Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
A Digest of Urban Survival Resources
For Independent Minded People!
ISSN 2161-5543
In This Issue:
1.
Tracking your food waste
2.
Top 10 Tricks for surviving the Zombie
Apocalypse
3.
Why you probably don’t need to add enzymes to
your septic
4.
How much freedom are you willing to give away?
"Isn't it
appropriate that the month of the tax begins with April Fools Day and ends with
cries of "May Day!" ~ Author Unknown
When I was in the Navy our base threw away 5,000 lbs. of edible food
every week; at the time, they wouldn’t donate it to area food banks. According to the EPA, Americans today throw
away 34 million tons of food every year!
1. Grab a notebook or logbook
and begin tracking your food waste – store it in the kitchen.
2. Each time you toss food from
your fridge, pantry or after a meal, record what you threw out.
3. After 30 days review your
notebook for patterns prior to making a new grocery shopping list.
4. Adjust your list accordingly. If you’re throwing away a half loaf of bread
or a frozen item which now has freezer burn, buy a smaller amount or eliminate
that item Consider buying better food
storage containers.
I’m guilty of finding freezer burn on many
items, especially bread and bakery. This
means I don’t wrap them well enough or pay attention to the date I stored
them. Freezers are great money-saver to
use when stocking up on sale items but you need to date everything and rotate
stock.
I also keep a Ziploc bag to store left over
vegetables in the freezer and when it comes to making soup or stew, the
contents are added to my stockpot.
Most Americans want life insurance after they’re dead. I hope that
doesn’t apply to you. The time is now to
firm up your preparations. It just makes
good sense. Be sure to read the piece in today’s Nanny State Updates…
For homes without downspouts, set a barrel at the corner. It will soften the flow of water when it
reains and collect rainwater for future use.
PM’s
Compendium of Useful Resources
Top 10 Survival Tricks for the Zombie Apocalypse
Over the years, we've
shared a ton of tips for keeping yourself safe and healthy during an emergency.
Here are some of our favorite clever survival tricks…
Free, Basic shed or cabin building plan
Why you probably don't need septic system enzymes:
1. The amount of enzyme in each dose of additive is small compared to the bacteria already in the tank or introduced with the first flush of human waste (in the case of a new system). If you think about it, you are constantly introducing bacteria to the system each time you flush the toilet. So, adding a small amount of septic system enzymes isn't going to help much, unless your system is under extreme shock. So, they might provide a small help if your system is under extreme shock. A study as West Virginia University showed a small benefit provided by bacterial additives when the system is under high stress (the tanks were stressed much beyond what would occur in a normal household).
2. Pumping your tank is actually very inexpensive, does not have to be done very often and is one of the best investments you can make.
3. Septic systems normally don't fail because the tank fills up and overflows. According to the US EPA, approximately 95% of septic systems fail because the drain field gets plugged with solids.
Will septic system
enzymes harm my system?
The biological additives are unlikely to be harmful. The chemical additives could definitely harm your system. These products have the potential to sterilize your system temporarily. The resulting passage of raw sewage into the drainfield will hasten its failure. The acid and alkali products can corrode the plumbing and the tank. The organic solvents pass through the system unchanged. They can then infiltrate into the groundwater, creating a chemical plume that endangers nearby wells. Of course, you can always do what Grandpa did, drop a packet of baking yeast into your toilet twice a year. Seemed to work for him!
The biological additives are unlikely to be harmful. The chemical additives could definitely harm your system. These products have the potential to sterilize your system temporarily. The resulting passage of raw sewage into the drainfield will hasten its failure. The acid and alkali products can corrode the plumbing and the tank. The organic solvents pass through the system unchanged. They can then infiltrate into the groundwater, creating a chemical plume that endangers nearby wells. Of course, you can always do what Grandpa did, drop a packet of baking yeast into your toilet twice a year. Seemed to work for him!
Visitors to the United States must
now pay $14 to complete an online form that asks
them a series of really bizarre questions. For example, one of the questions
asks visitors to the U.S. if they ever "collaborated with the Nazis".
The Nanny
State Updates…
A few months ago, the
second largest economy on earth (China) and the third largest economy on earth
(Japan) struck a deal which will promote the use of their own currencies
(rather than the U.S. dollar) when trading with each other. This was an
incredibly important agreement that was virtually totally ignored by the U.S.
media. The following is from a BBC report about that agreement....
China and Japan have unveiled plans to promote direct
exchange of their currencies in a bid to cut costs for companies and boost
bilateral trade.
The deal will allow firms to convert the Chinese and
Japanese currencies directly into each other.
Currently businesses in both countries need to buy US
dollars before converting them into the desired currency, adding extra costs.
Today, more than 60 percent of all foreign currency reserves in the world are in
U.S. dollars. But there are big changes on the horizon. The mainstream media in
the United States has been strangely silent about this, but some of the biggest
economies on earth have been making agreements with each other to move away
from using the U.S. dollar in international trade. There are also some oil
producing nations which have begun selling oil in currencies other than the
U.S. dollar, which is a major threat to the petrodollar system which has been in place for nearly four decades. And
big international institutions such as the UN and the IMF have even been
issuing official reports about the need to move away from the U.S. dollar and
toward a new global reserve currency.
A lot of this is being
fueled by China. China has the second largest economy on the face of the earth,
and the size of the Chinese economy is projected to pass the size of the U.S.
economy by 2016. In fact, one economist is even projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
Law
Enforcement Is Watching You
Do you remember the
father that posted that "Facebook
Parenting for the troubled teen" video that went
wildly viral all over the Internet earlier this year?
That video was watched
more than 31 million times, but it also resulted in both the police and Child Protective Services
officials visiting his home.
Everyone should have a little sewing knowledge. Whether it's just so you can sew
a button back on or fix
size issues in an otherwise perfect shirt, knowing how to thread a needle can
come in handy pretty often.
A number will spend
the surplus on something you might not expect — filing for bankruptcy.
The Parting Thought –
When and where
do American citizens draw the line?
The U.S. government
has shown clearly through word and action that its concerns are not with the average
American, and that its loyalties rest with decidedly smaller and more elite
interest groups.
When any government
decides it is no longer concerned with the freedom and prosperity of a nation,
no matter how righteous that government claims to be, we MUST, as citizens, ask
ourselves whether that government is still useful.
The progression of the
past decade has seen a hailstorm of legislation and executive orders that
impede personal liberties and erode Constitutional protections in place for
centuries. So many trails towards totalitarianism have been blazed recently
that it is becoming difficult to track them all, and yet, I do not think many
in our country have asked themselves what this means to their future. What kind
of rights are you ready to hand over to government? How many aspects of your
life should the establishment be able to dictate?
The Power To
Invade Your Privacy
The U.S. government
has long held at least a private belief that it should be allowed access to
every aspect of a citizen's personal life. In the past, the excuse of criminal
suspicion was a standard rationalization, but this expanded beyond the
targeting of individuals to broader surveillance of the populace as a whole
with the advent of the drug war. Financial records especially became subject to
government perusal without warrant and generally without any criminal charges
filed.
This trampling of the
4th Amendment over a fabrication of a "war" on substances that by all
rights should be legal anyway was just a taste of what was to come. With the
explosion of the war on terror (another fabricated conflict), the application
of mass surveillance became standardized. The Patriot Acts and the FISA bill,
both upheld by so called "Republican" and "Democratic"
presidents, have opened the door for centralized electronic spying in the name
of "national security". Never before has the world seen such an
unbridled assault on the private lives of common citizens. The big brother
grids of the Soviet era are child's play compared to the data mining of the
21st century, and this tyranny is made possible by the marriage of government
and corporate interests, working in tandem to ensure an ever tightening net.
The Power To
Financially Destroy
Of course, much of the
economic distress that we suffer today was generated by the corrupt activities
of the Federal Reserve (a privately controlled banking cartel) and global
financing conglomerates like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, however, the
government's complicity in these activities cannot be denied. It was the
Congressional repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that gave international banks
the ability to derivitize massive numbers of mortgages and create the ongoing
implosion of the housing bubble. It was the SEC that turned the other cheek for
years while credit fraud flooded markets and ratings agencies gave AAA status
to toxic and basically worthless assets. It is the U.S. government to this day
that defends the Federal Reserve's nonstop quantitative easing, the destruction
of the dollar, and increased deficit spending driving our nation even deeper
into debt. The passage of the bailouts despite an 80% opposition from the
public sent a stark message; the government does not care what you think about
the economy, and will do what it pleases, even if it means destroying your
means of fiscal survival.
The Power To
Militarize
Federal fusion centers
and funding for local law enforcement has irreparably damaged state and county
objectivity and opened the door to a steady diet of anti-liberty propaganda for
police officials across the nation. Some eat it up, some don't. However, the
issue here is one of intention. Why does the federal government feel the need
to arm divisions of local law enforcement with automatic weapons, predator
drones, and even tanks? Why is Congress going out of its way to free up FAA
regulations to allow police organizations unprecedented access to predator
drones, up to 30,000 by 2020, for use in civilian airspace?
And why has Obama
quickly and quietly signed the Executive Order for National Defense Resources
Preparedness? Though many will claim the order only rehashes such continuity of
government policies seen in older programs like Rex 84, I find it a bit disconcerting
that our government suddenly feels the need to rehash Rex 84 powers at all!
The order is a claim
to eminent domain, not just over land, but over every resource imaginable in
the face of a "national emergency". Using military force, all goods,
services, and property, can be confiscated in the name of support for military
and governmental logistics. In an article written in February titled "The
DHS Defends Globalism, Not America", I warned that Janet Napolitano's
language of supply chain protection and resource allocation could only be
supported by the pilfering of goods from one place to feed another.
Now we see that this
was indeed the intention all along. Given that the John Warner Defense
Authorization Act allows the president to declare a national emergency and
martial law for almost any reason at any time without oversight from Congress
for at least 6 months, the possibility of vast programs of resource
confiscation becomes much more likely.
Excerpted from Whiskey & Gunpowder
“Until the next
revolution”, the Poor Man
Remember, remember the 4th of November…
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don’t need another election” Protest T-Shirt Now
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