Update: Budget Preparedness–Survival Isn’t About Stuff, It is About Skills

JWR’s Introductory Note: This is an update to an article that I wrote for SurvivalBlog back in June, 2008. It includes an adenda from my first wife Linda (“The Memsahib”), who passed away in 2009. It is part of a series of SurvivalBlog 20th Anniversary update re-posts, in recognition of the fact that the majority of readers did not join us until recent years.

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I often stress that a key to survival is not what you have, but rather what you know. (See my Precepts of Rawlesian Survivalist Philosophy web page.) In part, I wrote:

Skills Beat Gadgets and Practicality Beats Style. The modern world is full of pundits, poseurs, and Mall Ninjas. Preparedness is not just about accumulating a pile of stuff. You need practical skills, and those only come with study, training, and practice. Any armchair survivalist can buy a set of stylish camouflage fatigues and an M4gery Carbine encrusted with umpteen accessories. Style points should not be mistaken for genuine skills and practicality.

To expand on those precepts, consider the following:

Balanced logistics are important for everyone, but absolutely crucial for someone that is on a tight budget. If you have a three-year food supply, then a quantity miscalculation for one particular food item will likely be just an inconvenience. But if you only have a three-month supply, then a miscalculation can be a serious hazard. Be logical, systematic, and dispassionate in your preparations. You need to develop some detailed lists, starting with my “List of Lists” spreadsheet. Be realistic and scale your retreat logistics purchasing program to your budget. Avoid going into debt to “get prepared.” A friend of mine who was a Physician’s Assistant went way overboard in 1998 and 1999, stocking up for Y2K. The massive credit card debt that he racked up eventually contributed to a prolonged mental depression and his eventual suicide. May he rest in peace.Continue reading“Update: Budget Preparedness–Survival Isn’t About Stuff, It is About Skills”

JWR’s Meme Of The Week:

The latest meme created by JWR:

Meme Text:

The Good News: Venezuelan President Maduro Now Has An American Advisor on Controlling Inflation.

The Bad News: The Advisor is Joe Biden

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 Day:

“Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.

But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.

For every man shall bear his own burden.

Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” – Galatians 6:1-10 (KJV) 

Preparedness Notes for Saturday — December 6, 2025

On December 6, 1884, an aluminum capstone was set atop the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.. (In the 1880s, aluminum was still rare and considered precious.) At 555 feet, this made it the tallest man-made structure in the world, overtaking Cologne Cathedral.

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December 6, 1534: Quito, Ecuador, was founded by Spanish colonists on the ruins of an Incan city.

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And on December 6, 1917, the French munitions cargo ship SS Mont Blanc collided with Norwegian SS Imo in the harbor of Halifax, Canada. The resulting explosion killed at least 1,700 and injured more than 9,000 people. This event has been gauged as the world’s largest pre-atomic explosion.

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Today’s feature article is a re-post from our friend and fellow American Redoubt resident Brandon Smith. He is the editor of the free Alt-Market.us website and the by-subscription newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch. Both publications are well worth reading.

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We need some 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.

 

 

America’s Poison Melting Pot and the Luxury of Tolerance, by Brandon Smith

Modern western culture is an absolute anomaly in the history of human civilization. If one studies the principles and doctrines of nearly every other society and empire around the world, you will not find one that allows mass immigration of foreigners with contrary ideologies. You will not find one that allows foreigners to migrate without strict assimilation and loyalty.

From the Arab states, to China, South Korea, and Japan (until recently), to India and beyond, every culture maintains a sense of cultural supremacy. There is an absolute expectation that newcomers will adapt to political policies, belief systems, social norms, etc. Most of the world for thousands of years has operated in this way. Only the modern west deviates and only the west is chastised as “xenophobic” for establishing barriers to foreign influence.

The US, in particular, has been typecast as a “global melting pot”, even though the vast majority of immigration up until the last half of the 20th century was from other western nations with similar beliefs and traditions. The melting pot theory was largely promoted and glorified by socialist elites in the early 1900s and was not a value of the common American.Continue reading“America’s Poison Melting Pot and the Luxury of Tolerance, by Brandon Smith”

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:

Along with our dog, Lily and I took a three-mile ski/hike up into the adjoining National Forest two days ago. This was the first time this year that there was enough snow to ski on.  We saw a couple of sets of quite distinctive wolf tracks in the snow. The paw prints made our large dog’s prints look tiny, by comparison. Needless to say, we both pack pistols whenever we are any distance from our ranch house.  (Typically, that is our Glock Model 30 .45 ACP pistols, with 13-round Glock Model 21 magazines.)

This past week, I had a “Holy Grail” piece come in from an estate sale purchase, for the Elk Creek Company inventory.  It is a very rare pre-1899 production example of a Model 1898 8×57 Mauser sporting rifle. This rifle was crafted by Tiroler Waffenfabrik Peterlongo, a renowned Innsbruck, Austria gunmaker from 1826 through 1898. This is the first time in more than 40 years in the antique gun business that I’ve ever been able to get a very early  Model 1898 rifle in captivity. Less than 1/10th of 1% of Model 1898 Mausers are pre-production Federally-exempt antiques, and of those, just a handful were originally made as sporting rifles.

Now, Lily’s part of the report…

Continue reading“Editors’ Prepping Progress”

The Editors’ Quote Of The Day:

“Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city!

She obeyed not the voice; she received not correction; she trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God.

Her princes within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves; they gnaw not the bones till the morrow.

Her prophets are light and treacherous persons: her priests have polluted the sanctuary, they have done violence to the law.

The just Lord is in the midst thereof; he will not do iniquity: every morning doth he bring his judgment to light, he faileth not; but the unjust knoweth no shame.

I have cut off the nations: their towers are desolate; I made their streets waste, that none passeth by: their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant.

I said, Surely thou wilt fear me, thou wilt receive instruction; so their dwelling should not be cut off, howsoever I punished them: but they rose early, and corrupted all their doings.

Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.

For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent.” – Zephaniah 3:1-9 (KJV) 

Preparedness Notes for Friday — December 5, 2025

On December 5th, 771, Charlemagne became the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman. Geneticists have estimated that the majority of modern Europeans and Americans of European descent are distantly related to Charlemagne, who fathered 18 children.

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And on December 5th, 1964, the first Medal of Honor awarded to a serviceman for action in Vietnam was presented to Captain Roger Donlon of Saugerties, New York. Captain Donlon and his Special Forces team were manning Camp Nam Dong, a mountain outpost near the borders of Laos and North Vietnam.

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Today’s feature piece is a brief history lesson from Senior Editor James Wesley, Rawles, (JWR).

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We now need 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.

America’s Future Can Be Seen in Spain’s Past

My goal in the essay is to use a well-known historical precedent to illustrate the U.S. Federal government’s untenable indebtedness predicament.

Spain, 1500-1590

GranadaIn 1500, the New World had just recently been discovered, and Spain had just recently forced the Moorish invaders from the Iberian Peninsula. Expanding their army, expanding their navy, and the lengthy campaign to kick out the Moors had been expensive for the Spanish crown. They also needed to maintain a large army to keep the Islamic North Africans from returning. There were also the expenses of building and supplying a large fleet of ships, in the hopes of bringing back treasure and warding off pirates. And they also needed to arm and equip an army to subdue the various native tribes in the Americas.

When they began seizing territory from largely Stone Age tribesmen in the Americas, the Spanish luckily had the advantages of Spanish steel, matchlock muskets, cannons, and (unwittingly) deadly European microbes on their side. The latter included Swine flu, Smallpox, chickenpox, bubonic plague, measles, typhus, influenza, scarlet fever, pneumonia, and malaria. These germs killed far more native warriors than the Spanish soldiers and sailors ever did.Continue reading“America’s Future Can Be Seen in Spain’s Past”

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.  This week, a FRED graph showing the M2 Money Supply, provided by the St. Louis Federal Reserve. JWR’s Comment: With such a dramatic expansion in the number of U.S. Dollars in circulation, there is no doubt why inflation is so pernicious, and why commodities are enjoying secular bull markets.

The thumbnail below is click-expandable.

 

 

Economics & Investing Links of Interest
  • Silver was shining brightly again this week, as the Silver Shorts have nearly surrendered, following the Black Friday Comex trading outage debacle. Spot silver briefly hit $58.03 USD per Troy ounce in Asian trading on Monday morning  (December 1, 2026.) By Tuesday afternoon, spot silver on the Comex was up to $58.83. That was another all-time intraday high, for silver. This brought the silver-to-gold price ratio below 72-to-1. Wednesday morning on the Comex: $59.15. On Thursday, there was some predictable profit-taking. But September’s $41 per ounce silver now seems like ancient history. The demand for taking physical delivery of silver in settlement from the futures markets (Comex, LBMA, and Singapore) has been huge. And given the law of supply and demand… The physical supply of silver in the West is fully depleted. So, I fully expect to see $70/oz. spot silver in the next few weeks. And if silver survives some expected greatly increased margin requirements on the Comex futures market, there is a possibility of a full-blown breakout to above $100 USD per Troy ounce.  – JWR
  • Reader Tom H. sent this: Goldman Sachs polled institutional investors on gold, and found many expect it to hit $5K next year.
  • CME Trading Is Restored to Wrap Up Week After Hours-Long Outage. JWR’s Comments: They blamed it on a “server cooling” problem.  But in reality, the problems were Dollar weakness and some hot Asian demand for physical silver.
  • Social Security’s day of reckoning is nearly here.
  • At Engelberg Ideas: A crash is coming.

Economics & Investing Media Tips:

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

Preparedness Notes for Thursday — December 4, 2025

December 4, 1812: Peter Gaillard of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, patented a horse-drawn mower.

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December 4th is the birthday of Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, (born 1912). He was an AVG “Flying Tiger” volunteer pilot for the Chinese Nationalist government, WWII Marine Corps aviator, and Medal of Honor recipient. (He died January 11, 1988.) A proto-Redoubter, Pappy Boyington was born in Couer d’Alene, Idaho and was raised in Spokane, Washington.

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 122 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A Gunsite Academy Three-Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any of their one, two, or three-day course (a $1,095 value),
  2. A Peak Refuel “Wasatch Pack” variety of 60 servings of premium freeze-dried breakfasts and dinners in individual meal pouches — a whopping 21,970 calories, all made and packaged in the USA — courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  3. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses. Their course catalog now includes their latest Survival Gunsmithing course.
  4. HSM Ammunition in Montana is providing a $350 gift certificate. The certificate can be used for any of their products.
  5. Harvest Guard is providing a 200-Piece Bulk Mix Pack of their Regular and Wide-Mouth Reusable Canning Jar Lids & Gaskets. This is a $161 + shipping value.

Second Prize:

  1. A SIRT STIC AR-15/M4 Laser Training Package, courtesy of Next Level Training, that has a combined retail value of $679
  2. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from TOUGHGRID.com (a $287 value).
  3. Preparedness author Jennifer Rader is offering a $200 purchase credit for any of her eight published food storage and medical preparedness books, including the Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Café series, the Armageddon Pharmacy series, and the Medicine Surrounds Us series.
  4. A transferable $150 FRN purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun. There is no paperwork required for delivery of pre-1899 guns into most states, making them the last bastion of gun purchasing privacy!

Third Prize:

  1. A Berkey Light water filter, courtesy of USA Berkey Filters (a $305 value),
  2. Two sets of The Civil Defense Manual, (in two volumes) — a $193 value — kindly donated by the author, Jack Lawson.
  3. A $200 credit from Military Surplus LLC that can be applied to purchase and/or shipping costs for any of their in-stock merchandise, including full mil-spec ammo cans, Rothco clothing and field gear, backpacks, optics, compact solar panels, first aid kits, and more.
  4. A transferable $150 FRN purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun.

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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.

 

Small Scale PV Power For TEOTWAWKI, by Mike in Alaska

When it all hits the fan and the grid is gone for whatever reason, be it EMP, all out nuclear exchange, a hurricane, or possibly a tornado, snow knocking down trees, or as we say up here in the interior of Alaska the four reasons power goes out: it’s either too hot, too cold, too wet, or the dawgs pee on the phone pole, and when that happens, we are now all equally being given a ride back in time … a time of no lights to just switch on, no medical life sustaining devices, and now it’s “game-on”, folks.

Over the years,I have accumulated several solar panels ranging from a military surplus fold-up panel, to ones that I bought with various types of radio gear along with their included battery packs, and most recently one that I purchased with a Dakota Lithium 2400 Power bank System that I recently reviewed in a SurvivalBlog article  (see Part 1 and Part 2.)I decided to try out the panel that came with the system this last weekend to see how well it really performs up here in the northern latitudes. (64°.xx.xx” North / 147°.xx’.xx” West) where our sunlight is getting shorter every day. Continue reading“Small Scale PV Power For TEOTWAWKI, by Mike in Alaska”

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, we look at developments in naval Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIEDs)–so-called “Kamikaze Drone Boats”.

Ukraine’s Kamikaze Drone Boats Hit Russian Tankers

Ukraine Releases Footage Of Kamikaze Drone Boats Striking Russian Shadow-Fleet Tankers.  The article begins:

“Two Russia-linked “shadow fleet” tankers suffered sequential strikes on Friday in Turkey’s Black Sea waters.

Preliminary reporting from Turkish authorities indicates both incidents resulted from external interference, consistent with a mine, drone, missile, or unmanned surface vessel.

By Saturday morning, Visegrád 24 circulated new footage from Ukraine showing explosive-laden kamikaze drone boats striking both tankers at the stern, rendering the vessels inoperable.”

Victor Davis Hanson on the War in Ukraine

SurvivalBlog staffer Tom Christianson mentioned this essay by Victor Davis Hanson, over at American Greatness: The War in Ukraine: Lots of Questions and a Few Answers.

Mamdani’s Marxist and Islamic Overseas Ties

Reader H.L. sent us this: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Links to Pakistani Marxist, Islamist, and CCP-Aligned Networks.

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