Year: 2008

Letter Re: Keeping a Low Profile is Crucial for Preparedness

Hi Jim, I agree with you that you shouldn’t “get so paranoid that you withdraw to hide under a rock” when using the Internet. Take precautions, certainly, but strike a balance. To illustrate why total privacy is practically impossible while making use of the Internet, here’s a discussion about recent work done with “de-anonymize” algorithms. In short, the researchers were able to identify 99% of anonymous users by comparing different datasets, one anonymous, and one not. Further, there have been studies with publicly available census data that show a person can be reasonably identified by all sorts of seemingly innocuous …


Identity Theft–The Jury Duty Scam

The following is one of those items that widely gets circulated via e-mail, but this one is legitimate and I think that warrants posting to the blog: “Be prepared should you get this call. Most of us take those summonses for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced. The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number and date of birth so he or she …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Wheat Prices Near $20 Per Bushel    o o o Eric H. found us this: Health officials keeping eye on drug-resistant flu strain    o o o Here is a “must read” piece: Signs Point To Banking Crisis Getting Much Worse. Meanwhile, reader Randy K. mentioned that the US Bank reserves have dropped even deeper into negative numbers. As reported in WorldNetDaily the “non-borrowed bank reserves column is now at $-18 billion. Randy’s comment “It seems that the earlier report of an $8B shortfall was less than half way there. For me, the phrase “financial institutions would be bankrupt if …



Letter Re: More About the Chimney Fire Hazard

We just just learned that the beautiful house we had built on our 20 acre Michigan property burned to the ground. I want to urge all readers to have their chimneys checked yearly. The house had a wood furnace in the basement and a well-built 3-flue chimney yet in a state with deep frost, foundations can settle. The new owners never spent the money to have the chimney cleaned/inspected yearly as we had advised them to. Yet they just spent over $40,000 on granite countertops and all that fancy stuff. “Penny wise and Pound foolish!” My brother-in-law lives next door …


Four Letters Re: My Preparedness Plans Just Took an Unexpected Turn

Jim: While I cannot speak to diabetes, except to say that we use natural sweeteners such as maple syrup and honey and maintain a balanced meal, we do have a lot of hands-on with the gluten-free diet. Our daughter has gluten sensitivity, as well as intolerance for corn and soy. I encourage the mother who wrote to you to examine corn as a possible allergy. It tends to go with gluten sensitivity. This has made our situation more difficult as the dynamic duo of wheat and corn are pervasive, they are present in products that you would never imagine and …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Credit Default Swaps Are Next to Take the Crunch Test. Does this sound familiar?    o o o A reader sent me an e-mail to chide me for mentioning that hedge fund redemption suspensions were on the increase. He said: that I was being “an alarmist” because “those [redemption suspensions] are still rare.” Well, I’m going to go out on a limb and state publicly that I believe that they are going to become a lot less rare in the immediate future. Even large hedge funds are not immune. For example, just recently one of CitiGroup’s hedge funds announced a …



Note from JWR:

The winter weather is starting to relent, and the snow is melting here at the ranch. It is the first hint that Spring is coming. The patchy snow on the hillsides beyond The Unnamed River looks so much like a Bev Doolittle painting, that I half expect to see a few Paint horses to wander through.


Letter Re: Vehicle Selection in Light of Potential Post-Peak Oil Shortages

Jim, no one seems to be discussing what kind of cars to buy in light of the Peak Oil situation. My reading so far has been to stay away from hybrid cars. My situation is that I have a 2003 4×4 V8 Toyota 4Runner. I commute about 30 miles each way to work and [the price of] gas kills me now. My car weighs 6,000 pounds and I don’t need a vehicle that big to tow myself around-I am single. I expect the gas prices to go up drastically in the next five years. I am considering trading in for …


Letter Re: Mining Claims as Potential Retreat Properties

Sir, I am so happy to have stumbled onto your site today. I have not been on the internet in a very long time (1997 or so). I have been working for a number of mineral exploration/mining companies south of our border on and off since 1998. I will no longer travel outside of the U.S. (unless I’m reactivated by the Army) for work or pleasure. I am going to be 40 this month and I don’t feel like getting shot at any more, at least not for money. I am a former Army Combat Engineer, Electronic Engineer, small business …


Letter Re: Harder Homes and Gardens

Dear Jim, I think before readers spend their hard earned cash on a brick or cinder block structure (thinking it is much safer then stick framed construction) then watching all three parts of this [“Concealment Doesn’t Equal Cover”] video is essential. All [high power] rifles (.223, 7.62×39, .308) and 12 gauge slugs went through normal brick and [hollow] cinder block construction. Just food for thought. – Ryan JWR Replies: I first posted a link to that Dahlgren/Marine Corps training video in SurvivalBlog in December of 2006. There was also a discussion of this topic in July of 2007., following my …


Odds ‘n Sods:

RBS sent us this, from the Dr. Housing Bubble Blog: Southern California Housing Numbers Exposed: The Bottom Falls out of the Housing Market, Again. Pay particular attention to the chart that shows the two year lag between sales drops and price drops. Clearly, the worst is yet to come. I’m still predicting a 50%+ drop in house prices in most California counties. The law of supply and demand is inescapable.    o o o Mark from Michigan alerted me to a great little article over at the SHTF Blog: on constructing secret doors, with links to web pages by folks …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of Biblical proportions. Mayor: What do you mean, "Biblical"? Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff. Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly. Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes… Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave. Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria! – Ghostbusters, 1984


Self-Sufficiency in Northern Nevada

Over at the Bison Survival Blog (formerly called the Bison Newsletter), editor Jim Dakin recently posted an interesting piece titled “Economics of Self-Sufficiency.” I recommend his blog, although it is with the caveat that there is a lot of foul language posted there, especially in some of the comments posted by readers. For several years, Jim Dakin has advocated the low cost retreating approach of buying an inexpensive piece of land (what he calls “junk land”), and living very frugally, with a large used travel trailer for shelter. Jim Dakin presently lives in Carson City, Nevada, in the rain shadow …