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From the society’s wealthiest and most powerful class to rural off-the-grid types, people are preparing for the worst, and sparing no expense on elaborate underground shelters, buying years’ worth of non-perishable foods and stockpiling fuel and ammunition. Some have embraced the term “preppers,” although precisely what they are preparing for varies. “We realized that we were totally unprepared should something happen,” said Jack Jobe, who was prompted to prep for a natural disaster after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Jobe, who will be featured on an upcoming episode of the NatGeo’s “Doomsday Preppers,” has invested about $3,000 in a safe...

While watching Doomsday Preppers last week, I observed one major difference in the various plans, and that was if the plan included access to land and water. Its one thing to stockpile 2 – 3 years of canned goods, food in mylar bags, freeze dried food, have a rainwater collection system, small backyard garden,,,,. Its another thing to have access to several acres of land, able to have chickens, a nice sized garden for a variety of fresh veggies, various types of fruit trees, access to fresh running water and access to land to hunt on. Maybe even have access...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The largest solar flare in five years is racing toward Earth, threatening to unleash a torrent of charged particles that could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. The sun erupted Tuesday evening, and the effects should start smacking Earth around 7 a.m. EST Thursday, according to forecasters at the federal government's Space Weather Prediction Center.

We are really happy how many people participated in our survey. Over 1800 of you have answered the questions and I have spent the last few nights to whip all the responses into a presentable form. This is done now and I think it gives everyone a good idea what is on most people’s mind, why people prepare, what they prepare for and where you are standing compared to others.

Looking at survival survey results it seems a lot of people have to see where they put their money. Into preps or have to spend it on things for everyday living. I know how this feels and live like that the last decades. After war I left city with two plastic bags full of random belongings. No documents and nothing else. I was refugee. But lucky that I was able to stay with family on countryside. I never really thought, ok now I prepare or anything. I simply wanted to have all sorts of things I did not have during...

We live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, and the potential for an event that could cause “sudden change” to the U.S. economy is greater than ever. There are dozens of potentially massive threats that could easily push the U.S. economy over the edge during the next 12 months. A war in the Middle East, a financial collapse in Europe, a major derivatives crisis or a horrific natural disaster could all change our economic situation very rapidly. Most of the time I write about the long-term economic trends that are slowly but surely ripping the U.S. economy to...

Via: On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events Key Points Probability of a Carrington event occurring over next decade is ~12% Space physics datasets often display a power-law distribution Power-law distribution can be exploited to predict extreme events By virtue of their rarity, extreme space weather events, such as the Carrington event of 1859, are difficult to study, their rates of occurrence are difficult to estimate, and prediction of a specific future event is virtually impossible. Additionally, events may be extreme relative to one parameter but normal relative to others. In this study, we analyze several measures...

Prepping for the Financially Challenged: A One Month Survival Plan For Under $300 Tom Chatham March 12th, 2012 The American Dream Lost The following article has been generously contributed by Tom Chatham, author of the newly released book The American Dream Lost – Economic Survival Strategy for a New Paradigm. Many people are now waking up to the possibility that the future may not provide the great recovery we all expect it to be. They are begining to sense that something is wrong with the economy and it will not get better. Their first thought is the question, What do...

A recent survey of 1,007 nationally representative Americans ages 18 and over suggests that most of us believe a doomsday scenario of some kind will occur in the next twenty five years. With three million preppers in the U.S. getting ready for widespread disaster, gun sales sky rocketing, and retail precious metals purchases at unprecedented levels, the results of the survey performed by Kelton Research on behalf of National Geographic shouldn’t be surprising. Among other things, the survey asked respondents to choose which natural or man-made doomsday scenarios they believed are most likely to happen in the United States. The...

With real unemployent approaching 25% of the population, 50 million Americans on food stamps, and the prices of essential goods rising every month, it’s no surprise that black market peddlers are turning to new product offerings to make a buck. In What Is Money When the System Collapses? we highlighted some items that would take the place of traditional currency in the event of a catastrophic financial and economic collapse – things like food, fuel, firearms and footwear. But for many, the world as they know it has already collapsed. Unable to afford retail prices for home essentials, these people...

The Survival Mom Teaches You How To Prepare More, Panic Less Mac Slavo March 13th, 2012 Over the last dozen years we’ve witnessed events in America and around the world that have proven one thing: sometimes, really bad things happen. We’ve seen thousands die in terrorist attacks on our own soil, residents of an entire U.S. city transformed into refugees almost overnight after, generations of families swept away by Tsunamis, economic and financial collapse that has wiped out decades of retirement savings, millions losing their jobs and forced into the government safety net for survival, and most recently, a nuclear...

16 Things to Stockpile with High Barter Value Cigarettes. Soap. Bullets. Alcohol. MREs. Silver Coins. Detergent. Water bottles. Matches and lighters. Sugar. Toilet paper. Water Filters/Purifiers. Bleach. Batteries. Candles.

Weekly Preppers Thread.

Weekly thread to post good buys for preparedness equipment and supplies, tips and tricks or just an update on where your are in your preparedness plans.

No Matter How Much Food You’ve Got Stored, It Will Eventually Run Out in a Full-Blown Collapse Joe Alton, M.D.,aka Dr. Bones March 1st, 2012 The following article has been generously contributed by Joe Alton, M.D., aka Dr. Bones, of Doom and Bloom Nation where you can find strategies to stay healthy that include traditional medicine, alternative remedies, and medicinal/survival gardening. For the best in emergency and long-term disaster medical preparedness we encourage you to check out The Doom and Bloom Survival Medicine Handbook and follow Dr. Bones and Nurse Amy on their weekly podcast. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Survive, How Much...

The Boy Scout motto — Be Prepared — is probably considered evidence of terrorist (or at least extremist) inclinations in the USSA Today. I won’t even get into the parts about hiking in the woods, carrying knives and practicing “survival” strategies. In my day, we even had a merit badge for marksmanship with a gun. But, weekend camping expeditions aside, how to be prepared in situ? In your home? For when the SHTF? Guns (and ammo) are obviously good things to have. And every person who wants to be prepared for a possible fecal-flinging scenario ought to have them. So...

Society as we know it will break down and collapse in a five stage process outlined here. While it can be accelerated by certain events like war, a natural disaster, pandemic, terrorist attack, or even an impending asteroid impact, history has shown that economic collapse will essentially happen in this five stage process. To survive the collapse, it is important to read and interpret the signs and understand what assets are important to the current situation so you can be prepared for the worst thereby allowing you to survive intact and with as little damage as possible.

http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/wyoming-house-advances-doomsday-bill/article_af6e1b2b-0ca4-553f-85e9-92c0f58c00bd.html

Most Americans do not know this, but a single EMP attack could potentially wipe out most of the electronics in the United States and instantly send this nation back to the 1800s. If a nuclear bomb was exploded high enough in the atmosphere over the middle part of the country, the electromagnetic pulse would fry electronic devices from coast to coast. The damage would be millions of times worse than 9/11. Just imagine a world where nobody has power, most cars will not start, the Internet has been fried, the financial system is offline indefinitely, nobody can make any phone...

What happens if we do all these preparations and nothing goes wrong? I am made fun of sometimes for being prepared. Mostly people will say “Are you one of those survival types?” NO. Number one I don’t like the word survivalist, I like being prepared. There are no tin foil hatters involved with preparedness. It sounds more prudent. If nothing goes wrong then I am ahead is how I see it. When you prepare you are ready for what may eventually happen. Why do you carry a spare tire in your car? Because the zombies might eat one and then...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a fantastic book on the impact of large, high impact, statistically rare events called The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. According to Taleb, history tends to swing much more than we realize on these theoretically foreseeable, but often unexpected large events as opposed to the much more predictable trajectory that we tend to forecast when we look ahead to the future. Technically, Taleb would probably classify the events we're about to discuss as "grey swans," unlikely events that we should still be able to anticipate, but that's splitting hairs. Long story short, we...

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico - Rescuers on Wednesday pulled a family from a sport utility vehicle that had been buried in a snowdrift on a rural highway in the southwestern state of New Mexico for nearly two days. State police said rescuers had to dig through 4 feet of ice and snow to free the Higgins family, whose red GMC Yukon got stuck on the highway when a blizzard moved through the area Monday. Rescuers found David and Yvonne Higgins and their 5-year-old daughter Hannah clinging to each other and lethargic early Wednesday morning. The family is recovering at Miners Colfax...

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Matthew Quain still struggles to piece together what happened after a trip to the grocery store nearly turned deadly. He remembers a group of loitering young people, a dimly lit street - then nothing. The next thing he knew he was waking up with blood pouring out of his head. The 51-year-old pizza kitchen worker's surreal experience happened just before midnight earlier this year, when he became another victim of what is generally known as "Knockout King" or simply "Knock Out," a so-called game of unprovoked violence that targets random victims.

At Carolina Readiness Supply in Waynesville you can buy freeze-dried macaroni and cheese by the 20-ounce can and a solar oven in which to warm it. You can get a woven bracelet in a variety of fashionable colors that converts into handy lengths of cord. Then, in theory at least, you are prepared for almost anything: making simple repairs to your backpack, starting a fire with a friction bow or fashioning a ladder for an elaborate escape from some futureristic prison. You can buy emergency kits that contain quick-assemble shelter and his-her hygiene necessities, water purification systems, lanterns of every...

Picture the scene: It’s the end of January 2012 and already it is clear the year to come will make that which has just passed seem something of a picnic. The last strains of Auld Lang Syne had barely faded before Greece defaulted on its debts. Over the next few weeks, Italy and Spain will follow. Across Britain and the Continent, bank after bank goes down, a domino effect exacerbated by panicking customers desperately withdrawing their savings. Where three years ago the giants of High Street banking were seen as too big too fail, now they are too big and...

I get this question often so I answer it here. “I would like to be part of a community or family larger than 2 or 3, but my extended family is worthless. My husband’s family is 1000 miles away, and don’t get the advantages of family either. My hope is to stick to our suburban home with a few good neighbors on our block. Is that a fantasy?”

Ok, so the SHHTF (S#!t Has Hit the Fan). You are hunkered down with your preps about you. There’s no ‘zombies’ knocking down you door, but the first few days are nerve-wracking to be sure. You will be busy securing what you can, monitoring the situation and generally getting into a survival routine to match whatever is going on. Generally, you will be too busy and with your adrenaline pumping and all the work to do it won’t seem that there are enough hours in the day to get everything done. But what happens when the initial action is over...

First half of show this evening discusses massive fraud and mismanagement in the financial sector. Second half will cover possible social breakdown scenarios and preparedness. Dishonest Finance/ Social Collapse Sun 11-20 In the first half, Associate Professor of Economics and Law, William Black, joins George Knapp for a discussion on how dishonest CEOs, crony directors, and corrupt middlemen can systematically defeat market discipline and conceal deliberate fraud for a long time -- enough to create massive damage. In the latter half, engineer, author and building contractor, Mat Stein talks about preparing for social collapse, environmental catastrophes and inevitable disasters.

I had lunch yesterday with one of the sharpest financial minds I’ve met in a long time at a rather picturesque setting overlooking Evergreen Lake, west of Denver. The restaurant patrons were all well-to-do residents of this wealthy community… in fact, the whole area is like a bubble, largely shielded from any negative effect of the economic fallout thus far. Most of these folks have gone about their lives over the last few years completely oblivious to the global financial crisis. My friend agreed; he told me, “Most of the people sitting in this restaurant haven’t felt a thing. Their...

Partisan politics will make any meaningful deal difficult to reach. The so-called Congressional supercommittee — a group of 12 politicians with the unenviable task of reaching a compromise on federal spending and our massive budget deficit — is running out of time. And so are American consumers and investors hoping for a deal to bolster a struggling economy and prove the stock market rally is here to stay. Only about a week is left for the group of six Republicans and six Democrats to craft a plan that will slash $1.2 trillion from the U.S. deficit during the next decade....

If you have food reserves, I caution you to take stock of your current situation and decide where you should keep your emergency food. Some of the food you purchase needs to be rotated, such as canned goods, dried eggs, powdered milk and perishables like winter squash, potatoes and other vegetables. The food with the shortest shelf life needs to be accessible so it can be rotated and used faster. I suggest you keep long-term food storage in a room that has a lock and key. It might be necessary to lock it with a dead bolt. Hide an extra...

A rather unobservant or at the very least “unlucky” man strolls across a faulty bridge; weathered, termite ridden, and over-traveled. He hops and skips and jumps about like a brain damaged orangutan without a care in the world. He does this not only because he is oblivious to the fundamental physics behind the workings of the bridge, and the structural signs of a bridge that is on the verge of collapse, but also because numerous highly paid “experts” on bridges have told him it is absolutely safe to do so. The bridge, of course, crumbles right under his feet, and...

NOAA Warns of Monster Solar Storm Region Facing Earth for Next Two Weeks; Fully Capable of Producing X-Class Flares Mac Slavo November 8th, 2011 SHTFplan.com Last Thursday the sun produced an X1.9 rated solar flare that narrowly missed Earth. Although it wasn’t aimed directly at us, about 45 minutes after leaving the sun it was still powerful enough to disrupt radio communications. Now, that same area responsible for producing the X-class flare may pose a direct threat to Earth. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center says that the region on the sun known as AR11339 and...

Survival guides, check lists, things to get at the store. It seems like everyone has a checklist, for your 72 hour kit for your car for your food. But all these checklists are all over the internet. I wanted to create a concise list in one place, for a long time I have been reading everyone else’s lists and, With all this information I have compiled a master list.. I used my own lists + lists from other websites.. I am going to present this list a little different than most lists.. With a multimedia experience. When are thinking about...

After The Collapse – Who Will Your Neighbors Be? Brandon Smith November 4th, 2011 http://alt-market.com This article has been contributed by Brandom Smith of Alt Market, an organization that facilitates networking, local community action, and the exchange of knowledge and ideas and promotes decentralization, localism, and the de-globalization of human economic systems. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. William Stockton celebrates yet another birthday surrounded by family and friends in the midst of a grand suburban paradise. The party is warm, and the evening is filled with joy and merriment. These people singing his praises, laughing and imbibing generous amounts of spirits, are neighbors...

If you’re fully stocked and prepared to survive anything, you may want to take that next step and start stockpiling popular bartering items. The exact items you choose to start stockpiling will depend on the situation your planning for, but in general the following items will all probably be in high demand after a total collapse: Water Purification Most people don’t realize how hard finding clean drinkable water will become in a post-collapse situation. When the water treatment plants stop running, people are going to be scrambling to find a way to purify their drinking water. Iodine tablets, bleach, water...

BILL FLECKENSTEIN: The Money Printing Era Will Implode In One Or Two Years Gus Lubin Nov. 1, 2011, 3:39 PM Bill Fleckenstein recommends gold above all as a hedge against money printing from the Fed and the ECB. In one or two years you'll be thankful, he tells King World News: Tomorrow the Fed is probably going to bring QE3 and meanwhile Europe is in a state of disarray. All of that will sort itself out bullishly for gold even if were to decline for the next couple of days. The Japanese, the British, the Swiss, the Americans are all...

This discussion with John Rawles is about how to literally survive the economic collapse. Gold and silver are a great way to protect yourself, but one thing that you want to stay away from is collectibles. If you want to be a coin collector, that is fine, but it has no place in a retirement account. You should buy bullion or coins. Shaving cream, razor blades, toothpaste are all good things to buy in order to protect yourself. The prices of all these items are going up, so you might as well buy them now. You can barter with them,...

Jim Rawls is with Peter Schiff today. He maintains a survivalist blog and is the author of several science fiction survival books. He is concerned about the possibility of an economic collapse and the hyperinflation that may be right around the corner. Interest in survival and family preparedness is up by about 30% in the past year. Right now, people seem to be more concerned about man-made disasters rather than natural disasters. You can see this in Egypt right now. The primary catalyst for all the riots over there is because the price of food has increased so substantially. Coffee...

GOLDMAN: Stop Kidding Yourself, The Economy Is Weak And Got Worse In October Joe Weisenthal Oct. 29, 2011, 5:28 AM Goldman's own proprietary Goldman Sachs Analyst Index does not reflect the modest cheer that people are feeling about the economy. Remember, this past week, Q3 GDP came in at 2.5%, nearly double the pace of the previous month. And the stock market has rebounded sharply thanks to a surprise string of stronger-than-expected economic data. But don't get too excited. From Goldman's Shuyan Wu The GSAI fell 0.9 points from 43.3 in September to 42.4 in October. This is the third...

The USDA has released their projections for food price inflation in 2011/2012, showing troubling forecasts that may send you to the grocery store today, before paying higher prices tomorrow. The report shows that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all food increased 0.8 percent between 2009 and 2010, and is forecasted to increase 3.5 to 4.5 percent in 2011. Items that are expected to inflate the most include beef, cooking oils, and seafood. Processed vegetables and beverages were projected to to see smaller changes in the CPI. The Wall Street Journal notes that “the midpoint of the new USDA outlook...

CONROE, Texas -- A Houston area law enforcement agency is prepared to launch an unmanned drone that could someday carry weapons, Local 2 Investigates reported Friday. The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in Conroe paid $300,000 in federal homeland security grant money and Friday it received the ShadowHawk unmanned helicopter made by Vanguard Defense Industries of Spring. A laptop computer is used to control the 50-pound unmanned chopper, and a game-like console is used to aim and zoom a powerful camera and infrared heat-seeking device mounted on the front. "To be in on the ground floor of this is pretty exciting...

Just a heads up in case some of you missed it in one of the several threads about Selco and his SHTF Wartime experiences in Bosnia. Selco has a blog called SHTF School. Load with information. http://shtfschool.com/general/signs-of-shtf/

By now everyone realizes that the euro is in major trouble and will no longer exist in its current form for much longer. However, the common view is that it is Greece and possibly other PIIGS countries who will be forced out if the eurozone is broken up. But few are talking about another possibility- of Germany leaving the EU. One who is talking about this is Dr. Pippa Malmgren, a former economic advisor to George W. Bush and a former advisor to Deutsche Bank (DB). According to Malmgren, Germany has already ordered the printing of Deutsche Marks in anticipation...

OK, i wanna share with you my own experience. (be patient with my English, i am from far away ) I am from Bosnia, and as some of you may know it was hell here from 92-95, anyway, for 1 whole year i lived and survived in a city of 50 000- 60 000 residents WITHOUT: electricity, fuel,running water,real food distribution, or distribution of any goods, or any kind of organized law or government.The city was surrounded for 1 year and in that city actually it was SHTF situation. (SNIP) Some of us was better prepared, but most of families...

In America today, there are millions of “preppers” that are working feverishly to get prepared for what they fear is going to happen to America. There is a very good chance that some of your neighbors or co-workers may be preppers. You may even have noticed that some of your relatives and friends have been storing up food and have been trying to convince you that we are on the verge of “the end of the world as we know it”. A lot of preppers like to keep their preparations quiet, but everyone agrees that the prepper movement is growing....

Mobs are at the doors of bankers and others in the financial system, screaming to politicians to put these people in jail while the vote-seeking politicians are fanning the flames rather than reminding people that the legal system is the way these people should be judged. Since banks are levered about 15 to 1, it doesn’t take much of a debt problem to cause them solvency problems, and since in deleveragings debt problems are big, there is significant risk banks will run out of equity again and the fury against them will intensify. For these reasons risks to the global...

"Nobody can afford right off the bat to buy 20 years of dehydrated mashed potatoes," he said. He would buy a little extra every time he went to the store. Peace of mind increases as the larder grows, he said. "If you stock food for a year and lose your job, you can at least eat for a year," he said. Besides food and water, his stash includes certain medicines and some cash -- "If it's worth anything in the end" -- and important documents, some of which he's duplicated and stored off site. "You can't be prepared for everything,...

Shotguns, buckshot, SHTF With all of the insane government spending going on, and the potential of nasty inflation hitting soon, I have been looking for things to buy that have utility, trading value, and long term storage life. I have been heavily involved in the gun culture, grew up in it, studied it, and have been a professional for the last 16 years. Almost everyone has a shotgun. Usually it is a 12 gauge, although there are plenty of 20, 16, and 410 shotguns out there. Most people have a box or two of bird shot. They might have a...

<p>The number is out, and it's HOT!</p> <p>PPI hs jumped 0.8%, well above the 0.2% analysts had expected.</p> <p>Core PPI, which excludes food and energy, was only up 0.2%, which is still above the 0.1% that analysts had expected.</p> <p>The culprit? Blame food and energy.</p>