 Greetings! My name is Dr. Sterling Silverman. That's Sterling-S-T-I-R-L-I-N-G. Online, I'm known by my nickname, Survival Doc. And many of my friends just call me Doc. This is my casting video for Screaming Flea Productions. I'm down here in my basement where I keep a lot of my survival supplies. What is the reason behind your prepping? Why do you prep? What are your core beliefs about the apocalypse? Well, the reason I prep is because through experience I learned the value of prepping. I used to live in Gulfport, Mississippi, and we received hurricane scares down there on a regular basis at least two or three times every year. And at that time I noticed I had just moved to Gulfport. And I noticed that whenever we had a hurricane warning, the grocery stores were all crowded with people. There were long lines of people at the gas stations. And people were at the grocery stores buying batteries and bottled water. And they were spending a lot of time waiting in line. And this didn't make any sense to me because I thought, you know, we get hurricane warnings down here every year. I mean, they're very predictable during hurricane season. Why do you wait till the last minute and then you spend all of your valuable time when you could be doing other things that are more productive? You spend all your valuable time waiting in line trying to buy batteries and bottled water. These are things that you could easily store for an emergency. And so one of the first things I started doing was I started storing bottled water and batteries. And then other items such as flashlights, ways that I could cook my food if we lost electricity and things like that. Well, that was back in the 80s. And about that same time, I became aware through some readings of some economic articles. I became aware of where I stood as a baby boomer. Again, in the mid-80s is when I first started working for myself. And 1984 was when I first went into business for myself. And the government was taking money or I had to pay to the, I was self-employed. I had to pay money to the government for my social security. And I looked forward to my retirement. And I realized that as a baby boomer, there were a lot of people who were paying into the system. And I realized that the government was not putting aside that money or they were not investing it or saving it, the government was just spending it. Well, anybody who could do the math could understand that when baby boomers as a group retired, there were going to be a whole lot less people paying into the system. And a whole lot more people like myself who were going to be drawing out of the system, collecting our social security checks and our Medicare. And anybody who knows simple math could do the figures and understand that that wasn't going to work. Especially since the government was in debt and every single year they were going further and further and further into debt. So I read some articles written by some economists and they talked about how when the governments get in this situation, what they usually do is they just print their way out of debt just by printing more money. And that's something they could do when, since we were no longer on a gold and silver standard, there was no limitations on the amount of paper money that the government could print. And throughout history I discovered that this is something that has repeated itself over and over. And when governments get into debt like that, that is always their way out. They don't just default on their debt, they just print money and print money and print money. All right, the problem with that, of course, is the more money you print, the more inflation you create. So even though you may be getting your social security checks, the checks won't buy as much because prices are going up faster than your checks are going up. And so looking forward to my retirement, I said, well, you know, this isn't going to work. I don't want to retire and end up in the poor house. So at that time I started putting away gold and silver because another thing I became aware of was I became aware of when the dollar decreases in value. There's always an inverse relationship with gold and silver increase in value. And back then, the first silver that I bought, I paid $4 an ounce for it. And now silver today is $44 an ounce. So the silver that I bought has increased 11-fold. And that was during a time when most other investments have decreased in value. So that has turned out well for us. And that is what turned my wife into a believer. And that is what a lot of the people who thought I was kind of crazy for doing this prep and stuff, they've come to realize that I wasn't really so crazy after all. And now some of the people who thought I was crazy, I'm talking about family members, some of the people who thought I was crazy are now buying gold and silver because they can see that what I was talking about way back then is beginning to come into effect. What are my core beliefs about the apocalypse? I don't really like to use the word apocalypse. Apocalypse sounds so much like the end of the world type of scenario. I don't think that we are at the end of the world. I think that we've come through many crises in the past like the Great Depression and Great World Wars. And I think that we'll probably come out of this eventually. So I don't think it's the end of the world. I don't really put any stock in the 2012 prophecy. I think that that might just be a diversion that's put out there. I started prepping a long time before anybody was ever talking about 2012. 2012 doesn't mean anything to me. It's just perhaps another reason why we should be prepping. But there are so many other reasons besides 2012. I don't think the world is going to come to an end in 2012. It certainly looks like some of the events that are occurring right now like the declining dollar or the collapse in the economy, it does look like those events are coming to a head just like they may be coming to a head right around 2012. So 2012 may turn out to be a significant date, but I don't really put any stock in the Mayan prophecy. How are you personally preparing or prepping? Specifically, what kinds of things do you have in preparation? What is your grand plan? How are you prepping or preparing your family? Well, personally how I'm prepping, prepping is just, it's something that just takes, has many facets. It takes up a lot of different areas of your life. A lot of the prepping begins right here. I think that primarily the most important thing to prep is your mind. And I think the two ways to do that, one is when you are prepared and you're expecting something, then when it happens you don't panic. You keep a cool head and you just work sensibly through a situation. All right, the other part of prepping that's in your mind is your skills or your knowledge. I know people who live out in rural parts of Missouri here and these people have been growing gardens for years. They've been canning food, they have livestock, they have rifles, they go deer hunting. They know how, they don't take their deer to a meat processing plant. They know how to cut up and butcher their own deer. And these people have skills that most people living in urban area, and I live in a suburb, I live in pretty much an urban area here. And I can see a lot of people around me have no, they wouldn't have a clue of how to grow a garden or to hunt or to can or preserve foods. So there are a lot of skills involved in prepping and these are skills that can be learned of course. And so I learn as much as I can about food preservation techniques, about hunting, about using firearms. I have taken a lot of courses in using firearms. I've taken several weekend courses where I've learned to shoot handguns, for example. And then I've also taken several weekend courses where I've learned rifle marksmanship. But there are a lot of skills that need to be learned first aid as I am a chiropractor and part of my chiropractic education was a lot of first aid type training. We actually had to be certified by the American Red Cross in first aid. So I had a head start on that, but anybody can take a Red Cross course and learn first aid. So there's a lot of things that we need up here. The other part that I prepare is primarily by stockpile and things. Like here in my basement you can see how I stockpile foods. And what's most obvious here are the canned goods that I stockpile. Canned goods I think are a good place to start. And that's probably where a lot of people should start because cans are not very expensive. They have a shelf life of about four or five years. Now there are foods that have other foods that are put away. They have longer shelf life foods that I have bought that were already prepared. And they're in nitrogen packs with oxygen absorbers and things like that. They have like a 10 to 20 up to a 25 year shelf life. So I've also got a lot of foods like that stored away. But primarily as you can see I like canned goods because canned goods are inexpensive. It's something that whenever you go to the grocery store you can just pick up a few extra ones and then gradually over time without breaking your budget you can add a few cans to your stock. How am I preparing, prepping my family? Well I'm prepping my family by putting up supplies for them. I try to put up enough supplies for everybody. My wife works outside the home. She doesn't have a lot of time to do the prepping. The prepping is pretty much my job. She does help me with things like she helps me in the garden quite a bit. She helps me with the food preservation, with our canning or foods and stuff like that. But I talk to my family a lot and I have two grown children now. I talk to them about prepping and finally I have my son. My daughter is not really on board yet but my son is a little bit older. He's in the Air Force and has three children of his own. And he has over the years seen the wisdom of some of the things that I've been telling him. And he is now investing in silver. And he's also putting a little food away in storage too. Do you have a bunker, a bug out location, or even an emergency meeting place? Well, my bunker pretty much is our basement here. If we have a hurricane or not a hurricane, we don't have hurricanes here in Missouri. But if we have a tornado, this is our safe hiding place. It's also where a lot of our supplies are. I don't really have a bug out location. We're pretty much going to be dug in here. We're not going to bug out unless we absolutely are forced to. And even if the authorities come and recommend that we leave our location, we're dug in here. Now, of course, we will leave the location if they're like toxic gases or radiation or something like that that we really have to get away from. But ordinarily, we're not going to a FEMA account. We're dug in here. This is where our supplies are. Emergency meeting place, what we do have a first emergency meeting place is right here trying to get everybody back home again. And if something has happened to our home and we can't get in here, the streets are locked up due to the authorities have the streets locked up or an earthquake in the house has collapsed or something like that. We just can't get there home. We do have a couple of meeting places. One is we agree upon a neighbor's house, which is real close. If we can't get that close to the house, we've agreed up on our daughter's house, which is a little bit further away. And then if we can't get to that location, then there's a parking lot in a large church that we attend where we will meet up. What measures have you taken to ensure that other people won't pillage your supply if there is an apocalypse? Are you well versed in firearms? Yes, I'm well versed in firearms. As I mentioned, I've taken a lot of firearms courses. I'm very good with handguns. I'm also very good with rifles. Would you be willing to have a survivalist expert come out and evaluate your preparation? Sure, I would welcome it. I would love to. I'll learn a lot of things from other survivalists online on YouTube. I watch a lot of other survivalists who make videos like I do. A lot of times people come up with ideas that I haven't thought of that I learned from. Do you feel that preppers or survivalists are misunderstood? Why? Yes, I think we are misunderstood. I think for one thing people think that we are pessimists and survivalists are not actually pessimists. We are optimists. And we are optimists because we are making plans to get through a disaster. I talked to one fellow one time when he found out that I was in the prep and he said, you know, if something happens, he said, I'm probably just going to die. Well, that's what I call extreme pessimism. So as preppers, we wouldn't be putting these things away to survive if we weren't optimistic and thought that we could get through a situation. So preppers are not pessimists. We are optimists. Another thing people think that we are conspiracy theorists. Well, you know, to that I have to say guilty is charged. If there is a conspiracy against you, then denying it doesn't make it go away. And I think that there are a lot of things going on right now against us. A lot of things going on against American people. There are a lot of people who want to, say, take away our guns, make firearms illegal, victim disarmament. They've done that in Australia. They did that in the United Kingdom. There are a lot of people who are trying to do that here in the United States. So if you don't think that people are conspiring against us, then I think you've got your head in the sand. I think there are also people conspiring against us as far as the economy is concerned. I think that people are being fleeced through inflation because when they print money, a lot of people don't realize it, but it actually makes the money that you have less valuable. And so your money actually spends less as inflation. And so that is actually a way of sucking wealth from people. And it's a way of taxing people without them even knowing it. You're taxing them by making the money that they have worth less and less and less. And I think we're being fleeced right now in this country from the people, from the banks who are printing money like crazy. So conspiracy theorists, I'd have to say guilty is charged. Now of course there are a lot of people who believe in a lot of other things because the preppers are, you can't put them in one category. Like I said, I don't put any stock in 2012. There are a lot of people who do put stock in 2012. There are people of a religious background who think that this is the end and we're in the time of the revelation. And what I say to them is every single generation since Christ died thought that they were in the end times. And they've also far turned out to be wrong. And so I wouldn't put all of my eggs in that basket. It seems that survivalism and prepping is in the news a lot more these days and we're hearing more people getting prepared. What do you think of this? Well, I think there's a reason for that. Like I said, I've been in prepping for many years and back when I first started prepping it just was not something that you heard about and when you talked about a survivalist it was some crazy guy with a long beard out in the Arkansas mountains holding out. And now prepping and I think that an illustration of this is like the television programs like this one that are coming out about prepping. This is something that wouldn't have happened 10 years ago. So it definitely is becoming more mainstream. I think that everybody, almost everybody out there has a sense that things are not right and that something is going wrong. And if people don't have that sense I think they're in denial. There are a lot of people in denial but I think that a lot of people who even are not preppers have no intention of prepping, not survivalists. I think that a lot of people sense that something is going very wrong. And I think what they can see that's making a feel that way is they're seeing the collapse of our economy, the fall of our nation. They're seeing the decline of the dollar and they're seeing the great depression that we're in that they're calling a recession and really a depression. And so a lot of people are out of work because more people are out of work. Crime has increased. And then this 2012 thing came along but I don't think it really has anything to do with 2012. I think some people have jumped on that bandwagon but I don't really think it has anything to do with that. I saw this coming. What's happening today and basically what I'm talking about is I'm talking about just the unlimited printing of new money which is leading to inflation. These are the things that I saw coming many, many years ago. And so what I saw, and we're also by no coincidence, I'm sure we're seeing the first baby boomers are beginning to retire right now. And so at the same time the first baby boomers are beginning to retire, they're beginning to hyperinflate the currency. Now I think there's more going on to it than just that but I think that certainly is a big part of the picture. But people can see prices begin to increase and I think we're just beginning to see the first increases in hyperinflation. I don't think we've been hit by it yet but they are certainly sending the stage forward and they're making no indications that they have any intentions whatsoever of doing anything to correct the problem. The only thing that they are doing is giving us more of what got us into this problem. And I ask how can you get out of a problem just by doing more of what you did to get us into that problem? All right, so there's nothing that makes sense in Washington, the entire place is just completely corrupt right now. And people sense that, I mean, the Congress approval is at an all-time low. The President's approval is at an all-time low. And so people can sense that something is going bad wrong here. So what are you doing with? Are they willing to be filmed for the show? Are they on board with preparations as well? Okay, I live with my wife, Lisa. My two children are both grown right now and they both have children out of their own. We have four grandchildren now. So right now it's just my wife, Lisa, and I, and yes, Lisa's willing to be filmed. And yes, she is completely on board with me with the prepping. Where are most of your preparations? I don't have any equipment, but I have preparations really every place in the house. In my garage I store propane and gasoline, and the loft in my garage is just filled with camping equipment. So I have propane lanterns and stoves and all that type of equipment. In the attic we have paper goods like extra toilet paper and things like that. We really have things in my tool room. I've got all kinds of tools stored up that do not require electricity. Tools like the drills that you turn with a crank instead of run by electricity. So I've got, I have a stock pile of hardware, nuts and bolts and screws on up in my tool room. I have another location here in the basement where I store fuel like a kerosene. And so, and we have food stored in other places besides here. And we really have things stored all over the house. But really this right here in our basement is where we store most of our preparations. I want to introduce you to my prepping partner. This is my wife, Lisa. And Lisa is the same age that I am. And Lisa tell us in your own words how you feel about my prepping activities. Well I'm glad that you do the prepping because I work outside the home and it's very hard for me to have the time to do it and I know it's something that we need to do. So if a disaster does hit us then I feel like we are prepared because you have done that. So I'm here to try to support you in that while you do the necessary prepping. So you are supportive of our prepping you think is something that we need to be doing. And you don't mind if we a lot of our family resources to prepping. Because you know in the long run that we will reap benefits from our activities. How do you feel about the fact that when I told you we needed to buy silver and gold the price of silver was about $4 an ounce and gold was about $250 an ounce. And today as we're recording this silver is about $45 an ounce so it's gone from about $4 an ounce to $45 an ounce and gold has gone from about $250 to about $1500. So how do you feel about that? I feel very good and I feel like our investments are paying off. So you feel like that we are prepared for our retirement even if the government doesn't come through with the Social Security money that they have stolen from us. I feel like we're getting there. I don't know if we'll ever be totally 100% prepared but yes I think we're on the right road. Okay Lisa thank you very much and thank you for your support. You're welcome. Why do I want to be on the show? Well we are all in this together. I want to educate more Americans that's why I make YouTube videos. The more Americans who are prepared the better off we will all be. If my neighbors are prepared they won't be coming to me looking for supplies because they'll have supplies of their own. I don't think we're going to get through this alone. I think we're going to need each other to get through whatever disaster may be coming upon us. This is a picture of water barrels. I think I have gallon drums in my basement where I store water. This is a rain barrel outside my house where I collect additional rain. This is my garage where I keep my rabbits. I raise rabbits and butcher them for meat. This is another corner of my garage. These are propane tanks that I store where I store energy. These are kerosene cans in my basement for additional energy. These are mason jars for canning. This is what we're currently working on. We're picking pears right now and drying them to store the pears. This is all sterling silver that I purchased at state sales. This is our retirement account when this is a paper goods, toilet paper and such. This is some of the gold and silver that we've stashed away for our retirement. This is survival doc reminding you be prepared or be prepared to be fleeced.