Grounded and Ready for Whatever

How Collapse Begins While Everything Looks Normal

• Shay • Season 2 • Episode 1

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 33:58

Normal days can hide the first cracks. Shelves look full, the lights are on, and the news hums in the background—but essentials quietly vanish, rules stack, and neighbors turn into sides. We take you inside the subtle sequence that precedes open crisis and walk through how to spot warning signs early: scarcity that shows up as limits and uneven prices, everyday language drifting toward dehumanization, “reasonable” controls that quietly erode consent, information that slows or narrows into a single narrative, and social fracture that dissolves trust at street level.

From there, we pivot into practical steps designed to keep you calm and ready without panic or theatrics. We start with reading patterns over headlines and move to building a quiet buffer: two to four weeks of food you actually eat, clean water and filtration, medications and first aid, small bills, and fuel. We talk about converting fragile assets—digits on a screen—into useful ones like supplies, tools, skills, and mobility. We dig into real-world trust: meeting neighbors, identifying steady friends, and agreeing on simple plans. We emphasize controlling visibility so preparation doesn’t paint a target, and we lay out how to protect information with offline maps, printed contacts, radios, and check-in routines. Finally, we help you define exit triggers so you don’t wait until fear makes the call for you, and we close with a mindset shift: live your life, stay alert, and keep readiness quiet and durable.

If you’ve felt the energy tightening—prices creeping, outages spiking, rules stacking—this is your roadmap to stay grounded and ready for whatever. Subscribe, share this with someone you trust, and tell us: which warning sign do you see most clearly right now?

🎧 Thanks for tuning in to Mind State Collective Media

Media for a New State of Mind

Stay connected — follow, subscribe, and explore more shows from the Collective:

[Grounded and Ready for Whatever] • [Offbeat Conversations and Casual Curiosities] • [The Mellow Mindset] • [Sessions with Shay]

https://www.podpage.com/mind-state-collective-media/


Support the Collective:

buymeacoffee.com/MSCM


SPEAKER_01:

Peace, peace to all my good people out there. Welcome to another episode of Grounded and Ready for Whatever. I'm Shay, and on this episode, we're going to be a little bit scenario-based. Just a tad. This episode is going to show you how collapse begins while everything looks normal. So try to take notes as best you can, but just follow me for a bit. All right, picture this. Sicily 19. Never mind. If you catch the reference, you catch the reference. The shelves are full, the lights are on. Wi-Fi works when it wants to. And everyone says that everything is fine. And that is how collapse begins. You're at home. Coffee's hot. The news is, you know, seamlessly playing in the background. And life feels normal. Except it really isn't. The cracks are already here, ladies and gentlemen. We see it every day. But most people just don't know how to see them properly to use them effectively. And I'm here to help you do that. So first sign is scarcity. Now, stores that look stocked, but their essentials keep vanishing. And you know the essentials I'm talking about. You know, not the thousand bags of lay's potato chips or the 40,000 different varieties of Fruit Loop Cheerios or whatever. I'm talking about the basic essentials that seem to disappear. The eggs, the bread, the milk, the meat, the chicken, all of those things. The vegetables, the fresh vegetables. All of those things keep vanishing. The canned foods, the medicine, the fuel. Limits start to appear. Oh, you can only buy two of this on this day, or three of this at all, or one of this at this exchange. Prices start to jump. Two dollars for a dozen of eggs here, twelve dollars for a dozen of eggs there. These aren't coincidences, they're the opening phases of force scarcity. Because if you look at it, scarcity breeds fear. Fear breeds hoarding. Hoarding breeds panic. Panic turns violent, and then history is written. And it never changes this order. Always, always, and always starts with that first sense of fear. Look at COVID. If you were here for COVID, you know how COVID started. Toilet paper and paper towels never became such a necessity as it did at that point. And a lot of people now, if you notice, whenever they feel the need to hoard, or maybe mini hoard as it is, they always go for those essentials. Toilet, paper, and paper towels. When I was younger, the essentials were bread, milk, eggs. Now it's toilet paper because I guess we're shitting all day and wiping our hands. Anywho, the second sign, dehumanization. And we've if you spend enough time on social media anywhere, we've already seen that. It just depends on how much you actually are on social media to see it as much as you do. The language is starting to shift, you know, traders, leftists, rightists, enemies, vermin, illegals, immigrants, those people, they people, all these words, they're starting to, you know, trickle into normal conversation, regular conversation. And it's just not online. It's not just politicians, it's not just the media, it's our coworkers, our family members, our church members, our people at the bank, our people that we conversed with at the grocery store, all these people, all these words are now in regular conversation. And once people stop seeing each other as human, cruelty becomes acceptable. And then having a disagreement with someone becomes dangerous. And then it shows that what all this shit that we're doing is justified because they can't act right, or they don't deserve all of this good stuff that we have here. It's not for them, it's for us. This is the mentality of when it's dehumanization has occurred. It doesn't matter that you're another human being, it doesn't matter that you know you're going through this thing, something that I created. This is them talking, not me. But it doesn't matter that none of this is going, all this is going on right now. I don't see you as human anymore because you're a traitor. You're a leftist, you're a rightish, you're a whatever. You see? Once these terms, these words, this shift happens, removal becomes justified because disagreement becomes dangerous. Third sign, tightening controls. Now, we in a certain community, in a certain collective, me meaning you, you meaning me, those who know who they know, we have been put under such scrutiny for a long time now. And we used to it, honestly. Some of us in certain communities, we're used to this level of control because this is how they always want us to be. Because once we are in that level, it's we're easy to be manipulated, to be separated, to be all of those words and things. We can be easily controlled that way because that's how they've always done it. It started with, you know, let me not get all preachy here, but I'm gonna get a second or preachy here. Look up where actual modern day police officers started from. Don't worry, I got the answer for you. They started from slave catchers during slavery. They needed people to round up random black people who could be escaping, and they became slave catchers, and they became the modern-day police force. So if you on inception are of a thing, if this is how you started, I do not see it getting any better from there. So I say all that to say the things that we have been seeing now in Minnesota and the National Guard and all of that stuff is the third sign of tighten control, but just on everybody, not just us. Because us in our community, we've already seen it like that. We live it, we we breathe it, we walk while black, drive while black, read while black, all that stuff while black, and we understand it, we live it. But the other people, they're just now starting to see exactly what we've been trying to tell them, and they don't know what to do because their mindset is different. I feel like they think, and I don't know this, but I feel like they think, well, they must be lying because it's great over here. I never see Jim the cop do such herocious things to people. I don't think he would ever do that. But then Jim the Cop is actually the one on the police camera doing said things, but she would never believe it because her mentality doesn't give her the discernment to think that way, but we know. Yeah, we definitely know. But the third sign tightening of controls. New rules appear overnight. We the executive orders that appear overnight, the curfews, the travel limits, the website bans, more police, more checkpoints. Each step seems reasonable, right? Until all of those reasonable requests start to stack. You know, one day, hey, there's a curfew. You can't move freely between these hours and these hours, but it's for your safety. But then they say, Yeah, you can move during these hours, but you can't only go these places, you can only stay in these areas. It's it's for your safety and ours as well. And then they say, Oh, okay, well, while you're in those certain areas during those certain times, you can only be on certain websites of the internet that you pay for on your phone, but it's for your safety. All of this is for your safety, and then they start to stack, and then you have more police presence in that safe area during those safe curfews, and then they have checkpoints with those police police officers in those areas during those times. All of these little things seem reasonable until they stack, and then reasonable accommodations, as it were, start to feel like prison or concentration can't be. I've never been in one, but I've read stories and I've seen books, you know. And here's the really scary part with this third sign: when leaders stop explaining and just start saying just comply, consent is gone, y'all. And control has replaced trust. When leaders stop explaining and start saying, just comply, or they don't need to explain, you just need to comply. Consent is gone, control has replaced trust. Fourth sign, information fades. Today is January 18th, and uh recently we had a well, certain people, not everybody, but there was an internet outage for all member all people who had Verizon that included internet, file, cell phone, all that stuff. And it's happened before, and as we all know, different carriers have different levels of service levels sometimes. Some people sometimes they go out, sometimes they don't. But think about it, it's been happening a lot more often lately, and a lot more carriers have been affected. So when the internet starts to slow down and the information starts to trickle slowly, doesn't even matter what type of information, just the fact that our society now is based on a here, I need this information now, and if I don't have it right now, I'm gonna ship bricks. That is where we're at with our information gathering. So if there's a delay or it's buffering or searching, people start to, you know, slowly lose their shit. So imagine if that happens during periods of unrest, during periods of government agencies coming to kicking your door freely, because they could do that now if you didn't know. Side note the um Supreme Court voted that nine to zero, mind you, nine to zero, that the Fourth Amendment, right where police or government officials cannot come to kick your door in in your home without a warrant, they just said nah to that no more. If the police have reasonable cause to come to your home, they can kick your door in. And that's not fake news or none of that. Go research that yourself, every everyone. Because when I read it, I had to look at it twice to see what it was really saying. But the way it reads, to me, it says that. So, what do you think happens when the internet goes down? It gets slowly um slow to back up again, and there's already shit popping in cities, and social media goes completely dark, and the news outlets or the information that you you are getting, it all says the same shit. It's all feeding you the same narrative, it's all telling you the same story. What do you do? Do you believe it? You have to, right? Because what else do you have? You don't have anything else to believe but the information that's being presented to you. So this fourth sign is information. You don't have the basic choice of free information. And this isn't a failure, it is literally a strategy. They do this in order to set the population up because a population that can't communicate properly can't organize properly, and a population that can't organize properly, they can't resist at all. So if your internet goes out one day and you don't know when it's gonna come back, that's one of those flags to say, hmm. One of those signs that Shay was talking about. But the fifth sign is social fracture. This is where one, and we could be here already, depends on you know your particular situation, but neighbors stop being neighbors. Politics becomes identity, families split based on the politics, communities harden into sides, your side, my side, our side, their side. That shit is happening every day, and the other steps that I've mentioned have fed into this particular step directly. Because if you don't know your neighbors and you don't talk to your neighbors, who's gonna vouch for you when they come knocking? Not saying that they would vouch for you anyway, but societies don't collapse because of armies, generally speaking. They collapse when people stop helping each other, and they collapse when people start snitching on each other to the people who are come knocking on their door in the first place to take them and their families and separate them in the first place. That's how societies collapse, and that's how they win. Because normally when trust disappears, violence fills that space, and it's the most easiest thing to do when you feel like you ain't got nothing left. So now you say, Shay, thank you for pooping in my Cheerios. What do we do now? We've all seen the signs, and what do we do now? Well, we know that the shift doesn't happen all at once, these are slow builds of actions and occurrences, but it creeps, and it's definitely creeping right now. And it might not happen tomorrow, it might not happen this year, but it's coming, and we feel it. The real ones feel it. The real people who feel the energy of things, we feel it. But I'm here to tell you, we ain't gonna be caught off guard because this isn't a time to panic. It's definitely not a time to panic. This is a time to position, and it's all about positioning, and we're gonna position ourselves to win or to at least not be caught off guard for the bullshit. So, step one, read the patterns, not the headlines. Headlines are noise, headlines are noise. Patterns are the truth of things, the things that happen constantly over and over and over again. That's a pattern, right? Right, a headline is just something to draw you in, clickbaity of things, something to look at and say, hey, I'm interested in this. Let me read further, let me draw your attention further. Things to watch for, shortages that return after being fixed, the eggs, bread, milk, all of the things, the meat, the chickens, all of that. They'll keep coming back and then going away, keep coming back and going away. Those are shortages that should be paid attention to. Also, prices rising faster than wages. We see that now. That ain't something to watch for. That's happening today. Language turning from disagreement to blame, emergency rules that never roll back. Collapse is cumulative, people. One sign is coincidence, two, three tend to be a trend. Four or five is a warning. All of this is happening right now. So step two, build a quiet buffer. You don't need a bunker. Now, if you can get one, kudos to you. If you can get one, hit me up. I would love to come visit if we need to, but yeah. But you, if you can't uh can't afford one, you don't really need one, you just need some good shit to hold you over. Aim for two to four weeks of independence at a minimum. A month because two to four weeks is gonna do a lot more than not planning at all or feeling too overwhelmed to plan for 10 to 15 years in advance. Two to four weeks is a lot easier to work with. And what do you need to get? Food you already eat that is shelf stable, your beans, your rice, all of those things. Things that can last for two to your two to four weeks of independence, your water, your filtration of water if you don't. You need gallons of water for you and every individual that's in your home, including your pets. Think about the babies. If you have little ones that need um formula, you need water for the formula, medication, first aid, cash in small bills, and I mean small bills like ones and fives and tens and twenties. Don't be hoarding 50s and hundreds, they're not gonna have the value you think it's gonna have, especially in a situation where everybody don't have hundreds. Fuel never let your tank drop below half. And it's a preference thing of mine. You do what you want, but if shit goes left and you're trying to get home, the last thing you need to have on your brain, am I gonna make it home? Because I only have a half a tank of gas. Now remember, all of this is not hoarding, it's just removing levels of pressure during a highly stressful situation. When other people are out there panicking, you don't have to because you've already built yourself up of two to four weeks or more of stable independence for you and your loved ones. And that's it. Shelf stable food, some water, some basic medical and first aid, a little bit of cash, and some gas. If you can. Step three convert fragile assets into useful ones. Now, when these regular systems wobble, convenience is the first thing that disappears first. So whatever money you think you have in the bank is gone. It's literally just poof on the screen. It was a ones and zeros on a digital screen is gone now. So your food, your tools that you have, your skills that you have are more solid than that money because that money is fragile. But the food, the tools, the skills, and the moment the level of mobility that you have, the freedom of movement to go from one place to another, that is solid. So what you do have, you can shift gradually. Move some of your savings into supplies. If you have a hundred dollars in savings, maybe move that hundred dollars into some stuff you can put into your pantry that you're gonna eat. One more thing about the uh shelf the stable foods. Buy foods that you're going to eat. Don't just buy foods that you think is what you you're supposed to buy. Buy the foods that you're supposed to buy, but you're also going to eat. Imagine being stuck somewhere that you don't want to be in a highly stressful situation with food you don't want to eat, too. Just saying. Back to shifting gradually. Take some of your savings and move it into supplies. Buy your water filtration if you need to with that. Buy some things to fortify your home if you need to, if you can. Step four, build real world trust. All of us that know people from online or have online relationships with people or what have you, once the online networks vanish, those people are gone. Unless you've created solid solid foundations with them and actually have communicated with them outside of those online platforms, because all of that shit is gonna go. That's why I'm saying you also need to know your neighbors, even if you're not a personable person, if those people are complete and utter assholes, you still need to know those people, you still need to know their names, you still should know what they look like. Because in the event that you need to know their names, you're gonna be really mad if you don't. So build these real-world trust networks as best as you can. I know everybody, you know, can't have communication, can't talk to everybody, but try as much as you can. You need people that know your name, you need neighbors that know your name. You need friends who stay calm under stress, you need family members that you can coordinate with all of this stuff with. Now, I understand if you're that person that everybody coordinates with you, that's cool. But then if you're that person, you need to know who you can coordinate with. And you need one person that you can rely on without explanation, and you know why you need that person. I shouldn't have to explain it for you, but if you need just a tad bit of explanation, this person is going to do whatever, whenever, however, and not actually why. Just say when we going and have quiet conversations now with these people that you want to build in your trust network, because nothing is the worst of having these plans and they're ready to go, but you have sold them to absolutely nobody. And if that's how you want to carry it, that's cool too. But if you want to have some type of trust network of individuals that's gonna move with you the way that you wanted to move, then you have to have these conversations and you have to see if they're gonna be on the same pages with you. Step five, control your visibility in unstable times. Shit, in stable times, attention is a liability. Never broadcast your preparation. Ever. Never tell people what you got, how you got it, where you're putting it, how you're preparing for XYZ. Never tell people that because some people take mental notes and they know what you're doing and they know where to go if shit goes left. And if you're prepared for that, cool. But if you're not prepared for it, uh I would hope that you would stop telling people what you got. That's all. Because I want everyone to be safe. And when situations like that happen, the ones that the ones that want the best for everyone in humanity tend to be the ones that go really quickly. So prepare for anything, but don't broadcast yourself, and don't signal scarcity or fear either. Just, you know, blend as best as possible. Because the loudest people are usually noticed first, but the prepared people they survive very, very quietly. Step six, protect your information. Assume all communications will fail. The internet's gone, your phone gone, your cell phone's gone, broadcasting is gone, all that shit is gone. So you need to find a way to prepare yourself with certain backups, including offline maps, uh printed contacts of people, battery packs or crank radios, agreed upon check-in plans for where we're going, who's coming here, and when they're coming here. If you have a set plan, stick to it, don't deviate, don't change. If you do make plans, it's okay to have backups to those plans, but they're only backups if the first plan is not gonna rock the right the same way. Never deviate from the original plan, but it's always good to have a backup. If information becomes unreliable, clarity is going to be your advantage. Step seven, decide your exit triggers. This is one of those conversations that everyone should have with whomever is hunkering down with you. Because most people don't leave too late, they decide to leave too late, and that's what fucks them. So don't decide too late. You have to know what's your situation and your circumstances for what we're gonna stay here or we're gonna dip out. And what the does what does that look like? What's what does it look like that you're staying? Hey, you know what? All of that stuff that's happening is two towns over, or you know, flooding is happening, three towns over, or you know, everything is seems to be outside of us, so I feel like we are safe here. That's a sign. Hey, we got all the signs we're gonna stay. What does it look like when we need to go? Hey, Johnny Bravo down the street is popping shit, and he's been popping shit for about three or four weeks now, and then he brought all his hickey cousins up here, and they both been popping shit now. We got nothing to help us here, and we don't have any supplies, and we don't have any food. Like, these are kind of signs that maybe we want to leave. It's okay to identify when the shit has hit the fan because you can move better that way. The more you ignore the obvious, the more situations become dangerous. But choose the signs, what it looks like to stay, what it looks like to go, and then when it if you do decide where to go, where are you gonna go? How you're gonna get there? What you're gonna take? Pre-decision of choices keeps fear from making decisions for you, my friends. If you already have the decision made for you, fear won't make the decision for you when you're already scared, when you're already stressed, when you're already trying to make the most some of the most difficult decisions that you probably will ever have to make. Pre-decided choices keep fear from making decisions for you. Step eight. Stay normal without being blind. Now, this part matters to me, it matters, and I want to convey it the best way possible. Live your motherfucking life, enjoy your routines, plan for the future, do all the dope shit that you want to do in your dope life, but do not confuse normal with behavior with blind trust. Don't think that everything out here is sweet in these streets, because we all know that it ain't. The balance is simple. Be alert, but don't be anxious. Be aware, but don't be scared. Be prepared, but don't be paranoid. Calm, not complacent, right? We can all still live our lives, but still be aware of the shit that's popping off near us and around us, but not live in fear of it, and don't let it consume us on a daily basis. We can do that. So, I know I've said a lot to you today, and I appreciate each one of you for hanging out with me, but in finale, I just want to say the collapse doesn't announce itself. Nothing like that will ever come across your phone and say, Oh, the collapse has happened. Prepare everybody. I hope you got all your your preps together. Nothing will ever come across that on your phone, nothing will never come across your TV to say that or none of that. War never announces itself, it blends in, it wears normal clothes like everything else. And most people wait for permission to believe that things are changing. Is is it okay now? Can we panic now? People wait for permission for that shit, and that permission never comes, it will never come. But you don't need certainty, you need readiness, and that's what we're here for. Because when the shift becomes obvious, options are gonna disappear. But that's why we stay calm and we stay prepared, and we stay grounded and ready for whatever. So I appreciate y'all for being here today, and I hope you catch me on the next episode.

SPEAKER_00:

Grounded, ready for whatever. Step, steady, hot, strong high, if you stay ready, you don't need to get ready. Grounded, ground Let's go.