We prepare for the last scenario listed because it does seem the most likely and, as others have said, it’s hard to prepare for the zombies. One thing I have changed, however, is being more prepared when I’m out and about. Should something happen rapidly, even a natural disaster, I don’t want to be stuck away from home in flip-flops with no cash. I wear good walking shoes for even brief errands and always keep a bit of emergency cash on me. At first, this made me feel like I was being paranoid, but now I just see it as common sense.

In the meanwhile, we’re doing what we can to make our community as sustainable as possible through the Transition Towns movement.

Jethro’s last name was Bodine.

Nice one.

I don’t know what I’m preparing for. I’m really concerned about the majority of folks here and everywhere who are not preparing — who don’t even think about preparing (like, for what?). Along with our own preparations to put our own houses in order, we all have an obligation to try to put other people’s houses in order, since we’ll need strong communities. And that’s where the head-scratching comes in for me.

I guess it’s all incremental work. Slowly more and more people will start to understand that we’re not living in Business as Usual anymore. So we all need to be like the Catcher in the Rye, making sure that those kids don’t go off the cliff.

but it does’t eat carion.

I’m betting it’s not.

In the meantime, learning how to garden (though having varying levels of success at it), improving the security and weather-safeness of my home, working toward a job in the community, and working on strengthening my ties to my neighbours is all the more I can do to prepare. That, and pray.

For instance, for speed limit and drinking age laws, Congress has used the carrot of highway funding instead of the stick of federal law. Lose the money, you’ll see road laws diversify. For drug laws right now, the states have passed a wide variety of legalization/decriminalization laws, and federal law enforcement has chosen to enforce federal laws where they are stricter than state law – but all it would take is the FBI to decide they have more important priorities, and looser state laws would prevail.

Americans have a deep attachment to the concept of the United States, but not a lot of love for most of its actual agencies. As long as we’re still theoretically governed by the Constitution, the actual behavior of the government doesn’t seem to matter much to most people.

Seriously, I do know what you mean – I just keep hoping that if something weird happens, it will be something good, since there’s not much else I can do.

Sharon