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In today's podcast Bennett Johnson and I talk about why the worlds economy affects the united states and  why the Chinese economy crashing might not be a good thing for us in the U.S.

I also mentioned the contest that we are having this week for the hidden Gun Shelf. You can read more about the contest here, and I will also announce the winners on next weeks podcast.

The other contest we are running this month is for the Academy Members, we will be giving away a few prizes to 4 randomly picked winners, these prizes are...

2. Bug out Bag First aid kits (Here)

1. Maxpedition EDC Kit (Here)

1. Copy of Patriots by James Rawles (Here)

Check out the Academy, join the community and become a member today.

There are a few ways you can enter below, and make sure to come back every day to get more entries.

Hidden Gun Cabinet

Why does the global market affect us (China)? The crash of 2008 was preceded by the same type of events:

Remember that banking and financial markets are the oil in our economic engine. Companies go to the financial markets seeking loans and capital to invest, grow, invent, and market their new products. This is the purpose of the stock market. For example: If you buy $100 of stock in Apple Corporation. Apple uses that $100 towards the operation of their company. If they are successful then Apple becomes more valuable and you investment grows with it. The opposite is true. If Apple failed then your money is lost.

Imagine this happening to millions of companies and to millions of people in a single day. The investments are not $100 they are more like $100,000 or even $100 Million!

Markets go up and down all the time. When companies get too big or not managed well or if there is war or too much debt then the markets crash. Not if but when the crash happens, millions and billions of dollars are lost. Wealth is destroyed and it sets everyone back decades. Every investor suddenly has less money to buy those things that make our life better. The less we buy the less companies have to operate. That leads to layoffs which leads to further wealth destruction and we have been less to live on. You see the progress of the slide downward.

This all leads us back to how is China connected to the USA. Our banking systems are now global. China invests in the USA and we invest in China. That applies to every modern nation, not just us and China. China and USA are two of the largest. That means when one goes down, it will hit the rest of the connected markets very hard.

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Doomsday is not all about preparing for martial law or a nuclear bomb to drop, doomsday is about what has the ability to change the way you live your life. People that know very little about preparedness think that all preppers all living in an underground bunker, surrounded by weapons and ammo, wearing a gas mask waiting on pins and needles for someone to attack.

If you have been preparing for any period of time you know how absurd this is, and if you just started prepping don’t fall for it. While these people are out there, most of us are average everyday people concerned in one way or another about potential disasters we might face.

In reality preparing for these smaller scale events like natural disasters and job loss are more important, and more likely. This doesn’t mean that it’s ok to forget about these larger disasters because they are a very real possibility, it just means to start from the ground up and build a good foundation for survival.

It really bothers me when I hear “I’m preparing for” anyone who says this might as well be saying “I am ignoring.” If everything you do is centers on an EMP disaster you likely to get blindsided by something completely different and not be prepared for it.

On shows like Doomsday Preppers you see someone who lives in a suburban area and spends 10’s of thousands of dollars fortifying his or her home, to me this is missing the point. If you live in an area with a high population with just your family, why not spend that money getting the hell out of there?

I don’t care if you have 10,000 rounds of ammunition 50 guns and a big bad bug out vehicle parked in the driveway, you still only have 2 arms. If a group of people know you have all that stuff and want it, they will do whatever it takes to get it.

My point is, don’t get so focused on one threat that you completely miss the bigger threat staring you right in the face.

In this week’s podcast Lisa and I talked about the different faces of doomsday and what they mean to us.

Not everyone’s situation is the same, and therefor there isn't any one size fits all solution when it comes to prepping. By working on becoming more prepared for these personal doomsday events that are more likely to affect us and our family, you will find that you are becoming more prepared for world changing or history making events.

Accidents that change to income dynamic of a home, can also happen at work and some jobs are more hazardous than others. If you work in an office your drive to work might be more dangerous, but if you work in construction or any manual labor job that should be included in your preparedness plans.

Home Invasion & Loss of Property: We all do what we can to keep our family and home safe from anyone wanting to do us harm, but the sad truth is that it still happens. Some people just want the easy way out and if we make ourselves targets we increase the odds of someone coming and taking everything we have.

Loss of property can also be caused by fires, flooding and even spoilage from improperly storing our supplies. The last thing you want to do in a disaster is open a bucket of long term food and find that the mice have been helping themselves to it.

Job loss: Because of the way the economy is these days we depend on a certain amount of money coming in each month just to stay afloat. Having a good preparedness plan involves setting yourself up to handle extended periods of time without that money coming in.

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When it comes to prepping we all think in time frames, a week, 3 months and a year. An economic collapse is not like a terrorist attack or an earthquake, an economic collapse has so many variables that there is no simple checklist you can go through and be completely prepared.

This article might be a little unorthodox because it’s about being the SHTF or post collapse entrepreneur, but hang in there and it will all make sense.

The second part of the article is about whether or not your money is safe in the bank, and some unique places to stash your cache.

Everything we talk about when it comes to preparing for an economic collapse is reactionary, but this is one of the disaster scenarios where we have at least a little say in how it turns out for us. An economic collapse or depression type event could have different consequences for each of us.

When we think of an economic collapse we tend to think worst case scenario, but what if it looks like the 2008 scare which affected some people more than others? Or what if it is a long term depression like the one in the 1930’s? Keep in mind as your read this, I think an economic collapse will look like the depression…just a whole lot worse.

On paper you probably have enough supplies to last anywhere from a month to a year depending on how much you have stored, but what about those situation we just can’t prepare for? And what happens 6 months down the line when your supplies and money are beginning to run low?

This is when our true survival instincts kick in. I’m not talking about eating bugs and building a fire, I’m talking about the same skills we use today when we are trying to balance our budgets and pay everyone that has their fingers in our pockets.

In a recent podcast about investing in gold and silver we talked about how we can make an economic collapse work in your favor as much as possible. As preppers we have the opportunity to hedge our bets…a little insider trading if you will. Most people will be caught off guard, but we (the crazy prepper) study what this might look like in order to become better prepared for it.

I’m not necessarily talking about illegal activity here because let’s face it, there will still be laws, and quite possibly many more restrictive laws. I’m talking about selling the goods and services people will need in a collapse scenario, but can’t afford to pay what the big guys want.

In this podcast Lisa and I talked about items we have that might be more valuable than money during an economic collapse, and how as preppers this might be where we can get an upper hand. I’m not talking about the beginning stages of a collapse, as a matter of fact we should do whatever we can to stay off the radar during this stage, but eventually everything is going to “normalize” a little bit.

The crime rate will still be high, and every part of town will be the bad part of town, but at this point we might have a better idea about who and what to avoid. Our supplies will only last so long, so we might also find ourselves in a situation where we have no choice but to figure something out.

It won’t be as easy as handing out resumes or hopping online to apply for a job because they probably won’t be there,

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With all the different disasters and emergency situations we could possible face, the process of preparing can be a little overwhelming at times and intimidating to say the least. It seems that even when we are more prepared than we ever have been, we still have the feeling that it’s just not enough.

I titled this week’s podcast “ Prepping Challenges, Distractions and how to…Squirrel!” because sometimes it can be really easy have our preparedness plans derailed or go down a rabbit hole that leads us nowhere.

Lisa and I talked about some of these distractions and how we can try to keep ourselves on track and not get burnt out with prepping. The last thing we want to do is to stop making progress towards our goal or goals.

At the end of this post we also have some interesting (and probably common) answers we got when we posed the question “what is your biggest challenges and/or distractions?” to the Apoco-List Facebook group.

Lack of resources

I made this number one on the list because it is probably number one on just about everyone’s list. With all the supplies we “need” to buy to become more prepared it seems like we can never have enough money.

I have written a couple of posts on this in the past including reducing your debt and budgeting that includes a free excel budget planner, and one that goes into how to earn extra money for prepping.

We might not be able to control how much the price of gas is, but spending money in the wrong areas of preparedness and not budgeting our money are both things we can control.

Outside Influences & Second Guessing

Unfortunately when it comes to how others react to our prepping there is not much we can do about it, sometimes it just takes patience mixed with a little wishful thinking. I do have an article about how to get your loved ones on board, and I also have one about how to read people which will be helpful now as well as in a SHTF situation.

Because of people telling us we are overreacting we can sometimes second guess ourselves, it’s ultimately up to you what you choose to do, but I would rather be safe than sorry.

Organization & Overwhelm

Prepping is just like everything else in life, take tools for example, over time we start to build up a supply and if we don’t keep them organized it becomes very frustrating and we forget what we actually have.

This can lead us to throwing our Hands up in the air because we are frustrated and overwhelmed by how much stuff we have.

News Media (Alternative & Mainstream)

I’m probably preaching to the choir here but the news doesn’t report the real news anymore, they report what they are told to report.

It doesn’t matter if you watch Fox News or CNN, everyone has their own agenda and for the most part they are telling us what to believe and what’s important. Make up your own mind, and do the research to find out the real or whole story.

Television

Every once in a while it’s nice to just turn off our brain for a little while, but we need to be careful how often we do it. It’s really easy to get sucked in by these shows and the more we do it the more it becomes habit.

Set aside a certain amount of time each day to work on preparedness. This can be learning, reading and even watching videos, it doesn’t always have to cost us money.

Creating Subconscious Distractions

I am a professional at avoiding what I should be doing, I can always find something that needs to be done that takes me away from what I need to be doing. It’s usually what I call “busy work”, just work that keeps me busy and distracted from my main goal.

This usually happens without you consciously knowing it’s happening and you can go the whole day until you realize that you just tricked yourself.

Procrastination

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Tornado's occur more in the United States than any other country…lucky us! An average of 1200 tornado's hit the United States annually, and are more likely in some areas such as the Midwest (Tornado Ally) and areas where th...

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With the exception of water, long term food storage might be the most important part of preparing, some might even say more important than water because of how easily our food supply line can be cut off and how far food has to travel in today’s world to reach our table.

Most of us in the United States have never gone more than 24 hours without food and have no idea how it will affect them, and although we can survive without food for a few weeks, if will be our main priority long before that. So lets talk about some long term food storage ideas.

If the average person were to walk into your home and see a Legacy food bucket they would probably make some wild assumptions right off the bat, but when you think about it, other than the shelf life and quantity, how different is long term food storage food than a box of hamburger helper?

Long term food storage, water storage and preparedness in general is nothing more than insurance for the future. What concerns me the most is not a nuclear bomb landing in my back yard, it’s our electrical grids vulnerability’s, economic instability and basic supply and demand.

Having a large supply of long term food storage food during the great depression would have been more valuable than gold.

Imagine you or someone in your family had lost their job for an extended period of time, with money being tight it would be a daily juggling act to pay the bills and buy food for the family. If you had a six month supply of dehydrated food that wouldn’t be such a huge hurdle, and would alleviate some of the stress you might be facing.

Imaging there was a natural disaster like an earthquake, or a hurricane like Katrina, if you had a few weeks of food stored that’s one less thing you have to worry about, and could literally be the difference between life and death.

My point is that long term food storage is not all about doomsday and does not make you a “doomsdayer.” Everyone is different and storing food for emergencies is just the smart thing to do. Some people store as little as a months’ worth of food, and some people store year’s worth, it’s really up to you what you decide to do.

This can be more cost effective than making a large purchase because you can go to the store and buy a little extra food each time and slowly build your food storage. The downside of this is that this food will only last so long, most boxed meals and canned food last between 6 months to 3 years.

On the surface this sounds great, but is you buy a year’s worth of food from the grocery store you need to make sure it gets used and rotated properly. Regardless of how well organized you are and how good your rotation system is, you are bound to lose some of it to expiration.

Dehydrated Food: This is where long tern food like Legacy food comes in, I call this my second layer, this is food that can be stored and organized much easier and longer than grocery store food. It’s good to have a good short term food supply, but at some point storing and rotating all that food will become nearly impossible.

Legacy food storage products are prepared and packaged in a way that makes them shelf stable for up to 25 years, so even if nothing happens in the next 10 years, you still have your food storage and you haven’t had to throw anything away.

DIY Food Preservation: There is another option that you have and that’s storing all the ingredients yourself and preserving your own food. Lisa and I do some canning (nowhere near what some other people do) and this can be a good option as well.

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Today in the show Lisa and I have the privilege of talking with Sara Hathaway who is the author of Day After Disaster. Some of you may have already read it, but for those of you who haven't I highly recommend it. I personally am not a big book reader because I am constantly reading other prepping blogs, but I have to say this book kept my interest.

I also found out during the podcast that this was not just a book, but the first book in The Changing Earth series and the second book will be published very shortly, Sara informed us that she just finished writing the second book the night before we recorded.

The book Day After Disaster is centered around a California woman who is thrust into an unexpected survival situation and goes through many challenges along the way that test her mentally and physically. This is what I like about prepper fiction, while it is fiction we can learn some things by reading these types of books.

These show notes really don't do this justice, you need to listen to the show to get a good idea about the book and Sara the author.

Day After Disaster is a little different than the typical prepper fiction book because Erica is completely on her own in the beginning and has to find her way back to her family. Because this was from a single persons point of view rather than a group I found myself thinking about what I would do if faced with the same situations.

Sara also has plans for a future podcast where she will read from her books and also offer preparedness and survival tips. She asked Lisa and I if we would be willing to be guests and we can't wait, it really sound like it going to be a great podcast.

Link to Day After Disaster on Tate Publishing: The digital book is $2.50 and if you purchase from this site you will get the PDF, PDA, cellphone or a stand-alone eBook reader files. [Click Here]

In the show we talked about keeping a group together and getting back together. here is a link to the grid system we talked about on her blog: [Click Here]

We didn't just talk about her book, we talked about some of the lessons you can learn form it. Sara really walks the walk when it comes to preparedness and survival and it shows in her writing. She is EMT trained (although she chose not to work in that profession) and trained in martial arts making her a great addition to any SHTF group or community haha

Here are a few other things we talked about in the podcast.

Wake up America! Our food supply is fragile, our energy grid is archaic, and our disaster response systems are inadequate.

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Surprisingly there is a lot of debate about investing in gold and silver for preppers to stockpile for any SHTF event or economic collapse, I can’t tell you how many times I hear “you can’t eat gold.” While this might be true in the literal sense, you can turn gold and silver into food and other supplies.

Keep in mind, I’m not talking about a short term disasters, in these scenarios precious metals will only be as valuable as the demand is, if no one in your area wants gold or silver it doesn’t matter what the going rate is.

I’m also not saying that it should be purchased instead of other supplies, it should be purchased in addition to your other preparedness needs. Food and water could be in very short supply and it doesn’t matter how much gold you have if there is nothing to buy with it or nobody wants it.

If you do decide to invest in gold and silver make sure you have all of your other bases covered first, make sure you and your family have the basics down and can survive for at least a month without any outside assistance before you even think about purchasing gold or silver.

In this podcast we talk about the what, when and why of purchasing gold and silver, as well as why it’s a good investment in your future regardless if nothing happens at all.

Think about it, when you are dead and gone your family members are going to come in and divide up your belongings. Who is going to be happier, the person getting the year supply of food storage or the person getting the gold and silver?

Let’s say you are still alive and kicking but you are living on social security, wouldn’t it be nice to have a little something set aside to add to that. And let’s be honest, who knows if we will even get social security when the time comes…I’m not counting on it.

To me investing in gold and silver is one of the things we can do like becoming more healthy, even if nothing happens during our lifetime we have set ourselves up to live a better life, and that’s what prepping is all about.

This excerpt from alternet.org explains what happens to our money once we GIVE it to the bank…

“Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the banks, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay.”

Information like this makes me want to take every penny I have out of the bank and stuff it under the mattress, but that is just not possible, and it’s not very smart either. Having large amounts of cash laying around the house will open you up to the possibility of theft, and with the ability to pay just about any bill online it’s far easier to plug in your credit card number on a website than to send a stamped envelope like the good old days.

You still need cash: Remember, we are talking about a long term event here, and even if the economy tanks cash will still initially hold some value. Let’s say that there is some sort of grid down event that causes and economic crisis, The plastic we hold in our wallets or purses will be useless, the ATM’s will be useless and we will probably have little luck withdrawing money from the bank.

Having a few hundred dollars (or whatever you can afford) on hand will literally be the difference between you being able to purchase what you need and standing there helpless wondering what to do next.

I always carry a small amount of cash in my wallet just for this reason, as a matter of fact the same bills have been there for over 2 years now.

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In any post collapse or SHTF situation there are going to be many things we are going to have to give up, and this does not just include common addictions like caffeine, alcohol or other drugs, this includes some of the modern conveniences we take for granted today.

Lisa and I talked about some of these today in the show as well as what we plan on doing for the 100th episode of the Survivalist Prepper podcast. We can't say thank you enough to everyone who has helped us get this far, but we can give a few things away! Read more about the giveaway at the end of these show notes.

When it comes to life after a collapse or even just another great depression there are some major changes in our lives, if we can make some of these changes now the shock might not be so bad later on. We talked about...

Addictions: When the SHTF it doesn't matter if your hooked on heroin or need a cup of coffee, your probably not going to get it.

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The post SPP099 SHTF Addictions and The Giveaway appeared first on Survivalist Prepper.

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We hear all the time about how a survival knife is a must have for any survivalist or prepper, but how do you choose the best survival knife for your needs? The best survival knife does not necessarily mean the most expensive, the best knife is one that fits your budget and needs.

You are going to see a lot of sites and read a lot of articles that focus on getting you to buy a knife that everyone else likes. You are going to be the one buying and using the knife, so instead of buying a knife because Dave Canterbury uses it, buy one because you know what knife you want and need.

Picking the best survival knife whether it is fixed blade or folding blade is like picking the best gun, everyone is going to have their own personal preference and what works for them might not work as well for you.

If you are more educated about the purchase you make, you are less likely to end up with something that just sits in your garage, or even worse, fails when you need it most. There are plenty of knock offs and even though two knives might look the same, they are not.

Just remember, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. On the flip side of the coin, just because it’s expensive doesn’t mean it’s a good knife.

If you have no idea what survival knife you might need, follow the steps in this article and buy a low cost survival knife that looks like the expensive one you like and test it out. Don’t expect these to be all that durable though, you are testing the weight, balance, grip and overall feel of it when you are performing certain tasks like chopping, slicing, batoning or whittling etc...

After you have given the knife a good test drive you will have a better idea about what you want, and you can use the knife as a backup or even a hand me down.

If this is a self-defense knife that hopefully never gets used you might be able to get away with a low cost sturdy knife with lower quality steel, that doesn’t need to hold its edge as well as the more expensive brands.

I will list a few of the parts of a knife that we hear all the time, but this article goes into much more detail about different knives.

The Tang: When it comes to a good survival knife a full tang is a must. A full tang runs the entire length of the handle and is sandwiched between the 2 peices of the handle, while a half tang (hidden or partial) does not. A partial or hidden tang runs the full length of the knife, but is not the full width of the handle.

A full tang will be much more durable even with a lower quality knife, and if the knife handle comes off or gets ruined the knife can still be used, whereas a partial or hidden tang knife will be unusable or very dangerous to use.

Blade Style: There are a few different styles of knife blade to choose from, you have the drop point, the tonto blade, the spear point and a clip point. Watch this video to get an idea about what the benefits of each style are.

https://youtu.be/HfR54reEsjk

Source: Smoking Barrel USA - Knives

Handle Material: There are quite a few materials that are used for the handle of the knife, the most popular are Micarta, rubber, bone and antler. I prefer Micarta because it is lightweight and strong, but the blade is far more important than the handle.

Thumb Rise: A thumb rise is basically what it sounds like, it is located between the spine and the handle of the knife and gives you a more stable grip on the knife. These can also sometimes be part of the handle.

Spine: The spine of the knife is the unsharpened edge of the blade, or top of the blade. These can sometimes be rounded or sharpened,