Category: Survival Mindset

Prepper Axioms That I Find Puzzling- Part 1, by N.B.

(SurvivalBlog Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of SurvivalBlog, its editors, or its advertisers.) My situation is not yours, and what works for me may not necessarily work for you. Only you can decide the best course of action for yourself. This article contains my opinions, which you may find useful. You may also find them bizarre or even shocking. Luckily, in accordance with natural law, you are under no obligation to accept my opinions. All that said, there are several prepper …


Escape from New York- Part 2, by Ragnar

Evaluation In the after action review, I realized there were a lot of things I learned and will do differently in the future: The small almost empty bug out bag approach worked great, but there were a few items I had room for that would have been game changers in the event something happened. In the event I have to survive with just the bag and its contents, I have since added a few items. The first thing I added was a small water filter (like a Sawyer mini). Water is key, and this was a big thing to have …


Letter Re: Monitor Your Preps!

HJL, When it came time for the 6 month change-out of my emergency water, what a surprise to find how light the jugs felt! Both of my Reliance Products Desert Patrol 6 Gallon Traditional Jeep Style Rigid Water Containers had sprung leaks. Slow leaks, so I didn’t notice in my dry cool basement, but both were half empty. Okay, out they go! Then checking my Reliance Products Aqua-Tainer 7 Gallon Rigid Water Containers, one of them was light too, having sprung a leak some time in the not-too-distant past. One had a leak near the top from having the other …


Escape from New York- Part 1, by Ragnar

There you are, in your off grid solar powered survival complex somewhere in the Redoubt, in a very carefully selected location, stocked to the rafters with every conceivable supply and armament. You are completely prepared for literally anything that might happen. ”Bring it” is your motto. Happy and confident that you have reached the pinnacle of prepping, you sit down at the keyboard to take care of some work e-mail. You open the first email and find, congratulations, you’re going to New York City! New York City? For those of us who have not moved to the middle of nowhere …


Letter Re: Moving to Alaska

HJL, A recent contributor had a great letter about their move to rural Alaska. I wish them the best of luck. Living in rural Alaska myself, though off the road system, I can only hope they fair well here. My family are in the process of doing the reverse move from Alaska to the Redoubt. Interestingly enough, I had a letter posted on Survivalblog about eight years ago about my move from the city to rural off-road system Alaska. Alaska has some distinct advantages, mainly the lack of people outside cities and available subsistence in some areas. But everything else …


Budget Planning- Part 1, by Sarah Latimer

Let me start off by saying that I am not a Certified Public Accountant, lawyer, stock broker, licensed financial planner, or banker. I have no licenses or certificates that enable me to give special advice or guidance regarding your finances. I am also not an ordained minister, though I have attended seminary. What I am writing below comes from personal experience combined with a business degree and both business and home management experience along with my understanding of the Word given to us from YHWH– the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (I believe it is necessary in these days …


Mindset of Financial Preparedness: The Color Code, by L.F. in Texas

We live in a world where almost everything happens rapidly and often by remote. Books and movies are downloaded from the Internet for instant entertainment. We travel freely and quickly around the world. Things like automatic dishwashers and laundry machines aren’t even remarkable anymore. And everywhere we go, in person or online, we are enticed to spend money freely, without thought of tomorrow. Being a prepper, however, means that we are thinking ahead to what might happen tomorrow, or next month or year, and getting ready for those possibilities. How does that affect our financial strategies? Colonel Jeff Cooper was …


Buying and Selling Rural Land: Considering The Basics

Much of my work as a consultant revolves around selecting retreat properties. For more than 15 years I have assisted my clients in their quest for the most suitable and practical properties available, to assure their families the best possible chance of surviving anything from a short-term localized disaster to a long-term societal collapse. Over the past 10 years of editing SurvivalBlog, I have included many insights about the retreat property selection process, interspersed in articles and replies to letters on related topics. But in this article, I’d like to distill a lot of that experience into just one concise …


Prepping and Moving, by S.F.

As many of you probably did, we started prepping before we really thought about moving. In the process we procured a lot of provisions that we felt would serve us well in some sort of catastrophe. It’s certainly true that skills are important but so too are food, medical supplies, guns, and a myriad of other necessities– necessities that take up space and are heavy, if not individually then certainly in aggregate. A number of years back I came to the conclusion that God was leading me to serve as a pastor. A couple years passed before I was in …


Making a Living in the Hinterboonies

One of the great quandaries faced by many American preppers is that their desire to move to a lightly-populated rural region is usually not consistent with the ability to earn a good living. Let’s face it: The job opportunities in the Hinterboonies are scarce. Unless you are retired, self-employed, or you are in a high-demand profession (such as medicine or dentistry), then it might be difficult to have the same standard of living that you’ve enjoyed in an urban or suburban community. Part of the following repeats what I wrote in SurvivalBlog back in 2009 about the sorts of jobs …


A Call for Legislative Change – Part 1, by J.D.

Why not now? Why not us? A call for legislative change. The mystic Chinese philosopher, Lau Tzu, once said, “The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.” I can’t help but think of an image regarding 6,899,000 people under the supervision of adult correctional systems in local, county, state, and federal custody (Glaze, Kaeble 1). The Unite States has more jails, approximately 5,000 (Stephan 1), than degree granting institutions, approximately 4,700 (“Fast Facts”). Our Judicial system is a blood sucking beast of a hundred thousand heads draining our country of its dwindling …


Letter Re: Tracking Dogs

Dear Editor:I would like to relate my experiences with tracking dogs that are not even trained. We had a beagle who was born mostly blind. She was a pet. She had an incredible sense of smell that I have seen in other trained hounds, but not in a pet. We would bring her to our children’s high school, which had 2,000 students. I would put her in the front of the multi-building facility and command her to “Find the kids.” She would start off walking making big S-shaped turns as she headed to and between the buildings. All of a …


Rebalancing Your Gun Collection for the Uncertain Days Ahead

With the upcoming presidential election, American gun owners are facing a time of great uncertainty. If Hitlery Clinton is elected, it is anticipated that she will not only issue a large number of anti-gun executive orders but during her term in office she will also appoint several ultra-liberal Supreme Court justices. That would dramatically alter the balance of the court. These frightening prospects have prompted many gun owners to increase the size of their collections and readjust their composition. As recent gun sales statistics attest, people are definitely stocking up. This news is not evidence of paranoia. It is simply …


Tracking Dogs- Part 3, by D.D.

As you can see, the dogs are the least of your worries. They are just one of the tools that are used to accomplish the overall goal of catching you. They are used for direction and tracking, and they supply information to the other searchers. A K9 may also be used to grab you, just as they would anywhere else they are used. Even if you could somehow trick or neutralize the dog, you are still going to have to deal with quite a bit of other things. To get into range of doing harm to the dog or handler …


Letter Re: Vacuum Sealing Jars and Feed Store Grain

Good morning, Hugh, I enjoyed and learned a little more from Sarah Latimer’s post. I’m interested in the method used to create a vacuum in the canning jars when dry canning. We have arrived at the same place you have– to use glass jars. We have canned many jars of dehydrated apples and other items by heating the jars in an oven to 300 degrees and sterilizing the lids, filling the jars with the contents, and tightening the lids quickly. This has worked well 95% of the time. We have heard of various devices to place a vacuum on jars, …