zero sum game

ZERO SUM GAME

Until one achieves wisdom through age ( with required School ‘O Da Hard Knocks diploma.  Aging without learning through adversity is just physical advancement without the mental equivalent ), the whole game we survivalists play tends to be taken just a smidge too seriously.  We are Mighty Survivalist, Hear Us Roar!  As a young soldier recklessly charges an enemy position, invincible, so does the prepper lock and load eager to engage the evil forces of the land.  The older experienced soldier snipes from afar, and the older survivalist begins to understand he is simply screwed rather than prepared.

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The more you learn about the underlying causes of our decline, the scarier it gets.  You begin to unravel the decaying ball of crap and to learn what you never knew you didn’t know.  As it sinks in, one fine day you realize, yeah, the best I’ll be able to do is to take out as many of the scumbags as possible before I’m overtaken by the mob of mouth breathers.  Then you go from “look at the supplies that will save me” to a more realistic “stuff I’ll need in case I end up surviving despite the odds”.

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But reality doesn’t stop us from trying, correct?  You can go Uber Morbid and nihilist and declare there to be no meaning to life past spawning, and give up after your children leave the nest.  Or, you can do that AND declare that since you need a hobby besides Netflix anyway, you’ll keep fighting the good fight regardless.  Which I’m sure is all my readers, because you aren’t just reading me for my wit and glorious mane.  You think preparing has enough benefits to continue, even if the only benefit is justifying your previous sunk costs.  Our sacrifices shall not be in vain!

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But having decided to continue preparedness, there is a nagging little detail you should know.  You aren’t mindlessly consuming.  This isn’t about trinkets, the most toys at death, or how big your dingus is by how many FLIR scopes you can buy.  This is the original Zero Sum Game humanity has always played.  And like all good game players who are competitive not because it is only a game but because competition is life’s little Darwin Award Ceremony and games are practice, if you aren’t going to play to win you might as well stay on the porch.

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Winning makes us feel good, because competition is life.  And being the winner at being the best feels good because we always try to be the alpha.  So, stop being a little girl, and sounding like one, and embrace the Zero Sum Game like you want to win it.  Play for keeps.  No longer because it is a hobby ( our old justification for prepping ), and not because it is an insurance policy anymore.  When sky’s are blue, insurance is insurance, nice to have.  When the hurricane meets the shoreline, it becomes more.

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From insurance it went to becoming your emergency equipment ( I’m speaking of insurance from a survivalists point of view-tools.  Not from a bankers point of view of finances ).  Survival insurance was JUST insurance ten years ago.  Nice to have IN CASE.  Now, decline and collapse are no longer an observable phenomenon that will one day occur, but an ongoing occurrence.  Before, highly probable and likely to occur, to now, already happening.  Granted, the decline has been ongoing through most of our lives.  But that was perpetual decline.  The decline now has a drop-off into collapse and an end date. 

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Having used “collapse” far too long, it lost its meaning.  Differentiating between decline and collapse should restore some understanding.  My point is, it is no longer insurance to prep.  It is a scramble to survive.  The “in case” turned into “case study”.  So we need to stop using the philosophy and terminology of insurance policy purchasing and undertake to ensure survival.  It isn’t like it is a difficult equation.  Dumb Ass cavemen scratching the lice out of their ass hair had it easy enough figuring it out.  Only modern man with radiological damage from cell phones don’t get it.

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Greed Is Good.  Not just a cute quote from a movie when all of today’s old bankers were young students of The Art Of War.  Not just the underlying philosophy of one brilliant but confused Russian emigrant.  To play the Zero Sum Game, you need to be greedy.  Not just self-serving or inclined to self-preservation, a trait all of us share.  But greedy.  Because greed means Never Enough.  And Never Enough is exactly how you properly prep.  Never enough supplies, never enough paranoia, never enough space between you and thee.  And never enough greed.  MORE greed.

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Remember the truism, it is all about food?  True enough, but that isn’t JUST calories in the cupboard.  It is all and everything securing that food.  It is defense and offense, and resources to achieve both.  If you look at life, the universe and everything from a standpoint of sharing, community, morality and philosophy, you have already lost, regardless of the piles of crap that you own.  You must be greedy enough to want everything.  It isn’t a Zero Sum Game until everyone else has to suffer so you can have the resources necessary to survive.  And thrive.

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Not in the meaning of wallowing in luxury.  In the meaning of having far more than you need.  Because surplus is survival.  Surplus food is surplus warriors, surplus farmers and surplus breeders.  Without a surplus, the US would have been another piss ant country under the rule of fuzzy foreigners.  Our Sino Overlords would have been bombing OUR wedding parties, rather than we bombing little brown peoples nuptial celebrations.  Without a surplus, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, because prepping wouldn’t be a thing.  And how are you in a position to have this surplus?  Because you are an imperial citizen.

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How is an empire formed?  In a zero sum game of Full Spectrum Dominance.  One party controls ALL the resources.  So to be clear, I don’t apologize for being an American, White, One Each.  I’m sad to be on the ass end of the Seneca Cliff of empire, but I’m smart enough to be grateful for what we had and to know it is almost all gone ( the end is nigh when you go from extracting resources from colonial possessions to sacking the home capital ), hence using it to best effect.  As an investment in the next round of resource control.

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I started out talking about the more realistic outcome in your efforts at survival.  In that you’ll die a horrible death and all your toy acquisition will be for naught.  And that is so, depressingly true.  But just as you plan to the contrary, so too must you play the Zero Sum Game.  In it to win it, regardless of the realistic probabilities of its success.  Because it IS a game, and you need to stay competitive.  Even at this time of life of far reduced hormones and lack of interest from reduced energy.

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Continued tomorrow.

( .Y. )

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