As I’ve gotten older, and acquired more years of doing this sort of thing, I’ve come to a couple conclusions. I’ve mentioned them a million times before but I think they are absolute truths that are worth hearing again:

• The small, personal EOTWAWKI will happen to you far more often than the Great Big EOTWAWKI. In other words, you will lose your job, be betrayed by those close to you, get stuck in the snow, have a medical emergency, experience a blizzard/earthquake/tornado, replace transmissions, repair water heaters, and be in money crunches far, far, far more often than you will be in a post-nuclear, EMP, dirty bomb, Chinese invasion, comet strike, or zombie situation.
• It’s impossible to be 100% proofed against an event. (Except maybe having your appendix out.) But what you can do is increase resilience. Survivalism isn’t so much about reducing the odds to zero as much as it is bumping up the survivability rate a point or two at a time. Preparedness (or survivalism) is increasing resilience to events.
• Determination, motivation, and clear-headed thinking with minimal preps beats wishy-washy, uncommitted, unfocused thinking with lotsa gear. If you can’t afford an FAL and a Land Cruiser, you can afford a library card and free wifi at McDonalds. Develop ‘mans basic tool of survival‘ , and you’ll still be at a tremendous advantage over the normies.
• Money or money-like instruments are the duct tape that fix 99% of the problems you will encounter right up until the wheels fly off civilization. For TEOTWAWKI there’s 5.56, for everything else there’s money. By all means, stack food, meds, fuel, clothes, radios, ammo and water. But stack some form of valuable currency (dollars, gold, silver, etc.) just as deep if you can…you’ll need it a lot sooner and more often than the rest.

But you already knew all that, right?

What an interesting time we  live in to be a survivalist. We’ve got pandemic, race issues, economic issues, lurking foreign policy issues, and who knows what else fate has on deck?

From Hemingway: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

Just an FYI… at the moment, I have 6 5 4 3 2 bundles of AR mags left, and 3 of AK mags.

Still wondering what 2019 holds. Since I’m a firm believer in ‘better safe than at at ballistic disadvantage’ I’m sending a chunk of those recently acquired magazines into the Deep Sleep. At the rate you people are buying them, it appears there’s some groupthink going on.

But, preparedness isn’t all glamour and guns. Being early January, now is the time to start some seeds indoors so theyre ready for the outdoors around May. Nothing fancy, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, that sorta thing. Don’t know why, but its always a bit satisfying.

As I’ve said, I’m going to try like heck to get the house paid off this year, and keep the gun purchases to a minimum (which, ideally, will be one grossly overscoped Ruger .338 Lapua Precision Rifle).

Other unsexy stuff for the year: better radio equipment, update/upgrade the video security, indoor hose bib for indoor firefighting, a big ol IBC in the yard for catching rainwater and a 12v pump to move it around, some solar panels if I can get a deal on them, more shelving for the basement, a couple extra propane tanks, and a few other geegaws.

But, always an eye on those idiots in Washington…theyre as big a potential problem as any supervolcano or EMP.