The newsletter included columns from Mel and Nancy Tappan, as well from Jeff Cooper, Al J. Venter, Bill Pier, Bruce D. Clayton, Rick L. Fines (writing as "Ross Lee"), J.B. Wood, Dr. Carl Kirsch, Charles Avery, Karl Hess, Eugene A. Barron, Janet Groene, Dean Ing, Alexander Jason, James McKeever, Kurt Saxon,[1] Bob Taylor, Reginald Bretnor, C.G.
A new edition of Tappan on Survival (with a foreword by Bruce D. Clayton) was released in 2009, and as of December 2009 ranks in Amazon's top 90,000 books (out of more than 4 million titles.)
Either time ran out before Mel had the chance to write more on a topic, such as medicine, money, barter or the management of stress or, as in the case of firearms, he wrote what may seem to some an inordinate amount because that was the subject in which his readers voiced the greatest interest.
As Mel wrote on pages 122-123, "Most problems resolve themselves into self-evident solutions if you have enough reliable information and if you can eliminate emotion from the evaluation of it."
Every problem that he encountered he approached with this attitude—be it field stripping a new gun for the first time, analyzing one of his favorite lyric poems or helping a friend in trouble.
Running like a leitmotif through everything Mel wrote is this theme: Take control of your life by becoming as independent of the system and others as possible, and as a first step toward achieving this, learn to look at reality in a hard, unblinking way.