Selco Talks About The 4 Types of REAL Survivalists – A great Read.

There is this fellow, goes by the pen-name Selco, that is pretty well known in prepper / survivalist circles. You see, he lived through the chaos of the Bosnian conflict and survived. He writes about his experiences, and provides some hints and stories about what it was like. Aside from being immensely interesting, it is also good information to take to heart when the SHIT HITS THE FAN (also known as SHTF). Here is one of his write-ups. I found it interesting, and perhaps you (the reader) will do as well.

The Bosnian war of 1992 to 1996 is one of the most recent examples of  a total SHTF situation. Upwards of 329,000 people died during the war  and the country is still recuperating in many ways (though it has also  made a remarkable recovery). During the Siege of Sarajevo which lasted  1,425 days, people were without water, electricity, and supplies.
 
Bear  in mind that Bosnia was a very westernized, modern country when the war  broke out. Heck, the capital of Sarajevo even hosted the 1984 Olympic  games! 

 -Primal Survivor  

Editor’s Note: Below is a segment of Selco’s book, SHTF Survival Stories. I think it’s a good indicator of the way Selco illustrates his points with real-life stories from the SHTF. This is a long piece but well worth the read. (Be sure to go here to see how to get a free mini-course when you purchase the book before Feb. 9.) This book is nearly 500 pages of experience and hard-won advice. All credit to the author. Excerpt by Selco Begovic, the author of SHTF Survival Stories


During the SHTF, I was a jack of all trades.

Resource gatherer, fighter and defender for my family, and also just the young man who wanted to enjoy life as much as possible in these problematic times.

During the SHTF, I was a jack of all trades.

In this section, I want to talk about different types of real survivalists. I don’t want to judge here. If you have lived a normal life, you may only know a glimpse of your survivor mindset – what kind of person you will be when SHTF and you fight for survival. What is important to know is that people show very different faces or mindsets when it comes to real survival.

Normal people like to think that everything can be solved by doing good, so they are trying to do good. Here it is not important whether we are talking about people who believe in God or not.

We have all seen TV shows where preppers are showing their stuff, talking about their plans for a time when SHTF.

What is  important to know is that people show very different faces or mindsets  when it comes to real survival.
What is important to know is that people show very different faces or mindsets when it comes to real survival.

I have seen a lady who is preparing for some possible scenario and showing her food storage and talking about her plans when SHTF. She is storing a whole lot of everything, much more than she and her family need because as she explains there is gonna be a whole lot of people who have lost everything, and her plan is to help them.

I hope everything the best for her. She is a great person. Someone who wants to help other people is a good person, period.

But when the SHTF, she is going down.

When SHTF, things are upside down.
When SHTF, things are upside down .

Sorry for being so negative but when people have to decide whether they die or this nice lady does, for many the answer is easy.

When SHTF, things are upside down, so it will not work as people imagine. We are all living our lives today aware that bad people exist, but that bad and evil is more or less (depending on where we are living) controlled or locked away from society. So, we are actually not aware of how many bad folks are around us.

You might be living with one… yourself.

The only person you can count on in a SHTF situation is yourself.  Don’t count on authorities like the police or military to keep you safe.
 
Take what happened in Srebrenica as an example. It was a “UN Safe Haven” with Dutch troops stationed there.
 
Despite  this, it became the site of the worst massacre of the war and over  8,000 men and boys were rounded up and killed. The day that Srebrenica  fell, 25 thousand refugees pleaded for help outside of the UN military  base but were left outside to fend for themselves. 

 -Primal Survivor  

When the SHTF, I was rudely awakened from the illusion. Actually, my illusion was shattered to pieces when I saw what “normal” people did to just survive. Bad people will be around.

When the SHTF, I was rudely awakened from the illusion. Actually, my  illusion was shattered to pieces when I saw what “normal” people did to  just survive. Bad people will be around.
THE BOSNIAN CIVIL WAR 1992 – 1995 (HU 75052) A Bosnian soldier comes under fire near a row of destroyed houses in Brcko, North East Bosnia, February 1993. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205020580

#1) The Bad Man

I knew a guy before the SHTF who was a nobody. An ordinary worker from one of the industrial machine parts factories.

Actually, I did not really know him than the usual “hello” on the street, or football discussion sometimes in the neighborhood.

He lived alone, looked decent, and had a typical work and afterward “coffee house/bar with friends” life. If someone asked me to describe him, I would say “just a guy from the neighborhood” or a typical “normal dude”.

When the SHTF, he emerged as one of the leaders of a local group. And he was popular, he had something that made people want to follow him. The problem was that he had something that made bad kinds of people follow him. He was pretty much something like a psychopath.

This guy was now someone very different.
This guy was now someone very different.

Murders, rape, robbing and everything else that goes with that was their way of life in that time. And to make things clear here, I need to say that whenever I met him and his group out on the street I would go and hide even I knew him from his former life as a “normal guy.”

This guy was now someone very different.

It was not like a movie. I was prepared to confront them and fight only as a last option, but Batman was not living in the city in that time. Even if he was there, he probably would have given up, so the chances of a superhero versus a group of bad guys were not realistic.

How bad?

Sometimes he liked to catch a guy and make him run across the open space where snipers were active. If the guy survived that (rarely) then they shot at him. If he survived that shooting too, then he would live. He called that, “God will decide are you going to live or die.”

It was not like a movie. I was prepared to confront them and fight  only as a last option, but Batman was not living in the city in that  time. Even if he was there, he probably would have given up, so the  chances of a superhero versus a group of bad guys were not realistic.
It was not like a movie. I was prepared to confront them and fight only as a last option, but Batman was not living in the city in that time. Even if he was there, he probably would have given up, so the chances of a superhero versus a group of bad guys were not realistic.

Some people have a certain type of charisma, and he had a lot of it. When you add the fact that he was bad, or evil if you like, you got an explosive combination. He was something like a bad kind of hero, the man who weak people want to follow. And they would obey his commands. Also, when you add the fact that he provided security and food for them, that counted too.

I was once in their nest, or headquarters, if you like to call it like that. It was like a place taken from weird fairy tales, or like some drug-induced nightmare.

On the ceiling, there was a big disco ball. On the wall, there was a big target drawn with paint with holes from bullets. Some women were laying on the couch giggling, drunk or high, watching me.

On the ceiling, there was a big disco ball. On the wall, there was a  big target drawn with paint with holes from bullets.
On the ceiling, there was a big disco ball. On the wall, there was a big target drawn with paint with holes from bullets.

On the floor in one corner, one man was laying. I was not sure if he was dead, drunk or just sleeping. I passed around him carefully. I was wearing my “I do not care” look because in a situation like that, if you showed fear you may find yourself in a bad situation. For example, these guys could make a practicing target out of you just for fun.

Also, to look too bold was not a good idea.

He was sitting in a bus seat taken from somewhere, and he had a hat on his head, the kind that you wear with a tuxedo. If that all was in a movie that I was watching I would laugh a lot.

But it was not a movie and I did not laugh.

My friend who brought me there introduced me to him and told him that I needed MREs. That friend was supposed to be my protection or something similar, but very soon I realized that, I, just like everyone else there, was dependent on his goodwill.

His first question to me was, “Are you going to her concert?”

I was confused, then he showed me a poster on the wall announcing some folk concert that happened a year ago in some different world. I did not know what to say.

He said, “I can get you tickets.”

And I said, “OK thanks”.

Nobody smiled. Some guy behind him was taking apart a machine gun and cleaning it with oil.

Anyway, we finished our deal, and I went home. While I was leaving, he said, “Do not forget to pick up your tickets” with a big fat smile.

I thought that he was crazy, but actually, he was not crazy at all. He just had a big great time since SHTF and enjoyed terrifying people to feel his power. He lived his dream where everything is allowed, where there is no punishment from society other than some other stronger and more wicked guy.

There is nothing deep and philosophical in that guy’s behavior and mindset. He was just a normal guy who turned bad because he loved power and was in a world without rules where he could play.

He lived on the bad side and lived a fast and evil life. He liked that SHTF situation.

But SHTF did not create that guy. He was there all the time. His real character just waited for SHTF to come out and play.

After some time, he ended up stabbed to death and then burned. I also knew the guy who did that, and he was even worse than the first bad man.

Now, this guy was not alone. When the SHTF, a whole bunch of weird and sick folks emerged. The point is that you never know what kind of people are living around you, or even with you.

And to make things worse, as I said, this guy was something like “normal” guy before SHTF.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
You do whatever it takes to survive.

Besides those normal guys who turned bad, there is a whole army of scum and criminals who are just waiting for the SHTF to happen, so they can go out and be something like small dictators.

You can be sure that they are perfectly prepared for that. They already live in their own version of criminal SHTF, with their rules. When real SHTF they gonna be ready for it, they just gonna jump out fully organized and ready to take over. They are gonna go open and be very mean.

I was surprised, though. I was like, “Why are there so many mean and bad folks suddenly?”

The answer is actually simple. Bad people are all around us. Some of them are aware of the fact that they are bad like organized crime members, gangs etc. Others are gonna see SHTF like their chance to fulfill their secret wishes and indulge in power over others.

So, no doubt once the SHTF you’ll run into a bad man from time to time, too.

#2. The Chameleon

Most of the folks who have been through some serious and life-threatening situations and survive are gonna tell you one thing: they survive it with mental strength.

Also, all survival instructors are going say that first thing in any survival situation to have is the will to survive.

It is easy to say today “I will survive” but a great majority of people do not know what the will to survive actually means.

Do not count on "peace keeping forces".
Do not count on “peace keeping forces”.

In my time I did see some folks who just laid down and had lost the will for life. They just gave up.

When it comes to survival you have to focus on what you are good at, and some people are just good at working with other people or maybe dealing or playing with other people. The mainstream media gives everyone a picture how real survivalist need to look and act, but they’re wrong.

The Chameleon is a smart type of real survivalist.

When SHTF, the word deception has a whole other meaning and becomes powerful.

It is used in many different situations and for many different reasons. It helps some to survive but also helps to take lives.

Never form your opinion about what kind of man is dangerous based on popular images. When the SHTF, you can end up dead because some 70-year-old lady blows your head off with a shotgun.

This is how you should think, but the average man – the sheeple – don’t.

So, you can be sure that when the time comes, you’ll need to look stronger than you are. But also, sometimes you gonna need to look much weaker than you are. More options are always better.

And for all who are preparing with the attitude, “let them come,” you need to change it to “let them not come”.

There was a guy in town in that time who was very good to know if you needed to figure out where you could find something useful, or to find out what is going on.

If I needed to find something particular, for example, if I needed 10 liters of diesel fuel for something, I would first check people in my vicinity. I’d check a few guys out, do they have that or do they know someone who has that. In short, I would go out and try my luck.

But there was also that guy who always had good information about sources for trade or any other information.

The guy was shrouded in some kind of rumors, or it was more like a myth. So, you could hear all kinds of stories like, “he has important friends” or “he has some sources from the outside” or “somebody powerful is protecting him.”  After all of those stories, you could easily conclude that the guy was powerful, even before you saw him.

He alone did not look mean or powerful or anything similar, but he carried this mean-looking, old-style, heavy machine gun all the time, with bullet strips over his shoulders and chest.

Anytime when I would go and visit him, I got something useful for trade or some useful information where I could go and find something.

He survived the war and I did not see him for several years. Then I met him in the mall, when he was buying some toys for his grandson. I started a conversation with him, and we got some coffee.

I asked him what he is doing now. He said he is a lawyer. I was surprised. Then he told me that he was a lawyer before the SHTF. For some reasons, I could not connect that man from the war period with a lawyer, but soon some things were clearer for me.

He invited me to his house for more coffee, and after some time he went to the basement and dragged up a big wooden box with locks on it out.

He opened it and I saw that old machine gun inside. Of course, I wanted to check it. When I took it, I saw that barrel was full of melted iron, in order to make weapon unusable.

I was surprised and asked the man why he did that. I mean, you never know when you gonna need weapon ready. He laughed and said, “It was always like that, unusable”.

Now I was completely confused, and then he started to talk.

Do not count on "peace keeping forces". There have been cases where UN forces turned a "blind eye" to mass killings of civilians.
Do not count on “peace keeping forces”. There have been cases where UN forces turned a “blind eye” to mass killings of civilians.

He was a lawyer before SHTF, he never fired a shot from any weapon, and violence was completely strange to him. When SHTF in the chaos he found himself on the street, looking at how a bunch of folks were breaking into malls and shops, taking whatever is useful.

In 5 minutes, he was inside a local museum with some young people who were breaking stuff and taking whatever useful things they could. He said, “When I saw a local policeman completely drunk trying to take a German uniform and helmet for fun, I realized that we were starting to live in interesting times.”

He took the machine gun from a glass box, together with some bullets strips and went home.

Ten days later some punks tried to loot his home armed with knives and screwdrivers:

“I put those bullet strips on me, took the machine gun, stood in front of them and yelled that if they do not disappear that moment, I am gonna massacre them.”

And of course, they disappeared.

He said, even if that thing worked, he was not sure if he would be able to shoot at them. But he realized one thing. It is not important how things really are – it is important what things look like.

When all the different groups in town started to use signs – I mean small colored bands on the shoulder in order to make clear who belonged to their group – he got all those bands and markings.

When all of those groups started with some system, when to wear what, he bribed guys in order to know that system.

So, if one group was controlling some part of the town and they used red bands on shoulders on Monday and Wednesday, and a black one on Sunday on Saturday he would know that.

He used that for moving through the city, because in all that chaos if you were moving through the city during the night, and you needed to go through an area that was controlled by some group, it was very useful to have some of their signs or code.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.

So, he was a member of multiple groups and all those groups shared information with him. As a result, he was everywhere in the city, and he always had correct information about important things.

He knew what was gonna have a high price, or when new food aid might come in. I asked him, “How were you able to know all the information about so much stuff?” Because it sounded just too complicated for me.

He said, “What I did not know I just made up in my head”.

Actually, he was playing with prices, with demand, and the needs of the people. He dictated the prices.

After some time, because of all of his information, he became so popular that if he said that “cans are gonna be very hard to find in next month,” people believed it.

So, it was easy for him to distribute all cans at higher prices. Of course, not personally, but at the same time, he would, of course, know a man who had cans right now at a cheap price. His man. He got a cut out of most deals and that helped him to survive.

Through his network of people, he put the word out that “powerful people were protecting him.” Another illusion but together with fact that people did not want to have problems with a man who had always good information, he survived.

Also, one other thing helped. In the first period, he collected 5-6 bodies, badly dismembered by shells and put them in front of his house. He put word on the street that “some guys messed with him, but he called his powerful friends and those friends made examples of the guys to not mess with him.”

If some really strong group caused danger to him, he just left the house and waited for them to leave.

No problem, he did not have anything valuable in his house. Trading goods he kept with his “associates” and his main value was information.

His main value actually was his brain.

Keep that in mind. Before you give up because you have nothing, use your brain and try to play the system with deception. Chaotic urban survival situations offer lots of opportunity for that.

#3. Slaves and Servants

Drug dealers, prostitutes, thieves, addicts, homeless people, family people, believers… good people, bad people… we like to call people by names in order to judge them and live our lives easier.

Most of the time we judge them so easily and form our opinion about them as we go without too much thought. It is easier like that. We see people doing something and think it is because of how they are. We often do not consider all the things that make them do what they do.

We see something, give that a name, and that’s it. Sometimes there is much more behind it. Someone who is bad might just have had circumstances in life that being like that is the only thing which made sense for that person. Yes, their whole way of thinking might be “wrong” or he might not act badly because he is bad, but because his kids are dying.

People judge too fast.

Not to mention that when the SHTF, it is dangerous to sort people in the easy and fast way. It can lead us to form the wrong opinion, which can lead to a lot of bad things. I learned not to judge people right away. A future friend might behave terribly the first time you meet, and a future enemy might be very nice to you.

I want to say this before writing about the type of real survivalist that I write about now. You encounter slaves and servants in a long-term survival situation because even though they go a very different way from a brave fighter… they are real survivalists and just make things work.

Many lone fighters died, and many servants suffered but survived. It’s not like a movie.

A lady who was my colleague before SHTF lived with her husband and two kids. She was in her 30s, a very nice and easy person to work with. She was my friend and we shared a lot of great moments at the job. I never saw or heard anything bad about her. I knew her husband, I knew her kids.

When the SHTF I lost contact with her in all that chaos, and to be honest I completely forgot about her. I had more important things to worry about.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.

A few months later on the trip that almost killed me out of town over the mountains to get some things we desperately needed, I had the opportunity to meet her again.

We already passed the most dangerous parts of the trip – mines, mountains, woods, and no man’s land – and came into a small part of territory controlled by one of the numerous militias, loosely tied to bigger (again numerous) factions.

The guys did not give us any problems, other than very short checking of who we were and where we were going.

We had already paid for passage to “a guy who knows a guy,” so everything went smooth. We took a small rest in one of the shacks and drank hot “tea.” Actually, the exact description would be “hot dirty melted snow, with added alcohol.”

Then I saw her, my ex-colleague.

If I learned anything since SHTF that was fact that you need to hide your feelings and body language until you figure out what is really going on.

So, I did not say anything to her, and I acted like I did not know her, even though I wanted very much to jump up, hug her, and ask about everything, about her, her family, etc.

She put some rice on the table, and more alcohol in front of one group member. She was one woman in a group of some 30 men, who were armed, wasted, and pretty dangerous. Most of them did not know too much about literature but they know enough about violence.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.

She did not look like a prisoner, and also, she did not look scared or beaten. She also did not recognize me (or maybe did not want to recognize me.)

Anyway, about a half hour later, one of the men from the group offered me her, for a price, explaining to me that “she is the property of the leader, but also if anybody is willing to pay, she can belong to them for half an hour.”

Now if that was a movie, probably you would expect from me to shoot all of them and save her, so we could ride into the sunset.

But it was not a movie, and I could get maybe three of them down before someone blows off my head and takes my boots and rifle. And even if I could save her, she would probably tell me that she does not want to be saved.

We went through that piece of land without any problems, and I did not see her again, ever. And no, I did not pay the price to buy her for half an hour, and I did not try to start a conversation with her.

Later I found out the whole story.

When SHTF people did a lot of different things in order to survive. She became the mistress of one of the small group leaders, and also the prostitute of that group.

She was not a prisoner, well not obviously, but you also need to understand that if she left that group, she and her family would lose protection and the steady income of goods. And her kids needed to eat something.

I do not know what her husband thought about all that (he was a bit of weak guy before SHTF) but rumors were that he agreed with it, in order to survive.

So, it lasted like that for months. And they survived.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
THE BOSNIAN CIVIL WAR 1992 – 1995 (HU 75062) Civilians go about their daily business in Sarajevo behind barricades constructed from freight containers, June 1992. Much of Sarajevo was under Serbian sniper fire during the siege and the barricades enabled civilians to cross streets and move from sector to sector of the city without coming under Serbian observation. Civilians, as well as military personnel, were considered legitimate targets by… Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205020572

So, is that good or bad? It’s nothing. It’s survival. Blame her husband? No… because they survived. If he would have become the fighter he might have died and with him, his family.

This does not mean people should let their wives become prostitutes (there were male prostitutes too, by the way). Everyone makes their own decisions and later you always know better.

Again, here comes in not judging.

Of course, when peace and normal life came, they could not stand to live here, not after everything. So, they chose to immigrate. As I heard it, they are living somewhere in South America under different names.

Here is some more background to that.

Prostitution here was something different than in other countries, and before

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
THE BOSNIAN CIVIL WAR 1992 – 1995 (BOS 239) A Bosnian sniper takes aim from the window of a ruined mosque during fighting in Brcko, north-east Bosnia, February 1993 Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205020545

SHTF you had to be a member of very rich and higher class of society or higher ranks of the political elite to be able to get into the contact with one. It was illegal and also it was traditionally very “wrong.”

So, prostitution was rare. To be a known prostitute was rare. To be a normal family woman and become a prostitute was unbelievable and almost impossible.

But when SHTF, lots of things changed.

There were prostitutes all around, not to mention women who were held as some kind of half slaves. Their position was not always the same, so some of them were not more than slaves, another one was almost powerful as the gang leader who they belonged to. There were also men who were just mascots or servants for more powerful people – but overall this was a more common way for a woman to survive.

Not all women were prostitutes, of course. Just like men, they all chose how to survive. Some were prostitutes, while others were more dangerous with a rifle than a lot of men.

But most of them chose just to stay home with their family and care for the kids. It was not something like – they need to do that – it was just that they did what they did best and what was needed, just like most of the folks in that period.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
THE BOSNIAN CIVIL WAR: BRITISH FORCES WITH THE UNITED NATIONS PROTECTION FORCE IN BOSNIA AND CROATIA, 1992 – 1995 (BOS 92) Soldiers of 1 Cheshire Regiment construct a bomb shelter near the school which they employed as a base in Vitez, 1992. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205188177

That woman I spoke about was much closer to an equal gang member than to a slave. They did not force her into prostitution. Actually, she “belonged” to the group leader, but also, she sold herself for goods, some of which she kept for herself and family, and some went to members of the gang. It was her “trade.” While other men risked their lives, she overcome her dignity and did that.

She had protection and food, and also her family home had some kind of protection from that group as well as food and other things.

She was there mainly for the fun of the group leader, and sometimes other members and customers when she wanted.

They survived.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
THE BOSNIAN CIVIL WAR: BRITISH FORCES WITH THE UNITED NATIONS PROTECTION FORCE IN BOSNIA AND CROATIA, 1992 – 1995 (BOS 69) A Muslim civilian displays a sniper’s rifle with home made silencer near Gornji Vakuf. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205188170

We can now judge them and talk about what every one of us would do in their situation, but we should not.

This may also be a lesson for normal times.

I worked for years in emergency services and see daily people living at the borders of normal society or even far from those borders in a different, very dark and nasty world.

It’s not that all of them are bad but sometimes in life, you have to do what you have to do, even if it only makes sense to you at that moment. It is not an excuse but it helps to remember that when your existence is under threat you might do very different things too.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
THE BOSNIAN CIVIL WAR 1992 – 1995 (BOS 222) An elderly man scavenges through rubbish for food and anything that could be salvaged or sold in Sarajevo, December 1994. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205020556

I’m sure only a very few (maybe sexually very open people) really plan on going that way when SHTF. But plans, they change.

#4. The Good Boss

The last type of survivalist I will write about is about a typical leader who knew how to handle our survival situation during the war.

He was a police officer. We called him “Boss” because of his look and stance. He had 30 years of service and I do not think that he used a gun too much. But he had a palm like a shovel and he used that a lot dealing with problematic teenagers.

He was the grumpy guy with whom you do not want to have too much business. If you got caught for some minor thing, theft or whatever, he did not talk too much with you, but his look talked stories, and his hands too.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
THE BOSNIAN CIVIL WAR 1992 – 1995 (HU 75042) A badly damaged house in Stup, near Sarajevo Airport, 1994. English grafitti on the front of the house reads ‘Welcome to Sarajevo’. The photographer, Kevin Weaver, was wounded by a Serbian sniper bullet in front of this house. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205020585

He gave people justice on the spot and got respect for that too. He made a difference for our neighborhood and was a type of police officer that in my opinion does not exist today anymore.

He and his colleagues had a patrol in a better part of the city when the SHTF, and in the beginning, they tried to restore some order in all that. But when they saw that an ambulance vehicle on call got shredded with shots, they realized that a new time had come.

They did not discuss too much but they were sure that law and order was something that was gone now, and to act like law keepers just did not make sense anymore.

They went back to the police station and took more weapons and equipment. Then they used a police van and went to army storage and took more weapons.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
THE BOSNIAN CIVIL WAR 1992 – 1995 (HU 75044) Two Bosnian Muslims, father and son, in the ruins of their house in Sarajevo after it was destroyed by a Serbian missile, June 1992. The young man’s wife was killed in the explosion. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205020583

They separated and took that to their homes. His colleagues shook his hand and left, each fighting their own fight. He pushed the police van out of the street and went home.

He lived alone for many years before SHTF, and also being the police officer for years gave him the advantage of knowing something about mob mentality and power over people. So, he did not have too many problems in dealing with issues in those beginning days. He was alone and that was a problem. But he was smart and that made a difference.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.

Local correction youth center, something like an open type jail for teenagers was falling apart too, so young folks were leaving there.

In these days, everything fell apart in the city, all that makes life normal, and institutions were falling apart too.
THE BOSNIAN CIVIL WAR 1992 – 1995 (BOS 230) Croat HVO soldiers greet each other after having forced the Serbs to evacuate Mostar, June 1992. The attack on the Serbian positions in the town was undertaken as a joint Bosnian – Croat operation. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205020547

He went there and took 7 guys from there. He used to be something like their “watcher” in normal times. He had arrested them for small-time burglaries, cons etc. He also kept eye on them when they were out of the correction facility and on streets again. Because of how he did things, he was like a father who gave them slaps here and there.

They all were kids without families. That correction center was their home or they were on the streets. Anyway, he took them to his home and took care of them in that chaos, and after some time they took care of him too. They all were around 16-17 years old at that time when all hell broke loose.

He taught them to shoot, to defend themselves, to trade, and to recognize problematic people. The fact that they been that problematic person once only helped in process of teaching. Those kids were street smart. And he was not too soft in process of teaching, in other words, he used his “shovels” a lot in process of “making people of them” as he called it.

He taught them to shoot, to defend themselves, to trade, and to  recognize problematic people.
A Croat fighter stands at the ready with his AK-47 in Vitez. Conflict among the Croats, Serbs, and Muslims in Bosnia began when Bosnia declared independence in early 1992, several months after other regions of Yugoslavia entered into war. (Photo by Patrick ROBERT/Sygma via Getty Images)

But he also taught them never to take from someone else. He was still a policeman and kept his ideals. They never turned against him. I saw many times that real sons turn against their fathers in that time or brother against brother, but they were perfectly loyal to each other, a real family. I guess it was because they knew that only in this group could they survive.

They did pretty well because of the starting “capital” he took from the army barracks. They were people that you could visit and get a rifle in a fair trade, without danger that you would be shot in the back. Also, they were the people that you did not want to f*ck with because violence was not a problem for them at all.

“Boss” died a few months before peace came, from wound infection. All seven of his “boys” survived and I never heard that they did something bad in that time. OK, bad in a little bit different terms, maybe. Not atrocities, nothing about unnecessary violence. What was necessary is a different question of course, but all of us who survived were not the most gentle folks at that time.

One of them later in peace went into organized crime and ended up shot dead, but all 6 of the rest of them grew up and became proud and strong family people. The type of men that you would want to have for a friend.

All  seven of his “boys” survived and I never heard that they did something  bad in that time. OK, bad in a little bit different terms, maybe. Not  atrocities, nothing about unnecessary violence.
All seven of his “boys” survived and I never heard that they did something bad in that time. OK, bad in a little bit different terms, maybe. Not atrocities, nothing about unnecessary violence.

They all refer to Boss as their father. They live today in different cities and countries, some of them even on another continent, but once every two years, they have met, all together in his memory.

And that guy from the beginning of the story, that colleague of the Boss?

He used his share of the loot from the barracks to form a gang, and they did a lot of bad stuff to the people. He finished dead, stabbed more than 30 times. Nobody remembers him or wants to remember him. It is like he did not exist at all.

In a survival scenario, you want people around you who know why the group matters. Just like early humans who knew not to fight each other or cause problems for the survival of the whole group. In the case of a Boss, the street kids already knew about survival and he was the perfect leader for them who also knew what kind of leadership style worked with them.

In a survival scenario, you want people around you who know why the  group matters.
In a survival scenario, you want people around you who know why the group matters.

Now I could say nice things about how to choose your group and of course include that annoying drama person that maybe your brother or sister married because “he/she is part of the family”.

But I speak from my experience and if you want to survive, like in any other “team” your group has to work. Having a strong leader like Boss helps a lot.

Normal is gone.

Normal laws and norms of society are gone in a long-term survival situation so people who still do things because it looks good are at disadvantage compared to people who do what works and make the team stronger and not weaker. If someone makes my team weaker on purpose (not because of sickness or age) he is not part of it.

Normal laws and norms of society are gone in a long-term survival  situation.
Normal laws and norms of society are gone in a long-term survival situation .

When you think about your survival group, think about who makes the best boss. Who knows how to lead the people? What works? Prepare for that too, and you are far ahead of many other preppers who think they can buy safety with money and having the most preps and gear.


Conclusion

We can spend a lot of time speculating about how people will react in  the aftermath of a major disaster, how society will react, what food  will be available, and the many other survival details. But the truth is  that we don’t know what will happen when SHTF.
 
The best  thing we can do is imagine as many possible scenarios as possible, and  take steps to prepare for them. However, we CAN take a lesson from SHTF  situations throughout history. By seeing what happened in the past, we  can get an idea of what may come. 

-Primal Survivor 

I hope that things don’t ever come to this. Yet, here I am, sitting at home in the middle of a biological attack by America on China as part of the Trump Trade Wars. We were caught off guard, and while China has reacted strongly to this by placing the military on DEFCON ONE, and locking the entire nation down, it’s still a SHTF situation.

And… I was caught “flat footed”.

You see, before we left for CNY, we cleaned out all of our food storage, and boxed up all of our property for a housing move that we were going to make immediately after CNY. Yikes! When we arrived home from our family trip, we entered a boxed up house with no food except for a big bag of rice, and a stack of about six cases of beer.

For weeks, we’ve been living off fried rice and beer.

Don’t be like us!

SHTF events happen when you are not expecting them. Do not be caught flat footed. Right now, I’ll tell you what is like. It’s BORING! Everyone is staying inside, and even though we have water, electricity and internet, we are collectively going stir-crazy!

Bosnians spent a lot of time during the war crouched down in basements  and holed up in apartments. It is incredibly boring. Without anything to  occupy their minds, fear would overwhelm them. No wonder survivors say  that books became their only respite. I’m going to add some more books  (the paper kind, not Kindle!) to my survival supplies. 

 -Primal Survivor  

Word to the wise, you all.

My SHTF experience.
My SHTF experience.

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How able is the United States to conduct military operations against a serious military power?

One of my on-going themes is the idea that war, real terrible war, hasn’t been conducted by the United States for around 70 years. The last “real” war that the United States fought; one that required full mobilization of resources, and placed the very existence of the United States on line, was World War II. Since that date, the government of the United States has become corrupt, slothful and a money-making organism. If not trying to milk the citizens as servant-serfs, it is trying to conduct “for profit” global military operations for other interests as proxies. The time is fast arriving that this model will no longer be sustainable.

The Navy has not been in a war for seventy years. It has sat off various  shores and launched aircraft, but the fleet has not been engaged. Over  decades of inaction, complacency sets in. Unfortunately, wars regularly  turn out to be otherwise than expected. Further, the American military’s  standard approach to a war is to underestimate the enemy (there is  probably a manual on this). 

 -Russia Insider 

There are numerous articles on this point. Here is another most excellent one. Posted here for your viewing pleasure.

The article is titled; “Unused Militaries” written by Fred Reed on September 10, 2019. All credit to the author, and please feel free to visit his site for the very interesting and contrary Comments. Presented here will only minor editing to fit this blog venue.

It appears that  Washington, ever a seething cauldron of bright ideas, is looking for a  shooting war with China, or perhaps trying to make the Chinese kowtow  and back down, the pretext being some rocks in the Pacific in which the  United States cannot possibly have a vital national interest. Or,  really, any interest. And if the Chinese do not back down? 

-Russia Insider

Unused Militaries

“America exists today to  make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no end  in sight? It’s part of who we are. It’s part of what the American Empire  is. We are going to lie, cheat and steal, as Pompeo is doing right now,  as Trump is doing right now, as Esper is doing right now … and a host  of other members of my political party, the Republicans, are doing right  now. We are going to lie, cheat and steal to do whatever it is we have  to do to continue this war complex. That’s the truth of it. And that’s  the agony of it.” 

-  Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of  staff from 2001 to 2005  

For a couple of decades I covered the military for various publications, as for example the Washington Times and Harper’s, and wrote a military column for Universal Press Syndicate. I was following the time-honored principle of sensible reporters:

“Ask not  what you can do for journalism, but what journalism can do for you.” 

The military beat was a great gig, letting you fly in fighter planes and sink in submarines. But if you take the study seriously, as I did, you learn interesting things.

Such as that a war with a real country, such as Russia, China, or even Iran, would be a fool’s adventure.

A few points:

Unused militaries deteriorate

The US fleet has not been in a war since 1945, the air forces since 1975. nor the Army in a hard fight since Vietnam. Bombing defenseless peasants, the chief function of the American military, is not war.

Bombing defenseless peasants is not war.

In extended periods of peace, which includes the bombing of peasants, a military tends to assume that no major war will come during the careers of those now in uniform.

Commanders consequently do what makes their lives easy, what they must do to get through the day and have reasonable fitness reports.

  • This does not include pointing out inadequacies of training or equipment.
  • Nor does it include recommending large expenditures to remedy deficiencies.
  • Nor does it include recommending very expensive mobilization exercises that would divert money from new weapons.
This assures reluctance to question the fleet’s  effectiveness in the face of changing conditions. Such as high-Mach,  stealthed, maneuvering, sea-skimming  cruise missiles. Or terminally  guided anti-ship ballistic missiles. America is accustomed to fighting  enemies who can’t fight back. This may not include the Chínese.

There  is also the fact that the American military simply doesn’t matter,  which reduces concern with whether it can fight and who it can fight. It  doesn’t defend the US, since there is nothing to defend it against.  (What country has the remotest possibility of invading America?) So the  military is used for what are essentially hobbyist wars, keeping Israel  happy,  providing markets for the arms companies, and for social  engineering: we have girl crews who would be a disaster at damage  control, but we assume that there will never be any damage to control. 

 -Russia Insider 

Thus an armored command has enough replacement tracks for training, but not enough for tanks in hard use in extended combat.

When the crunch comes, it turns out that getting more track requires a new contract with the manufacturer, who has shut down the production line.

The same is true for air filters, there not being much sand at Fort Campbell but a lot in Iraq.

Things as mundane as MRATs and boots are not there in real-war quantities.

GAU-8 ammo is in short supply because theory says the F-35 will do tank busting. The Navy runs out of TLAMs early on and discovers that manufacturing cruise missiles takes time. Lots ot it.

And of course some things simply don’t work as expected. Military history buffs will remember the Mark XIV torpedo, the Mark VI exploder of WWII, and the travails of the Tinosa.

Come the war, things turn into a goat rope. FUBAR, SNAFU.

Conscription

The United States cannot fight a large land war, as for example against Russia, China, or Iran.

Such a war would require conscription.

The public would not stand for it.

America no longer enjoys the sort of patriotic unity that it did at the beginning of the war against Vietnam. It will not accept heavy casualties.

People today are far more willing to disobey the federal government.

Note that many states have legalized marijuana in defiance of federal law, that many jurisdictions across the country simply refuse to assist federal immigration enforcement.

Any attempt to send Snowflakes and other delicates to fight would result in widespread civil disobedience.

The Navy

The existing fleet has never been under fire and does not think it ever will be.

Most of its ships are thin-skinned, unarmored. One hit by an antiship missile would remove them from the war.

Being something of a technophile, I took all of this in with  admiration, but I thought—what if it gets hit? As a kid in my preteens I  had read about the battleships of WWII, the Carolinas but in particular  the Iowa class, fast, brutal ships with sixteen-inch belt armor and  turrets that an asteroid would bounce off of. The assumption was that  ships were going to get hit. They were built to survive and continue  fighting.

By contrast, the Vincennes was thin-skinned,  hulled with aluminum instead of steel, and the radar, crucial to combat,  looked perilously fragile. A single hit with anything serious, or  perhaps even a cal .50, but certainly by anything resembling a GAU-8,  and she would be hors de combat until refitted.

One hit. 

...

I do not know a great deal about the Chinese Navy, having been out of  that loop for years. I do know that the Chinese are  smart, and that  they have optimized their forces specifically to take out carrier battle  groups near their territory. They do not try to match the US  ship-for-ship in the kind of war America wants to fight. They would lose  fast, and they know it. The key is to swarm the fleet with cruise  missiles arriving all at once, accompanied perhaps by large numbers of  aircraft. Would this work? I don’t know, but that is certainly the way I  would bet. 

-Russia Insider

This is as true of the Tico-class Aegis ships as of the newer Arleigh Burkes.

An aircraft carrier is a bladder of jet fuel wrapped around high explosives.The implications are considerable.

A plunging hypersonic terminally-guided ballistic missile, piercing the flight deck and exploding in the hangar deck, would require a year in the repair yards.

The Russians and Chinese are developing–have developed–missiles specifically to take out carriers.

Note that the range of some of these missiles is much greater than the combat radius of the carrier’s aviation. Oops.

USS Stark, 1987, after being hit by a pair of French Exocet missiles.
USS Stark, 1987, after being hit by a pair of French Exocet missiles.

The USS Stark, 1987, after being hit by a pair of French Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi Mirage.

The USS Forrestal   in 1967 after a five-inch Zuni land-attack missile was accidentally launched on deck.
The USS Forrestal in 1967 after a five-inch Zuni land-attack missile was accidentally launched on deck.

The USS Forrestal in 1967 after a five-inch Zuni land-attack missile, a pipsqueak rocket, accidentally launched on deck. It hit another fighter. The resulting fire cooked off large bombs. One hundred thirty-four dead, long stay in repair yards.

The Navy is assuming that it cannot be hit.

The Milquetoast Factor

Through Vietnam, America’s wars were fought by tough kids, often from rural backgrounds involving familiarity with guns and with hard physical work. I know as I grew up and went to Marine boot with them.

Discipline, if not quite brutal, came close.

Physical demands were high. In AIT–Advanced Infantry Training–at Camp Lejeune, it was “S Company on the road!” at three-thirty a.m., followed by hard running and weapons training until midnight. Yes, oldsters like to remember how it was, but that was how it was.

Today America has a military corrupted by social-justice politics.

Recruits are no longer country boys who could chop cordwood.

Obesity is common.

The Pentagon has lowered physical standards, hidden racial problems, softened training. The officers are afraid of the large numbers of military women who are now in combat positions.

One complaint about sexism and there goes the career.

Officer Rot

In times of extended peace the officer corps decays.

All second-tour officers are politicians, especially above the level of lieutenant colonel. You don’t get promoted by suggesting the the senior ranks are lying for political reasons, as by insisting that the Afghan war is being won.

Peacetime encourages careerists who advance by not making waves. Such Pattons of PowerPoint invariably have to be weeded out, at a high cost in lives, in a big war.

Today’s military is not going to fare well in anything resembling equal combat against Afghans, Russians, or Iranians.

The US military has not been able to defeat Afghan villagers in eighteen years with an immense advantage in air power, gunships, armor, artillery, medical care, and PXs. What do you think would happen if they had to fight the Taliban on equal terms–sandals, rifles, RPGs, and not much else?

Unrealism

The future is the enemy of the present.

What would happen if in a shooting war the Chinese crippled the  American fleet? Washington is rampant with large egos, especially that  of John McCain, the senator from PTSD. If it were discovered that China  could disable the Navy, many other countries might conclude that they  could do it too. They most certainly would think of this. Washington  could not accept the discovery: Fear of the carriers is a large element  in Washington’s intimidation of the world.  To save face, the US would  be tempted to go nuclear, or seriously bomb China proper, with  unforeseeable results.

The Air Force and Navy could hurt  China badly by conventional means, yes, for example by cutting off oil  from the Mideast, or destroying the Three Gorges dam.  For a variety of  reasons this would be playing with fire. The economic results of any of  these bright ideas would be godawful. 

 -Russia Insider 

The military is not ready for a real war now because its focus is always on things down the road.

For example, the Navy cannot now defeat hypersonic antiship missiles but will be able to, it thinks, someday, maybe, world without end, with near-magical lasers still in development.

These will funnel lots of money to Raytheon or Lockheed Martin or somebody whether they work or not. Which isn’t important since nobody really believes there will be a serious war.

This is common thinking.

America is in process of acquiring B-21 intercontinental nuclear bombers for a frightening price. These will be useless except in a nuclear war, when they would still be useless because the ICBMs would already have turned targets into glowing rubble when the B-21s got there.

B-21
B-21

What the B21 will look like. It has a seat for Robin. The appeal of such things for adult twelve-year-olds is underestimated.

Why build them?

Because Northrop-Grumman has so much money that its lobbyists use snow shovels to fill Congressional pockets.

In my days of covering the Pentagon, whenever a new weapon was bought, the AH-64 for example, the prime contractor would hand out a list of subcontractors in many states–whose congressmen would support the weapon to get the jobs. It is all about money.

Sometimes Congress forces the military to buy weapons it explicitly says it doesn’t want, such as more M1 tanks from the factory in Lima, Ohio. Jobs.

In short, many weapons are bought for economic reasons, not for use in war. In my day, II saw many not-for-use weapons. The B1, B2, DIVAD, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the M16, the V-22, the LAW.

Nothing has changed.

The Blank Ignorance Factor

The landscape outside of the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel is at least as bleak as that within.

A friend, very much in a position to know, estimates that ninety percent of the Senate does not know where Burma is. Think Hormuz-Malacca-South China Sea.

The likelihood that Trump knows what countries are littoral to the Caspian is zero.

When I covered the military very few in Congress and nobody in the major media knew anything at all about weaponry and it uses: surface duct, deep sound channel, convergence zones, pseudo-random beam steering, APFSDS, staring receivers, chirp coding.

These are the first-grade small talk of people who pay attention.

These do not include minor lawyers-become-Congressmen from East East Jesus, Nebraska. Yet hey vote on military policy.

The Arrival of the Maintenance Hog

Being in a real war is hard on equipment.

There are battle damage and heavy wear and tear. This doesn’t matter in the wars today’s military fights.

America cannot really lose, only be worn down and leave.

If the US “loses” in Afghanistan or Syria, it won’t matter to Americans and few will even notice. Because America always fights from well-protected bases and airfields, it can afford to use weapons that require a lot of maintenance, often including high-tech work.

In a real war, no.

In WWII, a fighter plane was just a malformed truck: engine, windshield, tires, motor, stamped metal. If one came back full of holes, repair crews with reasonable training could repair them fast on the hangar deck. It wasn’t quite pop rivets and Bondo, but close.

After the Big War, American aircraft almost always flew from relatively safe bases.

For example, in Vietnam the carriers were never in danger. After Vietnam the aerial forces seldom even suffered battle damage. Since the US was always attacking utterly inferior enemies, sortie rates and repair time ceased to matter.

And the military came to expect such luxury.

But now we have the F-35, the latest do-everything fighter of grotesque cost. It seems to be a real dog, poorly designed and suffering from endless problems. By accounts in the technical press, it is a hangar queen with very low sortie rates, poor readiness, and requiring complex electronic maintenance often at remote echelons.

This isn’t how you fight a real war.

How Wars Turn Out

Typically, not as planned. I’ve said this before but it is worth repeating.

Look at history:

  • The American Civil War was supposed to last a day at First Manassas; wrong by four years and 650,000 dead.
  • Napoleon thought his attack on Russia would end with the French in Moscow, not the Russians in Paris–which is what happened.
  • WWI was supposed to last weeks and be a war of movement; wrong by four bloody years of trench warfare.
  • The Japanese Army did not expect WWII to end with GIs buying their daughters drinks in Tokyo, nor the Germans that it would end with the Russian infantry in Berlin.
  • The Americans did not think they would lose in Vietnam, nor the Russians that they would lose in Afghanistan. And so on.

This happens partly because militaries are overconfident as a job requirement.

You can’t tell the Marines that they are at best mediocre light infantry or the Navy that it is essentially a target set. Instead the American armed forces are always said to be the best equipped, best trained, bravest, most formidable military that the world has ever seen.

Except they aren’t.

Assume that Bolton gets his war against Iran.

Advisers tell him it will be short and sweet, surgical, a cake walk. Have we heard this before?

The Navy says it can keep Hormuz open, grrr, woof. But somehow Iran doesn’t follow the script, doesn’t surrender.

The Navy to its surprise cannot find the deeply dug-in and truck-borne antiship missiles that keep hitting tankers. These keep burning.

Soon nobody will insure them.

They stop coming.

Three weeks into the war the world is screaming for oil, there is no end in sight, Trump can’t admit that he has blundered, and Bolton wants to nuke Tehran.

Or Washington pushes too hard in the South China Sea, an accidental collision turns into a shooting incident, and the Pompeo-Boltonian-Bannonites order the fleet to teach the Chinks a lesson.

Unfortunately the Chinese antiship missiles turn out to be rather better than expected, a carrier is disabled and three destroyers rendered scrap.

Now what?

Huge and uninformed egos in Washington could not accept defeat.

For one thing, it would end American credibility as a hegemon, and everybody and his herd of goats would want to buy Chinese antiship missiles.

Vanity plays a larger in world affairs than the textbooks say.

Washington, stupidly but inevitably, would double down and start an all-out war with China. At that point things would become unpredictable.

Washington seems not to realize that it wields far less military  power than it thinks it does, and that the power it does wield is ever  less useful than before. As a land power, it is very weak, being unable  to defeat Russia, China, or peasants armed with rifles and RPGs. Air  power has regularly proved indecisive.

If Washington somehow won a  naval war with China, so what? It would provide the satisfactions of  vanity, but China’s danger to the US imperium lies in increasing  economic power and commercial expansion through Asia, where it holds the  high cards: it is there, Washington isn’t.

  -Russia Insider    

Nuclear War

Men of incalculable stupidity and likely sexual inadequacy talk about nuclear war as winnable.

Dream on.

Reflect: American cities cannot feed themselves. Three days without food shipments and New Yorkers would clear the supermarket shelves. A week and they would kill for cans of tuna fish. Two weeks and they would be eating each other.

A very few nuclear bombs on transportation hubs would prevent distribution of food for months.

Even fewer cobalt bombs, designed to produce a maximum of lingering radiation, would make the farm belts lethally radioactive for a decade.

“Defense Intellectuals,” usually stupid enough that they ought to live in trees, chatter about escalation dominance and the intimidation factor and airtight missile defense.

They are nuts.

What they really need is a codpiece and a subscription to Pornhub Premium.

This is why it is a really, really, bad idea to have a psychopathic cockatoo, two loon Christians, and a pathologically aggressive momma’s boy in a position to start a war.

neocon negotiation team.
Trump neocon negotiation team takes on China.

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Washington DC as “Caddyshack” with Donald Trump winning the tournament.

Many people from myself to Rush Limbaugh have compared Donald Trump’s arrival in Washington D.C. to the movie “Caddyshack”. It’s said jokenly, but the fact remains that there are some real truths in this analogy. Like Rodney Dangerfield, Donald Trump was an outsider, and his strange and (seemingly) uncouth actions upset the fine cushy empire established by the local elites. Here is an article that discusses this phenomenon.

Donald Trump, love him or hate him, is exactly what America needs right now. We need to seriously shake up what the United States has become, tear it apart and rebuild it up from scratch. He’s the first step in this process.

 Donald Trump as Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack
 Sep 17, 2019 
                                                                                                                                              
RUSH: Now, normally I would not make a big deal out of this,  either. But this, I’m gonna call your attention to. I’m gonna go back to  May 22, 2018. So it’s, what, 15 months ago (a year and a half ago,  let’s call it that), and I was describing for people… You know, I love  analogies. I love to persuade. There are many different techniques that  one can use to persuade. I love the analogy or comparison. I was trying  to explain to a caller the way the Washington establishment has reacted  to Trump, and this is what I said (audio sound bite number 1) to the  caller.
 
RUSH ARCHIVE: You know another way to look at Trump? How about the  movie Caddyshack? Here you have these phony club members led by Ted  Baxter, and he’s running around. They’ve got this little country club  and everybody in it thinks they’re the best of the best in town. Rodney  Dangerfield decides to join and gets in and blows the club up. He’s got  this gigantic golf cart, drives it on the greens, blows a big horn, has a  gigantic golf bag. The leaders of the country club are beside  themselves. They try to kick the guy out, and they can’t. They lose  every effort against him. That’s Trump: Rodney Dangerfield in  Caddyshack.
 
RUSH: Yeah, Ted Baxter was great in that movie. He’s christening a  new yacht for his family, and it’s like a 12-foot dinghy. And Rodney  Dangerfield has this giant 80-footer and capsizes it while driving by  waving. This is Trump, okay? So let’s now go to Thursday on a podcast  called Recode Media. There’s a guy — the host is Peter Kafka — and he’s  talking to the New York Times chief television critic, James Poniewozik,  about his new book, Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the  Fracturing of America. The question: “There’s a great comparison you  have in the book. For our younger audience who hasn’t seen Caddyshack,  explain Rodney?”
 
PONIEWOZIK: Al Czervik, who Rodney Dangerfield plays, is this  obnoxious, boorish rich guy who all the stuck-up people — the other  stuck up rich people in the country club — hate. His character is  opposed, in the movie, to Ted Knight’s character, Judge Smails, who is  the, you know, stick-up-his-ass, uptight rich guy who sort of runs the  country club and cannot stand him. This all came to mind during the 2016  debates to me, when I’m watching Donald Trump in action in the debates  and seeing him go up against Jeb Bush. He’s like the Clampetts against  Mr. Drysdale. He’s Rodney Dangerfield against Ted Knight. It’s the rich  guy that you want to be against the (bleep) snotty rich guy that  everybody hates. 

This article is a full reprint of “The Deep State Starring in “Caddyshack on the Potomac” ” by Victor Davis Hanson. It’s pretty brilliantly (as usual), and discusses the Deep State, Hubris, Nemesis, and (of course) Donald Trump. I strongly recommend that the reader visit the author of this piece and get to know his works. You can go HERE.

The Deep State Starring in “Caddyshack on the Potomac

[T]hey never say to themselves, “I’m not elected.” The constitution says an elected president sets foreign policy.

Period.

So there’s this sense that they, as credential experts, have a value system, and the value system is they have an inordinate respect for an Ivy League degree or a particular alphabetic combination after their name: a J.D., a Ph.D., an MBA, or a particular resume.

I worked at the NSC, then I transferred over to the NSA, and then, I went into the State Department.

And we saw that in really vivid examples during the Adam Schiff impeachment inquiries, where a series of State Department people, before they could even talk, [they] said…

“I’m the third generation to serve in my family.  
This is my resume. 
This is where I went to school. 
This is where I was  posted.” 

And in the case of Adam Schiff, we saw these law professors, who had gone in and out of government, and they had these academic billets.

Expert...
Expert…

And to condense all that, it could be distilled by saying the deep state makes arguments by authority:

“I’m an authority, and I have  credentials, and therefore, ipse dixit, what I say matters.” 

And they don’t want to be cross-examined, they don’t want to have their argument in the arena of ideas and cross-examination.

They think it deserves authority, and they have contempt—and I mean that literally—contempt for elected officials.

[They think:] “These are buffoons in private  enterprise. They are the CEO in some company; they’re some local Rotary  Club member. They get elected to Congress, and then we have to school  them on the international order or the rules-based order.” 

They have a certain lingo, a proper, sober, and judicious comportment.

... Caddyshack would be an even sharper dissection of the divide between the Haves and the Have Nots in America than the script for Animal House  that he and Ramis co-wrote. 

In fact, the script had many  autobiographical references to incidents experienced by Ramis and the  Murray brothers, all of whom caddied at local country clubs as  teenagers. 

In 1988, Bill Murray told the New York Times Magazine,  “The kids who were members of the club were despicable; you couldn’t  believe the attitude they had. 

I mean, you were literally walking  barefoot in a T-shirt and jeans, carrying some privileged person’s  sports toys on your back for five miles.” 

- 10 reasons that Caddyshack may just be the best summertime comedy ever. 

So you can imagine that Donald Trump—to take a metaphor, Rodney Dangerfield out of Caddyshack—comes in as this, what they would say, stereotype buffoon and starts screaming and yelling.

And he looks different.

He talks different.

And he has no respect for these people at all.

Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. Reminds me of Donald trump in Washington DC.
Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. Reminds me of Donald trump in Washington DC.

Maybe that’s a little extreme that he doesn’t, but he surely doesn’t. And that frightens them.

And then they coalesce.

And I’m being literal now. Remember the anonymous Sept. 5, 2018, op-ed writer who said,

“I’m here actively trying to oppose Donald Trump.” 

He actually said that he wanted him to leave office. Then, Admiral [William] McRaven said…

“the sooner, the better.” 

This is a four-star admiral, retired. [He] says a year before the election … Trump should leave:

“the sooner,  the better.” 

That’s a pretty frightening idea.

Trump is like Rodney Dangerfield in the movie Caddyshack.
Trump is like Rodney Dangerfield in the movie Caddyshack.

And when you have Mark Zaid, the lawyer for the whistleblower and also the lawyer for some of the other people involved in this—I think it’s a conspiracy—saying that one coup leads to another. …

People are talking about a coup, then we have to take them at their own word. …

I think that people feel that for a variety of reasons—cultural, social, political—that Trump is not deserving of the respect that most presidents receive, and therefore any means necessary to get rid of him are justified.

” It would also seem that, of all the other older members of the cast,  Dangerfield bonded the most with the younger actors, mainly because of  their mutual appreciation for recreational drugs. In that same 2007  interview, Colomby revealed that the laundry room of the motel where the  cast and crew were booked became the designated partying area, and that  occasionally after hours Dangerfield would ask him, “Hey, Scott, you  wanna do some laundry?” 

 - 10 reasons that Caddyshack may just be the best summertime comedy ever.  

And for some, it’s the idea that he’s had neither political or military prior experience.

For others, it’s his outlandish appearance, his Queens accent, as I said, his Rodney Dangerfield presence.

Rodney Dangerfield as Donald Trump.
Rodney Dangerfield as Donald Trump.

And for others—I think this is really underestimated—he is systematically undoing the progressive agenda of Barack Obama, which remember, was supposed to be not just an eight-year regnum, but 16 years with Hillary Clinton.

That would’ve reformed the court.

It would have shut down fossil fuel exploration, pipelines, more regulations—well, pretty much what Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are talking about right now.

That was going to happen.

Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. Reminds me of Donald trump in Washington DC.
Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. Reminds me of Donald trump in Washington DC.

And so for a lot of people, they think…

“Wow, if Donald Trump is elected in 2020..."

—and he will be, according to the fears of Representatives Al Green or [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez or Nancy Pelosi; remember, they keep saying this impeachment is about the 2020 [election]—

“...we’ve got to ensure the  integrity.” 

That’s what Nadler said today.

But if Trump is elected, that would mean eventually in five more years, [we’d have a] 7–2 Supreme Court, 75 percent of the federal judiciary [would be] conservative and traditional and constructionist. …

We are the world’s largest oil and gas producer and exporter, but we probably would be even bigger.

And when you look at a lot of issues, such as abortion, or identity politics, or the securing of the border, or the nature of the economy or foreign policy, they think America as we know it will be—to use a phrase from Barack Obama—“fundamentally transformed.”

So that’s the subtext of it.

Stop this man right now before he destroys the whole progressive project—and with it, the reputation of the media. Because the media saw this happening and they said, “You know what?”—as Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times or Christiane Amanpour have said—“… you really don’t need to be disinterested.”

Trump is beyond the pale, so it’s OK to editorialize in your news coverage.

Trump is beyond the pale, and the "blue bloods" are shitting their pants.
Trump is beyond the pale, and the “blue bloods” are shitting their pants.

And so the Shorenstein Center has reported that 90 percent of all news coverage [of Trump] is negative.

So they’ve thrown their hat in the ring and said, we’re going to be part of the Democratic progressive agenda to destroy this president. But if they fail, then their reputation goes down with the progressive project.

And that’s happening now.

CNN is at all-time low ratings, at least the last four years. And the network news is losing audiences, and most of the major newspapers are, as well.

So there’s a lot of high stakes here. And if Donald Trump survives and were to be reelected, I don’t know what would happen on the left. It would make the 2016 reaction look tame in comparison.

Conclusion

A great little read. All credit to the authors. All I did was edit to fit this blog, and added some pictures. Source links: RTWT and HT: The News Junkie.

No respect.
No respect.

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Chinese military operations during the 2020 coronavirus Wuhan biological attack – some videos.

One of the reasons why the Chinese have been so swift in combating this coronavirus is because they identified (quickly and swiftly) it as a biological weapons attack. Most Americans are unaware of this because they read Western propagandized media. They believe that it is either [1] “not as bad as the flu”, or that it is [2] a biological weapon that the Chinese unleashed upon themselves. Here, we won’t get into that argument. Instead we will just present some videos of what went on during the days of 8FEB through 10FEB.

These videos were taken during a two day time period. Past the peak of the biological attack.

You, the reader, can believe what ever you want to. The FACT is that the China put their entire armed forces to DEFCON ONE, and shut the entire nation down.

You do not do this with the flu. You do not do this if you had an accidental leak from a weapons facility. You do not do this, especially in the middle of the biggest holiday of the year, unless there is a FUCKING GOOD REASON.

You can observe and come to your own conclusions.

Please kindly note that this post has multiple embedded videos. It is important to view them. If they fail to load, all you need to do is to reload your browser.

Video 1 – People getting sick suddenly.

The pesky thing about this virus is it’s high contagious nature, stealth infection, and rapid and sudden lethal outbreaks.

I find it laughable that the media is saying that the flu is far deadlier. Or that it only attacks old people. Here’s a young man in his 20’s going into a seizure on the bus.

I don’t know about youse guys, but I never had a seizure when I had the flu.

Video 2 – Affects children.

The reason why the Chinese video APPs were banned by the American military was so that they would not watch the effects of the biological weapon on the civilian population.

Here we have a little child in the hospital dying from the American bio-weapons attack.

Video 3 – Military decontamination units at work.

If you know what to look for you can clearly see the military decontamination units fighting this virus. Here we have a squad going after a contaminated area.

Decontamination is the process of removing or neutralizing chemical or biological agents so that they no longer pose a hazard. For military purposes, decontamination is undertaken to restore the combat effectiveness of equipment and personnel as rapidly as possible.

-Decontamination - NCBI Bookshelf 

Video 4 – Bringing food and checking up.

If you have the virus, you can opt to stay at home instead of going to a hospital or a tent clinic. In that case, the military / police will lock you in your house and seal the door. If the seal is broken, they will come and take you to jail so that you will not be a risk to the community.

Video 5 – Military and police decontamination.

Here’s some units in the decontamination of the streets using the military foggers. It’s a pretty impressive sight.

Video 6 – Truck decontamination.

The Chinese military has invested enormous sums of money perfecting mass decontamination of buildings and people. Here is an impressive array of trucks.

Video 7 – Sick woman decides to ask for help.

Hit hits suddenly. Up until when it hits, you think (falsely) that you can handle it. But you cannot. Here we see police taking a woman to an emergency station.

Video 8 – At the hospital.

This is pretty much what it will be like once she makes it to the hospital. There will be doctors and nurses in full NBC gear attending to her. But even at that, it will be a rough slog to get better…

Video 9 – Quarantine area

The Chinese government has repurposed sports arenas, and other civics facilities into quarantine areas. The people may or may not be sick. But they do need to wait within safe confines to see what may happen. Here’s one of the facilities within Wuhan…

Video 10 – Morning exercise

The Chinese love to exercise in the mornings and the evenings. This was started by the “dancing grandmothers” and after some abuses, was repurposed to a health initiative, that most of China takes part in. It’s a period of two to three hours of guided line dancing to Chinese pop music and K-pop. Here, we can watch it inside one of the quarantine facilities.

Video 11 – Drones continue to keep people off the streets

Big red banners with bright yellow letters are everywhere. They tell the people to be mindful, careful and to stay at home. Never the less there are those that refuse to listen. Some are just bad apples. Some are crazy. Some don’t give a fuck – they are far too self absorbed. And…

And some are just people going out for a walk and being casual with mask discipline. Such as this chick. The local police drone admonishes her and chases her home.

Video 12 – Inside a Military field hospital

Once Beijing declared this a DEFCON ONE situation, military hospitals were set up in all of the tier one, tier two and tier three cities. This is in addition to the new hospitals being constructed, the regular hospital and the networks of clinics that abound all over China.

China has a much more extensive system of medical care than America has. It has build up this network in great detail and complexity with layers over layers of systems.

Here we see what it is like inside one of the military tent hospital complexes.

Video 13 – Robot food delivery

To keep people from being contaminated, robots are being used in the tier one cities. Some have smiley faces, but most look like white boxes on wheels. Like this…

Video 14 – Assholes

During this period all elevators have tissues that people are supposed to use to press the buttons. Clear tape overlays are on the buttons, and public mechanisms of conveyance are all disinfected multiple times a day.

That’s all well and good, if everyone was “normal”.

One of the things that I hear from people (mostly Americans) is what about people’s rights? What about their freedoms? Well, not everyone is “with the program”. There is a tiny percentage of crazy assholes that want to make life miserable for the rest of us.

Luckily, China is fully wired up. Video feed of miscreants and trouble-makers goes straight to the local police… who know these people and take direct and swift action.

Here’s an asshole…

Video 15 – Going to the hospital

People “on the front lines”; those that need to be in public and are exposed to others are getting sick. Usually, being quite patriotic, they will stay at their posts until they get a seizure or collapse. Here’s a policeman, and that is exactly what happened.

Video 16 – Pull the nation closer.

It’s difficult to imagine the Chinese nation being any more patriotic than it already is, but this bio-warfare attack has pushed Chinese patriotism to mountainous heights. It’s really amazing. Here’s just one of thousands of videos I have collected along this theme.

If you enjoyed this post, please fell free to take a trip to my China / Trump Trade Wars index here…

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You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.

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