How Can We Prepare for Social Unrest & Civil Disorder?

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State and local agencies don't have a military so they are a nonissue.
A good place for people to start if they are serious about any of this is some of Mormon sites on self-sustaining preparedness. They are very good at distrusting D.C.
I am not particularly paranoid about any of this but I did buy a new shotgun today for my wife just in case. If everything is rosy then we'll just take up skeet shooting as a hobby. If everything goes into the toilet then we'll be like the characters living in basement in movie 'Tremors'. I seriously doubt if the army will be behind this new movement so I do not anticipate having to actually shoot at anybody. Perhaps it'll be like it is in other third world countries where we all shoot aimlessly into the air and kill people four blocks away with falling lead.
Better safe than sorry. Civil unrest can actually be a good thing.

^^A bit of revolution can be a good thing from time to time… ...
~Thomas Jefferson~.

I was going to bring up reading the original 'papers' but I thought it would be misunderstood by the younger members.

State and local governments will be the first to go, the day the patronage paychecks stop

They are mostly bankrupt, they lost half the retirement funds playing the market, and they were underfunded to start with.

Housing taxes, income tax, sales tax, have all just died. States have huge bond debt from building sports arenas and convention centers, the defaults are coming.

They are already opening the prisons, next they close the non essensials, schools, libraries, and they have already cut back on water, sewer, road, bridge repair, twenty years ago.

Louisiana has refused the extra extended unemployment money, those people would just want other services, food stamps, and should just leave the state, and go be someone elses problem.

It will become what it is, the Republican and Democrat gangs supported by armed security forces. No townie cop is going to die for the Mayor.

Without income, credit, long term debt, and with hyper inflation, everyone wanting a raise, government falls.

Government is not about water, sewer, garbage, education, fire protection, it is about Lawgivers who are above the Law, and their armed power to use the law against everyone else, enrich themselves, and control ever having to answer for their actions. .

The whole issue of government, is the right to the sole use of force. This only works when the governed allow it, other than that, there are now much larger gangs who use force.

The Government who did not protect our homes, jobs, savings, money, and the future of our children, has no right to exist.

I've got enough tinned food to last me a few months (if I ration) and I can get to my nearest shop quickly enough to loot some water if the water goes off. We've got a lot of wood in the back garden that I can reinforce my house with. I don't have any firearms so I'd stay in my house and ride it out.

I guess I’m semi-prepared for lack of a better term. I don’t live in the outback but I have guns (it’s my obsession, get over it already), ammo, canned food and other things that might be needed. I don’t live for this day because it will surely be a mess that may drag on for who knows how long. Most if not all of the services, conveniences, and security we take for granted will be no longer during this time.
I’d be apprehensive about what kind of society and government we’d be left with after it’s over, too.

Everything about Katrina was a mess and I’m glad I don’t live anywhere near there. I don’t think it would be that quite that bad where I live because we don’t have the corruption New Orleans had (probably still has) and we generally have a better grade of people than many of the convict grade individuals New Orleans is host to.
Those two things alone can make a big difference when things go to hell.

Being prepared for this, logistically and mentally, does not mean we eagerly look forward to it actually happening.
Likewise, just because we wear our seat belts doesn’t mean we want to be in a wreck.

I was prepared for the recession in 1971-3 here in the States, having moved to Washington State and living in the country. We 'went back to the land' and I shoveled chicken crap and mouldy straw every morning to have breakfast of eggs and dinner (every now and then) of chicken. I lost a lot of weight and got very fit. Grew potatoes and lived off of the digging for edible food items from the local vegetable market we gathered for 'compost.' Chopped and hauled wood for heat. Fished in the streams for cutthroat salmon We weathered the gas crunch and the dirt poor existance, probably because we were young and ignorant of what a slender thread we were on.

fast forward to early 1980's. This time we were a little more set up for living on the the land and it didn't rain as much in southern Oregon. We actually grew our own vegetables and traded and bartered what else we needed - gas and electricity for the main house and chop and haul wood for heat. I lost a lot of weight and got very fit. Then the financial crunch of '87 missed me as I was in college ( a good place to be when the economy is in the crapper.)

Then I boomed with the Dot.Com boom and busted with it too, I moved back to Oregon and lived in a tent on my friend's land, lost a lot of weight and got pretty fit. I suffered along with everyone else, but grew lavendar and thyme and rosemary - sewed headbands filled with polymer moisture holding beads for the super hot weather and sold them at farmer's markets to pay for what ever I couldn't grow in food. Thank gawd for saving up my unemployment. I would have carked it with out it.

This time, it looks pretty bad. I am living in a very inexpensive apartment in the capitol city of Oregon, I have a job detecting fraud in the medicare/health care provider sector and am stocked up on foodstuffs and canned goods for three months. I have a propane stash and a propane stove and hot plate. Come the revolution/social upheaval I am probably quite unprepared. I am older now and frankly, I don't care to live into decrepitude.

Merle

Gotta admit you got a point.

Contrary to contemporary perceptions, Genghis Khan's mongol armies were so successful because they were very well organized and coordinated.

Also, regrettably, I guess the stone age wasn't quite the aspie paradise some of us like to imagine, with aspie technical geniuses inventing better spear points. The native North Americans were living in the stone age just a few generations ago, so the genetic structure of their populations probably hasn't changed that much.

And they figured out crooked politics as well as they figured out how to ride horses.

Here in wyoming things haven't hit here yet, our unemployment rate is still 4%I've bought some survival food supplies and I went to a local gun shop and bought a giant thing of mace for use on bears just in case.

At work we've all been forced to take furlough days as a way to avoid layoffs. Our 10pm producer who is an economic guru says the economy won't slide into depression unless the banking system completely falls apart. What worries him most is the prospect of hyperinflation happening due to all this printing of money to pay for obamas stimulus package. That will happen if faith in the dollar dissapears.

I personally think the worst is yet to come. I was here on this board four years ago calling out that I felt we were on the verge of something awful and now I feel my prophecy is coming true.

Couldn't we all just stop listening to RIGHT-WING Shock Jocks, Jack Van Impe and other deluded Liars and accept that it's not as bad as some people claim and that Civil Unrest/revolution/breakdown of society is just not going to happen. You guys make us all sound like members of a New World Order compoud in Omaha. Seems to me that the guys with the biggest gun collections are the biggest looters and crooks that we should all be wary of. I will happily fend off the looters with my trusty pen, fists and native cunning. Then soon as their backs are turned, it's mine, all mine... No, you will not have me lucky charms.

Consider the common psychological condition where an agressor considers himself the victim, because he has convinced himself that he is the victim. In reality the person he accuses is often his victim.

^ in pop psychology it is known as the Victim/Persecutor/Rescuer Triangle.
and i hate to burst everyones' bubbles...but each of us is usually all three.

right wing politics tend to favour a rather primitive scenario that creates an enemy WITHOUT and BEYOND.
(see the Bush's terms of office for further historical illustrations.)