Here are some tools and misc. information that you may find useful in your planning and preps:
Free resource that can help you get your finances in order:
https://www.mint.com/
Article from the Alabama Prepper's Network:
Top 10 Survival Downloads You Should Have
Categories:
Uncategorized
by admin
The following article has been generously contributed for your reading pleasure by Rourke at Modern Survival Online. We strongly urge our readers to take Rourke’s advice and download or print (or both) the following guides, which are available 100% free. Ideally, retain a paper copy if you have a survival folder, and save a copy to your reserve USB drive, which should be a component of your bug out survival bag or stored at your bug out location.
There are tons of good downloads in the Survival Database Downloadsection of this website. For this article – I have selected 10 that everyone should have either printed and put away, or placed on a USB drive – or better yet both.
So – let’s get to it:
#10. FM 4-25-11 First Aid (2002) – Military First Aid Manual.First aid information is a must – get training before you need it – use this manual for reference.
#9. Guide to Canning – Being able to preserve crops to be able to provide for yourself and your family long after the growing season is over is important. This guide will help with that.
#8. Rangers Handbook (2006) – Crammed with info on demolitions, booby traps, communications, patrolling, tactical movement, battle drills, combat intelligence and much more
#7. Where There is No Dentist – The author uses straightforward language and careful instructions to explain how to: examine patients; diagnose common dental problems; make and use dental equipment; use local anesthetics; place fillings; and remove teeth.
#6. NATO Emergency War Surgery – While this is certainly not a manual that would stand alone in most persons emergency/disaster library, it is an absolutely necessary resource if you expect to handle any type of trauma where immediate comprehensive medical care is not available.
#5. A Guide to Raised Bed Gardening – This is not an “all knowing” gardening book – however it provides a lot of information to the “urban gardener” before or after TSHTF. Best to get the experience and knowledge of gardening NOW rather than later.
#4. FM 3-06 Combined Arms Operations in Urban Terrain – Combat techniques covered in the manual which may be very valuable in a “Roadwarrior”-type world.
#3. 1881 Household Cyclopedia – A massive resource of information that much of it has been lost over the past 203 generations. From Angling to Knitting – its here.
#2. FM 21-76-1 Survival-Evasion-Recovery (1999) – Excellent manual geared towards the soldier that finds himself behind enemy lines
#1. FM 21-76 US Army Survival Manual – From Amazon.com: This manual has been written to help you acquire survival skills. It tells you how to travel, find water and food, shelter yourself from the weather and care for yourself if you become sick or injured. This information is first treated generally and then applied specifically to such special areas as the Arctic, the desert, the jungle and the ocean.1970 Military Issue Manual. General Introduction and Individual and Group Survival Orientation Navigation, Finding Water In All Parts of The Globe. How To Obtain Food, Start a Fire and much more!
Well, there’s my list. Best of all – they are all 100% free. So, feel free to download them all.
Rourke
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Documentation
K, by now, you've probably got some water, some food, some supplies and a good idea about priorities. I would hope so, I've been gone a while... you know... life gets in the way like that. Which is exactly the point, my priorities came before this blog. But, now I'm caught up for a bit and suggest the next step. Back-ups and Documentation.
I was on the fence between this and home protection. I decided to go with back ups because a house fire or water line break is more likely than a violent home break in or societal collapse. If you are a home owner, you want a fire proof safe and hard copies of all your important documents like your car and house deeds, etc... but, also, technology being what it is, you can grab a 32 gig thumb drive and move all your important family pictures or digital files like digital reciepts and what not. Like, I have one drive in my fire proof safe, one at my dad's and one at my mom's. I back them up about every 2 months... well, I back one up and then rotate their locations, so I suppose at anyone time, the drive at my house is 4-6 months out of date. They have all my pictures and I've gone through the process of digitizing all my physical reciepts.
There are also online back up sources that I personally haven't tapped into yet, but probably will eventually. If anyone has any info on the pros and cons, I'd love to hear it in the comments section. I suppose I have tested the online storage a bit with Zune Marketplace (stopped buying physical movies and started buying a license right from Microsoft so I can download or stream the movies and they take up no more physical space), and I love it.
All of this makes you more mobile, which is a good thing. Obviously, if you are creating a homestead, you probably aren't thinking of mobility, but if you lose your job and the only place you can find a new job is North Dakota (or if you are in North Dakota, the only job you can find is somewhere else, like Texas), then the ability to pick up a safe or thumb drive, and go and you have all your important documents is extremly important.
Aside from documentation of your assets, you can also create a physical inventory of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). This could be with books like Surviving The End of the World As We Know It, Rainwater Harvesting, or your own binders with How To's on skinning animals, purifying water, nuclear disaster actions... whatever you think is important to have if you don't have access to digital media for a while.
I was on the fence between this and home protection. I decided to go with back ups because a house fire or water line break is more likely than a violent home break in or societal collapse. If you are a home owner, you want a fire proof safe and hard copies of all your important documents like your car and house deeds, etc... but, also, technology being what it is, you can grab a 32 gig thumb drive and move all your important family pictures or digital files like digital reciepts and what not. Like, I have one drive in my fire proof safe, one at my dad's and one at my mom's. I back them up about every 2 months... well, I back one up and then rotate their locations, so I suppose at anyone time, the drive at my house is 4-6 months out of date. They have all my pictures and I've gone through the process of digitizing all my physical reciepts.
There are also online back up sources that I personally haven't tapped into yet, but probably will eventually. If anyone has any info on the pros and cons, I'd love to hear it in the comments section. I suppose I have tested the online storage a bit with Zune Marketplace (stopped buying physical movies and started buying a license right from Microsoft so I can download or stream the movies and they take up no more physical space), and I love it.
All of this makes you more mobile, which is a good thing. Obviously, if you are creating a homestead, you probably aren't thinking of mobility, but if you lose your job and the only place you can find a new job is North Dakota (or if you are in North Dakota, the only job you can find is somewhere else, like Texas), then the ability to pick up a safe or thumb drive, and go and you have all your important documents is extremly important.
Aside from documentation of your assets, you can also create a physical inventory of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). This could be with books like Surviving The End of the World As We Know It, Rainwater Harvesting, or your own binders with How To's on skinning animals, purifying water, nuclear disaster actions... whatever you think is important to have if you don't have access to digital media for a while.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Knowledge and Skills
Ok, you've covered the big 4, stocking water, food, amenities and you've created a list of likely situations that will affect you and started preparing for them, now what? If you haven't already, now is the time to go beyond stocking and learn how to purify your own water, grow, find and kill your own food and find alternatives for a amenities.
Gaining the knowledge and developing the skills necessary is really the gist of almost everything else in survival and preparedness. The amount of things you can learn and skills you choose to develop are literally endless, and that's daunting to many n00bs to survival prep. In fact, it's the focus on these things that people inevitably overwhelm themselves and think it's impossible to be ready. I plan on going into this crazy bucket of skills as best I can and having others help write articles to populate this blog with that info, but it's important to be realistic.
Gaining the knowledge and developing the skills necessary is really the gist of almost everything else in survival and preparedness. The amount of things you can learn and skills you choose to develop are literally endless, and that's daunting to many n00bs to survival prep. In fact, it's the focus on these things that people inevitably overwhelm themselves and think it's impossible to be ready. I plan on going into this crazy bucket of skills as best I can and having others help write articles to populate this blog with that info, but it's important to be realistic.
Starting with the next blog post, this blog will take a direction that focuses almost exclusively on knowledge and skills because outside those 4 basic building steps we introduced with stocking, everything else is about knowledge and practice. For example, you can spend all the money you want on an amazing gun, but if you don't know much about it, how it works, how to fix it in a jam, how to maintain it, what it's most practical applications are, and how to shoot it indoors effectively versuses outdoors effectively, you're more dangerous to yourself than anyone you might use it against. There's an old adage, 'Fear the man with one gun'. It refers to the idea that he is so familiar with his gun that it's second nature to him. But, you can apply this thought to all major skill-sets.
So, starting now, I will put out an open invitation to any contributors who would like to help develop this blog. If you have an area of expertise and you would like to share that knowledge, please feel free to write an article about it and send it to me. I'll post the article here with you as the contributor, attribute it to you and your website if you have one, and if you become a regular contributor, provide you with free advertising space on this page.
Prioritizing
It's easy to flip on the news and see whatever current disaster is in the news and freak yourself out into preparing for that one very unlikely scenario. Right now, as of this writing, it is the Japan earthquake/tsunami/nuclear plant meltdown/severe cold/no food situation. A quick StartPage search (mypreferred search engine, for reasons we will get into A LOT later in the progression of this blog when we start talking about digital security) revealed to me that there is a Nuclear Power Plant 30 miles northwest of my location (St. Clair County, IL) on the New Madrid fault line. It would be easy to convince myself that I need to save up iodine tablet and b12 and blah blah blah... but really, what's more likely? An earthquake AND nuclear meltdown or the loss of my job? It's important to not get carried away. Be practical and evaluate your local conditions.
For example, here's a way to approach what takes priority. I've already stocked against a potential job loss but I live close to a flood plane outside of St.Louis and we've had a particularly heavy winter. The likelihood for flooding this spring is higher than it would normally be. So, my focus for spring of 2011 is to make sure I have the ability to get up and leave should this become a problem. A bug-out bag, or a bug-out cooler or a stocked bug-out location at a family members or friends are things I should be trying to put in place. In your area, the circumstances may be different. Think about the things that could effect you and prioritize them based on likeliness. This will help you organize your next preparations.
Since I cannot tell you what situations are most likely to affect you personally, this will be a short post. Things to consider when prioritizing this list of most likely scenarios is:
Your lifestyle. Is it excessive? By this, I mean are you living beyond your budget? Is your financial situation fixable (even finances are involved in prepping... it does you no good to max out your credit cards buying food and water and then have a hurricane take it all away and leave you with no means of purchasing food and water wherever you evacuate to)? Do you go out a lot (this could increase your likelihood of being mugged, what can you do to prepare for or prevent that)? Are you a hermit? Are you paying for things that you don't necessarily need to pay for?
Your career. Is it stable (someone in IT will have a more stable job than someone in say, banking... as of the time of this writing). Do you have the capacity and/or time to get or create an additional income? Do you have stuff you don't need and have been meaning to get rid of that you could sell to create an additional 'rainy day' savings?
Your location. Do you live in the city, the burbs or something more rural? If you're in the city, what's the crime rate? What's the history of riots like in your area? What are the economic conditions in your area? Are you in a company town that is facing a potential closure? What sorts of natural disasters do you experience on a seasonal basis? A yearly basis? Are their other disasters in your area's history? What are the energy considerations like in your area?
Once you've prioritized a list of most likely scenarios, think about necessities vs. luxuries. You can organize your list of what-to-get and what-to-do's around this so you don't overwhelm yourself and start developing simple plans of action based on this knowledge.
If you find this overwhelming, that's ok. There is a simplified and very effective method for preparation that sounds very silly, but actually works. Just prepare for a Zombie Apocalypse. I know, it's ridiculous, but think about what that includes: food & water incase you have to hide indoors... which is the same in case of a flood, civil unrest, joblessness, a blizzard, power outage, etc... weapons to defend yourself, the same as mass civil unrest, power outage, police state conditions, etc... medical equipment to protect yourself from infection like a pandemic, biological terrorist attack, etc... And frankly, it's a lot more fun to plan for a zombie attack that try and plan for each and every possibility in your area. It makes the process of learning about preparedness more entertaining and less stressful. Check out Zombie Squad if you think this could work for you.
Good luck if you choose to accept this mission. This message will self destruct.
For example, here's a way to approach what takes priority. I've already stocked against a potential job loss but I live close to a flood plane outside of St.Louis and we've had a particularly heavy winter. The likelihood for flooding this spring is higher than it would normally be. So, my focus for spring of 2011 is to make sure I have the ability to get up and leave should this become a problem. A bug-out bag, or a bug-out cooler or a stocked bug-out location at a family members or friends are things I should be trying to put in place. In your area, the circumstances may be different. Think about the things that could effect you and prioritize them based on likeliness. This will help you organize your next preparations.
Since I cannot tell you what situations are most likely to affect you personally, this will be a short post. Things to consider when prioritizing this list of most likely scenarios is:
Your lifestyle. Is it excessive? By this, I mean are you living beyond your budget? Is your financial situation fixable (even finances are involved in prepping... it does you no good to max out your credit cards buying food and water and then have a hurricane take it all away and leave you with no means of purchasing food and water wherever you evacuate to)? Do you go out a lot (this could increase your likelihood of being mugged, what can you do to prepare for or prevent that)? Are you a hermit? Are you paying for things that you don't necessarily need to pay for?
Your career. Is it stable (someone in IT will have a more stable job than someone in say, banking... as of the time of this writing). Do you have the capacity and/or time to get or create an additional income? Do you have stuff you don't need and have been meaning to get rid of that you could sell to create an additional 'rainy day' savings?
Your location. Do you live in the city, the burbs or something more rural? If you're in the city, what's the crime rate? What's the history of riots like in your area? What are the economic conditions in your area? Are you in a company town that is facing a potential closure? What sorts of natural disasters do you experience on a seasonal basis? A yearly basis? Are their other disasters in your area's history? What are the energy considerations like in your area?
Once you've prioritized a list of most likely scenarios, think about necessities vs. luxuries. You can organize your list of what-to-get and what-to-do's around this so you don't overwhelm yourself and start developing simple plans of action based on this knowledge.
If you find this overwhelming, that's ok. There is a simplified and very effective method for preparation that sounds very silly, but actually works. Just prepare for a Zombie Apocalypse. I know, it's ridiculous, but think about what that includes: food & water incase you have to hide indoors... which is the same in case of a flood, civil unrest, joblessness, a blizzard, power outage, etc... weapons to defend yourself, the same as mass civil unrest, power outage, police state conditions, etc... medical equipment to protect yourself from infection like a pandemic, biological terrorist attack, etc... And frankly, it's a lot more fun to plan for a zombie attack that try and plan for each and every possibility in your area. It makes the process of learning about preparedness more entertaining and less stressful. Check out Zombie Squad if you think this could work for you.
Good luck if you choose to accept this mission. This message will self destruct.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Amenities
Ok. You've stocked water and you're learning how to purify it so when your storage runs out you can still rehydrate, bath, wash clothes, clean... etc... You've stocked food. You're learning how to garden, forage, hunt and fish. You're learning how to can your leftovers; dehydrate, dry and keep your food. You're buying extra dry and canned goods when you go grocery shopping and if you catch them on sale. Food and water stock piles will take you a while to build up and because you use them, their attrition will require that you always restock them, so expect that. Once you have it mastered and you feel comfortable with your new stocks and skills, you take the next step. Now what?
Amenities.
Amenities encompass things like toilet paper, soap, toothbrushes, etc... Is there a whole lot of sense in buying a toothbrush for 60 cents a few years ago and $1.24 today... and $2.37 a few years from now if you can buy them all at today's prices? It's not like they're gonna to go bad. If you know you go through a couple tooth brushes a year, why don't you buy 50 or 60 toothbrushes at today's price instead of wasting more money later? Boom! Winning.
What about toilet paper? As the cost of toilet paper keeps going up as fuel prices rise and the lumber industry diminishes under oppressive EPA restrictions, what benefit do you get by paying more money tomorrow for the same quality of product you could get today at a lower cost? Remember, time is money and our money is being inflated, making it worth less. That means everything will cost more. That means you will have to work more hours to pay for what you have later. It simply makes more economic sense to buy what you can now at today's prices instead of tomorrow's inflated ones. Econ lesson for the day accomplished.
Amenities stocking is something people have a tendency to overlook because we habitually keep these items in closets and cabinets. Out of sight, out of mind. But knowing that, does it matter if you have one bottle of shampoo or 15 in the closet? Not really. What's better is, you don't even have to change whatever you system is right now. If you shop when you run out, you still add whatever you're out of to your shopping list and back stock your storage. If you shop once a week, every two weeks, once a month or longer, you shop the exact same after you buy your stock of amenities. You just back stock your storage now.
Here's a simple list of common things most people use:
toothbrushes
toothpaste
soap
shampoo
conditioner
deodorant
toilet paper
paper towels
batteries
bleach (non-scented)
There are certain storage considerations with all of these that also need to be considered, such as toilet paper and mice. Everyone and every home is different, so you'll have to decide if you have the room to keep toilet paper in plastic Rubbermaid bins or up high on shelves to keep from getting wet in case of a water break.
Also, it's possible to make all these items or find some sort of replacement in nature (except for maybe batteries and bleach) so if you're interested in learning to make soap or finding soap plants, making reusable towels and what not, the internet is your friend. As I continue this blog, I'll eventually expand into these areas... but not in step 3. That's just overwhelming.
Oh, and don't worry too much about cleaning supplies, if you stocked vinegar for your food stores, then you can always you some of that... some of the bleach you store or just plain water.
Amenities.
Amenities encompass things like toilet paper, soap, toothbrushes, etc... Is there a whole lot of sense in buying a toothbrush for 60 cents a few years ago and $1.24 today... and $2.37 a few years from now if you can buy them all at today's prices? It's not like they're gonna to go bad. If you know you go through a couple tooth brushes a year, why don't you buy 50 or 60 toothbrushes at today's price instead of wasting more money later? Boom! Winning.
What about toilet paper? As the cost of toilet paper keeps going up as fuel prices rise and the lumber industry diminishes under oppressive EPA restrictions, what benefit do you get by paying more money tomorrow for the same quality of product you could get today at a lower cost? Remember, time is money and our money is being inflated, making it worth less. That means everything will cost more. That means you will have to work more hours to pay for what you have later. It simply makes more economic sense to buy what you can now at today's prices instead of tomorrow's inflated ones. Econ lesson for the day accomplished.
Amenities stocking is something people have a tendency to overlook because we habitually keep these items in closets and cabinets. Out of sight, out of mind. But knowing that, does it matter if you have one bottle of shampoo or 15 in the closet? Not really. What's better is, you don't even have to change whatever you system is right now. If you shop when you run out, you still add whatever you're out of to your shopping list and back stock your storage. If you shop once a week, every two weeks, once a month or longer, you shop the exact same after you buy your stock of amenities. You just back stock your storage now.
Here's a simple list of common things most people use:
toothbrushes
toothpaste
soap
shampoo
conditioner
deodorant
toilet paper
paper towels
batteries
bleach (non-scented)
There are certain storage considerations with all of these that also need to be considered, such as toilet paper and mice. Everyone and every home is different, so you'll have to decide if you have the room to keep toilet paper in plastic Rubbermaid bins or up high on shelves to keep from getting wet in case of a water break.
Also, it's possible to make all these items or find some sort of replacement in nature (except for maybe batteries and bleach) so if you're interested in learning to make soap or finding soap plants, making reusable towels and what not, the internet is your friend. As I continue this blog, I'll eventually expand into these areas... but not in step 3. That's just overwhelming.
Oh, and don't worry too much about cleaning supplies, if you stocked vinegar for your food stores, then you can always you some of that... some of the bleach you store or just plain water.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Food
So, I brought up Water as probably being the most important thing we can figure out. I made that post mostly for newcomers that may just be getting into prepping and with that in mind, I thought I'd point out some food stuff. I would love additional input.
Food I think is second to water, and there are several layers to getting food. The first layer would be to simply get storable foods, so here are a few good deals:
ShelfReliance
Grab & Go Meals
Premium 1600 Year Supply of Food
MREs
Food Insurance
Dehydrated Food for Home Storage
If you can't get these for some reason, or you don't think they fit your particular lifestyle, just buy extra dry and canned goods when you go grocery shopping and build your stocks up slowly. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing effort. Couple of things that a lot of people tend to overlook would be vegetable oil and vinegar. Vinegar is great because it can be used for multiple things, like cleaning. If you have the Apple Cider vinegar, you can put a little in a bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and punch a few holes in it and catch any fruit flies that may be annoying you.
So, those are good starts and are easy to get access to right now. But, they cost money and will eventually run out. There are a few skills it would help to start learning now. Obviously hunting & fishing & foraging are three important skills in gaining access to food. We have forums about that on siloutdoors.com that are free access, so I'm not going to spend time on them. I'll only say it's important to play to your strengths and if you are weak on any of them, that's where community comes in... which is the entire purpose of SARC. You can ask any questions you have about those in the appropriate forums.
If you are not a hunter or gatherer, but you have a savvy green thumb, then gardening/farming is also incredibly important and productive. These can be singular or communal efforts and there are a lot of different ways to approach gardening in particular. If you're in an apartment or just want to save ground space in your garden, I've used the Topsy Turvey and had great results. I've also used the Upsy Downsy and the Strawberry version... all worked well and all of which are available at Walmart I think. Here's a good blog that has some more detail on it if you're interested.
If you have a yard, but not much space, you could try a 3 Sisters Garden method that the Native Americans used. The short and skinny is that it's a symbiotic relationship gardening setup, each plant benefits the other. You can migrate this to other vegetables as well. Here's a list. There's also Tire Gardening, which I'm going to try with Potatoes this year. Although I'm planning on doing the tire stacking method.
There's also community gardening, which totally depends on your community and how much you trust the people in your community. If you think about it, we have a whole lot of public space we're paying taxes on that doesn't do anything. And then, to add insult to injury, we have to pay someone to take care of it since they changed the rules on using criminals for public work projects like that. If you live in a community that has a space that would make a good garden, you can try pitching the idea at a local townhall and see if anyone would be interested in using the space.
The idea is simple, people in the community that are interested put in time to cultivate and raise different plants and everyone who puts in the time share in the results. Now, obviously there will be those that put in more time and those that put in less and how you work out the details to make that work would be on you and those involved. A nice benefit is that it would connect you with like minded people right there near you that maybe you didn't know were there and develop good habits in case the price of food gets out of control. Not to mention, just getting kids involved so they understand where food comes from is a great learning experience.
So, ok... all of this is fine and dandy, but what about storage? If there is no electricity, how do you store all this? Here's a few methods that you may be interested in learning:
Canning
Dehydrating or Drying
Solar Powered Refrigerator
I will be honest, I'm not strong on any of these yet, but if there is someone reading that is, please add your 2 cents.
Once you get a routine down, you should check out this link. It's a list of things you probably aren't storing, but probably should be... and why. They are LDS, but not preachy, so if you're anti-LDS for some reason, maybe don't go there... but if you're interested in some excellent info, great link. Great blog really.
Also, if you aren't a meat eater, or you are unsure of your ability fish/hunt and get the protein you'll need to stay healthy, check out Quinoa as a storage items. Gluten-free source of protein.
Any other inputs or thoughts on food are appreciated.
Food I think is second to water, and there are several layers to getting food. The first layer would be to simply get storable foods, so here are a few good deals:
ShelfReliance
Grab & Go Meals
Premium 1600 Year Supply of Food
MREs
Food Insurance
Dehydrated Food for Home Storage
If you can't get these for some reason, or you don't think they fit your particular lifestyle, just buy extra dry and canned goods when you go grocery shopping and build your stocks up slowly. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing effort. Couple of things that a lot of people tend to overlook would be vegetable oil and vinegar. Vinegar is great because it can be used for multiple things, like cleaning. If you have the Apple Cider vinegar, you can put a little in a bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and punch a few holes in it and catch any fruit flies that may be annoying you.
So, those are good starts and are easy to get access to right now. But, they cost money and will eventually run out. There are a few skills it would help to start learning now. Obviously hunting & fishing & foraging are three important skills in gaining access to food. We have forums about that on siloutdoors.com that are free access, so I'm not going to spend time on them. I'll only say it's important to play to your strengths and if you are weak on any of them, that's where community comes in... which is the entire purpose of SARC. You can ask any questions you have about those in the appropriate forums.
If you are not a hunter or gatherer, but you have a savvy green thumb, then gardening/farming is also incredibly important and productive. These can be singular or communal efforts and there are a lot of different ways to approach gardening in particular. If you're in an apartment or just want to save ground space in your garden, I've used the Topsy Turvey and had great results. I've also used the Upsy Downsy and the Strawberry version... all worked well and all of which are available at Walmart I think. Here's a good blog that has some more detail on it if you're interested.
If you have a yard, but not much space, you could try a 3 Sisters Garden method that the Native Americans used. The short and skinny is that it's a symbiotic relationship gardening setup, each plant benefits the other. You can migrate this to other vegetables as well. Here's a list. There's also Tire Gardening, which I'm going to try with Potatoes this year. Although I'm planning on doing the tire stacking method.
There's also community gardening, which totally depends on your community and how much you trust the people in your community. If you think about it, we have a whole lot of public space we're paying taxes on that doesn't do anything. And then, to add insult to injury, we have to pay someone to take care of it since they changed the rules on using criminals for public work projects like that. If you live in a community that has a space that would make a good garden, you can try pitching the idea at a local townhall and see if anyone would be interested in using the space.
The idea is simple, people in the community that are interested put in time to cultivate and raise different plants and everyone who puts in the time share in the results. Now, obviously there will be those that put in more time and those that put in less and how you work out the details to make that work would be on you and those involved. A nice benefit is that it would connect you with like minded people right there near you that maybe you didn't know were there and develop good habits in case the price of food gets out of control. Not to mention, just getting kids involved so they understand where food comes from is a great learning experience.
So, ok... all of this is fine and dandy, but what about storage? If there is no electricity, how do you store all this? Here's a few methods that you may be interested in learning:
Canning
Dehydrating or Drying
Solar Powered Refrigerator
I will be honest, I'm not strong on any of these yet, but if there is someone reading that is, please add your 2 cents.
Once you get a routine down, you should check out this link. It's a list of things you probably aren't storing, but probably should be... and why. They are LDS, but not preachy, so if you're anti-LDS for some reason, maybe don't go there... but if you're interested in some excellent info, great link. Great blog really.
Also, if you aren't a meat eater, or you are unsure of your ability fish/hunt and get the protein you'll need to stay healthy, check out Quinoa as a storage items. Gluten-free source of protein.
Any other inputs or thoughts on food are appreciated.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Water
Good day party peoples of the Zulu Nation.
I've pulled this off the forum, and there are a few comments and additional info in the SARC forum at SILO, but the first thing to know about prepping is water. You can have all the bullets, food, gadgets and skills in the world, but if you don't have water, you'll be dead in a few days. Fact. So, if you're new to preparedness, water is first. Get some water now to have it, and then follow up with learning a few different ways to purify it. First and most important skill. Put it this way, if water shuts down, how do you get clean water for drinking?
Here's two cheap and reasonable ways to start. If nothing else, you can print out the directions for the slow sand filtering system so you have it if there is no more interwebs... stupid solar flares.
If you fail to get your hands on anything and find yourself facing a situation where you need to get fresh water, first and foremost: boil. Remember boil orders? Boiling water destroys most no-no's in water. If you happen to get your hands on a plastic bottle, you can use the sun to kill stuff in the water by painting half the bottle black and leaving the clear side facing the sun for several hours. However, BPH related cancer becomes an issue if you keep doing it over and over and expose yourself to it constantly. But if you find yourself in a bind... water now... possibility of cancer later... it's your call.
Berkey products are really good and are at a really good price. Zombie Squad (great forum if you've never been) used them at Zombiecon (the Berkey Light version) to clean stream/river water when I went. A little drop of bleach in the top half kills the bacteria and parasites, the filters cleans everything (including the bleach) out. Although, I'm not entirely sure the bleach was even needed, but better to be safe than peeing out of your butt hole. Water tasted good... course that could've just been the ridiculous heat too.
http://www.berkeyfilters.com/
And then there's the sports bottle version.
Understandably, you may not have access to bleach later... although it's not entirely necessary, just an extra security step... but if you're neurotic like me, then redundancy of systems is a good thing. With that in mind you could combine the Berkey with a slow sand system. You can use either by themselves, but it can't hurt to double up either. Or, if you're just into building your own. This link has a couple downloadable PDFs available.
http://surferswithoutborders.org/Slow_Sand_Filter.html
So, first things first. Get some water now and start researching water filtering systems, bottles and and other methods of getting water. We'll circle back to this topic later when we get to harvesting rainwater and such... but that's not even worth thinking about if you're just now starting out. Baby steps.
I've pulled this off the forum, and there are a few comments and additional info in the SARC forum at SILO, but the first thing to know about prepping is water. You can have all the bullets, food, gadgets and skills in the world, but if you don't have water, you'll be dead in a few days. Fact. So, if you're new to preparedness, water is first. Get some water now to have it, and then follow up with learning a few different ways to purify it. First and most important skill. Put it this way, if water shuts down, how do you get clean water for drinking?
Here's two cheap and reasonable ways to start. If nothing else, you can print out the directions for the slow sand filtering system so you have it if there is no more interwebs... stupid solar flares.
If you fail to get your hands on anything and find yourself facing a situation where you need to get fresh water, first and foremost: boil. Remember boil orders? Boiling water destroys most no-no's in water. If you happen to get your hands on a plastic bottle, you can use the sun to kill stuff in the water by painting half the bottle black and leaving the clear side facing the sun for several hours. However, BPH related cancer becomes an issue if you keep doing it over and over and expose yourself to it constantly. But if you find yourself in a bind... water now... possibility of cancer later... it's your call.
Berkey products are really good and are at a really good price. Zombie Squad (great forum if you've never been) used them at Zombiecon (the Berkey Light version) to clean stream/river water when I went. A little drop of bleach in the top half kills the bacteria and parasites, the filters cleans everything (including the bleach) out. Although, I'm not entirely sure the bleach was even needed, but better to be safe than peeing out of your butt hole. Water tasted good... course that could've just been the ridiculous heat too.
http://www.berkeyfilters.com/
And then there's the sports bottle version.
Understandably, you may not have access to bleach later... although it's not entirely necessary, just an extra security step... but if you're neurotic like me, then redundancy of systems is a good thing. With that in mind you could combine the Berkey with a slow sand system. You can use either by themselves, but it can't hurt to double up either. Or, if you're just into building your own. This link has a couple downloadable PDFs available.
http://surferswithoutborders.org/Slow_Sand_Filter.html
So, first things first. Get some water now and start researching water filtering systems, bottles and and other methods of getting water. We'll circle back to this topic later when we get to harvesting rainwater and such... but that's not even worth thinking about if you're just now starting out. Baby steps.
SARC
SARC (SILO Apocalyptic Resource Community) is a local group to Southern Illinois formed on the SILO (Southern Illinois Outdoors.com) forums. We are attempting to group together in a community fashion and trade information, ideas and skills that will be useful in case society stops working as we know it now. This could be the result of a Solar Flare, Crop Prices getting too high or something worse.
This blog is a way to expand the viability of this community and reach out to others around us that are interested in contributing to our attempt to build a survivalist community in our region. It's also going to act as a sort of 101 for people first getting into Preparedness. There is soooo much to think about when it comes to preparing yourself that it can be overwhelming to someone who has very little exposure, and there is so much information out there in the form of podcasts, forums, webpages, blogs, articles, online books... it's hard to find a place to start. So, I'm attempting to fill that gap. As I move this blog (and soon an accompanying podcast) forward, I will point to other places that have a lot more in depth information on the topics.
If you're local to the St. Clair County, Illinois area and you'd like to join the SARC forum, we do charge a $5 fee, but this is purely to prevent drive-by posters or people who would hassle us pointlessly as so often happens on the internet. We also have a Twitter feed that is localized to our area, but open to anyone, for weather alerts, solar alerts, amber alerts, terror alerts, etc... Please feel free to post comments here if you have input and do not wish to join the forum.
This blog is a way to expand the viability of this community and reach out to others around us that are interested in contributing to our attempt to build a survivalist community in our region. It's also going to act as a sort of 101 for people first getting into Preparedness. There is soooo much to think about when it comes to preparing yourself that it can be overwhelming to someone who has very little exposure, and there is so much information out there in the form of podcasts, forums, webpages, blogs, articles, online books... it's hard to find a place to start. So, I'm attempting to fill that gap. As I move this blog (and soon an accompanying podcast) forward, I will point to other places that have a lot more in depth information on the topics.
If you're local to the St. Clair County, Illinois area and you'd like to join the SARC forum, we do charge a $5 fee, but this is purely to prevent drive-by posters or people who would hassle us pointlessly as so often happens on the internet. We also have a Twitter feed that is localized to our area, but open to anyone, for weather alerts, solar alerts, amber alerts, terror alerts, etc... Please feel free to post comments here if you have input and do not wish to join the forum.
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