Notes From JWR:

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Letter Re: Can I Burn Off Road Diesel Fuel in a Modern Diesel Engine?

James In the letter from “John in Central New York State’, he says that most late model diesels with electronic ignitions won’t work with off road diesel fuel. Do you know why? Thanks, J.P. in Montana JWR Replies: I believe that John’s statement was not entirely correct. Most Diesel engines can run just fine on the off road fuel or even home heating oil (called “red diesel”, in England), but they cannot legally do so on public roads in the U.S. and the UK. The formulations of Home Heating Oil, “off road diesel”, and road taxed No. 2 Diesel fuel …




Letter Re: Advice on Small-Scale Grain Growing, Harvesting, and Processing

Hi, I love your survival site. I was wondering about finding low cost or fairly low cost equipment to harvest, thresh, winnow and hull grains such as wheat, barley, millet, oats, etc. Also low cost equipment to extract oil from seeds such as sunflower seeds. I’ve done an extensive search on the Internet and can find very little that is meant for a family or small group of people. Manual (hand power) or electric/gas/diesel are all of interest. Being able to process and use grains is extremely important but I don’t know of any sites that sell survival equipment that …




Odds ‘n Sods:

Mike M. gave a thumbs up for the Nader Khalili’s sandbag building technique recently mentioned in SurvivalBlog. Mike says: “This is great stuff. Our church has been trying this building technique for use in Mexico. It would make a great shelter for short or long term use.” See: http://www.calearth.org/    o o o The remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party have threatened to retaliate if their leader is executed.    o o o Courtesy of Gold-Eagle, Joshua Fritsch offers some interesting charts showing the bull market in gold. The best is yet to come.




Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“Big government by its very nature is government that intrudes in people’s lives, usurps their rights and responsibilities and confiscates their money. There is nothing conservative about any of this. Regardless of how benevolent and well-meaning its intentions are, government expands almost entirely for the purpose of controlling and regulating the lives of its citizens. Each act of government, each law passed, each regulation written is a step toward limiting the freedom of some one or some group or some organization or some business or industry. Granted, some of these steps may be necessary but most of them are not. …