I recently had the privilege of being interviewed by John Wesley Smith from Destiny Survival. You can find the interview here.

We talked about some of the topics regarding faith and preparedness that I have covered here on the blog, subjects like why I believe Christians should be prepping, my thoughts on dreams and prophecy as well as eschatology.

We also discuss the upcoming retreats a bit as well!

If you listen to podcasts, you might enjoy the show!
 
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I wanted to let you all know I have been invited to speak at the men’s retreat at the Wood Lake Bible Camp on Saturday, January 24, 2015. I will be speaking on why, as men, it is our duty to prepare for our families; based on 1 Timothy 5:8 and my e-book Why Should I Prepare and is it Biblical?

The camp is located in 22460 Assembly Road Grantsburg, WI 54840. If you’re in the area, and would like to attend the retreat and hear me speak, you can register here.

 
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I don’t normally talk about news stories unless they could directly impact us. Today, however, I want to weigh in on a couple issues and give an update on the Preparedness Club.
 
 
The Preparedness Club

I have negotiated a pretty sweet deal for Preparedness Club members with Wise Foods. Preparedness Club members can now get a 12% discount on all purchases! See the member’s only page for the coupon code. Please know that registering for e-mails is different than subscribing to the Preparedness Club! Paying members have access to exclusive discount codes, while emails are sent to everyone daily for publically advertised sales free of charge.

There are many things I like about Wise foods; one is that you can call and get a free sample of an entrée, a nice option before buying a case of something, and another is that each meal comes in a single vacuum sealed bag. I actually prefer this over a #10 can, as they both have the same shelf life while closed, but, once open, the food in a #10 can needs to be eaten fairly quickly.

Nitro-Pak has agreed to offer a $10 discount on orders over $100 through October. I’m going to let anyone use this code. Simply enter PCNITRO at checkout.
 
 
Ebola

In What You Need to Know About Pandemics, I give my thoughts on pandemics. Here is what I said about Ebola.

“The scare right now is Ebola. While Ebola is incredibly nasty and I mourn for the families who’ve been affected by it, it isn’t what scares me the most. Ebola most often comes from West Africa and patient zero is infected by direct contact with infected animals, some of which are used as a food supply, such as bats. It is then possible for human to human infection via the exchange of bodily fluids. Some of the numbers I have seen for mortality rate of Ebola are 50%-90%. However, I found data that suggests there have been less than 4,000 cases since Ebola was discovered in 1976, including the cases from the recent outbreaks.

“If we had a case in Canada we’d isolate the case, the patient would live or die, and we’d be highly unlikely to have it transmit,”

At the time I wrote this, there had only been one confirmed case of Ebola stateside, and that was a doctor who had been flown to a hospital stateside. In the last two weeks or so AlertsUSA has done a great job of alerting me to several cases of Ebola stateside, often times before the media has the story.
In each of these reported cases, I believe the infected person traveled via airplane, risking the potential infection of everyone on board. I saw that the head of the CDC said that we could not close the boarder stating:

“Even if we tried to close the border, it wouldn’t work,” the top health official added. “People have a right to return. People transiting through could come in. And it would backfire, because by isolating these countries, it’ll make it harder to help them, it will spread more there and we’d be more likely to be exposed here.”

This might just be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard! Yes, I agree that those returning have a right to re-enter the country. If they are returning from a region with a risk of Ebola exposure, I am fine with them re-entering once they have passed a screening. They do not have the right to get anyone else here sick!

By isolating those countries, it does not make it harder to help them. We can still send money to aid in their fight against Ebola. If anyone understands how, by isolating those countries it would make us more likely to be exposed here, please help me understand.

If our government was serious about protecting our citizens from Ebola, we would have already implemented restriction for entering the country from anyone who had traveled to a hot zone. They would be quarantined until passing a screening.
 
What Can We Do?

If you haven’t given thought to when you will implement your own quarantine to avoid exposure, now is the time to do so! If you do not have PPE (personal protective) gear, now is the time! Masks and gloves should be in every prepper’s home at a minimum. We’re actually looking at disposable suits.

Right now Ebola is transmitted by bodily fluids. I have seen some express fear of it becoming airborne. If any of you know if this is in fact possible, and what would need to occur for it to happen, please either add a comment or send me an email!

Because it is transmitted by bodily fluid, if someone is even a little sick, treat it all as infectious. If it does become air born, I plan on hunkering down and taking no chances.
 
 
Islam and Beheadings

As many of you are aware, ISIS has begun beheading Christians in Iraq and in Syria. There has recently been a woman beheaded in Oklahoma by a muslim, who first tried to convert her.

I don’t want this, or the comments to turn into a muslim bashing rant, but there are some things you need to know.

It is my understanding that when it comes to infidels, muslims must either convert them and charge them a tax, or kill them.

Quran (9:5) – “So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them.”

Of course, not all muslim’s are people that want to kill you. However, there are 1,800,000,000 (1.8 billion) muslims in the world and it is estimated that 15-25% of them are radicalized. That means that between 270,000,000 to 450,000,000 muslims are radicalized. As we have seen, they have killed several times on American soil, most recently the beheading in Oklahoma.

I am actually shocked we have not seen this style of attack sooner, and I believe we will see many more. What are we believers in Jesus to do?

Jesus said “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. Here are my thoughts on this: Islamists made themselves my enemy, not the other way around. I pray for them now. I pray that they experience Christ in their lives. If an Islamist ever poses a real threat to me, I will be a danger to my enemy. If you are someone who believes Jesus called us to be pacifists, I have debunked that in an article called Should Christians Practice Self Defense?

If a muslim attempts to convert you, do not say the prayer or creed that declares Allah as the one true god and Mohamad as his prophet. This would, in fact, be turning your back on your salvation and would not guarantee your safety. One of the men beheaded on camera in Syria did, in fact, say the creed. He was killed anyway.

If a muslim does try to convert me, I realize it does not necessarily mean they have plans to behead me. They will still instantly and forever be placed in condition orange. Knowing me, I will probably poke the bear and declare myself a Christian. If this happened at work, as it did with the woman in Oklahoma, I would seriously consider breaking the rules about being armed at work.

I look forward to your input on these subjects!

 
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Today I want to fill you in on a couple things you might find interesting and I have a couple personal requests.

Free online Permaculture Design Course

I found this on facebook and thought some of you would really enjoy it. It is an online, self-paced 72+ hour program. If you have any interest in permaculture this could be well worth taking. I hope it’s available when I have more free time.

Here are some of the items covered.

• Natural building construction
• Pattern observation and site analysis
• Renewable energy and appropriate technology
• Reading the land and natural cycles
• Rainwater harvesting and conservation
• Soil regeneration and land restoration
• Passive and active solar design
• Food forests, trees, and garden design
• Greywater considerations and system design
• Business and financial permaculture
• Waste recycling and treatment
• Urban permaculture for sustainable cities

If you take the course I would love some feedback!

Gainsville Coins Info Graphic

I was contacted by the folks at Gainsville coins. They let me know about an info graphic they’ve created about junk silver. Junk silver is change that is usually pre-1965. They give lots of tips on how to spot it, how much it’s worth and so on.

Personal Update and Requests

I want to thank you for your prayers! The surgery went well and I am on the mend. I’ll be on crutches for another week or two but things seem to be healing nicely. While Trudee has been a huge blessing, I think we’re both ready for me to be done with the crutches.

 
New Website To Watch

Todd from The Prepper Website has started a new site called Top Prepper Sites. Unlike some of the other ranking sites that use Google and other analytics to measure traffic, this site’s rankings are purely visitor driven. If you think Prepared Christian is one of the best prepper sites, please take the time to vote for me whenever you read an article (you can vote more than once and the numbers reset each week). There will be a link at the bottom with the following request “Please click here to vote for Prepared Christian as a top Prepper site!”

 
Donations

My last topic isn’t something that is comfortable for me to bring up. I have been unemployed for some time now and unemployment insurance has run out. I’m having no luck getting back into my field.

The costs for maintaining this site used to be no problem. With finances getting even tighter I have a request; please prayerfully consider giving a portion of your tithe as a donation to Prepared Christian. There are two ways to give; by clicking on the donate button on the top left, or, if you would like to get something back for your money, you can join the Preparedness Club. The Preparedness Club offers discounts for nearly 20 preparedness business and each membership enters you in a drawing for a monthly prize! A 1 year membership is $40 and a monthly membership is $4.
Anything you give will be humbly appreciated.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and have a safe and Happy New Year!

Chris

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I want to let you all know about a couple things that could increase your overall preparedness.  One has to do with getting updates on new preparedness articles and the other is a going out of business sale that you might want to take advantage of.

Survival Pulse is a great resource to help you find good preparedness/survival related articles. They have signed up to receive updates from a large number of sites and publish the headlines of articles they think are worth reading.

New articles are added daily, so there is always something new to read. If you haven’t visited Survival Pulse, stop by! You might enjoy having new and informative articles waiting for you each day.
 
 

I posted this on facebook today and thought I would share it with all of you.

“I just received an email that one of the supporters of Prepared Christian, Mother Earth Products is closing down. They have received word from the Lord that has led to this decision. To help liquidate their remaining stock everything is 50% off, so if you or anyone you know is in the market for long term storage food, now is a great time to buy, feel free to share this on your facebook if you like. I am grateful to Mother Earth Products, and pray for the Lord to continue to guide them.”

I ordered a couple of things and noticed that their stock is disappearing quickly! However, they do have some stock. It’s mainly in #10 cans that they haven’t had time to enter onto the website.

When you are checking out, use the coupon code HUGE. This will correct the total to reflect the 50% discount.

Today I want to cover two different things that aren’t really long enough for their own posts, but I feel are important enough for me to mention.

Thanks to Jim for mentioning this a while back! Have you ever considered what would happen to those in jail or prison if there is a large scale event like an EMP or the like? Would guards let the inmates go? I can almost make that case for nonviolent criminals, who’re not a risk to the public. I say almost because nonviolent criminals still broke the law to get ahead when times were normal. If they are let go when there is a large scale event, what will they be capable of when they have nothing? When we were considering moving, we passed on one home that was a mile or two from a jail. If there is a large scale event, and the jail keepers take pity on nonviolent prisoners and let them go, they’ll most likely be let go with what they came into jail with. No food, money or anything else.

I am of the belief that violent prisoners should not be let go. This would indeed be a death sentence for those prisoners but I do not trust someone who has exhibited the ability to use violence against another to refrain from doing it again in this extreme circumstance.

Also consider zoos; what would happen to the animals in zoos? I read a prepper fiction story once where someone let the animals from the zoo go. What a mess! If this type of large scale event did occur and the animals are left in the zoo, there is little chance that the food for said animals would be available for long. The most humane thing to do might be to put the animals down. While sad, it is not nearly as sad as watching them starve to death or watching the carnage from them being released.

I bring this up because there are many people who value the lives of animals as much as or more than human life. These people might be willing to throw open the cages and let the animals go.
 
 

One odd prep that I have pondered is sandbags. They can be used to stop water or bullets! Heck, I have even seen some structures use them instead of cinder blocks! I recently saw an article called “How to use Sandbags To Stop Water or Bullets” and wanted to pass it along to you.

I recently purchased some sandbags from Camping Survival At the time of this writing, they are on sale; normally $.99, they are going for $.44 each or 100 for $38.

While I didn’t buy enough to hold back the flood waters, if things do fall apart, I can use them to barricade a door or a couple windows.

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