Free Republic

You may have enough weapons and ammo stashed away to fight the next World War all by yourself… You may have fortified your home and have 3 different routes mapped out to get to your bug-out retreat… You may have a food stockpile that will see you, your family, heck, the whole darned neighborhood, through until the Second Coming… You may tirelessly watch militant YouTube videos that show you how to take down your opponent in 3 easy maneuvers… But.. If you aren’t realistic about your skills and your physical abilities, you are likely to be just as dead as...

I am starting this thread to get suggestions on what items would be useful to have at one's house and at the ready for the following scenario.Initial Conditions: 1. Ebola has started to ravage the United States and many people are already infected with it, many of whom don't even realize yet that they are infected. 2. The the emergency rooms and hospitals are already filled up to the brim with fresh Ebola cases making hospitals a dangerous place to be if you don't already have Ebola and useless in terms of actually helping you any way if you do....

BILLIONAIRE HEDGE FUND MANAGER: Of All The Things That Are Likely, Nothing Is Scarier Than An Electromagnetic Pulse Myles Udland July 30, 2014 Plasmasphere - Wikimedia Commons Hedge fund managers often like to opine on various topics that are largely unrelated to investing. In his latest lengthy quarterly letter to clients, Paul Singer of Elliott Management spent some time discussing a phenomenon that caught our attention and the attention of many others. It's the danger posed by an electromagnetic pulse. Singer writes that an electromagnetic pulse is the "risk that stands way above the rest in terms of the scope...

Kylene and Jonathan Jones' book "The Provident Prepper" (Plain Sight Publishing, $16.99) gives straight forward and easy-to-understand details on emergency preparedness. It's a great resource for families or individuals who'd like to learn how to take care of the necessities during an emergency. Written in conversational style, readers can adapt the information to fit their situations. The 358-page book has sections on a variety of topics including survival kits; communication; water storage and purification; food and fuel storage; emergency heating; lighting; and cooking. Here are a few tips the husband and wife team share: In the case of an emergency...

New Yorkers are preparing for "doomsday" in a way that doesn't involve guns, bunkers, or earmarked pages in Revelations, LiveScience reports. Survivalists at one group, NYC Preppers, are planning to safely flee the city in case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. "They simply don't have the space to build a bunker," says sociologist Anna Bounds, who is studying the survivalists. She says they devise escape routes (including by kayak), keep the car filled with gas, and figure out which home appliances are likely to work in different emergencies. They also take long walks to practice carrying a "bug-out"...

If you thought last winter was bad, get ready for a potentially worse winter in parts of the country this year. But another record-setting winter could mean more than higher heating bills and snow fights. Harsh winter weather combined with coal-fired power plant closings could spell trouble for many households across the country who will desperately need to keep the lights and heat on this winter. Joe Bastardi, chief meteorologist at WeatherBELL Analytics, told the Wall Street Journal Live that current weather patterns are “flowing along right now into the type of El Niño situation that is notorious for giving...

Waste not, want not. We've heard it a billion times. It's one of the contributions to literature of my native county, which also coined the phrase "Where there's muck, there's brass" - brass being slang for money. A common insult in the UK is to say someone has Yorkshire pockets. Pockets too deep to easily get money out of. Yet frugal is not miserly, a common mistake among the newer to the prepper community. It's an unwillingness to spend money on what you don't need. If you do need it, you buy the best. I have pots and pans that...

What’s better than a survival vehicle that doesn’t need gas, but is happy to burn it when you can get your hands on some? Motorized bicycle builder Motoped has unveiled the new Black Ops edition of its Kickstarter-funded creation.

July 26-2014 by oovgroov Did you realize that knowing just 4 wild edible plants could one day save your life? If there were any four categories of plants that I would recommend all people to know how to use and identify it would be these: Grass, Oak, Pine, and Cattail. For the knowledgeable survivor, knowing just these four plants can make the difference between life and death if stranded in the wilds – for each one is an excellent food source which can sustain you until help arrives. Throughout this week and part of the next, I’ll be going into...

Change Blindness: In visual perception, change blindness is a normal phenomenon of the brain which show in light that the brain does not have a precise representation of the world but a lacunar one, made of partial details. Despite the name, this phenomenon does not affect the eyes but the brain, and as such is bound to happen to all the human senses. This phenomenon is still in research, but results suggests that the brain estimates the importance and usefulness of information prior to deciding to store them or not. Another issue is that the brain cannot see a change...

I’m 58. Granted, I’m pretty beat up these days. I’ve had my share of injuries, the result of having lived a rather careless active life outdoors, on horses, motorcycles, bicycles, and the field of competition. People my age who have not spent their years in a chair have an accumulation of aches and pains, most of them earned the hard way. And for us, beat up or not, the best way to stay in the game is to train for strength. The conventional wisdom is that older people (ah, the term sticks in the craw) need to settle into a...

TAMPA — Federal authorities sought doomsday prepper Martin Winters for two days in the woods of east Hillsborough County, attempting to arrest him on weapons charges. On the third day, agents didn't need to look far at all. Winters, soggy-shoed and hungry, waited with a daughter in a car outside the FBI field office on Gray Street in Tampa on Wednesday morning as his attorneys stepped up to a reception desk and arranged his surrender. In trade, he got cheeseburgers, fries, Gatorade, dry shoes, praise from the FBI and a morning free of gunfire — all this from the agency...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Preparing for the worst by setting yourself up with only the best. As CBS 2′s Maurice DuBois reported Thursday, luxurious kitchens, swimming pools, even gyms are being added to bunkers built just in case of an emergency. Bomb shelters were a common site in backyards in the Cold War 1950s. But as one bunker promotional video shows, today’s backyard survival bunker looks more like a five-star resort, equipped with everything from an indoor pool and state of the art movie theater, to a dog run and even an interactive classroom — all underground. “The overall scope of the project was...

Author Lewis Dartnell poses an interesting question in his new book, The Knowledge: How To Rebuild Our World From Scratch: If our technological society collapsed tomorrow, perhaps from a viral pandemic or catastrophic asteroid impact, what book would you want to press into the hands of the survivors?Just over a decade ago, I was living in Texas and taking occasional trips out to the hill country for camping, hiking, and climbing. There’s a whole-lot-of-nothing out there, if you’ve never been. It’s beautiful, but you can go days without seeing another human being if you’re in the right spot. Bringing...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve should be willing to let inflation temporarily run above its target level so as to more quickly bring the economy back to health, a top Fed official said on Friday, even as a second policymaker signaled the very idea left him cold. The debate, between Chicago Fed President Charles Evans and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, underscored a fundamental disagreement over the central bank's optimal approach to policy under new Fed Chair Janet Yellen. To Evans, one of the Fed's most dovish policymakers, allowing inflation to run above the Fed's 2-percent target would...

There are certain factors you should consider when living through an extended emergency. It is common for your physical, mental and emotional state to be affected following a disaster. On top of that, you are hungry due to rationing food portions and still have to continue daily activities, physical labor, parenting, etc. If you haven’t put thought into the right types of food and the amounts needed to see you through the ordeal, then you could be setting yourself up for deficiencies in your diet. Repeatedly, I have told readers interested in leading a self reliant lifestyle to simulate a...

If an ice storm can cause this much panic in our major cities, what will a real crisis look like? The biggest news story in the United States right now is the "historic ice storm" that is hammering the South. Travel will be a nightmare, schools and businesses will be closed, and hundreds of thousands of people will lose power. In fact, it is being projected that some people could be without power for up to a week. But at the end of the day, the truth is that this ice storm is just an inconvenience. Yes, the lives of...

ItÂ’s not too difficult to understand that we are well on our way to a paradigm shift in America; in fact weÂ’re in the midst of it right now. The writing is on the wall and can no longer be ignored. The US government has run up trillions of dollars in debt, and given the recent debates over the countryÂ’s debt ceiling, we can rest assured that neither Congress or the President will act to curtail spending and balance the budget. We will continue adding trillions of dollars to the national debt clock until such time that our creditors no...

I’ll be honest: for years, I never considered the survivalist/prepper crowds as target audiences. I mean, we’re on totally different ideological wavelengths, right? I’m not into shooting things, and they likely think I’m a touchy-feely hippie who wouldn’t survive a week after SHTF. What could we possibly have in common? Quite a bit, it turns out – apparently, ideology ain’t everything. As we’ve started doing more DIY/upcycling/self-sufficiency content, we’ve seen a steady rise in readership from sites like The Homestead Survival and Knowledge Weighs Nothing. And, as you might expect, I’ve spent more time checking out these sites and those...

Gold bugs, rejoice. After taking a pounding last year, gold looks set for a big rally, although chart watchers say it still needs a little push higher before it takes off. A gain of about 1.5% from current levels would take gold above a key chart level, which could spark a further rally of 13% to the August highs, technicians say, and possibly much higher. After tumbling 28% in 2013, gold futures have gained 4% so far this year. On Friday, futures were up 0.9% at $1,251.60 an ounce in recent trading, and were trading above the widely-followed 50-day moving...