SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets

Our weekly Snippets column is a collection of short items: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. Note that we may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters.

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Reader Mary L. sent this: Virginia ‘Assault Firearm’ Sponsors Say Governor Wants Amendments to New Law.  JWR’s Comments: Governor Spanberger is a Big Government Democrat stalwart who is strongly anti-Second Amendment. This draconian law is scheduled to take effect on July 1st.  I hope that Virginians have already heavily stocked up on battle rifles and full capacity magazines. (The limit for newly-acquired magazines in Virginia will be 15 rounds.) The Tidewater Gun Show in Virginia Beach last weekend must have been a frenzied scene, for magazine vendors. We should remember that Virginia was the home of George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson. How far it has fallen since its formative years!  Pictured above is the south side of the Virginia Capitol. (A public domain photo by Taber Andrew Bain.)

An Important Update! Virginia gun law on hold after judge issues injunction.

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Neighbors dig through Venezuela rubble to search for loved ones as death toll climbs.

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Reader C.B. mentioned this good news: Supreme Court strikes down Hawaii gun restriction.

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You’ll Now Lose Your U.S. Passport If You Owe More Than $2,500.

Continue reading“SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets”

SurvivalBlog’s American Redoubt Media of the Week

This weekly column features media from around the American Redoubt region. (Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and Wyoming.) Much of the region is also more commonly known as The Inland Northwest.

REDOUBT NEWS LINKS

Send Your Media Links

Please send your links to media from the American Redoubt region to JWR. Any photos that are posted or re-posted must be uncopyrighted. You can do so either via e-mail or via our Contact form.

Editors’ Prepping Progress

To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug-out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year.  We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in your e-mailed letters. We post many of those — or excerpts thereof — in the Odds ‘n Sods Column or in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!

Jim Reports:

Although it was partly cool and rainy weather, we had another busy summer week: On four days, I did some more firewood cutting and splitting.

With Lily’s help, I drained, scrubbed, re-filled, and chlorinated our Redneck Pool.

I helped an elderly neighbor clear and cut up another fallen tree, into firewood.

We replaced the eight deep cycle 6-volt batteries in our Bad Boy Buggy electric UATV. With the exception of some faded and worn seats, that vehicle is back in great shape.  We get a lot of use out of it, with our various chores here at the Rawles Ranch. Most notably we use it for hauling when we go out to cut firewood.

On the rainy days of the week, I did some more organizing in the shop, and replaced the handles on two of our splitting mauls. I generally prefer American-made hickory handles.

I’m a bit concerned that we are getting too much rain this summer.  We buy most of our grass hay from a friend who lives about 20 miles away. I’m concerned that he won’t have 10 consecutive dry days for cutting, tedding, and baling his hay fields this year. I’m praying that things go well. We’ve contracted for 25 tons.

Yesterday, I slaughtered and butchered a four-month old ram lamb. Several more young rams from the same flock are scheduled to meet their destiny, over the next few weeks.  There will be more details on the butchering and lamb meat preserving in Lily’s part of the report…

Continue reading“Editors’ Prepping Progress”

JWR’s Meme Of The Week:

The latest meme created by JWR:

Joy Reid Meme

Meme Text:

Our Thoughts and Prayers for the Health of Joy Reid…

She Has Developed a Chronic Blabber Infection

Notes From JWR: Do you have a meme idea? Just e-mail me the concept, and I’ll try to assemble it. And if it is posted then I’ll give you credit. Thanks!

Permission to repost memes that I’ve created is granted, provided that credit to SurvivalBlog.com is included.

The Editors’ Quote Of The Week:

“The Constitution … is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819

Preparedness Notes — June 23, 2026

This Week in History:

On June 23, 1810, John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor) organized the Pacific Fur Company in Astoria, Oregon.

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1931: American pilot Wiley Post and Australian navigator Harold Gatty took off from Roosevelt Field, New York, to attempt to set a new record circumnavigating the Earth. They successfully complete their series of flights in 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes.

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And on June 25, 1798, US President John Adams signed into law the Alien Friends Act, authorizing the president to deport any foreigner deemed “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.”

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I’ve completed writing the new Introduction for a revised hardback edition of my first novel, Patriots.  Lord willing, that edition (with a spiffy new cover and a Foreword written by Michael Z. Williamson) should be available from Ulysses Press on December 8, 2026.  But please wait until that day to place your order. (Mark your calendar.) – JWR

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Signal Nomad (one of our advertisers) has expanded their product line to include Faraday bags, a rugged cellular phone with removable battery (for stealth), power banks, and more. Take a look at their site and click on “Products”.

Health, Fitness, and The End Of The World, by D.F.

In this article, I’ll describe how medicine and society will change, and why you should become a fitness nut and not just a prepper.

There’s a stereotype of preppers, and it’s not kind: A middle aged or older man with a BMI that passed 30 before he was 30 and grew by 1% every year, a ton of guns, canned food, and a half-hearted vegetable garden.

I know because I resemble that. As I’ve been struggling to recover my health, I’ve had a few realizations that have kept me on the path to fitness.

Health is something money can’t buy. Ultimately, whether you’re healthy and fit is a question of discipline and commitment. Having children or dependents should serve as inspiration for the average prepper to do more than just go to the range and plink at blue helmet cutouts. However, as someone who has worked as a Registered Nurse in healthcare, I wanted to discuss in depth some things that we don’t really think about.Continue reading“Health, Fitness, and The End Of The World, by D.F.”

Dark Mountain Arms StowAway Rifle in 5.7x28mm, by Thomas Christianson

Chambered in 5.7x28mm or in 9mm, the Dark Arms StowAway Rifle packs more punch than similar survival rifles chambered in .22LR or .22WMR.

The StowAway is a single-shot, bolt-action rifle. It has a detachable, 16-inch, threaded barrel. It is 31.78 inches long when fully assembled. I found the rifle to be simple, reliable, and reasonably accurate during my testing.

The rifle is light at only 2.8 pounds, easily breaks down into less than 17 inches in length, but is ruggedly built in spite of its feathery weight. A hollow pistol grip provides enough space to store many rounds of 5.7X28mm ammo. The rifle is made in the USA.

At the time of this writing, the StowAway rifle had a manufacturer suggested retail price of $419 at darkmountainarms.com . The StowAway is also available as a pistol or as a Federally-registered short-barrel rifle (SBR).

If you are looking for a pinweight survival rifle that hits harder than a rimfire, then you might want to take a look at the StowAway.Continue reading“Dark Mountain Arms StowAway Rifle in 5.7x28mm, by Thomas Christianson”

SurvivalBlog Graphic of the Week

This week’s graphic is a map that shows the population density of U.S. counties, as of 2026.  Every  prepper knows that in a crisis, fewer people generally means fewer problems. Note the low population density in the American Redoubt. There is only one county in the entire American Redoubt region that is shaded dark green. That is Ada County, Idaho, with 519,000 people. For perspective, that is just a bit more than Raleigh, North Carolina. Ada County’s population includes the roughly 236,000 residents inside the city limits of Boise. – JWR

The thumbnail image below is click-expandable. (Graphic courtesy of Reddit.)

 

 

 

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Please send your graphic ideas to JWR. (Either via e-mail or via our Contact form.) Any graphics that you send must either be your own creation or uncopyrighted.

Economics & Investing Media of the Week

In Economics & Investing Media of the Week we feature photos, charts, graphs, maps, video links, and news items of interest to preppers.

Economics & Investing Links of Interest

Economics & Investing Media Tips:

Please send your economics and investing links to JWR. (Either via e-mail or via our Contact form.) Thanks!

The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from JWR. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. In today’s column, some more technological advances with negative consequences.

An AI Camera Put Another Wrong Man in Jail

Over at The Liberty Daily: How a Bad AI Camera Hit Put the Wrong Man in a San Diego Jail Cell. Here is an excerpt:

“They tried to stop a red Alfa Romeo on Broadway about ten minutes later. The driver fled at speeds reaching 100 miles per hour and officers lost the car near Little Italy without ever reading its plate. They were left with a description of a red Italian sports car with tinted windows and not much else.

Then a Flock reader five miles away in Old Town photographed a red Alfa Romeo on the 2200 block of Moore Street. Detective Gary Gonzales, one of the officers who had been chasing the carjacker, got the image and, according to his report, “’ecognized the vehicle in the image as the vehicle [we] were pursuing due to the red paint and black tinted windows.’

There was a problem with the timing that should have ended the case right there.

The Old Town photo was taken 23 seconds after officers in Golden Hill tried to stop the fleeing suspect. No car covers five miles of city streets in 23 seconds.”

JWR’s Comments: It is telling that they call these “Flock” cameras. That implies that we in the general public are a flock of sheep, to be shorn. By the way, I believe that we need a new acronym, to describe a Willing Human Accomplice To Artificial Intelligence Tyranny (WHATAIT). The police officer who made that arrest is a WHATAIT — and not a particularly bright one.

An Enormous Hack on Residential Proxy Networks

Three readers mentioned this at The WSJ: How Hackers Found a Back Door Into the American Living Room.

Continue reading“The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods”

SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets

Our weekly Snippets column is a collection of short items: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. Note that we may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters.

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In anticipation of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Field Gear Editor Tom Christianson recommended this insightful essay at Holly’s Substack: To Boss Ourselves. Here is a brief excerpt:

“I was raised in a culture, if not a family, that taught me my dignity came from somewhere higher than any man, any ballot, any king.

I no longer believe a great many things I was taught as a child, but I’m still sure of that one.

And it turns out the founders staked the whole country on the same wager — that what makes a person sacred is not assigned by the powerful, and so cannot be unassigned by them. No election reaches it. No majority can vote it away. It was never theirs to give, which is precisely why it is not theirs to take.”

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U.S. Army buys 9,000 DAGIR-V1 lasers for its newest rifle.

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Some interesting  observations by Ben Braddock on the newly-revised food pyramid: The Guidelines They Wanted.

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In honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration on Independence, we’ve started a sale on all of our blackpowder guns and all of our single-shot rifles and pistols at Elk Creek Company, with some deep price reductions. One of the guns on sale is an original 3rd Model Colt .44 Dragoon revolver! The sale ends on Monday, July 6th, so order soon.

Continue reading“SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets”

SurvivalBlog’s American Redoubt Media of the Week

This weekly column features media from around the American Redoubt region. (Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and Wyoming.) Much of the region is also more commonly known as The Inland Northwest. The photo above is courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service.

Redoubt News Links

Send Your Media Links

Please send your links to media from the American Redoubt region to JWR. Any photos that are posted or re-posted must be uncopyrighted. You can do so either via e-mail or via our Contact form.

Editors’ Prepping Progress

To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug-out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year.  We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in your e-mailed letters. We post many of those — or excerpts thereof — in the Odds ‘n Sods Column or in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!

Jim Reports:

We took a trip to once again visit Glacier National Park. (The photos herein were all taken by Jim or Lily.) This time, we decided to enter the park via the little off-grid town of Polebridge, Montana, up near the Canadian border.  Here is a description of that park entrance at SmokyBear.com:

“The Polebridge Entrance is the third Glacier National Park Entrance on the west side of Glacier National Park. It is a remote entrance and used mostly by the locals and hardy visitors. To access this entrance, travel about 35 miles north of Columbia Falls, Montana on the North Fork Road (Hwy 486), along the west side of Glacier Park (a mostly gravel road), then turn into the village of Polebridge. At the Polebridge Mercantile, turn left and the dirt road will take you across the North Fork of the Flathead River to the Polebridge Entrance.

This entrance will take you to some of the most pristine areas of Glacier Park, i.e. Bowman Lake and Kintla Lake. Both of these glacial lakes are roughly 7 miles long and sit in bowls surrounded by thick forests and the towering mountains of the Livingston Range. The entrance is open 24 hours a day all year around but closed to vehicular traffic from mid October to mid May depending on snow cover. Our favorite areas of Glacier Park are accessed through the Polebridge Entrance.”

The North Fork Road (Hwy 486) makes a unique sudden transition from a 70 MPH speed limit paved highway to a 35 MPH gravel road. The gravel portions of that road demand your full driving attention. Once inside the  National Park, the road is mostly one lane, and quite rough in spots. I do not recommend it for low ground-clearance vehicles.  We were surprised to see a lot of grandfathered private property in-holdings inside of Glacier National Park.  It was odd to see FedEx and UPS trucks transiting the park to reach those private cabins.

Back at the ranch, I cut and hand-split some more firewood. Our daughter expertly handled most of the stacking.

I mailed out a few more Elk Creek Company orders. Our big sale on blackpowder guns and single-shot pre-1899 rifles and pistols will be keeping me busy!

Now, Lily’s part of the report…

Continue reading“Editors’ Prepping Progress”

JWR’s Meme Of The Week:

The latest meme created by JWR:


Meme Text:

The U.S. Treasury Secretary Has Devised a New Tax That Will Balance The Federal Budget

A Tax Of Five Cents On Each Personal Pronoun In Every Contemporary Christian Praise Chorus.

Note From JWR: Do you have a meme idea? Just e-mail me the concept, and I’ll try to assemble it. And if it is posted then I’ll give you credit. Thanks!

Permission to repost memes that I’ve created is granted, provided that credit to SurvivalBlog.com is included.