18 Months From the Collapse?

I received a call from a old buddy of mine (Jeff) ...not a text message or an e-mail, but an actual phone call such as he was worked up. Apparently he has been reading articles and listening to news program and at some point he started believing the end is near,...18 months to be specific to a collapse. He was planning on quitting his job, moving out of the East coast and basically sinking 100% in prepping.

My response was "Okay, but what is going to be the catalyst? What do you think is going to happen and how?" I have been seeing articles in the last month of so pretty much outlining the good possibility of an economic collapse within the next two years, but I wanted Jeff to articulate the facts or assumptions that are leading him to his own view. So I told Jeff, "you may be right. I certainly think things will be tougher in the next 18 months,.....commodities shortages,.....inflation if not severe inflation,......I think we'll see food riots in urban areas. And the government will not be able to do too much as their assets pool is significantly shallower than ever." But I stopped short of telling Jeff that I think the collapse will occur in 18 months. I don't want to be responsible for someone basing their survival plan on my opinion, plus I'm still really in the plan for the worst - survival prep, and hope for the best camp. Anyway, I scanned all my on-line sources and resources to see what a cross section of people are saying.

Chris Martenson wrote on his website, Peak Prosperity, an article with the title - Why Your Own Plan Better Be Different - Because the cavalry isn't coming. Pretty much summing up that the US Government is broke and will not be able to get out of insolvency. Martenson remarks that action at the individual level is your best bet right now. I think action at the individual level has always been the best bet.

When the Treasury Department estimates that the U.S. has a ~$65 trillion NPV (Net Present Value) shortfall in its main accounts, it's saying that using its assumptions, the U.S. government would need to have $65 trillion – today – in an account, earning a stated rate of interest, in order to be solvent.

Since the U.S. government don't have that have that kind of scratch, it's insolvent. But the real picture is likely worse. The Fed calculates the NPV shortfall to be closer to $100 trillion. And if you believe Lawrence Kotlikoff's math, the figure is closer to $200 trillion. Either way – $65 trillion, $100 trillion, or $200 trillion – the sum cannot be paid.

Paul Joseph Watson, from Investor's Forecaster, reports: "On Saturday (Feb 1, 2014) it emerged that HSBC was restricting large cash withdrawals for UK customers from £5000 upwards, forcing them to provide documentation of what they plan to spend the money on, a form of capital control that more and more banks are beginning to adopt. (Then) Fears of bank runs have escalated with the news that Russian lender ‘My Bank’ has banned all cash withdrawals until next week. Bloomberg reports that ‘My Bank’ – one of Russia’s top 200 lenders by assets – has introduced a complete ban on cash withdrawals until next week. While the Ruble has been losing ground rapidly recently, we suspect few have been expecting bank runs in Russia.

These banking shenanigans (or are they tests?) follow a November 2013 incident where Chase Bank also recently imposed restrictions which prevent its customers from conducting over $50,000 in cash activity per month, as well as banning business customers from sending international wire transfers. Financial expert Gerald Celente said the news was a sign that Americans should prepare for a bank holiday.

And from Italy comes the headlines that "Italy’s president fears violent insurrection in 2014 but offers no remedy as events in Italy are turning serious. President Giorgio Napolitano has warned of “widespread social tension and unrest” in 2014 as the Long Slump drags on. Thousands of Italian companies are on the “brink of collapse”. Great masses of the working people are on the dole or at risk of losing their jobs. Very high rates of youth unemployment are leading to dangerous alienation.

Bob Rinnear writes - Housing ground to a virtual stop. The non-farm payroll report was horrid. The amount of folks not even in the workforce is almost 1/3 of the entire population. Food stamps, welfare, unemployment, and other fall back systems are overwhelmed. Just Monday 3 Feb 2014), the ISM report for the US hit. It could have been worse, but it would take work to do it. We saw the overall survey fall from 55.8 to 51. Inside the report, we saw the new orders index fall from 64 to 51, a 20% drop, the biggest drop since 1980. Yes you read that right. The biggest drop in 34 years........A likely scenario is that we bottom out, put in a massive bounce that comes up well shy of the highs, and then we roll over and plunge even lower.

Doug Casey, on Market Sanity.com said "We are heading toward The Greater Depression’ said The problem that we face in the world today is that almost all – in fact I’ll go so far as to say all of the world’s governments – are actually bankrupt, and the fact is, the world’s banking system is bankrupt as well…Both governments and the big banks are like a couple of drunks standing up holding each other up. The both should fall down. The entire world has become too financialized at this point. People are concentrating not on producing real goods and services, but on trading things and paper securities and so forth. This is a giant bubble that’s going to burst.” “I’ve been saying for years that we are heading for something that I call The Greater Depression…I call it The Greater Depression because I expect it to be much worse and much greater than what we went through in the 1930′s.”

James H. Kunstler wrote a column for Peak Prosperity titled "Get Ready For Strange Days - We're in the Twilight of American Federalism" . He makes an good argument about what the immediate aftermath of a collapse could look like with the states going it alone or perhaps banding together with other another state(s) to share and trade resources - from energy to commodities to defense capabilities.

The last time the USA faced a comparable political convulsion was the decade leading into the Civil War, but this time it will be more complex and confusing and it will have a different ending.

In the 1850s, the dominant Whig party choked to death on its own internal contradictions — mainly its failure to take a coherent position on slavery — and morphed into the Republican Party. The original Democratic Party broke apart into southern and northern factions. All of the doctrinal and legal debates of the day — states’ rights, property rights, et cet. — could not overcome the growing moral revulsion against human bondage. When Lincoln was elected in 1860, seven southern slave states seceded from the Union before his inauguration. The ferocity of the ensuing Civil War — the world’s first industrial-strength slaughter fest — came as a great shock to many who had expected little more than a few symbolic romantic skirmishes on horseback preceding a negotiated settlement.

I believe we are headed now into a breakup of the nation into smaller units, but this time there will be no reconstituting the original USA as in 1865. I realize this is a severe view, but the circumstances we face are more severe than the public seems to imagine. To some degree the coming political rearrangement would appear to be the unfinished business of the 1860s. The old animosities remain, mainly in cultural rather than economic terms. But the real driving force of schism will be catabolic economic collapse expressing itself in scale reduction of all our support systems: food production, energy production, transportation, finance, commerce, and governance.

Everything is going to have to get smaller, get more local, and be run differently. Just as political rhetoric failed to contain the revulsion against slavery, all the debates of the Left and Right in our time will not overcome the geophysical limits of energy resource scarcity and its affect on the other major systems of everyday life. Environmental degradation (including climate change) will amplify the journey downward in the viable scale of human operations.

Israeli Expert Predicts Coming Terrorist Attacks

This was sent to UrbanSurvivalSkills.com by a reader who said he read this article on the internationalforecaster.com. This is not a new article. There is a lot of debate over whether Juval Aviv is legitimate or not. His claims about being a Mossad agent cannot be determined and on-line fact checkers dispute his claims about predicting the 9-11 attackers. If he is exploiting 9-11 for his gain then he is simply a POS. But even shit can have it's uses,.....in the case of shit it can be used as fertilizer in some cases, and in the case of Juval Aviv, he gives us food for thought if we set aside the probability of him being a fraud.

A video is posted at the end of this article so you can see the judge Mr. Aviv yourself. One of the best things that can be gained from this article is the need for a no-comms plan. What are you going to do if the cellular and landline communications net goes down? Do you have planned actions such as link up times and locations and contingencies for no shows?

Enough from me, we'll let Juval Aviv have his say:

Do you know who Juval Aviv is? He was Golda Meir's bodyguard and the Israeli Agent upon whom the movie ' Munich ' was based. Golda Meir appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games. In a lecture in New York City a few weeks ago, Aviv shared information that EVERY American needs to know, but that our government has not yet shared with us.

A little background: Aviv predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News, stating publicly that it would happen within a week. At the time, O'Reilly laughed and mocked him, saying that in a week he wanted Aviv back on the show. Unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had occurred. Juval Aviv also gave intelligence to the Bush Administration about 9/11 a month before it occurred. His report specifically said that they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments... I think we all know what happened, right? Congress has since hired him as a security consultant.

Aviv predicts that the next terrorist attack on the U.S. will occur within the next few months. Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try hijacking a plane again as they know the people on board will never go down quietly again. Aviv says that our airport security is a joke – that we have been reactionary rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective.

For example, because an idiot tried to light his shoe on fire, now everyone has to take off their shoes. Example 2: a group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives, and now we can't bring liquids on board. He says he's waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on his underwear; government security will then have us all traveling naked! Last but not least, our airport security looks for metal, but the new explosives are made of plastic!

Currently, our government only focuses on security when people are heading to the gates. Aviv says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times on the front end of the airport when/where people are checking in. For example, it would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom, and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. In Israel , security checks bags BEFORE people can even ENTER the airport.

Aviv says the next terrorist attack here in America is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate, such as Disneyland, Las Vegas casinos, shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, etc., as well as in rural America this time (Wyoming, Montana, etc.).

The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country involving at least 5-8 cities, including rural areas. Aviv says terrorists won't need to use suicide bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like the MGM Grand in Las Vegas , they can simply valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.

Aviv says all of the above is well known in intelligence circles, but that our U.S. Government does not want to 'alarm American citizens' with the facts. The world, however, is soon going to become 'a different place', Aviv says, where issues like 'global warming' and political correctness will have become totally irrelevant.

On an encouraging note, Aviv says that Americans don't have to be concerned about being nuked. He says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. Instead, they like to use suicide, as it's cheap, it's easy, and it's effective – and they have an infinite abundance of young, ignorant, fanatic militants more than willing to 'go see Allah'.

Aviv also says the next level of terrorists over which America should be most concerned will not be coming from abroad. They will instead be 'home grown' – meaning they will have attended and been educated in our own schools and universities right here in the U.S. These young terrorists will be most dangerous because they will know our language and will fully understand the habits of Americans; but that we Americans won't know/understand a thing about them.

So, what can America do to protect itself? From an intelligence perspective, Aviv says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for its intelligence. Instead, we need to follow Israel 's, Ireland 's and England 's hands-on examples of human intelligence, both from an infiltration perspective as well as to trust 'aware' citizens to help. We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens; however, our U.S. Government continues to treat us, its citizens, 'like babies'. Our government thinks we can't handle the truth' and are concerned that we'll panic if we understand the realities of terrorism. Aviv says this is a deadly mistake.

Aviv recently created/executed a security test for Congress by placing an empty briefcase in five well-traveled spots in five major cities. The results? Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago , someone tried to steal the briefcase!

In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well 'trained' that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizen(s) who know to publicly shout, 'Unattended Bag!' The area would be quickly & calmly cleared by the citizens themselves. But, unfortunately, America hasn't been 'hurt enough' yet by terrorism for their government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens or for the government to understand that it's the citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.

Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children who were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11, children who were basically 'lost' without parents being able to pick them up, and schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until their parents could get there .

He stresses the importance of having a plan that's agreed upon within your family, to respond to in the event of a terrorist emergency. He urges parents to contact their children's schools and demand that the schools, too, develop plans of actions, as they do in Israel . He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even our youngest children to remember and follow.

Does your family know what to do if you can't contact one another by phone? Where would you gather in an emergency? Aviv says that the U.S. Government has in force a plan that, in the event of another terrorist attack, will immediately cut-off EVERYONE's ability to use cell phones, as this is the preferred communication source used by terrorists and is often the way that their bombs are detonated. How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot use phones, internet? Bottom line, you need to have a plan!