Free Republic

Had a good turnout for the ultimate backwoods teaparty. It's raining right now in Indy and we had our teaparty/gun shoot yesterday. We knew it would be raining today so we had our event yesterday. Made some noise, shot some guns, set off some explosives in celebration of the the 4th at an undisclosed location in Indiana. Heard the news about Gov. Palin resigning, coupled with the Gov. Sanford self destruction, we feel there is no hope left. Powder is dry. For those who feel the need to point out that we are now on the DHS most wanted list...

HOLLYWOOD — Clearly the Obama administration needs to address the issue of teacher salaries and fast. On AMC's "Breaking Bad," Bryan Cranston is playing a science teacher making meth, and now we have Thomas Jane as Ray Drecker, a high-school basketball coach-turned-male prostitute in HBO's "Hung." Both are men of middle age who find themselves undone by fate — Cranston's Walter White has cancer, Ray's wife has left him and he's lost his home to fire — and a lack of ambition. Both are angry at a world that seems to have reneged on earlier promises so, with their personal...

We have accumulated probably 3-6 months worth of stuff thus far, a good chunk of it being dry and canned goods, but more and more I am eying that deep freeze and all the food in it, because although there have been discussions of a generator purchase, we still don’t have one and I am very wary of the possibility that a power loss will render most of it useless. Another motivation is the fact that dried food lasts for so much longer and loses far less nutrients than canning, and I would like to use or save every bit...

Have I told you about my Scarlett O’Hara moment? It was a couple of years ago when a hurricane was just hours away from coastal Florida. The news video showed a bewildered looking woman staring at empty grocery store shelves. At that moment I said, “As God is my witness, that will never be me!” I vowed to never be the woman on TV who hadn’t given a serious thought of preparing for a disaster and now stood, vulnerable, to whatever dangers lay ahead. Taking steps to be prepared for various emergency situations or a significant downturn in our economy...

Pat McHugh invented the Space Blanket, an amazing piece of survival gear that has changed the face of emergency care for decades. McHugh said millions of Space Blankets were sent to help victims of the Indonesian tsunami a couple of years ago. But such large-scale disasters form only part of the basis of survival and outdoors gear McHugh has designed and represented. One of my favorites is an MPI outdoors backpack with a single shoulder strap that allows shooting a rifle while wearing the pack. But, while he said hunters and fishermen usually possess all the gear they need to...

A twitterer named lettersoftheliv has published an exhaustive series of tweets as a how-to guide for non-violent demonstrations. Here's how to protect yourself from tear gas: Do not pick up/throw back tear gas canisters- will severely burn your hands. Vinegar soaked bandana helps you breath with tear gas. Contaminates fast, have extra. Most tear gas injuries come from PANIC/chaos,not the chemicals:Ppl lose heads.Effects intense but very short-term. Stay calm and yell “WALK, WALK” as you walk away from tear gas/pepper spray attack- spread calm. Do not wear contact lens- pepper spray can linger and damage your eyes.

The never-ending rain may be wreaking havoc with everyone's weekend plans this summer, but at the White House Garden this week, it was hailed as the reason the crops were so lush and abundant. As fifth grade students picked 73 pounds of lettuce and 12 pounds of peas, assistant White House Chef Sam Kass noted that the garden had flourished quickly due to the downpours, the Washington Post reported. Besides the lettuce and peas, the 1,100-suare foot, L-shaped garden has also produced beans, kale, chard, collard greens and herbs, Kass told the paper. The White House kitchen has been turning...

While the credit crunch has caused life-changing hardships for many, some, believing the world is on the verge of a major depression, have taken to living off the land, regardless of how hard it is. Seven years ago, Viktor Sergienko felt life in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev had become too stressful. On top of that he had read several books that claim a big world crisis was imminent. The software engineer decided not to hesitate and prepared for the worse. In 2007 he bought a small house in the countryside. Last September Viktor was among the few who could...

Buying canned groceries and extra bags of flour and sugar have been the easiest part of food storage for me. Dehydrating my own food seemed to belong in the same category as spinning my own wool. Yes, it can be done, but why would I want to go through all the trouble??! I found out for myself that dehydrating my own food is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to stock up. Now, if I say it’s easy, you know. It’s easy! The foods are fresh with no additives of any kind, so I know exactly what my...

Let me be clear about two very important things before I continue in this article. 1. This is not going to be anything about how personal income tax is unconstitutional. While I actually believe it is, right now if you don’t pay it you get in a lot of trouble, you must pay all your legal tax obligations. 2. I am not a tax expert or a financial adviser. This article is more about exactly how to think about taxes then the specifics of how to reduce them. Cutting to the chase on this let me say when it comes...

SAO PAULO - BRAZILIAN scientists have identified a new strain of the H1N1 virus after examining samples from a patient in Sao Paulo, their institute said on Tuesday. The variant has been called A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1 by the Adolfo Lutz Bacteriological Institute, which compared it with samples of the A(H1N1) swine flu from California.

Bryce sent me this great link to a very interesting study on women defending themselves from rape and the success rates of these methods. Huge hat tip to him as this is awesome. For those on dial up I will sum it up. Women who used non violent methods of resistance (crying, pleading, etc) were raped about 96% of the time. Women who used forceful verbal resistance (yelling, screaming) were raped about half the time. Running works better then yelling as the women who ran were raped about 15% of the time. Forceful physical resistance is slightly more successful than...

I don’t remember when I first become convinced that homeschooling was the only type of education I wanted for our children. I do know it was long before I ever became pregnant! Now that we’ve finished our fifth year of homeschooling and we’ve started taking “prepping” seriously, I’m more glad than ever that we chose this route for our family. Homeschooling provides a continuous flow of education in spite of changing circumstances. A dramatic decline in income might force a family to move to another neighborhood, city, or even to a different state. Other than losing some time in the...

Is it possible that you are prosperous and didn’t even know it? Do you know that you can think you have nothing and find that you have everything? We have a small home with small rooms, and no quiet space of peace. Every room I enter there are children talking, or laughing and sometimes crying. When I wish to make a call, I must first say, “Shhh…can’t you see I am on the phone?” I am so rich, because I have a family and they are all around me. We do not have extra money to buy our kids the...

The three brothers grew up during the depression in a hard steel mill town. The older brother was a brilliant academic, star athlete, and he was a father figure to his younger siblings. He taught them honesty, honor, courage, and respect. He was proud of them, and they were proud of him. In fact, they freely admitted in later years that they had worshipped him. They grew to be solid young men, bright with prospect, even tempered, and religious. When World War 2 broke out, the older brother joined the Army Air Corps, and was trained by the Royal Air...

I think as a boy my favorite stories were always about epic journeys or quests. I always saw myself as the lone hero; bravely making his way through a barren landscape overcoming impossible obstacles and having fantastic adventures along the way. As preppers I think many of us still believe that WTSHTF our trip to “Get out of Dodge” will be an adventure such as those we read in books. I’m afraid however; the reality will be much grimmer than we can imagine. I fear that it will be more like The Road by Cormac McCarthy or the recent novel...

Slightly over half of the votes cast for president in November 2008 were for Barack Obama. One of his first moves was to use our tax money to fund abortions in foreign countries and allow human embryos to be used in research. You were warned that he had radical views on abortion, but voted for him anyway. He claims to be a Christian, but has put more time and energy into choosing a family pet than in choosing a family church. If you are a Christian are you still proud of that vote? His administration is cutting national defense, tying...

Until yesterday afternoon, many of us probably thought of security guards as annoyances. That's if we thought of them at all. They're ubiquitous in Washington -- checking our IDs, telling us to empty our pockets, directing us through the magnetometer -- such a constant presence that they can become invisible, just another extension of the security apparatus that's attached to nearly every aspect of public life these days. And then suddenly something happens. A man tries to get into a museum. He has a weapon. There's shooting. Yesterday, Stephen Tyrone Johns of Temple Hills died. He was shot at the...

The old woman walked into a Leesburg gun shop two months ago and explained her situation. She was 80-something and wore the scars of the Great Depression. It had crippled her family, she told store owner Gordon Schorer, wiping out their savings in a bank failure. Now, near the end of her life, she worried the U.S. was headed down the same road, and she wasn't going to make that trip — not without a fight. She had stockpiled more than a year's worth of food, put most of her money in precious metals and today was looking for a...

Have you heard of a Bug out bag (BOB)? If you have read even a few articles on urban survival then you have heard of this mysterious thing. Loosely defined, it is a bag packed with supplies and equipment for a few days to a week. It is intended to be something handy to grab, if you have to get out of where you are quickly. The thousands of items that could possibly be packed in a BOB are often a source of great debate among people building, packing, and storing their own bag. But what about the times when...