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 homemade bug spray for livestock.

JWR

Dear SurvivalBlog Readers,
This week has been very warm, sunny, and hazy from some distant regional forest fires.  Relatives are visiting for the next three weeks, so not much prepping other than gardening will be occurring.  This week we did dig up/rob many volunteer potatoes.  We had a few meals with only what we have raised here on the ranch: Lettuce, cucumber, tomato salad, beef roast, fried potatoes, fried zucchini and lots of raspberries for dessert.  We made chicken soup from our own chicken, celery and potatoes.  It’s very exciting to eat food that you have raised yourself!  This feeling never gets old to us.   We did freeze more zucchini, red and black raspberries from our garden. We also froze some purchased blueberries, from Costco.

With the young’uns, we’ve continued to practice and refine our water safety, rescue skills, and swimming strokes and endurance. Also we continued evening mountain bike rides around the ranch in up in the adjoining National Forest.

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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”. More absurdness from our public schools is revealed today.

Communications Sans Cellphones

Imaging trying to communicate with your loved ones if the cell phone network suddenly stopped working. Can you reach your spouse at work? How about your kids while at their friends house or at some activity they are participating in? Most preppers have at least considered the possibility and many have actively planned for alternat communications. If you are one of the few that haven’t, you need to read this introductory article that reader DSV sent in on How To Talk When Cell Phones Don’t Work.

Second Amendment

We’ve already reported on Seattle’s legal battle to keep the revenue generated by their ridiculous gun tax private and how they lost in court. It wasn’t surprizing that most people simply purchased guns and ammo outside of where the tax was collected. Now, because of the legal battle they lost to the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), we find two interesting things:

  1. Over 80% of the measly$108,013.04 tax revenue generated was from one single gun shop. The city expected anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000.
  2. The cost of defending the legal suit brought by SAF to force them to release the records cost more than the revenue collected from the tax.

Thanks to P.S. for that link.

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Editors’ Quote of the Day

“O Lord God, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might?” Deuteronomy 3:24 (KJV)

Preparedness Notes for Friday – August 04, 2017

On August 4th, 1944, 15-year old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family were captured by the Nazi Gestapo. The Franks had taken shelter in a small space in a sealed off area of an Amsterdam warehouse along with another Jewish family and a single Jewish man. They were aided by Christian friends who brought them food and supplies. Her diary survived the war, overlooked by the Gestapo, but Anne and nearly all of the others perished in the Nazi death camps.

July in Precious Metals, by Steven Cochran

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Welcome to SurvivalBlog’s Precious Metals Month in Review, by Steven Cochran of Gainesville Coins, where we take a look at “the month that was” in precious metals. Each month, we cover the price action of gold and examine the “what” and “why” behind those numbers.

What Did Gold Do In July?

Gold started July off with a bang but not the kind it wanted. A big jump in wholesale prices in the manufacturing sector on July 3rd sent gold plunging to the $1,220 mark. On July 3rd, North Korea successfully tested its first ICBM capable of reaching the United States. North Korean TV reported that dictator for life Kim Jung Un called the test “an early fireworks gift for the United States”. This started a month of bad behavior that helped gold prices.

On July 7th, an orchestrated take-down of the silver price cratered prices below $15 before the market could recover. This pretty much hobbled silver prices until the last half of the month.

Non-farm payrolls showed 222,000 new jobs were created in June, which is far higher than the expected 178,000. Gold dropped $8 an ounce, which triggered a waterfall of automatic selling. By the end of the day, gold was $14 lower at $1,211 an ounce.

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Freeze Dried Friday:

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Welcome to Freeze Dried Friday on SurvivalBlog! We’ve been making so many things in the Harvest Right Freeze Dryer that we want to share some of them with you. If you have something wonderful you’ve prepared in your freeze dryer that you would like to share with SurvivalBlog readers, take a photo of it and send it in along with a description. We might just feature you here! Freeze Dried Tomato Meat Sauce is today’s feature.

Broken Pump Seal Update

I received the supply of spare parts I ordered including the spare vacuum cartridge. An interesting note is that I thought the bulk of the weight of the pump (aside from the motor) was in the casing. Nope. The vacuum cartridge is quite a bit heavier than the aluminum casing of the pump. When one of these cartridges breaks down and has to be replaced, I think I’m going to tear it apart just to see what’s inside. In the meantime, due to some other pressing concerns, I wasn’t able to rebuild the leaking pump, so we will put that off until next week.

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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 False Recovery.  (See the Stocks section, below.)

Precious Metals:

The spot price of platinum is still in the doldrums, but recently saw an uptick.  Any point in time when you can buy an ounce of platinum for less than ounce of gold, then it is a good time to buy platinum!

o  o  o

I’m not a believer in most of what the Chartists have to say. But I found this macro analysis interesting: Ira Epstein’s Precious Metals Video August-2-2017.

 

Commodities:

After spiking in 2016, the price of sugar seems to be returning to its long term downtrend. The 2016 spike was attributed to El Niño weather patterns. If you ever hear of another El Niño developing, then immediately stock up on sugar!

o  o  o

The average price of propane is around $2.40 per gallon, nationwide. Locally, we just saw a deep dip in prices in the northern half of the American Redoubt. This might be a good time to top off your tanks.

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Preparedness Notes for Thursday – August 03, 2017

August 3rd, 1846 is the day that the Donner party found a note warning the emigrants that their expected route through the mountains ahead was nearly impassable. Hastings, an unscrupulous trail guide had created his own “short cut” route and wasn’t even at the meeting place at Fort Bridger, but had left word for the part to continue on. Hastings had claimed easy passage through the rugged Wasatch Mountains, but had left a note attached to a forked stick for the party explaining that the route was more difficult than he thought. Eventually reduced to cannibalism, only 45 of the original 89 emigrants reached California the following year.

The Novice And The Expert- Part 3, by Old Bobbert

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Yesterday, we took a look at what we’d need to do first in the event of an EMP and just barely began to look at the possibility of a tsunami or serious flood across the U.S. East Coast, causing complete evacuation and shut down. We’ll continue today to look at this incident and others that might happen.

East Coast Tsunami (continued)

In the event that the New York City financial service system shuts down, for any reason, that singular event will shut down the entire world banking system. Awe, shucks! And this will happen while the system is correcting itself with more of what has caused the problems in the first place. They are working to borrow the money needed to pay interest and to get out of debt currently. As I read history, isn’t that called an illegal “ponsi scheme”? Yes, it is! This is a very real near future reality event.

In the event that Washington D.C. shuts down, happy days are here again, right? No! Wait! That didn’t work the first time. Well, awe shucks. If NYC and/or Washington were to stop functioning, would my social security check have been deposited? That would be a very real SHTF incident especially if it happened without warning.

On that day that the warning comes, regardless of where you live, empty your bank account and buy what you need with your visa. If we lose the East Coast, we lose everything and every everyone there. Our debt-ridden, fiat money-based, digital society will fail, and it will fail world wide.

Continue reading“The Novice And The Expert- Part 3, by Old Bobbert”

Typeay’s Book Review: The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun, by Matt Bracken

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So, how does one categorize The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun?

In my opinion, you simply can’t.

Anyone taking a cursory glance at Amazon’s current fiction novel listings will confirm what many folks may have already surmised. The past few years have seen an explosion of what is commonly now referred to as “dystopian fiction”.

In the typical dystopian tome, a lone protagonist or group sets out on a quest for survival in what was once the world as he, or she, knew it.

I will cut right to the chase.  Matt Bracken’s latest novel is not a work of dystopian fiction.

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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”. Wait till you hear about the new YouTube Censoring rules!

“Hand Out” Survival Kit

SensiblePrepper has a YouTube video where he goes through a simple kit that you can put together to “hand out” to those who are with you on an outing, hike or camping trip. It contains simple to use items such as fire lighting kit, flashlight, knife, emergency poncho and simple first aid kit (boo boo kit), and a few other things. Those who are woefully unprepared for an emergency get a better chance if they are separated. Thanks to T.J. for the link.

MVT 1000 Yard Precision Rifle Range

Max has a new 1000 yard rifle range at his Romney, West Virginia training center. With the opening of this new range, they will be running the first Long Range Marksman Course (LRMC-1) on September 3-4. MVT is a first rate school and this is an excellent opportunity.

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Editors’ Quote of the Day:

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“To me, the most terrifying form of warfare would be if there was some simultaneous cyber attack on our grid, on the banking system, and on our transportation system. That would be quite a devastating thing, and yet in theory, absent some real protective measures, that could happen.” – Wilbur Ross

The Novice And The Expert- Part 2, by Old Bobbert

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Today, we are continuing to learn, whether we are a novice or an expert in preparedness. If experts, we can learn how to guide a novice in their preparation planning.

Confidence Key Words

We left off yesterday with a group in a pandemic situation going grocery store shopping in teams with lists and cash. We had a reference to use confidence key words at checkout to help avoid being a victim. What are these confidence key words? I know that you know them. Read the following out loud: “Please and thank you. Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. We appreciate your help.”

“We” is used often and especially if you are actually alone. These are the key words and this is the style of the type of person that the bad guys want to stay away from. You will then easily look to be the confident non-victim. You will most likely be safe.

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