Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“Then said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.” – John 1:22-23 (KJV)

Preparedness Notes for Saturday – August 26, 2017

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August 26, 526, is the official anniversary of the invention of toilet paper by the Chinese. We celebrate this, though not because of its convenience. In fact, it has many shortcomings, some which are described within the articles and letters of SurvivalBlog. Our celebration of it is primarily because we now have an official metric of just how hard core of a prepper you are as well as a metric for just how economically unstable your country is.

August 26, 1946 is also the official release date of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”

Survival To Go, Revisited- Part 3, by JMD

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Today, we are continuing with the revised list of items to carry for survival when traveling, carrying a pack on a flight or otherwise. We are in the midst of going through the content of the main zippered backpack compartment. We’ve covered solar panels, light shelter, lighting, clothing, water, food/energy, and now we’re moving on down the list.

Main Zippered Backpack Compartment (continued)

  • “Repair” pouch (because something always breaks when you’re traveling):
    • Assorted sizes of zip ties, including reusable ones, twist-tied together.
    • 8′ of regular paracord
    • 6′ of steel wire
    • 20’ of 400lb Kevlar line
    • 20′ of 1″ Gorilla tape, rolled onto a small dowel (also useful for medical repairs)
    • Gear Aid Tenacious Tapefor Fabric Repair – This stuff is fantastic for making “low visibility” waterproof repairs on almost any kind of fabric.
    • 3′ of rubber latex tubing (Can also be used as a long straw/siphon, cut up to make slingshots, et cetera. By sheer coincidence, I also have a couple of leather slingshot pouches in the bottom of my pack)
    • Small sewing kit
    • A couple of long heavy-duty EPDM rubber bands, twist-tied together.
    • Ranger bands, twist-tied together
    • A couple of split rings, which double as handles for the wire saw in the fishing kit
    • I also have small tubes of E6000 and Super glue in my liquids bag

Continue reading“Survival To Go, Revisited- Part 3, by JMD”

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!  This week’s focus is on early harvest time.

JWR

Dear SurvivalBlog Readers,

This past weekend the Rawles family traveled to a very remote area of Eastern Oregon to rendezvous with relatives in order to watch the Solar Eclipse in totality. It was spectacular! We saw the corona feathering out from the sun at totality. It was so beautiful, the Diamond Ring phenomenon, which was the highlight for us, the near total darkness, which came on in seconds at the height of totality and lasted a little more than two minutes. We could see blue skies on the edges of the darkness far away, and the stars and Venus.

Just before totality the children played with objects that made pinholes to see the sun’s partly occluded shadows (crescents) on the ground. We saw the crescent shadows of the sun through the leaves of a Locust tree, through the mesh of some Crusher hats, and through making a lattice by interlocking our fingers. It was an awesome lifetime experience. The children were amazed and all of the children said that it was indeed a Lifetime experience that they’ll remember forever.

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”. North Korea continues to make headlines and keep nuclear fears alive. Do you have your EMP stuff lined up?

Wild Horse Fire Brigade

This has been a tough fire season in the Western United States and Canada. With the past history of total fire suppression, and the current dry conditions in much of the area, wildfires tend to explode into major conflagrations with the slightest provocation. Capt. William E. Simpson II was interviewed on the Lars Larson show recently about his novel approach in dealing with two major problems. 1) The fire conditions, and 2) the 50,000 wild horses corralled by the BLM at tax payer expense. Why not let these horses graze the at-risk land to eat the tall grass before it burns. That would save the tax payer millions in care costs for the horses. At the same time, it would provide much needed pre-fire management at the same time.

Smart Meters

Reader DSV sent in this article asking a very unpleasant question. In this day and age of “The Internet of Things” and the propensity of those same items to be hacked, who will pay the ransom when the smart meters get hacked? The article references a few high profile cases where hospitals and infrastructure had to pay or shutdown because of ransomware hacks. It’s a fair question.

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

Editors’ Quote of the Day:

“The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken; according to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not. And the Lord said unto me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.” Deuteronomy 18:15-19 (KJV)

Preparedness Notes for Friday – August 25, 2017

August 25th is a birthday shared by novelist Frederick Forsyth (born 1938) and American humorist Patrick F. McManus (born 1933). Forsyth was the author of The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil’s Alternative, and many others. McManus was born and raised in Sandpoint, Idaho, so his books could be classified as American Redoubt humor. When I met Pat a few years ago, Pat very kindly autographed my entire battered collection of his books. Some of these books had been so well-loved that the pages were falling out of their bindings. I suppose that is the ultimate compliment for an author. – JWR

Survival To Go, Revisited- Part 2, by JMD

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We are revisiting what I carry when I travel for comfort and survival. We are looking through my items, as they are organized by their location in my pack, which is a 28 liter Red Rock Outdoor Gear Assault Pack. We’ve gone through part of the pack. Let’s continue on, looking next at the pocket that considers our airport security requirements.

Top Front Pocket Pouch- Ready to Remove At Airport Security

The next pocket is the small top front pocket (the one with the American flag patch in the picture). This holds things that I’ll need to pull out and put in a separate bin when I go through airport security. It contains:

  • A ziplock bag with my “liquids and gels”. (Note: I also have some small single use packs of medical gels in other pouches in my bag, but I’ve never been asked to take any of them out when going through security. I guess they’re too small to register.) These liquids and gels include:

Continue reading“Survival To Go, Revisited- Part 2, by JMD”

Freeze Dried Friday:

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Idle machines

Sometimes you just have to set things aside to make room for everything. There was so much going on around the Latimer household that both freeze dryers sat idle this whole week. I kept intending to fire them up as the harvest is really coming off now and the main freezer is starting to load up. Yet before I knew it, the week was almost over and I still hadn’t even looked at them. Therefore, we will postpone our updates in this column for a week. Hopefully things will slow down enough that we can fire at least one of those freeze dryers up again. I’m thinking it’s about time to run a couple of complete meals through them for camping.

However, if you made something scrumptious that you would like to tell us about, please post about it in the comments!

In the meantime, feel free to browse and comment on the past Freeze Dried Friday articles.

Economics & Investing For Preppers

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 antique gunleather. (See the Tangibles section, near the end of this column.)

 

Precious Metals:

First, there is this at Equities.com: Gold: A Hedge Against Growing Risk

o  o  o

Gold eases ahead of Jackson Hole central bankers meet

Stocks:

Top 4 Inverse ETFs for a Bear Market as of August 2017

o  o  o

Global investors look to Jackson Hole for signs of how QE will end

 

Commodities:

Copper: This one surging metal could see an even bigger rally ahead

 

Continue reading“Economics & Investing For Preppers”

Preparedness Notes for Thursday – August 24, 2017

On August 24th, 410, Rome was overrun by the Visigoths in an event that symbolized the fall of the Western Roman Empire. This is a moment in history that we would do well to remember. An empire that ruled the known world was corrupted from the inside to the point that they could not defend themselves from a much weaker enemy. This could conceivably be the beginning of the dark middle ages.

Survival To Go, Revisited- Part 1, by JMD

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Several years ago, I was fortunate to be able to share my experiences and recommendations on being prepared while traveling on SurvivalBlog (Survival To Go Part 1 and Part 2). However, as most of us know, being prepared is never a “one and done” situation. You have to constantly reassess the threats and risks you face. Adjust your preparations, approaches, and skills to stay aligned with your current situation. The goal of this article is to share how my approach to travel preparedness has adapted in the last three years. I based my approach  on how my personal situation and travel conditions have changed.

Significant Changes

Let’s start with what significant changes have occurred:

  • Travel in general, and air travel in particular, has become much more dangerous. Between airport bombings (Brussels, Paris, Istanbul), airport shootings (Florida, Paris), airport stabbings (Flint), airport facility disasters (Paris, Netherlands, Hong Kong), and too many airplane accidents to list, the chance of being seriously injured while traveling has increased significantly. This doesn’t even take into account terrorist attacks, shootings, accidents, riots, and disasters while you’re at your destination.
  • I’m getting older, and my back is having a harder time carrying a 28 pound backpack through the airport.
  • I kept accumulating more stuff in my travel backpack. It was getting harder to find something when I needed it, especially in emergencies.
  • I did a review of what was in my backpack. I found there were a number of items that I hadn’t used in a long time.
  • My company made me replace my personal laptop with a company-issued one. I now have no problem putting it in my checked bag.  I also realized that I pretty much never open my laptop on flights anymore anyway. There just isn’t enough leg room.

Continue reading“Survival To Go, Revisited- Part 1, by JMD”

Letter Re: Batteries and Chargers

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HJL,

If rechargeable batteries aren’t charged regularly then they are useless during emergency. I keep about 2-3 dozens of AA and AAA in a battery organizer and rotate them. To rotate them, I use battery powered LED strips in bathrooms and in closets. I do that to save energy and to practice blackout situation. For gadgets that run on C or D cells, I use a 2 AA converter case. I have them on my 3D maglite and Coleman lantern and they work great.

For chargers, I use Nitecore brand that has different charging current and 12V car adapter. I try not to use quick charge mode because it tends to heat up batteries and that shortens the life. I also own an USB charger just in case power goes down and I can hook up a portable solar panel if needed. – P.L.

Letter Re: See Rescue

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Hugh,

I have one of the See-Rescue devices when I use my kayak in Hawaii. If you are blown out to sea, this may be the only way an aircraft can find you. It also works on land. Great safety system and easy to carry. – M.G.