Category: Survival Mindset

Letter Re: Short Term Survival or Long Term Self-Sufficiency?

Hi James, You have an excellent blog. It is good to find another right-wing Christian who thinks we’re going down the wrong path, and someone who cares about other people. I have to take issue with your blog though. It focuses on survival in the short term (maximum five years after collapse). It does not give direction for how to proceed from there, how to thrive, how to rebuild society (or rather, how to build a better society). Surviving the collapse on modern medicine only to die from disease when it runs out is pointless. Surviving only to find that …


Seven Letters Re: Getting a Christian Wife Involved With Preparedness

Dear Mr. Rawles, I just came across a post that might give some more ideas to the gentleman who wrote in about getting his wife “on board” with preparedness efforts. It’s titled “All Aboard” and was posted over on Kathy Harrison’s The Just In Case Book Blog. (As may be obvious, Kathy is also the author of the [nonfiction preparedness] book entitled Just in Case.) As a side note, my husband and I “came together” on our preps about two years ago while watching the television show Jericho. We had seen some episodes in passing earlier in our marriage, but …


Letter Re: Getting a Christian Wife Involved With Preparedness

Mr. Rawles, I’ve been into the survivalist genre since I first read [the novel] Alas, Babylon [by Pat Frank] about 10 years ago. Since then i’ve read just about every book on the subject I can get hold of. I ran across your novel “Patriots” about six months ago and it has really lit a fire under me. When discussing the subject with my wife, I was surprised when she asked me, “why?”. She said that if our great country collapsed, what would be the point of surviving? Why keep struggling to go on when our Father in Heaven is …


Lessons Leaned from a Wildfire Evacuation, by Daniel in Montana

It was a gorgeous Saturday night, Sept. in Montana’s mountains the weather was hanging onto summer’s 70 degree temperatures, warm and dry. Working all day at the hospital and finishing some of my home preparedness projects gave me a satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. Time to relax, I sat down, put my feet up and was sipping my week’s end treat, a cold beer. I phoned my friend, “Brett” to finalize our plans to butcher a few of his farm animals tomorrow. He was finishing a Bible reading with his boys and was putting them to bed, and would call …


Over-Planning: Get Thine Act Together!

I occasionally hear from consulting clients that get stuck in the rut of “over -planning”. They do so much planning for training, and planning for stocking up, that they never seem to get around to doing either! Lengthy “to do” lists are worthless if they never get implemented. This sometimes reaches absurd lengths, as illustrated by one of my clients that showed me a spreadsheet on his laptop PC, in which he not only compared prices from various vendors for ammunition, but also tracked the changes in their prices, over the course of two years. I asked him: “Well, when …


Letter Re: An Overwhelmed Newbie, Catching Up at Prepping

Mr. Rawles, I’m fairly new to your blog (three months), and still feeling a tad bit overwhelmed. I’m a 5th grade school teacher, and my husband is a former truck driver, now a truck dispatcher/supervisor. Not just am I realizing that I have a lot of catching up to do to get my family prepared for the rough times ahead, but I’m realizing how much my husband and I have to learn, to be truly ready! I’ve taken your advice and have asked my mother to teach me how to do pressure cooker canning. That was something that I had …


Survival Preparation on Low or Fixed Incomes, by Shawna M.

So you’re convinced that the free ride is over, that things are getting worse, and when the worst happens, you want to be prepared. But you have a problem—you don’t have a lot of money for prepping and day to day living. Maybe you only make minimum wage. Maybe you make a little more than that, but you’ve got a lot of bills. Maybe you live on a fixed income, or have irregular self-employment. Regardless, don’t assume because you can’t afford expensive classes or pricey gear that WTSHTF, you’ll be unable to fend for yourself and your family. My husband …


Letter Re: Once a Prepper, Always a Prepper

Mr. Rawles, The following describes my background and how it shaped me. My Parents’ Influences My parents were from the south (Eastern Tennessee) They were also children of the Great Depression, their families were farmers and it was normal to prepare for winter or hard times. Both my parents could can food, especially vegetables and fruit. My father was an avid hunter and trapper. I learned from a young age from my parents, never take anything for granted, prepare for good and bad times. My Childhood My parents moved to Ohio for work, where I was born. I spent my …


Letter Re: Preps and Minimizing My Debts Paid Off When Unemployed

Dear Mr. Rawles, With all the bad news reported every day and your personal heartbreaks I hope I can reassure you about our future just a little by sharing my story with you. I started reading your blog three years ago, during the good times. I’m a 23 year-old man from the liberal north east, some college under my belt, married, and willing to dig in and work to secure my family’s future. I had a good job with a subsidiary of a major european telecom, I worked every hour of overtime I could and pushed myself to excel at …


Letter Re: Some Ground Truth–The “Us” and the “Them” in a Societal Collapse

Mr. Rawles, I am a retired Army warrant officer working for the Army teaching Electronic Warfare and Signal Intelligence. I only started reading your blog last week. It’s addictive, but slightly disturbing. Having worked for the Army for 27 years in a number of different failed countries I may have a unique perspective on survival that I would like to share with your readers. I believe most of the “survivalist community” is vastly underestimating the impact that other humans are going to have on their plans. Hunkering down and waiting for everyone to die off is a simplistic plan and …


Letter Re: Thoughts on Preparedness in a Diverse Community

I just met this past weekend with a group of ” preparedness folk.” They are on a farm about 30 miles from here. I have become interested in the subject after reading One Second After (a New York Times best seller, highly recommended!) and some writings by James Wesley, Rawles. I was surprised at who they were and the mindset I encountered. A few observations: 1) The root idea is that whether or not some disaster hits, we are far too dependent on a very fragile and tenuous energy and distribution grid. Raising your own chickens, goats, vegetables, rabbits, turkeys, …


Letter Re: Retreat Security: I Am Your Worst Nightmare

I was thinking about the “I Am Your Worst Nightmare” post as I worked in my vegetable garden, preparing it for Spring. I wonder how long it would be until the Looters evolved their strategy to the next levels, as follows: Looter+1: Don’t kill everyone, leave some alive to loot again later. Looter+2: Plan to scare, rather than kill, your victims, so that they can continue farming and provide for your needs later. Dead victims can’t work. Looter+3: Claim a territory and collect “protection” money/goods from the people in your territory. Tell them that in return for only taking one-third …


The Dumpster List, by InfoRodeo

Because of our financial constraints, aggravated by the economy and rural area we now live, my family cannot afford to own a second “retreat” home, nor do we have much land on which to build a shed or store much of anything. As a boy, my parents didn’t have much money, and through a mix of my dad’s “fix it or make do” attitude, the scout motto “be prepared” and my newfound need for better frugality, I’ve made a kind of checklist that every non-food purchase my wife and I make must go through, and it’s jokingly called the Dumpster …


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 …


Lessons Learned from Hurricanes Ike, Rita, and Katrina, by TiredTubes

In September, 2008, Hurricane Ike–a Category 4 hurricane–pounded the Gulf Coast of the southern US. Some coastal communities like Crystal Beach no longer really exist. Inland, life was severely disrupted. For those of us on the South Coast hurricanes are a frequent reality. We were quite well prepared, but used the disruptions and dislocations as a test and opportunity to tune up our preparations. 1. Be ready to help others and to accept help We didn’t need much during Ike, but the power went out before a neighbor finished boarding up his house. My 1 KW inverter, hooked up to …