JWR’s Recommendations of the Week:

Here are JWR’s Recommendations of the Week for various media and tools of interest to SurvivalBlog readers. The focus is usually on emergency communications gear, bug out bag gear, books and movies–often with a tie-in to disaster preparedness, and links to “how to” self-sufficiency videos. There are also links to sources for both storage food and storage containers. You will also note an emphasis on history books and historical movies. Since we are in the Amazon Associates program, we will earn a commission on any  Amazon sales. This week the focus is on the last few Baofeng UV-5R multi-band radios still available on the gray market in the United States. (See the Gear & Grub section.)

Books:

Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame), has a new book that is rightfully on the New York Times bestsellers list: The Way I Heard It. This book has been described as:  “…a delightfully entertaining, seriously fascinating collection of his favorite episodes from America’s #1 short-form podcast, The Way I Heard It, along with a host of personal memories, ruminations, and insights. It’s a captivating must-read.”

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American Medical Association Guide to Your Family’s Symptoms

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Emergency War Surgery (2014 Edition)

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The Prepared Family Guide to Uncommon Diseases. (This was written by the editor of the great Paratus Familia blog.)

Movies:

Ben Stoeger has a great series of videos. This one is for folks new to pistol shooting: Practical Pistol Foudations with Ben Stoeger.

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And here is a DVD suitable for kids that will someday be considered a classic: Toy Story.

Instructional Videos & Vlogs:

Two recent video essays from the always insightful Sam Culper of Forward Observer:

October Update: NVGs, the Area Study, and Skills

and

SHTF Concepts: Friction & Uncertainty

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Reader T J. recommended these four useful ham radio videos:

Podcast:

Reluctant Preppers Podcast: Unconfiscatable Arms & Strategic Relocation: An interview with James Rawles

Gear & Grub:

Wow, there is apparently still a gray market! I noticed that there is still just one seller on Amazon.com offering “six packs” of Baofeng BF-UV5R Dual Band Handi-Talkies. Surprisingly, they have raised their price only  around $15 for the case of six, to $135.99, shipping paid. I strongly recommend jumping on some of these, while you still can find them!  They are now import banned, and even sales banned, once the FCC gets around to clamping down of the few remaining gray market sellers. So this opportunity is “Going, going…”

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I noticed that GunMag Warehouse (one of our affiliate advertisers) is having a big sale on ETS brand clear plastic pistol magazines. I’ve found that these magazines are inexpensive, but remarkably reliable. Among others, they are now selling the ETS 40-round Glock 17/19 9mm magazines and 30-round SIG P320 magazines. They also now make a nifty 18-round magazine for Glock 21 .45 ACPs and a jumbo 30-round magazine for Glock Model 20 (10mm) pistols.  I just bought a pile of ETS magazines, and I recommend that you do , too. Full capacity magazines will be great for barter. They are also hedges on both inflation and Federal magazine ban legislation. (Since any Federal ban would almost surely include a grandfather clause.)

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NAD+ Boosting Super Supplement – 125mg NMN Nicotinamide Mononucleotide The Real, Clinically Proven NMN. JWR’s Comment: If you are familiar with NMN, then look at this National Public Radio report. Since I’m turning 60 next year, I believe that this is worth a try.

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ONE Protein Bar, 12-Pack, Gluten-Free, High Protein, Low Sugar, Includes Dark Chocolate Sea Salt, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Chocolate Brownie & Almond Bliss

Make a Suggestion

Want to suggest Recommendations of your own? Then please send them to JWR. (Either via e-mail of via our Contact form.) Thanks!




6 Comments

  1. I am sure some these will be available for a while. At some point though, they might be selling what appears to be the same thing, but not with the same free range functions. I’m thinking you will buy one and it will be strictly ham band xmit and wideband rx but not xmit.

  2. I consider Toy Story (and the follow up movies) to already be ‘classics’. It’s one of the few recent Disney movies that avoids subliminal PC and I actually enjoy watching them with my granddaughter.

  3. One simply cannot gather too much information about necessary medical practices. God help both the patient and the practitioner of Grid Down home dentistry. Getting the skills, the necessary tools and as much medication (especially pain and antibiotic) as possible beforehand is absolutely Paramount.

  4. Got my 6 pack of UV5R radios a little while back.

    They came with a total of 12 batteries of which 1 gave an error indication on the charger. I contacted the seller and they sent me 2 full replacement radio sets. So now I have 8 radios and probably 15 good batteries and one maybe.

    The programming cables however were junk. There are a number of cables that have counterfeit chip sets. Mine were apparently counterfeit. There are numerous websites that all basically lead you back to downloading old Prolific device drivers that will supposedly work with these cables. I messed around with this process downloading numerous Prolific and FTDI drivers and wasting hours. I am pretty proficient at making things that are not supposed to work on computers work through all kinds of manipulation. (A feature of my job as we do not update software nearly often enough.) I could not make it work. Some sites say the drivers will detect that the chips are counterfeit and disable them and I think this was happening. Finally I ordered this

    https://www.amazon.com/BTECH-PC03-Genuine-Programming-Cable/dp/B00HUB0ONK/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=2X1NW7WDYIUBQ&keywords=baefong+uv5r+programming+cable&qid=1571945007&sprefix=baefon%2Caps%2C348&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyMVo5VEhRWUFWVFY5JmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwOTc5OTU5MzlMTDJYR1VOWVlYSiZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNTM2NTQwMkxCOEhIWTBJSDdIViZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

    It did not load automatically the first time as advertised. However I was able to easily download and manually install the latest FTDI driver and it works flawlessly with the latest version of CHIRP. I will likely order another.

    The radios work OK. For now we are using MURS channels until I get licensed.

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