For months now I’ve been really sorting through my thoughts, ideas, concepts, and principles…and I came to a conclusion about preparedness…

I was wrong all along!

For nearly 2 decades I’ve been online writing about preparedness for emergencies, disasters, and “grid-down” events. I’ve even written several books about those subjects along with a number of short stories. And while possibly mildly entertaining…I was missing the forest for the trees.

Let’s walk down this path for a minute…what if we woke up tomorrow morning and:

• The US dollar lost over 90% of its value. A dollar yesterday was worth less than a dime this morning.
• Houses cost 20 times more.
• Rent is 21 times higher.
• Food prices were up 1000%
• Inflation had hit 975% overnight!

If you wanted to buy a new car this morning…yesterday the car was $50,000, this morning…that same car is now priced at $700,000!

What would you call that situation? An economic collapse? A bank failure? The fall of the United States?

But it gets worse…you check your bank balance…yesterday your account balance at the FDIC-insured bank was $1,761. This morning your account balance was only $163!

Then it gets far worse…yesterday your total debt at the bank was $5,200. This morning that debt is now showing $140,000!!

How bad would you call this situation?

No, there is no mistake. No, there isn’t some glitch. No, this isn’t some weird event. No, it wasn’t a nightmare that you woke up from. This is the new reality.

Do you think you would be throwing up right about then? What horrific event would you imagine had taken place for all of this to happen?

The phone rings…your employer calls and tells you that you were making $69,846 per year but because of the “incident” you would now be making $1,048,000 per year. Oh yeah!!! A million dollars a year…RICH ! !

Then you sit down with your spouse and realize that your mortgage which had been $2,800 per month is now $65,500 per month. Your grocery bill is now $14,000 per month. Just those two expenses alone are now $80,000 per month!! That works out to 91% of your total gross yearly income.

Oh my gosh…it’s economic ruin for your family!

What would you do? What would you think about the situation? Could you even survive this?

Then it hits you…

Oh hell…even making a million dollars a year can’t save us!

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But none of this happened overnight.

That’s the point.

It happened one ordinary day at a time…over the last 62 years. From the time the average person is born until they retire…it happened. And you’re living it.

Had all of that happened overnight, what would we have called it?

A catastrophe.

But because it took 62 years…we call it…

Normal.

For years I believed preparedness was primarily about preparing for emergencies, disasters and the potential of “grid-down”…

I don’t believe that anymore.

Emergencies can be serious, but they are generally limited in scope. Disasters can be devastating to a whole community almost overnight. A potential “grid-down” could cripple our nation and send us back to the stone age. But those are all possibilities…some more probable than others…but each still only a “maybe” in the bigger scheme of things.

But there is a certainty out there…a proven historic fact…economic numbers that show this has already happened. It is “life” over the last 62 years (1964 – 2026). It has already occurred…and we are all victims of it to one degree or another.

It would be a valid question to ask…

How did we get to this point?

Well, for months now I’ve been doing research…”deep-dive” research. I’ve been looking at actual numbers, fact-based statistics, and real-life evidence from reliable sources. And the picture became very clear. Very clear…and very ugly.

Test me…

How long have you been thinking that something just isn’t right in our country anymore? You feel it in your bones. You know something is “off”…but you can’t put your finger on it. Something just nags at the back of your mind, and you know there is a problem out there.

Well, you’re right…you’ve sensed it for a while now.

Most of us just get caught up in our daily lives…just getting stuff done day in and day out…and we don’t sit to ponder what is really happening around us. That’s understandable.

But you knew all along something just wasn’t adding up. Again, you were right all along.

Let’s be honest about what has improved since 1964. Do we own more stuff now? Of course. Do we have more technology? Yup! Do we have more advanced medical care? No question. Do we have fancier and more sophisticated cars? No doubt. Are our houses bigger and fancier? Oh hell yes!

But…our families, are better off now in 2026?

Here are some of the questions that came to my mind…maybe yours too:

• So why does it seem like life has become more difficult and complicated instead of easier?
• So why does it feel like so many families can never quite get ahead?
• So why do so many people feel less secure than their parents did?
• So why does it seem like one unexpected expense can throw an ordinary family into crisis?
• So why do so many families feel like the future is becoming harder instead of brighter?
• So why do so many families feel like they’re running harder just to stay in the same place?
• If we have more than ever before…why do so many people feel they have less of the important things in life?

Then I realized that no single year’s economic statistics looked catastrophic. But sixty-two years of what those statistics measured quietly year after year created a catastrophe in the lives of ordinary American families.

And that’s what bothers me the most.

If all of this had happened overnight, we would have called it a disaster…maybe even a “grid-down” event. We would have demanded answers. We would have wanted to know what happened, who was responsible, and most importantly…what we were going to do about it.

But it didn’t happen overnight. It happened slowly enough that we learned to live with it.

We adjusted. We borrowed more. We worked longer hours. We accepted less. And year after year, what would have once seemed unthinkable simply became…normal.

Maybe the question we should be asking ourselves now is…

How much have we accepted as “normal” simply because it happened slowly enough that we didn’t notice?

That is a question I intend to keep asking. And after spending more than 15 years writing about preparedness, I finally realized something. I was preparing for the catastrophe that might happen someday…while failing to recognize the one that was already happening all around us.

Yeah…I was wrong all along.

So…what else have we accepted that way?