The Prepper Who Fell Apart When SHTF

This is America, damn it. This isn’t supposed to happen here.

I stood in the grocery store looking at empty shelves. I didn’t need to be there; I had stuff at home. So why was I there? I couldn’t believe this was happening to us.

This is America, damn it. This isn’t supposed to happen here.

I was a contractor. I was paid by the hour. If I work I get paid. If I don’t work I don’t get paid. We were sent home. So far we can work from home, but what will happen to contractors? They don’t keep contractors around in times like these.

Friday the 13th we were sent home. Lockdown not declared yet. But we knew something was coming.

My friend and I were at the gun store on Saturday, like any good preppers – buying more ammo.

A guy said that he worked for the city water department and they were told that they were being “locked in” for two weeks. They were told lockdown was coming Monday.

I told others I knew in a local chat group: “Lockdown is coming on Monday. Go get some more chicken feed.”. They called me a liar and accused me of spreading rumors. Then a guy from my county confirmed it, even though he wasn’t supposed to say anything.

Monday they declared the lockdown, and I found myself at the grocery store staring at those blank shelves.

Maybe I wanted to watch the world burn…

This isn’t supposed to happen here. This isn’t supposed to happen to me.

I did like everyone else. I went home and paid (too much) attention to the news.

Remember: “Two weeks to stop the spread?” Well, it didn’t change in two weeks.

I had to drive through downtown Kansas City a few weeks later. A Saturday morning, on the interstate, on the bridge going across the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, driving through downtown.

Not a car in sight. The neon traffic sign was blinking “Stay Home. Do not travel.”

The fear was slipping. The governor said, “Things won’t go back to normal until we have a vaccine. That can take up to two years.”

Living in the New Normal

I was trying to just be normal. I bought an IBC tote for my garden, but I didn’t tie it down well enough. It blew out the back of my truck onto the highway. No harm, no foul because no one was there.

They kept talking about the “new normal”, but maybe living in this gray area was the “new normal”.

I prepped for SHTF. What is it? Collapse? Here we were in a suspended state, almost a Purgatory. Is this the “new normal”?

I had my beans, bullets, and band-aids, so why was I at the store? Because it wasn’t enough. What if I run out? (I’m fighting a battle with scarcity).

The “Why is this happening” kept eating at me. I am prepped. So why am I so insecure?

Maybe this prosperity, the America I knew – hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet – was just advertising. (I have seen how hot dogs are made, so hot dogs are already out, as far as I am concerned).

How Goes the Struggle?

Perpend and I visited an Orthodox Church in Kansas City for a garden tour. They had taken a city block, cleared buildings, and planted gardens.

We met the priest, Father Turbo Qualls, who gave us two pocket icons. I wore a shirt that said: “1984 – Make Orwell Fiction Again”. And he gave me a look that the people who know him say he is famous for, like “I am not so sure about this guy”.

Perpend started the catechumen path to become Orthodox. I became a catechumen shortly thereafter, and followed along – or maybe it was “I stumbled along”.

As I read of Orthodox saints, with their tortures, persecution and trials, it begins to make some sense of struggle.

But it seems to me like it would take a lifetime to begin to understand.

And many days the world still seems weird and gray and suspended.

Now it’s your turn. I’m asking you: “How goes the struggle?”

Look, the world is changing. You can feel it.

Don’t lose hope.

Live Local. Grow your own food as much as possible, even if it is on a balcony. Share seeds and the Local Wisdom of “what works” with your community.

I am a guy who grows chestnuts in Kansas, where we can go from 33 degrees to 96 in two days. Sometimes it feels like the odds are against me.

I write about building a real life instead of borrowing one.

Skills Over Stuff. Plant trees. Grow food. Build community.

Seeds (and trees) have a memory. They remember the place they came from – in Kansas it is those brutal winters, scorching summers, lack of rain for long periods of time.

New York may be Zone 5, but it is not Midwest Zone 5.

So where are your trees and seeds from? And do they know where they’re going?

My Midwest Memory trees are adapted to the Midwest Zones 5-7.