<Note:> If you are looking for a list of survival items, well, the internet is full of lists.  The Big List, over at Survival-Center.com is a compilation of lists from various sources, such as FEMA and the SAS Survival Handbook.  </ Note:>

Here we have a somewhat witty (or is that snooty?) piece from the The Independent, which in turn led to to read the following piece on one of Russia’s first millionaires who gave up his life in business and finance to milk cows and chop wood…3 years ago.

As a result, I am reminded of reading of Barton Biggs and his book, Wealth, War and Wisdom , and wonder how many people of “substance” had seen our hard economic times coming and made preparations for it well in advance, as Biggs recommends.

Hit & Run: The survivalist shopping list

If your blithe assessment of the recession runs to a couple of years of belt-tightening and the sacrifice of your favoured pancetta in favour of bacon bits, Gene Lange has news for you. You’re screwed, and you’re probably going to get trampled to death in the street.

Not Gene, though. Gene’s going to be fine. Gene works at a hedge fund in New York and, made wary by the increasingly erratic behaviour of his colleagues as the credit crunch has worn on, he is battening down the hatches. He’s stacked his basement with canned food, bottled water, and a decent supply of washable nappies for his baby. He’s fixing his car up so it’ll run off-road – presumably, massed ranks of crazed bankrupts will have taken to the motorways – and he’s taking good care of his collection of guns.

Gene’s not saying a rabble of crazy stockbrokers is absolutely definitely going to come round to his house and try to bludgeon him to death with his own wind-up torch so they can get at his baked beans. He’s just saying, “I don’t think it necessarily makes a guy crazy to prepare for the potential worst-case scenario.” That’s why he plans to purchase an inflatable speedboat. Everyone needs an escape plan.

Well, that’s just crazy Americans, right? But over here, the crunch is making people a little bit tense, too. Consider Michelle Fitzsimmons, “a businesswoman from near Cardiff”, who has planted a hazelnut tree in her garden. “They are a low-maintenance, highly productive source of protein that is much cheaper than meat,” she explains, and thus great in a financial squeeze. Fitzsimmons is also considering the purchase of a pig.

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Source: Happiest peasant: a Russian tycoon: Mark Franchetti – Times Online

AFTER becoming one of post-communist Russia’s first millionaires at the age of 24, German Sterligov lost no time building a financial empire with offices in Wall Street and Mayfair. Now, at 39, he has tired of life in the fast lane.

He has given up the two private planes and the fleet of luxurious cars, the four-storey Moscow mansion and the Manhattan penthouse.

In their place he has acquired a horse and a tractor, and moved his wife and five children into a three-bedroomed wooden house with no electricity or gas on a patchwork of fields surrounded by forbidding forest. Sterligov the international whiz-kid has become a humble peasant.

Until recently he brokered lucrative deals and tended a fortune which, at its peak, stood at hundreds of millions of dollars. Last week he was looking after pigs and sheep.

The family bakes its own bread and instead of champagne, Sterligov and Lena, his wife of 17 years, drink milk from their own cows, and kvas, a brown alcoholic brew made with birch-tree juice.

In summer their small corner of countryside 100 miles south of Moscow is infested with mosquitoes and in winter, when temperatures can drop to
-45C, the house is heated by a wood-burning stove and lit with candles.

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Technorati Tags: Barton Biggs, German Sterligov

Source: FT.com

We made it. Christmas, new year and the End-of-the-World-Armageddon-Apocalypse.

But 2009 is all about survival. And what better way to prepare than to become a survivalist? Survivalist websites and books were last year’s sleeper hit, no longer the preserve of lone wackos. Barton Biggs, former chief global strategist for Morgan Stanley, rebranded survivalism “sensible”. In his book Wealth, War, and Wisdom , he said all right-minded people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilised infrastructure” and advised the well-off to invest 5 per cent of their income in creating a refuge “well-stocked with seed, fertiliser, canned food and medicine”. A number of self-help books are on the market such as Cody Lundin’s When All Hell Breaks Loose, which instructs readers how to get rid of bodies and feast on rats in the event of disaster.

Jim Rawles tells me traffic to his website, survivalblog.com, increased threefold in the past year: “The demographics of [readers] have noticeably broadened, to include far more left-of-centre and green people … from a wide range of backgrounds and income levels. In 20 years we may all qualify as survivalists [as] the world seems headed for a deep depression.”

If you are worried that EOTWAA may come in 2009, visit the site for tips. There are testimonials from readers transformed by Mr Rawles’s shopping secrets. Reads one: “Imagine waiting for the vaccine to arrive, and the last can of anchovies is empty.” Even in the EOTWAA, someone will be preparing antipasti.

Over Christmas, the Cat Man came to London, to Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum, which offers weird exhibits. Cat Man, whose real name is Dennis Avner, has spent much of his life transforming himself into a tiger by tattooing his body, filing his teeth into feline points and having whisker implants. A computer programmer by day, he spent a month in the north Michigan woods to see if he could survive.

Positivity is key. Preparing for EOTWAA may sound depressing. But Mr Rawles says: “Active preparedness is all about keeping a positive attitude.”

The girl group Destiny’s Child knew the power of positive thinking: “I’m a survivor … I’m gonna make it.” There are worse anthems for 2009.

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Technorati Tags: TEOTWAWKI, Barton Biggs

I highly recommend Wealth, War and Wisdom, by Barton Biggs, and I also recommend that you pick up a good shortwave radio, if you don’t have one.  I have had great success with Grundig shortwaves over the years, but get whatever your budget will allow.

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Source: seattlepi.nwsource.com

The Armchair Survivalist believes the nation is falling into chaos, and he wants to help.

He offers practical advice for dealing with riots, wars, natural disasters and food shortages, which he says are imminent because of the worldwide economic meltdown and the incoming Obama administration.

“Too many things are occurring at the same time. It’s upsetting people,” said the Survivalist, whose real name is Kurt Wilson.

So this Martha Stewart for the camo-and-compound crowd provides valuable information on nonperishable foods, portable water purifiers and defensive weapons. His catalog business, Survival Enterprises, sells what you need for the coming hard times.

Northern Idaho has long been a magnet for anti-government types and Wilson moved his business here from California in 1998.

He operates out of a modest strip mall that is, ironically, on Government Way in Coeur d’Alene. Much of the work is packing and shipping orders for survival supplies such as canned bacon with a camouflage label and cases of military MREs.

Wilson started “The Armchair Survivalist” radio show about a year ago because so many people were asking him for advice on what he considered simple problems. The Saturday show can be heard over his Web site, on shortwave radio, or a few broadcast stations.
…

“Some conspiracy theorists and fringe “Patriot” radio hosts are seeking to reverse that course by calling on their friends and countrymen to arm themselves, organize and head for the hills in preparation for a fast-approaching second Civil War,” the SPLC said on its web site.

Jim Rawles, editor of survivalblog.com said unique visits to his site are climbing. They’ve doubled to about 107,000 a week, he said. But he doesn’t think Obama’s election is the main reason.

“The main driver right now is the economic situation,” he said. “A lot of people are deeply concerned we are on the cusp of another economic depression.”
…

Barton Biggs, former chief global strategist for Morgan Stanley, recently wrote a book (Wealth, War and Wisdom) in which he warned that people should anticipate the breakdown of civilized society. He suggested creating a “safe haven” and stocking it with canned food, liquids, medicine, seed, fertilizer and other tools for survival.

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Technorati Tags: shortwave