Original Article:
By PAT HENRY
When I got into Prepping back in around 2005, I felt compelled by a certain feeling in my gut that things were not going in the right direction. I saw potential threats to my family everywhere, so I began an intense study of the possibilities and likelihood of many different events. Most of my imagined threats were along the lines of a doomsday scenario but more and more I’m convinced that some of the top threats to Preppers are sneaking in among us as we speak.
I know for myself, I expected a giant explosion or some catastrophic event that happened immediately and affected everyone. I was always on the lookout, tense to a small degree most of the time and this lasted me for years. I was fully aware that you were more likely to need to prepare for a loss of a job or small regional natural disaster than a grid down apocalypse, but in terms of the “thing” I was prepping for, those relatively common events didn’t really get me too worried.
I finally started the Prepper Journal blog in 2013 to share what I had learned and to learn from others and maintained that for years, but no big “thing” happened. Day by day we kept going and society chugged along, but the threats to Preppers, Freedom-loving Americans, and I would say people around the world continued to grow. My problem and I think the problem with many peppers is that the threat doesn’t look like we thought it would. And rather than fighting zombies at my front door, we are facing a different type of tyranny.
Today I am focusing on a different threat and it’s one I have alluded to in my recent articles. I think that the last several years the message of prepping was to have basic supplies to take care of your family in smaller emergencies but the time has come to look at larger – maybe societal issues that could have more long-term negative impacts to preppers.
What are some top threats to Preppers?
Let me start by removing politics from this conversation as much as possible. At this point in my life, I do not really believe either political party is above reproach and I think both have done some pretty bad things in my opinion. I am not one to say if only so and so won the election, all our troubles would be over.
I do believe that some policies are more aligned with my way of thinking but politics and politicians by my estimation are all humans, prone to corruption, and eventually get power-hungry. So, this isn’t a red versus blue fight to my mind. The threats to preppers I mention below have proponents on both sides of the isles and business is tied up in the middle as well. If anything, it’s the people versus the state – regardless of who is running the state at the moment.
Loss of your right to free speech
It used to be a given that in the land of the free, we thrived on a diversity of opinions and thoughts. Ideas were debated and with that process, a consensus was reached on the best ideas and thoughts that usually were shared by most the people. That began to change when the primary method of speech became delivered by internet platforms.
I believe that anyone should be able to say what they want in their capacity as a private citizen and that should be allowed regardless of what they are saying. I think this is much more important when we are talking about political speech. The current technology crackdowns on “hate” speech and the rush to censorship are alarming to me. Much more alarming than the stupidest most horrible things people can say. Who determines what is hate and why is hate any different than anything else?
Detractors will say that these social platforms are private so they can limit what is said or remove access to their services and I understand that thought, but it is not as simple as that. Yes, FB, Twitter, Apple, and Google are private companies, but they have for years been acting as a public service of sorts. Their platforms are free and open to anyone, so our culture has shifted to the point that this is the public square. These platforms are where speech happens. When these companies arbitrarily limit who can participate or what can be said, it does have an effect. I won’t even get into the bias for views that are tolerated as opposed to what is censored.
People are already penalized for what should be their own opinion – thoughts, in a number of ways. The “cancel culture” can cost people jobs if their “values do not reflect” the company they are working for. Mobs of violent protestors can show up outside their offices or places of work. Thoughtcrime is here! People are punished for what they think if it doesn’t fit in with what the power structure wants them to think. It is no longer just a throwaway reference to 1984, it’s a real problem we have to deal with now. And it is only going to get worse.
The way I believe this is going, you will not be able to share your real thoughts anymore in any type of social media. Unless you are saying what “they” want you to say. And it might be fine if that’s all it is. You might think – I will just get off social media completely and then they will not know what I think. Or I’ll join the other platforms out there that are supposed to value freedom of speech like Gab or Parlor and that may work for a while.
Eventually though, without revolutionary change and I just mean the scale of change, not that a war is necessary, we will not be able to speak our mind without more serious consequences. Don’t believe me? Just look at China’s Social Credit system for a glimpse into what is coming for the US. It does not even have to be what you say. It can be the places you visit physically, your web search history or what you spend your money on.
I can even see a future where like now, a reasonable amount of credit history is necessary for any large purchases – your online history will be used to rate your creditworthiness or job acceptability. Hiding from the system will not only be not an option, but it will also be obvious when you don’t participate and you will be penalized.
Loss of privacy
As we get more and more into the Internet of Things (IoT) which will be brought into much greater prominence with the eventual rollout of 5G technology the sheer amount of data collected on you will be all anyone could need to develop an extremely detailed psychological blueprint of what you are, what you like and even what you can be expected to do.
24 hours a day, a giant trove of information is collected on you. Do you have a smartwatch, a cell phone, maybe a device like an Alexa, smart meter, or home security system? All these devices are collecting information to be used in some way to tell people how you live your life.
Your smartwatches and fit bits are collecting massive amounts of health data about you from how much you exercise to how your heart is performing. I can see this eventually being used to prescribe not only health programs but affect your insurance rates. Our smart phones collect essentially every where we go, who we talk to and what we are interested in. All purchases online are tracked by the companies you purchase from and detailed profiles are made on you to show you the ads that will resonate most successfully with someone with your background.
Your home is also reporting on what times you are active when you go to sleep and how much you leave the lights on. Interior security sensors capture when you are home, who visits, what packages you get. And that isn’t even counting the growing number of public cameras and sensors recording you in public.
Unless you physically get off the grid, information profiles are being built and modified on you with so many touchpoints, it boggles the mind, and this is not an accident.
Loss of access to information
Going back to the censorship I mentioned above, the same technology companies that are so worried about speech are also removing dissenting opinion in the forms of interviews, books and I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that history itself is going to be thrown down the memory hole to a large extent.
When all data is available online, it’s easy to change. Don’t like the way a public speech went, just erase any record of it. It really wouldn’t be hard to do. News articles are updated all of the time to change facts and there is no real reason why they ever have to tell you it’s been changed.
I change articles on this site occasionally, to update references or to add more appropriate links and the old information is just gone. How many of you google at least one time a day a question you have? Can you envision a future when Google just returns the data it wants you to know, not facts or what actually happened?
Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it – Santayana
What if the history you are learning is just wrong because it gets changed in the future?
Loss of 2nd Amendment rights
You would have to really have been living under a rock to not believe the right to own weapons is under attack and it seems odd to me that almost the minute the election was over and the “other side” politically got into power, mass murders started happening again.
Murders have always happened and they always will unless we are all lobotomized rats hooked into the matrix. Taking away your right to defend yourself is something that we should all fight against. I believe every law-abiding citizen has the right to purchase weapons to defend themselves and others.
It makes more sense to me to arm law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against criminals than it does to disarm law-abiding citizens and not disarm criminals. That is common-sense gun legislation to me.Pat Henry
I heard an interesting theory the other day and it goes like this, rather than take all of the guns away, let’s make it a law that every adult must have a weapon and be trained in how to use it. Can you imagine what would happen then? When someone walked into a massage parlor and started shooting, you would have 8 people shooting back. When someone walked into a grocery store or a theatre or a school and seriously had to expect they would be killed the second they started shooting, what do you think would happen to the rate of violence like this?
You may think I am advocating for a wild west type of approach and maybe I am. It makes more sense to me to arm law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against criminals than it does to disarm law-abiding citizens and not disarm criminals. That is common-sense gun legislation to me.
If we lose the fight for the second amendment, unspeakable tyranny is coming. When there is no resistance to tyranny you do get things like concentration camps. If they treat us like this when there are 393 million guns in the US, what will they treat us like when they take them all?
Conclusion
I mentioned in my article on Prepping 2.0 that we need to start thinking bigger picture than storing up some food, water and band-aids. We are really starting to see an attack on so many of the facets of life that make America the greatest country for freedom and personal potential in the world.
Preppers have shown that they have a special attention to what is going on around them and they recognize that we all need to take steps to prepare. Make sure you analyze what you are prepping for.
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