Right now, 2025 is a year in which we have many hopes for a better economy, infrastructure, and world condition. We can still wind up with a number of problems that we could have mitigated by learning a few things from 2024.
I see 2024 as the year my husband and I realized that conventional “SHTF” prepping wasn’t enough to meet the needs of the kind of quasi-social crash generated by COVID-19 and the responses to it.
No matter what you believe about this particular disease and its threat to health and life, most were not ready to deal with issues related to civil liberties, let alone if there had been a more extensive fallout leading to mass roundups of the unvaccinated.
Here are a few things I learned in 2024 that might be useful for challenges that may arrive in the new year.
Avoid Using Just One Source of News-Related Information
When Elon Musk bought Twitter, several people already suspected that mainstream media was being controlled to an extent where the truth wasn’t being told on many issues. The exposure of government interference in both mainstream and social media was very troubling.
Now we have a situation where multiple agencies, foreign and domestic, plus other groups are recognized as attempting to promote narratives that suit them by openly using “fact checking” to suppress those who think differently. Even with President Trump’s executive order to try and restore free speech, that doesn’t mean there won’t be resistance.
In particular, I speak of social media algorithms that, like web search engines, are based on “popularity”. Even if someone is telling the truth, they may never get heard or gain wide exposure because there are paid people who boost the ranking of those who follow a particular set of thoughts.
These are not problems that will go away anytime soon because there are always people willing to promote what they are told to for the sake of money and prestige. In addition, the national and international regulatory bodies can still put a lot of pressure on different outlets because of licensing and other matters.
Insofar as mainstream media, it is very important to have multiple sources of news-related information. Always be aware of who owns the networks you learn from, how they are connected to each other, and who regulates them.
If you now believe that social media is the only place to get your news, take a really good look at who the lead people are connected to. Make sure that you also look at who is boosting them.
It is also important to compare the response positioning of those who disagree as opposed to those who appear to disagree, but simply reinforce the primary message. When you find no useful disagreements in the top 5, or a significant number of other people adding to weak dissent, it is time to question whether or not that social media site’s algorithm, and the information presented, is trustworthy.
Finally, always go to primary sources. For example, if you see a video or article about how a drug is useful for treating a disease, always go to the clinical trials. If you hear about a treaty being broken, look for the primary text and read it for yourself.
Many times in 2024, I found that both social media and mainstream media presented inaccurate or incomplete information when compared to more primary sources. Far too often, the information left out conveniently led to the formation of one conclusion as opposed to asking more questions or forming a different conclusion altogether.
Thus, in 2024, I learned that there is no such thing as relying on just one or two sources of information. Rather, I found it essential to look at all of the primary information for myself and understand it for myself.
Without your own evaluation of primary information, you become the tool of others looking to boost what might be incorrect information or slants that hide the existence of vital facts. Furthermore, you feed a system that may promote ideas and values that bear no resemblance to the real world let alone what God meant for us as free thinking beings.
Pay Attention to Global Organizations and Their Drill Down Impact
When President Trump spoke about the fires in LA being caused by the diversion of water, it reminded me of the floods in Spain. It turns out, those floods may have been no worse than other floods in history.
Some sources claim that the destruction happened in part because dams were destroyed or not maintained. This has been “fact-checked” by offering the observation that over 2000 “small river barriers” that weren’t being used were affected and not dams that could have made a difference.
Even though these barriers diverted water, the “fact checkers” don’t acknowledge their loss could have played a role in the damage caused by these floods.
Quite interestingly, the program under which these barriers were removed or left without maintenance may have come through the European Union. In particular, the site, damremoval.eu, on April 15, 2024 proudly discusses the dam removal projects all over Europe, and how Spain was a leader in this activity. There are also BBC news reports dating back to 2022 talking about the removal of dams in Spain.
What if dams removed from other areas in conjunction with other river diversions did, in fact, contribute to the flood damage?
For now, I want to make note of the control mechanism from the (unelected by Spain’s citizens) European Union (and possibly the UN) that may have led to a serious loss of human life in Spain. Together with that, the cause of the disaster will be “fact-checked” out of existence because it doesn’t match a certain narrative.
This year, I hope to write more about these matters, and show how these global organizations are impacting not just media reporting, but may be responsible for deadly artificial hoaxes now being labeled solely as climate change damage.
Decentralize Your Survival Plans
When you decide to do spring cleaning, you may not always think about what happens if you can’t get to your survival supplies. A somewhat amusing situation of this nature is how my husband and I came up with the portable panic room cart.
Upon being stuck in one room overnight, we spent several hours thinking about and discussing “what if” scenarios. For example, what if this had been a tornado or something else that prevented us from getting to our supplies?
Our conclusion and experimentation resulted in the mobile panic room cart concept and realizing that we needed to decentralize each room.
Roofs can cave in, foundations can give way, and many other things can fail during bombings, catastrophic weather events, or lack of timely repair. Having that secondary plan in place for vital supplies can be a lifesaver.
Pay Attention to Emerging Surveillance and AI Technologies
Even if consumers don’t have electricity or access to drones, phones, and computers during a crisis, there are various groups and agencies that will. They will also have at their disposal advanced AI and surveillance tools.
While these things may legitimately be helpful in a catastrophe, they can also be used before that to limit survival plans that don’t rely on government resources. It is more important than ever to know what kind of devices are out there and who has access to them.
Watch Out for Your Health
Over the years, I’ve always believed in keeping up with test results that my doctors order, and where necessary, disagreeing with their opinion based on my own research and interpretation of clinical studies.
In 2024, we saw a lot of information about guidelines that were wrong or not fully based on robust research. This is not a new problem, but now we are all more aware.
At this point, it is difficult to say how those guidelines have been modulated or directed by the World Health Organization. Even though President Trump has taken the United States out of the WHO, it remains to be discovered just how much damage they have imposed by various guidelines.
This is another place where something I learned in 2024 will guide my search for better survival-related personal policies in 2025. In particular, I will be looking for a similar “drill down control” effect as seen in the floods in Spain, and perhaps even the fires in LA.
One thing is for certain, when you go to the doctor and there is a global agency directing their decision, you may not be getting the best care, let alone the best information.
Even more troubling is the fact that modern “evidence-based medicine” is shaped by patent-related and financial concerns. This means systems like Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine, and even some methods from Japan are not presented as viable options. If these systems work, we should have the truth about them and be able to choose them without being told that the only right answer comes out of a Western test tube.
It is my contention that, as students of survival, we must take a better look at what I call “quasi-social crash” scenarios and figure out how to get through them with as little damage to ourselves and our way of life as possible. This year, we have an opportunity to adjust our survival plans to keep up with technology and the impact of regulators, provided we know where to look and how to investigate.
References
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2040229-why-europe-is-removing-its-dams/
https://damremoval.eu/dre-report-2023/index.php
https://maldita.es/clima/20241104/dams-reservoirs-removed-floods-valencia/
. Trust and betrayal –
I was way into preparedness even as a child when times were way different and I have since adapted to change. The start of that is thinking rather than default to misplaced trust.
Living in proximity of The Gulf of America, my hurricane preparedness included a “transistor radio” (things had different names back then;) to get trusted information from our public servants (though now, they and what calls themselves “the news,” refer to themselves as “the authorities” with often not taking accountability with such terms as “The Whitehouse Says” (that’s a building and buildings don’t say anything).
We had trust back then, so a broadcast receiver made sense to be informed and advised.
In sharp contrast, today, my preparedness radios are trancievers for two way communications between myself and trusted friends also into preparedness. IF I even cared to hear self-professed “experts” and so called “authorities,” then my reason might be to consider the opposite of their admonishments being best for survival and freedom.
Ronald H Levine
When we look at news organizations, try also to look at those who are the least biased. AP, Reuters and UPI come to mind along with BBC America. Most of the so called mainstream media is biased to the Left, while Fox, Newsmax and OANN are biased to the right. And the news presented usually is 180 degrees apart. CNN and MSN are really equal to OANN and Newsmax in that they are biased to the far left and far right respectively. Fox is probably equally to CBS in its bias to the right and left. AP, Reuters and UPI are probably the least biased of all of media available. Any time you hear a news story that makes your blood boil, always fact check it to see if it is actually the truth versus rhetoric that got presented as truth. And recognize that most hosted news shows out there are giving us the opinion of the host and not actually factual news.