SurvivalBlog.com

Premised on the advantage of the’ element of surprise’, the bold and hastily conceived juggernaut, the subsequent hasty plan of piss poor preparation, lead to the piss poor execution of an operation of huge proportions, in that made Operation Market Garden, impressive in all regards. Although I’m certainly not a military historian, one can easily take that perspective, and learn something. The 1977 movie, A Bridge Too Far  [which was recently made available via Amazon Prime] is actually a great big fat 3-hour-long After Action Report, Hollywood style.  The fine and honest You Tube channel, History Buff provides criticism, insights and praise.

The primary lesson of the Market Garden failure, to reiterate, is that ‘haste makes waste’, and that pitifully poor planning will result in  pitifully poor performance. Getting into specifics points of failure is easy given the utter failure on many levels that made Market Garden monumental: The inability to use radio effectively, and disregard of intelligence are two glaring points of failure of that operation. Don’t let it be yours. They could have used Signal Intelligence (simply listening, collecting and, developing actionable intelligence to improve their strategy), yet sadly radio of the period was not fully leveraged in that capacity for that operation.  And they ignored reports from the Dutch underground.

Modern radio technology makes both communications and DIY signals intelligence much easier today.  We should strive to make the best of what we have today.  It costs little, and is not really all that complicated. But it is vital, and a first line of defense that would be more than silly to ignore. It could be fatal If ya know they are a’coming, we can bar the door.  Taking the element of surprise out of the attack by listening for it, or jamming it. Even the simplest form of home brew signals intelligence can blunt, or defeat an attack before it commences. And wouldn’t that be a good thing?   Warning others is the primary job of communications.Continue reading“A Failure to Communicate: Operation Market Garden, by Tunnel Rabbit”

More and more people are seeing the common sense in having some stored food on hand in case of emergencies. Many of these people are not preppers but just want to have the peace of mind knowing they have some extra food on hand for “just in case.”

The only problem for some is the question of “Where to start?” With food it is an easy start. Well, then again, maybe not so easy after all. If you decide to have food on hand for an emergency then you should think just that one line through some. What kind of an emergency? Does it even matter? If the emergency is the power being out and you live in an all-electric house you would either need food that could be eaten without cooking or you would have to have an alternate way to cook the food instead of your microwave or electric range.

Most canned goods can be eaten right from the can with no heating. They might not be as tasty that way but they would be safe to eat and would provide the same nutrition whether hot or cold. Or you could use your gas or charcoal grill to heat up or cook your food as long as you had the fuel on hand for the grill. Or you could use your fire pit for cooking as long as you had fuel on hand for that too. The fire pit might require some pre-emergency test runs so you learn how to cook over that open fire. And maybe buy some cast iron fry pans and cooking pots.

Or a very easy method of cooking your food in a power down situation is to use a camp stove. If you buy a propane model using common one pound tanks, it can be safely used inside your house on your kitchen counter to cook your meals. It would be almost as easy as cooking on your normal range. Many say using a propane camp stove is unsafe inside a home. But with a window cracked open, the propane camp stove is safe. It is the same as the gas ranges found in half the homes in America (and nearly every restaurant).Continue reading“Food Storage: The Basics, by Pete Thorsen”