We can’t sit in our homes waiting for someone to come save us. No one is coming.

I think we can admit that we’re all preppers now.

Back in March as communities braced for lockdowns and began seeing shortages of crucial supplies, people found themselves regrettably unprepared. I was one of those people. While waiting in line for over two hours to enter my local Costco, it occurred to me how fragile the systems are which enable us to obtain the basics needed to sustain a “normal” way of life. While waiting and observing others in line with me, I envisioned what a sustained power outage would look like, and imagined how vastly different it would be if the credit cards in our pockets were rendered useless due to crippled electronic payment processing systems.

Five years ago, CBS Sunday Morning aired a segment featuring Ted Koppel who had released his book, “Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath.” In his book Koppel paints a grim picture of a paralyzing power outage in the form of a cyber-attack on the nation’s power grid, which today relies heavily on the internet. The segment also included comments from Dr. Paul Stockton who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs from 2009 to 2012. Stockton’s advice regarding disaster preparedness was this: “average citizens need to be able to take care of their own families, and their own neighborhoods and their own communities and not assume that Uncle Sam is somehow going to bring in the cavalry and rescue them.” As we have seen with the recent wildfires, the hurricanes, and for many, with the pandemic response, not much has changed in the last five years that would alter Dr. Stockton’s perspective. Most of us can’t sit in our homes waiting for someone to come save us. No one is coming.

Our clients acquire precious metals for an array of reasons, not the least of which is to secure strategic access to a barter instrument for crisis situations. Having access to gold and silver as part of a disaster preparedness strategy is not only easy to achieve, it’s wise. We need to plan for the best, but prepare for the worst. In light of current events, I think we can admit that we’re all preppers now.

Works Cited list:

“Can cyber-hackers shut down the power grid”” YouTube, uploaded by CBS Sunday Morning, 15 November 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2-rkZOL8C4

In-text:

(“Paul Stockton,” 08:45-09:25).

Image by: Charlotte Venema, Unsplash