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The Three Stages of Crisis – Looking Through the Other Side of Disaster
Tom Chatham
June 14th, 2012
Project Chesapeake
Comments (122)
Read by 9,863 people
This article has been contributed by Tom Chatham, author of The American Dream Lost: Economic Survival Strategy For a New Paradigm. You can visit his web site at Project Chesapeake.
In every crisis there are three distinct stages that occur to form the complete crisis scenario. Once a crisis occurs, all three stages will be experienced at some level. In preparing for a crisis, you need to be aware of the stages and prepare for each one. A failure to acknowledge any of the stages will cause hardship for those caught up in it. Our ability to foresee danger and take precautionary measures sets us apart from other animals and gives us a distinct advantage when it comes to survivability. We have the ability to create tools and store supplies to see us through the worst of a given situation.
The first stage of any disaster is the pre-crisis interval when a potential crisis becomes suspect. Some will investigate the potential danger further to deduce its’ ramifications on their lives while others will ignore the potential threat in favor of maintaining the status quo so they will not have to face the reality. Many people have a problem facing a reality that suddenly changes and pushes them out of their comfort zone. To acknowledge a threat is to question the sustainability of that comfort zone and the beliefs that the person holds. Those that acknowledge potential threats widen their comfort zones to encompass the threat and they incorporate that into their beliefs so they can accept a changing reality and adapt to it. Once a person accepts a potential threat as real, they determine how best to protect themselves from it and form a defensive plan to deal with it. The defensive measures are dictated by the type of threat and the resources available to the individual. The defensive measures taken act to enhance the persons’ comfort zone and provides mental clarity when reality suddenly changes. This is why some people handle disasters better than others. Their comfort zone already encompasses the new reality and they are able to comprehend what is happening. Those that prepare during a pre-crisis interval are prepared for radical changes in reality.
The second stage of disaster is the unfolding crisis itself. This could be short or long in duration depending on the variables involved. An earthquake is relatively quick while a 1930s style depression is very long. The analysis and preparation one makes prior to an event will determine how well the person gets through the situation. Even without all of the necessary items identified by the prior analysis, a prepared person will fare much better than the unprepared due to the fact that their comfort zone will not have been breeched allowing them to make rational decisions in a timely manner. The preparations made during the pre- crisis interval will lead to successful navigation of the crisis and prepare the individual for the final stage.
The final stage experienced will be the post crisis phase. No matter how bad or long a crisis is, eventually it will end and recovery will begin in some form. A proper evaluation of the potential crisis will provide some insight into what a post crisis reality will require in terms of human and mechanical needs. The recovery effort following a crisis will depend in large part on what preparations were made prior to the crisis to provide infrastructure for the recovery. The failure to plan for a recovery effort will extend the crisis until the necessary situation develops in which recovery can commence. The act of preparation sets the stage for recovery even before the crisis actually happens and can limit how far outside of the comfort zone the crisis extends for unprepared persons. For every person prepared for the crisis, the extent of the crisis will be limited in scope and duration by a proportional amount.
Hence, if everyone is prepared for a disaster, the impact will be small and manageable and recovery will be rapid. Many people prepare for disasters but their planning stops at the crisis itself and fails to go beyond it. This can potentially extend the crisis in scale or duration until a majority of the victoms learn to move beyond the crisis and define the new reality they will live in.
As an example, you may determine that you are at risk of a tornado strike because of your location. Because of this you decide that building an underground shelter to protect your family is a sensible action so you build one. This is where most planning stops. If you believe your family is in danger then the possibility of losing your home is very high also. A complete analysis of the potential danger can lead you to a conclusion that you may also lose your home and leave you without the ability to care for your family.
Because of this you may decide to build a more robust shelter and equip it with the ability to house your family for several days and provide for all of their needs. Your post crisis planning will limit the hardship you face and aid in recovery.
To prepare successfully for crisis, you must look through to the other side of the disaster and determine how to best mold the new reality that will exist and prepare for the disruptions that are likely to occur. A plan to redefine the limits of a new reality will speed the recovery and prevent the lost, hopeless feelings that usually accompany any serious crisis. A failure to plan for the post crisis reality will leave the new limits to be discovered by trial and error and lead to a chaotic transformation rather than a smooth one.
The Three Stages of Crisis - Looking Through the Other Side of Disaster
The Ultimate Preppers – They Were Preppers, But Didn’t Know It
Norse Prepper
June 15th, 2012
www.SHTFplan.com
Comments (163)
Read by 8,388 people
This article has been shared with the SHTFplan community by longtime contributor Norse Prepper.
It always frustrates me when I turn on the television, read a newspaper or any other source of main stream media that is running a story on preppers. Invariably, with any television series or special, it is promoted with pictures of people with gas masks and AK 47’s talking about how they intend to kill zombies when the golden horde arrives upon their doorsteps when the SHTF. The most popular of these shows is the “Doomsday Preppers” series that is running on the National Geographic channel. I will admit, I watch every episode because there are always things I can learn when seeing what others have done to prepare for whatever they are preparing for and find the show to be very entertaining. In my opinion however, these extreme preppers are not a good representative of the vast majority of preppers.
Depending upon what any person is prepping for, be it an EMP attack with the long term loss of the power grid, a tornado/hurricane/flood, collapse of the financial system, nuclear war or any number of potential calamities that may come your way, there are always some basics that are universal across the board. These being food, water, defense of life and home and sustainability into an unknown future that will last as long as it does.
Outside of these staples of prepping, I have seen some of the extreme preppers having gas masks for the family, underground bunkers designed to ignite propane through hand rails to fry intruders in hallways leading to safe rooms and even homemade explosive devices. I can see why they do it and by having some of these things, they are probably more prepared than most. Having gas masks may be more common place in the prepping community and important for survival, but my point is that these are things that preppers typically take care of after the basics are complete.
Then there are the prepper want to be’s of the world. These are people that if National Geographic wanted to do a special on them, would show up and see them overloaded on information and lacking on results. They do research, read books on survival skills and talk a good talk about what’s coming and what they are planning on doing. It would be a very boring episode so you won’t see these people on any upcoming episodes I’m afraid. They are severely unprepared for whatever TEOTWAWKI situation arrives at their doorstep. Post collapse, they will be identified easily by listening to people in food lines and FEMA camps saying “I knew it!” and “I just didn’t have enough time to put it all together!” They may own a bunch of guns, mostly never shot more than to sight them in. They probably haven’t actually grown a garden, but have some seeds. They probably have never harvested a deer or game and prepared it for a meal. They call themselves preppers, but will have a very rude awakening when the SHTF.
That covers the 5% on either side of the bell curve of preppers, so who would be classified as the 90% and what would describe them? The answer is simple and can be answered with a single word. Grandparents. I recall a story my grandmother told me regarding arriving on a boat in North America. Her birthday was on Christmas and she recalls her and her sisters had a beet that was given to them for their Christmas meal. The moral here is that when someone tells me it could never happen here, I am reminded by this story that I am only 2 generations removed from it actually happening here in this nation. Is it ludicrous to think that these times instilled within our grandparents a sense of responsibility to prepare for leaner times? Today, many consider this extreme and would label them fringe nut cases.
When I think of the ultimate preppers, the picture in my head is of my grandparents. Growing up they were always known as “Farmer Gramma and Farmer Grampa”. They lived in a small farm house in northeast North Dakota and throughout life worked hard and played hard. They were preppers, but didn’t know it. When I was young, the farm seemed more like a playground, but in hindsight, they are what I believe all of us as preppers should aspire to become. They were hard working, self sufficient producers.
The following is just a short list of things I remember that they had in place that would apply to preppers:
- Rural setting far from any major city.
- Community. Surrounding farms were either family or very close friends. They all provided for their own families and helped each other when it came to butchering, harvest or anything that would be of need. They knew everybody and were very valuable to each other’s well being.
- Farmers with farm equipment along with the means, methods and knowledge to fix anything. If it broke, grandpa could weld it. He had a pole barn for a shop and it had every tool imaginable, many of them hand tools, some electric.
- Animals…lots and lots of animals. They had cattle for dairy as well as meat, hogs, chickens, horses and other occasional animals that were used to provide food and income to the family and a barn to house each of them complete with a hay loft that had a hook on the ceiling that could be used for transporting a hay bale from one side to the other or to turn a 6 year old into superman, flying over the countryside to eventually cannonball in to a pile of hay at the end of the barn. One main stay at the farm was a golden retriever named Goldie who would always let them know if someone was approaching or if there were unwanted animals like foxes, wolves or other predators. He was a great dog.
- Fruit orchard. There were numerous apple trees and plum trees. My grandfather could actually take limbs from one species of apple trees and graft them on to a different variety of apple tree. Maybe this is something that is common, but to me it was a master at work.
- Gardens. There was a fruit garden where you would find raspberries, strawberries and watermelon. The vegetable garden had, well, everything. Corn, peas, cucumbers, radishes, beans, carrots, lettuce, cabbage, beets and I could go on forever. From the eyes of a 6 year old I would estimate the vegetable garden to be over 2,500 acres, but in actuality it was probably about a half acre.
- Food preparation. This is an overall generalization of hundreds of things that my grandparents did to preserve food for winter or leaner times ahead. All excess fruits and vegetables were sold, given away or canned. They had a cellar below the house where a room was filled with potatoes after harvest and there were hundreds of canned items lining every wall. I’m guessing my grandmother could take a railroad spike and turn it in to a loaf of moist, perfect home cooked bread. What’s a microwave?
- Water source. There were two ponds dug for cattle, the original hand pumped shallow well that provided water to the farm and later a new well was drilled with an electric pump.
- Shelter belt. There was a perimeter line of woods about 40 feet wide surrounding the house and rear yard. This provided shelter from winds and drifting snow as well as provided free heat for the house.
- The house. I spoke of the cellar which contained mostly food. It was a small, modest typical farm house that was constructed at the turn of the century. Centered in the house was a wood stove that always had a pot of hot water used for providing humidity to the house as well as warm water for dishes, bath’s and other things necessary. Directly above the stove was a grate that went through to the small upstairs which had two rooms. Heat would rise from the stove and provide a very warm and comfortable atmosphere where their 7 children who shared the two rooms slept.
- Entertainment. Let’s face it, grandpa had a radio and that was it until the television arrived. He learned to play the harmonica, piano, fiddle and guitar and was quite talented at all of them. They had a handmade wooden miniature pool table that had metal pegs sticking out of it. You would take the cue stick and hit wooden checkers along the table and each peg had behind it a hole that would represent different points.
- A gun. You read that right, he had a gun. It was a .22 long rifle that was used to take a deer every now and then with uncle Nub back when you just decided it was a hunting weekend. They would take a deer and by nightfall it would be completely butchered and processed. The .22 was used during slaughter of the hogs and cattle, protected the farm from predators, provided entertainment in the way of target practice and was the only gun I ever remember seeing. It always was above the door, loaded and ready if needed. It wasn’t ever thought of being needed to shoot people, it was a necessary tool. One of my earliest memories of the farm was grandpa would take us out to shoot barn swallows if we would hand in the plug we still had in our mouth. Today that would be considered illegal, back then it was babysitting.
- Faith. Above all else, my grandparents had faith in God. They lived a sustainable life and believed that God honored their faith and efforts by providing, and at that He did in abundance. I don’t remember the stern dad that I heard grandpa to be when mom was growing up. I remember that every meal started with a prayer and every day ended giving thanks to God for the blessings He gave our family. When grandpa was in a nursing home on his death bed he could still quote scripture word for word and his bible was littered with personal notes showing a lifelong journey walking with God.
I encourage all of you blessed enough to still have their grandparents wisdom available to talk to them of what life was like when they were young. If you are like me and they have passed away, there is probably someone in a local nursing home with a story to tell if you would be so generous enough to take some time to use their stories to further your education. Believe me, they will be doing you a favor and it would make their day that someone would care enough to listen. Just a suggestion.
I could write a novel on the other million things I remember of Farmer Gramma and Farmer Grampa and their prepping retreat we called the farm. It saddens me to no end that today, in these United States of America, the land of the free and home of the brave, that they would probably be labeled as suspected terrorists according to recent descriptions of what the government considers key indicators in a recently published document on what to look for when on the lookout for terrorists. They were hard working, God fearing patriots that loved their family and country. They were the ultimate preppers. You see, prepping wasn’t a movement at that time. It was survival. It was providing for their family the best they could with what they had. It was life on a farm.
God Bless,
Norse Prepper
The Ultimate Preppers - They Were Preppers, But Didn't Know It
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rexresearch.com
Ian GILMARTIN & Robert CATTLEY
Mini Water Wheel
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News | Herald Scotland
1 January 2007
"Free Electricity"
It is a mechanical problem that has troubled scientists since the ancient Greeks. Now a Scottish electrician has invented a small water wheel that could save thousands of pounds in energy bills.
Ian Gilmartin, 60, who has no mains electricity, is generating power from the stream in his garden. He and friend Bob Cattley, 58, have invented a mini water wheel capable of supplying enough electricity to power a house, with no running costs and zero carbon emissions.
The contraption is the first off-the-shelf water wheel system which can generate a good supply of electricity from a waterfall as little as 20cm in height.
It is designed to be used in small rivers or streams, making it ideal for potentially thousands of homes across Britain.
Mr Gilmartin, an electrician and inventor born and raised in the village of Springfield, near Cupar, Fife, was not prompted to think up his device by high energy bills - he does not own a TV and has never lived in a house with electricity.
But he has a stream at the back of his house near Staveley, in Cumbria, and with the help of PhD engineering student Mr Cattley, now hopes to see the invention in the shops by the end of next year.
Mr Gilmartin, who lived in Linwood before moving to Cumbria in the late-1960s, began experimenting three years ago with yoghurt pots, toilet rolls and wheelie bins in the stream, before test-running a prototype.
He took the results to the Lake District National Park, and secured a £15,000 grant from the organisation's sustainability fund. The prototype has been working successfully at St Catherine's, a National Trust site near Windermere, opening up previously untapped energy.
The water wheel produces one to two kilowatts of power and generates at least 24 kilowatt hours of sustainable green energy in a day, just less than the average household's daily consumption of around 28 kilowatt hours. It should cost around £2000 to install, and will pay for itself inside two years.
The Beck Mickle low head micro hydro generator could potentially provide electricity to more than 50,000 British homes and could be used industrially.
The inventors predict a series of them linked on the same river course could create enough electricity to power a small town or large hospital.
Mr Gilmartin said he came up with the idea after giving up work to look after his son, who had epilepsy. "There was nothing available on the market to recover any sensible amount of energy from low (pressure) heads, so in wanting something to think about at the time, I thought of the idea of having revolving buckets to recover energy.
"While we cannot say this provides free electricity, because of the initial cost of buying the machine, it is expected to pay for itself within two years and then greatly reduce the owner's electricity bills after then. Because what we are doing is cheap to make, the pay-back is very quick."
Gilmartin's Website: Beck Mickle Hydro Ltd: Home
WO 2006082403Applicant: BECK MICKLE HYDRO LTD (GB); GILMARTIN JOHN GRAHAM (GB)
[ PDF Format -- 1.1 MB ]
IMPROVEMENTS IN AND RELATING TO GRAVITY TYPE WATER WHEELS
( 2006-08-10 )
GILMARTIN, John Graham
Classification: - international: F03B9/00; F03B9/00; - European: F03B9/00B
Application number: WO2006GB00351 20060202
Priority number(s): GB20050002142 20050202
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http://www.est.org.uk/aboutest/news/...cleid=15061334
7 October 2005
Yoghurt Pot Generator Could Revolutionise Energy Production
A revolutionary new invention that uses yoghurt pot plastic to generate electricity could be a significant new step towards increasing the UK's reliance on renewables.
The Beck Mickle Hydro project uses the plastic device to generate electricity from shallow waters such as rivers and streams to a depth of just 20 cm.
"We could be looking at significant changes to power production," explained the inventor of the device, Ian Gilmartin.
"We want to generate energy from water between 20 cm and two metres deep. No one else has attempted anything like this in such shallow water."
Mr Gilmartin hopes that the invention, currently being developed at Lancaster University, will translate into a device that could generate enough electricity to power a house.
Homeowners could then buy the machine for around £1,000 to achieve their own renewable microgeneration.
The device could also reportedly be used to provide drinking water and in air conditioning.
The project has received funding from the Lake District National Park Authority's sustainable development fund. It is believed the device, once developed, could be used in up to 100,000 sites across the UK.
Beck Mickle Hydro Ltd: Lancaster University partnership
Beck Mickle Hydro Ltd in Partnership with Lancaster University.
Local inventor and electrician lan Gilmartin has redesigned the water wheel for the 21st century to provide renewable inexpensive electricity from even tiny streams without harming fish or contributing to global warming. This unique patented technology makes use of recycled plastic and can even provide power from becks that are no more than a trickle. It is envisaged units that are scalable will be sold as white goods that can easily be approved and installed before simply being plugged in.
Following a referral from Business Link Cumbria, lan has been working with the Enterprise and Business Partnerships (EBP) Team of Lancaster University's Environment Centre to assess the environmental impact of this technology, identify its market potential and strengthen its patent protection.
The environmental impact assessment focused on the use of food-grade recycled plastics within the water wheel, to support a possible demonstration at the National Trust's St Catherine's site in Winder-mere. This was contracted out to CookPrior Associates Ltd, a local consultancy experienced in such assessments, which identified a low risk of any organic chemicals leaching from the plastics to be used, but recommended a series of leaching trials to ensure that no unforeseen problems arose.
Through a variety of literature searches, internet searches and personal contacts with organisations such as the: NERC, Environment Agency and Land Registry, the EBP team have identified several reports providing information on potential sites for low-head hydro generation and the proportion of the UK meeting minimum gradient and flow requirements.
However, further work remains to be done, in particular the development of a comprehensive business plan to successfully attract investors. Therefore, a team of four MBA students undertaking a business planning module in the University's Management School, have been recruited. The team have enthusiastically accepted the challenge of pulling together the market information so far obtained and producing a first draft business plan for delivery in mid December. During the business planning project, EBP have continued to investigate a means of actively identifying potential customers, rather than relying solely on passive internet-based advertising. This has now led to discussions with the University's Geography Department regarding the possible development of an automated system for analysing 1 in 10,000 scale maps and providing the postcodes of potential customers for use in targeted mail shots, possibly along with their electricity bills. EBP are also working closely with lan using the group's patent and intellectual property experience, to strengthen Beck Mickle Hydro's patent position and ensure appropriate confidentiality agreements are in place across their numerous contacts.
Beck Mickle Hydro have also been working closely with the Lancaster University Renewable Energy Group (LUREG) to evaluate their technology against siphon technology LUREG are developing as an alternative means of low-head hydroelectric generation. LUREG, which has significant expertise in low head hydroelectric generation in both tidal and non-tidal environments have adopted lan's technology and are working closely with him to establish a number of demonstration sites for both technologies.
The EBP team with the financial support of the NorthWest Development Agency and Higher Education Innovation Fund helps companies across the NorthWest to access the environmental and science expertise of Lancaster University. This is accomplished via company visits to identify areas where assistance would be beneficial, small pieces of free consultancy, technical and business based student projects and facilitating the formation of affinity groups between companies to resolve common issues through collaborative research partnerships. The EBP team also serve as the prime contact for the Lancaster Environment Centre, which is the largest of its kind in Europe and brings people together from across the university together with the NERC's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.
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John GILMARTIN: Low-Head Water Wheel
Obama should have made you his energy czar Sapper, this thread gets more amazing each time I see it. And I thought the FEMA camps were going to offer 3 hots and cable? Which would be a welcome site to all the people this non-president has left homeless and jobless! Thank You Sapper may need this if the camps become over crowded.
Oh! yeah! "Happy Father's Day Sapper7"
I hope and pray we don't need it Steve... it is getting scarier by the day... Happy Fathers day as well
Yeah. Good job Saps. Thank you.
Thanks Pattyk ... I hope this some of this stuff works for you also ... the same for everyone ... hey folks... if you want to post on here please do so... I am just trying to keep it going as a public service for the country and people I love to pieces
its all about this country and its people... if you got something cool to post that will help others PLEASE DO SO
Living Large in a Tiny House
By Farnoosh Torabi | Yahoo! Finance – Thu, Jun 14, 2012 8:49 AM EDT
Imagine living in a space that measures a mere 168 square feet, more than 14 times smaller than the average American home. That’s the reality for one family of four who, for the past year, has been living in their “Tiny House” tucked away in the rural mountains of Virginia. It’s here, they say, that they’ve truly learned how less can be so much more. In fact, in just one year the family has managed to save about $3,000 a month by downsizing in more ways than one.
The move began when Hari, her husband Karl and their two young children Archer and Ella were forced to give up their 1,500 square foot home last year due to financial struggles. Hari and Karl decided to take matters into their own hands, literally, by building their new tiny house with just $13,000 in materials found on Craigslist. Karl’s a bit of a handyman, to say the least. His parents helped build homes for a living and he learned the ropes at a young age.
The Tiny House is temporary. The end goal, they say, is to save enough to one day build a bigger home, one that’s 100% mortgage-free. And with the amount they’ve saved so far, they’re right on schedule to do so.
Learning from the Best: Inflation Lessons from Argentina
By Bill Bonner
http://dailyreckoning.com/wp-content...6/Deficit3.jpg 06/12/12 Baltimore, Maryland – Spain was down again before we noticed it was up. Yesterday morning, stocks all over the world were rising on hopes of a solution to the euro problem. By afternoon, the rally was over. The Dow ended the day down 142 points.
But that’s the way the euro rescues go. The effects are more and more short-lived. Pretty soon, investors will realize they don’t work at all…and then there won’t be any up-surge, A new rescue plan will be announced. Investors will realize it is just another scammy fix. And stocks will go down.
When that happens the game will be over.
We might not be far from that point now.
Meanwhile, the US is worried too. About Europe, which is on the verge of total breakdown?
Maybe. About China, which is growing at its slowest pace in 13 years? Maybe.
About the US itself…where the ‘recovery’ went missing? Almost certainly.
Here at our Daily Reckoning headquarters, we remain sans soucis. Which is another way of saying, we’re enjoying the show. What will the fixers do next, we wonder? Every fix makes things worse. But they keep at it.
For the benefit of Dear Readers with skin in the game, we leave our “Crash Alert” flag up for a few more days. This market could go to hell in a hurry. If you’ve got skin in the game, get it out.
And, for the benefit of everyone, we cast our weary eyes down to the pampas. Is there any policy so foolish the Argentines have not had a go at it? Is there any financial disaster so catastrophic the gauchos haven’t repeated it at least two or three times? Is there any trick so dishonest or so transparently fraudulent that the politicians south of the Rio de la Plata don’t make a regular habit of it?
Our Bonner Family Office chief investment strategist, Rob Marstrand, who makes his home in Buenos Aires, is visiting us in the US this week. He tells us that it is said to be a crime in Argentina to mention the “parallel” market in dollars. On the official market, the peso still trades at about 4.4 to the dollar. On the unofficial exchanges, that is, on the parallel market, the “blue” peso trades at less than 5.1 to the greenback.
But it’s apparently illegal to mention it.
So is it supposedly illegal to publish the real inflation rate. The Argentine feds have their rate; it’s a crime to contradict them.
The government is also trying to get Argentines to stop using the dollar as a protection against peso inflation. The president says she is converting her own dollar deposits to pesos, to set an example.
“I guarantee you she is not converting her accounts in Switzerland,” says Rob.
But the typical Argentine wasn’t born yesterday. He’s been around the block a few times. He knows that when the government gets in financial trouble, it can’t be trusted. He knows that it will seize whatever money it can get its hands on — especially if it is foreign currency. So, if he’s saved dollars, he’s hiding them…or getting them out of the country. Here’s the Reuters report:
BUENOS AIRES, June 8 (Reuters) — Argentine banks have seen a third of their US dollar deposits withdrawn since November as savers chase greenbacks in response to stiffening foreign exchange restrictions, local banking sources said on Friday.
Depositors withdrew a total of about $100 million per day over the last month in a safe-haven bid fueled by uncertainty over policies that might be adopted as pressure grows to keep US currency in the country.
The chase for dollars is motivated by fear that the government may further toughen its clamp down on access to the US currency as high inflation and lack of faith in government policy erode the local peso.
From May 11 until Friday, data compiled by Reuters from private banks showed $1.9 billion in US currency had been withdrawn, or about 15 percent of all greenbacks deposited in the country.
Feisty populist leader Fernandez was re-elected in October vowing to “deepen the model” of the interventionist policies associated with her predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, who is also her late husband.
She wants Argentines to end their love affair with the greenback and start saving in pesos despite inflation clocked by private economists at about 25 percent per year.
Fernandez set an example on Wednesday by vowing to swap her only dollar-denominated savings account for a fixed-term deposit in pesos.
But savers in crisis-prone Argentina are notoriously jittery.
Why would they be jittery? Because their dollar deposits were seized and forcibly converted to pesos 10 years ago? Because the peso was devalued by 66% in the last crisis?
Or because the Argentine peso of 50 years ago has been devalued by approximately 42 trillion percent. We don’t know how such a thing is mathematically possible…but that’s the report we’ve read.
Defaults, devaluations, hyperinflations — the Argentines have seen it all.
Americans have a lot to learn.
And another thought…
The British writer AA Gill once noted that…
“Europe is an allegory for the ages of man. You are born Italian, relentlessly infantile and mother-obsessed. In childhood, you are English: chronically shy, tongue-tied clicky and only happy kicking balls or pulling the legs off things. Teenagers are French: pretentiously philosophical, embarrassingly vain, ridiculously romantic yet simultaneously insecure. During Middle-Age, we become either Irish and fun loving, or Swiss and serious. Old age is German: ponderous, pompous and pedantic. And finally, we regress into being Belgian, with no idea of who we are at all.”
Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning
http://dailyreckoning.com/learning-f...rom-argentina/
The Battle Lines Are Being Drawn
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By Avalon
theintelhub.com
June 17, 2012
In a must-see video just posted InfoWars.com, Alex Jones talks with Survivalist James Wesley Rawles whose site is www.survivalblog.com and is author of Survivors. So many important subjects are covered that this video should go viral. Rather than summarize what is discussed, it’s more important to just present the video here for you to watch and hopefully pass along to everyone on your contact list. We are facing challenging times ahead.
Credit goes to Alex Jones and Wesley Rawles, who tell it like it is in one of the most important videos addressing survival, that goes over all the important subjects facing America and the world today. Please share via email and pass this information on to everyone on your contact list and please comment on the video so that the view count reflects a true count.
Theintelhub.com will also post an update showing the page count and redirect to watch the video on Alex Jones YouTube channel which is at www.youtube.com/TheAlexJonesChannel to document an accurate video count.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STfEP...yer_embedded#!
The Impending Economic Collapse with Survivalist James Wesley Rawles
Published on Jun 16, 2012 by TheAlexJonesChannel
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20 Reasons Why America’s Next Bank Holiday Will Be a Nightmare
James Wesley Rawles
June 18th, 2012
Survival Blog
Comments (161)
Read by 9,002 people
This article has been generously contributed for your reading pleasure by James Rawles of Survival Blog.
The world is on now on the brink of a global credit crisis that could be far worse than the tumultuous events of 2008. The ongoing sovereign debt crisis in the southern reaches of the Eurozone indicate that bank runs in the region will continue, and that more bank closure “holidays” will be declared. Under a bank holiday, virtually all deposits could be frozen and irredeemable for days, weeks, or even months. The key question is: Will this crisis spread to the rest of Europe and then even to the United States? I urge SurvivalBlog readers–particularly those in Europe–to be proactive, to stay “ahead of the power curve.” While the Generally Dumb Public (GDP) wakes up some morning to hear news of a bank holiday, you will have long hence prepared yourself.
Digits Lost in the Ether–Redeemable Mañana?
Most people don’t realize that printed U.S. currency and minted coins amount to less than $800 billion, worldwide. That is just a small portion of the aggregate Money Zero Maturity (MZM) money supply that now exceeds $7 Trillion. So what is in your bank account is just electronic money, and there is absolutely no way that even a fraction of depositors could get physical cash to redeem the digits in their accounts. If there is a bank holiday declared, there will undoubtedly be severe restrictions on cash withdrawals when banks re-open. Given the precedent of the limits on withdrawals of a few institutions during the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, I predict that withdrawal restrictions could go on for many months.
Here are 20 Reasons why America’s next bank holiday will be a nightmare:
- A bank holiday will create a virtual blackout of information on not just checking and saving accounts, but also automated mortgage payments, CDs, and more. Our presently quite transparent banking system will suddenly become opaque. Your bank balance will become invisible. Your handy-dandy online banking web page will be replaced by a “Service Temporarily Unavailable” notice. The willingness to accept checks will evaporate in less than a day. The FUD factor (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) will be overwhelming.
- Most businesses will no longer honor personal checks, corporate checks, or bank money orders. Showing a merchant your most recent bank statement isn’t likely to sway him. Again, the FUD factor will rule.
- All checks in the U.S. are cleared through the automated clearinghouse (ACH)network. Most of this network is inside of banking system firewalls. Many Federal, State, and local tax payments are also handled through ACH. (A similar network exists for European banks–the Pan-European Automated Clearing House (PE-ACH), under the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) system).
- Credit cards might not be accepted. The FUD factor will dictate that anything even peripherally related to the banking system will be suspect. (Even though the credit card companies have their own credit clearing mechanisms that are only attached to the banking milieu.)
- Except for a few grandfathered recipients, Social Security payments are now made exclusively via bank direct deposit.
- Military monthly pay, housing allowances, and ration payments are now made exclusively via bank direct deposit, in CONUS. That is true virtually across the board (Active component, Reserve, and National Guard.) Ditto for monthly military retirement payments.
- Many State and Federal employees no longer get physical paychecks. They too, are trapped in the “direct deposit only” world.
- Many Americans are now very dependent on bank debit cards (also known as a bank cards or check cards.) In fact, many people don’t even carry more than a few dollars in their wallets. If our world suddenly goes “cash only” most people will suddenly be out of cash.
- ATMs, debit card transactions, and online banking can be shut down in minutes. This huge vulnerability of banking customers has already been evidenced by a few minor glitches.
- Online payment systems like PayPal will be sharply degraded, because they rely on their ability to move funds to and from banks. More importantly, online payments are inextricably tied to credit card processing. If credit card processing is suspended, then online payments will be “dead in the water.”
- Many regular monthly payments such as mortgages, insurance premiums, and some utilities are automatically debited from checking accounts. These will all come to a screeching halt.
- SWIFT wire transfers will probably be suspended, freezing a good portion of global commerce. Similarly, International ACH transactions (IATs) will also be shut down, since they access the U.S. ACH network.
- The ability to process credit card payments will be dubious, at best. Many merchants will wisely “just say no” to credit cards, even if their countertop POP terminals are still functioning and show available credit. And the fact that many credit cards are now just debit cards in disguise will only add to the reluctance of merchants to take any credit cards.
- Point of purchase (POP) processing of credit and debit cards at gas stations has become ubiquitous. Nearly everyone now uses the “pay at the pump” option. Gas and diesel could become “cash only” transactions.
- Most American families keep less than $300 in cash at home at any given time, including their kids’ piggy banks. For most families, that wouldn’t cover even one month’s rent.
- Formerly distributed as “Food Stamps”, the USDA‘s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), provides benefits to low income families through Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card payments. These cards look much like credit cards. And like checks, EBT payments are all routed through the ACH network. Again, this is a network that is inside banking system firewalls. If the banking system goes into holiday mode, then it may take days or even weeks to get EBT processing back on line. If the EBT payments stop, we can expect riots in metropolitan areas in less than a week.
- Gift cards will be “iffy.” There are now two types of gift cards: “open loop” (or “network”) cards and traditional “closed loop” cards. Open loop cards are issued by banks or credit card companies and can be redeemed many places. It is likely that only closed loop cards will be honored by the issuing stores, because merchants will fear that open loop cards might have been zeroed out elsewhere. (If they can’t confirm the available balance, the card will be refused.)
- Most Internet vendors are almost entirely dependent on credit card processing. If that processing system is disrupted, then mailorder firms will either have to cease operations, or have them slow to a snail’s pace, and be restricted to only non-bank money orders.
- Reversion to U.S. Postal Service money orders (commonly called “PMOs“) will only be partially viable solution. This is because many small town and rural post offices don’t keep enough cash in their tills to be able to hand you $1,000 when you go to cash a PMO. You may be thinking, “Oh well, I’ll just ask them to write me a blank PMO, in exchange. Nope. A recent change to postal regulations designed to curtail money laundering banned money order-for-money order issuance. Bummer. And if you are considering using “Forever” postage stamps, hold your horses. Under a hygiene regulation published in the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM), postal clerks are not allowed to cash out (“buy back”) stamp booklets unless they are still in their sealed clear plastic master packages. So it might take decades to use up your Forever stamps, or you will be forced to liquidate them on the gray market at a slight loss.
- Bank safe deposit boxes will probably be inaccessible. Plan accordingly.
Some Observations and Mitigation Steps:
Because so many pay and retirement benefit systems are now handled via bank direct deposit only, we could easily live through a frustrating “Roach Motel” period of several months when “Dollars check in, but they don’t check out.” Be prepared to ride through that period.
If the European credit spreads to the United States, then immediately visit your company’s payroll office, and ask to be removed from their direct deposit system. This change might take a couple weeks. With a paper paycheck, you can probably cash it elsewhere, even if you own bank closes its doors–perhaps even at your local grocery store.
Keep plenty of well-hidden cash at home. Since it won’t be earning interest, some of this cash might as well be in $2 rolls of nickels. That method will also give you a hedge on inflation, and also serve as insurance against a currency reform. (Where a zero could be lopped off the Dollar, overnight.)
Be prepared for times for when anything other than greenback cash or perhaps silver coins will be eyed with suspicion, or rejected outright. Even USPS PMOs and drug store money orders may be refused. In the era of bank holidays, cash will talk. Keep plenty of it on hand. Oh, and needless to say, don’t store your cash in a bank safe deposit box. You probably won’t have access to it during a bank holiday.
Be wise and circumspect in storing cash at home. Don’t tell anyone other than your spouse about that cash. See the SurvivalBlog archives for suggestions on building secret hiding places, like this one.
A good portion of your “stash of cash” should be in the form of $1 and $5 bills. This is because during a banking crisis, many people will not be able make change for small transactions. And if your local power, water, and phone companies refuse checks, then you will need to be able to pay them the exact amount of your monthly bill. (They probably won’t have much “change”, either.)
Apply for at least one gasoline station chain charge card. In turbulent times when they won’t take your check or your VISA card, they might still take their own chain card.
If you have to pay your utility bills in in cash or by PMO, do you know where their business offices are located? And consider the sort neighborhood where those offices are located. (Unless you live in a free state for open carry or Constitutional Carry, do you have your CCW permit, and plenty of pistol practice?) For safety, it might be wise to form a neighborhood posse to go pay those bills in a group of of six people once a month.
Your local supermarket may declare “cash only.” This is yet another reason why it it is vitally important for every family to have a comprehensive food storage program. By the same token, fuel storage also makes sense, if your local fire code allows it.
At the tail end of a banking crisis–when the bank doors do re-open–the Federal Reserve will certainly have to crank up the printing presses. Even people that never had “mattress money” will want some. All this new cash will increase the velocity of money, locally. This will be inflationary, even at the same time that a the macro level, we will witness a huge dollar deflation. (This is because the multiplier effectof every dollar on deposit will work in reverse, as withdrawals are made.) These will be strange times, indeed. If you start to see any evidence of mass inflation kicking in, then be ready to spend your dollars as quickly as possible to parlay them into practical, barterable tangibles. Don’t be the last one standing in the game of Dollar Musical Chairs.
Conclusion
The threats of credit crunches, bank runs, and bank holidays are not new. No society is immune from them. We’ve been fortunate here in the United States to have not suffered any limits on bank withdrawals since the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. But don’t expect this stability to be permanent. We live in a dynamic world with rapidly changing threats to our lives and livelihoods. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
20 Reasons Why America's Next Bank Holiday Will Be a Nightmare
All Over America Government Control Freaks Are Forcing Preppers Back On To The Grid
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June 18th, 2012
5 comments
In recent years there have been huge numbers of Americans that have sought to go "off the grid" and live a more independent lifestyle. It has been estimated that there are now approximately 3 million "preppers" in the United States, and many of them just want to be left alone so that they can take care of themselves and their families on their own land. But that is not the way America works anymore. In many areas of the country, government control freaks have essentially declared war on preppers and are attempting to force them back on to the grid. In some states, "nuisance abatement teams" are conducting armed raids on off the grid properties. Property owners are being cited for "code violations" and are being told that they are "bothering the neighbors".
In some cases, trees and gardens are being forcibly removed. In other cases, entire structures are being relocated or torn down. And in the most extreme cases, property owners are actually being forced off of their properties completely by these control freaks.
You see, the truth is that in America you don't really own your property.
You are essentially renting it, and you can only do with it what the government allows you to do.
And the government does not like people disconnecting from the grid and living an independent lifestyle. So these battles over property rights are probably going to get even more intense in the years ahead.
These days, many Americans are choosing to grow "survival gardens" as a way to help feed their families and become more independent of the system.
But in some areas of the country these survival gardens are being forcibly ripped out by government control freaks. Just check out what happened to one unemployed woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma....
A Tulsa woman is suing the city's code enforcement officers after she said they cut down her garden with no cause.The government agents left her with nothing. They ripped her garden to shreds. She was relying on that garden for her food and her medicine.
Denise Morrison said she has more than 100 plant varieties in her front and back yards and all of them are edible and have a purpose.
She knows which ones will treat arthritis, which will make your food spicy, which ones keep mosquitoes away and treat bug bites, but she said none of that matter to city inspectors.
Last August, Morrison's front and back yards were filled with flowers in bloom, lemon, stevia, garlic chives, grapes, strawberries, apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, an apple tree, walnut tree, pecan trees and much more.
Because she is unemployed, she doesn't have any money to go to the store and buy all those things.
Now she is absolutely destitute....
"I came back three days later, sat in my driveway, cried and left," Morrison said.Oh, but at least the government agents can report that "everything is now up to code".
What is happening to this country?
In the state of California, armed "nuisance abatement teams" are intimidating property owners into getting connected back into the grid, and in some instances they are forcing homeowners off their land entirely.
When I first watched the videos posted below I got quite angry.
This first video is about government control freaks driving people off their land in the California desert....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yw3RiMdS7sE
This second video is also about what is going on with "off the grid" properties in California....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7Yy-roIT1A&feature=player_embedded
After watching those videos, it is easy to understand why millions of people have been leaving the state.
Those running things do not want us to be independent. Rather, they want us completely and totally dependent on the "nanny state" from the cradle to the grave. They want us as "connected" to the system as possible so that they can watch us, monitor us and control us.
Sadly, most Americans do not even realize that the United States is slowly but surely being transformed into a giant prison control grid.
This is happening in thousands of different ways.
For example, eventually all of us will not be able to go anywhere without our faces being recognized and recorded.
Yes, just like the movie "Minority Report". In fact, facial recognition advertising billboards are already being used in Japan.
Facial recognition is even being used on the Internet. Facebook recently purchased a facial recognition startup company called Face.com. This startup company has technology that can positively identify you in any photo and can even guess your age.
The following is from an official statement on the Face.com website....
Facebook has acquired Face.com! Our mission is and has always been to find new and exciting ways to make face recognition a fun, engaging part of people’s lives, and incorporate remarkable technology into everyday consumer products. If you’re anything like us, Facebook is a part of your life every single day. We keep up with our friends and family, share interesting (or mundane) experiences from our daily lives, and perhaps most importantly for us, we share a LOT of photos.The truth is that nothing any of us do on the Internet will ever be private again. That ship has already sailed.
We still have a lot of freedom to say what we want on the Internet, but that window is rapidly closing as well.
Internet censorship in the United States is growing at a very fast pace, and it is only a matter of time before entire websites start getting shut down for political reasons.
The following is from a recent CNN article about the explosive growth of Internet censorship....
In the last half of 2011, U.S. agencies asked Google to remove 6,192 individual pieces of content from its search results, blog posts or archives of online videos, according to the report. That's up 718% compared with the 757 such items that U.S. agencies asked Google to remove in the six months prior.If they don't like what we do on the Internet, they will just come in and wipe it out.
If they don't like what we do on our land, they will just come in and chop it down or forcibly remove it.
We do not live in the "land of the free" anymore.
"Amerika" is becoming a prison state.
And every single year the prison grid gets tighter and more oppressive in thousands of different ways.
If you are doing something "out of the box" on your own property right now, you might want to keep it very quiet.
If the wrong person finds out, an armed "nuisance abatement team" might just show up at your door one morning and hit you with several dozen "code violations".
I don't know what country we are living in, but it sure isn't America.
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All Over America Government Control Freaks Are Forcing Preppers Back On To The Grid
31 Ways to Use Mason Jars in Your Kitchen
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18th June 2012
By Stephanie Langford - keeperofthehome.org
I have a bit of a love affair with mason jars.
They are sturdy, they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, they can often be found inexpensively, and best of all? They are a completely non-toxic way to store things in my kitchen!
We all know by now that plastics usually include dangerous chemicals, particularly if they are heated at all, but even when they are used for any sort of food or liquid that could absorb the toxins that the plastics leach out. Some plastics are safer than others and it’s prudent to learn which ones are which.
This month, we’re actually looking at a variety of ways to “Spring Clean the Toxins” lurking in your home. What better place to start than in the kitchen, particularly with items that are touching the food you put straight into your body?When it comes to the kitchen, one of the best and simplest ways to avoid dangerous plastics and the toxins they contain is by switching to completely safe, clean options like glass! Enter the ever practical mason jar…
How to Start a Mason Jar Stockpile
First of all, never turn down an offer of mason jars. If you see them free at garage sales, if your aunt has extras she is getting rid of, if something you buy comes in a genuine re-usable mason jar. Any size, style, shape, even color– they’re all worth having.Personally, I like to get mine free (who wouldn’t?). It’s easier than you think. Some places to start looking:
- Craigslist. Look in the Free section and search for jars, canning, etc. You’d be surprised what people give away.
- Garage sales. I have picked up so many free or very cheap boxes of canning jars from garage sales. It’s one of the first things I look for when I stop at a sale.
- Family or friends. A lot of people have jars that they just don’t know what to do with, especially our mother’s generation, or perhaps grandmothers that used to do canning but have since given it up.
If you can’t find them free, and I will be the first to admit that this is getting just slightly harder now that canning and preserving is coming back into vogue, here are some other cheap options:
- End-of-season clearance sales. Starting around the end of August and all through September, I keep my eyes open for the brand new boxes in the grocery or hardware stores to go on clearance. Once they do, I buy as many boxes as my budget and storage situation can handle.
- Thrift stores (and garage sales). Sometimes you can find them in complete box sets, other times you have to buy them by the jar. Either way, it’s usually worthwhile.
Mason jars come in many sizes and shapes. The first distinction is in the mouth size (or the opening of the jar). The two most common sizes are Wide Mouth and Regular. There are some more random sizes out there, like Gem, but these are few and far between and difficult to find rings and lids for. I would stick to the first two to keep things simple.
The second distinction is in their size. They can be as small as 250ml (or I have even seen on very rare occasions jars that are half this size- so small!), and then you can commonly find jars that are 500 ml (or about 1 pint) or 1 L (same as quart). Then there are the 2 L (or 2 quart/ half gallon) jars. Among all these different sizes, the shapes vary slightly depending on the size of the jar’s mouth and the style of the jar.
In my experience, every variation on size, shape and style is useful in some way or another. Don’t restrict yourself. Collect as many different types of jars as you can, and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll find a use for them all.
Fermenting salsa, telling me when it’s ready to go in the fridge
Making Mason Jars Even More Useful
Did you know you can purchase these incredibly handy-dandy plastic screw-on lids for mason jars?
They come in both regular and wide mouth size and are very inexpensive.
What makes them even more perfect is that you can use a wipe off marker to label them, and simply wipe it off when you’re ready to use the jar for something new.
Labelling, and thus avoiding a fridge full of mysterious mason jars is a good idea (unless you want them to turn into mason jar science experiments… which could be a fun use, come to think of it).Another great find is sprouting lids intended to fit wide mouth mason jars. I have a set of 3 sprouting lids, each with a different size mesh (some for smaller seeds, some for larger ones). Love these!
I have purchased my lids through the natural foods co-op I shop at, Azure Standard. If you’ve seen these types of lids in other locations, please let us know where in the comments for the sake of other readers. Edit: You can get both the plastic lids and the sprouting lids at Amazon!
31 Ways to Use a Mason Jar in Your Kitchen
1. Leftovers. Perfect for soups or stews, grains like rice, chopped veggies, scrambled eggs… endless possibilities.
2. Smoothies. Make extra and store it in the fridge for later in the day, or use the jar to bring the smoothie when you’re on the go.
3. Drinking water for day. Need a way to visually measure how much water you are drinking throughout the day? Try using quart or 1/2 gallon mason jars to put your daily water out on the counter, then use it to refill glasses until it’s gone. You’ll know for sure whether you hit your water target or not.
4. Sprouting seeds or grains. With the sprouting lids I mentioned, this is a breeze for making fresh green sprouts. But even without fancy lids, I’ve been using jars for sprouting for years. Works for sprouting grains, too.
5. Soaking nuts or seeds. Soaking overnight reduces enzyme-inhibitors in nuts and seeds.
6. Store nut butter. After you soak your nuts, make homemade nut butter!
7. Sourdough starter. I like pint jars for creating new sourdough starter, then I’ll transfer it to a quart or 1/2 gallon jar for storing and maintaining the starter long term.
8. Making/storing kombucha. This healthful, fermented drink can also be flavored.
9. Homemade yogurt. I like making mine directly in jars, either in my oven or in my Excalibur dehydrator. Another option is to make yogurt in your crockpot, then transfer to jars once cool and set for easy fridge storage.
10. Mason jar meal. This creative idea would be great for a picnic!
11. Flower vase. Simple, quaint, beautiful.
12. Making milk kefir or water kefir or coconut milk kefir.
13. Storing homemade juice or iced teas in fridge. The large 1/2 gallon jars are particularly perfect for this, and even for brewing the tea, especially with the screw-on plastic lids.
14. Keeping herbs fresh in the fridge (green onions, cilantro, etc.). Fill a jar 3/4 full with water, place your bunch of fresh herbs in it, then store in the fridge for herbs that keep much longer than they would in your produce drawer.
15. Spice mixes. Making your own spice mixes is cheap and easy. The small jar (1/2 pint or smaller) make ideal spice jars.
16. Dry pantry staples. I like to buy in bulk, then store staples like sea salt, baking soda and baking powder in jars.
17. Dried vegetables from garden. Not only is it practical, but dehydrated summer produce looks beautiful in jars.
18. Canning. Whether you stick to a batch or two of jam each season, or you want to get serious about preserving the season’s bounty, this is the season to think about stocking up on jars if you plan to do some summer preserving.
19. Storing dry beans, pasta, rice, etc. in the pantry. There’s something particularly pleasing about a pantry full of mason jars.
20. Mixing salad dressings. I use 1/2 pint or pint jars with lids to mix up salad dressings, then store them in the door of my fridge to make salad eating simple. You could do this with homemade marinades or other types of sauces as well.
21. Homemade syrup. Our two favorite syrups (aside from genuine maple syrup, our number one choice) are honey butter syrup or a more typical syrup made with Sucanat (unrefined sugar) or coconut sugar. A perk of using glass is that you can soften extra honey butter syrup (since it will harden in the fridge) by letting it warm up in a pot of lightly boiling water for a couple minutes.
22. Mason jar salads. Love this brilliant idea!
23. Homemade cough syrup or other cold-kicking remedies.
24. Fermenting foods like salsa or pickles or sauerkraut. Leave them out on the counter while fermenting, then add a lid and store in the fridge, while you enjoy these digestion-boosting foods.
25. As a drinking glass. I’ve seen many people actually build up a collection of various mason jars, purely for the sake of using as drinking glasses. Great for everyday, or fun for a party or special event.
26. Dry baking mixes like bread, pancakes, etc. Making your own homemade baking mixes saves money and time. Store them in amounts that are just right for one morning of pancakes, or two loaves of bread, to simplify the baking process even more (no measuring!).
27. Culture your own creme fraiche (or sour cream).
28. Soup broth. Store your homemade bone broth for a few days in your fridge, or in your freezer (but make sure to leave a good amount of headroom so that your jars don’t crack).
29. Food gifts. Layered food mixes, like dry bean soup or cookies in a jar, look so lovely and homey in a mason jar. Add a pretty fabric or decorative paper label to the lid to make it extra special.
30. Decoratively. Aside from their practical uses, they’re also just plain old pretty. Try doing a search on Pinterest for Mason Jar. You won’t believe how many amazing ideas you find. Candles, lanterns, party decor… the possibilities are endless!
31. Edible beauty products. Did you know that you already have a kitchen full of beauty supplies? Try making some of these edible beauty products, or homemade scrubs like the ones in Simple Scrubs to Make and Give.
About the AuthorStephanie Langford has a passion for sharing ideas and information for homemakers who want to make healthy changes in their homes, and carefully steward all that they’ve been given. She has written two books geared to helping families live more naturally and eat real, whole foods, without being overwhelmed and without going broke. She is the editor and author of Keeper of the Home. View all posts by Stephanie @ Keeper of the Home
31 Ways to Use Mason Jars in Your Kitchen | Wake Up World
The Most Pesticide-Laden Produce, And Healthier Alternatives
June 20, 2012 by Sam Rolley
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Some commercial produce varieties are heavily laden with pesticide residues, while others are less often contaminated.
A new report from the Environmental Working Group shows which varieties of commercial produce are the most and the least contaminated by agricultural pesticides.
The EWG’s eighth edition of the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ contains updated information on 45 popular fruits and vegetables and their total pesticide loads dividing produce into two groups, the Dirty Dozen Plus™ and the Clean Fifteen™.
“The explosive growth in market share for organic produce in recent years testifies to a simple fact that pesticide companies and the farmers who use their products just can’t seem to grasp: people don’t like to eat food contaminated by pesticides,” said EWG president Ken Cook. “Our shopper’s guide to pesticides in produce gives consumers easy, affordable ways to eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables while avoiding most of the bug killers, fungicides and other chemicals in produce and other foods.”
Researchers analyzed annual pesticide residue tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration between 2000 and 2010. The samples were first washed or peeled prior to being tested so that rankings would reflect the amounts of the crop chemicals likely present on the food when is it eaten.
Here are some of their findings:
- About 98 percent of conventional apples have detectable levels of pesticides.
- Domestic blueberries tested positive for 42 different pesticide residues.
- Seventy-eight different pesticides were found on lettuce samples.
- Every single nectarine USDA tested had measurable pesticide residues.
- As a category, grapes have more types of pesticides than any other fruit, with 64 different chemicals.
- Thirteen different pesticides were measured on a single sample each of celery and strawberries.
The researchers also found that produce like kale and collard greens were commonly contaminated with highly toxic organophosphate insecticides that are toxic to the nervous system and have been largely removed from agriculture over the past decade. They are not banned, however, and still show up on some food crops.
“Organophosphate pesticides are of special concern since they are associated with neurodevelopmental effects in children,” said EWG toxicologist Johanna Congleton. “Infants in particular should avoid exposure to these pesticides since they are more susceptible to the effects of chemical insult than adults.”
For the first time, the researchers also took a look at commercially produced baby food and found that 92 percent of the pear samples tested positive for at least one pesticide residue, with 26 percent of samples containing five or more pesticides and 15 different pesticides on all samples.
The researchers recommend that parents opt for organic baby food varieties or prepare their own baby food using organic produce or varieties known to have the lowest pesticide levels.
Here’s a look at which fruits and vegetables make each list:
The Dirty Dozen Plus™
Only buy these organic.The Clean Fifteen™
Commercially lowest in pesticide.Apples
Celery
Sweet bell peppers
Peaches
Strawberries
Nectarines- imported
Grapes
Spinach
Lettuce
Cucumbers
Blueberries- domestic
Potatoes
+ Green beans
+ Kale**In order from highest to lowest pesticide content except for green beans and kale.Onions
Sweet Corn
(buy organic if concerned about GMOs)
Pineapples
Avocado
Cabbage
Sweet peas
Asparagus
Mangoes
Eggplant
Kiwi
Cantaloupe- domestic
Sweet potatoes
Grapefruit
Watermelon
Mushrooms**In order from lowest
to highest pesticide content.
Among The Clean Fifteen™, 90 percent of cabbage, asparagus, sweet peas, eggplant and sweet potato samples had one or no pesticides detected.
Overall, no single vegetable sample had more than five different chemicals, and no single fruit sample had more than five types of pesticides detected.
The researchers also took a look at drinking water, taking 284 samples from 12 community drinking water sources. They discovered a toxic herbicide called atrazine or its metabolites in every single sample and the herbicides 2,4-D and metolachlor in more than 70 percent of the samples. Six varieties of pesticides were also found in at least half of the samples.
The Most Pesticide-Laden Produce, And Healthier Alternatives : Personal Liberty Alerts
The 10 Best Vehicles To Survive The Zombie Apocalypse
By Mike Newman
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We’d advise you to start saving for one of these rides now, but let’s be honest, by the time you could afford most on the list it would be too late (what with the zombie apocalypse here and all). If you find yourself searching for the ideal vehicle to keep your ass alive, however, these would be your 10 best options:
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Sportsmobile 4WD Vehicle
While traversing a grim and rocky landscape, you’re going to need some essentials. The Sportsmobile 4WD Vehicle allows you to load up on Coke and Slim Jims for your delicious survival while you find paths to get to whatever city is left. It’s the most badass van that doesn’t have B.A. Baracus chilling in the back. (Link)
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Local Motors Rally Fighter
This ride is built for the deserts of the Southwest United States, which is exactly how we picture the whole world looking in the not too distant future. With a Corvette engine, a Ford truck rear and an F150 steering wheel, the Local Motors Rally Fighter is like the work of a mad auto scientist. Just tell your friends they’ll need their own ride. Who are we kidding, your friends will be dead. (Link)
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Aston Martin DB9
Let’s get real for a sec, chances are the zombies are going to win. If you’re going out, you might as well go out in style. Even pick up some hot zombie ass along the way. (Link)
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Conquest Knight XV
For luxury and ruggedness, look no further than the Knight XV. Just don’t let your hatchet nick up the leather. (Link)
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WaterCar Python
Can zombies swim? This question has spurred more web fights than the usage of there, their and they’re. We’ll play it safe with the amphibious Python. (Link)
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Triumph Rocket III Roadster
This is what a doomsday bike looks like. If tight passages are going to pose issues, the Rocket III is what we want. From takeoff to braking, everything is top of the line. Carrying a lot of supplies will be an issue, but we’ll just swallow a bunch of June bugs while we ride. (Link)
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Mercedes-Benz Unimog
As Mercedes-Benz says, the Unimog offers “absolute off-road supremacy.” Since it’s designed to perform in disaster emergencies and the harshest conditions, we’d have to imagine the Unimog is as dependable as it is fun to say. (Link)
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Gnarboard Trail Rider
Just because it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun, right? Sure you’ll probably be pegging it as long as possible and wishing you had a car, but a Gnarboard is still the only skateboard we’d trust when streets are less than ideal and our legs are weak from a lack of nutrients. (Link)
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Bugatti Veyron Super Sport
With a top speed of over 250 mph and a 0-60 time under three seconds, the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport is damn fast. If you need to get out of a hoard in a hurry, it’s your best bet. Where you’ll find the gas to keep refilling it, however, is up to you. (Link)
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Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon LAPV 6.X
Without the 5-0 ready to issue you a hefty ticket and make you recite the alphabet while standing on one foot in your underwear (assumed), staying on the road would be pointless. With this Benz and its 18″ of ground clearance, you’ll make your own roadways. Plus, the surprising agility will allow you to keep your windshield clear of Walker guts. (Link)
For those looking for an excuse to be lazy and not prepare, with this article, it's nowQuote:
The 10 Best Vehicles To Survive The Zombie Apocalypse
safe to say that this long term survival thread has lost touch with harsh reality.
The Bugatti Veyron? As a survival vehicle? It can only go as fast as it can fly on a well-maintained smooth surface.
And good luck finding parts and an experienced Veyron mechanic in Newghanistan. Why not an ultralight instead?
But the Mercedes-Benz Unimog does look like the vehicle of choice for the long haul in Afghanistan or NW Pakistan.
Gov Criminalizes Self Reliance: Woman’s Survival Garden Seized and Destroyed by Authorities
Rob Richards
June 19th, 2012
Off Grid Survival
Comments (292)
Read by 16,776 people
SHTF Plan Editor’s Note: As Rob Richards of Off Grid Survival points out in the report below, the government is rapidly moving towards dismantling the very activities that made this country great. From classifying preparedness minded individuals as potential domestic terrorists for storing food and emergency supplies to attacking local community farmers who share or barter their produce, Federal and local authorities are clamping down on individual freedom. Becoming self reliant and depending on yourself, neighbors or local communities for survival is rapidly becoming a criminal activity akin to armed robbery or murder – with SWAT teams often raiding suspects in full militarized police gear. The government, with the help of brainless myrmidons on local city councils and modern day storm troopers with policing authority, is making every effort to ensure that they, and only they, become the sole provider of food, water, energy and essential services. Soon, everything will require licensure or approval from a self appointed authority.
A woman from Tulsa, Oklahoma is suing the city’s code enforcement teams after they illegally cut down her entire survival garden. Denise Morrison, who started the garden after becoming unemployed, had over 100 medicinal and edible plants in her front and back yard.
She told local Tulsa reporters that she started her garden, after becoming unemployed, as a way to feed herself and treat a variety of medical issues. Instead of relying on government handouts, this woman took matters into her own hands and decided to become self sufficient. She filled her yard with things like, fruit trees, berries, nut trees, and a wide variety of edible and medicinal herbs. She used these herbs to treat her diabetes, high-blood pressure and arthritis.
Is the Self-Reliant Lifestyle Now a Crime in America?
All her hard work ended when the local code enforcement team showed up to her house and forcibly removed her entire survival garden.
http://offgridsurvival.com/wp-conten...ftergarden.jpg Morrison says that she tried to explain how everything in her yard followed the local code enforcement rules. You see, she had problems with these people in the past and this time she was determined to do things by the book.
She obtained the local ordinances and followed every rule to the tee. She made sure that everything in her garden had a purpose, and that her garden looked its best at all times. Local ordinances stated that no plant could be over 12-inches tall unless they were being used for human consumption.
Morrison made sure every plant in her garden could be eaten, but that didn’t matter to the city. They could care less about what the law actually said, they were determined to take out her garden. “Every word out of their mouth was, ‘we don’t care,’” Morrison said.
Over 100 plant varieties were removed by the code enforcement team leaving her with no way to feed or medicate herself. They took almost everything, including a number of her fruit and nut trees. She told local reporters in Tulsa, “I came back three days later, sat in my driveway, cried and left.”
Government Crack Down on Liberty
http://offgridsurvival.com/wp-conten...6/unclesam.jpg While this case is extremely sad, it’s also becoming more and more common throughout the country. From “nuisance abatement teams” that have beenforcing Off-Griders in California to hook back into the grid, to the heartbreaking story of Andrew Wordes who took his life after code enforcement teams seized his home, this country is making it harder and harder for self-reliant people to live on their own land.
While some dismiss these cases as localized issues, I believe they’re part of a larger movement to control anyone who dares to live a self-reliant lifestyle.
I think evidence of this can be seen in the federal governments attempts toregulate small farms out of existence, their use of the EPA to seize private land, the formation of theDepartment of Homeland Security’s Green Police Force, their attempts to seize control of the Great Lakes, oceans, and waterways, and their use of organizations like The National League of Cities to take control of local governments.
Gov Criminalizes Self Reliance: Woman
The Beast: Tracking You and Your Family Just Got a Whole Lot Easier
Mac Slavo
June 21st, 2012
SHTFplan.com
Comments (84)
Read by 2,468 people
“When your life and all you love are on the line”
-Verichip
It’s been hailed as the ultimate in personal identification and human tracking technology, and now it’s going mainstream. The VeriMed system, formerly known as the Verichip, is a passive RFID microchip measuring about the size of a grain of rice and is implantable under your skin, making it possible for health care providers and other parties to instantly access your medical history and other personally identifying information.
Via The Daily Sheeple and SGT Report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KG7lRAbh_qg
The chip itself doesn’t store a whole lot of information other than a personal identification number, much like a social security number. When scanned it connects directly to the Healthlink global network via the internet allowing doctors immediate retrieval of everything they need to know about you.
The systems are not only limited to human medical data storage, however, and have been used for years as location tracking for cattle and pets by Verichip’s former parent company Applied Digital Solutions.
Recently the UK prison system proposed that these machine-readable chips be implanted into prisoners to keep tabs on their whereabouts and help prevent escape:
Because of concerns about the security of existing tagging systems and prison overcrowding, the British Ministry of Justice is investigating the use of satellite and radio-wave technology to monitor criminals.While reportedly plagued with security problems and health concerns, RFID chips are being rapidly implemented into society, often with the argument that that they will protect the safety of our loved ones, namely our children:
But, instead of being contained in bracelets worn around the ankle, the tiny chips would be surgically inserted under the skin of offenders in the community, to help enforce home curfews.
…
“All options are on the table, and this is one we would like to pursue.”
Source: NZ Herald
While interviewing Scott Silverman (Applied Digital CEO), Sean Hannity said on October 24, 2008: “[Parents are saying:] we can’t even allow our kids to play in the front yard. Is there anything – technologically speaking – that [parents] can do that can help the situation, like a kidnapping. Is there, for example, a microchip…we can use for our kids?”While VeriMed and its precursor the Verichip are reportedly designed for medical application, the system itself is already capable of wide ranging tracking implementation that includes personal location services. Coupled with the recent advances in federal surveillance technologies that include a massive newly built National Security Agency data center and tens of thousands of drones patrolling the skies of America, an implantable tracking chip would give the government unfettered access into the personal lives and daily goings on of every man, woman and child in the country.
In the interview, Silverman describes a PLD, which is an acronym for “Personal Locating Device,” which is an RFID chip. This PLD is to be implanted into the body of the “child or someone you are interested in tracking.”
While Hannity initially presents the RFID’s use into the context of “protecting children from being kidnapped,” Silverman quickly admits the multi-function purpose of the RFID: “It is the first implantable microchip for humans that has multiple security, financial and healthcare applications.” Sean Hannity’s response: “I love this idea, Scott.”
Security, financial, and healthcare: These are the vast categories of use which would encompass all of human life and activity in America.
Source: Right Side News
As Mark Dice points out in the Resistance Manifesto, the ultimate goal of the chips is to replace ”drivers licenses and cash by using these devices so that every person on the planet will not be able to buy or sell anything without one.”
I’ll Never Stick One of Those In My Body!
Revelations refers to it as the mark of the beast.
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the MARK, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.To suggest that Americans would willingly accept such a “mark” under their skins for the purposes of health care or financial security may sound ridiculous, but it is not out of the realm of possibility.
Revelation 13:16-18
Consider the current state of affairs in America and the world and we can see how easily global governing entities may move to force such a technology on the vast majority of the population.
There are hundreds of millions of people worldwide, including half of all American households, on some form of government assistance, be it medical insurance, welfare, food stamps, disability or retirement stipend. With all of the fraud rampant in the system as it exists today and the lack of funds to maintain it, it would only take one major crisis for the government to step in and pass a law that forces anyone receiving government benefits of any kind to be implanted with an RFID chip in order to continue receiving those services they can no longer live without.
Can’t happen? Heck, these days the government doesn’t even need to pass a law. The President can either mandate such an action through Executive Order (as he and his predecessors have done so many times before), or a government alphabet agency can simply instigate a new rule requiring it, such as the USDA’s recent call for exactly what is mentioned above - RFID tracking for those receiving food stamps.
Some would bow out of the system on personal moral or religious grounds, but millions would be left with no other choice but to concede their liberty.
Do you need to put food on the table to feed your family or gain access to that life saving medicine for your wife or child? Then you and your family had better have the chip, otherwise there will be no help coming to you.
It’s that simple, really.
With more Americans than ever before dependent on government redistribution of wealth and services to get by, acceptance by most people of this technology is not such a far off proposition, especially with the threat of cutting off access to those services which people have come to depend for survival.
Those who refuse the chip, of course, would soon be labeled unpatriotic domestic terrorists, added to no fly lists (because if you’re not chipped, you’re probably hiding something and are obviously dangerous), and we’d soon see FBI/DHS bulletins distributed to doctors, retailers and government bureaucrats about how to identify potentially threatening activities of non-chippers.
If you see an unchipped, say something. It’s your duty.
The Beast: Tracking You and Your Family Just Got a Whole Lot Easier
Here it is: An effective plan to convince your loved ones to prepare
David Nash
June 22nd, 2012
Shepherd School
Comments (138)
Read by 7,348 people
This article was originally published by David Nash of Shepherd School at The Survival Mom web site.
Any person who has begun to seriously prepare has had to make compromises between current wants and future needs, how much to spend on preparations, and how many people to stock supplies for. If you’re married, you need to have a spouse that shares your concerns or you’re going to fight over every #10 can the mailman delivers. I don’t need to go into detail on how much you should store, how to store it, or what makes the cut on your List of Lists. The purpose of this article is to help communicate the need to prepare with those in your family that you want to help without alienating them or downgrading your own preparedness plans.
http://thesurvivalmom.com/wp-content...ly-meeting.jpg I am a professional firearms instructor and am also employed full time as an emergency management planner. Due to my job, my hobbies, and my personal beliefs, my former mother-in-law delighted in trying to insult me by calling me “Sgt. Tackleberry”. She was unreachable, and I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to convince her of the importance in prepping. She would rather buy timeshares of vacation property than spend money on a basic 72 hour kit. That works for her, and I cannot judge her, but she would not be invited to,“come live with me if it ever did happen,” as she believed.
Other members of my family have thought my preparations were a, “phase”, or some harmless idiosyncrasy. Those family members did not have a negative view of my preparations. They mostly looked at my preparations with amusement. They tolerated my teenage experiments with wild foods or earthquake kits. As I have grown older and they have seen things on the horizon that will personally impact them, they have begun to ask me for my opinion on coming winter storms or whether they should buy gold or guns.
It’s like being a firearm instructor and people asking you which gun to buy. If you do your homework and build credibility, people respect you more. If you take the long view and work diligently. these members of your family might be “converted” with patience and work. While I cannot assume responsibility for them and make them prepare for disasters, I can be a role model and sounding board to help them understand the issues at play so they can build a plan that works for them.
http://thesurvivalmom.com/wp-content...e-cupboard.jpg If the world as we know it collapses, it’s not only about survival. Once your survival needs are met, you’re going to have to rebuild and continue with your life. Having your loved ones with you makes that a lot easier. The problem is that each person I add to my retreat lowers my safety margin IF MY SUPPLY AMOUNTS REMAIN FIXED, but if those people I add to my retreat bring their own supplies, it dramatically increases my safety margin. To me it is definitely worth it to help your family prepare.
I have a few precepts that I use when dealing with family or friends on this subject.
- My first precept of dealing with family is not to preach. My preparations are based on my needs and the things that I believe are important. Each person has their own priorities, and preaching that you are right and they are wrong only pushes them away from the direction you need them to go.
- My second is never to prepare for a particular event. I am sure there is still a lot of rotting food out there that was bought in bulk specifically for Y2K, and some of those that bought it are convinced it was a waste of money. I tell my family that my food storage can be used for Y2K, Armageddon, TEOTWAWKI, Pandemic Flu, Nuclear Winter, Job loss, or when I just don’t feel like cooking. By having an all-hazards approach and building capability and skills rather than building for specific events, my planning work gets more bang for the buck. The first time I read of the “Deep Larder” was an “ah-ha!” moment for me, and changing my terminology has worked well in changing the response I get from my close loved ones.
- My last precept of helping my loved ones see the need to prepare is to foster an appropriate mindset instead of concentrating on gear acquisition. I could buy my mom a Springfield Armory M-14 and 10,000 rounds of match ammo, but it would be much more effective to get her to go with me to the range a couple times and practice with a .22. This would likely foster a desire to shoot, andthen I could help her choose a firearm that fits her needs and desires.
Whenever the family conversation gets around to disaster preparation I bring up concepts like:
- “Buying car insurance is considered a responsible action, but you don’t have any tangible benefit from buying it, if you never get into an accident.”
- “With having a deep larder, even if zombies never attack, I still have the food.”
- Or as Dave Grossman has said, “You never hear of elementary schools burning down but they all have fire extinguishers.”
- My favorite is, “Noah built the Ark BEFORE the flood”.
http://thesurvivalmom.com/wp-content...11/11/Noah.jpg I try to break everything down into manageable bites rather than cram it in and have them tune me out.
The best case scenario is that your loved ones will see the need to prepare for themselves and begin planning and preparing on their own, therefore augmenting your plan. You cannot out-argue someone into adopting your position. As Dale Carnegie said, “Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.” What has worked for me is a quiet and consistent approach.
I love my family and want what is best for them. The best way I know to do that is to help them become more aware of the need to prepare. My goal is to foster a sense of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility, and to help mentor them through the beginning steps of basic preparedness.
Think about how overwhelming it was when you first began to prepare. There is a LOT to learn and even more skills and equipment to acquire. We know that we cannot stock everything needed or prepare too much. The process of preparing is every bit as important as the items you acquire.
Researching and prioritizing is mental prep work so that when a large disaster occurs we are not comatose with emotional overload. If I coddle my loved ones and try to remove their responsibility to prepare by doing it for them, then I am doing them a disservice. When hard times come, they may not be emotionally ready to deal with the collapse. What’s worse is that making them dependent on my charity would cause strain on otherwise healthy family relationships. Because of this, I feel it is worth supreme effort to work with my loved ones to prepare so that we can grow together in adversity and make our family bonds stronger.
http://thesurvivalmom.com/wp-content...om-US-Army.jpg This year I had my breakthrough. My parents asked me what they could do to prepare. We had a very long discussion and came away with a workable plan. At the time of our discussion their location was more favorable for a long-term retreat than my own, and they are going to provide the location and storage space for most of my preps. We both win in the end. Shortly after that discussion our town had an unusually long cold spell. In the days before it we talked more about our short term plans and communication protocols and procedures. While we did not have to evacuate to my parents, it was nice having all the details ironed out in the event we had to.
Disaster preparedness is not a fad or a short term race to buy a lot of cool gear. It’s a lifestyle choice, and one that has a lot of benefits. However, it comes the necessity of taking off the rose colored glasses. Not everyone is ready to do this, but if you want to set an example and truly influence others, you must understand what you do is much louder than what you say.
David Nash is the owner of the Shepherd School and the author of Understanding the USE of Handguns for Self-Defense , a great book for new shooters, people who are thinking about becoming a new shooter, or just about anyone that wants to know about handguns in a no-nonsense, professional, but entertaining and non-stressful way.
Image Credit: K. Kendall, ChalonHandmade, LivingOS, US Army Africa
Here it is: An effective plan to convince your loved ones to prepare
Surviving The Apocalypse... In A Lifeboat
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau.../picture-5.jpg
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/21/2012 18:53 -0400
No, this has nothing to do with uber ultra-rehypothecation, fractional reserve banking gone terminally nuts, gold being allowed to rise above $2000, or a second tier Keynesian economist in charge of the Fed's plunge protection team. For the doomsday prepper who has everything, WIRED magazine introduces the water-ready modular bunker (called STATIM pods). Designed to make sure you get through the first wave when the next big Tsunami hits, the 'inland lifeboats' are eerily reminiscent of the Movie '2012' or perhaps 'Waterworld'.
Brace for the Apocalypse! Surviving the worst in an inland lifeboat
As the seas rise and cities fall, imagine a community of these built and arranged in new flood zones, perhaps for scientists seeking to learn about new littoral urban ecosystems or salvagers prospecting for the remaining treasures of a lost civilization. Every night, the tribe would return to their STATIM homes, sleeping soundly with the confident knowledge that when the next flood happens, everyone will be all right.
http://www.wired.com/design/wp-conte...on-660x222.jpg
Because the STATIM pods are modular, you can customize them for your particular nightmare scenario.
First things first. Before worrying about food storage or access to clean water during a major disaster, you need to make sure you get through the first wave safely. But never fear: When the next big tsunami hits, a water-ready modular bunker called the STATIM pod aims to float you above the flooding.
Invented by Miguel Serrano, President at Brahman Industries, the STATIM (Storm, Tornado And Tsunami Interconnected Modules) pods are designed to withstand the awesome power of tsunamis, while giving survivors a fighting chance in the aftermath.
Brahman Industries calls the pods “inland lifeboats.” The reason: they’re buoyant and self-righting, so when the floods come, they will bob to the surface. They’re also low-tech, easy to maintain, and easy to construct, which means there’s a possibility for wide deployment. The company’s plan is to install and anchor them in flood-prone areas so when the alarm bells ring, those most at risk can rush to the safety of the pods. Inside, up to 50 people can cling to secure seating arrangements.
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It's the end of the world, but this guy is feeling fine.
The biggest issue with rescue-shelter design is always cost. We already know how to make structures that can withstand natural disasters; it’s just incredibly expensive. The key to keeping costs down is using concrete, a cheap and well-understood building material. “We’re addressing a high-priority need with a low tech approach,” says Serrano. When STATIM reaches scale, Serrano aims to offer the 50-person pod at around $1,800 a head.
The tubular hull is made from a series of pre-cast concrete modules. The modules can be created at local factories, shipped separately, and then aligned and winched together on site to create a watertight seal. “Everyone knows how to do this,” says Serrano. According to the company, the assembly process for the pre-cast parts requires about the same amount of knowledge as installing a drain system.
http://www.wired.com/design/wp-conte...r2-660x495.jpg
A STATIM pod waits to be assembled.
The pod continues to serve the people inside long after the first wave of disaster. “After Katrina, they spent three weeks just rescuing people with helicopters,” Serrano says. Because the pods are buoyant and equipped with communications devices, rescuers will be able to easily meet up with the pods to tow them away. A boat or helicopter can transport 50 people at a time to safety.
And because the parts are modular, the pods are customizable. By including different segments equipped with all kinds of survival gear, your personal STATIM pod can be modded to your anticipated needs.
The next step, says Serrano, is creating pods that house critical infrastructure. The company has proposed a variation on STATIM called the Genset, which houses working generators. Having survivable power sources would have prevented the Fukushima meltdown, Serrano says, by providing power to the nuclear plant’s critical systems after the tsunami. Other variations include pods with desalination facilities and a version of the pod that can withstand an EMP blast, ensuring that critical electronics would survive a nuclear strike.
http://www.wired.com/design/wp-conte...on-660x436.png
The eerily calm diagrammatic disaster illustration. Not pictured: STATIM occupants bracing before nature's fury.
While the intention of the STATIM system is that they be temporary shelters, let’s indulge ourselves in a little bit of design fiction for a moment. What about the pod’s potential to facilitate long-term living in environmentally extreme places?
Back in the present, Brahmin’s disaster-related design pulled in seed funding earlier this year. Serrano says that they anticipate the first demonstration units will be available in early 2014. In the meantime, keep watching the horizon.
As the seas rise and cities fall, imagine a community of these built and arranged in new flood zones, perhaps for scientists seeking to learn about new littoral urban ecosystems or salvagers prospecting for the remaining treasures of a lost civilization. Every night, the tribe would return to their STATIM homes, sleeping soundly with the confident knowledge that when the next flood happens, everyone will be all right.
As an area becomes picked over, helicopter scouts are dispatched to the horizon to find new fields of discovery. When a suitable destination is discovered, the helicopters return, towing the community to their coordinates. In this way, the group slowly makes their way along America’s flooded coastline, passing by long lost levies and through once thriving port towns. Thanks to an accompanying desalination pod, the group can remain operational away from freshwater for a long, long time.
http://www.wired.com/design/wp-conte...V1-660x484.jpg
An exploded view shows how the modules of a STATIM pod are assembled.
Images courtesy of Brahman Industries.
Surviving The Apocalypse... In A Lifeboat | ZeroHedge
120 Powerful Pieces Of Advice For Prepper's
http://endoftheamericandream.com/wp-...er-300x230.jpg Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and millions of Americans are feverishly preparing for what they consider to be "the end of the world as we know it". In fact, it is estimated that there are now approximately 3 million "preppers" in the United States. But for people that have never done much prepping before, getting started can be both confusing and intimidating. In fact, I get more questions about prepping than anything else. People are constantly asking me how they can prepare for the difficult times that are coming. Well, in this article I have compiled 120 powerful pieces of advice for preppers. No two situations are exactly the same, and almost every prepper approaches preparation differently, but there are some basic principles that apply to almost everyone. And without a doubt, a lot of people that are not preparing now are going to regret it in the years ahead. The global financial system is falling apart, the United States and Europe are absolutely drowning in debt, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are becoming more frequent, signs of social decay are everywhere and war could erupt in the Middle East at any time. Actually, it is absolutely amazing that there are so many people out there that still believe that "prepping" is not necessary.
When people ask me what they can do to prepare, there is usually one tip that I give above everything else. It is not very "sexy", but it is absolutely foundational.
During the last recession, millions of people lost their jobs, and because a lot of them had no financial cushion, many of them also lost their homes.
For the next couple of years, my number one tip is to build up an emergency fund. If you are a prepper and you are living month to month, then you are in a very vulnerable position.
What is going to happen to all of your preparations if something goes wrong and you suddenly lose your home to foreclosure?
I recommend that everyone have an emergency fund that will be able to cover all bills and expenses for at least six months.
Yes, cash is continually losing value. But during any economic downturn it is absolutely essential that you be able to continue to pay your bills. Having a cash reserve is the smart thing to do.
So what else can people do to start prepping for the tough times that are on the horizon?
In a previous article, I explained that a good place to start is by focusing on the five basics....
1) Food
2) Water
3) Shelter
4) Energy
5) Self-Defense
If you have those five areas totally covered you will be in pretty good shape.
The following are some more things to consider as you are prepping....
*Do not post pictures of money or gold or your preps on Facebook. If you do, you might get some unwelcome visitors to your home.
*Make sure that your preparations are not against the law. If you have any doubt about this, make sure that you do not go on national television and tell all of America what you are doing.
*In the event of a major disaster, there will likely be hordes of "non-preppers" running around looking to take away the things that all of the preppers have been storing up. This is something that you will need to be prepared for.
*The following are 6 excellent privacy tips for preppers that come from an article by an anonymous author that was recently posted on theintelhub.com....
1. Trust no one that you do not personally know. Even the little old lady down the road will rat on you if she is hungry when the SHTF.
2. Keep your prepping to yourself. Again, do not tell anyone you are prepping. If they know you have stores of food, where do you think they will think of first when the SHTF? Oh and don’t forget, the Department of Homeland Security thinks people with stockpiles of food and weapons as potential domestic terrorist.
3. Don’t share any prepping articles on Facebook or other social media. Don’t draw attention to yourself by posting prepping articles or discussing the topic on the website. You may think you are educating your friends, but in reality you are just letting them know of your actions and plans.
4. Make sure boxes are not labeled with the company name if your order emergency supplies. Most companies will publish this in their ordering information. You don’t want to tip off the UPS driver that you just received a year’s worth of freeze dried food.
5. Do not tell anyone what you are up to. You don’t know how hard it is for me not to tell people I meet that I was almost on the National Geographic TV show. That would be a disaster.
6. Be alert to what others are saying. I was sitting in my dental hygienist chair a week ago and she told me about another customer that was storing food. She thought he might be prepping and she said if it ever got bad, she knew where to find some food. I just acknowledged the statement and let it rest.
*In one article that I did about preparation, I listed 10 things that you can start doing right now to get yourself into a better position for the chaos that is coming....
1 - Get Out Of Debt
2 - Find New Sources Of Income
3 - Reduce Your Expenses
4 - Learn To Grow Your Own Food
5 - Make Sure You Have A Reliable Water Supply
6 - Buy Land
7 - Get Off The Grid
8 - Store Non-Perishable Supplies
9 - Develop Stronger Relationships
10 - Get Educated And Stay Flexible
*Would moving to another area of the country be the best choice for you and your family? In an article entitled "What Is The Best Place To Live In The United States To Prepare For The Coming Economic Collapse?" I detailed some of the pros and cons for living in various areas of the country.
*In a recent article posted on shtfplan.com, Norse Prepper shared 11 questions that all preppers should be asking themselves....
1. What am I preparing for?
2. Am I going to bug in or bug out?
3. Can I defend my family, property and preps?
4. Do I have enough to feed my family until order is restored?
5. How will I heat my home?
6. How will I keep clean?
7. How will I provide light and electricity?
8. How will I keep up on information and communicate with the outside world?
9. What do I have to offer others?
10. How will I fight off boredom?
11. How do I pay for all of this?
You can read the entire article right here.
*In the years ahead food might cost a whole lot more than it does right now. Your food dollars are never going to go farther than they do right now.
*Many people do not realize this, but you can grow herbs that have tremendous healing properties in your own garden.
*In a recent article, I detailed some of the things that you will want to consider in the event of a major economic collapse....
#1 Food Shortages Can Actually Happen
#2 Medicine Is One Of The First Things That Becomes Scarce During An Economic Collapse
#3 When An Economy Collapses, So Might The Power Grid
#4 During An Economic Collapse You Cannot Even Take Water For Granted
#5 During An Economic Crisis Your Credit Cards And Debit Cards May Stop Working
#6 Crime, Rioting And Looting Become Commonplace During An Economic Collapse
#7 During A Financial Meltdown Many Average Citizens Will Start Bartering
#8 Suicides Spike During An Economic Collapse
#9 Your Currency May Rapidly Lose Value During An Economic Crisis
#10 When Things Hit The Fan The Government Will Not Save You
*You need to have a plan for what you will do if a massive wildfire comes sweeping through your area. This is especially true if you live in the western half of the United States.
*In a previous article entitled "20 Things You Will Need To Survive When The Economy Collapses And The Next Great Depression Begins", I made a list of 20 things that you will need when you are not able to rely on Wal-Mart or the grocery store any longer....
#1) Storable Food
#2) Clean Water
#3) Shelter
#4) Warm Clothing
#5) An Axe
#6) Lighters Or Matches
#7) Hiking Boots Or Comfortable Shoes
#8) A Flashlight And/Or Lantern
#9) A Radio
#10) Communication Equipment
#11) A Swiss Army Knife
#12) Personal Hygiene Items
#13) A First Aid Kit And Other Medical Supplies
#14) Extra Gasoline (But Be Very Careful How You Store It)
#15) A Sewing Kit
#16) Self-Defense Equipment
#17) A Compass
#18) A Hiking Backpack
#19) A Community
#20) A Backup Plan
*In the comments following that article, my readers suggested a number of additional items to add to that list....
1. A K-Bar Fighting Knife
2. Salt
3. Extra Batteries
4. Medicine
5. A Camp Stove
6. Propane
7. Pet Food
8. Heirloom Seeds
9. Tools
10. An LED Headlamp
11. Candles
12. Clorox
13. Calcium Hypochlorite
14. Ziplock Bags
15. Maps Of Your Area
16. inoculars
17. Sleeping Bags
18. Rifle For Hunting
19. Extra Socks
20. Gloves
21. Gold And Silver Coins For Bartering
*There are more preppers out there than you might think. Don't be afraid to reach out and make new friends.
*In a recent article, Brandon Smith shared some of the factors to consider when choosing a location for a survival retreat....
1. Property Placement
2. Community Network
3. Defensibility
4. Water Availability
5. Food Production
6. Proximity To National Forest
7. Secondary Retreat Locations
You can read the rest of that article right here.
*Almost everyone can grow a survival garden. Even if you only have an apartment, you can still grow a few things on your balcony.
*Don't underestimate the impact a major transportation disruption could have on our daily lives.
*You would be surprised what you can actually do with limited resources. For example, there is one family that is actually producing 6000 pounds of produce a year on just 1/10th of an acre right in the middle of Pasadena, California.
*Survival Mom once shared the top ten survival tips that nobody wants to talk about....
1. Duct taping your windows will not save you from radiation poisoning.
2. You may have to dig a latrine (more than one time).
3. You may not receive any government benefits or payment from your place of employment during a disaster.
4. It is possible that you may be sick or in the hospital during a disaster.
5. Your pets may not survive.
6. It is likely that your cell phone will not work.
7. No one is coming to help you.
8. Insurance doesn’t cover everything, if there is an insurance company left.
9. There will not be enough food and water for everyone.
10. If it is the end of the world, the previous nine tips will not matter!!!
*An EMP burst caused by a high altitude nuke or by a major solar event could fry most of your electronics. What are you going to do if that happens?
*Spending a million dollars on a "survival condo" in an abandoned missile silo in Kansas is probably not a very efficient use of your limited resources.
*Off Grid Survival recently posted a list of four powerful traits that most survivors have in common....
1. Survivors stay Calm in the face of Danger
2. Survivalists are Experts at Improvisation
3. Survivors are D.I.Y Experts
4. Survivors are Great Leaders
*You can always learn more. Organizations such as The American Preppers Network enable preppers to network and learn from one another.
*During the difficult times that are coming, in addition to physical preparation it is going to be absolutely crucial to be both mentally and spiritually tough.
Many have accused me of being a "doom and gloomer", but I don't see anything negative about being prepared.
In fact, having a plan can give you a tremendous amount of hope. There will be a lot of people out there that will be tremendously blessed in the midst of the chaos that is coming. Victory often goes to those who are most prepared.
But if you choose simply to have blind faith in the system and you choose to stick your head in the sand, you might find that "ignorance is bliss" for a little while but when the stuff hits the fan it is going to be incredibly painful for you.
Previous generations understood that it was wise to store up supplies in the good years in order to make things easier in the lean years.
Unfortunately, most people these days have never been through truly hard times so they have no idea what they are like.
Just because the world has enjoyed a tremendous amount of prosperity for the last several decades does not mean that things will always be this way.
Wake up, take a look at the storm on the horizon and get prepared while you still can.
If you choose not to prepare now, you will regret it later.
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120 Powerful Pieces Of Advice For Preppers
Sunday, June 24, 2:54 am
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Fear not: Emergency agencies train for zombie apocalypse
15 hrs ago
related links
While the CDC keeps nervously assuring the country zombies don't exist, the emergency agencies of Bangor, Maine, are officially training for a zombie apocalypse.
Bangor, which coincidentally is home to Stephen King, could possibly be letting its morbid imagination run wild.
Or maybe this is just a fun simulation that allows first responders to brush up on their basics in dealing with potentially pandemic outbreaks (such as SARS or H1N1) while mingling with role-playing actors gussied up in fake blood. Or, you know, maybe it's time we all took a hint from the headlines and started putting together our zombie-proof snow-plow-cum-school-bus rigs and practicing our head shots.
Better safe than sorry.
Fear not: Emergency agencies train for the zombie apocalypse
Emergency Meals When The Power Goes Out
June 25, 2012 by Peggy Layton
http://personallibertycom.files.word...e625_image.jpgPHOTOS.COMA reliable camp stove is one way to prepare meals if the power goes down.
What we learn from our parents and grandparents from yesterday helps us to be more prepared for today as well as the future. Learning the old-fashioned skills of the past is very important: skills like chopping wood, building fires, using kerosene lamps, gardening, preserving or bottling food, root cellaring for the winter months, fishing, raising and butchering cattle, pigs and chickens.
Our grandparents knew how to preserve their meat by smoking, bottling or drying it. Our ancestors knew how to survive off the land. It was a necessary skill and everyone did it.
Back then, everyone had family farms with chickens. Every morning they gathered the fresh eggs and milked the cow or goat so they could make breakfast. They knew how to bottle meat and turn it into strips of dried jerky for the winter months. Food and water storage was a necessity, and most of the daily activities centered around staying warm and gathering enough food to make meals to feed the family. Many times the older children had the task of gathering and chopping wood, keeping the fire and wood-burning stove going, lighting the kerosene lanterns and helping with the younger children.
What Would We Do Without Electricity?
I do product research for my business. I own every gadget and product I can find that will make life easier in an emergency situation. I use them and evaluate them and pass this knowledge on to my readers.
If the power grid goes down I will be using these items along with many of the skills passed down from my grandparents. We need to think ahead and have items on hand that we can use in our daily lives that do not require electricity. These include a non-electric can opener, a hand-cranked food processor, a hand-cranked wheat grinder or grain mill, an old-fashioned egg beater or wire whisk, a solar oven, a non-electric food dehydrator, and cast iron Dutch ovens. We will need hand tools and gardening equipment, bicycles and ways to get around.
What would we do if the power went out for a week or two? We would not be able to get gas because the pumps run on electricity. The grocery stores would not be able to sell products because the computers wouldn’t work. We would all be greatly inconvenienced. It would be overwhelming and very stressful.
It is a good idea to have alternative cooking methods such as camping stoves, with propane or white gas. Any recipe calling for food to be cooked on a stovetop can easily be cooked on a camp stove, in a pot, pan or on the griddle. Backyard grills are also great as a backup when the power goes out. Be sure to store enough fuel for at least 2 weeks.
In my previous articles I have listed many of the other items that are necessary for being prepared. I am listing a few of my favorite products. They are available on the web and in most sporting goods stores
http://plimages.blob.core.windows.ne...n_Sun-Oven.jpgA Solar Sun Oven is a great way to bake and it uses the power of the sun. You can bake anything in the sun oven that you can bake in a conventional oven. It comes with a dark enamel pot with a lid and is similar to a roasting pan. You place your pot of food in the oven and point the oven toward the sun. It heats up to 375 F quickly and cooks your meal without electricity. There is a cookbook that you can purchase with recipes designed for the sun oven.
Dehydrated And Freeze-dried Foods
Food and water storage is very important in an emergency situation. The types of foods that you will not have access to include fresh produce, breads, meats and dairy products. You will need to have canned meats on hand to make meals that contain protein. You will need bread-making ingredients and the skills to make your own bread. The meals you make in an emergency will be much different than what you are used to cooking.
Dried food will store much longer than wet-pack canned food. I suggest that you store a wide variety of freeze-dried and dehydrated foods. I recommend storing individual gallon-sized cans of dehydrated fruits, vegetables and dried dairy products. A variety of grains, such as wheat, oats and rice, as well as beans and legumes are great storage items because they last a long time on the shelf. They only require water and simple heat to prepare.
Pre-made Meals (Just Add Water)
In an emergency situation we will need simple meals that are easy to prepare yet nutritious. I like to store meals that are already pre-made and dehydrated or freeze-dried and contain all the ingredients. These are so simple to make because you just add water and cook for 15 minutes and the meal is done. The pre-made meals that I have been storing are called Go-Foods. These are so-named because they are ideal for families that are busy, on-the-go and need fast, easy and nutritious meals. When choosing meals to store, keep in mind that they need to be packaged for long-term storage. GoFoods have a shelf life of 15 years. These meals can be rotated and used for everyday cooking as well. This helps prevent the food from expiring and getting thrown away, which is a waste of money.
I research all the different food storage companies and their products and I am in the business of helping people become self-sufficient. I have now found a program that I am very impressed with. You can set up a monthly auto-ship to receive a box of food per month to store away so that over a year’s period of time you will have a one-year supply of emergency food. This company has new concepts in storable foods that are delicious, nutritious, affordable and convenient for daily use as well as for storing for up to 15 years.
http://plimages.blob.core.windows.ne...cken-pasta.jpgGoFoods pre-made meals are dehydrated from premium-grade fresh raw foods.
They have no genetically modified food items (GMOs). The food has no hydrogenated oil or monosodium glutamate (MSG). And it is not imported from countries using illegal fertilizers and insecticides. Just click here to learn more.
The meals ready to cook include soups like cheddar broccoli, Italian chicken, vegetable beef, tortilla soup, corn chowder, minestrone, chicken noodle, chili and potato cheddar. Entrées and other baking items include chicken pasta alfredo, cheesy chicken rice casserole, Santa Fe fiesta rice, creamy Tuscan pasta with sundried tomatoes, beef stroganoff, au gratin potatoes, instant seasoned potatoes, pancake mix, corn muffin mix, cornmeal dumplings, granola, powdered milk, wheat bread mix and buttermilk biscuit mix.
Each package of food is ready to go with everything except the water. It only takes 15-20 minutes to cook and the meals are delicious. The packages feed two to four people and come packed in Mylar® bags for long-term storage of up to 15 years. The cooking instructions are on each package. The company offers samples of their meals for people to try before they buy. All they ask is that you pay the shipping.
http://plimages.blob.core.windows.ne...flashlight.jpgIf The Power Goes Out
If the power goes out it is always a good idea to have several flashlights around. I keep one in all my vehicles as well as my home. I love thesolar-powered hybrid flashlight that recharges itself in any kind of light. It can be recharged each day by exposing it to sunlight or indoor lighting. It has a very bright light with 120 lumens of power and is waterproof. It floats, is non-breakable and works in extreme hot or cold temperatures. You never need to purchase batteries and it holds a single charge for three years before it needs to be recharged again by simply exposing it to sunlight. It is the best solar powered flashlight I have found so far.
Being prepared for whatever life’s emergencies might bring means, not only storing prepping items, but also having the skills to use them. Knowledge and skills will help us to be more emotionally balanced as well. If you are prepared you will not panic.
–Peggy Layton
Emergency Meals When The Power Goes Out : Personal Liberty Alerts=
ACTION NEEDED HERE!!!!
http://www.alipac.us/f8/alipac-amnes...lly-us-260062/
Product Selection Guidelines For Preppers
June 14, 2012 by Austin Fletcher
When, in the course of “human events,” it becomes evident that the “junk” has hit the fan, your medical, bug-out, vehicle and home kits need to work well and last through whatever life may throw at you.
The process of weeding out the “fluff” to get down to the meat and bones of a good product you can bet your life on (and your family’s lives) can be annoying at best and detrimental to your survival at worst. In an effort to show you some basic solutions to the challenge of selecting such important components of preparedness kits, Category Five has developed these helpful guidelines.
Length, Width, Height: Start With The Basics
Making sure you have room for items in your home, vehicle or bug-out bag will save you both time and money. You would be surprised how many of your “favorite” bug-out tools won’t actually fit into your bug-out bag. You may spend a lot of time making sure you’ve considered every other guideline (below), but if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t ship.
Capacity: How Much Can It Hold?
Make sure it can contain what you want to put into it (or carry on it) as well as ensuring that the capacity measures up to your specific needs.
Adults need more water than kids do; men need more food than women do. Not carrying enough of something is almost as useless as not carrying it at all.
Weight: A Much-Underestimated Category
This can make or break every step of a journey. Make sure an item is necessary. If not, leave it behind.
Construction: Because They Truly Do Not Make Things Like They Used To
Take your time to research the quality of what you’re purchasing. Customer reviews of just about any product can be found online. Pay attention to what customers are saying, but be aware of false reviews and fake review sites that are nothing but marketing engines for the product manufacturers.
Price: A Deterrent For Many People To Preparing In The First Place
Hand in hand with quality construction, you often get what you pay for.
There may be some amazing deals where there is a world of difference between two products of the same price, yet don’t fool yourself into thinking you can build a great kit for $20. Spend twice as much up front for something that will last, or buy four of the same thing over and over because they keep breaking. In the end, spending more can save you money.
Shelf Life: Father Time Is Not Always On Your Side
A cousin to quality construction, shelf life is specifically reserved for perishable items (i.e., food, medicine, chemicals). The bottom line: Make sure it will be around when you need it. Have a plan that accounts for rotation. If possible, spend more for a better product like freeze-dried versus dehydrated foods.
Value: What Is Included?
With so many preparedness retailers available, you can often get a great package deal. However, don’t neglect the other guidelines and allow yourself to get sold a package of junk. Are you getting the best bang for your buck or double the trouble?
Utility: Does It Multitask For You?
As Alton Brown from the Food Network would say: “No unitaskers!” Always purchase something that can be used for things other than what you bought it for. Multitasking helps with system redundancy as well as weight reduction.
Check out www.CategoryFive.org for some great videos and ideas, or simply surf the Internet to help get your creative juices flowing.
Having these basic questions answered at checkout will help ensure you do not have buyer’s remorse and will give you peace of mind that you have a quality product you can depend on when you need it most.
–Christopher Teasdale and Austin Fletcher
Product Selection Guidelines For Preppers : Personal Liberty Alerts
Preparing A Bug-Out Bag For Kids
June 18, 2012 by Tim Young
http://personallibertycom.files.word...0614_image.jpgPHOTOS.COMThe freeze-dried items in Cup Noodles® are a great introduction to stored foods.
I think that it’s so easy to overlook the needs of children in potential crisis situations. We focus so much on what we adults need in our bug-out bags for us, but we overlook the obvious things like what our children could use in an emergency.
As an adult, you can pack just about any kind of ration to eat. After all, we know that even though it tastes terrible, it will keep us alive and kicking. If you have kids, you know that this concept won’t go over too well with them.
Sure, there are packaged, efficient rations that your kids could get familiar with after a couple of days and a lot of hunger. But, as a parent, you need to realize that it is also your job to make your kids as comfortable as possible when times get rough.
I think the easiest thing to do when packing for your child is to focus on familiar flavors that your children have already gotten used to.
Dried fruit, peanuts and chocolate are great for kids. They are rich with vitamins, protein and carbohydrates that children need to stay healthy, but they are still considered comfortable to them.
Mixing these items together for trail mix is a good concept to play around with. Having a healthy combo mix of snacks is a great idea.
You can also add in protein or energy supplements that taste like chocolate for your kids, making sure that they’re safe for them.
As an avid health nut, I personally know that a lot of protein bars taste and are set up like candy bars to make them more tolerable. Using these to help fuel your children could be a great thing in a crisis. I can’t stress enough though that you make sure they are safe for them to consume first.
Other great foods to pack for kids are dried soups and noodles. Again, these are good foods for them because they are rich in vitamins and literally the stuff kids need, but they are also familiar flavors.
I loved picking out freeze-dried corn from Cup Noodles® as a kid. Food like that is not only good for your kids, but fun to eat. I know that a lot of you have stocked up on freeze-dried things because of their ability to last for years in storage. Your kids will love that kind of stuff.
A good trick to prepare them for the long haul is to familiarize them with the food now. If you think about it, the freeze-dried items in Cup Noodles® are a great introduction to stored foods. If you get them to like it now, they’ll have no problems with it on the road.
In my travels, I have also seen freeze-dried yogurt, which I loved. It tastes like astronaut ice cream, if you ever had that as a kid. It’s delicious, and it melts in your mouth. It also gives you much-needed calcium for your bones and vitamins that you wouldn’t necessarily get from other freeze-dried products. I eat this as a snack now, and I’m willing to bet that your kids would love it.
It’s also critical that you keep children’s chewable vitamins in their bags. Kids will generally have trouble swallowing the pills that we do, and the last thing that you want is to have the children sick because of a lack of nutrients.
Children’s vitamins come in gummy forms now and have been so popular that the companies who make them have decided to create a version for adults. Why not pack these types of vitamins for kids; it only makes sense.
I can’t say it enough: Your goal as a parent is to make sure that your child is as comfortable as possible in the face of a crisis. No matter how much you can prepare them for the worst, they’re still children. They still want to have fun, play and eat fun things. Knowing that, you should never pack for them like you would yourself.
Keep in mind that you want to make a bad situation better for them. So, when you pack their bug-out bag, make sure they have some comforts, rather than all utility.
Be smarter than they think you are,
–Tim Young
Managing Editor, Absolute Rights
Preparing A Bug-Out Bag For Kids : Personal Liberty Alerts
Study: Radiation Therapy Can Make Cancers 30x More Malignant
Post date: Tuesday, June 26th 2012 at 10:00 am by Sayer Ji
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Following on the heels of recent revelations that x-ray mammography may be contributing to an epidemic of future radiation-induced breast cancers, in a new article titled, "Radiation Treatment Generates Therapy Resistant Cancer Stem Cells From Aggressive Breast Cancer Cells," published in the journal Cancer July 1st, 2012, researchers from the Department of Radiation Oncology at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center report that radiation treatment actually drives breast cancer cells into greater malignancy.
The researchers found that even when radiation kills half of the tumor cells treated, the surviving cells which are resistant to treatment, known as induced breast cancer stem cells (iBCSCs), were up to 30 times more likely to form tumors than the nonirradiated breast cancer cells. In other words, the radiation treatment regresses the total population of cancer cells, generating the false appearance that the treatment is working, but actually increases the ratio of highly malignant to benign cells within that tumor, eventually leading to the iatrogenic (treatment-induced) death of the patient.
Last month, a related study published in the journal Stem Cells titled, "Radiation-induced reprogramming of breast cells," found that ionizing radiation reprogrammed less malignant (more differentiated) breast cancer cells into iBCSCs, helping to explain why conventional treatment actually enriches the tumor population with higher levels of treatment-resistant cells. [i]
A growing body of research now indicts conventional cancer treatment with chemotherapy and radiation as a major contributing cause of cancer patient mortality. The primary reason for this is the fact that cancer stem cells, which are almost exclusively resistant to conventional treatment, are not being targeted, but to the contrary, are encouraged to thrive when exposed to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
In order to understand how conventional treatment drives the cancer into greater malignancy, we must first understand what cancer is….
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What Are Cancer Stem Cells, And Why Are They Resistant To Treatment?
Tumors are actually highly organized assemblages of cells, which are surprisingly well-coordinated for cells that are supposed to be the result of strictly random mutation. They are capable of building their own blood supply (angiogenesis), are able to defend themselves by silencing cancer-suppression genes, secreting corrosive enzymes to move freely throughout the body, alter their metabolism to live in low oxygen and acidic environments, and know how to remove their own surface-receptor proteins to escape detection by white blood cells. In a previous article titled "Is Cancer An Ancient Survival Program Unmasked?" we delved deeper into this emerging view of cancer as an evolutionary throw-back and not a byproduct of strictly random mutation.
Because tumors are not simply the result of one or more mutated cells "going rogue" and producing exact clones of itself (multi-mutational and clonal hypotheses), but are a diverse group of cells having radically different phenotypal characteristics, chemotherapy and radiation will affect each cell type differently.
Tumors are composed of a wide range of cells, many of which are entirely benign.
The most deadly cell type within a tumor or blood cancer, known as cancer stem cells (CSCs), has the ability to give rise to all the cell types found within that cancer.
They are capable of dividing by mitosis to form either two stem cells (increasing the size of the stem population), or one daughter cell that goes on to differentiate into a variety of cell types, and one daughter cell that retains stem-cell properties.
This means CSCs are tumorigenic (tumor-forming) and should be the primary target of cancer treatment because they are capable of both initiating and sustaining cancer. They are also increasingly recognized to be the cause of relapse and metastasis following conventional treatment.
CSCs are exceptionally resistant to conventional treatment for the following reasons
- CSCs account for less than 1 in 10,000 cells within a particular cancer, making them difficult to destroy without destroying the vast majority of other cells comprising the tumor.[ii]
- CSCs are slow to replicate, making them less likely to be destroyed by chemotherapy and radiation treatments that target cells which are more rapidly dividing.
- Conventional chemotherapies target differentiated and differentiating cells, which form the bulk of the tumor, but these are unable to generate new cells like the CSCs which are undifferentiated.
The existence of CSCs explains why conventional cancer treatment has completely missed the boat when it comes to targeting the root cause of tumors. One reason for this is because existing cancer treatments have mostly been developed in animal models where the goal is to shrink a tumor. Because mice are most often used and their life spans do not exceed two years, tumor relapse is very difficult, if not impossible to study.
The first round of chemotherapy never kills the entire tumor, but only a percentage. This phenomenon is called the fractional kill. The goal is to use repeated treatment cycles (usually six) to regress the tumor population down to zero, without killing the patient.
What normally occurs is that the treatment selectively kills the less harmful populations of cells (daughter cells), increasing the ratio of CSCs to benign and/or less malignant cells. This is not unlike what happens when antibiotics are used to treat certain infections. The drug may wipe out 99.9% of the target bacteria, but .1% have or develop resistance to the agent, enabling the .1% to come back even stronger with time.
The antibiotic, also, kills the other beneficial bacteria that help the body fight infection naturally, in the same way that chemotherapy kills the patient’s immune system (white blood cells and bone marrow), ultimately supporting the underlying conditions making disease recurrence more likely.
The reality is that the chemotherapy, even though it has reduced the tumor volume, by increasing the ratio of CSCs to benign daughter cells, has actually made the cancer more malignant.
Radiotherapy has also been shown to increase cancer stem cells in the prostate, ultimately resulting in cancer recurrence and worsened prognosis.[iii] Cancer stem cells may also explain why castration therapy often fails in prostate cancer treatment.[iv]
Non-Toxic Natural Substances Which Target and Kill CSCs
Natural compounds have been shown to exhibit three properties which make them suitable alternatives to conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy:
- High margin of safety: Relative to chemotherapy agents such as 5-fluorouracil natural compounds are two orders of magnitude safer
- Selective Cytotoxicity: The ability to target only those cells that are cancerous and not healthy cells
- CSCs Targeting: The ability to target the cancer stem cells within a tumor population.
The primary reason why these substances are not used in conventional treatment is because they are not patentable, nor profitable. Sadly, the criteria for drug selection are not safety, effectiveness, accessibility and affordability. If this were so, natural compounds would form an integral part of the standard of care in modern cancer treatment.
Research indicates that the following compounds (along with common dietary sources) have the ability to target CSCs:
- Curcumin (Turmeric)
- Resveratrol (Red Wine; Japanese Knotweed)
- Quercetin (Onion)
- Sulforaphane (Brocolli sprouts)
- Parthenolide (Butterbur)
- Andrographalide (Andrographis)
- Genistein (Cultured Soy; Coffee)
- Piperine (Black Pepper)
Additional research found on the GreenMedInfo.com Multidrug Resistance page indicate over 50 compounds inhibit multidrug resistance cancers in experimental models.
[i] Radiation-induced reprogramming of breast cancer cells. Stem Cells. 2012 May ;30(5):833-44. PMID: 22489015
[ii] Human acute myeloid leukemia is organized as a hierarchy that originates from a primitive hematopoietic cell. Nat Med. 1997 Jul ;3(7):730-7. PMID: 9212098
[iii] Long-term recovery of irradiated prostate cancer increases cancer stem cells. Prostate. 2012 Apr 18. Epub 2012 Apr 18. PMID: 22513891
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http://www.greenmedinfo.com/sites/de...yer_byline.jpgSayer Ji is the founder of GreenMedInfo.com. His writings and research have been published in the Wellbeing Journal, the Journal of Gluten Sensitivity, and have been featured on numerous websites, including Mercola.com, NaturalNews.com, Reuters.com, GaryNull.com, and Care2.com.
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