Memorial Day 2019

On Independence

I've given David the day off, so enjoy this post from last year. -- Erin

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

As this post goes live, it is Tuesday, July 4, 2017. It is also Independence Day. On this day 241 years ago, 56 men risked everything they had to ratify a document declaring that they would no longer be subjects to the ruler of a distant land.

Liberty, and everything that comes with it, was dear enough that men were willing to risk everything to obtain it. Failure meant certain death, as well as a permanent stain on their families and progeny.

In the modern day, we celebrate the success of their daring venture. The parades date back to young men (and some old men) marching off to war with a grand farewell. The fireworks are an analog of the artillery fire that has cleared the way for those brave men since the dawn of our nation.

Don't feel guilty if you barbecue, or go to car shows, or go camping or boating or whatever with your family for this holiday. Blood and treasure has been shed for two and a half centuries to secure your right to spend time with the people that matter to you. If patriotic displays or quiet remembrance are more your speed, that's perfectly appropriate, too; the memories of the lives spent in service are worth keeping.

Lives have been pledged to the ideals of this nation since before the Declaration of Independence was even ratified, a tradition which has continued uninterrupted. While at times our military was much smaller, we have always had a core of professional officers and specialists that recruits could rally around. As warfare became more complex and involved, a cadre of true professional soldiers has arisen to fill that role. The stunning part is that all of these professionals are volunteers. We haven't had conscript soldiers in my entire lifetime, and for nearly a decade before.

Knowing that our men and women in uniform all raised their hand of their own free will makes the final line of the Declaration even more poignant:

"with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

Honor those who have purchased liberty, in whatever way you see fit. That is the nature of freedom, and that is what they have secured for us all.

Lokidude

The Super Bowl and Preppers

Not actually Erin.

Picture by KJ Photography

& is used with permission.

If you are watching the Super Bowl tonight, odds are excellent that you're watching it with friends or family. If so, take a moment to appreciate these people, for they are your tribe.

We've talked about the importance of Tribe, of having a close-knit group of people upon whom you can depend when things get messy. But your tribe should be more than a circle of preppers; they should be your family of choice, if not by blood, and that means you ought to spend time bonding with them by having fun.

Prepping is more about being ready for emergencies; it also means having supplies laid in so that when your friends come over, you will have what you need and not need to make a late run to the store for food, beverages, or charcoal.

So as you enjoy this most American of holidays, realize that you are also affirming what it is to be a prepper by surrounding yourselves with your chosen kin and digging into your supplies while enjoying yourselves.

Just don't forget to restock your pantry tomorrow.

On Independence

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

As this post goes live, it is Tuesday, July 4, 2017. It is also Independence Day. On this day 241 years ago, 56 men risked everything they had to ratify a document declaring that they would no longer be subjects to the ruler of a distant land.

Liberty, and everything that comes with it, was dear enough that men were willing to risk everything to obtain it. Failure meant certain death, as well as a permanent stain on their families and progeny.

In the modern day, we celebrate the success of their daring venture. The parades date back to young men (and some old men) marching off to war with a grand farewell. The fireworks are an analog of the artillery fire that has cleared the way for those brave men since the dawn of our nation.

Don't feel guilty if you barbecue, or go to car shows, or go camping or boating or whatever with your family for this holiday. Blood and treasure has been shed for two and a half centuries to secure your right to spend time with the people that matter to you. If patriotic displays or quiet remembrance are more your speed, that's perfectly appropriate, too; the memories of the lives spent in service are worth keeping.

Lives have been pledged to the ideals of this nation since before the Declaration of Independence was even ratified, a tradition which has continued uninterrupted. While at times our military was much smaller, we have always had a core of professional officers and specialists that recruits could rally around. As warfare became more complex and involved, a cadre of true professional soldiers has arisen to fill that role. The stunning part is that all of these professionals are volunteers. We haven't had conscript soldiers in my entire lifetime, and for nearly a decade before.

Knowing that our men and women in uniform all raised their hand of their own free will makes the final line of the Declaration even more poignant:

"with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

Honor those who have purchased liberty, in whatever way you see fit. That is the nature of freedom, and that is what they have secured for us all.

Lokidude

Our 500th Post

This is the 500th published post on Blue Collar Prepping. Monday through Friday, five times a week for a hundred weeks (roughly -- there have been some weekend posts), a bunch of admitted amateur preppers have been able to keep cranking out content that people want to read. 

Each of us has written about a hundred articles in the almost two years since we began. Try that sometime; unless you're a professional author, it isn't easy coming up with a new topic and writing 500-1000 words every week (mine tend to be a bit longer; I'm “thorough,” according to our editrix.  I also like to write in series to cover a topic, that gives me more opportunity to cover things in detail.). I have all of my old posts archived locally, just to make sure that I don't repeat myself.

We have a Facebook page with over 200 members, and our bloggers are the moderators of that page. We do our best to keep the trolls and spammers in line (politics not allowed), and we discuss posts and topics there with more activity than we get from the comments section of this blog. It's also a quick way to share links that we run across without writing a blog post about everything we see.

We've had writers join and we've had a few that had to step away from writing for various reasons. We cherish our guest writers, for they give the regulars a break. We all have regular lives, with the normal amounts of stress and commitments other than writing a blog. We have come together as a small tribe of our own, even though we're scattered from East coast to West and from Florida to Utah. We cover all four time zones, and our goal is to eventually gather somewhere and actually meet face-to-face.

Looking through the statistics furnished by Google, our ten most-viewed posts have covered a variety of subjects and span almost entire life of our blog:

• Erin's post on Purifying Water with Potassium Permangenate, from August 2014, comes in number one with 3,171 views. 
• Numbers two through four are my posts on Death and Burial: Body, Mind, and Spirit, with 1585, 880, and 701 views respectively (February and March 2014). This series was cross-linked on another blog and that inflated the numbers a bit.
• Water Filtration with a Stick, from just a few weeks ago, comes in at number five with 526 views. 
• A Prepper Library of PDFs is Erin's collection of free-to-use PDF files of interest to preppers and ranks in sixth place.
• Number seven is one of David's Buffet Posts, in which he covers several smaller topics that weren't worthy of individual posts alone.
• Erin's introduction to Your Apocalypse Arsenal and Every Day Carry are numbers eight and nine.
• And at number ten, Lokidude unboxed a prepacked Bail Out Bag -- a modified 72 hour kit designed for keeping in a vehicle. The Bail Out Bag is still available, and it is one of the few things that all BCP writers endorse.

Looking at some of the other statistics, I can tell that two-thirds of our readers use some flavor of Windows operating system and prefer Mozilla's Firefox browser over all others (twice as many as Chrome and three times Safari's users). You're mostly viewing our little blog from the United States, although France and the Ukraine are about tied for second place, with each showing twice as many views as Canada. Some of the other locations that show up are Russia, China, the UK, Germany, India, and Turkey.

We average 300-400 views a day, about 12,000 a month. Our numbers are slowly growing, and we are always looking for ways to get more readers. We keep the ads to a minimum, just a few on the right-hand side of the page, because we're not doing this to get rich. We don't sell DVDs or books (although we have discussed collecting our articles into an e-book) or survival-related gear; we're doing this to present information.

I feel that we need to give recognition to the sites who send readers our way. Without the links from them, we wouldn't have a fraction of the readers we do and we are grateful for their help. The top two are aggregator sites that post links to blogs, SurvivalBlogs.org and Gun Blog Black List. Give them a look if you have the time -- there's a lot of good information on both sites.

Here's looking forward to our next 500 articles. With your input and continued reading, we'll be writing until the SHTF for real.