Out of Gas

by Randy Dyess

  Mark reddened as he thought about his own car. He only used it about forty minutes a day to get back and forth to work and only about one hour to drive to the golf course on Saturday. Now that he wasn’t playing golf anymore, he figured he was paying close to $40 an hour for the use of his car. He was paying even more now since he worked from home a few days a week. He never worked out the true cost of his lease. He bet over time, he had spent anywhere from $40 to $60 an hour in lease fees every time he used his car.

  Owen looked at Mark and Kelly and said, “I know you understand what I mean. Based on what you‘ve said here today and what Mark has told me in the past, this is where you are today. You’ve figured this out and have started taking steps to prevent the worst from happening by living at a modest level. You’ve told yourself you would like to own most of your possessions. You are tired of making a payment each month for something you think you owe. You realize there is a chance of having it taken away from you because you missed a payment or two. You realized you could pay on something for years and only owe a small amount on it and still lose it because of a few bad months.”

  “You’re right. That is exactly where we are today,” replied Kelly. “We are at the point we do not want to wind up like a friend of ours if we were to lose one or both of our jobs.”

  “When I started on my new path, I was like Mark. I didn’t want to say anything to Donna about what I was thinking of doing without some further research. I spent three months looking things over. In time, I not only convinced myself losing my job was always a possibility, given the way the world was intertwined, it was possible. A collapse somewhere in the world could spread to everywhere else. I could easily be like my parents and grandparents and lose everything over something of which I didn’t even have control.”

  Owen looked at Kelly and Mark, “Unlike what you’ve told me about your beliefs, I did not just stop with the belief I needed to live within my means. I convinced myself the whole global situation was fragile and we could all wake up one day and find society had collapsed. I believe now there will soon be a deep depression which will take decades to end. The world will find itself once again living like we did in the 1800’s, but with less knowledge of how to do it. I am not optimistic about the future of America over the next decade. When I came to that conclusion, I took Donna aside and explained to her what I now fully believe in. It surprised me to find out she had always worried about the way we lived. She didn’t want to say anything for fear of me accusing her of ‘trying to hold me back’. Just like the two of you, we started doing more research to firm up our understanding and to convince ourselves of the horrible truth of it all. It didn’t take long before we both decided we needed to dramatically change our lives.”

  Kelly suggested a break so they could refresh their drinks, stretch their legs, and let the kids back in the pool. Afterwards, they sat back down and Owen continued where he had left off. “We started out doing the same things you two are doing today. Selling stocks to pay off our debts, selling our house so we could downsize, and cutting out all luxuries we could find. The difference is we went a few steps further. We decided we didn’t want our retirement in the hands of others, so we closed down our 401ks. We took a big hit with the taxes and penalties, but as it turned out we sold the stocks right before the major market downturn wiped out most people’s retirement. We got lucky and came out ahead on that one. We also decided we would not trust the government to take care of us if anything went wrong. This did not stop at the simple belief social security would not be around by the time we retired. We did a ‘what if’ exercise and looked at New Orleans and Katrina. We asked ourselves what the outcome would have been if the storm had hit Miami and ran up the east coast and wiped out multiple cities. The government failed miserably in New Orleans and anyone caught up in our scenario would have never received any help from the government for a long time. This exercise turned us into what is now commonly called ‘preppers’. We would only rely on ourselves in the future if something went wrong. If the government was there we would take what help we could, but we would not be herded around and give up our freedom in order to receive their handouts. We started planning on how to survive what we are now calling ‘The Great Depression’. “

  “I see now what you meant when you told us you are in ‘deeper’ than us. We have only started to wonder how to protect ourselves for a short time against job loss or reductions in salary. I haven’t even begun to consider what we would do for an extended period of time or if disaster struck cutting us off from everyone else. What all did you do?” Mark wondered aloud.

  “Well, we looked around and decided there were several scenarios in which we would start prepping for. The first was the economic collapse you two are prepping for, but ours went a little further. We told ourselves there wouldn’t be any jobs to speak of for five or ten years after the collapse. When things started coming back, we would only earn a fraction of what we do now if we could even get jobs. Think about how you would have to live if you only made a few hundred dollars a month. Think about what you would do if you were fifty years old and the only jobs available were manual labor jobs you couldn’t do because of your age. This made us plan for ten years of survival with another decade of very low income. Most of that income would come from bartering or black market trades and not from any jobs which might be available. “

  “How did you plan all of that? Just thinking about it would cause some of us to give up.” Kelly interrupted.

  “We gamed it out. The boundaries of the game were the economy had collapsed and there were no jobs in our area. Any jobs would be left would be with the government or small self-owned business and would not be available to the average person. These jobs would either be impossible to get or you had to have them before things went bad, so we couldn’t count on getting one of them. Another boundary at the time we started the gaming scenarios was the government would still survive, but in a smaller manner. They would provide some services, like a few food lines once in a while or some law enforcement, but it wouldn’t be the same as it is today. The few police would hole up in their stations and only go out when called. They might not even provide protection for private property and only protect government buildings or businesses paying subscription fees. They would only be there to provide protection for government functions or try to prevent massive amounts of crime, like riots. We decided everyone would be on their own and would need to learn to protect themselves and their property as best as they could. We didn’t game out massive armies of bike riding outlaws invading entire towns. Just small groups of local idiots and scumbags who would take advantage of no police protection to do what they wanted. We believe things could get to be extremely violent over time and if some scumbag came after you, it would be your life or theirs. Such lowlifes would just kill you to get you out of the way. They would try to sneak around you to rob you or hold you prisoner during the robbery and let you go later. The only time anyone would survive is if you were needed to use as a virtual slave to keep growing food or provide other services for them. If you know what I mean?” said Owen as he looked at Donna and Kelly.

  This startled Kelly and Mark a bit. They both thought crime would get worse. They had never gone as far as to think lives would be lost on a large-scale or criminals would become so violent. They were too used to living in a modern world to think about what might happen if criminals were allowed to roam free. They never thought about how violent criminals would get if most of their victims never learned to fend for themselves and no one else was around to protect them. Owen gave them a little time to consider what he had said. “Given these boundaries, we knew food, water, and electricity would be hard to get with from whatever was left of government. We also realized we would not be able to pay mortgage, loan payments, and most utility bills during those times. We might get lucky and the companies we had paid these things to would go out of business. With our luck our mortgage company would survive and still try to collect a monthly m
ortgage even with the economy in shambles. So in order to survive these types of scenarios, we told ourselves we needed to move into a small house in the country we had paid for in cash. We would also need to start paying for everything else in cash so we would not have any bills and loans which might be due after the crash. We didn’t want any outstanding balances causing any problems with repossessions or bill collectors. No telling what they would do if the police and government weren’t available to keep them in check. Would they try to take your house because you owned a few hundred dollars on a car you could no longer drive? We no longer counted on the goodness of humans if things went as bad as we thought they would. After coming to this conclusion, we gave up all credit cards and debts. We haven’t used a credit card in years since we figure if we couldn’t pay cash for something, we didn’t need it. Buying a small house out in the county meant we don’t have home owner’s association fees and the taxes are way less than houses in the city. It also meant we would have space for a small garden and chickens which would mean a lot for our food supply issues.”

  “A lot of arm-chair preppers think they can store up tons of wheat, dry milk, beans, MREs and other things that do not go bad and hold out. At first we thought the same thing. Once we started rotating it into our daily meals, we found out trying to survive for five years off of the stuff would be horrible. We are not foodies, but we realized we would go crazy eating wheat berries and beans day after day. We were also different than most preppers in realizing we couldn’t plant some seeds into the ground and be able to supply all our food for a year. I’m not crazy enough to think it would be easy to grow a garden without a lot of knowledge, experimenting and hard work. Having the space for a garden before the meltdown, meant we could build up our knowledge. As we talked about earlier, setting up the garden years before we actually need it allows us to make the mistakes everyone will make without going hungry for it.“

  “I remember it from my summers at my grandparents. Granny would always tell us to eat everything while it was fresh and it wouldn’t taste the same after being in the freezer for a few months. I also remember going out there for Christmas and most of the food she fed us came out of those canning jars. It still tasted great. At the time, I never realized they were the ones who canned all those jars of food and did not buy them at the store like we did. Their pantry was always full of mouth-watering food no matter what time of year we went there. They must have worked their butts off to grow and put all that away.”

  “Tell me about it,” Donna laughed as she referred to the amount of work she was doing putting this year’s garden away. “I mean, we buy some items such as spices, but most of everything else we grow or buy from other local farmers and ranchers. We usually buy a whole side of beef at a time and go out to the ranch to help slaughter and butcher it. Same thing with the pig we buy each year. Now we are raising them ourselves and have learned how to butcher our own animals.”

  “You butcher your own cows?” Kelly remarked.

  “When the time comes, there is not going to be anyone else around to do it for us. Besides, this allows us to see the cow and processing. We then know we have the freshest food we can get. And it allows us to make sure the living conditions of the cow or pig was humane. No cows from feedlots and no pigs raised indoors in tiny concrete pens. We feel like this is the least we can ask of the animals that we eat.”

  “I’ve never thought of it like that, but I see your point. Makes you closer to your food in a sort of spiritual way doesn’t it?”

  Owen and Donna just looked at each other and agreed before Owen starting talking again. “Doing what we do, allows us to know the chances are good we can feed ourselves. We also should have enough left over from our garden to feed a few others as well. I mean, it doesn’t take much more work to grow enough vegetables, fruit, and eggs to supplement a few of our older neighbor’s meals. I would do the same for either one of our parents if they were still alive. I plan on doing the same for my kids once they grow up and if they decide to not live like we do.”

  “Do you process all the extra food you give away?” Mark asked.

  “No, we just take the fresh stuff over to them a few days a week and what they do with it is up to them. Once in a while one of our neighbors, Martha, will come over and help us put up some things she wants to have over the winter. It doesn’t take much extra work to put away a few extra quarts of beets or pickles for her.”

  Mark got up and went to get another bottle of wine while Kelly and Donna made the kids get out of the pool, dry off, and go watch a movie. Once everyone was back in place, Owen continued with his story. “Going back to what I was saying earlier. We started paying cash for our major items and figured out our food supply. We then started stocking up on things we would need to tide us over for a five to ten year period of troubled times. I also figured even after the depression ended; it would take another ten years or so before life might return to what we think of as normal. America might lose two or three decades before we live even close to the way we do now. You read a lot about how you should stock up on gold and silver from the various sources discussing prepping for disasters. While I did stock up with some gold and silver, I never figured anyone would care about gold or silver bars if things got bad. I also figured all those silver dimes all the preppers talked about would be worthless as no one would care if they were mostly silver. They would just see a dime and nothing else. I spent my money on coins and bars labeled pure gold or silver and hope they will be handy if I need something big. I might be able to buy a horse or gun with some gold. I do not think most people would care enough about gold or silver to trade me for something else. Most people would want something they could use right then and there to feed or help their family. They would not care about precious metals which only mean something when people have money. There is also the problem of how to resupply ourselves when things ran out or break. I figure it would be better to buy things you could barter with or we could use ourselves instead of spending money on gold or silver. I always say that a chicken laying eggs will be worth more than a diamond ring when you haven’t eaten if a few days.”

  Owen took a sip of wine and continued, “Think about all the stuff you use on a daily basis. What would you do if you broke a shoe lace? You would just put on a different pair of shoes or take the shoe lace off another pair until you could buy replacements. What would you do if you did not have a store because it went out of business or if you did not have money to pay for those laces? These are the type of questions we started asking ourselves every time we bought something. Over time, we came up with a list of supplies to resupply ourselves or use to barter with others. We started looking at things we needed and used every day most people do not keep lying around. Garden supplies, canning equipment, small hunting rifles and ammo, etc., things we think would be needed if everyone was trying to survive a prolong crisis without government help. I remember reading in a book about John Adams when he went to Philadelphia to start the revolution, his wife asked him to buy a whole bunch of sewing needles. It seemed she remembered it was difficult to get replacement sewing needles during the last war and she wanted to stock up. Once we made our lists, whenever we had extra money or found something on sale which was on our list, we would buy those items. I even started buying some items by the case to keep the prices down. After a few years of buying a little extra here and there, I think we have more than enough to barter. If I had thought of it at the time, I would have set up an actual store, so I could have bought wholesale in bulk and saved even more money. I could have kept everything stored somewhere and declared bankruptcy after selling it cheaply to a friend. That way we would have saved bunches of money by not have to pay a lot of taxes on it.”

  “Not to get too personal,” Kelly said, “but how did you afford this?”

  “Well, we were lucky enough I have a great job and after cutting back on everything we could we had extra money each month to build up our supply list. But even if we didn’t have
large amounts of extra money each month, we would still be able to do what we did. It would have just taken a little more time than it did. Most families could do what we have done. They just need to look at their monthly spending and cut out a few bills for things they think they need but are luxury items. The money they save each month could buy a few supplies here and there. We are also not trained to buy used stuff when we can. We all have gotten used to the crappy construction of things and don’t want something used. Some things like scissors, knives, shovels, bikes, and even newer used cars are just as good as brand new ones but at lower prices. I’ve picked up tons of gardening equipment at estate sales for a fraction of what new equipment costs. What I did was scanned all the sale ads, trolled online sites, and went to all kinds of auctions and estate sales. A lot of the stuff we bought as extra or as future bartering items is used, bought in bulk at auctions, or purchased during sales. I figured no one would care if the axe they are buying is used when they do not have an axe and they need to chop wood. It didn’t actually take long to put together a whole cache of extra supplies doing it this way.”

  “Don’t forget we also bought bulk items at regular prices as well. Some things like oil for cars, chainsaws, lawn mowers, and other equipment can be bought in larger sizes and you save money in the long run. Look for bulk items when you can and if you have to spend a weekend repackaging it into smaller units, so what. What else were you going to do, watch TV, play golf?” said Donna.

  Mark and Kelly both knew at this point there were a lot of things they hadn’t thought of yet. They felt there were going to be a lot more conversations in the near future about some of the things they were learning from Owen and Donna. They were still not fully convinced of the need for this level of preparations. They silently agreed they would research some of these things and see if they needed to be on the same path as Owen and Donna. After Owen finished, the couples spent quite a bit of time discussing the prepping he and Donna were already involved in for what they thought would be a nasty future.