What if I said there’s a greater than 30% chance of a revolution or civil war in your lifetime? Would you think my tin foil hat was squeezing my brain?
What if I told you that the same event-prediction and risk assessment science that is used for defining flood plains says it’s that high… or higher? Would you be a bit more alarmed? Then be alarmed, because that’s what the math says.
Prepping just makes mathematical sense… you can check the math for yourself.
Well first you must know that “lifetime” is totally different for many of us. If I was 18 again your math would be more likely to prove out than for ME now, unfortunately. I do stock about a month’s worth of supplies. Plenty of guns and ammo along with water purification stuff. I don’t think my spouse would be willing to “bugout” and finish our final years in pure survival mode.
This is kind of long, ok it’s very long, but I found his logic pretty compelling.
Absolutely. It’s completely compelling. I’ve alluded to some of these analytical factors in other posts, specifically the socialist/communist party sympathizers thinking the military would or could aid them. Let em dream.
Is there a database that shows what this percentage was the last, say, 10 years or months?
@brian, I think the statistics don’t work like that. It’s a small data set for US, 2 events (revolution, civil war) or 4 if you include internment of Japanese (WWII) and native American relocation to reservations. So the stats dont really change year to year, and they aren’t based on short term politics. They’re based on long term catastrophic events. Take a look at how its calculated, the method is in the article.
Well, your tin foil hat may be a tad too tight, but that does not mean you are wrong.
Prepping is always a good idea, even if it is just for weather emergencies or some local civil unrest.
However, some, and yes, me and my tin foil hat, has been considering the options for over 40 years and it is something that, while not obsessing and taking up an excessive amount of time, is something that is at the back of the mind… along with weather emergencies, terrorist attacks, solar flares, local or regional civil unrest, or most anything.
There is something some have been worried about…… when the Army and Marines, fight the Army and Marines.
The US military swear an oath to the Constitution, federal officials and Intel Community swear an oath to the Constitution, and our elected officials, including Sheriffs, swear an oath to the Constitution, and NOT to the government.
If and/ or when the time comes, will those in command remember what they swore an oath to defend or will they follow illegal and unconstitutional orders, and what happens if some follow the Constitution and some do not.
Even if nothing happens, it is always better to be prepared than to be caught wide eyed like a deer in the headlights.
I spent Saturday stowing away 50lbs of rice, sealing it in mylar bags and air tight sealed buckets…first time my wife didn’t laugh or role her eyes at me for doing food prep.
It seems we’re now more statistically more likely to experience a civil war in our lifetime than to have a self defense encounter where we’ll need a gun (if I understand the numbers correctly).
Troubling indeed.
This topic has been around for a long time, talking about what a walkover it would be. It’s not that clear cut. For example, the military. I think most service members who have been in combat, will tell you, they aren’t fighting for the Alt Right or the Left/ests. They are fighting for the guys to the left, right, front, and back of them, their team, their unit.
The police are not going to divide as easily. They are just people, like you and me. They have families to provide for. They may not like it but if LEO’s bodies start hitting the ground. That thin blue line will stiffen in outrage.
Then you have to take into account mobility. In a Civil War 2.0, you are going to have to find a way to concentrate your forces to overcome the Mobility, and Force Multipliers that today’s military has.
Then you have to consider prosecuting an asymmetrical war. The reasons it works so well, is morale. The people, who have used it so effectively against us, they hate us. Deeply, passionately, and with the fervor that only true believers in a religion that is antithetical to what we as a country believe. Do you really think that alt right guy_001 is going to be ready to chop off Joe the Janitors head to make a point, or Bob the Butcher’s?
It’s all great theory, but give the far left the credit for some intelligence. How do you cook a live 
? You boil him real low and slow. He just swims around until he is dead. You don’t drop him into a roiling, boiling pot of water.
Last, where are the men and women, who have the strength, the moral fortitude, the sheer ability to galvanize the citizenry? Like the Founding Fathers of our Country? I don’t know if we have that as a country anymore.
This is going to sound horribly callous, and I truly apologize if I offend anyone. But do you really think, this hasn’t been going on since the 80’s? I know for a fact that it was war gamed in the 80’s. I could probably introduce you to one of the people who came up with that report. This has come up so often, since the ubiquity of the Internet, that it rolls around every few years.
Maybe, that video is right, maybe it’s not? All I can tell you is this. There’s a reason that the Civil War is the war that had the greatest amount of American casualties. EVER.
YMMV.
Big oversimplification on the mathematical model, IMO.
I’m missing the “historical rainfall data and some statistical magic… take that rainfall data, judiciously apply more math, and turn it into a flow rate… do hydraulics (more math) to determine how deep the river will have to be to carry that much water,” and “draw a line on a map” analysis for the revolution equation.
Interesting note, the Japanese internment camps held Japanese, Germans, and Italians (some citizens, some not). However, those of Japanese descent comprised about 90% of those held for varying periods of time. It’s also interesting that Britanicca says that “only Japanese Americans were targeted,” then in the same sentence talks about Germans, Italians, and Aleuts being detained.
Tin foil hat on? Check.
There’s a reason people are dropping off of social media in droves. They aren’t entirely gone, but they’ve tightened their circles. Dropped out of groups that used to be entertainment. They are “going dark” for a reason. I think there are far more people willing to fight than others are giving credit to.
The math is solid. Couple this with the well-known cycle of democracy touched upon by Alexis De Tocqeville in “Democracy in America,” and only an ignorant person or fool would believe an event wasn’t possible or likely.
There’s no foil hat here at all. It’s common sense.
Math isn’t my favorite (
), the things I took away from the article answer the age question:
Do the same math as we did above with the floodplains, in precisely the same way, and we see a 37% chance that any American of average life expectancy will experience at least one nationwide violent revolution.
Since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, there have been 465 sovereign nations which no longer exist, and that doesn’t even count colonies, secessionist states, or annexed countries. Even if we presume that half of these nation-state transitions were peaceful, which is probably a vast over-estimation, that’s still an average of one violent state transition every 2.43 years.
The article isn’t something I want to believe or deal with in my lifetime. However, I don’t want my children or grandchildren having to deal with it either. But I am not one to put my head in the sand and ignore it all. So I will follow one of the recommendations in the article, changing “box” to “case”.
Buy another box of ammo. Clearly.
Right!!
Math is like a foreign language to me lol
God bless all who flew through math courses!
let’s see… 2020 minus 1977… yep, that’d be 43 years. Been putting foil on that hat for quite a while now.
People ask… “yeah, but what if nothing ever happens? Aren’t you going to feel you wasted your time and money?”
Uh, that’d be a NO.
I suspect nobody ever lays in their death bed thinking “DANG it. I really wish I hadn’t spent money on fire alarms for my house and an extinguisher for the kitchen. I Just WISH I’d NEVER kept a spare tire! What a waste that was! Think how different my life would have been!”
Personally I think those people rise from a crisis and we won’t see them until the light of the bonfire starts to pick out their profiles. If there’s a fight, the leaders will come.
I’m going to say the plan was afoot as early as the 60’s incubating in the colleges even then.
Not disagreeing that the article takes a simple view… I’ve learned some of that sort of math for other reasons and even when it was my job it made my head hurt. Not faulting the author any for picking a simpler line through the problem.
But lets say his reliability is off by as much as 50% of that value… we’re still talking between oh, say 18% chance and somewhere near 50%. In any case, its enough to make me change what I do to prepare, relative to thinking the chance is in the 0-5% range.
When I’ve got an ailing animal, I and want to test or xray to determine what’s happening, my vet always asks “but is it going to change the way we treat?” If it will, then test, if not, then skip the test and go right to treatment.
If this number is 15% or 50%, I’m taking it as a clue I need to prepare. It’s not like there’s any difference for me between the two.
2 + 2 = 4, therefore Hillary Clinton will be elected in 2016. The math is correct.
I’m not saying that the math is wrong, I’m saying how the numbers were determined, and the obvious lack of analysis and proofs leading to the use of those numbers and coming to that conclusion is not reliable.
For example, the math was right when, on November 8, 2016, CNN predicted a 91% chance that Hillary was going to win the election. The problem was an oversimplification of the “time tested” procedures relative to the changes of the populace, technology, education, demographics, etc. The math can be correct, but if your numbers are based on oversimplified or outdated assumptions, the conclusion, and therefore the prediction will be unreliable.
I’m not saying that there is no probability of a revolution or whatever. I’m saying that his assumption, even with using “correct math,” is unreliable, and the validity of his claim is equivalent to someone guessing.
That being said, if you look at geography related to population centers versus food production areas, if rural America stopped producing food for the city centers for a week or so, tens of thousands would not survive. Grocery stores usually only have about 1-2 days of supply, and being in a concrete jungle doesn’t promote the 1-3 acres necessary to sustain one person’s food supply. Not much of a power struggle IMO when votes aren’t part of the equation. I wonder what probability he would calculate that we nationalize US food production?
Something to think about on a larger scale… China doesn’t produce enough food to sustain their people. Therefore, they rely on other countries… democratic countries… to just maintain their population, much less grow it. How much power does a country have when it is dependent on other countries with policies that directly conflict with it?
Hey… what if the revolution already happened and nobody noticed it, as they all thought it would involve conflict? What if we already experienced 6 revolutions over the last 30 years, but since there was no “war,” it’s more likely that revolutions we experience will happen not with a bang, but with a whimper?
What is the probability that whatever we prepare for, the problem will be something we haven’t prepared for?
Pretty close to 100% … at least in some aspects. But one does what one can.
I’ve spent enough decades in medical device development to be sure of that one. Meantime, I’m going to go work on my hat. 
Depends.
IF they disarm us first we will just be like another Venezuela. High prices and the lack of food. They will kill those that oppose them (like China, Venezuela and Iran) but no method to cause a civil war.
IF we defend our freedom there will be a revolution or civil war.
Either way the best to plan for either is to prep for it.
To know what to prep for look at two things.
That right there sir is so true!