The Great Reset is a term that I have only recently become aware of but its goal is not new. It is at its heart, a global new world order dream of a rigidly controlled society, ostensibly for the betterment of all. But if you look closely, this planned technocratic utopia, is really the dystopic hell of an Orwellian surveillance and control structure many of us have feared for some time.
Created by economist Klaus Schwab; the World Economic Forum Chairman, who also wrote a book called “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”, the Great Reset idea is not necessarily new or novel, but within the opportunistic view of the COVID crisis, it becomes more urgent and sinister. Because in his words, “The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future” — Klaus Schwab, WEF”
In plain language, COVID is allowing the elites, many of which attend conferences like Davos, to push forward on a lot of societal changes that they couldn’t make before because now everyone is scared and willingly compliant. It seems we are happily acquiescing with what would be considered impossible, even un-American not even 12 months ago. Ask any American back last January if they would be ok with any of the following:
- Mandatory worldwide lockdowns
- Closing Businesses deemed non-essential – but leaving some open – at the discretion of regional leaders with no understandable method or rationale.
- Trampling Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and the “free exercise” of religion.
- Implementing Surveillance programs to track people’s movement
- Discussing proof of documentation to travel, make a purchase, or work
- Canceling holidays with family
- Mandating what you must wear
- Mandating when you must go home
- Mandating where you must stand
Never let a crisis go to waste.
Saul Alinsky
I have not read Schwab’s book, but the main points are clearly listed on the WEF website which states the goals of the “Great Reset” are the following:
- Steer the market towards fairer outcomes
- Ensure that investments advance shared goals (equality and sustainability
- Harness the innovations of the fourth industrial revolution
That sounds perfectly harmless I know, but when you dig further into the methods proposed to accomplish the changes prescribed for us by our betters, you begin to see how this will radically change our lives and not for the better. You can read more about this plan directly on the WEF website. You can watch talks about this and see for yourself the desired outcomes they profess. You can hear speeches where these topics are discussed openly.
Even Prince Charles himself said “We have a golden opportunity to seize something good from this crisis — its unprecedented shockwaves may well make people more receptive to big visions of change” — Prince Charles
Of course, Agenda 21 was out in the public years ago also. These technocratic plans are all wrapped in nice-sounding adjectives like “fairer, equitable, shared”. But a key component of all is global, centralized control by unelected bodies and by that right a reduction of our freedoms. Our national sovereignty would be gone but the impacts on our lives would be the worst thing.
I urge you to conduct your own research on this topic.
What does the great reset have to do with prepping?
This article is not going to break down the WEF’s Great Reset and tell you what is wrong with it. You need to decide for yourself if this is something you need to be concerned with. There is so much out there already that should give anyone ample resources to make an informed decision.
What did occur to me several weeks ago – minus the knowledge of the Great Reset, is that Preppers have reached a milestone here in December 2020, and we could use this time to do what our buddy Karl suggests and Reflect, Reimagine and Reset our own prepping journey.
Like many of you, I have been prepping for several years. Many may know that I created this site back in January 2013. This was probably 5-7 years after I started prepping so I wanted to use what I had learned and been able to work out for myself to share some of these thoughts with people. The Prepper Journal posted 6 times a week and during that time I wrote over 500 articles. We had a number of other excellent contributors as well who made this site a great resource for people interested in prepping.
Fast forward to summer 2017. I had been running TPJ for over 4 years, 6 days a week and I was feeling like I had said everything that needed to be said by me. I was burnt out and needed a break, so I sold the blog and checked out. For several years I did just that. I took a rest from the daily management duties and pressures to write and unplugged from the world of prepping. I almost completely checked out of politics. I became much less interested in the news and current events. I felt like I needed to get away from it all.
I tried my hand at a couple of different things, but nothing really hit it off. I have always maintained a full-time job while I was blogging in the past, so money was not an issue fortunately when I took a few years off. I was going along just like anyone else. Then COVID hit.
When you finally get to use your prepping resources and knowledge
Virtually overnight we were all adapting to a different set of circumstances. I had family coming to me asking about what they should do. Did we have X or Y accounted for and thankfully, we usually did. You cannot hold your head high and call yourself a prepper if you aren’t prepared to handle a little global pandemic, can you?
The overwhelming fear that so many people had at the beginning struck me as very odd. Still does if I am being honest. But through it all I had a tiny thought in the back of my mind that went something like – If anyone was going to create a plan to bring an entire world to their knees with fear and propaganda, this COVID scare is brilliant.
Before you accuse me of being a flat earther, I do not argue that people are getting sick. I do not contradict that people are dying, but you must agree that in terms of what we as a nation are willing to put up with now, since COVID, it has definitely changed. Thinking through and living through this last year made me reevaluate my plans again.
I approached the then owners of The Prepper Journal and negotiated to buy it back in October of this year. Once again, I am back here with you as a prepper thinking about the future and trying to learn how I can protect my family and loved ones. But since we have all been through this exercise of lockdowns, a “pandemic”, of national travel restrictions, of protests, of growing unrest, and talk of Civil War I wanted to discuss how I am going to take the lessons learned in a Great Reset format and hopefully be better prepared for what’s coming next.
REFLECT on what this past year has taught me as a prepper
For a normal emergency, I imagine most of you were like me. You had some food, water, and necessary supplies. Who knew those megapacks of toilet paper would come in handy that quickly! Or that canning supplies and chickens would be snatched up by everyone? Security was in place with our standard firearms – which was good because I would hate to be trying to purchase anything now. If we did not leave the house for a month, we would have been just fine.
But that is just supplies. Stuff.
Yes, there were some shortages due largely to our well known and documented JIT inventory methodology, but I do not think anyone went hungry because the stores were cleaned out. Not counting TP and hand sanitizer, the trucks kept running although some stocks were occasionally depleted. You could certainly find food in the stores and plenty of it, but some items went up in price and some others were curiously gone for months.
Reflecting on this past year teaches me that supplies are important, but as preppers, we almost throw those out there as the end all be all of prepping. It is the Baby Steps of prepping. If you have water, food, medical supplies, and a gun that is all you need, right? But we did not really need anything like that in this phase of the disaster. What did we need?
We needed technology, which is curious since a goal of the Great Reset is to get us more dependant on technology. We needed alternate ways to get together and share information. We needed different ways to socialize, to meet, and worship together. We needed a plan for our jobs being lost – not by innovation but by someone just saying you had to close.
We needed a plan to avoid being separated from everyone on a basic human level. We cannot even hug an old friend anymore. We touch elbows. Grandparents waive to their grandkids from a safe distance, but they can’t come into the house.
The humanity piece is the biggest loss in this first phase.
The second loss is our confidence or resolve. From every corner, we are hit with an unending stream of Fear. We do not trust anyone anymore. The news is a constant stream of death counts. Every stranger is going to infect you or your kids. There is outright hatred from some people if you do not have a mask on. My local newspaper ran a story that instructed people on how they should report anyone they witnessed not complying with mandates. That sounds too much like Informants during the Nazi regime to me. What has happened to our country?
And, I will say it again. This is the reaction to something with a 98% survivability rate. The sheer scale of our efforts to “flatten the curve” and the reactions of everyone frightened of this disease does not seem to match reality.
Beans bullets and band-aids are vital but there is a human component we must consider – both bad and good. We need to expect that our loved ones will need different things than they do now in times of crisis, and total strangers may not be as friendly as we hoped even when the lights are still on and the taps are flowing. This is hardly a TEOTWAWKI scenario and yet some are still openly discussing how to snitch on people who do not comply. Those aren’t the tactics of a free and healthy society.
REIMAGINE potential scenarios and the preps I need to account for
You can give me just about any apocalyptic scenario you can imagine and assuming people can live through it, we have discussed it on The Prepper Journal. A grid-down disaster was the major league series of prepping. Imagining if you were forced through that kind of hell made a lot of decisions easier, your advance preparations would be so much wiser and comforting. The world in that context would be more black and white in the choices you had to make. Without a lot of grey, life and death decisions seem easier.
This world we are living in since COVID is extremely surreal to me and while our normal preps are certainly still valid, there is a lot more that I did not plan for. The thing is, I am not sure anyone could, so I came to the idea of this article as the next phase.
We have done a really good job of raising awareness of the need to be prepared for unseen disasters and I think that has really brought a lot of people around, but it is not enough. Supplies run out. People get sick. We all get old and die eventually. Our way of life can be changed randomly by executive orders.
But we are not playing the long game with our preps. We have been making plans to survive a short-term disaster and again is still valid, but people like Karl above are planning for changes that will affect the next couple of generations. We have been planning on staying alive while some have been planning how to change the world.
This blog will go more into those concepts in the future. Consider getting your initial preps in order in Phase 1. We need to start discussing what we need to do in Phase 2.
RESET my thinking around what is possible
The Prepper movement has touched millions of people but I don’t think our work is finished. I have said before that we should get as many people thinking about preparedness as possible because it can only help us. I would like to think we still have many more to go. But for us to continue, we must start talking about bigger concepts. Individual survival is a great first step, but as individuals, we are much easier to take out.
Prepping 2.0 should look to see how we can galvanize a movement that centers around the concepts that drew people into prepping in the first place. We can’t all keep prepping in isolation while the world is looking at how to control our lives. I do not know what that even looks like now, but I think that is where we need to head. Stay tuned.
I would love to hear your thoughts on prepping and what our own Great Reset could look like.