Category: Contest

Shortages, a 7-Year Food Supply, and Beating Inflation – Part 2, by SaraSue

(Continued from Part 1.) For many of us, the following are well-known concepts that we try to implement in our day-to-day living. I share my spin on them. I don’t cover OPSEC in this series because there are individuals with far more security experience than I, who can speak to it. Suffice it to say, I have implemented layers of security. The Basics: Water, Shelter, Tools, Energy, and Food Water: If you live in an urban or suburban area, your sources of water are very limited. However, you can get smart about water storage, storage containers, water filtration, and even …


Shortages, a 7-Year Food Supply, and Beating Inflation – Part 1, by SaraSue

Having a seven-year supply of healthy foods and saving money sounds like an oxymoron, but I want to explain how I did it in hopes it will help others. First, “7 years” is arbitrary. I had just finished reading the biblical story of Joseph and how God directed him to store up grain for 7 years because famine would come upon the land. Because of his obedience to God, he was rewarded both professionally by the Egyptian Pharaoh, and personally as the Lord brought his estranged family to him in need of grain. The story struck a chord in my …


The US as Babylon The Great, and What it Means to Preppers, by R.G.

Nowhere in the Bible is there a description of a latter-day Superpower that impacts the whole earth until the One World Government comes. Where is a Superpower like USA, or even China, described in the Biblical events leading to Christ’s return and Armageddon? Well, there is a detailed description in Revelation chapter 18 of a great Superpower that is destroyed leading up to the final days. This superpower is called Babylon the Great. Could this be America? Many Christian scholars believe Babylon to be Rome and/or the Catholic Church. They believe Rome’s destruction started in 410 A.D., continued with the …


Separation Or Purge? Sharing A Society With The Political Left Is Impossible, by Brandon Smith

Of all the social drivers in history the concept of freedom is the most powerful and fascinating. There are many observable objective truths in the world and it’s always important to recognize them, but the idea of freedom is more rare because it is a universal SUBJECTIVE truth. Meaning, it exists inherently in the majority of individuals; we don’t learn it, we just know it instinctively. Most of us share the experience but there is no microscope or telescope in existence that can observe that experience. We just have to trust it, or perhaps, have faith. Freedom is not taught …


Inflation: How Bad Could it Get? – Part 2, by Banker Bob

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) No matter what third-party players do on the international stage (China, Russia, Iran – in that order), this country may be on the road to a slow-rolling collapse over the next eighteen months. All the things that currently get news coverage are like the opening act before Garth Brooks takes the concert stage. Ukraine – So what? Taiwan – Well, it had to happen. Faltering economy – All Trump’s fault. West Texas crude oil above $120 per barrel – Just park your truck. And any of these things could result in higher …


Inflation: How Bad Could it Get? – Part 1, by Banker Bob

Much of my career has been in banking or related financial services including day-to-day, hands-on management of large-scale transaction processing centers for one of the world’s largest banks. Question 1: What’s your personal measure of inflation? Weekly grocery bill? Filling up your tank at the gas pump? 9mm or 5.56 ammo when you find some? Medical bills? Your individual perceptions are influenced by personal purchasing preferences, geographic differences, urban vs. rural spending habits, size of family, and income level. For starters, take a very skeptical look at the 7.5% CPI reported as the 12-month increase for January 2022. The figures …


An Emergency Household Water Supply, by St. Funogas

As we saw in 2021 here in the U.S., grid-down events lasting several days can occur at any time of the year. Some of the major ones making the headlines were caused by forest fires, multi-state tornados, and near record-setting wind storms. Most of us deal more regularly with local blackouts caused by wind and ice storms, outages that can happen anywhere at any time. Are we prepared? We take water for granted. It’s always there when we open a tap or flush the toilet and often we’re not prepared when it’s not readily available for a several-day period. Here, …


Fade to Gray: Files and Documents – Part 3, by J.M.

(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.) Document Tools Being able to store sensitive files and minimizing the chances of someone finding them is useful, but you still need to be able to view and edit the files in a secure and private manner without leaving details on what files you’ve worked on and what they contain all over your system (or the Internet). Many of the commercially available document and file editing tools such as Microsoft Office store a lot of information on what files you’ve worked on and potentially what’s stored inside them (for your own good, …


Fade to Gray: Files and Documents – Part 2, by J.M.

(Continued from Part 1.) Hidden Rooms and Secret Passages VeraCrypt has an extremely useful feature called a ‘hidden volume’, which is what we’ll be using to hide and protect sensitive files. As I mentioned earlier, a volume is basically a chunk of storage (file) that Windows mounts and assigns a drive letter to. What VeraCrypt does is allows you to create a big encrypted file and mount that as a virtual storage volume – ‘virtual’ in this case just means that the volume doesn’t correspond to a unique physical storage device, since the file can be moved anywhere and still …


Fade to Gray: Files and Documents – Part 1, by J.M.

If you’re reading SurvivalBlog it’s a safe assumption you use a computer of some type, and you probably also use your computer for more than just surfing the Internet. One of the nice things about computers is that they make creating, editing, storing and moving large amounts of information a lot easier than trying to do everything with pen and paper, and a decent laptop with some solar panels for charging can operate for years even after the grid goes down. This allows you to easily create, edit and view things like inventories, maps of cache locations, communications SOPs, defense …


The Dragon’s Breath: DIY Nonlethal Home Defense, by A.S.

People in their own homes may encounter an intruder who intends to take what they have and do them harm. They might run away if they could. But what if there is no way out? They may have no choice but to stand their ground. Unfortunately, many people in a situation like this are reluctant to use deadly force even if they stand to lose their possessions and possibly sustain personal bodily harm even death. So what can they do if they have been forced into a confrontation when the time for talking is over? You are in your own …


Raising Chickens From Scratch, by ZChick Lover

To the point: I have accidently discovered a simple action that is of great assistance in raising little chicks – moisten the chick food sometimes. Although I did this in an attempt to save some little distressed chicks who were not eating, this probably is simply called “mash”. Mash is mentioned in this older pamphlet, downloadable free as a pdf from google books. There is a wealth of other information found here in this 1917 book. Another successful action: have a “hospital” area always ready in the kitchen. And finally, I’d like to relay a story of how simply warming …


My Ultralight Get-Home Bag – Part 3, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.) First-Aid Kit – This is another area where I’m way out of the norm. My first-aid kit is based on the medical emergencies I’ve experienced throughout my life including backpacking and wilderness camping. None of those would have been helped by a first-aid kit: mostly broken bones (5), kidney stones (107), and a huge one which required hospitalization. For all other incidents requiring first aid my bandana was it, mostly to stop gushing blood. (As a side note, a bandana is one of the most versatile items in my GHB.) Any serious …


My Ultralight Get-Home Bag – Part 2, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 1.) What I’ll Be Carrying in My GHB No weights were guessed, each item (or group of items for the very light things) was weighed in grams on a kitchen scale, then converted to pounds. For the backpack and bivvy bag the weight was taken from online spec sheets. Pounds are rounded off to the tenth but my Excel spreadsheet has the unrounded numbers so the final number for total weight will be accurate. I may have forgotten some things here which are on my spreadsheet, or forgotten to update a change in the manuscript, so if …


My Ultralight Get-Home Bag – Part 1, by St. Funogas

Three cheers to J.M. for his recent excellent, award-winning article on Get Home Bags (GHBs). Finally, a GHB article with advice that’s sensible, logical, and doable for anyone wanting to put together a GHB. I know how long it takes to write an article for SurvivalBlog so I know it took J.M. months to put that all together so again, thanks for such a well-researched piece. I’m stepping up to the plate on his request for some thoughts on other ways to put together an ultra-light GHB. To say the least, I was pretty disappointed with what I was finding …