Category: Survival Mindset

Assessing and Prioritizing Risks, by Francis Marion

One of the most common questions asked by new preppers is “What should I prepare for?”. The easy…and wrong…answer is “everything”. After all, as Frederick the Great said, “He who defends everything, defends nothing”. If one attempts to prepare for everything that can happen…from coastal erosion to Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) to winter weather…one could quickly become overwhelmed. This is why the first steps in preparing should be to assess and prioritize risk. For background purposes, I spent more than 25 years as a commissioned officer in the United States Army Reserve, including multiple deployments. When planning military training and operations, …


Are You Self-Reliant, Self-Sufficent, or Self-Sustaining?, by Mrs. Alaska

One of our goals each year is to decrease our dependency on others by increasing our skills and resources. In the city, it was convenient to pay for services and products. Living remotely, we learn to do many things ourselves or do without. I evaluate aspects of our life on a continuum from dependent to independent: Dependent on others Self-reliant Self-sufficient Self-sustaining Given recent news reports of coronavirus and the economy, tornadoes, wildfires, and power outages, perhaps readers are applying this sort of rubric to their situations, too.


Thinking Outside the Aquarium: A Different View of Government Force

Much like a fish in a small aquarium, the citizens of modern-day nations have a distorted view of the world around them, and their relative freedom. They’ve never known a space any larger than the walls of their fish tank. From their perspective, the aquarium constitutes the limits of their world, and it is the only life that they can imagine. I’m penning this essay in SurvivalBlog to encourage my readers to take a step back and think about the very nature of government — all governments, at all levels. Of the 195 nations on Earth, all but a few …


Preparedness Regrets and Priorities, by N.C.

We all have our own ideas of how much risk we’re running and what type of disaster seems the most likely threat. Your answer to that will depend largely on where you are. Doubtless, my focus would certainly be different if I lived in Germany and it would be different if I lived in Ukraine or in New Zealand. Since I live in the United States the one that has cost me more than a little sleep is the prospect of a civil war in the US. It used to be that this was an extreme subject, raised only rarely …


21st Century Life: Controlling and Redirecting Anger, by SaraSue

I’m sure quite a lot of us, tens of millions for sure, maybe a couple hundred million, were slapped across the face a little while ago by the highest officeholder in our land. Anyone who disagrees with the gub’mint is a domestic terrorist, apparently. Also, the “Red Wave” that wasn’t? Or, if you don’t fix the root of the problem, you will get the same result. Sometimes throwing mud against the wall, wishing some of it will stick, is an ineffective use of your time and energy. I’m not saying that voting is a useless exercise. I’m just saying that …


YOYO Civil Defense, by 3AD Scout

Sometime between the First World War and the start of the Second World War the concept of civil defense or civil protection was born. The original purpose was to protect civilians from aerial bombing. After World War Two, the United States dismantled its civil defense corps. With the US the sole possessor of atomic weapons, there was no perceived need to spend money on civil defense. That perception did not last long due to the Soviet Union testing their first nuclear weapon in 1949. President Truman re-established civil defense with the goal of protecting the civilian population against a nuclear …


Do Not Comply – No Matter What, by SaraSue

Articles in SurvivalBlog are generally, focused on practical “How To” survivalist topics. I’ve been concerned more about my mental and emotional state lately. With so much negative news as of late, I’ve been focused on the practicality of managing my spirit as I work on practical things. I thought I’d share – this is where I stand. There comes a time when you realize that there is nothing left to do but face the Evil and stand firm. You’re done with trying to convince people, especially people you dearly love, that the Evil is here now. You’ve reconciled yourself to …


Revisiting the Rule of Threes, by J.M.

If you’ve been involved in prepping for any length of time or even just done some research on the subject, you’ve probably come across some variation of the Rule of 3s. I’ve seen it expressed a lot of different ways, but the most common version goes something like this: You can survive 3 minutes without oxygen or with severe bleeding You can survive 3 hours without a stable core body temperature You can survive 3 days without water You can survive 3 weeks without food The rule makes a great starting point for planning your preparations, but I’ve found that …


Preparedness on a Shoestring Budget (Updated)

Introductory Note: This is an update to a couple of articles that I wrote back in the early days of SurvivalBlog. — I often get e-mails from readers claiming either directly or indirectly that preparedness is “only for wealthy people.”  They believe that working-class people cannot afford to prepare. That is nonsense. By simply re-prioritizing your budget and cutting out needless expenses (such as alcohol, cigarettes, convenience foods, and subscription movie streaming services) almost anyone can set aside enough money for a year’s worth of storage food in fairly short order. It is amazing what can be done with hard …


My Ten-Day Test-My-Preps Adventure – Part 3, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 2.) Day Four It was completely overcast by 06:30. Yes! I can fully test my solar panel output. Freezer temps before the morning solar-panel electricity came on: 24°F. I can deal with that if it never gets any warmer during the test, and it didn’t. This on/off freezer method could potentially work year-round so let the SHTF when it wants. As the days get shorter and less solar power is available, seasonal temperatures also get cooler making it easier for the freezer to keep up in my unheated shop. This will be an interesting comparison test for …


My Ten-Day Test-My-Preps Adventure – Part 2, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 1.) I started a to-do list for when the test is over. It started with: Can 12 quarts or more of water. Figure out how much water the plumbing pressure tank holds from 50 psi down to 0 psi Many others, mentioned below. I went to bed that night at 21:30. In the fifteen seconds it took for me to fall asleep, a quick thought passed through my head: How nice it was to have complete darkness, able to see all the stars out of my loft window with no little lights from the television and DVD …


My Ten-Day Test-My-Preps Adventure – Part 1, by St. Funogas

With today’s world events, I’ve moved from “remote possibility” to “high probability” that we’ll soon see some major changes in our country and world that most folks can’t even imagine today. I’m not alone in thinking at some point there is a good possibility today’s events could lead into a major war for the U.S. We’ll be fighting some real armies, not a bunch of boys with old rifles riding ponies, as we did in Afghanistan. How hard would it be for enemy with Special Forces-type teams to take out our national power grid without even dropping any bombs? We …


Boers, Beans, Bullets, and Bear Soup – Part 2, by Tunnel Rabbit

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) A Rifle for the Recoil Sensitive Around here, .30-06 is more common than .308 Win.  The second most popular in my neighborhood is 6.5 Creedmoor (6.5CM), then 6.5×55, and lastly a wildcat for the AR platform, the 6.5 Timberwolf. Ideally, we would be best off to standardized on .308 Winchester. Yet .30-06 is still king in these woods. It is time tested and found to be the best all around cartridge CONUS, good for mouse to moose, and the occasional Griz, because it can shoot the heaviest .308 caliber bullets with a …


Boers, Beans, Bullets, and Bear Soup – Part 1, by Tunnel Rabbit

This morning, as per usual, I am having more black beans and black bear soup for breakfast on a cold mountain in Montana, waiting for all h*ll to break loose. I prefer beef, but presently bear meat is all that I have. The first few months of a collaspe may be the worst as the desperate and raiding gangs will be active. And then comes several years of famine.  And the rest of the Four Horsemen. Today, I must decide on whether to get a range finder, or a box of 1,000 match-grade bullets for the old war horse: a …


Update: Big Decisions — Weighing The Risks and Benefits

JWR’s Introductory Note: The following is a slightly expanded update to a post that I wrote for SurvivalBlog back in September of 2005: — When doing radio interviews or giving lectures, I’m often asked where the “perfect” place is for a survival retreat. The short answer is: There is none. Granted, there are a lot of places that are much better than others, but there is no single “one size fits all” perfect place. Much ike buying a pair of boots, the decision has as much to do with the size and shape of your feet as it does the …