Category: Retreat Groups

Preparedness Observations from the Rideshare Driver’s Seat by Guitar George

For the last six years, I have been supplementing my retirement income by working as a rideshare driver. At first, I was a little apprehensive about picking up complete strangers and all of the potential danger that might entail. After almost 20,000 rides, I can honestly say that there was only one experience where I thought my personal safety was at risk and it was relatively minor. Since those early days, rideshare companies have greatly improved their safety tools for both drivers and riders. Although I did not begin driving as an exercise in preparedness, it quickly became one.


Staying Home For TEOTWAWKI, by Jason H.

Opening caveat: A lot of what I describe below is highly illegal in normal times. It might even be frowned upon during semi-normal times. Only you, as a logical and thinking adult, can make a decision to take actions that could result in potential prison time. But this article is for those bad times, a true WWOTROL (World Without The Rule Of Law) scenario. Like many here, I’m an older gentleman, having retired almost 20 years ago after a 25 year law enforcement career. I’ve also been a faithful Survival Blog reader from almost the beginning. And like many here, …


Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future – Part Seven, by Single Farmer

(Continued from Part 6. This concludes the article.) Evaluating Families to Find Like-Minded People Daily, I am reminded of how bad it is out there, based on the information that I am analyzing. People often ask me “How long do we have?” If you understand history, economics, threat analysis, and have three generations of preparedness expertise in your wheelhouse, then you know the lateness of the hour. As for my situation, I hope it is long enough to be able to get married and to get the supplies my future spouse and her family need. I have a lot of …


Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future – Part Six, by Single Farmer

(Continued from Part 5.) Separating the Important from the Trivial Things that usually do not matter much for most men as far as a potential wife: her height, her income, and specific traits such as hair or eye color. I have never heard a man talk about a woman’s height unless she was very tall — which is statistically rare. Men are rarely concerned about a woman’s income unless they are looking for support. I don’t have a “type” and most men do not have a type such as only blondes or redheads. Of course, a bonus is if a …


Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future – Part Five, by Single Farmer

(Continued from Part 4.) Preparations for Sons After spiritual preparation, the number one thing a parent can do is to prepare their son for life is to teach him how to make and control money. Money and resources create options. Lack of money limits opportunities. I have a collateral or lineal relative in every conflict from the Revolutionary War to the present. If you go back far enough in history, you will find multiple great-grandfathers at a distant generational level. For instance in the time period of the American Civil War, I have multiple grandfathers and collateral relatives who served …


Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future – Part Four, by Single Farmer

(Continued from Part 3.) Health considerations There is a saying which encapsulates a large percentage of the preparation: “If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.” Health is much more critical for a young woman versus a young man. I have known of individuals whose fathers died before they were born as the female’s time contribution to pregnancy is on average 65,000 times greater than the man’s contribution. In nature, male bees (drones) do not live that long after successfully mating with the queen as the insemination act if successful is the male’s swan song. Even if they …


Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future – Part 3, by Single Farmer

(Continued from Part 2.) Give Up the Fantasy A daughter may need to move, bend, compromise, and pivot. Those are all signs of maturity and embracing reality. A successful farmer looks at changing conditions across soil health, larger economic forces, and continues to refine their decisions onwhat crops are planted, and when. Young women and their families need to give up on fantasies and embrace reality. Fantasies are very dangerous delusions that often leading to negative long term consequences. When preppers think their food supply is adequate, but it would not feed a 19th Century waif for a fortnight, it …


Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future – Part 2, by Single Farmer

(Continued from Part 1.) Preparations for Daughters The number one thing that a parent can do for their daughter who wants her to have a great life is to prepare her for marriage. The preparations necessary for a young woman for success in life are extremely different than the preparations for a son or grandson. The easiest way for a young woman to be successful in life is to enter into an excellent marriage. The number one problem is that most parents and grandparents are doing a poor job at preparing daughters and granddaughters for this role because they think …


Preparing Future Generations for an Uncertain Future – Part 1, by Single Farmer

Editor’s Introductory Note: This young man is prayerfully seeking a wife. He is offering an after-marriage gift of up to $50,000 to whoever introduces him to his bride with $18,000 after their marriage and another $16,000 to the individual who provided the introduction after the first two births of healthy children born to him and his wife, for a total potential gift of $50,000. For further details, see this link to his article posted on July 13th, 2025: My Quest for a Wife: I’m Willing to Move, and in his February 24, 2026 article on rural migration starting at the …


Establishing Relationships in Your New Locale, by SaraSue

I have been on my farm for about five years, give or take.  I live outside a small town in rural Tennessee.  I didn’t know anyone when I moved here.  The closest neighbor is about half a mile away, and the rest are many miles down the road. If you are planning on moving from the suburbs or cities to the countryside, you might glean something from my experiences.  I hope this helps. The first neighbor I met was an older widow, and the circumstances weren’t great.  My big dogs (German Shepherds) had a habit of escaping the property and …


A Systematic Framework for Identifying Real-World Threats, by Danield MacLeod

Many preppers have their priorities out of alignment. From my experience, many focus almost entirely on the how of preparedness—what supplies to stockpile, what gear to buy, or what skills to learn. Much of this is driven by one-size-fits-all recommendations that may not fit their specific situation. At the same time, attention is often focused on dramatic, low-probability events such as economic collapse, EMPs, or pandemics, while far more likely threats are overlooked. Now, I’m not saying that supplies, gear, skills, and major threats aren’t important—they are all extremely important for preparedness. Food, water, medical capability, tools, and training are …


Update: Charity, Civility, Community, and Hope

JWR’s Introductory Note: This is an update to an article that I wrote for SurvivalBlog in December, 2005. It is part of a series of SurvivalBlog 20th Anniversary update re-posts, in recognition of the fact that the majority of readers did not join us until recent years. — Whilst pondering the various possibilities for the future, it is easy to get caught up in the minutiae of radio frequencies, milligram dosages, microns of filtration, calibers, and calories per ounce. (You’ll read plenty of those details in SurvivalBlog. But in doing so. we can easily lose sight of bigger, far more …


Update: Critical Capabilities for Retreat Defense: “Move, Shoot, and Communicate”

JWR’s Introductory Note: This is an update to an article that I wrote for SurvivalBlog in December, 2005. It is part of a series of SurvivalBlog 20th Anniversary update re-posts, in recognition of the fact that the majority of readers did not join us until recent years. — As an Army officer, I learned that in order to be effective, any army must have three key abilities: To move, shoot, and communicate. Take away any one of them, and you are ineffective. But if you get all three right, and you can absolutely devastate an opponent–even one that has superior …


Loaves, Fishes, Tree Bark, Seeds, and Knowledge – Part 8, by The Chemical Engineer

(Continued from Part 7. This concludes the article.) 4 – How Much Food Can We Afford To Share With Others? Now, let’s consider the controversial topic of sharing our limited food resources with a neighborhood group. Think of this option like investing money in start-up companies, high risk for the chance at high rewards but in this case the money is our food and the companies are people that need some of our food to have the strength to work on survival projects with us. I will do my best to outline facts and calculations that will help us to …


Loaves, Fishes, Tree Bark, Seeds, and Knowledge – Part 4, by The Chemical Engineer

(Continued from Part 3.) 2.5 – Options For Using Local Cambium Resources If we have prepared beforehand to harvest tree cambium and a Type 2 Emergency (T2E) happens, we will have three main choices to consider in my view. I encourage you to make this decision prayerfully and with your group’s best judgment. Every choice in a disaster is a set of trade-offs with no perfect solutions. If we actively try and help our neighbors early there is no doubt that this will reduce early suffering for some and could lead to ongoing beneficial cooperation. If more people are pulling …