Our friend, Commander Zero, just posted this tip: Military phone wire on sale
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Six Diseases Return To US as Migration Advocates Celebrate ‘World Refugee Day’ – Sent in by B.B.
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Orlando Discussion: Why the Church is Conspicuously Absent
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“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.” – – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
June 21st is the birthday of Rex Applegate (June 21, 1914 – July 14, 1998), author of Kill or Be Killed. He was the friend and mentor of SurvivalBlog’s Senior Field Gear Editor, Pat Cascio.
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The recent frantic increase in gun sales in the United States is well justified. People are understandably concerned that their window of opportunity to buy battle rifles and magazines for their families may be closing–especially if Hitlery Clinton is elected. I’m presently in the process of consolidating my own collection to create better standardization. As part of that, I decided to auction one of my Saiga-12 shotguns, two Rhodesian FN/FALs builds, a Savage Model 110 .308, a PTR-91-GI, and a two M4s ARs. These are being sold by a friend of mine who has an FFL. He is also selling several unusual guns of his own, including a very scarce rotary magazine Johnson Model 1941 .30-06. You can see those auctions at his seller page at GunBroker.com. – JWR
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Many SurvivalBlog readers have never clicked through the Writing Contest prize links before and are really unaware of the tremendous prizes that have been made available by the sponsors. We thought we would profile one prize each Tuesday and Thursday just to tease you with these fantastic prizes.
Today’s profile is the Tactical Self-Contained 2-Series Solar Power Generator system from Always Empowered. This solar generator has been developed in-house (not a Chinese import) and maintains a class-leading performance in solar generators. The SG2A is a durable, expandable, EMP shielded and reliable generator. It comes with 3 solar panels and a 1000 W inverter. Since it’s expandable, you can add to it at a later date should you choose to do so.
It is ruggedized and fully self-contained. When you buy it, it comes fully charged and ready to work. All you have to do is open the case up, place the panels in the sun, and snap them into the provided connectors. Turn the inverter on, and viola! you have household power!
Some of the specifications:
The system can be expanded with there SG1SB boost kits and there are many more features. Check it out at Always Empowered and get to writing that contest entry!
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Today, we present another entry for Round 65 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The nearly $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:
First Prize:
Second Prize:
Third Prize:
Round 65 ends on July 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.
I had read an article some time ago about tracking dogs, and I didn’t get to respond to it then. However, here is my experience. It’s not the dog you are trying to beat; it is the handler.
I have a lot of experience with tracking dogs. I used to guard the copper pipeline in Indonesia. The copper mine (also containing some gold) was on top of a mountain. Once the material was taken from the ground, it was mixed into a slurry and pumped miles through the jungle to the port. This pipeline was under constant attack. People would cut into the pipe, fill some buckets, and run off into the jungle. We would have to track them with dogs, in the hopes of arresting them. Usually it was the military or police doing the cutting, so there was plenty of incentive to get away.
I spoke to most of the dog handlers about how to get away if a person were being tracked. They were adamant that there was very little a person could do to cover their tracks or fool the dogs. We had people climbing trees and jumping from tree to tree in order to break the trail. Some would run through rivers, ponds, and swamps or even climb and descend cliff faces.
You also have to understand that when the authorities decide to put on a manhunt, you are not coming up against just dogs and handlers; you are coming up against entire departments. They won’t send a couple of guys and a dog into the woods after you. They will set up a command post that sends and receives constants updates, as professionals coordinate the search for you. They can put up helicopters with heat cameras. They will drive along roads or get ahead of you and/or send other teams from another direction. They can seal off huge areas and blanket it with searchers or just wait you out. Even if you could take off at high speed into an endless woods, you would eventually run out of supplies.
Many times when someone is on the run, they don’t even use dogs to find them. Almost all of them are caught and caught quickly. The dog tracking team is gravy. If they see that you have only one way to go or few options, they’ll just high-tail to those spots and send fast chase teams after you without a dog.
These dogs are multi-thousand dollar pieces of equipment. All professionally-trained dogs are certified regularly on their ability to do what they are trained to do. All handlers are certified and trained on not only their ability to handle a dog but to handle specific dogs. Both the dog and the handler have training requirements, records, and certifications. Any department worth mentioning is going to have a well-maintained team. Just like any other equipment, these dogs will be regularly evaluated for serviceability.
Some are good at some things, and some are good at others. For instance, drug dogs range widely on their ability to find certain drugs. Some will be good at finding cocaine, while others excel at finding marijuana. If the authorities know what they are looking for or suspect something specific, they will pull out their heavy hitter for that specific thing. If a dog fails, they will use another.
Finding you is a game to the dog. They work for rewards, and that reward is usually a few minutes with a favorite toy. Just like any other trick, the dog is taught and rewarded for doing well. The dog is eager to please and is fairly simple minded in its pursuit of you.
It is not a relentless machine hunting you down. Think of a dog that enjoys playing fetch rather than the “Terminator”.
There are generally four kinds of law enforcement dogs: Attack (Bite), Drug, Bomb, and Tracking. Of course, there are many more specialties, such as agricultural, cadaver, money, et cetera. All of these dogs specialize in finding something.
Most dogs are single purpose, but you will occasionally find one that is cross trained. When dogs are cross trained, they are usually primarily trained in one of the nose-oriented jobs and then taught to be a bite dog. Cross-training is more likely to happen in departments with smaller budgets or K9 facilities.
Tracking dogs are very similar. Some dogs excel at finding people under different conditions. Some do better at finding people in the forest or jungle. Some are used to locating a scent, and others follow it. Some are slower and more reliable, while others are runners and will bolt in the direction of the scent trail and then reacquire it. You may come up against more than one kind of dog. For instance, they may use their sure-fire slow and steady dogs to negotiate difficult terrain or an area they think a runner is using counter-measures. They then may switch to fast dogs over terrain where there is limited choice of direction or to finally run someone down when they see him. You may get tracked by a tracking dog, and then upon seeing you they may release the bite dogs.
Tracking dogs can be of any breed. I’ve seen mixed-breed mutts taken from shelters and trained to sniff out one thing or another.
These are the dogs you will most likely encounter at the end of the chase. They are the ones most likely not to be on a leash when you do. They can be used to flush you out of a bush, attic, or any other hiding place. If the tracking dogs come to a stop and are going nuts barking at a bush, cave, et cetera, it’s the bite dog coming in after you. A bite dog is normally released when a target is in site and distinguishable to the dog by the handler.
Almost always the dog will latch onto you and hold you until the handler arrives. Bite dogs are trained to grab you in a specific way, usually by an arm or a leg. I saw one dog that was trained to grab a person by the ankle and rotate in circles until the handler got there. This caused the victim to fall down and be spun around. This is so that the victim cannot kick at the dog.
If available, or if they think there will be trouble, or if a dog is having a hard time, or you are attacking the dog, they will release another one or just shoot you (with a bullet or taser). No matter what you do, once a dog has been told to stop you, you are going to be seriously hindered as far as escaping any further. The handler and the rest of the team will be right on top of you, either way.
There are several things that make up a good bite dog.
The following problems may occur:
Problems with #1– The dog bites without command. It may bite other officers, or the handler, or you. It may bite you in an “unauthorized” place, such as the crotch or throat.
Problems with #2– The dog bites but does not grip. This may cause the dog to repeatedly bite you over and over again, causing injury.
Problems with #3– Sometimes once a dog loses the bite, it will not bite again, which is bad for the officers.
Problems with #4– The biggest and most common failure (in my experience) is #4. With an aggressive breed and after a chase, the dog just will not let go. The handler constantly yells commands at the dog, and the dog doesn’t listen. This causes a rush of officers on the victim to pin him while the handler physically removes the dog from the person, sometimes injuring him at the same time. I’ve seen dogs bite officers at this point or rush back and bite the victim once he’s in handcuffs.
Most bite dogs are larger, aggressive breeds that have the body weight to seriously challenge a full-grown man. Once it has you by a leg or an arm, you are not lifting 150+ lbs and dragging it around, especially when it doesn’t want you to and is actively fighting you. Even if you could do this, you’re not going to be able to move fast enough to avoid the tracking team.
This dog is better at smelling things out, because of the shape of its head, ears, and posture. The of the way the dog is built, it has its head low to the ground and level. Its ears are out and actually catch and keep the scent in its face, keeping a kind of pocket around the face and nose of the dog. On top of this, it has a very powerful nose. In my experience an actual bloodhound is rare. They excel at smelling things, and any department that put money into a bloodhound will always train it to locate something. I’ve never seen a bite trained or cross trained blood hound.
Dear Hugh
Some years ago I severely injured my back and could not access the bathroom, which was on another floor.
I took one of those lightweight home hospital potties, put a plastic bag into the bucket part, and put a bag of loose pine sawdust kitty litter next to it.
You use the bucket, sprinkle a cup of loose pine litter over it, no smell, no problem. And I do mean no smell. I had to sit right next to it for weeks.
Do not use standard clay kitty litter, which is made of bentonite clay. Yes, it will work, though not as well with the odor.
The problem is that bentonite clay is very durable. While it absorbs pee well, it does not want to dissolve, it wants to clump up and stay that way. This is fine in a litter box but not when you want to biodegrade the mess in a hole in the ground. The clay will not mingle with the dirt. It will encapsulate the pee and the poo.
The loose pine type of litter absorbs moisture very well, and biodegrades easily. It is also acidic. I don’t know what that does to the bacteria in feces, but bacteria generally don’t like acidic environments.
If you run out of pine litter, you can use sawdust. Do not get the pelleted pine litter, it will not work. It will stick on the poo like sprinkles on a cupcake.
On a separate note, you may want to keep the pee and poo separate, with a potty for each, and some water in the pee pot. The pee is not only fairly harmless, but if mixed with ten parts water to one part pee, it is a good source of nitrogen for your garden, and will not burn the plants. Doing this also greatly reduces the total bulk of what you need to dispose of.
I have a question: Has anyone tried taking the poo and simply tossing it into a hot outdoor fire? I presume it would be a bit smoky, being damp, but it seems like burning the poo would totally get rid of the disease risk, contamination, and disposal problem, leaving only sterile ashes which could also be spread on the garden.
I did look this up in the past, but could only find references to it being done along with a lot of other types of garbage, which caused chemical pollution problems. This would not happen if it is burned by itself.
Best wishes JW from NY
‘Deeply troubling’ Senators say mineral withdrawal would protect local economy – RBS
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Eastern Washington: State reports a new wolf pack, located near Sherman Pass
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Actor Shia LaBeouf hitchhikes through Wyoming and Montana
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Video: At a conference in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho in 2015, Pastor Chuck Baldwin describes the significance of The American Redoubt. (Scroll forward to the 12-minute mark for his comments about the folly of modern American corporate churches, and to the 43-minute mark for his comments on the American Redoubt and God’s sovereign will. The Q&A portion–mainly on the Second Amendment and Romans Chapter 13–begins at 57:50.)
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Americans Are Now The Top Silver Investors In The World
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What Brexit Could Mean For Your Money And Your Business
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Video: Beyond the Turmoil, Central Bankers Dread Brexit’s Shadow
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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.
Court lets stand law banning some semi-automatic assault weapons. This is not good news folks. This is what we can expect when they pass a national “assault weapons” ban, and hi-cap mag ban; the Supreme Court will let it stand if challenged! – Pat Cascio
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Because “You never know.”
US Army Technical Manual 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook – dated 1969. There are lots of “Poor Man’s James Bond” and “Anarchist’s Cookbook” type reads around. But this one differs significantly in that the US Army evaluated and tested the items in this manual and considered them feasible, effective, and reliable enough for publication.
Versions may be had in plain text, Kindle, and EPUB formats and are free to download. I suggest keeping a backup copy in plain text. Because again, “You never know!”
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From the religion of pieces– Muslims Behead Four Year Old Girl – Force Her Mother To Soak Her Hands In Her Daughter’s Blood – While the story has not been confirmed, it matches other reports where IS has mistreated, tortured, and killed young children. – Sent in by M.R.
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A bill to melt 100,000 1911 45s has passed the senate. Call your representative to get this stopped in the House. The pertinent verbiage is at section 331. – T.H.
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Venezuela is now so bad that the main stream media is finally picking up the story: Venezuelans Ransack Stores as Hunger Stalks Crumbling Nation – MtH
“If you are in a church where the pastor refuses to teach the truth and take a stand, why do you stay there?” – Pastor Chuck Baldwin on churches having the answer to our current moral decline.
June 20th is the birthday of Audie L. Murphy, born in 1925. (He died in a plane crash on May 28, 1971.) This is also the anniversary of the death of novelist Vince Flynn (born April 6, 1966, died June 19, 2013). His death at age 47 was a loss to the literary world.
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Reader D.S.V. sent this: Gun Shop Sells 30,000 AR-15s in Week Following Orlando Attack. And, BTW, SurvivalBlog advertiser GunMagWarehouse.com (a much smaller company) tells us that they shipped about the same number of magazines in the same week.
Be sure to stock up before the Democratic National Convention in July, folks. That is when the real buying rush will begin, and supplies of most black rifles and nearly all types of full capacity magazines will be depleted!
I’m not exactly sure where the dividing line is between some disorders, like genius, driven mad, sheer genius, tortured mind, losing your mind, and other similar diagnoses. There are creative minds, like that of the novelist Stephen King, and I’m not sure if he has creative genius or a very tortured mind, after watching many of the movies that Hollywood created from his novels. I tend to think that, perhaps, just perhaps, he has a tortured mind. In any event, I’m sure I’ve lost my mind many years ago; just ask my own family! LOL
Now, I’m not saying that any of the terms I listed are necessarily something bad; it’s just that many of us think differently about some things and can put this to good use in life. So, I’m not at all sure about the creative minds who work at Leatherman Tool who come up with the different variety of muli-tools and knives. Are they working on the premise of tortured minds or sheer creative genius? I don’t really know, but I do know that we all benefit from what comes from their minds. No one is making more different types of multi-tools that Leatherman. They are the originator of multi-tools, and in my humble opinion they still produce the best products along these lines.
I’ve carried a Leatherman “Blast” multi-tool since they first came out, and I was saddened to learn that this particular multi-tool has been discontinued. I’ve found it to be the perfect compromise between the size and the various tools it has. Still, to each his own, and I’m always open to test something new and different from the good folks at Leatherman. With this goal in mind, I requested the Leatherman Skeletool RX to test for our readers, and to be sure, we have some of the most intelligent readers out there, who want to know about the newest, coolest, and best tools available for survival purposes. Keep in mind that survival covers a lot of different definitions, from surviving on the mean streets of a big city, to wilderness survival, to just making an attempt to get through your daily grind.
The Skeletool RX isn’t the smallest multi-tool that Leatherman produces, and it isn’t one of the largest; Goldilocks might say it is “just right” for many needs. A quick look at what various tools the RX has is in order. We have needlenose pliers, regular pliers, hard wire cutter pliers, and wire cutters, plus a serrated knife blade made out of 154 CM (which is some great knife blade material), a carabiner/bottle opener, and a large bit driver with an added bit with different sizes on it for various screws. The RX handle material is stainless steel and Cerakote coated in blaze orange, so it’s not easy to lose sight of if you lay it down. To be sure, I’m guilty of this– using a knife or other tool on my small homestead and then laying it down in the grass and not being able to find it until I mow the lawn with the riding mower. Yikes!
The Skeletool RX does not come with a carrying pouch or sheath. Instead, it can be clipped to the inside of your pants pocket with the attached pocket/clothing clip, or you can use the carabiner to attach it to a keyring you might have hanging on your pants belt, so it is readily accessible. The knife blade can be accessed and opened without opening the folded multi-tool. I like this feature a lot. You don’t have to go to all the effort to actually unfold the multi-tool in order to quickly, one-handed open the knife blade, and it does lock open, too, with a liner-type lock. Nice!
The various pliers on the main portion of the tool has all the pliers combined into one, including the needlenose, regular, hard wire cutter, and wire cutter. Just move the plier portion up or down on the material you wish to grip or cut, until you find the one you need to use, easy as pie. The bit driver has a bit locked in place, not magnetically; you need to push on a release to remove that bit and exchange it for the other bit, which is stored in one of the handles of the Skeletool RX. This is my only minor complaint. The extra bit is a little bit difficult to access, but it is very secure and won’t fall out of the handle.
Quite often I can be caught carrying two folding knives in my front cargo pants pockets. One knife will most likely be my favorite EDC folder, and a second folder, on that I’m testing and carrying for an article, will be in my left front cargo pants pocket. At times, I leave my favorite EDC folder at home, when I have several new knives I’m testing and carrying. It’s not overkill but just the way I operate, when carrying new products.
I found the Skeletool RX easy to pack, clipped in my left front pocket. The only problem I had was accessing my house and car keys when carrying it in my left front pocket. It’s not a gigantic problem, just a little bitty one. With several vehicles in our family and a couple houses and other things that are locked, I have two keyrings in my left front pocket, so there is always something there.
Almost daily, FedEx, UPS, or the USPS bring me packages that must be opened. Some are cardboard boxes and others are large envelopes that need cutting into, and to be sure I’m one of these people who is always finding a loose screw. I just can’t let it be, so I pull out my Leatherman Blast and tighten it. This is a real “problem” for me, at the gun shop I haunt three or four days per week. It is also a pawn shop, and I’m always finding a loose screw and can’t let it be, especially when I run across a loose grip screw on a handgun or on the stock of a long gun. I gotta pull out the Leatherman and tighten it. So, I found a lot of uses for the Skeletool RX to practice on, mostly tightening loose screws.
Now, the Skeletool RX isn’t a super-heavy duty multi-tool, but it was designed for many of the everyday tasks you might run into. I noted one comment on the Leatherman website with a user complaining that it didn’t have a tool for opening an O2 bottle. In another life, I worked on an ambulance and for the life of me I never had to look for the tool to open an O2 bottle; it was always attached to the bottle, period!
Now, you can find Chinese-made multi-tools all over the Internet for a couple bucks, and when you look at the pics of ‘em they do “look” nice. However, most are pure junk and not worth the shipping to get ‘em, let alone use them. Leatherman is the originator and still the best makers of multi-tools, and they are made in my adopted home state of Oregon, right outside of Portland, OR. I’ve been invited up to Leatherman for a hands-on personal tour numerous times, but I just have a hard time trying to find the time to make the drive up to that part of the state. Oregon is also home to many knife companies. Ditto for them, who are always asking me to come up for a tour of the new plants and/or offices. Sooner or later, I get up that way. I’ve never toured the Leatherman operation, but I will, one of these days. I live a very rural lifestyle and honestly hate going to any big or bigger cities, even though I was born and raised in Chicago, IL. I’ve learned to love rural life and small town life.
The Leatherman Skeletool RX doesn’t come cheap. It retails for $102, and they do produce similar but different models that you might want to check out before laying down your hard-earned cash. Every Leatherman product comes with a 25-year limited warranty, too, which is something to keep in mind as well as the Made In The USA, which counts a lot in my book, too. So, check out the Skeletool RX. It might be exactly what you are looking for, in a light-weight everyday multi-use tool, for most of your daily needs. The sheer genius minds who design the multi-tools at Leatherman are to be congratulated for all their efforts, giving us so many different multi-tools to choose from!
– Senior Product Review Editor, Pat Cascio
The recent news about how the FBI filed a lawsuit to block disclosure of surveillance camera locations because it would “violate the privacy” of those surveilled has prompted the editors of SurvivalBlog to start a new awards contest for the most egregious examples of Orwellian Newspeak in the past year. This is in part to remind our readers of the prescience of George Orwell, in his novel 1984. We intend to issue these awards annually (like the Darwin Awards) each July 4th, and post descriptions and links for the top three examples, as well as for several Dishonorable Mention awards, with links.
To give you an idea of what we are looking for, I’ll start out with some examples that we’ve spotted in the news from recent years:
Please send us examples of where the English language is being twisted with Newspeak in ways that degrade our liberty, our dignity, our heritage, and the truth – in the past year. Be sure to include links to the original news sources. On July 4th, we will publish our first list of Orwell Award winners.
Many Thanks! – JWR
Sauce:
Slice and serve while hot or use cold slices for sandwiches. Makes about 6 servings.
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Do you have a favorite recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers? Please send it via e-mail. Thanks!
The EU Empire is going to fail. – A.D.
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You Are Living Through The Dumbest Monetary Experimental Endgame In History… – B.B
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Too Big? Brazil and Olympics on a Failing Path
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Foreign selling of U.S. Treasuries in April was most since 1978 -data
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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.
Oh, the irony! Ex-Calif. State Sen. Leland Yee, gun control champion, heading to prison for weapons trafficking
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The NRA’s answer to the White House and Hitlery: The AR-15: Americans’ Best Defense Against Terror and Crime – MtH
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Daniel Defense Cuts Ties with Academy Sports For Pulling AR-15 from Shelves
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Obama Increases Importation of Syrian Refugees After Orlando Terror Attack – B.B.
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When everything else fails, amateur radio will still be there—and thriving – P.S.
