Company sells American-made outdoor products: Hill People Gear.

This 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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Lily suggested this brief video with some serious truth bombs. (Warning: There is some foul language): A great message everyone needs to hear from a real man.

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Reader R.W. mentioned this company in Grand Junction, Colorado that specializes in American-made outdoor products: Hill People Gear. From their site: “We believe in personal liberty. We believe in the armed individual as the fundamental unit of personal liberty and human dignity. We also believe that personal liberty is very dependent on who you are taking your paycheck from. That’s why our suppliers are family-owned American businesses that use American materials and employ other Americans.”

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Millions of hacked toothbrushes used in Swiss cyber attack, report says.

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Massive Sunspot Turns Toward Earth. A quote:

“A sunspot so big it can be seen from Mars is turning toward Earth today. Visible through ordinary eclipse glasses, the behemoth has a mixed-polarity magnetic field that poses a threat for X-class solar flares. Any such eruptions in the days ahead will be squarely Earth-directed.”

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More wisdom from our friend Commander Zero: Kerosene stove.

Some interesting reading: Accidental Shooting Statistics: A Review of Unintentional Firearm Deaths from 1979-2024. A quote:

“Accidental shooting deaths have declined from 1,491 per year (1979-1998) to an average of 606 (1999-2023).”

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Video: Why The United States Is So Much Larger Today Than It Was In 2023. A summary:

“As of January 2024, the United States grew by about 400,000 square miles of territory or larger than the state of Texas. This was done under a little known United Nations policy called the Extended Continental Shelf.“

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Explosion Light-Years Away Could Obliterate Life on Earth, Scientists Find.

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SaraSue sent this snippet:

“My beautiful Jersey cow calved a healthy and handsome bull calf without incident. The following day I noticed her not behaving normally and started watching her very closely. She wasn’t eating or drinking and very slow. I called a vet. I waited about 6 hours for a vet to get here. She went down hard with Milk Fever right before the vets arrived. I sat beside her and told her to hang on, that help was on the way – this was way beyond my ability and medical kit to manage. The first question they asked after looking her over was “What do you want to do? In a commercial environment a cow like this is…” “Culled”, I responded. In other words, put down. I told them “I want you to throw everything at her that you’ve got”. So they worked almost 2 hours on her and we left her with her calf that night to recover. They thought she might also have pneumonia and ketosis as well as milk fever. She had a couple of IVs (calcium, and dextrose), vitamin shots, an antibiotic, and they pumped minerals and nutrition into her stomach with a long tube. The next morning, I was up early, early, and went out in the dark with a flashlight to find her. She was up eating and drinking with her calf close by. She’s not out of the woods yet, so I’m keeping a close eye on her, and have the vet on speed dial. The thing that was so amazing to me was that she stood for the calf to nurse, no matter how rotten she felt, until she went down and couldn’t get up. I knew he had a full stomach and would make it to the next morning, as long as she made it. He is doing very well, but I was ready to bottle-feed him if she didn’t make it.

3 of 4 pigs went to the processor. Loading the first two was easy. The last two were problematic. One escaped, so he didn’t get to go to Freezer Camp. Once a pig is scared, and loose, you can’t catch them. You have to set up a lure of some type and wait for them to come back. I was able to get him back in his pen by end of the day.

The remaining piglets will go to their new home soon, and I will be out of the pig business altogether. In other news, one of my dairy cows went to visit the neighbor’s bull to be bred, after several failed A.I. (Artificial Insemination) attempts.

It’s been a busy, stressful, week. Lots of praying, lots of running around, lots of managing the farm in spite of the drama. On a good note, the weather had cleared up and it was unseasonably warm. I was so grateful that all the above happened during a very nice break in winter weather – no snow, no rain, abundant sunshine, and the mud had mostly dried up. It could’ve have been much worse.”

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Air Force seeks retirees to come back to active duty.

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Washington state diverted $340M in federal COVID funds to immigrants, including via $1,000 checks.

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Brussels Blinks First: European Union Scraps Key Elements of Green Agenda Amid Standoff with Farmers. This article begins:

“The farmer uprisings across the continent have forced the globalist European Union leadership in Brussels to back down from key elements to its green agenda to achieve “net zero” emissions — for now.

Following major wins last year in The Netherlands, tractor protests from farmers secured another significant victory against the globalist agenda on Tuesday, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen scrapping plans to require the agriculture sector to cut methane and nitrogen emissions by a third by 2040.

Brussels is also set to backtrack on plans to cut the use of pesticides in half during the same time frame, which farmers have argued puts them at a disadvantage to foreign agriculture imported into the bloc under free trade deals at cheaper costs due to their countries having less stringent environmental regulations as the EU.”

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Reader D.S.V. sent us an article that provides one more reason to become a former Amazon customer: Amazon Bowed to White House Pressure to Suppress Books Skeptical of Covid “Vaccines”.

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Lumin sent this snippet:

“I had several novel adventures this past week that were on the dangerous side for me. They would not be dangerous for experienced old-timers because they would not make the mistakes that I made, but I hope there is something in what follows for you new people (like me).

Everything turned out okay, obviously, because you are reading this. They were satisfying adventures because I survived them and learned some important lessons that I will share below.

But first, although this may sound silly, it seems like every week or two I feel like I live through “The End Of The World As We Know It” (aka TEOTWAWKI) but in a good way. I am so far surviving my first Idaho winter living alone in the mountains, and it is rewarding. It may not be a coronal mass ejection (aka CME), electromagnetic pulse (aka EMP), Disease X or a dollar collapse, but nonetheless surviving dangerous challenges is rewarding.

Now, onto my update. Last week I had two back-to-back snow storms that dropped about eight inches of snow each night, so 16-inches total over a 48-hour period.

My personal survival rule is that as soon as there is six to eight inches of new snow, then I plow the 26 miles of forest service road leading to my house (13 miles down, and 13 miles back) so that I have egress and ingress to civilization.

Plowing snow is the easy part, but dealing with big trees that fall across the road is the hard part and takes the most time to deal with.

After the first night of an eight inch snow fall, I headed out first thing in the morning and came upon 20 fallen trees, 15 fallen trees on the way down, and five new fallen trees on the way back. Each time I stopped, studied the fallen tree (each one is unique) and then got out and started my chainsaw and got to work. Several times I cut through the trunk in the wrong direction and it pinched my bar and chain. Each time this happened I was able to extract my chain saw, but I think that I was lucky in not breaking the chain or bending the blade. I only had the one chain saw with me and foolishly left the second one at home. I will not make that mistake again, and will always start carrying two chain saws just in case one gets stuck in a tree or breaks.

I had to re-fuel and add bar-oil to my chainsaw twice that day. More on that below.

I also always wear eye protection and ear protection when I use my chainsaw, but I foolishly forgot to bring my chainsaw protective pants (which were still new in the bag back home).

I got home eight hours later exhausted. I felt similar to having completed a triathlon (which is a good feeling of exhaustion), but different (but still in a good way).

The next night it snowed an additional eight inches, so I again headed out first thing in the morning to plow and came upon 18 new fallen trees. This time I brought a second chainsaw as a backup, but I did not need it. I again needed to re-fuel and add bar oil to my chainsaw twice that day. I could tell that I was moving quickly through both resources, so I made a note to carry plenty of both from now on.

I again got home eight hours later feeling exhausted (again the good kind) but enough snow had fallen that I could not drive my 4WD truck up the incline to my house. I had already put 1,000 pounds of sand bags in the bed of my truck on the advice of the locals to help with rear-wheel traction, but even that wasn’t enough.

So, I walked the rest of the way home to get my Utility Task Vehicle (aka UTV) outfitted with snow tracks and a snow plow (my plan-B vehicle) to plow out the incline and my driveway so that I could drive my truck the rest of the way home. Just as I finished this plowing, the nylon rope broke that operates the UTV’s snow plow. At least I could get my truck home but now I had to figure out how to fix my now broken plan-B snow-plow. I used a small handheld propane torch to cut through the frayed end of the broken nylon rope and tied a knot to the end of the snow plow, which temporarily fixed the problem. However, I do not know how to tie knots (the proper kind) nor which one to use for different situations, so I would be grateful if one of the old-timers would chime in next week with advice on what knot they would have chosen.

I learned several important lessons:

- Fallen trees are a common occurrence and take time to safely dispatch.
- Always have a plan-B, which for me was my never-used Utility Task Vehicle (aka UTV) outfitted with snow tracks and a snow plow.
- Always carry an extra chain saw in case one breaks down.
- Always carry extra fuel and bar-oil for my chain saws.
- There is snow that is too deep for even a weighted 4WD truck to drive through, and it isn’t much.”

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H.L. sent us this zinger headline: Make Your Mind Up! Now British Government Wants to Arrest People For Wearing a Mask. Just two years after the government finally ended mask mandates in the UK it is moving to ban the wearing of masks, specifically during protests.

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Visa, Mastercard, American Express Implementing Code to Track Gun Purchase Information in California.

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YouTube CEO Vows To Censor “Hate Speech” and Boost “Authoritative Sources” in Recommendations When People Look for Election News in 2024. Here is a pericope:

“YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has a post up on the company blog just in time to, well in advance, reiterate the giant platform’s policies regarding the upcoming elections.

Even though Mohan’s “letter” is supposed to deal with the “four big bets for 2024,” the bit concerning the elections is of most interest, given the ramifications of YouTube’s previous and continued restrictive approach and unprecedented levels of censorship.

Just in case anyone worried things might improve, the post reassures them: YouTube will use its massive resources and the way the platform is structured, such as search and recommendations, to wipe out what it chooses to consider “hate speech” and at the same time “boost authoritative sources” even more.”

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And to end on a humorous note: A Chilean all-woman SWAT team tackles an obstacle course. JWR’s Comment: I propose that they should serve up those athletic lady cops some very tall glasses of Fepic Ale.