Survivalism As a Financial Plan: the Tactics for "Surviving the End of the World as We Know It" Applied to Modern Life - Interview with James Wesley, Rawles RPF0102
Radical Personal Finance
Joshua J. Sheats, MSFS, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CASL, RHU, REBC, CAP
4.2 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2014
⏱️ 123 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There's a lot of interest in our current-day world with the ideas of survivalism and prepping. One visit to your local bookstore's magazine rack will illustrate this to you.
Economic recessions and depressions, market instability, political gyrations...all of these things contribute to a general sense of unease for many people.
What could we learn about financial planning if we applied the mindset of a survivalist to our current reality?
I'm thrilled to bring you an interview today with James Wesley, Rawles. James literally wrote the book on how to survive the end of the world as we know it, among others.
Jim has authored 6 books on the topics of modern survivalism:
- How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times
- Tools for Survival: What You Need to Survive When You're on Your Own
- Liberators: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse (his brand-new book)
- Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse
- Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse
- Founders, a Novel of the Coming Collapse
- Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse
Jim's blog, SurvivalBlog.com has had almost 70,000,000 unique visits since July of 2005 and is one of the most comprehensive compendiums of survival information online.
The interview covers:
- Stockpiling as a financial strategy (the "Alpha Strategy")
- Alternative investments such as precious metals, ammunition, and productive farmland
- Functioning in a barter economy
- Buying nickels for a guaranteed investment return
- Applying ethics and morals in an immoral society
Enjoy!
Joshua
Links:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today on how to survivalism as a financial planning strategy, we talked to the man who literally |
| 0:06.2 | wrote the book on how to survive the end of the world as we know it. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheaths and today is Thursday, November 13, 2014. |
| 0:35.0 | Today I'm thrilled to bring you an interview with James Wesley Rawls, author of the book |
| 0:40.6 | How to Survive the End of the World as we know it? |
| 0:43.0 | Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times. |
| 0:48.0 | We're going to talk about financial planning through a survivalist lens. I've looked forward to bringing this interview and I was thrilled when I reached out to |
| 1:03.9 | to James Rawls I was thrilled that he accepted my invitation I really have it a lot of |
| 1:07.9 | admiration and respect for him I've thoroughly enjoyed over the years reading his |
| 1:11.4 | novels he's published at least, how many novels |
| 1:15.0 | he published, at least four, I think maybe five novels. He's written a couple of books, one of which |
| 1:19.5 | is literally a textbook entitled How to Survive the end of the world as we know it |
| 1:23.7 | tactics techniques and technologies for uncertain times and Jim Rawls is a master |
| 1:30.9 | survivalist I guess he's one of the most knowledgeable people I've ever come across |
| 1:34.7 | within that field of study and he's committed in every way. He is the editor of the most |
| 1:39.9 | popular survival blog on the internet entitled survival blog.com and today I bring you an |
| 1:45.8 | interview with him where we talk about survivalism as a financial planning |
| 1:49.8 | tactic and I think you'll find it really, really interesting. |
| 1:52.8 | This is the type of thing that I love doing on the show. |
| 1:56.9 | And this is the type of conversation, this is what I'm about, is this is the type of conversation |
| 2:01.6 | that is difficult to find in mainstream personal finance |
| 2:04.9 | press. |
| 2:05.9 | Oftentimes subjects like this, like survivalism, disaster preparedness, things like that, are |
... |
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