Some Prepping and Shooting Articles

•  "Five tips to modify a Zippo lighter for survival fire making" – Survival Common Sense. As the author notes, there are a lot of good things about the Zippo lighter--including some important advantages over your standard butane lighters--but it suffers from one main flaw which is that the fuel will evaporate over a few days no matter how well you seal them. There are some other Zippo-type lighters designed for the outdoors that are supposed to be better at preserving fuel, but I haven't tried any of them. In any event, the author has some tips for storing some spare parts, fire starting material just in case the fuel evaporates, and more.
• "Shooting to Live Methods and Results"--Tactical Professor. The author addresses a few techniques from the book Shooting to Live (1942) by Fairbairn and Sykes illustrated by a few videos with some commentary between. Probably mostly of interest to the person interested in the history of combative firearms training.
• "Editor’s Notebook: Forgotten Ammo Tests"--The Tactical Wire. The author provides an evaluation of the Georgia Arms G38S defensive load. It uses a full 148-grain wad-cutter and is intended as a defensive load for use with a .38 Special snubnose revolver. The author related some tests which found that it averaged around 700 feet-per-second and reached 13-16” in ballistic gel, even through four layers of denim. The author's tested it out of an S&W M&P 340 (sub-2” barrel), and found it to have an average velocity of 773 fps. He also provided a brief summary of velocity tests of a couple Civil Defense loads in .38 Special and .357 Magnum.
• "How to Survive the EXTREME Stress and Despair of SHTF"--Organic Prepper. This article is from J. G. Martinez D. and based on his experiences living through the economic crises in Venezuela and relocating to an adjoining country (Columbia, if I remember correctly). He relates that stress "will make your mood to be…swift changing, at best. It will make you get emotional in the less expected (and awkward) moment, making you feel uncomfortable as a minimum, and making your decisions much harder to take. If you allow it will erode your relationships with all around you: spouse, children, parents, friends, acquaintances." (Ellipses in original). 
• "Scavenging: It's Not Just When the SHTF. It’s Already a Way of Life for Many." by Fabian Ommar, Organic Prepper. The author relates according to official statistics, about 1% of the population in developing countries get by from scavenging, and even in many developed countries people participate in scavenging. But the author also states that, per his contacts, it seems to becoming more common in the United States, particularly among the growing homeless population. He also observes the related issue of thieves stealing fixtures and copper wiring and other metal to sell for scrap. 

    When resources become scarce, people look everywhere for stuff. We naturally go from the easiest to the hardest when it comes to getting what we want or need. In other words, we start shopping at the nearest grocery store and end up scavenging as the situation worsens.

    People scavenge for food to eat, for clothing to wear, and for appliances to use. Many make their living from collecting and selling scrap and recyclables. Scavenging takes place everywhere and at all times but grows exponentially during a crisis or some other SHTF. So, yes, it’s genuinely a survival activity.

He also writes that scavenging has four main practical aspects to it: what, how, where, and when:

    What is the type of stuff to scavenge. Mostly, food, recyclables (cardboard, plastic, glass, metals, old tires, etc.), construction materials, wearables, furniture and appliances, books, old records, discarded tools, toys, etc.

    How is related to the safest and most productive ways to scavenge, using protection (gloves, perhaps a dust mask and goggles), the right tools (a crowbar, a poking pole, etc.), and the means of transport for the stuff collected.

    Where is in respect to the most favorable places to look for each type of material. For instance, a person can find food around markets, food courts, and commercial spaces. You can usually find recyclables and materials around construction sites. Appliances, furniture, wearables, etc., are more commonly found in residential areas.

    When relates to the best time, week, month, and year more appropriate to find the desired stuff. For example, when is the best time to discard/collect different materials in different moments and places? It takes time to get that right, but once you do, productivity increases considerably.

Finally, he has some tips for beginners, some recommendations as to tools, and some personal experiences he relates.

    We probably have all done a bit of scavenging. Back when I was a kid, before plastic bottles and the proliferation of aluminum cans, when soft drinks were generally sold in glass bottles and you had to pay deposits for the same, my family would occasionally go along roadways and collect discarded glass bottles and redeem the deposits. 

     And when I was serving as a missionary in Japan, it was common for people to abandon or discard bicycles when they broke--most didn't have the tools or knowledge to repair bicycles and it was generally cheaper to buy a new bicycle than take the old one to a repair shop and have it fixed. The consequence was that there were often large mounds of discarded bikes in vacant lots or fields in and around urban areas. We would sometimes go through those piles to find parts for our own repairs. There were even a couple missionaries I knew that had assembled whole bikes from these parts.

    Of course, this is very different from scavenging after a more serious SHTF event such as a nuclear war, EMP, or something else that could collapse civilization. If that interests you, I would recommend reading Without Rule of Law: Advanced Skills to Help You Survive by Joe Nobody. You can read my review of that book here.

•  "Top-Selling Guns on GunBroker.com for June 2023"--Guns and Ammo. Gives you an idea of what is popular right now in various categories, new and used. 
• "Fiocchi .38 S&W Ammunition" by Thomas Christianson, Survival Blog. At one time, .38 S&W was a fairly popular cartridge, particularly for small, pocket sized revolvers. The British even developed a more powerful version (you can think of it as a .38 S&W +P, I guess) generally referred to as .38-200 (because the original design used a 200 grain lead bullet). Anyway, you might come across one of these old revolvers and decide to give it a try. Prior to Covid, .38 S&W was becoming much easier to find than it had been even a couple decades ago, so it appears that more and more people must be taking these old guns out to shoot.
  

    The author of this piece, Christianson, goes over the history of the cartridge, describes the revolver he owns in .38 S&W, his tests of the Fiocchi ammo, briefly discusses the advantages to purchasing and owning a pre-1898 firearm (which I believe are largely illusory, but that is a discussion for another day), and then returns to a bit of history: specifically, incidents of assassins which used .38 S&W firearms. 

•  "Fix Bayonets! A bayonet is a great knife for outdoor chores"--Survival Blog. Although bayonet charges are basically a thing of the past, the author discusses that bayonets can still serve a roll in crowd control or weapon retention when mounted on a rifle, and, depending on the style of bayonet, can serve as your survival or outdoorsman's knife. 
• "RG305: The One-Handed Revolver Reload"–RevolverGuy. Exactly as the title says: techniques for reloading a swing-cylinder, double-action revolver when you only have one hand to use. He goes over techniques for both righty and lefty shooters.