Sharecropping The Apocalypse: A Prepper is Cast Adrift (22 page)

“David now you know that I am all about lending a hand and helping folks out when we can, you know that of me. I still say that you need to really think this thing you are proposing over some more. You ain`t going to be  doing anybody any good if you end up robbed, killed or incarcerated in a FEMA camp for some bull shit you can’t control or have thought of yet. It ain`t like you’re going to be the last chance first responder or soldier to go rescue an orphanage or free a P.O.W, camp or something. Think of all the obstacles, hell think of your age or any infirmities you have these days to slow you down. You said all them folks stranded up there are preppers, don’t they stand a good chance to get by on their own somehow?” Michael said inquiringly with a raised eyebrow and a caution to himself what he had just said might make David cuss a might at him loudly and strongly.

David sighed, then grasped Michaels shoulder for a moment in comradely playfulness and explained that just because somebody labeled themselves as a “prepper” didn’t mean that they could survive anything or everything life threw their way. It just meant they were better prepared than most folks to face a disaster and try to persevere regardless. Preppers, he reminded Michael, came in all shapes, sizes and attitudes in regards to the level of preps they had stored personally or in regards to the survival knowledge they had attained from their efforts or others to spread the word of prepperdom and it was almost a sacred thing to consider that it was totally unfair to consider them as some kind of backwoods survivalists that could live off the land indefinitely by themselves without community let alone last for weeks without equipment and supplies in the wilds on average. Most preppers realized the futility in even considering such a notion of long term self-reliant living and prepared themselves and their families to just maintain a somewhat normal existence for a small period of time in a shortfall of goods and services after a catastrophe. Military and Bush craft schools taught the basics of survival for days before you are rescued when lost in the woods or shot down behind enemy lines, not the attainment of a Mother Earth News type self-reliant lifestyle that would take you a decade or more of failures to prepare for and attain if you had any chances of becoming self-sufficient in an off grid lifestyle means of truly feeding yourself past eating grubs.  Besides a lot of the folks attending Prepper Stock only planned on being there at the camp grounds with city goods access  for only a few days, a week at most if they had somehow managed to use up or save some of their precious vacation time in anticipation of, or got a few days off from work to attend the event and were now far away from whatever they had stored back at home they had by hook or crook they had somehow  managed to put back to help them and their loved ones survive such a calamity.

 
“Well ok, I got to say that I am sorry and I wasn’t being very realistic or truly caring about your friend’s needs, I guess. I doubt most of the country boys around here could even last that long out in the woods living under the conditions you have described. You never said how long you had planned on being gone, David. I guess it’s sort of hard for to say how long that mission will take but you must have considered some kind of estimate time wise.” Michael said still perplexed about what David thought he could possibly do other than somehow assist in getting that group of people off that island. That was enough he guessed, but he still wasn’t in the least bit convinced that David was somehow uniquely capable of achieving that task to be called upon and risk leaving the area. Maybe he knew somebody in Emergency Management that he was going to call on to help him out somehow. David had said he once had lots of contacts in that service and knowing him had a supply sergeant or two in mind to throw a bit extra gear or assistance his way if he asked for a favor.

David soon answered that question by stressing the fact that all first responders and relief services were surely overwhelmed and anyway he had no way of contacting anyone anywhere unless he showed up at their offices front or back doorsteps if the guards would let him.

“Well, don’t think of me as trying to be a smartass or anything David, but just what in the fields of god’s green earth is it that you think you can accomplish that 70 or so of your fellow brethren  prepper minded people haven’t already thought of or come up with for themselves?” Michael asked, waiting patiently for whatever it was that David convinced himself that he alone had dreamed up in some way to save the day.

“That’s a good question, Mike; it took me awhile and then some to come up with that answer for myself. I couldn’t for the life of me come up with an answer why Crick called upon me for anything else but moral support, then I decided to try and think like him and act like him in that sort of a situation. The biggest worry I can think of that he has other than getting everyone off that island ASAP is evidently how to try to feed all those people once he does manage to extricate them. Everyone including him is already going to be pretty weak and weary by now from lack of food and the elements. That’s the particular problem I think that he wants me to personally come down for and help him out with. You know that Michael, I constantly explore and wrestle mentally with all kinds of disaster scenarios and try to find corporate supporters to demonstrate their products as a possible solution to make life easier should I need to survive such situations. Well, back in the day sometime or another I came up this notion of creating for myself something I call a “Lake Living Bag”. What I mean by that concept is designing a bug out bag specifically designed for surviving by any type of a waterway. Makes perfect sense to me and maybe you might also agree if you think about it in the context that I am trying to explain it as. I don’t know why a large majority of preppers don’t already try to specialize or focus their own personal preps and bug out bags based on their needs in a specific geographic area or anticipated future bug out location should the need arise. I have had visions of a separate food procurement bag for years designed to assist in gaining some kind of sustenance for long-term possible living arrangement in a woodland environment. Anyway, I have had the opportunity to play with all kinds of various gill nets, crawdad and fish traps etc. and I hadn’t made any recommendations or done a giveaway of extra or endorsed tackle I had acquired to the prepper community and me and Crick compared notes on that and I asked him about fishing conditions and recommendations specific to the area that he lives around. He knows I have that kind of equipment ready at hand at the moment and as far as I know that’s what it is he wants of me. He has no other way to access that kind of fish catching stuff and as far as I know that’s the only way you can feed that mass of people utilizing natural resources readily available. You need someone that can understand commercial fishing and trapping and I happen to be the only candidate for that job at the moment, I reckon.” David said pleased with himself that he had puzzled out Crick’s riddle and inspiration.

“Well, I will be damned; I could have never come up with that solution. Now that makes sense! Hell yea, I will support you in that endeavor and rest assured I will try and protect your stuff while you are gone but there is no way I can be everywhere at once no matter how close we live to each other, which brings me back to another point.” Michael said as David motioned for him and Julie to come on back in the house and fix them another drink before he had another problem to deal with.

On the way to the house Michael mentioned his and Ray’s fears that the possibility of confiscation of “hoarded food” existed under the emergency powers acts that might be enforced by unscrupulous authorities and what did David think about that scary subject and the suppression of the Second amendment to the Constitution regarding firearms.

“I knew I was getting me another drink for some reason.” David grumbled and made a motion to Julie who was playing bartender in his small ships galley of a kitchen to add another finger measure worth of brown liquor to the already potent drinks they were consuming.

“That thorny question has been echoing in the back of my mind ever since you brought Ray by with that bucket full of bad news. When is he coming back over here anyway? I think he rather needs to be in on this conversation.” David asked Michael, still wondering about the man’s odd disappearance and thinking enough time had passed for him to reappear and explain himself.

“Maybe he will be back in a half hour so. I agree he needs to get in on this conversation but we will discuss that more later. He is probably jawing with the wife and getting reacquainted with the kids. Now then, David, try and answer my question if you will, more directly. Do you think we need to worry about either one of those situations I mentioned?” Michael said altering the conversation back to the matters at hand and still keeping David in the dark about Ray’s stash of goods that he was putting up unbeknownst to him.

David eyed him for a minute and then went back to the conversation of the subjugation of the constitution and personal liberties and his thoughts on such encroachments.

“Look Michael, neither one of us needs any kind of further education about how foreign soldiers or rogue law enforcement acts in times of disaster or war. We both have plenty of history lessons and real life experience’s to clue us in on the highly probable occurrence of that shit occurring if you start getting treated as a peasant or undesirable when the chips are down and they think nobody’s watching. Are you asking me do I think they will go door to door trying to enforce it? Hell no! There are not enough soldiers or crazy enough Law enforcement types to even attempt that and they know the citizenry will not stand for it and revolt. Some might be opportunistic S.O.B.s given the smallest chance but I have heard a many police officer or sheriff  say that for one I wouldn’t enforce such crap because of strong personal liberty belief and secondly I am not going to go get shot at every time I pull in a driveway. Just not going to happen.   Do the new world order types want us to revolt so they can call in more foreign soldiers and draconian measures? Sure, that’s a possibility but they will only do it to take control of certain areas at first close to their base of operations or as a distraction far away they can extend so called authority to. Hotspots as they like to call them, mass surge reactionary forces and then you will see the alphabet agency’s trying to call in civilian mercenary operators to assassinate or imprison whoever they consider resistance leaders so they can quell an uprising without getting their hands directly dirty. The government has already has dumbed down schools, prescribed massive amounts of psychotropic drugs to adolescents, brainwashed kids to snitch on their parents etc. and it will be jealous vindictive neighbor against neighbor and spoiled state owned brats acting like the secret police for the bastards to point accusing fingers at those they feel are holding on to more goods than they deserve. What people can’t take by force in time of need will be done by lies and treachery that won’t enrich their bellies much before some other asshole does it to them. Just remember the majority of the fore fathers that signed the constitution died impoverished and without thanks or charity from their neighbors that benefited from their sacrifices for pledging their lives and fortunes to the cause of freedom in this once great Nation. Patriots will all always remain the minority while the cowardly self-serving minions of greedy evil humanity serves their own devils messiah and forget what it is, or for what actions they will be judged by a higher power for when their day of reckoning comes around. Oh, the Oath keepers as a majority can be depended on, some of the folks in militias will hold true, many common men and women will remain faithful to their vows but I think the majority of so called citizens will not stand up to this oppression but instead try to profit by it, not take a stand.” David ranted thinking disgustedly that schools probably didn’t even teach anymore how we could learn from history about what it meant to have foreign troops on our soil and how the colonists fought back against this tyranny so hard that the British hired professional soldiers from Germany called the Prussians to try and suppress us. Would anyone still know or remember about the French Indian wars anymore when a bounty was placed on American settler’s scalps and the most horrific attacks came from Canada for any number of political or economic reasons? History repeats itself, our job of living in the present  and remembering it is to never allow such tragedies and miseries like the holocaust, wounded knee, the Bataan death march, Stalin, Mao, Poppa Doc, and a million other things and atrocities that have happened to allow man’s inhumanity to man to ever repeat itself again. However we are a fickle and unworthy benefactor of these lessons from time and forget all too easily how the progression of events that allowed such terrible things to happen is complicity and lack of preparedness. I don’t mean preparing for a disaster like prepping food and ammunition for the day you see coming, I mean preparing the hearts and minds of others not to turn a blind eye to such events occurring in their lifetimes. When any dictator or mad man or woman anywhere wants you to lose a right or liberty they are patient at first while they deviously deceive and distort facts that first rewrite and influence history to subjugate your mind, then affirm it through the kids in order to create a false reality.

“So you think it might happen then?” Michael said with an over mine and a lot of other cold dead bodies look.

“Always consider it will happen and can happen. Look to history and lessons learned and try to plan accordingly is about the best advice I can tell you. Let me explain that little zinger for a moment, Julie and I have been having a similar discussion on the same subject concerning this trip we are about to undertake. For example Mike, I explained to her that if we got stopped at a road block somewhere we need to try and look as uninteresting as we can, no frills and no obvious party affiliation like a screw the prez or legalize cannabis t shirt let alone a prepared prepper bugging out crazy pocketed or military surplus looking thing which is going to be difficult without some thought and planning. It’s not an insurmountable task to go gray wolf or man, plenty of folks I am sure are loading up their possessions and heading for parts unknown these days, we just got to be careful with our stories and what kind of goods we are carrying so we can Gray Man our way out of possible situations. That’s why I like being southern and picking my duds accordingly. Take for example my choice of weaponry for this road trip we are about to venture out on. On the one hand, I already know folks are awfully desperate these days and might not hesitate to shoot me over a can of beans, that makes me want to go full battle rattle  and carry my AR or AK rifle openly and wear my army crap I am used to in such a situation. However, I don’t need to be looking like I am a militia member going to form up to engage or homegrown terrorist in the light of day that needs to be tagged and bagged if the National Guard, Homeland Security or lord knows who stops me for a ID check and don’t like my appearance or firepower. I also ain`t going to have a pickup truck load full of food going anywhere or at any time unless I can disguise it because law enforcement would declare I must of stole it from somewhere and lock me up so they could consume it on their own or let some Army commander appropriate it for his troops.” David said wondering why Michael flinched on the last statement and waiting for him to question him further or carry on the conversation.