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Here are some of the things you can start doing today to get yourself ready if the world ends or if it doesn’t.
“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.” – Nick Fury the Avengers
If you watch the news things are bleak at best. No matter what happens out there we are done is what the news says. I’ve decided to not watch the news. Because what do they know?
I’ve reached out to a bunch of my friends and they have reached out to me. You are not alone about some of the things you are thinking when you watch the news.
Have we passed the point of no return? I don’t know… but it doesn’t look good.
I’ve been asked what to do by a couple people. The answer is simple but not easy.
First you have to have your life, your relationships, your health, and your wealth shored up and ready to go.
Your Life
If the world intends to end, why aren’t you living your life to its fullest right now? Enjoy the time you have before the world goes more to shit.
Are you truly enjoying the things you are doing, what you are doing to make a living, where you are living, and are you just a happy person?
If not… why not? All this is on you. Make your life as good as you make it. Work at it on both sides of the coin. If the worst happens, are you having a good life when it ends? If nothing every changes, are you living the best life you can?
Your Relationships
How close are you to your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and the people you see regularly? Why aren’t you close friends with all of them? Got to it.
If the worst happens you will need friends and people that will help you. After the Nazis started taking over Europe you think people helped the Jews they knew first or last?
People have always helped their friends and always will. Make friends with all you meet. Someday you might need them, or they just might make your life better.
Your Health
How’s your health? If the worst happens (like a global pandemic or worse) are you in as good as shape as you could be? If you really think you will fight the next war you need to be in as good as shape as you can.
War is about the most physical thing you can endure. Lack of sleep, food, rest, and just about everything else your body needs to be at its best is the normal, not the unusual. It is one of the reasons countries around the world don’t want old soldiers. Soldiering is hard on the body.
If things start going south, what meds do you need to survive? How long can you walk? When is the last time you walked for a long time with a load on your back?
If you don’t know what you can do physically, maybe it’s time to get back in shape and find out. This is my worst area right now and I’m working on it. But it takes lots of time.
Your Wealth
I do and don’t mean money shoved under the mattress or stashed someplace.
How is every piece of your finances right now? Do you have debt? How’s your income? How much savings do you have? Liquid and assets?
What kind of non-financial wealth do you have? The Five B’s. Do you have beans, bullets, bandages, and batteries saved up? Do the batteries actually work. You don’t store the last B, bad guys, you just prepare for the day the wolf knocks at your door.
Prepare for the last B
This is and isn’t what you think. You should be on the range about once a month keeping proficient with firearms. You should be working hand to hand skills to keep sharp, but the other thing you need to do is learn tactics.
The shooting is only a part of what needs to happen if the world is going to end. You need to be able to use tactics to out manuever your enemy on and off the battlefield.
If a war comes to America again, there will be no off the battlefield. You will have to learn how to live in a popetial state of war. It was one of the hardest things we did as Marines in 2003. There was no bases. There was no rear area. There was only the front or the “tip of the spear.” If a civil war starts in America there will be no rear area, there will be only war.
To prepare for that, you should read books on small unit tactics. All of the current Army and Marine Corps books can be found online and read. Get a couple and read them. Most are dry and boring, but they have good info on them. And when things get bad, that is what the government will use. Whichever side of the fight you end up on, you will want to know what our military will do.
If you want to continue your education more, you can start reading recounts of battles long ago. This will give you an advantage to our current military.
In the current military there is only so much time. So they are taught what is going on right now. Our military sometimes forgets a lot of things that happened in the past and focuses on training troops for the war that just happened or is happening right now.
Good military innovation only happens when lots of soldiers die on the battle field. And it takes forever! If you can learn what is going on right now, what they are being trained to do, then you will know what the military will do even in a civil war.
If you read the books of the past to find the tactics they used, you will know other ways to fight the battles. This will give you an advantage over our current military.
If you want to read a real account of battle, I suggest the book Platoon Leader: A Memoir of Command in Combat by James R. McDonough. Almost everything that happened in that book, happened to me in combat. It will give you a feel of the stupidity that happens in combat. It was creepy how accurate it was even today.
Find books of great warriors of the past and start reading. All of them will give you tactical ideas about how to win the next battle. Most will tell you what not to do in combat. Head their warnings… they probably learned it the hard way.
One of the books that changed the way I thought about combat was Dragon Days: time for Unconventional Tactics and Tactics of the Crescent Moon by H. John Poole. The first half of the books are history, literally, and the second half is all tactics that can be used by small units.
Read and learn all you can. Tactics and strategies win wars and battles. Being the best with a rifle can win you a gun fight, but tactics will also win in the long run.
Stay Safe,
Ben