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For those who are not familiar with the term TEOTWAWKI, it an acronym that stands for the phrase, “The End Of The World As We Know It.” Notice it does not mean the end of the world, but rather, it denotes a drastic, often horrific, change for the worse. It may not be something as drastic as a collapsed civilization but it can certainly mean the end of the kind of world people are accustomed to.
Many people think such a thing will never happen in their lifetimes. Chances are it won’t, but if it does they may not be mentally prepared for the kind of horrific curveballs that have been thrown at people around the world throughout history. Sadly they may also discover the tragic consequences of being wrong.
We don’t need to look too far back into history to see the kind of TEOTWAWKI events that can take the world by surprise.
Who in once-prosperous Venezuela ever dreamed their country would turn to absolute crap? It certainly turned into “the end of their world as they knew it.”
Going a bit further in history, let’s not forget the infamous Siege of Leningrad which was one of the longest and most devastating military sieges in modern history. Between September of 1941 and January 1944, the Russian people suffered horribly under the hands of the Germans for 872 days of absolute hell. It was a kind of TEOTWAWKI that the inhabitants of the land never dreamed could ever happen in their lifetime.
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad):
“The two-and-a-half-year siege caused the greatest destruction and the largest loss of life ever known in a modern city.
...The 872 days of the siege caused extreme famine in the Leningrad region through disruption of utilities, water, energy, and food supplies. This resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000 soldiers and civilians and the evacuation of 1,400,000 more (mainly women and children), many of whom died during evacuation due to starvation and bombardment....Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery alone in Leningrad holds half a million civilian victims of the siege...Deaths peaked in January–February 1942 at 100,000 per month, mostly from starvation. People often died on the streets…”
Then there’s the Holocaust which was certainly a TEOTWAWKI event in recent history that almost no one saw coming.
How about TEOTWAWKI events caused by famines?
Most people think of famines as something that happens only to third world countries. Notice that most of the following events happened not that long ago...and consider that these are just a few examples of many.
(The following are excerpts from the book, When All Hell Breaks Loose by Cody Lundin.)
Ireland, 1845-1849, The Great Potato Famine
Potatoes, the mainstay of the Irish diet, were inflicted with a potato blight that killed the crops. Local grain and livestock were owned by the English, and laws prevented the Irish from importing grain. The combination of crop disease and politics caused the death of 1.5 million people by starvation, cannibalism and disease.
USA, The Great Plains, 1930s
The United States experienced the worst drought of the twentieth century. The resulting lack of precipitation caused massive dust storms, which dominated the landscape, causing severe health problems while destroying crops and killing livestock. Death toll is unknown....
(Note: according to enclyclopedia.com, “The extended drought became the worst in U.S. history. Over 75 percent of the nation was affected, including 27 states that were severely impacted…”)
The Soviet Famine, 1932-1943
The Soviet Famine was initiated by Josef Stalin in an attempt to boost industrialization financed by forced collective farms in which grain production fell by 40 percent. His draconian measures included forbidding peasants to leave the country without permission; expelling, killing, or sending rich peasants to labor camps and forcibly seizing what little food remained to double grain exports to raise cash for his failed plan. The predicted chaos included a report issued by an Italian consul member in the Ukraine reporting "a growing commerce in human meat" and that people were killing and eating their own children. Astute authorities immediately responded, not with food, but by distributing posters that read: "Eating Dead Children Is Barbarism". Due to a national cover-up forbidding doctors to disclose on death certificates that the deceased had starved to death, numbers for the total dead are sketchy but estimates are at 5 to 8 million people, 10 to 25 percent of the population of the Ukraine.
The Warsaw Ghetto, 1940-1942
Three hundred eighty thousand Jews were confined to a 3.5. mile area that normally housed 160,000. The population eventually reached 445,000 before the Nazis sealed off the area with a ten-food wall, with the intention of starving all of the inhabitants within nine months. Official food rationing provided 2,613 kilocalories per day for Germans, 699 kilocalories per day for Poles, and 184 kilocalories for Jews in the Ghetto. Tens of thousands died from starvation and disease.
Northern China, 1958-1962
Chairman Mao's failed bid to "industrialize" his nation, along with several natural disasters and drought, killed an unbelievable 30 million people by starvation, disease, infanticide, and cannibalism. Desperate families swapped each other's children to eat, thus avoiding having to eat their kin....
Biafra (now Nigeria), Africa, 1967-1969
Civil war-caused famine kills one million people, leaving another 3.5 million to suffer from extreme malnutrition.
North Korea, 1994-1998
A combination of reduced Chinese and Russian food subsidies, along with the effects of collective farming, flooding, drought, and government corruption, caused an estimated 2 to 3 million people to die of starvation, disease, and cannibalism…
There are many more, but you get the idea.
Because of politics, weather, or agricultural diseases, countless famines have occurred (or are happening now) and will continue to happen in one place after another.
It does not take much for TEOTWAWKI to happen anywhere in the world, at any time. Unfortunately our society today is MUCH more fragile than it was a few decades ago. One bump in the beltway can cause chaos of unimaginable proportions. A series of bumps has the potential to throw society off the tracks for a long time.
This post was not aimed at increasing our worry levels, but to kick up awareness/preparedness a notch or two… Worry is destructive, and accomplishes nothing good; on the other hand, being fully aware with eyes wide open can be a good thing, and may lead to workable solutions, whether they are spiritual, mental, or physical in nature.
Because physical preps are rather fragile and have a finite shelf life, I make it a personal priority to prepare myself mentally and spiritually because I know that this will sustain me far longer and stronger than physical preps alone. The worst thing I can do is ignore the fact that devastating events can occur suddenly without warning.
The bill for ignorance will be presented after TSHTF.
Many people think such a thing will never happen in their lifetimes. Chances are it won’t, but if it does they may not be mentally prepared for the kind of horrific curveballs that have been thrown at people around the world throughout history. Sadly they may also discover the tragic consequences of being wrong.
We don’t need to look too far back into history to see the kind of TEOTWAWKI events that can take the world by surprise.
Who in once-prosperous Venezuela ever dreamed their country would turn to absolute crap? It certainly turned into “the end of their world as they knew it.”
Going a bit further in history, let’s not forget the infamous Siege of Leningrad which was one of the longest and most devastating military sieges in modern history. Between September of 1941 and January 1944, the Russian people suffered horribly under the hands of the Germans for 872 days of absolute hell. It was a kind of TEOTWAWKI that the inhabitants of the land never dreamed could ever happen in their lifetime.
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad):
“The two-and-a-half-year siege caused the greatest destruction and the largest loss of life ever known in a modern city.
...The 872 days of the siege caused extreme famine in the Leningrad region through disruption of utilities, water, energy, and food supplies. This resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000 soldiers and civilians and the evacuation of 1,400,000 more (mainly women and children), many of whom died during evacuation due to starvation and bombardment....Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery alone in Leningrad holds half a million civilian victims of the siege...Deaths peaked in January–February 1942 at 100,000 per month, mostly from starvation. People often died on the streets…”
Then there’s the Holocaust which was certainly a TEOTWAWKI event in recent history that almost no one saw coming.
How about TEOTWAWKI events caused by famines?
Most people think of famines as something that happens only to third world countries. Notice that most of the following events happened not that long ago...and consider that these are just a few examples of many.
(The following are excerpts from the book, When All Hell Breaks Loose by Cody Lundin.)
Ireland, 1845-1849, The Great Potato Famine
Potatoes, the mainstay of the Irish diet, were inflicted with a potato blight that killed the crops. Local grain and livestock were owned by the English, and laws prevented the Irish from importing grain. The combination of crop disease and politics caused the death of 1.5 million people by starvation, cannibalism and disease.
USA, The Great Plains, 1930s
The United States experienced the worst drought of the twentieth century. The resulting lack of precipitation caused massive dust storms, which dominated the landscape, causing severe health problems while destroying crops and killing livestock. Death toll is unknown....
(Note: according to enclyclopedia.com, “The extended drought became the worst in U.S. history. Over 75 percent of the nation was affected, including 27 states that were severely impacted…”)
The Soviet Famine, 1932-1943
The Soviet Famine was initiated by Josef Stalin in an attempt to boost industrialization financed by forced collective farms in which grain production fell by 40 percent. His draconian measures included forbidding peasants to leave the country without permission; expelling, killing, or sending rich peasants to labor camps and forcibly seizing what little food remained to double grain exports to raise cash for his failed plan. The predicted chaos included a report issued by an Italian consul member in the Ukraine reporting "a growing commerce in human meat" and that people were killing and eating their own children. Astute authorities immediately responded, not with food, but by distributing posters that read: "Eating Dead Children Is Barbarism". Due to a national cover-up forbidding doctors to disclose on death certificates that the deceased had starved to death, numbers for the total dead are sketchy but estimates are at 5 to 8 million people, 10 to 25 percent of the population of the Ukraine.
The Warsaw Ghetto, 1940-1942
Three hundred eighty thousand Jews were confined to a 3.5. mile area that normally housed 160,000. The population eventually reached 445,000 before the Nazis sealed off the area with a ten-food wall, with the intention of starving all of the inhabitants within nine months. Official food rationing provided 2,613 kilocalories per day for Germans, 699 kilocalories per day for Poles, and 184 kilocalories for Jews in the Ghetto. Tens of thousands died from starvation and disease.
Northern China, 1958-1962
Chairman Mao's failed bid to "industrialize" his nation, along with several natural disasters and drought, killed an unbelievable 30 million people by starvation, disease, infanticide, and cannibalism. Desperate families swapped each other's children to eat, thus avoiding having to eat their kin....
Biafra (now Nigeria), Africa, 1967-1969
Civil war-caused famine kills one million people, leaving another 3.5 million to suffer from extreme malnutrition.
North Korea, 1994-1998
A combination of reduced Chinese and Russian food subsidies, along with the effects of collective farming, flooding, drought, and government corruption, caused an estimated 2 to 3 million people to die of starvation, disease, and cannibalism…
There are many more, but you get the idea.
Because of politics, weather, or agricultural diseases, countless famines have occurred (or are happening now) and will continue to happen in one place after another.
It does not take much for TEOTWAWKI to happen anywhere in the world, at any time. Unfortunately our society today is MUCH more fragile than it was a few decades ago. One bump in the beltway can cause chaos of unimaginable proportions. A series of bumps has the potential to throw society off the tracks for a long time.
This post was not aimed at increasing our worry levels, but to kick up awareness/preparedness a notch or two… Worry is destructive, and accomplishes nothing good; on the other hand, being fully aware with eyes wide open can be a good thing, and may lead to workable solutions, whether they are spiritual, mental, or physical in nature.
Because physical preps are rather fragile and have a finite shelf life, I make it a personal priority to prepare myself mentally and spiritually because I know that this will sustain me far longer and stronger than physical preps alone. The worst thing I can do is ignore the fact that devastating events can occur suddenly without warning.
The bill for ignorance will be presented after TSHTF.
), I fear it may happen to trouble the lives of my children. I am doing what I can to prepare them for that time. They do have many useful skills if it does happen. 
