Preparedness Notes for Saturday — April 24, 2021

April 24th is the birthday of my childhood friend, Carolyn Cole (born 1961). She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times. This is also the day that the Armenian Genocide began, in 1915. Ottoman Turk Muslims slaughtered 1.5 million of their Christian neighbors, intellectuals, and community leaders. The Ottoman government proceeded with multiple phases to round up men in mass executions and drive women and children into the desert on death marches. They also led the general Muslim citizens to participate in brutal periodic massacres within their communities signaled with the blow of a bugle. It …




A Moving Story, by Uncle Reid

Think about having to move all your stuff. Think about the weight. And the volume. The Wuhan Flu put my wife and me on the unemployment line on March 16, 2020. Living in northern New Jersey (NJ), in Bergen County with its nearly 1 million inhabitants, 25 miles from New York City, with incredibly high property and personal income taxes was no longer tenable. We had a place to “bug out” to. My son had moved to Tennessee a few years ago and had a bed for us. But just a bed. No room for our 60 super pails, our …




Editors’ Prepping Progress

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.  We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in your e-mailed letters. We post many of those –or excerpts thereof — in this column, in …




The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“Call now, if there be any that will answer thee; and to which of the saints wilt thou turn? For wrath killeth the foolish man, and envy slayeth the silly one. I have seen the foolish taking root: but suddenly I cursed his habitation. His children are far from safety, and they are crushed in the gate, neither is there any to deliver them. Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and taketh it even out of the thorns, and the robber swalloweth up their substance. Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the …