Episode-1080- Glen Tate on Book 5 of the 299 Days Series
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Book 4 in the 299 Days Series
Glen Tate is the author of the ten-book prepper novel series “299 Days” published by Prepper Press.
The books describe an average guy who prepares for, and lives through, a partial collapse of the United States.
Glen joins us today to discuss a bit of the plot line for book five in the 299 Days book series.
Today we discuss how and ongoing collapse will play out, how it will both divide and unite citizens and human nature during the worst of times. We also discuss the problems creating the collapse at their core, some solutions, and why some components of the “union” may ball apart.
Glen is a moderator on the TSP forum under the name “Heavy G.” He lives and works in Olympia, Washington where he has a front row seat to the corruption in government. Much like the main character in the series, the author is a forty-something resident of the capitol of Washington State, Olympia, and is a very active prepper. He grew up in the remote logging town of Forks, Washington.
“Glen” keeps his identity a secret so he won’t lose his job because, in his line of work, being a prepper and questioning the motives of government is not appreciated.
The story line of 299 Days is as follows,
In it, the main character, Grant Matson, has a job that allows him to see what’s wrong with government. He realizes he needs to prepare for what’s coming and he does so. His wife, Lisa, is reluctant to prepare because she thinks things are just fine. When the civil unrest and political collapse hit in a dramatic way, it is undeniable that they need to leave their Olympia, Washington home and head to their cabin. But, Lisa is still reluctant; she desperately wants things to remain “normal.”
Out at the cabin, a collection of amazing–yet real–people assemble. They create their own community because the government isn’t functioning in their area. They have to work together and, as a community, they manage to achieve some impressive results. Unlike most prepper stories, in 299 Days America suffers a partial collapse. The utilities stay one (due to a spell-binding plot twist) and the government functions in larger cities. People in rural areas still get some food and services from the government, but must increasingly rely on themselves. There are no zombies or cannibalism; 299 Days describes a much more likely partial collapse scenario.
Grant’s friends, who work in government, describe how things continue to go down hill in the city and how the government is trying to maintain control. They describe exactly why the government, as big and powerful as it once was, cannot control things. Many in the military and law enforcement step in to stop the bad things; others in the military and law enforcement perpetuate the bad things.
After a while out at the cabin, some important visitors arrive and present Grant with a difficult choice. Eventually, the Patriots–the side Grant is on–are forced to take on what’s left of the former government. There is a huge battle. In the end, Grant has an important job at the beginning of the rebuilding.
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Up here Atlantic Canada is starting this project:
http://www.nalcorenergy.com/Lower-Churchill-Project.asp
3000 Megawatts or 16.7 Terrawatts a year.
Energy security is pretty safe up here too
Looking at Wikipedia, if you broke the US GDP into its constituent states..
Texas – 13th largest economy in the world (just after Spain)
California – 8th largest economy in the world (just after Italy.. larger than India and Russia)
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_us_states_countries
from 2011 but fun to look at (map with closest sized country to each state)
Shades of what John Titor was talking about.
Best,
Duncan
Jack,
Your comments about sequestration, specifically the effects, were not 100% correct.
I am a DOD civil service employee. The real world effect of sequestration is that I will be furloughed a total of 22 days between April 1st and August 31st. This will be realized as 22 straight weeks of being furloughed one day a week without pay. Done this way federal employees will not be eligible for unemployment benefits. Basically, I will only be allowed to earn 80% of my normal paycheck for 11 pay periods.
If sequestration was the long term answer to our country’s debt issues I would be for it. It is not. It was an ill advised plan thought to force congress into passing a new budget within a certain time frame.
The effects sequestration will have on the DOD are far reaching. See any of the service branchs chief’s memos to congress to get the word straight from the horses mouth.
Sequestration is being realized by making a 20% pay cut from DOD employees for 22 straight weeks. This is not a new budget being passed making any real cuts. It is only hurting the American workers employed by the DOD. (Of course other sections of the national government are being cut but I can only speak of the cuts I know are happening to the DOD).
If Congress and the President passed a budget that called for a permanent reduction in force (RIF) of 20% of all DOD employees, then so be it. If I was one of the 20% fired, that is life, that is what the budget necessitated. This is not what sequestration is doing. It is not an answer and will actually create tremendous hardship on honest, WORKING Americans.
You reach many peple, please read more, and learn the real effects sequestration will have, before publicly speaking about it again. Sequestration will have a very negative effect on our country and is not an answer. The answer is Congress and the President passing a real budget that takes our country forward.
Anonymous
Oh cry me a river. We spend to much on government, cuts mean all the crap and all the employees can’t stay. Like I said they don’t have to do that, they can just cut your pay across the board and be done with it.
Let me make this very easy to understand. Congress and the President are screwing all DOD employees with furlough.
If a 20% salary cut needs to be made, then the government needs to pass a budget doing so, and cut 20% of workers. Not screw 100% of them.
If the government passes a budget cutting all salaries 20% across the board, then so be it. That’s life, but again, don’t screw WORKING Americans by putting them on furlough.
Well it is a budget and if you want people laid off then DOD is free to do that. Congress handles the cutting, DOD handles how to deal with it.
LOL.
The sequestration is a pretty minor thing. It’s about a 7% cut out of the INCREASE in budgets. The fact that they’ve decided to throw this on the shoulders of current employees as a 20% shave… is pretty telling.
As a state employee, I already took my furloughs a few years ago like a man. Sure as heck didn’t go online anonymously to complain about it.
Jack, this was posted by a Pathfinder. Thought you would like to see a bit of history: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=494983100558083&set=a.242483872474675.60414.100001391927176&type=1&ref=nf
Hope this works. Great podcast!
Like I said before, read about sequestration before you comment on it.
Under sequestration no government agency can lay people off. That would counter the savings realized through furlough because people could draw unemployment.
Also, sequestration is not a budget. It is a series of automatic cuts, entangled with a myriad of rules on what government agencies can, and cannot do. Under a normal budget the various branches of the services can transfer money rather freely to the programs they deem need funding. This allows commanders to fund what they need. Under sequestration the transferring of money is severly limited.
I don’t want anyone laid off, but if Congress passes a real budget and the President signs it off, that requires manning to be cut certain percentages at various government agencies then it is what it is.
Um if you work for DOD they can lay you off if they want to, sequestration or not. Deal with it, instead of just a pay cut you get a pay cut with time off.
I don’t give a shit how it is done, we spend to much money and more on DOD then anything else. Besides your clowns will reach a deal at some point.
In the battle of rhetoric over sequestration, I have heard that it is only a reduction in the rate of growth, not a “cut”. Does someone have an easy link to the hard numbers?
In simplification – if the 2013 budget were set to grow say $200B over FY 2012, and now it’s “only” going to grow 115B, I’m sorry that’s not a cut, imo. If they’re going to take FY12 and knock 85B off of that, that’s different.
Can someone help, w/o the spin?
Thanks in advance.
The simple answer is it is both sort of. The percentage of cut includes both the baseline and planned increase. So to put normal numbers, here are three scenarios
A- Joe is spending 100 dollars a week, if we cut 10% now he spends 90 right. An honest cut with honest numbers. The government never does this, EVER.
B – Joe is spending 100 dollars a week, his budget is supposed to go to 125 next month, but we have a 10% cut to deal with. 10% of 125 is 12.50, so the new budge is 125 – 12.50 = 112.50, Joe is spending 12.50 MORE but we call it a cut of 10%. In reality the 10% was on all spending but included planned growth. THIS IS what they are doing now.
C – Joe is spending 100 dollars a week, he budget is supposed to grow by 25 dollars a week, we cut 10% of 25 and that is 2.50 and call it a 10% cut even though Joe is now spending 122.50. The government DOES do this at times but it IS NOT what is being done here.
Keep this in mind for all the wailing and nashing of teeth. The government is spending about 3.8 TRILLION a year right now, way back in the olden days of say 2007 yea that far back we spent 2.5 trillion and survived just fine and everyone knew we were spending to much then.
Now we are going to cut 85 billion this year by method B above, even if it were method C and 85 billion was coming off a static non growing budget of 3.8 trillion our new budget would be get this 3.715 trillion. Do you get it?
One trillion is a thousand billion, even if we believed this at face level the total spending these clowns are doing with money we do not have is less then 1% of total spending.
What we are supposed to believe in all of this is we can’t reduce spending to where it was two years ago and not have the entire economy implode.
With regards to the debt and such this is a must watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bYkl3XlEneA
2017 – $~23T?!?!!?!?!?!?!
Glad I bought more ammo at wally world this morning!
here is a link:
http://bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/The%20Sequester-%20Mechanics%20and%20Impact.pdf
I do not agree with the authors conclusions.. but the numbers are there, with an explanation of how its not really ‘across the board’ cuts.
To compare to previous budgets, just take a look at Wikipedia’s US budget numbers
Yep it isn’t purely across the board because some things are exempt and some spending is mandatory. You can’t cut the interest payment because it is mandatory and Social Security, Medicaid and Obamacare and other crap is exempt.
DOD is taking half the cuts because they spend the majority of the money. We outspend the top 20 nations combined on defense, there is room.
The other half goes equally to all other non exempt discretionary spending. But the total picture of this massive cut can be seen very real to what it is, a single drop in a giant bucket. Just look at the cut to spending ratio, in other words what are the total cuts vs the total spending?
2.4%
It has been added to the US Debt Clock, instead of bitching about this being too much and where to tax us more they should be aiming to cut more and get down to no more then the 2.4-2.5 trillion in revenues they steal every year.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
2.5 trillion is plenty to run a nation of 300 million people with, it worked only 5 years ago you know and surely we were pissing away money even then.
2013 budget – $3,803 Billion ($3.8 T)
US Population – 313.9 Million
budget PER CITIZEN $12,115.
US Income Tax Filers (2010) – 142.9 Million
budget PER TAXPAYER – $26,613.
est tax collected PER TAXPAYER (2013.. estimate is always high) – $20,308.
debt PER TAXPAYER (@$16.6T obviously this is a joke. think unfunded liabilities)- $146,854. <= Which means this is going up $6-7k/yr (deficit)+ interest
yeah. 'sustainable'.
http://www.irs.gov/uac/Tax-Stats-2
should have just used numbers fm:
http://www.usdebtclock.org
where you can find interesting facts like:
113.1 Million Taxpayers
21.7 Million government employees
=
19.1% of the ’employed’ work for the government
How about in the same column on the clock,
Food Stamp Recipients 48 million and growing!
Total SSI Recipients both retired and on disability programs 62 million and growing
Folks that is a total of about 1/3rd of the population, I am sure some on SSI are also in the Food Stamp number but perhaps not as many as we think. I know a lot of older folks on SSI (note I am not saying they didn’t earn it before someone insinuates that) and none are on food stamps.
Another scary number set official unemployed 12 million, actual unemployed 22 million, I mean that just basically doubles the unemployment rate, no big deal there right.
How about Unfunded Liabilities, what we owe over time that we DO NOT have any plans on how to fund other then borrowing more money to do it, 122 TRILLION!
Lastly how about Currency and Credit Derivatives totaling 627 trillion vs a monetary base of 10 trillion (M2) and an estimated total monetary base of about 16 trillion (M3 the number they hide) so even though we have 16 trillion in money from thin air that 16 trillion backs another 627 trillion of additional money created from thin air, think about that “correction” which mathematically must occur at some point.
I still say one more big casino run fueled by perceived “American energy independence” and then the final blow. The debt clock really doesn’t tell you when the hammer is coming down but how hard it will hit us when it does.
I could do a whole show just on the numbers in the debt clock but I would likely have to puke when I got done with it.
Love your thoughts on these numbers Insidious you always have great insights.
Oh and if you really want to feel sick and have the guts to look at it, got to the debt clock, up at the top you will see, Debt Clock Time Machine, you can look at a projection for 2017, do it only if you dare.
I take issue with the conversation of the coming change in society. When the SHTF there are concerns about the people leaching on productive citizens of society. What will happen? The speaker states he isn’t worried; his plan is to melt away into society. If all the actions of these people are good shouldn’t they be trumpeting their actions to all. Proudly telling everyone what they do on a daily basis to help improve thing and make them better.
Is it a case of another worker profiteering from others while the opportunity still exists. Simply justifying those actions. Why continue such working pursuits? Instead of being part of the solution they grow the problem. Helping those, advising those, performing actions on behalf of those that are the problem.
Every day the takers get up and choose to get in their car. Choose to drive to their jobs. Choose to do the bidding of their masters. They have a choice where they go every morning, where they work, what they do. I am skeptical that those who know what is going on are such say they mean well but continue on their same path. They are profiting while they can and helping to propel the hegemony to its final conclusion.
I love the freedom is a sliding scale PSA you give from time to time. It’s a good kick in the ass sometimes.
Regarding the sequester discussions above, the best way it was described to me was this:
The government was forced to shed x%.
Rather than shed that x% from fat and flab, they are choosing to take the x% of everything approach. x% of
– eyes
– teeth
– bones
– heart
– etc.
This is the same crap California does every year and it is done deliberately to drum up support for more taxes. I have some sympathy for .gov workers. I’m related to a few. But the fact that the gov is so stupid that they will cut where it hurts the most like some emo teenie booper faking suicide for attention is only more reason that they need to be hacked back and reined in.
As a secondary point of view, if you are getting pinched in this, consider it a preview of the dollar no longer being the reserve currency and consider moving with the shift instead of getting shredded by it. The gov industry (especially the DOD portion) is 100% guaranteed to have an Allentown transition sooner or latter. Might be better to walk through the exit before you get tossed out of it.
As bloated as this system is, there is room for flab in every single component.