Category: Contest

Making Flour From Mesquite, by Pete Thorsen

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My goal this past year was to make flour from Mesquite pods and I did meet this modest goal. To do this I planned ahead and I was able to purchase an old hand crank meat grinder and a hand crank grain mill. Both were used but appeared to be in excellent shape. The all-metal grain mill looks much like the old-style meat grinder but has two flat plates between which the milling takes place. New hand meat grinders and new grain mills like what I bought are still made and readily available. Many can be found on eBay and …


Cutting Your Power Utility Cord, by Dennis Williams – Pt. 2

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Step 4: Equipment Inverters When setting up your off-grid power system, don’t buy the cheapest inverter that you can find on Amazon! There are several excellent inverter manufacturers out there. I have some that I love, some of them are okay, and some I will not install. Keep in mind, as a professional installer, my reputation is at stake on every project I put in. There are some cheap ones that may perform well, I can’t go there. Some of the “good stuff” out there can power your retreat, automatically start and stop the generator based on battery status, and …


Cutting Your Power Utility Cord, by Dennis Williams – Pt. 1.

A Short Primer on Making Your Own Electricity Most of us have thought of the dream: A secluded retreat nestled in the woods, off the beaten path, no mortgage, no utility bills, raising our own food, homeschooling our children, spending time with our family, etc. Then we pop back to reality, and try to plan out and prioritize how we make it happen. How do we get from where we are to where we want to be? Ten seconds of background on me: I have been playing with solar energy for 40 years. I am an Army combat veteran, and …


Sundries For Survival, Part 2, by 3adScout

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Part 2 (Continued from Part 1, posted on Friday, Feb. 15, 2019.) With the many disaster and TEOTWAWKI scenarios, we can’t be 100% sure of everything that we will need in a post-event life. But the goal is to be as close to that 100% as possible. Another good saying to apply to prepping is that “necessity is the mother of invention.” Having a diverse on-hand stock of sundries can allow us to improvise and adapt those items to what we need. When at the hardware store I like to go down the aisles and look at items and think …


Sundries For Survival, Part 1, by 3adScout

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This article centers on logistics. This is not a list of what you need, but rather an inspiration to get us to think about a category of supplies that isn’t discussed a lot. Beans, bullets and band-aids are definitely key in survival but when you consider many of the items we will discuss in this article, they support our ability to raise, process or prepare food, ensure we can use our bullets if needed by having maintained and operational firearms and providing an ounce of prevention by supporting our health, safety and hygiene so we don’t have to use our …


Telling You a Thousand Times Wasn’t Enough – Part 2, by Orofino

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Part 2 (Continued from Part 1, posted on Wednesday, February 13, 2019.) I have recently been giving this subject a great deal of time in introspection. I was motivated when John Lovell at the Warrior Poet Society web site recently urged his followers to “weaponize consistency”. As if on cue, I recently read a well-written piece, from an author who recounted receiving a charge many years ago, from a sage Japanese gentleman that, “An elephant doesn’t bite, but fleas do.” Consequently, I resolved to incorporate those congruent principles into my personal training, before overtly encouraging my tribe to do likewise. …


Telling You a Thousand Times Wasn’t Enough – Part 1, by Orofino

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Self Discipline: Principles in Practice Trainers, educators and parents constantly contend with push back from professionals, students, and children when “the trainer” asks for consistent, repetitive attempts at otherwise banal tasks. What is the best germane rejoinder to such grousing? Worse yet, those of us who don the mantle of Prepper or Sheepdog probably wrestle with the same demons that would have us believe that we are competent in our fitness level and proficient in our gardening, animal husbandry, bushcraft, food preservation skills, etc. The stark reality is that we probably need to settle into the idea that we need …


New Zealand: Thoughts After Seven Years, Part 4, by Nivek

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Part 4   Taxes, everybody’s favorite topic New Zealand has a top tax rate of 33%. Okay, you think that’s not bad, the U.S. is right up there also. Well the trouble is you get to the 33% much faster as there are only three tax brackets. Making over $65,000 NZ Dollars per year will get you into the top bracket. That’s around $50,000 US Dollars. There are no deductions for a private person and you don’t get credit for kids or being married. The way around this seems to involve having a business and taking deductions through the business. …


New Zealand: Thoughts After Seven Years, Part 3, by Nivek

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Part 3   Weather Weather in New Zealand is widely varied with the north island getting much more rain than the south island. An exception on the south island is the far south-western tip called the Fiordlands. It’s a very rugged place with thousands of waterfalls. It is worth seeing. The north island has higher temperatures and higher humidity. I chose a location on the top of the south island that would have the most sunshine and dryer weather. I am a desert person and it takes a lot of getting used to the humid conditions. Take a look at …


New Zealand: Thoughts After Seven Years, Part 2, by Nivek

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Part 2 I’ll begin Part 2 with some random thoughts. I am just going to comment on various items from daily life. A Small Country One really important thing is the size of the market here in New Zealand. The population is something over 4.5 million spread out over an area about the size of California, and then split into two islands. The U.S. has well over 350 million people. This makes world products to be priced high here because the market share is low and the logistics are difficult to get things down here. Another factor is that almost …


New Zealand: Thoughts After Seven Years, Part 1, by Nivek

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Part 1 Many of you have probably wondered about “bugging out” to another country. I would like to share with you what I have learned after living in New Zealand for seven years. I will try to organize my thoughts in different categories to help you get some answers. The first part will cover why and how I made the leap. Part 2 of the article will discuss various experiences. Part 3 will cover weather, gun laws, cars, car insurance, and shopping. And in Part 4 I will finish by covering taxes, telecommunications costs, and post a “points system” locales …


Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread, by C.J.

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Bread has been called the staff of life. Throughout history has become a staple to diets across the world. There are literally thousands of bread recipes to be found in cookbooks, online, and in grandma’s little recipe file. Most recipes are actually very similar with the only difference perhaps being a little more or less flour, salt, leavening, or other agent. The one thing in common with most rising breads is the process. Adding ingredients, kneading for a given length of time, allowing to rise then baking. Hoping to find at the end, a perfectly risen mass of wonderful bread …


Round 80 Non-Fiction Writing Contest Winners Announced!

Round 80 of SurvivalBlog’s Non-Fiction Writing Contest has ended and the editors have picked the winners. If you are one of the top three winners, please make sure that you e-mail us your USPS and your UPS/FedEx addresses. Any article submitted, but not published in the December 2018-January 2019 timeframe have been automatically rolled over to Round 81 of the Contest. Our congratulations to the writing contest winners! First Prize: First Prize was awarded to K.B., M.D., for Medical Action Sheets (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, & Part 4) which was posted December 26-29, 2018.  She will received the …


My Mobile Alternative Energy Experiences, by Captain Steve

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All of us who think about what we’d do if the Schumer Hits The Fan (SHTF) spend a lot of time exploring options. What will I do if this thing or that happens? Will I bug out or hunker down? What should I buy and place in my long term storage? I expect that like me, most who are unwilling to just sit back and hope for the best have taken plenty of steps to protect and prepare themselves for many eventualities. Over the countless hours I’ve spent researching and planning, I’ve tried to assess and make note of where …


I Survived an Economic Collapse – Part 2, by Siempre Listo

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Editor’s Introductory Note:  Part 1 of this article on the Mexico currency devaluation was posted on Tuesday, January 29, 2019.  Today, Part 2 concludes this article. — In Part 1, I described how, while I was living and teaching in Mexico in 1982, there was a nearly 50% devaluation of the Mexican Peso, resulting in major economic hardship for the average citizen. In this installment, I would like to share a few lessons I learned from experiencing a currency devaluation –essentially an economic collapse– and how these lessons can help us prepare for a similar, or much worse collapse in …