Note from JWR:

The SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction ends at midnight eastern time tonight. (Friday, February 15th). The high bid is now at $300. The auction is for a Brunton Solarport 4.4 watt photovoltaic panel (a $140 retail value), a Deluxe Outdoor Survival Tool Kit (a $70 retail value)–both kindly donated by Ready Made Resources–as well as seven other items: A copy of the latest edition of “The Encyclopedia of Country Living” by the late Carla Emery (a $32 retail value), an autographed copy of my novel “Patriots” (a $23 retail value), an autographed copy of my nonfiction book “Rawles on Retreats and Relocation” …


Finding Your Dream Retreat: It is Time to Watch the Foreclosure Listings

I often get e-mails from readers, complaining that the retreat properties that they see listed are too expensive. Typically is something like: “I found a couple of good places, but they are beyond my reach.” Here is one possible solution: Buy on the other guy’s weakness. There are lots of foreclosures now on the market, and the foreclosure rate is expected to increase as the real estate bubble continues to deflate, and as the US economy slides into recession. (In my estimation, here is the equation for the next four years: Recession equals lay-offs, and layoffs equals missed house payments, …


Letter Re: Survival Lessons from the Book “The Long Walk”

Jim, One of your blog readers suggested the book “The Long Walk”. Five minutes Googling around will satisfy you that “The Long Walk” is pure fiction masquerading as fact. I like a good yarn, but only when such stories are clearly labeled “fiction.” Nobody but the British author who made up this tall tale has ever met or interviewed or known anything about the supposed Polish prisoners who he claims walked across the Gobi Desert and the Himalayas with virtually no gear. There are many great true survival stories, but unfortunately this is not one of them. – Matt Bracken …


Weekly Survival Real Estate Market Update

Buying Your Retreat During ‘The Melt’ Ah…for those of you who have never heard of the ‘melt’ or the ‘mud season’ in a cold climate you’ll be in for a big and most likely not very exciting surprise. This phenomenon usually lasts a few weeks to a month and during that time the entire area is just plain wet and muddy. Most roads other than the main highway have [commercial/logging/mining] load weight restrictions placed on them with heavy fines for violations. This is to keep the roads from buckling and sinking when the earth underneath them thaws and is sometimes …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Eric sent us this from BBC News: World markets lose $5.2 trillion    o o o From the International Herald Tribune: Global inflation climbs to historic levels    o o o RBS sent us an article on CCD, from England: Panic in the beehive    o o o An analysis from Now and Futures shows a US inflation rate of around 18%, using data from the now defunct M3 Aggregate figure. (A hat tip to Eric for sending the link.) OBTW, speaking of disappearing data, reader John T. mentioned this tidbit: "Due to budgetary constraints, the Economic Indicators service [web …



Notes from JWR:

The current SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction ends at midnight eastern time tomorrow (February 15th). The high bid is now at $270. The auction is for a Brunton Solarport 4.4 watt photovoltaic panel (a $140 retail value), a Deluxe Outdoor Survival Tool Kit (a $70 retail value)–both kindly donated by Ready Made Resources–as well as seven other items: A copy of the latest edition of “The Encyclopedia of Country Living” by the late Carla Emery (a $32 retail value), an autographed copy of my novel “Patriots” (a $23 retail value), an autographed copy of my nonfiction book “Rawles on Retreats and Relocation” …


Shortages Can Induce Deep Drama, and Making Do-It-Yourself Fire Logs, by Heghduq

I live in the Midwest. With the recent snow storms hitting the area there has been an abundance of snow and ice. We have had record levels of snowfall for the month of February. It comes as no surprise that the state was ill-prepared for this. As a result there is a statewide shortage of road [de-icing] salt. The distributors are out of stock and it is unknown how long it will be before they will get more. To those of you who have never had the pleasure of driving on winter roads in the Midwest, you may not understand. …


Letter Re: Survival Lessons from the Book “The Long Walk”

Dear Jim, The book “The Long Walk” by Slavomir Rawicz is the best book on the human spirit over the elements (both natural and man made) that I’ve ever read. The author and his group escaped from a Siberian Gulag in 1942, crossed the Gobi Desert and the Himalayas, and walked all the way to India. Over 4,000-miles! This was all without the aid of $10,000 worth of gear from the REI catalog, or for that matter, shoes. It’s a perfect combination of some of our standard topics! Government tyranny, survival, hope, ingenuity, teamwork. It was absolutely inspiring! – Frank …


Letter Re SurvivalBlog Logo Hats as Networking Tools

Hello Jim, I’ve been lurking since last November after I re-read [your novel] “Patriots”. On a whim I tried a web search looking for any newer books you may have published and found your blog. What a tremendous surprise. I had several questions when I first started reading your blog and decided to go back through the archives. Glad I did. Thus far all of my questions have been answered (I just finished [reading the archives of] December 2006). I feel being a recent contributor to the 10 Cent Challenge is dirt cheap for the knowledge I’ve gained, and I’ve …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Now mainstream journalists are starting to use the “D” word: Depression risk might force U.S. to buy assets. Thanks to Eric for finding that. OBTW, he also spotted this from Reuters: Dozens of U.S. banks will fail by 2010    o o o Don’t miss Charles Hugh Smith’s latest economics essay (posted February 13th) “System Instability, Redundancy and the Domino Effect “.    o o o The Other Ben L. forwarded this: Global demand lifts grain prices, gobbles supplies.    o o o Mike in Malaysia says “File this under… ‘Not good for the world’”: Pakistani nuclear scientists ‘abducted’



Notes from JWR:

It is gratifying to see that there are now so many SurvivalBlog readers all over the planet. Our readership growth in Europe has been phenomenal. I do have one question: Why is there now a 30-to-299 SurvivalBlog reader cluster way out in Siberia, just north of the Mongolian border? It looks too far east to be the Baikonur Cosmodrome (Tyuratam), but it is apparently somewhere on the Trans-Siberian railway route. Perhaps just some bored knob-turners at a far-flung Russian SIGINT site? Oh well, I guess that I should just be content that there are so many SurvivalBlog dots on the …


The Big Picture — Grid Up Versus Grid Down–Oil, Soil, and Water

Before selecting retreat locale, It is crucial that you decide on your own worst case scenario. A location that is well-suited to surviving a “slow-slide” grid up scenario (a la the deflationary depression of the 1930s) might not necessarily be well suited to a grid down situations. As stated in my post on August 15, 2005, a grid down situation will likely cause a sudden onset variation of TEOTWAWKI with a concomitant mass exodus from the big cities resulting in chaos on a scale heretofore never seen in modern memory. My own personal “best case” scenario is an economic depression, …