by Pete Thorsen
Bill was somewhat surprised at the tiny apartment that Sid had decided to get but he was always a saver. Bill liked his new bigger apartment and when the bank gave their OK to finance a new pickup Bill jumped on the chance. With his increase in pay he could easily pay the rent and his truck payment and still have plenty of money for fun.
After a couple years Bill traded his truck in on another new one. He was living in style and enjoying himself. He even had some cash in the bank. It was about then that the housing bubble burst and the whole country dropped into a recession. The construction market was the hardest hit of all and many construction outfits went bankrupt or went quietly out of business.
Bill and Sid were luckier than many others. They were valued employees of the still viable but now considerably smaller company. But there were still problems and concessions had to be made. There were no jobs near Flagstaff and both Bill and Sid could still work for the company but it would have to be down in the greater Phoenix area.
First they got motel rooms in Phoenix during the week and went home on weekends. Then with home prices way, way down and foreclosures commonplace they made an agreement between themselves and bought a foreclosed house that needed some work for a very low price. After just a little work they moved in and worked on the house as time and money allowed. Bill dropped his apartment in Flagstaff right away to save money.
Slowly, very slowly the economy seemed to improve some. Eventually there were more construction jobs available and both Sid and Bill breathed a sigh of relief. And home prices went up some, not like they were before the crash but they did go up. When the company told the guys that they had a couple years of jobs lined up in the Flagstaff area Sid was grateful for the chance to return to his real home full time.
Bill decided to stay in Phoenix where there were plenty of jobs also. They contacted a realtor and put their joint house up for sale. It sold remarkably fast and both guys made a tidy profit on the sale on the now nice looking newly remodeled home. Bill used his half of the profit to buy another fixer upper house in Phoenix to live in and to remodel for a future sale.
Sid moved back to his original home up north and guys saw little of each other though they did talk on the phone at least once a week. Sid made a couple trips down to Bill’s new house to lend a hand on some work on Bill’s house and just spend some time with his friend.
Bill spent a weekend in the fall at Sid’s house when he drew an elk tag in the area and shot a nice bull elk. He gave Sid half the meat because Bill knew he would never eat it all himself and Sid was happy to take it.
Again life appeared good for both of the single guys. Bill had a succession of girlfriends and even sometimes more than one at the same time. None of the relationships were serious for either party and the splits were always amiable and often they would still hook up occasionally afterward.
Bill had a happy and carefree lifestyle that he enjoyed and still enjoyed his job also. He was carefree but still a very conscientious worker at his job that by this time he had held for quite a few years. His work on the fixer-upper home was coming along nicely and he now lived in comfort in his own home for the first time in his life. He was a happy man.
Chapter Three
Sid and Val
Sid did not like living in Phoenix at all and was ecstatic to be able to return to working and living in the Flagstaff area after those miserable (for him) years of living and working in the large city of Phoenix. And he returned to his home with a well padded savings account thanks to the sale of their redone fixer house in Phoenix. The company’s first construction job was at a college in Flagstaff. As head of the job Sid often had to go to the college office for the constant barrage of changes and permissions for the job.
This turned out to be a blessing when Sid had almost daily contact with the head secretary who just happened to be a blond haired, blue eyed beauty that Sid was instantly smitten by. Surprising Sid the beauty also seemed to find him attractive and Sid was soon dating Valerie and the pair were together just about every weekend.
Six months later in a simple tiny ceremony Valerie became Mrs. Sidney Blanch and moved into Sid’s (now theirs) house in the hills. There were only five people at the wedding with the Minister, Sid and Val, Bill as best man, and Val’s friend Stacy as their maid of honor.
The whirlwind romance and wedding left both Sid and Val somewhat breathless but very happy to find their sole mates. The two fit together like bread and butter and Val loved their home in the country having lived on a farm growing up.
While alike in many ways they were also different in many ways also. Val had a satellite internet dish installed at the house in the first week after she moved in. Sid did not even own a TV much less a computer. Surprisingly Val was not interested in TV but was an information junkie and needed her internet to stay up to date on everything.
Soon Sid found himself more informed on national and world events than ever before in his life. Val even taught him how to use the computer and brought him into the twenty first century. In a couple months he bought his own laptop and gradually came up to speed on its use.
Sid was amazed by the electronic world that he had never had anything to do with up to this point. He had always been an avid reader and the house was full of books but now he found out about E-books and that opened even more possibilities for him. Plus the wealth of information on the internet was astounding to Sid.
He could punch in anything and get more information than even he could wade through on any subject. He learned many things that helped him at work and on projects at his own house. After a couple months he was a pro at looking up information and wished he had not waited so long to get into this technological side of life.
That was not the only change when Val moved in. When they worked together moving her stuff Sid was surprised at many things that Val had. There was an assortment of camping gear and Val assured him she had used every piece of that equipment in the past and was proficient with everything. Then were the guns and a surprising amount of ammunition.
Again Val told him the world was a dangerous place and a girl had to know how to protect herself and that she went to the gun range occasionally to maintain her proficiency with them. After those surprises there was the amount of food she had at her apartment that they now brought out to their house. Seeing all Sid’s perplexing looks Val finally sat him down to explain things to Sid.
“I’m a prepper.”
“That’s nice I’m sure but I don’t have a clue what that is.”
“I am someone who wants to be prepared. I have the camping gear in case there was ever an emergency and I had to evacuate Flagstaff, like a big fire or a chemical spill, or something similar. With the camping gear I could leave town, set up camp, and be reasonably comfortable in the hills.
The guns are obvious. I want to be able to defend myself and defend you too now. The food just makes sense. We always have to eat and it is prudent to have some food on hand just in case something happens. If times get hard and we run out of money it would be nice to be able to still eat.”
“I guess that all seems reasonable. I was just kinda surprised. You never seemed like a camping type girl and we never talked about it. The same with the guns I just never associated you with guns.”
“This won’t come between us will it? It is just such a part of who I am I just never even thought about specifically talking about it with you.”
“No it’s all cool. I kinda had enough guns and camping when I was in the Marines to last me awhile. But everything you said makes perfect sense and I have no inhibitions at all about any of this. Matter of fact the gun thing is a good idea living way out here and I’ll maybe buy a couple for myself.
Plus after eating some of Bill’s elk I have been thinking about getting into hunting myself.”
“I looked and there are a couple spots here where we can set up a little shooting range of our own. But being a prepper is a little more than the food, guns, and camping gear. Many
people like me think about many things that could cause devastation to this country either locally or nation wide and we want to be prepared to some extent for all or at least some of those things if they were to happen.”
“Like what could happen to cause ‘devastation’? You mean like nuclear war or something?”
“Nuclear war is one thing that is always a possibility. But there are other things. Some are local things like a big wildfire would be a possibility here or a big hurricane might be a possibility in the eastern states. Or a big earthquake in California if you lived there. Or a big asteroid hitting the earth or Yellowstone blowing up, those could cause world wide problems.
Or an EMP or even cyber warfare taking out the electric grid. And while possible those things are either unlikely or would not necessarily be devastating to us here. The one thing I think that is a real possibility and could really affect everyone is an economic collapse.”
“You mean like happened a couple years ago?”
“Yes and no. I think that was just a taste. I am concerned about the total collapse of the US dollar which would collapse most of the world economies including the United States.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Believe me it is very possible and many think it is inevitable at some point. You know that the Untied States is about eighteen trillion dollars in debt don’t you?”
“Yes I do know that much. But it does not seem to worry anyone in Washington that know a lot more about that kind of stuff than I do.”
“Do you think we could ever pay that huge debt off?”
“I don’t know. I guess it does not seem very likely because it just keeps getting bigger all the time. But if it was so bad wouldn’t Congress do something about it?”
“Congressmen have a main goal of getting re-elected and making money for themselves and way down the list is the well being of this country. And those in Congress know to decrease the huge debt they would have to cut spending way back. That is only logical to anyone.
But those in Congress also know a very simple fact of life in the political world and that is ‘Spending buys votes and budget cuts lose votes’. That is why there are never any cuts and there will not be any.”
“Well it is certainly true that any cut in spending is bound to hurt someone and that someone is not going to vote for those that did that cut. And obviously everyone likes getting something from the government. So yes, I can see that the saying would be true about spending and cuts. But Congress would not put the whole nation at risk ever would they? They would be hurting themselves also by doing so if like you say a collapse ever did happen to the United States.”
“I certainly think they would put the nation at risk because they already have done so. And both parties equally share the blame. But let me give you some places to get some information or you can easily research on your own. And you will come to see that economic collapse is coming and it could easily be quite a bit worse that the Great Depression ever was. The only real question is not if but when it will happen. Do some research yourself and come to your own conclusion and see if it matches mine.”
Chapter Four
Sid
That is how I became a prepper. My lovely wife opened my eyes to something I had never even thought about. I researched diligently and came to believe just like Val did about the economic collapse that was coming. We just did not know if it would be next week or next year or next decade.
During my research I found prepper web sites and soon was reading a lot on several of them. My favorite is preparedsociety.com. The more I learned the more I knew I had yet a lot more to learn. And I carefully brought up the subject to Bill and he gradually came around to similar thinking also (I believe).
With Val and I on the same page we did many preparations to our place (which it turned out I had picked an excellent location just by accident). We also bought more food and other items we agreed would be invaluable if and when there ever was a total collapse or any catastrophe.
Some of the things we did were rather expensive and some not so much. Changing the well pump over to a solar powered pump was one of the most expensive things. Another expensive thing was me buying several guns. I was familiar with the M16’s in the military so I bought an AR 15 in .223 and an AR 10 in 308 which would be big enough for deer and elk.
I also got a Ruger 10/22 for small game and a Beretta model 92 in nine mm again because of being used to the pistol from my time in the military. Then plenty of ammunition for each gun and more for Val’s guns.
Besides food we also ordered a lot of heirloom garden seeds and locally we bought a large supply of canning jars and what I thought was an absurd quantity of canning lids for them (but the lids were very cheap!).
At Val’s prodding I found and bought two more large propane tanks and had them filled. This was an expensive thing even though I bought the tanks cheap; the propane was expensive to fill them. I thought the extra propane tanks were a little over the top because I already had a lot of propane storage but propane never goes bad and will always likely go up in price so storing extra was a good financial decision besides a prepper decision.
Val had saved the real expense for last and that was the solar power set-up for the house. But she had some money saved up and with what I had from the sale of the house in Phoenix we had plenty to buy solar panels to cover the southern exposure roof of the house and then buy all the batteries needed and the big inverter and wiring.
We also bought extra solar panels that we put in storage along with several extra batteries that we left dry and stored the acid separate. When we saw that we could easily live without the power from the electric company we disconnected and just went off grid. While not amounting to much we did save the monthly electric bill.
One thing that cost very little in cash was cutting firewood. We got a permit to cut firewood in the national forest and did so for over a month and a half straight on weekends. And Val proved she was not just a pretty face and could almost out work me. How was I ever lucky enough to find this woman? We ended up with firewood stacked almost everywhere it seemed like.
We were both still working our same jobs and both received good wages so we constantly added to our preps. This included buying old American silver coins. We really did not have enough money to buy any gold but the silver we could buy a little at a time from local dealers. We chose not to buy anything else in silver besides the coins because they were known items that were easily recognized by just about everyone. And stocking up on more food, always more food.
As time passed it was blatantly visible to many people that the economy was getting worse all the time. Food and fuels were steadily going up all the time. The rise of house prices that we had seen stopped and slid back down a little. I think prices would have dropped more on houses but those with money did not know where to safely put their money so they went to the old standby of real estate.
I was still working but the construction market was limited and declining again. Unemployment was supposedly going down but that was obviously a bogus claim by the government. And a very large number of people that had jobs found themselves working only part-time. To say times were hard was a gross understatement. Close to a third of the population were on the food stamp program. It was very plain things could not continue like this.
We pulled what money we had in the bank out and just left enough in to pay our monthly bills. The cash we had in hand we turned mostly into silver coins but always keeping some regular cash on hand.
And food and fuel continued to rise in price. The government said the inflation index was less than one percent; what a joke that was. Except no one was laughing because they were all to busy just trying to survive. We watched the local paper and Craigslist for items listed for sale that we thought we could use.
Many things could be purchased very cheap from people that needed money bad (which was a lot of people). I bought a few more guns that we really didn’t need but at the prices I got
them for I couldn’t turn them down. Sometimes I bought ammunition from the same cash strapped parties at the same time as the guns. And we both bought many other items both new and used that we thought we might need if things did collapse.
It seemed like we bought and bought and we never ran out of things we thought we needed. And there was always more food to buy and store away.
Both Val and I always kept our ears open to any items that we happened to hear about that people were selling. We visited yard sales whenever we happened to be going past one. A couple times there were local stores that had going out of business sales that we took advantage of if they had cheap items that we thought we could use now or in the future.
And that’s when we got the first news of the big asteroid heading for Earth.
Chapter Five
Sid
It wasn’t even the government that first spotted it; instead it was some private entity that brought it to the world’s attention. Apparently it was pretty big so how could it have been missed for so long? Anyway there was a big chunk of rock hurdling through space heading for the earth. At first there were wild speculations about it smashing the earth and killing everyone and everything. Total extinction.
Then NASA came out and said ‘no it was not going to strike the earth’ but for a space item it would come very close to the earth. Close enough so that people could maybe even see it at night without a telescope. Then some said it would hit the moon and that would push the moon into the earth and kill everyone.
So NASA came out again and said it was not going to hit anything. While the asteroid would come quite close to the earth it would pass by and would soon be just a memory and cause no harm to any of us. This would turn out not to be the complete truth.