by Daisy Luther, The Organic Prepper:

So here we are. Right on the cusp of that SHTF event that we’ve been prepping for all these years.

A global pandemic.

A breakdown in the supply chain.

Shoppers who are already becoming agitated and even violent.

We’re watching it all unfold in our hometowns and across our nation right now.

Yet, somehow, it still doesn’t feel real to me. Is it just me who finds this hard to fathom? Am I the only one who still thinks doubtful thoughts? Like “No way. It’s going to be okay. You’re overreacting. It’s a little scare, just like Ebola and MERS and SARS.”

I’ve researched and written about this stuff for years. I always knew it could happen. I was whole-heartedly convinced of these possibilities and yet when this situation began to move irrevocably toward disaster, I find myself, somehow, shocked.

I can’t be the only one who has prepared for this yet still feels stuck in normalcy bias, thinking “this isn’t going to get as bad as you think” even as I watch the events unfold around us pretty much like we in the survival community always predicted. There’s still that doubtful voice in my head, making me wonder about spending even more money on another “last” shopping trip.

Heck, maybe this makes me a bad prepper. A fake survivalist. A fraud.

Or maybe it’s only natural to think that life will keep moving on pretty much like it always has.

Will Covid-19 really be the thing that brings us down? Will the nation devolve into chaos? I’d like to say no with firm conviction. After all, there have been close calls before. But the rational part of me won’t allow that firm conviction, despite the part that says, don’t be silly, everything will be just fine after a brief blip.

I believe it’s okay to feel this way as long as you don’t allow it to get in the way of your preparations or of your acceptance of the disaster when it actually unfolds in all its shocking reality.

Maybe I’m oversharing here and a whole bunch of folks will unsubscribe. I don’t know. But if others are feeling the same way, I want you to know that you aren’t alone.

Instincts vs. Normalcy Bias

I think people have come down on one of two sides since the Covid-19 virus first came onto our radar back in late December or early January. Some people have thought, “This is the next plague” while others have thought, “So what? The flu is more deadly.” Now that we’re down to the wire, we’ll soon find out which line of thinking was the most accurate.

A lot of this goes down to a decision. Are you going to believe your gut or are you going to believe the logical normalcy bias that tells you this isn’t how things go in the United States of America?

My gut has been telling me since mid-January that this thing is a major event. After all, would China have tanked its economy and locked down a city of 20 million people, welding their doors closed in many cases, if this novel coronavirus was no big deal? Would Italy have locked down their entire country and begun turning away patients over the age of 65 to funnel resources to those more likely to survive if this was just another common, everyday flu?

But the logical side of me says, “This is the US. We will be just fine.” Because we’ve always been just fine in my lifetime. We were bruised and shaken, but bounced back with fierce resolve on 9/11. We were fine when Ebola reached our shores back in 2014. We recovered after Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy and all the other named storms that have hit. We’re Americans. We are resilient. It’s who we are.

However, our resilience may not be enough to conquer a crisis that was badly mishandled from the get-go. It may not be enough to overcome less than a million hospital beds in a country with more than 327 million people. The enemy is a virus we know hardly anything about and we can’t even believe the numbers out there from China or our own government.

People are getting tense.

This afternoon when I heard there was a press conference in the Rose Garden at 3 pm, I had a bad feeling. I wondered if my calculations were off when I figured that we could begin to see major quarantines in about a week. I headed to the store with my 19-year-old daughter to get there ahead of the crowds that would certainly be imminent if such an announcement was made. We picked up extra cat litter, extra pet food, some hardware, and extra frozen vegetables.

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