THE ORIGINAL LIVE FREE SURVIVAL PAPERS

ALL 100 PLUS TITLES ON ONE CD ONLY $15.00!
Add $2.00 per set for postage and handling

The best articles from 30-years of Live Free USA newsletters, The best training handouts from Live Free instructors. The best publication written by Live Free authors. These papers range from one page to over 30 pages. Many are illustrated. Subjects include:

1. Food & Water for Survival

2. Nuclear Biological & Chemical Survival

3. Self-Defense Weapons & Tactics

4. Survival Supplies & Equipment

5. Urban Survival Skills

6. General Survival Subjects

7. Survival Planning, Tactics & Philosophy

Send $17.00 payable to Live Free, USA To:

Survival Papers

P.O. Box 342385

Bartlett, TN

38183-238

SURVIVAL PAPERS CONTEST
Enter your paper on any subject related to emergency preparedness, survival, self-defense, or self-reliance. Entries must be in electronic MS-Word compatible format, Illustrations and photos are welcome.

• First Prize $100.00
• Second Prize $50.00,
• Third Prize $25.00

All entries become property of Live Free, USA.

LIVE FREE REPORT

Summer 2008

2008 ANNUAL MEETING REPORT

Jim Jones reported that membership has increased since last year and we have doubled our activities.  It was stated that funds are dwindling due to increased costs and a lack of fund raising activities in 2007.  Increased membership put additional loads on the volunteer officers and this results in reduced activities and publications.  The result is that membership could start to go down again.  The only way to break this cycle is to get more members actively involved to improve programs.  Each officer was encouraged to aggressively recruit and designate “Deputy Directors” to expand the capabilities of each team.  The elected officers for 2008 are:

Note: copies of the bylaws are available to all members on request with $1.00 postage

ATTENTION INSTRUCTORS!  LAST CALL!

The Live Free, Certified Survival/Self-Reliance Instructors program has been in limbo for a while.  We are rebuilding it this year.  The goal is to reestablish the existing program and data and then upgrade it.

The first step is to register or reregister existing instructors.  If you previously were certified you need to file the forms again.  If you have been instructing recently and have not been certified you should file the certification forms before August 15th 30th 2008.  We will wave the $20.00 fee and supply new certificates, cards and patches this one time only.  Don’t wait!

Instructors Continued

Those who have never been certified or instructed for Live Free should consider filing the forms and paying the $20.00 certification fee soon.  Of course you do have to provide documentation of your qualifications and experience with the forms.

We are looking for help in creating a 200-question instructors certification quiz.  Please don’t send paper questions!  I have enough typing to do.  We need true or false or multiple-choice questions related to survival, self-reliance, self-protection, emergency preparedness, NBC survival, etc. typed as MS Word documents.

THE SURVIVAL PAPERS ARE COMING BACK!!

We are pleased to announce that we have a Deputy Director for Survival Papers publication.  In the near future members and non-members will be able to purchase Survival Papers Third Edition with over 100 papers on CD. We hope to have printed copies available also a bit later.  We also plan on having video CDs and DVDs of Live Free training programs and narrated Power Point presentations available by late 2008.  WE NEED NEW MATERIAL! In the early days of Survival(ist) Papers we would get about 50 articles each year from members.  Most were published in the newsletter (Directions) and the best got to be Survival Papers. Today most of this stuff goes to the

Internet.  That’s good, but we need to add new papers each year.  We are reinitiating a contest that offers $100.00, $50.00, and $25 for the best articles/papers submitted each year. In today’s world we cannot used hand written or typed items. Only computer files sent on CD or via e-mail to lfinow@aol can be accepted.  We can use photos and illustrations.

OPERATION SURVIVAL CHALLENGE, A BIG SUCCESS

Members and non-members gathered at Tippecanoe River State Park in North central Indiana on May 2-4 for Operation Survival Challenge 2008.  This event marked the 40^th year of Live Free programs at the park.  The weather was ideal and second and third generation members participated. A full range of programs including: water purification, first aid, biological protection, sanitation, fire building, rope craft, survival food, and survival equipment was presented.  First time attendees expressed amazement at to information provided.

Frank Bronkie demonstrates emergency sanitation methods

Comments included “Wow where have you guys been!” and “I have been looking for a group like this”.  Book sales and raffle ticket sales were brisk, resulting in a much-needed boost to our funds.  All classes were thoroughly recorded and we hope to have them available on CDs in the near future.

Dave Ritchie conducts a class on water purification

We have already reserved to park for next years event. Mark your calendars for May 1-3, 2009.

Camp Independence 2008

Survival and Self-Reliance Education Encampment, Saturday July19th and Sunday July 20^th, noon till noon. At The American Museum of Military Vehicles US 231 at 113^th Ave. East of Crown Point Indiana. Visit for the day or stay overnight.  $10.00 per  family contribution suggested. More is welcome.  Pre-registration required for campers and contest entrants.  Request flyer for details.

Camp Survival 2008

Saturday September 27^th and Sunday September 28 ^th. Members and instructors gathering.  Program to be announced.  Goodenow Grove camp site.  Will County Illinois. Follow State 394 south to Goodenow Road. Turn east in Goodenow road to Dutton Road. Turn North (left) on Dutton Road and continue until you enter the park. Visit for the day or stay overnight.  $10.00 per  family contribution suggested. More is welcome.  Pre-registration required for campers. Request flyer for details

LIVE FREE ANNUAL MEETING DATE CHANGED

At the May 4^th Annual Meeting the by-laws were amended to change the annual meeting from April/May to January/April. This will facilitate holding this meeting at a more convenient location than the remote state park.  The Annual Meeting is now scheduled for Sunday March 22^nd, 2009, at Cabela’s Conference Center, Hammond IN, I-80 and US 41

LOST SURVIVAL KIT?

Someone left their belt-mounted survival kit at Operation Survival Challenge on May 3^rd in Indiana.  We are holding it for the owner.  If this is yours please send us a description of the contents and your name.  Please send $5.00 for shipping or plan to pick it up at our next event.

For further information contact:

Live Free, USA,  P.O. Box 375, Dolton, IL 60419 or

E-mail: lfinow@aol.com

Winter Survival

If your survival preparations don’t cover subfreezing conditions you are only 50% ready.

The great majority of survival skills and survival equipment work well in dry and temperate weather. In the dry summer conditions you can survive for a while by simply not doing anything stupid. Moderate clothing and basic shelter items will get you through the chilly damp conditions of late Spring and early Fall. At home, mild weather survival focuses on having safe water and enough food. But winter conditions make survival anywhere an immediate and constant challenge. In winter, Mother Nature tries to kill you. Cold takes no prisoners. Whole armies have been wiped out by General Winter. The survival battle comes down to maintaining the body’s temperature. This is accomplished four actions.

• Generating heat internally through the consumption and metabolization of high calorie food and the necessary water to process it. Consider this fueling your furnace. Food requirements are much higher in cold weather.

• Keeping cold out of the body. Eating cold food, drinking cold liquids and breathing in cold air quickly lower the body’s temperature.

• Preserving body heat. Breathing out warmed air, standing in cold winds, contact with cold ground, getting wet, not wearing adequate clothing and failure to cover the head will burn away calories (heat) and lead to hypothermia
• Gathering heat from external sources. Getting into a warm place, standing in the sun, drinking warm liquids, eating hot food, standing by a fire, breathing warmed air reduces heat loss.

Civilization has focused on providing a warm environment. Our homes are heated. Our vehicles are heated. Even in winter our exposure to cold is brief. Well-feed and warm most of the time we are all in poor condition to survive long-term cold under survival conditions. When we think of survival we think of winter fire, but all animals and some human cultures survive the harshest cold conditions without any form of external heat. They depend on heat conservation and high calorie food metabolism. Two things are certain,

• Inadequately fed and clothed humans who are exposed to sever cold or chilly wet conditions for too long will die

• If you live in most areas of the United States and Canada and have not acquired the skills and equipment for long-term cold weather survival you are at high risk 20 to 70% of the year.

The Body loses heat in 5 ways:

• Respiration: Breathing in cold air, heating it in your lungs and then exhaling the warmed air back out is a significant source of heat loss. A simple facemask, ski mask or muffler over the nose and mouth can conserve some of this heat.
• Evaporation: Sweat and dampness on clothing evaporates and carries away heat. Alcoholic beverages give the allusion of warming while evaporating through the skin and taking away more heat. Rain, snow and even fog will dampen hair skin and clothing to take away you heat.
• Convection: Air (wind) passing over the skin carries away heat. That’s great on a hot day, but deadly in the cold. Get out of the wind ASAP! On the move wear a wind proof poncho.
• Conduction: Nature hates an imbalance. If you are in contact with ground, rocks, metal, snow, etc. that are colder than you are, energy will flow from you to the cold surface. Minimizing contact and good insulation are the keys to preventing this heat loss. Wet clothing loses 90% of its insulation value with water having 240 times the heat conductivity of dry air STAY DRY!
• Radiation: the whole body radiates heat/energy into the environment. Adequate clothing is the only way to reduce this radiation.

Since heat rises the head and shoulders are the greatest source of heat loss and since the brain is most heavily supplied with blood circulation the head is the last part to feel cold. Listen up! Hoods, stocking caps and those big fur caps will save your life. One day we were out in 10 below zero winds. We entered an unheated building and just took off our caps. We immediately started to shiver until we put them back on. Another device for combating radiated heat loss is the “Space Blanket”. These aluminized blankets can be used as ponchos or rigged as shelters. They reflect body heat back to you. They can also be used to catch and reflect campfire, stove heat or solar warmth onto your body. I have recovered from damp cold clothing in this way.

Continue Reading »
Winter Survival

Website Posting July 2008

From the Presidents Desk

American Survivor May Not Survive

Once again we have no one to do the American Survivor newsletter for our members.

Richard Fleetwood has resigned from three years. Richard did a great job, but became overloaded with other issues and had to give up. He will still keep up our website.

Last year the member that did the mailing of the newsletter had to quit after doing it for ten years. We had hoped to increase the size and frequency of the newsletter from 6 x 8-page issues to 8 x 10 page issues by 2007, but we were barely able to get out what we did. Last year we simplified the layout so that anyone with basic MS-Word skills could create the newsletter. While I can get a few issues to get us to 2009 it will take me away from organizing programs and other Live Free activities. Fewer publications and fewer programs will probably result in loss of membership that we have worked hard to gain.

Our best hope is to get several volunteer editors to do 2 or 3 issues per year. This would remove the pressure from any one parson and even improve the publication. If no one steps forward we will probably loss regularity or ceases publication altogether by mid-2009. We have continuously published a survival newsletter since 1977. It would be a shame to stop right when it is needed the most.

Survival Papers Available On CD

We have over 100 of the best articles from past newsletters and training programs available on CD. These papers range from one page to over 30 pages. Many are illustrated. Subjects include: Food & Water for Survival, Nuclear Biological & Chemical Survival, Self-Defense Weapons & Tactics, Survival Supplies & Equipment, Urban Survival Skills, General Survival Subjects, Survival Planning, Tactics & Philosophy. Send $17.00 payable to Live Free, USA

To: Survival Papers, P.O. Box, 342385 Bartlett, TN 38183-238.

Almost Broke Again!

Outside of membership we get very few contributions. Fund raising programs have been few and far between and even members often attend events without making the voluntary, but needed contribution. Book sales at gun shows and a few regular small contributors keep us going. Printing, advertising, mailing eat up funds faster than the trickle of dues replaces it. Breakout projects like the production of training videos, website upgrades or a bigger batter publication take hundreds of dollars that we don’t have. We have no grants or large contributors at-all. We are looking at a deficit year that will call for cuts in 2009.

Videos Old & New

We are hoping to create and sell a variety of survival education programs on CD and DVD by the end of 2008. This could bring our programs to many more people and solve our funding problems. We have three programs in the works. We are creating new programs that are specifically produced as training videos. We have gathered up dozens of videos of past Live Free training programs that can be converted to CD or DVD. We have several extensive Power Point programs that we will narrate and automate so they can be used by anyone.

Live Free Has A New Address

While our old Dolton Illinois PO box will remain open for another year, we have established a new PO box in Indiana. All future literature will be changed to this address. LIVE FREE USA, P O BOX 3295, MINSTER, IN, 46321.

Choices For Survival

I completed Choices for Survival last year. The book is about 90-pages at 8 ½ x 11 (more in book size pages) and is directed towards the psychology and philosophy of survival and self-reliance as I see it. I put lot of work into it, but only a few friends have seen it. Paper printing is pretty much out of the question because of cost. I may just post the whole thing on the site.

Thanks to all the members who continue to support Live Free and its mission. We struggle on and hope to survive.

STORM WARNING
The Perfect Storm of Change and Disaster in the Years to Come and How to Prepare For It
By Jim Jones, CHCM, EMT

In the Twentieth Century, we put in less and less and took more and more. In the Twenty-first Century, survivors will be the ones who do more and more with less and less. The twentieth Century was the time of waste and consumption and luxury. The Twenty-first Century will be the time of conservation and self-reliance.

In the movie “The Matrix” agent Smith (a virtual being) says, “Humans are the only mammal that acts more like a parasite, moving from one area to the next while growing exponentially until all of the resources in one area are gone and the area is dead and then moving on to the next area”. In fact, archeological and anthropological data supports this assertion. The arrival of humans always correlates to extinctions of animal, vegetable and mineral resources. In cases such as islands where the human population was unable to move on, they fought with each other over the little remaining resources and then died out or lingered in misery and poverty.

In the twentieth century, America has populated and consumed itself into a dead end. We were the last place to go. There is no place to move on to. The entire world is now populated beyond the remaining resources. We have a fast growing population seeking higher living standards on a nearly used up planet. There are as many people alive now as there were during the whole of recorded history combined and that will double in the next 40-years. Windmills, hydrogen power, solar power and better farming will buy a little time, but this is a race that humanity cannot win.

The use of corn for fuel has instantly caused a food shortage. Many stores in the US are rationing rice and other staples. Africa is starving and there have been food riots in Egypt, the Philippines, and Mexico. 37 countries have declared being in a food crisis. Some countries have banned exports of grain to assure local supplies. The falling value of the dollar has resulted in more of them being needed to buy the same amount of oil. The drive for biofule is leading to less food crops and massive deforestation in third world countries.

Grain reserves are at a 30-year low. A bad harvest anywhere could be catastrophic. Massive legal and illegal immigration from “have not” to “still have” nations is generating instability, crime and unrest throughout Europe and the US. This will only get worse. In some cases food is the new drugs. Criminal gangs known as “boosters” are beginning to steal food and resell it on the streets. The “black market” and government price controls will be more and more evident over the next 5 to 10 years. Water is the new oil. There are already legal conflicts developing between states in the United States and between many foreign nations over access to water. Water is currently classified as a “resource” belonging to everyone, but that could change. There are motions afoot to classify water as a “commodity” to be owned, bought and sold like oil.

Think about the consequences of that! Even freedom from thirst may not be a human right. Urban sprawl is eating up farmland. When I was a boy, I lived on the edge of Chicago at 97th street south. There were open marshes, wood and farms nearby. Now, 60-years later I have to go out to 225th street to see similar areas, and that is being developed fast. With exponential growth, Chicago’s sprawl could reach the Mississippi by the end of the Century. The oceans are no longer international territory. As resources dwindle nations are reaching out for the ocean and the ocean floors. The Russians recently planted their flag on the sea floor at the North Pole to claim any mineral resources that may be there. Other nations are trying to extend their boundaries or are disputing current limits. There is no doubt that in the future, every inch of the Earth’s land, ice and water area will be claimed by someone. This will of course result in serious border conflicts and probably wars.

Americans once lived the “American Dream” with one working parent, good vacations and benefits while buying with cash and saving regularly. Today it takes two working parents taking few vacations with few benefits and high debt to desperately hang on to a vanishing dream. As the late George Carlin said, “we spent money we didn’t have on stuff we didn’t need” and know we are broke with a lot of junk. The politicians will continue to try to fool the public with smoke and mirrors to get reelected and since false hope gets more votes than hard choices, the issues will not be faced. So there will be an ever-increasing series of ups and downs, but the downs will always be greater than the ups. The elite will thrive, the unprepared will perish and the prepared will survive and stay free.

What Will Happen?

Continue Reading »
STORM WARNING…The Perfect Storm of Change and Disaster in the Years to Come and How to Prepare For It

Hi members, friends, and visitors,

After quite a few months of other projects taking precedence, I’ve finally started the update to the latest software tools for our website here. We’ve just updated this site to Wordpress 2.5.1, and updated all of our plugins as well.

Chat will be coming back online shortly, with a better secured version, and we’ve looking at upgrading our Message forums to a new and difference package. More on that later.

Current tools, as we’ve got installed and updated as of tonight, give us audio and video players built into our website, and many new tweaks. Future tools to be installed over the next month include store management software to handle the Survival Papers, photo gallery software for us to share years worth of our projects, new video productions that will appear here on the site, and also be available for download, or on DVD, and many new and cool things.

We’re also setting up a new members only section on the website for managing tons of new content. The information on how to use this will appear in one of the next few newsletters that get mailed out.

So, stay tuned, and thanks for your long time support of Live Free, and this website.

Rich
SIte Administrator, Live Free Publications Director

Updated pages. As of 12/28/2007 I have updated the following pages:

“Events” now lists the 2008 programs as they are scheduled at this time

“Survival Stuff” has a number of new items added

“Live Free Report” now has the most recent issue posted

“American Preparedness Survey” now has the results of the 2-year survey.

 We are looking at ways to provide you with on-line training programs and our new electronic publication “Choices for Survival” one of the few books that looks at the psychological and philosophical aspects of personal and human survival in the 21st century.

SURVIVAL CHALLENGE 2008 SATURDAY MAY 3rd, 2008

Tippecanoe River State Park, Winamac Indiana(in the Patawatomi, Group Camp) 

Training Activities Start at 8:00 AM and Run Through 6:00 PM

 Advanced Registration Before April 15^thIndividual $20.00, Family $30.00, Add $10.00 for a cabin Registration After April 15^th or At The Site

Individual $25.00, Family $35.00, Add $15.00 for a cabin

Group Rates Available

SCHEDULED PROGRAMS

·         Emergency Medical Procedures

• Selection, Preparation and Storage of Emergency Foods

• Emergency Equipment and Evacuation Packs

• Water Purification and Storage

• Biological Hazard Defense and Decontamination

• Emergency Sanitation Methods

• Home and Wilderness Fire-craft

• Survival and Rescue Ropes and Knots

 Certificates of “Preparedness and Good Citizenship” will be awarded to all who complete the program 

Contact; Live Free, USA, P.O. Box 375, Dolton, IL 60419

lfinow@aol.com

From the Presidents Desk

   We are at a very critical point in the development of Live Free, USA.  We have reorganized and we have the best “core group” since the early 1980’s.  We have increased membership and the level of activities.  But we still have difficulty getting the American Survivor out on time even 6-times a year and membership outside the Midwest is less than it was in the 1980’s.  Some of our founding members are ready to retire, but newer members are not stepping up to take on the challenges.  Live Free, USA is the oldest and most respected survival and self-reliance advocacy organization in the USA (maybe the world).  We defined the philosophy in the 70’s, defended it in the 80’s and maintained it through the 90’s until it is now “main stream” accepted thinking.  We should be moving towards becoming a major organization with paid staff and a formal office and/or training center.  We are moving in that direction, but we could also fade way.   Live Free, USA was created in the 20^th Century, but it is obvious that its primary mission is to save life and freedom in the 21^st Century.  There simply is no comparable organization with our mission.   The next 12 to 18 months are critical.  We cannot simply continue our current level of actives, publications and funding.  We must grow exponentially and develop a whole new core of officers, instructors and organizers.  Look at our mission.  Think about how important preparedness and self-reliance are to the preservation of independence and freedom today and tomorrow.  Think about what will happen to the unprepared and the dependent as the predictable economic, political and environmental events impact future generations. How important can Live Free, USA be? 

IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOU!