Three Letters Re: Amazon

HJL, I really enjoyed Sarah Latimer’s article on using Amazon. Although I use it quite a bit, I still found some of her shopping tips helpful. Regarding caveats about shopping, the biggest one I have found is the item price is cheap but the shipping cost is outrageous. Here is a quick example, note the cheapest one doesn’t have free shipping. [Editors note: These prices/shipping do not seem to be from Amazon Prime. Mrs. Latimer strongly urges SurvivalBlog readers to sign up for Prime. If you just order 10 or 12 items a year, it will probably pay for itself.] …


Understanding the Progressive Agenda- Part 1, by DBS

For years, I have been feeling shocked by the amount of strange happenings, those that I couldn’t explain; they just didn’t make sense. More and more, I would get angry, frustrated, and upset with how these events and their origins occurred. I have a feeling that many like-minded patriotic Americans may feel the same way, especially since 9/11. Not only has our society change since that day but so has our culture. As a Desert Storm Marine and now a retired fire chief, I have found that our society and culture changed so quickly. It seemed each year the changes …


Letter Re: Shopping on Amazon

Hugh, The the Amazon story is great. I have very little time and live in a rural area. By using Amazon I save a lot of time and money. I also can’t say enough for the customer comments. However, my comment is more advice to anyone who wants to sell on Amazon. I am in the wine business, and it’s very regulated. However, with the recent changes of state-by-state shipping laws, we can now ship direct to 38 states. Along comes Amazon and BOOM my sales with them have skyrocketed. Not to say, they are way easier to deal with …


Guest Article: Getting Right With God, by Mr. T.

Whenever I hear the phrase about “getting right with God”, I have an image of a Clint Eastwood-type cowboy/farmer character with a shotgun and threatening a young fella’ that got his daughter pregnant by saying, “Son, you gonna git yourself right with me and the Lord and marry the girl or I’m gonna send you to heaven right now”. The boy had an obvious need to “get right”, but what about us as preppers? I often hear the admonition that we need to “get right with God” before the SHTF because it will be too late then. We don’t have …


Letter: Venezuela’s Health Care

Dear Editors, I saw this headline on the front of the “dead tree edition” of the paper this morning. Besides the coverage on your blog, this caught my eye because of a personal connection: A good friend of mine recently lost her mother in Venezuela. She was sent to the nearest hospital because of a problem with her heart and needed an operation to put in a stent. The hospital that she was checked into didn’t have all of the equipment that they needed to perform the operation on her. The nearest hospital with the equipment did not have all …


Readers’ Recommendations of the Week:

From SurvivalBlog Reader Spotlight: I would like to offer a recommendation for the movie The Grey, I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned before. Some caveats include lots of harsh language and some savage attacks by wolves upon men. Beyond that, it really struck a chord with me. It is an incredible story of survival and the will to survive. I am not into poetry in any way, but I specifically went back and memorized the poem from the movie. I think it’s a movie all young men should see. Mrs. Spotlight and daughter Flashlight, did not like it at …


Let’s Be The “Good Guy With a Computer” Too, by Tupreco

We all get emails or other Internet postings sent to us about something sensational or horrifying or something that just motivated the sender to repost it or forward it on to you. Most of us just ignore them and shake our heads at the gullibility of the sender. You know the kind I’m talking about. Here are a few of the famous ones that are still making the rounds after years of circulation and recirculation: The Blue Star temporary tattoo for kids laced with LSD! The FCC petition started by atheists to ban all religious broadcasting! Proctor and Gamble has …


Letter Re: 9mm and BF’s Comment

Hugh, Yes, it is the caliber in hand, but the one in hand should be the caliber with which you can put multiple rounds on target rapidly according to a well written SB article that I am too lazy to find just now. [Editor’s note: Firearms Training/Exercise #1] AND, in case you need a note for your wife on the annual purchase rate, the congressional candidate who will get my vote next week says “If you know how many guns you own (off the top of your head), you don’t own enough.” To avoid cheap mags I just go buy …


Letter Re: 9mm for Survival

Hugh / Jim, I have to agree with almost all of what Pat Cascio said in his column about the 9mm for survival. Any gun and caliber is a compromise, and the one you have with you when you need it is better than the one sitting home in the safe. I do have a couple of comments. I have had bad experience with the .40 Glock Korean magazines, including one of them in my Glock 35 having the baseplate pop off and the rounds dump out of the bottom of the magazine as I was in the starting box …


Using EMP-Hardened HF Ham Radio to Send/Receive E-Mail During Nationwide Outage- Part 2, by PrepperDoc

Transmit-Receive Frequency Offset This should be zero. Synthesized digital radios have no problem accomplishing this; however, vacuum tube rigs may struggle. Surprisingly, the less expensive HW-series transceivers and the SB’s with the vacuum tube based LMO (VFO), in my experience, have little shift between transmit and receive. Later SB-series transceivers with the solid-state VFO may have an offset. If this offset is > 100 Hz, you’ll notice it during SSB conversations (“leapfrogging” as you chase the fellow you’re talking to), and you’ll want to fix that for digital communications. Happily, the solid state LMO includes a FSK (frequency shift keying) …


Letter: Generator Tips

Good morning, Hugh, I thought I might pass along a tip or two about generators. I have several, the most used being one of a pair of Honda EU2000i, which does constant duty as an “unlimited length extension cord” around the property. The other is a much less portable 6500 watt unit, which lives in “hurry up and wait” mode in case power fails and the well pump is needed. I’ve got a homemade kit to couple the 2000s together to double the output, if I find I need some more “portable watts” for a power tool. The second EU2000 …


Using EMP-Hardened HF Ham Radio to Send/Receive E-Mail During Nationwide Outage- Part 1, by PrepperDoc

There are multiple possible scenarios that may result in a regional an/or national combined loss of Internet connectivity and cell/telephone service, during which you would probably wish to maintain communications to loved ones and others. EMP may destroy routers, cell towers, and power sources; solar coronal mass ejection (CME) may remove power from all communications systems; cyber warfare may have similar outcomes. Travel in some of these circumstances will be difficult, or dangerous to impossible. Ham radio VHF/UHF repeaters may go down, due to power outages or EMP. Direct, point to point simplex VHF Ham radio will still work (even …


Letter Re: Venezuela Eating Worse

Hugh, I understand the situation. The people are desperate. Looking at those pictures it is easy to see they are subsisting on too many starches, which makes them appear well fed, though they are not. So I’m not meaning to criticize, but there is also in those pictures of their food something of note. There’s lots of foods there that can be reproduced. Seeds in the veggies can be planted, beans can be planted, coax seeds from the onions and carrots, plant a potato, etc. Are they doing that? Do they have a place to do that? Would it be …


Notes from “The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs”, by ShepherdFarmerGeek

Did you know that you can get an estimate of distances and elevations conveniently using nothing more than your eyes and your hands? It’s really quite amazing and useful; hikers, hunters, and preppers really need to learn these skills. Ol’ Remus at the Woodpile Report (www.woodpilereport.com) recently recommended a book by Tristan Gooley entitled The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs: outdoor clues to find your way, predict the weather, locate water, track animals and other forgotten skills. It sounded downright intriguing, so I’ve been reading it on my Kindle and enjoying it quite a bit. The first Appendix had …


Letter: Observations on the Fires in Canada

Hugh, I wanted to comment on the article about the folks fleeing the wildfires in Fort McMurray, Canada. I saw some classic SurvivalBlog themes in there: Keep your gas tanks full. The gas station owner noted that people were “fighting each other to get gas, growing more and more desperate as the afternoon wore on.” Keep your gas tanks full, (yes I’m repeating myself). Later on the writer notes people were abandoning their cars on the highway since they knew they wouldn’t have enough fuel to make it to their destination. Don’t be a refugee. The folks that went to …