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SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) – The Salvation Army of Northwest Louisiana is preparing to feed at least 1,200 people this Thanksgiving.

The organization is asking for donations of ingredients or premade side dishes in order to make this meal successful. Organizers are asking for mac n’ cheese, dressing, sweet potatoes, green beans, and rolls. Meals will be given out on a first come, first-served basis.

Donations will be accepted Tuesday, Nov. 22 and Wednesday, Nov. 23 from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the front desk of the central office. Officials say if it’s after 4 p.m., donations can be left at the shelter with a note attached indicating the donations are for the Thanksgiving meal.

The Salvation Army will also deliver meals to seniors or those who can’t leave home. Simply submit the person’s name and address before 12 p.m. Monday, Nov. 21.

For more information, contact Chef Melvin Nelson at 318-424-3200 ext. 19, or email melvin.nelson@uss.salvationarmy.org.

Copyright 2022 KSLA. All rights reserved.

CHOCOWINITY, N.C. (WITN) – WITN hosted a booth at a high school career fair and was told by students, that they feel the pressure more now, more than ever when it comes to thinking about their future.

Southside High School gave students an opportunity to ask employees in various professions questions so students could have a better understanding of what life would be like in that career.

The career fair in Chocowinity was open to all grades. Students could be seen with a pen and paper ready to ask questions, and ready to take notes on what professionals said their day-to-day was like.

Adair Cisneros, a tenth-grade student, says he’s already thinking about his career at a young age because he wants to help his parents.

“My parents there – they migrated from Mexico. They are immigrants and they’ve worked hard ever since I was younger,” said Cisneros. ” I wanna retire them, get a good job. Take them out of working, make them happy.”

Students were motivated to get a jump start on their prospective careers for many reasons.

Freshman Taylor McRoy is hoping to go into the medical field. She plans to take college classes while completing her high school education because she can do so for free.

“A lot of people try to do it so that can be more prepared and not have to take certain classes while they’re in college,” said McRoy.

Amoz Gardner, a junior, says being around determined people has instilled a personal goal to be the best in his career.

“Simply because I want to be able to be successful in the future. I want to be able to retire young. I want to be able to basically, with all the money I have left, invest. And I want to be able to basically be a front runner,” said Gardner.

Copyright 2022 WITN. All rights reserved.

In 2013/14, my wife and I became fearful of a phenomenon that might have led to a civilizational collapse, and so we started ‘prepping’.

‘Preppers’ or ‘Doomsday Preppers’ are essentially any people who take it into their own hands to prepare for the survival of their group or family in the face of a predicted life-threatening catastrophic event.

We were amateurs, but nonetheless, with prepper manuals in hand, we bought a tiny shack in the middle of nowhere and tried to grow food we could eat so that we wouldn’t have to rely on stores, aka civilisation. After a year our garden failed to become self-sustaining but the novel How to Survive Everything was born and we learned a lot about the Prepper lifestyle and philosophy along the way.

Here’s what we discovered.

1. Preppers are not who you think are – they are a multitude. “We are all Preppers Now” said the New York Times during the Covid-19 pandemic, while the BBC declared ‘Preppers are going mainstream’.

Since Covid 19 has been a 50% increase in the number of Canadians joining ‘Preppers & Survivalists of Canada’, while Australia has reported a ‘Doom Boom’ with hundreds of thousands fleeing cities in ‘Covid flight’ to live ‘off-grid’. In the UK there’s been city-flight to rural Scotland and a boom in people learning ‘survival bushcraft.’

Since Covid 19 Preppers have become a much larger group than the ‘Survivalists’ of old. Survivalism was historically associated with gun-toting, right wing American militias, whereas today’s Preppers include ecologists, left-leaning ‘home schooling’ families, zero growthers, homesteaders, and everyday’ self-sufficiency’ couples, growing their own organic or macrobiotic food to become less dependent upon corporate food supply chains.  Some preppers turn holiday homes into safe houses, while others create fortified city homes. Some invent scientific systems to give themselves self-sustaining cycles of crops and fish, while others hoard year’s worth of food and medical supplies in hidden bunkers.

The new preppers include billionaires building apartment sized apocalypse bunkers with swimming pools and city-dwelling ‘fitness and self-defence preppers’ who are learning martial arts. Prepper websites list from seven to eighteen different varieties of Preppers, including hoarders, suburban preppers, weekend bug-out preppers and minimalist bug-in preppers – along with your regular old-school conspiracy theorist and religious apocalypse preppers who are still out there.

They all share a common belief, that in an extreme emergency, you can’t trust the government, so you’d better make your own plans.

2. It’s not only Preppers who are preparing for the end of civilization – your government is too!

Our time prepping started with a big and terrifying download of Government data.

It all started back in 2013 when my wife and I were commissioned to write the script for the TV feature ‘American Blackout’ for National Geographic. The show was made to launch the second season of the popular TV series ‘Doomsday Preppers’ and to introduce a wider audience to a wide variety of ‘Preppers’ who were preparing for a range of disasters in advance (Sea Level Rise, Meteor Strike, Civil War, Super Volcano Eruption, Pandemic, Economic Collapse, Nuclear War).

Fusing documentary footage of past disasters with dramatized sections featuring everyday people, our 90-minute docu-drama, revealed ‘in gritty detail the impact of what happens when a cyber attack on the United States takes down the power grid.’ (It has gone on to become one of the top ten films in the ‘prepper cannon’.)

What amazed and terrified my wife and I, when making American Blackout, was the specialist research that National Geographic passed to us from FEMA, the CDC, the NSA, Professors of National Security Strategy and the Department of Public Health at Columbia University – and other ‘Collapse Studies’ departments.

B – there are an alarming number of Govt. funded ‘Centres for Disaster Research and Planning’ in US universities.

These studies demonstrated ‘tipping points’ that had occurred during previous disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy and two blackouts in different parts of the US. They showed how ‘positive feedback loops’ escalate into multi-faceted crisis situations.

For example: one feedback loop is caused by people lighting fires to stay warm during a power outage. This then causes an increase in buildings going up in flames which increases call-outs for emergency services. In turn this leads to looters and criminals starting fires so as to distract the police, and so an increase in fire and looting leads to hospitals and police being overrun. Shut-down hospitals lead to escalating panic, more looting and more fires.

A positive feedback loop is the opposite of a negative one and a good example of a negative one is a thermostat – it turns the heat off. A positive one, turns it up.

These govt. and university studies also had modelled timelines for the collapse of civilization, from Day 1 to Day 30, and pinpointed the exact moment at which the military has to take over and enforce martial law. These were case studies from nations around the world

It was all very convincing and damn scary.

It’s not just ‘preppers’ who are paranoid, your government is also planning for all worst-case disaster scenarios, and calculating the degree to which you, and all other average members of the public could become a problem within its crisis-management plan.

You don’t want to be trapped in a positive feedback loop, you want to be outside the loop completely.

3. You will always miss one thing on your prep list.

‘How to Survive…’ Prepper manuals are obsessed with lists. Most preppers are preparing to cut themselves off from civilisation for a long period of time – ‘getting out of dodge’ when the ‘SHTF’ (Shit Hits The Fan), bugging-out into the wilds or hiding in an underground bunker to sit out a crisis.

Prep lists include essential foodstuffs you will need to hoard or grow in case the ‘just-in-time’ consumer food supply chain breaks down and lists of medical supplies you will need if the health system collapses. After all, before the discovery of antibiotics in 1928, the number one cause of death in the world was simple bacterial infection and the average life expectancy at birth was only 47 years.

You’re going to want antibiotics on your list. A lot of them.

Every single thing you and your loved ones will need for a long stay away from civilisation has to be on that prep list, in advance, and your stash needs to be complete before the collapse begins. When the unprepared population become desperate, contaminated, hungry and lawless, there is no possibility of ‘nipping out to the shops’ for say milk powder or tampons, a phone charger or something else you forgot to put on your list.

The dangers of being caught outdoors were demonstrated by the Martial Law rules during Hurricane Katrina, under which any person caught within ‘evacuated areas’ was rounded-up at gun-point and arrested as a looter – even if they were holding onto their own possessions in their own homes.

Preppers we interviewed and who had done ‘crisis rehearsals’ told us they’d overlooked three main things from their prep lists:

Books and magazines. In most situations where our access to ‘the media and the internet’ is shut down, we have to do something with ourselves in the moments when we’re not hiding, farming, or patrolling the perimeter fence with a cross-bow. This is where reading comes in. It’s at the peak of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but it gets pretty essential when a group of media-addicted people get stuck together in lockdown with no TV and internet. People need space from each other in tightly packed environments and reading let’s them do that.

Also, if civilisation is collapsing for good, and you’re the only survivors, you may wish you’d stocked up a good library of classics like Plato, Shakespeare, Goethe, Thomas Paine, Virginia Woolf and Harry Potter to build your new civilisation upon.

A guitar or musical instrument. In a bunker or hideaway home it’s a really good idea for social bonding, to have some time together that is not just ‘survival talk’. It’s also important to keep your own traditions alive and your spirits up. So sharing songs and even learning and instrument is a way to pass culture on and to help bond and motivate the group. Group sing-alongs to Bowie and Abba classics are also a really good way of preventing ‘bunker madness’.

Birth control. Perhaps because it embarrassing to talk about in groups, or because sex tends to be seen as a luxury in the survival hierarchy, a surprising number of preppers forget to pack birth control. This is a real problem – as was proven nine months after the Covid lockdowns with the emergence of a whole generation of ‘Lockdown babies’.  People forced into enclosed spaces, facing boredom and a lot of time ‘stuck together’ tend to become intimate; people facing fear of death also seem to have a primeval switch that clicks-on in their brains that says ‘death and fear is everywhere, quick, make more babies!’

A secondary problem with forgetting birth control during a prep is then failure to prep for what a baby will need on its arrival in a sustained lockdown or bunker hold-out. So the two tons of formula milk and diapers required are not on the list, and again, you can’t pop back out to Duane Reader for these if there’s been a nuclear war or airborne Lyssavirus (Rabies) pandemic

4. Beware of ‘apocalypse swapping’.

One of the strangest things about Prepping is that it can give you a feeling of being really special. You hold secret knowledge that the un-enlightened masses don’t. You know that the world is going to collapse for X, Y or Z reason and this makes you one of the few smart ones who will survive. This means you get to look down at everyday people – and call them ‘The Sheeple’ or ‘the normies’. When the SHTF, the sheeple are all going to starve or become infected, and you can shout ‘We told you so – but you wouldn’t listen!’ along the depopulated streets.

Such a mindset, with its sense of moral superiority and its secret conspiracy ethos can be highly addictive, and it has parallels with religious cult mindset. Even atheist preppers are in this way like ‘the chosen’ or ‘the elect of God’. There is a good deal of fantastical vanity involved in thinking of oneselves as ‘the only survivors’ and  a fair amount of apocalyptic revenge-fantasy in this too.

This ‘looking forward to the end of the world’ mindset, can lead to a strange Prepper behaviour that I call ‘apocalypse swapping’. In apocalypse swapping, a prepper who believed say in Nuclear War, shifts their believed in apocalypse to an entirely different one – say Meteor Strike, after their belief in impending Nuclear War collapses. Normally a person who believed in impending Nuclear War would cease to believe in the end of the world, after their fear of such a war diminished, however the apocalypse addict simply moves to another apocalypse so they can keep their prepper behaviors and belief in the end of the civilisation intact.

One prepper I know has, over twenty years, moved from a passionate belief in imminent nuclear apocalypse, to imminent asteroid strike, to imminent ‘Artificial Intelligence takeover’. It doesn’t matter to her if the reason for stocking up her cellar or practicing karate have changed completely. She seems only to be contented when she has an apocalypse to believe in. She has in the past become depressed and demotivated during her brief transitions from apocalypse type to the next. She needs the end of the world to give herself a sense of identity, purpose and self-esteem. In this sense, whichever apocalypse she believes in doesn’t really matter, what does matter is the discipline and focus of the prepping life. A daily routine of ‘being ready to face the end.’ She is, I should add, one of the happiest and most energetic people I’ve ever met.

5. You can spot a Prepper because they buy…

During Covid 19 when people became hoarders and panic-buyers, the must-have pandemic panic-purchase was toilet roll. Tens of thousands stuffed their cars and homes with it, they pulled each others hair in supermarkets over it.

Real preppers don’t fight over toilet roll, they have their own stashes already or they have other more sophisticated sanitary arrangements.

In autumn of 2022, in a Europe with 200% increase in fuel prices and facing fuel crises and blackouts, the next hoarding panic-object is firewood. We’re already seeing people hoarding and fighting over it. We are hearing that in France, the inhabitants are felling forests and gathering fallen wood from parks.

Preppers won’t be fighting over firewood. Most preppers aim to be ‘energy self-sufficient’. What you will see a rush on with preppers is something quite unexpected.

Preppers buy chickens.

Since Covid 19, the American Poultry Association reported an ‘exploding… resurgence in raising backyard poultry.’ Fear of scarce eggs and further lockdown has led many to start prepping for food self-sufficiency. The New York Times even reported ‘People are panic-buying chickens like they did toilet paper.’

Chickens however are a long-term investment. If someone has a batch of chickens you can bet they have a whole crop rotation survival system they’re not telling you about.

Which takes us to my final point.

6. Preppers are secretive, and have to be.

Prepping is a bit like ‘Fight Club’ – you know, ‘The first Rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club, the second rule is that you don’t talk about Fight Club.’

Every Prepper and Survivalist manual tells you that secrecy is tantamount. The reason is very simple: in any situation where the food supply chain breaks down, people in your vicinity will begin to starve and they will look to their neighbour’s homes for food once they’ve exhausted their own. And when law and order breaks down, and when all the stores have been looted and thousands are starving, then the last thing you need is for these people to know that you have a three-year stash of beans, pulses and canned meat in your not-so secret sub-basement.

The manuals warn you that formerly friendly neighbours can become desperate when food and safe fresh water runs out – after all people start dying of dehydration after three days without water. Preppers are trained to say no to neighbours and outsiders, and to scare them away. ‘Pity can be your weakest link’ the manuals warn. ‘Just say no.’ Saying ‘No’, may involve razor wire, a baseball bat, or worse.

Just to prove how secretive Preppers are, a few years ago, when my wife and I were making our pantry stash of canned goods, we were talking to a family member on the phone on the other side of the world,  and due to a couple of little tell-tale signs – in this case the purchase of chickens! My wife and I worked out that our relatives had started prepping too. It turns out they were prepping for a different catastrophe than we were. We were getting ready for the end of oil (Peak Oil) and they were studiously preparing for a global economic catastrophe. It also turns out that they were way more advanced than we were, and much more like the bunker-digging, supply-hoarding, high-security, hard-core apocalypse preppers in my novel How To Survive Everything.

‘Your secret is safe with us,’ we said.

***

The holidays are a time that everyone looks forward to, especially business owners. Why? Because it’s a prime opportunity to generate a lot of sales in a short amount of time. The holiday rush is when people are constantly on the prowl to find the perfect gift for their family members. However, it’s important for you to be prepared ahead of time as the holiday season can be very chaotic. You’d be amazed at how easy it is to lose track of things and become disorganized while your customers frantically shop. In this post, we’ll be helping small business owners prepare for the holiday rush.

Get your innovations out of the way

Have you been considering making a few adjustments to your marketing strategy? If so, now’s the time to act. The holidays will be here before you know it and you won’t have time to do much of anything because you’ll be too busy assisting customers. Granted, changing on a whim can be difficult, but who said you needed to make such drastic decisions? Innovation comes in many different forms and most of them are a lot smaller than you’d expect. it can be making improvements to your company’s website or investing in a better tracking system. Make sure to assess what you currently have, so you can have an understanding of what you need the most. Rushing through things can only cause problems down the road.

Take out a small business loan

You might be confused about what a loan has to do with prepping for the holidays. Well, it impacts quite a bit as you’re most likely spending more money than you originally anticipated. Small businesses, unfortunately, might not have enough savings to use for their investments. Since you’re going to want a bigger supply load, the costs can seem impossible to afford. But rather than take a huge risk, it’s far safer for you to look to Accion Opportunity Fund business loans instead.

Not only do they give you a lump sum of cash, but small business loans also come with a handful of benefits as well. Some of the most notable benefits include support networks, better savings on taxes, helping you build up credit, and making it easier to purchase what you need. Another benefit includes establishing a long-lasting relationship with the lender. By building a strong and healthy professional relationship with your lender, you’ll have a much easier time getting your hands on the funds you need whenever the situation calls for it.

Consider hiring seasonal employees

Do you know how in some stores you see an extra handful of employees at the registers? Those are known as seasonal employees. These are those who are hired to help the main team with the influx of customers checking out. Because you’re most likely to have triple the number of clients, it can be very overwhelming to handle them.

Map out your holiday campaigns

One of the best ways to beat the mad dash for the holidays is planning out your strategy in advance. Most businesses start planning their holiday ads and campaigns at the end of the summer, if not earlier. Depending on your niche, you might want to run ads earlier than later, especially if you sell products that are in high demand. In addition, you also need to think about your social media strategy and how you can boost awareness for free. If you already have a following, you should think about what type of content has gotten the best response. Use that as a catalyst to create more content that will resonate with them for the holidays. If you have a small following, it’s still a good idea to create content that will pique interest and make people take notice. Usually, people want to see the story behind your brand and learn why you’re in business. They want to know that if they decide to try your product, there’s actually a real person behind the logo. If you’re unsure how to go about it, think about brands you think are valuable. What makes you want to buy from them? The most important thing is to put a face with a name and humanize your brand.

Have a Plan B

Business is known for throwing sudden changes in your way when you least expect it to. Things could be going swimmingly until you start noticing a dramatic difference in clientele. During the holidays, the last thing you want is to lose valuable customers. This is where coming up with a backup plan can help you out. You could put your merchandise on sale and offer two-for-one deals on specific items. Adding a 20 percent discount whenever a customer spends over a certain amount of money, like $60 for example. It’ll also help if you analyze what your competition is doing, so you can better formulate your strategy.

Louisville, KY (40203)

Today

Sunshine continues. Still chilly.

Tonight

Cold

Updated: November 14, 2022 @ 8:16 am

The weather is changing, and we could see wintry precipitation in the forecast at any time. With that possibility in mind, the owner of Tucker’s Automotive in Godfrey is offering some tips for area motorists. There are a number of things you should consider when dealing with winter driving.

There are several things you need to do to winterize your car. One is to make sure your headlight lenses are as clear as they can be. He says you can fix the cloudy headlights with a do-it-yourself kit, or they can do it for you at the shop. Chuck Tucker tells The Big Z you should also pay attention if you start hearing a squealing noise under the hood.

Tucker says you should also keep an eye on your tires, and make sure there is enough tread to handle the inevitable snow and slush. Batteries don’t like the cold weather, so you should get that checked as well.

Are you ready for a disaster?

When I was growing up, I read books like Alas Babylon (story in Florida), Warday and Out of the Ashes — all with a theme of post-nuclear war America.

The Hardy Boys just didn’t do it for me.

Plus, it was the ’80s and we lived every day with the threat of those in Moscow deciding whether to destroy the earth or not (they are at it again), so it seemed appropriate reading. These books were an early crash course in doomsday prepping for me — it’s interesting to see what prepping has evolved into in 2022.

There are prepping TV shows and conferences, and you don’t have to look hard for materials — you can buy 60 days of emergency food at Home Depot.

It’s gotten so mainstream even the Kardashians have endorsed bug-out bags and survival kits for functionality and style.

Gone are the days of preppers stereotyped as militant types. One of President Barack Obama’s former innovation advisers, Silicon Valley executive John Ramey, discussed his thoughts as an expert in preparation for this week’s 60 Minutes.

His advice? Be ready to be your own first responder in a crisis.

There are lots of obvious reasons survival gear is becoming mainstream as yet another storm is barreling down on Florida this week.

Not to mention pandemics, fires, and cyberattacks on our infrastructure, each making the reality of being without the basics a genuine possibility.

For us in Florida, storm-related power outages are a reality every year. One doesn’t have to look back far to North Florida’s last multiple-day power outage: Hurricane Hermine, three days without power; Hurricane Michael, it was four days.

As for statewide, throw in the toilet paper shortage of 2020, no gas available following the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, and the devastation of Hurricane Ian just this year and you can see why it’s important to be ready for anything.

Too many Americans are like me in 1998. I was riding out a storm in Destin with a band I was on tour with — the Charlie Mars Band. Our day of disaster prep went like this: Play golf on the water, watch the storm come in, and go by the convenience store to gather chips, Duncan Hines cake mix and ravioli (and beer).

Despite the storm not being severe, our power went out fast. So, we ate chips and drank beer.

I think Charlie wrote a song as we stared at the goods that required power to cook.

Luckily, that situation was mild, but when the real thing hits, it’s no joke.

Water, food, meds, a full tank of gas, cash, comfortable shoes, and communication tools — these are the things you need to be thinking about. A full checklist is available from the State of Florida.

There are certain levels of preparedness.

For a million dollars, you can go ahead and pick up a doomsday condominium in Kansas and ride out a storm, war or pandemic. You may have seen this on 60 Minutes; they turned an old missile silo into a luxury prepper’s paradise, with a gun range, pool and theater to make sure their guests are pampered in any situation.

The facility’s owner also reiterated that preppers these days come from all ends of the country and political spectrum with any pre-existing stereotypes going out the window. He also mentioned all the residents showed up at the bunker during the pandemic, so it is battle tested.

I think a bunker would be a hard pass for me but there is certainly nothing wrong with having some necessities in the car and house when needed.

Personally, a solar-powered phone charger is a no-brainer; you can get them cheap anywhere.

If you’d like to learn more, Elkton, Florida has a summit in April 2023 where you can check out more details on self-reliance and disaster preparedness.

They have some really cool firsthand discussions on gardening, gun safety, hunting, and lots of other workshops.

Just like in the ’80s, the Russians are threatening the world yet again with nuclear weapons. While we would assume the idea of mutually assured destruction would keep even the most unstable world leaders (see Vladimir Putin and the North Korean guy) to not even think about pressing the button. But who knows how a madman or woman sees things?

As you read this, Swedish scientists say there is a 17% chance of a global nuclear war. If you want to read more and not sleep tonight, dive in here.

They also say (in theory) solar flares could wipe out our power grid with an electromagnetic pulse, like what a nuclear weapon does when detonated in the atmosphere; plus, of course, let’s not forget cyberattacks against our infrastructure.

Today’s column may not win the Feel-Good Column of the year, but on the plus side, the odds of a worldwide catastrophe are low.

On the negative side?

Odds are very high that a fire, hurricane or another pandemic could arrive on your doorstep any second. So, let’s confirm you have more than Duncan Hines Cake mix and beer in the house.

Hopefully, you will be more prepared for the next disaster than 1998 me.

___

Blake Dowling is the CEO of Aegis Business Technologies. He can be reached at [email protected].

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