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Page added on September 10, 2015
How You Can Prepare Over The Next Six Months
I wouldn’t say that it is “never too late” to prepare for potential disaster because, obviously, the numerous economic and social catastrophes of the past have proven otherwise. There simply comes a point in time in which the ignorant and presumptive are indeed officially screwed. I will say that we have not quite come to that point yet here in the U.S., but the window of opportunity for preparation is growing very narrow.
As expected, U.S. stocks are now revealing the underlying instability of our economy, which has been festering for several years. Extreme volatility not seen since 2008/2009 has returned, sometimes with 1000 point fluctuations positive and negative in the span of only a couple days. Current market tremors are beginning to resemble the EKG of a patient suffering a heart attack.
Stocks are a trailing indicator, meaning that when an equities crash finally becomes visible to the mainstream public, it indicates that the economic fundamentals have been broken beyond repair for quite a while. What does this mean for those people who prefer to protect themselves and their families rather than wait to be drowned like lemmings in a deluge? It means they are lucky if they have more than a few months to put their house in order.
The process of crisis preparedness is not as simple as going on a gear-buying bonanza or making a few extra trips to Costco. That is better than nothing; but really, it’s a form of half-assed prepping that creates more of an illusion of survivabilty rather than providing ample security in the event that financial systems malfunction.
Much of what’s listed in this article will include training and infrastructure goals far beyond the usual standards of beans, bullets and Band-Aids.
Market turmoil has only just begun to take shape around the globe; and as I explained in my last article, the situation is only going to become exponentially worse as 2015 bleeds into 2016. I certainly cannot say for certain how long our system will remain “stable,” primarily because our current collapse could easily move faster or slower through the influence of outside or engineered events (a slower progression without any black swan-style triggers would likely end in total breakdown within the span of a couple years, rather than a fast progression ending in the span of a few months). What I can do is give you a conservative timeline for preparedness and offer examples of actions anyone can accomplish within that period. For now, my timeline is limited to six months or less, meaning these preparations should be undertaken with the intent to complete them in half a year. If you get more time than that, thank your lucky stars for the extension.
Find Two Family Members, Two Friends and One Neighbor Of Like Mind
Here is the bottom line: If you are going the route of the lone wolf or secret squirrel isolated from any community, then you are already dead. You might as well hand your food and supplies over to someone else with a better fighting chance. The lone wolf methodology is the worst possible strategy for survival. And if you look at almost every collapse scenario in history from Argentina to Bosnia to the Great Depression, it is always the people with strong community who end up surviving.
Going lone wolf is partially useful only if you have zero moral fortitude and you plan to rob or murder every other person you come across and then run. This is not the smartest idea either because it requires a person to constantly seek out violent contact in order to live day to day. Eventually, the lone wolf’s luck will run out no matter how vicious he is.
I’ve noticed that those people who promote lone wolf survivalism tend to lean toward moral relativism, though they rarely come right out and admit what their real plans are. I’ve also noticed that it is the lone wolves who also often attempt to shame average preppers into isolationism with claims of “OPSEC” (operations security) and warnings of neighbors ready to loot their homes at the first sign of unrest. “Don’t talk to anyone,” they say. “Your only chance is to hide.” One should consider the possibility that the lone wolves prefer that preppers never form groups or communities because that would make their predatory strategy more successful.
Without community, you have no security beyond the hope that people will not find you by chance. You also have limited skill sets to draw from (no one has the knowledge and ability to provide all services and necessities for themselves). And you will have no ability to rebuild or extend your lines of safety, food production, health services, etc. once the opportunity arises. If you cannot find two family members, two friends and one neighbor to work with you in the next six months, then you aren’t trying hard enough; and thus, frankly, you don’t deserve to survive. I’ve heard all the excuses before: “Everyone around me is blissfully ignorant,” “My family is addicted to their cellphones,” “All my friends are Keynesians” and so on. It doesn’t matter. No more excuses. Get it done. If I can do it, you can.
Approach Your Church, Veterans’ Hall Or Other Organization
What do you have to lose? Find an existing organization you belong to and see if you can convince them to pre-stage supplies or hold classes on vital skills. Keep your approach nonpolitical. Make it strictly about preparedness and training. If you can motivate a church or a veterans’ hall or a homeschoolers’ club to actually go beyond their normal parameters and think critically about crisis preparedness, then you may have just saved the lives of dozens if not hundreds or people who would have been oblivious otherwise. Making the effort to approach such groups could be accomplished in weeks, let alone six months.
Learn A Trade Skill
Take the next six months and learn one valuable trade skill, meaning any skill that would allow you to produce a necessity, repair a necessity or teach a necessary knowledge set. If you cannot do this, then you will have no capability to barter in a sustainable way. Remember this: The future belongs to the producers, and only producers will thrive post-collapse.
Commit To Rifle Training At Least Once A Week
Set aside the money and the ammo to practice with your primary rifle every week for the next six months. Yes, training uses up your ammo supply; but you are far better off sending a couple thousand rounds down range to perfect your shooting ability rather than letting that ammo sit in a box doing nothing while your speed and accuracy go nowhere.
Also, think in terms of real training methods, including speed drills, movement drills, reloading and malfunction clearing, and, most importantly, team movement and communications drills. Shooting a thousand rounds from a bench at the range is truly a waste of time and money. Train in an environment that matches your expected operational conditions. Make sure you are learning something new all the time and make sure you are actually challenged by the level of difficulty. If you are not getting frustrated, then you are not training correctly.
Create A Local Ham Network – Expand To Long Distance
A 5-watt ham radio can be had for about $40. With the flood of low-cost, Chinese-made radios on the market today, there is simply no excuse not to have one. If you want to get your ham license, then by all means do so and expand the number of available frequencies you can legally use. If you don’t have a license, practice on non-licensed channels such as MURS channels (yes, MURS is only supposed to be operated at 1 watt or less; I won’t tattle on you to the Federal Communications Commission if you use 5 watts).
A 5-watt handheld ham radio can easily achieve 30 miles or more depending on the type of antenna used. With repeaters, hundreds of miles can be covered. With a high frequency (HF) rig, hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles can be covered without the use of repeaters (though HF radios are far more expensive).
During a national disaster, there is no guarantee that normal communications will continue. Phone and Internet connections can be lost through neglect, or they can be deliberately eliminated by government entities. A nation or community without communications is lost. Find friends and family and set up your communications network now. Over time, your network may grow to cover a vast area; but it has to start with a core, and that core is you.
Learn Basic Emergency And Combat Medical Response
We are lucky in my area to have a few people with extensive medical knowledge in our Community Preparedness Team. I have received training in multiple areas of emergency and combat medical response, and I am grateful for access to such people because there is always more to learn in this field. If you do not have people on your team with medical experience, then you will have to seek out such classes where you can.
Local EMT classes are a good start, but these courses are very limited in scope and do not cover treatment as much as they cover the identification of particular problems. Almost no community courses I can think of delve into combat medical response. If you can’t find a private trainer in your area, then you will have to settle for Web videos. Purchase extra supplies such as Israeli or OLAES bandages and practice using them. Learn your CAT tourniquet until you can use it in the dark. My team even shot a Christmas ham and then pumped fake blood through it to simulate a wound for our blood-stopping class.
If you already have solid people with medical training, try focusing in a niche area like dental work. At the very least, learn your trauma-response basics and store your own medical supplies. Do not assume that you will have access to a hospital when you need it.
Store At Least One Year Of Food – Then Store Extra
With your current food stores can you make it at least one year without a grocery supply source? Can you make it through at least one planting and harvest season with 2000 – 3000 available calories per person? Do you have extra food for people you might wish to help?
Imagine you or your community come across an ER surgeon during a crisis situation, but he did not prepare. Are you going to “stick it to him” and let him starve because he didn’t see the danger coming, or are you going to want to keep that guy and his skill sets around? Food preparedness is not as straightforward as it seems. You have to think in terms of your own survival, yes, but also in terms of individual aid. During a full spectrum collapse food is the key to everything. This is why governments like ours set up provisions for food confiscation. They know well that food is power. Without extra supply, communities struggle to form because people become hyper-focused on themselves and lose track of the bigger survival picture. Governments understand that if they can offer limited food to the desperate, they can control the desperate. Do what you can to make sure there are no desperate people within your sphere of influence and you remove the establishment’s best mode of control.
Plan Your Food Independence In Advance
To survive you must become your own farmer. Period. Do you know how to do this in your particular climate? Have you accounted for pest control and bad weather conditions? Have you extended your growing season with the use of greenhouses? Are you planning your crops realistically? What provides more sustenance, a field of tomatoes or a field of potatoes? A planting box full of lettuce or of carrots? What crops can be stored the longest and are the hardiest against poor conditions? What gives you the best bang for your buck and for your labor?
I realize that the current growing season is almost at an end, but that does not mean you can’t spend the next six months planning for the next season. Condition your soil for planting now. Store extra fertilizer and compost. Be ready for pests. Learn the square foot method as well as barrel planting. Take note of the space you have and how you can best use it. Stockpile seeds for several years of planting.
Train Your Mind To Handle Crisis
Panic betrays and fear kills. The preparedness culture is built upon the ideal that one must defeat fear in order to live. How a person goes about removing uncertainty from the mind is really up to the individual. For me, combat training and mixed martial arts is a great tool. If you get used to people trying to hurt you in a ring, it’s not quite as surprising or terrifying when it happens in the real world. If you can handle physical and mental trauma in a slightly more controlled environment, then fear is less likely to take hold of you during a surprise disaster.
Six months may be enough time to enter a state of mental preparedness, it may not be, but more than anything else, this is what you should be focusing on. All other survival actions depend on it. Your ability to function personally, your ability to work with others, your ability to act when necessary, all rely on your removal of fear. Take the precious time you have now and ensure you are ready to handle whatever the future throws at you.
36 Comments on "How You Can Prepare Over The Next Six Months"
Hello on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 7:31 am
Laughable.
Makati1 on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 7:34 am
Half-assed plan if I ever saw one. And this is for Americans? They couldn’t do this if they had six years. The best they can do is the Costco route on their credit card, if they have any credit left.
First, they would have to ditch all of the habits and addictions they have grown to love. Coffee, cigarettes, beer, weed, TV, sports, etc.
Second, a “skill” takes years, not months to master. Maybe you can learn to ride a bike in six months, if you are not too out of shape and obese.
Ditto for making a successful garden that you can live off of regularly. Failure happens to even the long term gardener occasionally. Not to mention that most homes do not have soil, they have dirt called ‘clay’ under a few inches of grass top soil. Barely grows weeds without chemicals and fertilizer.
One year food storage. Ok, maybe possible if you have about $5K+ to plunk down at the market, but do you know what to buy and how to store it? Water? Meds? Eye Glasses? Durable clothes? Cleaning supplies? Had tools for that “skill”?
I could go on, but the article reads like a hippie dream of living in some self-sufficient commune in six months. All you need is tons of cash or financial independence so you can do all of this instead of holding down a job and raising your family.
You should have started in 2008. It’s a bit too late now. LOL
americandream on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 7:50 am
Another prophesy of doom when the shops are stuffed. Are these people for real?
Davy on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 8:00 am
The dominoes are falling and the dreamers are well dreaming. The American dream is so out of fashion and blase.
Then there is the Asiaphiles who region host 4.5Bil of the 7Bil and is heading to 500MIL. What a tragedy that will be. It doesn’t matter how superhuman the Asiaphiles think they are if there are too many people and not enough food. Ha ha
BobInget on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 8:28 am
apologies for this being off topic. I thought it interesting enough to sneak it in here.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/09/exclusive-50-spies-say-isis-intelligence-was-cooked.html
More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned. (snip)
ghung on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 9:55 am
It never fails that the cornies are the first to jump in; the exceptionalists who think they’re immune to this sort of crisis. Of course, the first time they go to a store and find it’s been stripped of toilet paper, they’ll be the first to demand their entitlement and blame others for hoarding when “the shops were stuffed”. Got a year’s worth of butt-wipe? Your ass is the ultimate “just-in-time” demand.
While Mak, as usual, lumps all Americans into his silly little thought box, he’s right about growing things. I know plenty of pseudo-preppers who keep seeds, fertilizer, tools, etc. for the great vegetable garden they’ll grow when the store shelves are empty, but have grown nothing beyond, perhaps, a few patio tomatoes. Sustenance growing is tough, and the pests have the upper hand. I finished my high tunnel (greenhouse) in late July and began growing immediately. Having been a grower for years, I thought I was ready for anything, but was only partly prepared for the party Nature decided to throw in there as soon as my first cloned tomato went in the ground (WooHoo!).
It’s been a war of attrition ever since. I’m winning for now, but only with the use of stuff like neem oil, hand-picking white fly worms, spraying aphids, leaf miners, cucumber beetles, on and on. I put beets and carrots in one bed last week, and finished a bed of cabbage and onions last night after spraying with spinosad. Put both beds under row covers to keep pests out.
If I wasn’t growing in the shelter of the high tunnel, I would be dealing with mildew, mold, wilt, root rot, etc., because it has been so wet this summer; rain almost every day. A few very wet weeks and your garden will be a muddy mess of drowning, festering plants. Drought? If you haven’t developed a water source, your garden is screwed. If your garden requires hand watering, you better designate a full time waterer, because a garden large enough to feed even a couple of people will require constant attention to soil moisture. Got irrigation?
Knowing which crops and varieties do well in your area, under what conditions, and when, requires a lot of experience and experimentation. Every season of every year can be different.
Know the difference between mosaic virus (bad) and magnesium deficiency (got Epsom salt?)? How many wannabe survival gardeners have done soil tests (the kind done by your extension service) and done them again, and again? I take samples from each of my beds, send them in, amend if needed, sample again, send them in, and tell the lab what I plan to grow next. It’s free in my State this time of year, but will likely be unavailable when contraction takes it’s toll on govt. services. Better get a sense of such things; what your plants are telling you. Got good books on plant nutritional requirements and signs of stress?
I could go on all day, but those who haven’t been doing these things had better get in with a very local community garden with some experienced folks. That may be hard, since, in my experience, most successful gardeners go it alone after dealing with wannabe gardeners; been there, done that. I opened our large garden for several years to nearby neighbors and it’s not something I plan to do again. They all eventually dropped out, making every kind of excuse, and left me with a big mess. A family garden with me in charge; that’s it. Some folks simply don’t understand that bringing in one diseased plant or stealthy pest can ruin a healthy garden in short order; not too cool when it’s your primary fresh food source.
Live in an area with lots of other successful gardeners? I do. We share ideas, knowledge, and the fruits of our labors, and distributed food production will be key to a community’s success as opposed to large scale mono-cropping, long-supply-chain industrial agriculture. Greer’s latest series looks like it’s highlighting this sort of thinking. If you live in an area with little-to-none of this sort of thing, be prepared to stand in long lines like I saw in 1974 Moscow; hundreds of folks waiting for hours for a few pounds of chicken or vegetables to come in.
Think it can’t happen here? Party on.
BTW: Now is a good time to stock up on gardening supplies. I’ve found a lot of good long-shelf-life stuff on deep clearance at the big box stores (tools, pesticides, fertilizers, soaker hoses, irrigation timers, seeds) I got some of the little manual dial irrigation timers for $3; usually $11.99, and the nice battery timers were about 40% off. I got organic pesticides, usually $13/32oz, for $4 at Walmart. Fifty foot soaker hoses there were less than half price ($5). Bone meal, blood meal, fish emulsion, etc., also marked down. The seed starting mix I like was half price.
Got plenty of this stuff? Know how to use it? Thought not, which is why many of you have to believe the shit will never hit <i<YOUR fan.
Davy on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 10:11 am
G-man, I had a hell of a year in the garden with all of the above too including weeds which you have under control. I will second your theme. Gardening is tough work with often times lackluster results. I wonder how any of us are going to make it preppers included. Yet, if we don’t at least try entropy wins. I echo your advice on stocking up on gardening supplies. I have been stocking up on hand tools also.
ghung on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 10:17 am
Bob; thanks for the link. frome the article: …a large number of people tracking the inner workings of the terror groups think that their reports are being manipulated to fit a public narrative.”
Yeah,, ya think? Wouldn’t want to jeopardise the fragile, carefully-groomed construct that all is well in the world, and getting better. Freaking doomers just need to shut the hell up. Bad news is also bad for markets, profits, jobs, and the ongoing ‘recovery’. Now get the hell out there and SHOP! It’s the patriotic thing to do. We’ll handle those things you shouldn’t worry about.
ghung on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 10:39 am
Davy; the only thing I hate worse than weeds is weeding. That’s why I use mulch, including rolled paper and polyester (reusable) bed covers. On the other hand, a lot of weeds are food as well. I wonder how many folks will suffer malnutrition because they are cluelessly walking around on their breakfast.
apneaman on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 10:57 am
Now get the hell out there and SHOP!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxk9PW83VCY
MrNoItAll on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 12:05 pm
Hey Davy, come on man, you got to get those weeds under control! For me, the weeds aren’t too big a problem, even with 1200 square feet of raised planter growing area. They were bad the first year, but I was super-diligent and picked those weeds wherever I found them, before they could go to seed. It was hard work, but I got a lot of material for my compost pile and this year the weeds weren’t bad at all.
I agree with you that people (doomers included) who think that once TSHTF all they have to do is start up a garden are in for a very rude surprise. It takes dedicated, tough physical labor, detailed planning, proper seed for the area/climate, study and knowledge to get a halfway decent crop. And water — gotta have water. If/when the tap water stops flowing, what are people going to do?
I guess I’m one of the relative few who have managed to do all the above and produce a really decent quantity of food. I won’t boast again about how well my garden did this year. But let’s just say that I am confident I grew enough food to survive on, if needed, for at least a few months, probably more. And that’s on just 1/16th of an acre. And that is with less than optimal soil quality, which by the way I will be finally getting solved once and for all in a couple of weeks when I return from my business trip.
It CAN be done. Individuals CAN get set up to produce significant quantities of their own food. But it requires hardcore labor, money and materials invested, know-how and a gung-ho attitude. Which, I have observed, not all people have in sufficient quantities. I figure Mother Nature and physical reality (same thing actually) will sort it all out as the end of the Age of Oil fizzles out.
BTW, regarding your response to a post on another article. I would recommend that you harvest at least one or two frames from your hive, just to get the hang of it. Yesterday was my first day harvesting raw honey, and I made a lot of mistakes. Watching YouTube videos today, I see where I went wrong — I could have probably obtained another three or four quarts of honey if I had done it right. If you don’t have a honey super (or two or three per hive in case of a really good year), you might think about getting them. Definitely another hive would be what I would recommend, even two. I’m going to get one more hive next year assuming they are still gettable. Now, keeping the hives I have alive and producing year after year — THAT is going to be the real challenge.
simonr on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 12:09 pm
Article was having a pop at moral relativity, as a definition of objective is
‘not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased’
how can morals be anything other than subjective.
on a more exciting subject, I read an article in Rural heritage that advocated leaving weeds in to break up the soil, admittedly this pre-supposed a horse and cultivator to keep them under control.
idontknowmyself on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 12:22 pm
Easier to be nomadic trapping, fishing and eating weeds then having a garden.
ghung on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 12:35 pm
idontknowmyself said: “Easier to be nomadic trapping, fishing and eating weeds then having a garden.”
Sure. That’s why the human population began to grow so quickly when people invented agriculture and formed settlements rather than sticking to an easier life of being nomadic hunter/gatherers.
simonr on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 12:38 pm
idontknowmyself
I don’t really know Dave, but …. I wouldn’t try trapping or fishing or eating weeds on his land
A personal vignette, but would be replayed all over the world, and that’s why Nomadic just wouldn’t work
Get off my land !!
MrNoItAll on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 12:40 pm
Hunter/gatherer lifestyle is for wimps. Real men cultivate.
chilyb on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 1:04 pm
Lone wolf all the way baby. Howl.
GregT on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 1:28 pm
“Lone wolf all the way baby.”
Well have fun living in your cave chilyb, and don’t bother coming around these parts, cause the community is expecting you.
apneaman on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 1:33 pm
Agriculture was only an invention of necessity. Does anyone seriously think that it’s a coincidence that agriculture started right after we extincted the megafauna? I think they turned to agriculture so they would not starve and I bet they were well aware of how plants worked and even did some light gardening in their cyclical travels. What would you rather do? Go mammoth hunting with the boys once or twice a month or slave away in a field all day for life and have to listen to the old lady bitch every night? Next to sex, nothing drips the dopamine like hunting. Fucking and Killing – there is no life without it.
Humans, not climate, caused giant ancient mammal extinction
“Known collectively as megafauna, most of the largest mammals ever to roam the earth were wiped out over the last 80,000 years, and were all extinct by 10,000 years ago.”
“As far as we are concerned, this research is the nail in the coffin of this 50-year debate,” Bartlett said. “Humans were the dominant cause of the extinction of megafauna. What we don’t know is what it was about these early settlers that caused this demise. Were they killing them for food, was it early use of fire or were they driven out of their habitats? Our analysis doesn’t differentiate, but we can say that it was caused by human activity more than by climate change. It debunks the myth of early humans living in harmony with nature.”
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_465673_en.html
Pops on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 1:36 pm
The OP site is typical God/Guns/Grits but overall I like the suggestions.
Everyone has their niche so there is no right way to do things but I’d say the way to prep is by duration. If you don’t have a 72hr kit there is no use for 72k rounds of ammo. If you don’t have a large enough pantry to get you through to harvest there is no use having a 20k sf garden. If you can’t pay the rent next month without next months paycheck there is no use planting anything in the backyard.
Point is to do things in little steps. Buy things you already use, just more. You can do it a little at a time or all at once but strive to change your household habits rather than just buying a bunch of nitro-pak wheat berries.
One of many food storage threads from the archives (back when folks here did stuff instead of just blather and bicker)
http://peakoil.com/forums/post925.html?hilit=%5Bfood%5D%20storage#p925
Revi on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 1:37 pm
I think it will take a community, but I wonder if everyone will be so freaked out that it might take a while to even get people to realize what’s going on. Those of us who have known about peak oil for a while are aware of what’s going on. The vast majority of people aren’t aware that anything could go wrong. I think they will go ballistic, maybe literally when things start to go awry.
Pops on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 1:38 pm
I wonder if folks aren’t a little more edgy nowadays Revi?
been a tough decade…
GregT on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 1:44 pm
Pops,
The link in that thread to your 90 page text file is no longer working. Do you know where I could get a copy?
Pops on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 2:09 pm
Greg, I forgot the old links are lost. I laid my digital copy off on a DVD somewhere but you can search the web for “azgrammy” – she is the food storage guru.
—
Here is a site with lots of her collected stuff from back in the day. (if it doesn’t come up alphabetical by author just click the “Author” column head
http://docsplace.yuku.com/forums/76/sort/name/direction/ASC?page=1#.VfHUh52rSEJ
GregT on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 3:36 pm
Thanks Pops.
GregT on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 3:49 pm
“been a tough decade…”
Spoke with one of my old work buddies this morning. Another round of housecleaning and layoffs underway. Senior execs and middle management shaking in their boots. They’ll keep tightening the belts, until the circulation gets cut off.
jjhman on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 6:53 pm
A thought on the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture:
Hunter gatherer tribes were nomads, by definition, so they didn’t own anything that they couldn’t carry. To raise children they needed groups of a size to feed, clothe and protect helpless, or nearly helpless individuals for several years. Hence everything was shared.
The transition to agriculture involved being able to protect your crop from “transients” who found it much easier to steal your food than grow their own. Hence organization that involved hiring their own thugs to protect them from the wandering thugs. Eventually the thugs declared themselves “landlords” and we ended up where we are today with the thugs in charge.
Davy on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 7:22 pm
JJ, most Native Americans were a blend of which we call semi-nomadic. I have read extensively on the Osage Tribe. This semi-nomadic living allowed them multiple benefits depending on the season. They were the ultimate in variable and seasonal. Something we need to get more in touch with.
apneaman on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 8:13 pm
From Hunter-Gatherer to Farmer (Part 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJLHewx6PHQ
Makati1 on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 9:08 pm
Pops, I loved this comment: “If you can’t pay the rent next month without next months paycheck there is no use planting anything in the backyard.”
I wonder how many on here actually OWN their property? The banks own most land in the US and, if there is a working government, you never OWN your land. You only OWN it if you can always pay your taxes. IF you default on them, the government takes it.
The land is taxed here in the Ps, but it takes decades for the government to make the effort to try to collect, and even then, a ‘deal’ can be made. 3rd world countries have some advantages the 1st world does not. LOL
ennui2 on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 10:43 pm
==
Think it can’t happen here? Party on.
==
It can happen, sure. The question is WHEN. The constantly rolling “end is night” predictions are getting ridiculous.
apneaman on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 10:52 pm
“The constantly rolling “end is night” predictions are getting ridiculous.”
Yet you just can’t seem to find anywhere else you want to hang out. Why is that?
ghung on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 10:55 pm
Jeez, Mak, the taxes on the property down the road went unpaid for 11 years after the owners died. Even then, the beneficiaries had a year to get caught up on taxes before the property was auctioned for taxes due. Our county never takes property from retired/elderly folks. They settle up when people sell or die. Fact is, they don’t want the property. Generally the worst that happens here is that they publish a list of people and properties that have unpaid property taxes every March. If it’s a highly leveraged development or property, their focus is on the banks holding the notes.
Try to not paint with such a broad, messy brush.
ghung on Thu, 10th Sep 2015 11:16 pm
ennui2: “The constantly rolling “end is night” predictions are getting ridiculous.”
The end is nigh Nigh, as in NEAR.
Repeat after me: The End is Nigh. The End is Nigh. The End is Nigh…..
Makati1 on Fri, 11th Sep 2015 12:31 am
ghung, there are exceptions, but as the governmets get hungrier, they will be after you if you miss one payment. The world has changed, in case you have not noticed. They need that tax money to exist and will sell your farm for the few thousand you owe, in a heartbeat. Wait and see.
If there is no government left after the crash, your problems will be greater than holding your land. Everyone will want what you have on the shelf that they don’t have. And guns will not protect you.
Makati1 on Fri, 11th Sep 2015 12:34 am
ennui2, better 5 years early than 5 minutes late.
Perhaps you should read up on the years right before the 1929 crash and the First and Second World Wars. Nobody thought it would happen then either.