Day: March 17, 2009

Note from JWR:

Today we present another entry for Round 21 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The contest prizes include: First Prize: Two transferable Front Sight  “Gray” Four Day Training Course Certificates. This is an up to $4,000 value! Second Prize: A three day course certificate from OnPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. Third Prize: A copy of my “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course, from Arbogast Publishing Round 21 ends on March 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that articles that relate practical “how to” skills for …


Cold and Dark–An Account of an Ice Storm, by Steve S.

Preparations In January, 2008, the outlook for people in the United States appeared bleak. I told my wife that we needed to stock-up on food because I felt that the supply lines were thin and vulnerable. I began my preparations by Internet search. I found JWR’s SurvivalBlog and I bought a copy of his novel. In the meantime, I started buying cases of canned goods. I bought food that we generally ate. I looked at the expiration dates of every purchase. I tried to buy what would last through 2011. Not much would, so I bought with the idea of …


Letter Re: Private Gated Communities May Not be Gated After All

Hi Jim, Due to the real estate slump and the poor economy, my wife and I are trying to unravel our mess of real estate investments. One thing we did, was to abandoned our McMansion in a rural area near Seattle, Washington. It was a new four thousand square foot custom home in a gated community. All the other houses were as large and some significantly larger. We had abandoned the house about a year ago after failing to sell it for what we owed, and have not made any house payments since then. We also chose not to pay …


Letter: Full Capacity Magazine Price Inflation and Scarcity

Greetings – Just wanted to say “thank you” for suggesting the PTR-91 as a battle rifle option. I will freely admit to getting caught up in the AR-15 hysteria but I have come to my senses and saved money thanks to SurvivalBlog. German surplus G3 alloy military surplus magazines in good to excellent condition are easily available in quantity for $3-to-$4 each. Contrast that with AR-15 mags at $15+ each, and that’s a 5:1 ratio. Or, for the same $90 folks are paying for a single AR-10 mag, they can get more than 25 surplus G3 mags, shipped! In addition, …


Economics and Investing:

Shrike sent this: The Size of Derivatives Bubble = $190,000 Per Person on Planet. Shrike’s comments: “Jim, you were uncomfortably prophetic in your September, 2006 article, predicting that derivatives would be a major problem. Until your article, I’d never even heard of the term, at least in terms of financing and markets. Not surprisingly, we still hear very little from mainstream media about them.” Reader “Parsley” mentioned an London Telegraph article that does not bode well: IMF poised to print billions of dollars in ‘global quantitative easing’. Consumer price inflation on a grand scale is a likely result Get out …


Odds ‘n Sods:

I had this piece from Cheryl slated for the Economics section, but I decided to move it down to Odds ‘n Sods since it is related to practical preparedness: Dollars From Dirt: Economy Spurs Home Garden Boom    o o o From Paul in Kentucky: World Demand for Safe Drinking Water is Rising, U.N. Warns    o o o The Los Angeles Times profiles Neil Strauss, the author of a new book on preparedness: What’s new now: He’s ready for emergencies.    o o o Several readers forwarded me the link to this article on the erosion of free speech


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“Pangloss is admired, and Cassandra is despised and ignored. But as the Trojans were to learn to their sorrow, Cassandra was right, and had she been heeded, the toil of appropriate preparation for the coming adversity would have been insignificant measured against the devastation that followed a brief season of blissful and ignorant optimism.” – Ernest Partridge: Perilous Optimism