Comments

Episode-820- Listener Calls for 1-13-12 — 10 Comments

  1. Thank you for your terrific podcast. It’s an invaluable resource for those of us who are keen to keep on living once the inevitable collapse occurs.

    Obie

  2. Jack,
    Your response to Veteran, Keith from Denver (26:52) is why I love you so much! Just when I get a little bored with your show content I here someone like Keith and in response, get very heartfelt comments from you. Bravo Jack!

    I completely concur with your response. We want our soldiers home body, mind and soul but it usually takes someone that’s been “there” to understand the extent of their challenges. My daughter is married to a Army sergeant on his first trip to Afghanistan after two tours in Iraq. Every rotation back home seems to get harder and harder for him to adjust. We can only encourage them to seek help and pray that God will give them some relief from the demons of war.

    Keep up the good work, Jack and Keith, thank you stepping up and for serving our country.

    As always… Got Your 6,
    Bill Robertson
    Firearms Instructor

    Be Safe by Being Prepared

  3. I find it interesting that I listened to episode 317 today. Thanks Norcal Mike for posting up those episodes.

  4. Concerning the question about how to seal a pond with no/limited access. Here is another option that I cannot swear to but I believe was put forward by Joel Salatin. Put a solar powered hot wire around the area you want to be a pond. Put a few pigs inside the hot wire and give them a season to root and do their piggy goodness. I don’t know the soil conditions where you are but where we are they will root down to the clay and prepare a hard pack area that will most likely seal water. If it works, you have a pond and bacon. If, heaven forbid, it doesn’t work, you STILL get bacon. Any solution that produces bacon has to be good. Mmm, bacon. 🙂

  5. Been listening for a while, but this is my first entrance into the forum. Despite your opinion on bankers, I am one. However, I’m not an executive and I’m not a millionaire and most of us do help people and small business.

    Regarding some of the banking questions on this show, I may be able to provide some insight. The FDIC has a counterpart for credit unions, NCUSIF. Yes, credit unions can fail. A quick Google search showed 15 or so failed in 2011, which is small in comparison to the bank failures. While safer than banks, they are not risk free. The FDIC can absorb a small bank failure it is unlikely they would ever let a big bank fail due to unfunded reserves set aside for such an event. While your money is insured in a the event of a small bank failure, it is only covered up to a limit; usually $250,000. So, one could argue that a large bank may be the safer bet, since a merger would be arranged before the FDIC had to step in and the insurance amount wouldn’t even come into play under an arranged merger or acquisition.

    Regarding access to cash, you be surprised to learn that bank branches actually keep very little cash on hand. When I say little, I mean sometimes less than $10,000 and only about $30,000 for high traffic locations. This works throughout the day with the constant deposits and withdrawals, but I have seen banks run out of cash on a normal operating day, and I’ve seen this happen on numerous occasions. Imagine how quickly things could go south if people formed a line to withdraw money. The first two or three people could liquidate the entire cash supply of a branch. Keep in mind, I work in Atlanta where banks stay busy all day long, not at some sleepy po-dunk bank with no need for large cash supplies. If there is a run on the bank, good luck getting cash. You are better off keeping some money at home. Even the ATMs will run dry and most bank restrict ATM withdrawals to $200-$500 per day. So, at best, you may be able to get $500 out of an ATM.

  6. To Keith in Denver and Jack,

    The book On Killing by Lt Col David Grossman has good information on surviving a critical incident.

    Critical incident survival is perhaps THE most overlooked component of a warrior’s (and a preppers?) training. A critical incident for those that don’t know is one where a person’s life and/or limb faces a greater than normal chance of being removed from one’s being prematurely i.e. combat.

    There are some psychological sequelae that frequently occur secondary to being exposed to a critical incident. If you are unprepared mentally when the time for action comes, there is a greater than zero chance that you will handle it inappropriately. If you do survive the critical incident either through correct actions, dumb luck, etc, there is a greater than zero chance that you will become what is referred to as a psychological casualty. Just like one can prepare for living through a critical incident, one can also prepare for living WITH a critical incident.

    I have been involved with many groups that center their existence around the gun, some professional and some . . . not so much. There are some common threads even among such disparate groups. One is a gross misconception about one’s own abilities to survive the psychological aftermath of surviving a critical incident.

    A frequent refrain goes something like, “If the SOB tries to break into my GD house, the cops’ll clean his ass up off’n the lawn. That’s if I forget to drag his worthless corpse inside to make it look more like he was breaking in. And after the coroner carts his dead ass away, I’m planning on kicking back and having myself a beer.”

    Or, “If a punk tries to disarm me, I’m simply going to draw from my ankle holster and open his mind with my Baby Glock then go home and have a beer.”

    Both statements are paraphrases of sentiments I’ve heard times too numerous to count.

    Each represents false, if sincere, bravado uttered by those unlikely to have ever considered many of the physiological factors associated with what it takes to actually pull a trigger, even in the heat of justified conflict. Additionally, such hypothetical bravado polishes over a gross misunderstanding of the psychological ramifications of taking the life of another human being.

    In nature, interspecies combat that results in the immediate death of either participant is rare if it exists at all. Rattlesnakes for instance, even though they sport deadly force via their venom, opt to wrestle for mates/territory instead of biting. That is to say, there is a strong, inborn resistance to killing a member of one’s own species. To overcome that innate resistance in the vast majority of humans requires certain enablers. And even if one has been psychologically enabled to kill and successfully and justifiably does so, that individual must still deal with the fact that he has committed what he subjectively sees as a morally reprehensible act. If a person has not proactively dealt with this aspect of critical incident preparation, or if not shepherded through the process by others both knowledgable and sincere, the chances that that person will become a psychological casualty are VERY high.

    In closing, I had some incidents that fall under the definition of being a critical incident but have never had to take a life. My experiences came both prior and subsequent to being exposed to Lt Col Grossman’s work.

    His words rang true through each of them.

    I have known others that were exposed to critical incidents but were unfamiliar with the concepts put forth by Mr. Grossman and the consequences were catastrophic.

  7. On the discussion of Internet banks, I began the experience with a savings bank that was offering 5% interest (oh where have those days gone?). I moved to NetBank where I could have both checking and savings. It was a good experience until it went under, but FDIC backed the accounts and it was quickly taken over by ING Direct, which I have really liked. I particularly like the ability to instantly move funds between checking and savings.

    One of the problems I encountered early on was that they did not issue checks, and occasionally I had need for one (they are now offering checks). I do have my account linked to a local bank and I can transfer funds easily between the two, though it takes two working days.

    ING Direct has a really good website, in my opinion, and their Bill Pay function is easy to use. My local bank, on the other hand, is terrible in that regard.