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Best Survival Gear and Supplies

Investing for Preppers: Gold vs. Silver

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Gold and Silver Precious Metals Storage

In life, the best thing you could want for both you and your family is security. Whether that comes in the form of a secure home, adequate finances or emotional support, you want to have a system in place that will take care of you throughout any situation. In the modern world, there are a great number of things you must worry about on a daily basis, and one of them may be the state of current affairs.

As it is, the world sometimes seems as if it is heading towards a path of despair, one that may culminate in a catastrophic event that is either manmade or natural: the Doomsday event.

If you are someone who has already begun preparing for the possible Doomsday—storing mass goods within your home, from clothing to self-defense items, purified water to food—or if you are someone who has contemplated investing in preparation materials, you might be a Doomsday Prepper.

Many Doomsday Prepper lists will offer you a large quantity of items to keep stockpiled, including:

These lists can be quite extensive, but it is the final item that begs the question: Which currency works best?

Gold and Silver vs Currency

What Currency Is King?

Without knowing what Doomsday will bring, it can be difficult to discern which currency is going to provide you with the best financial security both in the immediate aftermath and the long run.

While cash is easy to store in large quantities, the likelihood of its current value staying following an apocalypse is quite low. Inflation will hit and the USD will crash, leaving the dollar more or less useless not long after the world takes a turn for the worse.

For this reason, it is best for you to invest in precious metals—silver and gold. Whether in the form of bullion bars, jewelry or rare, collectible coins, these items hold both a monetary and visual value that make them suitable for buying and trading items with other people.

These items are relatively easy to stock up on in preparation for Doomsday, as they work as investments for the future, whether or not a Doomsday event occurs. The value of gold and silver is something that is intrinsic to human history, and it is certain that these precious metals will continue to reign supreme no matter the direction of the future.

Yet, between these two precious metal options, which makes for the best long-term investment for you? There are two characteristics of both gold and silver to consider when first thinking about investing.

Preppers Precious Metals

The Cost Effectiveness of Each

Even when prepping, you need to make investments while considering your finances in relation to now. For this reason, you must consider the spot prices of both gold and silver to determine just which would make for the best investments for you.

At this time, the spot price of gold currently sits at just under $1300 per ounce, while the silver spot price is approximately $15 per ounce. While the value of gold might be greater than that of silver, the initial cost required to invest in gold is equally steep, and frankly just might not be in the budget.

If you’re looking to stockpile in larger investments of coins and bullion for the time being, it might be in your best interest to invest in silver; however, if you’d like to add some noteworthy pieces to your collection—items that could be used in dire times, when someone dearly needs to be influenced—you can rely on a piece of gold.    

While having a higher spot price, gold makes for a beneficial investment due to the advantage it has to increasing in worth over time. The value of gold has continually been shown to be greater than that of silver, but as the global mass of gold begins to shrink—and whenever doomsday hits—it can be expected that the value of gold will only continue to grow as all other precious metals become difficult to come by.   

Intrinsic Trading Value

Due to the difference in spot price between gold and silver, these items will serve different purposes when trading with others. Simply put, silver would be used to purchase small items, while gold would work best for items of much greater value.

Consider the following scenario: Doomsday has come and you have stockpiled a notable amount of both gold and silver; however, as you have continued thriving in the post-apocalyptic world, your supplies begin to dwindle.

You know someone still living within your region has the essential supplies you need, particularly food and water. For smaller items such as this, you could offer them a considerable amount of silver coins to purchase these basic items—a fair trade; however, if they were not pleased with the amount of silver you offer them, you could always provide them with gold, making it more likely to capture their attention.

Storing Gold and Silver for Preppers

What You Should Invest In

While we have provided you with insight into the differences between investing in gold and silver, but we really can’t make a declaration as to which would work best for you.

The truth is that each item carries its own worth, both monetarily and socially. It will depend entirely upon the size of the purchase as to whether silver or gold would be the most fitting item to trade. Furthermore, it will depend upon your current finances as to which investment you should consider most.

How To Lower Your Blood Pressure Before You Are Poked

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How To Lower Blood Pressure Immediately Before A Test

Blood tests are part of a physician’s routine to make sure that you’re healthy. Also, many testing centers are set up specifically to screen for any trouble before it becomes a bigger issue. At these locations, you simply visit a doctor on staff to receive an order for your desired test, then get the results sent right to your doorstep.

However, if you struggle with hemophobia, or the fear of blood, even the thought of having your blood drawn could make your palms get sweaty, and cause your imagination to run wild. Here are some tips to help you stay calm when you’re getting your blood drawn.

1. Know What You’re Being Tested For

If you know that you feel nervous about getting blood drawn, discuss the idea in advance, and ask what the test will screen for. Once you’re more aware of the benefits of receiving the test, you can start to move beyond any irrational fears.

2. Consider Doing It on A Different Day Than a Physical

Tell your doctor immediately if you don’t want to schedule blood work on the same day as a physical. If your fear of blood is very severe, it can lead to low blood pressure, and even fainting spells, so it’s understandable that you might need some time to prepare for it.

3. Make An Early Appointment

Try to plan your blood work on a day where it can be your main responsibility, and make an early appointment. By getting it done in the morning, you’ll put it behind you without letting your fear ruin the rest of the day.

4. Emphasize Small Talk

When it’s time to go through with your blood test, keeping up a conversation with the technician or nurse can make a difference. Even if you’re just talking about something as basic as the weather, the conversation diverts your mind from dwelling on what’s ahead.

5. Regulate Your Breathing

It’s a simple technique, but one that can help your body stay relaxed even while you’re being bombarded with emotions that make you want to tense up. Ask to be given a verbal cue when the needle is about to go in, as well (or just let them surprise you completely to avoid tensing up).

While everything is being prepared, resist the curiosity to look at all the tools. This will only give your mind the chance to concoct all sorts of scenarios that are probably not based in reality.

6. Don’t Look At The Needle

That sight can cause even people who aren’t normally afraid of blood to become squeamish. Fixing your gaze on a blank area of the wall is preferable to watching what’s going on, and should help you stay level headed.

7. Get the Most Bang For Your Buck

The field of phlebotomy has come a long way. In the past, technicians might have to draw blood on several different occasions, and not be able to give you results until several weeks later. Now, things are different.

Nature Communications is a journal which recently introduced a new device called a V-Chip. Once it becomes widely used, it’ll perform routine tests in a nearly hassle-free way. It’s able to do up to 50 tests at once, and only requires a single drop of blood as a sample, rather than a whole vial. In the near future, you might be able to opt for using the V-Chip instead of going through the traditional laboratory process.

All phobias require you to engage in a mental battle. However, by taking a few small steps to control your fears, you can get the upper hand, and give yourself the chance to become aware of health issues, too.

10 Ways to Improve Your Immune System

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As we grow older we need to optimize all chances at improving our immune system. This is all the more important when resources are limited and access to health/disease care is expensive – there I show you my prejudices. I’m not that enthralled at our current models of so-called health care, especially for those of us with chronic conditions.

So if you have a chronic condition, or you just want to avoid getting one, what can you do?

  1. Spend some time in the sun to optimize your vitamin D. For years doctors have pushed the message about avoiding the sun to cut skin cancer levels. However now we also know that there is a strong evidence that low levels of vitamin D INCREASE the likelihood of cancer. So do be sensible and avoid getting sun burned, but do get some sun.
  2. Stabilize your blood sugar levels. This is a vastly unacknowledged factor in ill health. Yes, most of us know that unstable blood sugars are bad for people with diabetes, but they are also bad for everyone if they occur on a regular basis. For a comprehensive discussion on their importance read this article.
  3. Where possible eat herbs regularly. Bioflavenols and polyphenols are important to our general health as they provide important co-factors needed for good immune function. We need to stop thinking in terms of magic bullets to fix us when we are ill. Eat a range of fresh herbs and vegetables. What is easy to grow in your area will depend on your climate. Where I am I can grow garlic, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, lemon balm, lemon verbena, and a range of mints. Use herbs frequently in your cooking.
  4. Undertake some regular exercise. There are far too many of us whose greatest exercise is to walk from chair to car to shop to car to chair. How many people get down on their hands and knees and scrub their floors? Or climb a ladder to clean our their gutters, or walk to the local shop, or personally dig their gardens. I would like to think that preppers undertake regular incidental exercise such as these, but if you aren’t then start.
  5. Eat enough quality protein to keep you healthy and replenish your stores that heal and provide energy. The general advice is to eat 1-2 grams per kilo of lean body mass. However that becomes complicated to work out so think in terms of a palm sized quantity of grass fed protein or fish three times a day.
  6. Improve your omega 3/omega 6 ratios. What this means is that we eat too much of the wrong sort of fat. We need to eat fish, lots of fish and if that is not possible for budget reasons then have some krill oil (preferable) or ordinary fish oil. Avoid vegetable oils except for coconut oil and olive oils.
  7. Laugh lots and make time for play. Medical research has shown that laughter improves our immune system.
  8. Do something creative that you enjoy, that’s another activity shown to improve your immune system, though I’ve currently mislaid my list of references for this.
  9. Deal with your unfinished business. There is a lot of research to show that bad stuff from our past can haunt us, either literally through bad memories and PTSD or through repressing them so they are reflected in poor immune function. Holocaust survivors who told their stories were shown to have improved immune systems compared to those who chose not to.
  10. Prepare for your future. When we are comfortable we have done as much as we can to look after ourselves then we are much less worried than if we are just aware and yet do nothing.

Pallet Gardening

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Spring is here. ‘Tis the season to be…….gardening!!

A neighbor friend told me about a method of gardening using pallets. The premise is placing a pallet on the ground, filling it with soil, and then planting vegetables and herbs between the planks of the pallet.

Pallet Gardening

This is not something that I have tried myself – but looks interesting. Anything that gets more people growing their own food is good by me. Many of the examples that I have seen people doing have some material laid under the pallet to minimize grass and weed growth through the pellet. Potting soil is often used – which is generally weed free.

Gardening in Pallets

Other than laying the pallet flat – a vertical garden is established by leaning the pallet up against a structure – building, wall, tree…..whatever. Soil is kept within the pallet by placing landscaping fabric along the back.

Pallet gardening looks to be a great idea – especially for those with minimal space.

Should You Help Your Friends and Neighbors During A Disaster?

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It is so easy to say that you’ll turn away someone when they come calling – until it happens. My daughter’s friend has issues. She is a walking disaster in many ways.

She was a teacher until persuaded by her husband to go into business together in a restaurant. He had both restaurant experience and business experience so it wasn’t an unreasonable thing to do. But it didn’t work and they lost all the capital they had built up over the years.

Under the stress her bipolar disorder flared. He couldn’t cope and started to beat her up. They separated and each took a rented place and shared custody of the children. He got adequate work and is able to support his lifestyle. She, with her mental health issues has had ongoing problems with employment.

Now the friend has been away from teaching for so long she cannot get back into it for various reasons relating to registration and the local teaching culture. While the economy was good she was able to get work. Now it is tightening the work she used to get is no longer there. The government support only pays $10 a week more than the cost of her rent in one of the lowest cost suburbs so she is not paying her utility bills.

It is only a matter of time before she has the power and water turned off and then is thrown out of her place for not paying rent (she is still paying it at the moment, but only just).

The stress is making her mental health condition much worse than it need be. She is difficult to tolerate for more than one day at a time, given her personality issues that she has been working hard on for years. There is no way my daughter wants to have her friend living with her but the friend’s father refuses to have her also and there is no other accommodation for low income families.

Now when the inevitable happens and this friend and her two young children are turned out of the house what is going to happen? She will turn up next door at my daughters place as her father is so unpleasant towards her.

We have already had a conversation about it and my daughter is prepared to put her up on a one day a week basis for a limited time. Then she will be hard hearted and send her around to her father’s place to sleep in the car outside his place if he won’t let them in. She has turned this friend away before when the demand was too great so I think this will be possible.

This is just the first step to things being difficult for so many. Apparently we have around thirty families in our immediate community who are living like this and who have to seek public assistance to eat.

Part of me wants to be angry and blame them for getting into this mess in the first place through making bad decisions. Part of me is very aware that when jobs are difficult to get, and  “appropriate care” for children costs what this mother could get for working.

As a society we no longer support such parents though we find money to remove the children and put them into foster care, often in circumstances worse than they would be with a mother with mental health issues who is working. The court awarded custody to the father at weekends as he was “working”. So was she and she had to pay for child care so she could bring in enough to feed them and provide a bed, a shower and toilet during her days of care.

This is not yet a SHTF scenario, but it will be shortly as it already is for the 30 odd local families in this situation.

And as a society we have to live with the consequences of having children poorly fed and without housing. I don’t know where they go and I don’t want to know (yes, I know being ostrich-like with my head in the sand is not a good idea). I just know that as the economy worsens and as people with poor health no longer have social support that things will get more and more dire for so many.

I have made a decision that with so many poor people the best I can do is not to be one of them, using up the limited resources that are there. My husband and I have to pay off our mortgage and support our daughter and her two children who live next door.

I’m here to make it easy for her to work at a reasonably well paid job by being the “slack in the system” providing child care when it is needed, looking after them when they are sick and helping out when things get difficult so she is able to continue to work. My husband was only five minutes away when someone smashed into our daughter’s car and he was able to support her to do all the things that needed to be done.

We could also help to get her to the train station and back again while the insurance people took their time about paying out so she could get another car. Her work and hence her income was unaffected. Family resources made life much more manageable in a difficult week.

Frankly we don’t have the time, energy or resources to help every family in dire need in the community. By having strong bonds we can, however support our own family and make sure we are prepared for what is coming.

I feel torn that we cannot help this woman more. But we have to realistic and I think the friend will appreciate boundaries early on in the situation so she can have ongoing support. She is not unaware, having done a lot of personal work and she knows that the most that people can manage to have her around is about three days.

I think she would appreciate having one day a week in a house with toilet and shower rather than four days and then be chucked out forever. But what when this is not an isolated incident, albeit number 31 in our district? What when the numbers and suffering become so great that something has to give and these people stop being reasonably polite?

The 4 Types of Emergency Food You Need

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I watched “Doomsday Preppers” once, they showed 3 or 4 different people who were preparing for 3 or 4 different “Doomsday Scenarios”. I understand that every week presents new scenarios with new people showing their solutions. Now, I have the privilege of talking to a dozen different “preppers” everyday and each of them has a different idea of what “Doomsday” will look like, consequently everyone has a different preparation priority list. While I can’t fit each person into some category of sorts, I can give some broad examples of expectations and offer advice on food solutions for each situation.

First, Weather Disasters: earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, floods, snow/ice storms, normally fairly short term. Some folks have been or know someone who has been affected by weather disasters OR live in an area where natural disasters are a distinct possibility.

In such circumstances, life is in absolute turmoil as public services are down, water is contaminated and rescue personnel are working overtime. I have to ask, “If your house has just been washed away, are you going to be sitting in a rubber raft with 200 pounds of rice and dry beans?” “If you are stranded in your car, buried under 6 feet of snow will you be boiling water to fix dinner?” “If you are on your way to the family retreat when your car breaks down, do you want to carry 40 quarts of home canned beets for the next 20 miles (possibly two days)?”

In these predicaments, Survival Food is optimal. Survival food is lightweight, compact, high in calories, vitamins and minerals, can be stored in just about any conditions and requires NOTHING to prepare.

In weather disasters or temporary situations of civil unrest where you are confined to the home, office or storm shelter, emergency Food is also applicable. These would be prepackaged entrées that require water and heat to prepare. It should be noted that while these prepackaged entrées are extremely quick and easy to prepare, they generally provide less than 200 calories per serving and are intended to be served with other food, ie. Salad, bread, drink and a dessert. A food storage of easy to prepare items from the grocery store, that are used regularly makes eating at home no different than any other day providing you have the means to cook them.

Second, Personal Financial Setback instigated by job loss, unfavorable changes in the stock market, illness, or death in the family. As companies regularly conduct lay-offs or choose to close the doors of American facilities only to then open production facilities overseas, oft times people are witness to their formerly “professional” neighbor suddenly delivering pizza and they thus begin to brace themselves for a similar situation.

One customer told me about his car engine seizing and his personal circumstances snowballed downhill from there. An older couple lost a significant amount of money in stocks, reducing their monthly retirement income. Whatever the details, it’s a personal disaster.

These situations call for food storage which can be full cupboards of grocery store goods that are used normally, home canned or dehydrated food, emergency food, long term storable food or a combination thereof (if looking for a good starting place, check out this really thorough survival food list).

Third, Food Shortages caused by drought, floods, world demand or oil prices, economic depression without total collapse causing hyperinflation and/or an increase in crime causing food outlet closures. The possibility of food or other resource shortage is reported on fairly regularly even in the main stream media.

There has been a return to gardening and home canning over the past 10 years because this is the prediction made by most “preppers” I talk to. GMOs, pesticides, additives and preservatives have played their part in influencing these people as well, but the greatest influence has been the rising cost of food in conjunction with the fear of food shortages on a macro scale.

The potential for wide spread food shortages is also the best reason for having a long term food storage. The classical definition of Long Term Food Storage is: individual ingredients packaged in bulk in airtight containers to be stored for decades. I harbor intense concern for those who have never cooked “from scratch”, and anticipate using these products for the first time under duress. My most emphatic advice is to learn to use flour before you start grinding wheat.

Fourth, Paradigm Shifting Events such as wide spread economic collapse, an EMP type event, biological warfare or/and prolonged civil unrest even to the point of civil war. This is absolutely “Doomsday”, SHTF or TEOTWAWKI.

Every type of food would have its place in one of these scenarios. Ideally, the long term food supply would be used in conjunction with the garden and other ingredients from the cupboard providing the widest variety and greatest nutrition. When planning a Long Term Food Supply, one must consider the number of people to be fed and for what length of time, the ability to grow adequate fruits, vegetables and livestock, what additional ingredients are required to produce an end product, and how many calories are provided by each item being stored.

Emergency Food would be used in much the same way DiGiorno, Stouffers and Sara Lee are now, for variety, when things are hectic, time is short or the cook is exhausted. Survival Food would be a necessity for those on guard duty or a mission away from home.

In a nutshell, these are the definitions one must apply for their food supply planning:

  1. For a short term disastrous event: Pantry Food – requiring no preparation.
  2. For a relatively short term emergency: Emergency Food – requiring minimal resources and preparation.
  3. For all other scenarios including an extended personal crisis: Long Term Storable Food, a necessity as a stand alone supply or to balance other sources – requiring water, a method for cooking and time to prepare.
  4. For the longest term and ultimate sustainability, we have to rely on God and the garden. Home Canning has sustained many generations. With economic trends on a down turn, there is no time like the present to start gardening and learning to preserve food at home.

To be truly prepared you need a complete food storage system that will keep you nourished under any circumstances.