Billy DeCarlo, Project: Pioneer Podcast

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Don’t despair—prepare.I've always taken pride in not being a sensationalist, always being practical and analytic. But it's true the frogs don't notice the water is getting hot until too late. It's true that people in cataclysmic historical times never actually realized it at the time. It's clear now the USA is an authoritarian regime. The Oval Office meeting with the El Salvador dictator on Monday made that clear. The past few weeks have made all this crystal clear:The Constitution is dead.The rule of law is dead.The separation of powers is dead.The checks and balances are dead.The Supreme Court has been rendered a joke.The entire top hierarchy of our government is corrupt and acting in concert.We are strongly allied with Russia, striving to replicate that dictatorship.We no longer have allies to save us. They pity us.The bond market meltdown last week made clear the world is running from us.We are heading for a long recession, possibly depression.We are in complete chaos—daily political, financial, and climate destruction.Experts on fascism are leaving the country.Our brightest doctors, engineers, researchers are leaving.If you don’t see the above happening in real time, you’re not paying attention or you’re in denial. I have a friend like that—always poo-pooing things he doesn’t want to acknowledge or doesn’t agree with, until reality makes it impossible. And maybe even then, he’ll still deny it.I have another friend, a Mexican-American of dubious citizenship status. He and his wife are all in with the cult. They like to travel. I’d be quite nervous presenting my papers the next time they re-enter the US. He doesn’t realize he’s dirt to Trump’s racist leadership, as are his kids and grandkids, because they “look dirty” to these racists, due to their skin color. They may get “sent back where they came from” simply for that reason. Sure, there’s Kash Patel and other tokens, which allow them to say, “See? We have black and brown friends.” They get in the club with massive devotions and donations, of course. You aren’t in the club.But, I love my friends, and we all have our quirks :-) However, it will always fascinate me how people who love and listen to all that music with lyrics that are the antithesis to trumpism, people who call themselves Christians, can support something that is the exact opposite.If you’re one of the folks who voted for trump, don’t say, “I didn’t vote for this.” Yes, you did. We all saw it coming. He said he would do all this. Don’t ever call yourself an American patriot. You’re a gullible, hateful person who reacted emotionally because you’re uncomfortable around people who aren’t just like you. Or, you’re some greedy entitled prick who doesn’t want to pay taxes to the country that made *you* great. Or, somehow, you bought into the fallacy that a greedy, corrupt guy who has only ever destroyed everything and everyone he’s come in contact with, with six bankruptcies including a casino, but played a fake successful businessman on a scripted “reality” TV show, was indeed a successful businessman and would lead *you* into prosperity.These billionaire fascists will come for you, eventually. You and those you love will suffer economically for these wannabe dictators. You already are. You are not in the club, as you’re just starting to find out (unless of course you’re a straight, white, male, billionaire). You’re not a fan of anything this country was based on, because this whole MAGA movement has always flown in the face of all of it. Don’t call yourself a Christian, because it’s always been the polar opposite of Jesus’ teachings. Re-read those Beatitudes. Carefully. You f’d around, joined a cult, now you’ll find out. You did this, you owe it to us all to join the fight.At most we have a year and a half before the curtain comes down on the USA as a constitutional republic, if we’re lucky. The report trump requested on day one of his presidency, on whether he should use the Insurrection Act, is due on April 20. He may decide to use it earlier, to quell the planned April 19 protests. There’s no way they're going to allow mid-term elections, at least not legit ones. One piece of strong evidence happened in that Oval Office press conference on Monday, all the ass kissing for the dictator from El Salvador. And so, back to us. You don’t find much real, actual, non-cosplay prepper content online. By virtue, we are paranoid, and a part of the recipe is to keep your mouth shut about your tactics, if you are serious about this. I only wanted to help others, and I hope I have over these two years of providing you so much information that you may very well need, and very soon. Those posts are a gift to you, but I can’t guarantee I’ll keep them online if things get hotter.Do I sound mad? Yeah, big mad. Giavana and I had that dream of building a nice, isolated prepper log cabin. Trump’s election ended that, because we knew the USA empire would fall. We wouldn’t buy or own real estate in Russia either, for the same reason. Would you? If not, then sell. Then we started thinking about joining an eco-village, to form a community for security and survival. Yesterday, on an informational meeting, we were getting all excited, then I had this vision:General (big strong guy, tears in his eyes): “Sir, I’ve come to you directly because Secretary Hegseth is still sleeping off his bender last night. This is important. We’ve discovered a village of woke, liberal smurfs living happily in the woods.”Trump: “Seize it, use eminent domain, and burn it to the ground, hopefully while that scum are still asleep.”I’m far more angry about the GenZ and younger people who will never enjoy the USA the rest of us had. For the first time, the children of working families have little chance of doing better than their parents. That’s not because of trans people or immigrants. There is one clear, obvious reason: corporate greed, corporate welfare. That’s what changed our life here so quickly from my parents’ time, one generation ago, where a high school dropout manufacturing worker could work Monday to Friday 9-5 with a solid hour lunch and give his family a comfortable life while his spouse stayed home to raise the kids properly. Now we’re all slaves to this corporate machine, stressed and tired, and it’s still not enough to survive, while those at the top wallow in luxury due to the fruits of our labor.The government are now seizing and examining the phones and content of US citizens, without warrants. That makes us a target, and maybe even you as well, for reading stuff like this. It puts people I love at risk, and I can’t tolerate that. I do this for you. There’s no financial benefit, and frankly hasn’t been a whole lot of interaction, which makes it easier. I’ll die for this cause, I’ll die on this hill for those I love who are younger, but I can’t put loved ones in danger. It’s not a sell-out or cop-out. I will be in this fight in every way I can, and I hope you will too. Everything depends on it.I’ll continue the fight, subversively, but that can’t include writing what I write. Not on a public blog, anyway. Trump said he’ll start sending US citizens to that gulag torture prison in El Salvador. I’m a small voice, whistling these words into the wind to a small audience. But, I enjoy this, and thus it’s another thing taken away.In the past, when I dared to dream (nightmare) all this happening, I was often naive enough to think, “The cops and military are regular people with families, all races and creeds, most of them wouldn’t go along with a takeover or violence against citizens.” Surprise, it’s happening all over right now. Cops, ICE, Homeland Security, FBI, all in full fascist concert. Probably the military is next. They seem to be loving the chance to use all those cool weapons and rough some folks up. That’s what too many cops do, it’s why too many are cops. We’ve seen autistic Black kids beaten and killed by Black cops, incredibly.In our last post, I talked about this overwhelming sense of things coalescing into…something. I mentioned earlier in this post that people in cataclysmic historic times don’t actually realize they’re in cataclysmic historic times in the moment.A few scenes from the new The Chosen season five stand out. There’s one where the disciple Little James is a talented singer and makes the cut to sing in the national choir as a young man, but is told he can’t because he has a physical disability. Immediate flash to Trump saying it’s “not a good look” for him to be seen with disabled veterans.There’s another scene where the Roman spy Atticus is telling Pontius Pilot his only job is to win, and another where the Jewish Pharisees are talking about “winning” and absorbed with politics over their faith and teaching. Of course, there’s the depiction of runaway greed when Jesus overturns those tables at the temple.It was always about temptation, from the Garden of Eden onward. The Lord’s Prayer says, “Lead us not into temptation.” Actually, we’ll always have temptation. It’s always been our job to do the right thing. It’s always been a test.Pioneer UpdateWe just paid our taxes, normally a patriotic contribution to pay for

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Don’t despair—prepare.It seems like everything is converging, coalescing, the good and the bad. If you’ve been reading our pioneer journal over these past two years, you may be sensing that too. We’ve been writing about the coming dystopia, and how to prepare for it, what works and what doesn’t. There seems to be a theme. Let’s get busy as the going gets tough, because it’s clear that nobody is coming to save us. We have to save ourselves.Pioneer UpdateWe got our Costco raised bed garden (on wheels!) up and running this past weekend. It was a fun exercise. Apparently, there’s a lot more to this than just throwing in some dirt and seeds! Our diligence turned up the Seed to Spoon app so we’re on the seven day trial. It allows you to specify your garden size and lay out what you want to plant. The cool thing is that it warns you about plants that are “bad neighbors” (the ones with Trump signs in their yard?) and shouldn’t be placed next to each other. We would have screwed that up badly. We went with things of substance—potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, parsnip, eggplant. Now we wait for buds to get budding!And yeah, you could use the rationale “Those are some expensive veggies, why not go to the grocery?” Because, well, we’re preparing for those shelves being empty, as we’ve shipped out all the ag workers, and poisoned our food, as we’ve canceled those silly FDA food inspectors. There will be no pesticides in our grub.Tomorrow is another round of surgery for me, ugh. Next week, we move the White House covered wagon pioneer RV from our former beautiful campsite to standby near where we live now. That will complete our new transition.Also, we got out for the April 5 protests. It was wonderful and magical to be among the massive crowds of sane, happy, motivated, patriotic citizens. There are plenty more to come, make sure you participate!A Survival PlanI mentioned convergence. The stock markets are continuing to crash due to this extreme nonsensical idiocracy. We’re heading to a deep recession or maybe depression, on the fast train. The worst of circumstances may well occur—stagnant economy and high inflation like in the 60s and 70s, a very bad combination that’s hard to fix. We’re likely heading for the “distraction” of a massive global shooting war, on top of the trade war.Our once beautiful democracy and economy, the envy of the world just a few months ago, is being burned to the ground. One of the world’s biggest insurers is predicting the collapse of capitalism due to climate change. Imagine losing your home like so many in the Midwest did this week, and having no insurance to replace it. On top of being laid off due to recession. That’s how depressions happen.Ok, that’s the bad news.We’re always thinking of solutions, all day every day. We wrote about our trip to Europe, and as fantastic and utopian as things are there, it’s just not Plan A right now as we both have elderly mothers that need help. However, if it gets that bad, we may have to bail anyway. Good to have options.But, while there, we saw a people who have always lived happily in smaller spaces. Giavana, Pia and I have been doing that for years, in an RV and now in a small apartment, after selling our home and attic, closets, basement, and garage full of useless neglected crap. So as a first step, why not bring that model here? Why can’t we all start behaving in that successful way, which is less stressful and better for your financial success? Americans are famous for our gluttonous shopping, our McMansions and land yacht vehicles, for having way too much of everything. Let’s change that.Our point? Stuff is about to get much more expensive. People already have far less money due to the Trump crash, and that’s about to get worse as they lose their jobs. Corporations are to blame for the most part. Fix the problem and fight back. Fix one is to sell, share, and barter among ourselves at discount prices. Make that former gluttony a huge advantage to each other. Get on your neighborhood discussion boards, like nextdoor.com, reddit.com, or discord.com. Need a lawnmower? I bet someone within a mile of you has an older or spare very functional one that they’d sell you on the cheap, far less than you’d pay at the store. Ditto for just about anything you need. If we all get out there, list what we have, or what we can do for others, think of the benefit! Same with thrift stores, and with food, by using farmer’s markets. Or mom and pop restaurants instead of those ugly, poisonous chains.There are so many ways to cut back without harming your quality of life. For example, commercials have brainwashed us into heaping large gobs of toothpaste on our brushes, when a much smaller amount is just as effective, especially if you don’t then rinse or spit it out. Ditto for laundry detergent and so many other items. Again, Kiss Your Money Hello (and Financial Stress Goodbye) is the ultimate guide to saving money and Plan Your Money Path is the same for planning your financial life. Read or listen, get them for free by ordering from your local library.Cut your reliance on expensive vehicles where possible by walking and getting a bike (or e-bike—they’re awesome!) Learn how the public transportation works in your area—buses and trains. Sell anything you haven’t used in a year, including clothing. Pile up your money, be frugal. Enjoy all the wonderful, free goodness of our parks and libraries (before they’re paved over).We need to converge as a society—the good among us, anyway. We’re seeing this happen, out of necessity. Hard times always bring that sort of thing. Families save money by sharing space, like in the old days here in the US. Communities begin to coalesce and share. In our area, some folks have started a discord server to bring this about. The main purpose is to move toward building our own intentional community/ecovillage, as we’ve been advocating for and written about in past posts. Quite European! The result has been phenomenal. We now have subtopic areas where people in this area are mentoring and sharing with each other on topics like personal security, gardening/farming, communication, bushcraft, survival, medicine/first aid, and disaster preparedness. It’s bringing about everything we’ve discussed above, and it’s beautiful to behold, watching it bloom. We’re also facilitating in-person meetings/training on those topics. Make it happen in your area, your survival may count on it.As we build and form these communities, so much more becomes possible. We can shelter those we need to—young people from being drafted into a war that might kill them, marginalized people from the hate on the outside. Underground railroads have been quite effective in the past. We all might need one at a certain point. Handmaid’s Tale Season 3 is just starting, what an example of all this!The other thing that’s coalescing here, at least for us, is the return to faith or at least hope for so many, with the popularity of The Chosen. We’ve binged the first four seasons for free by using their app and web page, and seeing season five at the theater, which is spectacular. Even if you don’t believe, it’s epic on the scale of other memorable shows we’ve all enjoyed. It’s a great break and distraction from our current lives, giving hope and joy, along with many of the lessons we should be relearning about how to live happily together on this rock.Find that safe haven, that hopeful diversion. It really helps. It could be mindfulness, yoga, reading, knitting, painting, gardening, whatever. Maybe it’s some combination of things. Forgive old grudges, turn the other cheek. That old friend turned adversary may be useful to your survival in the near future. We’ve never needed each other more."Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much"—Helen Keller"Today, if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”—Mother Theresa, Saint Teresa of Calcutta“I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.Stay tuned! This pioneer journey continues…Hey, it took me a few hours to write this journal post for you. Can you spend a few seconds and post it on your socials or forward to others? If so, thank you!Free subscribers get a free copy of my book of short stories, Rambles and Daydreams. Paid subscribers will get all three books in the noir crime trilogy, Vigilante Angels. I no longer do paid-only posts, because it felt gross to leave people behind, especially those who can’t afford it.If you read my ramblings, I’ll leave it to your conscience. If you get any value from my writing, consider a donation or subscription, which is priced at a few dollars, the minimum allowed. Half of all money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses.You can also support me by becoming a paid subscriber below, leaving a small one-time tip at the button below, or by buying my no

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Don’t despair—prepare.We pioneers have been in Europe for the past ten days. It was eye-opening from a prepper perspective. We were there to complete requirements for dual citizenship, begin to learn how to buy property, as well as take a long-overdue vacation in the last days of the pre-World War III world. Here’s what we discovered and experienced. And please, if you’re in one of those election districts in Wisconsin and Florida for this Tuesday, go vote and bring anyone and everyone else you can.Pioneer UpdateBefore we get into all that Europy stuff, a quick status update on us. We had to leave little Pia behind, so Giavana and I missed her very much. Same with our covered wagon RV, the White House. This coming week back home will be a transition time—break camp at the remote location we’ve lived at for almost two years, and move her to stand-by nearby, fully prepped and ready to carry us to escape mid-country if necessary. What we saw in Europe has only increased our motivation. Now that we’re home, our emphasis also moves to getting our raised bed garden up and running, getting to the shooting range, working with the local eco/intentional community folks, and getting to some of these resistance protests and meetings.Europe Prepares for WWIIIA good prepper is always gathering intel. Sure, a solid stock of provisions will keep you alive. Intelligence gathering is also critical. During our time in Europe, we paid close attention to what the locals were saying, and watched news channels based in several countries.First, as we always say, this isn’t a journal intended to cause hysteria and fear mongering just to get clicks. Clicks get us nothing—very few pay for these words. We aren’t interested in fame either. We are anonymous for a reason. We’re interested in helping save those who want to be saved, preparing those who want to be prepared. The countries of Europe are providing their citizens with education on how to prep—stocking provisions, all the things we do as preppers. They are also educating them on how to survive nuclear blasts. This is the government educating their people, not some random doomsday cult. They are buying up land to use for tens of thousands of graves.It is serious business—nobody knows the future, but indicators of world war are blinking red. They are also all working to institute the military draft for able-bodied men and women. In the US, that means compulsory conscription for ages 17 to 45. We have a leader who is drooling at the thought of building a big, beautiful army to fight in his name, so he can enjoy it all on TV like he did on January 6. After all, we’re just his newest reality show.Did we not just see a spectacular example of stupidity, and lapse of national security, a bunch of grown man-child bros at the top of our military and intelligence departments spewing emojis and excited bro-talk on a non-secure commercial app, jacked over the bombing of innocent children? Imagine their excitement at orchestrating a full-blown war, with our kids getting maimed and dying, of course not theirs. We’re gaslit starting in kindergarten, throughout our lives, how heroic and patriotic it would be to go off and die for our country’s constant genocidal conquests that enrich the already rich.In Europe, we visited the crumbled, destroyed remnants of ancient dynasties and empires. History rhymes. The vast, powerful Roman Empire collapsed due to an incredible amount of greed and corruption, which caused division and infighting. The Germanics saw the weakness, invaded and took them down. Strong parallels to today, in the United States. Now that our government is being dismantled internally via chainsaw, and we have a collection of completely inexperienced corrupt fools in charge, we are incredibly exposed. Our enemies know this, and they’re watching and planning day by day.The history we learned (or, relearned). on our trip was a reminder of the ages of human evil on the macro (nation) and micro (individual) level. So much cruelty, gluttony, greed, lust for power. So much suffering and death of innocents. We never learn. The mistake we make is living as if this one brief phase of our spiritual existence is all there is. You’re greedy and immoral, you might do well here, but there's a good chance you're screwed for eternity after that.The attorneys we met with in Europe said they’re swamped with requests from Americans for passports, visas, and citizenship. Other countries are tightening their rules to prevent a mass influx of Americans, as we found on our recent visit to Canada. Those damned pesky immigrants, amirite? Irony is dead. Then again, the Jews that saw what was coming in 1930s Germany and left were the ones who survived.We saw and heard much evidence of Europe and our other former allies around the world (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others) moving rapidly to detach themselves from any dependence or reliance on the United States, including their currencies. That’s a very bad thing for us on many levels.Our brain blocks us from stark realization sometimes. We don’t want to believe things when they seem extreme. Jews waited forever for the prophesies of a coming Messiah to come true. When he arrived, despite witnessing proof who he was over and over, they were like, “Nah, this ain’t the guy,” and killed him. In my recent post, I outlined extensive evidence that Trump is indeed the antichrist. Fun times (not).In my career, I traveled around the world every single week for years. I always saw so much American themed apparel on the foreigners, I often felt like I was back in the USA. Not this time, the difference was very evident. In grayperson prepper mode, Giavana and I made sure to not wear anything identifying us as Americans. The natives are clearly turned off by the US, and all we now stand for. In fact, the vendors were making sure their wares all had very prominent “Made in Europe” labels. It was very sad.Our time in Europe was wonderful. Despite all that, the people were going about their business. They were incredibly polite, even after some realized we were American. Not once did anyone lose patience or become rude with these lost, confused, and tired travelers, even in the non-tourist backwaters we made our way to. Some natives gently broached the subject of our takeover, expressing incredulity and actual pity for us and our country.The things that struck us most were the taxi drivers, restaurant servers, hotel wait staff that would often politely decline tips, or act genuinely surprised and thankful to receive them. It is because they are paid a living wage, and have excellent healthcare and retirement programs. They work normal hours with a long lunch break. Unlike our country, where hard working people like that cannot survive, due to the harm to extravagant corporate profits.We saw very, very few corporate chains, particularly in eateries. Everywhere we went, the restaurants and cafes were small mom and pop operations serving ridiculously inexpensive and healthy food. That was a very stark contrast to home. They aren’t owned by corporations. The people aren’t being poisoned and addicted to garbage, for profit. They eat smaller, healthy portions.The trains we rode were inexpensive, fast, on time, and super clean. The people were all multi-lingual—nobody losing their mind over someone speaking a foreign language—another stark contrast. In the crowded plazas, narrow streets, and on the roadways they were patient. The big cities were remarkable in that, even while in traffic, there were no drivers blaring horns, cutting each other off, providing finger gestures. A notable difference for us, was that in the restaurants we saw a very leisurely social experience. People took their time eating (good for health) and the servers never rushed anyone. In the US, a pet peeve of ours is servers constantly coming up to us while still eating and asking if we want a box. They’re pressured to flip those tables, as it’s very good for profit.We saw plenty of local and regional police, and military personnel. They were very observant, polite, and helpful to everyone around them. Tough looking and well armed, but not with that attitude as if they were standing by just waiting for a chance to crack some skulls. They smiled, showing true strength of confidence. Real badasses don’t have to constantly try to project badassery. They were almost equal numbers male and female. The dopes we have in charge now are all weak failson trust fund babies from unloving wealthy parents, insecure and feeling that need to project and cosplay uber-masculinity to compensate. The Joe Rogan set.Among the tourists, we saw plenty of locals in fresh air parks and museums with their kids, and no signs of corporate amusement parks. The younger kids’ faces were not embedded in screens, just the older teenagers.They drive very small cars and scooters (unlike our land yachts), and walk a lot. There were tons of recycling and composting devices along all the streets. We saw a strong emphasis on solar power, energy efficiency, and caring for the planet and climate. It’s a shame that our growing ignorance here will likely ov

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Don’t despair—prepare.I remember way back in the day, when it would be unthinkable that you would work hard all your life for a company and not have a pension for your retirement years. That got blown up when the thing about working for one company your whole career went away, for various reasons. They acclimated us to the idea of not having a pension real quick, since we had no choice but acclimate. “You have your Social Security, after all, and this new thing called a 401k plan.” Now, we’re being “acclimated” to not having Social Security, or Medicare for that matter. Read on for the reasons this is happening, and most importantly, how you can prepare. Unlike most “sky is falling” journals, this one actually tells you what to do. You already know the sky is falling.Pioneer UpdateSaturday was another visitation day at our White House pioneer covered wagon RV. It’s good to visit her, and we miss her. With each visit, we’re unwinding the systems of our former full-time life there and transitioning them to our new humble abode. She knows the time may come soon when we’re back to her, and on the run. We’re careful to leave as much in place as possible to that purpose.We built our raised bed garden and look forward to planting as soon as we return from our overseas trip, which we leave for on Friday.Why This Is HappeningQuite often, people ask, “Why is this happening? Why are they dismantling the government? Let’s take one example—Social Security. The plan is to make using it so insufferably miserable that people start to hate it enough to welcome the new plan—privatizing it. There’s almost $3 trillion in the SS trust fund. If you don’t think endlessly greedy folks like Trump and Musk aren’t salivating over all that money, you’re a fool (sorry). Rinse, wash, repeat for veteran’s health benefits, Medicaid, Medicare, public education, forest/national park management, and other things our government does for its citizens, as it should in any developed, functional democracy.You might say these government agencies, like Social Security and the VA, already suck. That’s because the staffs are undertrained, underpaid, and overworked. Sure, there’s an average 15 minute hold time when calling SS. Trump and Musk just tried to cancel the phone system completely—disabled people and elderly folks who can’t drive to an office be damned. Remember—through all disasters we’ve experienced in the almost one hundred years of Social Security, the checks never stopped. When I was under VA veteran health care, I received very good treatment from very compassionate providers. That’s about to end. The system needs to be improved, not decapitated. Always remember—the happiest countries in the world have a better version of what we have. The most unhappy and miserable have what we’re racing headlong toward.Trump and Musk will push the idea of having “smart” money managers taking that Social Security money and managing it under some corporate umbrella. They’ll likely invest it in their own stuff, right? How would you feel if your future SS monies were invested in Tesla stock right now? Elon would feel wonderful, but, note that it’s in the toilet. A sweet bailout of Tesla stock with SS trust fund money would fix that problem, same as they’re trying to do with crypto currencies and their “Sovereign Wealth Fund.” That’s in the tank lately as well. Everything Trump Touches Dies. It’s a taint of evil. Same with Trump’s social media company, which never made any money, and Musk taking Twitter from $44 billion of worth to basically nothing. Your SS payments will likely depend on how those investments are doing, and no longer be guaranteed. The SS system will be as scammy as the annuity and permanent life insurance business, and probably sold to overseas private equity, where there’s little regulation, oversight, or compliance obligation.Have a look at our privatized health care system. It’s the most expensive in the world, with the worst health outcomes. We’re sicker and die sooner than other developed countries, and that’s a disgrace. Suffering and death should never be a for-profit business. But we’re stuck with it, as the health insurance CEOs get paid tens of millions of dollars and they place their company names on major sports stadiums.Soon, when these government agencies are dismantled and sold off to the billionaire oligarchs that now run the country, our government will be a tiny shell of itself. What happens then? It’s a much easier target for takeover, which is the ultimate goal in all this. Then it will be a fait accompli, a system very much like Russia, where the ruler is massively wealthy, firmly locked into power, and protected by a small class of oligarchs by making sure their loyalty is well rewarded with that former government money. Anyone that steps out of line is brutally and publicly executed, sometimes by falling out of top story hotel windows or poisoning by polonium/Novichok nerve agents.What to DoIn the near term, expect disruptions in all these government services as they break them and make them miserable to use. Build up your emergency fund and expect tax refund, Social Security, disability, and other government checks to just not show up. Be prepared for that. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.Cut your spending as you would when a disaster is impending, because one is. Take shelter financially. There’s a whole book about stuff like that, Kiss Your Money Hello! (and Financial Stress Goodbye). Read or listen to it to learn how to pay down any remaining debt, do side hustles, create an easy to manage budget, save on your expenses, cut your taxes, (not) pay for your kids college/trade/tech school, and more.If you’re young, it’s quite likely you’re going to be “acclimated” to that life without Social Security, just like people my age were “acclimated” to a life without a pension. The key and most valuable asset you can have is a financial plan. Build it yourself, maintain it yourself. Once you have a solid baseline, the most valuable benefit is you can then copy that baseline scenario into what-if scenarios, like “What if there’s no Social Security or Medicare?” There’s a new book for that too, one that shows you how even if you’re not a financial guru. It’s Plan Your Money Path: Create Your Own Financial Plan.Yes, we’re still exposed to the collapse of the dollar if we have our money in savings accounts, money market, US treasury bonds, bills, notes. It’s hard to get around that, especially knowing if the dollar collapses the entire world and all its currencies are going to do so (or come close) as well. They are busy preparing for that and insulating themselves from our poison at warp speed, economically and militarily. It’s important to prepare for all downstream contingencies.There aren’t a lot of good options. Lots of preppers buy precious metals. The conundrum is that 1oz gold bars are a few thousand dollars, and not very useful if the stuff hits the fan and we finally get to a place where we can safely barter metals for goods and services. How are you going to get change for that $2,500 1oz gold bar? Silver coins solve the problem—smaller denominations, but they’re also quite heavy if you have a bunch of them.Costco is selling sheets of 25 small 1 gram pieces of gold, each piece worth about $100. They’re light and smaller denominations, so not a bad solution to the problem. Again, the best investment you can make is essential goods (food, water, shelter, medical supplies, energy) so that you can ride out the dangerous chaos of a collapse without having to go out for anything. When you do, if you have some surplus, those things will be valuable to barter. Do you have a place to grow food or raise chickens?Also think in terms of services. What new things can you learn in retirement that might be valuable to others to barter for goods or services? Midwife? Mending or creating clothing? Security? Electronics repair? Even if your career wasn’t in medicine, consider taking an emergency medicine class, or any of the skills you can learn at your local community college in person or virtually as part of non-credit adult continuing education.Eternity and MortalityOn a final note, I went to a special concert presentation celebrating the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album on Saturday night. I received some test results this past week that weren’t so good, so it’s been a down and reflective few days. I have an aneurysm that’s in a particularly bad place and it’s growing, among other issues.As I stood alone at the back of the concert venue, like a ghost, listening to the music from my youth, it brought back a flood of memories. Memories of a much simpler time, when we weren’t addicted to devices. Many of the people in the audience weren’t looking at the spectacular performance and musicianship on the stage, they were busy looking down at their phones, thumbs frantically twiddling. Or, they were watching the performance through their phones, holding them up to record something they’ll likely never watch yet depriving themselves of the moment. It’s not a boomer criticism, after all they were enjoying the show in

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Don’t despair—prepare.In our last post we talked about getting your mind right for what’s to come. Actually, we talk about that a lot! We also talk about the items you should have handy in order to be prepared. The other important ingredients in our survival recipe are your body and practice. Having all the cool prepper stuff won’t do much good if you’re not healthy enough to endure the hard times ahead, or able to carry that gear. Don’t underestimate how tough hard times can be on your body, in so many ways! I’m somewhat hardened (for my age) from a year and a half of woodland pioneer living in an RV, yet our recent move put me down for part of a day. Let’s talk about ways to mitigate that concern. It’s not that hard. We’re not going to push you to become a CrossFit junkie.Pioneer UpdateWe’re mostly settled into our new digs in this small apartment. An attractive feature is the layers of security. I’m impressed that the other residents didn’t blindly allow us to tailgate in past security, as we were new and they didn’t recognize us. One new concern is that we’re on a higher floor (for security reasons)—too high to jump in case escape is needed. Always, always visualize the worst happening. What will you do? What will you need? We immediately purchased a collapsible fire ladder long enough to reach from our balcony to the ground. Problem solved (along with fire extinguishers and blankets, of course).We have a prepper inventory Google sheet that lists every item we own, where it is, and what its priority is (for fast decision making). That’s been updated for our new location. You should do the same—things happen fast in a disaster, critical thinking skills are compromised, mistakes could be deadly.I worry we’ll get soft in this new environment. It happens quickly! Yesterday I visited our wonderful White House covered wagon RV, to say hello, provide some TLC, and clean a bit. She’ll go to the RV spa for some routine maintenance in early April, then to her new nearby location to serve on standby in case we need an emergency bug out, or just for some of our fun summer festivals. Good, fun practice!Get Your Body RightIt looks like Americans won’t have access to flu shots next winter, as the meeting of scientists to agree on and devise the formula has been canceled by the Trump administration. Our new “health czar,” the former heroin junkie who had part of his brain eaten by a worm, has told kids dying from measles to drink cod liver oil. New (to us) diseases, oldies but not goodies, are spreading around the country.These spoiled, entitled folks in charge now are well known for their intolerance for those they view as the “great unwashed.” You know, those tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Trump has expressed his displeasure at being seen with disabled veterans, saying it’s “not a good look” for him. What they’re doing is a form of societal chemotherapy. Chemo attacks and kills cells throughout the body in hopes that the “bad stuff” will die off before the good stuff dies along with it. They’re stripping away Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, veteran’s disability benefits and health care in order to kill our elderly, our poor, our disabled.That strategy will also kill off many folks who, in the eyes of the wealthy, “suck off the teat of government” for their “entitlements.” Narrator: far more money goes to corporate welfare and tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. After the bottom level of our society is dead, the middle class will effectively be moved down to the lower caste of Americans, albeit a healthier and prettier version of the “rabble” we had before, in the eyes of people like Trump and Musk. A kingdom of peasants and royalty will then be achieved, to our doom.Things could get real hard in a hurry, especially if they then trigger a global war to help cure the deep recession we’re heading toward. This time, the bombs will fall here. Parts of the USA could be the new Gaza or Ukraine as our powerful former allies fight against us and our new Axis of Evil partners. Medicine may be hard to come by, which is why we recommend the excellent Jace Cases. We’re so happy we found those, it was a big gap in our medical preparedness.Hopefully you’ve been following our advice over these seventy-seven posts and you have an emergency bugout bag near your door, and one in your car (perhaps a get-home bag). Imagine a circumstance where you’re forced to carry them (standstill traffic, vehicle trouble, etc). How far will you get? There’s one way to know—practice.If you’re not already taking regular walks, now’s a good time. The weather is warming in these cold regions! Start the habit, build that muscle. Once you get in a routine, practice with your bags (one at a time!). Routine is good, but not always the same route at the same time—that can be a security problem. Especially if your pack looks military or valuable. We’ve recommended quality pepper sprays, alarms, and portable weapons for that purpose as well.Need to drop some weight? It’s not unusual coming off a long winter of lower activity. Look, we obsess over body image. We all can’t or don’t want to look like the latest Hollywood action hero (they’re fake, anyway). We don’t need to. The healthy weight for you is the healthy weight for you. My BMI is 28 but there are plenty of folks with a much higher BMI that could run circles around me. Talk to your physician. The key is, can you carry that pack a reasonable distance? More robust body frames are likely be more successful, given they’re in shape.Body type is built into DNA. Contrary to what society teaches, it's not bad to be any body type, just to manage that and be healthy. Do that. There's a whole lot more to someone than what shape they are. Your good soul will live on long after your body is back to dust.This is important in person-to-person conflict as well. You can study all the boxing or martial arts, a great way to get in shape, but in reality most fights dissolve into on-the-ground grappling within seconds, and the victor is often the one who can outlast the other stamina-wise. Submission tactics are quite useful, however!Same with extreme weightlifting. Fun story—in my younger days I worked installing chain link fence. We did that day in, day out, all year long in blistering heat and frigid cold—digging holes by hand with posthole diggers, mixing and lugging unbalanced wheelbarrows of cement, carrying huge rolls of metal fencing on our shoulders across uneven terrain. It was brutal work. Most of us were skinny but wiry from it. One time a new guy came on, fresh from the gym, massive mounds of muscles in his shoulders, arms, legs. Quite impressive. He couldn’t do the work—he was too used to the comfortable, balanced loads he’s been using in the gym, and wasn’t up for that level of pain and discomfort.It’s a good lesson—apply it to your preparedness. Don’t just choose nice sunny days for your walks. Walk in all kinds of weather. It’s a good chance to make sure your all-weather prepper gear is comfortable and functional. Take your comms along and make sure they work at different distances and environments while you’re at it.I keep myself at my desired weight with a very simple, inexpensive practice. It’s worked for my entire adult life. We have a good bathroom scale that measures all kinds of body metrics, including BMI. I get on it almost every time before I take a shower. If it’s not where I want it to be, I eat less and walk more for a few days and measure again. Boom. It works like magic. No expensive fads or scams needed.Another way to be in tune with your body and what’s normal for you is to use a device like the Oura rings Giavana and I use. It will tell you when something is off, and provide an incredible wealth of tools to get your mind and body right. It alerted this nurse practitioner she had cancer long before she or her doctor had any idea. Not the actual cancer, but that something was very wrong with her body. It knew her well, what was “normal” for her, as ours do.Work at getting your diet right. Due to standards being lowered due to the corporate food lobby and deregulation, we’re fed a steady diet of addictive garbage every day. That stuff won’t be available in a collapse. Wean yourself off it—learn to make some favorite meals from scratch like soups and stews. Get your body used to eating real fruit and vegetables. They may be all we have in the end, if that. We’ll start our small home gardening experiments soon—stay tuned!Lastly, get any medical needs attended to now. That’s why I’m getting my hands fixed, they’re shot from those years of fence work, military, sports, and life. I’ll need them. Get your vaccines up to date. Do you need a measles booster? Might be a good time! You can get a simple titer blood test to see if you still have immunity. You don’t want measles, no sir. It’s incredibly communicable and spreading thanks to our new anti-science leadership.None of the news is good—stock market way down, recession indicators blinking red, layoffs, inflation raging back. This may be the last cycle where we get real reports and data, before party propaganda starts assuring us everyth

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Don’t despair—prepare.Before we get started on this week’s pioneer update, my urgent plea is for you to find some way to get involved. There is no more time left to save this country—it gets worse by the day, they make progress by the day in tearing it down, stealing our assets, aligning us with evil. Someday, your kids, grandkids, great grandkids will watch the “old” movies about the USA standard, the USA way of life, and ask you what you did to save it for them, to prevent the Russian dystopia they may well be living in at that time. You can do a lot from home, but every able-bodied American needs to get out there and be seen. Give money, whatever you can. Pick one or more of these sites and get to work. 5calls.org, indivisible.org, citizen.org, moveon.org, aclu.org, fiftyfifty.one, resist.bot, nosmallact.comI’ve been fortunate enough to travel the world—the good and bad places—the real places, not the dressed up tourist zones. I saw society in every state from good to bad, from strife to utopian. The forces that have overtaken the United States did so with a vision of white picket fence, Mayberry RFD, 1950s White America. The “Golden Age.” What they’re driving us toward is the soup lines, disease, and struggle of peak Great Depression. They are aligning with and driving us toward the stark, bleak, desolate life I’ve seen when traveling to Soviet satellite autocracies in eastern Europe and other places around the globe. It’s always the same.Pioneer UpdateJust when we thought we were almost moved into our new (to us) little apartment, we got word we need to clean out the rest of our stuff in storage. Another round of brutal lifting and moving of boxes ensued, and of course cold and high winds were there (out of nowhere) to make it a hundred times harder. It was pretty brutal this weekend, just when we thought we could catch our breath. We’re minimalist by US standards, but we’re realizing we still have too much crap. It’s enabling another round of cleansing ourselves from old and broken things. Memories are in the mind. This phase of our spiritual existence is a very brief flash. None of this is important.Buddhism teaches that suffering is part of life—and we should learn to deal with it through acceptance of that fact, mindfulness, and spirituality. Do the right things, and experience joy in eternity. I say often that I believe this place we’re in is a kiln, a miasma of trials and tribulations, temptations, to get us to see the light, to forge to shape our spirits into what would be acceptable in a perfect eternity. Jesus came here as an example of that, the perfect human, to show us the way, a living exemplar. Our bodies are a form of embryo, an egg to house our spirit during this physical journey.Stress and suffering make that hard. That’s the point. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. We had to go into overdrive this weekend. Back out to the White House RV, back to storage, loading Henrik the pickup, unloading her, all in high wind. I hurt myself, rather bad. Tons of extreme pain. I failed the test—I lost my temper and yelled at my precious, beautiful Giavana. I let her down, I let myself down. It’s further proof I still have work to do, spiritually. This is all a test, and I failed it. I need to be stronger, because it’s only going to get harder from here. I fail when the pain is too much, and I need to think more about what it must have felt like up on that cross, bleeding to death in the sun.As I was down for the count the rest of the evening, I returned to watching episodes of The Chosen. It’s such an incredible series, entertaining, and it grounds me. I went back to reading my Buddhist books. I had gotten away from all that in these recent whirlwind times, and it goes to show you need to practice, you need to practice faith, to stay sharp. I have made my apologies, begged forgiveness, and feel refreshed and invigorated today, mind and body (somewhat!).Where It’s GoingDon’t fall for the psyops. You’re seeing our national anthem booed in other countries. We love our country, so this is hard. Use your mind, not your emotions. This is what Trump, Vance, Musk want. They want you to hate our allies. It’s a psyop to get you to embrace the enemy, Mother Russia. They’re not booing the real USA—me, you, most of us. They’re booing our “leadership,” and with good reason, as we’ve betrayed the free world to align with Russia, China, North Korea, and the other miserable dictatorships around the world.What we’re seeing is an extreme form of societal chemotherapy. Trump and his minions are going to subject “the rest of us” to extreme pain—financially, health-wise, emotionally. They’re taking away Medicaid and other resources with the full knowledge people will die. They want that. They want the bottom crust of society to die off because they despise those beautiful people. To the elite, those are the great unwashed, the “dirty” people in steerage, and they want them gone. At the same time, moving the middle class down to the lower tier of society, broken but at least somewhat cleaner. At that point the goal is reached—a two-tier caste system of peasants and royalty. Autocrat/oligarchs and people with no power. This is what you should be out protesting and defending against, for those you love, now and to come. Go through my posts over a year and a half as your guide. Prepper Jim Cobb has a new magazine out, a few bucks well spent.I promised some Biblical context. Listen, I’ve been all over the map in terms of spiritualism and religion. I’ve written about my journey plenty of times, particularly in my road novel Farawayer. I’m practical, I’m analytical, my nature is to be skeptical. I just feel there’s too much evidence to ignore, not to mention the cost too great. As well, faith can help you prepare for the times to come, right? Isn’t this all about preparing? We can buy all the things, train and practice, but we have to train our mind, our spirit, in order to endure, or it’s likely all for naught. It’s a secret weapon to get through the worst of things, mentally and emotionally. You don’t have to join a cult-like organization or practice inane rituals. Just—be good. Believe, have faith, it will carry you through, give you hope, improve your self-esteem, set a good example for others. That’s all. Start with those Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. They’re incredibly inspiring—the greatest speech ever given. Otherwise, the below might at least prove interesting from a historical perspective.So, what does the Bible say? It seems to be very relevant in these times, as we swing the door open wide to disease, war, lawlessness, climate disaster."This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled"—Jesus, Matthew 24“There will be epidemics of terrible diseases." Jesus, Luke 21:11“There will be an increasing of lawlessness"—Jesus, Matthew 24:12 “Mankind will ruin the earth."—Revelations 11:18The end times will include plagues, wars, persecution, and other destruction.The Bible speaks of great suffering in the end times due to our human path. This is referred to as the great Tribulation. Perhaps it’s all part of the plan. When times are this bad, the weak will cave and submit to the evil, disavow their faith, leaving only the most pure and faithful perhaps to move on to what is promised. Perhaps it will give evil folks one last chance to repent. For the rest? Perhaps back to another kiln, another forge, to further develop, if that’s even an option at this point. Maybe this is the final deciding, maybe we’ve blown our last chance, after other Biblical resets like the Great Flood. At least, on this planet as it might not survive what’s to come either. We’ve reached a technical evolution, where one lunatic can press a button and wipe out a good part of the planet, just at the time we’ve lost our morality and ethics, which makes it all the more likely it will happen.In my Vigilante Angels noir crime trilogy, I wrote about the rise of a politician-as-antichrist and a cancer-ridden ex-cop that decides to assassinate him for the sake of humanity. Is Trump the antichrist? Let’s look at some signs (here’s one of many in-depth analysis by theologians). In summary, from the paper I just linked (please read that great piece by Benjamin L Corey for much more detail!), the antichrist will be:* The leader of a military superpower with the ability to destroy the entire earth.—Daniel 7:23* Arrogant and known for giving boastful speeches.—Daniel 7:8, Revelation 13:5 * Someone known for making a lot of public threats against people.—Revelation 13:2, Daniel 7:4* Obsessed with winning.—Revelation 6:2* Someone who causes people all over the world to be filled with wonder after he receives a head wound that heals, and follow him.—Revelation 13:3* A political outsider with despicable character who wins an election unexpectedly.—Daniel 11:21 * Someone who gives speeches about “great things” that only he can do.—Daniel 7:20* Someone who comes to power through collusion with a secret alliance and who uses disinformation to help him win– even though he has a minority number of supporters.—Daniel 11:23* Someone who immediately fi

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Don’t despair—prepare.Preparing requires a healthy dose of crystal ball visualization. We procrastinate, think we have time to do all the things to get ready, and then, one day, click. The lights, internet, GPS, cellular networks are off, and the apocalypse is on. Don’t fall for that idea you have “time” to prepare. Zero day attacks mean you have zero days to prepare. The time is nigh. Pioneer UpdateWe’ve been offline for a bit, it’s been a hot minute and a very, very difficult time here in pioneer-land. We missed you! Giavana, Pia and I got word we could start moving into our phase two pioneer life small apartment earlier than expected. That means shifting our covered wagon White House RV to standby mode (rather than full time abode). We’ve been making that change through these last twelve days and of course, having to do it in the worst weather—snow, ice, sleet, heavy rain, strong winds. Thus, our incognito silence here on our journal. We’re back!It’s been incredibly hard. We’re not spring chickens. This has been the kind of stuff that would have, once upon a time, had me raise my fist in anger and ask God why? Why me? Am I so bad to deserve this? As if the weather was all about me—the arrogance of that POV. When we’re stressed, we don’t think right.Giavana and I soldiered forth through it all. We’re physically and mentally stronger because of it—that’s a blessing, not a curse. I’m writing this pioneer journal post from my “new” desk—an old and scarred (but solid) wood piece we bought for a few bucks at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I love it. I wonder who else has held this seat and what they may have written about over its long history.We have a single TV in this small shotgun apartment, which we both watch from our desks in the living room converted into an office space, and then simply wheel it around the corner so we can watch something light at bedtime.We’re on a higher floor—high enough for security, but not too high that we can’t escape. We have a view—another small mountain range provides beautiful sunsets and reminds us of the much larger one that looms behind our former woodland pioneer home. We still have access to that, and will be going to visit the White House RV and care for her today. She’s been good to us, and she will stand ready to house us again should the need arise, and it sure seems like that’s likely.BlinkWe took a break from our moving duress to watch the new hit series Zero Day, starring Robert DeNiro. It opens with a perfectly normal day—people talking on phones, commuting to work. Then, suddenly…blink.The phones go blankGPS guidance goes blankRailroad crossings, aircraft control, and traffic lights go blankThe electrical grid, water plants, internet are offGas stations and ATMs are offline and useless, no credit or debt card transactions can occurRemember—if this is an EMP attack, backup generators and power sources may not workImagine this happening at the very moment you are reading this post. What do you do? You can’t call anyone. You don’t know if your kids or spouse/partner are safe across town. Your neighbors are just as confused and scared as you are. Or, maybe you’re now out on a highway with everyone getting out of their vehicles. Or, maybe in a crowded store in pitch black darkness.Let’s go back to my opening. Take a moment now, in relative comfort, to crystal-ball visualize that scenario. You can take it to the bank there will be chaos and maybe rioting/looting as people panic, if this isn’t remedied in very short time. Does your current situation require you to fill your gas tank, or are you short on food or medical staples? Got milk? Good luck with that. These apocalyptic shows are dramatic, but we watch them because they serve an important purpose—they get our wheels turning. Where are we exposed? If you find you are, go back to our posts over this past year and a half to cover your bases in the important areas—food, shelter, medical, financial, energy. When the movie Leave the World Behind came out last year, we wrote about it in the same context. It’s worth a re-watch. What a fun, relaxing(?) way to prepare!There really isn’t time. This is not hyperbole, this is not clickbait, this is not a drill. Last week in Saudi Arabia, Trump officially aligned the United States with the “bad guys”—the world’s dictators, led by Putin. In all those incredible war stories of the USA past we’ve been the heroes, aligned with the forces of good against the forces of evil. Now we’re the bad guys, led by an aged, corrupt, lifelong con man and immigrant billionaire who’s mad at the world because his surgery “down there” went bad and sees himself as some kind of dark gothic comic book villain. We’re rushing headlong to WWIII, and on the bad side of history. Europe is forming up their own massive army primarily due to this fact—the USA is now on the other side. So far, the bad guys have always lost these big conflicts. Probably not this time, with the massive arsenal of the USA, but a lot of people will die, and right here on our soil. You, your kids and grandkids will likely be drafted into the meat grinder, and die far away from home.The problem was never immigrants, woke, or LGBTQ+ people. Trump has plenty of both groups at his resorts. Caitlyn Jenner, for example. Or, the leader of the far-right party in Germany that Trump and Musk are supporting, who is gay with a Sri Lankan partner. JD Vance had an Indian wedding and his spouse is from immigrants. Those things were only tools to agitate vast numbers of ignorant folks into voting. So, who was it that got us here? It was the folks who changed our society in one generation from one where a high school dropout like my Dad could take a job in a small manufacturing company, work weekdays 9 to 5 with a solid hour lunchtime, and provide a good home and car to our family while my Mom stayed home with us, to one where two college-educated spouses have to grind and grind every just to try to stay ahead, and still be told they’re “lazy and entitled.” It was the wealthy who did this to us. It was greed. And now, they’re in charge.Our democracy is being dismantled before our eyes, day by day. You can safely assume all of your personal information is now “out there” and accessible to the worst hackers world-wide. Freeze your credit reports at all three agencies, as we’ve recommended in past posts. You can assume it’s being used to train AI systems in a way that’s not going to be good for you and your family going forward. We’re looking at a government shutdown in a few weeks. The stock market had two very bad days to close the week. Science and medical organizations are being dismantled as we lurch into a new Dark Ages (narrator: the previous one did not go well). They may be trying to crash the dollar to force us all to crypto currency. They certainly seem hell-bent on destroying the middle class to create a two level caste system of peasants and royalty. Trump has even begun referring to himself as king.So, do your homework, pioneer readers/listeners. Visualize. Mitigate your exposures. Our favorite YouTube prepper, Kris at CityPrepping, said in his most recent post that in all his years of prepping, he’s never felt such a sense of urgency as he does now. We hear you Kris, same here.Now that Giavana, Pia and I are semi-moved in, our focus changes a bit. We’re looking at Meshtastic to solve half of the comms problem (communicating with fairly nearby family when everything is down). We’re ordering our indoor growing systems so we have our own fruits and vegetables. We’re adding more of everything to our prepper stores.Next up, we’re going to put all this in a Biblical context. It’s fascinating how many parallels and predictions fit these times, even if you’re not really into that kind of thing.“Well, I'm near the end and I just ain't got the timeAnd I'm wasted and I can't find my way homeCome down off your throne and leave your money at homeSomebody has to changeYou are the reason I've been waiting all these yearsSomebody holds the keyWell, I'm near the end and I just ain't got the timeOh, and I'm wasted and I can't find my way home”—Blind Faith, Can’t Find My Way Home“Soul shineIs better than sunshineIt's better than moonshineIt's damn sure better than rain”—Warren HaynesSo, this is where Giavana, Pia, and I are currently in our pioneer journey. Stay tuned! This pioneer journey continues…Hey, it took me a few hours to write this journal post for you. Can you spend a few seconds and post it on your socials or forward to others? If so, thank you!Free subscribers get a free copy of my book of short stories, Rambles and Daydreams. Paid subscribers will get all three books in the noir crime trilogy, Vigilante Angels. I no longer do paid-only posts, because it felt gross to leave people behind, especially those who can’t afford it.If you read my ramblings, I’ll leave it to your conscience. If you get any value from my writing, consider a donation or subscription, which is priced at a few dollars, the minimum allowed. Half of all money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses.You can also support me by becoming

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Don’t despair—prepare.Let’s talk about the rapid spreads happening right before our eyes, and more importantly what you should do to prepare and keep your household safe. We’ll talk primarily about three major, dangerous spreads—disease, danger, and fascism. We’ll break it down, the good, bad, and ugly, and then end with a burst of positivity.Pioneer UpdateGiavana, Pia and I continue to battle through a rough winter. Ice, wind, and snow are regular visitors, pushing our winter covered wagon RV preps to their limit. The elements all take turns with us, and every day it seems to be something. One small unattended crack in the foamboard surrounding our undercarriage allows the wind to enter and try to blow the rest of it off from the inside. Henrik the pickup went into a wild spin on icy back roads while trying to make my way home late at night from visiting my kids and grandkids. A few days ago I went out to perform my tank dumping ballet and slipped on a sheet of ice, performing a split. Splits aren’t good for arthritic 60-somethings. I’m still sore, and lucky. Winter is dangerous. This winter RV life is hard, but that’s the point. We’re now hardened. We pulled out a paper map yesterday and reviewed the lay of the land and possible emergency paths. Drill baby, drill.We’re just trying to make it to spring. We’re just trying to make it to our new home, the small rental we’ve talked about recently. After almost two years in a small RV all together, it will feel like a dream mansion. The extra room to store up more prepper provisions of water, food, and other necessities will make us feel safer. Spring is coming seasonally, but winter death is coming for America and maybe the world, there is no longer any doubt. Prepare.Remember in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, when the Shire began to be encompassed by the spreading darkness and evil from Mordor overtaking the land? That’s what this feels like, for all of us. Note: Good won in the end. It was tough and took a lot of work, but good won in the end. Don’t frown, don’t be down, get out on the ground.Spread of DiseaseIf you wanted to spread disease, you’d do what we’re seeing our new “government” do right now. Close up agencies that fight the spread of disease in impoverished places before it gets a chance to come to developed nations. Shut down the public’s awareness of the presence of disease, and ways to protect themselves from it. Push propaganda that causes people to doubt science and medicine. Put two con artist medical hustlers in charge of the departments responsible for our health, one of whom has had part of his brain eaten by a worm, and has a long history of drug abuse.In the last week, we’ve seen fresh, new video of schools closed down and their classrooms being sprayed with disinfectant by people in hazmat suits. Sound familiar? Schools in ten states have been shut down, due to “influenza” but this doesn’t seem to be “influenza.” It’s something else—something new that doesn’t register on any of the testing. And it’s nasty—very nasty. COVID-level nasty.Due to this new Dark Ages reboot, we’re seeing measles, tuberculosis, and other oldie but (not) goodie diseases spreading here in the United States, shamefully. Ebola is making a comeback in Africa. The Bird Flu is mutating and hopping its way from species to species, working its way to inevitable spread among humans. In the meantime, those birds fly great distances, and will infect many of the animals we rely on for survival—meat, dairy, and more.I was driving this week and a snow goose fell from the sky and bounced off Henrik’s hood. It felt like a Hitchcock movie—that’s what our lives have been reduced to. The CDC put out an important document about the spread of Bird Flu to household cats, but it was quickly deleted.Prepper Mitigation: Listen—way back before COVID, we all saw the occasional Asian person wearing a surgical mask in public. We saw them as quirky and over the top. As per usual, they were the smart ones. Giavana and I remember a guy on a flight diligently wiping down his entire area with alcohol upon boarding—before COVID. We thought he was odd, but not any more. We are that guy. We’re seeing more people wearing masks in public. Get over the stigma of “nobody else is doing it.” Screw that. People are wearing their pajamas out in the wild, who gives a damn if you have a mask on. The privacy reasons alone, in Trump’s new dystopian version of this country, is a good reason to do it. Do all the COVID things—frequent hand washing; avoid crowds; have your radar on for anyone who is showing any signs of being ill. Don’t rely on our supply chain for emergency meds. Grab a Jase Case as we just did. Stock up on disinfectants (with hydrogen peroxide), 91% alcohol, spray bottles, masks, test kits, therapeutics, preventatives. Our Oura rings are the first line of defense, early warning system, and awareness of what’s going on in our bodies. Spread of DangerI’ve talked before about how a lot of the security that makes us feel good is only simple theater. It’s an illusion. We always thought the Secret Service were badass, until a scrawny kid decided to climb up on a roof and assassinate a president, and damn near did. Same with the guy on the golf course a short time later. It was simple luck they didn’t succeed, not any of the billions we spend on protections and that badass facade of people in suits with earpieces.Same with the airlines. We’ve seen many examples lately of ordinary people sneaking on flights, despite the layers of security theater surrounding those planes we trust our lives on. We seem to have a goal to enrage every terrorist state even more against us as well as push away and anger our allies. We’re decapitating and demoralizing law enforcement and homeland/world intelligence and investigation agencies. Those two things don’t go hand in hand. Just like we likely won’t see the next pandemic until it’s too late, we likely won’t see the next big terror attack coming. Prepare.Trump dismantled the Aviation Security group, decapitated FAA leadership, put a freeze on hiring air traffic controllers when they’re already badly short-staffed and over-stressed. The result was predictable—planes full of citizens falling from the sky, more dead American citizens on our own soil. Just like when he dismantled our world-wide pandemic early warning systems in 2017, and over a million innocent Americans then died on our soil. I use “innocent” with a grain of salt here—those that voted for him, knowing he’s a life-long con man, I guess are not so innocent. Suum cuique tribuere—you get what you deserve.Desperation breeds violence. We’re about to see a whole lot more desperation. As Trump’s ignorant, violent supporters start to realize the pain they’ve brought on themselves, how they’ve been betrayed and lied to, they’ll likely rise up. People are rising up, and this will be met with violence from the government, as Trump has been dying to do his entire life. The loose coalition of this nightmare—the extreme Christian right, the billionaires, the MAGA low-lifes, will begin to turn on each other when that loose alliance unravels, as each jockeys for power. There will be anarchy, and that, unfortunately, means violence.This will all come to a head soon in some way, shape, or form. If Musk defies the court order to stop dismantling the government and stealing citizen data this week, we’ll be in a full blown Constitutional crisis (again). Emotions may boil over if the government shuts down next month over Republican inadequacy to put a budget in place.Our new heroes emerged this week. A group of white Nazi dudes appeared on a bridge over an interstate near Cincinnati, Ohio, and began hanging up Nazi flags. They were too scared to show their faces, ironically wearing those masks they had recently called “face diapers that didn’t allow them to breathe.” They wore guns on their hips—security theater cosplay badasses. Their mistake was doing this in close proximity to the hood. A band of brave brothers and sisters emerged from one side of the bridge, and the “badass” Nazis ran away like scared little children in their mini U-Haul. The good guys and gals burned those Nazi flags in primal celebration. Heroism by the populace. “They chose the wrong neighborhood,” one resident said. The cops stood by the entire time. Imagine it had been some Black folks with BLM flags. Imagine the skulls being busted in that alternate scenario. Prepper Mitigation: You are the security, nobody will save you, except your tribe. Take precautions, prepare. I’ve written journal posts here about how to do that—go re-read them. Train yourself and your family to be very observant of everything and everyone around you. Heads up, phones down. Always look for your shelter or exit points. Avoid trouble and physical confrontation. Far more dangerous times are ahead for you and your family. Do all the preparedness things we’ve been guiding you with for this year and a half of our journey.Spread of FascismThere can longer be denial—we’re already there. Our democracy is being dismantled before our eyes, with all guardrails lying smashed by the side of th

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.NOTE: We usually try to publish on weekdays, as that’s when we can get what we think is very important, life saving content, in front of the most eyes. But, this is too important to wait on, as the collapse is happening so very fast. Please help us out by sharing this to your network, while we have one, which is the point of today’s post.As the Trumpocalypse takes shape, the only good thing is we can start to see the strategy a bit clearer and plan accordingly. Sure, now that the tariffs are in place and a big part of our labor force is in hiding or arrested, we know the price of just about everything is going up radically ( OMG inflation!), layoffs will occur, stock market will crash, etc. We’ve been talking about how to prepare for that, if you’ve been paying attention. That’s the obvious stuff. What isn’t obvious? We’re likely about to undergo radio/network silence—a cut-off from any reliable sources of information. Think about that. No reliable news, social media or otherwise. Perhaps no internet, without prior approval, and only then only approved sites and content.Of course, there’s always the chance Trump will back down on the tariffs, chicken out, and falsely claim victory, like he did last week with the Colombia tiff. Even then, the damage is done, as far as the tariffs go. It could also be the plan all along—do tariffs to crash the stock market, buy in big on that dip, then back off the tariffs so they add ridiculous wealth to their already ridiculous wealth, in just a few days.What we need to focus on here is the coming complete information blackout. When NBC reporter Peter Alexander embarrassed Trump in his press conference about the DC plane crash, I turned to Giavana and said, “No way he’s going to continue to allow any serious journalists in these press conferences. What happens then?” Sure enough, the next day they announced replacing legit news agencies with the likes of Breitbart and all the unserious bro-caster Trump sycophants. Very soon, legit channels of journalism won’t have much to report, because they’ll be cut off from all sources of information. FOIA requests will be ignored and laughed at.Musk is clearly taking control of all sources of network communication. He’s pushing Starlink into our cell phone plans. It’s already dominant in our government. There’s a reason for that. This week, he did a hostile takeover of our government checkbook, the payment systems that send out all the Social Security, Medicare, tax refund, and other government money. Are you one of those people who foolishly far overpay your taxes every year as a “savings plan?” Don’t hold your breath waiting for that refund this year. If for no other reason, that the government is in complete chaos at every level. Musk is even attempting a hostile takeover of Wikipedia, a very common source of all kinds of information for the average American household. The goal is to turn it all into Soviet-style propaganda.Information is already being scrubbed from critical government sites like the CDC, FDA, and CFPB. Those sites are important to your health, safety, and money. To us, this exposed a gap in our preparedness. We’ve advocated and practiced loading up on paper and electronic books on prepping, medicine, field survival, etc. But what about everything else? We found the solution in this article showing how to download offline versions of not only Wikipedia, but important datasets/information on things like health/medicine, ham radio communication, prepping (of course!), even mindfulness/spiritualism/Buddhism. These are big downloads, of course (much smaller if you just grab the text versions without the multimedia). We now have them all. Problem solved!I’m still working on the ham radio license. It’s quite a bit to learn, as far as what’s needed to pass the license test. The resistance may depend on these alternate means of communication more and more. Your WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram apps are only as good as an internet or cellular connection, and those may be going away soon, or at least heavily filtered and firewalled to the Dear Leader’s preference. Sure, they’ll come after the hams too, but this is a particularly hardened group I wouldn’t want to mess with. If anyone will find a way to do comms, it’s them. For now, they’re down the priority list after internet, cellular, etc.There are protests forming up for this week, February 5, in all the state capitols. I can’t say it as passionately or truly as this guy in the video below. Please give this video ten minutes of your time (warning, a few passionate f-bombs). Subscribe to him. He’s also a comedian and quite funny!If you go to the protests, be careful. We need to stand up to tyranny, but be safe and smart about it. Here’s a good picture guide from the hacker group Anonymous.Try not to get down over all this. We know it’s not easy. Stay active. Fight back. Appease worry by prepping to eliminate things that scare you. We’re showing you the way, each and every week.Lastly, here’s an excellent five minute video from Bernie, the guy who had it right all along, who only ever cared about working families in this country. Imagine the life we could have had. Give this video five minutes, please. "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."—Martin Luther King Jr“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”—Franklin Delano Roosevelt“Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.”—Leo Tolstoy“Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.”―Napoleon BonaparteSo, this is where Giavana, Pia, and I are currently in our pioneer journey. Stay tuned! This pioneer journey continues…Hey, it took me a few hours to write this journal post for you. Can you spend a few seconds and post it on your socials or forward to others? If so, thank you!Free subscribers get a free copy of my book of short stories, Rambles and Daydreams. Paid subscribers will get all three books in the noir crime trilogy, Vigilante Angels. I no longer do paid-only posts, because it felt gross to leave people behind, especially those who can’t afford it.If you read my ramblings, I’ll leave it to your conscience. If you get any value from my writing, consider a donation or subscription, which is priced at a few dollars, the minimum allowed. Half of all money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses.You can also support me by becoming a paid subscriber below, leaving a small one-time tip at the button below, or by buying my novels at wildlakellc.com, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or other fine book outlets in paperback, eBook, or audio.Intro music is Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby.When you buy something using the retail links in our stories we may get a teeny tiny commission, but it never affects your price or our judgement in linking to products we use and believe in. It helps pay for the costs in providing this (hopefully) entertaining content. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit billydecarlo.substack.com/subscribe

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.It’s hard times here in pioneer-land. The extreme cold will not relent, causing a ton of daily battles for Giavana, Pia, and me. Now that we’ve made our big decision, the lifestyle seems to revolt against us. The sub-zero temps freeze our door closed overnight and throughout the day. Attempts to open it have resulted in a broken panel that now needs repair. Sinks have to be dripped overnight to prevent our water sources and tanks from freezing solid. However, if the drip isn’t just right, our grey tanks will fill overnight and spill out onto the floor—a flood. A few drips from the overhead AC unit caused a panic—roof leak, or just condensation? It would be a b***h to get up on that curved, slippery roof in this cold to try to fix that. When we move to our new location, White House is going to the RV spa to get inspected and fixed up so she’s ready to bug out if necessary.We had to reflectix all the windows, so there’s no sunlight, we’re blacked-in every day in this modern covered wagon due to the Siberian cold. Meanwhile, outside our cozy little Hobbit-hole, America is being dismantled before our eyes. TBH, it sucks. But, we’re tough. We’re going to pull through. America likely will not, which escalates our preparations. As promised, we’re seeing a flood-the-zone shock and awe campaign of horror to overwhelm you, get you to give up, tune out, and put your head in the sand. Please don’t do that.Several key areas of justification for this thesis are below, along with what we’re doing to prepare for it. Again, I’m not doing this for click-bait or to scare you. I’m hoping you’ll take heed, follow our prepping practices, and share this vital information with others.We’re All Going to Get Sick and DieThe good news is Giavana and I have now closed another very important hole in our preparations. I’ve commented that we have comprehensive and solid medical supplies, including good quality tourniquets, anti-clotting materials, etc. I’ve posted links in the past to what we bought. We just ordered another case of good quality NIOSH N95 masks.The big gap has been prescription only medical supplies. We’ve accelerated refills of all our scripts in order to stock up on those. Those are for problems we already have. The exposure is for things that might happen. We wanted our own little ER with antibiotics, antifungals, and more—the good stuff. We found Jace due to many rave reviews in the prepper forums we frequent, and our order is on the way. Whew. Problem solved, just as the anti-medical, anti-science regime is dismantling our public health and medical research infrastructure. WARNING: Be very careful about self-administering any prescription drugs. You can die. Giavana is an RN. We have several good prepper medical books to guide us (I’ve linked to those in the past posts). Jace also provides a free guidebook PDF. This tactic is strictly for emergency life or death conditions.In the first short few days of this dystopian new regime, our public health agencies have already been silenced—not allowed to let the public know about health emergencies or prevention. This, with several deadly potential pandemics on the rise. Remember when Trump said that testing was bad, because the numbers make him look bad, so he secretly sent all our test kits to his friend Putin? How many Americans died because of that idiotic move? He has paused science, halted cancer and other important medical research here in the United States, but disease marches on. Disease don’t care. If disease could be happy, disease would be ecstatic. Anyway, no more bird flu updates, and we'll never see the next pandemic coming.This is how you get to a place like North Korea, where all public-facing communication, run by the government, assure you that all is well and everyone is happy. Meanwhile, all around you, people are miserable, sick, and starving to death. Trump has also eliminated Biden’s legislation to provide lower prescription drug prices to families and seniors. Big pharma and all those lobbyists are ecstatic as well. Critical clinical trial studies at the National Institutes of Health hospital have been stopped. Those ill, hopeful patients will be sent home, their dreams crushed by this evil. The important studies lost.Mother Nature is Coming for UsAs well, we’re now throwing fuel on the climate crisis. Thumbing your nose at Mother Nature has never worked out well. It’s colder where we are than it is in Siberia. There’s snow in Florida. The oceans are boiling. California is burning. Tornadoes are springing up unexpectedly all over America and wiping out entire towns. This was a primary factor in our recent decision to keep our White House RV covered wagon loaded and ready to run, but move to a sticks and bricks small apartment. Given some notice, we could have hitched up the RV and fled, but sometimes you get no notice—such as with earthquakes, tornadoes. As well, roads will immediately be jammed. We’ll have options. Options are good. Because Trump has announced he wants to eliminate FEMA, so if your town is wrecked, you’re on your own. Insurers aren’t insuring. No help is coming. Prepping has never been more important. NOAA is also being canceled, so as with the next pandemic, you’ll likely never see the next cataclysmic climate event coming. Trump, his family, and his oligarchs will likely be safe far away, while you and your family burn or drown. I’m sorry to be harsh, but people better wake up. I don’t want this for anyone. I benefit in no way from scaring anyone. I’m trying to help. I’m trying to save people from this horror to come.I’m Hungry Mama, Ain’t Nuthin’ to EatOn top of the food shortages caused by climate disasters and bird flu, the idiotic decision to start rounding up 70% of our farm workers and send them away will be cataclysmic to our food supply. It’s already happening, as they’re not showing up for work out of fear. Food is rotting out there in the fields . At the same time, we’re alienating and threatening the allies that we buy food from. In response, they are rightfully threatening to cut us off, just when we need them most.We’re going into growing our own stuff mode. We’ll report back on what products we select after our research. As well, with the new tactic we’ll have much more room to stock up on MREs, freeze-dried prepper stores, canned goods, water, ammo, and much more.War and Draft Cards are ComingDesperation leads to war. Given the above, we’re going to be big desperate. Got loved ones, male or female, ages 14-40? There’s a good chance they’ll be drafted at some point in the coming years into Generalissimo Trump’s meat grinder war. You can take it to the bank his kids, Musk’s kids, will safely be far away.This is much more likely as of yesterday, when our Congress put an alcoholic, abusive, cheating, party boy news personality in charge of our nuclear stores, trillion dollar budget, and three million people in the military and Defense Department as a whole. The guy who has only run two micro-businesses in his life, and shamed, bankrupted, and ran both into the ground. He’s there to do whatever the Fuhrer says to do, which is incredibly dangerous to all of us and those we love.To make this scenario worse, we’ve alienated our allies. We are a pariah to the rest of the civilized world. Our enemies, who Trump stupidly thinks are his friends, are salivating.Due to the possibility of war and nuclear or EMP strikes we’re looking at Geiger counters, radiation suits, and building or buying faraday cages for our sensitive critical electronics. We already have very high quality gas masks and CBRN filters. I mentioned that I’m working on my ham radio license. We’re also looking to add a shotgun to our arsenal. It’s a very good means of close-range self defense.Yes, We BrokeLast night, Trump illegally fired the inspectors general in charge of reporting fraud, waste, and abuse of our government agencies. Of course, that’s so the fraud, waste, and abuse of he and his minions are not reported. Last time he was in charge, these agencies reported their excessive and egregious spending on furniture sets, travel for their families, and so much more. This will result in massive additional deficit spending, but of course, it will never be reported. We’ll never again know reliably how much in debt we are, until our creditors swoop in and take us over without a shot being fired. They're using military aircraft to send a few dozen undocumented people at a time back, at a million dollars a flight cost to taxpayers, just for show, when there are far, far less expensive options.Trump is already demanding the Fed lower interest rates to make him look good, and make people like him who live on debt more rich. The results of this kind of intervention will be catastrophic to our economy, especially combined with the inflation the tariffs will cause. The stock markets are already at a red-warning level bubble. The amount of job loss could be irreparable.Of course, most of this is being done out of hatred for anyone who isn’t white, straight, male, wealthy, and Christian (fake or otherwise). Much of our government is being eviscerated to pay for the massive tax cuts for billionaires to come, and for Trump and his oligarchs to plunder the rest. See the chart below. 95% of us will pay more taxes under Trump’s new t

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.There are waves of storms coming in the next few days. Lots of different types of storms, none of them good. Let’s talk about ways to prepare, and best practices for each.It’s going to be hella cold (up to -6F without wind chill) here in pioneer-land this week, with a big snowstorm coming tomorrow (Sunday). We’re going into extreme mode—wrapping our covered wagon RV windows and that problematic outside above ground well riser pipe/spigot with Reflectix. We’re bringing our small propane tanks inside (not the big ones outside that we rely on—we’ll wrap those). Battening down the hatches! If you read our last post, you’ve learned about our big decision. But, that is later. This is now. Have you ever noticed that once you make decision to move on from something, you only see its hardship and flaws? It’s a thing we battle these days, especially with everything in general getting harder. Stay tuned for how we weather this storm in the next few days!Tonight at 8pm eastern, there’s allegedly going to (finally) be a full-disclosure event in the UAP/UFO/Alien world. On the NewsNation network, Ross Coulthard will host a former US Special Forces operator who participated in the long-discussed (see my former posts) NHI (non-human intelligence) alien spacecraft recovery unit—complete with video. If it’s undeniably believable enough, it will be a profound revelation. Aliens exist. They’re here. What will people do? Freak out? Disregard? Meh? Don’t Look Up? What about God and religion? How does this change all that? We’ve seen soft disclosure over the past few years (the release of the fighter pilot audio/video) and the recent UAP/drone hysteria). But, there was still enough vagueness for skeptics to put their heads in the sand and poo-poo the whole thing. Could tonight change all that? Are they here to help us avoid the insane dystopian chaos we’re running headlong into with intentional purpose? Or, will tonight be yet another nothingburger? We’ll see in a few hours!Then, if we manage to make it past the weekend to Monday, the pièce de résistance, the crowning of our first-ever man-child dictator king here in the United States. Let’s not forget, he promised several times, “dictator for a day.” After all the bended-knee pomp and circumstance, blatant sycophancy and toadyism on Monday, you should immediately see some attempt at dystopian raids to pull hard-working law-abiding residents of this country out of their safe haven churches, schools, and hospitals. This will infuriate other marginalized people and people who otherwise follow the teachings of their religion and care about others. Anarchists will rise up, protest violently and non-violently, and disrupt life in every way possible.Of course, this is just to make the magas feel better. It’s theater. Quietly, on the down-low, authorizations will be signed to bring a massive flood of Indian and African H1B and H2B workers to actually take American jobs and exacerbate corporate profits, CEO compensation, and stock buybacks. So, apologies, Bubba, there will be a lot more dark-skinned people speaking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while you’re buying your scratch-offs and PBR. All this could lead to enraged Bubba mass violence, akin to Jan 6.There should also be some immediate (or very soon) executive orders that will make the realization of “what we done” quite impactful to the maga crowd. These changes will not make their lives better, in fact quite the opposite. Too late, he’s already in, the damage is done, Lucifer is out of the bottle. They’re gonna be big mad. There could be violence. I’m quite sure the inauguration itself wasn’t moved indoors so much due to the cold (what a bunch of “masculine energy” woosies!), but Trump’s terror at the many credible intel reports on long-range sniper assassination attempts. When that happens, it will happen indoors, a small gathering, by someone familiar, and at close range.We’ll be in a much more dangerous place, as a country, because as of Monday, we’ll be cut off from critical intelligence from our partners around the world. Intelligence that could keep us from death or great harm. There’s no way the rest of the Five Eyes is going to continue to share that stuff with our new crew of drunk, corrupt, criminal, unintelligent, anti-democracy, and dictator-loving folks. No way. They’ll significantly water it down, if they help at all. We’ll be very exposed. Remember last time—a few days after taking office, Trump had Russia’s key people into the White House and leaked all kinds of extremely sensitive intelligence to them, which very much upset our allies that it put in danger. And that was just the first time out of many. Fun fact: he did keep our most sensitive military and nuclear secrets in the potty at his spy and cockroach-infested golf club. Don’t believe me? Read this recent Eurasian report of the top five risks the world faces in 2025.Let’s cut to the chase, the good part. What should you do to prepare and protect yourself from all the above? Here are some best practices, so to speak.Cold Weather: Take a walk around your house. Make sure nothing is connected to your outdoor hose spigots. Temporarily insulate any exposed basement windows. Drip your faucets before going to bed. Wrap your indoor pipes, keep them warm. Wrap or insulate any you can’t. Have safe ways to heat your indoors if the power is out for an extended period. Test all your carbon monoxide and fire detectors - like now. If your car battery is due for replacement, do it now.Violence: Stay away from crowds for a while. Be gray, bland, boring. That “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Kamala” bumper sticker might feel good, but it could get you killed. Cook at home, order in, keep your eyes up (not on your phone!) at all times. Always position yourself near and be aware of emergency exits. Don’t engage in arguments, it’s not worth it, you won’t change anyone’s mind at this point, only their suffering will.EMP/Power Strike/Outage: Regardless if it happens through extreme climate weather, a solar coronal mass ejection, an enemy starting their first strike with an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) bomb, or other, you should always visualize one thing:The power suddenly goes out, and stays out. No heat, no internet, perhaps no cell coverage, no gas stations, no ATMs, no refrigerator, no cooking, no air conditioning. Are you ready for that? Do you have food? Do you have alternate ways to communicate with anyone in your immediate circle that you might be away from, at work or school? To get the latest important community news, weather, police, traffic, weather updates? The best practices there are to mitigate all those exposures, using the ways I’ve discussed over and over in this pioneer journal. They are too many to list here, I’ve spent a year and a half documenting them and providing links.Here’s a sample of our thinking on a deeper level. We worry that the incoming administration is already crapping on and insulting our world-wide allies and about to do a whole lot more. They’re pissed, and talking about retribution. Canada has mentioned cutting off the critical food and energy supplies to all of the northern US. What if the rest of the world decides to disavow the dollar standard, as they’ve threatened to? As well, the tariffs and other draconian and stupid things this administration is talking about crash the dollar? Your cash is trash, at that point.We’ve already moved to cash and bonds, and out of the stock market. If the dollar crashes, we’re still screwed on that front. That’s why we started moving into crypto and (mostly) silver and gold coins. There are risks with those things, too. Crypto is imaginary money that could vaporize easily. It requires electricity and a network. When it’s viable, it’s a good means of doing business with folks who may have important (and illegal) resources. In the immediate aftermath of a stuff-hits-the-fan (SHTF) scenario, nobody will want gold or silver coins to barter/trade. They’ll want more important stuff like medical supplies, food, water, ammo, and information.Even putting yourself out there to barter for things will be dangerous. You could get easily robbed/killed, negotiation over. It all boils down to making sure you have a good strong supply of all those things, that you are self-sufficient. If you can get past the initial phases of disaster or societal upheaval, you may then get to the stage where there’s enough rebuilt society or infrastructure to do bartering with initial, basic currencies such as gold or silver coins. Our hybrid move in the spring to fixed shelter plus RV will allow us to store up a ton more stuff and hunker down for longer, if possible.Death: What if we don’t make it? What’s the best practice for that? I’ve documented my spiritual journey here before. I was a devout kid, then (mostly) an unbeliever in my very hard Farawayer days. I was always thinking it through, though. Analyzing. Re-reading. What makes sense? What checks off and explains the questions and concerns most accurately, as in Occam’s Razor? A profound reading was After, by Dr. Bruce Greyson, among other similar works, both pro and con that point of view.You don’t have to join a club or cult to have faith. Think of what that word means—faith. What’s the down-side, compared to the upside? I’ve cover

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.I knew things had changed when, as we settled into the darkness of our pioneer wagon sleep cave for the night, Giavana suddenly raised up from her nest of pillows and smacked her hands together violently, scaring the bejesus out of half-asleep little Pia and me.“What the heck was that about?” I asked.“Spider,” she said calmly, getting up to wash her hands.I sat in shock and awe as I watched her exit through the barn door toward the bathroom. A year and a half ago, when we started this pioneer life, the mere idea of a spider in close proximity would have sent my Italian former Playboy bunny city girl into hysterics.It was an epiphany. Things have changed. There was further evidence the following weekend, as I went on a trip, leaving her behind in the covered wagon RV. It’s winter, and a damn cold January so far. While I was gone, a few typical malfunctions occurred. The furnace went out, and the water froze up. Incredibly, she dug in, troubleshot, and fixed both problems on her own. I guess she had to, survival and all that, but I was only a phone call away. She fended for herself, and I’m damn proud of that pioneer woman.We’re working on survivalism, we’re preppers, and you need to become self-sufficient to survive. When the stuff hits the fan, you can’t simply call a repair person. You need to understand how electrical, plumbing, sewage, and other systems work at a fundamental level, and fix them yourself.We’ve had some discussions lately, over cafe breakfasts and our favorite simple home-cooked dinner of chicken, onions, and peppers fried up in a pan of olive oil and wrapped in wheat tortillas with some excellent salsa.If you go waaay back to Project: Pioneer #1 from August 2023, our original thesis for making this drastic change, selling all our stuff and moving into a small RV, had a few points such as:* We were too spoiled in our big ol’ house with all that space we rarely used, filled with crap we rarely used, and yet paid to heat and air condition all year round.* COVID and Trump v1 were wakeup calls. We saw a good chance another pandemic would occur, and perhaps Trump would return and this time achieve his lust to end our democracy and turn this country into a dystopian hellscape, perhaps start WWIII.* A climate disaster or world war/nuclear strike would force us to flee, with no plan and no resources. Our home and land, a significant part of our overall net worth, could become worthless (or seized by an out of control autocratic government).When I frequent the prepper communities, I see a lot of people reading the books, following the blogs, and piling up a lot of survival gear in their McMansions. If you’ve watched any of those reality shows where people are suddenly thrown into a dire survival situation, you’ll note that it’s a whole different ball game. You need practice.So, we sold our house at market high, and moved into an apartment for a time as we sold off our things and formulated our plan. In August 2023 we pulled the trigger and moved into a (way too tiny) RV. A very simple, minimalist life, year-round. Dealing with extreme weather, predators, threatening and perhaps dangerous people out in the woods. We learned in our year and a half that we’re just fine in very, very close quarters (that’s amore!), and how to maintain our small covered wagon. That box is checked, we feel. Our year-and-a-half-long special forces boot camp has served us well. We’re far more hardened than before. We feel we’re ready—far more ready than most, at least. I knew it the moment that spider bit the dust (although, I’m more of a catch and release type person—baby steps, Ms Giavana).Along the way, my health has continued to decline. I had a heart procedure, causing Giavana to have to care for me here in our pioneer covered wagon. I didn’t like that, because I felt exposed. We were exposed. This life is hard enough. Now I’m due for two more surgeries this year, which will basically take away the use of my hands for most of the year, not good for pioneer life. I have a looming AAA (ascending aortic aneurysm) that could take me out in a moment’s notice.And so, our decision. We’re keeping this beautiful rigged-out tiny home White House RV on standby, ready to hitch up and turn into our escape pod at a moment’s notice. This spring we’ll move into a quite small apartment, more tiny home living, but it will feel like palace for us. I’ll be near the hospital, crawling distance again. Good for survival. We’ll be able to store up far more food, water, and survival gear—a huge bonus. We’ll have access to our few remaining prized possessions—clothing, books, turntable/music again (those are in a very small storage unit), good for our mental health. They say a rolling stone gathers no moss. This will be around our tenth move in our years together, which don’t number much more than that, for reasons both known and likely unknown to us.Make no mistake—we’re not bailing, we’re not quitting. We love this simple pioneer life. We love our cozy little home, which we are fully acclimated to. But, for all the reasons above and below, this is the more strategic decision. We can’t become complacent—we have to continue to explore and practice other aspects of what surviving in the future might entail. This move allows us to explore those other scenarios, and solves some pressing problems.We’ll have options. If there’s a disaster, we’ll have strong shelter, perhaps enough to formulate a plan or just stay put. A fast, zero notice bug-out will entail taking our priority one items and stuffing them into the bed of Henrik the pickup truck, and bolting. A more dire and permanent looking scenario will entail the same, but hitching up the White House RV and bugging out. We like options. In any of those cases, we’ll be self-sufficient for quite some time, perhaps until help comes. Waiting for Godot, so to speak. We will be ready, because we practiced. We know this life.I was always a bit concerned because we were exposed with our original phase. If a sudden disaster hit, such as an earthquake or tornado, and we had no time to leave, we’d have been in big trouble in this flimsy tin can. Now we have the best of both worlds in phase two. This is what concerns me about the homestead fixed-location preppers—if they’re forced out of their comfortable established hard-wired setup due to war conditions, climate disaster, or other, what’s Plan B? They’re kind of screwed—forced out into the open, the unknown, and very exposed.So, the focus now goes to that new phase, along with our other priority one items—ham radio license and setup as well as learning indoor and outdoor small-space gardening, which we had zero room for in this RV life. We need to get to the shooting range more regularly. We will still be prepping, and from a perspective that will be much more relevant to many of you out there, so stay tuned! We already taught you all the RV stuff. But first, we have to make it through this cold unforgiving winter. Perhaps there are more lessons on the way. We also have a lot to look forward to. We’ve booked our trip out of the country to hopefully finalize our second citizenship—another escape-pod lever to pull in the coming dystopia. That one has been a lot of work and a long time coming. We like to have options.In our current phase of pioneering, we’ve been pretty much fixed-location. We got to practice battening down the hatches, hitching up, and moving twice a year as we migrated between our summer and winter RV sites. Cool. But, we always had the luxury of connections to electric, water, and sewer. In this next phase, we’ll be practicing boondocking and dry-camping on some spring, summer, and fall trips. This will force us to rely on our solar setup and water collection systems, which will be excellent practice. This is the practice we’ve been missing out on. Everything needs to be practiced, because when the stuff hits the fan, mistakes can be deadly.Make no mistake—hard times are coming, and probably pretty soon, as in about a week from now. The Trump regime is likely to take a wrecking ball to our country and world order. We were at the precipice of a strong future, keeping the peace and reversing climate damage, and we took the other option. These promised changes will make everything worse—the complete climate crises we’re seeing regularly, likely the promised war (will your kids/grandkids be drafted into the meat grinder to die for the billionaire class?), financial crisis, and more. The water is already boiling in our frog-pot—we’re already there. Just ask the people from California, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and countless other places who suddenly have no home. And that’s just in the past year or so. Are you understanding yet? We’ve passed the tipping point, and we’re already there. The time is nigh (or rather, now). Prepare.We went to the new Dylan biopic movie this week. It induced a slew of nostalgia and emotions. All that time ago, the young people of America and the rest of the world knew that we were damaging the earth, the climate, and heading for disaster. They knew the war was futile, wrong, and working-class American kids were being fed to slaughter in Viet Nam to feed the military-industrial money machine. It was a simple time, before we were all brainwashed to have our faces stuck in

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.A slow-moving stream turns a water wheel, which then powers the gristmill’s grinding stones to turn grain into flour. The wheel of time also turns, slowly, ambivalent to the follies of mankind. History rhymes, repeats, the same lessons having to be learned again and again, as they’re easily forgotten in the fog of memory.Throughout history there are countless occasions of greed and power run amok, mostly through the deception of the working class by the ruling class. In a recent post, I mentioned the Secession of the Plebeians back in old Roman Empire times. In this country, the USA, we’ve seen several cycles of this.In the 1700s, when British colonists had had enough of a greedy king back home, they held a Tea Party and bloody revolution for their freedom.In the 1800s, when the decent people had had enough of the horrible human and financial abuses of slavery, they revolted, and we had a long and bloody civil war.In the early 1900s, Upton Sinclair’s bloody exposé on worker conditions led to changes in workplace safety.The gilded age of runaway capitalism and abuses from the 1870s to 1890s was exposed by a Mark Twain novel of that name. It featured prosperity for the wealthy and runaway corruption, exploitation and poverty for the working class. This culminated in the big stock market crash of 1929, the following depression, and resulted in reforms after workers rose up, held strikes, and formed unions. Those changes led to a balance in wealth/equality distribution, and a prosperous middle class where one non-college educated wage earner could provide a comfortable standard of living to a family while a spouse/partner kept the home and cared for the kids. Ironically, that was the true golden age of America the MAGAs visualize when they talk about making America “great again.” All except for thoseDark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.of course. America was great then (except if you were a minority, gay, or female).Then came Reagan and the return of monstrous, excessive greed. The Empire Strikes Back! The Social Security system was raided in Reagan’s Great Heist to pay for a big tax cut for the wealthy Got deja vu yet? Union busting took away worker power. Deregulation led to poor product safety and greater profits. Antitrust regulations were ignored to smash competition and create monopolies. The two Bush Presidents, as well as Trump v1, continued this march, resulting in several catastrophic economic periods that left the economy and middle class in shambles, to be rescued and rebuilt by Democratic Presidents each time. Nobody was ever held accountable for the countless lost homes and jobs from the 1999 Dot-Com Bust, 2008 Financial Crisis, corporate bailouts, the raping of the treasury with corrupt COVID-era PPP loans to politicians and the rich, the 2017 Tax Cuts for the Wealthy that cost us actual taxpayers (and our future generations) another $7 trillion. And they’re queuing up V2 to launch quite soon.Four years ago yesterday the misled, gaslit working class rabble rose up and rioted because they were told their hero, an extremely corrupt lifelong con man with many bankruptcies under his belt, had actually won a free and fair election. He was that guy who was going to (finally) do something about…Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.A few months ago, they rose up again and re-elected him President, believing he would actually fulfill his promises this time, particularly the one about making their eggs cheaper and do something about…Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.Now that Trump is officially on the record, before even day one of his presidency, and it’s become clear that he won’t be doing any of that, the rabble is stirring again. Especially since he’s sided with his billionaire friends in regard to actually bringing in planeloads more of thoseDark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.from India and Africa on H1B “indentured servitude” visas to take jobs from their white American kids. Trump and his billionaire pals love H1B and H2B workers and fill their businesses with those cheap-labor American-displacing workers. It’s very good for profit!There’s a recent, excellent post by Thom Hartmann that puts this historical trend in context of predator and prey. I highly recommend you read it!The above are examples throughout history of people being screwed over until they just can’t take it anymore. To get to the point of this post, that’s when the fun starts.A guy fed up and in pain from being screwed over by massively profitable health insurance companies run by folks that make tens of millions of dollars (and use AI to reject claims) goes and kills a CEO. Now he’s a folk hero, with massive donations to his legal fund.A US military veteran fed up about trying and trying to get ahead, being held back by his skin color, creed, and other factors, rents a pickup truck and mows down a crowd of people to make a statement.A Trump-loving white military guy rents one of Musk’s crappy cyber trucks and blows it up in front of one of Trump’s crappy hotels. Why? Perhaps he heard that it had just come out that Trump wasn’t going to do nuthin’ about…Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.How bad will the class warfare get in a few weeks and beyond? That’s when we’ll turn the keys to our almost 250-year old democracy to a gaggle of the most corrupt, greedy, working-class hating folks on the planet.How bad will it get when those tens of millions of Mr & Mrs Bubbas see that not only have their egg and gasoline prices doubled, but those…Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.have actually multiplied like rabbits due to H1B and H2B visas. And then, on top of that, the Musk-promised “time of pain” when they crash the stock market (to make big short bucks), driving massive layoffs. The Trump Bucks checks won’t be coming this time, kids.The rest of us are already mad. We know the truth of what happened in the last administration—all the massive corruption, theft of taxpayer dollars, criming that went on. We know, because we haven’t been watching the gaslighting channels. Wait until the rest of ‘em figgers it out. Them folks is heavily armed. They might then start to take note:That wall never got built, and Mexico didn’t pay for it. He never locked her up.There never were any caravans of murdering, raping immigrants. No pets was ate.COVID wasn’t a hoax. Never went away in spring. Countless Americans died from the lies.The deficit wasn’t eliminated, as he promised, it was jacked bigly.He didn’t bring back the coal industry, steel jobs, or those auto plants he said he’d save, or even that Foxconn plant he promised. There was no 4% GDP, as promised.There was never a big, beautiful healthcare or infrastructure plan.And worst of all, nuthin’ was ever done about them…Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.Wait until the part when they say they need to make big cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment/food benefits, and more in order to “get us out of trouble.” When they find out the lobbyists are responsible for newly exposed lies like how a glass of alcohol a day is good for you, when really it’s a contributor to cancer. When they figure out all the poisons put in their food to make their children addicted and sick, and even more with additional regulation slashing.They’ll be mad when they realize that all along it wasn’t those people crawling across the Rio Grande River with only their kids and clothes on their back that was the problem. They were only coming for slave wages and jobs and to pay $70 billion in taxes for services we get to use, not them. They were coming for the jobs the billionaires were dangling. They spent their lives in hiding, not raping and murdering. They were really…Dark skinned people are talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.But in reality, they’re more like Bubba’s family than the billionaires Bubba just put in charge of things. Just trying to survive, just trying to give their kids a better life. Bubba will sure be mad when he/she figures this out.The rabble will realize they shouldn’t have focused on immigrant pay, they should have wondered why, not too long ago, CEO pay was 30 times average worker pay, now it’s 3000 times more. That’s why your stuff costs so much, bruh. That and stock buybacks, another fun capitalist greed tactic. See below.How about when they realize it wasn’t the welfare queens they should have been condemning, but corporate welfare? Wait until they see that billionaire-led “efficiency” team ignoring these massive lobbyist-inspired corporate welfare giveaways while taking away their Social Security, healthcare, veteran’s benefits, and unemployment. Lookee there at that list below—$16 billion of your taxpayer money for a company that makes a

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.Simple things, comprised of just a few working parts, are subject to more immediate and catastrophic failure. Complex things often fail more slowly—and in stages. They’re tough to bring down, often with fail-safe mechanisms and backups. When they do it’s often a result of a number of dominoes tipping over, breaking, then weakening others, which then fail in turn. The disaster movies like to show things happening fast, because, well, they’ve only got a few hours to tell the story. In reality, it happens in slow motion, under our radar, as we’re seeing in real life. This is why we prepare, here in pioneer-land, and why you should too. Keep in mind, most prepping is simply to buy time. To survive in the below circumstances requires a different mindset—sustainable, minimal, self-sufficient pioneer living.Think of our financial industry and system, which collapsed in the 2008-2009 crisis. The warning signs were there, but nobody did anything, because they were all making so much money. They correctly assumed the taxpayers would bail them out, and nobody would go to jail for that massive fraud on the working people. It’s strong incentive to rinse and repeat, no?We’re currently seeing a slow collapse with much worse consequences. Our pioneer journey in this past few years has been all about the realization of those facts, and preparing for the inevitable. There is nothing new under the sun. All resources are limited. Contrast this to our increasingly voracious consumption. We’re gutting the insides of this sphere we live on, faster and faster. Drilling the oil out of it, fracking (through massive underground explosions) the gas out of it. Strip-mining the mountains for precious minerals and metals. We’re pumping ever-more water from beneath the ground to deal with droughts. Those resources are limited and our consumption is ever more voracious. A hollowed-out planet is not survivable. The oceans are so, so hot, and the massive ice sheets are melting—slowly. The sun gets hotter, droughts happen, farmers can no longer grow food. There’s no fuel for their farming equipment. Dominoes. I mean—what could possibly go wrong?Yes, we have renewable energy sources like wind, sun, and water power. However, the means to use them requires building things to harness that energy. Building things requires metals and minerals, which are in ever-shorter supply. The richest place to find them is in the mountains of China. China just announced it will be hoarding those things, preventing their export. It’s no wonder. They see this coming. We use those precious resources for our computer microprocessors, which are used for our defense, commerce, basically every aspect of our lives now. There is very strong evidence we are heading for the slow but eventual collapse of human society on this planet, likely in our lifetimes. And yes, it’s true we could otherwise have a sudden and catastrophic collapse due to nuclear war, CME/EMP/solar flare, meteor strike (again!), alien invasion, etc.And that’s just the impending climate collapse. We also have a climate of societal and political change both here and around the world—a swing toward autocracy driven by the massive use of media to control minds. That tipping point was probably crossed when Trump won in November. It could easily lead to nuclear war.Back to the financial aspect, greed is driven by the myth that “the stock market always goes up” over time. It does—until it just doesn’t. The next financial collapse could be a permanent one. World currencies are no longer backed by actual “things” like gold reserves. Like crypto currencies, “fiat” currencies are also somewhat imaginary now—money printed will-nilly. Crypto doesn’t seem to make any sense, yet it is exploding. The complexities of how financials work are now beyond most humans, so we’re at the mercy of those who do. (Narrator: Who also tend to be the most greedy and unethical among us. See: Trump, Donald and Musk, Elon).Our air and oceans are limited resources, and we’ve been slowly poisoning both for a very long time. There are garbage patches in the ocean as large as countries. The water is filled with microplastics that are now abundant in the fish we eat, in the rain that turns eventually into our drinking water (and that of the animals we eat). The gas and oil usage have created huge emissions of greenhouse gases that deplete the ozone layer, making the sun stronger, melting those glaciers, causing floods and catastrophic weather, bleaching the coral and killing off marine species—dominoes. If those glaciers and ice sheets melt enough, we’ll see a sudden and catastrophic release of methane gas. Fun times that will be. We’ve blown past our warming “crisis points” of 1.5C and 2C. The current favorite pastime of billionaires—joyriding around in spaceships, is causing a huge amount of atmosphere, water, and food poisoning due to the spent rocket fuel sprayed into our air.Out in space, we’ve (surprise!) polluted that environment with a massive amount of space junk (about 40,500 pieces flying around above us). It’s currently under the radar, but we’re very exposed to something called Kessler Syndrome—a chain reaction where one of these pieces collides with another, which then is thrown off its orbital path and collides with another, and so on. The result? An immediate and perhaps permanent loss of wifi, cellular/mobile phone communications, weather, medical devices, GPS navigation, and more. Think of the movie, Gravity, with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Some satellites are actually space weapons to knock out other satellites, as Russia is threatening, which could cause this immediately. Scientists have been warning about it since 1978, but we continue unheeded with space pollution. Because, the money. And note that out of the 10,000 functional satellites we use for the above, most of them are now controlled by Musk, Elon. What could possibly go wrong?As all this marches along, resources will become limited and in short supply. Food, clean water, money, fuel/energy, safe shelter, medicine, security. We’re currently playing musical chairs with all of it, rather than working on actual solutions. I’ve asked many times in this journal why people feel they need so much money. This answers the question. This is why. They will be able to afford the limited resources, and their survival will be assured. They know this. Everyone else, at least those not prepared, will likely perish in a very slow and unpleasant way. Class warfare (more in this in a subsequent post) will occur as people begin to “eat the rich” out of desperation. Assassinations of greedy rich people occur (oh wait, they already have). The point is, none of this is a prediction. It’s all, unfortunately, factual and already happening right before our eyes. MAGA found out this week, the plan all along wasn’t to remove those dark-skinned foreign-language talking people that trigger them at the QuickieMart. It was to add more, far more, to take American jobs this time (unlike the ones coming across the Rio Grande). Why? Because they’ll work for half the price and twice as long to escape India and Africa. The H1B Visa has always been about cheap labor, indentured servitude, and more profit at the expense of actual American workers and families.Nobody is coming to save us, because the people that have the resources to do so are busy making other plans. We comfort and placate ourselves with the delusion that the experts have it under control and will save us, just like in the movies. The truth is, the folks we think of, like the myth of Musk, are busy building ways to save themselves, through the accumulation of massive wealth and spacecraft to whisk them away to a nice, new, clean planet to ruin, while we all burn and drown. They get to deploy the only prepper bug-out that actually works under these circumstances—getting off the rock.What are Giavana and I doing about it? We’re learning to grow our own food. We’re studying for a ham radio license as another way of communicating and gathering critical information. We’re exploring homesteads, eco villages, eco communities of like-minded people who believe in simple and sustainable living, both here in the US and abroad. We’re doing all the things we’ve been writing and teaching you about for the past few years. And you should, too.Want to learn more about slow collapse? Please read this excellent post by The Honest Sorcerer.One last word—we lost a truly great human being and former President over the weekend. His life should be a model for us to aspire to. He was good, kind, ethical, and honest. He spent his life, well into old age, helping others with less. He spent his entire life fighting against racism, for equality, peace, and human rights. He was also an Allman Brothers fan! Rest in peace, sir."It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."—Charles Darwin"Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception."—Carl Sagan"Survival was my only hope, success my only revenge."—Patricia CornwellSo, this is where Giavana, Pia, and I are currently in our pioneer journey. Stay tuned! This pioneer journey continues…Hey, it took me a few hours to write this journal post for you. Can you spend a few seconds and post it on your so

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.T’was the night before Christmas and a lifetime of those memories come flooding back. My childhood excitement, harried parents rushing around in last minute preparation, midnight mass, cookies and milk for Santa, sneaking peaks at Dad downstairs putting together presents he thinks I think Santa has brought. Will I ever get to sleep so the morning can come?It’s the holiday season, religious holidays, specifically. Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, Bodhi Day. It’s not a time for talk of the things that stress us. We won’t be discussing politics, alien landings, pandemics, preparing, or the downfall of humanity today. Let’s focus on hope and giving thanks, and we’ll share with you a little of what our typical pioneer RV life is like, in case you should ever consider such folly. We’ll get back to that other stuff in our next post. There’s a world to save, after all.Today begins like every other day. We rouse from the soft, warm blankets of the sleep cave, through the sliding barn door that leads to the main cabin area of our pioneer RV home. We crank the furnace up and coffee burbles as it readies for our cups. I pull my jeans off a bathroom hook and don them so Pia and I can take a walk outside in the bitter cold. The new snow covers the bleak greyness of dead things with a pristine white sheet. It’s too early for humans to wreck it with their big truck tires.Back inside, after she’s devoured her healthy gourmet food, Pia hears me slide back the foil lid on my daily yogurt and steps up. She always gets to lick the underside of that foil clean. The news drones in the background and Giavana mutters and grumbles on the follies of mankind from somewhere inside her plush oversized robe. Sometimes this tiny home reminds me of those forts we’d build long ago, out in the woods. Often they were just cardboard appliance boxes—tiny but a secret refuge from the horrors of the world outside. A place for quiet. A place for hiding. A place to not be criticized or judged. God and nature and church alone in the woods with the other animals, safe from the adults busy out there wrecking the world in their retched behaviors.Yesterday it was below zero, and we woke to faucets that yielded no water. Something was frozen, somewhere. We went through a standard process of elimination, switching from the outside well water connection to the backup water tank in the RV underbelly. Bathroom plumbing needs to work early in the morning! That temporary solution worked, meaning our underneath tanks weren’t frozen, whew. Checking the app, we verified the temp down there is holding at 32F, despite it being much, much colder on the outside of the insulating foamboard. Elimination yielded that the vertical pipe coming up through the ground had frozen at the valve. I slid the tall rectangular foamboard cover off of it, grabbed Giavana’s rocket turbo hairdryer, turned it on max, and stuck it inside. A few minutes later, water gushed out, eureka, and now Giavana gets to buy a brand new hair dryer because that one is officially toast.Today’s adventure came when I went to dump the tanks. Our connection to the ground sewer must have frozen and cracked, as water gushed onto the ground. This is why you always test with the grey water before dumping your black water. A very smelly crisis averted. I’ll wait until Sunday to fix that, when it will be at least tolerably cold.Back to the warm inside again, I feel the soreness from my surgery a few weeks ago. The freezing cold to raging heat brings out the stiffness and itchiness, as I just had the stitches out yesterday. I had sat in the cardiologist office as he checked things over, making noises as he waved some gizmo over the site where the electronics now bulge out of my upper chest. My body is on Bluetooth, yay. I had thought this was the end of half my serious problems, leaving only the ascending aortic sudden-death bulging balloon aneurysm to fret about. Then he starts his own muttering to the assistant, pointing at the tablet and something disturbing, apparently. The big reveal is that there’s indication of new symptoms that the new device can’t help with, which could lead to stroke. There’s discussion of blood thinners. Great, more big pharma, which I’ve always avoided when possible.Giavana can tell I’m upset when I arrive home. We go over the news. She goes into loving-comfort-nurse-wife mode, suggesting we bail now, in our second year of pioneer life, and go back to our luxury apartment with nice pool and fitness center and best of all, within crawling distance to a major hospital, emergency room, and medical center. She suggests we also book some winter time near Siesta Key, a nice warm vacation getaway to the beach, which she knows is more alluring, exciting, and comforting than those oxycontin pills they’ve been giving me. It’s Florida though, certainly a cesspool of humanity, at least politics and disease-wise. The warm sand and a day at the beach, relaxing, reading, listening to music, are my crack cocaine.Did I say at the start we’d focus on being thankful? Despite that news, that’s where I go after I’m done sulking. Giavana has made me feel better with the possibility and hope of those things. She’s good at that, my lovely Giavana. I’m lucky to have her by my side. I’m lucky to have my kids and grandkids, to have and feel that love even when we’re apart. I’m lucky and thankful for the few but good friends I have and my very good life in these many decades on this crazy blue marble we all spin ‘round on—Spaceship Earth. We’re planning a trip to Italy in March, to check out what life is like in a civilized country where basic healthcare is a human right and children aren’t gunned down at their desks in school in support of NRA profits. We’ll be looking at properties—small villas in the countryside or ecovillages. After living in the Red House and White House, it would feel like a mansion. We have trained ourselves well.We should all be thankful for what we have, and remember there are so many with far, far less, living in strife and struggle. Giavana and I are blown away every day at the examples of people with immeasurable money who never seem to have enough, never spend much to help others, and aren’t really especially happy. Something very bad happens to people when they get to the point where they have too much money. I’ve seen it too many times to believe otherwise. Check out old Mr. Potter while you’re watching It’s A Wonderful Life on Christmas tomorrow. Prime example. There are exceptions, of course. Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife Mackenzie Scott has given away almost $20 billion to charities in the last few years. Ol’ Jeff just changed his residency from Washington state to Florida in order to save himself $1 billion in taxes and to avoid helping the state and country that gave him such wonderful opportunity, and avoid helping other taxpayers with far less.What I’ll leave you with on this holiday eve is to ask you to take a moment from the bustle and stress of this week. Think about all you have to be thankful for. There are adults and children starving, living outside in the heat and cold, all around the world, and amazingly, here, in the richest country ever known in history we have our own citizens living under bridges and on sidewalks, in dire need of mental health help. (Narrator: Ol’ illegal immigrant Elon Musk’s net worth is now close to $500 billion, mostly thanks to government subsidies and bailouts). Billionaire and Trump pal Dan Pena just released the most horrific, cruel Christmas video (warning, NSFW, F-bombs). We’ll talk about class warfare in our next post. People are spending the holidays with their kids in pediatric cancer wards, or worse in cemeteries visiting their loved ones. Be thankful for this life, and all you have. Talk to your kids about this when they’ve grown bored with all the new “stuff” after a few hours. Teach them compassion and giving, and maybe there’s hope their generation will learn to love one another.As for Giavana, Pia, and I—our Christmas is a simple and humble one. One small gift and one thoughtful, lovingly inscribed card to each of us from the other. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Our gift is each other and this life, day after day after day. And, Pia got a very plush new bed, which she is also loving very much when she’s not snuggled up with us in the sleep cave.“An awareness of one's mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life.”—Bernie Siegel“A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream?”—Fyodor Dostoevsky“Funny thing, watching gods realize they’ve been mortal all along.”—Pierce BrownSo, this is where Giavana, Pia, and I are currently in our pioneer journey. Stay tuned! This pioneer journey continues…Hey, it took me a few hours to write this journal post for you. Can you spend a few seconds and post it on your socials or forward to others? If so, thank you!Free subscribers get a free copy of my book of short stories, Rambles and Daydreams. Paid subscribers will get all three books in the noir crime trilogy, Vigilante Angels. I no longer do paid-only posts, because it felt gross to leave people behind, especially those who can’t afford it.If you read my ramblings, I’ll leave it to your conscience. If you get any value from my writing, consider a donation or subscription, whi

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.The old Chinese curse says, “May you live in interesting times.” Actually, it’s a myth, but quite pertinent. Remember way back on December 21, 2012, when we were all sweating because that was the day the ancient Mayan calendar had indicated the world would end? Whew! Didn’t happen. We missed one detail though—we’ve fiddled with the calendar so much since the Mayan times, some math folks are arguing the actual predicted date is in December 2024. On top of that, we’ve got world events that are very similar to those described in the Bible’s Book of Revelations as leading up to the Battle of Armageddon (more on this later). Lastly, the increasingly hard to deny UAP invasion I’ve been hinting at in our last few posts.People are losing it. Examples? Here’s one. A NJ woman on a forum discussing these drones was moved to expletives in her stress. So, another NJ woman told her to shut her #@^! filthy mouth. Jersey girls, gotta love them!Remember that movie Slapshot with Paul Newman? Apparently the Hansen brothers have retired and become one of our only legit scientific resources to understand this. Meet the Tedesco brothers, twin scientists from Staten Island. They’re awesome and providing a legit take on these UAPs.Things are a bit stressful out there. How does this all relate to our faith, and what exactly is going on? I have some theories. First, let’s do a fun exercise to get away for a while. Imagine this:It’s announced that we’ve found a new planet that’s rich with all the resources we’re running short of and greatly value—lots of rare metals for semiconductors, minerals, natural substances. But, the new planet is filled with many species of life, which are harmless in that they just go about practicing the natural food chain and cycle of life, eating each other. There is also some “intelligent” life but it’s very primitive, with basic tools and weapons.What would we do in this circumstance? We’d make regular forays—scientific expeditions, exploratory missions, mining and cargo operations to bring home the bounty. We’d probably want to stay off the radar of the primitives, lest they catch us off guard and hurt one of us or our craft. We wouldn’t want to upset the natural, ecological balance by messing up the food chain, as it might lead to the organic decay and destruction of the planet full of resources we so badly want and need. We’d keep going back again and again for a very long time, but certainly keep an eye on those rapidly evolving primitives and their weapons.When the Spanish Conquistadors arrived in the New World, the natives were in great fear and terror. They originally thought the mounted horsemen were one great beast with fantastic weapons. Same with the Native Americans that encountered the English and other Europeans with their thundering guns and cannons. Imagine those futuristic warriors if they suddenly encountered a brigade of modern special forces, with their tech from head to toe, flying machines and armored vehicles.We’re the bomb (no pun intended), aren’t we? We like to think so. It’s a human condition, called arrogance. In 1899, the Commissioner of the US Patent Office suggested closing the department down because, “Everything has already been invented.”Now that the stage has been set, here are my theories. SPECIAL OFFER: Print these theories, take them to Starbucks, hand them to the barista along with $7 and you get a venti latte.Theory One: VisitorsWe are those crude, ignorant primitives on that rich planet. Our visitors have been here for a very long time. It’s been quite well documented over the years, in leaked intelligence, military, and other government documents, pictures and videos. The government has gone as far as subtly acknowledging this, along with official video and pictures. There are countless clear depictions of craft and visitors from ancient civilizations around the world. And architectures that they just weren’t capable of building.It’s no longer up for debate. The visitors likely go about their business mostly undetected, but do get nervous now that the cavemen have nuclear weapons capable of destroying the planet, and get ever closer to using them. The visitors have shown up in force during nuclear power plant accidents (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima). They’ve disrupted our nuclear weapons capabilities on many, many occasions.Receipts? Read up on the 1964 Vandenburg Air Force Base Big Sur incident. Exactly a year ago, Langley Air Force Base in Virginia was swarmed with drones for over two weeks. Advanced F-22 fighters were grounded and moved away to other bases in a panic. It’s incredibly hard to believe this wasn’t a bigger deal.So why not just tell us? As I said above, they have been, in a very slow and cautious manner. They are acclimating us to this reality. If they had a big dramatic press conference, like in the movies, it would likely be followed by mass panic, rioting, looting, suicide—just like in the movies. This way is better. Although, it feels like the visitors are forcing their hand. Perhaps they’re doing this by appearing as something friendly and known to us—using the red and green navigation lights that planes do. This is how we acclimate animals when we’re training them, right? Get them comfortable with us. This knowledge is carefully held, even above Congress, the Gang of Eight, and the heads of our military branches. Organizations like Space Force and All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) were created simply to placate and misinform those voices in government and the populace and let the real players, like Immaculate Constellation, do their thing under cover.And yes, many “sightings” are regular planes and helicopters—large, small, commercial, military. You can verify that with the FlightRadar24 app. But, many are obviously not. By government and law enforcement admission, these are far beyond our known technology. They cloak, maneuver at g-forces and speeds we’re just not capable of, have no thermal footprint, and use frequencies we can’t detect. They stay aloft far longer than any current battery technology would allow (it’s not internal combustion like our big military drones or they’d have heat signatures). This isn’t JetBlue, sorry, kids.Fun Fact: There have been documented “drone” incidents like this since long before drones were invented on this planet. They’re not drones. They’re UAPs.These do look like regular craft, aside from it perhaps being a familiar alien mirage. That fact is a bit off-putting to me when I consider the alien angle. Of course, the aircraft we have are shaped a certain way simply due to it being an efficient way to travel in our atmosphere. Visitors may simply be respecting our standards in order to avoid conflict.The point is, they seem to get very nervous when we come close to blowing up our planet, the one they seem to need and treasure. There was the incident where schoolchildren had seen a craft land, and were approached by beings that communicated with them telepathically to respect the planet and go easy on the technology. There were really too many with identical stories to discount it. These visitors may see the impending takeover of our government by hateful, violent lunatics hell-bent on WWIII as not a good thing.There are tons of “experts” with YouTube and social media accounts who are basically grifters or tin-foil hat brigade members. It’s hard to know who to believe. More sane and practical information comes from Ross Coulthard’s Reality Check show (on NewsNation’s channel), and people with credentials such as Lue Elizondo (who just published a new book, Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs).Theory Two: The Gov’mintThe government has never been shy about using the populace for experimentation. See: Tuskegee Experiments, Agent Orange, LSD experiments on servicemembers, and so much more. This could be something like that. There are videos of them spraying something that smells like ammonia or chlorine. That’s scary.Perhaps it’s more of a social experiment. Overwhelm people so they’re already exhausted for the really big thing to come. Fear always makes the acceptance of authoritarianism easier. “Only I can fix it.” “Only I can keep you safe.” Yeah, Trump said that stuff. So did Hitler and others long before him. It’s a playbook, not a cookbook.It’s quite possible that these are highly-classified drones that are searching, sweeping for something. Perhaps there’s a dirty bomb snuck in and they’re thinking it’s hidden in water. That would explain the focus on bodies of water. They wouldn’t alert us, as it would cause a mass panic and chaotic evacuation, and yes, rioting and looting. Maybe it’s a Republican special op, looking for the rest of Hillary’s emails and Hunter’s other laptop.This government theory is tempting, other than these UAPs are also swarming our nuclear bases in the United Kingdom, Germany, and other nuclear sites, and have been for some time now. The only plausible way to explain that we have technology like this is that we’ve finally successfully reverse engineered the alien craft we’ve captured, as the Immaculate Constellation leaked documents and the 4chan leaker describe in detail. They describe attempts and failures, and very little success.We’ve all learned one thing from Trump. If there’s a big scandal, just wait it

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.Heyo! I’m still kicking—my surgery went well. A little sore, a bit worse for wear and tear but hopefully bought some time here, wherever it is we are. Good thing my good nurse Ms Giavana is in my life. She and little Pia are taking good care of me. I can’t use my left arm for much for six weeks, which sure makes everyday pioneer life more challenging!That CEO getting shot was a sad but important bellwether for these times. In our last post, we mentioned the Secession of the Plebeians in the old Roman Empire. There are countless examples over history of greed and lust for power, combined with the stepping on the necks of everyday people, grows to a breaking point.People get to the point in their daily struggles, see their beloved kids, parents harmed, maybe die, and just don’t give a damn anymore. There’s not much more dangerous than a vigilante human who cares not for consequence. It’s what my whole Vigilante Angels fiction trilogy was about—a dying ex-cop who has lost hope and is hell-bent to extract his pound of flesh before he goes to meet his maker.We had a recent long battle with the same company, United Healthcare, about an expensive claim they rejected that was clearly within their guidelines for coverage. It was horrible—they just kept trying to blow us off and make us go away, hoping we’d give up. This is what happens in a country, the only one, where you allow making people’s sickness and dying a for-profit venture.With all the dystopian harm that will come to people around the country when Trump comes in, based on his own promises, you’ll see a lot more of this sort of thing, unfortunately. It’s one thing to take the children away from parents who have just crossed the Rio Grande river with just the clothes on their backs. He’s promising to take away the parents and children of people who have only ever lived here, and are likely well entrenched in our culture of guns and violence.The anarchists will rise, both the non-violent disruptor/occupier sects and the violent ones. Margaret Killjoy’s recent piece here on Substack, I Hope We All Make It was incredibly sad (even more so when listening to the dramatic audio voiceover). She herself hinted at coming out of legendary anarchist retirement. Today’s young people have been through hell most of their lives, between school shooting terror and the trauma of COVID. Many are likely at that breaking point. They’re worried they’re growing into a broken and condemned world of increasing climate hell, not to mention not enjoying the freedoms that have traditionally been enjoyed by their own parents and grandparents. I don’t blame them for being angry about it.This election was the first profound example of the danger of massive propaganda allowing to flourish, of the mind control that results. Most of our populace rooted in false belief, despite the evidence in front of their lying eyes and ears. Young people may completely revolt against all of it, disavowing the corporate social media that’s poisoning their minds. All of this pain because a bunch of boomer snowflakes can’t tolerate being around people who don’t look like them, speak like them, love like them, worship like them. That’s essentially why we’re at where we’re at, with a lifelong con-man and wannabe dictator about to take the reins of our government, followed by his clown car of bizarre criminal sycophants.Fun story. A beloved old-school corner store/delicatessen in the sleepy burgh near us just closed down. Now a vape shop is going in, and the old maga boomers are losing their stuff over it. “OMG, there goes the neighborhood, what trash!” Same folks with the barrage of tacky blow-up, flashing LED, projection, gaudy holiday “decorations” plastering their homes, and rusted pickup trucks up on blocks in the front yard.Back to that CEO shooter. He’s reached cult hero status because so many average people have endured similar oppression by the billionaire class, and do every day in their struggles at work and home. So many have said, while seeing news reports of the ridiculous, insane CEO compensation, the penchant for not paying taxes, love of bragging about their wealth, and lust for more wealth, “I wish I could shoot that mfer…” Now somebody has. Apparently the CEO of Cartier’s jeweler/diamond company, worth $7.5 billion dollars, has said his biggest fear is “the poor rising up.”Which brings me to my next subject—security theater. When I was a kid, I read a lot of scary science fiction from under the covers of my bed when I was supposed to be asleep. I think Mom knew, she was well aware that I couldn’t help but read anything I could find, cereal boxes, furniture tags that should not be cut off “under penalty of law,” etc. She’d check in late at night to find me with the sheets pulled up to my nose, wide-eyed in the darkness. Then she’d turn the light on, check under the bed, and bring in a special anti-monster spray and hit the closets and other hiding places with it to placate me. I still remember the first time, as an adult, someone used Aqua-Net hairspray around me. “That’s the monster spray!” Thanks, Mom. And, these sick b******s want to take kids away from their loving mothers. Careful—moms can shoot too.The point is, the Aqua-Net was security theater—something useless that makes you feel safe. Most of the perceived security around us is simply for show—primarily to scare someone from doing something. In practice, it’s not anywhere near as effective as we dare to dream. You want examples, you say?* If a simple 57-year old woman can sneak onto a transatlantic flight, how hard to you think it would be for someone with actual stealth skills, and with malintent?* Nobody could stop 9/11. All those massive shiny new warehouses are an anarchist/terrorist dream. It’s almost impossible to stop a weaponized small drone.* If a scrawny kid decides he wants to shoot a Presidential candidate (or anyone else), and actually does, how hard to you think it would be for someone with actual skills, despite all those impressive folks with the earpieces?* They never caught the person who planted those bombs on January 6.* They still haven’t caught the CEO shooter. You may have seen the video of the pathetic search of Central Park by NYPD, where dozens of cops leisurely sauntered on the sidewalks, occasionally poking a bush at double-overtime pay, idly chatting about WTF is going on with the Jets and Aaron Rodgers. No wonder they missed that backpack in plain sight for days. 99% of humans shouldn’t be trusted with work that requires diligence, full attention, and where lives are at stake. Not these days, anyway.* Cops in schools, metal detectors, teachers with guns, and other “security precautions” haven’t stopped one school shooter with a military grade assault weapon, and never will.* Too many in law enforcement just simply and sadly aren’t the best of us. Many of them are in the newly trained vigilante militias that have been forming up, allegedly to help with this immigrant roundup and enforce border security. Too many were participants in 1/6. Once a group has that kind of power, they typically get out of control with it. Trump’s dream. His own brownshirts.* Despite all our trillions of dollars invested in tech, military-industrial gear and personnel, intelligence, satellites, our top military and law enforcement people can only stand in front of the cameras and say they still don’t know what these SUV-sized craft are. You know, the ones that have been hovering over our most secure military/nuclear facilities for weeks with impunity.“Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions,” you say. We’ve been doing that for over a year now. These are the reasons we sold our house and all our crap in order to become mobile and self-sufficient. It was a gamble, in case this exact thing happened. These are the reasons we have our own security/defense systems, food/water/energy stores, medical supplies, and more. We don’t want to scare you. This journal is a money-losing proposition, it’s not to make a click-bait buck. We are anonymous, not seeking fame or attention. We want you to survive, because if you’re the type of person reading this, you’re probably among the best of us. That’s who we’ll need for the rebuilding after this debacle to come has torn everything down.And so, another pioneer day ends. We shut down our projects and head to the sleep cave to nestle under soft, warm blankets together, all side by side, ensuring we’re always touching, secure and happy that we’re all together. Something distracting is chosen for pre-sleep entertainment, and we three drift away into the ether of dreams together, peacefully. Little Pia snores, but that’s OK. Love means tolerance.So, this is where Giavana, Pia, and I are currently in our pioneer journey. Next up I hope to get back to some ideas on spirituality, afterlife, and more positive, hopeful content. Stay tuned!“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormou

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.Winter has descended on our pioneer home and I very much miss those days of summer festivals. We installed our thermal door flap before the harsh cold arrived. It’s a simple but wonderful tool to keep the heat in and cold out as we go about our business. The thing I love most about it is the Native American teepee vibe it gives to our pioneer RV home. I boycotted Thanksgiving again this year in honor of those victims of our massive genocide.There are six of us families hunkered down on this hill for the winter. The mountain range looms behind us, a comfort. Bear and mountain lions have been spotted all around our perimeter recently; we can hear them at night. Pia is always on high alert during our early morning and nighttime walks in the dark. She does her business and trots back to the hut—”Let’s GTF inside, yo!” She hears and sees things we cannot. She knows danger is lurking at that forest tree line. Our pond and lake are frozen, and the beautiful shades of autumn are reduced to bare gray sticks, the scalp of an old man lying on the gurney, reaching, begging for just a little more life.None of us neighbors know much about each other, the code is MYOB. We mostly keep to our cordial selves and find comfort in that no matter what anyone’s political ideology is, when the hard times hit, when the power is out, and snow is deep, we’ll help one another despite all that. It’s a comfort, hope for humanity.We’ve posted a lot recently on prepping. We feel we’re as ready as we can be at this point—with still just a few minor touch-ups needed. Our big concerns have shifted from political violence (now that the Trumpies are placated; perhaps until they find out how badly they’ve screwed themselves…) to quickly evolving world war, the next looming pandemic, and yes, our new alien visitors. Not to mention sinkholes opening up and swallowing grandmas as we suck the oil and gas out of this balloon we live on.Your Next PandemicGiavana is a registered nurse and works in clinical trials. She pays attention to the medical radar the way I pay attention to the military/intelligence side. There’s some crazy stuff growing in our round blue petri dish at the moment. There’s a mystery disease rapidly spreading and has already killed hundreds. We don’t know what it is.These additional diseases are also growing and on the move: Monkey pox, Yellow Fever, Dengue Fever, H1N1 Bird Flu (now in dairy products, poultry, humans), polio detected in NYC waste water, measles on the rise, mumps, rubella, walking pneumonia, and whooping cough (450% increase in those last two recently). And we still have good old COVID-19 and flu. Winter is the worst time for this—the spread is fast as we all stay indoors, crammed into shopping centers and holiday gatherings. This is the worst possible time to elect and bring to power a group of low-IQ anti-science, anti-medicine clowns. RFK Jr went to Samoa when a measles outbreak started killing their children, and spread misinformation about the vaccine. Result: many more children died. “Dr” Oz spent his adult life ripping off people who just wanted help with his fake snake-oil remedies. Now those nuts will be in charge of your health; your kids’ health.I’m dashing this post off today because tomorrow morning I go under the knife—work on the ticker. One of our prepping suggestions is to take care of any planned medical needs and procedures now. I’m practicing what I preach, although I don’t have much choice in the matter. Fortunately, I have a very beautiful and wonderful nurse and caretaker in Ms. Giavana and my raggedy ever-present source of comfort and love, Ms. Pia.So, the question is—are you stocked on N95 masks? The products that we had such a hard time getting when COVID slammed us in a heartbeat just a few years ago? This includes all we’ve discussed in our last few posts, including and especially hygiene products, food, water, and medical supplies. Darwin is going to take his pound (tons) of flesh again, be prepared so you’re not among the victims.Crypto BrosI’ve been a crypto skeptic/naysayer but saw the light when I heard stories of those in dire circumstances using it to buy banned sources of medicine and transport. If you’re going to need that kind of underworld help as our nation descends into a TV-clown con man autocracy, you’ll need crypto to buy the goods and services you need.As I said, we’re not betting the farm on this. Just enough to maybe accomplish some of those goals. We’re putting our feet in these digital waters. I have to say it’s been hilarious, as Giavana and I, old people, try to navigate and learn up on this tech. It reminds me very much of trying to teach the elders in our family tree what the internet is back in the 1990s.“Put it in there!”“Excuse me?”“No, in the wallet. The crypto wallet.”“The coins don’t go in there; just the private keys.”“Where’s our coins?”“In the blockchain.”“WTF is that? Where my money at?”Yeah, we now crypto bro and crypto babe. I think we have this down now. Step by step, day by day. It’s good to have options, and we’re being careful to take a conservative approach and every possible precaution.Election ReflectionWe still hold out hope that something will happen before the Jan 20 inauguration. The math and stats around a lot of the results is just completely bizarre. But, unlike the cult, no claiming anything without substantive proof. We’ll see.Looking back though, what things might have made a difference? Kamala was incredible. We miss that joy and enthusiasm. Those planned policies to help everyday Americans, not billionaires. If these results are legit, this election was won on ignorance.Our average adult reading level is 6th grade. The Trump demographic (if you don’t trust me, just go watch the rally footage and attendee interviews, not to mention J6 footage) is primarily uneducated, bigoted, boomer white folk (yes, and very rich folk). These are people who have zero to no knowledge of how inflation and basic economics work. No idea how our long-broken immigration and asylum laws work. How shipping out a massive portion of our low-end workforce, those construction and agricultural workers, would cripple our economy (8% of our GDP, gone, poof!) and the billions they pay in taxes for programs they’ll never get to use. How that effort alone, to round them up and ship them out, will cost us trillions more in debt to be paid by us, our kids, grandkids. Out of ignorance, MAGA drank up that Kool-Aid.I think a series of dumbed-down, cartoonish Schoolhouse Rock type short ads that demonstrate these concepts would have been impactful. They didn’t need to have, shouldn’t have, anything about Trump or Harris or politics. Just the basics, graphically depicted, of how these things work and thus, how they were being played by the con, brainwashed by that massive propaganda effort on Fox and Twitter/X. Maybe, then, Mr & Mrs Bubbamaga would have understood. Maybe. Soon they will, though.Before Trump, the ignorant among us elected a guy “I’d like to have a beer with,” George W. Bush. Like Trump, he struggled to get through school, born with a silver spoon, clearly low-IQ. Result? Thousands of our brave servicemembers dead in a war we entered based on lies by him and his handlers Cheney and Rumsfeld. A massive financial crisis that cost working families their homes and savings. An economy left in ruins. More massive debt for our country. Obama cleaned that mess up and left Trump a golden economy, which he also left in tatters, with hundreds of thousands of Americans dead unnecessarily on our own soil. $7 trillion in additional debt, $4 trillion of that due to the tax cuts for the rich he said would pay for themselves, and didn’t.It will likely get bad. What can we do? In ancient Rome, when the wealth equality got out of control, the commoners (plebs, or plebeians) realized they had power in their numbers and rose up—The Secession of the Plebeians. They held boycotts, strikes, protests, disrupted traffic and the economy, refused to fight in the military, and left the cities and began to form their own self-sufficient communities. The impact was drastic. Rome’s enemies saw this weakness in their military and economy immediately, and Rome folded. This is the kind of non-violent anarchy we need, and we will see. You saw the immediate reaction when martial law was declared in South Korea yesterday.As well, the Democrat party at large needs change. Some of these ancient politicians need to step aside in favor of more young, energetic replacements. Everyone loved Ruth Bader-Ginsburg but the reality is she enjoyed that limelight too long, “Oh, how cute the 90 year old lady doing exercise!” and refused to leave when she was clearly too old and ill. It was one of the first dominoes in this disaster. We saw that with Senator Feinstein, and see it in so many others (Pelosi, Nadler…). They enjoy the spotlight and access to insider trading to further enrich themselves. They all do it—both parties, and it’s disgusting. Make the left the party of the young intelligent, open-minded, compassionate. Back to the party of the working people, the commoners, the plebes.All righty, folks. I’m getting myself all worked up, and the doc said to chill prior to this surgery! Time to hit send. If I don’t make it (being dramatic here, it’s routine surgery) r

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.Happy Thanksgiving from your pioneer friends me, Giavana, and Pia! I guess I shouldn’t have mused about, “What’s next, alien invasion?” It appears it may be on. Military bases around the world are clearly being monitored. More reason to prepare, and that’s what we’ve been all about since we started this pioneer journey. We’ve already covered prepping for personal safety and security, financial security (here, here, here, here and yes, my thinking has evolved on crypto!), and medical. Today we’ll cover food, water, energy. Good timing, as almost everything in the links in those posts is on sale for Black Friday (and likely will be for the holiday season and after, and perhaps ridiculously expensive after Trump comes in Jan 20 and introduces those tariffs). I’m tracking the UAP situation and may do a post on it (prepping for alien invasion?)Mobile preppers (pioneers) have a much bigger challenge when it comes to food, water, and energy. Most of this stuff is heavy! WaterIf your goal is to harm or kill people, consider that 90% of people rely on the public water systems. Those are fed by reservoirs that are big bodies of water right out in the open. They’re a huge target for any enemy to attack. So, how to stock up? Sure, you can freeze-dry food, but there’s no freeze-drying water. Within 72 hours without water, humans are extremely dehydrated. This breeds desperation, the mind plays tricks, and people resort to drinking bad water filled with bacteria and die from that. Many of our troops in Afghanistan learned this lesson the hard way.We keep a rack under our White House pioneer RV loaded with 5-gallon containers of water. We use this small device to pop on top and create a nice compact, portable fountain. We also keep some smaller 3L jugs on hand. In a bug-out situation, we likely wouldn’t be able to carry all that weight. We have too many other heavy things further up the priority list (ammo, solar gear, generator, us). Humans require about a gallon of water a day, minimum, just for drinking. Don’t forget your fur babies! Three gallons is the minimum when you include sanitation, cooking, etc. If you have freeze-dried food, you need water. The small Lifestraws are a great solution—we have a bunch. You can literally stick them in a pond or lake or puddle and safely drink through them in almost all circumstances. Next up the chain is a collection system that can be used to filter rainwater or other sources. This larger one is the best bet. Having these lightweight solutions means you can skip carrying too much heavy water and utilize any you find in a new location. We also keep purification tablets in our bug-out gear. I’m not a fan of the systems that attach to guttering. Those gutters are filthy, and likely introducing an abundance of aluminum, rust, or plastic. Sure, it should be filtered out, but still. Food-grade collection barrels are a good way to keep stock on hand if you have space. As an extra precaution, you can boil your water if you have sufficient heat/energy to use for that. Here’s a video on a budget DIY water collection system.If you have a pool, congratulations! It’s a wonderful emergency water supply. You can use products like the PortaWell to immediately convert it to safe water, and it’s already way cleaner than pond or lake water (I hope!). It’s another reason I converted my pool to salt rather than chlorine sanitation, back when I had a house with a pool. If it’s an inground pool, when it’s empty you can always use it for hidden shelter (assuming you have a robust cover), if not just waiting for rain to fill it back up. Perhaps shallow end for hiding, deep end for water.If you live in a fixed location, you might have a well. Don’t be overconfident. During this recent severe drought around the US, wells started running dry. As well (sorry for the pun), they can easily be contaminated. (Have you had yours tested lately?). Keep a good stock of backup water and rotate through it.FoodWe need to exceed 1,000 calories a day, on average, before we hit starvation mode. You should shoot to double that number. Don’t just look at calories, though. You need a diversity of good nutrients and vitamins to stay healthy and alert. Beans and rice alone won’t cut it—your body will revolt at trying to continually process those dense foods. Costco-sized bags of these items, if not stored properly, will likely develop worms or go bad in other ways over time.Cases of canned foods like chili and stew are great, but again, heavy. The water is already in there. It’s good to have a few cases on hand, but use them regularly to rotate/cycle through them, always storing so the oldest bought is next up to consume, to avoid expiration dates (which are generally suggestions in my humble opinion!) We also keep stores of protein bars on hand for quick energy.Costco has a great selection of emergency freeze-dried food kits. We buy our other bulk goods there. Military Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) kits come with everything you need, including a heat source to warm food. Some are surplus, and that’s fine, they have an over five-year shelf life. Make sure you sample anything you buy. Sure, by complacent normal-life standards they might not be the best. But when you hit starvation/survival mode, you’ll be surprised how heavenly delicious they are.Our kit includes a compact kitchen mess kit complete with a Jetboil stove. The small Jetboil cannisters are a great compact, efficient source of heat and can be bought at any local outdoor store. They were quite popular with our troops in Afghanistan, for good reason.We have a good prepper seed kit for the long haul, if growing is possible (see: nuclear or solar radiation). Like water, your food will only last so long. It’s good to practice gardening now, so you know the rigors of doing it right and keeping animals (and humans) away from your crop. As well, you should consider a good, compact fishing kit, perhaps some traps or snares for game. Our personal security post covered guns and ammo, and they can be used for non-humans, too. A few chickens can be a great source of eggs, and perhaps protein.EnergyIf you’ve been following us, you know we’ve been concerned about this aspect of survival prepping. Yes, even though we live in a completely self-sufficient pioneer covered wagon RV! We have a gasoline/propane duel-fuel generator, but again, fuel is heavy and these are noisy (even the “quiet” ones). Noise attracts unwanted attention, especially if others have no power. It could be deadly. Fuel will be hard to come by in the worst circumstances (gas stations do require energy to pump gas, if they have any).For those reasons, we’ve been feeling exposed and concerned. No energy, no survival, not for long, anyway. We did a ton of research, first starting with ways to solar outfit our RV, which is the usual route people take. But, we started thinking, what if we have to bug out without the White House? What if we someday get that dream log cabin and sell the White House, or simply upgrade it? So, the research turned to more practical solutions to address those concerns. We went with this Jackery kit (way cheaper now with Black Friday, ugh) and then added another expansion battery and two more 200w folding panels, along with some extension cables. These work incredibly well and the Jackery support team are amazing. As long as that old black hole sun is burning, we have energy, power for life. Whew.We have a smaller folding solar charging blanket for some smaller uses. I’m also exploring comms, as in getting my ham radio technician’s license and a home rig plus some portable radios. We do have hand-crank weather/emergency radios (with solar recharging) and longer-range walkie talkies for now.As always, keep the essential books handy, both in hardcopy and stored locally on a laptop or even better, extremely small and lightweight Kindle that can be read in daylight. Remember, download the books to the device so they’re on there and ready when there’s no wifi. These make great holiday gifts, and can save lives in so many different circumstances.Survival Medicine HandbookPrepper’s Long-Term Survival GuideSAS Survival HandbookThe Prepper’s BlueprintSo, this is where Giavana, Pia, and I are currently in our pioneer journey. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more and make more concrete decisions. The clock is ticking. Stay tuned!"All things are ready, if our mind be so."—William Shakespeare“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”—Carl Sagan“Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival.”—Peter Benchley"Private-sector preparedness is not a luxury; it is a cost of doing business in the post-9/11 world. It is ignored at a tremendous potential cost in lives, money and national security."—The 9/11 Commission Report"As a species, we've somehow survived large and small ice ages, genetic bottlenecks, plagues, world wars and all manner of natural disasters, but I sometimes wonder if we'll survive our own ingenuity."—Diane AckermanThis pioneer journey continues…Hey, it took me a few hours to write this journal post for you. Can you spend a few seconds and post it on your socials or forward to others? If so, thank you!Free subscribers get a free copy of my book of short stories, Rambles and Daydreams. Paid subscribers will get all three books in the

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!Don’t despair—prepare.We’ve been hard at work here in pioneer-land, prepping for the dystopia ahead as each day the clown show continues. Headline after headline announces the next ridiculously unqualified white dude “straight from central casting,” complete with good hair and a long resume of unethical, immoral, and criminal behavior nominated to run a vast, complex government agency that has direct impact on your lives. Welcome to Trump’s newest reality show.Remember, Trump and Trump supporters are just a symptom of the problem. The real, actual problem is the rapid decline of ethics, compassion, and morality combined with the escalation of rampant excessive greed. It’s a species problem, but seems to be wildly more prevalent here in the USA. Runaway capitalism is the difference, it’s fuel on the fire in this country. Our beloved America got cancer when Citizens United was upheld by the Supreme Court, and now it’s metastasizing rapidly. That was when the firewall broke between big money and our democracy.My thesis on our existence, God, and the afterlife holds that we’re placed in this environment of extreme temptation as a test of our spiritual growth and purity. If we’ve sufficiently evolved, we may then gain access to a more perfect existence beyond. What are those criteria? Every religious text lays them out, such as the Beatitudes. Be compassionate, be generous, be peaceful, be humble. Exactly the opposite of what we’re seeing in this majority cult, which is, instead, a walking embodiment of the seven deadly sins. We watched the new Netflix Civil War era movie, “The Free State of Jones.” This is what we’re going back to, all that overt hatred and discrimination. All the promise of good things for working people that Kamala Harris embodied is lost. It seems we are going back, after all. It’s interesting to note one root cause of most of this has always been parents that are terrified their kids may start dating someone with a different skin color or religion, or perhaps that by allowing gay people to live their lives in the open, their kids may somehow become gay themselves. The fear of being embarrassed in their social circles far outweighs just loving their kids for who they are, and wanting them to be happy.As a former IT security professional and ethical hacker, I still pay attention to that community. There are rumblings deep in geekland as the metadata from the election and details about the tech specifics come to light. Something seems very, very wrong there. I’m not about to claim fraud—we should never do that without absolute, concrete evidence. Otherwise, we’re as ignorant of the Trumpies. But, there’s clearly smoke and I’m hoping the best we have are hard at work on this. We should know as the state certification deadlines approach in the coming weeks.Money Prepping Part IIIn our last journal entry, we discussed money prepping and some of the steps we’ve already taken. That’s a tough one. If you try to research it, you get things like, “pay off your debt,” and “have a good emergency fund.” Great advice, but this potential rising economic collapse situation requires more. We talked about a few strategies we’re taking (that might not be right for you). Some of those are stocking up on actual cash (bank straps of $1, $5, $10, $20 bills), small-denomination silver coins (for trading/bartering), and larger denomination (small, lightweight) gold coins (for bigger asks, such as, “help me GTF outta this country…”).The problem is, that kind of money is heavy and it’s not too secure to be holding a bunch of it during desperate times (makes you a target). Since then, we’ve done a crash course in crypto currencies. Yeah, I know—it’s imaginary money. But it has been useful in dire situations around the world. Useful for buying banned medicines, vaccines, information, and services—such as “help me GTF outta this country.” There’s a pretty good tutorial series at CoinBase.Unlike bank accounts, crypto currency cannot be seized by rogue, greedy autocratic governments who might use an emergency powers declaration. These allow a leader to take over domestic communications and media, seize bank accounts, prevent people from leaving the country, deploy U.S. troops against citizens, stop those pesky elections from happening, and much more. If you can’t imagine a power-drunk lunatic like Trump cashing all those chips, well bless your heart. He’s recently stated he’ll invoke emergency powers as soon as he’s inaugurated. He’s long promised to be a dictator on day one. What’s being planned, right out in the open, is a massive amount of shock and awe moves following the inauguration that are designed to overwhelm Americans and force a psychological coping mechanism of turtling up into submission and acceptance. We’re already seeing people just shrug their shoulders in the face of this ongoing horror show.You don’t want to put all your life savings in crypto currencies, of course. However, staking in for a small amount provides yet another option—more diversity. It’s a whole new world rife with ways to get taken by bad actors. Hence, our crash education. Secure cold wallets store access to your coins offline, disconnected from the grid. If you’re doing this from a prepping perspective you’re keeping those coins for an in-case-of-emergency-break-glass situation, not trading with them daily.There are many different crypto coins. BitCoin is just one type, the “Kleenex” of crypto currency, but it’s currently expensive due to being the market leader. Ethereum is in second place, stable, established, and less expensive. Ethereum has an advantage in that it support smart contracts, such as, “you get half the money now, and the rest when I’m safely outta this country.” Ethereum has other advantages in that it’s much easier on the environment, safer, and executes transactions faster than BitCoin. Meme coins and those created as a “joke,” such as the DogeCoin Musk is pushing on Trump and the country, are far more volatile and risky.We’re also looking at offshore bank accounts, although it’s still unclear whether they can be seized by a rogue US autocrat. Even if so, it’s another layer of protection that separates our money from this threat.Fight or Flee?We’re coming to accept, slowly, the dream that we’d be able to put the long national Trump nightmare in the past and go about enjoying what’s left of our lives, is gone. No catching up on the back reading list, enjoying hobbies and retirement. No forever-home log cabin by the water. Not in this country, at least. We have all this planning and preparation to do. We’re not some hair-on-fire lunatics. We’re being thoughtful, purposeful, and pragmatic. We like having options.There’s always the chance this is all talk—hot air. Keep in mind that in the last administration, Trump tried to pull off every horrible thing he promised. He was only stopped in much of it because he had some adults around him in the White House, and in Congress. That won’t be the case this time. He has experience, and only worse people around him. And even then, he managed to run up an additional $7 trillion in debt and kill hundreds of thousands of beloved Americans unnecessarily on our own soil. Among all the other drama, scandal, and constant fiascos. We were lucky we only had one crisis during that four years. There are many looming this time.It’s not just about the election, although Harris would have begun the process to move our country to a happier one, such as, well, the rest of the developed world where you aren’t forced to work yourself into poor health and health care is a right, not a for-profit monster. The seminal piece is Kirsten Powers’ The Way We Live in the US is Not Normal. It’s free, please read it! Consider how much worse it will be for your kids and grandkids if this path continues in the US. You love them, right?Our second citizenship is almost done. I had predicted that other countries would recognize the value of attracting the educated “good” Americans who voted for Harris. It’s already happening, with countries like Italy offering homes for $1 just to attract our wealth and spending. We’re planning a trip, perhaps around the inauguration. Sure, they’re tiny fixer-uppers. But, it’s a foothold, a roof and four walls to escape to if necessary. A place for our kids and grandkids to escape to, if necessary. We have elderly moms who need our help from time to time, so that’s a factor pushing us to stay. It’s a conundrum. Every single expat we talk to, most of whom left the first time Trump got elected, is deliriously happy. Just like the rest of the developed world.Part of us, being Americans, makes us want to stay and fight. The problem is, this isn’t some small minority that’s taken over American (or, about to). Apparently, if the election results hold true, this is America. It’s been lost. We hit that tipping point when our ignorance and lack of education overwhelms reason, education, and goodness. It’s a result of massive propaganda networks like Rush Limbaugh, Fox, and Twitter, all run by billionaires. It’s happened in every dynasty in history, and at 248 years, we’ve been long overdue.So, as stated, we’re working hard to ensure we have options. We can hitch up the White House and hit Canada or Mexico, if they’re accepting refugees for asylum. We can hotfoot it to E