Podcast: Play in new window
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This episode is another in our community member highlight series. Today we’re focusing on Justin “Graveyard” Fields, who is very active in the community and is himself a prolific blogger. Among other blogs he runs, he most recently set up Swift | Silent | Deadly, a blog focused on full-spectrum individual security.
In this interview, we talk a bit about how Justin got interested in writing about this particular set of topics as well as his thoughts on the lessons we should all be taking away from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Related Links
- Swift | Silent | Deadly
- Peace is the Exception by Sunshine_Shooter
- Survivor’s Club by Ben Sherwood
- Lights Out by Ted Koppel
Key Takeaways
If there were to main things I took away from this discussion, it’s this:
- People have a long history of getting things wrong
- The best way to prepare is gradual
To the first point, there are an awful lot of pundits and internet personalities saying that this new pandemic is the new “Black Plague” or some other notorious disease. There’s also a lot of people who were absolutely sure that a societal shutdown would look a certain way.
The truth is that they were wrong. In fact, humans are almost always wrong about these things.
When it comes to the societal friction we’ve seen, most people (including me) assumed “the event” would be like a light switch. We’d wake up one day and we’d find ourselves without rule of law (WROL) and it would be boogaloo time.
But, in reality, there are many steps along that ladder from daily comfortable life until the apocalypse.
If we ever get “there” at all.
The other major point was the correct way to prepare and think about self-protection. We’ve found ourselves in this difficult boom/bust cycle of panic buying and then not buying anything.
It’s particularly detrimental to the firearms industry, but the negative effects are far-reaching. Panicking people tend to overwhelm supply systems, and then those who are in actual need of certain items find it impossible to locate them.
The correct way to do this is gradually over time. As one example, when it comes to ammunition, rather than buying three cases of ammo all at once you should consider buying an extra box or two every time you go to the range. Store away those boxes and then build the stash over time and for a lower initial investment.
Justin also pointed out that now is not the time to be out and about trying to find rice and beans. The stores are not in danger of running dry, so don’t expose yourself to the risk.
That was another major topic, which ties back to the earlier point about humans often being wrong. In general, we are poor at evaluating risk. We are more afraid of novel things than the seemingly mundane.
So, aside from the obvious risks of the virus, we should also be concerned about getting ourselves injuries in common daily activities where we consider emergency healthcare to be a given. These days, it may be a little more difficult to get an ICU bed- so you should evaluate if you really need to break out the chainsaw for a home project, and definitely use all of the required protective equipment.
Closing
Thanks to Justin for joining me in this interview. You can find him at his website, Swift | Silent | Deadly, or in our own community here at The Marksman’s Quarter.
Great podcast. Lots of good food for thought. And it really makes me wonder what/how this pandemic will change people’s approaches. I hear various pundits calling this is a “life-changing” event, that it’s a “9/11” event, that “everything has changed,” etc. And while I’m certainly not minimizing the impact on those who have been directly affected by C-19, I’m also a little skeptical of how “life-changing” this will really be for the general populace. I’d love to believe that light-bulbs will finally go off, and people will (re)learn the the importance of being more self-reliant and self-sufficient in their daily lives, and that this is just a ‘smart’ thing to do, without having to go down the whole “paranoid prepper” rabbit hole. But we will see…
Thanks for listening! I agree with you. It’s hard to tell what the long-term impacts of this whole thing will be since I get the sense that there’s growing frustration with the messaging. I don’t expect the wider population to start taking preparedness more seriously after this, but at least some people will.
Hey Matt – I think I’ve heard it’s ‘taboo’ to comment on old posts but I’m going to here. I recently ran across Justin’s blog ‘Swift, Silent, Deadly’ and looking around about Justin – it took me here on your podcast. Something you and Justin touched on and you highlighted is an ‘incremental process’ between our normal life and when SHTF on a large scale – like the pandemic we just encountered. It’s a valid point and one that deserves more attention. It seems the large ‘global’ scale incidents will always progress in a scalable manner with some time to react while smaller ‘local’ situations tend to happen much quicker (weather/fire) with greater impact much like accidents happen to individuals. So what is the greater lesson learned as we’ve come through this pandemic? It’s not the place here in comments for me to rant but it’s a subject worth revisiting IMO. Perhaps you can invite Justin again.