Preparedness Notes for Wednesday – December 27, 2017

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On this day in 1979, in an attempt to stabilize the turbulent political situation in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union sent 75,000 troops to enforce the installation of Babrak Karmal as the new leader of the nation. The new government and the imposing Soviet presence, however, had little success in putting down anti-government rebels. Thus began nearly 10 years of an agonizing, destructive, and ultimately fruitless Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. Death by a thousand cuts.

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Never Waste An Opportunity To Buy Good Stuff Inexpensively!, by Old Bobbert

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When there is an opportunity, we don’t waste it. We preppers are very good at nearly everything we do, once we finally start down the road to project completion and timely success. The few things we do poorly are generally the foundation for our poor public image. Some of these are our poor selections, among the millions of printed pages concerning “being prepared” to live through a disaster.

Our most glaring and dramatic procedural mistake is also the main reason non-preppers also fail at an alarmingly high percent of starts. Yes, we still have much in common with our non-prepper friends and family.

Not Shopping With Frugality

We do not shop in any manner that even remotely resembles frugality. And we love small, inexpensive gadgets that are promoted as the “be all and end all” trinket to make sleeping on a bed of gravel enjoyable. This is well known as a final, unnecessary deal beaker, in all seventeen dialects of spoken English, except in my house, of course.

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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 the Exodus Cryptocurrency Wallet Tool. (See the Cryptocurrencies section, near the end of this column.)

Precious Metals:

Gold rises on dollar weakness, palladium hits 17-year peak JWR’s Comment: With platinum now at around $922 per Troy ounce and gold at around $1,283, it makes more sense than ever to parlay some of your physical gold holdings into physical platinum.  I prefer the 1/2-ounce and 1-ounce platinum Liberty (U.S. Mint) bullion coins, for their ease of recognition, for resale or barter.  Presently, platinum is so low that you might as well buy slabbed (PCGS or NGC encapsulated) Platinum Liberty coins. (In today’s market, those graded MS-66 to MS-68 aren’t selling for much more than the price of spot platinum, if you shop around.) In the long run, the current gold/platinum price inversion is bound to return to its historic norm. Platinum will then sell at a substantial premium above the price of gold, rather than at a discount. Buy low and sell high, folks.

Stock Markets:

Yahoo: Stock Market News For Dec 26, 2017

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JWR’s Recommendations of the Week

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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 movie The Ultimate Gift movie series.

 

Books:

The True Story of Fake News: How Mainstream Media Manipulates Millions (Mark Dice)

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100 Hikes In The Inland Northwest

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The Freedom Outlaw’s Handbook, by Claire Wolfe. (This is an update to her classic book: 101 Things To Do ‘Til The Revolution.  Now with 179 subjects.)

 

Movies:

Here is a movie that I can strongly recommend for your whole family:  The Ultimate Gift. Yes, it is a pro-Christian and pro-philanthropy message piece. And it is a bit sentimental.  But I wish that every entitled Millennial in the country could see it–because it would change them, for the better.  Oddly, the “movie stars” in the film (James Garner, Lee Meriwether, and Brian Dennehy) all played supporting roles. The lead roles were played by less well-known actors. They included: Drew Fuller, Abigail Breslin, Ali Hillis, and Bill Cobbs. But they all put in fine performances. The film was based on the novel The Ultimate Gift, by Jim Stovall. Not surprisingly, this movie had huge sales on DVD and inspired two sequels:  The Ultimate Life and The Ultimate Legacy.

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The Last Ridge: The 10th Mountain Division. (A good documentary, available on DVD, or free streaming to those with Amazon Prime.)

 

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Preparedness Notes for Tuesday – December 26, 2017

On December 26th, 1777, after crossing the Delaware River, Washington led his men against Hessian soldiers garrisoned at Trenton. After a brief battle, nearly the entire Hessian force was captured, with negligible losses to the Americans, significantly boosting their flagging morale.

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Don’t forget that the holidays are an excellent time to finish up that article you’ve been wanting to write but procrastinating. The prizes are awesome!

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Time, Effort, and Attitude (TEA) and Keeping Focus, by E in the North Woods

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I think a lot of us who are doing our best to prepare for a SHTF scenario usually had some moment when we popped our heads out of the sand and were pushed to that point. I look back on it, like I have heard others explain, as the red pill versus blue pill moment from The Matrix movie.

Once you have your eyes opened and decide to take action in living a prepared lifestyle, it feels like you just got ripped from your comfy cocoon and are now standing at the base of a mountain looking up at all the ground that needs to be covered. Especially in the beginning, it can become down right depressing to think about all that you need to accomplish and with a newfound urgency (panic). You will likely at some point wonder if you made the right choice with that darn red pill and if you can just find that hole in the sand to reinsert your head.

Background

Some quick background on my continuing path. I took my red pill about eight years ago while living in a city in Colorado. Living in a suburban environment, I did what I could to begin climbing the mountain, thinking mainly about all of the thousands of steps it was going to take me to get some level of preparedness. I was frustrated by living in the city, frustrated that so many things I wanted to do didn’t make sense for city prepping.

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SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt

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 new Boar’s Head Highland Butchery.

Region-Wide

First off, here is the latest from The Sandpoint Reader‘s lengthy series of articles: The American Redoubt Series: Ruby Ridge to Redoubt–A brief history of anti-government sentiments in North Idaho. JWR’s Comments:  The earlier installments of their series were relatively free of bias. But here we see much more blatant bias and outright Guilt by Non-Association. The writer (Ben Olson) started off with the caveat: “To be clear, these are separate movements with distinct precepts from the Redoubt, but past ideologies in North Idaho influenced a climate that can still be felt today.” Say what?  Why, Mr. Olson, are you mentioning these movements in the same context? One could infer that the subtext is: “Here is a chance to roll out SPLC propaganda to smear a movement. We’ll do so by dredging up 25+ years of history of completely unrelated movements, to form a subconscious connection, in the minds of our readers.” For Olson to suggest that a profoundly anti-racist movement like the American Redoubt movement has somehow been influenced by defunct racist movements is absurd.

For the record, once again: The American Redoubt movement is not racist. Nor are we anti-Semitic. (Most of us are in fact outspokenly pro-Israel.) Nor is the Redoubt movement “anti-government.” We are distinctly pro good government.  To me, that is generally synonymous with minimalist government, with few regulations, little intrusiveness, no residential building codes or permits, and low taxation. (In sum: “That which governs least, governs best.”)  To incorporate descriptions of the radically anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement and the overtly racist KKK into the American Redoubt movement article series is more than just shoddy journalism. It is a none-too-subtle smear, and I wish to condemn it.


Idaho (Boar’s Head Highland Butchery)

Congratulations to fellow blogger Enola Gay of the great Paratus Familia blog. She and her family just opened a butcher shop in Weippe, which is in north central Idaho, just above the Clearwater River Valley. It is called Boar’s Head Highland Butchery. Please pray for their safety and success.  For some details, see: A New Chapter – the Grand Opening!

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Police seek leads in Clark Fork murder case

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Idaho is Nation’s Fastest-Growing State, Census Bureau Reports.  (JWR’s Comment: I’m confident that the American Redoubt movement has contributed to this substantial growth, to some degree.)

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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”. In an update on Puerto Rico, we can see that this is fertile ground for church missions.

Easy Vegetables

Reader T.J. sent in this video from GrowingYourGreens on what he believes are the top three easiest vegetables to grow. This is actually a pretty interesting vlog because most of this gardening is done in an urban area on very small plots of land. If you are stuck in the city or suburbs, this is a good channel to follow. Just don’t stay in the city too long when SHTF hits.

Christmas Power Outage

While much of New England had a white Christmas, about 20,000 people in Massachusetts were in a blackout condition. The cause was a quick change of temperature and high winds. Most of the outages were on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. The loss of power really isn’t a big deal in itself, but it underscores the need to have backup sources of heat. Even if your house is heated with fuel oil or propane, most modern heating system require some form of electricity to operate. While this power outage was quickly dealt with, you don’t want to be in that situation where you are weeks without heat in your shelter. Thanks to G.P. for the link.

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Preparedness Notes for Monday – December 25, 2017

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To those who are celebrating the Advent of our Lord and Savior, the team at SurvivalBlog wishes you a peaceful and meaningful Christmas. For those who choose to celebrate our Lord through the Biblical feasts, stay safe out there during this holiday season. Our prayer is that each and every one of you enjoys the family time and stays safe on the roads.

Glock 21 .45 ACP, by Pat Cascio

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The Glock 21 .45 ACP pistol is under review in this article. I was most fortunate to have been able to test one of these pistols before they even came on the market, when I worked for the late Col. Rex Applegate.

Handguns for SHTF

Many people believe that they can get by, when the SHTF, with just a handgun. Maybe they can and maybe not. I’m inclined to think that a handgun is an up-close and personal defensive weapon, not one that was designed for offensive use. However, a good handgun can perform both duties, given the limitations of the round that the gun is chambered for.

Many readers will, no doubt, have a favorite handgun that they consider their “end of the world” handgun, and I have no problem with that so long as it is a well-built firearm, chambered in a man-stopping caliber: 9mm, .40 S&W, .45 ACP, or one of other similar handgun calibers. Like most, I have my own ideas about which handgun and caliber are the best to have around when the SHTF. My thinking on this doesn’t come lightly. As a gun writer with more than 25 years experience, I’ve had the chance to fire thousands of firearms over the years and have formed my own thoughts on this subject. I’m not saying I’m “right” and you’re “wrong”, not in the least. I’m just saying I have a lot of experience in this matter and have formed my opinion based on a lot of things.

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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 investing in vintage motorcycles and mopeds. (See the Tangibles Investing section, near the end of this column.)

Precious Metals:

Gold Prices Expected To Trend Higher In Quiet Holiday Week

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2018 Gold Price Forecast: A Major Bottom Is Forming

 

Stock Markets:

Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Finish Lower After Trump Signs Tax Bill Into Law

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