This article was originally published by Micahel Snyder at the Economic Collapse Blog under the title: 2nd Biggest Bank Failure In U.S. History – “We Found Our Enron” – “On The Verge Of A Much Bigger Collapse Than 2008”

The wait for the next “Lehman Brothers moment” is over.  On Friday, we witnessed the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history.  The stunning collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is shaking the financial world to the core.

As of the end of last year, the bank had 175 billion dollars in deposits, and approximately 151 billion dollars of those deposits were uninsured.  In other words, a lot of wealthy individuals and large companies are in danger of being wiped out.  In particular, this is being described as an “extinction-level event” for tech startups, because thousands of them did their banking with SVB.  I cannot even begin to describe how cataclysmic this is going to be for the tech industry as a whole.

There is so much to cover, so let me try to take this one step at a time.

Rumors of trouble at SVB had sparked a massive bank run in recent days, and regulators moved quickly on Friday to permanently shut the bank down…

Financial regulators have closed Silicon Valley Bank and taken control of its deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced Friday, in what is the largest U.S. bank failure since the global financial crisis more than a decade ago.

The collapse of SVB, a key player in the tech and venture capital community, leaves companies and wealthy individuals largely unsure of what will happen to their money.

We haven’t seen anything like this in a very long time.

In fact, it is being reported that this is the second biggest bank failure in all of U.S. history…

The closure marks the biggest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis and the second-largest in U.S. history after Washington Mutual collapsed during that industry-wide meltdown, according to FDIC data.

As of the end of December, the Santa Clara, California-based bank — the 16th largest bank in the country — had $209 billion in assets with more than $175 billion in deposits. As with other FDIC-member banks, SVB deposits are insured up to $250,000 per depositor.

The good news is that anyone that had less than $250,000 in the bank will be covered by FDIC insurance…

The FDIC’s standard insurance covers up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank, for each account ownership category. The FDIC said uninsured depositors will get receivership certificates for their balances. The regulator said it will pay uninsured depositors an advanced dividend within the next week, with potential additional dividend payments as the regulator sells SVB’s assets.

Whether depositors with more than $250,000 ultimately get all their money back will be determined by the amount of money the regulator gets as it sells Silicon Valley assets or if another bank takes ownership of the remaining assets. There were concerns in the tech community that until that process unfolds, some companies may have issues making payroll.

Unfortunately, as I noted above, the vast majority of the deposits with SVB exceeded the $250,000 threshold and were thus uninsured…

As we noted before, while the FDIC noted that SVIB had $175BN in deposits as of Dec 31, note that some $151.5BN of these are uninsured, which means they get exactly zero although a sizable number of them likely pulled their deposits in the past few days.

As SVB assets are liquidated, hopefully, those that had uninsured deposits at SVB will eventually see some of their money.

But for now, many of them are facing a complete and total nightmare.

For example, one tech CEO named Ashley Turner is freaking out because she had “at least $10m deposited with SVB”…

Ashley Tyrner, CEO of Boston wellness firm FarmboxRx, said she had at least $10m deposited with SVB and has been frantically calling her banker. She said it had been ‘the worst 18 hours of my life.’

Can you imagine how she must be feeling at this moment?

Sadly, she is far from alone.

The CEO of YCombinator, Garry Tan, says that what we are looking at is an “extinction-level event” for tech startups…

There are thousands of US startups that banked at SVB, often as their *sole bank*. $250K per account is not going to last long.

The #1 pressing issue for these startups is *payroll* – you can’t have people work if you can’t pay them.

This means mass furlough.

It might mean thousands of startups die before the FDIC gets through its receivership process and releases the funds.

From what I hear, there are venture debt options coming from providers like Brex, but we’re going to need *a lot* of options in order to avoid a mass shutdown of all American startups in the next few weeks.

This is an *extinction level event* for startups and will set startups and innovation back by 10 years or more.

I wish that I could tell you that he is wrong.

But I cannot.

When news of what was being done to SVB hit Wall Street, bank stocks started falling precipitously.

Nothing to see here. Just stocks of U.S. banks experienced a carnage. Everyone from top dogs like JP Morgan and Bank of America to all the local banks got clobbered.

But they are all too big to fail. They will get bailed out.

(Remember that bankers control everything in the… https://t.co/XuLbKyChMR pic.twitter.com/WhSrb3ttKt

— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) March 9, 2023

Is this the beginning of a horrifying new crisis for the financial industry?

Well, Michael Burry is suggesting that the collapse of SVB could be “our Enron”…

Michael Burry, the eccentric investor featured in the 2015 film “The Big Short,” warned: “It is possible today we found our Enron.”

And billionaire Bill Ackman is already suggesting that the federal government should bail out the bank…

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman says the US government should consider a “highly dilutive” bailout of Silicon Valley Bank amid jitters about its financial position.

The bank’s failure “could destroy an important long-term driver of the economy as VC-backed companies rely on SVB for loans and holding their operating cash,” Ackman said in a series of tweets on Thursday. “If private capital can’t provide a solution, a highly dilutive gov’t preferred bailout should be considered,” he said.

At this point, I doubt that Congress will be willing to do anything.

But if that doesn’t happen, Ackman is warning us that there could soon be bank runs at other major banks…

He added: “The risk of failure and deposit losses here is that the next, least well-capitalized bank faces a run and fails and the dominoes continue to fall.”

“That is why gov’t intervention should be considered.”

Once the dominoes start falling, it will be difficult to stop the process.

In fact, the situation is already so dire that Peter Schiff is proclaiming that we are “on the verge of a much bigger collapse than 2008”…

“The U.S. banking system is on the verge of a much bigger collapse than 2008,” said economist Peter Schiff, known for his dire predictions.

“Banks own long-term paper at extremely low interest rates. They can’t compete with short-term Treasuries. Mass withdrawals from depositors seeking higher yields will result in a wave of bank failures.”

Of course, a lot of the “experts” in the mainstream media never saw this coming.

Just last month, CNBC’s Jim Cramer was actually telling his viewers that they should buy SVB stock…

CNBC analyst Jim Cramer is once again being pilloried on social media after a clip resurfaced showing the “Mad Money” host recommending viewers buy shares of Silicon Valley Bank’s parent company, which owns the tech-driven commercial lender that swiftly collapsed on Friday.

“The ninth-best performer to date has been SVB Financial (the bank’s parent company). Don’t yawn,” Cramer told viewers during a Feb. 8 episode of “Mad Money.”

Cramer listed SVB Financial among his “biggest winners of 2023 … so far” alongside blue-chip stocks such as Meta, Tesla, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Norwegian Cruise Line.

Unfortunately, SVB’s situation is not unique.

Thanks to rapidly rising interest rates, many other banks are also sitting on mountains of Treasury bills that have lost a lot of value…

Banks are big investors in assets like Treasury bills because they need lots of safe places to park their cash. Many financial institutions piled into these investments during a period of historically-low interest rates that spanned the early years of the pandemic, as banks took in tons of new deposits and lending was somewhat restrained.

But now the Fed is hiking rates at a rapid clip, with Fed Chair Jay Powell warning earlier this week the central bank may have to speed up the pace of its rate increases to cool the economy further. The problem that creates for banks is simple: higher rates lower the value of their existing bonds.

For an extensive breakdown of why this is causing so much distress for our banks right now, I would highly recommend reading this excellent article.

As I have been telling my readers, our system simply cannot handle higher rates at this point.

But the “experts” at the Fed assured all of us that they knew exactly what they were doing.

Now they have caused one of the biggest bank failures in U.S. history, and much worse is on the way if they do not reverse course.

But I don’t expect the “experts” at the Fed to listen to any of us.

They are just going to keep doing what they are doing, and we are all going to have to live with the consequences.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to the new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream, and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial, or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and anyway that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Major employers all over America are announcing mass layoffs, but the mainstream media continues to insist that everything is just fine.  Every month the Biden administration gives us numbers that suggest that the economy is stable, and most mainstream reporters willingly go along with that narrative.  But anyone with half a brain should be able to see that we are headed for big economic trouble.  The housing bubble is imploding, food prices just keep rising, and we haven’t seen a wave of layoffs like we are currently witnessing since the days of the Great Recession.

One of the things that I appreciate about Challenger, Gray & Christmas is that they don’t have a political axe to grind.  They just report the facts, and their latest report tells us that announced job cuts in the United States are running 427 percent higher than they were at this time in 2022…

So far this year, employers announced plans to cut 180,713 jobs, up 427% from the 34,309 cuts announced in the first two months of 2022. It is the highest January-February total since 2009 when a total of 428,099 job cuts were announced in January and February.

Let those figures sink in for a moment.

When the number of planned layoffs is running 427 percent higher than a year ago, your economy is moving in the wrong direction very rapidly.

And the latest report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas doesn’t even include any of the job cut announcements that we have seen so far in March.

For example, it is being reported that General Motors will be offering a “voluntary” exit to the majority “of its 58,000 U.S. white-collar employees”…

General Motors will offer voluntary buyouts to a “majority” of its 58,000 U.S. white-collar employees, as it aims to cut $2 billion in structural costs over the next two years, according to a letter sent to workers Thursday from CEO Mary Barra.

The “Voluntary Separation Program,” or VSP, will be offered to all U.S. salaried employees who have spent five or more years at the company as of June 30. Outside of the U.S., the automaker will offer buyouts to executives with at least two years of time at the company.

General Motors is insisting that these are not “layoffs” because employees will get an opportunity to make a choice.

But we are also being told that workers will be “strongly encouraged to consider” the program.

In other words, nobody will be forced out the door, but a significant amount of arm-twisting will be taking place.

Meanwhile, I just learned that Johnson & Johnson has decided to lay off hundreds of workers…

Johnson & Johnson is letting go of nearly 350 employees in the surgical robotics space, according to layoff notices filed in California at the beginning of this month.

The WARN notices list layoffs involving 292 workers at Auris, 47 at Verb Surgical, and four at Ethicon Endo-Surgery. All of the jobs were based in Santa Clara County; the layoffs are effective April 30.

The “tsunami of layoffs” that we have been warned about is here.

It is really happening.

If you lose your job in the months ahead, you can blame the Federal Reserve.

After pushing interest rates all the way to the floor and flooding the system with unprecedented amounts of new money, the Federal Reserve has reversed course.

Now Fed officials are dramatically hiking interest rates and are rapidly reducing the size of their balance sheet.

As a result, money supply growth has actually turned sharply negative…

Money supply growth fell again in January, falling even further into negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. January’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.

Our system is not designed to handle this sort of a rollercoaster ride.

So there will be more layoffs.

And the housing market will continue to crash.

And more major financial institutions will be in peril.

In fact, it is being reported that a very important bank in California could potentially be on the verge of collapse…

Is the bursting of the tech bubble finally spilling over to the financial system?

One day after the biggest crypto-focused bank, Silvergate Capital, announced plans to unwind and liquidate after a deposit run effectively killed its core business model, this morning its far larger peer – the parent company of the venerable Silicon Valley Bank, SVB Financial Group – saw its shares plunge the most in more than two decades after the company took “steps to bolster its financial position” that included not only a highly dilutive stock offering but also a panicked asset sale that sparked fears of a liquidity crisis at one of the biggest and original providers of funding to the Venture Capital industry.

The Santa Clara-based company’s shares sank by as much as 60% on Thursday, their biggest decline in the company’s history since going public in 1987.

This is a really big story.

It has even been suggested that this could possibly be another “Lehman Brothers moment” if the financial position of the institution cannot be stabilized.

This news was part of the reason why stock prices were way down once again on Thursday…

The S&P 500 slid 1.85% to end at 3,918.32, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average dove 543.54 points, or 1.66%, to settle at 32,254.86. The Nasdaq Composite shed 2.05% to finish at 11,338.35.

Thursday’s losses brought the Dow to close below its 200-day moving average for the first time since Nov. 9. For the week and year, the 30-stock index is down 3.4% and 2.7%, respectively.

I am going to be watching the financial markets very carefully in the weeks ahead.

Trouble is brewing.

Hopefully the recent slide that we have been witnessing will not become an avalanche.

But if the Federal Reserve continues to go down this road, it will inevitably cause a tremendous amount of chaos.

For a very long time, the Fed artificially propped up our financial system.  Unfortunately, now the artificial support has been removed, and that is really bad news.

We all knew that a day of reckoning would arrive eventually, but hopefully we have at least a little bit more time before our financial system starts coming apart at the seams.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post So Far In 2023, Announced Job Cuts Are Running 427 Percent Higher Than They Were At This Time In 2022 appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

The wait for the next “Lehman Brothers moment” is over.  On Friday, we witnessed the second biggest bank failure in U.S. history.  The stunning collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is shaking the financial world to the core.  As of the end of last year, the bank had 175 billion dollars in deposits, and approximately 151 billion dollars of those deposits were uninsured.  In other words, a lot of wealthy individuals and large companies are in danger of being wiped out.  In particular, this is being described as an “extinction level event” for tech startups, because thousands of them did their banking with SVB.  I cannot even begin to describe how cataclysmic this is going to be for the tech industry as a whole.

There is so much to cover, and so let me try to take this one step at a time.

Rumors of trouble at SVB had sparked a massive bank run in recent days, and regulators moved quickly on Friday to permanently shut the bank down…

Financial regulators have closed Silicon Valley Bank and taken control of its deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced Friday, in what is the largest U.S. bank failure since the global financial crisis more than a decade ago.

The collapse of SVB, a key player in the tech and venture capital community, leaves companies and wealthy individuals largely unsure of what will happen to their money.

We haven’t seen anything like this in a very long time.

In fact, it is being reported that this is the second biggest bank failure in all of U.S. history…

The closure marks the biggest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis and the second-largest in U.S. history after Washington Mutual collapsed during that industry-wide meltdown, according to FDIC data.

As of the end of December, the Santa Clara, California-based bank — the 16th largest bank in the country — had $209 billion in assets with more than $175 billion in deposits. As with other FDIC-member banks, SVB deposits are insured up to $250,000 per depositor.

The good news is that anyone that had less than $250,000 in the bank will be covered by FDIC insurance…

The FDIC’s standard insurance covers up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank, for each account ownership category. The FDIC said uninsured depositors will get receivership certificates for their balances. The regulator said it will pay uninsured depositors an advanced dividend within the next week, with potential additional dividend payments as the regulator sells SVB’s assets.

Whether depositors with more than $250,000 ultimately get all their money back will be determined by the amount of money the regulator gets as it sells Silicon Valley assets or if another bank takes ownership of the remaining assets. There were concerns in the tech community that until that process unfolds, some companies may have issues making payroll.

Unfortunately, as I noted above, the vast majority of the deposits with SVB exceeded the $250,000 threshold and were thus uninsured…

As we noted before, while the FDIC noted that SVIB had $175BN in deposits as of Dec 31, note that some $151.5BN of these are uninsured, which means they get exactly zero although a sizable number of them likely pulled their deposits in the past few days.

As SVB assets are liquidated, hopefully those that had uninsured deposits at SVB will eventually see some of their money.

But for now, many of them are facing a complete and total nightmare.

For example, one tech CEO named Ashley Turner is freaking out because she had “at least $10m deposited with SVB”…

Ashley Tyrner, CEO of Boston wellness firm FarmboxRx, said she had at least $10m deposited with SVB and has been frantically calling her banker. She said it had been ‘the worst 18 hours of my life.’

Can you imagine how she must be feeling at this moment?

Sadly, she is far from alone.

The CEO of YCombinator, Garry Tan, says that what we are looking at is an “extinction level event” for tech startups…

There are thousands of US startups that banked at SVB, often as their *sole bank*. $250K per account is not going to last long.

The #1 pressing issue for these startups is *payroll* – you can’t have people work if you can’t pay them.

This means mass furlough.

It might mean thousands of startups die before the FDIC gets through its receivership process and releases the funds.

From what I hear, there are venture debt options coming from providers like Brex, but we’re going to need *a lot* of options in order to avoid a mass shutdown of all American startups in the next few weeks.

This is an *extinction level event* for startups and will set startups and innovation back by 10 years or more.

I wish that I could tell you that he is wrong.

But I cannot.

When news of what was being done to SVB hit Wall Street, bank stocks started falling precipitously.

Nothing to see here. Just stocks of U.S. banks experienced a carnage. Everyone from top dogs like JP Morgan and Bank of America to all the local banks got clobbered.

But they are all too big to fail. They will get bailed out.

(Remember that bankers control everything in the… https://t.co/XuLbKyChMR pic.twitter.com/WhSrb3ttKt

— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) March 9, 2023

Is this the beginning of a horrifying new crisis for the financial industry?

Well, Michael Burry is suggesting that the collapse of SVB could be “our Enron”…

Michael Burry, the eccentric investor featured in the 2015 film “The Big Short,” warned: “It is possible today we found our Enron.”

And billionaire Bill Ackman is already suggesting that the federal government should bail out the bank…

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman says the US government should consider a “highly dilutive” bailout of Silicon Valley Bank amid jitters about its financial position.

The bank’s failure “could destroy an important long-term driver of the economy as VC-backed companies rely on SVB for loans and holding their operating cash,” Ackman said in a series of tweets on Thursday. “If private capital can’t provide a solution, a highly dilutive gov’t preferred bailout should be considered,” he said.

At this point, I doubt that Congress will be willing to do anything.

But if that doesn’t happen, Ackman is warning us that there could soon be bank runs at other major banks…

He added: “The risk of failure and deposit losses here is that the next, least well-capitalized bank faces a run and fails and the dominoes continue to fall.”

“That is why gov’t intervention should be considered.”

Once the dominoes start falling, it will be difficult to stop the process.

In fact, the situation is already so dire that Peter Schiff is proclaiming that we are “on the verge of a much bigger collapse than 2008”…

“The U.S. banking system is on the verge of a much bigger collapse than 2008,” said economist Peter Schiff, known for his dire predictions.

“Banks own long-term paper at extremely low interest rates. They can’t compete with short-term Treasuries. Mass withdrawals from depositors seeking higher yields will result in a wave of bank failures.”

Of course a lot of the “experts” in the mainstream media never saw this coming.

Just last month, CNBC’s Jim Cramer was actually telling his viewers that they should buy SVB stock…

CNBC analyst Jim Cramer is once again being pilloried on social media after a clip resurfaced showing the “Mad Money” host recommending viewers buy shares of Silicon Valley Bank’s parent company, which owns the tech-driven commercial lender that swiftly collapsed on Friday.

“The ninth-best performer to date has been SVB Financial (the bank’s parent company). Don’t yawn,” Cramer told viewers during a Feb. 8 episode of “Mad Money.”

Cramer listed SVB Financial among his “biggest winners of 2023 … so far” alongside blue-chip stocks such as Meta, Tesla, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Norwegian Cruise Line.

Unfortunately, SVB’s situation is not unique.

Thanks to rapidly rising interest rates, many other banks are also sitting on mountains of Treasury bills that have lost a lot of value…

Banks are big investors in assets like Treasury bills because they need lots of safe places to park their cash. Many financial institutions piled into these investments during a period of historically-low interest rates that spanned the early years of the pandemic, as banks took in tons of new deposits and lending was somewhat restrained.

But now the Fed is hiking rates at a rapid clip, with Fed Chair Jay Powell warning earlier this week the central bank may have to speed up the pace of its rate increases to cool the economy further. The problem that creates for banks is simple: higher rates lower the value of their existing bonds.

For an extensive break down of why this is causing so much distress for our banks right now, I would highly recommend reading this excellent article.

As I have been telling my readers, our system simply cannot handle higher rates at this point.

But the “experts” at the Fed assured all of us that they knew exactly what they were doing.

Now they have caused one of the biggest bank failures in U.S. history, and much worse is on the way if they do not reverse course.

But I don’t expect the “experts” at the Fed to listen to any of us.

They are just going to keep doing what they are doing, and we are all going to have to live with the consequences.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post 2nd Biggest Bank Failure In U.S. History – “We Found Our Enron” – “On The Verge Of A Much Bigger Collapse Than 2008” appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

When it rains, it pours.  On the exact same day that we witnessed the second largest bank failure in U.S. history, Wells Fargo experienced an unprecedented nationwide computer glitch that caused countless numbers of account holders to have “incorrect balances” and “missing transactions”.  This is yet another example that demonstrates why it is never wise to put all of your eggs into one basket.  If you have all of your money in just one bank, you may wake up one day and find that you are suddenly not able to access any of it.  For years I have been telling my readers to spread their assets around, because our banking system is far more vulnerable than most people realize.

In particular, I have never been a fan of Wells Fargo.

It has been embroiled in controversy for years, and now this massive “computer glitch” has happened…

A nationwide computer glitch at Wells Fargo left irate customers with incorrect balances and missing transactions Friday morning, sometimes dipping accounts into negative balances.

Funds remain available, even though some customers’ direct deposit transactions were not showing on their accounts, bank spokesman Josh Dunn said.

Dunn did not say how many customers were impacted by the problem and did not provide a time when customers can expect the issue to be resolved. But he said Wells Fargo was “working quickly on a resolution.” As of 4:30 p.m. Friday, Dunn could not say when the problem would be resolved.

The number one thing that you should want from any bank is security.

And right now Wells Fargo seems to be severely lacking in this area.

When users tried to log into their online banking apps, they received a very alarming message…

It’s not clear what might be causing the direct deposit issue or when it might be resolved, but Wells Fargo posted a message at the top of its online banking app saying: “If you see incorrect balances or missing transactions, this may be due to a technical issue and we apologize.”

Needless to say, a lot of account holders were not pleased.

Wells Fargo is further proof to keep cash on hand for use. In the blink of an eye, a computer glitch or whatever, your funds are inaccessible.

— SD (@SDWilliby) March 10, 2023

i do not like to feel massive panic immediately upon waking but wells fargo decided to give me that gift this morning

— Katy Barber (@katy__kakes) March 10, 2023

I woke up to overdraft protection emails. @WellsFargo better have a good explanation because I had a paycheck yesterday

— aegyo tired leader @ htx (@_hasesuns) March 10, 2023

Wells Fargo has me like this at 9am on payday. I will definitely be closing my accounts. #WellsFargo pic.twitter.com/qFGVpaWyFY

— trav (@kingtravvv) March 10, 2023

Of course those that have their money in Silicon Valley Bank are in much worse shape.

Rumors had caused a huge run on the bank in recent days, and regulators moved very quickly on Friday to permanently shut it down…

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) says it has seized control of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), confirming the lender was shut down by California regulators amid a run on the bank.

The FDIC said in a press release that SVB was closed on Friday by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which in turn appointed FDIC as the receiver of all insured deposits of the bank.

Those that have less than $250,000 deposited with SVB will be covered by FDIC insurance.

But as I detailed in an article that I posted earlier today, the vast majority of the funds deposited with SVB are not covered by FDIC insurance.

Some depositors are literally in danger of losing millions of dollars, and that should deeply alarm all of us.

Meanwhile, there are now rumors that another major bank on the west coast may be in jeopardy…

Concerns have quickly shifted to other banks that might be in trouble. First Republic, another West Coast-based bank whose shares are down more than 30% since Wednesday, tried to reassure investors. In an unusual statement midday Friday, it said tech companies only account for 4% of its deposits and that less than 15% of its total assets are invested in securities like bonds.

Is this the start of a new financial crisis?

Some experts that were interviewed by CNN claim that this is not the case…

Mike Mayo, senior bank analyst at Wells Fargo, said the crisis at SVB might be “an idiosyncratic situation.”

“This is night and day versus the global financial crisis from 15 years ago,” he told CNN’s Julia Chatterley Friday. Back then, he said, “banks were taking excessive risks, and people thought everything was fine. Now everyone’s concerned, but underneath the surface the banks are more resilient than they’ve been in a generation.”

Similarly, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told Bloomberg News Friday that he saw “no systemic risk” if the situation “is handled reasonably,” adding he had “every reason to think that it will be.”

You can believe them if you want.

But as I explained earlier today, SVB got into trouble because they were sitting on mountains of Treasury bills that rapidly lost value once the Fed started aggressively hiking interest rates.

Unfortunately, there are lots of other banks that are in the exact same position.

The financial day of reckoning that I have been warning about for a very long time appears to be rapidly approaching, and most Americans are not prepared for it at all.

If you have all of your money in a single institution, or if you have more than $250,000 in a single bank, I would encourage you to consider taking action while you still can.

Things are starting to get really crazy out there, and you don’t want to find yourself exposed when the music stops playing.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Wells Fargo Customers Have “Incorrect Balances And Missing Transactions” Due To An Absolutely Massive “Nationwide Computer Glitch” appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

A modern cellphone is a powerful tool, and the modern prepper should not gloss over the potential usefulness of prepper…

This article %12 Survival Prepper Apps to Download in 2023% appeared first on %SHTF Blog – Modern Survival%.

Germany’s energy crisis continues to worsen and power cuts are coming. The country could face an electricity shortage in the next two years as its own energy resources become increasingly insufficient and demand rises.

Germany’s Public Now Favors Nuclear Power

Not to mention, the Nord Stream pipeline destruction that devastated the already hammered energy supply. Welt am Sonntag reported on Sunday, citing a local McKinsey study, that by 2025 the country will lack some four gigawatts of power capacity, while by 2030 the deficit will increase to 30 gigawatts, according to a report by RT.

“So we’re heading toward a significant shortage: 30GW corresponds to the capacity of about 30 large thermal power plants,” the study warned. Analysts claim the country will not be able to cover its energy needs with its own resources at peak loads, and by 2030 up to 100 power outages may occur, with the longest phase lasting about 21 hours. The analysts also warned that Berlin will not be able to give up gas in the next ten years.

“Our scenario analysis shows that natural gas will have to play a role in the electricity mix in the future. It is therefore important to reduce import dependency by diversifying suppliers. Part of the strategy must also be to make more green hydrogen available for power generation,” analysts stated, adding that Germany must also ensure it can obtain electricity from neighboring European countries, which requires innovation and expansion of networks.

Russia: Evidence U.S. Is Guilty Of Destroying Nord Stream Is “More Than A Smoking Gun”

The McKinsey study contradicts a recent report by the country’s Federal Network Agency (funded by the ruling class), which said the power supply would be secure for the next decade even if electricity consumption increases significantly.

Bloomberg reported that by 2030 Germany will have to spend at least $1 trillion to increase energy production from renewable sources. The German grid regulator and think tank Agora Energiewende estimates that Germany will face a one-third increase in demand by 2030, which means the country’s power plants will need to generate about 250 gigawatts of additional electricity by that time.

Nord Stream Sabotage Was US Covert Op: Seymour Hersh Bombshell Prompts White House Response

When I was a kid, I remember spending a lot of time outdoors and going on hikes. Looking at myself now, I probably seem over-prepared and paranoid with the amount of outdoor gear I carry now versus when I was younger. That’s because back then I didn’t really carry anything. Okay, that’s not entirely true….

The post Survival Hiking Kit appeared first on Survival Cache.

This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog. 

By the end of this month, there will be no more Walmart stores in Portland.  More than 641,000 people live within the city limits of Portland, so you would think that there should be a lot of money to be made there.

But Walmart has decided to wave the white flag.  Portland has been transformed into a complete and utter hellhole, and apparently, Walmart executives have determined that things are not going to turn around any time soon.  So they have announced that the last two Walmart stores in Portland that were still operational will be permanently shut down by the end of March…

The last two Walmart stores within Portland’s city limits will close in late March, the company announced.

The locations, at 1123 North Hayden Meadows Drive and at 4200 Southeast 82nd Avenue at the Eastport Plaza, will both close on Friday, March 24. Walmart says they are closing the stores because they were not meeting financial expectations.

A spokesperson for Walmart used very careful language to explain why these stores are being closed…

“The decision to close these stores was made after a careful review of their overall performance. We consider many factors, including current and projected financial performance, location, population, customer needs, and the proximity of other nearby stores when making these difficult decisions. After we decide to move forward, our focus is on our associates and their transition, which is the case here,” a spokesperson with Walmart said.

Of course, this isn’t exactly the truth.

But what do you expect Walmart to say?

Do you expect a corporate spokesperson to admit that Walmart is leaving Portland because it has become a drug-ridden, crime-infested hellhole?

One customer that was interviewed about the store closings addressed the real reason why Walmart is leaving…

“We gotta resolve the shoplifting one way or another,” she added, addressing the topic of retail theft at the city’s locations, “because that is simply the problem. It’s gotta stop.”

At this point, much of Portland has been turned into a giant tent city for the homeless.

And a very high percentage of the homeless are addicted to drugs.

The only way that many of those addicts can fund their addictions is by theft, and as I noted in an article that I posted yesterday, over 2,600 downtown businesses have left Portland in recent years as a result…

Business owners are fleeing Portland in droves amid a pronounced rise in crime and homelessness, officials in the Democratic stronghold have revealed.

Public data shows that since the pandemic, more than 2,600 downtown businesses have filed changes of address with the U.S. Postal Service to leave their downtown ZIP codes.

Several big-name employers, such Umpqua Bank, have been among the mass exodus, carried out by owners who have taken issue with the rising crime levels and homelessness – and the city’s failure to address it.

We really are in the midst of the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our country.

And it is getting worse with each passing year.

We have also just learned that Amazon will be shutting down retail locations in New York City, Seattle and San Francisco…

Amazon plans to close eight of its Go convenience stores, the company said Friday, a decision that coincides with a pullback in its physical footprint and a broader effort to cut costs.

The company will shut two Go stores in New York City, two locations in Seattle, and four stores in San Francisco. The stores will close on April 1, and Amazon said it will work to help affected employees secure other roles at the company.

Needless to say, all three of those cities are also dealing with massive crime waves that are being fueled by desperate drug addicts.

And is it just a coincidence that virtually all of the major cities that are having enormous problems with crime are run by Democrats?

Look, the truth is that our entire country is rapidly degenerating all around us, and that includes areas run by Republicans.

But the far-left policies that have been implemented by radical Democrats all over America have clearly been a complete failure.

In 2022, the ten states with the highest official rates of unemployment were all run by Democrats…

The ten states with the highest unemployment rates in 2022 were: Nevada (5.4 percent), whose governor was Democrat Steve Sisolak; Illinois (4.6 percent), whose  governor was Democrat J.B. Pritzker; Delaware (4.5 percent) whose governor was Democrat John Carney; Pennsylvania (4.4. percent), whose governor was Democrat Tom Wolf; New York (4.3 percent), whose governor was Kathy Hochul; Washington (4.2 percent), whose governor was Democrat Jay Inslee; Oregon (4.2 percent), whose governor was Democrat Kate Brown; Michigan (4.2 percent), whose governor was Democrat Gretchen Whitmer; Connecticut (4.2 percent), whose governor was Democrat Ned Lamont; and California (4.2 percent), whose governor was Democrat Gavin Newsom.

Do you think that is just a coincidence?

Sadly, it isn’t just our society that is deteriorating.

As Egon von Greyerz has aptly noted, the entire world “has been in a process of self-destruction” for a very long time…

For at least half a century, the world has been in a process of self-destruction.

As the decline accelerates, the next phase of 5-10 years will include major political, social, economic as well as wealth – destruction.

What can be more heinous than a total economic and financial collapse accompanied by a potential World War III that at worst could destroy the world totally.

Sadly, he is quite correct.

If we stay on this self-destructive path, the consequences are going to be far more horrible than most people are even willing to imagine right now.

So let us hope that we reverse course while there is still time to do so.

Unfortunately, evil continues to spread like wildfire all throughout our society, and the clock is ticking.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to the new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream, and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial, or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and anyway that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

@media (max-width:576px) { .read-more-content { height: 1980em; } }

The post Best Adventure Gear: Condor Outdoor Hell & Back Care Package appeared first on Ballistic Magazine.

A real survival flashlight should be able to survive the harshest of conditions.

Heat, moisture, and high impacts should be a non-issue if it’s truly tactical.

And I’d also argue that it should have more uses than just illumination.

If it’s going to truly live up to its survival nameplate; it needs to be designed to help keep you alive.

To help you survive.

Are You Ready For The Tough Times Ahead? Take My 60 Sec Quiz To See If You’re Part Of ‘The Fragile Masses’ Or Not… Start Quiz Now!

So what could be more tactical than a flashlight that has 14 survival uses?

So in this article, we’ll cover 14 improvised uses for the FireHawk LED Tactical Flashlight.

Get A FREE FireHawk Tactical Flashlight (+S&H)

1. Defend Yourself From A Threat

There are two ways this tough everyday carry flashlight can neutralize a threat.

1. You can momentarily blind someone with its intense laser-focused beam of light.
2. You can strike them with it.

Let’s cover option one first.

This super bright LED flashlight is so bright; it comes from the factory with a yellow caution sticker. A sticker that warns you (the owner) against shining it directly into someone’s eyes.

So just how intense is this little-LED survival flashlight?

Try to recall an experience when some jackass forgot to turn off his high-beam headlights. Remember that burning sensation when your vision became temporarily impaired, and you had to blink multiple times to clear your retinas?

Shining this survival flashlight directly into your eyes feels a lot like that; maybe even worse.

So do not underestimate this option for self-defense.

It’s an effective and surprising maneuver in an unfriendly encounter. And not just useful at night either, during the day this LED flashlight is just as effective at blinding a foe.

Fundamentally, a threat can’t hit (or shoot) what it can’t see.

Stunning a threat with a super bright, focused LED beam of light pointed directly into their eyes will give you the upper hand. It will give you a few crucial seconds to react first. Enough time for you to fight or flee.

If you decide to fight, I recommend you move quickly and decisively against your temporarily blinded adversary.

Remember, you’re in danger so forget a “fair fight,” strike them before they know what hit them.

This is a HUGE advantage; don’t waste it.

If you choose to flee instead, again, act as quickly as possible to slip away before your opponent can fully recover. Before they can detect which direction you escaped.

There’s also a second way to use your FireHawk Tactical Flashlight as a self-defense weapon.

I want you to take a close look at the tip of this flashlight. See those metal prongs? See the deep grooves along the side?

Also, take note of the size of this survival flashlight and how well it fits in the palm of your hand.

Because of these tactical design elements (size, prongs, and grip), this flashlight makes for an excellent blunt forced melee weapon.

Now, of course, you wouldn’t use this method in any fight, but you would if your life depended on it.

The fit, the grip, and the metal prongs all add up to an ideal weapon to knock your foe out cold. Bring the tip of the flashlight down hard on your adversary and if you strike a blow in the perfect location, they will crumble to the ground straight away.

Just watch the damage that a FireHawk Flashlight can inflict on this poor orange:

2. Hide Your Small Valuables

There are numerous reasons why having a small hidden chamber is beneficial, but for those who can’t think of any off-hand, I’ll give you two that come to mind.

1. If you’re traveling through a less-than-desirable neighborhood and you’re concerned about getting mugged. You could hide a bit of cash or jewelry to appear as if you had no valuables.
2. You happen you be carrying an item considered illegal in some states. So you stash that item in your FireHawks hidden chamber to keep your secret safe.

The bottom line is this:

If you find yourself in a situation where you need to hide something small, just remove the AA battery forming a discrete empty storage chamber.

3. Quietly Coordinate An Attack

You can use the soft and subtle clicking sound from the on/off button to signal a coordinated action.

Instead of shouting “1,2,3 let’s get ’em!”, you could click your FireHawk’s on/off button, and your team would know to spring into action on an unsuspecting foe.

Obviously, strategic coordination like this takes pre-planning, but the subtle click sound is a perfect action-signaling device.

4. Start A Fire With The Battery

Your FireHawk Flashlight requires a single AA battery; that’s it. But did you know you can use a single AA battery to start a fire?

All you need is a small strip of foil (gum wrappers work great for this).

Fold the foil. Then touch both ends of the foil to the opposite ends of a juiced battery and the foil will burst into flame.

How to start a fire with an AA Battery and a gum wrapper

So by carrying a working FireHawk Flashlight and a small pack of gum, you can improve your chances of survival by having the ability to create fire in a pinch.

And that’s what preparing, adapting, and overcoming are all about, using what you have with you to survive.

5. Throw A Stalker Off Your Trail

Let’s imagine for a second that you noticed a stalker. It’s at night, and you’d like to throw your stalker off your trail. You can accomplish this in 2 ways.

You can flash a beam of light onto an object located away from your current position. This will hopefully confuse the stalker who is following you.

They will see the flash of light and will stop to figure out what it was. They may even gravitate toward what they saw. Either way, the hesitation, and the confusion may give you enough time to slip away undetected.

The other way you can use your FireHawk Flashlight as a diversion tool is just to chuck it. The loud sound of it landing and hitting other objects will confuse a stalker and lead them toward the noise and away from you.

Personally, I’d rather keep the survival flashlight with me in case I needed to use it as a self-defense weapon, but for others, throwing it as a diversion device may make more sense.

Plus, the shape, size, and weight of this flashlight make it a good object to throw a long distance.

Objects that are too small or too light won’t work nearly as well because you can’t throw them far enough. Light objects also won’t make much noise.

6. Work In The Dark Hands-Free

This is a hand-held flashlight, not a headlamp, so how can you use it to work “hands-free”?

One of the smartest features of this flashlight is the recessed on/off button.

Having this button recessed helps prevent accidental activation, but it also allows you to set this survival flashlight down on a flat surface with the LED light facing up.

So you can turn it on, set it down (light end up), and then get to work with both hands.

While this setup is not as ideal as a good headlamp, it will provide enough ambient light in a dark room to accomplish most tasks. Better than trying to hold the flashlight in your teeth or working in the dark!

7. Catch Fish In The Wilderness

Hopefully, you never need to go to these lengths, and if you do, you’re going to lose its flashlight functionality. So there is a significant tradeoff to this survival use.

However, if push comes to shove, you can rip the small spring out of the button circuitry and use it to make several small fish hooks.

These hooks will only work for small fish (small lake trout or bluegill). The spring hooks won’t be robust enough to haul in a 40-pound channel catfish.

So you now have a couple of makeshift fishhooks, but you also need a bit of lead weight to keep the hooks at the bottom of the lake (where the fish are).

Fortunately, this flashlight comes apart into three sections; i.e. three chunks of metal. So tie one of these flashlight parts to your fishing line and it will help keep your hook on the bottom of the pond.

Now, before someone complains, I agree this setup is less than ideal. Catching fish with this rig won’t be easy and may not even be worth the effort, but that’s for you to decide.

Plus, worms and fishing lines are not included so you’ll need to figure those out.

8. Create Some Highly Flammable Tinder

This use and the next use are my favorites for the FireHawk Flashlight. You CAN start a fire using just the parts of this flashlight without the battery.

But before starting a fire, you’ll need some fine highly flammable tinder. The dryer and finer the tinder, the easier it will be to light.

Remember those deep grooves located on the side of your flashlight?

You can use these grip grooves to create fine tinder. I’d rather use a fixed-blade survival knife for this, but if you accidentally leave it behind this works fairly well.

Apply some downward force while quickly rubbing the grooves across a stick. These grooves will cut out small fibers of wood. Keep doing this until you get a small pile of fine tinder. Now you’re ready to ignite this fine tinder pile.

9. Start A Fire With The Lens

Here’s the fun part. Remove your FireHawks LED focus lens from the tip. This lens does an amazing job of focusing light, similar to a magnifying glass.

So for this to work, you will need it to be sunny out. Even partly cloudy will make this a challenging proposition.

However, if you do have a sunny day, angle the focus lens to capture the direct sunlight and focus it onto the tinder. Make sure you have the curved side facing toward the sun for maximum energy focus.

Also, the tighter you focus the light, the denser the energy will be. Once you got it just right, hold it steady for a few minutes, and viola….you’ve made fire!

10. Create A High Powered Spotlight

To be honest, this one will work with most flashlights (not just the FireHawk) but I like the power and size combination of the FireHawk to make this project as badass as possible.

First, you need to build a small mounting structure and then point the FireHawk directly through a magnifying glass.

It’s a simple but effective DIY project that almost anyone can complete in about an hour.

DIY Spotlight From A Flashlight

Now you have a setup that’s perfect for spotting animals or intruders on your property with ease.

11. Help Stash Your Food From Predators

If you’re camping in a primitive location or backpacking where bears are present, it’s recommended that you hang your food.

Hanging your food keeps it safe from bears and other wildlife. It’s a backpacking requirement in places like Glacier National Park where Grizzlies are prevalent.

In order to hang your food, you first put all your food into a bag or pouch. Next, you tie some string or paracord to the pouch and throw the opposite end of your string up over a high branch. The branch needs to be fairly high for this to work properly.

However, a good high branch is far to toss a light string over without using an object with some weight. Rocks work ok for this, but they are a pain to tie a string around without it slipping off.

So here’s where you’re FireHawk Flashlight comes in handy. It’s actually the perfect size and shape for throwing.

Plus, it’s got a heavy-duty clip to tie off too.

Also, don’t worry too much about it breaking your FireHawk, it can take some abuse and keep on shining.

Once you’ve tossed your FireHawk over the high branch, pull the string attached down and your food bag up. Tie it off to the tree trunk and you’re done.

12. A Poorman’s Rifle Spotlight

Nowadays you can buy better-designed rigs to mount a survival flashlight to your rifle. But those custom-designed rigs are often only available for newer rifles and are expensive.

But for those of us with old-school, Ruger 22s who are doing a bit of nighttime survival varmint hunting, adding a FireHawk Flashlight on your rig can come in handy.

You can easily secure your Firehawk using electrical tape. The tape is tough, it stretches, it’s black, and it’s easy to cut off with minimal adhesive residual left behind.

Just wrap it a few times and you’re all set with a makeshift rifle spotlight.

I recommend adjusting your FireHawk for the tightly focused spotlight setting and not in splash lighting only want to light up your target; not the entire surrounding area.

13. Read A Map In the Dark

I admit this survival use is on the obvious side, but it’s one of my favorite uses on backpacking trips so I just couldn’t leave it out.

Here’s the deal, reading a topographical map in good light is hard enough. Reading one in poor lighting can easily lead to a costly mistake.

And reading a topo map correctly is essential to avoid getting lost or ending up miles off track. Most of these maps have tiny print, and if you have aged eyes it can be extremely hard to pick out all those tiny details.

High-intensity illumination will drastically help improve your ability to read this small print.

A good survival flashlight is a must to read a map at night, but it also gets dim during the day underneath a dense forest canopy.

If you’re going into the wilderness for any reason (hunting, camping, fishing, or backpacking) take a local topographical map and your FireHawk with you to ensure you don’t miss all the crucial details.

14. Improve Your Chances Of Rescue

Use your FireHawk flashlight as a rescue signaling device to improve your survival chances. This works during the day or at night.

At night, if you’re lost in the wilderness but see a rescue helicopter sweeping the area, point your FireHawk at it in the spotlight setting.

Wave it quickly back and forth to help garner even more attention. This high-powered, super bright LED will get noticed. Once the rescuers notice it, they will circle around to investigate further.

The same idea works during the day. While the contrast during the day will be much less than at night, this LED light can still catch the attention of a rescue team. Just make sure you get the beam of the light focused and pointed directly at your target.

The easiest way to do this is to stick your hand out at arm’s length. Now make a V shape with your first and second fingers. Put your target object (rescue helicopter) between your two fingers.

Once you have that setup, shine your FireHawk flashlight between your fingers and directly at the intended target.

Once you’ve acquired your target with the light beam, quickly shake the light back and forth between your fingers.

This will create mini flashes of intense light that will help to get noticed.  Signaling is a highly underappreciated survival strategy that could very well save your life.

If You Don’t Have a FireHawk Flashlight yet, Now’s the Perfect Time

As you can tell, we’re pretty proud of our FireHawk Flashlight and all its survival uses. In fact, we’re so proud that we want everyone to have one.

Prepare, Adapt, and Overcome,

“Just In Case” Jack

For A Limited Time Only: Get a FREE FireHawk Tactical Flashlight For Visiting Skilled Survival! Just pay s&h. Click Here To Learn More.

The post Survival Flashlight: 14 Improvised Uses appeared first on Skilled Survival.