Day: February 15, 2008

Note from JWR:

The SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction ends at midnight eastern time tonight. (Friday, February 15th). The high bid is now at $300. The auction is for a Brunton Solarport 4.4 watt photovoltaic panel (a $140 retail value), a Deluxe Outdoor Survival Tool Kit (a $70 retail value)–both kindly donated by Ready Made Resources–as well as seven other items: A copy of the latest edition of “The Encyclopedia of Country Living” by the late Carla Emery (a $32 retail value), an autographed copy of my novel “Patriots” (a $23 retail value), an autographed copy of my nonfiction book “Rawles on Retreats and Relocation” …


Finding Your Dream Retreat: It is Time to Watch the Foreclosure Listings

I often get e-mails from readers, complaining that the retreat properties that they see listed are too expensive. Typically is something like: “I found a couple of good places, but they are beyond my reach.” Here is one possible solution: Buy on the other guy’s weakness. There are lots of foreclosures now on the market, and the foreclosure rate is expected to increase as the real estate bubble continues to deflate, and as the US economy slides into recession. (In my estimation, here is the equation for the next four years: Recession equals lay-offs, and layoffs equals missed house payments, …


Letter Re: Survival Lessons from the Book “The Long Walk”

Jim, One of your blog readers suggested the book “The Long Walk”. Five minutes Googling around will satisfy you that “The Long Walk” is pure fiction masquerading as fact. I like a good yarn, but only when such stories are clearly labeled “fiction.” Nobody but the British author who made up this tall tale has ever met or interviewed or known anything about the supposed Polish prisoners who he claims walked across the Gobi Desert and the Himalayas with virtually no gear. There are many great true survival stories, but unfortunately this is not one of them. – Matt Bracken …


Weekly Survival Real Estate Market Update

Buying Your Retreat During ‘The Melt’ Ah…for those of you who have never heard of the ‘melt’ or the ‘mud season’ in a cold climate you’ll be in for a big and most likely not very exciting surprise. This phenomenon usually lasts a few weeks to a month and during that time the entire area is just plain wet and muddy. Most roads other than the main highway have [commercial/logging/mining] load weight restrictions placed on them with heavy fines for violations. This is to keep the roads from buckling and sinking when the earth underneath them thaws and is sometimes …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Eric sent us this from BBC News: World markets lose $5.2 trillion    o o o From the International Herald Tribune: Global inflation climbs to historic levels    o o o RBS sent us an article on CCD, from England: Panic in the beehive    o o o An analysis from Now and Futures shows a US inflation rate of around 18%, using data from the now defunct M3 Aggregate figure. (A hat tip to Eric for sending the link.) OBTW, speaking of disappearing data, reader John T. mentioned this tidbit: "Due to budgetary constraints, the Economic Indicators service [web …