Category: Survival Mindset

Three Letters Re: Lessons Learned From a Recent California Power Outage

Dear Jim Yesterday at about 4:00 p.m. there was a massive power outage in the southwest. All of San Diego County And other parts of Southern California were without power for almost 12 hours some still are. I learned a few very good lessons from this experience. I do consider myself a prepper but am limited to how much I can store because I live in an apartment. I had concentrated on food, water, and defense measures for the long run, but had completely ignored some more immediate short term supplies. First and foremost, I overlooked cash. I have been …


Start Small, Plan Ahead, and Set a Realistic Timetable, by Christian Rebel

I’ve only been in the survival community for one to two years; I still need quite a bit of work to do before I’d dare say I’m prepared enough to survive a severe blizzard let alone some life changing and significantly prolonged event. I get a little overwhelmed by all the work I still have to do and frustrated by how precious little resources I have to work with. I’m a 21 year old unemployed college student still living at home in an apartment complex 20 minutes from a city, as you can see my options are limited. Limited not …


Letter Re: Hurricane Irene Lessons Learned

James, Thanks to the information presented in your book “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It” we were able to “weather” Hurricane Irene without much difficulty. It was amazing to the pandemonium at the super markets; people were waiting for water to be brought out from the stockroom and wondering whether they would “die of thirst”. If they had only looked over their shoulder they would have seen a pallet filled with cases of soda (on sale: four cases for eleven dollars). The same goes for D-cell batteries; people were lamenting that they didn’t have …


The Little Things, by D.M.L.

So, you think you’re prepared? So did I. Until Hurricane Irene destroyed the infrastructure around here. The roads were blocked to all the local towns, all three routes out of here. If it wasn’t trees down, it was flooded, or power lines and poles leaned over the road in the ‘maybe’ zone (maybe you would hit them and maybe not, but why take a chance on thousands of volts? If not those, it was pieces of somebody’s house across the road. And this was only a Cat 1 storm? Sigh.   Before she hit, I, being confident that we were ‘prepped up’, …


Lessons From Wartime Bosnia-Herzegovina, by Benjamin

1

I have been following the survivalist trend on YouTube for about a year now and so far you provide the best and most realistic advice of anyone. Many of the people who offer advice, in my opinion are not qualified based on what they are saying. And I can say this based on my experience. Half of the things I hear other people say cannot be applied to the situation I was in or most situations, but you seem to understand. I was born and raised in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I saw that a fellow Bosnian gave you his story, but he …


The Five Steps of OPSEC Assessment by Stone of Scone

Operational Security (OPSEC) which is the evaluation and control of any critical information that could be used against you by an adversary. The result of good OPSEC is the elimination or withholding of the most damaging information that your adversary has the ability to gather and understand how to use against you. OPSEC happens everyday. When you go on vacation and hold your mail and newspaper delivery, and use timers to turn your radio and lights on and off to make it appear that you are home, you are practicing good OPSEC. Here is a another example of OPSEC. A …


How to Handle Fear and be Stronger for the Experience, by P.G.T.

I am out of my comfort zone. We executed a move and I have to battle fear. I am afraid that we will fail. I am afraid that our plans have been too costly. Our “threes” have been reduced to one – and we all know that one is none. We no longer have three ways to heat, cook or travel. We don’t know the terrain well, nor do we know the roads.  We do not have all of our supplies here with us. And, to top it all off, today I opened a package of spiced almonds only to …


Letter Re: Vignette of an Eastern U.S. Earthquake

Hi Mr. Rawles: I want to share with you today’s events in Washington DC. I came home early from school and decided to go to the gym to burn off some of those summer pounds. As I was walking to the gym (two blocks away), listening to my iPod. All of the sudden I heard some crashing and screaming. Since this is DC, everything happens so I kept on walking. I finally realized that something was definitely wrong when I saw people pouring out from every building including a rather overweight man wearing only a bath towel  that was way …


A Defining Moment, by The Indexer

I suppose that I have a “prepper” all of my almost 57 years. The oldest of four children, I was raised by my engineer father who would probably seem quite believable as the father in the bomb shelter in the movie Blast From the Past. My mother went along with my father’s seemingly odd ideas, but I don’t really believe it went past accommodating some ‘strange ideas’. This article is about the psychology of a perceived ‘survival’ event, at least. First you will need a little background: I was with my father on the way back from my uncle’s house …


Spiritual and Moral Preparedness, by A. Padre

I guess I am a prepper.  When I started “prepping” 15 years ago they called it being a survivalist, but I think prepper is more apropos since the word survivalist suggests Rambo and anyone who knows me knows that’s not me.  Over the past few months I became aware that prepping is gaining momentum again, like it did before Y2K when I first got involved.  Some months back I stumbled on a YouTube channel and since then I have been making the rounds of the prepper sites.  I have been really thankful to all of you preppers out there who …


Letter Re: Prepping for Missionaries and Other Long-Term Foreign Workers

Jim: The NGO Security Page Safety & Security Resources for Humanitarian Organizations page is a great site with lots of free NGO Security Manuals in PDF. These may be relevant to both Aid Workers overseas and civilians without military experience. The International Committee for the Red Cross Manual Staying alive: safety and security guidelines for humanitarian volunteers in conflict areas is particularly good at explaining the effects of military weapons to laymen who’s ideas about their effects come from watching too many B movies. In my experience what gets foreigners in trouble overseas is cultural arrogance and doing reckless things …


Letter Re: Prepping for Missionaries and Other Long-Term Foreign Workers

Hello,  I have been a regular reader of SurvivalBlog and am very grateful for your efforts in maintaining such a great resource for those of use concerned with survival-related topics.  I would like to make mention of a recently-published book that is one of the best I have read in this field: Everything That Follows Is Based on Recent, Real-Life Experience That Has Been Proven to Work: Professional Survival Solutions, by James Shepherd-Barron  Here is a description: “James Shepherd-Barron has worked in more than 26 countries, including the conflict zones of Iraq, Kosovo, Croatia, Central Bosnia, Burundi, and Rwanda. Once …


Converting a Standard American Home Into a Hardened Retreat, by CentOre

Not everyone can find or afford a solidly built brick home with fittings to hang bullet-proof shutters and doors. We agree with the bulk of the writings we have read concerning the ‘non-defensibility’ of the average United States home.  Our group has choices as to which house will become ‘The Retreat’ for the entire group when the SHTF.  Our group’s consensus is our ‘Primary’ retreat will probably be a 2,600 square foot triple-wide ranch style manufactured home.  It has three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a living room and family room.   There is an adequate kitchen with a totally …


Letter Re: Plan B–Call Them Your Hobbies

JWR: Some of us don’t always have a spouse that is 100% on board with prepping.  So I thought I’d send a list of some hobbies that help with prepping in a SHFT situation, and have a non-SHTF function too.  Most have worked out well for me, some my wife has become more avid than I, the remaining she tolerates. Flower Gardening – Allows for purchase of gardening tools, composting, development of good growing beds, fertilizer, books on growing and seeding, and pest control products. You will have to pay attention to vegetable safe products, but in SHTF you will …


The Prepping Imperative, by A.L.T.

Three years ago, my husband and I had never heard the terms “prepper”, “survivalist” or “bug out”.  We were blissfully unaware of our country’s and world’s dire circumstances and didn’t know how to do much of anything truly useful.  This is a chronicle of the journey that brought us to where we are today, and I have included some of the specific books, resources and equipment that are the fruit of much research and thought.  We didn’t have much to spend on equipment or commercially packed stores of food, but through providence and thrift, we are much better able to …