American Survival Blog

Via Survivalblog comes this list of .pdfs that are mainly public domain works covering a variety of topics that will be useful to the survivalist post TEOTWAWKI. Farming, hunting, fishing, trapping, food preservation building heating and refrigeration devices, blacksmithing, gem mining, this forum thread has it all.

As we slip into second world status 19th century skills and technologies will become necessary to keep society running. My advice is to bookmark this thread, download the materials you want and print them out now. After the lights go out it’ll be too late. You also never know when a forum will remove links or disappear.

The Old Knowledge Database links thread.

Foraging wild edibles is a skill every survivalist should continuously work to develop. No matter how deep your larder is or how productive the micro farm in your backyard is, utilizing nature’s bounty will be necessary to extend the life of your stored foods and add nutritional value to the crops you are (hopefully) growing.

Dale Martin’s The Trapper’s Bible is one of the best resources you can own for learning to harvest wild game. It is also available in a Kindle edition. For wild plants things are more difficult as every region of the country will have different environments that produce very different flora depending on the seasons. Thus a survival library will need to be tailored to where you live. Because you never know what the future holds  being familiar with general foraging techniques and knowledge is a good idea and it is here that online resources truly shine.

One of the best websites I have found so far is the excellent Eat the Weeds. “Green Deane” offers physical classes and keeps a great archive but where Eat the Weeds really shines is the more than one hundred videos featuring the harvesting and use of many common plants that is available free to the public. They can be accessed on the site or through the Eat the Weeds YouTube channel and I urge everyone to check it out.

I’m a big fan of the The Nutnfancy Project channel on YouTube. There are literally hundreds of reviews of gear that are interesting and useful though I preface any endorsement of book or video instructions or reviews with the caveat that you should never take anything anyone says as indisputable fact. But TNP is a nice way to see gear you may want to purchase in action, and they have some decent survival training tips.

TNP has a three part video opus on urban survival that I think makes some good points and is something you should check out. I’m posting the first here but the rest are already posted on their page. There’s some jargon (like SAWC which means “Space/Size And Weight Constraints”) but don’t let that overwhelm you, there’s some good grist for the mill here:

Imagine yourself in a rapidly de-industrialized America (or Europe, Canada whatever) due to financial collapse exacerbated by food shortages, disease and a chaotic world exploding in the wake of American power receding. Maybe solar storms or an E.M.P. have knocked out the grid, or cap-and-trade has created energy shortages like we see in places like Venezuela and are beginning to see in Europe. Imagine that supermarkets are empty, refrigeration is unreliable and there is no guarantee that things will ever get back to normal. What would you do?

For many survivalists, myself included, the solution is “prepping” for such a scenario. This involves stockpiling long lasting foods and perhaps water if there is no other way to ensure supply. Those are short term solutions however, completely unsustainable for a lifetime. In the long term many survival minded people learn hunting, trapping and fishing skills. This is a sure way to starvation if it is your only option to put food on the table for you and your family as anyone who has ever been hunting or fishing will tell you. A better option is to supplement those skills with the art of growing food and foraging for wild plants. All together you now have a recipe for a short and brutish life much like that of ancient man when he still lived as a hunter-gatherer. Doable but hardly ideal.

Man is a social animal for a reason: our needs are more easily met when we cooperate in large groups. We need an economy to truly live a sustainable lifestyle; we will need to trade with others for things which for one reason or another we will not be able to produce ourselves. In short the best case scenario for a survivalist is to be enmeshed with a large group of people living in an area they are invested in securing who all produce various things that they will trade internally and on occasion with outsiders.

Producing things people will trade for is the ideal for long term sustainability after a collapse. Much has been written on how to avoid looters by looking like you have nothing to loot. Many survivalists are planning on spending years, maybe decades, hiding in bunkers with a select group of fellow survivalists. This too will end badly for many as anyone who can envision several well armed families living in close quarters and sharing finite resources will conclude. Those who survive any coming collapse will do so by being able to produce things others need, not share things from a collective and steadily depleting collective pantry. Food would be the most valuable resource of course, although a good seamstress or carpenter will likely be able to get by. What we are talking abut is wealth in the old sense of the word, not acquired through business deals or wise investment but through production.

Eggs, for example, are a kind of wealth. Many suburbanites have begun keeping their own hens for economic reasons (they save money on eggs) but we see more and more that a person with  small flock of chickens is doing something most Americans have little experience with – producing actual wealth. Even survivalists often don’t fully understand this idea, explaining why people who think America is about to descend into a new dark age think one ounce gold coins (or worse, gold certificates) are going to pull them through while the rest of us starve. Gold and silver have their uses (one of which is enriching bloggers pre-collapse) but gold and silver represent wealth. They are not necessarily true wealth.

I’ll give you an example. I have two neighbors in the above worst of the worst case scenario. One has a veritable dragon’s hoard of one ounce gold coins each of which are now theoretically worth $10,000 in the new, desperate America. The other has a micro-farm consisting of a flock of chickens, a couple of milking goats and a large garden. Now let’s suppose that both want to get a couple of bowls of Rob Taylor’s famous five can chili or some homemade cough drops I mixed up in my spare time. What happens? Do I make change for a $10,000 gold coin? Or do I take a small basket of eggs for a batch of chili with a home made cough drop lagniappe? Sans a banking system to standardize currency bartering with precious metals is a risky proposition which is an idea I have put forward to before. This is not to say gold will be worthless, but it will be hard to trade with and if push comes to shove, harder to digest. Historically this has always been the case.

The first verse of the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem reads:

Wealth is a comfort to all men;
yet must every man bestow it freely,
if he wish to gain honour in the sight of the Lord.

This line references the rune Feoh which represents wealth in general but its name literally means “cattle” which was the the measure of wealth the ancient Northern Europeans used. Those who study runes for religious reasons point out this understanding of wealth, as practical goods like livestock and furs, provides both historical and spiritual insight into the runic tradition. For the survival minded of any religion it is instructive to note that people who lived in a harsh environment of low technology and scarcity of resources, livestock was how people measured wealth and was the currency that common people traded with.

Of course, many people don’t have room for cattle or other sorts of livestock like goats which are increasingly popular. But depending on the laws in your areas and rules of your homeowner’s association if you happen to be unlucky enough to have one, almost everyone can own a few chickens or grow heirloom vegetables. These renewable resources have value to you and others. If you find no buyers for your eggs, goat’s milk, and Cherokee Purple tomatoes, you can still use them to provide comfort and security for you and your family which is literally what wealth is. Not so your gold hoard or your ammunition reserves. It is time for survivalists to have a fundamental rethinking of what wealth means and how we can acquire it in a post-collapse world.

I went out to Luthi’s Sport and Pawn in Greenville today to do my own ammo hoarding, looking for cartridges for my Charter Arms Patriot chambered in .327 Federal Magnum. I bought the gun because it’s a versatile “kit gun” which will fire several commonly available calibers beside the new .327 including .32 H&R Magnum and .32 S&W Long. That last round, anemic by today’s standards, has enjoyed quite a comeback thanks to the sport of Cowboy Action Shooting which spurred an interest in working antique revolvers, many of which were chambered in various permutations of .32. Modern ammo shouldn’t be fired from an antique though, so don’t blame me if you try this and hurt yourself.

But although these calibers are available they aren’t, or I should say weren’t, particularly popular. When it looked like Obama was going to win I saw the writing on the wall and wanted to stock up. I chose what are called “oddball” calibers knowing the rush on 9mm, .223 Remington and anything 12Ga would drive prices through the roof and make getting these rounds a competition of who can get to the gun store the fastest and charge the most. Unfortunately I underestimated demand for the unique calibers because Luthi’s is completly out of .327 Federal Magnum and .32 H&R Mag even though two or three weeks ago they had plenty that wasn’t moving.

I guess some big mouthed blogger tipped someone off as my wife said to me as we left. I ended up buying a hundred rounds of .32 S&W Lead Round Nose, which will go well with the couple of hundred rounds of .32 wadcutters I have. But I’m still looking for more .327 and .32 mag for my hoard which is a little thin in the stopping power department. How thin? Less than I want of .327, but hopefully more than I’ll ever need. But I only have one measly box or .32 H&R mag which is a nice intermediate between the .327 and .32 for situations where you need more firepower than the .32 but aren’t quite ready for a mankiller (raccoons and foxes, which we’re lousy with here come to mind) so any readers who want to help a brother out and let me know where I can get some will have my gratitude.

The guy at the counter said basically they weren’t sure when they’d get more in, and that their last shipment of 9mm has increased in price by $8. Their ammo counter was looking sparse and they were doing brisk gun and ammo business at 2:30 in the afternoon, so if you need a piece don’t wait.

I noticed that Cheaper than Dirt, where I’ve also had great success with the “oddball” calibers I like are basically out of the stuff considered unpopular a year ago. This includes most of the 20 GA Buckshot and slugs and .410 buckshot rounds (I told you I like the odd stuff) and if their website is any indicator they have been unable to restock .45 LC for the last couple of months. All the popular calibers (9mm, .40 S&W, .45 ACP) are down to the bottom of the barrel discount Russian stuff or $3 a round specialty stuff few people can afford. Luckily my shotgun shell stash is deep enough that I’m not worried about getting more pistol ammo, but if you’re relying on a handgun as your primary firearm it’s time to worry.

Cabela’s is basically the same, and were already running light on revolver loads thanks to CAS shooters. There are still some deals there but you need to move quickly to get them. Most calibers I’m interested in are on back order.

The counter person at Luthi’s said to just keep checking back in and in these times it pays to have the number of the gun shop so you can check in and have them hold a box for you as soon as they know they’re getting a shipment. But the ammo shortage is is spreading out to rounds that are usually collecting dust on the shelves so if you don’t have what you need there’s no time to waste.

Cross posted at Red Alerts.