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How Updated Is Your Go Bag?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2017
by GuptaRati 6666
We are witnessing the setting off of many global tipping-points; some political, some are spiritual, and some are ecological. They are all interconnected and disaster can be visiting us in our communities. There is one important personal question we must answer as we prepare for a potential disaster similar to the events in Houston, Nepal and Sierra Leon.

How updated are our Go Bags? Do we have Go Bags? The BKs may say that they were preaching to the masses to prepare for catastrophic events. However, the BKs have no monopoly on God nor are they futurists.

We all need to have a bag with essential items, including survival gear that we can just pick up and evacuate out selves from our residences prior to a disaster.

My Go Bags is a duffle type bag and in it are some of the following: tent, hammock, mosquito net, drinking water storage packs, emergency medical kits, solar energy lamps, survival blades, packaged dehydrated foods, and batteries. I am always up dating and upgrading the go bag. One addition has been a portable inflatable kayak. There are also excellent magazines on urban and wilderness survival. Practice makes perfect.

It's important to try out the varieties of survival gear and ensure they work. There is also the importance of nurturing the spirit to deal with a variety of extremely stressful situations, which accompany disasters.

Re: How Updated Is Your Go Bag?

PostPosted: 04 Sep 2017
by Pink Panther
With respect, American culture seems to encourage a fatalistic sense of threat, individual survivalism, self-reliance after the fact (as opposed to collective action to prevent or ameliorate disaster) and shop-bought solutions. Not unlike the BKs really). Have you lived there too long?

Not saying it may not be relevant for you, you may live in a flood prone area that is also a military target for whatever reason, but not all of us, even we who are geopolitically aware, feel so threatened. But like those who insist on living on the San Andreas Fault, maybe its the adrenaline of ”running on empty” - the gamble of the threat - that makes life feel more visceral!

Re: How Updated Is Your Go Bag?

PostPosted: 05 Sep 2017
by ex-l
I'd say the first thing to pack is knowledge that your body can survive a good few weeks without food, say a Biblical 40 days ... get it into better shape and used to not eating now and again. Perhaps start do the "5:2" thing. A lot of people on medication and junk food diets are going to start going really crazy around the 8 hour mark, and shooting themselves or others for eats soon afterwards.

I'd better pack some coffee ... and work out how many toothbrushes I need to last until I die.


Yes, I'd be worried it was a bit of residual BKism, but concede that in parts of the USA, Caribbean and Asia this is a genuine enough concern too, made more real by recent disasters whether fire or water.

I don't right now, but I have lived in parts of the world subject to tsunamis and it has left me with a residual amazement or "nervousness" when I watch movies or see photos of nations or States where people live right on the oceanside. Even paying a premium to do so.

Whether Norwegian fjords or Floridian/Californian beaches ... "How can they do that!", I think.

In Japan, remembering the last big one, companies sell "Sputnik-like" floating survival pods that one can climb inside and then (hopefully) bob away in, if you get hit. The mountains there are also subject to imaginably horrendous landslides, not a few rocks but entire mountain sides complete with forests on them, and rivers suffer from real flash floods in rainy season; and so one becomes very conscious of where one choose to live in a way more Europeans would not dream of.

It's not so much an "if" but a "when" but still people carry on as normal ... out of the necessity of "no where else to live", I suppose ... and a little bit of Buddhist non-attachment or fatalism, as in when your karma is called, there's nothing you can do about it. What is impressive is their social cohesion and civility, and their ability to spring back, after it does happened. In the US, it'd be civil war all over, as in St Louis, with mercenaries paid to shoot looters.


Within BKism, it used to "Shrimat" for every centre to hold 6 months of food supplies, I think it was. I don't know if they still do that. Many centres did in my day, although not all followers were told! During various 'End of the World' predictions, like Y2K, they had adherents stocking up on fresh water and other supplies too. I'd guess still doing only reminds them of their past failures.

Are you packing some weaponry too?


Putting aside all the funky zombie TV shows, like 'The Walking Dead', there was a good Viggo Mortensen movie I reckoned would have the BKs freaking out called 'The Road (2009)' that I thought actually portrayed what the break down of society in the USA would be like fairly reasonably. Being the USA, it involved a lot of homicidal shooting, and a bit of cannibalism. Ditto, The Wave (Bølgen 2015), chillingly portrayed a real life "not if but when" scenario in Norway.

What makes things more serious in the US, apart from a gun happy State ready to turn on its own citizenry, are the scales of distance, and what happens to food production if the system collapses for more than a month or so. Food production in most of Asia, West Indes, much of South America and the Africa that is drought free, all still on small sharecropping-style agricultural system that could carry on production.

Something to underline that and make folks here laugh I thought, from a recent story on the disaster in Texas ... a picture from a supermarket stripped of all other victuals. People there would rather starve in hell, then eat vegan food! So I'll be OK.

It reminds me of a joke told by one of the very first Western BKs who left first ... when asked by a keen and sincere young BK what he was doing to prepare himself for Destruction, he answer without a blink, "practise screaming".

I don't have one and I don't think it's a good thing for ex- or exiting BKs to concern themselves with. Too much of reminder of BK mania.

Life in the moment, imagine a future.

Re: How Updated Is Your Go Bag?

PostPosted: 05 Sep 2017
by GuptaRati 6666
Pink,

Your question tickled me so much that I had to restrain my laughter for fear of awakening my neighbors!

Sure, I agree with you on some aspects of the American culture and I have lived here for close to 40 years as an immigrant and US citizen.

I should have added in the post that as part of the go bag activities, individuals need to get together and plan emergency survival on a neighborhood and community level. With respect to New York City there are two major threats: the obsolete and malfunctioning Indian Point NuclearPlant (IPNP) and Plum Island. If there is a power failure and the back up generators at IPNP fail to start there can be a meltdown similar to the Japanese experience. PI houses some of the most deadly agents of biological warfare, including animal pathogens. PI is off the coast of NYC, scientists working there commute to the island each day. Natural disasters can release pathogens into the water and air. If IPNP malfunctions, NYC residents will have less than 30 minutes to get as far as Florida to save themselves.

I was there when 9/11 happened, the 2004 power outage, mega storm Irene, and super storm Sandy. Pink were you in Madubhan in 1979/1980, when the Russians invaded Afghanistan?

I do not think the BKs had any contingency plans if there was a collapse of law and order in North West India.

Re: How Updated Is Your Go Bag?

PostPosted: 05 Sep 2017
by GuptaRati 6666
Ex-I, for sure, I would carry weapons.

Yes, with respect to spirituality, a person in tune with the metaphysical can avoid danger, including wild animals and attacking humans. It does not work all the time. When my country asked me to undergo guerrilla warfare training in the rain forest of South America, as part of the mandatory requirements for a scholarship, I did not refuse on the grounds of being a BK or non-violent person. I enjoyed all phases of the training.

I think of the example of one ex-BK who posted on this site. He gave up the martial arts while he was a BK as violence. During that time, he foiled two assassination attempts against him. He returned to the martial arts just before he was banished by the BKs and found that the ways of the martial arts enhanced his meditation! He was able to fine tune a martial arts skill called haragi.

A few years ago his skills in haragi prevented him from stepping off of a sub-way train in New York City into a terrorist explosion at the subway station. Instead of disembarking at the subway station where the explosion occurred in the Chelsea area, he disembarked at West 4 Street/Washington Square. Instead of using the subway station where the explosion occurred, he used another station to return home. On his way to the subway station, he was seeing emergency vehicles racing up Avenue of the Americas. When he reached his home and was on the Internet, he saw the news of the explosion and realized that he was minutes away from it!

Re: How Updated Is Your Go Bag?

PostPosted: 05 Sep 2017
by ex-l
GuptaRati 6666 wrote:I do not think the BKs had any contingency plans if there was a collapse of law and order in North West India.

I think their primary "contingency plan" is sucking up the India military and government and expecting them to do it all for them! There is a surprisingly heavy presence on Mount Abu including ... if my memory serves me correctly, the military, and the Internal Security Academy/Central Reserve Police Force school. The Central Reserve Police Force is employed as static guards for protect vulnerable areas and very important persons, to actively fighting insurgents and anti-social elements in different parts of the country.

Some adherent recently claimed they have 10 years worth of financial reserves (unsubstantiated so far ... the BKWSU does not publish its full accounts).

In the old days, the predictions of Destruction included the deserts surround Abu being filled with devotees and that good BKs would get the hint to rush from their centres to it just in time, catching the last plain, the last boat, train or whatever to get there. Don't know what they teach now.

Re: How Updated Is Your Go Bag?

PostPosted: 05 Sep 2017
by Pink Panther
GuptaRati 6666 wrote: Pink were you in Madubhan in 1979/1980, when the Russians invaded Afghanistan?

Yes, but it wasn’t my fault, just coincidence.