Prepping for the Spread of Everything
Project: Pioneer #74, February 10, 2025 Monday 10am
Project: Pioneer is the live weekly 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. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.
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Don’t despair—prepare.
Let’s talk about the rapid spreads happening right before our eyes, and more importantly what you should do to prepare and keep your household safe. We’ll talk primarily about three major, dangerous spreads—disease, danger, and fascism. We’ll break it down, the good, bad, and ugly, and then end with a burst of positivity.
Pioneer Update
Giavana, Pia and I continue to battle through a rough winter. Ice, wind, and snow are regular visitors, pushing our winter covered wagon RV preps to their limit. The elements all take turns with us, and every day it seems to be something. One small unattended crack in the foamboard surrounding our undercarriage allows the wind to enter and try to blow the rest of it off from the inside. Henrik the pickup went into a wild spin on icy back roads while trying to make my way home late at night from visiting my kids and grandkids. A few days ago I went out to perform my tank dumping ballet and slipped on a sheet of ice, performing a split. Splits aren’t good for arthritic 60-somethings. I’m still sore, and lucky. Winter is dangerous. This winter RV life is hard, but that’s the point. We’re now hardened. We pulled out a paper map yesterday and reviewed the lay of the land and possible emergency paths. Drill baby, drill.
We’re just trying to make it to spring. We’re just trying to make it to our new home, the small rental we’ve talked about recently. After almost two years in a small RV all together, it will feel like a dream mansion. The extra room to store up more prepper provisions of water, food, and other necessities will make us feel safer. Spring is coming seasonally, but winter death is coming for America and maybe the world, there is no longer any doubt. Prepare.
Remember in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, when the Shire began to be encompassed by the spreading darkness and evil from Mordor overtaking the land? That’s what this feels like, for all of us. Note: Good won in the end. It was tough and took a lot of work, but good won in the end. Don’t frown, don’t be down, get out on the ground.
Spread of Disease
If you wanted to spread disease, you’d do what we’re seeing our new “government” do right now. Close up agencies that fight the spread of disease in impoverished places before it gets a chance to come to developed nations. Shut down the public’s awareness of the presence of disease, and ways to protect themselves from it. Push propaganda that causes people to doubt science and medicine. Put two con artist medical hustlers in charge of the departments responsible for our health, one of whom has had part of his brain eaten by a worm, and has a long history of drug abuse.
In the last week, we’ve seen fresh, new video of schools closed down and their classrooms being sprayed with disinfectant by people in hazmat suits. Sound familiar? Schools in ten states have been shut down, due to “influenza” but this doesn’t seem to be “influenza.” It’s something else—something new that doesn’t register on any of the testing. And it’s nasty—very nasty. COVID-level nasty.
Due to this new Dark Ages reboot, we’re seeing measles, tuberculosis, and other oldie but (not) goodie diseases spreading here in the United States, shamefully. Ebola is making a comeback in Africa. The Bird Flu is mutating and hopping its way from species to species, working its way to inevitable spread among humans. In the meantime, those birds fly great distances, and will infect many of the animals we rely on for survival—meat, dairy, and more.
I was driving this week and a snow goose fell from the sky and bounced off Henrik’s hood. It felt like a Hitchcock movie—that’s what our lives have been reduced to. The CDC put out an important document about the spread of Bird Flu to household cats, but it was quickly deleted.
Prepper Mitigation: Listen—way back before COVID, we all saw the occasional Asian person wearing a surgical mask in public. We saw them as quirky and over the top. As per usual, they were the smart ones. Giavana and I remember a guy on a flight diligently wiping down his entire area with alcohol upon boarding—before COVID. We thought he was odd, but not any more. We are that guy. We’re seeing more people wearing masks in public. Get over the stigma of “nobody else is doing it.” Screw that. People are wearing their pajamas out in the wild, who gives a damn if you have a mask on. The privacy reasons alone, in Trump’s new dystopian version of this country, is a good reason to do it. Do all the COVID things—frequent hand washing; avoid crowds; have your radar on for anyone who is showing any signs of being ill. Don’t rely on our supply chain for emergency meds. Grab a Jase Case as we just did. Stock up on disinfectants (with hydrogen peroxide), 91% alcohol, spray bottles, masks, test kits, therapeutics, preventatives. Our Oura rings are the first line of defense, early warning system, and awareness of what’s going on in our bodies.
Spread of Danger
I’ve talked before about how a lot of the security that makes us feel good is only simple theater. It’s an illusion. We always thought the Secret Service were badass, until a scrawny kid decided to climb up on a roof and assassinate a president, and damn near did. Same with the guy on the golf course a short time later. It was simple luck they didn’t succeed, not any of the billions we spend on protections and that badass facade of people in suits with earpieces.
Same with the airlines. We’ve seen many examples lately of ordinary people sneaking on flights, despite the layers of security theater surrounding those planes we trust our lives on.
We seem to have a goal to enrage every terrorist state even more against us as well as push away and anger our allies. We’re decapitating and demoralizing law enforcement and homeland/world intelligence and investigation agencies. Those two things don’t go hand in hand. Just like we likely won’t see the next pandemic until it’s too late, we likely won’t see the next big terror attack coming. Prepare.
Trump dismantled the Aviation Security group, decapitated FAA leadership, put a freeze on hiring air traffic controllers when they’re already badly short-staffed and over-stressed. The result was predictable—planes full of citizens falling from the sky, more dead American citizens on our own soil. Just like when he dismantled our world-wide pandemic early warning systems in 2017, and over a million innocent Americans then died on our soil. I use “innocent” with a grain of salt here—those that voted for him, knowing he’s a life-long con man, I guess are not so innocent. Suum cuique tribuere—you get what you deserve.
Desperation breeds violence. We’re about to see a whole lot more desperation. As Trump’s ignorant, violent supporters start to realize the pain they’ve brought on themselves, how they’ve been betrayed and lied to, they’ll likely rise up. People are rising up, and this will be met with violence from the government, as Trump has been dying to do his entire life. The loose coalition of this nightmare—the extreme Christian right, the billionaires, the MAGA low-lifes, will begin to turn on each other when that loose alliance unravels, as each jockeys for power. There will be anarchy, and that, unfortunately, means violence.
This will all come to a head soon in some way, shape, or form. If Musk defies the court order to stop dismantling the government and stealing citizen data this week, we’ll be in a full blown Constitutional crisis (again). Emotions may boil over if the government shuts down next month over Republican inadequacy to put a budget in place.
Our new heroes emerged this week. A group of white Nazi dudes appeared on a bridge over an interstate near Cincinnati, Ohio, and began hanging up Nazi flags. They were too scared to show their faces, ironically wearing those masks they had recently called “face diapers that didn’t allow them to breathe.” They wore guns on their hips—security theater cosplay badasses. Their mistake was doing this in close proximity to the hood. A band of brave brothers and sisters emerged from one side of the bridge, and the “badass” Nazis ran away like scared little children in their mini U-Haul. The good guys and gals burned those Nazi flags in primal celebration. Heroism by the populace. “They chose the wrong neighborhood,” one resident said. The cops stood by the entire time. Imagine it had been some Black folks with BLM flags. Imagine the skulls being busted in that alternate scenario.
Prepper Mitigation: You are the security, nobody will save you, except your tribe. Take precautions, prepare. I’ve written journal posts here about how to do that—go re-read them. Train yourself and your family to be very observant of everything and everyone around you. Heads up, phones down. Always look for your shelter or exit points. Avoid trouble and physical confrontation. Far more dangerous times are ahead for you and your family. Do all the preparedness things we’ve been guiding you with for this year and a half of our journey.
Spread of Fascism
There can longer be denial—we’re already there. Our democracy is being dismantled before our eyes, with all guardrails lying smashed by the side of the road. Election analytics are now making their way out of the deep on the ground studies that have been undertaken since November 5. It’s quite clear those results are far, far from normal.
The odds that any candidate could win all seven swing states by margins outside the recount threshold and not get far more than 50% of the popular vote are roughly the same as playing the MegaMillions with one entry and winning seven times in a row, or flipping a coin and having it come up heads twenty-five times in a row. Meaning—non-existent.
Likely Democrat voters were surgically purged from the voting rolls in swing states by the millions. The very strategically placed bomb threats in key counties in swing states, by Russia, helped a great deal. However, that still accounts for only a fraction of the problem. Same with the massive, massive levels of brainwashing propaganda Americans were exposed to on Fox and Twitter/X in the years leading up to the election. Trump and Musk have been pretty openly bragging about their “little secret,” which likely involves result manipulation at the county tabulation machine level. Several European countries are now investigating Musk for interference in their elections. He’s pushing the Nazis hard in Germany.
Prepper Mitigation: Fight. Fight hard. Back to the happy, smurfy Hobbits in that Shire—they fought. Everyone can do something, whether it’s from home or out there in the streets, like those brave neighbors in Cincinnati who just weren’t playing on that day. There’s power in numbers. Cosplay tough guys and wannabe bullies like Trump and Musk don’t like getting punched in the face figuratively or otherwise. They’re soft, spoiled rich kids who have had everything handed to them in life, without adversity. We are the adversity. Find your tribe and make a little time. Give a few bucks for the cause. indivisible.org, citizen.org, aclu.org are good places to start. Spend five minutes a day making calls at 5calls.org. C’mon, it’s not much. Especially when it’s an effort to ease or mitigate the suffering of those you love.
There are many protests on the horizon, and showing up makes a difference. Find one near you at this link or one of the aforementioned sites. Be smart if you go. Wear a facemask and perhaps even ski googles or some kind of eyewear/sunglasses. Nondescript clothing. Cover any tattoos. Tie your hair up under a ballcap with a visor. Leave your phone at home, have your emergency contacts on you. Don't bring any kind of weapon (even a knife), weed, etc. Don't wear contact lenses. Bring bottles of water to drink and wash your eyes out. Have cash and your ID only. Earplug in case of sonic devices by the cops. A few first aid supplies. You will be among many friends who will help you. Your tribe.
About You
All that can be hard to process. These are stressful times, we know—we have beloved family members who are in crisis over this. Not because of who they voted for or who they love or anything like that. They’re just normal pretty much apolitical American adults. They’re in crisis because they have families, homes, kids, and their jobs are being targeted for no good reason. So many good, innocent families across America are or will be impacted by this insanity.
You can’t help your loved ones or yourself unless you take care of yourself. Clear your head. Go for walks, take time to listen to music and read. Work on yourself, love yourself. In hard times, folks often turn to self-medication. That’s the wrong way. Nobody knows better than I how good that escape high can feel. It only makes things worse.
Want the same kind of high without drugs or booze? Purify your soul. Do good things for others, each and every day. You know how clean you feel after a long cleansing bath or shower, after you get a chance to dry off and relax? That’s what purifying yourself from the inside out feels like. It’s the right kind of high—a natural high. Get back to some kind of faith or spiritualism, be it Christianity, Buddhism, Mindfulness, or anything with a positive message. Mend those long broken fences. It starts with self-love and self-esteem. That’s the ticket, take the train. It helps prepare you to be ready for anything.
“Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away
We better stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look, what's going down”—Stephen Stills, For What It’s Worth
So, this is where Giavana, Pia, and I are currently in our pioneer journey. Stay tuned! This pioneer journey continues…
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Intro music is Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby.
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