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<TITLE>Another View of Survival</TITLE>
<H1>Another View of Survival</H1>
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by Hanover Fist<P>
     A large and growing number of people are becoming increasingly convinced
that the United States is facing imminent catastrophe, Either from a financial
collapse, or a revolution, or both. The former isn't really all that
surprising, all things considered. The country has a 500 billion dollar
deficit! That's enough to spend almost 14 million dollars a day for a hundred
years! It is literally too large a number for the human mind to grasp. As for
a revolution, you need only take a look at the current state of affairs in
this country and you could come up with a plethora of reasons for one. The
concept of a speedy trial no longer exists. For most purposes there is no such
thing as unfair search an seizure: &quot;anonymous tips&quot; are often sufficient to
obtain warrants, when the authorities even bother with them; and in many
cases, such as searching a car warrants of any kind are unnecessary. The first
amendment is largely ignored: has anyone taken a look at the censorship that
is so commonplace in this country these days? Books and records are censored
in too many towns to even attempt to name. Many people don't even realize that
their town has a list of prohibited books, but you can be sure the bookstore
owners know about it. There is even a federal regulation prohibits banks in
other countries from advertising in this country. This may not seem like much,
until you learn that in many countries, banks offer as much as 20% annual
interest on savings, and even on checking accounts! Many of these countries
don't even tax foreign investors.<P>
If all this isn't enough, you might consider the possible ramifications of the
government's current trends against the separation of church and state.  This
author considers that more frightening than anything previously mentioned in
this article! Religion is not necessarily a bad thing: in fact it can be good.<P>
If a religion supports tolerance and understanding, and most importantly,
rational thought (the other two can eventually descend from this) then it is
certainly a good thing indeed.  Unfortunately many, if not most of the major
religions in this country are actually opposed to all of these things. This is
certainly true of the various fundamentalist sects. If you doubt this, try
listening to a fundamentalist evangelist some day, or perhaps you might just
look at the history of any of the major religions and the atrocities committed
in their names.<P>
Fortunately, many of the people who anticipate any such catastrophes are
taking steps to prepare for them. Unfortunately, most of the steps being taken
are wholly inadequate. Of the people who are actually taking any steps at all,
most seem to b e trying to stock up on arms and munitions, learning combat
skills, and/or banding together in paramilitary organizations, or just
learning survival skills and planning to go underground in the event of
trouble, and perhaps, fleeing the country. While none of these things are bad,
and all of them could certainly be useful, none are really adequate to insure
the safety and continued well-being of the individuals in question. In fact,
the most certain way to survive trouble of any kind is to avoid it: and the
only way to avoid the situations discussed above is to flee the country and go
to some safer, more congenial location. And it would be wrong to assume it
would be easy to do this after the fact!<P>
A plan such as this should always have contingencies for the worst case
scenarios. It never hurts to be too cautious, but not being cautious enough
can kill you, and in this case, `cautious' reads as `being prepared.' While it
could certainly be useful to have a clandestine means of leaving the country,
any such would surely have certain risks attached to it, and so, should not be
used unless the risks of not using it exceed those of using it.<P>
There are, however certain steps that should be taken, regardless. Visas
should be obtained for all countries that you might need to travel to, and not
be allowed to lapse. If possible, citizenship should be obtained in any
country that you might want to settle in. It might be helpful if you could
obtain a change of identity in these countries. In many nations, it costs very
little to own and maintain a residence in many other countries, and if you
don't mind people knowing that you own it, you could use it for your
vacations.<P>
If you plan on staying anyplace for any length of time, you will need some
means of supporting yourself. Fortunately, the actual cost of living in many
countries is such that this is not a very serious problem. Also, there are
still nations that have no income tax, and I've already mentioned the kind of
interest rates that can be obtained from some overseas banks. In fact, there
are many nations that have strict banking secrecy laws which prevent their
giving out any information about their depositors, even to other governments
in criminal investigations.<P>
The fact that overseas assets in such nations generally cannot be frozen by
this countries government could also prove a significant benefit. Then, too,
there are still nations with whom we have no extradition treaties. Of course,
there is a law that was designed to prevent citizens from transporting more
than ten thousand dollars overseas without reporting it to the government, but
let me assure you, that law was intended to apply only to those who have not
read it! Read it and see what I mean.<P>
It is worthy of note that in many countries, the banks accept domestic
American postal money orders at full value. This would provide a means of
transporting money overseas that would be very difficult to trace. and once
the money is in a Swiss-style numbered account, not even our government can
get at it. I do not, however, recommend a Swiss account, as not only are they
no longer secure from our government's meddling, they usually charge you
interest instead of giving you interest, and many other nations's banks are
still secure, and pay you interest.<P>
The reader will undoubtedly have noticed that this article was very thin on
specifics: this was intentional. Not only would it take too much space to
provide detailed information on these topics, but it is all too likely that
some important pieces of information might be forgotten, and that could be
catastrophic! However, interested readers might contact the Eden Press company
and request a catalog. They have books on most of the topics mentioned above,
and those books often have very useful bibliographies.<P>
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