 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. 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've 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, 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 since we were no longer on a golden 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. Alright 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 golden 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 golden 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 golden 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. Perhaps it's 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 and it looks 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 something that just takes as 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. Alright, 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 cannon food, they have livestock, they have rifles, they go deer hunting, 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 and using firearms is 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 canneds 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 that 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. And they have like a 10 to a 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 air 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's not really on board yet but my son who's 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 but it's 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 not, 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 or we're going to, we're dug in here and this is where our supplies are. Emergency meeting place, well we do have a couple of, our primary, our first emergency meeting place is right here trying to get everybody back home again and if something has happened to our home we can't get in here. The streets are locked up due to the authorities have the streets locked up or there's an earthquake and the house has collapsed or something like that we just can't get to our home. We do have a couple of meeting places. 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 is 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? 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 fella one time when he found out that I was into prepping you know if something happens he said I'm probably just gonna 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 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 the American people there are a lot of people who want to say take our way our guns, make firearms illegal victim disarmament they've done that in Australia they did that in the United Kingdom and a lot of people who are trying to do that here in the United States if you don't think that people are conspiring against us then I think you got your head in the sand. I think there are also people conspiring against us as far as the economy is concerned I think the 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 that's 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 who 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 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 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 was not something that you heard about when you talked about a survivalist it was some crazy guy 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 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 them feel that way is they're seeing the collapse of our economy the decline of the dollar and they're seeing the great depression that we're in that they're calling a recession but it's 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 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 come in 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 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 beginning 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 of any intentions whatsoever of doing anything to correct the problem the only thing that they are doing is just 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 alright so there's nothing that makes sense in Washington the entire place is just completely corrupt right now and people sense that the congress approval is at an all time low the president's approval is at an all time low and so people people can sense that something is going bad wrong here who do you live 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 with the prepping where are most of your preparations? right here in the basement 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 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 I like to buy the hand operated tools like the drills that you turn with a crank instead of run by electricity so I've got, I have a stockpile 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 this is survival doc reminding you be prepared to be fleeced