I believe that in a severe crisis, most of the problems are going to have to be solved at the local level. State and federal government are too big and dependent on technology to survive a severe crisis once the grid drops and all services start to erode. Local governments, too, are ill prepared to assume this crushing responsibility, but they are much more resilient because their scope of control is smaller. Most of them have never even considered what they would do.

This article is a discussion piece to stimulate thought on the subject of small community recovery after TEOTWAWKI. I hope it will also be useful as a rough blueprint or checklist for local community leaders, or at least a starting point for a comprehensive plan. I wrote it from the perspective of a fictional town mayor. Most of the issues I mention apply to many levels of local government and law enforcement. I realize that A mayor never acts alone or has absolute power. They have a lot of people helping and advising them. I am hoping you will help yours make and implement the right decisions and that this paper will help in some small way.

Before I start spouting off about what I think will occur, I need to tell you who I am. I am a retired Army Electronic Warfare and Signals Intelligence Warrant Officer. I spent over a decade working on Army planning staffs at various levels, and was a professional action officer on the USAREUR DCSINT planning staff for more than four years. I got the rare opportunity to see many failed states and regional crisis and how people, communities and economies react. But I have never held any office in local government. Also, unfortunately, I am not a wizard who can see into the future. The following are my own conclusions and suggestions drawn from my own experiences. I may be wildly wrong, or overlooking factors that seem obvious to you, especially if you have a lot of experience in local government. So, take this for what it's worth. Hopefully, it will provide a basis for discussion and planning and generate a dialog. I am hoping to hear corrections and other ideas. I am never insulted by disagreement, so if you see things differently, I would be very happy to hear it.

First, we need to define what kind of crisis I am talking about. I am talking about a large scale disaster of some kind that effects a huge geographical region and forces local communities to solve their own problems and precludes getting help from outside. I am talking about an event that would cause a complete failure of basic services such as finance (banking) or the electrical grid and prevent the Government from repairing it quickly enough to prevent a general cascading breakdown of other services. I will use a major EMP event as my example because that would be just about a worst case event. Some of what I say will be applicable to regional or short term events, but some of it won't.

I believe that most communities are doomed. Many American and European communities are artificial constructs entirely dependent on modern society to keep them running. You can tell if your town cannot survive by looking at the population density, arable land, water supplies and other resources. If your community is in a desert and trucks in all their water, you can't possibly survive long term. If your whole population is suburban or urban and you have no working farms or farmable land, then you are doomed. Sorry. If you live in a doomed community, I don't know what to tell you. For this article, I am assuming a smallish town with a good water supply and a lot of working farms that don't require electric irrigation. Even a perfectly situated town will have huge problems and may not survive a major EMP event. Anything less than perfection is going to require superhuman effort, no mistakes and a large touch of luck.

Somebody has to take charge quickly:
Anarchy is the dirtiest word in the English language and should be avoided at all costs. Whenever I see some teenager wearing a T-shirt espousing anarchy, I get a strong urge to show him a little anarchy by beating him up and ripping it off his back..and then ask him if he still thinks Anarchy is "cool". I have seen chaos and virtual anarchy up close and I was frankly astonished at the depravity of mankind. Without law and order of some kind, the strong will take from the weak. The cruel will torture and kill wantonly. Rule of law is essential to any progress or recovery. I am writing this in the firm belief that when our society crashes, some communities will maintain order and some vestige of humanity. That's going to require a delicate balancing act because the two concepts are not mutually reinforcing and can be at odds with each other. Communities are going to have to make some very hard choices if they are to maintain order and survive. Lets hope they can maintain their humanity and Christian values while they are doing this.

Let's imagine that you are the mayor of a small town when this horrible event occurs. The lights go out, most cars don't work, and personal battery powered electronics malfunction. How quickly would most small town mayors realize it was EMP? I am guessing that most of them will figure it out within minutes or hours. There are enough smart folks around to advise them even if they are not knowledgeable. So what are your actions going to be?

What are your resources? The town owns some land and some buildings, some vehicles and maybe some utility equipment. But by far, your biggest asset is a limited amount of capital in the form of authority and good will. You represent a body of voters, which gives you more legal legitimacy than anyone else. You have a police force of some kind and the authority to spend money on behalf of the government...sort of. Your authority is real, but it's based on some fairly fragile cornerstones. Some of them may not exist anymore. The monetary system may be completely wrecked. You may not be able to pay anyone for anything. The Federal and State Governments are both out of communications and may not exist anymore. Any indecision or misstep on your part could destroy your authority, leaving nothing in it's place.

What, exactly is your authority? Where does it overlap with county or other governments? What gives you the authority to maintain order? Impose martial law? Appoint armed deputies, Set up roadblocks? Commandeer fuel and food stocks? The Army NCO academy teaches that there are five types of power that an individual can wield. You will need to use all of them.

a. Legal: You have limited direct "Command authority" in a military sense. Unless you have a body of laws to back you up, you can't lean on your command authority too much. Check on this, but your town is unlikely to have bylaws giving you much power in an emergency. Instead, you have to assume that you possess Delegated authority. You are the representative of both State and Federal government and have to assume their roles and responsibilities until you can re-establish a chain of command. In the absence of orders or directives, you are free to "assume" responsibility and authority. At least that's a good legal theory and may be enough. If this were ever tested in court, it might not be upheld, but by that time, the crisis will be over, right? Everything you do is "Legal" until you are overruled by a court...or ousted by a mob of your constituents. Your real authority is your mandate from the people. It rests on your ability to make sound decisions and convince others that you are doing all the right things. That buys you more authority in a crisis than all the documents ever printed.

b. Coercive: Unfortunately, brute force is always a factor. As long as you maintain control over the police force or sheriff's department, you have authority. You must gain firm control of your police and public employees first, before you try to do anything else. Without them, your authority can be dissolved by a few hot-heads with weapons. You are going to be forced to make some very unpopular decisions and part of your community is going to be extremely angry with you. Get your troops in place first or you won't keep your authority long. You must also be very careful not to abuse this authority or let your troops abuse it. A good way to do this is to immediately beef up your police force with out of work, solid citizens. You can take on a fairly large number of deputies from the community. That gives the community a sense of ownership in the police and helps prevent excesses.

c. Reward: You will initially have almost no ability to reward anyone. If the finance system is gone, you have nothing to trade for goods and services. You will need to change this immediately by setting up some kind of economy for your town. (This topic is covered below). If you don't lick this problem immediately, your police and city employees are going to stop showing up for work very quickly. They have to feed and protect their families somehow.

d. Charisma: Unfortunately, (or fortunately perhaps) personal charisma and magnetism are much more important than we like to admit. If you can sway a crowd or argue persuasively, it doesn't matter if you are right or wrong. This sword cuts both ways, of course. You are going to have to face very charismatic personalities around town and persuade them to go along with you, or at least stay neutral. You need to gain the immediate support of community and church leaders. Figure out who can cause you political trouble and approach them to get them on your side or otherwise neutralize them, or you will be facing a "minority party" that will eventually oust you.

A good tool for dealing with dissension is to trap your opponents into stating a preferred way to resolve some problem and then enlist them to oversee it. There are a lot of ways to "skin a cat". Let them try their way if it can work. Pull them into your administration. Remember, you are all on the same team at some level. Find that level and stay on it. I believe that in a crisis, everyone has a tendency to follow anyone with a firm voice and the appearance of a plan. Just be sure you have a good plan and you will keep dissension to a minimum.

e. Expert: Knowledge is power. Anyone with unique and useful knowledge has value and power. It's much easier to sway an audience if you have a degree in the topic or an acknowledged expert in your corner. You should surround yourself with experts. When a new problem arises and an expert or two are identified, pull them into your circle of advisers. Doing this not only makes you a better leader with better decisions, it gives all of your followers the sense that you are open to suggestions and good ideas from any quarter.

So, you take charge quickly and start issuing orders. What are those orders?You have a lot of things to worry about, and all of them are urgent and critically important. The following is my list of issues that you need to address immediately and some suggestions on how to address them. Local conditions, laws, resources and public opinions are variables that effect how you must react. Think it out in the context of your local conditions and try to at least have a tentative plan to put forward immediately. The venue for putting forth your agenda should be as transparent as possible, either a public meeting or a written decree or order. That way, everyone not only knows your decisions, they know the reasoning behind them. If you can get consensus from a town meeting before you put out an emergency decree, you will have less trouble,but some of these issues require immediate action.

1. Communications:
Without communications, you are powerless. You must be able to communicate with your police department and other public service folks, the people of the town, the county seat, the State, and lots of others. Unfortunately, a big EMP event will wipe out electronic communications in a blink and leave you isolated, just when you need to be at the center of activity. There are a couple of things you can do to mitigate this if you plan ahead, but you are still going to have to somehow establish some kind of communications with your neighboring towns and other polities...and hopefully higher echelons of government.

Mitigation:
If you can store some short range radio equipment and maybe some old-school TA-312 or TA-1 type telephones in a Faraday cage, they will be worth their weight in gold. Even a few old telephones (and wire) can enable you to keep in touch with the town down the road, or your own guard posts. Another thing to add to your Faraday cage is a couple of battery-powered shortwave receivers. These will allow you to catch long range HF broadcasts from working stations possibly overseas. Shortwave may be your most reliable source of news. A ham radio rig, if it survives, might be very useful too.

Actions:
If you don't have working radios, think back to a time when radio and even telephone didn't exist. Our founding fathers didn't have those luxuries and still managed. The solution is a central, easy to find headquarters, official written communications, and messengers. You will need plenty of paper, (with your office letterhead if possible), envelopes and some kind of official seal you can use. You might even consider a wax seal, like they used in the 18th century, but a notary seal (or something similar) with your signature over the top will look a lot more official than a blank paper. You will also need carbon paper or a working copier, but probably won't have them.

Small communities in the past used church bells, beacon lights, gongs, bugles, whistles, sirens and flags to communicate locally. These methods require some planning, but they still work.

Public notice boards were a major tool of government in the days before electricity. Designate a board outside city hall or somewhere convenient and section it off into five sections (or more if you wish). Post public policies and directives in one section and "good advice" such as water purification procedures in another. A third section of the notice board should contain a calendar or event log to keep people advised on upcoming events. (Also, you should somehow let people know what day it is). A fourth section of the board can contain news items picked up on the shortwave or from other communities.

The fifth [and very large] section should be made open to the public. Remember, they have no reliable communications means and may need to link up with missing relatives or communicate privately with other community members. A board is a good way to do this and can substitute for a public mail service. Set up a drop box for personal messages (controlled by someone at city hall or at the post office or whatever) and maintain a list of people with "refugee mail" on the public notice board. That way, if someone wants to send a letter or something to anyone else, they drop an envelope in the drop box and write the addressee's name (and a date) on the public board. When the addressee picks up his mail, he crosses his name off the list. Any person traveling to a nearby town can carry mail to that town.

You may need to regulate your public notice board by requiring people to date their notices and limit the time something can remain posted. Otherwise, the public board will quickly get out of hand, no matter how big it is. Try not to get too draconian. Allow people to post anything they want (subject to whatever constraints make sense to the town). Your board may be the best and only information service most people have.

You should also expect to do a lot of face to face meetings with crowds and individuals. Consider setting up a weekly town meeting where you can put out orders and public service information in person and invite discussion. Town meetings used to be a great source of entertainment and gave everyone a chance to blow off some steam about things that bothered them. When electronics fail,You will need to be able to do a lot of business face-to-face. If you move your headquarters to an easily accessible area, like downtown main-street, or near a marketplace, everything may be easier. Unfortunately, messengers and face to face conversations require working transportation of some kind (as discussed below).

2. Building an emergency economy
You are going to have to set up some kind of economy to replace the crashed finance system. You are not going to be able to rebuild the crashed economy, but will have to build an entirely new system, almost from scratch. If you get this one wrong, everything else will fall apart very quickly. This is a huge undertaking, but it must be done quickly. You simply cannot use the existing financial system or hope to rebuild it. About 4/5ths of your town will need food and most of the town's food will be owned by a very few individuals or controlled by a store manager in the case of a corporate chain store. If you allow the market to "work itself out", these few store managers or individuals will suddenly control all the wealth and be able to charge people anything they see fit...or withhold critical resources as the whim takes them. Some people will have nothing of value in the new economy [except their labor]. How will these people buy what they need? "Money" is not the fiat currency we are used to dealing with. It is something of value exchanged for something else of value. Any finance system has to be able to allow people to exchange what they need for what they have or it will fail. In this example, the likely results might be a riot and immediate looting.

Mitigation: None possible? I don't know how you can prepare your town for a total financial crash. If anyone has a suggestion, I would love to hear it.

Actions:
We might as well deal with this topic right away. Are you going to try to have a strictly capitalist system? If so, a lot of people who don't currently have exactly what they need, or anything that happens to be valued in your new economy, are going to die. (More likely, they are going to revolt and try to take the resources they need.) A free market is a wonderful thing, but it requires time, security and communication to form. You won't have any of these. People who don't have food won't wait long enough for you to form a fully functional free market system, which could take months or years. Without perceived equitable distribution of "wealth" in the form of whatever your community members need, you will have violence and mayhem very quickly. A free market capitalist trade system will never get a chance to form without a precursor system to hold it up until it gets established.

In my humble opinion (after seeing many different monetary systems over the years) there is no alternative to adding a very large socialist component to a post-collapse emergency economy. If you don't strictly regulate critical resources, they will not be distributed equitably and many people will needlessly suffer and perhaps die. Even if that's okay with you, consider what you would do in their shoes. Would you watch your family starve while there was food on the shelves down at the Wal-Mart? Not very likely. You might decide to gather some like-minded folks up and storm the Wal-Mart. If the police try to stop you, what will you do? You will fight to the death because there is no valid alternative. For that matter, the police force may be leading the charge. What are you planning to pay them with? Patriotism? Whoever controls the food and other scarce resources controls the reins of power. It simply cannot be left in the hands of random individuals.

To avoid total anarchy in a societal collapse, you will need to form a centrally controlled economy in the short term, designed to equitably re-distribute and manage critical resources. You will need to slowly build a free market as you are able, but trying to do it immediately will undermine everything you must accomplish during the crisis.

In order to form a centralized economy or even pay for the services the town is going to desperately need, you need to gain control of most of the "publicly available" critical shortage resources and use them as your basis of wealth. Scarce resources are the basis for a currency system. At a very basic level, Food is cash. Once you have a warehouse of food under your tight control, you can pay for labor and other commodities and resources with that food. A better system might be to pay for labor and services with "ration cards". That ration card entitles them to eat a single meal at a community soup kitchen, or entitles them to a set amount of grain or other commodity on demand from the town warehouse. In essence anyone needing community resources "works for the community" and gets to eat at the mess hall...and earns a little surplus to use for other necessities. This arrangement will also give you a huge manpower pool to work with almost immediately. You may find that you will need most of them.

Avoid giving "handouts" to anyone. You need everyone to work as hard as they can. You need them to use their incentive. Handouts that compete with the local economy are counterproductive and destroy human dignity.

Without machinery, manpower is your biggest resource. Cherish each unemployed citizen. Make them work for their pay and use them to build capital for the future (see below), food production, military duties, messenger services, trash collection or anything else that needs doing. Remember, these are not freeloaders, they are solid citizens who want to work and feel like they are part of a larger effort. Don't worry about having so many people on "welfare". Most of them will get to be self sufficient as fast as they are able. Pay them a slight surplus and they will feel that they are working toward something and not living hand to mouth. You may find that they invest the surplus and build your free market economy for you.

If you let private citizens keep their food and fuel and other scarce resources and only confiscate and control corporate or "large retail or wholesale stocks" (explained below), any citizen with resources can also hire help at roughly the same rates you are paying, which helps the whole community and drives down demand for public stockpiles. (You have established a minimum wage of 1 ration card per hour). Everything else could be bartered using food or the town ration cards as currency. If you establish a set value for your ration cards and a safe marketplace in town (perhaps even a market day, where other communities can join in the trading), you have the beginnings of a free market with as little pain as possible and almost no stink of socialism. Since food is established as the gold standard, you also add incentive to immediately start farming, hunting, and otherwise adding to the public larder.

So where do you get the resources you are going to control? I am not talking about collecting up everyone's food and gasoline. That would be an economic disaster in the long term. People need to feel secure in their property rights or they won't be willing to invest in the future. And you need a lot of private investment to get your community through the crisis. You will need to collect taxes later, but not until there is a harvest or something to collect.

You have to be careful which resources you initially confiscate and only gather large retail or wholesale stocks meant for re-sale. Anything owned by an individual for his own use is his property and must not be touched. Any critical and scarce commodity owned strictly for resale should be confiscated for the common good and held by the community. Make sure you provide a receipt to any owners you can locate or at least keep records of what is taken. This will allow much easier accounting if someone ever tries to rebuild the old
economy.

Our free enterprise system has provided the opportunity for some families and even individuals to amass huge fortunes. It also allowed groups of individuals to "incorporate" to form legal entities that own vast resources. In normal times, this is an overall goodness that generates wealth and (at least in theory) raises everyone's standard of living. In normal times, an individual is free to own thousands of acres of land and all the minerals under it. He is allowed to farm it, bulldoze it, burn it, deny it's use to others or use it pretty much any way he wants. It's almost certain that critical resources in your community are "owned" by a corporation or private investor. In theory, a single individual can legally "own" all the arable land in a community and prevent anyone from farming it, even if they are starving.

In an emergency, I feel that this cannot and must not be allowed. Moral imperatives and common sense must prevail over law in some rare cases and this is one of those cases. Private property for use by the individual is morally different from corporate property or privately owned property that is held for the "wealth" it generates. If someone "owns" something and has no intention of ever using it himself (or even seeing it), he cannot morally control it in an emergency. I believe that corporations are legal fictions that have exactly as much validity as the rest of our complex finance system. When the dollar crashes and all the banks close, (IMHO) they cease to exist in a moral sense.

Any corporate or investment property belongs to the state in an emergency. Did that sentence scare you? It does me. But I believe it will come to pass. The state has the ultimate responsibility to answer to the people and has legal power over all corporate entities. The government's charter (by constitution and a huge jurisprudence system) is to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. In normal times, this is best accomplished by jealously guarding a clearly documented body of property rights for individuals and corporations. But this is not a universal law of nature. If corporate interests collide with public welfare needs, the government has the right and the responsibility to negate corporate or individual rights for the common good.

As mayor of a community, you are going to have to make some hard choices and convince others that you are right. One of these choices might be to confiscate corporate property and redistribute it as needed for the common good. That specifically includes local merchants who hold stockpiles of needed resources meant for resale, such as gas station and grocery store owners. The whole retail system with it's complex accounting and "ownership" laws are part of a finance system that no longer exists after a severe EMP event. You (and your community) need to sit down and determine a whole new set of ownership rules. I urge you to think hard about this and perhaps appoint someone wise and respected to arbitrate individual cases. Farmable land owned by a absentee landlord is easy; he's not there and owns it only as an investment, therefore it now belongs to the community. Large corporate holdings, like the stock of a chain department store are easy matters. That corporation is dead and gone and the goods now belong to the community. A large Agra-business hog farm is easy, confiscate the hogs and their feed. But what about a silo of corn owned by a Co-op of local farmers? What about a local farmer with 1,000 acres of standing corn clearly meant for commercial sale? What about a rancher with 100 head of cattle? You really have to be careful where you draw the line between private ownership and "retail goods", but draw it you must. Your new government is going to need a lot of capital to survive the tribulations coming.

3. Transportation and fuel
Your police and city vehicles may not work after an EMP event. In my opinion, the testing of EMP effects on vehicles outlined in the congressional EMP report "2008 Critical National Infrastructures Report" was flawed. Their simulator was only capable of generating 50kv EMP and only generated a E1 event, not the (perhaps) more damaging E3 wave. The cars were tested only until they exhibited a fault of some kind and then the testing was halted. Many of the vehicles showed some kind of failure or "faults" at lower voltages, but were never subjected to high voltage EMP, yet the conclusion includes these cars as having survived with no permanent damage.

Also, there is no reason to assume that 50kv is the upper limit in a real world HEMP event, it was simply the limit of the test gear available. I believe the test gear used was strongly influenced by the Master's degree thesis by Louis W. Seiler, Jr., "A Calculational Model for High Altitude EMP, report ADA009208". That thesis, while brilliant, computes E1 gamma burst for the peak EMP at ground zero for a burst above the magnetic equator, where the Earth's magnetic field is far weaker than it is at high latitudes (nearer the poles). Further North or South, the magnetic field lines converge (increasing the magnetic field strength). It's generally accepted that the peak EMP is almost directly proportional to the power of the Earth's magnetic field. That means that real world voltages in real world equipment may easily exceed 50kv. In fact we have some evidence of this. The Soviet above-ground warhead test #184 produced ground zero EMP intensity estimated by Soviet scientists at 350 kV. Also, remember that the cars used in the commission's testing were older cars build between 1986 and 2002. Have cars gotten more EMP resistant since then? No. My conclusion is simple. A lot of cars may not survive a real world event.

If a lot of vehicles survive, fuel stocks may be depleted almost immediately unless you take steps to protect them. I know this sounds draconian, but the police force and emergency vehicles should have priority for fuel and the only way to assure this is to implement some kind of rationing plan immediately. Fuel stocks are a public resource owned by private citizens. Once they are gone, your community may never get any more. This is a case where you are going to have to exercise some emergency powers and appropriate property from private citizens. If possible, you should "pay" for the fuel immediately. If you cannot, at least make sure you give the rightful owner a receipt so you can pay him back later if someone manages to re-build the economy.

Mitigation
Keep your town's vehicles in good shape and look into storing them inside a shielded garage when off duty. Being indoors may prevent some of the damage. If you are able to afford it, buy a reserve fuel supply for the police department. I don't know how much this would cost for a specific town, or how much fuel it should hold, but if you could somehow talk the town into the merits of a municipal reserve to last even a few weeks, it might someday prove very useful. If you bought two tanks, sized to last the police department a month or less, you wouldn't have any extra expense for fuel additives. You could rotate your fuel.

Actions
As distasteful as this is to Americans, I can't see any alternative likely to work. You need to seize and ration all bulk stocks of gasoline, Diesel, propane, fuel oil, coal and other fuels used or held by the town. The town will desperately need these fuels for heating, emergency services and agriculture. You may also be forced to confiscate privately owned vehicles if yours are damaged or you need specialty vehicles (like fuel tankers, for instance). You need to work out a method of doing this without stealing. Any time you confiscate resources from any private citizen, you need to somehow reimburse them as fairly as possible. A better approach may be to exclusively hire them as the driver and let them retain ownership.

Your town may also have a stream of refugees pouring through or past it from a nearby city. This is a very bad situation that has to be dealt with immediately. If they have access to your town's fuel stocks, they will drain every drop in a day or two. This may need to be your first order in an emergency. Every hour you delay may be critical. (Refugees are discussed below).

Another distasteful, yet lucrative opportunity you may have is to confiscate fuel (and other resources) from passing highway traffic. Whether you call this piracy or taxation, If trucks are still moving on the big highways, they may contain resources your town really needs to survive. I am not suggesting that this is a moral or desirable option, but someone in your community is bound to bring it up. Think out your position in advance and be ready to argue your point. Personally, I believe that any interference in long range commerce or transportation is detrimental to all of society and also undermines the very laws that prop up your own authority. No matter what you call it, the act of a government stealing is a slippery slope.

4. Water and sewage

Modern towns are very wasteful of water, but can't survive without it for more than a few days. Most people have never thought about how to purify water or deal with waste. If you don't do something quickly, a lot of your citizens are going to start defecating outdoors and many of your citizens are going to drink unsafe water. The results will be catastrophic in terms of public health.

Your town may be in good shape, but probably not. You will want to get some expert advice on this immediately. Many towns rely on pumped water, often from towers in or near the town. If so, you have a few days until the tanks run dry. You will need to figure out a way to keep this system going if you can. You still need to add chlorine and get the water high enough to maintain water pressure. If the machinery for doing this is broken, you need to set a crew working on water immediately.

Some towns won't be able to keep their water flowing and will have to use extreme measures to provide water for their people and deal with wastes. You may have to haul water to a central point and purify it manually, or even set up public latrines and wash points. Without ready supplies of water, most private residences are going to be uninhabitable in the long run. The folks with homes you cannot supply may need to move closer to your water point.

Mitigation
Talk to your water providers now and get them thinking about it so they can come up with options for you. Ask them to do a formal assessment of your town's situation and resources and suggest mitigation strategies for emergencies. What do they need to manually run their system during a power outage? If they can't run manually, you might consider buying a backup generator to run pumps and machinery. (Make sure you budget for a good Faraday cage to protect this generator and keep it disconnected and keep all cables inside the cage until needed). You may need to stockpile fuel or extra chemicals or buy extra equipment that can be run manually. If your town can't afford any of this, You may need to buy some mobile water tanks for the town. Any of these preparations could be very useful during a whole range of situations and natural disasters.

Actions
These will depend on your town's system. But you need to keep your eye on the ball. You need to provide at least a gallon of water per resident every day, just to keep them alive. You will need much more than that to keep them healthy in the long run. You also need to tell the community how to get pure water and warn them against drinking or using tainted water. Is your area dependent on irrigation agriculture? You will need to figure out how to supply that water too.

5. Solid waste disposal and burial of dead.
Without fuel, trash collection and burial can be very laborious. These problems would be a lot simpler if everyone lived within easy walking distance of town, but unfortunately this is almost never the case in the US. You may need to solve this by distributing simple instructions on how to do it using old-school techniques. Old homesteaders had an outhouse to deal with sewage, a compost pile to deal with organic waste and a burn barrel (or fireplace) to get rid of burnables. Anything else, they threw in the "trash pile" out back. (The solid trash pile for non-rotting, non-burnable trash was often a used outhouse cesspool, which was then covered over with dirt). On the bright side, municipal rubbish volumes are going to diminish and be replaced mostly with compost-able plant waste. Anything that can be recycled and reused, like old cardboard boxes will be treasured and kept. Our throw-away society will be over.

Burial and funeral services used to be handled very locally at the neighborhood church or even on your own property. Embalming and cremation are modern innovations that will be too expensive to maintain. [JWR Adds: The only exceptions will be in heavily-timbered regions or in coastal communities that are in driftwood deposition zones. There, perhaps there will be plentiful firewood for use in outdoor cremation pyres.] You will need your medical people to oversee and recommend procedures for burial. Make sure they consult the church leaders or you may make problems for yourself.

Actions: Check with a local doctor and have him recommend procedures for waste disposal. Find a way to distribute them and encourage people to follow the procedures by explaining why.

6. Food. (Short term provisioning)
This is going to be a real problem. You need to provide some minimum of calories and nutrition for all your citizens until the community can grow (and the free market can distribute) all the food needed by the community. This is going to be a tall order. Most people don't store a substantial amount of food in their homes and will quickly be dependent on town stocks. Most of the food in most communities is owned by very few people or corporations.

The only way you are going to save a substantial percentage of your population over the short term is to gain control of and ration most of the food centrally. You are going to have to locate and safeguard as much food as possible. you will need to establish a warehouse of some sort and guard it well. Pre-historic villages and other primitive cultures always locate their food stocks in the center of their living space to ensure it is guarded. This might be a wise choice. You may be able to use a church, school or other public building close to the town center for this purpose. If that building also has a substantial kitchen and cafeteria that you can get working again, it will save a lot of transportation problems.

Don't be shocked if your town is forced to fight some other town to keep the food you stockpile. Historically, when food gets scarce, communities fight and take what they need. Be ready for this behavior. I would station my police force inside my granary, in the center of town if possible.

Sources of food you can confiscate or otherwise control:

a. Department stores and food stores: Large food stores are the most obvious place to look for food. They will not last long whether you confiscate the food or not. People are going to either buy or loot everything in a matter of days or even hours. Unfortunately retail stores don't maintain much stock these days. If it's not on the shelves, it's probably not in the back room either. With modern stocking practices, nobody maintains a well-stocked warehouse on site anymore. The non-refrigerated foods should all be salvageable, but if you hurry, you might be able to make use of much of the frozen foods and fresh produce or even salt some away using other preservation techniques before it goes bad.

b. Co-ops and large commercial farms: These may have livestock and large amounts of feed grain and other dried foods on hand. Whoever manages these establishments are also probably experts at food preservation, storage and a whole range of agricultural issues. Seek them out and get their input and help to secure their food. You want to avoid spoilage and loss as much as possible and these people can help. Hire them. You may need to keep the grain right where it's at (and guard it) or provide power (if possible) to dry out the grain or you may need to provide manpower to manually harvest crops. Listen to your experts.

c. Feed stores: Most animals in your community are going to have to be slaughtered during the first year. Save as much edible feed as possible for human consumption. Most feed mixes are good for humans to eat. Even the big bags of dog food should be preserved. You will probably need them. They are mostly grain and if ground into flour and thoroughly cooked, all of them are safe to eat. Alfalfa pellets and other "non-human-food" products may be used to feed livestock.

d. Pet stores. Bird seed is nothing but grain and oil seeds. Most pet foods are edible and should be saved for human consumption. The issue of what to do with pets is going to be a hard one, but logic dictates that the community refrain from using up useful food stocks on animals unless they add substantially to the local economy. However, keep in mind that people get very emotional about their pets. If you try to get people to give up their animals, they may lynch you. (Your commissary should sell the pet foods, just like they do people food. If the pet owners work hard enough to support their animals, you should not try to get heavy handed. Any other approach will put you at odds with part of your population.)

e. Regional distribution centers: If you are fortunate enough to have one or more of these in your reach, you should act immediately to secure them. These centers typically have very substantial stocks of food on hand. Unfortunately, much of this food requires refrigeration and will go bad very quickly. The centers with dried and canned goods will be in big demand very quickly, so you need to dispatch work parties (with lots of trucks) as quickly as you can organize them.

f. Standing commercial crops: Depending on the season, one of the first tasks you need to tackle may be to help farmers with their harvest or planting or other tasks. Modern farms are only manageable with the aid of heavy machinery. Without this machinery, even routine tasks are not possible. Without combines, farmers couldn't possibly complete their own harvests. Without security of some kind, their crops may never make it to maturity. Refugees would strip them bare without your help. You can strike a deal with farmers to bring in their crops and help in return for some kind of payment in kind or a cut of their crop and others in the area. (Remember, most farmers are mono-crop farmers with little use for 60 tons of corn with no market). They may be more interested in what you can provide in the form of machinery, power or labor. Talk to them, explain your situation and strike a deal that benefits both of you.

g. Lakes and rivers: Fishing resources are very limited, but important sources of food in many areas if you can protect them. You need to prevent poachers from destroying their production capacity by over-fishing (maybe with dynamite) or polluting water resources.

h. Bakeries and food processing plants: Processing plants usually have very limited stocks of food on hand, but may have quite a lot depending on what they are making. They may also have usable machinery that can be converted to use.

i. Colleges, Libraries and bookstores. These don't contain food, but they contain knowledge about foraging for wild plants. You may be able to extend your resources by sending out forage parties to collect locally growing wild resources. If you get lucky, you might be able to gather a large harvest of acorns or maple seed or some other highly prolific food species. Appoint someone (maybe a survivalist or old hippie) as "wild food forager" and cross your fingers.

Things to watch for are large grain mills and industrial cooking equipment. You may also find water pumps, power generation equipment, specialized vehicles, lathes, mills, presses and other industrial tools. If you can repair the EMP damage, power them and get them working, they can speed the recovery of your community and really enhance your economy.

Actions: Appoint a good commissary officer. Someone is going to have to oversee collection, storage and disbursement of not only food supplies but fuel, tools, fertilizers, seeds and other resources. Your commissary officer needs to be a very smart, honest person and he or she will need a fairly large staff. They are going to have broad powers, so find somebody that is morally good. Whoever you appoint needs excellent people skills and the meticulous attention to detail of a banker. This same person is really in charge of your whole economy and will probably be in charge of printing currency if you use it. A bank manager might be a good choice. If you have political opposition in the community, this is an excellent place to put them if they are up to the job. Once they are "holding the baby" they will be on your side and won't be able to accuse you of any misbehavior.

7. Heat and shelter:
When winter hits, you may be faced with a grave heating fuel shortage. People staying in private homes may not have access to heating fuel at all. The town council is probably going to have some number of refugees to care for and they require heat too. Your community may use oil, gas, wood or something else for heating and each of them pose their own problems. You will need to think this issue out in the context of your own community situation and come up with some kind of solution. The most efficient solution, of course is to co-locate everyone in a few larger buildings and heat them at 65-68 degrees. Setting up a shelter has it's own problems, but it's easier than trying to heat 500 single family shelters. The public shelter model of setting up in a big gymnasium can work, but it provides a very efficient vector for respiratory and other diseases. If you can provide each family (or multiple families) with a classroom or office room of their own, they will be much more comfortable and resistant to diseases.

Providing a warm place to sleep may be all you can manage. Some homes are going to be difficult or impossible to heat once the power grid goes down and the oil trucks stop delivery. You should make every effort to conserve liquid fuels that will be needed for spring planting and emergency machinery.

Mitigation: Location specific. You may be able to encourage your citizens to switch over to an alternate fuel source (like wood, if your community has a lot of forests nearby). Stockpiling fuel for the town may be a good idea if you can afford it, but this is a temporary solution. Look around your town for some suitable shelter buildings and food storage facilities and check out their heating and ventilation equipment. You may be able to improve your chosen buildings or buy alternate heating systems for them within your budget constraints. Laying in a large supply of cots and blankets is a good idea.

Actions: You should immediately set up a shelter and cafeteria of some kind after the emergency. Schools are probably your best choice for this. You will probably have homeless almost from the start, so you need to get this done quickly. Home fires are bound to be more common and some people who live too far from town will need to move closer to the cafeteria. The more people you can get to move into your shelter, the easier it will be to heat. (Each human radiates roughly the same heat as a 100 watt light bulb. It adds up fast.) Make things easy on yourself and appoint someone competent (a school principal for instance) to administer your lodging and cafeteria. The principal already has a staff dependent on the city payroll. You will probably have to feed your teachers and school staff anyway, so hire them to administer your shelters. Administration of a shelter is a big, frustrating job, so make sure you appoint someone level headed to oversee this effort.

8. Security and public order:
Whatever your town's current situation, you will probably need to greatly expand your security forces. In fact you will probably need an Army. During normal times, your town doesn't have it's own foreign policy or the need to defend itself. With a general society collapse, that changes. Your town will need the ability to fight off raiders or even other communities.

a. Some of your own civilian population is going to get unruly. Even a small percentage acting up can overwhelm your current police force. You need some way to punish them and bring them in line. Jails are inefficient and expensive and not very effective at curbing bad behavior. I suggest a simpler system of corporal punishment (whipping or caning) and for serious infractions or repeat offenders, expulsion from the community. Find a judge or other competent person to set up a simple system of justice that fits your circumstances, take a vote at a town meeting to get public buy-in and then appoint someone to run it. Your police force should be distanced from both judgment and punishment. Judgment and punishment should be accomplished by a different group, perhaps a randomly selected jury or something equally simple and fair.

b. You are going to have additional requirements for officers (or someone) to act as "messengers" to put out policies and community information. Without electronic communications, much more of your business has to be done in person.

c. You are almost certain to have extensive guard duty requirements. You will need to provide point security for foodstocks, livestock, roadblocks and critical resources like fuel, power generation, etc. Your uniformed police force is too valuable to bog down with these security positions. You need to hire out of work locals to augment them with a reliable guard force. (I recommend handing this responsibility over to your military...see below).

d. You may need to put a 24 hour presence at roadblocks or traffic control points to divert refugees away from your town. (see below for a discussion of refugees).

e. You may face a threat from outside polities. If so, you will need an Army or you will be destroyed. You may have to mobilize the entire population to fend off other communities. (see below for a discussion of inter-community politics.)

Your security forces are your "face" to the community. They will represent the town and embody your decisions and authority. You need to keep a tight reign on your police forces or some of them are going to be tempted to take unwarranted liberties and abuse their authority.

One of your first actions should probably be to call your security forces and emergency responders together and reaffirm your covenant with them. You need to reassure them that they are still going to be paid and their families taken care of. You need to get buy-in from them and make them feel they are part of something important and bigger than mere survival. Let them know your plans and your thoughts as clearly as possible so they can represent you well. You should also let them know that you will tolerate no misbehavior. They are your knights and have to act the part.

You should also set up some kind of "military" arm to deal with extraordinary requirements. Call it a militia or a town guard or whatever you want. In essence it's an army. If you have any doubts about the loyalty of your police chief or sheriff, the military arm should report directly to you or one of your representatives rather than falling under the police. All of your authority rests on the shoulders of your security forces, so you can't tolerate any dissension in the ranks or misbehavior. Choose someone loyal and skilled with a military background and good people skills to head up your military. Hopefully you have a retired officer or senior NCO available. Whoever it is will have to be able to effectively give orders to perhaps hundreds of people in an emergency, so choose someone charismatic and smart. He will also need an excellent grasp of tactics and the ability to plan for small scale military operations. Let your military commander hire his own personnel, arm and train them and instruct your commissary and police force to assist him in anyway possible.

Your military commander's first task will be to do some kind of terrain analysis and COA products to determine how to defend the community and try to predict future issues. His second task will be to build an effective military force. It should probably be a small offensive force backed up by a larger irregular militia comprising most of the town. He will need to set up some kind of training program and be able to pay people to participate. Military training is hard work, so don't expect anyone to take it seriously or work at it if you are not paying them. You can put your military commander in charge of all the guard duty requirements to assist the police as well as messenger duties.

9. Foreign relations and refugees:
Every community is going to face the same challenges you have. I expect most of them will fail and fragment. I also expect a huge outpouring of refugees from every city in the USA. City based communities have huge challenges that small towns won't. They have limited options and maintaining order will be desperately hard, perhaps impossible. Every community and group of people are going to face terrible, unsolvable provisioning problems. The ugly truth is, most citizens of the USA are going to starve to death after a society crash. It's simple arithmetic. There will not be enough food for everyone to live. Even if most of them last through a whole season until the first harvest, there is no chance that the first [post-collapse] harvest is going to be bountiful enough to sustain everyone.

The following is going to read like science fiction [a la Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank], but I call em like I see 'em. If anyone can find a flaw in my analysis, then please tell me about it. I believe you can expect large polities to attempt to take resources from smaller ones. If you are the mayor of a city with 100,000 or more people, you have no other choice. During normal times, the countryside (agrarian areas) produce all the food consumed by cities. Once the provisions stop arriving, your city is going to starve very quickly unless you can procure more. Your normal sources of supply are perhaps a thousand miles distant and might as well be on the moon. Your actual chances of sustaining your population long term are zero. If you are a smart leader, you will attempt to save most of your people by sending them to other communities that have more food and water. If you are not so smart, you will attempt to take what you need to keep going from the surrounding countryside and small nearby communities. The best a small community can hope for is that all the large polities (cities) nearby will fail and fragment quickly. If they don't the small communities may be forced to take in refugees or surrender food stocks to support the cities. Either way, the city people are mostly doomed, but if this occurs, so are the small communities.

A medium sized city could potentially muster an enormous army. I am not saying every city is going to manage the level of cohesion, organization and discipline needed to do this, but it's at least a possibility in some cases, especially for cities that have a military base nearby. You also need to consider smaller polities like boroughs or neighborhoods or even church congregations making demands on your community. How will you react when the mayor of a nearby town or city asks you for provisions?

Another probable development I expect to see is the "professional army". Groups may attempt to provision themselves by threatening small communities and extorting "protection" from them. This is another layer of taxation you probably can't afford, but if you choose not to pay, you must be prepared to fight. Think about it and make sure you discuss your concerns with your security leadership so they can form plans.

You can also expect to see a large stream of refugees pouring out of heavily populated areas. If they have vehicles, they will move outward from the cities along major roadways until they can't get more fuel and then stop. If the finance systems are still working, this refugee stream may burn up most of the available liquid fuel in the USA in a few days. If your community lies on a major line of drift, you can expect to have many thousands of thirsty, hungry refugees knocking at your door hoping for a handout. These are going to be US citizens, mothers and fathers, sons, daughters, and grandparents who are desperate and begging. If begging stops working, they will get hostile and dangerous. Maybe very dangerous.

I know this is a very disagreeable topic, but almost every refugee is doomed and you are powerless to change that fact. Think it out carefully and you will see that you simply cannot feed everyone. You are going to have to prevent refugees from consuming your community resources or you will perish with them. You need to stop the stream of refugees from entering your community. Once they are inside your community, they will exponentially harder to deal with. Effectively killing someone by evicting them from your town while looking them in the eye and listening to them beg is going to be hard to do. If you get soft hearted and let too many stay, you will be condemning your community to slow death by starvation. Discuss this topic with your community leaders, especially your security leadership and make them see that there are no alternatives to a strict quarantine. You need to have a plan and execute it immediately or you may be overwhelmed within hours.

One final note on turning back refugees: Do it as far from town as you can. The refugees are going to be truly pitiful and seeing this level of misery will cause your community a lot of pain and distention. You need very hard men to man your line and you need to be careful to leave the refugees another place to go. Don't block a major road. Instead, block a turn-off. It's okay to be as humane as possible and provide water at the roadblock, but you simply cannot afford to give away food or medical supplies. The only people you can let into your town are town residents. All others will have to continue down the road. The men on your roadblock are going to crack up fast, so rotate them often and watch them. This will be the most traumatic thing they have ever had to do.

10. Long term provisioning:
You need to appoint someone to oversee food production. This should probably be completely separate from your commissary department. You need someone with expertise in farming and more specifically, small scale gardening. They need to organize and assist everyone in the community with planting their own gardens and teaching such basic topics as drying, pickling and canning produce. They will also have to oversee a lot of coordination to grow and harvest grain crops and figure out the most efficient ways to store surplus.

Mitigation: Heirloom seeds and fertilizers are going to be in very short supply. If you can somehow trick (or talk) your town into stocking up on these, perhaps as part of a 4-H or school project, your town will be much better off. If you have any say in public plantings for parks or landscapes, try to plant as many food bearing plants as possible. An apple tree is just as attractive as a pine or elm and produces fruit every year.

Actions: Every piece of arable land in the community needs to be planted with something edible ASAP. Without power machinery, this is going to be a real challenge. Every lawn and every empty lot should be dug up and worked in order to build soils, even if it's not planting time. Working leaf litter and plant materials into the plots needs to begin almost immediately. The "Garden Czar" will probably take up the lion's share of the spare manpower in the town just planting city owned lots. He will need to procure hand tools by the hundreds and garden seed, both of which may be in short supply. The tools can be loaned or rented to citizens as needed for their own plots and the seed will need to be rationed out carefully until a stock of good seed can be built up.

The town's citizens may have no horticultural knowledge or gardening skills and will likely not be conditioned for long hours of manual labor. The sooner they start getting their hands dirty the better. Try to hire some skilled gardeners to assist and advise your citizens with their own plots. Building a surplus and a working economy depends directly on their success at working small private gardens.

You may need to pass some resolutions about gardening to prevent land from sitting idle. You can't afford a scrap of idle land as long as you have any seeds left to put in the ground.

11. Building a manufacturing capacity. At some point, equipment and tools will begin to break down. Before that time, you need to establish a manufacturing base that can support your community.

You will eventually need a machine shop capable of founding, forging and machining metal parts and tools. You may need this immediately to repair critical equipment for pumping water or grinding grain et cetera A simple blacksmith shop will be needed to create plows and simple hand tools like hoes and scythes that you are likely to need. You may also need a small foundry and machine shop to create replacement parts for critical machinery. Keep a lookout for likely skilled individuals and hire them to build the town a metal working capability. [JWR Adds: As science fiction writer S.M. Stirling aptly pointed out in his Dies the Fire novel series, leaf springs from abandoned cars and trucks make ideal steel stock that can be used to re-forge into crossbows, plows, small hand tools, knives, and even swords. Leaf springs should be very plentiful for at least one or two generations in a truly post-collapse society.]

You should have someone begin building hand plows and other animal and human powered agricultural tools ASAP. You will need as many as your metal shop can manufacture and I guarantee you will be able to trade surplus plows to other towns within a few months.

You will eventually need to replace or repair clothing. You will have a long grace period while you go through existing stocks from department stores, but within a few years, you will need new fabrics. Appoint someone to worry about fabric production. How do you build a loom? In less than four years, you are going to need a source of fiber and a fabric production capability, especially in cold climates.

Other manufacturing capabilities may be needed as you go along. You may wish to set up a pottery shop or produce adobe brick for building materials or set up a sawmill for lumber and firewood. Brainstorm this with your staff or at a town meeting.

12. Preserving:
A lot of irreplaceable things are going to be destroyed or lost if you don't make some kind of effort to preserve them.

a. Animals: A lot of people are going to be very hungry. Most of them are going to die. I expect most species of large animals in the USA and Europe, including livestock, to be slaughtered for food until they are scarce or even extinct. Think ahead. You are going to need draft animals desperately in a few months. You simply must preserve as many animals capable of filling this role as possible. Dogs are peerless burglar alarms. Cats keep vermin numbers down. Once all the chickens are gone, where are you going to get eggs and poultry? Saving even a small breeding stock of all the useful animals in your community is going to be hard when people are literally starving to death all around you.

Actions: You are going to have to put livestock under guard or they won't last long. Someone will poach them. Any private farmer trying to keep livestock is going to find out just how sneaky hungry humans can be. Someone also needs to start training your working animals immediately. It takes time to produce a working plow team out of average untrained cows or horses.

b. Knowledge: If you don't take steps to prevent it, people will burn most of the books in your town for fuel. I recommend keeping your library open for business. Your town or local school libraries may turn out to be very important for both entertainment and reference.

c. Records: You need to secure public and as many private records as possible. Without them, repairing our current culture will be much more difficult. Birth records, tax records, bank records etc. All of these may have
tremendous value in the future.

d. Art and historical treasures: If your town has any, you should safeguard national treasures for future generations. The very fact that you are making this effort will send a powerful message to your citizens.

13. Medical:
Your existing health-care facilities and drug supplies need to be safeguarded quickly. You will have a very limited stockpile of opiates and other painkillers and mind altering drugs that will be very attractive to some
criminal (or simply addicted) elements of society. Every pharmacy and clinic in town should be carefully confiscated and put under guard. Don't forget the pet hospitals and veterinarian clinics. Appoint a doctor or pharmacist to oversee this effort and support them with whatever resources they require (if you can). Some drugs require refrigeration and may not be salvageable if they are ever warmed.

Hire as many doctors and nurses as possible and set up a public health clinic near the town center. Have them take charge of public health and start an outreach program for self help and public sanitation. If your town has vaccines available, you will probably want to use them up quickly before they go bad. Your community may be able to avoid a lot of misery and casualties if you organize your health care.

Have someone in your manufacturing base or commissary department work with them to replace or recycle medical supplies. Something as simple as a building wood-fired autoclave might be beyond the capability of your health care folks but easy for your artisans.

Also, hire as many pharmacists, chemists and any other scientists you can find. You probably won't have too many of these once they are all accounted for. If you have a few, don't be afraid of tasking them to do some very difficult tasks for you. They are very intelligent folks and can perform miracles if you challenge them. Challenge them to set up a lab and try to synthesize antibiotics, or opiates. Or challenge them to figure out how to improve agriculture in your town or synthesize liquid fuel for your vehicles, or explosives. They may surprise you with spectacular results. These folks are valuable property, so try not to use them as unskilled farm hands or guards. The same goes for engineers. Give them challenging work and have them tackle real problems.

Conclusion:
I recognize that most of us are not mayors. We are probably not the ones who will be called on to shoulder the numbing responsibilities of command during a crisis. I really wouldn't care for that job, even in peacetime. When the balloon goes up, it will be hardest on the leaders. Your mayor and police chief will need help. As a prepper, you are in a position to provide that help. How many of the jobs that I mentioned above could you competently fill? I implore you to help them. Having you available as adviser (and commissary officer or military leader, experienced gardener, metal smith etc) could literally make the difference between life and death. Your efforts could make a huge difference to a lot of people.

If your community has any chance at all to survive, those odds will increase exponentially if your leaders have a well thought out plan and make good decisions. Community leaders will need to make timely decisions on a host of issues they have never considered and have the conviction to act ruthlessly. You, as a prepper, have the advantage of thinking about it ahead of time and working out all the details in your mind. That and the skills you have learned can allow you to make a real difference. Will you step up to the plate and try to save your whole community? It seems like a superhuman job and daunting for a mere human. But if anyone can do it, maybe it's you.

Win or go down swinging, - J.I.R.

As a member of the architectural profession, I am acutely aware of the multitude of sustainable issues emerging within our own society and the civilized world in general.  Urban homesteading is beginning to emerge because many people are beginning to come to the realization that there could be a major economic crash, Natural disaster, etc that could result in a disruption or failure in our food distribution chain emerging as directly applicable to many concerns facing many preppers regarding any failure or crises resulting in a disruption or collapse of the food distribution chain. But, urban homesteading is not the same as preparing for a crash or fall of civilized society.  Urban homesteaders openly farm and garden with marginal concern for crop or property security, but their approach rivals that of some intensive commercial operations and so do their results and unless you’re truly going to be happy living off an immensely deep larder, you better have another plan. 

Homesteading has proven to offer that and it also provides ample opportunity and direct experience at farm life skills, and the rewards of self confidence and self reliance associated with taking control of part of one’s life by being responsible for putting high quality food directly on one’s table, which is something you reap the benefits of almost immediately.

The biggest security concern for the homesteader is the open manner (and inevitably so) in which they often practice these skills amidst a large population surrounding them.  A successful homestead will make itself a beacon to those that are unprepared, and make them highly vulnerable to those that loot and raid, regardless of their reasons why. 

Beyond direct criminal activity, the largest threat to civil suburban social fabric is the failure of municipal utilities and the breakdown of food and water supply, both of which can be implemented locally, but only in so far as localized security permits.  The context of the over-all situation will be the determining factor in assessing when and if to implement those projects and is the key to being able to homestead openly in suburbia. 

For homesteading to be an effective strategy in suburbia, local and regional security will have to be addressed, which is out of this purview of this article.   Until that has been established, alternative methods of survival must be implemented, which will be the focus of this article- what to do in the meantime.     

The Suburban Homestead- Homesteading in insecure times
The ultimate goal of the homestead is that it be self sufficient, meaning that you’re able to grow or raise all the food you and your family need on your own plot.  Clearly in a highly hostile environment only marginal homesteading should be taking place openly, as in these times security is the primary focus, consequently you should be living off of stored supplies, but that doesn’t mean that aspects of homesteading cannot be done covertly and securely.  The more out of sight and less labor intensive the better.  In fact, consolidating your homestead efforts to within the home itself must be considered an absolute prudent security measure, especially that of livestock production. 

Something to Cluck About
In basic terms it is unlikely that anyone will be able to grow vegetable crops indoors to fulfill all their nutritional needs, as raising livestock can.  Therefore covert livestock farming inside of your residence should be your primary focus in planning and developing.   

From a nutritional perspective in a homestead environment little surpasses the nutritional value per square foot and time to raise of that of a chicken.  First it’s a food source people are familiar with and like.   It is also relatively small, easily managed, simply housed, has a short growth cycle (about 4 months) and provides a dual source of food; eggs and meat, whose feed can be readily stored in bulk.  A typical laying hen can produce over 200 eggs per year, with each egg providing about 155 calories each, with 12g protein and 10g fat.  That’s real world protein and fat, not third world protein and fat found in corn and beans.  And unlike vegetable crops do not need a tremendous amount of sunlight, space nor water to reach its nutritional potential. 

To understand my emphatic emphasis on chicken, review two studies done on nutrition; the 1944 Ancel Keys Starvation Diet Study in comparison to 1970 Yudkin Low-carbohydrate diet.  In each, the test subjects ate about the same nutritional level, 1,500-1,600 kcal per day, but with differing levels of macronutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrates) combinations, which were almost polar opposite of each other, but both were calorically at levels normally considered semi-starvational.  The major difference between them was that in Keys study (high carb, low fat diet) the subjects showed clear signs of being starved, obsessed on food constantly, were excessively lethargic and some developed dangerous psychological disorders to the point of self injury.  In Yudkin’s study (low-carb, high-fat diet) the subjects ate unweighed, unmeasured, unrestricted meals and suffered none of the ill-effects prevalent in Key’s subjects and were considered to be in good health.  The difference was in the volume of fat consumed.  Finding a replenish able source of high quality fat will be essential in a survival situation, as you just can’t get enough from a vegetable sources on a calorie restricted diet. 

In simple terms, moving from a standard American diet, to a strict calorie restricted vegetarian diet is going to make some people crazy and suffer the debilitating effects of a vastly modified diet.  I know I would be one of them- you may be too; just ask yourself does becoming a vegetarian on a calorie restricted diet ‘seem’ appealing to you?  I’m planning accordingly and that means chicken is going on the dinner plate and on the homestead in a significant way, to the point that the gardening efforts are in support of this primary food source, in the terms of chicken feed and then to my supplemental nutritional needs.

Bathtub Chicken
One of the most accommodating spaces to immediately transform into a covert farming space is any spare bathroom, which has a bathtub or shower.  These spaces by their original nature are designed to provide protection against moisture, provide natural light and ventilation, have surface materials designed to be washed down and are fairly durable, which sounds awfully like good (small) livestock farm space to me.  They are also rooms that hold the least amount of personal clutter and storage. 

An ideal application for this space is that of a battery chicken coop (a series of stacked cages) over the bathtub.  Within this volume it is possible to design a variety of coops for meat, egg and chick production in a highly intensive and sanitary manner.   A combination of 10 laying hens (eggs production), coop space for a cock, a trio of hens (chick production), hatchery for the chicks and broiler grow out space for 16 broilers (meat production), would produce approximately 5 eggs a day and a broiler chicken in a pot each week. 

While the family garage may ultimately serve as a better location for this operation, I doubt most garages are in a state of current use that would allow for immediate transformation into chicken production and the fact that most operational homesteads only operate with a single cock and a trio of hens and thus would be putting the coop before the chickens. This though, should be your ambition, as at that point you will be able to produce all the caloric nutrient needs of your family right in the garage.  It is unlikely though that you will need the volume of a two car garage to do so, and it is for this reason that I recommend that the chicken coop be isolated (finished and self enclosed) to the rest of the garage, leaving the free space for storage or other uses.

In all likelihood, if you live in a suburb that zoning does not allow livestock to be housed there, you can locate a nearby live poultry merchant and purchase the chicken and ‘temporarily’ house them at your residence- ‘for consumption’, if you feel times are getting shaky.  For those that are less risk adverse, have been known to openly violate zoning ordinances and to farm poultry until they are directly warned by authorities not to.  In most cases, they do so in the open will little consideration at doing so covertly, often with little or no hassle from neighbors or authorities.  The key to this is to be low-key about your activities, dutiful in maintaining sanitation practices, and respectful of your neighbors regarding positioning of the chicken coops and the scale and size of the operation.                  

The Achilles Heel of Chicken   
Chicken feed is inexpensive and can be stored in bulk, but the Achilles heel to this is you’ll eventually run out of stored feed and you’ll have to grow it or specifically find adequate substitutes and ideally those that don’t appear like a food source for people.  One of my favorite is a maggotry (a form of carcass composting) because it’s almost unheard of in the western hemisphere and solves multiple issues of waste disposal and pest eradication, while contributing greatly to feed supplementation.    

Maggotry
Maggotry in particular will be a benefit as it is a direct protein food source and  consists of little more than a bait bucket of rotting meat (spoiled vegetables, dead animals, chicken entrails- that’s you’ve butchered, etc ) that entices the neighboring fly population to spray their eggs on.  By stacking one bucket with a large screened bottom and containing the bait inside, onto another you’ve created the basic system.  When the eggs hatch and the maggots have fully fed and desire to pupate they tend to burrow into the ground, and in this case, will travel to the bucket below. 

A nice addition to this system is including a fly trap.  By cutting the top 1/3 of a 5-gallon water bottle off and inverting it back into the remaining bottle and duct taping it in place, you then can place this whole contraption on top of the maggot bucket.  After the parent flies have sprayed the bait with their eggs, they have a tendency to always go from a dark space (the bait bucket) towards light (the water bottle).  Once inside the water bottle they will not normally go back into the bait bin (due to the inverted funnel) and thus end up dying in the water bottle, awaiting collection.  In essence it’s a form of fly population control and breeding restriction combined.                 

The maggotry can be as open or covert an operation as you wish (clearly an outdoor operation).  The beauty of it is that it doesn’t have to be a continuous operation though.  In fact, limiting it, I’ve found to have many benefits, the first is that the general foul smell is limited to a brief period and limited area and second that my ‘supply’ of rot is able to accumulate to a sizable portion prior to utilization for a larger maggot harvest.  A production run may only last a little over a  week, as that is typically the length of time for flies to find the rot, mate, lay eggs and for the maggots to grow to nearly full sized larvae.  The maggots can be fed immediately to the chickens or the surplus maggots can then be stored by blanching and drying until needed.  No refrigeration is required.

As a side note, the same smell of decay that attracted the flies will attract other animals and rodents as well.  Capturing them and integrating them into the rot bait rotation is relatively self sustaining process.  Keep in mind that rodent populations boom normally in the wake of catastrophic events.  Reducing their population is always a wise task, and integrating them into your food supply system even better one.  While I’m sure that I could consume the occasional raccoon, possum, rat or mouse I’d rather utilize them as rot bait, so that isn’t a delicacy I ever have to try.

[JWR Adds: Needless to say, consult your local ordinances before considering establishing a maggotry. If cycled properly, no flies will hatch and fly out of your maggotry. The life cycle is interrupted and a "full kill" (typically by incineration) is done before each fly hatch, and a new maggot batch is started. I must preemptively state that before you write to complain about this gentleman's maggotry suggestion keep in mind that this advice is given with the assumption that proper cycling and properly-timed full kills are accomplished.]

Container Gardening
One of the fastest ways to transform your home into a homestead is by containerized gardening.  Stocking up on several bags of peat, top soil, manure, potting mix etc, takes up surprising little room in a storage shed, is rather inexpensive and will be on hand and ready when you are, as are a large number of commercial nursery pots, their associative carrying trays and watering pans. 

The benefits of container gardening are multi-fold from a growing stand point; a strong measure of control over soil conditions (pre-purchased potting soil), vastly reduces the risk of plant diseases, pests, weed control, water usage, plant management ability, tight space utilization, transportability of the plants, extendibility of the grow out season (move them indoors) and requires a minimal amount of specialized tools and equipment, typically only a few hand tools.   As importantly, almost all ages and sexes can participate, not just strong bodied farm hands (think delegation). 

The most important benefit is that they can be started, indoors and away from prying eyes and moved about as needed, indoors or out.  This will be critical until regional security stabilizes.  

Nursery trays stacked up vertically on racks, in book case fashion, or in nursery bleachers takes up little room and the majority of your starter crops can get all the sunlight they need from a few windows.  Utilizing the same principals seedling grow pots will take up more volume, but by selecting crops that would minimize grow out volume, will produce more plants per window space.  In this regard small root vegetable crops like garlic, carrots and onions are an excellent choice, as are leafy greens. 

It will be important to divide window allocation between plant nursery operations, seedling grow out space, and high value plant grow out space (plants that would attract attention outdoors, like tomatoes.   One of the major benefits of having a plant nursery and seedling grow out system established is that new seedlings can immediately replace harvested outdoor vegetables and a system of rapid successive planting can be enacted, but also by having crops in succession you don’t noticeably transform a given area, by leaving freshly turned soil or by having a mass planting, thus calling attention to it.

Into the Open
 The majority of the outdoor crops should be small, low profile and lacking readily identifiable silhouettes and are nutritionally dense; root vegetables, such as potatoes, garlic, onions and carrots, are ideal which also can be readily grown in quantities throughout a suburban yard without drawing attention, and when harvested can be combined to make nourishing soups, stews and stocks or dried for storage.  The planting of these crops should avoid neat rows, regular patterns or formal concentrations.  They should be grown in the same manner and spaces that weeds would emerge from; along the side of the house, fence lines, shrub lines, former flower beds, pots etc…  basically anywhere they would be concealed and not looking like a crop.

In this regard, potatoes should make up the bulk of your root crop as it will be the largest producer and nutritionally dense food source and can be started indoors and transported outdoors after the seedlings have grown to about a foot in size.  Medium trash cans and open top barrels work well as containers for potatoes, but various methods should be employed so as not to call attention to the uniformity of cultivation, and hide the fact that it is a crop.    

For the most part, the large open expanses of lawn will have to go fallow, until localized security measures are reasonably in place, and is why I would stay away from planting grain crops, as they take up a tremendous amount of space, are difficult to conceal and are immediately recognizable as acts of cultivation, which will draw further scrutiny and unwanted attention.  I would also refrain from utilizing any portion of the front or side yards that are visible from the street.  Even if the plants are well camouflaged and positioned, you can still tip off their location or more importantly your efforts by showcasing your labor efforts- people with no food, don’t normally carry watering cans about.   

The Value of Good Herbs
A shadowing relationship to any garden crop is the inclusion of culinary herbs and spices that will enhance the flavors and seasoning of the staple foods.  Planning for, and doing so in appreciable volume will make the difference between choking down a meal and actually enjoying the nutritional value, especially if it’s a frequently reoccurring element.

Most people would not recognize growing herbs, as a valued food source, so in a time of crisis these can be grown rather openly and in volume, as long as they are situated to appear as weed over growth, to which many readily appear.  By mix planting root vegetables and herbs together it is possible to break up the massing of any single crop and effectively camouflage the overall activity.  Furthermore having large single groupings of Rosemary, Thyme, Marjoram, Sage, Oregano, Cilantro and Parsley, clustered in recesses, nooks, corners etc, will appear as major weed outcroppings and will likely go undetected. 

it sounds sad, but you can really learn something of value by observing the worst kept yard in your neighborhood, where at the fringes of maintenance weeds encroach and start to work at the seams of what’s being ignored.  The key is to learn and to apply those elements intentionally with food sources.    

Minimizing the Transition
The emphasis of the Homestead Movement is adopting a sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle and by combining that with some of the best elements of the Survivalist movement you have an integrated life style that you can enjoy the benefits today and live a very similar one in times of deep drama.  Planning a homestead for survival is vastly more complicated than just growing food or setting up a garden, it requires a real understanding of the context in which you may have to survive.  Anticipating what that context is to be like, evaluating what you have at your disposal and understanding how those elements could work for you, will leave you in a vastly better position to not only survive, but thrive.

I just found your blog and want to thank you and all the like minded individuals who post to it. I have never thought of myself as a "survivor" or as most on here seem to prefer, "prepper". I just always thought of myself as a collector of knowledge much to my wife’s annoyance. I can’t help it, I just like to learn different things.

For one of the most recent "hobbies" I’ve been researching and learning about Quality Deer Management (QDM). I don’t know if this has been brought up before now, I’m still going through the archives, but I see where this would be a benefit to preppers.

In QDM, the goal is to assist Whitetail deer reach their maximum potential. This involves everything from harvesting does, passing on young bucks, removing predators, planting food plots, creating watering and mineral sites, creating sanctuaries and enhancing natural food sources.

In helping the deer, you also help turkeys, quail, rabbits, hogs and many other game and non-game animals and birds. How this would help a prepper is obvious.

Removing predators increases game species plus puts meat in the pot.

Planting food plots pull more game onto the property plus some of the food plots are edible by humans.

Creating watering sites gives the prepper additional water sources and possible fishing sites.

Mineral sites pull more game onto the property.

Sanctuaries would be great places for long term caches.

Enhancing natural food sources increases the amount and quality of foraged foods.

One other benefit to the prepper is it gives them a cover story to tell the neighbors as to why all the enhancements to the property.

A great source of information on QDM is the official Quality Deer Management Association’s web site.

That’s my pre-1983 penny’s worth for now but got a question for you and your readers.

Thanks - Okie in Muskogee

Hello Jim:
For supper tonight we are having a meal made with ingredients that I gathered from our place, with the exception of the meat which was purchased. I put a smoked ham hock in the crock pot over night. I also soaked some leather breeches (dried green beans) and some horticultural beans over night. These were added to the crock pot this morning along with a couple of hands full of ramps that I had dug yesterday and a couple of hands full of dandelion greens that Abigail had picked last week. Lastly some red potatoes from our garden last year were added.

Abigail will make some of her most excellent corn bread (made from Bloody Butcher corn that we raised) to go along with the meat and greens. The point of this short note is that I feel that people should make every effort to get out of the habit of eating out of the box (yes pun intended) and start now to look at some self sufficient ways of feeding themselves. Eating high quality tasty meals, I might add.

I would also like to put a plug in for one of our favorite training facilities. The faculty at Tactical Defense Institute (TDI) have been training citizens, swat teams, and military on their 186 acre campus for 15 years. Located in southern Ohio, John Benner and his crew conduct classes almost year round. Abigail and I have been able to attend almost half of the classes available and plan to take 3 more this year. If anyone is planning on doing any training TDI is right up there with the top training facilities in the nation. This is not just my opinion but many others. Last year SWAT magazine did an article about one of the carbine classes that we were taking. We have even run into some fellow preppers at some of the classes. We truly a great time and a real learning experience.

Yours truly, - John & Abigail Adams

Today there seems to be any number of reasons for the average American to turn the corner towards preparedness and being self-reliant.  Back in 1993, I would have been able to give you just as many reasons based on my observations through the 1980s.  Not surprisingly there are twice as many reasons for the average man to not start around that corner.  The reasons I have heard the most include the cost factor and objections to living so primitively.  Simply put: today's average American is too poor and soft to endure hardships like camping, physical labor, and no TV.  These were the same objections we had to overcome and did.

My wife and I woke up one day in 1993 and realized that our children (ages 2-10-10-12) were being raised by godless leftists in the government schools and on television.  We muddled through the rest of the school year and tossed out the television.  Instead, Renee quit her job to homeschool all of our boys. This was decided over several weeks and Renee had some doubts as to her ability, but in the end she made the commitment and I committed to supporting her as best I could. We chose to use the A Beka books for most of the curriculum. Having made this decision, it was about a year later that we realized the taxes we were paying went to very few services we used.   This started me down the path of finding a rural home with lower taxes and more opportunity to raise animals and a garden. We had envisioned a log home on a mountainside sloping to a meadow with a river running through. Right about then I lost my job.  It had been our plan to make these changes with the money I had from my income in the building industry but losing the job certainly put a damper on the plans.

Not wanting to continue with the old ways, we pushed forward. As it happened, I lost my job in the spring of 1993. That summer we sold almost everything we owned at the local flea market. Sometimes we were just exchanging things. A lawnmower for a grain mill, a bedroom set for a rifle, but for the most part we saved as much as we could. Selling the house didn't bring any real money to the table and what we did have was soon spent on a used school bus ($1,500) that was going to carry us all west to our promised land.  I rigged a tow bar behind our bus for our Jeep and one day in the fall with four boys, two dogs, and less than $3,000 we headed west.

I could write a chapter on our adventure/nightmare traveling but I’ll save that for another time. With less than $500 left, we ended up in northern Arizona in early January 1994. We had picked up a GP Medium tent with an arctic liner and set it up for the first time during a snow storm at a campsite in the national forest. Seeing a concrete picnic table at one site, it was my thought that we should place the tent over the table so we could have the comfort of the table inside. Seemed like a good idea to me. After directing the boys at holding the tent posts for about an hour we finally had the tent set up. My notion of enjoying the table was soon lost when Renee pointed out that the cold concrete table and benches just sucked the heat right out of us as we sat.  Live and learn.

We learned fast and within a few months, my boys and I could set up a GP Medium with liner and two woodstoves quicker than a company of soldiers. Staying in the national forest (with a 14-day maximum stay) saved us what little money we had left. It also helped that we had more privacy in the forest. It turned out that we always seemed to have a crowd gather around when we set up camp. The GP Medium tent is 16’ x 32’ in size and I guess seeing a man and four boys set it up was worth watching. After the work was done and the stoves were burning we’d often have someone knocking at the door post. Sometimes it was another survivalist living in the forest looking for a home cooked meal and sometimes it was just the curious having never seen a tent that big. 

One day while in the forest at a camp we had just set up. I told Renee that I was headed into the woods to do my business. I found a spot over a small hill and a stand of boulders from the site. It was private enough and there was a nice view of a small canyon just another 20 feet away. I was in the position with my paper and trowel in the ready, just enjoying the beauty of the canyon and forest. As I was there I got the strange feeling I was being watched. It really bothered me to the point I had to start scanning the surrounding area to see who was there.  As I looked across the canyon I saw a large timber wolf standing still and staring right at me.  I quickly jumped up and pulled up my jeans, turning just in time to see the wolf jump off the edge of the canyon and head towards me. Leaving my paper and trowel behind as I leapt over the stand of boulders, I saw the wolf crest my side of the canyon and knew it would be on me in an instant. Not turning back again I ran into our camp yelling, “Wolf! Wolf! Get my gun!”  Renee was at the tent door with my GP100 as I reached her. I grabbed the gun and turned expecting to see the wolf, but there was nothing. Once Renee and the boys stopped laughing at my adventure I vowed not to leave camp again without my sidearm.  Later, a ranger came by our camp to log our stay. I asked him about the wolf and was told he was a regular to that part of the forest and wouldn’t hurt anyone. Right.

Renee was the first to find work and I took up keeping the camp, cooking meals, schooling the boys, and seeking a place to start our home. 
It didn't take long to find affordable land in Arizona. The boys and I hiked for many miles on an old ranch land until we found a 50-acre place in the middle of an old 60,000 acre ranch. It was a bit larger than a ¼ mile square and had several good house sites. Further, it was "for sale by owner" and I was able to negotiate a "delayed settlement", "owner financing", and the "right to occupy".
This allowed us to set up camp on the property and save enough money to make the down payment in four months. Not having to deal with breaking camp every two weeks was a great feeling. The boys got extra freedom to wander and I could put in more permanent fixtures at our camp. We soon sold the bus and bought an old pickup truck along with a trailer for hauling water to our property.
Renee continued working while I kept up with the boys and started planning our house. Once we settled on the property, I started cutting the best looking junipers for the post foundation of our cabin.  I had found a solid outcrop of rock just below a cow path along one of the hillsides near the center of the land.  I dug down only a few inches to expose the rock that would support the cabin. Not having to dig any farther down than that, I placed the chainsaw cut juniper tree posts right down on the rock and started the house. Almost every weekend the boys and I spent searching for materials for the ranch cabin.
For the most part we used what we could off the land in timber and stone and paid cash for the rest. We were lucky to have found a saw mill close by. It was an old mill and the owner knew what he was doing. He sold us all the rough-cut ponderosa pine we could haul at a time.  

Once under roof we began our search for a woodstove. This was one of my biggest concerns. Renee had given me specific details on what was acceptable after many burned fingers and smoking pot holders. The stoves we had been using in the tent were the standard GI issue stoves. When they burned they burned hot, sometimes cherry red.  They were also not an airtight stove that would keep a fire all night unattended. And while they were relatively affordable, the stove we now needed was always expensive.  One day while in the big city 75 miles away from our ranch, I noticed a metal recycling scrap yard. High on a pile of iron was the stove I had been looking for! It was a Timberland Double Door with a large flat top surface suitable for cooking on! This was God looking out for Renee (or me). I was ready to drop a large sum of money on this right there. To my surprise, they only wanted the going rate of scrap iron per pound (less the weight of the fire bricks) for the perfect stove.  We later added a kitchen addition to the cabin with a standing pilot propane oven but the Timberland stayed on as the primary heat source for the home.

While building we used the water trailer as our water storage as well. Once the cabin was finished Renee hinted that she wanted running water in the kitchen sink. Being off grid with no well I had to come up with a workable solution.  We bought a 2,500 gallon water tank at a ranch supply store. Placing this tank on the hill where the bottom was above the height of the kitchen faucet I ran 2” pipe off the tank to the outside wall of the kitchen.  This gave us excellent water pressure to the faucet entirely gravity flow. Hot water for showers and dishes was heated by both the woodstove and the kitchen propane stove. Later, we added a propane instant water heater to the system.

Showers were accomplished in a shower house we built off the cabin. A wood decked walkway off the rear led to a small building with deck floors and a hook at the ceiling. At first we had a canvas military water bag with a large daisy shower head. The heated water was carried out and poured into the bag. We could take as long a shower as two gallons of hot water would allow. 

Being "off-grid" meant that, aside from the chainsaw, the boys and I were using only hand tools to build our home.  We could not afford solar power or generators until much later and for the most part we lived as early Americans did. We worked during the day, slept at night, used oil lamps when needed, heated with a woodstove, and had an outhouse for you know what. The only real luxuries we enjoyed those first years were a propane grill and our portable radio.  For nighttime entertainment as a family we listened to the AM radio shows. The boys enjoyed listening to KFI out of Los Angeles and their Radio Classics like The Shadow and The Jack Benny Show. During the day we hunted, killed rattlesnakes, and searched for arrowheads.

At one point Renee quit working and took up running the ranch while I worked locally where ever I could. Renee started a small garden that kept us in tomatoes and peppers to cook up with the average 18 eggs a day that our 24 chickens gave us. Her 30 goats supplied enough milk for everyone and all the cheese we could eat.

As the money came in we added on and upgraded and eventually got to solar panels and a generator. We even had one of the first satellite uplinks for Internet connection from our off-grid ranch.
It should be said that our sons are all men now. Two of them still live out west after going to local universities and the oldest is now out of the US Army, having gone to West Point. Our choices were not always the right choice but they were ours to own. I am proud of the job my wife did homeschooling our sons and while three of them do not actively live a survivalist’s life, they all know how to.

We are still survivalists. We sold our ranch and moved back east several years ago after staying out west for about 14 years. It became clear to us that water is everything for survival and the west has too many water issues. The ranch sold quickly to a California family looking to get out of their situation and into a better life. The lessons we learned have made us stronger and more ready to take on what's coming. The funds from the sale of our ranch bought us a 100-acre mountain farm sloping to a meadow with a river running through. Renee and our youngest son helped finish a modest cabin with solar power, and as soon as I can I'll be building that log home we had envisioned.

I always assumed that I would relax when I retired from my life’s vocation. I have now retired from working; however, there is no relaxation. As I absorb the news of the day my other life long avocation, family survival preparedness, continues to plague my mind. The current probability of a societal collapse looms ever closer.

I am sure everyone concerned about their family’s safety understands the problems in America . I have been preparing for over 50 years to self sufficient that my family, including children and grand children, would have the ability to survive hard time and hunger.

However, something has happened the last few years that is going mostly unrecognized by family survivalist and all other patriots for that matter. The game has changed! The rules of preparedness are being radically altered, it is imperative to understand the course change. America has shifted from a legal nation to an empire (check your law dictionary).

It is true that my family has been relatively successful over the years in family survival preparedness. We met or surpassed the survival goals set 40 years ago. Suddenly, in the past few years, the game rules have changed causing a change in thinking and direction of survival planning.

We purchased an 1,100-acre ranch (very inexpensively), located on the high desert of the southwest region of the US in 1978. It has a small stream through it and a several hundred gallon per hour spring on the canyon wall. It was ideal for the purpose of survival. I took a full year off work and relocated the family from the city. It was an exciting time of our lives. We lived in a tent at first, until we had built something more substantial in which to live.

My wife had some funny female idea that the babies should take a bath every day; I can still see, in my mind, my 4 and 5 year old girls carrying their little buckets of water from the stream to heat over an open fire so they could meet Mother’s requirement of cleanliness. In the beginning, we washed clothes in an open washtub with water heated over an open fire.

Slowly, we built up a comfortable home that was self-sustaining; it was an evolutionary process that occupied several years. I first placed several 50-gallon barrels on the canyon wall and by mid afternoon, there was ample very hot water for bathing and washing clothes.

The spring was diverted into a six-inch pipe, by the time it dropped a few hundred feet down the canyon wall, we had 140-psi water pressure. We irrigate an entire acre at one time with a ‘big bird’ sprinkler. Of course, that really made the big house livable, once you get water under pressure it is a whole new world for the family.

There were several years of experimenting with water turbines for electricity, however, the cost of installation and maintenance soon become obvious, and that was abandoned in favor a 5 kilowatt motor generator. That became the standby for washing clothes and charging batteries in the winter. Of course, the most efficient rig is a diesel motor generator but that too is expensive in upfront cost and long-term maintenance. A propane driven generator is great to have also, but the escalating cost of propane has proven the old standby gas motor generator proves the most efficient.

Now, under the new rules of survival the possibility of gas, diesel, and propane disappearing is high, so we must think sideways. If you can get the water under a little pressure you can improvise a ‘home grown’ water turbine generator rigged from a purchase ‘Pelton’ wheel and truck alternators. It works well, but requires a lot of attention and the alternator wears down rapidly. Design the system where you can change that component easily.

Over the years, we built up a large solar system that provides the power for the house. In addition, satellite television has become the rage. That is a real blessing for the family. Then we developed the satellite Internet, which expanded our educational and information horizons tremendously. Out here, on the desert solar power is the best way to go, however, the weak link is the batteries. They are expensive and require a lot of attention.

That leaves wind power. Actually, it was not a hard decision; wind is not a player on the desert. But perhaps you will be in a more advantageous location. Wind is good, but it is also very expensive up front and wind turbines have to be maintained continually.

We have several fruit trees matured and producing. We have built up several acres of garden area.

Without the distractions of the city we immediately began home schooling all the children. It was the best thing that every happened. The children did not have to fight their way to and from public school. There were no drugs or teachers unions demanding more money and less work.

I ran out of money at the end of the first year, as expected, so it was time to go back to work. I encountered instant rebellion; no one wanted to return to the city. We had a house with all the amenities of a city home. The result was that I went back to work in the city alone, the family remained on the desert ranch. That was a wonderful decision.

Analytically speaking it was a good project, even the home schooling went well. One on my younger sons is now almost through medical school. We, of course, would never cater to the AMA doctrines but still we needed a doctor in the family so he is becoming a doctor to get AMA teaching plus natural healing concepts. Another son is about half way through his bachelor’s degree, I expect him to become a computer scientist and follow in his father footsteps.

All the children are successful hard workers, attributable to living and working away from the corruption of the city. As far as education goes, I cannot imagine any parent turning their precious children over to such a corrupt system, one that will most certainly turn them into ‘functional illiterates’.

The children are grown now and I have a bevy of grandchildren wanting to go the ranch. And, that brings us to the immediate problem. We did what we did because of our desire to be free and raise our children outside the non-Christian society of the cities. I always had in the back of my mind the possibility of a survival crisis of some sort, however, I was able to function in society as it stood and stands to this point.

I have always been a student of history and eschatology and, believe me; something has changed in our country and society almost overnight. I will not bore you with details of the analysis but please be assured we are the verge of national crash that is going to rival the Roman Empire crash. It is going to happen! Do not believe me, take the time to study and read, your conclusion will most assuredly be the same as mine.

With that in mind, may I make a few suggestion learned from many years of playing this survival games. I think it will surprise some of you.

This crisis is going to be far too severe and to long to get through on your food storage alone. Whoa, does that shock you? Study and think about it for a few moments. It is true you must have as much food storage as possible, but that will not be enough! You will not be able to store enough food to get through the upcoming holocaust. You must have non-hybrid seeds stored away. They will be worth their weight in gold and you will need them to feed your family. You must have enough hard storage to survive a year or so until you can get a family garden going.

I will go so far as to say this, right now, this year start a family garden. If you live in a home, dig up the yard and learn how to grow a garden. If you do not have dirt immediately available, find a spot. Talk to your neighbors, look to you community for a garden spot. If you are close enough to the country, go find a farmer and cut a garden deal. The important thing is to put some seeds in the ground. Growing food in an acquired education and you are going to need to know how to feed your family when your food supply is gone.

Start educating yourself, stay current on news. The people that intend to destroy this country are becoming very arrogant, they sense victory is near. Turn off your sports television, put down your can of beer and learn to read the news, they are telling us in advance, what they are going to do.

Chemistry.  Say the word, and the average survivalist might cringe.  It brings up memories of a boring teacher in high school, or images of mad scientist lab with all sorts of beakers and tubes and glassware or long complicated formulas with strange symbols.

In reality, chemistry can help every survivalist have an ace up their sleeve. It’s just a matter of knowing a few tricks of the trade.  You don’t have to know how to build a rifle to fire it well, or how to run a large farm to have a garden.  It’s a matter of fundamentals, of simple things right there in front of your eyes.

Safety Proviso: This information is provided for educational purposes only.  While this information is scientifically sound, any experimentation with chemicals is dangerous. Any attempt to use this information is at your own risk and I take no liability or responsibility for your actions.

There has been talk in SurvivalBlog and in books about some aspects of this idea from articles about stills and making your own drinking alcohol to biodiesel.  You can read about soap making, and learn about lye.  But, what is left out is, where are you going to get the materials to do these things?  All of these articles presume a level of social collapse or destruction to put you or your group on a high self sufficiency level, not a 2 weeks and we get back to normal production situation, but do not take the next step to help the average survivalist find what they need.

For the purpose of this article, I create the following scenario:  You and your group have emerged from the initial danger period.  The looters have for the most part been driven off, gone away, died off, or are not a high level threat.  But, there will be no normal level of resupply or production for any foreseeable future if at all.  And while stores have been looted, there may still be a number of valuable items to look for, if you know what they are and what you can do with them and it is assumed you don’t have any of these items on hand.  Now is the time for a forage party to head out.

The first thing to look for is the “tools“ of the trade, starting with a still. A still is key for making drinking alcohol, along with its use in distilling water.  You can find plans for all types in many survival articles and books, but for this purpose I will keep it as simple as I can, literally.  Yes, a standard #10 juice can opened in the traditional manner by a “church key” leaving a triangular opening on each side.  Next you need a number of items that if you find them, take as many as you can carry.  First is a metal tube.  You’ll find one, if no place else, in any electric percolator in any looted store.  No one would take one of those.  Next is a little trickier.  You need a candy thermometer. Odds are no looter wanted one of them and you’ll find it in your housewares section of a number of store chains.  Now, look for rubber tubing with the inside diameter to fit over the metal tube. This you can find at the auto section or an auto supply store.  Do NOT use them from any vehicle as they have carried in them poisonous materials.  Lastly, you need a child’s toy plastic bucket, or if nothing like that can be found, the bottom of an empty bleach bottle.

Assembly is easy.  Place whatever is to be distilled inside the can. (Picking up a few funnels along the way wouldn’t hurt any.)  Cut the metal tube to a 2 inch piece. Put the rubber tubing over 1 inch of the tubing.  Place in the other triangular opening so that the rubber tubing seals it also.  Now, the placement of the candy thermometer will vary with the type.  If it is a spike/dial version, plug the one triangular opening with a cork, or piece of doubled rubber tubing, and stick the thermometer directly through the can lid. If it is a board mounted type, remove it from the board, insert through a 1 inch piece of the rubber tubing and place in the triangular opening so that you can see the 200 degree mark.  If you are using a gallon bleach bottle, cut the bottle at the point where the neck meets the bottom.  Save the top part; it also is useful as a large funnel. With either container, make an x cut in the side about ¼ inch from the bottom a little smaller than the outside diameter of your rubber hose. With one end of the rubber hose attached to the can, push the other end through from the inside; the hose will seal the hole. Coil the rest of the hose in the container. Add water for cooling.  The water need not be drinkable.  Put the can over your heat source, be it a grill, a wood fire, or a camp stove burner.  Plan on making different stills for different purposes, as some will be for items you will consume, such as water or drinking alcohol, others will be for poisonous, but useful items.

In the pet supply section, look for an air stone used in aquariums. It is a short tube that leads into a porous stone end.  Take any plastic tubing and connections there are.  If you find any coffee filters--the ones used in the coffee makers--buy as many as you can, as well as any Pyrex measuring cups and glass bowls you can get. And from the hardware or automotive section, try to find a pair of goggles or a face shield.

While there are even more items to be found for your “lab“, these will do for the purposes of what you are about to make.

As it has been written about in numerous places, you can make your own alcohol. But fermenting a “mash” out of various scrap items and yeast takes practice. While you are getting the hang of it, you need not go without.  Even if you and your group don’t drink, alcohol has many other uses from medicinal to trade goods and is an ingredient in biodiesel also.  So then, where to get it?
 
The looters would have stripped any liquor from any bar, or store. But, if you go to your dollar type discount store and check out the back storage area, odds are you will find a case or two of cheap mouthwash which is about 20% drinking alcohol (40 proof give or take). This means a pint (16oz) is about 3 oz of somewhere near 180 proof. Add that 3 oz to 5 oz of water and you have 8 oz of somewhere near 60-70 proof.  If you use a quart of cheap mouthwash, you can get a pint.  Remember this is “meatball” chemistry; we don’t try for anything near lab standards. 

But, how do you get it? Ah, to the still! Add the mouthwash, and place over the heat source. The trick here is to get the mouthwash to about 200 degrees F., so the raw alcohol evaporates but not 212 degrees, so the water does not . Depending on your heat source, this can be done a number of ways, usually using blocks or bricks to get the right level.  Use a measuring cup on the other end to receive the fluid and stop when you get near 3 oz. for the pint and 6 oz per quart. (Add 10 oz of water for the 6 oz)

Now in soap making, you’ll find lye mentioned. It is also an ingredient in biodiesel making. So then, how to get it?

The first place to look is in the drain cleaner area of the stores and look for cans marked LYE.  Wear rubber gloves in case the cans or containers have been broken open as lye will severely burn the skin.  But, if for some reason you can’t find any lye, you can revert back to the pioneer days.  Take wood ash, place in a non metal bucket or your bottom of the bleach bottle after you first make your x like for the still, and place a short 2 inch piece of rubber tubing in it.  Then pour 2 quarts of water, clear but not necessarily drinkable, in from the top.  Use a plastic bucket to receive the fluid that comes out.  This will be lye, so treat it with respect!

Even this method has its limits, as there may not be that much wood ash available after the first two or three productions.  What then??  Well it’s time to go “shopping” to your nearest building supply center.  What you are looking for is lime, also known as slaked lime or hydrated lime.  You will find it in as large as 50 lbs bags, and I doubt any looter would have touched it.  If none is there, you can use quicklime.  Then it’s off to your various stores, especial your dollar type discount store.  What you are looking for is plain washing soda (Sodium Carbonate or Sodium Bicarbonate).  There are a number of store brands along with the familiar name brands.  Look around now so will recognize it later.  Take all you can find.

With your rubber gloves, and your goggles or face shield on, you are ready to mix the ingredients.  If you use quicklime, you have to mix it with an equal part of water first.   BE CAREFUL! This mix gives off a fair amount of heat.  Mix the lime and washing soda together with an equal amount of water, example 1 cup lime or quicklime in water + 1 cup washing soda + 2 cups water (1 cup if you have used the quicklime/ water mix) in a large 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup.  Heat slightly while stirring.  Once the lime, washing soda, and water are well mixed, there will be created a liquid (Lye) and a solid (Calcium Carbonate).  Using an empty, clean plastic milk jug and a funnel lined with a coffee filter, slowly pour the mix in.  The filter paper will trap the solid, which you can let dry and store in any glass jar with a lid.  Using this method on a large scale you can get a lot more yield than by wood ash.

Last, but never least, is liquid bleach.  For a time it will be generally plentiful and available, but what then?  Once more we go “shopping” for the two items we need.  The first is sold under the trade name Saniflush, and can be found almost in every store in the drain cleaner section.  There are others also that can be used, but you can spot this one right off.  Next is a variety of powdered bleaches or pool chemicals that have chlorine in them.  With your rubber gloves on, mix one cup Saniflush in an equal amount of water in a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup.  BE CAREFUL, this also heats up.  Pour it into a clean plastic milk jug.  Get a cork from an old wine bottle, clean it and make a hole in it for a plastic tube.  You can use the tube from a plastic eye dropper with the dropper end cut off.  Then, take your rubber hose and add to one end your air stone, and put the other on the plastic tube.  Place the air stone end into a small plastic tub.  Put into the tub a mix of 9 parts water to 1 part lye.  Now, carefully crush the pool tablets into a fine powder, or use already powdered bleach and with a clean funnel add one cup to the Saniflush mix.  QUICKLY cork the jug as the chlorine gas is immediately released!  The gas will bubble up into the lye water creating bleach.  As this is “meatball “ chemistry, it will be a lot stronger that your regular store bleach.

Now you have some “building blocks“ to play with.  With your lye, you can now make soap if you have the animal fat.  You can also experiment with a form of biodiesel with the lye, alcohol and old cooking oils.  Then, there is an important item you can make easily.  Take one part bleach and one part alcohol and simmer in an open container, such as an old pot.  No cover will be needed but be careful of the fumes.  This should be done in the open or with plenty of ventilation.  Let it heat until you can see some small surface stirring, but do NOT let it boil. Continue for 5 minutes.  The result is Chloroform, valuable in many emergency medical situations.

In summation, there are many usable items overlooked in the survival area because of the belief that you have to be a chemist to know, use or make them. While there are many articles on homemade explosives, there are fewer on non-weapon improvised chemical uses.  Used C and D batteries, for example, can provide a number of valuable chemicals.  For those of you who would like to learn more, I refer you to The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, a book written for an 8th grade level reader, now out of print, but available as a download on eBay and other sources.

It has been said, your mind is your primary weapon for survival; feed it with basic useful knowledge.

I’m fairly new to SurvivalBlog but now it’s an every day read. I wanted to write and share my own journey of preparedness with you and your readers. After living with three and a half million people for about 22 years, a move to the country was long over due. I made the decision to get out of the city back in 1999, when I starting to take things a bit more seriously with all of the talk about Y2K. I was really hoping that something would have happened back then so I could test my skills at being prepared for it. I fear that those skills will be tested in the not too distant future none-the-less. Like you, I grew up in the age of bomb shelters and the threat of nuclear attack. My father was a member of the Civil Defense and I remember a small book that he gave me that showed how to build a fallout shelter in your basement. I always wished he would have done that but it never happened. What a great little fort that would have made for me and my brother, more on that later.

Anyway, I have wanted to live in the mountains since I was 12 years old so I headed out to the Rockies in search of a good bug out spot. I found just the right spot out in the middle of nowhere, 36 acres off a dirt road with the nearest Wal-Mart on the other side of the mountain range. It took another 5 or 6 years to actually be able to make the move. I was fortunate enough to start dating a like minded gal before the move and the minute we started talking about bug out bags and storing food, I knew I found myself a winner. We sold most of my furniture and put my home up for sale and were finally able to make the big move to our retreat property and start getting things situated.

Since we settled down we have been able to stock up on about two years worth of food, medical supplies, gasoline and diesel etc. To date we’ve put up about a ½ ton of wheat and a ½ a ton of corn, beans and rice. More than enough for us and enough to share with those that haven’t or couldn’t do it on their own. I love making things from scratch, so owning a welding and fabricating business has been a huge blessing as we are able to make most anything right here in the shop. And those things don’t necessarily have to be made from metal. We’ve been able to fabricate everything from a well water retrieval bucket made of pvc to our own colloidal silver generator to our bio diesel processing set-up. We converted an old exercise bike into a pedal powered grain grinder and I’ve made a lead melting pot so we can pour our own ammo and start loading it once we set up a loader. We have made a solar oven, solar air heaters for the roof of the shop and will be putting together a solar hot water heater real soon.

The shop has a small lathe, mill, drill press, cutting torch set up, MIG, TIG, Arc, and Plasma machines with two generators, sheet metal bender, notcher, roller, English Wheel and a ton of various hand tools. The hand tools will be a real important part of the operation when there is no more power from the grid and the gas for the generators runs out. We’ll be putting together a Faraday shielded box for some of our electronics in case of an EMP. In this box we will store a spare computer set up, radios, walkie talkies and anything with a circuit board that we don’t want to do without. Granted, the Internet may become a thing of the past but we have a lot of valuable information stored on hard drives and discs, we’re talking thousands of pages of info, and if we have a working computer, then we can access that info when needed.

Speaking of information, our survival library is currently at over 75 books, so at least some of our information is accessible without a computer. A few of the books and magazines that I would personally recommend would be “Dare To Prepare” by Holly Deyo, "The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It” by John Seymour, The Foxfire Book Series and The Mother Earth News magazine.

Every library should have books on gardening, first aid, holistic medicines and any skills that you might consider learning. It could be hunting or fishing or re-loading ammo or carpentry, canning, raising livestock or whatever peaks your interest. ‘Never stop learning’ is a good motto to hold on to. We try to learn something new every day. And this blog is a great way to do that.

We’ve been able to put in a huge garden, two greenhouses and I take a deer right off the land each year to put in the freezer. Moving here really has been a dream come true. Many of our friends here in the mountains feel the same way as we do about what the future holds and it amazes us as to how many people are getting ready for what’s to come. And yet we only discuss it with a select few from our church.

We have always felt that this was our bug out retreat since we left the hordes, but lately we’ve been wondering what we would do if we had to bug out of here. So, as soon as the ground thaws this spring, we start the next big project, an underground bunker. Dug into the side of our mountain, it will be made out of cinder blocks with the roof made out of ½” thick channel iron, since we just happen to have a bunch of that laying around. Then the entire thing will be buried under about 2 or 3’ of soil and will have two steel doors and even a periscope that I’ve made out of two 90-degree fittings and a couple of mirrors that we found at the hobby store. That way we will at least have a small view of the outside world if we have to hunker down for an extended period of time. Our biggest problem will be concealing everything with the proper camouflage, the tube that the periscope will be housed in, a solar panel to help keep the battery charged, a wire antenna for a radio and one of the steel doors will all be outside of the shelter. I‘m enjoying the other posts on this site of other shelters and would like to see more folks write in with their ideas. There are some pretty talented folks on this site.

My father has been a Ham for as long as I can remember and before too long I will be getting my Ham radio license and that will be another big asset for this whole effort. We’ll even try to install a transceiver in the shelter so we can keep in touch with the outside world.

I’ve read quite a bit on this site about obtaining skills for when TSHTF and couldn’t agree more. One of the first things I did when we got settled in was to join the local Search & Rescue team and Volunteer fire dept. and not long ago I got involved in a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). The training that I’ve received from each of these has been invaluable. Skills like wilderness first aid, CPR, rock climbing, rope rescue techniques, evacuation, firefighting, use of radio and much more. It takes a lot of personal time but I urge others to make the commitment and learn as much as they can. Being involved in these organizations might also give us a heads up with some advanced information and that could come in real handy.

Another thing we’ve done here is to load up a number of six gallon buckets with all sorts of items that we might need if we had to evacuate the house for some reason. These buckets hold some emergency supplies like food, bottled water, meds, blankets, tarps, rope, fire starters, gloves, socks, knife, flashlight, spare batteries and a small Sterno stove to heat water with. It’s amazing how much stuff you can cram into a six gallon bucket if you do it right. These buckets are buried strategically throughout the property. We keep the locations handy so we can get to the nearest bucket, dig it up and at least have some supplies to work with. In each bucket taped to the lids are the locations of the other buckets. Chances are pretty slim that anyone would find any of the caches by accident, being that all the buckets are buried on our own property and well camouflaged. All of the containers have a good seal around the lid to prevent moisture from getting in and when we bury them we have a piece of plywood cut in a circle that is an inch or two larger in diameter than the bucket. This helps keep the dirt off the lids when we need to dig them up. Each bucket is buried only a few inches below ground level and we stash a small garden shovel nearby underneath a rock, bush or by a tree trunk to make it easier to get the buckets out in a hurry.

As far as transportation goes, we have a gas powered pick up, a diesel pickup and a 1970s-vintage Jeep that has no [microprocessor] electronics in it that would be affected by an EMP. We burn vegetable oil in the diesel during the summer months, the harsh winters here make it a bit too thick to use, even with the additives we put in to help thin it out. I would also suggest that you get a good bike for each family member, know how to tune it up, know what the most common items are that would break and how to repair them. Have the right tools to carry on the bike and know how to use them. Here in the mountains we are a long way from anything and someday a bicycle might be the fastest way to get there. But in a big pinch there is always foot power. You obviously need to have good packs that fit well and a couple of comfortable pairs of hiking boots. You also need to maintain good physical health if you plan on hoofing a lot.

We try to teach others to be prepared as well. Not necessarily for TEOTWAWKI kind of thing but for the more common ‘what if’ scenarios like bad weather, power outages etc. We feel that if we can get our family members to consider those scenarios then they will be able to use that knowledge in case things really do hit the fan. It’s pretty frustrating knowing that my loved ones will not leave the big city and are pretty clueless as to how to survive when things take a turn for the worse. All we can do is pray for them and hope that they get a clue before it’s too late.

I know some readers will be thinking that we have it made being able to have a retreat, vehicles and a business that allows us to fabricate most of the things we need. Much of the emergency items we have were purchased from yard sales and thrift stores. We also barter for a lot of items and services. No doubt we’ve been blessed but it was not easy in any sense of the word. When we first got here we lived in an old camper with no water, shower or toilet for 14 months. We started out with a bucket for a toilet until we could get a port-a-potty hauled in. That was reason for celebration! It took about a year to get our place built and has been an ongoing struggle the whole time. But it has all been worth it. Being out in the middle of nowhere, we had no idea how we would make a living. It took about two more years to make a name for ourselves in the fabricating business. But word of mouth is the best advertisement in tight knit localities like this. We depended on miracles almost every month (and still do) when we didn’t know where the money was going to come from to pay the mortgage. It was a big leap of faith moving here but that’s what we were led to do. That leads me to one more item to mention before I close and that is faith in God. As many others have stressed, getting yourself right with God is the most important thing you can do. Faith has brought us this far and we continue to build our faith as things start to look darker and darker by the day. Pray for each other for knowledge, provision, wisdom and discernment and that we’re on the other side of the fan when it finally hits!!

Dear Jim,
I'm very sorry to hear about your recent loss! God Bless!

Thank you for all the work you put into your survival blog to get the much needed word out! It is much appreciated! My wife and I live in the mountains of Western Oregon and the following is one of the defensive strategies we use that may be of interest to your readers.

A good defense from mobs for a couple living alone is bee hives. A hive of bees tipped over will attack anything that moves within 50' to 100' of the hive day or night. (maybe further) We set hives along the driveway into our house and inside of the deer fence around our house which encloses about a half acre.

At night you can extend your bees attack area by placing electric lights some distance from the hives. The bees will always fly toward the light. The lights should be individual bulbs which can be turned on to illuminate a certain area. Only light up the area where the bees are needed.

Bees are very good for blockading roads or driveways. They are very persistent. You will need bee equipment to avoid being stung: bee suit, hat, veil, gloves and boots. And you will need the bee suit to put the hives back together.

Bee hives can easily be tipped over with a rope or wire attached around the top, if they are close enough to the house or defensive position. For longer distances a piece of heavy sheet metal can be leaned against a hive and shot into with a high powered rifle. (Being careful not to destroy the hive boxes.)

Bees normally begin flying when the temperature reaches 54 degrees F. At lower temperatures they soon drop dead. Bees will fly in any temperature if their hive is tipped over but the lower the degrees the more bees you will lose. In a survival situation bees will provide you with honey and a good non-lethal defense.

You will need to study beekeeping which is very interesting. Bees can live and forage in almost any environment. The bees will also pollinate your survival garden and orchard and increase yields by 30 to 50%.

Every survivalist should be a beekeeper... for the honey and for defense... and for the fun of it. - Pete in Oregon

So you’re convinced that the free ride is over, that things are getting worse, and when the worst happens, you want to be prepared. But you have a problem—you don’t have a lot of money for prepping and day to day living. Maybe you only make minimum wage. Maybe you make a little more than that, but you’ve got a lot of bills. Maybe you live on a fixed income, or have irregular self-employment. Regardless, don’t assume because you can’t afford expensive classes or pricey gear that WTSHTF, you’ll be unable to fend for yourself and your family. My husband and I make less than $10,000 (I’m disabled, he’s self-employed) a year, but we’ve already got a good start on skills, tools, and storage, have plans to expand, and it wasn’t difficult at all. Being on a low or fixed income can help you with a survival mindset, because you’re already used to making do with little, or having to get creative with what you have. You just have to expand what you have, a little at a time, and, before you know it, you’ve got a pretty good cache of supplies and abilities that can help you and yours no matter what comes down the pike.

Skill acquisition can be one of the easiest and cheapest things you can do to help yourself if you’re low on money. Ask family members, especially older ones, and if they could teach you these skills. Family with military backgrounds can be invaluable resources. After I found a Girl Scout survival camp wanting, I talked to my Air Force dad, and he gave me some of his old survival manuals. Friends are also good to ask for help learning things, and sometimes you can trade what you know for what you want to know. I’ve taught friends of mine simple things like gardening and cooking, in return for training in such things as knife sharpening, hand to hand combat, or camp cookery.

If you’re visually oriented, the Internet can be one of the cheapest ways to learn new skills. There are tons of things out there online that are free for the asking. Through various web sites, I’ve learned to make soap in a blender and on the stove, make apple butter, picked up free crochet and knit patterns, gotten gardening tips, and gotten advice on animal care, for a start. Plug in what you’re interested in learning into your favorite search engine and take off. It’s good to check out more than one site for certain skills, as a hedge against errors, and to expand your repertoire.

Books are another great way to teach yourself things, and you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars at the local chain bookstore, either. Check out your favorite online preparation sites and see what books they recommend, and make a list. Then hike down to your local library and see what they carry. Inter-Library Loan (ILL) can help you find books that your local city/county library system doesn’t carry. Some libraries provide this free, others charge extremely low fees (our local system charges a dollar per request, and you can request multiple books at one time). This way, you can see what books have the information you’re looking for, and which ones you would like to own. Even a book that you don’t like might help you glean some information that sends you on your way.

After checking out books at the library, you might find that there are some books you just have to own yourself, but you don’t want to pay out full price for them either. Used bookstores can be a Godsend here—I’ve managed to pick up the useful Foxfire series at local used booksellers for a quarter of the current cover prices. Auction sites such as eBay frequently sell books that are hard to find other places, and sometimes you can get whole lots of books in extremely good deals. Online book dealers often have sections for ordering used copies. I’ve used Amazon.com’s used services to get books like The Encyclopedia of Country Living for less than ten dollars. Talk to friends and see if you can swap books with them, and there are great places online where you can swap books all over the world for only shipping.

If you’re one of those people who learn best by doing, there are a lot of places where you can learn skills for cheap or free. A lot of my survival skills I learned from seven years in Girl Scouts, which sounds funny, but because of Scouts, when the major ice storm hit a few years ago and knocked out our power for almost two weeks, I was able to keep my husband and I fed with hot meals because I remembered how to make a hobo stove out of a coffee can with tin snips and a bottle opener. Other things I learned: how to chop wood, how to make an emergency shelter, and how to identify edible plants, and that’s just for starters. Offer to volunteer for your local Boy or Girl Scouts, or, if you have a child in Scouts, look through their manuals or ask them to teach you what they’re learning. This also works for children who are taking classes home economics or shop classes.

Your local county extension society, which connects people in your county with the latest information from your state land-grant university can be a great resource. Many people are familiar with the Master Gardener program they run, which trains people on every aspect of horticulture, so they can work as volunteers to the gardening public. Ask about scholarships to the training classes. Our local Master Gardener program usually costs $150, but when I asked if I could pay in installments, they gave me a full scholarship. County extension programs also help out farmers, administer county 4-H programs, and have a whole home economics department. That division at my local county extension gives out free handouts on many topics like budgeting and food preservation, and sells copies of the latest edition of Ball’s Blue Book of Food Preserving. Some extension societies also offer a Master Food Preserve program, which is administered much like the Master Gardener program.

Many churches offer programs that could help you learn skills for free or cheap. Most people know that the Church of Latter Day Saints helps people get together a food storage program, so ask your Mormon friends for help, or contact the Relief Society of your local Mormon ward for more information. The LDS [Provident Living] web site also has free links to information on preparation and food storage. Other churches have similar programs. A local Catholic Worker house in a city near me grows fruits and vegetables for the poor and homeless, and they are always asking for volunteers to learn how to care for the plants, in exchange for some of the produce. Again, ask around religious groups in your area, or scan the religion section of your local Sunday paper to get ideas.
Here’s a secret about learning survival skills—well before the economy tanks, the bomb is dropped, or what have you, you will start saving money. Learning to garden has helped my family eat better for less, learning to can has kept our pantry full in tight times, learning to make soap has helped us stay clean and healthy, and learning to sew, knit and crochet has kept my family warm and looking good. The money you save with your skills can be reinvested in learning more skills, or, as we’ll get to next, getting tools and supplies.

Tools and supplies for preparation can be an Achilles’ heel if you don’t have a lot of money to spare, but if you’re willing to look around in places you might not usually go, you’d be surprised at what you can find and for how little. Get an idea, first, of what you would like, again, make a list, and ask around. My mother in law gave me a sewing machine she wasn’t using when she heard I was learning to quilt. When I mentioned to one friend I was looking for yarn for knitting and crocheting, he said his grandmother had some she didn’t use anymore, and came over with three enormous boxes full of yarn, from wool to crochet thread to specialty yarns that retail for almost ten dollars a skein. When a neighbor moves, ask if you can have what they don’t want. One of our neighbors, before they left town, gave me a nice cast iron skillet that had just been taking up kitchen space. I was astounded when I checked online and found out that it was worth $80!

Garage sales can help you score fantastic deals. I got two huge cartons of canning jars and rings in many different sizes for $5, just two blocks from my house. I’ve also gotten embroidery hoops, sewing supplies, and out of print books just to name a few. Churches often have annual rummage sales that can be the place you find that one of a kind item that’s been eluding you. I’d searched three years for a used bread bucket (a metal container with a hand crank and a hook that kneads bread), and found one at a local church for $7. You can often dicker at garage sales, so if you see your dream item, but don’t quite have enough cash on hand, give it a whirl!

FreeCycle is a fantastic program online which matches people who have things to give away to people who are looking for free things. Go to their web site, which will direct you to your local program, and, through the mailing list, see what people are offering, and offer things yourself. For the price of bus fare or gas, I’ve gotten art supplies, kitchen helpers, and even more books for the taking.
Let friends and family know about some of the things you’re looking for and request them as holiday gifts. When I decided I wanted to learn canning, I asked my husband for a water-bath canning starter kit as an anniversary present. He thought it was odd, but after three years, he really appreciates the jams, jellies, pickles, and salsas! If people aren’t quite sure what to get you, tell them you’ll gladly accept gift certificates from a local or online store. And don’t hesitate to put items on a gift registry for large events—sure, people thought it was odd when my husband and I asked for archery supplies for our wedding, but they knew it’d be more useful than, say, a lemon zester!

Online auction sites can be a good resource for tools and supplies, but I recommend you research what you’re looking for, ask the seller questions, and don’t hesitate to complain about problems quickly to get replacements and/or refunds. I’m still kicking myself over a pressure canner I bought on eBay that I didn’t touch for months. By the time I learned that it didn’t work, it was far too late to contact the seller to complain or get a refund. However, I’ve gotten canning jars and rings in quantity on auction sites for a fraction of what I’d pay brand new, so just be careful.

Don’t be afraid to step outside of the usual places for tools and supplies. Army surplus stores can be heaven, especially for camping and survival supplies. Dollar stores can sometimes turn up with the most interesting things. One of our local dollar stores got a shipment of lamp oil in, and we stocked up on several bottles. One place that has turned out to have hidden gems for us is ethnic stores and supermarkets. I picked up a great grain mill at a local Hispanic market for $30, and it works great on wheat. We’ve also got our eye on some cast iron cookware at the local Asian supermarket.

If you look around, one of the best places overall to get tools and supplies are resale shops that sell items that were rejected from megastores because of damaged packaging or one item was damaged in a lot. Resale shops nearby have landed us great things, like 11 jelly jars with new lids and bands for $1, or a high quality four-man tent for $20. The best deal we’ve gotten so far was a food dehydrator that was brand new but didn’t have a box or a manual, for $25. Three minutes online and I’d downloaded and printed off the manual and several recipes, and it’s the best $25 I’ve ever spent.

Food supplies for stockpiling can be had for the cheap in many places. Dollar stores that carry canned food have been a great place for us to stock up. Off-brand stores are another wonderful place to get loads of canned goods. Even large chain supermarkets can have great deals on their store brands. Warehouse stores can be a good place for bulk-buying staples that are far cheaper than little individual packages. When I saw how cheap flour was in 25 pound bags at Sam’s Club compared to the grocery store, we started buying them and keeping it in a plastic bucket by the kitchen. While membership fees at these places can be high, go in with friends like we have and you can have a year of bulk-buying for maybe $5 apiece. Again, ethnic stores can be a bonanza for cheap staples. After seeing the price of 50 pounds sacks of rice at an Asian supermarket, we’ve got another plastic bucket filled to the brim with rice.

Some people might shy away from storing food if they don’t have a lot of room, but if you’re willing to think outside the box, you’d be surprised at what you can put away where. Part of my linen closet houses reused 2-liter pop bottles with an emergency water supply. The space under beds is frequently wasted space that can hold several cases of canned goods. You can even turn some of your storage into cheap décor—one book on home storage I read showed that you can stack up a few boxes of cans, cover it with cloth remnants or an old sheet and voila! You now have an end table.
When I first felt led to prepare for TEOTWAWKI, I was worried that our very low income would hamper preparations. But one thing that many people who have little have had to learn is something that we all need to learn: prioritizing, making the most of what you have to get what matters most. Many people spend out thousands of dollars a year for habits of a moment when they could be storing up skills and supplies to last them the rest of their lives. If it is important enough to you, you’ll make the necessary adjustments and start looking around for what you can get and learn.

Changing your habits and being open to learning new things not only changes you, it can change the ones around you. While my husband and I make very little compared to a lot of our friends, we are frequently the ones they turn to when layoffs hit or disasters strike. They’ve started taking notes, and many have asked us to pass on what we’ve learned, so they, too, can be prepared. Should things go south for whatever reason, perhaps our cheapest but greatest resource will be a group of friends that have many skills and supplies that can enable all of us to survive, come what may.

Mr. Editor,:
If one was truly going to "Prepare to Garden Like Your Life Depends on It" I would never rely 100% on organic farming unless it was as a last resort Personally I wouldn't rely on it anymore then compost and manure, if it was free and available (Do you deliver?)

I work in agriculture and during growing season, I see organic crop failures, and these are professional farmers. Could you afford to loose 25-80% of your crop, or how about 100 percent?
Organic growers are operating at a huge disadvantage using "organic pesticides" with many that just don't work. Sure, some will knock the problem down for a short while, then you will be back where you started, as all the eggs hatch out again.

If you have ever had problems with: Whitefly, Thrips, or Spidermites just too name a few, then you will know exactly what I mean. Commercial growers feed the world, and turn out crop after crop with reliable results using the correct amounts of pesticides and fertilizers, shouldn't you be doing the same? After all, your life might depend on it right?

Ok back to work, Now lets see... Who was it that had fertilizer and Malathion on sale? And I need... - Barry

JWR Replies: In my estimation, the best course is lies in the middle ground: Get experience with both gardening techniques. If we ever have a dreaded multi-generational TEOTWAWKI, then experience with organic gardening will be invaluable. In the short term, it also has some health benefits, and amending the soil naturally is a good thing, even if you decide to use pesticides. I agree that after the Schumer hits the fan, crop yield will trump all other considerations, since there will suddenly be a lot of hungry folks to feed, without any conveniently-stocked supermarket shelves. Even devoted organic gardeners should store some pesticides! But don't overlook the possibility of a worst-case situation that could go on, and on, and on, and we find that all available pesticides and chemical fertilizers are expended and irreplaceable. Again: Get experience with both techniques.

I am a retired Marine Corps officer and Naval Aviator (jets and helicopters), commercial airplane and helicopter pilot, and most recently, an aircraft operations manager for a Federal agency.

I graduated from numerous military schools, including the U.S. Army Airborne (“jump”) School, U.S. Navy Divers School, Army helicopter, and Navy advanced jet schools. In addition, I have attended military “survival” courses whose primary focus was generally short-term survival off the land, escape from capture, and recovery from remote areas.  Like most Marine officers, I attended The Basic School, an 8-month school (only five during the Vietnam era – my case), which is still designed to produce a second lieutenant who is trained and motivated to lead a 35-40 man platoon of Marines in combat.  This course covers everything from field sanitation to squad and platoon tactics, artillery and other ordnance delivery, communications, reconnaissance, intelligence, firearms training, and much more.   Later, I attended the Marine Amphibious Warfare School and the Command and Staff College, both follow-on schools and centered upon the academic study of tactics and strategy as they applied to the missions of the Marine Corps.  I flew helicopters offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and across the U.S. I found out first hand how thoroughly corrupted is the federal bureaucracy and the government, in general.  Not a pleasant experience. I’d rather have been flying. I have bachelor's and master's degrees.

As a result, my wife of forty years and I seem to have been moving endlessly from place-to-place.  Nevertheless, I have tried in each place to do what I could to maintain a level of self-sufficiency for my family that varied greatly with locations and personal finances. My intention here is to try to share some of the less-than-perfect ways that I have tried to accomplish that end. 

Only in the last few years, primarily as a result of the political and fiscal situation in the U.S., have I begun reading some of the huge amounts of literature about how one can prepare for serious long-term off-the-grid survival.  I have found that the preparation required to be ready for that contingency seems to be endless.  I do not want to talk about all of those preparations.  Others have done so very well, and besides, I’m not there, yet.  What I would like to do is to talk to those, perhaps like me, who are not true survivalists in the commonly referred-to sense, but who are genuinely concerned about the future of this country, and might desire, like me, to begin to prepare. Perhaps my elementary and simplistic efforts might be of help to someone else who is beginning to think about the subject of preparedness.  There are many scenarios that might require this, but the two that I am thinking most about are economic collapse and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. I’m building small Faraday boxes, but not doing much else for EMP.

My thinking on begins with my own estimation of the basic problems:  shelter, water, food, fuel, and security.  I view these as the most critical needs, whether living in a tent or other outdoor shelter or here in our rural home in West Virginia. Here I have and often take for granted what I have -- shelter, well water, a small stream, a pond, a rain barrel; canned, dried, frozen, and freeze-dried foods; fuel for the generator and portable stoves, kerosene heater and lanterns; factory-made and reloaded ammunition for any one of several firearms.  Edible plant books. Gardening books. Encyclopedia of Country Living-type books. Reloading books. Hunting books. Tracking books. A few novels devoted to the “what ifs” of the future, including Jim Rawles' excellent "Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse", for example.  Books to fill an entire bookcase.  The Boy Scout Field Book sits right there next to the military survival manuals, as do Tom Brown's Field Guides, the The Foxfire Book series, a canning book, field medical books, and quite a few others.

Those are the basic things about which I think. I have been thinking about them for quite a while, in fact, longer than I even realized.  Perhaps I’ve been thinking about them ever since I was a young lad.   For example, my very first “survival book” was the Boy Scout Field Book, the original of which I still have (circa late-1950s edition). It is still a great reference if one is looking for an all-in-one manual for starting fires, making simple shelters, recognizing game tracks, tying knots, and much more.  I note that it is still available on Amazon.com. (It’s probably been scrubbed to favor the politically correct, but don’t know [JWR Adds: Yes, I can confirm that unfortunately it has been made politically correct--with the traditional woodcraft skills showing any injury to innocent and defenseless trees duly expunged. So I advise searching for pre-1970 editions!] ) One does not necessarily need the SAS Survival Handbook or the U.S. Army survival manual. I have them and have read them. They do cover security problems, but then don’t cover other topics.  Alas, there appear to be no “perfect” manuals, and the Boy Scout Field Book is no exception.  But it’s not a bad beginning. And so I was beginning the journey even before I knew that I was. 

I think that my first education in “survival” came at about fourteen. That’s when I first shot a .30-06, an old [Model 19]03 Springfield. It pretty much rattled my cage.  Mostly, my older brother and I used to track and shoot small animals in the deep woods of Missouri as youngsters.  We were “issued” ten rounds of .22 LR ammo by our father, a retired USAF pilot, to be used in a bolt action, single shot, .22 rifle with open sights.  One would be surprised what that meager handful of loose ammunition could do for one’s choice of shots, one’s ability to be patient in waiting for the shot, and for one’s great satisfaction at having brought home six or eight squirrels for the cooking pot, having used just those ten rounds – and sometimes, but not often, less.  My point is that the knowledge of firearms is, in my view, basic to the notion of preparedness and in surviving in the wild. And it need not be exotic or overly complicated in nature.  One can surely attend modern schools that will teach one to double-tap a cardboard target or silhouette at seven yards with a semi-auto pistol, as well as basic and advanced tactical rifle courses, but very basic survival skill with a rifle can be had without much cost if one is committed to learning the skill and if one disciplines oneself. Start with only one round, and work up from there.  As Col. Jeff Cooper used to say, “Only hits count.”  In a purely off-the-grid survival scenario, I can envision that .22 LR rounds would be very precious, indeed.

Consequently, and even though I own handguns and rifles that will shoot .45 ACP, .44 Magnum/.44 Special, .357 Magnum/.38 Special, .380 ACP, .223, .25-06, .270, 7mm-08, .308, .7.62x39, .30-30, .30-06, and .45-70/.457 WWG Magnum (a wildcat), I shoot a .22 rifle and pistol more than all of the others, combined, and normally at least twice a week. And I’m hoarding them, as well as shooting them.  I have the capability to reload all the calibers (except .22 LR/Magnum, of course) above, as well as shotgun ammo in 12 and 20 gauge. I wasn’t really thinking of “survival” when deciding to do this about twenty years ago, but was interested only in having the capability to shoot more, and to do it more cheaply. Yet it appears that much of that ammo could be used for barter. I had never even considered this until reading some of the recent “survival novels.”

My apologies.  I’ve wandered into the weeds here, as I could do forever on my favorite subject.  Suffice it to say that whatever firearm one chooses – and make no mistake, one is necessary in my opinion -- there are all kinds of reasons to choose one over the other, depending on the situation and the person. One must endeavor to shoot it well. Owning a firearm is of almost no consequence, at all, unless it is properly employed.  Personally, I prefer a M1911 .45 ACP pistol and a 7.62 M1A SOCOM, while my wife is comfortable with the milder .38 [S&W] revolver and 20 gauge. pump shotgun.  I won’t even begin to get into the debate over .223 vs .308 and 9mm vs. .45 ACP.  Suffice it to say that in Vietnam I had the opportunity to see the effects of all of these, and I chose for my own security the .308 and .45 ACP.

Having got my favorite subject out of the way, I’ll talk about one that is likely even more important.  Water.  It is amazing how complicated this can be, and how many choices one has to solve this problem.  I have not yet solved it.  I have put up a rain barrel, and plan to get a couple more.  It’s amazing how rapidly a 55 gallon barrel will fill in even a moderate thunderstorm.  I got mine from Aaron’s Rain Barrels. http://www.ne-design.net/. I’ve camo-painted the first one to make it recede into the bushes that surround it.  

We have a very shallow stream down the hill that I need to dam so that it keeps only about a foot-or-two deep pool for gathering some water. It flows into a large pond, of which we own half (The owner of neighboring property owns the other half.).  But that’s over a hundred-yard trek downhill with empty buckets, and the same distance uphill with full ones.  Now, while that is okay for a backup, in my thinking, because I’m going on 63 years, I prefer to have something closer.  So my next “big” purchase will be a Simple Pump that allows one to drop a pump and pipe though one’s existing well casing down to below water level and extract water by means of a hand pump or DC motor attached to a battery which, in turn, will connect to a solar panel.  This is much, much cheaper than a Solar Jack.  At $1,200 for the hand pump capability (I’ll add on the DC and solar later), it’s a bargain, for me. See: http://www.survivalunlimited.com/deepwellpump.htm.  
I’m not recommending it for anyone, yet, as I haven’t got one. It has plenty of good reviews, and I’m willing to try it.  My apologies, but I am just talking about how I, for one, intend to solve my “water problem.” 

I’ve also started collecting clear plastic soda bottles for use in Solar Disinfection (SODIS), see; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection.  I’ve set up a rack for putting out the bottles in a sunny place.  Again, that’s a backup, but I’ll use it.

I have bought three different water filtering devices, the best of which is the Swiss-made, all-stainless Katadyn Pocket Microfilter.  It works wonders in that shallow stream and pond down the hill.. [JWR Adds: The same Katadyn filter model is available from several SurvivalBlog advertisers. They deserve your patronage first, folks!]

With the exception of the Simple Pump, these solutions are relatively cheap and effective, if not producers of great volume.  So far, they are what I’ve come up with.

I won’t go much into the food problem. It isn’t quite as complicated as the water problem.  I’ve either got to have it [stored], grow it, or kill it.  I’ve started storing all kinds of Mountain House freeze dried #10 cans (with expiration date dates in 2034), two-serving meals from Mountain House (expiration dates circa 2016), and numerous grocery store-type canned foods (expiration a couple years), in addition to dried beans, rice, Bisquick (sealed in plastic bags with desiccant inside), salt, sugar (Domino, which are sold in one-pound plastic tubs), olives, peanuts, wheat, etc.  Basically hit-or-miss, so far.  I need to get this “food problem” organized and do it right.  But it’s a start.  I think we’ve got only about a 60-day supply now, for two.

I’ve got two Coleman two-burner stoves.  One is a butane stove, and the other a dual fuel (white gas or unleaded gas), as well as several small backpacking stoves, the best of which is a MSR Whisperlite International, which uses virtually all fuel (unleaded, white gas, kerosene, diesel, and maybe even corn oil).   I was heavily into backpacking when we were stationed in Hawaii in the late 1970s, and still have all the gear.  After having one knee replacement and hedging doing another, I’ll not be backpacking if I can help it.  Nevertheless, I have two bug-out bags with essentials in them, ready to hit the trail if need be.  I’ve saved up and bought two good Wiggy's bags and a couple of his poncho liners.

Concerning backpacking stuff, I can recommend a book that I read back then called The Complete Walker, by Colin Fletcher. I haven’t read it in at least a decade, but its import is such that I remember much of it.  He emphasizes simplicity in gear.  That is to say, don’t pack a tent if you can get by with a tent fly – which you cannot in cold weather. I’ve still got my old three-season tent, but am saving up for a four-season. And he emphasizes: don’t worry about pounds – worry about ounces.  That is to say, if one is packing tea bags, remove the labels from the bags.  Ounces.  Remove all packaging material unless it is absolutely necessary (usually never). Don’t carry a “mess kit,” nor a knife, fork and spoon set.  A spoon will do (I’ve done it) along with a pocket knife. Now I have so many knives of so many types that I can’t remember them.  Personally, I’d go for a multi-tool.  But it’s heavy.  I never used to carry a weapon while backpacking.  Of course, it was (and is) illegal in Hawaii, but I think one would be remiss in not doing so today.  There was so much good advice in that book that helped me in the USMC, if nothing more than when packing my helicopter before a mission, or a car, trailer, or truck to move across the country.  “Think ounces, not pounds.”  I always think about Mr. Fletcher’s advice when I pack.

Anyway, I think I’ve got the camping stove angle covered in spades.  That is, until the fuel runs out.  Same goes for kerosene heater and lanterns (5).  My plan is to pull out our pellet stove and replace it with a free-standing wood stove.  Pellets are nice, but they must be bought, and the price is getting exorbitant, according to my pocket book.  They likely will be non-existent in a crunch. 

I connected a 12,000 Watt/50amp gasoline generator when we moved into this house nine years ago, as I have with every house in which we’ve lived for the last two decades.  I’ve got it wired through a transfer box to the circuit-breaker panel, a job that I did myself. It works, and it’s safe.  The main reasons for having this were to run the 220V[olt AC] well water pump and to run the refrigerator and our free-standing freezer during power outages.  But I’ve got it wired, anyway, to nearly every circuit in the house, except the other 220V appliances – water heater and heat pump.  It is somewhat selectable. That is to say that I can choose which circuits I want to power by engaging or disengaging the switches on the transfer box.  The problem is that it uses gasoline. So in a long-term outage it would soon become useless.  I’ve had the propane gas company come out to estimate what it would cost to get a dedicated 100 gal propane tank for the generator.  It would be about $500, but then, in addition to the 50+ gallons of gasoline, butane tanks, and white gas that I keep stored in a separate outbuilding, it would make a great explosion when hit with a tracer round.

Which brings me to the subject of security.  We live in a split-level home on about ten acres of forest.  The property is surrounded by other similar-sized properties of seemingly like-minded individuals.  I gleamed this because everyone out here shoots.  The sweet sound of gunfire can be heard at times in a full circle.  West Virginia, at least, has still got its priorities straight in this regard.  But I digress. This is a frame house with half of it below ground in front, but framed in back, which faces the forest.  The forest, itself, is a maze of downed pine trees blown over by the wind, interspersed with small saplings, vines and low brush.  Not a likely avenue of approach for anyone but the most determined.  For those who are determined, the downed trees would make excellent cover and concealment.  So I have a security problem to solve there, as well as at the front. 

I’ve started buying rolls of barbed wire and baling wire.  Unfortunately, I do not have access to dynamite, which we used to be able to buy in a hardware store in the 1960s.  We used it back then to blow stumps while clearing the land for our house.  I am thinking of buying a bunch of used railroad ties to build cover in the back; I’ve thought also of bricks and sandbags.  Problem is we’re reaching the point in all of this where the house would begin to look like a fortress, of sorts, to all but the most ignorant observers.  So there’s a line here concerning security versus “normalcy” that I must cross sooner or later.  Inasmuch as my wife is a few years older than I and is on constant medications, I’m afraid that finding a retreat (if we could even afford one) would be out of the question, as access to doctors, hospital and pharmacy are a necessity. Nevertheless I’ve got the bags packed and gear ready to throw into the pickup (Toyota 4x4 – like to have one of those older model American trucks, but I think they are getting rare, at least around here.  And what there are will likely go to the Cash for Clunkers Program….grumble, grumble. What will they think of next?).

So it looks to me as if we are here for the duration of the crisis, or sooner, if they try to take the guns from my cold, dead hands.  Speaking of, I still have to build a cache or two for guns and ammo and a few other necessities. 

And since I’ve more-or-less made that decision (here for the duration), I’ve thought of organizing the apparently gun-loving neighbors.  I’ve begun to buy walkie-talkies, if not field phones and commo wire.  I’ve got solar panels and several batteries (need to get a mega deep cell or two, however) to run the small battery chargers and the CB radio. My shortwave is up and running.

I will have to wait to talk to the neighbors, whom I rarely see, much less know.  I can just imagine the words that would come out of their mouths if I were to mention to them the notion of forming a security “company” and establishing a perimeter.  “That old retired Marine down the road is nuts!”

So that’s what I’ve got to say.  I do hope it at least stimulates some thought for those who are starting out trying to prepare, as I am.  All of this shows me that one “problem” in this “survival” business leads to several more, and they in turn lead to even more problems.  Lots to do. So I’m glad I’m retired.  I’ve got time to think about it.  If I were rich, I could do a lot more and likely in a far away place, but as it is, we do with what we have.   I have to use the lessons taught to every Marine:  Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.  

Long Live America.  Keep the Faith. - “Two Dogs”, Col. USMCR (ret.) in West Virginia

Dear Mr. Rawles:
I have been following several good reader contributions including “Bug Out At the Last Minute” arguments versus those who consider “Early Relocation” and most recently “A Multiple Family Retreat—Lessons Learned the Hard Way” in regards to the most expeditious and efficient way to set up a self-sufficient retreat. While I understand that some folks are just simply unable to make a full time commitment in setting up a retreat, I also know that there are many—while there are still the comforts of life available (television, readily available food and gasoline)—that are unwilling to make the sacrifice necessary to prepare for any pending manmade or natural disaster(this include members of my extended family who are living what they consider the “good life” but I am sure will be on our doorstep WTSHTF) From my family’s experience, if one is not practicing what they preach…i.e. actually learning by trial and error and doing what one plans to do when the time come, then no matter how much one has prepared—stocking food supplies, buying “Seeds in a Can”, or planning to bug out with everything but the kitchen sink—then there will most certainly be a very steep learning curve to be had. Believe me, my husband and I have made many mistakes, but because we are also willing to sacrifice, after five years have reached the level of preparedness WTSHTF! In fact, it is best to get to a prepared lifestyle so WTSHTF, such events are just a mere bump in the road for your family.

With my parents we purchased 110 acres of fertile land, with two running streams, a spring, and two ponds 100 miles away from the nearest “Metro Mess”. There are several vibrant and viable little towns within driving or even walking distance for that matter. These towns are very close knit and some would call them “clannish” because everyone seems to be related to everyone else. We bought the land 10 years ago, but starting living on it full time 5 years ago.

Most people would think this is the perfect setup. We think it is, however, please allow me the opportunity to expand on what I mean “Practicing what you preach” because our journey to where we are today did not come by just planning, but by doing.

1. The Land - Pros: Good land, sandy loam, available water. Cons: Just as the veggies like the soil, so do the weeds! If we do not pull weeds everyday, they seem to come back double within the week. Additionally, despite all the attractive pictures on the veggie packets and promises that they will grow, I have learned what will grow in my particular location and what will not grow. Although we live in zone 7, in my particular location it is not uncommon to have a late hard killing freeze the end of April. I still have fruit trees, but lost all of the fruit this year. I also know what types of vegetables will grow and which ones will not. This was not learned by planning to do it in the future when it is necessary, but over a trial and error five-year period. Is this a process that one wants to learn when one really needs it, or instead by practicing what you intend to do, so that you are up to speed when the time comes as disaster strikes? It means having on hand all the tools and supplies needed, and this was only learned by doing before hand.

2. The Livestock - Pros: A ready food source or beasts of burden. Cons: They are reliant on you for their well being. Chickens get eaten by varmints or neighbors dogs if one is not careful, animals need daily care—whether from you, or someone else if you are away for a time—they get sick and hurt, get into a neighbor’s pasture, etc. If you plan to eat chickens for example, then you must learn how to kill them and dress them properly. Believe me, all these things are not something one needs to learn when it is truly necessary, but is only learned by doing before hand.

3. The Farmstead and accompanying equipment—Pros: This goes without saying. Cons: If one is not a handyman, or DIY, then learn anyway you can! Metal roofs blow off, water well pumps stop working, trees fall on things that they are not supposed to, wild fires and floods, etc. It is just not a matter of “Calling someone” to fix these things because out in rural areas, it is assumed that everyone knows how to take care of these things. One can only know what tools they will need for their particular situation by practicing and experimenting—remember an electric dehydrator for preserving food, or a wide screen tv will not be useful when there is no electricity. Our family got rid of cable/satellite tv (no time to watch it other than a rental movie every once in a while) but, we still have satellite Internet service—the best source for alternative news like SurvivalBlog. I am learning to can with a pressure cooker and preserve food that we grow. All these things are learned by doing.

4. The Job—My husband and I both had jobs in the city when we bought our land. Before we moved from the Metro Mess, we scaled back and paid off as much debt as possible, and saved as much as possible. When we finally moved to our land we commuted to our jobs for three years, 1,000 miles a week. That meant going to bed promptly at 9 p.m. in order to get up at 3:30 to feed the animals and be on the road by 5 a.m. for our 200 mile round-trip trek. My husband retired to work on the farm full time, and as soon as I was able, I found a teaching job in one of the small towns. I taught for two years in this position, but now our homestead is able to generate enough income, plus what we have saved, for me to resign my teaching position. Is this difficult to do? Yes, it takes sacrifice and ignoring the naysayers who may think that you are a little crazy. But again, sacrifice is only gained by doing.

Now, as I stated earlier, I know that there are many people out there that do not have a choice, and are doing the best that they can to prepare and I pray for you. However, I also know that there are just as many people who are unwilling to work hard and sacrifice so when the time comes, they will be scrambling to get themselves in a better plan, and with possible dire results. Please, if at all possible, try to get to your ultimate retreat before you really need it. Learn not by planning, but by doing and Practicing What You Preach! God Bless, - SHM

I have been a follower of your blog for a couple of years now and find it to be the best source of self-sufficiency information on the Web. You and your readers have provided me with a wealth of information that would have otherwise taken a lifetime to research on my own. –and for that, I thank you and all those who took the time to contribute.

While the plethora of advice handed out on a daily basis is extremely helpful, the one thing that I have found to be sparse is the first hand accounts of failure. A wise mentor once told me that no one learns from “trial and right,” and he was correct, the best way to learn is by “trial and error.” Unfortunately, I have had my fill of error lately.

Thus, I thought I would share all the things that went wrong over the past year and a half as my family attempted to develop a retreat for a bug out location in the country (we live in the city) with two other families. I hope this helps others who may find themselves in a similar situation.

The main problems encountered:

1. Although the adults agreed to the general goal of developing a self-sufficient retreat and the various components that would be required to sufficiently make the property a true bug out location, each had different ideas on the sense of urgency, priorities, responsibilities, and methods of doing things. This resulted in a tremendous waste of time and resources; numerous projects started, but never finished, or simply not done well. Failures outnumbered successes 10:1.

2. The young adult children of one family did not contribute and were allowed to not contribute. When the parents were confronted, they reassured us, “we will talk to them.” The “talk” never happened. This led to a significant level of resentment by the children of the other two families.

3. Dogs of one family were poorly trained and supervised. The owners did nothing to remedy the problems encountered. These dogs dug up fresh plantings on several occasions and set us back an entire season. Much worse, when the gate to the chicken coup was not shut properly one day, the chickens got out and the dogs killed most of them just when they were beginning to lay well. This set us back eight months.

4. Two families did not live at the retreat full time and were only able to tend to the property and garden on weekends. We learned the hard way that there is simply not enough hours in a week to work full time, raise children, and tend to a second property on weekends. The result was severe burn out by those of us living in the city, and a one year backlog on projects for our city homes. Life doesn’t stop just because you decide to develop a retreat.

5. Only one family took firearms seriously, taking all of the advice one can read on your blog and not only taking professional training, but practicing on a regular basis to master each and every firearm by every member of the family. Another family bought a shotgun and a box of ammo, which was promptly parked in a closet, and the third family has yet to get around to it. The main issue here is that these latter two are not the folks I want watching my back in a SHTF scenario.

6. One family thought they could “buy survival.” When the going got tough, they would offer to pay for equipment and supplies instead of showing up and getting their hands dirty. This is also the family that sincerely believes that having all the stuff (solar oven, camp washer, propane stove, cases of Mountain House[long term storage food], Berkey water filter, etc.) means they are prepared. This resulted in resentment by the two families that did most of the hard labor.

7. Only one of the families actually accumulated two years worth of food & supplies (the agreed upon goal for each family), the other two families have six months or less. This was the last straw for me as it became apparent that the other families expected to survive off the one, if they ran out.

By now you can guess which of the families described is mine. After a year and a half of spending each and every weekend in the dirt, working from sun up to sun down, we just up and quit being part of the retreat a couple of weeks ago. No amount of discussion and compromise could rectify the problems we encountered, and I have no words for the extreme frustration we felt and still feel. It has been a real learning experience as these other families are not strangers; we have been close friends for over 20 years.

Our investment of sweat, time, and money yielded us with only the experience of our trials, and we are right back where we started from, living in the city with a very small garden, wondering what to do next.

In hindsight, we should have:

1. Developed a project plan that listed all of the projects, broken down by tasks, assigned priorities, and most importantly, had sufficient resources allocated to them.

2. Defined up front who does what, when & how, and who pays for what. It should also include consequences for failure to live up to expectations.

3. Agreed upon a code of conduct with everyone pledging to uphold it. Even to the point of having everyone sign a symbolic contract.

4. Had a formal schedule with built in breaks (rotating weekends off or something).

5. Had everyone on the same page as to the sense of urgency. Nothing gets done if everyone has different ideas of how important what you’re doing is.

Lastly, the most important lesson learned. Preparedness doesn’t come in a box. It comes from hard work, from getting your hands dirty, and teaching yourself new skills. There’s a lot of trial and error and the important thing is to not give up even when everyone around you is letting you down. Preparedness comes from time. Time learning and practicing. While this experience has been a complete failure, at least we learned what not to do as we plan out our next attempt.

Thank the Lord that my family still believes in me and what we need to do. Wish us luck. - KJ

One of my readers sent me this news item from southwestern England: Announcing the Release of ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’. That got me thinking. Perhaps they can feed themselves. But if things fall apart, how can they feed the Golden Horde from Bristol, Bournemouth, Plymouth, Poole, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Bath, Exeter, Swindon, Torbay, and the other cities of southern England? And let's not forget greater London. Most of those city dwellers will want to head for "the countryside", but how many urban refugees can the small towns absorb?

Parenthetically, I'll mention that the Rawles family name originated from southwest England, not too far from Totnes. (Well, actually a bit farther west, in eastern Cornwall.) My progenitor left England around 1700, in part because he considered it "crowded." That was when the nation's population was under 6 million people. It is now more than 51 million. (To give American readers a sense of scale: That is roughly the combined population of California and New York, but all shoehorned into an area the size of the state of Alabama. Yikes! That does not provide a great prospect for self-sufficiency--especially if sans grid power. I wonder what my gr.gr.gr.gr.gr.grandfather John William Rawles would have thought about the modern-day self-sufficiency conjecture in Devonshire? He'd probably advise being on a tall ship on the next tide.

There are several thousand SurvivalBlog readers in England. My advice for any of you that are genuinely concerned about preparedness and self-sufficiency: Take the Gap. As I've just illustrated, the demographics are against you. The climate is also against you. (It is a cold, wet climate.) The gun and knife laws are increasingly against you. So face it: Your chances of surviving a grid-down collapse are quite slim in England. If anything, the nation is a prime candidate for a tremendous die-off, possibly to pre-1700 level population levels. (That would be a self-sufficient population level!)

Even if you live way out near the Brecon Beacons or in the Yorkshire Dales and have James Herriott's family for your next door neighbors, there just isn't enough "countryside" to go around. In a true "worst case", every town and village will get mobbed by the yobs. My advice is straightforward and perhaps a bit blunt: You should emigrate to a lightly-populated corner of the United States, New Zealand, or perhaps Belize, as soon as possible. By doing so, you'll dramatically increase your family's chances of survival, and you'll also enjoy greater personal liberty.

The Peak Oil crowd--both in the US and in the UK--is well-intentioned, intelligent, and articulate. It is also sadly predominated by folks that are hopelessly naive. It is all well and good to talk about farmer's markets, sustainable agriculture, green technology, and kumbaya. But we live in the real world, where if the lights go out, it won't take too long for people to get hungry and start hunting two-legged big game. And in England, where there are few guns, and the few there are predominantly owned illegally by gangsters rather han legally owned by the good folk. So the self-defense equation will come down to nothing but brute force. Take my advice and take the gap!

JWR:
For those who are planning to wash clothes in case of power outage or loss of delivered water I have two suggestions.

First is the wringer to get excess water out of washed clothes. Use an industrial mop wringer, such as the kind available through Lowe's stores. It is made of heavy duty industrial plastic, and, of course, is dual use. Wring out your mops or your clothes. It is less expensive than a traditional roller type wringer.

Second, for washing clothes in small batches you might consider a foot moved (adapted to hand crank on rollers) drum cement mixer of the kind marketed by Sportsman's Guide. It is made of poly plastic and is easily cleaned. Once again, it is a dual use item. Mix your cement (60 lb. sack capable) or in an emergency use it as a clothes washer. Due to its tight seal it could also be used as a storage container if need be, instead of a five gallon bucket. If you choose, you could get multiple buckets for storage use and then after the manure hits the spreader, when the drums are empty, use them as barter items.

One final item: Sealable plastic drums with removable tops of the 55 gallon variety are a good way to store sacks of cement and keep them dry until they are needed. Bag each cement sack in heavy duty plastic bags before storage, as a "just in case", so that if one bursts it does not make a mess. Plastic drums used for soap --like that used by car washes (or auto dealers)--can sometimes be purchased fairly cheaply from the car wash owner. (They have a return fee to the distributor of between $10 and $20.) These type of drums have two small caps in the top and are easily cleaned and reused to collect runoff water for gardening, toilet flushing, or could be adapted for use as mini-septic tanks with exit holes drilled on one third of a side (properly called vaults) or cut a hole in the bottom, install a toilet seat and use it for an outhouse (but don't forget to cut out the top and set it on a base layer of large gravel prior to use).

Just a few thoughts for the "adapt, reuse and recycle" minded. - Bob W., in West Virginia

Influenza Pandemic Update:

1918 & 2009 H1N1 Similarities Confirm Recombination "...the growing list of similarities between 2009 pandemic H1N1 and 1918 pandemic H1N1 continues to cause concern."

UK: Swine Flu Vaccine to be Cleared After 5-Day Trial (How can they eliminate the risk of pathogenicity so quickly? Your Editor is dubious.)

WHO Says Health Workers Priority for H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine

In descending order of frequency, the 78 readers that responded to my latest survey recommended the following non-fiction books on preparedness, self-sufficiency, and practical skills:

The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery (Far and away the most often-mentioned book. This book is an absolute "must" for every well-prepared family!)

The Foxfire Book series (in 11 volumes, but IMHO, the first five are the best)

Holy Bible

Where There Is No Dentist by Murray Dickson

"Rawles on Retreats and Relocation"

Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook by James Talmage Stevens

The "Rawles Gets You Ready" preparedness course

Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival by Jack A. Spigarelli

Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times by Steve Solomon

Tappan on Survival by Mel Tappan

Boston's Gun Bible by Boston T. Party

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners by Suzanne Ashworth

Survival Guns by Mel Tappan

Boy Scouts Handbook: The First Edition, 1911 (Most readers recommend getting pre-1970 editions.)

All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew

When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency by Matthew Stein 

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition by Abigail R. Gehring

Preparedness Now!: An Emergency Survival Guide (Expanded and Revised Edition) by Aton Edwards

Putting Food By by Janet Greene

First Aid (American Red Cross Handbook) Responding To Emergencies

Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook by James Talmage Stevens

Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson H. Kearney (Available for free download.)

Cookin' with Home Storage by Vicki Tate

SAS Survival Handbookby John "Lofty" Wiseman

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables by Mike Bubel

Outdoor Survival Skills by Larry Dean Olsen

Stocking Up: The Third Edition of America's Classic Preserving Guide by Carol Hupping

The American Boy's Handybook of Camp Lore and Woodcraft

Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook by Peggy Layton

98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive by Cody Lundin

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners by Suzanne Ashworth

Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life by Neil Strauss

Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management by Maurice G. Kains

Essential Bushcraft by Ray Mears

The Survivor book series by Kurt Saxon. Many are out of print in hard copy, but they are all available on DVD. Here, I must issue a caveat lector ("reader beware"): Mr. Saxon has some very controversial views that I do not agree with. Among other things he is a eugenicist.

How to Stay Alive in the Woods by Bradford Angier

The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman

Tom Brown Jr.'s series of books, especially:

Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival

Tom Brown's Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking

Tom Brown's Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants (Field Guide)  

Total Resistance by H. von Dach

Ditch Medicine: Advanced Field Procedures For Emergencies by Hugh Coffee

Living Well on Practically Nothing by Ed Romney

The Secure Home by Joel Skousen

Outdoor Survival Skills by Larry Dean Olsen

When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikesby Cody Lundin

The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO's Contribution to Warfareby John Poole.

Camping & Wilderness Survival: The Ultimate Outdoors Book by Paul Tawrell

Engineer Field Data (US Army FM 5-34) --Available online free of charge, with registration, but I recommend getting a hard copy. preferably with the heavy-duty plastic binding.

Great Livin' in Grubby Times by Don Paul

Just in Case by Kathy Harrison

Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson H. Kearney (Available for free download.)

How to Survive Anything, Anywhere: A Handbook of Survival Skills for Every Scenario and Environment by Chris McNab

Storey's Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance by John & Martha Storey

Adventure Medical Kits A Comprehensive Guide to Wilderness & Travel Medicineby Eric A. Weiss, M.D.

Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening: The Indispensable Green Resource for Every Gardener  

Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook (superceded the very out-of-date ST 31-91B)

Wilderness Medicine, 5th Edition by Paul S. Auerbach

Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Longby Elliot Coleman

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition by Abigail R. Gehring

Government By Emergency by Dr. Gary North

The Weed Cookbook: Naturally Nutritious - Yours Free for the Taking! by Adrienne Crowhurst

The Modern Survival Retreat by Ragnar Benson

Last of the Mountain Men by Harold Peterson

Primitive Wilderness Living & Survival Skills: Naked into the Wilderness by John McPherson

LDS Preparedness Manual, edited by Christopher M. Parrett

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James H. Kunstler

Principles of Personal Defense - Revised Edition by Jeff Cooper.

Survival Poaching by Ragnar Benson

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses by Eliot Coleman

In a recent phone conversation with one of my consulting clients, I was asked why I placed such a large emphasis on living in the country, at a relatively self-sufficient retreat. I've already discussed at length the security advantages of isolation from major population centers in the blog, but I realized that I've never fully articulated the importance of self-sufficiency, at a fundamental level.

In a societal collapse, where you are in "You're on Your Own" (YOYO) mode, it will be very important to be a net producer of water, food, and energy. This will mean the difference between being someone that is comfortable and well fed, and someone that is shivering, hungry, and thirsty, in the dark.

If you were to create computer models of a typical suburban home as compared to a small farm, they would probably present two very different pictures:

A typical suburban home is an energy pit. It generates hardly energy other than a bit of garden waste that could be used as compost, or fuel. A farm house on acreage, in contrast, can often be a net producer, especially if the farm includes a wood lot. (Standing timber that is suitable for use as firewood.) Properties with near-surface geothermal heat, coal seams, or natural gas wells are scarce, but not unheard of. I've helped several of my clients find such properties. For some further food for thought, see this article by Lester Brown over at The Oil Drum web site: The Oil Intensity of Food

A typical suburban home is a food pit. Just picture how many bags of groceries you tote home each week, month, and year. Compare than with the net volume of food produced by a small farm, or the meat produced by ranch. (For the latter, a ranch that is large enough to produce its own hay and grain is ideal.)

A typical suburban home is also a water pit, dependent on utility-piped water. But with a spring, or with well water and a photovoltaic or wind-powered pump, you can be a water exporter--charitably providing surplus water to your neighbors.

There are are of course some work-arounds for these limitations, such as installing photovoltaic power systems and rainwater catchments cisterns. But it is nearly impossible for a family to be a net producer of water, food, and energy, when living on just a small city lot.

Consider the inherent limitations of life on a "postage stamp" lot:

Limited acreage means that your house will always be a net importer of home heating fuel. Unless you live on acreage where you have a wood lot for firewood, you'll end up on the wrong side of the production-consumption equation. Photovoltaics are practical for lighting and running some appliances, but the big energy loads like space heating, hot water, and kitchen range cooking exceed what PV panels can produce, unless you are a millionaire. Yes, there are substitute energy sources, but most of those--such as propane-but those-are also "imported." Hmm... Perhaps it is worth the extra time and effort to find a retreat property that has a natural gas well, a coal seam or that is in a geothermal zone. At least buy a property with a wood lot, so you can heat your home and water with firewood.

Limited acreage and a location inside limits usually means restrictions on raising livestock. You might find a property that has been exempted or "grandfathered", but without the room required to grow animal feed crops, you will still be a net importer. (You will be forced to buy hay and grain, rather than grow it yourself.)

In many jurisdictions, it is illegal to have a private water well in a neighborhood that is served by a public water utility. This usually has more to do with maintaining a monopoly, rather than any genuine worries about a public health issue. There are of course exceptions, such as older houses with wells, that pre-dated the advent of a water utility. In many jurisdictions, the owners of these wells benefit from grandfather clauses. If buying such a property, make sure that the grandfather clause exemption is transferable. (Otherwise, you will have to cap the water well.)

One of the great ironies of urbanized life in modern-day America is that there has been a great inversion. In 1909, it was dirt poor farmers that lived on acreage, while wealthy people lived on city lots. But now, in 2009, owning acreage is something that most people only dream of, for retirement. In the more populous coastal states, the price per acre of land that is within commuting distance of high-paying jobs has been driven up to astronomical prices.

Have you ever stopped to think why there are large Victorian-style houses falling into disrepair in some Inner City ghettos? This is because at one time, those neighborhoods are where rich people lived. They were nice, safe neighborhoods, and were conveniently close to work, shopping, and schools. But times (and neighborhoods) change. These days, most of the wealthy have long-since moved to suburbs or to the country.

If you decide that you must stay in the suburbs, then I recommend that you at least relocate to a stout masonry house that is on the largest lot that you can afford. When you search through real estate listings, some key phrases to watch for are "creek", "grandfathered", "mature fruit trees" (or "orchard"), "secluded", and "well water." Another key word to watch for is "adjoins". It is advantageous to own a property that adjoins park land.

As I've often written, I recommend moving to a house on acreage in the country--that is if you can afford it, and your work and family situations allow it. But I'll close with one admonition: Don't bite off more than you can chew. There is no point on living on acreage if you have a large mortgage, and no working capital remaining to build up the infrastructure for genuine self-sufficiency. In fact, that would be "the worst of both worlds", since you would have higher commuting costs, a bigger mortgage, and perhaps even a bigger annual tax bill. Owning non-productive land may be worse than owning no land at all.

This article could also be titled: "How to Convince Friends and Family to Prepare for Economic Collapse." One of the greatest problems for the prepper is getting family and friends on board without alienating them or terrifying them into inaction. With this article, I hope to use my experience to show you how to gently and persuasively warn friends and family about the coming economic crisis. I have used this approach with several people and found it to be successful.

I am writing this article now because I believe that now is the time to approach your sheeple about prepping if you have not done so already. More and more people are noticing that something is wrong with our economy, and many of them are probably ready to hear about preparedness, but only if you approach them from the right direction. My goal is to help you find a good approach.

Why should you listen to me? Well, in my previous job, I was a corporate educator at a large mortgage bank. I learned two things from that job: how to watch my income spiral down into oblivion along with the entire mortgage industry, and how to explain complex concepts in simple ways. You don’t need my help to watch your income spiral into oblivion, so instead I will teach you how to explain complex concepts.

Before we get started, let’s emphasize a few basic rules that educators follow. I will elaborate on these rules in this article, and then I will show you how to put them into practice.

Three Basic Rules of Persuasion
Rule 1: Take it slow.
Rule 2: Keep it simple and sane (KISS).
Rule 3: Relate it back to their lives.

Now let's expand these concepts a little bit.

Rule 1: TAKE IT SLOW
Are you sure that you want to have this conversation? There are schools of thought that say you should never mention your preps to anyone. Think this through carefully; otherwise you may have 45 family members knocking on your door next winter. I considered this before mentioning it to anyone; however, I don't think life is worth living if everyone I love dies, especially if I could have warned them. Besides, my nearest relative lives a five hour drive away from me. They'll have a long walk to pester me.

Define your audience. Think ahead and focus your efforts on the most level-headed, trustworthy, "solid" people that you know. This has several purposes. First of all, such people are more likely to listen to you and believe you. Secondly, other people will trust that person; once you persuade them,so they can subsequently persuade two or three other people.

Establish essential concepts and build on them. That's how adults learn. You see it in this very article; I have given you three simple rules and now I am expanding on them.

Rule 2: KEEP IT SIMPLE AND SANE (KISS)
Don't expect too much, too fast. Remember, that some folks' idea of "preparing" is to buy an extra six-pack on Saturday because the liquor stores are closed on Sundays. Take it easy; my experience is that prepping is a daunting task to most people and if you give them too much information you will spook them. Once they're spooked, it's hard to get them to listen at all.

Climb down from the crazy tree. No, I am not saying that you are crazy for being a prepper. I am saying that most people think that preppers are crazy. Your goal here is to persuade and convince. I would never have convinced my auntie successfully if I had mentioned my gas masks or my plans for a fallout shelter. Keeping your mouth shut about these things is also good OPSEC. Your goal is to sound just a little bit more prepared than them: "Terry and I bought a few cans extra cans of Spaghetti-Os last week..."

Keep language plain and simple. Imagine that you're explaining all this to a 12-year-old. Use simple words and concepts. Adults learn better that way. Complicated language makes them feel threatened, and they tune it out.

Keep concepts plain and simple, too. The novice trainer’s most common mistake is to dump a bunch of information on the learner and believe that “since they heard it, they know it.” That’s not how adults learn. We learn through repetition of basic concepts.

Rule 3: WITH A RELATION
Relate it to their life, not yours. Imagine that you go on two blind dates. The first person talks about themselves non-stop all through dinner. You can barely get a word in edgewise. The second person engages you in interesting conversation and hangs on your every word. Which person do you call back?

You call back the person that talks with you, not at you. The same is true in persuasion. You are telling them these things because you love them. Listen closely to how they respond, like the loving person that you are.

Use concrete examples that matter to them. Which of these two approaches is more captivating?
“A loaf of bread might cost you $20 next fall.”

or,

“The Federal Reserve was established in 1913, as the central banking authority of the United States. The Federal Reserve is a monopolistic cartel of bankers, and they established a new kind of currency called fiat currency, which is unconstitutional. Now, fiat currency is basically just paper backed up by law. It doesn’t mean anything…”

Obviously, the short sentence that relates to their life is better than the ten-minute history lecture on something they barely understand and don’t care about.


Now Let’s Practice.
With these rules in mind, practice a typical conversation. I have provided a script below, but in reality you don’t want a one-sided script; you want a conversation. Talk with them, not at them.

Also, notice that each part of the conversation is related to one of our three rules.

Rule 1: START SLOW...

Start with Pleasantries. (This establishes a sense of ease and rapport.) "Hi Aunt Bea, it's been awhile since we talked. Yes, Terry and I are doing well. We went hiking last weekend and really enjoyed it. How are things in Mayberry?"

Explain why you are calling them. (This gets their attention and prepares them for what's next.) "I'm calling you because I have something serious to talk about, and I know you're level-headed and you're likely to listen to me."

Establish your credibility. (Adults want to know why they are listening to you. Who are you, anyway?) "As you know, I was laid off from that big mortgage bank awhile back, and when the bank started having trouble I started paying really close attention to the financial blogs. I've been reading them for awhile..."

Establish the credibility of your sources. "... and I've been starting to see some news leak into the mainstream financial press, such as Yahoo Finance..." (This is true.)

Rule 2: KISS...
Explain the problem. Keep it simple and keep your language sane.
"A lot of credible sources are saying that there may be rapid inflation starting this fall. Nobody knows for sure, but it could be a little or it could be very high.It might take $100 just buy a loaf of bread. There are also rumors of a possible bank holiday this fall. The phrase 'bank holiday' is really a misnomer. It's when they close the banks for a few days or a few weeks, and you can't withdraw cash to buy food and pay bills. They might do it if they needed to fix a problem with the banking system. This is harder to confirm than the inflation, but I think it's wise to prepare for the possibility."

Let’s analyze the above paragraph using our KISS rule.
I kept it to two main points. There are a million things to prepare for; you need to decide what the most convincing, urgent, easily-prepped-for problem is and stick to it. I chose economic collapse because it’s in the news right now, and it gets people’s attention.
I kept my language approachable, and when there was a new term I explained it simply. I didn’t mention any off-the-wall theories or rants about the Federal Reserve. The bank holiday is a rumor but well within the realm of possibility; but I emphasize that the inflation is NOT a rumor. It is a credible possibility being discussed in mainstream financial publications.
I didn't just say "There's going to be an economic collapse." I gave them a concrete example (the $100 bread loaf) that would relate to their lives. And speaking of relating it to their lives…

Rule 3: RELATE...
Suggest some ways to prepare. "There are things you can do to prepare for this, Aunt Bea, and it doesn't have to be really complicated. You can take some money out of the bank, and that's good to have on hand anyway in case of emergencies like earthquakes. I recommend keeping about a month's worth of cash on hand, if you can. You can also buy some of those old quarters and dimes... you know, from before 1965, when they used to make them out of silver. [Take a little time here to explain why junk silver is good in times of inflation. Rawles has some great articles. Also explain that it can be purchased at local coin shops, and explain the current cost.] And of course, since food will get more expensive later, it might not hurt to buy a little extra food now."

Take a moment to consider: Why would you start by talking about cash, then talk about silver, then talk about food?
First of all, these are all simple, non-threatening recommendations that anyone can follow. You want to start with the easiest step and go from there. Let's go back to our three rules:
Slow:
Start slow by talking about the cash first, because everyone knows how to get money from the bank.
KISS:
Talk about silver next, because you can emphasize that they can keep it simple and spend just a few dollars, if they want. (In other words, right now they can buy one silver dime for about $1.50.) If you explain it well, this idea is unthreatening and easy to do. It's also "more sane" than telling them to buy gold because many people are familiar with the old silver coins.
Relate:
Mention the food last because to some people in your audience, stocking up on food immediately rings the “crazy survivalist” bell. It's good to put it in context of a wise financial decision related to the other steps they’re taking.

Ask them to talk to their family. This relates the whole conversation back to their lives. It makes them feel less alone, and it impresses on them that we're all in this together, etc. It's also the charitable thing to do. The more people that prepare, the better. I have also used this moment to ask them to help me persuade others (my mom, my grandparents, etc) since two voices are more credible than one.

Thank them. This lightens up the conversation and makes it sane. "Thanks for listening to me about this. I'm sorry to bring up all this gloom and doom. I just really care about you guys."

Continue the conversation according to your audience. Tailor your spiel to the person you’re talking to. Think back to the three rules that I mentioned earlier (slow; KISS; relate). Below are profiles of three of my favorite aunties. How would you apply those rules to your conversation with them?

Auntie A is threatened by the idea of prepping. She will barely talk about it.

Auntie B says she has a gun, and she also says she wants to start a garden.

Auntie C lives in a big, dangerous city and she will not move (cannot afford to and has lived there all her life). However, she is otherwise on board and even excited that someone finally mentioned it, and she’d like to read some online articles. She’s worried about her antiques business in this economy.

Take a moment to think about your approach, and then read on to learn how I approached each of my aunties.

With Auntie A, I took it slow. I will be lucky if she will buy a week's worth of spaghetti; I didn't push her any further than the script above. I moved on to talk about the weather or whatever. I can always talk to her about it again later.

With Auntie B, I followed the KISS rule. I suggested getting a little extra ammo for her gun and enough seeds for her garden. These are simple things that she can do tomorrow, and they’re not that scary. I did not say outright that ammo and seeds will be unavailable after the collapse, because that sounds insane.

With Auntie C, I related it back to her life. Since she's web-savvy, I pointed her to a web site that discusses prepping to live in the city during an economic collapse (FerFAL's web site). (To “keep it sane” I mentioned that his site is "geared toward American survivalists" and “I don’t like reading it because it’s scary” but "if you can get past all that, it's worth looking at.") Because she mentioned that her antiques business will probably not prosper, I also pointed her to posts about how people make money in the city in hard times

In conclusion...

This can be the only conversation you have with your loved ones, or it can be the first in a series. However you approach it, remember these proverbs:
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." and, "A prophet has no honor in his own country."

In other words, no matter how simply and gently you explain the coming collapse, there will be some that prepare and some that won't. You don't have any control over that. Your only duty is to try to gently persuade them in a way that they can understand.

Final quiz: What are the three basic rules of persuasion?

The Memsahib Adds: Before approaching a relative or friend with the topic of preparedness, consider: Is there some aspect of prepping that would fulfill one of their long-held desires, or perhaps even a childhood fantasy? Have they always wanted to own a horse? Be a master chef? Live like a Native American? Live off the land like a Mountain Man? Be a doctor? Be an herbal medicinalist? Be an explorer? Be a teacher? Own a large acreage? Be a park ranger? Sail the seven seas? Be a philanthropist? Be a missionary? There are aspects of preparedness that can fit into all of these desires. So, in effect, you can make prepping fun and fulfilling for them. When I was growing up, I always loved baby lambs and wanted to own sheep. I was also disappointed that I didn't grow up on a farm, as my mother had. (I was raised in the suburbs.) Our path to preparedness was a great excuse to buy some acreage, and raise a flock of sheep. This led to buying spinning wheels and a loom, learning how to card, spin and dye wool, learning how to knit, how to felt wool, raising angora rabbits, and raising angora goats. This in turn eventually led to us getting dairy goats, and later a dairy cow. So all of this fulfilled a childhood fantasy of having my own farm. Thus, prepping felt rewarding, and in no way did I feel threatened or did it seem like I was living under a dark storm cloud. When I served my first loaf of bread that I had made with eggs from my chickens, and wheat that I had sown and later hand-ground, the rooster in our barnyard couldn't crow any louder than I could! My grandmother would have been proud of me. Talk about heavy gravitas, when bringing such loaves to a church potluck! (But even just brining muffins with berries that you grew yourself, or picked out in the wild can give the same sense of accomplishment.) It was much the same for me when I finished making my first sweater with wool from sheep that I had helped deliver. I had shorn the wool, carded it, dyed it, spun it and knitted it--bringing the sweater all to its final form. What a lot of work, but what great fun!

My favorite way to introduce this topic to other women is through teaching "heritage crafts". The homemaking skills of our pioneer ancestors are something that most women--even city women--can relate to. Whether it is canning, gardening, small livestock, sewing, cooking, baking, knitting, leather-working, candle making, soap-making , et cetera. I have done all of these, and and have enjoyed passing on these skills to neighbors, friends, and even my nieces and nephews. Perhaps your local church, 4H club, scout troop, PTA, homeschooling club, or public school would be open to having you teach a class or put on a demonstration.

I found that the more I learned about one preparedness topic, the more that I wanted to learn about related topics. For example, when I was raising rabbits, it was fun learning how many different ways I could prepare rabbit meat dishes. And when I was dairying, it was fun to branch out into making yogurt, soft cheese, and milk soap. With God's providential guiding hand, your friends will each find a special preparedness niche, that will benefit their families, and in turn get them excited about many more aspects of preparedness.

A note to husbands, fathers, brothers, and uncles: Please do not alienate your female friends and relatives from preparedness by "assigning" them a prepping specialty. Instead, let them pick their own, to suit their particular disposition and interests. By letting women choose our own areas of expertise, it gives us the feeling of being in control of our lives in an uncertain world. Encourage and nurture their interests, but don't dictate them!

Part of getting prepared is recognizing the fact that some aspects of preparedness are more "fun" than others. And, correspondingly, what constitutes "fun" for one individual is not necessarily considered fun by another. How many men wouldn't blink an eye at buying a $700 SIG or a $1,500 FAL, but get anxious about "the expense" when they see their wives looking through a Louet or LeClerc catalog? What is needed is a well-rounded approach to gathering logistics, tools, and skills. There is much more to preparedness than just "guns and groceries." Get prepared, but don't obsess over all the gloom-n-doom "what ifs?" You should instead take a well-rounded approach that will provide a family with educational activities and lots of fun, all while actively learning, preparing, and cross-training. One way to ease your spouse into a preparedness mindset is by encouraging her to get involved with a the local fiber guild, 4H club, or farmer's market co-op.

Tall Sally is absolutely right about going slowly. Get your friends and relatives into preparedness one small step at a time. Encourage them to get prepared, by playing off of their pre-existing interests, fantasies, and hobbies.

James,
I know that I have seen posts about deep water wells, but when I search I really don't see that many applicable posts. I am looking at a property where water [static level] is about 400 feet down. In a "grid-up" scenario, this isn't really a problem, but I am looking for "grid-down" options for using a well at this depth. Not knowing much about the specifics of wells, I am not having much luck searching with Google, either. Would you be able to cover some deep well basics and some options for grid down/solar/backup pumping, specifically for deep wells?

Thanks so much for the blog. I have been an avid reader (pretty much daily) for two years and have several copies of your book to loan out to friends. - John C.

JWR Replies: As per your request, here are a few deep well basics:

Solar and wind power are the best solutions for deep wells in a grid-down collapse. If you live in an area with reliable winds, a windmill used in conjunction with a large gravity-fed tank or cistern, is relatively inexpensive and trouble-free. Photovoltaics are getting less expensive with each passing year, but system complexity is an issue, especially with systems that use a battery bank. (To maintain water pressure during hours of darkness, you will either need to store water in a gravity-fed cistern, or you will need a battery bank, so that you can operate your well pump. )

Deep wells can be pumped with submersible AC pumps, but not submersible DC pumps. This is because the "line loss" (voltage drop) in DC cabling is tremendous. Even with fat, heavy gauge DC cables, if you start out with 24 Volts DC (VDC) at your battery bank, you will likely be down to just two or three volts at 400 feet! Given that sad fact, there are two good solutions:

1.) Use a DC-to-AC inverter top-side, and run AC cabling down the well shaft to an AC well pump. (Note: Many of these pumps require 220 VAC, so you will either have to use a much more expensive 220-capable inverter, or replace the pump with a 120 VAC model. (You may be an electrical neophyte, and asking "What type of pump do I have?" Take a quick look at your AC circuit breaker box. If the breaker labeled "Well Pump" is a pair of breakers that are ganged-together with a wire loop so that they'll be actuated simultaneously, then the chances are 99% that you have a 220 VAC pump.)

or,

2.) Install a jack ("cricket") type pump or a windmill to actuate the sucker rod pump cylinder. Traditionally, sucker rods were made from hardwoods such as white ash. More recently they've been made with metal or fiberglass. Even with ash wood, their service life is measured in decades. The pump cylinders are made of brass and will last many decades. However, the pump leathers will eventually wear out, so you should consider buying a couple of spare sets and storing them someplace safe from mice and moisture/mold. Unfortunately changing all of the leathers on a down-hole sucker-rod actuated pump means yanking the entire sucker rod and then the weight of all 400 feet of your service line. That is a lot of weight, requiring a heavy duty hoist and of course all the usual "mind your head, fingers and toes" safety precautions and protective gear. Lifting a 1-1/2" or 2" diameter 400 foot long pipe is no problem for a pump company, but it would be a challenge for a typical rural family working with an improvised hoist. I recommend that you watch your pump company man carefully as he installs the pump in your well for the first time. You will notice that the crucial piece required is the flange that catches the pipe unions on each 20+ foot long section of service line pipe as they are raised or lowered in the well casing.

I've previously owned a jack type pump, and in my experience I found them problematic. I would much rather use an AC submersible pump.

Shallow wells (say, 50 feet or less) can be pumped with a DC submersible pump. I generally advise my consulting clients to "hang" both an AC pump and and a DC pump, one above the other in the same well casing, for the sake of versatility an redundancy.

Getting any dairy animals is a very big commitment. However, I believe that they are a valuable part of your livestock preparedness. Even more importantly I believe goats are the best dairy animals for the survivalist.

Here are my reasons to recommend goats over cows for a survival situation:

1. A dairy goat is about one fifth the cost of a dairy cow.

2. Five goats can be fed one the same amount it takes to feed one cow.

3. If your your one cow dies you are out of luck. But the odds of losing all your goats is small.

4. Goats browse rather than graze and can make use of a wider variety of forage.

5. Goats are easier to handle

6. Because of their smaller size, goats are less likely to cause injuries or damage fences. Getting stepped on by a goat is trivial. Getting stepped on by a cow is not.

The downside is that it will take more time to milk five goats than to milk one cow. You'll have to get five animals in and out of the stanchion, Wash five udders, milk five does (female goats), strip five udders, etc. But I really believe that the benefits of having the insurance of multiple dairy animals far outweighs the extra effort.

The main drawback is that the cream does not separate readily in goats milk so that you will not be able to skim the cream off. And therefore you will not be able to make butter. On the other hand, goat milk is much easier to digest, and many people who cannot drink cow's milk can drink goats milk. And of course you can use goat's milk to make yogurt, cream cheese, hard cheese, and ice cream, as well as use it in recipes just like cows milk.

As I mentioned earlier dairy animals are a big commitment. This is because they are traditionally milked twice a day, at the same time every day. Perhaps your current schedule doesn't allow for this? There are ways to get around this and still being prepared. You could for instance milk in the morning but let the kids nurse during the day. You could also have a small herd that you do not milk at all, but instead just let them raise offspring until your family needs the milk. Or maybe have a small herd but don't even breed them until TEOTWAWKI. (Needless to say, they will not produce milk if they do not give birth.).

For greater detail on raising goats, I recommend the book: Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats: Breeds, Care, Dairyingby JD Belanger.

JWR:
While we all dream that perfect place in the country it is important to emphasize how much that can be accomplished on a small city lot. My home sits on about 6,000 square feet of land, a small suburban house in a cookie-cutter neighborhood . The house and garage and drive way take up about half of the lot . Of what's left, I'm slowly converting the ornamental landscape to organic food production. My current garden consists of 48 tomato plants (4 varieties) 2 beds of sweet corn, 2 rows of cucumbers staggered 2 month s apart for continuous harvest, 2 similar rows of pole beans, one row of lima beans, 30 sweet pepper plants, 6 pumpkins, 12 winter squash, 12 summer squash , 6 cantaloupes , 4 peach trees, 2 nectarine trees , 2 pear trees , 2 apple trees, and one fig. In addition, numerous herbs –(basil , dill, rosemary, sage, and thyme) and 4 artichoke plants . Could easily plant enough onions and garlic to last us all year and I plan to do so as I add beds.

Last year I grew enough popcorn to last two years. Next year I plan on a large bed of dent corn for corn meal. Am still experimenting with winter crops but peas, beets, carrots, and kale all do well and I'm anxious to see how many potatoes I can get from 100 square feet.

I figure that I' ll pull about $2,000 worth of food from the garden this year and that ’it is going to increase because I still have about 1,000 square feet of ornamental beds and lawn to tear out and plant and the fruit trees are still young . Over the past 8 years I've spent less than $1,000 for tools and equipment: two spades (one all metal for my heavy clay soil) , a Mantis tiller, metal fencing stakes for pole beans, tomato e s, and cucumbers ( they last forever, much better than wood) , various clippers, twine, a bit of organic fertilizer , and the bare-root fruit trees . This year I've spent less than $25 ( seeds, twine, and a bit of seaweed spray) since I have all the tools already. Could rent out my tiller at $ 30 / day if I took the trouble to post at the local store. Meanwhile, we're eating healthy and free and will start putting up food as I expand my beds and grow enough to save as well as eat.

I love the work so it is not drudgery for me it is great exercise and a relief to be outside after working in my office all week . Weekends in late winter and early spring are a bit busy –-- perhaps 5 or 6 hours per weekend for a month or so . But once the winter garden is out and the spring garden is planted, it requires about two hours per week for the rest of the season.

Yes, we all want to life in the country. But until then there's free food for eating and survival storage right in your backyard if you're willing to do the work. - Patrick C. in Southern California

Jim,
I'd like to add an additional perspective on the letter on "Learning the Details of Self-Sufficiency" -- the conscious competence learning model. I'd like to pull back the shade a bit on why 'just buying stuff' and reading books isn't going to cut it when the balloon goes up.

Many folks are 'buying things', reading books, searching the internet with the thought that when the time comes, they will begin living the self-sufficient lifestyle in the country. The aforementioned letter points out the folly of this approach. I just want to take a step back and look at why so many people are taking an unproductive approach -- it has to do with how people assimilate new skills.

With a new skill set (like self-sufficient living in this example) a person at first is unconsciously incompetent (stage #1). Here a person doesn't even know what they don't know. They certainly don't understand the ramifications of not having mastery of the things they don't know. Most people stop right here. They feel safe. In fact, it's not until they go a bit further into consciously incompetent (stage #2) when they begin for the first time to understand some of the things at which they are incompetent; and begin to realize the impact of their incompetence on their desired outcome.

Stage 2 lasts a long time because the more a person learns, the more necessary skills they uncover, which skills they have no experience whatsoever. It's not until you actually eat the beans you've canned, which were stored in the root cellar you made; which beans grew in your garden, which garden you protected from insects, which plot you cleared from the forest, fenced from the deer, amended the soil, selected the correct variety of bean seed, planted at the correct depth,with the correct spacing, at the right time of year, with the proper sun exposure, etc. Then and only then will you have begun to have some gardening experience -- for beans. Then you can begin to appreciate that beans are not carrots. Carrots have different needs, and hey, wow, I wonder if all these different vegetables, grains and fruits have different requirements? Gee, what would happen if I grew my garden in 'compost' I bought from a local garden center and the entire crop failed, and I couldn't buy my veggies from Wal-Mart? Last example was a true story for me as a local nursery sold me 10 yards of 'compost' which [later] tested almost zero for N, P, & K. My crops bolted and died within three weeks.

Stage 3 is conscious competence. This is when you can perform a skill reliably at will. I can put up more beans this year, I know how to do it; I know how many rows of what dimension and how much seed I need. I want to put up some dilly beans, I know how to do that too. I can cook using the blanched and frozen beans I grew last year.

Stage 4 is unconscious competence. This is where you aren't even aware of the skills you are using to produce the desired result. People who reach this level of expertise often can't teach another person how to do what they are doing because so much ability (not knowledge -- big difference) is assumed. Have you ever seen a craftsman produce a beautiful result, and make it look easy? Then you tried and found, "Hey, this is harder than it looks!" That's what stage 4 is, and where you need to be before you risk your family's life on homesteading in the midst of a crisis.

We've only talked about beans so far; how about production quantity gardening for the 20 or so veggies, fruits, and grains you're going to need? How about producing pork? Chicken? Rabbit? Lamb? Can you breed, select, grow, cull, harvest, process, store, and prepare all of these? How about dairy operations? Retreat security? Redundant water systems in place? Redundant power systems in place and functioning? Productive relationships with neighbors? Suppliers? I'd like to give you a more complete list, but I've been doing this for years now, so I don't even know all I know!

If you aren't doing these things right now, then you won't be any good at them in a time of need. The only way to gain new skills is by doing. Take advantage of whatever time we have left before things get much worse, and go do it! - Mr. Kilo

Jim,
None of us here can know the hour when 1 Thessalonians 4:16 -17, will come to be. There are Prophesies that seem to indicate that that time approaches. But we don't know. We are not Prophets ourselves. We can just know to be ready. But until that time comes, there are also many other possibilities for which to prepare. We are in the early stages of a world-wide economic meltdown. As that grows worse, it can lead to all sorts of interesting events. Unemployment will likely lead to increased crime and even food riots. That can lead to the break down of systems. And that can cause the loss of health care, electricity, sanitation, water and so on. And that will inevitably lead to epidemics.

The Sun is the "quietest" it has been in many, many years. The last time Earth experienced so little sun spot activity, hundreds of thousands died from cold and lack of food because it snowed during the summer. The Yellowstone Caldera, a super volcano, is 40,000 years overdue to blow. When it does, it will spread ash across the entire US and block sunlight for years. There is an undersea volcano off Africa that is in danger of collapse. That could cause a tidal wave that would take out the entire east coast of the US. ...And then there is the ambitions of our governments "new friends" in Venezuela and Iran, and Al Qaeda and N. Korea. An EMP attack will surely make us all take notice that being "friendly" and acting weak is no solution to bad behavior by evil people. ..Not to mention what the closing of the Hormuz Straits will cause, if certain folks decide they can get away with it.

And all that is just some of the possibilities as televised on PBS shows in the last week. Not even alarmist conspiracy theory or doom and gloom, just Public TV science and reporting.

I am of the opinion that the "first world" industrial societies are so complex, that they could collapse fairly easily. It's just like my tractor. For lack of grease, the bearing spun. For lack of a bearing, the field didn't get plowed. With no turned earth, there was no garden and no food.

In these kinds of economies, small events can have remarkable consequences. Several years ago, a tree fell against a power line in Ohio. That small outage spread. Power went off in parts of Canada and as far away as New York. A couple more trees, and there could be no power anywhere. And then who would there be to help Florida or Texas, after a hurricane.

So what are we to do? Certainly reading survivalblog everyday is a great start. Acquiring knowledge thru books is absolutely necessary. Getting training and practical experience at such schools as Front Sight and Midwest Native Skills Institute is crucial. You can also volunteer at any of many the open air museums, and learn about appropriate non-electric skills and tools. But, there is more. We really need seven day, everyday, experience.

For example, there has been a good bit of discussion lately about "city retreats". Some folks believe they can make it in a well equipped "abandoned" factory or warehouse. They will hide in plain sight. That may work for a time, but what happens when the power goes out, and your stored fuel is used up? You might have bullets and food stored to last three years, then what? In my opinion, if you are concerned enough to be reading survivalblog, you ought to be realistic enough to get where you need to be to survive. And, IMHO, that ain't the city. You simply won't learn the practical skills needed to be self-sufficient, if you live on cement

It is remarkably complex to be self-sufficient. Without daily experience, you are unlikely to make it. It can easily take three years to successfully cultivate and grow an organic garden. It can take years to really learn to save seeds or prune a fruit tree. If the electricity goes out, you'll need to be able to do that and much more. If you can't, your children will suffer. It may take you a season or two to learn to get your fences built before the deer eat your crops. (They can clear a garden in one night). It can take years to learn what you actually need to run a farm. Little things like having lots of nails and screws on hand. If the big box stores close, how are you going to build shelter for city family refugees if you don't already have the supplies? And do you know construction? Do you have the tools? Or, without lots and lots of files and hack saw blades, how will you work metal when the gas runs out? It takes more than just having an anvil and hammer. Do you know the simple things like stacking hay bales on their sides, instead of "strings up"? If the hay gets wet, the water will run through the bale if it's on its side. The hay will much more likely mold if you store it with the strings pointing up. Right now, we all have the time to make such mistakes. It's not yet life or death. But soon, it may be.

In a crisis, being efficient also becomes much more important. You'll waste all kinds of time until you learn to carry a tool box on your equipment when you go to the field. It can be pure aggravation to need a wrench, screw driver or piece of wire, and have to walk all the way back to the barn. A simple fix can easily turn into a wasted hour, if you don't have the experience and tools to know better. And an hour lost is a job undone. That can be very costly.

It's taken me quite some time to learn to consistently keep certain things lined up by the back door. If I turn on any lights at night, a raccoon or coyote going after the chickens will run. I've learned, if I hear a noise, to get up in the dark, put on my boots, which are always where they need to be, have the other necessaries in easy reach, and to get out the door, silently, to take care of business. That's not something learned easily or quickly. Just developing night vision and how to see in the dark, and how to listen to the sounds of night in the country, can take a lot of time. Not knowing that can mean losing half your chickens in one night. It happened to me.

It can also take some time to learn which neighbors are reliable and which farm equipment dealerships are best. You don't want to buy major equipment from a dealer that has poor service and inventory. And asking for help from the wrong neighbor can be worse than no help at all.

It can take many seasons to learn the weather of your farm. I know that there is always a dry week in April when I can till the gardens. If I miss it, and it rains, it may be May before the ground will again dry out enough to plow. And when snow comes from certain directions, it may mean I need to clear a roof before it falls under too much weight. ..It's happened.

It's taken me some time to learn to put a broody chicken in wire cage inside the hen house. I put as many eggs under her as will fit, put in a bit of water and food, and shut the door. I've had many a hatch of eggs go bad because the chicken got up and didn't find her way back. With this little trick of confining the chicken, I get chicks every time. That's not something you learn just bugging out from the city.

It's also taken some time to learn that its hard to read by candle light. An oil lamp is better, it can give between 2.7 to 4.4 candle power, depending on how wide the wick is. And having an oil lamp with mantle, which gives 40 candle power, (or the equivalent of a 60 watt bulb), is really important if you have any medical needs at night. I know I much more appreciate sewing myself up when I can see where to stitch, instead of kind'a poking around by candle light.

And so it goes. We all know something is coming. Most of us believe it in our cores. We wouldn't be here otherwise. So, what are you going to do? I believe the time has come to take action. It may not be comfortable to leave the city and a well paying job. But you have so much to learn, and so little time. You really need to get moving. Because the mistakes you will certainly make today, just may do you in, tomorrow. - Jim Fry, Curator, Museum of Western Reserve Farms & Equipment, Ohio

Hello,
Let me tell you about an experience I had the other day and my frustration. I recently purchased some tools from Sears and got the "higher quality" Craftsman brand. One of the items purchases was a bow saw. I did not look closely at the quality of the item purchased because I thought to myself, "It is a Craftsman, they have a life time warranty." Well, a few months later
the saw broke because of bad construction. Some little nubs that were punched through the very thin sheet metal that held the saw blade in place. It does not take an expert to see that they broke soon after I started to do some hard work. Very disappointing. Sears exchanged it, and I see that they have a new model with a rivet instead of a nub. But I am not sure that it will las very long. I asked the clerk if all of their stuff was Made in China. She said "No," and stated it surprised her that the saw was made in China.

On the way out I looked at a vacuum cleaner, it was a wet-dry "shop vac". Craftsman and Made in Mexico. I guess that "Mexico" is not China so she was technically right. I purchased a Kenmore about two years ago because it was rated the highest in Consumers' Reports. It is all plastic and does not work that well. The suction is pretty low. My grandmother has a vacuum cleaner that she purchased over fifty years ago. My brother and I call it "The Pig" because it looks like a pig (complete with a snout) from behind. I can not seem to find a vacuum cleaner that will last. They are all cheap and made as disposable items. I would rather purchase one good vacuum cleaner to last me 50 years instead of one cheap one every 3-to-5 years.

Where does someone buy Made in the USA products that are made out of good metal? I know a place must exist somewhere. Thanks, - Brent

JWR Replies: This topic has been raised before in SurvivalBlog. In my opinion, the best quality for your dollar can often be found in used American and European-made tools. For details, see this post from late 2008: Letter Re: Recommended Sources for Gardening Hand Tools.

With a cynical eye on the rapid downward spiral of events, it seems prudent to plan for a very long time of sustainable living. In this case survival depends not only on your stockpiled preps, but also in your ability to sustain food production past the end of your stored supply.

Let’s assume, to begin with, that you have reasonably stocked retreat. I’m not talking a stock to the level described in “Patriots”, but rather one that includes a year (or more) of food, basic ammo, firearms, reliable water, heat and power source … the basics.

Now it’s time to look past the first year or so and decide how you will continue to produce food and supplies for your family. Hunting is often an option, but it can’t be considered a long-term complete food source, as it is not nutritionally complete.

Much has been said about keeping heirloom (open pollinated) seeds, and this cannot be stressed enough. But you have to plant and harvest a crop each year to continue to re-supply your seeds. Most retreats seem to be in colder climates as they tend to have a lighter year-round population load. If you’re up in the mountains, altitude will play a significant factor in what you can hope to grow. Staples such as corn require heat days in order to properly pollinate and “set”. You generally want to lay in a supply of varieties that have the shortest maturity date. That means from the time you plant that seed to the time you harvest the crop is the shortest possible number of days.

Using “short season” varieties gives you two advantages. First, if you have a crop failure for some reason, you can often have time to replant. Secondly, if you’ve harvested your first crop, you have time to put another crop in the same space.

As summer approaches, consider a great time to practice crop production, if you haven’t already. It is not as simple a poking a seed into some dirt. Get a couple of good gardening books, or better yet, books on basic farming. Carla Emery’s Encyclopedia of Country Living and the Reader's Digest Back to Basics are both excellent reference books that cover everything from farming to livestock to making basic necessities.

Having a huge variety of seeds is not as important as having plenty to the right seeds for your needs. If you just can’t live without brussel sprouts, by all means, lay in some seeds. But stick mostly to the basics: wheat, corn, squash/pumpkin, beans, peas, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, peppers, and your basic herbs. If you haven’t planted fruit trees, now is the time to get started on that. It takes several years for trees to be come productive. Also give consideration to other perennials such as strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and grapes. Again, it take a few years for these (except for strawberries) to get into full production.

Besides your garden, fields and orchards, you’ll need to take a serious look at what sort of livestock will fit in to your situation. Eventually, you will probably need some sort of animal power for transportation and heavy work.

The most efficient feed-to-food converter is a chicken. One hen will lay approximately one egg every other day. Peak production (during the summer) generally is an egg a day. Winter drops to an egg every third day or so without significant extra light in the chicken coop. You can expect to raise two or three sets of chicks each summer. Hens will get “broody” and sit on eggs to hatch them once the weather is warm. In order for the eggs to be fertile, you of course must have a rooster. The best ratio is one rooster to every ten hens. A family of four would do well with 25 laying hens and three roosters. The extra eggs produced during the warm months can be frozen or used for feed for other animals. You can even feed the [well-pulverized and unrecognizable] eggshells back to your chickens to give them adequate calcium. During the spring, summer and early fall, you don’t even have to provide chickens with any feed. They are excellent consumers of all sorts of insects and bugs. “Free range” chickens pretty much feed themselves during the warm months. If predators are an issue though, you’ll want to keep them in a moveable cage (called a “chicken tractor”) so they don’t become a snack for some varmint. Raccoons are especially fond of chickens, as are weasels.

If you know that the stuff is hitting the fan, try to order 50 chicks or so [and buy a 50 pound sack of chick starter feed at your local feed store]. Chicks arrive in the mail. Ideal Poultry and Murray McMurray are two excellent sources. If you order “straight run” chicks, you’ll get a mix (about 50/50) of hens to roosters. The best all-round chicken in my opinion is the Astralorp. They start to lay early (at about five months of age) and consistently, they are good mothers and are big enough to still be a reasonable source of meat. The roosters tend to stay calm and usually are not aggressive. Chicks will cost you around $1.50 each. The price varies with the breed, the supplier and the time of year. Ideal tends to have good sales, which you can keep up with by signing up for email alerts.

Another excellent feed-to-food converter is the basic goat. I’ll say right off that they are tough to keep fenced in. Goats are terrifically intelligent and are phenomenal escape artists. If you keep goats, make absolutely certain that your gardens, crop grounds and trees are well fenced off and well protected. Goats can decimate fruit trees in minutes. Goats produce milk, meat and leather. A doe can kid as early as eight months old, but it’s best to wait until they are yearlings. Goats’ gestation is about five months and they tend to only breed in months that have “R” in the name (Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr). There are some aseasonal breeders, but don’t count on it. If your does are bred in early September, you might be about to get them bred back again in April, two months after kidding. Goats usually have twins and triplets. Bucks can be smelly and can be aggressive during rut.

The breed of goat really is an individual preference. Goat enthusiasts will extol the virtues of their particular breed, but mostly it comes down to basics: good dairy does will give about a gallon of milk a day. Goat milk, properly processed, is indistinguishable from fresh cow’s milk. If you have never consumed fresh milk, you ought to give it a try. It is completely different from what you purchase in the store. It makes store-bought taste like water. Goat milk is white, it does not separate as easily as cow’s milk (it takes longer to skim enough cream for butter), and it is often well-tolerated by people with lactose issues. During grazing months, a goat will produce milk just with pasture (grasses, clovers, and browse). A small amount of grain is nice at milking time so the does will be excited to come in to the milking area. It beats chasing them all over Creation. IN the winter, they will require hay and a little grain if you intend to keep milking. Some people “dry off” their does in the winter in preparation for kidding. You have to allow about two months of no milking before the doe kids so that her body has time to produce the colostrum the kids need in order to survive.

Goats are capable of pulling small, fairly light carts and helping with basic garden work (muzzled, of course). They can work individually or as a team of no more than two. They are also good packers capable of carrying about 30 pounds (for a full grown adult goat). For a family of four, two or three does and one buck is plenty. And yes, you can keep doe kids and still breed them back to their sire (or their brothers). Line breeding is not recommended over the long-haul, but it’s perfectly fine until things stabilize and you can trade genetics with a neighbor.

Sheep are extremely important, in my opinion, but are rarely discussed. They don’t have a terrific feed-to-food ratio, as they require a bit more protein. But for what they give you in return, they are an excellent survival animal. Besides meat and terrific hides, sheep produce wool. Wool is one of the very best natural fibers. It is somewhat flame retardant, retains its warmth even soaking wet, and is incredibly versatile. It can be spun into yarn, felted, woven, and even worked with “raw”. Lanolin is the “grease” on the wool. Once cleaned, it is an excellent, lasting softener for badly chapped/burned skin.
Sheep are not very smart, and so they really require looking after. If you have a predation problem, you’ll want to keep sheep close-in, or have some sort of guardian (human or animal) with them at all times. Sheep are similar to goats in breeding and birthing habits. In fact, you can keep sheep and goats together without any problems. They do not interbreed (although you may see the males trying it anyway).
Merino sheep are the best for fine wool production: the kind of wool you can wear next to your skin and not feel “itchy”. They are hard to find in the United States. Virtually any sheep, except “hair sheep”, will work for survival purposes. Larger breeds such as Columbia, Suffolk, and Corriedale will have more coarse wool, but they will produce bigger (meatier) lambs on less feed.

Like goats, you’d want two or three ewes and one ram. Rams can be dangerous. Repeat: rams can be dangerous. There is a product available called a “ram shield”. It is a leather piece that fit over the ram’s face so that he can’t see straight ahead to charge. However, his vision is fine for eating and wooing the ewes. (By the way, it works on goat bucks, too). After one Suffolk ram kept charging me, it is standard on our rams except for the Merinos. I’ve never had an aggressive Merino ram. Not to say it couldn’t happen; it just hasn’t happened yet. Merinos are smaller and when the rams fight during rut, the Merinos can take quite a beating. With the other rams wearing shields, it helps keep the Merinos from getting clobbered. It’s best to have a separate ram area away from the ewes once the girls are bred. It’s just safer for the shepherd/ess during feeding and lambing time.

Hogs are not for everyone, but they are one of my favorites. They produce a lot of meat, they are smart and easy to manage if you treat them decently, and they can grow fat on table scraps, roots, and forage. One sow can produce 20 or more piglets in a year. That a lot of meat and useful fat (soap-making). My experience is that colored pigs do better on pasture and forage than white pigs. I have no idea why this is true, but it seems to be. I don’t think the breed makes much difference, as long as the pigs aren’t white. Contrary to the stories, pigs do not like to be dirty. However, they cannot sweat to lower their body heat, and they must be provided with a place to cool off. A shallow concrete “pool”, access to a creek or pond, or even occasional hosing off will work. If pigs cannot get cooled off any other way, then they will wallow in a mud source.

Pigs “root” (dig) almost from the minute they are born. This is a terrific help in the fall when you want to get your garden turned over. They are omnivores and will graze, browse, and yet still consume table scraps and meat. Pigs are a good way to dispose of any accidental animal carcasses that you can’t eat yourself. Pigs are extremely smart (some say smarter than dogs). Boars can be dangerous, just like any other male, especially when he’s chasing a female. If you see the boar slobbering (white foam), stay out of the pen. He’s wooing a lady. We tame our pigs by hand-feeding eggs to them. After a few days, the pigs will come when you call. I have never even been charged by a pig, and I feel comfortable around ours. However, I never forget that they have razor-sharp teeth and that they weigh about 600 pounds when full grown! I never let the kids go into the hog pens unless I am standing right there. We’ve never had a problem, but I don’t believe in being foolish either.

Sows’ gestation is 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days. Sows will have between 8 and 15 piglets per litter. Many times, sows will have fewer “faucets” than piglets and you’ll have to make sure every gets their fair share of food in the beginning. Within a week, the piglets will be running everywhere and helping themselves to whatever Mom is eating. Piglets can be weaned at one month, but we generally leave them on until the sow weans them herself. The nutrition they receive from the sow doesn’t cost me anything and it helps the piglets get an excellent start.
Pigs can be butchered at about 160 pounds, which will give you about 80 pounds of meat and 20 pounds of lard. Pigs raised on pasture have much less lard and more lean meat. A little corn each day will help them gain weight faster, but much of that weight gain is fat and is probably a waste of valuable resources.
One sow and one boar will keep your family fed and provide lots of meat for trade.

As for larger stock, cattle and horses are generally what most people think of. They have great benefits but also great draw-backs.
Cattle produce milk, meat and hides. They also have a poor feed-to-food ratio compared to smaller stock. However, cattle can provide muscle as oxen for pulling, farming, and carting things around. Oxen can be male or female, so even your milk cow can be your ox in a pinch. Cows eat a lot. Figure on a milk cow eating 30 to 50 pounds of hay a day in the winter time. That’s a lot of hay if you’re putting it up by hand. Bulls are dangerous, but necessary to keep your cow bred (unless you can trade for the service a neighbor's bull). It takes about a year or so to get a calf to butcher size, which means you’re going to be feeding that calf over the winter (more hay). However, your cow will produce five to eight gallons of milk a day (on average). That’s a lot of milk for your household, for trade, or for feeding chickens and hogs. Cow milk separates easily.

A cow’s gestation is about nine months and they will breed any month of the year. You can continue to milk the cow up until about two months before she calves. Cows usually have just one calf. Dairy cows produce far more milk than beef cows, but they have less meat. A good solution is to have a dairy cow and a beef bull. The resulting calf will have more meat at butcher time. However, if you’re trying to raise a replacement milk cow, this won’t work in the long run.

There are many breeds of dairy cows. Dexters are excellent dual purpose (milk/meat) for a small group. They are little cows, about the size of a pony. They consume half the feed of a full size cow, produce two to three gallons of milk daily and have a beefier carcass. They dress out at about 65%. The down side is that they are still relatively expensive ($1000 for a cow/$800 for a bull). If you look carefully, especially in this down economy, you can probably find them quite a bit cheaper. Dexters are docile and make excellent oxen.

Jerseys are another “homestead” favorite due to their smaller size and high percentage of butterfat in the milk. Jerseys are 800-1,000 pounds full grown and produce 5-to-8 gallons of milk daily. The milk is rich in butterfat and slightly sweet. I think it’s the best milk. We have a Jersey cross milk cow for our family’s use.

Horses are a huge help, but not necessary to survival. They consume a lot of feed without producing any food in return. Most of the work horses do can also be done by oxen. However, I’d rather ride a horse than an ox any day. If you have plenty of pasture, plenty of feed and plenty of shelter during storms, then by all means keep a couple of horses. Again, a mare or two and a stallion keeps things sustainable.

It’s unlikely that most people would be able to keep each of these animals, or even that they would want to. The idea is to carefully consider what you need to supply for your family over a period of years. What livestock can you add to your retreat planning to help insure a sustainable food supply? Other possibilities include rabbits (meat/hides), geese (down/eggs), ducks (higher protein eggs) or domestic turkeys. Both of the books mentioned above for farming practices have a wealth of information for small-scale livestock production.

The other thing to consider is mobility. If you’re already living at your retreat, adding large stock is relatively simple. If you’re going to have to bug out, you’ll have to consider what you can take. I know that I can put three goats, three sheep, six piglets, and 30 chickens in and on the back of my Suburban. I know because I tried it. It took me 30 minutes to get all of them safely loaded and/or crated. [JWR Adds: My #1 Son mentioned that you should have videotaped this exercise--it would be very popular on YouTube!] I’d have to leave my cattle and horses if I had to bug out, but I could take enough livestock to keep us going for the foreseeable future.

So give consideration to what you will do when your stash runs out. How will you feed your family, your neighbors, your group if hunting is difficult or impossible? What can you do that is sustainable and practical? Think about what works for you in your situation. It’s easy to butcher poultry. It’s a bit more complicated for sheep or goats, and it takes some serious planning for a 600 pound pig!
Think ahead and be prepared.

JWR:

One of your readers asked: "I want to buy a 3 in 1 machine. Does anyone have any experience with them? Perhaps a brand to recommend or stay away from?"

Having considered that choice extensively myself, my home shop amateur opinion is to recommend separate machines. Now that I see what a real mill table looks like, I realize there isn't enough table space on the 3-in-1 to set up anything. Instead, get the cheapest lathe you can stand, and the best mill you can afford. If you still want a combo for space reasons, get one of the lathes with the vertical mill attached at the back center of the bed, like the Grizzly G0516.

As one example of a machine combination, I would propose the 250 pound Harbor Freight 8x12 (8x14+, actually) lathe, and the 700 pound Enco Rong-Fu 45 clone (square column, geared head). I've found real-world machine capacities are better described by weight than work envelope.

Budget spending twice as much on tooling as you do on the lathe and mill. If you can only afford one, get the lathe. People did clever work with a lathe for hundreds of years before the vertical mill was made practical by cheap end mill cutters. Machine tools are only as clever as the user, but others' cleverness is recorded and available inexpensively in books from Lindsay Books.
Of course all this equipment is made in China. The EPA, OSHA, and the unions have made it impossible for industry to be competitive in the US. Thanks to what remains of free trade, you are better off being able to get Chinese iron than to get nothing at all. The purpose of autarky is to be able to starve a population into submission; see also
Curtain, Iron. Buy soon while you can still buy at all.

Chinese machine tools tend to be a fix-up project from the start. There are lots of little details which will want to correct, which you wouldn't be willing to pay the manufacturer to have done right.
Popular machines have deep user communities on the Internet.
Here are some suggested vendors and places to get ideas:

Lathemaster.com
Grizzly.com/products/G0516
Littlemachineshop.com
Varmintal.com/alath.htm
Use-enco.com
Harborfreight.com [JWR Adds: Beware! Nearly all Harbor Freight products are made in Mainland China, and mostly junk with scant spares or warranties!]
ihcnc.com
Lindsay Books

Regards, - B.B.

Hi James,
I have had a Shoptask 3 in 1 for 6 yr's now. As far as I can tell, the Harbor Freight designs are [clones of the] older designs of the Shoptask machines. Grizzly also makes a similar machine,which in my opinion looks better, but I have no firsthand knowledge of that. My experience with any of these machine's is that out of the box, they are junk. These do not have high quality metal, hardened surface's and such. The belt drive's are poorly designed, extremely noisy, and prone to breakdown. The best thing to do with one should you purchase it,it to tear it apart, clean and adjust everything! Mine came with casting sand all over, and inside! Everything was sloppy or loose. If you have any mechanical background,these can be made into a decent machine ,but with lot's of sweat and time. These are great for making odds and end',or quick repairs,but not heavy duty stuff. They are not,and will never be, intended for 8 hour a day use. For a home hobby machine,they can be handy, but not for true business use. The switches are junk, the motors are junk, the bearings are junk, the belts are made of old rubber bands or somesuch! The milling portion of it is nothing more than a drill press, and just as inaccurate.

If your an experienced machinist, I have 30 year's worth,they can be a handy machine, given time and effort. I personally have three other older machines, two CNCs and a chucker, each one cost about the same as a new Shoptask. If room is an issue, I'd prefer to get a Harbor Freight machine, as it need's the same amount of work to be decent,and cheaper. My experience with Shoptask was less than stellar,as it took 8 months to arrive, a really slow boat from China! If shop floor space isn't an issue, I'd prefer--and wish I had bought--an older full size machine. Even an older "worn out" production type machine would have been less effort than this was! - Dean

Sir,

In response to your letter regarding 3-in-ones:
The ones you see for sale are a combination machine tool that combines a metal lathe, drill press and vertical milling machine. They are used a lot by hobbyists here, and I have heard that in Vietnam and similar locales, they are the #1 machine for small motorcycle rebuilding shops.

I have been using a Smithy 1220 for about 5 years, and here are some observations:
Most of these machines are built on a pretty heavy lathe bed that uses a small milling table as the platform for bolting the lathe tooling to. As a lathe, they are pretty stout. Most of them lack a back gear for slow turning operations (such as threading) and you'll want to check on whether they have a split nut, power feeds and a thread dial. The basic 1220 I have does not have a thread dial or a slow speed, which basically means threading is done [by 'hand-spindling"] with the lathe powered off. The upgraded Smithy models have more of these features.
In general, these machines do a good job as a lathe. Be sure to get a 4-jaw chuck with the package, as you will need this for gunsmithing or any precision work. The import 3-jaw chuck you will get with most is not anything I would use on work that needs to be repeatable.

In drill-press mode, they will all work fine. They are really overbuilt compared to even a good drill press, so you will have no problems locating and drilling precision holes, countersinking, etc. I recommend tossing the import drill chuck that comes with these and purchasing a proper American-made Jacobs, as they are much better.
The main weakness in all of these machines is the milling aspect. The table is usually fairly small, most do not have a knee for raising/lowering the table, and they are not that rigid. Your work envelope will be quite a bit smaller than a full-size Bridgeport or even a tabletop mill. Get rid of the vise that comes with these and pick up a Kurt or a good import knockoff of this design.
Also, build a heavy-duty table to bolt the unit to, and it will run with much less chatter. I made a stand for mine out of 2x2" steel tubing filled with concrete. I can mill steel if I use good US cutters (pick these up on eBay) and modest feed speeds.

From my experience, I would say that the Harbor Freight model is probably the least desirable, in terms of initial quality and aftermarket support. The Grizzly is better, and they generally stand behind their products and offer replacement parts for sale. My Smithy has been okay in terms of quality, and I would say that their support is excellent (reasonable prices on parts/accessories and excellent US phone support). I do not have any experience with the Shoptask, but I hear good things about the machine and its capability.
If you want more first-person accounts, sign up for the Yahoo 3-IN-ONE discussion group. Cheers, - JN

Jim--
In response to the questions about 3 in 1 machines. The two most common brands are Shoptask and Smithy. Both are imported, quality is pretty similar from what I can tell. I have owned and used a Shoptask for more than a decade.

Both machines have real limitations. For a neophyte or hobbyist who wants to make the odd part for a motorcycle restoration or old gun, they're fine. If you're trying to scratch out a subsistence living with a part time job as a machinist, you'll never make it. The mill/drill function of the machine is extremely limited in the "Z-axis", which is the "up and down" motion. There are other limitations as well.

I bought one because I knew I would be moving 5-10 times in a decade, and would have to put it in a basement or utility room. They are somewhat "portable" and take up less room than three proper machines. You can do decent work on them, but it's slow and tedious and takes more skill. But to do really good work, and do it efficiently enough to make a living on, you just have to have a real lathe, a real milling machine, and a real drill press.

If you shop around, you can get both a used lathe and a used milling machine, probably with some tooling, for around $5,000, give or take. Occasionally there are terrific deals around and you might get the job done for half that amount. A real lathe and a real milling machine could produce parts at about 10 times the rate of any combo machine.

Don't forget that it is entirely possible to spend as much on tooling as you do on the basic machine, so the initial lower price of the 3 in 1 machine isn't as great a deal as you might first assume, compared to a used machine with goodies included. Sure, there are worn out junk machines on the used market, so you have to know what to look for there. It's not an automatic slam dunk that all used machines are better than all new 3 in 1 machines.

If you bought new Grizzly equipment, you could get a small mill/drill machine and a modest size lathe for $5,000 including shipping. If you decide you really have to have one, stick with either the smithy or the Shoptask. Many of the off brands are junk. Some of them can't even cut threads, which is a key function of a lathe. HTH, - Troy

Dear Editor,

Personally, it has been my experience that no one, unless you are a "hobbyist", should use one of these machines. They are fine for very small parts only, and parts made of either plastics, brass, or aluminum. Why? They cut really fast, easily, and require no specialized tooling. No extreme pressures, but the speeds are up there, about 1,200-1,800 rpm.
It all comes down to one word: Rigidity! If it isn't solid, you have wasted time, money and energy. You cannot get gold, from junk.

1) A lathe was made to turn 'rounds', period.
You can dress them up with a number of additions, to make a lot of items not easily made by the lathe itself. (everything you do, costs more money!)

2) Mills are what they are, and anyone that has ever operated one, knows what's their most important feature/factor.
Not just weight, but the rigidity of the entire unit, from the "quill" to the bed, to the knee, (if it's that type of mill).
You cannot do much with a small lightweight machine, it's like trying to mill on a drill press! (It just Won't work!)

Like I said, those smaller combination units may work ok, but not for any serious metal turning or milling, especially of steels. It is comparable to soldering-versus-MIG or TIG welding!
You have to have the right machine for the correct operation.

I own a "very well used" circa 1939 metal lathe, belt driven, 9-12" swing, and 32" length material capacity. Geared head and has a range of 12 speeds.
It still, holds within .002"-.005" accuracy, and I've never "adjusted" it so far.
It weighs in at 400+ lbs. With the small 3/4 horse 115 volt ac motor, it can make anything I want it to. It only cost me $800!
(With that being said, 1 collet chuck cost me $600, alone! Then there were the collet sets and such, as well as the replacement 3 and 4 jaw chucks that ran around $280 each) Not cheap to get into, and not for just anyone! If you don't know what you are doing, in this area, then get some knowledgeable help!
BTW: they can, and they do, tear people up, if you make "1" single mistake!
Stay away from a lot of imported stuff, unless you know it's a real "brand name" that you can easily get parts and tooling for .

A machinist friend of mine bought a "Jet" lathe a few years back, then discovered it was smaller than what he thought...It had a swing of only 3 1/2 " and a material capacity of 11-3/4 ".
He paid over $600 for it, and it only weighed about 45-47 lbs! It was great , if you were making model aircraft or train components... He has it sitting on his desk, as it's only 18" long, and makes an interesting paperweight!

Look for the stability, and "serviceability" of the tools you select for the "proper" job.
In other words don't use a chisel in place of a screwdriver, and vice-versa!
There are quite a few older models out there today, and...not all Chinese made tools are that bad either.
For example, a mill I used a lot in aerospace manufacturing , was an old "MaxMill", a big old "boat-anchor", that wouldn't quit. The writing on it's electric motor was in Chinese, and I never did know much about it! We also had an "X-Cello". (I have no clue [about its origins],) but it was a good solid machine!

For "our" lathes, nearly all were made in China, as the really older ones made in Japan were deceased by then. My personal favorite was the "WEBB" or "Takisawa" (same same), the guys in the shop called it the "widow maker"...It had a broken detent, that allowed it to drop into crossfeed mode at it's own whim. Once it was repaired, I'd have paid $5,000 for that old junker! (Cost to replace the detent: $0.10).

Note: Most of the older DOD contract requirements mandated that any part made for them or by use in any military equipment, had to be made on a machine based in the United States only!
That meant out of our shop's six mills, we could only use three of them (the Bridgeport's) and of our lathes we could only use one, the "Hardinge". (A nice toy if you have the money.).
That included all manual mills lathes and all CNC machines. We had machines from Germany, Holland, China,and Japan.

Today, thousands of these older 'dinosaurs', are on the market... You can get an older "Southbend Lathe", for a song and a dance, and with all the tooling! You'll need a lot of guys and maybe a forklift to move it though! Bridegports are the same way!

Stay away from all of the CNC machines, unless you know programming! In the machining business, you have to figure it this way: "Weight is equal to quality and accuracy"! - Bill in Phoenix

Jim,
Go to Sherline.com. They are the best American-made machines (for lower cost) available. Their only limitation is [their small] size, which is true of any machine. - Mr. XYZ Axes

Mr. Rawles,
Any multi-task machine is a trade off. They do nothing well,but do save space. When ShopSmith brought out theirs in the early 1970s, I saw many demos and was about to buy one. I am glad I didn't.Wood or metal working is the same basic concept.

I would recommend that a person buy the tool they need most and add "toys" later. If you need a mill, buy a mill. But if you only do a little mill work but do a lot of drilling, get the best drill press available. You can put an end mill in a drill press chuck and do light milling. See my point. As for things made in China, almost all tools that have a high cast content like vices, anvils, clamps, drill presses, and such have been made in China or India for over twenty years. One good place to find tools and machinery is school district auctions. They upgrade the shops from time to time. Also, government auctions are worth looking into. I know the depot in Columbus, Ohio has had some good deals recently.

It's a sad state of affairs that our government lets this happen since China will not let an item be sold there that's not made there. Then they scream protectionism if we add a tariff or restriction.
Thank you for your blog, it is very good. - BKM

James:

Grizzly.com industrial has good quality stuff from taiwan, including mill/lathes 3 in 1s
Smithy.com has been around a long while. (only 3 in1s) (made in China)
Sherline.com is from USA but they are specialized for tiny things.
kbctools.com has Chinese stuff, but is better than nothing, they have good customer service.

STAY AWAY FROM HARBOR FREIGHT! Most everything they sell is shifty shady and breaks fast. (it is soooo tempting though) I haven't used their machine tools, but to their credit, I have seen their smallest mill in three separate catalogs. Harbor Freight micrometers have some merit. My machine shop teacher had a few sets, but when things really needed to be precise he whipped out his Etalon micrometers.
I have been disappointed by every purchase from Harbor Freight I've made. I stopped buying from them awhile ago.

If two is one and one is none, [when buying from] Harbor Freight [, the ratio] is 10 is one and 9 is none.
Real machine shops give a wiiiide berth to the multifunction machines. It's like the AR-15 with every attachment you can think of . They get in each others way. But they're much better than nothing.

Mainland China and Taiwan are the most common machine tool builders. Korea and Japan make better ones--and of those, Japan the best. Germany makes them too (real good). Italy a few.
Basic machine tools from the USA no longer exist. Only the super precision, extremely large, specialized, and a few CNC.

Again, Moore, Hardinge, HAAS Sandvik. Moore machines can cost millions, Hardinge/Bridgeport cost tens of thousands (not pure USA either) and HAAS is only CNC, (great machines though--when they break, their software tells you what to fix!) Sandvik is super specialized.

Get used to working High Speed Steel. (HSS) It is more robust and cheaper than carbide, it does fine. It just likes slower speeds.
Dig through this Thomas link, and you'll find next to nothing in USA-built machines.

Measuring:
Kannon is a good middle of the road (hard to find)
Fowler is hit and miss (mostly hit), but reasonably priced
Mitutoyo (expensive), Starrett, Brown and Sharpe, and Etalon (expensive). You get what you pay for with these.
Stay away from any plastic/fiberglass/resin measuring devices. they loose accuracy fast when temperature changes. - Tantalum Tom

James
To the reader in Hawaii looking for a 3 in 1 machines, he might check out Grizzly.com. They have four different machines listed in their 2008 catalog. I bought a Shoptask 3 in 1 machines about 12 years ago. The he lathe part of it is fine, but the mill leaves a lot to be desired and I have had to repair the multi position switches several times. I am not a machinist, but a master machinist has thought me the basics and beyond over the years. I still use the Shoptask, but I also needed larger machines. Bridegport machines were out of the question as simply too expensive for just hobby work. In my search several years ago I found Grizzly.

The main reason I went with Grizzly is that they make large machines in 220 V single phase. Most other companies that sold similar machines of those larger sizes were all 3 phase motors and I didn't have 3 phase and I didn't want to buy a phase-o-matic system to convert from 3 phase to single phase. I have a 14" x 40" lathe and a 2 h.p. horizontal/vertical mill with a 9-1/2" x 39-3/8" table. Both machines are outstanding. I also liked Grizzly because it is a large company, with help line, and replacement parts are no problem. I am not affiliated with Grizzly. I just like their products. I have also bought a large wood planer and a large joiner from Grizzly. Again, they have outstanding pieces of machinery, but it is made in China. -Regards, - John in Montana

JWR;

As a non-professional amateur hobby pseudo-machinist that likes to play with machinery. My suggestion is don't buy a 3-in 1 unless you have very little space or will do very little machining. I know there are many that won't agree with me. The problem is you will have a project set up and then want to work on something else. then you will loose the first set-up to make another set-up. I started with a 6" Atlas lathe 30 years ago and used a hand held drill. later was added a new bench top drill press (Taiwan built) then 4 years later I found a 16" Jet mill/drill that came from a burned-down fabricating shop. I've since added a 13" Enco lathe (Taiwan built) and many Taiwan and Chinese made add-ons. They are not the highest quality tools but they are what I can afford. I did add a strong magnet to the lathe gear box to catch chip. Without imports, I and a lot of others could not afford this type of machine. I have had to redesign some things on the machines but the machines allow me to do it.

Don't get me wrong, I would have a Bridgeport and an American made lathe and drill press if I could afford it.

Keep in mind, a lathe is the only machine capable of reproducing itself. It can drill, mill, bore and turn metals and wood. The skill and imagination of the operator is what determines what it can do.

Used machines do sometimes become available, both import and domestic. A lot have been abused, some well cared for. If space is not a concern then consider separate machines, and take care of them. - Frank from Indiana

JWR Replies: The current economic downturn will mean that hundreds of small prototype and production machine shops will go out of business in the next two to five years, particularly in and around Detroit, Michigan. There will be some genuine bargains found at auction. Watch your local sale papers closely. Some high quality US and German machine tools, bits, dies, jigs, brakes and so forth may sell for pennies on the dollar!

Yesterday, in Part1, I discussed the "safe" and counter-cyclical occupations for the unfolding economic depression. Today, I'd like to talk about one specific approach: self-employment with a home-based business.

I posted most the following back in late 2005, but there are some important points that are worth repeating:

The majority of SurvivalBlog readers that I talk with tell me that they live in cities or suburbs, but they would like to live full time at a retreat in a rural area. Their complaint is almost always the same: "...but I'm not self-employed. I can't afford to live in the country because I can't find work there, and the nature of my work doesn't allow telecommuting." They feel stuck.

Over the years I've seen lots of people "pull the plug" and move to the boonies with the hope that they'll find local work once they get there. That usually doesn't work. Folks soon find that the most rural jobs typically pay little more than minimum wage and they are often informally reserved for folks that were born and raised in the area. (Newcomers from the big city certainly don't have hiring priority!)

My suggestion is to start a second income stream, with a home-based business. Once you have that business started, then start another one. There are numerous advantages to this approach, namely:

You can get out of debt

You can generally build the businesses up gradually, so that you don't need to quit your current occupation immediately

By working at home you will have the time to home school your children and they will learn about how to operate a business.

You can live at your retreat full time. This will contribute to your self-sufficiency, since you will be there to tend to your garden, fruit/nut trees, and livestock.

If one of your home-based businesses fails, then you can fall back on the other.

Ideally, for someone that is preparedness-minded, a home-based business should be something that is virtually recession proof, or possibly even depression proof. Ask yourself: What are you good at? What knowledge or skills do you have that you can utilize. Next, consider which businesses will flourish during bad times. Some good examples might include:

Mail order/Internet sales/eBay Auctioning of preparedness-related products.

Locksmithing

Gunsmithing

Medical Transcription

Accounting

Repair/refurbishment businesses

Freelance writing

Blogging (with paid advertising) If you have knowledge about a niche industry and there is currently no authoritative blog on the subject, then start your own!

Mail order/Internet sales of entertainment items. (When times get bad, people still set aside a sizable percentage of their income for "escape" from their troubles. For example, video rental shops have done remarkably well during recessions.)

Burglar Alarm Installation

Other home-based businesses that seem to do well only in good economic times include:

Recruiting/Temporary Placement

Fine arts, crafts, and jewelry. Creating and marketing your own designs--not "assembly" for some scammer. (See below.)

Mail order/Internet sales/eBay Auctions of luxury items, collectibles, or other "discretionary spending" items

Personalized stationary and greeting cards (Freelance artwork)

Calligraphy

Web Design

 

Beware the scammers! The fine folks at www.scambusters.org have compiled a "Top 10" list of common work-at-home and home based business scams to beware of:

10. Craft Assembly
This scam encourages you to assemble toys, dolls, or other craft projects at home with the promise of high per-piece rates. All you have to do is pay a fee up-front for the starter kit... which includes instructions and parts. Sounds good? Well, once you finish assembling your first batch of crafts, you'll be told by the company that they "don't meet our specifications."
In fact, even if you were a robot and did it perfectly, it would be impossible for you to meet their specifications. The scammer company is making money selling the starter kits -- not selling the assembled product. So, you're left with a set of assembled crafts... and no one to sell them to.

9. Medical Billing
In this scam, you pay $300-$900 for everything (supposedly) you need to start your own medical billing service at home. You're promised state-of-the-art medical billing software, as well as a list of potential clients in your area.
What you're not told is that most medical clinics process their own bills, or outsource the processing to firms, not individuals. Your software may not meet their specifications, and often the lists of "potential clients" are outdated or just plain wrong.
As usual, trying to get a refund from the medical billing company is like trying to get blood from a stone.

8. Email Processing
This is a twist on the classic "envelope stuffing scam" (see #1 below). For a low price ($50?) you can become a "highly-paid" email processor working "from the comfort of your own home."
Now... what do you suppose an email processor does? If you have visions of forwarding or editing emails, forget it. What you get for your money are instructions on spamming the same ad you responded to in newsgroups and Web forums!
Think about it -- they offer to pay you $25 per e-mail processed -- would any legitimate company pay that?

7. "A List of Companies Looking for Homeworkers!"
In this one, you pay a small fee for a list of companies looking for homeworkers just like you.
The only problem is that the list is usually a generic list of companies, companies that don't take homeworkers, or companies that may have accepted homeworkers long, long ago. Don't expect to get your money back with this one.

6. "Just Call This 1-900 Number For More Information..."
No need to spend too much time (or money) on this one. 1-900 numbers cost money to call, and that's how the scammers make their profit. Save your money -- don't call a 1-900 number for more information about a supposed work-at-home job.

5. Typing At Home
If you use the Internet a lot, then odds are that you're probably a good typist. How better to capitalize on it than making money by typing at home? Here's how it works: After sending the fee to the scammer for "more information," you receive a disk and printed information that tells you to place home typist ads and sell copies of the disk to the suckers who reply to you. Like #8, this scam tries to turn you into a scammer!

4. "Turn Your Computer Into a Money-Making Machine!"
Well, this one's at least half-true. To be completely true, it should read: "Turn your computer into a money-making machine... for spammers!"
This is much the same spam as #5, above. Once you pay your money, you'll be sent instructions on how to place ads and pull in suckers to "turn their computers into money-making machines."

3. Multi-Level Marketing (MLM)
If you've heard of network marketing (like Amway), then you know that there are legitimate MLM businesses based on agents selling products or services. One big problem with MLMs, though, is when the pyramid and the ladder-climbing become more important than selling the actual product or service. If the MLM business opportunity is all about finding new recruits rather than selling products or services, beware: The Federal Trade Commission may consider it to be a pyramid scheme... and not only can you lose all your money, but you can be charged with fraud, too!
We saw an interesting MLM scam recently: one MLM company advertised the product they were selling as FREE. The fine print, however, states that it is "free in the sense that you could be earning commissions and bonuses in excess of the cost of your monthly purchase of" the product. Does that sound like free to you?

2. Chain Letters/Emails ("Make Money Fast")
If you've been on the Internet for any length of time, you've probably received or at least seen these chain emails. They promise that all you have to do is send the email along plus some money by mail to the top names on the list, then add your name to the bottom... and one day you'll be a millionaire. Actually, the only thing you might be one day is prosecuted for fraud. This is a classic pyramid scheme, and most times the names in the chain emails are manipulated to make sure only the people at the top of the list (the true scammers) make any money. This scam should be called "Lose Money Fast" -- and it's illegal.

1. Envelope Stuffing
This is the classic work-at-home scam. It's been around since the U.S. Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, and it's moved onto the Internet like a cockroach you just can't eliminate. There are several variations, but here's a sample: Much like #5 and #4 above, you are promised to be paid $1-2 for every envelope you stuff. All you have to do is send money and you're guaranteed "up to 1,000 envelopes a week that you can stuff... with postage and address already affixed!" When you send your money, you get a short manual with flyer templates you're supposed to put up around town, advertising yet another harebrained work-from-home scheme. And the pre-addressed, pre-paid envelopes? Well, when people see those flyers, all they have to do is send you $2.00 in a pre-addressed, pre-paid envelope. Then you stuff that envelope with another flyer and send it to them. Ingenious perhaps... but certainly illegal and unethical.

From all that I've heard, most franchises and multi-level marketing schemes are not profitable unless you pick a great product or service, and you already have a strong background in sales. Beware of any franchise where you wouldn't have a protected territory. My general advice is this: You will probably be better off starting your own business, making, retailing, or consulting about something where you can leverage your existing knowledge and/or experience.

---

In closing, I'd like to reemphasize that home security and locksmithing are likely to provide steady and profitable employment for the next few years, since hard economic times are likely to trigger a substantial crime wave. After all, someone has to keep watch on the tens of thousands of foreclosed, vacant houses. (If not watched, then crack cocaine addicts, Chicago syndicate politicians, or other undesirables might move in!)

The current economic downward spiral has prompted several SurvivalBlog readers to write me and ask: "My job is now at risk, so what are the safe jobs?" I've actually addressed this topic fairly well since I started SurvivalBlog in 2005. We ran a "best recession-proof jobs" poll, back in May of 2006. Then, in February, 2007, we ran a poll on "Best Occupations for Both Before and After TEOTWAWKI". Later, we even ran a poll on the current occupations of SurvivalBlog readers. In the past three years, we've also posted a panoply of more detailed employment-related letters and articles on subjects such as:

How to set up a home-based second business,

Bartering skills,

Home-based mail order businesses,

Small sawmills,

Gunsmithing,

Handloading ammunition,

Horse breeding,

Rabbit breeding,

Small machine shops,

Selling and bartering through Freecycle,

Selling and bartering through Craig's List, and

19th Century Trades.

And those were just the ones that I found in a cursory 10-minute search of the SurvivalBlog archives. There are many more. Just type a topic into the "Search Posts on SurvivalBlog:" box at the top of the right -hand bar. (We now have nearly 6,200 archived articles, letters, and quotes!)

Which Jobs Were Safe in the 1930s?

One good insight on the near future can be found in the past. (As Mark Twain said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.")

According to statistics published some 20 years ago by Dr.Ravi Batra, the safest businesses and industries during the worst years of the Great Depression (1929-1933) were:

Repair shops
Educational services (A lot of young men that couldn't find work borrowed money to go to trade schools and college.)
Healthcare services
Bicycle shops
Bus transportation
Gasoline service stations
Second hand stores
Legal services
Drug or proprietary stores

To bring Batra's list up to date, I would speculatively add a few more sectors and business that are likely to do well in the next depression:

Home security and locksmithing (since a higher crime rate is inevitable in bad economic times.)
Entertainment and diversions, such as DVD sales and rentals. People will undoubtedly want to escape their troubles!
Truck farming and large scale vegetable gardening (since just 2% of the population now feeds the other 98%--whereas back in the 1930s the US was still a predominantly agrarian society)
Export consumer goods. (Starting in late 2009 or early 2010, the US Dollar is likely to resume its slide versus most other currencies)

Tomorrow, I'll post Part 2 of this article, in which I will focus on home-based businesses.

Many readers of Survival Blog are either in the process of moving to a lightly populated area or actively planning to bugout to such an area when the balloon goes up. Twenty years ago I moved from the edge of a large city to a fairly remote property, and have been quietly setting up the doomstead and perfecting skills ever since. In the process, I became part of the fabric of country life here and have learned some valuable lessons which may benefit the rookie country dweller.

Most full-time country residents are descendents of frontiersmen who ventured into the wilderness with little more than a rifle, axe, team of horses, and a large supply of guts. Country people hold many of the same attributes as their forebears; competence, toughness, perseverance, and a willingness to help their neighbors, be it for common defense or a barn raising. Many of these traits are at odds with modern city life supported by a specialized full-time job. Your transition to country life will be smoother if you consider the following:

Country People are Closet Doomers:
They can do lots of useful things such as shoe a horse, grow corn, weld, back a trailer, milk a goat, make tamales, catch a wild cow, troubleshoot an electrical problem, can a tomato, and shoot lights out. And that's just the women.

People here are armed every day as a matter of course. Most have been shooting all of their lives, so the level of firearms proficiency is way above average. I see lots of casual ARs and scoped bolt actions, so if my neighbors and acquaintances are any barometer, potential rampaging MZBs are in for some exceedingly tough sledding.
On a related note, there are a few bad apples in the country, but most tend to migrate to the anonymity of the cities. The outlaws who remain are generally well known to both law enforcement and the population at large, and are easy enough to avoid once you plug into the local grapevine.

Be Scrupulously Honest:
Country people don't care that much what you think or how you wear your hair as long as they can trust you. Lie or stiff a merchant one time and in 45 minutes everyone in the county will know it, guaranteed.

On the flip side, if you've been given too much change or an error is made in your favor with a bank deposit or charge purchase at a merchant, politely point out the mistake and insist on paying the correct amount. While such a gesture will usually be met with stunned disbelief in a large city, in the country it will be acknowledged with a nod and sincere appreciation. And never doubt for an instant that the country grapevine will work in your favor as the word spreads.

When I first moved here, I was able to open an account with any business in town simply by asking if I could charge a purchase. No references, no questions, no credit check, just an address so they could send a statement at the end of the month. Such an accommodating policy would most certainly not have been the case had I been late in paying those first bills.

Money is Overrated:
Country people never forget a kindness; they also rarely forget a transgression against good manners or honesty. The most valuable commerce in the country is not conducted in dollars but in trading, gifts, being owed a favor, and goodwill.

Become Part of the Community:
Self-sufficiency is a worthy goal, but in truth perhaps the most useful survival skill is contributing to a community which has a stake in your well being. To my mind, being able to call upon neighbors for specialized assistance or trade is just as important as beans, bullets, and Band-Aids.

Schools and churches are the glue which binds a country community. If you have children in local schools or choose to attend church, tapping into country networks will be greatly accelerated.
Also, small communities run largely on volunteers, so consider volunteering at the library, as a fireman, at sports fund raisers, community cleanup, or meals on wheels. JWR Adds: If you homeschool your kids, be sure to join the local homeschooling "co-op" group. You will be sure to meet the preparedness-minded folks in your community.

The Country is a Time Warp:
Time passes slower here, as it's based more on the seasons than on a clock.
Fight the city urge to hurry everywhere. Tasks are completed when time, required supplies, and any needed help are available, and not on an arbitrary schedule. Parts are generally not readily available as they are in a city, you might have to order a particular part and wait days or weeks for it to arrive, and perhaps have to improvise in the meantime.
The two main time-related lessons you’ll learn is that weather can throw a kink into any plan, and maintaining household water supply trumps almost every other concern. You’ll soon adopt a mañana attitude about most other projects, as there is always plenty more to be done while waiting for specific parts or supplies.
Slow down enough to take time to talk about the weather, trade recipes, talk gardening, help a neighbor with a project, and to watch a sunset.

Seek Out Those with Useful Skills Now:
Country life requires a generalist rather than a specialist, so trading your particular skills – whether carpentry, electrical expertise, or knowing what’s wrong with a row of beans - with neighbors in exchange for their skills just makes sense. In fact, there is even a term here, “neighboring”, which refers to a group effort of working each landowner’s livestock in turn without hiring outside help.
I have also become acquainted with various people who have huge gardens or dairy goats or sheep or hogs or teams of horses and mules or a small band saw mill for making lumber. Such people often don’t advertise and they may be hard to find, but the search is potentially of huge benefit to the astute survivalist.

As an example, there is a man here who has an old steam-powered grain mill. Another has a tiny combine for harvesting wheat and oats in the scattered small plots where it is grown in this area. Up until now, I haven’t used their unique services, but still make it a point to give these men a quart of honey from our hives every summer.
You will choose to help many of these people in time of trouble, just as they will choose to help you, but in the meantime always exercise OPSEC about your underlying motivations and preps. Country people have a wide independent streak so your desire to be more self-sufficient will never seem out of place.

Country People are Provincial:
But largely by choice, which doesn't mean they are stupid or uninformed. The vast majority are Internet savvy and many are exceptionally well-traveled and well-read. More than a few have made the decision to leave a lucrative city existence in exchange for country life. The level of overall awareness is high, so you'll hear more commonsense over a cup of coffee than you'll ever hear from Washington.
A few recent quotes I’ve heard regarding our current economic meltdown:
“I was going to sell all of my calves last fall but held back four in case my freezers start to look empty.”
“We’re breaking some new garden ground this spring, going to plant a lot more potatoes than we usually do.”
"I bought two more cases of .223 ammo, just in case the rabbits go on the warpath.” Listen and learn.

Never Underestimate the Amount of Work Involved:
Few farms or ranches here are entirely self-supporting, with one or both spouses usually working a “regular” job. The pay scale is considerably lower than in a city, so often people work two or even three jobs in order to live well. This is in addition to farming and working livestock on their own places. People work hard, and that’s in relatively good times.

If this economy continues to unravel, more subsistence-level farming and ranching may well become the norm, and that’s when the work really begins. Growing and processing most or all of your own food requires a tremendous amount of labor and expertise, with constant effort from everyone involved. Have no illusions about some idyllic country life of sitting on the porch all day, chewing on a grass stem while contemplating the vista. The trick for making subsistence agriculture work is for everyone to always be doing something constructive, whether it’s hoeing weeds in the garden, building a chicken coop, shelling beans, cleaning a firearm, playing with a toddler, or rereading one of your how-to books.

With that said, no family or survival group can possibly be competent at all of the skills required. This is when being on good terms with neighbors becomes essential; give them half of a fresh beef now for the cheese they can provide later on; the pickles you made are a fair trade for his baskets of peaches; your stash of supplies may well allow you to trade for a rooster and five hens (along with some expert advice on getting started); if you can provide the diesel, your neighbor might plow your garden plot after your tractor has thrown a rod. - Bois d'Arc

I was raised in a missionary family, on nine different mission fields around the world. At the age of nineteen, I went out to serve the Lord on my own in the former Soviet Union. I had no formal Theological training, but was accepted by the missionary societies of my denomination because of my experience under my father and my willingness to go to dangerous areas.

I married, and my wife and I have now six children. A few years ago, due to some changes in my theology, I fell out of favor with my denomination and had to return home to the USA. I was faced with a situation of suddenly having to feed and care for a large family with: 1. no formal education/training/skills of any kind and 2. very little understanding of the southern American culture that I found myself living in. I was forced to take very low-paying jobs and survive on a low-income.

With our savings we were able to buy a small rural house and 7.5 acres in the southeast. We were able to pay cash, I wanted it to be ours with no strings attached, regardless of what the future held. I figured that at the very least we would have a roof and some plantable land. I bought in the area my parents lived in to help care for them as they progressed in years.
Our income is very limited. I work at just above minimum wage. I work a full-time job and another part-time job. I am thankful that the Lord provides.

As I studied current events I became concerned about the possibility of a world-wide economic and/or societal collapse of some kind, or a societal break-down here in the USA resulting from any number of possible reasons. I had witnessed the chaos of the nineties in the former Soviet Union, had watched doctors and physicists sweep streets and live off of potatoes and bread for months on end, and I was concerned about my responsibility to feed my family should a similar collapse happen here.

What can you do when you have very limited means? Actually there is much you can do. It amounts to setting goals and getting your family on board with you. The first thing I did was (after my wife and I had many long talks and she began to see things in a similar way), I gathered the family around and explained everything to them. I explained about our limited means, exactly how much money was coming in, how much went to utilities, fuel, etc. I explained what I believed the dangers were. I explained what we needed to do as a family. Let me interject here that after being born and growing up on a third-world mission field, they were far from spoiled children! They were accustomed to living in tight quarters, washing in cold water, eating cheap, and basically just "roughing it."

My first priority was for two weeks worth of provisions. We began to buy a few extra cans of food when we went shopping. I set a goal of 20 dollars per week for prepping. Some weeks ten dollars of canned goods and/or dried foods like rice, beans or noodles, and ten dollars in ammo or medical supplies. Some weeks just food, some weeks just extra gasoline. We bought gas cans at thrift stores and garage sales for a dollar apiece, Large scented candles (better than nothing) at closeout sales and garage sales for 30 and 50 cents, and just about anything we could scrounge that might come in handy if the lights went out. It did not take us long to build up enough supplies to last two weeks in an emergency. We had enough gasoline to drive to work for two weeks (if needed), enough food for our family plus a little extra, and candles, radios, batteries and other odds and ends to get by.

I had also along the way added to my ammunition stocks for my Winchester .30-30, and my bolt-action .22 LR.
After we reached the point where we felt we had enough for a two-week catastrophe, we began to focus on the six-month time frame. This opened up many entirely new possibilities. since the food required for this amount of time was such a major expense, we had to make sure that it would last for several years. This raised the issue of long-term storage in buckets, mylar bags and oxygen-absorbers. We had to save for months to buy an order of oxygen-absorbers and mylar bags on e-bay! We found low-cost buckets and began to fill them with rice, feed corn, corn meal, noodles, beans etc. Anything that was inexpensive. We taught the children to like corn-meal mush and grits since they might get quite a bit of it one day!

Gradually we worked our way up to 30 buckets. At this point I made a strategic decision. I decided that we needed to invest our extra funds in gardening. Not entirely stopping the food storage, but reducing it in favor of procuring means and experience in growing and canning our own food. We began to buy canning jars and lids to put away in the attic for the future. My father gave us a tiller with a blown engine which we were able to get fixed, and we began to garden. The first garden was not very well thought-out. Some things grew, some did not. But we learned. We learned first-hand what pollination means and about soil fertility. We learned about bugs and blight. We gained valuable experience.

We also invested in chickens, and watched some of them die, some of them be eaten by neighbor's dogs, some get eaten by our dogs, and the hardy survivors begin to lay eggs. We watched them eat their own eggs and learned to give them calcium. We let half of them free range and half range in portable pens that we built which have an open floor that we could move each day to fresh grass. We learned how to make them roost and lay where they were supposed to.

We bought some rabbits and learned a lot, real fast! We experimented with many types of portable cages for rabbits which would allow us to move them from one grassy spot to another without giving them time to dig a burrow. Sometimes we would wake up and find rabbit carcases torn to shreds, because a neighborhood cat had gotten to them. My kids handled most of this, and they learned things the hard way.

If you haven't figured it out yet, We were totally green. I spent my life traveling and overseeing the translation of Christian literature into foreign languages. My wife is a musician. We had zero experience at any of this, and no one around that we knew to advise us. We had to learn everything from scratch. We bought a goat and promptly saw it attacked and killed by a stray dog. That hurt, financially as well as emotionally. After sending the dog to join the goat "on the other side", I bought another goat. and then another. These have survived. We have learned to care for them.

Gradually I am seeing my children grow confident in their relationship to the animals under their care. Gradually we are learning the needs of these animals and how to make them produce for us. If we had had some kind of hands-on training, it would have saved the lives of a lot of animals, but we didn't. I am happy to announce a much higher survival rate for animals that we bring home now.

I felt like I needed a greater firearms capability (what man doesn't?). I thought long and hard. At first I bought a Mosin-Nagant since they were so cheap ($75) and the ammo was dirt-cheap as well. I then began to consider what type of semi-automatic I could afford. I looked at the prices of ammo which was very critical since I would have to train my entire family to shoot. At the time the best deal for us appeared to be the SKS rifle. It was cheap (a good quality Yugo[slavian SKS] was less than $200), dependable, semi-auto and the ammo was very cheap at the time. I later added a cheap 12 gauge pump, and last but not least, a 17 round Bersa Thunder 9mm. After purchasing these guns I began to pick up ammo for them when I could find it on sale. I have gradually gotten up to about 500 rounds for each of them.

I then turned my attention to our home and it's defense. While we live in the country, we are close to our neighbors 100 yards +/-, about five miles from a small town, about 15 miles from a large town, and about 90 miles from Atlanta (upwind fortunately). My greatest concern is our proximity to the road. The house is only about 65 feet from the dirt road in front of our house. A looter or burglar/rapist could be at the door or windows before the dog barked. In response to this my next expenditure is to be fence posts, fencing, and barbed wire, along with a row of thorny bushes in front of the wire next to the road.

Our house is a soft target, offering no ballistic protection. My remedy/forlorn hope is to have plenty of sand and gravel on hand, and to start checking the thrift stores for pillow cases to buy and store. perhaps we would have time to bag up sand bags and at least harden up certain corners or rooms of the house. We also have several large piles of sandstone (we live on top of a mountain) which could be placed strategically and then perhaps sand bags on top of that. We could also cut logs and add that to the mix.

Our water supply is a [grid-powered] electric well. This is one of my biggest worries. We have made it a priority to buy a generator at least strong enough to run the well and freezers for an hour or two a day. I know that this is only a temporary solution but is about all we can handle right now. I am very thankful for the non-fiction writing contribution about the siphon pumps for wells such as mine, that offered up new possibilities which I have not had time to address yet. We also have a neighbor 1/4 mile away which has an artesian spring on his property, though it has extremely high iron content. I have purchased two 330 gallon plastic livestock watering tanks and several drums which I can fill at the first sign of trouble. I can also load them on my little trailer and pull them down to the neighbor's to fill up from his well. I just need to check on the ramifications of the high iron content.

I am also trying to fill up as many containers as possible with gasoline. I add Sta-Bil and plan to use/rotate it yearly (as long as the price stays low). I would like to keep at least 250 to 500 gallons on hand at all times. I buy old gas cans at yard sales and just found a source for cheap 55 gallon drums with sealed lids ($3). I may start using them instead.

Our immediate plans are to build more pens and raise more chickens and goats, maybe a pig or two. We also look forward to planting a much bigger garden this spring and maybe use some of our hard-won experience of last year. We also want to involve the kids in martial arts classes if we can afford it, as well as herb-collecting hikes from the local community college field school (which are free and fun). We want to spend more time with them in the woods and in the garden so that they feel comfortable there and begin to think about survival from their own perspective. We also are beginning to exploit the library for free resources for them to study on various topics.

The future of this country looks grim. As Christians we have "read the back of the Book" and we know Who wins. Our responsibility is to be good stewards of the talents we have, perform our duties as husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, and ultimately, to trust Him for that which is beyond our vision and power.

Jim,
Situational Awareness has a number of definitions, from the rather complex to the "simple". They include:

• The process of recognizing a threat at an early stage and taking measures to avoid it. (Being observant of one's surroundings and dangerous situations is more an attitude or mindset than it is a hard skill.)
  
• The ability to maintain a constant, clear mental picture of relevant information and the tactical situation including friendly and threat situations as well as terrain.
  
• Knowing what is going on so you can figure out what to do.
  
• What you need to know not to be surprised.

This comes to mind because of my recent reading of your novel, "Patriots". (An excellent book. A must have for any "prepper".) The book is primarily about a group of people who joined together to survive in the "days after". The daily requirements of surviving in times of roving bands of criminals and martial law enforcers were covered rather forcefully. Many of the challenges they faced required an armed response, and situational awareness was often discussed. For the kinds of situations in which the "Patriot" folks found themselves, the extremely helpful explanations of such matters as OPSEC and LP/OPs are very helpful to anyone facing what is soon coming for many of us. As the book describes, situational awareness is absolutely vital to survival and success in our near future.

But, while situational awareness is most commonly thought of as a conflict skill, there are also other kinds of situational awareness. On Yahoo Groups, there is a discussion group about surviving in the days after. One of the most prolific writers has several times recently warned the readers to "Get out of the cities now !". He's even suggested moving to very unpopulated areas and using wood pallets to erect shacks. IMHO, this is a suggestion that will cause many people great harm. Folks, with little or no preparations, suddenly moving to the land to escape the "Golden Horde", will likely fail or die. Just reading the stories of the many pioneers who moved west, will quickly sober you up from any "can do/don't know" thinking.

I have lived nearly all my life on a farm. I have developed a deep knowledge of the land. It has come at the great expense of many missteps, failures, successes, hard work and time. I call it having situational awareness of the environment. I know what certain kinds of clouds mean when forecasting tomorrow's weather. I know that the vine-like plants with three shiny leaves aren't so good to eat or touch. I know a dead snake can still bite. People just coming to the land for the first time will have little of that knowledge.

For untold years and many generations, the knowledge of how to live on the land and be self-sufficient was passed down thru families. In farm country, school was often found at the back fence. If you or your Grandfather didn't know something, the farmer next door often did. I remember many times in my youth when I'd be out working the land and the guy next door would be out on his. Often as not, we'd stop and stand by the line fence and talk. ...And I learned lots. But, now, much of this passing on of knowledge is lost. Farmers more commonly sit 12 feet in the air, driving an air conditioned combine, following the turns suggested by the GPS receiver on the dash. Your parents most likely worked in a factory or a shop, than on a farm. What was common family knowledge just a couple generations ago, such as maple syrup making, canning, gardening, butchering, animal husbandry, etc., etc., is gone. The "chain" is broken. Without this great deal of passed on knowledge and experience, nearly any farm endeavor can, and often will, lead to unexpected disaster.

This is where Situational Awareness comes in. "The need to know, so as not to be surprised." The list is endless, but for starters:

• Knowing the good bugs from the bad in the garden
  
• Knowing fresh horse manure will kill a garden, fresh chicken m. will help
  
• Knowing only 3 or 4 ounces of yew leaves--a common landscape plant in much of the US--can kill a horse
  
• Knowing how to split wood so that the axe won't glance off and chop your leg
  
• Knowing that burning certain kinds of wood in your wood stove means you need to clean the chimney twice a winter so you don't burn down your house [with a chimney fire]
  
• Knowing the nice, fresh, clean, free flowing, mountain stream may be full of giardia.
  
• Knowing that, when plowing with a horse, you should never tie the reins together and put them around behind your back so your hands are free to handle the plow. (This was the way it was done in the novel "Dies the Fire" [by S.M. Stirling). If your horse happens to shy and takes off running, you will be dragged along the ground and be seriously hurt. The proper way to plow is with the reins over one shoulder and under the other. Then, if your horse runs, you just duck your head and the reins slide off.
  
• Knowing that crows in the garden are bad because they eat the new planted seeds, but crows around your chicken coop are good because they keep away the hawks that will eat your chickens.
  
• Knowing that if your tractor suddenly starts making a new sound, this is not good. Stop immediately and figure out what's going on, before something breaks.
  
• Learning to look around you when walking, instead of only staring at the ground for your next step, (as most people do).

And on it goes. I have lived decades on the land. There's not a day goes by that I don't learn something. But even with all my handed down knowledge and hard-fought experiences, I'm not even sure I could make a go of suddenly heading out to the "country" to build a cabin and barn, till the soil, cut fire wood, store food for man and beast, and more. It's just awful hard without lots of prep's. And I can tell you, without an extensive knowledge of what the "environment" around you is telling you, it's darn near impossible. ...(Taking a walk in the woods can hurt just as much as a walk on certain inner city streets.)

So what are you to do ? Well, having a "G.O.O.D." bag and great escape vehicle is a start. Having supplies, tools and seed already in place really helps. But once you get to your retreat site, have a plan, have some knowledge of how to do, what to do. Practice now. If you think you're going to learn while living in a wood pallet shack, you won't. You'll most likely die. If there's no more Elders to ask, get to know the other "elders"--books. Go to local farms and ask to spend time just helping, so you can learn something. Go to a school to learn skills; like tracking, orienteering and fire building without matches; (one of the best, imo, is Midwest Native Skills Institute). Never take charcoal or lighter fluid on a picnic, learn to gather what burns. Go camping in winter, instead of just when it is "pretty" outside. Find a "big animal" vet. and ask to attend and help when birthing a calf. Most especially, turn off your tv. Use your time to learn to sew, or knit, or make soap. Pick up (fresh) dead animals on the road and practice skinning them and then tan the hide. [JWR Adds: Needless to say, consult your state Fish and Game laws before doings so!] Find local crafts people and acquire a skill, such as weaving, or candle making, or tin smithing, because having a survival trade in a cashless society may keep you alive. Learn to listen. Throw away those darn ear plug music things. Learn situational awareness. What is the wind telling you about the day ? What does the sudden and not normal crowing of a rooster warn you of ? What does the setting of the moon in a certain place on the horizon tell you about the season ?

Learn what it takes to live on the land, before you have to suddenly move there. Learn what nature, the land, and new tasks are telling you, before you find yourself in a difficult situation, ...(un)aware.

- Jim Fry, Curator, Museum of Western Reserve Farms & Equipment, Ohio

Thank You Mr. Rawles,
My husband and I are new readers of SurvivalBlog; we have been so encouraged/convicted/moved/enlightened/blessed by your wisdom.

Gertrude's "Bloom Where You're Planted" article, for me, was amazing. It's the "if she can do it, anyone can do it' - I am encouraged. I don't really have words for what I'm trying to say, just that I don't feel so overwhelmed now after reading her words.

We are just in the baby beginning stages of preparedness. My amazing husband is leading us in the most right direction, and is a very steady purposeful man. I trust him and his ability completely.
I think to sum up this attempt at an email to you Mr. Rawles, is that hearing Gertrude's calm direction and wisdom has changed my entire approach, or my thinking....does that make sense?

Ultimately, my trust rests in my most Gracious God, and then, He knows my fears and doubts and places folks like Gertrude in my path. I am grateful. Blessings on you, - Kristy in Oregon

I'm giving really serious consideration to a move to the north-central Ozark area of Arkansas. My reasoning is that the weather is fairly benign - average temps are 40-to-80 F, good [length of] growing season; land is still pretty reasonable. Acreage at $1,000 per acre - sometimes less - is not unusual. The area has springs/lakes/creeks/caves; many smaller towns; living costs are very reasonable; a strong family orientated population; fairly well-developed medical services even in the smaller towns.

I realize that this area is more suited for people who do not work or who are not looking for work, but I'm only seven months from retirement and so far have managed to keep most of my retirement funds from tanking. I hope to have in the area of around $4,000 per month coming in to fund my retirement; and this without resorting to IRA withdrawals. I should hopefully be able to off-load my house in Florida for around $150,000 - mostly because of the location. After paying the minimal balanced owed, I hope to pretty much be able to put up ~$100,000 as purchase money. Looking through the current realtor's ads from the area, that money could buy me anything from 50-to-80 undeveloped acres at one end, to a three bedroom house on 20-40 acres on the other end.

The biggest negative in the area appears to be that the in-place governmental infrastructure occasionally is not up to the job, a state income tax, and jobs are not very plentiful. But again for me these are really almost pluses. I plan to use trusts to handle most of my transactions there and by limiting my visible income I hope to keep pretty much off both the state and Federal radar screen. All taken together the pluses - at least from my perspective - seem to far outweigh the negatives.

I would like to build a semi-underground house on a southeast exposure to minimize heating and cooling costs as well as reducing security issues - both personal and disaster related.

A big downer there is that it is in the Mississippi earthquake zone, but sometimes you have to flip the coin, and I worry more about the caldera of Yellowstone than I do a [local]earthquake. Regards, - Doug D.

I recently received an e-mail from T.F. in Utah, who quipped: "They tell us that inflation is now non-existent. Well, how many years of deflation will it take to get prices back to where they once were? It is noteworthy that the average annual property tax on a house on a city lot now exceeds the entire land purchase price and construction cost of a comparable square footage house, in 1890." Inflation is indeed insidious. And its has implications that are far-reaching. For example, consider the following:

Creeping tax increases one of the reasons that it is now nearly impossible for someone to "live off the land" on small acreage. Even if you own your house and land free and clear, property taxes are inescapable. Thus, in "self-sufficient" mode, although you can feed yourself, you still need a cash-earning job, just to pay the taxes. I pray that at the far end of the coming depression, our debt money system--which is the root of inflation--will be replaced by a system of sound currency that is redeemable in specie. That is the only sure, long term solution to creeping inflation, and corresponding creeping taxation.

I've mentioned this tale of woe before: Back in the 1930s, my great grandparents lost a considerable portion of their 5,000+ acre sheep ranch in northern California to back taxes. At the beginning of the Great Depression they were land rich but cash poor. But by the end of the Depression, that had neither much money or land. (By 1942, the county had taken most of the ranch for back taxes.) Although the chances of a long-lasting deflationary depression are fairly small (since I think Helicopter Ben will try to inflate his way out of this mess), it is prudent to do your best to maintain a cash income to supplement "the fat of the land", from your self-sufficient retreat. See the SurvivalBlog Archives for some suggestions on building up home-based businesses.

Here's a beginner's list I made for my [elderly] father today:

Food
{Brown pearl] rice does not store well. Neither does cooking oil so that needs to be fresh. No, Crisco doesn't count.
Coconut oil would be your best bet.
Wheat berries - 400 pounds - bulk order at your local health food store
Beans - 400 pounds - bulk order at your local health food store
Mylar bags
Spices
Salt
Country Living grain mill
propane tanks, small stove and hoses to connect
freeze dried fruits, vegetables, eggs and meat if you can find them.
Water
500 gallons of water [storage capacity. Rainwater catchment is a common practice in Hawaii]
Water filter

Cooking
Cast Iron Cookware

Firearms
FN PS 90

10 PS 90 magazines

5.7 handgun

10 FN 5.7 handgun magazines

5.7 ammo

Training: Front Sight four day defensive handgun course. (Note: eBay sometimes has course certificates for $100!)

Body armor: Nick at BulletProofME.com

Medical
Personal medications
Augmentin antibiotic
Up to date dental work
Painkillers
Bandages
Iodine
Anti-fungal spray

Finances
$10,000 cash in small bills
100 one-ounce silver coins (GoldDealer.com or Tulving.com)

Transport
Gasoline in 5 gallon cans or better yet, this.
Gas stabilizer
Mountain bikes
Air pump

Miscellany
Flashlights
Rechargeable Batteries
Battery charger
Hand held walkie talkies
Topographical map of your area
Spare eyeglasses
Shortwave radio
Home generated power
12 volt battery system
Good backpack
Good knife
Good compass
Good shoes
Bar soap
Toothbrushes
Dental floss
Toilet paper
Fishing kit
Salt licks
Connibear traps

Regards, - SF in Hawaii

JWR Adds: The following is based on the assumption that SF's father also lives in Hawaii: Because of the 10 round magazine limit for handguns, I recommend that Hawaiians purchase only large bore handguns for self defense--such as .45 ACP. Both the Springfield Armory XD .45 Compact or the Glock Model 30 would both be good choices. The "high capacity" advantage of smaller caliber handguns is not available to civilians in Hawaii, so you might as well get a more potent man stopper, given the arbitrary 10 round limitation.

A front page headline in The New York Times on Friday shouted: Congressional Leaders Stunned by Warnings. The article began: "It was a room full of people who rarely hold their tongues. But as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, laid out the potentially devastating ramifications of the financial crisis before congressional leaders on Thursday night, there was a stunned silence at first." Later in the piece, it mentions: "...the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.'"

U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat, of New York) gave his impression of the meeting with Bernanke: “When you listened to him describe it, you gulped." In a another interview with NPR, Schumer said of the unfolding credit crisis: "If we wait too long, the floor could come out and everything could crash down. " It was Schumer, BTW, that first proposed creating a new agency that would be analogous to the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), during the Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s. Parenthetically, you will also remember Schumer as the inspiration for a couple of my pet expressions ("Deep Schumer", and "When The Schumer Hits The Fan"), that I coined back in the early 1990s, to avoid making crude scatological references. Given Senator Schumer's horribly leftist and gun-grabbing voting record, I make no apologies for enshrining "Schumer" and "WTSHTF" in the SurvivalBlog Glossary.

Clearly, we are living in perilous times. I predict that the markets will be in rollercoaster mode for the foreseeable future, with news stories and government pronouncements precipitating some huge swings. At this juncture I think that I should repeat some thoughts that I posted back in March of this year, since our newest readers probably missed it. This was posted back when I first started warning in earnest about the Mother of All Bailouts (MOAB). As you'll see, most of my predictions were correct:

Last week, the mainstream media described the latest expansion of the Mother of All Bailouts (MOAB), but they politely refrained from calling this what it is: socialism, plain and simple. The grand plan, as it stands now, is to bail out not just consumer banks, but also investment banks, with taxpayer dollars. They are effectively making our life savings and our future earnings surety for a bunch of idiotic contrapreneurs' loans on everything from flat top duplexes to McMansions. These were houses that the contrapreneurs bought, that they could never really afford unless the market continued to rise at an artificial rate. They bought these houses with the intention of "flipping" them, but then the market topped out, and the "easy money" party ended.

At least those hated fascist dictators like Mussolini had the common sense to nationalize viable, productive companies. But now Ben Bernanke is busy nationalizing a slew of corporations with negative net worth. This is absolute lunacy!

[Some deleted, for brevity.]

All of these calls for regulation, new government agencies, and greater scrutiny might outwardly sound well-reasoned, but they ignore some inescapable underlying problems: We have a fiat currency that is based on debt, we have a banking system with fictional fractional reserves, we have a derivatives market that is a $500 trillion casino, and we have a national treasury that is backed by wishful thinking--certainly not by anything tangible.

The other key point that seems to have escaped the mainstream media is that this new regulatory power is being handed to the Federal Reserve, which is a private banking cartel, not a government agency. They are no more "Federal" than the Federal Express parcel courier company. So this isn't just socialism. This is nothing short of corporate-controlled socialism--where a handful of banking corporations are given access to the Federal tax coffers to bail out other institutions and then, even further, they are given sweeping regulatory powers. This power grab is deemed "necessary" by circumstances that the Federal Reserve itself created! Somewhere, somehow, somebody stands to make a lot of money in this process. Cui bono? I'll wager that it won't be the American taxpayers that benefit. As economist Mish Shedlock observes, this is like putting the Fox in Charge of the Henhouse. Mish summed up the current mess succinctly: "The biggest, most reckless credit experiment in history has started to implode. It's far too late to stop a complete systemic collapse now. Granting new powers to the agency most responsible for the mess simply does not make any sense."

Secrecy is another concern. In a recent e-mail, SurvivalBlog reader KAF commented: "We should be greatly concerned about the fact that the Federal Reserve has provided public release anonymity to the institutions who are taking '30 day' never ending loans. We'll now never know if the institutions we deal with are truly solvent and credible, This new"confidentiality" allows the Fed. to manipulate reserves on a routine basis. We'll never know if this country's Federal Reserve is or is not heading for bankruptcy unless we use the tests of consumer spending and commodity pricing as indicators." She hit the nail on the head. At the same time that the press is howling for "greater transparency" in banking, and writing exposes of "predatory lending practices", the Powers That Be are drawing the veil of secrecy over lending institutions. They'd rather treat us like mushrooms--keeping us in the dark and feeding us barn waste--than risk a panic by letting the public know the real depth of the liquidity crisis and its collateral effects.

Instead of government platitudes, do you want some figures to chew on? Look at this Federal Reserve web page. The negative numbers at the bottom of the "Non-loaned Reserves" column speak volumes. Without the newly-created Federal Reserve "emergency lending mechanisms", many banks would be absolutely bankrupt. As you can see, the bankers are swimming in red ink. There is now a huge risk of bank runs, but this threat is being ignored by the mainstream media. Mark my words: There are bank runs coming.

The fact is that the global lending system is essentially broken. Artificially lowering interest rates won't fix it, when bankers are afraid to lend. As I've previously noted, the bankers are afraid to lend because so much re-packaging and reshuffling of debt has gone on in the past seven years that nobody knows who owes what to whom, and precisely what assets are underlying these exotic debt "packages." Meanwhile, the bankers have learned that the big insurance firms like Fitch, Moody's and S&P were in on the swindle. We now know that they colluded with their mortgage firm buddies to inflate assets and deflate risks in a masterpiece of legerdemain that would make Enron's accountants proud.

The bottom line is the the entire world economy is is in deep, deep trouble. Without financing, the Big Machine is grinding to a halt. The next few years will probably see the economy plunge into a deep recession, if not a full blown depression. The current headlines are just a foreshadowing of the real crisis to come. The MOAB will grow and grow, eventually bailing out far more than just banks. There will be brokerage houses, insurance firms, S&Ls, credit unions, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, and possibly even muni bonds and pension funds are all lined up, ready to reach into our wallets. Once the government starts down the slippery slope of bailout-socialism schemes, they will perforce spread to more and more institutions. And, as I've previously noted, the public coffers will be insufficient to cover the inestimable costs of the MOAB. So this mean that Uncle Sam will monetize the difference. They'll just create the needed "dollars" out of thin air. This will be outrageously inflationary, at all levels.

[More deleted, for brevity.]

All of these macro-level implications might seem fairly abstract, so let me put them in real world terms and take the risk of extrapolating on some trends that I've observed: There will be a recession, and it will be deep, and long-lasting. A recession will mean that there will be some big corporate layoffs. Be ready. There will be bank runs and banking "holidays". Be ready. There will be huge flows of "bailout" funds that will effectively nationalize many industries. Be ready. There will probably be a stock market collapse. Be ready. There will be a further collapse in residential real estate that will make the recent declines seem small, by comparison. Be ready. Credit delinquencies and foreclosures (on car loans, home loans, credit card bills, etc.) will dramatically increase. Be ready. There will be a collapse of the commercial real estate market. Be ready. Even though the credit available for IPOs and private mergers and acquisitions has dried up, there will be news of some large and seemingly inexplicable acquisitions in the near future, all sanctioned by and in some cases, underwritten by, and even funded by, the Federal government. Be ready. There will be shortages of key commodities including fuel and food. Be ready. Strapped for cash, America's highway, rail, water, sewer, telecommunications, and power infrastructures will degenerate. Be ready. There will be mass inflation of the US Dollar that will devalue any dollar denominated investments. Be ready.

And now, to further extrapolate, (with a lower level of confidence): All of the aforementioned economic dislocation and surging inflation might trigger mass protests, riots, looting, and arson in the cities. Be ready. There may then be massive out-migration from the cities. Be ready. Wars have been known to follow close on the heels of depressions and financial crises, so there may be a war, possibly big enough to require another draft. Be ready.

As I've written many times before, the real lynchpin to worry about is the power grid. If the grid goes down, then all bets are off. Be vigilant, be well-stocked with a deep larder, and be self-sufficient. Store extra for charity. If you can afford to, establish a survival retreat in a lightly-populated region, and if possible, live there year-round.

I still stand by those recommendations. The time to get ready was yesterday.

Well, I am back on the Internet for a time at least. Mind you, from the look of the soap opera world, I didn’t miss much. Grin

A bit of background first for context. I am forecasting grim things for the fairly near future, particularly in financial terms. In one sense I am a type of survivalist, in that I want to prepare. Most survivalists tend to plan and prepare for a type of bunker at a fixed location to survive whatever doomsday they foresee coming. Such a plan has very distinct, real, and important advantages. However, the armed forces have a saying, “No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.” In my case I did not feel I had sufficient forecasting ability to make a viable plan, nor do I think that most others have either. So I decided to be as flexible as possible based on a couple of premises. One; That there were negative changes coming for humanity which would cause great social disturbance, and when the stuff is about to hit the fan, it is best not to be standing about with your face hanging out. (Want to be at least a tank of gas away from a major population center.) Secondly economic conditions will likely deteriorate dramatically, and with them a good deal of the scientific infrastructure that makes life so good today. If humanity is going back to the 1800s, I want to prepare using the advantages our infrastructure of today provides.

I picked a number of locales at which I felt I could, in extreme circumstances, be largely self sufficient. All have plusses and minuses. A large degree of isolation became a central point because of expected social disruption. (Desperate, starving people.) Part of isolation is to be in a place where no one would likely go, or at least not roving gangs. And that means having no roads or trails leading to you. Individuals who are lucky enough, or experienced enough to find you, may make good additions to the team.

Events of Aug 15, 2007 convinced me that it was time to stop planning and begin acting. I decided to move to the nearest locale that I felt could be a possible final location, and which would allow me to be far enough away from a major population center so as to avoid the worst of the initial social disruption, yet close enough to rescue the non believers I care about, and also be able to salvage a good deal of valuable stuff before people recognize its value. From there I could watch events unfold in relative safety, while still likely to be able to move on if that became desirable. As practice and to test my plans, during the last five weeks I began setting up the beginnings of a permanent residence and clearing enough land for a garden. I don’t expect to use this location, but in a worst case scenario, or proper circumstances, I can. This is a report of the surprises I encountered.

Probably the biggest mistake I made was one that I had experience with, and logically, knew what to expect because I grew up with no electricity or refrigeration. I had not expected how emotionally dependant I had become on refrigeration and the offshoots from that. Logically, I had supplied myself with lots of dried foods, etc. In a “grid down” situation it becomes much worse than even those who grew up without electricity, and refrigeration will expect.

The most stupid mistake was to think I could use a cell phone as emergency backup in case of accident in an isolated, unpopulated place. You’re on your own. No signal.

Some small tools, such as a leaf rake which I never saw the likes of in the 1930s, would be invaluable. I tried to remember exactly what we had on the farm then and replicate that. A fly swatter or it’s equivalent is easy to pass over in planning. Pioneers valued their cutting edges above almost all else. Axes and saws were gold. I had plenty, depending on how society fell apart, but I have added more for a worst case scenario. I also found one of those charities selling used clothes and stuff. They had various sharp “butcher” type knives on sale for .19 each. I snagged about 40, along with some stainless steel kitchenware, and other goodies. [I think some things like specialty steels (razor blades) and aluminum (Energy intensive) will become very scarce.] I did one really good thing, and that was to obtain a loggers tool I have not seen in years. I call it a Peavey but it is sometimes known as a cant hook. Used for wrestling with logs, particularly in water such as a river.

Only once before in my life (over 50 years ago) had I met insects that raised significant welts on me. (And I have spent years in the bush, mostly in isolation.) The insects at this location did, enough so that I broke my isolation rule and visited a doctor. Four pills of Benadryl brought me back from sheer agony and fear of major change in plans. (I thought part of the problem was allergies due to advancing age. Maybe, maybe not.) A Calamine lotion with an antihistamine content helped marginally. Anti-allergenics are a must have in your medical kit. (Along with an insect mesh jacket and hood I discovered. The brand name was CAMPAC and within the last couple of days, I am informed that this type of jacket/hood can be purchased in the order of $11, versus the $36 I paid when in a rush.) Stocking enough DEET to be effective would fill a warehouse, although it works well.

I had forgotten what percentage of the time one spends in rubber boots, and how easy it is to poke holes in them. Of course I had a pair, but now I have four good pairs, and would consider more if rubber boots did not deteriorate relatively rapidly, unused.

Glass for windows and light will be sorely missed. Thankfully, I am also skilled in glass making.

After some scouting, the location I picked was on the edge of a swampy area of about 100 acres. Swampy area produces good soil when drained. (And lots of bugs until then! It was probably crown land. The problem in converting the area to farmable land is twofold. One; the trench(s) to drain it, and two the huge stumps and roots it produces, which must be removed or they simply sprout again. (One can do controlled burns it three consecutive years in the spring and it will be largely cleared, except for roots. [Watch for ground fires, particularly the third year] I had neither three years nor the inclination to attract fire rangers to my spot.) I had decided that fuel for mechanical devices would likely be difficult to get in isolation or TEOTWAWKI, so had opted for chain blocks and other hand methods for heavy lifting such as stump removal. I can say these methods do work, but they are very slow and hard work. I had expected to supplant my own muscles with horsepower, but moving animals before having a fixed location is a no go. (Plus animals don’t like biting bugs, which are plentiful around swamps, any more than we do and they move away.) Regarding stumps and roots- you can expect as much wood below ground as above ground. Lots of digging.

I began thinking about an easier way. Eventually, despite my resources being finite, I began to consider some form of small engine driven unit such as a 4 wheel ATV, (Arctic Cat) construction loader (Bobcat) and finally one of the mini-Kubota diggers. (Available in tracked or wheeled models) A regular backhoe would be ideal, and efficient, but it uses about 2-1/2 litres of fuel per hour. (Approximately 4+ litres per US gallon, or 5+ per Imperial gallon) Cost new; $35,000-40,000) At a maximum I felt I could not store a two year supply, if for no other reason than degradation of fuel. (A Kubota is a miniature backhoe, but one can buy attachments such as a blade or bucket.) The Kubota would be rather like emptying a swimming pool with a teaspoon, Can be done, but oh so slowly and ineffectively. (Note: A major problem with any form of backhoe is the hydraulics and their repair. If the hydraulics break anywhere, they may be useless.) For trenching, or digging roots the Kubota would be worth its weight in gold. I do have a chainsaw and spares, with an expected useful life for any engine of less than two years. (Fuel supply)

Overall, horses would be far more efficient than the mini Kubota, and the other small engine machines were non starters. (the BobCat less so than the ATV.) On the other hand, horses require feed. Unless one has a relatively small fenced area, and can bring the food to them, horses travel great distances to forage. I have seen them go 10 miles hobbled, and 20+ miles if un-hobbled, in one night. You can spend all your time chasing horses. (The pioneers often used cattle to draw their wagons as they traveled. Cattle will not wander so much when foraging, and stay in a herd, whereas horses go off in all directions, but are better and faster for hauling.) Since I had no feed to bring to horses, I could not consider other than forage. Until I had enough land cleared for my food and horses food, (Or fences up, and shelter is a higher priority) I would have difficulty getting thru the winter. (Plus, particularly now, I didn’t want visible trails from the road by packing in repeated loads.) Ah, the problems one faces for having a variable plan.

I can hear the questions/arguments now. I do expect land prices (not value) to drop dramatically as the world financial system collapses. (And government and law as we know it to fall apart completely.) Besides, there are few locations with developed land that do not have roads. Where I tried my experiment, there were no roads within five miles, and then only one poor secondary road/fire trail. So far as I know, there were also no habitations within 20 miles or more or even ATV trails either. So, while I am rather closer to a major population center than I would like, I feel that it is unlikely that I will be found easily by an inexperienced group capable of taking me (and those who accompany me) down. In the time available I could not make a significant impact on the ecology, since to build a largish fire to burn downed trees would have the fire rangers investigating instantly. I do believe I have tested out my general plan, and found some problem areas that need addressing. And that was the purpose of the exercise.

Warning: Do not try this at home. It requires lots of experience, particularly in the bush, but in farming as well, and even then success is not guaranteed. And it is so easy to fatally injure yourself, particularly if you are living alone.

Mr. Rawles:
After reading "Patriots" last year, much like Mr. H., I was decidedly ready to act, but largely unprepared logistically. It can be overwhelming and the feeling that “I had a long way to go” was ever present (it still is and I suspect always will be as my education never ends). I'd just like to remind the author to not worry, you’ll get the stuff; you’ve already taken the first step and done something. But preparedness is more than material, the mindset is most important. Start to live right, be frugal, be healthy. Don’t be reliant on outside institutions. Grind that grain, learn to eat and use whole foods. You’ll not only be saving money in this inflationary environment as you prepare, you’ll also enjoy health benefits and be doing your family service by breaking them out of the consumerist mentality that inundates us all and welcoming them into a life of self sufficiency. Most importantly by being a good, guiding father and husband.

Once you get your mind right and start thinking, you’ll learn to set priorities and focus on certain aspects of preparedness individually. Over time you will accumulate materials and skills necessary to not only survive in TEOTWAWKI, but to thrive in everyday life.

Last year I submitted an article called What if The Schumer Doesn't Hit The Fan? - Reasons to Prepare Anyway. I stand by my writing but have learned a lot since and think we are ever closer to rough times.

In less than one year, I’ve accumulated most importantly a wealth of knowledge, but also several months worth of grain and dried food for my family, a grain mill of course, defense items, several books, communication equipment, a generator, a modest gasoline supply, first aid supplies, a pocket water filter and several other items. We also now raise backyard chickens, expanded our garden, increased savings (the most difficult part by far), and I am finally working on starting a small dog training business.

Since deciding to really prepare, it’s amazing how far I’ve come, but I was also amazed at how receptive my wife and kids have been and how much we were either already doing or mentally prepared to do which mesh well with a preparedness lifestyle. Things like home schooling, camping, eliminating debt, learning to do without. I still have a long way to go but I am proud of our accomplishments and enjoying the lifestyle change.

In closing, I'd like to say it's awesome how many people's lives you are changing. Thank you, Mr. Rawles for all you do. - MB

JWR's Introductory Note: The following is a re-post from the Energie & Klima Blog, which was kindly translated by SurvivalBlog reader Martyn B., a multi-lingual Danish ex-pat that lives in Spain . To read the original article in German, see: Überleben in der Krise

Within the next two years, the price of oil could rise to $150 to $200 per barrel, analysts of the investment bank Goldman Sachs forecasted yesterday under the management of the famous chief analyst, Arjun N. Murti. According to the news agency Bloomberg, the cause is stated mainly as being that the supply of oil cannot cover the rising demand from countries that are comprised by the growth, such as China. The chief analyst of said bank in Munich Harlaching, where parents in the "villa suburbs" exchange the newest economic developments while they watch the kids playing in the sandbox and on the climbing rigs, only smile at such forecasts. The man in his late forties who is never seen without science and economy magazines, has already moved on. For a while, he has now been reading and praising "Walden" by Thoreau.

On request, Uwe informs overbearing, smiling parents that the imminent "crisis" has nothing to do with the crisis from the 1980s where Monaco Franze [bon-vivant, small time crook and protagonist of a German television series by the same name] procured forest strawberries, parma ham and champagne from Dallmayr (Delicatessen chain) for picnics with pretty female schoolmates in the English garden while the whole world around him was talking about crisis, saved and dared not "fill up". No, the imminent crisis, according to Uwe, is written in upper case: PEAK OIL, CLIMATE CHANGE, FINANCIAL CRISIS, HUNGER RIOTS and cannot be charmingly painted pretty by Munich-Harlachingen-ish island mentality, a completely misguided "Munich feeling". You need to
get prepared, right now, for a totally new, radically changed lifestyle in order to survive this CRISIS.

As The Guardian reported at the beginning of the week, Uwe is a part of a greater international movement. So-called survivalists with a sharpened awareness of the possibility of an impending total breakdown of Economy and Society, would be discussing on countless pages on the Internet where to find refuge and how to best equip your retreat once the time comes.
While many would not shy away from breaking arms legislation when equipping themselves, most will, according to information from The Guardian journalist Harriet Green, be content with the milder methods for fighting for survival, such as stashing food, growing fruit and vegetables in their own gardens as recommended by the famous British television chef Jamie Oliver and self-sufficiency in terms of energy and water.

When it comes to money, survivalists will also be looking for new opportunities. According to Harriet Green, precious metals are preferred. (For savings, Uwe advises stocks and real estate).

"The safe haven must be self sufficient". Ex-banker Barton M. Biggs also knows this. He is also one of the people cited in The Guardian's Survivalist Overview as warning against the impending total breakdown. The former (until 2003) "Chief Global Strategist" of Morgan Stanley has published a book, "Wealth, War and Wisdom" and contains, according to Bloomberg, has an unusual piece of advice for the rich: "Insure yourself against war and disaster by buying a remote farm or ranch and procure large stocks of seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes etc."
The "etc.", Bloomberg alleges, "must mean guns".

But even when "the wolf is at the door", there are also survivalists with a less bleak concept of the time after Peak Oil, such as the webmaster of WolfAtTheDoor, who predicts to The Guardian that TEOTWAWKI will occur within the next decade: "I'll be turning 50 this year. So far, I've had a good life. I want to enjoy the next 5 to 10 years."

Uwe, as it seems, has found a girlfriend among the single parents in Munich-Haidhausen; maybe he will soon be writing crisis in lower case. I'll soon be going to BeraterBank to find out.
- Thomas Pany, May 7, 2008

"A wise man has great power, and a man of knowledge increases strength; for waging war you need guidance, and for victory many advisers." (Proverbs 24:5-6)
Most survivalist planning focuses on physical needs—food, shelter, clothing, first aid, self defense. While the physical essentials rightly belong at the top of the list, there's almost always some empty space left in the locker/bunker/trailer/back-of-the-truck for...something. What to put in there?

Human beings are social animals, and we need each other; God has woven this into our genetic code. A "Lone Ranger" survivalist might have an edge in the short-term, but a group of survivors has a distinct long-term advantage—if they can overcome the challenges. Other than basic supply-scale issues, the primary challenges facing larger groups center around communication issues—making sure everyone is fully informed and knows The Plan. Communication helps build trust, and trust-based relationships are exactly what you need as a survivor—whether you're dealing with your family, or with the family down the road, in the next county, or across the globe.

One of the reasons I enjoy being a technology consultant is the fact that technology brings people together. Postal mail, telephone, fax, mobile phones, email, text messaging, videoconferencing, two-way radios...you name it, it's basically about human communication. As I formulate and revise my overall survival plan, I find myself evaluating various technology gadgets in this light: Would this gizmo (whatever it is) provide communication benefits to me if I were in survival mode, and, if so, is it feasible and reasonable to utilize it in that capacity? Note that what is "feasible" and "reasonable" are almost completely subjective, depending on the skill set of the particular individual or group—those who have a "techno-wiz" or two in their midst can obviously support more complex technology than others. By evaluating your group's capacity for utilizing technology, and carefully selecting from some proven technologies, you can improve your survival capabilities in numerous ways by improving your ability to communicate within your group of survivors, be it large or small, and increase your access to outside resources. Here are some ideas:
Get your ears on. The mobile phone infrastructure may or may not be operational, and even if it is, your survival retreat might not have decent reception—so don't count on it. If your group consists of more than one person, odds are that you will need to split up at some point, and radio communications give you a huge advantage in almost every situation—especially if you run up against an aggressor. Anything is better than nothing, so at least grab a set of inexpensive "bubble pack" FRS/GMRS radios. Better still, see if you can develop a relationship with a like-minded radio guy in your area, and draw upon his expertise. Find yourself an expert and get educated.[JWR Adds: See the ARRL for a directory that will include a ham radio club in your area.]

Get eyes in the back of your head...or house. A good survival retreat includes a security system, and this is a great place to leverage technology. D-Link, TrendNet and others make decent network cameras, both wired and wireless, for around $100 each. You can string network wires through the trees, direct-bury, or go wireless. Virtually any inexpensive wireless access point (e.g., Linksys/Netgear/D-Link cable/DSL routers, Apple AirPorts, etc.) can be used to provide a basic communications network for wireless cameras. Using multiple cameras with software like Security Spy for Macs or NCH Software for Windows, one person with a laptop computer can cover a lot of ground just sitting in a chair. You can even configure the software's motion detection features to alert you (by making a noise, flashing the screen, etc.) when anything moves, so the man on duty doesn't have to keep his eyes glued to the screen. Much of this equipment runs on 12 VDC, so it's perfect for photovoltaic-powered systems.

Own the night. Get some night vision equipment. Others have written extensively and with much more knowledge on the subject than I possess, but if you can see in the dark, you have a huge advantage over the guy who can't. Find yourself an expert and get educated. 'Nuff said. [JWR Adds: One night vision gear vendor that I recommend is JRH Enterprises.}

Get connected. What happens to the internet after TEOTWAWKI? A safe assumption is that the Internet will be unreliable at best, and possibly unusable. This may be true to varying degrees on a global or regional scale, but understand that the internet itself is simply a conglomeration of smaller networks. If you've built a security network like the one mentioned above, you can use point-to-point wireless links to connect your survival retreat with your closest like-minded neighbor (you do know your neighbors, right?), so you can communicate more quickly and easily. Remember, there is strength in numbers—especially when you can maintain good communications. What's more, if you build a "mesh" of interconnected networks, if just one location has internet access, those communication and information resources immediately become available to the entire mesh. Remember all those survivalblog.com articles you always meant to print out but never did? If the server is still online, now you can get to them!

The least expensive wireless point-to-point equipment is generally going to be a pair of weatherproofed 802.11b/g radios hooked to a directional antennas. The disadvantage to this configuration is that 802.11b/g is a "line-of-sight" technology that uses microwave frequencies—so, anything that would heat up in a microwave oven will attenuate the signal. Thus, if your two locations are separated by foliage or terrain, you'll have to get those antennas up over the treetops. Not only is that a hassle, but it's also a very easy way for non-friendlies to locate your retreat. In that case, you'd be better off utilizing more specialized equipment from a manufacturer like Motorola or Trango. It's pricier, but it's non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and will shoot through trees.

Light 'em up! A good solar power system is a great addition to a survival retreat in any case, but it becomes a necessity if you want to leverage electrically-powered technology. A basic solar power plant is comprised of one or more photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, which generate electric current whenever they're exposed to light, one or more deep-cycle batteries to store the excess power for later use, and electronics to regulate the voltage and manage the battery charging. Power is usually delivered at 12 VDC, which can be converted to 120 VAC using an inverter—though it's more efficient to simply use equipment that will run on 12 VDC. Don't skimp on photovoltaic gear, and I recommend sizing your solar panels to at least double your usage projections. For one thing, you'll always want more juice than you think you'll need. For another thing, many vendors quote solar panel performance based on best-case conditions, and even if they regionalize their numbers for the amount of daylight in your area, they typically use an average length-of-day instead of the shortest length-of-day, and they either ignore or underestimate the effects of cloudy days, dust coating, bird feces, etc. on PV panel performance. Solar power is quiet, too, so you won't be giving away your position with a noisy generator. [JWR Adds: One alternative energy system vendor that I recommend is Ready Made Resources Also, don't overlook the references available at SolarDoc, at Backwoods Home magazine, and at Home Power magazine.]

Protect your equipment against electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The general effects of EMP are fairly well documented, but the specific effects of EMP on various types of electronic equipment, and the most effective ways of protecting that equipment, are not so well-documented. EMP is surrounded by misinformation, urban legend, and simple unknowns. Most "experts" on EMP seem to agree that the most straightforward way to protect equipment is probably to store it inside a "Faraday box," which could be made by lining the inside of a metal filing cabinet with several layers of newspaper, or wrapping a cardboard box with a couple layers of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Stored in these containers, your electronic equipment is reasonably protected against EMP. Note that I said "reasonably." When we're talking about EMP, we're talking about nuclear attack, and survivability—for electronics and people alike—is obviously highly dependent on where you are in relation to ground zero, so all you can do is make reasonable preparations and pray to God for grace.

Only you can determine whether or not the benefits of these technologies are worth the money and effort in your particular survival plan. If you decide to utilize any particular technology, I highly recommend building and testing the system now, before it's needed. And, of course, you should always have a "Plan B" for those times when—not if, but when—the technology fails. EMP, rainwater in the wrong place, a broken wire, and a dead battery all have the same end result—dead equipment—and you need to plan for it. Note, too, that the ideas presented here were kept to a basic level of information due to the limited scope of this article—each topic would easily merit a fairly lengthy book, if not a complete volume, in order to be explored to a satisfactory degree—so I strongly encourage you to seek further knowledge in those systems that are of interest to you.

Again: Find yourself an expert and get educated. If you're an expert in one or more survival fields, find someone who wants to be educated and teach them. Being a survivalist doesn't mean you have to be antisocial. Remember that part of your survival plan should involve building relationships with like-minded people who have, among them, a diverse enough skill set to be able to handle the widest possible range of survival tasks. One of the primary uses of communications technology, aside from its immediate tactical use, is to build and maintain these kinds of relationships even (or especially) in a survival scenario."Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no-one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)

Here is a non-exhaustive list of Internet resources, to help get you started:

Night vision:
Sideroad.com
N)Vision
Optics Planet

Point-to-point and outdoor wireless:
Radio Labs
Trango Broadband
Motorola PTP
MoonBlink Wi-Fi
Teletronics

Photovoltaic power:
Solar Power Directory
Solar-Electric

EMP protection:
AusSurvivalist EMP Protection Pages
Faraday Cages
1997 Military EMP Hardening Handbook
Parrhesia.com EMP Hardening Handbook

Mr. Rawles,
I have been working on a retreat that I will be moving to later in the year. Naturally, construction is taking up a large amount of my time. My family is on-board for the retreat.

I need help in the area of an Operations and Security Manual. Is there anything that you know of that would be a starting place rather than from the ground up? I know there are a lot of things that I would miss out on if I started [by myself] from the ground up, and not know it until it's too late. I purchased the "Rawles Gets You Ready" preparedness course and I would have missed the boat on food storage if I did not have that as a reference.

Any direction would be appreciated. Thank you, - Craig in Arkansas

JWR Replies: I can't recommend a stand-alone reference, but I can recommend an abbreviated version of the list of "musts" for your retreat bookshelf::

• The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery. Sasquatch Books. (Get the Ninth or later edition.) This book is 845 pages of valuable 'how to' country survival knowledge.
• Nuclear War Survival Skills, by Cresson H. Kearney
• American Red Cross First Aid
• Where There is No Doctor, by David Werner
• Where There is No Dentist, by Murray Dickson
• Emergency War Surgery (NATO handbook) Dr. Martin Fackler, et al.
• The Ultimate Sniper, by Maj. John L. Plaster

And, at the risk of sounding self-serving, I also recommend my novel "Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse". It provide a detailed description of what might be needed to secure and operate a self-sufficient rural retreat in a protracted societal collapse.

I have finally found one of my favorite books available as a PDF. This Peace Corps Remote Areas Development Guide is just what anyone would need to jump start a agricultural settlement and
everything else the small town would need.

Unfortunately the [photo reproduction] quality [of the PDF file] is low, I have packed my hard copy of this practical pocket guide with me for many years from my college Bugout Bag to here in Israel.

Hi,
I’m finding SurvivalBlog very interesting in these troubling times. I came across it in the bibliography of a good novel, "Last Light", by Alex Scarrow, which took me to Peak Oil, and then to your blog.

I live in a small city in the most unknown part of Italy , a southern region called Basilicata . It’s always been a region bypassed by history and its inhabitants have known a modicum of well being only in the past 20 years. You might have heard of a book called "Christ Stopped at Eboli" by Carlo Levi. Well, that’s here. Though of course right now, it’s a charming place to live, with a lively music scene, great art and new restaurants opening up every day, people still remember vividly a subsistence existence.

I think having been very poor could actually be a huge advantage if and when it is The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI). There’s still a huge huge amount of knowledge in their DNA about how to make do under harsh conditions of extreme scarcity. I can’t imagine them panicking if horrible things happen because every home has a grandmother or grandfather or an uncle that tills a small field, that can make sausage and is really good at canning. They have literally thousands of years of experience in banding together in harsh conditions. My sisters in law know everything there is about storing food, canning, etc.

In many ways, the millennial poverty (now greatly alleviated) will probably prepare them well if things collapse. And maybe areas of the world that are used to living in scarcity will do better than rich urban areas. They might not collapse, just revert to a previous culture. Also, this area is very rich in water and they’ve just discovered the largest methane fields in Europe .

Anyway congratulations on your fascinating blog. Right now, there’s no food scarcity because Italians don’t have a long food chain. They are very careful to eat locally and by law food’s origins must be labelled and Italians prefer national food to imported food, because they are snobbish about the taste of imported food. Also, Italy grows most of its own rice. Best, - E.J.

JWR Replies: I wholeheartedly agree that in the event of a societal collapse, those that live close to the land will fare better than most others. It may go down in history as a Great Inversion--something analogous to France, during the Revolution, when wealthy people in desperation traded rings set with precious stones, gold necklaces, and fancy furniture for loaves of bread. Perhaps in the next collapse they'll be trading Jet Skis and big screen plasma televisions. This sort of inversion was aptly described by Pat Frank, in his early-1960s post-nuke novel "Alas, Babylon." The novel is set in rural Florida. The story describes how the erstwhile poor black residents coped much better than rich whites, simply because they were already accustomed to making do. When dollars became worthless, suddenly it was practical skills that trumped all else. Before the Schumer hit the fan, the "Po Folks" already raised gardens, kept small livestock, and were experienced subsistence fishermen. Their white neighbors had a lot of catching up to do, to reach the same level of self-sufficiency.

Could life imitate at? I think so. The most likely to prosper in a collapse will me middle class farmers and ranchers that are well-removed from urban areas . They can capitalize on their food production kills and infrastructure, yet will be isolated from most of the peril that will grip the cities and suburbs. A farmer with a pair of well-trained draft horses and old-fashioned (horse-drawn) machinery will do the best of all. These farmers with new-found wealth will of course have to quickly hire some mercenaries to protect what they have. Speaking of Italy, the days ahead may get downright Machiavellian.

In the past week I've had three newcomers to SurvivalBlog.com write and ask me to summarize my world view. One of them asked: "I could spend days looking through [the] archives of your [many months of] blog posts. But there are hundreds of them. Can you tell me where you stand, in just a page? What distinguishes the "Rawlesian" philosophy from other [schools of] survivalist thought?"

I'll likely add a few items to this list as time goes on, but here is a general summary of my precepts:

Modern Society is Increasingly Complex, Interdependent, and Fragile. With each passing year, technology progresses and chains of interdependency lengthen. In the past 30 years, chains of retail supply have grown longer and longer. The food on your supermarket shelf does not come from local farmers. It often comes from hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This has created an alarming vulnerability to disruption. Simultaneously, global population is still increasing in a near geometrical progression. At some point that must end, most likely with a sudden and sharp drop in population. The lynchpin is the grid. Without functioning power grids, modern industrial societies will collapse within weeks.

Civilization is Just a Thin Veneer. In the absence of law an order, men quickly revert to savagery. As was illustrated by the rioting and looting that accompanied disasters in the past three decades, the transition from tranquility to absolute barbarism can occur overnight. People expect tomorrow to be just like today, and they act accordingly. But then comes a unpredictable disaster that catches the vast majority unprepared. The average American family has four days worth of food on hand. When that food is gone, we'll soon see the thin veneer stripped away.

People Run in Herds and Packs, but Both Follow Natural Lines of Drift. Most people are sheep ("sheeple"). A few are wolves that prey on others. But just a few of us are more like sheepdogs--we think independently, and instead of predation, we are geared toward protecting and helping others. People naturally follow natural lines of drift--the path of least resistance. When the Schumer hits the fan, 99% of urbanites will try to leave the cities on freeways. The highways and freeways will soon resemble parking lots. This means that you need to be prepared to both get out of town ahead of the rush and to use lightly-traveled back roads. Plan, study and practice.

Lightly Populated Areas are Safer than High Density Areas. With a few exceptions, less population means fewer problems. WTSHTF, there will be a mass exodus from the cities. Think of it as an army that is spreading out across a battlefield: The wider that they are spread, the less effective that they are. The inverse square law hasn't been repealed.

Show Restraint, But Always Have Recourse to Lethal Force. My father often told me, "It is better to have a gun and not need it, than need a gun, and not have it." I urge readers to use less than lethal means when safe and practicable, but at times there is not a satisfactory substitute for well-aimed lead going down range at high velocity.

There is Strength in Numbers. Rugged individualism is all well and good, but it takes ore than one man to defend a retreat. Effective retreat defense necessitates having at least two families to provide 24/7 perimeter security. But of course every individual added means having another mouth to feed. Absent having an unlimited budget and an infinite larder, this necessitates striking a balance when deciding the size of a retreat group.

There are Moral Absolutes. The foundational morality of the civilized world is best summarized in the Ten Commandments. Moral relativism and secular humanism are slippery slopes. The terminal moraine at the base of these slopes is a rubble pile consisting of either despotism and pillage, or anarchy and the depths of depravity. I believe that it takes both faith and friends to survive perilous times. For more background on that, see my Prayer page.

Racism Ignores Reason. People should be judged as individuals. Anyone that make blanket statements about other races is ignorant that there are both good and bad individuals in all groups. I have accepted The Great Commission with sincerity."Go forth into all nations" means exactly that: all nations. OBTW, I feel grateful that SurvivalBlog is now read in more than 100 countries. I have been given a bully pulpit, and I intend to use it for good and edifying purposes.

Skills Beat Gadgets and Practicality Beats Style. The modern world is full of pundits, poseurs, and Mall Ninjas. Preparedness is not just about accumulating a pile of stuff. You need practical skills, and those only come with study, training, and practice. Any armchair survivalist can buy a set of stylish camouflage fatigues and an M4gery Carbine encrusted with umpteen accessories. Style points should not be mistaken for genuine skills and practicality.

Plentiful Water and Good Soil are Crucial. Modern mechanized farming, electrically pumped irrigation, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides can make deserts bloom. But when the grid goes down, deserts and marginal farmland will revert to their natural states. In my estimation, the most viable places to survive in the midst of a long term societal collapse will be those with reliable summer rains and rich topsoil.

Tangibles Trump Conceptuals. Modern fiat currencies are generally accepted, but have essentially no backing. Because they are largely a byproduct of interest bearing debt, modern currencies are destined to inflation. In the long run, inflation dooms fiat currencies to collapse. The majority of your assets should be invested in productive farm land and other tangibles such as useful hand tools. Only after you have your key logistics squared away, anything extra should be invested in silver and gold.

Governments Tend to Expand their Power to the Point that They Do Harm. In SurvivalBlog, I often warn of the insidious tyranny of the Nanny State. If the state where you live becomes oppressive, then don't hesitate to relocate. Vote with your feet!

There is Value in Redundancy. A common saying of my readers is: "Two is one, and one is none." You must be prepared to provide for your family in a protracted period of societal disruption. That means storing up all of the essential "beans, bullets, and Band-Aids" in quantity. If commerce is disrupted by a disaster, at least in the short term you will only have your own logistics to fall back on. The more that you have stored, the more that you will have available for barter and charity.

A Deep Larder is Essential. Food storage is one of the key preparations that I recommend. Even if you have a fantastic self-sufficient garden and pasture ground, you must always have food storage that you can fall back on in the event that your crops fail due to drought, disease, or infestation.

Tools Without Training Are Almost Useless. Owning a gun doesn't make someone a "shooter" any more than owning a surfboard makes someone a surfer. With proper training and practice, you will be miles ahead of the average citizen. Get advanced medical training. Get the best firearms training that you can afford. Learn about amateur radio from your local affiliated ARRL club. Practice raising a vegetable garden each summer. Some skills are only perfected over a period of years.

Old Technologies are Appropriate Technologies. In the event of a societal collapse, 19th Century (or earlier) technologies such as a the blacksmith's forge, the treadle sewing machine, and the horse-drawn plow will be far easier to re-construct than modern technologies.

Charity is a Moral Imperative. As a Christian, I feel morally obligated to assist others that are less fortunate. Following the Old Testament laws of Tzedakah (charity and tithing), I believe that my responsibility begins with my immediate family and expands in successive rings to supporting my immediate neighborhood and church, to my community, and beyond, as resources allow. In short, my philosophy is to "give until it hurts" in times of disaster.

Buy Life Assurance, not Life Insurance. Self-sufficiency and self-reliance are many-faceted. You need to systematically provide for Water, Food, Shelter, Fuel, First Aid, Commo, and, if need be, the tools to enforce Rule 308.

Live at Your Retreat Year-Round. If your financial and family circumstances allow it, I strongly recommend that you relocate to a safe area and live there year-round. This has several advantages, most notably that will prevent burglary of your retreat logistics and allow you to regularly tend to gardens, orchards, and livestock. It will also remove the stress of timing a "Get Out of Dodge" trip at the11th hour. If circumstances dictate that you can't live at your retreat year round, then at least have a caretaker and stock the vast majority of your logistics in advance, since you may only have one trip there before roads are impassable.

Exploit Force Multipliers. Night vision gear, intrusion detection sensors, and radio communications equipment are key force multipliers. Because these use high technology they cannot be depended upon in a long term collapse, but in the short term, they can provide a big advantage. Some low technologies like barbed wire and defensive road cables also provide advantages and can last for several decades.

Invest Your Sweat Equity. Even if some of you have a millionaire's budget, you need to learn how to do things for yourself, and be willing to get your hands dirty. In a societal collapse, the division of labor will be reduced tremendously. Odds are that the only "skilled craftsmen" available to build a shed, mend a fence, shuck corn, repair an engine, or pitch manure will be you.and your family. A byproduct of sweat equity is muscle tone and proper body weight. Hiring someone to deliver three cords of firewood is a far cry from felling, cutting, hauling, splitting, and stacking it yourself.

Choose Your Friends Wisely. Associate yourself with skilled doers, not "talkers." Seek out people that share your outlook and morality. Living in close confines with other families is sure to cause friction but that will be minimized if you share a common religion and norms of behavior.You can't learn every skill yourself. Assemble a team that includes members with medical knowledge, tactical skills, electronics experience, and traditional practical skills.

There is No Substitute for Mass. Mass stops bullets. Mass stops gamma radiation. Mass stops (or at least slows down ) bad guys from entering a home and depriving its residents of life and property. Sandbags are cheap, so buy plenty of them. When planning your retreat house, think: medieval castle. (See the SurvivalBlog Archives for the many articles and letters on Retreat Architecture.)

Always Have a Plan B and a Plan C. Regardless of your pet scenario and your personal grand plan of survival, you need to be flexible and adaptable. Situations and circumstances change. Always keep a G.O.O.D. kit handy, even if you are fortunate enough to live at your retreat year-round.

Be Frugal. I grew up in a family that still remembered both our pioneer history and the more recent lessons of the Great Depression. One of our family mottos is: "Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without."

Some Things are Worth Fighting For. I encourage my readers to avoid trouble, most importantly via relocation to safe areas where trouble is unlikely to come to visit. But there may come an unavoidable day that you have to make a stand to defend your own family or your neighbors. Further, if you value your liberty, then be prepared to fight for it, both for yourself and for the sake of your progeny.

The ABCs of When the Schumer Hits the Fan (WTSHTF.) aren’t what you have prepared, acquired or stowed but even more basic in the preparation processes that we sometimes take for granted.
The A is the ability to learn, to adapt and to try. No matter how many classes we take or how much we have stored away there is the potential that we might have missed something or prepared for one scenario and ended up with another. We may be in the middle of TEOTWAWKI and not be fully ready but guess what, we aren’t scheduling it. Ability is not only applying something that we’ve learned but troubleshooting or working through something that we don’t have a clue about. We may not get it right the first time that we try something new but we have the ability to learn from our mistakes and go back to try again. We have the ability to learn from others mistakes and we have the ability to make changes or corrections that work for our scenario.

The B is the brains that we have to reason with to store our morals our life lessons and the memories that make us who we are. The best tool that we have at our disposal is our brain. So many people in day to day life just go on auto pilot and don’t think about what they can do to improve how they do something. In my line of work I hear that “I’ve done it that way for 20 years”. My response is that you’ve been doing it wrong for 20 years. We just get in the habit of doing things a certain way. We eat our meals at the same time even if we aren’t hungry just because it is the time we are conditioned to eat. We go to bed at a certain time and we get up at a certain time. As a culture we have stopped utilizing what we were born with. In my opinion that is a large part of why we are where we are today. The sheep just keep waiting for someone to lead them or fall prey to the ones that use their brains without the use of morals. If we just think about what we are about to do instead of just doing it we can prevent personal injury or emotional pain. A simple example would be when a loved one has done something that upset you and you just respond without thinking of how it would affect them or why they did it the way they did. The words are already spoken; you can’t take them back, or you’re cutting something with a knife and slice your finger or hand because you didn’t think about what you were doing. We should try to learn and practice as much as possible so it will at least be familiar if not second nature but if we haven’t seen or done it before it is still doable because we can reason and solve problems. The human race has faced challenges for thousands of years and we have always improved because we have the ability to think.

The C stands for two things, first is choice. Most of the dialog that I’ve seen on SurvivalBlog shows that we have made a choice to not be led into a place where we no longer have a choice. We all are at different stages in the process but our choice is to survive whatever we are dealt. The choice is yours for all situations, you may not be able to control the overall aspect but you make the choice of how you let it affect you. Have you ever been driving and had someone cut you off? You don’t have control over the other driver but you do have the ability to make the choice of letting the incident infuriate you or brushing the whole situation off. We all make choices of whom if anyone will be invited into our confidence or where our retreat will be. We make the choice of what type of armament we will utilize or the type of food we will store or grow. Some things are dependent on location or availability but it is still a choice. Our choices are a large part of what makes us who we are. The choice to have faith, the choice to be ready, and the choice to have morals are some choices that most of us here have made. Remember that no matter what the influences are the final choice is the one that you make. Right, wrong or indifferent it’s the choice that you will have to live with.

The second C is composure, always maintain your composure. If you keep your wits about you then you stand a better chance of surviving the situation. When you lose your composure you lose your ability to reason and react rationally. In an emergency situation time is critical and if you remain calm you will have a higher probability of doing it right the first time. In an emergency situation maintaining your composure could mean the difference between life and death. I don’t mean you have to become cold or callous but you can deal with your emotions after the situation subsides. If you don’t maintain your composure you might not get that chance.
I would like to thank my brothers in arms from all the services; they have helped me learn these lessons and have given me the opportunity to use what I was born with and strived to refine it and help it grow.

Remember that we started out without clothes and shelter. We started out without the ability to communicate over great distances without traveling them. We can now travel and communicate in space or around the planet all because we use our ability, our brains and by the choices that we make.

In my opinion we should absolutely continue to learn, store and prepare. We should choose who we will coexist with before, during and after the coming collapse, we should do that even if the collapse doesn’t come during our lifetime. We should continue to grow as an individual and as a group. We should not over analyze the solution to whatever problem we face. We should not assume failure if we missed something or we didn’t get the opportunity to get everything that we wanted. We should be thankful for what we have. We should remember how far we have come. We should use our brain to think the solution through. We should use our ability to reason and we should stay calm to prevail.
I have learned a great deal since I started reading SurvivalBlog and utilizing the links and resources available here. It has provoked the thought process of things that I hadn’t thought of or had a different approach about something.

There are many things that the survivalist practices that have become a lost art so to speak such as canning and the ability to survive without modern conveniences. We are in a society that does not know how to function without cell phones and computers but I can remember when we didn’t have them. We communicated either by land line telephone or my goodness how archaic, snail mail. Farther back in our history there was the Pony Express and even couriers.

[The author of the] Heartbreak Ridge [screenplay (James Carabatsos)] stated it best:" Improvise, adapt and overcome."

I've had several consulting clients contact me in recent weeks, all with notes of fear in their voices. They realize that something is horribly wrong with the economy, but they cannot properly isolate and articulate the problem. I haven't been able to calm them, however, because to an extent I share their anxiety. In my estimation, the "something wrong" that we sense is nothing short of a monumental shift in the economic climate.

America is clearly headed for a recession. Most economic recessions are simply a product of the business cycle. These recessions are relatively mild and they often last just 12 to 24 months. The economic engine just readjusts and everything soon gets back to normal. But this nascent recession in 2008 is something radically different, and it won't be short-lived. The current slow down was triggered by a collapse in the global credit market. For decades, the global credit market grew and grew, in an enormous debt spiral. Our neighbors to the south saw trouble coming decades ago, because their economies were at the time more debt-dependent than our own. As far back as the mid-1980s, their newspapers featured political cartoons that portrayed an enormous, insatiable monster that was invariably captioned "La Dueda"--"The Debt". Our cousins in Latin America saw it coming first, but the dark side of the debt nemesis will soon be clear to everyone.

Because modern banking in the western world is based on interest charges that create continuously compounding debt, credit cannot continue to grow indefinitely. At some point the excesses of malinvestment become so great that the entire system collapses. This is what we are now witnessing: a banking panic that is spreading uncontrollably as wave after wave of ugly debt gets destroyed by margin calls and subsequent business failures.

Some economists are fixated on reading charted histories--and unrealistically expect that by doing so that the can reliably predict future market moves. (They can't do that any more than I could predict the bends in the road ahead by keeping a chart of the preceding left and right turns of my car's steering wheel. My apologies for any offense to my friend The Chartist Gnome, but you are fooling yourself.) Although they are working from a flawed premise at the micro level, the chartists do have some things right on the macro level: There are major economic "seasons" and even climate changes. The most vocal chartists like Robert Prechter hold to what is called the Elliot Wave Theory. And the big bad nasty in this school of thought is a Kondratieff Winter. This "K-Winter" is an economic depression phase that the world has not fully experienced since the 1930s. An economic winter does not end until after the foundations of industry and consumer demand are rebuilt. This can be a painful process, often culminating with war on a grand scale. (It was no coincidence that the Second World of the early 1940s was an outgrowth of the Great Depression of the 1930s.)

The US Federal Reserve and the other central banks are furiously pumping liquidity to the best of their ability, but in the long run they will not be successful. At best, dumping billions in cash on the economy will delay a depression by perhaps a year or two. But inevitably, a K-Winter depression will come. And the longer that it is delayed, then the worse the depression will be. Further inflating the debt bubble will only make matters worse. I think that veteran market analyst Jim Rogers had it right, in a recent interview. Take a few minutes to watch that video. Jim Rogers sees the big picture. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he has gone off somewhere to hunker in a bunker.

"Big Picture" Implications

As I've mentioned before, hedge funds are presently most at risk in the unfolding liquidity crisis, because they use lots of leverage in lending funds that they themselves have borrowed. They borrow short and lend lon, effectively use debt compounded upon debt. Many, many hedge funds will be bankrupted before the end of 2008.

Even more alarming is the scale of global derivatives trading, particularly for credit default swaps (CDS). Derivatives are a relatively new phenomenon, so derivatives contract holders have not yet experienced a major recession or a depression. Thus, it is difficult to predict what will happen in a genuine K-Winter phase. In a perfect world, derivatives are a nicely balanced mechanism, where there are parties and counterparties, and every derivatives contract equation balances out to have a neat "zero" at its conclusion. But we don't live in a perfect world: Companies go bankrupt. Contracts get breached. Counterparties disappear and disappoint. We have not ever experienced a derivatives full scale "blow up", but I predict that when it happens, it will be spectacular.

The scale of derivatives trading is monumental, and the vast majority of the population is blissfully ignorant of both its scale and the implications of a derivatives crisis. There are presently about $500 trillion of derivatives contracts in play. That is many times the size of the gross product of the global economy, but the average man on he street has no idea what is going on. It won't be until after the giant derivatives casino implodes that the Generally Dumb Public (GDP) awakens and asks, "What the heck happened?" Since the credit market began to collapse last summer, the number of new derivatives contracts has dropped precipitously. But whether the aggregate derivative market is $400 trillion versus $500 trillion, when a crisis occurs there will undoubtedly be some very deep drama.

The next decade will likely be characterized by successive waves of inflation and deflation, and perhaps some of both simultaneously, at different levels. Countless corporations, and perhaps a few currencies or even whole governments will go under as this tumult plays out. The current low interest rates will soon be replaced by double-digit rates, much like we saw in the late1970s. The dollar will lose value in foreign exchange, and may collapse completely. The Mother of All Bailouts (MOAB) will result in mass inflation. The bull markets in silver and gold will surge ahead, propelled by economic and currency instability. (Investors will be desperate to find a safe haven, when currencies and equities are falling apart.)

Risk Mitigation

Be ready to "winter over" the coming K Winter depression. That will require: 1.) Prayer. 2.) Friends that you can count on (a "retreat group"). 3.) A deep larder, and 4.) An effective means of self defense with proper training. (For each of those four factors, see the hundreds of archived articles and letters at SurvivalBlog.com for details.)

Since large-scale layoffs seem likely, it would also be wise to have a second income from a recession-proof home-based business.

In the event of a "worst case" (grid down) economic collapse, it would be prudent to have a self-sufficient retreat in a rural area that is well-removed from major population centers. Get the majority of your funds out of anything that is dollar-denominated, and into tangibles, as soon as possible. The very best tangible that you can buy is a stout house on a piece of productive farm land. It will not only preserve your wealth, but living there may very well save your life.

Good Evening,
I've recently become a reader of your web site - thank you for the excellent resource.
Having read through your information on Recommended Retreat Areas, I have an additional question or two. My husband, kids and I currently live in Utah. He has family here, within an hour drive. We also live in a heavily populated area, right on the Wasatch Fault. That is worrisome. My mother, many cousins and close friends live in rural coastal North Carolina. My mom lives alone and is aging. We have thought ahead to the possibility of needing to care for her. She has a large house that is paid for and will pass on to me when she leaves this life.
My family has very strong ties to North Carolina, having ancestors in the same county for 200+ years. My husband and I have lived there together - he felt most welcome and fit in very well. We were part of a close knit church group, in addition to family and neighbors that looked out for each other. I know that the East Coast is not high on your list of places to be, and my family is in a hurricane/flooding zone. On the other hand, it's rural, the home is paid for, it's on almost two acres that can be used for small scale homesteading, and there is a family/friends support system in place. Do you feel that these things are more important than having a retreat in a specific location, i.e. West of the Mississippi? Thank you, - Mary C.

JWR Replies: As I described in my book Rawles on Retreats and Relocation, you cannot put a price tag on having deep roots in a community! Even if you were not known personally, if you are related and share a distinct surname with "one of the pioneer families", then you have an exceedingly valuable "in" in a rural area. This factor should weigh heavily in your choice of retreat locales.

My main objections to moving to the eastern United States are the generally higher population density, and the unfavorable downwind position of the eastern states in the event of a full scale nuclear exchange. You can fairly well mitigate both of of those drawbacks by:

1.) Building a home fallout/storm shelter (typically by upgrading an existing basement, or building a stand-alone shelter, such as those built by Safecastle), and

2.) By teaming up with contiguous neighbors or "doubling up" with another family that would share your house with you after TSHTF, to provide additional security for your retreat.

The only other significant limitation in your situation is owning less than two acres. Perhaps you could buy or lease some adjoining land. Good luck with your upcoming move!

Moving to a new area is a challenge, as any city-bred person from the US East Coast could tell you after his first winter in Wyoming. And the job market is not exactly as promising, either, at least for office workers. Yet, many make the move, and come to regret having waited so long before having done so. An even more difficult move is to go from the country of your birth and to explore a new life somewhere else. Many of our ancestors did this, however, and under far more difficult circumstances than you would face today. Just think of the “coffin ships” that the Irish came to North America on.

Before considering this big step, you should ask yourself what you are trying to achieve and what types of disasters you are hoping to survive. Is it a local disaster, such as flooding, or the disaster of your country going down the drain? You can prepare for almost all natural disasters without the need to move. However, if you are worried about something along the lines of serious civic unrest or even a civil war, then you may want to consider a more dramatic move. For example, if you had been living in the Soviet Union when it came crashing down, but had had German ancestry, you could have moved to Germany. Would you have done so?

Once you have decided to pursue the possibility of moving, you should consider the fact that serious trade-offs will be required, as there is no perfect place in this world. You will have to weigh and balance many new issues in a way that you don’t now. For example, some countries often have low crime, but may seem a bit regimented, such as Singapore. Other countries may be relatively free, but lacking in modern infrastructure.

1. Review all the issues that would apply if you moved within your country. They still apply - only more so. If you can’t handle the snow in Idaho, you won’t do much better in Switzerland. If you can’t afford a house plus a retreat in the Western US, then you probably won’t be able to pull it off in Costa Rica, either. Yes, it’s true that prices are lower in less-developed countries, but the days of the dollar being as good as gold are long gone.

2. Make a list of needs, wants, and can’t haves for everyone in the family. Without their buy-in, you’ve got a problem. You need a reasonable balance for them in their new home, too. You may happy to find a paradise that has both good tax and gun laws, but your children may not care about that, and they’re unhappy about going to a school that teaches in a foreign language.

You should set your priorities of what you can live with, and live without. Do you need TV programs from your home country? You realize, of course, that those might not continue anyway if things get really bad. Do you need first-class hospitals, such as the Mayo Clinic? What is your definition of good medicine? Some folks think the US has a great system, while others disagree. It’s clearly the case that some of the less-developed countries have modernized quite a bit in the last 20 years, and that could make a move to, say, Mexico a lot safer in this regard now than then. Indeed, medical tourism is a fast-growing business due to the low costs in places such as Costa Rica or India. Are you willing to experiment a bit? I have had good results with Chinese herbal shops in Asia, but you may feel that is too risky.

A possible list of must "haves" is:
-Taxes are no worse than where I am now.
-A hospital where at least some of the doctors speak English is within close range.
-Some form of self-defense is legal.
-Phone and Internet service is available.
-Violent crime is uncommon.
-Many schools teach in English.
-The type of business I want is legal for an immigrant to operate.
-Good agricultural land is available and not too expensive.

A possible list of "wants" is:
-Phone and Internet service is inexpensive.
-The government is pro-American.
-The currency is stable.
-A wide variety of churches and religious materials is available.
-Properties with gravity-fed water supply are available.
-Acquiring a second citizenship is not too difficult.
-The country is considered to be a tax haven and has laws that guarantee financial privacy.
-US-style fast food and supermarkets are available.
-Cyclones are rare.

A possible list of "can’t haves" is:
-Religious oppression is common.
-There is wide