Survivalists

The current economic crisis has spawned a whole new breed of survivalists.  Rather than holing up in a bunker, living off the land and waiting for  “the end of the world as we know it” these new survivalists are average Americans who see the chaos going on around them and who believe that they won’t be able to depend on the government to take care of them.

In a recent article, the Houston Chronicle reported on this new breed of survivalists.  One survivalist they featured is named Jack Spirko.  Jack owns his own media company, he is married to a successful nurse and he has a son in college. He also has two dogs and lives in a beautiful house with a pool in Arlington, Texas.

That sounds like a very normal guy, right?

But the truth is that Jack Spirko is a survivalist.

For several years, Jack has been busy stockpiling food, water, gas, guns and ammunition.

The Houston Chronicle quoted Spirko as saying this about his lifestyle: “I have a nice TV; I have nice furniture. We are not living in the sticks, but I take all of these things very seriously.”

While the general economy has been falling apart, sales of storable food, water filters, guns and ammunition has been going through the roof.  It is people like Spirko that have been fueling these sales.

“We are normal people just like you,” Spirko also said to the Houston Chronicle. “We just understand that, sometimes, stuff goes wrong.”

So why are so many people like Spirko feeling so negative about the future?

What has caused so many people to believe that incredibly hard times are on the horizon?

Well, the reality is that the United States was once the wealthiest, most prosperous nation on the entire earth. Americans lived in peace, almost everyone had a job, businesses were booming, the citizens were the healthiest in the world and almost everything America did turned to gold.

But now those days are long gone.

Instead of taking care of our national wealth, Americans squandered it.

That wasn’t even enough for the new greedy generation of Americans, so they spent their children’s money, and then they spent their grandchildren’s money and then they spent their great grandchildren’s money.

Now the United States is in the middle of a financial horror that is literally unprecedented in the history of the world.

At this point, the total liabilities of the United States government, including future social security and medicare payments that the U.S. government is already committed to pay out, now exceed 65 TRILLION dollars, which is more than the GDP of the entire world.

If you don’t believe this, just read the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government.

It’s an official U.S. government report.

And you know what?

That 65 trillion dollars does not even reflect any significant money from the monstrous financial bailouts that Congress has recently passed.

So the truth is that things are going to get MUCH worse financially.

How in the world could the richest nation on the earth let this happen?

How can anyone be so foolish?

This is what happens when extreme greed and extreme gluttony overcome a nation.

For decades, many financial experts, patriots and religious leaders have been screaming and yelling about all the debt that America was getting into.

But nobody listened.

America sowed the wind and now it will reap the whirlwind.

Because of the mountain of debt that the U.S. government, financial institutions and ordinary Americans have piled up, the financial system is beginning to fail.

A horde of banks, insurance companies and retail chains have failed already in 2009. All of the bailouts that Congress has been passing certainly do not seem to be helping much yet.

The truth is that all of the government spending that Congress is doing will help the economy in the short term, but it will make the long term problems of the U.S. government far worse because all of this spending is just increasing the debt.

So who is going to buy all of this new government debt? China has serious doubts about who is going to buy all of America’s new debt. The reality is that the only way that the government can “bailout” anyone or pay for any “stimulus” bill is to borrow.

So America borrows and borrows and borrows and borrows.

If your own personal finances were like that, how do you think it would end?

You don’t have to have much imagination to understand that it would end in financial disaster.

Times are going to get even harder my friends.

Already there are so many average Americans families that are in severe pain.

The U.S. economy lost 598,000 jobs in January. Just think about that. Over half a million jobs GONE in one short month.

These job losses are hurting real people.

Do you know people who have lost jobs?

We do. We know parents that are trying desperately to support their children who have now lost their jobs.

When people lose their jobs they don’t have money to spend at the stores and they can’t pay their mortgages either.

Foreclosures in the United States increased by 81 percent last year, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight to the mess.

As more people lose their jobs, more people will lose their homes.

The truth is that there are more homes sitting empty in the United States today than there ever had been before.

Just think about that.

In fact, there are some areas of the United States that are in danger of becoming permanent disaster zones.

Did you know that some areas of New Orleans STILL have not been rebuilt after all this time?

In the “greatest country on earth” a situation like New Orleans can persist for YEARS and still the government does not fix the problem.

It is a national disgrace.

But New Orleans is not alone. There are a growing number of areas around the U.S. that have been hit by natural disasters or hard times and have just been left to rot away.

Just ask someone who has been to certain areas of Detroit. There are some places there that look like a war zone. Many people in Detroit are hurting really bad.

In Flint, Michigan the government there is actually considering permanently abandoning parts of the city because so many people have left and so many houses are boarded up.  Some areas of Flint actually look like a post-apocalyptic world.

Does anyone care about this?

All of this financial turmoil has also cause a sharp increase in the number of homeless.

It’s not just people sleeping on street corners either.

Due to the huge number of foreclosures, tent “cities” have been popping up on the outskirts of major cities all over the nation.

The truth is that there are more people in the United States without a decent place to live than ever before.

Even areas that were once the definition of U.S. prosperity are experiencing severe problems.

For example, the “California lifestyle” was once the envy of the rest of the United States.

Not anymore.

Now many Californians can’t wait to get out of that state. For the 4th year in a row, more Americans have left California than have moved there from other states.

The truth is that California is quickly becoming a total nightmare, and all of the sunny weather, sandy beaches and Hollywood stars are not enough to keep people there anymore.

The following are ten reasons why California has now become America’s national nightmare…..

#1) California’s overstretched emergency health care system is on the verge of absolute collapse. Dozens of hospitals and emergency rooms have shut down in the last decade. Many emergency rooms simply could not afford to stay open as they were swamped with immigrants and poor and homeless who were not able to pay for the services they were getting.

This had led to brutally long waits, diverted ambulances and even patient deaths as the remaining emergency rooms that are still open are just way, way too crowded.

#2) Tax refunds were recently put on hold in California for the very first time in the history of that state. According to ABC News, Hallye Jordan, spokeswoman for California State Controller John Chiang had this to say about the situation…..

“Unfortunately, we have asked the California Franchise Tax Board not to send over tax refund claims beginning today because we will not be able to process them and have them out the door by Feb. 1 when a 30-day delay in tax refunds goes into effect.”

#3) The unemployment rate in California is 8.4 percent and rising.

#4) Due to very high taxes and crippling housing costs, the cost of living in California is completely outrageous even in the midst of this economic downturn.

#5) Rampant gangs and increasing crime is making California an increasingly dangerous place to live.

#6) The traffic in the major cities throughout California is absolutely suffocating.

#7) An all time record of 236,000 foreclosures have been projected in California for 2008, more than the entire prior nine years combined, according to the research firm MDA DataQuick.

#8) Each year there are the thousands of devastating wildfires in the state.

#9) Each year there are endless earthquakes, and the “big one” could hit at any time.

#10) In addition, California officials say that the drought in 2009 may be the worst in California history.

With all of this economic turmoil going on, ordinary Americans are becoming increasingly upset. More Americans than ever don’t trust the Republicans OR the Democrats. The people of the U.S. want answers and they want solutions to their problems and they aren’t getting any.

In the midst of these bleak times, instead of reaching out with a helping hand, the U.S. government is clenching their fists. It seems as though almost every “answer” the government comes up with these days involves more taxation, more government control or more “big brother” tactics.

It is because of all of these factors that we have seen the rise of the new breed of American survivalists.  A growing segment of the American population are very pessimistic about the future and they don’t believe that they government is going to help them when things get really bad.

Many of these survivalists believe that the American Dream is gone and that it is not coming back.  They believe that they can take care of themselves when society collapses, and they have the food, water, gas, guns and ammunition to prove it.