Category: Survival Mindset

Two Letters Re: Advice on Disaster Pet Euthanasia

Hi Jim, A couple of things worth considering for painless pet euthanasia.  This is never a pleasant subject, but: 1. Carbon monoxide poisoning.  People die of this painlessly all the time.   Prepare a setup now to connect to your vehicle exhaust (or any other gas engine exhaust) to an enclosure sized to hold your pet. 2. A person can be made unconscious simply by pressing two fingers against the juggler veins in the neck without any feeling of strangling or otherwise. It’s like going to sleep (the brain is deprived of oxygen and you black out).  A prolonged application …


Letter Re: Advice on Disaster Pet Euthanasia

Mr. Rawles, I am constantly impressed by the wealth of information that I am able to find on your web site and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and all involved for the work you do on this.  I was also wondering if you, or your readers, might be able to help me out with a certain, unsavory aspect of my preps.   Currently, our family is overseas in a country where we are required to maintain an evacuation plan and needed supplies at all time.  I am wholly on-board with this and have done this, …


Networking as a Survival Skill by K.C. in New York

The ground smolders with the charred remains scattered across once-green fields now turned black from cinders and dried blood.  An electric pole lies on its side across an abandoned road, menacing with the occasional buzz and spark.  Your home is gutted, shredded like a soft chunk of cheese.  A stack of crisped tortillas lie uneaten on the hearth, abandoned in the chaos. The air is fowl and acrid though silence has now settled after the screams and destruction of the night before.  You were lucky, though.  Living on higher ground, you heard the mobs coming and you had time to …


Your Better Half: A Force Multiplier, by J.L.H.

It’s no secret the majority of survivalists are males.  If your better half is just as prepared for emergencies as you, or you are a female survivalist who is reading this article, then congratulations!  But what about others who have a wife or significant other who goes about their daily life in ignorant bliss; unaware of the dangers surrounding us in today’s world, and how to prepare for and handle them?  I am sure you all love your spouses, and when disaster strikes, you’re going to look after them.  However, wouldn’t they (and you) be better off if they were …


Never Let Your Guard Down: Adventures in the City, by B.D.

The rustling came again from the back of the shotgun-style apartment. Was it squirrels? We had a few of the little gray buggers living in the trees around us and they made quite a racket. I assured my wife via text that a squirrel wouldn’t come through our window screens. She got up and looked into our bedroom just to make sure and saw a head and back sticking through about half way onto our bed. Letting out a blood curdling yell, she screamed and ran towards the window as the perp backpedaled out and ran off down the alley. …


Some Observations on Privately Owned Firearms

Washington D.C. is presently all abuzz with talk of the BHO Administration looking for an opportunity to enact the UN’s stalled Small Arms and Light Weapons Treaty. Meanwhile, Senator-For-Life Dianne Feinstein is “consensus building” to reenact the so-called Assault Weapons and “high capacity” magazine ban. (Note that the term “high capacity” is a specious political creation, to wit: A 30 round magazine is standard capacity for an AR or an AK, and anything less than that is a reduced capacity magazine. Get your terminology straight and don’t fall for semantics traps!) Rumor has it that this new incarnation of the …


Three Letters Re: Hurricane Sandy After Action Reports

James Wesley, By now you probably know that the mountains of West Virginia got snow generated by Superstorm Sandy so our local disaster looks somewhat different than other areas.  In our case we got better than 3 feet of very heavy wet snow dumped on us in short order.  Trees came down over a couple of day period in numbers great enough to make walking outside hazardous. One of the local farm families I know had to cut their way to the barn to care for the live stock and then cut their way back home.  Over a week later …


Hurricane Sandy Hits Home With The Eastern News Media

The preparedness movement in America just got a huge boost with Hurricane Sandy. In effect, the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy vindicated America’s once marginalized survivalists and preppers. It is one thing to talk about major disasters abstractly from a distance, but quite another to live through one yourself. Heretofore, mainstream media reporters have tended to ignore societal fragility and vulnerability issues. But now they’ve felt the impact personally. Our friend Tamara, over at the View From The Porch blog astutely observed that New York City is “the navel of the news media universe.” And the greater New York City region …


Three Letters Re: Hurricane Sandy After Action Reports

James: Let me first say we are doing well compared to the rest of the folks here on Long Island , NY . I am no hard core prepper but believe strongly that the need is there. We are in Nassau County and are served by LIPA, the Long Island Power Authority. As I write there are about 300,000 people here without power. Some of the things I have witnessed are very sad indeed and we were blessed to have our power back within two days.   South of where we live along the water the houses have had their …


Four Letters Re: Hurricane Sandy After Action Reports

Dear Editor: I live in southeastern Connecticut. I am far from wealthy and I live in a section of town while certainly is not what one may consider a ghetto, neither is it in any way “nice”. I would not label myself as a prepper nor a survivalist, instead I have common sense. I have a good stock of food and water, preparations and gear in case I have to leave, not for some cataclysmic disaster but because I live in a world that has hurricanes and natural disasters. Our Governor here in Connecticut recommended that my area evacuate. I did not. Though I am on the coast, …


Letter Re: Self-Reliance Versus Governmental Reliance Mindsets

JWR: Stories like these only help to illustrate the wide range of problems that come to the surface when the thin veneer of society is striped off due to an event like Superstorm Sandy.  The compression of people in high density population centers like metropolitan New York etc, is just asking for chaos and confusion when their normally well organized and managed structure of life is quickly changed for the worse. Our world is now comprised of what is known as the inverted technology pyramid.  When one side is  weakened in can quickly topple over and leave the entire structure …


Four Letters Re: Hurricane Sandy After Action Reports

Good day, Mr Rawles… Here in West Virginia, we have experienced a wide variety of weather from Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy.  Last Friday, it began raining well ahead of storm making landfall. Rains continued off and on thru the weekend, gradually increasing in steady rains all day Sunday and well into Monday. Around 7 pm our local time, that rain turned to snow and that’s when things began to get interesting.  I tend to be a light sleeper so it was the ‘sound’ of power going off at 2:34 am on Saturday morning that awakened me for the day.  I got coffee …


Family Continuity Planning, by John from Virginia

It’s 2:36PM; you and your spouse are at work.  Your son is at day care and your daughter is at school.  The Schumer hits the fan. What is your Family Continuity Plan? The scenario above is very real and indeed plausible.  Many families have and will one day experience something very similar to this.  To prepare you and your family from natural or man-made disasters it is recommended to design, develop, and incorporate a Family Continuity Plan (FCP); it may one day save all of your lives. As any prepper, for a natural disaster or a TEOTWAWKI event (or both), …


Six Letters Re: Hurricane Sandy After Action Reports

James, I’m located in central New Jersey not far from the Delaware River. In the days prior to the hurricane hitting, everyone packed the supermarkets, warehouse clubs and home improvement stores to stock up. At the home improvement stores, the people who had best luck getting generators were those who purchased them online and selected in-store pickup. There were lines of people 100+ deep from the front of the store to the back waiting for new shipments of generators to arrive. The only people who were guaranteed anything were those who had already purchased and paid online. For those lucky …


Attitude Adjustment, by Dena M.

As a single mother of two I know and live the word budget all to well. My income is limited and I have wasted a lot of time and money because I was too focused on getting ‘only the best.’ I quickly realized that the path I was on was getting me nowhere. I began to look at past purchases and realized that a lot of my purchases were unnecessary and quite frankly irresponsible. If I wanted to better guarantee the safety and sanity of myself and my young children, I needed to take a different path to self-sufficiency and …