So my purpose was to propose a standard with the absolute loosest guidelines which would allow the greatest amount of personal freedom in choice of kit, while maintaining function and interoperability. Kind of like the AK-47 of survival. - Just tight enough to work, loose enough that there's plenty of wiggle room for the crap to fall out the bottom.

The PAA grows slowly, because I have some unbreakable rules when it comes to membership and how it is considered. Many members are somewhat lukewarm in their dedication, and that's cool. Once I got ahold of Patrolling, I realized that Sean had invented a good part of the wheel for us, and we adopted many of his practices.

Again, though, what we have learned is that past the basic kit, everything else is luxuries and specialty. You can survive ALMOST anything with a good set of basic kit you put together yourself, are intimately familiar with, and can actually USE in the field.

So great. Now you've got a PAA Bugout Bag. Now what?

Now what is the OTHER part of Survival And Preparedness, and that is KNOWING. It is early warning. It is advance intelligence. It is keeping a running log of where we all are in case something DOES happen. It is communication.

This is where the PAA website does its best job. Outside of being just a clearinghouse for PAA members to share information, it is also a method for early warning. For those who HAVE intelligence information to share, for those who ANALYZE and CHECKSUM that information to post their evaluations, and for those LOOKING for the information may go to find both.

So yeah, we're a bunch of part-time, survival-and-preparedness lab rats with our fingers in the wind to determine direction, sniffing the dirt and listening to the airwaves to see which direction the next storm is coming from.

If you're in the Tampa Bay Area, and would like to join, go to the forums in the website first at http://www.privateaidassociation.org/forum/ and look around a bit. There, you will find a public area that you can read (but not post to -- too many spammers) and you will find FAQ's and all sorts of small goodies that will give you a "tip of the iceberg" look and feel of the PAA. Instructions for applying to membership with the board are also there, as well.

Membership IN the PAA is a little more tricky, and I don't discuss the application process nor the evaluation process for acceptance on any open board. Those kinds of discussions are in-person only.

Anyway, I guess you'd call the PAA a "Wog Tribe in Tampa", but not necessarily the "Wog tribe OF Tampa" -- I don't pretend that we're the only one. I know of a few other folks with Wog tendencies who are not "PAA Material" -- we cooperate with them and share info and tricks of the trade with non-members. It's just that the PAA has some agreements amongst the membership that require some dedication, even if it is not immediately called upon.

In conclusion, I'd like to welcome any newly-awakened Wogs to the field, and wish you all the blessings of Server in achieving your personal goals.

There's little to no prestige in being a member. In fact, most of us are completely anonymous, to the point of only reluctantly admitting membership. It's not like we're a secret society or anything, it's just that the type of people who are the active membership like our privacy, and we're particularly sensitive to being judged by the classic media portrayal of the survivalist, which is, to be kind, not positive.

There is little to no power directly in being a member. Instead, we encourage our membership to empower themselves. Taking principles from another website, "Empower Thyself" (http://www.empowerthyself.com), the concepts of self-reliance AND a positive public appearance can do wonders to reversing the above mentioned media portrayal of the spam-eating, bunker-hunking, racist, misguided, barely-conscious troglodyte who spends his time making up conspiracy theories to justify his own particularly interesting brand of psychosis and prays for the end of the world to "show them all."

While this stereotype is not wholly unearned - every group has its lunatic fringe - I honestly believe that in the case of survivalism, or more accurately, survival and preparedness, the lunatic fringe has been deliberately overexposed due to the subtle bias of those behind the fish-eye lens. Those folks who are NOT prepared, and instead of owning their own feelings of inadequacy, choose to ridicule a group that, in some cases pridefully, advertises its preparedness for what may come.

Attitudes are attributed to that group, sometimes wrongfully. It never ceases to amaze me how many "experts" in survivalism and preparedness tell ME what I think about things, or try to explain to me why I shouldn't be "praying for the end of the world."

My greatest effort has been not to roll my eyes at these people whose only exposure to folks like me is through the colored lenses of the mainstream media.

You can learn about what we are, and are not, in our FAQ portion of the forums, which are the heart and soul of the PAA. We are a clearinghouse for local Tampa Bay survival and preparedness enthusiasts - a place to correspond with one another both locally and with other S&P groups. We try to keep links that are useful all in one centralized location, whether it's the cost of precious metals, or storm tracking - we're trying to do our membership and our community the service of vital information, necessarily centralized.

So, why are you here? If not for the prestige or the power? Or the affiliation?

Oh yes: You're here because someone you know handed you a little card with our website on it.

That person must have thought very highly of you; As I have said before, we don't exactly advertise this place - too much stupidity, too many anti-government types looking for a new home to troll, etc. etc.

We're not any of those things. We're just a bunch of folks who think it's important to have certain plans and materiel in place BEFORE things happen, not trying to play catch-up in the face of disaster, whether it's weather, natural, man-made, political, local or nationwide.

We talk about preparing. We examine the unthinkable with as honest and critical an eye as we can; We don't entertain a lot of wishful thinking, and most of us do NOT have conspiracy theory as a hobby.

Though some of us do, because it can be entertaining to listen to a bunch of folks weave their tapestry, but truly, Heinlein said it best: "Never attribute to malice what can be more easily explained by stupidity."

So you're here. You may just be checking it out because someone whose opinion you value in another area asked you to. Or you're curious. Or you're bored.

Whatever.

Welcome.

Feel free to look around and click on the links. Our Webmistress has just recently redesigned the website, so please be patient if some of them don't work. Our Administrator Scott, bless his heart, is kinda flaky sometimes, so don't blame the Webmistress too much if the updates are slow. Scott only keeps a few sets of keys to the place and he's more miserly with access than loan officers are with money.

Here's what you can find here, in a nutshell:

Information. First and foremost, this is an information website. Links are provided all over the place for you to click on so you can get up to date information that is relevant to you. Not every link will be at the same level of relevance - our scope is rather diverse and we'd rather cover everyone than miss out. If a link you think should be included, feel free to email the administrator at Scott Skawronska at privateaidassociation.org and request it. He checks that email I swear, at least once a month.

Guidance. Believe it or not, not everyone who comes here is a gen-u-wine "eckspert" in S&P; We all have to start SOMEWHERE. There are a lot of folks out there ready to sell you their particular brand of survivalism, the same way religious nuts are ready to sell you their version of spirituality. This is our version, but we're open to others as well. More than once, I've read blurbs by Scott about how much he hates this guy or that guy, but STILL publishes that guy's stuff on the website BECAUSE IT IS VALID. Personally, I don't think he should do that, but it's not my website, so I have the benefit of Scott's broad-mindedness and approach to survival that is the embodiment of the motto: "If it's stupid, but it works, it's not stupid." Along with essays from other folks, the PAA also has a list of published standards (still works in progress - Flaky Scott) at the "rule of threes" levels: 3 days (Bugout Bag), 3 weeks (Bugout Vehicle) and 3 months (Master Storage/Bug In/Bug Out Location). For a list of "what to haves" by PAA Standard, you can find them here. Beware. The standard changes, and Scott makes no apologies - his reasoning: If something recommended here doesn't work, and he finds out it doesn't work, he doesn't make excuses - he DROPS it and goes to something that does. I gotta admit, I admire him for that. Even if it makes revamping to new standards a pain sometimes.

Networking. Maybe you're already a member of a group and you want to touch base with the PAA. Cool. Maybe you're new to the area and are looking for a group. That's cool, too. Or maybe you're just tired of being solo all the time and are looking to get involved with a group that doesn't cramp your style too much. We might be that group. Finally, you might be a complete newbie to S&P, someone handed you a card and said, "Go there, you'll get what you need from there." - To these people especially, Welcome; You've come to the right place

For whatever reason you've come, you're here. Have a look around. See if you like the place. If you want to participate in the discussion, feel free to request an account from Scott, or in the future, hopefully me.

I'd like to welcome you to the Private Aid Association. Come on in. Meet the family. They're about as dysfunctional as any other family, with the old weird uncle and the drunken aunt, and the brats who make mudpies in the backyard in Mom's flowerbed.

But that's what families do. And somewhere along the way, we manage to be just a little bit organized.

I wish you a happy stay and All the Blessings of Liberty.

A fireman is a fireman, not because he believes everything will burn, but because he believes much can be saved. Doctors don't believe in death, they believe in life, and a survivalist is not a survivalist because he believes everything must be destroyed and everyone must die, he believes that life and freedom can be saved, if people of good will are prepared. A fireman does not start fires, a doctor does not make disease and a survivalist does not make disaster.

Crime, disease, war, revolution, fire, flood, periodic financial collapse and famine are the results of nature and the nature of man and unfortunately are not within the power of anyone on this earth to prevent.

We all know that the sun will set each day, leaving us in darkness and we all know that warm summers give way to cold winters and that we can do nothing to keep the sun from setting or the cold winds from coming, does this make us pessimistic? I think not! So then, why is the survivalist called a pessimist when he makes ready to face events that are just as much a part of history and nature as the sunset and the changing of the seasons.

Another misconception is that survivalists are predicting world disaster. On the contrary, we seem to be THE OPTIMISTIC MINORITY that is predicting world survival. We are hard pressed to find any well recommended historians, economists, political scientists, sociologists or military strategists that can come up with a scenario that gives even a fifty-fifty chance of avoiding a large scale catastrophe, yet we survivalists dare to be OPTIMISTIC about the future. We survivalists do not need to predict the probability of disaster anymore than we need to predict the sun setting.

Those who criticize survivalists, are like men who refuse to look at a calendar, in the hope that through self-imposed ignorance they can keep from aging another year.

"You survivalists will be disappointed if we don't have a world cataclysm." Here is another accusation that is pure B.S. and I could not think of a milder phrase to describe it. We survivalists have loved ones we don't want to see hurt or killed, we have homes we don't want to see destroyed, we are not tools to think that just because we are survivalists a world cataclysm would be fun for us or that we would not experience danger, loss, hunger, injury, cold or even despair and death.

We have spent time and money to improve our chances for survival and recovery from disaster, but we would have a great celebration if some day we could be assured that we had wasted our time. No, we will not be disappointed if there is no disaster to survive, anymore than the Red Cross is disappointed when there are no floods and storms or the man who buys an insurance policy is disappointed when his house fails to burn down.

It may be said that the survivalist would much prefer the pleasant (but unlikely) surprise of being wrong to the (probable) deadly rude awakening that the nonsurvivalist will face if he is wrong.

So you see, the survivalist can't lose because his survival preparations will be of value regardless of what the future has in store. In time of crisis, those who have not prepared to turn to each other, will turn on each other.

It is most regrettable indeed, that many people consider survivalists as a threat and regard them with suspicion and even hostility. This attitude is logically indefensible and is rooted in the nonsurvivalists own sense of fear and guilt. Subconsciously, the nonsurvivalist may hate the survivalist for reminding him of how fragile his lifestyle is.

Now, let's get the facts turned around right. THE MOST DANGEROUS PEOPLE IN AMERICA TODAY ARE THE NONSURVIVALISTS. Every person who has not made provisions for surviving without food, water, fuel and other essential needs from the outside, is a mortal danger to his neighbors.

What will a man do when he and his family are freezing, vulnerable, thirsty, sick and starving? He may ask or beg his neighbors for help, but when they have no extra fuel, food, water or medicine to give, will he just go back home to die with his wife and kids? What do you think? We survivalists who stock up on food and other supplies, now do a favor to society because what we now buy is replaced on the shelves, so there will be that much more available in an emergency. We survivalists won't be looting and killing for food. We won't be a burden on the medical facilities or a danger to the police. Since we will be able to turn to each other, we will not need to turn on anyone and we may be able to help at least some.

Survival preparation should be regarded as a social obligation, one that every individual owes to his family and community and his nation. The nonsurvivalist is simply a poor and irresponsible citizen.

So the reality is, that survivalists are optimistic, self-reliant individuals, who cannot help but see the imperative of preparing for the worst possible events, while hoping sincerely, that they won't happen. Today's survivalist is an asset, to his community and to the world and should be proud to be called SURVIVALIST.

But then I wake up and realize that the world I dream of is not our world. And while I strive toward the ideals of that world, I also plan and take steps to mitigate the parts of this world that are not so ideal.

I am a survival and preparedness enthusiast. Contrary to popular belief, I am an optimist. I believe that I CAN plan for the night in order to survive to the dawn. I believe that I CAN be self-reliant, even in the most adverse of times. I believe that I CAN actually function in a crisis, large or small, without being a burden to the existing infrastructure.

I dream of being able to do just that. So that others in the same crisis, many in dire need, may use resources that I will not need nor take, in order to secure their own survival.

I don't believe in criminal activity as a survival solution. I don't see large retailers as my own private supply stock when crisis hits.

I dream of having my own safe, legal, legitimate supply, from which I can draw in times of need. I dream of having enough to take care of others in their times of need, as well.

I prepare for the night.

Because I dream of living to see the dawn.

I don't expect the government or any other "official" agency to take care of me in times of extreme crisis, when the infrastructure is damaged and resources are thin.

I don't expect to tax those resources any more than I absolutely have to.

I don't expect a handout.

I dream of being able to tell the troops when they come by to check on us in the aftermath of a Hurricane: "Nah, we're good, thanks. We stocked up. No one hurt, no one needs transport, plenty of food and supplies. We're doing just fine."

Just fine.

I dream of being able to do "just fine" no matter how bad it gets.

And finally,

I dream of not doing it alone. « close