Last week, I had din­ner with three oth­er prep­pers.  One was new, and the two oth­ers I have been in touch with for some time.  We all live in North­ern NJ, and are con­cerned with the econ­o­my, job growth, Bug­ging In, Bug­ging Out, etc.  The con­ver­sa­tion twist­ed and turned in many direc­tions.  We talked about form­ing a group, buy­ing prop­er­ty, where to buy prop­er­ty, who is look­ing at prop­er­ty for a Bug Out Loca­tion (BOL), what the cost of the prop­er­ty is, the like­li­hood of actu­al­ly being able to make it to that prop­er­ty either on foot or via vehi­cle, etc.  We dis­cussed who had kids, the inevitable bug out / bug­ging in con­ver­sa­tion, how to do both, what some of our indi­vid­ual bug in and bug out plans are, etc.  One of the guys is grow­ing his own wheat, and is just plant­i­ng his win­ter wheat as we speak.  He also explained how he is grind­ing his own wheat into flour, and learn­ing to bake, etc…

The new guy, a Den­tist, is also an avid prep­per, gun own­er who is active­ly tak­ing class­es and tac­ti­cal cours­es, was look­ing to con­nect with sev­er­al oth­er like mind­ed peo­ple.  He was a friend of one of the oth­er guys at the table.  He turned out to be a pret­ty open and nice guy, and I look for­ward to chat­ting with him again soon.  Not to men­tion I have been look­ing for a new den­tist.

With Occu­py Wall Street start­ing to get stressed, vio­lence is sure­ly around the cor­ner.  That said, every­thing we spoke about is spec­u­la­tion.  But one thing was mate­r­i­al, which was the fact that OWS is a cur­rent and present issue for poten­tial issues to ignite going for­ward.

Anoth­er item that came up was the pulling of troops from Iraq by the end of the year and this let­ter my friend received about his kids school, and emer­gency drills that are hap­pen­ing every cou­ple weeks.  Check this out:

As of Novem­ber 1, 2010 the Sen­ate and Gen­er­al Assem­bly of the State of New Jer­sey has enact­ed a law cov­er­ing school secu­ri­ty drills. Every prin­ci­pal of a school of two or more rooms shall have at least one fire drill and one school secu­ri­ty drill each month.

Two of each of the fol­low­ing school secu­ri­ty drills are required dur­ing the school year.

Lock down – imple­ment­ed when some­one or some­thing in the build­ing may cause harm.

Bomb threat – imple­ment­ed when a bomb is sus­pect­ed on the premis­es.

Evac­u­a­tion – imple­ment­ed when a haz­ard is sus­pect­ed in the build­ing.

Active Shoot­er – imple­ment­ed when some­one has intent to cause phys­i­cal harm with a weapon.

Two addi­tion­al drills are need­ed and can be on any of the above men­tioned or:

Shel­ter in Place – imple­ment­ed when a dan­ger is emi­nent out­side of the build­ing

Reverse evac­u­a­tion – imple­ment­ed when a chem­i­cal spill is sus­pect­ed near the build­ing and stu­dents are out­side

Evac­u­a­tion to relo­ca­tion site – imple­ment­ed when dan­ger is emi­nent in or  near school build­ing

We have been advised to make our announce­ments for these emer­gen­cies con­sis­tent and sim­ple. There­fore, when we prac­tice a lock­down an announce­ment will be made say­ing, “This is a lock­down.” We will be prac­tic­ing these drills through­out the year. The chil­dren are pre­pared for these drills by the teach­ers. The terms might be alarm­ing but this is the direc­tive from the State.