PP #23: Financial Prepping; The Bloodbath to Come

Project: Pioneer #23, March 17, 2024 Sunday 11am

As we inch closer, day by day, to becoming New Russia, our preparations become more urgent. We ventured out into the ‘rest of the world’ last week, and didn’t like what we saw. Everything is different. Everything seems dysfunctional, broken, including the people. When it comes to airplanes carrying hundreds of souls, that’s a real problem.

Project: Pioneer is the live reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle, just at the start of winter. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality/afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Audio podcast at this link, Apple, and Spotify)

In this journal post:

• Our Current Status and Updates

• Financial Prepping

• The Bloodbath to Come

• What’s Next?

Current Status/Updates

We left the safe embrace of our pioneer enclave for the modern world last week. Airports, connections, crowds. No thanks. We were very happy to return home to our White House. It’s crazy out there!

And, of course, we’re sick for the first time in years. We let our guard down, and we’re paying the price now. On the return trip, one lovely individual, who was quite ill, spent the entire two hours coughing and sneezing unmasked in the seat directly behind us. Seven million dead people, and we haven’t learned a damn thing. The next pandemic will likely come soon, and wipe out even more of our species. Our tech is failing, much of our population is mentally compromised. The next bioweapon will likely escape or be intentionally released from a lab here, in North Korea, China, or Russia soon. This is yet another reason we are preparing (prepping). COVID was the pre-game warmup. More on that later in this journal entry.

As I write this, a huge class-A motorhome is pulling into the spot previously occupied by the loud truck/loud dogs biker couple. They’re pulling a toad (tow-behind car). Fortunately, they appear to be a rather mundane old couple just enjoying their retired life. We’ll see! You never know, out here in the wild of humanity.

It’s been warm, for March. Really warm. It’s been great to open our windows and let all the fresh mountain air flow through White House. The extended outlook indicates we may be done with the cold weather. It’s exciting, but we’re not going to tempt fate. That hasn’t worked out well for us lately. Some pioneers have begun taking down their winter RV skirting. If you have a well-built rig with the four-season/arctic package like ours, there’s little risk of freezing up even in single digit cold if you’ve done a good job with skirting. But, we’ll still have nights in the twenties (F) and removing the skirt would cause more propane use and colder flooring. We’ll wait. Only another month until we move to the new wooded location!

The cops keep coming around to try to arrest our neighbor. It’s triggering for me, given my recent problem. We’re glad the winter experience is almost over, as we’re all packed in pretty close to one another up here on the hill, by necessity. Keep the covered wagons close to ward off the weather. When we move into the woods, we’ll be done with the yappy dogs on both ends, old Elmer, and the rest of this. Who knows what awaits down there, though. At least things are more spaced out. We’ll be able to spend more time outside, out by the lake and pond, relaxing by the beach, out alone on a boat together.

Lastly, we put our business up for sale. It’s time. I’m really excited to be finally retired for real, and be able to focus on the things I enjoy more. Hopefully, Giavana hangs up her spurs soon as well, and we can go about the rest of our lives together. We’re becoming more engaged in the political fight. You should be too, but prepare for the ugliness to come, win or lose. More below.

Free subscribers will continue to get all the updates on prepping, spirituality/afterlife, politics, RV living, and personal finance. Now that I’ve opened the Pandora’s Box in the more personal area, I’ll try to post a weekly (or so) update in that area for paid subscribers. The next one should be out tomorrow!

Financial Prepping

I promised some thoughts on financial prepping. We get so excited about the fundamentals of prepping, this part is often overlooked. I mean, the whole thing is about surviving an apocalyptic event (whether climate, political, or other). We just assume the money is gone, and the focus is on just surviving day to day. How would you get to your money, with no power, no internet?

Given the faster march toward massive change for the worst (see below), it’s time to step up your efforts!

"Gold is the money of kings. Silver the money of gentlemen. Barter the money of peasants and debt the money of slaves."

I asked in a few financial forums what would happen to the Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab accounts in the event our democracy was overthrown and we become yet another authoritarian country. Because, new authoritarian leaders know that once they seize control, first round up the guns, then start helping yourself to the assets. Putin is the richest man in the world by doing exactly this. The playbook works, every time.

My posts were quickly removed by administrators, even though I was careful not to make them political. Everyone, quick—put your head in the sand! Finally, I posted on a Reddit prepping subreddit and stimulated a pretty good discussion. I recommend you read it. My favorite quote from that thread is:

Gold & currency will hold no value if our economy collapses, & the banks fail & shut down. In a major, worldwide SHTF, if you can’t eat it, burn it or trade it, it will be worthless.

If you have a place to store 50K worth of alcohol, or ammunition, you will be wealthy...providing you beef up your security. Gold ingots will be shiny door-stops.

My advice and takeaways:

You might think it’s best to have a paid off mortgage, so you own your home and land. Well, you never really do, do you? There are property taxes, and the likelihood a greedy leader would take massive advantage of eminent domain (the government’s right to seize your property). That’s why we own our home, and can easily move it somewhere else. We rent this beautiful land for $700/month with utilities included.

The forums say to pay off debt. This might be the one case where you don’t! It’s going to be tough for someone to collect in a financial collapse. That said, stay out of debt.

The bitcoin/crypto idea is ridiculous. It’s not backed by anything at all, and totally dependent on power, internet, and you remembering your passwords and not being grabbed up by the highly skilled hacking teams around the world.

Eliminate your dependency on expensive habits—smoking, drinking, pot, drugs. It’s going to suck enough if this happens, but if you are also in withdrawal or needing to trade precious resources for those things in a moment of weakness, you’re even worse off. Exercise, the going will likely be rough. Find natural remedies for your ailments as prescription meds may be non-existent or very expensive.

We assume the financial accounts will be gone or inaccessible. Maybe forever. Assume the markets will crash, and your investments will be worth far less. We’re stuck, really. You can’t pull huge sums of money out and stick it in your mattress or a bury it. That’s a bigger recipe for disaster, and getting killed fast. That goes for gold, silver, or cash. But, you should have some degree easily accessible. With the way things are going here, the US currency may be severely devalued or worthless. Note that Costco is now selling Canadian gold and silver coins. We’re more a fan of the smaller denomination silver ones. If you need to barter for food, medicine, or ammo and only have gold bars or coins worth $2,000 each, your bargaining position is severely compromised.

In Russia in 1917 and China in 1949 the stock markets of those two large countries zeroed out and everyone lost everything after political takeovers. It can happen.

We are still exploring the investment/brokerage side of this, and whether it’s smarter to perhaps move those to a Canadian custodian and more (or all) investments outside the US. We will continue to report back on that front.

All this is secondary to your primary prepping. If you’ve done that right, you won’t need anything for quite a while. See my prior posts for all the things you should be doing and stockpiling. Develop your skillsets to be able to fix and repair the essential life support systems you will depend on. Start learning how to grow your food. Buy some seed stockpiles. Learn to safely operate your firearms.

The Bloodbath to Come

Trump said it again yesterday. He’s using his megaphone to make that violent dog whistle more evident, more clear, and louder. He said if he loses, there will be a bloodbath. It’s a call for a new civil war. The Republican party has been weaponizing the most naïve, ignorant, hateful, and violent members of our population since they unleashed Rush Limbaugh on radio back in the Reagan years, just for this purpose. If Trump loses, there will likely be violence that will make January 6 look like a peaceful demonstration. It will likely happen at state capitols and local police stations (remember how easily they were overtaken recently).

He’s openly meeting with other dictators and planning all of this. He’s saying it right out in the open, and people are cheering. Viktor Orbán just visited Mar-A-Lago. Hungary no longer has a democracy. It is now a dictatorship—it happened fast there, and in so many other places.

If Trump wins, he promised to be a dictator on day one. In that case, there will be less violence (although massive protest) but the changes to clamp down on your rights will happen immediately. Expect martial law. Expect troops in the streets. Expect a rush to escape the country. It will be too late. Keep in mind that big portions of our military and law enforcement are totally on board with this Trump doctrine. The entire Republican party is. About a third or more of our knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing population is.

I recently got into it with a Trump supporter that excitedly told me about the time he had his limo stop to help someone with a flat tire, and paid the person’s mortgage off. And, he allowed a homeless old black woman to stay in Trump Tower rent-free. Of course, those things never happened and it’s easy to prove it. But, they all believe ridiculous stories like this. It's a cult. People who have almost nothing, worshipping a life-long con man who literally craps in a gold toilet and has spent his life ripping off people just like them. It’s sad, and it’s scary.

If you’re not an uber-wealthy, male, straight, white, evangelical Christian you are not in the club. You are being used and played, and they will eventually come for you, too.

Giavana, Pia and I plan to be out of the country on election day. We’ll vote early, by mail. It will likely start to get ugly soon before then. Expect Trump’s dictator friends in Russia and the OPEC countries to jack the price of gas through the roof sometime between now and the election, and blame Biden in order to win. Trump has openly wished for the markets to crash, to help him win, and has enough friends in the financial sector to make it happen at just the right time. They know enough voters aren’t smart enough to figure it out. They’re already busy purging voters from the rolls in lots of states. Expect to show up and be told you’re “not on the list.”

If Trump wins, there likely won’t be a world war. The carving up of the planet will just—happen. The rest of the world democracies will be no match for the combined dictatorships in China, Russia, the US (or TrumpLandia or whatever tacky name it will be called then), North Korea, Iran, Syria, and the rest. That’s a lot of nukes. If the democratic countries decide to fight, it will be apocalyptic and likely be over pretty quickly. The massive US military stockpile will be used to eradicate free Europe, Canada, and other countries. India, Israel, and Mexico would fall quickly in line, as their leaders already lean this way. The dominoes will fall. Maybe that’s all it will take to trigger the Rapture and Second Coming. I’d be pretty fed up at that point if I were God!

There was about twenty years between World War I (the war to end all wars!) and World War II. People still remembered the threat of a few dictators carving up the world for themselves and holding the rest of us hostage in fascist poverty. We fought like hell, so many brave people died to prevent that. But now it’s been eighty years since World War II. Those who lived through that threat have died, and aren’t here to remind us of the horror. We now have people here, in our land of freedom, openly cheering the idea. We are seeing what it was like in early 1930s Germany, the rabble cheering on their charismatic new leader, who would eventually lead them to ruin and death because of their hate and intolerance. We have our leading presidential candidate openly advocating for a “strongman” to run this country, and colluding with dictators around the world to make it happen. God help us.

What’s Next?

We’ll be spending time at our new site, measuring and getting things ready for mid-April when we can move the White House there. Our focus will change to making sure no critters can get in, once they start to wake up from their winter slumber! We’ll report back on our efforts, and what was required.

This has been, by necessity, a rather dark post! Next time, I’ll get back to the hopeful musings on spirituality and the afterlife. If it’s all too much, read my post on Buddhism and mindfulness! Keep calm and carry on!

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"When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent."

— Isaac Asimov

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