Preparedness Notes for Monday – October 09, 2017

On this day in 1992, 18-year-old Michelle Knapp was watching television in her parents’ living room in Peekskill, New York when she heard a crash in the driveway. Alarmed, Knapp ran outside to investigate. A sizeable hole in the rear end of her car and a matching hole in the gravel driveway underneath the car. In the hole was what looked like an ordinary, bowling-ball–sized rock. It was extremely heavy for its size (it weighed about 28 pounds), shaped like a football and warm to the touch; also, it smelled vaguely of rotten eggs. The next day, a curator from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City confirmed that the object was a genuine meteorite.

SOG’s Power Grab Multi-Tool, by Pat Cascio

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SOG’s Power Grab Multi-Tool is under review today, and it is one of their newest and stoutest multi-tools they have produced to date.

Tools and Inventions

I’m always interested in some of the TV programs that show the top 100 tools or inventions that have made our lives easier. Some of the products featured are inventions that I’ve never heard of or used; some are strange, to say the least. I’m sure today’s generation probably thinks that the cell phone is the best invention ever! I would sure disagree with that. I wish the cell phone had never been invented. Just think of the untold lives that have been lost in car accidents because someone was busy trying to text while driving. Nothing is so important that you have to take your eyes off the road. Pull over to text or talk on your cell phone, but don’t do it while driving. Enough said!

Continue reading“SOG’s Power Grab Multi-Tool, by Pat Cascio”

The Legislative Entrepreneur: Investing in Some Key AR Parts

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Binary Triggers In Your Future?

The recent terrorist attack in Las Vegas is spurring Federal lawmakers to introduce new legislation. These laws would ban any device or combination of parts that can “accelerate” the rate of fire of a semi-automatic firearm. This includes bumpfire stocks, Gat Crank triggers, Autoburst trigger, Hellfire and other gadget triggers, binary triggers, light match grade triggers, and 3 mode triggers. Sadly, the U.S. National Rifle Association (NRA) gave up on this issue without a fight less than a week after the tragic massacre.  This means that there is now a strong likelihood that some legislation will be passed within a month. Once passed, I suspect that it will be signed by President Trump and possibly go into effect on or before January 1st, 2018. The clock is ticking, folks!

In my blog writings, I’ve often mentioned the futility of  so-called “gun control” legislation.  In a country like the United States, with more guns in circulation than there are adult Citizens, enforcing gun laws is a Fool’s Errand.  Liberals are now in the habit of calling gun control laws “Gun Safety laws”, which is disingenuous. They don’t want safety. They want disarmed peasants. I refer to these laws as “civilian disarmament” laws. Because in essence that is what they truly are: An attempt to rob the citizenry of their God-given right to keep and bear arms.

I’ve also gone on record for my opposition to all government mandated “bans” and “freezes” as well as any attempts at wage and price controls. History has repeatedly shown that legislated or dictated bans and freezes don’t work.

Continue reading“The Legislative Entrepreneur: Investing in Some Key AR Parts”

Recipe of the Week: Energy Granola Bars, by Mrs. Latimer

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Ingredients

  • 2 cups rolled oats
  • 1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds, unsalted
  • 3/4 cup raw sliced almonds
  • 1/3 cup raw wheat germ
  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 4 tablespoons dark brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 cup chopped, dried fruit or fruit/small nut combination (cherries, blueberries, cranberries, apricots)

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
  2. Place oats, sunflower seeds, almonds, and wheat germ on a cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes.
  3. Place honey, brown sugar, butter, vanilla extract, and kosher salt in a medium sauce pan and put over medium heat.
  4. Stir continuously until boiling and all sugar has been dissolved.
  5. Add fruit mixture.
  6. Stir toasted oat mixture into honey/fruit mixture until thoroughly blended.
  7. Oil a 9×9 pan.
  8. Mash mixture into oiled pan until pressed firmly.
  9. Let cool completely and then cut into 16 bars and wrap individually in plastic wrap to store at room temperature for up to three weeks.

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 investing in binary triggers.  (See the Tangibles Investing  section.)

Precious Metals:

To begin, at Gold-Eagle News: Gold Prices This Week And Next Week’s Forecast.

o o o

Gold rebounds above 2-month low on North Korean concerns

Stocks:

Breakout – Value Line Geometric Index. The article begins: “The Value Line Geometric Index ($XVG) is an equal weighting of all the stocks on the NYSE. It has been consolidating sideways for almost 20 years. In the last several months it has broken out to the upside. This suggests a powerful and sustained move higher in the stock markets is likely to take place, and soon.”

Commodities:

IEA: “Era Of Expensive Renewables Is Over”

Economy and Finance:

The coming “Great Liquidity Crisis”: JPMORGAN: Here’s what could cause the next financial crisis

Continue reading“Economics & Investing For Preppers”

The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

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“My only advice: Reporting that makes the publisher uncomfortable from time to time is one sign of a newspaper doing its job. Something to guard against is the temptation to think that rewriting press releases and regurgitating the words of politicians qualifies as news coverage. It’s really an invitation to irrelevancy.” – Dermot Cole

Wandering in the New World- Part 2, by JMD

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Yesterday, I began writing about the post-SHTF conditions that may make a wandering nomad type lifestyle much more practical and reasonable. We are talking about considerations for this and continuing with this further today.

Situational Awareness – You need to always be aware of your surroundings, where you are and where you can quickly get to for cover and concealment.

Medical

If a medical emergency occurs, you probably won’t have anyone to rely on but yourself and/or your group. You’ll need to learn how to handle common injuries and illnesses with what you have available.

Bushcraft

Since you won’t have a house to live in, you’ll need to be able to survive in the wild. This includes shelter making, fire starting, et cryrts. If you’re traveling in a vehicle or RV, you can always sleep inside that.

Food Gathering

You won’t have access to a farm, garden, livestock, etcetera, so you’ll need to be able to forage, hunt, fish, and trap in order to keep yourself fed.

Environmental

Because you won’t have access to the wonderfully accurate weather forecasts we enjoy today, you’ll need to be able to read your environment and understand how it affects you. Is there a storm coming? When will winter move in? Could a thunderstorm turn that gully you’re sleeping in into a raging river?

Continue reading“Wandering in the New World- Part 2, by JMD”

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”. The Nanny State is up to their collective eyeballs in ludicrous legislation again.

Rawles XL Voyager

I noticed that the supply of the limited-production Rawles XL Voyager folding tanto knives has dried up. The manufacturer (Cold Steel) sold out more than a year ago. In a recent bit of web-wandering, I only found one dealer that still has a few on hand at around $80 each. If you’ve been hesitating, this may be your last chance to get yours at under $100. – JWR

Paladin Press

Fellow blogger Claire Wolfe mentioned that Paladin Press is closing its doors. Claire mentioned that Paladin Press is closing its doors at the end of December. Sad to see one of the few publishers of controversial titles quitting business. This comes on the heels of both Loompanics and Lindsay Technical Publications shutting down. The only good news is that they have a huge sale right now.

Survival Shelter

The Canadian Prepper has posted a video on building a large survival shelter. The Silky Saws are featured tools and he uses several sizes to accomplish the task. the video shows the entire process of building the shelter. After watching these saws in action, I’m definitely adding a couple to my preps. I’ve been searching for a replacement saw for the standard bow saw and these look good.

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

The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” – Rev. 21:1-4 (KJV)

Preparedness Notes for Saturday – October 07, 2017

October 7th is the day that we remember the 96 American POWs from Wake Island that were executed on the orders of the commander of the Japanese garrison on the island, Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara. The execution of those American POWs who were blindfolded and shot in cold blood, remains one of the more brutal episodes of the war in the Pacific.

Continue reading“Preparedness Notes for Saturday – October 07, 2017”

Wandering in the New World- Part 1, by JMD

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Let’s explore the concept of wandering. If you’ve been involved in the world of preparedness for any length of time, you’re familiar with terms like “Bug-Out Location” (BOL) and “Bugging-In”, and you have probably read or participated in discussions about ways to go about securing your house/neighborhood/compound/town. Humans as a species tend to be social animals, and gathering in fixed locations in large groups has always had many advantages, including security, stable relationships, sharing of labor, farming, et cetera. But there have always been individuals and small groups who prefer (or are forced) to minimize their interactions with “society” and not be tied to any specific location.

These have traditionally been called wanderers, travelers, gypsies, nomads, et cetera. While these types of itinerant peoples have existed in one form or another for centuries, the pressures of modern society and the desire of governments to exercise an ever-increasing degree of control over people’s lives has made such an existence extremely difficult. However, in a post-TEOTWAWKI world, those factors would all but disappear, making such a lifestyle much more possible and potentially necessary for some people. This article is meant as a thought exercise in exploring a wandering lifestyle in such a scenario.

Continue reading“Wandering in the New World- Part 1, by JMD”

The NRA Has Capitulated on Banning Fast-Firing Semi-Autos

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Bump Fire Stocks Legislation

The U.S. National Rifle Association (NRA) just caved in on the issue of fast-firing semi-autos. On Thursday, they issued a public statement that encouraged bump fire stocks legislation. It said in part:

“In the aftermath of the evil and senseless attack in Las Vegas…”[lots deleted]

“…Despite the fact that the Obama administration approved the sale of bump fire stocks on at least two occasions, the National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law. The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations…”

This sort of panicked wholesale capitulation to the mainstream media’s demands will surely cause a cascade of executive orders and/or Federal legislation.

My Objections

I have some huge objections to the NRA President’s capitulation letter, to wit:

1.) NRA President Wayne LaPierre apparently did not first consult the full NRA Board of Directors. And he doesn’t speak for the entire membership.

2.) The statement was so loosely worded that it could include a plethora of parts and accessories. The problem is this vague phrase “…to function like fully-automatic rifles…”   “Like?”  What do you mean by the word “like”, Wayne?  Do you mean firing more than once with with each function (pull or release) of the trigger?  (That is the current legal definition of a machinegun.) Do you mean capable of firing more than once or twice per second?  Or do you mean a semi-auto that “sounds scary”? Do you mean firing semi-automatically from a linked belt or from a magazine of substantial capacity?  Your vague statement could be construed to include not just bump fire stocks but also match grade (light) triggers, binary triggers, magazines over 20 round capacity, pants belt loops, or even rubber bands!

3.) They had the opportunity to confront the horribly open-ended wording of Senator Feinstein’s bill, but they did not.  (Her bill –not yet assigned a number–is an outright ban, with no Grandfather Clause, and has no exceptions. It would cause a Federal “taking” of private property, with no compensation for those affected by the proposed legislation. This sort of taking flies in the face of a long-standing tenet of American jurisprudence. You can’t  just take someone’s property without compensation.)

4.) The wording of the NRA statement was nearly as vague as Feinstein’s draft ban legislation!

5.) The NRA missed a huge opportunity to insist that the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934’s machinegun registry be re-opened. By re-opening the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Records (NFRTR) they could solve a number of chronic problems. This would allow amnesty registration (with a $200 per-item tax) on any contraband full autos, including military veterans’ “dufflebag bring-backs.” If need be, this amnesty could include bump fire stocks, if they are erroneously re-classified as “machineguns”.) However, by leaving the error-ridden NFA registry closed it will leave hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens in legal limbo.  And assuming that bumpfire stocks become banned, then additional tens or even hundreds of thousands more gun owners will become “unprosecuted felons.”   What is really needed is a blanket NFA registration amnesty lasting 18 to 24 months. Better yet, the Hughes Amendment to the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 should also be rescinded.  That would leave the machinegun registry open as it should be, to new manufacture and importation.

6.) The NRA didn’t even wait long enough for an ATF forensic report which would reveal whether or not simple “bump fire” was employed, or if Stephen Paddock had actually illegally converted one or more of the ARs he used to true full auto fire.

7.) The NRA leadership has repeatedly promised “no compromise” on the Second Amendment.  Well, you’ve just compromised on a grand scale.  You’ve just capitulated to the gun grabbers. The leftists in Congress will now smell blood in the water, and attempt to pass sweeping civilian disarmament legislation.

8.) History has repeatedly shown that legislated or dictated bans and freezes don’t work.  Especially when a ban infringes on a God-Given right.

In my opinion, the NRA Board of Directors should rescind the letter and remove Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox from the organization, immediately!

Speak Out!

Please contact the NRA to make your opinion known, visit their web page, or phone: (800) 672-3888.

To contact your Congressman, call (202) 224-3121

To write your Senator:

The Honorable _________________
United States Senate
Washington DC 20510

To write your Representative:

The Honorable _________________
United States House of Representatives
Washington DC 20515

To find out who your Representative is, enter your zip code in the search function at: http://www.house.gov/writerep/

To contact the President:

President _________________
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
(202) 456-1111 (phone)
president@whitehouse.gov

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilence”

Please let your voices be heard!  – JWR

The Editors’ Preps for the Week

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To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make long-term and short-term plans. Steadily, we work on meeting our prepping goals. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities. They also share their planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, property improvements, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in the Comments. Let’s keep busy and be ready!

JWR

Dear SurvivalBlog Readers,

We’ve had a lovely week of seasonal temperatures and sunny weather.  Most members of our family caught the colds that are making its rounds in our region.  Thus, we kinda laid low, resting, until Friday. However, this week we moved a few large potted vegetables from the greenhouse into the house in anticipation of some hard frosts.  These are the plants I want to try to keep growing through the winter: a dwarf lemon tree, celery, green peppers and oregano.  We picked, blanched and froze a gallon of broccoli. I harvested seeds from cantaloupe, Hubbard squash, pole beans, green beans, and black beans for next summer’s garden.  I also reorganized one of our chest freezers. (We have two–one is electric and one is propane.)

Vegetables in the greenhouse are continuing to grow well despite some observed temperatures just below 32°F in the greenhouse according to the thermometer.  Despite these temperatures the tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers and butternut squash show no signs of damage and continue to grow. I surmise that the ambient moist air surrounding the plants or warm air coming from the raised beds themselves must be warding off the cold air above the plants.

Continue reading“The Editors’ Preps for the Week”

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”. Today’s focus is on the recent Las Vegas Massacre.

Climate and Weather

Reader H.L. sent us this: US winter forecast: La Niña to fuel abundant snow in Rockies; Bitterly cold air to blast Midwest

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