Well, today is the twentieth anniversary of me thinking “Hmm, maybe I’ll start a survivalist blog”. And, lo, it came to pass…….
The original incarnation of the blog was on LiveJournal (remember them?), and then I grabbed a copy of PageMaker and made up a website. That lasted for only a few weeks until I decided to go with WordPress. And, since then, that’s what I’ve used.
It’s been a fabulously interesting twenty years as far as blog-related stuff goes.
First and foremost, I like to needle ,Rawles about how my blog predates his by a few years. However, in all fairness, his blog is updated every day whereas mine is usually every three days or so. It’s a good-natured rivalry that is silly because, hands down, he has the more informative and useful blog. But…I was in the space first. ;0
See, my blog was never about telling people how to prepare, or why to prepare, it was simply to tell how and why *I* was preparing. I make mistakes, and sometimes I have brilliant insights….hit-n-miss is pretty much how the posting goes around here.
I’ve met a few people in the preparedness and gunblog world. I’ve also been ’email friends’ with a few people in the industry. I’m very grateful for those experiences and have enjoyed meeting all of them. I try very hard not to name drop in this blog because of privacy, but I’ve met some of the ‘big names’ in blogging. Fine folks, every one of them.
Over twenty years, I’ve seen a lot of blogs come and go. The most fascinating was our good friend Harry over at Self-Sufficient Living. He went dark and deleted his blog a number of years ago and eventually stopped replying in email. Maybe he died, maybe he went to ground. Dunno. But he was a great guy to read and I enjoyed our communications. I’d love to catch up with him sometime.
Over twenty years you can see trends change and fall in and out of favor. This blog is older than the iPhone that many of you are reading this post on. When this blog started we were still in the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban era. Can you imagine? Neutered rifles and 10-rd magazines…the horror!
And, of course, over twenty years we have had all sorts of ‘this is it!’ moments as told to us by the media and people who had their tinfoil on too tightly. Just off the top of my head….SARS, Bird Flu, Avian Flue, Kung Flu, 2012, Fukishima, Ebola, Peak Oil, assorted earthquakes, etc, etc. Yet…..we’re still here.
It doesn’t take twenty years of thought to come up with “Stay safe, live within your means, be ready for a rainy day, plan ahead.” So, why have I been re-hashing the same stuff over and over? Well, its not always the same stuff…technology and toys change over time, new goodies come to market, etc. But, mostly, I’ve come to enjoy the routine and structure of blogging. And most importantly, I like that my interactions with people who read the blog remind me that maybe I’m not some outlier with a weird camo fetish…there are plenty of people out there who think the same way. Its a nice reminder that Im not alone in my beliefs and practices. Don’t underestimate how important that is.
What does the future hold? Beats me. My life is completely different than it was on Day One of the blog. Back then I had lotsa time and no money. Now its the other way around. Back then it was a big deal to spend $20 on batteries or a MagLite. Nowadays I routinely drop several hundred bucks every couple weeks on preparedness acquisitions (and way too many Ruger P95Dc’s). I’ll probably keep blogging until either the apocalypse actually happens or until I finally get my beloved Middle O’ Nowhere heavily fortified house. And even then i might not stop. Just can’t really say.
In the meantime, I’ll use this moment to shamelessly shill for myself – if you’ve enjoyed the last twenty years or twenty minutes of my posting, feel free to head over to Patreon and throw a little something my way. I promise it will go to a cause that would make Schumer and Feinstein fall down with a case of the vapors.
Thanks to everyone who reads the blog and I hope you all continue your work on making yourselves more resilient against what the future holds, no matter what that might be. We’ll see how many more years we can keep cranking out these posts.
