Odds ‘n Sods:

Is there a SurvivalBlog reader who lives offshore that has some available server space? My goal is to set up both a public access mirror (or multiple mirrors) and a closed peer-to-peer set of torrent files of SurvivalBlog, to keep as a “worst case” situation back-up. These back-up files will be automatically be updated daily. Please e-mail me if you have some server space available in a country that is not reflexively obedient to the U.S. government. (Preferably somewhere like Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Andorra, Sealand, or Tonga.) Alternatively, is there a scripting guru out there that can create a script that will automatically create a Torrent of all the archived SurvivalBlog posts, on a daily basis?

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Donald S. mentioned this sign of the times: Backwoods Home magazine has announced that they are now offering the option of selling annual subscriptions for $1 in pre-’65 silver coin.

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New East Palo Alto license plate readers will run all plates through crime databases. JWR Notes: FWIW, back at the turn of the century I worked as a technical writer for Oracle Corporation. By geographic necessity I commuted to Oracle’s Redwood Shores headquarters via East Palo Alto. At that time the city had lots of illicit drug dealers and a very high street crime rate. I suspect that situation hasn’t changed much. These license plate scanners are a troubling development. The erosion of our liberty is most noticeably felt in the big cities, but we are all suffering for it.

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I heard that Mountain House now has a four week order backlog on their storage foods in #10 cans, and they’ve stopped taking any new direct purchase orders from the general public on their canned foods. They are also now strictly rationing their distributors. Buy now, while there are still fairly ample supplies in the pipeline. As I’ve noted in SurvivalBlog before, the long term food storage industry is very small, and it doesn’t take much of a macro level event to completely overwhelm their production capacity. OBTW, for a limited time, Ready Made Resources is still offering a free U.S. Mint Silver Eagle one-ounce silver coin with each full case order. (These must be full cases of six cans, and the same variety.)

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Fire and ice headlines: Fire in Israel, and Bitter Cold in Europe.