Month: September 2008

Notes from JWR:

Our prayers go out for the citizens of Texas. Hurricane Ike made landfall with quite a wallop. More than four million people are expected to be without utility power for days or perhaps weeks. Thankfully, it has been downgraded to a tropical storm, but as of this writing it is still doing damage as it makes its way through Texas. It is gratifying to see how much the SurvivalBlog readership has grown, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, and Indonesia. Welcome aboard! BTW, we are actively looking for correspondent in Australia and Indonesia, to keep us up to date on …


Letter Re: Generating Photovoltaic Power When Grid Power is Available

Jim: I agree completely with your comment that [photovoltaic] solar systems should not be grid-tied to run the meter backward [to isolate the photovoltaic system from potentially devastating coupled electromagnetic pulse (EMP).] When the grid is available to home or retreat, I believe it is worth connecting. It is the easiest way to deal with barns, 220 volt tools and wells, but some thought to solar wiring can go a long way. Many custom homes and retreats were built with home-run wiring before the price of wire jumped so high. A number of these homes and retreats can be solar-controlled …


Letter Re: A Resource on Make-It-Yourself Backpacking Gear

Hello, I came across this web site and thought I’d send you the link to a page at Backpacking.net: Make Your Own Gear! I can’t even sew my shirt buttons back on, but maybe it would be of use to other readers. [JWR Adds: Don’t miss the individual plans in the left hand bar.] By the way, I gave your novel a good review on Amazon.com. Most everybody did. But I included a motivational quote in it that really means a lot to me. I heard it from an Amway tape many years ago: “I will do today what others …


Odds ‘n Sods:

SurvivalBlog reader “Cyberiot” mentioned that readers with concerns about pandemic flu may be interested in a new and growing online storybook sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Pandemic Influenza Storybook: Personal Recollections from Survivors, Families, and Friends” includes first-person accounts of the 1918 and 1957 flu pandemics. Readers are encouraged to contribute their own recollections. Speaking of flu pandemics, earlier this year, New Scientist magazine published a detailed analysis of how a 1918-scale influenza pandemic would affect the US economy.    o o o I’ve heard from a reader that he plans to attend the ASPO …



Notes from JWR:

Note from JWR: I was saddened to hear that Chuck Karwan passed away last week, following open heart surgery. He was an exemplary American, a USMA West Point graduate (1969) that served in Vietnam and elsewhere (1st Calvary Division (Airmobile), 5th Infantry Division (Mechanized), and the 5th and 10th Special Forces Groups), and was a noted writer on knives and military firearms. He will be missed, especially by his friends in Oregon. The SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction ends tonight (September 15th) at midnight, eastern time. The high bid is now at $580. The auction for a mixed lot that includes: Two …


Note from JWR:

A SurvivalBlog reader in northwestern Alabama wrote me to mention that he witnessed the local price of gasoline jump $.70 per gallon overnight (to $5.35 per gallon.) This presumably, was in anticipation of a disruption in supply because of Hurricane Ike. It bears mentioning that many SurvivalBlog readers wisely have at-home underground gas and diesel tanks. Among other benefits, these allows them to ride out the ravages of occasional price spikes like this one, in which even wholesale gasoline jumped to over $5 per gallon! It is starting to look pretty C.C.R.-ish out there. (As the song goes: “Hope you …


The Lehman Brothers Debacle Illustrates the Extent of the Global Credit Collapse

You probably saw yesterday’s headline in The Wall Street Journal: Lehman Races to Find a Buyer. Well, well. The once mighty Lehman Brothers Holdings firm had a market capitalization of $47 Billion last year. But when I last looked, it was down to a paltry $2.58 billion. The company is now definitely on the ropes. It is likely that the Mother of All Bailouts (MOAB) is going to grow even larger. There will probably be an announcement made this weekend of a “private” takeover of Lehman–possibly including an overseas “white knight”–but down in the fine print we will learn that …


Letter Re: A SurvivalBlog Reader Prepares for Hurricane Ike

Dear Mr. Editor: Just a quick note to tell you how people that read your blog are preparing for Ike. Thanks for all the great information. I live near Houston in the suburbs, about 60 miles north of Galveston. Most of the stores are open and have plenty of water, drinks, bread, tuna and other canned foods. The stores have done a much better job this time of keeping needed items in stock than they did when Katrina was headed this way a couple years ago. The gas is going fast, and many stations are closed. I filled both my …


Letter Re: National Geographic’s Cover Story on Soil and Food

JWR, Here’s a link to the September 2008 National Geographic cover story about the world’s fragile soils and their diminishing capacity to feed 6.5 billion+ people as well as cautionary examples of places where the soils can no longer support the existing population due to poor stewardship in the past. Pages 92-93 of the hardcopy edition have a great fold out map showing soil fertility areas around the world — a good retreats and relocation general shopping reference (although certainly not detailed enough for researching specific properties). My Best, – Lee in Hurricane Alley


Letter Re: An E-Mailed SurvivalBlog Digest?

Sir, I would like to sign up to get your blogs [via e-mail]; but I can’t see where I do that; Could you please help me. Thanks, – Dianne M. JWR Replies: For the privacy of my readers, I don’t have a digest of my blog that is e-mailed. (I don’t like to keep lists. I don’t even keep records of anyone that makes a voluntary subscription donation.) Just direct your web browser whenever you’d like to read SurvivalBlog. It is updated daily (and I haven’t missed a day since the blog was started three years ago), so you might …


Odds ‘n Sods:

U.K. state memo warns of “anarchy” in the city streets. (Thanks to Florida Guy for the link.)    o o o Yishai flagged this for us, from The Morning Brief: “This could be the mother of year-ends,” Brian Sack, of Macroeconomic Advisers and a former Federal Reserve chief market analyst, tells Bloomberg, which says the Fed may have to increase the cash it provides to banks and brokers beyond already-record levels to help them balance their books at the end of the year in the wake of six bank failures in the past two months and rising concern about Lehman’s …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.’ So, if government financial ‘favors’ are granted to reckless investment firms (Bear Stearns) and now mortgage borrowers, what about other economically vital ‘multiplier’ industries like: automakers, airlines, credit card and insurance companies and even corporate real estate lenders? The logical conclusion for this current drift is hyperinflation. In order to make good on its promises the Federal Government will have to resort to the printing press…with a vengeance. – John Browne


Notes from JWR:

I have some proverbial “good news and bad news” about the upcoming re-publishing of my novel “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse”. First the bad news: Because the publisher’s schedule is packed, the book won’t be available for ordering until March of 2009. The good news: It will probably include both a glossary and an index! Both are quite unusual for a novel, but if J.R.R. Tolkien’s publisher could do it, then so can mine. Perhaps I need to put a map in the frontispiece, with The Rocky Mountains in the place of The Misty Mountains.;-). More details will follow, as …


Energy Dependence and U.S. Military Policy, by Edward C.

“Oil is the world’s most critical resource”, and “without it, nothing works in an industrialized civilization as currently configured”1.“The issue is not whether DoD will be able to obtain the oil it needs to provide for our national defense, because it will”, but “trends in global supply and consumption patterns” serve to further “complicate…the challenge of providing fuel to DoD’s far-flung operations as well as affecting the price DoD must pay for fuel”2. “Historically, no other energy source equals oil’s intrinsic qualities of extractability, transportability, versatility, and cost”3. The qualities that enabled oil to take over from coal as the …