Of course, we totally agree with the subjects of the show, Doomsday Preppers, in that the apocalypse is upon us. But what kind of apocalypse are they preparing for, and what kind of apocalypse should we as end-times Christians be preparing for? And what should our preparations be?

The National Geographic channel commissioned an online survey of about 1,000 American adults and found that 61 percent of them believe the country will experience a major catastrophic event within the next 20 years, though only 15 percent of them feel they are fully prepared for it.

It may be obvious to say that part of what defines an event as a disaster is that we’re not fully prepared for it – or it wouldn’t be a huge disaster. And in the case of the end of the world as orchestrated by God Almighty, we can be fully prepared for the eventualities, certainly in a spiritual sense and to a large extent in a material sense.

We just need to do a few things.

We urge all who will hear the Spirit of God today to do so. Revelation chapters 2 and 3 say repeatedly, “Let him who has ears, hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches,” as the book describes the seven churches and their various responses to God.

The Bible describes the events preceding the final years before the return of Jesus, graphically so in Revelation. What we are seeing are what the bible calls birth pangs: wars, earthquakes, pestilence, famine, excessive corruption, men being lovers of self rather than lovers of God, hurricanes, the worst floods in recent history and so on.

We also are told that in order to buy and sell, every person alive will have to receive the mark of the Beast, signaling their alliance to his satanic system in opposition to God’s, followed by the antichrist’s declaration that he is god.

What we must be doing as believers is preparing to live outside the system of the antichrist materially as well as spiritually. This includes practical preparation, as when Matthew 24 compares these days to the time when Noah built his Ark. Matthew writes that the last days will be just like the days of Noah.

Getting God’s money is an urgent piece to the puzzle; money answereth all things, as Ecclesiastes 10:19 says. If you get God’s money, precious metals, He will see you through. It is an act of obedience to get his money and get prepared, just like Noah.

It’ll be interesting to see if National Geographic deals in a straight and honest way with Christian “preppers” and doesn’t make us out to be idiots. Of course, ultimately, their treatment doesn’t matter anyway – only what we do out of obedience to Christ.

That’s why it isn’t really a surprise that, so far, the federal government hasn’t backed off a move that has American Catholics up in arms and threatening to challenge the Obama administration even up to the possibility of taking to the streets in protest.

What the Obamaites are trying to pull, of course, is to force all employers, including Catholic-owned hospitals and other institutions, to pay for birth control. Catholic leaders upped the ante this week, threatening to challenge the Obama administration on this particularly heinous part of Obamacare.

Catholic leaders are furious and determined to harness the voting power of the nation’s 70 million Catholic voters to stop a provision of President Barack Obama’s new heath care reform bill that will force Catholic schools, hospitals and charities to buy birth-control pills, abortion-producing drugs and sterilization coverage for their employees, as CBS-2 TV News in New York reported.

“Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church,” said Catholic League head Bill Donohue.

Already Archbishop Timothy Dolan has spoken out against the law and priests around the country have mobilized, CBS 2 said, reading letters  from the pulpit. Donohue said Catholic officials will stop at nothing to put a stop to it.

“This is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions, and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets,” Donohue said.

Why are we at Unreported World News not surprised that Obama’s acolytes would pursue this course even when it should have been obvious to them that it could cause incalculable political damage to the president’s re-election efforts. After all, not only are Catholics a numerous portion of the electorate, but they’re easily the largest cohort of potential swing voters from election to election.

And in nearly all of the presidential elections of the past half-century, the balance of the Catholic vote has lined up with the winner.

2 Timothy 3:1-4 describes this matter: The federal officials mandating this, and their left-wing supporters, are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, a primary marker of the last days in which we’re living.

It is an abomination to the purity of the gospel and all moral values held by civilized societies. It is an outrage to youth, parents and for any person with moral values.  And even if Obama backtracks for reasons of political expediency, this move has telegraphed what he really thinks. That’s no surprise, either.

But can Newt Gingrich be trusted to carry the banner for those of us who believe in the gold standard, if he should get in a position to do something about returning us to it?

Not so fast. Gingrich is an inveterate New Ager, Constance Cumbey is observing these days – and, as one of the original whistle-blowers about the New Age
movement decades ago, along with us, she should know. As Speaker of the House in the mid-Nineties, in fact, Gingrich was putting together an argument for “global governance networks” that, among other things, would greatly reduce the sovereignty of the U.S. government and citizenry in world affairs.

Besides, is there really any hope that the United States could possibly return to a gold standard – President Gingrich, or no President Gingrich – before the coming
crash? It’s one thing for us personally to get our financial houses in order by using God’s money, gold and silver, rather than man’s debt money.

But it would be a stretch indeed to believe that the U.S. situation now is parallel in any way to the last time that anybody seriously talked about a return to the
gold standard, early in Ronald Reagan’s presidency 30 years ago. Now, the U.S. essentially is more than $100 trillion in debt, and President Obama blithely keeps adding to the tally – printing money like he’s ordering burgers at a fast-food restaurant.

A nation this much in debt cannot possibly survive the coming crash, and even a President Gingrich pushing a return to a gold standard wouldn’t be able to avoid it.

History may be repeating itself in a presidential candidate calling for a gold standard the way that Reagan did. But God’s plan will unfold no matter what. And
in order for the New World Order to control America and our economic assets, the U.S. economy must fall. The debt we’re under as a nation is no accident; it is part of a well-contrived, Satanic plan in these last days to bring the U.S. into submission to the Beast.

And for at least two big reasons – his true allegiance as a New Ager, and the enormity of the task that would confront him – a President Gingrich wouldn’t be able do anything about it. And first he’d have to get elected!

How does that passage refer to today? After I spent three years following the Lord’s leading in trying to help protect innocent people from becoming victims of a scam, a class-action lawsuit was filed on December 27 against self-proclaimed Christian financial adviser and gold and silver dealer, Larry Bates, for fraud and conspiracy, even involving civil charges of racketeering.

As Unreported World News has reported for three years, this has amounted to horrifically fraudulent behavior by this so-called Christian leader, a visible figure on national Christian television and the owner of the largest Christian radio news network.

Ezekiel 34 describes the fat shepherds and the scrawny sheep. Are other pastors and church leaders using their platforms for extortion and excess while the sheep are implored to sacrifice, often at the expense of buying food? Are heavy burdens being put on the sheep to build church buildings and invest in “bonds” to support the cause, which will become junk bonds when the dollar crashes in the near future?

Are church leaders and pastors advising their flocks to flock to God’s money, gold and silver, to protect their assets?

Sadly, for the most part, no.  Our newest book, Gold, Silver, Money and Your Future: A Biblical view of Real Money, will be available soon. We encourage you to get a copy of this short but powerful book to understand the economic deception in the church today.

Don’t let the actions of one dishonest metals dealer cause you to hesitate to obtain a place in God’s money system.  SLGAS was founded  as an alternative for metals’ investors – a trusted and safe source for precious metals, because of the dishonesty manifested by Larry Bates, a clearly not “Christian” precious-metals dealer.

Beware of the Scribes and Pharisees and get God’s money now, before the coming economic deception unfolds and it is too late to get metals affordably.

Two groups are most important of all in the groundswell of responses to the news, broken by Unreported World News on Wednesday, that Bates’ legal comeuppance has begun: the national news media, and Bates’ victimized customers.

It’s crucial for the law suit and Bates’ practices to get attention by the news media – secular and Christian, traditional and online – so that Bates and FAMC might be forced to stop what they’re doing immediately. It was relatively easy for Bates and his associates to continue to pull the wool over the eyes of unsuspecting gold and silver buyers when we were still toiling to get the word out about how dangerous he is; many of his most recent new customers never knew there was any reason to doubt his smooth sales pitch.

But now, with local, regional and national newscasts and publications picking up on the news of the suit, many thousands of Americans who potentially were Bates’ next customers, instead, fortunately will be warned away from him. So far, the Associated Press, major regional newspapers in Bates’ home state such as the Tennesseean from Nashville and Memphis’s Commercial-Appeal, and local TV news broadcasts in Tennessee have been the first to pick up on news of the suit. Because of these stories and what surely will be more to come, at least many folks can avoid being added to his long parade of victims.

The second and probably even more important constituency who are getting a boost from attention to the suit are Bates’ existing victimized customers. It’s unclear at this point to what extent any single individual might be compensated for the evil that Bates has done, should the suit be won or settled. But the news coming out this week certainly is encouraging many of them, including the big number of people who personally were assisted by Unreported World News and our associated precious-metals company, Southlake Gold & Silver.

“I am so proud of you, and thanking God for you,” one of Bates’ victims e-mailed us yesterday.

Here’s another:

“My wife and I purchased Gold and Silver from Larry Bates and it took a year to get delivery … [We] were new Gold and Silver investors and depended on (Christian Bates) to guide us in this new area of investments only later to find out, not only was he dishonest, but he grossly over charge[d] us on our purchases…

“We invested six figures with his company. He needs to be put in jail. At one point I had told the guy at his company I’d like a refund, he told me our order was final and Gold and Silver prices were way down and they would pay me [what would amount to] just a little over half or what I had invested…

“They had a [racket] going. Larry Bates is a crook who needs to be behind bars.
Thank[s to your] efforts [this] is getting … out!”

And finally, here is a note from a major supporter who is neither media nor victim but, rather, someone of integrity and importance in the precious-metals industry – an industry given something of a black eye by Bates’ practices.

“Your diligence has paid off. Well done!” the note goes. “Hopefully the victims will receive appropriate relief from the courts. Equally important will be the possible deterrent [effect] this will have on future victims. Maybe now that Dr. Bates realizes his practices are out in the open he will change.

“The Lord is full of forgiveness for someone who repents and does what is right to correct the wrong done. One can only hope Dr. Bates apologizes to the clients and will do what is right to restore them.”

Of course, regular readers of Unreported World News understand that Bates and his Memphis-based company, First American Monetary Consultants (FAMC), are the financial predators whom we have been battling for more than two years. A local mid-South firm had partnered with a prominent Michigan firm to pursue this claim on behalf of claimants across the country. The filing of this suit represents not only a huge ratcheting up of the secular pressure on Bates and FAMC to cease and desist in their reprehensible business practices but also the most significant secular recognition yet of the massive deceit he has been carrying out against his customers.

Two former customers are named plaintiffs in the suit, and more than two dozen other individuals from across the United States are covered as victims. One of the plaintiffs, Damian Orlowski, is familiar to our readers because we shared his story of his dealings with FAMC a couple of years ago. Now, the Chicago man has courageously come out front in this lawsuit.

FAMC is among the most prominent precious-metals dealers in the United States, “Christian” or secular, frequently cited by the big players in the trade, such as Lear and Goldline, as a significant competitor. That is one reason Bates has continued to pursue such shady business practices with impunity even while we and dozens of his customers have been attempting to get him to stop.

Now, very capable new advocates seek the same aims as we do. The firms representing Orlowski et al. include the law offices of “super lawyers,” Gerard V. Mantese of Mantese Honigman Possman and Williamson, P.C, and J. Houston Gordon. Mantese, a complex business and commercial litigator, has been named repeatedly in Best Lawyers in America. Respected Tennessee “super lawyer” for plaintiffs, J. Houston Gordon has made millions doing personal-injury work during his 40-year career. He also is former chair of the Democratic Party in the state and ran for Senate against Republican Fred Thompson in 1996.

As we have reported to you over the last couple of years, the named plaintiffs and other members of the proposed class were duped by Bates for a total of several hundred thousand dollars because they purchased gold, silver and other precious metals from FAMC based on his appeal to their Christian beliefs, then saw Bates and FAMC keep their money without providing the metals they had purchased until months later. In some cases, Bates sold them inferior products to what they had ordered; in others, he filled part of the order and kept the remaining funds.

Bates’ business practices have been especially reprehensible because he has targeted widows and other elderly asset owners who are devout Christians, using seminars at churches, direct mailings, radio and television interviews and the internet to entice them to purchase precious metals with “end-times” warnings and an appeal to mentions of gold and silver in the Bible.

And while we at Unreported World News share much of Bates’ purported theology concerning the importance of acquiring precious metals, dealing with God’s Money instead of man’s debt-money system, and have our own prophetic take on the end times, we do not in any way agree with how he and FAMC do business.

In fact, as many readers will recall, we – with the Lord’s help – have been largely responsible for getting Bates on the radar not only of personal-injury lawyers but also of journalists in Texas and Tennessee who have reported on his practices, and of regulators in both states who have been checking him out.

Bates’ customers have been outraged particularly because a major part of his  positioning has been to tout FAMC’s ability to “move millions of dollars … in a matter of minutes with settlement in 48 hours in the currency of your choice,” as one advertisement put it.

Instead, while garnering payments from clients within minutes, hours or days of their orders, many of Bates’ shipments have taken extra weeks and even many months beyond what is considered reasonable in the industry. And when FAMC has finally fulfilled the orders, often the company has substituted items – such as heavy silver bars for silver coins – that are less liquid and even less valuable than what the client ordered.

Another egregiously unethical aspect of FAMC’s practices has been to justify its lack of paying interest on customer funds it has held by alleging it wouldn’t be “a Christian thing to do.” In response to complaints, Bates has stated that he sells metals on a “no-whine” basis – meaning that customers shouldn’t criticize FAMC’s practices even when the firm has held their life savings for months, or years, without fulfilling their precious-metals purposes.

This lawsuit is case No. 1:11-cv-01396.

Click the following links to see the public records that were filed.

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2

Exhibit 3

Exhibit 4

Complaint

Civil Cover

But we’ve been saying for years that the Bible essentially assures us that at some point – and we believe it’ll be before the Rapture of believers – the entire world will become a police state. And while Paul and others have continued to express fears that the United States has been creeping toward martial law, our concerns are for Christians and others around the globe, because our true citizenship isn’t of this world.

And the facts will be that the Antichrist will impose the Mark of the Beast and a cashless society as described in Revelation 13. Whether this is coincident, a cause of martial law or an effect of some other actions isn’t clear. What is clear is that the mark will be the way that the Antichrist and his worldly minions – presumably including many government officials and others the world over – in effect control all those who accept the mark and force the rest of us to live outside of mainstream society.

So while Paul has become an effective spokesman at least for martial-law fears, we must be wary of depending on him to raise the banner on such views. One reason is that he doesn’t seem to be proffering a particularly Biblical interpretation of such circumstances.

The second reason to avoid tying our wagon to Paul’s, in terms of public perceptions, is that he is in the process of being discredited by the mainstream media and the political establishments on both the left and the right.

Leftist pundits have always thought Paul the libertarian a lot nutty. But now, while they’ve tolerated his surge in this election cycle to the point that Paul actually could win the Iowa caucuses on January 3, the Republican Party brain trust absolutely won’t brook the possibility that somehow Paul could become their party’s nominee in the fight to oust Barack Obama. It’s most likely they will finally attack his isolationist foreign-policy views to bring Paul’s candidacy crashing to earth.

So expect Paul to be discredited as a spokesman for martial-law fears – and everything else he stands for.  But keep in mind that he’s just a man, and the truth, including the Antichrist’s imposition of what amounts to martial law at some point, will still be the truth.

(NaturalNews) One of the most common questions I’m asked today from people who are aware of what’s really going on is, “Should I leave the USA to get away from the coming police state?” Three years ago, I would have said YES, but today, after having experienced such an effort myself and now having a clear understanding of the ramifications of such an effort, I must urge people to reconsider. As you’ll read here, you may ultimately be far safer and more successful living right where you are, in your “home country,” even if that home country becomes a police state.

I’ve lived in many countries, by the way: Taiwan, Australia and Ecuador. I’ve traveled extensively throughout Asia, giving seminars in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. I’ve traveled across England, France, Spain and even Portugal. Spent quite a bit of time in Central America and South America. I speak decent Spanish and decent Chinese, so there’s almost nowhere I go in the world that I can’t speak to the local people in either English, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese. I’ve seen extreme wealth, extreme poverty and extreme corruption in all its world flavors, and I’ve seen what corruption does to nations and its populations, first hand.

I don’t claim to be a prophet of any kind, but today I’m a bit wiser, a bit more experienced and a bit less foolish than I was a few years ago, and I’d like to pass on whatever nuggets of wisdom might help you and your family prepare for the powerful global changes which have already begun to unfold.

Here, I share with you five powerful realizations you need to keep in mind when considering where to locate (or relocate) before the collapse becomes a reality. (Time is growing short, so read up…)

For starters, there is a universal truth you must accept if you hope to make a truly wise decision about where to locate: Corruption is everywhere.

Realization #1 – Corruption is far worse outside the USA

If you think the USA is corrupt, you should try living in Peru, or Bolivia, or Panama. And if you think that’s corrupt, head over to Haiti for a double heaping serving of corruption.

Yes, we may all legitimately complain about the USA, but from what I’ve seen everywhere around the world, the United States is still less corrupt than most places in the world. Yes, there are bad apples everywhere throughout local police, federal FBI agents and even the court system, but for every bad apple there are probably three times as many honorable people who are truly just trying to do their jobs.

In years past, I served in a non-profit support role, the local police in Tucson, Arizona, and I came to know them as some of the most upstanding, honorable peace officers I’ve ever met. Yes, they had a history of outrageous corruption (which you’ll find in every police force from time to time), but they rooted out that corruption and restored integrity to their operation. You’ll find the same dedication to honest public service all across the nation, even if there is a little corruption that normally goes along with it.

So don’t make the mistake of thinking you can escape corruption by leaving the USA. You are actually likely to discover MORE corruption elsewhere. For example, in Ecuador, where I lived for two years and held a local driver’s license, it wasn’t unusual for me to be stopped at an armed military roadblock and asked questions. These were staffed with soldiers carrying what appeared to be variants of the standard U.S. issue M4 rifles (AR-15 in the civilian editions). They never gave me any trouble, it turns out. They asked a couple of questions and looked at my documentation, then waved me through.

In fact, I had many friends in law enforcement in Ecuador, and I spoke with them regularly. Sure, they were a little corrupt, but not in an over-the-top criminal way like we see with the FBI in the United States actually masterminding terrorist plots and then magically “discovering” those plots just in time to halt them (http://www.naturalnews.com/034325_F…).

Costa Rica has been described as a “police state” by numerous people who have visited or even lived there. Yes, the country if a beautiful paradise in terms of climate, and it is perhaps the most socially advanced nation in Central and South America, but like all such nations, it has a socialist police state mentality.

South Americans love socialism, it turns out. And this has everything to do with preparedness…

Realization #2 – Many cultures do not practice long-term preparedness thinking

In observing all this first hand, I’ve come to the conclusion that the embracing of socialism throughout South America is the result of cultural short-term thinking.

For example, throughout South America, people often buy prescription medicines one pill at a time. They buy a bag of twenty screws from the hardware store, then return to the store after they run out to buy another twenty. This is often infuriating to the “gringos” who are trying to build a house, for example, because they operate with the idea that you should just buy 5,000 screws all at once and have plenty to get the job done. I can assure you from first-hand experience that such a concept is completely alien to a great many South Americans (most notably in rural areas).

I make no judgments about this, by the way. There are pros and cons on both sides of this equation. But in my experience living in Ecuador, finding people engaged in preparedness planning was virtually impossible unless they were of European descent. For example, rural Ecuadorians often buy a small baggy of spices in a quantity for cooking one meal. And in doing this kind of thing, they nickel-and-dime themselves into actually losing money because they don’t take advantage of the purchasing efficiencies realized through long-term planning. The idea, for example, of buying large quantities of facial tissue at a Costco or Sam’s Club is completely foreign to most South American cultures (more so in rural areas than urban). Even if they might save 40% from buying in bulk, their cultural tendency is to buy one tissue box at a time, paying a much higher overall price over time.

This concept is also reinforced by the very heavy reliance on state-run lotteries throughout South America. In any nation, high participation in lotteries is a powerful demonstration that a culture lacks the cognitive coherence necessary for intelligent financial planning. You see this heavily reflected throughout Peru and Brazil, by the way. You’ll even find this in many poorer areas of rural USA where the lack of mathematics education (and, perhaps, an irrational belief in luck) motivates many people to hand over their money to the state. That’s why the mathematically inclined call the lottery “a tax on people who can’t do math.”

There is, of course, an interesting up-side to short-term thinking, because the very same phenomenon might also be called “living in the moment.” Some in the new age movement call it “the power of NOW.” South Americans know all about the power of NOW, as you’ll clearly see on a Sunday morning when driving your car down the road, weaving around drunken citizens sleeping in the ditches, sometimes still clutching an empty bottle of sugar cane alcohol. The night before, they all lived in “the now,” you see, and they weren’t necessarily thinking about the hangover implications that would inevitably arrive the next morning.

You see, to actually get anything done in society, you have to live at least a little bit in the future.

On the food production front, by the way, it is extremely difficult to buy a John Deere tractor in many Central and South American nations. Much of the food production there is still done by hand (not as much in Brazil, of course, where agricultural mechanization is in full swing…).

In Texas, by comparison, John Deere tractors are available everywhere. More importantly, there are lots of people who know how to fix ‘em. Given that a tractor is one of the most fundamental work multipliers in agriculture, if you hope to survive the coming collapse, you need a reliable tractor on your land in a community that’s familiar with tractors, and you need a few hundred gallons of stored diesel fuel to power it through the disruptions. It’s no exaggeration to say that one gallon of diesel fuel can replace the labor of twelve men working twelve hours. It’s a powerful force multiplier if you own the right hardware.

If you get a tractor, by the way, avoid all those more recent John Deere tractors which are fifty percent electronics and plastic. Buy the old ones, made out of iron and grit, because they’re the only ones that will still operate after an electromagnetic pulse attack, in case you were wondering.

Climate reveals a lot about the planning tendencies of any culture

Getting back to the preparedness mentality of different cultures, climate shapes cultural tendencies, too. The climate in Central and South America is so much more amenable to easy food production (except at very high altitudes) that there really isn’t a cultural impulse to engage in behaviors such as “storing food to survive the winter.” With food literally falling off the trees year-round in places like Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, generations after generations of people there have settled into a rhythm of day-to-day living with relatively little planning. The very best preparedness planners, not surprisingly, are people whose ancestors survived harsh climates and brutal winters.

A lack of planning in South American culture is also evident in the surprising lack of family planning you’ll find there, where it’s not unusual to find women with four, six or even ten children, none of which seems to own a decent pair of shoes. It makes you seriously wonder about the “thinking ahead” portions of the brain and why they have not been activated in some people. There is a part of the brain — the future planning part — that can imagine a particular future emerging as a result of today’s actions and then use that imagined future to reshape today’s actions in order to improve the future (which eventually becomes the NOW, of course, as you’ve no doubt noticed). People who are cognitively skilled at this process are, by definition, good planners. They tend to have better outcomes in life. Those who are poor at this skill, for whatever reason, tend to have poorer outcomes in life.

Women’s rights advocacy groups correctly point out that a lack of family planning among women usually stems from a cultural devaluing of the female, which then leads to a chronic lack of women’s education, subsequently correlated to startlingly high birth rates. The best way to reduce birth rates in developing nations, it turns out, is to either build more schools or just go the Bill Gates route and vaccinate everyone into a state of total infertility. (If you’re an evil globalist, it’s so much easier to just inject women than educate them…)

Why does all this matter? I’ve learned over the last few years that the best place to be in a collapse scenario is living around a bunch of other people who are also prepared because they are long-term thinkers and planners. You might want to live in a Mormon community, in other words, as they are typically the best prepared.

You might also find some preparedness communities in places like Ecuador, Uruguay, Panama or Costa Rica where there exists a critical mass of preparedness-minded people who tip the scales in your favor. So that’s definitely a solid option for those who are still intent on leaving the USA or Canada and looking for preparedness options elsewhere. I do know first-hand that there are some very viable ex-pat communities in both Panama and Costa Rica where a critical mass of aware citizens already exists. Lots of libertarians down there… but watch out for “retirement communities” in these countries, which are populated by people who have no interest in actively surviving anything because they figure they’re close to dying anyway.

You do NOT want to live around a whole city of people who culturally and habitually lean toward short-term thinking rather than long-term planning. A city full of starving children with mothers living in total poverty who can barely afford their next meal is not a good backdrop against which you want to build a survival retreat, especially if you’re living out in the country by yourself.

Read books by Jared Diamond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_…) if you really want to understand the long-term implications of geography and climate on the development of human culture. You will come to understand that in cultures where food comes too easily, over time there comes to exist a systemic lack of long-term planning in the minds of the citizens. This is a red flag for anyone seeking a preparedness destination.

Realization #3 – Don’t be the foreigner

Another important point to remember in all this is that if you’re, let’s say, a white person living in a white town in America, you blend in. You can walk around anonymously — at the grocery store, the shopping mall, the gas station, whatever. But the minute you move to some country town in South America (or Thailand, or whatever), then you suddenly stick out like a sore thumb.

In other words, if you’re a 6′ 1″ white guy walking around a town of 5′ 8″ brown-skinned people, do ya think anyone will notice?

You bet they will, and when they see a 6′ 1″ white guy walking around, what they really see is a walking ATM.

You’re a symbol of wealth, and the poorer the country you go to, the more wealth disparity you’ll find, of course. And what you need to understand is that wealth disparity breeds contempt. So while you’re driving around in a brand-new Toyota 4×4 (which I never did, by the way), the locals are looking at you and thinking to themselves that they could never afford that vehicle in their LIFETIME.

Why does this matter? From a practical perspective, it means that in a social breakdown scenario, these people have an instant idea of where the goods are. Who has the money? The white people! Who has the nicest houses, cars and electronics? The white people! (Or “the foreigner,” even if you’re not white.)

What I learned from this is that I’d rather be an “average” white guy living in an average neighborhood, driving an average car than sticking out like some sort of person who appears to be relatively well off. That’s why today I still live in a modular trailer unit in Austin, I still drive a Toyota pickup truck, I dress like a rancher in blue jeans and flannel shirt, and nobody gives it a second thought when I’m out in public. I blend in, and that’s far wiser than sticking out.

Some people want to look rich and popular, so they wear a lot of bling, and they drive a high-end car they can’t afford, and they live in a house they can’t pay off, and they try to fool everybody into thinking they’re rich and powerful. I’d rather fool people into thinking I’m NOT powerful. Because underneath all that, I actually am quite capable of defending myself, or taking decisive action, or just quietly removing myself from the situation if required.

God help the mugger who tries to mug me on the street someday, because I don’t dial 911. Then again, I don’t walk around looking wealthy enough to mug in the first place. In fact, half the time when I walk into a hardware store in Austin to buy some equipment, I still have dirt and grime on my face from working on the farm that morning, and I’ve got mud on my jeans and grease on my shirt from greasing the hydraulics of the tractor loader bucket.

The point is, if you try to stand out in a time of crisis, you’re an idiot. Blending in is so much wiser, I’ve learned. And I learned some of this the hard way, being an idiot myself in years past.

So the bottom line on this point is simple: Live where you fit in. If you speak with a Cajun accent, live around Cajuns. If you’re black, don’t be the one black guy in a white neighborhood (nor do you want to be the one white guy in a black neighborhood). It’s not racial segregation I’m advocating, by the way, it’s simply a preparedness attitude of blending in so you don’t attract unwarranted attention to yourself and your daily activities. If you can find a mixed-race neighborhood, then you can usually blend in no matter what your physical appearance.

Don’t draw attention to yourself

You’re going to have far better success at preparedness, survival and even home defense if you can engage in preparedness activities without drawing attention to yourself. So if you’re out at the local Wal-Mart, let’s say, buying up a case of rubbing alcohol to add to your first aid kit, you don’t want to leave any kind of strong impression a cashier there who, for example, might later tell some FBI agent, “Oh yeah, there was this 6′ 2″ guy with red hair and an old-style Western mustache, and he bought up a cart full of shotgun ammo, rubbing alcohol and bandages. I thought that was kinda weird…”

So another tip in all this is that if you’re buying first aid supplies, or stored food, or anything you need to stay prepared, buy things in small quantities, and better yet use the self checkout lanes at local retailers, so you’re not even interacting with a cashier at all. And don’t be a moron and buy too many items of anything at once. It’s far better to make multiple trips (to different stores, preferably), buying up smaller quantities of things and then combining them at home.

And what kind of things should you have? Well, if you want the full details, get my Be Prepared, Not Scared course that I recorded with Robert Scott Bell, as we go over the entire preparedness list covering food, first aid, emergency communications, lighting, safety and much more:

Food Security:
http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Be_Pr…

Economic Security:
http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Be_Pr…

I’ve also created what I believe to be a very powerful audio recording called “Five Mental Strategies for Surviving Anytime, Anywhere” which is included as a free bonus to our “Surthrival” course recorded with Daniel Vitalis. Read about it here:
http://www.naturalnews.com/033985_S…

…or download the full course at:
http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Surth…

Realization #4 – You cannot escape the global police state

I learned this with the help of Alex Jones of InfoWars.com. I was talking to him in the studio one day, during a commercial break, and he was asking me about Ecuador. Then he said something profound: “You can’t escape the police state, you know. It’s global.”

And he’s right. Think about the controllers and how they operate: It’s the global banksters, the global pharmaceutical giants, Monsanto, Coca-Cola, Exxon and all the other evil corporations that infect our world with disease and suffering. These corporations run the global governments, and if you don’t believe me, just ask John Perkins, the former “Economic Hit Man.”

Listen to my interview with Perkins here:
http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=8…

You will be astounded by what you’ll learn there, probably. But the upshot of it is that tyranny is a global phenomenon, and you cannot escape it by simply crossing some national boundary.

The simple truth is that our entire world is under assault by criminals right now, and those criminals are deeply embedded in the financial system of Goldman Sachs crooks and Federal Reserve elitists. They are dominating economies across Europe, North America, Asia and even Central and South America. They are planning an economic implosion so they can steal the world’s wealth. All assets backed by paper may become worthless in 2012 in the years soon thereafter. This is all by design, and it’s global.

With economic implosion comes social unrest, and with social unrest comes martial law. So you can expect martial law to be declared in many nations around the world, and in my experience, if you’re living under martial law, it’s preferable to blend in so that you don’t attract unnecessary attention to your own activities. (And by this, I don’t mean anything unlawful or subversive. I just mean fundamental commonsense things like buying extra food and supplies, for example, to defend your family and your local community. And have yourself a reliable mechanical lead-slinger as well.)

Realization #5 – You are far safer to hunker down than try to go mobile

A lot of people talk about having a backup retreat somewhere that they will “drive to” or “fly to” when the collapse strikes. In my view, this is foolish. Highways will become kill zones targeted by marauders, and using vehicles on roads will only get you either robbed or dead (or maybe both).

To a gang of armed looters who forgot to plan ahead before the collapse, there’s no more juicy target than an RV loaded down with stored food, ammo and gold, and if you’re stupid enough to drive one of those as you’re trying to get to your destination, you’d better have your own cavalry along for the ride, or you probably won’t get very far.

Anyone who has studied military tactics, gang mentality or historical accounts of what happens when governments fall knows that roads are to be avoided at all costs. The only safe way to go from point A to point B is to hump it on foot, cross-country style, and even then you’d better only walk at night or you risk being shot by someone defending their own land.

Once you start actually thinking about all this, it doesn’t take long to realize that the far safer strategy is to live in your castle starting right now. Stay put, stock up, and find a way to defend it.

Want a great book on how to accomplish that? Buy and read “Holding Your Ground: Preparing for Defense if it All Falls Apart” (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/06…)

It’s written by “Joe Nobody,” which itself is a lesson in laying low. This book isn’t about turning your house into a concrete bunker armed to the teeth, because that’s just an invitation to be hammered by an armed gang of looters. Rather, it’s just as much about using cosmetic deception to fool would-be marauders into thinking your place has already been hit, for example, and is therefore worthless. This informative book is really an example “The Art of War-” style thinking for defending your home and your family, using very clever techniques that go far beyond “shooting back.”

Don’t expect the book to be well edited, by the way. A lot of the best survival and prepper books have lousy editing because they’re written by people who are experts in practical skills but relatively inexperienced writers. But who cares? I’m not looking for Shakespeare here. I’m looking for tactics that really work, and this book delivers. (Wish I could find who really wrote this because I’d like to interview them here on NaturalNews…)

Getting back to the point at hand, even with a vehicle you can’t possibly carry everything you need to stay safe and prepared, and on top of that gasoline supplies may be impossible to find for a while, so the very best place to hunker down is the place where you live. That’s where you can store your food, emergency first aid supplies, communications equipment (wind-up emergency radios, for example), defensive items such as defensive items, solar battery chargers, cooking gear, instructional books, garden seeds and whatever else you might need to survive an economic collapse.

That’s why I’ve decided to ride out the collapse in Austin, Texas, by the way. Well, not exactly in the inner city itself, but near enough to the city to be considered an Austinite.

Why Texas? It’s not perfect, but it’s well-armed

Why Austin? Because Texas has its own power grid unlike the rest of the nation. Texas can grow its own food. Texas is the energy capital of the nation and can produce natural gas, diesel, oil and even jet fuel. Texas has masses of armed patriots who own more guns than they do pairs of shoes, and that makes Texas practically impenetrable to any invading force.

For example, suppose North Korea launches an ICBM into the high atmosphere over North America and unleashes an EMP weapon that destroys nearly all electronics (http://www.naturalnews.com/034344_E…)

This could theoretically be followed by a naval invasion of forces from Red China and North Korea, both of which suffer from too many young males that can hardly be fed and might as well be thrown at some enemy nation as cannon fodder. These forces would plow right through Southern California, with all its anti-gun laws and totally unprepared populations. Oregon would fare a lot better, thanks to the country folks who know how to live off the land, and although Seattle would be quickly overrun by enemy forces, the eastern (country) parts of Washington state would put up a fierce resistance. And any enemy forces foolish enough to try to make it into Idaho would, of course, be viciously intercepted by highly capable resistance forces that would snipe, explode and shred the enemy’s supply lines, halting any advance no matter how strongly intentioned. (You do not want to mess with American rebels and patriots in Idaho, for the record.)

If some enemy force was foolish enough to try to enter Texas, they would be obliterated by a mass of Texas farmers, ranchers, National Guardsmen, law enforcement officers and ex-military men who are all locked and loaded to the hilt. That’s where I feel safest, in the midst of the best-armed and most well-skilled riflemen in the country, most of which are upstanding, community-minded citizens who defend life and liberty. Texas is a fortress of determined men and women who will not, under any circumstances, willfully surrender their freedoms or their Bill of Rights.

Interestingly, Austin is also a progressive town with lots of raw foods, vegans, yoga studios and amazing artists. It’s a progressive, almost liberal town, surrounded by conservative country folks who ultimately serve as a safety buffer that protects the city of Austin itself. When SHTF time comes, you can bet all the unarmed Austin residents will be begging the rural cowboys to protect them from looters and armed gangs.

That’s why people who don’t own guns dial 911 — because they want men who DO own guns to arrive as quickly as possible and solve their problem.

Are your current skills based in reality? Or fiction…

As you consider where to go in a time of crisis, think about where you are right now. Is your local community able to defend itself? Do you live among people who know how to repair cars, weld equipment, repair a rifle, clean fresh fish, grow vegetables, raise chickens and chop firewood? If not, you might want to think about relocating to a place where you live among some more capable people rather than the city-minded people who — let’s face it — live in anartificial reality that’s extremely fragile and won’t last but a few days in a true collapse scenario.

If your top skills today are things like: texting while driving, finding the best sales at Macy’s, and beating the level 12 boss on your Xbox video game, then you’re not likely to survive very long in a real crisis. Xbox skills, it turns out, do not translate into the real world. All those people who are currently experts at artificial skills need to think long and hard about picking up a few reality skills that might help them in the real world.

You don’t know jack, Jack!

Above all, as much as you think you know about preparedness, survival and the like, you probably don’t know jack.

And that goes for myself, too, even as I study this subject and work to learn as much as I possibly can in the short time remaining. Do you know how to suture an open wound? I have literally spent an afternoon reading a suture book and practicing stitches on chicken meat bought from the grocery store. Seems silly, right? Who spends their Saturday suturing a chunk of chicken? Then again, if you’re cut and bleeding more than a little, I’m the guy who knows how to apply a tourniquet in 60 seconds, sanitize the wound and sew it up. It will be ugly as all hell, as I’m no cosmetic surgeon, but as long as you didn’t sever some major artery, you’ll probably live.

I’ve also been known to pack open wounds with freshly-cut aloe vera gel. I just stuff it right into the wound then use a skin stapler to staple the surface shut. Never had an infection problem, as aloe vera gel is a powerful antibacterial substance that also pulls the wound shut as it dries. It’s crude, free and highly effective. Just the kind of country remedy I like to have handy in a time of crisis. That’s why I always grow aloe vera everywhere I go.

Get some skillz, Jack!

These days, my goal in preparedness is to know as many useful skills as possible, which is why I study emergency first aid and other practical skills. In a crisis, I can prep emergency food for an entire community, sanitize water for a small group, perform basic emergency medical procedures on the wounded or even be part of a rifle fire team that defends a church, for example, against a band of armed looters. I’m not the best at any one of those things, but I’m useful in them all.

I know how to grow medicine, grow food and (somewhat) handle farm animals. I know how to clean a rifle, repair a torn belt on a broken piece of farm equipment, operate a John Deere tractor, start a fire without matches, and stitch back together a torn piece of canvas or clothing.

I still don’t know how to field dress a wild pig or deer, but I figure I can always barter with someone who does, as I’ve got a complement of other useful skills that they probably don’t possess. (I’m not into hunting or skinning anything. Can’t stand to shoot live animals. That’s just not my thing, y’know?)

Most of all, I’m determined to survive, and I’m determined to help as many of my fellow human beings survive with me, to the best of my ability and resources. And that’s ultimately what’s going to get me through the coming collapse, so help me God.

Wherever you go, assess the basics

The other day I was thinking about Jim Rogers, the wealthy investor who lives in Singapore and often appears on alternative news shows like RT America or InfoWars. As much as I totally agree with Jim’s advice on learning Chinese (which is one reason why I speak a fair amount of Mandarin myself), if you know anything about Singapore, you also know it is perhaps the last place in the world you want to live in a collapse scenario.

Singapore is a concrete jungle with virtually no usable space for growing food in proportion to its population. Even worse, Singapore has virtually no water supply and must import a huge portion of its water from Malaysia, a nation with which Singapore has dicey relations.

The food for Singapore must all be imported from surrounding nations (such as Malaysia), and Singapore’s claim to fame — a financial hub of Asia — is in many ways based on the very false derivatives and fragile debt instruments that are on the verge of total collapse in the years ahead. If Asia suffers much in the way of economic collapse, Singapore may become a desperate place. Certainly, a resourceful guy like Jim Rogers can probably weather the storm and still come out on top (he’s got assets in multiple currencies, in many financial institutions around the world), but for your average run-of-the-mill citizens, Singapore could become a very dangerous place to try to survive.

When people look at relocating for preparedness reasons, they often overlook the basics such as water resources. That’s why I recommend people buy the book “Strategic Relocation — North American Guide to Safe Places, 3rd Edition” (http://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Rel…) by Joel Skousen. I’ve been a fan of Skousen for over a decade, and this book will walk you through the key decision-making process of finding a place that can keep you and your family alive. That place is NOT New York City, nor Los Angeles, obviously. Those are places to go if you want to DIE in a collapse.

But there are many places across North America that are quite suitable for creating your preparedness retreat as a primary residence. Many of these places even have internet bandwidth available, so you can potentially earn a living on the ‘net while you prepare your location.

If you read the book, you’ll discover that Austin has its own pitfalls, including being relatively close to both nuclear power facilities and the border with Mexico. Both of those are legitimate concerns, of course, and there’s no perfect spot that has everything you want. You have to find the best combination of factors that matter to you, then do the best you can with the time, skills and resources available to you.

Timing: Are you prepared yet?

If you’re not already well along with your own preparedness plans, you run the risk of missing this train entirely. 2012 is nearly upon us, and while I don’t believe all the Mayan calendar nonsense being rumored around the internet, I certainly see a financial collapse headed our way in 2012 or very soon thereafter.

It takes 2-3 years to really get squared away with your retreat if you consider the process of making good quality soil for gardening, planting some fruit trees, squaring away your irrigation system, getting some backyard chickens and so on. You can’t just “buy a place” and move in and suddenly expect to be fully covered. Building a retreat requires experience that only time will deliver — experience dealing with weather, garden pests, wild predators, knowing the lay of the land and so on. Just squaring away your own home water supply can be a daunting task if you don’t know where to begin, and even getting a well drilled can be a six-month process in terms of acquiring permits and waiting on drilling companies (which are often backlogged).

Time is running short. If you’re not already in the process of storing the supplies you need — and learning the skills that go with them – you’re late. Get on top of this NOW.

And don’t worry if you’re not in the “perfect” geographic location or the perfect house or whatever. Work with what you have. A family with skills and just a few basic supplies is far better off than a wealthy family with a house full of gear they don’t know how to use. I can’t even tell you how many people out there just buy stuff, toss it on a shelf and never learn how to use it. That’s about as silly as owning a guitar and thinking you’re suddenly a “musician” because you have the gear.

Whatever you buy to be prepared, practice with it and practice with your entire family. Even if you don’t own firearms (or don’t want to), a family of four armed with a few cans of heavy duty pepper spray can make a small group of attackers think twice. Plan ahead for what’s coming, and you won’t be left behind.

http://www.naturalnews.com/034404_preppers_collapse_bugging_out.html