1) Dr. Charles
F. Stanley's 30 Life Principles
Life Principle 25
God blesses us so that
we might bless others.
How would you complete the
following three statements?
1. God saved me because _________________.
2. God’s purpose for me is _______________.
3. I am most like Jesus when I ________________.
This little quiz is not to put
you on the spot, but it is to set the proper framework for this life principle:2. God’s purpose for me is _______________.
3. I am most like Jesus when I ________________.
1. God saved me because
He loves me.
The sole reason God sent His
Son to this world to die for our sins was because He loved us. When we
acknowledge our sin and need for a Savior, He forgives us, grants us eternal
life, and gives us the gift of His Holy Spirit out of His immeasurable love and
grace. There is no other reason.
Many people seem to believe that God saves a man or
woman because of the person’s good works or service. Nothing could be further
from the truth. No amount or type of service can earn salvation. The apostle
Paul made this very clear when he wrote: “For by grace you have been saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a
result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8, 9). Even
the faith by which we believe that God forgives us and saves us is a divine
gift that flows from His love!
This point is critical to understand. Any good we do
is in response to
God’s gifts of salvation, eternal life, and the Holy Spirit—never in order to
earn, win, or warrant salvation.
2. God’s purpose for me
is to bring Him glory.
God saved you and me so that
we would serve as examples to others of His love and mercy at work in and
through a human life.Many people seem to think the only reason for salvation is so that a person will go to heaven when he dies. Eternal life is part of God’s plan of forgiveness, but that is not the sole reason for our salvation. God saved us so that we each might reflect His nature—that we might be His people on this earth, doing the kinds of works that Jesus Himself would do if He were walking in our shoes, through our world, during our lifetime. He desires to manifest His character through our personalities and giftedness.
When we allow His Holy Spirit to work in us and
through us to others, we become vessels of His love in action. We begin to
reflect His compassion, love, and mercy to others. And in so doing, we become
His witnesses. We bring credit, honor, and glory to Him.
3. I am most like Jesus
when I serve others.
The foremost characteristic of the life of Jesus
Christ was and is service.
We are most like Him when we serve as He served.
Many seem to think that a
person is most like Jesus when he preaches like Jesus preached, teaches like
Jesus taught, heals like Jesus healed, or performs miracles like Jesus
performed miracles. They look only at the outward manifestation of a person’s
witness and ministry.
They need to look beyond the outer manifestation to
the motivation for Jesus’ life. That motivation was always love. Jesus
preached, taught, healed, and performed miracles in order to help others, never
to call attention to Himself. He poured out His very life so that others might
be saved. Paul wrote, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though
He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty
might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).
God calls us to serve one
another just as Jesus did. He didn’t save you or call you to service so that
you might be exalted, praised, glorified, or put on a pedestal. He saved you so
you could serve Him and others. When we do this, we honor Him with our lives.
The most important thing you can do outside of accepting Christ as your Savior
is to give your life to Him and allow Him to lead you each day.Some mistakenly think that what we do is unimportant to God, but this is far from true. He has a plan for each one of us. When we make a decision to walk by faith, He will reveal it to us. And that plan always includes service and dedication to Him and to those He brings into our lives.
God loved us so that we might love others. He blesses us so that we might bless others. That’s what the Christian life is all about.
2) The 30-Day
Reading List That Will Lead You to Becoming a Knowledgeable Libertarian by
Robert Wenzel
Everything You Love You
Owe to Capitalism
I'm sure that you have had this
experience before, or something similar to it. You are sitting at lunch in a
nice restaurant or perhaps a hotel. Waiters are coming and going. The food is
fantastic. The conversation about all things is going well. You talk about the
weather, music, movies, health, trivialities in the news, kids, and so on. But
then the topic turns to economics, and things change.
You are not the aggressive type so
you don't proclaim the merits of the free market immediately. You wait and let
the others talk. Their biases against business appear right away in the
repetition of the media's latest calumny against the market, such as that gas
station owners are causing inflation by jacking up prices to pad their pockets
at our expense, or that Wal-Mart is, of course, the worst possible thing that
can ever happen to a community.
You begin to offer a corrective,
pointing out the other side. Then the truth emerges in the form of a naïve if
definitive announcement from one person: "Well, I suppose I'm really a
socialist at heart." Others nod in agreement.
On one hand there is nothing to
say, really. You are surrounded by the blessings of capitalism. The buffet
table, which you and your lunch partners only had to walk in a building to
find, has a greater variety of food at a cheaper price than that which was
available to any living person — king, lord, duke, plutocrat, or pope — in
almost all of the history of the world. Not even fifty years ago would this
have been imaginable.
All of history has been defined by
the struggle for food. And yet that struggle has been abolished, not just for
the rich but for everyone living in developed economies. The ancients, peering
into this scene, might have assumed it to be Elysium. Medieval man conjured up
such scenes only in visions of Utopia. Even in the late 19th century, the most gilded palace of the
richest industrialist required a vast staff and immense trouble to come
anywhere near approximating it.
We owe this scene to capitalism. To
put it differently, we owe this scene to centuries of capital accumulation at
the hands of free people who have put capital to work on behalf of economic
innovations, at once competing with others for profit and cooperating with
millions upon millions of people in an ever-expanding global network of the
division of labor. The savings, investments, risks, and work of hundreds of
years and uncountable numbers of free people have gone into making this scene
possible, thanks to the ever-remarkable capacity for a society developing under
conditions of liberty to achieve the highest aspirations of the society's
members.
And yet, sitting on the other side
of the table are well-educated people who imagine that the way to end the
world's woes is through socialism. Now, people's definitions of socialism
differ, and these persons would probably be quick to say that they do not mean
the Soviet Union or anything like that. That was socialism in name only, I
would be told. And yet, if socialism does mean anything at all today, it
imagines that there can be some social improvement resulting from the political
movement to take capital out of private hands and put it into the hands of the
state. Other tendencies of socialism include the desire to see labor organized
along class lines and given some sort of coercive power over how their
employers' property is used. It might be as simple as the desire to put a cap
on the salaries of CEOs, or it could be as extreme as the desire to abolish all
private property, money, and even marriage.
Whatever the specifics of the case
in question, socialism always means overriding the free decisions of
individuals and replacing that capacity for decision making with an overarching
plan by the state. Taken far enough, this mode of thought won't just spell an
end to opulent lunches. It will mean the end of what we all know as
civilization itself. It would plunge us back to a primitive state of existence,
living off hunting and gathering in a world with little art, music, leisure, or
charity. Nor is any form of socialism capable of providing for the needs of the
world's six billion people, so the population would shrink dramatically and
quickly and in a manner that would make every human horror ever known seem mild
by comparison. Nor is it possible to divorce socialism from totalitarianism,
because if you are serious about ending private ownership of the means of
production, you have to be serious about ending freedom and creativity too. You
will have to make the whole of society, or what is left of it, into a prison.
In short, the wish for socialism is
a wish for unparalleled human evil. If we really understood this, no one would
express casual support for it in polite company. It would be like saying, you
know, there is really something to be said for malaria and typhoid and dropping
atom bombs on millions of innocents.
Do the people sitting across the
table really wish for this? Certainly not. So what has gone wrong here? Why can
these people not see what is obvious? Why can't people sitting amidst
market-created plenty, enjoying all the fruits of capitalism every minute of life,
not see the merit of the market but rather wish for something that is a proven
disaster?
What we have here is a failure of
understanding. That is to say, a failure to connect causes with effects. This
is a wholly abstract idea. Knowledge of cause and effect does not come to us by
merely looking around a room, living in a certain kind of society, or observing
statistics. You can study roomfuls of data, read a thousand treatises on
history, or plot international GDP figures on a graph for a living, and yet the
truth about cause and effect can still be evasive. You still might miss the
point that it is capitalism that gives rise to prosperity and freedom. You
might still be tempted by the notion of socialism as savior.
Let me take you back to the years
1989 and 1990. These were the years that most of us remember as the time when
socialism collapsed in Eastern Europe and Russia. Events of that time flew in
the face of all predications on the right that these were permanent regimes
that would never change unless they were bombed back to the Stone Age. On the
left, it was widely believed, even in those times, that these societies were
actually doing quite well and would eventually pass the United States and
Western Europe in prosperity, and, by some measures, they were already better
off than us.
And yet it collapsed. Even the
Berlin Wall, that symbol of oppression and slavery, was torn down by the people
themselves. It was not only glorious to see socialism collapse. It was
thrilling from a libertarian point of view to see how states themselves can
dissolve. They may have all the guns and all the power, and the people have
none of those, and yet, when the people themselves decide that they will no
longer be governed, the state has few options left. It eventually collapses
amid a society-wide refusal to believe its lies any longer.
When these closed societies
suddenly became open, what did we see? We saw lands that time forgot. The
technology was backwards and broken. The food was scarce and disgusting. The
medical care was abysmal. The people were unhealthy. Property was polluted. It
was also striking to see what had happened to the culture under socialism. Many
generations had been raised under a system built on power and lies, and so the
cultural infrastructure that we take for granted was not secure. Such notions
as trust, promise, truth, honesty, and planning for the future — all pillars of
commercial culture — had become distorted and confused by the ubiquity and
persistence of the statist curse.
Why am I going through these
details about this period, which most of you surely do remember? Simply to say
this: most people did not see what you saw. You saw the failure of socialism.
This is what I saw. This is what Rothbard saw. This is what anyone who had been
exposed to the teachings of economics — to the elementary rules concerning
cause and effect in society — saw. But this is not what the ideological left
saw. The headlines in the socialist publications themselves proclaimed the
death of undemocratic Stalinism and looked forward to the creation of a new
democratic socialism in these countries.
As for regular people neither
attached to the socialist idea nor educated in economics, it might have
appeared as nothing more than a glorious vanquishing of America's foreign
policy enemies. We built more bombs than they did, so they finally gave in, the
way a kid says "uncle" on a playground. Maybe some saw it as a
victory of the U.S. constitution over weird and foreign systems of despotism.
Or perhaps it was a victory for the cause of something like free speech over
censorship, or the triumph of ballots over bullets.
Now, if the proper lessons of the
collapse had been conveyed, we would have seen the error of all forms of
government planning. We would have seen that a voluntary society will
outperform a coerced one anytime. We might see how ultimately artificial and
fragile are all systems of statism compared to the robust permanence of a
society built on free exchange and capitalist ownership. And there is another
point: the militarism of the cold war had only ended up prolonging the period
of socialism by providing these evil governments the chance to stimulate
unfortunate nationalist impulses that distracted their domestic populations
from the real problem. It was not the cold war that killed socialism; rather,
once the cold war had exhausted itself, these governments collapsed of their
own weight from internal rather than external pressure.
In short, if the world had drawn
the lessons we should have from these events, there would be no more need for
economic education and no more need even for the bulk of what the Mises
Institute does. In one great moment of history, the contest between capitalism
and central planning would have been decided for all time.
I must say that it was more of a
shock to me and my colleagues than it should have been, that the essential
economic message was lost on most people. Indeed, it made very little
difference in the political spectrum at all. The contest between capitalism and
central planning continued as it always had, and even intensified here at home.
The socialists among us, if they experienced any setback at all, bounded right
back, strong as ever, if not more so. If you doubt it, consider that it only
took a few months for these groups to start kvetching about the horrible
onslaught that was being wrought by the unleashing of capitalism in Eastern
Europe, Russia, and China. We began hearing complaints about the rise of a
hideous consumerism in these countries, about the exploitation of workers at
the hands of capitalists, about the rise of the garish super rich. Piles and
piles of news stories appeared about the sad plight of unemployed state
workers, who, though loyal to the principles of socialism their entire lives,
were now being turned out onto the streets to fend for themselves.
Not even an event as spectacular as
the spontaneous meltdown of a superpower and all its client states was enough
to impart the message of economic freedom. And the truth is that it was not
necessary. The whole of our world is covered with lessons about the merit of
economic liberty over central planning. Our everyday lives are dominated by the
glorious products of the market, which we all gladly take for granted. We can
open up our web browsers and tour an electronic civilization that the market
created, and note that government never did anything useful at all by
comparison.
We are also inundated daily by the
failures of the state. We complain constantly that the educational system is
broken, that the medical sector is oddly distorted, that the post office is
unaccountable, that the police abuse their power, that the politicians have
lied to us, that tax dollars are stolen, that whatever bureaucracy we have to
deal with is inhumanly unresponsive. We note all this. But far fewer are
somehow able to connect the dots and see the myriad ways in which daily life
confirms that the market radicals like Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, and Rothbard were
correct in their judgments.
What's more, this is not a new
phenomenon that we can observe in our lifetimes only. We can look at any
country in any period and note that every bit of wealth ever created in the
history of mankind has been generated through some kind of market activity, and
never by governments. Free people create; states destroy. It was true in the
ancient world. It was true in the first millennium after Christ. It was true in
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. And with the birth of complex structures
of production and the increasing division of labor in those years, we see how
the accumulation of capital led to what might be called a productive miracle.
The world's population soared. We saw the creation of the middle class. We saw
the poor improve their plight and change their own class identification.
The empirical truth has never been
hard to come by. What matters are the theoretical eyes that see. This is what
dictates the lesson we draw from events. Marx and Bastiat were writing at the
same time. The former said capitalism was creating a calamity and that abolition
of ownership was the solution. Bastiat saw that statism was creating a calamity
and that the abolition of state plunder was the solution. What was the
difference between them? They saw the same facts, but they saw them in very
different ways. They had a different perception of cause and effect.
I suggest to you that there is an
important lesson here as regards the methodology of the social sciences, as
well as an agenda and strategy for the future. Concerning method, we need to
recognize that Mises was precisely right concerning the relationship between
facts and economic truth. If we have a solid theory in mind, the facts on the
ground provide excellent illustrative material. They inform us about the
application of theory in the world in which we live. They provided excellent
anecdotes and revealing stories of how economic theory is confirmed in
practice. But absent that theory of economics, facts alone are nothing but
facts. They do not convey any information about cause and effect, and they do
not point a way forward.
Think of it this way. Let's say you
have a bag of marbles that is turned upside down on the ground. Ask two people
their impressions. The first one understands what numbers mean, what shapes
mean, and what colors mean. This person can give a detailed account of what he
sees: how many marbles, what kinds, how big they are, and this person can
explain what he sees in different ways potentially for hours. But now consider
the second person, who, we can suppose, has absolutely no understanding of
numbers, not even that they exist as abstract ideas. This person has no
comprehension of either shape or color. He sees the same scene as the other
person but cannot provide anything like an explanation of any patterns. He has
very little to say. All he sees is a series of random objects.
Both these people see the same
facts. But they understand them in very different ways, owing to the abstract
notions of meaning that they carry in their minds. This is why positivism as
pure science, a method of assembling a potentially infinite series of data
points, is a fruitless undertaking. Data points on their own convey no theory,
suggest no conclusions, and offer no truths. To arrive at truth requires the
most important step that we as human beings can ever take: thinking. Through
this thinking, and with good teaching and reading, we can put together a
coherent theoretical apparatus that helps usunderstand.
Now, we have a hard time conjuring
up in our minds the likes of a man who has no comprehension of numbers, colors,
or shapes. And yet I suggest to you that this is precisely what we are facing
when we encounter a person who has never thought about economic theory and
never studied the implications of the science at all. The facts of the world
look quite random to this person. He sees two societies next to each other, one
free and prosperous and the other unfree and poor. He looks at this and
concludes nothing important about economic systems because he has never thought
hard about the relationship between economic systems and prosperity and freedom.
He merely accepts the existence of
wealth in one place and poverty in the other as a given, the same way the
socialists at a lunch table assumed that the luxurious surroundings and food
just happened to be there. Perhaps they will reach for an explanation of some
sort, but absent economic education, it is not likely to be the correct one.
Equally as dangerous as having no
theory is having a bad theory that is assembled not by means of logic but by an
incorrect view of cause and effect. This is the case with notions such as the
Phillips Curve, which posits a tradeoff relationship between inflation and
unemployment. The idea is that you can drive unemployment down very low if you
are willing to tolerate high inflation; or it can work the other way around: you
can stabilize prices provided you are willing to put up with high unemployment.
Now, of course this makes no sense
on the microeconomic level. When inflation is soaring, businesses don't
suddenly say, hey, let's hire a bunch of new people! Nor do they say, you know,
the prices we pay for inventory have not gone up or have fallen. Let's fire
some workers!
This much is true about
macroeconomics. It is commonly treated like a subject completely devoid of any
connection to microeconomics or even human decision-making. It is as if we
enter into a video game featuring fearsome creatures called Aggregates that
battle it out to the death. So you have one creature called Unemployment, one
called Inflation, one called Capital, one called Labor, and so on until you can
construct a fun game that is sheer fantasy.
Another example of this came to me
just the other day. A recent study claimed that labor unions increase the
productivity of firms. How did the researchers discern this? They found that
unionized companies tend to be larger with more overall output than
non-unionized companies. Well, let's think about this. Is it likely that if you
close a labor pool to all competition, give that restrictive labor pool the
right to use violence to enforce its cartel, permit that cartel to extract
higher than market wages from the company and set its own terms concerning work
rules and vacations and benefits — is it likely that this will be good for the
company in the long run? You have to take leave of your senses to believe this.
In fact, what we have here is a
simple mix up of cause and effect. Bigger companies tend to be more likely to
attract a kind of unpreventable unionization than smaller ones. The unions
target them, with federal aid. It is no more or less complicated than that. It
is for the same reason that developed economies have larger welfare states. The
parasites prefer bigger hosts, that's all. We would be making a big mistake to
assume that the welfare state causes the developed economy. That would be as
much a fallacy as to believe that wearing $2,000 suits causes people to become
rich.
I'm convinced that Mises was right:
the most important step economists or economic institutions can take is in the
direction of public education in economic logic.
There is another important factor
here. The state thrives on an economically ignorant public. This is the only
way it can get away with blaming inflation or recession on consumers, or
claiming that the government's fiscal problems are due to our paying too little
in taxes. It is economic ignorance that permits the regulatory agencies to
claim that they are protecting us as versus denying us choice. It is only by
keeping us all in the dark that it can continue to start war after war,
violating rights abroad and smashing liberties at home, in the name of
spreading freedom.
There is only one force that can
put an end to the successes of the state, and that is an economically and
morally informed public. Otherwise, the state can continue to spread its
malicious and destructive policies.
Do you remember the first time that
you began to grasp economic fundamentals? It is a very exciting time. It is as
if people with poor eyesight have put on glasses for the first time. It can
consume us for weeks, months, and years. We read a book like Economics
in One Lesson and pore
over the pages of Human
Action, and for the first time we realize that so much of what other
people take for granted is not true, and that there are exciting truths about
the world that desperately need to be spread.
To consider just one example, look
at the concept of inflation. For most people, it is seen the way primitive
societies might see the onset of a disease. It is something that sweeps through
to cause every kind of wreckage. The damage is obvious enough, but the source
is not. Everyone blames everyone else, and no solution seems to work. But once
you understand economics, you begin to see that the value of the money is more
directly related to its quantity, and that only one institution possesses the
power to create money out of thin air without limit: the government-connected
central bank.
Economics causes us to broaden our
minds to look at the commerce of society from many different points of view.
Instead of just looking at events and phenomena from the perspective of a
single consumer or producer, we begin to see the interests of all consumers and
all producers. Instead of thinking only about the short-run effects of certain
policies, we think about the long run, and the spin-off effects of certain
government policies. This is the essence of Hazlitt's first lesson in his famed
book.
By the way, let me interrupt here
to make an exciting announcement. This book was written more than 60 years ago,
and it remains the most powerful first book on economics anyone can read. Even
if it is the last book on economics you read, it will stick with you for a
lifetime. It is a hugely important tool, and though I'm glad that it has stayed
in print, I've not been happy with the edition that has long been distributed.
We had long hoped for a hardback version of this amazing classic to make available
at a very low price. Now we have it.
For a person who has read in
economics, and absorbed its essential lessons, the world around us becomes
vivid and clear, and certain moral imperatives strike us. We know now that
commerce deserves defense. We see entrepreneurs as great heroes. We sympathize
with the plight of producers. We see unions not as defenders of rights but as
privileged cartels that exclude people who need work. We see regulations not as
consumer protection but rather cost-raising rackets lobbied for by some
producers to hurt other producers. We see antitrust not as a safeguard against
corporate excess, but as a bludgeon used by big players against smarter
competitors.
In short, economics helps us see
the world as it is. And its contribution lies not in the direction of the
assembly of ever more facts, but in helping those facts fit a coherent theory
of the world. And here we see the essence of our job at the Mises Institute. It
is to educate and instill a systematic method for understanding the world as it
is. Our battleground is not the courts, nor the election polls, nor the
presidency nor the legislature, and certainly not the wicked arena of lobbying
and political payoffs. Our battleground concerns a domain of existence that is
more powerful in the long run. It concerns the ideas that individuals hold
about how the world works.
As we get older and see ever more
young generations coming up behind us, we are often struck by the great truth
that knowledge in this world is not cumulative over time. What one generation
has learned and absorbed is not somehow passed on to the next one through
genetics or osmosis. Each generation must be taught anew. Economic theory, I'm
sorry to report, is not written on our hearts. It was a long time in the process
of being discovered. But now that we know, it must be passed on — and in this
way, it is like the ability to read, or to understand great literature. It is
the obligation of our generation to teach the next generation.
And we are not merely talking here
of knowledge for knowledge's sake. What is at stake is our prosperity. It is
our standard of living. It is the well-being of our children and all of
society. It is freedom and the flourishing of civilization that stands in the
balance. Whether we grow and thrive and create and flourish, or wither and die
and lose all that we have inherited, ultimately depends on these the abstract
ideas we hold concerning cause and effect in society. These ideas do not
usually come to us by pure observation. They must be taught and explained.
But who or what will teach and
explain them? This is the crucial role of the Mises Institute. And not only to
teach but to expand the base of knowledge, to make new discoveries, to broaden
the reach of the literature, and to add ever more abundantly to the corpus of
freedom. We need to expand its proponents in all walks of life, not only in
academia but in all sectors of society. This is an ambitious agenda, one that
Mises himself charged his descendents with.
You are helping us take up this
task, and for this we are so grateful.
May 19, 2008
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is founder and president
of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor ofLewRockwell.com, and author of Speaking
of Liberty.
3) Roger’s
Rangers Rules or Plan of Discipline by Major Robert Rogers
Rule
#25
25.
In paddling or rowing, give orders that the boat or canoe next the sternmost,
wait for her, and the third for the second, and the fourth for the third, and
so on, to prevent separation, and that you may be ready to assist each other on
any emergency.
4) 52 Weeks to
Preparedness by Tess Pennington
Week 41 of 52: Self-Reliant Skills
I have often emphasized how important it is to understand that
preparedness isn’t about how many items you have stored away – it’s really
about learning the skills necessary to survive. Ultimately, we want to be
self-reliant and able to maintain a healthy lifestyle. In order to adapt and
transition more fluidly into self-reliant living, our efforts must lie in our
learned skills, abilities and knowledge.
I realize the time constraints of our daily schedules can put a
dent in our availability; but it is vital that you find the time to learn. When
making the decision on what skills you should learn, think sustainability.
This is a basic list of skills you should learn in order to
survive in a longer-term disaster.
1. Medical Training
Medical training should be a priority for those preparing for
extended emergencies. Due to the increased use of sharp tools (and
weapons for that matter), there will be more medical emergencies involving deep
lacerated cuts and infections from open wounds. Additionally, there will be an
increase in burns from being in closer contact to fires. These injuries
can become infected very quickly, and knowing how to treat them will keep your
family healthy.
There are online courses offered for basic CPR/First Aid, however,
learning some advanced medical skills will give you more of the fundamental
training needed to thrive during a long-term emergency. Find an Emergency
Medical Technician (EMT) class that is offered for paramedics to better equip
you to handle emergency medical situations.
Further, invest in medical handbooks such as The Doom and Bloom Survival Medical
Handbook by Joseph Alton, M.D. and Amy Alton, A.R.N.P. or When There Is No Doctor by
Gerard S. Boyle, M.D. Both resources are will help you learn what needs to be
done in an emergency medical situation. Practice these techniques now in order
to perform better under pressure.
2. Disaster Training
Learning how to plan and prepare for a disaster, as well as
understanding how your community plans to respond to emergencies (and the after
effects of a disaster), will help us adapt to the situation more quickly in
such an event. Disaster training is typically offered by FEMA, the
American Red Cross and other disaster organizations. The American Red
Cross offers extensive courses in disaster safety and training, as well as
basic First Aid/CPR courses. Thanks to the Information Age, information
is at the click of a mouse. Online disaster courses are
now offered through a variety of websites.
3. Gardening Skills
It’s time to get your hands dirty and get back in touch with
nature. In a long term survival situation, seeds will mean the
difference between life and death. When a disaster occurs, start some sprouting seeds to
ensure that you have a natural source of vitamins and nutrients until your
seeds bear their fruits.
Learn necessary gardening skills such as companion plants, crop
rotations, beneficial insects, natural ways to replenish soil with compost and earthworms, and which gardening
tools will be beneficial in an extended emergency.
4. Medicinal Plants
Another relevant knowledge source is understanding the medicinal value of plants and herbs.
It is amazing how many uses there are for plants besides spicing up our
entrees. Researching natural medicines is another major need in a
survival situation, especially if a person in your group has a pre-existing
condition.
Click here to read about the Top 10 Medicinal Herbs.
5. Firearm Certification and Training
There are dozens of firearm courses offered through the National Rifle Association as well as at
self defense businesses and at some local colleges. This skill is easily lost
if you do not practice regularly. Also, practicing gun safety, especially
around children will help
them learn how important it is to be mindful around weapons.
6. Canning and Food Preparation
As Carla Emery, a homesteading author once said of our pioneer
ancestors, “If people’s labors were fruitful, they put away a long-term food
supply as a matter of common sense; their food was wholesome, hearty, and
healthy.” Knowing how to can and preserve foods to eat during the long
winter months is essential.
Canning and food preservation measures will
be extremely useful in a longer-term disaster. Having food preservation tools
such as jars, lids, pressure cookers, and supplies to preserve foods can help
you keep your harvest edible for a year or more! Check www.craigslist.com, garage sales and even at
second hand stores for these essential items. Canning jars would also make an
excellent bartering item.
Further, having knowledge on how long foods last will help you
preserve foods when they are at their best. This convenient food storage chart is a great tool to
have in your kitchen to ensure your pantry foods are within expiration.
7. Amateur Radio Classes
Each of us have read enough survival books to know that the “comm
down” scenario is a very real threat, and happens more often than not. Experts
from the private and public sector warn that we are just one major catastrophic event away
from an incident that could take down the grid. The best way to prepare for
this serious situation is to equip yourself with the knowledge and with the
tools for emergency communication. Having a radio is encouraged by
many disaster relief organizations. And having knowledge on how
to work and maneuver a HAMM radio will provide a person with an emergency
communication source during a time when most communication is down.
The National Association of Amateur Radio provides
information based on a person’s location and course information on their
website.
8. Sewing Classes
Everyone has heard stories of how their great grandmothers would
sew quilts out of material harvested from worn-out clothing. Not many of
us have this skill anymore. Typically fabric stores offer sewing classes
and sewing events for their customers. Sewing classes will not only teach
a necessary skill, but it will also help you get the survival mindset in place.
Instead of buying something, make something new out of what you have
available. For instance, rather than throwing away torn jeans, salvage the
non-worn areas and turn them into patches for clothing. Use other
sections for pieces for a quilt, and make rags from what is left over.
9. Outdoor Survival Skills Courses
Learning necessary outdoor skills will provide a person with
fundamental knowledge on how to better survive. The Boy Scouts offer
adult classes, and you can also find relevant courses at some community
colleges. Get creative and search around the internet. There are
some survival courses offered online (some are even free survival courses) that
a person can take from the comfort of his or her home. Look for courses
on how to forage for food in the wild, essential survival skills, and
wilderness medical courses. Some of these courses are offered at local
colleges, the YMCA, community park and recreation facilities, etc.
Additionally, finding books, and e-books on survival
skills is another way to gather information on this topic and practice what you
learn later.
10. Homesteading Skills
There is a range of preparations and skills that are absolutely
necessary for running a successful farm or homestead. That is why our
forefathers often screwed up and starved to death. If all the pieces are not
there then the potential exists for failure. Now is the time to get these
skills in order. Learning about livestock care, how to fix essential machines,
how to use non-electric or turn of the century tools, how to render lard,
and how to make soap and candles. These are all lost art forms, in my opinion
and need to be learned in order to sustain your family or group for long-term
scenarios. YouTube and online websites can do wonders for helping you learn the
basics of these skills.
11. Hunting Skills
If you plan to hunt wild game for a food source, you will need to
learn how to gut the carcass, skin the fur or remove feathers and properly cut
the meat. The “hunter-in-training” will also have to have a proficient
knowledge on the different types of hunting tools used to prepare animal
carcasses (and these tools come in different sizes based on the animal). TheNational Hunting Association is a portal
that can take a person to their local area hunting association in order to get
more information for their specific area. Also, this website offers the hunting guides for all
of the states within the USA.
I’d like to conclude by offering a few pieces of advice on
learning new skills – practice any chance you get and give yourself time to
learn it. Like any new thing you try to do, there is a learning curve involved.
Give yourself time to make the necessary mistakes and learn from them. Process
of elimination is usually the way we learn best. Finding others in your area
who can help guide you through these new skills can be such a blessing, and can
open the door to some new mentors.
Preps to Buy:
- Written books
on skills you want to learn
- Tools or
accessories needed to learn these skills
- Extra printer
paper to print out any information you find online
- Binders for
organizing your information (To help you organize this binder, click here for
tips)
Action Items:
5.
Start looking online for any online courses you can take.
6.
Make a goal to start learning a new skill set.
7.
Purchase written resources for your survival library.
8.
Equip yourself with essential knowledge.
9.
Get and stay current in any certifications.
10.
Continue to educate yourself on skills you feel are pertinent to
your survival.
Week 42 of 52: Characteristics of an Ideal
Retreat
By now, each of you are keenly aware of the different disasters
that could affect our way of life. Some of these disasters even have the
capacity to cause widespread destruction, panic and suffering. Given the
pandemonium that would ensue in the more populated areas of our country, some
of us are ready to take the necessary steps to be more self-reliant.
As a result, many are selling their suburban and urban dwellings
to move to more rural settings to start their survival retreats. Preparing
your home to be a survival retreat allows you to stock more supplies, and be
more prepared for longer-term emergencies. This resource, by M.D. Creekmore has
excellent book reviews and shows readers how to build a survival retreat on a
low budget.
Deciding exactly where to relocate is not an exact science. You
can gauge the potential threat and plan accordingly, but you can never be
completely certain what will happen and where the safest place will be.
However, knowing that you have researched and prepared the best retreat
possible puts you at a far greater advantage than many others.
Location and land characteristics are crucial factors when a
person is considering purchasing land for a survival retreat. According
to James Rawles, author of How to Survive the End of the World
As We Know It, the decision to have a survival retreat should be a
“well-prepared and defensible redoubt with well-planned logistics.”
Experts agree on the fact that the area we should choose for
a retreat property needs to be a semi-isolated location with steady water
supply and a fair amount of timber for heat in a woodstove/fireplace. If we
find ourselves in a grid-down scenario, we want to be able to support our basic
needs. These will be the top priorities in the beginning.
While walking the property note what resources and obstacles your
site has before you make a plan. Keep in mind that you want to find a property
that can be sustainable. Ask yourself questions such as:
- “What’s there
that you can use? Trees, bamboo, stones, sand, soil, clay…?
- Is there plenty
of wood or coal for fire?
- Is there a
natural water supply?
- Can you work
with those materials? Can you learn to?
- Can the retreat
property be seen from the road?
- Is there a
major highway nearby?
- Can you protect
your land, if attacked?
Keeping these questions in mind will help you determine whether
the property is appropriate for surviving long-term disasters.
Climate is another consideration. Although many believe that
living in the warm climates of the south will be an ideal area for retreats,
keep in mind that most southern states are susceptible to damage brought on by
hurricanes, tropical storms and flooding. As you can see from the map below,
most our states are exposed to one or more climatic issues. Therefore, keep
this in mind when determining where you want to set your retreat up.
Map provided by Redcross.org and
Noaa.gov
Another aspect to factor in is whether any major cities are in
your desired retreat area. Ideally, you want to choose an area that has low
population density. If a major disaster occurs, living in a more isolated area
(especially from major highways) will help to protect your from transient mobs
leaving the cities. You don’t want to be on the lines of drift from major
cities, as towns along these roads will be hit hard by hordes of people, some
of whom might not be friendly. See the map below to view the major cities
of the United States.
U.S. Major Cities
Some other important factors to consider are:
- A long growing
season
- Property backs
up to a state or national park
- Low population
density and away major cities and suburban developments
- Sufficient
year-round precipitation and surface water
- Rich topsoil
- Sunny area for
solar panels
- No major
earthquake, hurricane, or tornado risks
- No flooding
risk
- No tidal-wave
(at least two hundred feet above sea level)
- Minimal
forest-fire risk
- Away from
interstate freeways and other channelized areas
- What type of
employment is in the area
- A diverse
economy and agriculture
- Low taxes
- Non-intrusive
scale of government
- Favorable
zoning and inexpensive building permits
- Minimal gun
laws
- A lifestyle
geared toward self-sufficiency
- Plentiful local
sources of wood or coal
- No restrictions
on keeping livestock
- Defensible
terrain
- Not near a
prison or large mental institution
- Inexpensive
insurance rates (home, auto, health)
- Upwind and away
from major nuclear power plants
Consider searching within an active farming area. This is beneficial
because the barter systems are already in place, not to mention an abundance of
livestock and produce.
When thinking about where you’d prefer to buy your retreat and/or
retirement home, look at all the factors and whether the piece of land can sustain
you and your family’s needs.
Use this mapping tool to:
- Look into if
there are any underground aquifers in the area
- If there are
any environmental or climatic issues in the area
- Maps the vegetation
growth in the area
Further Reading:
Preps to Buy:
- Topographic and
geographic maps of the area
- Farmer’s
Almanac to find out growing season
Action Items:
37.
Research! Compare counties that
you are interested in moving to.
38.
Look into the local governments and what local laws are in place.
39.
Research websites like www.city-data.com to see what the
statistics are for the location you are considering.
40.
Find out the condition of the soil.
41.
Determine if there is a barter system.
42.
To learn more about understanding the principles of a retreat,
consider reading this page from Survival Blog.
5) 110 Rules of
Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation by George Washington
#73 - Think before you Speak
pronounce not imperfectly nor bring out your Words too hastily but orderly
& distinctly.
#74 - When Another Speaks be
attentive your Self and disturb not the Audience if any hesitate in his Words
help him not nor Prompt him without desired, Interrupt him not, nor Answer him
till his Speech be ended.
#75 - In the midst of Discourse
ask not of what one treateth but if you Perceive any Stop because of your
coming you may well intreat him gently to Proceed: If a Person of Quality comes
in while your Conversing it's handsome to Repeat what was said before.
No comments:
Post a Comment