Preparedness Notes — June 23, 2026

This Week in History:

On June 23, 1810, John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor) organized the Pacific Fur Company in Astoria, Oregon.

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1931: American pilot Wiley Post and Australian navigator Harold Gatty took off from Roosevelt Field, New York, to attempt to set a new record circumnavigating the Earth. They successfully complete their series of flights in 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes.

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And on June 25, 1798, US President John Adams signed into law the Alien Friends Act, authorizing the president to deport any foreigner deemed “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.”

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I’ve completed writing the new Introduction for a revised hardback edition of my first novel, Patriots.  Lord willing, that edition (with a spiffy new cover and a Foreword written by Michael Z. Williamson) should be available from Ulysses Press on November 3, 2026.  But please wait until that day to place your order. (Mark your calendar.) – JWR

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Signal Nomad (one of our advertisers) has expanded their product line to include Faraday bags, a rugged cellular phone with removable battery (for stealth), power banks, and more. Take a look at their site and click on “Products”.

Health, Fitness, and The End Of The World, by D.F.

In this article, I’ll describe how medicine and society will change, and why you should become a fitness nut and not just a prepper.

There’s a stereotype of preppers, and it’s not kind: A middle aged or older man with a BMI that passed 30 before he was 30 and grew by 1% every year, a ton of guns, canned food, and a half-hearted vegetable garden.

I know because I resemble that. As I’ve been struggling to recover my health, I’ve had a few realizations that have kept me on the path to fitness.

Health is something money can’t buy. Ultimately, whether you’re healthy and fit is a question of discipline and commitment. Having children or dependents should serve as inspiration for the average prepper to do more than just go to the range and plink at blue helmet cutouts. However, as someone who has worked as a Registered Nurse in healthcare, I wanted to discuss in depth some things that we don’t really think about.Continue reading“Health, Fitness, and The End Of The World, by D.F.”

Dark Mountain Arms StowAway Rifle in 5.7x28mm, by Thomas Christianson

Chambered in 5.7x28mm or in 9mm, the Dark Arms StowAway Rifle packs more punch than similar survival rifles chambered in .22LR or .22WMR.

The StowAway is a single-shot, bolt-action rifle. It has a detachable, 16-inch, threaded barrel. It is 31.78 inches long when fully assembled. I found the rifle to be simple, reliable, and reasonably accurate during my testing.

The rifle is light at only 2.8 pounds, easily breaks down into less than 17 inches in length, but is ruggedly built in spite of its feathery weight. A hollow pistol grip provides enough space to store many rounds of 5.7X28mm ammo. The rifle is made in the USA.

At the time of this writing, the StowAway rifle had a manufacturer suggested retail price of $419 at darkmountainarms.com . The StowAway is also available as a pistol or as a Federally-registered short-barrel rifle (SBR).

If you are looking for a pinweight survival rifle that hits harder than a rimfire, then you might want to take a look at the StowAway.Continue reading“Dark Mountain Arms StowAway Rifle in 5.7x28mm, by Thomas Christianson”

SurvivalBlog Graphic of the Week

This week’s graphic is a map that shows the population density of U.S. counties, as of 2026.  Every  prepper knows that in a crisis, fewer people generally means fewer problems. Note the low population density in the American Redoubt. There is only one county in the entire American Redoubt region that is shaded dark green. That is Ada County, Idaho, with 519,000 people. For perspective, that is just a bit more than Raleigh, North Carolina. Ada County’s population includes the roughly 236,000 residents inside the city limits of Boise. – JWR

The thumbnail image below is click-expandable. (Graphic courtesy of Reddit.)

 

 

 

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Please send your graphic ideas to JWR. (Either via e-mail or via our Contact form.) Any graphics that you send must either be your own creation or uncopyrighted.

Economics & Investing Media of the Week

In Economics & Investing Media of the Week we feature photos, charts, graphs, maps, video links, and news items of interest to preppers.

Economics & Investing Links of Interest

Economics & Investing Media Tips:

Please send your economics and investing links to JWR. (Either via e-mail or via our Contact form.) Thanks!

The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from JWR. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. In today’s column, some more technological advances with negative consequences.

An AI Camera Put Another Wrong Man in Jail

Over at The Liberty Daily: How a Bad AI Camera Hit Put the Wrong Man in a San Diego Jail Cell. Here is an excerpt:

“They tried to stop a red Alfa Romeo on Broadway about ten minutes later. The driver fled at speeds reaching 100 miles per hour and officers lost the car near Little Italy without ever reading its plate. They were left with a description of a red Italian sports car with tinted windows and not much else.

Then a Flock reader five miles away in Old Town photographed a red Alfa Romeo on the 2200 block of Moore Street. Detective Gary Gonzales, one of the officers who had been chasing the carjacker, got the image and, according to his report, “’ecognized the vehicle in the image as the vehicle [we] were pursuing due to the red paint and black tinted windows.’

There was a problem with the timing that should have ended the case right there.

The Old Town photo was taken 23 seconds after officers in Golden Hill tried to stop the fleeing suspect. No car covers five miles of city streets in 23 seconds.”

JWR’s Comments: It is telling that they call these “Flock” cameras. That implies that we in the general public are a flock of sheep, to be shorn. By the way, I believe that we need a new acronym, to describe a Willing Human Accomplice To Artificial Intelligence Tyranny (WHATAIT). The police officer who made that arrest is a WHATAIT — and not a particularly bright one.

An Enormous Hack on Residential Proxy Networks

Three readers mentioned this at The WSJ: How Hackers Found a Back Door Into the American Living Room.

Continue reading“The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods”

SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets

Our weekly Snippets column is a collection of short items: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. Note that we may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters.

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In anticipation of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Field Gear Editor Tom Christianson recommended this insightful essay at Holly’s Substack: To Boss Ourselves. Here is a brief excerpt:

“I was raised in a culture, if not a family, that taught me my dignity came from somewhere higher than any man, any ballot, any king.

I no longer believe a great many things I was taught as a child, but I’m still sure of that one.

And it turns out the founders staked the whole country on the same wager — that what makes a person sacred is not assigned by the powerful, and so cannot be unassigned by them. No election reaches it. No majority can vote it away. It was never theirs to give, which is precisely why it is not theirs to take.”

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U.S. Army buys 9,000 DAGIR-V1 lasers for its newest rifle.

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Some interesting  observations by Ben Braddock on the newly-revised food pyramid: The Guidelines They Wanted.

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In honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration on Independence, we’ve started a sale on all of our blackpowder guns and all of our single-shot rifles and pistols at Elk Creek Company, with some deep price reductions. One of the guns on sale is an original 3rd Model Colt .44 Dragoon revolver! The sale ends on Monday, July 6th, so order soon.

Continue reading“SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets”

SurvivalBlog’s American Redoubt Media of the Week

This weekly column features media from around the American Redoubt region. (Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and Wyoming.) Much of the region is also more commonly known as The Inland Northwest. The photo above is courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service.

Redoubt News Links

Send Your Media Links

Please send your links to media from the American Redoubt region to JWR. Any photos that are posted or re-posted must be uncopyrighted. You can do so either via e-mail or via our Contact form.

Editors’ Prepping Progress

To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug-out bag fine-tuning, 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 your e-mailed letters. We post many of those — or excerpts thereof — in the Odds ‘n Sods Column or in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!

Jim Reports:

We took a trip to once again visit Glacier National Park. (The photos herein were all taken by Jim or Lily.) This time, we decided to enter the park via the little off-grid town of Polebridge, Montana, up near the Canadian border.  Here is a description of that park entrance at SmokyBear.com:

“The Polebridge Entrance is the third Glacier National Park Entrance on the west side of Glacier National Park. It is a remote entrance and used mostly by the locals and hardy visitors. To access this entrance, travel about 35 miles north of Columbia Falls, Montana on the North Fork Road (Hwy 486), along the west side of Glacier Park (a mostly gravel road), then turn into the village of Polebridge. At the Polebridge Mercantile, turn left and the dirt road will take you across the North Fork of the Flathead River to the Polebridge Entrance.

This entrance will take you to some of the most pristine areas of Glacier Park, i.e. Bowman Lake and Kintla Lake. Both of these glacial lakes are roughly 7 miles long and sit in bowls surrounded by thick forests and the towering mountains of the Livingston Range. The entrance is open 24 hours a day all year around but closed to vehicular traffic from mid October to mid May depending on snow cover. Our favorite areas of Glacier Park are accessed through the Polebridge Entrance.”

The North Fork Road (Hwy 486) makes a unique sudden transition from a 70 MPH speed limit paved highway to a 35 MPH gravel road. The gravel portions of that road demand your full driving attention. Once inside the  National Park, the road is mostly one lane, and quite rough in spots. I do not recommend it for low ground-clearance vehicles.  We were surprised to see a lot of grandfathered private property in-holdings inside of Glacier National Park.  It was odd to see FedEx and UPS trucks transiting the park to reach those private cabins.

Back at the ranch, I cut and hand-split some more firewood. Our daughter expertly handled the stacking.

I mailed out a few more Elk Creek Company orders. Our big sale on blackpowder guns and single-shot pre-1899 rifles and pistols will be keeping me busy!

Now, Lily’s part of the report…

Continue reading“Editors’ Prepping Progress”

JWR’s Meme Of The Week:

The latest meme created by JWR:


Meme Text:

The U.S. Treasury Secretary Has Devised a New Tax That Will Balance The Federal Budget

A Tax Of Five Cents On Each Personal Pronoun In Every Contemporary Christian Praise Chorus.

Note From JWR: Do you have a meme idea? Just e-mail me the concept, and I’ll try to assemble it. And if it is posted then I’ll give you credit. Thanks!

Permission to repost memes that I’ve created is granted, provided that credit to SurvivalBlog.com is included.

Preparedness Notes: June 16, 2026

This Week in History:

On June 16, 1779 US General Anthony Wayne (pictured) captured Stony Point, New York, inflicting heavy losses on the British.

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June, 1462: Vlad III the Impaler (the inspiration for “Dracula”) attempted to assassinate Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in a night attack at Târgoviște. But the failure of that attack forced him to retreat from Wallachia.

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And in 1873: US President Ulysses Grant declared a portion of Wallowa Valley, Oregon are a reservation for the Nez Perce Native American tribe. But the order was rescinded two years later and the tribe was forcibly re-located to Oklahoma.

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A reminder: SurvivalBlog is now delivered Fresh Every Tuesday. I’m trying to make the new weekly format as useful and comprehensive as possible. – JWR

Saving Western Civilization, by Single Farmer

Editor’s Introductory Note: This young man is prayerfully seeking a wife. He is offering an after-marriage gift of up to $50,000 to whoever introduces him to his bride with $18,000 after their marriage and another $16,000 to the individual who provided the introduction after the first two births of healthy children born to him and his wife, for a total potential gift of $50,000. For further details, see his article posted on July 13th, 2025: My Quest for a Wife: I’m Willing to Move, and in his May 6, 2026 article on rural migration starting at the bold section on “A Golden Opportunity to Move”

Please remember all of my writings are a Gedankenexperiment, not a form of advice, but an extended thought experiment. This will surely be a controversial article. But consider that sometimes medicine is useful even if it initially tastes bad.

White people are being oppressed around the world and are a minority group who are under constant assault. White people are often systematically discriminated against, are declining as a percentage of population, and if you examine this without any labels just examining the population’s percentages over time it could be characterized as a genocide. There has even been an effort to deny that White people even exist as a distinct group or culture to the point of many people [including journalists and academics] refusing to use capitalization for the term “White,” but capitalizing “Black.” Those are strong ideas that many people have never heard of previously. In this article, I intend to demonstrate further information in support of this idea along with providing a potential solution and to give my thoughts on Afrikaner refugees who are fleeing South Africa.Continue reading“Saving Western Civilization, by Single Farmer”

Recipe of the Week:

The following recipe for Mock Soylent Green Hardtack Crackers is from SurvivalBlog reader L.E., who notes: “You can also experiment with making Soylent Yellow and substitute orange juice for the beer, and use yellow split pea powder and yellow lentil powder, and substitute mushroom powder for the seaweed, and sugar and cinnamon/nutmeg for the spices.”

Ingredients
  • 1 cup cornmeal
  • 1/2 cup green lentil powder
  • 1/4 cup split pea powder
  • 1/4 cup powdered seaweed
  • 1/2 cup beer (adjust for consistency)
  • 1 tablespoon onion powder and/or garlic powder
  • Soy sauce, to taste (about 1 teaspoon)
Directions
  1. Mix Dry Ingredients: In a large bowl, combine cornmeal, lentil powder, pea powder, seaweed, and salt and spices. Mix well.
  2. Add Beer: Gradually add beer to the dry mixture, stirring until a dough forms. Adjust the amount of beer to achieve a workable consistency.
  3. Roll Out Dough: On a floured surface, roll out the dough to about 1/8 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes and prick all over with a fork. Use a gingerbread boy cookie cutter for that “human” touch.
  4. Bake: Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Place the crackers on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden and crisp.
  5. Cool and Store: Let the crackers cool completely before storing them in an airtight container.

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Do you have a well-tested recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers? In this recipe column, we place emphasis on recipes that use long-term storage foods, recipes for wild game, dutch oven recipes, slow cooker recipes, and any recipes that use home garden produce. If you have any favorite recipes, then please send them via e-mail. Thanks!

SurvivalBlog Graphic of the Week

Today’s graphic is a map showing the United States divided by watersheds, as proposed by explorer, cartographer, and USGS Director John Wesley Powell. (Graphic courtesy of Reddit and the Sonoran Institute.)

The thumbnail image below is click-expandable.

US Watersheds Map

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Please send your graphic ideas to JWR. (Either via e-mail or via our Contact form.) Any graphics that you send must either be your own creation or uncopyrighted.