Read this.
…we believe the dollar could lose its status as the world’s dominant currency (which could see it depreciate over the medium term) due to structural reasons as well as cyclical impediments
As such, diversifying dollar exposure by placing a higher weighting on other currencies in developed markets and in Asia, as well as precious metals makes sense today.
… Being the world’s unit of account has given the United States what former French Finance Minister Valery d’Estaing called an “exorbitant privilege” by being able to purchase imports and issue debt in its own currency and run persistent deficits seemingly without consequence…There is nothing to suggest that the dollar dominance should remain in perpetuity. In fact, the dominant international currency has changed many times throughout history going back thousands of years as the world’s economic center has shifted.
… In other words, in the coming decades we think the world economy will transition from U.S. and USD dominance toward a system where Asia wields greater power. In currency space, this means the USD will likely lose value compared to a basket of other currencies, including precious commodities like gold.… Central banks across the globe are also adding to gold reserves at their strongest pace on record. 2018 saw the strongest demand for gold from central banks since 1971 and a rolling four-quarter sum of gold purchases is the strongest on record.2 To us, this makes sense: gold is a stable source of value with thousands of years of trust among humans supporting it.
Given the persistent—and rising—deficits in the United States (in both fiscal and trade), we believe the U.S. dollar could become vulnerable to a loss of value relative to a more diversified basket of currencies, including gold. As we scan client portfolios, we see that many of them have far more U.S. dollar exposure than we feel is prudent.
My interpretation: Jim Sinclair was right that the central banks intend to do a “soft landing” inflatory move, devaluing the Dollar (and Euro will, in my opinion, devalue even more since the EU has an even worse internal crisis on top of Euro being essentially a Dollar-derivative). According to Sinclair, this first controlled inflatory attempt will fail, and as a result there will be a second, “natural” inflatory event that will balance the world economy on actual values.
So, nobody can say they haven’t been warned. According to some rumors, JP Morgan has been accumulating immensely large amounts of silver recently, so you can’t say they aren’t backing up their talk with money.
As for crypto, I agree with Peter Schiff that crypto will be the first thing to collapse, and that will actually make fiat currencies look good. Everybody invested in crypto will be wiped out. The exception are the blockchain-based technologies backed by actual assets, like the Russian crypto-Ruble. After that, everybody holding significant portion of their assets in fiat currencies or their derivatives such as dollar and euro denominated bonds will be wiped out. The current rise of gold and silver is just a precursory warning shot, and I still recommend buying.
The disclaimer is that this only applies to people who actually have significant savings. If you reduce your cash supply below one month’s needs, you are actually putting yourself in harm’s way. Instead, stock up on canned and other long-lasting food (pasta, flour, sugar, beans), because in a hyperinflatory environment food supply might get disrupted. I don’t know how long this might last, so there’s no harm in assuming it might last long enough for everybody who didn’t prepare to regret it. Have in mind that I’m following my own advice, which means I’m taking this shit very seriously.
In the case of a bad scenario, did anyone consider to make a stock of medicine?
I read about the experience of people, mostly Americans who take antibiotics for aquarium fishes. I even order one pack from eBay and it came on the address. Bacterial infections, wounds, and inflammations could be ugly dangerous. If you don’t have access to antibiotics it could be fatal.
Another thing I totally advice is clinoptilolite powder. It is a pure anorganic powder, made from volcanic rock. I have 10 years of experience with that thing.
When you have an open blister or wound on the skin (let’s suppose that you fall to the concrete and very badly scratched the skin), you only need to clean the wound and several times put the powder directly to an open wound. Pain and prickling will immediately stop, from that moment on the wound will be dry and the inflammation won’t be possible. That thing is unbelievable efficient and harmless. I cannot enough laud clinoptilolite (it is a type of zeolite) for application on the wounds.
There are also other powerful uses of clinoptilolite powder. You can drink it with water.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11434724
Look for the Table around the middle of the article about the animals, tumors, dosage, and results. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11905741_Natural_zeolite_clinoptilolite_New_adjuvant_in_anticancer_therapy
In small shops, it is expensive, but you can buy cheaply bunch of kilos if you look market for that thing for years, for what is in use, and read the product analysis.
Personally, I am not worried as tumor left me with high blood pressure which can’t be regulated with anything that can be obtained without prescription (not interested in black market), so I’ll die from heart attack much sooner than from infection unless I’m lucky 🙂
Yup, I’m down that lane as well. I’m on heart and high blood pressure medication as well, so good luck with survival 🙂 my wife as well, she had tyroid glands removed, without medication, she has about two, maybe three months.
Fuck that, I’m the one who actually wants to die and everybody else has cancer. 🙂
But seriously, a few weeks of independence in a total disruption scenario is all my “survival strategies” are aiming for. After that, he who dies first wins.
I agree with that.
After the body goes older, even now it is not a pleasant situation to be here. I was watching the young dog how easily and happily he runs across the riverbank and I saw old dogs how painfully they walk.
The physical body is a trap.
As you can see, it didn’t work out that well for me 🙂
More efficient solution is required, medicine became too good 🙂
Is it possible that you speak with your doctor and arrange higher doses of the same medicals? If you now take 5mg pills, can you arrange to get 10mg and make a stock for the case of a crisis? Or, can you detect other medicine and use that trick?
That is one way to try to resolve the issue.
If that would fail for some reason I would try to order active substance from the factory, from Alibaba. In such a case, I will consider that act as my legitimate effort.
Of course, I agree, if a bad crisis comes it will be an ugly place to live.
But this is ugly too.
https://www.index.hr/vijesti/clanak/sanders-inzulin-u-kanadi-kosta-32-a-u-sadu-340-dolara/2104977.aspx
Yea, I’m not THAT inclined to survive 🙂
This is actually my exit ticket if things go south for too long, why would I spoil it?!
Antibiotics are prescription only in Croatia, so stocking is basically impossible unless you’re a doctor.
Someone might find all of this confusing, because it’s obviously not clear what type of disaster I’m expecting. My answer is that I’m merely reacting to the stuff from the global astral field, and some of the “feelings” so far checked out, and when I didn’t act on them I regretted it.
I don’t know what will happen, but my reaction to what I’m feeling is to prepare for as large spectrum of scenarios as possible, especially when those preparations don’t cost me anything, like stocking up on food that I would buy anyway only in smaller quantities and just-in-time, because it doesn’t spoil and I would spend the money anyway, it just uses up storage space, that’s the only overhead. Also, if I have savings, I keep them in precious metals instead of the bank. All of those precautions are either free or in fact profitable – for instance, buying more canned food at once actually saves time and fuel for grocery runs, and buying precious metals, well, just look at the gold/silver price chart and you tell me.
So, I see those things as cheap insurance. Worst case, I use up my storage space and stumble over palettes of cans, best case, there’s a brief crisis I can endure painlessly. Or, if everybody gets killed, none of it matters. But there’s such a wide possible spread of scenarios, and I trust my assessments of time so little, that I’m preparing for as wide a range of circumstances as possible without really going out of my way.
I was wondering this yesterday, but it lead me to another question.
Sure, in “all dead” scenario it does not matter as you said, since everyone is dead.
But in any other scenario you made it quite clear it’s important to survive.
Why?
I have few ideas in the line of “be prepared so you do not end up in a position where you might be tempted to do compromises far worse than death or become someone else food or some other The Road scenario”.
Is that the main idea or is there something else as well?
The thing is, I suck at time. I am very good at “what”, but I suck at “when”. If an economic collapse plays out the way it did before the second world war, it means it could drag out for a whole decade. That would seriously suck. I’m not saying things will happen that way, and my analysis doesn’t even qualify it as likely; for that, America would have to go quietly into the night, and I can’t imagine that happening. However, it’s enough for the collapse period to drag out for a few months before the nuclear war, and you already have good justification for being prepared. There’s nothing about death that scares me, but living on the streets and eating trash is not something I would find appealing.
I would suggest the next products :
Isolated SOY protein – packed in nylon/paper bag-20kg, cost around 100 Euro
I’ve got SUPRO EX32 for years. It is a very stable product.
I hope that the SUPRO EX37 can be used too because it is affordable.
http://www.ireks-aroma.hr/Supro-program.htm
C vitamin – 1Kg pack.
Installation of the hand water pump nearby.
Potassium iodide from eBay.
I would express caution re: KI, because I had a bad reaction when I took it. Some people including myself react very poorly to heightened amounts of Iodine. However, it’s excellent in cases of radioactive contamination, to saturate the thyroid with Iodine thus preventing absorption of the radioactive isotope of Iodine.
Re: soy protein, I’m not in love with soy because it’s basically an antivitamin and I know a person who ended up in hospital with serious liver symptoms because she ate almost nothing but soy protein. It’s an anecdotal report with a sample of 1 but it’s so nasty that I have to mention it. I use whey isolate which proved to be problem-free for me and everybody else that I know who tried it, so I’ll stick to that. It’s expensive, though.
Re: vitamins, I basically recommend stocking up on what you normally use, regarding medications and supplements. Also, if fresh produce might be unavailable, this would suggest that increased reliance on supplements will be necessary. Vitamins, especially C, B complex, D and Selenium are what I would personally use, but YMMV. Also, electrolytes (Gatorade powder or like) might be a life-saver. Electrolyte loss that accompanies dehydration is probably the main cause of death in disaster scenarios. If you get diarrhea due to poor sanitary conditions and can’t replenish your electrolytes, you die.
Water purification in disaster scenarios is the no1 priority. In deteriorated economic conditions, not so much, but it’s better to be prepared than not. I stock up on Sodium hypochlorite (known as “Varikina” regionally). Five drops per liter will sanitize water and make it drinkable (unless it’s very dirty, then more is needed). More sophisticated methods of water filtration and disinfection are probably great, but this is cheap and is proven to work in messy situations.
As for food, I stock up on pasta, canned beans, canned chick peas, canned corn, tomato passata and diced tomato cans, canned pineapple, canned peaches, salt, sugar, flour, canned tuna, honey. The general recommendation is to stock up on what you regularly use, and replenish supplies as you use them up. For instance, if you normally use canned beef or pork, stock up on that. I normally use tuna and occasionally sardines. Sardines are cheap and excellent. The problem with this logic is that I normally use quite healthy food, and in survival situations one might prefer less healthy stuff that is cheap, will last for a long time and has great nutritional content, but for instance contains preservatives and doesn’t taste good enough for normal non-disaster use. However, if you stock up on disaster-specific food, it might not be used at all and spoil. Some canned spam or beef goulash might be cheap insurance, though; if it goes bad it’s not that expensive, and if you run out of protein in a disaster scenario you’ll learn to love it.
The weaknesses of my food stash are lack of canned meat and lack of fats. I don’t normally use cooking oil, I use coconut oil in rather small quantities and that stuff was too expensive to stock up on. I need to figure something out. Also, I don’t have nearly deep enough stash of fish cans, and no meat cans, because I don’t normally eat canned meat. However my biggest problem is limited storage space. If I had more storage space I would increase my food storage tenfold, and add non-essential insurance cans. As it is, I just can’t afford the storage space for anything I don’t actually cycle through for daily use.
I forgot to mention that I don’t rely on refrigeration for emergencies, because I assume the power outages; the fridge might not work. Also, I don’t rely on foods that need to be cooked, because utility gas might not work, as well as electricity, so most of my stash is in “ready to eat” form, and not in very big cans because I assume you must eat it immediately once opened, because you can’t risk food poisoning.
Yea, not many options there, you can either go with dried and salted meat like pršut or špek (does not require cooking and can be stored for more than a year).
This is probably the best way with limited storage space and is also most practical. Not cheap though.
Another option is “meso iz banjice”. It’s basically cooked/fried meat stored in swine fat. It can also be stored more than a year and fat can be used for cooking.
Now, I wouldn’t actually buy it prepared, especially for people who do not use swine fat for cooking.
Instead, I would buy pure swine fat in smaller containers (it can be found in stores, from 0.5 kg upwards).
Swine fat is really cheap and can be stored long term (years even) and in case of a need, you can use it to store cooked meat.
It can be prepared and stored in any clean container available like simple pot – just place cooked meat (salted if possible) to the bottom, melt swine fat (it melts quickly, around 40 C) and pour if over meat – done.
It’s important to melt fat, otherwise you get air pockets which is bad.
Podravka apparently makes excellent canned beans with lots of bacon, and that might be ideal for my purposes. I just have to try how it tastes.
Canned food has better quality and lower prices in Hofer Slovenia.
Once in Croatia, the price for canned red kidney beans was 3 kn, it is not anymore. In Hofer, you can still buy it for that price.
The Canned fish, the tomato passata and other food have very good quality and low price in Hofer.
As for SOY Isolate Protein, it is a contemporary product. In the past, before 10 years or more, the consummation of SOY-Concentrate Protein products was problematic because of oil and other residues.
Supro EX32 Isolate is the same product as the expensive SOY Isolate product in stores for bodybuilders. It has the same analysis.
Because of the low price and excellent stability I have SOY Isolate Protein in a food stock. Isolate is pretty neutral in taste, you can add water, flavoured vitamins and get a good food combination.
Edible Oil storage is the problem. Oil oxidize after two or three years, maybe not if it is originally closed.
Rosemary CO2 extract and E-vitamin can help. I use that stuff in stabilizing vegetable oils in cosmetics. I don’t have experience with eating that stuff but it was advertised for the food industry.
https://www.kemig.hr/farmaceutika/farmaceutski-asortiman/sirovine/co2-antioksidativni-ekstrakt-ruzmarina-prirodni-konzervans-i-antioksidans
The canned fish in oil could be the best combination for a nutritive mix.
Swine fat can be a good fat source as Mario was said, it is interesting information, it is a cheap food source.
I think on edible gelatine as the collagen source also.
https://www.tvornicazdravehrane.com/goveda-konzumna-zelatina-1000g-proizvod-41339/
Yes, storing fats and meat is a problem, and I decided it’s the best solution to just buy cans that contain fatty meat, or fish in good kinds of oil (not soy; sunflower or olive).
That’s how it was done in my place before refrigerators (and it’s still done because it tastes great) and is much higher quality than can food. At least ours is since we always prepared fresh meat and fresh fat for that (certainly not an option for most).
However, it is not as simple as cans especially if swine fat is not part of your daily diet and also takes more space because you can’t do that in 0.5L can.
Without a cellar and actually using swine fat, cans are a way to go.
And dried bacon (slanina, špek) is a really good option as well.
From home production perspective I would stock salt first, because it can’t be made easily in continental area (unless you live in Salzburg) and it is quite essential in diet. Salt was a form of currency in my area, that should say enough for itself.
Then flour because you can make tons of food with it and it can’t be made easy nor quickly, plus water mills are gone and it will take time to make new ones.
Be careful how you store it though, both flour and beans can go bad (type of worm adores them both plus flour does not like heat and humidity).
Sugar is easiest and least essential, it’s basically cheep calories store and can be easily produced / replaced. I prefer honey as sugar storage which can be purchased from home producers.
Most of other things would be purchasable from home producers.
I would also recommend swine fat in large bucket (5-20kg). Not only is huge calories store, you can store fried/cooked meat in it for entire year. In time before freezers, beside salting and drying it was the only way to store meat long term.
It is easy and cheap to get now but it might get expensive in crisis.
Also, water. If water distribution fails (and it might) this will be biggest issue for many people – even for us living right next to rivers since not many are drinkable and it will take time before they do. We do have water wells, though.
Water purifying pills might be really good idea to store as well as finding out closest water springs if there are any in your area.
Those are all excellent recommendations.
I would add that water is likely to become a problem in a disaster scenario, not in economy-collapse scenario. Water supply is likely to continue working in a broken economy. Other utilities, not so much. Electricity and gas are likely to become a problem, and that’s why I think it’s a good idea to store mostly food that doesn’t require cooking, because there might be reductions of electricity and cessations of gas supply. Canned beans, corn, meat, fish – those are all cheap and last a long time. Also, everything that used to be scarce in Yugoslavia in the 1980s: coffee, chocolate, detergent, cooking oil, gasoline, flour, sugar, meat. In an economic crisis, people are going to rush to the stores and spend their money immediately while it’s still worth something, and empty shelves and rationing are going to become a thing, so it’s an extremely good idea to see what you’re using up the most and stock up. Also, have candles and battery lights at home for power outages. A propane-butane tank for cooking is an excellent thing if you can afford the space to store it (which I unfortunately can’t, so I don’t have the ability to cook food in case of gas outages).
You assume that enough people will be able to pay for water distribution. That, of course, depends on the type of economy collapse.
Water is abundant in Croatia, but distribution still depends on people being able to pay for it.
But if gets that bad we are basically in “disaster scenario” and rules change anyway since problems raise exponentially and food can easily become second or fifth problem if you freeze to death during winter.
If large propane tank is not an option, a good alternative would be small propane cooking devices with exchangeable cartridges like this one.
We used those in camping and one cartridge is enough for several meals, they are MUCH easier to handle than single large tank and you can easily stock those for 2-3 months of cooking time.
If they are used only in case gas outage, and you do not cook every day, two dozen of those can last a year. They are also great if you have to move.
Getting a wood oven would be great for anyone who can put it somewhere and even apartments have smoke-chimneys (at least in my area).
Wood is easy to get on a daily basis, so no need for huge storage, but it does not mean much if there is no place to burn it.
One more thing – dried stuff – fruit, vegetables and mushrooms especially. Everyone can make those, they are easily stored and great for transport.
Get carob (rogač), lots of it – AMAZING stuff that can last for years. And it’s season is just here on Adriatic coast.
Also, carob fun fact – carob seeds are ALWAYS 0.18g in weight and were used to measure gold in antic times – hence – karat – which is 0.18g of gold … yeah, it’s that amazing 🙂
This small camping cooker is an excellent idea and I actually thought of it year ago, but I just didn’t get around to buying it; I think I’ll have to get a few, along with a package or two of gas cartouches. It’s cheap insurance.
As for the utilities… I think socialism will be introduced immediately in Croatia regarding such basic utilities, the same as during the war. Nobody will be unplugged for not paying the bills; it will be seen as a form of distributing aid to the needy. However, the things that require international payment, such as gas or electricity, those will be tricky. Croatia doesn’t produce enough electricity for its needs because of all those leftist “eco” bastards who turn up to protest whenever anyone wants to build anything, and sun/wind solutions are worse than useless. We need at least one, realistically three, nuclear power plants, because Krško is getting old. So, we don’t produce enough of our own gas, so that’s mostly imported, and we don’t produce enough of our own electricity, so that’s mostly imported. We have plenty of water, though.
Also, the rent is possibly a serious issue for people like myself who rent our housing. Being evicted during a crisis for whatever reason is not good. However, I think this will be a greater problem in America, because they don’t have a habit of social solidarity during a crisis, and we Croatians did really well with that during the war, so this might actually be the best place to be.
I would tell you that you can have my apartment in case of eviction (because you can), but this leads to another line of thought since it’s not clear what happens to “mine apartment” in case of crisis.
Most our real-estate is being paid off to banks in either EUR or HRK.
In case of strong USD devaluation which means strong EUR devaluation which means strong HRK devaluation – do you have any idea what banks might do to protect their contracts?
They went to EUR based contracts because they had hard time with dinar when Yugoslavia broke apart, but what in case USD devaluation?
Also, if you think socialism would be installed in case of crisis, it’s much more likely I’ll get apartment for free than banks will get government support to evict me (which won’t help anyway – if I can’t pay off, it’s not like there will be line of people who can).
What are your thoughts on this?
We also have vineyard houses which would easily support Robinson life style if it comes to that and I can easily move there and free my apartment.
In any case, if you ever might need it, it’s yours.
I’m also thinking about current agriculture model which will fail miserably as soon as crisis hits.
Landlord with huge land just for government money?
There will be A LOT of land empty in such scenario.
Maybe it’s not a bad idea for everyone to stock some tools and even some basic seeds (they can’t go bad and can stay dormant for years).
Especially if cities won’t be sustainable and people will have to move out.
It could be easier to start or join already started small farm.
Why am I saying this. I remember time before distributed water when we had to work for food every day. And most valued people were those willing to work and contribute.
And if they brought their own tools – those were golden 🙂
Our parents would always send us to help those people in return (which of course we hated as kids :-)) and lazy people and smart asses (basically lazy people saying things out loud) were simply ignored and were left to themselves.
In case of strong economical crisis, things might look a lot like that, I imagine.
I don’t know, but if they are faced with options of either losing all the money or trying to take over the collateral claiming unforeseen event, the state will have to choose between the banks and the people, and I expect the people to get the short end of the stick. However, it’s a toss; an event of global currency devaluation never happened before and the banks might just as easily get nationalized. But since the real estate prices depend greatly on the cheap credit available on the market, and there won’t be any of that for decades after the crash, the real estate prices might be quite affordable, if you have the gold.
Yes, in such scenario there is no safe heaven for banks because they would have to move to some asian currency now which would probably be quickly stopped by US with sanctions (also, bank can’t make me to change contract without government support) and once devaluation starts it’s too late anyway.
And even if they do take all unpaid real-estate – they would just create market of very cheap real-estate with not many people buying it.
In any case, I have more than enough options to easily survive that, this part does not worry me personally.
Another important reason why it’s a great idea to stock up on non-perishable food is that you can stay home during the most dangerous part of every crisis, the initial panic and store-rush, which is when you’re actually likely to get killed or robbed. If you can sit out this initial SHTF phase, your odds improve significantly.