Category: Survival Mindset

The AI Threat in Perspective, by Silvertip

In the 1980s, a funny, popular pseudo-AI computer program “Eliza” was a college joke magnet.  A few beers, and then dialed into a dialup Bulletin Board System (BBS) and ask all kinds of suggestive questions, just to see what “Eliza” said.  So, as a Coder, we expanded the Data File, many times over… and Eliza’s answers got more verbose and direct, like Grandma suddenly butting into your life!  That was about the start of the AI revolution, for me.  It was cool, funny, and a half-life of 30 minutes over a dialup system.  Querying a Data file, database of “information” …


Preparing to Serve in Disasters, by JMS

This my recollection about preparing for a natural disaster in the summer of 2017. I had just arrived on a Caribbean island with a single checked bag and a temporary rental. Within weeks of arriving Hurricane Irma, a category five hurricane, passed a few miles north of the island. It took only hours for the island to lose electricity and communication with the outside world. Two weeks later, Hurricane Maria hit the island and knocked us back to the 18th century. I was unable to access my money in a bank on the US mainland, due to infrastructure damage on …


Fall of the American Republic – Part 1, by Single Farmer

Author’s Introductory Note: Please remember all of my writings are a Gedankenexperiment, not a form of advice, but an extended thought experiment. I can safely conclude that the Republic has likely fallen just before its 250th Birthday. My ancestors were founders of the original Republic and I am one of the small percentage of Heritage Americans left with 97.5 percent of people who reside in the United States having no original colonial Patriot blood flowing in their veins. I do not make this pronouncement lightly or gleefully, but solemnly as my family has for generations warned against the dangers of …


Mastering the P.A.C.E. Model for True Self-Reliance, by A.C.

Most people live in a state of perpetual psychological comfort known as Normalcy Bias. This is the deeply ingrained, warm, fuzzy assumption that the systems keeping us alive today will function indefinitely tomorrow. We unconsciously believe that the grocery store will always hold a fresh supply of organic kale, the kitchen tap will never run dry, and the wall outlet will indefinitely pump electricity on demand. Spoiler alert: It won’t. When we analyze why individuals, organizations, or entire societies collapse during a crisis, the root cause is rarely a complete lack of preparation. Instead, failure occurs because someone mistook a …


Health, Fitness, and The End Of The World, by D.F.

In this article, I’ll describe how medicine and society will change, and why you should become a fitness nut and not just a prepper. There’s a stereotype of preppers, and it’s not kind: A middle aged or older man with a BMI that passed 30 before he was 30 and grew by 1% every year, a ton of guns, canned food, and a half-hearted vegetable garden. I know because I resemble that. As I’ve been struggling to recover my health, I’ve had a few realizations that have kept me on the path to fitness. Health is something money can’t buy. …


Saving Western Civilization, by Single Farmer

Editor’s Introductory Note: This young man is prayerfully seeking a wife. He is offering an after-marriage gift of up to $50,000 to whoever introduces him to his bride with $18,000 after their marriage and another $16,000 to the individual who provided the introduction after the first two births of healthy children born to him and his wife, for a total potential gift of $50,000. For further details, see his article posted on July 13th, 2025: My Quest for a Wife: I’m Willing to Move, and in his May 6, 2026 article on rural migration starting at the bold section on …


Preparedness Observations from the Rideshare Driver’s Seat by Guitar George

For the last six years, I have been supplementing my retirement income by working as a rideshare driver. At first, I was a little apprehensive about picking up complete strangers and all of the potential danger that might entail. After almost 20,000 rides, I can honestly say that there was only one experience where I thought my personal safety was at risk and it was relatively minor. Since those early days, rideshare companies have greatly improved their safety tools for both drivers and riders. Although I did not begin driving as an exercise in preparedness, it quickly became one.


A Letter To My Younger Self – Part 2, by N.C.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) The World As We Now Know It Succeed here first. A good man succeeds regardless of where he is. Marcus Aurelius would be a good man here or in ancient Rome. Same for Sejong the Great. Same if an Adeptus Astartes was put in your place. A good man succeeds where he finds himself. “I would succeed if only…” is loser talk. It’s taken many a man who might have succeeded and turned him into one who did not. You’ve probably heard “if you think you can or think you can’t, you’re …


A Letter To My Younger Self – Part 1, by N.C.

This is an article hypothetically written to my younger self, as if I were just going to start on my path of preparation. These are lessons I spent a couple decades learning. So, this is for you, young man. Things I’ve learned, what I’d do if I were in your shoes: Social Skills Are the Primary Prepping Skills Not guns. Not gardening. Not bushcraft. Social skills. Social Skills are the single most important skill you need. It will affect your career and therefore your resources and your preps. It will affect your mate options. It will affect your children. It …


Prepping on a Dime, by Michael X.

When we started prepping, we did not have the money to buy an old missile silo…or an old mine…or a ready-to-use retreat. We were “stuck” in the city where our jobs were. Then we retired. We could sell our house and move to the middle of nowhere… From a city near the Twin Cities in Minnesota of over 100,000, my loving wife and I have relocated to a lakeside cottage in northern Wisconsin, a few miles outside a village of about 400 people. Wisconsin has its own problems. Mostly Madison and Milwaukee. And to a lesser extent, Eau Claire. Those …


Staying Home For TEOTWAWKI, by Jason H.

Opening caveat: A lot of what I describe below is highly illegal in normal times. It might even be frowned upon during semi-normal times. Only you, as a logical and thinking adult, can make a decision to take actions that could result in potential prison time. But this article is for those bad times, a true WWOTROL (World Without The Rule Of Law) scenario. Like many here, I’m an older gentleman, having retired almost 20 years ago after a 25 year law enforcement career. I’ve also been a faithful Survival Blog reader from almost the beginning. And like many here, …


A Brief But Very Serious Word of Warning on AI

“There’s a storm coming…” I’m the founder and Senior Editor of SurvivalBlog. Unlike the editors of many other preparedness blogs and vlogs, I try not be an alarmist. However, some recent revelations about generative and agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications autonomously breaking through firewalls, showing signs of self-awareness and self-preservation “instinct”, scheming blackmail, and surreptitiously mining cryptocurrencies now have me feeling quite alarmed. I fear that perhaps within months an AI will go fully rogue, to wit: It will escape its development lab and then proliferate itself in a virus-like fashion across servers all around the world. Once it starts …


Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future – Part Seven, by Single Farmer

(Continued from Part 6. This concludes the article.) Evaluating Families to Find Like-Minded People Daily, I am reminded of how bad it is out there, based on the information that I am analyzing. People often ask me “How long do we have?” If you understand history, economics, threat analysis, and have three generations of preparedness expertise in your wheelhouse, then you know the lateness of the hour. As for my situation, I hope it is long enough to be able to get married and to get the supplies my future spouse and her family need. I have a lot of …


Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future – Part Six, by Single Farmer

(Continued from Part 5.) Separating the Important from the Trivial Things that usually do not matter much for most men as far as a potential wife: her height, her income, and specific traits such as hair or eye color. I have never heard a man talk about a woman’s height unless she was very tall — which is statistically rare. Men are rarely concerned about a woman’s income unless they are looking for support. I don’t have a “type” and most men do not have a type such as only blondes or redheads. Of course, a bonus is if a …


Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future – Part Five, by Single Farmer

(Continued from Part 4.) Preparations for Sons After spiritual preparation, the number one thing a parent can do is to prepare their son for life is to teach him how to make and control money. Money and resources create options. Lack of money limits opportunities. I have a collateral or lineal relative in every conflict from the Revolutionary War to the present. If you go back far enough in history, you will find multiple great-grandfathers at a distant generational level. For instance in the time period of the American Civil War, I have multiple grandfathers and collateral relatives who served …