Preparedness Notes for Thursday — August 5, 2021

August 5th is the sad anniversary of the Mann Gulch Fire in Montana that took the lives of 13 firefighters (including 12 smokejumpers and one former smokejumper), in 1949. The intense, fast-moving forest fire took place in what later became the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness. The events of that fire were chronicled in the book Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean and immortalized in the haunting lyrics of the ballad Cold Missouri Waters by James Keelaghan. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today, we begin Round 96 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include: First Prize: …




My Many Fast Failures – Part 1, by M.P.

I just learned the hard way the truth about not counting your chickens before they are hatched. This is but one of the many failures I have experienced over the past several years as I have been trying to climb the learning curve of several different self-sufficiency skills. I wanted to share my experiences with the other readers of SurvivalBlog in hopes—not so much that you can learn from my mistakes though if that happens, wonderful!—but as much as anything to encourage you to start now making your own mistakes and learning from them if you haven’t already. “Fail fast” …




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 “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 software-defined radios (SDRs). A Primer on Software Defined Radios (SDRs) This video is a primer on inexpensive software-defined radios (SDRs): The Coolest Radio You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.  JWR’s Comment: …




The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops — but not on our lines. The …