Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Fleetwood Family. To all my friends, family, coworkers, and compradres...thank you for your friendship, fun, laughter, tears, and smiles. I hope the holidays bring you joy, laughter, and peace. Remember those who aren't here anymore, those who can be here but won't, those who may be away fighting for our right to exist, or those who don't know they are missed. Remember yourself as well...YOU are important to more people than you know. Pray for justice, righteousness, and strength to persevere. Lift those who need it to a higher place. Remind those in higher places that they need to lift *us* up. Never give up, never surrender, never waver in a fight for the good. Lead those who will listen to that place where we all can succeed and support one another in good times and bad. It's never been about being the last man standing...it's always been about getting to the finish line together. REMEMBER THAT. The year of 2011 has been one of major global natural disasters...economic distress...world political upheaval...and personal tragedy for many people. Quakes and tsunamis in Japan, massive quakes around the world, record tornadic outbursts across the southeast USA, record flooding in several states, only a couple of hurricanes of note, record Santa Ana winds, record droughts in Texas and Oklahoma, "Arab Spring" killing thousands, and injuring tens of thousands, in riots across the Middle East, war ending in Iraq, continuing in Afghanistan, and brewing around Iran. I won't mention Obama, his "destruction" of America, or the evil he brings. That's a lot to be going on...all at once. Just ONE event is catastrophic to the affected populace having to deal with the resultant destruction, death, and disease. Reality TV continues to spread into all areas of awareness, survival, upheaval, potentials, and fears. Dual Survival, Survivorman, Bear Grylls, the Survivor series, end of the world history, 2012 mumbo jumbo , science, pseudo-science, and other documentaries on The History Channel, National Geographic, H2, Discovery Channel, and so many other television infotainment series bring to the masses the Real World of staying alive...or not...when the wind blows, the prairie rolls, or the sun boils. The news still leads the tops stories of the day with these same kinds of  "human interest" topics. We've seen 2011 through the eyes of the few...affecting the lives of millions...almost every day. Just so you know...there are some major updates coming to the SurvivalRing project after the first of the year. New downloads, daily blogging, sharper focus, and family & community involvement. We're entering our 15th year on the World Wide Web.  We're not the oldest survival website, the best, or the most famous...but we're doing something right...to still be here. We're very social, too. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. We offer live feeds on nearly every potential threat, directly from the news. We have feeds from some of our favorite sites, and offer feeds of our own site. We don't make the news...but we do watch it, study it, and think on it every single day. We connect...we consider...and we plan. We prepare for what always happens. Change...hoping for the good...dealing with the bad...but always change. We offer the tools and real information to lead you up or down different paths...from where you are...to where you can be...on high ground. We're literally offering over a million printable pages of documentation, in thousands and thousands of downloadable PDF files. We haven't created many new PDF downloads over the last few years, but we still have bookshelves of never before digitized public domain data in books, manuals, flyers, and training material to get online. We have, however, increased the number of CD or DVD titles that SurvivalRing/SurvivalCD offers to 11 disks, as of 2011. I foresee (meaning they're getting ready to be finished) as least 6 more disks in 2012. I'm also producing special CD/DVD products for others, most notably James Talmage Stevens of Making The Best Of Basics, and Shane Connor of Ki4u.com. This website...the key to it all. We're still here, and still expanding. We educate.  We endure. We persevere. And, we're looking for guest authors, bloggers, and individuals to share with our readers. Why? Search Google for SURVIVAL WEBSITE. Out of 249,000,000 websites...we're number TWO (as of 12/16/11). 8 hours later this evening, we're number FOUR of 253,000,000.  Our traffic fluctuates with the news some days, and our search engine page listing fluctuates as well, but hitting the front page of Google out of that many hits, with regularity, means we're a leader in content, tools, and resources for learning how to prepare...for anything. We've got great SEO, web longevity, and more downloadable content than ANY other known personal survival/preparedness website. We'd like you to take an active part in making a difference. Join us in helping our friends and neighbors learn new skills, find new solutions and survive all those regular disasters we all deal with every year. I've got new equipment to put to good use this coming year. My Canon HD video camera, my 16 megapixel Panasonic Lumix digital camera, my new Snowball USB microphone, and other gadgetry that I will USE to create content like you've never seen. Unlike some preparedness fashionistas, I do like to get my hands dirty. Not just in simple survival techniques, but home repairs and upgrades, vehicle maintenance and repair, frugal living and recycling, emergency and accident response. I get recertified in certain skills each year...to help others, including CPR (adult, child, infant), and AED use. Thankfully, I haven't had to use them specifically lately...but in September, I was one of the first on site of a motorcycle/pickup truck collision on the highway on my way home, seeing the collision and cloud of dust from a quarter mile away. I helped keep a man alive who was laying in the middle of the road broken and bleeding. I've not been able to find any more info about him since that day, other than he was life-flighted from our local hospital to Casper, Wyoming, and then Denver...still alive two days later. His name is Kenneth Babb, from Alberta, Canada...and I won't forget him.  I'll keep trying to learn more about his recovery as possible. The pickup driver? Drunk. Reminds me of September 15th, 1975, when it was me laying in the road, for the same reason. Another passion...spreading awareness of DUIs and DWI, and how to identify, report them , and get them off the road. This truly is a daily life and death struggle which I feel strongly about...for that very obvious reason of nearly being a fatality because of it 37 years ago. I've got other skills as well, besides the obvious geeky web stuff you see here. I swap engines, I weld, I even do paint and body work. I tear down and rebuild laptops. I adopt pets. I even build furniture. In all these things, are opportunities to learn a skill that can be applied to some life saving, life extending, or life renewing area. And, in each of these, I can show you how, why, and where to do these yourself, and so many other things. It's just good common sense...something that took me a little longer to get right (according to my dear wife Annie). Like everybody else, we're broke. Like everybody else, we often do without. This website makes me a little bit of money, but never enough to live on. It just covers the cost of hosting, domains, hardware, and the like. I work a real full time job, in the middle of nowhere, and live in an extremely rural area. All this facts just add to the need to plan, to prep, to keep plugging along.  After eleven years in the least populated state of the USA, 150 miles from the nearest interstate, I've got a lot of good, workable thoughts, facts, and how-t0's to share. It's a life style...a choice...a passion...for living. Finally, thanks to ALL of you for your long time support of my passion for making a difference. It's why I keep doing it, year after year. Please get involved in taking care of yourself, in planning for your preparedness needs, and in having the basics to survive a weekend without power, and flat tire in the middle of nowhere, or a severe storm that damages your home. Have alternatives, tools, and solutions...before you need them. THAT is common sense. Rich Fleetwood Founder / Director of SurvivalRing