Posts

Some Self Defense Basics

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Hey, everyone. If you haven't noticed by now I've been focusing a lot on self defense lately. It seems to be almost completely ignored by people in preparedness circles. I can understand why. It takes a long time to get good at it. There's a lot of getting sweaty and rolling around with other sweaty people. It's pretty easy to get hurt. Especially, if you're just rolling around with your buddies in your backyard. Quality training is pretty expensive. Besides, why learn how to fight when you can just carry a gun? Realistically, though, there aren't too many situations that we should be prepping for that are more likely than getting jumped on the street and sometimes pulling a gun will get you in a lot more trouble than it's worth. Here are some really good videos on self defense basics. Stephan Kesting has a lot of BJJ videos online and he's one of the better "youtube instructors" that I've found. He sticks to the basics and he

10 Natural Disasters Caught on Surveillance

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Today I've got a guest post for you all. If you've got an idea for a guest post you can shoot me an email at artyboy at gmail dot com. If I like it then I'll post it up. Just make sure that it's original content and not something that's been posted on a million other blogs all over the internet please. Anyway, on to the post. About the Author: This article was written by 2MCCTV Surveillance , international supplier of surveillance cameras and complete systems . They offer complete security solutions for home and small to enterprise-level businesses. 1-877-926-2288 The past decade has been filled with natural disasters. These recent disasters have had drastic consequences on the environment and the people affected. Tsunamis and earthquakes destroyed homes and displaced millions. What are your plans for a natural disaster; do you know what to do? There are thousands of recorded videos on the internet depicting the tragedies. Here we’ve compiled 10 natural

Why you should train jiu-jitsu (or some other "real" martial art)

"Where there's discomfort there's fear. In these very tough positions you're in a little piece of hell. And through this daily suffering, you learn to survive in these situations. You have to find comfort in uncomfortable situations. You have to be able to live in your worst nightmare. Jiu-jitsu puts you completely in the moment where you must have complete focus on finding a solution to the problem. This trains the mind to build that focus, to increase your awareness, your capacity to solve problems. Sometimes, you don't have to win. You cannot win. But that has nothing to do with losing." -Rickson Gracie This is why I continue to train jiu-jitsu. At a good school you'll do a lot of live grappling (we call it rolling). You get choked out, arm barred, leg locked and put into plenty of other uncomfortable situations all the time till you get used to them. Then you start learning how to defend. Then you find yourself submitting people. Then a

Just watch it

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I've been a Joe Rogan fan for a while. I've followed the UFC for years and he's always on point. That got me to take a look at his standup comedy and that's always been entertaining. Until recently I had no idea that he does podcasts until one of the guys I train jiu-jitsu with started posting them up on facebook. Interestingly enough, the dude is pretty freakin brilliant. He digs pretty deep into politics and human nature. Here's a pretty good sample of what you can expect from his content. This one is much shorter but it's still good. Check it out. More to come.

Sorry for the blackout

Things have been pretty crazy around here. I somehow managed to download a virus on my laptop that made it pretty much impossible for it to do anything. Trying to write up posts on my phone has proven to be very frustrating so I've just been neglecting the blog. I've also been ridiculously busy. I've lost 45 pounds since I started training mma/jiu-jitsu. I didn't really consider myself fat to begin with (5'11" 220) but I was getting there. Training for 2-4 hours a day 4-5 days a week, holding down a real job and being a dad tends to cut the schedule down to pretty much nothing. I've still got some posts in the works and now that my laptop is fixed I should be able to find more time to get them written up. Thanks for reading. If you need to get in touch with me you can email me at artyboy at gmail dot com.

Welcome to my new sponsors

I'd like to take a moment to welcome two new sponsors to my blog. I had the pleasure of meeting both of them at the Denver Self Reliance Expo. The first one is LPC Survival . If you've ever been to a survival blog with direct banner ads then you've probably seen one of their banners. For years they've supported several of the survival blogs in the prepping community. I'm happy to be the latest one on the list. They sell several different Berkey water filters and the parts to make your own (you did see my DIY Berky bucket filter post that I did sometime last year, right?) if you don't want one that's made out of nice, shiny stainless steel or that has a built in LED lighting system . They also sell everything from Wise food storage survival buckets (keep an eye out for an upcoming review) to emergency seed banks . Go check out their site, have a look around and patronize them if you find something that you need. Forge Survival Supply is anothe

Denver Self Reliance Expo was a hit

So this weekend the Denver Self Reliance Expo was held at the Denver Western Stock Show Complex. It surpassed all of my expectations. Granted I didn't expect much. I'm not even sure what I expected, exactly. Regardless, at the end of the day I was impressed by everything. Everyone was very professional, friendly and willing to make a deal. I managed to pick up some needed preps at a good price, I met some great people in the prepper community, I got some great ideas for future posts and I even landed a couple of sponsors. I will welcome them all within the next few days in dedicated posts. The majority of the booths consisted of storage food. "Survival buckets" were the most popular item for sale by far. You've probably seen them before. They generally consist of several packages of individual, freeze dried entrees sealed in mylar, packaged in lightweight, space saving buckets. There were also a lot of vendors selling #10 cans of everything from free