Financial or Catastrophe

I have been writing about a financial and what we need to do to survive it. Now I have been getting some information from a fairly good source that we may be in for more than just a financial meltdown. I am no scientist, so what I am going to say here relies on what I gleaned from scientists and what NASA supposedly knows about and is preparing for.

What I am being told is that there is going to be major sunspot action in late 2011 and all of 2012 culminating in severe action late in 2010. Why should we be worried about sunspots? They can take out our entire electrical grid, our phone system, satellite communications and many other electronic items. It sounds to me that this would be a lot like the aerial nuclear blast I was talking about a couple of blogs ago. I am not sure how to prepare for it exactly, but I am going to do many of the things I talked about in that blog. Go back a couple of blogs and check that one out. This could be even worse if the sunspots take out our electrical grid or even part of it. We barely have enough grid to keep everyone supplied at the present time. If even half of it were taken out, the entire country would be in deep doo doo.

In one of the articles I read, the person writing it said that it could virtually cause a nuclear winter. It could cause flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes and virtually wipe out the entire country. This was his worst case scenario but even the possibility is enough to make on think long and hard about what to do.

Whatever happens, financial meltdown, sunspot catastrophe, or even war, we need to be prepared. I have written many things in past blogs and some of you may want to go back and check them out to see what I deem as being prepared.

Something I probably have not talked about enough is having enough medical supplies and equipment on hand. Now here I am not talking about a first-aid kit, even an elaborate one. I am talking about a full scale medical kit. I had started building one a few years ago but got sidetracked and never finished it. Now I intend to get back to it and should the events of 2012 that are predicted occur, I will be ready. Getting all of the equipment is expensive, but then it is our lives we are talking about.

First of all, anyone that is on prescription medications needs to have as much on hand as you can talk your doctor into. I know that there are some medications that you cannot stock up on due to certain laws. Anything that you can talk you doctor into giving you a year's supply for, do it. Everything else, do the best you can. Next, begin to study natural medicine and see if there is something that you can make up from nature that will take the place of your prescription. In future blogs I will be giving some recipes for a few items which I make. I currently do not make any internal medicine and will probably not give a lot of those recipes anyway because every person is different and will need to do some research on what they need. I will probably give some suggestions of what plants to look for but that will be about all.

Another thing you will need is a complete set of tools. You will need forceps, various tweezers, several types of scissors, suture equipment (needles, suture thread, etc.), dental pics and more. Remember, we are talking about caring for teeth, ears, eyes and all the rest of the body. I would purchase and put aside a couple pair of the cheap reading glasses for anyone in the family that has eye problems. Buy two or three each of several different strengths. Have tooth and gum medicine to control pain. They make a temporary filling that should still be available somewhere. If you know anyone in group that wears dentures or even a partial plate, have a denture repair kit in your medical kit. There are many other things that I could list and in future blogs I may from time to time list a few. What everyone needs to do is to try to visualize every medical problem that you may encounter. Eliminate the ones that you know you cannot help such as doing an appendectomy or heart surgery and for the ones that you could possibly take care of, get the right equipment and supplies.

There is something else that is very important. Make sure that you are in the best physical shape that you can possibly be in. Taking your age into consideration, try to get as physically fit as possible. If you are not now in good shape, there is no better time to start a training program than right now. I have already started mine and am trying to do three things. Number one, I am trying to lose some weight, number two, I am trying to gain some strength and number three I am trying to improve my endurance. If I can do these three things, I will be happy. At my age I know I am not going to get back to where I was at 35, but I can be better than I currently am.

We will talk more about all of this in my next blog entry. Until then check out my other blog.

http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com

Getting Ready

I mentioned in my last posting that I believe we are in for a financial meltdown and that I am starting to get ready for it. I said that I would let you know what I am doing and what I believe every survivalist should do. So, here goes!

First you need to look at what the price of gasoline might be. If it doubles, will you be able to afford to drive your present vehicle? I do not think that I would be able to. Therefore, I am rebuilding an old motorcycle and keeping both of our bicycles in good shape. We live in the country about six miles from town and I believe that I could ride my bicycle to town to pick up a few items. For more than a few items or traveling farther I would use the motorcycle. When I talk about motorcycles, I do not mean some big Harley that gets the same gas mileage as a mid-size car, I mean one of the older cycles in the 50 to 175cc range. The one I am rebuilding is a 1967 50cc bike. It is a two cycle engine so it will have plenty of power to carry me and will get excellent mileage. It has a kick starter and a three speed transmission. That type of cycle, a moped or a 50 or 100cc scooter is what I recommend for a survival vehicle in a financial meltdown.

If the price of fuel doubles, what do you think the price of groceries will be? The farmers will need to get more for their crops and the truckers will need to jack their rates up just to cover the cost of fuel. That should make the cost of food skyrocket. As I live in the country I am planning a larger garden this year than I had last year. I am also going to use as many non-hybrid seeds as possible so I can save my own seeds. This will mean the following year I will not have to buy nearly as many seeds and by then we may not even be able to buy any. I suggest that anyone that has space for even a small garden plant one. Plant in containers on the porch or deck and plant in the house if you have to. Another thing that I am going to do to supply my food is to raise chickens. I intend to go to a small animal auction and purchase six heavy laying hens, one rooster and two bantam hens. Six laying hens will provide plenty of eggs for my wife and I and when we get ahead on eggs, we will put some under the bantams to hatch. Most breeds of modern chickens have had the hatching gene bred out of them. They will not set on eggs till they hatch. However, the bantams are still excellent for this purpose, which is why I am going to have a couple. The eggs that the bantams hatch will be used according to our needs. Some of the hens will be kept to replace the older hens, while any hens over six will be used for fryers along with the roosters that are born. The old hens that are culled out will be used for stewing and soup. In this way we can provide our own eggs and some meat. For those of you who cannot have chickens where you live, I really do not know what to tell you. Perhaps you could get someone who lives close to you but in an area where chickens are able to be raised and by purchasing more chickens than you need and the feed for them split the eggs and meat. We are all going to have to work together.

I am going to do an extra amount of fishing, hunting and wild plant gathering. Fishing and hunting can both provide meat and wild plant gathering will add to the gardening I am going to do. One of the things I am going to do with the fish and game I get as well as much produce from my garden is to can it. If all other fuels go up, you can expect the price of electricity to skyrocket right along with everything else. It may ever come to the point that some of us will not even be able to afford to pay our electric bills. That is one of the reasons that I am going to put less in the freezer and can more. Fruits and vegetables can be canned, meat can be canned and there are ways to can fish. I am also going to build a smoke house so that I can smoke some of my fish and possibly some meat. Some things can also be salt cured. Look back to the old ways and bring some of them back to life. What did people to to preserve their food before electricity? The fact that I am going to do more hunting and fishing and gathering is another reason that I want a bicycle and a motorcycle. I have several areas in which to fish within five miles from home. These places will be reached by bicycle. I have to go farther to do any hunting that I cannot do on my five acres, so that is where the motorcycle will come in handy.

While there is much more I will be doing to get ready, I am going to change the subject and talk to those of you who may live in cities or large towns or villages. If I were you I would be ready to move out at a moments notice. I feel that there is going to be widespread rioting and looting once the people cannot afford food and the government is not there to help them. Plan now to have a place to go. If you have relatives that live in the country or even a small town, that may be where you want to go. I have four children and five grandchildren along with a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law and they all would be welcome here if things got to bad where they are. If you do not have relatives strategically located, do you possible have a good friend that is. By offering to help them out they may allow you to live on their property. If nothing else, locate a spot in a national forest and set yourself for long term camping. Hopefully it would not be too long. At all costs, get out of the cities if you value your life. At least in the forest you could gather enough food to live on. If you have been reading this blog for a while you may have noticed that I talk a lot about having food set aside for this type of situation. If you do not now have a supply of survival food, go back into my past blogs and see what I believe you need. Then if you need to cut out and live for awhile away from everything, you will be prepared. Being prepared for whatever comes up is what survivalism is all about.

There is much more that I am going to do, but that will have to wait for my next post. I will give plans for security, medical and several other things. Stay tuned and in the meantime check out my other blog.

http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com

Coming Soon

As this is a survival blog, I sometimes write about what I see upcoming and what I will be doing about it along with what I believe that everyone should be doing. Have I been wrong about what I think is upcoming? You bet I have and yet I have never lost money or gotten behind because of the preparations I made. What I try to do is to keep things on a reasonable level so that if what I believe will happen, actually happens, I will be prepared. If what I believe will happen does not happen, I will be no worse off than if I did not prepare. The secret is living a survival lifestyle in the first place. This may mean that you will have to change some hobbies for other ones. Say you love golf and have never fished. As a survivalist fishing is one way we prepare to obtain food. This means you may have to give up golf or at least cut back and take up fishing. What I see in the near future is a worldwide financial meltdown. I am not alone in this but most people think we that see it coming are nuts. A couple of big financial planners seem to think the same way I do and some of what I have gleaned was from their writings. Much of it was what I came up with just by watching how things are going. I will go through a few things that I see and then if there is enough space on tonight's blog, I will get into what I am about to do. If the blog gets too long my plans will have to wait until next week.

The first thing to look at is the national debt. It is very nearly fourteen trillion dollars and growing every day. Every day we borrow more and more money, most of it from the Chinese. The only reason the we have been able to get away with it thus far is that the dollar is the world trade currency and we have the printing press for that money. What do you suppose would happen if another currency became the world trade currency? We would then have to purchase that currency so we could trade with other countries. If you think that another currency taking over for the dollar is far fetched, it is not. The world bank has floated the idea of a currency that would be used ONLY for trade. Several European and Asian countries got together for a meeting without the U.S. to talk about how they could structure trade without using the dollar. China and Japan and China and Russia are close to starting to trade in each others currency. One of the thing that dollars being the official trade currency does is keep the price of gasoline lower than it would otherwise be. That is why, although we are paying about three dollars a gallon, that is the cheapest of any industrial country, with most of them ranging in the four to eight dollar range. Already Iran, Kuwait and Qatar have ceased to accept dollars for oil. If a few more countries do this you will see our gasoline prices spike to at least seven dollars a gallon.

We already cannot pay off our debt because we are running yearly deficits and borrowing more and more to just run the country. As we all know, "You cannot get out of debt by borrowing more money." This is one of the reasons the other countries in the world are looking for something other than the dollar to do business with. If that does happen, and I believe it will, the U.S. will have to really crank up the printing presses. When they do that inflation will skyrocket like no one alive has ever seen in this country. We have all heard about it happening in other countries, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Germany and several others, but it can never happen here. WRONG!!! It can and will happen and when it does the government will have to pull the plug on a lot of the "entitlements" that we now have. Let's face it we have thirteen percent of the population on food stamps. Large percentages on other government programs like medicaid and rent assistance along with a ton of other ways that people are living off other people's money. We are fast approaching the point where if everyone was taxed at one hundred percent of their income, we will not be able to even pay the interest on the debt. What happens then?

I am looking for the dollar to lose its standing in the world. It is already losing it in some countries. The largest bank in Mexico will no longer take deposits in dollars. Countries where tourists are used to spending dollars are no longer taking them either. Some countries are not even exchanging dollars for their own money. China is getting rid of dollars as fast as they can and China is the largest holders of dollars in the world. Here in the U.S. there are places that are now accepting the Mexican peso and the Euro. There also a number of states that are printing their own money. This is not illegal, but a lot of people do not know that. Our monetary laws allow the making of private money as long as we do not try to pass it off as official U.S. money. Also, you do not have to accept U.S. currency in payment for things that you are selling.

What do I think is going to happen? First the dollar loses its standing, next the feds crank up the presses and start printing money. Now things get out of hand because just the rise of gasoline will cause much inflation. Truckers will have to double and triple their rates for hauling food and farmers will either have to get a lot more for their crops or the will not be able to afford fuel and they will go out of business. This will mean that food will go sky high and there will also be shortages. That would mean the end of food stamps and all of the other entitlements and that would mean riots and anarchy. If that were to occur it would probably mean martial law. From there it is hard telling what might happen. It could mean all out war or most likely every person for themselves.

That is what I feel is going to happen. What am I going to do? I will let you know in my next posting. For those of you who also follow my fasciunism blog, this weeks will be a lot like this posting. You may want to check it though, I may have even more to say about what I feel is going to happen.

Check it out at: http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com