Economics and Investing:

Squatters in Las Vegas and all the problems that come with them. – P.S.

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OFFICIAL SOURCE: Global Silver Supply Deficit Surges On Revised Data

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Pew Research Study – The American Middle Class Declined in 90% of Metro Areas From 2000-2014 – H.L.

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Legend Warns Risk Of Total Global Collapse Is Greater Today Than Any Time In History – G.G.

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Cyberattacks on Swift financial network ‘worthy of freaking out’ about: ex-Treasury official

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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.

Odds ‘n Sods:

I don’t like it, but it’s hard to argue with him: ‘Preppers’ say Obama ‘has divided us on a course for civil war’ [Warning: The site has a totally unrelated video that autostarts.] – Submitted by DSV

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FBI Hid Surveillance Devices Around Alameda County Courthouse Nothing to see here…move along. – B.B.

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Reader P.S. sent in the link to an interesting interview with Jesse Hughes of Eagles of Death Metal (the band playing in Paris during the Bataclan islamic attack).

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Reader T.J. sent in this link showing the “technical failure” that Ankara (Turkey) claims was the cause of its helicopter crash. Excerpt: “If a heat-seeking missile breaking an aircraft in half is seen as technical failure, that would be accurate.”

The value of this article is that it shows just how complicated things have gotten in the region. The PKK is one of the strongest anti-ISIS fighters in the area. The U.S. supports the Kurdish YPG fighters with close ties to the PKK. The U.S. and Turkey are in the same anti-ISIS coalition, but Turkey actively targets the PKK. Russia also targets the ISIS forces, yet constantly tangles with Turkey. The military and political wars in Syria and Iraq further complicate the issues. Is your head spinning yet? It’s hard to believe that the world has not entered WWIII yet, because of this region.

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From the Desk of Mike Williamson, SurvivalBlog’s Editor at Large: Good news from behind the 2A lines – Court Rules That Right To Buy, Sell Guns Protected By 2A In SAF Case

Hugh’s Quote of the Day:

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” – Frederick Douglass

Notes for Monday – May 16, 2016

On this day in 1868, the U.S. Senate votes against impeaching President Andrew Johnson and acquits him of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

In February 1868, the House of Representatives charged Johnson with 11 articles of impeachment for vague “high crimes and misdemeanors”. (For comparison, in 1998, President Bill Clinton was charged with two articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice during an investigation into his inappropriate sexual behavior in the White House Oval Office. In 1974, Nixon faced three charges for his involvement in the Watergate scandal.) The main issue in Johnson’s trial was his staunch resistance to implementing Congress’ Civil War Reconstruction policies. The War Department was the federal agency responsible for carrying out Reconstruction programs in the war-ravaged southern states, and when Johnson fired the agency’s head, Edwin Stanton, Congress retaliated with calls for his impeachment.

Hawkins Pressure Cooker, by Pat and Mary Cascio

We’ve owned several travel trailers over the years but hardly ever went out camping. We live in the boonies, and I sincerely love where I live. There is no need for me to go any place else to enjoy myself. Basically, we used travel trailers as mobile bug out retreats, if the time ever came, or as a spare “bedroom” for guests. Approximately a year ago, we acquired a newer 21-foot travel trailer that has everything I wanted, except a/c, which would have been nice. (I still might have it installed and spend hot summer nights sleeping in it in our front yard!)

One thing becomes readily apparent when you have a small travel trailer, and that is the size. You simply can’t put everything inside of it that you’d like to, period! You learn about all the cool products that are specifically designed for travel trailer living. These products are down-sized from their full-sized counterparts as a necessity. You only have a very limited amount of room for storage. Even though most travel trailers and their bigger cousins, 5th wheel trailers, are designed to have a lot of storage space, there still isn’t enough space for everything you would like to have in them.

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We keep our travel trailer pretty well stocked at all times. In a matter of a few minutes, I can hook it up to my pickup and drive away, knowing that we have at the very least a couple month’s worth of food and other supplies. Give us a half hour and we can load up a lot more food, guns, ammo, and other gear to see us through a year or longer, seriously! We have learned to economize, when loading up a travel trailer. You can’t have all the frozen and refrigerated foods you’d like, because it has a very small refrigerator with a tiny freezer, but that’s not all that important in the long run.

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No matter what your plans might be– simple weekend camping, a week on a hunting trip, or long-term survival– you have to have cookware, but you can’t fit everything you’d like in a small travel trailer. I personally could live in our 21-foot travel trailer. It is big enough to carry all my needs and necessities; it really is. Still, space is at a premium, so we plan carefully what we keep stored in the trailer. My good friend and long-time SurvivalBlog.com reader, Big Jack in Arkansas, recently ran across an ad for a small pressure cooker. That is something we didn’t have in our travel trailer. Yeah, we have one. However, like many pressure cookers, it is big and takes up a lot of room. So, we never kept one in the trailer. Big Jack, bless his heart, bought one for us and had it sent directly to our home.

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What we received is a 1.5 liter aluminum pressure cooker from an outfit called Hawkins Pressure Cookers. This is the smallest one they produce and their latest model, too. They make a complete line of pressure cookers in various sizes. Check out the above link on Amazon.com for some of their products. I’ll readily admit that a 1.5-liter sized pressure cooker isn’t ideal for cooking some meals, because it simply isn’t big enough. However, it is big enough for many cooking needs. I do a lot of the cooking in our house, simply because I’m a good cook. (Ask my family, and they’ll tell you.) But I have never used our full-sized pressure cooker. I leave that job to my wife. So, I called upon her to aid me in my testing of the Hawkins Pressure Cooker.

Working from her notes and my own observations, there are a few things that I wanted to bring to light. First of all, do not fill this little 1.5-liter pressure cooker more than 2/3rd of the way full or just halfway full for foods that expand, like rice and dried veggies.

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The basic operation of the little Hawkins is to put your pressure cooker on the stove on high heat with the lid closed. When the vent starts steaming, you then place the vent weight/pressure regulator on it. It goes through three steps when cooking– no steam, steam escapes, and steam is full force when the regulator is lifting and whistling from the blast of the steam. Now, once it is whistling with the weight/pressure regulator on it, you reduce the heat to medium and start to time your cooking, as your recipe requires. BTW, a nice cookbook comes with the Hawkins, which is made in India. So many of the recipes are for Indian-style foods.

There are some great benefits to using a pressure cooker. First of all, it usually cuts your cooking time by 50%, and this is important when you only have limited fuel. In a travel trailer, you only have a certain amount of propane on hand for cooking. So, a pressure cooker saves time, money, and fuel, which is excellent!

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My wife says it gives more nourishing foods, keeping in many of the vitamins and proteins. The food is also better tasting as well. A pressure cooker also makes your food more hygienic, because the temperature gets much higher than when using a regular pan to cook, it helps destroy harmful bacteria. It can also sterilize instruments for medical use, although this little 1.5 liter unit is too small for this use.

The Hawkins pressure cookers are unique in that its gasket fits from the inside. That is, there is a little rubber gasket on the top of the lid, and you have to fit the lid inside of the pan. It takes a little practice to get it down pat, but it’s really easy to do. Once pressure builds up in the pressure cooker, the lid is held on firmly from the pressure as well as the latching handle lid. You’ll want to really pay attention to the directions for attaching the lid to the pot; as I stated, it takes practice, but it is very easy to do once you do it a few times.

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The Hawkins pressure cooker can be used on all types of stoves, or even wood fires. Just avoid direct contact with hot coals or hot wood. Our travel trailer has a propane stove and oven, so the pressure cooker worked great on the stovetop. This smallest Hawkins pressure cooker could even be carried in a backpack, if you want to use it while out camping, too. It cooks with about 15 lbs of pressure, and excess pressure is periodically released, so there are no worries about it exploding. However, it is recommended that you purchase a few extra pressure regulators just to have on hand. These can be ordered directly from Hawkins.

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Honestly, I never gave much thought to keeping a pressure cooker in our travel trailer, until Big Jack told me about this product and had one sent to me. Travel trailer living does have it limits and, as already mentioned, one is the very limited space in all of them. We have one clothes closet that we have some clothes stored in. Other clothes and footwear is stored in one of the many other hidden storage spaces in the trailer. You learn, in short order, that you must pick and choose what you can store in your travel trailer. So you make your choices based on what is most important to you. A travel trailer sure beats living in a tent, if a SHTF scenario should arise. Yes, you can run out of propane, but we have a couple of solar ovens as well as rocket stoves, so we can use them for cooking, too. We would also load up our 3,500 watt generator, if we had to bug out, with a limited amount of fuel, of course! No matter how well you plan, you only have finite fuel sources for everything. You hope for the best, that you can somehow find a source of resupply of propane and gas to operate these things.]

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Our goal for when my wife retires, if a major SHTF scenario doesn’t happen before then, is to sell our small homestead and purchase a nice-sized 5th wheel trailer and place it on a small plot of land in a rural area and live the rest of our days in it. We simply won’t be able to afford to continue living where we presently live on our retirement funds. However, a nice 5th wheel would make living very nice indeed. As a matter of fact, most 5th wheel trailers we’ve looked at over the years are much nicer than our current home. No plan is perfect, but we looked down the road, and this is what we’ll probably end up doing. We’ll need to sell off a lot of stuff, because even in a big 5th wheel trailer, you can’t fit everything in it that you now own.

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So, if you have a travel trailer, a 5th wheel trailer, or are in the market for a pressure cooker, check out the many different models that Hawkins has to sell. I’m guessing you’ll find one that is just perfect for your needs. I believe the model that was sent to us by Big Jack in Arkansas was about $26, give or take a few cents. It’s a great investment and a great gift for our long-term survival needs in our travel trailer.

Cascio’s Note: If you are entertaining the notion about living in a travel trailer or even a 5th wheel trailer, pick up a copy of Brian Kelling’s book Travel-Trailer Homesteading Under $5,000. It’s a great starting point, with some good information in it.

Obama’s Wide Open Throttle

Eight years ago, Barrack Hussein Obama (BHO) and his cronies were swept into office by a naive electorate that fell for their vague promises of “Hope and Change”. But today many of us have lost hope, and we have all suffered from the change. It was as if a locomotive had a change of engineers, and the drunken replacement accelerated the train with a wide open throttle. Obama’s statist-collectivist policies have been instituted at a breakneck pace.

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Let’s take a few minutes to ponder Obama’s legacy and just what all of BHO’s “change” has wrought:

  • Massive government debt. With the help of a Republican-controlled congress, our 44th president, has amassed more Federal debt than his 43 predecessors, combined. Our children and grandchildren will bear the burden of those debts.
  • Emasculated military forces. Not only have our soldiers, sailors, and airmen been subjected to the disgrace of having to serve with open homosexuals, but now the size of our military is shrinking. The intentional draw-down of the U.S. Army now has its manpower smaller than in 1939.
  • Socialized medicine. Once just a scheme of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, America’s formerly first-rate private healthcare system has been socialized. Failure to enroll in this “not a tax” tax program subjects Americans to a graduated system of fines. Thankfully, Christian cost-sharing programs like Samaritan Ministries, Christian Healthcare Ministries, and Medi-Share are still available as legal alternatives to Obamacare, but that window of opportunity may close in the near future.
  • Leftist courts. BHO’s appointments to the Federal courts and to the Supreme Court have been almost universally been hardline socialist democrats. Typified by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, BHO has consistently nominated judges who are both statist-collectivists and “activists” who ignore both precedent and the intent of our Constitution’s framers. The effects of Obama’s many court appointments will still be felt for decades after Obama leaves office.
  • Inverted foreign policy. Rather than standing up to the onslaught of radical Islamic extremism, the BHO administration has quite unevenly both turned its back on our long-time allies, like Israel, and cozied up to dictators. By embracing the Arab Spring movement, the BHO Administration has thoroughly fouled up our foreign policy, alienating our allies and making our nation a mockery in most nations.
  • A shrinking middle class. Obamanomics, so-called “free trade”, oppressive taxation, and crony tax credits have all worked together to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, gradually destroying our nation’s once vibrant middle class.
  • Federal officials used as bully boys. The FBI, BATFE, EPA, and IRS have been used as apparatchiks against perceived enemies of the state. The notorious Lerner “Special Projects” scandal selectively delaying or denying the tax exemption of nonprofit conservative groups was just one example. Most recently, FBI HRT teams were deployed to Oregon, in response to the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge headquarters. The FBI’s message in Oregon was clear: Step out of line, and you end up lying face down in red snow.
  • Federal gun-running. With the intent of discrediting American gun-owners, Operation Fast and Furious was put in operation, intentionally allowing American guns to be illegally exported to Mexican drug lords. The end result of the gun-running scandal was that Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress, but no official ever answered for this state-sanctioned perfidy.
  • Institutionalized corruption: Obama presidential campaign contributor Bruce Heyman was named the U.S. ambassador to Canada. (It is amazing what rounding up $1 million in campaign contributions can do for a man.) During BHO’s first term, the creditors of General Motors were left twisting in the wind, while the socialist UAW benefited. Following campaign contributions, Solyndra received $535 million is taxpayer funds, but the company went bankrupt. The promised “4,000 new jobs” never materialized. Current campaign finance laws allow tremendous influence to be exerted by corporate donors. In the past few years, Hillary Clinton has amassed an astounding $200 million dollars in “speaker’s fees”, in presenting speeches at one million dollars per speech. And we are told that there was no quid pro quo for these enormous fees. Meanwhile, the Clinton Foundation has taken in millions in donations from foreign governments and corporations, and again we are told that “it is perfectly legal” and again that there was no quid pro quo. But let me be frank: I know corruption when I see it, and I see it plainly, both in BHO’s White House and with the Clintons.
  • Homosexual “marriage” and gender-bending. Spurred on by the mass media’s relentless brainwashing, the institution of marriage has effectively been destroyed. The latest affront is the legalization of cross-gender use of restrooms and locker rooms. The BHO Administration recently announced that it would withhold Federal funding from any school that does not allow cross-gender uses of restrooms.
  • Common Core curriculum. With the full backing of Obama, the Department of Education has instituted collectivist Common Core standards for America’s schools. This pervasive system is undermining the independence of both the states and local school districts.
  • Open borders and un-vetted immigrants. The way that the BHO Administration has handled our borders and immigration policy has been horrendous. These policies have left us much more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Only time will tell the full implications of BHO’s blunders.
  • The rise of the surveillance state. Continuing a trend that started with the second Bush Administration, Obama has condoned the pervasive surveillance of the American people. There are now countless cameras and license plate scanners in operation, permanent archiving of all Internet activity, and monitoring of nearly all telephone calls, with deep, persistent archives. It is like a Stasi agent’s dream come true. Our Fourth Amendment rights are under attack, and the courts are doing little to stop it.

But Not All Bad News…

All of the preceding is just a sampling, and it might seem quite depressing and disturbing. However, there has been some good news in the past eight years. One notable failure of the BHO Administration has been their intended disarmament of the civilian populace. Aside for some executive orders that still stand, nearly all of their attempts at “gun control” have been blocked by Congress and the courts. Meanwhile, nondiscretionary concealed carry permits are now available in nearly every state, and permitless (Vermont style) concealed carry laws are expanding to many states. I expect this trend to continue. Having a well-armed citizenry provides a crucial check on the Federal government. In effect, the Second Amendment is the insurance policy for the rest of the Bill of Rights.

A More Sober Engineer?

The upcoming quadrennial presidential election presents both an opportunity and a substantial danger. Please be prayerful that America gets better leadership. We cannot afford to have another four or eight years of leftist lunacy. Pray for God’s mercy on our nation. And always be ready and willing to stand up and fight if full-blown tyranny descends on America. – JWR

Note: Permission is granted for re-posting of this entire article, but only if done so in full, with proper attribution to James Wesley, Rawles and SurvivalBlog, and only if the included links are preserved.)

Recipe of the Week: Shortcut Chili Con Carne

Ingredients

  • 1 lb lean ground beef
  • 1 small onion, chopped
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 to 2 tsp chili powder
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 (8-oz) cans tomato sauce
  • 2 (16-oz) cans kidney beans, drained

Directions:

  1. In a skillet or slow-cooking pot with a browning unit, break up beef with a fork and cook until lightly browned.
  2. Pour off the excess fat.
  3. In a slow-cooking pot, combine the meat with onion, salt, chili powder, bay leaf, Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce, and kidney beans.
  4. Cover and cook on high for 2 to 3 hours.
  5. Remove the bay leaf and serve.

Makes 6 to 7 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!

Letter Re: Comms Using Photos – Would This Work?

Hi Hugh and James,

I just finished reading The Religion War by Scott Adams. It’s a short, very good book about Christianity vs. Islam in the future as both sides prepare for war. In it, he wrote something that made me curious if it would work. In order to defeat the use of computers scanning emails to find key words or phrases, his characters do something I’ve never thought of. “Cruz’s intelligence forces electronically searched every message that crossed the Internet, but their sniffing programs were looking for text, keywords, key phrases, and encrypted files. (His people) thwarted the filters by simply handwriting their messages on photographs of landscapes, scanning in the entire pictures, and sending them as email attachments. A human could easily read the handwritten message on the photo, but a computer wouldn’t find enough regularity or structure to identify where a tree ended and a letter began.” What do you think? Would this work?

HJL Comments: The technology of facial recognition and handwriting analysis is fairly mature, and the technology can easily be used to recognize “other” things in pictures. It wouldn’t get 100% recognition, but the system would be good enough to flag the data for further investigation by a human on those that it couldn’t read outright. To implement this on a broad scale would require significant resources, and while the alphabet agencies’ giant data vacuum certainly records the raw data, the data is only archived if you are targeted in some fashion.

It’s all a matter of resources. If you are low on the list, not many resources will be expended on you. If your communications get a higher priority, more resources will be allocated. When the full force of the resources of the government get pointed at you, there is very little that will remain secret. Even with encryption, they can bring a serious brute force attack against it, and the only way you can remain secret is to have some sort of self-destruction of the data when too many failures happen. (And of course, we all know how the FBI vs. Apple turned out. A 10 million dollar bounty is a serious motivation.)

Staying off the radar is the best method. Constantly changing methods runs a distant second. The only method that has never been broken is a true one-time pad encryption. While it’s simple to implement, even the smallest slip up in OTP methodology will compromise it, considering the amount of resources that can be focused on it.

Initially the method you describe might give some obscurity (but not security); however, the moment “they” know it is happening the obscurity is lost. Additionally, SurvivalBlog ran a link to an article a while back that showed how the contents of messages were not necessary to grasp the importance of an individual: Using Metadata to find Paul Revere. While seemingly complicated, this is really a simple analysis. Yet it identifies Paul Revere as critical to the American Revolution. What if the British had done this sort of analysis? As we have seen in the Burns, Oregon fiasco, TPTB are not above identifying the critical personnel and removing them from the overall picture. Using nothing but metadata obtained in the typical three or four degrees of separation that the alphabet agencies use on communications, it shouldn’t be too hard to identify Kevin Bacon, considering the resources they can bring to the table.

Economics and Investing:

Items from Professor Preponomics:

US News

Restructuring the National Debt (Mises) Excerpt: “US presidential candidate Donald Trump made more waves yesterday by suggesting he might attempt to reduce the US national debt by renegotiating with creditors.” …and of course there is follow up! From Zero Hedge… Trump on Debt Renegotiation: “You Never Have to Default Because You Print the Money” Warning: Commentary following article may contain bad language and/or inappropriate avatars.

Puerto Rican Debt Crisis is Coming to a Head (Barrons) Excerpt: “Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank, which plays a key role in the island’s finances, defaulted on $3.9 billion of debt last week, while working out a deal with about 25% of creditors that would pay them around 47 cents on the dollar.”

International News

Saudi Arabia’s Powerful Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi is Fired (Fox News Business) Excerpt: “Mr. Naimi, who had been the kingdom’s oil minister since 1995, has been a loud voice against lowering Saudi Arabia’s production when prices fall, a departure from its past tactics.”

Saudi Arabia Names Khalid al-Falih Energy Minister to Replace Naimi (Reuters) Excerpt: “Riyadh believes that cheap crude alone can balance the market by stimulating demand and shutting down high-cost producers.”

Greek Parliament Approves Pension Cuts and Tax Rises as Protesters Clash with Police (The Telegraph) Excerpt: “…the latest reforms demanded by the European Union and International Monetary Fund in exchange for fresh funds from Greece’s 86 billion euro (£68 billion) bailout agreed in July, the third for the debt-laden country since 2010.”

According to Deutsche Bank, the “Worst Kind of Recession” May Already Have Started (Zero Hedge) Excerpt: “Sarcasm aside, let’s summarize: according to Deutsche Bank the worst kind of a recession, an ‘endogenous one’ in which labor demand plunges as ‘corporations are not just tired of negative profit growth, but also because they are drawing a line in the sand from the perspective of defending margins’ may be imminent….” Warning: Commentary following article may contain bad language and/or inappropriate avatars.

Personal Economics and Household Finance

Survival Buzz: How to Move from the Mid-Way Point of Prepping (Backdoor Survival) Excerpt: “Are you at the point where you are comfortable with your prepping progress? By that I mean you have done enough to know you can get by if you have to, and, for better or for worse, wonder if you have done enough.”

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SurvivalBlog and its editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. Please see our Provisos page for details.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Reader J.N. sent in some interesting recipes for preppers. Note: These are for informational purposes only.

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L.G. sent in this link on learning how to shoot a target outside from an inside position – A very useful skill to have: Defending a Bug In position takes practice and skill.

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It could just be that some manager has a particular fear, but…Why Were Texas Game Wardens Just Issued Nuclear Radiation Detectors? – Sent in by B.B.

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A new listing at our SurvivalRealty.com spinoff site (owned and operated by my #1 son) just caught my eye: a 46.9 acre sustainable permaculture farm in Hawaii. Take a quick scan of the more than 225 listings now at the site. There are some amazing properties! – JWR

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Mike Williamson, SurvivalBlog’s Editor at Large, sent in the link to this blog with first hand reports from Venezuela.

How to Use Amazon for Economical Purchasing- Part 2, by Sarah Latimer

How to Locate/Shop for Items

The main principle here is database searching functions. There are literally millions of products available through Amazon, and it would take almost forever to read through their entire list of product offerings, especially since there are duplicates made available by multiple vendors. You want to find exactly what you are looking for as quickly as possible and find the best value, however you define that in your particular situation. Sometimes, it is for a disposable in which case the least expensive item may do the trick. Other times, it is critical that the item endure over a long time. Regardless, you need to get started by finding the items that meet (or exceed your specifications and need). Here are some ideas of how I hone in on items fairly quickly:

  1. Search Specifically in All Departments. If I have a pretty good idea of what I am looking for, I start off by using the search window within the drop down “All” departments. By searching all departments, I am performing the largest sweep for an item. If I am shopping for a men’s hooded rain jacket, for example, I could simply type in “men’s hooded rain jacket” and drop down to search within “Clothing”, but then I might miss the jackets listed in the “Sports & Outdoor” category. So, initially, I type in the most specific description of what I am looking for and searching for those items within “All” departments. However, if you are looking for 99% isopropyl alcohol, you may not want to search in “All” departments. Instead, you may want to search for “isopropyl alcohol” within the “Health and Personal Care” department so that you don’t find every product containing alcohol, or you may want to be specific by searching “99% isopropyl alcohol”, which would be a more precise search and could be searched within all departments. I would follow the latter options and search using the most specific description. In doing so, I still get 440 product options to browse through. The results include a lot of alcohol options– everything from quart, gallon, and 5-gallon size containers of 99%+ alcohol to individual alcohol swabs and disinfectant wipes in dispenser canisters and more.
  2. Search and/or Browse in Categories and Sort to Target Item. If you are shopping for a men’s lightweight hooded jacket, but you don’t know what kind or color of jacket you want, you might just want to browse. While shopping for a man’s hooded rain jacket, you could find the options in a variety of ways. You could go to the search window and type “men’s hooded jacket”. If you know that you want a “men’s navy, waterproof, lightweight, hooded rain jacket”, then you could type all of these keywords into the search field and come up with dozens of options. Alternatively, you could browse by department. You could go to the “Clothing” category and select “Men”. Then, select “Clothing” (versus accessories, uniforms, et cetera) and “Jackets”. From there, you can either browse or refine your selections again by selecting “Trench & Rain”. At any point in this process, you can also type some description into the search window to refine the options shown. At the time of this article, we are shown 166 mens trench or rain jackets to choose from. That’s a pretty large selection! Now, you can just browse through in the order that Amazon has listed them, or you can choose to reorder them to your liking, using the “Sort by” field. I like to use this field to help me find the highest quality and best prices. I will search by lowest to highest price and also by average customer review (rating). I personally am not interested in the newest arrivals, as I am not one to jump onto the latest and greatest fashion fads. I want tried and true items, especially when it comes to my prepping supplies! The new arrivals usually haven’t had enough buyers to provide good feedback on the products, and this feedback is very important information to me.
  3. Use the “Refine By” Options to Get More Specific with Customer Rating, Maker, Size, et cetera. The “Refine By” options are down the left column on my computer. (I don’t use know where they are placed on a Smartphone or iPad, since I like to use the computing tool with the largest screen and multiple tabs when I’m shopping and comparing prices.) When I do a search and come up with thousands of options, I often refine my search by looking for only those products that have been reviewed highly. To do this, I refine the search to items with only four or more stars. If I’m looking for clothing options, I also look for items available in a specific size. On certain types of products, it is also important to me to have an item made by a certain maker. When it comes to knives and blades, Hugh has a few favorite makers, so I look for knives or blades from specific makers that fit my search description. One of my sons is a big fan of Cold Steel knives, so when I’m shopping for a knife for him, I search for the type of knife he wants and then use the “Refine By” option to select Cold Steel as the maker option. This way, I don’t have to scroll through a lot of knives that are not from Cold Steel to find the one I want to buy for him.
  4. Read the Reviews! Now, while I just above stated that I sometimes refine my searches based upon customer ratings, those are not always trustworthy as the basis for making your final selection between two or more products. I highly recommend that you always take some time to read a sampling of the product reviews, unless the item is so standardized that you don’t worry. For example, there probably isn’t a lot of difference between the quart size bottles of 99% isopropyl alcohol, so you can just pick one with a high rating and go with that fairly confidently. However, there may be some difference in packaging and shipping. This is one of those rarities, since it is fairly consistant as a single ingredient. Most other products can be “duds” presented as something better or different than they are. While a product may have a five-star rating, you may read that all of the reviewers say is that it “arrived as described” and none have used it. That five star rating has little meaning, other than that the supplier ships it in a timely manner. Down the road a bit, that won’t mean a thing. What matters is whether the item satisfies its purpose or not. You may alteratively read that all of the reviewers of an item who rated it with four stars received the product for free or at a reduced price in exchange for their “fair evaluation and review”. You may also see that just over half of the handful of ratings are five star ratings with very favorable comments by people who have actually used the product over time and the other nearly half are one star ratings by people who didn’t like the color or didn’t read the description and bought the wrong thing or said it wouldn’t do what they wanted it to do (which was something other than what it was designed to do). These one star ratings skewed the overall rating significantly, but it doesn’t mean the product isn’t a five star product. I saw this in the case of a coffee/spice grinder once, where people were trying to use it to grind nuts and were frustrated when it gummed up and quit working. It was’t designed to grind soft, oily sunflower seeds and almonds! Yet, these folks gave the product one star ratings, while those who used it for coffee and hard spices gave it five stars. I bought it in spite of its low three and a half star rating, and our family successfully used it for the purposes it was intended, and we still use it years later. You need to read to find out what the strengths and weaknesses of a product are. Just note that more and more vendors are offering their products for free or at reduced prices in order to get reviews because the vendors recognize that a large number of high ratings is helpful to moving their product forward and giving buyers confidence, but the reviewers are required to note this at the end of their reviews, which I appreciate. I read those reviews but consider them a little less reliable than those from consumers who paid full retail price for the product. Since the reviewers didn’t pay full price, they may have a lower expectation of the item. Their detailed information about the product is still valuable, and I have pleasantly seen some good critisms come for these reviewers. Basically, the star rating is not adequate in and of itself to use in choosing between two products. You must read the details in the reviews from actual buyers! Honest feedback is quite valuable in comparing products. I have even been surprised and pleased to read some interesting recommendations on how to use items for survival purposes and have seen SurvivalBlog articles referenced and linked within Amazon product reviews! They can be quite informative and helpful in selecting and also in utilizing products.
  5. Look for the “Frequently Bought Together” Suggestions. If there is a companion product that is helpful in the use of some item, down below the item’s description there is usually a list of other products listed as “Frequently Bought Together”. This can make it easy to find appropriate items, too. Even if you want something different, this may give you the specifications/sizing information you need to help you begin your own search.
  6. Search for “Bulk” when Buying Disposables. When shopping for disposables, such as paper towels, household cleaners, food items, toothpaste and toothbrushes, and even items that store a long time, like essential oils, it is often more economical to buy large volume items or multiple items in a purchase pack. So, I often search for the item I’m looking for along with the word “bulk” behind it to help me locate these larger items and compare pricing. For example, a four pack of toothpaste may cost $29, while a single tube of the same toothpaste is $8, including shipping. However, a twin pack of the same toothpaste may only cost $9.47 when part of Prime Pantry. Let’s talk about how to get these values in the next section.

Getting a Good Value

Think about what you really need in a product and use that in your search parameters. Then, look for prices and, most importantly, read rating reviews. I want to obtain a product that performs its function well and will continue to do so for an extended period of time in exchange for my family having to part with the least possible amount of money. I will pay for quality over junk, but I don’t want to waste a dime. Remember my mom’s lecture to me: “a penny saved is a penny earned”. I take my job of being a frugile buyer for our family seriously. It is one of the ways I can make a great contribution to our family and is an area others recognize I have skill, thus I do a good deal of shopping for multiple families.

I never had the opportunity to meet my maternal grandmother. Folks say she was a shrewd business woman, and back in the late 19th and early 20th century people came from multiple counties to ask her to accompany them to the livestock auctions, as she was very good at selecting livestock and negotiating deals on their behalf. My mother was an accountant and watched every penny she spent. I supposed I may have come by my skill through some geneology and observation, as my mother was the most frugal woman I ever met, but we ate well, dressed well, and always lived in a very comfortable home. I had no knowledge of any struggles. When I look back on what my parents were able to build and save on their meager income, even durig the Depression, I know that they were conservative spenders and wise with their money. I hope I am teaching my children and grandchildren the same.

Search Products and Read Reviews to Find Quality and Get Educated Before Hunting Best Prices

Amazon offers a number of ways to save, but first you have to make sure you aren’t sacrificing on quality. While some products may only have three stars, once you read the reviews you find that the few reviewers simply were not good shoppers and ordered the wrong color or didn’t read the description of the product and ordered the wrong size, yet scored the product low even though the mistake was their (the buyer’s) error rather than anything to do with the quality or functional of the product. I’ve seen this time and again where buyers didn’t read descriptions and then blamed the manufacturer or the product because it didn’t perform a function they wanted. Still, the buyer was angry over their mistake and took out their frustration in the rating and review rather than realizing their own error and just returning it. Those who bought the item for the function it was designed to fill gave it five stars, but those who gave it one star brought the overall rating down to three stars. It deserved five stars. I’ve also seen some four or four and a half star items that were only rated by people who had been given the product in exchange for a review. I don’t have any problem with products being given to people for review or sold at reduced rate, but I am some how a bit suspicious that those reviews are slanted more favorable than they might be by someone who paid full price. I look for reviews from those who paid full price to validate any others.

Read about the products and specifications. Many reviews are detailed and will discuss applications and situations where the product works best and where it does not. Sometimes, knowing how it fails is very useful. Consider your intended use and then adjust your search accordingly. Find good quality products first and make sure you know what you want and are well-educated on how to tell what is the best and what is not.

Searching and reading before making a purchase, particularly a significant purchase, it very important. I read even on small items, because then I will know what to come back to reorder confidently the next time. If I did my homework up front, I can be confident that my family is eating, using, wearing, drinking, and enjoying the best I can afford to give them. So read up before hunting those deals, because what looks like a deal may not be a deal if the product is junk.

Shipping and Prime Membership

Prime membership is $99 a year and offers free two-day shipping on many products, plus the membership includes some additional free services, including Prime Amazon video/movies ( similar to Netflix) and Prime audio/music. Also a once-a-month free Kindle book download from the lending library of over 500,000 books is part of the membership. I have not used the lending library, so I cannot comment on the quality of this service, but the Amazon video and audio has been useful at times. There is also a photo cloud storage service, but I strongly caution against using this! Since all cloud storage is always actually on someone’s server, you can lose control of whatever you upload to “the cloud”. Should someone (i.e. government or a hacker) access your cloud-stored photos and use facial recognition software to identify someone in your photo library, they will now know that you are one of their associates also. Alternatively, if you are targeted because of your patriotic, survivalist, and/or political position, or for any other reason, then your family and friends could also be at risk because they appear in pictures with you. Hugh and I simply recommend that you do not use cloud storage service, period! However, it is my opinion that the shipping benefit of Prime membership alone is worth the membership fee, and then the free video and audio downloads are just icing on the cake.

With shipping costs at other websites ranging from $5 and usually much more per package, regardless of how small the item, I estimated that all I needed to do was make more than 16 small purchases a year to find Prime membership profitable for the shipping benefit alone. That comes out to just a little more than one per month, and I do a LOT more than that! Even when I did a comparison of web stores that offered free shipping on $100+ orders, I found the Amazon products we frequently purchased were priced considerably lower than other stores, so shopping Amazon and using Prime made the most sense for our family. Sure, we also shop the warehouse, like Costco, for items, but it is a long drive and takes almost a full day of our time. There are the occasional times when Amazon is less expensive than Costco or other sources, and it is far more convenient to have items dropped at my doorstep than for our family to make the drive to the big city.

Also, with the Prime membership you have some advantages with third-party sellers also, including free returns on defective products and so forth that are not quite so clear cut or expedited without the Prime membership. When I got the membership, I saw an immediate across-the-board improvement in services.

If you only make a few purchases a year on Amazon and don’t want to invest in Prime membership, wait to accumulate enough items in your cart so that you are spending at least $25 (though this amount may have gone up) on Amazon-inventoried items (items not shipped from third-party providers) in the same order. You will have the option for reduced shipping charges. While this shipping option is slower, it can help you save money.

Prime Pantry for Your Everyday Grocery Store Items Delivered to Your Door

For $5.99 per box, those with Prime membership can order the heavy, bulky, or otherwise grocery store items and have them delivered to their doorstep at prices that often rival the big box store and grocery store prices. I have bought my share of Prime Pantry boxes. For survival food, a box of long grain and wild rice rice-a-roni, a can of meat, and then a can of cream of mushroom soup offer an excellent one-pot casserole that can be brought to a boil in a cast iron dutch oven over a rocket stove and then put in a wonder oven and left for only an hour or so to make a wonderful casserole dinner. I got the boxes of rice-a-roni for under $1 per box on a Daily Deal, which I’ll talk about a little later in the article.

Prime Pantry boxes vary in size and are allowed to hold up to 45 pounds of product. Amazon says, “Your order will be packaged in an appropriate-sized box, based on the dimensions and weight of the items. This box could be anything from the size of a shoe box to as large as a suitcase.” While shopping in the Prime Pantry category, you are told what percentage of the box the product fills. Amazon says, “A percentage is calculated for each item, based on its maximum dimensions or weight. For example, a 12 pack of soda and a 6 pack of paper towels are each approximately the same percentage. While the soda is heavier, the paper towels take up more room.”

If you don’t fill a Prime Pantry box, the items you have purchased will be shipped in an appropriately sized box, though Amazon is famous for excessive packaging and over-sized boxes. If you sign up for Prime membership, be sure you have a means for disposing of or repurposing lots of boxes. BTW, there are some great uses for cardboard boxes. I use strips of cardboard, written on with a Sharpie marker and covered completely in packing tape, placed on sticks that serve as almost-free garden markers. They sure aren’t the prettiest garden markers I’ve ever used, as I have used some beautiful copper ones, but those got bent and lost over time. When the cardboard ones get destroyed, it is no big loss; I have lots more Amazon boxes at my disposal.

Hunting the Deals

Amazon often offers good prices on products. I’ve found at times that Amazon’s price on a particular product is lower than the manufacturer’s price; I suppose this is the case because shipping is factored into the final price. Once again, the prime membership or free shipping for higher priced items is a big advantage to shopping on Amazon. However, there are also some ridiculously high priced items for sale on Amazon, too, though usually by third-party vendors. You must shop wisely and do some comparisons to be sure you are paying a reasonable price! Usually, the items listed highest on the search list are reasonable and popular deals, but “the buyer should always beware”.

In addition to their regular, competitively-priced products, Amazon offers some limited time and limited quantity deals, identified under the heading “Today’s Deals”. Today’s Deals include:

Deal of the Day– This is a limited quantity item or items that are significantly reduced in price for the day. It is worth checking these items each day, as there are some great tools and big ticket items sometimes marked 40-50% off!

Lightning Deals- Usually well over a hundred items, many with four or five stars, offered at discount. These have quantity and time limits. You have to watch the clock, as they expire throughout the day and tell you the percentage claimed. The problem is that someone can order a quantity and it close fairly quickly. Don’t dilly dally on these!

Prime Early Access Deals– These are deals that are not yet available but are upcoming. As a Prime member, you get advanced viewing and can watch these items for when their sale price becomes active. It’s great to be able to investigate a product ahead of time, and then snag it at a significant discount within the next 24 hours. Sometimes, what I see with these is that the lightning deals become deals of the day when they are closing them out for whatever reason, whether there is a new model or Amazon just isn’t carrying it for awhile. It’s like a clearance sale and you get advance notice, if you are a Prime member. I’ve been able to buy some awesome equipment, household and camping supplies, high-quality jewelry, and awesome gifts for a fraction of their original price using the early access deals and lightning deals.

Buyer Beware

While there are some great deals on Amazon, there are some ridiculous ones, too! Be careful to read the quantity, size, ounces, and descriptions. You may assume that toothpaste offer that is priced at $36 is for multiple tubes, when in fact it is for one travel-size tube. I’ve never been caught with this situation, but I have seen many of these offers listed and read a few reviews from people who didn’t notice the description size. Don’t be one to be caught expecting one thing and getting another. If the description is different than what you receive, you have a claim. If not, you are the loser. This is just another reason to read the descriptions and the reviews. Fortunately, if it seems odd or that there is a mistake in the listing, you can ask a question about the product and wait for an answer before making your purchase.

Don’t Forget Your Specialized Mom and Pop Stores, Especially SurvivalBlog’s Advertisers, Too!

With over 41 million Prime members, Amazon is a huge and convenient source of product for many buyers are looking for convenience, selection, and competitive pricing. Just be sure you don’t forget the mom and pop sellers out there also, especially your local sources who keep your small-town economy alive, and our faithful SurvivalBlog advertisers, who keep the blog coming your way day after day! Amazon truly is a wonderful, convenient tool, but there are just some things that can’t be replaced by an efficient giant like Amazon– friendly, personal customer service and specialized products. The SurvivalBlog advertisers offer both of these and more!

Enjoy shopping from the comfort of your home, whether from Amazon or another online retailer, like one of SurvivalBlog’s advertisers. I’m much happier getting my goods from the UPS driver than fighting the crowds and standing in lines at the big stores. Maybe you will be, too.

Letter Re: 9mm for Survival

Hugh / Jim,

I have to agree with almost all of what Pat Cascio said in his column about the 9mm for survival. Any gun and caliber is a compromise, and the one you have with you when you need it is better than the one sitting home in the safe.

I do have a couple of comments. I have had bad experience with the .40 Glock Korean magazines, including one of them in my Glock 35 having the baseplate pop off and the rounds dump out of the bottom of the magazine as I was in the starting box at an IPSC match. The two Korean mags I had went in the trash can after I got home. I have not had any 9mm Korean magazines, but with Glock brand mags selling for under $20 new as well as having good luck so far with Magpul and ETS brand magazines that cost less than the factory mags, I think I will continue to avoid the Korean magazines. I also keep my eyes open for police trade-in Glock mags, which usually run around $11, roughly the same as the Korean mags. I would also add to his list of guns I would trust out of the box the SIG Sauer P series as well as S&W Double Action revolvers. I do have to admit that I much prefer used guns to new, probably buying around ten used guns for every new one I buy. (Okay, I buy too many guns, but I am working on it). Police trade-in pistols are an outstanding bargain, and I have never had a problem with any that I have purchased, even the well-used Israeli trade-ins. – B.F.