The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “HJL”. Goodbye, France. It’s been nice knowing you. Goodbye, France France has a significant population of Islamic people. Every day, the significant number of those parents send their kids to a local mosque where they spend half of a three hour lesson learning Arabic and the other half learning about the Quran. Now, the president of France wants to introduce a program into public schools to offer Arabic to kids as young as …







Preparedness Notes for Wednesday – October 24, 2018

October 24th is the anniversary of the firing squad execution of Norwegian traitor Vidkun Quisling, in 1945. His ignominious place in history was to have his surname become a noun. “Quisling” is now a moniker synonymous with treason and alliance with an invading army. Something tells me that the popularity of “Vidkun” as a boys’ natal name in Scandanavia dropped precipitously after about 1942. Ditto for “Adolf”, in Germany, and “Benito”, in Italy, after 1944. o o o SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today features another entry for Round 79 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The nearly $11,000 worth of prizes …




G.O.O.D. Skin Care, by TK

Market research studies reveal that the skin care industry anticipates sales of $121 billion in 2018. It is a huge industry, with creams and potions promising much and not always delivering. Practicing good skin health costs less and has a better payoff. Skin Care Practicing proper skin care now, in preparation for economic, natural, and governmental disasters, will pay off in the long run with overall better health. Our skin is our largest organ and is vital to survival and health. It protects everything inside our bodies, regulates temperature and water loss, communicates external environmental factors through the nerve endings, …




Economics & Investing For Preppers

Here are the latest news items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. And it bears mention that most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor.) Today’s focus is on Stock market turbulence. (See the Economy & Finance section.) Precious Metals: First up, from Clint Siegner: How The Midterm Elections Might Affect Gold And Silver Prices o  o  o Palladium Spikes to All-Time High: The Long View o  o  o Money Managers Slash Bearish …




JWR’s Recommendations of the Week:

Here are JWR’s Recommendations of the Week for various media and tools of interest to SurvivalBlog readers. This week the focus is on some Electrical How-To videos. (See the Instructional Videos section.) Books: On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War’s Greatest Battle o  o  o Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Note: I’ve mentioned this book in SurvivalBlog, but the subject matter and the quality of the writing both warrant another mention. o  o  o Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution, by Tucker …




The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“A man must know his destiny… if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder… if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it.” – General George S. Patton




Preparedness Notes for Tuesday – October 23, 2018

On October 23rd, 2002, around 50 Chechen rebels stormed a Moscow theater, taking 700 hostages during a popular musical. After 57 hours, during which two hostages were killed, Soviet Special Forces pumped a powerful narcotic gas into the theater knocking the terrorists and hostages unconscious before breaking in through the walls and roof. When the dust settled, most of the rebels and 120 hostages had been killed.




The Well-Balanced Gun Collection

A topic that comes up in more than half of my consulting calls, is firearms. Most survivalists gravitate toward guns for obvious reasons. If anything, SurvivalBlog could surely be labelled a “guns and groceries” oriented blog, and most of our readers are like-minded. We tend to have large gun collections. We aren’t entirely gun-centric, but our concept of preparedness includes owning guns and having full proficiency in their use. The greatest difficulty vis-a-vis guns for those in our community is not hand-wringing about whether or not we should own them. We’ll leave that pseudo-question up to the leftists. Rather, our …




SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt

Here is SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt. This weekly column features news stories and event announcements from around the American Redoubt region. We also mention companies of interest to preppers that are located in the region. The emphasis this week is on the new crypto mining restriction in Ephrata, Wasington. See the Eastern Washington section.) Idaho Fish and Game: Idaho outdoorsmen to have some of the best elk hunting conditions of all time o o o Coeur D’Alene Police Department evacuated after man brings in explosive found in car   Montana Reader Cathy N. sent us this news about …




The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “HJL”. Robots The governments of the world continue their march towards robotic weapons. It really only makes sense. A robot is considerably less expensive to replace than a trained person if it is a casualty of a battle. Robots can also make decisions much faster than humans can. The danger, of course, is that a robot has no conscience and no sense of right and wrong. If you make a robot designed to …




The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“Today, you people are no longer maggots. Today, you are Marines. You’re part of a brotherhood. From now on until the day you die, wherever you are, every Marine is your brother. Most of you will go to Vietnam. Some of you will not come back. But always remember this: Marines die. That’s what we’re here for. But the Marine Corps lives forever. And that means you live forever.” – R. Lee Ermey, as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, in Full Metal Jacket.  







Jeep Shovel, by Pat Cascio

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have some kind of compact shovel in my vehicles. Some are better than others. Today, we’re taking a close look at the “Jeep Shovel” from Major Surplus. It is quite the little tool. Haunting Army-Navy Surplus Stores When I Was a Kid I grew up haunting army-navy surplus stores back in Chicago, IL when I was a kid. I could, and I did, easily spend hours and hours in those stores. Two, in particular, were just a couple of blocks away from one another in downtown Chicago, so it was easy visiting …