Free Republic

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.