Preparedness Notes for Monday — October 20, 2025

On October 20, 1600, the Battle of Sekigahara established the Tokugawa clan as Japan’s rulers (Shoguns.) — October 20, 1634: King of England Charles I levied the “Ship Money” tax on all English and Welsh counties. — October 20, 1906: Dr Lee DeForest demonstrated his electrical vacuum tube. (Soon commonly called a radio tube.) — Today is the birthday of the late Tom Petty. (Born October 20, 1950, died October 2, 2017). He was a great singer-songwriter and a passable actor. — Today is also the birthday of shootist Ed McGivern (born 1874, died December 12, 1957.) He was born …




Loaves, Fishes, Tree Bark, Seeds, and Knowledge – Part 1, by The Chemical Engineer

JWR’s Introductory Note:  At just over 20,000 words, this is perhaps the longest single-topic contributed article ever serialized in SurvivalBlog. I consider it an important piece to ponder.  Please read all eight parts before sending your comments. I will post most of them in the Snippets column on October 29th. — I want to start with a brief but sincere thank you to all the article writers I have learned from here at SurvivalBlog.com. Your efforts have made a difference for me and many others. I hope my contribution can have a similar benefit to others. Thank you. Let me …




Recipe of the Week: 

The following simple recipe for Chicken and Egg Sandwiches is from The New Butterick Cook Book, copyright 1924, now in the public domain. That is one of the many bonus books included in the 2005-2025 20th Anniversary edition of the waterproof SurvivalBlog Archive USB stick that will be available in February of 2026. Ingredients 1 cup cold cooked chicken Yolks of two hard-cooked eggs 1 teaspoon rich stock 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1 teaspoon melted butter or butter substitute Salt Pepper Bread slices Directions Pound the chicken to a paste. Add the mashed yolks of hard-cooked eggs, the stock, Iemon …




SurvivalBlog Graphic of the Week

Today’s graphic:  Map of Tree Canopy Cover in the United States. (Graphic courtesy of the USDA.) For the full dataset with useful variant raster maps, see: https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/rastergateway/treemap/index.php The thumbnail below is click-expandable.       — Please send your graphics or graphics links to JWR. (Either via e-mail or via our Contact form.) Any graphics that you send must either be your own creation or uncopyrighted.