By the author of The Faithful Prepper and The Prepper’s Guide to Post-Disaster Communications.
We’re seeing some strange things in modern society and all signs point to the fact that famine is coming. Within the US, drought on the plains is making is so that winter wheat can’t grow while up in North Dakota there’s so much water that farmers’ fields are too waterlogged for anybody to do any planting. I have my suspicions.
American farmers that are able to get out into the field are having a hard time finding critical components they need to their machinery.
Two children were just hospitalized due to a lack of infant formula within America. When have you ever heard of that happening before?
We’ve witnessed a lot of talk about smallpox pandemics over the course of the past two years, Germany is now gearing up for another wonderful “simulation” wargaming a pox pandemic originating from leopards, and now, monkeypox is popping up throughout the world.
Monkeypox outbreak:
– UK: 9 confirmed cases
– Portugal: 5 confirmed, 15 suspected
– Spain: 23 suspected
– USA: 1 confirmed (Massachusetts)— BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk) May 18, 2022
As of this writing, there are 9 cases in the UK, possibly 21 in Portugal, 23 suspected in Spain, 13 suspected in Canada, and 1 in the United States. The initial reports all stated that this was from an infected man flying back from Nigeria on a commercial plane.
Monkeypox isn’t something I’m terribly concerned about as of yet. I am having a hard time finding the R0 of monkeypox (the number of new people infected on average from a single case) It’s just something I’m keeping my eyes on. What I am concerned about is the public health response.
Sri Lanka is currently experiencing food riots. People are being hunted down in the streets as we speak. Iran seems to be experiencing a version of the same.
Nations throughout the world have quit exporting food.
Food facilities throughout the Western world keep going up in smoke at numbers that we’ve never seen before. These fires are no accident. (An almond processing plant just had one, by the way.)
Chickens are being culled by the millions throughout America.
Hyperinflation is kicking in. Even those suffering from normalcy bias are beginning to talk about it.
There is talk that the East Coast is out of diesel. I’m hearing rumors – from people who aren’t preppers – that gas on the East Coast is expected to be $8/gallon next month.
Our Southern border is non-existent and thousands of “refugees” are being pumped across it as we speak. How many of these have military training? Remember that Venezuela and Russia have quite the relationship. Foreign troops on US soil? That’s not too far-fetched of an idea.
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The point is that America is being set up for a very hard fall.
The threat of famine is coming as we are being ushered into a one world government. Famines create conditions where people will sell anything for food. Fabian pointed out your guns would be part of this. History also shows us that peoples’ freedom goes right out the window when famine enters. The man with the food is the one that gets to make the decisions.
Consider both China and Russia have stored years’ worth of food at the moment. Meanwhile, in America, we can’t even keep our own children fed.
You need to store more food now.
To seek trouble coming down the road and to take action against it is wisdom.
Food preparation is key, but as Joe Dolio points out, so is the ability to produce food. Ayn Rand famously said that production is wealth (she was pulling from Adam Smith, but the truth remains). Eventually, you’re going to run out of your long-term food stores. You’re not going to have any more buckets of beans, rice, and wheat berries.
What will you do then?
You’re going to need to have the ability to replenish your supplies.
You’re going to need to know how to grow, practice pest control in the garden, how to harvest, how to save seed, how to can your harvest, how to store your food so that it lasts, and if you’re not learning how to do all this now, you are setting yourself up for a world of hurt.
(If you want to learn how to can, check out our free QUICKSTART Guide on home canning.)
This is why I take issue with preppers who minimize the notion of food production. “Those people take things too far. They think society will collapse completely. We really just need to be able to ride over the occasional hiccups in life.”
These are the people who have never read a history book. They were born in the 50s and 60s and think that the America they grew up in still is the same America and will continue to be so forever. Wrong. Turn off your TV and take in a hefty dose of reality.
The problem though is that not everybody has access to acres and acres out in the middle of nowhere where their survival retreat is filled with geese, cows, corn, and chickens. Many Americans live in suburbia or urban environments.
What are you to do then?
Our new course, Urban Agriculture, is definitely a great place to start. One of our primary garden writers for a long time now has been Jayne Rising. She knows exactly what it takes to raise your own food in a non-typical environment. She’s been there. She’s done it. And she’s crafted a course to show you how to do it too.
In this course, Jayne points out what you need to know about pest management, what foods you should grow, proper harvesting at the end of season, how to maintain your soil, how to best care for your plants, and more. Producing your own food can be a rather steep learning curve. A mentor can save you the headaches, frustration, and wasted money that you would have had to put up with otherwise.
Urban Agriculture can help you on this journey.
Right now, you can pick up the course on sale for the price of $79.00 (sticker price is $149.00).
Famine is coming. Are you prepared?
What are your thoughts? Are you trying to get your loved ones to realize this? Are you seeing food shortages, shrinkflation, or a spike in food prices in your area? Let us know what you’re seeing in the comments below.
About Aden
Aden Tate is a regular contributor to TheOrganicPrepper.com and TheFrugalite.com. Aden runs a micro-farm where he raises dairy goats, a pig, honeybees, meat chickens, laying chickens, tomatoes, mushrooms, and greens. Aden has three published books, The Faithful Prepper, The Prepper’s Guide to Post-Disaster Communications, and Zombie Choices. You can find his podcast The Last American on Preppers’ Broadcasting Network.
Cats are God’s own form of pest control. A good hunter will happily catch a dozen rodents a day, every day. That’s two or three thousand rodents a year. Per cat. Watching them do deep dives into the snow and come up with a vole is like watching a nature documentary live. All you need to do is put out something for breakfast (NOT dinner, nocturnal predators will get it), and they will stay on your homestead. And give them shelter for bad weather. And for a bonus, they will also kill every snake they can find.
I can vouch for the skills of cats. We just got our third cat we are sure will be as skilled as her predecessors.
I’m in a rural area of a western state – we have seen very little of anything that could be called “food shortages” so far, and although some things have gone up in price – especially meat and gasoline, most things haven’t so far.
That doesn’t mean I trust those intentionally wrecking the planet who are hellbent on making people suffer and and as miserable as they can to not make their influence felt here soon.
And let’s not forget this – their REAL goal is simply to make others miserable. They are full of hate for themselves and humanity and do not know how to feel emotions like love. Just anger and hate.
If they experience “joy,” it’s only the joy of hurting other people as much as they can get away with before they die.
Food Collapse dot com — news website
https://foodcollapse.com/#
AND
New Food System Will Stop at Nothing to Control You,
By Dr. Joseph Mercola
Reprinted here on 20 May 2022:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/05/joseph-mercola/new-food-system-will-stop-at-nothing-to-control-you/
Plus extensive reference links.
–Lewis
Cities will be the first places to run out of foodstuffs. When that happens the dwellers will leave their cesspool cities and head out foraging, meaning stealing from anyone they can because they don’t know how to feed themselves any other way. There will be MILLIONS of thieving feral humans trying to take from those who prepared so keep your powder dry America.
No doubt some will do exactly that: head out into the country with delusions of food fields shining in the sun, guarded by hillbillies too stupid to shoot straight. I’ll leave it to my country cousins to disabuse them of those notions LOL
The smarter city dwellers will make use of knowledge and resources, and get by as best they can. Just as they did in Sarajevo when leaving wasn’t an option. Obviously the time to prepare is NOW. It’s prime gardening season. Smart city dwellers know this.
“guarded by hillbillies”
they’ll outnumber the hillbillies 20/1. and they’ll have guns too.
FYI don’t be sooo sure. The country and rural life is packed with well to do folks in big houses, ranches, on farms with $$$$ and they are far from being Hillbillies. They are well educated. THEY work in towns and cities and they drive home 5-10-15 miles or more to their sanctuary…The MAYOR of my town lives 18 miles away and drives into town everyday…RON DeSantis family in Fl. live in the country! Doctors, lawyers, School administrators etc. live in the country !!! And YES they have GUNS and security alarm systems and Great BIG dogs in and out of their houses…Enlighten your self please on the RURAL folks…The ones who venture out there will be in danger way more than they think…They don’t own farms and ranches etc. b/c they are stupid idiot hillbillies !!! Please use some common sense.
Absolutely! I meant that as a tongue in cheek comment, no disrespect of my country cousins intended. Those I lived with out there could shoot very well actually. Other city folk actually do think that way but again, I’ll leave enlightening them to all of you.
18 miles from a city is not rural. it’s suburb. and such areas will do worse than either cities or rural areas because 1) they produce little food and 2) have less clout than cities in obtaining what remains in the system.
Yeah and they will be holding their guns sideways whereas we have been shooting all our lives. I got my first shotgun at 8 y/o so theres that.
“they will be holding their guns sideways”
“city” != “gangbanger”. there are more trained people with guns in the cities than there are in rural areas.
It is the Lord who protects and grants victory, regardless of odds. Look at Gideon, the “mighty warrior” of the Bible. The Lord’s sees his beloved for who they really are and those of who trust what he tells us about ourselves will be formidable too. So yeah, prepare and be ready to fight, if needed, but do not focus only on what you see, but also what is unseen.
Trust and do not be afraid. As saints, we are called to wage war every day, all day. The Gospel and prayer and obedience are our primary weapons. Don’t be an idle warrior. Don’t be caught sleeping at your post!
“It is the Lord who protects and grants victory, regardless of odds.”
to believers, sure. when he does, sure.
Runt7,
If they shoot anything like you, we will have nothing to worry about.
Shouldn’t you be working on your manifesto?
“If they shoot anything like you, we will have nothing to worry about”
most of them will shoot as well as you. and they’ll outnumber you by a large margin.
Yeah, no kidding. It’s not like Mr. Know It All gives useful advice or anything.
“gives useful advice”
a correct perspective is good advice.
I disagree.
Jayne have you ever read Selco’s stories about how life was in Sarajevo? Smart city dwellers LEFT well before the war erupted. Those that would not or could not suffered from hunger, malnutrition, urban warfare, snipers, disease as unburied people trapped in the rubble rotted and well human fecal materials did NOT have a working sewer system to whisk it away with a flush.
Nothing I’d wish on any single or widowed mother.
NOT LOL
“Cities will be the first places to run out of foodstuffs”
no, they’ll be the last. any remaining food anywhere in the distribution system will go to the cities first. the rural areas, which have little food production themselves, will be cut off first.
I TOTALLY DISAGREE…and why do you say that?????
“I TOTALLY DISAGREE”
with what, exactly? that cities have the money and votes to commandeer any food in a shortage? that rural areas are just as dependent on outside source of food as cities? that any food they do have will be commandeered/confiscated by cities?
That is the purpose of this site. Be prepared. Most city folk have no clue if it isnt shrink wrapped. Rural ppl will have the upper hand. Don,t think the thugs are coming out for my tom and beans. If so its on them. My folks have to eat too.
“Rural ppl will have the upper hand”
the cities will have the numbers, the finances, the people, and the drive to obtain what they need from wherever it is. they will have the “upper hand”.
Until the cities are locked down, trapping the residents, as is happening in the latest corona-insanity in cities in China. The inability to move freely will doom those trapped and locked down in big cities.
Oh you mean the 1950’s city dwellers! The ones’ who were not lazy! Got it! Cuz that sure isn’t the way they are now.
I think you must thrive here as you seek only to “plant” divisiveness. I find you entertaining though. How many hours do you wait for the responses to you “quips.” There is some truth to some of your statements; one must sift through them to find the fine grains of clarity.
Clearly you never lived in a small community or rural area. You couldn’t be more wrong. Yes city people may get all the incoming food but the rural people typically don’t rely on going into the city for food. They are mostly self reliant or rely on other local farmers. I grew up in a town (village) of 600 with most of it rural. I now live in an urban area so I’ve seen both sides. Almost every family I know still living in the small town has at least a garden and the majority kill and dress for their own meat. I know many who haven’t bought fish/meat at a grocery store in years! I can assure you they will fare very well compared to most others. Also small communities band together, unlike city/urban where many don’t even know their next door neighbor.
“They are mostly self reliant or rely on other local farmers”
a handful are economically independent. the large majority are banana republics – they produce one or two items and are reliant on imports for absolutely everything else. they are less economically independent than cities – far less.
“small communities band together”
city people band together too, when they have a reason. they’ll have a reason.
“kill and dress for their own meat”
that works fine when hunters are few and hunting is regulated. when the number of hunters increases x10 and regulations are ignored then entire populations will be hunted to extinction in short order. very short order.
what you’re missing is that things change. you’re presuming that what you see now – the laws, the practices, the city/rural relationship – will continue. they won’t. they will change, and not in favor of the rural areas.
I live in a rural area now, and I just don’t see the things you are describing.
Not many hunters. Gardens, but supplemental things, not anything that would feed a family of four.
The local range is often empty. I rarely hear what I would recognize as “practice” shooting.
My impression is that people everywhere vastly overestimate themselves. I rarely see an honest estimate of abilities or skills, or people (preppers included) seeking metrics and means to evaluate themselves.
I see a lot of faith, and assessment of capabilities based on… not much, honestly. Anecdotal evidence and this weird trust that since great grandpa used to shoot deer in a flannel jacket, well, I must be a crackerjack shot, too.
Its crazy.
Everyone here gets food at Walmart or Aldis. Full stop.
Even people who can buy a quarter cow from a local farmer. And post SHTF, they sure won’t be getting that.
I think its a bit late for city dwellers to be purchasing a course on “Urban Agriculture”, seriously. Famine is already stalking the land, beginning first in dirt-poor countries and it will swiftly spread from there. More and more nations are announcing they are halting all food exports in attempts to horde what they already have. No relief in sight for those who have nothing, now.
No doubt some urbanites will plant, but how will they keep what grows and harvest it in consideration of ‘the mob’… even their neighbors? Good luck with that!
I disagree. It’s prime planting season in this hemisphere and there are a ton of new preppers looking for some guidance. It’s not at all too late to start and you’d obviously be surprised at how many are doing it. And this course includes advice on getting started with food preservation as well. New gardeners can do much more to help themselves than most prepper snobs give them credit for!
So, I’m a “prepper snob” for pointing out that the time is late. This if from the above article… “You’re going to need to know how to grow, practice pest control in the garden, how to harvest, how to save seed, how to can your harvest, how to store your food so that it lasts, and if you’re not learning how to do all this now, you are setting yourself up for a world of hurt.” I seriously doubt buying a gardening course now will enable someone to gain years of accumulated gardening skills. A few slicing tomatoes in a pot is one thing. Feeding yourself is quite another. Have you any idea how many acres are required to feed one person for a year? Five… in a good growing season. In a city with thousands (millions) of hungry people, would that garden even make it to harvest? Thats not snobbery. Thats just reality.
So people should just lie down and starve? Reality is: they won’t. And yes it’s late but not too late. People are feeding themselves in several cities, including New York and Detroit. Urban agriculture is a Thing. City rooftops provide lots of space, and that’s far from the only feasible farming method. Aquaponics and hydroponics ring a bell? Telling people to just lie down and die is pure snobbery, and most unrealistic. I have much more respect for those trying to help themselves. At least they’re trying! If I can turn an honest buck by helping them, what is your problem?
If you really wanted to help you wouldn’t charge them anything.
We all have to make a living. Do you get paid for your job?
Ask Mike Adams what he charges for his pod casts and Daily Situation Updates. How about Matt Braken and a host of others who feel the information is TOO IMPORTANT than trying to sell it to desperate people. I don’t have an issue with anyone earning “an honest dollar”. But why don’t you do full disclosure on these articles that states at the front end, “I am offering this to encourage you to buy my product”. Allowing sellers to post an article that further panics readers. leading to selling their product. is disingenuous and BS. Covering cost is one thing, making a profit of people’s anxiety is something else.
We publish 2 articles a day absolutely free with tremendous amounts of advice. We have an archive of more than 3000 articles, also free. We have always given away every product we create to anyone who contacts us and cannot afford it. If you prefer Mike Adams’ and Matt Bracken’s content, go for it. Furthermore, this article was not written by the course creator.
Have a great day.
Daisy, you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. Thank you for your work.
Yes it’s amazing what you can grow indoors or on a patio/balcony. I have several herbs, pineapple, romaine, amd green onions growing in my window sill right now. I have a lettuce grow farmstand on its way. With the grow lights there’s not a lot that I can’t grow. Many plants can be grown in planters as well. And as I stated in a previous comment I know plenty of people who feed their family from their own gardens and some on very small parcels.
Absolutely! As I see it, every bite I put into my mouth that I grew is something I didn’t have to buy. And it’s amazing how much we can grow on a tiny urban lot!
“ Five… in a good growing season.”
In your opinion or in your experience?
It doesn’t take anywhere near 5 acres to feed one person for a year if you grow the right foods over a course of a year and you won’t need a tiller to do it! My parents grew a lot of the food on the half-acre lot that our family ate every year (eight of us!). We had vegetables, fruits, eggs, and meat. Now, my husband and I are growing most of the food we eat on our acre and a half. What we don’t eat, we sell to buy what we can’t grow.
There are a lot of indoor growing options that would allow you privacy from others looking for food. Even if you do have an outdoor garden, livestock, etc if you don’t have a way to protect (i.e guns and ammo) it you could lose it all. In my opinion food and security kind of go hand in hand because you’ll need to protect your food, regardless of where it’s stored or planted.
whydah…YES, WHY do they not realize that anything and everything planted OUTSIDE will be stolen (even in the wee dark hours of the night? Planting outside will be fine until the mobs of hungry people show up and in cities the mobs are all around so imagine the chaos when ALL of them get hungry, can’t feel themselves or their kids…Many live in highrises, condos, townhouses, apartments and have absolutely NO room to plant or keep any foods except inside. The ones in trailers/mobile homes have some room but not enough and imagine the folks (think Florida and warmer climates) that live FULL TIME in Campers and motor homes, they have even less room to store anything. SOOOO. And many thousands, millions are NOT able to plant at all and even if they could it would be stolen. Most on rented land are NOT allowed to be planting anything. Do you not think their neighbors will turn on them and steal if they can in hard times when people are hungry????? Ahhhhh, think again please…To me, this is simple common sense, Seeing the forest for the trees and just thinking outside the box. We NEED to enlighten ourselves and do some smart thinking that will be beneficial to us…
Wandakate maybe if you were to bring up ideas to address the situation? You seem to have put a lot of thoughts about this.
I for example have been a gardener off and on for over two decades. Mostly organic and am always learning. My truck garden two years ago had so much I was a regular donator to the food bank and senior center. Didn’t do it last year for family reasons.
Most folks don’t know what food looks like outside the grocery store. Corn and red tomatoes, yes, those are easy even for a “Hood Rat” to ID. Farm like gardens in nice rows and often with plain weeded dirt between identical plants is a pretty easy give away.
My amusement is when visitors look at my madcap compost pile with a wild variety of volunteer plants growing and thinking or often saying what a weedy mess. Sometimes I plunge my hand into that weedy mess and pull out a nice carrot or such for a snack :-).
I’ve grown in HOA flower beds potatoes and got away with it. Was fun to subtly snip at the flower Nazis that way. Folks don’t know what a potato plant looks like, same with most root veggies.
So, Wandakate, what ideas do you have to help others survive the coming Holodomor?
An outrageous idea that I had for keeping the hoards away from my garden stems from the idea of allowing deadly nightshade to grow alongside my tomatoes. A person who steals “tomatoes” from me might find themselves expired for eating a “weed” from my garden that they thought was a tomato. Oops.
“Are City Dwellers Prepared?”
superficially, no. but whatever food is available will go there first.
My educational background and training is in public health, infection control and epidemiology. I’ve admittedly been out of the ID-loop lately since changing into a different field. However, Monkeypox is certainly pretty low yield when it comes to pandemic potential. Respiratory viruses and pandemic Influenza are definitely what I would anticipate as the next “big one.” Second would be antibiotic resistance. Third would be EIDs such as Nipah or Hendra which have hard to manage reservoirs (bats). I was fortunate enough to keep my ear to the ground regarding C19 and we were well-prepared and anticipated certain supplies running dry. I guess that’s one perk of having a personal and professional interest in infectious diseases.
The family and I relocated out of a smaller metropolitan area last year and we have been slowly chipping away at food security. Stating the obvious here but I think we are definitely heading into a time of scarcity where “victory gardens” and pig/cow/meat “clubs” make a come back.
Great read!
I am a city-dweller in the Los Angeles area on a 50×100 lot. My backyard is being converted into all garden, though it is taking time. Anyone flying a drone will be able to see it, so backyards are not private. Would it be wise to grow unconventional produce, such as yellow tomatoes, purple beans, etc. in front yards so the uneducated won’t recognize them? This is definitely a time to work on skills and get the “victory gardens” in.
Good for you! By all means convert your front yard to edible produce. Look up OPSEC in the Garden on this site. Get a field guide for your area and see what’s edible in your yard already. You might also consider table top hydroponics and Kratky jars. Never mind those who say it’s too late or can’t be done.
“Would it be wise to grow unconventional produce, such as yellow tomatoes, purple beans, etc. in front yards so the uneducated won’t recognize them?”
they’ll learn to recognize food in five minutes.
the best way to defend your garden is to help your neighbor with his own.
Selco actually teaches that blood relationships were the most enduring. According to his articles, neighbors didn’t band together that way when SHTF. Families did. His experience was very much a survival scenario where the laws of civilized society went out the window.
(nod) they didn’t band together after grid down, because they weren’t prepared before grid down. now is a good time to start helping your neighbor.
My summer reading is “Three Famines” by Thomas Keneally. Good read. Also noticed something. In all the prepper books/blogs/articles (fiction and non-fiction) I’ve read the starving people leave the cities and swarm the country looking for food and to live off the land. BUT–in the book “Three Famines” it is the opposite. Those in the country all migrated to the city looking for food or jobs or to sell their children. Wonder which it will be when our time comes to live through it.
both.
In times of crop failures and famines throughout history, those in charge, who remember, above all else, above EVERYTHING else, prioritize retaining and extending their own power and wealth. Nothing else matters. Widespread hunger has always contributed to revolutions and ending of regimes (think Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Czar Nickolas II, and so on). Those in charge in dictatorships and autocracies have learned their history well, which is why they have always fed their cities first, even if the countryside that produces all that food starves. After all, the rulers have always been most in danger from those close to them in location. Hence you have the Caesars of Rome (who many times starved everyone to make sure Rome got fed), Stalin’s theft of grain from Ukraine to feed Moscow and St. Petersburg (where around 3-6 million people at least ended up dying from hunger, after they ate grass and trees and their children and each other). Think the Irish potato famine (another unnecessary and largely manmade famine). Think of Maduro, who’s made sure that whatever food is available, after he and his piggy cronies have filled up at the trough, goes to Caracas. Think of North Korea. A hungry capital city is a very dangerous capital city for those in charge. And these are just a few examples I can think of off hand.
So yes, I would expect that whatever food is available, at least early on in the last crisis, will go to the big cities.
History doesn’t repeat itself, the saying goes, but it echoes. There are differences (so far) between us and previous “great hungers,” but if you play the odds, the cities will get the lion’s share of whatever’s available, at least for a while.
Yes! My first thoughts about this were “appeasement”. Hungry urban mobs are dangerous to politicians. There’s a lot of wealth and poverty side by side in urban areas. Thank you for the history lesson.
I grew up and live in a rural area. I have lived in cities, in the US and overseas.
I see little difference between cities and rural areas when it comes to food security, now, or after an emergency.
Sure some few folks here have gardens, the tools and skills and land to put meat on the table. They are few and far between, and truly self sufficient homesteaders vanishingly rare.
I personally live in a mobile home, in a park, outside a small Midwestern town surrounded by miles and miles of fields full of feed corn and soybeans. I have little in the way of food stores. It is certain I would be a member of the “starving hordes” the instant the balloon goes up.
I’m armed. I’m ex military, and while my service didn’t involve combat I have trained to a level of conscious competency with the current standard 9mm pistol and AR rifle. I can and do make my own gear, and train with it. I dryfire almost daily, and when I do I do so with focus and intent, and have a par timer so that I at least maintain if not improve my shooting fundamentals. I train frequently with professional trainers, they are lifelong friends and it is free of charge and I take advantage of that.
I lift weights, take steroids (TRT, I am 50), exercise for endurance and mobility, although I am no tactical athlete by any stretch. I ruck. I take a yearly trip, on foot, of at least a month, in the worst of winter. You might doubt it, but there is at least one other reader of these comments who knows this a fact, and that I’m underselling it.
Whats the point of me saying this? Bragging?
My point is, wherever we live, we are individuals. City, Suburb, rural area, mountain holler, there will be people who are serious. Who believe and are motivated to survive, thrive, are willing to suffer and will seek it out when it doesn’t happen naturally.
Somewhere, someone is training harder than me, and learning faster, and is starting out further down the road of prepping.
I’m not worried about the millions of city dwellers who are, let’s be honest, basically in the same boat I am in the event of a true catastrophe. I’m not worried about a farmer who shoots his rifle a few times a year.
I’m worried about local law enforcement becoming quasi legal bandits. Prepper groups with enough trained and armed individuals to stake a claim, and start “protecting” areas adjacent to their own.
I mean, absolutely grow a garden, wherever you are, there are so many options.
I personally wouldn’t separate city and rural, and make decisions based on assumptions about the capacities and abilities or lack thereof of either group.
You just never know.
“local law enforcement becoming quasi legal bandits. Prepper groups with enough trained and armed individuals to stake a claim, and start ‘protecting’ areas adjacent to their own”
repeated for emphasis.
“prepper groups … ‘protecting’ areas adjacent to their own”
(laughing) yep. the biggest threats to prepper groups won’t be “city folk”, it will be other prepper groups.
Not around here. There aren’t enough “prepper groups” and I’m too close to Chicago.
If food delivery fails in my area, you are correct, Chicago will be an area of greater need and will be supplied first.
If that fails, and city folks in any significant number start following the interstate corridors in search of life saving necessities like food and clean water…
This area is toast.
But then, I personally think most of us, city, rural, prepper, non prepper… will quickly become refugees regardless.
Just seems to be what happens when living becomes impossible in any area.
I ruck too.
30lbs, for 30 minutes, 3-4 times a week.
Then 30 minutes of Ammo Can PT. Two ammo cans, each filled with 10lbs of sand. While walking use the cans to do various arm exercises. When I feel the burn, I stop and do push up on the ammo cans, or some kind of ab work out.
This is after the rucking.
Yes, famine is coming. It started slowly by bits and pieces, so much so that many didn’t realize it, and is now increasing like labor pains.
I live in a rural county in SE Tennessee. We have one Walmart, an Ingles and a couple of Save-A-Lot stores. We never had shortages before this year except for the famous toilet paper problems early 2020.
At the Walmart this week many food isles were sparce. Cookie isle had less variety with multiple stacks of the same brands to take up space.
Some sections had been moved and reduced in size such as cornmeal and flour. I saw only a few bags of one brand of meal. There were limited quantities of four brands of flour, but mainly the store brand.
Chip and snack isle was a third full. There were big gaps in the frozen food sections, which has never happened before.
The thing that caused me most concern was an endcap display. Each of the 6 shelves had 5 or 6 bags of 5 pound bags of rice stacked next to 8 to 12 cans of pinto beans which were faced at the edge of the shelf with no cans behind. I have never seen these items placed together and certainly not in May! This was pitiful and scary.
I brought the shortages to the attention of 3 or 4 other shoppers I encountered. They raised their heads and looked around as if this was news to them.
Most older people in our area know the basics of gardening and canning but the younger generations have no clue. I’ve encouraged members of my own family to come spend an hour or two to let me show them the techniques that only come from experience in making bread, rolls and biscuits. They will do it “someday” but I don’t think the Lord is going to give me many more “somedays” since I will be 73 soon.
I learned all I could the last 15 years about preparing, preserving and storing food because I could see this day coming. Now that the day is here, I never dreamed I would be so physically weakened I won’t be of much value.
For all of you who are still able-bodied, its not too late to learn as much as you can. Just start. Now! Take that first step and then a second. Start small if you have to and keep adding to your skills. Don’t give up before you begin.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
Im in that “younger generation” you speak of and I know how to do all that. Ive been working towards being more self/community sufficient for awhile. Im sorry your family doesnt want to learn from you. But, please dont assume all of us are ignorant. I would LOVE to learn from someone older or more knowledgeable than me. I just haven’t found anyone who even cans anymore. But, by the grace of God I go.
Rest easy, Grammy.
Sure we are young and stupid and lazy and not as respectful towards our elders as we should be.
We are also all members of the same species of Homo Sapiens that spread across the planet with nothing but some sharp broken rocks.
We got this.
Every bird on the north american continent is edible. A pellet rifle and a tin of pellets will keep you family fed for a year.
Yup. We’ve got a lot of really fat doves hanging out at our feeders all day. We’d have to catch them by stealth, or they won’t come around.
I am an ‘experienced’ gardener. Years of plenty and years of little. I find myself in a year of little, as I started my seeds too late and have had few sprout. Thankfully, I can go to the locally owned/run garden center and get heirloom plants. But if I didn’t have that option? Well, I would start my seeds earlier for one. I would start a second round of seeds. I would reach out to my gardening neighbors to see if they had starts to share. If you don’t garden now and expect to feed your family in the future, you have another thing coming. Successful gardeners have failures and learn from them. It’s called a learning curve. Knowledge is the one thing that can’t be taken from you. Learn and practice now while you can. I especially advocate talking with successful gardeners in your own area as they will know adaptations for your own local climate.
We have to start over with our carrots because we had an unseasonable heat wave that fried the sprouts. Now it’s May gray and June gloom so we should have more success getting them going.
Don’t feel bad! I’m off to the garden center because my seedlings are stunted and diseased, likely from the new seed starting medium I tried. Adapt and adjust!
More than a few farmers have already stated they are planting less, or due to the lack/cost of fertilizer, expect significantly reduced crops. A number of crop insurance companies agree with that assessment. Some are not planting for commercial sale at all, but for personal/family use only.
Meat industry may also reduce their herds/flocks as the price of feed is already high, expecting it to go higher.
Factor in the cost of fuel/diesel for transport and suddenly $10 for a pound of 80/20 ground beef, or a dozen eggs, or a gallon of milk are a real possibility.
As the sources of food production declines, the availability of the end productions declines even faster as ultra-processed food stuff requires additional inputs (re: corn and other grain based products). Ever read the back of a microwave oven dinner? Or even a loaf of in store made bread? How much are you willing to pay for a Coke if the price of HFCS has gone through the roof?
Price increases, erosion of buying power to inflation, people see empty shelves more so than we have now, panic buying ensues.
During periods of uncertainty and fear, people tend to keep to what is/feels familiar and safe. Home. With their own stash or stock pile of food, they are not about to abandon a freezer full of meat.
As time goes by, their stock pile dwindles, they have to venture out to the grocery store. What and how much will still be on the shelves? At what price? Naturally I would expect the government to try to do something about the crisis. I also expect them to be a few months late and millions or billions behind (see the recent baby formula crisis), make the situation worse and fail outright.
Are we also going to see robberies in the grocery store parking lot for a cart of food?
By this time, it is too late (ref: Selco’s articles). Flee to where? Will there be fuel that you can afford to fill up the tank? We are already seeing people drill holes to drain out gas from fuel tanks, now.
Go to your local Wal-Mart and look around. Count how many people look like they are in shape enough to strap on a 30lbs pack, and hump it 8 miles a day to clear the urban areas, the sub-burbs. What would it be like out on the open road? Available fresh water? Road blocks? Snipers? Someone mentioned legal bandits. Just read a report from the ATF and the number of firearms being produced and bought has tripled since 2000.
However, owning a firearm does not automatically imbue one with mad SEAL Team 6 like skills. Runt7 has proven this to us.
Takes training, practice and experience. See my articles on using Air rifles and pistol to maintain marksmanship, and my recent article on how to be a better shot, 5 For 5 Dime Challenge.
The cities may have votes, and they can vote for whatever they want, but their voting power stops at the city limits. Granted the state capitols and DC can pass laws, but can they enforce them from hundreds or thousands of miles away?
Cities may have more financial power, but as we are seeing it happen right now, the result of printing of millions and billions of “financial stimulus,” out of thin air is exactly what produced our current inflationary environment (note it was not just Musk and Bezos who said it but the San Fran Fed and Janet Yellen also said the same). Go ahead, print more money. As I stated above, make the situation worse. And if there is no fuel, food, no amount of money in the world is going to make a difference.
“More than a few farmers have already stated they are planting less, or due to the lack/cost of fertilizer, expect significantly reduced crops.”
Yep. I expressed this last fall. Furthermore I wrote I was not the only one culling back and downsizing. Cash balance farmers not willing to play the bank game feel the pinch earliest, upside is guys I know like me are nimble enough to adjust financially and keep clear of danger. Cattle prices are way up now, not to 2011/12 prices, but they are up. I’m seeing some load up with heifers now, I don’t have the heart to tell them they are being suckered in.
Oh well. My flock is shorn now and looking superior. The cows are flush on grass. Building another 18 acres of pasture this week and getting ready for first cutting. My hay customers are lined up and the “garden” is jumping. Got my aldis stash???? cuz that’s just how I roll.
Happy weekend gaters.
With my gardening, I’m trying to find what I can grow easiest in my area. For instance, I can grow beans without doing anything except watering. No bugs. No disease. No problems. Potatoes, no disease, but tons of bugs and not that great of a harvest for the work put in. Corn, forget it.
All of this is purposeful and manufactured. The “famine”, the countries halting wheat exports, the fake Ukraine garbage, the billions sent over, the middle finger to small businesses, the protected classes, the demonization of white people, the mysterious “monkeypox”, the US buying large doses last year of smallpox vaccines, The US buying 13 million doses of monkeypox vaccines this past month, the truck crash with monkeys heading in Penn. heading to a lab, the idiot woman who decided it was a good idea to interact with the lab monkeys before getting scratched, The US surrendering control of pandemic responses to the W.H.O., Bill gates getting wet at the next pandemic, bill gates and soros buying PCR tests, the fake US president who uses a fake white house set spreading fake information and giving fake speeches about his fake authority, the shutting down of the Keystone pipeline day one of a fake presidency, the canceling of oil/gas leases in Alaska & the Gulf of Mexico, the gas going up daily, the shortage of everything, the border left wide the F open while the politicians scream pandemic, the drag queen story time, the CRT in schools, the sending of FBI after school parents, the intimidation.
Remember this:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
Hell yeah!
You didn’t mention here that you also need to learn how to keep up the soil’s fertility. Our current shortage of fertilizers is a problem for many farmers, but it doesn’t have to be. By understanding how nature has always rebuilt fertility in eons past, we can build soil that will stand the test of time. I have been growing my garden using natural methods since around 1970 (I was a kid then) and every year the soil improves. This in turn reduces insect and disease problems as well.
Decent thread on the MonkeyPox….
“Traditionally, monkeypox has an R0 of just 2”
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1526929873419354113
HERE ARE THINGS GOING AWAY YOU HAVE NOT EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT
https://youtu.be/i1LaYDdBAEM
It’s a shame the article calls out city dwellers specifically. It may ensure a lively debate in the comments section, but it only serves to separate folks who should be on the same team.
Famine is coming: Is anyone prepared?
If that had been the header, I think the conversation might have had a different tone.
I’m not prepared for a famine. Its that simple. Doesn’t matter where I live. If I lived in a city, but had 6 months of water, freeze dried and canned food, and some self defense basics, I would be better prepared.
As it stands, in an emergency that stops food supplies to my town, or cuts off gas or electric in the winter, I’m a refugee at first, and eventually a beggar or bandit.
The steps to avoid that would be similar regardless of location, while acknowledging that there will be some situational differences according to geographic location and population density.
Please refer to monkeypox as moneypox as this is what it is all about, this and reducing the population.
Aden….Please don’t forget the plagues….because no good famine happens without a plague or two. Gosh! Follow the science (Fauci knows!) Dang…I need to get back in my time machine and go back to when there was at least some semblance of perceived normalcy. When was that again?
Dr. Robert Malone just came out with an article on monkey pox, and the Ro is less than 1.
I’m going to die.
Click bait for this person’s Urban Agriculture course.
Weather control “I have my doubts”? I thought human climate change was impossible/sarcasm!
Can’t find monkey pox R0? Too me 2 minutes (it’s less than zero).
Be afraid. Right?
We have plenty of food in America, we export TONS. It will get more expensive, but we have well more than enough. Now other places that have little cropland (think middle east/north and east africa) may have trouble, though I suspect the business practice of just in time delivery will become troublesome.
The food disaster will be just the “crisis” needed to take full control. Soldiers on each corner, no travel, and food as an instrument of control! Do as your told or starve. covid didn’t do the job, this Will!