If you don’t have an Eton Blackout Buddy, then you need to get one. It’s an awesome investment with tons of upside and very little downside—a rare commodity today.

I got my Blackout Buddy as a Christmas gift from a friend. It’s so cool. It’s a night-light that looks like an iPod. Since it’s plugged into the wall, it’s always charged, so when the power goes out in your house it automatically kicks on with a full charge. When you unplug it, it doubles as a flashlight, buying you precious time to get your bearings. That alone is worth the price of admission.

But one of my favorite reasons for owning the Blackout Buddy is that it can get you past inertia. Disaster prepping can be overwhelming. There are so many ideas and products to wade through that you feel like you’re drowning in information. No one wants to feel all that pressure and then have to deal with the actual disaster.

Make it easier on your family. The Blackout Buddy alleviates the pressure. I use it as a physical reminder to break my planning up into manageable bite-size pieces. I keep it near the island in the kitchen where our family spends most of our time. It’s a conversation starter.

The Blackout Buddy doesn’t look like your average night-light. As I already mentioned, it looks like an iPod, but it has an American Red Cross on it. One of our friends asked, “Why does it have a red cross on it?” and that question got a conversation going. The Red Cross recommends that Eton’s emergency survival products be part of everyone’s supply kit. That got us talking about more than just what to expect when the house goes dark and everything is scarier. If the conversation gets too heavy, we move on. It almost guarantees we’ll talk about our planning again because it’s always there.

The Blackout Buddy is practical and is an inertia beater. And breaking your prepping into bite-size pieces will lessen the shock when you say to your spouse, “Honey, I want to install a generator.”

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“The full extent of the Nazi threat to Switzerland during World War II has never been adequately acknowledged. The reality was that the Swiss citizenry rifles in hand, stood up to the Nazis, threatening an unacceptable loss of German blood in the event of an invasion. When the Nazis conquered France, they decreed the death penalty for any person who failed to surrender firearms. This would have special significance in Switzerland where every man had been issued a rifle for militia service.”  -The Swiss and the Nazis: How the Alpine Republic Survived in the Shadow of the Third Reich , by Stephen Halbrook

Mr. Halbrook asks, “Are the lessons offered by Switzerland during World War II relevant today?” The answer is unequivocally yes.

As Mr. Halbrook points out, “The Swiss aversion to centralized authority derived in part from their mountain culture and from the enduring legacy of the Reformation doctrines of Calvin and Zwingli. This proved to be a powerful bulwark against the Fuhrer principle just as, in more recent times, the Swiss rejected integration into the sprawling bureaucracies of the European Union. Referenda, local control and democratic consensus are core values in Switzerland. Indeed the Swiss are more opposed to statism than the parliamentary democracies Hitler sought to destroy.”

As Stephen Halbrook explains, “To the Swiss, strict armed neutrality meant that they would not participate in external wars. They would fight only defensively and only if attacked…. At the peak of its mobilization, the Swiss Confederation mustered an astonishing 850,000 men under arms—out of a population of 4.2 million.”

Stephen Halbrook concludes, ”The birth of the Swiss Confederation in 1291 and the United States in 1776 are extraordinary episodes in history in which peoples banded together to win their freedom. Despite today’s vast differences in size and population, Swiss local democracy is a kind of template of American local democracy. That is why Switzerland and the United States, despite occasional bumps on the road, will inalterably remain Sister Republics.”

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The 67th Fighter Squadron “Fighting Cocks” (67 FS) – This is what fighters from Langley and Oceana do off Virginia’s coast.

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In 2011, knives were used in 1,694 murders. Hands and feet were used to commit 726 murders. Clubs, hammers, and other blunt objects were used to commit 496 murders. Handguns were used in 6,220 murders and shotguns were used in 356 murders. Given the hype over “assault rifles,” you might think Dianne Feinstein’s “weapons of war” would be responsible for thousands of murders a year. But the reality is that rifles were used in 323 murders in 2011, far fewer than handguns and less than all other conventional weapons broken down by the FBI in their annual statistics.

In light of these facts, and after a national examination of the issue of gun control, Americans are cooling on the idea of new gun regulations. A poll conducted by Langer Research Associates shows a decline of 35% in support for new gun regulation over the last month. Americans are pushing back against new gun control. Women especially are concerned about losing their second amendment rights under any new gun ban. Celia Bigelow and Aubrey Blankenship make a compelling case at National Review on why women prefer AR-15s for their own self-defense.

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