Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 21, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams

12:32

Keeping preparedness simple: Tips from the Health Ranger

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Alright, today we'll tackle some questions and answers on preparedness.
	This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, and you are listening to TalkNetwork.com, so thanks for joining us.
	And yeah, I've been a prepper for at least 20 years, maybe longer than And I live the lifestyle.
	It's not just something I do academically or just read about.
	It's actually something that I do.
	I live every day as a prepper.
	If the entire power grid went down tomorrow, my lifestyle would not be that different.
	It would actually be better because I wouldn't have to post anything online.
	So it would...
	It would be like a vacation.
	Nevertheless, people are asking me questions, so I want to cover some of those questions and answers.
	Number one, people are saying, which preparedness book should I buy?
	And my answer is the one that burns the best, because you're probably not going to read it anyway, but you will need a heat source when it hits the fan.
	How about that?
	Yeah, the one that burns the best.
	Obviously, I'm joking.
	But...
	That's a joke that's true because a lot of people, they buy preparedness books and they don't read them.
	Now, there's nothing wrong with buying a reference book for preparedness.
	I've done a lot of that where I want to have reference books.
	I have a lot of medical reference books on antibiotics.
	The dosage, the use, you know, books on medicinal herbs, essential oils, ditch medicine, emergency dentistry.
	I have books on metallurgy, in fact, and lots of things such as that that I intentionally haven't read because I don't have time, but I know I want them.
	If things go bad, I want to have those reference books on site.
	Nothing wrong with that.
	But my joke is a lot of people buy books, like how-to books, and they never ever read them.
	And, you know, books don't work by osmosis.
	You actually do have to read it, and then more importantly, you have to put it into use.
	But getting on to a serious question, a real practical question and answer...
	A lot of people are asking me things like, I feel overwhelmed by the very idea of trying to practice preparedness or survival or whatever you want to call it, self-reliance.
	It just feels overwhelming.
	How do I deal with that?
	When I pry into this, what they explain is that there are just so many categories of things, and they feel like they have to acquire all of these items.
	They have to get water filters, and they have to get storable food.
	That right there can take up a room in your house.
	They have to get medical supplies, and they have to get communications equipment, and they have to get a shotgun to defend their home, and they have to get ammo for the shotgun, and spare parts for everything.
	They have to get a bicycle.
	And it just goes on and on, and they just feel overwhelmed, and they don't know where to start.
	And it's just like, ah, you know, it's crazy.
	How am I going to do this?
	And then at the end, they say, and I live in an apartment in the city that's like 700 square feet, so I don't even have space for this stuff.
	So the question is, where do you start?
	How do you deal with the overwhelming feeling that it's so hard to prepare?
	Well, here's my answer.
	You have infinite space in your head to learn things and the most important thing that you really need in an emergency is knowledge and skills.
	The most important tool, as they say, is the one between your ears.
	Yeah, that means your brain.
	And so you can not just read, but practice skills.
	There are ways to learn skills, acquiring skills.
	You can start with outdoor skills, doing camping and hiking.
	You can even take survival seminars, or you can do wild foods, wild edibles, harvesting tours, or wild medicines in almost every big city in the country.
	You can find experts who are wild edibles experts and some of them give walking tours, which is really fascinating.
	I've been on some of them myself where they show you the local plants and here's what's good for that and here's what you can use as a food source or a water source and so on.
	That's very valuable.
	And you don't need a single square foot of storage space in your house to have that knowledge.
	So start there.
	If you're limited on space, start there.
	Because I know people who have survival gear out the wazoo.
	Is that how they say it?
	I guess they have a lot of storage gear.
	Suddenly I'm slipping up on the weird sayings in English.
	Out the wazoo?
	Is that it?
	Anyway, they have a lot of stuff, but they don't know how to use it.
	They've got like five camp stoves.
	And I asked them, have you ever pulled one of those out and tried to, you know, cook a meal with some pine cones?
	And like, no, no, that's messy.
	I don't want to ruin my gear.
	It's all brand new and shiny.
	Like, hey, that's not survival, buddy.
	Survival is gear that's been used.
	Okay, that's what you need.
	You need some gear that you've actually played with.
	You go out in the forest or the backyard or somewhere and you cook a meal.
	Using pine cones or whatever you have, dried weeds and tree bark, dried moss, you know, all the things that you use to start fires out in nature to cook meals.
	And until you've done that, you're not a prepper.
	I mean, if all your preparedness gear is all shiny new in the box, you are a collector, not a survivor.
	Okay, just to be clear about that.
	You know how people who collect action figures?
	They've got Batman in the original package from 1989.
	They've got Captain Picard from the Star Trek series.
	Original, unopened package.
	Yeah, they're collectors.
	Some would say geeks, too.
	Nothing wrong with that.
	But they're not survivalists.
	They're not preppers.
	So don't try to keep everything new and shiny and in the box.
	Get it out and use it.
	Learn how to use it.
	That's the best thing that you can really start with.
	The second point in all of this is that you don't need tons and tons of stuff necessarily.
	There are a few key things that you need, but the thing that you should really start with, and you only need one good one, is a knife.
	A bushcraft knife.
	I'm talking about an outdoors knife.
	A cutting edge.
	Something that you can use.
	If you had to, you could chop some small branches with it.
	You could defend yourself with it, potentially.
	You can cut cordage with it.
	And that's key, and we'll talk about cordage here in a minute.
	But if you don't have a cutting edge, you're not into survival.
	If you do have a cutting edge, you're like halfway there already, because that right there is going to help you in a tremendous way.
	And some would say, by the way, the next thing to get is a small prying, like a small pry bar, a pry tool.
	Because with a pry tool, especially if you live in a city, you can pry open doors, including car doors and car windows and doors to homes and businesses if you need to, well, you might be thinking loot the place, but I was thinking more like, you know, rescue somebody.
	Or perhaps in an emergency, you and the community do decide to loot a pharmacy or something, And distribute the medicine to people in need.
	You need to get in there.
	So a pry bar is very, very useful.
	You can buy small titanium pry bars on Amazon.com if you want.
	That's where I got them.
	And they're very, very lightweight, portable, and incredibly handy.
	And you don't want to necessarily use your knife as a pry bar because you don't want to mess up the blade.
	So you get the separate pry bar to do it.
	And in a city, there are all kinds of things that you might need to pry open.
	Windows, actual bars over the windows, for example.
	Doorways, ventilation, shafts.
	But especially automobiles, vehicles, things like that.
	So right there, if you have a knife and a pry bar and some knowledge of how to use those two things...
	You're halfway there.
	I mean, you've really nailed just two of the most important tools that you need to survive.
	And I bet you didn't think about a pry bar, because a lot of people don't.
	After that, again, without going crazy on the equipment, you need a water filtration system.
	It doesn't even have to be the most expensive system out there.
	Big Berkey is what I recommend because I've done lab tests on it and it really does the best job of the gravity filters.
	Of removing all the toxic elements.
	I've actually tested that in the lab with lead and arsenic, cadmium, and so on.
	And you have to make sure you get the big Berkey with the fluoride arsenic filter add-on.
	And then it really eliminates all those things.
	But you don't have to go for that.
	It's kind of expensive.
	A few hundred bucks.
	You can use smaller systems, much, much smaller systems.
	Camping type of systems, for example, that are more portable might actually be a better fit for you.
	If you live in a city, if you're in an apartment somewhere, you know, your plan is probably to bug out anyway.
	So you don't want to be lugging around in a big, a big Berkey water filter.
	You want to have something that fits in a pack or That you can take with you that's portable, that's probably pump operated where you actuate the pump manually and you can immediately filter water instead of waiting for hours for gravity to do it.
	So if you cover that, I mean, think about it now.
	You got a knife, you have a pry bar.
	And you have a water filter and obviously you have a pack of some sort that you carry on your back, right?
	Now you're really doing great.
	You have covered more than 99% of the population, believe me, just with those three things so you don't have to freak out.
	If you just have those three things now, you are just way ahead of the curve.
	And then if you throw in some portable stored food, just a little bit, enough to fit in your pack.
	And by the way, you know, in terms of calories per ounces and portability and long-term shelf life, you should get yourself some peanut butter in a plastic jar.
	Peanut butter is the perfect survival food or coconut oil or something that is very high calorie density and yet in a small form factor so that it's portable.
	And peanut butter, you know, fits the category, but it could be almond butter or it could be any kind of other seed butter or nut butter like that.
	Lots of choices out there.
	Of course, you can always get dried meats as well, but don't get the meats with the sodium nitrite in it because that causes cancer.
	So get the uncured meat or dry your own or whatever.
	So as you can see, it doesn't take much to get started, and that's the message I want to get across to you.
	I can't give you a whole preparedness course here in 12 minutes, but I can tell you that you don't have to think that you've got to do everything.
	You don't have to have a radio system transmitter shortwave.
	You don't have to have surgical supplies with Stitches Every little thing that is mentioned in a prepper's forum, too many people gear up, but they dumb down at the same time.
	They don't know how to use the stuff they have.
	And you'd be better off having just a few things that you know how to use.
	And the same thing is true with a firearm.
	You don't need 50 firearms, you know.
	Just one good handgun that you know how to operate and clean and clear the jams and everything.
	That right there, and by the way, I recommend the 9mm Glock 19 as your starting handgun.
	That right there can just get you through a lot of situations of self-defense or community defense or saving someone's life or defending life and property, all kinds of things.
	So just keep it simple.
	Start with the basics.
	Master the basics.
	And the rest will come to you.
	Thanks for listening.
	Sorry I ran out of time, but I hope you enjoyed this.
	My name is Mike Adams.
	I'm the Health Ranger.
	And this is TalkNetwork.com.
	Also check out my website, AlternativeNews.com or Collapse.News.
	I think you'll enjoy it.

▲