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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/