Day: September 28, 2007

Notes from JWR:

We are rapidly approaching the two million unique visits milestone, and we have readers all over the planet. Thanks for making SurvivalBlog such a huge success. Please keep spreading the word. Links at your personal web page and/or in your e-mail footer would be greatly appreciated. The bidding is now at $460 in the SurvivalBlog benefit auction, for a scarce pre-1899 antique Finnish M39 Mosin Nagant rifle from my personal collection. This rifle was rebarreled by Valmet during WWII, and is in excellent condition. It comes with a replica bayonet, original sling, and original muzzle cap. Since the receiver for …


Letter Re: Questions on Underground CONEXes

Hello Mr. Rawles I’m a fairly new reader of your site and have been meandering through your archives and checking back periodically. It’s a wonderful site you have here, and I’ve found your articles to be quite interesting and informative. My personal concerns for the future are more focused on nuclear events than fiscal ones, but in either case I’m likely screwed as I am living on the east coast in close proximity to dense population centers and terrorist/military targets. As of late however I have been considering buying a few acres in one of the rural areas a few …


Letter Re: Running Chainsaws on Ethanol & Home Alcohol Production Stills

Sir: About your comments [on Thursday] and others in regard to kerosene use in a gasoline engine: From anything I’ve experienced, you are correct about it not being as simple as some have posted. Engines that were built for “all fuel” use – including distillate and kerosene, had very low compression ratios – usually around 5 to 1. Low compression makes a low-power, inefficient engine. The carburetors were jetted differently, a twin fuel tank setup used, a selector-valve installed for quick fuel changeover, and a closeable air-shutter on the radiator to keep the engine hot. You started the engine on …


Weekly Survival Real Estate Market Update

Doubling Up Before the “Crunch” This is a unique time in survival real estate. Never before have we seen so many people actually wanting to purchase a family retreat for the coming hard times, but as last week’s update alluded to, most people are struggling to complete their purchase due to the lack of capital, usually because a current real estate asset has yet to sell. These times call for more purposeful thought and planning in order to come up with a solution. One idea is to bring two or more like minded families together in order to increase their …


Odds ‘n Sods:

From The Independent: Only £4.4m left to protect UK’s bank deposits    o o o There is an interesting topic posted over at The Mental Militia Forums (formerly called The Claire Files), about the tremendous gains in the price of Rhodium in the past five years. Obviously, somebody made a lot of money. (FYI, it wasn’t me. I was very conservatively invested in silver and gold.)    o o o Pets being slaughtered in meat-starved Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is now truly in crisis. 80% unemployment. An average life expectancy of just 37 years. The inflation rate is continuing to increase–some analysts …