THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND
This article was written pre-Y2K, but it's just as applicable today. Some things endure through the decades and, although Y2K is long behind us, the 'Great Reset' looms like a black hole dead ahead...
"Guy" and "he" are generic terms and are applicable to either males or females as the situation warrants... It's hard to know who to follow, especially with all the people who are claiming to have the answers on the Great Reset, encroaching government totalitarianism, and survivalism in general. If you're a relative newbie to the survivalist genre, you're probably doing a lot of head-scratching and frowning as you read through often conflicting advice on what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and where to begin.
There are a lot of "experts" out there these days. You've probably met some of them, like the people on the message boards who seem to be Johnny-on-the-spot with an answer for everything. If you look closely, you'll see that some of these folks seemingly hang out on the message board every waking moment. It's very hard to train, it's almost impossible to practice survival techniques when you're sitting in front of a computer monitor. So who are these guys?
Enter the intellectual survivalist. He knows it all, he's read every survival book, every firearms manual, all of the military FM's, Sun Tzu and about five thousand Internet articles. He owns the best equipment and has accumulated every suggested item from every credible source-list he can find. He doesn't get out a lot, because he's too busy absorbing all the information available from written sources and typing his Visa card number into the Internet ordering forms. Unfortunately, without practice all the mental gymnastics in the world won't save his hide when he gets into a tight spot. If he doesn't field test his equipment and skills, he's an armchair survivalist, no matter how great a store of knowledge he's carrying in his massive cranium. If you ask his advice he'll tell you the latest spin from his ASG and make it sound perfectly plausible. How are you to know that he's never done any of the things he gives expert opinions about? After all, he's just lines of typing from somewhere out in cyberspace.
Enter the pseudo-gurus (and I'm not talking about people like Gary North et al). With or without a computer degree this guy is on the same level as the armchair survivalist. It's not enough to read about the possible repercussions from Y2K - you need some real-world experience to back up your hypotheses about what's going to occur over the next year. I especially like the guys who recommend knocking on your well-prepared friends' doors in case some of the doom-and-gloom predictions come to pass. These are the guys who eat out a lot, probably live in the city, or at worst the suburbs, and think that milk is made in some back room of a grocery store. They can be found poring over a Tritium lensatic for hours - because they can't find their way out of a dark alley with a compass, let alone across town without a cab! They're bad, but not as bad as the nay-sayer pseudo-gurus who tell you that Y2K is a lot of hype and never mind buying that case of bottled water and a few extra cans of beef stew. When the power goes out (disaster-related or not), faithful followers of either guru-type will be wishing they'd bought that kerosene heater they saw at WalMart last fall.
Enter the supply wizard, a long-term storage food or survival gear company that promises delivery faster than any of the established sources. These businesses seem to have sprung up overnight. That's about how long they'll stay in business. After heading off to a commercial supplier or the local LDS cannery with a few thousand bucks, these people are ready to sell you $100 worth of goods for $500. If you're lucky enough to receive your order you're likely to find the food/goods second-rate at best. The supply wizards are in it for the short-haul and the quick buck. Will they get it? Oh yes, because there's a sucker born every minute.
Enter the survivalist network leader. Somehow a nasty rumor got started that it was a prestigious position and now everyone wants a piece of the action. This guy sets up a really cool-looking website with about 50 links, a few articles, and a message board. Eventually, he finds out that it's a lot more work than he thought it would be and his e-mail starts getting further and further behind. All those pesky people with all those elementary questions - why can't they just go look it up for themselves? The website stays, untended and forever frozen in cybertime, while the "leader" heads off to greener pastures. What about all the people who decided to follow this Pied Piper? It was a bad decision. After all, this was just a case of the blind leading the blind...
~ Warrior Woman
Be cautious; the closer we get to mid-year, the more voices you'll find shouting to be heard above the inevitable din. Accept no imitations - know the people you follow, know the people who advise you, know the people you do business with. It promises to be, if nothing else, a very interesting year.....