Skills for the coming collapse

I've been thinking of ways to acquire skills that could be helpful in a rough situation or the bad times that are coming to the whole world. I'm an international listener since the show is produced in the USA but I can see the writing on the wall that we are all going to need skills to survive no matter where we live.

When you think about it if you were wanting to start a prepping community where everyone brought something to the table in a mutual agreement where everyone involved would chip in and you'd all work together to survive through the coming economic collapse you need to ask yourself this question. What do I bring to the table?

In the emerging economy coming out of the collapse that is coming I think it will be hard skills that will help you sustain yourself. Can you build a security fence out of scrap lumber? Can you weld a tower together for a HAM radio operator who might not have the skills to build the tower and not have the money to buy a commercial tower?

Bob Maybe of Today's Survival Show did a show called Become a Jack of All Trades and Survive.I think he is dead on with that line of thinking. So the question comes up, how do you gain these skills?

Well there are many ways. You can take classes at your local community college to get some basic skills. I'm looking at a basic vehicle maintenance class and a small engine repair class offered. I'm also looking at some continuing education courses offered by some of the local high schools where I can learn a little bit of welding and carpentry. You can volunteer with Habitat for Humanity to learn some construction skills.  You can even do an unpaid apprenticeship for a couple months in your spare time with someone who knows what you want to know.  It can never hurt to ask.  Take any chance you get to expand your skills!

In Ontario Canada where I live some people took courses paid for by the government to gain new skills after being laid off. Well if you qualify why not look at the long term and maybe go to a private career college for welding or something like that where you can gain a valuable skill and not have to pay for it? I don't agree with our government supplying these courses for people and funding them going to school again especially since the program was aimed at people who lost jobs that made a very good living who if they were smart could have had a big emergency fund and stashes of cash to get them through plus money to take a course if they were smart with their overpaid union jobs. But the thing is the government was going to do it whether we all liked it or not so if you can qualify why not take advantage of what your tax dollars are paying for?
Get books on things like plumbing and electrical work. This way if you have to at least you can look up how to fix something. Resources and knowledge will be huge in the new economy that is emerging.
Take any chance you get to learn skills and gain valuable knowledge.

[What have you done to prep this week?]

Frazer

Trends Journal - Excellent Resource

Gerald Celente of the Trends Journal has been spot on in regards to his trends forecasting for a long time. He predicted the dot com bubble and the housing bubble. I recommend everyone go and subscribe to the Trends Journal found at www.trendsresearch.com I plan on subscribing soon myself. I've heard Gerald on the Alex Jones show and he seems to be getting things right. I think the Trends Journal can help you with your prepping by helping you make sound investing decisions and know more about what is coming up on the world stage so you know what areas to focus your prepping in. I`ll be sure to do a follow up once I have my membership and can give some first hand experience on how The Trends Journal has helped me!

Watch the video for a feel of what you'll get with The Trends Journal!

Pick Me Up Value!

Today we are going to talk about the benefits of having some kind of pick-up truck available to you. You don't have to spend a lot of money to have a pickup truck, get a well maintained used GM pickup for $2000-$5000 but make sure not to go into debt to get it! These tools can be invaluable in all kinds of emergency circumstances but also in everyday life. Kymber talks in her blog posts about using old tires to make container gardens. It's a good idea you should check it out! If she didn't have a pick-up to get all those tires home she would have had to pay someone to do it! Often you can save money by picking up or delivering stuff on your own instead of paying for it to be delivered to you. All it will really cost you is the gas in your pick-up truck!

Now some of us don't want to have a big gas guzzler around the homestead and probably don't need a full size half tonne or ¾ tonne pick-up truck. Well, you can get the same utility from a simple Ford Ranger or Chevy S-10 just on a smaller scale! These pick-up trucks may be the kind of truck that looks like a truck saying "when I grow up I want to be a real truck!" but the sure have some utility depending on what they need.

Some features I'd look for in a pick-up is 4x4, this is good for if a major storm hits your area and you need to do some urban style off road driving to get the kids from school when most roads are impassable to a basic 2 wheel drive car or truck. In our Canadian winters 4x4 can be handy to get the kids to school if the busses aren't running and a bit snow storm hit. Or even just to get to the store to pick up a prescription for a loved one. I'd also look for an extended cab, this will allow you to transport more people and also lock some items inside the truck and keep them more out of sight than if you had them on the bench seat of a regular cab truck.

Now you might be thinking about insurance for the truck, maybe your just scraping by and don't have much room in your insurance budget to add another vehicle. I'd suggest a seasonal or casual driving insurance program and make sure to tell your broker that you won't be driving it to work. If you have anything resembling a farm you may be able to get farm plates and farm insurance which can be cheaper. Make sure to get the bare bones insurance since this vehicle is not a primary vehicle and just for use when you may need a truck. (Unless you do plan on using it day by day. I'm talking mainly to those who don't want or need a truck day by day and how they can take advantage of a pick-up truck in the few times they actually can use it) Sometimes I wished I had a truck are when I found a great deal on some furnature at a local discount house that buys stuff from Sears catalogue order returns and sells them dirt cheap but doesn't supply delivery. It would be nice to have a truck just to bring things home from that store. Even a small Ford Ranger could do the job decently.

Some things you can use a truck for if you had one (and possibly save money) are:

• Transporting firewood (if you have a fireplace and a neighbour has a tree fall down, you can clean it up and take the wood, often the neighbour will not charge you and just be glad to get rid of the fallen tree)
  
• Emergency transportation (if you need to do some sort of off road driving or just manoeuvre around a disaster zone and over objects in the road with the 4x4 option and higher ground clearance will let you go where most other vehicles can't)
  
• Save on delivery charges (If you can pick up furniture at Leon's or the Brick you can save on their delivery costs)
  
• Hook up a plough to clear snow
  
• Get a friend out of the ditch
  
• Transport dirt onto your property for gardens without paying the delivery fee
  

There are many more things you can do with a truck; these are just some options for you. If you really think outside the box I'm sure you can come up with plenty of things you can use a pick-up truck for if you need to and be glad you have it!

We do need to talk a bit about maintaining this vehicle that might be sitting much of the year. Some things I'd suggest are to put fuel stabilizer in the tank or even pump the tank into a gas can so that you can protect the gas. If you leave the gas in the tank you might want to syphon it out and change it once a year, maybe every 6 months syphon it into your day to day vehicle and put new gas into the truck so that you have fresh gas in it for when you need it. Something else I think would be handy is putting small solar panel and put it into the cigarette lighter jack so that you can keep a good charge on the battery so it will start up when you go to turn the key after not using the vehicle for a couple months. Even if you only use the truck once or twice a year while society is still functioning you might want to give it one oil change minimum a year under those conditions so that you can be sure the oil hasn't gone bad or something so that you don't kill your truck after letting it sit for a while. Even if you haven't put the standard 2000 km on it that year, you may not need to do it every 3 months but it does need an oil change at least once a year!

    I hope you look into having a pick-up truck of some kind around your homestead; they offer great utility and can be a valuable tool if society breaks down!


 
[What is your 2010 preparedness plan?]

 

Frazer,

 

Feel free to follow me on Twitter and check out my Youtube videos.   

The New Roof Top Eagles Blog

Hey Prepper Army!

So I am revamping my blog, working on making it more specific in it's mission.  My new mission is to provide information on practical survialism and common sense prepping!

I'll cover things like how to prep in an apartment, food storage ideas, sanitation ideas, good products and many other topics that have to do with prepping and modern survivalism.

You can click the twitter icon in the sidebar to follow me on twitter and you can subscribe to my feedburner feed to get this blog show up in your rss reader.  Please use the re-tweet button and share this blog with your friends!

Thanks for reading Prepper Army!

Letter to Leatherman Tool Group Inc.

I sent the following email to Leatherman Tool Group Inc. regarding their warranty repair service and a suggestion that I thought could make their warranty service better for some of their customers

Hi Leatherman!
I want to say you guys make excellent tools; they are among the best made pieces of equipment I've used.  I've used competitor's tools but Leatherman always comes out on top!  I've never had a tool last as long as my Leatherman wave!

I bought a S2 Juice model for daily carry a while back because I wanted something lighter and I must give you kudos for making a tool with all the tools I like to see on a Multitool in a lightweight basic package!

I did have a problem a while back where the back spacer popped out and it needed to be sent in for warranty service.  I am very grateful for the 25 year warranty; it's just long enough for any factory issues to come to light!  Now I contacted you guys and you gave me the address for Eastern Outdoor Sales and I sent it in for replacement.  I sent it off and then called after a couple weeks to find out how much longer it would be.  They informed me that they haven't got to it yet but through conversation I found out that the Juice line is replaced not repaired. 

I'd like to suggest a change to your procedure for warranty replacement tools.  It took about 3 weeks to get my new tool and I don't think that was necessary.  If my tool was being repaired I'd see the logic of using something like a cue to decide who's tool gets fixed next, that is only fair. (A cue like when you get put on hold calling your cable company where they get to you in the order of when the call was received) I don't think putting a tool that is by default replaced and not repaired into that cue just to get mailed out is a good practice.  Since the Juice line is replaced without any thought to it being repaired I'd think when the repair facility sees the Juice (or other models that may be replaced and not repaired) it would be nice to your customers just to mail out a new one upon arrival of the tool.  There really is no need for someone to wait 3 weeks to get a tool that is replaced and never even considered repairable.

I'd like to close with this, despite this little disagreement with your protocol I am committed to buying Leatherman tools in the future.  The very fact that I didn't have to go out and buy a new tool for $40+ dollars and instead just paid $6 in shipping is reason enough for me to stay committed to your excellent tools!

God bless you and thank you for your top notch tools!
--
Frazer

 

I'll be sure to post any follow up emails that they send me. I can't stress enough how Leatherman makes some of the best Multitool out there and I probably barring a major melt down in quality with never buy anything but Leatherman Multitools!

 

[What is your 2010 preparedness plan?]

 

Frazer,

 

Feel free to follow me on Twitter and check out my Youtube videos.

 

Why cancel Google Services?

I've been listening to the Alex Jones Show and I have been guarding myself by taking what he says with a grain of salt. Before I buy any of his claims I look into his sources myself to see if they line up. I think this is how an independent thinker operates, independent thinkers like myself don't buy into anything unless we look into the facts ourselves.

Well some recent developments in what I've learned is that Google, the tech giant was founded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) so I am cancelling as many of my services with them as I can. For example I used Gmail; the main reason was that I could funnel all my email accounts into the Gmail system just like you can with outlook or Thunderbird. Well I am going to delete my Gmail account once I get some stuff sorted out. I'm looking into using another blog service that is available to me since my blogs are on blogger which is owned by Google. I'll still keep a Google profile for use with blogger since I am part of the Canadian Preppers Network which uses Google.

My source for this information that Google is a CIA front company comes from an article on infowars.com called Ex-Agent: CIA Seed Money Helped Launch Google. An interesting comment by an ex-CIA intelligence agent Robert David Steele in the article are

"I think Google took money from the CIA when it was poor and it was starting up and unfortunately our system right now floods money into spying and other illegal and largely unethical activities, and it doesn't fund what I call the open source world," said Steele, citing "trusted individuals" as his sources for the claim.

Another good article this one on prisonplanet.com is called ``Former Intelligence Agent Says Google In Bed With CIA`` on this article I found this link to an audio recording of Alex Jones interview with Robert David Steele. It`s tough to find anything about the reality of Google`s relationship with the CIA so seeing that I can`t find a whole lot of credible information on these claims but I don`t want to risk it and I`m pulling as many of my Google services. I`m keeping Youtube and Blogger for commitments I have with friends who use Google services so I don`t really have a choice. However I am going to scrap my Gmail and Google account as much as I can and I am going to start a Google account with an untruthful alias email to protect my information.

    Now it`s no secret that Google saves your search history and use it to predict what you will do in the future. For this reason I looked for an alternative search engine to Google. I found one that doesn`t record my IP address called ixquick.com. I don`t really have anything to hide I just like my privacy! I highly recommend that you listen to this interview by Alex Jones with Robert David Steele a former CIA agent. I`ll be sure to update you all when I find my alternative blog!

Oh and check out Robert David Steele`s website

[What is your 2010 preparedness plan?]

 
 

Frazer,

 
 

Feel free to follow me on Twitter and check out my Youtube videos.

 

EDC Update - July 22, 2010

This is a video of my recent EDC Update.




Items I carry on a daily basis, some things change depending on the planned task however my daily carry is usually a variation of this. For example I might carry my full size Leatherman Wave Multi-tool if I plan on doing heavier tasks and I might carry my Streamlight Scorpion LED if I need a brighter light with more through from the beam and more power from the flashlight.

Contents of my Everyday Carry:
* Maxpedition Spartan Wallet (tough as nails)
* Moleskine Notepad (some of the best notepads out there)
* Fisher Space Pen (excellent pen for Canadian Winters, will right in frigid cold)
* Zebra Telescopic Pen (used as a back-up)
* Leatherman Juice Model S2 (great little knife, light weight and good quality)
* 16oz hand sanitizer
* 3'x3' 100% Cotton Bandanna (great for wiping sweat or tears from eyes, even can be used as a crude first aid implement purchased from Canteenshop.com)
* Microfiber cloth (for cleaning my glasses)
* House and Vehicle Keys (self explanatory)
* Streamlight Stylus Pro Flashlight (perfect Size for EDC, might upgrade eventually to the 4Sevens Preon 2 for more power out of a similar light)
* Motorola V9x RAZR cellular phone (simple is better, yeah I'd love an Android smart phone but this thing has served me well)

Frazer,

feel free to follow me on Twitter,   and subscribe to my Youtube videos.