Built on lies.

How prepared are you for a crash? A crisis? Or even the end of an empire? This past week has been one for the history books, and may signal devastating events to come.

Some hypothetical future scenarios (and solutions) in today’s letter →

📖 ESTIMATED READ TIME: 6 minutes 15 seconds

Black Tuesday.

The United States in the 1920s was a time of indulgence and expansion.

Known as the “Roaring Twenties,” it epitomised boundless optimism and an almost indestructible belief in perpetual economic growth. The stock market soared, factories churned out consumer goods at an unprecedented pace, and skyscrapers began to shape city skylines, raised as if monuments to the seemingly unending upward march of American wealth.

But it was all built on a lie. A concrete tower of prosperity laid on a foundation as flimsy as rain-soaked cardboard.

Rampant speculation meant that many Americans had invested their entire life savings in the stock market; millions buying on margin, borrowing heavily to purchase more shares. Easy access to credit further exasperated this problem, with households splurging on radios, appliances, and cars, with no thought of the future consequences of racking up so much debt.

It was a bubble destined to burst. An event that played out with catastrophic consequences on the 29th of October 1929.

Black Tuesday struck, the stock market crashed, and panic ensued. As the reality of what was transpiring set in, mass selloffs began with millions of investors attempting to dump their stocks only to find no buyers. Banks, having invested heavily in the market and given out loans for stock purchases, started to fail. People rushed to withdraw their savings, leading to widespread bank runs and further failures.

Within hours, billions in wealth had been wiped clean from the markets and the pockets of the American people, as if it had never been there at all.

The social fabric of the country was torn apart as people grappled with their new reality, where the previously held “American Dream” devolved into a nightmare of survival. Homes were lost, poverty became widespread, and shanty towns sprang up nationwide. In the shadow of the skyscrapers that came before, the new image of America was one of soup kitchens, bread lines, and a sense of hopelessness.

In the blink of an eye, an entire nation was devastated. Followed by a decade-long mega recession that would be called the Great Depression.

The signs of the collapse were there for all to see. However, most were blinded by promises of eternal stability, enraptured by a society they believed was too protected to fail.

Chaos.

It’s been a wild week.

In what is being called the largest IT failure in history, a global outage in Microsoft Windows caused by security company CrowdStrike bricked around a billion computers worldwide—grounding flights, blocking access to banking, and even disrupting government operations.

Bangladesh is currently under a government-imposed blackout of internet, TV, and text messaging, in response to student-led protests in the capital. The military has been deployed with “shoot on site” orders, that have so far resulted in over 110 deaths.

And of course, former US president Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt last weekend. Something that if successful, many believe could have sparked the start of a new civil war.

It was a week that illustrated how fragile our modern world is.

“Fragile” being the key word here.

In the West, we’ve grown up believing that we live wrapped in a protective bubble that defends our way of life from whatever the world throws at us.

But the reality is that we live on a knife-edge, where at any moment we’re one small misstep away from plummeting into an abyss that could devastate our society for years.

Don’t believe that to be true? Well, I invite you to turn your mind back to how fast things changed when the global health crisis hit us in early 2020.

Our comfortable existence could end in an instant, just as it has many times before in history.

Here are a few hypothetical scenarios that could play out in the near future, and how you might better weather these storms:

SCENARIO ALPHA (α): A digital attack on your nation’s financial system by one of its enemies abroad causes a shutdown of the entire banking network. For weeks, nobody in your home country can get paid, or access their bank accounts.

SOLUTION → Because you spent years setting aside a percentage of your paycheck to purchase Bitcoin, you have an emergency store of money to continue to trade with inside your country, and the outside world. You also set up an offshore bank account a few years ago, which is unaffected by your home country’s outage.

SCENARIO BETA (β): Your country goes to war on another continent, causing massive hyperinflation of its currency, rendering your life savings nearly worthless. Overnight, the cost of a loaf of bread spikes from a few dollars to tens of thousands.

SOLUTION → Thankfully, you own a few hundred ounces of silver coins. Even though your dollars may have been rendered useless, silver has held its value and you can use it to trade as normal.

SCENARIO GAMMA (γ): A total economic collapse takes place in your home nation, brought on by the financial mismanagement of your government and the banking industry. Your government no longer has the funds to trade with the outside world, which causes widespread food shortages and chaos as people loot, pillage, and destroy infrastructure trying to survive.

SOLUTION → A few years ago you acquired a residence permit in Mexico as a backup plan, which you didn’t even have abroad to do. Mexico is unaffected by your home country’s financial collapse and chaos, and you quickly and easily move your family there because you previously spent time organising the legal right to be able to do so—and only at a cost of a few hundred dollars.

None of the above are far-fetched scenarios.

In fact, I would argue that the likelihood of any of these occurring today is higher than it has been since the end of World War II.

I don’t say this to generate fear.

Rather the opposite: it’s to impress upon that soft, grey, thinking meat between your ears that there are signs all around us that our world is just

You don’t have to become a doomsday prepper and build a bunker deep within a mountain to protect yourself from hypothetical scenarios that may come as our world continues to destabilise.

In fact, by taking just three small steps, I believe you’ll already be better prepared than 90% of the population to weather these chaotic storms.

These are:

1. Hold 10-30% of your net worth in gold, silver, and/or Bitcoin. (Ideally a mix of all).

2. Open at least one multi-currency bank account offshore. This can be easily achieved using digital services like Wise or Revolut.

3. Get a residency permit in another country, one which would be mostly unaffected by a national crisis where you currently live.

I would also add one more to the list if at all possible:

4. Take steps to acquire at least one more citizenship/passport.

Still think this is all too much effort?

Before the Black Tuesday collapse in 1929, I’m sure the vast majority of the American people thought the same. That they were untouchable, and their all-powerful government would protect them from whatever may come.

They were wrong.

They should have had a backup plan. They should have heeded the wise words of Franz Kafka:

“Better to have and not need, than need and not have.”

Written by Leon Hill.
Founder, Anticitizen.

This newsletter is for educational purposes, and is not financial advice. Please do your own research, and consider risks involved with investing or purchasing any asset.