Preparing Deseret, one blogger at a time
After some recent discussions on her blog, Marie at Food Storage…A Necessary Adventure decided to start up an Idaho Preppers Network. 
Good to see more initiative out there. If you are an Idaho Prep blogger, get added. If you are a prepper, join up to read. And please add a link on your blog too.
If you know of another regional prepper blog network that we don’t know about, or maybe you are just starting one too, let us know.
Welcome back, I hope your Christmas was as good as ours. Now it’s time to get back to the grindstone of life. I hope the recent focus on the family will keep us all looking at how to keep them safe in what is coming to us all. With a flailing economy, people will do anything to keep afloat. You need to make sure you are prepared ahead of time.
Twas the month before Christmas
And all through the house
The storage was low
Hardly a crumb for a mouse.
The shelves were about empty,
Oh, what a plight!
The wolf’s at the door,
And no money in sight.
All the children were nestled
To keep warm in their bed,
Hoping that before long
They surely would be fed.
The prophet had counseled
“Each one be prepared,”
We had procrastinated the day,
Why hadn’t we cared?
ALAS! “Twas only a dream”,
But that didn’t’ matter
I jumped from my bed
Making a loud awful clatter.
Away to the basement
I flew like a flash,
Stumbling over boxes and bottles,
Along with some trash.
As I surveyed my storage,
With eyes all aglow
The security of filled bottles
All straight in a row
Filled my heart with a warmth
And my eyes with a tear
To think I had food
to last us a year.
This feeling of warmth
And security too,
Is what we as your friends
Wish for you.
So put gifts of storage
Under each Christmas tree
For those on your list,
Is our warmest plea,
Give honey, give sugar,
Give flour or wheat.
Give milk, give salt,
Give something to eat.
And you’ll hear them exclaim,
When Christmas is here,
“Thank-you so much,
It will be a good year.”
Author unknown (If you know, tell me :) )
This was handed out to my wife’s Relief Society (Womens Group at Latter-day Saint Churches)
Ever been called crazy for having a preparedness mindset? Ever questioned yourself if that drive to store up a few more cans of food might be just a little too much? A friend of mine, who is a trauma counselor, decided to start writing a bit about the psychology of preparedness.
After hearing him talk a bit about generalized difficulties he sees on a daily basis, our discussions went into what you will start to see in his posts. To be mentally stable, you must have some security, some anchor in your life. He starts here by establishing some of the basic needs we have for mental stability. I’d recommend giving it a read, then keep your eyes open for the rest of the series, should prove very useful in helping yourself understand your basic reasons for preparedness, and why maybe others you know might not feel the same.
With an economy just starting a free-fall, rights being repealed left and right, job losses, and more, you need to make sure that you are prepared both physically, as well as mentally for what may come.
This is the final post in our 3 part series, Winter and Snow Driving Preps. The first post, Prepping your Vehicle, can be found here followed by our second post, Supplementing your Gear.
To wrap this Winter Prep series up, let’s go over a few winter driving tips. I’m not trying to teach you how to drive, but just some good techniques to use while driving in snow and ice conditions. Continue reading “Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 3 of 3, Driving Tips”
This is the second post in this series, the first – Prepping your Vehicle – can be found here.
Winter vehicle emergencies can be pretty harsh. If you breakdown, wreck or slide off the freeway that’s one thing, help should be there soon.
But, if you’re on the road less traveled and it’s late at night and something happens, you could be stuck there for a while. If for some reason you can’t start your vehicle in that situation, you have about 20 minutes before it starts getting cold in your car. You already have an emergency kit in your vehicle, right? Just in case you don’t, we’ll be covering that in a later post. But, from here we’ll assume you’ve got a basic 72 hour survival kit in your vehicle. These are some things you should add to it for the winter:
Continue reading “Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 1 of 3, Prepping Your Vehicle”
I suspect that most readers of this blog are more intelligent than the average reality show addicted, talking head worshiping American
that thinks that everything going on in the world and economy right now is just a hiccup that will go away in the spring. You know, the ones that we preppers are pretty sure we’re going to have to fight off from killing us and stealing our preps WTSHTF. But, just in case any of you are slightly toeing the line with the popular hero-worshiping of the Socialistic head of the ‘Office of the President Elect’ thinking somehow he’s going to Change anything but his mind, or that somehow he’s going to bring Hope to the country – I bring you this.
There are very few mainstream articles being published right now that are presenting a realistic top-down view of the entire situation with the economy. The quotes I’m going to present to you here are from mainstream publications but the key point of them is that these are quotes from high level analysts and executives in widely respected financial companies who are remarking that things are bad, very bad and they are going to get much worse.
The following snippets are from this excellent article from Bloomberg:
I’d like to link today to a great post by a friend of mine, Jordan Gunderson. I’ve known Jordy for a few years now through our local geek community, and was ever so proud when recently he had told me about how his family had been dedicating themselves to getting their three-month, then year’s supply of food in place. He had obviously put in some good thought and research into things, much like any geek will do when dedicating themselves to solving a problem.
A local friend of mine recently posted his notes about creating a set of emergency bags (BOB – 72 Hour Kit) for his family. It’s great to see a friend getting his family so ready, and even better when they can share such excellent information. In his example, I think he does a great job of presenting how he will get his young sons to carry a small part of their own gear, without overtaxing them. I know all younger families like myself worry about how to ‘carry enough’ for the younger children, and this example shows great thought in dealing with that concern. Check out the Lances BOB setup. Several pictures showing all the included gear, in and out of the bags.
Nothing like a little motivation. Ok, I know I’m a Star Wars geek.
I saw this reported on a number of web site, here is one of them.
It seems more and more likely that we have only seen the beginning of the financial chaos that is to come. This goes along with our post last week about the Top 10 Tips To Prepare For A Depression and our post on Why we prep.
Top trend forecaster, renowned for being accurate in the past, says that America will cease to be a developed nation within 4 years, crisis will be “worse than the great depression”.
The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions – all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.
Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.
Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts
“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.
“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.
Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as “The Panic of 2008,” adding that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 per cent.
The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures.
The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest,” and that, “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class.”
In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.
“There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”
“The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.”
“It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.”
“We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.”
The George Washington blog has compiled a list of quotes attesting to Celente’s accuracy as a trend forecaster.
“When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.”
— CNN Headline News
“A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.”
— The Economist
“Gerald Celente has a knack for getting the zeitgeist right.”
— USA Today
“There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.”
– CNBC
“Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.”
— The Wall Street Journal
“Gerald Celente is always ahead of the curve on trends and uncannily on the mark … he’s one of the most accurate forecasters around.”
— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution