TL;DR:  For your reading arc today: Nuclear Macro-danger, fragile elites, market jitters, ceasefire myth-making, reclaiming agency via soil & muscle, a personal readiness snapshot plus a winter prep tip punchline.

Trump Goes Nuclear

My consigliere who lives a little too close to many targeting package selections has been very clear: He will be available for tax advice right up until the very last microsecond before vaporization.  Because he’s not planning to bug-out.  “What’s the point?” he asks?

To be sure, his remarks have been mainly in jest. Air raid sirens are convincing salesmen.

Long-time readers will remember he squired Elaine and me through the Dayton Air Force Museum some years back to see the life-like mock ups of the nukes used on Japan and the plane that flew them back when.

Today, his “Point of Personal Preservation” becomes more poignant as Trump suggests the U.S. will resume testing nuclear weapons.

Far as we can tell, he may belong to a select group of people who will not be deeply-disturbed.  Sure, he’s got a pretty good “evidence-based case” for futility of it all.  The “after” any actual nuke use will be a likely hell on Earth. But the good news? The democrats will get their ultimate government shutdown and riots over everything.  Plus, those hot summers here in East Texas will become more seasonable during Nuclear Winter.

Still, our planning runs to the Robert W. Service  path (from his poem “The Quitter“:

“It’s easy to cry that you’re beaten — and die;
It’s easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope’s out of sight —
Why, that’s the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each gruelling bout,
All broken and beaten and scarred,
Just have one more try — it’s dead easy to die,
It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.”

BUT, like I said, the consigliere has a strong evidence-based case.

Still, Trump’s Developer Personality may just need another outlet.  This is what “progress” looks like in late-stage economic bubbles, we reckon. The Russian Tsar bomb to be matched by “king” Trump?

The Inscrutable Meeting

Who got screwed at the Trump-Xi talks is a little hard to figure, just yet.

On the surface, a big win is claimed: Trump says Xi to lift rare earth curbs, cut US tariffs after Seoul talks.

But beneath it? Xi says US, China ‘should be partners and friends’ as he meets Trump in South Korea.  We’d bet this is a bromance-style hug, allowing China to get closer to put the knife in our back.

Take a close look at pictures of Xi on this trip.  We have been hearing rumblings about big change in the CCP inner ranks and Xi (to my declining eyes) has that puffy face look of someone under great stress and water retention.  Too much sake on the road?  No, more to it by the look, we’d venture. Do both leaders have health issues? The marl road beats louder.

So what’s the real cost?  Trump to reduce tariffs on China after meeting with Xi Jinping.

We stay bankrupt with a nearly $40-trillion debt – times about 4 if you include undeniable interest.  China keeps their choke collar on us and we’d bet a couple of sawbucks that “administrative delays” will pinch American industry, anyway.  Xi will deny, Trump will spew, you and me (public) will be the ones getting screwed.

Scamming the “Ceasefire”

I don’t know whether to call the Federal Trade Commission, the State Department, or just dummy-up and say bupkis. We try to stay out of computers.

But somehow, the headline Israel Says Cease-Fire Restored After Strikes Kill More Than 100 in Gaza | TIME just hit me as wrong-headed media manipulation.

The Big Ponder here?  “How many times can you break a “cease fire” with strafing runs and still label it a ceasefire and package it that way for the sheep?”

Could we (please) at least call it an “Intermittent Fire” or something similar; you know –  within sight of Reality?

To Market To Market

Let’s size up the fat pig prospects, shall we?

The Futures are complying with the hint laid out in the Peoplenomics ChartPack Wednesday.  Tuesday and Wednesday flashed “double zero days” using our VMS – visual market signal – so the trend for the next week of trading is likely to be down.

The REAL question is “How far?”  We’d expect the Dow to drop 150 or more today with proportional drops in techs and the S&P.

Europe is coming along to the downside as well: half a percent down earlier, but be looking for snowballing. Gold and silver are clawing back.  Maybe because the Rare Earths decision from Xi will not stop autos from being made.  See what the real problem is? Once we make all those cars and trucks, they’ll be “too expensive to buy.” And the disposable income problem will take center stage.

BTC was trying to hold $110,000 but when someone besides us figures out the perils international internet connectivity faces, well….you connect the dots.  On dial-up maybe?

Diogenes  as Our Editor

Let’s begin in Washington D.C. – where the odds of honest anything are enough to start old Diogenes pouring hemlock.

Exhibit A: ‘Orwellian’: DOJ stuns as memo erased detailing pardoned J6 rioter’s dangerous act.

Exhibit B comes to us from Kalifornia: Gov. Gavin Newsom tells Prop. 50 backers to stop donating: ‘We’ve raised enough’. Are you willing to believe a politician saying such a thing?  If you are not from the (once) Golden State, Prop 50 would authorize temporary use of new congressional district maps in California, drawn by the Legislature, beginning with the 2026 elections.  We already know Diogenes is persona non grata in all the left coast fruit orchards.

Oh, as long as we’re on Honesty (and Kalifornia) take a gander at the NY Post story:  Gavin Newsom is part of a new trend: inventing ‘poorigin’ stories.  Yeah – poor form, indeed.

Ja’ make a mess?  More than 25,000 in shelters as Jamaica assesses devastation of Melissa – Cayman Compass. Now clearing Bahamian waters, Melissa’s heading on to smack Bermuda.

Personal Health:

Recall to be aware of: Blood Pressure Medication Recalled Due to Possible Carcinogens.

And you probably already knew this: Intelligence And Longevity Share Genetic Roots, Shows Study Of 400,000 People.  Yeah – because they don’t eat stupid? Like high carb, HFCS, sugar, and….oh let’s not.

ATR: Garden Like Your Life Depends On It

If the future is as sketchy as it looks — if ceasefires fails and inflated markets deflate and power grids flicker while rare-earth flows depend on who hugged whom in Seoul — then the core question for long-term survivors becomes embarrassingly simple: can you feed yourself?

Not in a romantic homestead-influencer way; this isn’t a click here and buy this shill piece.  Just in a practical boots-in-dirt, weeds-don’t-care-about-geopolitics way. It’s fashionable to chatter about crypto hedges and rare metals for the bunker, but all that falls apart when the web breaks, food trucks stop rolling and lettuce hits $18 a head. Health insurance? For the next decade it may come spelled with worms, mulch, and muscle memory. Home grown botanicals. The body you build hoeing rows is a different kind of policy — one not dependent on actuarial grace or government budget cycles.

Normal is addictive: Assumptions have it that global machines will always hum. Yet the elites — the modern media pricks — spew platitudes while paring back transparency. Diogenes would need a halogen lamp (and a ray gun) to find honest news in this haze.

You can feel it in the markets, taste it in the tides of gold, and see it in the price of anything with a motor. Liars all around: crafting poor-boy origin myths for political flavor, while jets streak over “ceasefires” while born-again Bill sees a muddle through.

Becoming a Long-Term Survivor

So here’s my forward sketch. The next decade belongs to the adaptable, not the outraged. To the practical, not the performative. To those who can raise food, repair gear, and maintain a coherent sense of reality when narratives break like rotten fence posts. You don’t need to go full prepper. You don’t need to build a moat or stock OR-lawyer-issued hazmat suits.

Start with a raised bed. Even an indoor hydroponic tub or three. Learn which bugs help and which bugs don’t. Grow greens before you grow fear. And when the world shakes — whether from markets, missiles, or simple bureaucratic incompetence — you’ll feel something rare: agency. A tomato you grew is a foxtrot-uniform to  fragility. A root cellar is a vote for continuity. Carrots not karats will matter. And in the quiet of morning, when watering beats wondering, or hunting hides headlines, you’ll find health insurance no policy can match.

Years back I prompted you to try an exercise to test personal resilience:  Turn off your water and power for a weekend and see how life rolls.  It was a shocker to many.

We did it then, and we do it now.  What has changed?  We go a step further:  We also turn off the three wifi networks and cut phones at demarc.

Our current score?  Very prepped. Highly ready. 600 gallons of water in pressurized backup. Genset and fuel in its own secured building. Ak’s and SKS’s cleaned and zeroed. But more important, the freeze-dried, the sprouting seeds, the rice, the beans. The vitamins, the meds…the water catchment – oh it’s a long list.

For us Life should still work: The ham radio and shortwaves keep us informed, the scanners tell us where help is, the weather radio?  With the solar and a couple of wind machines on ice, power, food, water…but yeah, everyone can always add toilet paper. Don’t even think of showing up uninvited.

Here’s where this is going:  Unlike 99.9 percent of America, we have a bead on where we think future will be laying in wait.  We’re ready to walk the path and come out the other side. But we’re not running  guide service.

Something to think about when you get tempted to “piss your life out a wifi card” because there are no do-overs in real life. You can’t eat social but you can wake up from game-induced sleep.

Winter Preps

Found these the other day: A preset plug and play “freeze prevention” plug. $14 bucks on Amazon and it turns on a heater at 38F and turns it off at 50F.

Now, just remember to get heaters for your “keep warm spaces” that don’t have electronic controls. Most of those won’t automatically come on after a five minute power outage and you may not have time to acquire, test and return “test heaters” if necessary before real cold shows up.  i

It was 38F here at press time.  Couple that with a fresh haircut and it seemed like something worth mentioning before my brain freezes over.

Write when you get rich,

[email protected]

Newbie here? Hit the Visitor Center for orientation.