Lessons From the Trenches

*Been trying to get this done for days, but I couldn’t get the pictures to upload!!*

Sooooo, Friday night our area was hit by a major storm with heavy down pours. There was a tornado sighted, but it didn’t touch down by us anyway. We had 80-90mph winds plus straight line winds. Bear and I had met friends for dinner and our foster dog was home in a crate that she barely tolerates. I have to play YouTube videos that are for releasing fear, otherwise she panics, tears up the crate trying to get out and the anxiety causes her to have liquid diarrhea…. yay…. We knew a storm was coming and were keeping an eye on it, when one of the group came in after “burning a lung” and said it was sprinkling we headed home. * sign up for local weather warnings * Shortly after getting in the truck our cell phones started ringing, “Code Red” was calling to alert us that the we were under a Tornado Warning. Plus our cellphone provider sent text alerts saying the same thing. The storm had rotations, heavy rain, hail, 80mph winds and straight line winds. We were a half hour from home and Bear punched it. About 4 miles from home we hit the storm and went from driving almost 80mph down to 10mph. We were driving into the storm and the heavy rain driven by those high winds meant we couldn’t see except in between gusts. After getting off the highway we were turned so those winds were hitting the truck broadside and almost flipped a full-size Chevy pickup. The visibility meant we couldn’t see debris in the road til we were almost on it. The main road through our town was blocked by half a tree that had been blown down. The route we took around it was the road that runs in front of our house and it was blocked by a tree limb, too, but since we were only a block from home Bear just drove over the end of it (almost in the ditch). I saw the road ahead was blocked again, but realized that was right in front of our house! I thought our young Maple tree had come down, turns out I was right, a huge limb from our Maple tree had taken out a section of our fence. The power in town was out and we were even more concerned for our foster dog being alone with all the noise of the storm and the destruction going on. Coming into the yard stopped us in our tracks, though, it was full of huge limbs from trees and the biggest was on the fence. This is the first thing we saw:

Southwest corner of the yard.

The Maple Tree is from an old growth tree in our neighbor’s yard, it’s about 50ft. long.

Where the section broke off. Looking southwest over our fence.

Second picture right on the fence. You can see my little garden under there, behind the chicken wire.

Third photo to get in the whole tree!

What’s left after the tree was removed. There’s our foster dog, Bailey!!

Remains of half my garden. The beans on the right are OK and so are most of the strawberries. I know, I need to pull that grass growing there!!

South fence line. The branches right behind it are what they pulled off it. Yep, there’s Bailey photo-bombing again!

We have been prepping for a few years at this point, we have made sure we have back-ups for heating and electricity. We have a year’s worth of food; ways to obtain, store and purify water. We have medications and first aid supplies. Hygiene is covered, too. We were set Friday night and weren’t concerned at all that we had no electricity at the house. But. It had been a hot and humid day all day and it didn’t cool off that much even after the sun went down. The only fan we had was the little tent fan I use when I’m camping at festivals and it was not enough to keep two adult humans and stressed out German Shepherd cool. It was a clear reminder to keep ALL the seasons in mind and not just worry about winter and freezing. The heat can kill as easily as the cold can.

It’s been almost a week since the storm hit and the clean up has been slow, the stress of the last few weeks have taken its toll on Bear. The weeks of high stress working for a new boss he couldn’t please, then his great-aunt passing away, getting fired 2 days after her funeral with no warning and a couple weeks after that the storm hit. The muscles in his lower back locked up so tight he couldn’t get out of bed for 2 days. That’s also a problem to be dealt with going forward.

OK, this is getting long and has taken too long to write. Time to post it!

 

 

Time to Kick it Up

Ladies and gentlemen, Preppers and non. The time for reading, researching and thinking about getting prepared for the economic collapse is over. I am not a financial expert, but I have learned a lot over the last 17 years being with someone with an MBA in Finance and International Finance, plus he’s a CPA. I’ve been listening to experts like Gregory Mannarino, Bix Weir and Gerald Celente; they are experts and they are saying that this economic house of cards we’ve been living in since Nixon “closed the gold window” in the early 70’s. In the last 9 years, since the last crash, the creation of money that’s backed by nothing have excellerated. Look at the statistics put out by the Federal Government (for those in the US) on unemployment, job creation and the economy in general; then look around yourself and ask if you’re seeing it. Stores going out of business, more people begging for money, houses being up for sale for months and not selling. I’ll bet you have at least one friend out of work who can’t find anything better than a part time job with no benefits. Or have had give up trying to find a job because there’s just nothing out there. Is what you’re seeing, in any way, matching the garbage, lies and fantasies put out by the Feds?

What does all this have to do with this post? The above mentioned experts all agree that things are going to be changing here, possibly in September when the current budget ends and the government once again runs up against the debt ceiling. The same government is putting on dog and pony shows, like the Comey testimony; is watching we citizens assuming we are all criminals that just haven’t been caught at it yet; meanwhile, this same government is allowing some serious criminals walk free and appear to be arming and funding the very terrorists they claim to be fighting. There are violent Marxists and Marxist groups gaining strength in America who’s goals seem to be preventing the Free Speech and attacking anyone who disagrees with them. They have guns, bats, knives and (it seems) urine and aren’t afraid to use them to intimidate people.

Reading about preparing yourself and your family for what could be coming isn’t the same as doing it. Just like reading a diet book isn’t the same as following the diet from the book. You need to have at least 3 months worth of food and water for everyone. You need to have shelter, if that isn’t where you are living, then you need to have as many routes to the second location as you can find. You’ll need extra fuel for the vehicle/s to get there. You should have Bug Out Bags filled and ready to go in case you have to walk there, so that means the secondary location has to be stocked with food and water. If you’re sheltering in place, you’d better have a means to defend it. You need to have at least 2 ways to heat your shelter if you live where it gets cold. You need to have appropriate clothing for everyone, for the current season and the next one coming up. This includes good sturdy boots and shoes. You should have more than a month supply of all your prescription medications and the ones everyone else takes on hand.

I know this is a long list, but these are just the bare necessities. I could add: a generator and fuel; livestock to feed yourselves; seeds, gardening equipment and the means to preserve your crop; hunting and fishing equipment, the knowledge and skills to use it and clean what you take…. Well, you get the idea. Americans and a lot of people in the Western World, aren’t self-sufficient anymore. Our idea of hunting for meat is digging through the cooler at the grocery store.

It isn’t impossible to get ready by the end of September, but the time for doing it slowly, a little bit at a time, is pretty much past. So, time to stop thinking and start doing. If you’ve been taking it slow, it’s time to pick up the pace. I can’t make you prepare. I won’t do it for you. And you can’t come stay with me and take advantage of our hard work and sacrifices.

Women’s Issues- Pregnancy

Hi Ladies! I was looking over my last post on this subject WARNING!! “Girl Talk” and at the end I said I’d try and address pregnancy in a future post. After much consideration, I’ve decided not to do so. The liability is more than I’m willing to take on at this time. There are numerous prepping websites and blogs where this is covered, I’ll leave the liability to them. I won’t even offer suggestions on which ones I think are good or not, I’ll leave it to you to decide that. Only you can decide what information seems “right” to you and who you feel you can trust.

I will say this: women have been having babies since there have been females walking or crawling on this planet. It’s only been in the last 100 years or so that we’ve been taught not to trust our bodies or listen to them. We’ve been told/taught that we need to have medical intervention in order for our bodies to do what they were designed to do. I call “Bullshit” to that. If you are healthy with a reasonable level of fitness your body should be able to handle this process just fine. Will there be exceptions to that? Yes, there always has been and there always will be. But, for the majority of women, if you just stop interfering with your body’s natural processes you’ll be amazed at what your body can do. It will be uncomfortable and messy, but well worth every second of that when you’re holding your baby in your arms for the first time.

 

The Last Few Weeks

Hi again Peoples, this gap in posting has been interesting. To say the least! Our first two foster dogs both found homes before they even made it to the rescue’s website! The male even picked his family! We were at a “Meet and Greet”, there was a young woman crouched down looking at another dog, Rhett walked over to her, but she had no interest in him and I pulled him away. A couple minutes later I saw this stubborn look on his face. He walked back over to her, took his shoulder, knocked her on her butt, then sat down beside with his head on her chest and looked up adoringly at her! They stayed that way for the next half hour ’til the event was over. Since she and her mom were already approved to adopt a dog from the rescue, I took him to their house the next day to see how their existing dog and he got along, that was no problem, Rhett is so laid back he was fine with letting her be Alpha! On Mother’s Day, I left him with his new family. The few updates I’ve gotten have been that he’s settled in well and already trained his new humans to sit and pet him while he lays on the bed in a sunny spot!

Our current foster dog is a whole other story, she had been in several homes already due to her separation anxiety. She came into rescue 6 months ago as a 6 month old puppy, not housebroken and wearing baby diapers. She’d been kept locked in a small crate wearing diapers for 12 hours a day by her last owner who’d had no experience with dogs. Her last foster family had thought they were going to keep her and went about trying to break her of her bad habits, they tried to talk to her like she was a human and just ended up reinforcing them. They did at least housebreak her, mostly. I can’t leave her alone in the house without her pooping on the carpet. If I put her in a large wire crate I have to use a hard rubber tie-down across the door so she doesn’t force it open, but she still has diarrhea and pees in it. I call her my “Velcro Shadow” because she’s practically attached to my leg no matter where I go in the house. The Vet put her on anti-anxiety medication and that has helped her immensely. Before that she couldn’t ride in a car without getting violently car sick and she couldn’t be in a large crowd without barking constantly. Now, we can drive her anywhere and we’d had her in a large crowd at a local marina Saturday evening with people coming up to her constantly and while she ended up backing up against my legs, she didn’t bark at any of them and even let them pet her!

The worst part was the week before Memorial Day weekend. I joined a local Pagan group that hosts one of the largest and oldest Pagan Festival in America. I hadn’t been able to afford to go for the last 7 years since I’d been unable to work and I was really looking forward to reconnecting with friends I’d only been able to talk to on Facebook in that time. The second night there I was sitting with 3 women I’d known for years, one of whom owned an in home daycare. We started talking about the ridiculous nutrition guidelines that the previous First Lady had put into place that the current President had revoked. One of the women there got a little nasty when I bad-mouthed those guidelines but I pointed out that there had been excellent guidelines in place already and you can’t legislate children into becoming Vegetarian. The daycare owner actually backed me up on this, much to my surprise and soothed the other’s ruffled feathers by saying the current administration had put even more strict guidelines in place. The two “Kim” and “Terry” (obviously not their real names) started bitching about how the President had also stopped funding the extended food programs through the schools. Meaning that the schools will no longer have the money to provide food to “needy” children on the weekends and stop the summer lunch programs. Of course, Donald Trump was the most evil person for not feeding those poor kids. At this point, I started to tell them about what my husband saw at a Sam’s Club the first of the month a few years ago. I got as far as, “……here were these Welfare Mommas” and “Kim” cut me off in anger saying she’s not going to “allow that kind of talk in this space” that we weren’t going to talk politics. We’d already been talking politics, but that must have been OK because most of it was Trump bashing. What she didn’t want to hear was reality and truth about what’s really going on. Here’s what I was going to tell them: A few years ago my husband, Bear, had had to pick up some things at Sam’s Club the first of the month. When he got in line he noticed there were several registers open and each had long lines filled mostly with women with their EBT cards out. Most of these women had flatbed carts instead of just shopping carts and those flatbed carts were filled with crab legs and lobster tails. When Bear got to the register he quietly asked the checker if this was normal and she said it was. These women were using their Food Stamps to buy themselves luxury food items knowing that the schools would feed their kids!!

Now, I know this can’t be a local phenomenon just in western Iowa, so you can guarantee this is going on where you live in America. Your taxes are being used to, basically, feed these “needy” children twice so their mommas can have crab legs and lobster tails several times a month. For those of you who like crab and lobster; when was the last time you had it? Do you eat it more than once a month? Better yet, not have to pay for it yourself!?

Back to my friends. I used to really fit in with the “Hippy Pagan People”, 18 years ago I wanted to go take a workshop on being an “Eco-Terrorist”, learning how to effectively chain myself to trees and things. I couldn’t afford the cost or the trip to California. 😦      Seven years ago, my friends were “Liberals” and hadn’t been so badly brainwashed yet. Now, they have become the narrow fanatics who believe the propaganda being broadcast by the major news outlets. They honestly believe that Donald Trump was elected only because of the Russians, even though the facts don’t show this. He didn’t win the popular vote and the Electoral College system can’t be hacked. In almost a year of investigating, no branch of the government has found any evidence of Trump colluding with those evil, sneaky Russians. Next. One man, no matter who he is, can affect the Stock Market. It’s being propped up by cheap money from the Federal Reserve and manipulated by High Frequency Trading algorithms. Parameters are input into the programs and when those triggers are hit, the computers sell or trade the stocks; and either sell a short or long position. That’s what’s affecting the markets, not one man. They howled and wailed that the President is a “misogynist”, a “racist” and a “xenophobe”. There is no evidence for these loaded battle cries of the Social Justice Warriors. Yeah, he is a Chauvinist, like a lot of men his age, but that doesn’t mean he “hates” women. Was/Is he disrespectful towards women? Again, yes, like a lot of men his age. The only evidence I’ve ever heard used to show he’s “racist” is he wants to build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out. Let’s see……wanting to keep criminals out of our country is bad…? And Yes. They ARE criminals because they are illegal immigrants. “Illegal” means against the law, meaning they are breaking the law to come into this country, which makes them criminals. They come in, illegally, won’t learn the dominant language so they can’t find work, which means they have to receive welfare of some sort. They’ve never paid a dime into these programs and never will. Why are they, then, entitled to receive any of this money??? So, the President uses his Constitutional Power to protect our country from people who will come in, drain resources and not put anything back and he’s a racist. I see…. He also wants to protect this country (again a Constitutional mandate) from people who are willing to blow themselves up in order to kill us or steal a truck/van in order to run us over, he tries to do this by signing an order (again, within Constitutional Law) to temporarily stop allowing people into our country from a few countries known to hate Americans. Obummer  Obama drew up the list even!! Yet, Donald Trump is a xenophobe. OK… You know, this Order wants to increase the “vetting” procedures on people wanting to come into this country from those countries where the people are known to hate us. Wow….that is just ssooooo unreasonable! It’s awful! Imagine, a President who wants to protect those of us whom he’s responsible to protect! Who does Donald Trump think he is??!!??  :steps off soapbox:

So, what did I learn at camp this year? I learned that I don’t fit in with people who I used to consider friends. My views on what I see going on in my country are diametrically opposed to friends I’ve known for over a decade. And these “friends” expected me to listen to their opinions, but reacted in anger and refused to allow me to express mine. So much for Freedom of Speech. Yeah, try and shut the Political Marxists up. You’ll be hit by such a shit storm of meaningless platitudes and empty phrases, not to mention SJW buzzwords, that you won’t know up from down.

If you disagree with anything I’ve said, don’t just throw meaningless phrases and emotional trigger words at me. Show me proof that I’m wrong and I’ll show you the proof you are.

WARNING!! “Girl Talk”

GUYS!! Stop here!! This post is about having periods!!!  I suppose I shouldn’t have used red for the font color, but, oh well…. 😱

Ladies, lets be honest, “End of the World” doesn’t mean “End of Womanhood”. We will still have all the biological functions going on: monthly cycle, menopause and pregnancy. But. How will we handle all this without all the convenience products we’ve grown dependent on?

First lets address those of you who are still having your monthly cycles. Lets say you use tampons to stop your flow. For the sake of simplicity you’re 20, use 10 tampons a month and are likely to have your period until you’re 50. So, that’s 10 tampons x 12 months= 120 tampons a year. 120 x 30 years of periods remaining= 3,600 tampons needed until menopause. There’s a sobering number! Even if the disruption lasts only a year, you’re still talking about 120 tampons needed. You will need quite a bit of storage space for all of those, even if you buy the brands without the applicators, you’re taking up shelf space that could be used for other hygiene products or food. If you are using pads, you could easily take up 4 times the shelf space. And what about all the rest of the products advertisers tell us we need? You know, “vaginal washes”, powders and all that other garbage they tell us we need to mask “odor” (Oh, NO!! Can’t smell like a woman!!) Sorry, that’s a huge pet peeve of mine and another rant…. And, don’t forget the Midol and Pamprin for all those “side effects”!

  So, how to handle this monthly “curse”?? First of all, as a Pagan (I’ve never hidden this) I have a huge problem with calling our menstrual cycle a “curse”. It is the proof of our Super Power. We, alone, hold to the secret to create life. Yes, we need a man’s “input”, but their part ends when they pull out. So, let’s change our thinking on this Super Power of our’s. :steps off soapbox: Unless you want to store your tampons or pads in a place where they will stay clean and dry; what else can you do? Let’s reach back in time to an era before Playtex. What I know about this is straight from my late maternal grandmother who passed away in the early 80’s at the age of 95. Nana told me there was a stack of rags kept in the outhouse (you read that right, outhouse) and during “that time of the month” her mother (my great-grandmother) would put a bucket of Borax and water in there, too. Every time one of them used the outhouse, they would put the used rag in the bucket and replace it with a clean one. This is why one of the slang terms is “being on the rag”. In researching this, I found multiple books and websites that claim using cloth pads stops cramps. By the time I did this, I was 6 years post menopause and can’t verify this. However, that isn’t the subject of this post, I’ll leave it to you women to do your own research and draw your own conclusions. 

If SHTF (Shit Hit The Fan) and you’re in a secure location, making your own pads is a viable option. What I’ve read is to use soft cotton baby diapers. Cut them into stripes that will fit into your underpants, fold the length in half and pin them from underneath with a couple three diaper pins. Yes, I know, this sounds like a hassle, you still have to wash them and dry them and those PINS what a pain!! That could be literal, too!! However, think about all the waste from pads and tampons that will have to be disposed of. The smell alone would be problematic, it will draw dozens of flies and possibly scavenging animals, like feral dogs. Not to mention the rotting blood will be a major breeding ground for diseases. So, that makes the use of “rags” a much smarter and safer idea. And in all honesty, with the way things could change, that could either be the least gross thing you’ll do or just another in a long string of gross things! 

Since menopause brings an end to all the above, there’s really nothing to “take care of”. As an Herbalist, I didn’t use hormone replacement therapy when I went through menopause a few years ago, the “hot flashes” were only a few a day and ended after about a year. Compared to my periods, that was a piece of cake!

Next post, I’ll try and tackle pregnancy…..

Time is Running Out

 

The financial experts I’ve been listening to on YouTube are all saying the same exact thing: America is in a recession, there is worse coming, that could be in September when the federal fiscal year ends and what is coming is going to make 2008 look like a bounced check.

So, what does this mean for you if you’re not in America? There are dozens of banks across the globe that are hanging on by their fingernails and any one of them could start a global collapse the likes of which no society has ever witnessed in the history of the human race.

Since I’m an American and live in America, I’m going to talk about what this could mean for Americans. I can only talk about what I know, but there isn’t much difference between any country that has a central banking system, anymore. First of all, do not for one second, think your central bank is part of your government, because its not. A central bank is a private, for profit, institution. Period. And they are looting your country. So, why bring this up now? Because they’ve pretty much gotten everything there is to get and they’re going to either crash the economy or let it crash so they can rebuild it and start over. For decades our governments have “kicked the can down the road”, “borrowing” money from all the various programs so they have the funds to pay the interest on the money they borrowed from the central bank and keep all those popular programs funded, like Social Security. Why does the government have to borrow money? What about all the taxes we pay? You might ask. The short answer is: So there’s currency. Every dollar Americans, and America itself, spends was borrowed from the Federal Reserve Bank and has interest owed on it. Our lifestyles today have been bought and paid for using our children’s prosperity. Let that sink in for a moment. That $7 latté you bought on your way to work this morning was paid for by your child. Taxes aren’t enough to pay for all the obligations the government has, but that doesn’t put actual currency (money) into circulation. It doesn’t “print”, create, the money you use to pay for that latte.

Despite what you’re hearing on the mainstream (social) media the economy isn’t having little hiccups, housing sales aren’t doing well, Wall Street is a lie the S&P that so recently broke 20,000 is mostly tech stocks and that high was from about 10 stocks that make up almost 50% of the index, Apple and Amazon being 2 of them.

What this means for you is this: I started this blog to not only teach you how to prepare yourself and your family for the bad times that are coming, but to also warn you when those times are coming. They’re coming sooner rather than later. Don’t let that happy bullshit being thrown at you by mainstream media, and all the fools who listento it stick to you. The Globalists who’ve been running things want to keep us in the dark until they’ve wrung every last bit of profit out of us. Yes, that sounds paranoid, but the quickest way to discredit those who are trying to spread the truth is to name call and say they’re “crazy”, or “don’t have both oars in the water”, not “playing with a full deck” and other phrases that make us sound sick or stupid. But, maybe I and the alt-right media are wrong, you’ve taken everything to heart and stocked up and nothing happens. What’s the worst that will happen to you? You have a lot of extras? Yay! You don’t have to buy it in the coming months. Wow. That would suck… However, if we’re right, then you and your family will be ahead of those around you. You won’t be one of the people standing in blocks long lines waiting to buy toilet paper only to find out the person in front of you just bought the last roll. Or, things have gotten so bad that one roll of toilet paper costs $50 worth of silver. Then what would you do?

About Dogs and Stuff

Sorry to keep dropping out of sight for long stretches of time, it’s really no way to build a readership. Dad’s death in Feb has hit me harder than I thought it would. Now, his 92nd birthday would have been Sunday…..

Last Wednesday Bear and I were accepted as foster parents by a local German Shepherd rescue and got our first two dogs the next day! 😯  These 2 are an awful story (I suppose most rescue dogs aren’t from good homes), they are brother and sister, pure black shepherds and their douche bag former owner was breeding them! You read that right, but feel free to read that last sentence again. He was a felon so, I guess it’s no surprise he had no ethics, when he went back to prison he’d left these poor babies tied in the yard. His parole officer talked him into giving them up and she boarded them until she could find a group to take them.

The first thing the rescue did was get them both “fixed” and both dogs are all healed up. Her stitches came out Tuesday. They will never be bred again, but there’s no way to track down all the people that bought puppies from him the last 3 or 4 years.

Our job, now, is to show these two babies how to be a house pet. Rhett (they named them we didn’t) has been working “hard” learning how to cover as many square inches of a king size bed with his fur and Raquel is learning how to be a lady. She isn’t that interested in the bed, but it could be that he just isn’t leaving her much room! These two didn’t know how to react to loves, they would stand there but wouldn’t really do anything. Sunday morning, Bear, got down on the floor with Rhett and just snuggled, petted, scratched and praised the dog. Rhett sure figured it out fast and likes it! He can’t get enough of loves now! She’s a little more reserved, but still likes to be loved on. Some families are going to get two good dogs! The rescue is going to try and send them to two different homes. I’m not sure how that’s going to work out, but we’ll see.

You might think that as Preppers we will be teaching them to be big bad guard dogs and nothing can be further from the truth. We don’t agree with turning dogs mean and won’t do that to any dog we have, or will have. If a dog feels a place is home and feels you are part of their “pack”, they will defend it. After being here a few days, these two are already barking aggressively at people walking down the road by our house. Our former dogs, when they were 12 years old and one was crippled with arthritis, killed a badger that was driven from its burrow in a levy during some flooding. Our dogs lived, the badger did not. That’s what loyal dogs will do to protect their home and pack.

That’s the main idea I want to get across in this post, as responsible adults, people and preppers and you want to have a dog or dogs for “protection”, you don’t need to turn them into vicious killers for them to be a good watchdog. They just need to feel loved, safe and part of a pack and will fight to the death for you. The bonus for your family is you’ll have a dog who loves you and you can trust around even the youngest child.

Prepping For Addicts

First off: I have a degree in Addictive Studies and worked as a Substance Abuse Counselor for a time. I also received treatment for alcohol abuse almost 30 years ago. I experimented with numerous different drugs when I was younger, also. So, when I’m talking about drug and alcohol abuse and addiction, I know what I’m talking about. For clarification on terms: “Addiction” means a set of maladaptive behaviors revolving around ANY substance. “Abuse” means just that, abusing ANY substance. And, “Dependence” means the person is physically dependent on ANY substance. Examples of the above terms would be: Using alcohol to avoid dealing with cruel words spoken by peers. Or lying about giving up coffee on a diet and then sneaking up to a coffee shop for a mug or six. Smoking cigarettes for 10 years, giving them up in a day and having no problems. A prescription of pain medications says, “Take 1 every 4 hours, by mouth”, you are crushing them and snorting the powder every 2 hours. I will be using the term “Addict” as a generalization for a person exhibiting any of the above problems.

OK. So. Now that that’s clear……

The obvious problem with having someone who’s addicted in your family is they are pretty much, completely, undependable! And you know I’m right about that!! Without proper treatment to address the underlaying reasons for the maladaptive behaviors the person’s chances of “recovery” are slim to none. When a disaster happens and pharmacies are closed, liquor stores are empty and all stores are out of tobacco products; where will the Addict find their “drug” of choice? I can’t see street level dealers having product for long and if currency is no good, how will the drugs be purchased? There’s a thought that should cost you sleep.

Let’s back up for a minute. Take a better look at what I wrote in the last paragraph. You and I both know that stores are going to be cleaned out of tobacco, beer, wine and liquor and probably even before the food is gone. Pharmacies will be cleaned out of anything that will get people high. Think about that for a minute. Think about the scenes of rioters smashing store windows and stealing everything they can get their hands on. New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, there was no power and those idiots were stealing flat-screen TVs and game consoles. Really??? Their houses were, more than likely, destroyed. Where were they planning on putting this stuff? This is the mentality of people that will be roaming the streets in every single large city in the country when the SHTF. And make no mistake, it will be hitting the end of summer or early fall. Add to those pricks all the Addicts who will be desperate for a fix, hit, drink or shot and things will be out of control. If law enforcement is still on the job, they will be badly out numbered. Will your Addict be among the Zombie Hoards roaming the city?

If your Addict does decide to quit, do you know what their withdrawals will be like? Caffeine will be just a headache and can be dealt with with a bottle of aspirin that has some caffeine. Central Nervous System Depressants, like opioids, Tylenol 3s or 4s, will be hyper. Usually. Central Nervous System Stimulants, like cocaine or meth, the person will sleep. Usually. However. Alcohol detox can be fatal, especially if the person has been abusing it for years. Heavy alcohol use can lead to seizures during detox. Are you equipped to deal with that?

If the Addict doesn’t want to quit, what will you be facing then? If they are an “alcoholic” and there’s a good stockpile of booze chances are they will be drinking. I’ve been there and dealt with them while I was counseling and the story is the same, if there’s something alcoholic to drink, they can’t help themselves they’ll drink. Same with any drug actually. If there’s a situation where your home/compound is being attacked; can you trust that they’ll be sober enough to pick up a gun and use it safely? Heavy users of alcohol will get real bad shakes even after a few hours of not drinking. They will not be able to handle a firearm at all. An opiate addict or someone abusing marijuana will be too “out of it” to be able to see clearly. I’ve been high on pot in my youth and I couldn’t focus enough to even see the TV right in front of me. When I was out of beer and cigarettes and low on money, I’d go out to my parent’s house and lie to mom to get money. Other people have done a lot worse.

During desperate and dangerous times, the last thing you need is a desperate person who is unable to think clearly at your back. Don’t think for one minute they’ll “get over it” or “get with the program”, they can’t and won’t. You can’t talk them down or out of it. You can’t “love them enough”, either. If any of those methods worked, we wouldn’t be talking about this now. This isn’t your fault (no matter what they say) and you are not responsible for them either (despite what they say). You’re best option is to get them into rehab right now, but that may not be possible.

What you may have to face is, during a disaster when you and your family are just barely hanging on and the Addict is taking time and resources away from your basic survival, they may have to go. Especially if the Addict is sneaking out and back in to obtain drugs. What if the Addict was on perimeter patrol and left to get drugs? That stretch of fence will be wide open, that will leave the rest of the group/family exposed to unimaginable danger.

Central Nervous System Stimulants can cause the abuser to become dangerously psychotic, I talked to meth users who told me they wouldn’t sleep for weeks. That kind of sleep deprivation leads to numerous psychological issues, like paranoia, hallucinations and violent outbursts. Not who I want in my house when there are major threats outside.

Even though I said you might have to kick the Addict out, I really am not telling you what to do. I was saying it is something you might have to do. How you handle your situation is up to you and your family/group to decide. This is also not a complete list of withdrawal symptoms, using behaviors or situations that an Addict can have, do, or create. Ultimately, my hope is that you do not have any form of an Addict within your family or group and that this has been a waste of your time to read. If that isn’t the case, you need to make an honest assessment of what you could be dealing with in the future. You need to do this sooner rather than later. Please.

Prepping Disabled

This is something I touched on a little in my post Family and Friends, in that post I talked about elderly family members. But, I didn’t cover family members with other disabilities. This is going to sound really harsh, but any person in your life who depends on electricity to survive, like a ventilator, has a slim chance of surviving after a major collapse. Zero chance if the power grid goes down for any reason.

What you’re going to have to figure into your prepping plans is what to do for disabled family members. I know, “disabled” covers a huge span of issues and degrees of severity. Your plan of action is going to depend entirely on your situation and how self sufficient your family member is. A former neighbor has a son with Down Syndrome, he functions about the same as a 5 year old child. He can help with simple tasks and as long as someone is there he knows and trusts, he might do alright. A current neighbor has advanced Multiple Sclerosis, she needs a power lift to get in and out of bed and the bathtub; she requires oxygen at night or she stops breathing. Gail stands zero chance of surviving long-term without electricity.

Disabled includes damage we’ve inflicted on our bodies, too. My back is a total mess due to work related abuse, I have trouble doing much and require powerful medications to do what I can. I couldn’t walk to our bug out location, no way. Once my medications run out, I have no idea what I’ll do. Harvest “ditch weed” is my only option. My husband, Bear, blew out his knee a few years ago. He’s put off surgery due to our financial situation. We’ve been able to keep it from getting worse with Glucosamine/Chondroitin/MSM blend, but its not healed. Between the 2 of us, we make a whole person! We belong to a group that knows our limitations and they don’t have a problem with them.

What you need to do while things are still relatively quiet and stable is, sit down and go over just what health/physical/mental/emotional issues are present with you, your family and anyone you will be bringing into your circle after a disaster. Be honest in your assessment of your own capabilities and limitations. Don’t think you’ll be able to “tough it out” or “get through it” unless you’ve been doing so already. The stress and added workload post disaster will be beyond anything any of us in America have had to deal with before. It isn’t the time to find your limitations and to suddenly toughen up. Family members will need to same evaluation, if you have a family member who has physical limitations, be prepared to pick up any slack and make sure everyone else is on board with it, too. With your friends you can be a little more ruthless and by that I mean, look at them as if they were just some strangers you heard about on TV. Would you want them with you? If they have limitations, what are those? Do you need or want the extra stress and burden of the extra workload?

Mental illness is a whole other subject. What is the diagnosis? How stable are they on and off medications? What is the level of comprehension? Are they able to care for themselves? Will you be able to trust them?? Trust them alone with any firearms? Would you be able to trust them to “watch your back”?

There are probably a couple dozen more questions you could come up with on top of mine. These questions have to be asked and honest answers have to be sought in order to move forward. Only you can answer those questions, but, remember, those answers will affect everyone you’re responsible for.

But, What is “Prepping”??-Start Here!

Someone who has heard the words, “prepping” or “prepper”, probably won’t know what those terms means. Let alone all the acronyms like, “SHTF”, “TEOTWAWKI”, “BOB”, “BOL”, “WROL”, to name a few. If you’re one of these folks, then, please, read on and feel free to leave a comment if you have a question. Or, you can email, too.

The word “prepping” comes from the word “preparing” and “prepare/d”. Being prepared to take care of yourself and your family and standing on your own. We don’t trust the government to take care of us (to varying degrees). Sadly, only the really extreme people make it to the news, like Ammon Bundy and his group taking over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns Oregon last winter. Then there are the people who are virtually exhibitionists that go on the TV show, “Doomsday Preppers”. Sadly, the producers and editors of that show end up making the people look like paranoid idiots and fools. According the the people who’ve been filmed, the show is at their home for days filming, the producers will ask them to preform certain tasks, like, one segment where they had a semi drop off a load of long-term storage food after dark in an effort to make her look sneaky and paranoid. Yeah….no one will notice that! However, that is not how the majority of Preppers think or act. We have people within the subculture from the entire spectrum, from the casual to the hardcore; people who still have some trust and faith in the government to those who don’t trust the government to take out their trash.

But, what does being prepared mean??? The answer: different things to different people. *I’m not getting into the origins of prepping, because I don’t think it’s really important. Yes, its laid the groundwork and set some of the standards, but I believe the lifestyle has evolved beyond its origins. Or, what I think the origins might be.

The quick answer is, it’s being ready, willing and able to take care of yourself and your family in the event of some form of disaster. Be it a major storm like a hurricane, flood or tornado; an earthquake; a major terrorist attack; or even losing your job and being unable to fine another one right away (very real possibility nowadays). FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency even recommends the American People get prepared, Are You Ready? An In-Depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness. The Feds even started a website on it, Ready.gov. Clever name…… Better yet, do a web search for “prepping” and you will be amazed/shocked/overwhelmed by the results. Using bing and just the word “prepping” I got “3,220,000 RESULTS” including a dictionary definition of the word. I try to avoid Google since it came out that they employ over 100,000 contract laborers to sift through websites and censor ones that don’t meet the government’s narrative and what the Leftist Political Marxists say is “correct”. Let’s see….curious now…. OK. Google came back with “About 29,900,000 results”, it starts with the same dictionary definition, but the order of the results is very different. The top one on bing, a “how to get started” site is #6 on Google. Just sayin’…… *Just had an email come in from a YouTube channel I’m subscribed to that’s saying bing is censoring results, too. I, personally, believe this is the result of Obama turning over control of the Internet to the U.N.

You can get as involved as you want to, buying a week’s worth of food and water for your family all the way up to forming your own group, buying land, building a bunker and having monthly training sessions . And there’s a huge variety of points along the spectrum in between. However, the basic idea is still the same, being able to take care of yourself and those you love in the event of some event. Have enough food to feed everyone for at least a week, in case the stores are closed, have enough clean drinking water for everyone for at least a week, have enough washing water, having enough of the prescription medications everyone is on, make sure you have a fully stocked first aid kit, have a back stock of all the hygiene products everyone uses and have a way to protect yourselves. This last is very important! You may hate guns, but be assured, those who want what you have won’t share your feelings. And you won’t win a gun fight with feelings. How will you call the police if the phones aren’t working or the government has hit the “Kill Switch” on the cell networks? Even if you can make a call, if things are that bad, do you think the police will have time to come stop every robbery? No. They won’t.

Lastly, why Preppers are reluctant to rely on any form of government. The Federal Government? Two words, “New Orleans” post Katrina. FEMA worked out well for the residents of New Orleans, didn’t they? The majority of the Federal Government’s money is going to service the 20 trillion dollar debt and there isn’t enough left over to fund all the dozens of agencies, except the military. Local governments rely on federal money to fund their emergency preparedness units. The same federal government that can’t even fund their own emergency preparedness agency. See why we have our doubts about government help? That’s not even getting into the “FEMA Camps” that people claim have been built. These are reported to be little better than the Nazi Concentration Camps where millions of Jews were murdered. I’m not saying this is true or not, I have no direct knowledge about any “camps”. My reason for mentioning it is this, if even half of what is claimed is true, then residents of an area will be herded into an area that is surrounded by barbed wire fencing topped with razor wire (think: prison); forced to live in a barracks like building with dozens of people you don’t know and no way to secure your belongings or your privacy; your Civil Rights taken away; and any control over life is, also, taken away. The Centers for Disease Control have gained the ability to detain any person in an area where there is an epidemic, hold them without their consent for as long as they want and force this person into receiving medical treatments against their wishes. This includes children and the parents won’t be notified where their child/ren is/are and they won’t be allowed to speak for their child/ren or allowed to give or withhold their consent and any medical treatments. Does this sound like someplace you’d want to be? Does this sound like the Constitutional Republic the Founders and countless people fought and died for? If you don’t know the answer to that last question, it’s time for you to read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Point of distinction: The Constitution and the Bill of Rights did not “give” us any Rights. Those were seen as being already ours, what The Constitution and the Bill of Rights do is prevent any level of Government from Infringing on those Rights. Meaning, mess with, limit, require licensing or pass any laws against those rights. Look it up. Buy books, borrow books and read them. Learn the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Stand up and speak out when you see your Rights being infringed upon. Wake up before it’s too late, because, people, it almost is. The Government has been chipping away at those Rights for decades a little bit at a time for any number of reasons. The big one is to “protect” us from “terrorists”. That is an old, old ploy. Create a “Bad Guy”, whip the citizens into a frenzy of fear, and then, start taking away their Freedom for their “protection”. The citizens are so afraid, at that point, that they are willing to give their Freedoms up. These “measures” are, the citizens are told, only temporary, just until the “threat” is over, but it never seems to be over and after a while, the citizens get comfortable with their new situation and then just forget that they gave anything in the first place. Then, the Government has to take more “measures” to keep the citizens “safe” and the cycle starts all over again. Sound familiar??

I hope this will help explain “Prepping” and gives you the motivation to read more and maybe start getting prepared to take care of yourself and your loved ones. I don’t care if a man or a woman is reading this right now. I’d started this with the thought of showing women that this isn’t just a “man’s world”, this is something that men only do. But, it doesn’t really matter, just so long as you learn something and start taking some steps to get prepared.