January 17, 1746: In the Battle of Falkirk Muir, the Jacobites under Charles Stuart defeated Hanoverian forces.
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And on January 17, 1950: The Great Brinks Robbery. 11 men robbed $1.2 Million in cash and $1.5 Million in securities from armored car company Brink’s offices in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1956, eight of the robbers were convicted and handed life sentences in prison.
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Today, we present an entry for Round 122 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest.
Editor’s Introductory Warning: The devices described in this article can cause great bodily injury. We live in a highly litigious society. Employing caltrops in any situation other than a “Without Rule of Law” societal collapse would invite a lawsuit that could potentially cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or perhaps even more than a million dollars in assessed damages, attorney fees, and court costs. There is also the potential for these to be stepped on inadvertently by family members, friends, pets, or livestock. So, ONLY use them in absolute extremis, and only in a fenced-off area that will prevent the equivalent of a “friendly fire” incident. – JWR
The best tire spikes available can be crafted by you at home. You are going to really love this one.
Making tire spikes has to be one of the most popular prepper & survival “how-to” skills out there and you are going to learn how to make tire spikes like the pros. This design that we are going to go over is by far the most effective and durable available. Both National Geographic Doomsday Preppers and the Discovery Channel Myth Busters have already released very popular tire spike video designs with over 2.5 million views, but the design I am going to reveal here far surpasses both of those featured designs.
Tire spikes are also sometimes called caltrops or road spikes. Forms of tire spikes or caltrops have been around for many ages and some of the first uses of these devices can be traced back in history to the times of medieval knights when caltrops of various sizes would be used against enemies on foot and horseback. Tire spikes are also thought of as road spikes or spike strips that law enforcement may deploy to stop fleeing vehicles effectively by rapidly deflating their tires. Tire spikes have even been featured in various Hollywood action films like the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, when tire spikes are dropped by Bond’s BMW spy car.Continue reading“Caltrops: Making Homemade Tire Spikes, by Joe. R.”
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!
We kept busy with our regular winter chores this week. There was plenty of manure hauling and firewood stacking to do. I also had to do a bit of snowplowing and shoveling, but generally temperatures stayed above freezing.
The odd-sounding squeal of a pressure relief valve told us that the water pressure tank under our house failed, on Sunday evening. It was about 35 years old, which is about a long as those can be expected to last. Thankfully, our water quality here at the ranch is superb, so it was not sediment that killed the pressure tank. It was just rust. We were without running water for just a day and a half. The old tank had a 32-gallon capacity, and the replacement holds 83 gallons. With any luck, the new tank will still be working when I’ve gone to meet my maker.
This week, we took delivery of two Uimoso deer carts with folding steel frames. I’ll be adding some plywood panels to make them more versatile. I’ll attach those with heavy-duty plastic cable ties, so the panels can be removed quickly, if need be. The carts were advertised as having a 500-pound capacity. They were just $75 each, so I have my doubts about their longevity and their capacity, but time will tell.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
“I Am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.
Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.
My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.
He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.
He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.
He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.
Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.
He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked.
He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places.
He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate.
He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.
He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.” – Lamentations 3:1-13 (KJV)
On January 16, 1605, the first edition of “El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha” (Book One of Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes was published in Madrid.
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January 16, 1668: The Infamous sword duel between George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and Francis Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. They fought over Anna, Duchess of Shrewsbury and mistress of Buckingham. The Earl was mortally wounded.
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The 20th Anniversary (2005-2025) SurvivalBlog archive waterproof USB sticks have arrived from the manufacturer! Orders will be mailed out starting next week, in the order that they were received. We expect to sell out in just a few weeks, so order soon!
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Today’s guest article was written by a gentleman who has expressed an interest in advertising in SurvivalBlog, so it will not be part of the writing contest judging.
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We need a few more entries for Round 122 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest.
More than $978,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 122 ends on January 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. In 2023, we polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Please refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic.
(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.)
During winter, even the U.S. Embassy monitored the grid closely. The possibility of a complete system failure was taken seriously enough that commercial flights were placed on twenty-four-hour standby for potential evacuation of official personnel. We were nongovernmental residents. Those plans did not include us. Our planning had to be personal.
Cold changed how time felt. Days stretched and compressed unpredictably. Waiting became a skill. Movement slowed, not from laziness, but from necessity. Mistakes in cold were costly. Dropping something, misjudging exposure, forgetting a step could mean numb fingers, wasted effort, or worse.
At night, the building sounded different. Pipes knocked and shifted. Wind pressed against the structure. When the power was out, darkness was complete in a way I had not experienced before. There were no ambient glows, no distant streetlights filtering in. You adjusted your movements carefully, counting steps, memorizing layouts.Continue reading“Preparedness Lessons From Communist Mongolia – Part 2, by G.K.”
In Economics & Investing Media of the Week we feature photos, charts, graphs, maps, video links, and news items of interest to preppers. Today: A map of State Minimum Wages, in Dollars, as of January 2026.
The thumbnail below is click-expandable.
(Graphic courtesy of Reddit.)
Please send your economics and investing links to JWR. (Either via e-mail or via our Contact form.) Thanks!
On January 15, 1907, the first 3-element vacuum tube was patented by American inventor Lee DeForest.
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This is the anniversary of the 2009 “Miracle On The Hudson” engines-out emergency water landing.
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Today is the birthday of Dr. Edward Teller who co-invented the H-bomb and worked on the Manhattan Project.
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Today’s guest article was written by a gentleman who has expressed an interest in advertising in SurvivalBlog, so it will not be part of the writing contest judging.
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We need a few more entries for Round 122 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest.
More than $978,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 122 ends on January 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. In 2023, we polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Please refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic.
We lived in Mongolia in the early 1990s, for a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, during a time when the system had officially ended but its habits had not yet loosened their grip on daily life. I was in my early thirties, married, with two young daughters, trying to build a life far from anything familiar. We were not passing through, and we were not insulated expatriates. We were attempting to function inside the local economy, under local conditions, with consequences that were immediate and personal.
At the time, I did not think of what we were doing as preparedness. I had no language for it. There was no ideology attached to the experience, no checklist to consult, no theory to reference. There was simply life as it presented itself each day, and life required adaptation. At first, the differences felt cosmetic. Language, clothing, food. Small disorientations that seemed manageable with time and effort. But slowly, and then unmistakably, deeper assumptions began to collapse.
Food was the first. There were no grocery stores in the sense we understood them. No aisles. No fluorescent lighting. No refrigeration cases humming steadily in the background. Food came instead from informal markets and small vendors, scattered and inconsistent, appearing and disappearing without explanation. Availability shifted from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.Continue reading“Preparedness Lessons From Communist Mongolia – Part 1, by G.K.”
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: mutated bird flu viruses.
Reader B.T. sent us this, from The New York Times: Bird Flu Viruses Raise Mounting Concerns Among Scientists. The article begins:
“In the United States, the term bird flu has become synonymous with a particular virus that has devastated poultry and dairy farms over the past few years. But that virus, called H5N1, is not the only form of bird flu in circulation.
Concerned scientists are keeping a close eye on other types, including a fast-changing flu virus called H9N2.
In a study published in November, researchers in Hong Kong showed that over the last decade, this virus has acquired mutations that allow it to spread more efficiently among people and to cause more severe disease.
H9N2 is often discounted as a threat, because it causes only mild symptoms in poultry. But in people, especially children, the virus can cause more severe illness than the seasonal flu.
There have been fewer than 200 reported cases of H9N2 in humans since 1998, but the number has been rising sharply. China reported 29 human cases of H9N2 last year, compared with 11 in 2024.”
At the Whatfinger.com news aggregation site: Trump on Iran: We’re looking at some very strong options… I’m getting an hourly report, and we’re going to make a determination very soon.”Continue reading“The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods”
“The wild Indian power of escaping observation, even where there is little or no cover to hide in, was probably slowly acquired in hard hunting and fighting lessons while trying to approach game, take enemies by surprise, or get safely away when compelled to retreat.” – John Muir
On January 14, 1799. American inventor Eli Whitney received a government contract for 10,000 muskets. While his competitors largely produced guns with hand-fitted parts, Whitney became famous as an innovator with his designs that featured interchangeable parts.
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And on January 14, 1873: “Celluloid” was registered as a trademark by its inventor John Wesley Hyatt.
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I just heard that cartoonist Scott Adams passed away. Rest in Peace.
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Today we present another entry for Round 122 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:
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More than $978,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 122 ends on January 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. In 2023, we polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Please refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic.
(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.)
In a previous article I had described a possible need for having some form of radio communications receiver in a TEOTWAWKI situation. It is just good policy to have something you can hide, run on very low voltage, and in the case of this radio, a battery that you can recharge using a solar panel to generate a charge into a battery bank. This radio is an AM receiver set only. However, the chip set can work at much higher shortwave (SW) frequencies and I am researching the possibility of using it for that purpose.
Continue reading“The Elenco Two-IC AM Radio Kit – Part 2, by Mike in Alaska”
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. Pictured above is an old stereo view of the frosted beards of some Klondike miners.
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Mike in Alaska wrote:
“In the time since December 20th, 2025 and this morning we have had consistent temperatures at or below -35 degrees; in addition we have had 23” of snowfall, and our snow will not melt until mid April or May … Juneau is on the ocean and it is a tragic event for them inland, as it is for all the costal areas. Welcome to the real Alaska. The last winter we had in this State was in 2012 which was as bad as this one is just not as long lived as this one is. Yesterday it was -7 degrees out during the day for about five hours ..then it dropped to -27 again, this morning the skies are clear, the aroura is spectacular, and its -37 below zero again. We had five consecutive days of temperatures at -51 below zero to -57 below zero and a wind chill factor that froze the doors shut. In the 15 years that I’ve lived here this is only the second time I’ve seen this kind of winter, so I guess it was overdue.
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A book excerpt from author Jack Lawson: Lice (and How to Deal with Them). You wil recognize Jack Lawson’s name, as one of our writing contest prize donors.
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From freelance writer Jasper Craven, at Wired: True Patriots Are Cashing In on the Apocalypse. JWR’s Comments: Craven’s approach to the subject was antagonistic. And his selection (or the editors’) selection of photographs to run in the article not-too-subtly attempted to cast the two rival companies in a bad light.Continue reading“SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets”
