Perhaps you may recall that several months ago I wrote an article that took the position that one of the greatest threats to our safety and security were actually your neighbors and friends. Sadly, this reality is being encouraged all over the nation at present in plain daylight. It’s undeniably reminiscent of the behavior of the German people during World War II when the friends of the Jews, even Jews themselves, would provide information to the German SS Army about their neighbors simply with the hope that they would be treated more favorably than what they were witnessing all around them. As such, some neighbors and friends even provided false information in exchange for a promise of a more comfortable life with the Third Reich in control. Sadly, today the DHS has kicked off their own version of such a scenario by encouraging Americans everywhere to be the eyes and ears of the community and to provide verbal testimony against any suspected perpetrator of domestic terrorism.

You know, as I sit down to write my 500^th article about preparedness, I stop and look at the recent entries and realize that it’s been a LONG time since I got back to the beginning, to the core of the most basic foundation of self-reliance. So I’ve decided to do just that today—reveal what I believe is preparedness at its core.

To me preparedness is not about storing lots of food, ammo, or creating a 72 hour kit. Those are simply activities that in which someone might be engaged as a result of their convictions of preparedness.

The SARS outbreak in China. Hurricane Katrina. The Great Depression. The Gulf War. 9/11. The paralysis of all air traffic as the result of an “minor” volcanic eruption. The Indian Ocean tsunami. The Revolutionary War. The Cuban Missile crisis.  The Haitian earthquake. And dare I mention what I’ve come to label as “The TSA Invasion?” What do all of these things have in common? Well, to me, I think that all of these things are the shadow of more serious things to come.