Letter Re: A Suggested Reading List

James:

Thank you for all of the work that you put into your web site. I have been reading your site and preparing for the last couple of years. I thought you might be interested in the Bibliography to my [retreat] group’s operations guide.

Fiction

Adams, John Joseph. Wastelands. San Francisco : Night Shade Books, 2008.
Alten, Steve. The Shell Game. Springville , Utah : Sweetwater Books, 2007.
Brin, David. The Postman. New York : Bantam Books, 1985.
Budrys, Algis. Some Will Not Die. New York : Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1961.
Card, Orson Scott. The Folk of the Fringe. New York : Tom Doherty Associates, Inc., 1989.
Carlson, Jeff. Plague War. New York : The Penguin Group, 2008.
Frank, Pat. Alas, Babylon . New York : Harper Perennial, 1959.
Heinlein, Robert A. Farmer in the Sky. New York : Ballantine Books, 1950.
________. Time Enough For Love. New York : The Berkley Publishing Group, 1973.
________. Tunnel In The Sky. New York : Ballantine Books, 1955.
Ing, Dean. Pulling Through. New York : Charter Communications, Inc., 1983.
Kunstler, James Howard. World Made By Hand. New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008.
McDevitt, Jack. Eternity Road. New York : Harper Collins Publishers, 1997.
Niven, Larry and Jerry Pournelle. Lucifer’s Hammer. New York : The Random House Publishing Group, 1977.
Party, Boston T. Molon Labé! Ignacio , Colorado : Javelin Press, 2004.
Rawles, James Wesley. Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse. The Clearwater Press, 2006.
Sheffield, Charles. Aftermath. New York : Bantam Books, 1998.
Stewart, George R. Earth Abides. New York : Del Rey Books, 1949.
Stirling , S.M. Dies The Fire. New York : New American Library, 2004.
________. The Protector’s War. New York : New American Library, 2005.
________. A Meeting at Corvallis . New York : New American Library, 2006.

Nonfiction
Food Storage
Layton, Peggy. Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook. New York : Three Rivers Press, 2002.
Stafford , Jake and Jim Rawles. Rawles Gets You Ready: The Ultimate Emergency Preparedness Course. Genoa , NV : Arbogast
Publishing, LLC, 2006.
General
Boy Scouts of America , Fieldbook, 4th Edition. Irving , TX : Boy Scouts of America , 2004.
Clayton, Bruce D. Life After Terrorism. Boulder , CO : Paladin Press, 2002.
Deyo, Holly Drennan. Dare to Prepare, 2nd Edition. Pueblo West, Colorado : Deyo Enterprises LLC, 2004
Diamond, Jared. Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York : Penguin Books, 2005.
________. Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
Emery, Carla. The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 9th Edition. Seattle : Sasquatch Books, 2003.
Kelly, Kate. Living Safe in an Unsafe World. New York : New American Library, 2000.
Kunstler, James Howard. The Geography of Nowhere. New York : Simon & Schuster, 1994.
________. The Long Emergency. New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005.
McGlashan, Charles F. History of the Donner Party. Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc., 2004.
Party, Boston T. Boston on Surviving Y2K and Other Lovely Disasters. Ignacio , CO : Javelin Press, 1998.
Rawles, James Wesley. Rawles on Retreats and Relocations. The Clearwater Press, 2007.
________. SurvivalBlog: The Best of the Blog Volume 1. Clearwater Press, 2007.
Ruff, Howard J. How To Prosper During The Coming Bad Years In The 21st Century. New York : The Penguin Group, 2008.
Starke, Linda. State of the World 2004. New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.
United States Air Force. Search and Rescue Survival Training. New York : Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc., 2003.
United States Army , US Army Survival Manual. New York : Dorset Press, 2001.
United States Marine Corps. Guidebook For Marines, 14th Revised Edition. Quantico , VA : The Marine Corps Association, 1982.

Global Warming
Gore, Al. An Inconvenient Truth. New York : Rodale, 2006.
Knauer, Kelly. Global Warming. New York : Time Books, 2007.
Lynas, Mark. Six Degrees, Our Future on a Hotter Planet. London : Harper Perennial, 2007.
JWR Adds: For a contrapuntal viewpoint, see: Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media, by Patrick J. Michaels

Mechanical
Bealer, Alex W. The Art of Blacksmithing. Edison , NJ : Castle Books, 1995.
Burbank , Nelson L. et al. House Construction Details, 7th Edition. New York : McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986.
Davis , Thomas Bieber and Carl A. Nelson Sr. Audel Mechanical Trades Pocket Manual, 4th Edition. Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2004.
Finch, Richard. Welder’s Handbook, revised edition. New York : The Berkley Publishing Group, 1997.
Hauser, Walter. Introduction to the Principles of Mechanics. Reading , MA : Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1965.
Graf, Rudolf F. The Modern Power Supply and Battery Charger Circuit. New York : TAB Books, 1992.
Harper, Gavin D.J. Solar Energy Projects for the Evil Genius. New York : McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2007.
Hornung, William J. Builders Vest Pocket Reference Book. New York : Prentice Hall Press, 1955.
Macauly, David. The Way Things Work. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988.
Oberg, Erik et al. 27th Edition Machinery’s Handbook. New York : Industrial Press, Inc., 2004.
Parmley, Robert O., P.E. Field Engineer’s Manual. New York : McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981.
Peters, Rick. Plumbing Basics. New York : Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2000.
Proulx, Danny. The Pocket Hole Drilling Jig Project Book. Cincinnati , OH : Popular Woodworking Books, 2004.
Richter, H.P. et al. Wiring Simplified. Minneapolis : Park Publishing, Inc., 2002.
Schwarz, Max. Basic Engineering For Builders. Carlsbad , CA : Craftsman Book Company, 1993.
United States Navy. Basic Machines and How They Work. New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 1971.
Wing, Charlie. How Your House Works. Kingston , MA : Reed Construction Data, Inc., 2007.

Medical
Burns, A. August et al. Where Women Have No Doctor. Berkeley , CA : Hesperian, 1997.
Carline, Jan D., Ph.D. et al. Mountaineering First Aid, 4th Edition. Seattle , WA : The Mountaineers, 1996.
Dickson, Murray. Where There Is No Dentist. Berkeley , CA : Hesperian, 1983.
Forgey, William W., M.D. Wilderness Medicine, 5th Edition. Guilford , CT : The Globe Pequot Press, 2000.
Nato Handbook. Emergency War Surgery. El Dorado , AR : Desert Publications, 1988.
Werner, David et al. Where There Is No Doctor, revised edition. Berkeley , CA : Hesperian, 1992.

Peak Oil
Simmons, Matthew R. Twilight in the Desert. Hoboken , NJ : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005.
Tertzakian, Peter. A Thousand Barrels A Second. New York : McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Weapons and Combat
Ayoob, Massad. The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery 6th Edition. Iola , WI : F + W Publications, 2007.
Clausewitz, Carl Von. On War. London : Penguin Books, 1968.
Cooper, Jeff. Principles of Personal Defense. Boulder , CO : Paladin Press, 2006.
________. To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth. Boulder , CO : Paladin Press, 1998.
Party, Boston T. Boston’s Gun Bible. Ignacio , CO : Javelin Press, 2002.
Perkins, John et al. Attack Proof. Champaign , IL : Human Kinetics, 2000.
Plaster, Maj. John L., USAR (Ret.). The Ultimate Sniper. Boulder , CO : Paladin Press, 2006.
United States Marine Corps. Essential Subjects. Arlington , VA : Marine Corps Institute, 1986.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Norman in England suggested a piece of commentary about the Mother of All Bailouts: The Rescue of the Wealthy

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Brad E. and Kevin A. both forwarded some bad news from Forbes, that confirms what the Peak Oil crowd has been telling us: Here comes $500 oil. The law of supply and demand is inescapable. I do, however, have my doubts about the supply side of the equation. (See, for example, the arguments presented by the Abiotic Oil proponents.)

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More Odds ‘n Sods gathered by Cheryl N., our Economic Editor: Dow Down 373 Points On Spiking Oil Price, Investor Unease Over Bailout — Morgan Stanley To Sell 20% to Mitsubishi UFJ — G7 Declines US Bailout Scheme — Dollar May Be ‘Crushed” As Investors Weigh Bailout — WaMu Under Pressure — Dire Warnings Fail To Sway Senators On Big Bailout; Dow Down Another 161 — Holiday Sales Expected To Be Weak — Morgan, Goldman Seek Deposits; Regional Banks To Become ‘Lunch’ For Larger Banks — US Dollar Set To Be Major Casualty of Bailout — Credit Crisis Analysis and Conclusion — Berkshire (Warren Buffet) To Invest $5bn In Goldman, Sachs — Funds Get Freer Hand In Buying Bank Stakes “The Federal Reserve, unleashing its latest attempt to inject more cash into the nation’s ailing banks, loosened longstanding rules that had limited the ability of buyout firms and private investors to take big stakes in banks.” [Cheryl’s Comment: Loosening rules adopted after the Great Depression is what caused this…how can loosening more rules be good?] — Hedge Fund Paulson Discloses Short Sales On UK Banks — and, Baby Boomers Delay Retirement.

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Flora recommended a TED Video: Irwin Redlener: How to survive a nuclear attack

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Eric flagged this: Housing crisis has spread to well-to-do

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

Every economy in the world has experienced booms and busts, but somewhere along the line someone came up with the bright idea of eliminating the busts. Throughout the 1990s the world experienced a series of economic crisis in Asia, Mexico, Russia, and even in the US markets that would have been enough to cleanse the system and restore equilibrium. On each and every occasion the Fed met the problem head on with the printing press, so a full blown reaction was avoided thereby creating what I call a “distortion” in the financial system that would eventually have to be sanitized. What any normal country would have done after a capital injection is withdraw that capital once things got better, but the US never did that. They just kept right on printing much like a drug addict keeps increasing the dosage because the old amount has less and less affect. Unfortunately, like a drug addict the economy eventually dies from an overdose, and that’s where we are today. – Enrico Orlandini

The MOAB Accelerates the Inevitable Destruction of the US Dollar

Back in March, I coined the acronym MOAB (for Mother Of All Bailouts), to describe the Federal government’s continuously-expanding response to the global credit collapse. My family has been getting great chuckles mentioning each time that commentators and legislators start using the term. These have included Michelle Malkin, Congressman Ron Paul, Senator Richard Shelby, and Joel Skousen. So now we are waiting for a pronouncement for Al Gore, that he invented both the term and the acronym.

The government’s virtually uncontrolled bailout spree has now expanded to more than 1.5 trillion dollars, and there is no end in sight. At best, this “buy your way out of the problem” approach–via government spending–will result in a decade or more of economic stagnation. This is what has happened in Japan for 15+ years. But at worst, the MOAB will result in the utter destruction of the US Dollar, through hyperinflation. Unless our trading partners continue to go along with the convenient fiction that the US Dollar has meaningful substance, then it is all over. I predict that within the next year, the US Treasury auctions will turn into a farcical comedy . Foreign investors will start to demand higher and higher yields in order to buy any US Treasury paper. Once that cycle begins, the handwriting will be on the wall for the US Dollar.

Five Letters Re: Preparedness Advice for the Parents of a Newborn Infant

Dear Memsahib:
I’d like to suggest exploring the Wear Your Baby site There are free directions for making your own baby wearing wraps and free videos demonstrating different wrapping/carrying styles. The free printable items have good clear photographs to help in choosing the right fabric for the job. Now that slings have become poplar and trendy the prices have become rather expensive. There is nothing like spending $30+ dollars to find that baby doesn’t like that carrying style or is wrong for momma’s back. I’d rather buy fabric and try different styles (more comfy). If it is a total washout at least the fabric can be used for other projects. Another benefit is the cost is low enough a spare can be handy for those oops that come with babies. HTH, – Stephanie in Arkansas

Jim:
These folks may want to find a way to store and dose antibiotics. Kids develop infections of all kinds from strep to severe ear infections. In a post-collapse environment this may be very hazardous health wise. Buying clothes that are several sizes bigger for the child to grow into is another thought. – Scott S.

 

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Rawles,
I love your site. I have been reading for a few months now and hope to get my act http://www.alertpay.com/together here. I am slowly but surely getting prepared (my Dear Husband thinks I am crazy, but I tell him he will thank me one day.) I am starting a homemaker’s preparedness section on my site. You know, what if you have no washer, have to make your own laundry detergent, cleaning supplies. That kind of thing. So this was right up my alley 🙂
I have two Babies and I can offer this advice.
1. Lots of pure water for Mom who is nursing. I have a water filter pitcher that I got on sale and am saving for an emergency.
2. The Nojo Sling is great for Mom who has to nurse/keep baby quiet/put baby to sleep on the go or in emergency situation. [JWR Adds: The Nojo brand slings are quite expensive if bought new. But if you shop around, they can be found in “gently used” condition on eBay or even Craig’s List.] They can double as blankets and changing pads.
3. Lansinoh Lanolin cream is food rated and is not only good for Mom, but cures diaper rash and chapped skin.
4. Acidophilus will stop some diarrheas. Garlic for a natural antibiotic (honey to make it go down for Mom but of course no honey for Baby. Baby will get garlic in breast milk), ascorbic acid (buffered Vitamin C) to cure just about everything.
5. Coconut oil. Not only can you cook with it, you can use it to moisturize sensitive baby skin, it is a natural sun screen, has anti bacterial and anti viral properties, works on diaper rash and can help keep away bugs.
6. Bulb syringes. I just got two at Walgreen’s [pharmacy store] for about $2 each. They suction noses and [can be used very cautiously to] clean ears. Invaluable for when baby is stuffy and can’t nurse.
7. Saline nose drops for same thing. I am “thinking” correct me if I am wrong, that these could double to clean out wounds.
8. Cloth diapers. I don’t use them, but have some to use as light weight blankets, wipe up clothes and for putting in the crook of your arm when you nurses so baby’s face doesn’t stick to your arm.
9. Boppy [style sling baby carriers]. Great for nursing anywhere. (The “Breast Friend” works well for on the go because you can strap it on and walk if you have to, otherwise use sling) and can support baby upward if baby is sick and can help baby sleep.
10. Oatmeal. Great nutrition, easily transported and stored, good for both Mom and Baby to eat and increases breast milk production
11. Dr. Bronner’s soaps are great, multipurpose soaps the whole family can use. I use the Peppermint to clean (it deters pests) and brush teeth, wash baby with Baby soap. Can also use to clean dishes, as a shampoo and to wash clothes. [JWR Adds: I have used a 4 ounce squeeze bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Castile Soap for many years, mostly on backpacking trips. A little bit goes a long way!]
12. Rubbing alcohol to cheaply and effectively disinfect everything.

Hope any of this helps. I tried to think in terms of compact and multipurpose. We are in a crowded town, in a small apartment and I am doing what I can and asking God to help me (and trusting him) with the rest. Keep up the good work! Many Blessings – Ace

Jim and Memsahib:
As a mother of 13 children, I am very familiar with prepping for newborns, toddlers, children and teens :-).
Our children range in age from 19 years old to 10 months old, (and one on the way)

Here is what I have stocked up on for the little ones:

==Acetaminophen suppositories (I buy the baby, junior and adult doses).
They are wonderful for when a fussy baby or child will not swallow medicine. A real life saver that has helped me keep my sanity.

==Children’s Motrin and Tylenol liquid. When my babies reached 20 pounds, my doctor said that they could receive a 3/4 dose of liquid Children’s Motrin if the fever was not coming down. I recently had to do this and thank goodness it worked! Keep plenty of both liquids on hand..it goes fast.

==Pacifiers. If your child likes a pacifier, you don’t want to be without one in the middle of the night or during an emergency. I once had a child scream for seven hours until I gave in and went to the store. I have gotten smarter with age and now I have stocked up (I have several dozen in my storage).

==Bottle Liners, extra Nipples, extra holders. If you use a bottle for breast milk or formula, you’ll need these. You can never have to many. Any baby items are good for barter.

==Humidifiers. I always have at least 6 new humidifiers in storage. A baby can be miserable with a cold.

==Baby Food. I try to give the baby what we are eating..but if we are on the road or are eating something the baby probably can’t handle (chili, etc), I whip out the baby food. I keep a years worth on hand.

==Suppositories (Glycerin). Babies do get constipated on occasion. I also keep “Baby Lax” on hand (a liquid).

==Pedialyte [oral rehydration solution]. A must! Keep plenty of it on hand. It could be a life saving item!

==Extra blankets, crib sheets, etc.

==Baby shampoo. I prefer not to use adult shampoo on the younger children as it will eventually get in their eyes and they’ll pitch a fit that’ll raise the hair on a bald man.

==Toothbrushes and special Toothpaste (non-fluoride as they will swallow it!) I have them for the babies as soon as they get their first tooth. I get extra for all age groups.

==Next size up in clothing. They grow fast! Thank goodness we have hand me downs as all my children (except one) are boys!

==Books. Babies love books. Get them now as you’ll be surprised at how young an age they will enjoy listening to you read!

==Toys. Age appropriate toys. The more simple, the better (blocks are a favorite around here).

I’m sure I have more items I could add to this list as we follow the “Alpha Strategy“…but it’s time to make lunch.

God bless all of you! You are an inspiration! In God’s Love, – Walt and Wendy, and our 12 (soon to be 13) blessings from God

 

Folks,
First, for those who have children, blessings.

Second, in addition to diapers, do not forget more blankets, bedding, a good crib and a safely portable car set/trailer system / transport system depending on your transportation options.

Stock up on supplies for milk, baby food and Pedialyte. (Gatorade is not for small children). Contact your medical provider about infant medical supplies, study and train up for infant CPR. What ever supplies you have on hand, add to them and remember rotate, rotate rotate. Formula is not cheap, and does not have a long shelf life. As to diapers, well that is up to you to choose, but A supply of disposables and cotton washables would be a good idea. The disposables are not cheap.

Adult health products are not for children, including pain relievers and the like, so please consult your pediatrician and your pharmacist. Also review your home for hazards, like exposed electrical sockets and the like. – TFB

JWR Adds: As mentioned before in SurvivalBlog, there are recipes available for make-it-yourself Oral Rehydration Solution. (ORS). Be sure to print out a hard copy for your file. It could be a lifesaver!

Odds ‘n Sods:

Eric sent a link to a London Telegraph article: Financial crisis: Default by the US government is no longer unthinkable.

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Wayne S. suggested this article: Great Myths of the Great Depression. Wayne’s comment: “I found it to be a great educational primer on the Great Depression. It is interesting to draw parallels with today’s tumultuous times and MOAB with the government policies of the 1929-to-1941 Depression years.”

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Eric also found this important tidbit in The Des Moines Register: Brasher: Corn, soybean supply on brink of shortages. Stock up!

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Laura C. flagged this: What Would Ayn Rand Have Done?

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I’ve been getting first hand and press reports from the southeastern US of gas stations running out of gas. In some locales the little gas that is available selling for $5+ per gallon. It is a good thing that most SurvivalBlog readers have a reserve on hand. Use it wisely.

Note from JWR:

The high bid in the SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction is now at $770. The auction for a large mixed lot that includes: A Special Mixed Vegetable Case-Six #10 Dehydrated Food Cans (Retail Price $105.95) This special Mixed Vegetable Case contains six #10 (96-ounce) cans–one can of each of the following: Mixed Vegetable Blend, Green Beans, Sweet Garden Peas, Mixed Peppers, Potato Dices, and Sweet Potatoes and a EZ-Towels 10 Pack Combo (10 bags of 50 towels. Retail value: $99.95). These items were donated by Jan at Healthy Harvest Foods. An assortment of world class loose leaf teas, and a box of Bellagio hot chocolate (25 individual packs), with a combined value of approximately $100. These items were courtesy of Charlie at CMEBrew.com. A NukAlert radiation detector (a $160 value), donated by at KI4U.com. And, a Katadyn VARIO water filter, donated by Ready Made Resources. (An $89 retail value.) The auction ends on Monday October 15, 2008. Please e-mail us your bid.

Even Chuck Schumer Thinks that We Might Be in Deep Schumer

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.

Letter Re: An Expedient Toilet Flushing Method for Grid-Down Situations

Salutations,
[In a recent letter to SurvivalBlog,] Jeff in Ohio mentioned filling the toilet tank with water in order to flush it, however, this is not necessary. You can flush by pouring about a gallon directly into the bowl. (Don’t dribble it in, but also don’t get carried away and slosh it in at once . . . unless you really want to use more water to mop the floor.) I learned this from my military service in Okinawa in the late 70s where we had water rationing with running water only every other day. On water days we filled 55-gallon drums with water and then used one-gallon coffee cans to flush the rest of the time. (If you live in an area that tends to lose power, you do fill your bathtubs with water prior to storm onsets, right?)

Give it a try today, for the sake of familiarity. There’s nothing like indoor plumbing, until you lose it. – Home’s Cool Mom

Letter Re: Finding a Mineshaft or a Gemeinschaft

JWR
I think that your “Mineshaft or a Gemeinschaft” article was especially true and timely. However, there are some problems [with living in a community]. Even given how imminent I personally fear financial Armageddon is, there is still time that it might be a nuclear event or a disease pandemic, etc., all of which demand slightly different responses. There is no possible way one or even five individuals can be totally self-sufficient. Even the hermits come out once a year or so to trade for things like salt or ammo, or whatever. Personally, I think a small community of up to 300 varied skills, pooling their resources and pulling together towards a common goal, is ideal. Still small enough that everyone knows everyone else, and has their own estimate of the reliability of every other person, so a community can be totally and realistically democratic.

However, I do think that the more remote the better, and the less known publicly about it the better. In my studies of the downfall of empires, it is clear that officialdom is the greatest thief of all. Anything they can find, either through records or investigation is subject to their attention. In my own case, no one, even me, knows where I will land. (Although I do have a variety of potential areas in mind.) In terms of being found, all are very remote. Your comment about a road or trail being a roadmap to your retreat is very accurate. I am having a problem directing attention away from my trail in for moving in equipment and supplies. Given my bush experience, if I get a few weeks before someone comes looking, I think I can cover that base using game trails. Satellite [image]s are definitely a problem. But hopefully, a little smudge that is difficult to get to will either not be noticed, or deemed not worth the effort. Hopefully, during the first year, there won’t be even much of a footprint.

My greater fear is that if someone knows I am preparing, and where, then the story is sure to be embellished, and suddenly I become a worthwhile target. If I have the very basics underway, surely people (who have survived) will see the benefits and be anxious to join. My theory is that most people will stick to the roads in the early stages at least. I intend to be remote and difficult to get to, and I hope to look like something else, not worth bothering about.

The few [that find us] that are experienced woodsmen will likely be great community member. Otherwise, I can hand pick my community members before they even know they are being considered, or any other details or hints. By that time, if my assessment of the civil distress to come is somewhere near target, I am sure that the survivors will have the most crucial element of being good community members, [namely that] they are survivors, not theorists. They will likely have some other warts that are difficult to deal with, but a common interest will hopefully smooth that path somewhat.

I do have many problems with my scenario and plans, but depending on the start date, I think the first 18 months will be the worst. If I/we survive that length of time, we will probably survive much longer. – Allen C.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Nanny State Britannia run amok: YouTube bans knife and gun videos in England. I suppose that this ban will also include instructional and safety videos, but worry not: They tell us that it is all for the public good! (Tut, tut! We mustn’t “glamorise!”) OBTW, I think that using a third party web browsing portal such as Anonymizer will probably remove any do-gooder impediments. (And, BTW, it is wise for everyone to use  Anonymizer, just on general principle, to prevent leaving an audit trail of your web browsing. Think OPSEC!)

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From Cheryl, our Economic Editor: Bush, Congress Working on $700 Billion Bailout — 12th Bank Failure of the Year (AmeriBank Inc.) — Paulson Commits Trillions of Dollars to the MOAB (“The global mass exodus from the U.S. dollar and Treasury debt is about to begin: Do not get caught in the stampede.”) — US Gov’t Disaster Fix-it Plan Send Stock Markets Soaring — US Economy Stares Into The Abyss — Money Market Accounts Shaken (“This week, shareholders pulled more than 60 percent of the assets from Reserve Primary Fund, which on Wednesday became the first money-market fund in 14 years to expose investors to losses.”) — GM Tapping Remainder $3.5 Billion Credit Line (“Everyone is running to cash, hoarding it, and we’re not out of the woods yet,” Mikelic said. “There’s a little less pressure with the government stepping in. But the government needs to keep printing money, printing securities, even if there is negative yield.”)

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I spotted this linked at Drudge: Almost Armageddon: Markets Were 500 Trades From A Meltdown. The $1.00 Net Asset Value (NAV) barrier for money market funds is practically sacrosanct. The Fed has promised to continue to step in whenever a $1.00 NAV is in danger. But given the sheer scale of money market investing, I wonder how long that this can go on. I therefore urge SurvivalBlog readers to divest from any uninsured money market accounts, ASAP. Reinvest those funds in tangibles and perhaps some Treasury Inflation-Protected Security (TIPS). Most other US Treasury paper is risky, since US Dollar inflation is very likely to accelerate radically in the next few years, threatening the real value of any investment that is denominated in dollars.

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Several readers mentioned this Politico piece by Mike Allen: Foreign banks may get help. I must ask: How big can the Mother of All Bailouts (MOAB) get if it also includes foreign entities?

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“I didn’t know how long we’d have together… Who does?” – Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, in Blade Runner (1982). Screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick

Finding a Mineshaft or a Gemeinschaft

I’ve observed that survivalists tend to fall into two schools of thought: those that are loners and those that are community-minded. The loners would prefer to disappear into the wilds and essentially find a mineshaft to crawl into–somewhere they can lay low, whilst things sort themselves out, back in civilization. That is both a naive and selfish starting point for preparedness. Short of moving to the roadless interior of Alaska, it is not realistic to expect that you can find a remote rural property where you’d have no contact with outsiders for an extended period of time. We live in the era of Google Earth, where there few truly secret hideaways. I recently read that Mel Gibson couldn’t buy total privacy. Even if you live off-grid, if there is a road leading to your house, eventually someone will find you.

I have only seen a handful properties in the lower 48 States that I consider truly isolated. One of them was a ranch in the Basin and Range country, about 50 miles out Lovelock, Nevada. (It was actually 15 miles east of the tiny hamlet of Unionville, Nevada, (which is a 37 mile drive out of Lovelock) but I doubt that many people have heard of it). This was a 200 acre parcel that I evaluated as a potential retreat purchase for one of my consulting clients. (Note: I can describe it here, because the client eventually selected a different ranch in another county.) The road leading into the property traversed a dry lake bed, then went through a full section BLM land on a very dusty lame excuse for a road. Then, as the road started up into the hills it would appear to a casual observer to just become a rocky trail. But in fact it was in fact drivable in a 4WD vehicle, and the condition of the road actually improved, farther up the canyon. The upper end of the property had a surprising number of trees (including some pretty cottonwoods) and a large creek. But that property was a genuine rarity. There, if they were careful about noise and light discipline, someone could conceivably build a retreat and have it go entirely un-noticed indefinitely for anyone approaching by road. (And, BTW, it would have been a terribly long way to drive into town, especially in these days of high gas prices.) But even with a retreat that is out of line of sight from any road, it would still still be visible from the air, and from Google Earth. There is no such thing as total privacy.

I can safely say that 99% of SurvivalBlog readers will never own a truly remote retreat. For the rest of us, we will be on a recognizable road, and we will have neighbors. And we will have the occasional Jehovah’s Witnesses come wandering by to hand us copies of The Watchtower and extol their bad doctrine. Resign yourself to that fact. Having neighbors generally necessitates being neighborly. More about that, follows.

The German word for community is Gemeinschaft. This word describes both a community of people and their collective will. From the perspective of disaster preparedness, one of the positive aspects of community-mindedness is what the Germans call Kampfgeist (fighting spirit), or what the Boers call laager spirit. I’ve alluded to this before in SurvivalBlog, as a component of the “We/They Paradigm.” The downside of this is the risk of developing xenophobia and racial bigotry–which I, along with most SurvivalBlog readers, abhor. But the desirable side of Kampfgeist is that unifies a community in defending itself against outside foes. Kampfgeist is most often seen in small communities, but on rare occasions it can even be seen on the scale of a metropolis, where every able-bodied citizen pitched in. This was best illustrated in the defense of Stalingrad, in World War II. The city was defended by a large portion of the local Russian citizenry. (There, there were some phenomenal manifestations of Kampfgeist. The one there that comes immediately to mind is the perhaps apocryphal creation of propagandists: As the German army advanced on the city, the employees of the local tank factory personally manned and went into battle with the very last T-34 tanks that came off the assembly line.

I have long been an advocate of setting up small covenant communities, inhabited by like-minded people. Consider my vote for Gemeinschaft, not a mineshaft. The “mineshaft” is essentially a myth. I’ll have more comments on covenant communities in an upcoming article.

Letter Re: Comments on the 2008 Financial Collapse and the Mother of All Bailouts (MOAB)

Hi Jim,
This [current economic news] is nauseating. Now, not only are we in the insurance business, but we the taxpayer are going to be forced to purchase all of the bad and recklessly created debt generated over the last eight years. We know it’s bad, it’s even been called “toxic debt”. We’re not going to be given a choice on whether or not we want to purchase it. It’s being purchased in our name and we have no say about it. I can think of no better definition of socialism.

If this is not the end of the world as we know it, it certainly is the end of our once great country as we knew it.

Seeing all of the pundits saying that this is a wonderful idea, I am reminded of a quote from Star Wars III, Revenge of the Sith, when Padmé Amidala says, “So this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause.” Regards, – Rod