China Cuts Fertilizer Exports Through August. Your Food Budget Will Feel It.

Ask a teenager, or an adult for that matter, to point North. No phone. I’m reminded that an entire generation has outsourced navigation to a device that needs batteries and a signal. Worth fixing.

Finding Your Way When GPS Fails

Last week we covered your phone as a survival tool. This week is the backup plan for when it dies, breaks, or loses signal.

A compass and a paper map are the most reliable navigation tools ever made. They don't need batteries. They don't need satellites. They work in caves, in storms, and after an EMP. The problem is that most people haven't used either since middle school, if ever.

Start with a compass. A basic orienteering compass has a magnetized needle, a rotating bezel, and a direction-of-travel arrow. To find north, hold it flat and let the needle settle. Rotate the bezel until the N aligns with the red needle. That's it. You now know north, and from north you can determine every other direction.

Paper maps are the companion piece. A road atlas or a USGS topographic map of your area gives you routes, terrain, water features, and landmarks that don't depend on a server. Keep one in your car and one at home. Mark your key locations: home, work, family, evacuation routes, water sources.

Here's the skill most people skip: relating the map to the ground. Hold the map so that north on the map aligns with north on your compass. Now everything on the map matches what you see around you. Roads run the right direction. Rivers are where they should be. This simple step turns a confusing piece of paper into a useful picture of where you are.

Natural navigation works as a rough backup. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In the Northern Hemisphere, it's always roughly south at midday. At night, Polaris (the North Star) sits almost exactly over true north. Moss on trees is unreliable, despite what you learned in scouts.

For urban navigation, landmarks matter more than compass bearings. Tall buildings, highways, rivers, railroad tracks, and power lines all give you directional reference. If you can identify two landmarks you recognize, you can orient yourself without any tools at all.

The practical takeaway: buy a compass, buy a map, and spend 30 minutes learning how they work together. That investment covers you for any scenario where your phone can't.

Buy a paper road atlas or print a map of your area.

Boeing's Combat Survivor Evader Locator (CSEL) helped U.S. Special Forces rescue a downed F-15E weapons systems officer hiding deep inside Iran. The 800-gram device — worn in the pilot's survival vest — uses ultra-short burst transmissions and rapid frequency hopping that appear as background noise to enemy sensors, relaying encrypted coordinates through military satellites to rescue centers worldwide. The civilian equivalent: a registered Personal Locator Beacon (PLB). If you spend time in remote terrain, a PLB is the civilian version of this technology. (YnetNews, ZeroHedge)

Joshua Enyart, known online as the Gray Bearded Green Beret, served as both an Army Ranger and a Green Beret across 12 combat tours. In Surviving the Wild, he writes about navigation as the foundational survival skill that enables every other one. His point is direct: the best shelter, water source, and escape route in the world are useless if you can't find them.

Enyart teaches a concept called "terrain association," using the ground itself to confirm your position. Instead of relying solely on a compass bearing, you cross-reference what the map shows (a ridge, a creek, a road junction) with what you see in front of you. If they match, you know where you are. If they don't, you stop and figure out why before you keep moving.

China Shuts Off the Global Fertilizer Tap Through August

Beijing suspended exports of phosphate fertilizers and nitrogen-potassium blends through August 2026, restricting between half and three-quarters of China's total fertilizer exports. China is the world's largest phosphate producer. Combined with the Hormuz closure — which handles roughly a third of the world's seaborne fertilizer supply — farmers are caught in a double squeeze right as the US Corn Belt planting window closes in mid-April. Industry estimates put additional price increases at 15–20% by mid-summer.

What this means: If you grow any food or plan to, stock soil amendments, fertilizer, and heirloom seeds now. Garden input prices are likely to rise through the season. (Taipei Times, Farm Progress)

Suunto A-10 Compass

The Suunto A-10 is a liquid-filled baseplate compass with a jewel bearing, made in Finland. Declination correction scale, orienteering arrow, map scales in both metric and imperial. Designed for navigation basics — nothing flashy, everything functional. It's lightweight, durable, and runs about $30. We've dropped it, gotten it wet, and left it in a hot car. Still reads true. For most people learning map-and-compass, it's the right starting point. If you can afford the highly rated brother compass, the SUUNTO MC-2 is trusted by amateurs and professionals alike, running around 70 dollars And should last many years to come.

→ Suunto A-10 on Amazon (~$30)

Overrated: GPS watches for preparedness. They're great fitness tools, but they rely on satellite connections and batteries. In a real navigation emergency, they're just as dead as your phone when the power runs out.

Underrated: Road atlases. A $10 Rand McNally road atlas covers the entire US and fits in a glovebox. No signal required, no battery needed, and it includes alternate routes that GPS apps never suggest.

Budget alternative: Brunton TruArc 3 ($12). Basic orienteering compass. Perfectly functional for map reading and finding north.

USGS TopoView — Free topographic maps of the entire US. Download and print your area.

REI: How to Use a Compass — Clear tutorial with diagrams. Good for beginners.

CalTopo.com — Free online mapping tool that lets you create custom topo maps.

Grokipedia: Celestial Navigation — Background on using stars and sun for direction.

Orienteering USA — Find local orienteering events where you can practice map and compass skills with other people.

Cooking without power. What to eat, how to heat it, and the surprising number of options you already have in your kitchen right now.

PS: My friends can now find north in under five seconds. Took exactly one lesson. Some skills really are that simple once someone shows you.