Greetings and welcome to the Patriot Express Newsletter Edition #160. Thanks for stopping by to spend a few minutes with us. As we begin our journey through May, we see lots of different weather patterns and conditions around the nation. While many are preparing for doomsday, remember you are more likely to be hit by mother nature and natural disasters than eventual doomsday. By preparing vs prepping, we focus on everyday life, not a single event. You could have other events that will impact your daily life and impede your abilities to provide for yourself and your family. Being prepared is an insurance policy to protect you and your loved ones. Most insurance policies pay off after the event has struck. Preparedness is a policy to protect you from the start of the event. You decide.
Last Friday evening I had a great visit with the Crossville and one of the KY team leads along with their CEOs. We shared a good meal at a local eatery while discussing topics covered in a HFS Team Leader meeting conducted the night before. Time together and positive discussions makes for an easier drive home to Eastern TN. I appreciate their time given up meeting with me on a Friday evening.
Ms. Lucy and I will be entering another crazy period of life with lots of travel the next six weeks or so. Somehow, we will manage and work it out, but time will be limited, and our energy will have to be focused on numerous task we do each week in order to keep the train on the track. Why does it seem that life goes faster with more to do as we age?
Okay, let us move along.
Thursday Zoom Rallies – This week we conducted HFS Zoom Rally #87 with more group exercises and a discussion on upcoming changes to HFS. We also spent more time focusing on the importance of building a P.A.C.E. Family Communication Plan and why. If a disaster strikes tomorrow, do you have a plan in place to communicate with loved ones?
Communications: You can now follow HFS social media on the following outlets:
Facebook – Hope for Survival
YouTube Channel – Hope for Survival
MeWe: - //mewe.com/p/hopeforsurvival2
Odysee - Hope for Survival (odysee.com)
Parler - Preparedness101
Check out the newest HFS YouTube video at this link. If you have not, please hit subscribe and support our efforts to get the preparedness message out. Thanks. https://youtu.be/TKayDFymR7I
Connect and give me a shout. Share with family and friends.
Guest and Newcomers
If you are a guest or newcomer to the HFS journey, please check out this link for additional
information offered through HFS. https://www.hopeforsurvival.com/post/guest-and-newcomers-information-page
Hope for Survival books and HFS Thumb Drive for Emergency Documents -: You can obtain information on the two HFS books at this link: Survival, Preparedness, Disaster Management for individuals or family (hopeforsurvival.com)
Hope for Survival - How Food, Water, Shelter, and Security Could Save Your Life (Book 1)
Hope for Survival - The Mindset (Book 2)
HFS Thumb Drive for Emergency Documents - We just restocked the HFS Thumb drive and have them available now. Follow this link and you will see the add at the top of the page. Blog | Survival (hopeforsurvival.com)
Heritage Life Skills 2022 - Waynesville, NC, May 20-22 - TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!! Class schedule and signups are posted for your review and selection. Once again, the price for a full weekend attendance or single day visit can't be beat. This is a very affordable opportunity for loads of preparedness training and information. Not to mention, you will meet some amazing people who become friends for life in many cases. Here is the link to view this year's classes, class schedules, and instructor bios. Upcoming Events | Carolina Readiness | Preparedness & Camping Store If you have questions, please call the Carolina Readiness Supply at 828-456-5310.
If you would like to sign up for classes taught by Hope for Survival at this event, here's the posted HFS dates, times, and classes being taught.
Thursday, May 19, 2022 - HFS Potluck Dinner (time to be determined)
Friday, May 20, 2022 - 830 AM to 1130 AM - Preparedness 101
Friday, May 20, 2022 - 1 PM - 230 PM - Preparedness 102
Friday, May 20, 2022 - 3 PM - 430 PM - Vetting New Members (New Class)
Saturday, May 21, 2022 - 830 AM - 1130 AM - Preparedness 101
Saturday, May 21, 2022 - 1 PM - 230 PM - Preparedness 102
Saturday, May 21, 2022 - 3 PM - 430 PM - Psychological Preparedness (New Class)
Sunday, May 22, 2022 - 830 AM - 10 AM - Vetting New Members (New Class)
Sunday, May 22, 2022 - 10:30 AM - 1200 PM - Protecting Your Five Mile Radius
Sunday, May 22, 2022 - 1 PM - 230 PM - Psychological Preparedness (New Class)
We must make this brief public announcement to protect the innocent.
Ding, Ding, Ding....Attention HFS readers..... Opinions shared in this newsletter are just that, opinions, and nothing more. Read at your own risk. The owner and author of this site is not responsible for hurt feelings or thin-skinned readers. I do my best to show restraint and respect to the best extent possible. I take as many precautions as possible and try to remain as nonpolitical as possible, however, there are times when I just can't help but point certain things out. Occasionally I use words only Patriots recognize and understand. It's not personal against any non-Patriot. It's just the truth. Sometimes we must pull up our spenders and suck it up. Just saying. Stay the course, read what you want, and avoid the rest. Avoid fear porn as much as possible and the day will be okay. When all else fails… Keep the faith and always have Hope.
Let’s move along and get to some thoughts...
Thoughts for the week -
I-D-M - "It Doesn't Matter" and for some you may hear "it don't matter." Regardless how you hear it the meaning remains the same. I-D-M is possibly the single most pointed out item for Hope for Survival over the past year. Yep, I have chapped my fair share of backsides and attitudes with the I-D-M statement. But it's true and it can't be proved wrong. It is no skin off my elbows either way and I'm simply trying to help others learn, understand and prepare. If someone is trapped on the roof of their flooded house and a helicopter flies over offering them rescue, and they pass it up waiting for a boat, they probably haven't figured it out yet.
No matter what is said or offered some people look at me and they are on another planet. You can see it in their eyes. Heck, in the middle of your statement they interrupt me with another topic unrelated to the point I was making. I swear they are on Planet Lost through the entire conversation. To keep this simple, I am offering them a boat engine to go against the tide, yet they are convinced using their hands as boat oars is better.
What you believe and what you choose to do is a personal choice. The question is how much time do you have to get it together? Sometimes I think to myself that people are living like a racehorse with partial blinders on. They have limited vision and they see and hear what they want. Just like my pastor said on Sunday, "if you preach the Bible you are going to offend someone." That is a fact. And I feel the same way at times sharing my thoughts on preparedness based on lessons learned from my past life and things I experienced and witnessed. I can run furiously across the field yelling "the buffaloes are coming, run." A few would run and a few would stand still trying to figure out if buffaloes are really approaching or did I hire a tympani player to stand beyond the ridge and give a long tympani cadence to sound like a charging herd.
It is this simple. You can be the steppingstone for yourself, family, and community, or you can be the stumbling stone who ignored and failed those who love you and look up to you. What will your choice be?
Here is the thing. people are spending and wasting valuable time on things that just don't matter. I have beaten this topic like a dirty rug hanging in the Mojave Desert. I could simply stop and just move on and let those hanging in Epstein style do so. If people wish to follow this fad or that fad that turns out to be another wish on no return, they are investing in lottery odds. I have suggested repeatedly for preparers to invest their money in preparedness and not lottery tickets with no return.
Do you realize readers get mad at me for telling them the truth on things they do not wish to hear? I'm not pointing this out to criticize people and I'm not laughing at them. I'm the ranger in the park yelling "fire, fire, fire" to the boys at the table playing cards. The fire burns hotter and gets closer and the boys continue their card game. What matters most? The approaching fire or the card game? How can grown educated adults believe Elvis is still alive, the former President is really married to Princess Di who is still alive, half the Democratic Party is locked up at Gitmo and the other half got executed. It's doesn't matter. Shall I continue? The military is planning a revolt and will take control of the White House and the former President will regain power. Hillary Clinton is also being held at Gitmo and a body double is being used for her appearances in public. People...it doesn't matter. People will tell you the Bible is nonsense yet believe the voice of a person they have never met who is selling them hope based on an unnamed inside sources who parades nonsense. Yes, it is easy to believe, and even easier because 150,000 other people listen to the same information and gobble it up. When all the local stores are out of food and your family crying because of hunger, are you going to run around town explaining to food vendors you need food, or a story you heard on a podcast relating to dwarf giraffes taking over Saudi Arabia?
We are living in a world where it seems people will find any reason to bring down another person. We are living in a society where we praise and warship high school and college athletes more than students working to become brain surgeons and bridge builders. We have a government wanting to wipe out the college debt of many while leaving critical thinking skills in debt for years. What is wrong with our nation and the world? If the indebted college educated doctor voices opposition to the college dropout football player who goes pro after two years of college with millions of dollars already in their pockets, the debt loaded doctors are titled racist for not understanding what a college jock goes through. Let me put it another way. College football playing jocks are weighted down from the millions of dollars in their pockets and are rushed to the hospital for a head injury that requires brain surgery to be performed by the debt loaded doctor. Think about that. Parents are losing control of their children to skill systems, drag queens are parading as guest in churches, our nation has more debt than common sense, and people tell me nothing is wrong, it will all work out.
The Federal Government, both parties, tells us we need to tackle the nations poverty so the poor can be somewhat equal. Really? I don't think many would argue the point with taking care of our people. But when the government rewards bad behavior and pays non-residents more in monthly income than hard working Americans trying to survive, then we have a problem, and it is getting worse. Almost everywhere we travel we find "always hiring" signs all over the place. In our small community a person waits 30 minutes to one hour for seating. No, not because they are busy. Half the place is empty. They don't have full staffs to seat people at every table. Managers continually state workers no longer worker because the government pays them more to stay home. Why? Yet, even people who recognize and talk about this will tell you there is no problem and things will be fine.
Our world is upside down because the things that should have mattered the past 50 years didn't matter while we spent time living life and believing someone else took care of what mattered. Now that its upside down, many now believes the world will be fixed by a magic rabbit popping out of a hat. Abracadabra type stuff.
Now, let me ask you a question. If people are smart enough to figure out all these things are wrong and it is bad enough to require a rabbit to pop out of a hat and fix it, then why would the same person not recognize they better get their act together and stop focusing on all the things that doesn't matter? I am convinced a large number of alternative news listeners thrive on fear porn. Building a preparedness plan is boring and takes effort. How much is your family worth to you? I don't make predictions, but I can tell you all the negatives surrounding us are worth taking note of and not doing anything about it to protect your family is foolish.
When you are making out your daily schedule, make sure you place the letters I-D-M at the top of each day and apply it to each hour. How are you spending your time that matters or doesn't matter? Faith, family and friends, and community.
Next ....
When a person or family starts their preparedness journey and begins the madness of reading countless websites, listens to numerous blogs, and gets on preparedness forums, their brain is fried, and they feel lost and defeated. They feel they are hopeless and must spend thousands of dollars to get prepared. Nonsense. They have yet to find the one location or person who will ask the single most important question; "what are you preparing for?" Few to none ever will ask the question "have you conducted a risk assessment to your location and then determine any and all potential existing threats. Why not? Risk assessments aren't cool and very few post-apocalyptic books ever mention doing the RA. But, let me ask you, if you are preparing for something how do you know how to prepare if you don't know where you stand as a starting point and what are the threats to you in a priority order? How can you, if at all, mitigate identified vulnerabilities if you don't know what they are? Right?
When you are driving down the highway and start down a mountain at 55 mph and then see a yellow sign alerting you the safe speed is 45 mph going into a curve, the sign is identifying a possible threat ahead and the mitigation is to slow down to 45 mph. You either maintain 55 mph or slow down to 45 mph to offset the threat. Your choice. Just like in preparedness, you must pick and choose to what degree you wish to prepare for potential threats forecasted ahead.
There is a process that can be used to help you out. I personally named it protecting your five mile radius. This can be more or less than five miles. You could have two miles and build upon it as you build your community team located further out from you. This gains you distance and hopefully will help push the threat further away from you and offer you a communication point to alert you when a possible threat passes a group member located a distance away but in your radius you are trying to protect.
There's several key areas you should put in your risk assessment process in order to build a complete picture of your community. One area is key personnel around you. This is called assessing the human terrain factor. This is a must category to complete because many of your community and personal risks and areas you may have to mitigate will come in this area. When I do a risk and vulnerability assessment for families, this is the single category I spend most of my time. Here is a list of questions you should answer:
1. Do you know the population in your community? You should have this number as a baseline figure.
2. You need to identify the areas of homogenous race, ethnicity, culture, and religion. Knowing the mixes of race, age groups, culture needs, and religious beliefs will help you a great deal.
3. You need to identify the socioeconomic breakdown in your area. This is also important. You should also identify the number of property owners and renters in your area. If things go belly up and renters can no longer pay their rent, the owners will evict the tenants who will become homeless and hungry. How many of these properties are near you?
4. Do you know the crime patterns and high-crime areas in your community? Consider this. If you have medium to high crime today, imagine how high it will go under economic downturns or grid down circumstances. This problem could easily end up in your five-mile radius. Are you ready and do you have a plan?
5. What civic and social organizations do you have in your community? Are they pro or con to your political and religious beliefs? How could they impact your five-mile radius, especially in urban and suburban communities?
6. Have you identified the media outlets that work against your political and religious beliefs? Have you even considered this? A Patriot brother shared a story with me recently how a community positive turned in to a community nightmare of sorts depending on how you view it. His community deployed a new program for the homeless problem. It was a success and moved the homeless off the street into a community shelter. A local media outlet shared the success story and before long the homeless population skyrocketed and became out of control. They ended up with more homeless people than anything they started with. I am not picking on homeless people. I am simply stating when a community has homelessness, crime can rise.
7. Do you have groups or subgroups that are aligned with your goals? Do you have local organizations that politically lean in your favor? The future of a community very much rest in the hands of leaders and organizations bringing or blocking unwanted change, population, taxes, police leadership, and more problems.
8. Which of the groups or subgroups will likely have a disposition towards violence during an emergency? Seattle or Portland ring a bell? Would you have leadership, law enforcement, and local organizations protecting those groups causing violence? If so, you may want to move yesterday.
9. Do you know which groups or subgroups who align with your political and religious beliefs? Look at America today from city to city and see which cities allow attacks on people and personal property. Do I need to name them for you? If events and attacks like you are witnessing today occurs in your community, how will your community leadership and law enforcement respond? That should tell you a great deal about your personal safety.
10. Who are the leaders or individuals who hold influence over each group or subgroup? Do you know your Sheriff? Mayor? Do you attend your local city council meetings?
Many preparers simply stock up at home and wait and wait and wait for something to happen. If you are allergic to wasp, why let them build a nest on your porch before you go address the potential problem? Why not go address the problem when you see it first start or better yet takes measures and build a plan to stop the wasp from even considering taking up residence on your porch or near your property? Get out and learn your community, who runs your community, who lives in your community, what your community is doing and who your community leadership caters to culturally. There is nothing wrong different cultural groups. Just know how they could potentially become a problem during escalated periods of economic downfall, unemployment, employment downsizing and more. . You want to be ahead of others and know what is around you. This will help in determining potential problems and eventual threats to you when building preparedness plans. Meet your County Sheriff and know what positions tey hold in protecting the people of the county.
Your community is your safe haven and what you know about it now could make the difference later for you.
And that's my thoughts for the week....
Preparedness News –
1. Dr. Alton - Doom and Gloom - Survival Medicine - Dr Bones wrote about diabetes that some might find helpful. One of the interesting things he said is: "According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2011, 25.8 million Americans had the disease. Ten years later, the number has risen to 37.3 million, or 11.5 percent of all U.S. adults. 96 million are thought by the CDC to be “pre-diabetic.”
"The recent pandemic didn’t help the numbers. A large new study showed that people who were infected were 40 percent more likely to become newly diagnosed diabetics compared to the general population. The study identified the disease in many young adults who were otherwise healthy before being infected. (Thanks, Festus for this submission)
2. From Marie Hawthorne - The Organic Prepper - You Need to Be Thinking NOW About Bartering - The Organic Prepper - I have recently written on the topic of bartering in previous PENL's. It seems to be a growing practice on the localized level.
3. From Steve Nubie - The Homestead Survivalist - How to Build a Potato Tower (Illustrated Guide) - Homestead Survival Site - Here's a few more ways to build potato planters. Good concepts.
4. From Stacy lyn Harris - Vegetable Soup Recipe and Step-by-Step Canning - Stacy Lyn Harris - Do you collect recipes? You may wish to do so. After a while, beans and rice, rice and beans, and beans with rice, will grow old and boring. How are you going to spice up your meal plan?
5. From Prep School Daily - Prep School Daily: How to Keep Bread from Molding - We are always looking for better ways to do things to preserve our food products and resources to last us longer. Here is another method to preserve bread to prevent molding.
6. From Chuck Abbott - Successful Farming - Largest grocery price increase since 2008 | Successful Farming (agriculture.com) - That impossible. Didn't the government just tell us things are great and the economy is strong? Yep, it's true...and pigs fly, and chickens have lips as well. Here at HFS we have been telling folks for roughly 18 moths to prepare for continued price escalations that will not end any time soon. Just another reason to prepare.
7. From Peak Prosperity -
Other News -
1. From Jim Richarks - https://youtu.be/UuVLFdq1LD8
2. From the Guardian - Northern Ireland faces loss of 1 million sheep and cattle to meet climate targets | Environment | The Guardian - Not only are they about to lose 1 million sheep and cattle, I believe they have lost a lot more of their brains.
3. From Paul Craig Roberts - The United States Approaches Its End Time - PaulCraigRoberts.org
- Close your eyes imagine you are watching a scary movie about the worlds most gifted and prosperous nation where the 88 million people elect an incompetent new leader who can't communicate coherently. Everyone in the nation wonders who's on first in the White House. Foreign leaders refuse to take calls from the new leader. Like a massive hole in a sinking ship, undocumented illegals are allowed to sweep across the border unvaccinated while the nation is locked down from a pandemic. Millions are losing jobs and family-owned businesses get closed daily. The national debt clock is spinning upward like a fan on warp speed. It appears the nation is being set up for total collapse. I can't wait to see how the movie ends because I'm curious how the people will react and respond.
4. From Debra Heine - American Greatness - Cardiologist Says 30 Percent of Vaccinated Pilots Would Fail Health Screenings Due to Vaccine Injuries › American Greatness (amgreatness.com) - Imagine living in a world where the media would be truthful and have the citizens interest as a priority. I often ask myself if citizens could handle knowing the truth in a full dose.
5. From John Whitehead - The Rutherford Institute - The Rutherford Institute :: How to Safeguard Your Freedoms in the Face of the Government’s COVID-19 Power Grabs: A Special Report by The Rutherford Institute | - Very good read by J.W.
Drum roll...........
That's all my Patriot brothers and sisters.
Prayers - Please keep our great nation, our elected leaders, military and first responders in your thoughts and prayers. We pray for good health and wisdom. Please pray for our leadership to find answers and guidance to the problems facing our great nation. May your faith remain strong and answers to the unknown provided. God is good and may our prayers blanket and protect you and your circumstances. I pray for each, and every one of our Patriots.
May we pray for all the blessings and things in life to be thankful about and continued hope for revival around the world. We must continually pray for the unsaved, our family and friends who live each day without the protection for eternal life and salvation.
Please keep two of our HFS Patriots in Western NC in your prayers as they work through their current battle with Covid. Also, please keep our Patriot brother and sister in Northern Alabama in your prayers.
As Patriots we must stay strong and never give up. Our home, community, and nation need us now more than ever. Stay focused on your local community and things that will impact you around the nation. Don't allow the events around you to create fear in your life. Build your own self-reliance and focus on hope. Remember we are a blessed nation, and we must continue to be great people today and make a better tomorrow. Keep charging.
Blessings,
Bravo Echo Out,
