Prepping For Bubbles - Part 1

 I want to talk about an upcoming economic "bubble" that may be (is?) headed our way.  This is a bit long, so I'm breaking it into two posts - one on the market and government forces currently at play, and the second on the "bubble" itself.
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We're currently in an economic cycle that feeds on itself, actually making things worse as it progresses.  It's tough to say what is the starting point, but the cycle goes something like this:  Sales are bad.  The business must lay off employees to keep the business open.  Other businesses do the same thing, and unemployment rises A LOT.  Because so many people are unemployed, they don't have the same levels of disposable income, so they aren't buying as much as they used to buy.  Sales drop further.  More people are laid off.  Cycle continues until the business closes.

Some of these businesses are banks.  Their losses mount due to homeowners and business owners not paying on their loans (on over-valued properties or unsecured lines of credit) and many are shut down by the government.  Those banks that survive, become very tight with their cash.  Unless you're a "solid gold" borrower - business or personal - you're not getting a loan.

To encourage banks to lend money, the government infused them with massive amounts of cash (TARP) and offered them loans at obscenely below-market rates (currently as low as 0.15% - yeah, fifteen one hundredths of one percent).

But banks continue to have tight credit standards.  They still feel it's too risky to lend to most entities.  The majority of them are not making their money from Interest Income, but from Asset Trading or Asset Sales.

This is the cycle we've been seeing since late 2007.

All the while, the government has quietly increased the money supply - "creating" more than  $90 billion of new money (Currency In Circulation) since August of 2008 - to help pay our bills.  That is an increase of almost 11% in 15 months - effectively lowering the purchasing power of the dollars that were already in circulation.

Still, the $90 billion in new money is no where near enough to pay for all of the programs we've added.  Demand for services has increased while the supply of money to pay for them has declined. 

So the government has borrowed like crazy.  Our national debt now exceeds $12 trillion dollars.  The people and entities that lent our government the money must receive regular payments on the loans (Treasury Notes/Bills/Bonds).  An increasing percentage of the taxes our government receives must be applied to interest payments instead of towards Constitutionally mandated services and programs.

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Amid all of this doom-and-gloom, there is a startling aberration:  The stock market. 

Despite businesses shutting down, despite continued lay offs, despite profit reports based upon cost cutting and not increased sales - the stock market has blossomed.  Hell, it's boomed!  The Dow Jones Average is up over 57% since March of this year!

How can this be?  Why are people pumping trillions of dollars into the market?  Isn't the stock market supposed to be the "bet" investors make on the future performance of listed businesses?

Most of the time, the answer would be yes.  It could still be a 'yes' for some people, but it's becoming increasing clear that's not what's going on at this time.

Tomorrow:  The coming "bubble" and what you can do to prepare to minimize the impact.

Accept The Challenge

Financial preps are as important as preps for food, water, security and mobility.  They are all fully intertwined.

Virtually everyone needs some source of income to survive - at the very minimum, you've got to pay your taxes.  Just as the knowledge of emergency shelter building can keep you safe and dry, developing financial skills on economic trends and indicators can keep you from getting hit by a "financial tsunami" that wipes you out.    

They're skills that should not be overlooked.

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Copyright 2009 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

State of Mind, Part 2

The mental outlook you possess to tackle daily tasks or to live your life is incredibly important.  The last post was on the mindset of self-defense.   Emergency Preparedness gets the nod today.
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I spent a good deal of my life in a field that was highly regulated by the government.  Because of the nature of the industry, having Business Continuity and Disaster Plans in place was required by law.  All of the companies in my industry had very impressive tomes that lined the shelves of their board rooms. 

The plans were written, but nothing was ever done with them.  Perhaps once a year, the employee contact sheets were updated, but little more was accomplished.  They were never tested.

Just before the Y2K panic, the government realized that this just wasn't acceptable, and required the companies to update AND test their plans.  IMO, it was a great example of how the government should act in its role as a regulator (and those are very few and far between!).

I was a Chief Information Officer at the time, and most of this planning and preparation fell on my shoulders.  It was a great experience and education, and also an incredible eye-opener. 

Our Board of Directors fought the testing, tooth and nail.  They saw it as an expenditure that wouldn't produce income.  To them, it was a waste of money.  They figured that we had a plan, and it would work flawlessly if something bad happened.  They couldn't see that spending a little money NOW could save us literally millions of dollars if a disaster struck.  And this was coming from a business located in the heart of earthquake country, San Francisco.

How many people do you know with the exact same outlook as my former bosses?

Many people will grudgingly put together a personal Emergency Preparedness plan, but how many have spent the time and money to test that it will actually work?  They figure that by having the plan, they're covered - nothing can harm them.  They never consider that Murphy's Law will be visited upon them, and their nice, neat plan will get turned on its head.  They don't have the mental toughness to challenge their own assumptions.

Oh, and FEMA will always be there to bail them out, right?  Yeah, nice Plan B.

Accept The Challenge

Don't give yourself a false sense of security by simply going through the motions of putting a plan together.  You have to test your plan, and test your assumptions.  You MUST assume your plan won't work as you've laid it out.

If your plan is to "bug in" during an emergency, what will you do if your house burns down or you can no longer reach it?  What happens if your stored water supply goes bad - do you have alternate sources and the means to make the water potable?  Do you have stored food and equipment in other locations, or do you have all of you "eggs in one basket?"

Change your mental outlook to include the very real possibility that things COULD turn out worse than you expect.  Think of it like a life insurance policy.  You don't expect to die before you are very old and gray, but you accept the idea that it could happen and have taken action to protect against that possibility - regardless of how unlikely it may be.

Test your plan as you've got it designed, but also test it by throwing as many variables as possible.

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Copyright 2009 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

State Of Mind, Part 1

With almost any endeavor, your mental outlook is a key to success.  If you think something is worthwhile, you'll generally put forth the effort to make it work.  If you're wishy-washy about a project, chances are you'll look for the first excuse that presents itself to scuttle what you're doing.

Many people recognize that putting together an emergency preparedness plan, or taking their self-defense seriously are good things.  They may go as far as drawing up a plan or even taking some classes on these subjects.

While these are great first steps, they're not enough.  You have to have the mental toughness to act on what you've learned.
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Self-defense.  At almost every firearms class I teach, the question comes up about actually firing a gun at an intruder.  A surprisingly large number of people will make a statement along the lines of, "I could never kill someone.  I would just shoot to wound them and call the police."

I want to scream.  But I don't.

I take a deep breath and remind them that someone has entered their home, or followed them to their car or taken some other action which has alerted them that the bad guy is a threat.  You are nothing but a pay day, a piece of ass or some part of a twisted fantasy to these thugs.  They will have no hesitation in taking your life if necessary.  Criminals show no pity.

You need to have the same mental determination to save your life as the criminal will have in taking it.

And it doesn't matter if the bad guy has a gun, a baseball bat or a knife.  No decent person EVER wants to take another life.  But if you command them to retreat or to leave your home, and they advance on you - and you don't shoot - you are unnecessarily putting your life at risk.
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Take a look at this excellent review and update of the old Tueller edged weapon defense study.  It has to do with using a gun when your attacker is within 7 yards of you with an edged weapon.

Bottom line: Within a 21-foot perimeter, most officers dealing with most edged-weapon suspects are at a decided - perhaps fatal - disadvantage if the suspect launches a sudden charge intent on harming them. "Certainly it is not safe to have your gun in your holster at this distance," Lewinski says, and firing in hopes of stopping an activated attack within this range may well be justified.

The average attacker was able to travel the 21 feet in 1.5-1.7 seconds.  The fastest attacker was able to do it in 1.27 seconds.  I sure as hell hope you have your weapon in hand and ready before they get that close to you.

If YOU want to try and "wing" them ala a Hollywood movie, go right ahead.  I'm shooting until they stop.

Accept The Challenge

You MUST mentally walk-through multiple threat scenarios before they happen.  If you are serious about your self-defense, you must be willing to accept the (unwarranted) guilt and the potential scrutiny of your friends, family and the media.

By running through scenario after scenario, you are much more likely to make the right decision in a time of crisis.  You don't shoot the kid or the drunken neighbor playing a prank at 3am, but you do protect your family when it's an actual threat.

A final thought:  If you shoot someone - even an attacker in your own living room - you may very likely be arrested, especially in a state such as California.  Be prepared to deal with that as well.

As the old saying goes, "I'd rather be tried by twelve than carried by six."

Tomorrow:  The Preparedness Mind Set

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Copyright 2009 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

Inexpensive Firearms Practice

As anyone who owns a firearm knows, shooting skills are "perishable" - if you don't practice on a regular basis, your ability to put bullets on a target diminished greatly.  Anyone who golfs once a year at the company tournament can understand this.  Without practice, you can make yourself look pretty silly.

Obviously, when using a handgun, the stakes are much higher.  A bad shot can result in an innocent person being harmed or killed.

Two of the biggest excuses people have for not going to the range on a regular basis are time and money.  It may take a couple of hours out of your day to pack up all of your gear, head to the range, put a decent number of rounds down-range, then pack up and come home.

With the cost of ammunition and the difficulty in finding certain calibers of handgun cartridges, it can become cost-prohibitive to practice on a regular basis.  Plus, each time you do go down to the range, you have to pay the range fees and target costs.

This is where Air Soft pistols can eliminate both of these excuses.  While they won't fully replace real handgun practice, they do offer a fantastic option for what is perhaps the most important aspect of using a pistol:  First shot accuracy.
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I teach an Advanced Pistol class where the overall philosophy is to be able to quickly and accurately hit multiple targets with multiple rounds.  I explain up front that this is not a traditional marksmanship class, per se.

For instance, one of our objectives is not to see how many rounds can be put into a half-inch circle from 10 yards.  It is to learn how to put two or more rounds into an 8 inch target at 10 yards in 2 seconds.  Misses are unacceptable.

To meet that standard, your first shot has to happen VERY quickly.  As soon as your arms are fully extended, the trigger must be pulled.  Immediately.

So how do you do that - essentially shoot your gun without aiming?

By repetition of motion practice.  We find the natural point-of-aim of the shooter and leverage that basic mechanical motion to allow them to "hit paint" with a very high degree of accuracy.

After every class, I drill into my students that they need to go home and practice their first shot drills with an Air Soft pistol.  Basically, start from a high-compact gun position, extend their arms and fire the first shot ONLY.  Again, and again, and again until it becomes second-nature.  They don't need to align the sights in the traditional sense - their body does it for them.
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You may have noticed that I have stressed that this is for the first shot only.  That is very important to heed this suggestion.  Obviously, with a real handgun, after the first shot, you're going to have the muzzle rise from the recoil.  You won't have this with an Air Soft gun.  If a student practices double- or triple-taps (I hate that phrase, but you know what I mean), they will get a false - and potentially deadly - sense of confidence.

The second shot will go off in a direction that IS NOT the center of mass of the bad guy.

IMO, the only way you can accurately train for multiple, rapid shots on target is with the guns you expect to have in your possession, and with live ammunition.  Using the Air Soft guns let's you practice the first part of the shooting equation very inexpensively.

Accept The Challenge

If you own a handgun, practice with it on a regular basis.  If you truly want to become proficient at stopping a threat without endangering others around you, practice is a MUST.

Consider using Air Soft guns by setting up a target range in your backyard or, as I do, in my garage.  You can pick up a spring-loaded Air Soft that mimics virtually any widely available handgun for less than $20.  The CO2 powered models are often made of metal (with some running very close to $100), and more accurately reflect the size and weight of a real handgun.

If you need to justify spending $100 on a "toy", take your average cost of a box of your ammunition, multiply it by the number of boxes you shoot when you go to the range, and divide that into the price of the Air Soft gun.  It pays for itself pretty quickly.

The Air Soft "BBs" are incredibly inexpensive (they're little plastic pellets).  If used indoors in a garage out to perhaps 10 yards, the accuracy is well within the tolerances needed make the training worthwhile.

Another benefit of the Air Soft guns is that you can practice shots while you are moving.  You are not restricted to a stationary shooting point in the range.  As long as you are only taking one shot at a time (take a couple seconds between shots), this can give you some extremely valuable defensive shooting practice.


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Copyright 2009 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

Legume Flour Soups

At home, we nuke foods in the microwave - we can't get our "meals" down our gullets quickly enough. In a grid-down situation or while camping, fuel resources may be limited. You want food to be prepared quickly, with as little valuable fuel consumed as possible.

I recently saw some videos about a group that teaches bushcraft and survival skills - Bushcraft On Fire. I sniffed around their site and YouTube page (60+ videos of some decent stuff).

The videos that interested me were about making soups using natural greens and legume/grain flours. I have this near-obsession with finding and developing foods and recipes that only require the addition of water and heat. What I like about these recipes is that by using flours, the cook time is considerably reduced. After your water comes up to a boil, you only need 3 or 4 minutes to have a meal!

First up, it required some legume and grain flours. I broke out my Family Grain Mill and made flour out of dent corn, yellow split peas and lentils.

After I made the flours, I followed two of the recipes to the letter. First, corn chowder -

Corn Chowder

Approx. 3 1/4 c. hot water

1/3 c. rounded fine corn flour or Masa

3 Tbsp. pea flour

1 Tbsp. chicken or vegetable bouillon

Hot sauce or cayenne pepper is awesome in it too!

Whisk flours and bouillon into your hot water and cook, stirring, for 1 minute over medium high heat. Cover and turn heat to low; cook 2-3 minutes. Serve with broken corn chips. Makes 2 hearty bowls full.

The result was an edible, pretty flavor-less, though fairly thick soup. It passed the "standing saltine" test. Still, definitely NOT a chowder.

I added some black pepper and a shot or two of hot sauce, and it was much better. I think this would be very good with some sort of smoked meat - ham or bacon come to mind. Some parboiled corn kernels would work nicely as well.

It's a keeper recipe with some minor adjustments for the JAW recipe files.
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Next up was the lentil soup.

Just from looking at the recipe, I could tell it was going to be VERY thin. And it was.

Lentil Soup

4 c. hot water

2 tsp. lentil soup seasoning (See below this recipe)

4 Tbsp. green lentil flour

Have your canteen [your cooking pot] over medium heat (knock fire down to hot coals), whisk lentil flour into boiling water and add soup seasoning (below). Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook 2 minutes. Serves 3-4.


Soup seasonings

8-10 Tbsp. salt

2 1/2 Tsp. garlic powder

3 Tbsp. black pepper

7 Tbsp. parsley flakes

5 Tbsp. dried chives

3 Tbsp. onion powder

3 Tbsp. paprika

Combine and store in airtight container (Keep in your kitchen and EDC kit)

As suspected, this was more of a broth than what I think of as a soup. It needed some sort of binder, as the lentils would separate from the liquid after a few minutes. It did not pass the "standing saltine" test -

The flavor was pretty good, though. I made up a batch of her Soup Seasoning, and used it to flavor this stuff.

It needs to be thicker, IMO. I guess if you were sick at home and just wanted some watery nutrition, it would do the trick. If I were out camping or in an emergency situation, I'd want a more substantial soup. As with the corn chowder, smoked meats would go very well with this.

In general, though, it's a keeper. I'm going to play with the recipes a bit, and I'll pass along any insights I come across.

Accept The Challenge

Developing foods and recipes that require little preparation can benefit you in a number of way.  In addition to being able to grab a quick, nutritious meal, you can also prepare them with very little fuel.  This can be crucial in any kind of emergency, or if you are on a camping trip.

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Copyright 2009 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

First Aid

Whatcha gonna do?

A child playing on a swing set is suddenly on the ground, and not moving.

An elderly man walking in the park suddenly drops to the ground in front of you.

While driving down a back road, you come upon an automobile accident and you see the driver - not moving - in the driver's seat.

Tag.  You're it.  You need to render aid.  But do you know what to do?  Do you know how to help the situation and not make it worse?

GENERALLY speaking you want to follow two assessment protocols - AVPU and ABCDE .

The first is to assess the responsiveness of the victim.  AVPU is an acronym for Alert, Verbal, Painful, Unresponsive.

Is the victim awake and aware of their surroundings?  Can they tell you what happened?  Are they in pain (they may appear to be unconscious, but are moaning in pain)?  Are they moving at all?

Up to this point, you haven't touched or physically interacted with the victim.  Most of what follows WILL require some sort of physical interaction.  That interaction may save the person's life, it may kill them or it may make their current injuries worse.

Tread lightly, here.

ABCDE stands for Airway Maintenance, Breathing, Circulation, Disability, and Exposure/Environmental Control.  You want to do each of these assessments/actions in the order they're presented.  The idea being, each of the items is more important than the next item in keeping the person alive and well.  Most of the time.

Airway Maintenance.  You must have a clear airway.  It may be a chunk of meat stuck in a throat.  If that meat is not removed, the person will never be able to draw a breath of air, and will die.  Do you know how to clear an airway?

Breathing.  They now have a clear airway.  Are they actually breathing?  How are your mouth-to-mouth skills?

Circulation.  They're breathing now, do the have a pulse?  Also, do they have any visible bleeding?  Can you perform CPR to get their heart working again?  Can you stop the blood from pouring out of their gaping wound?

Disability (This pertains to mental awareness).  Are they now aware of what's going on around them?  Can they assist you with letting you know what hurts?  Are they combative or disoriented?  How do you deal with that?

Exposure/Environmental.  If you found someone motionless in the snow or in the middle of the desert, would you know what to do?  What if they fell off a cliff at the beach, and the tide is now coming in?  Is anything in the current environment going to further injure or kill them?

This last item is a very touchy one.  The rule of thumb is that you never move a person that has had some sort of traumatic physical incident until their spine had been immobilized.  You don't want to inadvertently paralyze someone by moving them around.

But what if their car has run off the road and is sinking in the water below?  Or that twisted up hiker down on the beach now has the surf lapping at his feet?  Personally, I'm moving them and letting the Good Samaritan laws sort it out if they are injured by my actions.

Accept The Challenge

At the very bare minimum, take a first aid and CPR class.  A slight "bump up" in training would be to take a First Responder class.  This will give you skills above the first aid/CPR level, but not bring you up to the level of an EMT.

Aside from giving you the skills and knowledge to save a life, you will gain additional legal protection in the event something goes awry.

Additional Resources:

Online First Aid guide (PDF file)
Mayo Clinic First Aid guide
American Red Cross
Ranger Medic Handbook (PDF file)


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Copyright 2009 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

Daily Reads

I've added a Daily Reads section to the left sidebar of the folks I visit each day for my preps and firearms related fix.  Stop by and give them a look-see.  Great information and perspectives.

Note to self:  You spend WAY too much time on the Internet!
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Copyright 2009 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com