Author Archives: James Wesley Rawles

Editors’ Quote of the Day:

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Jerry Pournell

“Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.” – Jerry Pournelle, Chaos Manor View 408, April 3-9, 2006


The Editors’ Preps for the Week

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Fiskar Pole Trimmer

To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make long-term and short-term plans. Steadily, we work on meeting our prepping goals. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities.  They also share their planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, property improvements, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in the Comments. Let’s keep busy and be ready!  This week’s focus is on homemade bug spray for livestock.

JWR

Dear SurvivalBlog Readers,
This week has been very warm, sunny, and hazy from some distant regional forest fires.  Relatives are visiting for the next three weeks, so not much prepping other … Continue reading →


Economics & Investing For Preppers

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Economics and Investing

Here are the latest items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. And it bears mention that most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor.) Today’s focus is on the False Recovery.  (See the Stocks section, below.)

Precious Metals:

The spot price of platinum is still in the doldrums, but recently saw an uptick.  Any point in time when you can buy an ounce of platinum for less than ounce of gold, then it is a good time to buy platinum!

o  o  o

I’m not a believer in most of what the Chartists have to say. But I found this macro analysis interesting: Ira Epstein’s Precious Metals Video August-2-2017.

 

Commodities:

After spiking … Continue reading →




Economics & Investing For Preppers

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Bank Run

Here are the latest items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. And it bears mention that most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor.) Today’s focus is on investing in hairspring watches.

Precious Metals:

First, at Seeking Alpha: Mining stocks’ valuation attractive, led by copper and zinc, BMO says

o  o  o

India’s Demonetization Policy Takes a Turn for the Worse

Commodities:

Sanctions On Venezuela Could Push Oil Into The Mid-$50s

o  o  o

China’s threatened scrap import ban jolts copper into life: Andy Home


JWR’s Recommendations of the Week

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Stainless Steel Wool

Here are JWR‘s Recommendations of the Week for various media and tools of interest to SurvivalBlog readers.  This week the focus is on stainless steel wool. (See the Gear section, near the end of this column.)

Books:

The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun by Matt Bracken.  (Recommended by long-time blog reader P.T..) Matt Bracken is a former U.S. Navy SEAL. His thought-provoking novels always include a lot of practical and tactical goodness woven into the storylines. (Matt’s better-known Enemies Foreign and Domestic” novel series is widely read, for good reason!)

The Shoestring Girl: How I Live on Practically Nothing and YOU Can Too



SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt

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Net Metering

Here is SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt. This weekly column features news stories and event announcements from around the American Redoubt region. The emphasis today is on net metering.

Idaho (Net Metering)

First up: Idaho Power seeks changes for solar customers. JWR’s Comments: The power utilities don’t like seeing home power meters running backwards.  Doing away with net metering is a slap in the face of thousands of customers. These are folks who each invested tens of thousands of dollars. They did so in anticipation of the equipment gradually paying for itself. Without net metering, their investment would probably be a net loss. Changing the rules in the middle of the game is just disreputable.

o o o

Also in Idaho: Boise neighbors tackle, pin driver after hit-and-run spree



Economics & Investing For Preppers

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HK21 Machineguns

Here are the latest items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. And it bears mention that most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor.) Today’s focus is on investing in registered Class 3 machineguns. (See the Tangibles Investing section, near the end of this column.)

Precious Metals:

Gold Prices Will Be ‘Explosive,’ Just Wait and See – Jim Rogers

o  o  o

As of July 31st, the trend line for spot silver is looking encouraging. I hope that SurvivalBlog readers stocked up when silver was lower. If you didn’t, then buy now, before the next market crisis. (I predict that the next global crisis will send silver soaring to $35+ per ounce.)

Commodities:

… Continue reading →



The Editors’ Preps for the Week

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Cheapskate Garden

To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make long-term and short-term plans. Steadily, we work on meeting our prepping goals. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities.  They also share their planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, property improvements, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in the Comments. Let’s keep busy and be ready!  This week’s focus is on garden plumbing.

JWR

Dear SurvivalBlog Readers,

This week in the northern part of the American Redoubt the weather has been very warm and dry, the high temperatures in the high 80s and low 90s and … Continue reading →


Economics & Investing For Preppers

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Fabrege Eggs

Here are the latest items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. And it bears mention that most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor.) Today’s focus is on investing in Collectibles. (See the Tangibles Investing section, near the end of this column.)

Precious Metals:

China Surpasses South Africa’s Gold Production. (Although South Africa still has the world’s largest below-ground reserves.)

Commodities:

Oil Rises, But Saudis Face Daunting Dilemma


The Antifa Threat Spiral: Some Safe Predictions on the Coming Unsafe Era- Part 2

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Antifa

In Part 1 of this article, I pointed to the rapid post-election growth of the leftist so-called “anti-fascist” (Antifa) movement. This movement has some clear parallels to the draft protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Now, in Part 2 , I’ll further describe how the threat spirals will likely develop.

The Crypto Guys

It is safe to assume that cryptography and novel communications techniques will be used by leftist domestic terror organizations, as they internally develop their tradecraft. It is very likely that anonymous mail forwarders, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and a variety of cryptographic tools are already in use by Antifa. This can only be expected to expand, with the passage of time. I anticipate that the Antifa groups will assume that all publicly-available VPN services and encryption sites are fully co-opted or even the creations of national intelligence organizations. Therefore, some of their … Continue reading →