 Okay, roll them! What is your name and age? My name is Sterling Silverman, a.k.a. Survival Doc. And I'm 54 years old. Where are you from? Originally, I'm from a small town in Mississippi. But I've lived in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, for about 20 years. How long have you lived in your current home? I've lived in this house for about 20 years. Are you married or single? Married. If you have a significant spouse, how do you feel about your prepping? Alright, would you run that by me again? Okay, you said you're married, right? How does your wife feel about your prepping the survival skills? Is she supportive? Yes, she's on board with me. I think one thing that convinced her was the fact that I told her we should start buying gold and silver back when the price of silver was about four or five dollars an ounce. And now silver is forty-five dollars an ounce. So she's beginning to understand what I've been talking about. Is she involved in your prepping? Well, not as much as I am, of course, but she does. She is supportive. One thing we do is we go camping, and that way we can check out some of our equipment. And she does go camping with me, so I'll have to say she is a sport. Is there any other prepping activities that you do together? Well, camping, I mentioned, and gardening. She helps me a lot in the yard and in the garden and with the fruit trees. And she also helps me put up the food from our garden and our orchard. She helps me do the canning, and so, yes, she is pretty helpful. Do you have any kids? How many? Yes, we have two kids. They are both grown, and they have kids of their own. Do they help? How do they feel about your prepping? Well, my son is on board with me, and he actually has been doing some prepping of his own, even though he lives in a different state. He is actually doing some food storage and some other prepping. My daughter is not really on board with us. I have tried to convince her to do some things, but she is not really convinced. Any other family members? Do they encourage you prepping or not? Well, I don't really have a lot of family living close by, so I'd have to say no. So none of them are preppers either? No. Have you ever met your friends? Are they sympathetic to your survivalist ways, or do they think you're crazy? Well, at first my friends thought I was crazy, but because I first started prepping 15 or so years ago, and people could not see what they're beginning to see today. But now that the economy is collapsing, the dollars collapsing, precious metals, gold and silver are going to the moon, and these are the people that I was telling that they should buy gold and silver back when the price was five, six, eight, ten dollars an ounce. And now they are again beginning to see what I've been talking about. So you try to educate them on your views? Yes. Is there one person's mind that you wish you could change in regards to their lack of prepping, and if so, who is it and why? How would you go about informing them? I would say my neighbor, and the reason for that is because we're putting up a lot of food storage, and if food becomes in short supply, of course my neighbors are going to be looking for food, and they're going to be looking at my food storage, and if they had a food storage of their own, they wouldn't be looking at my food storage. Do you run drills or scenarios with your family or your closest friends? And if so, who do you require to participate in these drills? We don't really run drills. Other than, I mentioned we do go camping. We have a lot of survival supplies that overlap with our camping supplies, and like a portable stove and things like that. And when we go camping, it gives us a chance to get out some of our equipment, make sure everything is working properly. And so other than the camping, I'd say we don't really run drills. What was the pivotal event that made you decide it was time to start prepping? Well, I started prepping back in the late 80s, and what really convinced me was two things. One was at that time I mentioned we lived in Mississippi. We lived on the Gulf Coast, Gulfport, Mississippi, and we would get hurricane warnings and evacuations generally a couple of times a year. And what impressed me was the fact that even though these people were used to having hurricane evacuations, still whenever we had one, the grocery stores would be overrun, the shelves would be empty, everybody would be there buying batteries and bottled water, and I'm thinking this is something that we know is going to happen every year, hurricane season. Why don't you store up some batteries or some water in your house? So you're not in a frantic trying to buy things at the last minute in the grocery store. And so I started storing bottled water, batteries, simple things like that. And then the other thing that happened was I became aware of the government debt and the fact that I was paying money into Social Security that I was counting on for my retirement, and I realized that the government was spending that money as fast as we were handed into the system. And with the increasing government debt coming, I realized that when... I'm right in the middle of the baby boomer generation, and I realized that when all of us baby boomers started to retire at the same time, it was going to overload the Social Security system, and with the government debt, the government was going to have no choice other than to just print their way out of the debt, and they were going to pay baby boomers' retirements with inflated dollars. And history has proven that I was right, and that is exactly what the government is doing right now, and they are printing so many dollars that the dollar is collapsing in value, and if we do get our Social Security money, it will be inflated dollars, and I don't think it will be enough for us to live on. So what I decided to do at that time was I decided to save, and primarily I decided to save gold and silver because I knew that when the dollar lost its value, that historically gold and silver have always increased in value at the same time, and if the government was going to inflate away their debt, then that was going to cause the prices of gold and silver to skyrocket. And so that was the other event that got me into prepping, was putting all my savings in gold and silver and trying to accumulate as much as I could during my lifetime. There are many apocalypse, natural disasters, and government conspiracy theories floating around. Which one or ones do you believe and why? Well, the main one I believe in is the collapse of the dollar, and I believe that this collapse of the dollar has been orchestrated to a large extent by the government, but particularly not so much by our government officials, but by the bankers who control our government, because they have used their ability to create an unlimited amount of dollars as a way to control our politicians and to control our economy. How far along have you come in putting together food, water, medical supplies, and the like? Do you feel like you're running out of time? Well, I've been storing away items like this for years, and I have people ask me all the time, how much is enough? And my answer to them is, I don't think there's ever enough. And the reason for that is even if we have enough food for our immediate family, we're going to have other family members who are not preparing, who are going to be looking, and you're certainly not going to let other family members go hungry. We also have neighbors who are not preparing. And again, you're not going to sit there with food storage supplies while your neighbors are starving to death. So realistically, we are prepared not just for ourselves, but also for any others who might need our help. So I don't think you can have enough supplies. So my goal is to just put together as much as I reasonably can. As far as urgency, I don't really feel an urgency. I do feel that the time in which we will need these supplies is fast approaching. But this is something that I've been preparing for for years, so I don't really feel an urgency. A lot of other people I know are feeling an urgency, and I can certainly understand why, because they haven't been preparing or they're not prepared, and they are recognizing that events are unwinding to the point where within the next year or so, they're going to be needing some preparation supplies. List the different locations in your home that are your survival spots. That is, where do you store food and supplies, and why did you choose these locations? Tell us about everything you have stored in each location. Well, we are using just about every corner of the house where we have space. For instance, in the loft of our garage, we are storing all of our camping supplies. In our garage, we are storing propane. In the attic, we are storing extra paper goods like toilet papers. But the majority of our supplies are in this room right here, and we're in my basement right now. And the reason I use my basement is for two reasons. One is because it is a part of the house where there's a lot of room where we're not using the room for other uses. And two, a basement is a nice, it's a cooler place in the house, where the temperature is more constant than other parts of the house. And so that is an environment that is more conducive for, say, long-term food storage. Do you have a bug out vehicle and what supplies do you keep in it? I don't really have a bug out vehicle. I do not plan on bugging out. I plan on staying in our home if at all possible. Certainly the last place in the world that I want to be is in a government shelter. So the only reason I would leave my home is if it was such a disaster that forced me out of my home. So we are not really planning on bugging out. We do have our bug out bags just in case. We do have to leave our home if our house were to be demolished by an earthquake or something like that. I mean, there is the contingency for leaving the house, but I don't really want to leave the house. We do have our vehicle in the trunk of our vehicle. I do store a lot of emergency supplies. And the reason for that is in case something happens while we're in our car away from the house, we do have a large bag of a lot of emergency supplies in the vehicle of our car. But I wouldn't really call it our bug out vehicle. It's more of our family car. Do you have a root cellar or an underground bunker? If so, what supplies do you keep there? And do you have any other survival facilities outside of your home that you maintain? No, I don't have a root cellar or bunker. I refer to my basement as my bunker ingest, jokingly. But no, I don't really have a separate facility. We do everything right here at the house. Do you have any survival skills such as a shelter building, fire-starting farming, or hunting and gathering techniques? If so, what do you do on a day-to-day basis to keep them sharp? Well, I do have some survival skills. Of course, this is something that I've learned along the way. I've read a lot of books on survivalism. But I am an herbalist by trade, so I do know how to make a lot of my own medicines. I grow. We do not use medical doctors. We do not use prescription drugs. We use herbal and natural methods of healthcare, which helps us out a lot. There are certain herbs that I grow myself and certain herbs that I buy that we use for our own medicines. What was the other part of that question? It's about shelter building, fire-starting farming, or hunting and gathering techniques. Oh, hunting. Yes, skills. Okay, back to the skills. Yes, I have hunted over the years. I do have hunting rifles. I have been deer hunting. I am skilled enough to hunt some of my own food. I am also skilled enough to butcher and clean my own food. For one thing, we raise rabbits, which I kill and butcher for food. I have also butchered a deer, so I am able to do that kind of thing. Have you taken any survival classes? If so, please describe them. No, I haven't really taken any survival classes. There are a lot of books out there on survivalism, and I have read a lot of books. What do you like to do for fun? For fun, I like to go camping. Of course, camping does help hone your survival skills. When you are camping, you are away from running water and electricity and things like that. Generally, we go primitive camping in which we are living in a tent without electricity. We rely on our camping stoves and our campfires and stuff like that. We enjoy doing that. That is a lot of fun. That does help us keep our skills. Other things, I like to shoot. I collect guns and I like to go out and practice with my guns. That helps me with my survival skills because it helps me get skillful with my rifles. When I need them to hunt for food, I will have that skill there. Is there anything else you would like us to know about in regards to your prepping or disaster theories? Well, no, I think there is really a lot to cover. That is why I have a website, thenewsurvivalist.com. That is not a question that I could answer briefly. As I say on my website, the motto of my website is be prepared or be prepared to be pleased. Is that all? Okay.