Knowledge IS the Killer of Fear !

The Film The Road as a Cautionary Tale

2013-04-17T07:28:00.003-07:00

The Film The Road as a Cautionary Tale

The film The Road based on the book by the same title, is a very good cautionary tale illustrating why it’s not good to get caught with your pants down with regards to preparedness.

As the film begins, the father, played by Viggo Mortenson, knows something is wrong. When he begins filling up the bath tub, his wife, played by Charlene Theron ask him something to the effect of “Why are you taking a bath?” He wasn’t bathing. He was stockpiling water for drinking.

As you get further along in the film, it becomes obvious that the wife is not going to make it. She does not have the psychological survival skills to make it. She wants the pre-TEOTWAWKI world back and it's not coming back. Hence, the reason to prepare, so you can rebuild the world if it comes to that. The wife simply wonders off into the night and never returns.

After the wife is gone, the father and the boy, forgive the terrible pun with relation to the title, hit the road.

As someone who has been a student of preparedness for more than two decades, a writer of a paid, print, subscription preparedness newsletter for two years, and a blogger on the subject 2 to three years now, I was floored, absolutely floored, by what I saw in this film. (Yes, I know it was just a movie, but what a lesson it teaches.)

Ever heard this? “For want of a nail......” In fact, the film could have been titled For Want of a Nail. Or better yet For Want of a Bullet. Let me explain.

The father and the son faced many dangers that could have been taken care of if they had just done only a little bit of preparation. They were presented with INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITIES they could have taken advantage of if they had prepared.

Before we examine the dangers and opportunities, I want to make some comments about the film.

I thought the film The Book of Eli presented an accurate portrayal of what a post TEOTWAWKI would look like. As good as that film was in portraying TEOTWAWKI, the realism of what TEOTWAWKI would look like in The Road was, in my opinion, a power of ten increase over The Book of Eli. (The Book of Eli was an awesome film!)

Dangers-If you ever want a reason to get motivated about stockpiling ammunition for your firearms, just watch this film. Before the wife walked out into the night and never came back, there was a scene in which husband and wife were talking. They talked about how the raiders (for those of the Rawles school of preparedness this is the “golden hoard) would come back and that they only had TWO BULLETS!!!! Does one have to go to school and take special courses to be that stupid? In addition, they only had a revolver!

Fast forward now to the scene where the men on the truck were hunting.........humans. Yes, there is cannibalism in this film. In this scene the father and the boy head into the woods to hide. One of the members of the cannibal hunting party walks into the woods to urinate and discovers the father and son. He states that he thinks the father won’t shoot him. The father deposits high velocity metal into the skull of said hunter. Now the father has only one bullet, and the other hunters are streaming out to find out what happened.

If you observe close, essentially all of the hunters had scoped, bolt action rifles. If the father had only had a Ruger 10/22 with a 25 round detachable magazine, he could have killed half of the hunters before they even knew what was happening. But when you only have a revolver with one bullet........

Opportunities-The father and son had numerous opportunities they could have taken advantage of, if only they had prepared. If they had say 300 standard sized nails, 300 two inch screws, a hammer, screwdriver, and a small hand saw, they could have had their choice of accommodations. In one scene, the father finds the house he grew up in.

The items mentioned in the previous paragraph could have been easily carried in the cart the father and son carried their supplies in. With said items plus a Ruger 10/22, they could have fortified the houses they walked up on. (To be fair though, running a 24/7 LP/OP watch with only two people could not be done for an extended period of time.)

With regards to missed opportunities, it gets even worse.

When the father and the boy were just about to drop from starvation, they find an underground shelter loaded with food and supplies! (The owner(s) of that underground shelter probably were dead-most likely because they bought into the lie that firearms are not needed for survival.)

The father and the boy stay in the shelter for a while, gain some weight with all the food there, and get much needed rest. In additions, the father gets to spend time with his son doing what fathers do in normal situations.

Then one day they hear people walking on the surface. They have to leave BECAUSE YOU CANNOT DEFEND YOURSELF OR YOUR PLACE OF SAFETY WITH A REVOLVER THAT HAS ONLY ONE BULLET!!!!!!!!!!!!

As bad as this was, it still gets even worse.

In one part of the movie they run up on what appears to be an empty house. The basement/cellar is locked. The father opens it. He discovers a group of people being held prisoner, chained and naked, to be eaten by, you guessed it, more cannibals. Just as the father gets back to the main floor, the cannibals return. Father and son hide upstairs and discover the area where the prisoners were butchered to be eaten. Just as father and son are about to be discovered, the prisoners start coming out of the basement/cellar and this gives father and son time to escape.

Have you ever heard the word “charity”? Protecting yourself, your family, and your property are not the only reason to own guns. When other humans are in danger, and the risks to you and yours are relatively low, you have not a responsibility, but AN OBLIGATION to defend your fellow human beings. The obligation is even stronger if those other human beings are old, sick, children, handicapped, or weak. I chose the word obligation purposely. ‘Responsibilities” are made to be shirked off. Ever hear these kindergarten teachers who try to brainwash young children into believing the lie of man made global warming? They make children repeat “With rights come responsibilities”. Factually incorrect. With rights comes only ONE obligation: Don’t violate the rights of other human beings.

An obligation is stronger than a responsibility. I wish there were Samurai kindergarten. If I had any children that is where I would send them. At least they would get the opportunity to choose honor instead of mediocrity.

In that scene, it never shows what happened to those people. It’s highly likely they were put back in the basement/cellar, naked, because THEY HAD NO GUNS, BUT THE PEOPLE WHO TOOK THEM PRISONER DID HAVE GUNS.

At this point, the reader might have noticed a, shall I say subtle, sub-theme in this post? If you have, excellent!

This whole anti-gun thing is getting, correction, has gone, way past the point of logical thinking. I’m fine with keeping guns out of the hands of people who meet the clinical definition of psychosis. (Psychosis is any mental disease in which the person has lost touch with reality-they hear things other people don’t hear, they see things other people don’t see, etc.) But to restrict firearms ownership by people who are law abiding, have no violent crime convictions and no psychosis is done only for one reason:Tyranny.

(Also, if a charge of domestic violence is going to keep one from owning a gun, domestic violence needs to be raised to a felony in areas where it is classified as a misdemeanor. Otherwise you have felony accountability for a misdemeanor crime.)

If the U.S. government wants to restrict or take guns away from people who obey the law, you can be sure of this: The U.S. government is planning on BREAKING THE LAW sometime in the near future.

I do recall something about “of, by and for the people.”

Sorry for the rant.

Do learn the lesson that The Road teaches. It says:

1. Be prepared and don’t get caught with your pants down.

2. Being prepared is not only about helping yourself. It’s also about helping others.

3. Being prepared to take advantage of opportunities is a large part of winning in survival.

4. Keep the fire alive. (You’ll have to watch the film to get that one. This is arguably the most important thing in survival-attitude.) The father taught this to the boy in the film.

5. With regard to guns, have more than a revolver with two bullets.

To all of you all around the planet, keep the faith, think noble thoughts, do noble things, take care of the ones you love, help others when possible, behave in an honorable manner, judge others solely by their actions, respect the person and property of other people, and remember that when individual human beings work together, we can improve the lot for all.

Interesting Survival Products

2013-02-27T16:14:00.000-08:00

Night Vision Equipment

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Has this “zombie apocalypse” thing gone too far or what?

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Extreme Ratio RAO Ultra Heavy Folding Knife

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Dark Ops Knife’s Vindicator

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Survival Bags Inc.

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Tactical Tailor

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SCCY Industries CPX-2

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Bravo Company U.S.A.-tactical gear

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Elite Survival Systems

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Check out their Crossroad Discreet Escape Bag

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Personal Defense World

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Survival Prep Store

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Emergency Birthing

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4 EverLites

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Dr. Power Burncage-Burn those sensitive documents!

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Oxy2Go

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Survive Tomorrow Supply

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Convertible Greenhouses Co.

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Globalgig

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B’Twin Folding Bicycles

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X Products High Capacity Magazines

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LifeStraw Portable Water Filter

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American Survivor Website

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Texas Ready Seed Banks!

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Just Water-Water Filters

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Defending Yourself Against the “Intellectual Punt”

2013-02-06T07:35:00.000-08:00

The intellectual punt is a disinformation technique designed to get individuals to reject certain ideas by associating them with other ideas.

I DO NOT assume that everyone understands football as played in the United States of America, and since I played a little in junior high and high school, I’ll explain the concept of the punt.

The offense, that’s the team with the ball, has four chances (four downs) to make ten yards of forward progress from where they started. So if they started on the twenty yard line, they have to make it to the thirty yard line in four plays. If, after the third down, the offense has not made ten yards of forward progress, the team has two options. If the team thinks they can INTEGRATE and work together, they go for it on the fourth down. If the team thinks they cannot INTEGRATE and work together, on fourth down the ball is snapped to the punter who drop kicks the ball away. Had the offence gone for it on fourth down (assuming they started on the twenty yard line) and made it only to the twenty nine yard line, the other team would get the ball and only have to go twenty nine yards to score a touchdown. So if the offense cannot INTEGRATE and work together, the punt gives them better field position and increases the distance the other team has to move the ball to score.

Rather than give a precise definition of the intellectual punt, I’m going to define by example. I’m going to give 6 generic statements and 1 specific statement. When I give the specific statement, some of you will recognize the person I’m quoting. He’s a bit “iffy” on some things.

This person gives a lot of good data in his books about the ongoing movement to create a world government. By “movement to create a world government” I’m simply referring to the ongoing movement to get sovereign nations to cede more and more of their control to a central global authority. There’s no big secret there. However, I do think it’s bad, because once you have a central global authority and it goes bad as all governments do given enough time, there will be no other force there to keep it in check.

Lets begin.

Statement 1-True statement about the movement for world government. Easily confirmed at even a small town library. Easily confirmed using 1^st rate, 2^nd rate, and even 3^rd rate internet sources. (We’ll cover how to determine what is a 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd rate internet source another time. However it is a process of elimination-all sources are considered 3^rd rate until proven otherwise.)

Statement 2-True statement about the movement for world government. This statement might require a medium size town library to confirm. It can be confirmed using 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd rate internet sources but it takes a little more time.

Statement 3-True statement about ongoing conspiracy for world government. For confirmation, a large city library might be required. Confirmation via the internet will be tedious because the 1^st rate source will say one thing, the 2^nd rate source will say basically the same thing as the 1^st rate source-it will just say more, and the 3^rd rate source will say something totally different.

Comment: At this point you were hit with the word “conspiracy”. The term “conspiracy theory” has been turned into a bonafide psychological weapon. A man or woman could say “The sky reflects blue light and the grass reflects green light”. Call their statement a “conspiracy theory” and 99 times in 100 they will back off.

Let’s define our terms.

conspiracy-When two or more individuals work in secret to achieve a given end.

I think that has happened a few times in recorded history. A number of Roman emperors were assassinated via conspiracy. It’s how “honest” Abe Lincoln was removed. It how J.F.K. was removed. (If you actually believe a bullet can turn 180 degrees in flight and move opposite the direction it was fired, you may want to look into a scientific discipline known as “physics”. )

People tent to associate “conspiracy” with bad things. As such, it’s worth noting that two or more individuals can work in secret to achieve a good end.

The term “conspiracy theory” is really a term used by weak minds who reject an idea on an a priori basis. In simple terms, they reject an idea simply because it does not fit in with their way of thinking. At best, the a priori fallacy is very dangerous. At worst, it gets you killed.

Let’s continue.

Statement 4-True statement about the ongoing conspiracy for world government that is very complex. This hits even harder because the statement seems outlandish to someone who is not well versed on this topic. You will need a big city library and a lot of time spent in that library to confirm this one. The information you find on the internet will be so convoluted you won’t even be able to make an educated guess at what is a 1^st rate, 2^nd rate, or 3^rd rate internet source. Also, the various internet sources will contradict one another.

Hang on, it gets worse.

Statement 5-True statement about the ongoing conspiracy for world government. To confirm this one you will need to go to one of the less than one hundred university libraries in the United States designated as a “research library”. If you go to such a library, you will have to spend from half a day to 3 days to confirm the statement and you will have to check multiple sources. If you do an internet search, you really have to know how to work the internet. For example, if you’re looking for the number “4", you’re not going to find a “4" on any one web site. You might have to go to one site and find a “2" and to another site to find another “2" to make a “4".

Statement 6-True statement about the ongoing movement/conspiracy for world government. Notice that “movement/conspiracy” is used together. This further muddies the water. You will need a research library. However, if one cannot “read between the lines” as it were, a research library is not going to help. Let’s say again, for purposes of example, we are doing an internet search for the number “4". This time it isn’t going to be as easy as 2 + 2 = 4. This time you might have to go to four web sites and find a “1" at each site to make a “4". You might have to go to eight web sites and find a “0.5" at each web site to make a “4". You might have to go to sixteen web sites and find a “0.25" at each web site to get a “4".

It’s worth noting that most people cannot effectively do what is necessary to confirm statement 6. I would estimate/guesstimate/extrapolate that only 1 person in 75 can do this.

Now, it’s time for the punt.

Statement 7-“The British royal family are alien, reptilian, shape shifters.” At this point some of you know who I’m quoting. Can you see the punted ball flying away?

So now let’s give a little more formal definition of the “intellectual punt”.

In simple terms, there are true statements that you do not want people to believe. You then add to the true statements one or more statements of outlandish bullshit. The idea is to make the bullshit so outlandish that the reader throws everything away, or “intellectually punts” all of the data away because he/she cannot INTEGRATE it all into a cogent whole.

So how do you handle the statement that is designed to induce the intellectual punt? You handle it just like any other.

“Alien”-There is no fundamental physical law that says other intelligent life cannot exist in this multi verse or in our particular universe. Given the size of our universe, an estimated 14 billion light years across, it’s essentially a sure thing there is other intelligent life out there.

(I do have a modest proposal. Perhaps we should confirm intelligent life exists on planet Earth before we look for it elsewhere in the universe. We as a species keep following these chemarims we call “politicians”. If there are any reptiles on planet Earth that walk on 2 legs, politicians are the most likely candidates. They’re certainly cold blooded)

“Reptilian”-There is no fundamental physical or biological law that prohibits there being highly intelligent reptiles. However, I think it’s a bit of a long shot because reptiles are cold blooded, meaning they cannot internally regulate their body temperature. This would make an advanced brain very difficult.

“Shape shifter”-This one is a bit more problematic. While there is no fundamental physical law or biological law that prevents it, it would be very hard. In a biological of this type, mass would be constant. However, when shifting to a new shape, surface area would be variable. As such, temperature regulation would be more difficult than it would be for a biological whose surface area were a constant.

But where is the evidence? In simple language, it ain’t there. I do remember an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine in which the shape shifter on the station, Odo, was made to shift back to his original shape by being hit with what appeared to be a bolt of plasma or electricity. Is the promulgator of this “alien, reptilian, shape shifter” theory going to hit the Queen Mother with an 800,000 volt stun gun? I doubt it.

In all seriousness, do some observations yourself. Notice how “controversial” ideas are mixed in with ideas that are just crazy. Notice how other people “punt” when this occurs. Take care not to “punt” yourself.

Some Thought for those Feeling Depressed During the “Silly Season”

2012-12-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

Some Thought for those Feeling Depressed During the “Silly Season”

It’s not really odd for an article like this to be on a site about preparedness and survival. You see, a significant number of people will not survive the Christmas Season because they will self-terminate a.k.a commit suicide.

My formal education is in psychology, and one thing we know is that while not the time of the highest number of suicides, a lot of people do commit suicide during the Christmas season, New Year’s Day being the day with the highest total suicides over the Christmas Season.

This article is for those people contemplating suicide.

There are a lot of good reasons for many of us to feel depressed. Many of you will spend Christmas Day alone. Many of you will get no Christmas Cards. Some of you won’t even get a “Merry Christmas” from a single human being. Many of you are unemployed or underemployed. As such, you have a lot of time to think about the fact that you have no family and you are unemployed and in economic hot water. (The economic hot water thing applies to me personally, so at least in that area, I do know what you’re going through.)

Now, if you are thinking about committing suicide, what I AM NOT going to do is ask you not to do it. What I am going to do is ask you to put it off. You see, if you’ve really made up your mind to commit suicide, you will find a way to do it, even if they lock you up in a padded room. Just put it off.

It’s worth commenting on the phenomenon of depressive realism. Individuals who are mildly depressed perceive the world more accurately than their non-depressed peers. The key word is MILDLY in mildly depressed. If you’ve reached the point where you are thinking about committing suicide, you are way past the point of mild depression. As such, you DO NOT perceive the world more accurately, you perceive it less accurately.

So what do you do?

Get help is an obvious answer. However, depending on where you are, even seeing a standard M.D. could take days or weeks. To see a psychiatrist could take longer. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to see a doctor-do try. But I want to give you alternatives in case you have to wait, because the wait could kill you.

There are other people you can talk to. Your minister, rabbi, priest, or other religious leader is a start. If you have no religion or you’re an atheist, in larger cities there are organizations that offer counseling to people who are contemplating suicide.

If push comes to shove and you think you are going to do it, go to your local emergency room. Ask to see the resident psychiatrist and tell them you are contemplating suicide.

With that said, I know some of you will never ask for help. That means you’re going to have to take matters into your own hands to help yourself. (And I’m not talking about a .38 revolver.)

What follows should be looked at as ideas, not a list of steps. Some of the ideas will be good for one person and not another person. Consider them all.

1. Spend some time helping people whose lives are way more messed up than yours. This sounds like b.s, UNTIL YOU DO IT. Been there, done that. Helping other people whose lives are way more messed up than yours helps you get a more realistic perspective on your own situation.

When you get depressed, you start focusing more and more on your own situation. This starts a cycle in which you become more depressed. You then focus ever more on your own situation. You have to break this cycle, and helping others who are way more messed up than you helps you do this.

2. RADICALLY CHANGE THE STRATEGIES YOU ARE USING TO ADDRESS YOUR OWN PROBLEMS. Again, here we get into a vicious cycle. When things are not working, what do we as humans tend to do? WE DO WHAT WE’VE BEEN DOING; ONLY WE DO IT HARDER. Sad but true.

A one hundred eighty-degree change of strategy and tactics is a good technique. Totally change how you approach your situation.

3. Avoid isolation. Isolation will just give you more opportunity to focus on your own issues. Get out of your house or apartment and get out in public. One thing I suggest is going to the movies. Even if your economic situation is bad, you can probably scrape up enough money for the ticket. Eat something before going and sneak a water or soda into the theater inside your coat. Snacks at the movies are so expensive because the theater makes ZERO money off the tickets. That all goes to the movie makers.

If you are going to spend Christmas Day alone, I highly recommend this one for Christmas Day. A lot of new films open on Christmas Day.

Movies, for a time, take you into an imaginary world. That is a good thing when you are depressed. You need to “get away” for a short time.

In the theme of avoiding isolation, most cities, even small ones, have lots of public events during the Christmas season that are free to the public. Get a copy of your local newspaper or city magazine and find the dates and times of these and go to as many as you can. If you’re going to be alone on Christmas Day and your city has an event on Christmas Day, go to it.

If a local Church has a service on Christmas Day, go to it even if you’re not a member.

4. In survival and preparedness, we know this: You avoid if possible making big decisions when you are hungry, thirsty, fatigued, or sleep deprived. If you are depressed and you are experiencing any of these, you need to fix it.

Try to eat at least 3 large meals daily or 4 to 5 smaller meals. If money is an issue, the canned meat section of the grocery store offers a lot of good protein selections at low prices.

If you are fatigued, rest. If you can’t rest, plan your activities in the most energy efficient manner.

Now, sleep is a biggie with regard to clinical depression. THE CLASSIC WARNING SIGN OF CLINICAL DEPRESSION IS EARLY MORNING AWAKENING. If you wake at any time between 2:00 A.M. and 5:00 A.M. and cannot go back to sleep, this is a big warning sign that you have clinical depression. If you go to bed at nonstandard times, if you normally sleep on or about 8 hours and you wake up at a time on or about 4 hours after going to bed, you have early morning awakening.

If you simply cannot sleep, melatonin is a good option. It’s available over the counter. I personally have found the Natrol brand to work consistently. I think this is because it is a pure synthetic as opposed to melatonin extracted from animal sources.

5. Take steps to reduce bad stress. Again, planning your activities in the most energy efficient and time efficient manner will help. Plan your tomorrow TODAY. Write down all the places you need to go, what you need to do, and all the addresses and phone numbers of the people and places you will need to go to and see. It’s good to write it out in a small notebook. If you do this in your smart phone or electronic devise, Murphy’s ghost will catch up with you-the electronic devise will fail when you need it the most. (Also smart phones are easily hacked. That’s a good reason not to keep detailed personal information there.)

If you don’t exercise regularly, start. If you can afford a gym membership, I suggest you get one. This will be another way to get you out of the house and interacting with other people.

If you cannot afford a gym membership, consider local churches, your local YMCA, or Jewish Community Centers. Many of these have exercise facilities.

If this is not an option, there was a very good book written more than 20 years ago by a U.S. Navy SEAL entitled Get Tough. It is an exercise/running plan that requires no other equipment than a chin up bar. Even if you have no chin up bar, if you do the other exercises you will be in great shape.

Double blind placebo controlled studies have shown regular exercise helps lift depression.

With regard to reducing stress there is a book entitled The Relaxation Response that has some very good techniques for lowering stress.

If you cannot afford the books mentioned, your local library can get them via an interlibrary loan if they don’t already have them.

6. The herb St. Johns Wort is an over the counter product that has been proven to work as good or better than the prescription SSRI (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors), what I refer to as the “Zoprac” class of anti-depressants.

Now, here is a big warning. One of the most dangerous times in depression for those contemplating suicide is the time when the depression is first lifting. When you are at rock bottom, you may be too depressed to kill yourself. However, when you’re coming out of it there will be a time when you’re not over it but you will have enough energy to kill yourself. So be careful. I only offer this advice because I know some of you will not seek professional help. Again let me say if you can get professional help, get professional help.

With regards to St. Johns Wort, you want to buy a standardized version. One I recommend is a brand called Kira. It is made in Germany. The Germans were big into herbal medicine (until the dictatorial European Union regulated herbs). It is of excellent quality. The company Nature’s Way makes a standardized product called Perika that is very good.

How does it work? St. Johns Wort acts as a reversible mono amine oxidase inhibitor (as opposed to the irreversible prescription maoi inhibitors like phenalzine sulfate, tranylcypromine, and isocarboxazide which can cause blood pressure to rise to lethal levels if the person taking them ingest the chemical tyramine in certain foods or if the person taking them takes certain drugs, both over the counter and prescription).

7. Try speaking to God in prayer. Try this especially if you don’t believe He exists. This comes from someone who has been on both sides. Let me explain.

I started out thinking I was a Christian. Then I swung over to the other side and essentially became an atheist. Later, I read a book by an orthodox Jewish rabbi (not a Christian) that convinced me that the Bible was real, so I became a real Christian, but not a “good” Christian. I object on principle to anyone being called a “good Christian”. If we were good, we would not need the overly generous deal offered by Jesus Christ. Also, any honest Christian will tell you they commit sins on a frighteningly routine basis. I know I do.

However, it’s not my purpose to make you a convert in this article. My purpose is to keep you alive.

When you go to God in prayer, be respectful but say what’s on your mind. If you have questions, ask them. God is not interested in humans repeating mindless prayers over and over again. In fact, He considers such prayers offensive. God is interested in you. Why you ask? I can only give you my theory.

A large part of running the multiverse for God has to be boredom. When your omnipotent, omnipresent, and not bound by linear time, you pretty much know all there is to know and all there ever will be. In simple terms, God made us because he was bored and wanted (not needed) company. God views all humans as his children, and like any loving father he does care about his children. That’s why you should go to Him in prayer with your problems and issues.

I would be negligent here if I did not cover what many people, including depressed people, will ask. They ask “How can a loving God allow evil and suffering to exist?” Or sometimes it is stated “If 1. God is totally good and 2. God is omnipotent, omnipresent and all powerful; the existence of evil proves that one of the two has to be false.”

That is what I call a simple Simeon philosophical argument.

God does not mess with free will. If humans had the choice to:

1. Behave good.
2. Behave good.

We would not be humans. We would be mindless automatons.

You say “What about all the suffering in the world?”

Most of it is caused by us. When a walkway in a hotel falls and kills a lot of people, we humans have a tendency to blame God when they should blame architects who can’t do math as it applies to statics.

Why doesn’t God remedy all the suffering in the world? HE SENT US TO REMEDY IT. This does not mean one has to end world hunger eradicate all injustice. It may be something as simple as saying a kind word to someone who is lonely or a kind word to that person in the office who is not well liked.

If you’re depressed this Christmas and you get that, once you recover, it’s unlikely you will ever get depressed again.

One last thing before I go. With regards to life on Earth, the secret to life may be this simple:

Keep putting one foot in front of the other.

May you stay alive this Christmas and live to see many more.

An Eclectic List of Survival/Preparedness Tips and Ideas

2012-11-09T07:56:00.002-08:00

An Eclectic List of Survival/Preparedness Tips and Ideas

Kevin S. in Alabama

The word eclectic means “selecting or employing individual elements from a variety of sources, systems, or styles”. Thinks of this article as a Thanksgiving time cornucopia of tips and ideas in which you can take the tips and ideas that are useful to you and disregard the rest.

1. In all things relating to survival and preparedness, DO THE BEST YOU CAN WITH WHAT YOU HAVE NOW. Any amount of preparedness is better than no preparedness. Money is the major limiting factor in most individual’s preparedness plans. Prepare as best you can given your financial position.

2. Look into Ziploc Slider storage bags. These bags come in storage type and heavy duty freezer type. Both types are available in quart and gallon sizes. I suggest purchasing the heavy duty freezer type if money is not an issue. The price difference between the storage type and freezer type is not great.

Unlike some of the lesser quality “zip lock” bags, these bags have a slider that you pull to seal the bag. With this slider, you know you have a good seal and you know the bag will stay sealed.

One can use these bags to organize the items in your bug out pack. You can put fire making equipment in one bag, signaling equipment in another bag, etc. Also, by putting all the equipment in your bug out pack into the Ziploc slider bag, you have turned your non-waterproof bug out pack into a waterproof bug out pack.

I also suggest you take one of the one gallon size slider bags and stuff it full of as many slider bags as possible. In a survival situation, the potential uses for these slider bags are almost unlimited. You can use the bags to collect water to be purified at a later time. You can use them to store food you collect. If you had to do a river crossing you could fill the bags with air and tape them to an injured adult, a non-swimmer, a child, or even an infant and use them as a flotation device. You could even get creative fill some bags with air and some bags with water. By taping the bags in the right position you could make an improvised self-righting devise to keep the person face up in the water. Bags filled with air could be put into your bug out bag or taped to it to get it to or close to neutral buoyancy when river crossing.

3. Keep a Ziploc Slider bag full of rock salt in your bug out kit. Salt creates an environment in which it is hard for infectious bacteria to thrive. For puncture wounds, a little water can be added to rock salt to make a paste to put in the wound, to suck out toxins. You can add a lot of water to rock salt to make a saline solution. This saline solution is good for washing out wounds. A warm saline solution is good for rinsing out the mouth when oral infections are present. This is also good for rinsing the mouth after meals if you cannot brush your teeth.

This is especially important if you keep your bug out pack in your vehicle. None of your over-the-counter or prescription antibiotic creams and powders will survive the heat level inside your vehicle on a sunny day. Salt will last essentially forever.

4. Keep a cylinder of sugar (sucrose), like the ones you buy on the coffee and tea isle in the grocery store in your bug out pack. Sugar can be used to treat infected wounds and was once sold in combination with providone-iodine solution (Betadine) as a product called Sugardyne. To treat an infected wound you simply pack the wound with sugar crystals. Check the wound at regular intervals. When the sugar crystals turn liquid, it’s time to re-pack the wound with more sugar crystals. Why do you do this? The sugar kills the infectious agent by osmotic shock. In simple terms, it sucks the water out of the infectious agent, dehydrating it. If you leave the liquefied sugar crystals in the wound, the infectious agent can use the water in the liquefied sugar solution to begin the growth process again.

5. Keep a roll of aluminum foil tape in your bug out pack. It has numerous uses, but the most important use relating to bugging out is protecting you from frostbite and hypothermia.

Imagine TEOTWAWKI has come and you have to bug out in a hurry. Its winter and it’s very cold. You have to travel on foot and you don’t have waterproof socks or shoes. There is a foot of snow on the ground. If you travel in the snow on foot your shoes and socks are going to be soaked in short order. Then come’s frostbite and possibly trench foot.

If you have a roll of aluminum foil tape in your bug out pack you’re covered. Before going out you simply wrap your socks with a layer of aluminum foil tape. Like the space blankets made of aluminum, the aluminum foil tape reflects your body heat back onto your feet and keeps out the water.

Imagine a situation even worse. You have to bug out in a winter storm and you don’t have adequate clothing for the cold. You could wrap the upper part of your body (the area around the heart and lungs) with aluminum foil tape. This would help keep your core body temperature from dropping into the hypothermia range. Using a pair of scissors like those on a pocket knife or multi tool you could cut small pieces of aluminum foil tape to go on your face, nose, and ears to prevent frostbite.

6. Get Gorilla Tape. This stuff puts the best duct tape to shame. It comes in several sizes and is available in camouflage. Keep a roll of it in your bug out pack. Get as much of this product as you can.

7. There is a lot you can do with the metal coat hangers you get from the dry cleaners. This little tool from Duluth Trading will help immensely in bending coat hangers into the shapes needed for whatever preparedness project you are working on. It bends mild steel up to 3/16” diameter and lets you bend “S” hooks, fishing rod eyes, curtain rod rings and more. Get a large plastic garbage can and save all your metal coat hangers. They can be very useful.

8. There is a huge amount of survival and preparedness information on the internet. Unlike Survival Blog many web sites are here today and gone tomorrow. (And they don’t have the funds to make an archive CD like Survival Blog.) So if you find useful information on a site, it’s very important to capture that data.

I suggest copying and pasting the data with Word Pad. Why Word Pad? It is not that great of a word processor but it is on virtually every computer that uses Microsoft Windows as its operating system.

Word Pad has its drawbacks. The program is hit or miss when it comes to capturing graphics. I prefer to use the special paste option unformatted text. Sometimes you lose the graphics, but this is not a big deal with many articles.

If you want to capture and entire web page the newer versions of Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat 10 can do that.

Whatever method you use to capture survival and preparedness data from the internet, it is very important that you print out a hard copy. Print the data out onto 8 ½ x 11 inch paper with three holes and put the papers in three ring binders. That way, if you lose your computer to EMP or other threats you still have the data. You might even consider purchasing a gun safe rated to take a 1500 degree Fahrenheit fire for 30 minutes to store your three ring binders (and survival and preparedness books) in. To give your survival and preparedness information even more protection you could wrap your binders and books in several layers of aluminum foil before putting them in the gun safe.

This and this are examples of the kind of information you should be making hard copies of.

9. When stockpiling 12 gauge shotgun ammo stockpile only 2 ¾ inch shells. Why? Depending on the make and model of the shotgun it may shoot 2 ¾ inch shells, 3 inch shells, 3 ½ inch shells, or all three sizes. Let’s say you have a 12 gauge shotgun that shoots all three sizes and you stockpile 3 ½ inch shells. Let’s say you lose that shotgun in a firefight defending your survival retreat. You scrounge and find another 12 gauge shotgun, but it is only chambered for 2 ¾ inch shotgun shells. You’re out of luck.

10. When stockpiling pistol ammunition, stockpile the heaviest grain weigh non +P ammunition. Why? You may have a pistol that can take the pressures produced by + P ammunition, but you lose it. You scrounge and find a perfectly good pistol in your caliber that was produced before the introduction of + P ammunition. Again, you’re out of luck.

11. Get to know the herb andrographis. It is a very effective treatment for bacterial and viral infections when professional medical care is delayed or outright unavailable. You might consider getting the seeds and growing it yourself. Native to India, some claim the use of this herb kept India relatively free from the 1918 flu pandemic. If you have bleeding disorders or autoimmune disease do not take andrographis. If you have any serious problem with your heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, or immune system check with and M.D. or D.O. who has knowledge of herbal medicine in addition to standard medical training before taking this herb. When I feel the flu coming on, 4 capsules every 4 hours knocks it out. I like the Nature’s Way brand.

12. There are times when you might have to drop your bug out pack and run. You need something to go on your belt to keep your most essential items. The Nite Ize Hip Pock-Its Utility Holster is a good option to wear on your belt. With two of these on your belt, filled with your most essential items, even if you lost you bug out pack you would not be totally naked in terms of survival equipment.

13. When bugging out, you are going to run into the “Golden Hoard” leaving the cities en mass. A few of them will be civil but most will act like savages. Have something to give them that they can use like these emergency ponchos from Coghlans. It may help, but you will eventually meet some with whom you will need to exchange gunfire.

14. With # 13 in mind, get some serious medical gear designed to help you survive combat. Tactical Medical Solutions is a good supplier. Request their print catalog. They make some very good medical products to treat gunshot wounds, such as:

Quick Clot Combat Gauze

Celox Hemostatic Agent with syringe style applicator for deep wounds Note: The active ingredient in Celox is chitosan, which is made from shellfish. If you have ever had an anaphylactic reaction from eating shellfish DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT.

The Phantom Individual Medical Kit

Active Shooter Response Kit

15. Get a copy of the Tactical Survival Specialties Inc. print catalog. It has some really hard to find and uncommon survival equipment.

16. Since fire is absolutely essential for survival, you need to exceed the Nez Perce Rule of Threes.

Have the following on your person in a small hip pack on your belt like that listed in item # 12. In it you will have:

1. A Zippo type wind proof lighter

2. Several Bic lighters still in the plastic

3. At least 4 boxes of waterproof matches

4. A tube of Coghlans Fire Paste

5. At least 2 Duraflame Firestart Firelighters

6. Another fire starting tool or method of your choice

7. Still another fire starting tool of your choice.

Remember, you keep this kit on your belt, not in your bug out pack. The ability to make fire is survival itself. Without fire there is no heat to boil water to purify it. There is no heat for cooking. Every individual in your group should have a kit like this of their own on their belt. All the items in the hip pack on your belt should be duplicated in the bug out kit of every member of your group.

17. Since water is absolutely necessary for life for your bug out kit consider the following:

1. A Katadyn small water filter. This will give you water to drink very fast.

2. A SteriPEN water treatment devise

3. A small metal cup (stainless steel or copper) for boiling water.

In a hip pack on a belt include:

1. 5 of the Ziploc Slider bags-heavy duty freezer type-1 gallon size to collect water in.

2. Katadyn or other brand of chlorine dioxide tablets. These tablets take 4 hours to work, but they claim they kill giardia and cryptosporidium

18. If you’re planning on bugging out in a group and you are thinking something like this: “person 1 will carry survival items A, B, and C. Person 2 will carry items D, E, and F. Person 3 will carry survival items G, H and I.” I have two words for you. FORGET IT. Each person in your bug out group must have all the essentials for survival (water purification, fire making equipment etc.) on their person. Why? You could get split up, captured or killed. If you did the scenario described above some of your essential survival equipment would be gone.

19. If you want a handgun to put in your bug out pack or to wear concealed while bugging out, I suggest the Glock 26. This is one of the “baby” Glocks. With its standard 10 round magazine, it is hard to hold. But put in one of Glock’s extended magazines, and it handles great. It will accept the Glock 9mm 12 round magazine, the 15 round magazine, the 17 round magazine, the 19 round magazine, and even the 33 round 9mm magazine. You could wear it in a shoulder rig under a dark shirt with the 17 round magazine in it. You could have 4 to 8 of the 33 round magazines in a hip pouch if the stuff hit the fan

20. Remember to protect your eyes, hands, and feet. If you have any major problem with any one or all of these three, your efficiency will drop dramatically.

For eye protection, wear the military type goggles that seal out dust and sand. If you have corrective lenses some companies will make these goggles with your prescription ground into the lens.

For hands, get gloves that are cut resistant, fire resistant, and provide good grip.

For footwear, get something you can walk in for a very long distance (this will require testing) comfortably. Steel toes are preferred.

All of these items can be found in the Grainger catalog. Order a print copy of it today. (The Grainger catalog is loaded with safety equipment, survival equipment, medical supplies and just about anything one would need for their survival retreat, wire, fasteners, etc.)

21. Do you know how to haggle? Would you know how to work the black market during crisis and/or martial law to get the things you and your family need to survive? If not, start studying up. If and when TEOTWAWKI comes, the only economic system operating will be the barter system.

22. Have something in your bug out pack to keep you motivated. If you’re a Christian, a copy of the Holy Bible Old and New Testament in the King James Version or the English Standard Version would be good. If you’re a religious Jew, a copy of the Old Testament and some of the other sacred Jewish texts.

Here is a nice product you might store your religious texts in.

In addition to religious material, a copy of the United States Constitution would be good. Also, some non-fiction books that motivate you would be in order. I would have any or all of the Pocket Ref books. They contain vast amounts of useful information.

23. In your bug out pack, keep a map of your state and maps of every state that borders your state. After and EMP attack the GPS system might be down as well as your hand held GPS devise. Topographic maps can be useful as well.

24. If you’re looking for a hobby, why not learn how to use the sextant and the slide rule? If the GPS system goes down, both of these items would be useful. You can buy slide rules here. You can buy sextants here and here.

25. When you get to your survival retreat, if you don’t have some fun from time to time you’ll go crazy. You need recreational activities that people of all ages can play. K-Mart sells some low priced, good quality bocce ball sets (in the south we use these sets for lawn bowling). In bocce ball (lawn bowling) you have a small white ball. The two players are on opposite sides at equal distance from the small ball. The players then take turns rolling their two larger balls toward the small white ball. The player that gets closest to the white ball without touching it wins. If a player hits the white ball that player automatically loses. You can play a cut throat version of this in which one player can roll his ball into the other players ball, causing it to hit the white ball, thus the other player loses.

Games like chess and go are good as well because they teach strategy, something you will need in defending your survival retreat. This is especially true for the game go in which you try to control the largest amount of territory with the least number of pieces.

26. Remember, no one has this whole survival/preparedness thing figured out yet. As such, it would benefit us to drop or at least fall out of love with our preconceived notions of how TEOTWAWKI may happen. If and when TEOTWAWKI comes, it will most likely come in a form few of us expect.

27. Consilio et animis. Latin By wisdom and courage.

Some Interesting Data About the Alleged "Peak Oil" Theory

2012-09-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

Kevins Rant on Peak Oil

There is just one problem with the "fossil fuel" theory of oil and coal: There is no hard science to back it up. The same is true for "peak oil". The "peak oil" theory is based on a lot of what I would call "guesstimates".

If petroleum and coal are the remains of dead animals and plants, there are certain things you should find in them that just aren’t there.

Paleontologist Robert Bakker has pretty much proven that dinosaurs were not cold blooded like reptiles and amphibians, but warm blooded and more closely related to birds. Birds like other vertebras have two very important things in their blood: Cyanocobalamin (vitamin B-12) and heme iron (the type of iron that forms hemoglobin which carries oxygen through the body). These substances are not found in oil or coal.

As for the idea that dead plants are the stuff petroleum and coal are made of, consider this: Plants contain chlorophyll. You do not find residue of chlorophyll in petroleum or coal.

The abiotic oil theory is true. Recently a new book on it has been released by Jerome Corsi.

So why are the "pushers" of "Peak Oil" and the "fossil fuel" theory so ardent in their belief? Some of them are true environmental nut jobs who want to send us all to "green hell". (Check out the Green Hell blog).

If you want to drive up the price of any product, if you can convince people that it is going to run out, you can really drive up price.

Consider also that the United States is the Saudi Arabia not only of natural gas, but of energy itself. You can heat high grade coal and it will give off gases. On or about fifty percent of this gas is in the form of hydrogen. On or about thirty percent of this gas is methane. There is no shortage of energy. The problem is that one energy interest gets the government to keep other energy interest from accessing their product. It’s called political whoredom.

That’s enough of my rant. However, do not take my statements on faith. Do you're own research.

A Review of Founders: A Novel of the Coming Collapse by James Wesley Rawles

2012-09-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

James Wesley Rawles was kind enough to send me an advanced uncorrected proof of his new book Founders. On the whole I found the book to be a very good read. If you liked Rawle’s books Patriots and Survivors, I think you will like Founders. Like the other books, it is centered around a planet wide economic collapse. You can read my review of Rawle’s previous book Survivors at this link.

The way all three of the books are written, you can start off with any of them-you don’t have to read them in the order they were published to understand the plot of any of the books, although there are some chapters where there is overlap of characters from other books, but none of these overlaps are out of time sequence. For example, in the book Patriots the character Dan Fong gets killed. However, Dan Fong is alive in Founders. There are four major points about Founders I think are worth mentioning.

1. Founders is quite literally a treasure house of great quotations. These quotes appear at the beginning of each chapter.

2. The actions taken in chapter 28 of Founders is a good plan to fix a lot of what is wrong with The United States of America today.

3. The way the characters deal with the invading United Nations troops is very creative. In Founders, the United Nations troops and the traitors in the United States armed forces who join the United Nations forces main activity is looting. Occasionally they can find time to shoot laser guided artillery into elderly people’s homes, simply on the basis of being given a “tip” that resistance fighters are there-they don’t bother to actually check to see if these “tips” are true before firing the laser guided artillery.

4. Chapter 30 ended in a beautiful way, proving God can turn something bad into something good. . Mr. Rawles has a very good intellect, and I agree with most Rawles principles on preparedness. However, per chapter 30 and a lot of other things Mr. Rawles has published in the past, it’s clear he believes in the “Peak Oil” theory and it’s corollary that petroleum and coal are “fossil fuels” formed from the remains of very old plants and animals. See my rant against peak oil in the next entry on this blogspot.

Founders also has a tremendous amount of info about OPSEC that can be applied in a situation like tha protrayed in the book.

Founders is a first rate work. If you have not ordered your copy, hold on until the release date a.k.a. the “Book Bomb Day” of September 25th, 2012. This will help the book get a better ranking on the best seller list.

To all of you out there around the planet, keep the faith.

Crass Stupidity, Ignorance and Arrogance, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Truth about Islam and the Arab Spring

2012-09-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

Crass Stupidity, Ignorance and Arrogance, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Truth about Islam and the Arab Spring

As I begin this on 09-12-2012 A.D. at 09:54 CST, many people have not yet woken up to learn that diplomatic facilities of The United States of America in Libya and Egypt were attacked by forces of the Muslim Brotherhood. Multiple United States citizens were killed.

I cannot help think of a statement made by the religious leader of POTUS 44, Jeremiah Alvesta Wright, Jr. “The chickens have come home to roost!”

Some of you reading this post will undoubtedly think you have this whole “Arab Spring” figured out as you’re a 2 digit I.Q. non-thinker “sheeple” who believes everything you hear in mainstream media. You probably think it’s all about spreading democracy. It is not. The “Arab Spring” is about spreading the stuff that sticks to your shoes and stinks on a hot day.

It has been my contention that the whole purpose of the “Arab Spring” is to destabilize the entire middle east and ultimately produce a third world war to bring about global government AND destroy the state of Israel.

At this point, some of you are thinking “conspiracy theory”. If you are one of those people, go to the top right of the screen and hit the x button, you’re a lost cause.

In The United States of America today, the term “conspiracy theory” has been transformed into a bona fide psychological weapon that is used to stop rational analysis and debate. A man could say “The sky reflects blue light and the grass reflects green light.” Call that man a “conspiracy theorist” and 99 times in 100 he would back off that last statement.

Now let me rant for a few paragraphs.

The United States of America IS NOT a democracy. It is a constitutional republic in which elected representatives make the laws. In a true democracy 51 percent of the people rule and this 51 percent can even vote away the rights of the other 49 person. Democracy is majority rule. A republic is the rule of law. In democracy differs from a dictatorship in only this way: you substitute a51 percent majority to take the place of a dictator.

While going down this line of thought, some of you need to learn that our country’s name is the United States of America, not “America”. America is two continents that stretch from Cape Columbia, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada 83°8′N to the Águila Islet, Diego Ramirez Islands, Chile 56°32′16’S. We’ve usurped the name of two continents. It’s called imperial hubris.

I think the “United States” part of The United States of America is left off purposely, because originally state citizenship took precedence over federal citizenship and federal citizenship only applied to citizens when they travelled outside the United States of America. (Say this and some will try to associate you with the sovereign citizen’s movement, whose member’s murder police for “tyrannical acts” like giving them a traffic ticket.)

Now back to topic.

I support the right of the State of Israel to exist. The current government in power in the United States of America does not. Judge them only by their actions and not their speech and this becomes obvious.

In case there are any Jew hating bigot’s reading this post let me say two things:

1. Every loser on planet Earth tries to blame the Jews for their own problems.

2. If you’re thinking “Swindle is a Jew” you would be wrong. The patriarch of our family had the last name “Otts”. Do your research and see what country that comes from.

Now, if you’re one of those “conspiracy theorist” labeling people, and you’re still here, please do as I said and hit the x button at the top right.

The plan for world government has been in place before the United States Civil War, and the plan involves having 3 world wars. (For those of you who label ideas like this as “conspiracy theory” I have news you’re probably not aware of: there have only been 2 world wars so far. There are these things called books, and you can learn facts like that if you actually read them.)

Mr. Assad in Syria is not a nice person. But if Assad falls, a Muslim Brotherhood government will take over, and world war 3 is on. Yet the mainstream news all of you “conspiracy theory” labelers get you “facts” from will not tell you this. Instead democracy is the bromide to medicate all the world's ills.

THERE CAN BE NO REAL FREEDOM UNDER ISLAM. I am not of the opinion that all or even most Muslims are bad. In fact, most of them are good people who want the same thing other people on planet Earth want-a good life, a family, and worthwhile goals to pursue. However, the Islamic faith is incompatible with individual rights and property rights. Families living in Islamic countries that go abroad for 6 months or so often come home to find their homes occupied by other families.

ISLAM IS NOT A RELIGION OF PEACE. If one actually takes time to read the Koran, it’s filled with statements that say, in various ways; kill the non-Muslims or “infidels” as they are called. In Christianity, there are no cases where Jesus, any of Jesus’s Disciple’s or the Apostles called for the murder of non-Christians, nor do they support forced conversions (which aren’t real conversions) as the Muslims do. Non-Muslim’s either convert or are murdered by Muslims. Sometimes they get off by “paying the tax” a tax placed on non-Muslims in some Muslim countries.

The cause cited for the murder of United States diplomatic personnel in Libya and Egypt is a film that portrayed Mohammed in a negative way. IT’S CALLED FREE SPEECH. SOME MUSLIMS WOULD DO WELL TO LOOK INTO IT.

In the film The Last Temptation of Christ actor William Dafoe plays the part of Jesus Christ. In this vile, wretched piece of filth, Jesus is portrayed as a homosexual. Christians were rightly upset, but I don’t recall any of burning down theaters or killing movie directors. Yet within the past few weeks some U.S. Congressman and Senators are calling for investigations into so called “radical Christians”.

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. Period. Again, observe what they DO, not what they say. Notice who they associate with. We need about ten thousand modified Hugo Stiglitz set for “Muslim Brotherhood” instead of “Nazi” If that sounds like an ugly statement it is because it is an ugly statement. Sometimes life is ugly.

One of the authors who have had more influence on my life than just about all the rest is Robert J. Ringer. Ringer points out that arrogance and ignorance go hand and hand, where one is the other will always be.

Notice those who claim to have this Arab Spring/Muslim brotherhood figured out figured out. They don’t look below the surface nor do they look at the big picture. Then they tell you “it’s a very unique situation. Per Robert J. Ringer “unique” means “one of a kind”. There are no degrees to uniqueness. A thing is either one of a kind or not.

Yes, I have been somewhat of a horse’s ass to some of you in this article. I do not apologize. Why? WE, the rest of us who are no longer drinking the kool-aid need YOU to get on the wagon and start looking below the surface and stop being naïve sheep. In that spirit I say this: Do not believe anything in this article is true because I say it. Likewise, do not believe everything in this article is false because someone else says it is false or labels it a “conspiracy theory”. Check it out for yourself-do your own research.

Knowledge IS the killer of fear.

A Review of Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse by James Wesley Rawles

2012-06-20T09:24:00.003-07:00

A Review of Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse by James Wesley Rawles

James Wesley Rawles runs Survival Blog,the best preparedness/survival web site on planet Earth. The web address is www.survivalblog.com

James Wesley Rawles is also a first class writer. He has written a second fiction book, Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse. If you liked Mr. Rawles first book Patriots, you will like Survivors. While the books are alike in some ways, there are some significant differences. This article will compare and contrast the books.

Many of the characters who were in Rawles first novel Patriots are also in Survivors. (The books are written in such a way that you do not have to read Patriots first to get what’s going on.)

For those of you who read Rawles’s first book, Patriots, you know that while it is a work of fiction, it is essentially a training manual as well. You learned something new in every chapter. The knowledge base Rawles possesses is incredible.

Survivors focuses a little more on the human side of survival during a TEOTWAWKI type event. Still, this book has a lot of good information in it. There are three chapters in the book that contain such high quality data that those three chapters are worth the price of the entire book. (I’m not going to tell you what chapters they are, as the purpose of this article is to get you to go out and buy a copy of Survivors.)

Survivors, like Patriots begins during a worldwide financial meltdown. Patriots focused mostly on what happens in the United States as a result of a global financial meltdown. In Survivors however, Rawles paints a very good picture of what happens all over the planet when the global financial meltdown occurs. There are characters who live in Afghanistan, Western Europe, Central America, and the United States. This is what really sets the book apart. It shows the financial meltdown not just from the perspective of a United States citizen, but from people in other countries. This brings us to the main character.

The main character in the book is a combat hardened veteran of the war in Afghanistan. As the worldwide economy collapses, he finds it hard to get home. What makes his situation worse is he has a bride back in the U.S.A. waiting to marry him. He manages to hop a German military transport to Germany. From there he has to hike and bike his way to the western coast of Europe. He then has to get a boat to England, not an easy task in a worldwide economic crash.

His situation gets harder. When he gets to England he wants to get a boat going directly to the U.S.A. But with rioting in major U.S. cities and large scale social breakdown, no one with a boat wants to go to the United States.

Our hero does manage to get a boat ride from England to Central America. He then has to go on foot and horseback from Central America to his home in the Four Corners area of the United States.
As you might imagine, during his trek across Europe, during his boat ride across the Atlantic, and during his trek from central America to the Four Corners regions of the United States, our hero has a number of incidents with thugs (and pirates during the Atlantic Ocean crossing.) This isn’t a great problem while he is in Western Europe, because most of the civilian population there do not have guns. Our hero does-only a pistol, but a make generally considered to be the best in the world. During the Atlantic Ocean crossing this pistol is put to good use against pirates. When our hero arrives in Central America things get much more complicated, as most everyone has guns.

While the main character is making his trek from Afghanistan to the United States, the other characters are trying to survive. Some of them form retreat communities. Others find ways to open businesses that give the citizens what they want, as there is no excessive government to speak of, at least for a while.

The economy changes into one where there are essentially three currencies: Barter item, gold coins, and silver coins.

Remember the previous "at least for a while" ? In Survivors, a so called legitimate government arises that is allied with the United Nations. (One character in the book stated something very funny. He said essentially any government that actually has to call itself the “legitimate” government probably isn’t legitimate.) Using United Nations troops and United Sates troops who are traitors or are so ill informed they believe they are doing the right thing (they’re still traitors.) the new “legitimate government” tries to impose it’s will.

Pretty much all firearms and other equipment that would be useful for resisting a criminal “United Nations” government are banned. If not turned in by a certain time, any person caught with such weapons after that time is summarily executed. This goes right along with real life United Nations standard operating procedures. In real life, United Nations "peace keepers" have executed people for simply violating curfews.

The new and “legitimate” government does what all criminal governments do-it steals from the citizens. How does the “legitimate” government in Survivors do this? By re-introducing fiat money. Remember, in addition to being counterfeit, fiat money is also a hidden form of taxation via printing more worthless paper.

With that last sentence in mind, Mr. Rawles chose the perfect first name for the president of the new “legitimate” government: Maynard!

For those readers unfamiliar with economics, there is a school of thought in economics called the Keynesian school of economics, named after economist John Maynard Keynes. This school of economics favors big government, massive intervention in the free market, and prefers fiat money. Fiat money is backed by nothing. It’s money because the government says it is.

The new “legitimate” government uses the United Nation’s troops and the traitors in the U.S. military to “pacify” They begin with four states. I actually live in one of those first four states the “legitimate” government chose to be “pacified” in the novel.. That state is Alabama.

(Just a personal comment. If a situation like the one described in Survivors, ever really occurs, unless a “legitimate” government is willing to use nuclear, biological, chemical, scalar weapons, or totally defoliate all the crops, trying to “pacify” Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Northern Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Texas is going to be.......interesting.)

Perhaps the most important thing in Survivors that every person that is into preparation and survival should pay close attention to is Rawles description of the emergence of organized criminal gangs that loot entire towns. I think Rawles description is a very accurate one. Essentially what he describes is modern day brigandage. (Brigandage is a crime committed a lot in the past. You see it in movies sometimes. Gangs ride in on horseback, loot the village, rape the women, kill all the men, and then burn the village down.) In a TEOTWAWKI situation, the probability of the emergence of organized criminal gangs that loot entire towns is essentially one hundred percent. In fact, I would not be surprised if various criminal organizations are already planning for this type of activity so they can take maximum advantage of a TEOTWAWKI event.

In the book, the leader of this criminal organization is very smart. He starts out his criminal career by forming a gang and doing home invasions (which Mr. Rawles and I both believe is going to be a very common crime in the near future) but as the economy crashes, the leader manages to steal military vehicles, including A.P.C.’s (Armored Personnel Carrier). The gang grows and eventually reaches the point it can raid towns with populations of twenty thousand or more.

AGAIN-This type of organized criminal looting is essentially a sure thing if there is a TEOTWAWKI situation such as the power grid going down or full scale economic collapse.

I said the beginning of this blog entry that Survivors focuses more on the human side of survival. Let me explain what I mean.

Patriots is a novel that had huge appeal to people who were already into preparedness and survival. Patriots presented fictionalized data on how to fight a war of resistance (guerilla warfare) against a non-legitimate U.S. puppet government backed by the United Nations-a global criminal organization, and traitors from the U.S. military who join the U.N. forces. Data like this can be a bit heavy for people who are exploring getting into preparedness. I have no doubt that many people who read Survival Blog gave a copy of Patriots to someone they care for who isn’t preparing hoping it would induce that someone they care for to start preparing. If I were laying odds, that might have worked 1 time in 9.

Survivors is the book you should give to that person who will not prepare. Why you ask? The book shows what a TEOTWAWKI situation would look like through the eyes of the people living it in, but it does so in a way that is a bit more palatable for the average person, for the non-prepper.

In Patriots Mr. Rawles simply lays out the honest truth of what a TEOTWAWKI situation would look like.. In Patriots there is even one example of cannibalism. For a lot of people, this is too much. Truth can be an ugly thing. Most people really don’t like the truth. Most people prefer the soothing comfort of the lie.

In simple terms, Patriots may be too much of a psychological shock to the non-prepper, because non-peppers are mostly non-informed. Let me explain.

The average person, the non prepper, watches their 30 minute local newscast and a 30 minute national newscast, and they think they know what’s going on in the world.

Not so for the prepper. Just to get a basic idea of what’s going on in the world we use the net to study economics, geopolitics, worldwide food levels, disease outbreaks, and even praxeology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology

How many non prepper’s or even professional investment advisors look at the Baltic Dry Goods Index?

Mass media portrays prepper’s as mostly nut jobs, gun nuts, or associates preparedness with race hate organizations. In a small number of cases, these portrayals are correct. But most of the presentations of prepper’s are smear jobs. I’ll give you a good example.

James Wesley Rawles did an interview with a newspaper, I think it was the Los Angeles Times. Rawles told the newspaper he opposed racism because judging someone solely by their race is fundamentally irrational. RAWLES EVEN STATES THIS ON HIS WEB SITE! So guess what the Los Angeles Times does? On their internet addition on the same page with Mr. Rawles picture and article link there is a link to a story about some guy convicted of a crime who was a member of some race hate organization!

Now, taking those facts into account, consider the fact that most people who live in the first world operate under the normalcy bias (see link)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias

and have no concept of what black swann event are or how and why they occur.

How many people who live in the first world have really experienced hunger? In the United States, how many people have actually ever had to go 48 or 72 hour without any food. Remember, when I said Patriots event had an incident of cannibalism in it? Like the looting of towns by organized criminal gangs, in a TEOTWAWKI situation, cannibalism is going to happen (and, like in the book Patriots, the people who do it should be shot.) But to even think about this is usually too much for your average person.

One thing I want to be clear on though: I AM NOT saying Survivors is some kind of watered down version of Patriots. If anyone tells you that, you can be certain they have not read Survivors. But Survivors is not quite the shock to a non-prepper that Patriots can be. Survivors is a better book to give to the non prepper than Patriots if you are trying to get the non prepper to start preparing.

If you have not read Survivors get out and buy a copy. If you do long haul driving there is an unabridged version available on CD.

I even think there is movie potential for Survivors, provided you could find a producer and a film company not overly concerned about political correctness.

I’m currently in the process of reading Rawles next book Founders, scheduled to be released later this year. So far it’s looking very good. From what I’ve read so far, it seems to be a cross between Patriots and Survivors. I will write a review here when I’ve completed reading it.

To all of you out there around the planet, keep the faith.

Vonu

2011-07-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

In the early 1970's several people published a magazine called Vonulife with the subtitle “how to live and let live, out of sight and mind of those unwilling to let live.” The publishers of the magazine invented a new word “vonu.” Vonu means “invulnerability from coercion.”

I get the idea that the people who published the magazine were hippie types (no offense if any of the publishers are reading this), but nevertheless, I salute them for their principle of being invulnerable to coercion and their creativity to invent a new word.

So how can one be coerced?

First, there is the obvious physical coercion-coercion by physical violence or the threat of physical violence. So what countermeasures can one take against physical coercion?

Carry weapons. Use passive defenses like body armor. Study martial arts. Be fast, which enables you to elude the person(s) doing the coercion. Hide-if they cannot find you they cannot use physical coercion against you.

Second, there is the more subtle psychological coercion. So what countermeasures can one take against psychological coercion?

Study, understand, and be able to recognize the techniques used by psychological manipulators. You can goggle any of the following and get lots of information:

psychological manipulation
psychological manipulation techniques
propaganda
propaganda techniques
verbal violence
psychological coercion
guilt manipulation
psychological violence
psychopaths
sociopaths

Third, there is financial coercion. In this area, government is the biggest threat. I want to be clear, I do not advocate tax evasion. However, there are lots of reasons the government can use to seize or freeze the money you have in bank accounts, stock portfolios, mutual fund portfolios, and other financial instruments. Lawyers can do the same thing using civil lawsuits.

So what countermeasures can one take against financial coercion?

There is the option of foreign bank accounts. However, as the economy continues to decline, government regulations will make it harder to send money out of the country. This is also true for investing in foreign companies.

One can convert one’s money to cash and store it at home. There are dangers in this however.

First, your cash can be stolen. If you’re going to keep lots of cash at home I recommend a gun safe that is rated to keep guns safe in a fifteen-hundred degree fire for thirty minutes. Even with a gun safe of this type, cash is more apt to burn than guns, I suggest wrapping your cash in with two layers of aluminum foil. Keep the gun safe in a secluded part of your home. Ideally one would have a hidden space behind a wall that can be accessed easily but looks like a normal wall.

Second, if the government finds out that you have large amounts of cash at home, they will seize it and accuse you of some illegal activity, such as trafficking narcotics. So if you are going to keep large amounts of cash at home, tell no one.

Third, given the fact that the government is running the money printing presses 24/7, it’s highly likely all your U.S. currency will be good for is toilet paper. Remember, inflation is not about prices going up, it’s about the value of your money going down. Every time another dollar is put into the system, the value of every other dollar in the system drops a little more.

One can convert one’s money to precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and iridium. All of the statements given above for storing cash at home apply to storing precious metals at home, with the exception of wrapping your precious metals in aluminum foil.

WARNING: Do not store cash, precious metals, stock certificates and other financial instruments in a bank safe deposit box. In a crisis, government will declare a bank holiday and you will not be able to access your safe deposit box. The same is true if the government seizes or freezes your assets.

The best way to secure your money is to convert it into tangible assets that can be sold or bartered. Some of the better ones are:

rifles
shotguns
pistols
ammunition
freeze-dried food
dehydrated food
MRE’s
dried beans
water purification equipment
non-hybrid/non-GMO seeds
water purification chemicals
medical supplies
hardware
fuel
portable cooking equipment
energy devices
liquor
tobacco
antibiotics
over the counter medications

(See my article Crisis, Martial Law, and Black Market Operations for a more detailed list)

http://knowledgeisthekilleroffear.blogspot.com/2010/04/crisis-martial-law-and-black-market.html

The list is potentially endless. I recommend you study your particular area to determine what items are in high demand.

Remember, coercion is a fact of life. Do what you can to avoid it.

How They Attack You When You Give Useful Information

2011-05-10T07:24:00.000-07:00

I try to give useful information on my web site. Apparently that scares some people.

A web site can be attacked directly or indirectly. My web site site was attacked directly and indirectly.

My web site was attacked directly and my article on cold weather survival was deleted. It is back up now. Direct attacks are easy to see. This has happened to several very high volume web sites like George Ure’s Urban Survival (www.urbansurvival.com) Stan Deyo’s web site (www.standeyo.com), and Steve Quayle ‘s web site (www.stevequayle.com).

The indirect attack on my web site was very sneaky. My article Principles of Accurate Analysis and Synthesis was the DI-Daily Insight link on the web site www.codenameinsight.com for the date 04-25-11. When I last clicked that link it took me to the following web address:

www.hancinema.net/watch-stream-korean-drama-Really_Really_like_you_full_episode-4-english-subtitled.html

In simple terms, someone hacked the Code Name Insight website and redirected that link. Someone did not want that article to be read. It’s also worth noting that the redirected link mentions Korea, because it has a personal meaning from a time in my past. In case you’re wondering, I’m not Korean. I’m basically a European mixed breed-English-Irish-German-French.

So what’s the lesson to other bloggers and writers? If you get your writing linked on web sites, go back periodically and check the link’s to make sure they have not been redirected.

So who would do this? Probably government. Read the article Principles of Accurate Analysis and Synthesis and ask yourself is there anything in it government might not want you to know.

By the time you see this, the person(s) who did this might fix the link. I’ve tried to get in touch with the webmaster at Code Name Insight to fix the link but either the webmaster is very busy, or my e-mails to the webmaster are being blocked.

Perhaps you the reader could send the Code Name Insight webmaster the link to this article? The webmaster’s e-mail address is webmaster@codenameinsight.com

A word to all the white hat hackers out there: It would be very nice if you could come up with a system to trace attacks such as this back to their source that is relatively easy for the non-computer professional to use. Perhaps it could be built directly into web sites.

Readers please forward the link to this article to your friends and ask them to forward it to their friends. Knowledge IS the killer of fear.

Principles of Accurate Analysis and Synthesis

2011-05-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

Principles of Accurate Analysis and Synthesis

This article is about making predictions. Predictions are just best guesses of what is going to happen in the future based on known intelligence (information). This article can be useful for any type of prediction including military prediction, business prediction, and science prediction

Analysis is the process of breaking down known pieces of information into smaller pieces of information so that the details can be studied.

Synthesis is the process of putting the studied small pieces of information together in a way that will paint a picture of possible future events.

Data analysis and synthesis should be based on facts or data that has a high order of probability of being accurate.

1. Avoid preconceived notions. Just because an event happened a certain way in the past does not mean it will happen the same way at this point in time. By repeating the same action over and over again, a good enemy can lull you into believing that he will never change tactics. Then he kills you.

View every situation as a blank slate, even if that situation is similar to a past situation. Enemies that don’t change their tactics from time to time do not survive long. This means change will come at some point even though the situation’s are similar to past ones.

2. Think cause and effect. If you want to understand an effect, study the effect’s cause. If you want to understand a cause, study the effect produced by that cause.

3. Do not rely on just a few sources of information. Get your information (intelligence) from as many sources as possible-internet-books-magazines-libraries-talking to people. Also, don’t be an intelligence snob. Get your information from the good. Get your information from the bad. Get your information from the ugly. Don’t be afraid of getting information from sources that are so low they can sky-dive off a piece of paper.

4. Listen to the dissenting opinions. The majority is often wrong. Why? Because the majority is made up of individuals who fall into that broad and general category known as “average.” How do average individuals behave? Average. This means they are susceptible to peer pressure (cause) and to group-think (effect).

At this point lets be clear: groups do not think. Only individuals think. What group-think really refers to is a situation where a few individuals in a group (usually the more popular or charismatic individuals) do the thinking and everyone else in the group just goes along.

Truth is not determined by consensus. At one time, not so long ago, you could go to the greatest universities on this planet and talk to the most learned men of science, and they would tell you, with a straight face that if you sailed your ship too far out to sea you would fall off the earth because the earth was flat. The fact that they had a consensus did not make their idea true.

5. Remember that big changes for better or worse happen extremely fast. If something big happens, it is going to happen fast. Think Pearl Harbor for example. Think stock market crashes’.

6. You don’t have all the information. In fact, you’re lucky if you have half of it. And, if and when you get the other half, the half you have now will be out of date.

7. The universe we live in is a chaotic, non-linear system. This means that some things cannot be predicted, yet via observation patterns can be detected. Always look for patterns in data that seems totally chaotic. Often patterns will appear.

8. Small details matter. By observing small details, you may catch a pattern that you would otherwise miss.

9. Be on guard for disinformation. Enemies will put out false data. More dangerous enemies will put out false data mixed with true data. Sometimes the false data mixed with the true data will be something crazy. This is done to make the person looking at the data have a knee jerk psychological reaction. The person looking at the data thinks that if the source of the information can come up with something this crazy, the source is crazy, and one should believe none of that source’s data.

When looking at data and you come across something crazy, study it just as you would study any other data. Then move onto the next piece of data.

It’s worth noting that the disinformation an enemy puts out can tell you as much about that enemy as true data. The nature of the disinformation will often tell you what your enemy is trying to hide and what your enemy fears.

Cold Weather Survival

2011-05-05T08:18:00.001-07:00

Cold Weather Survival-I had to re-post this as a hacker deleted it.

Cold kills. That’s a fact. Cold kills via hypothermia. Hypothermia is the term given to the condition when the amount of body heat lost to the environment exceeds the heat produced by the body.

The symptoms of hypothermia include: Shivering, confusion, decreased activity, clumsiness, shallow breathing, and slow heart rate.

Wet cold is defined as cold that goes down to 14 degrees farenheight. In wet cold, the ground freezes at night and thaws out during the day. Dry cold is defined as cold that goes below 14 degrees farenheight and rarely goes above this temperature. Since water freezes at 32 degrees’ farenheight, in dry cold the ground stays frozen all the time. This is important as being wet increases the loss of body heat.

There are 4 basic rules about clothing for cold weather.

keep it-------Clean
avoid--------Overheating
wear it-------Loose and in layers
keep it-------Dry

Keep it Clean-Dirt clogs up the air spaces in your clothing and reduce their insulating ability. The same is true for soap, so make sure washed clothes are completely rinsed out.

Avoid Overheating-If you overheat in very cold weather you will sweat. The sweat will then freeze and make you even colder.

Wear it Loose and in layers-This also helps prevent overheating. Wearing several thin layers of clothing can produce a lot more insulation than a single layer of thicker clothing.

Keep it Dry-The previous two rules have a lot to do with this. The human body cools itself to a large extent by a process called evaporative cooling. In everyday terms we call that process sweating. Being wet in a cold environment creates the same effect, even if the liquid is not sweat.

Consider the 50-50-50-50 rule: A normal adult without specialized cold water protective clothing has a 50-50 chance of surviving for 50 minutes in water that is 50 degrees farenheight.

Keep as dry as possible at all cost. One modern way to keep dry when overheating is to wear clothing made of Gore-Tex material. This material has pores in it large enough to let sweat evaporate out, but small enough to keep out water in the form of rain and melted snow.

Wool is another good clothing material for cold weather because it wicks water away from the body to the outside of the clothing. Traditional wool is very scratchy and uncomfortable, however, a modern form of wool called Moreno Wool is a lot more comfortable and has all the benefits of standard wool.

FROSTBITE-Frostbite occurs when body tissue freezes and thaws out. The hands, feet and head are particularly vulnerable to frostbite. For the feet, I suggest socks made out of Moreno Wool. If your feet get wet, this material will wick the moisture away from your skin. These socks are available in the hunting department of your Wal-Mart type establishments and at dedicated outdoor supply stores.

For the hands, gloves are essential. Ideally, the gloves should be waterproof and provide good insulation without having a major effect on manual dexterity, so you can do things like shooting a gun. I like the neoprene gloves as they meet all those criteria.

Protecting your head from the cold is important because 20 percent of your body heat is lost through your head. In cold weather the hat should be considered mandatory. If the cold is severe with high wind, your also going to need to protect your face, ears, and neck from frostbite. If you look at your local Wal-Mart type establishment or in outdoor catalogs catalog’s like Cabella’s you will find garments that you pull over your head. These garments cover everything except your eyes, nose, and mouth. However, in extreme cold with high wind, these areas will have to be covered as well. For gear to cover these areas, look to military supply catalogs like Brigade Quartermaster.

Snowblindness is a factor to consider if your going to be in the cold for long periods in areas where it snows. Snowblindness is caused by light reflecting off of the snow. A pair of sunglasses with polarized lenses will prevent snowblindness. In a pinch, one can cut two small slits in a piece of cardboard or wood and attach it around your head with a piece of string.

Why do so many people die from cold via hypothermia? In his book Survival Psychology, psychologist Dr. John Leach Ph.D. cites the work of J. Bligh to find the reasons. They are:

1. Misfortune-This refers to events like airplanes crashing, boats capsizing, or even failure of home heating equipment. The Lesson: If you are flying over Alaska or boating in Canada, bring along the appropriate protective clothing. If your home is in a region that get’s extremely cold, have a backup method of heating your home AND some very good cold weather clothing that is rated to protect you to the lowest outdoor winter temperature in your area. (The worst case scenario is you might have to leave your home and be in the outdoors).

2. Miscalculation-Inaccurate assessment of one’s situation. For example, you underestimate how cold it is. The Lesson: Get correct information about the weather situation before you go out. For example, your going hunting and you believe, incorrectly, that the temperature is going to 40 degrees farenheight with a 5 mile per hour wind when in reality the temperature is going to 15 degrees farenheight with a 20 mile per hour wind. If you dress for the 40 degrees and 5 mile per hour wind, your going to have problems. If you do not have accurate weather data, you cannot plan and dress accordingly.

3. Misplaced confidence-Inaccurate assessment of one’s ability to survive in cold weather or believing, incorrectly, that if you do get hypothermia there will be someone to come to your rescue. The Lesson: You are not Superman, and Superman will not be there to rescue you. DO NOT OVERESTIMATE YOUR OWN ABILITY, ESPECIALLY WHEN IN COLD WEATHER.

4. Logistic failure-Not bringing adequate cold weather clothing and survival gear with you. The Lesson: This one ties in with # 1,2, and 3. WHEN IN DOUBT, OVERESTIMATE THE SEVERITY OF THE COLD AND BRING MORE GEAR THAN YOU NEED.

5. Individual pathophysiological susceptibility-This refers to individuals who have medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to the cold. The Lesson: If you have medical problems like hypothyroidism (low thyroid), heart disease, diabetes, problems with mobility, etc. you are going to be much more vulnerable to the effects of the cold. As such, PLAN ACCORDINGLY.

My state, Alabama, is not usually thought of as a cold state. However, Alabama has some of the largest extremes in temperature in the U.S.A. Summers often reach temperatures of over 100 degrees farenheight, and in winter nighttime temperatures go below 20 degrees farenheight. Some of you have winters much colder than that, but I doubt many of you have temperature ranges that extreme.

I’m often amazed how some people will go out in the middle of winter, say to the store, with nothing but a shirt on. The thought process is something like this: The store is only 3 miles away, I’ll only be out of my car as I walk from the parking lot into the store. What could happen?

In answer to that question, my reply is: “A damn lot!”

What if your car breaks down on a rural road, and your out of cell phone range? What if you have to change a tire? What if the weather changes dramatically for the worst while you are in the store shopping?

My solution to these potential problems is to keep the following items in your car:

1. A light, compact jacket that gives you some rain/snow protection.
2. An emergency space blanket or bag. These are made of metal foil and they reflect heat back to your body. The bags are better than the blankets. Ideally you would have one of each.
3. An emergency poncho for extra weather protection and extra warmth. These are available at Wal-Mart type establishments for around $1.99. Orange is the best color for visibility-choose this color if it is available.
4. 3 disposable Bic type lighters left in the plastic package until needed.
5. 4 boxes of waterproof matches.
6. 1 Zippo type lighter with extra flints and a small can of lighter fluid.
7. Kindling material for starting fires. Cotton balls smeared with Vaseline Petroleum Jelly kept in a nalgane bottle are a good choice.
8. A good flashlight, ideally and LED flashlight, to help you find your way and signal for rescue.
9. A signal mirror-to signal for rescue.
10. A whistle-it’s sound can go much farther than a human voice

The best warning about cold weather survival is this: Don’t get caught with your pants down. Be prepared.

Some Basic Survival Questions

2010-12-08T17:53:00.000-08:00

This is and article I wrote in the now defunct Idaho Observer.

From the December 2006 Idaho Observer:

Some basic survival questions

by Kevin Swindle

Following is by no means a comprehensive list of survival questions. This is simply a bare bones list of questions to get you thinking about survival and your own situation.

1. How much potable (drinkable) water do I have stored and how long would it last if all sources of water were cut off? Ideally, you should have 2 gallons per person per day. (3 gallons per person per day if your stored food is freeze dried or dehydrated.)

2. How much food do I have stored and how long would it last if all sources of food were cut off and all electric power were cut? (Hint: this means all your frozen food and foods requiring refrigeration are gone.)

3. How much essential medication for myself and my other family members do I have on hand and how long would they last if there was no way to get refills or if there was a medical emergency?

4. How much emergency medical supplies do I have? Do I have enough for every family member?

5. Do I have a firearm for each adult family member? Do I have enough ammunition for each firearm (The minimum should be at least 1,000 rounds of ammunition per firearm)?

6. Are the firearms I have in good working order? (This means old guns that have not been shot in 50 years should be considered unreliable until proven otherwise. Also, guns like a .22 caliber pistol probably won’t help much in defending your home from a group of intruders). Ideally the caliber of all handguns you have should begin with the number 4. (Notable exceptions to this rule are the 9mm, 10mm, .357 magnum, the .38 special, and the .22 magnum.) Ideally, all shotguns should be either 10, 12, or 20 gauge. When choosing rifles, reliability should be the # 1 consideration in survival situations. The AK-47 and its many variants are best in this area, but they are not as accurate as other military type rifles such as the AR-15, FN-FAL, and SKS carbine. Most deer rifles are excellent in this area as well.

NOTE: HAVING ANY FIREARM EVEN IF IT IS LESS THAN IDEAL IS BETTER THAN HAVING NO FIREARM.

7. If I live in a cold weather climate, do I have proper clothing to survive assuming all energy sources were cut off? In simple terms this means its cold and you have no heat. (Space blankets and space bags, which are made of metal foil which reflects body heat, are a low priced way to give yourself protection in this area).

8. How much CASH money do I have stockpiled for emergencies? In survival situations, you should work off the assumption that checks and credit cards will not be honored. You should have at least $200stockpiled in case of emergencies.

NOTE: HAVING ANY AMOUNT OF CASH STOCKPILED EVEN IF IT IS LESS THAN $200 IS BETTER THAN HAVING NO CASH STOCKPILED.

9. Do I have any books on survival in my personal library? If the answer is no, get some. Delta Press and Paladin Press are two of the best sources for books on survival. I recommend that you read every book you can get your hands on by Duncan Long and Ragnar Benson. These two gentlemen are, in my opinion, the best writers on survival topics on this planet.

10. Do I really know what’s going on in the world? If you don’t know what’s going on, you cannot plan for emergencies effectively. (Hint: If you get all your news from the mainstream media, you DO NOT know what is going on. That’s a fact.)

The First Lesson in Survival: Humility

2010-07-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

From the November 2006 Idaho Observer: An article I wrote for their print and online edition with an introduction by the late Don Harkins, publisher of The Idaho Observer

The first lesson in survival: Humility

We are in the middle of perilous times. If surviving our uncertain future is your goal, when presumed expertise may or may not help you, then our first lesson is humility. Kevin Swindle is a survivalist who intends to begin publishing "Kevin Swindle’s Preparedness Newsletter" early next year. Because there has been a merger of our respect for Swindle’s sincerity in providing (potential) readers with vital, cutting-edge material and our desire to perpare our (existing) readers to survive the coming storms, Swindle has provided us all with THE "point-A" perspective on the subject of survival.

by Kevin Swindle

What is humility? First of all, lets define what it is not. Humility is not shame, as the guilt merchants of the world would have you believe. HUMILITY IS THE REALIZATION THAT YOU ARE JUST ONE OF MANY IN THIS GREAT BIG WORLD, AND THAT NO MATTER HOW STRONG, INTELLIGENT, OR TALENTED YOU MAY BE, YOUR ABILITIES HAVE A DEFINITE LIMIT. To put it another way, you are not Superman.

You might be thinking, "Yeah Kevin, no kidding, that’s obvious." But is it? If you look at most people’s behavior you will quickly conclude it is not obvious. Graveyards are full of people who did not know their limits.

Here are some points to ponder on the topic of humility.

1. JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE AN EXPERT IN 1 FIELD DOES NOT MAKE YOU AN EXPERT IN EVERYTHING.

Individuals in the medical, scientific, and legal fields are particularly bad about making this mistake. They think because they are in a highly technical field this somehow makes them experts in everything. It does not.

I recently visited with my tax accountant and we talked about this topic. He told me of a medical doctor who decided he was smart enough to do his own taxes. The doctor took about a day and a half to do the taxes. He brought it in to show my accountant. My accountant reviewed the return and calmly informed the doctor he could have saved him an additional $6000.00. This doctor would not have gone to his accountant for surgery, so why did he go to himself for tax preparation? Arrogance, or more precisely, LACK OF HUMILITY.

In his excellent book Deep Survival, author Laurence Gonzalez tells of a U.S. Army Ranger who was killed on a white water rafting trip. Despite all of the survival training this Ranger had, he did not have training in white water rafting. His expert status did him no good, because his expertise did not extend to white water rafting.

Understand and know what you are an expert in, but more importantly UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE NOT AN EXPERT IN. If you are going into an area in which you are not an expert GET TRAINING through self-education, the classroom, or find someone who is an expert in the area you are going into and consult them.

2. YOU DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING. IN MOST SITUATIONS YOUR LUCKY IF YOU KNOW HALF OF IT.

OVERCONFIDENCE KILLS. If you enter into a situation thinking you have all the information, all the relevant data, you may at best be in for shock, at worst it can cost you your life.

Military history, from ancient times to the present is filled with examples of where overconfidence cost men their lives. Sometimes it caused empires to fall.

Survival situations are the most dangerous places for the overconfident person. Nature can throw things and situations at you that you could not foresee in a million years. If you face nature with the attitude that you know it all, that you’ve got all your bases covered, nature will embarrass you and maybe even kill you.

Note: CONFIDENCE is a good thing. FEAR is a killer every bit as deadly as OVERCONFIDENCE. You should not be afraid. Just avoid OVERCONFIDENCE.

OVERCONFIDENCE = LACK OF HUMILITY

Always keep this fact in your mind, especially in survival situations, whether they occur in the woods, ocean, or corporate boardroom: IN MOST SITUATIONS, YOU WILL BE LUCKY TO HAVE 50 PERCENT OF THE RELEVANT FACTS. This means that half of the facts that are relevant are unknown to you. If that doesn’t make you humble it’s likely nothing ever will.

3. ASK FOR HELP WHEN YOU NEED IT

There is nothing more stupid than to err or fail OR DIE when there are people around who are willing and able to offer you assistance. All you have to do is ask them.

LACK OF HUMILITY however, keeps many from asking for the help that is readily available. Some people just don’t like to admit they need help.

People have died, and do die on a routine basis simply because they refuse to ask for help. So the next time you find yourself in a potentially dangerous situation, and you don’t want to ask for help, you may want to ask yourself if your stupid pride (LACK OF HUMILITY) is worth dying for. Trust me, it is not.

Create your own seed vault; bypass terminator technology!

2010-06-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

This article originally appeared in both the print and online version of the October 2008 Idaho Observer

From the October 2008 Idaho Observer:
Create your own seed vault; bypass terminator technology!
By Kevin Swindle

In early 2008, the Svalbard seed vault in Norway opened. It is approximately 620 miles from the North Pole. Operated by NorGen, a gene bank, the seed vault is allegedly there to protect millions of varieties of food crops from being wiped out in wars, man-made or natural disasters. It is far more likely that giant agribusiness is using this facility to advance its genetic modification (GM) technology.

There is both anecdotal and scientific evidence supporting claims that genetically modified foods are harmful to humans and animals. Plus, a component of GM research is the propagation of "terminator seeds."

Farmers, for thousands of years, have traditionally collected seeds from the crops they grow for planting the following year. Terminator seeds are seeds genetically engineered to produce sterile seeds in the plants they produce, making farmers dependent upon agribusiness to supply seeds each year.

This would be an excellent mechanism for controlling the world’s food supply, a means of using food as a weapon. Food control could be used as a means of people control.

This terminator technology is created by inserting one plant gene and two bacterial genes into the seeds. Before sale, the seeds are soaked in the antibiotic tetracycline which activates a molecular switch in one of the bacterial genes. The inserted plant gene does not activate until the seed in the plant is near maturity. The inserted plant gene produces a toxic protein that kills the seed in it’s late stages of development.

Some scientists have speculated that the sterility trait produced by the terminator gene sequence might get into plants in the wild via cross-pollination. If such a thing did occur, over a period of centuries, "heirloom" varieties of plant life could disappear.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Mississippi-based Delta Pine and Land Company received U.S. patent number 5,723,765 for the terminator technology. Delta Pine and Land is now owned by agribusiness giant Monsanto.

Creating your own seed vault:

You may not know it, but most of you reading this article already have your own seed vault: Your freezer. At the temperatures inside most freezers, seeds will stay viable for about one hundred years.

While not absolutely necessary, some of you may want to purchase a dedicated freezer for your own seed vault, especially if the freezer you have now is extremely full. There are small chest type freezers that take up little space and are available for less than two hundred dollars.
So what seeds should you put in your own personal seed vault?

First, select non-hybrid varieties. Hybrids are the first generation (F1) offspring of two different varieties of the same species. Hybrid seeds will express the desired genetic traits of the parent plants for only one generation. As such, hybrids are not a good choice for long-term survival food production.

Second, purchase seeds from reputable sources that state in their catalogs that they do not use GM seeds. If possible purchase your seeds from heirloom sources.

Third, purchase seeds for a wide variety of food crops, both foods you like and foods you don’t like (remember, you are not just doing this for yourself, but for every person on the planet).

Even if the worse case scenarios regarding terminator seeds do not occur, having your own seed vault will be beneficial. You will have a supply of viable seeds to grow for food and you can make a contribution to agriculture by saving rare and heirloom varieties of seeds in your seed vault.

Fight the future! Just because a group of madmen want to control this planet by controlling the food, that does not mean we have to just go along with it! Teach your children the importance of food security. In the process of teaching you can introduce them to a wonderful hobby called gardening, a hobby that could potentially save their lives at some point in our increasingly uncertain future.

Kevin Swindle’s Preparedness Network

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Understanding and Treating Anaphylactic Shock

2010-06-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

Emergency Medicine

Understanding and Treating Anaphylactic Shock

1. While I do have a fair amount of medical knowledge, I am not a medical doctor. You should not attempt self-medication or self-treatment when professional medical care is available. However, for the purposes of this post, it is assumed that professional medical care will be delayed or outright unavailable. The treatments I recommend are the treatments I would give to myself and my family if professional medical care were delayed or outright unavailable.

2. Anaphylactic shock is a life threatening condition that can kill in minutes. Never, ever attempt self-treatment or improvised treatment for this condition when professional medical care is available. However, for the purposes of this article it is assumed that professional medical care will be delayed or outright unavailable.

3. For those of you with professional medical training, you will notice that I have over-simplified some of the material in this article, as it is not written for medical professional but for those with little or no medical training.

Anaphylactic shock is a life threatening condition that can be described as a system wide type 1 allergic reaction. It is most commonly caused by bee stings. Without quick treatment, this type of allergic reaction can kill in minutes.

Symptoms-flushing and itching of the skin, hives, feeling of warmth, swelling of the tongue and throat making breathing difficult, nasal congestion, throat tightness, wheezing, shortness of breath, cough, hoarseness, dizziness, low blood pressure, weakness, fainting, chest pain, feeling of doom, heart palpitations, nausea, vomiting diarrhea, bloating and cramps

Common sensitizing antigens come from the following: Bee stings, wasp stings, hornet stings, yellow jacket stings, ant stings (especially fire ants), penicillin type antibiotics, peanuts and food containing peanuts, tree nuts and food containing tree nuts, fish and foods containing fish, shellfish and foods containing shellfish, eggs and egg products, soy and soy products, milk and milk products, aspirin, ibuprofen, and other NSAIDS (non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs).

The insects listed above are Hymenoptera type insects and between 0.5 and 3 percent of the population experience system wide allergic reactions after being stung by these insects.

In the foods listed above, peanuts and foods containing peanuts are thought to be responsible for 62 percent of the deaths caused by anaphylactic reactions to food.

COMMENT: Even if you have been stung by one of the listed insects in the past and not had an anaphylactic reaction does not mean you cannot have an anaphylactic reaction the next time you are stung. The last time you were stung could have been the sting that sensitizes you immune system to that particular antigen.

TREATMENT-Most of the items for standard medical treatment are prescription drugs. We’ll look at the standard medical treatment, then address how you can get those prescription drugs, the look at over the counter items you can use for improvised treatment.

STANDARD TREATMENT FOR ANAPHYLACTIC SHOCK

1. The first line treatment for anaphylactic shock is epinephrine (also called adrenaline chloride) injected intramuscularly (into the muscle).

Adult Dose: 0.3 to 0.5 milliliters (0.3 to 0.5 milligrams) of 1:1000 epinephrine solution injected intramuscularly (IM). For more critical situations inject 1 to 2 milliliters (0.1 to 0.2 milligrams) of 1:10,000 epinephrine solution intramuscularly (IM).

Child Dose: 0.01 milligram of epinephrine solution per kilogram of body weight ? 1:1000 or 1:10,000

COMMENT: Epinephrine treatment of anaphylactic shock is essential. The injectable form of this drug requires a prescription. The inhaleable form of this drug is available over the counter in as Primeatine Mist. The tablet form of this drug, ephedrine, is available over the counter as Primeatine Tablets and as the white cross or mini-thin tablets in convenience stores. INHALEABLE EPINEPHRINE AND EPHEDRINE TABLETS ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR INJECTABLE EPINEPHRINE IN THE TREATMENT OF ANAPHYLACTIC SHOCK. However, we will look at how they can be used as an improvised treatment if standard treatments are delayed or outright unavailable.

There are three ways to get injectable epinephrine from your doctor.

1. The multi-dose vial-This is a good option to keep around the house IF you have medical training and are comfortable giving injections to yourself and others.

2. The Ana-Kit-This is a kit that you can keep at home or keep on your person. (You could probably keep it in your car in a small cooler. Heat causes epinephrine to deteriorate.) I like the Ana-Kit because it has enough epinephrine for a second injection if necessary.

3. The Epi-Pen-This is a good option for people with little or no medical training and for people who are not comfortable giving injections to themselves or others. The Epi-Pen is an auto injector. You simply place it against your skin and activate it. When activated a spring loaded needle deploys penetrating the skin and injecting the epinephrine. If your really afraid of shots, this is the best option.

If you have never had an anaphylactic reaction, tell your doctor you simply want to be prepared just in case. Some doctors will say yes and give you the prescription, others will not. If your doctor will not write the prescription, consider asking your dentist or veterinarian. (I often find veterinarians are some of the most down to earth medical professionals. It’s hard to develop a God complex working on animals. Many times veterinarians will give you prescriptions for drugs like this, if you only ask. However, for liability and legal reasons, the prescription will have to be written for a pet, real or made up.)

2. In addition to the epinephrine, treatment with an antihistamine that blocks histamine 1 receptors, while not absolutely necessary, is highly desirable. The best drug of this type to use is diphenhydramine (Benadryl). The adult dose is 10 to 50 milligrams injected intravenously (IV) or intramuscularly (IM) every 4 hours as needed. If injected intravenously (IV) the IV rate should not exceed 25 milligrams per minute. The child dose is 12.5 to 25 milligrams by mouth 4 times per day.

COMMENT: diphenhydramine (Benadryl) is available over the counter in the form of syrup, capsules, and tablets. The injectable form of this drug requires a prescription.

If diphenhydramine (Benadryl) is not available, other antihistamines can be used, such as:

chlorpheniramine maleate (Chlor-Trimeton)-over the counter
promethazine (Phenergan)-prescription only in U.S., over the counter in Great Britian
triloprolidine-over the counter
meclizine (Antivert)-over the counter, also sold as Dramamine Less Drowsy Formula
cyclizine (Marezine)-over the counter

3. If possible, in addition to epinephrine treatment plus an antihistamine that blocks histamine 1 receptors, treatment with an antihistamine that blocks histamine 2 receptors can be useful. A common drug of this type, available over the counter is ranitidine (Zantac). The dosage is 150 milligrams by mouth twice per day. Cimetidine (Tagamet) is another drug of this type.

COMMENT: In the professional medical setting these drugs are almost always given by the intravenous (IV) route for the treatment of anaphylactic shock.

Optional #1. For breathing difficulties caused by anaphylactic shock that do not respond to epinephrine, inhaleable bronchodilators are useful. Albuterol (Proventil, Ventolin) is a drug of choice for this. The adult dose is 1 to 2 inhaled puffs every 4 to 6 hours.

Optional # 2. For very severe anaphylactic reactions or for the treatment of delayed effects of anaphylactic reactions, corticosteroids can be used. Methylprednisolone (Medrol Dosepack) or dexamethasone (Decadron) can be given by mouth in the form of tablet. These drugs can also be given intramuscularly (IM) or intravenously (IV).

Optional # 3. The drug glucagon (GlucaGen) and dopamine (Intropin) also have use in treating low blood pressure caused by anaphylactic shock that does not respond to epinephrine treatment.

Glucagon (GlucaGen) is for use in anaphylactic shock patients who are taking the non-selective beta-blockers like propranolol (Inderall) for blood high blood pressure. In these patients, glucagon should be used in addition to epinephrine, not in place of epinephrine.

SUMMARY OF STANDARD MEDICAL TREATMENT OF ANAPHYLACTIC SHOCK

1. Injectable epinephrine solution-absolutely essential
2. Injectable or oral diphenhydramine (Benadryl) or other anti-histamine-highly desirable but not essential
3. Oral ranitidine (Zantac)-desirable but not essential
4. Inhaleable albuterol (Proventil, Ventolin) for breathing difficulties that persist despite epinephrine treatment.
5. Injectable or oral corticosteroid treatment for delayed anaphylactic symptoms.

IMPROVISED TREATMENT USING OVER THE COUNTER DRUGS

Anaphylactic shock is a life threatening condition that can kill in minutes. Never, ever attempt self-treatment or improvised treatment for this condition when professional medical care is available. However, for the purposes of this article it is assumed that professional medical care will be delayed or outright unavailable.

1. Epinephrine inhalers such as Primeatine Mist-These inhalers ARE NOT a substitute for epinephrine injection, however, if injectable epinephrine is delayed or outright unavailable, these inhalers are certainly better than nothing. Use according to directions on the box. The goal of this improvised treatment is to prevent airway constriction and to get some epinephrine into the bloodstream via absorption through the lungs.

2. Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) Syrup-Take 2 capfuls of diphenhydramine syrup and gargle for 1 minute then swallow. The goal of this improvised treatment is to keep the throat from swelling shut due to the anaphylactic reaction and to get the antihistamine into the bloodstream. If you do not have the syrup but have tablets or capsules, you can still make use of the drug. Chew the tablets and then put some water into your mouth and gargle the drug and water solution. If you have capsules, open them and mix them with water or any available liquid and gargle the solution.

3. Ephedrine tablets’ such as the white cross or mini-thin tablets sold in convenience stores. These tablets are also sold as Primeatine Tablets. Take 1 or 2 of these 25 milligram tablets. If ephedrine tablets are unavailable you can take pseudo-ephedrine (Sudafed) tablets or phenylephrine tablets (Sudafed PE). These are also beta-agonist like ephedrine and will give some degree of relief. The goal of this improvised treatment is to get epinephrine like oral drugs into the blood stream.

4. While not technically a drug, hot tea contains the drug theophylline, which is used to treat asthma and can be used to treat anaphylactic shock if other drugs are not available. If hot tea is available, drink two cups of it.

5. Mormon Tea is a herb that contains ephedrine. The seeds for it are available from Richters Herbs. The dried leaves make a good addition to a herbal medical kit. Drink the tea hot to release the ephedrine.

Food Storage and a Preparedness Fantasy

2010-06-02T15:36:00.001-07:00

I hope all of my readers have now started some kind of food storage program. As I’ve stated before, for most people, money will be the limiting factor in your preparedness plans. Do the best you can with what money you have NOW. Even if you can only store a small amount of food, storing some food is better than storing no food.

Here is an example of what WILL NOT work if the situation is bad enough:

One preparedness/survival fantasy I’ve heard many people tell goes like this: “Kevin, if there is a food shortage I’ll just get out my rifle, go out to the woods, and kill a deer to feed my family.” Depending on what part of the country the person is from, they may replace deer with whatever animal is plentiful in their area.

What is my reply to this fantasy? Bullshit. Conditionally.

This strategy might work in the event of a severe economic downturn or other events that are relatively minor. However, if a “big” event occurs, this strategy will fail and will likely get you killed.

First let me define what I mean when I say a “big” event.

1. An exchange of as little as 20 ICBM’s (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) carrying nuclear warheads between the United States and a foreign power. Its worth noting that most ICBM’s can carry at least 6 nuclear warheads and each of those warheads can be independently targeted. In practical terms that means a single ICBM carrying 6 warheads can take out 6 cities. So in this hypothetical scenario of a 20 missile exchange, lets say that Russia launches 10 ICBM’s against the United States and the United States launches 10 ICBM’s against Russia. If each missile carries 6 independently targeted nuclear warheads (some ICBM’s can carry a lot more than 6) that means that 60 cities in the United States and 60 cities in Russia are either destroyed or non-functional. For our purposes, forget about the cities in Russia (I have no readers in Russia, yet.) However, do consider that 60 cities in the United States are either destroyed or non-functional. Do the math: 10 missiles with 6 independently targeted nuclear warheads = 60 cities destroyed.

(On a side note, if you are under the belief that the proposed U.S. anti-ballistic missile program could stop this, you are mistaken. Russia has developed a new missile called the Topol-M, referred to by the U.S. military as the SS-27. It is essentially the most advanced ICBM ever created, the fastest ICBM ever created, and it is invulnerable to EMP (electro-magnetic pulse). On 30 May 2007, the Russian news agency Pravda announced it tested the R-500 missile, a version of the Topol-M that can carry multiple independently targeted warheads. This missile traveled 3,400 miles in 24 minutes. Both of these missiles are carried on mobile launchers, so they are very difficult to target).

2. An asteroid as small as 1/10th of a mile wide hitting any spot on the North American continent, an asteroid as small as ½ mile wide hitting anywhere in the western hemisphere, or an asteroid 1 mile wide or larger hitting anywhere on the planet. If the 1 mile wide asteroid hit anywhere on the planet, it would kick up enough dust into the atmosphere to block out the sun for 3 months to 2 years or more, even if it hits in the ocean. Also, even if it hit on the other side of the planet, it would kick up debris so high they would go into space and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and fall back down on the other side of the globe. This would occur even if the asteroid came down in the ocean. We’re not talking about small rocks either. We’re talking boulder size or larger chunks of rock, chunks of rocks big enough to destroy anything from large buildings to small towns.

3. A civil war in the United States. This is not as far fetched as some of you might think. A massive economic downturn might be all that is necessary.

4. The U.S.A. is invaded by a foreign power. My nomination for the most probable invaders would be a Russian-Chinese alliance. Such an alliance would most likely have help from North Korea, Syria, and Iran. I think their strategy would be to first seize everything west of the Rocky Mountains, including Alaska and Hawaii. This would be done with a combination of airborne operations, amphibious landings and with containers on container ships modified to carry troops. Such an alliance could do this without using nuclear weapons. However, given the number of troops China has, the U.S. would probably have use tactical nuclear weapons (as opposed to strategic nuclear weapons) to stop this invasion.

Now that you know what I mean by a “big” event, let me explain why the survivalist’s deer hunting fantasy will not work if a big event occurs.

You may recall that in a past issue, I CONSERVATIVELY estimated that for every 1 person or family that prepares, there will be 200 who do not. In practical terms, that means when a big event occurs, there are going to be a lot of hungry people. When their small supply of food runs out, many of those people who own guns will head for the woods to try to kill deer or whatever animal is plentiful in their region.

Think about that for a minute. Tens of thousands of people in each state heading for the woods with guns. Most of these people will have no hunting experience, AND they will be starving. In practical terms, that means they will shoot at anything that moves, and they will not take the time to identify their target before shooting. Do you want to be in those woods with those people? Better bring your bulletproof vest and body armor.

Even if you are in those woods, it really does not matter. With that many people in the woods, the supply of game will be killed down to nothing in a very short time. It does not matter what state you are in and how plentiful your supply of game is. My state, Alabama, has one of the highest deer populations in the nation (some experts say that Texas is the only state with a larger deer population than Alabama). After a few weeks, the deer population in Alabama would be decimated down to essentially nothing.

However, it gets worse. In addition to having to dodge bullets from non-experienced, starving hunters who will shoot anything that moves, there are other dangers. If the big event # 1 that I listed previously occurs, and exchange of ICBM’s between the U.S.A. and a foreign power, any game you kill is likely to be radioactive. If 60 U.S. cities were hit, there is going to be a tremendous amount of radioactive fallout. It will be in the water the deer drink and in the plants the deer eat. So if you eat the meat from one of these deer, the radioactive fallout will be in you. Depending on how much fallout you ingest, you could live for years with almost a 100 percent probability that you will develop cancer sometime in the future, or you could die a gruesome death in a period of a few days. Still want to head for the woods to get them deer?

If big event # 2, an asteroid 1 mile wide or larger landing anywhere on the planet, land or ocean, occurred, it would kick enough dust up into the air to block out the sun for 2 months to 2 years or more. So if you are going to feed yourself and your family by killing deer, your going to need night vision goggles and a night vision rifle scope. But that ain’t all. An asteroid this large will kick large boulders up into space, and most of them will come down and re-enter the earth’s atmosphere. Because of something called friction, when these boulders re-enter the earth’s atmosphere, they will get very hot, red hot. If one of these red hot boulders comes down in a forest, your going to have a forest fire. So in addition to your night vision goggles and your night vision scope, you may want to bring some fireproof clothing and a portable supply of breathable air, or a device to filter the smoke from the air you breath. Still want to be Davy Crockett?

If big event # 3 or # 4 occurs, you still face the problems of non-experienced, starving hunters who will shoot anything that moves being out there, and the problem of all the game being killed off in a very short time. Also, in events # 3 and # 4, you may run into enemy soldiers who have guns. When they hear you fire at them deer, they will direct a lot of firepower in your direction.

It still gets worse. One word: cannibalism. Yes, it is sickening, but it has happened in the past under extreme situations and there is no reason to think it will not happen again when extreme situations occur in the future.

Picture this: A man who did not prepare for his family is out in the woods with a gun. He had enough food to last a week under normal conditions, but in the crisis of the big event, he stretched it out and made it last 3 weeks. After three weeks, he heads for the woods. All of the game has been killed. Suddenly he sees you, but you do not see him. Keep in mind he has a starving wife and 3 starving children. Do you think it is far fetched to think he might shoot you? After all, if he brings home fresh meat, do you think his starving wife and kids will ask where it came from? Remember, he butchered you in the woods, so there is no evidence that the meat is that of another human. If you think this is far fetched, go to the internet and do a search using the word “cannibalism”. You will see the many times it has happened in history.

So, if you have the survival feed your family by deer hunting fantasy, I suggest you give it up. If the previous material does not convince you to give up this fantasy, I doubt anything will.

So what kind of food should you store? Freeze-dried is by far the best. The company Mountain House is one I highly recommend. I have some of their individual meal packs I purchased in 1999, just in case the Y2K scenario came true. They are past the expiration date by at least 2 years and they are still fine to eat. Mountain House also manufactures freeze-dried food in large steel cans. They cover the outside of the steel cans with a chemical similar to clear nail polish to protect the food from oxygen in case there are any microscopic defects in the steel. Mountain House claims, and I believe their claim, that they have tested freeze-dried food in these steel cans that is over 20 years old, and that it was still fresh and good tasting.

The down side to freeze-dried food is that it is relatively expensive compared to other survival foods. Also, you need water to prepare freeze-dried food, so in an emergency freeze-dried food will take more of your water supply than other foods.

Dehydrated food also puts a drain on your water supply. However, it does not last as long as freeze-dried food. If you have to pick between freeze-dried food or dehydrated food, I recommend you go with freeze-dried. The cost difference between the two is not that great.

However, as I have stated before, for most people, the biggest limiting factor in their preparedness plans will be money. So what do you do if you can’t afford the freeze-dried option?

MRE’s (meals ready to eat) or as at least one member of the military has called them, “meals ready to exit”, are the field ration of the United States Military. I’ve eaten them, and the taste of some of the items is very good. However, the shelf life of MRE’s is highly dependent on temperature, much more so than freeze-dried food. ( NOTE: High temperatures will shorten the shelf life of ALL types of stored food.) If you have a cool place to store them, MRE’s are not a bad option. I WOULD NOT rely on MRE’s for more than 20 percent of my stored food supply. Why? In the military there is a saying that is often repeated: “Remember, your rifle was made by the lowest bidder.” So are MRE’s. What if you get a bad batch? If you buy MRE’s for food storage I suggest you buy them from many different suppliers. This will reduce the chance of any portion of your MRE’s being from a bad batch.

If money is a real problem for you in your preparedness efforts, dried beans and grains are what you may have to consider. I DO NOT ENDORSE VEGETARIANISM AND I DO NOT THINK IT IS A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE. Raising a child on a vegetarian diet is, in my opinion, child abuse. Why? Because a vegetarian diet lacks something that children need for development, vitamin B-12. Many vegetarians claim you can get vitamin B-12 from a vegetarian diet. They are wrong. What you get from a vegetarian diet are analogs of vitamin B-12, chemicals that have a similar but not the exact 3-dimensional structure of vitamin B-12. These analogs DO NOT function properly in the biochemical reactions in the body requiring vitamin B-12. Vegetarian diets are also low on another important nutrient, carnosine.

One can however, get all your protein requirements using dried beans and grains. Have you ever heard of a dish called red beans and rice? Do you know why red beans and rice is often associated with good health? Because this particular combination provides all of the essential amino acids in the proper ratios to produce a complete protein.

It is beyond the scope of this article to go into the details of what beans to mix with what grains. However, you can buy books that list the amino acid contents of all common foods. Using one of these books you can easily determine what combinations will provide a complete protein. You need a combination of beans and grains that provides adequate amount of ESSENTIAL amino acids to get a complete protein. Essential amino acids are the amino acids that your body cannot manufacture and must be obtained from food. If you use beans and grains as your primary method of food storage, you should also store supplemental vitamin B-12 in the form of tablets or in the sublingual supplemental form (a tablet or liquid of vitamin B-12 that dissolves and is absorbed under your tongue.). Vitamin B-12 is also available in injectable form, but you need a prescription to get it.

WARNING: I DO NOT recommend that you use soybeans as a storage food. Soybeans and soy products in general, like tofu, ARE NOT HEALTHY. Soybeans are loaded with phyto-estrogens. Phyto-estrogens are estrogens, female sex hormones, made by plants. DO NOT FEED YOUNG MALE CHILDREN SOY PRODUCTS, ESPECIALLY SOY “MILK”. In fact, don’t feed soy products to ANY children or teenagers. Soy products also contain chemicals that inhibit protein absorption.

You can buy a lot of dried beans and a lot of dried grains for very little money. You should store the dried beans and grains in plastic sealable containers in a cool, dry place. It is a good idea to put duct tape or Gorilla tape around the seals on these plastic containers as an extra precaution against insects getting to the dried beans and grain. When you put the dried beans and grains in the plastic containers, leave the beans and grains in the plastic bag in which they were purchased.

The company Emergency Essentials sells “SuperPails” of many beans and grains. These pails contain about 45 pounds of product. This company is also a good source for MRE’s and freeze-dried food, as well as other preparedness supplies. Their web site is: www.beprepared.com Their phone number is 1-800-999-1863. Call and request their monthly mail out. For the record, I have no financial ties with this company, but if they ask you how you heard about them, please mention this blogspot.

Human See Human Do: Deception and Why it Works So Well

2010-05-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

Human See Human Do

Deception and Why it Works So Well

Introduction

As a species, we humans are very easy to deceive. As if that were not bad enough, certain individual and groups of individual in our species earn their living deceiving others. These include lawyers, politicians, lobbyist, special interest groups, and big business. The individuals and groups of individuals who make this all possible on a day to day basis are collectively referred to as mass media

Before the rise of mass communication, especially visual mass communications (television), it was more or less impossible for a single individual or a small group of individuals to deceive on a grand scale. A single individual or small group might deceive the people of their town, village, city, or region, but that was the extent of how far an individual or small group could deceive.

Today using modern visual mass communications (television), a single individual or small group of individuals such as lawyers, politicians, or robbers in suits can sell the other members of their species almost anything. Please note that the word “sell” in that last sentence was placed there purposely. Deception is essentially selling, usually the selling of an underlying idea that is often hidden on purpose.

Psychology

As human beings we gather quite a bit of our information about life by watching others. If the other humans we observe are competent and have no intention to deceive, the information we gather will usually be accurate and help us lead more productive lives. But what if the other humans we observe intend to deceive? What if they modify their words and actions to sell us on their ideas?

It’s very important to note that it is much easier to fool human beings using visual information than it is to fool human beings using audio information. This is why television marketing is so successful. Indeed, if you want a statement to sum up deception of human beings, this is it: The eyes deceive us.

Most human beings in industrialized societies get most of their information from television, a means of communication that exploits the human vulnerability to visual deception. This present’s a multitude of opportunities for individuals or groups of individuals who wish to deceive us, or, more correctly stated, want to sell us their ideas.

Concrete Examples

Tugging on the heart strings: This method uses strong visual data to get the human being emotional about a given problem. Once the human has gotten emotional, the messenger then suggest a solution for the problem that helps the messenger’s agenda while hiding the real cause of the problem. A common example of this is the television adds that show starving, malnourished children in third world countries. Seeing children in such condition id deplorable and few humans are not affected emotionally when seeing such sights. So then the messenger takes advantage of the emotionally affected human and may suggest, ever so covertly, that the emotionally effected human should somehow feel guilty over this and send in a donation.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to charitable giving. If you have the means, one should give to the poor. However, for this example it’s worth looking at what the messenger does not tell you.

In many of these countries where you see the children dying from malnutrition, the reason these children don’t have enough food is because warlords and corrupt government officials hog all the food for themselves and dole it out to their sycophants. Also, the people in these countries are prevented, by their governments, from owning firearms. Thus, they have no way to remedy the situation.(My solution to world hunger would involve the distribution of simple break open shotguns and ammunition to the starving people, starting with women who have children. Let them make examples of a few warlords and corrupt politicians who hoard the food. Putting fifty buckshot in someones center mass sends a strong message.)

The food the United States and other countries give the poor people of these countries just continues these poor people’s states of dependency. Giving people food does not address the fundamental problem: Why can't they produce and distribute enough food? There is an old saying that goes like this: “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” Maybe we should give the worlds poor the skills and resources to be independent and self reliant. One charity I greatly like who does this is Heifer International. They give livestock to poor people all over the world to help them achieve self-reliance. Their web address is www.heifer.com

Expert fixations: This method uses visual deception to present a picture that the people who are speaking are experts whose ideas and solutions should be trusted. A very good example of this technique is the Sunday morning panel news shows. They have supposed “experts” dressed in nice suits and ties. The “experts” then sit around a nice table and discuss the matter at hand in the most serious tone of voice. The set up implies, ever so subtly, that these “experts” only have everyone’s best interest at heart at that it is impossible for these “experts” to have their own agenda. However, if one looks at the pronouncements of these “experts”, the idea that they are experts and are free of their own agenda becomes suspect.

“Free trade benefits everyone in the United States.” Never mind that when the United States rose to global economic prominence after World War 2, the United States practiced ruthless protectionism and hit foreign products with high tariffs. Never mind the fact that the top one percent on the planet are getting richer while the other ninety nine percent are getting poorer. (See the book Bad Samaritans by Ha-Joon Chang.)

“Illegal aliens do the jobs that U.S. citizens won’t do.” Correction: Illegal aliens do jobs for wages no U.S. citizen would accept.

“Some businesses and banks are too big to fail.” Kinda like the Roman Empire, right?

“We will have to give up some of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to protect the United States from terrorism.” Really? I thought that the terrorists, not the U.S. Constitution, was the cause of terrorism.

COMMENT: The use of “experts” is one of the most effective techniques of deception used by visual mass media. Indeed, there are many people in the U.S. today who automatically give someone “expert” status if that person talks about a given subject on a television news show, never mind the fact the person has no expertise. Just because someone is on a tv news show does not make them an expert. Just because someone gets a lot of tv time does not mean they are competent in their field of "expertise".

The Bottle Neck: This method uses a setup similar to the expert fixation in that it employs a highly controlled panel of “experts” to limit the range of choices for the human who is watching. They push other human being towards an intellectual bottle neck.

During presidential elections this method is used to suggest, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly that you only have 2 real choices to vote for in the presidential election. On the television shows that use this method, there will be several “experts” who will tell you why you need to vote democrat and there will be several “experts” who will tell you why you need to vote republican. These shows rarely consider 3rd party candidate’s or candidates in the 2 major parties who are not considered to be in the group that runs everything in the 2 parties

In the last presidential election, Ron Paul, while a republican, was treated like a libertarian (a third party) because of his strong stance on being true to the United States Constitution. Notice how Ron Paul was treated during the republican debates. Notice how he was given much less time to speak than the other republican candidates, and when he mentioned the Constitution, the other republican’s facial expressions looked as though they were listening to some crazy uncle, thus sending the message that Ron Paul was not a real choice.

These three examples are but a tiny fraction of the deceptions techniques perpetrated by visual mass media (television). Given that there are so many techniques of deception, it is good to have a few general rules to apply to protect yourself from deception.

Rule # 1-To the largest extent possible, get your information by reading. Even though reading uses the eyes, it is essentially an audio means of getting information, as most people hear the words in their mind when they read them.

Rule # 2-Get your information from multiple sources.

Rule # 3-If you must get your information from mass visual communication (television), always ask yourself the following question: “Could there be an alternate explanation?”

Rule # 4-Work off the assumption that anyone talking about a given subject has their own agenda. Everyone has a dog in the fight.

Rule # 5-Be wary of the beautiful. Psychology has shown that people who are more attractive are considered more competent than people who are less attractive, even when objective data proves the lesser attractive person more competent. This is why television broadcasters have really pretty women and quarterback type men anchor their news shows.

Rule # 6-Be wary of those on television who try to get you excited. Getting people excited is a basic sales technique. When you get excited clear-thinking leaves the building.

Rule # 7-Avoid being intimidated. People who sell so called “self help” merchandise use this technique all the time. They say things like “Winners do this” or “Losers do that.” And of course, to be a winner you must buy their product or accept their ideology.

Rule # 8-If you are male, be a man and think for yourself. If you are female, be a woman and think for yourself. Other people, especially the so-called experts may have more knowledge and training than you, but that does not mean their judgement is better than yours. The experts may have knowledge, but thats no guarantee they have wisdom.

Rule # 9-Be very skeptical when the mass media bakes broad and general cconclusions.

Crisis, Martial Law, and Black Market Operation

2010-04-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

Crisis, Martial Law, and Black Market Operations

In the coming years, I think there is a strong possibility that there is going to be crisis and martial law in the United States and in other nations as well. During such periods, the items you need to survive will become increasingly scarce, especially if the crisis and martial law goes on for an extended period of time.

This article could have well been entitled How to Be a Successful Criminal, because what we are talking about bartering during cisis and/or martial law. In crisis and martial law, bartering of goods will be considered a criminal act. As such, if you barter you will be a participant in the black market (at least in the eyes of the government). Remember, during crisis with martial law, you can be arrested for just about anything.

The rules I cover in this article come from the book Black Market Operations: Marketing Theory and the Fencing of Stolen Goods, A report by Ted Roselius and Douglas Benton, associate professors in the college of business at Colorado State University. The book was published by the now defunct publisher Loompanics Unlimited. You may still be able to find the book on some internet booksellers. The book’s ISBN number is 1-55950-017-4. If you can get a copy, I recommend you add it to your preparedness library.

For the record, I do not support criminal behavior during normal times. However, during periods of crisis, especially prolonged crisis with martial law, you have to do what is necessary to survive. Just because the martial law government labels your bartering a “crime” does not make it unethical or evil. On the contrary, your first duty is to provide for your family. (See 1st Timothy chapter 5 verse 8.)

In the book listed above, the author’s list some characteristics of goods that are best for selling and trading on the black market. Let’s examine those characteristics in detail and how the principles will apply to a pure barter economy during a prolonged crisis with martial law.

1. “High Value-generates more cash per risky transaction.”

Selling and trading goods on the black market is always risky. It is especially risky if you are under martial law, as you can be executed for essentially anything. Therefore, if your taking a big risk, you want to make sure that there is a big reward for taking the risk. In crisis or under martial law how much value your barter items have will determine how many goods and services you can trade them for. Some items that will have a high trade value include guns, ammunition, freeze-dried food (see # 2 ), antibiotics, narcotic pain medication, liquor, knives, batteries, and radios Under normal conditions bartering items like narcotic pain medications and liquor could be very risky. However, during crisis and martial law, the bartering of anything can get you arrested and possibly shot. So in crisis with martial law, bartering anything is a high risk activity. Make sure your barter brings enough rewards to justify the risks involved in bartering.

2. “ Low bulk and low perishability”

Any product you sell on the black market will have to be transported and will have to be in useful condition at the time of the transaction. Therefore, perishable items are out in most situations. The same is true for large, bulky items. However, what constitutes large and bulky will depend on your own situation. If you have a large pick up truck, you will have the advantage of being able to transport large items that those without large pickup trucks cannot transport.

Most food will perish very easily. However, freeze-dried food, dehydrated food, and to a lesser extent MRE’s (meals ready to eat) will make good barter items. So will water purification supplies

3. “Branded items”

Here we are talking about items with a brand name on them. People trust branded merchandise. In fact, people trust branded merchandise so much, the criminal class has started branding merchandise like heroin and cocaine by putting them in packages with brands on the package so that users will make repeat purchases of their product.
Imagine this: John Smith has a case whisky he is going to trade for a rifle. He goes to the meeting point and produces a clear glass container with a light brown liquid inside and there is no seal on the top of the bottle.

Now imagine: Peter Sloan has a case of whisky he is going to trade for a rifle. He goes to the meeting point and produces a glass container with a label on it that says “Crown Royal” and the seal on the bottle is in tact.

Imagine if you were the man trading the rifle for the whisky. Which of the two people listed in the paragraphs above would you be more inclined to do business with? The correct answer is Peter Sloan, because Peter Sloan has branded merchandise. John Smith might have cooked up some grain alcohol in a still and put some brown food coloring in it and called it “whisky.”

If the crisis and martial law last long enough, and you can produce useful goods, you should consider coming up with your own brand and putting that brand on your product.

4. ” Non-sized items”

This means items like clothes and shoes are not good items for trading or selling, because you have to find a buyer who fits the clothes you have. This is a GENERAL RULE. (A general rule is a rule that applies between 7 and 9 times in 10) There are exceptions. For example, lets say you live in a relatively remote area and you are having an extremely cold winter. You manage to find someone who wishes to trade a supply of military parkas for items you have. If you are in a situation where you can barter sized items and benefit, do the deal!

5. “Established and well known price”

This rule applies more to the black markets during normal periods than crisis periods and martial law periods. Remember, criminals pay zero for their items because they steal them. (I do not endorse criminal behavior) Let’s say a criminal stole 4 cases of vodka, and the normal price in the legitimate retail world is twenty dollars a bottle, the criminal should make it know that he is selling the product for less than the normal price twenty dollars a bottle.

During crisis and/or martial law, normal pricing rates will go out the window. The prices for everything will go up. However, if the crisis and/or martial law last long enough, established prices for goods and services in the barter economy will develop. By making your barter price slightly below the “established” barter price that develops for a particular good or service, you may have more success than the individual who sticks firmly to the established barter price. Notice I said make your price slightly below the barter economy established price. Say five percent lower than your competitors. If everyone else is trading their extra rifles for 100 bottles of whisky, trade your extra rifles for 95 bottles of whisky. Pricing your barter goods slightly below the barter economy price may give you an edge.

6. A. “Products should not be subject to post purchase dissonance.”

Here the authors were talking about people who changed their mind and want their money back. In simple terms, buyers remorse. During crisis and/or martial law, ALL SALES AND TRADES ARE FINAL..........unless you can get something of more value in the return/exchange process. If the situation is very bad, you should always be prepared to enforce this rule with bullets.

B. “ Low traceability.”

The items you trade should not be easily traceable. Guns are a good example of items that are easily traceable, because virtually all guns produced in the last 30 or so years have serial numbers.

Suppose you trade a pistol to John Smith for 50 freeze-dried meals. Later John Smith is captured by the martial law troops and they find his gun. The serial number on the gun will be traced, and you will soon have government troops knocking on your door.

If you sell or trade anything in a crisis or martial law scenario that can be traced to you, to the best of your ability remove anything from the item you are selling that allows it to be traced, such as serial numbers or identifying marks.

C. “Marketing opportunities increase substantially with and increase in the range of consumer types.”

That is a fancy way of saying with a more varied customer base comes more opportunity to sell and trade. If your dealing with people who need food, having guns to trade is of little use. If your dealing with people who need medicine, having food to trade is not going to help.

With this in mind, I have two recommendations:

1. Provided you have the means, start building a supply of items you can barter. Determine what items are of most value to the people in your area or region. If you have extra money, stockpile items that are of value in your area, provided you don’t break any of the previous rules.

2. Get to know as many people as possible in your area. DO NOT discuss your preparedness plans with them. You simply want to get to know them socially so that in the event a crisis and/or martial law, you will have a larger base of people to trade with. A bonus with this is that you might find some decent people and make new friends.

One last thing: Try to be decent. Get a fair trade when you barter but DO NOT ruthlessly exploit your fellow human beings. Also, if you have large supplies of goods, do a little charity and give away some things to sick people, old people, orphans, and others who cannot fend for themselves. But only do this if you have large supply of goods that will more than take care of you and your family

You Are the Glass

2010-04-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

Some people ask the question "Is the glass half full or half empty?" Know what? It does not matter. What matters is that you have a glass.

You and your life are the glass. If you get the knowledge you need and apply it consistantly, in time your glass will overflow.

This does not just apply to preparedness. It applies to every area of your life. If you're not happy with your present situation, get the knowledge you need to fix your situation, apply it consistantly and you and your life WILL improve.

I and S - Improvise and Scrounge

2010-03-31T07:07:00.000-07:00

Improvising and scrounging are two very important skills to learn for preparedness and survival. One of the things I have tried to drill into the readers of my newsletter is to do the best you can, with what you have NOW!

In the recent past it was my belief that money was the primary limiting factor on an individuals preparedness plans. However, now I believe that attitude, creativity, and doing the best with what you have now are as or more important than money

Yes, it would be ideal if you could buy a 5-year supply of Mountain House freeze-dried meals in the # 10 cans. However, most people won’t have the money to do that. However, there is nothing stopping most people from buying 1 or 2 cans per month.

Improvising is doing the best you can with what you have now. So lets say that purchasing 1 or 2 cans per month of Mountain House freeze-dried food is too much. You can stock up on dried beans and grains like rice. Buy them in bags at your grocery store and put them in plastic pails with lids on them secured by Gorilla tape.

Scrounging is when you actively search for something you need. Usually if you find what you need, there will be an element of barter involved.

For those of you who are Star Wars fans, you will remember C3PO, a protocol droid fluent in over 6 million forms of communication. Another droid who never made it to the big screen but was in some of the Star Wars books was M3PO, a military droid. Image C3PO in olive green instead of gold. In addition to M3PO’s military training, he was loaded with commodities trading software so he could “scrounge” for what his unit needed when deployed to some backwater planet. Earth could become a backwater planet during several TEOTWAWKI scenarios such as a 1 mile wide asteroid hitting the planet or even a limited nuclear war between the United States and Russia or China.

So how does one learn to scrounge?

First, you’ve got to know your area and know your neighbors. If you don’t know your neighbors and your area, scrounging is going to be difficult. If your neighbor Jack is a welder, you know he’s probably got welding equipment and welding rods. If your neighbor Bill is a carpenter, you know he will have hand tools.

Problem: You need some welding done on your trailer. Jack, the welder will do it in exchange for a large hammer. What do you do? You find something you have the Bill wants and trade that something to Bill the carpenter who gives you a big hammer. You give the hammer to Jack, the welder and Jack does the welding needed on your truck.

The previous example is a good reason to get to know your neighbors and what they do for a living and what skills they have.

Learning your area is also important. Learn what items are in demand in your area and learn who has them. Stockpile these items if possible or have some good or skill you can trade for them.

The Fundamental Law of All Preparedness

2010-03-31T07:06:00.000-07:00

The fundamental law of all preparedness is Murphy’s Law, which states: “Whatever is the worst possible event that can occur will occur, and it will occur at the worst possible time.”

Learn it, live it, love it, because it is the truth.

In virtually any situation , if you determine what is the worst possible event that can happen, prepare for it to the best of your ability and to the degree that your money allows, you will usually be on fairly stable ground.

For example, when you go out in a boat, what is the worst event that can happen? Sinking. And when is the worst possible time that it can occur? The time you have no life-jackets on the boat. Therefore, it’s good to make it a rule to always carry a life jacket for each person on the boat. Yet people go boating all the time with no life jackets. Why? They lack something, and that something is what I call RATIONAL CAUTION.

What differentiates RATIONAL CAUTION from paranoia is that rational caution is proactive, paranoia is reactive. A person who has true paranoia see’s danger coming from every direction, but yet such a person rarely if ever studies their situation and apply Murphy’s law to their situation. Such a person is almost never proactive. There are exceptions, but as a GENERAL RULE (a general rule is a rule that applies between 7 and 9 times in 10) most paranoids are almost totally reactive.

Simply put, rational caution makes you sleep better at night, while paranoia keeps you awake

Some Basic Preparedness Questions

2010-03-31T07:05:00.000-07:00

1. How much potable (drinkable) water do I have in storage and how long would it last me and my family if all other sources of water were gone? Ideally, you want to have 2 gallons per person per day. If most of your stored food is freeze dried or dehydrated, raise this amount to 3 gallons per person per day.

2. What chemicals and/or devices do I have to make non-potable (non-drinkable) water fit to drink? Chemical treatments include chlorine, iodine, and hydrogen peroxide. Devices may include equipment to boil water, charcoal filters, reverse osmosis devices, ultraviolet light system, and distillation apparatus.

Most everyone has the ability to boil water. Boiling will not remove the particulate matter in non-potable water, but it will generally kill most micro-organisms. Boil the water for 10 minutes.

3. How much stored food do I have and how long would it last if all outside sources of food were gone AND all sources of electric power were gone? HINT: This means all frozen food and foods requiring refrigeration are GONE. (Freeze-dried food is the best for long term storage, but it is expensive relative to other foods for storage. Canned goods are the option many people will have to use.)

4. How much essential medications do I have on hand and how long would they last if all sources of them were gone? (Essential medications are over the counter and prescription medications you take on a daily or near daily basis.) If you take a lot of prescription medications, this may be a very important issue for you. For Prescription medications, most insurance companies will pay for only a month’s supply at a time. There are ways around this I will address in a future issue.

What about over the counter medications you use on a regular basis? How long would your supply last if you were cut off from all sources of these medications?

5. Do you own any firearms? If yes, do you know how to use them? Are they reliable? Guns that have not been shot in 50 years should be considered unreliable until proven otherwise. What about ammunition? How much of it do you have?

With regard to preparedness I CONSERVATIVELY estimate that for every 1 person who is prepared, there will be 199 who are not prepared. When a crisis comes (and it will), those who did not prepare are going to come to those who did and try to get help. Some of those seeking help will ask. Some will not be so polite and they will try to take your preparedness supplies. That is why firearms are so important.

Understand the following and understand it well. You are under no moral obligation to help those who could have prepared but decided not to prepare. Perhaps they spent all their extra money on SUV’s, etc. YOUR PRIMARY DUTY IS TO YOUR FAMILY.

WHEN THE UNPREPARED COME TO TAKE THE SUPPLIES YOU STOCKPILED FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, YOU MAY HAVE TO USE DEADLY FORCE. THIS IS WHY FIREARMS ARE SO VERY IMPORTANT IN ANY SURVIVAL PLAN.

Some will no doubt say that such a stance is un-Christian. If you believe such a stance is un-Christian, I suggest you read 1 Timothy chapter 5 verse 8.

One of the best recommendations I can give you is to keep your preparedness efforts secret. Tell your other family members, including the kids, to keep your preparedness efforts secret. That way, when a crisis comes, you may not have to worry about the unprepared trying to beat down your door.

6. What supplies do you have for energy? Generators are good, provided you know how to use them and they are reliable. What about natural gas? Do you have cylinders or tanks of it and heating devices that run off it? There are a lot of fuels you can use for energy-gasoline, diesel, kerosene, propane, methane, liquid propane, and white gas. Each fuel type has its own advantages and its own disadvantages.

You have 3 main areas of concern here:

1. Energy to run essential electric and communications equipment.
2. Energy for cooking and for some water purification systems.
3. Energy for heating and cooling.

Generators are a great investment if you can afford them. Many experts agree that the most reliable generators for long term use (day or weeks) are the diesel kind that run at 1800 revolutions per minute. When choosing a generator, you want to get as much power as is needed to the degree your money will allow. However, don’t plan to run everything in your house during a crisis. Plan to run only the essential items.

Don’t get me wrong. If you have a lot of money you can buy a generator system that will run EVERYTHING if the power goes down, but you are going to spend a good amount of money to get such a system.

One of the best investments you can make for cooking is a wood stove, provided you live in a region where wood is abundant. The Coleman Company also makes a wide variety of cooking devices that run off small, portable propane cylinders or Coleman fuel. These cooking devices are so small even an apartment dweller can store them.

Energy for heating does not have to come from electricity. Many companies make space heaters that run off propane or other gases. Your main area of concern when using these systems indoors or in areas that are not well ventilated is the buildup of carbon monoxide gas.

7. How much CASH money do you have on hand?

In a crisis, you can work off the assumption that checks and credit cards will not be honored. The more severe the crisis, the more this will be the case.

Start putting back a little bit of cash every month. Even if it is only $5.00 per month or less, that is a start. Put it in a secure place and in a place where it is safe from fire. In a crisis, this stockpile of cash will come in handy.

Ethics-Helping Those Who Cannot or Will Not Prepare

2010-03-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

There are some people in this world who do not see or understand the value in being prepared. The people who make up this group represent about 99 percent of this planet’s population. Because such people make up such a large group, it is very dangerous for the people who do prepare to believe that the people who do not prepare will have no affect on us should a crisis present itself.

You may be thinking: “Who cares? They had their chance to prepare, and they didn’t!” Well, life is never that cut and dry. Also, the question is one of ethics, doing what is right. What really is the point of surviving if your going to have to live out your days with people who are moral cretins? Indeed, if that is the world we who prepare will have to inhabit after a crisis, we had better come up with methods to purchase and store lots more ammunition.

So who do you help and who gets priority. In answering this question I look to the Judeo-Christian Ethic.

1. Your first duty is to your spouse and your children. If you are serious about preparedness your spouse and children should already be covered to the extent that your funds will allow.

2. Your parents come in second after your immediate family. Your parents may not have believed in preparedness or they may not have had the money to prepare, but the reason they did not prepare is irrelevant. You have a moral obligation to help them in a crisis. However, what defines “help” is indeed a tricky issue. Also, keep in mind that your duty to your spouse and children DOES take priority over your duty to your parents, per my interpretation of the Judeo-Christian Ethic.

I wrote in an earlier issue of this newsletter that one of the best policies to adopt is to keep your preparedness activities secret. Don’t discuss your preparedness activities with anyone except those people who are in what you might loosely refer to as a “network” of others involved in preparedness in your area, and even then be very careful. Teach your children not to discuss your activities like food storage with other children. In a crisis, the unprepared will come and beat at your door the same way the unbelievers came to the door of Noah’s ark when the rain started.

With that in mind, if your parents live close to you, say 50 miles or less, taking them into your own survival retreat is probably the best course of action, PROVIDED they can keep their mouths shut. If they are inherently more concerned about the survival of their own family over the survival of others (non-family), a quality shared by virtually all rational people, you are probably on safe ground. However, if they are of the type that spout off mindless religious mantras such as “All people are equal in God’s eyes.”, (A TRUE statement when taken in it’s proper context) then you are going to have problems. Simply put, if your parents have the “egalitarian socialist ethic”, and they will tell everyone they talk to about you cache of food and supplies because doing anything else would be “unfair”, you are better off helping them out from a distance, by giving them food, medicine, money, and supplies but NOT bringing them into your survival retreat. Keep in mind however that if they are the type who tell everything they know to everyone, once they realize you have supplies, everyone who has any contact with them will also know you have supplies. So your BEST option for helping in such a situation might be to give them food, medicine, money, and supplies anonymously.

If your parents live a long distance from you, say over 200 miles, giving them any real help in a big crisis is going to be hard. My advice is to plan ahead. If your parents who live far away are not in the habit of being prepared, the Christmas season provides a wonderful opportunity to help them. Potential Christmas gifts in such a situation might include generators, a supply of freeze dried food, emergency medical kits, books on preparedness, water purification equipment, cold weather clothing, propane cylinders and heaters, pump action shotguns with 1000 rounds of ammunition, you get the idea. IMPORTANT: DO NOT BEAT THEM OVER THE HEAD WITH THE PREPAREDNESS SERMON-A MAN CONVINCED AGAINST HIS WILL IS OF THE SAME OPINION STILL.

3. Your siblings, brothers and sisters, come in 3rd place, and all of the warnings and suggestions I gave in the section on parents apply here.

4. Your extended family comes in 4th. This includes aunts, uncles, and cousins. Again, all the warnings and suggestions in the section on parents apply here as well.

It’s doubtful, neigh impossible, for a single member of a family who did prepare, to effectively help all 4 groups without killing their own family in the process. If you can help your parents and siblings, you will be doing far more than most. Always remember who takes priority over who.

Assuming it would actually be possible (it isn’t) to help all family members including extended family, one would now be faced with the question of what type of help, if any, should I give to non-family members who did not prepare? Keep in mind that from this point on what I am discussing is largely theoretical.

If one group came to mind, it would be those non-family members who were not able to prepare themselves because of severe mental or physical disability. If you were to find yourself in a position to help such a person without compromising your family, then help them. Why? Because they are entitled to our help by right? No. Because it is simply the decent thing to do. I would also add that as a student of preparedness, this is the one group of the non-prepared that I would have sympathy for, and more importantly, empathy for, in a crisis.

After those who were not able to prepare because of severe mental or physical disability, it is probably the right thing to put the poor next in line. By poor, I mean those individuals who had no money to prepare because just surviving normal day to day living took all of their money. I AM NOT speaking of individuals who were “poor” because they lost all their money at the casino’s, or on other self-destructive activities.

Excluding those individuals with severe mental or physical disabilities and the poor, essentially everyone else you will deal with in a crisis had some chance and ability to prepare, but chose not to. Maybe they lived in a house that was too big. Maybe they had expensive vehicles. Maybe they had expensive recreational activities. Maybe they were simply stupid, or worse yet, intelligent but purposely ignored the facts.

When dealing with those who could have prepared but chose not to, there is really only one guiding principle: Be a decent human being guided by rational self-interest. Rational self-interest is not an immoral concept, as many people would have you believe. In fact, during and after a crisis, it is perhaps the most ethical position one can take when dealing with those non-family who were unprepared by choice. Why? Because there is no reasonable way one can judge who among this group is more worthy of help. Sure, you COULD judge them by what they say, but their action of non-action, being unprepared when they had the means to be prepared, speaks louder than anything they can or will say.

Remember, I said be a decent human being. Do not exploit the position of such a person, but DO engage in value for value transactions when dealing with those who are non-prepared by choice. If you help them, make sure you get some kind of benefit in return. Benefits are not always concrete things like food and supplies. A benefit might be technical expertise. A benefit might be intelligence. A benefit might be something as simple as the advise from an older person with more real world experience than you. Just make sure you get SOMETHING of value in return for your aid.

When crisis comes, you cannot sacrifice for everyone. If you attempt to do so your preparedness efforts made for your family will amount to nothing. Family comes first.

With this in mind it seems no surprise to me that one of the goals of socialism is to destroy the family unit, and replace the family unit with the state. The Most High God established the family unit as the foundation of society. So if anyone tells you that you should sacrifice the preparedness you made for your family for the good of the unprepared masses, remember whose side such a person is on.