Year: 2011

Odds ‘n Sods:

Mathew R. suggested the free firearms and combat survival training videos available at the ATACS web site.    o o o A piece by Tess Pennington, by way of Lew Rockwell’s site: Vaseline: A Multipurpose Prep Item    o o o Pentagon unveils its new cyberstrategy. Well, some of it, anyway. (Thanks to John R. for the link.)    o o o Some great commentary from Tam, over at her View From The Porch blog: I’ve never seen an engineer pretend to be a lawyer…    o o o Sean M. mentioned a useful rainwater calculator map, for estimating roof …



SurvivalBlog Writing Contest – Round 35 Winners Selected

We’ve completed the judging! The winner of First Prize in Round 35 of the SurvivalBlog writing contest is R.B. for The Will to Act: Your Ultimate Bug-out Kit which was posted on July 30th. As his prizes, he will receive: A.) A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795, and B.) Two cases of Alpine Aire freeze dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources. (A $400 value.) C.) A 9-Tray …


Medical Conditions That Do Not Need Antibiotics, by Dr. Bob

The subject of what not to treat comes up so often in medicine that books have literally been written about the subject both for medical and non-medical folks. I decided to break it down head to toe and try to approach it with a common sense approach. Headaches do not need antibiotics. If an infection is due to bacteria, if it causes headache alone…that would be really unusual and probably cause the person’s death. Some bacterial meningitis infections will benefit from antibiotics, but figuring this out in time and having the right antibiotics is just not realistic. Now, headaches can be caused …


Letter Re: The Will to Act: Your Ultimate Bug-Out Kit

James Wesley: In follow-up to the mention of lights and headlamps in The Will to Act: Your Ultimate Bug-out Kit by R.B., I just thought I’d add that Fenix makes an excellent head mounting system for 1″ lights. It is a quality item, very good indeed.  What plastic headlamp is going to keep up with a 200 lumen light (or two), such as their equally excellent and very stout 2xAA-powered LD20? I have a handful of high-end Petzl headlamps, and while they’re very nice items, they fall rather short in output, durability, water resistance, and ultimately versatility to this setup.  …


Economics and Investing:

Last week, just before everyone’s attention was diverted to a Mall Ninja toting a tarted-up Mini-14 in Norway, news came of $16 Trillion Dollars that was loaned by the Federal Reserve to prop up the banksters–mostly in Europe. This is an aggregate figure on loans over the course of two years, and most of it was paid back, but it is still staggering. Its a good thing that we have experts like Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke in charge. Otherwise there might be inflation or somethun’… Oh, and meanwhile, the Congresscritters are quibbling about how they can “trim” $1 trillion …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Dilbert is a Prepper–in a cartoon that is a reminder to think OPSEC! Here is a recent Dilbert comic strip about preparedness for financial collapse that is funny, yet alarming. (Iggy was the first of several readers to send me the link.)    o o o Since when is swearing adherence to the Constitution a sign of “Rage”, “Anti-Government”, and being “Conspiracy [minded]”? Only in the eyes of the leftist ADL: Rage Grows in America: Anti-Government Conspiracies.    o o o W. in West Virginia mentioned a television news segment about underground shelter builder Radius Engineering.    o o o …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“We are now in the final stages of what economist Ludwig von Mises termed the “crack-up boom,” with the Fed (and other central banks abroad) printing money frantically to try to stave off the inevitable collapse and hyperinflation. We have been warning about this outcome for several years now, and it is indicative of how dire circumstances have become that the likes of Forbes magazine — not a purveyor of Austrian economics by a long shot — is now frankly acknowledging it.” – Charles Scaliger, The New American, July 26, 2011.


Note from JWR:

Today we present the final entry for Round 35 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. This is a corrected version of an article that was initially posted last week. It was removed so that a couple of facts could be rectified, and so that the article could be expanded. The prizes for this round include: First Prize: A.) A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795, and B.) Two cases of Alpine Aire freeze …


Buying Registered Sound Suppressors in the U.S., by R.B.

This article is an after action report (AAR) of sorts on my experiences with buying registered NFA items with a $200 transfer tax, and to piggyback on the few entries in SurvivalBlog dealing with suppressors.  There are a few reasons to not buy a silencer.  Mainly that you lose a bit of your privacy by giving info to the ATF, but you do that whenever you fill out a Form 4473.  After much internal debate, I decided to go off of the deep end after reading an article here on Survivalblog.com.  It dealt with problems in Argentina when the SHTF …


Letter Re: Expanded Gun Controls in Canada?

Mr. Rawles, The owner of CanadaAmmo.com recently posted on a public forum (Canadiangunnutz.com) that the Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) Firearms lab “is encouraging importers to hold off on new imports until the fall, when they expect the prohibited list to be ‘updated’ to reflect new models.”  Updating the prohibited list in all probability and precedent would mean sweeping confiscations of some firearms. [JWR Adds: Unlike here in the U.S., Canadian gun laws don’t have a tendency toward “grandfather” exclusion clauses.] Even though the Conservative party of Canada now holds a majority government in Parliament and the party has claimed …


Letter Re: Alabama County Provides Microcosmic Preview of a Larger Bankruptcy

Dear Mr. Rawles — Here is a link to a story in this morning’s New York Times about Jefferson County, Alabama. It seems to be a microcosm of what the whole country faces as the threat of Federal default becomes real. The reporter says, “There are lessons for everyone here, and they are all painful: lessons for those who are not concerned about the prospect of mounting debt, for those who insist that steep cuts can be relatively painless, for those who think the bill for big spending can safely be put off into the future, for those who have …


Economics and Investing:

In his latest subscribers-only newsletter, veteran market analyst Porter Stansberry describes a U.S. sovereign debt downgrade as “inevitable”. JWR’s comments: Make your plans with the assumption that there will be a rating downgrade by all of the credit ratings agencies. The current AAA rating for U.S. paper is just a convenient fiction. Obviously a debt downgrade will mean higher interest rates. This will in turn ratchet down the U.S. economy in general and the residential and commercial real estate markets in particular. This will delay any recovery for many years. Plan on a riding through a depression that could last …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Ravenous wolves colonise France, terrorise shepherds. (A hat tip to F.G. for the link.)    o o o Signs of The Times: Detroit to set services by neighborhood condition. (Thanks to J.B.G. for the link.)    o o o KAF sent this: 2010-2011 drought likely to be among costliest on record for Texas farmers, ranchers    o o o Reader Shawn in Ohio asks: “If they riot at a movie, how bad will things get if we default?”: Riot Police, Crowd Clash Outside Hollywood Premiere of Film on Electric Daisy Carnival Rave    o o o Are you planning to …