Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Preparation

The guys were cheering. Why?

“Dude,” Bobby said, “did you see that mag reload and dropping to the knee? That was awesome.”

Grant didn’t know that he’d done that.

Pow was very happy with his new student. “I gave you a mag with only nine rounds in it so you’d have to do a reload. Why did you go to the knee to do it?” he asked Grant.

Grant thought, “Well, if I’m reloading there’s a better chance the other guys will get off a shot. I figured I needed to be a smaller target so I got down. It was just a reaction.”

Then Grant realized that this instinct of his was exactly what it would take to be good at this. He was very proud of himself.

The Team was glad to have a good new recruit. And the recruit was a lawyer who instinctively drops to his knee for a mag reload.

They spent the rest of the day shooting and taking turns teaching Grant things like how to transition from his rifle to his pistol quickly.

Grant was glad he was in the best shape of his life. This runnin’ and gunnin’ stuff worked up a sweat. The weight training allowed him to have the arm strength to point a rifle all day long. He was twenty or so years older than these guys, so he didn’t want to be the tired old guy. He was fine, though, and kept pace with them. Grant realized that if he had to do this all day, every day, that being in shape would be an absolute must.

Grant had a blast. It was so much more fun than standing in place and shooting at paper targets. He realized that if people were shooting back, knowing how to stand in one place and shoot at paper targets would not be much help. In fact, just standing there out of habit could get a person killed.

That day, Grant found a new love: tactical shooting. He was good at it. He was thrilled to be on the Team, and could tell this was what he was supposed to be doing.

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.