PFCMA

Less than two weeks to hurricane season, amateur preppers: not so much time to study up on your Mormon theology or survival medicine before the ol' cones start showing up and the TV weathermen experience the only exciting time of their year.

As you've surely learned from us by now, a central tenet of prepping is that you never know what's coming, and it's best to do all you can for any type of scenario. This year, however, economic situations have put a pinch on a valuable commodity: gas cans to hold the extra fuel for your escape route out of town.
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NOAA via Wikipedia

If it happens again, where will you be?

We're less than a month away from the official opening of hurricane season. After reading our recent cover story about modern-day survivalists, you may feel compelled to make better preparations this year than the usual ritual of hoarding toilet paper, bottled water, and Chef Boyardee from Publix at 10 p.m.

After all, we lie in one of the most vulnerable geographic areas in the country, subject to yearly poundings by hurricanes, flooding, wildfire, and (maybe) alien attacks.

Yesterday morning, Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet approved this year's Statewide Emergency Shelter Plan. A new plan is approved every even-numbered year, and this year's designates "an estimated 939,395 spaces around the state."
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As our recent cover story about local survivalists, or "preppers," was going to press, we learned that one of the main characters in the story, Hollywood-based agricultural consultant Chris Petrovich, had been interviewed by the CBS affiliate up in West Palm Beach.

So treat yourself to the TV station's three-minute CliffsNotes version, in which they interview Petrovich and a guy who has a really big truck and throw in some b-roll of the Twin Towers collapsing.

Of course, we won't let our bitterness about local media competition get in the way of fair coverage -- the preppers are happy to spread their message of readiness any way they can.
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James Talmage Stevens lives up on a mountain somewhere in Texas, where he has a few years' worth of food, a well he can pump by hand, sturdy walls, and gardens for food. He's prepared for just about anything.More >>

Elder Mark Brown and a church volunteer pause in the storehouse.

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This week's cover story is about modern survivalists.

August 23, 1992, was an exceptionally shitty day in America. Hurricane Andrew was gathering strength over the Caribbean, and by nightfall, it would plow over South Florida with category-five winds, ripping whole neighborhoods to pieces, knocking out power, and claiming dozens of lives.

Three thousand miles away, at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, the weather was calm, but the anger and tension were unbearable. Hundreds of federal troops at Ruby Ridge were in the fourth day of a siege on the house of conspiracy theorist Randy Weaver. They had already killed his dog, his son (shot in the back), and his wife (shot while holding their baby).

Media reports portrayed Weaver, who had moved to the woods to escape government and society, as a dangerous white supremacist. The feds wanted him on gun-trafficking charges. Down the road from his blood-soaked mountain cabin, hundreds of people gathered to protest the siege. From this, the modern American militia movement was born. More >>

​Could a whole coalition of highly accomplished, super educated doctors and researchers -- the ones who work at and advise the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Harvard School of Public Health -- all be wrong?

Or are their critics hindering them from saving lives?

As described in our recent feature story about circumcision, three studies conducted in
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Hasner, the Jewish Allen West.

​U.S. Rep. Allen West's departure from his Broward-Palm Beach district to run for a more Republican-leaning seat up north is undeniably good news for local Muslims. Finally, South Florida will be rid of a congressman who calls Islam "a totalitarian, theocratic, political ideology."

But don't start celebrating yet. Former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner (R-Delray Beach) is seeking to replace West and has already received the congressman's ringing endorsement. Small wonder, because the two men share similar political tactics -- namely, getting ahead by spouting fear-mongering, anti-Islam rhetoric. (To read about how local Muslims are coping with such bigotry, see this week's New Times cover story.)

In 2009, Hasner invited anti-Islam nutbag Geert Wilders, a member of the DutchMore >>

The Daily Mail

​A little-known killer is making its way through the southern United States, according to the British tabloid The Daily Mail: a "brain-eating amoeba" called Naegleria fowleri. Victims so far include one 16-year-old girl from Florida, Courtney Nash, who reportedly died after swimming in the St. John's river in Brevard County. (The New York Daily News confirms the story.) More >>

BSO

Ellisa Martinez

​The woman who caused an FBI investigation after sending threats to right-wing radio host Joyce Kaufman -- leading to the lockdown of more than 300 Broward County schools -- was sentenced today to two years in prison.

Ellisa Martinez was arrested in November after emailing and calling Kaufman's radio station, WFTL-AM (850), and pleaded guilty to a threatening charge in May.

Martinez had watched MSNBC's coverage of Kaufman speaking during a Tea Party rally last July -- the speech in which Kaufman said "if ballots don't work, bullets will."

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