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.

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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 Pandemic

Giavana 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 Bros

I’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 Reflection

We 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.