Intro Thread

[lhunt]

I am a web designer, guitarist, fisher, beginner hunter, beginner prepper, Dave Ramsey veteran and an ordinary average guy.

My brother in law told me about the podcast at Christmas 08. I have been listening since. I haven't done nearly as much as I need to and as much as many of you have. I am however debt free, although we are getting ready to upgrade the house and will take on a small mortgage to do so. I have been learning a lot, as is there is a lot to learn.

Something about this podcast and what Dave Ramsey preaches speaks to me. I had a great respect for my grandparents and how they lived. I think a lot of that way of thinking and living has been lost on modern society. I want to be more like them.

I anticipate my commutes everyday so I can listen to the latest episode of TSP. I am just now venturing into the forum. I know there is a wealth of information here. I thought I would introduce myself. Next stop, the bugout bag threads!

[Sister Wolf]

Wow what a resource this site is! I'm a 38 year old auditor with a wife and kid who is sick and tired of being fed up with the bozos in Washington. I's so sick of arguing politics, I could yack.

I finally decided to spend my time and energy on something I can actually do something about. I am starting a garden based on the square foot method and Jack's advice. I am also working on some other basic preps based upon the guidance I've found on this site.

I hope to contribute here when I have a chance.

Welcome Clockwork!    I'm glad that you're spending your time and energy on positive change.  Good for you, and welcome to the pod.

[Sister Wolf]

I am a web designer, guitarist, fisher, beginner hunter, beginner prepper, Dave Ramsey veteran and an ordinary average guy.

Hey!  I'm a web designer and guitarist too!    And we're all "fellow babies" (as my friend Vec is fond of saying) when it comes to prepping.  So don't feel too bad. 

Welcome to the forum, lhunt!

[lhunt]

Hey!  I'm a web designer and guitarist too!   

Thanks Sister Wolf! It seems there are a lot of web people on here. I saw your photo of you and your guitar. Very cool. What acoustic is that?

[Scipio]

Hello all.  I have the distinct pleasure of being the newest forum member, for at least what... 5 seconds.

I only discovered the podcast about two weeks ago, but am making a helluva effort to catch up.  Very refreshing to hear someone explain the thoughts that have been pinging around in my head for years.

My grandparents raised me in North Dakota with good depression era values and strong work ethic.  For them, all this 'prepper' stuff was just a way of life.  They had gardens and canned the produce.  They raised cattle for beef and milk.  Hunting is something we did for meat, not for the pleasure of killing.  They worked hard every day of their life.  My greatest dream is to instill in my two young boys the lessons they taught me by example.

I served 8 years active Army (am still in the Reserves) and a veteran of Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. 

My upbringing in North Dakota and my military experienced shaped me into who I am and instilled the belief that I have to prepared to rely on my own hard work to get by.

I'm 39 years old and I live in Maryland (Abingdon).  I like it out here much more than I thought I would, but I feel awfully cut off from the soil and nature.  Our garden is fine, but you can't live too long on tomatoes alone.  My wife is 50% on board with the prepper mentality, as long as I don't refer to it as such.  She knows I grew up with a well stocked pantry and root cellar, and that I never feel comfortable without a good amount stored up.

I'm very excited to have found like minded people out there.  Good to meet you all!

[monkeyboyf]

Welcome, Scipio and all you new members.  Glad to have you on board.  Jump right in.

[BerserkerPrime]

Scipio, I had the pleasure of serving 3 years in Minot ND and hated every second of it (no mountains)!  That being said, it is a great state as far as prepparedness goes.  Now that I'm older and wiser, ND/SD area would be one of my choices for settling down and setting up a homestead.  Welcome aboard and look forward to your contributions!

Berserker Prime

[azjake]

Welcome everyone!

[chileverde]

Greetings.  I am a father of two girls,6 and 9. I am a LEO in S.AZ.  I have been listening to TSP for some time now, usually while on patrol.  The postcast is great. 

[dudekrtr]

Greetings.  I am a father of two girls,6 and 9. I am a LEO in S.AZ.  I have been listening to TSP for some time now, usually while on patrol.  The postcast is great. 

Welcome aboard! Girls are great , I have 3 of them, all a bit older than yours. Be ready to start losing your hair in about 5-6 years 

[hd45hunt]

Howdy all  I am a LEO in south NY near CT border.  Recently finished listening to all of Jack's podcasts (some at work ) and am just so glad that I have found a place where I don't feel alone.  I remember I first found a magazine called "Practical Survival" sometime around 1990-1991 and fell in love with what they put out: self-reliance.  I'm also a longtime Backwoods Home subscriber.  After my Army days, I kind of drifted back into "modern thinking" (sounds nasty typing it).  Let's just say I have a new spark in me.  My plan is to reduce the debt load (Thank You Jack for calling a spade a spade) and head south, TN-KY?? (before NY bleeds my dry), build my own 'stead and within 5-10 yrs, work because I choose to (I'm 38 now).  The few people I have shared this with think I'm crazy: give up my retirement, move to the sticks and build a house(underground anyone???).  You try to explain, but you can tell within a couple of minutes, they just don't get it.  I guess I'll close with "If I'm crazy, I've found the asylum and I feel right at home."

[sarahluker]

Welcome brother!  You sound like you will fit in just fine. 

[LICountryBoy]

The few people I have shared this with think I'm crazy:

This isn't nessecarily a bad thing, is it?

Welcome aboard from a fellow New Yorker!

Asylum, no. Nut House Maybe. But nuts are tasty and full of nutrition.

[swoods]

Welcome. This forum is great and much learnin' and teachin' can be had by all.  I've spent way too much time and have become addicted to logging in to see what I may have missed whilst I slept!

[drthumbs]

Greeting all

I thought I would introduce myself.  I am a 36 year old paramedic. I live in NE Texas with my wife and two young sons.  I have been involved with wilderness survival skills and training for about 20 years ans over the last four or five I ave moved that mindset to my everyday live and have began “preping”

At work I am a member of a disaster response deployment team.  We can be sent where in the US, but  during my involvement in the team most of our responses have been hurricane related on the gulf coast of LA and TX.  I have seen first hand those that neglect to prepare themselves and there family for an obvious threat, let alone the not so obvious ones.

I am by no means prepared, but I am working on it.

I learned about the survival podcast over at Ron Hoods forum (the Hoodlums). Someone mentioned it after DT09 so I thought that I would come by and check it out and see if it is worth my time. I have listened to only 6 or 7 of the latest podcast and so far it seems to be worth the investment of time. 

I have not explored the forum yet, but plan to get on that soon, perhaps I may have something useful to add

[firetoad]

It has been a while since I have said it, so here goes...

Welcome to all of the new members!  Kick back, relax, read, enjoy, share your wisdom and knowledge and drink a little coffee (or kool-aid or tea or whatever your pleasure ).

[Whatatata]

Hey all,

VERY new to survivalism, but my interest has always been there.  I was always just never really thinking about these sort of issues, mainly cause nobody I know really gives a damn about them at all.  Heck, I never even thought that there would be a whole culture based on survivalism...  I found out about this podcast and forum just randomly by searching for podcasts about, "survival" on the net, and the Suvival Podcast showed up in the results.

I took a listen, and was hooked IMMEDIATELY by Jack's amazing insight and approach.  His thought process seems so honed and thought out, and he seems to be able to say with ease about every topic he covers, really making things interesting to listen to.  

I have been listening to the podcast every day at work, where I am a lowly drafter for an engineering firm, and the nature of my work, I am able to listen with ease while working.  

I have a bachelors in painting (art), and an associates in film and video production with one documentary under my belt.  I settled into my job for money reasons and my unwillingness to move to LA to persue the movie industry, yet I still want to make films, but where I live (Harrisburg, PA), I have to be all DIY with it.

I am also probably the only member of this forum who is a part time club DJ and promoter, as I am INSANE about electronic music in general--mostly drum and bass, dubstep, minimal techno and house music being my favs. Lot of good that will do when the sh*t hits the fan right? LOL

I feel I am a Libertarian by nature, yet very torn on many issues.  I have a hard time deciding on who is right on SOOOO many matters, especially since many of friends tend to be liberal in nature, (for instance my girlfriend), and I really suck at any sort of problem solving especially with people being involved.  Trying to get me to explain anything is hard as I am not good with words.  I hear both sides of an arguement and they both sound right to me, I can't decide half the time.  Though if you look at the core beliefs about being libertarian, I am right there.  

I have a bit of credit card debt, almost 3500$, which now that I have bought my first house in the suburbs, I feel that I can now pay this off, cause I HAVE to.  I feel I have to change my way of life, and have started that by buying the house, which was a STEAL in this market, I got lucky on so many levels with this purchase.  I hope maybe 5 - 10 years down the road to sell it and get a more rural location, but for now, I have a small backyard which I plan to utilize for a garden (another thing I know NOTHING about, and I hope you guys can help me).  I also would like to look into buying a gun for home defense, but again, I know NOTHING about it, and am willing to learn.  I have shot guns before, but only a few times.  Also interested in learning about solar power, etc.  I hope to become a contributing member, so Hello everyone!!!

edit: Whatatata is a character from an old movie I shot in my youth, kind of an inside joke with me and my friends.

 

[dudekrtr]

Trying to get me to explain anything is hard as I am not good with words.  

Welcome aboard Whatatata,
BTW , I think you did a great job of explaining yourself; this was a clear concise post. Keep exploring the forum for what you need , and go over some of the older shows, too. You simply cannot put a price on the wealth of information here.

[Saint]

Team - my bad, should have done this (introduction) first.
I'm Kevin (go by Saint),41, married with my first offspring inbound around Turkey Day!
Born, raised and now live in NY after a 20 year period away at college and the military (no longer a "New Yawkah" since I lost my accent in the USAF and my attitude while living in FL). Currently a flight test engineer for a large defense contractor and still in the air guard.
Interestingly, I'm in charge of the "Future Council" and "Threat Matrix" at work - defining emerging threats and weapon system improvements to counter them and I'm the training and Stan/Eval dude in my guard unit - so well before I found you all, Jack's podcast or this movement in general, I've been "focused" on some level of prep, prediction and training...cosmic.
I just finished Krepenevich's book "7 Deadly Scenarios" and it reinforced the need for this mindset. Looking forward to re-reading 1984 and the Pig Farm - if for no other reason than to marvel at Orwell's insight.
All that said - wow, the learning curve has been huge - fun, but huge!
Saint

[awouldbehipster]

Hello everyone,

My name is Jackson, and I'm new to this community. I'm a 26 year old 'would be hipster' guy living in Portland, OR with my lovely wife and two cats. I'm just getting in to this modern survivalism/prepper thing, so I'm sure I have a lot to learn from all of you.

Portland is incredibly progressive/liberal, so I often feel like a stranger in a strange land. Being that I am a libertarian, I was drawn to this site after listening to one of Jack's interviews on the LewRockwell.com podcast.

Thanks in advance for all of your help!

~Jackson

[Ultraist]

Hi Everyone.

Nice to meet you all.

Back when I was a wee lad, all I wanted to do was draw comics.  That may not seem to have anything in common with Survivalism on the surface, but it was that desire to make a comic that ultimately lead me here to The Survival Podcast Forum.

Back in 1986, what I did was took a look at what the newspaper guys were doing through syndication, thinking that was the path I should follow, and contacted King Features Syndicate, who promptly sent me a submissions package.  Reading the fine print, even at twelve years of age, my intuition knew that forfeiting ownership of my intellectual property to a syndicate was not a wise course of action.  I didn't want to spend my life working on something that would ultimately be owned by someone else.  There had to be an alternative, and that was when I discovered self-publishing.  This was a way I could create my own work, build my own brand, and control my own future.

But life has a way of veering you off course...

Over the next few decades, I got caught up in life's undertow.  I went to college for animation, then got seduced by the flash of computer animation, and feature films, and low six figure salaries, all the while thinking "if I just earn enough to take some time off, maybe I can work on making a comic"...  Meanwhile life continued to happen.  I moved from Toronto, to Honolulu, to Montreal, to Berkeley... and back to Toronto.  Every step of the way, my wife moved with me, and our family continued to grow.  Soon we bought the house in the GTA suburbs, and locked ourselves into the "death-grip" of a mortgage.  All the while thinking... "if I work just a little more... maybe I can save enough to take some time off and make a comic".  But expenses kept rising, and the wages in animation started to slide.  My creative energy, my temporal currency, was being sucked away.  Every bit of labor became for a fiat paycheck that vanished into thin air.  More and more was demanded, longer hours, more commuting, more overtime, with nothing to show for it... something had to give.

This year, the family and I took a hard look at what we wanted in life, and realized this wasn't it.  So we started making changes. 

The first change was taking a lower paying job to work from home.  Now I suddenly have ability to spend more time with my beautiful wife and 4 wonderful children, as well as a little extra time to actually draw my own projects.

Phase 2 of this operation is bugging out to a Northern Homestead.  As I mentioned elsewhere on these boards, we're thinking North East of Toronto, (possibly the Muskoka region).

The idea is to get out of the suburbs and on to some acreage.  Cut the mortgage in half (or more).  Finding ways to become as self-sufficient as possible to free up the time and money to make those comics I had been wanting to make all those decades ago.

Which brings me here, to The Survival Podcast.

As I was finishing up my latest comic, I was looking for something to entertain/educate while I inked my final pages.  A friend from Freedom Force International passed me a link to the show, and it resonated with me.  I've been listening ever since.  Now (as time permits) I hope to sift through these forums to see if I can't find some ways to live that better life.


My name is Mike Kitchen.

[mamabear]

Welcome to all our new folks! Glad you could join us.

[Ultraist]

As I mentioned elsewhere on these boards, we're thinking North East of Toronto, (possibly the Muskoka region).

That should read North WEST of Toronto...

... gonna have to get used to not being able to edit posts!

Mike.

[Eluin]

Hi all,

I'm a 34yo Truck Driver/Dispatcher in Colorado & very new to prepping. I found out about the show through an interview Jack did with Lew Rockwell & became hooked. 
I've driven in all lower 48 states, some of Canada, & now I've settled down in Colorado. Where from here I go in my prepping is still a bit vague to me, but I have nearly 45 days worth of food in my apartment, but not much else as yet. I spent too many years living from moment to moment w/o paying any real attention or even buying things for a home life & now I have a ton of catching up to do for myself  .

That being said, the show is great, & I look forward to being a part of your great community!

[s_gorilla45]

Hello to everyone!  Matt here. 

I'm a 32 yr old sales associate from Phoenix, AZ.  I grew up on a rural western Nebraska farm and meandered my way to the desert southwest 7 years ago.  I've been an advocate for preparedness lifestyle since moving away from the farm and realizing how unable "city folk" could cope with minor, let alone major, disruption of their daily lives.  I was used to having months worth of food in the house simply because it was unusual to go to the grocery store more than once per month.  It was strange to me to watch my now x-wife's family buy groceries for one or two meals at a time.  I tend to keep at least six months of nonperishable on hand at any given time and have been extending that recently.  I have also started a container garden on my rather small patio (condo).

Water is a major factor here and have just over 50 gallons stored.  This is my most pressing issue but I've simply run out of space in my condo for more.  Water filtration and treatment methods are a priority among my preps. 

I guess I can be lumped in with the gun nut crowd.     I practice regularly with both my handgun as well as with my rifles.  I try to get in at least one USPSA handgun match every month and would shoot much more if possible.  I reload to keep cost to a minimum and to provide myself with match quality ammunition for my rifles.  I grew up hunting and fishing though I haven't been doing much of either for the last few years. 

Thanks to everyone that makes this such a great forum and though I probably won't be a regular contributor, I will try to help out whenever I can. 

[inara5681]

first post.. been prepping for a while Katrina was the eye opener for me.. but not real intensely. turned the corner spring of 08 when we had local flooding in our community and observed first hand how inadequately people are prepared for emergencies.. love and the posts been lurking for a while..

[Heavy G]

Too many new people to say "hi" to all of you ... but "hi!"  We're so happy you're here. 

This is the place to learn and have fun.  No jerks (if so, tell us mods).  No crazies (well, not too many).

[Vinny T. Firefly]

Hey, Everyone! I'm Vince. I'm living in Northern Indiana and probably moving to Kentucky in about a month. I don't know the zones yet but, I'm still learning. I've been listening to Jack for about a year now and I've been into "prepping" since I was kid. Unfortunately, I didn't really *do* anything about it. So, I guess I'm a late bloomer. I'm slowly bringing my girl on board. Not, with the generals but the specifics. She doesn't want to know. She says,"that's why she keeps me around."

[Darkwinter]

Welcome Vinny, glad to have you on the forum.

[Rand McNally]

I will get the statistical stuff out of the way first. I am 36 year old male living in Manitoba. I am married and have one child.

I stumbled on the podcast about 6 months ago and have been generally impressed by Jack's clear thinking and sensible approach to prepping.

By way of background, I have spend time working in international development, academics and the military, plus a couple other things for a bit. From my time overseas with both the military and working in international development, I have developed an appreciation for how fragile the systems of support are, and how many things could interfere with them.  I also got to see how little we need to be comfortable and happy, and that community often matters more than stuff.  I have been prepping in a haphazard way since my 20s, and have felt for quite awhile that there is something wrong with modern society.  Listening to Jack has helped give me more focus on what I need to do. Compared to many of you I am just a beginner, when it comes to this stuff. While I feel pretty comfortable with my wildness survival skills, I realize that I need to learn a lot about gardening, canning and some of the more domestic skills.

I have rambled long enough, I think I will shut up and learn for a bit.