If you’ve spent any time at all reading articles on this site or perhaps leafing through one or more of my books, you know I’m about as far from being an alarmist as you can get in the prepping world. Hell, even throughout this whole ebola craze, when lots of prepper bloggers are predicting mass quarantines and such, I’m over here shrugging my shoulders and saying, “Meh.”

That said, for a while now I’ve been feeling a storm brewing in this country. A growing number of people are getting more and more angry, more and more upset, more and more desperate. The disparity between the “Haves” and “Have Nots” is becoming larger and larger, with no signs of slowing.

It used to be we had the poor, the middle class, and the upper class. In recent years, that middle class has all but disappeared, replaced with just varying degrees of insolvency. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, y’know?

Those who manage to have jobs find themselves working harder and harder, putting in longer hours, and yet their paychecks don’t last nearly as long as they did in years past. Here’s just one example. I graduated high school in 1990. That summer, I was hired on as temporary help in a local factory. Starting wage was $15.00 an hour, with increases every 30 days through the probationary period. After 3 months, full benefits including health and dental. Vacation time after a year.

A couple dozen years later, you’d be hard pressed to find a job paying even $10.00 an hour as a starting wage. And health benefits? Yeah, right, good luck with that.

The few available jobs out there pay a pittance and you’d have to work at least two of them in order to earn something approaching even a modest income. Yet, at the same time, the fat cats are lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills, guffawing at the profits they’re making by sending more and more jobs overseas, to places where there aren’t pesky laws dictating how many breaks they have to give workers during their shifts.

I’m telling you — people are frustrated at how things are going in this country. I don’t “do” politics on this site and that’s not even really what I’m talking about here. This isn’t the result of any particular person being President or even politicians in general. Overall, it is greed on the part of the “Haves.”

Mark my words. I truly believe a reckoning is coming. You can’t keep a significant portion of the population trapped underfoot forever. If things don’t change, if the economy doesn’t improve, and SOON, I think we’re headed for another civil war. This time, rather than the North versus the South, it is going to be a class war.

While the wealthy can afford the nicer toys, the poor will have anger burning in their hearts. They’ll also have a much greater number of people at their sides.

Make no mistake, I’m not hoping such an event takes place. Far from it, actually. But, every day, I feel we’re drawing ever closer to it happening.

Tell you something else. If it does happen, it is going to be absolutely, horribly brutal. The Civil War (1861-1865) killed over 600,000 Americans. I shudder to think what the body count would be if my prediction were to come true.