Occasionally you read something that permanently changes your outlook. Maybe you forget the exact argument that made an impression on you. Maybe you forget the book or the author but the change remains and it is forever. This happens to me, on average, about once a year; usually from books but, on occasion, on the internet. One such example is from just a little over a year ago and it can be found here.

I see them every day. One is reading the paper on the same desk that my feet are propped up on as I type this sentence. He just got done taking his multitude of pain and diabetic medications, washing them down with a gas station burrito. I see dead people.

Another co-worker this evening was telling me about how her family (husband and adult children) would not eat meat loaf if she put black beans in it (which I had brought to work), how they never eat leftovers and order out if she is not home to cook for them. My first thought, "I see dead people."

I drive through the rich suburbs and I see them. I drive by the trailer park and they are there. I am invited into the homes of executive vice-presidents and I see their final resting place. I walk among the middle class and they show me their four wheeled coffins. I walk among the poor and I can see the coming train that will destroy their world and take their lives. Where ever I go, I see dead people.

No doubt some will surprise me with their resilience. Others I meet, again from all backgrounds and economic strata, and I do believe them to be among the walking dead. "They just might make it," I think. These are just my judgments, nothing more or nothing less but I am pretty sure that I am right about the broad strokes even when I am flawed on the details.

Where ever I go, I am seeing dead people walking.

I've gotten to the point where I've set the bar so high on the preps scale that I think everyone's dead people including the Dervaes family and the guys at the permaculture site I just visited.