There Is Always Hope

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By the author of The Prepper’s Guide to Post-Disaster Communications and Zombie Choices.

I believe that one of the things that makes America so great as a nation is that we refuse to bow to fatalism. As other nations collapse, their citizens tend to bow their heads and say, “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it, so I might as well just accept it.”

Sure, you can do that. And evil will win because of your unwillingness to stop it.

We don’t do things that way here in America.

We stopped Japan, saved England, stopped the Holocaust, figured out yellow fever, tore down the Berlin Wall, rescued the Philippines, and put an end to Osama bin Laden.

Americans believe in hope.

Succumbing to fatalism doesn’t make one a better person. It doesn’t make you a “realist.” It just makes you somebody devoid of hope – somebody who has swallowed the pill of apathy.

There is always hope.

Yes, we must look at the truths of the world around us and acknowledge facts. And there are times when the facts are stacked against one. But wisdom allows us to see that hope is always present.

I write this largely because of my prior piece on the Belgorod. I never want to give my fellow Americans the feeling that the state of things in our nation is hopeless.

There is always hope. 

It’s when we surrender ourselves to fatalism that we create the self-fulfilling prophecy of our nation failing. Why was it that Nazi shortwave propaganda throughout Europe during World War 2 was largely used to generate fatalism throughout occupied and under attack nations?

there is always hope
Joseph Goebbels. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

It was because Goebbels knew that if he could destroy hope, the German armies would have a much easier time accomplishing the wickedness that they had in mind. If he could get the French to think that it was all pointless – it was all over – then the Nazis could continue to occupy Paris.

But people didn’t lose hope, and the good won.

On October 6, 1973, Israel came under a surprise attack when most of its troops were on holiday. They were completely surrounded by Egyptian forces to the south and Syrian forces to the north. Yet, inexplicably, Israel won what would come to be known as the Yom Kippur War – in less than a month.

there is always hope

If the element of surprise is one of the keys to victory if numerical superiority and the ability to surround your enemy matters, how on earth was the Yom Kippur War won?

There is always hope. 

As the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism, trapped in the Sierra Nevada by furious snowfall that had left them stranded far from civilization, they were surprised one day when a group of rescuers found their way to the scene. One man, John Stark, carried nine starving children back to safety single-handedly.

Who would have expected a single man to have marched out into the mountains to haul nine of the party back to safety? Absolutely nobody.

Yet it happened.

There is always hope. 

After days of being trapped underground, rapidly running out of oxygen, and fearful that they were to be entombed alive, rescuers finally were able to get a special escape pod to a group of Chilean miners. Every single one of them was saved.

there is always hope

Despite the threat of running out of time, cave-ins, or malfunctions, the Chilean miners were rescued as the world watched.

There is always hope. 

During Hurricane Katrina, a pregnant woman waded through the floodwaters to reach the hospital. She was in labor and needed an emergency C-section. There was just one problem: Katrina had rendered the hospital without power, cell service, and without running water. Things looked incredibly bleak.

Yet a blind ham radio operator had willingly stayed behind, setting up shop in the hospital with his radio. He was able to call in a medevac, and both the woman and baby were saved. A blind man – one whom society would typically consider insignificant and unable to do much – was able to save those two human beings’ lives.

Did the pregnant woman walk into the hospital thinking it was going to be a blind man that saved her life?

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There is always hope. 

For 76 days, Steven Callahan was lost at sea aboard an inflatable rubber raft. He subsisted off of seagulls and rainwater amidst a setting that seemed intent on taking his life. And yet, in the end, the world learned his story.

With minimal food, minimal water, and the constant threat of sinking, being eaten by sharks, or being baked alive, he was saved and lived to tell the tale.

there is always hope
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Why is that?

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It’s because there is always hope. 

So do not succumb to apathy, fear, or resignation. This does not have to be the end. Good always stands a chance. There is always hope. But if we renounce it, then we have forsaken every chance that we have. To live without hope is to cheer on evil – to embrace it.

The world is filled with enough evil. Let us cheer on the good and let us be the good ourselves as well.

The world needs it.

Do you have some examples of hope winning the day? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

About Aden

Aden Tate is a regular contributor to TheOrganicPrepper.com and TheFrugalite.com. Aden runs a micro-farm where he raises dairy goats, a pig, honeybees, meat chickens, laying chickens, tomatoes, mushrooms, and greens. Aden has four published books, What School Should Have Taught You, The Faithful Prepper An Arm and a Leg, The Prepper’s Guide to Post-Disaster Communications, and Zombie Choices. You can find his podcast The Last American on Preppers’ Broadcasting Network.

Aden Tate

Aden Tate

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  • There is always hope. Jesus gives us hope. I would not have hope without Him. There are also people in this world who give hope. Americans have a tenacity and resilience that we can get through anything regardless of who wants to destroy it. We can’t let them destroy us. There is hope!

    • Well stated.
      These are truly “days that try men’s souls”, but in that, there is indeed hope. I reference (the Bible’s) II Chronicles 20 – with that eternally optimistic line: The battle is not your – but God’s…!

  • Aden, it seems funny to me that you would talk about a lack of hope, fatalism, or apathy on this site. That people are resigned to a fate that they can’t alter, or control.

    I’ll admit that maybe some comments seems a little discouraging, but what I generally see on this site is determination. The determination to make it through. To help our families and neighbours to make it through. Our trust in a God that will see us through. I don’t see the readers/contributors to this site as sitting back and waiting for the inevitable.

    We may seem a little pessimistic sometimes because many of us see what is coming, what may be inevitable, for our world and our society, but I don’t think that it makes us fatalistic, or apathetic. I think it only makes us more determined not to succumb to apathy, to fall for Goebbel’s propaganda, and to build something better out of the coming hard times.

    Being able to see what is coming does not mean that we are simply resigned to it. It is our ability to look, and to see what is on the horizon, that gives us the strength to prepare. The world will not end, although our present society/modern civilization might. But, because we are who we are, we will persevere, and overcome the obstacles placed in our path, and hopefully be able to help build a better future for those we love.

    We all die. It is what we do up to that point, and how we die that matters. I refuse to live my life fearing death – because I KNOW that death is the reward that my God gives me at the end of a life well lived. Until that time there is determination (okay, maybe it’s stubbornness) to move forward, to make whatever small differences I can, and to try to leave the world a little better than it was before.

  • In the military we say,
    “Hope is not a course of action.”
    However, I do believe we need hope or all else is lost.
    I would like to hope our illustrious leaders and world leaders (/sarc off) would do the right thing, like get back to the peace table, in earnest, and end the war in the Ukraine.
    Yeah, I made myself laugh too!

    We need something to get us out of bed and be productive human beings.
    Could be for a job. Could be for a sense of purpose. Could be a loved one. Could be hope. The hope that each and every day we make it even just a little bit better than the previous one.
    How does one measure something like that? Could be many different ways. Some might measure it by how big their bank account is. Others by how well a harvest goes. How well the garden does. Not going to lie, seeing a full pantry, or maple cured bacon from hogs I raised puts a big ol smile on my face. And a sense of accomplishment.

    Looking around at the ongoings in the world can give one a sense of hopelessness. While hope may not be a course of action, it is better then quitting.
    Normally about this time I would say “Semper gumby.”
    But today, I shall take a saying by the great commander of the NSEA Protector, Commander Peter Quincy Taggart,
    “Never give up! Never surrender!”

    (name that pop-culture reference without use of search engine of choice)

    • That’s easy: Galaxy Quest. One of my favourites.

      And because you didn’t say it….I will.

      Semper Gumby my friend.

  • Some more examples

    Date Of Birth: c. 1676
    Date Of Death: 12 December 1721 yellow fever [?]
    Place Of Birth: Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland
    A true-life castaway, Scotsman Alexander Selkirk was the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. While sailing with English privateers in 1704, Selkirk quarrelled with his captain and asked to be put ashore on an uninhabited island off of South America. He took with him a musket, a hatchet, and a few utensils. There he survived alone for four years and four months before being rescued by another English ship. He sailed for two years before returning home, where his story made him a celebrity.

    The island where Selkirk left his ship is now called Robinson Crusoe Island; it was formerly known as Más a Tierra or Aguas Buenas.

    https://www.infoplease.com/people/who2-biography/alexander-selkirk

    A more recent story featured the WWI flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker. Early during WWII, FDR asked Rickenbacker to carry a message to General MacArthur who was somewhere in the South Pacific. The pilot who was flying the plane Rickenbacker was riding in … got lost and ran out of fuel. Three raft loads of men who survived the ocean ditching had to survive on fish and rain water before they were finally rescued some 21 days later. As the result of that experience Rickenbacker recommended that the survival kits for all pilots should include water distilling gear to remove the salt as well as any other contaminants. His recommendation was adopted quickly and probably saved many lives during the rest of that war.

    A final story of interest is about the mostly successful life of spying for the British and other governments by the man eventually known as Sidney Reilly. His story was told in an NPR TV presentation called “Reilly, Ace of Spies.” Much of his life is detailed here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Reilly

    Finally in the early 1920s Reilly exposed an organization in Russia (called “The Trust”) as a controlled opposition scam that reported to Stalin. Then Reilly’s luck ran out. On Stalin’s order Reilly was arrested and executed in 1925. That sad ending was not mentioned in the various James Bond novels that Ian Fleming created after the inspiration of Sidney Reilly’s life of spy exploits.

    –Lewis

  • You’re out hiking and a Nuke Explodes 50 miles away and the wind is blowing the fallout your way. You find Shelter but No water and No food . . . Is there no hope? Actually there is Great Hope if you know the best treatment for Radiation is Dry Fasting! No Food and No Water for 7 to 10 days though 3 or 4 days would be of much benefit. The Doctors who treated the Chernobyl Victims found Dry Fasting was the best treatment. Videos on it, I read the book by Dunning. Research so you can try it and be prepared.

  • A wonderful thing happened that I learned about last night. A man was being murdered in a midwest American hospital when his wife managed to do a radio show with attorney Thomas Renz. Three hundred thousand people called that hospital–and they released the man to another hospital. Staff there were shocked at the abuse. That guy had been too severely abused to survive and died a week or so later, but at least they reduced his pain and he died in the arms of his wife instead of all alone. And he left a priceless legacy: an example of how we fight and win.

    We are starting to see other hints of the Big Evil backing off when faced with united people demanding righteousness. We are winning. It is going to be an enormous win. With so many many people still utterly oblivious, it is obvious to me that things still HAVE to get a lot worse. But we are winning, so “enjoy the show” as you learn how to do your part.

  • Aiden, your sensitivity after your other article is touching. You must’ve felt that you might’ve created more fear in people if they read it & feel responsible for that. Some other sites infuriate me when I read them because they read like fear porn at best (he claims to be a Christian as well). I appreciate this article. It is our duty to educate ourselves to defend our families & not be ignorant. This site does its diligence with that. We are here to connect & share life experiences to teach each other. There is always hope as long as our focus is on God (like it or not). He is the ultimate Master & nothing is a surprise to Him. I do wonder often what He is planning with all of this. It has been an interesting movie to watch.

  • Yes, we have hope and His name is Jesus. I don’t feel this nation will get better unless it turns from its wicked ways.

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