Author: Sheila and Dan

If we were to pinpoint the one pervasive emotion in society today, it would be fear.  People all around you are fearful of almost everything.  They fear the police.  They fear the IRS, ATF, TSA and all the other “alphabet police”.  They fear losing their job.  They fear loosing their house.  They fear their city or town government.  And they fear the mother of them all – fear of continuing life without enough money to maintain their current lifestyle (or at least the one the remember from a decade ago).  Most people rationalize these fears as normal because “everyone has them”.

We are trained from a very early age to act out of fear.  We fear  our teachers wrath, so we do our homework.  We fear clergymen, for they decide if we go to heaven or hell, so we say all the right prayers.  We fear older children who may bully us so we cross the street to avoid them.  Later on in life we fear the cost and hassle of a ticket, so we fasten our seat belts.  We fear losing our house so we work in a job that means nothing, offers us no personal satisfaction other than just enough money to keep us trying to reach the carrot on the stick.
Continue reading “Fear Itself”

Having lived off the grid for the last 7 years, you see ’em come, and you see ’em go.  The dozens of people we’ve seen succeed and the dozens of people we’ve seen fail gave us a keen eye to the attributes necessary to be a survivalist.  Like we’ve told many people before, no matter how prepared you think you are, you’re gonna go through some changes!  So after many years of observation, below are listed the 6 essential traits every survivalist should possess to be successful.
Continue reading “6 Essential Attributes of Successful Survivalists”

Here it is – Why Are You Trying to Survive?  With the news being what it is, the world has now come to the point at which a huge shake-up is undeniable – to anyone who has 2 cents worth of brain matter between their ears.  So  hoards are joining the stampede to become “survivalists”.  The movement has even spurred the development of the “survival industry”, with commercials now being played on mainstream media stations for freeze-dried storage foods and solar generators.

There is an old saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do.”  So if you are going to go the path of being a “survivalist”, first you’ll want to know where you are going – and why.
Continue reading “The One Most Important Question a Survivalist Can Ask Themselves”

Here are 24 signs that you might be a closet prepper:

• You’ve had a survival blog for 4 years and your spouse doesn’t know.
• Your family does not know there’s a case of Dinty Moore stew hidden in the basement
• You stand around the office water cooler laughing with your buddies about all those tin-foil hat wearers – but you have your own roll of Reynolds Wrap at home.

Continue reading “24 Signs That You Just Might Be a Closet Prepper”

Its been a long, strange trip.  We didn’t grow up on a farm.  We grew up in the city, a walk away from the grocery store, schools and friends. Our only training about self-reliance was that we were self-employed, but the business world was and is very different from knowing how to plant, how to cook with wood, how to milk and butcher a goat, or how to build a house.

We’ve come a looooong way from those days.  We’ve been counting only on ourselves for the last few years and we’ve learned so much in that time – mostly through trial and error.  We’ve built four  houses,  made a composting toilet, fixed trucks, harvested local edible plants, stayed up nights keeping the stove going so we didn’t freeze.  We learned to do without when we couldn’t get to town when something got used up, we learned to wash the dishes with only 2 gallons of water when the water delivery man couldn’t get up our road.  We learned that even without “much o’ nothin’”, nobody ever took away our birthday, nor did we ever starve.  It’s been wonderful.  We learned, first-hand, that “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
Continue reading “Self-Reliance Doesn’t Have to Mean Being By Your Self”

One of the biggest questions we get on our website, survivingsurvivalism.com, is how to begin achieving off-grid/energy independent status.  Not everyone can afford to go out and buy a 5 kilowatt solar array and the associated batteries.  This article is written for those of you who want to begin your road to energy independence, as well as being able to use your laptop, mobil devices, etc..
Continue reading “10 Ways to Keep Your Power and Computers Operational When TSHTF”

As the nation readies to choose a leader, to choose the one “on top” of the country, forget about the choices you have been given and consider what the criteria for a leader should be. Here’s a concept to consider: Being on top means you serve others.

Many Native American tribes choose a new chief by determining who has done the most for the tribe. Who has given the most to the tribe, in time, labor, courage? Who has taken in the most orphaned children, taken care of the most widows, given his plate of food to a hungry mouth? Who has done these things without thought of compensation for doing them? This is the one who knows the right path to follow, the path on which to lead the people.
Continue reading “Choosing a Chief”

In my humble opinion, Michael Tsarion  (michaeltsarion.com) is a brilliant researcher and teacher of the history of history.  He explains in great detail how we all got here.   In a lighter moment of one of his speeches, he said this,  “I don’t mind being called a conspiracy theorist – if you don’t mind being called a ‘coincidence theorist’!”    It made me chuckle. And then it made me think.  It made me think how true it is that they are just two sides of the same coin.

A coincidence theorist is one who can actually rationalize in his or her own mind that it was a coincidence that the exact scenario of 9/11 was written up in the Northwoods Document 20 years or so before the event. (Don’t get me started on all the 9/11 coincidences – that’s’ been about beat to death.)
Continue reading “The Coincidence Theorist”

Some may call it a self imposed exile, but several years ago we separated ourselves from so-called “society”. It’s a 90 minute ride to even get to a town from here, mostly across dirt ranch road, some of it “primitive” (white knuckles). About a year ago, our Ford Bronco died, and we got swindled out of $3000 for a replacement truck that…well, long story, but suffice it to say we haven’t had a vehicle since then. We haven’t left the ranch in about a year. The handful of times we had visitors since then, they have been so kind as to bring us up some small amount of groceries for a “treat” or two, but we gained something very special in that time – perspective.
Continue reading “An Unusual Perspective”

We know that waiting till the last second is not a good idea, but for some it is the only option.  So we have taken three  possible average scenarios and broken them down for you.   All scenarios will include a family of 4 – Mom, Dad and two kids under high school age – living in the suburbs of a megaplex city…

 Scenario #1

Continue reading “3 Last Minute Survival Scenarios”