Month: May 2015

Recipe of the Week: A Prepper’s Pierogi Casserole, by Mags

This recipe can be made with fresh ingredients, leftovers, or with freeze-dried/canned ingredients. There are lots of options for personalizing it, too. You can use whatever meat you prefer– beef, bacon, ham, turkey, venison, or even chopped jerky that’s left over after a hunting or camping trip (if it’s even possible to have leftover jerky). Ingredients: 9 lasagna noodles, uncooked 4 cups of mashed potatoes, hot or reheated (or use about 1 1/2 cups of potato flakes mixed into about 3 1/2 cups of hot water) 4 ounces of herb & garlic cream cheese (or use reconstituted powdered cream cheese …


Letter Re: Digital Security

HJL, Where TrueCrypt left off, VeraCrypt has picked up the baton. (It has the exact same interface, same features with improvements made behind the scenes.) The TrueCrypt letter specifically said that there “May still be unresolved security issues…” They didn’t say it wasn’t secure. They were quite vague. They were in the middle of an audit and quit before the results came out. VeraCrypt takes the results of the audit and appeared to correct some of the very minor issues. I was impressed by how few they are (i.e., increasing some iterations from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands), …


Economics and Investing:

America’s Shadowy Energy Partnership With Azerbaijan o o o For citizens of the U.S., their way of life depends on those dollars in their pockets, but they fail to understand what determines the strength (value) of those dollars. This video should be a wake up call. o o o U.S. Nearing Recession, Dollar Falling Hard o o o Is This Why Greek ATMs Are Empty?. – H.L.


Odds ‘n Sods:

Something is rotten in Albany… o o o I just ran across this interesting post at my old friend Commander Zero’s blog: See the red button? Push the red button. – JWR o o o Mike Williamson, SurvivalBlog’s Editor At Large pointed out a review of the Ruger SR1911. o o o Looks like things just took a turn for the worse in Mexico: The Rising. – M.S. o o o Education Secretary Sets The Stage For ‘Public Boarding Schools’. As scary as the thought of this is, you will find parents in favor of it. Hey, it’s free babysitting. …



Notes for Sunday – May 17, 2015

On this day in 1769, George Washington launched a legislative salvo at Great Britain’s fiscal and judicial attempts to maintain its control over the American colonies. He brought a package of non-importation resolutions, drafted by George Mason, before the Virginia House of Burgesses. This initiated a chain of events that led to Britain’s House of Lords demanding that men involved in the extra-legal Massachusetts convention of towns be tried in England. Britain’s plan backfired and created an American identity where before there had been none.


Street Combat – This Ain’t No Game! – Part 6b of 9, by Pat Cascio

Hip Shooting Whoa, partner! Before everyone starts firing letters off to me protesting that hip shooting isn’t point shooting, give me (and others) the benefit of the doubt! You have to admit that leveling a gun at someone from just above your holster isn’t exactly aimed shooting, is it? Neither is it exactly what we call point shooting. None the less, the technique is worth mentioning, as it does work in the tightest of combat situations. When your opponent is directly in front of you just about face-to-face or, worse yet, is face-to-face with you, you can’t draw and fully …


Letter Re: Digital Security

Hello from Russia! This Friday, SurvivalBlog mentioned “Digital Security- Part 2, by Dakota”. As a computer specialist and a paranoiac, I must warn you about two things. Bitmessage is absolutely secure. (I mean that nobody can read an encrypted message or find the sender or recipient or fact of communication between them.) But the price of this fact is too high and is a security hole by itself: Bitmessage client sends your message to every other client. What does it mean? In reality, every client would receive all the traffic the system creates. If, say, every one of 100 users …


Economics and Investing:

The Recesssion is Here, Prelude to Depression, by Robert Gore. – JFJ o o o The low wage employment tsunami: Low wage jobs now make up 25 percent of all employment in the United States. o o o US In Recession – Just Doesn’t Know It. Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock o o o Peak Of Bakken Oil Production Signals Collapse Of U.S. Economy.


Odds ‘n Sods:

The recent train wrecks, including the Amtrak derailment, has brought rail safety to the attention of many preppers. Are your preps sufficient to cover the dangers of rail near your location? Do you even know what those dangers are? 10 things railroads won’t tell you o o o To Smell the Putrid Smell of a City on Fire o o o 8th Grader Arrested, Threatened with Beatings and Held for 6 Days in Jail – For Throwing Skittles. – H.L. HJL adds: This is beyond absurd. At what point will we see the police officers voice Bill Whittle’s words: “No, …



Notes for Saturday – May 16, 2015

SurvivalBlog just successfully weathered our fourth hack attack in the past five years. A reminder, folks: You need to bookmark and/or write down our two prominent dotted quad addresses. Why? Because far greater malice on the Internet might someday be perpetrated by the Hitlery Clintons of the world, who could direct their bureaucratic minions to steal domain names from their rightful owners, all in the name of “fairness”. I can anticipate something far worse than the pranks of a few malicious hackers: That would be a deranged government doing horrible things to our First Amendment rights under color of law, …


Optimizing Training for the Committed Prepper, by F.M.

Almost everyone who reads this column knows that most Americans are woefully unprepared to face a post-poop hits the fan, WOTROL, grid down world. Equally sad and dangerous is the fact that most in the prepping community fall into one of the following categories: Someone who thinks about prepping and sees the need but hasn’t really gotten started, Someone who buys a lot of “stuff” but doesn’t really know what to do with it, or Someone who has “stuff” and reads a lot of books and columns on prepping but still hasn’t tried to live it. I suppose that even …


Letter Re: Reverse Mortgage

Hugh- I wanted to know what you and/or Jim’s and/or The Econocobas’ opinion is of reverse mortgages. The missus and I have moved to the Redoubt and own our location outright. I was mentally extrapolating the possible outcomes of a reverse mortgage should the balloon go up, but I always value other people’s thoughts. Also, forgive me if this has been addressed previously. – D in Southern Idaho HJL Responds: I have never considered reverse mortgages, as I always considered the land worth something but the cash out value as a loss due to inflation. Call me old fashioned, but …


Economics and Investing:

House of Cards – Will It Collapse? “It is unwise to scramble in front of an oncoming steam-roller in search of dollar bills when real money, gold and silver, is still available at “bargain” prices.” – Gary Christenson o o o Capital Controls, Gold Confiscation, Bank Holidays, and Everything Else o o o You can’t afford to live in California: It would take the typical family 35 years just to save for a 20 percent down payment in San Francisco. o o o U.S. Farmers In “Dire Straits”: JPM Warns Of Imminent Liquidity Crunch