Billy DeCarlo, Project: Pioneer Podcast

Billy DeCarlo
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This platform will serve as an interactive reality journal for Project: Pioneer and notes/interaction for my current and future novels. billydecarlo.substack.com

  1. 04/17/2025

    So long, for now.

    Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others. Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post! Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Don’t despair—prepare. I've always taken pride in not being a sensationalist, always being practical and analytic. But it's true the frogs don't notice the water is getting hot until too late. It's true that people in cataclysmic historical times never actually realized it at the time. It's clear now the USA is an authoritarian regime. The Oval Office meeting with the El Salvador dictator on Monday made that clear. The past few weeks have made all this crystal clear: The Constitution is dead.The rule of law is dead.The separation of powers is dead.The checks and balances are dead.The Supreme Court has been rendered a joke.The entire top hierarchy of our government is corrupt and acting in concert.We are strongly allied with Russia, striving to replicate that dictatorship.We no longer have allies to save us. They pity us.The bond market meltdown last week made clear the world is running from us.We are heading for a long recession, possibly depression.We are in complete chaos—daily political, financial, and climate destruction.Experts on fascism are leaving the country.Our brightest doctors, engineers, researchers are leaving. If you don’t see the above happening in real time, you’re not paying attention or you’re in denial. I have a friend like that—always poo-pooing things he doesn’t want to acknowledge or doesn’t agree with, until reality makes it impossible. And maybe even then, he’ll still deny it. I have another friend, a Mexican-American of dubious citizenship status. He and his wife are all in with the cult. They like to travel. I’d be quite nervous presenting my papers the next time they re-enter the US. He doesn’t realize he’s dirt to Trump’s racist leadership, as are his kids and grandkids, because they “look dirty” to these racists, due to their skin color. They may get “sent back where they came from” simply for that reason. Sure, there’s Kash Patel and other tokens, which allow them to say, “See? We have black and brown friends.” They get in the club with massive devotions and donations, of course. You aren’t in the club. But, I love my friends, and we all have our quirks :-) However, it will always fascinate me how people who love and listen to all that music with lyrics that are the antithesis to trumpism, people who call themselves Christians, can support something that is the exact opposite. If you’re one of the folks who voted for trump, don’t say, “I didn’t vote for this.” Yes, you did. We all saw it coming. He said he would do all this. Don’t ever call yourself an American patriot. You’re a gullible, hateful person who reacted emotionally because you’re uncomfortable around people who aren’t just like you. Or, you’re some greedy entitled prick who doesn’t want to pay taxes to the country that made *you* great. Or, somehow, you bought into the fallacy that a greedy, corrupt guy who has only ever destroyed everything and everyone he’s come in contact with, with six bankruptcies including a casino, but played a fake successful businessman on a scripted “reality” TV show, was indeed a successful businessman and would lead *you* into prosperity. These billionaire fascists will come for you, eventually. You and those you love will suffer economically for these wannabe dictators. You already are. You are not in the club, as you’re just starting to find out (unless of course you’re a straight, white, male, billionaire). You’re not a fan of anything this country was based on, because this whole MAGA movement has always flown in the face of all of it. Don’t call yourself a Christian, because it’s always been the polar opposite of Jesus’ teachings. Re-read those Beatitudes. Carefully. You f’d around, joined a cult, now you’ll find out. You did this, you owe it to us all to join the fight. At most we have a year and a half before the curtain comes down on the USA as a constitutional republic, if we’re lucky. The report trump requested on day one of his presidency, on whether he should use the Insurrection Act, is due on April 20. He may decide to use it earlier, to quell the planned April 19 protests. There’s no way they're going to allow mid-term elections, at least not legit ones. One piece of strong evidence happened in that Oval Office press conference on Monday, all the ass kissing for the dictator from El Salvador. And so, back to us. You don’t find much real, actual, non-cosplay prepper content online. By virtue, we are paranoid, and a part of the recipe is to keep your mouth shut about your tactics, if you are serious about this. I only wanted to help others, and I hope I have over these two years of providing you so much information that you may very well need, and very soon. Those posts are a gift to you, but I can’t guarantee I’ll keep them online if things get hotter. Do I sound mad? Yeah, big mad. Giavana and I had that dream of building a nice, isolated prepper log cabin. Trump’s election ended that, because we knew the USA empire would fall. We wouldn’t buy or own real estate in Russia either, for the same reason. Would you? If not, then sell. Then we started thinking about joining an eco-village, to form a community for security and survival. Yesterday, on an informational meeting, we were getting all excited, then I had this vision: General (big strong guy, tears in his eyes): “Sir, I’ve come to you directly because Secretary Hegseth is still sleeping off his bender last night. This is important. We’ve discovered a village of woke, liberal smurfs living happily in the woods.” Trump: “Seize it, use eminent domain, and burn it to the ground, hopefully while that scum are still asleep.” I’m far more angry about the GenZ and younger people who will never enjoy the USA the rest of us had. For the first time, the children of working families have little chance of doing better than their parents. That’s not because of trans people or immigrants. There is one clear, obvious reason: corporate greed, corporate welfare. That’s what changed our life here so quickly from my parents’ time, one generation ago, where a high school dropout manufacturing worker could work Monday to Friday 9-5 with a solid hour lunch and give his family a comfortable life while his spouse stayed home to raise the kids properly. Now we’re all slaves to this corporate machine, stressed and tired, and it’s still not enough to survive, while those at the top wallow in luxury due to the fruits of our labor. The government are now seizing and examining the phones and content of US citizens, without warrants. That makes us a target, and maybe even you as well, for reading stuff like this. It puts people I love at risk, and I can’t tolerate that. I do this for you. There’s no financial benefit, and frankly hasn’t been a whole lot of interaction, which makes it easier. I’ll die for this cause, I’ll die on this hill for those I love who are younger, but I can’t put loved ones in danger. It’s not a sell-out or cop-out. I will be in this fight in every way I can, and I hope you will too. Everything depends on it. I’ll continue the fight, subversively, but that can’t include writing what I write. Not on a public blog, anyway. Trump said he’ll start sending US citizens to that gulag torture prison in El Salvador. I’m a small voice, whistling these words into the wind to a small audience. But, I enjoy this, and thus it’s another thing taken away. In the past, when I dared to dream (nightmare) all this happening, I was often naive enough to think, “The cops and military are regular people with families, all races and creeds, most of them wouldn’t go along with a takeover or violence against citizens.” Surprise, it’s happening all over right now. Cops, ICE, Homeland Security, FBI, all in full fascist concert. Probably the military is next. They seem to be loving the chance to use all those cool weapons and rough some folks up. That’s what too many cops do, it’s why too many are cops. We’ve seen autistic Black kids beaten and killed by Black cops, incredibly. In our last post, I talked about this overwhelming sense of things coalescing into…something. I mentioned earlier in this post that people in cataclysmic historic times don’t actually realize they’re in cataclysmic historic times in the moment. A few scenes from the new The Chosen season five stand out. There’s one where the disciple Little James is a talented singer and makes the cut to sing in the national choir as a young man, but is told he can’t because he has a physical disability. Immediate flash to Trump saying it’s “not a good look” for him to be seen with disabled veterans. There’s another scene where the Roman spy Atticus is telling Pontius Pilot his only job is to win, and another where the Jewish Pharisees are talking about “winning” and absorbed with politics over their faith and teaching. Of course, there’s the depiction of runaway greed when Jesus overturns those tables at the temple. It was always about temptation, from the Garden of Eden onward. The Lord’s Prayer says, “

    15 min

  2. 04/07/2025

    How To Survive the New World

    Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others. Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post! Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Don’t despair—prepare. It seems like everything is converging, coalescing, the good and the bad. If you’ve been reading our pioneer journal over these past two years, you may be sensing that too. We’ve been writing about the coming dystopia, and how to prepare for it, what works and what doesn’t. There seems to be a theme. Let’s get busy as the going gets tough, because it’s clear that nobody is coming to save us. We have to save ourselves. Pioneer Update We got our Costco raised bed garden (on wheels!) up and running this past weekend. It was a fun exercise. Apparently, there’s a lot more to this than just throwing in some dirt and seeds! Our diligence turned up the Seed to Spoon app so we’re on the seven day trial. It allows you to specify your garden size and lay out what you want to plant. The cool thing is that it warns you about plants that are “bad neighbors” (the ones with Trump signs in their yard?) and shouldn’t be placed next to each other. We would have screwed that up badly. We went with things of substance—potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, parsnip, eggplant. Now we wait for buds to get budding! And yeah, you could use the rationale “Those are some expensive veggies, why not go to the grocery?” Because, well, we’re preparing for those shelves being empty, as we’ve shipped out all the ag workers, and poisoned our food, as we’ve canceled those silly FDA food inspectors. There will be no pesticides in our grub. Tomorrow is another round of surgery for me, ugh. Next week, we move the White House covered wagon pioneer RV from our former beautiful campsite to standby near where we live now. That will complete our new transition. Also, we got out for the April 5 protests. It was wonderful and magical to be among the massive crowds of sane, happy, motivated, patriotic citizens. There are plenty more to come, make sure you participate! A Survival Plan I mentioned convergence. The stock markets are continuing to crash due to this extreme nonsensical idiocracy. We’re heading to a deep recession or maybe depression, on the fast train. The worst of circumstances may well occur—stagnant economy and high inflation like in the 60s and 70s, a very bad combination that’s hard to fix. We’re likely heading for the “distraction” of a massive global shooting war, on top of the trade war. Our once beautiful democracy and economy, the envy of the world just a few months ago, is being burned to the ground. One of the world’s biggest insurers is predicting the collapse of capitalism due to climate change. Imagine losing your home like so many in the Midwest did this week, and having no insurance to replace it. On top of being laid off due to recession. That’s how depressions happen. Ok, that’s the bad news. We’re always thinking of solutions, all day every day. We wrote about our trip to Europe, and as fantastic and utopian as things are there, it’s just not Plan A right now as we both have elderly mothers that need help. However, if it gets that bad, we may have to bail anyway. Good to have options. But, while there, we saw a people who have always lived happily in smaller spaces. Giavana, Pia and I have been doing that for years, in an RV and now in a small apartment, after selling our home and attic, closets, basement, and garage full of useless neglected crap. So as a first step, why not bring that model here? Why can’t we all start behaving in that successful way, which is less stressful and better for your financial success? Americans are famous for our gluttonous shopping, our McMansions and land yacht vehicles, for having way too much of everything. Let’s change that. Our point? Stuff is about to get much more expensive. People already have far less money due to the Trump crash, and that’s about to get worse as they lose their jobs. Corporations are to blame for the most part. Fix the problem and fight back. Fix one is to sell, share, and barter among ourselves at discount prices. Make that former gluttony a huge advantage to each other. Get on your neighborhood discussion boards, like nextdoor.com, reddit.com, or discord.com. Need a lawnmower? I bet someone within a mile of you has an older or spare very functional one that they’d sell you on the cheap, far less than you’d pay at the store. Ditto for just about anything you need. If we all get out there, list what we have, or what we can do for others, think of the benefit! Same with thrift stores, and with food, by using farmer’s markets. Or mom and pop restaurants instead of those ugly, poisonous chains. There are so many ways to cut back without harming your quality of life. For example, commercials have brainwashed us into heaping large gobs of toothpaste on our brushes, when a much smaller amount is just as effective, especially if you don’t then rinse or spit it out. Ditto for laundry detergent and so many other items. Again, Kiss Your Money Hello (and Financial Stress Goodbye) is the ultimate guide to saving money and Plan Your Money Path is the same for planning your financial life. Read or listen, get them for free by ordering from your local library. Cut your reliance on expensive vehicles where possible by walking and getting a bike (or e-bike—they’re awesome!) Learn how the public transportation works in your area—buses and trains. Sell anything you haven’t used in a year, including clothing. Pile up your money, be frugal. Enjoy all the wonderful, free goodness of our parks and libraries (before they’re paved over). We need to converge as a society—the good among us, anyway. We’re seeing this happen, out of necessity. Hard times always bring that sort of thing. Families save money by sharing space, like in the old days here in the US. Communities begin to coalesce and share. In our area, some folks have started a discord server to bring this about. The main purpose is to move toward building our own intentional community/ecovillage, as we’ve been advocating for and written about in past posts. Quite European! The result has been phenomenal. We now have subtopic areas where people in this area are mentoring and sharing with each other on topics like personal security, gardening/farming, communication, bushcraft, survival, medicine/first aid, and disaster preparedness. It’s bringing about everything we’ve discussed above, and it’s beautiful to behold, watching it bloom. We’re also facilitating in-person meetings/training on those topics. Make it happen in your area, your survival may count on it. As we build and form these communities, so much more becomes possible. We can shelter those we need to—young people from being drafted into a war that might kill them, marginalized people from the hate on the outside. Underground railroads have been quite effective in the past. We all might need one at a certain point. Handmaid’s Tale Season 3 is just starting, what an example of all this! The other thing that’s coalescing here, at least for us, is the return to faith or at least hope for so many, with the popularity of The Chosen. We’ve binged the first four seasons for free by using their app and web page, and seeing season five at the theater, which is spectacular. Even if you don’t believe, it’s epic on the scale of other memorable shows we’ve all enjoyed. It’s a great break and distraction from our current lives, giving hope and joy, along with many of the lessons we should be relearning about how to live happily together on this rock. Find that safe haven, that hopeful diversion. It really helps. It could be mindfulness, yoga, reading, knitting, painting, gardening, whatever. Maybe it’s some combination of things. Forgive old grudges, turn the other cheek. That old friend turned adversary may be useful to your survival in the near future. We’ve never needed each other more. "Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much"—Helen Keller "Today, if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”—Mother Theresa, Saint Teresa of Calcutta “I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Stay tuned! This pioneer journey continues… Hey, it took me a few hours to write this journal post for you. Can you spend a few seconds and post it on your socials or forward to others? If so, thank you! Free subscribers get a free copy of my book of short stories, Rambles and Daydreams. Paid subscribers will get all three books in the noir crime trilogy, Vigilante Angels. I no longer do paid-only posts, because it felt gross to leave people behind, especially those who can’t afford it. If you read my ramblings, I’ll leave it to your conscience. If you get any value from my writing, consider a donation or subscription, which is priced at a few dollars, the minimum allowed. Half of all money goes to The National Alliance t

    11 min

  3. 03/31/2025

    So, You Want to Leave the USA?

    Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others. Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post! Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Don’t despair—prepare. We pioneers have been in Europe for the past ten days. It was eye-opening from a prepper perspective. We were there to complete requirements for dual citizenship, begin to learn how to buy property, as well as take a long-overdue vacation in the last days of the pre-World War III world. Here’s what we discovered and experienced. And please, if you’re in one of those election districts in Wisconsin and Florida for this Tuesday, go vote and bring anyone and everyone else you can. Pioneer Update Before we get into all that Europy stuff, a quick status update on us. We had to leave little Pia behind, so Giavana and I missed her very much. Same with our covered wagon RV, the White House. This coming week back home will be a transition time—break camp at the remote location we’ve lived at for almost two years, and move her to stand-by nearby, fully prepped and ready to carry us to escape mid-country if necessary. What we saw in Europe has only increased our motivation. Now that we’re home, our emphasis also moves to getting our raised bed garden up and running, getting to the shooting range, working with the local eco/intentional community folks, and getting to some of these resistance protests and meetings. Europe Prepares for WWIII A good prepper is always gathering intel. Sure, a solid stock of provisions will keep you alive. Intelligence gathering is also critical. During our time in Europe, we paid close attention to what the locals were saying, and watched news channels based in several countries. First, as we always say, this isn’t a journal intended to cause hysteria and fear mongering just to get clicks. Clicks get us nothing—very few pay for these words. We aren’t interested in fame either. We are anonymous for a reason. We’re interested in helping save those who want to be saved, preparing those who want to be prepared. The countries of Europe are providing their citizens with education on how to prep—stocking provisions, all the things we do as preppers. They are also educating them on how to survive nuclear blasts. This is the government educating their people, not some random doomsday cult. They are buying up land to use for tens of thousands of graves. It is serious business—nobody knows the future, but indicators of world war are blinking red. They are also all working to institute the military draft for able-bodied men and women. In the US, that means compulsory conscription for ages 17 to 45. We have a leader who is drooling at the thought of building a big, beautiful army to fight in his name, so he can enjoy it all on TV like he did on January 6. After all, we’re just his newest reality show. Did we not just see a spectacular example of stupidity, and lapse of national security, a bunch of grown man-child bros at the top of our military and intelligence departments spewing emojis and excited bro-talk on a non-secure commercial app, jacked over the bombing of innocent children? Imagine their excitement at orchestrating a full-blown war, with our kids getting maimed and dying, of course not theirs. We’re gaslit starting in kindergarten, throughout our lives, how heroic and patriotic it would be to go off and die for our country’s constant genocidal conquests that enrich the already rich. In Europe, we visited the crumbled, destroyed remnants of ancient dynasties and empires. History rhymes. The vast, powerful Roman Empire collapsed due to an incredible amount of greed and corruption, which caused division and infighting. The Germanics saw the weakness, invaded and took them down. Strong parallels to today, in the United States. Now that our government is being dismantled internally via chainsaw, and we have a collection of completely inexperienced corrupt fools in charge, we are incredibly exposed. Our enemies know this, and they’re watching and planning day by day. The history we learned (or, relearned). on our trip was a reminder of the ages of human evil on the macro (nation) and micro (individual) level. So much cruelty, gluttony, greed, lust for power. So much suffering and death of innocents. We never learn. The mistake we make is living as if this one brief phase of our spiritual existence is all there is. You’re greedy and immoral, you might do well here, but there's a good chance you're screwed for eternity after that. The attorneys we met with in Europe said they’re swamped with requests from Americans for passports, visas, and citizenship. Other countries are tightening their rules to prevent a mass influx of Americans, as we found on our recent visit to Canada. Those damned pesky immigrants, amirite? Irony is dead. Then again, the Jews that saw what was coming in 1930s Germany and left were the ones who survived. We saw and heard much evidence of Europe and our other former allies around the world (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others) moving rapidly to detach themselves from any dependence or reliance on the United States, including their currencies. That’s a very bad thing for us on many levels. Our brain blocks us from stark realization sometimes. We don’t want to believe things when they seem extreme. Jews waited forever for the prophesies of a coming Messiah to come true. When he arrived, despite witnessing proof who he was over and over, they were like, “Nah, this ain’t the guy,” and killed him. In my recent post, I outlined extensive evidence that Trump is indeed the antichrist. Fun times (not). In my career, I traveled around the world every single week for years. I always saw so much American themed apparel on the foreigners, I often felt like I was back in the USA. Not this time, the difference was very evident. In grayperson prepper mode, Giavana and I made sure to not wear anything identifying us as Americans. The natives are clearly turned off by the US, and all we now stand for. In fact, the vendors were making sure their wares all had very prominent “Made in Europe” labels. It was very sad. Our time in Europe was wonderful. Despite all that, the people were going about their business. They were incredibly polite, even after some realized we were American. Not once did anyone lose patience or become rude with these lost, confused, and tired travelers, even in the non-tourist backwaters we made our way to. Some natives gently broached the subject of our takeover, expressing incredulity and actual pity for us and our country. The things that struck us most were the taxi drivers, restaurant servers, hotel wait staff that would often politely decline tips, or act genuinely surprised and thankful to receive them. It is because they are paid a living wage, and have excellent healthcare and retirement programs. They work normal hours with a long lunch break. Unlike our country, where hard working people like that cannot survive, due to the harm to extravagant corporate profits. We saw very, very few corporate chains, particularly in eateries. Everywhere we went, the restaurants and cafes were small mom and pop operations serving ridiculously inexpensive and healthy food. That was a very stark contrast to home. They aren’t owned by corporations. The people aren’t being poisoned and addicted to garbage, for profit. They eat smaller, healthy portions. The trains we rode were inexpensive, fast, on time, and super clean. The people were all multi-lingual—nobody losing their mind over someone speaking a foreign language—another stark contrast. In the crowded plazas, narrow streets, and on the roadways they were patient. The big cities were remarkable in that, even while in traffic, there were no drivers blaring horns, cutting each other off, providing finger gestures. A notable difference for us, was that in the restaurants we saw a very leisurely social experience. People took their time eating (good for health) and the servers never rushed anyone. In the US, a pet peeve of ours is servers constantly coming up to us while still eating and asking if we want a box. They’re pressured to flip those tables, as it’s very good for profit. We saw plenty of local and regional police, and military personnel. They were very observant, polite, and helpful to everyone around them. Tough looking and well armed, but not with that attitude as if they were standing by just waiting for a chance to crack some skulls. They smiled, showing true strength of confidence. Real badasses don’t have to constantly try to project badassery. They were almost equal numbers male and female. The dopes we have in charge now are all weak failson trust fund babies from unloving wealthy parents, insecure and feeling that need to project and cosplay uber-masculinity to compensate. The Joe Rogan set. Among the tourists, we saw plenty of locals in fresh air parks and museums with their kids, and no signs of corporate amusement parks. The younger kids’ faces were not embedded in screens, just the older teenagers. They drive very small cars and scooters (unlike our land yachts), and walk a lot. There were tons of recycling and composting devices along all the streets. We saw a strong emphasis on solar power, energy efficie

    16 min

  4. 03/17/2025

    Prepare Your Financial Future

    Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others. Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post! Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Don’t despair—prepare. I remember way back in the day, when it would be unthinkable that you would work hard all your life for a company and not have a pension for your retirement years. That got blown up when the thing about working for one company your whole career went away, for various reasons. They acclimated us to the idea of not having a pension real quick, since we had no choice but acclimate. “You have your Social Security, after all, and this new thing called a 401k plan.” Now, we’re being “acclimated” to not having Social Security, or Medicare for that matter. Read on for the reasons this is happening, and most importantly, how you can prepare. Unlike most “sky is falling” journals, this one actually tells you what to do. You already know the sky is falling. Pioneer Update Saturday was another visitation day at our White House pioneer covered wagon RV. It’s good to visit her, and we miss her. With each visit, we’re unwinding the systems of our former full-time life there and transitioning them to our new humble abode. She knows the time may come soon when we’re back to her, and on the run. We’re careful to leave as much in place as possible to that purpose. We built our raised bed garden and look forward to planting as soon as we return from our overseas trip, which we leave for on Friday. Why This Is Happening Quite often, people ask, “Why is this happening? Why are they dismantling the government? Let’s take one example—Social Security. The plan is to make using it so insufferably miserable that people start to hate it enough to welcome the new plan—privatizing it. There’s almost $3 trillion in the SS trust fund. If you don’t think endlessly greedy folks like Trump and Musk aren’t salivating over all that money, you’re a fool (sorry). Rinse, wash, repeat for veteran’s health benefits, Medicaid, Medicare, public education, forest/national park management, and other things our government does for its citizens, as it should in any developed, functional democracy. You might say these government agencies, like Social Security and the VA, already suck. That’s because the staffs are undertrained, underpaid, and overworked. Sure, there’s an average 15 minute hold time when calling SS. Trump and Musk just tried to cancel the phone system completely—disabled people and elderly folks who can’t drive to an office be damned. Remember—through all disasters we’ve experienced in the almost one hundred years of Social Security, the checks never stopped. When I was under VA veteran health care, I received very good treatment from very compassionate providers. That’s about to end. The system needs to be improved, not decapitated. Always remember—the happiest countries in the world have a better version of what we have. The most unhappy and miserable have what we’re racing headlong toward. Trump and Musk will push the idea of having “smart” money managers taking that Social Security money and managing it under some corporate umbrella. They’ll likely invest it in their own stuff, right? How would you feel if your future SS monies were invested in Tesla stock right now? Elon would feel wonderful, but, note that it’s in the toilet. A sweet bailout of Tesla stock with SS trust fund money would fix that problem, same as they’re trying to do with crypto currencies and their “Sovereign Wealth Fund.” That’s in the tank lately as well. Everything Trump Touches Dies. It’s a taint of evil. Same with Trump’s social media company, which never made any money, and Musk taking Twitter from $44 billion of worth to basically nothing. Your SS payments will likely depend on how those investments are doing, and no longer be guaranteed. The SS system will be as scammy as the annuity and permanent life insurance business, and probably sold to overseas private equity, where there’s little regulation, oversight, or compliance obligation. Have a look at our privatized health care system. It’s the most expensive in the world, with the worst health outcomes. We’re sicker and die sooner than other developed countries, and that’s a disgrace. Suffering and death should never be a for-profit business. But we’re stuck with it, as the health insurance CEOs get paid tens of millions of dollars and they place their company names on major sports stadiums. Soon, when these government agencies are dismantled and sold off to the billionaire oligarchs that now run the country, our government will be a tiny shell of itself. What happens then? It’s a much easier target for takeover, which is the ultimate goal in all this. Then it will be a fait accompli, a system very much like Russia, where the ruler is massively wealthy, firmly locked into power, and protected by a small class of oligarchs by making sure their loyalty is well rewarded with that former government money. Anyone that steps out of line is brutally and publicly executed, sometimes by falling out of top story hotel windows or poisoning by polonium/Novichok nerve agents. What to Do In the near term, expect disruptions in all these government services as they break them and make them miserable to use. Build up your emergency fund and expect tax refund, Social Security, disability, and other government checks to just not show up. Be prepared for that. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. Cut your spending as you would when a disaster is impending, because one is. Take shelter financially. There’s a whole book about stuff like that, Kiss Your Money Hello! (and Financial Stress Goodbye). Read or listen to it to learn how to pay down any remaining debt, do side hustles, create an easy to manage budget, save on your expenses, cut your taxes, (not) pay for your kids college/trade/tech school, and more. If you’re young, it’s quite likely you’re going to be “acclimated” to that life without Social Security, just like people my age were “acclimated” to a life without a pension. The key and most valuable asset you can have is a financial plan. Build it yourself, maintain it yourself. Once you have a solid baseline, the most valuable benefit is you can then copy that baseline scenario into what-if scenarios, like “What if there’s no Social Security or Medicare?” There’s a new book for that too, one that shows you how even if you’re not a financial guru. It’s Plan Your Money Path: Create Your Own Financial Plan. Yes, we’re still exposed to the collapse of the dollar if we have our money in savings accounts, money market, US treasury bonds, bills, notes. It’s hard to get around that, especially knowing if the dollar collapses the entire world and all its currencies are going to do so (or come close) as well. They are busy preparing for that and insulating themselves from our poison at warp speed, economically and militarily. It’s important to prepare for all downstream contingencies. There aren’t a lot of good options. Lots of preppers buy precious metals. The conundrum is that 1oz gold bars are a few thousand dollars, and not very useful if the stuff hits the fan and we finally get to a place where we can safely barter metals for goods and services. How are you going to get change for that $2,500 1oz gold bar? Silver coins solve the problem—smaller denominations, but they’re also quite heavy if you have a bunch of them. Costco is selling sheets of 25 small 1 gram pieces of gold, each piece worth about $100. They’re light and smaller denominations, so not a bad solution to the problem. Again, the best investment you can make is essential goods (food, water, shelter, medical supplies, energy) so that you can ride out the dangerous chaos of a collapse without having to go out for anything. When you do, if you have some surplus, those things will be valuable to barter. Do you have a place to grow food or raise chickens? Also think in terms of services. What new things can you learn in retirement that might be valuable to others to barter for goods or services? Midwife? Mending or creating clothing? Security? Electronics repair? Even if your career wasn’t in medicine, consider taking an emergency medicine class, or any of the skills you can learn at your local community college in person or virtually as part of non-credit adult continuing education. Eternity and Mortality On a final note, I went to a special concert presentation celebrating the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album on Saturday night. I received some test results this past week that weren’t so good, so it’s been a down and reflective few days. I have an aneurysm that’s in a particularly bad place and it’s growing, among other issues. As I stood alone at the back of the concert venue, like a ghost, listening to the music from my youth, it brought back a flood of memories. Memories of a much simpler time, when we weren’t addicted to devices. Many of the people in the audience weren’t looking at the spectacular performance and musicianship on the stage, they were busy looking down at their phones, thumbs frantically twiddling. Or, they were watching the performance through

    17 min

  5. 03/10/2025

    Body Prepping

    Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others. Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post! Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Don’t despair—prepare. In our last post we talked about getting your mind right for what’s to come. Actually, we talk about that a lot! We also talk about the items you should have handy in order to be prepared. The other important ingredients in our survival recipe are your body and practice. Having all the cool prepper stuff won’t do much good if you’re not healthy enough to endure the hard times ahead, or able to carry that gear. Don’t underestimate how tough hard times can be on your body, in so many ways! I’m somewhat hardened (for my age) from a year and a half of woodland pioneer living in an RV, yet our recent move put me down for part of a day. Let’s talk about ways to mitigate that concern. It’s not that hard. We’re not going to push you to become a CrossFit junkie. Pioneer Update We’re mostly settled into our new digs in this small apartment. An attractive feature is the layers of security. I’m impressed that the other residents didn’t blindly allow us to tailgate in past security, as we were new and they didn’t recognize us. One new concern is that we’re on a higher floor (for security reasons)—too high to jump in case escape is needed. Always, always visualize the worst happening. What will you do? What will you need? We immediately purchased a collapsible fire ladder long enough to reach from our balcony to the ground. Problem solved (along with fire extinguishers and blankets, of course). We have a prepper inventory Google sheet that lists every item we own, where it is, and what its priority is (for fast decision making). That’s been updated for our new location. You should do the same—things happen fast in a disaster, critical thinking skills are compromised, mistakes could be deadly. I worry we’ll get soft in this new environment. It happens quickly! Yesterday I visited our wonderful White House covered wagon RV, to say hello, provide some TLC, and clean a bit. She’ll go to the RV spa for some routine maintenance in early April, then to her new nearby location to serve on standby in case we need an emergency bug out, or just for some of our fun summer festivals. Good, fun practice! Get Your Body Right It looks like Americans won’t have access to flu shots next winter, as the meeting of scientists to agree on and devise the formula has been canceled by the Trump administration. Our new “health czar,” the former heroin junkie who had part of his brain eaten by a worm, has told kids dying from measles to drink cod liver oil. New (to us) diseases, oldies but not goodies, are spreading around the country. These spoiled, entitled folks in charge now are well known for their intolerance for those they view as the “great unwashed.” You know, those tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Trump has expressed his displeasure at being seen with disabled veterans, saying it’s “not a good look” for him. What they’re doing is a form of societal chemotherapy. Chemo attacks and kills cells throughout the body in hopes that the “bad stuff” will die off before the good stuff dies along with it. They’re stripping away Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, veteran’s disability benefits and health care in order to kill our elderly, our poor, our disabled. That strategy will also kill off many folks who, in the eyes of the wealthy, “suck off the teat of government” for their “entitlements.” Narrator: far more money goes to corporate welfare and tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. After the bottom level of our society is dead, the middle class will effectively be moved down to the lower caste of Americans, albeit a healthier and prettier version of the “rabble” we had before, in the eyes of people like Trump and Musk. A kingdom of peasants and royalty will then be achieved, to our doom. Things could get real hard in a hurry, especially if they then trigger a global war to help cure the deep recession we’re heading toward. This time, the bombs will fall here. Parts of the USA could be the new Gaza or Ukraine as our powerful former allies fight against us and our new Axis of Evil partners. Medicine may be hard to come by, which is why we recommend the excellent Jace Cases. We’re so happy we found those, it was a big gap in our medical preparedness. Hopefully you’ve been following our advice over these seventy-seven posts and you have an emergency bugout bag near your door, and one in your car (perhaps a get-home bag). Imagine a circumstance where you’re forced to carry them (standstill traffic, vehicle trouble, etc). How far will you get? There’s one way to know—practice. If you’re not already taking regular walks, now’s a good time. The weather is warming in these cold regions! Start the habit, build that muscle. Once you get in a routine, practice with your bags (one at a time!). Routine is good, but not always the same route at the same time—that can be a security problem. Especially if your pack looks military or valuable. We’ve recommended quality pepper sprays, alarms, and portable weapons for that purpose as well. Need to drop some weight? It’s not unusual coming off a long winter of lower activity. Look, we obsess over body image. We all can’t or don’t want to look like the latest Hollywood action hero (they’re fake, anyway). We don’t need to. The healthy weight for you is the healthy weight for you. My BMI is 28 but there are plenty of folks with a much higher BMI that could run circles around me. Talk to your physician. The key is, can you carry that pack a reasonable distance? More robust body frames are likely be more successful, given they’re in shape. Body type is built into DNA. Contrary to what society teaches, it's not bad to be any body type, just to manage that and be healthy. Do that. There's a whole lot more to someone than what shape they are. Your good soul will live on long after your body is back to dust. This is important in person-to-person conflict as well. You can study all the boxing or martial arts, a great way to get in shape, but in reality most fights dissolve into on-the-ground grappling within seconds, and the victor is often the one who can outlast the other stamina-wise. Submission tactics are quite useful, however! Same with extreme weightlifting. Fun story—in my younger days I worked installing chain link fence. We did that day in, day out, all year long in blistering heat and frigid cold—digging holes by hand with posthole diggers, mixing and lugging unbalanced wheelbarrows of cement, carrying huge rolls of metal fencing on our shoulders across uneven terrain. It was brutal work. Most of us were skinny but wiry from it. One time a new guy came on, fresh from the gym, massive mounds of muscles in his shoulders, arms, legs. Quite impressive. He couldn’t do the work—he was too used to the comfortable, balanced loads he’s been using in the gym, and wasn’t up for that level of pain and discomfort. It’s a good lesson—apply it to your preparedness. Don’t just choose nice sunny days for your walks. Walk in all kinds of weather. It’s a good chance to make sure your all-weather prepper gear is comfortable and functional. Take your comms along and make sure they work at different distances and environments while you’re at it. I keep myself at my desired weight with a very simple, inexpensive practice. It’s worked for my entire adult life. We have a good bathroom scale that measures all kinds of body metrics, including BMI. I get on it almost every time before I take a shower. If it’s not where I want it to be, I eat less and walk more for a few days and measure again. Boom. It works like magic. No expensive fads or scams needed. Another way to be in tune with your body and what’s normal for you is to use a device like the Oura rings Giavana and I use. It will tell you when something is off, and provide an incredible wealth of tools to get your mind and body right. It alerted this nurse practitioner she had cancer long before she or her doctor had any idea. Not the actual cancer, but that something was very wrong with her body. It knew her well, what was “normal” for her, as ours do. Work at getting your diet right. Due to standards being lowered due to the corporate food lobby and deregulation, we’re fed a steady diet of addictive garbage every day. That stuff won’t be available in a collapse. Wean yourself off it—learn to make some favorite meals from scratch like soups and stews. Get your body used to eating real fruit and vegetables. They may be all we have in the end, if that. We’ll start our small home gardening experiments soon—stay tuned! Lastly, get any medical needs attended to now. That’s why I’m getting my hands fixed, they’re shot from those years of fence work, military, sports, and life. I’ll need them. Get your vaccines up to date. Do you need a measles booster? Might be a good time! You can get a simple titer blood test to see if you still have immunity. You don’t want measles, no sir. It’s incredibly communicable and spreading thanks to our new anti-science leadership. None of the news is good—sto

    12 min

  6. 03/03/2025

    Where It's Going (Epic Biblical Context)

    Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others. Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post! Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Don’t despair—prepare. Before we get started on this week’s pioneer update, my urgent plea is for you to find some way to get involved. There is no more time left to save this country—it gets worse by the day, they make progress by the day in tearing it down, stealing our assets, aligning us with evil. Someday, your kids, grandkids, great grandkids will watch the “old” movies about the USA standard, the USA way of life, and ask you what you did to save it for them, to prevent the Russian dystopia they may well be living in at that time. You can do a lot from home, but every able-bodied American needs to get out there and be seen. Give money, whatever you can. Pick one or more of these sites and get to work. 5calls.org, indivisible.org, citizen.org, moveon.org, aclu.org, fiftyfifty.one, resist.bot, nosmallact.com I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the world—the good and bad places—the real places, not the dressed up tourist zones. I saw society in every state from good to bad, from strife to utopian. The forces that have overtaken the United States did so with a vision of white picket fence, Mayberry RFD, 1950s White America. The “Golden Age.” What they’re driving us toward is the soup lines, disease, and struggle of peak Great Depression. They are aligning with and driving us toward the stark, bleak, desolate life I’ve seen when traveling to Soviet satellite autocracies in eastern Europe and other places around the globe. It’s always the same. Pioneer Update Just when we thought we were almost moved into our new (to us) little apartment, we got word we need to clean out the rest of our stuff in storage. Another round of brutal lifting and moving of boxes ensued, and of course cold and high winds were there (out of nowhere) to make it a hundred times harder. It was pretty brutal this weekend, just when we thought we could catch our breath. We’re minimalist by US standards, but we’re realizing we still have too much crap. It’s enabling another round of cleansing ourselves from old and broken things. Memories are in the mind. This phase of our spiritual existence is a very brief flash. None of this is important. Buddhism teaches that suffering is part of life—and we should learn to deal with it through acceptance of that fact, mindfulness, and spirituality. Do the right things, and experience joy in eternity. I say often that I believe this place we’re in is a kiln, a miasma of trials and tribulations, temptations, to get us to see the light, to forge to shape our spirits into what would be acceptable in a perfect eternity. Jesus came here as an example of that, the perfect human, to show us the way, a living exemplar. Our bodies are a form of embryo, an egg to house our spirit during this physical journey. Stress and suffering make that hard. That’s the point. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. We had to go into overdrive this weekend. Back out to the White House RV, back to storage, loading Henrik the pickup, unloading her, all in high wind. I hurt myself, rather bad. Tons of extreme pain. I failed the test—I lost my temper and yelled at my precious, beautiful Giavana. I let her down, I let myself down. It’s further proof I still have work to do, spiritually. This is all a test, and I failed it. I need to be stronger, because it’s only going to get harder from here. I fail when the pain is too much, and I need to think more about what it must have felt like up on that cross, bleeding to death in the sun. As I was down for the count the rest of the evening, I returned to watching episodes of The Chosen. It’s such an incredible series, entertaining, and it grounds me. I went back to reading my Buddhist books. I had gotten away from all that in these recent whirlwind times, and it goes to show you need to practice, you need to practice faith, to stay sharp. I have made my apologies, begged forgiveness, and feel refreshed and invigorated today, mind and body (somewhat!). Where It’s Going Don’t fall for the psyops. You’re seeing our national anthem booed in other countries. We love our country, so this is hard. Use your mind, not your emotions. This is what Trump, Vance, Musk want. They want you to hate our allies. It’s a psyop to get you to embrace the enemy, Mother Russia. They’re not booing the real USA—me, you, most of us. They’re booing our “leadership,” and with good reason, as we’ve betrayed the free world to align with Russia, China, North Korea, and the other miserable dictatorships around the world. What we’re seeing is an extreme form of societal chemotherapy. Trump and his minions are going to subject “the rest of us” to extreme pain—financially, health-wise, emotionally. They’re taking away Medicaid and other resources with the full knowledge people will die. They want that. They want the bottom crust of society to die off because they despise those beautiful people. To the elite, those are the great unwashed, the “dirty” people in steerage, and they want them gone. At the same time, moving the middle class down to the lower tier of society, broken but at least somewhat cleaner. At that point the goal is reached—a two-tier caste system of peasants and royalty. Autocrat/oligarchs and people with no power. This is what you should be out protesting and defending against, for those you love, now and to come. Go through my posts over a year and a half as your guide. Prepper Jim Cobb has a new magazine out, a few bucks well spent. I promised some Biblical context. Listen, I’ve been all over the map in terms of spiritualism and religion. I’ve written about my journey plenty of times, particularly in my road novel Farawayer. I’m practical, I’m analytical, my nature is to be skeptical. I just feel there’s too much evidence to ignore, not to mention the cost too great. As well, faith can help you prepare for the times to come, right? Isn’t this all about preparing? We can buy all the things, train and practice, but we have to train our mind, our spirit, in order to endure, or it’s likely all for naught. It’s a secret weapon to get through the worst of things, mentally and emotionally. You don’t have to join a cult-like organization or practice inane rituals. Just—be good. Believe, have faith, it will carry you through, give you hope, improve your self-esteem, set a good example for others. That’s all. Start with those Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. They’re incredibly inspiring—the greatest speech ever given. Otherwise, the below might at least prove interesting from a historical perspective. So, what does the Bible say? It seems to be very relevant in these times, as we swing the door open wide to disease, war, lawlessness, climate disaster. "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled"—Jesus, Matthew 24 “There will be epidemics of terrible diseases." Jesus, Luke 21:11 “There will be an increasing of lawlessness"—Jesus, Matthew 24:12 “Mankind will ruin the earth."—Revelations 11:18 The end times will include plagues, wars, persecution, and other destruction. The Bible speaks of great suffering in the end times due to our human path. This is referred to as the great Tribulation. Perhaps it’s all part of the plan. When times are this bad, the weak will cave and submit to the evil, disavow their faith, leaving only the most pure and faithful perhaps to move on to what is promised. Perhaps it will give evil folks one last chance to repent. For the rest? Perhaps back to another kiln, another forge, to further develop, if that’s even an option at this point. Maybe this is the final deciding, maybe we’ve blown our last chance, after other Biblical resets like the Great Flood. At least, on this planet as it might not survive what’s to come either. We’ve reached a technical evolution, where one lunatic can press a button and wipe out a good part of the planet, just at the time we’ve lost our morality and ethics, which makes it all the more likely it will happen. In my Vigilante Angels noir crime trilogy, I wrote about the rise of a politician-as-antichrist and a cancer-ridden ex-cop that decides to assassinate him for the sake of humanity. Is Trump the antichrist? Let’s look at some signs (here’s one of many in-depth analysis by theologians). In summary, from the paper I just linked (please read that great piece by Benjamin L Corey for much more detail!), the antichrist will be: * The leader of a military superpower with the ability to destroy the entire earth.—Daniel 7:23 * Arrogant and known for giving boastful speeches.—Daniel 7:8, Revelation 13:5 * Someone known for making a lot of public threats against people.—Revelation 13:2, Daniel 7:4 * Obsessed with winning.—Revelation 6:2 * Someone who causes people all over the world to be filled with wonder after he receives a head wound that heals, and follow him.—Revelation 13:3 * A political outsider with despicable character who wins an election unexpectedly.—Daniel 11:21 * Someone who gives speeches about “great things” that only he can do.—Daniel 7:20 * Someone

    15 min

  7. 02/23/2025

    Zero Day Prepping

    Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others. Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post! Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Don’t despair—prepare. Preparing requires a healthy dose of crystal ball visualization. We procrastinate, think we have time to do all the things to get ready, and then, one day, click. The lights, internet, GPS, cellular networks are off, and the apocalypse is on. Don’t fall for that idea you have “time” to prepare. Zero day attacks mean you have zero days to prepare. The time is nigh. Pioneer Update We’ve been offline for a bit, it’s been a hot minute and a very, very difficult time here in pioneer-land. We missed you! Giavana, Pia and I got word we could start moving into our phase two pioneer life small apartment earlier than expected. That means shifting our covered wagon White House RV to standby mode (rather than full time abode). We’ve been making that change through these last twelve days and of course, having to do it in the worst weather—snow, ice, sleet, heavy rain, strong winds. Thus, our incognito silence here on our journal. We’re back! It’s been incredibly hard. We’re not spring chickens. This has been the kind of stuff that would have, once upon a time, had me raise my fist in anger and ask God why? Why me? Am I so bad to deserve this? As if the weather was all about me—the arrogance of that POV. When we’re stressed, we don’t think right. Giavana and I soldiered forth through it all. We’re physically and mentally stronger because of it—that’s a blessing, not a curse. I’m writing this pioneer journal post from my “new” desk—an old and scarred (but solid) wood piece we bought for a few bucks at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I love it. I wonder who else has held this seat and what they may have written about over its long history. We have a single TV in this small shotgun apartment, which we both watch from our desks in the living room converted into an office space, and then simply wheel it around the corner so we can watch something light at bedtime. We’re on a higher floor—high enough for security, but not too high that we can’t escape. We have a view—another small mountain range provides beautiful sunsets and reminds us of the much larger one that looms behind our former woodland pioneer home. We still have access to that, and will be going to visit the White House RV and care for her today. She’s been good to us, and she will stand ready to house us again should the need arise, and it sure seems like that’s likely. Blink We took a break from our moving duress to watch the new hit series Zero Day, starring Robert DeNiro. It opens with a perfectly normal day—people talking on phones, commuting to work. Then, suddenly…blink. The phones go blankGPS guidance goes blankRailroad crossings, aircraft control, and traffic lights go blankThe electrical grid, water plants, internet are offGas stations and ATMs are offline and useless, no credit or debt card transactions can occurRemember—if this is an EMP attack, backup generators and power sources may not work Imagine this happening at the very moment you are reading this post. What do you do? You can’t call anyone. You don’t know if your kids or spouse/partner are safe across town. Your neighbors are just as confused and scared as you are. Or, maybe you’re now out on a highway with everyone getting out of their vehicles. Or, maybe in a crowded store in pitch black darkness. Let’s go back to my opening. Take a moment now, in relative comfort, to crystal-ball visualize that scenario. You can take it to the bank there will be chaos and maybe rioting/looting as people panic, if this isn’t remedied in very short time. Does your current situation require you to fill your gas tank, or are you short on food or medical staples? Got milk? Good luck with that. These apocalyptic shows are dramatic, but we watch them because they serve an important purpose—they get our wheels turning. Where are we exposed? If you find you are, go back to our posts over this past year and a half to cover your bases in the important areas—food, shelter, medical, financial, energy. When the movie Leave the World Behind came out last year, we wrote about it in the same context. It’s worth a re-watch. What a fun, relaxing(?) way to prepare! There really isn’t time. This is not hyperbole, this is not clickbait, this is not a drill. Last week in Saudi Arabia, Trump officially aligned the United States with the “bad guys”—the world’s dictators, led by Putin. In all those incredible war stories of the USA past we’ve been the heroes, aligned with the forces of good against the forces of evil. Now we’re the bad guys, led by an aged, corrupt, lifelong con man and immigrant billionaire who’s mad at the world because his surgery “down there” went bad and sees himself as some kind of dark gothic comic book villain. We’re rushing headlong to WWIII, and on the bad side of history. Europe is forming up their own massive army primarily due to this fact—the USA is now on the other side. So far, the bad guys have always lost these big conflicts. Probably not this time, with the massive arsenal of the USA, but a lot of people will die, and right here on our soil. You, your kids and grandkids will likely be drafted into the meat grinder, and die far away from home. The problem was never immigrants, woke, or LGBTQ+ people. Trump has plenty of both groups at his resorts. Caitlyn Jenner, for example. Or, the leader of the far-right party in Germany that Trump and Musk are supporting, who is gay with a Sri Lankan partner. JD Vance had an Indian wedding and his spouse is from immigrants. Those things were only tools to agitate vast numbers of ignorant folks into voting. So, who was it that got us here? It was the folks who changed our society in one generation from one where a high school dropout like my Dad could take a job in a small manufacturing company, work weekdays 9 to 5 with a solid hour lunchtime, and provide a good home and car to our family while my Mom stayed home with us, to one where two college-educated spouses have to grind and grind every just to try to stay ahead, and still be told they’re “lazy and entitled.” It was the wealthy who did this to us. It was greed. And now, they’re in charge. Our democracy is being dismantled before our eyes, day by day. You can safely assume all of your personal information is now “out there” and accessible to the worst hackers world-wide. Freeze your credit reports at all three agencies, as we’ve recommended in past posts. You can assume it’s being used to train AI systems in a way that’s not going to be good for you and your family going forward. We’re looking at a government shutdown in a few weeks. The stock market had two very bad days to close the week. Science and medical organizations are being dismantled as we lurch into a new Dark Ages (narrator: the previous one did not go well). They may be trying to crash the dollar to force us all to crypto currency. They certainly seem hell-bent on destroying the middle class to create a two level caste system of peasants and royalty. Trump has even begun referring to himself as king. So, do your homework, pioneer readers/listeners. Visualize. Mitigate your exposures. Our favorite YouTube prepper, Kris at CityPrepping, said in his most recent post that in all his years of prepping, he’s never felt such a sense of urgency as he does now. We hear you Kris, same here. Now that Giavana, Pia and I are semi-moved in, our focus changes a bit. We’re looking at Meshtastic to solve half of the comms problem (communicating with fairly nearby family when everything is down). We’re ordering our indoor growing systems so we have our own fruits and vegetables. We’re adding more of everything to our prepper stores. Next up, we’re going to put all this in a Biblical context. It’s fascinating how many parallels and predictions fit these times, even if you’re not really into that kind of thing. “Well, I'm near the end and I just ain't got the timeAnd I'm wasted and I can't find my way homeCome down off your throne and leave your money at homeSomebody has to changeYou are the reason I've been waiting all these yearsSomebody holds the keyWell, I'm near the end and I just ain't got the timeOh, and I'm wasted and I can't find my way home”—Blind Faith, Can’t Find My Way Home “Soul shineIs better than sunshineIt's better than moonshineIt's damn sure better than rain”—Warren Haynes So, this is where Giavana, Pia, and I are currently in our pioneer journey. Stay tuned! This pioneer journey continues… Hey, it took me a few hours to write this journal post for you. Can you spend a few seconds and post it on your socials or forward to others? If so, thank you! Free subscribers get a free copy of my book of short stories, Rambles and Daydreams. Paid subscribers will get all three books in the noir crime trilogy, Vigilante Angels. I no longer do paid-only posts, because it felt gross to leave people behind, especially those who can’t afford it. If you read my ramblings, I’ll leave it to your conscience. If you get any value from my writing, consider a donation or subscription,

    12 min

  8. 02/10/2025

    Prepping for the Spread of Everything

    Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others. Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post! Project: Pioneer (Prepping, Politics, Afterlife, RVLife) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Don’t despair—prepare. Let’s talk about the rapid spreads happening right before our eyes, and more importantly what you should do to prepare and keep your household safe. We’ll talk primarily about three major, dangerous spreads—disease, danger, and fascism. We’ll break it down, the good, bad, and ugly, and then end with a burst of positivity. Pioneer Update Giavana, Pia and I continue to battle through a rough winter. Ice, wind, and snow are regular visitors, pushing our winter covered wagon RV preps to their limit. The elements all take turns with us, and every day it seems to be something. One small unattended crack in the foamboard surrounding our undercarriage allows the wind to enter and try to blow the rest of it off from the inside. Henrik the pickup went into a wild spin on icy back roads while trying to make my way home late at night from visiting my kids and grandkids. A few days ago I went out to perform my tank dumping ballet and slipped on a sheet of ice, performing a split. Splits aren’t good for arthritic 60-somethings. I’m still sore, and lucky. Winter is dangerous. This winter RV life is hard, but that’s the point. We’re now hardened. We pulled out a paper map yesterday and reviewed the lay of the land and possible emergency paths. Drill baby, drill. We’re just trying to make it to spring. We’re just trying to make it to our new home, the small rental we’ve talked about recently. After almost two years in a small RV all together, it will feel like a dream mansion. The extra room to store up more prepper provisions of water, food, and other necessities will make us feel safer. Spring is coming seasonally, but winter death is coming for America and maybe the world, there is no longer any doubt. Prepare. Remember in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, when the Shire began to be encompassed by the spreading darkness and evil from Mordor overtaking the land? That’s what this feels like, for all of us. Note: Good won in the end. It was tough and took a lot of work, but good won in the end. Don’t frown, don’t be down, get out on the ground. Spread of Disease If you wanted to spread disease, you’d do what we’re seeing our new “government” do right now. Close up agencies that fight the spread of disease in impoverished places before it gets a chance to come to developed nations. Shut down the public’s awareness of the presence of disease, and ways to protect themselves from it. Push propaganda that causes people to doubt science and medicine. Put two con artist medical hustlers in charge of the departments responsible for our health, one of whom has had part of his brain eaten by a worm, and has a long history of drug abuse. In the last week, we’ve seen fresh, new video of schools closed down and their classrooms being sprayed with disinfectant by people in hazmat suits. Sound familiar? Schools in ten states have been shut down, due to “influenza” but this doesn’t seem to be “influenza.” It’s something else—something new that doesn’t register on any of the testing. And it’s nasty—very nasty. COVID-level nasty. Due to this new Dark Ages reboot, we’re seeing measles, tuberculosis, and other oldie but (not) goodie diseases spreading here in the United States, shamefully. Ebola is making a comeback in Africa. The Bird Flu is mutating and hopping its way from species to species, working its way to inevitable spread among humans. In the meantime, those birds fly great distances, and will infect many of the animals we rely on for survival—meat, dairy, and more. I was driving this week and a snow goose fell from the sky and bounced off Henrik’s hood. It felt like a Hitchcock movie—that’s what our lives have been reduced to. The CDC put out an important document about the spread of Bird Flu to household cats, but it was quickly deleted. Prepper Mitigation: Listen—way back before COVID, we all saw the occasional Asian person wearing a surgical mask in public. We saw them as quirky and over the top. As per usual, they were the smart ones. Giavana and I remember a guy on a flight diligently wiping down his entire area with alcohol upon boarding—before COVID. We thought he was odd, but not any more. We are that guy. We’re seeing more people wearing masks in public. Get over the stigma of “nobody else is doing it.” Screw that. People are wearing their pajamas out in the wild, who gives a damn if you have a mask on. The privacy reasons alone, in Trump’s new dystopian version of this country, is a good reason to do it. Do all the COVID things—frequent hand washing; avoid crowds; have your radar on for anyone who is showing any signs of being ill. Don’t rely on our supply chain for emergency meds. Grab a Jase Case as we just did. Stock up on disinfectants (with hydrogen peroxide), 91% alcohol, spray bottles, masks, test kits, therapeutics, preventatives. Our Oura rings are the first line of defense, early warning system, and awareness of what’s going on in our bodies. Spread of Danger I’ve talked before about how a lot of the security that makes us feel good is only simple theater. It’s an illusion. We always thought the Secret Service were badass, until a scrawny kid decided to climb up on a roof and assassinate a president, and damn near did. Same with the guy on the golf course a short time later. It was simple luck they didn’t succeed, not any of the billions we spend on protections and that badass facade of people in suits with earpieces. Same with the airlines. We’ve seen many examples lately of ordinary people sneaking on flights, despite the layers of security theater surrounding those planes we trust our lives on. We seem to have a goal to enrage every terrorist state even more against us as well as push away and anger our allies. We’re decapitating and demoralizing law enforcement and homeland/world intelligence and investigation agencies. Those two things don’t go hand in hand. Just like we likely won’t see the next pandemic until it’s too late, we likely won’t see the next big terror attack coming. Prepare. Trump dismantled the Aviation Security group, decapitated FAA leadership, put a freeze on hiring air traffic controllers when they’re already badly short-staffed and over-stressed. The result was predictable—planes full of citizens falling from the sky, more dead American citizens on our own soil. Just like when he dismantled our world-wide pandemic early warning systems in 2017, and over a million innocent Americans then died on our soil. I use “innocent” with a grain of salt here—those that voted for him, knowing he’s a life-long con man, I guess are not so innocent. Suum cuique tribuere—you get what you deserve. Desperation breeds violence. We’re about to see a whole lot more desperation. As Trump’s ignorant, violent supporters start to realize the pain they’ve brought on themselves, how they’ve been betrayed and lied to, they’ll likely rise up. People are rising up, and this will be met with violence from the government, as Trump has been dying to do his entire life. The loose coalition of this nightmare—the extreme Christian right, the billionaires, the MAGA low-lifes, will begin to turn on each other when that loose alliance unravels, as each jockeys for power. There will be anarchy, and that, unfortunately, means violence. This will all come to a head soon in some way, shape, or form. If Musk defies the court order to stop dismantling the government and stealing citizen data this week, we’ll be in a full blown Constitutional crisis (again). Emotions may boil over if the government shuts down next month over Republican inadequacy to put a budget in place. Our new heroes emerged this week. A group of white Nazi dudes appeared on a bridge over an interstate near Cincinnati, Ohio, and began hanging up Nazi flags. They were too scared to show their faces, ironically wearing those masks they had recently called “face diapers that didn’t allow them to breathe.” They wore guns on their hips—security theater cosplay badasses. Their mistake was doing this in close proximity to the hood. A band of brave brothers and sisters emerged from one side of the bridge, and the “badass” Nazis ran away like scared little children in their mini U-Haul. The good guys and gals burned those Nazi flags in primal celebration. Heroism by the populace. “They chose the wrong neighborhood,” one resident said. The cops stood by the entire time. Imagine it had been some Black folks with BLM flags. Imagine the skulls being busted in that alternate scenario. Prepper Mitigation: You are the security, nobody will save you, except your tribe. Take precautions, prepare. I’ve written journal posts here about how to do that—go re-read them. Train yourself and your family to be very observant of everything and everyone around you. Heads up, phones down. Always look for your shelter or exit points. Avoid trouble and physical confrontation. Far more dangerous times are ahead for you and your family. Do all the preparedness things we’ve been guiding you with for this year

    18 min
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This platform will serve as an interactive reality journal for Project: Pioneer and notes/interaction for my current and future novels. billydecarlo.substack.com

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