Maloney Calls It: Recession Here Now
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Oil Prices Continue To Rise On Hollow Saudi Comments. Saudi rhetoric has been an integral part of the move in oil prices over the last days, but most of this has been panic buying with total disregard to fundamentals
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World stock markets climb on labor data, oil gains
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Inflation: It’s a Wealth Redistribution Scheme
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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.
Free Private Cities: The Future Of Governance Is Private
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MassPrivateI: Snapchat, Big Brother, credit card companies etc., are using facial recognition
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Inmates made defective combat helmets for U.S. troops — and no one was prosecuted. You might want to check your helmet to see if it is from the affected lots. – V.H.
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Venezuela crushes 2,000 guns in public, plans registry of bullets – DSV
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“In my opinion, any adult human – and most children past a certain degree of maturity – ought to carry a knife. Otherwise you’re just a chimp with a haircut.” – Tamara K. in a comment to a post in The Adventures of Roberta X. blog
The 18th of September is Chilean Independence Day. On this day, in 1810, Chile declared independence from Spain.
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Today, we present another entry for Round 66 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The nearly $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:
First Prize:
Second Prize:
Third Prize:
Round 66 ends on September 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.
“You can’t make people smarter. You can expose them to information, but your responsibility stops there.” -Mark Rippetoe, Strength Coach and Texan
Two-thirds, one-third, and one-tenth. Those are the stats on how many Americans are overweight, obese, and have diabetes, respectively. Let that sink in for a minute. One in ten Americans would be dead within weeks, should their insulin supply be cut short by any kind of major incident. (Insulin is only guaranteed to be good for 28 days.) There would be roughly 30 million bodies in the first two or three months. The remaining folks who are obese would have some serious issues with their calories being cut short. Those too unfit to defend themselves, forage, hunt effectively, or get some gardening going would snuff out quickly as well. There is no denying it; your health is the most important prep you can make, and it’s also the least expensive one.
Last year I spent a day helping a friend haul gravel and wood around his yard. I’m in good shape; he’s not. I went mountain biking and did yard work the next day. He went to the doctor for his back and was out of commission for three weeks. Imagine if his ability to get work done or get around the next day was a matter of life and death. What would happen to him?
For those with rural properties, farms, or authentic manual labor jobs, some of this will be much easier for you. For the average city folk or suburbanite, you could go weeks or months without sprinting or carrying a heavy object. You need to be better prepared for things. I’m here to help. (Note: Some city folk walk four or five times the amount that suburb dwellers do! Last time I was in NYC, I walked six miles per day getting around.)
I’ve been a personal trainer for eight years. I’ve had hundreds of clients and business isn’t slowing down. My business comes down to two things– knowledge and discipline. My clients lack one or both. The first is easily excusable, as a good trainer is worth the money. The time it takes to become really great as a coach is immense, and even the most disciplined person can still see solid benefit from an expert. Those who lack in the latter are less excusable. Nobody is perfect, but sloth is a great sin and the waste of an amazing gift. I’m not talking about six pack abs and massive arms. I’m concerned with the ability to put in work and come out alive and unscathed and to be able to face uncertain times with strength, mobility, and endurance. Plenty of people underestimate the impact that sudden physical exertion can place on the body and mind. Unless you’ve had a hardship, a manual labor job, or attempted a 4-day canoe trip having not walked more than two miles in a day for months (as one client of mine), you don’t fully comprehend what lays in store. Things can get nasty very quickly. A pulled groin will lay you up for weeks. A back muscle in spasm will relegate you to the nearest hard, flat surface for days. A sprained shoulder makes shooting near impossible. Your ability to put in good long hours day after day is your first and most important line of defense.
Health has come to mean the absence of acute illness, which is a sad state of affairs indeed. True health is thriving, being energetic, and relishing physical activities and challenges. It has a pyramid, like most things.
Mobility is the true base of health. If you can move well with full, pain-free range of motion (ROM) in your joints, you are way ahead of the curve. Good mobility means you can jump in and things will much easier. There is a simple test that tells a trained eye where problems lie– The Overhead Squat.
Start by standing with your feet outside your hips and your arms extended overhead. Most people can’t get into an overhead position that shows full ROM. Your bicep should be behind your ear and the arms should be at 90° to the shoulder. Then sit back into a deep squat while maintaining the overhead position. Most peoples arms will come quite far forward, knees will cave, the lower back will round and they will end up on their toes. If you’re unsure about your ability, try it with your toes against a wall. That is your first challenge. Take a video of your movement for retesting two weeks from now.
The fix for any problems is two fold. Start doing Yoga stretches. YouTube is full of free videos, and five minutes a day will pay massive dividends. I like my stretching time to be a period of reflective thought, prayer, and deep breathing. I’ve become a fan of Kelly Starrett. He’s a physiotherapist from San Francisco and has book called The Supple Leopard. You’ll learn how to use inexpensive items to help prep the body for movement, work on painful spots, and clean up years of poor posture and movement. You are going to get hurt at some point. Be prepared to rehab it yourself. I use his methods everyday in my gym and was lucky enough to attend a seminar in 2011 that changed my practice forever. I can’t say enough about his work. Try my above advice for two weeks, and then retest your overhead squat. Things will improve quickly.
Many equate strength with size, and the correlation bears some mentioning. While a larger muscle has the propensity to become stronger, it doesn’t necessarily equate to more strength. Strength is quantified as the absolute heaviest repetition one can complete in any given lift.
The king of all lifts is the deadlift. Humans are capable of lifts well in excess of 500lbs without the use of anabolic steroids. My own personal best was a 455lb deadlift at a body weight of 190lbs, using no straps, belt, or drugs. That required three years of dedicated lifting, five days a week. I’m not naturally strong and had to work hard for it. I was also in my early 30’s, and age is big factor in how easy the gains come. I would propose that all men should be able to deadlift 1.5 times their own body weight to be considered physically fit. A solid women weight would be around 1-1.25, depending on their age. My wife pulled 225lbs for one rep at a bodyweight of 135, and she was quite lean at the time. She has her father’s genes, who at 71 can do 20 pushups, three pull-ups, and competes in Dragonboating weekly. Health is ageless. The big question is: How do you get strong enough to be useful in uncertain times and be bulletproof enough to not break in half when you need to use that strength?
There are two choices. The first is that you can join a real gym, where people lift real weight. Look for powerlifting gyms or Crossfit locations; avoid large chain gym locations. These large chains gyms will stick you on machines and waste your time and money! Your second choice is to go the inexpensive and self-disciplined route– go for it at home. For under $450 you can buy a squat rack, a barbell and 300+lbs of steel plates. This will require a space to use it, some research, and some ego checking. Here is the simple strength plan. It uses the principle of linear progression, or what we call the Milo and the Calf Method. Linear Progression works off the human body’s desire to maintain homeostasis. An exercise induced stressor can cause the body to adapt to it, through a process called Super Compensation. When you lift weights or run for a long duration or high intensity, you damage the muscle fibers and stress the respiratory and nervous system. The body responds by building things up stronger and/or bigger so that the specific stressor you put to it will no longer be a problem. If applied with incremental progression, you can add between 80-100lbs to your strength numbers in 18-24 weeks.
Using the barbell can be simple for some with the right body type and mobility. Should you be concerned with your ability to get started, I suggest the Mark Rippetoe book Starting Strength. He has a no Bravo Sierra way of presenting things and is very thorough in the necessary details. His language can be a bit spicy at times. (You’ve been warned.)
Everyday tasks will become easier, you will lose body fat and gain muscle, and you’ll be much better prepared for TEOTWAWKI.
The second option for strength training will be continued in Part 2 of this article.
Hugh,
This article is a good start to a problem solving dilemma. It definitely requires a mindset change, but that’s achievable for everyone. The best book I ever read, back in the late 80s, on this subject is Re/Uses: 2133 Ways to Recycle and Reuse the Things You Ordinarily Throw Away by Carolyn Jabs, published in 1985. – T.S.
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Hugh,
When I have plenty of scraps, I do just as the author suggests (and as Julia Child had suggested in her book!) and make soup stock with them, canning them for later use. It makes for wonderful, flavorful soup stock! A lot of times, before I have filtered the scraps out, my husband eats the soup as is–and he has never complained. I gave up trying to tell him those were the junk ends and were supposed to be thrown out. Apparently, they still taste good, and he often has several bowls of this soup. After the scraps are filtered out, they go to the chickens for their third life. 🙂
As an example, right after Christmas, frozen turkeys were marked down to 49 cents a pound. I canned the meat from two of them and then took the carcasses and all of my freezer scraps and made stock. I canned 17 quarts of really flavorful stock that I am still enjoying!
As one more suggestion, there is a lot of talk these days about the health benefits of bone broth. With larger bones, you can cook them in a pressure cooker until the bones are easily breakable (or leave them in longer for the bones to dissolve) to get at the marrow, which can also flavor your soups and stocks. – L.B.
World seeing ‘greatest monetary policy experiment in history’. Excerpt: “The six months under review have seen central bankers continuing what is surely the greatest experiment in monetary policy in the history of the world. We are therefore in uncharted waters and it is impossible to predict the unintended consequences of very low interest rates, with some 30 percent of global government debt at negative yields, combined with quantitative easing on a massive scale,” – Link sent in by P.S.
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Silver Takes A Dip On Hawkish Fed Meeting Minutes
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Is The Oil Production Efficiency Boom Coming To An End? Oil rigs have gotten much more productive since the start of the oil bust, sometimes even producing 1000 bpd, but how much more efficient can these wells get?
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Tech Wreck – 100+K Jobs Gone and More Cuts Coming
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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.
Claire Wolfe recommended this insightful essay by Vin Suprynowicz:
‘Tolerance’ sounds great. But is there no limit to what we can wisely ‘tolerate’?
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Authorities believe frat boy found eating victim’s face may have been on “zombie” drug. Are you prepared for more of this as society crumbles around you?
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SurvivalBlog Reader RBS wrote in about yesterday’s Top Note: I have heard it said that in the Klondike Rush an egg was worth its weight in gold. One can only imagine that transaction taking place. Here is an interesting side note to history that is rarely if ever ever spoken of in standardized history texts. Opportunity is where you find it. When “things are re-organized” by factors beyond anyone’s control, new opportunities will avail themselves too.
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America to hand off Internet in under two months. They wouldn’t stifle dissent, would they? Nah. No more “badthink/badspeech”! Rainbows and unicorns for all. – C.S.
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Col. Ralph Peters talks legacy after Gitmo: ‘Lincoln freed the slaves, Obama freed the terrorists’ – B.B.
“A society that puts equality … ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.” – Milton Friedman
While salmon fishing near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory on August 17th, 1896, George Carmack reportedly spotted nuggets of gold in a creek bed. His lucky discovery sparked the last great gold rush in the American West. His two companions later agreed that Skookum, Jim–Carmack’s brother-in-law, actually made the discovery.
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Today, we present another entry for Round 66 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The nearly $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:
First Prize:
Second Prize:
Third Prize:
Round 66 ends on September 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.
Technically you could differentiate between these two, as some items that you can compost you shouldn’t feed to certain animals. So scrounge two plastic buckets of a size you’ll actually use, carry, and empty, and make sure they have well-sealing lids since you’ll probably keep these in the kitchen. Then, label one Compost and the other Chicken Food (or whatever). Keep them under the sink or somewhere where you’ll actually use them. I’ve heard that compost “rules” have changed and you might be able to compost meat and dairy products now. I probably wouldn’t feed old meat or cheese to the chickens, but maybe you do, so just do what works for you and your animals.
You can probably re-eat a lot of the stuff you’d normally put right in the compost, so consider doing that first. Save old fruit peels for making fruit vinegars, but then compost them later. Apple cores and cuttings can be juiced into a rough sort of apple cider and then composted. Make some soup stock out of the onion skins and carrot ends before composting them. You get the idea.
You can still do this even if you’re in the city, though you may need to get creative about storing your stash. I don’t know of any metal that can’t be taken to your local scrap yard (readers may be able to chime in, though). Just make sure you sort by type beforehand. If you just put everything in one bin, you’ll lose out on high-dollar metals, like copper and brass, because as far as I’ve experienced you’ll get the dollar value of the lowest-value metal in your container. So, sort out the brass and copper! Also, don’t recycle your food cans, if you do decide to have a scrap pile, but do recycle bottle-deposit cans (see #7).
Post-garage sale free piles can be great sources for scrap. Look for bed frames, old flatware, kitchen items you don’t need (trays/bowls), broken appliances (for the copper coils in the motor), and especially house hardware. (I’ve scored pounds of brass doorknobs and fixtures this way.)
Make sure your scrap containers are solid, not slatted. Then you can toss in small metal bits like bent nails, soda can tabs, and bottle caps. Seem extreme? Yup, but every piece can count.
Wait until you have probably a hundred pounds or more of sorted scrap, and then take your first run to the scrap yard. You’ll get a feel for how much you need to bring in to make a certain amount of money. They should give you an itemized receipt with the weights of your sorted metals and the dollar value per unit (in pounds or tons, probably). Then you’ll be able to gauge how often you want to do a scrap run and how much stuff you should bring to make it worth your while. I think we used to go every six months or so. Follow the rules, be polite, don’t horse around, and don’t try to pull a fast one by hiding low-value metals in your high-value bins!
If you have any sort of backyard or back driveway, rustle up some concrete blocks, a big old stock pot, or a circle of rocks, and start a burn area. Also, start a paper “Burn Bag” in your kitchen. You’ll see major reductions in your landfill trash this way. Plus, you can get rid of personally identifying documents without needing to buy a shredder. I’d suggest diverting items like old bank paperwork to the burn bag, plus stuff you can’t necessarily recycle or compost, like greasy paper towels, dryer lint, old toothpicks and popsicle sticks, tin can labels, used matches, short bits of string, butter wrappers, paper food containers, and pizza boxes. Want to take it to the extreme? You can dispose of some bathroom trash this way (used kleenex, cotton swabs, and cardboard toilet paper rolls, for example). It’d probably be more sustainable, though, to sew some handkerchiefs out of found fabric.
If you want to maintain a little more OPSEC in the summer, just use your burn bag as kindling before a nice hot dog roast or barbecue. That way, if neighbors are curious about the smoke, you have a real reason to tell them, instead of letting on that you’re burning sensitive documents.
Can’t reuse, re-eat, compost, scrap, or burn it? Try donating it to a thrift store. There are none close by? If you’re in a moderate to high traffic area, and this fits with your neighborhood ethos (stay Grey Man), try a free box. The town we live in has a thriving “freeboxing” community, if you know where to look and what guidelines to follow. I’ll have more about how to maximize free stuff in my next article, but for now if you’re looking to give stuff away for free (so that you don’t have to pay to throw it away) here’s what to remember. First of all, your goal is to get rid of something, right? You need to make it easy and appealing for someone to take. Put your clearly labeled “free box” (cardboard is just fine) out on your curb or median grass strip. Don’t keep it on your porch or lawn or you might end up with folks taking your lawn furniture or items on your porch. Keep your free box clean and neat! It’s a big turn-off to find a free box that looks like it’s full of kitchen trash. If you want to get rid of items that thrift stores won’t take, like old plastic and glass food containers, wash them first! Stack them neatly and include lids. You’ll likely have more takers than if you treat your free box as a dumping ground. If you’re giving away clothes or fabric material, wash and fold them, then put them in the box. Keep an eye on your free box; if stuff gets tossed outside of it, take a minute to tidy it up. Put the box away in your garage or otherwise out of sight after a few days, so folks don’t start tossing their trash in it. You may or may not need to advertise (on Craigslist, etc) that you have a free box at your curb. If you feel ambitious, you can use scrap lumber to build a nice “free box” stand with a roof and clothes hanger bar, as some in our city have done.
If you maximize “trash” flow to strategy streams 0 through 6, you may not need to pay for recycling service. See if you can swing that. Otherwise, if you end up with a lot of nonburnable, non-scrappable, inedible items (like glossy paper ads and some styrofoam materials), recycling may be for you. Though, before you shell out your cash on service, check out three other options. First, see if you can trade with a neighbor to utilize their recycling bin. Maybe if you take it to the curb and back in every week, they’ll let you toss in your stuff, especially if it’s not much. Second, ask your coworkers or your boss if you can bring your recycling to work. (Clearly, this option depends on your personal work circumstances.) Third, see if your town has any kids’ clubs, churches, or craft centers that need donations of art materials. Styrofoam meat trays, plastic yogurt cups, glossy ads, and foil wrappers (all clean!) could be a great help to that group.
Also, don’t scrap or send through recycling services anything that has a deposit! Look at the label or top on drink bottles and cans, and see if it lists your state abbreviation (i.e. “CA”) and then says something like “DEPOSIT” or “5 cents”. Save those items and take them to a bottle-deposit facility, grocery store, or mini-mart. If you take them to a person (as opposed to an automated machine), pre-count your items, politely let the clerk know how many you have (stay under daily limits), and then graciously recount them out in front of the clerk when requested. Don’t ever try to sneak in non-deposit items; or, if you’re new to this and accidentally put in a non-deposit can, be honest and apologize. Over time, the clerk will start to trust you and your count. Build that trust and don’t abuse it, and it’ll pay off in the long term. They often deal with a tough crowd, and your politeness and honesty will put you on their good side.
This should ideally be a last resort, but there are some things that you can’t do much else with. Feel free to offer your reuse ideas for empty ketchup packets, used dental floss, and broken light bulbs! By now, though, your landfill-bound trash bag should be pretty small, as you’ve successfully learned how to divert the majority of the waste you generate to other streams.
Your trash at this point contains one last thing of value though. You now have an opportunity to analyze what you’re still tossing in order to determine how you can find, make, reuse, or trade for that item, instead of buying it and then throwing it away.
For example, maybe you’re still throwing away tea bags. Could you eliminate those from your trash? I think so. First, you’d have to decide whether or not you wanted to keep buying tea (#0). Maybe that’s a “Yes” for you, which is fine. Next, consider if you could reuse/re-eat this item (#1 and #2). Can you make one more cup of tea out of it before tossing the teabag? Then, if it’s really at the end of its lifespan, look at composting the organic matter (#3). Maybe your tea bags have that little staple, string, and tag. Feeling extreme? How about scrapping the staple (#4) and burning the string and tag (#5)? No more tea bags in the garbage!
And what if you’re throwing away juice boxes? Maybe you’re ready to stop buying those (#0). Have you saved and juiced some apple cuttings (#2)? Great! Now you can put your homemade juice in reused plastic or glass containers (#1) and feed the juiced-out apple bits to the chickens (#3).
So, you get the picture. While cutting down your trash might seem like a big endeavor, it will ultimately help you save money for the things that are much harder to get, while building a creative, out-of-the-box mindset in you that positions you for resourceful survival. To be honest, though, while we’ve done every single item on this list, it’s not always easy. You can cut yourself a break on that one late night when hand-washing a sandwich bag might send you over the edge. We’re all human, but don’t give up! Find another creative way to cut down your trash. I think you can do it. I know we did.
There are two things old timers knew that you must know about wound care, if the patient is outside. The wounds of a person or animal all will be affected greatly be these two things. If you are not able to see a doctor or get to an air-conditioned facility, such as a hospital, these two things could save your life. You need to know them.
Two days ago my daughter was riding her beloved pony and our cows were a bit scared by the dog who was faithfully looking out for our daughter. She usually doesn’t ride near the cows. The dog’s actions alerted my husband that something wasn’t right. In the blink of an eye, the bull charged at the pair (pony and daughter), and the pony took a life-saving blow for our daughter. My daughter, by the way, got some pretty good licks in on that bull with a riding crop. Between her blows and the dog, the bull lost. All this happened in a blink of an eye and before we knew what had happened. My husband, who was 200 feet away, was and unable to stop it quickly, though he ran to her rescue, but it was over as quickly as it started. The scene ended with only a wounded pony and one ticked off 10 year old. Don’t mess with country girls or their horses! God smiled down on us and our daughter wasn’t hurt, but we had to act fast to help the pony who had been gored pretty bad. Here’s the two things you should know that could mean life or death for you, your family/friends, or your animals if someone is wounded and you cannot get medical help. This will specifically address wounds that must be treated and healed outside.
Next we called the vet because we could (amazingly) see very clearly right into the wound. It was a very deep gore that went into the shoulder and she had to be stitched up. The cut was about eight inches long and a few inches deep. So this brings us to our next important topic for knowing how to treat wounds outside.
U.S. ‘Debt Held by Public’ Tops $14,000,000,000,000; Up 122% Under Obama – B.B.
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Retirees Need $130,000 Just to Cover Health Care, Study Finds
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Price Controls Are Disastrous for Venezuela, and Everywhere Else
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Central Banks Are Now On The Cusp Of Losing Control
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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.
The East(there’s a fine line between justice & terrorism)
Over a Thousand Motorists Stranded by the Flood: Are You Prepped for Something Like This? How long could you survive? – H.L.
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Ron Paul: Election 2016 – Liberty Loses No Matter Who Wins
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Brotherhood-linked leader tells Muslims to change Sioux Falls, convert non-Muslims (VIDEO) – B.B.
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U.N. Peacekeepers, U.S. Embassy Stand Down As American Aid Workers Beaten, Raped In Sudan – C.L.
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Clinton Wants Politicians to Fight American Gun Owners, aka the Gun Lobby “The only gun lobby is the millions of voluntary citizen members of the National Rifle Association, The Gun Owners of America, The Second Amendment Foundation and the thousands of state level, pro gun, groups and associations. All made up of folks like me and you.” – B.B
