Our weekly Snippets column is a collection of short items: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. Note that we may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters.
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Reader C.B. recommended the Pure-Gas.org website. It has a list of gas stations that sell ethanol-free gasoline. JWR’s Comment: This is the correct variety of gas to use for extended storage. Of course, add some PRI-G or Sta-bil. Do not expect any ethanol blend to store well.
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Something published back in 2018, but still relevant: Why the Ozarks is Mecca for Doomsday Preppers.
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From reader H.L.: Western Civilization Depends on Men and Masculinity.
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How To Tan a Deer Hide.
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I bumped into a useful Reddit thread: Old truck restoration.
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Reader C.J. wrote:
“The proliferation of automatic license plate readers (ALPR) is a burden on our privacy and freedom, particularly if the data from those ALPR cameras is used for other reasons.
I am sharing the following two websites, to share with SurvivalBlog readers.
The Eyes On Flock site explains how the Flock ALPR cameras are being used. The Deflock site is an interactive map showing where the FLOCK cameras are located.”
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Several readers mentioned this widely-linked article: A Skills Gap Is Turning Cleaning for the Rich Into a $100,000 Job.
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In response to the recent 8-part article series on recovery from a major disaster, blog reader Janet W wrote:
“It may have been in SurvivalBlog years ago, but I read that if you take the tips of willow branches and add them to water, the enzymes they produce result in more successful, stronger, healthier, and more abundant growth in any sucker branch cuttings placed in that willow water.
I will be planting a few weeping willow trees next year for exactly that reason.
Some of your readers may know more about this, but I suspect most will never have heard of it, so it may be useful information.”
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And reader L.E. had this response to the same series:
1 – Once fed initially, the vast majority of hungry and unprepared will become apathetic and quiescent, until they get hungry again. They will not attempt to prepare against a second wave of hunger, knowing that if you fed them once, then you are now obligated to feed them again.
2 – NEVER give these people access to or training in the use of any kind of weapon, because once they become hungry again, those weapons will be used against you, because it is easier to steal from the kind than it is to work to prepare themselves. No slingshots, bows and arrows, BB guns, spears, clubs, or machetes, and definitely NO GUNS.
3 – Hungry and unprepared people will work in the fields helping to grow food, but only at the point of a gun wielded by a ruthless leader. They will whine, complain, pilfer, and scheme/betray against good people trying to help them. If you gave them seeds then they would not know what to do with them.
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H.L. sent this: La Niña’s fingerprints are all over winter weather forecasts.
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“Innocent Bystander” sent us a letter that he originally posted back in 2009:
“A most outrageous, totally legal and likely profitable libertarian political protest:
They are going to try to put me in the concentration camps in the first group for thinking up naughty ideas like this. Please feel free to distribute/forward, with no hint of my name and e-mail address.
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Libertarians have many of the right answers to the problems facing the United States and need to be heard loud and clear above the confusion disseminated by the mainstream media and their lackeys in government, all bought and paid for by the crony capitalists of Wall Street.
If all of the nickels and pennies in circulation rather suddenly disappeared, it would generate a lot of media attention and curiosity on the part of the public. It would be a brilliant protest against the devaluation of our currency and the debasement of the Republic by the bankers and their ilk. Change could be made only to the nearest dime.
There are roughly 140 billion pennies and 28 billion nickels in circulation. It would “cost” only $2.8 billion dollars to remove them all from circulation. If we can find 2.8 million libertarians to each accumulate $1000 of pennies and nickels, we will be heard loud and perhaps clear. I use the quotes on “cost” to indicate that it actually could be quite profitable to remove these coins from circulation.
Nickels and pennies are a special class of investment that do well with inflation, deflation and economic collapse. One of the few other investments in this class are greenhouses. Presently, the value of the metal content of nickels and pennies is quite close to the face value. While it is illegal to melt them for the metal content, that prohibition likely will be lifted, as it has for traditional silver coinage in the US.
Everyone would do well to have 6 months of cash on hand. The form of the cash ideally would be difficult to steal and difficult to spend. Having cash that is hedged for inflation and economic collapse is even better. Since many in the libertarian movement are armed, a significant fraction have gun safes. You can bet your last dollar that no one (other than a team of ATF agents) will carry away your gun safe if it has an extra 200 kilograms of coins in it.
There is a lot more to be said on these topics, but my goal at the moment is simply to plant the idea of an inexpensive and highly effective political protest. I understand that we may not be able to dirty our hands with things that are too outrageous.
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SurvivalBlog staffer Tom Christianson suggested this, from Smithsonian: It’s Almost Impossible for Tristan Gooley to Get Lost. That’s One Reason He Has Millions of Followers.
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And lastly, reader C.B. spotted this, over at X/Twitter: A customer leaving a restaurant in his own plane, casually, in Alaska.
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