Archive for the 'Survival' Category

Part of the thrust behind Social Media was to break the barrier of number 36 (below), which every American used to have.  Imagine creating the world’s largest intelligence collection system and then convincing people to surrender their critical information to it for free. Nobody teaches their children to keep household matters private anymore, and because of social media, the natural discernment to be private about family is gone.

Keep your mouth shut, appear the least out of place in situations, and observe more than divulge. The only thing that should make you stand out is that you fit in well.

Keeping your mouth shut and eyes & ears open, this election cycle should once again prove to be an excellent opportunity to collect free intel on enemies, foreign and domestic. The election “results” are largely inconsequential. Observe carefully what all groups say for certain, but more so what groups and individuals do over the next several weeks and months. Local intel matters most.

Speaking of which, there’s a new billboard, in the most Lefty part of town, for the upcoming holiday season Gun Show. We’ve been warning for a while now that it isn’t only the right that’s buying all the guns.

Numbers 12 and 13 are big. The throw-away society is like an infection that spreads into the mindset, crippling long-term thinking, and planning. The value proposition for especially people, but also equipment and other things, is being degraded wholesale. It’s easier to train somebody you know than to find other people you can trust.

What is Self-Sufficiency?

Depends on who you ask. Does that sound like a cop-out?

Well, die-hard doomsday day preppers would likely say that self-sufficiency is providing for all of one’s needs without any outside help or resources; there is no need to buy food, clothing, water, power, sanitation, medicine, etc. This would be the most literal interpretation of “off-grid.” That’s at one end of the spectrum.

Others take a more balanced approach to the idea of being self-sufficient. For them, self-sufficiency is about how well you can provide for the needs of yourself and your loved ones for the long haul. For example, you grow a percentage of what you eat, or you have a backup power source for outage situations. Perhaps it’s about having a bartering agreement with someone wherein you exchange eggs for honey, bringing community in as an element of independence and control in taking care of yourself.

However, let’s take a broader view of what it means to be self-sufficient. Let’s think about it as a mindset. In that vein, I offer these principles of self-sufficiency from Don McIlvaney.

McIlvaney’s Principles of Self-Sufficiency

1. Change the way you look at everything. Rethink your entire lifestyle.

2. Develop discernment about people.

3. When you invest, invest first in the right people.

4. Look at yourself honestly. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

5. Seek the counsel of others you trust.

6. Find like-minded people who can be part of a mutual support group and who you can cooperate with.

7. Find alternate methods for doing everything.

8. Develop an instinct for what doesn’t feel right. No matter how good something looks or sounds on the surface, go with your gut feeling, your instinct, and your intuition.

9. Eliminate non-essentials from your life. Eliminate all time wasters and money wasters, and things you don’t need, i.e., clothes, furniture, junk, etc. Eliminate television from your life.

10. Simplify your lifestyle. Learn to say no to things and activities that don’t make you self-sufficient.

11. Develop physical, mental, and spiritual discipline.

12. Learn to treat everything as if it were irreplaceable.

13. Buy things that will last, even if they cost more.

14. Acquire tools that do not depend on electric power.

15. Learn to spend time alone with yourself in total silence. Think, reflect, reminisce, and plan (or strategize) in silence.

16. Learn to spend time with your family without any superficial entertainment and distractions.

17. Make sure your trust is in the Lord and not your own preparedness. Pattern your preparedness according to the guidance of the Lord. Listen to what He puts in your heart. Don’t use only your reasoning power.

18. Learn something from every situation you are in. Everything you hear, see, touch or feel has a lesson in it. Learn a principle from every mistake you make and from everyday life situations.

19. Store up memories for times of isolation or separation from your loved ones.

20. Learn to enjoy simple pleasures from the smallest things. Have a measure of joy and happiness that doesn’t come from creature comforts or entertainment.

21. Establish priorities for all areas of your life, including relationships and current and future needs. Set goals for areas to become proficient or self-sufficient. Set a schedule or a timeline to reach those goals based on the money and available time.

22. Examine the concept of civil disobedience from Bible times throughout history. At what point should the people of Egypt have said No to killing the male babies in Moses’ day? At what point should the people of colonial America have said No to King George? At what point should the people of Germany have said No to Hitler? At what point do we say No to the despots of our day when they take over our money, property, guns, our children, and our freedom? Decide what is your choke point. When do you move toward civil disobedience? For many throughout history, it was when evil leaders handed down edicts that were directly contrary to God’s Word or commands. Don’t set your choke point too early or too quickly, too late or never. Think through and calculate a strategy. Then never look back.

23. Learn to ask the right questions in every situation.

24. Bring orderliness into your life. If you live in disorder, it will pull you down and break your focus. Think focus vs. distraction.  Eliminate the distractions from your life.

25. Self-sufficiency or survival principles are learned on a day-to-day basis and must be practical.

26. Always have more than one way to escape, more than one way to do something. Have a plan B and a plan C.

27. Everyday life, and especially life during a crisis, requires up-front systems and backup systems if the first line of defense, or the up-front system, fails.

28. Real education only takes place when change occurs in our attitudes, actions, and way of life.

29. Wisdom is making practical applications of what you know. It is not enough to know everything you need to know. It will only serve you and others if practical application is made of that knowledge.

30. Fix in your own mind the truth about your capabilities. In a crisis situation, this will keep you from being too cocky and will provide you with confidence.

31. Decide ahead of time, before a crisis arrives, how you will react in a given situation so that you are not swayed by the circumstances, the situation, or your emotions.

32. Beware of being spread too thin in your life. Decide on the few things in life that you must do and then do them well. Think focus versus distraction. Make sure that unimportant, non-essential distractions don’t keep you from achieving your important objectives.

33. Learn to quit wasting things. Be a good steward of all that God provides.

34. Buy an extra of everything you use regularly and set that extra one aside for the time when such items may be difficult or impossible to obtain.

35. In every situation, train yourself to look for what doesn’t fit, what’s out of place, and what doesn’t look right.

36. Teach your children, and learn this yourself, that you are not obligated to give information to strangers. You don’t have to answer questions that are none of their business, not even to government officials.

37. Sell or give away things you don’t use or need. Consider giving away or selling half of your stuff, the non-essentials. Simplify and streamline your life, lifestyle, and possessions.

38. Find someone who lived through the Great Depression and learn from them. Find out how they became self-sufficient, how they made do with very little, and how they found joy and contentment amid hard times.

Watch the video of the statements.

PBS took the democracy is in danger hysteria to new levels on Tuesday’s Amanpour and Company as Hari Sreenivasan interviewed Prof. Barbara F. Walter to inquire on just how close the United States is to another civil war. Walter, who wrote the book How Civil Wars Start, warned that all the pieces are in place for “Christian” “white men” to start one.

Sreenivasan began by accepting the premise that a civil war could break out and asked, “You have studied several types of societies who have been on the brink of, who’ve been in the middle of, a civil war, who’ve been after, who’ve survived after one. How is America on that timeline? How far along a timeline toward a civil war is the United States?”

Walter argued that the conditions are there in the U.S., “we know very clearly that the two big risk factors are whether a country has a weak and partial democracy, and whether in those countries its political parties had divided along racial, religious, and/or ethnic lines. So, it really didn’t take a lot to know those facts, and then look to see what was happening here in the United States.”

Of course, Walter overstates just how polarized those demographics are when it comes to our political parties and to the extend they are polarized, it is not exactly new, but conceding that would lead to a rather boring conclusion that would not lead to a PBS appearance.

[…]

We also know who tends to start civil wars. Most people think it’s going to be the poorest members of society, and they have the motive, they have the grievances, they have a reason to rebel, or they think it’s the most heavily discriminated or it’s the immigrants, all these groups who are, in some ways, downtrodden ted. But, again, they don’t start civil wars. The groups that tend to start civil wars, especially ethnically-based civil wars, are the groups that had once been dominant and are in decline.

Again, Walter tried to force this onto present-day America, “So, they used to dominate politically, economically, and oftentimes, socially and they’re losing that position oftentimes because demographics are changing… These were studies that were done on over 200 different civil wars that we’ve seen around the world. And if you apply that to the United States, you also see similarities.”

Elaborating, Walter further claimed:

The — we’ve seen a significant rise in violent extremism since 2008. Some of its been on the left, but the vast majority of it has been on the far-right. And it’s been perpetrated almost exclusively by white men. And again, if you look at the history of the United States, the group that had been dominant since the very inception of our country were white men. They also tended to be Christian, and they are losing that position. It’s no longer guaranteed that you are going to get into the best schools, or get the best jobs, or have, you know, economic security your whole life.

America isn’t a Christian country any more, so what she said doesn’t make sense unless there’s a false flag coming to build the excuse to attack conservative whites. We’re guessing but let’s suppose four percent of those claiming to be Christian are actually converted, and the rest are just LARPing. That seems fair. Those 100 million LARPers are all pro-government slaves. You needn’t worry about them, they might be mostly registered Republicans, but they’re too ignorant to know that Republicans are just Democrats with nicer suits. And Christians, real Christians, are not called to take the kingdom of heaven by force of arms but by the Great Commission. This sounds like a setup.

Via WoG.

Last week we posted about the killing of Nigerian Christians.

Nigeria was recently removed from the CPC list by the Biden Administration.

Linked here is an effort to reinstate Nigeria to the list. While that’s a nice gesture, Nigerian Christians need to take up arms and form local militias.

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Last year on November 15th, 2021 the Biden approved the removal of Nigeria from the Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) list. The CPC list was established under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 and Frank R Wolf International Religious Freedom Act of 2016. The criteria for the CPC list includes (1) Torture, (2) Prolonged detention without charge, (3) Forced disappearance, or (4) Flagrant denial of life, liberty, or security of purpose. Nigeria meets ALL of these criteria for their brutal treatment of Christians.

Nigeria is the most dangerous country in the world to be a Christian. Last year 4,650 Christians were martyred by Islamic terrorist groups and over 3,000 were kidnapped. 13,000 churches have been forced to close or have been destroyed and burned to the ground. Radical Muslim clerics have called for the immediately killing of any Christians who blasphemes, without exception, even if that person repents, stating that they should “kill now” and let “Allah sort it out.”

Christians that are kidnapped are often beaten, raped, sold as slaves and girls, typically young teenagers, have been forced to marry older Islamic men. Christians are often arrested on false charges of blasphemy while the Muslim persecutors of Christians are almost never charged.

American Christians need to plan for the day when they have to take group defense seriously.

There’s more at the link, including a video.

No, we’re not talking about prepping for Christians, whatever that is. Here’s the lead; you need to be able to have church away from prying eyes.

Assembling with other believers is commanded (Hebrews 10:25). If you have children, the man, as the head, should already be giving a family bible study, perhaps as often as every evening. Those husbands and wives with grown and gone children could still be doing this. There’s something quaint and very pleasing about that notion; a husband having a bible lesson, just him and his wife. What a wonderful way to honor the Lord. Where were we?

It would have been challenging to convince American Christians of the need for this preparedness just a few years ago. People would have thought it absurd that the government would shut down churches, especially a Republican president. Well, the government did, and your pantywaist Pastors complied.

That’s just a tiny foretaste of what’s coming for the Christians in America. Keeping in mind that most mainline churches would turn you over to the government if required, the first rule of underground church is – you don’t talk about underground church.

Many, tens of thousands, perhaps millions, never returned to those closed churches. That might be a good thing. Some of those certainly went to find a group of true believers who did not quit on God so readily. For those who never bothered going again, we also consider this a good thing; it’s unlikely they were converted if all it took was shutting the door to a building. Most are merely brainwashed slugs; they did as they were told, never concerned enough to voice an objection.

Our God is the God of redemption; read, Thanking God for Covid 19. Consider wisely your future with Christ, your leadership role now, and the needs of the believers counting upon you in a country rapidly growing antichrist. You are the very best Christian somebody knows. Get better; begin the work to build an antifragile church group.

Your group leader doesn’t have to be the same man who brings your bible lessons.

Many started groups of intrepid believers meeting away from corporate 501(c)(3) buildings in open defiance. Good for them. Their reward is rich in Heaven. And that’s what you must prepare to do. Meeting in open defiance is obviously the first choice. That’s the most significant and crucial qualifying statement we’ll make. You don’t have to put on a show or make a political statement; you do it with your heart toward Father God, prepared always to suffer for Christ’s name, who died for your eternal soul, not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together.

For followers of Christ, it shouldn’t be a stretch to consider what your family, group, church, or team needs. The object is to continue to gather along a continuum of possibilities from a home church to entirely underground, at least not in a mainline building, but in varying degrees of relative secrecy depending upon the circumstances.

What does it take for you to hold church? Well, those are the things you need. Christian men should already be providing a simple bible lesson for their families on a regular schedule, perhaps around a table. Extending this concept during government oppression or a cataclysmic event is easy. You need knowledge, materials, and to already be in practice.

We make sure to say here that a preacher of God’s word, a Pastor in the name of Christ, is a specific calling God places on the lives of a small percentage of men. We are in no way advising you, outside of God’s will, under your own power to start being a Pastor or a Preacher. Those are God-ordained and called men. There are circumstances in which one may be pressed into service. This is a serious thing. American churches are full of men and now women that claim ordination of God but are false. With a humble heart, admitting that you are not called to Pastoral headship, nonetheless, a group of believers being required to meet, a man of good repute must be prepared to lead. Nobody has authority outside God’s calling to assume Pastoral headship or the office of the Preacher. Still, you men should be able to bring a clear, encouraging bible lesson when the need arises. Being prepared is all the more critical because the potential for the absence of a Pastoral head under persecution is real. A good Pastor must be willing to lay down his life for the flock (John 10:11) in the name of Christ, for “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” – 1 John 15:13. So should all true Christians.

Be prepared to step into the breach when needed. Make a list and get the materials; undoubtedly, this starts with the Holy Bible in sufficient quantity for everybody present or expected. Consider that depending on the situation, you may minister to neighbors or complete strangers. Hard times bring hard questions and people looking for answers. Every Christian must be ready to share the hope that is in you, the splendid joy, and blessed assurance of life everlasting that you have in Christ Jesus (1 Peter 3:15); we are all witnesses for Jesus Christ.

Most people have a strange view of the church, it’s a show put on by professionals, and sadly, in most churches, it is. America, and your team, don’t need more professionally trained carnival barkers spewing false Scriptural understanding to followers; obviously and, in many cases, willfully slothful ignoramuses that refuse to educate themselves in the word of God. All you need is two or three gathered together in the name of Christ, and there He is in the midst (Matthew 18:20). Nonetheless, some structure seems required; singing Psalms, the Lord’s supper, reading of Scripture, and a plain lesson from the text have been sufficient throughout Church history.

Encouraging and uplifting one another should be something you already do at church.

For most believers, you are a long way from where you can hold a simple church service type of bible lesson. Opening the Scriptures to fellow believers (or lost souls) is a weighty matter and should be treated with the humble reverence it deserves. First, you must be a practicing Christian, not practicing religiousness, but a doer of the word.

Hard skills:

With the introduction of the Homestead Act of 1862, previously unsettled land in the western portions of the United States became an attractive option to thousands of people.

These pioneers were looking for a new way of life, but in order to attain it, they had to have certain skills.

Traveling in covered wagons, grouped together for defense and support, the early pioneers were a mix of nationalities and had a large array of skills.

Only the individuals who could master this huge list of skills were ultimately able to settle this uncharted terrain successfully. Unfortunately, many didn’t make it…

The skills developed by this brave, resourceful group of people are just as relevant in today’s modern homesteads. Only individuals who can master these essential skills can be successful in this challenging, rugged existence.

But are those skills relevant to homesteading as we know it today? Let’s take a look at the long list of skills that those first pioneers had – and determine their importance for the modern homesteader today.

Everything from weather forecasting to making cleaning products to the seasonality of food storage and preparation. Do people still tan hides? Included is a video on how to do it.

Source:

U.S. students in most states and across almost all demographic groups have experienced troubling setbacks in both math and reading, according to an authoritative national exam released on Monday, offering the most definitive indictment yet of the pandemic’s impact on millions of schoolchildren.

In math, the results were especially devastating, representing the steepest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, which tests a broad sampling of fourth and eighth graders and dates to the early 1990s.

In the test’s first results since the pandemic began, math scores for eighth graders fell in nearly every state. A meager 26 percent of eighth graders were proficient, down from 34 percent in 2019.

Fourth graders fared only slightly better, with declines in 41 states. Just 36 percent of fourth graders were proficient in math, down from 41 percent.

Homeschool really is a matter of prepping. Are you preparing your family to support each other and be a team? Educating your children in the Law-word of God and demanding they behave according to right and wrong as defined by God in the Holy Bible is paramount. This is critical not only to you and them but to civilization. Exodus 20:12, Proverbs 22:6.

It’s been a mild autumn so far nationwide. Not sure about Alaska, but they usually know what they’re doing. But for the rest of us, it’s been so mild in all regions that we may be lulled into a false sense of ease about the coming winter. That first blast of cold will be a wakeup call for many. Several links are provided below; most are basics, but for the serious, here is the List of Lists.

Winter Prepping basics and tips, including some things you might not have thought about in a while or ever considered, along with regional considerations. This list is too short. There are many other facets that need consideration.

#2: Honey, get yourself a honey bucket!
Since you may you may not have water or sewer from the municipal water supply in an emergency you’ll need to think about sanitation: grey water and honey buckets.

A Honey Bucket is not a Honey Trap, nor is it a Honey Bunny. See, prepping can be fun! The term Honey Pot is very often misused for Honey Trapping. A Honey Pot is actually a computer network with no real intelligence value in the data. It’s designed to lure in (foreign) powers, so they give away their intrusion capabilities or otherwise open themselves to counterattack. Properly identifying each of these other three potential problems has, at sundry times and in diverse manners, helped me. Prepping isn’t only about dried foods. A Honey Bucket is something else entirely.

#3: Stock up on food and a way to cook indoors
You may well have prepared your long-term emergency food needs with ample supplies of rice and beans, but it’s time to stock up on the foods you’ll need to survive a power outage! Your aim for a power outage is ready to eat, shelf-stable meals, such as protein and energy bars, nut butters and crackers. If you have an alternate way to cook, then stock up on soups and canned foods.

Next, given the recent global environment, there are World War II Civilian Survival Lessons. Regardless of what becomes of America, you’ll spend most of your time doing “civilian stuff” anyway.

How American Civilians helped win World War II (and survive).
History repeats itself they say. Capitalizing on wartime lessons can help you for any disaster, not just war. Below are some civilian survival skills and ideas garnered from the civilians who survived World War II with patriotism, collaboration and a “can do” attitude. Below are survival lessons garnered from civilians during the war…

Next, don’t forget how the bankers and government (but we repeat ourselves) brought us the never-ending communist New Deal. So consider prepper Lessons on The Great Depression. The Green New Deal should be twice as good as the first one! That’s what the TV said, so we believe it. Joking aside, Solutions-based Prepping is an interesting concept.

Learn from the past: prepping for the next Great Depression.
Wondering how can you survive an economic collapse and avoid poverty? Perhaps Robert T. Kiyosaki summed it up best when he wrote: “Poverty is simply having more problems than solutions.” Think about this from a prepper’s perspective: strive to be prepared to have more solutions than problems. To ensure you have more solutions than problems, be creative, be flexible and adapt. Below is how to help survive the next Great Depression.

Further, if you’re new to the notion of viewing how to make it through tough times, here are some basics to start:

10 Steps to Basic Preparedness.

Prepping for Ordinary People.

At the CDC, we learn some rudimentary respects to being prepared for Winter Storms. The fun part about doing what the government says to be prepared is that they tell you to both get ready, and then they call you insulting monikers for taking their advice.

Also, see the basics of preparing for Winter Power Outages. This seems important now, certainly for Europe and California, but elsewhere as well.

37 Foods to Hoard

And finally, in light of the recent “pandemic,” it would be a very good idea to get books and training in basic medical and dental knowledge.

Clausewitz’s most famous saying about war, that it is the continuation of politics (policy) by other means.

Here is the passage in full:

24. WAR IS A MERE CONTINUATION OF POLICY BY OTHER MEANS.

We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to War relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses. That the tendencies and views of policy shall not be incompatible with these means, the Art of War in general and the Commander in each particular case may demand, and this claim is truly not a trifling one. But however powerfully this may react on political views in particular cases, still it must always be regarded as only a modification of them; for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.

At SurvivalBlog, this is an excellent two-part post. A very brief history of the Boer Wars is offered then it’s almost exclusively weapons, ammo, purposes in use, and personal firearms considerations. Great stuff, tons of data, with much to consider and debate.

Part One

Part Two

Excerpt from Part Two:

Around here, .30-06 is more common than .308 Win.  The second most popular in my neighborhood is 6.5 Creedmoor (6.5CM), then 6.5×55, and lastly a wildcat for the AR platform, the 6.5 Timberwolf. Ideally, we would be best off to standardized on .308 Winchester. Yet .30-06 is still king in these woods. It is time tested and found to be the best all around cartridge CONUS, good for mouse to moose, and the occasional Griz, because it can shoot the heaviest .308 caliber bullets with a 1:10 twist rate barrel.

The .30-06 can also punch out a flat shooting 175 grain bullet at 2,800fps with H4831sc, H4350 powder, or other similar powders. It is appreciable flatter shooting than .308 Winchester, and far flatter than .308 Winchester’s military version, 7.62×51 NATO.  Yet we do pay the price in terms of a punishing level of recoil. Therefore, my ideal long range rifle would be the 6.5×55 cartridge in a modern action capable of 60,000psi with 29 inch bull barrel attached, however that rifle is only a dream rifle.

The Rutherford Institute

“It is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, racial, political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer. That’s the way to soften up a democracy.”― J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit

The U.S. government has become a master of deceit.

It’s all documented, too.

This is a government that lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn; treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, bartered, traded, and tracked; and wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and has no qualms about spreading its reign of terror abroad.

Worse, this is a government that has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

With every passing day, it becomes painfully clear that this is not a government that can be trusted with your life, your loved ones, your livelihood or your freedoms.

[…]

Just recently, for example, the Pentagon was compelled to order a sweeping review of clandestine U.S. psychological warfare operations (psy ops) conducted through social media platforms. The investigation comes in response to reports suggesting that the U.S. military has been creating bogus personas with AI-generated profile pictures and fictitious media sites on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to manipulate social media users.

Psychological warfare, as the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group explained in a recruiting video released earlier this year, enables the government to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

We’ve argued this before, but about NSA spying on foreign nationals and countries. What the DoD is doing here is legitimate in the national security interest as it stands today. The problems are not this program or the US spying on enemies or potential enemies; there are two problems with this. There is no declared war, and the DoD has been permanently funded to wartime levels for 80 years now under continuing resolutions. It’s silly to argue against this spying while funding the spies like we’re at war. Will all of this be turned against us, surely, and probably already is? But as it stands right now, this is a legitimate use of the funds allocated by Congress for this purpose. We were warned against a standing army, and congress used to have power over that.

It’s a short hop, skip and a jump from a behavioral program that tries to influence how people respond to paperwork to a government program that tries to shape the public’s views about other, more consequential matters. Thus, increasingly, governments around the world—including in the United States—are relying on “nudge units” to steer citizens in the direction the powers-that-be want them to go, while preserving the appearance of free will.

[…]

This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being brainwashed—manipulated—into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward.

Read the whole thing.