Letter From David in Israel Re: Blue Water Sailing as a Retreat Option?

James: Anyone near any body of salt water should consider purchasing something like the Navy/Coast Guard [approved] Manual Reverse Osmosis Desalinator (MROD) They are sold on eBay and as far as I know are only made by PUR. They can provide drinkable water at sea for one to two people with quite a bit of work but PUR also makes a larger bicycle pump model. I have tested mine in both the Med (not as salty as ocean) and the Salt Sea (the saltiest water in the world). More salt just means more work. A creative person might make a …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Another indicator of inflation ahead? SurvivalBlog reader Bill H. notes: “A trend that I have not seen mentioned on your web site, apart from gold and silver investment, is that [fine] “art” is going through the roof. Most of us cannot afford to invest in art, myself included. However, we can still see the writing on the wall when the moderately wealthy are flocking to acquire art at record prices. You don’t have to buy thousands of pounds of gold when you can pay $20 million for a painting that will only appreciate. That’s a fairly extreme example, but you …



Note from JWR:

The SurvivalBlog benefit auction for a pair of MURS band handheld transceivers, with optional extended range flex antennas ends on February 15th. The high bid is currently at $175. These radios were kindly donated by Rob at $49 MURS Radios. Check out his products. What Rob sells are a lot of radio for the money.


Letter Re: Advice on a 12 VDC Fuel Transfer Pump

Mr. James Wesley; Rawles: I keep a lot of extra gas in five gallon jerry-cans around my new farm/retreat wanna-be, for emergencies. (Stabilized with PRI-G, of course.) Yeah, I know that siphoning–especially if you prime it “by mouth”–is not safe. (Gag!) To make it easier and safer to transfer gasoline into or out of vehicle gas tanks, is there any transfer device that I can use use? Perhaps something that would plug into my pickup truck’s cigarette lighter [12 volt DC power] jack? What can I buy that is cheap off-the-shelf, or cheap to cobble together myself? Oh, and its …


Letter Re: Smoke Damaged Firearms

Greetings, In January, our home burned down. The family made it out safely thanks to our dog waking us up. The fire started outside and once it entered the house it was engulfed in minutes. My question is how to restore books, firearms, et cetera that have been damaged by smoke and fire. Since getting burned out is a possibility in survival times this information could be quite handy. BTW Smoke eats the finish on guns. My Mini-14 got eaten up pretty badly, but the CETME in the rack next to it came out just fine. I guess they used …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Blog reader B.H. sent this snippet: “Last month I was at the NRA headquarters in Virginia. I noticed a sign across the street for condos for sale for $260,000. I made a comment on how expensive that sounded when a NRA headquarters employee said that he sold his condo in the same development for $465,000 just eight months prior. That’s a decline of 44% in one year. Ouch for the guy that bought at the top of the bubble.”   o o o There are just 3 days left in the big “Container load sale” at Survival Enterprises. Looking at …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow… For society does not control crime, ever, by forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding." – Jeff Snyder


Notes from JWR:

Our special thanks to the folks at Safecastle (one of our most loyal advertisers) for expanding their advertising on SurvivalBlog. They now have the exclusive “nailed up” top position SurvivalBlog banner ad. Be sure to sign up for their “Safecastle Royal” buyer’s club and give them your patronage. They have a fantastic line of preparedness products! Today we also welcome our newest advertiser, Health Treasures. They provide a great assortment of health and survival products, including water test kits, aerobic oxygen, potassium iodide (KI) anti-radiation (thyroid protection) tablets, health books, and survival books. They also sell nutritional supplements such as …


Three Letters Re: Pondering Some Personal Consequences of Global Climate Change

JWR, Both M.W.A. and Michael Williamson bring some sanity and reason to the subject of climate change. Thanks for publishing their letters. Weather/climate is probably the most complex system on earth. For anyone to say they can tell with any kind of certainty what the climate on earth was like millions of years ago is ridiculous and what is the point. On a very basic level, the one universal truth about the weather/climate is change, unending change. You could even make the case that change is a universal physical law. The writers are correct to question the motives of the …


Odds ‘n Sods:

As reported by The Daily Reckoning: “The Central Bank of Zimbabwe announced this week that henceforth inflation would be illegal. Anyone who raises prices will be arrested.” Do they honestly believe that they can put the brakes on a 1,200% per annum inflation rate, by decree? The Zimbabwean government is beyond corrupt, and beyond incompetent. Comrade Mugabe and his band of fools from the ZANU-PF must go!   o o o RBS mentioned this news story at CNN.com: Vagrant: “We killed for scrap metal, hid bodies in manholes.” Human nature hasn’t changed. When times get really hard, you can expect …




Letter Re: Questions on Multipurpose Home Shelters

Sir: I live in Georgia and we have more than our share of tornados. We usually go to the basement to my office during storms but I’ve decided that even though it’s underground on 3 sides, with only 3/4 plywood and sheet rock between us and the garage doors that it is no longer a viable option. I’ve looked at FEMA plans and I’ve scratched my head and come up with this idea but wanted to kind of say it out loud to someone to see if it sounds too crazy. The back part of the basement is almost completely …


Two Letters Re: Pondering Some Personal Consequences of Global Climate Change

Jim, I have been reluctant to comment on the climate change hysteria, but the recent letter by Hawaiian K was too much. There are several important facts to remember on this topic: 1) We don’t have enough data to determine whether we are in a long-term warming trend, or in a counter-cyclical move in a long term cooling trend. Lot’s of people have ‘data’ but no ‘facts’ have been established. Remember in the 1970’s how the next ice age was right around the corner? 2) Even if we do happen to be in a warming trend at the moment, there …