The “Chicken Little” Syndrome- Part 2, by Peter Martin

…opinion but just an opinion. Some make it sound like the opinion they are expressing is an informed opinion, although for the most part it is just opinion. Some talk radio show hosts are very good at this, and it is misleading. Some news anchors, both local and national, are also quite good at making their opinion sound as if it were the Gospel truth, which it isn’t. We must stay informed, and the only way to do such things is to search for information from as many sources as possible in order to discern what is true and what is not true. I thought about listing out some of the sources I use, but then those sources are my opinion of what a good news source is, and it’s not your opinion. So, let me provide a good insight into determining good sources of information and determining not so…




A Story of Caution in Today’s Police State, by Lebannen

…it there because I tend to forget where I placed it.” Officer: “Okay, stand right here, I am going to run a check on you to verify who you are and to make sure you are authorized to operate this vehicle.” The Officer returns and states: “I will walk you to your vehicle.” You and the Officer walk back to the vehicle, and you sit down and buckle up. Then the officer asks you: Officer: “Can I search your vehicle, since you carried your information so readily; I feel that you are hiding something from me?” “Do you have any weapons or contraband I need to know about?” You: “I do not agree to any search, as I have done nothing wrong and complied with your every request.” The officer is instantly angered by your answer and removes you from the vehicle, places you in restraints, and pat searches for




The Five Steps of OPSEC Assessment by Stone of Scone

new address, I made sure no connection between the old and new address existed. I forwarded all of my street mail to a P.O. Box at my old location’s Post Office. I opened a new P.O. Box at my new location, and did not give a forwarding address. Next, I selectively notified friends, the electric company, and very few others of my new P.O. Box. Nothing else got forwarded. This also got rid of a lot of junk mail. And I did not get a street mailbox at my new home for two years. The next item in building my OPSEC for my new home was to develop a bullet proof solution for having a street address. Various government agencies, such as our state’s driver’s license section, require that you have a valid “911” home street address and not a post office box. Some home deliveries and online purchases require…




David in Israel Re: On Gun Laws in Israel and War Worries Update

…two long guns for hunting but insurance is unavailable so no new long gun permits. However, current holders can still keep these guns. Here are basics on handguns: Three years of citizenship, doctor’s letter, one day of class, and shooting exam required, you must have what is deemed a “valid reason” to get this permit. Valid reasons for handgun permit include: three years with police reserve unit, military officer over captain, or residence in “higher risk” area like the West Bank. The police will ask publicly that licensed owners carry when there is increased levels of terrorism. I am guessing 40%-to-60% of men in the West Bank carry a handgun as do many women. In settlements you may be able to join the anti-terrorist squad and be issued an army M16. Combat soldiers must carry a firearm and magazine while on leave. War? Looks like tings are getting hot again…




Preparedness Notes for Tuesday — January 31, 2023

…the exact opposite of what folks were hoping. They apparently don’t understand the concept of “The Gray Man”, since these bounced messages stand out like a sore thumb and everyone who gets notified looks at the messages in detail bringing a level of unwanted scrutiny — especially from financial institutions. Instead of fake e-mail addresses, they should use valid throwaway e-mail adresses. Whatever you do, please don’t use fake Gmail addresses. So many of the fake e-mail addresses include “gmail.com” that Gmail has now rate-limited how many e-mails can be sent to Gmail from SurvivalBlog’s mail server. This makes even those who do use valid Gmail addresses suffer. We are now getting rate-limiting bounce messages from known valid e-mails because Gmail won’t let them through. — Today’s guest article was too short to be included in the judging for Round 104 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest, which ends today….




Letter Re: Available Rawles Books–Request for Clarification on Various Editions

…narrated by Dick Hill. It is available through iTunes and Audible.com (as a MP3 download) or on CD from many booksellers, such as Amazon.com. I’m presently writing two sequels to the novel, set contemporaneously to the storyline of “Patriots”, but in different locales. Simon and Schuster plans to sequentially release the two sequels in 2011 and 2012. I also wrote “Pulling Through“, a feature length survivalist action/adventure movie screenplay that is very loosely based on “Patriots”. The full screenplay text is available for free download. It is also available as a wire-o bound print-on demand book from CafePress. Nonfiction: “How to Survive the End of the World As We Know It”, from Penguin Books, New York. There are now more than 60,000 copies in print. The UK edition of the same book with a slightly different cover (but essentially the same text) was recently released by Penguin Books of England….




Keeping Your Communications Private, by F.J.B.

…a best-selling book, or any book that is associate with an”cause”!] Coded messages like this can also be sent by any method you choose including radio and phone after the SHTF. This type of code system can also be employed by Mutual Assistance Groups (MAGs) when communication privacy is of utmost importance. Keeping your communications private will prove to be more and more difficult as bureaucrats look for new ways to use the new and intrusive technology that continues to develop. Older, low-tech methods of communication may have to be used when privacy is your biggest concern. A secure communications network is impossible without trustworthy and like-minded people. The greatest tool in private communication is a network of trustworthy people. Finding and developing such a network is not an easy task and will become much more difficult to do after an economic, political, or societal collapse. Whom do you trust?…




Terms Of Service

…THAT YOU ARE LEGALLY ABLE TO ENTER INTO THIS AGREEMENT. PRIVACY POLICY. Company respects your privacy and permits you to control the treatment of your personal information. A complete statement of Company’s current privacy policy is located at https://survivalblog.com/privacy-policy/. Company’s privacy policy is expressly incorporated into this Agreement by this reference. USER CONTENT. You grant Company an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty free license to use the materials you post to the Site or Service. By posting, downloading, displaying, performing, transmitting, or otherwise distributing information or other content (“User Content”) to the Site or Service, you are granting Company, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, consultants, agents, and representatives a license to use User Content in connection with the operation of the Internet business of Company, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, consultants, agents, and representatives, including without limitation, a right to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate, and reformat…




GPS for Day-to-Day Use and Survival, by Mike S.

…map and compass skills. (You can also use your GPS receiver to help verify that your compass reads true by obtaining the coordinates of some prominent feature, and then computing the magnetic bearing from your compass test point to the feature. Yes, even a genuine military lensatic compass can be off by several degrees.) For information about using GPS receivers with maps (specifically topographical maps), I’d recommend the book GPS Made Easy , by Lawrence and Alex Letham. While the book is directed at hikers and other outdoor enthusiasts, it provides a good discussion, using real-world examples, about navigating with GPS receivers using topographical maps with different coordinate systems. The book is now in its fifth edition. The fifth edition omits a discussion about the use of a map and compass for backup navigation, in the event of GPS receiver failure, found in the previous editions. Summary I believe GPS…




Letter Re: Archiving Downloaded Instructional Videos

…local computers. An easy way to do this is with the Firefox Fast Video Download plug-in. While watching an unlicensed video on YouTube and other sites, select the Tools menu, Fast video download, and then select the video you want to save. The videos may have the name of the video or a generic name like youtube_video. The extension may be .flv or .mp4, or there may be one or more of each. Select the format that you want (I personally prefer .mp4) and save the file, renaming it if you need to. To playback either of the files I recommend the VLC Media Player, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The combination of the Fast Video Download plug-in and the VLC Media Player give you a free way to build up that survival video library and use it without an Internet connection, anywhere. – LVZ in Ohio…




Letter Re: Internet Resources on Preparedness and Self-Sufficiency

…large monthly bandwidth expenses. PayPal: steve@stevespages.com.) At a minimum, be sure to downlad the exploded diagram and the user manual for each of your guns. The Hesperain Foundation offers free downloads of many books, including the now classic Where There Is No Doctor by David Werner, and Where There Is No Dentist by Murray Dickson Global Security has lots of free military manuals. (Text only.) PR68.com has lots of links for U.S. Military FMs and TMs. Wikipedia has some links to PDFs of U.S. Military manuals. For advice of stocking up, download a copy of The Alpha Strategy by John Pugsley. For some good Christian doctrine and Bible stidy, I recommend the many free books offered by the Institute for Christian Economics, established by Dr. Gary North. Others, For a Fee: I also recommend buying the 38-year compendium of The Mother Earth News on CD-ROM. There are several e-Bay vendors…




Notes from JWR:

Great News! For those that have asked, a digital download of the SurvivalBlog Archive 2005-2011 is now available for $9.94 via PayPal! (This can be left on your laptop’s hard drive, or easily copied onto a memory stick or to a backup CD-ROM.) Also, for you Kindle fanatics, the searchable Kindle version of the SurvivalBlog Archive (2005-2011) is now available. While its lacks some of the advanced features of the expanded SurvivalBlog Archive CD-ROM, it’s greatest advantage is of course that Kindle readers are very portable and can easily be recharged with just a small solar panel! The Kindle version of the archive is priced at just $4.97, or $3.93 for digital download. Note that the Kindle version does not include an electronic copy of my book “Rawles on Retreats and Relocation”. (Which is included free in the CD-ROM edition and its digital download equivalent.) Also note that this huge…




Update: SurvivalBlog Archive 2005-2012

The expanded SurvivalBlog 2005-2012 archive has been selling at a fast pace, via digital download. The DVD version of the archive should be available in another 6 or 7 days, after we’ve had time to test some prototypes. The DVD will be priced $2 higher than the digital download. Thanks for your patience. This new archive collection has expanded bonus material (a digital copy of my book Rawles on Retreats and Relocation–normally $28 in hard copy–12 Firearms Manuals, and 14 U.S. Military Manuals), an improved user interface (with the same look and feel of the SurvivalBlog web site), and of course one more year of the blog content. The digital download and DVD both include the archives in HTML (10,131 pages) and PDF (7,923 pages). The blog archive is fully keyword searchable. It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The archive provides you with all of the SurvivalBlog context since…




Preserving a Digital Library, by H335

…XP License sticker (with the product key), you can either look for one that does, or purchase new copies of Windows XP that vendors are trying to unload since support is being discontinued in 2014. • Adobe Reader (Free download from Adobe.com) • PDF Creator (Free download, PDFForge.org) • Darik’s Boot and Nuke (Free download from DBAN.org if you are a do-it-yourselfer and tech savvy) Preservation issues Storing Paper Paper is very sensitive to relative humidity and moisture. If you are doing any kind of dried food storage you probably know how to handle this already, but if not you need desiccant packets, and airtight storage containers. Store in a relatively temperature consistent location. You can use the dry ice trick to exhaust the air from storage container just as you would with foods. Storing Electronics Remove the batteries from the laptops for storage. They won’t be any good over…




Digital Communications Capabilities for Prepared Families, by Prairie Dweller

As most preppers know, regardless of where you are on your prepping journey, the ability to communicate is a vital need. We need to communicate with our families, and we need to get information about what’s going on around us. The need for communications, as well as the traditional methods for establishing them, has been well addressed in preparedness circles. What has not been addressed much is what digital communications capabilities have to offer you as a prepper. I have been an amateur and commercial radio operator for many years, and the capabilities of digital communications as compared to voice communications astonishes me still. Digital communications involves the interconnection of computer hardware and radio equipment in order to send and receive messages that are generated by a computer by utilizing radio transmissions. While analog voice communications have their place, digital communications offer the ability to send messages over short or…