Survivalist Anthologies Volume 1

by George Shepherd

  The go-bag will allow your group or family to rendezvous at pre-designated points where an orderly evacuation from the area of operation to a retreat area may be carried out. You must, however, have a retreat area already stocked and in place before you can set this plan into action. If you do not have a retreat area, you will merely become refugees without the means for securing your future survival.

  The same may be said for the rural homestead. Because I have located my homestead close to National Forest, BLM and wilderness land, I have taken advantage of the large expanse of land to set up caches, rendezvous areas and hides to evade detection of my loved ones, while maintaining the means to provide for them.

  Whether you live in the city or country, you will have to make similar preparations for yourself. If you have relatives in rural areas, consider a visit should a martial law disaster be declared in your area. I have family who are planning just that and I welcome them. Be warned, however, when such a situation arises, you must move quickly to implement your evacuation plans or you may become trapped within a locked down urban center.

  If a martial law scenario is limited in scope to a specific area as it was during hurricanes Katrina and Rita, removing yourself from the affected area may be all that is necessary. There are some scenarios which may lead to a national state of martial law, however. Suppose that a city in the mid-west declares a ban on firearms and citizens refuse to turn them in and real shooting breaks out. Martial law would be declared. National Guard and Marines would be sent in to quell the violence. It is possible that some citizen groups could assemble outside of the declared area of martial law and cut supply lines to police/military assets. This would widen the area of operations and possibly create a nationwide lock down. Such a scenario would dictate that you be prepared to evade or resist martial assets even in rural areas.

  The overall strategy that I am suggesting for small survival groups and families for surviving martial law is to situate yourself away from affected areas when possible. Should a national state of emergency be declared, small groups and families must be ready to evade into expanses of land.

  This strategy is aimed at keeping loved ones safe. Its weakness is that once you have decided to evade martial control, you will have to evade forever. There will be no going back to “civilization”. You may be hunted and in hiding while caring for your family. One aspect that I have not yet talked about is armed resistance. When combined with the strategy of evasion to keep your family safe and free, an armed resistance may restore freedom and order allowing your families to rebuild a normal life. On the other hand if your side loses, you are back to evasion. Again, you will have to decide for yourself the best course of action.

  Firearms: The subject of firearms has filled countless books on survival. I would never advise anyone to do without them. When you consider martial law, however, you must consider that if you are found in possession of one you may be executed or incarcerated. You may make the decision to turn yours in. If that would be your decision, I advise you to sell off your firearms now and use the money for other supplies. Though, without the means to protect your supplies, they will probably be taken from you anyway. Forget hiding your firearms. Your property is likely to be thoroughly searched and we have already discussed the consequences of holding contraband.

  Don’t take that as advice for eliminating your firearms, however. Once again, you are either all in or all out. Firing on martial assets in defense of your lives and property is a very serious consideration. You will most probably be out-manned and out-gunned. Your best bet is to get your family out of the way first, then pick and choose your targets on your terms.

  Surviving martial law is becoming a greater concern to survivalists these days. With the political and economic climates as indicators, I believe these concerns to be warranted. As protectors of your family, it is up to you to have your strategy and plan for survival in place.

  Corcceigh Green is a long-time survivalist and homesteader with a lifetime of experience living and studying survival and self-reliance in various environments, including desert and semi-arid sage land, temperate western coniferous forest, the Pacific Northwest rain forest and eastern deciduous forest environments. His survival and self-reliance writing has been featured in such publications as: Backwoods Home Magazine, American Survival Guide, The Independent American, and The Dystonaut.

  Collapse Communications Part One

  by Craig Green

  In this state of the art technological era, the tethers of modern communications permeate our lives and interactions. Instant requests and retrieval of critical information as well as interactive voice/data communications is taken for granted practically anywhere we go in our modern, urban and in quite a few rural areas. How dependent we have grown on these resources and what do we do when they become unreliable and/or non-existent?

  Like other survival resources, communications capabilities are invaluable, and must be placed as a priority in societal collapse preparations, as social mores and duress for life’s necessities become focused among a large population. This is a complex discipline and a single article does not suffice to even begin an effective discussion, so this will be the first part of a multiple series of articles.

  It is my belief that collapse communications must start with a data diet. Instead of streaming megabytes and gigabytes of information-rich multimedia content, we must leverage the most from simple voice and signaling - in the thousands of bytes a second - for practical implementations. Voice and slow data radio nets, along with wired field phone systems in some locations become the new media of discourse. For those who have military, law enforcement, or amateur radio net discipline in radio communications it rapidly becomes second nature to shift into effective communications at lower bandwidths. For others it may require additional practice and training to maximize the usage of legacy voice radio, slow data, and open channels where adversaries contending for resources may be monitoring for targets of opportunity. Part one is going to focus on general communications disciplines and concepts and later articles will delve into practical implementations of a more technical nature.

  Let us begin with some definitions of communications’ spheres of influence and involvement. Communications circuits may be viewed as having three basic areas of influence:

  Perimeter and “local area” – up to tens of miles from a specific homestead or location

  Regional – hundreds of miles around a specific homestead or location

  Strategic – trans-continental and worldwide communications

  Additionally, we should consider the three spheres of involvement our communications will create:

  Secure and compartmented communications within a community of survivors

  Shared communications with local groups/communities for information, barter/exchange, etc.

  Altruistic communications with any party if needed - distress, broadcast for help, etc.

  Before any communications are made, we should carefully ascertain where within the sphere of influence and involvement and take due diligence to discipline what we transmit within our own group or to outside entities. As an unfortunate consequence of human nature, there will be those individuals and groups with less than exemplary intentions towards those who are making a stand in surviving. I am not talking about mutually beneficial arrangements, I am talking about adversaries. Communications discipline is essential to protect persons and resources in a time of societal collapse and the disintegration of social inhibitions toward others’ resources.

  As part of preparations for communications it is essential to organize a communications unit that will have the responsibility of creating a plan for operations of communications resources, as well as the procurement of technical assets. Additionally, this person should provide training in the operation as well as a radio discipline or Signal Operating Instructions (SOI) for the group to maintain cohesively. Signal Operating Instructions are usually comprised of:

  Frequencies util
ized by units

  Call signs of communications’ elements

  Guard channels to monitor by time and location

  Authentication mechanisms

  Implied duress signals – code word used to indicate capture or duress

  Aural brevity codes to shorten transmissions and/or obscure meaning if necessary

  Net discipline with a net control during times of elevated danger

  All individuals in a community should have discipline in the basic SOI and communication equipment to provide operational flexibility and security for all.

  While all of this sounds onerous and complicated, by leveraging a few simple concepts, a basic SOI can be memorized and changed tactically as circumstances warrant. Here is a basic idea of one of the ways you can use the above SOI bullet points in a simple and effective manner:

  1. Frequencies programmed into channelized radios may use memory numbers to reference the channel, and these may be changed periodically by front panel programming (FPP radios)

  2. Call signs should be short and use simple ICAO phonetics, numbers, or common names (i.e., Tango 7, Mike 3, Gold 2). These can be changed daily at a briefing.

  3. Authentication mechanisms should be used sparingly, and printed tables can be compromised by capture, so simple challenge responses are usually sufficient. Non associated pairs of words work the best, use a pair of phonetics and change them daily.

  4. Have a reserved duress word that is not used in any communications except for a compromised event or situation. This can be the name of a non-existent individual or a duress call sign when communicating.

  5. Use generic terms for those going to a known location like “destination” or “camp” for prearranged objectives.

  6. Use a shared secret when needed to test a situation where duress or identity is in question. This is great to use when a wrong response to a known shared secret is used to indicate duress. It will likely be unknown to the adversary that a duress signal has been exchanged.

  7. I will get into this in more detail in the next segment, but be sure to use frequency agility in currently available transceivers, especially multi-band units where you can have a conversation in two different frequency ranges. Net Control can call on UHF, other units respond on a VHF channel, etc. Conversations can move every exchange to a new channel if basic communications security is needed in specific circumstances. By combining cross band and manual frequency hopping, it makes it difficult to intercept short exchanges to folks with simple scanners, if that need exists.

  I think you are getting the basic mindset here that should be present in a societal collapse situation. Short basic communications with communications security and discipline permeated in the operators.

  The next segment will focus on a couple of technologies that get the best price/performance ratio for communications units. More on that next issue…

  In Omni Paratus,

  -Craig

  Survival Gold & Silver

  Is It Practical for You?

  by Jim Richter

  You can’t eat it, shoot it, or have romantic relations with it, so why bother to stockpile gold and/or silver? First of all, it should be noted that these metals generally enjoy wide acceptance as a store of value, meaning no one deliberately throws their gold away. Gold is valuable because it is perceived as having value, while silver has many commercial uses. Suppose an economic collapse or other disaster occurs. During these disruptive events, supplies of every commodity may be interrupted, or even halted completely--including food. For most of us, we prepare by stockpiling some food, but how long can this supply last? No one knows, really, and we should be prepared to barter for supplies. Small silver coins can be used to buy minor items, and more valuable gold coins can be used to make large purchases. I suggest other commodities (ammunition, for example) be kept for barter as well.

  There is risk involved in having a supply of metals, and this risk is being robbed. Whether it’s by government or criminals, you could lose your stash to someone else. Protecting it is a responsibility you must plan for, just as you have planned to protect the other things of value you store. I recommend all the usual ways: a big safe, having firearms, and KEEPING YOUR MOUTH SHUT. If you feel the need, metals are easily buried as well.

  Having metals isn’t something you want to rely upon exclusively, however, it is useful to remember that metals can be a part of abiding by the rule of 3s --that is to say, having redundancy when it comes to survival stockpiling.

  What follows here is a Question and Answer session on metals that I had recently with a friend. I consider him to be a skeptic on metals, and challenged him to come up with some questions about metals in order to give a rounded point (and counterpoint) of view for your benefit.

  Q: How do you get change for one ounce gold coins if there isn’t enough change on hand?

  A: Let’s say that you are at a convenience store and all you have is a $100 bill, which the cashier says she doesn’t have change for. What people do these days is to go to their bank and bust that C-note into smaller bills. Instead of going to a bank to bust a Krugerrand, you’d instead find a broker of metals. Right now it seems as though brokers are few and far between, and that’s because most people are into paper money and the banks which broker bank notes are everywhere. But during times when banks start shutting down and paper currency is generally sneered at, those bankers will probably be going into metals brokering.

  Q: If you only have one-ounce gold coins, how do you get change for smaller purchases?

  A: Many survival minded folks are well aware that they may have to barter for their wants and needs. Gold and silver coins are universally accepted as medium of exchange, and have been for thousands of years. To make change for that coin you’re using to get that bicycle tire you’re bargaining for, you might want to have your “shopping list” handy to take in trade other things for that coin of yours. Need cartridges? Fuel for vehicles? Need an item so scarce that it hasn’t been seen in months? When you’ve got the gold, you have purchasing power to bring out the goods and you should think in those terms.

  What I would do if I was stuck only with gold one-ounce coins and needed to make small value purchases is look to barter for bags of what’s called “junk silver”, which in the USA means silver coins minted before 1965 in denominations of 10-50 cents. Billions of those coins are still around, even if you don’t see them in circulation these days. Brokers are common sources for this kind of coinage. So-called “war nickels” (1943-1945) were also made of silver and are still found in change. Usually people don’t think of them as silver, so they are less useful for barter. It also takes $1.20 worth of nickels to make one ounce of silver. Gold coins are also minted in one-tenth ounce, quarter ounce and half ounce coins as well, so it should be possible to exchange larger gold coins for smaller gold coins.

  Q: I’ve heard that China is exporting excellent fake “silver collector’s” coins to the USA. How do you tell real gold/silver from fake?

  A: First of all, unless you’re a knowledgeable numismatist, don’t buy from the guy on the street corner - only from reliable dealers. Also, don’t buy the most commonly faked coins. How else do you protect yourself from such frauds? I would perform a test that brokers use, and that is; the specific gravity test.

  Purchase a catalog of the world’s coins, making sure that the catalog has weight, purity, alloyed metal(s) and physical dimensions data on the silver and gold coins. Measure accurately the volume and weight of the coin in question. You will need to mathematically determine what the coin’s specific gravity should be and then test for what it actually is. Counterfeiters can only match these specs for expensive numismatic coins because it requires so much effort to duplicate, making it not worth the trouble for coins used for bullion. Some counterfeiters of high quality coins can get close, perhaps within 10% of the genuine coin, but the real thing is within 1%. Almost all counterfeits can be beaten this way.

  Testing by appearance is also a c
onvenient tool to spot fake coins. A few ways to do this is to simply examine the coin closely for edges being properly minted either reeded or smooth with lettering. Have real coins and be familiar with their appearance, both worn and new. Look for an odd sheen, or color to the coin. Compare the actual coin dimensions with specs (should be within 1%), and give those suspected coins a “ring test” - fakes made of other metals will not ring like the real thing. A good article on testing/spotting fake gold and silver coins can be found here for more details: http://www.goldstocknews.com/articles/2009/0409-Coins.html

  For suspected high-quality fakes, have the fellow who is tendering the coin go with you to a broker who can conduct non-destructive testing for a reasonable fee. Offer to pay for the test if the coin in question turns out to be genuine. If the seller balks, walk away.

  Q: Gold is too expensive. Are there any other metal coins worth buying?

  A: Yes. You can get 140 pre-1983 95% copper Lincoln pennies for $1.40 at this time. There are approximately 140 pre-1983 pennies per pound of copper. Copper is trading at about $4.20 per pound, making each penny worth about 3 cents. I sift those pennies out of the change I get in the course of a day and save them, knowing that bad money (the post-1982 pennies) is chasing out the good money (pre-1983 pennies) just like what happened with silver coins in the 1960s and early 1970s. Nickels are in the same boat as well, the metal is worth more than the face value.

  Q: How much mark up is fair to pay to purchase metals, and how much loss is acceptable when selling?

  A: When dealing with brokers, I go no more than 3% above spot when buying bullion, and no more than 3% down when selling. Demand lower premiums when buying in large quantities.