Day: April 29, 2008


Letter Re: Spare Parts Now Available for XD-45 Pistols

Jim: You mentioned that spare parts for Springfield Armory XD pistols have been hard to find. That was the case, up until recently. But now spare XD parts are starting to show up at PistolGear.com. Hover you cursor arrow over “Springfield XD” at the bottom of the window that pops up . There should be a line that reads “XD Factory Parts“. I just got a whole stack of [factory spare XD parts] in the mail last week. There are still some critical parts that are missing, such as the extractor. I have done a lot of business with them …


Letter Re: Cooking Aromas and Post-Collapse OPSEC

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Greetings All, SurvivalBlog has, and is, providing great practical information as well a thoughts on just about every aspect overcoming adversity and disastrous conditions. This brain trust provides information on retaining as much privacy as possible in this era of electronic monitoring of everything we purchase, and how to camouflage just about every type of inanimate object. I have noticed one issue that hasn’t been addressed. (Don’t faint!). During a long term situation in particular this one issue can impact any family or group’s safety. So here is the question. How can we best ‘camouflage’ or limit the smell of …


Three Letters Re: What Determines if a Storage Bucket is Food Grade?

Greetings Jim, I have found the folks at the bakery counter at [supermarkets such as] Safeway are willing to give me food grade buckets for free or maybe $1 each. They get frosting five gallons at a time. Once you read the label on that stuff you may never eat store bought cake again! – DAP in Missouri   Jim: I wanted to share the best priced source I have found for Food Grade Buckets. Other than getting them free from food vendors, I haven’t found a price better than $3.99 for five gallon food grade buckets. Lids are $1.09. …


Two Letters Re: Observations on a Tour of a Telephone Company Central Office

James: The batteries are why the phone still works when the power goes out. That is if you still have an old style (hard wire) phone and not all cordless phones. The cordless phones need 120 VAC power to run the base station. You should maintain at least one all wire somewhere in your house. I believe the [common design for COs is that the] whole building is built in such a way that it is a big Faraday Cage. It would take a pretty close proximity EMP to take one out. The EMP danger is in the above ground …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Paul D sent us this article about the Ug99 wheat fungus: Stem Rust Never Sleeps    o o o Analysts Predict: Gasoline May Soon Cost $10 Per Gallon in US    o o o A traveling video-journalist meets Vern Switzer. There are some self-sufficiency lessons in this piece.    o o o China steps up monitoring of deadly virus outbreak. (A hat tip to frequent contributor RBS.)