Here’s a video from Survival Doc with some common sense advice about what you don’t want to wear in a SHTF, societal collapse situation when martial law comes to town. I have always been a proponent of becoming a “grey man” when all hell breaks loose. What is a grey man? It’s someone who doesn’t get noticed. Someone who doesn’t stand out. Someone who doesn’t look like a “troublemaker”. In other words… Ditch the cammo, tactical gear and your NRA hat…

I guess that also means I should stow my own favorite hat out of sight (pictured right).

I would even take it one step further and develop some “costumes” for various situations. For example; some E&E (escape and evasion) experts recommend adopting a ragged appearance like a homeless person or refugee. This is what they call “The Untouchable”. The logic being that if you look dirty or unsavory, most people won’t want to approach you or spend too much time even looking at you, allowing you to slip away unnoticed. 

Other times, they suggest dressing as a person of some authority, or at least a person who has a reason to be there. For example; A CERT team member once suggested that donning a hard hat and reflective vest may allow you to slip easily in and out of a disaster area without much notice. Of course if you’re in a disaster and people need help, you should help. But if they’re rounding folks up and carting them off to a FEMA camp, you’re gonna want to get the hell outta Dodge.

Can you smell the police state coming? Just when I think the attack on our rights and privacy couldn’t get any worse, another entirely unbelievable threat shows up on the horizon. The House and Senate have recently voted for the passage of a bill (H.R. 658) that will allow the use of surveillance drones to spy on American citizens. But hold on… it gets worse. In addition to surveillance cameras, these drones will reportedly be equipped with shotgun tasers, so they can shoot and disable you right where you stand before you even know what’s coming!

Since unmanned drones have already been proven so effective in the summary executions of American citizens who were suspected of having connections to crimes of terror (one of whom was a teenager), and since all American citizens are now considered “guilty until proven innocent” under NDAA, what’s to stop them from arming drones with rockets or machine guns? 

Rep. Ron Paul: 

“If the American people accept this blindly and casually, that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys. I think it’s sad,” Paul told reporters after a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire. 

“Al-Awlaki was born here, he’s an American citizen, he was never tried or charged for any crimes,” Paul said. “To start assassinating American citizens without charges – we should think very seriously about this.” 

It might be easy to dismiss the concern of flying drones tasing or gunning down Americans in the streets as paranoid, knee-jerk alarmism, but it’s hard to tell what is these days. If someone had warned me about the Patriot Act or NDAA back in 2000, I would have thought those things could never happen in America either. And even if these drones are to be unarmed (which, I frankly doubt), just the fact that another layer is being added to the Big-Brother surveillance grid should be enough to cause great concern. 

American Civil Liberties Union: 

“Unfortunately, nothing in the bill would address the very serious privacy issues raised by drone aircraft. This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.”

And let us not forget general safety considerations. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has strict restrictions against domestic deployment of unmanned drones in U.S. air space for a good reason – the safety risk that comes with filling the sky with flying robots!

In case you don’t know, they tend to crash a lot more frequently than commercial aircraft.

Here’s the details about what the bill would do: 

• Require the FAA to simplify and speed up the process by which it issues permission to government agencies to operate drones. It must do this within 90 days. The FAA has already been working on a set of proposed regulations to loosen the rules around drones, reportedly set for release in the spring of 2012.
• Require the FAA to allow “a government public safety agency” to operate any drone weighing 4.4 pounds or less as long as certain conditions are met (within line of sight, during the day, below 400 feet in altitude, and only in safe categories of airspace).
• Require the FAA to establish a pilot project within six months to create six test zones for integrating drones “into the national airspace system.”
• Require the FAA to create a comprehensive plan “to safely accelerate the integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system.” “Civil” drones means those operated by the private sector; currently it is all but impossible for any non-government entity, except for hobbyists, to get permission to fly drones (for-profit use of drones is banned). Industry groups and their congressional supporters see this as a potential area for growth. Congress specifies that the plan must provide for the integration of drones into the national airspace system “as soon as practicable, but not later than September 30, 2015.” The FAA has nine months to create the plan. The FAA is also required to create a “5-year roadmap for the introduction” of civil drones into the national airspace.
• Require the FAA to publish a final rule within 18 months after the comprehensive plan is submitted, “that will allow” civil operation of small (under 55 pounds) drones in the national airspace, and a proposed rule for carrying out the comprehensive plan.

Here’s a list of the Senators who voted for this bill. See if your state’s legislators think the government should be allowed to spy on you from the sky. 

From www.Senate.gov 

Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
Max Baucus (D-MT)
Mark Begich (D-AK)
Michael Bennet (D-CO)
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
Roy Blunt (R-MO)
John Boozman (R-AR)
Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Scott Brown (R-MA)
Richard Burr (R-NC)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Tom Carper (D-DE)
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
Dan Coats (R-IN)
Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Thad Cochran (R-MS)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Chris Coons (D-DE)
Bob Corker (R-TN)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Mike Enzi (R-WY)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Charles Grassley (R-IA)
Kay Hagan (D-NC)
Dean Heller (R-NV)
John Hoeven (R-ND)
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)
Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
Dan Inouye (D-HI)
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Mike Johanns (R-NE)
Tim Johnson (D-SD)
Ron Johnson (R-WI)
John Kerry (D-MA)
Herbert Kohl (D-WI)
Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Joe Lieberman (ID-CT)
Dick Lugar (R-IN)
Joe Manchin (D-WV)
John McCain (R-AZ)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Jerry Moran (R-KS)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Patty Murray (D-WA)
Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Rob Portman (R-OH)
Mark Pryor (D-AR)
John Reed (D-RI)
Harry Reid (D-NV)
Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Richard Shelby (R-AL)
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
Jon Tester (D-MT)
John Thune (R-SD)
Pat Toomey (R-PA)
Mark Udall (D-CO)
Tom Udall (D-NM)
Mark Warner (D-VA)
Jim Webb (D-VA)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Roger Wicker (R-MS)
Ron Wyden (D-OR)

To read more, go to: http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/report-protecting-privacy-aerial-surveillance-recommendations-government-use 

http://pprnnews.prepperpodcast.com/bill-clears-path-for-30000-surveillance-drones-over-us-in-next-ten-years/#axzz1mTO4QrKI

The Stasi DHS regime continues to target preppers and people who purchase survival supplies. To date, the FBI and the Dept. of Justice have produced 25 fliers aimed at, and distributed to various industries to promote the reporting of “suspicious activity”. From gun dealers and military surplus stores, to hobby and coffee shops (did you know that paying for your latte with cash means you might be a terrorist?).

The federal government is going completely overboard and is now encouraging the public to report fellow Americans for engaging in the most routine, mundane behavior. 

For example; every day we’re warned to protect ourselves against identity theft, but according to these fliers, if you actually take steps to protect your identity by refusing to give out any unnecessary personal information, they label you a terrorist. (on almost all of these government fliers, one of the behaviors they warn to watch out for is: “demanding identity privacy”).

These days, it seems like more and more stores want to get your name, email address, physical address and phone number every time you make a purchase. Well, forgive me, but when I buy something at a store and they start asking for that information, I always politely say: “I’d rather not”. Not because I think they’re trying to steal my identity, but partly because I don’t need to help them send me more junk mail (electronic or otherwise) and mostly because IT’S NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS!

If I don’t want Sears or Radio Shack knowing where I live, that’s my prerogative as a FREE AMERICAN. It doesn’t mean I have something to hide and it certainly doesn’t make me terrorist.

Now they’re focusing on stores that sell bulk foods. Advising these businesses to demand that their customers show ID and report those who pay with cash, buy MREs, or make “unusually large” purchases…

Whatever that means.

I mean, really, who buys small quantities at a bulk food store? Isn’t buying large quantities the whole point? 

That’s like the flier that was distributed to hobby shops, warning to watch out for people who show an “unusual” amount of interest in radio-controlled airplanes. Then, further down the list, they claim that showing no interest in the hobby is also a sign of suspicious behavior. 

So for the love of Pete, if you’re all jazzed about RC airplanes, try to contain your enthusiasm! But if you couldn’t care less, you should at least try to feign a little interest. 

Oh, wait a minute, I almost forgot… The flier also lists: “Demonstrating interest that does not seem genuine” as suspicious too… 

Ok…  Better just to stay away from RC airplanes altogether…

I think model trains are still a “safe” hobby… That is, until Homeland Security gets to thinking that someone might use a Lionel H-Scale to deliver an H-bomb. Maybe they should have added: “Buying an excessive amount of model train track” to their list of questionable activities. 

However…. I digress. 

While it may be entertaining to point out the asinine nature of some of these warnings, it’s also deeply troubling that we are being told to spy and drop a dime on our neighbors. I was going to go off on a tirade about all the legitimate reasons that people have for storing food, or the fact that I can’t think of a single reason why it would even come close to qualifying as “suspicious terrorist behavior”.  Not to mention what an utter contradiction it is that the Dept. of Homeland Security labels it as such, considering that both FEMA and DHS have actually encouraged Americans to store food for emergencies in the past. But I don’t think y’all need to have that spelled out for you. 

What apparently does need to be spelled out for some people is how infuriatingly repugnant this is to a free society, and what an insidious danger this represents. 

To quote that old axiom: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. So if you’re among those who think: “As long as you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about”, let me remind you that back in the ’30s, a lot of folks in Germany said the same thing when they were told to spy on their neighbors… 

Until they got hauled off on a train, that is. 

And if you’re thinking: “That could never happen in America!”, I know some Japanese-Americans who would beg to correct you. 

You know, my grandparents canned and stored “large quantities” of food too… I wonder if ol’ Grandma and Grandpa were secret Islamic terrorists? Elderly Al-Qaeda? Geriatric Jihadists? 

Or maybe…  Just maybe, they were simply PRUDENT, SENSIBLE AMERICANS. 

Click here to view all 25 “Suspicious Activity” fliers.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it a little odd that Congress approved an additional $24M in funding to expand the TSA’s “VIPR” program, which operates checkpoints on highways, bus and train stations, sporting events and even at high school proms (!), right before NDAA was signed?

Congress is set to give the green light on funding for a massive expansion of TSA checkpoints, with the federal agency already responsible for over 9,000 such checkpoints in the last year amidst increased fears America is turning into a police state following the passage of the ‘indefinite detention’ bill.

Is it just a coincidence that FEMA is now seeking contractors to staff and supply even more of their “emergency camps” located all over the country?

Am I the only one who finds it disturbing that Special Ops forces have been conducting drills an maneuvers in Los Angeles, Miami and Boston over the last couple of days, using sports arenas as staging areas

This is becoming painfully clear due to the fact that the military trains for what they think they’re going to do.

If they are planning to fight in the desert, they would train in the desert and obviously if they are going to be fighting in a metropolitan setting in the United States, they would train in an American city.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what we are witnessing: increasing amount of training in urban American environments.

And now, reports are surfacing that the Military is training for martial law and urban warfare scenarios in a mock American city, roughly the size of downtown San Diego, outside of the Twenty nine Palms military base.

Call me paranoid, but none of this gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. I may be nuts, but I don’t feel even one bit safer. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

It’s becoming abundantly clear that the roll-out of all these “enhanced” security measures and military drills have nothing at all to do with protecting us from terrorists. The government continues to dump more and more money into these programs despite the fact that not one, NOT ONE terrorist threat has ever been foiled or even identified (unless you count the ones perpetrated by the FBI!). This has more to do with conditioning U.S. citizens to accept having their rights and civil liberties violated.

To those who think that all this effort and expense is being expended in the name of protecting you from the invisible hand of terrorism; you need to WAKE UP!  The government is not destroying the very things that make this country free because they’re afraid that a bunch of barefoot, cave-dwelling zealots might topple the strongest nation on Earth.

I just hope that enough of our servicemen and law enforcement officers remember that they took an oath, not to their commanding officers, or to Congress, or the president, but to the Constitution of the United States and the citizens who’s rights it protects.

Read More:

With all of the pieces in place, when will the hammer drop?

Why does the military seem to be preparing for urban warfare in the United States?

Militarized Drills Continue: Stadiums Prepped To Be Used As Martial Law Staging Centers

I’ve been getting the sense that there has been a steady increase in the number of people getting involved in preparedness and survivalism over the last couple of years, but so far, that has just been based on personal observation and dead reckoning. There is now a growing number of economic indicators over the past few months that show Americans are joining in the prepper movement as concerns over a global economic collapse increase.

Besides the catastrophe that has been developing in the EU, with the failures of economies in Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland over their massive debt issues, a new agreement yesterday between India and Iran over the trade of gold for oil (instead of U.S. dollars) is causing even greater concerns. Already last year, China and Russia agreed to stop using the dollar for trade between those two countries, starting a new paradigm shift away from the dollar as the global medium of exchange. As these agreements increase, the chances of a dollar collapse, or outright rejection of US control over the reserve currency also increases.

The FBI has reported a record number of background checks for gun purchases over the Christmas season and sales of survival and disaster preparedness gear were top items bought by Americans during the holidays. Also, as I posted last Friday, economist and trends forecaster Gerald Celente listed economic martial law by the government as the number one concern on his list of trends for 2012.

People living in rural areas who are more self-sufficient tend to be more aware of the need for long-term preparedness than those living in cities and urban environments. Self-Reliance has been replaced by reliance on the government in America. A new report that came out yesterday shows that 15% of the U.S. GDP is now being spent on welfare programs to almost 50% of the American people!

The single most disturbing statistic: in 2011 nearly half of the population lived in a household that receives some form of government benefit, which in turn accounted for 65% of total federal spending, or $2.5 trillion, and amount to 15% of GDP.

                                                                                                                                                                                       -Zerohedge

And that’s just the way the oligarchy wants it.  People who are dependent on the gov’t for their day to day survival are easier to control and manipulate and they’re much less likely to see the dangers of a collapse.  While those who are self-reliant and don’t need gov’t handouts are much more aware of the sobering realities of the world around them and much more prepared to survive.

“Unfortunately, given the increasing complexity and fragility of our modern technological society, the chances of a societal collapse are increasing year after year,” said author James Wesley Rawles, whose Survival Blog is considered the guiding light of the prepper movement.

“We could see a cascade of higher interest rates, margin calls, stock market collapses, bank runs, currency revaluations, mass street protests, and riots,” he told Reuters. “The worst-case end result would be a Third World War, mass inflation, currency collapses, and long term power grid failures.”

                                                                                                                                                                                      – Reuters

Natural disasters, economic crisis and war can occur at any time, and are no longer limited to just a few regions around the world. The uprisings we saw in the Arab world last year showed us that governments can be toppled in just weeks or days. Our world is on the cusp of a global economic meltdown, or a new economic paradigm shift, and those who live a self-reliant life stand a much better chance of survival, and they are being joined by a growing number of preppers for any number of reasons.

There’s a lot of talk about all the things that you should do in an emergency if there’s a disaster or crisis of some kind, but knowing all the right things to do will do you no good if you can’t think straight, or worse… If you panic.

Fear, stress, adrenaline and other natural responses to an emergency situation can make it impossible to remember and execute the things that you’ve spent so much time learning and practicing. I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves in a situations where our minds just went completely blank under duress and we became unable to perform tasks that we had rehearsed and prepared for. It may have been an important test, a job interview, speaking in public or even just simple anxiety in a social situation.

When this happens, it can be embarrassing and awkward, but in a disaster situation, it can be downright deadly. Even if you don’t become paralyzed with fear or suffer a full-blown panic attack, anxiety can cloud your judgment, impair your motor skills and make you indecisive when crucial decisions need to be made.

Emergencies may be complete disarray. However ready you are, it will always be a shock and many people lose their composure, clouding their thinking and impacting their capacity to take responsible, considered actions. When it comes to crisis survival, it’s just as crucial that you be mentally and emotionally ready as it is to have all the suitable materials.

We all like to think we’d keep our cool in an emergency, but our brains are hard-wired with what’s called the “fight-or-flight response”. This is an autonomic response brought about by a sudden release of chemicals in the brain that get triggered when we’re suddenly presented with a life-threatening situation. It’s basically a biological self-preservation mechanism that we (and every other animal, I reckon) have had since the early primordial days, and can be very difficult to overcome.

Everybody experiences the fight-or-flight response to one degree or another, but some people seem to be able to manage it better than others. While there’s really no way to rehearse for an unknown emergency, there are ways to prepare your mind, so you don’t lose your composure when TSHF.

I have learned several techniques over the years to counteract anxiety and remain calm and lucid in a stressful or dangerous situation, but the most immediate method I know of to counteract anxiety is to control your breathing. When we are fearful or anxious, our breathing tends to get fast and shallow – which can lead to hyperventilation. The most helpful thing you can do to keep your composure is to be conscious of your breathing. Take a long, deep breath in through your nose – hold it for a second – and exhale slowly through your mouth. Keep repeating this breathing pattern and you will eventually feel your heart rate go down and you’ll feel more clear-headed due to the increased flow of oxygen to the brain.

Other techniques, such as daily meditation can have a very positive influence on how you handle a crisis. Of course, I’m not suggesting that you start meditating when there’s chaos going on all around you, but regular, daily meditation has the long-term benefit of enabling you to have greater control over your mental and emotional state.

Without going into a full dissertation about brain waves and the various levels at which our brains function; suffice it to say that eventually you will learn how to enter these states at will when stress or anxieties strike, and you’ll be more capable of clear thought and decisive action.

And when you’re in a dangerous situation, you want to act, not react.

Here’s a brief checklist of things to do to keep your head and do the right thing in an emergency survival situation.

Never mind the Mayan calendar.  There are plenty of other real and demonstrable issues that are building to a “perfect storm” that threaten our infrastructure, society and general survival, that don’t require speculation or “belief” in invisible planets, lizard people, judgment day or the end of the 13th baktun.

That’s not to say I’ve ruled any of that out (well… except for the Mayan calendar. But that’s a topic for another article). Anything’s possible until unquestionably proven or disproven, but if I wasted my time and energy worrying about what may, or may not happen, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I may get hit by a bus the next time I go into town, or I may slip in the shower and break my crazy neck, but I’m not about to let that cripple me with fear and apprehension.

What I’m more concerned about are the trends and forces that have been building visible and quantifiable momentum over recent years (to those of us who are “awake”, that is), pushing us closer and closer to collapse on numerous fronts – or a “confluence of crises”, as some have called it.

When you consider problems such as the growing U.S. and Global economic crisis, the incremental destruction of our Constitutional rights and liberties, our unsustainable energy infrastructure, the world-wide dwindling of food production capabilities, the depletion of fresh water reserves, the increase of natural disasters (yes, climate change is happening… but it’s not all about carbon emissions) and the United States’ ever-expanding imperialist agenda of invasion and occupation – coupled with increasing socio-political unrest throughout the Middle East… You don’t need to make up more fantastic and implausible reasons to be prepared (and these are but a few examples).

In recent years, I have been somewhat reserved about being too emphatic in my warnings about the growing dangers. Mostly because I am too well aware that if you run around hollering “doom and gloom” and warning people about TEOTWAWKI, you’re typically going to be perceived as a nut-case, and whatever you say – no matter how valid – will be either ignored or taken with a grain of salt. So I tried to nudge people a little at a time… in bits and pieces… so as not to be a complete shock to their conditioned psyche.

But time is running out for those who are still waiting to see how things will “play out” before they decide to start prepping. Things are playing out right now, and have been for some time. What we are experiencing has been described as a “collapse in slow motion”, and as such, just like the proverbial frog, many aren’t even aware that we’re slowly being boiled. Don’t wait for the regretful epiphany of hindsight to make you aware of what’s going on all around you right now!

But don’t take my word for it alone. Recently, Gerald Celente’s Trends Journal has published their Top 12 Trends for 2012. Celente is one of the few economists and trends researchers out in the media who tells it like it is. He’s not beholden to the corporate owners or the powers that be, so he doesn’t deal in BS. He has an impressive track record of dozens of accurate trends predictions going all the way back to the 1987 stock market crash and is called by many the most trusted trends forecaster in the world.

1. Economic Martial Law: Given the current economic and geopolitical conditions, the central banks and world governments already have plans in place to declare Economic Martial Law … with the possibility of military martial law to follow.

2. Battlefield America: With a stroke of the Presidential pen, language was removed from an earlier version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), granting el Presidente authority to act as judge, jury and executioner. Citizens, welcome to “Battlefield America.”

3. Invasion of the Occtupy: 15 years ago, Gerald Celente predicted in his book Trends 2000 that prolonged protests would hit Wall Street in the early years of the new millennium and would spread nationwide. The “Occtupy” is now upon us, and it is like nothing history has ever witnessed.

4. Climax Time: The financial house of cards is collapsing. In 2012, many of the long-simmering socioeconomic and geopolitical trends that Gerald Celente has been accurately forecasting will come to a climax. Some will arrive with a big bang and others less dramatically … but no less consequentially. What’s next for the world? Are you prepared?

5. Technocrat Takeover: “Democracy is Dead; Long Live the Technocrat!” A pair of financial coup d’états in Greece and Italy have installed two unelected figures as head of state. No one yet in the mainstream media is calling this merger of state and corporate powers by its proper name: Fascism, nor are they calling these “technocrats” by their proper name: Bankers! Can a rudderless ship be saved because a technocrat is at the helm?

6. Repatriate! Repatriate!: It took a small, but financially and politically powerful group to sell the world on globalization, and it will take a large, committed and coordinated citizens’ movement to “un-sell” it. The “Repatriate! Repatriate!” trend will pit the creative instincts of a multitude of individuals against the repressive monopoly of the multinationals. 

CLICK HERE to read the entire list.