Letter Re: Monitor Your Preps!

HJL, When it came time for the 6 month change-out of my emergency water, what a surprise to find how light the jugs felt! Both of my Reliance Products Desert Patrol 6 Gallon Traditional Jeep Style Rigid Water Containers had sprung leaks. Slow leaks, so I didn’t notice in my dry cool basement, but both were half empty. Okay, out they go! Then checking my Reliance Products Aqua-Tainer 7 Gallon Rigid Water Containers, one of them was light too, having sprung a leak some time in the not-too-distant past. One had a leak near the top from having the other …


Escape from New York- Part 1, by Ragnar

There you are, in your off grid solar powered survival complex somewhere in the Redoubt, in a very carefully selected location, stocked to the rafters with every conceivable supply and armament. You are completely prepared for literally anything that might happen. ”Bring it” is your motto. Happy and confident that you have reached the pinnacle of prepping, you sit down at the keyboard to take care of some work e-mail. You open the first email and find, congratulations, you’re going to New York City! New York City? For those of us who have not moved to the middle of nowhere …


Letter Re: Moving to Alaska

Hugh, This is just another opinion, but it may help. I moved to Alaska when I was young. I lived there for 28 years. It was a glorious time. Alaska is a beautiful place. It is a great place for young people who have lots of energy and are unafraid of work, seasons, and learning new things. I learned to hunt, to fish, to reload ammunition, to cut my own meat, and I got married. We now live in the Redoubt. There are lots of former Alaskans here. Why did we move? First, Alaska becomes more difficult to deal with …


Reloading Ammunition For WTSHF- Part 2, by S.B.

Having removed the spent primer, you now need to insert a new one. There are specialty tools available for this, as well as attachments to do this on your press. How your particular setup will work depends entirely on what equipment you buy, but all methods insert a new primer into the primer pocket in the base of the brass case. Exactly which primer you need depends on your cases. For example, some 45 ACP cases use small pistol primers, and some use large pistol primers. Your specific round formula ca be found in your reloading manual (e.g. standard or …



Letter Re: Buying and Selling Rural Land

Hugh, If you have narrowed down your list to one or two properties, consider chartering an aircraft to do a visual inspection. It might cost you $300-$500 but it allows additional validation of a significant investment. Even at 1,000 feet above ground level (AGL in pilot speak) you can quickly take some pictures, makes some notes, and assess things such as the terrain, trees or vegetation, and even a potential risk if say a neighbor has something on their property that could ultimately contaminate your water supply. I know some readers will scream “my privacy!”. Here in the USA there …


Reloading Ammunition For WTSHF- Part 1, by S.B.

First off, let me say that I am very grateful to have SuvivalBlog. Over the years I have learned so much from the accumulated wisdom of the writers and the administrators. I felt that it was time to give back to this community, so I decided to share what I have learned over many years of reloading my own ammunition for rifle and pistol, while being conscious of both budget and space/OPSEC concerns. Please believe that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars or have a 1000-square-foot shop dedicated to reloading in order to produce your own high-quality reloads …


Letter Re: Moving to Alaska

Hugh, When I saw the title “Moving to Alaska”, I thought to myself “WHY?” Although my wife and I have lived in Los Anchorage for over 40 years, yes, it’s getting very blue here. I must echo everything Bryan B. has said and more. About two years ago my wife and I saw the trend coming and worked and paid off our home, and our rental is almost paid off. If needed, it will be our BOL due to its size. We also partially closed our business. We get two ships a week to Anchorage; 85% of our groceries come …


Letter Re: Digital Currency Weapons and Intel Tools

Hello, I have recently been doing a bit of research for my Payroll and Accounting class, and part of that led me to a 2007 Kansas law that allowed employers to select the form of payment to employees. These include things you might expect, like cash, direct deposit, checks, and more interestingly for me payroll debit cards. The payroll debit cards led to further research I thought worth sharing and somewhat related. To be clear, I fully support a laissez-faire approach to private business, but the digital trend may be worth looking at. First, governments around the world are keenly …


Recipe of the Week: Knockwurst With Hot German Potato Salad

Ingredients: 4 large potatoes 1 onion, sliced 1 tsp salt Water 4 slices of bacon, diced 2 Tbsp flour 2 Tbsp sugar 1 tsp dry mustard 1 tsp salt ¼ tsp pepper ¼ cup vinegar ½ tsp celery seeds 4 knockwurst links 1 Tbsp finely chopped parsley Directions: Peel and slice potatoes. Combine with onion in slow cooking pot, then sprinkle with 1 tsp salt and cover with water. Cover and cook on low for 5 to 6 hours, or on high for 2 to 3 hours. Remove from pot, drain thorougly and return to the pot. Cook the bacon …



Mindset of Financial Preparedness: The Color Code, by L.F. in Texas

We live in a world where almost everything happens rapidly and often by remote. Books and movies are downloaded from the Internet for instant entertainment. We travel freely and quickly around the world. Things like automatic dishwashers and laundry machines aren’t even remarkable anymore. And everywhere we go, in person or online, we are enticed to spend money freely, without thought of tomorrow. Being a prepper, however, means that we are thinking ahead to what might happen tomorrow, or next month or year, and getting ready for those possibilities. How does that affect our financial strategies? Colonel Jeff Cooper was …


Prepping and Moving, by S.F.

As many of you probably did, we started prepping before we really thought about moving. In the process we procured a lot of provisions that we felt would serve us well in some sort of catastrophe. It’s certainly true that skills are important but so too are food, medical supplies, guns, and a myriad of other necessities– necessities that take up space and are heavy, if not individually then certainly in aggregate. A number of years back I came to the conclusion that God was leading me to serve as a pastor. A couple years passed before I was in …


Letter Re: Sanitation Issues

Good morning, Hugh, Many homes are equipped with septic tanks to perform as a holding tank for waste, allowing waste decomposition to occur. Reduction of solid waste through bacterial action works, but is a slow process and often incomplete. Additionally, a large number of chemicals we regularly introduce into our septic tanks, such as common soap, dishwashingj and clothes detergents, bleach, commercial toilet cleaning solutions, et cetera, are toxic to the bacteria performing the job of decomposition. Septic tanks are one part of the equation; the other being the leach field. Leach fields are the fluid distribution pipes running from …


June in Precious Metals, by Steven Cochran of Gainesville Coins

Welcome to SurvivalBlog’s Precious Metals Month in Review, by Steven Cochran of Gainseville Coins where we take a look at “the month that was” in precious metals. Each month, we cover the price action of gold and examine the “what” and “why” behind those numbers. What Did Gold Do in June? Gold started the month at $1,212.70 an ounce and ended June at $1,321.70 an ounce, for a gain of $109.00. The worst payroll report in years and the Brexit vote were the main factors in favor of gold. Silver was the big winner in June. It handily beat gold, …