Survivalism, Prepping, and OPSEC: An Alternative View, by Todd

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The topic of OPSEC (operations security) comes up all the time on SurvivalBlog, and I wholeheartedly agree that it is an important topic for all of us. But I believe it is an important topic with potentially more than one right answer, depending on your particular situation and mindset.

Standard OPSEC Based On Secrecy

The standard answer to OPSEC on SurvivalBlog (and just about everywhere else) is based on secrecy and the general concept of keeping your preps, your location, your networks, and sometimes even your survivalist mentality all to yourself, or at the very least known to as few other people as possible. This is very similar to the conventional OPSEC practiced in the military, where it almost always makes good tactical sense to employ a “need to know” philosophy. After all, if an adversary knows your exact location and your defenses, he can use that information to shape his attack and increase his chances of success.

Less Strategic Sense To Keep Things Completely Secret

But just like in some examples in the military, it can actually make less strategic or “big picture” sense to keep such things completely secret. For example, an adversary or an ally can both be significantly influenced by knowing about one’s strong military and its capabilities, or by being informed of decisions and actions that have been or will be taken. Along those lines, in my personal life, I’ve gone with another OPSEC route for several reasons.

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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 Great Britain’s voter-mandated exit from the European Union (commonly called Brexit).

Precious Metals:

Precious Metals Outlook 2018 – Platinum to outperform palladium

Stock Market:

When it comes to 2018 investing, ‘boring’ is better, portfolio manager says (Has auto-start video.)
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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 Victorinox Swiss Army knives.

Books:

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

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The Winter Survival Handbook: 157 Winter Tips and Tricks

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The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition)

Movies:

Ben-Hur: 50th Anniversary Edition. JWR’s Comment: The recent remake pales in comparison. Charlton Heston’s performance as the leading man is great, and so is the film-making.

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The Last Ridge: The 10th Mountain Division. This documentary is available on DVD, or free streaming for those with Amazon Prime.

 

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Preparedness Notes for Tuesday – December 12, 2017

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On December 12, 1989, the Queen of Mean was sentenced to four years in prison, 750 hours of community service, and a $7.1 million tax fraud fine in New York. Leona Helmsley, nicknamed the “Queen of Mean” by the press, became the object of loathing and disgust when she quipped that “only the little people pay taxes.” Helmsley died in August 2007 at age 87. She famously left $12 million to her dog, Trouble.

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Start Now, While You Can, Because You Can, by Old Bobbert

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These short published blog articles, these pieces of myself, of ourselves, concerning preparedness, survivalism, self awareness, and personal readiness are created to help the reader to start taking action and learn to fight ignorance and greed. From my side of these entries, I do not promote myself as an expert; I’m just another concerned guy who wants to help others and perhaps showcase my personal opinions. Not even a little of the real me has ever shown completely through these prepper pages, these pieces of our lives,.

Prepper Achievement Judged

Moving on, there’s a well justified question begging to be given a platform on which our communal characters can be examined, and therein be prepper achievement judged. Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of our total human family, a family now in great danger, now deep in materialistic self mutilation of our very souls, a family of families now in perilous danger. We few can be the catalyst and positive-oriented answer, if we will only allow ourselves to be all we can be.

That’s a quote from somewhere. Oh, yeah. I remember now. I did four years in the regular army from 1958 to 1962. And that’s really a long long time go. I received $33 monthly and three hots and a cot. Roll-call was at O-dark-30, except Sunday. Imagine being seventeen years old and sent to serve two years in Oahu, Hawaii, where there was no snow and it was not yet a state!

Standing For Values

Some of us have often stood for better values and strived mightily to add even a small measure of individualistic strength of character to the counter forces of goodness and love of country and love of principle. And these efforts have proven to be well timed and very meaningful, especially in the face of political and financial irresponsibility and massive self appeasement. All of these low level vices of our modernistic and usually very self-centered blot of bigotry of digital self enhancement are usually well hidden. They are deadly and growing in strength.

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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 realtor Todd Savage, who was profiled in the recent American Redoubt article series.

Region-Wide (Todd Savage)

The huge Southern California wildfires had been raging for so many days that the local fire crew were at the point of exhaustion. So late last week the call for help went out, and fire departments from throughout the western United States responded. I’m proud to report that many of the volunteer departments that responded were from American Redoubt. It has been reported that  “fire crews from Boise, Meridian, Kuna, and Star left Thursday morning for California to help provide assistance in any way they can.” Ditto for Montana. Ditto for Oregon. May God bless them, protect them, keep their families at home safe in their absence, and bring them all home safely!

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The fifth (and presumably final) installment of the American Redoubt article series at The Sandpoint Reader has been posted. It focuses on Redoubt realtor and retreat consultant Todd Savage: Profiles of the Redoubt: The Redoubt Realtor.  JWR’s Comments:  Before this series began, I warned SurvivalBlog readers that it would probably show bias. But in retrospect, I can now see that the series showed very little bias, and that is commendable. So I hereby apologize for my presumptive warning. It was good to see at least one group of journalists set their biases aside and just focus on the facts.

I have known Todd Savage for 14 years.  We’ve worked together on a few projects, helping relocation clients. Over the years we’ve referred a lot of business to each other.  I never have any hesitation about sending folks to Todd Savage and his ventures. As a Former Marine, he really knows his stuff about retreat security. Todd has also served as a volunteer fireman, so he has first hand knowledge on how to protect retreat properties from fire. And he has a strong background in  real estate in general and the Redoubt Region in particular. I highly recommend him.

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The Sandpoint Reader also had this companion piece: The American Redoubt Series: Location, location, location.

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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”. President Trump’s immigration policies get yet another boost due to yet another NYC bomber yesterday.

Another NYC Bomber

Chain migration led to yet another person entering the U.S. who has acted upon wishes of harm. The suicide bomber accidentally set off his device at the wrong moment at the nation’s busiest bus terminal. He had strapped the device inside his pants with Velcro and zip ties, but it went off in a subway corridor and didn’t kill anyone, including the bomber. In typical lame stream media fashion, most reported that despite the bomber claiming ISIS as inspiration (some mention that ISIS claims him), “Details on possible motive were unclear”.

The bombing happened just before 7:30AM and was covered as breaking news by Fox, but CNN and MSNBC, who often claim Fox ignores breaking news that might harm the president, chose instead to cover President Trumps Diet Coke habit instead of the bombing until nearly 9am. Even though the bomber failed to complete his intended mission, he won’t be having children anytime soon due to the location on his body that he carried the bomb.

Second Amendment

Reader G.P. shared this news story that the BATF will be taking another look at “bump stocks”. Congress lost the impetus it started with in it’s quest to ban them and despite having ruled that they only assist in shooting technique rather than modify the firearm, they now want to classify them as a full-auto modification. I’m wondering if you will now have to pay a $200 tax and file paperwork with the BATF if you have opposable thumbs and wear pants with belt loops. The article also continues the short sighted view of the shooting. It was not the “worst mass shooting spree in US history”. I believe the “Wounded Knee Massacre” holds that distinction. It’s worth noting that that one was perpetrated by the U.S. government over Second Amendment issues.

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Kershaw Knives, Fraxion, by Pat Cascio

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Today’s knife under review is called the “Fraxion” and is from Kershaw Knives in my home state of Oregon. Kershaw Knives has come a long, long way in a very short period of time, and is a leader in the cutlery field.

Kershaw Knives

It was just back in 1974 when Pete Kershaw left another major knife company in Oregon that he started Kershaw Knives. His products were, and still are, a big hit with the knife-loving public. Just a few short years after starting Kershaw Knives, Pete Kershaw sold out to the KAI Corporation from Japan, and they continue to carry on his name and legacy in the cutlery field.

I have toured the Kershaw factory here in Oregon several times, from their humble beginnings when they only had a dozen or so people actually working on the floor manufacturing knives until their move to a new plant, a much bigger plant, in 2003 that they have already expanded to meet demand for their products. The new plant is huge, too. The shipping department alone and warehouse are big enough to get turned around in and get lost in short order. Unlike some companies, who operate on a “just-in-time” philosophy, Kershaw Knives tries to keep every product in-stock whenever possible. Congrats to them on this!

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Recipe of the Week: Chicken Olé, by G.T.

Ingredients:

  • 12 tortillas, cut into 6 or 8 pieces each
  • 4 cups of coarsely chopped cooked chicken or turkey
  • 1 (10 3/4 oz) can of condensed cream of chicken soup
  • 1 (10 3/4 oz) can of condensed cream of mushroom soup
  • 1 (7 oz) can of green chili salsa
  • 1 cup dairy sour cream
  • 1 Tbsp grated onion
  • 1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese

Directions:

  1. Lightly grease the sides and bottom of a Crockpot.
  2. In separate bowl, mix together undiluted soups, salsa, sour cream, and onion.
  3. Inside Crockpot, arrange alternating layers of tortillas, chicken, and soup mixture.
  4. Cover and cook on low for 4 to 5 hours.
  5. Sprinkle with cheese and cook on low another 15 or 20 minutes.

Serve with orange and avocado salad, plus additional warm tortillas.

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Useful Recipe and Cooking Links:

Do you have a favorite recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers? Please send it via e-mail. Thanks!

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 economist–and dedicated survivalist–Brandon Smith.

Precious Metals:

Dollar rise pushes gold toward biggest weekly fall since May

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James Howard Kunstler: BTC is Gold’s Proxy in Sounding Fiat Alarm

Stock Markets:

Dow posts first 8-quarter win streak in 20 years. (Has auto-start video.)

 

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The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

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“But let it not be said that we did nothing. Let not those who love the power of the welfare/warfare state label the dissenters of authoritarianism as unpatriotic or uncaring. Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security. Understanding the magnificent rewards of a free society makes us unbashful in its promotion, fully realizing that maximum wealth is created and the greatest chance for peace comes from a society respectful of individual liberty.’ Former Congressman Dr. Ron Paul