The only crazy people left are the ones who refuse to prepare

As systems and institutions falter all around us, it’s not too late to build the physical, mental, economic and spiritual resilience you’ll need to get through to the next phase.

“I was called crazy 22 years ago when I started talking about collapse.”

Susan Harley

posted that on Substack Notes yesterday — and it struck a nerve.

If you’ve been paying attention for a while, like Susan has, you’ve probably had the same experience. You’ve seen the signals and you know what they mean: systems unraveling, narratives cracking, and the strange sense that something isn’t quite right.

All this used to be chalked up to ‘conspiracy’ thinking and tinfoil hatosis, but the dam is now beginning to break and many people no longer feel they’re out on the ledge anymore… it’s just another Thursday.

Some other folks have only recently started waking up, thanks to the COVID operation — a shock that exposed the fragility, deception, and absurdity baked into modern life. For many of those people, it can feel like they’re late to the game and have a lot of catching up to do.

To that, Susan offers this bit of advice:

“Don’t be called crazy because you left it too late to prepare yourself physically, mentally and spiritually. Start today.”

That thought aligns perfectly with something Fabian Ommar — our favorite Brazilian streetwise stoic — told us last year:

“There is always time to prepare. If we're alive and sane, there's time. The thing to realize about time is the price of delaying action. It's a curve: the sooner we learn and take action, the lower the cost.”

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As we’ve said many times before, collapse doesn’t happen overnight. It’s more like a slow erosion — followed by a sudden crash. And as Fabian reminds us, preparing is a process.

Read our full interview with him now, if you haven’t yet (Part One | Part Two). It’s full of gritty wisdom from someone who’s lived through five decades of real chaos in Brazil — not hypothetical “prepper” scenarios, but prolonged instability, economic crisis, political upheaval, and social breakdown.

Fabian’s approach is practical and human:

• Give yourself controlled exposure to adversity

• Adjust your strategies as conditions change

• Prepare yourself to bear witness to a lot of suffering and decay

Ultimately, however, Fabian is living proof that while hard times may be around the corner, we can navigate them and still manage to live well.

Many will fall along the way, but the rest, the majority, will adapt; we're crafty and resilient creatures. Life goes on and it's perfectly possible to be happy and move up; it’s important to keep that perspective in mind.

So if you’re putting pieces together and starting to see things for what they are, remember that you’re not too late. You’re right on time, just as long as you start equipping yourself today — physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Talk to the people who were called “crazy” 20 years ago, and you’ll sense an almost eerie calm about them now.

That’s because they’re ready, and have been waiting for this moment for a while. You can achieve this state-of-mind, as well. So what are you waiting for?

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