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Fair warning! This is a long and dense read and not intended for the faint-hearted

While most of us would accept there are two states of mind when it comes to perceiving reality, belief and disbelief, I posit there are three. And this third state of mind, the suspension of disbelief, is employed by nearly all of us most of the time when interacting within our own perceived reality.

If we are to recognize the prevailing global cultural insanity as a long duration event, meaning it started many centuries ago and will last many centuries beyond today, being logical and rational, while an essential component of survival, can only be viewed as a significant disability when trying to make sense of an insane world.

This is particularly true when we closely examine group and individual psychology and how it affects everything from culture to money to politics and all the prevailing memes in-between. Any sober assessment of the human condition leads to one conclusion only. Everyone is insane, including you and me. It is only a matter of degree, not if.

That said; for the sake of this article let us assume one can be sane enough to recognize his or her own insanity. While nearly all will point to the actual behavior of the insane as proof of the illness, I tend to focus on the driving force behind the behavior. My experience shows this to be our horribly distorted belief system(s) which propel us deeper and deeper into our madness.

But belief is a misnomer for what actually occurs in the real world. The word belief implies action, intent and effort, as in a verb or adjective. However this should be differentiated from passive belief, which is a subconscious and conscious embrace of a thought or idea which we embody in whole and absolutely.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Beware of the “dark side” of humanity during any collapse

August 22, 2017

Beware of the “dark side” of humanity during any collapse

While there have been countless books, movies and television shows about life after some type of apocalyptic event, chances are none of us will ever actually be forced to experience what its like trying to rebuild society from the ground up. More than likely, the majority of us will never be so hungry that we’re forced to get food from somewhere other than the local supermarket, craft our own tools and weapons just to make it through the day, or make decisions that are a matter of life or death. All that being said, there is still a burning question that millions of Americans across the country find themselves asking every now and then: what if?

What if society really did crumble like a house of cards? What if we really were forced to rebuild from the ground up? What would that look like? Would mankind be able to set aside our differences for the greater good, or would the ensuing chaos and fear bring out the worse in us?

All of these can be answered by addressing one more overarching question: are human beings good or evil by nature? It would appear that when reduced to their natural state as a species, humans possess the will and desire to work together with one another; if the opposite were true, then society would never have had the opportunity to be built in the first place. (Related: These are the top ten cities that would be rebuilt first after a societal collapse.) However, it would be inaccurate to say that human beings are entirely good in nature because, as demonstrated through people like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, our species clearly has a dark side.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sailboats, survival, and SHTF

January 13, 2017

Sailboats, survival, and SHTF

I’ve always been a fan of being self-sufficient and learning skills. Sailing is one of the skills that I always wanted to acquire but until my sister married her husband, I never knew anyone who sailed. I love it so much now that I’m considering selling everything and living on a sailboat. As you’ll see below, learning how to sail will give you the opportunity to learn all sorts of self-sufficiency skills, emergency preparedness skills, and off-grid capabilities. As far as I’m concerned, the skills and knowledge required to sail a boat to a distant shore and live on the boat require almost exactly the same skills that preppers pursue.

Lemme throw some context at you for a sec and then tell you why you might want to consider learning how to leave dry land if you need to. I went out to Kalifornia in September to visit some friends and family and along the way, I spent a week in Monterey, where a good friend is learning Russian at the Defense Language Institute (DLI). Since I didn’t want to sit around his house all day while he was in school, I decided to take this opportunity and take sailing lessons. I’m glad I did.

I spent a week and got my ASA101, Basic Keelboat Sailing and ASA103, Basic Coastal Cruising certifications (those links are to the exact books they gave me for the courses but I’ll list the other books I’ve recently read at the end of this post – click here to jump to my book list). I then stopped in at Oxnard on the way back to Phoenix, and instead of getting a hotel, I decided to just rent a 32-foot sailboat for the day since it was almost the same and I’d have the boat for daytime (they let you sleep on the boat).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trumpocalypse? Suddenly Liberals Are The Ones Stockpiling Food, Guns And Emergency Supplies

December 24, 2016

Trumpocalypse? Suddenly Liberals Are The Ones Stockpiling Food, Guns And Emergency Supplies

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, many liberals all over America have suddenly become extremely interested in prepping. Fearing that a Trump presidency could rapidly evolve into a “Trumpocalypse”, a significant number of leftists are now stockpiling food, guns and emergency supplies. In fact, even though many had expected a sharp drop in gun sales following Trump’s victory, what actually happened is that fear of what is coming under Trump pushed background checks for gun sales to an all-time record high on Black Friday. The election of Donald Trump has awakened the left to a degree that we haven’t seen in decades, and some on the left are embracing hardcore survivalism without any apologies.

What is ironic about all of this is that on the other end of the political spectrum interest in prepping is probably the lowest that it has ever been in the history of the modern prepper movement. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about how it was like “a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community“, and nothing has changed since that time.

In fact, since I originally wrote that article we have gotten some hard numbers that show how dramatically optimism about the future has surged among those on the right.

Just before the election, CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey found that only 15 percent of all Republicans believed that the economy would improve over the next year, but after the election that number skyrocketed all the way up to 74 percent.

But among Democrats it is a different story altogether. That same CNBC survey found that optimism about the economy on the left fell by more than half after the election. At this point, it is sitting at just 16 percent.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

103 Survival Food Prepper Should Check In Their List in 2016

November 12, 2016

103 Survival Food Prepper Should Check In Their List in 2016

Although you may not know of any immediate dangers or emergencies, it is best to be prepared for something long before it presents itself. Often, when a disaster arrives, supermarkets will run out of food rapidly. In fact, typically grocery stores only have a maximum of three days of goods on hand before they run out, so it would be best to prepare now.

Below are 103 items a prepper should consider to have on your long term food storage list because they have a long-shelf life, have multiples uses and can be great for bartering. and should pick up during your next grocery store visit to hold in case of emergency:

How do we choose them?

Shelf Life.

When the world is not the same as we knew it now. Chances are there will be no one restocking the food at the nearby Walmart. One of the best bet is to store only food that can last for decent amount of time.

Bartering

Unlike in video games, cash does little but to use as artificial fuel to keep your campfire burning (not that it is of much use in that aspect as well). Ensuring that you have items on hand that are essential for survival will also mean that you have bargaining chips in negotiations as well.

Multi-Purpose

Food are not only used to nourish our bodies. Some food even rises up to special occastions when you couldn’t find any such as cleaning or antibiotics.

1. Back To Basics

These ingredients are those that should be on any survival food list because they are foods that are the foundation of many meals. That being said, many can be eaten alone if need be.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

These 7 Things Are Better Than Paper Money In the Bank When the Economy Collapses

March 6, 2016

These 7 Things Are Better Than Paper Money In the Bank When the Economy Collapses

So you’ve done the hard work of getting your finances in order and now you’re looking to invest your hard-earned surplus into things that will protect or grow it.

Keeping your savings as fiat currency in the the banks may not be the safest way to store your wealth. Banks are beginning to give concrete evidence of actually penalizing you for keeping your money with them … and that’s if they don’t outright confiscate it via bank bail-in.

It would be prudent to look at investments that offer the dual purpose of getting around the banking system, while also offering ways to stockpile the tangible items that should fare much better in any economic collapse situation.

Here are seven investments that will hold value far better than cash if the current trends continue.

Food

We are beginning to see in real-real time what a collapse in the food supply could mean. One look at Venezuela should prove that even though most people believe “it could never happen here” or even that they have enough money to get what they need no matter what, this is not the case. Even the supposedly wealthy in Venezuela are waiting in long lines with everyone else.

While things are still relatively stable, it makes sense to build a food stockpile slowly but surely. You can pick up a few key food items each week at the supermarket to build up your food bank without having to spend thousands in bulk food acquisitions. It’s best to keep your storable food bank list simple and concentrate on common foods that you already consume regularly. We wrote an article geared toward foods that have long shelf lives but are also practical for most diets, so please read “10 Best Survival Foods At Your Local Supermarket.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to change the world in 3 easy steps

December 23, 2015

How to change the world in 3 easy steps

I often get asked by people about what they can do to change things, to change the world, when each of us is just one person, in the face of so much that we cannot even hope to control or influence.

What can we do? Why bother, given our powerlessness?

As we look back on the key events of 2015, and the processes that led to them, it would be all too easy to succumb to despair.

Despite fighting the ‘war on terror’ for 14 years since 9/11, we’ve only succeeded in seeing terrorism accelerate, metastasising into the so-called ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria. We have invested well over $5 trillion on the ‘war on terror’ since 9/11, but according to US State Department data, in this period terror attacks have skyrocketed by 6,500 percent, while the number of casualties from terror attacks has increased by 4,500 percent.

Decades of international climate negotiations have culminated in a ‘binding’ climate accord that still guarantees carbon emissions that would tip us into a planet on average 4 degrees Celsius hotter by mid-century, creating largely inhospitable conditions for much of the global population, and potentially triggering runaway amplifying feedbacks that would accelerate climate change further.

And while governments and international institutions continue to explore neoliberal capitalist solutions to kick-start economic growth, they are failing. The IMF itself concedes that the world has still not recovered from the 2008 banking collapse; and that pumping cheap money into the global economy has inflated debt to higher than pre-crash levels. Another financial crisis is inevitable.

These seemingly disparate crises are not happening separately and accidentally. They are interrelated symptoms of our global civilisational paradigm, premised on fossil fuel-driven unlimited growth on a finite planet, through geopolitical alliances with autocratic, terror-toting — but oil-rich — regimes in the Muslim world.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Retrotopia: A Gift to be Simple

December 17, 2015

Retrotopia: A Gift to be Simple

This is the eleventh installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator ventures out of Toledo into a tier one rural county and sees one of the alternative cultures taking shape in the Lakeland Republic.

***********

We changed trains in Defiance. The station wasn’t much more than a raised platform running along each side of the tracks, with a shelter of cast iron and glass overhead to keep off any rain that might happen along. The day was shaping up clear and cool; the town looked like old county seats I’d seen in parts of upstate New York that hadn’t been flattened during the endgame of the Second Civil War, a patchwork of clapboard and brick with the county courthouse rising above the nearby roofs. I could see only two obvious differences—first, that the only vehicles on the streets were pulled by horses, and second, that all the houses looked lived in and all the businesses I could see seemed to be open.

The train west to Hicksville came after we’d waited about fifteen minutes. Colonel Pappas and I weren’t the only people waiting for it, either. Something close to a hundred people got off the train from Toledo with us, some in olive drab Lakeland Army uniforms, some in civilian clothing, all of them with luggage and most with long flat cases that I guessed held guns. Once Pappas rolled up the ramp onto one of the cars and I followed him, I found that the train was already more than half full, and it was the same mix, some soldiers, some civilians, plenty of firepower.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Shrinking the Technosphere, Part VII

November 24, 2015

Shrinking the Technosphere, Part VII

You have survived your first winter on the land. Congratulations! The worst part of the ordeal is quite possibly over. Gone are whatever addictions and expectations with which you arrived, be they internet access or coffee. Your new world consists of the few people around you, and a huge number of plants and animals. But it is a world that is indisputably yours—to make the best of, and to pass along to your children and grandchildren.

In the beginning some elements of nonnaturelike technology will persist. But as seasons wear on your newfound world will no longer include electricity or electronics, synthetic materials or fabrics, internal combustion engines (no more outboard engines, snowmobiles or chainsaws). Firearms, synthetic pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and much else will quietly fade from memory.

In place of gadgets there will be books: the riverboat that makes its rounds of shoreline settlements exactly once a year—in midsummer—carries a lending library, dropping off books one summer and picking them up the next. It also distributes a set of textbooks made available by the government: language and literature, mathematics, botany, biology, chemistry, physics, geography and geology. Some of the textbooks haven’t changed in many generations; after all, there has been very little new that would be useful to you. Others have needed an update or two; the geography textbook no longer lists countries such as Bangladesh, Kiribati or US states such as Louisiana and Florida, which won’t be around for much longer. Numerous failed states with morbid populations and undefended borders will be given scant mention.

In place of synthetic fabrics or cotton there will be cloth of flax and hemp (cotton goes away along with industrial chemistry, on which it depends for pesticides). Much use will be made of leather, wool and fur, the last of which already essential for your continued survival.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Shrinking the Technosphere, Part VI

November 17, 2015

Shrinking the Technosphere, Part VI

Suppose your situation is such that you need to effect a swift change of venue. The circumstances that prompt this relocation can be quite varied, but the common and foreseeable ones are:

1. There is no fresh water where you are. The reservoirs are dry and dusty, the artesian wells are either no longer producing or are producing water laced with arsenic and heavy metals, and the few desalination plants bottle their water and sell it at prices you cannot afford. What was once fields and pasture is reverting to sand dunes. Forests have dried out, burned down, and are now a lunar landscape criscrossed by deep ravines eroded by sporadic torrential downpours—too sporadic and too torrential to be of benefit.

2. The place where you live is under a few feet of ocean water mixed with raw sewage—not all the time, but often enough that staying there has become a very bad idea. An onshore wind combined with a high tide and a bit of rain are enough to make contaminated, brackish water spew out of every storm drain. With each passing year and more and more basements are flooded, more and more foundations undermined, more and more buildings condemned. Places further inland flood more rarely but are already too crowded, and will be subject to the same conditions after a slight delay.

3. Your country has been overrun by “refugees” who have looted the shops, occupied many of the public buildings and are busy beating up the men and raping the women (like they are doing in Sweden, which is now the second-rapiest country in the world, Lesotho in South Africa is the rapiest). There are large sections of your city where even the military, never mind the police, fear to venture.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to Survive a Terrorist Attack

November 16, 2015

How to Survive a Terrorist Attack

When horrible events happen, people want to know why. Why was a random group of people targeted to have their innocent day destroyed by violence and terror? Why did the culprit choose that group of victims, that day on the calendar, that specific location? And who? Who was the mastermind behind the event? Who were the members of the group that perpetrated the horror?

This is always followed by the speculation that things are not as they have been presented to us. Most people in the preparedness world have a very valid mistrust of the corporate-sponsored mainstream media. We look to other sources for our news, and rightly so.

Every time, that speculation includes accusations that our own government is behind it, pulling the strings. Other frequent theories are that the events never actually happened at all and that the victims are 100% made up of crisis actors.

The pursuit of the truth is an important quest. Some journalists have dedicated their entire lives to uncovering the Machiavellian plots of those who pull the strings and it’s a noble and meaningful calling.

And that is why what I’m about to say is controversial and probably won’t be well-received.

Strictly from a survival point of view, it doesn’t matter at all who committed the acts of terror that occurred on 9/11, on the streets of Boston, or on the other evening in Paris. It doesn’t matter whether the shooting at Sandy Hook was perpetrated by a kid with behavioral issues or by operatives with an agenda.

If your focus is preparedness and survival, the most important thing you can be doing right now is learning from these events.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Water Storage Tips And Advice 101

October 31, 2015

Water Storage Tips And Advice 101

Today we present another article in our non-fiction writing contest –Boatswain’s Mate from Florida

Greetings to all. I would like to write about my experience with water storage over the years. First and foremost, water is hands down the most important tangible item in a survival scenario. There are countless articles written on food storage, guns, bug out this, bug in that and multiple other survival gear and items.

The fact is, without water….your dead. The human body can only survive a few days without water, but can go a few weeks without food. Sure you can “bug out” and snare game, or kill a deer for food, but how are you going to wash your hands after you dress an animal, clean your cookware or wash down that game flavored goodness that you are probably not used to? So here is a short article on water basics covering procurement, storage, filtration and usage.

Procurement – There are many ways to find water and here are a few that are available in my area. First, the well. If you don’t have one, you should look getting one. We live in FL and have a high water table so running dry is not an issue. I have an antique cast iron hand pump for dispensing with spare leather cups on hand. The second source you can use is a nearby lake, stream or river. Note, these may be contaminated even more than already when SHTF so use care when filling containers.

Also a cheap way to find water is to use a rain water containment system from your roof. You may have shingles instead of a tin roof, but with filtration, this can be turned into potable water if needed. Finally, there are multiple other places to look, too many to list in fact. There should be good water in your hot water tank for a few days.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Permaculture, Climate & Survival

October 23, 2015

Permaculture, Climate & Survival

SUMMARY: From 15th Annual International Permaculture Convergence in London, September 9th, 2015: “Cool Talk” by Albert Bates from The Farm in Tennessee. Albert interviews Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins. Australian permaculturalist Rosemary Morrow tells us Western permies are the minority, compared to East Asia, India, Africa, and the Pacific Islands.

WELCOME

If you don’t know what permaculture is when we start, you will by the end of this intensive radio feature.

Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Or listen right now on Soundcloud!

ALBERT BATES

Albert Bates is the author of books like “The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change” and “The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times”. He is the host of “The Great Change” blog at peaksurfer.blogspot.ca.

But that just touches the surface. Formerly an environmental lawyer, Bates is one of the long-time residents of the Tennessee intentional community “The Farm“. That’s where so many great alternative ideas and low-tech solutions are created. We last had Albert on Radio Ecoshock for an interview on January 29th, 2014. Find the blog for that show here. Or you can download or listen to that previous interview here.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Get Back Home Urban Survival Kit

October 22, 2015

The Get Back Home Urban Survival Kit

city URBAN SURVIVAL Most of you probably have a bug out bag – having a bug out bag is good insurance in the event you are forced to evacuate your home or retreat for some unforeseen reason. It seems most of us are ready to bug out, but few of us have considered the need to find our way back home if caught away during an emergency.

No doubt, many of you spend a lot of time away from home, with work, school and business sometimes taking you hundreds of miles away from home. Most of the time this isn’t an issue for me, but recently, I’ve had to make several business trips that have taken me out of state and far from home.

What would I do if disaster struck while I was several hundred miles from home? What would I do in the event of a terrorist attack, riot, earthquake or similar disaster. Could I get back home? What would I do if forced to stay in the area for several days or even weeks?

With any luck I’ll be able to drive out, but you never know – the roads could be blocked or impassable because of damage, the area could be quarantined or it could be too dangerous to move for several days.

As with anything related to survival, there are no guarantees and I doubt her father could make it under anything but the best of conditions considering his health. I just hope nothing bad happens with him in tow.

To increase our odds of making it back or surviving in the city if needed, I’ve put together a “Get Home Kit” that I take on extended trips. Sure I could have just taken my bug out bag, but it really isn’t the best solution and the gear for the most part, isn’t what I’d need in an urban setting.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Something Big Is Coming’ – Billionaires Kick Doomsday Prepping Into High Gear

October 19, 2015

‘Something Big Is Coming’ – Billionaires Kick Doomsday Prepping Into High Gear

While preppers and survivalists have grown in numbers over recent years, preparing for everything from an Electromgnetic Pulse (EMP) to a zombie apocalypse, with sites catering to those prepping on a budget, and the U.S. government continues to stock their underground facilities for an extinction level event, another segment of society is preparing for ‘doomsday’ and how to survive it in style.

Billionaires are buying up space in underground bunkers, luxury bomb shelters, paying up to $35,000 just as an entry fee to the Vivos Indiana facility, but the price tag for the Vivos Europa One facility, described as a “subterranean Noah’s Ark” will run you $3 to $5 million, and according to Robert Vicino, founder and CEO of survival prep company the Vivos Group, his clients range from top surgeons to movie stars to U.S. miltary colonels.

While Pulse.com highlights the man who “builds luxury bomb shelters for the billionaires afraid of doomsday,” with careful attention to detail in describing what these luxury bunkers look like and include, a few interesting points are made within the article, including the fact that “catering to doomsday preppers has become a multibillion dollar business.”

Why is it is multibillion dollar industry? Because from those living paycheck to paycheck to those with more money than they could ever spend in ten lifetimes are all aware that something big is coming…. and are preparing for it.

Public comments from some of the planet’s richest people reveal a strain of paranoia about insurrection. At the last annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, observers noticed elites growing more alarmed about the possibility of social unrest. Last year, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer published an open letter to his “Fellow Zillionaires” in Politico Magazine that summed up the growing worry among the wealthy: “What do I see in our future now? I see pitchforks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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