The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it.

For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.

Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.

And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.

For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment.

The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea.

And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.

For it is the day of the Lord‘s vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion.

And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch.

It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.

But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.

They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing.

And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.

The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.

There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate.

Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them.

And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line: they shall possess it for ever, from generation to generation shall they dwell therein.” – Isaiah 34 (KJV)

Preparedness Notes for Friday — August 23, 2019

1

August 23rd is the anniversary of the declaration of the independent state of “Franklin” in Eastern Tennessee by the settlers there in 1784. Unfortunately, the Continental Congress rejected it, so the state of Franklin never became a reality.  Pictured is John Sevier, who served as “Governor.”

—

Seed for Security, LLC has announced a sale: Their Super Survival Pack is now 20% off. This pack includes 4 lbs. of survival seeds and 2 pints of healthful grains. All of their seed is heirloom, non GMO, and none is hybrid. Their 5 page detailed Seed Saving Guide is included. This offer is for a limited time.

—

SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 84  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public.
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  7. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Second Prize:

  1. A gift certificate from Quantum Harvest LLC (up to a $2,200 value) good for 12% off the purchase of any of their sun-tracking models, and 10% off the purchase price of any of their other models.
  2. A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
  3. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  4. A Three-Day Deluxe Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $190 value),
  5. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
  6. An assortment of products along with a one hour consultation on health and wellness from Pruitt’s Tree Resin (a $265 value).

Third Prize:

  1. Good2GoCo.com is providing a $400 purchase credit at regular prices for the prize winner’s choice of either Wise Foods or Augason long term storage foods, in stackable buckets.
  2. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
  3. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  4. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  5. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  6. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances.

Round 84 ends on September 30th, 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.

Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 4, by T.R.

8

(Continued from Part 3.)

Later that morning/early afternoon, we sat down at the kitchen table (having brewed a pot of coffee on the spare camp stove from the basement according to our “A” plan) and talked through this. We needed a balance of water, fuel, gear/shelter, food and safety/security. Optimizing the mix of these five items (plus cash and valuables) and optimizing how to pack them efficiently with some degree of access to the right items in what order took significantly longer than either of us expected when a filter criteria of “not coming back” was inserted vs “we are leaving for a temporary camping trip”.

For example, we needed to talk through specific tradeoffs of how to optimize more gear vs. more food and/or more fuel for the truck. We had plastic gas cans from Walmart in the garage and our annual plan to rotate the gas (with stabilizer) has worked well to date. We had enough spare gas to totally fill up the vehicle (and then some) and we had a tow hitch style grate/rack that would enable us to bungee cord extra gas cans, a cooler and that 5-gallon blue water jug for our camp site use. It would have been nice to know ahead of time which gas cans and which coolers would fit nicely on that hitch rack. Turns out we had bigger 6-gallon tan water jug that didn’t drip as much when pouring and would dog down better on the rack being the same shape/size as the gas jugs.

At our table top debrief (before we actually left for Colorado and Wyoming) we decided to assume that we would have the ability to somewhat replace our water (we each had life straws in our EDC packs along with larger water filter style liter bottles in each EDC pack, water treatment tablets in the 72 hour bag and a dollar store sized bottle of no scent Bleach); we packed our usual camping 5 gallon water jug with a spigot that we park on a picnic table for the family inside the car, and added the 6 gallon tan water jug (full) on the tow hitch rack/grate as well.Continue reading“Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 4, by T.R.”

Economics & Investing For Preppers

16

Here are the latest news items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. And it bears mention that most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor, JWR. Today, we look at investing in AR Lowers and Pre-1899 guns. (See the Tangibles Investing section.)

Precious Metals:

Jim Cramer: Here’s Why You Should Own Gold.

o  o  o

Estate stores dealing with rash of fake gold scams

Economy & Finance:

At Wolf Street: In Hilarious IPO Filing, WeWork Dreams of $3 Trillion in Revenue But Has Billions in Losses. Red-Ink Massacre to Come in 2nd Half.

o  o  o

Mr. Magoo speaks: Ex-Fed boss Greenspan says ‘there is no barrier’ to Treasury yields falling below zero. (Thanks to G.P. for the ink.)

o  o  o

Fuel for the Next Mortgage Bust?  “Cash-out refi hype is back full-blast. And for the first time since early 2006, people are doing it in large numbers.”

o  o  o

Negative Interest Rates: Carry an Umbrella at All Times

Continue reading“Economics & Investing For Preppers”

Preparedness Notes for Thursday — August 22, 2019

11

August 22nd, 1992 was the second day of the Incident at Ruby Ridge. FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi wounded Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris, and murdered Weaver’s wife, Vicki. It should be noted that in 1994, after being acquitted by a federal court, Weaver filed a federal civil rights case against the FBI and U.S. marshals stemming from the siege. In 1995 the government settled Weaver’s case for $3.1 million. It is commonly thought that had the weaver family stayed with the trial, the award would have been the full $200 million. In true FBI style, Lon Horiuchi was not prosecuted by the Federal government. When Idaho brought manslaughter charges against him, the trial was moved to federal court and dismissed. Horiuchi has also been accused of firing unauthorized shots at the Waco siege.

—

SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 84  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public.
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  7. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Second Prize:

  1. A gift certificate from Quantum Harvest LLC (up to a $2,200 value) good for 12% off the purchase of any of their sun-tracking models, and 10% off the purchase price of any of their other models.
  2. A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
  3. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  4. A Three-Day Deluxe Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $190 value),
  5. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
  6. An assortment of products along with a one hour consultation on health and wellness from Pruitt’s Tree Resin (a $265 value).

Third Prize:

  1. Good2GoCo.com is providing a $400 purchase credit at regular prices for the prize winner’s choice of either Wise Foods or Augason long term storage foods, in stackable buckets.
  2. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
  3. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  4. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  5. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  6. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances.

Round 84 ends on September 30th, 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.

Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 3, by T.R.

(Continued from Part 2.)

Some background: I still work almost full time, but portions of the year are full throttle 60+ hour weeks and other blocks are much lighter, with my husband retired from the military. We wanted a vacation in terms of scenery and wildlife and we wanted to test our plans across a number of elements.

To appropriately field test our plans with a degree of stress testing that would replicate a certain amount of tension present in real threat condition whilst isolating certain elements one at a time to calibrate parts of our plan in a systematic way, we tried to set a few parameters that would shape the testing conditions: 1. Pack the car and get out of dodge quickly, with the hope to leave in less than 4-6 hours; 2. Be on the road with gasoline services to get as far as possible and then artificially cut ourselves off from stores, gas and retail purchase power for some period of time. 3. Deal with weather/climate and test shelter, security/safety, water, food, health/fitness and personal fulfillment (wildlife, nature and reading) for a 30 consecutive day period of time.

For those of us without 30 days in a row available (which was us for most of our lives working until very recently), one could test Colorado (or like location) as one 10-day chunk of time and then Wyoming as a separate 20-day test of time. In the past, when we did not have these large consecutive blocks of time, we would avoid restocking for our 2nd vacation week and see how well we did running down on leftovers. That wasn’t really much fun in terms of enjoying our vacation nor did those part camping outings really have enough documentation and controls (e.g. inventory of what we brought, field notes of what worked and what didn’t) to be a true mastery of our goals.

However, building on last summer’s camping trip to the Everglades which was a completely different climate of hot, humid and wetlands vs. this summer with mountains and colder temperatures was a good variation. In retrospect, we were thrilled at our test location(s) – we saw wildlife, nature, met amazing people at a few national parks and we also went far backcountry with surprisingly few people but that’s not the topic of this essay.Continue reading“Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 3, by T.R.”

The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

26

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— 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. Today, we look at another wolf attack and feature an excellent letter forwarded by SurvivalBlog’s Editor-At-Large Michael Z. Williamson.

Democrats Threaten Supreme Court with Expansion

By way of the news aggregation site, Whatfinger.com: The party of tyranny: Democrats Threaten Supreme Court with ‘reorganization’ if justices don’t rule in favor of gun control.

Camper Saves Family From Wolf Attack

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

The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“I have an appetite for background checks. We’re going to be doing background checks. We’re working with Democrats. We’re working with Republicans.” – President Donald J. Trump, August 21, 2019 (JWR’s Comment: It is high time to call the White House, your congressman, and both of your U.S. Senators. Our liberty is at stake!)

Preparedness Notes for Wednesday — August 21, 2019

1

In 1986, Lake Nyos in Cameroon erupted with an estimated billion cubic yards of carbon dioxide gas. The gas had apparently been accumulating in the crater lake, held down by the weight of the water. When it finally erupted, the gas cloud smothered and killed every living animal, including insects, in its path until it dissipated. Outsiders learned of the disaster when they approached the villages and found animal and human bodies on the ground. The best estimate is that 1,700 people and thousands of cattle died.

—

SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 84  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public.
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  7. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Second Prize:

  1. A gift certificate from Quantum Harvest LLC (up to a $2,200 value) good for 12% off the purchase of any of their sun-tracking models, and 10% off the purchase price of any of their other models.
  2. A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
  3. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  4. A Three-Day Deluxe Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $190 value),
  5. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
  6. An assortment of products along with a one hour consultation on health and wellness from Pruitt’s Tree Resin (a $265 value).

Third Prize:

  1. Good2GoCo.com is providing a $400 purchase credit at regular prices for the prize winner’s choice of either Wise Foods or Augason long term storage foods, in stackable buckets.
  2. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
  3. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  4. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  5. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  6. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances.

Round 84 ends on September 30th, 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.

Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 2, by T.R.

17

(Continued From Part 1.)

During 2018, I made a dot chart counting how many days fit into each category A, B, C and D in terms of readiness and then converted the “dots” into a percentage of time for the year. As a corollary, if things are leaning environmentally towards TEOTWAWKI, then we would already be limiting our “D” types of trips away from home and/or starting to pursue our exit via our “B” plan scenario. If things look particularly grim but quasi-temporary, then we would limit our “C” scenarios to avoid leaving home for long blocks of time and leaning towards staying home at night altogether.

Regardless, our “A plan” (we are at home, with car stocked with a basic bug out bag in the trunk and miscellaneous winter gear for an emergency) represents our most outfitted and overstocked scenario, had already been tested multiple times from local power grid outages (Hurricane Sandy or Hurricane Irma or other ice storms) and been a major focus of our efforts over the last few years. Furthermore, we have a food rotation plan with a paper log book coupled with a large propane tank for stove top cooking, fireplace heat and a water supply. Whilst we can always make improvements, this “A” plan of “stay at home” is the strongest and most resilient of our four-pronged flowchart. We add gear, test new ideas and share them with our grown kids on camping trips each year and then back-feed those ideas into each plan. However, not all of the gear could fit into a vehicle for the “B” plan for Get-out-of-Dodge, not even close.

Around Easter/spring, we typically begin refrain from buying new groceries until we draw down some of our non-perishable food rotation to keep it fresh/cycle the stock and also because that eats down the pantry and fridge somewhat before we go on vacation to save a little money. I test a few new recipes for weekend gatherings, and we rate them for gourmet quality and ease of preparation. Since my husband does most of clean up while I do the bulk of provisioning and cooking, we added ease of clean up as a sorting criterion as well. Continue reading“Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 2, by T.R.”

JWR’s Recommendations of the Week:

9

Here are JWR’s Recommendations of the Week for various media and tools of interest to SurvivalBlog readers. The focus is usually on emergency communications gear, bug out bag gear, books and movies–often with a tie-in to disaster preparedness, and links to “how to” self-sufficiency videos. There are also links to sources for both storage food and storage containers. You will also note an emphasis on history books and historical movies. This week the focus is on nature’s greatest predator: the humble mosquito. (See the Books section.)

Books:

The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator

o  o  o

Peter X. wrote to mention one of his favorite books:  The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics

o  o  o

Edward’s Snowden latest book is already a best seller, several weeks before its release: Permanent Record.

o  o  o

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

Instructional Videos & Vlogs:

Over at Full30.com: Mud Test: H&K 416/MR556

o  o  o

Tim J. suggested three instructional videos this week:

Fill the Freezer with FREE ORGANIC MEAT from Craigslist.

“A lot of people get into small livestock in the Spring when the babies are fluffy and don’t eat very much. By late summer those same babies are big, loud, and eating you out of house and home….and you raised them so you can’t bring yourself to butcher them. In comes the smart Craigslist farmer to the rescue! Get healthy juvenile animals that only need a few weeks of better food and water and fill the freezer just before Fall. We don’t eat family pets so we don’t take any animals that the owner states they don’t want to be eaten. It works really well with rabbits, ducks, and chickens because they develop quickly and take very little extra space for the few weeks you have them.”

DIY Pallet Greenhouse Build

“I collected all of these materials last summer but didn’t like how it was turning out using only pallets. This go round we used pallets for the ends and old lumber and tin for the sides. All materials were reclaimed, even the cow panels. The idea for this project came because my renter was using our commercial greenhouse and I wanted a greenhouse for spring greens but I really needed it to be built for free. The greenhouse also needed to be wind proof since two years ago our geodesic greenhouse blew away in the early spring winds. How to anchor the greenhouse when our ground doesn’t let us get spikes in the ground? Build our raised beds and fill with compost and wood to hold the whole thing sturdy! So excited to see how it works! For now with it still being summer the cow panels could work as a trellis for green beans or anything else that needs support and could shade the greens in the bed a bit. Right now I don’t have the plastic on since we have heat for another two months. Will keep you up to date as I make improvements!”

The Best Rat Trap I Have Ever Tested. The Uhlik Repeater Trap. Mousetrap Monday.

“In this video we test out an incredibly effective rat trap called the Uhlik Repeater. If you have a rat problem this is the trap for you.”Continue reading“JWR’s Recommendations of the Week:”

Preparedness Notes for Tuesday — August 20, 2019

4

20 August is the birthday of former Congressman Ron Paul (born 1935). Dr. Paul is to be commended for fighting the good fight for many years.

—

August 20th, 1866 was the day that President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over.

—

SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 84  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public.
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  7. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Second Prize:

  1. A gift certificate from Quantum Harvest LLC (up to a $2,200 value) good for 12% off the purchase of any of their sun-tracking models, and 10% off the purchase price of any of their other models.
  2. A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
  3. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  4. A Three-Day Deluxe Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $190 value),
  5. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
  6. An assortment of products along with a one hour consultation on health and wellness from Pruitt’s Tree Resin (a $265 value).

Third Prize:

  1. Good2GoCo.com is providing a $400 purchase credit at regular prices for the prize winner’s choice of either Wise Foods or Augason long term storage foods, in stackable buckets.
  2. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
  3. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  4. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  5. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  6. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances.

Round 84 ends on September 30th, 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.

Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 1, by T.R.

4

(Editor’s Note: This Part 1 of a five-part article series.)

My goal in this article is to detail how to “build the plan” versus “test the plan” for bugout, while having fun.

We regularly read SurvivalBlog and enjoy it immensely. We’ve also read and studied a lot of great books including Lights Out and Patriots. However, a few years ago we realized our learning curve was too slow for the fast-moving risk profile of a civil society becoming more frazzled (coupled with having moved to a hurricane-prone state after my husband’s retirement). We brainstormed how to compress the time required around implementing many of the great ideas from SurvivalBlog and associated books and articles.

Our first thought to accelerate our preparedness path was to better balance table top planning with actual field testing of our plans. We have the checklist of all checklists and we spend time camping but had we really combined the best of both planning and test? Before this latest trip and this essay, the answer was: “Not really.” After our trip and composing this essay, we feel more confident of our survival skills and eager to further improve.

We agreed on a testing scope during a longer than usual personal vacation. We crafted this to mimic certain attributes of off road living we wished to pursue (and in some ways, certain chapters of the novel Patriots  written by JWR, but without the dose of civil unrest portion).

Previously, Hurricane Irma gave us a real dose of evacuation reality testing within a year of moving to Florida. That hurricane happened early relative to our really getting settled, thus it was a perfect “real” stress test of our conceptual plan. However, we reflected that if we did everything we wanted to prepare in serial order, we would never get done and quite frankly, we’d be chasing an elusive goal. Neither of us wanted to wish for another Hurricane to see how we did. But we always wanted to visit more National Parks and eventually visit the majority of them having already spent time walking through museums in Rome and trying to stay awake. We were tired of international travel and liked the idea of spending our discretionary dollars in the USA.Continue reading“Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 1, by T.R.”