Do You Have the Will to Survive in a SHTF? What’s the most important thing you need to survive in a SHTF? In my opinion, it’s the will to live. In a real SHTF scenario, [...]
Ready Lifestyle – Prepping, SHTF, Survival, First Aid and Defense
Here at Ready Lifestyle, our mission is to make sure that you have the right thought process, skills, and equipment to protect yourself and your family during the next major disaster or SHTF event. Regardless of if you’re interested in building a bug out bag list, finding out how to survive a nuclear attack or looking for the next great survival axe, you can find that information here!
SHTF – What Does it Mean?
Many people hear the term SHTF and they aren't exactly sure what it means. We hear "what does SHTF mean" all the time. It stands for sh*t hits the fan. It is basically any event that turns your world upside down. That means that the meaning is much more involved than a simple four-letter piece of prepping slang.
Other terms that mean the same thing are TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as We Know It), or maybe even just EOTW (End of the World).
There is a lot to consider when you're thinking about SHTF. For most people, it's the main driving factor behind why they prep, but it can be completely different depending on who you ask. What you really need to determine is what SHTF means to you.
Once you figure that out, you can really get down to prepping for real. We'll list a few possible SHTF scenarios below that you can look over. Hopefully, they will get you thinking about what you should be prepping for or even convince you that you should be prepping for some kind of SHTF event.
Types of SHTF Events
Major natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcano eruptions and so on are the most common form of SHTF. These are generally events that affect a certain region with outside aid coming in before, during or shortly after the event is over. Many of these events are so devastating that they leave the area they hit completely uninhabitable for long periods of time, even with outside disaster relief.
If you live in an area where a major natural disaster is likely, you're probably better off prepping for that first before you try to move on to any of the other SHTF events we discuss. This is for two reasons. First, it's the disaster that you're most likely to face. Second, prepping for a natural disaster will likely meet a lot of the requirements for prepping for another type of disaster.
A pandemic or localized epidemic is another reason why some people start prepping. In a scenario like this, a disease would spread rapidly through the population. It could be a regional disaster or even a worldwide SHTF. This scenario is especially scary for people since you can't see a disease coming.
Many of the most deadly diseases have been all but eradicated through vaccinations and other medical breakthroughs. The bad thing is some of these diseases are seeing a resurgence in certain parts of the world. Depending on how the disease is spread, and how deadly it is, this could lead to any number of man-made SHTF situations on top of the disease itself!
Solar flares are a natural occurrence on the surface of the sun. Large solar flares can produce massive amounts of electromagnetic energy that travels to the earth at roughly the speed of light. This means that by the time that we can observe these solar flares the electromagnetic energy is also hitting the earth.
When this energy hits power lines they act as antennas, magnifying the power and transferring the energy to transformers and power production plants. This has the potential to bring down power grids across entire continents.
Economic collapse happens when something causes the banking system to fail in some way. This could come in the form of hyperinflation, a cyber attack on the banking system itself or a major stock market crash.
A serious economic collapse could make your money worth practically nothing or it could wipe out your life savings. Either way, social unrest and other types of SHTF are probably going to be on the way.
With the social and political climate the way it is, large-scale social unrest is very likely. Some would say it's all but assured. Something as simple as a protest in one city could quickly turn into riots in major cities across the country thanks to social media and news agencies continuously spurring our anger toward each other.
Full-scale collapse of the power grid would devastate the country! This is probably the worst possible event we could experience. A state-sponsored terrorist organization could conceivably cause an EMP that would take out power in most, if not all, of the United States.
The power grid is even vulnerable to simple gunfire in certain areas. If there was a coordinated attack on remote substations power could be disrupted in certain areas for a long period of time. It's even susceptible to cyber attack from our enemies.
A nuclear attack is another event that some are prepping for. It seems far-fetched, but just take a look at the world leaders that have access to nuclear weapons...it's scary when you really take a look at it!
A nuclear attack would have an impact far greater than just where it occurred. It would send the country, and the world, into a panic.
World war is another possible cause of SHTF that seems like it could never occur until you look at our political landscape. The Middle East remains a hot zone where America and our enemies are almost always just a few miles away from starting WWIII.
SHTF - What Are the Likely Scenarios?
There is a lot of debate about what is most likely to cause a SHTF scenario to occur. We’ve spent a lot of time looking through the most likely causes of SHTF and these are the scenarios that we came up with. These are loosely in order from most likely to least likely. Some of these are easy to put ahead of others, but many are hard to put in rank order.
Personal SHTF
Normally when we think about what a SHTF is, we turn to some grand scheme that involves nukes or the overthrow of the government. While those may be possibilities, they’re also not likely to ever occur.
On the other hand, people experience personal SHTF events every day. These aren’t things that affect all of us, but they’re just as devastating to those that experience them. If you’ve ever lost your job, found out that you have a significant medical problem, lost a close family member, or any number of other things then you know how they can change your life immediately and in a major way.
Natural Disaster
Natural disasters are a cause of SHTF that are almost as common as a personal SHTF. They occur daily all over the world and can have catastrophic effects.
Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes are examples of a SHTF caused by a natural disaster. Smaller, less wealthy, countries suffer more during natural disasters due to their lax or non-existent building codes, high level of poverty and lack of ability to recover from natural disasters.
Areas that are just barely making it before a large natural disaster often never recover from its effects.
Terrorist Attack
We’re all too familiar with terrorist attacks these days. School shootings, lone wolves inspired by Islamic terror organizations, not to mention the attacks on 9/11 have made it almost common place to see terrorist attacks on the news.
These SHTF events can be both small and large scale and are becoming more and more common.
Social Unrest
Social unrest used to be thought of mainly as a secondary form of SHTF. This means that it would follow something like an economic collapse, terrorist attack, major cyber-attack or other large-scale event. Now, social unrest is more likely to occur by itself thanks to the supercharged division in the country.
The continued division found in western society is troubling to say the least!
Economic Collapse
America’s national debt is one of the greatest threats we currently face. SHTF from economic collapse has barely been avoided multiple times in the last 20 years.
Economic collapse is another event that will likely follow many of the other causes of SHTF. Once there is major uncertainty caused by a SHTF, the stock market is likely to implode and bring the entire banking system down with it!
Cyber Attack
Most developed countries in the world are under cyber attacks every day. If one of these cyber attacks was successful they could cause any number of SHTF events.
They can take down the banking system, compromise military systems or even cause a total grid down scenario. As more and more items are connected to the so called “internet of things” the possibilities are very scary.
Grid Down
A full grid down SHTF event can be caused by an unsettling number of scenarios. An EMP, a cyber-attack, a coronal mass ejection (commonly referred to as a CME), even a coordinated physical attack on certain parts of the grid itself can all bring it down and leave the country in the dark.
America’s power grid is based on decades old technology that is both aging and difficult to maintain. The parts take months to manufacture and the people and facilities that can do it are limited.
Some studies suggest that a total grid down event would result in the deaths of 90% of the population in the first year. It’s one of the most catastrophic SHTF scenarios that could occur, even worse than a nuclear war!
Pandemic
We’ve all but eliminated many diseases that used to be considered a death sentence just a couple decades ago. Vaccines and modern medicine have made it feel like widespread disease is a thing of the past, but that’s not necessarily the case.
Diseases are still the number one cause of death in many parts of the world, the overtreatment of simple colds with antibiotics has brought about strains of disease that are almost impossible to kill and the possibility of biological attacks from terror organizations are always there.
Nuclear Attack
An actual nuclear attack is just about as likely as it has ever been in history. More countries have access to nuclear weapons then ever and the leaders of those countries are more unstable than ever.
A nuclear attack still isn’t likely, but it seems like it’s getting more and more likely as time goes by. The chances could get even worse in the future. State sponsors of terrorism like Iran are seeking nuclear weapons. They may not be able to hit the U.S., but they could hit U.S. military easily. Any nuclear attack would most likely trigger some degree of social breakdown.
This is just a few of the possible causes of SHTF that could occur. Read our other articles to find out more about prepping, SHTF, defense, survival, first aid and more!
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