The Altons at Doom and Bloom Medical have an article about what to do When a Person Faints. I once fainted while standing in early morning PT formation in the Army, probably from a combination of low blood sugar and low hydration. Well, I vomited and then fainted, so I hit at least one of the warning signs which the Altons mention. I think I also hit “momentary lack of attention.” After questions from a medic and a drink of water, I was able to continue with PT as usual with no further issues. Anyone can faint, but sometimes more rest is better.
Even 6’4″ military men may experience fainting
We often write about medical strategies when a society collapses, but, sometimes, an individual may collapse as a result of fainting (also called “syncope”). It usually occurs when a drop in blood pressure (“hypotension”) doesn’t allow enough oxygenated blood to reach the brain.
Someone who has fainted must be differentiated from the person who has “seized” from epilepsy. Fainters won’t exhibit jerky movements as in a Grand Mal seizure or stare into space as in a Petit Mal seizure. Also, a person who has had a seizure tends to be difficult to rouse for a period of time. This is called a “post-ictal” state and may last for 30 minutes or so before it resolves on its own. Most people who have only fainted will regain alertness relatively soon after the episode.
(Note: Grand Mal and Petit Mal are no longer used in the latest nomenclature of seizures. They changed the whole system in 2017, but most people still know them by these names.)
There are a few signs that a person is close to fainting:
Cold, clammy skin
Nausea or vomiting
Complaints of feeling lightheaded or weak
A sensation of spinning
Tunnel vision or blurriness
Yawning
Slow pulse
Momentary lack of attention
(Note: More than once, I’ve had a surgical intern or other assistant faint dead away during a grueling and long surgical procedure.)
Survival scenarios almost guarantee the medic will be confronted with a person who has fainted at one point or another. Simple activities of survival, such as long hikes to retreats, work sessions in hot weather, and hiding out in hot shelters without climate control, can make certain group members prone to syncope. In addition, skipped meals and dehydration will put many of your people at risk.
Low blood sugar and various other medical conditions can cause fainting. Good hydration and appropriate dietary intake will prevent most episodes. Glucose or honey packets, for example, can help raise a person’s blood sugar that has gone dangerously low. Have some in your kit. Others may pass out due to irregular heart rhythms, extreme stress, or even pregnancy.
If someone feels as if they are about to collapse, they should sit down and put their head down between their knees to increase blood flow to the brain. If you see someone who is fainting from a standing position, hold and gently lower them to the ground on their back. In normal times, of course, you would have someone call emergency medical services as soon as possible.
If help isn’t coming, it’s up to you to quickly evaluate the victim. If the patient fell to the floor, there is always the possibility of a head injury. Evaluate for obvious wounds and rule out concussion.
A person who has had a simple fainting spell will usually be breathing normally and have a steady, regular pulse. Raise their legs about 12 inches off the ground and above the level of their heart and head. This position will help increase blood flow to the brain. Assess the patient for evidence of trauma, bleeding, or signs of a seizure. If bleeding, apply direct pressure to the wound. If no pulse or breathing, begin CPR.
After the first few seconds, you have determined that the victim is breathing, has a pulse, and is not bleeding. Tap on their shoulder (some say to gently shake) and ask in a clear voice “Can you hear me?” or “Are you OK?”. Loosen any constricting clothing and make sure that they are getting lots of fresh air by keeping the area around them clear of crowds. Look for a medical alert bracelet that may give clues as to their health issues. If you are in an area that is hot, fan the patient or carefully carry them to a cooler area. Cool compresses may be helpful.
If you are successful in arousing the patient, ask them if they have any pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease or epilepsy. Stay calm and speak in a reassuring manner. People oftentimes are embarrassed and want to brush off the incident, but be aware they are still at risk for another fall.
Once the victim is awake and alert (Do they know their name? Do they know where they are? What year it is?), you may have the patient sit up slowly if they are not otherwise injured. Don’t let them get up for 15 minutes or so, even if they say that they are fine. If you are not in an austere setting, emergency medical personnel are on the way; wait until they arrive before having the patient stand up. Off the grid, however, you will have to make a judgment as to whether and when the victim is capable of returning to normal activities. A period of observation would be wise.
As dehydration and low blood sugar are possible causes, some oral intake may be helpful during recovery. This is appropriate only if it is clear that they are completely conscious, alert, and able to function. Test their strength by having them raise their knees against the pressure of your hands. If they are weak, they should continue to rest. Close monitoring of the patient will be very important, as some internal injuries may not manifest for hours.
Attorney Molly McCann writes about how large, internet, social media companies are enforcing foreign speech laws across the board in The Big Tech Occupation.
Big Tech has infiltrated the American homeland and is imposing speech laws that resemble those of Europe, challenging the authority and longevity of the First Amendment. Although we share common ideals with other Western nations, we pursue and defend those ideals very differently. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our approach to speech.
It is important to understand how fundamentally different our country is from the rest of the world if we want to understand why Big Tech’s speech codes shout not be inflicted on American citizens in American jurisdictions. Put another way, if the would-be monarchs of Silicon Valley get their way, their speech codes will ultimately undermine our American values of free speech and the First Amendment itself.
A Tale of Two Speeches
In America, the First Amendment expresses an absolutist viewpoint on speech: “Congress shall make no law...” (emphasis added). From there, the courts have developed a framework that governs speech. Not all speech is “protected” speech (e.g. fighting words and true threats), and we have standards that determine if, when, where, and how the government can limit speech. All told, American speech law can be quite complex, but philosophically it begins at that intransigent right: “Congress shall make no law.” This principle permeates the American mindset and is defended by our written and entrenched (i.e., difficult to change) Constitution.
Europe, however, begins from a qualified position and immediately seeks to balance speech with other competing interests. Despite aspirational language to the contrary, European law begins with the assumption that speech is a privilege, the contours of which can be defined and redefined by the government. Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights makes this clear.
1.Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers….
This sounds good until you read the second paragraph:
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary. (emphasis added)
The blunt fact is that most Europeans have freedom of speech at the discretion of their governments. Think about the wide differences of opinion there are on what speech restrictions are “necessary in a democratic society”! The European crusade against hate speech (a label that can be applied to almost any disfavored speech) is a perfect example of the abuse that can flourish when speech isn’t enshrined in a written and entrenched constitution, and is instead a discretionary standard subject to majority votes of prevailing legislatures.
The United Kingdom has yo-yoed back and forth on banning “insulting” speech as hate speech. The term has been added, dropped, and added again over the past decade. According to a 2013 article in the Guardian, when ‘insulting’ was included in the hate speech law “arrests and prosecutions rang[ed] from an Oxford student asking a police officer ‘Do you realise your horse is gay?’ which Thames Valley police described as homophobic and ‘offensive to people passing by’, to a 16-year-old holding up a placard that said ‘Scientology is a dangerous cult’.” Hate speech can mean almost anything, and in 2018, British police were rounding up and questioning people for tweets that criticized gender reassignment surgeries for children. As the culture slips, standards that can be amended by majority legislatures cannot defend speech rights.
The United States Constitution’s protection of speech has no tempering clause. Our court-created frameworks all seek to implement and obey the opening, sweeping directive of the First Amendment; we do not recognize a “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment; and our speech rights are certainly not at the mercy of every successive Congress’s whim. We can truly boast speech rights—and the ability to assert those rights against our government.
Enter Big Tech
The Big Tech internal speech codes are just like Europe’s broad, discretionary standards in that they permit a privileged few to determine what is and is not offensive or “dangerous” speech. For example, Facebook bans “hate speech,” including “white nationalist rhetoric” and “violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation,” as well as other categories of offensive speech. Although this type of speech policing is contrary to the American principle that we have the liberty to offend, these definitions might sound otherwise uncontroversial and even attractive (after all, most decent people don’t want to be exposed to violent or dehumanizing speech). But of course, in addition to offending our spirit of free speech generally, the application of these standards has already proven to be both broad and biased, permitting companies to label all manner of political socially-conservative speech as dangerous or violent. There is wisdom and authentic freedom in America’s adherence to robust and “absolutist” protection of speech; there is opportunity for corruption, bias, and suffocating censorship lurking in the European approach.
Big Tech has effectively imported European speech law into the United States. Big Tech has created a massive internal framework that blankets the nation and imposes European-style standards in direct opposition to the robust, absolutist American rule.
Because Tech oligarchs control the primary thoroughfares of public discourse today—our new public squares of the digital age—they have effectively occupied our country and imposed foreign law on American citizens, restricting our fundamental liberty to gather and to exchange thoughts and ideas freely.
Big Tech censorship is also dangerous to the long-term stability of the First Amendment. Because digital interaction is so widespread, its European view of speech will slowly begin to chip away at Americans’ absolutist attitude toward speech. Big Tech’s speech codes are chilling and suppressing speech now, but ultimately, our collective attitude toward speech might change.
In debating cancel culture, Greg Lukianoff and Adam Goldstein have argued that nations without good free-speech law can still preserve a thriving culture of free speech—albeit a persecuted one—but, a culture that itself is not freedom-minded will not be free, no matter how good its law on speech is. Lukianoff and Goldstein have warned that if Americans’ attitude toward speech changes, our First Amendment will not protect us. Similarly, if Big Tech’s moralizing about and censoring of hate speech is accepted by too many Americans, it will influence and shift our culture’s attitude, and the First Amendment will fall. To maintain the potency of the First Amendment, the American public has to believe in and live its spirit.
Justice Scalia once remarked, “many Europeans like to think of Americans as their close cousins—albeit reckless, loudmouthed cousins they’re embarrassed to talk about at dinner parties. It is easy to forget, however, that the United States was settled primarily by people seeking, in one way or another, refuge from the ways of Europe.” Our freedoms are not equal.
Europe’s speech standards leave Europeans at the mercy of their ruling class. In America, the First Amendment (and the attitude it embodies), continues to provide Americans the strongest speech rights of any people on earth. Big Tech cannot be allowed to impose European speech codes in digital public squares within American jurisdictions. It is an affront to American sovereignty, and by demanding conformity to a European understanding of speech rights, Big Tech threatens to mold our culture’s perception of speech in a way that will undermine our independent attitude toward speech and even threaten the longevity of the First Amendment.
A section on Email application security from IntelTechniques
IntelTechniques has a chart they put out last month covering the security of voice, email, messaging, and video applications. Click here to view the page. Some explanations of the terminology used:
E2EE – end to end encryption. E2EE is good to have. If something is encrypted, but not end to end, then at some point in the data’s journey between two end points it is “in the clear” for anyone to view.
Country of ownership is there to indicate the likely laws governing privacy or to investigate how easily a company submits to subpoenas for access to their servers.
14-eyes association is another name for SIGINT Seniors Europe or SSEUR – an association of fourteen countries around the world who all share surveillance data with each other. For example, the US may have a law that makes it illegal to collect surveillance data on a US citizen without a warrant, but they can ask an ally from SSEUR to share that same data with them because it wasn’t collected by the US agency.
Open Source is the name for software where the program source code is available to the public to check (and even modify under conditions of the various open source licenses) for accuracy, security, or other reasons.
Third-party metadata – does the application allow metadata access (such as To, From, Subject, source IP, etc) to any third parties?
Third-party analystics – does the application allow any third party to analyze traffic that passes through the application system?
Ephemeral messages – An ephemeral message is one that can or will disappear from both the sender and receiver devices after some amount of time.
Third-party audit indicated whether the application source code has been audited by a neutral third party for security problems.
I believe that most of the other terms are more easily understood.
To say out-loud that you find the results of the 2020 presidential election odd is to invite derision. You must be a crank or a conspiracy theorist. Mark me down as a crank, then. I am a pollster and I find this election to be deeply puzzling. I also think that the Trump campaign is still well within its rights to contest the tabulations. Something very strange happened in America’s democracy in the early hours of Wednesday November 4 and the days that followed. It’s reasonable for a lot of Americans to want to find out exactly what.
First, consider some facts. President Trump received more votes than any previous incumbent seeking reelection. He got 11 million more votes than in 2016, the third largest rise in support ever for an incumbent. By way of comparison, President Obama was comfortably reelected in 2012 with 3.5 million fewer votes than he received in 2008.
Trump’s vote increased so much because, according to exit polls, he performed far better with many key demographic groups. Ninety-five percent of Republicans voted for him. He did extraordinarily well with rural male working-class whites.
He earned the highest share of all minority votes for a Republican since 1960. Trump grew his support among black voters by 50 percent over 2016. Nationally, Joe Biden’s black support fell well below 90 percent, the level below which Democratic presidential candidates usually lose.
Trump increased his share of the national Hispanic vote to 35 percent. With 60 percent or less of the national Hispanic vote, it is arithmetically impossible for a Democratic presidential candidate to win Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Bellwether states swung further in Trump’s direction than in 2016. Florida, Ohio and Iowa each defied America’s media polls with huge wins for Trump. Since 1852, only Richard Nixon has lost the electoral college after winning this trio, and that 1960 defeat to John F. Kennedy is still the subject of great suspicion.
Midwestern states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin always swing in the same direction as Ohio and Iowa, their regional peers. Ohio likewise swings with Florida. Current tallies show that, outside of a few cities, the Rust Belt swung in Trump’s direction. Yet, Biden leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because of an apparent avalanche of black votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Biden’s ‘winning’ margin was derived almost entirely from such voters in these cities, as coincidentally his black vote spiked only in exactly the locations necessary to secure victory. He did not receive comparable levels of support among comparable demographic groups in comparable states, which is highly unusual for the presidential victor.
We are told that Biden won more votes nationally than any presidential candidate in history. But he won a record low of 17 percent of counties; he only won 524 counties, as opposed to the 873 counties Obama won in 2008. Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes.
Victorious presidential candidates, especially challengers, usually have down-ballot coattails; Biden did not. The Republicans held the Senate and enjoyed a ‘red wave’ in the House, where they gained a large number of seats while winning all 27 toss-up contests. Trump’s party did not lose a single state legislature and actually made gains at the state level.
Another anomaly is found in the comparison between the polls and non-polling metrics. The latter include: party registrations trends; the candidates’ respective primary votes; candidate enthusiasm; social media followings; broadcast and digital media ratings; online searches; the number of (especially small) donors; and the number of individuals betting on each candidate.
Despite poor recent performances, media and academic polls have an impressive 80 percent record predicting the winner during the modern era. But, when the polls err, non-polling metrics do not; the latter have a 100 percent record. Every non-polling metric forecast Trump’s reelection. For Trump to lose this election, the mainstream polls needed to be correct, which they were not. Furthermore, for Trump to lose, not only did one or more of these metrics have to be wrong for the first time ever, but every single one had to be wrong, and at the very same time; not an impossible outcome, but extremely unlikely nonetheless.
Atypical voting patterns married with misses by polling and non-polling metrics should give observers pause for thought. Adding to the mystery is a cascade of information about the bizarre manner in which so many ballots were accumulated and counted.
The following peculiarities also lack compelling explanations:
1. Late on election night, with Trump comfortably ahead, many swing states stopped counting ballots. In most cases, observers were removed from the counting facilities. Counting generally continued without the observers
2. Statistically abnormal vote counts were the new normal when counting resumed. They were unusually large in size (hundreds of thousands) and had an unusually high (90 percent and above) Biden-to-Trump ratio
3. Late arriving ballots were counted. In Pennsylvania, 23,000 absentee ballots have impossible postal return dates and another 86,000 have such extraordinary return dates they raise serious questions
4. The failure to match signatures on mail-in ballots. The destruction of mail in ballot envelopes, which must contain signatures
5. Historically low absentee ballot rejection rates despite the massive expansion of mail voting. Such is Biden’s narrow margin that, as political analyst Robert Barnes observes, ‘If the states simply imposed the same absentee ballot rejection rate as recent cycles, then Trump wins the election’
6. Missing votes. In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 50,000 votes held on 47 USB cards are missing
7. Non-resident voters. Matt Braynard’s Voter Integrity Project estimates that 20,312 people who no longer met residency requirements cast ballots in Georgia. Biden’s margin is 12,670 votes
8. Serious ‘chain of custody’ breakdowns. Invalid residential addresses. Record numbers of dead people voting. Ballots in pristine condition without creases, that is, they had not been mailed in envelopes as required by law
9. Statistical anomalies. In Georgia, Biden overtook Trump with 89 percent of the votes counted. For the next 53 batches of votes counted, Biden led Trump by the same exact 50.05 to 49.95 percent margin in every single batch. It is particularly perplexing that all statistical anomalies and tabulation abnormalities were in Biden’s favor. Whether the cause was simple human error or nefarious activity, or a combination, clearly something peculiar happened.
If you think that only weirdos have legitimate concerns about these findings and claims, maybe the weirdness lies in you.
Intelligence analyst Sam Culper of Forward Observer talks about Levels of Intelligence and Operations. He discusses three levels of warfighting applied to intelligence, recommending a 60/30/10% effort split from local to national level (tactical to strategic level) of preparation.
On 1 January 1940, Britain called up two million 19- to 27-year-olds for military service. The first half of this lecture presented here contains an introductory section on how we decide what is good and evil, before Lewis goes on to discuss the pacifist question in particular (11:24). Part 2 of the Lecture is here which deals with the fourth element, Authority: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jreq3… You can find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Compelling-Reas… This is the first half of an address to the Oxford Pacifist Society. The exact date of this address has always been unknown except that it was given in 1940, but I notice the lecture does refer to something very topical at the time – the heroic and sacrificial courage of the captain and crew of the ‘Jervis Bay’ (misread in Lewis’ rough handwriting as ‘Terris Bay’). The sinking was only made public in the U.K. on the 12th November 1940 (Daily Mirror https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9Mm…) so that narrows down the delivery date considerably to late 1940. At this time Britain was in the middle of the Blitz and was facing the Nazi threat alone, with the Pacifist President Franklin Roosevelt ‘leading from behind’ and being painfully slow to help arm the last democracy in Europe. As bad as that was, Britain did worse! Britain was facing the same severe stress she had given to Czechoslovakia in 1938 with a public and leader asleep to the gathering storm. This situation would all change within a single year of this lecture, with the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor and Nazi Germany declaring war on the United States on the 11th December 1941. I’ve added some helps to the captions during Winston Churchill’s address, but the captions need to clicked on by pressing the subtitle button on bottom right of the video.
In this article, Christian Prepper Gal gives some basic information on types of foods for long term food storage. I’ve also included links at the end to some more advanced/involved food storage articles.
When someone says, “long term food storage” what do you think of? I used to think of canning, simply because years ago I had a huge garden and did a lot of canning. Now, I think of the closet in the basement of our house that has shelves of a different variety of foods that are preserved in many different ways.
There are so many options out there for preppers regarding long term storage! Where does one even begin? Well, the first place to start is to educate yourself. You want to get the best bang for your buck and one way to do that is to research what is available. Some important things to keep in mind are: what is the most economical; what you will need to use to prepare it, i.e. water, camp stove, etc.; and what is going to last the longest (shelf life). This can take a lot of time and research to find what the best choices for you and your family are, and that’s why I’m here to help! I will share what I have found in my research (and experience) that may be helpful to you in yours.
Store bought canned foods
Store bought canned foods are a good, economical choice. One thing that makes canned foods economical is that you can pick some extras up when you’re buying your normal groceries. That way you aren’t spending a whole wad of cash on them at one time.
Canned foods usually have a “Best By” date of 1-1/2 to 5 years. However, they will last long after their best buy date, as that simply means that they will taste the freshest until that date. After that date they will lose some of their flavor from having sat in the liquid for that long of a time. But, they will still be good for eating. Be sure to check the cans and don’t buy any with dents in them. If they have dents, or are leaking any food they can be contaminated and could cause botulism. When you are ready to open the can, make sure there are no dents, leaks, rust, or corrosion on them; as air may have gotten inside them and spoiled the contents. If there are not dents, rust or corrosion and you open the can, make sure are no small bubbles in the liquid inside the can, no bad odors, the food hasn’t become mushy, and the liquid isn’t cloudy. Any one of those would indicate the food has gone bad; don’t eat it. Also, if you open the can and the contents explode, don’t use it or eat it.
Make sure you rotate your canned foods to keep your stock fresher longer. Simply take out the ones that may be close to expiring and replace them with newly purchased ones. Then you can use the ones you took out with your normal family meals. This will just ensure that if your food stays stored for a number of years you will have the freshest selection you can.
If you have the space, canned foods are the best choice for long term food storage because you can eat them right out of the can if you don’t have the means to warm them up and you don’t have to have an abundant supply of water on hand to cook them.
Home canned foods
Does anyone really can their own foods at home any more? Yes, there are those who still do! If I had a garden, I certainly would. Most home canned foods will last up to 10 or more years. Just make sure the seals are still tight, there are no dents in the seals, and there is no mold or cloudy liquid inside the can. Home canning is probably the most economical in long term food storage! But, how many of us have the time or the resources to can our own food?
Freeze dried foods
Freeze dried foods have a very long shelf life; some up to 25 – 30 years if properly stored! However, they are not the most economical; whether you are lucky enough to afford a freeze dryer or purchase the food from a company that uses commercial grade freeze dryers. I know you can freeze dry foods at home without a freeze dryer just using your freezer and dry ice, but I haven’t gotten into that as of yet and don’t feel qualified to talk about it at this time.
Freeze dried foods are a good choice if you don’t have a lot of space, if you go camping a lot, or for use in your MREs (Meals Ready to Eat, which I will talk about at a later date). Do keep in mind you will need to have a good and plentiful supply of water on hand to cook them. I have some freeze dried foods mixed in with my canned foods in my storage, mostly to have a variety of choices as well as saving space. I will use those when water is more plentiful.
Freeze dried foods come in a variety of packaging. There are small individual pouches that will feed one, larger pouches with 4 or more servings, and the number 10 large sized cans that have enough to feed several people for several meals. Pouches are usually packaged in tubs or boxes and some companies offer individual pouches for purchase. The pouches are convenient in that you can add hot water directly into the pouches to heat them up and don’t need additional cookware.
Here is a list of three of the most reputable companies that sell freeze dried foods. You can easily purchase their products on their websites. All three companies also sell some of their products on Amazon, and shipping charges can be avoided if you have Amazon Prime. Plus I think delivery is quicker through Amazon. (I always check to see if what I want is available on Amazon before I purchase directly from the company.) Some of their products may also be available at local stores such as Walmart.
Wise Company (They have gluten free foods available)
Augason Farms (They also have gluten free foods available)
Mountain House (I did not see any gluten free foods available)
Dehydrated foods
I will be honest with you here, I have not had that much interest in dehydrated foods until recently. In my research for this article I was unable to find any companies that dealt strictly with manufacturing dehydrated foods and the sale thereof. Although, I did find that Augason Farms offers some dehydrated foods as well as their freeze dried foods.
Recently, for some reason (I believe it was God) I was prompting to look up and research how to dehydrate food. I’ve thought about it a couple of times in my lifetime, but never really felt like it was something I wanted to pursue. But, it was brought to my attention that now that I’m a prepper it might be something that would be of benefit for me and my family. So, I started watching YouTube videos on dehydrating food. They really grabbed my interest!
I always thought the only things you could dehydrate were fruits and beef jerky. Boy, was I wrong. One of the things I discovered was that I could make the meals that my family likes to eat and dehydrate them and store them! And, let me tell you, there are some pretty picky eaters in my family! I discovered I could make my homemade spaghetti, hamburger stroganoff, hamburger vegetable soup, chicken alfredo, fruit roll ups, and a plethora of other things that I make on a regular basis (minus the fruit roll ups, I’ve never made them). So, lo and behold, after watching dozens and dozens of videos I decided to take the plunge! I’m looking forward to receiving my food dehydrator from the UPS man this coming Monday! Yay me! I found what looks like a pretty good and reliable dehydrator on Amazon for only $60. Of course, that was after researching them for at least three days.
Getting back on track…dehydrated foods are another type of food that have a pretty good shelf life, and aren’t overly expensive if you make them yourself. If the foods are dried and stored properly they can last up to 10 years. They do need water to re-hydrate them, but I figure since they won’t be my main source of food storage they will be worth the effort of finding enough water to cook them. They would be primarily for eating once or twice a week at the most. I’m sure dehydrating your food is something I will post a lot more about once I actually try it and see how well it goes, so stay tuned!
Beans and Rice
Dried, uncooked, beans are a good addition to have in your long term food storage. However, I wouldn’t plan on having a ton of them without other foods to go with them as I’m sure even a hangry person would grow tired of them over time. They are definitely inexpensive and if prepared and stored properly will last up to 10 years, maybe longer. The best way to prepare them for storage is to put them in mylar bags in family meal sized portions (depending on the size of your family) along with an oxygen absorber and seal the mylar bag. I will have more on how to properly prepare and store beans later on.
White rice is another good addition to have in your inventory. The same would go for rice as beans, it shouldn’t be a primary staple as you will grow tired of eating only rice or beans after a long period of time. Rice is also relatively inexpensive food item and when prepared and stored properly it can last anywhere from 25-30 years. It should be prepared and stored in the same was as the beans.
Thank you for hanging in there and reading this entire post. I know it’s longer than my usual ones (thus far) but there was a lot to cover in it. Please bare in mind these are only the basics of prepping and we will delve into some of these subjects much deeper in the future.
If you have any tips or insights that you think would help others regarding long term food storage please feel free to comment below (you will need to be signed up and logged in before commenting). Take care, and God bless.
In a video somewhat echoing the Viking Preparedness video that we posted yesterday, Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen talks about how things in the world seem to be moving more toward a feudal control of the people.
Mainstream media has declared Biden as winner of the US election 2020. Allegations of fraud doesn’t matter, Biden is president and covid will now be dealt with. The bias and smugness is amazing. In this video, I explain why I believe we are moving towards neo-feudalism. – Bjorn
The need for supportive communities in SHTF situations is something we talk about often. People know they need a support network because, let’s face it, in a long-term survival situation almost none of us can do it alone. However, one of the biggest tragedies to come from the Covid rules has been how hard it is to meet people and establish any kind of community these days. And many of us have learned things about our circle of people that aren’t overly positive during this stressful time.
In my state, Colorado, public gatherings are severely curtailed. I still attend church, but we are no longer allowed to socialize afterward. At the kids’ activities, parents are discouraged from sitting near each other and chit-chatting, which was a major social outlet for a lot of parents (myself included) for a long time. You might strike up a conversation with someone friendly, or you might get someone who flips out over not social distancing properly.
This atmosphere of distrust is worse than any virus.
You have your friends, and then there are your “lockdown” friends
We have come together in ways I never would have expected. I don’t know what will work for everyone, but I can give an example of how a series of inconveniences gave rise to my own little group of people getting together to process chickens.
I have had a little side-gig producing a couple hundred chickens every year for meat. They are pastured birds raised on certified organic corn- and soy-free feed. I’ve learned a lot over the years, getting and training livestock guardian dogs after predator attacks, and so on. The only hitch has been getting the birds processed every year. My luck has been almost comically bad. I’ve seen a number of processors close.
I eventually met a couple, I’ll call them Andrew and Andrea, about nearby that had their own processing equipment who taught me how to process birds. I’d bring my birds over, we’d process together, and it was a social outlet as well as getting a chore done.
Then their house burned down in 2018, literally a day after we’d processed my birds.
They are still in the process of rebuilding, but in 2019 and 2020 Andrea brought her processing equipment to my house and we processed the birds ourselves. When we were at her house, Andrew would help, or sometimes they’d have friends hanging out that wanted to learn how to process. Processing 70 or 80 birds is a lot of work, and many hands make it go a lot faster.
It takes a community to process chickens
I wasn’t sure where we’d get the extra hands at my house, but sometimes problems solve themselves. My boys are in Scouts, and knowing that I have a hobby farm, one of the other parents asked if I had any big jobs her son, I’ll call him Josiah, could help with. He wanted a new computer game, and she told him he could pay for it himself. I asked how Josiah felt about processing chickens. She laughed and said she’d find out how badly he wanted that computer game.
It turns out Josiah really wanted it! I had him plus my own three children, plus Andrea helping me out. The work was exhausting but we got it all done, and it was done well. I gave Josiah $20 and a couple of chickens.
The next time around, I had another friend interested in homesteading skills come over and help, along with my three kids. Well, Josiah heard my kids talking about it and was disappointed that I hadn’t asked him to help again! He’d already gotten the computer game, but he said my chickens were the most delicious he’d ever eaten. Also, he just thought it was cool to be able to process animals. He bragged about it so much to the other boys in Scouts that some of them have started asking if they can help me next time.
However, I’m not 100% sure there will be a next time
This year multiple groups of people parked at the perimeter of my property began honking and screaming that they wanted chickens. This went on for a couple of months in the early summer. In July, someone drove through my fence, pulling out a full 330-foot roll of fencing as well as half a dozen steel T-posts. I’m not sure that was related to the people harassing me, but it was terrifying and a ton of work to fix.
Then in August, in three separate events, fifty-five of my birds were stolen. I have guard dogs, but they do not bite people. They are wonderful at barking and scaring off all the foxes, coyotes, and eagles in my area, but I can’t have dogs that bite people. In the first incident, my birds were pastured a few hundred feet away from my house, but only twenty-five feet or so from my property line. My property is enclosed with 4-foot fencing but these people climbed it.
When I saw one morning that 40 of my birds were missing, with none of the gore that comes with animal attacks, I moved them to an enclosure closer to my house and put barbed wire on top of the fence. They came back and took 10 more anyway. I put my remaining birds in the insulated brooder close to my house; it’s in a well-lit area. However, our summer was incredibly hot and I left the small door of the brooder open for ventilation. The fenced-in run was closed but the door to the inner part was propped open.
In the morning, I saw that someone had pulled up part of the fencing and snagged five more of my birds. These people only stopped when I put motion-detecting cameras all over the brooder. So I can still raise some chickens, but I’m not sure how to raise true pastured poultry without putting my birds at risk. And frankly I cannot keep taking these financial hits.
The ordeal was so nerve-wracking. My children and I didn’t sleep normally for weeks. To have your property violated that many times is terrifying. I had been so satisfied during the shut downs and grocery shortages about raising so much of my own food, but it doesn’t matter how much you produce if you can’t keep other people from stealing it.
In times of instability, a new skill learned can create stability for some
The truth is, there will always be bad actors in any given group of people. There will always be individuals looking for a chance to steal, hurt others, and just in general cause trouble. It’s human nature and we can’t get away from it. When we had stable rules, stable jobs, and the kids all had stable school schedules it was easier to notice people looking for trouble. That stability is gone, and I don’t know if it will come back.
However, the eagerness of my own children, as well as their friends, to have real-life skills makes me want to try and figure something out. Kids these days are so glued to screens most of the time for school; many of them are itching to get out and do something tangible. Learning how to turn animals into dinner is a total change, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it would have been for me to get help processing birds this time around.
While there are hidden (or not-so-hidden) troublemakers out there at any point in time, there are always people willing to help, too. If you are new to homesteading or the country lifestyle, five years ago trying to meet like-minded people online might have been a good idea. I’m hesitant to recommend that now. I’m pretty sure the people that caused so much damage to me found me through social media. I have friends that also have sustainable agriculture little side-hustles that they advertise online; one, in particular, has been repeatedly targeted by animal-rights activists.
Maybe it’s time to figure out a new way to find community
If you have the skills to make money with farm products, then taking the risk of potentially exposing yourself to troublemakers is something you need to weigh against the value of advertising. It’s a business decision that’ll be different for everyone.
However, if you are new to the country/homesteading scene and just want to make friends, I personally would have a hard time recommending looking for people online. There have been plenty of other articles written about not advertising your prepper status, and I wholeheartedly agree.
As the holidays approach, hopefully many of us will be calling and checking in friends and relatives. Whether it’s some homesteading project or a specific survival scenario for which you’re trying to prepare, get a feel for how interested other people are in participating. I have my one good farm friend, Andrea. The rest of my various helpers over the years have been a mixture of friends from church, Scouts, neighbors, and relatives. A lot of them live in the suburbs. You might be pleasantly surprised to find who is receptive to preparing with you.
I have lived in the same area for the better part of a decade, so my pool of friends and acquaintances is fairly wide. If you have just moved to the country, or are not so established in your community, it may be different and will probably take longer. However, the principles are still the same. Pursue your interests; be a good neighbor; if you have solid family relationships, sustain those; and things will eventually fall into place. But it is never too soon to reach out and start building your network of like-minded folks…
The Washington State Supreme Court ruled the overtime exemption for dairy workers was unconstitutional Nov. 5. Since then, it has been a scramble for dairy farmers and their employees to figure out what to do in the aftermath of a decision that could cost dairy farms up to $120 million for following what was the law at the time.
As previously discussed, the negative effects of this court decision will be felt most sharply by dairy workers themselves as their employers grapple with the potential costs of overtime pay moving forward, including layoffs and a reduction of hours.
The intervenors in the case, the Washington State Dairy Federation and the Washington Farm Bureau, have indicated they are petitioning the court for a reconsideration of their 5-4 ruling. The reconsideration puts the judgment on hold until that request is settled by the court.
However, dairy farmers are being advised to begin paying their employees overtime pay immediately.
Dairy farmers have been in an economic downturn for at least five years. This year was supposed to be a bright spot in an otherwise bleak market. However, with the onset of COVID restrictions and restaurant and school closures, milk prices have remained poor.
Now, dairy farmers must weigh one of three options: restrict all shifts to 40 hours or less, let some of their employees go, or cut the pay of their employees to offset the cost of paying time-and-a-half when their schedules eclipse 40 hours a week.
Dairy farmers have been advised by agriculture groups the fairest approach is to allow their employees to work their full schedule – approximately 55 hours a week on average – at an adjusted base rate. By maintaining the full work schedule, adjusting base hourly wages down (but not below the state minimum wage), and paying overtime at time-and-a-half, dairy employees will end up making slightly more money over the long-term.
The larger question mark for both dairy farmers, and the larger agricultural community, is the potential for retroactive compensation for dairy employees. Retroactive compensation opens dairy farmers up to be required to issue backpay to their employees for up to three years.
The key point of the retroactive compensation question is that it would punish dairy farmers for following the state’s constitution. The new figures for what retroactive compensation would look like in dollars is approximately $120 million, if assessed for three years, according to the Washington Dairy Federation. You can hear more from the Washington Dairy Federation here.
The bottom line is dairy workers and dairy farmers are put at risk by this lawsuit. Dairy farmers are being asked to make late-in-the-year budget shifts to cover the cost of overtime pay and, as a result, some dairy employees may find themselves looking for work as the holidays begin.
The Washington State attorney general and secretary of state have issued a joint statement regarding gubernatorial succession because of questions asked about what would happen if current governor Inslee were to accept an office in a Biden Presidential administration.
From Washington State Wire:
In light of recent inquiries from members of the press and public, Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Secretary of State Kim Wyman are jointly providing information about what happens under Washington law if the governor resigns to accept a position in a presidential administration.
If the governor were to resign, article III, section 10 of the Washington Constitution provides that the lieutenant governor would perform the duties of the Office of Governor. The Washington Supreme Court, in 1902, held that the lieutenant governor also continues to serve in the Office of Lieutenant Governor while performing the governor’s duties. State ex rel. Murphy v. McBride, 29 Wash. 335, 339-40, 70 P. 25 (1902). There would thus be no vacancy in the Office of Lieutenant Governor.
That said, under article II, section 10 of the Washington Constitution, the lieutenant governor would not continue to serve as President of the Senate while performing the duties of the governor. The Senate would choose its own presiding officer during that time, much as it regularly designates one of its members to preside when the lieutenant governor is unavailable.
Article III, section 10 of the Washington Constitution requires that if the governor resigns within the first two years of his term, voters elect a person to fill the remainder of the term at the next general election. In this hypothetical scenario, that would take place in November 2021. Some have asked if an election to fill a vacancy in the Office of Governor can take place in 2021 in light of the language of RCW 29A.04.321 specifying certain other vacancies that can be filled by election in odd-numbered years. Since the Constitution itself specifies that the election occurs at the next general election (which would be in 2021), the omission of the governor from the list in statute makes no difference.
Under this hypothetical scenario, there would not be an election for lieutenant governor in 2021. The lieutenant governor would continue to serve in that position while performing the duties of the Office of Governor.
God of all blessings, source of all life, giver of all grace:
We thank you for the gift of life: for the breath that sustains life, for the food of this earth that nurtures life, for the love of family and friends without which there would be no life.
We thank you for the mystery of creation: for the beauty that the eye can see, for the joy that the ear may hear, for the unknown that we cannot behold filling the universe with wonder, for the expanse of space that draws us beyond the definitions of our selves.
We thank you for setting us in communities: for families who nurture our becoming, for friends who love us by choice, for companions at work, who share our burdens and daily tasks, for strangers who welcome us into their midst, for people from other lands who call us to grow in understanding, for children who lighten our moments with delight, for the unborn, who offer us hope for the future.
We thank you for this day: for life and one more day to love, for opportunity and one more day to work for justice and peace, for neighbors and one more person to love and by whom be loved, for your grace and one more experience of your presence, for your promise: to be with us, to be our God, and to give salvation.
For these, and all blessings, we give you thanks, eternal, loving God, through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
The U.S. economy has been on the verge of collapse for at least a decade, ever since the crash of 2008 and the subsequent explosion in fiat stimulus from the Federal Reserve. While the mainstream media has always claimed that central bankers “saved” us from another Great Depression, what they actually did was set us up for a far worse scenario — a stagflationary implosion of our society.
Here is the primary problem: By injecting trillions of bailout dollars into the system, the Federal Reserve prevented the economy from going through its natural purging cycle. This cycle would have been painful for many, but survivable, and it would have removed large amounts of excess debt, parasitic corporations that produce little or nothing of use, as well as numerous toxic assets with no legitimate value. For a real free market to function, weak or corrupt elements must be allowed to fail and die. Instead, central banks around the world and most prominently the Fed kept all of those destructive elements on life support.
This has created what amounts to a “zombie economy:” a system that needs constant outside support (stimulus) in order to continue moving forward. In the process of keeping zombie corporations and other parts of the body alive, healthy parts of the economy, like the small business sector, get devoured.
The zombie economy is, however, highly fragile. All it takes is one or two major shocks to bring it down, and the moment this happens the whole facade will disintegrate, leaving the public in panic and disarray. This is what is happening right now in 2020, and it will get much worse in 2021.
Bailouts encourage and reward unhealthy financial behavior, and this is why national debt, corporate debt and consumer debt have recently hit historic highs. When every pillar of the economy is encumbered with the weight of debt, any instability has the possibility of bringing all those pillars down at once. The Federal Reserve turned the U.S. into an economic time bomb, and the Fed is itself more like a suicide bomber than some kind of fiscal savior.
The “Great Reset”
I first heard the term “global reset” or “great reset” back in 2014/2015. I wrote an article about how the reset was actually a long term process in my article The Global Economic Reset Has Begun. Christine Lagarde was the head of the IMF back then, and she mentioned it briefly in multiple interviews.
I made a mental note of it because it seemed planted into the discussion very awkwardly, as if it was scripted. I rarely heard it mentioned for years after that. In 2020, as we descend into social and economic chaos, I’m seeing the phrase used everywhere in the media and by globalists.
Over the past decade, globalist institutions have come up with numerous phrases that seem to refer to a worldwide planned and dramatic shift in human society sometime in the near future. The “great reset” is just another phrase for “the new world order.” It is important to understand that the reset these people are talking about has actually been engineered and staged for many years. This is not something that just popped up in 2020 — they have been talking about it since at least 2014. And before that, they talked about the new world order, and “multilateralism,” and the “multi-polar world order,” and Agenda 2030, etc.
The reset is the catalyst phase of an agenda that has been in the works for a long time now. The goal, as they have openly admitted many times, is to centralize the entire globe into one monetary structure, one highly interdependent and socialized economy, and eventually one faceless and unaccountable governing body.
One of the biggest obstacles to the finalization of the reset and the formation of the new world order has been liberty-minded populations across the planet — most of all, the liberty-minded people within America. The U.S. has to be destabilized or eliminated; the old world order has to be brought down before the new world order can be introduced. The people have to be beaten down and desperate, so that when the globalists offer their “reset” as the solution, the people will gladly accept it without question — simply because they want the economic pain and uncertainty to stop.
A common statement made by globalists from Klaus Shwab at the World Economic Forum to the current Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, is that the coronavirus pandemic is the “perfect opportunity” to trigger the “great reset.” As globalist Rahm Emanuel is famous for admitting, in crisis there is opportunity to do things you were not able to do before.
In other words, when people panic in the face of crisis, they become easy to manipulate. And, if a crisis doesn’t happen naturally, then why not create a crisis from thin air and use that to cause panic?
Enter the economic lockdowns…
The lockdowns have not only been proven to do nothing to stop the spread of the coronavirus, but they are also a clear attack on what’s left of our economic system. The small business sector in particular is being gutted as more than 60% of those that shut down during the first lockdown were unable to reopen. Small businesses provide more than half of all employment in the U.S.. When they collapse, the U.S. economy will have nothing left except the big-box corporations that the Fed put on life support over a decade ago.
Real unemployment, which is already at 26%, will skyrocket even further if a second national lockdown is initiated. The speedy collapse of the U.S. economy will be assured, and the “great reset” can commence. At least, that is what the globalists want to happen…
With the U.S. presidential election currently being contested, it is hard to say how the next few months will play out in detail. As I have been pointing out since July, a contested election is the best possible scenario for the globalists because it creates a Catch-22 situation:
If Trump stays in office, the political left will accuse him of usurping the presidency and there will be mass riots in the streets. Conservatives will be tempted with the idea of bringing in martial law to suppress rioters, and such measures will undermine the flow of the U.S. economy, causing its fragile structure to implode.
If Biden enters the White House, then he will attempt a Level 4 lockdown similar to the lockdowns we have seen in Australia, France, Germany and the UK; perhaps even worse. Our economy will crumble, conservatives will revolt, and Biden will attempt martial law measures.
Either way, the globalists get their crisis, and therein their opportunity.
Surviving the lockdowns and deterring the globalists
But here is where things get less certain for the elites. If liberty-minded Americans organize immediately for security and mutual aid, we can defuse the Catch-22. If we provide for our own security within our own communities, there will be no rationale for Trump to institute martial law. Community security is an awesome deterrent against leftist rioting and looting, and basic economic trade can continue.
By extension, if we organize our own community security as well as localize our economies with barter and trade, we also act as a deterrent to Biden and any ideas he might have of enforcing national lockdowns. The point is, we can’t allow the globalists to dictate the terms of the crisis. We must act to change the rules of the game.
The reset is not a natural inevitability, it is a con, a trap. No matter how bad the crisis in our nation becomes, it is the people — namely the liberty-minded people — who will determine the future, not the globalists. Their plan relies on our panic. Instead of panic, let’s show them a unified front and a plan of our own.
The Altons at Doom and Bloom Medical have an article about what to do When a Person Faints. I once fainted while standing in early morning PT formation in the Army, probably from a combination of low blood sugar and low hydration. Well, I vomited and then fainted, so I hit at least one of the warning signs which the Altons mention. I think I also hit “momentary lack of attention.” After questions from a medic and a drink of water, I was able to continue with PT as usual with no further issues. Anyone can faint, but sometimes more rest is better.
Lower Valley Assembly 