Money plays such an important role in our lives that most of us could not imagine surviving without it. Yet that is exactly what you need to do if you want to prepare for an economic condition called deflation.

Deflation is the term economists use to describe a “general decline in prices, often caused by a reduction in the supply of money or credit.” A good way to think of deflation is as the opposite of inflation. Inflation occurs when there is too much money in circulation, which destroys its value and raises prices. When deflation occurs, there is too little money available, which often causes prices to collapse and the economy to shut down.

In severe cases of deflation there can be no money available at all not — even at the banks. This nightmare actually occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when there were places in the United States where there was no cash available at all. More recently, it has happened in Greece, where ATMs ran out of cash and where banks placed limits on the amount of money that could be withdrawn.

People had no money to pay bills or buy food for their families. Employers had no money to pay employees, customers had no money to buy goods, and many people were reduced to bartering to survive. During the Great Depression, farmers would pay professionals such as mechanics and doctors with food because they had no money and no credit.

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Here’s just a small glimpse of what you’ll find in The Lost SuperFoods:

The US Army’s Forgotten Food Miracle And 126 Superfoods That You Can Store Without Refrigeration for Years

Watch the video below!

The situation got so bad that in some areas of the country, local governments, chambers of commerce and businesses issued their own currencies — the so-called depression scrip. The scrip often took the form of pieces of paper that people used as money because there was no government currency available. The scrip was used to pay workers or buy goods.

At one point during the Great Depression, the money shortage got so severe that the US government considered issuing a national scrip as an alternative to the dollar. That plan was eventually dropped and the government solved the crisis by simply printing more dollars.

Many people have known survivors of the Great Depression who liked to keep large amounts of cash on hand. Others would hoard food and other items. Those people developed that habit because they remembered what life without money was like. The fear of the deflation that occurred in the 1930s haunted them all of their lives.

The frightening reality is that the threat of deflation is still real. Some knowledgeable individuals, such as wealth preservation experts Will and Bill Bonner, believe that a sudden deflation leading to a national or international money shortage is still possible today.

The Bonners, who have studied some of the world’s knowledgeable investors such as George Soros, believe that the next financial crisis will begin with a “violent monetary shock” similar to the one that occurred during the Great Depression. They predict that money could suddenly disappear overnight, causing the economy to come to a grinding halt.

What Happens When Money Vanishes

Historical accounts of the Great Depression show us some of the possible effects of such a violent monetary shock. The damage caused by such a violent deflation can include:

The sudden collapse of prices. The Great Depression began with the collapse of stock market prices in 1929. That was preceded by the collapse of agricultural prices in the United States during the 1920s. During that crisis, land prices in rural areas collapsed, causing large numbers of rural banks to fail. When the banks failed, the government liquidated them and their assets, which included lots of foreclosed farmland, an action that further drove prices and made the crisis worse.

Everything you have — your investments, your home and your possessions — could suddenly lose all of its value. We saw this happen during the mortgage bubble of 2007-2008, when many people found themselves “underwater.” That occurs when the amount a home is mortgaged for exceeds the property’s value.

The collapse in prices during the Great Depression particularly hurt farmers who relied on commodity prices. Newsreels from the early 1930s show farmers dumping grain on the ground and pouring out milk because they could not sell them.

Bank runs and the collapse of financial institutions. A bank run or banking panic occurs when all of a bank’s depositors try to take their money out at once. Bank runs often trigger the collapse of financial institutions, which prompts even more bank runs. Between 1930 and 1933 nearly 10,000 banks failed or were suspended. The panic got so bad that President Franklin D. Roosevelt actually suspended all bank transactions in the US between March 6 and March 10, 1933 to prevent further runs in his so-called “bank holiday.”

During the banking crisis of the 1930s, many Americans lost their life savings simply because they were not able to get to the bank fast enough and withdraw their money. Even some wealthy individuals ended up on the streets and in bread lines because they could not get money from the bank.

Massive unemployment. It is a simple and obvious fact that when there is no money, there are no jobs. At the height of the Great Depression in 1933, 24.75 percent of the nation’s labor force, or one in four workers, were unemployed. Around 12.83 million people were out of work at a time when America’s total population was only around 93 million people. That unemployment persisted for years, with 8.1 million Americans still out of work in 1940 in the 11^th year of the Great Depression. The unemployment created by the Depression only ended when World War II created “jobs” in the form of the draft and war production.

Hunger and Starvation. Not surprisingly, hunger and in some cases death from starvation can become a problem after deflation. Historians disagree on the number of people who died during the Great Depression.

Massive expansion of government and its power. In his first 100 days in office in 1933, Roosevelt signed 15 major pieces of legislation, several of which established massive new bureaucracies. During the 1920s there were 553,000 civilian employees of the federal government, but by 1940 the federal government had more than 1 million civilian employees. For the first time in American history, the federal government even tried to set prices for products under the National Recovery Act. The government also told farmers what to grow under the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Those laws were so blatantly unconstitutional that the US Supreme Court struck them down in 1935 and 1936.

Increased taxation. When money disappears government gets desperate and imposes more and taxes in an attempt to squeeze more money out of the economy. During the Depression, the maximum income tax rate was raised from 20 percent to 55 percent, gift taxes were increased from .75 percent to 33.5 percent, and new taxes were levied on automobiles, gasoline, telegrams, telephone calls and even checks. By 1934, the United States had the highest tax rates in the world. In 1935 taxes were raised again. Historian Murray Rothbard estimates that the effective tax rate in the United States increased from 16 percent to 29 percent during the Depression.

Why it Could Be Worse Today

If such an event were to occur in today’s world, it could be far worse than the Great Depression.

People were far more self-sufficient in the 1930s, as large numbers of families lived on farms and grew their own food. Even many Americans who lived in town maintained gardens and chicken coops. In those days people also hunted for meat, canned and preserved their own food and baked their own bread. People also sewed their own clothes and fixed their own cars, which gave them a high level of self-sufficiency.

Today, most Americans rely solely on supermarkets for food, and many families no longer even cook. Few people bother to sew, and most of us do not even change the oil in our cars. If our money were to disappear, we would be as helpless as children.

It’s time that we learn the lessons of the Americans who survived the Great Depression. That lesson was to be as self-sufficient as possible so you can survive, no matter what.

On December 6th President Trump’s words shook the world.

For the first time in over 2000 years, Jerusalem was recognized as the capital of Israel.

Whether he knows it or not, President Trump fulfilled his part in a frightening biblical prophecy exactly as the scriptures predicted.

Only the top church leaders and Bible scholars know the real meaning behind this great and terrible moment, yet no one is saying a thing about it…

So pay chose attention because this video will change your life forever for the good!

It sounds like something out of a Cold War era movie. Boxes of medical supplies stacked high in government warehouses to help citizens in the event of a public health emergency.

However, this huge stockpile is very real. It is called the Strategic National Stockpile, and “Once Federal and local authorities agree that the SNS is needed, medicines will be delivered to any state in the U.S. in time for them to be effective. Each state has plans to receive and distribute SNS medicine and medical supplies to local communities as quickly as possible.”

For security reasons, the location and the number of warehouses that comprise the SNS are classified information – as is much of what is in them. “If everybody knows exactly what we have, then you know exactly what you can do to us that we can’t fix,” Greg Burel, director of the program told National Public Radio in a recent interview. “And we just don’t want that to happen.”

The SNS started in 1999 with an approximate $50 million budget. Since then, it has built an inventory in multiple warehouses that is valued at just over $7 billion. “If you envision, say, a Super Walmart and stick two of those side by side and take out all the drop ceiling, that’s about the same kind of space that we would occupy in one of these storage locations,” Burel said.

The SNS extensive inventory includes massive amounts of small pox vaccines, antivirals in case of deadly flu pandemic, medicines to treat radiation burns and sickness, chemical agent antidotes, wound care supplies, antibiotics and IV fluids.

NPR science writer Nell Greenfieldboyce recently visited an SNS. She was told she was the first reporter ever to visit the secret warehouses, and she had to sign a confidentiality agreement not to describe the location or the exterior of the facility.

A locked section of the warehouse stocks painkillers than can be addictive. A giant freezer is filled with medicines that need to be kept frozen. Greenfieldboyce described a humming sound that comes from the rows of ventilators that are charged once a month and sent out for maintenance once a year.

With an annual budget of more than half a billion dollars, the SNS is charged with deciding what to purchase for the stockpile. In order to do so, officials must determine which threats are realistic and which are not.

“That’s where we have a huge, complex bureaucracy trying to sort through that,” Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told Greenfieldboyce.

The government recently hired a firm called Gryphon Scientific to analyze how well the stockpile could respond to a range of health disaster scenarios.

Although he said he could not be specific on results of the study, Gryphon Scientific’s Rocco Casagrande told the NPR reporter, “One thing we can say is that across the variety of threats that we examined, the Strategic National Stockpile has the adequate amount of materials in it and by and large the right type of thing.”

However, he pointed out that the studies were based upon a single type of attack at a time or a single type of weapon.

The brief shelf life of some of the newer medicines is a problem for the SNS. “These are often very powerful, very exciting and useful new medicines, but they are also very expensive and they expire after a couple years,” explained Dr. Tara O’Toole, a former Homeland Security official who is now at In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit that helps bring technological innovation to the U. S. intelligence community.

Another problem is the time it would take to get the medicines from the warehouses to the people who need them in the event of real emergency. “It is not going to be easy or simple to put medicines in the hand of everybody who wants it,” O’Toole told NPR.

The warehouse Greenfieldboyce visited contains 130 shipping containers, but who will be on the receiving end of these shipping containers during an actual emergency?

“While they do have plans for emergencies, and lists of volunteers, they’re volunteers,” said Paul Petersen, director of emergency preparedness for Tennessee. “And they’re not guaranteed to show up in the time of need.”

Local public health officials have had severe budget cuts and are underfunded, Petersen told NPR. “Over and over, I heard worries about this part of the stockpile system.”

O’Toole said, “We have drastically decreased the level of state public health resources in the last decade. We’ve lost 50,000 state and local health officials. That’s a huge hit.” She commented that emergency drills would be helpful, adding, “The notion that this is all going to be top down, that the feds are in charge and the feds will deliver, is wrong.”

Meanwhile, the secret warehouses continue to stockpile supplies. “We have the capability, if something bad happens, that we can intervene in a positive way, but then we don’t ever want to have to do that. So it’s kind of a strange place,” Burel told NPR.

“But we would be foolish not to prepare for those events that we could predict might happen.”

Also watch: www.whatfinger.com

When planning for a SHTF Survival situation, there is really only one thing that you can be absolutely sure of: Survival is going to be a much bigger and tougher challenge than you ever thought possible. While there are some things you can do to prepare yourself for the chaos ahead, the reality of the situation is that when things go bad, there are going to be things happening that none of us prepared for or could have ever imagined.

What is SHTF?

SHTF has multiple survival meanings, but the acronym itself means Shit Hits The Fan. The meaning is pretty straight forward, but basically, it’s just a prepper/survivalist’s way of saying that during a long term survival crisis or collapse of society things are going to get bad, real bad! How bad none of us really know, and what dangers we will face is only speculation at this point, but one thing we do know for sure is that most people have no real clue to the dangers they will face during a collapse scenario.

Prepping for SHTF Scenarios

It’s not hard to imagine things going bad during a long-term disaster or collapse situation; all you have to do is look at how quickly things turn south during normal yearly disasters to get a sense of how bad things could get. Even during somewhat predictable events like summer storms, flooding and hurricanes we see a large section of the population turn desperate. From people who failed to prepare totally losing their shit in the grocery store when they find the shelve empty to the assholes who take advantage of every disaster to hit the streets looting and attacking innocent civilians, you can find plenty of examples that should at least get you thinking of what you need to be prepared to face.

10 Realistic SHTF survival situations that most people Don’t Prepare or Plan for!

While many of the threats you will face can be easily predicted by looking at recent events, we wanted to look at some very likely SHTF scenarios that very few think about, and almost nobody prepares for. These are threats they may present themselves during short-term disasters, but in all likelihood, these threats will be the ones that start to pop up during those extreme long-term situations where people lose hope and become desperate.

SHTF Law Enforcement Issues

1. No Law Enforcement

During an extreme SHTF scenario, it is very likely that law enforcement and emergency responders will be pretty hard to find; in fact, I would go even further and say that they will become nonexistent. Even during small-scale disasters, law enforcement officers often leave to take care of their own families first. When things go bad (empty grocery stores, no utilities, mass riots, violence, etc.) you are more than likely going to have to defend and take care of yourself.

2. Fake Law Enforcement

In a SHTF Scenario, you need to be on the lookout for everything including people impersonating law enforcement and military personnel. During a catastrophic event, you will most likely see criminals preying on the innocent by pretending to be either police, firefighters, emergency personnel, or military officers. In fact, almost every time a natural disaster hits we see criminals posing as some type of first responder in order to gain easy access to areas where they can then take advantage of the situation and loot homes and businesses.

You have to be able to quickly determine who are the real law enforcement officers or be prepared to stay away from people at all costs.

3. Law Enforcement and the Military Will Try to Take Your Guns.

Think it can’t happen? It already has!

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass ordered all local law enforcement, including the U.S. Marshalls office and the National Guard, to seize all civilian firearms.

Without warrants, armed National Guard troops and New Orleans law enforcement officials forcibly confiscated over 1,000 legal firearms from law-abiding citizens. The New Orleans gun confiscation should serve as a warning to how the government and law enforcement officials will react during a large-scale national disaster.  

It’s very high on the probability list that they will come for your guns!

SHTF Personal Safety Issues

4. Gangs & Raiders

When things go bad, there will likely be more people who mean to do you harm than there will be people who are prepared. This is something that you must accept and learn to deal with. The fact is, most people have no idea what it really takes to survive, and once their safety net is removed, they will become increasingly desperate and unpredictable. Even your once jolly neighbor will become a threat when he is faced with surviving without knowledge or supplies.

Let’s face it, even during the good times there’s a certain segment of our population that’s just downright insane. From the idiots who go nuts and riot after their team loses a game to the violent criminals and gangs who are already terrorizing big cities throughout America, there’s little doubt that a total collapse will make urban living almost impossible.

5. You need to be able to Defend Yourself.

During an extreme emergency situation, the lunatics of the world are going to be roaming the streets looking for easy victims to target.  If you’re serious about survival, you need to train yourself in multiple self-defense styles and techniques. This means arming yourself with not only weapons but also with the knowledge of how to defend yourself without them.

These are things you should be doing now to ensure you can protect yourself during a SHTF situation:

• It Starts with Developing your Situational Awareness: This is probably the single most important self-defense skill you can have. It will allow you to defuse most dangerous situations before they can become a threat to your safety.
• How to Protect Yourself from Violent Mobs of Criminals: The really scary thing about situations like this is when people start to mob up and form groups. You need to be prepared to take on multiple attackers, and you need to know how to quickly get out of hotspots and trouble zones.
• Surviving Active Shooter Situations: Sadly this is a SHTF situation that we have to deal with now, in our everyday lives. Imagine how bad things will get during an actual crisis!

WATCH BELOW!

I Lived In A Post-SHTF World For 3 Years, And This Is What I Learned

SHTF Sanitation Issues

6. Garbage will become a Killer.

This is another survival topic that’s not often thought about or discussed, but it’s one that will probably become one of the biggest problems you will face during any long-term disaster situation. If the gangs and criminals don’t get you, the real danger might actually come from something that you already have in your home: GARBAGE!  

You need to have a serious plan on how to deal with it and how to make sure your general sanitation doesn’t become a threat. Check out our article on how to deal with Garbage during a SHTF disaster.

7. You have to Stock up on Sanitation Items

When planning to survive a long-term disaster or collapse, one thing that’s often overlooked is the danger associated with a lack of adequate sanitation. It’s certainly not a pleasant thing to think about, but this one issue has the potential to kill more people than any other survival issue we can talk about.

Even today, because of liberal policies that are destroying big cities throughout our country, we are starting to see Medieval diseases reemerge because of unsanitary living conditions in homeless and immigrant populations in these urban hell holes. In fact, in California multiple disease outbreaks are running through these populations including Typhus.

Mental & Physical Health Issues

8. Maintaining a Positive Mental Attitude during a Survival Situation

The ability to maintain a positive mental attitude during a survival situation is something that needs to be taken seriously. It’s also something that you need to start working on now, before disaster strikes.

Making it through a survival scenario often comes down to how well you can control your emotions. Keeping a positive frame of mind in the face of an unthinkable threat will help you process what’s happening and will help you respond to the situation without giving into fear.

9. You must be prepared to face a number of physical and mental challenges.

From dealing with a lack of sleep and inadequate hydration to coping with hunger pains and other stressors, survival can take a huge toll on your body. One of the best things you can do to ensure your survival, in just about any situation, is to make sure your body and your mind are trained to survive. This means motivating yourself to get off your butt and get in shape before it’s too late.

SHTF Communication Issues

10. You will be cut off from the outside World.

In a survival situation, knowledge is going to be a critical factor in determining the ultimate outcome of your situation. The ability to be able to predict what will happen during a survival situation is an important part of being prepared and often comes down to your ability to send and receive information.

When the power lines go down, and the radio stations stop transmitting, there’s one line of communication that will still be alive and well.  

Having a good Multiband Ham Radio will allow you to send and receive critical emergency information during a disaster. It’s also a great way to find alternative news sources from around the world.

Also watch: www.whatfinger.com

With a budget of almost 14 Billion dollars in 2013, you would expect that FEMA would have the resources at its disposal to really be able to assist the public prior to any disaster. If you haven’t already; I recommend going out to the FEMA website to see what their recommendations are for getting prepared. FEMA is the government’s office that addresses most of the specific topics of the prepper movement so I was surprised at the information I found on their site. Actually, I wasn’t completely surprised because I did write about National Preparedness Month and how I believed that as an agency their communications left me completely underwhelmed.

Regardless, I went out again today with fresh eyes to see what I could learn from FEMA. I say that because I truly believe that our government should have the smartest people in our country in positions like this, right? I mean if you are an agency that deals with disaster you need to have the top disaster experts in the world giving out advice, right?

FEMA breaks the topics on their website down into a few categories to start with:

• Be Informed – This is where FEMA says you can “Learn what protective measures to take before, during and after an emergency”.
• Make a Plan – “Prepare Plan and stay Informed for Emergencies”
• Build A Kit – “Build a kit for disasters to be prepared.”

So at first glance this seems like a good start. I went under “Be Informed” to learn what protective measures I could take and decided to start with pandemic. The first thing to notice is that they mention influenza pandemic and I didn’t see anything about Ebola, but let’s just assume that anything bad enough to spawn a Pandemic would be covered by FEMA. They mention having a two week supply of food and water, plenty of prescription drugs, copies of your health records and to talk with family members about how they should be cared for if they get sick. Lastly they ask you to volunteer and get involved.

During an actual Pandemic (this is the page that FEMA has for Pandemic information) they recommend avoiding close contact with people who are sick (Really??) staying home from work if possible and the usual suspects of covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze and washing your hands.

A pandemic by definition is when a disease is prevalent throughout an entire country, continent or the whole world. I am going to add my own addendum that there must be a relatively high loss of life. With that definition, the only other pandemic any living person has seen (I don’t count AIDs or SARS) was the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 that killed an estimated 30 to 50 million people in two years. In the United States alone over 675,000 people died in two years!! When FEMA is supposed to be informing you about what to do for a Pandemic that is the best they can do?!!!

Lists of phone numbers does not prepare you for a disaster

Maybe I am over reacting and this is sound advice? Perhaps, but look at Ebola where they say you are contagious for up to 21 days. If you are supposed to stay indoors for three weeks, you would be mighty hungry that last week if you only stored two weeks of food wouldn’t you? The World Health Organization states that people with Ebola can still transmit the disease though semen for up to 7 weeks after they have recovered. Is it possible that a two week plan might leave you seriously under prepared for the next pandemic?

Obviously I take issue with the plans FEMA seems to have for sheltering in place should that be necessary during a pandemic so I went over to their Make A Plan page and then down to the Plan to Protect yourself and your family link. The page seems worthless to me and the most prominent item on the page is a link to download their Family Communication Plan which is really just a sheet for you to write down phone numbers, a meeting place and medical insurance information. I don’t see how this is a realistic plan. Phone numbers are helpful I guess and having your dentist’s phone number would be a good thing if you are having a tooth emergency but I expected more again from FEMA.

A family survival plan is more than just simply writing down phone numbers and being truly prepared requires more than two weeks of food; especially during a pandemic. FEMA it seems has always recommended the most basic information and supplies that anyone probably already has on hand. Is this preparing or are they trying to cater to our lazy side? Is this the lazy person’s way to prepare? Just write down some phone numbers that won’t help you at all and keep the regular amount of food you probably already have on hand and no worries! But while you’re at it, FEMA does recommend some social messaging shout outs you can use.

FEMA doesn’t have a plan for you

You can go lots of places on FEMA’s website and there is some good advice, but on balance I get the sense that either FEMA is trying to lower everyone’s expectations for any real disaster to the point of leaving millions under prepared or they are simply out of touch with reality. I know people who have been without power for longer than two weeks in the winter and this wasn’t considered a disaster by any stretch. When we imagine disaster, it will probably take FEMA two weeks just to get out and do anything if you are foolish enough to believe that you only have to hold out until they get there. Once FEMA does arrive, they are no magic savior. Remember Hurricane Sandy when the FEMA office closed? They actually had the mental sharpness to hang up signs informing the public, who presumably was going to the offices for assistance, that they were closed “due to the weather”. You can’t rely on anyone else in a disaster so it’s important that you take the responsibility for your life and the lives of those you care about into your own hands.

So what are my solutions since I seem to know everything? First thing is that will admit that I don’t know everything but I don’t believe there are any one size fits all plans for preppers. You can’t just say store 2 weeks of food and think that will do for just about any disaster. Everyone has to have their own plan that has been carefully structured based upon the needs, resources and skills of your family/group with a strategic consideration of the potential threats you face. Here’s my take on FEMA’s 3 points.

• Be Informed – Make sure you know what is going on in your home, city, region, state and country. Staying informed doesn’t have anything to do with sports scores, reality TV or what the latest star is doing that has gotten her in trouble. Being informed is knowing what is going on around you (situational awareness) and what is going on that could affect you. Learn as much as you can right now about different ideas and perspectives. I like to think we cover a lot of bases on the Prepper Journal, but there are dozens of other sites out there that offer a ton of great information too. Check out our prepper resources section for a second opinion on practically anything related to prepping or survival.
• Make a Plan – Once you have considered who you are prepping for, it then makes sense to ask what are you prepping for. Once you have the answers to those two questions you can start working on a plan that will work for you personally, that addresses the needs of your family with regard to the threats you have identified. Your plan won’t look like mine, but there might be similarities. What works for you might not work for a single mother in the city.
• Build A Kit – I don’t think the normal supplies I would consider for someone to be adequately prepared would fit into anything I would call a “kit”. A kit sounds like a box that sits in the closet. If you want to be prepared you will need to begin stocking up on supplies and that means different things to different people. There are lots of bases to cover but the most important begin with food, water, shelter and security.

Make your plan to fit your family, to take into consideration where you live and what you are dealing with. You will make better choices than any bureaucracy and your family will be better off with you than at any FEMA shelter regardless of the disaster. FEMA doesn’t have a plan for you. They have a plan to maintain order for the masses and hopefully prevent chaos. You are the only one that is going to keep your family’s needs in the front of your focus. Take steps now to ensure you aren’t living with FEMA’s idea of what is important.

What’s your plan?

Also watch: www.whatfinger.com

House Republicans on Sunday released new emails suggesting Dr. Anthony Fauci “prompted” or commissioned the drafting of the “Proximal Origin” paper meant to “disprove” the COVID-19 lab leak theory.

In a published memo, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Majority Staff told other members Fauci prompted co-author Dr. Kristian Andersen, professor of Scripps Research, to write “Proximal Origin” to disprove any lab leak theory, the authors of the paper “skewed available evidence to achieve that goal” and Dr. Jeremy Farrar—a British medical researcher who has served as director of the Wellcome Trust since 2013 and is the incoming chief scientist at the World Health Organization—went unaccredited despite significant involvement.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, and at least eleven other scientists on Feb. 1, 2020, convened a conference call to discuss COVID-19.

“It was on this call that Drs. Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China and may have been intentionally genetically manipulated,” the memo states.

Three days later, four conference call participants authored a paper entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” (Proximal Origin) and sent a draft to Drs. Fauci and Collins for editing and approval prior to final publication in Nature Medicine.

On April 16, 2020, more than two months after the original conference call, Collins emailed Fauci expressing disappointment that the Proximal Origin paper did not crush the lab leak hypothesis and asked if the National Institutes of Health could do more to “put down” the lab leak hypothesis.

“The next day—after Collins asked for more public pressure—Fauci, during a White House press conference, cited the paper as evidence the lab leak theory was implausible while pretending it had nothing to do with him and he did not know the authors.

Yet, the committee cited several emails GOP leadership say suggests that Fauci was involved in commissioning the Proximal Origin paper, which aimed to disprove any lab leak.

On Aug. 18, 2021, Scripps responded to former Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member James Comer and former Committee on the Judiciary Ranking Member Jim Jordan’s July 29, 2021, letter to Andersen, asserting that Andersen “objectively” investigated the origins and that Fauci did not attempt to influence his work. Yet, “both statements do not appear to be supported by the available evidence,” the memo states.

On Feb. 8, 2020, Anderson said in an email:

“Our main work over the last couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory.”

“This e-mail directly contradicts Scripps’ earlier statement that Dr. Andersen “objectively” weighed all the evidence regarding the origins of COVID-19,” the memo states. “Instead, it appears that Dr. Andersen was given direction and sought to formulate a paper, regardless of available evidence, that would disprove a lab leak.”

An August 18 letter by Scripps sent on behalf of Dr. Andersen stated:

“As for the conference call of February 1, Dr. Fauci did not, in Dr. Andersen’s view, attempt to influence Dr. Andersen or any other member of the ad hoc working group of international subject matter experts with respect to any aspect of the discussion.”

Yet, on Feb. 12, 2020, Dr. Andersen wrote to Nature requesting the publication of Proximal Origin.

In this e-mail, Dr. Andersen wrote:

“There has been a lot of speculation, fear mongering, and conspiracies put forward in this space and we thought that bringing some clarity to this discussion might be of interest to Nature [sic]. Prompted by Jeremy Farrah [sic], Tony Fauci, and Francis Collins, Eddie Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, Bob Garry, Ian Lipkin, and myself have been working through much of the (primarily) genetic data to provide agnostic and scientifically informed hypothesis around the origins of the virus.”

This e-mail directly contradicts Scripps’ earlier statement that Dr. Fauci did not influence Dr. Andersen.

In a July 14, 2021, interview with The New York Times, Andersen was asked how his view changed from “possible lab leak to definitely zoonotic.” Anderson claimed that he and other researchers “looked at data from coronaviruses found in other species, such as bats and pangolins, which demonstrated that the features that first appeared unique to SARS-CoV-2 were in fact found in other, related viruses.” 

According to newly obtained evidence, while Proximal Origin was going through peer review with Nature Medicine more than a year earlier, Andersen actually did not find the pangolin data compelling despite publically stating otherwise.

“Privately, Dr. Andersen did not believe the pangolin data disproved a lab leak theory despite saying so publicly. It is still unclear what intervening event changed the minds of the authors of Proximal Origin in such a short period of time. Based on this new evidence, the pangolin data was not the compelling factor; to this day, the only known intervening event was the February 1 conference call with Dr. Fauci.”

As for Dr. Farrar—Farrar is a critical player in the WHO’s new Pandemic Treaty. Although Farrar is not credited with any involvement in the drafting and publication of Proximal Origin, emails show he led the drafting process and made “direct edits to the substance of the publication.” Farrar also pressured Nature to publish the paper.

Also watch: www.whatfinger.com

The countdown to the end of the world in Malachi 4 presents a summary description of what will be the lot of the wicked in the final destruction. What is being described seems to coincide with the testimonies of prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and John. What is significant about this prediction in the book of Malachi is the commentary on the final efforts that God will make to salvage sinners prior to “the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Mal. 4:5), and the eternal destiny of the redeemed.

The prediction of a fiery destruction
According to the first verse of Malachi 4, the Lord will send fire upon the earth which will burn up the wicked and bring them to ashes. This particular verse is very interesting because it seems to contradict the popular notion of an ever-burning hell in which transgressors are supposed to suffer throughout eternity.

It reminds me of a conversation a long time ago in which a brother was advancing the view that Satan cannot die because he is spirit. He was making this assertion to justify the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the eternal-hell theory. Upon hearing this remark, I kindly refer him to Ezekiel 28:18 where it is clearly stated that like the wicked, Satan himself will be burned to ashes for his transgressions.

It seems like there is a consensus among Bible writers around the idea that the unrepentant will be burned to cinders without any prolonged suffering. This position seems to be more consistent with the mercy of God, which endures forever, and the fact that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked; not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (Ezek. 33:11; 2Pet. 3:9).

The Elijah message in the ministry of John the Baptist
In contrast to this message of warning, the Lord gives an assurance that He will make every effort to restore true godliness in the world. He promised to send Elijah to turn the hearts of the people from transgression. Does this mean that the prophet Elijah will return from heaven to which he was translated to undertake this ministry?

According to Christ, Elijah has already come in the form of John the Baptist who did preach a powerful message of repentance preparing the way for the coming Messiah (Matt. 3:3; 17:11-13).

While we should accept the ministry of John the Baptist as a secondary fulfillment of the coming Elijah, we should expect a wider fulfillment of this prediction just before the end of the world. This prophecy will be fulfilled in the final proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom, which is synonymous to the everlasting gospel spoken of in Revelation 14.

The power of Elijah through the ministry of the two witnesses
In his end of the world countdown in Revelation 11 we can see a clear hint of an Elijah ministry in the form of the two witnesses. These two prophets are to prophesy for 1260 days (42 months). It seems as if they have a special mission that is confined to a certain locality and set apart from the work of the rest of the people of God.

There are clear similarities between the ministry of Elijah and that of the two witnesses. Like Elijah they will have power to shut heaven during the period of their ministry – did not the Bible say that Elijah shut heaven and created a drought for a 42-month period? See 1Kings 17:1; Jam.5:17. Typical of the miraculous work of this spirit-filled prophet, the two witnesses will also have power to speak and cause fire to come down and destroy their enemies (2Kings 1:10-12).

Incidentally, the ministry of these two end-time prophets will also exhibit characteristics that are similar to the work of Moses! They will also be able to turn the waters into blood and smite the earth with plagues as much as they will. But this observation is also in keeping with Malachi’s countdown of events leading up to the end of the world. In the same chapter where the fiery destruction of the earth is foretold, and where the end-time return of Elijah is announced, there is a clear warning to keep the Law of Moses!

It is very interesting that in light of an impending event that is to signify the end of the world, the prophet Malachi admonishes us to obey a law that, by conventional opinion, is supposed to be obsolete by then. In another article, we will look at the significance of this admonition in the context of the last days.

The final message in the spirit and power of Elijah
When we examine the countdown of end-of-the-world events from the writings of different prophets, you will see a consistent testimony about the preaching of the final message to the world. It is foretold in the scriptures that in the last days our God will have a people upon the earth who, in the manner of that spirit-filled prophet standing before king Ahab, will be bold and fearless in their utterances, and whose ministry will go forth in the spirit and power of Elijah. The work of the gospel will then be finished in a blaze of glory, turning “the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers” before the earth is visited with a curse (Mal. 4:6).

Also watch: www.whatfinger.com

In today’s episode of “lies our government told us,” a new classified report by the U.S. Department of Energy concluded a lab leak in China most likely caused the COVID-19 pandemic, although U.S. “spy agencies,” usually found at the center of the greatest cover-ups are divided over the issue.

This sudden epiphany is a shift from the department’s earlier position that it was “undecided” on how the virus emerged. It comes more than three years after those of us with common sense were booted from Facebook for stating the obvious: The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 didn’t randomly jump from animals to humans in a wet market in Wuhan, China. It escaped from a lab in Wuhan where Gain-of-Research was being conducted—and funded by the U.S. government—on coronaviruses.

The classified report reiterates “the consensus” of supposed experts nobody trusts is that COVID-19 was “not the result of a Chinese bioweapon,” a U.S. official said. In its review, the Energy Department described the “likely” laboratory leak as an “accident.” The Chinese, with our financial assistance, were simply making bad viruses more virulent for funzies.

According to sources, lawmakers on the intelligence committees were briefed last month by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence about the classified report. While the department shared the information with other agencies, none changed their position. How ironic. They’ve also not changed their positions on forced vaccinations, face masks, or lockdowns either.

Officials did not disclose the source of the intelligence that prompted the change. Still, the Energy Department’s insights supposedly did not come from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s internal emails, which blatantly show his efforts to reframe the narrative so it wouldn’t look like Sars-CoV-2 escaped from a lab he played a role in funding.

Intelligence officials believe that understanding the pandemic’s beginning may be necessary to “improving global response to future health crises,” while scientists say there is a “responsibility to explain how a pandemic has killed almost seven million people started” and what poses the most significant “threats to future outbreaks.”

The American people want answers to the pandemic’s origins so that those responsible can be held accountable—not only for the virus that killed millions of people but for the response (censorship, suppression of treatments, forced vaccines, lockdowns, and mandates) that likely killed more.

A spokesperson for the Energy Department said in a statement that the agency “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed.”

When asked on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” what the consequences should be if it’s found the Chinese government covered up a lab leak, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said lawmakers must first “have public hearings on this and really dig into it.”

“Think about what just happened over the last three years, one of the biggest pandemics in a century,” Sullivan said. “A lot of evidence that it’s coming from the Chinese.”

Although China may be to blame for the lab leak, it was the U.S. media who gaslit experts who said the virus escaped from a lab, our own Big Tech companies who censored scientists online and deleted their YouTube Channels, and U.S. regulatory agencies and officials (like Dr. Fauci) who intentionally conspired to suppress the lab-leak theory.

It’s also probably not a good idea to put the World Health Organization, that’s essentially a public relations agency for China and likely knew all of this from the start, in charge of our country’s pandemic response.

According to NBC News, House Republicans have started their investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and are “reviewing the classified information provided,” a spokesperson said.

In an apparent effort to downplay the report, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, “there is not a definitive answer from the intelligence community” about how COVID-19 originated.

“There is a variety of views in the intelligence community. Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Perhaps the U.S. needs a new intelligence community.

Also watch: www.whatfinger.com

This piece summarizes one of the episodes of “The Twilight Zone” entitled “The Shelter” that bears mention for all who have neighbors, especially those they are “unsure” of.  In this (two minutes to midnight) preparatory lifestyle, it’s always important to know about those who live around you.

Today’s neighbors can morph into tomorrow’s marauders in the blink of an eye.

The fragile nature of our society is best described as the thinnest of veneers of civilization overlaying an underlying barbarism that can manifest itself at any given moment.

“The Shelter” is an excellent case-study of such a precept that I recommend to everyone to watch at least once.  This is of the original series, and the episode was written in 1961 by Rod Serling.

The story commences in the home of a neighborhood doctor where he and his neighbors are celebrating his birthday.  Everyone is festive, and the mood is one of good spirits, laughter, and indulgence in food and drink.  After a birthday toast, several birthday guests comment (abrasively) on the noise the doctor has had over the months from the construction of a bomb shelter in his basement.  The doctor kind of ignores it, and the party continues.

Soon the doctor’s son comes into the dining room (only adults are present) and announces that the TV has gone dead, and just prior it announced to go to the Conelrad station on the radio.  The following report came forth on the radio as everyone listened:

“…Four minutes ago the President of the United States made the following announcement.  I quote: at 11:04 pm Eastern Standard Time both our Distant Early Warning Line and Ballistics Early Warning Line reported radar evidence of unidentified flying objects flying due southeast.  As of this moment we have been unable to determine the nature of these objects, but for the time being and in the interests of national safety we are declaring a state of yellow alert.  The Civil Defense Authorities request that if you have a shelter already prepared, go there at once.  If you do not have a shelter, use your time to move supplies of food, water, medicine, and other supplies to a central place.  Keep all windows and doors closed.  We repeat: if you’re in your home, go to your prepared shelters or to your basement.”

Needless to say, all of the guests frantically depart.  The doctor and his family scramble around, filling up jars with extra water and moving some extra stuff down into the bomb shelter.  In the shelter were beds for the family and shelves with canned goods and medicines, as well as other gear and some chairs and a table.  The doctor returns upstairs, and then one of the neighbors, Jerry, begins rapping on the window.  The doctor opens the door, and Jerry worms his way in, slyly informing the doctor that he and his family are unprepared for what’s coming.

The neighbor wants to shelter himself, his wife, and two children in a shelter designed for three people.  The doctor leaves him and enters the shelter, locking the door and sealing it off.  Presently, more neighbors arrive.  One of them pounds the door, insisting that the doctor allow him to enter.  Soon even more neighbors arrive, and one of them is very belligerent.  Men and women are irate, and they’re demanding the doctor let them in.  It escalates very shortly, as the aggressive man belligerently makes the following demand with several other men beside him to the doctor after yelling his name:

 “You’ve got a bunch of your neighbors outside who want to stay alive.  Now you can open that door and talk to us, and figure out with us how many can come in there…or you can just keep on doing what you’re doing and we’ll [hitting the door] bust our way in there.”

The doctor refuses, and the men outside move away from the door, and then begin to argue among themselves.  There is already infighting about who (of the outsiders) will enter the shelter, as the men move out of the house.

“Bill, who are those people?” the mother asks.

“Those people…those people are our neighbors…our friends…the people we’ve lived with and alongside for twenty years.  C’mon, Paulie.  We better get up some of this furniture and this bunk so we’ll have some protection in case that door goes through,” the doctor said.

The half-dozen men return to the house, smashing up furniture in the dining room and trashing the house.  They enter the basement with a heavy pipe, and as their wives cheer them on, they begin battering the shelter door.  Presently they break through.  Just as they are stepping into the shelter, the radio in the shelter with the family announces that the previously-spotted objects were satellites, and the alert was lifted.

As the dust settles, the neighbors try to blow it off half-heartedly, but the doctor doesn’t really want any of it.  The neighbors had managed to smash in the door and force their way in.  The doctor summarized it quite eloquently with his description of what had happened:

“The kind of people we are just underneath the skin.  I mean all of us…a lot of naked, wild animals who put such a price on staying alive that they’ll claw their neighbors to death just for the privilege.”

The episode is excellent, and in under 25-minutes presents exactly what human nature boils down to…in a non-profane, “Hallmark” version with no blood or gore to offend the tender sensibilities.  The doctor made the following critical mistakes.

 All of his neighbors knew he had built a bomb shelter in his basement

1. The shelter (although made to resist radiation) was not built sturdily enough to be able to resist the marauders
2. The doctor did not have one weapon to protect himself and his family and drive off the angry mob
3. He allowed “Jerry” to come inside the house, instead of locking and barring every part of it to keep the neighbors away

The old adage, “Know thy neighbor” holds true…and not just from a superficially-friendly, good time perspective.

What is important to know is that when the needs of the neighbors are not able to be met, those needs will be attempted to be filled at your expense if you are the one with the supplies and safe haven.  “The Shelter” is an oldie but a goodie, and a perfect tool to keep in mind that all of us can pass beyond the limits of the “better angels of our nature,” and the situation turn from “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” to “The Road Warrior” in the blink of an eye.  Happy watching, and hope you take something from it.

Also watch: www.whatfinger.com

The following is an important article because altering the definitions of words is a classic propaganda trick used by those who wish to cow a populace by keeping them in an apathy below understanding.

Like all  the mind games inflicted on a trusting populace by its parasitic echelon of dishonest, manipulative criminals, they lose their power once people understand what is being done.

And once understanding is established it protects you from the next effort to deceive you.

Understanding will set you free.

COVID NEWSPEAK:

Altering Definitions to Alter Perceptions

“The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc-should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words.” George Orwell 1984

COVID Newspeak

The phrase “follow the science” is meaningless when “science” itself is manipulated and altered to fit and promote a prevailing agenda. The definitions of some scientific words have been changed in order to fit the “pandemic” narrative:

1) “PANDEMIC”

Most people are unaware that a month before the H1N1 flu “pandemic” in 2009, the WHO changed the definition of the word “pandemic” to fit the narrative.

Pre-2009 definition:

“An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.”

Post-2009 definition:

“An influenza pandemic may occur when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity.”

The prerequisite for illness and deaths in large numbers was dropped. This enables “cases” generated by large numbers of false-positive test results to constitute a “pandemic” regardless of severity in terms of deaths and illness. Completely healthy (asymptomatic) people can now be used to artificially inflate the numbers. An endemic common cold “virus” can now be used to generate a pseudo pandemic without end with “new variants” appearing at politically convenient intervals in order to impose draconian social measures.

2) “HERD IMMUNITY”

In order to sell vaccines, the concept of natural immunity is either completely ignored or it is claimed to be inferior to the immunity induced by a vaccine.

Original definition:

“Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.”

Updated 2020 definition:

“‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached. Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.”

In other words, don’t trust your natural immune system but trust very lucrative injections produced by large globalist corporations with a long history of criminality instead. What could possibly go wrong? Well if something does go wrong don’t expect the pharma company that made the vaccine to compensate you as they will not be held to account and will not be liable to pay compensation.

We now know that the “covid” shots are causing a type of immunodeficiency which some are calling VAIDS. The effect is cumulative with each successive shot causing further depletion of CD8+ immune cells.

3) “VACCINE”

When people question the motives behind developing experimental gene therapies and passing them off as “vaccines” the globalists simply change the definition of “vaccine” to fit their agenda.

When the “vaccine” completely fails to provide real immunity to the disease it was developed to combat they simply changed the definition again.

Pre-2015 definition:

“Injection of a killed or weakened infectious organism in order to prevent the disease.”

2015-2021 definition:

“The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.”

September 2021 definition:

“The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.”

The vaccine can now be an experimental gene therapy rather than a killed or weakened infectious organism. The requirement to prevent the disease has been dropped and replaced with “produce immunity” and “produce protection”. This means that a vaccine can be considered effective if it stimulates an antibody response. It doesn’t matter whether these antibodies are actually protective or not.

Sometimes, as is the case with Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE), the antibodies can exacerbate disease rather than protect against it. This had been a long-standing problem with Coronavirus vaccine development prior to 2020. Vaccinated animals who are subsequently challenged with the “virus” they are supposed to be protected against developing serious disease and die due to ADE. Unvaccinated control animals do not develop serious diseases and don’t die when challenged with the same “virus”.

Sometimes vaccine antibodies only provide a very narrow range of protection and sometimes they are very short-lived. Natural immunity is a multi-faceted, broad-spectrum, longer-lasting, and more trustworthy than Pfizer et al.

Follow The Science

Don’t forget to “follow the science” but only the “science” stipulated by the dictators of global health. The “science” they manufacture to fit their agenda complete with Orwellian Newspeak. If you don’t, you’re a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist.

Also watch: www.whatfinger.com

Introduction

“When the system breaks down, we all break down.”

Tactical camping is a great way to develop and sharpen many essential survival skills. But, beyond these skills there is a particular discipline that needs to be practiced; one that will improve your ability to travel through unfamiliar or potentially unfriendly territory during dangerous times if circumstances should require it. Most people don’t think about evading detection because their day to day lives don’t depend on it.

To my way of thinking, there are three issues that risk the safety and obscurity of a group in camp. These are visibility, noise and odor. I will leave it to you to visualize the circumstances under which these risks might apply, but the general scenario is that you are on the move between points A and B of indeterminate distance. Whether you are alone or traveling in a group, on foot or caravanning with several vehicles, the issues are the same.

Importantly, I am excluding urban or other densely populated areas from this discussion. They are not in my field of expertise and frankly, I don’t spend much time thinking about cities. My presumption is that you have successfully evacuated from an urban/suburban location and are traveling through rural, less populated country.

As a Prepper, you either already have a plan or you are working on one. It should mean you have a rally point where your group will assemble, that you and everyone else know the route to the destination, and that you have pre-established way-point locations where you will lay up while en route to that chosen destination. It will mean that you have taken congestion and potential roadblocks into consideration. Finally, it will mean that you have evaluated fall-back sites and alternate routes that may be needed to reach your objective.

The thrust of the title is that you need to be a ‘hole in the dark’ for all three issues. In other words, an apparently dark camp can still be exposed by excessive noise, the odor of drifting smoke or food preparation. What techniques can you employ to establish and maintain a profile that is ‘dark’ to all aspects of the human senses?

But first, what is the best time of day to be on the move with a group? The answer will most likely be based upon the group’s overall capabilities, the tools and resources at your disposal. If you opt to travel only at night, but you have no night vision goggles, then your rate of travel may be exceedingly slow. It will be further hampered in rough terrain where you are required to distinguish safe from unsafe trails. My general bias is to move in daylight and camp at night, but there are conditions, such as familiar terrain, ample moonlight and an experienced team that I’m working with, where I would flip the preference.

The discussion that follows reflects my bias for laying up at night. I have practiced these disciplines under a variety of weather and terrain conditions, both singly and in groups ranging up to a dozen people.

Establishing a ‘dark’ camp:

• Seek locations that are as secluded as possible. This means that you are consciously separating your group from the Golden Horde. Circumstances created by a SHTF situation dictate that you avoid Interstate highways and all other major routes that lead to your chosen destination.
• Seek locations that provide the best possible concealment for the entire group, whether natural or man made. In the case of structures, think of a vacant barn, warehouse or a walled compound. For outdoor settings, think of places where concealment is provided by terrain, dense vegetation, or structures that will obfuscate. One such example might be on the back side of an abandoned corral. Open air camp sites need to be located beyond the range of approaching headlights.
• Strive to set your camp well before sundown so that you have enough light and time to prepare a dark camp. This means that you are establishing lay up sites that are close enough to reach in the time you have allotted for each day’s travel. It implies that these are preselected locations that you have already evaluated to some degree. The time required to set a secure camp may vary at each location along the route.

• Have time to deploy or create necessary obfuscation, such as camouflage. The absence of sunlight is not a guarantee that your camp is safe from detection. Although there may be a low probability, consumer grade thermal/infra-red cameras can spot exposed camps and vehicles at distances greater than one mile. If thieves are on the hunt for vulnerable groups, an exposed camp site becomes an easy target.
• Have time to set a security perimeter that maximizes your ability detect any approaching threat. Elevated lookout or observation posts (LP/OP) give you a decided advantage during night time hours, as well as the ability to spot traffic or groups during pre-dawn and after sunrise. If possible, locate these posts on the military crest. Time your travel to and departure from the LP/OP(s) so that you are moving in low light and shadow. Elevated security posts can be at any distance as long as you can maintain a clear line of sight of the area that you need to monitor. Obviously, communication between your camp and LP/OP(s) will require the use of two way radios.
• Prepare your evening meals and clean up before dark. In these circumstances you will want your cooking fires out and cold before dark. Avoid the use of wood or charcoal fires where possible, or use devices like the Rocket Stove, which require a minimum quantity of biomass and burn hot enough to limit the output of smoke. Do not prepare your morning meals until daylight to keep fires from being visible. This is not a backyard hamburger cookout. Drifting smoke and the smell of food may alert others to your presence.
• Stow non-essential camp items before dark to prevent accidental noise.
• Each morning, break down your camp and stow gear as quickly as possible. This should be an assigned task. Remember, your security team members will be returning to camp. Every step they take downhill reduces their visibility to approaching vehicles or groups and progressively shrinks your security perimeter. Once they reach your camp the entire group may be effectively blind to any threat. Be prepared to move out before you have to.

• Cover and conceal all vehicles to prevent moon glow. I cannot emphasize this enough – I know of surveillance operations that have ‘gone south’ because a subject was able to detect the glint of moonlight on a partially covered windshield.
• Extinguish all outside light. If it becomes necessary to illuminate something, such as the inside of a backpack, use a low lumen light with red filter.
• Set the dimmer switches in your vehicles to the off position. This will eliminate escaping light if you need to open a door after dark.
• Cloak any vehicle that may be used as an Op center where interior lighting may be required. To be effective, this requires using opaque blankets that shroud all possible sources of light leakage.
• Strictly avoid the use of flashlights for signaling. In other words, restrict communication to radios with headsets, but keep your traffic to a minimum. Avoid popular GMRS/FRS frequencies that can be monitored by others within range. Use the lowest power output possible. [I use programmable dual band (VHF/UHF) two-way radios that permit me to transmit and receive over GMS/FRS/MURS frequencies, but I also have my own SHTF frequencies that would be used by the group. This helps to assure that you are ‘dark’ to the radio spectrum that is most likely to be used by others.
• Constrain all movement to the absolute minimum at night. If I am standing a watch between 00:00 and 02:00, there are only two people that I expect to see, the person I relieve at midnight and the one who relieves me at 02:00. Don’t wander around in the dark. Otherwise, you are a safety hazard to yourself and others.

Other Contingencies

I am somewhat reluctant to open this subject, but the exposures are real enough and they are played out every night along the Southwest border with Mexico.

If you envision bug out circumstances that tend toward the extreme, such as attempting to move through an area after martial law has been declared, there will be other considerations that apply to concealment. For example, the government could enforce martial law over large areas through the use of surveillance aircraft equipped with thermal cameras, FLIR and ground surveillance radars that detect motion against a stationary background.

In case it hasn’t occurred to you, the Department of Homeland Security already uses hundreds of fixed and rotary wing aircraft, a fleet of Predator UAVs, mobile vehicles and portable manned surveillance equipment. These are used to detect and apprehend smuggling groups along the U.S./Mexico border. Under conditions of martial law, some of those assets could be redirected to the detection and apprehension of citizens. In circumstances such as these, you could be dealing with a potentially hostile and/or desperate populace as well as a government that wants to find you. Their motivation may not be particularly humanitarian.

The type of surveillance aircraft referenced above have the ability to detect heat signatures at distances of fifteen miles or more. They can differentiate between you and a warm rock. They can detect a stationary vehicle, even though the engine hasn’t been running for two or three hours. They can detect your movement, course and speed. If that isn’t enough, their thermal cameras are capable of identifying if you are carrying a long arm.

Fixed wing aircraft generally operate at altitudes of 8,500 to 10,000 feet, while Predator UAVs typically patrol at altitudes ranging between 19,000 and 21,000 feet. Generally speaking, all of these aircraft are quiet and they patrol without running lights. In other words, you will not see or hear a surveillance aircraft that is orbiting your position from seven miles out.

Most night time detections occur where groups are laid up or moving across open ground or along ridge lines.

Against these capabilities, the basic concepts of maintaining a dark camp require added precautions; particularly if you are outdoors.

• You may need to consider setting camp in an area that provides dense overhead cover and that is in a narrow confined area, such as a ravine or draw. Your heat signature can be significantly reduced by the overhead cover. The steep angular nature of the terrain will help prevent detection from long range. Ideally, you will want to be inside an enclosed structure; one that has a roof.
• Setting camp against a cliff, particularly if there are overhangs or shallow caves, can mask you from surveillance.
• Heat that is radiating from a vehicle (especially the engine block) is much more problematic. One suggestion is to open the hood as soon as you’ve concealed the vehicle. This will help dissipate heat more quickly. Parking under dense tree cover will also quickly lower the overall temperature of the vehicle. Avoid covering the vehicle with heat trapping blankets, tarps and camo netting until it has reached the ambient temperature of the air.

I have not experimented with heat cloaking devices, so I cannot make recommendations regarding the efficacy of any product or technique. If anyone has experience or suggestions on this subject, I am all ears.

The probability of surveillance aircraft being deployed during or after a major SHTF scenario (that is, one that pulls large numbers of CBP aircraft away from the border) is probably very low. I know of no situation, such as a major hurricane or earthquake, where this has ever happened. Other assets, such as National Guard and state Department of Public Safety aircraft, are more likely to be used for search and rescue operations.

Circumstances that might lead to a declaration of martial law across a major region or the entire country are far harder to visualize to any reasonable level detail. The deployment of surveillance aircraft against citizens under martial law conditions would certainly require a functioning central government, and motivations could range from the elimination of armed bandits to the suppression of rebellion. The problem is that an aerial surveillance camera operating at 19,000 feet will not know that you are merely trying to get home. My only recommendation is “when in doubt, assume the need for maximum precaution.”

If it is any comfort, Border Patrol agents optimistically estimate that they succeed in apprehending somewhere between 35-40% of illegal aliens that cross the border. Their estimate of success for drug smugglers (the wiliest of all creatures) is even lower; in spite of the surveillance technologies that I’ve described above. For the most part, smugglers that successfully evade detection use terrain to their advantage.

Conclusion

More than anything else, being a ‘hole in the dark’ is a discipline rather than a set of tools. Certainly, tools can help, but they cannot offset poor security practices. If you don’t plan and prepare for the circumstances that require you to exercise those disciplines, you are placing yourself at risk. Any bug out destination that you have in mind is likely to require one or more lay up sites along the way. Your survival may very well depend on knowing in advance where they will be, as well as the steps needed to assure a secure camp.

Also watch: www.whatfinger.com