Year: 2025

Preparedness Notes for Saturday — June 7, 2025

June 7th, 1099: The First Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem. — On June 7th, 1663: In the Hudson Valley, the Munsee and Esopus bands of the Delaware Indian tribe made a surprise attack on the Dutch settlement of Wiltwijck (later re-named Kingston, New York). They killed 25 settlers and took 45 more, as hostages. — June 7th, 1776: Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Continental Congress a resolution calling for a Declaration of Independence. — June 7th, 1967 was the day of Jerusalem’s redemption from foreign governments in the Six Day War, placing it back under Israeli sovereign control …


Review: Springfield Armory Kuna, by Pat Cascio

Author’s Introductory Note: I mostly retired from writing more than two years ago, for a number of health reasons. I had several strokes plus a host of other health problems. I used to be able to type 100-to-125 words per minute, but now I can only type 30 words per minute. I was in the hospital several times – at one point, I had blood poisoning, and the ER doctor said I was within a couple of hours of dying. Not a good thing. During another hospital visit, I had uncontrolled internal bleeding and was given 21+ units of blood. …


Editors’ Prepping Progress

To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug-out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year.  We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in your e-mailed letters. We post many of those — or excerpts thereof — in the Odds …


The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom. A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself. When the wicked cometh, then cometh also contempt, and with ignominy reproach. The words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters, and the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook. It is not good to accept the person of the wicked, to overthrow the righteous in judgment. A fool’s lips enter into contention, and his mouth calleth for strokes. A fool’s mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of …


Preparedness Notes for Friday — June 6, 2025

D-Day was 81 years ago, today. I was born in 1960, just 16 years after D-Day.  I grew up living near a lot of World War 2 veterans. I hunted with some of them up until the 1990s.  It causes some cognitive dissonance to consider that today, the youngest veterans of that invasion, assuming that they were then 19 years old, would now be 100 years old! – JWR — Today is the birthday of American gun designer Hugo Borchardt. (June 6, 1844 – May 8, 1924). He was born in Germany. He is best known as the designer of …


For Want of a Nail: A Preps Inventory System – Part 4, by J.M.

(Continued from Part  3. This concludes the article.) What I’ve covered so far are the absolute basic things you need to know to use Obsidian for an inventory management systems. There are a number of other potentially useful capabilities you can use to enhance your inventory system that I’ll cover next. Where’s Waldo? Another potentially useful feature of Obsidian is the ability to assign a geographical location to a note. Say, for example, you have a couple of buried caches that you want to include in your inventory and you’d like to be able to include a map of their …


Economics & Investing For Preppers

Here are the latest news items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. In this column, JWR also covers hedges, derivatives, and various obscura. This column emphasizes JWR’s “tangibles heavy” investing strategy and contrarian perspective. Today, we look at the global debt crisis in general and the U.S. National Debt, in particular. Precious Metals: With both world war tensions and a global debt crisis brewing, the precious metals bull market is picking up speed. I took note that spot gold stood at $3,393.60 USD per Troy ounce on Thursday morning. It …



Preparedness Notes for Thursday — June 5, 2025

On June 5, 1284, Charles of Salerno was captured by Roger of Lauria during a naval battle in the Gulf of Naples. This was part of the Sicilian Vespers uprising, a.k.a. the War of the Vespers. (The outbreak of that war is depicted above.) — June 5, 1827: Turks captured the Acropolis and took Athens during the Greek War of Independence. — June 5, 1851: Harriet Beecher Stowe published the first installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The National Era. She was the sister of firebrand abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher. — I noticed a couple of interesting Idaho listings now …


For Want of a Nail: A Preps Inventory System – Part 3, by J.M.

(Continued from Part 2.) For security reasons, the Obsidian folks are pretty strict about letting you install Community plugins. You first have to go into the ‘Community Plugins’ section in ‘Options’ and turn off ‘Restricted Mode’ before you can install any plugins. Then after you install a plugin you have to verify you want to install it, and after it’s installed you have to click the ‘Enable’ slide switch to enable it. When a core or community plugin is installed a new button will usually appear for it at the bottom of the left pane of the Options dialog. If …


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, we look at the recent Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian bomber bases. Details on Ukrainian Attack on Russian Bomber Bases Operation Spider’s Web: How Russians Were Tricked Into …



Preparedness Notes for Wednesday — June 4, 2025

Today is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, in 1989. — Today is the anniversary of the June 4, 2004, Granby, Colorado armored bulldozer incident, where Marvin Heemeyer knocked down several buildings in the town. A documentary titled Tread details what happened that day, and the events leading to the rampage. Though often called the “Killdozer” incident, the only one who died that day was Marvin Heemeyer, from a self-inflicted gunshot. — A Reminder: We are running a two-week-long sale on all of the pre-1899 Mauser rifles in our inventory at Elk Creek Company.  There is no paperwork required …


For Want of a Nail: A Preps Inventory System – Part 2, by J.M.

(Continued from Part 1,) The Obsidian UI The User Interface (UI) for Obsidian can appear somewhat complicated, but it’s actually laid out pretty well. Here’s a picture of the basic interface:         Starting on the left is the Ribbon, which contains a series of icon buttons that you can press to perform different actions. There are a couple of different core functions, and many of the additional capabilities you can add via Plugins (more on that later) will add additional action buttons here. Next is the Left Sidebar, which can display a number of different views, but …


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. — Reader Tim J. sent this news: Army To Retire All Of Its Turboprop Surveillance Planes By The End Of The Year. JWR’s Comments: I predict that the Army will be forced to extend the life of its existing Guardrail turboprop (Beechcraft Super King Air) platforms, until a significant number of the new …