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Three Digital Privacy Solutions You Should Know About

January 22nd, 2014 Simon Black

Dropbox, the popular cloud-based file storage service, has upwards of 200 million registered users.

I doubt many of them have ever read the company’s privacy policy, which states clearly that the company will fully comply with requests from law enforcement agencies.

And while the company does encrypt your files across their multiple data centers, they hold the decryption keys.

Bottom line, just like Google has access to your web history (plus email if you’re a Gmail user), and Facebook has access to huge parts of your personal life, Dropbox has access to every single file that you host with them.

And based on the company’s own policies, all of this can be handed over at any time to any government agency, all without your knowledge or consent.

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Building a Backyard Water Treatment Plant

January 21st, 2014 J.S.M.

Clean drinking water is critical to your survival, because without potable water you will die within a few days. I don’t intend to hammer away on this point, because everyone who visits this blog generally knows how important it is to have access to clean water, and this subject has been covered many times from many different angles. Many of us have several hundred gallons of water stored away in containers, some more portable than others. Some plan to rely solely on a Berkey water filtration system to filter surface water collected from ponds or rain catchment barrels. While the Berkey filters are excellent and water storage is a must, having these will not be good enough in a prolonged grid-down scenario. Your water storage may run dry, and your Berkey filters have a limited lifetime and may not be able to handle long-term filtering.

The Lord handed us a pristine planet, and though we may have polluted much of the water we have been entrusted with, He has given us the materials and intelligence necessary to purify our water. Most of the modern world relies on municipal water treatment facilities to provide them with clean water. Water flows from faucets and toilets flush with the flip of a lever as surely as the sun rises and sets. By paying the water company every month we are guaranteed an almost unlimited supply of clean water. Most of the time the public shows no appreciation for the system that delivers the water or knowledge of the process by which it is treated and delivered, but most everyone expects to be provided with water as though it were a birthright. The public generally does not question the quality or safety of their water while the nameless, faceless technicians at the utility company work their “magic”, and we generally put our faith in them to deliver. However, some of that faith has been shown to be eroding over the last few decades as more people have been relying increasingly on water filtration systems and bottled spring water.

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Tactical Solutions for Preppers

January 21st, 2014 The Grunt

As a sound and forward thinking prepper you should already be on your way to some level of sustainability in the event of some kind of social breakdown. The food, water, medical, and sanitation needs are boring, but important enough that without them-anything else doesn’t really matter. As readers of this blog I sincerely hope you’ve utilized the vast wealth of knowledge available here to develop your own systems of storage, rotation, and skills development. So with all of that as a foundation, I pose a question. With your family, your plans, and your supplies all depending on you for security-what do you next when whatever calamity strikes?

So many preppers, myself included, get caught up in the gear reviews. Oh, its so easy to be swept away by the allure of product reviews or the exhilaration of arguing the merits of your favorite “survival” rifles and why all the rest should be used for decorative paperweights. The bug out bags have become especially mainstream these days. Its no longer the tin foil hat wearing crowd with three day bags and remote properties fully stocked and ready to go. The bags, the gear, along with our food and water are easy to research and acquire. What’s proving difficult for many people is finding actual tactical common sense for defending our preps.

Lets pretend for a moment that some disaster has befallen our once great land. Those with access to remote locations have already made it to their “bug out location”. Those that are going to shelter in place have gathered their families and are worriedly wondering to do next. I pray that scenario never comes to pass, but if it does, you will be far ahead of the herd. With a little common sense, a little planning, and a few inexpensive supplies it is quite easy to keep anything less than an infantry platoon away from you and the things important to you.

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Anger Is An Important Tool If We Learn How To Use It

January 20th, 2014 Indra

There is an inherent pressure for us to forgive. It is considered an ideal. However, the greatest fallacy of ideals comes about when we push a process based on its ideal rather than its merit or legitimacy. The fact is, we are deeply intelligent beings here to live our truth authentically and to the fullest extent . We are here to soar into our “beingness” and create infinite variations of our truthful divine expression.

Every moment is a chance for us to be completely “who we are”. So then, what, pray tell, do we do with anger? This is a profound question. The place where we have to begin is to accept the validity of our anger and pain before it can be transformed. We have to give credit to the part of ourselves that is saying “something in my life needs to change so I can fully express myself”.

Anger is powerful tool. Like all powerful tools–sexuality, femininity, the body–anger has been suppressed in our world. Imagine a world where we all spoke our truth, never settled for second best; never took or felt offense. Imagine if we were all just being authentic, and when things were not in integrity with our love and bliss, we were given the space to express ourselves and architect a change with the support of everyone around. Wouldn’t that be great?

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Battery Basics — Are You Prepared?

January 18th, 2014 Lisa Metheny

The common goal of most preppers is to simply be as self sufficient as possible. This means keeping an adequate supply of necessary items in case of an emergency. The number of what-if scenarios, which can happen and constitute an emergency, are as varied as the number of items you need to be stockpiling.

One of those essential items for preppers is batteries. Batteries are vital for many of us who wish to maintain some sort of normalcy in the event of an emergency. During a mass emergency such as a hurricane or blizzard, batteries are one of the first items to fly off store shelves.

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Signs That It’s Time to Head for the Exits

January 17th, 2014 Doug French

Real money, such as gold and silver, is adopted by the market and traded for goods and services voluntarily. The government’s fiat currency is something different. Most people forget we have legal tender laws forcing us to use the scrip that the Federal Reserve and Treasury create from thin air.

The business of creating bills for pennies and trading them for, in some cases, a hundred dollars is a good one. Creating electronic journal entries costs even less. Governments won’t let go of this business without a fight.

Ultimately, the government will drive the value of its paper to the value of, well, the paper. At its essence, the printing of money is a silent and devious way to tax the public. Eventually the public catches on. Charles Mackay wrote in his classic book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

We are in the one-by-one process and the government knows it. The first signs of capital controls have surfaced. Toting $10,000 worth of financial instruments out of the country is verboten. The US government has signed agreements with countries and banks around the world to keep money inside the US.

But what happens when the citizenry want to leave the government’s currency? If history is any indication, the government will get mean.

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When The Schumer Hits (Literally)

January 17th, 2014 Prepper EMT

Many things will change in a SHTF scenario but one of the most life altering will be the lack of 24/7 medical care. Many people today take little to no hands-on care of their own personal health, and they are more than happy to let the doctors and nurses at their local doctor’s office or hospital take care of it for them. Unfortunately, the day when local healthcare services will not be available could be closer then a lot of us think. With the ObamaCare debacle in full swing, it’s high time each and every one of us begins to take an active role in the management of our health.

As has been mentioned many times on the Survival Blog, making sure you are in shape is the single best thing you can do for your long and short term health. Everything in your body works better when you are in shape. You will be able to work better, heal faster and avoid all sorts of health problems from heart attacks to back injuries. Everybody should also get some sort of medical training. I recommend that every prepper take a basic EMT course. You can usually find them at your local fire station or at convenient locations throughout your state. Being an EMT gives you a good all around foundation in medicine. You will be able to control bleeding, set bones, and give basic meds. You can also volunteer with your local fire department which is an amazing way to meet the locals and help out your community. It also gives you a great in with the local emergency services which will come in very handy WTSHTF.

When most people think of medical problems they might encounter in a grid down situation, they usually think of broken bones, gun shot wounds and uncontrolled bleeding. The reality is usually much less exciting, but just as deadly. One of the single biggest causes of death in areas without medical care, such as third world countries, is diarrhea. According to the WHO, diarrhea causes 4% of all deaths. There are nearly 1.7 billion cases of diarrheal disease every year. Diarrheal disease is the second leading cause of death in children under five years old. It kills over 760,000 children every year. The worst part is that a significant proportion of diarrheal disease can be prevented through safe drinking-water and adequate sanitation. In a world without clean water or food refrigeration, our country could quickly degenerate into a situation not unlike third world countries.

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OPSEC and Safe Social Networking

January 16th, 2014 US Army

This is obviously taken from an Army presentation. So why is it posted here. Well, take a look. You will probably see some OPSEC things that you can improve in your walk. Stay safe. (ed. note)

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Six Ways to Get Ready for Going Off-Grid

January 13th, 2014 Gaye Levy

Regardless of where you live, the possibility of a short-term power outage is likely at some point. For most of us, this happens two or three times a year for a very short period, meaning a few hours on up to a few days.

These short-term outages often become a big adventure. Talk to someone who is an avid camper and you will learn there is a certain magic involved in sitting by a campfire or camp stove, sharing fish tales and roasting marshmallows over the flickering flames. And so it is when the power goes out. The oil lamps are lit, the fireplace or woodstove is set ablaze and out comes the rocket stove for cooking our food – outdoors of course.

Yes, the whole idea of being off-grid for a few days can definitely be viewed as a big adventure and something to look forward to as a way to disconnect from our busy lives and the digital world.

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Survival Skills: Conquering Sleep Deprivation During Emergency Situations

January 11th, 2014 Josh

Getting a restful night’s sleep is hard enough today, but in a survival situation it could be even more difficult. Not getting sufficient rest is actually much more serious than we tend to realize: going without sleep for as little as 20 hours can cause impairment equal to an alcohol level of .08%! You certainly wouldn’t want to walk a patrol or chop wood with that much alcohol in your system, but in an emergency you will be tempted to work under similar levels of “sleep inebriation”. It is key to learn how to sleep properly and to understand exactly what benefits sleep brings to your body.

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