Year: 2006

Letter Re: Banking a House for Winter

Memsahib Rawles:: Banking a house for the winter is a fairly common practice where I grew up in Canada. Often the leaves were raked and bagged in the fall and placed along the house for the winter. Other times square bales were stacked against the house to insulate for the cold winter months. The only drawback from this way of insulating was the fact that you would often get a large amount of unwanted house guests (mice and voles) who were attracted to the warm shelter! Keep up the informative writing, – T.S.


Odds ‘n Sods:

One of our major advertisers is auctioning a very hard to find P-10 shelter on eBay, on behalf of an acquaintance. These rarely come up for sale in used condition, so don’t miss this chance to buy one for less than half of what it would cost to buy one new. It is being sold “on site”, so you would have to pay for hauling.    o o o As previously mentioned, Microsoft’s president Bill Gates has publicly declared that he’s Short the U.S. Dollar.   o o o From Steve Quayle’s Site: Scientists Warn of Immense Solar Storm Threat …



From The Memsahib: Alternative Home Heating Fuels and Banking a House for Winter

In the event of TEOTWAWKI, fuel will become very important in regions where the winters are severe and long. We can learn some survival ideas from pioneers in on the treeless prairies. Some used alternative fuels such as cow chips, corn cobs, ears of corn, twisted grass, or a mix of straw and manure manure called “mist.” (The German word for Schumer.) In 1881 the magazine Warren Sheaf said that three acres of corn would provide the average house of the time with fuel for the year. Straw burner attachments were designed for cook stoves. These were oblong tubes 18 …


Letter Re: Backup Generators and Well Pumps

JWR, The following is probably more than you want to know about pumps!!   There is a finite limit to how far one can “lift” water with a pump.  It is based on the fact a pump does not really “suck” a fluid but rather creates a vacuum and atmospheric pressure forces the water up the pipe.  On a standard day at sea level that pressure is equal to just under 34 feet of water column.  Therefore a PERFECT vacuum (which does not exist) could “lift” water a shade less than 34 feet.  At higher altitudes, or low atmospheric pressure …


Odds ‘n Sods:

I recently added a few DVDs and another 19 U.S. Army and USMC manuals from my personal collection to my Mail Order Catalog. Some of the manuals were “restricted distribution” titles and hence quite scarce!    o o o There is now talk of another increase in the U.S. federal government debt ceiling. My precocious #3 Son asked: “Daddy, why do they call it a ceiling if they can keep raising it?” Hmmm…Why, indeed?    o o o The recent Robert Kiyosaki article is evidence that silver gaining popularity with mainstream investors. The first silver exchange-traded fund went live in …



Note from JWR:

Our apologies about the page display problem that we experienced from Wednesday afternoon to Friday afternoon. During this time, the blog page displayed fine with Firefox, Safari, and Netscape browsers, but it had problems with some versions of the Internet Explorer browsers. If you still see any problems, please hit your browser’s “reload” button. Our profuse apologies!


The American Indian Way of Reading Deer Tracks, by "C++

My secret for hunting deer is to hunt them based on trails and tracks. Learn what a buck track looks like. Get yourself a pick and a shovel. Soften every trail, so that you can really read the tracks. These soft-areas need to be about three feet long by one foot wide. You need about a half of inch of soft dirt. read the tracks, after studying the tracks and movement (direction) you’ll begin to see a pattern. Use a broom to wipe out the tracks so that you can see the next set of fresh tracks a day later… …




Note from JWR:

Yowza! We just surpassed the 400,000 unique visits mark. That is a fantastic number. I had only expected 100,000 unique in the first year, and now we’ve logged four times that in just the first 10 months! Thanks for making SurvivalBlog such a rapid success. Please keep spreading the word. A brief e-mail to your friends, and/or adding a linked SurvivalBlog banner on your website would be greatly appreciated!


Letter Re: Survivalist Matchmaking?

JR: Can you recommend a place, business, web site, that offers the equivalent of Match.com, eHarmony.com, etc for preparedness minded folks? There used to be a place called patriotmatchmaker, but no more. Any suggestions? If you cannot find such a place, you might want to consider starting one as a income producing web site. Why not? You have the perfect target audience to do so. Thanks, – Boosters JWR Replies: Because our society is so litigious, I’m not inclined toward setting up such as service. I formerly directed folks to the Survivalist Contacts page at www.SurvivalistBooks.com, but that page doesn’t …


Letter Re: Potential Peak for Gold?

Mr. Rawles: The other day you mentioned some pretty outlandish predictions for gold and silver from the “gold bugs.” Just what are they saying, and how credible are their claims? I’d also like to hear your own estimation of gold’s potential. Thank You, – Mrs. F. JWR Replies: Some of the claims are indeed outlandish — like Roland Watson, who predicted $10,000 per ounce gold. (See below.) But it isn’t just die-hard gold bugs that are predicting significantly higher precious metals prices by the end of this decade. There are quite a few Wall Street wonks that are talking about …


Odds ‘n Sods:

I just noticed that Gun Parts Guy is advertising a new batch of U.S.-made metric FAL barrel assemblies. With the BATFE‘s recent suspension on the importation of complete semi-auto rifle parts kits with (barrels being the parts that they want stopped), this could be a genuine “don’t miss” opportunity. If you own a FAL (or clone thereof), buy a spare, and perhaps even a “spare spare.”    o o o The Titan Missile base in eastern Washington that I mentioned a few weeks back has been re-listed on eBay. This time the starting bid is $750,000! Too bad that eBay …