Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism

Pleasure??? Dumbass, I get no pleasure. Prepping is hard work. I do it so me, my friends and family can survive hard times.

Kill happy??? I never killed anyone, yet, and frankly, would not want to cross that path unless absolutely necessary.

But at least I won't lie down and be a fucking pacifist sheep to be shorn like you are fixin' to. Careful Zack, I can assure you being run over by the economic bulldozer coming our way won't be fun, idiot.


Fuckin' lefties.


You lie to yourself,…you get maximum pleasure from yer phallic symbol.
I love your posts though,…‘cause they take me back to 6th grade. School-yard baybeeee!!

You never killed anyone?,…too bad for you tough-guy. My, my, my,… what a large weapon you have. Scary.

Listen,…I just spent a week out in the wilderness. Coming back and reading these types threads cracks me up, makes me realize that not all people will understand what has been written in stone,...what is currently happening.

Don’t worry,…I’m headin’ back out tomorrow, just came into town for more rum. You can get down to the serious business of being the GLP virtual badass with all due authority,…but I now understand you do not do it for pleasure,…

Must be instinct.

You city folks scare the shit out of me,…



Z



Typical lefty *guns are a phallis* symbol weak ass argument. Sorry asshole, don't buy it, never have. Guns are merely a tool for a specific number of purposes, careful Zack, your real fear is showing as is typical of all lefties. Which is: If I cannot overcome my fear of guns no one should have them.

You are a fucking pussy man. The only wilderness you are at is a hobo camp. Get a fucking job, lefty, if you are capable, LMAO......

I was talking to Omega,...he knows what I mean. Perhaps.

You and all you know will die at some point,...right?

Do you think your death will be made more tolerable if you kill,...kill,....kill,...kill all the boogie men/men/women you have been taught to fear????...or that want your material items??????

The boogiemen/women/children are simply your own shadow presented within the confines of another carrier/body/person/human/god.

Each person you meet in life is meant to teach us lessons,...some good, some bad.

If you kill,...especially with a long range weapon,...you are a coward and will learn nothing,...

That we are ALL ONE,...for instance.

That's kinda what I mean.


Zack, I'm going to take a wild stab here and assume you don't have kids. Am I right?

I'm not blood thirsty hunter, but I will protect my family against intruders. I don't care if we are "all one" if someone decides to not only loot my place but take pleasure in my daughter while he's there - just for example. Would you sit by and meditate while that happened?

Asleep at the switch again woo woo's????

:Phead:


What amazes me is how some of my friends who used to think I was crazy
are now starting to prepare themselves.

Holy shit, from the New York Times?????

Hunker down people, here it comes.....

Also I'd rather have a topo map and compass anyday... but that's just how I am...

actually you are saving a lot of money by buying NOW, and stocking up...by this time next year, the price of food will be doubled and you will be glad you have some stocked, even if there isn't an emergency...it will save you money, you might need to put a tank of gas in your car.

actually you are saving a lot of money by buying NOW, and stocking up...by this time next year, the price of food will be doubled and you will be glad you have some stocked, even if there isn't an emergency...it will save you money, you might need to put a tank of gas in your car.



Your about 4 years too late for that. Prices have already doubled: land, food, water, fuel - you name it.

Get your seeds in now folks!!!


:grnd08:

Also I'd rather have a topo map and compass anyday... but that's just how I am...


I don't even need that. All I need is the North Star on a clear night and during the day the knowledge that the heaviest moss always grows on the north side of a tree.

“If all these planets line up and things do get really bad,” Mr. Marcom said, “those who have not prepared will be trapped in the city with thousands of other people needing food and propane and everything else.”

Asleep at the switch again woo woo's????

Omega, that looks like some good soil you have there. May I be so bold as to suggest you try and work it less intensely?

Maybe you are a big strong fellow, but my ideal way of growing things would be to have a series of circles divided up into wedges (like you would cut up a round of cheese). Make these beds raised - at least three feet high.

Then you fill up the wedges with stones and rocks at the bottom and then layer in straw, charcoal, worm castings, herbivore manure, and some of that lovely soil you have. Then grow some nitrogen fixing legumes in each wedge and turn over this green fertilizer after 6- 8 weeks.

Then you companion plant in each wedge. You have to make a plan for each circle.

You would plant an early tomato plant in one of the wedges and slightly later bearing varieties in other wedges. Basil in with the tomatoes etc.

Plan it so that circle 1 will be for reaping early on, then circle 2 much later in the season. After circle 1 is finished bearing then you can dig everything under and get the chickens in to scratch it up and fertilize.

The advantage to having raised beds is that they are really labor saving and you don't have to bend down to get to the weeds and being wedge shaped you can always get to the middle of the deepest part of the wedge from the sides. Being raised also helps to keep critters out, but you can put a dome over the circle if birds are a problem. Also drainage is also improved with this method.

Instead of using a "tiller" to dig over the soil before planting, why not use worms. They do it all for you.

All you do is to bury a bucket (with a lid) in the ground, and fill that with compost and worms. Obviously drill heaps of big holes in the sides and bottom so that the worms can come and go. Just fill up the buckets with garden clippings and vegetable peelings, old fruit etc and the worms will do the rest. The soil will be light, moist and friable in no time at all, with all the necessary bio organisms working flat out.

Just an idea, would hate to see Omega spending all his time in the garden.

So, when is the best time to buy a farm? This year, or wait til the prices bottom out next year?

Jinx,

If you don't own a homestead already, why even consider waiting? Know anything about farming, herding cattle or livestock in general? Know how to use a disc or plow? Know what a bush-hog is?

Wow! Your money will continue to decline in value. In real terms you need as much time as you can get to make any place you select productive.

Unless you are planning a speculation, without any observation that society as we know it as Americans is going down for the count; you had better not wait! A small farm can enable you to produce enough food to provide security for you and your loved ones. Rather doubtful that a good working homestead in a good location for security, climate and production will not be bought up by someone who knows better than to wait and see if the price will go lower.

It will take you many months just to acclimate to the homestead lifestyle. I would not wait. If you are "wealthy" in terms of money, you run the risk of having your money lose its purchasing power and inflation of desirable property and goods reduce your wealth. What you should be thinking is about deploying your wealth so you/your family have means of production and safety to weather the chaos to come.

good luck~

Holy shit, from the New York Times?????

Hunker down people, here it comes.....




[link to www.nytimes.com]

Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism

THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.

It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.”

“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.”

Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore.

Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.

They stockpile or grow food in case of a supply breakdown, or buy precious metals in case of economic collapse. Some try to take their houses off the electricity grid, or plan safe houses far away. The point is not to drop out of society, but to be prepared in case the future turns out like something out of “An Inconvenient Truth,” if not “Mad Max.”

“I’m not a gun-nut, camo-wearing skinhead. I don’t even hunt or fish,” said Bill Marcom, 53, a construction executive in Dallas.

Still, motivated by a belief that the credit crunch and a bursting housing bubble might spark widespread economic chaos — “the Greater Depression,” as he put it — Mr. Marcom began to take measures to prepare for the unknown over the last few years: buying old silver coins to use as currency; buying G.P.S. units, a satellite telephone and a hydroponic kit; and building a simple cabin in a remote West Texas desert.

“If all these planets line up and things do get really bad,” Mr. Marcom said, “those who have not prepared will be trapped in the city with thousands of other people needing food and propane and everything else.”

Interest in survivalism — in either its traditional hard-core version or a middle-class “lite” variation — functions as a leading economic indicator of social anxiety, preparedness experts said: It spikes at times of peril real (the post-Sept. 11 period) or imagined (the chaos that was supposed to follow the so-called Y2K computer bug in 2000).

At times, a degree of paranoia is officially sanctioned. In the 1950s, civil defense authorities encouraged people to build personal bomb shelters because of the nuclear threat. In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security encouraged Americans to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape to seal windows in case of biological or chemical attacks.

Now, however, the government, while still conducting business under a yellow terrorism alert, is no longer taking a lead role in encouraging preparedness. For some, this leaves a vacuum of reassurance, and plenty to worry about.

Esteemed economists debate whether the credit crisis could result in a complete meltdown of the financial system. A former vice president of the United States informs us that global warming could result in mass flooding, disease and starvation, perhaps even a new Ice Age.

“You just can’t help wonder if there’s a train wreck coming,” said David Anderson, 50, a database administrator in Colorado Springs who said he was moved by economic uncertainties and high energy prices, among other factors, to stockpile months’ worth of canned goods in his basement for his wife, his two young children and himself.

Popular culture also provides reinforcement, in books like “The Road,” Cormac McCarthy’s novel about a father and son journeying through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and films like “I Am Legend,” which stars Will Smith as a survivor of a man-made virus wandering the barren streets of New York.

Middle-class survivalists can also browse among a growing number of how-to books with titles like “Dare to Prepare!” a self-published work by Holly Drennan Deyo, or “When All Hell Breaks Loose” by Cody Lundin (Gibbs Smith, 2007), which instructs readers how to dispose of bodies and dine on rats and dogs in the event of disaster.

Preparedness activity is difficult to track statistically, since people who take measures are usually highly circumspect by nature, said Jim Rawles, the editor of www.survivalblog.com, a preparedness Web site. Nevertheless, interest in the survivalist movement “is experiencing its largest growth since the late 1970s,” Mr. Rawles said in an e-mail, adding that traffic at his blog has more than doubled in the past 11 months, with more than 67,000 unique visitors per week. And its base is growing.

“Our core readership is still solidly conservative,” he said. “But in recent months I’ve noticed an increasing number of stridently green and left-of-center readers.”

One left-of-center environmentalist who is taking action is Alex Steffen, the executive editor of www.wWorldchanging.com, a Web site devoted to sustainability. With only slight irony, Mr. Steffen, 40, said he and his girlfriend could serve as “poster children for the well-adjusted, urban liberal survivalist,” given that they keep a six-week cache of food and supplies in his basement in Seattle (although they polished off their bottle of doomsday whiskey at a party).

He said the chaos following Hurricane Katrina served as a wake-up call for him and others that the government might not be able to protect them in an emergency or environmental crisis.

“The ‘where do we land when climate change gets crazy?’ question seems to be an increasingly common one,” said Mr. Steffen in an e-mail message, adding that such questions have “really gone mainstream.”

Many of the new, nontraditional preparedness converts are “Peakniks,” Mr. Rawles said, referring to adherents of the “Peak Oil” theory. This concept holds that the world will soon, or has already, reached a peak in oil production, and that coming supply shortages might threaten society. While the theory is still disputed by many industry analysts and executives, it has inched toward the mainstream in the last two years, as oil prices have nearly doubled, surpassing $100 a barrel. The topic, which was the subject of a United States Department of Energy report in 2005, has attracted attention in publications like The New York Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, and was a primary focus of “Megadisasters: Oil Apocalypse,” a recent History Channel special.

Another book, “The Long Emergency” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005), by James Howard Kunstler, an author and journalist who writes about economic and environmental issues, argues that American suburbs and cities may soon lay desolate as people, starved of oil, are forced back to the land to adopt a hardscrabble, 19th-century-style agrarian life.

Such fears caused Joyce Jimerson of Bellingham, Wash., a coordinator for a recycling-composting program affiliated with Washington State University, to make her yard an “edible garden,” with fruit trees and vegetables, in case supplies are threatened by oil shortages, climate change or economic collapse. “It’s all the same ball of wax, as far as I’m concerned,” she said.

Scott Troyer, an energy consultant in Sunnyvale, Calif., said he was spurred by discussions of peak oil — “it’s not a theory,” he said — and other energy concerns to remake his suburban house in anticipation of a petroleum-starved future. Mr. Troyer, 57, installed a photovoltaic electricity system, a pellet stove and a “cool roof” to reflect the sun’s rays, among other measures.

Mr. Troyer remains cautiously optimistic that Americans can wean themselves from oil through smart engineering and careful planning. But, he said, “the doomsday scenarios will happen if people don’t prepare.”

Some middle-class preparedness converts, like Val Vontourne, a musician and paralegal in Olympia, Wash., recoil at the term “survivalist,” even as they stock their homes with food, gasoline and water.

“I think of survivalists as being an extreme case of preparedness,” said Ms. Vontourne, 44, “people who stockpile guns and weapons, anticipating extreme aggression. Whereas what I’m doing, I think of as something responsible people do.

“I now think of storing extra food, water, medicine and gasoline in the same way I think of buying health insurance and putting money in my 401k,” she said. “It just makes sense.”
__________________

Also I'd rather have a topo map and compass anyday... but that's just how I am...


I don't even need that. All I need is the North Star on a clear night and during the day the knowledge that the heaviest moss always grows on the north side of a tree.

Original Rednecks resisted Fascism
[link to www.sherdog.net]

19th century West Virgina saw conflict between coal Miners and Mine owners. Due to unjust conditions imposed by Mine owners, Miners formed a Mine Workers Union. Not all Mines were unionized and Southern West Virginian Mine owners worked diligently to prevent unionization.

10,000 thousand odd Northern Union Mine workers led a march to the southern non Union West Virgina where their brother miners were denied unionization . Southern West Virgina Mine owners employed law enforcement, politicians and 'private detectives' (nothing more than company employed thugs) to harass, intimidate , imprison and kill miners who tried to Unionize.

The marching Union Mine workers tied a red scarf/bandanna around their necks to identify themselves. A reporter who was covering this march coined the term 'Redneck'.

“I now think of storing extra food, water, medicine and gasoline in the same way I think of buying health insurance and putting money in my 401k,” she said. “It just makes sense.”


This poor woman hasn't got a clue...
If promises to pay remain viable, you don't really "need" what the article exhorts you to prepare for.

This is a wake-up call and many will hear it.
If just a few decide to prepare, it will impact the availability of goods and materiel. Just In Time inventories mean just in time for you not to be able to get any....



I have already gotten my wake-up call and have actually been doing what I can do over the last couple of years....But what I'm still not seeing enough of, are people who are absolutely ignorant of the real situation developing.

I've stored up food and ammo and all that kind of stuff and am doing my first ever garden (hard work!) and so forth...I'm just not seeing any of my neighbors doing anything! So rather than be prepared to kill everyone that might come knocking (best case), I've decided to store some bulk grain and corn and legumes to offer meals to any who might ask. It's really not all that expensive to make cornbread and beans, and it is good wholesome food. The idea is to offer ONE free meal, then they have to move along...Think this thinking is sound, or dangerous?

It would behest all who read these posts to consider well the source and think things through for yourself.

Those who are promoting some kind "survivalist homestead"
plan perhaps are well intentioned but deluded.

Armchair survivalist have the luxury of plotting their little house on the prarie fantasies from the comfort zone afforded them by the last century of American hegemony, interestingly and ironically the evil incarnate many of those same malcontents seem to decry.

Barring the largese afforded them through their families benefiting from the American legacy, they would be just other faceless third-worlders stuggling to gain food for the day and health maintenance to exceed an average lifespan of forty.

Look hard at what you're wishing for. How much of the idea of hoarding away grub and gold and guns is the very reason causing the calamities you are expecting?

I got mine, screw you.

There is so much bravado here with talk of guns and defending home and hearth and actually welcoming that horror that it bears no semblance to that hard reality, rather more the moronic pandering of the powerless playing at reality like a script from a movie or action sequence from a video game.

Have you ever been to war? Do you have any idea what that means?

Those looking forward to turning back the clock a century I highly doubt have any idea what the implications are. The average Amercan college student now enjoys a life only dreamed of by kings or heads of state a scant century and a half ago.

Think these things through well friends!

The price of a civil society now may seem high and trying but the duress pales and in reality is a pittance in comparison to what many seem to be anticipating with glee.