3 Stages Of SHTF
Slippery Slope
The first stage of SHTF begins with creeping normalcy and shifting baseline. This is happening now, and has accelerated rapidly. It has been happening slowly for many years… the inability of people to react to significant changes that occur gradually. People that do not make themselves aware of gradual change, suffer eventual undesirable consequences. The powers that be have always known that change needs to be gradual to be accepted; at least until such time that a critical mass of useful ‘idiots’ have accepted it, which results in a very rapid final push towards the final change or changes. We have reached that point and are moving beyond it.
Collapse
The next stage of SHTF is collapse. Societies along with their life support systems suffer abrupt failures after the long term ‘slippery slope’ decline of its culture, its civil institutions or other major characteristics of it as a society, eventually and suddenly collapsing after triggering or passing a tipping point when they fall off the cliff, so to speak. There is no turning back. Factors that may combine and contribute to collapse are economic, social and cultural, overpopulation, resource depletion, or major natural or man-made disaster including war or invasion.
During collapse, and for a time, power becomes decentralized and people tend to be more self-regimented and have many more personal freedoms with a slackening of social rules, although what’s left of society as a whole is suffering chaos. Geographically speaking, communities become more isolated.
Lock Down
The third stage of SHTF is lock down, a state of containment or a restriction of progression to prevent people or information from escaping. It is ordered by someone in command and implemented by force. Martial law or takeover imposed on an unstable population. It accompanies curfews, the suspension of civil law, and civil rights. This final stage can be the most dangerous in that it will encompass a time of either total compliance or civil war, or a mixture of both.
Preparing for, and functioning under each of the three stages of SHTF involves different methods, choices, and behavior. While we are most definitely in Stage 1, the slippery slope, many people instinctively know that we are not far from Stage 2, collapse. It may benefit you to consider each of these three stages and form a plan how to prepare and survive through each of them.
Time is running short. Please pass along this message.
3 Stages Of SHTF,
I don’t fear SHTF. I fear what is put in place after it.
The prepared should not fear it… it sounds like you are prepared. That is good. You are correct to point out the high unknown… that is, what is to follow. The follow-on depends upon so much, that it is nearly impossible to know with any degree of certainty. It will entirely depend upon the people who remain, and the choices that they make.
Case in point is the “martial law” Patrick enacted here in Mass during the last storm. I’m not for the reckless putting our safety people in harms way but to make it illegal to drive was too much… And how much public outcry???? What will the next line in the sand be?
It’s always for ‘your safety’. Our freedoms are basically gone and most people don’t even realize it. The powers that be are testing it regularly now, and are themselves probably amazed at how compliant the public at large actually is. They are realizing that they can get away with nearly anything now, so long as it’s for your safety. Look at the power that one governor had (I think they did it in CT as well) over millions upon millions of people. All it took was an executive order. Have you noticed that they are calling them executive ‘actions’ nowadays? Must sound less threatening to the sheeple at large.
I agree that the “useful idiots” are reaching an all time high, especially among the younger generation. I recently spent some time on a college campus of a major state university and was disgusted at the level of ignorance and stupidity that many of our young people have regarding the loss of liberty and the encroaching arm of regulation from our government. My colleague (a prepared individual like me) and I took some time to talk to many of the students and realized that issues like “gay rights”, “global warming” and “gun control” are forefront on their minds. I was and am disgusted. Freedom/Liberty, The Constitution and Personal Responsibility are non-existent on the list of important issues on the young people’s minds today. Most do not even understand what our Founders so greatly laid out for us. I sadly fear that many of them will blindly follow whatever the government asks them to do. Individually these “useful idiots” will be easily dispatched but the sheer volume of them concerns me greatly.My colleague buddy, who is highly trained in arms/tactical areas and an “above average bad-ass”, looked me square in the eye and told me that for the first time in his post military life he was truly afraid. Not of the individual but of the sheer numbers.
My retreat is coming along very nicely and I pray that I have made the right choices to dedicate so much time, effort and money into it. Mathematics is indisputable and the math proves that the “idiots” are multiplying quicker than I expected. May God Save this Great Republic.
RL
You have summed up my feelings very articulately. I could not agree more. I strongly believe that we as a society have gone beyond the point of no return, so to speak, where there are enough people, parents and children indoctrinated into a life of government oversight, handouts, control and compliance, whereby it will take a major collapse and a generation living as such, until there stands a chance of reversal. They do not even know another way. No real understanding of liberty and true freedom. I see it all around me, and I see the acceleration of it.
They way things are shaping up, looks like I will not be dying of old age.
What the prepared should fear is the unprepared. Nothing wrong with fear. No fear is an indication of brain damage. Fear is a natural response and it keeps you alive. It is a survival skill to learn how to properly respond to fear. Irrational fear kills.
For every prepared person in SHTF there will be thousands of irrational sheeple. They will ant what you have. If that does not evoke a survival response in you, then maybe get a cat scan. You may have a brain tumor.