I moved this site to a new host
It’s been a hassle to do it. I have a lot of sites. For each site: You have to copy all the files and ftp them to the new host. Make a new database at the new place. Download the old database via the phpadmin, zip it and transfer it to the new host. Modify the wp-config file. Finally, change the nameservers. Then make sure your e-mail hasn’t broken and modify the DNS there.
I’d been with my old host for a while, but kept getting hacked and I wasn’t satisfied with their response, so I bit the bullet and moved.
Wildflower was the last site I moved and the only one I allowed to be offline for a while. I don’t really know what to do with it. The survivalist niche obviously doesn’t work for me–I do think it could work for a black woman, but she’d have to be (pretty much exactly) like the others and not rock boats.
So it’s a new niche here. I still haven’t found my way with it either. Should I just take this site offline? I’m thinking about it.
One thing I’m doing elsewhere is working on making money online and Internet marketing with a couple of friends along with my author /writing stuff and a couple of other interests.
Wildflower would go well with domestic interests, assuming I was interested in anything domestic (other than cooking, eating, and keeping things tolerably clean), which I’m not. I’m no Hillbilly Housewife. I like making money more than saving it, frankly, and I’m better at making it, so the frugality focus is tiresome too.
I’ll see. Changes are nothing new here.
Oh crap, I still have my aunt’s site to move. She has a site about…coffee. A whole site about coffee. She likes coffee.
Fat yeast people and morons
James Kunstler often deserves me to blog and label a post dedicated to him on Mondays. Here’s the quote
All we can do now is give cars away, or give US citizens free money to buy them — which we are obviously already doing with “Cash for Clunkers” — which is additionally hilarious in the same nation that is deeply paranoid about the government giving anybody free health care. What a nation of morons we have become.
Then, of course, there is the political problem that nobody is thinking about, namely, what happens when a substantial portion of the public is permanently foreclosed from motoring because they’ve lost jobs and incomes and positions and vocations that they will never get back — ? Do you think they’ll just hike down the breakdown lanes with colorful bundles on their heads like the impoverished folk in other lands? Or will they put all those home arsenals to work? I can’t wait to find out.
I can’t either.
Originally posted 2009-08-17 07:41:00.
Survivalists are Scaredy Cats
To induce you to read my article, let me offer some free gun porn and a self test. If you’re a straight male and looking at the gun more than the girl…well. If you’re a straight woman, a gay guy or merely think you’re a straight male, and you’re primarily trying to figure out what sort of gun the guy below has…well. Also, if you wank to Soldier of Fortune magazine rather than Big Booby Bonanza or if gay, Manly Man Meat…you do have issues.
I read Rawle’s book and I’m going to recommend it with some reservations. Here is one. Rawles got some issues. All that stuff about guns, guns, guns, and security is overkill and a waste of money much better saved.
The most immediate impression one gets of American survivalists is they quiver in fear. They are absolutely terrified. That’s why they need all the guns.
What’s interesting is that they’ve mostly all lived comfortable lives with few, if any, threats. All their fear is in their minds.
Groundless fear is rarely a good thing. Fear should be reserved for threats staring in you in the face. People forget there is a purpose to fear. It gets you ready to fight or flee, immediate reactions. Fear without threat leads to physical complications for your body at the least, hate at the worst.
All hate is based in fear, usually groundless. Peoples who practice fear over nothing are people who practice hate over everything.
Where are the hordes coming to get one in Idaho? Where are the commie baby eaters? Where are the groups of black looting, raping, shiftless gangstas in rural Idaho? You think they are going to take the effort to travel to you across hundreds or even thousands of miles? These folks can’t even travel dozens of miles to better their lives. For the most part they have zilch self esteem, are depressed, and don’t think they can do anything except what is in front of their faces. And they are leery of white folk. Leery, as in scared–that’s why they don’t venture out of their enclaves to go to school, to get a job–it’s just too much for them. They ain’t coming to Idaho, that’s for sure.
People who practice fear can always exercise flights of fancy to rationalize it. But I’m talking about facts and probability. Where are the zombie bikers? Where are the gangstas? Where are the commie baby eaters? Who you really gonna shoot?
It all boils down to that question and here is the answer. The only people to shoot will be your hungry or needy neighbors. Are they going to storm your place? No. They are going to knock on the front door and ask for your help.
NEWSFLASH: You have other options than shooting them.
You can lie and say you have nothing. This is easy if you’ve taken my advice and don’t look like you have anything, all your crap is well-hidden, and you’ve never advertised your survival tendencies thus your likely food stores anywhere or to anyone. You also blend and look for food along with everybody else.
You can share your stuff with the clear message you’re sharing all you have. Jesus will smile on you for this.
You can tell them you can’t give them anything, but you wish you could help (you do, don’t you?).
But what about home invaders, your fearful, weinie brain whines?
Home invasion is a possibility. It raises with each time your or your nearby neighbors have had strangers breaking into their homes. Do you live in a place where this happens a lot? You get to shoot them if you are present when they break in, and this is usually not the case because, believe it or not, home invaders want to avoid being shot by your nifty guns.
Recession has gained a firm hold and in many nice upscale areas, folks are losing their homes, can’t pay their bills. They are desperate. Think about this for a moment. How many of these folks are going out and breaking into their neighbor’s homes? They could use your stuff, for sure, but how many are actually breaking in and stealing from folk?
Not many.
Most people aren’t bad
Rawles writes that most people are bad, that with stress and privation, they will go hog wild and attack.
Let me share something with you. People have a self-image. All people, even those dark-skinned folks that terrify many of the majority. If their self image doesn’t include images of them committing crimes such as breaking into people’s houses (most people know how dangerous this is), raping folk, or eating babies, they won’t do it. Nothing will make them do it. Most of your neighbors will let their kids starve before they grill your baby and eat it. Honest. It’s the reason white folks don’t go around saying nigger any more. They might be racist as hell but their self image precludes it.
Scared of black folks (or white folks)?
Rawles had a link to video on his blog a while back of some ig’nant, young black guys in Florida shooting their guns in the air with the admonition that this is why tactical training is necessary to protect the family.
Those black guys are doing what BET and their rap songs tell them to do. By the way they talk, it can be easily savvied that they are rarely, if ever, around white folks. They are products of culture and TV and they are too scared to go around crazy white men whom movies have told them are all Bruce Willis Die Hard clones. They are way too stupid to organize themselves. They aren’t about to travel out of their safety zones. They aren’t much of a threat to anybody else but themselves. Rawles obviously knows nothing about those fools. If they do venture out (highly unlikely), those folks who have a few guns will easily take them out, because there really aren’t many of them. So have a few guns. Otherwise, save your money. You might need it.
Most black folks are no different than any other folk in their socio-economic group. If you live in an all black upscale neighborhood (they do exist, mainly in Atlanta and Maryland), you’re as safe as in any white suburbia. If you live in an all white meth-ridden trailer park, you’re as unsafe as you’d be in any drug-ridden low class black ghetto area. In the trailer park, there will be more folks begging, and it will be more essential for folks to think you don’t have anything. But few folks are actually going to break into your place, much less storm it (unless you’ve been bragging about how much stuff you have and how you refuse to share). If they do they will do so stealth, bent on preserving their own lives. You have a shotgun, right? That’s the time to use it. It’s the same in the ghetto.
People will only attack people they don’t think of as people AND if it’s accepted in their peer groups. Before 1950, whites attacked black areas, especially prosperous ones, quite frequently. They destroyed a well-to-do black area in Tulsa known as the Black Wall Street. They destroyed a thriving black town in Florida, Rosewood. They did not like it when blacks did better than them and would readily murder, burn, and pillage.
But most whites nowadays practice colorblind racism rather than the mean old-fashioned kind. Going to the nearby black neighborhoods and killing folks while looting and rampaging doesn’t match their self images, and would be thought of as kinda tacky and redneck. There is little to fear from our white neighbors, at least the ones who don’t consider themselves rednecks. Blacks will be way too scared to go into white areas and loot and rampage. Most know they’d be looking at wholesale genocide, bombs, mass destruction along with white folk shooting them down for fun. The common knowledge is white folks are mean and crazy, and I know for a fact, most blacks believe that on some level. They will leave white folks well alone.
Most whites don’t live close to black areas and most blacks don’t live close to whites en masse. We that do are sprinkled among them and few in number. Most whites who live among blacks know they’re accepted and don’t fear them and vice versa. Exception: If you’re black and live among spread out, rural, provincial, right wing whites…personally, I’d move. You don’t have the contact with them for them to know you well, they’re mostly armed, and they outnumber your badly.
The bad people exist, but they are a minority in any area. A gun is useful just in case the rare encounter with a baddie happens. Those folk deserve to be shot. An arsenal is rarely necessary unless you’re hanging in Baghdad or somewhere like that. I will bet you tens of thousands of dollars an arsenal will NOT be necessary in Idaho.
The government attacks
In Jim Rawles novel, PATRIOTS, the armed survivalists in Idaho beat down the New World Order UN gov’t.
Nope, you still don’t need an arsenal in Idaho because it wouldn’t happen. I’m not saying that the possibility that some gov’t might come and take your guns won’t happen, no, that could happen. I’m saying you won’t be able to win. Remember Waco? They got bombs, planes, bunker busting missiles. If they are going to bother to come after you in the first place, that is the stuff they have ready to use on you.
I suggest you run, and if you can’t do that fast enough, I suggest you surrender…that is if you want to keep breathing. Even if you choose to go down in flames, your children deserve better. Send them out with white flags. Who knows, they might avenge you when they grow up.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.–Paul Atreides, DUNE
Full review of Rawle’s latest is coming up…
Originally posted 2009-09-25 09:40:00.
A Lifestyle Change Is in Order
Barely squeaking by on $300,000 a year No, this article isn’t a joke. It’s in the Washington Post, the same paper that gave us the lame family living on their unemployment while scarfing fast food and gabbing on their Blackberries.
Laura Steins doesn’t mind saying that she is barely squeaking by on $300,000 a year…As a vice president at MasterCard’s corporate office in Purchase, N.Y., she earns a base pay of $150,000 plus a bonus. This year she’ll take home 10 percent less because of a smaller bonus. She receives $75,000 a year in child support from her ex-husband. She figures she will pull an additional $50,000 from a personal investment account to “pick up the slack.”The nanny and property taxes take $75,000 right off the top, but Steins considers both non-negotiable facts of her life and not discretionary. When she bought out her husband’s share of the house after their 2006 divorce, she assumed the costs of keeping it afloat — $8,000 to $10,000 a month. There’s a pool man, a gardener and someone to plow the snow from the quarter-mile-long driveway.
As tight as money is, she has decided that living in a 4,000-square-foot house on three acres is the practical thing to do.
Her sacrifice? Foregoing her $200 hair salon appointment. She’s failed to get the plumbing fixed while keeping two cars for one person to drive, all sorts of extraneous and expensive activites for the kids, and of course, the gardener and poolman. I can understand the nanny, basically she’s buying a wife. A man would simply marry somebody to take care of the same tasks.
These are the sort of people who got the tax breaks from the likes of GW Bush while the average working person’s taxes stayed the same or got higher.
These are the people who right wingers worship everything about and aspire to be like.
They pay far less taxes than regular Americans by virtues of tax breaks, shelters and loopholes. They have to abide by little government regulation of any sort. Their lives are ruled by the premise of spending money. They have servants and have no idea about how the rest of us live. Laura Steins is only upper middle class by virtue of the fact she has a job and only $125,000/year unearned income. She’s a pauper compared to the people she’s trying to keep up with.
The recession is making some of these folks tighten their belts, but only the lower echelon of these, the bottom 2-3% of the upper 5% of income in the U.S. And getting rid of the live in full time nanny for school age kids is out of the question. Your kids can go without health insurance and die, but rich ten to twelve year olds cannot suffer the shame of having to make their own breakfasts. They have individual breakfast tailored to their tastes, served to them by the nanny (or ersatz wife).
Laura Steins story isn’t even about the recession. It is about divorce and how successful men dump their wives and kids for 25 year old trophy babes. It’s about being a woman.
A smart woman would have prepared for that common and predictable she-it hitting the fan and been willing to make adjustments. Some lifestyles can’t be maintained alone. Sometimes a woman needs to deal with kicking the fancy job to the curb, downsizing, and raising the kids herself since women don’t have the privilege of getting a free wife (that is, if one makes sure she’s thrifty)…and paying for one (a live in nanny) while you’re doing a demanding job is pricey.
Smaller house, one minivan, public schools or home school, no job, no nanny, no gardener and no poolman and she’d still be able to afford luxuries on her income and raise those spoiled kids of hers by hand. Maybe that’s what she’s trying to avoid, huh?
Originally posted 2009-08-17 06:33:00.
Black survivalist training camp in Illinois
In looking for other survival sites that address folks who aren’t right wing, I found this! http://www.blacksurvivalnetwork.com/activities.html
There’s camp in September and October
DON’T LET DISASTER CATCH YOU
AND YOUR FAMILY UNPREPARED!!
“THE TIME TO PREPARE IS NOW!!!”
COME AND LEARN WATER TREATMENT, WILD FOOD FORAGING, LAND NAVIGATION, SELF-DEFENSE, FIRST AID AND MUCH MORE!!!
Survival Skills are needed PLEASE DON’T WAIT UNTIL IT’S TOO LATE!.
SIGN UP for THIS Oct. 2009 YEAR…
SURVIVAL TRAINING CAMP
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2ND – SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4TH 2009
TRAINING LEVELS Offered (Fees do NOT include Registration)
*Level I Basic (Introduction) Course= $100.00
*Level I Advance Course=$75.00
*Level II Proficiency Course=$75.00
*Level lll Solo Course=$50.00
$25 EARLY SIGN UP MAY DISCOUNT FOR OCT. SURVIVAL CAMP)
$20 JUNE Discount / $15 JULY Discount / $10 AUG. Discount / (IN SEPT. THE FULL AMOUNT IS DUE) AFTER SEPT 2, 2009 – $5 LATE FEE
FOR INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION CALL:
804-652 -2859 or 804-382-6705 Day hours 8:45am-9:00pm or
804-543-9744 Nights and Weekends
OR
E-mail Us at: FREEMANSurvivalCamp@yahoo.com
Originally posted 2009-08-30 10:55:00.
James Wesley, Rawles: How to Survive The End of the World As We Know It
Today is the day to order James Wesley, Rawles’ book. I have no idea why he writes his name with the comma, but to each his own.
He wants to push the Amazon rankings up–which is sorta meaningless. It measures sales activity…but overall sales from Amazon aren’t what count with publishers or Those Who Watch. It’s better to go out and buy the book from a bookstore the first week. High numbers from certain stores and chains are what put you on the lists (such as getting the words New York Times Bestselling Author on your next book). Boo on checking one’s Amazon rankings constantly. Or obsessing over your reviews. Or calling Ingrams. Therein lies unproductivity, believe me, I know.
Anyhow, I give this book a B- for the readers it’s intended for, traditional survivalists. This B, instead of a C, is for the amount and breath of info crammed into this volume on how to start and maintain a homestead. I tend to only give As for the sublime.
This book covers quite a bit of valuable info in few words. I think it’s worth purchasing in MP3 format (available at B&N, link will be up on the sidebar) and saving to your bug out flash drive among with other information resources. I liked the medical information, bartering, gaining skills, and having all the survival basics in one place…there is also info on things such as wells, storing fuels, vehicles and providing power and everything I’d ever want to know about guns in this lifetime and probably the next.
Also, the reason for my B- is this book will work for the wiser survivalists who live frugally, are aware about the world, and save their resources for usage in any number of unknown contingencies from earthquakes to martial law. This book works when one is settled somewhere permanently–and some of the info could be useful as far as basic day-to-day life.
It would work for land bought in Brazil, New Zealand, Paraquay or where ever. There is an extraordinary amount of information on security in that uniquely fearful, right-wing American style. Some of the security tips, such as fortifying your homestead, might be useful.
Rawles is absolutely obsessed with guns and fantasies of Hollywood gun battles (with whom is unclear and quite fictional). Unfortunately, what the traditional survivalists fail to understand is once the gun battle has started, you’ve already lost.
You can win overall, but bullets are flying in any gun battle. If you or a loved one is hit by a bullet it’s a fail. I’m not against guns, particularly as a tool, not as a worship object or idol of salvation, which frankly, is the way Rawles writes about them. I think a gun or two can be a necessary tool for a family. But gun battles NEVER work out the way the do in TV or movies with only the bad guys, the expendable new character or the black guy getting shot–the main characters NEVER get shot or God forbid, killed, unless it goes with a nifty story line. It does not work that way in real life. Children are shot by stray bullets, good guys (or women) are killed. Macho gun play is the main male fantasy in this country, but that is all it is, a fantasy. Don’t base your future and life of your family on a Hollywood-based fantasy. Avoid gun play, don’t plan for it or God forbid count on it. The universe does give you what you want.
Do I advocate spending millions outfitting a homestead like Rawles describes…permanent, immobile, full of stored fuel, power, vehicles, ammo and guns? Nope. I think it is stupid to invest in a place like this in the US before you see how things are going to go. You might not be able to defend it (you won’t be able to if the gov’t or a conquering gov’t decides to bother you) or you might simply have to leave due to something such as wildfires or earthquakes. You do know there’s a huge super volcano in Yellowstone due to blow that will render a good part of the western US uninhabitable? We are living in interesting times, which makes any permanent homestead, especially located in a superpower such as ours (which is somewhat unstable now and regularly pisses other powers off) inherently insecure.
A homestead might not be able to be secured until your children’s or your grandchildren’s time. That’s the nature of the changes that are upon us–as far as our puny lifetimes, they usually don’t settle out quickly. But we need to preserve our ability to be truly mobile, just in case. It’s a prime survival strategy and one that’s ignored and left out of this otherwise solid survival manual, thus the minus.
But it’s not the American way to be frugal or to save and preserve your resources for possible storms the way many immigrants do–traditional survivalism ensures money is made for companies (particularly ones invested in an evil status quo, such as Safe Castle) by people spending their money on survival crap and if they have fortunes, spending a LOT of money on permanent homesteads full of survival crap.
They’d call anything else communism or socialism to be sure–not being aware that that failed and ruined idealistic philosophy (communism) at least tried to ensure the survival and welfare of the common, working man. They are too stupid, too nationalistic (rah-rah-America right or wrong), and ultimately as I’m sure they will discover sooner or later, too evil.
I’m not too big on traditional right-wing survivalists obviously, I think they are tools of this world and its ruler, that’s why their extreme emphasis on fear and killing…but I think this book is an excellent foundation for the permanent homesteader.
(ADDED: I’d give this 4 stars on Amazon, but I’m not posting there. I never post less than five star reviews on Amazon or anywhere under my real name. Author Karma, y’know?)
Originally posted 2009-09-30 11:29:00.
The police might not always choose to save you
Abraham, a survivalist, has a good article about the police up.
People who live in minority areas have always known that police aren’t always on the side of right or there to help you. It is a survival trait to be cautious of the police.
Lesson is to interact as little as possible with the men in blue. Any interaction with the police is likely to turn out badly. Avoid them like the swine flu. They want a reason to interpose themselves in your life. They like nothing better than to get involved with you. That’s why they hide there on the side of the road behind bushes and bridges, like miscreants, waiting to spring out, seize you and keep you from going peacefully about your business. Given the opportunity that police salivate over they will take you out of your car, beat you, lock you up and seize your property. It’s what they want. It’s why they do what they do.
Be careful out there.
Abraham notes minorities probably already know this. Indeed. In a great blog I discovered (since defunct, but the archives are kickin’) by a young black guy, he relates a bar fight that almost started between his Asian buddy and a white guy when the Asian guy said the white guy’s girlfriend had a badonkadonk (big booty).
The situation is getting more and more heated and if the white dude throws a punch, all six of us will jump him and he WILL die…so I physically step between the white boy and The Chairman and start making jokes, namely: “If whites and asians fight, the niggers go to jail. Both of you shut the fuck up, please.” I guess that’s far less a joke than it is hard and fast reality, but in any case the black dude found this hysterical, and it was actually enough to get the two to back off from one another – though they both continued talking shit.
Then as the tension was finally relieving itself, some other tiny white dude insists on saying over and over again:
“Just so you’ll know, there’s like 18 cops at the top of the hill. I’m just saying. Alright?”
Now, he wasn’t saying this in a helpful “hey guys, chill out – you could get in trouble” kind of way. Instead, he was saying it in an arrogant “If we fight, the cops’ll be on our [white] side, you colored fucks” kind of way.
A lot of white folks assume the cops are going to automatically be on their side, especially in any confrontation with a minority. This has often been the case–but it might not always be.
I’ve been trying for a long time to figure out what the hell it is that makes white dudes think they can challenge some guy physically when he’s backed up by an entire platoon of his friends. I don’t think tiny white men harbor any illusions that they’re going to physically kick the asses of six or more minorities all by themselves, so all I can figure is that their arrogance is predicated on the notion that the cops/bouncers/society will always be on their side if the shit goes bad.
Surprise can be a bitch.
This dude blames white guy’s delusion on the movie, The Fight Club. I see a lot of folks completely deluded by all those shoot ‘em up movies, so I can go along with this.
I think the movie Fight Club may also share some of the blame. It’s a movie that supports a myth that fighting is easy, punches (both giving and receiving) don’t hurt that much, and white people have unreal pain tolerances. The great thing about Fight Club is that the overwhelming majority of dudes who watched it have probably never been in a real fight and are entirely unfamiliar with the amount of pain involved in getting punched square in the face. This is why guys from rough neighborhoods have a blasé attitude towards Fight Club and view it as a comedy, while nuggets*** from the suburbs absorb everything about the movie with almost a cultish fervor then go out in public hoping to reenact what they’ve just seen.
Every movie Brad Pitt makes results in thousands of irresponsible white men getting their asses kicked.
Hmmmmm. Chris Rock made a video for black folks, How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police. It might behoove privileged white folks who’re mouthing off at the police to watch it. ‘Cause I’m reading in the news more and more how they are getting their asses kicked too (much to their surprise).
Originally posted 2009-09-05 06:41:00.
Slum Life
I came across a web site, http://www.theplaceswelive.com/. It’s somewhat frustrating to navigate because of the heavy usage of Flash, but its wonderful photos give an eye views into four family’s homes in four slums in India, Venezuela, Indonesia and Kenya. It is truly enlightening to see how these people manage to survive.
Over two billion people live like this–with no clean running water, no flush toilets, no anything, crammed into one room or less.
Americans will shrug over these foreigner’s sad lives and situations and chalk it up to their faulty genes or something else that’s these people’s own fault, smug in their assumed superiority.
But real survivors are interested in learning all the world’s lessons of survival, and these survival lessons often aren’t dependent on their movie-based fantasies of Armageddon scenarios or based on the fact that they get hard ons about fantasies of macho gun play.
Roaches are survivors. They survive anywhere, scatter at a threat, are easy to kill but damn near impossible to eradicate.
Life in the first world is now only a few feet away from these vast slums with the poor crammed with desperate hungry people, sores that blight the world–with the rest of the land either raped for its resources or playgrounds for the elite classes. Some people see these slums as merely an unfolding chapter in elite globalist plans to cull the herd and institute a new world order. I’m just saying.
The elite conservatives are now fighting hard against gov’t cheese and things such as healthcare that would help regular people…somehow the cheese to help the obscenely wealthy bankers and investors gets through with barely a hitch.
The working middle-class conservatives have had to abandon their foreclosed homes, been chased out of their trailers, cars and off their cheap land where they’re are isolated with dwindling food stores and no gas or power. When the troops came to relocate the rural folks from the no-population zones, their puny guns were useless. They either submitted or died. The stupider ones died, and no memories of them remain.
The jobs of the future are poorly paid manual farm worker positions. The American one-time-middle-class lives in sprawling slums where prosperous, car-reliant suburbs once reigned supreme. Manpower is cheap, oil isn’t.
Can you foresee the vast tracts of north American slums near to vast farms and manufacturing complexes, full of white loyal once-working red state Republicans and other conservatives? The elite rich they once so desperately supported can and will abandon them.
The smartest survivors are long gone from the U.S., and the others are doing what they need to do to live. Their salvation is their brains and their will to live. The smart ones understand the victory is in surviving.
Rawles published a letter about The Gray Man, a canny way to comply and survive in one imagined doomsday scenario, and eventually get the hell out, rather than shooting it out and dying in a so-called blaze of testosterone-fueled glory. Predictably, stupid conservatives disagreed. They had a fit because the scenario didn’t fit into their fantasies and what gives them a chubby–mainly shooting up folks in some sort of Mad Max, Patrick Henry, give me liberty or give me death, sort of scenario.
The gray man will put a pro-government bumper sticker on his vehicle, in contrast with the beliefs in his heart.
The gray man will smile when the police come to his door to collect his firearms. He’ll happily hand over his registered weapons at the door and thank the officers for their work, while his cache of unregistered weapons is safely hidden away.
He’ll be first in line to receive his sub-dermal ID chip, and will smile as it is implanted. He’ll then return home and remove it himself, treat and stitch the wound himself, wear long-sleeve shirts until the wound heals, and rub the scar with oil until it disappears. He’ll carry the chip under his sleeve or inside his watch so as to blend in with society, until such time as he wishes not to be seen or tracked.
He’ll gladly take his government issued credit card, and will use it for regular purchases like groceries and gasoline. However, on the weekends he’ll leave it on his coffee table next to his ID chip, and he’ll take his silver coins and ammunition to the illegal farmer’s market for barter and open discussion.
He’ll go to the library and check out the books on the government’s suggested reading list and use them as examples to quietly teach his children what not to believe.
If one day he and his family should disappear, the authorities will check their databases. They’ll see that his car has not passed through any turnpike billing checkpoints. They’ll see that his credit card has not been used anywhere unusual. They’ll see via their satellite RFID map that all members of his family are still located in their home, and they are currently viewing government programs on their internet-television.
Days will pass, and they’ll go to his home and see that his vehicle is gone. They’ll enter and find a small pile of ID chips sitting next to a government credit card and a RFID turnpike billing pass. Next to this will be a note, thanking the officers for their good work. – E.
Originally posted 2009-06-18 09:51:00.
Slow Decline or Fast Crash?
Slate has this kick ass interactive grid, Choose your own apocalypse.
Who can know the future? But I think we read the future by looking back into the past.
The world has changed suddenly as folks knew it, notably in Europe during WW2. In Iraq, their world changed. Imagine living as a regular person in Iraq now. In Chile in the seventies, in Cambodia in the sixties, there were profound changes in the economy and people’s lives. I was in Chile in the seventies…and experienced hyperinflation first hand, along with men with machine guns on the corners, after dark curfew and whispers of people disappearing (okay, I was quite young–but the money thing, the escudo back then, even pissed me off, and the machine gun men were scary, undercover operatives destroyed my camera! But utilities, movies in the theatre and food supply still went on). Mass, systematic slaughter happened in Cambodia. The world can end for millions personally, but if you survive, the world always goes on.
In the fast crash, there’s usually time to stop and read the writing on the wall and get out if you can in most all instances. Fast crashes usually come as the result of war, dictatorship out to change the status quo, or unstable government.
Government is invested to avoiding the fast crash, because it is fundamentally destabilizing to their power. Government, any sort of government, wants above all things to preserve their power.
America isn’t really set up for a fast crash. We’re too coupled with other governments. We have a ruling class absolutely invested in maintaining their power. I think a fast crash will be avoided at all costs, short somebody raining atomic bombs on us. And that wouldn’t really be a crash…that would be a demolition. I think we’d be turned over to UN management or other countries would step in before this country would be left to rot and ruin–that is, no food supply or off the power grid indefinitely.
It’s smart to prepare to be one of the few who’re able to get out in the event of a fast crash–but the slow decline is what’s here now. For most people the decline will NOT be no access to food, the government isn’t going to let that happen–it would be destabilizing to their power–but rather individual income loss and all that comes with that–control over your own life. A person without income is at the mercy of the powers that are.
That’s the world ending the way we know it is most likely to play out.
Are you ready?
Originally posted 2009-08-13 06:42:00.
Amusing ourselves to death
Check this out. It’s more than worth the click.
Our present reality shows us that Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD was a more accurate prophecy than Orwell’s 1984.
ADDED: I have been informed that there are people who haven’t read the above books yet (!) Below are links to online free reads. Go and get yourself educated!
Originally posted 2009-08-09 07:07:00.
Some folk’s survival strategy is to scream and run
Repetition in providing survival info is unavoidable. The same basic info is out there on dozens of blogs and sites. What humans need to survive has been the same for thousands of years–clean water, food, warmth, shelter.
Most people are running the treadmills of their lives, balancing work, bills, and relationships. They are busy taking care of their needs in the here and now. They can’t up and move to Hooterville hinterland in the sparsely populated West, buy a half million dollar solar and wind powered off grid cabin with a stream running in the back, lay in an arsenal to protect their expensive goodies, raise a few goats and diddle on the Internet while they wait for the world to end.
If you got it like that to any degree, then survival is basically about farming and self-sufficiency off the grid.
You got your folks with mountain man dreams and then it’s about living in the wilderness, trapping stuff and eating grubs.
Then, you have your dudes with macho-man kick-ass commando movie fantasies. They need an enemy to fight. Generally, I find they manufacture in their fevered imaginations hordes of Nigra gangbangers storming Idaho or whatever lily-white place they’ve holed up. They occasionally muse happily on what they’re gonna do to those gangbangers when they get to Idaho or out to Hooterville hinterland. You kinda hate to disappoint them and tell them unless Chinese troops invade en masse, their toys ain’t happening. Their MO is guns, guns and more guns along with other military fun and games. They love acronyms ’cause it makes them sound and look more badass and military. They are kinda fun to watch from a distance, but I assume they’d be scary close up.
I see a few frugal survival blogs. I love these. They are basically about creating white trash trailer heaven (I’d just as soon call ‘em Pickininny Paradises, but unfortunately, there are few black survivalists–not that many of us in numbers comparatively and y’all scare most of us to be honest). That mantra is to buy a beat up trailer and put it on some dirt cheap land out in the desert or somewhere so you have a roof over your head while you eat your grubs and poop in a bucket. Personally, I love the whole balls of the notion, but most of us want to have maximum comfort as long as possible.
Even Mr. Richie Prep sitting out there in the Hinterlands isn’t sure what’s going to happen and when. Nuclear war, biological attack or avian flu, violent home invasion or wildfire, there are uncountable manure flying scenarios. Anybody’s plans for safety could fall through based on what’s going to happen and when. We are working off guesses, not certainties.
All this is pretty basic and commonsense. If a person doesn’t have the sense to figure out what’s needed (food and more food, my dear), well it doesn’t really matter, does it? How you use your resources is going to be the important than what you have when the manure flies.
And you can’t store intelligence, persistence, resourcefulness, experience, and street smarts.
The others? Well, screaming and running have worked in the past, and will probably work again in some instances.
Originally posted 2008-08-22 09:14:00.
If the Manure Flies Suddenly: The Evacuation Option
Your survival options in the event of quick cataclysmic change or disaster
Shelter in Place or Evacuate
It’s as simple as that.
You need to prepare for both. Traditional survivalists really only prepare to shelter in place. Their plans to flee usually only include going to a usually close by rural location or perhaps having a RV. They plan to carry survival supplies and arms. If their rural areas need to be evacuated for any of a number of disasters, they are SOL, She-it Outta Luck. A real survivalist needs to prepare for a more extensive and realistic evacuation to fit any scenario. You can need to evacuate from anywhere on only a moment’s notice.
When the need comes to scream and run, you want to be ready. Below is what a real bugout bag should hold. You need one for every person in your family. It’s small enough to fit into a purse or to hide on your person. It’s everything you need to get outta Dodge fast and far.
- At least $10,000 cash, preferably $100,000–yes, that is for each member of your family. As long as you have the minimum 10 grand in cash, you can put the rest in gold or alternate currency such as Euros. Silver is too bulky.
- Passport
- Yellow fever immunization certificate
- Birth certificate
- Driver’s license for all adults
- USB flash drive with all the above documents and anything else important, including an inventory of your possessions, deeds and contracts, insurance papers, important contact info and absolutely everything else.
- Credit cards, debit cards, ATM cards
- Cell phone unless the disaster is an act of war or martial law is in place. A cell phone is a tracking device. You would not want to use your cards either in the latter scenarios until you’re safely out of the country.
You need a rendezvous plan for your family
There needs to be a rendezvous plan for how family members will meet up (on foot if need be) if the disaster takes place when family members are away from the home. It’s good to have a drill. Don’t count on cell towers working either if things get that bad.
You need a map with backroads routes planned to airport, port or safe haven in rural area.
A bed and breakfast will do if you have the cash to pay for it. You will be welcomed if you’ve arranged to PAY for a stay in advance with trustworthy people. Other urban refugees with their ungainly RVs and crap or looking for handouts will likely be turned away. Cash will give you the ability to buy breathing space and a way out. There has always been a window in every historical scenario to be able to get out if you have the means.
The above is ALL you need to save your family’s lives and live comfortably almost anywhere. You need to put hands on this bugout bag it in a few minutes. If things get that bad, getting out of Dodge might mean getting completely out of the country. You want to look poor and like you have nothing, which is why I didn’t include a laptop in the list. You can access or buy one of those when you get relocated. All the above items can be hidden on your person.
It depends on the situation whether you want to carry a concealed pistol. It must be licensed and you must have the proper permits…otherwise, particularly if you’re a minority, the likelihood of your being imprisoned or executed if arms are found on you is high. In the event of government crackdown and martial law with the permits being suspended, you DO NOT want arms on you. You also don’t want to have them when you’re trying to leave and enter another country.
My relocation category posts all focus on evacuation.
Summary: Get your bug out bags together. If you don’t have 10 grand each, we’ll work on that next week, but get everything else in a row including your emergency USB flashdrive. Map out the back road routes and plan family drills for rendezvous in case of emergency at different times. Get ideas and contacts for places to retreat ahead of time, including places out of the country.
Originally posted 2009-08-31 07:40:00.
Survival Toileting 101 and approaching prepping
Sharon Astyk and I agree completely on survival topics. Read her article carefully. It’s the smart way to approach beginning prepping.
And there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, since she covers Survival Toileting 101 adeptly.
Originally posted 2008-08-15 08:15:00.
Drastic downsizing
Everybody’s different, but I wanted to present another path to survival. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Downsizing is a big step, but one I think is a necessary one if you’re into survival. I’m talking real survival, not the fantasy. You need to be able to have a stash of cash in addition to investing in at least some gold and silver to get you anywhere you need to be and quickly. Most Americans don’t have significant savings, much less gold and silver. What we have is bills. I have a feeling it’s crucial to get rid of the bills and have cash, valuables on hand.
How to do this? Drastic downsizing and debt paydown.
Move
First ditch the big suburban house and the mortgage that goes with. Cut your housing costs to the bone. Live somewhere you enjoy. College towns are excellent.
In the slower collapse that is now happening, a smaller town or most importantly, a cohesive neighborhood area, even if it’s in a bigger city, isn’t a bad place to be. Ideally, you want to work close to your work, close to where you can build a business or trade, close to cultural events, close to walk to the store, the post office and other places you frequent. If you can need a car only rarely or not at all, that’s ideal. You’ll save tons of money.
In this slow collapse, you need a place with a sense of community and there are many of these in towns and the big and smaller cities across the nation. A rural area is good if that’s your background and you’re surrounded by friends and family–but it’s expensive to live out in the boonies. You need a vehicle to get anywhere, and to create a source of income. Your vehicle has to be a good one with money available for lots of gas. Being isolated carries its own set of dangers.
But it’s best to rent a small apartment, the smallest you can cram your family in, close to your job, or a source of available jobs, make sure you’re able to walk rather than drive to places you regularly need to visit. Sacrifice size for a neat location, LoDo in Denver, for instance. Small is easier to heat, less utility bills, and having less crap is a good thing. Sell your crap and use the money to pay off debt or if that’s done, to save. All your extra area will go to food storage and a few survival necessities. I’ll get to the topic of where to stash your stuff and the small amount necessary crap to have in a later post.
Definitely get rid of the second car and make the first car or vehicle a paid for one. If you have kids, take advantage of the cultural riches and good libraries. Home school your kids, but public school is good ground to learn survival skills. Your job is to instill your values and morals into your own kids, so you don’t have to worry about them picking up inferior ones. Street smart city kids are the best survivors out there.
Security
I know fear rules a lot of folks, but seriously, you need to fear those worth fearing–and the average American isn’t worth that. Blend in. Talk about what you don’t have rather than what you have. Keep your stores and preps hidden and private. Be friendly and helpful rather than fearful. Keep your doors open, so folks can see your modest place. Ask them in for a beer or coffee. Your neighbors will see and spread the word you have nothing worth stealing. This is going to work better than a huge stash of guns and ammo and is a lot cheaper. I have a big raised captain’s bed with hundreds of pounds of food stores in buckets under it. There are other places, none obvious to folks I ask in, even if they casually look around. A shot gun or hunting rifle is fine for the rare case of breaking and entering along with a yappy dog for an alarm. When I’ve lived in the roughest neighborhoods and been a part of the community, I’ve not had a break in since college days when I kept to my own business paranoid-style.
What about a trailer in the hinterlands? All right, if you have a job or business and can walk to where you need to go. The point is for it to take less, much less, money to live day to day. Less money going out means quicker self-sufficiency.
Your first goal
Small rent and utilities in a community you like and value with no bills. With drastically lessened living expenses, you can pay off all your bills…if it’s not doable, declare bankruptcy now while you still can. How will you feel if HALF or more of all your money coming in goes to debt repayment, then to cash and tangibles? How will you feel when you’re able to quit your job to learn a new skill or start a business? How would it feel to be able to buy a place to live, cash money? That’s being survival ready to my way of thinking, not having a lot of crap you’re sick with fear over somebody taking, but having the skills and time to be wholly self-sufficient with what you and your family can carry on your backs.
Self-sufficiency is the final goal, not having a lot of crap to weigh down your heart and mind if you need to bounce, but being about keeping body and soul together regardless of what happens.
Bounce Tips: This is my tip with each post with what you need if you have to get outta Dodge and bug out to another city or even out of the country.
The guideline is take less than half the crap you think you’ll need and twice the cash. With drastic downsizing, the point is to have the cash on hand.
Bugging out with the vehicle is what I’d do in the worst case sudden manure hits the fan scenario, say a nuclear plant melts down nearby or anything else I want to get outta Dodge and I feel I can drive out to another city. Next scenario is taking off with backpacks–heading to any airport where I can get on a plane and fly. Cash will make this possible, as might gold or silver to grease palms. The American ways is you can buy darn near anything, even your escape. The key to either is to do it when and while you still can. When prominent dissidents start disappearing is the time to hit the airport. You might even have time to have stuff shipped to your destination in that scenario. The time to hit the road is at the first news report, real fast on a back ways route before the highways are jammed. Best to avoid the interstates altogether. Have your route mapped and be able to be on the road with all your crap within half an hour.
Originally posted 2009-06-30 11:54:00.
Why are the Bible types are on the gold and silver bandwagon?
I’m wondering about those sites that predict dire doom and looming disaster and even throw up some Bible prophecy along with visions and dreams now and then. You know the type, Steve Quayle is one of ‘em.
I also wonder about the survivalists who are into religion and the Bible, but are still all about telling everybody to buy gold and silver to protect their wealth through Armageddon, the end of the world or whatever.
I don’t understand. See, I’ve actually read the Bible and it says…
Matthew 19:24
And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
So, minding your riches is not overly conducive to survival according to what Jesus said. He didn’t quibble, he said it straight and easy to understand. He said, while not impossible, it will take a miracle of God to save rich folk. So why are survivalists intent on preserving their wealth through buying tangible silver and gold? I won’t get started with the ludicrousness of buying guns to protect your stores and wealth according to what Jesus said.
Ezekiel 7:19
They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD
That’s pretty clear, don’t cha think? That gold and silver aren’t gonna help an itsy bit is directly from the Word of the big guy in the sky.
Personally, I’d stick to buying wheat. It’s cheaper anyway and you can, ummmm, eat it. I do believe in having cash to bug out and gold doesn’t hurt. That’s just me. I don’t preach Armageddon either.
I wish somebody would explain how the Bible folk rationalize their gold and silver buying with the scriptures. I’m honestly interested.
Originally posted 2009-09-17 09:26:00.
Some people’s SHTF a while back
Most Americans aren’t that aware of day-to-day life in third world countries or countries at war. Our media is almost totally government controlled now and the government learned the lessons of the people’s reaction to the images of the Vietnam war well. Now, we don’t see graphic images of war.
We also don’t often hear what it’s like for those other people, usually of color, living in primitive conditions in third world countries. Our caring for others and charity has been drained away in the name of Republican-style greed and selfishness pretty long ago. We don’t really care. We hear far more about who what politician carried on adultery with, or what celebrity is acting a fool.
But the lives of those people outside our vision can teach of something because many of them are living our fantasies of what could happen the myriad ways the manure can fly. We have a lot if invaluable primers in other’s experience of what worked or didn’t, how people react to this or that, what’s important to have? It’s worth our while to search out other un-government controlled news and find out what the people are saying. The Internet is invaluable.
For example, in the Russian economic collapse–those who lived in the city did better because trade wasn’t totally disrupted all of a sudden. Social networks and lack of isolation were important.
It is unlikely that everything collapses all at once in any scenario. I lived through hyperinflation in Chile in the seventies (as an exchange student) right after Allende. I remember a loaf of bread costing one price one day and the next day the price was completely different. They ended up ditching their currency, the escudo at the time, and replacing it with something different. There was also a strict curfew and men with machine guns on the street corners. I would hear about people disappearing. Stories were told about the conflict, about how my classmates hid from the fighting and gunfire while the canal in the middle of Providencia ran red with blood. So I have a least a slight clue how it feels to live in a military dictatorship under tight martial law in the midst of wholesale economic collapse. People are living or have lived most of the various flavors of societal collapse, short of all out nuclear war.
It would help survivalists to strive to do the rather unAmerican thing of going past our gov’t controlled headlines and be aware of what’s happening in the world outside of our own.
Originally posted 2008-08-24 17:54:00.
A paycheck away from desperation
Picture from the Washington Post
The Washington Posts chronicles a white, working class family in northern Indiana in a well-written article. They have two children, a teenager and a small girl, around two. What they don’t have is jobs. Scott and Kelly Nichols worked in the RV industry in Elkhart. When the economy busted and people had less money to spend on luxuries like RVs, they both got laid off.
He made 53K at his best income, she probably made around 25K (an estimate, she worked in the office).
When he lost his job, Scott had no savings, his primary objective always having been to earn enough to cover the rent, eat an occasional steak, feed and clothe their children, ride his dirt bike, fish, golf, play poker, buy lottery tickets, and drink Bud Light.
Preparing for the future was not this family’s strong suit. They seem to be typical Americans.
Only now he’s off to collect their unemployment benefits, electronically delivered to their bank accounts by the state of Indiana: $268 for Kelly, $390 for him.“Payday,” he says, driving to an ATM.
He withdraws $700, which he tucks into a front pocket of his jeans. He buys a Pepsi, four packs of Marlboro Lights and $20 in gas. He pays the electric bill, buys brake pads and a $66 money order for the kids’ health insurance, and hoses down the Cougar at a car wash. At the bank, he deposits $500 toward rent.
“Five, 10, 12 dollars,” he says, counting his remaining cash.
He has $100 more coming, his reward for winning the NASCAR betting pool at his bar, a dark, smoky joint called the Winners Circle. He walks in just before noon, hoping to find someone, anyone, who might know something about a job. The place is almost empty. The bartender, gray-haired, gravelly-voiced Valerie, delivers his winnings and a $2 draft. He rarely drinks at home or in front of his kids. He never drank at work. But sometimes he drinks here, beer after beer after beer.
“I don’t want to end up in a bell tower with a high-powered rifle,” he likes to say. “I need to let loose in some way. I’m not going to give up everything.”
At 1:10 p.m. he orders his fourth Bud. At 1:44 he orders a fifth, then a sixth. His cellphone rings. He knows it’s Kelly before he answers. There’s that question again: How much does he have left?
“We’re still fine,” he says. “Promise! No I’m not! . . . I’ve only had six. . . . I’m good. . . . This is it.”
He downs a seventh beer, then an eighth at 3:04. He drives home slowly. The last thing he needs is a cop pulling him over.
His wife turns down a job interview because it would pay less than unemployment, eats out at Subway (which could buy a whole days worth of food) and they both lay around the house all day watching cable TV, drinking Pepsi, and eating fattening food while talking on their cell phones.
Scott is depressed and I would be too. Since they no longer have health care, he can’t get his antidepressants. His present wife dreams of having a modest Victorian house but says she knows it would never happen. Nope, she married a loser man and she’s no prize herself, without the know how to make things better for her family.
But I can’t condemn these people, I feel sorry for them. They simply don’t have the tools to make it when things have gone bad. A lot of people are going to be in their boat. They could make better choices, but they don’t have the ability to figure it out. They’re just regular people, with no silver spoons handed to them (other than being white–but they don’t even know how to use that to their advantage).
They can’t afford their rent, so they see their only option is to move back to live with Kelly’s mother in the basement in an economically depressed small town in Michigan. They are screwed in other words, just like millions of Americans. Nobody is going to come handing out 50K jobs to uneducated people with no skills. Those days are over. This family counted on, things always being like they were. But the game has changed and the rules are becoming completely different.
“You know what he grossed this year?” a woman asks at Scott and Kelly’s barbecue, referring to her husband, an RV worker, who grins as he toes the ground. “Under $10,000.”
“We’re three months behind on our mortgage payments,” she says.
“After I pay all my monthly bills, I’ve got $40 in my pocket,” says a boyish man, a single parent who works two jobs and fixes cars on the side.
“Haven’t seen it this bad here in 21 years,” says another man, in a baseball cap and bowling shirt, leaning against his pickup, gripping a can of beer. “We’ve all had to make adjustments.”
Scott’s son sees his future as bleak.
Inside the house, Cody and his girlfriend, Brandy, lie on his bed watching cartoons. He wears a black T-shirt emblazoned with the Grim Reaper’s hooded face. Thick black liner circles her hazel eyes.
“I have atrocious grades and no money,” Cody says, which leaves one option, as far as he can see: the military, although boot camp is not something he’d relish.
“I’m not exactly in shape.”
There’s a slide show at the post, along with an article on this family. It’s worth watching.
They’re on the long, slow slide downwards. Should we tell them what could they do better? What we would do? It’s immaterial because we aren’t them. The only thing we can do is learn from their mistakes.
Originally posted 2009-08-04 14:02:00.
Survival Tips for Fat Folks
We are some tubby folks. Americans in general are, but black Americans with our thrifty famine hardened fat storage genes take the cake. And eat it.
Thrifty-gened fat folks crave carbs and store them very efficiently. Carbs by far are the cheapest and easiest foods to store.
The bad news is that fat folk have less stamina and trouble getting around. They are also prone to diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea and all sorts of diseases. They’re not going to be that good at running, but will probably do all right at hiding. Fat folk also tend to crave carbs in large amounts.
The good news is that fat folk don’t need as much food. They are carrying significant food stores around. Cherish your food stores, why not?
But fat folk also need to get as fit as they possibly can now. Yes, fat folk can exercise and should do so. You might have to run, so increase your running ability now while you can. Fool those skinny folk who assume you’re out of shape and lazy by flying past them. It is far better to undertake a fitness program, aerobics, weight lifting (with your MDs permission) than some expensive, fancy diet that probably isn’t going to work anyway. I know some fat folk who have stamina, and while they may not run that fast, they can run far.
When the manure flies, your fat will become valuable again. In third world hungry countries, fat women are considered more beautiful. They are more fertile, more ready for sex and sexually responsive and more apt to be able to carry children to term. The size sixteen with muscle underlying all her soft curves will be the hot one. Buh-bye to the bony size four. Her hotness is a skewed creation of culture and gay fashionistas who dig skinny adolescent boys best.
Fit and fat women will be golden. And dieting will be easy! Feed your children and men and don’t eat, or eat in very small amounts. Live off your nifty portable food stores! The smell of the manure hitting the fan along with your hungry children should rein in your appetite.
There should be no such thing as fat men. Think big men. Stocky, strong men with muscle who can dig in, hew wood, heave water and protect us. We like them. Feed your men up. But softness and flabby weakness isn’t masculine! Ugh. Get thee to the gym!
For now–The best way to feel better and lose weight for thrifty-gened fat folk is low carb eating. Cheap low carb eating isn’t easy, but I do it early in the day when I’m alone…Basically I eat eggs and low carb flax muffins every morning and again if I get hungry around lunchtime. I’m a creature of habit, what can I say?
Low carb eating increases energy and decreases food cravings. Sometimes I eat a salad for lunch–or a broth based veggie soup in winter–but that’s pretty ambitious for me, deviled eggs and yummy flax muffins are better anyway.
My day’s eating is quite light and if I avoid carbs, there are few cravings. The rising cost of my daily staple, eggs, is killing me. I’ve stored up on powered ones and some flax in #10 cans.
When the family comes home, I do serve bread (muffins, cookies or the like) as an after school snack. I avoid this snack and nuke another instant flax muffin (recipe to follow) or have a ready made one.
I stretch dinners and weekend meals with homemade bread and enjoy it myself. This is a hit and I can serve smaller entrees and much less meat. I serve dinner sort of late (the snack holds them) and don’t eat carbs myself until then. Carbs slow us thrifty-gened folk down, so my days work is always done by dinner. I eat and relax.
I also have meatless meals two times a week (Tuesdays are pasta and cheese, Thursdays, beans).
A delicious homemade after school snack straight from the oven, along with homemade bread at meals will cut down on junk food and eating out pleas, saving lots of money. You don’t get homemade oatmeal cinnamon bread oozing with real butter at McDonalds.
Ditch the expensive diet. Get as cardiovascularly fit and muscularly strong as you can instead.
UPDATED: I’m really skinny now after my illness. I don’t like it. Don’t seem to be able to gain weight.
Originally posted 2008-08-19 11:13:00.
Manure flies in Padang
At least 75 people were confirmed dead after hospitals and hotels crumbled, and as fires raged in the coastal city of Padang, home to nearly a million people, in the wake of the 7.6-magnitude quake.
“People are trapped, hotels have collapsed, schools have collapsed, houses have collapsed and electricity has been cut off,” Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters in Jakarta.
Health Ministry crisis centre head Rustam Pakaya told AFP that a major city hospital was among the many buildings that had buckled.
“Houses and buildings have collapsed, causing thousands of people to be trapped inside in the rubble,” Pakaya said.
The 23-year old described seeing neighbours’ houses on fire and ground caving in or disappearing before her eyes.
State electricity company PLN cut power supplies to Padang following a 7.6-magnitude earthquake that rocked the neighboring town of Pariaman, located 78 kilometers southwest of the West Sumatra capital city.
The earthquake disrupted the telecommunications network in Padang and its surrounding area, making it difficult for the National Disaster Management Agency to collect data on people killed or injured and buildings damaged by the quake.
Blackout in Padang after quake strikes-Jakarta Post
Flights to Padang cancelled….but I’m curious if the runways are too damaged for folk to get out?
In case of earthquake, when in the home, the safest zone is BESIDE a sturdy large thing such as a couch or a bed, NOT under it. If the structure collapses the large thing might have some airspace and protection immediately beside it. If you’re under it, you will be squashed.
What would your survival strategy be in this instance? It could happen here, even in a rural area. If I were blessed enough to have everybody I loved survive, I would gather them together according to the already established rendezvous plan and find a way out of the damaged area to safety. If planes were definitely grounded, as long as some roads are intact, with enough money there would be a way out. If there is an intact runway anywhere…planes for wealthy foreign nationals and local people who have money and influence are taking off, count on it.
In sum, earthquakes can hit anywhere, even your fully stocked survival retreat or piece of land with trailer out in the boonies. Think about that. If your home is intact, you can stay in it…but the nature of earthquakes often makes homes unsafe, even if they’re still standing–structural damage, leakage, etc. Often the affected area is blocked off and people HAVE to leave. If you don’t want to be staying in a FEMA camp post flight de la manure (and under martial law to boot!), you’d best have some cash.
Traditional survivalists never address the possibility of the manure hitting the fan at their retreat or area they’ve deemed safe. But few, if any, are prophets.
Originally posted 2009-09-30 13:47:00.
Tough Ways to Get Ready
10 Tough Ways to Boost Your Bottom Line
You WILL need money to survive. You WILL need to be unencumbered with debt. It’s the first step. Here’s a great article with ten tough ways to get there from here. You’re tough, aren’t you?
1. Downsize your house
2. Save 50% of your income
3. Eliminate your gadgets
4. Eliminate your car
5. Only buy used
6. Get rid of three items for everything you buy
7. Don’t spend on Christmas
8. Don’t eat out
9. Don’t pay for entertainment
10. Start your own business
Originally posted 2009-06-16 08:40:00.
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