NAIS: What Does it Take to Raise an Alarm These Days? by Ken Anderson of “All Maine Matters”

I can remember when 1984 was a scary book. Today, it seems that we worry only about those things that we’re told to worry about, and accept the answers that are given to us, no questions asked. On September 11, 2001, three passenger planes were crashed into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, while a fourth came to fiery rest in a Pennsylvania field. Less than a month later, the USA PATRIOT Act was introduced in Congress, to be signed – more than 300 pages of it – on October 26, 2001 with few objections from the public or …


Letter Re: Supplementing The Medical Kit

Mr. Rawles: The two links listed below provide good basic information to supplement the low cost medical kits previously discussed on your site. This information is available free for downloading and printing. This link is to the Virtual Naval Hospital which is being discontinued due to a lack of funding. It was set up for use by military medical personnel: http://www.vnh.org/ The link below is another free link that was mainly for use where there is no doctor and pharmacy available and would be helpful in an emergency situation. One example of a good source of information is Chapter 7 …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, short swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of unnecessary implements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues and tends to foment uprisings." – Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Lord Chancellor of Japan, August 1588, the order that instituted "The Great Sword Hunt"


Note from JWR:

Please spread the word about SurvivalBlog. Just a brief “bcc-ed” e-mail to the folks on your e-mail address list would be greatly appreciated.  Remember: Every friend, neighbor, and co-worker that gets squared away logistically will be one less individual that comes begging on your doorstep, come TEOTWAWKI+1.  So it is in your own best interest to let them know about SurvivalBlog.


Search Engine Privacy–And Google’s 30 Year Cookie Retention Iniquity

Part of being a prepared individual is keeping a low profile. I don’t heavily emphasize privacy issues on SurvivalBlog, but I do recommend that you learn how to fly under the radar, just on general principle. My philosophy: Don’t leave big paper trails or bit trails. An interesting article recently appeared at Wired News, titled “How to Foil Search Engine Snoops”  See: http://wired.com/news/technology/0,70051-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_2 For greater privacy, the author recommends using either the Firefox PC browser or the Safari Macintosh browser. He states: “In Firefox, you can go into the privacy preference dialog and open Cookies. From there you can remove …


“Shooter” on The Draw Technique, or “Shooter’s Five Steps to Keeping Ten Fingers”

In my last article (posted on SurvivalBlog on Thursday, January 5, 2006), I discussed some basic range manners and the only three rules I live by. I hope it serves as a starting point for good gun handling skills. After reading the recent letter about loaning out weapons to ‘untrained’ neighbors during times of crisis, I thought best to move along to the second lesson we all must be concerned with when dealing with handguns. You can use this and the first lesson I wrote about to help bring your neighbors up to speed when the need arises. The basic …


Letter Re: Stocking Up on Shoes and Boots for Survival

In regard to Matt’s statement in his letter on survival footgear: “BUT, you cannot fake or approximate footwear!” Don’t be so sure about that. See: http://www.indigenouspeople.net/tarafeat.htm I have yet to scale a 10,000 foot peak in tire sandals or moccasins, but I’m going to give it a try one of these days: http://www.hollowtop.com/sandals.htm  Less along the lines of “field expedient footwear” and more along the lines of “Post-TEOTWAWKI skills,” here’s a link to a site that deals with making “medieval style” shoes: http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/SHOEHOME.HTM If things ever get bad, having the skills to make well-fitted shoes could make one a welcome …



De-Nuked Tridents?

A tip of the hat to Noah at the DefenseTech Blog, who alerted me to a recent Washington Post story. Apparently some 24 submarine-launched Trident missiles will be converted to carry improved conventional munitions for a “global strike” capability See: http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/01/a_bad_weapon_in.html#more. According to the story, some observers suggest that a launch of any of these retrofitted missiles (which could carry up to four MIRVs each) might cause a false alarm in trigger-happy nuclear nation states like North Korea. That could create the excuse for a retaliatory strike with nukes, which would of course be a very bad thing.


Letter Re: Stocking Up on Shoes and Boots for Survival

Hi Jim, As always, SurvivalBlog is the top of my morning reading list. Great discussion today about arming your unprepared non-shooting neighbors during or after TSHTF. I have always considered the training of non-shooters to be almost a sacred duty. Just as we do not turn away the repentant prodigal son from church when he awakens, we must gratefully take the opportunity to train and arm our neighbors when crisis hits. This is an example of enlightened self interest at work, for as you say, it is hard for a family to protect four quadrants. Much better to have semi-trained …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Can anyone in this country do anything without their cell phone? Today a co-worker told me that her husband refused to keep a date to go out to dinner because he had misplaced his cell phone. Instead of spending a romantic evening together, they spent two hours frantically searching for his cell phone. They finally found it in his car, where they had searched twice before. If I recall correctly, life was possible before everyone had a cell phone.   o  o  o The RWVA’s Spring Appleseed Tour series of rifle training sessions/matches is shaping up. They have shoots scheduled …



Note from JWR:

There are just eleven days left in Round 2 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The writer of the best contest entry will win a four day course certificate at Front Sight. (An up to $2,000 value!)  The deadline for entries for Round 2 is the last day of January, 2006. I also have some good news: Thanks to the generosity of Naish Piazza (the founder and director of Front Sight), we will be extending the writing contest for at least one more round! Round 3 will begin February 1st and end on the last day of March. We’ve already …


Letter Re: Surplus Ultra-Cold Medical Storage Freezers

I have been watching the U.S. Government surplus auctions for ultra-cold medical storage freezers. This one (“KELVINATOR, MDL: UC50RFMS, LAB REFRIGERATOR”) recently sold for just three hundred bucks. See: http://cgi.govliquidation.com/auction/view?id=743367&convertTo=USD Not a bad price at all. I hope that it went to some frugal individual who will be using it for long-term storage in the event of TEOTWAWKI! I’ve become hopelessly addicted to the govliquidation.com site. Keep up the good work. A 10 Cent Challenge check is headed your way. – T.K.


Eric Roseman’s Commentary on the Inverted Yield Curve

The following are some excerpts from some commentary by Eric Roseman that was included in a recent issue of  The Sovereign Society’s Offshore A-Letter: When the rate of return for short term investments exceeds that of long term investments (the yield curve “inverts”), it is generally a sign of bad economic times ahead. Over the last two years, investors have barely kept pace with inflation in benchmark intermediate term US Treasury bonds. After enjoying a massive rally since 2000, bond yields hit a 40 year low in 2003 at 3.3%. Despite thirteen Federal Reserve rate hikes since June 2004, bond …