299 Days: The Preparation

Chapter 24 Normalcy Bias

That day, when he came back from the range with the Team, Grant was elated. He was good at something really cool. He couldn’t wait to tell Lisa.

Oh, wait. He couldn’t tell her.

She didn’t know about the food, the guns, or any of the other “survival” stuff. This secret life he had been living was draining him. The most important thing in the world (other than his family) was something he couldn’t talk about with his wife. His fears about the future and his plans for taking care of his family… he had to keep this huge part of his life secret. This secret that he couldn’t talk about made him feel their marriage was incomplete. They were such a great couple on so many levels — all their friends always said they were the perfect couple — but that was only because Lisa didn’t know Grant’s big secret.

On the way home from the range, he seriously considered telling Lisa about everything. She would understand that he was doing this as a precaution against all the things that were going wrong in the world. She and the kids were the most important thing to him, and prepping was second. Prepping meant he could take care of his family in a crisis; what wife would be against that? He needed a full relationship with his wife so he would tell her. He spent the twenty- minute drive getting his courage up.

He got home and she was there. Here goes. The stock market had just fallen a few thousand points over the past few weeks. Surely this would be evidence that things were going poorly and having a little extra food, a comfortable place to go outside the city, and a few guns would be welcomed.

She was in the kitchen. “How was your shooting thing?” Lisa asked. She thought it was bull’s-eye shooting with .22s at paper targets.

“Oh, great,” Grant said. “I met some cool guys. We’ll be shooting together again.” He paused. He was going for it. He didn’t want to waste twenty minutes of rehearsing and then chicken out.

“You know, the stock market took a huge beating the past couple of weeks,” Grant said. “I haven’t been saying anything because I didn’t want to stress you out, but I see plenty more of this happening.” He went on to describe how the federal debt was unsustainable and could never be paid off without crushing taxes and economic collapse. He explained how the Federal Reserve creating trillions of dollars would lead to inflation. He described all the things the Administration did to control the economy, like taking over the auto industry and health care, and the new controls on the financial industry, not to mention a frightening call for a “civilian security force.” Grant told Lisa what Venezuela was like and how they had a “civilian security force” just like what the American Administration seemed to be describing. He gave Lisa a very logical and somewhat understated description of what was going on in the country, all based on things he knew she had read in the newspaper. Then Grant said the “F” word.

“Honey,” Grant said in summation, “there is a term for when the government and corporations work together for their mutual benefit and restrict liberties. That word is ‘fascism.’”

“Are you out of your mind?” she yelled. This was not going well.

“What’s wrong with you?” She just stared at him.

He started to explain that “fascism” is not necessarily Nazism, but that Nazism was one form of it. He was about to describe Italian fascism under Mussolini before the mid-1930s when Italy entered into an alliance with the Germans, but it was obvious Lisa thought “fascism” meant men with little mustaches and genocide. It couldn’t possibly mean America. We are the land of the free; didn’t Grant, who was an American History major in college, know that? He must have gone insane.

Grant said, “I’ve been right about everything so far. About the Dow falling, about the price of gold going up, about the size of the debt….”

“Shut up!” Lisa screamed. She never said that. She was furious. “What?” Grant was stunned. Then he realized that he had just said “I’ve been right about everything so far.” Big mistake.

Grant continued. “I’m not mad at you, honey. I just want to make sure nothing bad happens to our family. This isn’t an ‘I’m right’ thing. I’m a man and it’s my job to take care of my family and I see some things happening, and more to come, that mean we need to take some steps to….”

“Shut up!” she screamed. “I said shut up.” He hadn’t seen her so mad in years.

“Stop talking,” she said. She put her hands over her ears and said screamed, “I can’t handle this. I don’t want to hear it. Don’t talk about this.” She calmed down a little and looked at him half- apologetically and said much softer, “Please don’t talk about these things. OK?”

Grant realized now that Lisa knew things were going badly in the economy, but she just couldn’t handle thinking about it. She didn’t know about all the food and other preparations Grant had, so an economic collapse seemed much scarier to her.

Well, now she knew things weren’t rosy. Grant could at least work on her not wanting to hear about it.

Then it hit him. Grant had a new plan: build up an undeniable track record. Make predictions that end up coming true, so not even Lisa could deny that he’s onto something.

One little problem, though. This meant he needed to tell her all the predictions. How would that work if she didn’t want to hear about any of it?

Right then Manda walked downstairs. “Hey, Mom and Dad, whatcha talkin’ about?”

That was it. Manda. She was the solution. Grant would tell Manda what was going on, making sure not to scare the fourteen year old. He would build up a track record of predictions with Manda, and then, when he needed to, have her tell Lisa all the things he had correctly predicted way back when. He would turn Manda into a junior co-prepper with him and they would work on Lisa when they needed to. Not a bad plan.

“Nothing, Manda,” Grant said. “Have you done your homework?” He asked, changing the subject.

Grant had a huge advantage when it came to Manda. She was already a right-wing whacko. During the past election season, Manda told some friends that she was a Republican and they ridiculed her. When some of her friends found out she was a Republican, they wouldn’t talk to her anymore. She was stunned. It pissed her off. She had the fighting spirit — she did have red hair and it’s true how fiery they are — and thought if people would be mean to her because of her beliefs, then she would get in their faces about it because they were stupid. That’s my girl, Grant thought.

Grant took Manda and Cole to school most mornings. He had Glenn Beck on the radio for the ride. Grant found out how well Beck was explaining things when he brought up the topic of economic collapse with Manda the next morning on the way to school.

“Hey, Manda,” Grant asked, “What do you think will happen with the economy?”

“Oh, it will collapse,” she said plainly.

This was going to be easier than he thought. “What do you think will happen?” Grant asked her.

“The government is spending way more money than they,” Manda said and then corrected herself, “well, actually, we can ever pay back. They’re taking over stuff like those companies. .”

Wow. This was going well.

They talked about it more. Grant had several more conversations with her about what was happening. He asked her if she remembered the things Beck had predicted.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Manda said. “He has been right about most things. No one on TV has been saying these things and they’ve all been surprised by what’s happening. But not him.”

Now that Grant had credibility with Manda on the issue of whether there was a problem out there, the next step was to establish that something needed to be done.

Grant tried not to alarm her but asked, “Manda, what do you think will happen to Americans?”

“Bad things,” Manda answered. “I think food will cost a lot and we won’t be able to afford other things. I think I will have to work really hard the rest of my life to pay for all the government stuff.” Grant decided to go further. “What do you think happens if food prices go up?”

She thought. “People will get mad.”

“Yes, they will,” Grant said, thrilled that she got all of this. “You’re smarter than most adults. You know what happens when people are hungry and get mad?”

Grant proceeded to describe what a riot was. He told the story about the LA riots. Her eyes were huge. She had never heard such things, but she was smart enough, and open-minded enough, to realize that this could happen right here in America.

“Dad,” Manda asked, “what can we do to be safe if this happens?”

Perfect. “We’re at school now,” Grant said. “I’ll answer your question on our next ride.” He was so proud of her.

Grant dropped her off and then took Cole to his elementary school. As usual, Cole didn’t say much and didn’t seem to understand what they were talking about. He was doing so much better than when they first started going to the elementary school for kindergarten. Back then, he only knew about ten words.

But, now he had a few hundred words. It took a lot of speech therapy, but he could get by with the words he knew and hand gestures. He was doing OK in the regular classes at school. He was pretty good at math. With his incredible photographic memory, he would just memorize the multiplication tables. He had some trouble with reading comprehension, but he was getting it. He was in the bottom quarter of the class, which was respectable given how hard it was for him to process language.

Cole was the happiest kid in the world, though. He was extraordinarily polite. People always remarked about that. He was the most caring little guy and especially liked little kids. He could talk to them because they had the same vocabulary, and the little kids didn’t talk too much for him to process. He would play with them and help them. He was like a little day care worker, getting them food, hugging them when they fell down, and helping them potty. Grant knew what Cole would do for a living when he grew up, and he’d be darned good at it.

Very little bothered Cole, except that he had to have a routine, which was very typical for people with autism. For Cole, that meant bed at the same time and the same food for every meal. He didn’t melt down if the routine was altered like he did a few years ago, but he didn’t like any changes.

This worried Grant. What if there were a collapse, or, as they said in the survivalist world, the “shit hit the fan?” (SHTF for short.) How would Cole deal with all his normal routines — one kind of pancakes and one kind of syrup for breakfast, video games after school, hotdogs for dinner every night — when he had beans and rice to eat out at the cabin and there was no school, and possibly no electricity for video games?

Not only would it be hard on Cole, it would be hard on Lisa.

She tried so hard to make sure he was always happy, which was very understandable. In fact, when one of Cole’s routines was disrupted, like when they ran out of pancakes, Lisa would get agitated and extremely focused on getting the routine back on schedule. She was a loving mother. If Cole ran out of his pancakes, Lisa would drop what she was doing and go get them. Cole needed the routine and Lisa needed Cole to have his routine. Grant couldn’t fault her for being a things broke down and there were no more pancakes in the stores. Lisa might freak out more than Cole. Lisa had a bad case of normalcy bias.

For Lisa, normalcy bias probably meant when the grocery store was out of pancakes, which would be the first day of the crisis; she likely would not believe that the stores were completely out of them. It must be just this particular store, she would think. She might drive around town in dangerous conditions just to find the store that has those pancakes. And she was beautiful and defenseless and….

Another part of normalcy bias was that when there is a crisis, people are so comforted by the normal pre-crisis things in their lives that they do irrational things to have the normal thing back. That would be another reason Lisa might drive around during dangerous conditions to try to find Cole’s favorite kind of pancakes; it would be her way of coping with the disaster.

You have to understand this. Lives will depend on it.