Strategic Relocation in a Terror Attack

HS - Jason Hartman Income Property Investing (2)What is the risk to you and your family if there is a terrorist attack on a U.S. city? What will you do? How do you plan an exit route out of a major city? Where are the safe places to relocate? People face many threats in today’s complex world. Jason Hartman and political scientist, Joel Skousen, discuss foreign and domestic affairs, and the need for strategic relocation, crisis preparedness, and self-sufficiency planning. Mr. Skousen also touches on the subject of military affairs and readiness, as well as free-enterprise solutions to economic and social problems.

Joel Skousen is a political scientist, by training, specializing in the philosophy of law and Constitutional theory, and is also a designer of high security residences and retreats. He has designed Self-sufficient and High Security homes throughout North America, and has consulted in Central America as well. His latest book in this field is Strategic Relocation–North American Guide to Safe Places, and is active in consulting with persons who need to relocate for security and increased self-sufficiency. He also assists people who need to live near a large city to develop contingency retreat plans involving rural farm or recreation property. Joel was raised in Oregon and later served as a fighter pilot for the US Marine Corps during the Vietnam era prior to beginning his design firm specializing in high security residences and retreats. During the 80′s, he took a leave of absence to serve as the Chairman of the Conservative National Committee in Washington DC., and concurrently served as the Executive Editor of Conservative Digest. For two years, he published a newsletter entitled, the WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF, and served as a Senior Editor of “Cogitations,” a quarterly journal on law and government. The World Affairs Brief is now back in publication and is available as a weekly email newsletter or in a monthly print edition. He is the author of four books, one on law and government, and three on his special design innovations in security architecture.

Narrator: Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper. The Holistic Survival Show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst-case scenario, you’ll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places, and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host Jason Hartman.

Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, where we talk about protecting the people, places and profits you care about in these uncertain times. We have a great interview for you today and we will be back with that in less than 60 seconds on the Holistic Survival Show. And, by the way, be sure to visit our website at HolisticSurvival.com. You can subscribe to our blog, which is totally free, has loads of great information and there’s just a lot of good content for you on the site. So make sure you take advantage of that at HolisticSurvival.com. We’ll be right back.

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Start of interview with Joel Skousen

Jason Hartman: It’s my pleasure to have Joel Skousen on the show today. He is the author of Strategic Relocation as well as many other works and his weekly articles and so forth – and you’ll hear all about those. But this book is just a fascinating book. I discovered it while visiting a friend of mine in Utah and I just couldn’t believe how incredibly detailed it is, how complex it is frankly, and how it evaluates so many different areas. And in terms of their value, in terms of survival and safety in a crisis situation. So I’ll let the author talk about it himself and, Joel, welcome to the show today. How are you?

Joel Skousen: Thank you, Jason. It’s good to be with you.

Jason Hartman: Likewise. So you’re talking to us today from Provo area in Utah, and I guess you also have another home in Portland, right?

Joel Skousen: Portland area and Hood River, Oregon.

Jason Hartman: Good, good. And how did you come to write this book on strategic relocation? What was the inspiration for it?

Joel Skousen: Well, I came from a long background of constitutional conservatives. My uncle was W. Cleon Skousen who wrote The Miracle of America and is really one of the modern founding fathers of the constitutional movement. He also wrote a book which I read when I was a teenager called The Naked Communist and it had some very strange anomalies in it about how our own government helped bring Mao to power, bring Castro to power by cutting off military aid to Batista, cutting off military aid to Chiang Kai-shek, undermining the Somoza Regime in Nicaragua and many other things like that. And I got the feeling I don’t think we can really trust our government. They talk one thing, they talk anti-communism and yet they do so much to ferment and evade trade, even in the Vietnam war I was a military pilot for the Navy marine core – I found out that we were fighting with one arm tied behind our back. It was our own government that was causing us to lose the war.

And so I came out of the military deciding that I think things are not going to turn out well in this world. I think we better prepare for a great many things. And I developed the concept of the survival home, went into architecture, started the movement on survival architecture: how to design home that could operate in a crisis as well as in good times. And I wrote the book The Secure Home. It’s been a bestseller for many years – the pioneer in the field. And as I developed an architectural career of consulting with people about safe and secure housing, I found that there was a dying need for people who were saying to me as they were consulting about architectural design “Am I in the right place? Is this a safe place? Am I throwing all this money into a secure home for naught?” And some of them were. Some of them were in the outskirts of New Jersey, close to the New York area and they would have been overwhelmed in a crisis. And so I began consulting in strategic relocation. I ended up writing a book on it. This is the third edition which you hold in your hands and it’s about 3/4 new material from the older editions.

Jason Hartman: Which was originally 1997, right?

Joel Skousen: That’s correct.

Jason Hartman: And it’s interesting – when did you start on this? The Secure Home book for example and survival architecture, when did you write that book?

Joel Skousen: That was 1976.

Jason Hartman: Okay. So you’ve been thinking this way a long time then. This is not in light of recent economic and political developments.

Joel Skousen: That’s right. These are threats that I saw coming many, many decades ago.

Jason Hartman: And do you think the threat is worse nowadays? I have a feeling I know the answer. But…

Joel Skousen: Yeah. Even the mainstream is waking up. You listen to television about the debt crisis which is insolvable. I mean there’s no way that every tax payer in America has 30 to 60 thousand dollars to give to the government to pay off the debt. It’s never gonna get paid off.

Jason Hartman: Well, it’s really probably about $200,000 per person – depends on how you look at it.

Joel Skousen: Total obligations of the federal governments, the unfunded obligations, you’re exactly correct.

Jason Hartman: Entitlement time bomb I call it.

Joel Skousen: It’s something that’s never gonna get paid off. It’s simply a matter of kicking the can down the road. It is my personal feeling that because of my analysis as editor of The World Affairs Brief which is a weekly news analysis service I do on world affairs, it’s been my analysis for many years that a lot of Americans don’t understand that The United States has been aiding and abetting the rise of communism even during World War II, then at the end of World War II under the guise of Lend Lease. We gave the Russians the rest of the atomic blueprints to make their first atomic bomb – the ones that couldn’t figure out from what they had stolen in the Manhattan Project. We gave them the first uranium, enriched uranium so that they could produce their first atomic weapon. We’ve done an awful lot including covering for continued rise of Russia and rearming towards a nuclear missile power and China as well.

Jason Hartman: But, Joel, I’ve got to ask you and play devil’s advocate with you on that, how do you know that? If you asked any government agency or representative, they would of course deny that. I mean why would the US do that? And how do you know they did?

Joel Skousen: Well, we have the diaries of Major Jordan, for example. He’s the one that intercepted those plans and the uranium, going through the Montana Air Base on its route over Siberia. And it’s all in his book, Major Jordan’s Diary about how he called The White House and the Roosevelt administration and talked to Harry Hopkins and he chastised him for stopping that material and told him to send it on to Russia.

Jason Hartman: Okay, so that’s the how you know. What do you think the motivation would be? Is it just a spy that’s getting paid? A traitor? Or is it something more significant than that, more institutionalized?

Joel Skousen: Well, one would think initially that this is just a bunch of spied in the Roosevelt administration and there were communists in them according to Barry’s testimony. But there’s a pattern that goes beyond…It went into the Truman administration, betrayal of our troops in Korea, for example through failure to attack the Chinese across the border that McArthur ran into. And it happened during the Eisenhower administration, then during the Kennedy administration.

And my belief in the motivation is subject for another interview perhaps sometime. It’s outlined in my website under the title Strategic Threats. I outlined what I believe is this globalist theory of getting us into a new world order and using conflict and war to create the crisis that drives people into accepting things like 9/11 drove people in accepting a demolition..

Jason Hartman: Yeah, so that’s the false flag argument. And I sort of spoke over you there. So I wanted to say you said 9/11 drove people into accepting less freedom, Patriot Acts, etcetera. That’s what you were gonna point out, right?

Joel Skousen: A false flag is only a small portion. We’re talking about major war creation – the World War II was set up specifically and reduced. I could tell you incredible stories about how Hitler was reluctant to bomb London and Churchill had meetings with his advisor and told him to go bomb the [0:09:21.4] country. We’ve got to induce Hitler to bomb London. So we did the first firebombing of the Germans in order to induce that. Now, that isn’t to say that Hitler was a nice guy. I’m just saying the western leaders were involved in exacerbating conditions for a post-war hatred of the rest and the firebombing of Dresden was totally unnecessary. Giving away of all of the European nations to Hitler or to Stalin at the end of the war, Operation Keelhaul where you took all of the soldiers who had fought on the ally side, you belong formally to pre-Soviet states were taken back and thrown into the arms of Stalin. We left 5,000 American troops with Stalin and never reclaimed them – we kept it secret from America.

Tremendous amount of evil that has gone on in the world, setting the stage for future wars, and it’s my considered opinion and we’re headed for World War III at least probably a decade down the line with Russia and China. And so that type of threat does deal very strongly with my view that people need to prepare strategically for safety and especially when you look at a nuclear scenario where about 15 to 20 America cities might be nuked someday where the military industrial complex is integrally involved with the city, people need to be out of those cities. We need to not be living in San Diego when that time comes, not living in Seattle. These are dead cities. Colorado Springs, they moved out NORAD into an open Peterson Air Force base in Colorado Springs and it makes the city vulnerable. Omaha, Nebraska, Washington, DC and New York City of course are targets – Newport News, harbor Jacksonville, Florida, Kings Bay, Georgia – tremendous amount of major nuclear targets that are outlined in my book. Now, that isn’t the only threat.

Jason Hartman: Oh no, you outline a lot of other threats and I want to talk to you about those. But it’s just interesting and I would really like to have you back and do maybe another show on this, Joel, is the globalist agenda that you mentioned a few minutes ago. I just can’t understand the reasons. They’re just not compelling enough to me. I mean I see that there are reasons that people would want to sell America out like this. It’s really amazing to me this great experiment in human liberty that has lasted so far 230 some odd years and it’s a real sad time. It definitely is. But it makes me think hasn’t every generation and at every time throughout history, haven’t there always been people who said the sky is falling and feared the worst but it didn’t happen? Well, sometimes it did happen. Can you address that just for a moment before we move on to the specifics.

Joel Skousen: Jason, it’s very important because I do run into this all the time. It’s important to realize that the media just simply has undermined this and the government is actively covering for Russian, Chinese military preparations. If they would broadcast about Russia and China what they’re broadcasting about Iran, you would have people up in arms. Why aren’t we doing something about it when there’s a total silence, when there’s only three analysts, myself included, in the United States that are predicting a third world war with Russia and China, you know there’s a major disconnect between what the government is warning people.

Jason Hartman: Let me ask you a question about that. So are you saying that in this potential third world war that Russia and China will be allies against the US?

Joel Skousen: Yes. They are already allies in that regard. I mean let me give you an example. In 1997 there was a front page article in the New York Times, front page showing a satellite photo of Yamantau Mountain. And this is an underground bunker complex as big as the Washington DC area in the euro mountains that Russia was building a great big nuclear bunker complex. And they went to the CIA and they asked him what do you think about Yamantau Mountain? What’s the problem? And they said oh that’s nothing, it’s just defensive, we’re not worried about it. Well, in point of fact, there isn’t a single person in the United States, in our military, in intelligence, who has ever been inside Yamantau Mountain. How could they say it was defensive? They were covering. And, in fact,

I’ve seen the satellite photos. Russia maintains it’s a mining complex but there are never any mining cars going in and out once the excavation was done – only rail type cars and then factories are being produced down in there. I mean if I know this as a private intelligence person, certainly the government knows it. Why are they covering for that? Why are they denying that Russia’s a threat? Why are they pretending that they’re an ally?

Jason Hartman: Well, what is your answer then? Why are they?

Joel Skousen: I believe that they in fact want…And I’ve had contacts within the CIA who have told me “Look, we’ve got instructions not to ever bad mouth the Soviet Union and we’re to downplay anything that comes up about China.” Now, why? I think there is a globalist agenda to create a third world war because, and we can discuss some point why people want to undermine American sovereignty in favor of global government, it’s just a little bit more than just power and money. This is a problem that’s been going on for many, many years where these globalists have it, and you may say what’s the evidence? Well, believe me, I could regale you with about 50 major quotes from people indicating just what I’m telling you – admitting it.

Jason Hartman: Listen, and I’m playing partially devil’s advocate. I mean I believe in the globalist agenda. I mean I don’t believe in it from a philosophical standpoint but I believe it exists, I’ll say that, and I’m just asking some clarifying questions there. It does amaze me though. And you don’t have to convince me, but I just wanted you to expand on that for the listeners a bit. But, Joel, getting into the book here, you cover just the US or just North America?

Joel Skousen: In the previous editions, I’d covered Mexico as part of North America, but it’s so out of the question that I don’t cover that. But I do cover international. The whole first question is on international retreats for safety. I rate them, I talk about the fact that in the long term there’s too many people that look to Costa Rica and Latin America and South America because they can get a cheap living right now, but they can’t guarantee that any of that’s gonna remain the same if war starts, if the balance of power changes, if the US is no longer looked upon as a major force that can intervene in countries. My personal opinion having lived in most of those countries and knowing the high percentages of socialists and Marxists that are in the bureaucracies there that American bank accounts, American property rights are gonna be worth nothing. And I think it’s going to be very difficult to get back to the United States under conditions of war and social unrest.

One of the points that I make that’s very important in the book is that even though our country’s government is the problem – intervening around the world, creating hatred against Americans – they don’t hate us because of our freedoms, they hate us because of our government intervention around the world – but there is no other country in the world that has the base of millions of people who were schooled in constitutional theory who are willing to resist. Canada doesn’t have it, England doesn’t have it, Australia doesn’t have it, New Zealand doesn’t have it, let alone Latin America or any of the European countries. In other words, even though we’re going to be the subject I think of a nuclear strike someday, most people will survive. They can especially survive if they follow my recommendations in strategic relocation and the secure home. But the point is we will band together and fight this globalism. We can resist because there’s such a basis of people who are already schooled in the concepts of law and freedom and liberty that exists in no other country around the world.

Jason Hartman: And that’s what I’ve always maintained. I completely agree with you that the American psyche is just different. There are many people here who are extremely independent in their thinking. And even though people like to say Americans are a bunch of lazy lemmings and so forth, and certainly that’s out there, but more so than any other place in the world I would agree that just instilled in the American spirit is that constitutional thinking and that thinking of fairness and small firearms. I love Hirohito, I believe it was, during World War II when someone asked him if he would ever consider an invasion of the US and he said something like no way because there’s a gun behind every blade of grass in the United States and thank God that’s true – it’s a really good thing. But you’re right – I don’t think those small arms are really as big a deal as people make them out to be because obviously there are much more powerful weapon systems available to government and the powers that be, but it’s better than nothing.

Joel Skousen: To occupy it, it’s a real problem having so many private arms hidden away that can make everybody a potential sniper. It’d be very difficult to occupy this country.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, that’s true – good point. So you live in the United States, and it sound like – when you look at the global perspective, Joel – you believe that the US is still the best place to be all things considered, right?

Joel Skousen: I do, I do. If they live in the major population centers around the east coast, they don’t realize how much vacant land there still is in the United States from the Midwest on. And then you just fly over this country and you see most of it’s vacant and people don’t realize that that rural vacant land is your greatest safety net, and being in major populations is your greatest danger zone. Because when social unrest hits, and believe me – almost any shortage for more than 2 or 3 days of water, food or electricity can cause panic. I mean look what’s happening in London. It was maybe a spark that was considered by some perceived injustice, but this has become simply a looter’s paradise of middle class kids, spoiled kids, poor kids, it runs across the entire gamut, but there’s no moral restraint left in these communities in England. And the same thing can happen here in our major inner cities.

Jason Hartman: Well, it was interesting when we were talking before we started recording as to what you said about why you live where you live. And I just found it funny, Joel, that it was so opposite of what most people might say. Tell the listeners about that, if you would, when you talk about that vacant land and so forth.

Joel Skousen: The highest rated area in the United States for safety from major population centers is the inner mountain west. This is the area surrounding…If you take Salt Lake City as the center and Salt Lake City itself isn’t particularly a good city to be in, but if you look at the area surrounding it, you’re separated from the major population centers by a minimum of 5 to 800 miles in all directions. I mean you’ve got 1200 miles to San Francisco through trackless wastelands of desert in Nevada. You’ve got 800 miles to Los Angeles through the Mojave Desert. You’ve got 500 miles to Denver through trackless Rocky Mountains. You just can’t get to the inner mountain west in a crisis without relying on all the modern conveniences. And, as you say, a lot of people say well that’s the reason I don’t want to live in mountain west. But, in fact, you have access to all commerce because of what we have. But when you want safety from major population threats, you have to have distance so they can’t simply overwhelm you. After they’ve pillaged in Los Angeles, they’re gonna start moving out into the communities surrounding that. And eventually a lot of people will try to get further north or east or west but they won’t be able to because of the harsh conditions and the lack of fuel and electricity.

Jason Hartman: So certainly you look at, in your analysis, population density as being a major detriment, right?

Joel Skousen: That’s right. It is the most dangerous effect – if you’re not in a nuclear bomb zone, it’s the population density collapsing that will kill you faster than anything else. And I’m realistic to know everybody cannot move into the country. Most people have to stay within the city, so I spend a lot of time in the book talking about contingency planning, how to move to safer areas in a Metropolitan area, how to plan your exit routes. A lot of people don’t realize that freeways are like moats around the city. You can’t get across them except at an intersection and those intersections will be clogged with people getting on and off the freeway. But I show in my book how there are a minority of underpasses that go through freeways, exiting an area that have no exit on them, meaning it’s just a straight underpass or overpass over the freeway and there’s no exit. That means they’ll be free and clear and you need to know where those are if you’re gonna try to get out of a major area without getting caught in the traffic.

Jason Hartman: Very interesting. See, most people would think the opposite probably. They’d think well where are the freeway on ramps so I could get on that freeway and get out of dodge, right?

Joel Skousen: You don’t want to get on that freeway cuz it’s an island in the sky. You can’t get off. There are barriers on either side of most places until you get actually way out into the west and you could drive off no place to go. Like in Katrina, people got trapped on the freeway. They had to abandon their cars. And the one thing they point out in my book, which is what we learned from Katrina, is whatever you do in a crisis, you never go into the arms of government. Don’t go to a FEMA camp or a FEMA facility. We found out in Katrina that they become prison camps. Nobody once in those FEMA facilities was free to leave without government permission.

Jason Hartman: Tell us more about that. So FEMA just kept people there and said…

Joel Skousen: Absolutely. When people entered the superdome and they found conditions deplorable and unsanitary and molestations going on, they literally went for the door and they were locked and there were guards at the door saying for your own safety you cannot leave until we say so – and they were prisoners. And even when people said, look, I’ll go back to my house – it’s safer than living in here. I have a place to go, you have no right to keep me there – they had no rights and the government had all rights. It was just incredible and I hope people are listening.

Jason Hartman: Let me take a brief pause – we’ll be back in just a minute.

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Jason Hartman: That’s the next thing I wanted to ask you about is the possibility of martial law. The false flag and the martial law that follows quickly after that or maybe just not letting a crisis go to waste as Rahm Emanuel would say. So you look at the escape routes from cities for example, and that was very enlightening what you just said about the overpasses without exits and on ramps on them being a better way out because they won’t be clogged. But what about martial law? What about barricades and government control of routes and so forth?

Joel Skousen: Well, it takes a while for that to be implemented. I am not one of those on the conservative of right who is crying even at martial law. In the first place, we don’t have anywhere near enough police to operate martial law. We could take what soldiers we have and add to it – you still don’t have enough to control everybody getting on and off every road and control checkpoints. It takes really a good 6 months to 9 months to implement martial law. And it takes a major crisis. The worst thing the government can do to convince Americans that there really is a conspiracy to take away our liberty is to call for martial law for at least a terrorist attack.

I mean look what they did after 9/11. They shut down the entire air traffic system, totally unnecessary, totally unnecessary. They could have simply had everyone land, rescan the passengers and put everybody back into the air again. But no, they shut down and realized that it’s government reaction to a terror strike, falsified or not, that creates the most damage to the economy. Even 9/11 – I don’t want to seem callous, only 3000 people, but look how many billions of dollars were lost in the government’s reaction to 9/11 in terms of shutting down transportation. And it could be worse under a nuclear scenario. That’s why I say it’s very, very important to have access to current information that is not going to be the establishment news media because they simply distort the news mostly by what they omit, what they don’t tell you. Most government stories are giving I guess 90% coverage to what government spokesmen say. And when they have a difference of opinion, it’s only a slight difference of opinion from someone who doesn’t really go against the government position. And you’ll never hear people like you or me or others who have a completely different point of view about information they don’t want people to hear.

Jason Hartman: Right. And it may well be controlled opposition.

Joel Skousen: That’s right. And it doesn’t have to be directly controlled. Many times they’re predicable people that they can simply call upon who they know that always have a predictable point of view that meets their approval. So we don’t actually have to enter into a conspiracy with someone. Simply use dumbed down, predictable, or people who have sense that we don’t touch this topic because I won’t ever get invited back if I do.

Jason Hartman: Very good point. Go back and just talk about since most people listening probably live in urban areas or suburban areas or feel they have to live in those areas – whether they really do or not is debatable. But what are some of the other preparations for an urban residence? You have a chapter on that.

Joel Skousen: One of the most important concepts is one to prepare an urban residence or contingency planning meaning you want to be able to get out of town quickly if you can, but if you don’t get out quickly and all of a sudden all the roads are clogged, it’s probably better to prepare to wait it out. And that means you’ve got to have at least two weeks of supply of food and water. You’ve got to have some concealed storage in case there’s looting where you can actually…I recommend safe rooms that are concealed so that people can get into a basement, seal themselves off where they can’t be found, and they can let people go through or leave the doors open, steal what they can, but then house is left intact and their essential food and other things is left intact. That’s a very important strategy rather than trying to confront waves of people with arms or violence, it’s simply wiser to get out of the way into concealed space and that takes preparation. And people can’t prepare in advance for that. Ultimately, I think everyone needs to have a place to go to.

There’s nothing worse than getting out on the roads with no place to go and getting to town after town and every motel is filled and every school gymnasium is filled with refugees and people run out of food and water and then they get into the hands of government but now they’re in refugee camps and can’t leave. So I think it’s very important that people have, whether it’s informal networks with friends and family and neighbors that can’t afford to build a retreat themselves, they need to have prearranged places, where to go, and several different routes of how to get there. And they need to have kits in their car to be able to make basic repairs and have extra fuel and oil and things that they can get to places and perhaps even have a 4 wheel drive vehicle that allows them to go off road if necessary.

Jason Hartman: Do you get into as granular as how to secure your door? And I think I’ve seen your other book where you had…

Joel Skousen: I do all of that in the secure home, and also there’s a book called How to Implement a High Security Shelter in the Home. That’s how to do a safe room within a basement with concealed access. But in the secure home, this is my 700 page book that covers everything from price security to self-sufficienty to generators to solar to safe rooms to building a fallout shelter to having the filters and 12 electrical systems – just covers everything including how to do concealment.

Jason Hartman: In terms of that bug out location, when you talk about people leaving town if they’re in a city, is there an ideal distance for it? If it’s too far, you might just get caught up and stuck on the way or looted on the way or mugged or whatever. If it’s too far away, then you have all that risk during that time of transportation. What’s the ideal optimum length away from your own home, that that bug out location is?

Joel Skousen: This depends a lot on the area that you’re in for example. One of the advantages of the Utah area where I’m in, one of the reasons why I chose this is that the mountains come right down to the city. So you can get to good routine locations by going up the canyons right out of the city within 30 minutes. And as the [0:30:51.2], it’s only about five miles from the city. You can’t do that in LA or Phoenix. It’s just not enough cover, there’s not enough barrier to the city than out into those areas [0:31:04.4] mountains, so a lot of that, in answer to your question, depends on the terrain around where you live. If you’re in the Midwest for example when you have no mountains at all and you have a big major city and then just farmland going out there, you probably need to get out at least 30 to 50 miles just because to get out of the range of the waves of pillaging that will successively go out away from the city as they absorb all of the food and water and everything so they can steer within the city, they start moving out into the farms and you need to have sufficient distance. And I also like it to be so that it can ultimately be within walking distance. It’s something I like to see within 30 to 50 miles as a first line of retreat. 30 miles is a minimum, but 50 miles you can walk in a couple of days.

Jason Hartman: Okay, so maybe this is a silly question, but why are the mountains the safer bug out location? Are you saying that the hordes of people that are pillaging and trying to find resources as they move out from the city, they won’t go up hill?

Joel Skousen: They don’t go up steep mountains. They generally are running out of energy. Except for your thug type individuals in a four-wheel drive pickup who most of your common people are not gonna get up into the mountainous areas. There’s also the issue of cover and concealment. In other words, when you’re trying to run or flee from something, if you’re just out in open terrain, you’re vulnerable. Once you’re seen, it’s just a race to see who gets to you and if somebody’s after you that having cover and concealment from trees or even hills is much, much better ultimately if you’re gonna get to a location. You look back at what happened during World War II and all of the Germans and the Russians were coming in and they were fleeing. You look at their stories of those that kept to the roads and the main flows just didn’t surprise. They got robbed, raped, and pillaged. There were too many people competing for too few resources. The people that got way off away from the roads and went through the farm lands and met more amiable farm people who were willing to help them, but the farms that were near the roads just got trashed and could help nobody. So it’s important even when one is considering a plan to get out of dodge to consider going very rural and having the pre-position supplies even to sometime have safe locations.

I mean even on public land you could even bury a bucket of supplies in a place, if anybody found it it wouldn’t be anything illegal but at least you know if there’s something that I can get to and have some additional dry food or some rations – I’ve known people even to cash fuel out in rural lands if they can get access to it if they run out of fuel, drive it down.

Jason Hartman: That’s really interesting. What do they do? Bury it underground?

Joel Skousen: Yeah.

Jason Hartman: So they just take a gas tank and…

Joel Skousen: Yes, if they use gas, of course, you have to put a stabilizer and PRIG which is a brand name or StayBill which people can get at AutoZone or other places. But you have to cap it also. You don’t want vented gasoline because it’s the evaporation of the volatiles that makes gasoline go bad. So if you cap gasoline air tight, you could preserve it, and it’ll last and still be good 3 and 4 years later and perhaps longer underground when the temperature’s stable. But often times I recommend to client they use diesel vehicle because diesel can be stored almost indefinitely – it’s safer to store.

Jason Hartman: What about preparing to live after a nuclear attack? Most survivalists aren’t really thinking too much about the nuclear threat as you are I don’t think. They’re more thinking about economic collapse it seems. That’s maybe the more possible scenario in most people’s eyes. How do you live after a nuclear attack?

Joel Skousen: Well, first of all, you have to understand that a nuclear winter is simply anti-nuclear propaganda. There won’t be a nuclear winter. Nuclear radiation dissipates within 2 to 3 weeks and so society will start to knit itself back together. One of the big problems, of course, if they throw an electromagnetic pulse nuclear…

Jason Hartman: No electricity.

Joel Skousen: And we struck down the grid probably for 3 to 6 months and during that time you would basically have this country go back to a third world country. And that’s why the only way to survive after a nuclear war scenario, we have a downing of electricity is to go back – is to have a set of skills, bartering and repair and growing food are gonna be the most valuable things to do. And even if you’re a person who’s professional – you need to get some basic knowledge there and stockpile some tools, equipment and seeds that we can provide a service because so many millions of people won’t even be able to provide because we don’t have anything bur hybrid seeds which once they grow they grow they can’t collect it.

Jason Hartman: That’s the problem with Mansanto, a very evil company if you ask me.

Joel Skousen: But being able to repair and scavenge things and make do with whether those people are gonna be worth their weight in gold.

Jason Hartman: Very good point.

Joel Skousen: That means you’ve got to have tools and some spare parts and glues and tapes. And I cover that in my little booklet, 10 packs for survival on how to collect all these barter items and these things that you can’t manufacture. You can’t manufacture super glue or duct tape. You need to stockpile that stuff.

Jason Hartman: What about the terrorism threat? I mean do you think that’s real or do you think that’s just completely overplayed? Because if you ask me, Joel, if the terrorists really wanted to get us, there are so many ways that they could get us.

Joel Skousen: That’s the point I made for years, Jason, during my world affairs brief is that if we had real terrorism – we’ve got an open border with Mexico – they’d be streaming across doing normal attacks of terror. They’d be bombing shopping malls. They’d be throwing explosives, electrical pylons. They’d be blowing up Amtrak in the southern part of the United States. We have not had a single legitimate terrorist attack. Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t terrorists. We’re breeding more terrorists than we cure by occupations in the middle east, but they’re not coming over here or they’d be coming already. They’d be streaming across the border.

Jason Hartman: So you know what I hear about that in the mainstream area or Sarah Palin calls it the lamestream media, I love that, is the reason that Al Qaeda doesn’t do these smaller acts of terrorism is that they’re very patient and they only want to do big, flashy things like 9/11. That doesn’t seem like a very good explanation to me.

Joel Skousen: It isn’t. In fact, it’s just the opposite. When you look at Israel, which does have all kinds of acts of terrorism, it’s always the small stuff.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, it’s the suicide bomber…

Joel Skousen: Any little damage they can because what does that do? That makes the people feel totally unprotected, government can’t stop the small stuff, and so it is very effective and we should be having that too and we don’t. And that’s what leads me to the conclusion that most of our terrorism if not all of it has been false flag terrorism. Almost all the terror prosecutions have involved agent provocateurs, i.e. FBI informants that are providing the explosives, the know-how and goading them constantly into doing things.

Jason Hartman: Unbelievable. This is just incredible. It’s incredible that we’ve come to this. Well, Joel, tell people where they can get the book and learn more about you in all of your work. You have studied this subject intensely and written about it intensely. Where can they find out more?

Joel Skousen: Well, there are two websites that I have. My basic website is JoelSkousen.com, and that covers all of my books that I’ve written, including Strategic Relocation. People can order online. There’s also my World Affairs Brief website. That’s WorldAffairsBrief.com where it covers my weekly news analysis service. There’s a modest subscription price for that and people can get a free sample issue by emailing me at [email protected]. Lots of free stuff to read and contemplate on the websites, so I encourage people to go there. And if you only remember one of them, you can go to WorldAffairsBrief.com and there’s a link to JoelSkousen.com and vice versa.

Jason Hartman: Good stuff. Well, Joel, thank you so much for joining us today and thank you for the information. This has been very, very informative. And, listeners, the rule here, the advice here is prepare in advance. Dig your well before you’re thirsty so to speak because this does not work after the fact. You’ve got to do it in advance. A prepared society is a safe society, so prepare, prepare, prepare. Thank you Joel, appreciate it.

Joel Skousen: My pleasure, Jason. Good to be with you.

Narrator: Thank you for joining us today for the Holistic Survival Show, protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating Wealth show which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today’s economy. Learn more at www.JasonHartman.com or search “Jason Hartman” on iTunes. This show is produced by the Hartman media company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional. Information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. (Top image: Flickr | puuikibeach)

Transcribed by Ralph


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