Introduction:

Anything can happen and eventually will….

In our era of terrorism and endless conflicts and throughout human history, we start out this book in chapter one with a subject that has touched countless millions with death, destruction, and the aftereffects of living in its postmodern world: war.

I have grown up in a war-mongering world, and living with the effects of a Cold War posture has had a profound effect on the way I view the world. Post-WWII and the years that followed, “the war to end all wars” has pasted in the back of everyone’s mind the potential of a nuclear attack by our enemies, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Back in 1980, fresh out of high school, the Chinese were threatening the invasion of the island nation of Taiwan, our ally, and Ronald Reagan as president made it clear that any attack on them would be viewed as an attack on the US and met with the full force of our military.

It was a tense time, and I even saw myself possibly entering the military to do my part to combat the Chinese threat. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, the Chinese backed down, and the threat went away. But I’ll remember always that feeling of "Is this it? Would the two superpowers now come to blows and bomb the daylights out of each other?"

One of the movies I recall in my youth was Red Dawn, where Cuban rebels infiltrated our homeland disguised in commercial airliners, and after tactical nuclear strikes took out our leadership, they controlled a vast portion of the heartland, backed by Soviet forces. It all seemed so farfetched and made for a great storyline, because even though the thought of it happening was surreal, we always reflected back to the security of our country being protected by the greatest military on earth.

But the plot thickened as the film unrolled and people’s lives had been changed forever with the occupation of an outside force within our borders. The very freedoms that we as a nation took for granted were now gone and we were under the control of our enemies. The portrayal of how hard life was under foreign rule dwelled into executions of Americans who didn’t cooperate with them, as well as internment camps to indoctrinate their captives. But the real struggles to survive every day for those allowed to live under their rule were slightly touched.

Occupation by an outside force may seem unlikely in our day. But as we have allowed our borders to become floodgates of illegal entry into the US, one has to imagine it is becoming more plausible our everyday standard of life we’re accustomed to is being threatened from within.

The drain on our financial, economic, and material resources will undoubtedly have long-lasting consequences for our ability as a nation to survive. If the USA were to implode by a market-driven trigger that wiped out our financial system, our way of life would instantly become a mission of survival.

The elephant-in-the-room question that needs to be asked here is, are you ready for anything that may happen? There’s a preoccupation these days with zombies, and many of the headlines and storylines are filled with end-time scenarios that make great movies and sell a lot of books.

But truth be told, we are heading into unchartered territory, as the world has exponentially exploded in population, and the ability of all nations to meet basic future needs has been stretched to the limit.

The basic menu list of survival items every human being requires is food and water. You may add additional items of necessity, such as shelter, first aid, sanitation, etc., but just to continue living, humans must have food and water.