I'm tempted to take a look, but at those prices, I want something more than a download. I want something in my hands.
American Survival Guide, we even called it ASG, was great in the 1980's, early 1990's, in fact, it even had a networking section where you could exchange correspondence with people who were into survivalism. Some of what we do with PM's we actually did with snail mail!
"Conservative, Christian Survivalist, patriotic, served in military, Law Enforcement with family looking to contact same or similar in my area and beyond it to exchange ideas, tips on preparedness. Ted, 123 his Street, his town, his state, his zip code."
I've lost contact with those I use to correspond with, but it was neat receiving letters, pictures and I'll keep the confidences I had.
One funny thing, it was prudent to send in your first contact letter "Not into racism, anything illegal and/or the violent overthrow of the government" because you didn't know who you were contacting. This is one of many reasons I got a PO Box because I certainly wasn't going to have my address out there.
Many of the articles were interesting. I remember the firearms ones the best.
I still remember the gists of several, including one where a guy wrote about a friend who had a single shot 10 gauage for everything. Hardly a practical firearm, but that article's author wrote he'd count on that old guy with a 10 ga over anyone else with anything else because that's all the guy carried and used. The notion was if everyone became proficient with whatever they had, they'd be capable.
Then toward the end of the good ones there was a crazy trend to skeltonizing wooden (I think laminated) stocks. Right on the cover was an M1A with a stock with the middle cut out. Some previous articles or letters covered more practical things like survival kits in the hollow of synthetic rifle and shotgun stocks. (If anyone remembers how to do it so you don't need to be unscrewing it, but is still secure, please pass that on, it'd be a great project.)
Some fun and silly stuff was there too. Some guy who didn't have the money for a Main Battle Rifle set out to make one, and showed how he got a synthetic pistol grip stock, put it on an old Browning autoloader and got some Eagle or other 10 round magazines. Other guys were using long old field shotguns on some improvised tactical course. It looked funny, but they were at least training. I wondered why not simply buy a combo gun, a Mossberg with both barrels ran like $150 back then.
I miss ASG. I wonder how many practices I do now stemmed from ASG back in the 1980's.
