While it’s true that doomsday prepping is pointless, prepping for emergencies is not pointless at all.
I live in Texas. Every year since the big storm of 2021, there is a mad dash for the grocery stores and camping stores in case it happens again.
What do I do? Nothing. I’ve already prepped with non-perishables and other things in case we go through that scenario again.
I “gray person” through life, so there are no angry swarms of people who will steal my things. Instead, I’ve made friends with my neighbors, and we look out for each other.
I tell my worried relatives who live elsewhere that I will be fine—and I am.
If the world ends, there’s not much I can do. But for natural disasters and emergencies, there is a lot I can do—so that is why I prep.
yes i think that is why most people prep - they believe the situation will be temporary... that things will return to normal
Obviously this is not what will happen when the global economy implodes... this will be permanent...
I do not recommend prepping ... it will make you a target. There will be some very nasty fellas with starving families... they will do whatever it takes to feed them
When I lived in NZ I would deer hunt with a neighbour who was a professional hunting guide... I have seen him take down a deer with a head shot at nearly 1km distance...
I imagine a prepper weeding his patch .... and my neighbour putting a bullet in his head... he won't even know what happened...
People in parts of the Carolinas, Tennessee, and other storm-stricken states are standing their ground as looting reports flood X. This dire situation highlights the harsh reality that when disaster strikes and the government is nowhere to be found, being prepared and armed will save your life.
Eight illegal aliens were arrested in the eastern part of Tennessee for looting following the tropical system that unleashed flash floods in Washington County. Maybe these migrants were searching 'for bread' to feed their families... We suspect not.
The other five men — Albin Nahun Vega-Rapalo, 24, David Bairon Rapalo-Rapalo, 37, Kevin Noe Martinez-Lopez, 25, Marvin Hernandez-Martinez, 43, and Dayln Gabriel Guillen Guillen, 37 — were charged with aggravated burglary for breaking into occupied structures, the sheriff's office said. -NYPost.
Just north of Greenville in western North Carolina, a video uploaded on TikTok, then X, of realtor Leigh Brown, who warned, "The looting has picked up major steam," adding, "I was advised by a county sheriff to make sure that anybody out and about is 'carrying' and in his words 'carrying with the safety off.'"
Brown said the people out in the storm-ravaged area might not be "awful people, they're desperate" as their homes and towns were wiped off the face of the map by 'biblical floods.'
You illustrate many of the reasons I am not a prepper.
Some years ago I worked in an Ace hardware store and met a prepper. His list of needs pretty much tipped me off, so I asked him, and he confessed he was preparing for collapse. Like me, he was getting a bit long in the tooth, and inevitably that leads to dependency on pharmaceuticals to artificially extend our lifespans. When I asked him if he was on blood pressure medication, he responded he was, and a number of other critical meds, too. I asked him how he was going to procure these medications in a post collapse world.
This reinforces my opinion of most humans being just plain stupid.
This clown fears collapse and death... so he preps... meanwhile he is unwilling to do anything about a lifestyle that has resulted in life-threatening high blood pressure. Sheesh. I wonder if he knows how to tie his shoe laces.
I am reminded of a Pro Vaxxer moron (and former friend cuz he mocked me for not shooting the Rat Juice)... he guzzles a bottle and a half of wine every single night ... pretty much subsists on frozen meat pies.... and has a drunk's protruding belly... and was absolutely terrified of covid. You'd think if he was that fearful of dying.... he'd do something about his diet and his alcoholism. I know a number of other Pro Vaxxers who are similarly unhealthy....
F789 all of them ... let them shoot more boosters (and eat cake).
You’re so right. “Prepping” begins when one is young, and involves valuing one’s health, strength and frame of mind. Valuing a healthy, nourishing diet, valuing exercise, and valuing a positive, “can do” mindset are all part of “prepping” even for the normal good times most of us grew up to expect.
Even under the best of circumstances, simply growing older can be a burden on yourself and a drag on those around you if you do so by setting yourself up for illness and decrepitude. Most of us need not be broken and sick and in debt to the medical system. That’s primarily the result of poor lifestyle choices. Granted, various industries attempt to lure you into that lifestyle because they profit from it, but the ultimate choice is yours.
We have so many options for staying healthy today that weren’t available to previous generations, but we must be of the mindset to take advantage of them. Even if, in the end, we are doomed to all die from spent nuclear radiation (I’m not entirely convinced that the scenario will play out exactly as you’ve suggested, nature often has unexpected wrinkles, but whatever, we shall see), is that any good reason to stack the deck for making the latter stages of your life unnecessarily expensive and miserable just to go on living? Especially when cultivating health can be delicious and rewarding? Not in my opinion! But then again, I’m not battling a personal addiction to a model of aging that says one must prepare to be lame and sick as one grows older and there’s nothing one can do about that so one may as well dissipate one’s youth and middle age in idle pleasures that ultimately compromise one’s health or distract one from improving one’s health.
We won’t get very far into the crisis before discovering who is currently alive that is alive only because of the plethora of crutches made available by modern medical technology.
Agree, the nuclear winter end of everything, permanently, everywhere is a bit of scare mongering hype in the opposite direction. There was even one guy who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions and lived to be 93 years old.
At atomic bomb is nothing like a spent fuel pond... read the article... these ponds spew for years ... and they release epic amounts of cancer causing substances with half lives of thousands of years...
They will be picked up by ocean currents and end up in the jet stream and fall as rain across the planet... humans will be eating and drinking this stuff...
An atomic bomb is not the same as a spent fuel pond.... neither is a reactor meltdown.
There are massive amounts of extremely dangerous materials stored in these ponds....
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.
I'm going to have to look more into that; always heard the total amount of nuke waste wouldn't fill up a very large area, but who knows. Regardless, they won't be abandoning nukes; they really can't unless we all want to live like the Amish.
The technology came a lot way since Chernobyl for sure. Long watch but fascinating and informative:
A big handful survived both bombings, actually. Most have just never been publicized. Lying flat on the ground, under any sort of shelter if possible, apparently is a big factor, and I think a few were just in unusually protected spaces.
Dependence upon meds is not at all inevitable, at least not for everybody - and most don't even extend your lifespan appreciably anyway. These civil war veterans lived to a ripe old age before most modern medicines were even thought about.
I am guessing the guy you encountered was probably fat after a lifetime of eating crap foods and not exercising, to say nothing of side effects from whatever poison his doctor mindlessly prescribed to treat symptoms. He is reaping the compound interest from such decisions and lifestyle habits made over a lifetime.
(Note: The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.)
Many medications have undesirable long term side effects. Some though like blood pressure medications do help people with little downsides. What I find frustrating is we treat the symptom, not the cause.
Correct. Geoffrey's friend may live longer without the BP meds.
Anyway, the first steps for lowering blood pressure should be sunlight on the skin, potassium, magnesium, exercise--those four are the most important (and they won't lead to dizziness or falls). Possibly taurine, L-arginine, L-citrulline, and a low-carb diet. Probably also Vitamin K2 for long-term reduction of arterial calcification. Preppers should definitely stockpile potassium and magnesium, whether they have high BP or not.
From my observations ... people with high BP generally eat shit... drink too much ... and do no exercise... a disease of gluttony and sloth.
Doomsday preppers need to stockpile painkillers to deal with the cancer they will get when the toxins from the spent fuel ponds get into the water supply and veggies
Armed men belonging to the Gran Grif gang have killed at least 70 people, including three infants, and forced at least 3000 to flee as they swept through a Haitian town shooting automatic rifles at residents, the United Nations says.
“We are horrified by Thursday’s gang attacks in the town of Pont-Sonde in Haiti’s Artibonite department,” UN spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan said in a statement.
At least another 16 people were seriously injured in the attack in the early hours of Thursday (local time), including two gang members hit during an exchange of fire with Haitian police, according to the UN.
The gang members reportedly set fire to at least 45 houses and 34 vehicles, forcing residents to flee their homes.
The killings are the latest sign of a worsening conflict in the Caribbean country, where armed gangs control most of the capital Port-au-Prince and are expanding to nearby regions, fuelling hunger and making hundreds of thousands homeless, while nearby countries continue to deport migrants back to the country.
“This odious crime against defenceless women, men and children is not only an attack against victims but against the entire Haitian nation,” Prime Minister Garry Conille said on X.
We are also getting a taste of how a collapse will play out. As Fast has said in the past, the food zombies and gun toting gangs who will stop at nothing to take stuff away from you and your families.
It's already playing out in parts of Colorado and Chicago. Violent Venezuelan gangs have taken over neighborhoods in Aurora Colorado. They are now the landlords and demand rent money because they chased away the real landlords. The problem is, the MSM refuses to bring it to light, the police don't respond and the government says all of that isn't true, that it's being blown out of proportion.
Except it isn't because the Bidet Administration allowed these violent gang members to enter the US via the southern border and these violent gangs are spreading into major US cities run.
So true. The nuclear spent fuel or actively working nuclear reactors will finish us off. When I realized this several years ago, I spent a couple years drinking more than I should. I quit doing that, but I also quit prepping. I just keep enough food and water for a couple weeks, after that, death will be welcome, but I would prefer a quiet, painless death . . . not sure how to do that.
Eddie said to get fentanyl. I don’t really know how so I have a 22 handy and I also have a garage with a car. Hopefully I will have a full tank. I don’t know how long it takes.
Doctors won't give me any sedatives. I allways hear of others getting all kinds of drugs, legally and illegally, but I couldn't even get my doctor to give me a couple pain pills for my hiking first aid kit. For real pain tylenol is useless. When I was going through a terrible period in my life, and had upstairs neighbors that were awake 24/7, showering, walking around, etc., I couldn't get a couple sleeping pills either. Do I look like a drug abuser? No, I do not!.\
Good work on putting this one up. Especially The Bronx Blackout vid.
Yeah, the redundant fuel rod pools are a big problem. I'm having to concede, most unwillingly, that you might be right.
But I also can't believe that Our Father will be happy to see one of his great treasures destroyed by such trash. This won't be (definitely isn't?) the first time the planet has been through this process, and I guess a few hundred thousand years is not so long on his timescale.
I believe (right or wrong) that there is evidence of ancient nuclear explosions in North Western Australia. Not to mention, Sodom and Gomorrah.
Yeah, prepping... All you say is true, but the "Crisis Period" may be intentionally brief (as the Bible seems to say), and allow for survivors - who will no doubt be motivated to maintain those pools of water...
Wait and See, is about all we can do. I'd like to have that honour, at least.
You said "Our Father". I have to wonder - is this not the time where Mark 13 comes into play?
"19For those will be days of tribulation unmatched from the beginning of God’s creation until now, and never to be seen again. 20If the Lord had not cut short those days, nobody would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom He has chosen, He has cut them short...."
God will not let His humans go extinct - He died for us.
I have no doubt this coming tribulation will be horrible - beyond horrible. Most will die. But some will survive to see His return and the execution of His wrath on these evil monster, fallen rebels and those who join them. And that I want to see.
Once this stuff gets into the oceans... and it will ... it does not degrade for thousands of years... it will make it's way around the world... instead of taking days or hours to arrive -- it will take maybe a few months.
Enjoy your cancer if you are prepping -- that is if you neighbours don't rip your face off first when the supermarkets go empty - permanently
RE: "Your stuff will be looted if things get really bad. I think Fast Eddy on his substack made a very good point about the futility of trying to prep too deeply. It will boil down to what you can defend."
What survives collapse? What survives crisis? Community. What ever you give and contribute into your community and you generate that goodwill, and you generate those structures of taking care of each other and reciprocal (gift) relationships… that is an investment. That is a savings account that fires cannot burn and thieves cannot steal.
The best investment you can make is generosity, for only thing that cannot be taken from you is that which you give.
The thing about growing a garden and saving seed is that heirloom seeds are living beings and you always have more than enough for your own needs. Thus, the act of saving seed compels you to share your seeds and excess harvests with neighbors, developing symbiotic relationships and good will within that community which you live.
Now I could get into the reasons why even if we are talking about a hypothetical situation with mobs of callous, raging, thieving and pilfering neighbors, the choice to garden is still worth it purely due to number 23 on my list ( https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/25-reasons-you-should-start-a-garden ), but that would not address any people in the crowd that have more pragmatic (and perhaps self interested) atheistic concerns and priorities, so instead I will elaborate on how there are practical/pragmatic reasons why knowledge and skills related to food cultivation is more valuable than food stores, cryptocurrency, silver or cash (as they are accessible and applicable in and and all situations and cannot be taken from you.
So, here we are visualizing a post apocalyptic mad max type situation in which everyone has decided to behave like rabid selfish primates and they are stealing and thieving from their neighbor’s gardens (as silly as this is, some people think that is what human nature is when people get desperate as they have been watching lots of Hollywood psyops, so lets explore that hypothetical).
Even if the mobs of ravenous garden raiders stole all my crops from the garden, broke into my home and held me at gun point while they stole my pickled and freeze dried food stores I still have heirloom seeds which, after they leave, I could use both as emergency food and/or plant for a fast harvest microgreens garden.
Lets say they are super industrious and relatively intellectually well educated garden raiding and burglarizing thieves, and they steal all my heirloom seeds from in my house as well.
What then?
Well, first of all, people who are stealing from others, rather than cultivating and foraging for food in the first place are unlikely to be capable of recognizing the value of heirloom seeds, nor would they be likely to want to cultivate them, but lets say we are talking about some really unusually viscous and selfish thieves (that also have a green thumb). Okay, they took my seeds from in the house, but that still leaves the seeds I have outside in my living Soil Seed Bank.
That is the thing about permaculture design and regenerative gardening, along with saving seed inside, I also encourage the natural self-seeding processes that are part of the life cycle of my favorite and most nutritious crops (which means if you remove something from my garden, the sunlight will shine down on the mulch and compost layer, awakening an array of dormant seeds that always exist there). In a number of days I would have abundant microgreens to eat without any work. In a few weeks, I could have significant harvests to eat (also without any work).
Beyond the food security of my living soil seed bank (which is immune to thievery, well, unless the thieves arrived with an excavator to also steal my soil ) as stated above, I retain the knowledge and skills I have acquired through my choice to garden (knowledge and skills which are accessible and applicable in any and all situations, whether for planting another garden, or for plant identification and foraging outside the garden).
Now this brings me to something I brought up in reason # 𝟏𝟎 from my 25 reasons to start a garden in 2024 relating to the ubiquitous lack of plant identification skills and knowledge in most people in modern day urban industrialized western society.
We live in a time where most children in Canada and the US are capable of identifying over 1000 corporate logos, yet they can only identify less then 10 plant species.
I suspect that same lack of basic botanical awareness and plant literacy is equally reflected in the urbanized adult populations.
Part of my comment above was pertaining to food forest design.
If one was blessed to have enough space where they could begin to create a food forest one would essentially be creating a food production system that is camouflaged to most every day people in the western world. In a society where people can identify more corporate logos than they can plant species, a forest filled with a multi-layered food production system that seamlessly emulates a mature forest would be unrecognizable and essentially invisible to the mobs of lazy/desperate thieves and pilferers (that have a poverty of plant knowledge).
Thus, beyond all the factors that I mentioned above that make the choice to grow a regenerative garden in one’s yard a wise choice (regardless of outside circumstances) food forests, in and of themselves are resistant to thievery, due to the widespread poverty of eco-literacy in the modern western world."
Look at that Eddy! You're wrong about the futility of prepping! Just start a garden and when the raiders come and steal all your food and crops, they will leave you and your community completely alone and not stay! In fact they won't murder or rape anyone at all! They will just leave and you can replant all your crops and restart again! In the meantime, utilize one's hunter/gather forager skills to survive in the mean time. Completely ignoring the fact that the land will be completely devoid of enough game, fish, and wild plants due to the large marauding hordes!
"The best investment you can make is generosity, for only thing that cannot be taken from you is that which you give."
I try not to be actively mean, but when someone rights nonsense like that I feel my stomach lurch.
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl. Source
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. Source
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident Source (Note: The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.)
“However, many of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have long half-lives. For example, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, and plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,800 years. Because it contains these long half-lived radioactive elements, spent fuel must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years.” Source
It does not matter how remote you are, the jet stream and ocean currents will circulate these toxic cancer-causing substances around the globe. They will be picked up by convection and pour deadly rain on your crop and water supply.
Nobody survives the collapse of civilization. This will be an extinction event.
How one is supposed to food forest through that escapes me. But pointing that out will get one labeled a white supremacist and eugenicist by the permacultures folks.
I have speculated myself that being a well-armed nomadic predator will be one of the more viable ways of capturing the resources one needs, and in a time of increasing climate instability, for instance, being nomadic -period- will likely be a better ploy is a better model than being rooted in-place. Being such a pirate will be a very dangerous way to live however, especially if you are in a well-armed nation. There will be be no firm dividing line between 'stupid' farmers and the guy with the sniper rifle. There will be, rather, a hazy gradient of folks running the gamut between those two extremes. The sniper might just as easily make his kill shot and have his own head ventilated by someone totally unexpected on his way in to claim the spoils. It may be one of his own band who does it. It may be a farmer who is not stupid. Sooner or later, at any rate, survivors will be required to cooperate, this is how we have survived long-term as a species for as long as we've been around. With the balance tipped towards cooperation rather than predation, which is always a short-term solution. Until all the nuclear stations melt down, yes. I've thought of that myself. Unless we have the foresight to decommission them while we still have the means (highly doubtful) the future looks very ugly from that perspective alone.
You shoot your family members and neighbours who are begging at the farm gate?
What about the well-trained former military men?
Or the thousands of experienced hunters - my hunting mate in New Zealand has a rifle and scope that is so accurate that he has shot deer at over 800m.
One minute you are going about your business chopping wood or weeding the garden and the next your head will have exploded - you won't even hear the crack of the rifle cuz the bullet will reach you before the shock waves.
Then the bad guys will leisurely walk towards your doomsday encampment ... and help themselves to the food... and no doubt the women.
I have extra vittles on-hand specifically for extended family. Strangers can take a hike. I’m in a very huwhyte area of a major city, what is needed is neighborhood level defense from riff-raff visitors.
In the countryside, if 800-yd deer rifles are an issue, then you have to escalate and engage at 1,200 yards with something like a .338 Lapua.
Right tool for the job, I have tools that fit the urban context.
How will you even know the man with the high powered rifle and scope are even there... one day you walk out the door ... and from half a km away there are a group of men .. with rifles aimed in your direction ... when you step into view... BANG.
You're dead.
How far are you from the nearest nuclear power plant? They all have spent fuel ponds... you can calculate how long before you die from cancer using a complex formula involving wind.
It’s called recon. There are plenty of communities with military men who know how to detect invaders. If communities bother to work together during a crisis, they police themselves. Your version of collapse doesn’t sound like reality either.
No, I would assume you have people who are on recon duty while others are farming. You have security. I agree without that, these individualist preppers are wasting their time.
Collapse has a variety of potential meanings. It doesn’t mean all order simply disappears. It means rapid decline in power structures. It can mean sharp declines in industrial output. It would be no doubt chaotic. Nuclear plants have safeguards and I would imagine anyone living near one would have engineers who would survive to keep containment going. All this is possible while sharp declines take place.
I would agree these are all concerns but perhaps your conclusions are based on a Hollywood lens about what collapse actually looks like.
If someone ventilates your brainpan in this fashion then you don't have to deal with such men, your problems are solved. It's not something to go around fearing. No-one's odds will be good when this collapse goes into full-swing. And of course, no matter how lucky and capable you are, on a long enough timeline your odds of survival are and always were zero. You ARE going to die. Try to have some fun in the meantime, no matter what.
Very few nuclear power plants are located in the Southern Hemisphere:
Brazil: 2 reactors (Angra).
South Africa: 2 reactors (Koeberg).
Argentina: 3 reactors (Atucha and Embalse).
Australia: no civilian nuclear power plants (only a research reactor).
This means that more than 95% of the world’s spent nuclear fuel is stored in the Northern Hemisphere, either in cooling pools or dry storage facilities.
Consequence
In the event of a major crisis (war, collapse, attack, or abandonment of nuclear sites), the risk of large-scale radioactive releases would be concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere
Jet streams, rainfall, and ocean currents can carry radionuclides to the Southern Hemisphere although atmospheric and oceanic circulation between hemispheres is way slower.
You are absolutely hilarious. I won't deny I didn't think it through, but at the onset of 2020's engineered panic the only thing that truly terrified me was was potential toilet paper shortages. And you're but you're correct: people will be doing asshole checks to find out who's holding out.
While it’s true that doomsday prepping is pointless, prepping for emergencies is not pointless at all.
I live in Texas. Every year since the big storm of 2021, there is a mad dash for the grocery stores and camping stores in case it happens again.
What do I do? Nothing. I’ve already prepped with non-perishables and other things in case we go through that scenario again.
I “gray person” through life, so there are no angry swarms of people who will steal my things. Instead, I’ve made friends with my neighbors, and we look out for each other.
I tell my worried relatives who live elsewhere that I will be fine—and I am.
If the world ends, there’s not much I can do. But for natural disasters and emergencies, there is a lot I can do—so that is why I prep.
yes i think that is why most people prep - they believe the situation will be temporary... that things will return to normal
Obviously this is not what will happen when the global economy implodes... this will be permanent...
I do not recommend prepping ... it will make you a target. There will be some very nasty fellas with starving families... they will do whatever it takes to feed them
When I lived in NZ I would deer hunt with a neighbour who was a professional hunting guide... I have seen him take down a deer with a head shot at nearly 1km distance...
I imagine a prepper weeding his patch .... and my neighbour putting a bullet in his head... he won't even know what happened...
People in parts of the Carolinas, Tennessee, and other storm-stricken states are standing their ground as looting reports flood X. This dire situation highlights the harsh reality that when disaster strikes and the government is nowhere to be found, being prepared and armed will save your life.
Eight illegal aliens were arrested in the eastern part of Tennessee for looting following the tropical system that unleashed flash floods in Washington County. Maybe these migrants were searching 'for bread' to feed their families... We suspect not.
The other five men — Albin Nahun Vega-Rapalo, 24, David Bairon Rapalo-Rapalo, 37, Kevin Noe Martinez-Lopez, 25, Marvin Hernandez-Martinez, 43, and Dayln Gabriel Guillen Guillen, 37 — were charged with aggravated burglary for breaking into occupied structures, the sheriff's office said. -NYPost.
Just north of Greenville in western North Carolina, a video uploaded on TikTok, then X, of realtor Leigh Brown, who warned, "The looting has picked up major steam," adding, "I was advised by a county sheriff to make sure that anybody out and about is 'carrying' and in his words 'carrying with the safety off.'"
Brown said the people out in the storm-ravaged area might not be "awful people, they're desperate" as their homes and towns were wiped off the face of the map by 'biblical floods.'
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/looting-erupts-after-biblical-floods-devastate-southeast-us-sheriffs-urge-residents-carry
You illustrate many of the reasons I am not a prepper.
Some years ago I worked in an Ace hardware store and met a prepper. His list of needs pretty much tipped me off, so I asked him, and he confessed he was preparing for collapse. Like me, he was getting a bit long in the tooth, and inevitably that leads to dependency on pharmaceuticals to artificially extend our lifespans. When I asked him if he was on blood pressure medication, he responded he was, and a number of other critical meds, too. I asked him how he was going to procure these medications in a post collapse world.
No clue, lol.
This reinforces my opinion of most humans being just plain stupid.
This clown fears collapse and death... so he preps... meanwhile he is unwilling to do anything about a lifestyle that has resulted in life-threatening high blood pressure. Sheesh. I wonder if he knows how to tie his shoe laces.
I am reminded of a Pro Vaxxer moron (and former friend cuz he mocked me for not shooting the Rat Juice)... he guzzles a bottle and a half of wine every single night ... pretty much subsists on frozen meat pies.... and has a drunk's protruding belly... and was absolutely terrified of covid. You'd think if he was that fearful of dying.... he'd do something about his diet and his alcoholism. I know a number of other Pro Vaxxers who are similarly unhealthy....
F789 all of them ... let them shoot more boosters (and eat cake).
You’re so right. “Prepping” begins when one is young, and involves valuing one’s health, strength and frame of mind. Valuing a healthy, nourishing diet, valuing exercise, and valuing a positive, “can do” mindset are all part of “prepping” even for the normal good times most of us grew up to expect.
Even under the best of circumstances, simply growing older can be a burden on yourself and a drag on those around you if you do so by setting yourself up for illness and decrepitude. Most of us need not be broken and sick and in debt to the medical system. That’s primarily the result of poor lifestyle choices. Granted, various industries attempt to lure you into that lifestyle because they profit from it, but the ultimate choice is yours.
We have so many options for staying healthy today that weren’t available to previous generations, but we must be of the mindset to take advantage of them. Even if, in the end, we are doomed to all die from spent nuclear radiation (I’m not entirely convinced that the scenario will play out exactly as you’ve suggested, nature often has unexpected wrinkles, but whatever, we shall see), is that any good reason to stack the deck for making the latter stages of your life unnecessarily expensive and miserable just to go on living? Especially when cultivating health can be delicious and rewarding? Not in my opinion! But then again, I’m not battling a personal addiction to a model of aging that says one must prepare to be lame and sick as one grows older and there’s nothing one can do about that so one may as well dissipate one’s youth and middle age in idle pleasures that ultimately compromise one’s health or distract one from improving one’s health.
We won’t get very far into the crisis before discovering who is currently alive that is alive only because of the plethora of crutches made available by modern medical technology.
Agree, the nuclear winter end of everything, permanently, everywhere is a bit of scare mongering hype in the opposite direction. There was even one guy who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions and lived to be 93 years old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi
At atomic bomb is nothing like a spent fuel pond... read the article... these ponds spew for years ... and they release epic amounts of cancer causing substances with half lives of thousands of years...
They will be picked up by ocean currents and end up in the jet stream and fall as rain across the planet... humans will be eating and drinking this stuff...
An atomic bomb is not the same as a spent fuel pond.... neither is a reactor meltdown.
There are massive amounts of extremely dangerous materials stored in these ponds....
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo.
I'm going to have to look more into that; always heard the total amount of nuke waste wouldn't fill up a very large area, but who knows. Regardless, they won't be abandoning nukes; they really can't unless we all want to live like the Amish.
The technology came a lot way since Chernobyl for sure. Long watch but fascinating and informative:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt_P41tBxKY
Chernobyl was controlled and did not involve the spent fuel ponds
A big handful survived both bombings, actually. Most have just never been publicized. Lying flat on the ground, under any sort of shelter if possible, apparently is a big factor, and I think a few were just in unusually protected spaces.
An atomic bomb is not a spent fuel pond
Funnily enough, I learned to tie my shoes and shave properly at the age of 34 when I was in jail awaiting trial.
Dependence upon meds is not at all inevitable, at least not for everybody - and most don't even extend your lifespan appreciably anyway. These civil war veterans lived to a ripe old age before most modern medicines were even thought about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTf44Wwa2Fo
I am guessing the guy you encountered was probably fat after a lifetime of eating crap foods and not exercising, to say nothing of side effects from whatever poison his doctor mindlessly prescribed to treat symptoms. He is reaping the compound interest from such decisions and lifestyle habits made over a lifetime.
He needs to stockpile chemo drugs...
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16628547/
(Note: The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.)
“Compound interest” as a concept applied to the cumulative long-term effects of one’s health choices - I like that!
Many medications have undesirable long term side effects. Some though like blood pressure medications do help people with little downsides. What I find frustrating is we treat the symptom, not the cause.
Two people with high BP have informed me that they do not have high BP. They of course are taking meds to bring it down. Duh.
Correct. Geoffrey's friend may live longer without the BP meds.
Anyway, the first steps for lowering blood pressure should be sunlight on the skin, potassium, magnesium, exercise--those four are the most important (and they won't lead to dizziness or falls). Possibly taurine, L-arginine, L-citrulline, and a low-carb diet. Probably also Vitamin K2 for long-term reduction of arterial calcification. Preppers should definitely stockpile potassium and magnesium, whether they have high BP or not.
From my observations ... people with high BP generally eat shit... drink too much ... and do no exercise... a disease of gluttony and sloth.
Doomsday preppers need to stockpile painkillers to deal with the cancer they will get when the toxins from the spent fuel ponds get into the water supply and veggies
ATTENTION DOOMSDAY PREPPERS - ATTENTION!!!
Armed men belonging to the Gran Grif gang have killed at least 70 people, including three infants, and forced at least 3000 to flee as they swept through a Haitian town shooting automatic rifles at residents, the United Nations says.
“We are horrified by Thursday’s gang attacks in the town of Pont-Sonde in Haiti’s Artibonite department,” UN spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan said in a statement.
At least another 16 people were seriously injured in the attack in the early hours of Thursday (local time), including two gang members hit during an exchange of fire with Haitian police, according to the UN.
The gang members reportedly set fire to at least 45 houses and 34 vehicles, forcing residents to flee their homes.
The killings are the latest sign of a worsening conflict in the Caribbean country, where armed gangs control most of the capital Port-au-Prince and are expanding to nearby regions, fuelling hunger and making hundreds of thousands homeless, while nearby countries continue to deport migrants back to the country.
“This odious crime against defenceless women, men and children is not only an attack against victims but against the entire Haitian nation,” Prime Minister Garry Conille said on X.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/haiti-gang-kills-at-least-70-as-thousands-flee-says-united-nations/3EJJENX7HBC5RD4DXWSAU3VDKU/
We are also getting a taste of how a collapse will play out. As Fast has said in the past, the food zombies and gun toting gangs who will stop at nothing to take stuff away from you and your families.
It's already playing out in parts of Colorado and Chicago. Violent Venezuelan gangs have taken over neighborhoods in Aurora Colorado. They are now the landlords and demand rent money because they chased away the real landlords. The problem is, the MSM refuses to bring it to light, the police don't respond and the government says all of that isn't true, that it's being blown out of proportion.
Except it isn't because the Bidet Administration allowed these violent gang members to enter the US via the southern border and these violent gangs are spreading into major US cities run.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/09/04/immigrant-invader-gangs-busy-at-work-liberating-colorado-apartment-houses/
So true. The nuclear spent fuel or actively working nuclear reactors will finish us off. When I realized this several years ago, I spent a couple years drinking more than I should. I quit doing that, but I also quit prepping. I just keep enough food and water for a couple weeks, after that, death will be welcome, but I would prefer a quiet, painless death . . . not sure how to do that.
Eddie said to get fentanyl. I don’t really know how so I have a 22 handy and I also have a garage with a car. Hopefully I will have a full tank. I don’t know how long it takes.
Better than a vehicle in the garage, is a hibachi in your bedroom. Take a sedative, fire it up and lie down on your comfy bed and go to sleep.
Doctors won't give me any sedatives. I allways hear of others getting all kinds of drugs, legally and illegally, but I couldn't even get my doctor to give me a couple pain pills for my hiking first aid kit. For real pain tylenol is useless. When I was going through a terrible period in my life, and had upstairs neighbors that were awake 24/7, showering, walking around, etc., I couldn't get a couple sleeping pills either. Do I look like a drug abuser? No, I do not!.\
Go doctor shopping, I hear in Florida they will prescribe you anything you want
Anti Aging clinics... the whore of whores in the medical profession ... HGH ... whatever you want they will give ... so I have read
I also read that if a person has bitcoin they can order whatever they want on the dark web without any problems
Good idea though. If I run into any drug dealers, maybe I can get something to bump me off when "that day" comes.
That's where I'm at.
This report was put out by the *cough* Government of Canada recently...
-----
https://horizons.service.canada.ca/en/2024/disruptions/index.shtml#Health
Apologies... wrong link. This is what I meant
Wow... that's grim reading.
It gets a little more interesting when you see who or what Kristel Van der Elst, Director General, is aligned with.
Don't make me start from scratch - where's the link - or just tell me.
WEF
🙄🙄
Doomsday prepping may be hopium, but this is a massive appeal to futility that isn't helpful at all.
Good work on putting this one up. Especially The Bronx Blackout vid.
Yeah, the redundant fuel rod pools are a big problem. I'm having to concede, most unwillingly, that you might be right.
But I also can't believe that Our Father will be happy to see one of his great treasures destroyed by such trash. This won't be (definitely isn't?) the first time the planet has been through this process, and I guess a few hundred thousand years is not so long on his timescale.
I believe (right or wrong) that there is evidence of ancient nuclear explosions in North Western Australia. Not to mention, Sodom and Gomorrah.
Yeah, prepping... All you say is true, but the "Crisis Period" may be intentionally brief (as the Bible seems to say), and allow for survivors - who will no doubt be motivated to maintain those pools of water...
Wait and See, is about all we can do. I'd like to have that honour, at least.
The silver lining is that once the humans are extinct... this stops:
Industrial Farm Cruelty
https://t.me/leaklive/11666
https://cubeoftruth.com/av
Horrifying Animal Experimentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuKaHh3ZKIk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNKRgwHJumM
Fauci under fire for ‘puppy experiments that saw beagles locked in cage with hungry sandflies that would eat them ALIVE’ https://www.the-sun.com/news/3920949/fauci-puppy-experiments-beagles-locked-in-cage/
@ Al Can
You said "Our Father". I have to wonder - is this not the time where Mark 13 comes into play?
"19For those will be days of tribulation unmatched from the beginning of God’s creation until now, and never to be seen again. 20If the Lord had not cut short those days, nobody would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom He has chosen, He has cut them short...."
God will not let His humans go extinct - He died for us.
I have no doubt this coming tribulation will be horrible - beyond horrible. Most will die. But some will survive to see His return and the execution of His wrath on these evil monster, fallen rebels and those who join them. And that I want to see.
Once this stuff gets into the oceans... and it will ... it does not degrade for thousands of years... it will make it's way around the world... instead of taking days or hours to arrive -- it will take maybe a few months.
Enjoy your cancer if you are prepping -- that is if you neighbours don't rip your face off first when the supermarkets go empty - permanently
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/why-bug-out-states-are-not-a-good/comments
RE: "Your stuff will be looted if things get really bad. I think Fast Eddy on his substack made a very good point about the futility of trying to prep too deeply. It will boil down to what you can defend."
I disagree, that is anthropocentric, ecologically illiterate and Doctrine Of Discovery thinking (for reference: https://archive.org/details/doctrineofdiscovery ).
What survives collapse? What survives crisis? Community. What ever you give and contribute into your community and you generate that goodwill, and you generate those structures of taking care of each other and reciprocal (gift) relationships… that is an investment. That is a savings account that fires cannot burn and thieves cannot steal.
The best investment you can make is generosity, for only thing that cannot be taken from you is that which you give.
The thing about growing a garden and saving seed is that heirloom seeds are living beings and you always have more than enough for your own needs. Thus, the act of saving seed compels you to share your seeds and excess harvests with neighbors, developing symbiotic relationships and good will within that community which you live.
Now I could get into the reasons why even if we are talking about a hypothetical situation with mobs of callous, raging, thieving and pilfering neighbors, the choice to garden is still worth it purely due to number 23 on my list ( https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/25-reasons-you-should-start-a-garden ), but that would not address any people in the crowd that have more pragmatic (and perhaps self interested) atheistic concerns and priorities, so instead I will elaborate on how there are practical/pragmatic reasons why knowledge and skills related to food cultivation is more valuable than food stores, cryptocurrency, silver or cash (as they are accessible and applicable in and and all situations and cannot be taken from you.
So, here we are visualizing a post apocalyptic mad max type situation in which everyone has decided to behave like rabid selfish primates and they are stealing and thieving from their neighbor’s gardens (as silly as this is, some people think that is what human nature is when people get desperate as they have been watching lots of Hollywood psyops, so lets explore that hypothetical).
Even if the mobs of ravenous garden raiders stole all my crops from the garden, broke into my home and held me at gun point while they stole my pickled and freeze dried food stores I still have heirloom seeds which, after they leave, I could use both as emergency food and/or plant for a fast harvest microgreens garden.
Lets say they are super industrious and relatively intellectually well educated garden raiding and burglarizing thieves, and they steal all my heirloom seeds from in my house as well.
What then?
Well, first of all, people who are stealing from others, rather than cultivating and foraging for food in the first place are unlikely to be capable of recognizing the value of heirloom seeds, nor would they be likely to want to cultivate them, but lets say we are talking about some really unusually viscous and selfish thieves (that also have a green thumb). Okay, they took my seeds from in the house, but that still leaves the seeds I have outside in my living Soil Seed Bank.
That is the thing about permaculture design and regenerative gardening, along with saving seed inside, I also encourage the natural self-seeding processes that are part of the life cycle of my favorite and most nutritious crops (which means if you remove something from my garden, the sunlight will shine down on the mulch and compost layer, awakening an array of dormant seeds that always exist there). In a number of days I would have abundant microgreens to eat without any work. In a few weeks, I could have significant harvests to eat (also without any work).
Beyond the food security of my living soil seed bank (which is immune to thievery, well, unless the thieves arrived with an excavator to also steal my soil ) as stated above, I retain the knowledge and skills I have acquired through my choice to garden (knowledge and skills which are accessible and applicable in any and all situations, whether for planting another garden, or for plant identification and foraging outside the garden).
Now this brings me to something I brought up in reason # 𝟏𝟎 from my 25 reasons to start a garden in 2024 relating to the ubiquitous lack of plant identification skills and knowledge in most people in modern day urban industrialized western society.
We live in a time where most children in Canada and the US are capable of identifying over 1000 corporate logos, yet they can only identify less then 10 plant species.
I suspect that same lack of basic botanical awareness and plant literacy is equally reflected in the urbanized adult populations.
Part of my comment above was pertaining to food forest design.
If one was blessed to have enough space where they could begin to create a food forest one would essentially be creating a food production system that is camouflaged to most every day people in the western world. In a society where people can identify more corporate logos than they can plant species, a forest filled with a multi-layered food production system that seamlessly emulates a mature forest would be unrecognizable and essentially invisible to the mobs of lazy/desperate thieves and pilferers (that have a poverty of plant knowledge).
Thus, beyond all the factors that I mentioned above that make the choice to grow a regenerative garden in one’s yard a wise choice (regardless of outside circumstances) food forests, in and of themselves are resistant to thievery, due to the widespread poverty of eco-literacy in the modern western world."
Look at that Eddy! You're wrong about the futility of prepping! Just start a garden and when the raiders come and steal all your food and crops, they will leave you and your community completely alone and not stay! In fact they won't murder or rape anyone at all! They will just leave and you can replant all your crops and restart again! In the meantime, utilize one's hunter/gather forager skills to survive in the mean time. Completely ignoring the fact that the land will be completely devoid of enough game, fish, and wild plants due to the large marauding hordes!
"The best investment you can make is generosity, for only thing that cannot be taken from you is that which you give."
I try not to be actively mean, but when someone rights nonsense like that I feel my stomach lurch.
There are 4000 Spent Fuel Ponds Around the Globe…
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl. Source
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. Source
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident Source (Note: The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.)
“However, many of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have long half-lives. For example, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, and plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,800 years. Because it contains these long half-lived radioactive elements, spent fuel must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years.” Source
It does not matter how remote you are, the jet stream and ocean currents will circulate these toxic cancer-causing substances around the globe. They will be picked up by convection and pour deadly rain on your crop and water supply.
Nobody survives the collapse of civilization. This will be an extinction event.
Well said.
How one is supposed to food forest through that escapes me. But pointing that out will get one labeled a white supremacist and eugenicist by the permacultures folks.
I’m also highly skeptical of this ‘move-to-the-countryside-and-become-a-farmer’ PsyOp.
It makes people easily controllable, plenty of examples listed in my piece:
https://open.substack.com/pub/fulgurite4779/p/back-to-the-future-with-trump-the
I have speculated myself that being a well-armed nomadic predator will be one of the more viable ways of capturing the resources one needs, and in a time of increasing climate instability, for instance, being nomadic -period- will likely be a better ploy is a better model than being rooted in-place. Being such a pirate will be a very dangerous way to live however, especially if you are in a well-armed nation. There will be be no firm dividing line between 'stupid' farmers and the guy with the sniper rifle. There will be, rather, a hazy gradient of folks running the gamut between those two extremes. The sniper might just as easily make his kill shot and have his own head ventilated by someone totally unexpected on his way in to claim the spoils. It may be one of his own band who does it. It may be a farmer who is not stupid. Sooner or later, at any rate, survivors will be required to cooperate, this is how we have survived long-term as a species for as long as we've been around. With the balance tipped towards cooperation rather than predation, which is always a short-term solution. Until all the nuclear stations melt down, yes. I've thought of that myself. Unless we have the foresight to decommission them while we still have the means (highly doubtful) the future looks very ugly from that perspective alone.
You cannot decommission a spent fuel pond
It’s a continuum. We West-Coast pimps prep for the CS-Z going off, which is survivable, if you have the essentials.
Of course you shoot looters and beggars, just like today.
You shoot your family members and neighbours who are begging at the farm gate?
What about the well-trained former military men?
Or the thousands of experienced hunters - my hunting mate in New Zealand has a rifle and scope that is so accurate that he has shot deer at over 800m.
One minute you are going about your business chopping wood or weeding the garden and the next your head will have exploded - you won't even hear the crack of the rifle cuz the bullet will reach you before the shock waves.
Then the bad guys will leisurely walk towards your doomsday encampment ... and help themselves to the food... and no doubt the women.
How will you deal with such men?
I have extra vittles on-hand specifically for extended family. Strangers can take a hike. I’m in a very huwhyte area of a major city, what is needed is neighborhood level defense from riff-raff visitors.
In the countryside, if 800-yd deer rifles are an issue, then you have to escalate and engage at 1,200 yards with something like a .338 Lapua.
Right tool for the job, I have tools that fit the urban context.
How will you even know the man with the high powered rifle and scope are even there... one day you walk out the door ... and from half a km away there are a group of men .. with rifles aimed in your direction ... when you step into view... BANG.
You're dead.
How far are you from the nearest nuclear power plant? They all have spent fuel ponds... you can calculate how long before you die from cancer using a complex formula involving wind.
It’s called recon. There are plenty of communities with military men who know how to detect invaders. If communities bother to work together during a crisis, they police themselves. Your version of collapse doesn’t sound like reality either.
Ah right so every time they go out to tend the garden they'll do a recon ... checking for snipers within a 1km radius ... hahahahahahahaha
What about the spent fuel ponds?
No, I would assume you have people who are on recon duty while others are farming. You have security. I agree without that, these individualist preppers are wasting their time.
Collapse has a variety of potential meanings. It doesn’t mean all order simply disappears. It means rapid decline in power structures. It can mean sharp declines in industrial output. It would be no doubt chaotic. Nuclear plants have safeguards and I would imagine anyone living near one would have engineers who would survive to keep containment going. All this is possible while sharp declines take place.
I would agree these are all concerns but perhaps your conclusions are based on a Hollywood lens about what collapse actually looks like.
If someone ventilates your brainpan in this fashion then you don't have to deal with such men, your problems are solved. It's not something to go around fearing. No-one's odds will be good when this collapse goes into full-swing. And of course, no matter how lucky and capable you are, on a long enough timeline your odds of survival are and always were zero. You ARE going to die. Try to have some fun in the meantime, no matter what.
Very few nuclear power plants are located in the Southern Hemisphere:
Brazil: 2 reactors (Angra).
South Africa: 2 reactors (Koeberg).
Argentina: 3 reactors (Atucha and Embalse).
Australia: no civilian nuclear power plants (only a research reactor).
This means that more than 95% of the world’s spent nuclear fuel is stored in the Northern Hemisphere, either in cooling pools or dry storage facilities.
Consequence
In the event of a major crisis (war, collapse, attack, or abandonment of nuclear sites), the risk of large-scale radioactive releases would be concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere
Jet streams, rainfall, and ocean currents can carry radionuclides to the Southern Hemisphere although atmospheric and oceanic circulation between hemispheres is way slower.
You are absolutely hilarious. I won't deny I didn't think it through, but at the onset of 2020's engineered panic the only thing that truly terrified me was was potential toilet paper shortages. And you're but you're correct: people will be doing asshole checks to find out who's holding out.