The life lanyard is worn around your neck and has the minimal things you are probably going to need or those few things that when you need them, you really need them. When you get to where you’re going and take your pack off you can slip the lanyard over your head (you’ll always have a head) and you still have the essentials on your body.
550 cord or para-cord makes a great lanyard. You could also use a dog-tag chain, that might make more noise than you want, it’s shiny and it isn’t as multi-purpose as para-cord.
The items should be durable, functional, have a loop on it for fastening to the lanyard and be small enough that you’ll actually wear around your neck. These are all miniature versions of things that are also in your BOB. This is a great way to work in redundancy around the most important things you should have with you. For example you should have at least 3 ways of starting a fire. Why not pick one of those ways for starting a fire and put it on your lanyard.
This week the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Treasury were both in China for talks about the economy. China is the number one holder of US debt according to government figures. $2 trillion of their reserves is made of foreign currency, currently almost half of this reserve is in US debt.
In order to fund the plans that the administration has for government and the economy we need someone to take our 
debt. Despite grumbling, China seems content to continue to take more debt. They are in a difficult situation. If they don’t take on our debt then the Federal Reserve will just print more money to pay for government debt. In doing this, they will contribute to inflation. If inflation gets out of hand then the $800 billion in US debt that China holds will become worth less.
Here are some good quotes from a Bloomberg article:
Central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan ruled out any sudden change in the management of the reserves last month after proposing that governments investigate setting up a supranational currency. Premier Wen Jiabao said in March that he was “worried” about the safety of the nation’s U.S. assets. China holds $763.5 billion of Treasuries.
“It’s inevitable that China will continue investing in Treasuries because of the sheer scale of its reserves,” said Ken Peng, an economist with Citigroup Inc. in Beijing. “Diversification will happen at a slow pace, with commodities the favored alternative.”
About 65 percent of China’s reserves are in dollar assets, with the rest mostly in euros, yen and sterling, estimates Wang Tao, an economist with UBS AG in Beijing. It is “difficult to stop buying U.S. Treasuries when markets for most other assets are too small and too illiquid,” she said in a report last month.
Ideally they’ll figure out a way to execute a smooth transition. Given this inevitability a rosy scenario is less international purchasing power for the United States dollar. A worse case scenario is a sudden dump of US dollars. This could result in great instability and loss of wealth within the United States.
As we’ve said before, no matter what situation you end up in you will have your body and mind. This post is about jumping off points for improving your knowledge.
Most of the reading I do to stay on top of the news is online. There are some topics that are worth taking a deep dive on. For that, you got to get a dead tree book. Here are some books I have read that are related to survival.
- When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikes
- Build the Perfect Survival Kit
- Ragnar’s Urban Survival: A Hard-Times Guide to Staying Alive in the City
- Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)
- The Essential Wilderness Navigator: How to Find Your Way in the Great Outdoors, Second Edition
- 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive
What would cause it?
There are cosmic events that could cause an Electromagnetic Pulse but the most likely cause of an EMP is via a nuclear weapon explosion. The detonation needs to occur within your line of sight or above your horizon for it to effect you. It is possible that a powerful enough detonation far above the United States could impact the entire continental United States.
Equipment can generate small, focused EMPs. This sort of equipment is impractical to deploy as a weapon. EMP bombs are possible but they are an order of magnitude less powerful and impractical compared to a nuclear EMP effect. They could be an option to avoid the political fallout an organization would attract by using a nuclear weapon.
Rogue states like Iran and DPRK are not capable of a continent-wide EMP attack on the United States. They could effect a metropolitan area with a detonation at the site or they could effect coastal cities by launching a nuclear weapon a modest distance into the air and then detonating. Read the rest of this entry »
We’ll assume you have a good amount of water in your bug out bag. Having 3 full days of water is not practical, 3 gallons is hard to carry on your body. The food in your bug out bag should minimally keep your spirits up while giving a baseline of nutrition to keep you operating effectively.
MRE’S Meals Ready to Eat
You just can’t go wrong with MREs. They have a good mix of variety and familiarity even though they have a great shelf life. I have 3 MREs in my bag. If space is anything close to being a concern you should break down your MRE, remove most of the packaging and any items you’re not going to use. This saves lots of space.
Nuts and Beef Jerkey
Nuts pack in so many calories that I don’t even eat them when I’m trying to lose weight. In a survival situation those calories can fuel your ability to get where you need to be. Nuts are a great source of protein as is beef jerkey of course. Studies show that protein is more important than carbohydrates for cognitive ability. Protein also gives you a long term sustainable energy. If you want some carbs in there throw in some raisins. Read the rest of this entry »
If you haven’t heard the term BRIC, you will. That’s who will be running the world as America fades. BRIC stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Military
Not many BRIC nations are challenging the US military. Russia and China are conducting joint military exercises. China is buying time, increasing their leverage and growing strong.
Economic
China is flush with US dollars that it thinks may soon be worth much less. Before that happens China is investing all over the world; Latin America, Africa, Australia and the rest of Asia. They offer a refreshing no strings attached approach to business.
Reserve Currency
The conventional belief is that it’s not a matter of if the US dollar will lose reserve currency status but a matter of when and what will replace it. Being the worlds reserve currency allows us to print money and spend it in the world. This will mark the end of an era, the free ride will be over. At the recent G-8 meeting, Russia presented all attendees with a prototype of a proposed world currency.
Links
If you are under weight and are a hard-gainer look into the GOMAD diet. Since gaining weight has never been a problem for me I
won’t pretend to have anything to say in that area.
If you’re still with me then you’re in the camp that wants to lose fat and retain or increase lean muscle. It’s important to strip away all the noise and get down to how you lose weight. Whatever your genetics, glandular issues, high-school injury, occupation or family life situation weight loss comes down to two things you can control.
Losing weight has obvious implications for preparedness. You can go further and move yourself more easily. It’s also good to become aware of your dietary requirements. You’ll learn what it means to restrict calories. You’ll get more of an understanding of what your nutritional requirements will be in adverse situations.
I have to say up front that I have no special training in security consulting, I’m not a law enforcement officer. I have some training in physical security from military days but it’s hardly applicable to home defense.
If multiple armed perpetrators are inside your house and in control of your family then the fight is for the most part lost. That’s just the reality. You can decide to go down in a blaze of glory but the fact is that your life is in their hands.
So the question is, how do you minimize the chances of that happening. Read the rest of this entry »
Tomorrow I’m traveling to Denver to see Chris Martenson lecture. Way before the initial crash of the market in October of 2008 I was geeking out on things like the economy, how money is made, peak oil and the housing bubble. There was enough information out there and I was able to piece together enough such that I was concerned about the stability of America, our economy, the dollar and our ability to maintain the unsustainable trajectory we were on.
Later in the game, I believe after the initial market crash I stumbled on Chris Martenson. He dug much deeper than me and came to the same conclusions much earlier. He packaged his research into what he calls the Crash Course. I really wish I would’ve found him earlier, I could’ve saved some time. You can view the entire video series on YouTube. There’s also a condensed version available. Here it is but I recommend watching the long version. Read the rest of this entry »
Before talking about handguns I might need to make the case for guns. If you are preparing and you don’t have a means of protecting yourself, your loved ones and the things critical to your survival then you are not considering possible outcomes. It’s possible that all your preparation benefits someone else. Someone stronger, less principled and well armed. If you let that happen then all your work is for nothing. Indeed your efforts to survive might even make you more of a target than you otherwise would have been.
Local gun laws obviously effect any decision to buy a pistol. Depending on where you live you may not even be able to legally own a pistol. Other weapons are great for their specific uses but nothing compares to the usability and and ability to conceal a handgun. For sure we can say that in any situation a handgun is better than the long gun that is too big to carry.
Semi-automatic vs revolver
Revolvers have fewer moving parts so they could be considered more reliable. Revolvers don’t not expel casings. They are also intuitive to operate. Unfortunately revolvers are hard to re-load once you have fired all of your bullets. Revolvers have a vulnerable point where the cylinder swivels out and attaches to the frame of the gun, if that becomes damaged it may not work properly. Many people consider revolvers to be a good backup weapon.
Semi-automatic pistols share the same basic concepts. There’s a trigger, safety button, magazine release button and a slide release button. For the most part the only difference is where these buttons are situated. The safest bet is to purchase a semi-automatic pistol unless you know you have special requirements that only a revolver can satisfy. Read the rest of this entry »