Month: March 2020

Preparedness Notes for Saturday — March 21, 2020

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March 21st, 1778:  Just three days after Hessian mercenary forces assaulted the local New Jersey militia at Quinton’s Bridge, the same contingent surprised the colonial militia at Hancock’s Bridge five miles from Salem. In what became known as the Massacre at Hancock’s Bridge, at least 20 members of the militia lost their lives, some after attempting to surrender. The Loyalists reputedly exclaimed “Spare no one! Give no quarter!” as they stormed the occupied house. Judge Hancock and his brother (both Loyalists) were bayoneted in the melee by the attackers even though they were both staunch supporters of the crown and …


Get Going on Gardening – Part 2, by St. Funogas

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(Continued from Part 1.) If you’re on a tighter budget, then there are inexpensive ways to create a lot of compost for next year’s garden. You can start a huge compost pile by cleaning out chicken coops, animal stalls, obtaining mushroom spawn from your local mushroom farm, adding grass clippings, Starbucks coffee grounds, dead leaves, etc. Do some googling and brainstorming to come up with ideas on how to get as much organic material as possible to get a huge first-year compost pile going. The woodier and the chunkier the materials, the slower they will compost so avoid things like …


Editors’ Prepping Progress

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To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year. Note that as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in the Comments. Let’s keep busy …


The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

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“God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us; Selah. That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations.  Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Selah. Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless …


Preparedness Notes for Friday — March 20, 2020

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March 20th is the birthday of Mel Tappan. (He was born in 1933, and died in 1980.) His perennially popular survivalist books Survival Guns and Tappan on Survival have a well-deserved following. I designated March 20th as National Survivalism Day, in his honor. This year marks the 40th anniversary of his untimely death. It is also apropos that National Survivalism Day falls in March–one of the months that both Northern Europeans and Native Americans refer to as The Starving Season–when stored food runs low, but before spring bounty appears. SurvivalBlog readers are the type who plan ahead, and stock up. …


Get Going on Gardening – Part 1, by St. Funogas

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If you seriously think we’re going to be facing some kind of a TEOTWAWKI situation sometime in our future then you can’t get started soon enough on learning how to garden. Among preppers, the majority of us probably don’t have a two-year supply of food on hand, even if any friends and relatives show up. And if most states lose 18-25% of their deer population every year in a managed 10-day hunt, I’m guessing that in the free-for-all that will ensue after the SHTF, most big game will quickly become nearly extinct — like it was in most states by …


Economics & Investing For Preppers

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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. Most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor, JWR. Today, we look at the incredibly volatile global stock markets. (See the Stocks section.) Precious Metals: Price of Physical Gold Decouples from Paper Gold o  o  o Gold price remains down as Philly Fed survey see largest drop in history. JWR’s Comments: Some institutional stock traders are feeling squeezed by the new bear …


The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

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“If you do not want the State to act like a criminal, you must disarm it as you would a criminal; you must keep it weak. The State will always be criminal in proportion to its strength; a weak State will always be as criminal as it can be, or dare be, but if it is kept down to the proper limit of weakness – which, by the way, is a vast deal lower limit than people are led to believe – its criminality may be safely got on with.” – Albert Jay Nock


Preparedness Notes for Thursday — March 19, 2020

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On March 19, 1982, 50 Argentines landed on South Georgia in the Falkland Islands to plant the Argentine  flag. They renamed the islands The Malvinas. This precipitated the Argentine army invasion on April 2nd. Despite some significant naval losses and dreadful weather, British Marines re-took the island on April 25th in a well-coordinated ground campaign. Coincidentally, in this brief war, the British Army and the Argentine Army were both equipped with FN-FAL variant rifles. (The Brits carried L1A1 “SLR” inch pattern FAL rifles.) — I’d be remiss if I did not mention that the number of reported COVID-19 cases is …


When Do We Change Masks? – Part 3, by ShepherdFarmerGeek

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(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.) When the mask (and goggles?) is done in the “toaster,” then bag it in a fresh carry bag along with the goggles for your next adventure! (And why this challenging routine? It’s because not only do sneeze and cough droplets carry COVID-19 but even breathing produces a mist of viruses. And those particles are so small they can stay suspended in the air for up to 3 hours. All of these droplets and particles settle out on surfaces and the floor. And this virus is so incredibly contagious that persons who use …


The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods

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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 “JWR”. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. Today, we look at a warning on NSAIDs. Coronavirus: An Anti-Malarial Drug is a COVID Cure? Tucker – BREAKING: A peer-reviewed study shows that 100% of patients, after 6 days of taking a Malaria …



Preparedness Notes for Wednesday — March 18, 2020

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Today is the birthday of Luc Besson, director and producer of films such as Nikita and The Fifth Element. He was born in 1959. March 18th is also the birthday of novelist John Updike. (He was born in 1932 and died in 2009.) — Have you noticed that the silver-to-gold price ratio just hit a high of 115-to-1?  If you can find a local dealer with any physical silver on hand, then this would be a great time to ratio trade out gold, into silver. SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 87 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction …


When Do We Change Masks? – Part 2, by ShepherdFarmerGeek

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(Continued from Part 1.) GET SUNNY! Another option would be to expose your contaminated masks to sunlight. The UV component in sunlight will kill viruses. And if you position the mask just right, as the sun moves across the sky it will irradiate the entire face of the mask without any part being shaded and untreated. (You could even hang your masks from a clothesline if you clip the clothespin to one of the tabs where the strap attaches to the mask proper.) Unfortunately, for the Shepherdess and I and many other preppers, the weather here in Spokane does not …


JWR’s Recommendations of the Week:

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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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This week the focus is on some Hunkering down “how-to” and supplies.  As near as I can tell, our infection curve …