Giuseppe Filotto Cross

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Some Truths about Self-Sustainability Farming

Despite everyone somewhat jumping on the bandwagon of wanting to go off-grid, rural, and become a self-sustaining farmer, you need to understand that the task is not for the faint of heart.

In particular, if you have been a city-boy most of your life, don’t expect to suddenly be able to move to the country, go off-grid and be like little home on the prairie all flowers and daffodils and unicorns.

Farming, regardless of where you are, to a level that actually is able to feed you and your entire family AND earn you some cash for those other “incidentals” that are inevitable in the farming life, is far from easy.

At a minimum, assuming a family of 7, like mine, where the children are all still quite small, you will require:

  • Sufficient land to grow a number of different crops
  • Sufficient water/irrigation or natural rainfall to water your plants
  • A greenhouse of suitable size to grow those foods that are more susceptible to being eaten by bugs and wild animals and produce better results in a protected environment
  • A tractor with the various attachments to plough, cut and dig
  • If you plan to go off-grid you need a serious solar/battery setup. depending on where you are this will run several thousand euro/dollars/gold coins. At a minimum here in Italy it would be 30k Euro, but 50k euro would be better. Even then if you get snow in winter (we do), it will not be enough to run everything you ideally want to run, so prioritising becomes important.
  • Wood-heated stoves to warm the house and water too in winter
  • Wind turbines tend to break and not be anywhere as efficient as you hope
  • Permits/Bureaucracy/Taxes/Regulations be sure what these are before you even buy the property. Sometimes there are legal ways to do what you want despite initial setbacks. sometimes there aren’t. That might not matter in a SHTF situation, but until you’re actually fighting off hordes of zombies, it does matter and can cost you dearly to fall foul of it.
  • You will also need an array of tools and tool storage solutions that will cost you a further several thousands at a minimum and many several thousands if you go full “apocalypse warehouse”
  • Your income will be very different from what you are used to, and in the best case, dependent on things like: The weather. Chemtrails. Your ability to purchase a bunch of things, from petrol to fertilisers. And possibly, all the way to Laser-fires from above, or, immigrant petrol-lit ones if you are in a place that some government pedovore fancies you should not be in.

And that’s just the material/practical side of things.

There are some intangibles that are also very important to consider:

  • Your wife/children may not be ready or willing to undergo the rather extreme shift in lifestyle from “I’ll have my latte Venti with Vanilla extract, a Peruvian berry and a unicorn fart on the foam, thanks” to “You wanna eat? Clean out the chicken-shit from the coop, collect the eggs, water the goats and then make breakfast. I have to feed the chickens, feed the goats, fix the fencing, trim the brambles around the fruit trees and butcher the pig. I’ll be in for breakfast soon.”
  • They may also find the remoteness hard (at least at first), and if they are not helped to appreciate nature, farming itself, hunting, building and fixing things and so on, they may well resent you and, like many farmer’s children from all the ages, run off to the glitzy city lights you just escaped from. The difference being that back then the city lights offered a real job and still some semblance of a life. Today, the glitzy lights represent the beams of the operating theatre where they operate on your genitals to make you “more real than a real woman” while telling you that the plastic cheese is good for you while you work in a cubicle farm and are hooked up to a VR headset for 3D masturbation in the 3 hours before you pass out in a glycemic coma; before you are woken by a snort of cocaine and do it all again the next day. And the next. And the next.
  • There are no days off. Pretty much ever. The up side is also that there are no set alarm times to get up, although, necessity sees to it that most farmers rise early and go to bed early. I am a crap farmer, because my natural inclination is to be a hunter/scout, so I tend to rise later and go to bed never, but that’s not the way of the farmer, trust me.
  • The income you can make from selling produce as a small farm is not a lot. You really need to organise yourself to do that if that is your idea. Personally, misanthropic as I am, I am not too inclined to do that, but it is an inevitable need if your farm becomes your sole way to earn a living.
  • Farm animals stink. Chickens stink. Pigs really stink. Goats stink. Cows stink. And they all shit. A lot. All the time. The up side is that if you have raised 5 kids from birth, you are mostly used to the stink already. Being regularly sprayed with snot, vomit, liquid shit, piss, undefinable sticky substances from their grubby little hands, and having the occasional dead bug or small animal brought indoors, somewhat hardens you to the farming life. Even so, your wife may occasionally miss wearing long, flowing, colourful dresses, high heels and smelling of jasmine and morning dew. Try to cheer her up by reminding her that if the farm animals escape, there can be early morning runs in underwear and farming boots, where the freezing dew will mix naturally with the sweat and adrenaline pheromones.
  • This may depend a bit on where you are, but the vast expanses of Earth that are covered in greenery, have bugs. Lots, and lots, and lots of bugs. If you are like me and grew up in that environment, you may find the bugs, the scorpions, the snakes, mice, random little animals cool to see or even study. If you are a city girl, you might freak out every 5 minutes and feel like Dresden in WW2 being dive-bombed by mosquitoes, gnats, and other fiery-biting things.
  • Injuries. Just like you cannot do martial arts without getting some, it is quite likely that you and yours will suffer some injuries. If you are smart, careful, and go about things intelligently, these should mostly be limited to cuts, scrapes, thorns, twisting an ankle or pulling a muscle or ten. If you are an unsafe idiot, it can mean your death, or worse, that of one of your children or wife. I have worked as an armed bodyguard in South Africa, which is basically one of the murder capitals of the world, with a level of death by violent crime that surpasses the war in the baltic states of the 1990s. And has kept this level of homicide steady for some 30 years, year on year now. I have also done martial arts for over four decades. And I consider farming, especially on hilly, uneven ground that has not been well-maintained, to be more dangerous than either of those endeavours.
  • Sometimes you will simply need other people to help you. Be they friends or paid workers, especially while setting things up (which is also when you will make the most mistakes). Some jobs can’t be done alone, and some jobs really need an expert guy who has done that most of his life to come help you and show you how it’s done.
  • Community. Wherever you are, as a farmer, you will need to be a good neighbour and rely on them too. This is not optional. Every farmer knows this. Which is why farmers are some of my favourite people on Earth, always have been. They are also far more level-headed, salutary and pious than soldiers; though, the two types are not as far apart as you might think. Especially if the soldiers are honest types instead of wound-up toys pumped full of battle drugs and retarded ideology. So… make sure you can get along with the people living near you.

So, know all of that before buying into some online grifter telling you how the “homesteading life” is the easy way to removing yourself from Clown World and be totally trouble free. And while people like Wranglerstar might make their living from their YouTube channel, or others may survive on donations, that is not a model you should base your ultimate survival on. Nor is it one in which most will succeed, either. It can be a side stream of income and it can take off and be great for some, but beware of anyone that tell you that the self-sustainable lifestyle is easily or quickly achieved.

And if you want to multiply those problems by an order of magnitude, then try creating a brand new community of people that all do this together and in harmony.

Believe me, you need God then.

In any case, despite all the above, it looks like soon we will have the first purchase of a home near us by a loyal henchman. May he be the first of many to come.

Oh… one last point… if you ARE prepared to face all that stuff… is it worth it?

Absolutely, yes!

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This is Community

Surround yourself with people like this.

Courtesy of westernrifleshooters.us

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American Naïveté

Americans —the NPC citizens I mean, not the paper (((americans))) controlling them, their goyim puppets, or other assorted deep state, demon-infested criminals— are mostly a generous, good natured, oblivious, and stupefyingly naïve people.

There is no other way to explain their child-like belief in completely absurd fairy tales told to them by the Freemasons that created their country in an orgy of fraud, French financing, and the blood of Christians.

Only a truly quite innocent people can believe in such things as:

  • Freedom of speech
  • The American version of “natural rights”
  • The American Constitution being the basis of sound government
  • The FBI, CIA, ATF, US armed forces, the police, being the “good guys”
  • American exceptionalism
  • That 9/11 was done by muslim terrorists
  • That Israel is their greatest ally

And so, so, so, many more.

I genuinely have been mildly amused as well as astonished at this aspect of their natures since about age 13 or so, when I probably heard most of the absurd “philosophies” for the first time.

The free speech one was without doubt my favourite one to make fun of. And the way I did it, face to face, I never found anyone that disagreed with me. In fact most people agreed with me once it was presented. Speech has NEVER been free. Never will be either; nor should it be. Personally I am all for speech having consequences, especially at the individual level. The problem people have is not with that aspect of it. It’s with who carries out the consequences on whom. If the consequences are done by hardcore, real, Catholic men, I’m good with it. If by mentally ill degenerates, and their paid minions, not so much. And the reverse is not doubt true too. No one that can think at the level of a normal, unbrainwashed, 15 year old would think free speech ever was, or ever could be a thing.

The other one that has always been nonsensical, is the “inalienable rights” one. In fairness, the UN charter of human rights —which is a self-contradicting document full of unicorn rainbow farts— also tries a version of it.

Let me explain something really simple to you:

For the vast majority of humanity, one guy with an iron bar or a knife, is enough to alienate you right out of those “rights”.

The only actual natural rights you have are the ones you can keep or enforce by the use of overwhelming force. Everything else is up for grabs by whoever is willing to break whatever social rules (or often, deluded fantasy) you happen to live under.

The constitution, any constitution, and all laws for that matter, are pieces of paper. None of them stop bullets. Neither do cops.

The western world has for a very long time lived in a quasi-paradise compared to 90% of the rest of the planet. The sudden drop back into the feral wildness of reality —thanks to the intentional mass importation of adult males of fighting age from third world places by the millions— is a shock to the system for most of them.

And while they sit and debate about what kind of inalienable rights are really the real ones, religious or secular, Americanised or UN prescribed ones, it’s hardly going to do them much good when and if Farooq and Sipho pick up a machete or brick and rob your business, attack your children for their smart phones, and rape your wife. The responding police would no doubt be very sorry and will call you if they find out anything more.

And even if you live out the rest of your days in some idyllic and crime-free utopia, it is the height of foolishness to think that just because you greet all your neighbours daily, in an extreme situation, they might not roast you over a fire to feed their starving loved ones.

Which is not to say that the current pedovores in charge will not try to murder you with fake “vaccines”, other assorted “cures”, chemtrails, and endless, crippling regulations and mandates and taxes and the fake money they print out of thin air but you need to trade pieces of your soul for daily.

So wake up Americans, and the rest of the Western world too. The crash is coming, and it ain’t going to be pretty. Rediscover your ancestral roots and relearn the fortitude of your ancestors. You exist because of it. Give your children and their children the same gift.

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The economics of a war of attrition

More overview of the entire Russia vs (((the West))), and why Russia and China both have at least a few years to set things as they want. From Slavyangrad. It’s long but instructive, and I think my commentary at the end closes the circle on the present day situation for the foreseeable future of Europe, and less so, for America.

During World War II, 90% of U.S. defense enterprises were state-owned. After privatization, already during the Vietnam War, the majority of enterprises ended up in private hands. Further this trend only intensified, and after the collapse of the USSR, no one saw the need for a large US military-industrial complex. The remaining 5 big giants started to earn money on arms trade abroad and production of new unique, expensive weapon systems, such as F-35, which are accompanied by colossal cost overruns. All this to the detriment of conventional systems that used to be on the assembly line.

In March of this year, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition William Laplante told the New York Times that the U.S. has “let production lines go cold and watched their parts become obsolete.” The Wall Street Journal writes that U.S. Defense Department leaders now estimate that it will take five or six years to reverse former production cuts.

However, the U.S. doesn’t have that time to militarily support Ukraine and Taiwan. In an attempt to make up for lost time, the U.S. Congress announced the creation of a Technical Industry and Government Task Force consisting of civilian and military experts, as well as industry specialists, who will develop recommendations for the early production and transfer of necessary weapons to U.S. allies.

Europe’s military-industrial complex is facing a similar situation, with defense spending in Europe rising 13% to $345 billion in 2022, the largest increase since the end of the Cold War. In April this year, the European Council approved 1 billion euros from the European Peace Fund to supply Ukraine with 1 million rounds of ammunition for a year. In June, the EU Council agreed to allocate another 500 million euros to boost production.

Tommy Gustafsson-Rask, head of the Swedish subsidiary, the UK’s largest defense firm, BAE Systems, said, “In the past, we had time but no money. Today we have money but no time.” At BAE Systems, soaring demand for products and supply chain disruptions, have tripled lead times for some of its combat vehicles. That means an armored vehicle ordered in 2023 won’t be manufactured until 2030 at the earliest.

European countries have depleted their military stockpiles far more than the U.S. by supplying arms to Ukraine. Thus, France has transferred half of its self-propelled artillery units, while the UK and Denmark have transferred all their SAU’s to Ukraine.

However, Kiev is asking for more and more weapons, from artillery ammunition to air defense systems, and allies’ stocks are not unlimited. In addition, NATO has planned to increase its “high readiness force” from 40,000 to 300,000, which means it will also need new weapons.

On June 15, NATO defense ministers met with 25 leading military-industrial companies in Brussels. The ministers asked defense companies to increase production, but the companies asked for clear long-term demand plans to justify investment in new production lines in three to five years.

Governments have reneged on announced plans before, with many European capitals repeatedly failing to meet NATO targets for stockpiling weapons or pledging to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense.

Andrea Nativi, chairman of the defense division of business association ASD Europe said that the industry, which is facing shortages of skilled labor and key components, has already done all it can to optimize or expand production through its own investments, now the sector needs transparency on what government demand will be in the coming years.

He added that in addition to long-term contracts, governments could also take other measures, including direct help to pay for production expansion or prioritizing access to electricity, which is very relevant in Europe right now.

The meeting eventually turned into a scandal after it emerged that French firms Airbus Defense, Dassault, MBDA and Safran, U.S. Boeing and Germany’s Diehl did not receive an invitation. In protest at the fact that no Spanish companies were invited, Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles refused to approve the start of work on NATO’s action plan to expand military production.

European officials’ desire to ramp up the MIC faces objective obstacles, such as a lack of critical resources to produce the requested amount of ammunition. Europe’s gunpowder production capacity is limited, although German firm Rheinmetall is the largest producer in the region, but its two production sites operate at full capacity seven days a week.

Also delaying the growth of MIC production are a lack of skilled labor and bureaucratic obstacles to obtaining construction permits. Some banks are reluctant to lend to the sector for fear it could tarnish their reputations in light of their commitment to green energy, and both industry and NATO officials have complained.

According to many industry representatives interviewed by Bloomberg, the reality is that even with more orders coming in, it will take years for Europe’s defense industry to keep up with current demand. Gergen Johansson, head of Saab Dynamics, said his division increased production as recently as last year, but further expansion will take 2-3 years. Only then will the company be able to return to delivery dates that were until 2022.

The situation with Leopard tanks, which are produced by German firm Rheinmetall, is typical, as in the U.S., the firm no longer produces new tanks, but is only engaged in modernization of old ones. The management of Rheinmetall said that this year it will not be able to deliver any more Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Although the concern has 22 Leopard 2 tanks and about 88 Leopard 1. However, no orders for the restoration of these tanks have been received. Rheinmetall itself cannot start such work, as the cost is several hundred million euros. Even if the order were to arrive tomorrow, deliveries would not be possible until early next year.

It is hard to find a more vivid example of the current state of the Western military-industrial complex. At the same time, as RIA Novosti reported in March this year, hundreds of new T-90M “Breakthrough” T-90Ms have been delivered to the Russian army. In the same month, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said that the Defense Ministry would receive 1,500 tanks in 2023, and on June 1 he specified that more than 600 tanks had already been produced this year.

Peter Tyukov, director of Kurganmashzavod, said that in the first half of the year 95% of the output for the whole of 2022 was produced and in the second half of the year the company intends to increase the production of infantry fighting vehicles by 30%.

It is quite clear that despite billions of dollars of investment in the Western military-industrial complex, it has already reached the ceiling of its production. Further expansion of production lines will take years, and the unfolding sanctions war over rare earth metals must be taken into account. Russia clearly has a head start of at least a couple of years to achieve all the goals of the SMO in Ukraine and ensure its defense capabilities.

Note: in wars of attrition the economy wins. And the economy of the real sector.

And as you know, it takes more than one year to make a metallurgist out of a girl manicurist.

It turns out that we have the money, but the time is getting shorter.

Russia has the infrastructure in place, and the training of new personnel to create and build the machinery of war will be achieved in the coming few years. The West has neither in place and the people can’t be trained before the infrastructure is in place. Not successfully anyway.

At this point, depending on how Europe reacts on the ground, they might just be better off stopping any war production and inviting all the American military infrastructure and bases already in Europe to return to their homeland.

A sharp ramping up of active manufacturing processes would mean endless war in Europe, and no Europeans want that. Getting rid of clown world and their destruction of Europe agenda with DIES (Diversity, Immigration, Equality and Sexual deviance) is not going to be easy, but starving the pretend governments of Western Europe (clown-world puppets) and their masters of practical resources, is a necessary first step.

Clown world does not respond to classical economic rules, because the aim is not economic stability, but the destruction of heritage European peoples and cultures.

For this reason, mere starvation of the puppets in place as European government officials is not going to achieve a positive result for most European nations. The puppet strings are operated from the USA and the Americans have no intent, ability, or courage to remove their deep-state masters, who, in turn, are only delighted by whatever apocalyptic scenario they can inflict on native Europeans in Europe.

The massive influx in illegal immigration of fighting age men with cultural norms that are criminal activity in old, civilised Europe, is one of clown world’s key achievements. It ensures that even if their stranglehold on the European puppets were to fail completely, the host nations would remain infested with chaos, crime and societal disruptions for years and years to come.

The neoclowns running things have gamed the reaction of civilised people very well. The covid narrative demonstrated the sheep-like obedience of absurd mandates was almost total. The only possible miscalculation is the tipping point at which an exasperated populace, even if beholden to a possibly Satanic, child raping and murdering and thus blackmailable puppet government, might eventually rebel in a spontaneous, unco-ordinated yet massive revolt.

The noeclowns have spent 70 years neutering every warrior instinct of European males by every means possible, from psychological warfare, including the vilification of males by nonsensical bullshit like “toxic masculinity” which is essentially the demonisation of literally the natural instincts of human males that made men be protectors, providers and defenders of their family and loved ones, for millions of years. The destruction and feminisation of the family unit through courts and propaganda to allow the far more emotionally volatile and hormone susceptible female of the species to control a narrative that is logically unsustainable but emotionally appealing to deceived women. The chemical “castration” of males by introduction of additives and various other chemicals, generically modified and chem-sprayed foods that reduce testosterone, increase the spread of female hormones in the water supply, and generally promote sterile sex practices even in heterosexual pairings.

For these as well as other very real and designed reasons, as well as the synergy of all these emasculating processes, the neoclowns are reasonably certain they can keep shoving the Europeans natives off the generational and reproductive cliff that they are now hellbent on bulldozing us over.

The only miscalculation, in my opinion, is that unexpected spark of human spirit that resurfaces, as if from a slumbering tiny piece of ember, that results in a sudden, unpredictable, unprecedented, raging tornado of fire. If that happens, it will not be pretty, it will not be nice, it will not be fun. But… the streets of Davos might just end up having the pedovore class swinging from lampposts, decorating them like macabre, rotting piñatas.

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Pretty much why I don’t fear AI

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Even more Interesting

Now… some say that the German response to the world, that is, what ended up becoming WWII was a direct result of their wanting to throw off the punishing reparations for WWI, the nation destroying policies of wealthy bankers and financial interests that were essentially toxic for native Germans and the utter depravity and sexual degeneracy that the Weimar republic had descended into, with all sorts of deviant behaviour being normalised, public sex shows that included urination on restaurant tables, sex acts in public under the guise of clubs privè and so on. And, interestingly enough, also a rejection for the very first transgender clinics. Much of the above, including the transgender agenda and the pornography, as well as the banking, being directed and instigated by Jewish people.

Today, banking, entertainment and pornography are often also controlled by Jewish owners. The hormone “treatments” for transgender “transition” that is hormone blockers to prevent puberty in pre-pubescent children so as to genitally mutilate them into parodies of the opposite sex, are manufactured almost exclusively in firms in Israel.

Now, I have no idea if the people involved in the below image are Jewish or not, I mention the historical aspects for information purposes of interest in hearing all sides of events that are difficult to reconcile in a sensible manner even more than 80 years after the fact.

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How Interesting

I find it remarkable, that the British Crown, gave Palestine to Lord Rothschild, yet, the narrative is that the Rothschilds never had anything to do with any war, ever.

And lest you think this is some antisemitic conspiracy theory, note the origin of where the copy of the text is taken from.

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Some interesting memes

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Why Role Playing Games are civilisational

There are many reasons why RP games are a net positive, especially for young adults, but for a whole bunch of people that are defined as adults. Zoomers, Millennials, even GenX (who know RPGs the most) can benefit from them.

Aside from the general benefits listed below, today, this seemingly innocuous or nerdish activity, makes most of these benefits be far more useful and beneficial than ever before. If you are a under 45 or so, please listen to what I will describe below. It’s important. It makes a difference. And it doesn’t matter if you play one of my RPGs or you prefer others. What matters is that you take a small step back in time and learn an activity that has more benefits for you than you can possibly imagine until you actively begin to do it. Let me count the ways then, the importance of each may vary from person or group to person or group, but one important point to remember is that for any person or group, at least some of these benefits will be very important, and, for all of them, the combined synergy of them all, results in an overall benefit that is more than the sum of its parts.

Teamwork

Those who know me are perfectly aware that I am hardly a gregarious social butterfly, and in fact, more like an ornery and misanthropic hermit. Nevertheless, as irritating as I may find the bast majority of humanity, the absolute fact remains that being able to work alongside others, being both a support for others as well as able to rely on others, is possibly the most fundamental concept of successful human communities, and since building our own communities, that reject, ignore, and, eventually —if a hot kinetic collapse takes place— might have to fight back against clown world, is pivotal, anything that fosters, teaches and promotes the ability to work with others for mutual benefit, is important.

The beauty of this is that you will have to deal with all sorts of personalities. Firstly the real physical ones of the others players and referee, secondly, of those imagined and played out of their characters and the non-player characters your referee (or DM in RPG parlance — Dungeon Master) puts in your path.

Having to both imagine characters with personalities different from your own and doing a good job of it by not making them one-dimensional characters, but rather complex, if different characters does two things, at a minimum. It creates a flexibility of mind that allows you to better cope and deal with other human beings that may have radically different sets of values, ideologies, belief systems, and methods of operation. Secondly, it teaches you how to interact with such people and even difficult situations in a variety of ways. While at first in RPGs the “solution” will be to kill everyone in the room, after that novelty wears off and the referees become better at creating scenarios, actual role-playing out alternatives will become a feature. And finding solutions that the players cooperate in will produce at times catastrophic results, at times unexpected awesome one, but all in the comfortable safety of your table and lounge. Usually with hilarious results. The ability to at least work together even with people you might otherwise not enjoy the company of, whether in real life or in the pretend world of secret agents, spacemen, dragons and werewolves is in all cases a useful skill.

Problem Solving

Nothing exercises the imagination quite as much as trying to figure out how to escape from the slaver’s prison, find the clues to who is really behind a conspiracy, a mass murder, or a homicide masquerading as an accident. Or avoiding the traps and magical wards of an evil warlock. Or coming up with improvised solutions to avoid your damaged spaceship from being swallowed by the gravity well of a nearby gas giant. Regardless of how “improbable” some RPG scenarios might be in real life, the attitude towards a seemingly impossible problem, and the will and ability to find solutions is a skill that is 100% transferable to real life and everyday problems. The human mind cannot differentiate between finding solutions to real or imagined problems. The principal activity is the same. And if you get disheartened in real life, sometimes, all it takes is for you to consider: “Right, what would my character in my favourite RPG do if faced with this situation?”

And… just standard internet disclaimer: if your answer is “kill everyone in the room” perhaps rethink your strategy, and above all, don’t blame a game, or me, for any idiotic action you decide to take, remember, only YOU are responsible for your actions. No one else.

The point is that problem solving is a key skill to have in ANY life. And RPGs foster it. Add in the teamwork bit and you now have a far superior human being in terms of effectiveness than one who has neither skill. And the synergy of both skills creates a much better and more capable person.

Leadership

In a group of people playing RPGs, one tends to become the referee, or DM, who presents the scenario to the other players, keeps track of the campaign, resolves any rules disputes, and generally sets the tone for the campaign or adventures. The best DMs manage all of these separate activities in a flawless fashion that provides entertainment, wonder and enjoyment and real emotions to the other players, without being an autocratic tyrant imposing his iron will on the players as a misplaced need to control everything. While not everyone is a naturally good DM, it’s a skill that too can be learnt and the preparation for a game require the learning of several skills that are required for any leader. Discipline, preparation, and planning, which are all the standard and expected skills everyone tells you about, but also those that are often neglected or sometimes not even mentioned:

Improvisation, flexibility of methodology with rigidity of objective, as well as flexibility of objective depending on circumstances. Keeping cool under pressure, quick thinking that looks like a premeditated plan to others but is a spur of the moment solution to an unexpected problem or development. Contingency planning (plan B, and C and the much used “Oh, fuck! Wing it!”).

Everyone should have a few goes at being DM.

It gives you a deeper appreciation for the game, the difficulty your usual DM has to face, and how to be a better player when you return to the other side of the player-DM divide.

And there is always the added bonus of the synergy of teamwork, problem solving and leadership, which, once again, elevates you as an overall more capable human being.

Role Playing Real Possibilities

If you think roleplaying is just for silly geeks removed from reality, think again. Every standing army on the planet literally roleplays various scenarios. That’s right, RPGs are literally matters of life and death if used correctly.

If you take the approach of using game systems that are set in the modern world, like Top Secret, or my own Surviving the Current Zombie Apocalypse RPGs or if you adapt something like Traveller to function in a modern-day setting, you can create scenarios that are specific to possible situations, be they extreme, fantastic, or even realistic, that might apply to you. With a little extra effort, you can set the game in your own geographical area. Using real paper maps or print outs from google maps that show current locations and landmarks. Creating a storyline that fits the present day or a version of it that can present your players with learning opportunities and/or hilarious scenarios. You can even incorporate a bit of live action roleplaying, leaving clues in the physical world or requiring some tasks in it; like, say, take a picture of the local church’s most prominent painting, or count the number of steps of a particular staircase in a shopping centre, or a million other adapted things that are innocuous and harmless to everyone, but represent an important factor in the imaginary world of the game adventure being played out. Perhaps you can even go so far as plan hikes and even camping trips that are somehow, to one degree or other, tied to a RPG scenario, or incorporated within it. What better way to learn about navigation by the stars and paper maps than to do it for real? And yet, also have the lifeline of actual mobile phones and GPS in case (or when) you screw it up.

Roleplaying games give you the opportunity to teat out scenarios safely and learn real life skills in a safe way, so that if they are ever needed, you actually are not starting from zero.

Conclusions

Human beings are literally wired to learn from story-telling. The better the story, the more engrossing and engaging it is, the more our neural pathways get involved, and the more that happens, the more actual real-life abilities develop. This is simply a neurological fact. It’s also not very useful if you only passively listen to a story without ever engaging your body. This is the difference between a couch potato and a roleplayer. The rolepalyer is at least taking the physical action to sit around with other people and physically interact with them. They take the physical action of at least writing and keeping notes and paying attention and interacting, not just passively absorbing information but help shape it. This is how human beings learn. If you then take an additional step and take that learning into the real world, well, you’re now a more resourceful and capable human than 99% of the planet. The roleplayer that decides to go on a hike to learn how easy or hard it is to camp out in the wild using only what you can carry with you, is a far more accomplished person than the one who binge watches a TV series.

Playing RPGs will fire your imagination and will eventually get you to wonder and want to learn some things in real life. Be it world-building that leads you to write the next Lord of the Rings, or just learning how to make a fire, or use a compass, or take up combat shooting, or, or, or… the possibilities are endless.

My own RPGs are specifically set in either the current world, or a western one that is easily adaptable to almost any scenario. But there are many RPGs out there. Pick one, or a few, and find, gather, or make a few friends and get around a table with paper, pencils, and dice, and begin saving and conquering new worlds.

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Some sobering thoughts on the war

For those who think the USA (((clown world led))) vs Russia-China is going in any way well for the West, here are a few key performance indicators:

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has now lasted more than 500 days; most modern conflicts that cross that mark become protracted. After April 26, 2022, when the first meeting of representatives of 40 Western countries took place at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany on the issue of arms supplies to Ukraine, this conflict turned into an armed confrontation between Russia and the West. Accordingly, such a long confrontation is developing into a race of military-industrial complexes and its prospects can already be assessed.

In March of this year, Michael McCaul, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, said that of the four aid packages allocated to Ukraine for $113 billion, about 60% went to the U.S. military and military-industrial complex to modernize the stockpiles of weapons and military equipment. It would seem that after such injections, the output of the military-industrial complex should have grown like on yeast, but this is not happening.

600 million dollars went directly to the Pentagon’s Defense Production Capabilities Directorate. Of that amount, $45.5 million went to Arconic to expand production of high-grade aluminum. The fact is that Russia controls more than 75% of the world market for high-grade aluminum, which is needed for the production of jet aircraft and various military equipment. Now the U.S. access to Russian aluminum is limited.

13.8 million was awarded to Timken, the only supplier of high-strength ball bearings that meet U.S. Department of Defense standards. The Pentagon awarded $200 million in grants to U.S. companies to produce 27 critical chemicals that are part of the supply chain for jet fuel and explosives.

In June 2021, the only black powder plant in the U.S. was blown up due to an accident. Although black powder is no longer used in the same quantities as it was 200 years ago, the technology to produce it is virtually unchanged due to the fact that the use of electricity in the processes is minimized due to the risk of sparking. Production at this plant was not scheduled to resume until the summer of this year.

15 million dollars was allocated by the Pentagon for a feasibility study of cobalt mining in Idaho, as China has cut its supply to the world market. China holds a controlling stake in 70 percent of the cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s largest supplier of the metal.

The sanctions war between the U.S. and China is heating up and, therefore, it is pointless to hope for the restoration of previous volumes of rare earth metals supplies. Cobalt is used not only in the production of tank armor, but also for aircraft and even radar.

It will take years to modernize these existing production facilities, and in the case of cobalt, now we are talking about exploratory drilling, and the construction of production facilities for cobalt processing is a separate big story.

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