For our safety, edification, and survival we need to know what is happening and what to do about it. As the plethora of prepper blogs and forums reveal, preppers have a lot to say—much of it informative, enlightening, and insightful and some of it disinformation, illogical, unmitigated drivel, and even evil. We need to screen the nuggets from the waste. Logic, critical analysis, and a well-formed conscience help us do that.

Even now, before events have hit nadir, we avoid controlled media. At best, mass media is useless; at worst, it is destructive to mind, body, and soul. What mass media provides is not news or information, but diversions, disinformation, outright lies, smut, and hasbara. Thinking people have come to depend upon the “alternative media” of the internet, but, when times get worse, the internet “kill switch” will deprive us of that source. We will be “in the dark” unless we build alternative means and networks. Better to build now than during a crisis. Amateur radio, “ham radio,” is one way to build friendships and networks now, before catastrophe peaks.