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How To Not Be Overwhelmed With Your Prepping – Tips, Advice and How-To For Putting Together the Perfect Bug Out Bag
How To Not Be Overwhelmed With Your Prepping – Tips, Advice and How-To For Putting Together the Perfect Bug Out Bag
If you are like me, you may find prepping for everything to be a little overwhelming. It can seem that no matter how much you have, there just is never enough. I have read hundreds of articles and watched endless videos on what to carry for EDC and how to make a BOB/INCH bag. I also seemed to focus on one aspect at a time and way overdo it while letting the rest slip by. So to keep me from having the most awesome arsenal in town and dying of thirst, or keeping me from caring an 80 lb. backpack everywhere I made a graph of what I might need in a survival situation vs. how long I need to survive.
My first concern in any emergency is can I breath, see, or am I bleeding? Next question is am I in immediate danger and what can I do to remove the threat? After that I need to ascertain what threats are likely to come from this situation and prepare my surroundings to deal with them. Once the threat is no longer my focus, it should turn to how can I sustain myself in this situation?
Now many of the answers may change depending on what type of emergency you are facing. I am bleeding but an EMT is currently coming through my door would be handled a lot different than I am bleeding and marauders are currently coming through my door. The two situations require both different responses from me as well as needing different gear.
To know what I need, I need to know how long the emergency will last. Here is where the problem comes in, I don’t know when, what, or how long.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Here’s How You’ll Die When the SHTF (and How to Prevent Your Untimely Demise)
Here’s How You’ll Die When the SHTF (and How to Prevent Your Untimely Demise)
When it hits the fan…I mean REALLY hits the fan in a permanent kind of way, the most likely outcome is death.
That’s not pretty, and I’m well aware of it. I always try to be positive and optimistic, because for me, preparedness is the ultimate act of optimism, but sometimes we have to look at the numbers and face some things that are pretty terrifying. The first reality check is that some research says that only 3 million Americans are preppers. That means that 315 million Americans are not preppers. Some experts predict that within 30 days of the power going out, 50% of Americans will be dead. Within a year, an astounding 90% of the population will be dead.
Do you want to survive such a scenario? Do you want your children to survive? When you read this information, you have to realize that it’s very unlikely that you and your family would live through a grid failure of a year or more unless you are proactive and develop a preparedness plan that takes all of these causes of death into consideration.
The Top 10 Ways to Die in a Long-term Disaster
So here are the cold hard facts. One of these is the way that you are most likely to die when the SHTF, particularly in the event of a long-term grid failure. The good news is, now that you know this, you can take steps to prevent your untimely demise.
- You die of thirst or waterborne illness. Most people have a case of water bottles kicking around, and perhaps a 5 gallon jug for the water cooler. What they don’t have is a gallon a day per person for a long-term emergency. Most people also don’t own a gravity fed, no-power necessary water filtration device with spare parts and extra filters.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Self-Reliance: Control What You Can (Food/Fitness)
Self-Reliance: Control What You Can (Food/Fitness)
Self-reliance boils down to taking control of what we can control and depending as little as possible on what we can’t control.
Self-reliance is a grand-sounding phrase, but what does it mean in real life?Does it mean total self-sufficiency?
To my way of thinking, even the most self-sufficient still rely on energy pulled out of the ground somewhere far away, grains grown far away and a host of goods manufactured far away.
For most of us, living in urban or suburban zones, self-reliance boils down to this:take control of what you can. We can’t control monetary policy or the shared infrastructure; we’re at the mercy of authorities at the top of highly centralized hierarchies.
But that doesn’t mean we have no control. We can control what we put in our mouths, what we do with our time and what we pursue with our minds.
The dynamic here is well-known: garbage in, garbage out. Garbage food in, garbage health out. Garbage financial planning in, garbage finances out. And so on.
As longtime readers know, we maintain a messy postage-stamp sized urban garden. Despite my lazy gardening style, the garden produces more vegetables than we can eat, so we share much of the yield. In summer, we only buy what we don’t grow: round onions, carrots, etc.
Here’s a few photos of this summer’s bounty.
Fitness is like food: garbage in, garbage out. Any 6-foot/2-meter square of open space is a gym. You don’t need any weights, machines or special equipment. If you want this stuff, much of it is available used at a huge discount to the retail price. If the weather allows, a bicycle replaces many auto trips. Fitness does not have to be a separate activity–it can be part of everyday life.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Surviving the Drought: 25 Easy Ways to Conserve Water
Surviving the Drought: 25 Easy Ways to Conserve Water
If you aren’t already storing and conserving water, it is absolutely your top preparedness priority as our country suffers from the drought that has now reached epic proportions. Forget, for now, about the beans and rice – how are you going to cook them without any water?
From a survival aspect, you absolutely must focus on a long-term source of water. All of your best-laid plans will be for naught if you don’t have water rights on your property, a collection system for rainfall, and second and third sources to rely on, as well as reliable purification systems. Safe municipal water (although with the inclusion of all the toxic additives ‘safe’ is debatable) could soon be a thing of the past.
It’s beyond dispute that the United States is facing a water crisis. On the West Coast, where much of our produce is raised, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a State of Emergency and ordered statewide restrictions on water use. On the East Coast, the water is plentiful but is polluted by chemical spills, as seen inWest Virginia and radioactive leaks, as seen in South Carolina. In Detroit,thousands of people who couldn’t afford to pay their bills no longer have running water in their homes.
Three years ago, Michael Snyder wrote about the endless drought of 2012, calling it the largest natural disaster in American history. He predicted a water shortage that will change the lives of every person on the planet.
It’s certainly beginning to look like he was right.
How much water are you using?
One thing that people don’t always stop to consider is exactly how much water they use each day. Everyone in the preparedness realm knows the adage about 1 gallon per person per day, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. It doesn’t include the vast amount of water we customarily use for hygiene purposes.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Foodroom Gardening: No Rows, No Woes
Foodroom Gardening: No Rows, No Woes
As I battle mud and mosquitoes in this wet year, in the wallow that used to be our garden, I think faraway, crazy thoughts. I keep trying to imagine a future time when all human beings would be responsible for their basic food necessities just as they are responsible for their own bodily cleanliness and cooking meals. Could every home have a sort of foodroom adjoining the bathroom, where the basic yearly food could be produced? Ideally there would be a composting bin or two, plus a cistern or rain barrel to catch water, all geared to take no more time than a daily shower, shave, teeth brushing, and hair combing.
The first thing that would have to disappear to save space would be garden rows. Have you ever thought about how stupid rows are? Rows came into existence to accommodate machine and human traffic. Without them, a garden can produce twice the amount of plants or more. My imaginary foodroom would be elevated even more than raised beds, walled up so I could sit or stand next to it on either side and accomplish all planting and weeding comfortably by hand. Weeding would be done with a trowel from a standing or sitting position. Gone would be all the primitive backbreaking bending over that makes gardening by hand so tiresome. Once a plant produces its food, it could be pulled out and another started in its place. Elderly people could go on gardening until they were a hundred years old and never once have to get down and crawl along like I do now. Kids would be more easily cajoled into the work because you could describe it to them as merely playing in the dirt, like a sandbox. Adults who like office work would see the garden bed was just another desk.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
12 Strategies for Creating the Perfect Pantry
12 Strategies for Creating the Perfect Pantry
There are a lot of different ways to go about building your pantry. While each style has its pros and cons, I think that adhering to any one strategy alone leaves some gaps in your food preparedness. Personally, I’m a fan of combining the best of each world based on the needs of your particular family. Enjoy this excerpt from the updated version of my book, The Pantry Primer.
Excerpt from The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide to Whole Food on a Half-Price Budget
Looking for a strategy to create your own pantry? There are a lot of different philosophies out there, but I think it boils down to three basic types of food supplies:
- The Bunker Pantry
- The Agrarian Pantry
- The Bargain-Hunter’s Pantry
This doesn’t mean you are stuck with just one strategy, however. All of the types have positives and negatives. Learn about these food storage ideologies and then take the most applicable components for your situation. Combine them to create your own version of the Perfect Pantry. Use strategies from each type to create a stockpile that meets your family’s needs.
The Bunker Pantry
This is the most “hardcore” of the food storage types. A Bunker Pantry is the type of food supply that could keep you going for the next ten years without a single trip to the store. Sure, it might be a little bit boring and lacking in variety, but it is a supply that will see you through any disaster while allowing you to remain in your shelter. This type of pantry focuses on huge quantities of long-term foods, repackaged carefully to resist spoilage due to pests or the elements.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Building Hope in Times of Crisis
Building Hope in Times of Crisis
‘There is a big need for the solidarity movement in Greece. It started in late 2011 and has nearly doubled now to around 400 groups – even more if you add the more loosely networked ones,’ Christos Giovanopoulos says.
We sit in the central Athens office of Solidarity for All, a project that aims to facilitate the solidarity movement. It provide spaces and tools for co-ordination between different groups.
‘The government is friendly to these structures, but they have the bigger picture to consider,’ Giovanopoulos says, describing the attitude of ruling Left party Syriza. The self-organized social solidarity economy has grown quickly since the economic crisis hit Greece and the country was strangled by austerity measures imposed by the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Since 2009, unemployment has nearly trebled to 26%. As those who lose their jobs only receive benefits for the first year of unemployment, poverty and depression have skyrocketed. Even more strikingly, those without employment lose access to public healthcare services after a year. ‘About 50,000 people have died because they have no access to public healthcare. It is a human rights violation,’ Tonia Katerini, also a member of Solidarity for All, says. ‘When people are thrown out of social protection they don’t feel part of the system any more. It is dangerous because if there is no progressive movement these people are easily affected by fascists and the far-right party Golden Dawn.’
As a response to the humanitarian crisis many activists and local people started organizing food distribution and healthcare for those who had fallen through the cracks.
– See more at: http://newint.org/blog/2015/06/09/hope-in-times-of-crisis/#sthash.PGZ5Sk34.dpuf
San Andreas for Preppers: 12 Earthquake Survival Lessons from the Movie
San Andreas for Preppers: 12 Earthquake Survival Lessons from the Movie
Nothing warms my prepper’s heart more than a good disaster movie that supports my hypotheses about a specific event, and the recent movie San Andreas 
Okay, sure, there was some pretty unrealistic stuff like when The Rock was driving a boat through post-tsunami San Francisco and just happened to find his daughter that he was looking for. The last time I went to San Francisco, my daughter and I had trouble finding each other on the first floor of Forever 21, for crying out loud.
But, when you only have two hours for a movie, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief somewhat and put that kind of stuff aside. So. putting that aside, I enthusiastically recommend the movie. We live about 4 hours from San Francisco and go there occasionally for educational outings to the excellent museums, so the setting was quite familiar to us, as was the premise of what would occur if an earthquake happened there. So familiar that my daughter was the frequent recipient of my elbow, as I whispered, “See!!!! I told you this was what would happen if the Big One hit that time we went to the Science Museum!” Trooper that she is, she said, “Yes, Mom, I know, you were right about that too.” Since she’s a teenager, she probably also rolled her eyes each time, but it was dark and I can’t be absolutely certain of that.
As I’ve said before, you can’t overestimate the value of finding entertainment that enhances your preparedness mindset. A movie is like the prepper version of a sporting event, where we can cheer, jeer, and scheme our ways through some imagined event.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide: Are You Ready for a Long-Term Water Emergency?
The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide: Are You Ready for a Long-Term Water Emergency?
Are you truly prepared for a water emergency?
How long could your family survive if the water stopped flowing from the municipal supply and none was available at the store? If the answer is not “indefinitely” then you need to check out my new book, The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide: Harvest, Treat, and Store Your Most Vital Resource
This comprehensive book contains life-saving information about how to:
- Store fresh water
- Collect rainwater
- Purify water from lakes and rivers
- Dig a well for groundwater
In addition to harvesting water, you’ll gain the tools to keep large stores untainted for long periods of time, test the water you collect for dangerous toxins, and treat water-related illnesses that are commonly contracted during a disaster.
This book is very research heavy, with the latest in-depth information about the contaminants lurking in our water supplies and water-borne illnesses, as well as tips for conservation and sanitation during times when your lifestyle is decidedly off-grid.
I hope you enjoy this excerpt from the book.
The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide
If you’ve been prepping for a while, you’ve probably heard of the survivalist’s “Rule of Three.” You can survive:
Three minutes without air.
Three days without water.
Three weeks without food.
If a disaster has hit and you’re still breathing, then your next concern has got to be water.
Have you ever watched any of those survival shows on the Discovery Channel where people are dropped off in the middle of nowhere and left to survive with limited tools and supplies? In nearly every single episode, the biggest issue is finding and purifying water.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Stouffville Corner
A new section of my site, Stouffville Corner, aims to provide a variety of write-ups on topics I consider to be of primary importance/ interest. The aim was to have my local paper, Stouffville Tribune, publish them on a weekly/bi-weekly basis to bring the issues to the consciousness of my local community (thus the name). While the paper no longer accepts op-ed pieces due to its limited publication schedule (use to be published twice a week but now only once), I will still be offering the articles on a weekly/bi-weekly basis on my site beginning today with the introductory piece that has been accepted as a letter-to-the-editor.
Cheers…
Steve
Quote Of The Year. And The Next. And The One After
Quote Of The Year. And The Next. And The One After
I very rarely read back any of the essays I write. But maybe that’s not always a good thing. Especially when they deal with larger underlying issues beneath the problems we find ourselves in, why these problems exist in the first place, and what we can and will do to deal with them. Not all of these things can and perhaps should be re-written time and again. Commentary on daily events calls for new articles, but attempts to define the more in-depth human behavior behind these events should, if they are executed well, be more timeless.
Not that I would want to judge my own work, I’ll leave that to others, but I can still re-read something and think: that’s something I would like to read if someone else had written it. Since a friend yesterday sent me an email that referenced the essay below, I did go through it again and thought it’s worth republishing here. It’s from New Year’s Day 2013, or almost 2.5 years old, which should be a long enough time gap that many present day readers of The Automatic Earth haven’t read it yet, and long enough for those who have to ‘enjoy’ it all over again.
I am not very optimistic about the fate of mankind as it is, and that has a lot to do with what I cite here, that while our problems tend to evolve in exponential ways, our attempts at solving them move in linear fashion. That is true as much for the problems we ourselves create as it is for those that – seem to – ‘simply happen’. I think it would be very beneficial for us if we were to admit to our limits when it comes to solving large scale issues, because that might change the behavior we exhibit when creating these issues.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Permaculture: The Design Arm of a Paradigm Shift
Permaculture: The Design Arm of a Paradigm Shift
Here’s how it happened to me: Back in 1990 I was playing hooky from my unsatisfying biotech job in Seattle by browsing the homesteading shelves in the public library. I pulled down a thick black book I hadn’t seen before calledPermaculture: A Designers’ Manual. As I perused the pages, suddenly my previously fragmented life made sense. I had been fascinated for years with ecology, appropriate technology, economics, gardening, evolution, construction, energy systems, social justice, and a raft of other seemingly disconnected fields. But I didn’t want to specialize in any one of them, and I had been watching with some envy as my friends dropped into successful careers in various niches. Now, finally I knew what was going on. What a relief to find that a whole-systems approach could tie together the many disparate pieces of my life. This is, I know, a familiar and exalting experience for many when they first encounter permaculture.
Another familiar and not-so exalting experience for most of us is trying to explain permaculture to our friends and families, and receiving blank, confused, or condescending looks in response. I’ve explored this problem in the past, as have others. I’ve continued that journey, and want to share some of my latest thoughts on how we can explain permaculture to others and where it fits into a larger picture.
Just as permaculture helps umbrella many seemingly unrelated disciplines and places them into a larger context, we can understand permaculture better by seeing where it lies, in turn, in its own larger context. Much of the difficulty and confusion around permaculture stems from its protean nature: It can be many things to many people. It’s been called a philosophy, a movement, a design approach, a set of techniques, a practice, a worldview, a land use ethic, a science, a pseudoscience, and even a religion.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Looking for Some Answers
Looking for Some Answers
A few months back John Michael Greer, over at the Archdruid Report, wrote an essay about how we might begin to tackle the huge mental and emotional burden of dealing with collapse. It was noted that, for the most part, the majority of people simply don’t want to think about or discuss the way in which we humans are accelerating towards an ecological brick wall and would instead prefer to either lose themselves in fantasy worlds of their own or others’ making. Thus, many people like to lose themselves in video games, TV series and dreams of cornucopian splendour where we will all shortly be living the good life, just as British PM David Cameron announced yesterday (if we vote for him). Surrounding yourself with people who think just like you do and only exposing yourself to information sources that bolster your hoped-for belief that ‘things are going okay’ and ‘the experts are in charge’ adds some comforting texture to this fantasy.
Since I stopped playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was about 13 I’ve not been particularly interested in fantasy worlds. For me, reality is where it’s at. But reality sometimes hurts, and so when reality does actually bite, there are two ways of dealing with it. The first is to anaesthetise yourself so that it doesn’t hurt as much – either by way of the above-mentioned mental escape avenues, or by literally anaesthetising your brain and nervous system with alcohol and drugs. Unfortunately for society as a whole, most people end up choosing the latter option, and we see spiralling problems of addiction, domestic violence, depression and many other ills as a result.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How to Survive Anything in 3 Easy Steps
How to Survive Anything in 3 Easy Steps
You can have enough food to ride out 15 years of Armageddon. You can have a fully stocked retreat or a bunker. You can have so much ammo stashed that your floorboards are groaning. You may have followed your favorite preparedness book’s 
But regardless of this, you may not be fully prepared.
Because surprisingly enough, none of these is an indication of “the prepper mindset.” Those items are a great start, but until your head is fully involved in the game, you’re not actually prepared.
To me, the pinnacle of preparedness is a way of thinking about pretty much everything you encounter. It’s a unique way of looking at a situation, assessing the options, and acting that defines the prepper mindset. Think about any stressful situation that has ever happened to you. Once you accepted the fact that it had happened you were able to set a course of action. Once you had definitive steps to take, you probably felt much calmer. You took control of the things you could, and you executed your plan. Only by taking that first step – accepting that this mishap had indeed occurred – could you take the next two.
There are 3 steps to handling any crisis with aplomb. While the execution isn’t always easy, making these steps second nature will greatly increase your chances of survival, no matter what kind of disaster you are facing.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Earth shelters: Building an eco-friendly bunker
Earth shelters: Building an eco-friendly bunker
Most of us have a proverbial “plan-B,” or at least a rough idea of how we would protect ourselves and our families in the event of an emergency. Having a temporary safe haven is at the top of the list. However, before you start, it’s important that you know how the project is impacting the environment, as construction can leave a heavy carbon footprint if you don’t take the necessary measures to minimize it.
Fortunately, there are green and eco-friendly options available to you. In three phases, you can construct a sturdy, safe and environmentally-sound backyard shelter to protect you and your loved ones in case of an unexpected crisis.
Phase 1: The hole
This is the easy part. To build a shelter, the first step is digging a hole that is at least 10 feet deep—20 feet if you’re one to err on the side of extreme caution. Though it is possible to dig your own hole the old fashioned way (i.e. with a shovel and manpower), a more efficient means of moving that much soil would be to rent machinery like a backhoe or excavator. Doing so will turn days of digging into a Saturday afternoon project.
Phase 2: The walls
After clearing the space for your bunker, you have to reinforce it. Normally, this is where the construction of your shelter would negatively impact Mother Nature: the most common material used to line and seal structures is concrete, but traditional concrete is mixed with cement, making it an environmentally unsound material. Why? Three reasons: production wastes energy, it is fossil fuel-intensive, and its manufacturing is one of the top offenders of carbon dioxide emissions (aka greenhouse gas). Additionally, making cement requires aggregate materials like stone and sand from quarries, further depleting natural resources.
– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/03/earth-shelters-building-an-eco-friendly-bunker/#sthash.jJErto5w.dpuf
