“A nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strike could cripple the U.S. electrical grid, communications, transportation, and other critical infrastructure for months, an expert warned,” Fox News reports. “Historian William Forstchen, a New York Times bestselling author and an expert on EMPs, discussed with Fox News Digital how the U.S. – and everyday Americans – can prepare for the ‘existential threat’ that the attack poses.
That may be news to their readers, but EMP, along with preparedness planning, have been regularly featured in AmmoLand Shooting Sports News stories and other Second Amendment-promoting websites. Curiously, the ones not talking about either are gun prohibitionist lobbyists. Try using those search terms yourself at Brady United, Giffords, and Everytown, and see if you can find one word about what you can do if the real possibility of widespread social disruption happens.
This won’t be another article on how to stock up on supplies or what to put in your bugout bag (assuming car circuitry isn’t fried and/or you have alternate means of egress), how to make sure you have enough water, food, medical supplies, ammunition, fuel, (toilet paper!) etc., how to secure your home/shelter, organize trusted friend/neighborhood alliances, etc. There are plenty of resources to consult on that, and presumably, AmmoLand readers and gun owners in general are more cognizant of them than most. Instead, let’s look at the likely universal commonalities for when the lights go out.
Before too long, it will be clear to many that they won’t be coming back on anytime soon. It will also be clear that stores won’t be able to sell you anything because their registers won’t work. They’ll soon become dangerous places to be as people figure out if they want it, there won’t be anyone to keep them from taking it, and anyone to keep someone else from taking it from them.
The “authorities” will be overwhelmed, at least the ones who don’t just abandon their posts to take care of themselves, as happened in Hurricane Katrina when 249 “community heroes” took care of themselves, with some even joining in the looting. They’ll organize and deploy to where they’re most needed and set up triage stations. With cars being stalled, planes crashed, emergency first responders all but helpless, hospitals trying to figure out where to put the dead…Add widespread looting and arson with firefighters pretty much helpless…
“Many Americans Not Prepared for Disasters,” HealthDay reported from a poll back in 2012. “Nearly half of adults surveyed do not have emergency supplies, researchers find.” And the ones they surveyed has “a false sense of security.”
There’s no reason to believe that’s changed, and every reason to believe most Americans don’t even have the three-day supply of food and water recommended by government agencies like the National Weather Service. What happens after three days? What happens after a week? Two weeks…?
Is now a good time to mention “that lead times for transformers has grown fourfold in three years, with orders sometimes taking two years”?
There will be no shortage of people who prepared for nothing and who, driven by desperation and already inclined to predatory practices, will be prepared to take what they want from who they want, and kill anyone who gets in their way. And they’ll spread out from the cities to find what they need, which will soon turn into who they need.
Now consider the numbers. Or don’t because they’re terrifying.
With “top men” reporting the potential for EMP to shut things down and leave us all at the mercy of the merciless, it’s time to ask who the delusional ones are: American gun owners or the evil violence monopolists and their useful idiots (aka “cannibal food”) demanding citizen disarmament, and especially the banning of “weapons of war” and “high capacity magazines”?
As I’ve asked before:
[W]here in history is any civilization guaranteed stasis? Has not despotism and mass destruction plagued every civilization that preceded ours? Is it not, in fact, still commonplace throughout the globe? By what suspension of reality, by what denial of the observable and the probable, by what art, device or magic are we sheltered few immune from catastrophe? Are we certain, from our brief and privileged vantage point, that such things will ever remain headline curiosities? Is it not just plain stupid to proclaim that our familiar way of life will forever be the norm, when everything that has gone before us shows we are, instead, the extremely lucky beneficiaries of a rare and fortunate convergence of circumstances; and one, by the way, that has only been preserved under force of arms?
If only the Founders had conceived of a way that Americans could band together in times of existential threat and to provide for what was “necessary to the security of a free state…”
Oh, they did…? And what we need to do is clear…?
I don’t suppose, with all the wish lists gun owners are preparing for Donald Trump now that he’s started issuing Second Amendment-related executive actions, anyone with the president’s ear would like to remind him that “The President shall be Commander in Chief of … the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”? And urge him to start championing its resurrection in addition to that “Iron Dome” he’s proposing…?
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
