Recipe of the Week: Hamburger Soup, by R.T.

Ingredients: 1 lb lean ground beef 1/4 tsp pepper 1/4 tsp oregano 1/4 tsp basil 1/4 tsp seasoned salt 1 envelope onion soup mix 3 cups boiling water 1 (8 oz) can tomato sauce 1 Tbsp soy sauce 1 cup sliced celery 1 cup sliced carrots 1 cup macaroni, cooked and drained 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese Directions: Crumble beef into a crockpot. Add pepper, oregano, basil, seasoned salt, and dry soup mix. Stir in water, tomato sauce, and soy sauce; then add celery and carrots. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours. Turn the control to …


What We See And Believe Is Not Always Reality, by Old Bobbert

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Let’s talk about reality and what we see and believe, but just for a moment imagine this scenario. Visualize the following presumably safe evening event at your home one day soon. A Grateful Situation…Somewhere You are reflecting on the terrible situation in (name any major city, state, or area) and you are very grateful that your home area is not severely affected by that power grid outage somewhere else in the country, specifically about 1,000 miles away from your home. Your area power system is functioning just fine. You’re feeling really bad for that area as you watch the video …


Preventing Failure to Communicate- Part 5, by JMD

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We’re continuing to evaluate how to prevent a failure to communicate when we do not have wireless electronic communications available to us. We’ve been exploring our options. Yesterday, I wrote about the different types of communications and types of interference to communication. I wrapped up yesterday’s part of the article by introducing what you should do to prepare. The first part, of course, was plan. Let’s take a look at the second part and conclude the article with the subsequent steps to prepare. Document Once you’ve got a good handle on your requirements and solutions, you should create a couple …


Preventing Failure to Communicate- Part 4, by JMD

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We’re continuing to evaluate how to prevent a failure to communicate when we do not have wireless electronic communications available to us. We’ve been exploring our options. Yesterday, I wrote about various channels of communications. Today, we’ll move into various forms of communications to consider. Electronic In the beginning of this article, I mentioned that it was about alternatives to wireless electronic communications. However, that doesn’t rule out wired forms of electronic communication. Wired communications tend to be point-to-point, are very hard for anyone to intercept, and can send large amounts of information. The biggest disadvantages are that they require …


Letter: Thoughts on Prepping, Harvey & Irma

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HJL, Thanks in part to my experience learned from living through Hurricane Dolly years ago and also thanks to this Blog my family and I were mainly prepared by the time Harvey hit. ( We live in the Houston Metro Area). We shared our knowledge with neighbors and like everything else, some listened, some asked for help and info and some…well…they already knew everything. We came through everything very well. However a few things stand out:


Preventing Failure to Communicate- Part 3, by JMD

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We’re continuing to evaluate how to prevent a failure to communicate in the event that our normal, electronic communications equipment are not available to us. We are exploring our options. Yesterday, I wrote about common content items and encoding. Let’s continue. Medium The medium defines what carries the communication through the channel. For written communication, the medium will usually be paper. For most signal-based communications, the medium will be inseparable from the channel. In the case where communications is sent by a flashing light, light is the medium. Channel The channel is critical to all communications. It determines how the …


Letter: Second Redoubt Area?

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HJL, I have been reading your page for years. The wife and I have decided that it is way past time to get out of Kalifornia (we live way out in the desert). We originally looked at the Redoubt areas. I quickly learned that my body simply could not handle the cold weather. I wish I could but it is too painful. We are now looking at East Texas. (Not Austin) I was hoping you may know somebody that could write an article or provide more information regarding warmer climates for places to retreat / homestead/ ranch. Your Redoubt would …


Preventing Failure to Communicate- Part 2, by JMD

We’re continuing to evaluate how to prevent a failure to communicate in the event that our normal, electronic communications equipment are not available to us. Yesterday, we looked as some definitions and began defining our own communications requirements. With that in mind, let’s move forward. Options Now that you’ve (hopefully) thought a little bit about what your communications requirements might be, let’s take a look at some possible options for the various elements. Sender/Recipient As I mentioned earlier, the best starting point for figuring out a communications strategy is by making a list of everyone it will need to support. …


Preventing Failure to Communicate- Part 1, by JMD

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Communications failure can be prevented, though it may not be in the form we’re expecting. Ever since the earliest cavemen grunted at each other and painted pictures on their cave walls, humans have been communicating in one form or another. Communications are critical to any multi-person activity. Many people consider having radios and other electronic communications devices a core part of living a prepared lifestyle. Virtually every survival- and preparedness-related forum or blog has one or more sections dedicated to this. Things like shortwave radio communications, protecting your radios from EMP, powering your radios in a grid-down scenario, et cetera. …


Recipe of the Week: Brunswick Stew, by R.R.

Ingredients: 1 (2 1/2 to 3 lb) Chicken, cut up 2 qts water 1 onion, chopped 2 cups cubed cooked ham 3 potatoes, diced 2 (16 oz) cans tomatoes, cut up 1 (10 oz) package frozen lima beans, partially thawed. 1 (10 oz) package frozen whole kernel corn, partially thawed 2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp seasoned salt 1 tsp sugar 1/4 tsp. pepper Directions: In a slow cooking pot, combine chicken with water, onion, ham, and potatoes. Cook covered on low for 4 to 5 hours or until chicken is done. Lift chicken out of pot and remove meat from …


Review of MVT Combat Rifle Skills Class, by T.B.

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JWR & HJL, Below is my review of the MVT Combat Rifle Skills that was held at MVT Romney. As with the Defensive Concealed Handgun class that I attended in early 2017, I was greatly encouraged and motivated by the class. Again, thank you both for what you do! Past Experience I attended the Defensive Concealed Handgun class at MVT Romney in 2017. I greatly benefited from the well thought-out, deliberate, and detailed training I received at that class. One of the attendees of that class had attended the Combat Rifle Skills that had been held earlier in 2017. He …


Earthquake and Power Out Experience in the Philippines- Part 2, by S.B.

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A Good Neighbor We charged the neighbor’s cell phones. So at that point, they let us run the generator all night! The generator ran from 6pm to 6am and then ran out of gas. It used 25 liters of gasoline. So here that equates to about $20 a day for gas. If it runs for a month, it will be expensive; $20 times 30 equals $600 per month. Ouch! At this point I tried to shut generator off before it ran out of gas. I was afraid the voltage will vary a lot when it does last couple revolutions before …


Letter: Thank You from Texas

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HJL, Thank you SurvivalBlog for all that you do.The things I have learned from this blog the last few years has been very helpful with helping me and my family make it through the Harvey Disaster down here in Houston.Even though my preps are not at the level I would like them to be at , the things we did have (God, clean drinking water,food,personal protection and fuel) were enough to give me and my family comfort that we would of make it through. I’m very thankful that my home was high and dry and we received no damage to …


Earthquake and Power Out Experience in the Philippines- Part 1, by S.B.

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This was my experience with a mild earthquake and a power outage in the Philippines. Amazingly nothing was damaged by the quake. I expected some things to tip over. Latest reports say it was a 6.5 quake. The epicenter was about 15 miles away. It was stronger than other quakes I have experienced here in the past eight years. Also, immediately after the main quake, there was a long slow side to side rocking motion for several seconds. I never felt that before. We also had 10 or more aftershocks. A local man who is about 50 said it was …


Guest Post: A Discussion on “Bugging Out”, by Max Alexander

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Let’s have a discussion today about “bugging out”. This is in fact a huge topic and often discussed across the prepper-sphere. There are many aspects to this and a detailed discussion, including the debate about “to stay or to go” is written up in “Contact! A Tactical Manual for Post Collapse Survival. The issues, pros, cons, and mistakes around this are further illustrated in the collapse-novel Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises. Foolhardy Bugging Out On Foot Given the breadth of the topic, my plan today is to focus on the idea of bugging out on foot with a “never coming …