Why You Shouldn’t Wait for the Government to Save You

Back in 2005 when hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans area with a vengeance, my son and I happened to be in the area for business.  Are we experienced the devastating force of that hurricane, we learned firsthand many valuable lessons of how to survive as well as the dark side of human behavior.

There were several miracles that occurred that made it possible for us to escape the area after the hurricane hit.  One of the very sad images I still can clearly see is a group of people huddled in a hotel lobby waiting for the government to rescue them.  We had a hard time understanding why these people didn’t just take the matter in their own hands and figure out a solution to the problem as my son and I were doing.

I came across this article I wanted to share that does a great job in addressing why one should never rely on the government to save one’s family in the event of a major disaster.

“Hello, I’m from the government and I am here to help…”

If these words sum of your survival “plan,” you should go on ahead and start kissing your loved ones good bye right now. The government is NOT prepared, and by the time their underlings start rolling down your street, it will likely be to take and not give, supplies.

The government is not prepared to render aid to all American people immediately after a national disaster strikes, and beyond. The massive stockpile of food, potable water, and medicine you might think the government has to distribute, simply does not exist.

The aftermath of natural disasters in 2017 alone proves that the problems with getting aid to emergency sights is not just a lack of available stockpiles, but also involves budgetary and logistical hurdles as well. Local and state governmental entities will be as overly taxed as federal agencies, and equally hampered by a lack of resources, funds, ability to reach areas in either the immediate or surrounding, disaster area.

In all likelihood, when the government does arrive in your neighborhood, it may be to find more essential resources to keep itself and “top priority” areas going. Your guns could be the first thing to go, especially if martial law has been declared. The redistribution of vital materials, “for the public good” should be something we all are thinking about as we prep….and covertly store our preps.

Disaster Warnings

How much of a warning the government has before disaster strikes will directly impact both the amount of aide that can be distributed and how long it will take to deliver. Having time to coordinate with state, regional, county, and local governmental entities and businesses that sell fuel, food, and water, will increase the possibility that aide could arrive within days or weeks, if the disaster is not a nationwide event.

The chance of having more than a 24 hour warning before disaster strikes is likely only going to happen if the incident is sparked by a weather related event, like a hurricane, tornado, or flooding. The ability to detect solar flares before they happen has only existed for about two decades and is still not perfected.

Do not count on the Emergency Alert System (formerly known as the Emergency Broadcast System) to utter more than a single warning before a SHTF incident – if that. The once simplistic emergency response system went high tech about a decade ago…making it incredibly vulnerable to cyber hackers.

Terrorists who are able to hack into the EAS could potentially send out false information to not only the general public, but to the first responders who would be rushing into ground zero to help in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Ponder for a moment, how much more devastating the 9/11 attacks or the Boston Marathon bombing could have been had the first responders intentionally been given false information – or instructions designed to lure them to an area for stage two of a terror attack to take place.

If the power grid goes down, as would happen during a solar flare, EMP, nuclear attack, or catastrophic natural disaster near Washington, DC, the ability to enact the Emergency Alert System might not exist.

The change over from the Emergency Broadcast System to the high tech Emergency Alert System permits the President of the United States to tap into a direct link to the EAS to issue an alert. To date, no president has conducted a live test on the new system, so whether or not it works or how hard it would be to hack, is basically unknown. Some security tech experts maintain hacking into the EAS system would not take the skills of a seasoned cyber hacker. If a hacker garners access to the root server of the Emergency Alert System, the ability to thwart or alter warnings messages, has been gained.

Governmental Priorities

The government’s first priority will not be to feed, house, and render medical aid to the American people. Maintaining order will be the number one priority of all levels of government during and after a SHTF disaster. If our freedom must be infringed upon to get the task completed, that is what will be done. One of the most revered presidents in the history of the United States did just that, and we now celebrate his birth with a day off of work every year.

President Abraham Lincoln has long been heralded for saving the union during the Civil War. He may have done that, but the Constitution was trampled upon to achieve the lofty goal. There is a distinct reason many Southerners refer to what happened between 1861 and 1865 as the “War of Northern Aggression,” and they do not have anything to do with cherishing the abhorrent act of owning other human beings.

Contrary to what most public school history textbooks tell you, the Civil War began brewing not over slavery, but after more than a decade of tariffs being levied upon the South alone. Politicians of the 1800’s were no different than their modern counterparts when it came to holding onto power and money to spend that was not their own. Prior to taking a vote on secession, President Lincoln had the entire Maryland State Legislature arrested.

To keep America intact and collecting increasingly high export tariffs, the Constitution was violated in the following ways by Lincoln during the Civil War:

1)  The Navy was ordered to blockade domestic ports. Such an act must be ordered by Congress, but during the Civil War the president usurped the power of the governing body in an effort to starve the South into submission.

2)  President Lincoln ordered the military attack on Fort Sumter without congressional approval and refused to call Congress back into formal session after the attack has taken place. Sumter was not just any fort, it was a primary tariff collection depot.

3)  General William Tecumseh Sherman was issued an order by President Lincoln to embark on his march to the sea – burning down whole towns (including hospitals) and “requisitioning” food and other goods from Southern residents, as he saw fit.

4)  Lincoln again circumvented Congress when he suspended the writ of habeas corpus. This allowed the arrest of Americans without bothering to file a criminal charge against them – and to hold them without the benefit of a trial indefinitely. When ordered by the United States Supreme Court to immediately restore the writ of habeas corpus. Lincoln not only ignored the mandate without consequence, he ordered the arrest of the justice who dared to issue it. Approximately 20,000 Americans were arrested after the writ was suspended during the Civil War.

5)  More than 300 newspapers, the only form of a free press at the time, were either commandeered and then shuttered, by order of President Abraham Lincoln. Some of the publishers and editors of the newspapers who reported negative articles about the handling of the Civil War, were arrested for merely exercising their right to free speech.

The very protections our Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution to forever prevent a loss of freedom or for tyranny to rear its ugly head in America, were cast aside by a single man and then soundly forgotten by the history books.

If you think such a thing could not happen again, for the sake of keeping order, you would be delusional. The government will once again be acting in the ends justify the means mode during a SHTF scenario.

What We Should Expect The Government To Do In An Effort To Maintain Order

● Declare martial law
● Impose a curfew
● Restrict movements of Americans – enter the definite possibility of FEMA camps here!
● Requisition all functioning vehicles, or even horses, if the SHTF disaster was caused by an EMP or solar flare.
● Take control of the food supply
● Suspend the writ of habeas corpus…again
● Shut down the free press

The effective mission statement on FEMA’s own website should be viewed as a harbinger of what to expect during a large-scale disaster:


I can just about guarantee you folks that rural areas will not be anywhere near the top priority list for recovery aid during and after a doomsday disaster. When the agents from the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA show up in rural areas where most preppers live, they will be looking for food – because this is where is grown and raised, and for guns, because we have the highest percentage of ownership on a geographic scale.

Who will be the government decision makers after a SHTF disaster? That question has far too many variables to offer even an educated guess. We could be way down the presidential line of succession after a doomsday disaster. The HMIC could be the director of the Department of Transportation or the deputy director of Bureau of Land Management – in essence, an unelected appointee with less experience than a small town mayor, when it comes to managing a population of any size

I am not one prone to conspiracy theories. My description of the typical government response is based upon past precedent, agency priorities, and logic. The government will not think it’s out to get you, but protect you while maintaining order for the “public good.” That, my dear fellow preppers, is the recipe for a freedom-infringing and very dangerous scenario, indeed.

Source:  https://modernsurvivalonline.com/dont-wait-for-government-to-save-you/

More than 35 years experience in the Preparedness Industry