The Y2K hysteria bullshit has came and gone not with a bang but with a whimper and a very wimpy one at that. The prior year everyone was freaking out about computer malfunctions causing blackouts, plane crashes, financial collapse, blah, blah,blah. However, after a drunken New Year's Eve and a fight with the sidewalk- what happens?? Nothing! Absolutely fucking nothing!! Not even a mini-riot in New York. The most pathetically chaotic thing that happened was a bunch of third rate arab terrorists got busted trying to smuggle a truckload of nitroglycerin over the U.S./ Canadian border. When I came back from traveling around for almost a year two days before NewYear's Day, I amazingly discovered I had a whooping $450 worth of credit on my NY food stamp card! So what did I do? On New Year Eve some friends and I brought $450 worth of food! Who knows, the card might not have worked the next day. Besides, I ate good and got to stay rent free at the house for a while. Actually- I was hoping something interesting would have happened, like the FBI's NCIC system crashing resulting in mine and some good friend's criminal records getting erased. Oh well, better luck next time.

An interesting book I finished called 'Life in the 1900's' showed how daily life was in that time. It drives home the point that only within the past 100 years out of 6000 odd years of humyn civilization (a term I use very loosely since there're still a bunch of idiots out there trying to put each other heads out but with handguns instead of clubs and spears) we enjoy the modern technology that exists today. It even had a recent survey of which technology that people said they couldn't live without. It ranged from the practical (telephones and radios) and conveinent (tampons and condoms- hey can't blame the guys for not wanting to breed or the ladies for not wanting to bleed unnecessarily) to the frivolous (hairspray (!!) and deodorant (ever hear of baking soda?) and the environmently destructive (automobiles). Obviously, only a mentally eviscerating thing like television could had made number one in this survey, which it did! Personally, my choice would've been a stereo system. The doktor can live without Jerry Springer but NOT Black Sabbath! My main point is we don't need all the trappings of the modern westren world to have a content way of life. If one has the right attitude encompassing the will to live with the ability to think rationally and adapt to many situations (pleasant and unpleasant) one can overcome anything. A little piece of wisdom a Nazi concentration camp survivor told me one time.

Well, it's been a long time since the last issue of Poison Pen- almost three years but the doktor is back for another. Why the long hiatus? It is was a combination of the preoccupations and complications of day to day living plus a dash of just plain sloth. During that time I gathered much insight into the survivalist philosophy. Usually just by observing and associating with different subcultures which practice by neccessity the skills we emphasize here from SF gutterpunks and east coast squatters to freighthopping hobos and southwestern native americans. At the same time I've have seen direct contradictions of the same, from overdoses and suicides to preventable accidents (one guy burned to death smoking in bed, while another drowned trying to swim while blacked out, etc., etc.) . Most of the victims of this were for the most part good people whom lives were wasted. I try not to imitate whatever bought them down and learn from their mistakes, lest their deaths be in vain.

We at the NSF realize that now multi-adaptability is paramount. We will prepare, blackmarket, hide, flee, defend, group, loot, ambush, forage and scavenge as necessary. We urge you to do the same. However, this is not an excuse to become monsters! The day you see us raping and pillaging like Milosilevic's butchers in Kosovo, please shoot us. We'll deserve it. Violence against property is acceptable. Violence against individuals excluding self-defense is not. While, it seems it's not the end of the world as we know it yet and diaster follows no timetable like a passenger train, its warning signs are frequently noticable. Try to keep your eyes open and your mind alert for those signs. Amen.