Category: Current Events & Politics

Prepared For Financial TEOTWAWKI? – Part 2, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 1.) Interest on the National Debt There are three categories in the US budget. Mandatory spending is mandated by law to be paid. Discretionary spending can be adjusted for each department, or the funding can be eliminated at any time. Interest payments are in their own category but for all intents and purposes are in the mandatory category. The 2025 budget has the interest payment estimated at $969 billion, just a hair under one trillion. If I can tweak that up to $995 billion based on historical budget misses it will make the math easier as this …


Prepared For Financial TEOTWAWKI? – Part 1, by St. Funogas

Sometimes the truth is ugly and nobody wants to hear it. Ignoring the truth is what got us into the current budget deficit mess and the insurmountable national debt we now face as a nation. Hope is a remarkable thing. Hope that our actions will pay off keeps us working toward the goal and it generally pays off. False hope, on the other hand, causes us to work toward solving a problem which is impossible to resolve. Because we fail to recognize it can’t be fixed, we keep working and hoping and can’t understand why our exertions aren’t achieving the …


January, 2025 in Precious Metals, by Everett Millman

Welcome to SurvivalBlog’s Precious Metals Month in Review, where we take a look at “the month that was” in precious metals. Each month, we cover gold’s performance and silver’s performance and examine the factors that affected the metal prices. WHAT DID GOLD AND SILVER DO IN JANUARY? The new year brought new all-time highs for gold while silver marched higher, rebounding from a nearly three-month downtrend. Gold rallied an impressive 1.3% on Thursday, Jan. 2nd only to give back most of those gains over the next two trading sessions. Silver prices rose during each of the first seven days of …


A Red State Manifesto: Two Americas in 2025 – Part 3, by Jonathan Rawles

(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.) Red State Prospects It seems almost redundant to try to list the benefits and advantages of “red state living.” Red America is vast and offers opportunities for every climate, lifestyle, regional culture, and personal preference or situation. Red State America includes something of everything of America: – Mountain West logging and mining towns. Lakeside resort towns. Ranching country. Vast empty spaces. Arizona sunshine. – Midwest and Plains Americana, from small farming towns to prospering cities. The Great Lakes. America’s historic manufacturing and agricultural heartland. – Texas, a nation to itself. The economic …


A Red State Manifesto: Two Americas in 2025 – Part 2, by Jonathan Rawles

(Continued from Part 1.) Political Migration: Origins of the Big Sort In 2008, demographers Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing put a name to a trend that had been going on in America since the 1960s with their book The Big Sort. The authors’ contention is that Americans are sorting themselves geographically and that as a consequence, all areas are becoming more politically polarized. In their model, people do not necessarily move for explicitly political reasons, but based on lifestyle and cultural choices, which tend to correlate with political outlooks. As they describe it: “People who move to Portland want …


Get Ready for Tariff War 2 or World War 3

This brief essay serves as a reminder, for the new year. As we enter 2025, both geopolitics and global economics are displaying some profound changes.  The Ukraine war, the fall of Assad’s government in Syria, and the ongoing civil wars in Burma (aka Myanmar), Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia all have the potential to spill over into wider conflicts. Ditto for potential invasions in Taiwan and South Korea. Meanwhile, the rise of the BRICS trade bloc, the out-of-control U.S. National Debt, global debt as a whole, and the run-up of precious metals prices are all evidence of deep-seated economic …


SurvivalBlog Graphic of the Week

Today’s graphic was suggested by Avalanche Lily: Map of U.S. Gun Ownership Rates. (This map is courtesy of Visual Capitalist.) The thumbnail below is click-expandable.           JWR’s Comments: Take note that this data comes from the anti-gun website The Trace.  So I suspect that the figures are all skewed low.  When they are polled in telephone surveys, I assume that many gun owners hang up, or are reluctant to report their gun ownership. You can see how strongly the American Redoubt region ranks. If Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington were separate states, then their rates of …


Demographics, Dollars, and Our Destiny

The United States and many other Western nations are facing a demographic disaster. As I’ve mentioned before in SurvivalBlog, birth rates have fallen below the population replacement rate. In this essay, I will spell out some root causes of these demographic shifts that might surprise you, as well as some practical solutions. The primary cause of the current negative societal trends goes even deeper than a liberalized academic system, an activist mass media spouting progressive blather, entrenched D.C. “Swamp” politicians and bureaucrats, and uncontrolled illegal migration. The taproot of the pernicious weedpatch of our societal problems is monetary.  It all …


Unidentified Drones In America’s Skies? Smells Like A False Flag, by Brandon Smith

The term “False Flag” gets thrown around rather haphazardly these days and it’s important to recognize that a real false flag requires a particular end result – The public blaming the wrong culprit for an event that someone else (usually our own government) perpetrated. When it comes to the increasing fervor over major drone activity across the US, I have very little doubt that what we are witnessing is a false flag scenario. First, let’s outline what has happened so far: Drone sightings have exploded across the country involving a wide variety of devices – but the incidents that concern …


Should We Get Ready For a NFA Amnesty?

For the past several weeks, President Trump has been very busy naming his cabinet appointments.  One that is still uncertain is his choice to become the new BATFE Director. The current director, Steven Dettelbach, is a clueless anti-gun buffoon who can’t give congressmen a straight answer.  Many American gun owners are hopeful that DJT will appoint 07/02 FFL holder, gun designer, and pro-gun pundit Brandon Herrera as the new Director.  If that happens, it will surely inspire some boisterous celebration. In addition to his vows to slash the ATF’s budget and operations, Herrera has also promised to begin a series …


A “Stay Behind” Strategy for Ukraine and Moldova

This article serves as an open letter, primarily to Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI) designee. It would also be of interest to planners in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations (DO). Take note that rather than re-hashing some well-documented historical subjects, I will be relying heavily on quoting the InfoGalactic Wiki. Also, note that this is an article about strategy rather than tactics. – Carborundum With casualties mounting after more than two years of intense fighting in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Army is quite simply losing its war of attrition against the combined Russian ground and air forces. …


An Important Time For Giving, by SaraSue

If anyone has funds to spare, I want to remind SurvivalBlog readers that the communities in Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee are still suffering the devastation from Hurricane Helene.  Since our government failed these people, We The People have responded en masse to take care of them.  There are people still living in tents as the snow starts to fall.  Many many people have donated trailers, Buddy heaters, blankets, clothing, and food to help keep these families intact. You may ask why those people are still living in those devastated areas.  Many have no other place, or the funds, …


SurvivalBlog Graphic of the Week

Today’s graphic: How U.S. presidential votes shifted from 2020 to 2024. (Graphic courtesy of Graham Kates, CBS News. See the CBS site for the full zoomable version of the map as well as interactive exit poll data and analysis by Graham Kates.) The thumbnail below is click-expandable. — Please send your graphic ideas to JWR. (Either via e-mail or via our Contact form.) Any graphics that you send must either be your own creation or uncopyrighted.


JWR’s Meme Of The Week:

The latest meme created by JWR: Meme Text: Don’t Worry, Dad… I Know The Guy That You Need To Appoint As The New ATF Director Ironically, His Name Is Brandon… News Link: San Antonio’s ‘AK-Guy’ and former Congressional candidate is gunning to be Trump’s ATF director. Notes From JWR: Do you have a meme idea? Just e-mail me the concept, and I’ll try to assemble it. And if it is posted then I’ll give you credit. Thanks! Unchanged: Notes From JWR: Do you have a meme idea? Just e-mail me the concept, and I’ll try to assemble it. And if …


Thoughts on Retreats: History and Land – Part 4, by Single Farmer

Editor’s Introductory Note: This is part of a multi-part article series on retreats written by a Christian farmer who is praying and searching for a wife. Please prayerfully consider all of the topics that he discusses. — Economics of Land in the 21st Century Arable land is no longer free nor available at reduced cost. As you learned in Part 2, over a hundred million acres of land in our country were sold for some sweat, initiative, and a small filing fee during the main Homestead years from the 1860s to the 1930s. Even earlier, land was available for a …