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Dehydrated Blueberry Muffin Syndrome: Survival Isn’t Always Comfortable
Dehydrated Blueberry Muffin Syndrome: Survival Isn’t Always Comfortable
One thing a lot of preppers overlook is the potential discomfort of a survival situation. They stock up and prepare as though everything will remain exactly as it is now, except they’ll have to rely on dehydrated food instead of fresh ingredients. In some scenarios, this is true – take, for example, the recent lockdown.
But in more extreme scenarios, your life will be anything but comfortable, and this is something Selco and I try to get across to people. Many preppers refuse to fathom a life in which they won’t have time or facilities to bake a batch of muffins. We call this Dehydrated Blueberry Muffin Syndrome. Get more details in the video below. (Note: the video won’t appear if you have an ad blocker on.)
Survival may be gritty and difficult, as it was in Selco’s situation. It’s not just like life is now, but without electricity.
What are the 5 Rs?
Here’s an explanation of the Five Rs I mentioned in the video. They highlight the sequences you have to be prepared to deal with depending on INTENSITY and/or DURATION of a disastrous event:
- REDUCE the impact on your lifestyle or routine. Many events are over within 72 hrs. With adequate preparation, you should feel little to no interruption to your daily life.
- REPAIR. By understanding the nature of the threat. Your residence and life situation, you can anticipate by competence or cost things that may well need repairing in order to RETURN TO NORMAL.
- REBUILD. This can be both physically (Think a beyond repair storm-damaged house) or ‘structural’. A business that has suffered significant disruption or loss and cannot necessarily continue exactly as before…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Selco: “Here Are Some of the WORST Pieces of Prepping Advice I’ve Heard”
Selco: “Here Are Some of the WORST Pieces of Prepping Advice I’ve Heard”
The competition for the worst prepping advice out there is pretty sharp. It’s been going on for many years and has a tendency to get even more ridiculous as time goes on.
One reason is that a lot of the advice is pushing you in the direction of buying something, and when you need to buy something things can go weird and false.
Another reason is the fact that there are numerous “experts” out there, and it does not have to be about selling. Often it can be that people just want to be known as experts because they feel more important or whatever.
So, as I mentioned many times before there is a chain of people who share advice, and if you follow the trail where that advice is coming from you are usually gonna find a self-proclaimed “expert” at the end, or even worse some fictional character from movies or books.
So here are a few pieces of bad prepping advice I have seen.
“Handle everything with violence.”
Yes, I do agree, nothing can put things in the right perspective like a few shots from an assault rifle in the correct place and time. Brute force can very efficiently solve some situations.
But…
I see a lot of advice that goes only as far as being well-armed and having that “out of my cold dead hand” attitude.
Most of the time when the SHTF, it will be about other things, like hygiene, resources, interactions with people, managing people in groups, maintaining mental and physical health in hard circumstances, and many other things that have nothing to do with violence.
So, violence and being ready for violence are critical, yes, of course, but it is not only about that.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Building a Better Bug-Out Bag: You’re NOT Going on a Fun-Filled Camping Trip
Building a Better Bug-Out Bag: You’re NOT Going on a Fun-Filled Camping Trip
Based on the things I’ve learned from folks who have actually lived through survival situations and bugged out, I think that we need to revisit what bugging out really means and why you might use a bug out bag. If we understand the concept better, it’s easier to pack a bug out bag that will work for each of us personally.
3 kinds of bug-outs
There are at least three different kinds of bugging out:
- You’re never coming home again: This bug-out means you’re leaving and you don’t expect to be returning. It could be due to a rapidly approaching natural disaster that is likely to demolish everything in its path, like a wildfire, or it could be due to terrorism or genocide. It could happen at the last moment or you might have time to pack – it really depends on the situation. If it’s a last-minute thing, you might only have the things you can grab in your bug out bag. Sometimes you don’t even have time to grab that – it could be a situation in which a few seconds are the difference between life and death. When I visited a museum about the genocide in Bosnia, one woman told of leaving the house with her child wrapped in nothing but a hastily grabbed towel because the little girl had been in the bathtub when the family was hauled away.
- Bug Out with Warning: This bug-out happens during natural disasters and often (but not always) you’ll have a few days of warning. Some examples might be a nearby wildfire or an approaching hurricane. You can load up your vehicle with sentimental items and bring more than you’d ordinarily bring. The focus for this type of bug-out is often on the things you can never replace.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
SELCO: Adapt Early to the “New Rules” If You Want to Survive
SELCO: Adapt Early to the “New Rules” If You Want to Survive
Survival is constant learning, for me and for you, for everybody, no matter how “tough” you think you are, or resilient or smart. As soon as you start to think you are a master of survival or some kind of expert, you are doing something wrong in your philosophy.
The whole series of events that have been happening around us everywhere lately we can be used for learning and understanding. It can help us to be better prepared.
We are living with a new set of rules – and not the ones from the government. When everything changes, the rules of society change too. If you want to survive, you must adapt to them early.
“Boiling of the frog”
We all know the story about two frogs. It goes in a way that if a frog is thrown in boiling water it will jump immediately out because otherwise, it will end up dead. The other frog that is in a pot of cold water will sit calmly in it while water is slowly getting warmed to the point of boiling, and that frog will end up dead because the change from cold to boiled water happened gradually, and the frog did not recognize the danger.
We are mostly frogs sitting in warm water, not yet boiling but we might be close to that point.
Let’s recognize the danger.
Adaptation can be good or bad.
Humans have a magnificent ability of adapting to the circumstances and events around them. Well, most of us do.
My personal experiences there are very rich, and while it is something that goes very deep into human psychology I will mention the practical side of it.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Here’s What 75 Preppers Learned During the Lockdown
Here’s What 75 Preppers Learned During the Lockdown
The lockdown that recently took place due to the pandemic was like a practice run for a bigger SHTF event. Many of our prepper theories played out and were accurate, while others weren’t as realistic as we thought beforehand.
People who weren’t preppers already learned a lot about why they would want to be better prepared in the future, but they weren’t the only ones who learned lessons. These preppers took a moment to answer questions about the lessons they learned during the lockdown. (Here’s an article about the things I learned.)
What did you learn about preparedness during the lockdown?
Trisha…
I learned two main things. First, I was very surprised at how strongly the isolation hit me. I am a person who is “energized” by interacting with other people. I knew that already, but I was shocked at how MUCH it affected me. Second, I got a taste of normalcy bias. I kept trying to see ways in which our situation was still “Normal”. As a school teacher of little ones for thirty years, I was pretty much used to switching into action immediately to deal with a crisis and putting my feelings on the back burner. So, I was shocked that it took me a couple of months to “accept” the changes in our lives and start looking for creative ways to make life work and meet our needs.
Maria…
I learned it is so important to pay attention to what’s going on and stay ahead of the crowd. My husband and I were able to stock up two weeks before everyone else panicked. I also learned my plan of being stocked up and shopping only for replacements is a great system.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
9 Things to Buy Every Time You Go to the Store
9 Things to Buy Every Time You Go to the Store
Lots of folks have mentioned that their grocery stores never fully restocked after the rush on food and supplies back at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown. And with the current news stories about spiking COVID numbers, it may not be long until we’re locked down again.
Work on what’s within your control
It’s important to note that even if you are unconcerned about the virus, there are a lot of things that could be out of your control in the event of another governmental series of actions:
- Workplaces may close back down
- Supply chains may be further damaged
- The economy will take another hit
- You may not be able to go where you want
Real, or not real; dangerous or not, the end result for us is the same.
It’s just like the debate over whether a terror attack in the news is a false flag or an actual terror attack. Every time I write about surviving one of these attacks, people flock to the comments to tell everyone that it was all crisis actors, the whole thing is a hoax, or our own government did it to take away our guns.
But we’re talking about survival. If you’re there when the bullets are flying or the bombs are going off or the planes are crashing, it doesn’t matter who’s behind it. Your only goal at that point is to survive it.
With COVID, does it even matter if the numbers are accurate or not? Because the government is using it as an excuse to exercise rigid control over all of us – telling us when we can go to work, when we can visit with loved ones, keeping us away from hospitals and leaving our ailing relatives to die alone, and enforcing laws about masks and appropriate distances.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Do You Prepare for a Revolution?
How Do You Prepare for a Revolution?
As all hell breaks loose across the United States of America (and we haven’t even gotten to the election yet), a resistance movement to the status quo seems to be increasingly violent, taking over a Minneapolis police precinct and an area in downtown Seattle. Protests continue to be peaceful in some areas but show little signs of letting up.
A lot of folks are pretty sure that a revolution is coming – and many people say it’s already here.
I got a great question in a group that I moderate: how do you prepare for a revolution?
As preppers, this is always our go-to response to trouble. We want to know what we can do, specifically, to meet the crisis head-on and keep our families safe.
How do you prepare for a revolution?
In this article, I want to speak specifically about the practical steps you need to take to be prepared for a revolution if things should come to that point across the country. This article is not about philosophy or right vs. wrong. It’s not about fighting for your “side” whatever side that might be. It’s about surviving. There are lots of links because I’m not reinventing the entire wheel here – that would be a book on its own. This is merely a guideline so you know where to focus your time, money, and attention.
I pondered the question for quite a while before answering because it isn’t really a situation I had given a lot of thought to before.
The answer is really not anything earth-shattering. In fact, many will probably find it underwhelming.
You prepare for a revolution by simply continuing to prep. Specifically, consider prepping for the following:
- Supply chain disruption and shortages of food
- Supply chain disruption and shortages of material goods
- Civil unrest
- Disruption of utilities
- Disruption of services
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
What I Learned During the COVID Crisis
What I Learned During the COVID Crisis
The COVID-19 crisis has affected just about every family in the United States in some way or another. All of our situations are unique and everyone I’ve spoken to has learned some lessons about their levels of preparedness. Some of those lessons are unconventional but valuable nonetheless. There are a whole lot of things you can’t learn from a book or a blog.
Here are the things I’ve learned.
Trust your instincts.
I began writing about this virus back in January when it was announced that the entire city of Wuhan was being locked down and millions of people were under stay at home orders. With that many people under a mandatory lockdown, I was firmly convinced that this had potential global ramifications.
I had come back from Europe to attend a funeral in early January and was supposed to return on January 28th. After doing the research for the article mentioned above, I rescheduled my flight for March 28th and settled in with my youngest daughter at her apartment to help out with the bills. We immediately began stocking up.
A lot of folks at that time said I was crazy – a few here on my website but more so on other sites that republished my work. I’m no stranger to being called crazy – I’m in the preparedness industry and I like guns, so right there, the mainstream media sees me as a lunatic. It no longer bothers me and I was convinced that this was going to be a big deal.
Every day from January 23rd to the present, I’ve spent hours researching as this pandemic has unfolded. I sincerely wish that I had not been correct, but here we are, still in lockdown in many parts of the country.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Soap Shortages: Here’s How to Stay Clean
Soap Shortages: Here’s How to Stay Clean
We all like to be clean. By doing so, we feel better, much more secure, and confident of ourselves. This is especially important when the power of the circumstances surrounding you are like a windstorm and have transformed your entire world. The inability to buy deodorant, toothpaste, and similar products makes our self-esteem tank down to unreasonable levels.
It´s hard to stand up and fight if we feel we are inferior to our enemies. It´s just the way it is and Communists use this to keep people under control. For those of us who are more or less civilized, at least. The dictatorial regimes know this. They´ve used that scarcity against the populations they need to enslave, for decades. Whether if this works or not, will depend on us.
There’s been a soap shortage in Venezuela
I want to make a parenthesis to present a couple of proofs that evidence the engineered scarcity in Venezuela of the hygiene products. Check this link
Please use your browser to translate, would you? Back then, a guy called Fleming said: “there was not lack of production”. Knowing the corrupted practices involved in laundry schemes with our currency and the exchange controls…I find very hard to believe anything coming from someone with such strong ties to those powerful positions.
And three years later, after the failed State took “control” of the production, just read this article, informing than the scarcity was worst than ever.
2016 was a though year. Zika virus became almost epidemic, like Chikungunya disease. Basic goods like toothpaste, soap, shampoo, and TP, almost inexistent. Not for us, though. We had a decent amount and we resisted until 2017.
Beware of hastily made commercial products
This being said, I´d like to mention there is an important fact here, which must be carefully registered.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Where to Get Seeds When Online Sources are SOLD OUT
Where to Get Seeds When Online Sources are SOLD OUT
With the current shift in the economy, and with supply lines being interrupted all around the nation, there has been a massive – massive! – spike in the number of people interested in growing a garden this spring.
Hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of new gardens are springing up across the country. Some are large, some are small, and all are important. Some people are calling them Victory Gardens, others are calling them crisis gardens. Even those living in high-rise apartments are planting “Victory Sills,” pots or glasses of water on their windowsills in which herbs or sprouting vegetables are rooting. Whatever the name, cumulatively, they’ll be an important source of fresh produce.
Normally the renaissance in gardening of all sorts would be nothing but good news. However, the surge of interest from both novice and experienced gardeners is stretching seed companies to the limit. Many companies have stopped answering the phones and are putting up online pleas for understanding as they try to handle backorders with limited capacity and inventory.
Here are some other places to get seeds.
If you find yourself unable to order seeds online, here are some alternate sources to consider:
- If you’ve planted non-hybrid seeds in previous years and have saved your seeds for planting this year, congratulations (and be generous with your gardening friends). This is the ultimate way to obtain seeds – by saving your own. Ultimately this is the position in which everyone should be. (Learn more about saving seeds here.)
- Ask your gardening friends for any surplus seeds they can spare. They may also be able to offer helpful planting advice.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Fuel Shortage in Venezuela Will Lead to Starvation
The Fuel Shortage in Venezuela Will Lead to Starvation
Dear readers, those who already know me are aware I used to write about confirmed facts we all care about as preppers. At this point in my life I hardly can be considered a prepper, though. A survivor? Sure. I’ve been in much better conditions (as I have mentioned earlier in previous articles) than other migrants. Always had a roof and something to eat, and could buy my kiddo a good meal every now and then and even an ice cream, cookies and the occasional chocolate when he asked for it. Maybe I have not eaten a grilled steak every two days, but I haven’t starved. Have I seen myself rationing? Sure. At least I have something to ration. I know I have been a little…disperse. I have realized that facing with a reality you had only had imagined in your worst scenario fantasies, is harder than I thought. That´s why I´ve been trying to recover myself, and getting used to the quite grim possibility of death far away from my homeland.
This said, I received a few audios about a situation that is presenting given the scarcity of gasoline that has already impacted the food supply. The person sending me these materials is reliable, and informed me that indeed that happened.
There’s a fuel shortage in Venezuela
The local majors, governors, and uniforms have confiscated the fuel, and they sell them in dollars, for their own personal profit. This way they are bypassing tax controls, impeding the audit, and pocketing all the money they collect. They are trafficking with the fuel, and this brings along two consequences.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
AI Social Distancing Tool Keeps People “Safe”
AI Social Distancing Tool Keeps People “Safe”
Landing AI has created a new tool to help keep people “safe” by spying on them with a camera that measures whether or not they’re properly participating in social distancing. Because who needs privacy when there’s a deadly virus around, right?
Landing AI’s blog says:
To complement our customers’ efforts and to help ensure social distancing protocol in their workplace, Landing AI has developed an AI-enabled social distancing detection tool that can detect if people are keeping a safe distance from each other by analyzing real time video streams from the camera.
For example, at a factory that produces protective equipment, technicians could integrate this software into their security camera systems to monitor the working environment with easy calibration steps. As the demo shows below, the detector could highlight people whose distance is below the minimum acceptable distance in red, and draw a line between to emphasize this. The system will also be able to issue an alert to remind people to keep a safe distance if the protocol is violated.
As part of an ongoing effort to keep our customers and others safe, and understanding that the only way through this is with global collaboration, we wanted to share the technical methodology we used to develop this software. (source)
Watch the quick video below.
Watching life go on through the eyes of an artificial intelligence device has a certain sense of dystopia. The technology highlights “people whose distance is below the minimum acceptable distance in red, and draw a line between to emphasize this.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Meanwhile, WW3 May Be Brewing While We’re Distracted
Meanwhile, WW3 May Be Brewing While We’re Distracted
Those who are paying close attention to the pandemic may have missed that another potential killer is brewing across the ocean. In Syria today, there is the real and looming threat of a third world war. Not only is Syria fighting Western-backed terrorists on its territory, there are many more players involved on Syrian soil – from the Russians and Iranians to the Americans, Turks, and Israelis and, with the recent Turkish actions, all of those players could very well come to blows.
It’s well-known to geopolitical scholars that the world is already in global conflict. With the United States, NATO, Israel, EU, and the Gulf States loosely united against the “multi-polar” world of Russia, China, Iran and a growing host of “target” nations that prefer the carrot over the stick, the globe is already in a quiet world war, though the major powers have yet to publicly declare it on one another. As it stands currently, the global conflict is more akin to the Cold War where color revolutions and proxy wars are the order of the day. However, the quiet war can only remain quiet for so long, until one side begins to see that it is the inevitable loser. Then the quiet war becomes loud.
When the Western powers initiated the war against Syria in 2011, it was largely expected and intended to go the way of the Libyan disaster that just ended. However, with the unity of Syrian culture, Syrian government leadership and, most importantly, Russia entering into the war on the side of the Syrian government, the quick destruction of the Syrian state has resulted in a nine year war that has seen Syria turn the tide on the largest and most effective military state in the world.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
What Will the Future Bring? Here’s How to Survive the Uncertainty
What Will the Future Bring? Here’s How to Survive the Uncertainty
We live in a very different world than we did back in January when the calendar turned to 2020 and everyone was anticipating the great things they’d accomplish in the brand new decade.
Only 3 months ago, we all had futures we imagined…
- Kids graduating from high school or college
- A vacation we were planning
- A new job we were striving toward
- Retirement so close you could practically smell the beach where you’d spend your golden years
- The health and fitness goal you were finally going to achieve
- A positive lifestyle change you were planning to make
- A relocation to a new destination
- The advancement of your relationship, whether it was a new one or one you’d been in for a while
- A summer road trip
- Getting a new pet
- An empty nest and what you were going to do with that newly vacant bedroom
- A new family member
Three months ago, we all had dreams, goals for the future, or at least some idea of what the upcoming year would hold for us.
I’ll bet none of us even considered on New Year’s Eve that we’d spend the first half (at least) of the year dealing with a deadly pandemic. Heck, I sat on a balcony in a little seaside village in Montenegro, toasting the new decade with a friend and some Jack Daniels, watching fireworks over the Adriatic Sea, and planning what European destination I’d be heading to next.
It probably never crossed anyone’s mind that there’d be some crazy new virus that nobody had ever heard of which would leave us under the equivalent of house arrest for months. Few of us imagined that suddenly, over the course of just a few weeks, more than ten million Americans would suddenly become unemployed.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A One-Month Shelf-Stable Food Menu Your Family Will Love
A One-Month Shelf-Stable Food Menu Your Family Will Love
Now that most of the country is practicing social isolation, people are turning more and more often to their pantries to make meals from shelf-stable ingredients.
Do you ever wonder what on earth you’d eat if you had to rely solely on the items in your pantry? How could you possibly make tasty meals from these items you have stashed away? Do you imagine a future filled with cans of Spaghetti-O’s and saltine crackers?
Trust me when I tell you, you can do much better than that. Here’s a menu that you can adjust to your family’s preferences.
A one-month menu of shelf-stable dinners
If you have fresh or frozen ingredients on hand, feel free to substitute them in for shelf-stable ones. If you’re a vegetarian, a lot of these meals can be converted by simply omitting the meat or replacing the meat with lentils or beans. Tweak the meals according to your family’s preferences and allergies or intolerances.
Menu: Week One
- 5-Can Chili
- Chili Pie
- Tuna Noodle Casserole
- Chicken Alfredo and Pasta
- Udon Noodles in Peanut Sauce
- Scalloped Potatoes with Ham
- Mexican Pizza Pie
Menu: Week Two
- Shepherd’s Pie
- Vegetable Soup
- Chicken and Dumplings
- One-Pot Beans and Rice
- Spaghetti
- Bread and Gravy
- Pantry Potato Soup
Menu: Week Three
- Goulash
- Vegetable Fried Rice
- Chicken and Dressing
- Jambalaya
- Fry Bread Tacos
- Split Pea Soup
- Pasta Primavera
Menu Week Four
- Pasta Fagioli
- Chicken Pot Pie
- Poor Man’s Stroganoff
- Baked Beans with Ham and Sweet Potatoes
- Baked Bean Chili
- Southwestern Chicken and Rice
- Corn Chowder
I like to save leftovers from dinner for the following day’s lunch. Shelf-stable breakfasts are pretty simple with things like powdered milk, dried fruit, and cereal or oatmeal. You can get all these recipes and a shopping list in my PDF book, The Stockpile Cafe, for just $5.
Below, find one of my family’s favorite shelf-stable recipes.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
