TEOTWAWKI on Dec 21, 2012 – or not…

I have always wanted to live off the grid, when I was a kid, I didn’t exactly know what that meant, I just knew that I wanted to live away from people and populated areas, I wanted to live off the land, to be free of society, to be self sufficient. There were no solar panels back then, at least none to be had by most people, I was willing to live in a small cabin using candles or kerosene lanterns for light, cooking on a wood stove or fireplace, living like a pioneer. Little did I know that the end of the world would come in my lifetime…

I did know about solar cooking though, my dad and I had a plan to make a solar powered cooker, we even had the materials to do it, my dad brought home a round piece of shiny metal, about 3 feet across, we were going to turn it into a solar concentrator. Now that piece of metal is sitting outside of my sky castle, it never got used as a solar concentrator, it got turned into a lid for a round metal container that we put hot ash in from the wood stove, little did I know that some 30 something years later, that piece of metal would follow me to my off grid life and become a useful object.

Growing up, I felt a need to be far from populated areas, I instinctively knew these areas would not be safe in a SHTF situation, although I wasn’t a fearful doom and gloomer, I just had enough smarts to understand that living outside of town was much better and potentially safer (for me) than living in town.

Fast forward many years, I grew up, got married, had a child, raised my son, got divorced, found and fell in love with the internet, still lived in town, worked a regular job, then I met PB. He was the ultimate DIY’er, he did everything for himself, including first aid, things that most would have gone to the emergency room or to see a doctor, he took care of it himself. We hooked up, got married and several years later, he began telling me about his desire to move out west, to live off grid.

I had no idea he wanted to do this, I had never told him of my childhood desire to do the same thing! So we began to actively look for a place to make our home. During this time, I listen to a radio talk show called “Coast to Coast am", it plays overnight so I subscribe and get their podcasts each morning. While I don’t listen to every program, there are lots of subjects they cover that I am interested in, things like fringe science, things that go bump in the night, survivalists, conspiracies, history and such. One of the subjects discussed more and more was the December 21, 2012 end of the world phenomena.

Apparently the Mayans had created this long count calendar, and the date on the last one apparently ended on Dec 21, 2012. When I first heard about this, I didn’t think too much about it, but as the years went by, this subject was brought up more and more, even the main stream media started talking about it. I remember how Y2K went, it was a big flop, nothing happened, I pretty much believe the same thing about this date as well… mostly, well honestly about 85-90% of me believes nothing out of the ordinary will happen.

As we got closer to making our dream of living off grid a reality, this date event kept coming up and I couldn’t file it away as easily as I had been able to before. Do I believe the world is coming to an end? Do I believe there will be catastrophic disasters such as floods, asteroids, solar flares, planet X coming in for a close encounter? No, I don’t believe any of those things will happen, BUT even in the remotest possibility of some natural (or unnatural) disaster happening, and we all know about last few natural disasters to hit, hurricane Sandy, the earthquake-tsunami and resulting nuclear events that happened in Japan, giant sink holes in the middle of the USA, I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Honestly, I am more worried about how people are going to act at the end of this week, people living in populated city centers who might decide that if the world is going to end anyhow, why not make it a big party, a party that includes rioting, looting, burning and other assorted unsociable behavior. Or if, by some remote chance, some sort of disaster does hit, again I would rather be in a less populated area, assuming you survive whatever it is that might happen, it’s the hoards of people who are going to make life difficult.

So here I sit, looking at the calendar, seeing that date looming at the end of this week. As I said, I don’t believe there are going to be major earth changes or the end of the earth, never the less, I’m glad I am sitting on my very unpopulated mountain, far from the nearest town, hours and hours away from any major population center, if the worst happens then it will not matter much were anyone is, if things just go badly, then I feel like I’m in a safe place, but chances are, I’ll wake up on Saturday morning, along with the rest of the world, look at the clock, turn over and go back to sleep. What about you, what are you going to be doing on Friday night?



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Wretha,

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