Reading Recommendations for Self Sufficiency

You are listening to PBN. You will pay us back the stability. You will pay us back the stability. This National Preparedness Month podcast set up here in the backyard is kind of winning me over. It's kind of winning me over. I'm starting to figure out whether or not I want to run hardwire internet all the way out here. Just keep it out here. Because we could go over yonder to the gardens, to the trees. It's kind of nice out here. The mosquitoes can be relentless. But aside from that, kind of digging it. I am definitely kind of digging it. Speaking of mosquitoes, I had the headphones on. I just got done with Allison from This Prepared Life. We're going to talk about her book a little bit today. We're going to talk about books. This is almost like an NPM, a National Preparedness Month kind of bonus, if you will. That's what today's show is going to be about. But we're also going to introduce you to the Be Aware dashboard, which is something I want to do more consistently here on the show. You're going to see it more consistently on the show. Our friends are really our number one tech partner as we enter into this brave new world that is, well, just an explosion of technological advance. Our number one tech partner, Be Prepared Solutions, has done some incredible stuff that we'll be able to reveal soon, but They also offer some amazing services, and you're going to get a look at the Be Aware dashboard consistently here on PBN. Because there's something new out. There's something new that's occurring. This idea just popped into my head. I'm going to take full credit for it. For the longest time, we've had the EDC, and my EDC knife is in on my desk. We've had the EDC. right? The everyday carry with the explosion of information and access to information, the ability to manipulate and, and, and personalize information preppers, survival minded people, information minded people. Um, we have to start thinking about our EDV. What is an EDV? It's your everyday viewing, right? Your everyday carry your everyday viewing. What, what, What can you gather from the, I don't even want to call it the internet anymore, but it's the new highly personalized worldview that you can create for yourself. And when I say worldview, I mean information more than ideology, right? What is your EDV? What is your everyday viewer? I don't want to go on about this. I'll blow the whole show up. But expect to hear more about that. My EDC for the outdoor podcast has to change. I have this really swanky desk. I wish I could show you. It's a cinder block on top of another cinder block. And I'm not even joking. Why it's really swanky is because I could put some pens and some notebooks in here. I put my coffee in here most of the time. It goes right inside. Boom. Right in there. So I get a little, you know, black widow venom in my coffee in the morning. Whatever else is living up in there. sprinkled on top, right? It's like a caramel ribbon crunch from Starbucks, except you get a little concrete pellets on there and a little bug legs and stuff in the pandemic disaster coffee. Books. There are books that are complete and total essentials, okay? And there are books that are new that are becoming essentials. And I want to talk about those today. I want to talk about those books. We're going to get the easy one out of the way first. In the podcast, I'll have a link to this. In the videos, I'll have a link to this book. The No Grid Survival Projects, I need a new one, by the way. Mine's, as you can see, it's been through the ringer. It's folded and crumpled and all that. I look at this book so much more than the Encyclopedia of Country Living. You hear preppers and homesteaders talk about the Encyclopedia of Country Living. It's a good book. I own it. I used to say it was one of the books. If you're opening your mind to self-reliant living and that kind of stuff, preparedness, then I think the Encyclopedia of Country Living is good. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's a good reference. If you're into the actual... changing the property, adding serious projects to the board. This is the book. This book I'll link to exclusively because it's an affiliate of mine. And also I wrote the book. Like I am an author on the book. Michael Major, Amber Robinson, Claude Davis, and myself, James Walton. So like things like this, this raised bed build right here, Like that's my backyard. I built that easy to build. It changed the way I built raised beds to using those old castle bricks. Those old castle bricks you can get from Lowe's. They are worth the money because it's just so easy. I mean, it's and it's step by step. You see the whole process step by step. It tells you every tool you need material. Eight old castle planter blocks for two by sixes. Four 2x6x8s, compost and manure, topsoil, all of the above, how to do it, what to do with it. Later in the book, I actually turned that raised bed into a hoop house with a... I can't find it. With a door, like a raiseable hoop house. Easy, easy stuff. All of it's pretty easy. That's my toilet, too, by the way. The Intrepid Commander's Throne. The headquarters. of Prepper Broadcasting Network. So awesome, awesome book, No Grid Survival Projects. Please, if you like the looks of it, you don't have it. I know most of you have it, but if you don't have it and you like the looks of it, do me one favor and use the link that I give you, okay? Because I'm looking for a dry place to put this thing. I get some money if you buy the book using my link, okay? I'm also gonna share with you a newsletter signup. If you sign up for a newsletter, You can immediately get off of the newsletter if you want. But the reason I'm going to focus on the newsletter today is because almost every book that I'm talking about is in this e-book I wrote years ago called 50 Must Read Books to Survive Doomsday. This is a collection of books that I own and some that I don't, some that I have bought by recommendation from the hosts, from Rick Austin, the creator of Prepper Camp, to create sort of the 50 must read books to survive doomsday. I mean, that, that really is what it is. You know what I mean? They run the gamut. You know what I mean? They are sort of comfy and cushy books like, um, you know, books that, that kind of like no grid survival projects or, well, maybe not like no grid survival projects, but books about food storage, books about foraging books that are less kind of spooky and, and, and sort of, uh, Tailored less to the violent aspects of SHTF. And then there are some books on there that are very much tailored to the violence of SHTF. One such book, which I think is an American essential, even though it wasn't written by an American. It's a book called Total Resistance by H. Von Dock. And it is the Dutch resistance against the Nazis. Is that right? No, the Soviet's. The Dutch Resistance Against the Soviets. And it's an amazing book, man. Like, if you listen to... No, I'm sorry. Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian resistance movements during World War II. If you listen to our Tactical Tuesday at all, then you'll hear a lot of the same sort of ideas resonating. Any prepper who is worried about anything... in terms of home security, is going to want... Where's it at? Construction of roadblocks. See that? Construction of roadblocks. Building of organization and conduct of guerrilla warfare groups and such. This book is tremendous, man. It really is. It's an amazing book. So I want you to definitely consider that one. I've got at least three books from me. Shameless books. Shameless plug. Here's what it is. If you don't want to get too down into the dirt on prepping books, if you want a little something to read this time of year, leading into the fall season, into the spooky season, then Darker Trails is the book. In fact, I'd recommend everybody get Darker Trails. This book right here is just built for this time of year. You know what I mean? A glimpse into the things that could be. 20 different stories and poems that shed light on the most rapid and radical change that our species has ever gone through. There is a lot of small stories, charcoal artwork that I did myself. And it's a lot of spooky stuff. It's spooky stories, spooky drawings. This one is probably one of my favorite stories of them all, actually. It's called Mycelium. And it is a hell of a ride. There's no doubt about it. But if you want to read some survival stories and also some poems that didn't make poems for men. And there's a lot of quotes, too. Sometimes people hit me with these quotes. And it blows me away that people know them, right? I remember watching or looking at a photograph of my youngest walking through a path that we've walked through a million times at Forest Hill Park. I think he was a kindergartner at the time. And this one came to mind. This is a quote from the book. A man should know many ways. The fool knows them all. To live well is to make old paths new. There's a lot in there. So, darker trails. Get your pumpkin coffee cup, your disaster coffee, and your darker trails. And... Enjoy some story, okay? The one and only Judson Carroll recently put out an incredible book called Herbs That Heal. I was not aware, and it's beautiful. It is really probably the most beautiful book on herbs and the Catholic religion that exists. I don't even know if there's anything like it. It never occurred to me that this sort of weird world of witchery... And herbs has led some people to believe that healing with herbs and herbal remedies are not like, they don't align with Christianity. And this is an entire book, Judson Carroll, Steve Cunningham, Herbs That Heal, that's all about the history. It's all about the history, the things that worked. I mean, look, you got Frank Salvato over here from Underground USA. You got Marjorie Wildcraft. Samantha N. Stevenson. Great accolades on the back of the book. You've even got this guy. What's his name again? He's a real mess. James Walton, head of the Prepper Broadcasting Network, is in here. Judson has a range like few writers these days. Of course, when he hones in on the subject of herbs and wild edibles, no one does it better. That's my advanced praise in herbs that heal for my man Judson. Anything by Judson Carroll. Everything by Judson Carroll. You guys hear herbal medicine for preppers, right? Weekly show here on the podcast. You got to listen to it. You got kids? You want to get the kids a book? The World of Ready, book one. We also have book two about camping. The World of Ready is the colorful, short, fully illustrated adventure that I think is a great way to get kids talking about preparedness, okay? The World of Ready, OODA, get to meet OODA, get to know what kids are worried about in this day and age with preparedness. And then at the end of every book, you get a pretty clear breakdown of some sort of preparedness thing or survival thing, right? This book in particular, book one, is about building a go bag. It's got the whole list. The whole list. The world was brought together by an amazing artist, Alicia Erlen. She really captured the book. We haven't put a new one out. I got to get the next one out soon, but it's fun, man. It's a fun little series. If you want the kids to have a doorway into preparedness, a fun, colorful adventure, look into the world of Reddy. Raise your hand if you're a... Actually, you know what? Let's talk about Allison's book because it's out today. Can't get this book until today, right? Until today, it's out. This Prepared Life. Allison Michael. Unbelievable book. If you have any plans of creating food storage, her immediate short-term and long-term food storage system is incredible. There's great food storage planners in here, weekly planners, meal planners. There's awesome recipes in here. Hamburger soup, lentil soup. I mean, it's home food storage templates in here. The whole back of the book is templates that you could fill out yourself. Just came out today. Hot off the press. Home food storage. This one is not in my e-book. OK, so if you see home food storage or preparedness plan, you got to get that yourself. Just look it up on Amazon or go to her site. She's easy to find, Alice in Disprepared Life. We've got two more to go, very important books, but let's take a look at that newsletter, sign up real quick, and then we're going to get into the Be Aware dashboard. Okay, 50 must-read books, links down below, get your hands on that. What have we here, folks? The Be Aware dashboard from Be Prepared Solutions. This thing right here is highly personalized. It's monumental. It is part of that sort of everyday viewing concept. We all know about everyday carry. But in this world of information that can be so perfectly tailored to your situation, I think we have to start building out our everyday viewings. right? We can look at something like this Be Aware dashboard just for moments at a time and become incredibly aware of what's happening in the world around us, right? So what you're looking at is Richmond, Virginia, and we're going to go through what's happening here, what we need to be aware of and how this thing works and will work for you, right? Waking up this morning down at the bottom left, you see there's 66 power outages happening in the area, which is a lot considering we didn't have any weather the night before. 2,000 customers have been affected by that. And that gives you an idea of kind of what's happening locally. You can hover over one of these and see what's going on, right? Trees down, whatever the situation is, how many people have been affected. The promo code... if you decide to build out your own B be aware dashboard, use the promo code PBN 20. Okay. PBN 20 is going to get you 20% off when you sign up. But more importantly is you can go try this out right now for three days free. Just go to be prepared solutions.co or use the link down below. All right. I'm telling you right now, folks, this, uh, What you're looking at is the next sort of stage of preparedness. And it's understanding that all of this stuff, we're no longer going with alert systems that just spit out nonsensical alerts to you no matter what's going on. We're no longer building plans and bug out bags off of checklists that just cover some weird expanse that a person assumes is necessary for you. The whole ethos of Be Prepared Solutions and why we work with them is because they tailor everything to you. They tailor everything to your address, right? And listen, if you're worried about OPSEC, do what I did here, right? You think this is my actual address right here that you see? See the house blinking there? I have a house blinking with an address. Do you think I put my actual address in here, right? So be a little smart. Right. Be a little aware and build out a dashboard that helps you. So this is our utility breakdown on the left. Right. So we know what's going on with electric. We have a great emergency alert section and you can you can decide sort of what's going on with notifications. Right. When do you want to be alerted? You probably don't want to be alerted every time someone gets a power outage. Right. Because they're not always going to affect you. but you may want to be alerted when big storms are coming. What we have now also on the Be Aware dashboard is tech updates, right? So Cloudflare, has incorrect geolocation for some Cloudflare WARP users. Now, me, no idea what that means. It does tell you that Discord, Shopify, Peloton, and some other websites are affected by that. This is local, and it's minor, right? But it's good information to know, man. It's good information to have on hand. The other thing that it does for you is it tailors some news and drops news bits into your dashboard each morning so you know what's going on. It's got our Cloudflare news. It always has news about crashes, murders. You want to know of all the things that we learn about, know about. You talk to the average American about the Clancy trial. And they'll give you a 20-hour tirade on what's happening with her and her situation. You ask them about what happened a neighborhood over last night, they have no idea. That's one of the things that I really love about this dashboard. All the things you could learn, you might not even know that Bellevue Elementary School is still closed because we can't figure out how to inspect schools here in Richmond, Virginia and make sure they're safe for kids. We've had all summer to figure that out. We screwed that up somehow. Look at this, Amtrak to suspend Virginia to DC service for track upgrades. Big, big, big, right? Man hospitalized after shooting in Richmond's East End. So this is an incredible tool. This is a daily viewer, right? This is an everyday viewer. This is a thing you hop on and go, what's going on in my area? What do I need to know about? What don't I need to know about? And again, this whole report is created and spit out and update it based on the address you put in it. Okay? So it is tailored to you, tailored to your address. You go to bepreparedsolutions.co and you're going to see this is how the whole thing works. The whole thing works this way. It's all about tailoring to you instead of random checklists that, you know, maybe they get some of the things right. Go to BePreparedSolutions.co. Use the code PBN20 to get 20% off that sign-up, which is an amazing deal. You sign up for the combo. You get all their great services for under $ 200 for the whole year with the 20% off. Think about it. Break it down by month. It's pennies on the dollar. It really is. And when you sign up, you'll also be able to take advantage of their plan builder, which, I mean... And then from the moment you input your information, everything that you do there on that website knows you. It knows what you need. It knows your family's needs. It knows that you're a family of four. So any kind of kits or anything like that, that it builds for you, it builds with that in mind. All right. I appreciate you guys. Do me a favor. Check out BePreparedSolutions.co. Use the code PBN20. Books before the computer dies. I hope we can pull it off. We've got two more books. Before the computer dies off on us, we may make it, we may not. You know what? We're going to boom this thing. If you're into mushrooms, you want to learn mushrooms? If you want to learn mushrooms, this is the book. It's repetition. It's the best in terms of images. It's the best in terms of lookalikes. It's the best in terms of Time of year, seasonality, pictures, multiple pictures, pictures of the lookalikes, what to look out for. Whitney Johnson, Go Forth and Forage. She was amazing in creating this book. It's phenomenal, this book. It really is. It is the book. I use it more for mushroom foraging. I could have improved more mushroom foraging in the last year or two because of that book than any other resource I've ever used. Okay. And finally, you want to get somebody a great gift. A great gift for National Preparedness Month. Check out my new book. Came out the 28th of July. Fresh off the presses. The Ultimate Survival Toolkit. You get a little multi-tool for your EDC. Slips right in your wallet. You get 50 of these amazing little index cards for study, for placing in kits, putting in your bug out bag, whatever you want to do. And then, of course, you get the ultimate survival toolkit. Full page, full color page book, right? Breaks down all the basics of survival, fire, food, the whole nine yards, okay? It's a beautiful book, a beautiful guide. Them's the books, PBN family. Them's the books if you want to get prepared. So there are many more. Feel free to comment if you have other books that you think are great. But we're going to wrap this one up. I got two great shows to edit and to get to you. And, yeah, man, it's National Preparedness Month. Make the most of it. Get yourself prepared. You've got 20 more days, 22 more days. You take little steps. You'll be amazed at what you can pull off. All right? Talk to you soon, everybody.