Category: Survival Mindset

Getting Home, by D.K. Vet

Now, I feel relatively secure in my prepping, having been at it for several years. Food, check. Arms and ammo, check. Water, tent, first aid supplies, heating sources, et cetera, check, check, check. All is well and good, as long as I am home or near home and can shelter in place or pack up and move out of Dodge. However, there are several times every year when I am away from home and not just in the next county. We spend time in Florida and go to vet conferences in other states. When we’re somewhere else, we are totally …


Practical Personality Assessment, by M.B. – Part 2

Reasons I’d like to articulate three powerful reasons to become a student of personality types. 1) To Explain Preparedness in a Way that Others Will Accept “A wise man’s heart guides his mouth, and his lips promote instruction.” (Prov. 16:23) One of the best reasons to try to discover someone’s personality type is so that you can more effectively communicate with him or her.  We probably all have family members or friends who refuse to listen, despite our best attempts to convince them of the need to prepare.  Sometimes part of this is because of personality differences.  For example, you …


Practical Personality Assessment, by M.B. – Part 1

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu If I could take the liberty of adding a little to this famous piece of wisdom, I would say that we should also make every effort to know our friends and allies.  Nowhere is knowing yourself and those around you more critical than in a survival situation.  We often equate knowing ourselves and others to knowing what skill sets we possess– he’s handy with a rifle, she knows medicinal herbs, and I can repair small engines, and so on.  …


Letter Re: Survival: Are We Aware Enough?

Dear Survival Blog Editor, I’ve enjoyed reading Survival Blog daily for over two years and thank everyone for their efforts to share information about surviving these interesting times. I was very happy to see the article “Survival: Are We Aware Enough?“, as I have been waiting to see if someone would write on this theme. Thank you, S.S., for bringing this topic into the open. I have been “prepping” for almost 25 years, and from the very beginning I realized that how I am inside my heart and head is the most important survival tool… ever. In answer to SS’s …


Survival: Are We Aware Enough?, by S.S.

There is a common theme in most of the dystopian, post-apocolyptic, zombie, killer virus, alien invasion novels that goes unnoticed by many reviewers and readers alike. Perusal of the vast survivalist and prepper websites out there shows few articles or references made to this theme. Yet, it remains the most fundamental aspect of survival– self-awareness. I mean that no matter how many gadgets, survival kits, food kits, and weapons you have, if you are not mindful of how you will react to fear, sadness, loneliness, and loss, your survival is threatened. Sam Sisavath has written a wonderfully entertaining book on …


Accommodations for the Dietary Requirements of Infants, by L.C.

Infants have specific nutritive needs that at the present moment may be met in two ways: breast milk and formula. In a collapse or post-collapse scenario, the supply of formula may dry up and no longer be an option. There are several strategies to cope with this as well as breastfeeding supplies that can easily be acquired now. I’m the mother of five kids under the age of six with the youngest being six weeks old, so for the past six years I’ve been pregnant, nursing, or both. I breastfed my first four exclusively, until we started solids between 6-7 …


The Time Has Come, by JTH

Suddenly it hit me. We are DOING IT! After years of dreaming about moving to the Redoubt, planning, plotting, learning new skills, understanding what is important, we are finally doing it. I am scared and excited at the same time. We have two more months of frantic remodeling and updating our home, in order to get top dollar, and then we’ll put the house on the market. After searching for property in Idaho online and with the help of several couples who live in Idaho and a realtor recommendation, it’s time to make a couple of trips out and get …


Reaching Out to the Un-Prepped, by Mark C. – Part 2

Here’s Why The vast majority of the population exists in cities or very near them. We’ve already seen what happens in places like New York and Watts when power was lost for just three days. There are riots, looting, and violence. Imagine a long-term or even permanent loss of power. Imagine that the gasoline supply is what is in your vehicle’s gas tank right now, and that’s it. Food in your pantry is what you have, and that’s it. Water? Fill your bathtub, sinks, or anything else you can find, but that’s it. Toilets? You better dig a hole in …


Reaching Out to the Un-Prepped, by Mark C. – Part 1

If you are reading this and you have a high interest in prepping but maybe someone you know or someone close to you does not, read on. You’ve tried to reason with them, but the result is the same. Whether it’s your passion or persistence, they get overwhelmed and simply glaze over. Or, maybe they become unsettled or scared. Either way you lose them, and that frustrates you because you feel time is running out. If they would just read Patriots or survivalblog.com! Right? Well, print this out and give it to them. Now, if you’re reading this because you’re …


Defending The Castle, by R.T.

Numerous articles and blogs have appeared over the last couple of years, targeting the prepper community and those people associated with standing up for our God-given rights as well as those rights afforded us from within the Constitution. These articles are generally positive, and they supply the reader with a fair amount of good quality advice in regards to surviving a “grid down” situation or some other catastrophe that may come about. Being that it is nearly impossible to know which impending event might suddenly occur with little or no notice, it is extremely difficult to plan for ALL possible …


Letter Re: Tactical Preparedness

Hugh, I would offer a short story to your readers: Some years ago a friend, who has been preparing for the fecal matter to hit the oscillator for some years, was at the house of another friend, who was his neighbor. He asked her to show him her pantry. She did this, and it contained about three days worth of food. He looked her in the eye and told her that when things really go south, “The first place I am going to go is your house, and I am going to kill you, your children, and any other threat …


Letter Re: Finding Other Preppers

Dear Mr. Latimer, I am struggling with an issue and hope you can give me some guidance. I recently made a purchase in a preparedness business that opened in a neighboring town. The owner of the store had several questions regarding my life and specific questions about my level of preparedness. His questioning was more than trying to sell his products. (What supplies do I have? Describe the location and terrain of my home. What water sources do I have? What are my neighbors like? Am I a member of a group? et cetera) I understand his reasoning, but I …


BOB(B): Bug Out Bag (Baloney), by R.S.

Many in the prepper community work hard to develop the skills and test the gear that they expect to rely on in a time of collapse. However, I am convinced that many more are “armchair” preppers. These “armchair” preppers are those who are actively involved in reading blogs (including excellent ones like this one, of course!) and purchasing supplies and equipment but never actually using them to verify that they will serve their intended purpose in a time of crisis. I am further convinced that this is nowhere more true than in the oft-discussed area of “bug out bags”. Preppers …


The Twelve Pillars of Preparedness: A Leap of Faith, by R.W.

Suffice it to say that much of this information is floating around in books, print, or cyberspace, and it may or may not be new and informative, but here is my outline for being prepared for possible difficult times and is kind of a value or mission statement that my wife and I have agreed to live by. It is by no means all inclusive or complete; rather, it is a work in progress for our group. Faith/knowledge. I am secure in my faith. I am a child of the most high God. I understand that God is good, holy, …


What I Learned From the Midwest Ice Storm of 2011, by J.M.

The three elements of nature that cause damage– sun, wind, and water. My bet is on the last one, especially the frozen kind. Preparing and acting upon it are two entirely different and opposite things. The rain started in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, without much concern at first. Although the weather report at first said the possibility of ice was real, it would stay south, in Ohio. Lesson #1: Nature is fickle, and even NOAA cannot always track the line between rain, snow, and ice. Predictive weather paths can give you a false sense of security, and margins …