Day: December 26, 2007

Note from JWR:

The high bid in the current SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction is now at $200. The auction is for a scarce original 1980s-vintage Heckler und Koch 19mm Emergency Flare Launcher (EFL) aka “Notsignalgerät“ from my personal collection. It comes with three magazines and 28 scarce original German 19mm flares–10 red, 10 white, and 8 green. Together, this package is worth approximately $400. It is not classified as a “firearm” under Federal law. (Consult your state and local laws before bidding.) Sorry, no overseas bids will be accepted for this auction. This auction ends on January 15th. Please e-mail us your bids, in …


Letter Re: Home Canning Resources

Mr Rawles, I am a 10 Cent Challenge subscriber who has learned so much from your site since my brother, “Mike near Seattle” told me about it. One skill that my husband and I are trying to become proficient at is canning. Both of us came from homes where our mothers canned, but being a kid in the “production line” doesn’t mean you will remember how to can 30 years later as an adult. I found a great web site called CanningUSA.com that has free online videos for beginners to watch so you can learn how to start canning all …


Letter Re: Sources for Gasoline and Diesel Fuel in a Grid-Down Collapse

Mr Rawles: Would a hand-lever pump like this one or this one work for pulling up fuel from a gas station underground tank]? Thanks, – F. JWR Replies: Both of those hand pumps are designed specifically for pumping from drums with standard barrel bung threads. They should work with underground tank is you add an extension hose with a nice tight seal at the union of the hose. However, this type of pump is less flexible than my preferred 12 VDC pump design, since they cannot be used for one step vehicle-to-vehicle fuel transfers. They are also only marginally faster, …


Letter Re: Cashing in on Scrap Copper, Brass, and Aluminum

Dear Jim, I am a daily reader of your blog. With all the discussion about gold and silver value I thought it might be prudent to bring up the value of other metals. I am a Master Plumber and I make a small fortune by recycling old copper pipe, brass fittings, valves, and faucets. Number 1 copper is up to $2.75 a pound. Four years ago it was $1.50. Yellow brass is $1.60 a pound. It was only 60 cents four years ago. An old water heater can get you $5.00. I know people that save aluminum cans and take …


Letter Re: Communications in Times of Crisis

Hi, Jim: As a licensed Ham and (ever since the 1970s) a licensed CBer (those were the days when CB licenses mattered.) I had to go quickly back and check the Communications in Times of Crisis posting one more time, and sure enough I did find a couple of small errors/omissions which need mention. First, the 12 watts output mentioned by the author for CB radios only applies when operating in SSB mode. If in AM mode, you are still limited to 4 watts out. Yes, I know some folks run “foot warmers” (illegal [linear] amplifiers); but, remember that those …


Letter Re: The Novel “The Last Centurion”

Mr. Rawles, I thought you might be interested in an early preview of “The Last Centurion” a novel about the world after an Avian Flu pandemic. The Author is John Ringo – who writes military and sci-fi – and often combines the two. The language is coarse, and it is written in a blog style, but it has some great observations about society, politicians, money supply and what happens in a real disaster. You can find the early release chapters online. It really gets good in chapter 5 and 6 talking about the responses to the outbreak and how some …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Delinquencies are soaring: Unpaid credit cards bedevil Americans. (A hat tip to Craig S. for sending us this.)    o o o An Ambrose Evans-Pritchard article was mentioned the at CometGold Forum (at Contrary Investors Cafe) and by nearly a dozen SurvivalBlog readers: Crisis may make 1929 look a ‘walk in the park’. Here is a key quote: “Liquidity doesn’t do anything in this situation,” says Anna Schwartz, the doyenne of US monetarism and life-time student (with Milton Friedman) of the Great Depression. “It cannot deal with the underlying fear that lots of firms are going bankrupt. The banks and …