Practice, Practice, Practice

This week I am going to talk about some things that we all should practice. However, first I am going to do something I have not yet done and that is let you know where you can purchase some of my books. I have a store on wigix.com and in my store, among other things, I sell several survival books which I have written. When you get into the wigix site, go to stores and then you can go to "Steve's Coins, Books and More". Within my store is a shelf titled "Survival Books". This is where you would go to purchase these books of mine. There are several of them that I consider very valuable to the survivalist. Now I suppose that I got the commercial out of the way I can get down to business.

There are many thing that we should practice to be ready for a survival situation. Many of them are things that we do not do in our day to day life. We do not want to wait on learning to do these things and to do them well until the survival scenario is upon us. I am going to list a few that I think are the most important. I am not listing them in any particular order so you can give the most practice to the ones that you feel that you are most likely to need in a survival situation.

Fire making is something that everyone needs practice with. Being able to start a fire under any conditions, with or without matches is a very basic survival need. Having a fire may keep you from succumbing to hypothermia or other problems. It may also be needed to boil water to purify it. When practicing fire making, start with a method that you feel you can handle and when you get good at it move on to another method. My start was the flint and steel method. One of the reasons is that once you know how to do it, you do not really need the flint and steel. A fire can be made using the pack of a knife against a rock found on or near your fire site. The best way to make a fire is still with matches. Make your own waterproof matches by dipping them in melted wax. Not only will the wax keep them waterproof, it will flare up and keep the fire longer. You may want to move to a fire bow or maybe a magnifying glass or your eyeglasses. Whatever you do, keep practicing until you have no problem. Try starting fires in the rain or snow. Practice every situation you can come up with.

If there is one number one thing to know it is where to get water. You can live a long time without food and fire is great, but you cannot live long without water. Try making solar stills in various areas. Get good at it and it will provide you with a surprising supply of water. Try to harvest dew. Learn how to spot where a small stream may be, by knowing the lay of the land and the types of trees and bushes that grow around them. Learn what type of water and snow you can obtain and how to purify it. Remember to shake up the boiled water to give it some flavor back. Find out which plants in your area contain the most moisture. Water is very important, practice ways of obtaining it.

Gathering food is another thing to practice. Here I am talking about not only hunting, fishing and trapping, but also growing your own and saving seeds and hunting wild plants that are edible and very tasty. There are many excellent food plants growing wild over most of this country. However, you need practice so that you can identify them and not get plants that are possibly poisonous or possibly just not healthy. I continually practice the art of finding wild plants. It is a rare week that goes by that we do not have some wild plant for at least one meal. For hunting and fishing there are many methods of obtaining fish and animals in a survival situation. At the present time many of the methods that I know about are illegal. In a survival situation these methods will be morally acceptable. Check you fishing, hunting and trapping laws in your area and practice all of the ones that are legal. You will want to practice especially the methods that are, if not completely silent, at least very quiet. 

Now the one that everyone thinks of when talking about practice: shooting. This is something that we cannot get too much practice at. I know that many of you that have to pay to use a range and then spend a bunch of money on ammo may have a hard time. However, there are ways around this problem. I will be the first to admit that I am lucky. I have a 100 yard range on my property. I also have an area where we can throw clays and practice with the shotgun. I do most of my practicing with a .22 but at least once a month take a centerfire rifle out and shoot that. This, I feel, is a necessity if you want to stay proficient with firearms. I try to practice for at least one hour each week. I shoot the .22 for about a half hour or until I get about 100 rounds through the gun. I then shift either to the centerfire rifle or to one of my handguns. Here again, most of my handgun practice is done with a .22. The .357 comes out about once a month.  Now for those of you who do not have all of the amenities that I do here is another idea. Get an air rifle and an air pistol. With these you can shoot in the basement, the garage, the backyard or even the living room if the woman of the house allows it. This will keep you proficient at aiming, trigger release, etc. I use air guns in the winter when the weather is too cold to go out every week.

I am going to leave it at that. I could go into a lot of other things like knife throwing, boomerangs, bows, crossbows, throwing stick and other weapons. However, I believe that you get the picture and can decide what you want to practice. Just remember, practice. practice, practice at what ever you feel you need to be proficient in. Until next time, remember to check out my other blog.

http:www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com

Staying Well

Earlier this week I covered the swine flu pandemic on my other blog; http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com. Since that time I have learned more about this disease and feel that I should cover it again in this blog. I am not going to go into as much detail as I did in the other blog, but feel people should know what is going on. For a little deeper look at it got to my other blog.

First of all; I have a funny feeling that this strain of flu is not something that occurred naturally. When you look at The DNA sequence of this strain of flu, it makes on wonder just how it could have occurred naturally. This strain of flu has elements of DNA from: avian flu, human flu Type A, human flu Type B, Asian swine flu and European swine flu. Now you tell me the probability of this happening, five different flu strains from four continents combining and spreading from human to human like wildfire. To me it looks like a case of a bio war project which either escaped or was intentionally released. Also, regular flu season is about over and this strain of swine flu is affecting young adults rather than the very young and the very old. 

All of that being said, I would like to take a look at what can be done to protect ourselves. I am well past the age where I am told that I should take a flu shot every year. The only reason I see to take a flu shot is to help the drug companies make a bigger profit. Right now the government is paying drug companies to come up with a new serum and they are rolling out all of the flu cures that they can. I have never taken a flu shot and I do not intend to. The best thing that can happen from a flu shot is nothing and the worse thing is that it can give you the flu. In all of the years that I have been told that I should get a flu shot, I have never gotten one and I have not had the flu. 

Here are some things that I do to stay well. I am not a doctor or other medical practitioner so I cannot tell you that you should do this. All I can do is to tell you what worked for me. First of all I drink an eight ounce glass of a honey, cider vinegar and water mixture. One tablespoon of vinegar, one tablespoon of honey and eight ounces of water. I put the vinegar and honey in a glass and add hot water. After the honey has dissolved I add cold water and drink the tepid mixture. I take a complete natural multi vitamin with the minerals included. Besides this I take natural vitamin C. All the vitamins and supplements I take are natural so I will not bother saying it each time. From Oct. 1st to Apr. 1st I take 2,000 mg per day. The rest of the year I take 1,000 mg per day. I take 800 IU of vitamin E from Oct. to Apr. and 400 IU the rest of the year. I take 50 Mg of zinc daily, 5,000 MG of garlic daily and enough cod liver oil capsules to get about two hundred percent of my A and D. From Oct. to Apr. I also take echinacea, altering the amount by how I feel. All of these are helps to the immune system and i have found them to be effective in my life. With this new strain of flu, there are two other supplements that I do not presently take but am thinking of starting. One is aloe vera and the other is cayenne pepper. Both of these also help the immune system.

Doing what I do I keep the government out of a little bit of my life and I stay well. I also do not    have any of the stuff that is in the serum in my blood stream. I do not want to get in the habit of depending on a government to take care of my health. What happens in a survival situation when there are no serums available? The way I do it I am protected and can keep a large enough supply on hand to go through a fairly lengthy survival situation. Most natural vitamins and supplements can be kept for at least two years.

Another disease that affects many survivalists is Lyme disease. This is brought on by deer tics. I just received some information from a survivalist who has suffered from Lyme disease on what to do if you cannot see a doctor or if you are in a survival situation. Keep some Doxycycline on hand and if you have to take a deer tick off of yourself take two pills the first day. Then cut back to one a day until you feel that the danger is over. At least Lyme disease is not a government caused illness.

There you have what I do about a couple of ailments in a survival situation. I will be writing more about health issues in the future. For now that is all I have. 

Check out my other blog at;   http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com