Hi Everyone,
April was Earthquake preparedness month. We don’t want to scare our kids by telling them the BIG ONE can come at any time, but we SHOULD be talking about it so that when an earthquake comes, they will know what to do. This can be as easy as a dinnertime conversation:
- What should you do if there is an earthquake at night?
- What if you are at school?
- What if you are home, but Mom is at the store?
- Do you stay inside or run outside?
Here is a great place for information: Earthquake Preparedness | California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services
In addition, you can use the USGS map to actually SEE the fault lines in your city: U.S. Quaternary Faults.
Turns out my local library is offering a “Plant Trade” Day where people can come together and trade plants. I guess they also have demonstrations going on about gardening and composting and stuff like that. I’m just giddy with excitement. It is happening on April 22 in honor or “Earth Day”. You might want to check YOUR local library and find out if anything interesting is happening!
Confession — I have never gutted a fish. Perhaps I’m not alone here. Secretly, I have wondered how to do this, although really I don’t want to be the one who does it. LOL
BUT, look what I found….
GARDENING HAPPENINGS:
Last week I sprayed twice for aphids and whatever those little black bugs are stuck all over the outside of my yellow cups. I wouldn’t have worried about them so much, except that I started looking UNDER the leaves of my plants and they were everywhere! I used Safer Soap with Pyrethrin.
Notice the OMRI label on the front. This assures you it is organic. I bought mine last year, used it all summer, and still have 1/2 bottle left for THIS summer. You only use 2 TB at a time in a spray bottle filled with water. Even organic gardeners spray for insects. You have to!!!! I’ve read about people who steep garlic and other spicy items in hot water, then use the garlic water to spray. Yeah, I’m not sure if that would affect the taste of the lettuce??? And, frankly, I can’t be bothered. LOL
THIS WEEK’S PURCHASE: rice
Somewhere I heard (probably a rumor) that rice may get scarce because of the weather. Just pick up 2 10-pound bags of rice. You used to be able to get these bags for about $8.00. I know they are more now, but I think they are still under $10. You’ll want to re-package them, either in a food-grade bucket with a lid, OR you can use 2-liter bottles, OR you can vacuum seal them in smaller quantities.
BEST IDEA EVER!!!
In case of an emergency, prepare a lanyard for EACH member of the family that they can throw over their heads — especially children, NO MATTER their age!!! On it have an ID, a family picture, a small flashlight, etc. After Hurricane Katrina, people were evacuated, and children were sometimes separated from their families. In some cases, it took months to get the children back if you couldn’t prove with birth certificates, ID pictures, etc that they belonged to you. For the next few weeks, I’ll include something to help you get this set up.
THIS WEEK – get lanyards for everyone. I like the idea of colored ones – a different color for each member of the family, but only IF you can remember which kid gets which color!
8 Pack Cruise Lanyard with Waterproof ID Card Holder
These lanyards are SO inexpensive that grandparents could give them as gifts to their kids and grandkids – print the ID tags for them and include a family picture.
WARNING: When I taught school and we took the kids on field trips, we NEVER had them wear name tags. We didn’t want a stranger to be able to call them by name. Maybe have the child’s picture only. Then on the back, have parent information. This child belongs to… For field trips, we had the school’s name and phone number and the teacher’s name and phone number, but NOT the child’s name.
Your child’s name can be on a folded piece of paper in the plastic pouch, available but not visible.
FOOD STORAGE RECIPES:
Apple Oatmeal Muffins
from the book Cookin’ With Home Storage by Peggy Layton
- 1 1/4 c. wheat flour
- 1 c. oatmeal
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 3 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp salt
Sift dry ingredients together
Combine wet ingredients
- 2 eggs
- 2 TB honey
- 1/2 c. milk
- 1/4 c. oil
Stir into dry ingredients. Mix well.
- 2 c. diced apples or raisins – Add
Fill greased muffin tins. Bake 15-20 min at 350 degrees.
Granola Muffins
from the book Cookin’ With Home Storage by Peggy Layton
- 1 3/4 c. flour
- 1 TB baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 c. brown sugar
- 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
- 1 c. granola
Mix dry ingredients.
Combine wet ingredients
- 1 egg
- 1 c. milk
- 1/4 c. cooling oil
Add to dry ingredients, stirring just enough to moisten.
- 1/4 c. raisins – add
Spoon batter into greased muffin tins. Bake 400 degrees for 20 min. Makes about 12.
Simple Candied Carrots
from the book Cookin’ With Home Storage by Peggy Layton
1/2 c. dried carrot slices – Cook in water until tender. About 20-30 min. Drain water.
Add 1/2 c. butter, stir till melted
Add 6 TB brown sugar, stir till smooth.
Marti
For as long as humans have walked the Earth, we haven’t tracked temperatures very well. Though the oldest continuous temperature record is the Central England Temperature Data Series beginning in 1659, recorded temperatures from multiple locations did not start until 1880. It’s difficult to extrapolate out global weather patterns from one or just a few sites documenting the data. For this reason, temperature records derived from instruments are often separated from proxy measurements. Data from earlier years are reconstructed from proxy records like tree rings, pollen counts, geological records, and ice cores. Because these are different kinds of data, scientists generally don’t put proxy-based estimates on the same charts as instrumental records. Often scientists have to first turn to the oral history of an area and then use proxy records to determine the validity of the claims.
The average person, faced with overwhelming data and daunting, scary headlines, turns to their own area for answers and to forecast the future. The science is overwhelming, so I also recommend this approach. Talk to the old-timer locals. Go to the library in your area and read the old newspapers on microfiche. Be a historian of the area you live in today. What are the indigenous people’s tales? Do you live in Oregon, Nevada, or California? Do you know about the Great Flood of 1862 and the conditions that led to that? Do you live along the Missouri River but don’t know about the flood of 1881? Have you heard about New England’s Great September Gale of 1815 that toppled church steeples and ripped up fruit trees as far as 85 miles inland? How about the 1816 Year Without a Summer? That was the result of Mount Tambora erupting in Indonesia, which spewed tons of volcanic ash into the air. Crops failed as frosts occurred even in the Summer in the United States. Do you understand the causes and circumstances preceding the Dust Bowl and Black Blizzards less than a century ago? There are both global, national, and local instances of extreme weather that have impacted the area where you live, and you should know and note the significant events as they are apt to repeat themselves. 
After you delve into your area’s historical record, you might feel overwhelmed by the number of real possibilities you could be facing in the future. Rest assured, however, that in our modern age, any extreme weather event will result in the same loss of modern conveniences you probably take for granted right now. Loss of water, sewer, electrical, food supplies, medicine, police, fire, other emergency services, natural gas, and even your shelter are all probabilities after any disaster. This is why we say that when you prepare for one type of disaster, you prepare for a multitude of disasters. I know many preppers who used their stored emergency food after a job loss to make sure food was on the table. I know many people who were preparing for other disasters when the power went out for a week or more where they were at. The tent they had for a bug out situation served to create a warm microclimate for them when they pitched it in their living room. You also find out what doesn’t work for you after a disaster. You may not have accurately calculated your power needs, as I show you how to do in another video, so you find out you don’t have enough power to run the vital things you need after a disaster. Maybe you find out that utility tool made in China isn’t as solidly built as it appears to be. Whatever the lessons you learn after a disaster has struck, the same systems are apt to fail. You want to focus upon those realizations and fix them for the future.
The Federal Reserve has a problem with inflation which they haven’t seen since the 1980s. To combat that, they have recently raised rates so aggressively that some banks have been caught with their pants down, unable to provide their promised rate of return and suffering from a public lack of confidence and a run on withdrawals. This has led to high-profile closures that have revealed how intricately laced, fragile, and interwoven all our money is.
There are several early indicators that we are heading into a deep recession we will look at here. The foremost of these indicators is inflation. Unless you’re rolling in money, you’ve noticed that you are paying more for everything from a bag of lettuce to a gallon of gas. Inflation hit a 40-year high on June 15th of last year, and it has continued its upward trajectory, only beginning to level off and sink a bit this year. But, has it really? Unlike the inflation of the past, however, high prices are also being driven by supply scarcity and supply chain disruption from a world war combined with price manipulation from multiple suppliers. OPEC+ nations cut production, Russian supply is shut off, and for-profit fossil fuel companies sell their product to the highest bidders overseas. All of that causes fossil fuel prices to surge.
If you are the Central Bank, you can seemingly create money out of thin air. You can loan money at no interest, which results in investors and super-wealthy investors putting billions into risky investments to turn what they hope is a quick profit. You can raise interest rates to make borrowing money harder for banks and investors. Between the raising or lowering of interest rates, whole banks sometimes get ground down to insolvency when they can no longer make their minimal interest payments and promised debt obligations. We saw that with Silicon Valley Bank this year.
The dream of a soft landing was always more of a dream than a reality. The facts are that there are too many unpredictable elements in the economy. Many of those I mentioned earlier. If any natural disaster, supply chain failure, or an ever-increasing war or political disaster pushes inflation higher and the job rate down, stagflation and an even deeper recession are all but inevitable. But what does that mean to you? Enough of this high-level forecast of our collectively dismal future. Let’s look at precisely what this will mean for you and what you can do about it.
So far, the only good economic news is that the jobless rate has remained low, though that may be changing. Let’s be honest, though, even when the economy was chugging along, wages have been stagnant since 1979. These two combined are just rough for the average worker in decent economies. In a downward economy, it’s terrible news. As companies change their projections and outlook for the future, as the supply of resources slows or becomes challenged, and as it becomes more difficult to maintain the high profits of the past, they will look to lay off, downsize, scale back production, and cut worker pay. So even as the cost of everything continues to rise, you have less money in your pocket to buy anything.
In this time of uncertainty, the costs of making and transporting anything continue to rise. This is translated into the price, both real and perceived. The “real” is the actual costs going up, and the “perceived” is that imaginary Greedflation I spoke about earlier. So, just when you think things couldn’t be more expensive, expect them to go up in price even further for a long time to come.
The wealth inequities and the government’s failure to protect and insulate its citizens always result in social and political strife. Politics become even more divisive as some call for government assistance or bailouts, and others demand the government not interfere while blaming the opposition or offering no clear solution themselves. On top of that, Unions push for their share of the profits for their members. They fight for higher wages and better working conditions. Crime and homelessness also increase as people are suddenly left with little to nothing of what they once had.
As dark an image as that might portray, there are ways you can rise above it all and endure. There’s no single great solution but a series of little things you can do, and there certainly isn’t going to be a Central Bank or government that will ride in and rescue you. And let me say this before we jump into actionable steps you can implement now: you do not have to be a victim. The decisions you make today will define your future. Let’s cover a few practical things to do.
First, get local with your supply. The more removed you are from the global supply chain that feeds the big box stores and grocery chains, the easier it will be for you when those fail. Grow some of what you eat, source as local as possible, and cook your own food. Did you know that just ten companies control almost every large food and beverage brand worldwide? Don’t put your faith in just ten companies that they will keep prices down and produce food even as their profits nosedive. Don’t expect the American farmer to rescue you either, as massive agribusinesses have replaced many. Securing a steady, localized, self-generated, or self-prepared food source for yourself is the chief means to endure a massive economic downturn.
The economic downturn we face will be further complicated by drought and flood. Even as the western U.S. receives massive amounts of rain, hydroelectric lakes, and aquifers remain at low levels. This means water insecurity will continue through this decade of financial decline. If you are in a part of the country receiving too much rain, snow, and precipitation, that can be a problem too. Additionally, we have seen train derailments that have devastated entire communities and rendered their water toxic. Have stored water to get you through crises and have the means to collect, treat, and filter water should those crises last longer than anyone would expect.
Every massive economic downturn is accompanied by foreclosures and people being forced to move from their homes and seek other accommodations. Paying your home down more aggressively and paying off any equity line of credit are good ways to build a better shelter. I’m not a financial adviser, but I don’t have to be to tell you that the economic times we are heading into will mean higher interest rates and the tightening of credit. If you are barely keeping a roof over your head, it will get worse as the economy slides further down. I bought my first home in 2009 right after the housing market crash and let me tell you, I drove into neighborhoods where literally every other house had a foreclosure sign in their front yard. It was surreal to see. While I don’t think we’re heading into a similar situation, just don’t allow yourself to risk the roof over your head.
When things get tough, companies cut, and those that are in demand rise to the surface. I learned this principle years ago and decided to invest in myself. Back in 2005, I started my first business doing web development. At that time, YouTube wasn’t really popular and there weren’t many online courses. I had to go to the library and buy books online to learn various skills. Obviously, the market has changed drastically since then. There are a ton of online monthly subscription services that allow you to develop a skill. My videographer who set up this studio just a few years ago decided to learn video skills and learned from several YouTube channels and now gets gigs with Netflix and other studios simply from investing in himself. He’s older than me and started learning at about my current age. I bring this up to point out that it’s never too late to learn a new skill, even if it’s technical. Don’t allow excuses to hold you back.
The final thing you must do to survive a decade or more economic downturn is to approach your finances as a prep. An all-out dramatic collapse is less likely than a long, drawn-out series of failures and collapses. Implement small strategies as detailed in the Recession-Proof Guide we make available for free. So many financial lessons aren’t passed from generation to generation, and, let’s be honest, the systems change. Still, there are some constants that you can apply today to get you better positioned to face a chaotic and declining fiscal future. We tried to outline those for you with this guide which I’ll link to below.
The immediate impact that everyone will face is a shortage of everything. It starts with your food. The shortage of natural gas getting to the processing plants results in smaller supplies of fertilizer. This leads to skyrocketing prices for fertilizer which we are already seeing. This means less fertilizer for farmers and smaller crop yields. The Russo-Ukraine conflict significantly impacts the global supply of sunflower oil, wheat, and corn. Whether these are used in other products, consumed by humans, or fed to animals, global markets are impacted. Other countries can’t simply ramp up the production of wheat, for instance. Winter wheat was planted before the war and its subsequent soaring demand. The new wheat seed must be acquired, planted, tended to, and harvested as part of a cycle that involves months of time before any harvest can be reaped. Beyond just that grain, the lack of wheat and corn, and fertilizer puts pressure on the other major feed grains: sorghum, barley, and oats. It puts pressure on all grain production from barley to soybeans. You might think in precise terms with grains like wheat equals bread, corn comes on a cob, oats come in a bowl for breakfast, and rice is eaten out of a bowl as a side dish, but these grains are processed in so many different ways that they compose the majority of the products on almost every food aisle of your grocery store. 
Learn to use every ounce of food that passes through your kitchen. Learn to waste nothing. If that means you have to learn to cook for yourself and figure out the correct portions that will result in zero leftovers or waste, do that now while you have the luxury. Pull out the dehydrator and start processing food today to be snacked on and preserved for later. We have had fancy dehydrators and inexpensive ones. My go-to dehydrator is pretty simple and affordable. When my garden is in full swing, I run it 24/7. Through the rest of the year, we press it into service on whatever we can get my hands on. We are continually adding to my food stores between the dehydrator and the freeze-dryer.
At the same time that prices are going up, the currency will be bottoming out, and some markets will collapse altogether. Some investment firms have already started allocating their excess funds to bonds, defense industry stocks, and slower-growth but reliable investments. We have seen for years the rich buying up land and water rights. They know that the smooth upward trajectory that leads to profit in everything from real estate to soybeans is cyclical and has to end somewhere, so they have been quietly buying up the most stable resources they can find. With war threatening to explode worldwide, you will see even more investors fleeing instability and seeking more stable havens for their money.
If you have already trashed your New Year’s resolution to get healthy, you better get back on a program to get fit. Just dropping an extra few pounds can ease joint pain, reduce inflammation, lower cholesterol, and reduce your chances of having comorbidities. You might not be fleeing across your country to a safer country as millions have recently done, but your health is your absolute number one prep. While you might lack the funds to build your preps, you don’t need any money for exercising. Increasing your health can reduce your dependency on a health care industry and even over-the-counter medications and prescriptions. You are far better off managing high blood pressure through diet and exercise than paying over $300 for 30 doses of blood pressure medicine which also might become in scarce supply if global supply chains continue to suffer. Most of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) are manufactured overseas.
Whether the power goes out because of poor maintenance, a cyberattack, natural disaster, or a bomb, you have to be able to supply the energy you need to get by. You won’t be making a smoothie for yourself with the TV, dishwasher, and clothes dryer all running. Still, you will need energy sufficient to replenish devices, cook, obtain news, communicate, and heat or light your environment. Here too, you have to approach energy as a primary prep. If your answer is a gas generator, you may need to reassess. Running a gas-powered generator may be challenging when gasoline is $7.00 a gallon. If you rely on the flow of natural gas or propane deliveries, you may be without those energy resources when these vital resources are allocated to the war effort or larger entities than average consumers.
They talk considerably in the marketing industry about building your brand. You want your product or service to be the go-to entity for whatever it is you are selling. Have you ever done something for a friend or neighbor, and suddenly other people ask if you could help them out? You fix a neighbor’s fence or help them re-screen their window or paint or bake some awesome birthday treats or share with them some homemade soap or eggs from your chickens, and suddenly others are asking if they could get a little something too. That’s an opportunity for income or for bartering goods and services. If your area suffers from the far-reaching effects of a global war, whatever skills or goods you bring to the table are suddenly far more valuable.
Even if a violent global conflict doesn’t come to your door and your country’s financial markets remain steady and stable enough, you could suffer from the impact of one of the newest weapons in this war–cyberattacks. In my FREE downloadable guide about cyberattacks which I will link to in the comments, there are several steps you can take today to protect yourself and your assets from cyberattacks. You don’t want to wake up to a zero balance in your hard-earned bank or retirement accounts. You don’t want to be the door that foreign, enemy hackers walk through to access other more extensive systems.
cucumbers. I read an article once that said cucumbers are like people. They want the temperature to be 80˚ pretty consistently. Celery is tricky. They want it warm, but they don’t like full-on sun. Last year I tucked them among the tomatoes so they got some shade.
these amino acids are produced by the human body. But for good health, we must get the other nine amino acids from the food we eat. When a food contains ALL nine of these amino acids, it is called a “complete protein.” Animal proteins are complete. A few complete plant-based foods are quinoa, buckwheat, blue-green algae, and soybeans. They may not contain as much protein per serving, but they are complete. You can combine foods to get a complete protein: 
sew a wound back together. PS. I want to be unconscious first.
We find it easier for people to understand OPSEC from the standpoint of seen and unseen. There are things we see when we intentionally study something or are looking for something, and there are things we don’t see in our everyday lives. A police officer will notice how someone walks differently if they have a heavy gun tucked into their waistband. A security officer will notice the person in a heavy coat when it’s 90 degrees outside. The hungry or thirsty person will notice the garden, even over the fence, or the rain barrel against the house. Lacking the specific training or need, the average person absorbs very little visual data, so long as it stays comfortably below their threshold of awareness and doesn’t spike or peak their attention.
First, let’s address the visible–the seen–and those people you don’t know. After any prolonged disaster where help is not coming, people will be scrambling for the same basic things: food, water, medicine, fire, shelter, and weapons. Looting is common. Some of it is out of necessity, like food and water, and some of it is out of opportunity, which is basically just stealing and robbery. If you live in an urban or suburban environment, you have to take note of what you present to your neighbors. To ensure your OPSEC, do a pre-crisis walk-through of your home. Walk around your house from the outside and survey your vulnerabilities. See what strangers will see.
After a disaster, if food and water are being handed out and you can collect some safely and in an orderly manner, do take your share. You will be keeping up the appearance that you are suffering along with everyone else. This is the seen– what you show to others if you choose to leave your home. There’s an old saying, “Beware of the fat man in a thin country.” When you are seen after a disaster, you should appear to be suffering along with everyone else. Looking disheveled and unshaved with loose-fitting clothing can’t hurt either. Regarding accepting food when you have it already, consider giving it away to others in need, but only in secret.
There are three groups of people you want to keep in the dark about the true extent of your preps: neighbors, family, and random strangers. The neighbors that live immediately around you may see your daily routines. On hot days, it’s not uncommon for many to work in the garage with the garage door open. Friendly neighbors walking their dogs or poking their heads in to say high is great for relationship building, but it’s not good for your preps. As a rule, whatever you can conceal and remove from plain sight, you should, even if your neighbors know you prepare somewhat for disasters. Keep your stockpiles and preps out of view. And when hauling that 50 lbs bag of rice to your home, don’t go through your front door in plain view, but through your garage if possible.
It’s a fine line between revealing your prepping activities and keeping them a secret. To some, you want to start the conversation, and it’s okay to let them know that you are preparing for disasters. This is how Mutual Assistance Groups and prepping networks are created, and survivors increase their odds of survival geometrically as a group. You also don’t have to partner up with every person you find that has prepping in common with you. You could lone wolf it, but your odds of survival might be lower.
Without water, you’ll be dead in about 3-days. Without food, you would have somewhere between a week and three weeks. Knowing this, we still allow ourselves to rely upon a system that is increasingly subject to failure. Just this year, we have witnessed cyber attacks on our food supply chains that have completely halted food production and distribution. We have seen cyberattacks that have nearly poisoned municipal water supplies. We’ve seen vital fuel pipelines required for distribution shut down and held for ransom. We have seen an entire state, Texas, that if it were its own country would rank 9th largest by GDP, frozen over and powerless, as significant infrastructure systems collapsed under brutal cold. These more minor failures point to the potential of a much larger collapse with our food and water systems.
Our energy system is another dependency that is failing before our eyes in real-time. The Texas outage should have been a wake-up call to many that our infrastructure is aging and vulnerable. However, it wasn’t when almost exactly a decade prior, in February 2011, frigid temperatures caused some of the state’s critical power infrastructure, including natural gas wells, to freeze up, cutting off a significant source of electricity and heating for Texans. The cyberattack and ransoming of the Colonial Pipeline should have been a wake-up call to many. When Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm warned earlier this year that American adversaries have the capability now of shutting down the U.S. power grid, you would think many would have listened and taken personal measures to secure some energy dependence from a system that is failing in real-time.
It’s no surprise that government corruption represents both a failing we should see as a sign and a dependency. Many people turn to prepping when they realize the cold reality that the government isn’t likely to be there for them after a disaster. Whether it’s disaster relief held up by congress after hurricane Sandy, or the government’s failings after Katrina, Irma, Harvey, Maria, or countless other hurricanes, many people turn to prepping after realizing the government isn’t in their corner. And government corruption isn’t new. The Crédit Mobilier, Iran-Contra, and the Teapot Dome scandals should have taught us that the best interests of the populous aren’t always the guiding principle of governing. This isn’t just an American problem. It’s a global problem. The China, Bahama, Mossack Fonseca leaks, and the Panama Papers should have been a wake-up call to everyone that government officials put profits well before people.
Information has been weaponized against us and is destroying us by dividing and propagandizing us. Algorithms feed us according to our biases, regardless of how misinformed those biases may be. The rabbit holes have become black holes that have led many to demonize and dehumanize political opposition and even justify and carry out acts of violence. Pundits have replaced expert analysis with catchy and biting sound bites. At the same time, we are less aware of what is happening in the rest of the world. So many are hard focused on the previously mentioned vulnerability, governments, that they are ignoring their need to tune it all out and focus on their preps. The populace is increasingly more polarized, and this division hasn’t been so apparent since maybe the Gutenberg press and the King James Bible.
We don’t make much here anymore, and what we make here often depends on parts and components made overseas. Were we to have another Carrington Event, a solar coronal mass ejection that hits Earth and overloads and burns out the power grid, we would have to rebuild. The same would be true were we to experience an EMP from a hostile country. There’s only one problem with rebuilding, though, most of the components: polymer insulators, suspension end fittings, power transformers, and other specialized bulk power equipment, are manufactured in China, and a large-scale grid collapse would bring deliveries of these components to a grinding halt. 
There is much discussion as to whether the inflation pressures of today will rival the double-digit inflation of the 1970s in America. Then, America experienced nationwide gas shortages, wage increases, higher prices, and some vaguely similar supply chain issues, though much has changed in the last half-century. The inflationary pressures felt in the 1970s were primarily confined to our country. Today, we face global inflation. The closest historical example is the Great Depression which had severe worldwide economic effects.
If we ask the question, are we being lied to, the answer is almost always ‘probably.” Most people can’t handle the unvarnished truth. Most people avoid telling the objective truth. It’s not in the government’s best interests to tell you that “yeah, inflation is going to get really bad here over at least the next year.” That derails the pandemic recovery efforts and spurns panic buying activities that will exacerbate the current supply-chain problems. As the most widely used measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index is an indicator of the effectiveness of government policy. In addition, business executives, labor leaders, and other private citizens use the index as a guide in making economic decisions. Any set of statistics can be read in different ways, so while a few measures on the CPI may be hitting new record highs, others may only show moderate advances. It’s those slower movers that the spinners of good news will want to focus on while they also point out job growth, wage growth, and their efforts to correct the bottleneck at the ports. Personally, we’re not vested in any particular party’s assessment of the optimism or doom we face. We think when we focus on the evaluation they’re trying to feed us, we fail to pull the curtain back for ourselves and really see what’s working the levers and switches.
The first prominent real-time inflationary index for you is your actual spending and purchasing power. If it cost you 26 dollars to fill your tank in January and here at the end of the year it’s costing you 38 dollars, that’s a genuine increase for you. That increase is in alignment with the national gas price. A year ago, a pound of chicken would have cost you at least 32% less, according to the USDA. In the past year, the overall consumer price index for food barely rose a percentage point, while the index for beef rose 17.6%. To diagnose this problem further, other indicators indicate that food inflation is about to break out to all new highs. The energy crisis and spike in energy costs mean fewer synthetic fertilizers are being manufactured, and several major producers in Europe have already scaled back production. 
With almost a guarantee that prices will increase in the foreseeable future, there are some things you can do to insulate yourself a bit. If things get even worse than is forecasted, you will be glad you did. Survival all comes down to the availability of resources. Right now, resources like food and water might be within arm’s length. If you were in the middle of a desert, alone and on foot, your odds of survival are decreased because your access to resources is reduced. So, as a prepper, you want to first bring your resources up to a level to sustain you through periods of resource scarcity, in this case first being priced out of the market and second the item disappearing from the shelves altogether. Think of your prepper pyramid first: food, water, and energy.
No Power, No Problem. If the power in your neighborhood goes out or some nefarious individual tries to cut the power to your house specifically, you can’t let it also take down your security. When it comes to lighting, you have to realize that would-be criminals don’t want to be seen. Even in a world without the rule of law, they risk retaliation from the occupants of a house when they are lit up and blinded by light. A burglary occurs every 
When it comes to no power, you want to check any electrical surveillance product you buy to determine the total runtime after the power goes out. Most now come with lithium or another type of battery backup that can run for 24 hours or more of continued usage. Whether that’s a camera, video doorbell, or monitoring station, plan for it to have its own battery backup of some kind independent of your electrical system. These are usually trickle-charged from your home’s power, so factor that feed, if you can, into your emergency power needs if considering a home generator or battery backup system. Even if the internet goes down, your WiFi devices will still be working so long as you are providing electricity to your internet router with a UPS or other similar battery backup. A home Wi-Fi network, which is almost always hosted by a router, is independent of the internet. Meaning that any devices on the network can always work with one another to share and back up data, print, stream local media, and so on. So, even if the power goes out, you don’t have to be in the dark when it comes to monitoring your perimeter.
“If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace, and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter, if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside, will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.” Truer words were never spoken, but
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You can greatly extend your area of surveillance with motion detectors. We have reviewed the Guardline Wireless Driveway Alarm, and we will link to that video in the comments below. This system is a force multiplier. It will run off batteries, can communicate with the base unit up to 400 meters or 1/4 mile away, and you can string several sensors around your perimeter to have a massive alert system. While it won’t provide you with a visual of the threat that is out there, it will tell you from which direction it is coming. They call these driveway alarms, and they are great for that purpose, but you can easily string multiple sensors around your home and build a complete 360-degree detection system of your perimeter. They can also easily be thrown in your bugout bag to take a layer of security with you. You can be sleeping in an unknown location while these sensors alert you to any motion approaching your campsite.
Depending on the type of crisis, sometimes sending up a video recording drone straight up with a 360-degree rotation can give you a many-block or many-mile view of any threats in your area. In this way, your location security is maintained, and you can quickly survey a community of thousands of homes. You can determine if an angry mob is heading in your direction or where the smoke is coming from. If you work with one or more neighbors, you can take turns surveying in this manner at regular intervals.
Neighbors come in many types. Some you can trust. Some you wouldn’t trust at all. Some you wonder about because you never see them, and when they come home, the garage door closes before they’re even out of the car. Some have wildly different views or political views than ours, but none of that matters after a disaster. After a disaster, you indeed find out who your neighbors are. Unfortunately, that’s not the time to discover the true nature of your neighbors.
Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.
These are high caloric bars. Here is a breakdown of the calories and how you can estimate the calories per bar on your final recipe.
On the counter, these will probably last for about a week or two, as is, owing to the high-fat content. In your freezer, they could last for years. The coconut oil and the oil in the nuts will turn slightly rancid in taste, and that’s your best test. When it comes to shelf-life, there are four main factors: pasteurization, storage temperature, moisture, and air.