Preparedness Notes for Wednesday — June 9, 2021

Today is the birthday of Jean Alexandre Francois LeMat (1824–1883), best known for the percussion cap-fired LeMat revolver. It was a clever design, with a nine-shot .42 caliber cylinder revolving around a 20-gauge shotgun barrel.  The LeMat was considered a fairly obscure footnote in firearms history up until some nice replicas (in .44) were manufactured by Pietta, and then it got a lot of screen time in Holywood movies, most notably in Twelve Monkeys and Cold Mountain. On June 9, 1940 Norway surrendered to the invading German army, during World War II. The citizenry was then quickly disarmed by the …




Chainsaw Fuels for Long Term Storage, by Tunnel Rabbit

Even if I do not have time to lay out all that I know about long-term storage of various fuels and the various types of engines that might consume that fuel, perhaps I can pass along some helpful information. As a rule of thumb, I figure I’ll need one gallon of chainsaw gas for every one cord of wood that I cut, and I’ll need half that volume in bar oil. If we can keep a chainsaw running, then that fuel could be of adequate quality to run anything else. Gasoline is much more difficult to store than diesel, and …




SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets

This weekly column is a collection of short snippets: practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. We may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters. Firstly, and most importantly, there is this encouraging news: Federal Judge Overturns California’s Assault Weapons Ban.  The full text of the decision can be seen here. JWR’s Comments: Be advised that the automatic stay leaves the door open for a very likely appeal, anytime in the next 25 days. So we can expect this to advance to a Ninth Circuit three-judge …