Preparedness Notes for Wednesday — December 31, 2025

On December 31, 406, “The Great Invasion” sent a vast mixed horde of barbarians that included Vandals, Alans, and Suebians across the Rhine River, at Mainz (pictured). Thus began the invasion of Gallia.

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December 31st 1564: William I of Orange demands freedom of religious conscience for his subjects in dramatic speech to the Council of State.

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December 31st is the birthday of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008).

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December 31st, 1851 was the birthday of Frederick Selous. (He died on January 4th, 1917.)

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The 20th Anniversary SurvivalBlog 2005-2025 Waterproof/EMP-Resistant Archive USB sticks are available for Pre-Ordering.  This year, we are also offering a limited number of them in steel keepsake tins, with keychains.  Orders should start to be mailed in the third week of January.  To be sure that you get yours, order soon!

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Today’s feature article is by SurvivalBlog Senior Editor, James Wesley, Rawles (JWR).

Regional and Seasonal Camouflage Clothing and Gear

As 2025 draws to a close, I’d like to revisit a topic that often comes up in SurvivalBlog: camouflage clothing and equipment.

Note: To see examples and variants of the camouflage patterns that I’ll mention in this article, see the comprehensive Camopedia.org website. They are to be commended for maintaining a great reference site.

I will begin with some history:

The French Lizard Pattern

Camouflage uniforms were not standard issue for all but a handful of the world’s armies until the mid-1960s.  Experimentation with modern printed camouflage fabric as we now know it began with the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS, circa 1942-1945.  They tried no less than a dozen different patterns. Also in 1942, the US Marine Corps began limited use of a camouflage pattern called Frog Skin. It had been designed by Norvell Gillespie, a civilian horticulturist and the gardening editor for Better Homes & Gardens magazine, at the request of the War Department.

But except for the camouflage used by elite units or for unusual deployments, until the 1980s, most soldiers of major armies still wore khaki, olive drab, or other solid shades of green. The French Army began limited issue of their now famous “Lizard” brushstroke camouflage pattern in 1947, but most French soldiers still wore khaki — both in garrison and in the field.Continue reading“Regional and Seasonal Camouflage Clothing and Gear”

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.

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Where Are People Moving Most in the U.S. in 2026?

o  o  o

CPRC’s Lott Calls Out Wall Street Journal’s Fear Mongering Over Concealed Carry.

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31 Indoor Woodworking Projects to Do This Winter.

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SurvivalBlog’s Editor-At-Large Michael Z. Williamson spotted this:
Burundi: Farmer finds new technique for preserving tomatoes.
o  o  o

Pilot-free flying taxis revving up to traverse U.S. skyways.

Continue reading“SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets”

The Editors’ Quote Of The Day:

“No ornament of a house can compare with books; they are constant company in a room, even when you are not reading them.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe. (The sister of Henry Ward Beecher, who was quoted yesterday. Both of them were very outspoken abolitionists.)

Preparedness Notes for Tuesday — December 30, 2025

On December 30, 1861, Associated Banks in New York City — innovators in credit clearing circles (pictured above) — halted gold payments to government and investors, to disrupt Abraham Lincoln‘s US bank reform program.

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December 30, 1865 was the birthday of Rudyard Kipling.

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Today’s feature article is a product review, written by Field Gear Editor Tom Christianson.

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We need more entries for Round 122 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. More than $978,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest.  Round 122 ends on January 31st, 2026, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging. In 2023, we polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Please refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic.

FrogLube Gun Care Products, by Thomas Christianson

I recently tested a number of FrogLube products for effectiveness for firearms cleaning, lubrication, and corrosion resistance. I tested FrogLube Lubricant-Protectant and FrogLube Extreme Lubricant and Preservative for corrosion resistance. I tested FrogLube Super Degreaser and FrogLube Solvent for cleaning. I tested FrogLube Extreme Lubricant and Preservative for its effectiveness as a lubricant.

My standard gun care products are kerosene for cleaning and Breakfree CLP for lubrication and corrosion resistance. I found the performance of FrogLube products to be roughly comparable to my standards under temperate conditions. In my limited testing, I felt that FrogLube Extreme Lubricant and Preservative was slightly more effective than BreakFree CLP as a lubricant. I concluded that BreakFree CLP provided marginally better corrosion resistance than either FrogLube Extreme Lubricant and Preservative or FrogLube Lubricant-Protectant.Continue reading“FrogLube Gun Care Products, by Thomas Christianson”

SurvivalBlog’s American Redoubt Media of the Week

This weekly column features media 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.

Send Your Media Links

Please send your links to media from the American Redoubt region to JWR. Any photos that are posted or re-posted must be uncopyrighted. You can do so either via e-mail or via our Contact form.

The Editors’ Quote Of The Day:

“Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.” – Henry Ward Beecher

Preparedness Notes for Monday — December 29, 2025

December 29, 1812: The USS Constitution, under the command of Captain William Bainbridge, captured the HMS Java off the coast of Brazil after a three-hour battle.

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This is also the birthday of inventor Charles Goodyear (1800–1860.)

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The 20th Anniversary SurvivalBlog 2005-2025 Waterproof/EMP-Resistant Archive USB sticks are now available for Pre-Ordering!  This year, we are also offering a limited number of them in steel keepsake tins, with keychains.  Orders should start to be mailed in the third week of January.  To be sure that you get yours, order soon!

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With the exceptionally large moves in the silver market, we are posting a feature piece by JWR on silver instead of a product review by SurvivalBlog Field Gear Editor Tom Christianson. (His article will instead be posted on Tuesday.)

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We still need more entries for Round 122 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. More than $978,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest.  Round 122 ends on January 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging. In 2023, we polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Please refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic.

The 20th Anniversary SurvivalBlog Archive USB Sticks

I have some great news: The new batch of 32-gigabyte waterproof SurvivalBlog archive USB sticks is now available for pre-ordering.

To order, see the 2005-2025 SurvivalBlog Archive USB stick ordering pages:

Many folks have asked about what is included in the new 20th Anniversary  2005-2025 SurvivalBlog Archive USB stick. There certainly is a lot!

Of course, these sticks will have everything that has ever been posted in SurvivalBlog, dating back to its launch in August, 2005, and up to December 31, 2025. In my humble opinion, the feature articles, product reviews, columns, and quotations just by themselves are worth the price of the archive stick.

But then there is also a veritable mountain of carefully curated bonus material from the public domain.  Many of these are rare pre-1930 books from my personal library that I had professionally scanned, at considerable expense. Most of those books are not available online. Here is a partial list of what is included:

The pre-1930 bonus books that were recently scanned to include with the new 2005-2025 edition sticks are:

  • Camping and Woodcraft, by Horace Kephart
  • Audel’s Carpenters and Builders Guide #1
  • Audel’s Carpenters and Builders Guide #2
  • Audel’s Carpenters and Builders Guide #3
  • Audel’s Carpenters and Builders Guide #4
  • Dyeing and Cleaning: A Practical Handbook, by Frank J. Farrel & Franklin W. Walker
  • Hand and Arm Signals, United States Marine Corps, FMST-304
  • How to Make Etchings, by John J. Barry
  • Lip-Reading, Principles and Practice, by Edward B. Ritchie, B.A.
  • New Practical Physics, Fundamental Principles and Applications to Daily Life, by Newton Henry Black and Harvey Nathaniel Davis.
  • Brown’s Practical Pocket-Book for Merchant Seamen, by J. McKerrell
  • India, Land of the Black Pagoda, by Lowell Thomas
  • Count Luckner, The Sea Devil, by Lowell Thomas
  • The Complete Works of Thomas Dick, LL. D.: Eleven Volumes in Two
  • TM 3-34.86 Rigging Techniques, Procedures, and Applications

Also included are all of the great bonus content from the many previous years’ editions, including:

King James Bible
English World Messianic Bible

Food Books, including:

  • Good HouseKeeping’s Book of Menus, Recipes, and Household Discoveries
  • Preserving Game Meats
  • Preparing and Canning Fermented Foods and Pickled Vegetables
  • Food Storage: Use It or Lose It
  • Canning Principles
  • Culinary Herbs – Their Cultivation, Harvesting, Curing and Uses
  • The New Butterick Cook Book
  • Uncooked Foods and How to Use Them, by Eugene Christian
  • Anyone Can Bake, published by The Royal Baking Powder Company
  • Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer
  • Milk and Its Place in Good Cookery by Mildred Maddock Bentley
  • Nine Hundred Successful Recipes, by Lulu Thompson Silvernail

Information on Homesteading, including:

  • Dr. David Roberts’ Practical Home Veterinarian
  • Backyard Composting
  • Basic Knots
  • Concrete and Masonry
  • Carpentry
  • The Practical Poultry Keeper
  • Farm Knowledge – Volume 1 (Farm Animals)
  • Farm Knowledge – Volume 2 (Soils)
  • Farm Knowledge – Volume 3 (Implements)
  • Nut Growing, by Robert T Morris
  • Pioneering Knots & Lashings
  • How to Feed the Dairy Cow
  • Orcharding, by Victor Ray Gardner
  • Practical Plant Propagation, by Alfred Hottes
  • How to Make Baskets, by Mary White
  • Practical Muskrat Raising, by E.J. Dailey
  • Construction and Repair Work for the Farm, by F. Theodore Struck
  • The Complete Works of Thomas Dick, Volume 1
  • Fishing For Salmon, by Cyril Darby Marson
  • Fix It Yourself, Edited by Arthur Wakeling
  • Orchard and Small Fruit Culture, by E.C. Auchter and H.B. Knapp

Several Medical and First Aid books and military manuals, including

  • First Aid FM 21-11
  • First Aid FM 4-25.11
  • Practical Local Anesthesia and its Surgical Technic by Robert Emmett Farr, M.D., F.A.C.S.
  • Principles and Practice of Minor Surgery, by Edward Milton Foote, A.M., M.D.

A wide range of U.S. and Allied military manuals, including:

Basic Visual Tracking Australian Air Training Corps
Incendiaries FM31-201-1-20
Infantry Patrolling (Canadian Army)
Map Reading & Land Navigation FM21-26
OSS Simple Sabotage Manual
USMC Martial Arts
USMC Winter Survival MWTC
Survivability FM 5-103
Combatives FM 3-25.150
FM 3-22.68 Machine Guns
Grenades and Pyrotechnic Signals (2009 edition) FM 3-23.30
Navy SEAL Sniper Training
Nuclear War Survival Skills 1987
Ranger Unit Operations FM 7-85
Telephone Set TM 11-5805-243-13 (TA-1).pdf
US Army Special Forces Medical Handbook
USMC Survival FNM21-76_MCRP 3-02F
Camouflage FM 5-20
Camouflage of Vehicles FM 5-20B
Explosives and Demolitions FM 5-250
Field Hygiene and Sanitation FM 21-10
Fire-Fighting Operations FM 5-415
Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs TM 31-210
Infantry Rifle Platoon-Squad FM 7-8
NBC Decon FM 3-5
NBC Protection FM 3-4
Ranger Handbook SH 21-76
Special Forces Unconventional Warfare TC 18-01
U.S. Marines Close-Quarters Combat Manual
Soldier’s Handbook for Individual Operations and Survival in Cold-Weather Areas (1986)
Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) Operations
Military Mountaineering
Arctic And Sub-arctic Operations
Arctic Tent, 10-Man Manual TM 10-8340-222-10
Physical Security FM 3-19.30
Basic Communications Rules
Canadian Military Fieldcraft B-GL-392-009/FP-100
Civil Disturbance Operations FM 3-19.15
Mufti-Service Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Kill Box Employment
Visual Aircraft Recognition FM 44-80
Special Forces Use of Pack Animals FM 31-27
Scouting, Patrolling, and Sniping FM 21-75
NBC Protection FM 11-9
Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare FMFRP 12-18
Management of Dead Bodies After Disasters
Internment and Resettlement Operations FM 3-39.40
Special Forces Communications STP 31-18E34-SM-TG
Special Forces Tracking TC 31-34-4
Engineer Field Manual FM 5-34
Mountain Operations FM 3-97.6
Engineer Field Manual FM 5-34
Mountain Operations FM 3-97.6

Various Firearms Books and Manuals, including:

  • Sporting Firearms, by Horace Kephart
  • Amateur Gunsmithing, by Townsend Whelen
  • M16 and M4 Marksmanship
  • AK-47
  • FN-FAL 7.62mm
  • Mossberg 500
  • M24SWS (M700 Remington)
  • Beretta 92FS
  • Glock Pistols
  • Remington 870
  • M1/M2 Carbine
  • Colt 1911 Series 90
  • HK 91
  • Ruger 10/22
  • M1 Garand
  • Colt AR-15
  • M1A
  • Ruger Mark II

Anti-Intrusion Devices (Multiple manuals)
Meteorological Equipment (Multiple manuals)
High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (Multiple manuals)
Radio and Communications (Multiple manuals)

And a panoply of other useful books and manuals, including:

Nuclear War Survival Skills (1987)
Winter Survival Course Handbook
Wilderness Survival Guide – Military. Abridged Edition
Terrain Analysis
Soldier’s Handbook for Individual Operations and Survival in Cold-Weather Areas (1986)
The Lincoln Library of Essential Information — Parts 1 & 2 (a compact encyclopedia: 2,174 pages!)
John Brown’s Body, by Stephen Vincent Benet
Stories of Classical Fables — A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Junior Game Book, by T.S. Denison & Company Publishers
The Oregon Trail, by Francis Parkman
With Lawrence in Arabia, by Lowell Thomas
The Individual’s Guide for Understanding and Surviving Terrorism
How to Start and Train a Militia Unit
The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1957)
Sun Tzu on The Art of War
CIA Lock Picking Field Manual
Basement Fallout Shelter
The Nameless Island – A Story of Some Modern Robinson Crusoes
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
Western Europe in the Eighth Century and Onward
History of the Fall of the Roman Empire Vol 1
History of the Fall of the Roman Empire Vol 2
Forensic Spoorology
Counter Insurgency Lessons
Civilization During the Middle Ages, by George Burton Adams
Games, Contests, and Relays, by Seward Charles Staley
Sports and Pastimes, Young and Old, by Mrs. Grace Townsend
The Guardians of the Columbia, by John H. Williams
The Science of Everyday Life, by Edgar F Van Buskirk
Hoyle’s Games
The Book of the Sailboat – How to Rig Sail and Handle Small Boats
18,000 words often mispronounced; William Henry Pinkney Phyfe
Famous paintings of the American Revolution
Beyond Khyber Pass, by Lowell Thomas
Great Poems of the English Language (1,502 pages!)
The Practical Book of American Antiques
The Royal Road to Romance, by Richard Halliburton

And even more books that are not listed individually, here, for the sake of brevity…

USB Stick Specifications

The 2005-2025 sticks are now available for pre-ordering. It is loaded on a 32 GB stick, which also allows some extra room for you to load scans of all of your important documents, and your treasured photos on this waterproof, vibration/shock-resistant, and highly EMP-resistant stick. Just as with previous editions, it is mounted in a threaded alloy case with an O-ring seal. So it is great for your bugout bag, or for caching at a secure site. We recommend passing along your older-edition sticks to family members. This new edition is engraved “SurvivalBlog.com 2005-2025.”

Note: We again opted for more expensive USB 3.0 sticks so they will be faster to load, if your laptop, desktop, or smartphone is USB 3.0-compatible. But these sticks are of course also backward-compatible with USB 2.0.  Note that with some operating systems, it may take up to one minute for the stick to initially load.

They Will Sell Out Quickly!

Many readers order  2, 3, or 4 sticks, so I expect them to sell out rapidly. Last year’s edition of the archive stick sold out within five weeks, so be sure to order yours, soon! 

USB stick mailings should begin by the third week of January, but with the expected rush of orders, please allow up to four weeks after that, for delivery.

As usual, all U.S. orders are shipped in the sequence of their order numbers. So the sooner that you order, the sooner that yours will arrive. This is truly a  “First come, first served” situation.

To order, see the 2005-2025 SurvivalBlog Archive USB stick ordering pages:

This year, the stick capacity is again 32 gigabytes and it uses the faster USB 3.0. We had to raise the price a bit, due to increased product costs and postage costs. The postage fee is flat rate, so you’ll pay just $7 postage for your order, whether you buy just one stick or a dozen of them.

Deliveries should begin in the third week of January. Allow up to four weeks for delivery. Thanks for your patience.

Note: Orders must be made through our automated ordering system. 

These sticks sell out quickly each year, so order your sticks soon! – JWR

How Long Will The Silver Bull’s Rampage Continue?

Spot silver jumped 10.35% to $79.59 per troy ounce in just one day, on Friday, December 26, 2025. On that day, there were new all-time highs set for silver, platinum, and gold. Spot silver has gained a phenomenal 166% in value in 2025. And now, amazingly, a $1,000 face value bag of pre-1965 non-numismatic “junk” 90% U.S. silver coins now sells for $56,840. Though prices vary, that effectively means that the melt value of one U.S. pre-1965 silver dime (10-cent piece) is now $5.68.

And today? In Monday morning trading in China, (that was early Sunday evening, in the United States, the New York Globex silver was at $82.40. It has since then dropped to around $76.25, as of this writing.

The Metals Price Ratios

In percentage terms, silver and platinum are consistently rising faster than gold. It was easy to predict this trend, because of several factors, to wit:

  • Silver’s scarcity, geologically.  There are roughly 8 ounces of silver in the Earth’s crust for every ounce of gold. The traditional monetary ratio (in exchange) was around 15-to-1. The market price ratio has wandered between 40-to-1 and an absurd 110-to-1 in recent years.  But in the past 8 weeks, we’ve seen the market price ratio drop from 74-to-1 to 57-to-1. I expect to see that ratio continue to decline — perhaps to as low as 30-to-1, within a few years.  For the past three years, I’ve been advising SurvivalBlog readers that they should ratio trade a good portion of their gold holdings into silver. Hopefully, most of you heeded that, and you have realized a handsome profit.
  • Growing industrial silver demand. Although the photographic demand for silver had dropped tremendously, the overall demand is growing, particularly for the production of photovoltaic power panels and batteries. Samsung recently announced the fruition of a new ultra-fast charging long-range solid-state electric car battery that will depend heavily on silver.  They’ve been developing this for nearly five years. They are both safer and faster to recharge than lithium anode batteries. This new silver-carbon composite nanolayer anode battery technology will undoubtedly increase the demand for silver in the next few years.
  • Lack of silver scrap recovery. While the majority of gold used in electronics is recovered from scrap, the majority of silver is not.  This means that a lot of silver has incrementally ended up in landfills.
  • Declining commercial silver stockpiles. The amount of available aboveground silver has been gradually falling for more than 10 years.  The law of supply and demand is inescapable.
  • Relentless physical demand from Asia.  Asian investors have always liked silver.  And not many small investors can afford to buy gold at roughly $4,400 per ounce. So, they are shifting to buying silver.

Continue reading“How Long Will The Silver Bull’s Rampage Continue?”

Recipe of the Week:

The following recipe for Senator Dan Sullivan’s Alaska Seafood Newburg comes to us by way of SurvivalBlog reader Mike in Alaska.

Mike writes:

“I got this in an e-mail from my friend U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska. He has given permission for publication. We used some Copper River Silver Salmon we caught fresh from the river, one very large fillet in our recipe. It was absolutely wonderful. My wife made the sauce, baked the salmon in the oven and then poured the sauce over the salmon. Fresh caught salmon has a taste that is impossible to beat.”
Ingredients
  • 2/3 cup salted butter
  • 6 Tbsp all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 cups light cream
  • 4 beaten egg yolks
  • 3 cups cooked seafood — shrimp, scallops, king crab, or lobster*
  • 1/2 cup dry sherry
  • 4 tsp lemon juice
  • Paprika (to taste)
Directions
  1. Melt 2/3 cups of butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Blend in flour and salt and cook for approximately 1 minute.
  2. Remove from heat and gradually stir in cream. Return to heat and cook slowly over medium heat, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens.
  3. In a separate bowl, stir a small amount of sauce into 4 beaten egg yolks, and then add this mixture back into the sauce on the stove. Continue stirring and cook until thick.
  4. Add seafood and dry sherry, then lemon juice, salt, and paprika into the sauce. Stir gently to combine all ingredients.

*To save time, prepare seafood in advance using your preferred cooking method.

SERVING

Serve over rice or toast.

(Serves 8 adults.)

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Do you have a well-tested recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers? In this weekly recipe column, we place emphasis on recipes that use long-term storage foods, recipes for wild game, dutch oven recipes, slow cooker recipes, and any recipes that use home garden produce. If you have any favorite recipes, then please send them via e-mail. Thanks!

SurvivalBlog Graphic of the Week

Today’s graphic: Weapons and Camouflage Patterns in Europe. (Graphic by “Ausspanner”, courtesy of Reddit.)

The thumbnail below is click-expandable.

 

 

 

 

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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.

The Editors’ Quote Of The Day:

“For all being Kings as much as he, every Man his Equal and the greater Part no strict Observers of Equity and Justice, the enjoyment of the Property he has in this State, is very unsafe, very unsecure. This makes him willing to quit this Condition, which however free, is full of Fears and continual Dangers: And ’tis not without Reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in Society with others, who are already united, or have a Mind to unite, for the mutual Preservation of their Lives, Liberties, and Estates, which I call by the general Name, Property. The great and chief End therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.” – John Locke

Preparedness Notes for Sunday — December 28, 2025

On December 28, 1867, the United States claimed Midway Island, the first territory annexed outside continental limits.

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December 28, 1793 was the day that Thomas Paine was arrested in France for treason. The charges against him were never fully detailed, but he was tried in absentia on December 26 and convicted. Best known as the author of Common Sense, he moved to Paris to be part of the French revolution. Initially welcomed, the tide soon turned against him, because he was opposed to the death penalty and the French revolutionaries were sending hundreds to the Guillotine.

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 122 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A Gunsite Academy Three-Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any of their one, two, or three-day course (a $1,095 value),
  2. A Peak Refuel “Wasatch Pack” variety of 60 servings of premium freeze-dried breakfasts and dinners in individual meal pouches — a whopping 21,970 calories, all made and packaged in the USA — courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  3. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses. Their course catalog now includes their latest Survival Gunsmithing course.
  4. HSM Ammunition in Montana is providing a $350 gift certificate. The certificate can be used for any of their products.
  5. Harvest Guard is providing a 200-Piece Bulk Mix Pack of their Regular and Wide-Mouth Reusable Canning Jar Lids & Gaskets. This is a $161 + shipping value.

Second Prize:

  1. A SIRT STIC AR-15/M4 Laser Training Package, courtesy of Next Level Training, that has a combined retail value of $679
  2. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from TOUGHGRID.com (a $287 value).
  3. Preparedness author Jennifer Rader is offering a $200 purchase credit for any of her eight published food storage and medical preparedness books, including the Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Café series, the Armageddon Pharmacy series, and the Medicine Surrounds Us series.
  4. A transferable $150 FRN purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun. There is no paperwork required for delivery of pre-1899 guns into most states, making them the last bastion of gun purchasing privacy!

Third Prize:

  1. A Berkey Light water filter, courtesy of USA Berkey Filters (a $305 value),
  2. Two sets of The Civil Defense Manual, (in two volumes) — a $193 value — kindly donated by the author, Jack Lawson.
  3. A $200 credit from Military Surplus LLC that can be applied to purchase and/or shipping costs for any of their in-stock merchandise, including full mil-spec ammo cans, Rothco clothing and field gear, backpacks, optics, compact solar panels, first aid kits, and more.
  4. A transferable $150 FRN purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun.

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More than $978,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest.  Round 122 ends on January 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging. In 2023, we polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Please refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic.