Prepare or Not to Prepare?

     I understand there has been a while since I've posted and my weekly article isn't so much "weekly" anymore but I've struggling with how best to approach this topic. Since the inception Jack of All Spades, I've had numerous people contact me on social sites and other venues wanting to “friend” me or to follow the Jack of All Spades. The popularity is something I’m excited and grateful for. The only thing that is alarming is that a high number of these individuals are “Doomsday Preppers”. 

     On the grand scale of survivalists there is the slothful couch potato to the left and the Doomsday Prepper towards the right.  This scale paints a very clear picture between doing and not doing. As for Jack of All Spades we fall in a happy middle ground between the two ends. There exist extreme levels of hoarding food and arms, and even larger claims of apocalyptical endings but that is where difference between an Everyday Jack and a Doomsday Prepper lies. An Everyday Jack divides the two groups nearly equally in terms of preparation. Most people’s preparation standards fall on the left side of the scale while the more extreme Preppers fall to the right. 

     The grand difference between the Doomsday Prepper and the Everyday Jack is the purpose behind the preparations. Jack of All Spades prepare for events to either prevent or be ready to cope when they occur. This keeps our life from falling into personal and financial recessions. A Doomsday Prepper does all this because he expects the world to fall and he and those like him will be the only ones left standing. They might claim that inevitable catastrophic failure in government or mankind but they prepare so that they can be left standing when everyone else falls. Everyday Jacks don’t want to be the only ones left standing. We prepare to prevent such disasters if possible and deal with them afterwards if we can’t stop them. 

     Apocalyptical disasters might stand a credible chance of happening but the likelihood is much less than the ones we prepare for as Everyday Jacks. Using your efforts to prepare for a flood or fire is much more productive than preparing for nuclear war or alien invasion. I don’t want to degrade those that prepare to such extremes because many of their techniques and processes are enlightening and available to those that want to learn. I have learned many things from them and encourage everyone who wants to learn “pre-modern world” techniques to seek out this information. 

     Not all Doomsday Preppers are bad either. There are varying degrees of preparation and some of them only prepare “just in case” but Jack of All Spades does not prepare for the end of the world. There are too many other things to worry about throughout our normal lives and too many things that we can do now to prevent those far off disasters from happening. There might be a day that government failure will be more likely. When those odds become more likely Jack of All Spades will be ready to start offering advice, but until that point take care of your family, your friends and your community so that we as a people are better. Prepare for muggings, rape, kidnapping, home invasion, credit card fraud, terrorism and international dangers when at home or abroad, natural disasters and even personal and public medical emergencies. All of these things and more will be the end of us if we don’t stand together as Everyday Jacks and Everyday Jills against the evil that is presented to us. 

     Jack of All Spades is a community based on the principles of knowing the danger, training for them, and then providing an ever-evolving safety net of friends and teachers. We’re not a remote commune of people waiting for the world to end. If we are anything, we’re a group of people preventing the world from ending. Is it not true what Albert Einstein once said, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing”?

     Spend your time and money on things to improve the situation and not wait for it to get worse. Running from the problems will only make it worse when you try to step back into the situation. To be clear, Jack of All Spades is not a community of Doomsday Preppers. Think Jack of All Spades as a neighborhood watch for the United States. We know the threats, we’re trained for them, and we share our knowledge among ourselves to better our preparedness. No longer will we stand still as danger approaches because we’ll see it approaching and have a plan to combat it.