SHTF vs. TEOTWAWKI

There is something that bothers and worries me when it comes to sharing preparedness information with others. Just about all of the Blogs and YouTube videos that I have seen reference that preppers are getting ready for SHTF and that SHTF is the end all of disasters. It is NOT!

Katrina was a SHTF for those directly affected. It was NOT the end of civilization or even of society. Things went south on them but the area is recovering. Some quicker than others. There is city, county, and state government in place.

Now some of you may be asking what is SHTF and TEOTWAWKI?

SHTF is an acronym for Sh!t (Poop) Hitting The Fan. This is a major disaster that affects an area where recovery can take months to several years for services to normal levels.

TEOTWAWKI is an acronym for The End Of The World As We Know It. This is the super major event that affects most of the world and where recovery is several decades or more. True city, county, state, and federal government does not exist. This is more like a ‘Mad Max’ world. Most technology like oil refinement, plastic production, mass power production and distribution, medicine manufacturing, etc. is gone for decades.

Other things such as clothing production, food production, water and sanitation are back to the 1600s or even the Dark Ages level.

The problem with most ‘professors of prepping’ is that they don’t know this difference or espouse the difference in their videos, blogs, or books. The just talk about the worst case scenario as SHTF as if that covers everything.

True preppers/survivalist know that disaster come in varying degrees of severity. They just forget to relate it in the proper terms. So as you get prepared, don’t forget to plan to react accordingly to the level of the event. Don’t go whole hog wild into TEOTWAWKI mode if it is just a Katrina Hurricane or Loma Prieta Earthquake level event.

Remember; Get Informed, Make a Plan, Get Prepared. It’s Not If, But When Disaster Will Strike.

Gil Patton, Emergency Management Coordinator, Executive Coordination Center Officer, U.S. Department of Homeland Security – RETIRED

Current CEO of The ASSET Center

Winter is No Time to rest on your Laurels

Well, I’m up in Basalt Idaho and the Shelley Ready Preparedness Fair was this past Saturday. Even with the unusual cold and snowy weather and the bout of flu the prior weeks, there was still a good turnout. True a couple of vendors and two class presenters were sick and couldn’t make it. Other presenters stepped in and did a second session of their class.

I am proud of everyone that showed up. Whether to present or to learn, it showed that you are not resting on your laurels. Just what does that mean anyways? Resting of your laurels.

In Ancient Greece, victorious athletes were presented with laurel wreaths to wear. They were, and still are, signs of great accomplishment, unless you start resting on them…

To ‘rest on your laurels’ means that you get lazy or complacent about what you could achieve because you’re too busy basking in the memories of former glories. It’s a phrase that continues to have significant relevance in the world of sport (‘Yeah, you may have won the World Cup but don’t rest on your laurels!’), which is also where it originated.

Winning competitors in the Ancient Greek Phythian Games, a forerunner of the Olympics founded roughly in the 6th century BC, were given wreaths made of the aromatic laurel leaves as a symbol of their triumph.

Those that participated in the Shelley Ready Preparedness Fair were definitely not resting on their laurels. The Presenters put on great classes and the participants were asking great questions. they were eager to learn and it showed.

So just because it’s winter time it doesn’t that it is time to sit back and bask in all the preps you did last summer. Keep going, keep preparing. Remember, Get Informed, Make a Plan, Get Prepared. It’s Not If, But When Disaster Will Strike.

Gil Patton, Emergency Management Coordinator, Executive Coordination Center Officer, U.S. Department of Homeland Security – RETIRED

Current CEO of The ASSET Center

The Survivalist Creed

Many years ago a friend asked what it meant to be a survivalist. At the time I was reading Jerry Ahern’s novel series ‘The Survivalist’ and in one of the book the main character John Thomas Rourke was explaining what a survivalist was to his new sidekick Paul Rubenstein. What he explained I boiled down to this.

I will survive so that I can help my family to survive,
My family will survive so that we can help our friends to survive,
Our friends will survive so that we can help our community to survive,
Our community will survive so that we can help our country to survive.

That in a nutshell explains what a true survivalist is all about. Surviving to help others do the same. This is one of the reasons I have worked for many years for free in setting up preparedness fairs, setting up the C.E.R.T. program in my city of Martinez, worked with the Boy Scouts, and now working with The Asset Center. That is to get people prepared to survive.

It is the reason I went to work for DHS and for the last ten years been the Emergency Management Coordinator there. I helped Bank of America’s data center in Concord get ready for Y2K. I was the Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for my church for twelve years, and I’m still helping out.

This coming Spring I will again be a Special Guest Speaker for the Shelley Ready | 2019 Emergency Preparedness Fair, in Shelley Idaho. Last year they had over 4,000 attendees.

So check your local area for a preparedness fair and go to it. Getting prepared is the best thing you can do for and with your family. Be that above average american and get prepared.

Gil Patton, Emergency Management Coordinator, Executive Coordination Center Officer, U.S. Department of Homeland Security – RETIRED

Your Journey to Being Prepared Begins Now

So this has been a long time coming and now it’s here.  We now have posted a sampler book for free on the Books page. Please let us know what you think of our site and any suggestion you have.

Like setting up this website, getting prepared takes time and effort, trial and error. That is one of the reasons we created this site. With all of the years we have been survivalists, (Preppers is so new wave yuppie), we have each learn a lot through our own trail and errors. And as true survivalist, we are still here and sharing what we have learned.

Forty-seven years ago there wasn’t much information out there and there weren’t so many gadgets. So much has come and went that those just getting started preparing wouldn’t believe it.

Back in the 1969, the Los Angeles Fire Department taught that we should get a skinny coffee can (or yeast can), that a 16d nail and punch a bunch of holes in the bottom, put the plastic lid on the bottom, then fill it with baking soda and put another plastic lid on top.

This was the new handy dandy grease fire extinguisher for your kitchen. If you had a small fire you would pull the lid off of the bottom and shake the baking soda of the fire to put it out. if it was bigger then you would take the lid off of the top and shake it over the fire.

The problem was that people didn’t check it to make sure the baking soda wasn’t caking up from moisture. when they went to use it and it didn’t come out like it did when they made it, they panicked and pulled the lid off of the top and dumped the caked up block of baking soda on to the grease fire splashing burning grease all over the place.

After a few incident of this the LAFD stopped teaching the make your own fire extinguisher. Times change and we learn.

Learning should be on going. we humans do NOT know everything, contrary to what some would have you believe. Remember, five hundred years ago everybody thought the world was flat.

So for today’s thought, let’s us fire extinguishers, When was the last time you checked yours? What you should do is every six months or so, take you fire  extinguishers, Check to make sure the indicator needle is in the green. Then slowly and gently turn them upside down and as you turn them do you feel the powder inside shift from bottom to top and back? If not, the powder had most likely settled together into a chunk. It may be time for a new extinguisher.