Preparedness Notes for Wednesday – January 17, 2018

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In his farewell address to the nation on January 17th, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the American people to keep a careful eye on what he called the “military-industrial complex” that had developed in the post-World War II years. We didn’t do a very good job of listening to his warnings.

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Seed for Security, LLC is having an exceptional sale. Their Colossal Security Pack is now 15% off. This pack is a total of 7 pounds of vegetable, herb and grain seeds. All are open-pollinated and non GMO. Included are their 3 most popular collections: Their Super Survival Pack, their 4 Grain Collection, and their Heirloom Herb Collection. Each Colossal Pack comes with a 4 page Seed Saving Guide. This offer is for a limited time.

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Apartment Dweller Prepping- Part 2, by AKM295

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When I relocated to the big city and moved into a shared apartment, I began to simultaneously look at prepping and consider how to make this work– living with others and trying to be prepared for a disaster.

What I’ve Learned From Experience (continued)

I’m writing about what I’ve learned over year’s of experience of living through power outages and disaster, including Hurricane Sandy. In covering topics for apartment dwellers, we have taken a look at storage, food, and water.

Security

When I was moving out from my childhood home, I tried to figure out how I could get my 12 gauge, Mosin-Nagant, revolver, Glock, and accompanying ammo and kit to my new tiny apartment. According to everything I had seen, I needed to cover all of my bases to be well prepared. It wasn’t until I had everything laid out that I realized how ridiculous this was going to be for my situation.

I put everything, except the Glock, in the safe at the family home. In the event I would need to use my firearm in a defensive situation, I had it. If you are in an area where your 2nd Amendment rights aren’t restricted or you’ve jumped through the necessary hurdles to access them, my feeling is having a secured firearm is a great tool to have. I’m putting an emphasis on “secured”, especially so if you are living with roommates. If a firearm is out of the question, be sure to have a means to defend yourself. Whether you feel more comfortable with a baseball bat by the door or a can of pepper spray on your person, be sure to have a means to protect yourself, if need be.

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Economics & Investing For Preppers

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Here are the latest 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 JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor.) Today’s focus is on a possible boom in commodities in 2018.

Precious Metals:

Hedge Funds Kick Off 2018 Piling Into Gold and Silver

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Next, at The National: Will 2018 mirror 2011 as a landmark year for precious metals?

Stock Markets:

Three reasons the 2018 stock market rally is downright weird

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This gives new meaning to the phrase “The bottom dropped out of the market”: Floor collapses at Jakarta stock exchange, dozens injured

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JWR’s Recommendations of the Week

Here are JWR’s Recommendations of the Week for various media and tools of interest to SurvivalBlog readers. This week the focus is on the documentary film and companion book Unbranded.

Books (Unbranded):

Unbranded–written by filmmaker Ben Masters–as a companion piece to his documentary film.  (Described in the Movies section, below.) This has some fabulous photography, and the text fills in some huge gaps in the movie.

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Montana Homestead: How I Built My Homestead Off Grid In The Wilderness

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Movies (Unbranded):

Back in 2016, I mentioned this great western horsemanship documentary: Unbranded. This is a quite rousing adventurous tale of some recent Texas A&M graduates who green-broke a string of wild mustangs and rode them all the way from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. I’m making mention of it again only because I just noticed that it is now available of free streaming for Amazon Prime members.

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Full Contact Stick Fighting: Volume 1 – Fundamentals

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Preparedness Notes for Tuesday – January 16, 2018

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The Space Shuttle Columbia launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 16th, 2003. STS-107 would disentigrate on re-entry 15 days later, killing all seven of the crew members on board. SurvivalBlog salutes all seven cremembers: Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William McCool, Mission Specialist David Brown, Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist Michael Anderson, Mission Specialist Laurel Clark, Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon.

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Don’t forget! There are only two weeks left in Round 74 of the SurvivalBlog writing contest and there are still some openings left. Get your article finished up and sent in ASAP.

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Apartment Dweller Prepping- Part 1, by AKM295

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Precious metals, dehydrated food, bug out cabins, and surplus everything are some of things that may spring to mind, thanks to pop culture and the media, when you mention prepping to someone who isn’t familiar with the topic. Those were the things that I thought of too, when I first began looking into how I could be more prepared for an emergency or disaster I might face back when I was fresh out of college.

When I Moved To A Big City

Back when I was a naive graduate who moved to a big city with student debt on my back, one room in a small shared apartment to call home, and extremely limited resources, a lot of the information I was finding did not apply to me or my living situation. I’m not starting a homestead or prepping a house for a family. I was one guy in his early twenties sharing an apartment and just squeaking by.  I had to cherry pick as much knowledge as I could and figure out how to make it work for me. Some information proved vital while others made me second-guess why I felt it was important in the first place.

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SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt

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Here is SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt. This weekly column features news stories and event announcements from around the American Redoubt region. We also mention companies of interest to preppers that are located in the region. The emphasis this week is on the company Aviation Specialties Unlimited, Inc. (ASU), in Idaho.

Region-Wide

North American Van Lines has released their latest U.S. internal migration map.  This is more confirmation on the demographic changes that we’ve been mentioning in the blog for several years. Increasingly, Americans are voting with their feet!

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Westward bound! More and more Americans are leaving the East Coast and heading west because it’s ‘cheaper, warmer and easier to find a job’

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Reader Chris F. sent a link to a map showing which States have no toll roads, bridges, or tunnels. Tolls are just another form of taxation. Clearly, toll rates are continuing to increase.  (For example, getting across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge now costs $15!) But it is no great surprise that the entire American Redoubt region is “toll free.”  (The map doesn’t show–as it should–that there are essentially no tolls in Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon.)  In the Redoubt, only true excursions (such as a jet boat ride down Hell’s Canyon) come with a toll.

Idaho (Aviation Specialties Unlimited)

Aviation Specialties Unlimited, Inc. (ASU) a is company that specializes in night vision equipment. They are located in Boise, Idaho.  Take a look at their web site. They make and/or market night vision googles (primarily for aviation), weapons sights, laser aiming lights, spotting scopes, parts, mounts, and accessories. ASU has the best variety of NVG helmet and head mounts that I’ve seen offered anywhere.

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Making some summer plans? Mark your calendar for June 29, 2018 – June 30, 2018. The Salmon Ready Preparedness Fair will be held at the Sacajawea Center, in Salmon, Idaho.
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The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

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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 “HJL”. How secure are your water sources? There is a looming water crises and you need to make sure you have your bases covered.

Eye Bleeding Outbreak

Uganda’s Health Ministry finally confirmed that they may be facing a large scale outbreak of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. They also fear a large scale pandemic of this disease. Emergency response teams are being deployed to the districts of Nakaseke and Luweero. While only the nine year-old girl has succumbed to the disease in Uganda, three people in neighboring South Sudan have also died of the disease. The disease is spread to humans via tick bites or contact with raw meat and infected animal blood immediately after slaughter. It’s worth noting the rapid response is due to its high fatality ratio (10-40%) and the difficulties in treatment and prevention. Thanks to G.P. for the link.

S***hole Countries

The media blew up this weekend with a private conversation of President Trump leaked to the press where he called the less-desirable countries by a specific name. Setting aside for a moment that it was a Democratic Senator that inappropriately leaked the private conversation, that it has been taken totally out-of-context and the fact that the media never blew up like this at Obama who regularly used unsavory words, it’s interesting to note that California now counts as one of those countries.

Yep, you read that right. California, whose budget exceeds that of most countries now has the highest rate of poor and under-classed people in the United States. How’s that immigration policy working for you now? (Note that the U.S. definition of “poor” is considerably different than the rest of the worlds. Here, you can still own a 100” flat screen TV and be poor.) Thanks to M.M. for that link.

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The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

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“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” – Frederick Douglass

Kershaw’s Barstow Folder, by Pat Cascio

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I love value in a true every day carry folding knife, one that will get used hard but still stand up to the rigors of what a folding knife should be, and the new Kershaw Barstow folder is worth a close look.

Kershaw Knives

Kershaw Knives has been around since 1974. It is right here, in my home state of Oregon, not too far from Portland but just far enough from the maddening crowds. Kershaw never ceases to amaze me with all the new and very different knife designs they come out with each year. To be sure, and to remain competitive in the cutlery field, they have some of their knives made overseas. I have no problem with that, so long as the quality is there and the value is exceptional. I don’t especially enjoy buying products made in communist countries, but we live in a global economy, like it or not, so we all must overlook things like this.

Exceptional Value and Nice Blade Features

The Kershaw Barstow is made in mainland China. But it is an exceptional value, considering all the features this little folder has to offer. The 3-inch long spear point blade is plenty tough, and it has the look of being a double-edge blade though it is not; it is only sharpened on one side. The blade’s steel is 8Cr13MoV. This is an economy stainless steel, but it holds an edge a decent amount of time and is actually easy to re-sharpen. Kershaw applies their BlackWash coating for an “already broken-in” look, and it helps hide any scratches on the blade from use, which is nice! The black glass-filed handle material is also plenty tough with an arrow type directional pattern, for a sure grip.

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Economics & Investing For Preppers

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Here are the latest 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 JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor.) Today’s focus is on American retail giant Walmart.

Precious Metals:

Kitco News Gold Survey: Dollar’s Pain To Mean Gold’s Gain

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Rich Dad Author Says The Next Financial Crash Will be Like an “Avalanche”. Kiyosaki is predicting huge losses and a “half off sale” for stocks. For many years he has suggested gold as a safe haven.

Stock Markets:

Next, over at MarketWatch: This epic stock-market rally will get a second wind from stellar earnings

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The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“The structure of the Second Amendment within the Bill of Rights proves that the right to bear arms is an individual right, rather than a collective one. The collective rights’ idea that the Second Amendment can only be viewed in terms of state or federal power “ignores the implication that might be drawn from the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments: the citizenry itself can be viewed as an important third component of republican governance as far as it stands ready to defend republican liberty against the depredations of the other two structures, however futile that might appear as a practical matter.” – Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 YALE L.J. 637, 651 (1989).