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James Wesley Rawles survivalist

Biography

Rawles was born in Livermore, California in 1960 and received a BA degree from San Jose State University. He was a United States Army Military Intelligence officer, serving from 1984 to 1993.[3] He resigned his commission as an Army Captain, immediately after Bill Clinton was sworn in as President of the United States. Rawles worked as an Associate Editor and Regional Editor (for the Western U.S.) with Defense Electronics magazine in the late 1980s and early 1990s[4] and concurrently was Managing Editor of The International Countermeasures Handbook.[5] He worked as a technical writer through most of the 1990s with a variety of electronics and software companies including Oracle Corporation. In 2005 he began full-time blogging.

He is now a freelance writer, blogger and retreat consultant.[7] Rawles is an influential figure in the modern survivalist movement.[8] He has been called a preparedness "guru."[9][10] He reportedly lives at "a survival-ready ranch [in an undisclosed location] 'somewhere west of the Rocky Mountains'" that is surrounded by US National Forest lands. Rawles is best known as the author of the survivalist novel Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse.

[edit] Philosophical, political and economic views

Rawles is an outspoken proponent of family preparedness, especially regarding food storage and his advocacy of relocating to lightly populated rural "retreat" areas.[13][14] His preparedness philosophy emphasizes the fragility of modern society, the value of silver and other tangibles for barter, recognition of moral absolutes, being well armed, maintaining a "deep larder", relocation to rural retreats, and Christian charity.

Rawles does not make specific buy or sell recommendations for particular stocks nor attempt to "time" particular markets. But he has specifically advised buying gold and silver at particular market dips.[16] In January, 2006, when silver was $14.75 per ounce, he predicted a major upward move in the price of silver: "After a short term correction, look for some volatile moves upward in the near future!"[17]. In the next 14 months, silver prices did rise to more than $20 per ounce. However, Rawles has fallen short in the timing of some of his predictions: In April of 2006 Rawles wrote: "...I'm still predicting $20 silver by next February ('07), and perhaps even $40 silver by the end of Aught Eight. [2008]".[18] In actuality, spot silver only made it to $14.55 per ounce in February of 2007.[19] Spot silver didn't get past $20 per ounce until March of 2008.[20] In August of 2007, he made a long term prediction for the spot price of silver, writing: "We are still witnessing the opening phase of a bull market that will propel silver past $50 per ounce." [21] The veracity of that claim has yet to be seen. Rawles is a proponent of silver as an investment and as a barter currency in the event of circumstances that would destroy the value of fiat currencies.

One of his long-standing investment recommendations is rolling over IRAs and 401(k) accounts into American Eagle gold coin IRAs.

Without setting a specific timeframe, Rawles predicted the end of the housing bubble in the United States, urging his readers on August 14, 2005 to "Sell any rental or non-retreat vacation houses that you own. Take your profit now. It is better to be a year too early than a day too late. Keep that money on the sidelines, with at least a portion of it in precious metals. Then after the bubble bursts, you'll have the chance to step in with cash and buy at perhaps as low as 40 cents on the dollar versus the currently over-inflated prices. When you eventually do decide to buy, concentrate on productive farm land in a lightly populated rural region."[26]. In August, 2005, Rawles correctly predicted mortgage holders "walking away" from houses and turning in the house keys to their bankers--what has now been dubbed "jingle mail": "When the bubble does burst, watch out. Things could get ugly. I predict that people that are caught "upside down" in their mortgages will just turn in the keys at the bank and walk away from their houses. This has happened before--most notably in Texas in the 1980s when the Houston Oil Boom fell apart and took the real estate market for the region with it."

Rawles correctly warned about the global derivatives market as a potential trigger for an economic catastrophe.[27] In October 2007 he predicted that hedge funds will fail and suspend investor redemptions at a greatly increasing rate, in what he described as "a disaster story that could unfold in quarterly episodes."[28] His warnings on derivatives were confirmed by the global credit market collapse that began in the summer of 2007, since the collapse has been blamed in large measure on credit derivatives. In February 2008, Rawles warned SurvivalBlog readers to "be ready for bank runs".[31] But as of February 2009, while many more banks have failed than in preceding years, no significant bank runs have occurred in the United States.

In March 2008, Rawles accurately warned that the US government would take the approach of employing what he dubbed a "Mother of All Bailouts" (MOAB), to counteract the collapse of the global credit market, in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage and credit default swap (CDS) fiasco. Rawles predicted that more and more institutions--both public and private--would be bailed out, and indeed they were.[33] He further predicts that this uncontrolled public spending will inevitably result in mass inflation of the US currency.[34]

As early as September, 2005, Rawles urged SurvivalBlog readers to stock up on diesel fuel, bulk grains, and ammunition, both as hedges against consumer price inflation, and as physical preparedness measures--anticipating future shortages. On September 27, 2005, he wrote: "It is safe to assume that inflation will continue, and will only get worse, especially with commodities. Oil will likely double in the next 18 months. So that means corresponding increases in gas, diesel, and home heating oil. Wheat, rice, and other commodities will also jump up in price. They too, may double soon. Protect yourself from inflation. Stock up on tangibles. Not only is it wise to be prepared physically, but you can also consider these tangibles a prudent investment." Those predictions were generally accurate, but mostly premature. In fact, wheat prices doubled between October of 2007 and March of 2008., rice prices doubled in the first six months of 2008, and ammunition prices doubled between 2006 and 2008. In October 2007, Rawles advised his American readers to invest in high capacity (11 cartridge or larger) firearms magazines as a hedge against inflation and legislative changes.[39]. By December, 2008, shortly after the election of Barack Obama, most high capacity magazines prices had doubled.[40]

Rawles was one of the many individuals that warned about possible disasters related to the Year 2000 problem (Y2K). Because the risks were mitigated by intensive work by computer programmers in 1998 and 1999, his warnings turned out to unfounded. Others that made similar predictions about Y2K included economists Dr. Gary North, Don McAlvany, Edward Yourdon[43] and Ed Yardeni[44].

Rawles credits Mel Tappan as his inspiration for launching SurvivalBlog.com[45]. Rawles was quoted by the New York Times in April 2008 that "interest in the survivalist movement 'is experiencing its largest growth since the late 1970s'". He also stated that his blog's conservative core readership has been supplemented with "an increasing number of stridently green and left-of-center readers."[46][24]

Rawles has shown in both his fiction and on line articles[47] to be strongly anti-racist. He has a regular Jewish Israeli correspondent on his blog and he has fielded questions from minorities specifically relating to racism problems during national emergencies.

[edit] Blog presence

Rawles is the editor of SurvivalBlog.com, a blog on survival and preparedness topics.[50] SurvivalBlog has about 107,000 unique visitors per week[51]. The main focus of his blog is preparing for the multitude of possible threats toward society. In his various writings, Rawles has warned about the Year 2000 problem (Y2K)[22][42], socio-economic collapse[52][53], a pandemic arising from a mutation of the Asian Avian Flu, terrorist attacks., Peak Oil, and food shortages.

[edit] Survivalist fiction

His first book was a work of speculative fiction set in a near future period of hyperinflation and socio-economic collapse first titled: Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse, and later re-titled: Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse. The book was originally released in draft form as shareware[58] in the early 1990s but was later printed by the Christian[59] partner publisher[60] Huntington House. After Huntington House went out of business, the book was re-released by Xlibris, a "print on demand" publisher. Starting in March, 2009, the novel went back into wide circulation, in a 400-page trade paperback edition, published by Ulysses Press, Berkeley, California. This new edition was updated and expanded to include a glossary and index.

Starting in the early 1990s, he also authored or co-authored 17 Internet FAQ reference pages, primarily on firearms topics.[61] More recently, Rawles has self-published two non-fiction books.

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* Much like a muscle that atrophies with disuse, any right that goes unexercised for many years devolves into a privilege, and eventually can even be redefined as a crime.

* I'm often asked why I make such a 'big deal' about choosing conservative Christians, Messianic Jews, or Orthodox Jews for neighbors. The plain truth is that in a societal collapse there will be a veritable vacuum of law enforcement. In such times, with a few exceptions, it will only be the God fearing that will continue to be law abiding. Choose your neighborhood wisely.[63]

* It is one of the great ironies of our modern 'civilized' era that in most of the places where you don't feel the need to carry a firearm for self defense you can legally do so if you choose. But in most of places where you do indeed justifiably feel the immediate need to carry a gun, they are banned.[64]

* It�s in our fallen, sinful nature for tyrants to rise up in every nation. And unfortunately, it�s also in our nature that the vast majority in every nation is either too stupid or too apathetic to do anything about it until the tyrants have put up their barbed wire and spilled a lot of blood. (Rawles's fictional character Todd Gray, from Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse')

* A little change in your life is a good thing. A significant change to your body temperature is not a good thing.[66]

* The three most important things to look for when searching for a church home are doctrine, doctrine, and doctrine. If your main criteria are 'programs' and 'outreach' to this or that niche group, then in my opinion you are starting your search the wrong way.[67]

* As an Army officer, I learned that in order to be effective, an army must have three key abilities: To move, shoot, and communicate. Take away any one, and you are ineffective. But if you get all three right, you can absolutely devastate an opponent�even one that has vastly superior numbers.

* [At my retreat] I'm surrounded by National Forest. A river runs through the back end of the property, so there's no shortage of water and no shortage of fish, or game to shoot. If Western civilization were to collapse tomorrow, I'd have to read about it on the Internet. [Otherwise,] I just wouldn't notice.[69]

* Tools without training are almost useless. Owning a gun doesn't make someone a "shooter" any more than owning a surfboard makes someone a surfer.

Bibliography