.
American after the crash is Third World America. A disfunctional government. A country that works only because of the unofficial economy, and because people learn to do without the disfunctional government. They find work-arounds, they barter, they use foreign currency in place of their own, they work off the books, and families and friends look after one another.
Preppers’ PING!
Please consider this our weekly Prepper Thread.
Actually I think what concerns me most of all is what people both left and right will vote for out of desperation.
And we wonder why the left is is so critical of “Atlas shrugged” by Ayn Rand. The left is bringing reality to her every prophecy.
For some, like myself, we are very concerned that so many do not yet realize how close we are to final collapse and world-wide restructuring. What you may deem desperation is in fatc a facing of the reality we discern.
Hussein, Jesse and Al are already whipping the scumbag crowd into a frenzy. Look at all the black on white crime that's come out of the St. Trayvon case. There's already a long list of deaths closely related to Thug #1 that have been written off as simple street crimes with little to no investigation. We can expect more intimidators hanging around the polls this November.
Such an uplifting thread/s. IS the world going to hell in a handbasket, or are we going to do what we can to make it better, regardless of the fact that it is not heaven down here?
You may want to look at this. A look into our future? (sigh)
Bumping Ms. Bloop.
Oops. Don’t know where that L came from.
The situation described is exactly what the Russians had to deal with after the USSR collapsed. The Mafia stepped up to the plate as the only forced in society strong enough to organize anything. At least until Putin marshaled his ex-KGB forces to take them out.
I didn’t think about it when I posted this, but many non-preppers more than likely have no idea who Ferfal is n Argentinean who writes a prepper blog called Surviving Argentina (http://ferfal.blogspot.com/ ) about his experiences living through Argentina’s financial collapse of 2001.
You can get a good idea of what it was like by watching this documentary about it on youtube:
Argentina’s Economic Collapse - Part 1 of 12 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH6_i8zuffs
I sometimes forget how fast the interest in prepping is growing, even though FReeper Eaker who host my Preparedness Manual ( http://tomeaker.com/kart/Preparedness1j.pdf ) told me that the manual was downloaded over a thousand times last month.
“There is no greater disaster than to underestimate danger.
Underestimation can be fatal.”
Adolph Hitler was the man to “save” Germany from communism amid economic collapse.
Oh how silly of you. Do you really want to jump over the edege by dragging Hitler and suh into this exchange? If so you my have the floor, I will not be responding to such.
Oh how silly of you. Do you really want to jump over the edge by dragging Hitler and such into this exchange? If so you may have the floor, I will not be responding to such.
Good thing Americans are a fundamentally different people from Germans, eh?
To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
If the pilot announce for the passagers to assume crash positions is that the time to start disscussing a better design for the airplane?
No one is saying that we shouldn’t try a stop it. Like a flood you continue piling sand bags despite the river’s crest estimates, but you make sure you have done what you could to protect those behind the dike should your efforts fail.
Good thing Americans are a fundamentally different people from Germans, eh?
Exactly how are we different?
Our choices are socialism or communism, just like theirs were.
Non sequitur
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