(CHOOSING TO BE ON THE SIDE OF OVER-COMPENSATING. WHAT WILL IT HURT??)
f you are scared of war, martial law, social unrest, or other serious disturbance right now, you are not alone, and you’re not crazy. The events we are now seeing daily have all happened before — they were the precursors to the broad sweeping actions that came later, along the path of the Nazi rise to power. It would be unwise and uninformed not to be alarmed right now.
“What can we do?” Folks have asked me. I’ve asked myself too, and here’s what comes to mind.
You want your cash, but keep in mind that a homeowner’s policy will only replace two hundred dollars of cash in a home. There’s always a waterproof fireproof safe, but as we just learned during Hurricane Helene, a safe can float down a landslide or brand new “river” and never be seen again. They also melt after X amount of time with X temperature. So I agree with having cash on hand, but limit how much. Use a credit union, and keep cash in a Safe Dep Box, and in a safe at home. Venmo, etc might seem like great options until you realize they could go bankrupt & there’s no FDIC insurance on your accts, and if there’s no cell service, your money is frozen.
Now, if Elon gives the word, and the skeleton crew of Trump loyalists don’t stand up to him *Together* (as one… no scabs, no deserters), then our SocSec checks, Disability, SSI, could all end abruptly, without warning. What then?
Go read up on Mutual Aid Societies and start building a local one near you. Freecycle. BuyNothing groups.
Make friends with your neighbors. Find your tribe. Identify people who, if things get really bad, they cannot do for themselves, and they’ll need us. If you’re medically fragile, think through the scenarios and decide now what you’ll do if X happens, or Y, or Z. Contact neighbors, family, and friends who will agree to come assist you.
We will need to be able to instantly create a moneyless society to get food, goods, and services immediately (the way western NC just did after Helene, everyone gave *everything* away for free!). Everyone worked for free. Everyone bartered labor, traded, or simply gave away as they were able, and it worked. Then employers started calling everyone back to work, and we all chose to start paying for everything again. Think. Humans existed before money, before Capitalists.
The big preparedness piece is going to be stuff like canned food, shelf-stable milk, dry goods, and medical supplies.
If you have a menstruating uterus in your household (or one who could in the next few years, age 8+), buy PERMANENT washable reusable equipment to handle your lifeblood. There are conical cups and disks, all with various sizes & features. Even if you had to have help using one, for most of us, that’s better than freebleeding. Buy washable cloth period panties and cloth menstrual pads.
If you pee sitting down, invest in the squishy little funnel tools for us to pee standing up.
If you have urine incontinence or organ prolapse, get a pessary from a urologist, or buy the OTC type, rip off the fabric, and you’ll find it is washable, reusable silicone. Buy reusable cloth snap-in pads & panties designed for catching urine & menstrual flow.
Think about ways to be seen (high visibility reflective pullover vests are cheap) if you need to be found, and ways to not be seen (camouflage for your region) if you need to be hidden, not found.
Think about alternate sources of heat/cooling, power, camp stoves & fuel, grill tops for your firepit. Pocket knives, a poop trowel, and other tools you would need if you had to survive on foot, like thin mylar reflective emergency shelters.
If you like them, you might want to stash away imported things like coffee, tea, chocolate.
Keep the antibiotics you picked up but then the dr called to say it was viral, not bacterial, or that urinalysis didn’t show an infection, etc.
Stocking up on first aid, OTC meds, creams, ointments.
Get the little camping tools like spark-makers to build a fire, other fire starters, lighters, waterproof matches. Dryer lint in a paper egg crate with Vaseline makes great portable tinder if you melt wax over the top to seal it to the egg create; each one will start a fire. Think about portable water purifier systems, as well as the tablets to make any water potable.
Even if you don’t need them, buy as many condoms, OTC birth control pills, Plan B, and mail-order Misoprostol as you can afford to buy. Why? You could save a life. Mifepristone is not required to save a life, but it apparently does make the experience easier. You could get somebody one extra month of bc pills to get them out of an abusive relationship or further down the road toward moving to a state (country?) where it’s legal to control your own body even if you’re female. You could prevent any 8yr old being forced by the govt to gestate her rapist’s child (usually the product of incest). Share info about Mayday .dot health.
The Bills have already been introduced to: a) take personhood rights away from pregnant people and transfer those rights to zygotes, embryos, and fetuses, making abortion federally banned, prosecutable as “murder”; and b) make it “murder” to provide Hospice or Palliative Care to a newborn who is dying.
Explain to your kids that trans & gay people are not predators, not child molesters, etc. Don’t teach stranger danger or good touch / bad touch. It’s confusing. Teach them about “Tricky People” who do bad things but call it good, who don’t honor boundaries when you tell them NO, who don’t listen when your body language or words show them they’re making you uncomfortable — who are supposed to be people who love you or are close to your family, trusted, but are acting creepy, want to get you alone, or tell you to not to tell other people about the things you do when you’re with them.
They also promised the following court cases will soon be revisited/overturned: a) the right to gay marriage; and b) the right for married couples to access CONTRACEPTION. They even hinted at interracial marriage laws being reviewed.
If you have a partner who is abusive, or you do not want to be married to anymore, especially in a crisis, leave now. File for divorce NOW. If you aren’t old enough to understand what a fight it was to gain the right to a no-fault divorce, look it up, and realize you will SOON NOT BE ALLOWED TO DIVORCE unless very strict criteria are met. They promised this too.
Use the Rule of Law to its fullest while we still HAVE it. Don’t let it go. Prosecute.
If somebody comes to your workplace and demands access to something they shouldn’t, or if you see/hear something, document it, store it in 2+ places, and share that documentation. Then report it. If the chain of command is compromised by loyalists, go up higher or find alternate avenues to pursue the Law objectively.
Remember that China already has access to turning off our entire utility grid. Wasn’t it water, sewer, *and* power? Wash and sterilized empty milk jugs, fill with clean tap water to the top, no air, seal tightly (I’m thinking a ring of hot glue around the top, but maybe overkill), keep stored.
Remove bdays, phone #s, addresses from social media profiles. It might be worth it to see if pseudonyms will fly.
Talk with your family about whether, where, and how you’d be willing to hide Anne Frank if she’s trans, gay, disabled, black, brown, in need of an abortion, or Muslim this time around — or yes, Jewish.
Talk with your family about who you know who would rat out Anne Frank to authorities and turn you in.
Talk to your family about how there might be occasional guests in your home for a while, travelers — maybe a girl or woman who doesn’t feel very good, maybe somebody who speaks another language. Explain safety.
If you can avoid moving in or moving to extremely conservative states, do so — especially if you’re one of their target demographics, like female.
Have a meeting place in town for your people, where all the family & friends who would want to rough it together & take care of one another agree to go, to meet up, in the event of anything truly serious. Pick out a place in the woods or wherever — for if shit hits the fan. Identify where you would go, and download or print a map of your area.
Work out how you would communicate if there is no wifi. We had to figure that out after Helene too. People put up chalk/white boards at their doors, to let others know they were safe, where they were, etc. A non-postal message box on your porch is helpful. Walkie talkies, folks.
Have batteries in your Survival Kits for headlamps, flashlights, lanterns, hearing aids, medical devices, etc.
MRE’s… military rations… are lightweight freeze-dried meal packs that don’t weigh down a backpack, and are easily reconstituted with water.
Find out what plants could replace the Rx medications you’re prescribed. Make sure you can ID wild edible plants and poisonous things in your area. Don’t throw out old prescriptions. Stockpile these, because some is better than none, even if expired.
Have a Go-Bag for each person in their bedroom or the car: clothing, toothbrush, meds, hygiene kit, first aid kit, and most importantly, 2 pairs extra socks (wool ones to avoid blisters) and a change of shoes.
These are the things I can think of. If I am wrong in my thinking somewhere, correct me. Please add to this list.
Copied with permission rom a local Asheville post… sure to be challenged by the conservative crowd…. but who would have suspected people would be in our Social security accounts already?
But in my mind always is the “other” May 4. That would be May 4, 1970, 50 years ago today. I was in high school, and my stepmother was attending college–at Kent State University. She came home from school that afternoon in tears. By the time the news was on that night, we all saw what she’d escaped from. National Guard members had shot and killed four students and wounded nine more in the middle of a protest against the expansion of Vietnam War into Cambodia.
Nine Kent State students were wounded in the 13-second fusillade. Most of the students were in the Prentice Hall parking lot, but a few were on the Blanket Hill area. Joseph Lewis was the student closest to the Guard at a distance of about 60 feet; he was standing still with his middle finger extended when bullets struck him in the right abdomen and left lower leg. Thomas Grace was also approximately 60 feet from the Guardsmen and was wounded in the left ankle. John Cleary was over 100 feet from the Guardsmen when he was hit in the upper left chest. Alan Canfora was 225 feet from the Guard and was struck in the right wrist. Dean Kahler was the most seriously wounded of the nine students. He was struck in the small of his back from approximately 300 feet and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Douglas Wrentmore was wounded in the right knee from a distance of 330 feet. James Russell was struck in the right thigh and right forehead at a distance of 375 feet. Robert Stamps was almost 500 feet from the line of fire when he was wounded in the right buttock. Donald Mackenzie was the student the farthest from the Guardsmen at a distance of almost 750 feet when he was hit in the neck.
You will see the claim online that this virus is a lot like the viruses that cause colds, and that if you get it, it will probably just seem like a bad cold and you are very unlikely to die. Depending on who you are, these statements are probably true. But they are incomplete, and the missing information is the key to understanding the problem.
Scientists measure the spread of an epidemic by a number called R0, or “R naught.” That number is calculated this way: for every person who develops the illness, how many other people do they give it to before they are cured (or dead) and no longer infectious? The R0 for coronavirus, in the absence of a control strategy, appears to be a number close to 3 – maybe a bit higher or lower, but in that ballpark. This is an extremely frightening number for such a deadly disease.
Hospital in downtown Asheville, I’ve noticed this small building on the corner.
pool, and the grove had just about any tropical fruit you’d like to eat– mango, giant avocados, calamondin, tamarind, bananas, mamey, black sapote, lychees, a bunch more I never tried. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
turn on 
the same small home. We intersect at meals, sometimes. But even then, there’s often a screen in view and we’re absorbed in parallel play.
What followed was a messy few days when I explained how she is (he also has disabilities, but more physical than autistic), and assured him that it was likely the best he would get out of her. We were both sad, and then he broke up with her on social media. UGH.
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