Category: Retreat Locales

Letter Re: A Geographically Isolated Retreat Locale: Republic, Washington

Jim – First, may I join many, many others in extending my condolences for your recent loss along with my gratitude for your work with SurvivalBlog. I have struggled with the thought of writing this or not for some time. I have finally decided that the potential positives outweigh the negatives. This past year I bought some property outside of Republic, Washington, population about 900. The town is located about 170 miles Northwest of Spokane, Washington.. Republic is the county seat of Ferry County, the least populated county in Washington State and is classified as a “frontier” environment. Republic sits …


Letter Re: Survival Notes from the Dominican Republic

Jim, I’ve recently read several of your books and found them both interesting and educational. I would like to offer some personal insights based on my experiences from living in a small rural town one of the larger Caribbean islands. Most of my notes are cheap solutions used by people in developing nations all over the world. There may be better ways, but these work and cost next to nothing. Water: There is something especially disturbing about opening the faucet and hearing a sucking air sound. Not being able to shower, flush, or wash dishes is the worst. One or …


Letter Re: North Dakota as a Retreat Locale

Hello Jim, My deepest sympathy and prayers for you and your family after the recent passing of your wife. I have read for quite awhile of these folks that write with their questions and concerns for a survival retreat and where to locate and many have substantial resources to do so and yet many others (like myself ) didn’t/don’t have those resources. This is why I choose North Dakota which is notably in your top 18 states for retreat areas and I want to tell you why. I have traveled extensively over the years to every state in the US …


Letter Re: Should I Rent, or Should I Buy Property?

Sir; I have a question that I think would be of interest to a lot of your Blog readers: “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It“. I really enjoyed the book. It helped coalesce all of the concepts I learned in “Patriots”, [the now out-of-print] SurvivalBlog: The Best of the Blog Volume 1, and “Rawles on Retreats and Relocation”. One of your central precepts is that one should move to a “lightly populated rural area.” Okay. With some work, I can find and buy a suitable piece of property and/or house. But you repeatedly point …


Letter Re: Preparedness for Families that Move Frequently

Mr. Rawles, Just finished reading your book “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It. I finished it in one long sitting, and have plans to go over it again with highlighter and pen and paper to take more detailed notes. Great work! As a member of the Armed Forces, I face a difficult dilemma in that I understand and can clearly see the need to prepare/plan ahead, but my family and I feel hamstrung by our relatively transient lifestyle. I’ve been in the service for just over four years, and in that time I have …


Twenty-Two Reasons Why this Recession is Different and Why it Will Endure

I find it surprising that I’m now getting inquiries from readers, asking if “we’ve reached bottom” in the current economic recession, and asking if the time has come to start buying stocks or residential real estate. It seems that the talking heads of mainstream media are using some sort of voodoo. How can anyone think that we’ve hit bottom, and an economic recovery is in progress? To dispel the myths from the CNBC Cheering Section, please consider the following. (And note that I’ve provided references for each assertion, just so you know that I’m not talking out of my camouflage …


Where You Live Matters: How to Assess Your Location and Develop Scenarios, by Brendan S.

A little foreknowledge will prevent you from becoming a victim. Most people don’t think about what they will actually do in the case of an emergency. One just has to see what happened after Hurricane Katrina to see how ill-informed the masses are. They simply expect the government to take care of everything. They meander like zombies to some location and wait to be fed and cleaned up after. Not me! I know what I’m going to do when any disaster strikes. In this article I want to share with you my thoughts on how to: •Assess the situation and …


Letter Re: Getting Self-Sufficient in Wyoming

Dear Mr. Rawles, I was recently given your novel “Patriots” by a like-minded friend in Wyoming. I read it once for pleasure, then twice with a highlighter, notepad, and Google. It’s a wonderful resource, and I’m looking forward to the new book [“How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It”]. Reading “Patriots” left me proud to be an American, and revitalized something I felt I had been losing in the recent years. This is a wonderful country, and I have faith that there are still a bunch of decent God-fearing people who will stand up for …


Letter Re: Where to Start in Survival Preparedness?

Mr. Rawles, My family and I are facing some challenges in our pursuit to become prepared. First off, a little background on our situation. I’m a 12-year Air Force veteran currently stationed in Montana. My wife also works full-time. We have about $60,000 in debt between credit cards and two auto loans. We have no problems paying our bills and our credit is excellent. It’s just that we don’t have a ton of extra money to begin our grand survival scheme. We’ve talked about all the different routes about living debt free and also purchasing the right vehicles, retreat and …


Five Preparedness Lessons Learned, by Allen C.

I was speaking with a friend recently who mentioned he still has a generator in the box taking up space in his garage.  It has been there for ten years.  He did not know what to do during the Y2K panic so he spent money to make himself feel better.  I am not knocking the value of a good generator.  I have used mine for almost twenty years.  However, purchasing a generator he did not know how to use without at least buying some gasoline to go with it was a waste of money.  It has been said the humans …


Letter Re: Grub and Gear–Lessons Learned from an Alaskan Trapper

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James, Going through some old gear last month, I found my food supply lists and notes from 1976-79. I thought the old list might be of interest and the lessons I learned during the first three years in the remote Alaska bush may be helpful to a few of your readers. I do not recommend Alaska for a TEOTWAWKI retreat but the lessons I learned the hard way may be helpful to any one in a cold climate. I grew up in California listing to stories from my grandfather about Alaska and the Yukon. When I graduated from high school …


Developing Our Family’s Survival Strategy, by FBP

We started prepping about 18 months ago. I have felt like a chicken with its head cut off, going wildly in all directions. I’ve learned a lot about a lot, some by research, but have learned most from doing. Being prior military (I served six years in the Army Captain, and as a civilian, I was a financial planner), I started identifying mission statements and initiating plans, backwards (aka backwards planning) in order to get them accomplished on time. The first mission: “How do we survive hyperinflation?” My readings led me to believe that the best protection is to plan …


Know Thy Neighbor, by “The Old Salt” in Virginia

In reading “Preparedness Beginnings” by Two Dogs it struck me that I had been missing a vital part of basic preparedness . . . I was doing it naturally, but I realized how many post I had read that left it out or put it as “I will need to do this when . . . “.  My title tells the story, but let me digress a little and put some background to it: Like “Two Dogs”, who is a retired Marine Corp Officer, I’m a retired Naval Officer who drug his family around the country through nine moves in …


Letter Re: Preparedness for Living on a Chesapeake Bay Island

Mr. Rawles, I am just now (pretty late in the game, I know) becoming aware of the impending collapse and have begun reading your blog regularly (it is the first thing I read in the mornings now). I realize now that I must prepare as much as I can and have a question about my current location. I live on an isolated (no bridges, ferry and airplane transport only) Island in the Chesapeake Bay. It is somewhat densely populated for its size, but everyone knows each other and most residents hunt and fish and have their own boats. Many residents …


Letter Re: Viability of a Well-Stocked Suburban Retreat?

Good Morning! Thank you for the info you provide for all of us in your web site. I live in the Kansas City Area in a beautiful suburb which is one of the nicest cities in the country. till doing okay in the depression too. My work is secure and I do well and I own my own twp-story with basement frame home and have been making it a retreat for the past five years. I have no debt and am 60 days ahead with my mortgage and insurance and utilities. Am I absolutely crazy to try to stay here …