Year: 2025


Preparedness Notes for Thursday — August 7, 2025

August 7, 1588: English sailors set alight eight fireships, with pitch, brimstone, gunpowder, and tar, and cast them downwind towards the closely anchored vessels of the Spanish Armada, scattering the armada. Pictured: English and Spanish fleets clash in the 1558 Battle of Gravelines in a painting by Philip James de Loutherbourg. — August 7th, 1933 was the birthday of the late Jerry Pournelle. He, along with Larry Niven, authored the survivalist classic Lucifer’s Hammer. — As part of the 20th Anniversary celebration for SurvivalBlog, we’ve launched our biggest sale ever on all of our percussion gun inventory at Elk Creek …


Zastava ZPAP M70 Underfolder, by Thomas Christianson

AK platform firearms have a well-deserved reputation for rugged reliability. This is due (among other factors) to their simple design, sturdy construction, generally loose tolerances, and over-gassing. As a result, AK platform rifles have been a long-time favorite of mine for potential use in situations in which normal care and maintenance may be difficult. The Zastava ZPAP M70 Underfolder is a credit to its AK family lineage. It is compact (just 26.25 inches long when folded), reasonably accurate for an AK (those loose tolerances don’t make for an ideal sniper rifle), with above-average fit and finish for an AK, and …


The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is 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. In today’s column, more news of nuclear war brinksmanship. Russia’s Terrifying ‘Dead Hand’ Threat Over at The UK Daily Mail: Russia’s terrifying ‘DEAD HAND’ threat as spiraling nuclear rhetoric leaves world …



Preparedness Notes for Wednesday — August 6, 2025

We are now celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the founding of SurvivalBlog. My first blog post was on August 5, 2005. That was just three weeks before the first report that Hurricane Katrina had formed. There are now 40,836 archived SurvivalBlog posts. That includes 7,296 quotes, with Bible verses on every Saturday and Sunday. All of the blog archives will remain freely available. Thanks for spreading the word and making the blog such a great success. Our special thanks to the 2% of readers who voluntarily subscribe. I hope that more folks will recognize the usefulness of SurvivalBlog as a …


Meat and Vegetable Broths, by Mrs. Alaska

Almost any savory dish you cook with water will be tastier if cooked with a vegetable broth or meat broth.  So throughout a week of cooking (and harvesting), I set aside less desirable parts of vegetables and bones to make broth when I have accumulated enough to make a pot or two.  I often time the cooking in advance of making rice, or beans so I can cook those carbohydrates in the broth. Making Vegetable Broth The vegetables for broths can be any and all.  For example, this week, I harvested broccoli heads.  For the broth, I cut up the …


SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets

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. — I found this great documentary linked over at my buddy Commander Zero’s Notes From The Bunker blog: Exploring the Paranoid Country with 374,142 Bunkers to Hide Everyone (how is this possible?)  Pictured above is a fortified Swiss artillery emplacement, camouflaged to look like a house. o  o  o Reader C.B. sent this …


The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can’t understand it, don’t like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That’s why the Second Amendment is America’s first freedom.” – Charlton Heston


Preparedness Notes for Tuesday — August 5, 2025

August 5, 1716: Battle of Petrovaradin [aka Peterwardein]: The Habsburgs under Eugene of Savoy defeated the Ottomans in a decisive victory. — On this day in 1763: Battle of Bushy Run, Pontiac’s War. Forces led by Swiss mercenary Henry Bouquet defeated Chief Pontiac’s Indians at Bushy Run. — August 5, 1917: The entire US National Guard is taken into national service, subject to presidential rather than state control. — August 5th is also 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 …


Writing Contest Prize Winners Announced — Round 119

We’ve announced the winners of Round 119 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. Note to the top three prize winners: Please contact me and let me know your UPS and USPS address(es), for your prizes. Thanks. – JWR The top three prize winners will each receive some great prize packages. The winners for Round 119 are… First Prize Winner: First Prize goes to A.F. for Preps Starter Kits for Reluctant Families. See: Part 1 and Part 2. It was posted July 8-9, 2025. He will receive as prizes: A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for …


Commonality Across Your Preps, by A.C.

Let’s face it, the world we live in is defined by the staggering variety of choices we have. A that is why the simple concept of standardization (the deliberate choice to use common platforms and equipment) might seem like a limitation. However, as large government organizations and individual preppers alike have learned a strategic commitment to commonality offers immeasurable benefits in efficiency, cost, and safety. By examining the lessons from military programs I have been personally involved with and applying them to our own lives, we can see how thinking about standardization is a powerful way to enhance our readiness, …


SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt

This weekly column features news stories and event announcements from around the American Redoubt region. (Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and Wyoming.) Much of the region is also more commonly known as The Inland Northwest. We also mention companies located in the American Redoubt region that are of interest to preppers and survivalists. Today, news about the manhunt for an Anaconda, Montana quadruple murder suspect. (See the Montana section.) Idaho Throwing Away The Key: Bryan Kohberger transferred to long-term isolation in ‘restrictive housing block’. o  o  o Sun Valley Tour de Force survivors heal and inspire. “What started as a …



Preparedness Notes for Monday — August 4, 2025

On August 4, 1735, a jury acquitted John Zenger of the New York Weekly Journal. (A sample issue from the previous year is pictured.) He had been charged with seditious libel by the royal governor of New York. This was a key victory and legal precedent for freedom of press. — August 4, 1900:  An allied expeditionary force, made up of Japanese, Russian, British, French, and American troops, set off from Tientsin for Peking, China, to put down the Boxer rebellion. — And on August 4, 1961 Spokane, Washington reached an August record high temperature of 108° F. — Today’s …