In 1997, one day during his daily meditation, Mr. Matthew Stein heard his inner voice that encouraged him to write a book on disaster preparedness titled “When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, Surviving the Long Emergency.” It would explain how people can prepare for emergencies when basic services and goods such as fuel, shelter, food and water are not available. But at the time, Mr. Stein was neither a survival expert nor one particularly concerned about disasters facing humankind. But today, he is both.

There’s been many civilizations in the past that have failed on the planet, so different things have busted civilizations. But now, we have six global trends and each one of them is a potential civilization buster. The first one is climate change.

According to Mr. Stein, the other civilization busters are: reaching maximum petroleum production; deforestation beyond recovery; fish and ocean collapse; the global food crisis; and population growth.

Right now, 11 out of 14 of the world’s major fisheries in the oceans are either in collapse or in danger of collapsing. The combination of the oceans heating up from global climate change, and the acidification, is killing not just the planktons and the fish, but the coral reefs. The coral reefs stabilize carbon, they take the CO2 out of the atmosphere and they combine it with nutrients in the ocean to make coral. When the coral reefs die, that’s another big leg of stabilizing our atmosphere, our breathability, our weather, all of that.

So we’re messing with things, huge systems that keep our world livable, are in danger of collapse. The next one is the forest of the world. Half of the forests in the world are gone, from what there was in ancient times. Not only do they part of the carbon-oxygen cycle that keeps our weather stable, and keeps our atmosphere breathable on the planet, they also are giant water pumps. So a single huge tree, like a giant redwood or a giant rainforest tree, supposedly has the evaporative surface area equal to a 40 acre lake.

So what happens when you cut the trees down, is you have giant weather changes down wind from the trees. Now #5 is really scary, like I haven’t scared you not yet. (Yes, I know!) Number 5 is the global food crisis. (Right.) There’s something like six major rivers in the world that no longer flow into the ocean.

As we’re running short on fresh water, that also means we’re running short on irrigable land. And more and more people are hungry every year. We’re also unsustainably farming the soils. Modern factory farming methods are actually mining soils. Problem is that the soils in America are being depleted at 30 times faster than they’re being replenished. If you continue that trend, then the trend in world food production is towards collapse.

So the oceans are headed for collapse, the forests are headed for collapse, the world climate is changing to the point where it’s been predicted we might have as much as 6-degree temperature change in the next century, and that will make most of the food baskets of the world un-farmable.

So you’ve got all of these trends, they’re building up, and are each of them individually headed for collapse, and they’re making a perfect storm. Now the last trend is population. What that means is that we’re consuming the natural resources of the planet faster than they can regenerate.

If we do not reverse these trends as an engineer and scientist, there is a 100% guarantee that each of these trends individually will cause collapse, and collectively, there’s no chance. The chance is in making change. We must change the way we do business on our planet.

Mr. Stein believes that without immediate change, human survival will be jeopardized around the globe. To help families and individuals who wish to be better insured, hoping, of course, that a crisis would never happen, Mr. Stein created the “Grab-and-Run Kit.” When we return, we’ll find out about some of the essential items for the kit with disaster preparedness expert Matthew Stein. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Supreme Master Television’s Enlightening Entertainment. Previously, Mr. Stein showed us different materials we can use to purify water, give first aid, and learn to forage for wild plant foods – all useful skills for anyone caught in an emergency. Today, he shares about more potentially life-saving items and survival tips.

Here’s some dental floss. Now dental floss is good for more than just dental flossing. It’s good for tying things together, it’s good for strong thread to sew stuff up.

This is very important – sun screen. You know, people forget about that, disaster happens, you’re living outside, earthquakes are shaking, nobody’s going in a building. Because when’s the next shock is going to hit? You’re outside 24/7.

Now, a compass. Some people say, “Well, I don’t know, why do I need a compass?” Well, if there’s a fire, or something’s happened, and you can’t see the sun, it’s cloudy, and you’re disoriented, and there is smoke, you might have no idea what way north is. I always thought I had a tremendous sense of direction. I was skiing and it’s pitch black, and there is a snow storm, blinding snowstorm.

So you can’t see stars to navigate by, there is no trees, there is no mountains on your side, it’s dark to navigate by. I looked at my compass, and it’s like, “Oh my God! I’m supposed to go that way!” Because of the shifting winds, I had turned around 180 degrees the wrong direction. So it could be a life saver in certain situations.

This is called a space blanket or an emergency sleeping bag. It’s aluminized cover, it’s waterproof, it will reflect heat, it will keep the wind and water off of you, it might make a huge difference between comfort or just horrible torture, or between living or not living.

A mask can be important for escaping a fire, volcanic ash, or even for those living near an oil spill.

It’s not a full gas mask, but it’s called “a painter’s respirator.” And you can get them in any kind of hardware supply (store). And what this will do, is it filters the air coming into your body.

So, say you’ve got a fire, then 99.9% of the particulate and the toxic chemicals you’re breathing in will get taken out by these filters and carbon canisters. So this could make the difference between choking and not being able to do anything or getting terribly ill, and being fine.

Tea tree oil I find is more effective to me than the Neosporin, and it’s anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and the amazing property of tea tree oil is it’s a tiny molecule. It’ll soak right through the skin into the infection and zap it.

If you’ve got an infected tooth, you can dry it off and dab the tea tree on there, and people have said that it’s highly effective.

A solar or hand-powered radio, multi-tool pocket knife, compact stove, something to cook and eat out of, toilet paper, a flashlight are also important. Mr. Stein also suggests obtaining waterproof matches and a windproof lighter to build fires and to sterilize needles.

This is probably one of the most important items for your Grab-and-Run Kit. This is a sewing kit. Right here. So I’ve got needles, some very large heavy duty needles in here as well as smaller ones. Might have to stitch wounds up as well as your pack.

You talk about something that your book mentions as something very important is a “pit of the stomach” exercise.

Yes.

The “pit of the stomach” could really be the most important thing that you take away from our conversation. In a crisis, you will rarely have all the information at your finger tips. You don’t really know what to do and you know you can’t trust the rational mind when it’s changing it’s mind every minute. There is an inner compass, an inner guidance system bred into each and every one of us, and if you can get in touch with that, it simply knows what to do and will guide you.

A few years ago, there was a high-tech gentleman from the San Francisco Bay area who was traveling with his wife and infant in their car and they got lost and disoriented, and they ran out of gas, they were out of cell phone range. So this guy stayed with his wife and infant for I think two days. Well he thought in his head, he thought the rule of thumb for survive is you follow the river and it will take you to civilization. So that’s what he did.

So what you do for the pit of the stomach, the first thing you do is you say, okay, if you’re spiritual, you pray and you ask for help from Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, or Holy Spirit. You ask for help or you just say please help me, and you don’t have to ask anything specific if you’re not spiritual. Then you start breathing deeply and you focus your attention on the area between your rib cage and your belly button, on the pit of the stomach right here, some call it Dan Tien right there, and you keep breathing deeply until you feel your thoughts quiet down and you feel a relaxed sense in that pit of the stomach, that the muscles are relaxed.

Then what you do is you’re going to do this in pictures, you’re going to avoid the thinking mind. So what he would do in his situation is picture himself in his mind’s eye walking down the river towards civilization, and then you feel the pit of the stomach. Now if you feel the muscles tense up into a knot, then you know it’s a bad idea. So then it’s like “Well maybe I should stay in the car.” Now the mind was telling him, “You can’t stay in the car! That’s the sissy thing to do, that’s the chicken thing to do, that’s like waiting for death to come on you.”

You do the pit of the stomach, you picture, and if you get that “Ahh…” feeling, like a relaxed expansive feeling, then it’s like “Oh wow, I’m staying in the car.” Well what happened? He went down the river, he got stuck in a steep river canyon, cold hard rain, died of exposure and exhaustion.

They found the car and the wife and the child. People say does this really work? And can you really trust it? And I’ll say yes. And you’ve had that experience in your life of listening to that intuitive feeling and think afterwards, “Oh thank God I listened, now I understand. I am so glad I listened.”

Our sincere appreciation, Mr. Matthew Stein for sharing this valuable information. Wishing you all the best in your efforts to raise awareness of the need for humanity to halt its dangerously unsustainable trends and turn to planet- and life-saving directions. For more information about the Grab-and-Run Kit and other helpful resources, please visit

Thank you for your presence on today’s program. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Words of Wisdom, coming up right after Noteworthy News. May Heaven protect our planet, and you and your loved ones, always.

Come experience the strength and beauty of Cuban ballet while celebrating dances of other cultures.

Ballet in Cuba is very important because there we all have our culture, our roots, and we hold art in our hearts.

These ballets, and this Cuban culture that we brought tonight, it lives forever in the hearts and the minds of the people that saw it.

Watch our presentation on the Blankenship Ballet Company, Wednesday, August 18 on Supreme Master Television’s Enlightening Entertainment.