Preparing For The Resistance – June 2022

In my post Prepare For The Resistance I outlined how I think patriots should be preparing for the dark days ahead. To reinforce those recommendations I am formatting these posts to match up with them.

Toughen Up

Spiritually:

As a Christian, studying The Word helps strengthen my faith. This month I continued my study of the Gospel of John.

Prayer is another way to strengthen ourselves spiritually. This month I continued my regular, daily prayers and continued to pray for my 50 closest neighbors.

Fellowship with other believers and fellowship with God is a critical component to maintaining spiritual strength. This month I continued teaching Sunday School and attending church.

Mentally:

 

Physically:

 

Be Smarter

Privacy, fighting, medical, coms, et.

 

Be More Resilient

Supplies:

 

Gear:

 

Finances:

We continued to add money into our retirement accounts and precious metals. I also moved some money out of savings and into precious metals before they topped out.

Energy:

I ran the generator for 15-20 minutes to help prevent carburetor issues and make sure it will be good to go if it is ever needed. This is a recurring monthly task.

***

That’s it for me. That’s what I prepped this month. How about you? What did you Prep this month?

Be alert, get prepared, fight the good fight!

God bless and God save the Republic.

 

Preparing For The Resistance – May 2022

In my post Prepare For The Resistance I outlined how I think patriots should be preparing for the dark days ahead. To reinforce those recommendations I am formatting these posts to match up with them.

Toughen Up

Spiritually:

As a Christian, studying The Word helps strengthen my faith. This month I continued my study of the Gospel of John.

Prayer is another way to strengthen ourselves spiritually. This month I continued my regular, daily prayers and continued to pray for my 50 closest neighbors.

Fellowship with other believers and fellowship with God is a critical component to maintaining spiritual strength. This month I continued teaching Sunday School and attending church.

Mentally:

I didn’t do anything specific this month to strengthen myself mentally.

Physically:

I had some mixed results this month but overall I am on track to getting stronger and healthier; hitting the gym and walking.

Be Smarter

I attended a one day medical training that covered casualty care procedures and bleeding control. I also attended half a day of a tactical rifle class.

Be More Resilient

Supplies:

We continued stocking up on food. I also rotated the emergency pantry into the regular pantry and re-inventoried and restocked.

I have met my goals for ammo supplies but concern over future availability has me continuing to add to our stocks:
5.56/.223 (80 rounds)
9mm (50 rounds)
.22 Long Rifle (250 rounds)

Gear:

I purchased two Holosun HG515 red dots and installed them on my rifle and Wonderful Wife’s rifle. These are tougher and better optics than we had installed before.  It also gives us consistency on three of our self-defense rifles. The other has a Low Power Variable Optic (LPVO) installed. I tool all four of our self-defense rifles and the M&P 15-22 I purchased as a trainer to the range and zeroed/confirmed zero on all of them. Then spent a little time on longer range work and transitioning between multiple targets.

5.11 had a closeout sale on a specific color of their TacTec plate carrier and I took advantage of that to upgrade mine. I also purchased several pairs of pants. They are sturdier and allow for a greater range of motion than the cargo pants I usually wear.

I updated the programming on all my radios to make sure they were all consistent with each other and the standards of our team. We also bought several more radios, both walkie talkie style radios (also programmable) and GMRS. With that complete I will need to schedule a short training session and they will be passed out to family members. I am also working on a “communications plan” to serve as a “how to” and a reference guide.

We purchased more medical gear including combat bandages and tourniquets. For the moment this is going into tubs. Ultimately, they will be made into trauma kits\IFAKs for the family.

I also purchased a pocket IFAK. It is like a bifold wallet to carry core essentials in a pocket instead of a pouch. Lots of times I am going placed and don’t have my backpack with me but I will be able to slip this in my pocket.

Finances:

We continued to add money into our retirement accounts and precious metals. I also moved some money out of savings and into precious metals.

Energy:

We purchased two additional 5 gallon fuel containers during (preparedness) tax free weekend and filled them with treated gasoline.

I ran the generator for 15-20 minutes to help prevent carburetor issues and make sure it will be good to go if it is ever needed. This is a recurring monthly task.

***

That’s it for me. That’s what I prepped this month. How about you? What did you Prep this month?

Be alert, get prepared, fight the good fight!

God bless and God save the Republic.

 

The Challenge To Our Faith

We live in a time when our faith in Christ and God’s word is often challenged. (I believe) we are headed into even darker times when our faith in Christ will be attacked, and living according to God’s will could cost us our lives and family.

I pray that I am wrong.

I also pray that God will strengthen me and my family so we can persevere and hold onto our faith regardless of what we face. Prayer is critical but it is also important to use the gifts He has given us to be prepared for those dark times. So, we pray, we stock up, we train, and we team up with other like minded individuals but faith and prayer remain the bedrock.

God bless.

Preparing For The Resistance – April 2022

In my post Prepare For The Resistance I outlined how I think patriots should be preparing for the dark days ahead. To reinforce those recommendations I am formatting these posts to match up with them.

Toughen Up

Spiritually:

As a Christian, studying The Word helps strengthen my faith. This month I continued my study of the Gospel of John.

Prayer is another way to strengthen ourselves spiritually. This month I continued my regular, daily prayers and continued to pray for my 50 closest neighbors.

Fellowship with other believers and fellowship with God is a critical component to maintaining spiritual strength. This month I continued teaching Sunday School and attending church.

Mentally:

The tactical training I do toughens me up in several ways. First, to keep pushing and focusing when exhausted develops a mental toughness. The scenarios we train, whether force on force, hand to hand or small unit tactics such as ambush, helps to create a mental readiness for when/if we encounter such situations in real life.

Physically:

I’ve done a pretty good job with working out and exercising this month. I am almost back to the level of fitness I had pre-COVID/injuries. Hopefully, I can stay healthy and continue to improve.

Be Smarter

I took a one day self-defense class. I spend a lot of time working with firearms and have even had some knife training but I know that hand to hand is an area of weakness. This class helped me improve in this area, a little. I was a somewhat limited on some of the techniques and had to be careful of my hip.

Be More Resilient

Supplies:

I purchased another case of MREs. I primarily use these when I am out in the field training and are not really a part of my long term food storage plan. Still, it is nice to have a few extra on hand, just in case.

Topped off the pantry from the emergency pantry, inventoried it and placed an order to top off what we have used and fill in a few gaps. At this point for most items we are in a good place and can afford to wait for sales and take advantage of them to continue stocking up. However, we are continuing to stock up on long term foods adding more mashed potatoes, rice, beans, flour, sugar and salt.

We are also stocking up on non-food items like cleaning supplies and personal hygiene items. This month we stocked up on deodorant and soap.

I have met my goals for ammo supplies but concern over future availability has me continuing to add to our stocks:
5.56/.223 (80 rounds)

Gear:

Wonderful Wife asked me about coms for the family in an an emergency and I explained that I told them what radios to buy but they had not bought them yet. We bought two more UV-5r radios and two extended life batteries. Once I get them programmed I will show the family how to use them and pass them out.

Purchased two heavy-duty tarps on the preparedness tax-free weekend. I also bought new smoke detectors for the house since they were tax-free as well and ours have all begun to fail.

Finances:

We continued to add money into our retirement accounts and precious metals. I also moved some money out of savings and into precious metals before they topped out and invested a stock dividend into precious metals.

Energy:

I ran the generator for 15-20 minutes to help prevent carburetor issues and make sure it will be good to go if it is ever needed. This is a recurring monthly task.

We took advantage of the tax-free preparedness weekend Texas has and added to our supply of batteries.

***

That’s it for me. That’s what I prepped this month. How about you? What did you Prep this month?

Be alert, get prepared, fight the good fight!

God bless and God save the Republic.

 

Thought For The Day

Tools without training are useless.
-John Wesley Rawles

Preparing For The Resistance – March 2022

In my post Prepare For The Resistance I outlined how I think patriots should be preparing for the dark days ahead. To reinforce those recommendations I am formatting these posts to match up with them. We’ll run that way for a few months and see how it goes.

Toughen Up

I attended a weekend-long Warrior Skills Training class this month and that helped toughen me up in every way; spiritually, mentally and physically. Forty eight hours of drills, training, simulated operations, and education combined with living on only what you can carry was truly a challenge. Add the lack of sleep due to long training days and nights sleeping on the cold ground and this was an experience that toughened me up in every way.

Spiritually:

As a Christian, studying The Word helps strengthen my faith. This month I continued my study of the Gospel of John.

Prayer is another way to strengthen ourselves spiritually. This month I continued my regular, daily prayers and continued to pray for my 50 closest neighbors.

Fellowship with other believers and fellowship with God is a critical component to maintaining spiritual strength. This month I continued teaching Sunday School and attending church.

Mentally:

See comments above on the Warrior Skills Training but one more addition here. We were using blanks during many of the operations. Which meant that we were aiming our rifles at other human beings, pulling the trigger and producing the same (similar) response as the rifle would make in a real fight (gun goes bang). The same goes for stabbing the torso of a human-like training dummy. All the classroom discussions from all the self-defense classes I have taken over the years about mindset and being “in the fight” took on a whole new level of reality. I hope and pray I never have to use any of this training but the reality check from this weekend will, hopefully, reduce any hesitation I might have when the time comes and help ensure that I have the right mindset at the time.

Physically:

See comments on the Warrior Skills Training I have also been doing OK when it comes to gym time. There is still room for improvement there. My hip seems to be healing and I have more mobility and flexibility than I have in weeks.

Be Smarter

Attended a small unit tactical training class on patrolling, breaking and reacting to contact as well a carbine class focused on weapons manipulation drills.

To top it all off the I was able to attend a weekend long warrior skills training class. We humped all our gear and made camp in the woods. We used that for a base of operations to train for the next 48 hours. Topics trained included night movements and operations, patrols, ambushes, CQB practice sessions, weapons manipulation, camouflage, communications, tripwires for early warning as well as base security operations.

Be More Resilient

Supplies:

Made a bulk purchase of the needles I use to administer one of my medications. I am now set on these for the next several years.

I have met my goals for ammo supplies but concern over future availability has me continuing to add to our stocks:
5.56/.223 (400 rounds)

We have slowed a bit over the last month on adding to our food supply inventory. We have continued stocking up, just at a slower pace. I think it is time to kick that back into high gear.

Purchased a bottle of Permethrin. I plan to use it to treat my outdoor gear to repel critters as the weather warms up.

Gear:

In preparation for the weekend training I purchased several pieces of gear including a headlamp with a red light, a red light penlight, a single person tent, and a large backpack/rucksack.

I am still trying to find a radio headset that works for me in tactical situations. I have tried several in ear head sets but I haven’t found one that is durable and stays in place. A buddy runs a set of Peltor headphones and seems to like the setup so I looked at picking up a set…yeah, not gonna happen anytime soon. I did find a (relatively) cheap set of Chinese knockoffs and purchased them. They probably won’t last but I will be able to see if I can stand wearing a full headset in the south Texas heat and humidity. If so, I can start watching for deals on the good ones.

I picked up 5 additional AR magazines. To complete the load out I plan on carrying I needed a couple more. I could have pulled them from stock but there was a sale on them when buying five or more. So…

I purchased a new phone. With the ongoing supply chain issues and ever increasing prices I decided to go ahead and get one now while they are available rather than wait for my current phone to need replacement and potentially not be able to get one or have to pay a much higher price.

Finances:

We continued to add money into our retirement accounts and precious metals. I also moved some money out of savings and into precious metals just before before they topped out.

Energy:

I ran the generator for 15-20 minutes to help prevent carburetor issues and make sure it will be good to go if it is ever needed. This is a recurring monthly task.

Purchased two additional 5 gallon gas cans, filled them and added stabilizer. I also topped off the generator after running it and now I have another small can to fill.

***

That’s it for me. That’s what I prepped this month. How about you? What did you Prep this month?

Be alert, get prepared, fight the good fight!

God bless and God save the Republic.

 

Preparing For The Resistance – February 2022

I am changing up the format of this series just a little bit. In my post Prepare For The Resistance I outlined how I think patriots should be preparing for the dark days ahead. To reinforce those recommendations I am formatting these posts to match up with them. We’ll run that way for a few months and see how it goes.

Toughen Up

Spiritually:

As a Christian, studying The Word helps strengthen my faith. This month I continued my study of the Gospel of John.

Prayer is another way to strengthen ourselves spiritually. This month I continued my regular, daily prayers and continued to pray for my 50 closest neighbors.

Fellowship with other believers and fellowship with God is a critical component to maintaining spiritual strength. This month I continued teaching Sunday School and attending church.

Mentally:

Still looking for ways to toughen up mentally.

Physically:

Total failure in this area. I am doing physical therapy for my shoulder and that’s about it due to work and travel schedules.

Be Smarter

Started checking out MMA/self-defense gyms and sat in on a class. I won’t make a decision or join until my travel schedule slows down.

Did some live fire and move to contact drills.

Be More Resilient

Supplies:

We finally completed the reorganization of our emergency pantry to accommodate the increased storage capacity. Based on that we placed orders to begin filling the space. Stocking up on as much food as practical. As part of this we vacuum sealed a number of containers of pasta and put into bins for easier storage over a longer period of time.

We stocked up on some medical supplies including rolled gauze, generic Dramamine and two more CAT Gen 7 tourniquets.

Of course, we stocked up on ammo as well:
5.56/.223 (40 rounds)
9mm (200 rounds)
.22 Long Rifle (300 Rounds)

Gear:

I purchased a tough, low tech watch. I normally wear an Apple watch but there may be times, especially in a collapse, where I may not want to wear (trackable) smart technology on my person. In some cases when hiking or doing other things I would like a tougher watch on my wrist instead of the (far more) expensive and breakable apple offering. This little Timex is pretty tough and was pretty inexpensive.

We bought a hand operated pump (safe for fuel use) and a drill operated pump (not safe for fuel use). We also started topping up gear and supplies for our emergency kits (sill-cock keys, water filters, collapsible water containers, storm proof matches, etc).

Finances:

We continued to add money into our retirement and investment accounts. We have decided to stop purchasing Crypto at this time. Instead, we will put the money (plus a little more) into precious metals instead. Overall, this slightly reduces the amount we are putting into our investment accounts and increases the percentage in precious metals. A good return from the investments is critical if we want to retire and live in the manner we would like. Precious metals is for wealth preservation and does not provide that return however it should be the safer choice and will preserve wealth even if inflation continues to be a problem and it is a hedge against a market collapse.

I took the dividends from one of our stock accounts and invested that into precious metals as well.

Energy:

Nothing this month.

***

That’s it for me. That’s what I prepped this month. How about you? What did you Prep this month?

Be alert, get prepared, fight the good fight!

God bless and God save the Republic.

 

Preparing For The Resistance – January 2022

Reminder: I have changed up the format of this series just a little bit. In my post Prepare For The Resistance I outlined how I think patriots should be preparing for the dark days ahead. To reinforce those recommendations I am formatting these posts to match up with them. We’ll run that way for a few months and see how it goes.

Toughen Up

Spiritually:

As a Christian, studying The Word helps strengthen my faith. This month I continued my study of the Gospel of John.

Prayer is another way to strengthen ourselves spiritually. This month I continued my regular, daily prayers and continued to pray for my 50 closest neighbors.

Fellowship with other believers and fellowship with God is a critical component to maintaining spiritual strength. This month I continued teaching Sunday School and attending church.

Mentally:

Still looking to you guys for some suggestions here.

Physically:

For a variety of reasons I have not been as attentive to this area of preparation as I should have been. I really need to get back in the swing of things.

Be Smarter

I received my GMRS license and have been working with the radio to learn more about communications.

I missed one tactical training class this month but I did attend a class on Searching and Clearing. I took this particular class previously but this type of training is rarely a “one and done” kind of thing. The more times you take the class and the more practice you get the better you get.

Be More Resilient

Supplies:

We continued stocking up on food. We are planning to stack food “to the rafters” over the few months. In order to extend our canned food storage capacity I purchased another shelving unit and cleared a space for it and I am in the process of redistributing and organizing it all.

I purchased the components and put together another trauma kit. I realized that I didn’t have one for my range bag. Now I do.

We stocked up on additional batteries. Every January I replace the batteries in my smoke detectors as well as in the optics and lights mounted on self-defense firearms so we purchased those and swapped them. We also added another 100 count of AA and AAA batteries to our supply.

Other things we stocked up on this month include: water purification tabs (100), razor blades (100), OTC medicines (sinus, anti-diarrhea and heartburn), Duck Tape, Vacuum sealer bags, soap, yeast, can openers, lighters, clothes pins and sewing kits. Many of these items are based on the “First hundred things to disappear in a collapse” posts.

Of course, we stocked up on ammo as well:

9mm (200 rounds)

5.56 (1080 Rounds)

.22 Long Rifle (200 Rounds)

I also did an inventory of the ammo on hand to make sure we were at our targeted stock levels.

Gear:

We purchased another, larger Sawyer water filter setup. Wonderful Wife and I decided that multiple, smaller filtration solutions were preferable to a single, larger solution. It will be more work to filter larger quantities of water, if need be, but we won’t be reliant on a single system and point of failure.

I completed the AR pistol build and added needed accessories (light and backup iron sights. I reused an optic and a single point sling I purchased previously. I also purchased an M&P 15-22 for a lower cost training option.

Added three 35 round Magpul magazines for the CZ Scorpion and five more training magazines for the AR.

Finances:

We continued to add money into our retirement and investment accounts including stocks and cryptocurrency. We also added a few more ounces of silver to our reserves. Reinvested a dividend from out investment account back into the same fund.

Energy:

Nothing to add here.

***

That’s it for me. That’s what I prepped this month. How about you? What did you Prep this month?

Be alert, get prepared, fight the good fight!

God bless and God save the Republic.

 

A Time To Reflect And Plan (Part 2)

In Part 1 we looked, at a high level, at what specific scenarios we are preparing for. In this post we will look at the plan we have put together for becoming more prepared in 2022.

We will use the same format as we use in the Preparing For the Resistance series of posts:

Toughen Up

Spiritually:

1. 1. 1. For 2022, I want to complete a detailed study of four books of the Bible.
         
      2. Perform three additional service projects per year

Mentally:

I don’t know of anyway to specifically strengthen myself mentally for what is coming. Strengthening myself spiritually and physically requires and will build mental toughness. Tactical training that forces a fighting mindset strengthens mental toughness. As does a basic awareness of what is happening in our nation and our world.

An even tougher question is how to help those around me become stranger mentally without discouraging them…

Physically:

1. 1. 1. First and foremost, I want to get my shoulder squared away and healed so I can work and fight more effectively.
      2. I want to lose 15-20 pounds
      3. I will get myself in good enough cardio condition to run half a mile and be able to pass the Marine Corps Combat Fitness test and complete a “Murph Challenge.”
      4. I want to get Wonderful Wife into a regular workout routine.
      5. Finally, I need to get off my duff and get a fully functional security system set up and running as well signing up for a monitoring service for the system.

Be Smarter

1. 1. 1. Pass my exam for a Ham license
      2. Complete a medical training class
      3. Complete at least six tactical training classes during the year.

Be More Resilient

Supplies:

1. 1. 1. We are in the process of building up our stockpiles and would like to complete that in Q1 of 2022.
      2. Fill in the holes identified in the 100 Things That Disappear In A Collapse exercise.

Gear:

1. 1. 1. Our bugout bags are a mess and have been pilfered through the lock-downs of 2020 and 2021. We need to get these ready to go at a moment’s notice.
      2. The same goes for my get home bag. It’s been so long since I really left the house that I need to get this back back in shape and restocked.
      3. I also want to put together a get home back/crate/tub for my Hippy Dippy daughter in San Antonio.
      4. I need to do a test run on a number of critical gear items; single room air conditioner, new propane heater,  butane powered burner, propane stove, and our lanterns.

Finances:

1. 1. 1. Add $24,000 to our savings/investments
      2. Write our will
      3. Purchase a prepaid funeral plan

Energy:

1. 1. 1. Buy a backup generator
      2. Buy a small solar charging system that can be used for charging electronic devices

Those are my goals for 2022. How about you? Do you have a prep plan for next year? Feel free to share it in the comments below.

Be alert, get prepared, fight the good fight!

God bless and God save the Republic.

A Time To Reflect And Plan (Part 1)

About this time every year I try to take a little time to reflect on my general state of preparedness and make some plans for the coming year. It is easy to get caught up in things that are fun or easy and overlook critical items that are not as much fun or not as easy to accomplish. Having a plan at the beginning of the year helps make that what is most important gets taken care of.

The first thing we do is to decide what we should be preparing for. This has remained pretty consistent since Hurricane Harvey:

1. 1. Death – Death is a given. We will all die at some point it is just a matter of when. We have both accepted Jesus Christ as our savior and have received His grace so while we are not exactly ready to go shuffling off we know we will be with Him in eternity. From our perspective, the most important prep of all is handled. However, neither of us wants to be burden on those we leave behind so there is still some things we need to take care of in order to feel fully prepared. Specifically, we need to get our wills done and purchase a funeral policy so those costs and arrangements are out of the way.
   2. Retirement – Hopefully, this happens and happens before item number one. We were poor as church mice when we got married and it took everything we had to raise the kids and make sure they had what they needed so we go a late start on retirement planning. We are playing catch up on this big time. I contribute as much as possible to our 401k but we also need to build up other investment and annuities to make sure we can retire and not have to eat out of a dumpster. Based on the current state of the Social (in)Security program, we are not counting on it at all.
   3. Hurricane – On average a major storm hits this area about every ten years so we should be good for a bit. Averages are funny things and we don’t take it for granted that we could get hit at anytime during the season and need to be ready.
   4. Flood – This was never an issue until Hurricane Harvey but it weighs heavily on our planning at this point.
   5. Financial Collapse – Well, this isn’t so much a possible scenario as it is one we are living through right now. Wonderful Wife was laid off twice this year and inflation is tearing into our savings and disposable income like a pig into slop. I believe we are in the early stages of a financial collapse or at least some of the hardest economic times in living memory.
   6. Social Disruption – Have you seen the news? Again, I think we are already on that ride we are just slow part of the ride before the bottom drops out.

These are the scenarios we are trying to prepare for in Part 2 we will look at how we plan to be better prepared for them.

Be alert, get prepared, fight the good fight!

God bless and God save the Republic.