Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Preparation

“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.

Work at the State Auditor’s Office was starting to suck. At first it was great. Grant got to do things like help the Joe Tantoris out there. He was able to help people from inside government, with the full weight of the State Auditor’s Office behind him.

But, after only less than a year in his position, he was being thwarted by his co-workers. He would ask for information from the Auditor’s Office staff on a particular agency or a past audit and would be told the file was “lost.” That was hard to do because everything was on a computer which was backed up and could be searched by terms. So Grant would have to take the time to find the information himself, which was time he couldn’t spend working to help the citizen. He was now spending most of his day finding information that the old staff of the Auditor’s Office could have found very quickly — if they wanted to do their jobs instead of helping their government buddies get away with screwing people.

One thing did not suck, though. The cabin. It was a magical place. Sometimes, when he was there he felt an actual buzz of euphoria. He had worked extremely hard his whole life and, thanks to the miracle of an early inheritance, now had exactly what he’d always wanted. His stress would melt away the closer he got to Pierce Point. By the time he drove up to the cabin, he was completely relaxed. The smell of the place, which was a combination of the sea and evergreen trees, instantly put him in a good mood. He actually measured his blood pressure before and after coming to the cabin. It dropped by ten points.