You don’t say! “The TSA is failing spectacularly at cybersecurity.” You don’t say! “The economy is running on monetary fumes.” You don’t say! Doctors are overscreening for cancer. You don’t say! Fed prosecutors need ethics lessons. Um … maybe. But those lines at Disneyland generally don’t kill you. If that’s all enough to drive you to drink, here’s a 5,000-year-old beer recipe. Not to mention evidence that beer may have helped kickstart civilization. Why the very poor have become poorer. While technically only a book review, this is jam-packed with interesting data and thoughts. But occasionally good news strikes. Terry…
Category: Preparedness
Be patient, citizens! That is an order! Your government is hard at work protecting you. (I do rather wonder what those TSA lines snaking up and down escalators look like. Or worse, feel like to stand in, especially if you’re stuck at the top or bottom where the stairs disappear. But not enough to want to go to an airport to see for myself.) Speaking of gummint “protection,” be glad you didn’t run into this employee of the Federal Protective Service. Whoo. gutsy woman! Militias going mainstream? So sez The Guardian with a surprising minimum of tsking about it. But…
It is surely a mixed blessing to have time to design your own headstone. That’s a wonderful monument, though, and the Vanderboeghs could use some help getting it made. Kudos to Kurt Hofmann for a quote deserving of such immortality. “Trump: Why it happened and what comes next” by David Stockman. (How come presidential advisors never sound either this smart or this liberty-minded while they’re presidential advisors? Only afterward?) Yes, indeedy. We should always believe our heroic protectors when they tell us they need tools like Sting-Ray technology to catch terrorists, child-abductors, and the like. Sure thing. Herschel Smith says…
Pretty amazing way for a 16-year-old to live. (H/T JB) OTOH, some people may just have too much time on their hands. And hatchets and beer in them. (H/T ML) Speaking of too much time and hands … did you know there’s a (not joking) world of rock-paper-scissors competition? (Tip o’ hat to jed) Looking for some good hard science fiction? (H/T MJR) Get businesses freaked out enough about “discriminating against the disabled” and they’ll fall for anything. 12 lessons to learn and hang onto forever. (Especially for business, but plenty have applications in the rest of the world, too.)…
The feds have broken the Oregon standoff with arrests and one killing. A remnant remains. Leaders were apparently lured out on the pretext of attending a community meeting and trapped at a roadblock. Why? Why not wait them out? (H/T db) David Codrea exposes and righteously blasts the latest junk-science study op-ed from “prestigious” anti-gun medical sources. “Does stupidity cause gun control, or does gun control cause stupidity?” Bear Bussjaeger speculates. I’ve never understood the mentality that official (or family) wrongdoing is fine as long as no one exposes it and that any person exposing the wrongdoing is somehow the…
… I was still living in the flatlands. The contents and setup of the bag were premised on the scenario that a flood, earthquake, or tsunami would drive me and the dogs into the nearby hills. We wouldn’t have to go far, but we might have to stay out there quite a while. The only nearby buildings big enough to serve as shelters were all either in or across the zone of most likely damage. The neighbors, mostly poor and unprepared, might be liabilities. Camping solo was in the cards. That was then. Two and a half years ago I…
BHM has a buy-one-get-one-free offer on any Backwoods Home anthology. Offer is good through Sunday at midnight. NFI on my part, except the usual undying gratitude to the Duffys and the wonderful staff of BHM for keeping me writing and keeping the pups in kibble.
Funny how it works with these holiday Amazon listies. I might do five or six of them in a season and only one person will buy a single listed item.
But orders do increase and quite often the purchases are similar to the listings … but a different model. Or brand. Or color. Sometimes a mention of one type of gear will spark a little flurry of orders for related items. A link to a rifle scope will bring bipods, holsters, and books on reloading.
This post may do the same. I’m going to link to specific products, but it’s not the specific product that matters; this is a list of things everybody swears by. Some I’d regard as absolute necessities for every prepared person. Others are just those things that make you go, “Oh, I wish I’d had one of those five years earlier!”
And they may get the same reaction from people on your gift list.
For some reason, the NRA sat on its review of the notorious Armatrix iP1 “smart” gun and just recently released it. They probably didn’t mean it to be hilarious, but it is. Ten ways to lessen your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack. #BlackLivesMatter may get all the press, but Tommitrise Collins, college student and new mother, is a lot more impressive. Wendy McElroy found this one first, but it should be spread far and wide: thanks to asset forfeiture, U.S. cops now steal more property than all the nation’s burglars combined. What The Hunger Games movies say…
A bird in the brush
Yesterday was the first moment after … ohhhh, 40 days and 40 nights … that it wasn’t either raining or threatening to rain. Between that and the end of the year’s big hunting seasons, the dogs and I were finally able to return to long, leash-free walks in the woods instead of annoying, leashed walks around town (annoying because Ava likes to gallop and Robbie barely moseys these days; I end up walking sideways with my arms extended in two directions).
It was glorious. Chilly, but blue and still.
On our afternoon walk, though, we came across a lone crow feasting on an elk ribcage. Ava — she of the killer prey drive — alerted and paused. Figuring the crow would fly off, I gave her permission to run at it.
It didn’t fly off. It hobbled into the weeds, limping and vainly flapping its wings.