Category: Survival Mindset

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 …


Looking Back at My Flight Training Adventures (Circa 1970), by H.L.

Editor’s Introductory Comments:  Most regular SurvivalBlog readers recognize the initials H.L.  She has been one of the blog’s most loyal and prolific volunteers, sending news and information links since around 2010. I am confident that she spritely lives to a three-digit age. But when she does pass away, I hope that her gravestone will be inscribed: “Always a Maverick.” – JWR At age 83 now. I have some very unusual memories of my early life.  I did not lead the conventional life of an American woman born in 1942.  Conventional is fine. However, there was something in my soul that …


Necessity is the Mother of Improvisation – Part 2, by 3AD Scout

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) At one auction, I found some very odd tools for some type of woodwork.  Upon research they were used by wheelwrights to make wooden wagon wheels.  I have an interest in several old trades but wheel making is not one of them.  On a trip to Holmes County, Ohio (in Amish country) I took those old wheelwright tools and traded them for some other tools (blacksmithing and chisels) that I did want at the Colonial Homestead Store, in Millersburg.  This store offers old but usable tools from many old trades.  Just walking …


Necessity is the Mother of Improvisation – Part 1, by 3AD Scout

We have all seen the post-apocalyptic movies where improvise armored vehicles with machine guns roam the landscape.  These Hollywood creations make for great entertainment but are such cobbled together machines just fantasy?  The civil war in Somalia introduced the world to “Technicals”, or utilizing civilian vehicles, like decades old Datsun and Totota Hilux pickup trucks, as a platform to mount heavy machine guns, like the Soviet era DShK 12.7mm.  Thirty years later and such vehicles are now being used on the battlefields of Ukraine.  Not only has Ukraine made improvised war wagons out of civilian pickup trucks but they have …


Your “Gray Man” Camouflage, by A.C.

Background I travel for work, often traveling all over the word into some not-so-friendly environments where I don’t want to be a target but I still need to remain capable. I’ve interviewed behaviorists about the science behind being memorable and I’ve also spoken with members of certain 3-letter-agencies about what they’ve learned about traveling in austere environments. This short essay is an aggregate of that information that is easily consumable and understandable. In the world of tactical preparation and survivalism, there is a pervasive image of the “operator”, that is; someone decked out in multicam patterns, sporting morale patches, and …


The 21st Century Rural Migration, by Single Farmer

The idea that our country is thought of in terms of conservative versus liberal areas caused me to think about how so many people today and in the recent past have either moved, will be moving, or even thinking about moving for better opportunities. I wanted to write more about how this has occurred historically and more about how my conservative region is part of this trend including how it is impacting farms. Technological change and government interventions are often two factors that cause the settlement and population redistribution throughout the country.  Urbanization following the Second World War was just …


More Inflation Ahead: At Best, Plan on Semi-Retirement

Imagine that you were a weakling who kept his cash under his mattress, and you lived in a bad neighborhood that was dominated by the Mafia.  Every year or two, Mafia thugs would come by and threaten to beat you to death, and demand: “Half for us and half for you.”  That is a bit like what it is like to live in an era of mass inflation. But with inflation, the cash extractions are gradual, and almost invisible. No thugs. Just melting purchasing power. Perhaps I chose a poor analogy, but bear with me, while I explain: As a …


Raising, Hunting, and Harvesting Animals – Part 1, by Lodge Pole

In late 1929, when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began, the population of the United States was around 121.7 million people. All through the Great Depression, it was unheard of to leave roadkill on the side of the road left to rot. With high unemployment,  the hunting pressure was heavy. Small game, like rabbits and squirrels, nearly went extinct in large parts of the United States from being over-hunted, to feed desperate families. Today, in 2026, the estimated population of the US is 348.3 million. If animals were being hunted to near extinction when the population was …


Going Off Grid In The Tropics – Part 1, by Conan Stevens

Have you ever thought about going off-grid in the tropics?  No? Well, me neither, yet that’s where I find myself. First up, though I have had food stores and access to water as a habit for over a decade I have only been living (mostly) off-grid for a year. So I’m not very experienced and still learning the ropes. But I thought my experiences here might be a curiosity and possibly be interesting reading for others. I originally moved to Thailand to work in the action film industry, 21 years ago.  Since then I saw that the country started modernising, …


Thoughts on the Morality of Lethal Self-Defense, by Mr. Wobbet

Introduction The recent shooting death of Renee Good has resulted in a lot of discussion about whether or not the shooting was justified. Those discussions are important to our society and are illuminating when everyone engages with respect for each other. I project that most regular readers of this blog will land on the side of “legally justified self-defense”. But whether or not it is legally justified is not what I want to address in this missive. I think, especially if my projection of my audience is accurate, that what I want to address is even more important. What is …


Preparedness Lessons From Communist Mongolia – Part 2, by G.K.

(Continued from Part 1.  This concludes the article.) During winter, even the U.S. Embassy monitored the grid closely. The possibility of a complete system failure was taken seriously enough that commercial flights were placed on twenty-four-hour standby for potential evacuation of official personnel. We were nongovernmental residents. Those plans did not include us. Our planning had to be personal. Cold changed how time felt. Days stretched and compressed unpredictably. Waiting became a skill. Movement slowed, not from laziness, but from necessity. Mistakes in cold were costly. Dropping something, misjudging exposure, forgetting a step could mean numb fingers, wasted effort, or …


Preparedness Lessons From Communist Mongolia – Part 1, by G.K.

We lived in Mongolia in the early 1990s, for a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, during a time when the system had officially ended but its habits had not yet loosened their grip on daily life. I was in my early thirties, married, with two young daughters, trying to build a life far from anything familiar. We were not passing through, and we were not insulated expatriates. We were attempting to function inside the local economy, under local conditions, with consequences that were immediate and personal. At the time, I did not think of what we …


Introducing Your Community to Emergency Preparedness – Part 2, by A.F.

(Continued from Part 1.) The next topic is water. I begin with the low hanging fruit of having water stored at all times. It hurts my soul to thoughtlessly parrot the “one gallon per person per day minimum” tripe we have all heard so many times. My recommendation is to store no less than three gallons per person per day or ten gallons each. I follow this up by encouraging each family set a goal of having a five-gallon water jug set aside for last minute filling for each person. For those who lament storage space, I recommend the collapsible …


Lessons From a Fight at a Restaurant, by Robert E. Downing

(The photo above, courtesy of Openverse, was taken by “Terren in Virginia“, a witness to a 2008 baseball team “fan rivalry” brawl at a New York sports stadium.) The following is what I learned about security at lunch one day: Scenario One Tuesday, about six weeks ago, I stopped for a late lunch at a local upscale family restaurant in Virginia Beach, Virginia, that is part of a well-known chain.  It was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and it seemed to be a quiet place to have lunch and prepare my Sunday school lesson. I selected a seat near …