The Survival Weekly Dispatch - Volume 11, Issue 39

Hey folks, thanks for checking out the newsletter this week. This one is going out a little later than usual. Normally, I write these up on Monday or Tuesday and schedule them to send. Monday I was busy with other things and Tuesday I got slammed with a 24-hour bug. Ended up spending most of the day crashed out on the couch or in bed, with a fever bouncing between 101F and 102F.

This was undoubtedly a gift from my granddaughter. She’d spent the weekend with us and was feeling under the weather for most of it. When the most adorable two-year-old granddaughter in the world asks for cuddles to help her feel better, you just can’t say no, even though you know you’re gonna catch whatever she’s got.

I feel marginally better today, so hopefully I can start clearing some of the deadlines from my plate.

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Prepper Tip – If you have local family and/or friends who are aware you prep, assume they will show up and ask for help in a crisis. As hard-nosed as you may be in conversations with them, odds are at least some will still end up knocking on your door. Your options are:

--Plan to turn them away, with the understanding that doing so may require force, and also realizing that there may be consequences to face later, once the crisis has passed.

--Plan to prep for them and add what you can to your own pantry and such to accommodate the additional mouths to feed. This may or may not involve asking them for financial or some other form of support in order to acquire the needed supplies.

--Plan to not be there when they arrive, though this isn’t always feasible or practical, depending on the overall situation.

If you’re confident that nobody on the planet outside your home knows you prep, you have nothing to worry about, I suppose.

It might be worth noting that not all disasters or crises will rise to the level of a total societal collapse. In pretty much all of the most likely situations, order will indeed be restored at some point, and there may be questions about actions taken. Turning strangers away is one thing. Forcing Uncle Carl and his family off the porch, despite having broken bread with them for the last 27 Christmases, might be another thing entirely.

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The 2024 Gear Guide special for Backwoods Survival Guide magazine should be appearing in stores. Look for it anywhere magazines are sold. You can also order it online here.

There are well over 100 individual products in this issue. Some of the companies represented include:

• Bark River Knives

• Wazoo Survival Gear

• 5.11 Tactical

• Tuff Possum Gear

• Leatherman

• Victorinox

• Smith & Sons Knives

We’re covering clothing, shelter, first aid, knives, multi-tools, fire making, and tons more. In each section, we have some detailed product reviews, followed by pages of additional products we like. We’d love to make this an annual issue, as it was a lot of fun to put together. And we timed it just right for holiday shopping 😉

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If you have little ones in the mix, the Sesame Street website has a ton of resources to help you talk to them about disasters as well as help them handle the crisis.

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As of this writing, my Urban Prepper’s Guide book is on sale at Amazon for under twelve bucks. That’s the lowest I’ve seen it go since it was published. Don’t let the title fool you. It isn’t just for city folks. The idea was to put together a book geared toward readers who didn’t have 40+ acres of land to use.

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Get caught up on our How to Survive 2025 podcast here. We’re up to nine episodes, with many more to come.

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I have two 2025 calendars available for purchase.

Real World Prepping has about 130 tips, hints, and suggestions scattered throughout the year to keep you moving forward to being ready for life’s little and not so little curve balls. There’s also a ton of bonus content that can be found through the QR codes that are printed for each month.

Point to Pommel is for my fellow knife nerds. The calendar features knives from:

• Bark River

• LT Wright

• 7Forge

• Spartan Blades

• Buck Knives

• Night Watch

• White River Knives

• TOPS Knives

• Kopis Designs

• Smith & Sons

• Vehement Knives

• Dan Tope

If you are interested in a bulk purchase of either calendar, drop me an email [jim@survivalweekly.com] to discuss rates.

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Our hike over the weekend was a visit to Horicon Marsh in Horicon, Wisconsin. It is the largest cattail marsh in the country. All told, it’s about 14 miles long and five miles across at its widest point. They have a few trails, as well as a great visitors center. As luck would have it, the day we were there they were hosting the Horicon Marsh Archaeology Festival. We had no idea this was going on, and it was a pleasant surprise. The leaves are just starting to change there.

Survival Tip – Establishing Baselines

We often do this sort of subconsciously, but it’s worth discussing for a moment. The term baseline refers to what you would consider the norm in a given environment or situation. It’s deviations from the baseline that should get our attention when our situational awareness is on track.

Here’s an example of how this can work. Let’s say you walk your dogs just about every morning around 7AM. Even though you’ve been taking the same route every day for months, you still maintain some level of situational awareness. As you walk past one house, you notice that their front door is ajar. This is odd given that it’s the middle of December and rather cold. You also see a vehicle in the driveway that’s never been there before. These observations are deviations from the baseline. You know that an elderly widow lives there, as you’ve seen her walking her own little dog on occasion.

You continue walking by, but when you round the next corner, you call the police department’s non-emergency number, which you have saved as a contact in your phone. You explain to the dispatcher that something just doesn’t seem right about what you observed. Turns out, you were right to be nervous about it as officers discovered a robbery in progress when they arrived.

Situational awareness is all about watching for deviations from the baseline.

Backwoods Survival Guide Magazine

For those new to my little corner of the Internet, I am the Editor in Chief for Backwoods Survival Guide magazine. Here is the cover for the current issue available in stores right now. 

You can find them just about anywhere magazines are sold, including:

• Walmart

• Sam's Club

• Costco

• Publix

• Walgreens

• Rite Aid

• CVS

• Tractor Supply

• Fleet Farm

• Barnes & Noble

Subscriptions are available here.

Questions, Comments, Complaints, Concerns?

I am always just an email away - jim@survivalweekly.com.