The recent decline in the prepper community

Does the recent decline in the prepper community mean people have too much faith in what Trump may be able to do?

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse

Is the prepper movement in the United States dying? At one time it was estimated that there were 3 million preppers in the United States, but in late 2016 interest in prepping has hit a multi-year low. The big reason for this, of course, is that the election of Donald Trump has fueled a tremendous wave of optimism among those that consider themselves to be conservatives, patriots and evangelical Christians. Not since the election of Ronald Reagan has the mood on the right shifted in such a positive direction so suddenly. But now that everyone is feeling so good about things, very few people still seem interested in prepping for hard times ahead. In fact, it is like a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community.

As the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, I am in contact with a lot of people that serve the prepping community. And I can tell you that sales of emergency food and supplies have been crashing since Donald Trump's surprise election victory. Firms that help people relocate outside of the United States have seen business really dry up, and I know of one high profile individual that has actually decided to move back to the country after Trump's victory. It is almost as if the apocalypse has been canceled and the future history of the U.S. has been rewritten with a much happier ending.

Personally, I am quite alarmed that so many people are suddenly letting their guard down, but it is difficult to convince people to be vigilant when things seem to be going so well. Just consider some of the things that have been happening in recent weeks...

-Donald Trump was just named Time Magazine's Person of the Year.

-The Dow just keeps setting brand new record high after brand new record high. In fact, the Dow has now risen by more than 1,200 points since Donald Trump won the election.

-The Russell 2000 has shot up an astounding 13 percent just since Trump's victory.

-Donald Trump has convinced heating, ventilation and air conditioning giant Carrier to keep about 1,000 jobs in the United States instead of shipping them to Mexico.

-Donald Trump has convinced SoftBank to invest 50 billion dollars and create 50,000 new jobs in the United States.

-The U.S. dollar index recently hit the highest level that we have witnessed since March 2003.

-We just learned that U.S. Steel wants to bring back somewhere around 10,000 jobs to communities that lost them.

At this point there is an overwhelming belief among those on the right that Donald Trump is going to be able to do what he has promised to do.

And the numbers back this up. In a previous article, I discussed the fact that a recent Gallup survey discovered that the percentage of Republicans that believe that the U.S. economy is "getting better" increased from just 16 percent immediately prior to the election to 49 percent immediately after the election.

I don't recall ever seeing such a shift in public sentiment in just a few days. Tens of millions of Americans have put their faith in Donald Trump, and time will tell if he will be able to deliver. As billionaire Mark Cuban recently pointed out, Donald Trump is like a number one draft pick that has not proven himself yet...

"I'll analogize it to the NBA draft: He's the No. 1 pick," Cuban said. "He's who we put our hopes and dreams with, and we're going to believe in him. Right now it's a little bit easier because we haven't played a game yet."

"There's no reason to rush to judgment or come to any conclusions now," he continued. "Let's see what happens starting January 21 and go from there. I hope he's a superstar, and I hope everything turns out the way we all hope it will. But until January 21, there's no real point at going into detail."

Let us hope that President Trump will be everything that people are hoping that he will be.

I would love it if 2017 is a year filled with peace and prosperity. That way I could write less about our economic troubles and instead do more of the positive stories that I have been sharing lately. And my wife and I could take some time off and just spend some time enjoying our quiet life up here in the mountains.

I don't think that is the way it is going to go, but I do hope that the optimists are right.

At this point I could start listing out all of the reasons why our economy is doomed no matter who is president, but unless you are already convinced all of that reasoning would probably fall on deaf ears.

Tens of millions of Americans are completely convinced that we are heading into a new golden era for America just because Donald Trump won the election, and for the sake of the nation let us hope that they are correct.

But what if they are wrong?

What if the rioting, violence and civil unrest that the radical left is planning for the Inauguration on January 20th sparks a movement that plunges many of our major cities into chaos throughout Trump's presidency?

What if all of the incredibly bad decisions that were made during the Obama years result in the biggest economic downturn we have ever seen early in the Trump years?

What if Trump's inability to get along with China results in a major trade war between the two largest economies on the entire planet?

What if the growing financial instability in Europe results in a new global financial crisis that Trump will not be able to do anything to stop?

I could go on and on, but I think that you get the point.

All of the things that myself and other watchmen have been warning about all this time are coming.

My hope is that the optimists are right and that the horrible events that are coming will be put off for as long as possible.

But I wouldn't count on it.

A day of reckoning for America is fast approaching, and those that are wise understand the signs of the times.

With Trump As President Prepping Is More Important Than Ever

by Brandon Smith Alt-Market.com,

I don’t believe it is as pervasive as certain people may think, but there is a notion among some in the liberty movement that with Donald Trump in the White House the need for crisis preparedness has subsided. Because preppers and survivalists tend to lean towards the conservative side of things, the urgency for prepping almost always explodes when the Democratic party is “in power.” As they say, for example, Barack Obama was perhaps the greatest gun salesman in history with the gun industry growing over 158% during his two terms.

Now with Republican dominance in Congress, Senate and White House, there is a possible temptation for conservatives to become complacent and comfortable once again. In 2017 so far, ATF background checks have dropped by at least half a million since this time last year, and gun company stocks are turning negative. There are also rumors floating around that survival food companies are suffering from a severe crunch in sales. Though I have not yet found this to be substantiated, I can verify that many preppers I deal with on a daily basis seem to have relaxed their guard.

I would point out that this is not necessarily all due to Trump. The gun market is likely saturated after eight years of Obama, and one must also consider that as the U.S. economy continues to decline, surplus cash used for prep gear is going to dry up. That said, I do think it is important to examine any assumptions liberty activists might have in terms of a Trump driven “recovery.”

When I began publishing my post-election analysis on what I felt was a predictable Trump win, I did find anger among some activists who decided I was being “too pessimistic,” and that I should join the movement in celebration. Being that I called a Trump presidency half a year in advance based on the premise that the globalists needed a conservative scapegoat for the next phase of the ongoing financial crisis, it was hardly a moment of celebration for me.

There is a common delusion among those that invest themselves in politics that all that is needed to reverse the course of any nation or situation is a “strong leader” with ample cheerleading from the populace. In reality, social and geopolitical disasters are usually far beyond the means of any one politician to change. Economic disasters are even more irreversible. I wish I could pretend to be optimistic, but I am rather well studied in the history of these kinds of events.

Conservatives are especially vulnerable to the idea of a “protector on a white horse” coming to their rescue; a God-fearing hero and statesman, a general and leader of men. But, such people do not exist. There are no supermen. There are no worldly saviors. There are only common men, with common failings, destined to face extraordinary obstacles. The great men of history are not born before hand — they are forged in the crucible of crisis. Great men are not great men until proven otherwise. To assume any political leader is a great man beforehand is foolish, to say the least.

This is why blind faith in a post-Trump renaissance is misplaced. It is something that has yet to be proven, and in the meantime, there are numerous and highly visible dangers on the horizon that demand continued vigilance and preparedness. I will examine one of these primary dangers now…

The Growing Threat Of Civil Unrest

As I noted in my post-election analysis, the political Left has been shell shocked by the rise of Trump and their emotional response would undoubtedly be to double down and become progressively more volatile and more violent. I predicted that this would be evident as winter broke and the cold weather subsided.

The first signs of this are surfacing as May Day is becoming a rally date for social justice mobs bent on disrupting any agenda the Trump administration might have for enforcing immigration laws. The largest of these protests is to be held in Los Angeles, but similar protests are planned nationwide as well.

From what we have seen from previous rallies, it would not be unfair to expect rioting in May. I say this because a tone shift in the left is taking place and extreme reactions are more frequent. The following video illustrates this clearly, I think…

Warning - Explicit

In case you missed it, this guy just pulled an AR-15 on someone simply because they had a MAGA flag on their truck. Not only that, but he FILMED HIMSELF doing it and and apparently posted it on social media. That is how brazen and insane these people are becoming.

Think of it this way — could you have even imagined something like this happening during the 2012 election? It is important not to become conditioned to such behavior as being “normal.”

To be sure, this sort of thing will not be happening in certain parts of the country. In my state of Montana, the assailant would have been shot two dozen times over by our highly armed population regardless of his politics just on the self defense principle. And frankly, I am fine with that. Citizens providing security for citizens is the American way.

What I do have a problem with, though, is the increasing potential for an extreme response from conservatives in the face of leftist lunacy. Meaning, I worry about martial law with conservative support, which in my view is more and more likely over the next two years.

Contrary to popular belief among tough-government champions, martial law often instigates more violence than it solves. The harsher the crackdown, the more vicious the push-back; the more vicious the push-back the more totalitarianism is rationalized by authorities. It’s a terrible cycle.

Preparedness in terms of self defense should be self-explanatory here. During widespread mob action the rule of law is usually the first casualty, even when martial law is instituted. You also never know when some nutcase might declare you a “Trump supporter” (whether you are one or not) as he reaches for a weapon.

It is fascinating to me the level of cognitive dissonance with some liberty activists who seem to think Trump’s first term will be anything other than pure chaos. George Soros, an elitist who often funds the very groups organizing mobs to protest Trump, said it plainly:

“I think Trump will fail.”



“What’s more Soros predicted that the market’s Trump high will soon turn into a hangover. He called Trump unpredictable and unprepared, and said that combination will end up bad for the market.”

Soros and his globalist colleagues do not need to field guesses; they ENGINEER the outcomes that they “predict.” Social unrest at this fragile time would result in the exact market instability Soros mentioned, among other problems.

Look, you may believe Trump is being threatened on all sides by the so-called “deep state,” or you may believe that he has willingly surrounded himself with global elitists because he is a Trojan horse. Either way, the diagnosis for the future is not rosy. It would be naive to think that the globalists would not do everything in their power to foment calamity in the near term. It would be equally naive to believe that such an agenda could be repelled through political means.

The answer, as always, is a prepared citizenry. This can act as a deterrent as much as a measure of comfort. The more prepared the public is for any eventuality, the less affected we will be by disaster. The less affected we are by disaster, the less fearful we will be when it strikes and the less likely we will be to make stupid decisions such as throwing our support behind martial law and the wholesale erasure of the constitution. The more prepared we are, the fewer options available to the establishment when attempting to lure us into poor collective decisions.

Prepping means freedom in the face of uncertainty, and times have never been more uncertain. To summarize: A Trump White House calls for more caution, not less.

I see no reason to stop preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

Really, little has changed. We should all still be prepping.

Onward and upward,
airforce

I think that the prepper community has gone more underground and not as noticeable as in recent years. I live in Georgia and in Atlanta there is a store dedicated to nothing but prepping and survival. They stay BUSY! Almost a revolving door of customers. They constantly are having seminars and classes. Back in April I had the opportunity to meet John Jacob Schmidt of AmRRON from Idaho. A lot of my friends that are in the prepper, survival, and militia communities are just not advertising as much anymore but are still prepping.

bountyhunter, if you're in northern GA around hotlanta, you're not too far from Waynesville NC. You might want to check out Carolina readiness supply if you ever out that way.

Your friends are smart, not to advertise what they're up to.

There may be a 'silver lining' to the decline in interest to prepare for hard times. Many of the suppliers will feel the pinch and prices will drop. If that happens some will go out of business. Now would be the time to support them and stock up while prices are cheap.

@CSC I am in West Central in a small town just north of FT. BENNING. I have heard of Readiness Supply but just never made the trip. I need to for sure.

Good folks.

http://carolinareadiness.com/

Here in the American Redoubt

In central Washington, even after Trump's win, 'preppers' foresee potential disaster and violent confrontation with the left

By Wilson Criscione

On Saturday afternoon, as kids play and roosters crow on a farm north of Prosser, Washington, a crowd of people are gathered in a barn, preparing for the day the "Shit Hits The Fan."

The preppers who attended the fourth annual Northwest Preparedness Expo in Prosser don't know exactly what will cause a breakdown in public facilities and functions, a situation they call the "SHTF scenario." It could be a natural disaster, an economic collapse, or a civil war caused by political upheaval. And they don't know exactly when the collapse will happen.

But increasingly, they see more political violence in big cities, and more of a divide between rural and urban environments. The left's reaction to Donald Trump's presidency, they feel, has deepened the divide, making the day they've been preparing for seem ever more imminent.

"We don't really care what the reason is — if there's a breakdown, then we're going to be able to fend for ourselves while the authorities sort it out," says RJ Blahut, president of the Lower Valley Assembly, the group that sponsored the preparedness expo.

Here in Prosser, the mindset of the American Redoubt thrives. The American Redoubt — "Redoubt" meaning a fortress or retreat — refers to a movement of conservative Christians escaping liberal areas and finding a haven in the area east of the Cascades throughout Eastern Washington and Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. For them, it's a God-honored territory where like-minded people gather together.

"That's kind of what the Redoubt means to me," Blahut says. "It's a safe area — a relatively safe area with some common ideas."

Taking the direction of leaders like Rep. Matt Shea (R-Spokane Valley), preppers in the American Redoubt are preparing to survive a disaster, and to defend themselves against what they perceive as enemies of their culture.

'THE BREAKING POINT'

Cassie Whitlock didn't know what to expect when she came from Oregon up to Prosser with her family to sell wood-fired forges for the expo.

"We were sort of wondering when we came here: Is this going to be super radical?" Whitlock says.

Whitlock, who didn't see many of the speakers, says it didn't seem radical at all. For her, the expo is simply a place where people share ideas on being self-sufficient. She saw people, maybe about 150, building community.

The event features vendors who came from all over the country to sell food, survival materials and ammunition. It included hands-on classes to learn about wound care, home food storage and strategies for unarmed defense, as well as a class about concealed carry options.

There were talks about building a self-sufficient retreat, and a talk called "SHTF Intelligence," in which a former military and contract intelligence analyst named Sam Culper broke down how to gather information about threats that may exist, whether related to infrastructure, power outages or local gangs.

The expo was started four years ago by the Lower Valley Assembly, which describes itself as a "grassroots movement whose goal is to foster a safe, stable and free community." It promotes self-reliance, Christianity and the U.S. Constitution in the Lower Yakima Valley.

Wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses and an army-green button-up shirt, Blahut, the LVA president, tells the Inlander that he first got involved after hearing a speech from 2012 Washington gubernatorial candidate Shahram Hadian, who is currently a pastor in Spokane Valley.

"Being a Christian-based organization and a group that favors the concept of the original Constitution, we're a group that believes words have meanings and they don't change much over the years," Blahut says.

He opposes the federal government taking control of land, in line with the views of those who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon for 41 days in a standoff with federal authorities last year. If the government wants to enforce something that is not written in the Constitution, Blahut says, then they should amend the Constitution.

When he sees what's happening in this country, specifically in cities like Berkeley, California, Portland and Seattle, he can't help but feel that political upheaval is more likely than ever. He calls it "failure" on the part of the left to "accept and work with the results of the election," which, in his mind, makes it even more important to prepare for some kind of catastrophe.

"If anything, it's probably shifted more from preparing for natural or economic collapse, to more of a political upheaval," he says.

Blahut would like to see a redivision of states to prevent situations like the one in Washington currently, where he claims that the ideas of liberals on the west side of the state have the sway. What King County wants, he says, King County dictates for everybody, fair or not.

"I don't really see how we, here — in Benton County, and Franklin County, and Yakima County and so forth — I don't see how we are ever going to match up with the political views of King County and Pierce County and all those guys down there on the west side," Blahut says. "So where's the dividing point? Where's the breaking point? Where do you say, 'OK, well, this just isn't working out for the state?'"

RURAL AND URBAN DIVIDE

In the "Patriot Barn," the main stage of the expo, an American flag hangs from the ceiling to the right of the stage. Chandeliers hang above wooden chairs, and bistro lights brighten up the room. Glen Tate, giving only his pen name, tells the audience what he thought would happen in the 2016 presidential election: Hillary Clinton would win, by cheating.

If that were the case, "the civil war starts the day after election day," Tate — who declined to comment for this article — tells the crowd of roughly 50 people gathered in the barn.

"In my mind, it was gameday," Tate says. "It was gonna happen."

Thus, his talk is entitled "Hillary Did Not Win, So Should We All Just Quit Prepping Now?"

The answer to that question was "no." Trump, Tate says, bought some time before a major civil conflict, but he says it's still imminent, and actually "should have happened years ago."

After Trump's presidential victory, those in the American Redoubt see more political violence, and they're preparing for more to come. For Tate, the divide between the rural and urban will still inevitably lead to a SHTF scenario.

Tate wrote a book series called 299 Days that imagines the collapse of the United States. It will be a partial economic collapse and a partial political collapse, he says. He supports filling in the Redoubt with "good people" to balance out the protesters in the cities, as he told the preppers on Saturday.

"I think it's fantastic, because when we are mixed in with liberals, they have our way with us," he says. "We need to be separated."

He told the crowd he was "heartened" to see anti-protesters fighting back against what he describes as the "bad guys," the far-left Antifa protesters (Antifa is short for Anti-fascism) in Seattle on May Day. When he mentions "Seattle," the crowd groans.

By the end of his speech, a man in the back of the crowd has asked Tate how the right could find its own leader to fight against the "bad guys" like Antifa, to engage them and to "annihilate them" on the spot.

Tate ignores the violent suggestion, saying that it's better to have "smaller, independent teams" rather than one leader, and advises communicating better than the other side through radios. The right, he said, is "better than the other side at thinking on their own."

Blahut, when asked if he's concerned that the preppers would take up arms against the left, rejects the idea. Rather, the people Blahut associates with are "in favor of the rule of law," he says. They just want to be left alone.

"If we're gonna end up using arms, it's gonna be defensive," Blahut says. "If somebody breaks into your house and you got a gun, you're gonna be defensive about it, right? That's kind of how we look at it."

THE 'REAL ENEMY'

For preppers in the American Redoubt, there are a number of forces to protect themselves from, according to Rep. Matt Shea. In an impassioned speech on Saturday, Shea presented a PowerPoint presentation called "The Future of Liberty: Protecting Our Christian Culture."

Shea declined an Inlander interview request, and requested that his speech not be recorded. But in front of a crowd of nearly 100 people, he identified what he called the "enemies": communists, the Muslim Brotherhood and foreign governments.

Among the "communists," he mentioned activist organizations like the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. He linked the media to the "communists," since a Spokesman-Review columnist once served as a moderator for a PJALS panel discussion. He called out the Inlander for a correction the paper made, because he was unsatisfied with the size, font and location of the correction. He said a story about Spokane County Democrats' numerous Public Disclosure Commission violations was "one of the most underreported stories this year," without mentioning last month's detailed Inlander investigation of the violations.

The Redoubt, "the best place in America," Shea said, does not share the same values as Western Washington, and he said he'd continue his efforts to create a 51st state. For the audience, the message was to keep focused on the enemy, and help your neighbors.

"We're here because we know if something does happen, we can help our neighbors, love our neighbors," he said.

He ended with a call to the crowd to fight for their culture.

"Are you going to fight?" Shea asked them.

"Yes!" they responded.

He asked a second, and a third time. And with each response, the crowd grew louder. ♦

The NW Preparedness Expo was great fun! I arrived late and missed many of the speakers, but still caught Rep. Shea's presentation on the State of Liberty, E. Wa. seceding from the left coast. I attended one on Strategic Landscape Design, and stayed for a great sermon that was an intro for the Jordan Page concert. Seeing so many young people and children gave me a lot of hope.

I've spent some time with the good folks of the Lower Valley Assembly on a few occasions. I can't say enough on how good these people are. Very friendly, warm, and welcoming folks. I'm starting to make friends there too, since I have been taking all of these Groundrod and SHTF Intel Prep classes. The folks at the Patriot Barn are good solid people who are not violent extremists at all. Their message is one of love of God, liberty, family, and community. Self sufficiency and helping each other are not mutually exclusive. When I got there I saw a sign that said "Smile. Drone overhead." Later I found out that people inside the alphabet soups do not see the people at this event as a threat, but rather a resource of help in emergencies. Many LVA folks are in AMRRON. AMRRON had great a booth there too, and now I'm currently studying for my technicians license. I bought seeds, books, cd's, etc.

The next day I attended a class there on Advanced SHTF Intelligence Analysis on HUNINT and OSINT. Great class with relevant info that you can easily apply to daily life. Sam is a really good instructor, and I will be doing a review soon on the SHTF Intel Prep classes, and the Groundrod classes by CSG as well. If they come to your area, take them. If you are broke and have 20 guns, sell one to take the class.

When Rep. Shea said "Will you fight?" the first time, the "yes" was not very loud. That's because these people are good moral folks that do not want to resort to arms, but will only if attacked. As was recently pointed out to me while in the Lower Valley at a class, the left does not have the moral inhibitions we do about using violence. They don't believe in God, whereas we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard because we have to answer for our actions someday.

I bought a really cool American Redoubt shirt that had the snake on it divided up into E. WA, E. OR, ID, MT, and WY.

--

Regarding the main topic of this thread, I have seen greater numbers of leftists take up Prepping for the Trumpocalypse. The prepper oriented companies should take advantage of this and market to the left in this way because it keeps the conversation going between our 2 sides which reduces chances we will shoot at each other. I have Bernie socialist friends into canning and jarring. Those types like gardening and non-GMO too. I have also seen dramatically increased numbers of left leaning people becoming firearms owners too. Good! Teach them how to drill and mill their own 80% lower and build their own AR-15, and guess what? They will start to vote like an AR-15 owner! Then they will say, "I don't want them taking away MY AR!" I'm less worried about them shooting me with that AR because I'm now in the Redoubt. I'm more worried about meth addicted predatory survivalists who's SHTF plan is to go wipe out people in the cabins, take their shit, and live there. Next time Jihadi Ahmed goes Allah Akbar on a night club full of fags, go up to one and say "Hey, that wasn't us American gun owners. Would you like to go shooting with me? I'll show you what I know, and help you create your own "safe space" anywhere you go, because you will be armed." Then, as a new gun owner, they will start voting like one. I offered to one I knew at work, and was warmly thanked. He didn't take me up on my offer, but just making the offer built repor (sp?).

A couple of weeks ago the owner of one of the "main" survivalist websites was told by several of the companies who advertise on his site that they were receiving NO business none, NADA, zip. Many of them are considering pulling all their advertising off the web.

Now this...

You'd think with all the hurricanes and wildfires more people would be preparing not less.

All things ebb and flow. If you have money in the stock market right now, you're more apt to be ecstatic than scared. And if by some miracle they do pass tax reform, this may go on a bit longer - until people belatedly realize that no one is doing anything about the budget deficit, or the national debt, other than doing away with the debt ceiling.

If something can't go on forever, it won't. Hopefully, folks will realize this before it's too late.

Onward and upward,
airforce

From the same guy...

I've noticed the same thing. Websites and blogs that have been active for years are now dead as a door nail.