8 reasons why the great depression was a best case scenario

[SHTFMIKE]

This link has many pictures with brief summaries from the great depression era and are EYE OPENING.
If this were to happen today we would truly be screwed.
People that survived the great depression KNEW what it was like to be starving, have nearly no possessions and no running water to bath in.
After the great depression, these are the people that started putting long term food storage to use out of fear that this could happen again.



http://ladypatriotus.blogspot.com/20...n-is-best.html

[Rick]

How old are you? Wrong all across the board. Generalizations are always dangerous but your assertions are simply not correct. My part of the country was fairly low on the economic totem pole but few if any were starving. My grandfather had all sorts of farm animals as well as fruit trees and a garden. Their Saturday nights consisted of slaughtering some chickens and enjoying music they performed with neighbors. Sometimes a stolen chicken or two would hit the pot just to aggravate someone (they later found out they were eating their own chickens). They weren't broke until the depression hit and they lost the farm. My dad said it was over night. To think that they were not a consumer/debt society is also wrong. Of course they were. Many times the debt was paid at harvest or at slaughter but it's the exact same thing. They had to have money to buy seed as well as staples like flour and sugar. That was often bartered or a loan was secured just like today.

As for long term food storage that was in the root cellar long before the depression hit. It's how they survived the winter.

The depression of the 30s wasn't the first this country has endured. It was the fifth. Three lasted about 7 years each and two lasted for over a decade.

Unfortunately, that article is little more than a rambling of half truths. Sorry.

[Echo2]

As I've stated before....I feel it will be very similar....other than the level of violence.

[jfeatherjohn]

Both of my folks were members of farm families during that depression. My Dad used to quip, "We were so poor, we didn't experience a depression.
They did; they saw it all around them.
According to him, they put up food year-round.
I think that things were different then. They had outhouses, no refridgerator, a root cellar...well, you know...a lot easier yo tough it out if one is already toughing it out.
Then, as now, people in urban environments will have a bit tougher time, in general. ;-)

[kyratshooter]

What we refer too as the "Great Depression" is not even the worst economic disaster in our nations history. Heavy depressions are about a 20 year cycle with deep depressions once each century no matter what type economy is in place or what checks and balances are installed.

Each of the previous economic crashes resulted in mass migratons to the west as people lost farms and fortunes. There was a huge unchecked collapse after the war of 1812, that resulted in families moving into the "old northwest". Possibly the worst depression on record was the Crash of 1836, which lasted nearly 15 years and resulted in the Indian Removal, the Overland Trail migration, the collapse of the fur trade and Texas entry into the Union leading directly to the Mexican War and our Civil War..

Food storage and preservation is what every generation before us as considered necessary as a simple part of life. It was not survival and it was not unusual, it was just life. My grandad did not start raising hogs and working a garden because of the depression, he did it as a part of normal life. He was a grown man when the depression developed and his parents brought him up working the farm and they put up food in ways most have never used.

If "crash" occurrs tomorrow we will deal with it just as every nation that experiences economic disaster deals with daily life. Just because it has not happened HERE does not mean it has not happened in other civilized, developed, modern nations even in our lifetime.

Guess what?

People still live and work in Bosnia, Kosovo, Argintinia, Brazil after their economies have crashed, civil wars have raged and genocide has occurred. Oddly, many people consider those places HOME and wish to live nowhere else.

[SHTFMIKE]

How old are you? Wrong all across the board. Generalizations are always dangerous but your assertions are simply not correct. My part of the country was fairly low on the economic totem pole but few if any were starving. My grandfather had all sorts of farm animals as well as fruit trees and a garden. Their Saturday nights consisted of slaughtering some chickens and enjoying music they performed with neighbors. Sometimes a stolen chicken or two would hit the pot just to aggravate someone (they later found out they were eating their own chickens). They weren't broke until the depression hit and they lost the farm. My dad said it was over night. To think that they were not a consumer/debt society is also wrong. Of course they were. Many times the debt was paid at harvest or at slaughter but it's the exact same thing. They had to have money to buy seed as well as staples like flour and sugar. That was often bartered or a loan was secured just like today.

As for long term food storage that was in the root cellar long before the depression hit. It's how they survived the winter.

The depression of the 30s wasn't the first this country has endured. It was the fifth. Three lasted about 7 years each and two lasted for over a decade.

Unfortunately, that article is little more than a rambling of half truths. Sorry.

I am 42. You can't put everyone that experienced the great depression in the same generalization either. You think everyone had a farm and put a years worth of food away? Yes, lots of people owned farms but not everyone. What about the millions of people living in cities? I'm pretty sure none of them had root cellars filled with food. What about the families that literally lost everything almost overnight?
And yes, they were a consumer/debt society but absolutely nothing like today. Most people paid for everything in cash. Everyone today uses credit cards. They didn't back then. If you couldn't afford it, you saved enough until you could afford it.
Consumer/ debt ratio's of today society are WELL over what they were in the 30's.
My grandparents lived through it just as well as yours did. Yours may have had a farm with livestock and crops, mine did not. My grandparents had to migrate halfway across the country to live with their relatives. At least they were able to do that. Many families didn't have that option. I have heard many accounts from elderly people that lived through it and some of the stories would make you sick to your stomach.

If we had a great depression now in this day and age what do you think would happen? You think the welfare checks will just keep coming with no money to pay for it? Does the Gov. have enough money to put EVERYONE on welfare? What will happen when people can't feed their children these days?. There would be anarchy.


My grandparents had to learn the hard way about putting food away for an emergency. They started doing it after they got back on their feet.

[Rick]

I think it would be like it has always been during a depression. People are people. Only the technology changes. You sort of missed my point. People lived their life prior to the depression of the 30s. They did what they did because they didn't know any better. They had nothing to compare it to. Just like we do what we do today because we can't see the future to compare it to. Families had large numbers of offspring prior to the depression because they had food. No animal produces a large number of offspring in lean times. As KY said. It's all cyclical. It's supposed to be by design.

[Echo2]

If the dollar were to be down graded to junk on the global market due to the over production of dead presidents........what do you see the first 3 months of that being like?

Will everyone be able to continue to do what they do?

I think the first few months will be somewhat chaotic before the normalization begins.....chaotic meaning ultra violent in the metropolitan and urban areas....then it will spread from those areas to the more rural areas....and the thinning of the population will happen during the first winter.

One thing that helped other nations that have had an economical collapse....is there was some big country with a ton of milk and honey to spare held out a hand and stabilized them until they began to reset their currency and pick a direction to go.

Who will be there to hold our hand?

Essentially China has been holding out hand for a while out of fear....because if we go....they feel the monetary effect hard. They have been working hard to diversify over the last few years....but the majority of their eggs are still in our basket.

Will Russia come to our aid.....we helped some....but didn't jump to bail them out after the cold war.

The Brits?.....they are in the same boat as us....if not worse.

The EU....yeah right.

Either way...I try to keep one ear to the ground so I can figure out when to look at the BOL as home.

[hunter63]

This seems to me rehashing old news......Have y'all been putting food/stuff by?....learning skills that will keep you well, and fed?
Do you keep your bills paid, your stuff paid for?
These are the things that should be important, as there isn't much you can do about the world.....Your world starts at home.

Hanky wringing doesn't account for much.......

[Rick]

What would the first three months after a comet strike be like? Sort of like planning around hypotheticals. By the way, you won't live to see that happen.

[hunter63]

Won't have to worry about it after Dec 22nd.........

[Echo2]

I'm not arrogant enough to think that I can prep for a earth ending event.....but I can have my house in order for an economic event.

Do you think the odds of a comet impact is the same as a economic event?

[Rick]

The sound you heard was the point of my post flying past. I wasn't comparing odds simply pointing out that attempting to judge what life would be like three months after any event is senseless and an impossible task. In other news......So....you ARE arrogant enough to think that you can prep for an economic event? Bazinga! (I slay myself)

[SHTFMIKE]

In 2004 Hurricane Charley whipped through my area and blew down thousands of trees which in tun pulled many power lines down with it. The power was out for 2 weeks. We were under a boil water alert for most of that time. Boiling water on the grill was tough. I didn't have more than a weeks worth of food combined then. All the perishable food was ruined after 24 hours. I had to cook all of our meals on the grill. I burned through cash like nobody's business. That was cash i had in the house. Getting money from the bank was impossible due to the power outage.
Credit cards were useless because of the power outage; unless the merchant had the old fashioned card swipe machines.

An economic collapse would be 10 times worse. Merchants may not accept credit at that point. Who knows what will become of the trucking industry at that point. Will food supplies even make it to markets???
Municipalities should stay as is; (should).
Imagine not being able to pay your utilities, your mortgage, food.
Now imagine all the unprepared masses. What will happen next would be complete havoc.

Can you prepare for an economic collapse? I like to think i have all my ducks in a row but who knows. Until it happens.

[Echo2]

The sound you heard was the point of my post flying past. I wasn't comparing odds simply pointing out that attempting to judge what life would be like three months after any event is senseless and an impossible task. In other news......So....you ARE arrogant enough to think that you can prep for an economic event? Bazinga! (I slay myself)

Knowing what life will be like in <*arbitrary number here*> is a bit far fetched yes.....But I would think that if someone could drop out of day to day interaction with the populaces at large for 18+ months.....and also have enough supplies laid back to sustain farming and harvesting for an additional 5+ years.....teach his children up to and exceeding a high school education.....and have a sizable number of folks to provide security for a well defend-able position.... and enough PM to cover 3 months wages......He may be able to hedge the effects of an economical event....slightly.

He may be totally wrong....but in the spirit of "hope for the best and prepare for the worst".....I think he'd be doing the best job he could.

His core ideology has been aimed at keeping his children from looking to him and saying "I'm hungry"....and not being able to do anything about it.

How long could most folks go before going hungry?

[kyratshooter]

In case of the previous do you want to know who has stockpiles of years of food, years of fuel, plenty of ammo and the expressed responsibility to maintain order?

The military.

If the nation decends into chaos they will step in and maintain order just like they did in the GD.

Contrary to popular belief that was not a span of time that was deviod of violence or masses of starving demanding hope and change! The nation experienced a near Coup de' etat buy a military industrial coilition, wild violent protest, occupation mobs in Washington DC, border closures of specific states attempting to preserve their rescources and militay intervention against the civilian population on a massive scale.

[Echo2]

Quite true....but if martial law were to be initiated here in the states on a large scale....meaning major metropolitan areas....I kinda look at that as a "nation ending" event.

I shudder to think of the loss of life.

I wonder which sect of ideologies would come from that....an which we would fall in to.

[kyratshooter]

Major metropolitan areas are not the entire nation. The rest of the nation knows that those areas are controlled by the "Bread and circus" program and from the suburbs out there is a seperate nation.

Riots and the control of riots are not unknown in our nation, even on a widespead and organized agenda, and the entire nation is not going to rise up in rebellion due to the "powers that be" moving to control violence in the urban centers. No one in Nabraska rose in rebellion when Detroit burned and the 101 airborne entred the city, no one is South Carolina organized a militia group to assist rioters in Watts as they fought the California NG and no one came to the aid of rioters in Cincinnatti back in 2002 as they fought the agencies of control. They did not in the 1960s-1970s and it will be no diffrent now.

The size of our nation's land mass insures that even these huge metro areas are viewed as localized events by those 2000 miles away. It would be espically true if the internet and cell phone communications were restricted, media outlets controlled an land lines and ham radio monitored.

Our nation uses the same process as the old Soviet Union in controlling these disturbances. NG units from other states and areas are often transferred to those locations to insure they are not operating against friends, family and neighbors. They view themselves as agents of law and order, not the military-political complex.

Do not forget that our experiment in republican government is a short little span of time. Most of world history has been spent under the control of kings, emperors or dictatiors who held power through force and were not hesitant to kill hundreds of thousands of their own people to maintain that control.

[Echo2]

My goal as a parent is to keep my family as far away from harms way as possible.....let those who are going to tear themselves apart....do so.

What worries me is how many new regulations will be put in to place for "our safety".

What will be the cost of safety but the loss of freedoms....and are all to suffer for those that go bananas?

When Katrina hit....they tried to confiscate weapons....The BATFE had boats stationed above the gun stores waiting for the water to subside. Do you see this going well in a nationwide setting?

As far as media being restricted....one thing we have in this country....is a GIAGANTIC HAM community.....The restriction of news I feel will prove harder than taking over AM/FM and TV.....and that land mass makes it very difficult to jam everything else.

Our little Republic may not be around forever....but good lord will it be messy when ending....

[SHTFMIKE]

"Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." Benjamin Franklin.



"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions." James Madison.