Pat Cascio’s Product Review: Gerber Prodigy Tanto Knife

For a lot of years, Gerber knives was a major player in the cutlery field. However, some years back, they fell out of favor with a lot of consumers, and their line-up of knives really shrank quite a bit. Honestly, it’s been at least 15 years or longer since Gerber sent me any knives for articles. I don’t know if it was a change of shifts or powers-that-be, but they stopped sending me knives to write about. That’s okay; there are more than enough knife companies that do send me samples for testing and articles. One of the best fixed …




Times Are Getting Tougher, But Women Can Thrive and Not Just Survive!, by Sarah Latimer

There are hundreds of thousands of women among the SurvivalBlog reader community and their households, and most of us are feeling stressed beyond what has been “normal”. If you’ve been reading SurvivalBlog and watching the news for anytime at all, like me, you’re probably concerned on a macro level about the blatant disrespect of human life, the trampling of our liberty and privacy, the moral decline of society in general and in what the children in schools are being taught, the economic crises around the world, the pressure pot of international conflict on multiple fronts, and more. Then, on a …




Recipe of the Week: Turnip Au Gratin with Greens by OkieRanchWife

A retired co-worker visited the other day and brought two huge feed sacks of his homegrown turnips. I happen to love them and put them into almost any soup or stew or pot roast. I have made turnip and potato mash but wanted to do something a little different. This is a casserole that pairs with just about anything. Use fresh greens though, because canned ones just won’t have the correct texture and flavor. At first this may seem like a not-so-friendly SHTF dish, but most everything in it can be grown in a home garden. Powdered dry milk can …




Letter Re: EMP Question

Hugh, I’ve asked Matt Bracken this question, and he didn’t know. I’ve read all of your EMP-related data, but none of them answer the question of whether batteries, particularly the small D, C, AAA, AA types need to be shielded to protect them from EMP. All authors make much of electronics in devices but never mention separate stores of batteries or the dangers of batteries stored in electronic devices like radios, sights, et cetera. Your advice would be greatly appreciated. – S.D. Hugh Responds: There is much FUD in the online world (and in books) about EMP. Some of it …




Economics and Investing:

Adidas’s $600-a-year subscription for workout clothes is testing the limits of a big shopping trend. Several observations here: Have we really reached a point in society where we have more money than time? Then we have become a slave to money even more so. Back in the day, people valued their money over their time; they typically tried to fix broken things or would innovate with what they had or could find. Find a Popular Mechanics from the 1930’s and see how it’s full of ideas of how to fix or make things. In the process, we were a whole …




Odds ‘n Sods:

By way of Tam at the View From the Porch blog, I heard about a thought-provoking piece in Joe Huffman’s The View From North Central Idaho blog: Culture changing concealed carry o o o ‘Open-carry’ in Texas causing confusion for law enforcement. This law is a legal gymnastics exercise: Not only does it only include handguns, but it also requires a permit. And no carry is allowed at sporting events. JWR’s Comment: Whenever someone must buy a license or pay a fee to exercise a right, then it is something less than a right. It is in fact a mere …