Expect to Self-Rescue

My family are not "preppers" in the most common sense of the word.

Indeed, most who identify as such would find us woefully unprepared.

We are, however, more prepared for disaster than most people who don't subscribe to the identity. For example:

--> I have more than one remote place to which I can retreat if the shit hits the fan or the zombies arrive.

--> I've spent the last decade amassing enough liquid and barterable assets, stored off-site at an untraceable location - for my family to subsist comfortably for a short period in the event of a banking collapse or an extended period on tight rations.

-->Compared to most, I'm heavily armed. All of my children have handled firearms, and some of them are excellent shots.

--> I'm comfortable killing and butchering my food, and I have the means to locate it.

--> 40% of my children can start a fire with nothing more than two sticks, all of them have spent at least one night sleeping outside with not so much as a tent, and some of them have lived for extended periods in the wilderness.

--> My wife's medical skills extend far beyond Botox and Filler; she can get us through some tough shit should the need arise.

One thing that preppers tend to focus on wisely is food. Whether by building a proper larder in which they pack away and rotate non-perishable foods or by stashing buckets of mass-produced freeze-dried meals under their beads, the objective is clear: have food to eat if the supply chain fails.

This is very smart.

But this morning, it dawned on me that, where food is concerned, it misses a more significant point.

The chances of anyone alive today needing their emergency food stock are extraordinarily slim compared to the chances of spending the rest of their lives eating food from large-chain grocery stores.

It's a point worth considering.

I'm reading "A Bold Return To Giving A Damn" (

https://amzn.to/3sjGZQk ) about Will Harris, owner of White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, GA. Ostensibly, the book is about his 25-year journey to transform his farm from a commodity-and-chemical-based supplier of factory-farmed calves supplying mid-western confined feeding lots to a broad-spectrum regenerative farm producing consumer-ready beef, pork, lamb, and poultry from animals who spent their entire lives on his farm.

As you might imagine, no such book could be written without touching upon the pitiful state of the food supply in America and much of the world.

I often write about the toxic poisons that pass for food in the middle aisles of the grocery store. Boxed dinners, lunchbox snacks, chips, sodas, cake mixes, and other highly processed foods ladened with sugar and seed oils are slowly killing us.

It's death by 1,000 paper cuts, certainly, but at least some small portion of the population is aware.

Yet it's far more insidious.

Most of the best stuff, even on the outer aisles, is far from perfect.

Take your beef, for example.

Most of it (~99%) comes from large, industrialized farms, AKA "Factory Farms," in a two-step process where they are raised from birth to around nine months before being sold to a finisher. About 95% of these are moved to confined feed lots where they are fattened with corn and soy until they reach market weight and are shipped again to be slaughtered.

Very few are finished on grass, and even fewer are finished on the farm where they were born.

There are implications of this method, and the same is true of the vegetables, fruit, dairy, and the rest of the butcher's case at your grocery store.

There is an enormous difference between the commoditized, factory-farmed foods and those raised organically & regeneratively.

These differences affect not only your health but the future of America's food supply.

But you won't hear that from Big Food or Big Ag; they're too busy counting their money.

They do find time to tell us that all is well and good in this modern food production system, but if you ask me, that's a lot like when the government knocks at your door and says, "Hi, we're here to help."

My point is this: the American food supply is, at best, less-than-ideal.

At worst, it's poison.

Hardly anyone is paying attention.

And nobody is doing anything about it on a scale that's likely to impact you or me during our lifetimes.

You can, however, escape it.

But you have to self-rescue.

Nobody, or at least hardly anybody, is coming to help.