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Deep in the woods of North Carolina is a man name Joe Hollis who's lived of the grid for 50 years. Here he's mastered the techniques of a life tuned to nature, dependent on his natural environment for survival. He also has the largest collection of native Appalachian and Chinese medicinal herbs in the Eastern US. Join me on this most epic look into a lifestyle that is becoming more attractive to many in this rapidly developing world. This is part of our greater Appalachia series: • APPALACHIA 🇺🇸

Those who see the madness for what it is have only one escape: go to ground, fade from public view, become self-reliant and weather the coming storm in the nooks and crannies. A great madness sweeps the land. There are no limits on extremes in greed, credulity, convictions, inequality, bombast, recklessness, fraud, corruption, arrogance, hubris, pride, over-reach, self-righteousness and confidence in the rightness of one's opinions. Extremes only become more extreme even as the folly of previous extremes wearies rationality. Imaginary sins are conjured out of thin air to convict the innocent while those guilty of the most egregious fraud...

While China has been relentlessly pursuing self-reliance when it comes to raw materials -- especially strategic ones such as titanium, tungsten and cobalt, which are used in the defense industry -- the US for the past several decades has been selling off huge chunks of the strategic minerals stockpile to the extent that the National Defense Stockpile is reportedly reaching insolvency. By comparison, China, as of 2020, was the world's third-largest exporter of titanium, while the US was the number one destination for the Chinese titanium exports. It is China's growing influence in Africa, especially through its Belt and Road...

Much to his surprise, Bob Oblack’s home on Dickey Prairie Road in Molalla was not destroyed by a raging wildfire Friday. When he found it intact the following day, he wondered what had happened. He soon found out in a text from a neighbor: “A 100% redneck fire crew rolled through here yesterday. They stopped the fire a mile from my house.” The “Redneck Fire Crew” may not be exactly how they would describe themselves, according to another resident, whose husband — a 20-year veteran of the fire service, including fighting wildland fires in California — helped lead the effort....

Patrick Rooney, Founder of Old School™, explains in a simple fashion how meditation actually works--that there is a REASON for each component, and how essential it is that we find a counterbalance to the mind-control techniques of mass media that pull us further and further away from the center of our common sense.

“It saddens me”, he says,” to see the white man beating his breast over and over, too emasculated to put up any resistance to people who’ve come to threaten him on his own doorstep”. He believes that a toxic mix of guilt, “human rightsism”, political naivety and crass ignorance of History have a debilitating effect on Europeans’ capacity to fight the invasion. He accuses the corrupt African leaders of destroying the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings in all impunity, but is equally critical of the ideologues who are paving the way for them. They should stop blaming...

Congressional hearings are a fixture in Washington and are supposedly a tool for investigation by the nation's lawmaking body. Unfortunately, too often when Democrats are in charge, it's not the case. Rather than hearings being a means for seeking facts and information, they become a platform just for politicking by members of the majority party and a forum for attacking those whose views they don't like. This distortion of process was in full view at recent House Budget Committee hearings on Poverty in America: Economic Realities of Struggling Families. Of eight witnesses, six were from the same left-wing organization --...

(snips) ---- Victor Davis Hanson says he lives in the nineteenth century—a fact that can get him into some trouble. “Let me give you an example,” he says. Hanson was in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart one day when he saw a young woman struggling to move a big screen television into her Honda. When he went over to help her, he noticed that she was holding an EBT card, a government-issued debit card for cash and food stamps. Hanson told her, “You shouldn’t be using the food card to buy the big screen TV.” She told him to...

It’s always interesting reading when someone smug and sanctimonious writes a clueless diatribe about another group of people being smug and sanctimonious. So when I saw that an economist for Moody’s and Forbes had written an op-ed calling self-reliant homesteaders “delusional,” I knew I’d be in for some misinformed hilarity. The article, entitled, “Dear Homesteaders, Self-Reliance Is a Delusion” was published a couple of days ago on the Forbes website. You’ll be forewarned that the article won’t be deep in the first paragraph, when the author presents his claim to knowledge about self-reliant living comes from the fact that he...

On April 14, 1852, Lloyd and Lodisa Frizzell and their four sons, with “five yoke of cattle one pony & sidesaddle” in tow, departed their home, on the Little Wabash River in southeastern Illinois, for California. Seventy-two days into their voyage, Lodisa would write in her journal (later titled Across the Plains to California in 1852): That this journey is tiresome, no one will doubt, that it is perilous, the deaths of many testify, and the heart has a thousand missgivings, & the mind is tortured with anxiety, & often as I passed the fresh made graves, I have glanced...

Dr. Wayne Dyer spoke at the I Can Do It conference in Denver this year. By 1977, he was giving what he called lecture concerts. Credit Hay House

Where are you, country? Why can’t I find you? Why have you gone away? Adapting Cindy Lou’s song about the loss of Christmas spirit in Whoville expresses the sadness for what as been lost in my country. When I was a young boy in the small town of Piedmont, Missouri, the local physician, Doc Jones, would come to your house if you were sick. People paid him in cash, or perhaps some other goods. No one imagined they had a “right” to have someone else pay Doc Jones. It was their solemn duty, part of leading a responsible and moral...

“It might be tough, but my dad used to say, tough times don't last — tough people do." – James RobertsonJames, on his 21 mile daily commute on footI know we could all use a feel-good story, and I have a doozy for you today. It comes to us from - of all places – Detroit. As you read James’ story you may begin to understand what once made Detroit a great city; a monument to American enterprise and the “Arsenal of Democracy” before the liberals took it over and tried to “fix” it with government dollars. It’s because people...

NOME -- I used to joke and tell my friends that other than for obvious reasons, I only need a man to operate my chain saw. Because really, I’m an Alaska girl, and can bleed the line when I run out of fuel at the house. I thaw my pipes when they freeze. I can change a flat tire, butcher a caribou and catch, filet, smoke and can a silver salmon. Oh, and shoot a few ptarmigan with a .22 for dinner. You know. Normal stuff. But here’s the thing. I’ve relied on a man for seven years to supply...

Libertarians and free-market conservatives take an unequivocal stand on the provision of state welfare. It should be phased out and returned to the private sector. Charity is not a proper function of government. This, of course, attracts the usual horrified denunciations of, “My God, what kind of human being are you? Don’t you have any compassion? How can you wish to suppress poor people so? We can’t just let people be poor; we must do something!” But to be against state funded welfare does not mean one is devoid of compassion or desirous of suppressing poor people. It means one...

The Economic Collapse….people envision bank runs, life WROL (without rule of law), piles of worthless currency, rampant homelessness, and breathless news reports on CNN and the network channels (if you happen to still have access to a television, that is). They imagine a grim, gray world, devoid of entertainment, with unwashed citizens digging desperately through the trash. Because of this apocalyptic image, the idea of an economic collapse seems pretty far-fetched to most people. After all, we still see cars in every driveway, lights in every window at night, children going to school and parents going to work. Everything’s fine,...

You’re snug in your cabin in the mountains outside of Big Bear, California. Snug, but fearful. They’re searching for a killer near you. A terrifying, heavily armed former cop from Los Angeles who has gone on a killing rampage. Suddenly you hear gunshots. You part the curtains to look outside ... and there’s the man whose picture you’ve seen countless times on TV over the past few days running toward your house as he returns fire to police officers in pursuit. Just a few weeks ago you had been considering buying an AR-15 just in case it might be needed...

KRAEMER, La. -- Roland Torres wants you to know a few things. He lives in a rural area where life is pretty straightforward. His family has been active on the bayou for five generations, witnessing a daily battle of survival of the fittest. The birds, animals and reptiles who inhabit the vast swamps of south-central Louisiana live only as long as their wits and luck hold out. They are on their own 24/7. So is Torres. A former game warden, Torres is of Spanish descent and still speaks the language of his Cajun ancestors: French. He makes a decent...

Here's the big lesson from mega-storm Sandy: Mother Nature sneers at high tech, mocks modern convenience and couldn't care less about what kind of person you are. She will smack you if she wants to. As we have become addicted to machines, many of us have forgotten about nature. We must have gizmos. Sandy laughed and took them away. Power, gone. Internet, dark. Cellphones, not happening. Even your landline phone, not available, because "all circuits are busy." Suddenly, it's 1850 with one exception: battery-operated flashlights and radios. So what is the lesson here? Actually, there are a few. First: No...

fter granting permission, my Entire Food Shelf Life Summary Article was published in the Journal of Civil Defense, Volume 43, Issue Number 2, Year 2010. The Journal of Civil Defense has an extremely wide distribution and readership including all the Congressmen in the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. Publisher's Mailing Address: The American Civil Defense Association, 11576 S. State Street, Suite 502, Draper, UT 84020 Publisher's Web Address: www.tacda.org.