I recently came across this podcast while browsing in the
iTunes store. I haven't listened to the entire set of shows, but I've been impressed with the ones I've heard. Unsurprisingly, it sounds like the host is a White Libertarian. It worries me that Black people don't seem to be talking about the "
nitty-gritty" of contingency planning. We're too busy following the minutiae of the
Obama campaign.
{long sigh} Anyway, the podcast is called
The Survival Podcast: "Helping you live the life you want, if times get tough, or even if they don't."
You can also listen from the website at
http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/ I suggest you start with the following 3 shows:
"An Introduction to The Survival Podcast" (6/20/08).
"The Unique Challenges of Economic Collapse Survival Planning" (8/11/08).
"The Missed Lessons from Hurricane Katrina" (6/27/08).
People Get Ready.
13 comments:
This is an excellent resource and I really want to thank you for sharing. The work now that is ahead of us is daunting but we must stay level-headed, balanced and do it. That Podcast is a great way to start--non-alarmist, just practical and well-thought out. So thanks and I hope people are really checking it out.
Uhuru.
Peace & Blessings Khadija
Thank you for sharing this self-help tool. I'll be sure to listen, especially if this person is a libertarian--I'm a registered libertarian myself. By the way, as you know, we are new home owners as of April, and found out on the news yesterday that our bank folded and was bought out by Citi bank. That's enough for me! It's "been" time to do emergency planning. Dh and I are planning on window shopping for RV's. What's going to happen if Citi bank fails? KWIM? Look at some of these other banks?
Welcome, Chi-Chi!
You're welcome! I'm just happen to encounter Black folks who are willing to prepare. Most of us are committed "grasshoppers." (As in the grasshopper & the ant fable.) This is a good example of the following bible quote from the Mormon's preparedness manual:
The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it. Proverbs 27:12. A reader posted the LDS (Mormon) manual on the Survival Podcast forum. It's worth checking out.
Yes, what I like about the podcast host is that he's very practical and not hysterical.
____________________
Welcome, Sister Seeking!
You're welcome! Like I told Chi-Chi, I'm happy there are some of us willing to take heed. I used to get drained worrying about the oblivious among us. I still worry because they are the majority of Black folks in this country.
But most of all I praise God for my health & ability to prepare. My best friend has health problems and consequently is on a fixed income. She does an excellent job of managing with what resources she has available.
Back to character issues: I try very hard not to be angry with the legions of wasteful, foolish Black folks. I try very hard not to focus on how these fools' resources would be better used in her hands (and other sensible people's hands). My best friend is a Reverend, and she often points out that this sort of thinking is a mental "snare." {sigh}
About the mortgage: Among the finance giants, I'm pretty sure that there will be some entity left standing to collect your money!
Peace, blessings and solidarity.
Ooops! "I'm just happen to encounter Black folks who are willing to prepare" should read "happy to encounter..."
Ahh, typos...
Peace and blessings.
I found this blog: http://ferfal.blogspot.com/ whose author talks about the economic collapse in Argentina and how he and his family survived. It is very interesting indeed but I wonder how far I'm willing to take my preparedness. I'm not entirely comfortable using firearms (I don't know how and I have small children). My husband is completely against them. But I can truly see how one might need this kind of protection (even from neighbors and "friends") especially if you are one of the few that has actually prepared. So, what are your thoughts on firearms? What are your thoughts on protections in general?
Chi-Chi,
Thanks so much for the blog address! I look forward to checking it out.
About guns: I feel that every decent Black person who lives in a Black residential area needs to get the proper license, firearm safety training AND a gun/shotgun. I also feel that anyone who is unwilling to shoot somebody (even to save their own life) should leave guns alone.
My belief has nothing to do with the coming depression. It is extremely dangerous to live in Black residential areas! We're generally in denial about how dangerous it is.
A few months back (July 2008 if I remember correctly), a blog entry on What About Our Daughters had a video embeded that was taken from a sister's home security camera. The video clearly showed approximately 4 Negroes attempting to kick in the door to her (fortress-like) home.
She was home alone with her child, minding her own business. After many long minutes spent trying to kick in her door, the Negroes finally gave up. Thankfully, the sister had a firearm.
Individuals who commit home invasions do so with the intention to stay awhile to rape & torture people before murdering them.
We're in denial about how common home invasions are in Black residential areas. It's been my impression that many home invasions in Black areas don't make the local news. This impression was formed while working as a government defense attorney. The local Black newspaper has a police blotter that lists some of the violent crimes being committed in Black areas, but that's about it in terms of news coverage.
I try to avoid sharing detailed work-related horror stories, but this one is relevant: I'm often reminded of a case that one of my colleagues had years ago. It's a NOT RARE fact-pattern: Her teenage Negro male client & his friend had kicked in the front door to an elderly Black couple's house. These 2 Black "youths" had cut the landline phone wires before kicking in the door. {shudder---they apparently planned on spending a very long time tormenting this couple}
Praise God, the elderly husband had a shotgun and blasted both of the "youth" as they crashed through. My colleague's client was blinded. [Serves him right. He got to find out what it's like to be relatively helpless prey among his fellow "youths." Good.] This did not make the news. [Incidentally, this is what's good about a shotgun--you doesn't need perfect aim to hit an assailant coming at you.]
Of course his mother claimed that her boy was a "good boy," "wasn't doing anything wrong," and "the old man shot them for nothing." His mother was shocked when he decided to take the plea deal. My colleague's client's only remorse was that he got shot.
There are plenty more predators like this particular "youth." I see them everyday at work. I don't have any illusions left about them.
Also, an armed Negro tried to carjack one of the sheriffs that works in my court building while she had her baby in the car. She was off-duty. She shot at him. She missed and he ran off. This also didn't make the news.
[She said she would've jumped out & let him take the car, if her baby hadn't been in the carseat there.] She does not live in an official slum area. She lives in the so-called Black community.
Peace, blessings and solidarity.
Everyone: Here are some really good preparedness ideas from the blog Act 2: From the Wilderness' Peak Oil Blog:
From the 3/2/09 post:
"SURVIVAL TIP -- For everyone who thought it was a good thing to get rid of your land line telephone and just use your cell, think again. The real serious hits are coming PDQ.
Major telecoms (all of which trade on Wall Street) have been and will inevitably cut back on repairs. Suppliers will stop shipping parts, labor cut back, etc... you know the rest. Satellites will go down.
Cell towers will have intermittent failures. And all those gadgets will be heading the way of the dinosaurs over the next five years. Landlines are an excellent way to have redundancy and also avoid the eavesdropping technology that is all over the place and legal. It still takes a warrant to tap a land line.
When the cell towers go down, or satellites fail, if you have a land line you will become a VIP in your neighborhood. It is good to be needed... and we all need to be good."
From the 1/18/09 post:
"Unless you live in a place surrounded by concrete canyons, and if you have family or a close network, a real neighborhood, go out and buy 5 watt FM walkie-talkies with rechargeable batteries.
It's been a few years since I've done research but these radios, which can reach up to
two-and-a-half miles, are important for two reasons. First, they do not require any kind of licensing. Neither do they require the use of a satellite or a microwave relay tower. They can't easily be jammed or shut off. They are direct point-to-point and they will work when everything else fails."
Peace and blessings,
Khadija
I followed a link to you from Black Woman, Blow the Trumpet and am reading all you old posts. I love it!
I thought I was the only black female libertarian doing survival planning.
I'll have to play catch up on the podcasts. Thanks!
Greetings, GeekGrl!
I'm so happy you found this blog! Welcome, and thank you for your kind words. I truly appreciate it.
You said, "I thought I was the only black female libertarian doing survival planning."
Well, I'm not a libertarian. LOL! I just want to live, and live well. Actually, some other readers and I are pondering what those of us who want to "survive and thrive" should call ourselves.
You'll see as you read through the blog discussions, that many of us have concluded that sane, sensible Black people MUST make ourselves distinct from the "acting Black crew." It's a matter of our survival. We DON'T want to reap the enmity that these "acting Black" lunatics are sowing with their deranged and/or criminal behavior.
I'm in the process of researching the names of a variety of past political movements. We'll see what turns up. *Smile*
Peace, blessings and solidarity.
This week, in fact, thanks to this podcast, I'm going to be researching local ponds, lakes, etc that have fish that are safe to eat and the laws attached to fishing in those bodies of water. I have to re-iterate--what an excellent resource that podcast is.
Khadija, I have a question for you. How do you reconcile (or balance)emergency preparedness to being flawless keeping in mind that for many people, especially in these times, it's either/or?
Hello there, Chi-Chi!
You said, "Khadija, I have a question for you. How do you reconcile (or balance)emergency preparedness to being flawless keeping in mind that for many people, especially in these times, it's either/or?"
{sound of a dead horse being beaten}
I can't keep going back and forth with those who REFUSE to do what they can to be Flawless women. And that's what the creation of this FALSE DICHOTOMY of "Flawlessness vs. Survival Preparations" really boils down to.
My older female relatives lived through the Great Depression. They were POOR. Poor, for real poor. They didn't talk this "either/or" stuff about their self-presentation. It was "both/and." Preserving their personal dignity was as much survival-related as anything else.
Peace, blessings and solidarity.
That's what I've been saying. Except that to me personal dignity doesn't equal flawlessness (as you probably gathered from my previous comments). Again, it's not neglecting to take care of yourself . . . it's being okay mentally/spiritually, it's being fabulous even if you can't look it, per se. Don't know if you've read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler or World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler but both imagine a world where the economy and society has completely collapsed. It's violent. It's unsure. I imagine myself in that world sometimes . . . realizing it might become ours one day soon. And I wonder how to make these things that we know are vital (like fabulousness) relevant in that world. I'd like to see that aspect of things touched on a little more here and see tactile suggestions as to what we can do to maintain that even in the face of hardship or the world collapsing around us, as it were.
Chi-Chi,
Why are you coming here with this? You are rejecting the call to flawlessness. And, as during the original conversation, you are doing so with an endless list of rationalizations. That is your prerogative. I have nothing to do with that.
Not every message is for everybody. Apparently, you are not "ready to feel flawless." Again, this is your prerogative. Those of us who are ready are moving forward. I'm not going to keep checking the rearview mirror with this issue.
Furthermore, I don't appreciate the subterfuge involved in this recent series of comments. You didn't come to this thread to discuss survival tactics for the 2nd Great Depression. You came here to further rationalize and debate your original (and continuing) choice to reject the call to flawlessness.
Perhaps this is an attempt to re-define your refusal to seek flawlessness as something else. I've seen you make similar attempts to re-define and justify mediocrity when Rev. Lisa has called for excellence at her blog.
At this point, I don't care what it is because I don't have time for these sorts of games. We hit an "agree to disagree" point regarding this issue during the original discussion. I'm NOT going to waste my time going back and forth over an "agree to disagree" point that was already covered to the point of exhaustion.
I won't publish anymore time-wasting, game-playing comments from you about this issue.
Peace, blessings and solidarity.
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