Life is dangerous. It always has been and it always will be. That’s why we’re preppers; we know things can go badly wrong, and we mean to be ready if they do. Prepping is all about understanding, and preparing for, the world’s dangers.
Ironically, though, just being a prepper can bring its own dangers. We do things most people don’t. We buy things most people don’t. Worst of all, we attract the kind of attention most people don’t.
That’s why just about every prepping website ends every year with a look forward to what hazards preppers could face in the next one. That’s always worth doing, but sometimes it helps to look more than a year ahead. What sort of problems could we face as preppers in the next ten years? Here are my best guesses.
The Economy
In the short term, inflation is still a big worry; it’s come down from its 2022 peak, but we’re not out of the woods yet and recently it’s started to creep up again. However, there could be economic problems ahead that make recent inflation look like a minor hiccup.
Our government is addicted to debt.
In his first three years in office Biden borrowed $6.32 trillion dollars. Someday that has to be paid back, and until then we’re paying interest on it. And, every year, the government borrows even more.
We’re not even trying to pay off what we owe already, and the interest payments are steadily growing. As they eat more and more of the tax we pay, the government has to borrow even more money to avoid spending cuts. It’s a deadly spiral that’s getting tighter and steeper.
Eventually that spiral is going to come crashing down. Either taxes will rise so high millions of Americans will be driven into poverty, or government spending will need to be slashed ruthlessly.
Either of those scenarios is going to leave a lot of hungry people looking for resources they can steal – and if they know you’re a prepper, your stockpiles will be a tempting target. That’s why I’ve already installed on my property these automatic backyard traps and alarms against looters and intruders. And you should probably do the same.
Civil Unrest
The US has always had a lively democracy, but it’s no longer a healthy one. Our politics has become dangerously polarized.
It used to be that even if 49% of the population hated the way an election turned out, they’d accept the result and hope their guy won next time.
That started to change in 2000, when many Democrats refused to accept George W Bush’s election victory.
Then there was 2016, with thousands of protesters insisting Donald Trump was “#NotMyPresident,” and then the contested election in 2020.
Whoever wins this year it’s a dead certainty that tens of millions of Americans will refuse to accept it, while politicians and activist judges try to overturn the election result.
The level of hysteria and polarization in our system is even higher than it was in 2020; we’re likely facing a tense four years, with no guarantee the 2028 election will make things better. Would you bet against widespread violence next January, when the president is inaugurated?
Pandemics
The 2020 COVID managed to be a disaster even though the disease itself wasn’t all that dangerous.
Efforts to stop the virus spreading led to one of the fastest and most dangerous expansions of government power in history. For the first time ever, whole industries were shut down and people forced to stay at home as much as possible.
We live in a globalized world now; thanks to large-scale migration and affordable air travel, diseases can spread further and faster than ever before.
There will be more global pandemics, and even though lockdowns don’t seem to have done much to stop COVID spreading – Sweden never shut itself down, and didn’t suffer any worse than we did – that probably won’t stop governments trying them again.
During a pandemic, access to medical care and basic medications will be scarce, as it was the first time around. Before that happens, add these 10 medical supplies to your stockpile, as they will be the first to disappear in a crisis.
Gun Control
Most preppers own at least one gun, and the most popular firearms for preppers are the sort gun control advocates hate the most – handguns and “military style” long guns, like semiautomatic sporting rifles and pump-action shotguns.
Right now things are actually looking quite good for the Second Amendment.
Some recent Supreme Court decisions have struck down state or local anti-gun laws, including restrictive handgun laws in New York and Chicago.
There are plenty laws left, though, and liberal lawmakers are constantly pushing to resurrect the 1994 “assault weapon” ban. Semiautomatic rifles and “high-capacity” magazines are the usual targets, but gun control is a slippery slope.
Related: The Guns the Government Doesn’t Want You to Have
If its advocates ever manage to ban “assault weapons” it won’t take them long to find something new to aim for. They’ll never be satisfied until all guns are banned.
War
Remember when the Soviet Union collapsed and social scientists confidently proclaimed “the end of history”? The Cold War was over. Governments slashed defense spending and poured the money into social programs instead. How smart does that look now?
Russia doesn’t have the military power the old USSR did, but Vladimir Putin is trying to rebuild his armed forces – and he’s a lot more aggressive than the Soviets ever were. NATO leaders are warning that Putin is prepared to start a war with the west.
Worse, there are other hostile states rising. China is a lot richer than Russia and is investing heavily in its military. Its technology isn’t up to US standards, but it isn’t bad, and, unlike Russia, the Chinese military is backed up by a strong economy.
Iran is a different challenge; it can’t compete with the US (or even Russia) in high-tech weapons, but it can make crude but effective drones and missiles in large quantities. Then it exports them to where they’ll cause the most trouble. Russia is using Iranian drones to bombard Ukrainian cities; the Houthi terrorists are using them to attack ships in the Red Sea.
Then of course there’s North Korea, a rogue state ruled by an eccentric dictator and armed with nuclear weapons. North Korea might have the ability to put a nuclear warhead in a satellite, creating the perfect system for an EMP attack – and the regime’s possibly crazy enough to use it. Compared to the world now, the Cold War was an oasis of peace and stability.
With inflation creeping up again and many US cities suffering from out of control crime, it’s easy to let all your attention get focused on what’s happening right now. If you want to survive, though, you need to be ready for what could happen next year, or in ten years. It’s never too early to start preparing.
