Week 18 – Question of the Week: Does the government help or hinder personal preparedness?

Week 18: 2011-08-05

Recently my mother was watching the National Governors Association television broadcast.  She was surprised (and pleased) that at least one governor advised taking action for personal preparedness, even if only to assure survival a few weeks.

So for today’s question: do you feel your federal, state, or local government helps or hinders personal preparedness?

Comments, questions, and suggestions are all appreciated.  Submit your response in the block below.

– Doc Cindy

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About Cynthia J. Koelker, MD

CYNTHIA J KOELKER , MD is a board-certified family physician with over twenty years of clinical experience. A member of American Mensa, Dr. Koelker holds degrees in biology, humanities, medicine, and music from M.I.T., Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the University of Akron. She served in the National Health Service Corps to finance her medical education.
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6 Responses to Week 18 – Question of the Week: Does the government help or hinder personal preparedness?

  1. Pete says:

    The government at the local level sometimes assists individual citizens in preparedness tasks, but at the state and national level, they comprise the biggest roadblock. Fundamentally, the preparedness movement is about helping ourselves, our families, and our communities, come what may. It is also about working towards self-reliance as individuals and as communities, because when things go south, that may be all you can rely upon.

    Unfortunately, the prepper ethos conflicts with the reason d’etre of the modern bureaucratic state – which is of course to protect itself and expand its power and influence. The existence of so many federal agencies devoted to “safety” and “consumer protection” is cover for the numerous ways in which Uncle Sam meddles in our lives… too numerous to count here. Private citizens face all sorts of road blocks in their way as they strive to prepare medically, from access to training to regulations restricting who may purchase medical devices, drugs, and when, to licensing of who may legally deliver care and when.

    Bluntly put, the government does not want citizens able to care for themselves and their loved ones and neighbors, they want subjects – people dependent upon them for everything. When the Mississippi floods an Iowa town, more often than not, the people there don’t sit around waiting to be rescued, they help themselves. Contrast that with folks passively waiting in flooded New Orleans after Katrina. Which one is the better deal for big government and those who favor it? If you answered Katrina, you are correct. That’s a pity, because – as the old saying goes – God helps those who help themselves, or for the secular among us, chance favors the prepared mind.

  2. Charles, MA, LCDC-III, CPC says:

    I think that by observing the government’s actions, and tuning out the message, we can get a fair idea of what we need to be doing. They have HUGE stockpiles of food and medicines, top-notch training, and the largest and most comprehensive arsenal in the world. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

  3. Dave, RN says:

    They do encourage “being prepared,” but generally only having supplies for 3 days (FEMA, NASA etc). They stop short of talking about preparedness of an economic nature. Maybe they think that longer term preparedness is too “out there.” Three days is just long enough to get you to a FEMA camp.

  4. Cynthia says:

    Although the federal government makes some effort to encourage citizens to be prepared for “disasters” (floods, tornado, hurricane, earthquake), they hinder people from being personally prepared for attacks to our electrical grid, water supply, food shortages – due to fuel or other supply problems. People are hindered by the government regarding these issues simply through lack of discussion of these subjects by our elected officials. Instead of having public service announcements, guest spots on talk radio, etc. on the need for people to become more self-sufficient, our officials continue to lull people into believing that the “government” will come to their rescue – for Mother Nature events. Other scary possible scenarios are basically ignored. Therefore, many people, although aware that economic times are tough, don’t realize what may be coming and what they can do to help themselves be prepared.

  5. Michelle says:

    Let me count the ways.

    They hinder us by making a large percentage of us completely dependent on them.

    The large amount of people who cannot take care of themselves threaten all of us and weigh us down.

    They make it difficult to grow gardens.

    They steal our money at gun point making it difficult to appropriate our own funds toward long term storage.

    They make us sick with their chemicals and food poisons.

    They take our weapons when disaster strikes.

    They try to take supplements and healing medicines away from us.

    They arrest people for selling real food.

    They destroy our basic food sources with GMO killer crop seeds.

    They charge and burn down independent communities that serve as examples of self-sufficiency and survival.

    Humanity has the technology to be living in utopia right now. But we allow the bankers to steal it all and use it for destruction instead.

  6. KF says:

    In comparison to a few countries who actively have instituted working refuges for the safety and survival of their citizens by building and stocking provisions for nuclear protection in underground shelters, and by distributing biochemical protective masks and garb to them, our government falls behind on physical citizen action plans.

    They have built protective structures all over the nation for the political hierarchy, but leave the structural and provisioning responsibility solely up to the individual citizens. Thus, from an informatics perspective, and I make an assumption that they do this not to cause emotional panic, duress to the mass population. However, the US Gov. could invest more at least in active public awareness education than just providing a website advocating a 3-day bug-out bag of provisions and the availability of FEMA encampments.

    The onus appears to be falling on the individual citizens to protect and provision themselves through the readily availability and example of the survivalist mindset.

    A quick web search will point you to hundreds of blogsites available today on survival tactics and techniques and that collectively encompass volumes of relevant information covering the why, what, and how to prepare yourself and your family for surviving a TEOTWAWKI scenario.

    “A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.” Proverbs 22:3

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