➡ The movie Homestead, while not an award-winner, offers a unique perspective on survival scenarios, making it interesting for preppers. The film presents a post-apocalyptic situation where a nuclear bomb detonates off California’s coast, leading to cyber attacks and chaos. The characters face challenges like rationing supplies, dealing with threats, and navigating misinformation, all while living in a prepping homestead near Salt Lake City. The movie also includes a subplot about a clairvoyant girl, which adds an unrealistic element to the otherwise plausible survival scenarios.
➡ In a post-apocalyptic world, a community faces various challenges such as coping with PTSD, dealing with psychopaths, and managing people off their psychiatric medications. The community also grapples with potential spies, maintaining security, and managing living standards. They encounter another community living nearby, leading to conflict and the consideration of aggressive actions. The community also deals with religious and secular clashes, the importance of morale-boosting food, and mental health issues.
➡ This text discusses a show where societal collapse forces people to adapt to a new way of life. It highlights the importance of survival skills, dealing with mental health issues, and the potential dangers of spies within a community. The text also emphasizes the need for spare parts for equipment and the complexities of relationships in crisis situations. Lastly, it introduces a power struggle within the community, setting the stage for future episodes.

I recently did a review of the movie Homestead. You can check that out here. While it was not an Academy Award winning production, as a prepper, I found it quite thought provoking. There’s very seldom a movie that presents a plausible scenario. Usually Hollywood is over the top in terms of its sensationalist displays about how things might play out in a end of the world situation. I like this one because it brought up a unique set of scenarios and challenges that the characters face that I don’t think are often depicted in a lot of movies. This of course, is great for preppers because it allows us to brainstorm what we might do in these situations.

Now, the movie actually spun off into a series and I’m going to be reviewing episode one today. So a recap of what happened in the movie. A nuclear bomb was detonated off the coast of California. There were cyber attacks that brought down the grid in the east, and it appears as though the United States is under a flurry of attacks. This triggers an exodus and the convergence of several different groups on one prepping homestead near Salt Lake City. Throughout the movie, the characters face numerous challenges like rationing supplies, having to deal with outside threats, and the lack of information about what appears to be a collapsing federal government.

One of the great things about this movie is that it really does try to convey the fog of war, the idea that something bad has happened. And in viewing it from the survivor’s point of view and not exposing what’s happening outside the homestead, we’re really able to identify with the uncertainty of this world. And I think this is something that approximates exactly what would happen in this situation. Most people are not prepared for the information blackout that’s going to happen after a major national disaster event. In addition to that, you’re likely going to be navigating a lot of misinformation or straight out disinformation in this environment.

So episode one starts out six months before the apocalypse. And our main character that I usually call Security Guy, also known as Jeff, he is the guy who’s running security detail for the homestead. But we’re going back six months before the disaster happened. And the episode starts off with him doing a raid on what appears to be some hotel. And now the symbolism is a little bit on the nose here, but you can see in this frame 666. Now, Angel Studios, of course, is a Christian movie production company. Part of their mandate is to create movies that they claim amplify light.

So clearly this placement of 666is, is not accidental. It’s a Little bit too on the nose, though. I think what they’re trying to convey is that there’s evil happening inside this building. So Jeff security guy ends up finding a young girl inside this hotel room that appears to possibly be a victim of human trafficking. Him and his family actually end up adopting the girl who we’ve come to find actually has some clairvoyant capabilities. She gets these visions that allow her to predict the future. And she does this at several points throughout the film. This is one of the only things I don’t like about the movie is it adds this element which is largely unrealistic.

The wife of the homestead owner starts off narrating about how they let in 100 people, but that they were not safe from the millions who are scratching the dust for food. Now, as far as I know, we’re only a few weeks into the apocalypse at this point, so I’m not sure if it would be that dire. And it wasn’t like a nationwide mutually assured destruction scenario. One of the main issues that I’m seeing with the direction of this movie is that they’re claiming things are going way out of control, way too fast. Things are going to fall apart, make no mistake.

But after only a few weeks of one nuke being detonated, people are already scratching the dust for food. Maybe a bit of a stretch, but you never know. So the episode starts out with Georgie, the little psychic girl, wandering through the forest, frolicking and playing, far from adult supervision. Definitely something you don’t want to happen. Even if you have a secure homestead that is being patrolled by your own private army, you probably want to keep your kids within earshot. In the very least, she starts getting chased by some stranger from the outside who’s made their way onto the homestead property.

So the narrator clarifies that it’s now been six weeks since the event took place, and they have this encampment of people outside their property. Because they know this is a very wealthy homestead that was preparing for this eventuality for some time. And because this is a very Christian movie and the whole point of it is that you have to share with your community, they’ve basically set up a system where you can trade at this outpost, which is not too far from the entrance of their property. And from here they’re trading all of their precious supplies. This is the first reemergence that we’re seeing of commerce because you have this little barter town set up where people can come and trade what they find on the road.

Whatever the primary homestead needs is willing to trade food and water to to people for those commodities. Is this a good idea? Probably not. And I think it’s going to prove to be a very bad idea in the long term. So the narrator goes on to say that people are burning stuff, anything that they can find in order to boil water. If you are around a fresh water source that needs purification, which is most throughout the United States, then indeed this is going to be something to factor in that combustible fuel is going to be in very short supply.

And what that means is people are going to be burning the city not only to keep warm, but you cook and purify water. Of course, all of this burning and boiling of water is going to increase the risk of fires spreading. And because there’s no fire departments anymore, the likelihood of massive conflagrations arising as a result of people in densely populated regions trying to keep themselves warm is going to be disastrous. Dealing with post collapse refugees is going to be probably one of the biggest predicaments for anybody who is prepared. Now obviously the location of this homestead is far from ideal in my personal opinion.

I know that the people who own the property, who in fact are preppers, this is not just fiction. The people who own the property are preppers and they have a contingency plan and their own religious mandate to deal with this particular situation in the way that they depict in this film. Ideally you would want to be much farther off the beaten path so you can minimize your exposure to people in need. It’s not that we don’t want to help people, it’s that we also don’t want to have to turn people away. However, as I indicated in my review of the movie, and this was pretty much the moral of the movie, is that people are assets.

So remember, if you are a die hard prepper and you already got your own basis covered, it might not be a bad idea to make provisions for people who are going to have the vital skills that you’re going to need to build a thriving community post collapse. You can’t do it alone. So because gold back partly sponsored this movie, they have to do another product placement for goldbacks. What a goldback is is essentially it’s money which is made of phys physical gold. Gold is actually infused into a bill form so it has the melt value of gold.

But because of the high premiums that you pay most people kind of shy against it. However, they are becoming more widely accepted. But the gratuitous product placement here was a little much, I gotta say. So the owner of the homestead has made a list of people who are allowed to come in, and they have a variety of different occupations, one of which is an engineer and his wife, who happens to a therapist. Now, you’ll notice his wife has very short hair. She’s not scantily clad, she’s not overly done. She doesn’t have a lot of makeup on.

And this is something that a lot of women are going to want to consider is actually cutting your hair to make yourself as unattractive as possible because sexual predation is going to be a big problem. And while I don’t think this was the intent of having this character look the way she does, it just reminded me of something that I think a lot of people don’t commonly consider. Any female in your group is likely going to want to significantly tone down their appearance, so not to invite any sort of unwelcome attention. Now, would a therapist be useful in an SHTF situation? I think people perhaps underestimate the utility of this occupation in these conditions.

Historically, there has always been somebody in order to help people deal with the rigors of everyday life as it was before modern technology. This was a responsibility that largely felt on religious clergy or priests of the day. Especially in this type of environment where you’re going to have a lot of PTSD and you’re going to have a lot of people who don’t know how to cope with this new world. You’re also going to have people with psychopathic tendencies likely out survive the people who aren’t psychopaths. And in this case, you’re going to want somebody who can perhaps identify those people.

Also, you’re going to have people who are no longer able to acquire their psychiatric medications. And as such, they could potentially have some episodes that will put the community in jeopardy. Now, there’s some aspects of the show that look a little too clean, you know what I mean? Like, I think the costume and the design and the makeup could have been a little bit better for six weeks in if people are clawing through the dirt for the remaining morsels of food, the setup is a little bit too slick and polished. I like to see gritty in these types of movies.

That’s what I like to see the most. So now we have a scene where there appears to be a character who is radoing into another community, all of the security details of our homestead, basically telling them how many guards there are, what type of weaponry they have, what their security schedule looks like. And this is part of the reason why it’s a really bad Idea to have all of these people congregating at your gates. Even if the majority of these refugees are harmless, you’re going to potentially have moles and spies in their midst. These people are going to try to acquire as much information about your community before they make their move.

And what a lot of desperate people have is time. So understand that if you have a homestead or if you have anything, period, in a collapse situation, you are likely going to be being surveilled for a long time before anybody attempts a raid on your property. Now, I wish I would have told these guys about my communist cameraman because some of the special effects here could have really used work. It actually looks like they use the same smoke effect for two of these different fires. They should have maybe switched it up a little bit more. To the untrained eye, you’re never going to notice.

You’re just going to think there’s fires burning off in the distance, but we notice these things. We also get another wider angle here of the homestead. It really gives us a good shot and a contrast of the encampment of people within the homestead who don’t live in the big house. Okay. Because remember that the owner of the property has allowed some people into the compound. Friends, family, people of various occupations that are needed in the community. They’ve been allowed into the community. But there clearly is a bit of a difference in terms of living standards within the community.

And I have a feeling that is going to be a subject of controversy moving forward. So then Jeff, the security guy, learns that Georgie was being pursued by some outsider, and he immediately jumps into action and he goes to investigate the situation. So Jeff and his buddy jump on their Rambo E bikes in pursuit of these intruders. Again, another great reason to have E bikes in this type of situation is because they’re incredibly quiet compared to any combustion engine vehicle. So many of the people within the community start to get concerned about Jeff having too much autonomy with respect to security detail.

So they call in Ian’s brother. He is the guy who owns the homestead, but he was shot and he’s in a coma. And. And so they bring in somebody who they think can hold Jeff accountable for his actions. In one of these situations, you’re going to have two philosophies. One is going to be to keep everybody else out and to militantly engage every outsider. And you’re going to have another element which is going to want to give all your stuff away and help everybody that comes by. You got to strike a balance between those two things.

You Also don’t want it turning into something that might resemble a military dictatorship. And for that reason, you have to have really strong leadership to keep your security guys in check. So their resident clairvoyant, Georgie, basically provides all of the details about this other community without ever having come into contact with them, of course, as a testament to her psychic capabilities. Unfortunately, I think this angle in the film was really unnecessary and it does more to damage the credibility of the scenario in question, because most communities, I’m guessing, aren’t going to have the luxury of having a resident psychic in their midst.

So in their pursuit of the intruders that nearly absconded with Georgie, they come across a community that is living by a creek not too far from the homestead. Now, the community doesn’t see them. Jeff brings along with him another soldier who is very aggressive, very half cocked, and is just itching for a fight. He sizes up the community by talking in terms of how many able body fighting age males are there. As much as this evaluation might seem overkill, this is something you’re going to have to consider if you are contending with another community. So the very aggressive soldier who is with them actually wanted to kill everybody then and there.

But then they come across a dead animal carcass that appears to be likely infected with some sort of disease and they decide to put that into the water to poison this community. Now, the soldier does say something interesting. He says if they’re desperate, they’re eventually going to try to come and get what we have. Now. Often times in apocalypse films, you’re faced with this protagonist, antagonist situation where the protagonist, the good guy, is trying to do what’s right and then you have the antagonist telling him that everybody’s a threat and you need to be on the lookout and, and we need to get more aggressive.

Now ultimately that antagonist is always vindicated in these movies and shows is because like they predicted, everybody ultimately, when desperate enough, does become a threat. And eventually the protagonist good guy ends up exhibiting those exact same characteristics of the antagonist later on in the movie when the situation gets more dire. But in the beginning this is a way to differentiate between good guys and bad guys. So they create the dichotomy between atheism or agnosticism and religion. When the wife of the homestead owner starts talking to the therapist about how God is watching over them and everything’s going to be fine.

The therapist of course is skeptical and her skepticism creates a much needed counterbalance to the underlying Christian message of the film. Of course, I have a feeling that she eventually is going to become a believer or something like that, because Georgie is going to predict something which, which is going to be undeniable. So it is what it is. This is a part of the storyline that you have to endure. But if anything, it presents another scenario that a lot of people perhaps never thought of. That being that you’re going to have a conflict between people who are very religiously motivated and people who are not.

The secular and the religious worlds are going to clash and they could in fact clash rather violently. So they go into the pantry and the women are talking and she’s basically describing to this psychologist what food is what. And they get to the nutri store who are clearly sponsoring this video, I presume, because she says, this is the good stuff. And I have to concur. Nutra store is great, which is why we’ve reviewed it on the channel before. It really is a high quality food. In fact, it’s the basis of peak refuel meals. Great stuff. And I would strongly recommend for SHTF or just a meal replacement.

So they get to a part where the girl’s like, ooh, creamy pasta and beef. I don’t know, it’s, hey, it’s a little shameless, but I gotta admit, it is good stuff. There’s no doubt about that. Now here they’re stressing the importance of morale boosting foods and that the people in the community are needing a little bit of a pick me up just to keep them from rebelling. So the moral of the story here is, if you want to prevent your community from massive upheaval, make sure you keep a few cans of nutri store kicking around. So then the resident psychic, Georgie, comes into the room where these three hens are cackling about all the food and she says that somebody’s going to die, right? So the psychiatrist says she seems a little bit dissociative and obviously the defensive mother jumps in and says, I don’t need you making any assumptions about my child.

And for me, this best exemplifies the discourse that’s going to arise as a result of people fighting over mental health related issues. And of course a person with a mental health issue in a community like this is going to potentially pose a threat to others. And the manner in which you deal with these people is going to be a contentious issue. So having some sort of standardized protocol on how to deal with them, whether or not they’re actual clairvoyance or not. I think what’s being exhibited here is a conflict of opinions that are going to arise as a result of abnormal behavior.

So there’s a scene where the dad is trying to teach the son the core principles of using a firearm in a combat situation. One of which is always first checking your secondary weapon and your primary weapon to ensure that you have enough rounds into the magazine. And the kid gets all mad and he’s all over sensitive. And the dad’s like, hey, why don’t you listen to me? And the kid’s like, I resent you for not spending enough time with us. I don’t know, this just seems like fluff. To be brutally honest, in the modern era, people are held to different standards than back in the old days.

There was a time when the dad had to go and work 12, 16 hours a day. Probably never seen his family. And if they did, when they seen him, he was likely rough around the edges and they were just barely trying to eke out an existence. This is exactly what’s going to happen in societal collapse. The apocalypse is going to be incredibly paternal in nature, meaning that the dad is going to have to teach the son what he needs to learn to survive, despite whatever sensitivities that the son might be carrying over from the old dead world.

So in my personal opinion, the weak and entitled mentality that dad isn’t spending enough time with me, that shit’s just not going to fly after it hits the fan. The quicker you can get over your resentments, better the better. So the women talk about how they can’t believe they’re back to hand washing laundry and hanging it on the line. The thing I love about a show like this is that they remind people of all those things they took for granted. No washing machines, no dryers. You’re going to be hand washing things, likely with a washboard or some other manual tool, and you’re going to have to hang dry stuff.

This is what people did up until the 80s. While the two ladies are hanging the laundry, she talks about how her husband is her new hairdresser and one thing she misses most is her hair. And I really do think that the reason why she cut her hair was to appear less attractive to would be sexual deviants. So psychologist lady then takes Jeff’s wife into this building where they’re warehousing people who are struggling with clinical depression. Okay, apparently there’s at least a dozen people in there who are all bedridden and struggling with depression. Is this a plausible situation? Number one, I think at this point in time, you would likely be turfed from the community if you weren’t pulling your Weight.

That said, if you were on psychiatric medication, especially antidepressants, and you get abruptly removed without any taper, then you indeed are going to exhibit debilitating physical illness and it is likely going to amount to you not having any real will to do anything and could very well lead to attempts at self deletion. And this is exactly rightly what the psychologist says in the film, that these people are going to start offing themselves unless we do something. But I guess Darwinism is going to sort the situation out. Now, I think this scene is a little bit sensationalized.

It’s not going to be a bunch of people bedridden like this. They’re going to be walking around, they’re going to be doing things, but they’re not going to be feeling too well about life. But it does bring up a very important point to keep in mind that the people who are on psychiatric medications, I believe it’s about 25% of Americans, when they abruptly are removed from those, you are going to see some pretty nasty side effects. And in fact, these people could imperil the entire community. They could do something that puts the entire community at risk.

So you’re going to have to plan to monitor, treat, or just deal with these people. So the next scene is Jeff’s wife approaches him while he’s trying to work on a solar panel and he’s very frustrated about not being able to fix it and having too many responsibilities. She pulls out a screwdriver, messes around with it for like 5 seconds and fixes it, I guess. But the point here is that you have to have spare parts for all these things, okay? Because when Home Depot is closed down and it’s never opening up again, spare parts, things that you don’t even think you are going to need, just walk through the aisles.

Once you have everything as a prepper, it’s high time to make a miniature microcosm version of Home Depot in your own home or garage or warehouse. So the next scene shifts towards that bureaucrat who they encountered earlier on in the series that was trying to come in and expropriate all their stuff. Well, now he’s hatched a plan with the help of a spy that he is leveraging on the inside to basically take over the place by force. I guess the lesson here is to always beware of spies in your midst. If a spy is relaying critical information about a community, it could very well be that community’s undoing.

So the psychologist is talking to Georgie and Georgie is telling her that I’m very sorry, but somebody is coming, something bad is going to happen. And the psychologist asks her what? And Georgie says, you’ll see. Obviously signaling that something bad is about to happen to somebody in this psychologist’s life. So the daughter of homestead owner is asking the psychologist for advice on, you know, whether or not she’s in love with this guy. And the psychologist says, well, you have to consider the circumstances that you’ve met under. One thing to keep in mind is that it is actually an established fact that if you meet somebody in a crisis situation, you’re going to share a certain affinity with that person which may manifest as having strong feelings for that person.

Really, you identify with that person because you’re in an acute crisis. Now of course you also have to be pragmatic in this kind of situation. You don’t want to be falling in love and getting knocked up in the apocalypse. Okay, so get a load of this, right? Security guy’s son makes a picnic, brings in bottles of wine, catches a fish for this girl, says that it’s okay we don’t have to have sex until marriage, and she finds some nonsensical trifling reason to sabotage the whole thing. Sounds like some things ain’t gonna change after the apocalypse. Alright, so then the homestead guy who’s in a coma, his brother shows up in a helicopter and he’s about to take the reins on this entire operation and go head to head with Jeff in a vying for power over the community because of course the wife of homestead guy thinks that she’s losing control of the situation.

So she calls in his brother because she needs somebody to keep Jeff in check to make sure that security guy doesn’t turn this thing into a military dictatorship. And that’s basically where this episode ends. Stay tuned because I’m going to be reviewing episode two of the Homestead series in the near future. I hope you found something useful in this video. Let me know if there’s any scenes in this episode that you found thought provoking from a preparedness point of view. Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to like Comment. Subscribe Canadian Prepper out the best way to support this channel is to support yourself by gearing up@canadian preparedness.com where you’ll find high quality survival gear at the best prices.

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