It all feels so strange – I live, eat, and breathe “prepping.”  Sometimes I look in the mirror and ask “who are you?!”  In trying to remember when the change in me began, it is traceable back to the financial collapse of 2008.  Even before then, I had become very concerned about privacy – or the lack thereof.  In my professional life, I am a security and privacy consultant, so I know a lot about how little security and privacy exists in our networked world.  I understand in minute detail how online access to the most sensitive and confidential information has led to record breaking hacking incidents and identity theft.  The massive amounts of information about each individual that has been compiled into databases by various entities are the target of extremely organized “information criminals” and readily available to the U.S. government.  Because of my job, I am often one of the first to hear about a serious hacking event and be a part of the incident response team that performs a root cause analysis – how “they” (the criminals) did it.  In most cases, there was nothing sophisticated about it – human error allowed the vulnerability, subsequently exploited by criminals.  I can be found shaking my head over and over about the stupidity of it all at any given moment during a work week.  What I know to be true, from real life experience and my professional career – there is truly no such thing as privacy and security in the online world.  As a career technologist, I see that technology has created more problems for us than good done for us – think: Tower of Babel.

The anxiety about the lack of privacy and security in the online world morphed into anxiety about what was happening in the physical world.  I watched with dismay as our retirement plans started to devalue at a frightening pace, along with the value of our property.  I became increasingly anxious about our ability to survive comfortably – in the manner to which we were accustomed.  As the economy stumbled into a numb, sickening, downward spiral and we watched most of our wealth seemingly disappear overnight, I turned with a genuine concern towards my husband who seemed to act as if nothing really was affecting him – not in the way it was affecting me.  I thought that maybe I was over reacting to the horror of what was unfolding.  Ah, but no, he was internalizing the stress – laughing outwardly.  The stroke that debilitated a large part of his brain and many physical capabilities told the true story.  I remember thinking, “game over man”.  We were more fortunate than many.  My friend’s husband also had a stroke a few months later, but he died instantly.  I’m not sure which is worse considering what is to come, but I am grateful that I still have my husband with me.  It was six months before he could shower himself by himself and remember to take his pills.  After 2 years of speech and communication therapy, a year of physical therapy, and continued home exercises, he is almost himself again.  He still cannot drive any unfamiliar route or for more than about 15 – 20 minutes at a time.  His memory is terrible, his speech slurred when tired, and he is slow in responding sometimes, can become confused, and he must rest more than the average person must.  I manage our lives with patience and am now the sole breadwinner – I am so thankful to God that I have the ability to earn a living.  I love this guy and I am grateful that God spared him – if just for my selfish reasons.  His laugh is back, his smile is huge, and he can make fun of himself and remains the great optimist. He is active in the volunteer community and he is truly an amazing person – a survivor.

There are many true tales such as ours.  That is not the point.  The point is, the tragedy of what has happened in America has affected us all and in unexpected ways.  There is not an untouched person among us.  I realized that I must prepare for what is coming, and I must do most of the preparations relying on my own strength.  I am cognizant of the fact that SCHHTF (could have hit the fan) while we were in the middle of the initial health crisis – we were graciously granted more time to prepare.  I am hoping, really, that my story will embolden and strengthen those among us who are feeling alone in preparations or who have large burdens to carry.  It can be done.  We cannot give up.  We must not curl up into a ball and become frozen with anxiety, stressed, heartbroken, and worried.  We must march on. 
Preparing to get out of Suburbia, and convincing your family that it is the right thing to do, while accommodating a disabled person, is challenging.  It has taken a good year or two of convincing our six grown children and their spouses that prepping is critical.  This past Christmas, they all received Go Bags replete with hand crank/solar NOAA weather radios, MREs, emergency water pouches, blankets, snacks, first aid kits, flashlights, candles, water proof matches, etc.  The light bulb came on for my husband as we packed our Go Bags from boxes of supplies.  Our grown children thought I was crazy and over-reacting to their dad’s stroke, but I have successfully convinced them that the issues in the world are much bigger than our personal struggles and we should figure out how, together, to survive the coming mayhem.  I would say that 90% of my family and extended family are on board now.  (Make a mental note:  it has taken 2-3 years to get them on board).  I have successfully convinced my elderly parents to stock up on food and water supplies, and keep the gas tank full.  So, everyone is emotionally onboard – what next?  Action.  Action.  Action.

The last six months I have devoted every spare moment to finding a piece of property to relocate to – one that would accommodate the 16 of us (including parents, children, spouses, grandchildren).  I have no need to include my siblings because they have prepped for their families independently with properties in Washington and Idaho.  Our home is in Nevada by virtue of necessity.  Now, imagine a lone woman – born and bred in Suburbia; trying by herself to find property with a well, septic, and water source; far enough out of town to be somewhat difficult to reach, but close enough to be near a  major medical facility; not in the “line of drift” from the “golden hordes” of California; not too difficult to access, but not easy either, and “handicap accessible”.  Doesn’t this sound so overwhelming?  It is.  I am not deterred and I found a spot that meets our requirements.  To some preppers, finding a spot 20-30 minutes outside of town is not good enough.  To some, cocooning in place is the only option.  For us, we found a compromise that will at least provide us with the opportunity to develop a sustainable lifestyle that is not dependent on the modern necessities (or should we say ‘niceties’).
In our case, I had to find a piece of property that was in fairly good condition because my husband is disabled and I work full time (from home).  I finally found a little piece of sustainability in a well-developed acre with a good sized home, fenced, with a deep and highly functioning well, solar panels for water heat, propane, and septic.  I realize this well maintained property will need more than me to manage it, but I’ve called in the troops (my family and friends) and with the aid of some hired help, I believe we can accomplish what we must.  My first concern was to get out of town.  My second concern was to provide for off the grid living if necessary (solar, generator, propane).  I have been stocking up on food and water for a year, and started a large garden inside our suburban home from heirloom seeds that are now soaking up the sun in portable containers in the backyard – just waiting to be transplanted into their new home.  The property has several out buildings, one of which will be converted to a chicken coop with very little effort, one will be used for tools, and the spare garage will house the generator and supplies.  Fortunately, our good friends own a tractor with all the attachments and live close by.  Moving near friends into a like-minded community was a major criterion for the mission.  The acre, already fenced with well laid out corrals and sections that will each have a specific purpose (pigs, goats, fruit trees, vegetable garden, chickens, and rabbits). 
Inside the home, which is a daylight basement home, the upper floor is the entrance floor and fully handicap accessible.  The downstairs or basement, is beautifully finished and could conceivably provide sleeping space for up to 8-10 people (the upstairs can provide sleeping space for up to 6 people).  The property boasts 3.5 baths – critical with potentially 16 people coming to visit.  From the upstairs kitchen and deck, we have a view of the entire valley that leads back into town – should trouble come our way we will see it coming.  However, our home is not visible from the lower roads, backs up to empty BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land (read – desert), and won’t stick out.  The valley has a large number of one and two acre properties consisting of fairly independent, tough minded, country folk.  Most properties have horses, chickens, cows, llamas, goats, etc.  I can bet a silver dollar, it is an armed community.  The county sheriff has chosen it for his own residence.
We are packing now and will move in a few weeks to our new little spot.  Trust me, I realize what cleaning out a chicken coop looks like.  I will liken it to all those diapers I changed and washed when my kids were little.  I’ve already arranged to trade eggs from my coop for horse manure (for the garden) with some friends.  I’ve studied, researched, prepared, asked for help, and now its implementation time.  There are enough people out of work here in one of the highest unemployment states in the country, that finding help is not going to be the problem.  To me, this is like a highly complex Information Technology implementation.  You do your homework, you create the plan, you implement, with checkpoints along the way, using an iterative quality assurance cycle.  I have a sense of exhilaration, but understand the reality in front of me – this is not going to be easy. 
Lessons learned:

1.  The realtor – I can’t tell you how many times I had to repeat the criteria for the property we sought – an acre +, a well, septic, propane, 20-30 minutes out of town, well maintained, minimum of 1800 sq. ft., no HOA, handicap accessible, primarily paved road access, fairly flat land (we have enough snow during the winter to make a dirt, windy, hilly road unnavigable.  Getting the realtor on board was tough.  I did most of the research myself using Zillow, an MLS search, search of county property tax records for additional details, called the local well driller to get specifics on certain properties, etc.
2. Prioritize the “List of Lists” (totally overwhelming at first glance, but was able to understand the scope of types of things that would be needed in the major categories – prioritized and am working through the list).
3. Research – propane suppliers, propane rent vs. own, propane vs. oil heating, pellet stoves vs. fireplaces, well depth, water quality, water filtering systems, laws governing wells, zoning laws, growing vegetables and other plants in a high desert climate, generator types, solar power, battery capacity, site stick built homes vs. manufactured or modular homes, how to raise chickens for eggs and meat, firearms and ammunitions, ham radio operator license, herbal remedies and natural medicines, etc.
4. Get Educated – books I read (fiction and non-fiction):
1. Trump University Asset Protection 101 – learned to restructure business for asset protection.
2. How to Be Invisible: The Essential Guide to Protecting Your Personal Privacy, Your Assets, and Your Life – learned how to protect assets by titling them in an LLC, how to live under the radar and keep a lower profile.
3. How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times;
4. SurvivalBlog.com complete Archive CD-ROM
5. Mini Farming;
6. The TEOTWAWKI Tuxedo: Formal Survival Attire;
7. Holding Your Ground: Preparing for Defense if it all Falls Apart;
8. Without Rule of Law: Advanced Skills to Help You Survive;
9. Atlas Shrugged
10. The Encyclopedia of Country Living
11. Read a variety of books concerning:
1. the economy and America’s imminent demise from a political and financial perspective;
2. privacy from the perspective of a citizen and from the perspective of law enforcement – the hunted and the hunter perspectives;
3. online businesses;
4. financial investing (gold, silver, etc.);
5. Christian prophecy concerning the end times (The Bible and other books);
6. disaster recovery and preparedness;
7. survival;
5. The right job – It took me a year to find the right job utilizing my skills in a “work from home” situation with infrequent travel.  That was a very rough year as I turned down job after job opportunity situated in the metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Boston, Washington, D.C., etc. 
6. Training – I knew nothing about guns and ammunition.  I took the first step and got in person, personal training, own one gun, and have a limited supply of ammunition.  I was afraid of the guns but I made the first step.  I plan to expand this skill this year.
7. Budgeting – if you don’t have the budget for a large purchase of freeze dried or dehydrated food storage, double your grocery budget and buy 2 of everything every time you go to the store focusing on the essential foods.  I cut other things out of the budget to enable this strategy.  Future purchases include things like a generator, not a big screen television.
8. Learn now, practice now – don’t wait for the perfect opportunity.  I learned to make a variety of cleaning supplies from Ivory soap and white vinegar, learned how to make my own laundry detergent, shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and hand soap from Ivory soap bars.  I started the heirloom seed garden on the kitchen counter.  I regularly fill and use 15-20 gallon containers of filtered water – to practice the inconvenient art of water storage.  I bought essential oils and learned about their medicinal qualities, and created various lotions and salves.  Garden, can, bake from scratch, hand wash and hang dry… reject convenience and select inconvenience now.  It will help in adjusting to life without later.
9. Reaching others – the hardest part of this journey so far has been convincing my family that Christians are not showing a lack of faith by preparing for disaster.  I likened it to many Biblical stories where the industrious are honored. 
10. Pray – last on the list does not mean least.  The God of the Universe knows all, sees all, and has a plan.  The purpose of my preparation efforts are to protect and care for my family and friends in order to minimize suffering and to share what the Lord has in store for us.

Next Steps:  Take Action
There is no convenient way to utterly change your lifestyle from beginning to end.  It has taken me close to three years (setbacks notwithstanding) to get to the point where I understand what all has to be done and am actually doing it.  There are many, like me, who read SurvivalBlog religiously but who do nothing.  I made a commitment to myself that before the elections in the fall of 2012, I would be settled in a new environment with the potential for a sustainable lifestyle.  I may be wrong that the elections will be a tipping point in these United States, but I want to be prepared.

When I was asked to be involved in the panel discussion The Women of Prepping at the Self-Reliance Expo, I was offered an additional opportunity to give another talk, subject of my choice. I decided to give a talk entitled “Going Country: Moving Rural for Self-Reliance.”

This talk was a shortened distilled version of my ebooklet Moving to the Country offered on Selfsufficiencyseries.com for $ 2, but tweaked a little to be specifically geared toward Preppers.

I promised a number of listeners I would post the text of the talk, so here it is.
___________________________________

Going Country: Moving Rural for Self-Reliance

Good afternoon. My name is Patrice Lewis, and I homestead twenty acres in north Idaho with my family, trying to live a self-sufficient lifestyle.

I’ll be talking about moving to the country in order to become as self-reliant as possible. The focus of my talk is not about the feasibility of you leaving your urban environment – whether you can afford it, whether it’s better to stick it out in the suburbs, or all the reasons why you can’t leave your job or your friends. Instead, this talk is directed at those who have already made the decision to move rural in order to become better prepared for an uncertain future.

May I see a show of hands for those who already live a homesteading lifestyle?

Now may I see a show of hands for those who live urban or suburban, but who want to live a homesteading lifestyle?

It’s for folks like YOU that this talk is directed. I’m working on the assumption you’re interested in moving to the country in order to become as self-sufficient as possible through homesteading, rather than moving to the country just for the pretty views.

There have been endless discussions about how to bug out to a rural retreat. I’ve read stuff on the best routes out of the city when the bleep hits the fan, the types of transportation, what you should put in your bug-out bags, and how you should stock your rural retreat.

I’ve read much, much less on what the heck you do once you GET to your rural retreat. Not much is written about the long-term sustainability of your bug-out. In short, for long-term societal interruptions, you don’t just need a rural bug-out; you need a homestead.

A homestead is not just a place in the country, it’s a place where you can potentially grow a huge garden, raise fruit trees, acquire livestock, defend against two- and four-legged marauders, and otherwise survive indefinitely.

A Brief History
As a brief history, my husband and I left urban Sacramento back in 1992, shortly after we were married. We didn’t know exactly what we wanted to do, but we did know that the city wasn’t where we wanted to be. We didn’t want to spend the rest of our lives listening to traffic and sirens and fighting neighbors, getting tied up on highways and buying all our food from grocery stores.

Above all, we didn’t want to be the type of couple who would be married for fifty years, only to look at each other on our golden anniversary and say, “If only.” If only we’d moved to the country. If only we’d raised our futures kids on a farm.

At the time, we were both working professionals and between us we made about $ 70,000/year – a very respectable sum for a young childless couple in the early 90’s. We were able to pay off our student loans and car payments without much effort, as well as save up a nest egg of about $ 5000. In short, we were sitting pretty financially.

What I had no way of knowing was it was the prettiest we were to sit, financially, ever again.

At that time, we had the rare insight to realize we were at a critical juncture in our lives. With no kids and no debts, when would we ever have a more opportune time to jump ship and move rural?

We considered staying in California, but land prices were too high. And even back then, we could see the regulatory nightmare on the horizon for the Golden State. So on the excuse of sending me to graduate school, we found an inexpensive fixer-upper on four acres in rural southwest Oregon. I’m not exaggerating when I say we bought the land and they threw the house in for free. The house could only be charitably described as a shack. Built in 1874, it encompassed every interior decorating disaster spanning five decades. When I told friends how to find our place, I would tell them to look for the house from The Beverly Hillbillies, before Beverly Hills. But the property was enchanting and we fell in love with it.

We knew we were giving up lot when we left California and moved to Oregon. We were giving up our jobs. Our friends. Proximity to our families. Our careers. Our regular paycheck.

Even more interesting, we surrendered to a surprising extent the respect of our families. Our parents wondered what on earth were we doing, giving up dependable careers and a nice income? Those of you whose parents started life poor and climbed their way into the middle class know what I’m talking about. To watch their children deliberately reverse course and voluntarily opt for a life without financial security seemed to them stark raving insane.

But that was okay. We were young, in love, naïve, and entirely dedicated to the idea that we knew what we were doing.

In retrospect, it’s a good thing we didn’t know what we were doing, because had we known what was in front of us, we might never have left the city.

Bottom line, we went from a great income to nothing. Zilch, zero, zero, nada, nothing. For five months we had no job, no money, no prospects. The employment opportunities my husband optimistically thought would drop into his lap never materialized. I was in graduate school full time and accruing student loan debt. Our savings account quickly disappeared. We often lived on our credit cards. Any hopeful plans we had for fixing up our little slice of rural paradise were shelved. Rather than replacing the roof which leaked like a sieve during wet Oregon winters, we put bowls on the floor to catch the drips.

Desperate for income, my husband took his hobby – woodworking – and turned it into a highly specialized niche business making hardwood drinking mugs. We hit the road and peddled them at Renaissance Faires and Oktoberbests. We worked seventy and eighty hour weeks, trying to keep our heads above water. Livestock was out of the question – we couldn’t afford to fix up the infrastructure we needed, such as barns and fences, plus we were away from home too much selling our wares to be able to care for livestock, which we couldn’t afford anyway.

It was a brutally hard time of our lives. It would have been so easy to give it up and move back to the city… so easy. But we didn’t. We had the teeth-clenching determination to succeed because more than anything in the world, we wanted to live in the country.

For ten years we lived in poverty.  No health insurance, even through the hospital births of both our daughters and the partial amputation of my husband’s thumb on the bandsaw. Ten years of never buying new clothes or eating in a restaurant.

When our girls were born, we were already accomplished students of thrift, but raising babies added a whole new element to living cheap. We had hospital bills to pay off as well as the emergency room for patching up my husband’s hand, so spending money on things like disposable diapers and lots of toys was out of the question. Daycare was impossible (and we didn’t want it anyway), so when I graduated with my master’s degree, I worked nights as a field biologist and my husband worked days in the shop. It’s amazing, really, how little money it takes to raise children when you simply don’t have money to waste.

But gradually things got better. We transitioned our business from retail to wholesale and got off the road. A few years after our daughters were born, I came home for good and split the hours in the shop with my husband, and our business truly became a family affair.

After ten years in Oregon, we moved to Idaho in 2003, where we found a twenty-acre homestead with a house and outbuilding for $ 115,000. We’ve been there ever since, and can’t imagine being anywhere else.

But rural living doesn’t have to be as hairy and difficult as we made it. You simply need to strip away your rose-colored glasses and approach the subject with far more maturity and realism than we did.

In other words, do what I say, not what we did.

There are a number of things to do before, during, and after purchasing rural property. Let’s look at these in order.

Before Buying Rural Property
Okay, you’ve decided you’re going to take the leap and get out of the city. But such drastic measures require mature planning and intelligent forethought, rather than impulse and rosy dreams. What should you do first?

• Get out of debt. I can hear the groans of dismay right now, but let me tell you, you don’t want to be dragging the leg shackles of credit card bills, student loans, and car payments along with you to the country. Your income is likely to take a tremendous drop, but bills don’t go away. Contrary to popular belief, country living is not necessarily cheap, especially in the beginning. So buckle down, live on beans and rice, cut up your credit cards, and work like mad to get rid of the debt. Believe me, you’ll probably build up more debt when you move anyway – don’t handicap your efforts even further by bringing along several maxed-out credit cards.

A corollary to that is to leave as cheaply as possible, starting NOW. Frugal living is fun and creative, but you won’t be able to embrace it if you look at it as a constant string of deprivation.

• Find ways to make money from home. One of the first things we realized about country living was the importance of working from home. It might sound oh-so romantic and fun to set your own hours and theoretically stay in your pajamas all day, but it goes much further than that.

Working from home means you bring your work with you. It means you’re not tied by an umbilical cord of employment to a city job. It means you don’t have to commute long distances and/or through adverse weather conditions with high gas prices. It means you can look far enough away from urban hubs that you can buy twenty acres and a house for $ 115,000.

Most people in rural areas don’t do just one thing to earn money. They have many irons in the fire. Some hold down two or three part-time local jobs. Some have many creative ways to earn money at home. It’s the rare but lucky individual who can take his city wages with him in the country and telecommute. But developing income from different sources has a major advantage: if one income stream dries up, you’re not absolutely destitute.

The topic of working from home is huge and beyond the scope of this talk, so I’ll just touch on it briefly here.

Finding a niche and filling it might sound like a cliché, but it’s true. Look at your skills and interests and see what can be transitioned into multiple streams of income. Be realistic in what you think people might be willing to pay you for. YOU might have a fascination with hand-painting pastel ceramic dragons, but do you realistically think enough OTHER people will like them so much that you can support yourself? Unlikely. But maybe you can teach ceramics, or teach music, or do desktop publishing, or computer data recovery, or other skills you already possess which could possibly bring in money. Start thinking about that now.

• Broaden your skills. Before you make your move, start learning to pressure-can green beans, handle a chainsaw, shoot a rifle, learn carpentry, and grow a garden. Read up on plumbing and wiring, on livestock care and fencing. Start developing a library. Start learning skills that will be marketable in a rural environment.

• Make a bucket list of what you want in your rural property, and know what’s negotiable and what is not. After talking with sixty or seventy realtors during the course of buying our Idaho property, I learned they don’t necessarily try to find property that suits your needs. Rather, they take the properties they have available and try to convince you it suits your needs. I can’t fault realtors – they can only sell properties that are available, not create ideal properties out of thin air – but it means you have to know what hill you’re willing to die on vs. where you can compromise.

• Decide what kind of climate and terrain suits you. Some people love heat, others prefer cold. Some like arid deserts, others like oceans or mountains or forest. There’s nothing wrong with anyone’s preference and there’s plenty of land to suit all our tastes. But keep in mind one critical thing: this is not a vacation home you’re buying. This is, conceivably, the land that may keep you alive if the bleep hits the fan. To that effect, avoid extremes in terrain or climate that make true homesteading impossible. Deep forests or arid deserts are breathtakingly beautiful, but not practical for growing wheat or raising cattle or planting orchards or other self-sustaining ambitions, at least not without immense effort, time, and of course money.

While Buying Rural Property
Okay, you’re ready to jump ship and move rural. You’ve found the part of the country that interests you. You have several pieces of property bookmarked to visit with a realtor. What now?

• Research the local, state, and federal laws that might affect you personally. This could include homeschooling laws, wetlands requirements, livestock or building restrictions, CC&R’s, gun laws, eminent domain issues, timber, water, and mineral rights, liens, rights-of-way, and other issues. Remember, just because you’re buying a piece of rural property doesn’t mean you’re exempt from state and local laws.

• Consider whether your targeted property is suitable for your long-term goals. If you want to farm, don’t buy desert land or property that’s completely forested or on a steep mountainside. Don’t get swept up with the beauty of a parcel without realistically assessing whether it will be useful. And for God’s sake, NEVER buy land sight-unseen.

I recently heard a radio commercial for forty-acre “ranches” in mid-state Washington. The descriptions sounded glorious. But what they didn’t tell you was this land is nothing but dry scrub unable to support agriculture except with extensive irrigation, and water rights don’t come with the property. The land parcels were cheap because they were useless for much of anything except for someone to brag they own forty acres. Take it from me, you’ll wear yourself out trying to turn unproductive land into a homestead without a huge amount of money and labor. The same applies to a parcel that’s heavily forested. Forests don’t support farms. Remember, you’ve got to think realistically about your targeted property.

• Consider buying property with an existing habitable structure, rather than bare land. Bare land is wildly expensive. Oh, not for the initial purchase – that can often be seductively low – but it’s expensive to bring in power or rig up alternative energy, build something to live in, and create the infrastructure you might need for homestead, such as barns and fences.

Also, buying land with an existing and habitable structure means you’re less likely to face bureaucratic nightmares from government officials who can restrict your activities due to wetlands, endangered species, or other red tape if you try to build on bare ground. Don’t be ashamed to start small or humbly – you have to start somewhere. If your new home is a butt-ugly shack – well, you can always build something nicer later on. But in the meantime, it’s good to have a roof over your head.

• Adjust your expectations. Too many books, magazines, websites, and blogs emphasize the beauty and simplicity of rural life without considering that country living is not all sunshine and moonbeams and mystic crystal revelations. To paraphrase Murphy, if something CAN go wrong, it will. When newbies are faced with complications, they often become disillusioned and disheartened, and eventually return to their “simpler” life in the city.

• Water water water. I can’t emphasize this strongly enough – your land MUST have water. How deep is it? How clean is it? Is there a well? A spring? Is the supply consistent? Are there usage restrictions? Will you face wetlands violations if you plow that field? Who owns the water rights? What about irrigation? If you haven’t got enough water and can’t afford to get more, your chances of having a successful farm or homestead is virtually nil.

• Learn the politics. Be careful about moving to where the political climate is the polar opposite of your own. Just saying.

• Family members, especially your spouse, must be on board. A bitter and complaining spouse will ruin your experience and, possibly, your marriage. And don’t think that moving rural will necessarily “save” your teenage children who are heading down the wrong path. Yanking three mall-oriented teens out of the mall and into a rural environment can result in rebellion and resentment, not wholesome goodness. Try to move while the kids are young and more adaptable. Or, if you do have older reluctant teens, give them goals: “You can do X once you accomplish Y.” We have neighbors who told their three teenage boys they couldn’t get their driver’s licenses until they’d completed their Eagle Scout.

• Consider renting for awhile in your targeted area. I know everyone is impatient and you want to start your homestead as soon as possible; but by renting for anywhere from a few months to a year, you can discover a number of critical things. Perhaps the weather or climate isn’t suitable after all. Perhaps the politics in your region are not to your liking. Perhaps other problems are more widespread than you anticipated. If such is the case, you can leave without having irrevocably committed all your efforts into a piece of property. But renting can also provide additional benefits. You can explore the area at your leisure and target specific locations or properties that interest you. You can begin to get involved in local functions or organizations, and spread the word about the type of land you’d like to buy. You can start making friends.

• Do NOT overburden yourself with too high a mortgage, because it’s almost guaranteed that your income will drop when you move to the country. What might be perfectly affordable on your old paycheck may not be affordable on a country income. Better to buy a cheap fixer upper and spend years slowly improving it, than buying something shiny and pretty and too expensive.

• Consider the potential for defense for your new property. Ideally you want someplace well off the main roads but with open views – and this does NOT mean perched on a hillside in full view of everyone. If you’re totally surrounded by trees, you don’t have clear lines of fire if you’re being attacked. But bear in mind, total isolation can be almost as deadly as city living. No man is an island, and if you’re too far away from others, no one can hear you scream if you’re under siege. Ideally you can band together with neighbors to help defend your area.

How close is your new homestead to a major city, and how easy is it to get from here to there? Living close to a city has advantages like access to supplies and entertainment, but if the bleep hits the fan, that city can be your worst nightmare. There are many experts on security, far more expert than I am, and some of the best are right here at this Expo (be sure to seek their counsel). But my point is not to forget security when purchasing rural property.

After You Buy Your Rural Property
Congratulations, you’re now the proud owner of a piece of rural paradise! Now what?

• Do not bite off more than you can chew. Too many newbies think they can “do it all” their first year on the farm. They try to build a house and barn, get chickens, cows, goats, and pigs, plant a garden, drill a well, fence forty acres of pasture, cut and split eight cords of firewood, in addition to homeschooling four young children and trying to make some money from a home craft business. Then they wonder why they’re stressed, exhausted, and broke. Unless you can devote yourself full-time to developing a homestead, I would suggest no more than one, perhaps two major projects per year. That way you can take the time and energy to do it right without killing yourself.

• Concentrate on infrastructure before you get livestock. Animals need protection from weather and predators, and they also need to be kept where you want them to be. Before you buy a cow or baby chicks, have a barn, corral, fences, coop, or whatever ready to go. In other words, at least in this case, don’t put the cart before the horse.

Remember, you might be able to store garden seeds for the long-term, but you can’t store livestock. Chickens or cows are a little reluctant to get vacuum-packed and put in storage. Better to move to your rural place now, get your livestock, plant your garden, and learn the art of self-sufficiency – so you have it when you need it.

• Two rules of country living: Leave a gate the way you found it, and never let your dogs roam.

• Learn how homesteading is an interconnected circle. Livestock can provide you with milk, eggs, and meat; composted manure enriches your garden, scraps of which can be fed to livestock. The whole thing is a beautiful circle, but it takes awhile to achieve. And in the beginning, that circle can be quite delicate and easily broken.

• Preparedness is a three-legged stool: supplies, knowledge, and community. Presumably you’re all doing pretty well in the supplies section; but knowledge of how to sustain yourself indefinitely from the fruits of your labors takes awhile to acquire; so do friendly and supportive relationships with neighbors in your new area. Your emphasis on rural property should be on how to grow or raise your own food, and you need the knowledge and equipment to do that. But no one can go it alone. You don’t want to be so remote that you’re isolated. We all get by with a little help from our friends, so cultivate a friendly relationship with everyone you can in your new community. Become involved, join local organizations, attend a local church, offer yourself to your community. You won’t regret it, but remember: all this takes time.

In short, there’s no time to lose! There comes a time when, after you’ve done all your research, you have to close your eyes, grit your teeth, and take the plunge. Don’t just endlessly talk about it – talk is useless. At some point you have to take the leap. This might mean taking losses in the city and jumping into the unknown.

Self-sufficiency takes time, effort, preparation, money, and experience. Better a year too early, as the saying goes, than a minute too late. Just know what you’re jumping into.

The biggest take-home lesson from this talk is this: your rural property should be productive, capable of potentially supporting you, reasonably defendable, and not so far from neighbors that you’re isolated in case you need help.

Remember, the people who know the most about country living and self-sufficiency are the ones who have never done it. The best way to learn about how little you know, is to jump in with both feet and start experiencing it.

All the episodes I’ve uploaded for this show, and many others, can be found on www.ytepisodes.com in neatly organized lists – YTEpisodes is a completely free, community-built directory of episodes of over 90 different TV shows aired/airing in US and UK that have been uploaded to YouTube. Each series has its own page, with episodes listed in chronological order. You can watch the shows from the website with no ads or commercials, without having to search YouTube for the next episode. Only full episodes are listed here; not ones broken into 10-minute pieces. Stop by and see if I have your favorite show on here, and see if you can help out by submitting your own episodes [no uploading required].
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During an appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, Jim Cramer of CNBC boldly predicted that “financial anarchy” is coming to Europe and that there will be “bank runs” in Spain and Italy in the next few weeks.  This is very strong language for the most famous personality on the most watched financial news channel in the United States to be using.  In fact, if Cramer is not careful, people will start accusing him of sounding just like The Economic Collapse Blog.  It may not happen in “the next few weeks”, but the truth is that the European banking system is in a massive amount of trouble and if Greece does leave the euro it is going to cause a tremendous loss of confidence in banks in countries such as Spain, Italy and Portugal.  There are already rumors that the “smart money” is pulling out of Spanish and Italian banks.  So could we see some of these banks collapse?  Would they get bailed out if they do collapse?  It is so hard to predict exactly how “financial anarchy” will play out, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the European financial system is heading for a massive amount of pain.

Posted below is a clip of Jim Cramer making his bold predictions during his appearance on Meet The Press.  He is obviously very, very disturbed about the direction that Europe is heading in….

But what is Europe supposed to do?  Even though “austerity measures” have been implemented in many eurozone nations, the truth is that they are all still running up more debt.  Are European nations just supposed to run up massive amounts of debt indefinitely and pretend that there will never been any consequences?

That is apparently what Barack Obama wants.  During the G-8 summit that just concluded, Obama urged European leaders to pursue a “pro-growth” path.

Of course to Obama a “pro-growth” economic plan includes spending trillions of dollars that you do not have without any regard for what you are doing to future generations.

Germany has been trying to get the rest of the eurozone to move much closer to living within their means, but as the recent elections in France and Greece demonstrated, much of the rest of the eurozone is not too thrilled with the end of debt-fueled prosperity.

In Greece, the recent elections failed to produce a new government, so new elections will be held on June 17th.

Many EU politicians are trying to turn these upcoming elections into a referendum on whether Greece stays in the eurozone or not.  If the next Greek government is willing to honor the austerity agreements that have been previously agreed to, then Greece will probably stay in the eurozone for a while longer.  If the next Greek government is not willing to honor the austerity agreements that have been previously agreed to, then Greece will probably be forced out of the eurozone.

The following is what John Praveen, the chief investment strategist at Prudential International Investments Advisers, had to say about the political situation in Greece recently….

“If the pro-euro major parties fail to muster enough support to form a coalition and the radical left Syriza party and other anti-euro, anti-austerity parties secure a majority, the risk of a disorderly Greek exit from the Euro increases and could roil markets”

Right now, polls show the leading anti-austerity party, Syriza, doing very well.  The leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, has declared that he plans “to stop the experiment” with austerity and that what the rest of the eurozone has tried to do in Greece is a “crime against the Greek people“.

But the Germans do not see it that way.  The Germans just want the Greeks to stop spending far more money than they bring in.

The Germans do not want to endlessly bail out the Greeks if the Greeks are not willing to show some financial discipline.

As we approach the June 17th elections, the financial markets are likely to be quite nervous.  According to Art Hogan of Lazard Capital Partners, many investors are deeply concerned about how “sloppy” a great exit from the euro could be….

“Next week is only one of the four weeks we have to wait until the Greek election. Every utterance out of Greece makes us think about their [possible] exit and how sloppy that could be”

Most Greek citizens want to remain in the eurozone and most European politicians want Greece to remain in the eurozone, but it is looking increasingly likely as if that may not happen.

In fact, there are reports that preparations are rapidly being made for a Greek exit.  According to Reuters, “contingency plans” for the printing of Greek drachmas have already been drawn up….

De La Rue (DLAR.L) has drawn up contingency plans to print drachma banknotes should Greece exit the euro and approach the British money printer, an industry source told Reuters on Friday.

And even EU officials are now acknowledging that plans for a Greek exit from the euro are being developed.  The following is what EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said during one recent interview….

“A year and a half ago, there may have been the danger of a domino effect,” he said, “but today there are, both within the European Central Bank and the European Commission, services that are working on emergency scenarios in case Greece doesn’t make it.”

When these kinds of things start to become public, that is a sign that officials really do not expect Greece to remain a part of the euro.

And Greece is rapidly beginning to run out of money.  According to a recent Ekathimerini article, the Greek government is likely to run out of money at the end of June….

The public coffers are seen running dry at the end of June, but this will depend on two key factors. First, revenue collection: In the first 10 days of May, inflows were about 15 percent lower than projected but there are fears that the slide may reach 50 percent. The GAO will have a picture for the first 20 days on May 23, while the last three days of the month are considered crucial, when 1.5 billion euros of the month’s budgeted total of 3.6 billion are expected to flow in.

Second, whether the IMF and EFSF installments are disbursed: This is not certain, as the decision will be purely political for both providers and evidently partly linked to political developments. Earlier this month the eurozone approved a disbursement 1 billion short of the 5 billion euros that were expected.

If Greece runs out of money and if the rest of Europe cuts off the flow of euros, Greece would essentially be forced to leave the euro.

So the last half of June looks like it could potentially be a key moment for Greece.

Meanwhile, the Greek banking system is struggling to survive as hundreds of millions of euros get pulled out of it.  The following is from a recent CNN article….

The Greek financial system is straining hard for cash.

Consumers and businesses are making massive withdrawals from Greece’s banks — leading to concern the beleaguered nation could be forced out of the eurozone by a banking crisis even before its government runs out of cash.

Deposits are the lifeblood of any bank, and Greeks pulled 800 million euros out of the banking system on Tuesday alone, the most recent day for which figures are available.

If Greece does leave the euro and the Greek banking system does collapse, that is going to be a clear signal that a similar scenario will be allowed to play out in other eurozone nations.

That is why Jim Cramer, myself and many others are warning that there could soon be bank runs all over the eurozone.

Sadly, the banking crisis in Europe just seems to get worse with each passing day.

For example, the Telegraph has reported that wealthy individuals are starting to pull money out of Spanish banking giant Santander….

Customers with large deposits have started withdrawing cash from Santander, the bank has admitted, as it tried to reassure concerned members of the public that their money is safe.

Round and round we go.  Where all this will stop nobody knows.

If Greece does end up leaving the euro, that could set off a chain of cascading events that could potentially be absolutely catastrophic.

Former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi recently stated that the “whole house of cards will come down” if Greece leaves the euro.

And if the “house of cards” does come down in Europe, that is going to greatly destabilize the global derivatives market.

You see, the truth is that the global derivatives market is very delicately balanced.  The assumption most firms make is that things are not going to deviate too much from what is considered “normal”.

If we do end up seeing “financial anarchy” in Europe, that is going to greatly destabilize the system and we could rapidly have a huge derivatives crisis on our hands.

And as we saw with JP Morgan recently, losses from derivatives can add up really fast.

Originally, we were told that the derivatives losses that JP Morgan experienced recently came to a total of only about 2 billion dollars.

Now, we are told that it could be a whole lot more than that.  According to the Wall Street Journal, JP Morgan could end up losing about 5 billion dollars (or more) before it is all said and done….

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is struggling to extricate itself from disastrous wagers by traders such as the “London whale,” in a sign that the size of its bets could bog down the bank’s unwinding of the trades and deepen its losses by billions of dollars.

The nation’s largest bank has said publicly that its losses on the trades have surpassed $ 2 billion, and people familiar with the matter have said they could over time reach $ 5 billion.

And if Europe experiences a financial collapse, the losses experienced by U.S. firms could make that 5 billion dollars look like pocket change.  The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers….

According to Reuters once you include Spain and Italy as well as Credit Default Swaps and indirect exposure to Europe, US banks have roughly $ 4 TRILLION in potential exposure to the EU.

To put that number in perspective, the entire US banking system is $ 12 trillion in size.

Interesting days are ahead my friends.

Let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.

Those who think the answer to the unemployment problem is more education might be surprised to learn the Majority of Unemployed Attended College.

For the first time in history, the number of jobless workers age 25 and up who have attended some college now exceeds the ranks of those who settled for a high school diploma or less.

Out of 9 million unemployed in April, 4.7 million had gone to college or graduated and 4.3 million had not, seasonally adjusted Labor Department data show.

click on chart for sharper image

In 2011, 57% of those 25 and up had attended some college vs. 43% in 1992. Those without a high school diploma fell from 21% to 12% over that span.

But along with the increasing prevalence of college attendance has come a growing number of dropouts, who have left school burdened by student loan debt but without much to kick-start their careers.

Among everyone up to age 24 who has left college or earned a two-year degree — including those not actively searching — the full-time employment-to-population ratio has plummeted from 69% in 2000 to 62% in 2003 to 54%.

This has occurred even as student lending and enrollment at community colleges has soared, elevating the student loan crisis to the center of political debate and a rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Those who graduated with a four-year degree fared better employment-wise but many of those still struggle with student loans. Many other end up underemployed in retail sector jobs as opposed to the curriculum they studied.

Student loans are a trillion dollar problem, and growing every quarter. President Obama wants more student loans, but all that does is make many graduates debt slaves for the rest of their lives.

The cost of education is preposterous and the solutions are easy to describe.

Five Solutions

1. Kill federally funded student loan program entirely. Student loans do nothing but drive up the cost of education. Anyone can get a student loan because the loans are guaranteed and cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The beneficiaries of this horrendous setup are teachers and administrators, not the kids receiving loans.
2. Kill state aid to colleges as well
3. Increase competition by accrediting more online universities, even foreign universities. This will drive down costs immensely.
4. Public unions are a huge part of the reason for driving up teacher salaries, so collective bargaining (collective coercion actually), must end.
5. High school counselors and parents must educate kids that there simply are no realistic chances for those graduating with degrees in political science, history, English, art, and literally dozens of other useless or nearly-useless majors.

The deflationary overhang of student debt is enormous. Those in debt will postpone buying homes, getting married, starting families, and spending money in general.

The only solution is to ensure kids to not get into massive debt in the first place. The way to achieve that is to drive down the cost of education.

Sadly the Obama administration (like many before it and many at the state level as well) has done nothing but throw money at the problem, rewarding unions and administrators while making debt slaves of kids as education costs spiral out of control.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Mike “Mish” Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction.
Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Well well what do we have here?  (From Chris Whalen and IRA)

To rescue Europe, to reinvigorate the United States, and to set the global economy on a sustainable path toward expansion, the current debate offers a so-called “choice”: either slash government spending or spend your way to growth.

…..

But framing the discussion between austerity and stimulus is a canard that has enveloped economists, commentators, and policymakers in a collective delusion.

I’d argue it’s an intentional diversion, intentional in both diversion and mathematical bankruptcy, but those are the finer points of intent.  The fact is that there’s no path “forward” that can be found in this movement but you have 30 years of political investment in it, and thus it is difficult to get anyone to talk about the facts of debt-driven economic cycles in honest terms.

This is found in the so-called “Presidential” campaign, where we have three contenders, none of which will take this issue on.  Not even the “Libertarian” Gary Johnson will tackle it.

Some ask why.  It’s not very difficult to figure out, really: All are highly invested in the frauds of the last 30 years, because without them none of their so-called “successes” would have worked.  Obama, ironically, is the least invested in them simply because he has the least in actual “things” he’s accomplished in that his actual tenure of “acts” only encompasses the last three years!

The key question facing the global community is how to manage the transition to a less robust, but also less volatile period of growth without sliding into another world war. A true solution will have to involve not only governments reducing public debt, but also restructuring insolvent industries to fuel real, sustainable growth.

Well, yes and no.  No exponential growth curve can last forever.  We live on a finite rock here; it is of finite size and has finite resource.  As such we can either accept this or we can overextend ourselves and ultimately collapse.  One of those two outcomes is inevitable.  Choosing overextension and collapse is idiotic.

Indeed, to give Merkel her due, the key obstacle to global growth today is excessive government spending and public debt. But the United States, and, in fact, the majority of G-20 nations, have ruled out broad debt reduction and financial restructuring of insolvent banking systems.

True, but one must ask “why”?  And here the obvious reason comes to the fore — nearly all of the so-called “wealthy”, with a handful of exceptions, are not really wealthy — they own someone else’s obligation rather than the fruits of production by their own hand, and should restructuring come their “wealth” will all go “poof!”

This is a war by means other than hunks of lead hurled around at 3200fps, but it is no less of a war.  It is in fact full of the exact sort of attack that comes with any war — Bernanke yanking liquidity in 2008 while telling everyone he was providing it, Paulson threatening “tanks in the streets” before a huddled room full of Congressmen along with intentionally-fraudulent claims made about “recovery”, retail sales and employment.  As in all wars propaganda is a major part of the conflict, sometimes even more important than the actual shooting, as was true in Vietnam with the Tet Offensive and our media’s so-called “coverage” that decimated American support for a conflict that we had just, in objective terms, effectively won!

Some would call that act by our media organs treason, incidentally, and not entirely without cause.

But as “managed stability,” fueled by U.S. monetary emissions, is now falling by the wayside, G-20 leaders need to develop a new means of attacking joblessness and deflation. To start, we must build a new narrative free of neo-Keynesian fantasies about consumer purchasing power trumping true wealth creation.

You were doing good right up until this paragraph.  I’ll forgive you later; the sin is the word “deflation.”  There is nothing wrong and in fact plenty right with “deflation” that simply corrects past inflation.  That is, when one blows a huge credit bubble over the space of 30 years ceasing to pump it further and further is not “deflation”; it is recognition of an unsustainable dynamic and allowing it to contract back to natural and sustainable levels.

Let’s take education as one example.  Why should it cost more than $ 10,000, all-in, for a Bachelor’s Degree in essentially any field?  The argument is not about whether you can extract more, it is whether one can provide this at a profit given that as a price-point.  The answer is yes, as it happens in other nations all the time, with India being one example (actually, for less than half that.) 

The point is that one can flip burgers or pizzas to pay $ 2,500/year for a college degree.  If the goal is to have a highly-educated population why should we not encourage the same decrease in cost that we all enjoy in televisions, computers and cellphones to take root in education?

More to the point why hasn’t it happened all on its own? 

That’s simple: Anti-competitive actions, ensconced into both actual and effective law, that make it impossible.

For example you cannot sit for many exams in fields that require them without an accredited degree first, and the boards will not accredit a school that does not force the teaching models and physical facilities (along with costs) they “like.”  You thus get to pay for a huge athletic department, ivory tower idiocy, gold-plated dorms with food that looks like something from PF Changs’ every night and graft like no tomorrow all to protect a scheme.  This sort of anti-competitive behavior is supposed to be illegal (see the Sherman and Clayton acts) but of course there are “exemptions” to protect the “quality” of the resultant fields. 

Really?  Or is the truth that they’re simply protecting the inflated price?

Inflation is an assumed but unspoken part of the pro-stimulus agenda. But these same liberals refuse to accept that the marginal increase in GDP per a given amount of new public debt is now just about zero.

Yep.  I pointed this out on the Ticker years ago.  Nobody wants to hear it, but it’s true.  The numbers just are what they are and what’s worse is that the marginal increase for a given amount of debt, public and private, has been consistently negative for 30 years.

That is, from 1980 forward we never managed to post up more GDP increase than debt.

It is and has been a scam.

Welcome to reality; the red pill is a bitch, isn’t it?

But the biggest threat to Obama is the fact that the US economy is worse off today — more debt, lower home prices, fewer jobs — than in 2008. In November all incumbents will face tough challenges. And come 2013, a new, even angrier Congress is hardly going to be in a mood for compromise regardless of who occupies the White House.

When a political leader talks effectively about ways to pursue less volatile economic growth in a framework of limits on public spending and debt, such an individual will find a large and eager audience. The supposed debate between austerity and stimulus is false in economic terms, politically duplicitous, and, when one considers basic arithmetic, unsustainable. More debt and inflation is not a solution. The first politician to stand up and say just that in an intelligible way gets to set the course for the G-20 industrial nations over the next century.

Oh Gary!  Oh Gary! 

Calling Gary Johnson, the latest edition of “clue-by-four” just smacked you upside the head!

Mittens won’t do the right thing because essentially all of his money was made by exploiting the frauds and scams of unbridled credit expansion; should he take this position it becomes obvious that his entire story line is a gigantic scam.  Obama won’t do it despite claiming he would in 2008 as he got invested in the bullshit with Geithner and the rest of them and is effectively trapped.

Anyone who’s followed the Ticker knows damn well that I’ve been pounding this drum since I started writing The Ticker in 2007.  Indeed I tried to lead John McCain and his campaign to the truth in 2008, and failed.

As for Gary Johnson I began my quest there in 2010 on Blogtalk, and then again before the Florida Libertarian Convention debate in his suite at the Embassy Suites hotel.

He refused then and he refuses now, but this much is clear – Institutional Risk Analytics and Chris Whalen are right, I’ve been right, and the people are tired of the same old crap as it is clear that it’s not working. 

What they’re not yet clear on is that it isn’t working because it can’t on a mathematical basis and that, in turn, means the people have been serially defrauded by the politicians and “business wonks” for the last 30 years.

The people will figure it out.  The people can be slow, but don’t mistake inertia and 30 years of conditioning driven by lies and frauds for stupidity.  Indeed as the people figure it out their reaction worldwide is increasingly one of anger, and with damn good cause.

The politician who gets in front of this issue and leads with it wins.

It was that simple in 2008 and was the message that I attempted to carry then, and it’s still that simple today. 

Get in front of this or get run over.

James,
Having just read the letters regarding reloading economics, I noticed the following caveats and had two important points about them:
 
1.  “do not shoot lead bullets in a Glock” because of the polygonal rifling.  Polygonal rifling essentially creates rifling engagement angles that are less than 90 degrees, therefore whatever bullet material you use seals the bore better (because it’s easier to deform lead/copper into a rifling groove that has a more obtuse (open) angle) than a sharp 90 degree angle.    A standard cartridge fired out of a conventionally rifled barrel will travel faster out of a polygonal rifled barrel because of the superior seal that the polygonal rifling creates and that is why Glock uses those kinds of barrels, bullets perform better out of their barrels. Better seal = higher pressures,  higher pressures = higher velocities.   It needs to be noted that the HK USP series of pistols also has polygonal rifling as well as the Baby Eagle line and problem some others that I haven’t listed here.  Lead is perfectly safe to shoot out of Glocks or HKs, as long as you decrease your powder charge.  Polygonally rifled barrels do lead up any more readily than conventionally rifled barrels, in fact, because polygonal rifling seals the bore better the number one cause of leading  is reduced, “gas cutting” the increased pressure does not melt lead bases to any appreciable extent – gas cutting does.  This was all figured out decades ago by better men than me, like Elmer Keith.  Since higher pressures also yield higher temperatures (simple physics) even a conventionally rifled barrel can build up lead quickly if you use hot loads, or try to reproduce +p type ratings using lead or copper plated bullets.  It isn’t lead build up that leads to a “kaboom”, it’s nearly always a compressed load which is far more dangerous in any barrel.  Gas checks (copper jackets that go on the bottom of a lead bullet) are effective not because the leading lip of the gas check hits the rifling and splits to seal the angle of the rifling in addition to shielding the base of the lead bullet.  Don’t believe me?  Check the effective velocities of a gas checked bullet, it’s higher than just lead – less pressure leakage.
 
2.  Copper plated bullets should be treated as if they were lead when calculating your powder charge.  Because the plating is not a “jacket” but a very very thin microscopic coating of copper the hardness of the bullet is still essentially whatever the hardness of the lead that was used in casting it before plating.  The plating process does not harden the lead bullet, it seals the bore better than a copper jacketed bullet – and should be loaded accordingly otherwise you can create higher pressures and you may damage your pistol or yourself.  Always load copper plated bullets as if you were loading lead.  You get less lead fouling with copper plated bullets, but I’ve pulled lead deposits out of a pistol bore that was only shooting copper plated bullets, although it had a couple thousand rounds through it prior to the cleaning.
 
3.  Remember that the higher pressure rounds will have more problems with overpressure than low pressure rounds, typically autopistols shoot 9mm, .45 ACP, .40 S&W – I’ll ignore the other more uncommon rounds, so look them them if you’re going to reload for them., as an example only (look up your specific combination of powder, bullet, primer and casing) the following number can give you an idea of the pressures involved:
 
9mm Luger (9×19) is around 34,000 psi
45acp (45 auto) is around 20,000
40sw (40 short and wimpy) is around 32,000 psi
 
ammo manufactures spend a seriously paranoid amount of time calculating not only pressure, but the pressure curve (burn characteristics inside barrel) and they minutely examine the components after firing before determining a load is safe, they do this for each and every “lot” of ammunition they produce, if they change one component then there is a different “lot number” assigned to it and the workup is repeated for it.  Since their powders and components are custom blended and manufactured, they tend to repeat this process a lot.  A typical handloader will not have access to the testing equipment that a manufacturer has and has to be at least as meticulous.  Pressure is king and over-pressure will injure you and destroy your weapon.  In a grid-down survival situation the nominal savings that reloading will yield are offset by the very serious chance a non-expert reloader will inadvertently take.  If and when THSTF I do not plan on shooting any reloaded ammunition out of my autopistols or autoloading rifles.
 
As a side note, a few more thoughts on reloading practices:
 
The typical reloader who uses “junk brass” that is harvested from a shooting range is taking some serious chances.  Without realizing it, a handloader can work up a load that is perfectly safe in a Lake City 5.56 case, and start producing with a large range of brass cases from various manufacturers – without realizing that the internal dimensions of each manufacturers casing are different, in fact the typical Lake City nato 5.56 casing has a thicker web and thicker walls than a commercial Winchester .223 Remington case – so a perfectly safe load in a different case will yield MUCH different results and since we’re worried about pressure (as we should be) we inadvertently are producing loaded cartridges that are quite different while believing we are making a consistent product because we’re using only one type of bullet/powder/primer.  Whenever possible, use ONE head stamp AND be sure they’re of the same year of manufacture.
 
I have reloaded now for 20 years, from .50 BMG to .380 and the one thing I keep as my watch-word is that I’m loading for target ammo only and I am not trying to reproduce factory maximum pressures.  I’ve had to toss out a serious amount of ammo from time to time because I wasn’t as careful as I should have been, and in case you’re wondering – no I never considered breaking apart the casings to reclaim components – why?  Because it’s just not worth the time and potential hazards to re-use bullets that have already been crimped, and powder that may be contaminated by whatever was in the case when I reloaded it or handled it during disassembly.  Sure a lot of old codgers will say that you can avoid problems, but I have a healthy enough paranoia to toss a couple of bucks in the trash (actually I take them to a public range to put in their “red bucket”  I’ve see these same guys pull ammo out of a red range bucket – such disregard for Murphy will surely clean the shallow end of the gene pool at some point
 
It comes down to pressure and amassing as much possible knowledge about interior ballistics as is humanly possible.   Most of the “kaboom” problems that Glocks and other autopistols have had occur when a reloader tries to reproduce a hot cartridge – or as the old competitors used to call it “make major” because before a typical competition each competitors load would be chronographed to insure they weren’t using a “wimpy” load to reduce recoil and thus increase accuracy.
 
I’ve had two kabooms, both were from compressed loads in reloaded ammo (one mine and one a factory reload) I’ve met other people that have had compressed loads from factory ammo, which is a major cause of “kaboom” in police departments across the country as they use duty ammo on a rotational basis during qualifications (use up the duty ammo to issue fresh duty ammo).   I’ve shot a lot of lead out of Glocks, never had a problem – the one I reload for most often is my Glock 20 and 29 – the ultra-hot 10mm.  And in case you’re wondering, reloading for revolvers has a slightly different set of problems that can be just as dangerous as those faced by autopistol reloaders.
 
Remember that no firearms manufacturer will warranty your firearm if you shoot reloads of any kind avoiding lead in Glocks while shooting jacketed reloads is just as much a warrantee problem as the other.    Seek knowledge and understanding, understand why polygonal rifling creates higher pressures and you can anticipate and compensate for it, understand why shorter barrels are less efficient at launching light and fast loads, and a host of other knowledge that is useful.
 
For me the greatest value that I get from reloading is that I’m much better educated than a typical shooter about the products I shoot and it’s a relaxing hobby that helps keep my mind sharp.  When I first started reloading I did save a significant amount of money on ammo, but component prices have skyrocketed since then and the savings are now pretty much non-existent. - Jim H. in Colorado

Dear Mr. Rawles,
This was an excellent article. I have a few comments for consideration. There are several aftermarket barrels available for Glocks to allow shooting lead bullets. Search for "Glock replacement barrels".  Many of the competition shooters I know use them quite successfully.

Reloading ammo or buying factory ammo are definitely not mutually exclusive activities. I do both. My goal it to increase opportunities to keep shooting. Where I seem to save the most is in reloading my own match ammo. Not only do I save money but my groups are significantly tighter with my reloads. The downside I see with reloading is for those of us who can be distracted into endless pursuit of the "perfect" load.

For folks who have a short memory, reloading is a good thing when ammo is either not available or is so expensive it is unaffordable.

Get out and vote. – Jim Z.

JWR,
Just a few observations about R.S.O.’s article.

I had a few issues with R.S.O.’s article on reloading and wanted to share them.

First, if you order powder or primers by mail, there will be a $ 25 hazardous materials fee for each package (not item, but boxes in which they’re shipped) you receive. Also, I have yet to find a business which mixes primers and powder in the same package. If you’re going to mail order either, get some friends who also reload to place orders for their needs to defray the costs (Besides, if you don’t already reload, you’re going to want some help with set up and some instruction, right?).

If you use range brass (and there’s nothing wrong with that), beware that some (mainly polymer) pistols, like the Glock, generally have issues with bulged brass at the base. Over time, this brass will not feed reliably. There are a number of methods to deal with this, like roll-sizers ($ $ $ $ $ ) or some specialty dies. Proceed at your peril. You can generally feel this bulge, and many dies do not size the base low enough to completely get rid of the bulge.

If you decide to buy brass (and there’s nothing wrong with that), you can lower the cost of purchase by reusing that brass. So, while $ .18/round is somewhat expensive for brass, you’ll reuse most of it multiple times, spreading out the cost. If you want another way to get bulk brass, just buy loaded ammo, run it thru your favorite unloader (mine’s a M1911), keep track of the brass you shoot and pick it up after you’re done. Lots of people like once-fired brass better than pristine. (Note–If you shoot bolt-action rifles, you’ll get better results from fire-formed brass than from pristine or fully-sized brass. Use a neck sizer only after you fire form your brass, and it’ll be custom to your rifle’s chamber.)

Your mileage may vary here, but I’ve had no issues shooting unjacketed lead (moly coated and uncoated) thru my Glock. Granted, I’m more diligent about cleaning the barrel when I shoot lead thru my Glock (which isn’t often, I’m not a Glock fan), but have had no ill effects. If you want, Lone Wolf Distributors makes a great aftermarket barrel, and one of the marketing points for it is you can use unjacketed lead in it. The biggest issue with Glock is the fact that shooting reloaded ammo (yours or anyone else’s) voids your warranty, tread at your peril.

I recommend specifically against buying any Lee Precision progressive press, which is unfortunate, because most of their other equipment is outstanding an affordable. The reason I recommend against their progressives is the large number of important parts made of plastic–especially the primer feed system. I owned a Lee Loadmaster for several years, and spent a lot of money on spare parts to replace broken ones.

The Dillon 550B is NOT a true progressive press, as it requires a manual index of the shell plate. True progressive presses index the shell plate by using the lever–every time you pull the lever, the ram goes up and down, does all the operations, and the shell plate rotates. The 550B requires you to turn the shell plate by hand after each stroke.

R.S.O.’s point about buying dies made by he same manufacturer as the press is a good one, but not entirely accurate. Almost all dies are threaded the same, so they’re theoretically interchangeable. However, the depth of the place where you screw them into the press can vary. If your die bodies are too short, they won’t adjust or work properly. I currently use Lee dies on an RCBS single stage press with no issues. Lee dies have the advantage of coming with a shell holder, no other die sets do (at least as far as I can tell).

I wholeheartedly agree with R.S.O.’s point on the manuals. If you use a recipe someone else gives you, you’re risking losing vital body parts. Don’t be that guy/gal.

R.S.O.’s point about Boxer and Berdan priming is a good one, but many foreign manufacturers of handgun ammo use Berdan primers. Look into the case, and if you see two small holes instead of one relatively large one, it’s not reloadable.

When cleaning your brass, a tumbler is not strictly necessary, it’s just the most efficient and easiest method. You can clean brass with water and let it dry. When you go thru the sorting operation, make sure you check the cases for dings, dents, Berdan priming, and cracks. Dings and dents may not be a problem, discard Berdan and cracked cases. Also discard any steel and aluminum cases, as they’re generally poor candidates for reloading.

R.S.O. is mostly correct that you don’t need to lubricate most handgun brass if you use carbide dies. However, having reloaded a bunch of .500 S&W Magnum, I recommend lubing long cases, even if you’re using carbide dies–I snapped a Lee Loader trying to resize .500 brass without lube. Additionally, most bottleneck cartridges (like many popular rifle calibers) require some lube to make the operation effective, even when you use carbide dies. I can’t say this is strictly true for calibers like .400 Corbon or .357 SIG, but I refuse to own pistols chambered for these cartridges–they are answers to unasked questions, and if you’re going to go to the bother of chambering a pistol to mostly .40 S&W or .45 ACP, why not just go with the straight wall version and use heavier bullets?

R.S.O. omitted a step–you have to prime the cases. Make sure you use the appropriate primers. One thing to note, some popular calibers (like .45 ACP) have manufacturers who have switched from large to small primers, so pay attention–especially if you’re using range brass. It is generally not smart to interchange rifle primers for pistol primers–there’s a reason why they make primers specifically for rifles and pistols. Also, be aware that using a magnum primer in a non-magnum cartridge will give you inconsistent velocity.

Three additional sources for reloading supplies:
www.midwayusa.com (based in Columbia, Missouri)
www.brownells.com (based in Montezuma, Iowa; they recently acquired Sinclair International)
www.grafs.com (based in Mexico, Missouri)

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Video Rating: 4 / 5

The Facebook IPO is kind of like a graduation party – everybody comes together for one huge blowout to celebrate the end of an era before going their separate ways.  Unfortunately, most people on Wall Street do not understand how bittersweet this moment really is.  A tremendous amount of pain is ahead for Wall Street in the next few years, and we will probably never see anything like the Facebook IPO ever again. But the Facebook IPO sure has been fun to watch.  Facebook is one of the largest companies to ever go public in the United States.  According to CNN, 247 million shares of Facebook exchanged hands in the first 45 minutes of trading.  The Facebook IPO was nearly ten times larger than any other Internet IPO in history, and the amount of money being made by some people on this deal is absolutely amazing.  For example, it is being reported that Bono will make more money on the Facebook IPO than he has from being part of the band U2 for the past 30 years.  Sadly, this euphoria is not going to last for long.  The next wave of the global financial collapse is rapidly approaching, and once it strikes there will not be much for anyone on Wall Street to be smiling about at all.

During the IPO process, Facebook sold more than 420 million shares and raised about 16 billion dollars.

Those are incredible numbers.

At 38 dollars per share, Facebook would have a market cap of about 81 billion dollars.

So is Facebook worth 81 billion dollars?

Of course not.

But most stocks are tremendously overvalued at this point.

Yes, Facebook has 900 million users and it made about a profit of about a billion dollars last year.

But that does not add up to an 81 billion dollar company.

Not even close.

A recent article by Jay Yarow explained this in more detail….

As good a business as that is, it’s not Google good. It’s not Apple good. And at the current IPO pricing, Facebook has to be a much better business in the near future.

In fact, Yarow says that Facebook is going to have to dramatically improve in order to justify the current valuation….

So, what’s the bull’s case for Facebook? Unfortunately, it comes down to faith. You have to have faith that Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the rest of the executives at Facebook will discover a magical money making product that will justify its valuation.

Unfortunately, there are already signs that the growth of Facebook is slowing down.

Advertising revenue during the first quarter of 2012 was only $ 872 million.  That was a decline of 7.5 percent from the previous quarter.

And eventually someone will come along and topple Facebook just like Facebook toppled MySpace.

Remember MySpace?

Facebook did not even exist a decade ago.  Right now there are young kids tinkering around in their college dorm rooms trying to figure out how to create something that will be even better than Facebook.

The truth is that Facebook is operating on borrowed time.  It is not going to remain “hot” and “trendy” forever.

But for the moment, there are a whole lot of people out there that want a piece of Facebook.

Hey, I am not in the stock market at all, but even I am half-tempted to buy a few shares so that I can introduce myself as a “part-owner of Facebook”.

After all, who doesn’t like Facebook?

Yes, government agencies and big corporations use Facebook to spy on all of us.  If you don’t believe this, just check out this article, this article and this article.

But there is an incredible upside to social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter as well.

They have given average people the ability to communicate directly with each other on a massive scale.

In the past, the big corporations pretty much had a monopoly on mass communication.

If you wanted to get your message out independently of the big corporations, you could hand out fliers, you could send out mass mailings (very expensive) or you could try to get a book printed.

But today something that you post on Facebook or Twitter could be seen by thousands (or even millions) of people within a few days.

The Internet is filled with a whole lot of garbage, but it can also be used as an incredible tool for good.

Sitting at home behind your desk, you have the potential to touch the lives of people on the other side of the globe through the Internet that you would probably never have a chance of influencing any other way.

So I am very thankful for Facebook.

We should use tools like Facebook to wake people up while there is still time.  Our world is becoming increasingly unstable and we might not always have the opportunity to freely share our thoughts with the entire globe like this.

Just try to imagine a world without Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and Internet forums.

All of those things have only existed for a relatively short period of time, and there is no guarantee that we will always have them.

Instead of wasting our lives away in front of our televisions, we should be taking advantage of these tools to help change the world.

Every single day, hundreds of people are directed to my website from Facebook.  I am hoping to eventually increase that to thousands of people per day.

A great economic collapse is coming to this world.  People need to keep their eyes on the financial crisis in Europe and on the derivatives market.  The coming financial tsunami will likely be even worse than the crash of 2008.

People are going to be looking for answers.

Now is the time to be a light shining in the darkness.

Not everyone has the time or the knowledge to be able to set up a website or make YouTube videos, but nearly everyone is capable of setting up a Facebook account or a Twitter account.

If you make even a small effort, you could end up touching the lives of thousands upon thousands of people.

Yes, there are a lot of negative things that can be said about Facebook, but at least for today let us celebrate it for what it has given us.

It has given us the opportunity to make a difference on a massive scale, and that is a wonderful thing.