Note from JWR:

The high bid is still at $400 in the SurvivalBlog benefit auction, for four items: a Baygen Freeplay Summit AM/FM/Shortwave digitally-tuned radio, and a Baygen Sherpa hand crank flashlight. These were kindly donated by Ready Made Resources, one of our most loyal advertisers. Also included in the auction lot is a copy of my “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course, from Arbogast Publishing, and an autographed copy of my novel “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse”. These four items have a combined value of more than $350. The auction ends on November 15th. Just e-mail us your bid.

Letter Re: Safety Tips on Hi-Lift Jacks

Jim:
Please warn your readers of the potential dangers of using a Hi-Lift jack (a.k.a. farm jack [or Sheepherder’s jack]). I am a member of a local Jeep club and while we require each Jeep have one on outings, we don’t allow anyone to use theirs unless they’ve been trained in their use. People have been killed by these crude (but necessary) machines and many, many, many have been injured. A fellow in our club had his jaw broken and cheekbone fractured years ago when lowering his Jeep after doing a trailside repair. When raising a load do everything to prevent your head or body from being directly above the handle. Make sure you move the handle through the entire range of travel and watch the “dogs” or pins to ensure they are engaging the beam holes and walking up the way they should. When you reach the desired height, leave the handle in the fully up position. Use a bungee cord to secure it in this position. Lowering a load is probably the most dangerous process of using the jack. Again, keep your head and body out of range of the handle. Once the handle “clicks” into position at the bottom of the stroke the entire load will literally be in your hands. Anticipate an immediate load pushing the handle upward! This is where most injuries occur. Work the handle through the entire range of movement and keep watching those pins to make sure they are engaging properly. Keep in mind too that these jacks aren’t terribly stable, do everything you can to help brace and/or support the load before you ever consider getting under a vehicle while using one of these. I suggest some experimentation with these jacks at home, on a level driveway, etc. before ever attempting to use one in the field. Furthermore, I recommend you buy nothing but the actual Hi-Lift brand jack manufactured by Bloomfield Manufacturing Co. You can download a safety brochure in .PDF format from their site. Don’t risk your life using some cheap Chinese jack sold at a discount tool shop (good luck getting replacement parts for these anyway). Bloomfield makes rebuild kits and replacement parts for all their products – always keep a Hi-Lift rebuild kit in your rig. In addition to lifting your vehicle, these jacks can be used in combination with tow straps/tree straps and used as winches. They can also be used as big clamps, presses and spreaders. Regards, – Tanker

JWR Adds: Thanks for sending those tips. In addition to vehicular use, we have found our aging but still quite serviceable pair of 47″ Hi-Lift jacks to be indispensable around the Rawles Ranch. Most frequently we use them for pulling old fence posts. Bolting on a two-foot length of heavy chain just below the lifting surface (using a large Grade 8 nut and bolt) adds tremendously to a jack’s versatility for tasks like fence post pulling. I agree that it is important to keep a factory (white box) rebuild kit handy. But the most important thing to keep in mind is to keep the jack’s pair of pins well lubricated. Typically, people abuse their jacks–leaving them out in the rain. The pins rust, and then then the pins get stubborn. If a pin gets stuck in the out position while you are lifting a load, it can be a very bad thing!

Letter Re: Source for Bulk Grains and Legumes in Southern California

Dear Jim,
I live in the Los Angeles area. I have been searching for the best place to purchase several hundred pounds of grains and legumes. I have read your course and all the SurvivalBlog article (I think). I have searched for a local place where I can pick up the product in person. The local Costco has all the White Rice and Pinto beans I need. However, I am at a loss to find a place to purchase Hard Red Wheat, Black Beans, Kidney Beans, Lentils, etc. I have found several businesses on line, including the SurvivalBlog advertisers, but surely we are not so “advanced” that I will be forced to pay shipping fees which near triple the cost. Any stores or warehouse type businesses that might sell bags of grains and legumes that I can repack for long-term storage?

Thanks for you time, sir. Blessings, – MB

JWR Replies:

Honeyville Grain currently offers a flat UPS shipping fee of $4.49, regardless of the size of your order, anywhere in the continental United States. They have four warehouses, including one that is in Rancho Cucamonga, California. In a phone conversation yesterday, I was told by a manager at Honeyville that if you pick up your order in person, you can get a discount price. (The prices quoted at their Internet web page must have some shipping costs built in.) The other advantages, of course, are that if you can pay cash, you can avoid much of a paper trail, and you won’t raise any eyebrows with your local UPS driver.

For rice and beans, don’t overlook ethnic food stores. There are lots of them in Southern California. (Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican, and so forth.) Not only do they have very competitive prices (recent immigrants are often on a tight budget and they look closely at prices!), but they also often have rapid turn-over of inventory. This means that there is less likelihood of getting bags of rice or legumes that are a year or two old. This is particularly important with beans. Even if stored under ideal conditions, beans harden with age. After around six years, this hardening gets to the point that they are inedible even after days of soaking. In my experience, if you are trying to cook eight+ year old storage beans, the only viable alternatives are to either grind the beans, or cook them in a pressure cooker. Otherwise it is like trying to eat pebbles.

Weekly Survival Real Estate Market Update

This week in our weekly review of Survival Real Estate, I’d like to mention that we are in need of your help. We need you, the SurvivalBlog supporter that lives in any retreat locale in the world, to refer us to your local agent that understands what survival real estate shoppers are looking for. We have North Idaho and Northwest Montana covered but we need to locate and contact trusted agents elsewhere in the US and world-wide, so they may be featured in the weekly reviews in SurvivalBlog, and on our spin-off site: SurvivalRealty.com.

If you have a friend or have used an agent that really knows your locale then drop us a line. They do not have to be SurvivalBlog readers, just have an excellent working knowledge of the area, be amiable to working with folks like us and most of all they must hold high ethical and business values. We are not looking for names out of phone books–we can do that. We need actual referrals to either friends in the business or agents that you have worked with who won’t say “huh?” when we speak to them about the site and locale.

In order to reward our loyal readership, each person who e-mails us the contact details of an agent referral that passes our stringent checklist and is featured on SurvivalBlog will be entered into a drawing to win an autographed “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course, and an autographed copy of my novel “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse”. We will have two separate drawings, one for CONUS and one for overseas locales.

Please e-mail your referrals to our North Idaho correspondent Todd Savage at: toddsavage47@gmail.com

A quick side note: For those of you ready to purchase your retreat in a northern locale, it’s about ready to snow in most higher latitude North American locales so you can expect sellers to panic and either drop their price and/or look at special financing options, many of which have already been detailed here recently. Good luck and happy shopping! – T.S.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Economist and investment adviser Thomas Tan recently posted an interesting piece in his blog: Gold as an Alternative Investment.

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Bill P. sent us an interesting article over at TCS Daily about the mainstreaming of preparedness: We’re All Soldiers of Fortune Now. Bill’s comment: “I guess after Katrina and the fires in southern California, at least businesses see the value of being prepared even if it’s only too make a buck from a bug-out bag. I prefer my own rather than a mass-produced bag of dubious value. However, it’s a step in the right direction. The more others are prepared the less I’ll have to deal with when the SHTF.”

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Keith in Texas mentioned that anyone interested in the BareFoot Motors link (recently mentioned in SurvivalBlog) might also be interested in www.GorillaVehicles.com. he said the information on solar charging for their vehicles was of particular interest.

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Posted on the CometGold forums at ContraryInvestorsCafe.com today: Analyst: Banks face big write-downs. The article begins: “U.S. banks and brokers face as much as $100 billion of write-downs because of Level 3 accounting rules, in addition to the losses caused by the subprime credit slump, according to Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC. The Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Rule 157 will make it harder for companies to avoid putting market prices on securities considered hardest to value, known as Level 3 assets, Royal Bank’s chief credit strategist, Bob Janjuah, wrote in a note Wednesday. The new rule is effective Nov. 15. “This credit crisis, when all is out, will see $250 billion to $500 billion of losses,” Janjuah wrote. Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest U.S. securities firm, has 251 percent of its equity in Level 3 assets, making it the most vulnerable to write-downs, followed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. at 185 percent, according to Janjuah.” One posted comment: It looks like we now have to go overseas to get facts about our own banking industry. It could make a lot of things very interesting.

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us…they can’t get away this time.” – Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, USMC, in Korea

Note from JWR:

If you value what you read here, then please support SurvivalBlog with a voluntary 10 Cent Challenge subscription. If you are on a tight budget then please skip subscribing, but remember that mentioning SurvivalBlog in e-mails to friends and relatives costs virtually nothing. Thanks for spreading the word!

The Demise of the US Dollar–The Handwriting is on the Wall

The major news outlets have finally started shouting about the collapsing value of the dollar and the bull market in precious metals. (Looking at the charts, $820 per ounce seems to be the new floor for spot gold.) Just as I predicted, it was a move by China that precipitated the latest drop in the dollar. Thanks, BTW, to the five readers that all sent that link. I should mention that several SurvivalBlog readers mentioned that article. Reader Mike the Blacksmith noted: “The remarks by Cheng on world currency status is the most important point in this article.” The currency markets are coming apart at the seams. Reader Chris S. pointed to the one year chart for the US Dollar versus the Canadian Dollar.His comments: “Notice the steep drop? It hasn’t even looked close to this since the 1970s during the worst of the oil crunch. Other countries are beginning to stop trading in dollars altogether. When someone says “your money is no good here” now, it’s not a compliment and a prelude to a freebie. It means they don’t want our money. Considering our main export to the rest of the world right now is our paper money, this doesn’t bode well. I would say that we could work our way out of this by building things the rest of the world wants to buy, but our so-called leadership in this country (both political and business) has also exported the jobs and sold off our infrastructure. We’re getting increasingly stuck with empty factories and mortgage debt in a real estate market that no one wants to finance. BTW, the US Dollar is also now beginning to lose value against the Mexican Peso…” Also in the news, there are rumors of a formal dollar devaluation.

And if that weren’t bad enough, we read some disturbing news on the credit market front: Markets fear banks have $1 trillion in toxic debt (thanks to both D.V. and Matt B. for sending that link.) But wait, it gets worse: Bond insurers set off fresh wave of credit panic.

Getting back to the FOREX markets, it is noteworthy that the USD Index has broken down below the 76 level. When I last checked, it was at 75.405, and falling. From deep in his lair (rumored to beneath Zurich’s Paradeplatz), my friend The Chartist Gnome tells me that it is a long way down to the next interim support level. (For those of you that deride technical analysis, just ignore the following.) This SurvivalBlog snippet from a few weeks back bears repeating:” [I had mentioned ‘Some analysts suggest 75 or perhaps even 72 as the next support level for the US Dollar Index’. The Chartist Gnome said that I was being overly optimistic. By his calculations, ‘the next logical support level for the USD Index is 72 and then if that fails to hold, we can expect a step off the cliff with no support until 42.’ Lest you think that this is some wild-eyed exaggeration, Jordan Roy-Byrne (editor of The Trendsman) came up with almost identical numbers. (Namely, 72 and 40 support levels.) Gulp! A USD Index level of 42 would equate to around $2.75 to buy a Euro and $4.02 to buy a British pound.”

I often tell my consulting clients that it is impossible to predict short term market moves, but I’m often asked for advice on long term trends. My favorite bit of sage advice to quote about the UD Dollar comes from economist Ed Daughty, who writes under the pen name The Mogambo Guru: He explains: “You paint a dollar sign on a rock, which you can also use to defend yourself, and (according to the instructions), ‘Hold the rock in an outstretched hand, making sure the rock is well away from your body, then say aloud ‘Oh, Magnificent Mogambo U.S. Dollar Index Predictor, what will the dollar’s value be over the long run?’ then let go of the rock.’ It’s uncanny how accurate it is!”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again: Protect yourself from the imminent demise of the US dollar. Get out of your dollar-denominated investments. If you have an IRA, talk to Swiss America and roll over your IRA into a warehoused US Gold Eagle IRA. Sells your stocks and bonds.Even the best of them is no protection when the currency unit itself is destroyed. Sell your silly jet ski and big screen plasma HD television. Instead, buy productive farm land in a lightly populated region–land that that can first and foremost serve as a survival retreat. (See our spin-off SurvivalRealty.com web site for specially-selected retreat properties.) Get your family’s food storage and survival gear squared away. Buy some practical tangible barter goods, like common caliber ammunition and full capacity magazines. After that, if you have any funds left over, invest it in physical silver (such as $1,000 face value 90% silver pre-1965 mint date coin bags) and store it in your home vault.

Letter Re: Living Off The Land

Mr. Rawles,
My Survival Group was having a discussion the other night, and we got to talking about “What if / Worst case” stuff. One of the situations involved the old “Lost in the wilderness with nothing but your knife and your lighter”. (you do carry a pocket knife and a lighter with you, right?) That got us to thinking…what would you eat? Most of us tended to think of ways to snare small game, but then we got to talking about wild plants. Before long, it became clear that not only is foraging for wild plant potentially more efficient than snaring wild game, its also much easier. There are almost always edible plants all around you, no matter where you are. Usually within arms reach! Case in point: The Pine Tree.

Pine needles can be easily brewed into tea which contains many nutrients and vitamins. Pine cones can be roasted over a fire (you did start a fire already, right?) to open the cone and access the seeds inside. In a longer term situation…those same seeds can also be ground into a type of course flour. One can also east the inner bark of Pine trees if nothing else is available. And that’s just the common Pine tree, which grows almost everywhere! Speaking of Tree bark: remember that Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) was originally derived from teas made from the inner bark of the Willow tree.
Anyway, you get the point. A little study on the matter can go a long way toward making you self sufficient as far as food is concerned, by enabling you to supplement your dry-stores (you do have food stores, right?) with fresh greens providing vitamins and nutrients year round. Just remember what Crocodile Dundee said “You can live on it, but it tastes like…”Well, you know what.

Here area couple of web sites I’ve come across that deal with this topic:
Linda Runyon’s “Of the Field” Web Page
 WildwoodSurvival.com/

There are, of course lots of other web sites out there, as well as good old fashioned EMP-proof books as well.

Good luck, and KYPD, – Krys in Idaho

Letter Re: Advice on Sources for a FN FAL Clone Rifle

Hi,
I am a relatively new but loyal reader and can use some advice. I am looking to purchase a .308 battle rifle (eventually five or six of them) and wonder if you have any resources for fairly priced new FN FAL (type) firearms and magazines? Thanks, – Ryan

JWR Replies: If you don’t mind a paper trail, some of the best bargains are some of the “builds” done by individual members at The FALFiles Forums. Depending on circumstances (such as car repairs, loss of jobs, and divorces) they are sometimes sold below cost. For example, here is a very nice L1A1 presently being offered.by a gent that needs to raise cash for house construction.

It is possible to get lucky and find a FAL or L1A1 listed at the FALFiles Marketplace Board that is being sold in your own state, being sold by a private party. Of course any transfers across state lines would have to be processed through an FFL holder. State laws on firearms also vary widely. Research them before you make a purchase. If avoiding a paper trail is a high priority, then I recommend that you make all of your gun purchases at gun shows from private parties, or through GunBroker.com (on-line auctions) or GunsAmerica.com (fixed price sales–usually more expensive). Both of these web sites have search features that allow you to search “by State”, allowing you to find only sellers from your own state. Again, that way you won’t run afoul of the Federal law that prohibits the transfer of a modern (post-1898) gun across state lines, except through a FFL dealer.

You also asked about magazines. Your best source for both metric FAL and inch pattern (L1A1) magazines would be Gun Parts Guy (he currently sells slightly used Imbel FAL magazines for under $8 each and I heard that he also obtained a batch of brand new in the wrapper Australian L1A1 magazines.

Letter Re: Home/Retreat Power Generator Noise Reduction by “Jerry the Generator Guy”

Jim,
One thing to note about generator noise reduction. It’s not just a matter of running quiet by normal standards. It’s a matter of running quiet when nothing else is making any noise. With the grid down, a lot of normal background noise will be gone. That was one reason for my choice of solar electric power over a generator. – Raymond

JWR Replies: Remember that light discipline will be just as important as noise discipline, post-TEOTWAWKI. It is important to have the materials on hand to black-out your windows. Regardless of your power source, if you have power when nobody else does for blocks–or miles, then your house would be a “come loot me” beacon at night. Buy a stack of 1/2-inch plywood and two dozen 2″x4″x8′ studs now. Carefully measure and cut inserts for each of your windows, and label each of them for quick reference. The edges can be wrapped with rags or old blankets. They can be tacked in place (so that they don’t fall inward) with finishing nails or power screws driven in above, parallel to the sheet of plywood. At the same time, build a framework of 2x4s so that you can make a relatively light proof “airlock”–something a little bigger than a phone booth. It can be covered in opaque blankets. That way you can open your front door without fear of a blast of light escaping. T o be prepared for any overlooked light leaks, buy a few cans of expanding insulating foam (such as Dow “Great Stuff”, available at any hardware or building supply store such as Lowe’s or Home Depot) and some dark spray paint. Once you have your blackout shutters up, do a check for light leaks. As a final test, look for light leaks while wearing night vision goggles. (You will be amazed at what you missed!) It takes considerable effort to make a house that light-proof. But perhaps that is overkill, considering the capabilities of most would-be looters.

Letter Re: Nutritional Supplements and Preparedness

Jim,
There is one thing that I think that would be very helpful to also stock up for WTSHTF, that would be supplements there are several out there and other products just for general health like protein powers / Met rex formulas and so on. I have some experience with these things from the Army – to helping my father fight cancer. Most of these added to a meal would help your body with many things like extra calories, to repairing muscle, blood pressure, vision, heart, to just good general heath. I really do not know of a shelf life and whether or not they would store easily. What would be your thoughts?

Taurine
From Body Building For You
From The Magnesium Website
From Better Nutrition

Acetyl-l-Carnitine
From Wikipedia
From OSU
From BodyBuilding.com
From Dr. Ray Sahelian’s web site

Arginine
From Wikipedia
From the Vitality Research Institute
Arginine Versus Aspirin

The reasons that I picked these three is because I just finished a test on a product that I have been using. A few years ago I had to entirely give up coffee on doctor’s orders. If your anything like I was on that news he should of taken me out behind the building and just shot me, no more coffee that was my life juice. He then told me that he also had to give up coffee and that he had found something else it was a Sobe product called No Fear and that his body had thanked him for it many times over. So I tried it, at first I thought okay what’s the big deal about this stuff then in about a week I felt better and a lot of other things happened–I had focus and drive, no heartburn, and my body started to feel much better. So one day I found this product on sale so I bought a lot of it because in the mini marts and such stores they are about $2.50 a can but I found it for 99 cents a can so I purchased 22 cases–all they had. Well, that was about three years ago, just to see. I put about three cases in my storage food area. I just [recently] used myself as a guinea pig and drank two cans from the stores and it was just fine. So today I called Sobe and asked they if they had a shelf life on this product they said no that had never been asked before. (Note: Do not drink more than three a day or you will not sleep.)

Next, when my father came down with throat cancer and had his voice box removed he was eating from a feeding tube (And will be for the rest of his life). He could not get his weight back on that he need to survive. With what the hospital gave him, so I called one of my old Army buddies and he came up with a mix of protein powder, Met-Rx, and baby food blended together. It worked very well for a long time and it wasn’t fat that he put on. Rather, it was healthy muscle weight even through radiation therapy he did not lose weight. So I have several hundred pounds of these products in my food stores. The products that I stocked up on were Mega Mass-3000 (protein powder), Met-Rx, and other supplements. – Chad

Odds ‘n Sods:

RBS flagged this from The Age in Australia: Crash is coming, warns top investor

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Thanks to Eric S. for sending this article on a “polemical documentary”: New ‘disaster’ movie warns world of oil apocalypse

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An article that provides some details on the Robert Karhe US Gold Eagle coin payroll tax case, which resulted in a mix of acquittals and a hung juries–no convictions.

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The excellent Comet Gold web site (often cited in SurvivalBlog) recently merged with The Contrary Investor’s Cafe. Please update your links/bookmarks.

Notes from JWR:

Wow! I guess that by now you’ve heard that the spot price of silver jumped nearly a dollar an ounce yesterday and in early morning (Asian) trading to $15.70+ per ounce. Meanwhile, gold topped $830 an ounce. I told you that the precious metals bull would continue his charge. This is hardly the top! The full implications of the housing market collapse and the credit market melt-down have yet to be felt. To use a quaint aphorism: “You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!”

Speaking of surging numbers, from our hit map I can see that Europe has developed a severe case of SurvivalBlog “measles.” Welcome to all of our new readers in continental Europe and the British Isles! I’m also gratified to see that the US and Canada are well-blanketed with SurvivalBlog readers. Please keep spreading the word!