The ultimate suburban survivalist guide.

The smartest money moves to prepare for any crisis.

Sean Brodrick.

To my wife, Cindy, my partner in all things.

And to my children, who, along with other children, are the last and best hope of this world.

Foreword.

For many years, the author of this amazing book has been helping show investors how to protect themselves from financial harm and profit from opportunities around the world.

Along the way, he has traveled to far-flung locales from Guanajuato, Mexico, to Labrador, Canada. And he has kept us all informed and entertained with some of the wittiest research I 've ever had the pleasure of reading.

In this book, Sean Brodrick takes several giant steps further, giving proactive prescriptions for steps you can take to make your life richer and safer. Only this time he's sticking a lot closer to home, by helping you prepare for threats that, in not-so-unlikely worst-case scenarios, could literally strike right in our own backyard.

If you read my book, The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide, you learned how to survive and thrive financially. Here, Sean will show you how to survive physically!

We all pray and hope that the scariest of future events will never come to pa.s.s. And even in a depression, which could return with a vengeance in years ahead, I remain optimistic that most will not come true! But suppose I'm wrong. Or suppose the forecasts of some of the most reasoned scientists-regarding an influenza pandemic or the impacts of global warming-come true sooner than most of us dream possible.

Then what? Sean will prepare you, and he'll do so without ever having to pack up and head for the hills. He's written each chapter like a stand-alone mini-book on each major challenge you face. Together, they form a complete guide for protecting yourself in even the wildest of crazy times.

You'll not only see more clearly the swords of Damocles hanging over our heads, but you'll also learn through the real-life stories of people who learned to cope under similar circ.u.mstances.

Worried about the real potential for a swine flu disaster and the resulting drug shortages? This book tells you how to prepare ahead of time and how to use drug alternatives in a pinch.

What would you do if gasoline became unavailable? Sean has multiple answers for you.

If a major disaster hit your neighborhood right now, would you have an emergency bag packed and ready to go? After you read this book, I guarantee you will! All without costing a small fortune or going to extremes!

Sean's book opened my eyes to a whole range of threats (and solutions!) that I had never before considered. I am certain he will do the same for you as well.

As Sean shows us, the solution is not getting rid of our creature comforts or living in caves. It's to take simple, logical, incremental steps towards self-sufficiency and better preparedness. This book tells you what to do, and how to do it. It's intelligent, engaging, and entertaining. Read it now and keep it by your side as a handy reference for years to come.

Martin D. Weiss, PhD.

President, Weiss Research, Inc.

Author of the New York Times bestseller, The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide.

(published by John Wiley & Sons).

Acknowledgments.

Thanks to Martin Weiss, for teaching me about keeping money safe, to Larry Edelson, for teaching me about gold, and to Eric Drawdy, for teaching me about guns. Also, to everyone who agreed to be interviewed for this book-thanks for being so kind with your time. Finally, thanks to caffeine, without which this book would not have been possible, and to wine, for celebrating when the book was finished!

Introduction.

The shadow of what comes next looms over the world like a dark cloud of misery brought about by the madness of men.

-Jesse at Le Cafe American.

Do you have a pervasive sense of anxiety, as if our modern world is on thin ice? Do you have an uneasy feeling that Wall Street seems to be collapsing under the weight of bad debts and bad decisions-and dragging your job along with it? Or, maybe you feel our society is coming apart at the seams, and that our civilization could actually break down and collapse.

You are not alone. A lot of people are worried. In fact, there is a growing movement of people who are preparing for the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI).

Serious survivalists use another acronym, WTSHTF, or when the s**t hits the fan, to reference the inevitable onslaught of disastrous events that is sure to befall our beloved nation in the near to semi-near future. Some people think after TSHTF, our civilized, cultivated selves will rapidly devolve to radioactive cannibals fighting each other over sc.r.a.ps of meat in the burned-out husks of our cities. These hard-core survivalists move to remote farms where they raise livestock, collect guns and ammo, and prepare for a global oil crisis/financial meltdown/zombie invasion/the end of the world (as we know it).

I want to be prepared, too. However, I 'm comfortably ensconced in a twenty-first century lifestyle, and I don't want to give it up.

That said, I know the odds are increasing that my family and I will experience a disaster that will change our lifestyle and maybe even grind the gears of civilization. I'm not just talking about individual house fires or floods that affect neighborhoods. I'm talking about changes on a societal and national level-an economic crash, an energy crisis, terrorism, or even a plague.

A disaster could be any of a number of things, manmade or natural. I believe that yes, the U.S. empire is in decline, and may be on the brink of a catastrophic change. Now, I don't think it will happen all at once. I also don't think our civilization will go down without a fight. Even in the worst-case scenario, I expect there will probably be an initial panic, followed by an attempt at recovery and return to normalcy, and then a b.u.mpy downward spiral. Rome didn 't vanish overnight, and neither will today's Western world.

So what can you do if you want to maintain your modern lifestyle and you want to be a master of disaster?

The fact is, we are living in scary times, and changes are happening more rapidly than anyone would have imagined even six months ago.

Taking this into consideration, there are realistic goals you can set to prepare for dire situations. A few years ago, people who talked about these preparations might have been thought of as the wacky ones with foil hats; now, ordinary people are concerned. The ability to survive on your own for at least a few days after a storm blows through seems elementary, yet even in South Florida, where I live-an area that should be used to hurricanes by now-I've seen people out looking for ice and gallon jugs of water within hours after a storm has pa.s.sed.

A little self- reliance and independence goes a long way. The scouts always say to be prepared-the problem is, we've had a generation or two that have outsourced nearly every single facet of their lives.

But you don't have to live that way-not anymore. This book you're now holding in your hands can be your checklist on how to start preparing and your roadmap to peace of mind when a crisis. .h.i.ts. And I'm not talking just storms and power outages-I mean the kind of world-changing crises that keep us awake for more than a night or two.

You can survive a world-threatening disaster, and live a healthier lifestyle and save your money in the here and now. Here's the best part-you don't have to move to a goat farm in the wilderness to do it.a And I know it can be done, because my family and I have done much of it already. What we haven't done, friends and trusted sources have done. Preparing and protecting your family is possible. You can even prosper at the same time. It 's up to you.

Reading this book will prepare you for the worst. So when the s**t hits the fan, you can not only survive but thrive. While you should never deceive yourself about the difficulties you face, neither should you allow yourself to become the prisoner of your own fears.

Being prepared for the bad times means a lot of things: reducing debt, living within your means, storing food, buying survival gear, and more.

This book is for people who are going to prepare as much as possible, but, for reasons of job, family, or social choice, aren't going to move to a safe house in a remote, undisclosed location (if you do, say h.e.l.lo to d.i.c.k Cheney for me).

The fact is, you can wait a long time for the world to end. You can also buy a ton of specialized gear that you won't use unless the world completely falls apart. Or, you could ...* Just buy the basics you're going to need anyway.

* Change your food shopping habits, building a necessary stockpile of food and saving money in the process.

* Start a garden and load up your table with the healthiest, freshest food you've ever eaten.

* Develop skills that will make you a more self-reliant, well-rounded, and interesting person.

* Develop plans for any kind of emergency that will put you three steps ahead of the general population-also known as sheeple-in a panic.

* Position yourself financially to coast through tough economic times and come out on top.

Some financial outlay is called for in this book. But unlike many stocks and bonds pushed by Wall Street, the things I recommend you buy won't see their value go to zero. Indeed, if history is any guide, some will greatly increase in value over time. And some could save your life.

Throughout the book, I'll explain three things:1. The basics in each area of preparation 2. What my family has done, and what we've learned in the process.

3. Where you can go to get more information on each of these topics.

Major Disasters.

Bad things are going to happen. You know it. You 've probably been through temporary situations-blizzards, power grid down for days, water shortages-and are aware of looming worsening situations around us, both potential manmade calamities and natural disasters. Economically, our country slides into recessions now and again. The problem is, this time around, things seem to be much worse than average.

* Economic Depressions: The recession that started at the end of 2007 is the worst since World War II, and as bad as the Great Depression by some metrics. Car sales as measured by fleet turnover hit an all-time low in 2008. The number of Americans receiving food stamps. .h.i.t a record. Stock market crash, bank failures, soaring unemployment-all compounded by worries that our economy is on a slippery slope.

* Natural Disasters: Whether it's fires raging in Southern California, tornadoes touching down across the Midwest, crippling ice storms in New England, or hurricanes blowing through the Southeast, natural disasters cause temporary cessation of services and life as you know it. And they seem to be becoming more frequent, thanks to global warming.

* Oil Crisis: Peak oil-when oil production peaks around the world, which is a prelude to much higher prices-is rushing at us like a runaway train. And we can have energy spikes and shortages long before peak oil really bites. Thanks to our just-in-time delivery system, a fuel shortage will very quickly lead to a food shortage.

* Food Crisis: In recent years, the populations of the world's developing countries have been growing about 7% a year, a rapid rate by historical standards. This means that hundreds of millions more people are getting access to the basics of life, and many people-in China, India, and other emerging countries-are eating more food than they used to. That jump in demand is helping to drive up the prices of agricultural commodities and straining global food stockpiles. The 2007 to 2008 harvest-to-harvest year was the third in a row in which the world consumed more grain than it produced.1 Soon, we could be just one bad harvest away from a global food crisis.

* Climate Change: The dramatic changes in our climate are real and are altering our world in unimaginable ways. Global warming has made storms stronger, hurt harvests, and could cause desertification across large swaths of the United States by making water shortages so severe that some cities will have to be evacuated. Sea levels will rise between one and three feet by the end of this century, and temperatures could rise an average of seven degrees Fahrenheit at the same time, making large sections of Africa and Asia uninhabitable. The subsequent ma.s.s migration could dump hundreds of millions of immigrants on our sh.o.r.es.2 * Shutdown of large portions of the U.S. energy grid: The U.S. electrical grid is actually three separate electric networks, covering the East, the West, and Texas. Each includes many thousands of miles of transmission lines, power plants, and substations-a 100-year-old amalgamation of local utilities. Much of it is out of date and p.r.o.ne to breakdowns anyway. More recently, the threat of cyber-attack has reared its ugly head. The growing reliance of utilities on Internet-based communication has increased the vulnerability of control systems to spies and hackers. According to national security experts, cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system,3 and perhaps shut down sections of the grid for a very long time.

* Civil Unrest: Rising unemployment is squeezing the working cla.s.s hard, and strikes and protests could spark into riots. Beyond that, the Department of Homeland Security is warning of increased activity among right-wing domestic anti-government groups, ranging from militia movements to borderline terrorists. These aren't your average tax protestors. Some of them are h.e.l.l-bent on secession. Others are dupes of the same moneyed interests they are supposedly rebelling against. Homeland Security warns that home foreclosures, unemployment, and other consequences of the economic recession "could create a fertile recruiting environment for right-wing extremists."4 While the chances of civil war seem remote, it becomes more likely if the federal government runs out of money. There are many ties holding our country together, but the most important one is that the U.S. government can play sugar daddy to the states, dishing out fat federal subsidies every year. If that gravy train ends, some states may decide to unhitch and go their own way.

* Pandemic: Our world is increasingly interconnected, which means it's easier for germs to get around. Each and every human being on Earth is a living, breathing germ factory, and there are more people on this crowded planet every year. Compounding the problem, the equipment for genetic engineering has become so commonplace that backyard mad scientists called biohackers are tinkering with the building blocks of life, and could easily create new versions of old diseases. The swine flu that seemed to come from nowhere in early 2009 may be a harbinger of much worse to come.

* Terrorism: And of course, our favorite boogeyman of the twenty-first century: foreign-based terrorism-dirty bombs, chemical attacks, or some other form of terrorist attack. Think back to the days after 9/11 when many were afraid to leave their houses, people couldn't fly, and businesses closed temporarily. We don't want this to happen again, and we hope the government continues to stop potential terrorists in the fastest legal way they can, but we do have to face the fact that there are nasty people out there who would like to disrupt our lifestyle here in the United States.

Any of these disasters could be catastrophic for our highly complex society, but there's also the potential for a s...o...b..ll effect: In other words, a global energy crisis could precipitate a financial crisis, which would lead to a food crisis, and perhaps a pandemic. The nightmare scenario is a societal collapse-when a nation or even a civilization breaks down. It's happened many, many times before in human history, and is almost certain to happen again.

The big-picture disasters can be so scary that people don 't want to think about them. But by preparing for the smaller-scale disasters: floods, fires, severe storms, and the like-you can take the first steps toward being prepared for the big ones.

The Stages of Collapse.

Change is the one constant of the universe. It 's when change comes too fast that we see it as chaos. And when chaos engulfs a structured, ordered society, that society can come apart at the seams.

In his book Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, which I highly recommend to anyone, Dmitry Orlov looks at the challenges facing the United States through a unique lens. Orlov was born in Leningrad and immigrated to the United States at the age 12. He grew up to become a computer engineer. As the Soviet Union fell apart, Orlov shuttled back and forth between his new home in the United States and his old home behind the fraying Iron Curtain. He came to the conclusion that Russia was in better shape to survive a collapse than the United States, but that their problems hold lessons for us.

Orlov also wrote an article, "The Five Stages of Collapse," which he explains as:1. Financial collapse 2. Commercial collapse.

3. Political collapse.

4. Social collapse.

5. Cultural ccollapse.

Orlov believes the United States is undergoing a financial collapse right now. "Financial inst.i.tutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost," Orlov writes. Does that sound familiar?

After this comes a commercial collapse, when store shelves are stripped bare of necessities and remain that way for weeks at a time. h.o.a.rding becomes popular.

Political collapse is a breakdown of public order, which Orlov sees as particularly dangerous for the United States because our population is so well armed.

Social collapse is when people lose faith that society will take care of them, and they only look out for themselves and their families and close friends. Finally, in a cultural collapse, even those bonds are shattered.

"If Stage 1 collapse can be observed by watching television, observing Stage 2 might require a hike or a bicycle ride to the nearest population center, while Stage 3 collapse is more than likely to be visible directly through one's own living-room window, which may or may not still have gla.s.s in it," Orlov writes.5 Human history is crowded with the ruins of civilizations that fell apart. And the track record so far is that all civilizations eventually fail; our own is probably not an exception.

What actually makes a society collapse depends on the place, time, and people. In his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond talks about how, on Easter Island, the inhabitants literally used up their environment. The Vikings of Greenland got clobbered by climate change and their own refusal to adapt.6 And a bevy of historians have written about how the Roman Empire, probably the most successful long-running civilization in history, ran afoul of a number of things from changing weather and barbarian incursions to poor economic choices and incompetent rulers.

But apart from catastrophic events, what finally brings any society down? In his landmark book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter seems to say that a complex society gets more and more complicated until greater and greater investment produces less and less benefit. Finally, the point is reached where investment in complexity no longer brings any increase in benefits. Collapse becomes increasingly probable. At that point, a crisis the society easily weathered earlier in its history-a military loss, drought, resource depletion, and so on-is enough to cause collapse.

Our society is probably the most complex that has ever existed. Bigger and bigger investments in agriculture, medicine, energy, and government are bringing smaller marginal returns.

But all this is still not enough to bring about a civilization's collapse. In Tainter's view, a real collapse only happens in a power vacuum. That is the reason Europe did not collapse long ago-if one country fell, it was taken over by its neighbor-and, according to this line of reasoning, is why the next collapse will be global in scale. Because this time, if one of the leading powers of the world goes down, we're so interconnected that we all go down.

But the worst-case scenario isn't the only scenario. Even Orlov isn't completely pessimistic. In his book, he identifies three progressive stages of response to the looming crisis:1. Mitigation-alleviating the impact of the coming upheaval 2. Adaptation-adjusting to the reality of changed conditions 3. Opportunity-flourishing after the collapse In other words, after the collapse of what we've always known, something else can come along, and people can thrive.

Waves of Chaos Will Change the World Around You.