New Year, Real-World Readiness

Systems don’t warn us before they snap—they just do. We kick off the year with a clear-eyed look at what 2025 taught us and how to turn those lessons into practical, affordable readiness for 2026. From a brief digital detox to a high-velocity news cycle—Venezuela’s shake-up, grid-challenging winter storms, and shifting global coalitions—we focus on what you can control: your mindset, your pantry, your plan, and your community.

We revisit standout moments: how the SNAP disruption actually played out on the ground, why churches and food banks became resilience engines, and which sub-$20 tools beat expensive gear when the power goes out. We unpack the difference between normalcy bias and a true prepper mindset—the kind that keeps momentum and morale when help is hours away. Then we zoom out: mixed economic signals, rate cuts that could loosen credit, tariff ripple effects, and the geopolitical wildcards of China–Taiwan, the Middle East, and the long proxy grind in Ukraine. Arms control timelines add background tension, but panic won’t help; planning will.

Technology and space push the story forward. AI has moved from buzzword to daily utility, quietly speeding up research and decisions. Robots are crossing from lab demos to real work. A revived space race—lunar flybys, whispers of rare lunar resources, and national competition—underscores how much we now depend on satellites for navigation, timing, and communications. Add a solar cycle peak and a fragile grid, and the case for simple redundancy is strong: stored water, safe heat, reliable lighting, battery banks, and printed contacts. We also map the cultural calendar—Winter Olympics, World Cup, America’s 250th—flagging travel strain and local shortages so you can plan around the rush.

If you’re ready to trade doomscrolling for decisive action, this is your guide. Pick one step to finish by January 15—inventory the pantry, rotate stock, add a case of water, or kit out a get-home bag—and tell us what you chose. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you want in your resilience circle.

https://augasonfarms.com?sca_ref=9315862.VpHzogdDNu

Augason Farms
Support the podcast. Click on my affiliate link and use coupon code PODCASTPREP for 10% discount!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open And Host Introduction
• 0:54 Digital Detox And Media Sanity
• 1:36 Venezuela Arrest And Power Vacuums
• 3:15 Top Episodes Of 2025 Recapped
• 5:15 SNAP Disruption And Community Response
• 7:35 Budget Preps That Actually Work
• 8:35 Winter Outage Readiness Lessons
• 11:30 Prepper Mindset Versus Normalcy Bias
• 12:42 Tune Out Noise, Stack Essentials
• 13:42 2025 Big Picture And Takeaways
• 16:06 One Action Before Mid-January
• 18:12 2026 Outlook: Economy And Rates
• 20:38 China, Tariffs, And Global Risks
• 22:52 Wars, Ceasefires, And START Treaty
• 25:29 AI, Robots, And Rapid Change

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

The National Labor Center position is a severe thunderstorm warning. Welcome. To the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended off-grid compound high in the mountains. Coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, Virginia. Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_01: 0:41

Well, this is Keith, and you're listening to the Common Sense Practical Purper Podcast for January the 3rd, 2026. Well, happy New Year's, everybody. I hope everybody had a safe and happy new year. And something I want to get off my chest right out of the gate. For a couple, three or four days, I stayed away from social media. And it was probably one of the best decisions I've made in a long time. I found myself running errands, doing chores around the home, reading other than doom scrolling. And when I came back, I got caught up on the headlines. I'm going to try to do that more often. I like to stay up on current events. I like to know what's going on in the world. I like to know what's going on in the US, in my state, in my city and town. So I'm not caught off guard. But there's nothing wrong with unplugging for a day or two, a day or three, whatever you need to keep yourself sane. So when I got up this morning, I checked the headlines and found out that we invaded Venezuela briefly and we arrested Maduro on an outstanding warrant for apparently drug trafficking. So he's going to go in the way of Manuel Noriega, other regime change, the Shah in 72 in Iran. And we've been involved in several other regime changes. The U.S. government and the alphabet agencies, that's kind of their strong suit. They like regime change. Here's the only issue: when you remove that person from power, there are times there's a chance it'll create a power vacuum unless you have already handpicked the person that you want to become the leader of that country. Trust me, that's how it's normally done. The people, the news reports, the video that I saw, these people are absolutely over the moon that this cat is in custody and will not be back to screw them over. He was an evil dictator, ran that country's economy right into the ground. And you can really feel for him. You could just sense the emotion and the happiness that this guy is no longer in the picture. I certainly hope the best and wish the best for the country. I wish the best for the people of Venezuela. Very wealthy country. They have a lot of oil. They've been trading oil around the world for the longest time, but they got the drugs, they got the fentanyl that they're exporting. We're blowing up their drug boats. Maduras was given an ultimatum. He blinked, and now he's on his way to a federal prison. We'll see ultimately what happens to him, but he's going to go the way of Manuel Noriega and other folks that we've arrested in the past. So let's go ahead and look at 2025, and I'll give you some predictions for 2026 as well. So here are the top five episodes of 2025 and what we learned from them. All right, so let's go backwards. Number five, what happened when Snap stops being paid out and how we stepped up? So remember, for several days, no Snap payments were going out. But for the most part, people had an idea. They had some lead time. They knew this was going to happen. So they had some time, they had the ability to make other arrangements. A little bit of social unrest here and there, but nothing like riots in the streets. There weren't hundreds of people flash mobbing and taking all the food out of the Walmart or going after a CVS or a Walgreens. For the most part, everybody behaved themselves. The worst part about the whole thing were all these knuckleheads getting on TikTok saying how if they didn't get their money, they were going to hurt somebody, they were going to go to the store, they're going to take whatever they wanted to take just for clicks. If you have enough time to go posting on TikTok and monetize your TikTok account, then you don't need welfare. You can probably go out and get a part-time job, work your TikTok part-time, and then you're in great shape. We saw where churches stepped up, we saw where food banks stepped up. And again, by using my affiliate link in the month of November, I was able to write a check for$50 to the Chesterfield Food Bank. And again, thank you to all of those folks that participated. All right, the next one. There's a lot of products out there that are under$10, under$15, under$20, just going to prove that you don't have to spend a lot of money to be prepared. November 4th, a practical guide to winter power outages. Now, this one was perfect timing given what's happened in the last couple, three weeks. We had that Christmas bomb cyclone that buried half the country. I think they're still getting snow. Was it Tahoe got like six or seven feet? I don't know how many inches of snow, but it's like record snowfall out in Tahoe and many other parts of the country. Was it three or four days ago? The Midwest got creamed, the Northeast got creamed. And again, were you prepared? Do you live in that part of the country? Do you have friends or family that live in that part of the country? And were they prepared? Did they have extra food and water? Did they have the ability to heat their home if the electricity went out? Wood burning stove, pellet stove, the Mr. Buddy stoves. If you're out in your vehicle, did you have a jump box? Did you have a get home bag? Another way of communicating? Did you have a charging bank for your cell phone? Wool blanket, all the things we've talked about from a get home bag. There were pile-ups after pileup, 40 and 50 car pile-ups on these icy interstates, people driving off into snow drifts with the amount of accidents on some of these roads. It took several hours in many cases for law enforcement or EMS to get to these people. So if you live in that part of the country, if you live in a part of the country that is susceptible to heavy winter storms, you really need to have a plan. I think last I saw the death toll was like six or seven for this entire set of winter storms. But it may have risen since then. All right, next November the 13th, prepper mindset versus normalcy bias. This one got a lot of traction. So normalcy bias, oh, it won't happen here, or it's okay, it'll happen somewhere else. 2025 said, Oh, it'll happen, and it'll happen when and where I choose to. Being in charge and being in command of a situation, you are in charge of the momentum in a sense. You are the person that is keeping this small group, whether it's your family, your friends, or some folks you've you've found yourself stranded with, as the leader, you're responsible for keeping the group moving forward, keeping positive momentum as you fight through whatever adversity you happen to be experiencing. All right, November 5th, from political threats to everyday readiness. This one got a lot of traction, especially around election week, because a lot of people were very nervous about what may or may not happen. New York, Virginia, and a few other local races and a few other national races. So again, the winners, the quiet folks who turned off the noise, stacked their shelves instead of going online and arguing with a bunch of people, that is probably one of the biggest wastes of time out there. All right, so the big picture. What did we learn in 2025? We learn that threats don't come with warning labels anymore. They just happen. Silver goes to the roof, lake effect snow in California, daycare fraud in Minneapolis. Didn't have that on my bingo card. So nobody knows the exact play, but we all see a pattern. There's a strain to the system, and then it snaps. Inexpensive items.$8 headlamp beats that$300 solar gadget every day of the week. Common sense over gear porn. Now there's nothing wrong with gear porn, trust me. I like looking at the websites, I like watching the videos. Nothing wrong with gear porn, but you have to keep your head about you and not make a bunch of impulse buys like I have in the past that many you end up regretting. Do your research, find out what fits your particular situation. So before we close out 2025, technically it's already closed, but you know, you know what I'm getting at. Pick one thing, one of those top five episodes, pick something out of that that you want to do that you haven't done. Do you need to take stock? Do you need to take inventory in your pantry but haven't yet? Go do that. Do you need to rotate first in, first out in your pantry? If you haven't done that and it's due, go ahead and do that. That extra can of tuna, extra case of water. Set yourself a deadline of January 15th and say, when I go to the store, I'm gonna buy the extra peanut butter. Or when I go with my mom or my dad, say they're elderly, when I help them with their shopping, I'm gonna make sure that my mom or dad had that extra case of water. Because here in the US, winter is not over by a long shot. So we all survived. 2025 was not the end of the world, but it was just a dress rehearsal, in my opinion. We showed up, we showed up prepared, and there are already additional threats lining up for 2026. Stay ready, stay prepared, stay calm, educate yourself, and be ready for all the things that 2026 is going to throw at us. All right, here's a couple of predictions. Again, I don't have a crystal ball, but two eyes, two ears, and half a brain. So this is what I see on the horizon. All right, the economy. GDP was up. The economy for the most part is doing very well. We have a lot of conflicting data. Unemployment's doing great, GDP's doing great. Hopefully, the interest rates are going to continue to come down, the Fed's going to lower them, so mortgage loans will come down, auto loans will come down, the banks will quit hoarding the money and start lending it to folks, and then make more cash in the system, and you and the economy here in the States will continue to prosper. So with the big beautiful bill, they had all those tax incentives, Social Security no tax, tips and overtime no tax. Let's see how that all plays out. All I've been seeing are all these headlines that read largest tax refund in history, huge tax refund on the horizon. Well, let's see. Let me see come mid-March or mid-April when I get my return back from the account. Let me really see if I was in a position to take advantage of all these crazy cool things that are apparently part of the Big Beautiful bill. So we've got China. So China's still threatening Taiwan, military exercises. That is kind of a wild card. They've been threatening Taiwan for the longest time, building that naval base and that air base in the middle of the ocean, dumping a bunch of sand and dirt and rocks and making an island in the ocean and then building this huge naval base and this huge Air Force base. So we'll see what happens with that. But for the most part, I don't want to say it's an economic mutually assured destruction as opposed to the nuclear mutual assured destruction. Our economies are so intertwined that I believe if somebody does something rash, be it the US or be it China, potentially that could have ripple effects throughout the world. I don't necessarily see that happening unless somebody gets froggy and they want to do something silly. Some of the risks economically, obviously, interest rates, this whole tariff thing, we brought in a lot of money through tariffs, and apparently that's going to be part of the tax refund. So we'll see ultimately what happens with that, if that money's going to be invested or put back into the economy, used to pay the debt, whatever it happens to be. Interesting to see what happens. We already talked about the Fed and then potentially lowering rates again. I say no major wars yet, but taking out Maduro wasn't necessarily a war, but we did invade a country. We did arrest a guy, so I don't know, maybe a wash on that one. The Middle East is always tense. You know, we have the Israel, Hamas, Palestine ceasefire that's still kind of there. So ultimately, we'll see what happens there in Israel and Gaza. This has happened before, and it really doesn't take long for someone to break the ceasefire and they're just back at it again. Ukraine. What is this? Will this be year in February? Will it be the third year or the fourth? We'll be going into the fourth year. We've been doing this so long. A proxy war with the Soviet Union. That's exactly what Ukraine is. We just ship them another 45 bajillion dollars. I I lost count. I can't, I can't count that high in the total number that we've sent them. And don't give me off on a tangent with that one. Again, the Middle East, always very tense. We talked about China, Taiwan. Something I read the other day that really surprised me. So the START Treaty. So the Nuclear Arms Control Treaty. When was that? Gosh, was that with Reagan? Did Reagan and them sign the START treaty? Anyway, that expires on February the 6th. And apparently there's no talks with, I was gonna say the Soviets, there's currently no talks going on with Russia about extending that treaty in some form or fashion. Now, at this point, there's no way they're gonna be able to hammer something out in the next 30, 35 days. So it appears it will expire on the sixth. Now, that doesn't mean World War III goes kinetic and we start lobbing nukes at each other, not by a long shot. But back when the START treaty was signed, it was very important for the deep deploriferation. Did I say that right? Deplurifer. Okay. It was very important for us to dismantle our nuclear stockpile down to a certain number. And again, I'm not an expert. I don't know if I I don't know if the United States, okay, we're only gonna have 200 land-based missiles and 100 sea launched missiles or missiles at sea. Soviet, you can only have 600 of those. And I don't know the numbers, but I don't think that at midnight on February the 6th, we're gonna all of a sudden we're gonna have like 500 more nukes in our inventory. I think something will either get worked out or there'll be a gentleman's agreement, a handshake, a pinky swear. I wouldn't worry too much about a kinetic war with the Soviet Union. So technology, we all know about AI. And folks, I am here to tell you AI is here to stay, and it's not going away, and it's only growing exponentially. There's not an hour in my current career, there's not an hour that goes by on any given day, Monday through Friday, that I am not employing or deploying some sort of AI tool to assist me in my research, to assist me in my projects, or just literally asking it some questions and asking it to review an email, review some data that I pulled up from a couple sites. If you have not embraced AI and you're in a position to, you definitely need to do that. So a lot of folks will say that the AI stocks are overvalued, there's going to be a course correction. A lot of the big tech stocks, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, all of them are going to suffer as well. But again, I'm not an economist. I don't have a crystal ball. That's just what some people are saying. Robots. What's Tesla's robot? Optimus. I saw a video, and I think it was in Japan. There was a concert, and they had the backup dancers were robots, and they had some moves. I'm a white guy and I can't, I can barely walk and chew gum at the same time. I have no rhythm. I can't dance worth a damn. These robots, I mean, they really put me to shame. When it comes to AI, when it comes to robots, that stuff is just going to take off exponentially. The stuff we're seeing with AI and robots today, we'll look back on it in six months and saying, oh my gosh, that's child's play. Look what they're doing now. Look how much further AI and robots have come just in the last six months. Let's talk about space. The Artemis II rocket. Apparently, in April-ish, SpaceX is going to send a crew to do a flyby of the moon with future plans to actually go back to the moon in very short order because somebody somewhere said there's a bunch of rare, I was gonna say rare earth minerals, rare moon minerals, rare lunar metals that we could use here on Earth. We've got another space race, so instead of the US and the Soviet Union, I said it correctly, it is now the US and China. Didn't China land on the dark side of the moon? Great album, by the way. Didn't China land on the dark side of the moon a few years ago? It's kind of one of those things where if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it, does it make any noise? There wasn't a lot of fanfare, and of course the Chinese are very guarded about video and technology, whereas they just come over and steal ours, but I digress. So we'll see exactly what's going on. So we're gonna fly by in April, and hopefully there'll be a moon landing a few months later. And so we will be back to the moon for the first time since what, early 70s? I don't recall our last, our last moon landing. So we talk about overall employment, folks out there with a lot of job anxiety, especially for white collar roles. There's been a lot of layoffs, don't get me wrong. There's not been any mass displacements because of AI alone. Certainly layoffs because of AI, because of downsizing, no mass displacement yet. So in a few weeks, we have the Winter Olympics in Milan in Italy. So I like to watch curling. I don't know why, but I became enamored with curling like three Olympics ago. If you watch curling, you'll learn about the stones that they throw or they slide. They all come from a special type of granite, I believe, on a specific island off the coast of Scotland. So it's it's cool just to learn the history of that. Man, they get animated. They scream and yell. They got the sweeper and the pusher and the stone, stone rock thrower person. They really love the sport, they really get into it. Of course, there's hockey. I might watch some skiing, but for the most part, it's gonna be hockey and maybe some of the bobsled or the skeleton. Have you seen the skeleton? They lay on this thing that's like it's like it's tiny and they're just inches from the ice and they're going like 500 miles an hour down the track. But I like the bobsled, skeleton, ice hockey, and curling. That's what I'll probably tune into. We've got the World Cup in June and July. And And I'm not a big football fan, but I do watch it from time to time. So that'll be held US, Canada, and Mexico, I believe, because it's there's teams from all over the place. So we'll have an economic boost in those particular countries, in those particular cities, logistical chaos in the host cities. If you happen to be traveling, take your time, beware of delays. The U.S. midterms in November, a very high-stakes election to potentially flip Congress. So we'll see what exactly happens. I have my theories, I have my guesses, but we're not here to talk about that right now. America's 250th birthday, July 4th, 250 years old. I have been blessed to be able to travel around the world ever since I got out of college. It's when I first started, when I backpacked across Western Europe at the time. I have certainly been blessed to visit other countries, meet other people, and experience their culture. It is so foreign, pun intended, it's so foreign to me that when I go over to these countries and I look at the architecture. Like again, I was in Germany, what, three months ago. You look at these cathedrals. That cathedral's 400 years old, 500 years old. Here's a town, a church over here that's 1200 years old. There's buildings in Europe that are older than the United States. You need to really put that into perspective. We are very, very young when it comes to the world and it comes to other countries. In a lot of ways, we're still trying to figure it out. I know people in other countries are listening to me right now going, you have lost your mind, but we're still trying to figure it out. Obviously, I'm a bit biased. I think we have a fantastic outlook. I think we're going to be doing very well, not only economically, but socially, culturally, golden era, golden age, whatever you want to call it. I think the US is at a precipice on the brink, or whatever cool analogy you can use that I think we're going to move in a positive direction, and that benefits everybody. If everybody is on board and everybody is moving forward, everybody is moving towards a common goal, everybody wins. The division, the bickering back and forth, the divisiveness, in my opinion, is all planned. There are people that are pitting us against our neighbors, people across the street on the other side of the street, black, white, male, female, different ages, different religions. It's all orchestrated to keep us mad at each other so we can't focus on a common goal, which is for everybody to be successful. And don't confuse success with money. To be successful, to prosper, and to give back, volunteer, charity, that sort of thing. Sorry if I got a little preachy there for a second, but I think I think I just got up on my soapbox accidentally. So again, here's a couple of the wild cards for 2026. Is GTA 6 ever going to drop? I heard November of 2026? These are important things, folks. This is what the world wants to know. Is Grand Theft Auto 6 really going to drop in 2026 and not be delayed another year? Forget politics. What about GTA 6? So in 2025, and then a little further into 2026, apparently, is one of the most active solar storm, solar cycles that we've had for the longest time. Now, we don't have to worry about EMPs, we don't have to worry about being fried by you know geomagnetic radiation or anything to that effect. But the grid, especially the grid in the United States, is so fragile, so, so fragile. It wouldn't take much for it to cause some cascading effect that would potentially lead to a significant grid down situation. So we'll see what happens in these elections. We don't know. There's elections coming up in the EU. We'll see what happens there. Those have far-reaching effects for a very long period of time. If SpaceX goes public, if they file for an IPO, I'm not an economic advisor. I'm not telling you what to do with your money. But if that happens, I'm going to start digging through my couch cushions and try to pull as many nickels, dimes, and quarters as I can and go to the bank because that is a bet that I will take every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Now that I said that, don't everybody start cutting open your mattresses, getting out your money, waiting for, waiting for them to file an IPO, because I don't even know if it's going to happen. But if it does, man, the sky's the limit and pun intended. But we'll see. So ultimately, what I see in 2026, nothing apocalyptic, but more of a transitional phase, a transitional time, the transitional year as we as the economy continues to move, as these elections start to come up, as other world events will happen. Will the attack on the US by Al-Qaeda and ISIS, will that happen? We're still within that window. People are still talking about it. And sadly, over the weekend, there was the fire in Switzerland, I believe, at that disco. There's been other mass shootings. The last quarter, so yeah, Q4 of 2025 has been very eventful. There is a lot that has happened that I believe is just going to carry on over into 2026. All right, folks, thanks for stopping by. I really do appreciate it. If you want to reach out, podcastprep at gmail.com. Of course, I'm on the Twitters, prepper underscore podcast, or comment since practical prepper. And I'm on Signal too. I haven't, I don't, I have the signal account. I'm prepper.99. I think that's my username, prepper.99. If you have a signal account and you want to reach out via signal, I know signal is supposed to be encrypted and have all these security features. So we'll see. I don't know that much about it. I'm just told it's a secure messaging platform. We had a great 2025. Here's the 2026. Here is to continue prosperity. And I hope everybody has a fantastic 2026. And as always, be safe out there, take care of one another, and until next time.

SPEAKER_00: 26:12

Thanks for listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. While you're at it, help spread the word by leaving a rating and review.