Everyone can remember the media outrage following Hurricane Katrina; New Orleans became a hotbed for violent criminal behavior long after the event. Catastrophes, natural and otherwise, that destroy our power sources and leave us in the dark elicit an ugly and familiar behavior in some: looting and theft. And while few natural disasters meet the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, any event that takes away our power can leave us instantly exposed. Even those of us prepared with a home alarm system lacking an alternative power source can be invaded the moment our power fails. Here are a few tips to prepare your home for safety the next time you experience a power outage at home.
1. Have a plan ready with your family
Before a power outage happens, the best step you can take to make sure your family remains safe is to have a plan prepared. This includes:
plenty of unrefrigerated food
a water source/supply
an emergency kit including flashlights and medical supplies
reserve clothes and bedding
at least one alternative source of power
Your family should have a plan, including common routes and meeting locations. If anyone becomes lost,they should know where to find everyone. Another important aspect to assess in your plan is how long your household can survive in case the power outage is for an extended period of time; there should be a predetermined day in which you leave when you pass that number of days. If you have a nearby neighbor you trust, make arrangements with them. In survival situations, there is always strength in numbers.
2. Prepare different sources of light
For most criminals, a dark house equals an exposed house. It provides cover, allows easy access to your home, and indicates that any security measures you’ve equipped are likely now unplugged. Deter criminals and maintain your sanity by keeping plenty of alternative light sources somewhere specific that every member of your family is aware of, like a pantry or storage closet. Oil/battery-operated lanterns, long-burning candles or fireplaces are potential ways to keep your home alight enough to deter crooks targeting a seemingly vacant defenseless home. Keeping motion-sensing lights hooked to a generator at night for your lawn is an excellent precaution.
3. Limit access to your home
To prevent criminals from invading your doors and windows, limit your access with some simple modifications. Install a screw on each window that limits how far they can be opened to a few inches. Make sure your doors are of a sturdy material and equipped with secure locks and deadbolts. Preparing your property with a sufficiently tall fence (six feet minimum to deter people) and a locked gate will definitely benefit you in a power outage. Last but not least, never leave equipment out on your lawn that could be used against you in an attempted break-in, such as tools, blunt instruments, or ladders.
4. Take caution with generators
While investing in generators for this kind of event is smart planning, make sure your use of the generator is equally smart. Using generators in-doors is extremely dangerous and can result in carbon monoxide poisoning. Likewise, you should keep generators far from windows or doors where the poisonous gas can seep in. It’s important to follow the directions provided with your unit to avoid possible electrocution or damage to your wiring, and never refrain from contacting a professional to lend you a hand if you’re unsure while installing or using a generator. Solar generators are an excellent long-term source for electricity during power outages, though should be used sparingly; focus on lighting and communications devices foremost. They can be expensive − unless, of course, you make one.
Keeping these tips in mind, your family will feel much safer during a power failure. Even if you’re fortunate in not needing all of your supplies or plans readied for the occasion, the peace of mind your family will have to know what needs to be done in case the worst happens is a priceless boon.
Everyone can remember the media outrage following Hurricane Katrina; New Orleans became a hotbed for violent criminal behavior long after the event. Catastrophes, natural and otherwise, that destroy our power
Preppers have become known for a lot of things in the media, but until recently it wasn’t for any prepper skills. We are known for underground bunkers, stockpiling tons of freeze-dried food and weapons. Preppers are frequently portrayed as preparing for the end of the world (on more than one occasion) and we generally get lumped into a very large classification of people who seemly panic and overreact to everything. For many years, if you were someone who considered themselves a prepper you could expect to be the butt of many jokes.
But somewhere along the way, that perspective started to change and for the most part, preppers aren’t viewed quite as harshly as we used to be. In fact, I don’t believe Prepper is such a bad word anymore.
Oh, sure there are still sarcastic remarks you will hear occasionally from intellectual hipsters. “You’re one of those Doomsday Preppers, aren’t you?” Some people even write articles about how they just wish preppers would all die so they could eat their stored foods. Even some preppers complain about other preppers and question their motivations for preparing or argue over what is really going to happen and what is fantasy in their opinion.
There will always be arguments over style, but it seems that the ideas behind the motivation to prepare are catching on. News reports actually reference preppers from time to time and soberly relate advice we have all been saying for years. So the idea has gained some validation, but if you had to boil it down to some generic survival skills, what would those be?
I started to think about what were the must have Prepper skills that I thought each person could try to master in order to give themselves the best chance of survival. We dig much deeper into each of these areas below on Final Prepper blog, but people love lists so here it goes.
What are the must have prepper skills?
The ability to create or find shelter
There is a saying in survival circles about the rule of 3’s. The Rule of 3’s states that you can live for 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food. Naturally, there are exceptions to the rule, but is a good baseline to look at when we talk about surviving. Assuming you are able to breathe, the first prepper skill revolves around shelter because exposure to the elements can kill you more quickly than most other non-human involved situations.
When we think of shelter that usually means heat or cold in the extremes. Sure having a dry roof over your head is nice but the important factor is keeping your core temperature in the healthy range. If you can’t keep warm and your body temperature drops too low (hypothermia), you die. If you can’t keep cool and your body temperature rises too high (hyperthermia) you die. There have been many people who died in the dry cold of abandoned buildings.
A simple debris shelter can insulate you from the cold and if done properly, conceal your location.
Shelter includes wearing the proper clothing, regulating your body temperature and augmenting your environment to keep yourself alive. It is one of my main concerns when faced with the thought of bugging out and that is why I do pay attention to the supplies my family has for their bug out bags. Additionally, I know ways to create shelter out of natural elements like the traditional debris shelter in the picture above.
The ability to find water and make it safe to drink
Following the next most important aspect of the survival paradigm of the rule of 3’s is the ability to keep yourself hydrated. If you don’t have good clean water to drink and pretty regularly, you will die. You might think this isn’t really a skill, but I consider the acquisition of water in a grid down situation very important to your survival. Finding it, carrying it and disinfecting it can prove to be a challenge for many people. Our reality is that clean water flows from the taps. When that stops what will you do?
If you only have to worry about yourself, you might be thinking that all you need is a LifeStraw and you are all set. That may help you survive, but in order to thrive you need to plan for much more water for daily use. Every person adds to that total which makes finding a reliable source of water a mandatory first step. Yes, you can find water in the woods, but you can also walk around a long time without finding any.
A good edible plant guide makes a great addition to the prepper bookshelf.
How can finding food be a prepper skill you ask? Assume for a minute that none of the regular places you go to now for food are available? How will you eat? We assume that the grocery stores will always be open or we will simply walk out in the woods and shoot a deer while we eat a nice salad from our garden with dressing made from the apple trees in our orchard and herbs from the back porch. That may happen, but what if all of those other methods were out of reach for you? What if you weren’t in your home anymore and you were on the run? I think to survive we are all going to have to rely on as many methods for obtaining food as possible.
Foraging – Yes, there are edible plants all around us but do you know what they are? Do you know how to prepare them so your children will eat them? Do you know how many stalks of that green vegetable you will have to eat to actually have a full stomach? What will you eat in the winter when nothing is growing outside?
Fishing – Fishing seems like a great fall back idea. If you have access to a lake or a river it would be easy to think that you will simply walk down to the bank with your trusty rod and reel and fill up a bucket of fish. All ponds and lakes have a maximum amount of fish they can support and they can be over-fished. If you figure about 50 lbs. of fish per acre per year, that really isn’t even enough to keep one person alive if you consider the approximate average of about 400 calories per pound of fish. Fishing can certainly augment your food stores but unless you have an insane amount of water that nobody else is using, you can’t plan on this as your only source. Obviously, if you are out on the ocean, this is not the same problem but us landlocked people have to consider that.
Hunting – We will all be hunting for our meals when the grid goes down and this is one of these myths that so many preppers believe in. If you live in the woods and have successfully hunted every year of your life, you could still starve in some catastrophe where the amount of hunters increases exponentially. Let’s assume you have 1000 hunters around where you live and each hunter where you live can shoot 10 deer per year. What happens when the number of hunters goes up to 10,000? How many deer will that leave you? Assuming you are lucky and are able to get your 10 deer, what happens the next year? All of the deer will be hunted to extinction.
Trapping – Setting snares for animals can get you a great amount of protein for your table, but that also assumes animals find them and fall for the trap. You can set all the hunting snares in the world, but if the animals don’t find your traps or there are no animals left in your area, you will still starve if you are only relying on trapping. I’ve watched an episode, some time ago, of Mountain Men on TV. One character was in Alaska, himself a very experienced trapper and he barely caught anything after many weeks on end. Certainly he was alone in the wilderness so you would assume there wasn’t any competition for food, but if he was counting on those traps to eat, he would have starved. The animals simply didn’t appear.
Snares can catch a meal if you are lucky, patient and in the right place at the right time.
Having a plan to provide yourself and your family with food should be multi-dimensional; it should change with the seasons and should consider times when food is scarce. That is one reason to have plenty of long-term storable food, several months’ worth of food you already eat everyday as well as a garden you tend and put back extra for the winter months. Hunting, fishing, trapping and foraging are all great activities too, but they take practice, luck and materials. Don’t expect to simply pull out your book on wild edibles and feed your family if the grid goes down.
The ability to make a fire
You need fire to keep warm and burning wood is one of the best alternatives to not having a furnace powered by electricity or fuel. There is an art to starting a fire and this is something that requires a little practice. Once you have a fire going, it needs to be maintained. In a grid down situation, it is highly likely that you will be cooking over an open fire so mastering this seemly simple task can give you a means for surviving.
Starting a fire is something you can easily practice now and I am frequently amazed at people who have never in their life started a fire. The basics are covered in the video below. Some additional information:
The ability to provide for your security – Defend this house
Defensive needs will vary by the person, location and situation. What is right for you?
So far we have covered keeping yourself protected from the elements, obtaining and either filtering or disinfecting a source of water, planning for finding different sources of food and creating fire to help you stay warm or cook that big caribou you just shot with your favorite survival rifle. There are other risks to your health and safety though and in my mind one of the biggest threats to your life in a grid down scenario where the basics of society have been lost, are other people.
People are going to be one of the biggest considerations you have to plan for eventually. If you are able to keep yourself alive, someone could come along who wants what you have. Defending your life or the lives of your family could be a real possibility in a collapse. There are many options depending on your principles, values, physical limitations, legal realities or preferences.
For me, I try to have redundancy as much as possible. For security, my default position is that I have firearms in several different configurations for different needs. Hopefully I won’t have to use them but if the world has gone to hell and somebody is trying to separate me and my family from food, I won’t be wrestling with him. He will get the business end of one of my different weapons.
That sounds well and good but what if your gun jams Pat? Fair enough question and you have to be ready and willing to get physical too. The world of combat has many disciplines and I am no expert on which is the best. Krav Maga has been put forth as an effective fighting style that can save your life. Is it better than boxing or judo or Brazilian grappling or any one of hundreds of other styles? I don’t know and I can’t say what will work best for you, but investigate self-defense from as many angles as you feel comfortable with. Your life might depend on it.
The ability to heal yourself – First Aid
People get hurt every day and in a survival situation you should have basic skills to stop bleeding, care for wounds, fight infection and prevent further injury. Would it be great if you were a brain surgeon? Absolutely, but not many of us have the time or money for school and I don’t know if brain surgery would be the best investment of your time if you are only doing this to prepare for some emergency situation.
Basic first aid on the other hand is very valuable. I don’t expect many of us will be conducting surgery but for many injuries our body has an amazing ability to heal itself. All we can do is help it and having some basic medical supplies and a little know how never hurts. Good medical reference materials are great to acquire now so that you have them on hand if something were to happen before you could get back to Amazon.com.
The ability to pull your own weight – Physical Fitness
When I was in the Army we had PT every morning. I would be lying if I said I jumped up at the sound of my alarm and bounded outside to wait in formation for PT to start with a big cheery grin on my ugly mug. PT for was luckily forced on me and I was in pretty decent shape back then. Motivating yourself to be physically healthy is hard for some people, but the better shape you are in now, the more able you will be to take the stress and physical requirements of a much harder life.
We sit around a major part of the day largely because of the conveniences we have. We don’t have to go very far for water or to use the bathroom. We purchase food by the trunk load and rely on cars to get us where we want to go, engines till our soil and we purchase anything we need instead of making it. Take away electricity, vehicles and engines and life just got much harder. Many people who are so sedentary now that they rarely get out of the house, will likely die shortly in a world gone dark when they are suddenly required to move more than they are used to. Sure, there will be a good portion of people who soldier through it, lose weight and regain muscle like they did in Wall-E, but many more will not.
Nobody expects you to be a weight lifter or a marathon runner, but how much weight can you lift? Can you do 20 push ups without slowing down? How about 5? How far can you walk with that 50 pound Bug Out Bag? How far do you walk each day now? Can you run? Act now to get in better shape. You don’t have to have zero body fat, but you need to be physically able to perform tasks to simply stay alive. Can you garden all day and defend your home too? Are you able to haul water from that stream 1 mile downhill?
I use my GPS on my phone more times than I want to admit. Remember the good old days when you had to know street names and before you would go somewhere new you had to ask for directions? OK, it doesn’t sound like it was better, but we were conditioned to get around in a different way that wasn’t reliant upon technology. Everyone had maps in their glove compartment. You watched for street names before blindly turning and ending up going the wrong way.
Even if the grid doesn’t go down and satellites aren’t falling from the sky you may have to rely on something besides your phone to get around. Want to get off the grid? Leave that phone behind and walk into the woods. You may need to map alternate routes to your bug out location or navigate around cities that have descended into chaos. Knowing how to read a map to get where you are going could be a much-needed prepper skill.
The ability to read the future – Situational Awareness
OK, technically you wont be able to tell the future, but having a good sense of situational awareness and practicing your observation skills could help you in ways that may seem to the uniformed that you knew what was coming ahead of time. Make sure you know what is going on in your immediate area by getting your face out of your phone. Make sure you know what is happening in your city by paying attention to the news, observing the people around you and what they are doing. Follow regional and state-wide events usual alternate media and radio programs as well as keeping tabs on international news. What happens in other nations could wind its way to your neck of the woods. Will you have a plan in place ready to act or will you be caught off guard?
The ability to keep your eye on the prize – Kill complacency and the normalcy bias
I mentioned in the beginning of this article that preppers have occasionally been linked to people who predicted the end of the world, somewhat prematurely. Time after time, preppers have focused on an impending event that rallied them into action only to suffer a form of let down when nothing came to pass. Imagine being disappointed that the world didn’t stop on 1.1.2000 or the end of the world didn’t materialize when the Mayan calendar said it was supposed to.
Prepping is about surviving anything that comes your way. We diversify our prepping focus and plan for what we need to live so that we have the tools, gear, knowledge and plans to stay alive regardless of the evil creeping down the street. Just because the economy doesn’t collapse on the day they said it would, you can’t give up and sell all of your prepper supplies to your neighbor for pennies on the dollar. If there never is a military coup, don’t give up prepping and ignore that garden. You have to stay focused because the people who give up, the people who think everything is fine are the ones hit first during tragedy. Instead of believing that you are impervious and nothing bad will ever happen, continue to scan the horizon for threats and take comfort in knowing you are prepared even if on your deathbed you have been proven wrong.
Prepping is often compared to life insurance and I can’t think of a better example. I spend money on insuring the things I do not want to lose. Prepping is my personal insurance plan that I hope I never need, but if I do I want to have all the prepper skills mentioned above to help me survive.
There will always be arguments over style, but it seems that the ideas behind the motivation to prepare are catching on. News reports actually reference preppers from time to time
Equipped with a large database of knowledge, co workers and all the equipment/supplies they need at their fingers tips.. it is no secret that America is home to some of the best doctors and medical professionals in the world. If SHTF, what happens if all the lights go out? Would the equipment still function? What if all the supplies run out? What if all the doctors are sent to make-shift-camps or hunkered down with their own families? What if there is no hospital, no 911, no help coming?
Believe it or not, this actually happens all around the world each and every day. Out there right now there are doctors, nurses and medics working around the clock without power or computers, without their co workers, without all the fancy equipment.. They are equipped with nothing more than their knowledge and whatever is packed into their medical bags. That is right, they are saving lives out of the contents of their medical bags.
Most of us are not doctors nor do we have access to the same kind of supplies that they do. However, having a medical bag is one of the most important things we should all consider while preparing for those situations we hope never happen. You may be wondering what to put in your own medical bag or if you are forgetting anything so I’ve provided my own list to help get you started.
The Medical Bag
Elite First Aid Fully Stocked GI Issue Medic Kit Bag, Large – $132
There are all kinds of options out there for medical bags. Use what works best for you. I have seen people use back packs, tackles boxes and shoulder bags. I personally went with the shoulder bag because my bug out bag is a back pack and I only have one back. I also would like to keep both of my hands free so this was the best option for me.
Sanitation and Personal Protection
Regardless of the emergency, sanitation is not something that should never be overlooked. For your own protection and the protection of your patient, always WASH YOUR HANDS!!!! I cannot stress the importance of hand washing. For this reason and so you never forget.. choose the most easy to access part of your bag to store your sanitation supplies. Most of these items can be found at your local dollar store so there are no excuses not to be hygienic when providing first aid. These very simple step could mean the difference between life or death.
**Tip: Keep a small zip-lock bag with a maxi pad and bandanna in with your sanitation supplies. In the event someone is bleeding you can buy yourself a minute to wash up by having the injured use the maxi pad to apply direct pressure, if they are unable, you can hold it in place with the bandanna.
Items to include:
Bar of hand soap and a case to put it in (dollar store)
First Aid Kit Emergency Response Trauma Bag Complete
Equipment
The more we have to work with, the easier it will be so some basic equipment is good to have. If your budget is tight you can pick up some of these items at the dollar store and then add the rest when you are able
**Tip: Know how to use these items!! They are all easy to use, I promise.
Rescue Essentials Shears EMT/Scissors Combo Pack with Holster, Tactical All Black
From superficial scrapes to life threatening bleeding it is no surprise that there are millions of wound care products out there. Try not to get too overwhelmed with this. The first thing we need to do is to make sure that whatever caused the injury is no longer a threat. We then need to make sure the person wants our help!! Before we rush in to play doctor, we should always let the injured person know who we are and what training we may have. In the event this person is or at any time becomes unconscious implied consent is given. Once we have established that there is no current threat to ourselves and that we have consent to help then the main objectives are to stop the bleeding, monitor for shock and prevent infection. It may be wise to divide this into 3 sections so if you are ever in a panic, you’ll be less likely to miss a step.
**Tip: Pack what items you can afford then add to it as you are able to.
The Survival Medicine Handbook: A Guide for When Help is Not on the Way
Items to include:
Bleeding Control
3 Maxi pads and a bandanna (extras!! – dollar store)
**Tip: this will be a lot easier if you can keep the person calm. Consider pain management ideas for while you are treating. Flushing a wound with clean drinkable water will be the ideal method. You may need to pick out tiny pebbles or dirt with tweezers and possibly even scrub it. It is very important to make sure the wound is clean. You will then want to use an antiseptic such as peroxide, alcohol or iodine. If a person had been bitten, infection is much more likely use a BZK wipe.
Stress ball (give it to the patient to squeeze but never in the arm they are bleeding from)
5 paper bags (having the patient breathe into one for a couple of minutes may help distract them and will remind them to breathe)
It is almost never a good idea to close a wound in a non-sterile setting, you can pack a suture kit for just in case but this should be a last resort. I did not pack a stapler because I personally am not comfortable with using for a number of reasons.
If possible divide up other emergency supplies into sections to keep them more organized and easier to access. Try to keep these in plain view when you open your bag.
Items to include:
Section 1 – Breathing Difficulty/Chest Pains
Manual suction device with extra tubing
Areochamber mask with asthma inhalers (if someone in your group has asthma)
If you are reading this.. then chances are pretty good that you can still run out to the local pharmacy whenever you may need to. If SHTF easy to access pharmacies may become a thing of the past. Without power and oil production it would become extremely difficult for pharmacies (or any stores for that matter) to re stock their shelves. This is why it is so important to buy these things while we still can and while we still have health care professionals to ask all our questions to.
First and foremost, everyone with medical needs should pack at least a 30 day supply (the more the better) of any medications that have already been prescribed or recommend to you by your doctor, pharmacist or health care provider. Nothing you read on the internet should ever substitute the advice from your health care provider. Seek their care and medical advice whenever necessary for as long as it is available.
The amount of medications you should pack is going to vary greatly from person to person. I recommend packing enough for yourself and at least one other person, if you can. If you have a larger group then pack accordingly. I have not included any amounts as to how much you should pack because it is important for you to carefully think numbers through based on your own groups size. Talk to your health provider before taking any new medications.
Again, you may pack these however you choose but breaking them to sections may help you find what you need faster. Toiletry kits work great for this.
Items to Consider:
Bag 1 – Indigestion and Upset Tummies
Tums (for heartburn)
Antacids (for more severe Indigestion)
Ginger and Peppermint tea bags (a natural aid for nausea and upset tummies)
Gravol tablets (for adults and children – for motion sickness, nausea and vomiting)
Pepto tablets (for all your tummy needs)
Metamucil (for constipation)
Anti Diarrhea tablets
Small cup (for the tea)
Bag 2- Fever, Pain and Discomfort
Tylenol (for infants, children and adults)
Advil (for adults) and children’s Motrin
Ultra strength advil liquid gels (works faster)
Muscle Rub (for sore muscles)
Preparation h (hemorrhoids)
Gold Bond Powder (foot odor)
Vaseline and Diaper ointment (I highly recommend Beaudreaus butt paste – for rashes)
Cold pack and heat pack
Numb 520 with 5% lidocaine (amazing deep numbing pain relief, this will numb someone enough for suturing)
Vasocaine Numbing Spray (also amazing, it’s mostly used for tattoos)
Bag 3- Infections and Supplements
Rehydration salts (yes, I’ve included these twice)
Activated Charcoal (accidental ingestion of toxins)
Colloidal silver (Talk to a health care provider first)
Oral Antibiotics (for infection – I’ve chosen 3 – talk to your health care provider)
Essential oils (tea tree, clove, lavender, eucalyptus and oil of oregano were my choices)
Polysporin and Neosporin (for minor scrapes and burns)
Triple Antibiotic Ointment (in a tube)
Honey
Foot Fungal Ointment
Nystatin (yeast infections)
Monistat (yeast infections)
Hydrocortisone Cream (treats many skin conditions)
Children’s vitamins (Safe for pregnant woman, children and adults)
Vitamin D drops (for breastfed babies)
Iron supplements (after blood loss)
Education
I have saved the best for last.. Education. Take all the classes you can and read all the books you can get your hands on. In fact, pack your favorites in your very own medical bag!! One of my personal favorites is “Where There is no Doctor“. It is also completely FREE to call or drop in to your local pharmacy to ask all the questions you may have about any items you are including in your own medical bag. Talk to your doctor about any pre existing conditions or concerns. Your knowledge is your best chance of survival.
Equipped with a large database of knowledge, co workers and all the equipment/supplies they need at their fingers tips.. it is no secret that America is home to some of
When we hear “crank it out”, we tend to be hearing “get it done”. We have a lot of advantages with that these days. Nobody’s spinning a wheel on a giant roller to produce our news – we just tap a few buttons, and systems lift and press, roll, and cut for us, or we’re online and reading away without a walk to the morning paper at all.
The conveniences are all around us, from our coffee grinders and brewers, out in our sheds, and all around our homes and lives. But it wasn’t actually too far back in history that “crank” was a very literal term for a lot of those conveniences.
In my kitchen, I have a simple slider mandolin, mason jar pump-top onion chopper, and a salad spinner. I’m going to break down and get a cherry pitter this year or next year. They’re convenient. They save labor in time and energy. Grinders are there for coffee and wheat, so I stay happy/sane. My world is full of items that do the same, from my battery drill and power saws to the blender that cranks out curach and turns strained jelly peels and pulp into slurries for fruit roll-ups.
A disaster is a bad time to lose all of our conveniences in life. There are also some hand powered tools we can pull from the pages of history – and that inspire modern tools – that will help us with our self-reliance. They bounce back and forth from the kitchen to the workshop, out to the barn. Here’s a quick look at a handful of those things that can help us keep cranking it out.
Oil press
An oil press can be a big financial commitment, and it’s not for everybody. Until there’s enough land space to be producing foods, let alone oil nuts and seeds, it should go on the back-burner. On the other hand, if you’re in suburbia and you have the 1-2 working oil presses in 3-25 miles, you have a very powerful bartering tool at your fingertips.
Essential Oils Natural Remedies: The Complete A-Z Reference of Essential Oils for Health and Healing
That’s because fats are important. A lot of game animals are very lean in fats. In a world where we and our limited livestock are working just as hard as wildlife to eat, stay warm, prepare for winter, recover, and raise a family, we’re going to get leaner, too. That’s not always a good thing. There are vitamins and minerals our bodies can’t process without fats.
Fats are also important in baking, and make cooking (and cleanup) a whole lot easier. Plus, check out your powdered peanut butter. I’ll bet it tells you to add some oil for best results.
Sadly, even Crisco and powdered margarine won’t last forever, and it’s not like they’re all that good for you.
There is an alternative to a press to get those fats – at least one.
We can basically mince the heck out of various seeds and nuts, turn them into a slurry, let them settle (for hours or days), pour off the liquids (that’s what we keep), strain and press the wet mass (to get more of the liquids), and wait for the water to dehydrate (days). There are regularly additional steps for different types of plants, like shelling, simmering, filtering, additional pour-offs, and milling. Fermentation and spoilage risks are high. Labor and time are through the roof.
With an oil press, an impressive number of tree and grass seeds can be turned into oils.
Many presses have or can be fitted with automatic shellers and separators. The leftover meal can be dried to use in breads, thicken stock and gravy, or be fed to animals. The same presses can be used for a wide variety of seeds and nuts, sometimes requiring a gear change and sometimes extremely small or large seeds require an additional piece or to be minced. Sometimes we do have to take our peanut shells and skins off, and feed it just corn kernels.
(There are corn threshers and bean-pea shellers available crank-style, too.)
Not only is the time and effort hugely reduced with an oil press, our product comes out cleaner and we usually have more to show for it at the end of the day.
I won’t go into as much detail for the rest of today’s list, but those types of factors are there for all of them. It’s why the “convenience” and “efficiency” machines came into play in the first place.
Hand Beater
While we’re right there talking about speed and ease in the kitchen, let’s talk about rotary beaters.
I know that at various stages, there were also rotary and pull-cord blenders on the counters. This guy has good memories for me, though.
Moms and Grandma used to have a set. They made whipping eggs or cupcake frosting for twelve or a classroom fast and easy. If we’re going to be doing a lot of from-scratch cooking, or if we have months and months’ worth of powdered milk, butter and creamed soups stored, something as simple as a design that hasn’t much changed in 50-100 years and can still be found in stores is a force multiplier.
Peeler-Corer-Slicer
Another kitchen equivalent to the venerable 1911 is also probably one of the most commonly suggested and available hand-crank tools. It extends way beyond the preparedness-homesteading crowds. Like a cherry pitter, anybody who grows or processes a lot of fruit considers these things gold. When I’m only filling out a few drawers in a dehydrator I’ll still just whip out the mini-paddle mandolin, but when you start talking buckets and bushels, these apple peelers more than earn their price.
Ours has the option for using the coring center or just a spike, so I can also peel potatoes with it, and the slicing blade can come off so I can grate those, pears, or apples instead of slicing them.
Hand-Crank Food Processor
Once we’ve peeled or washed our produce, there’s another gem we can upgrade to if we want – people have actually started (or returned to) making hand-crank food processors. Like the electric versions, they make pretty fast work of assembling salsa veggies, dicing for relish and chutney, slicing salads, or cutting butter into pie and tart crust.
Salad Master
There’s another version we can use that bolts onto a countertop or table. I actually prefer it, because I like the resiliency of metal when I’m plunking down a chunk of change (Queen Klutz here).
You can get them in a number of styles and there are sets with attachments as far ranging as the modern Kitchen Aid base mixer. That means a single hand crank base can be adapted for ground meat and sausages, and pressing pasta, as well as mincing, slicing and dicing veggies.
Which styles we like best is just personal preference.
Applesauce and Baby Food Strainer
If we do a lot of jelly and jam canning, want to quickly churn out applesauce, or want to make our own baby food, there are some pretty simple devices out there still – and that we can pick up from old farm estate sales fairly regularly if we watch for those.
You can also find steam and hand-crank juicers that work for syrups and jellies. If you plan to forage or produce a lot of the cranberry viburnum and chokecherry type fruits, those are handy to have.
Butter Churns
When we think of churning butter, a lot of people apparently think of somebody sitting with the tall canister and paddle or plunger, lifting up and down. I think of my blender, personally.
Throughout history, however, there have been a lot of different styles and scales of butter churns, and some of the small and countertop hand crank versions are more likely to fit into our storage space – and regularly, our budgets.
Styles like the canning-jar base are also a lot more hygienic than the wooden ones and the larger, longer metal designs. You can clean them more effectively in between uses.
If we’re in a world with limited outside assistance, that becomes even more important. Goats aren’t as likely to have a milk infection, but cattle used to get them regularly. They still do in some cases. Some of those diseases will only spoil flavor, but some of them have human health concerns. If that milk is transferred into plastic or wooden containers, it takes a lot of cleanser and then a lot of rinsing to regain comfort in using them. Water is going to be a hugely important resource for a lot of people, and it still might not do the trick.
Smaller glass and metal vessels can fit inside pressure canners and are easier to reach (and rinse) than larger ones, and long, skinny churns.
They’re far faster than shaking a jar or rolling it underfoot – although if you’re about to shell a solid ton of peas, the foot thing might work for you.
Centrifuge for Butterfat Testing
So, we have our goats, sheep, camels or cattle, and we want the ones with the highest butterfat for butter and clotted cream. How do we find out in the second and third generation of livestock after a crash?
An old-school hand-crank centrifuge.
That centrifuge can also be used just to find out which animal’s butterfat or heaviest creams separate fastest and easiest.
Instead of having shallow containers sit for hours – without jostling – with the risks of pests, dust and heat spoilage, we can also use various turn-of-the-century tools to speed that process.
Hand-crank sewing machines
When a ram horn catches us and rips a hole in our clothes, or our pockets start failing, when growing kids need clothes made out of curtains, we can sit down with a needle and hand sew, but if a sewing machine is available, it tends to be a lot faster of a process.
It’s also an easier process for old and damaged hands – some tension adjustments and threading is required, but then those hands (and eyes) can relax a bit.
You can hunt up antiques, or run some searches for non-electric sewing machines – they’re out there, especially from/for some of the still-developing nations.
Modern Manual Drill
Nothing is going to help us rebuild a shed or fence or put in a new milking bench like our electric drill and driver, but there are still manufacturers out there for hand-crank versions that will be faster and easier than doing it all with a screwdriver.
Hand augers are commonly seen on the lists of disaster tools, and are shaped a bit differently. They’re really good at what they do. Modern and yester-year manual drills that can also be fitted with our current drill’s screw tips have some advantages, too.
Combined, they make a pretty handy pairing around a house or farm that’s looking at losing power.
Bench Grinders
Modern-made and antique, there are all kinds of handy things for the shop. While a drill is one of the most commonly reached-for items in our house, the wheel grinders are in high demand at my father’s. They make fast work out of sharpening tools and blades.
Some of the hand-crank versions are massive beasts that can be set up for two hands, and can handle light notching, planer, and plank sanding and some can even be set up as circular saws and used to cut pipes, tubing and OSB. (Those are two-person jobs for safety reasons.)
As with the kitchen, the speed and work effort compared to a hacksaw, steel wool, and sharpening stone plays a factor when looking at the costs.
And, as with the kitchen, both the bench grinders and the manual drills mean that people with injuries or ailments can still get work done in a lot of cases, and do that work faster. That, too, factors into what we’ll pay and how we prioritize.
The Wide Range of Shop Tools
Shop tools of all kinds are out there. I don’t use a drill press often enough (and they’re expensive enough) to have given it its own listing. But they’re out there. So are things like barn beam boring drills, smaller tinker-merchant and jeweler’s presses, ratcheting drill presses and nail setters.
Farm horses used to regularly be hitched to circle and power things like turnip slicers, grain threshers, and grain mills. Horse-drawn harvesters dug, separated and in some cases even sorted potatoes and turnips, working off gears attached to the wheels. Dogs and goats can handle some of that workload with smaller versions.
Modern Spins
Just as some of the hand-crank and -lever tools that bear consideration can be had from current production runs, the modern world has not turned its back on hand cranks.
They’re there in tire pumps and emergency lights large and small. We can also buy little hand-cranked battery boxes to charge our small electronic devices. One of my earliest articles dealt with laundry, with several modern takes on manual washers and wringers.
In some cases, we can find those devices in bike-pedal powered forms as well.
Cranking It Out in the Modern Age
The internet is a wonderful thing. It brings the whole world right to our fingertips, and it can regularly have most of that world delivered to our door.
We didn’t jump from caveman sticks and rocks directly over to sending email over HAM radio. Throughout history, there are gadgets that made lives easier and allowed us to do more work. As preparedness spending grows, we can find a lot of new manual gadgets becoming available from suppliers and inventors.
Whatever you reach for this week or this month, especially over planting and harvest season and the next DIY build or repair, make a note of it (a real, physical note). Is it a force multiplier? A must-have? A beloved convenience? How important does it rate on your scale?
If you’re doing things by hand or planning for a world without power, it might be worth popping a “manual” or “hand-operated” search for that item into your browser. There are fair chances somebody has one, makes one, or has a hack to create one.
In my kitchen, I have a simple slider mandolin, mason jar pump-top onion chopper, and a salad spinner. I’m going to break down and get a cherry pitter this year
Throughout history, settlements form near water. The largest and most successful settle with plentiful water. There are a number of reasons for that. One, water really is life. We require water for drinking. We also use it for cleaning and laundry. As the human species advanced, we needed additional water for livestock. Then we became stationary, mastered various forms of irrigation, and bred our crops to become more and more dependent on water. Doing so allowed us to reap larger yields of sweeter and more mild crops, but it also tied us inexorably to water systems.
Historically we were further tied to water systems for faster and easier travel and trade, and we eventually turned to it for some of our labor. First with direct-labor systems such as grinding mills, then for the generation of power that could be sent across distances, water made life easier as well as sustaining it.
We are no less tied to water now than the caveman, Viking or European colonist. We just don’t always notice. And because most of North America enjoys easy, low-cost water, we aren’t great about conserving it.
Test Your Water Use
Want to see just how influential water is, and how much we use? Easy enough. Turn off the water at the main for a day. Remember to also tape or turn off faucets so you don’t empty any hot water heaters and end up with problems.
If you’re on a well, use your backup pump system. If you don’t have a backup system, one immune to fire and earthquake and the prepper-minded EMPs, you don’t actually have a water system. Turn it off.
Do it on a standard day. A day you’re not off backpacking, not working on your three-day bare-minimum drill doing a dry camp in the living room or backyard. Really ideally, do it in summer or autumn on the day(s) you’d be watering if you irrigate gardens, and on a day you’re hunting or harvesting some doves, chickens and rabbits.
For less-immersive comparison, just monitor the water gauge. For livestock on a non-metered system, fill containers that can have checks and tally lines added quickly.
Don’t let yourself become complacent or say, “well, that’s just because” to justify the amount of water used. Yes, our grooming standards can go down and change, and we can adopt some laundry methods and clothing treatment from the past that limit our uses more. Eventually, though, hygiene suffers.
If anything, a crisis is a time to focus more on proper hygiene.
Handwashing, especially, can make a major impact on fecal-oral route infections, which tend to be the root of most of the illnesses laymen call “food poisoning”.
If your hygiene is dependent on wipes, run that test as long as you can to get the best possible average for how many you run through per day. Whatever your backup toilet system is, use that.
Use the data to create a baseline. How much do you use? How long will your stored water last? What seasons can you reasonably count on resupply?
From there, we look for ways to increase our sources and our efficiency in harvesting and using the water we can access.
A Double-Edged Sword
Water is one of the few things we can’t do without, and a functioning stream, river or lake system or even just a marsh can make a huge positive impact on our preparedness. They aren’t without hazards, however.
Flooding is a primary risk, although healthy marsh systems can actually mitigate and minimize floods. Still, the levee systems in the U.S. are aging and Midwest floods aren’t uncommon. Colorado and Tennessee have both had major, devastating disasters due to river- or creek-originated floods.
In a protracted crisis, the hydro dams put in by the Tennessee Valley Authority and in the Northwest are likely to suffer failures, on top of the failures we see washing out roads and creating mudslides and large floods right now.
In addition to those failures, there are mines and factories along our waterways these days. We’ve seen in just the last year what can happen as they fail and toxins leak out. Nuclear plants are routinely along waterways.
Failures combined with flooding can wash those contaminants into our farmlands, cities and suburbs, affecting creeks and wildlife long before and long after we can see the effects.
EPA Accidentally Turns Colorado River Orange With Pollution, Putting Drinking Water At Risk
Livestock are also a contamination risk to both well intakes and streams, just like human waste can already be right here in the U.S. Those risks are even more prevalent in some of the third-world nations that live without our level of basic services. Disease is rampant after earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods due to fecal wastes, and can be expected to go up after a major disaster.
Mosquitoes and the spread of ever increasing and previously “dead” diseases by insects are another risk.
Many of those risks can be limited with site selection and sculpting the land a little, by planting a few things that can help create buffers, predators, and sinks for water and its diseases and pests. An interruption in “easy” water after we’ve become accustomed to it is still the bigger and more likely threat for most of us.
While a gravity-driven well with a pressure-driven cistern would be ideal, not everybody is there. Not every well can either reach or hit the amounts needed for livestock and crop irrigation.
Pairing the unprecedented, super-filtration power of an all-new gravity block core with a hybrid ceramic shell, it removes 99.9999 percent of impurities, including bacteria, cysts, disinfectants, volatile organic contaminants (VOAs) and heavy metals.
A moving channel is a fantastic element to site. One aspect to watch for with small systems is that they don’t dry out in summer. Ideally, they won’t even dry up in the 25- and 50-year drought cycles.
Through much of history, moving water has helped us either with direct labor, such as the old mills we can still find here and there, or later by producing power for us to then use however we like.
Running streams, creeks and rivers can also turn water wheels that help us by lifting water into aqueduct systems or into cisterns that will produce enough gravity from water weight to push water further away from the source.
With even a small amount of motion, there are sling pumps capable of moving water for us. Even if a sling pump won’t reach all the way to gardens and livestock, saving us the bend-lift labor of filling buckets and being able to fill a cistern while we move the first load can make an enormous difference.
With greater rates of movement, we can create hydro re-directs to lessen some of our labors and in some cases produce small amounts of energy. We can dam small waterways to increase pressure or create channel- or pipe-based systems to generate power.
In some cases it’s not going to be a lot of electricity, but even the ability to slowly charge electric tools, appliances, and our music and photo devices can be a huge boost.
Slow it, Sink it, Spread it, Store it
In permaculture, there are several “S’s” promoted in regards to water. They simplify the desires to:
Catch water for future use
Prevent flooding even on the “daily” and seasonal scales, and by doing so prevent erosion and soil hardening via water (runoff, soil compaction)
Allow water to infiltrate so roots can access it, and to lift the water table for springs and swale systems
Keep chemicals and waste from running across landscapes and polluting our waters or gardens
Catchments are one way we capture water – storing it for later and preventing it from running wasted over the surface of the soil.
Water catchment on a huge scale was and still is used in Australia, with systems similar to water towers and large roof-to-cistern systems both above ground and below ground.
Sheep and cattle stations and small farmers also create nearly lock-style channels to store water for the three- to six-month dry seasons. Those systems can be duplicated in North America depending on local laws.
In places where regulations prohibit such large scale water harvesting or hoarding, it may be possible to obtain permits to put in lakes or ephemeral or permanent pond systems, which can function similarly and have added benefits for homesteads.
On a small scale, water can be stored using systems as complex as we like, or we can go simple and create pyramids or triangles of trickle-over buckets and barrels with no plumbing and just mesh or permeable cloth to prevent mosquito infestations.
Small, shallow swales sequester less, but can prevent damage from rains over years. Larger swales can hold more water, allowing that water a greater amount of time to infiltrate. That water then creates a “lens” beneath the surface of the soil and allows plants a longer period of time to access it.
Preexisting vegetation and the type of vegetation we want to put in, if we plan to move livestock through the swale systems and what type of livestock also affects what type of swale system will work best for us.
Reducing Reliance On Systems
We have to have some water, and ideally a constant source. However, even with the best of planning and siting, sometimes we run into droughts or damaged systems. One way to build resiliency to those is to lessen our overall dependence.
Silvopasture over turf can provide forage and fodder even in drought years, and lessen dependence on irrigated grains and delicate pasture and hay. Some silvopasture is coppiced, but most will be either pollarded or selective-drop of large limbs from each tree.
Our livestock selection can also lessen dependence.
Ducks tend to be wasteful of water, while with drip waterers, chickens can be highly efficient. Pigs really need a lot of water to gain weight efficiently, and they need regular access to it. Comparatively, dairy and meat goats need a little less access and less total water per pound of produce.
If we veer a little further away from the American norm, camels need less yet, and have traditionally been used for milk, meat and hides and in some cases angora just like llamas.
We can also look into more water efficient breeds from typically dry regions of the world. They may be more expensive as an initial investment and have less-efficient feed-milk-meat ratios, but in a survival situation, the fact that they do survive with little water may make them invaluable.
If we have a fair bit of property, we can also tailor habitat for hunting small game, and focus our water labors on egg and dairy producers.
Hugelkultur beds are another way to limit use and dependence on rainfall and irrigation. Once established, a properly sized and layered hugel bed requires almost no assistance at all. It retains and essentially generates moisture from within.
When we do use water, we can use it as many times as humanly possible instead of letting it run and flow past our fingers.
Gray water systems, using cooled cooking water in gardens or for livestock, and reclaiming runoff from sprouts and sprouted fodder for livestock or re-watering can all help decrease our total draw.
Then there are little things like using a cup of water to rinse while brushing teeth, and having catch basins for washing hands or rinsing produce that then gets used for laundry or put back into the garden systems – at least once, and in some cases, several times.
Water Is Life
We have always been dependent on water as a species, and civilization and modern post-industrial life has made us more so. However, we can look back at history and to some of the underdeveloped nations to find ways that we can harvest and store water against need, and in some cases, use water wheels and even small creeks or lake properties to help us move water or generate a little bit of power.
Pairing the unprecedented, super-filtration power of an all-new gravity block core with a hybrid ceramic shell, it removes 99.9999 percent of impurities, including bacteria, cysts, disinfectants, volatile organic contaminants (VOAs) and heavy metals.
There are a few tips here. The article about gardening in droughts has additional lessons from fairly recent history that can be applied to reduce water uses for human and livestock food production, large scale or small, urban or rural.
When we’re ready to delve into long-term disaster planning, water needs to be a focus. Without water, and a backup plan for water, all the rest of our preparations become null and void in a large-scale emergency.
Water can also be dangerous. It’s worth researching the local flood patterns, especially pre-levee system, and looking up the diseases, symptoms and cures common to waterways in third world nations and after disasters.
Throughout history, settlements form near water. The largest and most successful settle with plentiful water. There are a number of reasons for that. One, water really is life. We require
In preparation for National Geographic’s American Blackout ; I wanted to create my own power outage checklist for preppers. The premise of the show from the website is “the story of a national power failure in the United States caused by a cyber-attack — told in real time, over 10 days, by those who kept filming on cameras and phones.” If nothing else, I hope the situations they present inspire and motivate others to be more prepared if we are ever faced with a situation like this.
Even if we aren’t ever the victim of any cyber-attack that takes down the electrical grid, power outages do happen all of the time. Knowing what you need to have to weather an outage and having a plan for living through the power disruption is important. As with anything else preparedness related, you are better off planning and organizing what you need well in advance of any emergency. The old prepping adage is that it is better to be five years early than one day late.
The list below is broken into different chunks of information and follows a good, better, best type of format. Good items are the absolute minimum you need for a given scenario which so happens in this case to be our power outage. Better will keep you above the minimum requirements giving you additional flexibility and capabilities. Best is our recommendation for what you would ideally have to make it through most conceivable scenarios provided outside influences don’t change your situation. Best isn’t perfect, but it does put you on a posture for success. For most items I have added links to Amazon or other shopping outlets so you can order and price these items for yourself.
We will be using the same assumption that National Geographic is using for American Blackout and that is a 10 day power outage. We will assume that for the duration of this power outage, you are able to shelter in place and aren’t forced to leave your home. Where you live and what time of year this happens will influence some of your choices below but I’ll try to call that out where appropriate. I probably won’t go into some of the situations we as a country could be faced with in the aftermath of something like this, but in terms of basic survival we should have all the bases covered.
There is no more power
A power blackout from a cyber-attack will not be announced. An attack either on systems that deliver power to our homes or from an EMP attack will come without warning. You won’t get news reports for several days in advance like with a hurricane. You won’t have any time to run to the store to buy the items on this checklist before the blackout. You will have to use what you have on hand, or can acquire almost immediately after the blackout has occurred before panic sets in. Once people learn the power isn’t coming back on anytime soon, there will be chaos and you don’t want to be anywhere near that.
What do we need to prepare for living without in a power blackout caused by a cyber-attack?
The ability to run any electronic devises without batteries – This includes ATM’s, credit card machines, cash registers (I’ll deal with this in security), gas pumps…
So, let’s take these one at a time and start at the top and work our way down the list of scenarios and all of the items you should have on hand before a power blackout.
Backup power and tying into your home’s electrical system require skill. If you don’t know what you are doing, call an electrician to avoid costly and potentially fatal mistakes. Solar Panels may require additional equipment.
Rechargeable Batteries for all headlamps enough to charge a set and use a set at the same time.
As with anything flammable, candles and oil lamps should be used carefully and not while anyone is sleeping.
Cooking
You quickly find out how much we take for granted during a power outage at two points. The first is when you flick that light switch on by habit and nothing happens. The second is when you want to cook something and are faced with the reality that you might have to eat those leftovers cold.
Wood Burning Stove – I know these aren’t practical in all situations, but generally speaking this is the best overall option in a grid down scenario, all things being equal.
In the context of the power blackout, we discussed that you would not be disposed from your home, so this is really talking about protecting yourself from the extremes of heat or cold. Most of the items below could pull double duty as camping equipment.
Good
Appropriate clothing for the temperature. Warm weather calls for clothes that dry quickly and wick moisture away. Cold weather usually means layers and warm additions like hats and gloves.
Spare blankets/ screens for windows depending on weather.
One gallon of water per person for 10 days. For a four person family, that is 40 gallons. The easiest way to store and transport these for me is 5 gallon water jugs
Security like some of these other topics is more complicated so a list like this is subject to a lot of scrutiny. We do cover this subject in much greater detail in our Self Defense section of our website.
As I mentioned above, lists like these are going to be subject to scrutiny. Without devoting a few paragraphs to each topic, this list could spawn a lot of questions. Fortunately, the Prepper Journal has articles on just about every one of these subjects so the information is here. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments below.
In preparation for National Geographic's American Blackout ; I wanted to create my own power outage checklist for preppers. The premise of the show from the website is “the story of a
There are numerous concepts used in the Prepping community and the concept of a Get Home Bag is one of the easiest to understand because the rationale is very obvious and could potentially affect most anyone. The practice of assembling and using this tool is another matter. A Get Home Bag (GHB) is just what it sounds like. It is a bag that contains supplies to help you Get Back Home. Pretty simple, right?
The next obvious question is what do you put in the Get Home Bag? This is when the answer becomes more complex. Not because it is hard, because I do not believe constructing a bag with the basic supplies you need is difficult, but we frequently want a list of items we can go purchase because its easier. Actually, it would be better if we could go down to Wal-Mart purchase our get home bag along with the latest DVD and some chips and be done with it. Either give me simple instructions or make it easy for me to acquire it and I’m there.
The Get Home Bag is often grouped in with its larger sibling, the Bug-Out-Bag or bugout bag, but the two are vastly different tools and should have two distinctly different uses. While the bugout (BOB) usually contains the same items from situation to situation, this doesn’t necessarily make sense in a get home bag. Let me explain why.
The scenario for a bugout bag is that you are forced to evacuate your homeand you are heading somewhere else for an extended period of time. You may or may not be coming back. Your bug out bag carries the basic necessities for living away from your home for an extended time. The bug out bag is usually pretty closely aligned to your Survival Kit List and the bags are larger because you have more stuff that needs to go in there. Most people would share the same necessities (food, clothing, shelter, security) so the general contents of the bag would be similar regardless of location. You would need some type of shelter, but the type of protection from the elements you need may be different for someone living in Alaska as opposed to Mississippi.
The Get Home Bag is not something you should be packing to live off of. This bag’s contents depend largely on how long it will take you to get back to your family and the obstacles you envision facing on your journey. If you are traveling away from home, your GHB should take a completely separate state of scenarios into consideration and it should be packed accordingly. If you are right down the street at a party, would you need the same equipment?
How far will you have to travel?
According to data I was able to get from the US Census Bureau website, the average commute time in the US was about 25 minutes. I know this is an average and some of you out there drive an hour each way. Uphill. In a car made of cardboard… Actually, I used to do that myself for a month. There will always be situations that are on the outside edges and I can’t take all of them into consideration so we will just take the average as our baseline and work out from there. So taking that amount of 25 minutes into consideration we can assume if you jump into your car and start driving at 60 miles an hour right away the average distance would be 25 miles. I know this isn’t the case, so I am knocking this in half for traffic, public transportation, etc. 12 miles away from home for the average person.
OK, now that we have our base distance of approximately 12 miles and knowing that all things being equal, the average person (I am going to use that term a lot) can comfortably walk a mile in 20 minutes. 12 miles X 20 minutes is about 4 hours. If you are being chased by Zombies, that amount of time goes down and you could make it home much quicker, but the average person should only need about 4 hours to get back home. But wait you say, this is a grid-down type of scenario and you don’t know what could be involved with actually trying to get back home. What if I am not at work and I am visiting relatives? That’s correct so we will take another set of assumptions.
What could cause me to need my Get Home Bag?
For the purposes of this article, some emergency has happened, your normal method of transportation is not available and the location you are in (maybe it is a visit to friends) isn’t going to work so you must get back home. We’ll take that one step further and say in order to realistically need your GHB, NO method of transportation is available and you are using your LPC’s to transport you back to home. For those of you who don’t know, LPC stands for Leather Personnel Carriers – shoes. If we had a situation like 9/11 where a catastrophe happened, no public transportation was available but the basic infrastructure was in place, walking is perfectly reasonable. Again, this is your average person, not someone who is in a wheelchair or injured. If this is the case, what needs to be in your GHB? That depends on what you think you will need for your 4 hour (or so) walk home. Do you need a complete first aid kit, cutting torch, welding gloves and hazmat suit? Probably not.
Let me pause right here and say that I am not poopooing the idea of a Get Home Bag. I have one and it is with me daily in my car. I am just trying to put things into perspective. If you work 3 hours away or are on vacation, your bag’s contents need to be adjusted.
OK, back to the scenario where a disaster has happened, no public transportation is available and you are forced to walk back home. There are a ton of factors that could influence what you carry.
Is it Summer or Winter?
Is there snow and ice on the ground?
Do you work in a high-rise office and wear high-heels to work?
Are you a lifeguard and only wear a bathing suit?
Is it evening time when you are forced to get back home?
Are you likely to be in a situation where you are trapped inside a building and need to escape?
Could you possibly be trapped underground in a tunnel?
All of these factors start to influence what we pack but they should individually be evaluated against the percentage of likelihood that you would encounter a situation like this. Could you possibly be in a car that is plunged into an icy river and you would need oxygen tanks to survive until you can swim up to the surface? Sure, but is that very likely? Nope.
OK, I think I have circled the wagons long enough here and if you have been like me and scrolled all of the way to the bottom until you see a list of bullets, here you go. I keep all of my stuff for my get home bag in a Maxpedition Jumbo Versipack because it has more than enough room for what I need to carry.
Walking shoes – these may already be on your feet.
ball cap or boonie hat to keep the elements off your head
Jacket – to knock the chill or rain off depending on season
Gloves – work type gloves would be better in this scenario
Knife (but this should already be in your EDC)
Multi-tool (again, you should already have this on you)
Headlamp with spare batteries
Dust mask or handkerchief
Water – amount depends on your situation
Basic blood stopper bandage
Spare ammo (you are carrying right?)
meal replacement bar X 2
energy booster – 5 hour energy
Lighter
Pen/paper
25 feet of paracord
10 feet of duct tape (I prefer Gorilla tape)
Your mileage may vary.
Do you need this many medical supplies to just make it home? Probably not. This is a good emergency medical kit for your family though.
Is this going to be enough for you to chisel your way out of a collapsed parking garage, fight the mutant hordes, set up a shelter to weather the meteor storm and feed a group of individuals you have met up with after the disaster for a week? No, but this will get the average person home in a day or two without dying in most situations.
Can you add more water and food? Of course and if you live in hotter climates or have further to go, you should absolutely do that. For me in my every day use though I don’t believe this is necessary. I have reviewed other Prepper’s bags and they account for a lot of situations mine doesn’t. For example, I have seen some that suggest rope (to rappel out of your office window) and bolt cutters and topographical maps and compasses and pry bars and lock pick sets. My belief is that if you can’t figure out how to make it back home without a map, you are very likely to not know how to use a map in the first place. Perhaps you want to take this so someone else can tell you how to get home?
What about a more substantial first aid kit? That’s a great question, but what are you planning for? Most every first aid kit I have seen comes with 250 Band-Aids and a lot of aspirin tablets for the most part. If the world around you has collapsed so completely that you are forced to walk home 12 miles are you really going to stop and put a band aid on a boo boo? No, but you may be injured more seriously so I recommend a basic bandage to stop larger blood loss and patch a bigger cut.
What if you are vacationing and are several hundred miles away from home? That would require you to change the contents of your get home bag. For instance my normal EDC firearm is replaced with a full size Glock and two spare magazines. My water is increased and so are my food preparations. I also have clothing appropriate for walking in whatever weather is forecast. If I am traveling with others, the get home bag starts to look more like a bug out bag but that’s fine.
What about the roving hordes of mutant zombie bikers? Again, if the world has gone to crap like that, carrying more stuff isn’t necessarily going to help you. Your mileage may vary, but this is the basic list of items that can keep you from starving, dehydrating and safe for a day. You may be tired and hungry, but you aren’t going to die.
I am curious to hear what others have packed in their get home bags.
Other self-sufficiency and preparedness solutions recommended for you:
There are numerous concepts used in the Prepping community and the concept of a Get Home Bag is one of the easiest to understand because the rationale is very obvious
A Bug Out Bag is something that most of us are familiar with even if most of us do not have one loaded by the door or in the trunk of your car, ready to go at all times. For the uninitiated, the Bug Out Bag’s purpose is to give you everything you should need to live for 72 hours if you are forced to evacuate your location suddenly. A bug out bag should be pre-packed with all of your supplies so that you can grab it, throw it on your back and walk or run out your car, or head for the hills.
I have written a couple of other posts about Bug Out Bags and one dealt specifically on the subject of the contents of your bug out bag or BOB. My contention is that there are too many people that are throwing everything but the kitchen sink in their packs and I feel that there is something of an insane rush to get everything humanly possible into your BOB without much thought as to the why or the weight.
A bug out bag is not a U-Haul. It is not a Bug Out Suitcase even though I swear some people pack more into a Bug Out Bag than they do for a week down in Cancun. I have another post lined up to rehash this concept under a different theme, but I have heard others talk about packing 50 to 70 pounds in their Bug Out Bag and they plan to walk for hundreds of miles if necessary. 70 pounds???
I won’t get into weight or the absolute foolishness (in my opinion) of packing anything remotely that heavy in this post. I will talk about intelligently packing what you do have because regardless of whether you have an ultra-light pack or some behemoth weighing as much as a 4th grade boy, you need to pack this in a way that will make it as comfortable as possible to carry. We are going to talk about how to pack your bug out bag to take the most advantages of weight distribution and tried and true backpacking tips as possible. Backpackers have been bugging out for a long time and it pays to take a lesson or two from people who have more experience than the average Doomsday Prepper fan when it comes to packing everything they need for 72 hours on their back and living to talk about it.
Packing a backpack and packing a bug out bag are virtually identical. I would argue that you could just as easily bug out with a back pack as you could with any military looking pack from Blackhawk, maybe even easier. There are 4 simple rules to packing any pack you are going to carry on your back.
Heaviest gear goes close to your back
Light gear away from your back
Frequently used items go on top
Less used items go on bottom
The Basics of Pack Loading
Packing a backpack or packing your bug out bag are pretty similar. To be successful, you want to pack the right gear, but you need to pack it the right way too and that means keeping your center of gravity as close to you as possible. The last thing you need is a big pack that keeps you off balance and puts unneeded stress on your back.
Sample Bug Out Bag loading diagram.
Items like water and food usually weigh the most unless you have some really heavy gear in your bug out bag. A lot of people have moved to carrying water bladders like a Camelbak and most new packs have a place right inside the back next to your spine for carrying this. Keep the heavy stuff as close to you as possible and low as opposed to above your shoulders.
The Bottom of the Pack
Using the guidelines above, I pack the items I am going to need to get to least, at the bottom of the pack. My pack has a compartment in the bottom for my sleeping bag so that goes in first. Additionally, having your sleeping bag on the bottom gives you a nice soft cushion when you set your pack down. I have my sleeping bag in a compression sack, but if I have any fear of rain I would add a waterproof bag instead. Running out the door isn’t the time to worry about this, so it may make more sense for you to pack your sleeping bag in a waterproof sack regardless.
Next, I add my tent or hammock gear. I still prefer the tent and it is one of the last items I need so It goes in the bottom of the bag. Depending on the trip I also have a tarp that is attached at the bottom.
The Core of the Pack
Once I have my sleeping bag and tent in the bug out bag, I pack most of my spare clothes, then food and cooking gear. I say most of my clothes because depending on the weather I will carry a fleece or windbreaker too and I want this where I can get to it easily. My main food isn’t going to be eaten until I am at camp or stopped most likely.
I also carry a JetBoil that takes up about as much room as my food and I have my fuel in that same container. My jetboil can boil water for drinking, cook food or quickly heat my water for coffee in the mornings.
The Top of the pack
The top of your bug out bag or the pockets on the outside depending on what you are using should have the gear or equipment you are going to need the most. My pack has a compartment that is waterproof and that is where the lighters and fire kit go along with my headlamp and snacks. This way if I get hungry, I don’t have to dig in my bug out bag, just unzip the top compartment. On the backside of my pack, I have a zippered pocket for tp and spare cordage. I will also carry maps and maybe a camera.
What’s on the sides?
The sides usually hold the water filter, maybe some additional items depending on what I am carrying like spare water bladders. I carry two spares so that when I get to camp I can pump plenty of water for washing up, cooking and even breakfast in the morning. When they are empty they weigh nothing. My pack also has side pockets for my water bottles too and those work nicely because I can easily reach water while I am walking. One of these days I am going to pull the trigger and get a Camelbak so that I don’t have to carry it, but I still think the good old bottle is easier in some aspects.
That’s how I do it. How do you pack your bug out bag?
As Preppers we take steps to plan for disasters that could force us out of the comfort and safety of our homes. These threats could range from regional weather incidents like Tornadoes, Earthquakes or Hurricanes to longer term disasters that might not be caused by Mother Nature. Even these relatively common regional weather events can cause massive damage in some places, but shelter and safety is usually within a short drive or walk from your home. To reach safety, it may be necessary to throw your Bug Out Bag into the car or on your back and get the hell out of dodge as quickly as possible before the roads are clogged or leaving is no longer possible. The hope is that you will be able to come back home as soon as the disaster has passed and conditions are safe for your return.
The perfect bug out bag will give you basic supplies, food and shelter to live for at least 72 hours, hopefully longer without being so heavy that it will kill you. A bug out bag is designed to give you what you need to survive without the benefit of your home and all its supplies but it is only a short-term solution because it will be impossible to carry every single thing you would ever need for any potential scenario. What if the disaster is longer than 72 hours? What if you aren’t able to come back home ever again for some reason? What if the grid goes down and you can’t get to your money any more due to bank holidays, power outages or some currency crisis?
How can you protect your money?
There are a lot of things that we put in our bug out bag but a supply of money is one of those at the very top of the list when we start to consider what we might need in order to survive. I am not talking about lost in the woods survival here but surviving in a society that still operates in cash. Until we have some TEOTWAWKI event, money still has purchasing power so having some extra cash on hand is wise. You might not be able to access the money you have in the bank anymore like the people in Cyprus, so I recommend keeping a relatively large amount of cash hidden somewhere that nobody can find it outside of your bank. Having all of your money in the bank makes this a single point of failure so having a decent amount of cash on hand, as long as you take precautions could save your rear if the banks decide they can’t or don’t have to give it back. How much should you keep out of the bank? That’s up to you but I try to keep as much as possible outside those doors that can lock me out.
Zimbabwe Dollars ranging from 10 to 100 billion printed within a one year period. The magnitude of the currency scalars signifies the extent of the hyperinflation.
Maybe your money will still be accessible, but with inflation it simply won’t buy you anything at some point in the future. This isn’t without precedent as it has happened in the Weimar Republic after WWI and also in Zimbabwe. As a hedge against actions beyond our control; some people are storing precious metals for long-term protection against inflation. Holding physical gold and silver could be crucial to your family’s survival if the currency collapses so many preppers are acquiring silver and gold coins should the Dollar fail someday or the banks prevent you from accessing the money in your accounts.
While those beautiful shiny coins could save your life financially speaking if the fiat money you have ends up being worthless, they also have their disadvantages. When it comes to bugging out, you have to consider the weight. If you have been quietly purchasing precious metals for years in anticipation of an economic collapse, have you given thoughts to how you will take all of that with you?
There are a lot of options when it comes to precious metals. Some people like James Wesley Rawles advocate using pre-1965 US coins because of their silver content. Smaller denominations, in easy to understand measurements would be easier to barter with other individuals he reasons and I agree with that theory. Instead of spending my weekends sorting rolls of quarters from the bank though; I have settled on 1 ounce Silver coins as my precious metal of choice. I chose silver coins because they were more affordable than gold and I could see paying someone with a silver coin being much easier than chiseling off a piece of my gold coin. Gold coins because of their worth are easier to carry, but harder to make change for. I could carry one gold coin or 70 silver coins. When you are bugging out that weight will start to add up.
Let’s say it was the end of the world and you had to bug out with only the items in your bug out bag, your trusty AR15 or preferred end of the world firearm and all of the money you have. If you had one gold coin you could easily carry that around practically anywhere, but the problem comes in when you wanted to purchase something with it. You couldn’t go to a restaurant and pay for a meal with a fraction of your gold coin. You would want some smaller bills (coins) so to speak.
So, instead of gold you chose silver and now all of your silver is loaded in your bug out bag. Just 200 silver coins will weigh over 14 pounds. What if you had more silver? What if you had cashed in your 401K and have 1000 silver coins? That would be over 60 pounds and I don’t care who you are, adding that much weight to your bug out bag will hurt you sooner or later. Not to mention, if you lose your bag or someone steals it, all of your money is gone.
A bug out plan with Precious Metals
So what is a good prepper supposed to do? I still recommend having some precious metals because I don’t have faith the long term health of our monetary system. Does that mean I am right? You have to investigate that for yourself and make up your own mind. If you do plan to purchase some precious metals how can you plan to bug out on foot with all that coin?
You can’t.
What? Is that your great advice? Well, not exactly but you have to plan on this happening. I have some silver and this works for my me and my family, but I would not load it all into my Bug Out Bag. I also might not load it all in my vehicle if I was bugging out either. So what would I do?
I would bury it. Yes, I would bury my precious metals in containers I could dig up later. This poses a couple of problems too though. What if I can’t make it back to my buried treasure? What if I couldn’t find it after it was buried? These are the realities of storing all of your money outside of a central location but they can easily be mitigated. If I had a bug out location, I would bury some, probably most of my silver there. I probably wouldn’t bury much more than a handful of coins if any along the route. I would also bury a lot at my current location. If I was planning to bug out and had time I would dig it up and take it with me, but if the plan was to bug out on foot, I would only take a small amount with me in my BOB and leave the rest buried.
How much would I take? For a bug out scenario I would probably take 20 silver coins and several hundred dollars. All of this money would be divided into different hiding places and probably with different people. This way if one person gets robbed or lost you don’t lose all your money.
You may be asking what the point of buying silver is if it is going to be so hard to carry. You may be saying the same thing about bugging out. This article may be bringing up more problems than solutions but these are things to consider if you plan on bugging out. Having to bury your money in the ground isn’t ideal but neither is losing all of your money when the banks need a bail-in. Having to bug out isn’t ideal either and it helps to plan for how you are going to take your money with you or keep it safe until you can get back.
As Preppers we take steps to plan for disasters that could force us out of the comfort and safety of our homes. These threats could range from regional weather incidents
When we jump on preparedness sites, sometimes we’re immediately struck by the enormous loads of things to buy, do, and learn. We immediately start hearing about WROL, battle rifles, ammo counts in the thousands, pressure canners, INCH/BOB bags and locations, pace count, and primitive skills. World- and nation-altering events such as nuclear war, internet-ending viruses, Nibiru, Agenda 21 and NWO, and the like pop up. They all have their places, but sometimes things get missed and it can make for a very overwhelming introduction. It can make it hard to prioritize where to spend our time and financial budgets even for those with experience and years of exposure to the prepared mindset.
To make it a little easier to prioritize, we can work in stages. We can look at what is most likely to occur in the near future and our lifetimes, and use that information to help us decide where to focus our time, efforts and resources.
Zone-Ring Systems
In permaculture, planning is based on zones. The basic premise is that you start at 0 or 1 with the self or home, and move outward through 2-4 and eventually into Zone 5. The inner rings have the most immediate contact with the resident, while the outer rings are visited less frequently. Other systems also use similar ring concepts of involvement, frequency and impact.
The same can be applied to preparedness, just like we modified a Health Wheel to fit our particular interests and needs. In this case, instead of looking at the frequency with which we’ll make contact with an area, we’ll be looking at the frequency with which things occur and impact our worlds.
Like permaculture, I’ve gone with five general categories. In this case, they are: Daily, Seasonal/Annual, 5-10 Year, Generational, & Lifetime/Eventually/Maybe. There are some examples for the average Western World resident. Later in the article there’s a few tips for planning for and around those most and least-prevalent scenarios.
Zone 1/First Ring – Daily Occurrences
A layoff can be just as devastating as a zombie invasion if you aren’t prepared.
Daily emergencies are those that strike somebody somewhere every single day in our English-reading modern life. While some affect larger groups, these tend to be personal or family related items. They’re the kinds of things the neighbors might not even notice. Some examples are:
Personal physical altercation (mugging, home invasion, the drunk at a bar, date rape)
Missing person(s), family death
When considering the financial aspects of preparedness, also consider the things that might not affect jobs, but do affect our income and-or our ability to offset daily costs. For instance, an injury that prevents gardening and picking up overtime or a second job as a stocker, pipe-fitter, or forklift driver, or a developing disability that renders an arm/hand weak or unusable and prevents needlepoint, canine grooming, or weaving.
Zone 2/Second Ring – Seasonal/Annual Occurrences
These are the things we can consult our Almanacs and insurance companies to consider. They regularly tend to affect a larger number of people. It might be a block or a street in some cases, parts of a town or county, or might impact a whole state if not a region. They’d be things like…
Let’s hope that last stays firmly in the “annual” category or shifts back to the third prevalence ring for most of us. Let’s also acknowledge that in some places and nations, it’s already more common to be caught in crossfire of some sort than it is to live peaceful lives, and for some of them, it’s as or almost as common as paying monthly bills or going out to eat.
Zone 3/Third Ring – 5-10 Year Occurrences
These are the things that happen regularly, but infrequently. Some occur on cycles. Some, as with the natural disasters above, are a nearly predictable cycle. Some aren’t really predictable, per se, but as with tornadoes in one of the nations’ tornado alley or hurricane-prone areas, you learn to expect them. We can expect them to affect a larger area or more people in many cases.
Natural Disasters from above
Mudslides
Major industrial or business closures/layoffs
Drought (personal & widespread impacts)
Widespread livestock illnesses (such as the avian diseases that pop up regularly)
The span covered by the term “generation” tends to change if you use the strictest definitions. Most account for a generation to cover about 20-30 years. Some examples of things that very much tend to be generational include:
Major wars (mental & physical disabilities, income effects good & bad)
Recessions, depressions
Fuel cost cycles (more extreme)
Serious multi-year “weird” weather (droughts, floods, late or early springs)
Zone 5/Fifth Ring – Lifetime/Eventual/Possible Occurrences
A lot of these are going to affect not just a region, not just one nation, but many. In some nations and regions, they may fall under the fourth ring of prevalence instead of the fifth. Some of these are also the big-fear “gotcha’s” or clickbait types that seem to draw folks in. Some are truly believed in, and I try not to judge people on what they believe. Poles have shifted in the past, Yellowstone has erupted, we’ve had serious solar effects on power, and asteroids have struck our earth. Will they happen again in our lifetime or eventually? Some almost certainly. Some are a firm “maybe”. Some are … possible.
Major global climate change (for the hotter or colder)
EMP, devastating solar activity
Nation-crippling electronic-based virus(es)
Alternative Scale Systems
Like permacuture’s zoning, the business world can also give us some scale systems to apply. High-probability, high-reward, urgent-response items are given priority, while lower-chance and less-likely risks are tended to later. We can create the same for our preparedness.
Another way to look at the five rings would be to apply a timespan for event duration. Perhaps 3-7 days, then 3-6 weeks, 3 months, 6-12 months, and 18-months+.
Like using prevalence, using time spans creates a measurable scale that works off a “most likely” basis. Most of us, at some point inside 1-5 years, will have some sort of financial upheaval or power outage that makes the supplies in the first few rings useful.
Ensuring we have everything we need to cook, clean, stay warm (or cool), and pay bills for those periods will keep us more balanced in our preparedness, and make us better prepared for the things that are MOST likely to occur in our near future and our lifetimes.
Applying Prevalence Rings
It’s inarguable that if you’re ready for the New World Order to freeze the planet and then send out FLIR drones to drop nuclear bombs in the midst of a planned or unplanned foreign-nation bank account hack while satellites are inaccessible due to solar storms’ interference, you’re pretty much good.
That’s not a particularly practical place to start and it might not be the best plan for resource allocation unless everything else really is covered.
There are a world’s worth of things that occur on a small-scale, inside homes and towns, that happen a lot more frequently than the dinosaurs and mega-mammals die out.
I see an awful lot of people hyped on one thing that can go wrong and might one day go wrong, but they exclude all kinds of things that do actually happen.
They forget that we sometimes have disasters that mean daily life is taking place all around us, or in the rest of the county, state, nation and world. They neglect fire extinguishers and smoke detectors for the sexy-cool aspects of preparedness like the rifles and Rambo knives.
Fact is, most of us will experience something from the first tier or two in our lives at least once, and for some of us, they’re regular parts of life.
In many cases of upheaval and crisis, we’re still going to want electricity, most likely.
We will still have a job or need to find a new one, will still be expected to present ourselves showered and with money to receive services, will still have doctor’s appointments, hunting and squatting in county-state-national parks will still be frowned on, and combat gear in the streets will still be the exception rather than the rule.
In some cases, the duration of our life-altering events might only be a few hours or days. However, in many parts of the world, those hours or days can be seriously inconvenient if not downright deadly. The ability to keep a CPAP machine running, repair a down or wrecked vehicle, and continue on with life after a squirrel invasion or a tree comes down is just as important as defending the home from looters and making beeswax candles.
Being able to repel the zombie horde does me little good if my vehicle is in poor repair on a daily basis and leaves me stranded on my way to work. 5K-10K rounds of ammo times my 7 platforms sounds nice, unless I don’t keep oil, coolant, jumper cables and fix-a-flat or a mini air compressor in my vehicle so I can limp my way home to them safely – on a daily basis.
Prioritizing instead of jumping willy-nilly – and tracking instead of continuing to add to whatever my favorite prep stash is – can help prevent daily disasters from truly causing upheaval.
Overlap Between Rings
The nice thing about seriously assessing what is likely to go wrong based on prevalence in the past is that we can sometimes make just little twitches.
A bug-out bag serves as a shelter-in-place kit as well as a “standard” wildfire or hurricane evac kit. Having a month or two of food (or far more) means we can also weather a big bill because we can skip buying groceries.
Image: How’s your insurance coverage?
Preparing by Prevalence
Resources like the Ready.gov site and our insurance carriers can help us determine what goes wrong in our area. We might be well served making maps using the information they give us about regular, fifty-year and hundred-year floods, wind storms, and snow/hurricane routes to apply to our walk-out and drive-out plans.
We can also use their information – like, what is the number-one thing that causes job-loss or vehicle and home damage in our area – to make sure we’re buffered against it.
Practical Preparedness – Planning by Prevalence
When we jump on preparedness sites, sometimes we’re immediately struck by the enormous loads of things to buy, do, and learn. We immediately start hearing
Today we are going to discuss creating a self-replicating food supply for your backyard flock. Yes, we are talking about becoming worm farmers – mealworms, to be exact (not to be confused with our previous discussion about setting up vermiculture composting systems with red worms).
Mealworms are the larval stage of the darkling beetle, and they make a great treat and food source for your backyard poultry. With very little time and cost, you can have a simple setup in place that allows you to raise a batch of mealworms that will continuously reproduce and give you an excess supply to harvest and feed to your poultry.
And if you have kids, grandkids, or are a mentor to neighborhood youth, a mealworm farm can make a great weekend science experiment that can be monitored throughout the year and bring insights to the marvels of the natural world. Who doesn’t like hearing a 3-year-old say “pupa”?
The Life Cycle
When initially setting up your first mealworm farm, you will need to get some live worms. There are many sources – everything from a pet store, online ordering, and even a farmer’s stack of grain might have some to be had. We took the easy route and ordered 5,000 online. You can find just about anything on e-Bay.
As shown below, the basic life cycle of mealworms goes from Egg, to Larva (mealworms), to Pupa, to Beetle.
Timeline
Mealworms go through a complete metamorphosis during their life cycle. The female adult darkling beetle (Tenebrio molitor) lays eggs (they will lay 100 – 500 during their short life) which can take anywhere from 4 to 19 days to hatch, based on temperature and humidity conditions. The egg develops into a tiny mealworm that then eats, grows, and sheds it skin multiple times (9-20 times) before becoming a pupa. The pupa then develops into a darkling beetle (up to 20 days). Cycle complete.
Farm Setup
The setup for the mealworm farm is very basic. All you need is a plastic storage tub or other container (some even use old aquariums) that can house a large number of mealworms and give them space to grow and multiply over time. They sit in a layer of bedding and consume the scrap food that you provide on occasion. Ventilation and humidity levels need to be monitored to make sure optimum growth conditions occur, but from our experience so far, they are pretty low maintenance and only take a few minutes every couple of days to check on.
Materials Needed:
Large shallow plastic container or aquarium with lid that allows for ventilation
Screening material for the lid (for ventilation)
2-3″ of bedding (mixture of wheat bran, oats, chicken crumbles)
When setting up your system for the first time, it is highly recommended that the bedding be sterilized to kill any pests that could be living in the grain. The problem people most often run into are grain mites. Grain mites are tiny and they bite. You do not want grain mites! For our bedding, we used a mixture of ground-up chicken feed and oats, which we ground up in an old coffee grinder. Many people use wheat bran. To sterilize, spread out the bedding material on a cookie sheet and placed it in a warm oven (at 130 -150ºF) for 20 minutes. Once sterilized, place your bedding material into your plastic tub or aquarium. Add mealworms and some food scraps. We’ve used carrots, potatoes, celery, squash, and watermelon rinds. The food scraps are not only a source of food for the mealworms, they also provide necessary humidity. Some humidity is important, but you don’t want your food scraps to get moldy, so check on your bin every few days and replace the scraps.
As the population grows in your mealworm farm, they will eat up some of their bedding as well. Every few months we add a few more inches of fresh, sterilized bedding. The ideal temperature for mealworm growth and production is 80ºF. During the warm summer months, we keep ours in our garage. During the cooler months, we keep it in the house, in our laundry room.
Harvesting and Generational Continuation
We let our initial mealworm farm grow for about 2 or 3 months before we started harvesting mealworms.
There are 2 methods of harvesting that we employ to not only gather worms for feeding to the chickens but also ensure we have a continuous supply of mealworms for next generations.
Manual Harvesting
Harvesting by hand might be slow and tedious, but it does allow us to pick the choicest treats and ensure we get the maximum potential out of each worm. We have also grabbed “bulk” handfuls at times when the bin is teeming with worms. We try our best to get only mealworms and leave the pupa and beetles to reproduce. Sometimes we end up grabbing some bedding and other stages of the life cycle, but we don’t worry too much about it, since it is all edible for the chickens.
Food Slice Transport
The other method we use is to place a food chunk (apple/carrot/squash) into the bin for a few minutes and let the mealworms start to feast. Then we pick up the whole chunk and move it to a new bin for the next growth cycle/farm. Keep in mind that adult beetles also like this food and sometimes will have to be picked off.
The mealworm farm is more productive during the warmer summer months. Excess summer harvests can be stored in the freezer to provide for feed during the cooler months when the production slows down.
An important word of caution: We have read about some individuals developing respiratory allergies to mealworms after prolonged exposure. The best way to avoid this is to minimize your exposure and/or wear a mask if you will be tending to your mealworm bin for any length of time. Also make sure to wash your hands after working with your farm.
Today we are going to discuss creating a self-replicating food supply for your backyard flock. Yes, we are talking about becoming worm farmers – mealworms, to be exact (not to
The remembering of the events on 9/11/2001 that killed thousands is just barely in our rear-view mirror. This day fortunately passed without any incident. That day in our past saw so much death, chaos and confusion many of us haven’t experienced in our lifetimes and hopefully never will again. It was a historical day for all manner of reasons beyond the tragedy of lives lost through terrorism or sacrifice. It gave us a glimpse into the very definition of pandemonium live on TV – played out in real-time before our unbelieving eyes. As a nation, we watched in horror as first explosions rocked the towers, then the catastrophic collapse of two giant skyscrapers enveloped a city in toxic dust and sent untold thousands running for their lives.
A terrorist attack on a large city is still statistically one of the least likely events you would ever be affected by, but since that day people have come to understand some of the risks of being caught in an urban disaster differently. There are different realities in an urban environment that might require an alternate set of plans for your life. If you started to plan for an urban survival kit, what items should you consider?
Urban survival kit list
An urban survival kit is one you could carry with you and possibly stash at your work location assuming you have a safe place to go to outside the city. If you live full-time in the city, your needs for a kit might be similar but if you plan on walking out and not coming back, a Bug Out Bag might be more appropriate.
I work in a small city in a building in our downtown area and if an event like 9/11 happened in my city, I would want to have some items on hand that might allow me to escape with my health intact or possibly to render aid to someone. The items in the urban survival kit below are just ideas. Your reality might require additional survival items altogether.
I am going to discuss items that could assist you if an event like 9/11 happened in a city you were in. A disaster has impacted the city and you work in an office building downtown. Communications are down, services are down and your goal is to make it out of your building, out of the city and back home as quickly as possible.
The basics
Water – Naturally you will need water so a liter or so, maybe a couple of plastic bottles of water would meet your needs until you either get home or to a location with a source of water you could filter and resupply. Even in 9/11 the world didn’t stop. Stores were still open and you could still make purchases but this initial supply will allow you to get as far away from the crisis as possible before you have to stop and think about additional supplies.
Plastic water bottles can be reused and are lighter than other options, but a stainless steel Nalgene bottle can also be used over a fire to boil water if you really are in dire straits.
Pack down to storage pocket-size. Ultra lite-weight Waterproof and breathable. Beats carrying an umbrella.
Food – This should be something that requires zero preparation. Something like high calorie energy bars would be best. You don’t want to have to worry about boiling water (or carrying cookware) to re-hydrate your Mountain House Chili Mac, you want to get home. Energy bars take up relatively little space, you can eat them while you are walking and they will tie you over until you get to a safer location. A good option would be Bear Valley Pemmican Bars. They have 390 calories each and no chocolate to melt all over the place. Have enough for the amount of time you think it would take you to walk home and double that. You could face detours or be slowed by injury.
Shelter – You could be forced to spend the night outdoors, or trapped in a subway station or airport. For urban survival you wouldn’t need to worry about packing a tent. There should be millions of places to find a shelter you can get under. You do need to worry about warmth though. In the cooler months plan for a set of base layers, a fleece and a water proof shell. These don’t have to be expensive and the high-dollar hiking shells aren’t worth their price in my opinion. You can get a waterproof jacket from Frogg Toggs for less than $20 that is incredibly light so it takes up no space in your urban survival kit and it can keep you dry. It also doubles as a windbreaker so in combination with your base layers and fleece you should be warm for a walk out of the city.
A urban survival kit can give you the survival items you need to make it out of the city fast.
Summer conditions require a different shelter and that is usually from the heat. A good lightweight hat that keeps the sun off your head will work. I would also pack a lightweight long sleeve shirt. This may be the last thing you want to wear if it is hot, but if you are a woman who is in a sleeveless dress in the middle of summer a shirt will keep the sun off you and offer a little more protection.
Simply touching an attacker will deliver a high voltage shock causing loss of balance and muscle control, confusion, and disorientation bringing him to his knees and making him incapable of further aggressive activity
Shoes are a big deal for me probably because for some reason I have been blessed with the tenderest feet in the world. If I had to walk very far barefoot I would be hurting. I know some people who can walk barefoot over gravel. Not me so good footwear is a priority for me for that reason. In addition, you may be at work with dress shoes and they aren’t suited for long walks. Have a good pair of shoes that will first allow you to walk for days possibly and protect your feet. You could have to walk cross-country. The weather may be inclement so have shoes that will get you home no matter what. I wear either leather boots with good soles or hiking shoes every day. I know some people who wear flip-flops and I would hate to see them try to climb their way out of a collapsed building or pile of rubble with nothing more than those on.
Security – I carry a concealed firearm with me just about all of the time. If something happens I will at least have a 9MM for protection. In a true disaster, desperate people might be out to harm you for any one of a million reasons. Having a means to defend yourself is an important, but often overlooked necessity. If not a firearm, because for some people that isn’t possible, a high power Taser that can shoot out 53,000,000 watts could incapacitate someone quickly. Barring that, Police Strength pepper spray is an alternative. Sabre has a compact size that gives an advertised 35 shots. That could get you through a lot of bad guys. Going down the list a good survival knife is a fall back item which has other uses, but the last thing I want to do is get into a knife fight with anyone.
Health – Running from disaster can lead to injury or you could have been injured in the attack. Simple first aid items can help you stop bleeding or wrap up wounds long enough to receive care when you are in a safe location. Obviously, if you are seriously injured, I don’t expect any of us will be packing a full service medical kit in our urban survival bag.
You can pack a few of the following items that could help in the health department.
N-95 masks – Remember the giant dust clouds when the buildings fell? These could be very useful in a similar situation or offer some protection against other threats.
Nitrile Gloves – This one might not make sense because our goal is to get home as quickly as possible but a few sets of nitrile gloves weigh almost nothing and could be a disposable option for messy situations.
Pain Reliever – A good pain reliever could help with aches from injuries or sore muscles from carrying loads.
Blood Stopper –This is a compound that actually stops bleeding. Used for serious wounds to create a seal. Adventure medical kits created a Trauma Pack bandage with Quick Clot in it so you can wrap the wound, the Celox will stop the bleeding and you can keep on keeping on.
Sunscreen – If you are forced out in the middle of summer and you aren’t prepared to deal with the effects of too much sun, you could end up with severe burns.
In a disaster or crisis you could find yourself running for your life. Will you have the gear you need?
Hygiene – I wouldn’t worry too much about the hygiene department assuming you aren’t dealing with disease or dead bodies here and assuming you can make it to safety. Spare toilet paper might be a good item to pack just remove the cardboard insert out of a half used roll and squish it down. Put this in a freezer bag to keep it dry. Hand sanitizer isn’t something I use, but in a disaster situation where I was worried about disease and I couldn’t wash my hands I would use this before eating.
I wouldn’t bring deodorant or a toothbrush although I know comfort items are really important to some people.
The X Factor
Many of those items above could have a home in either your Get Home Bag or your Bug Out Bag, but what other items could you need in an urban survival situation where your goal is to get home as quickly as possible?
The Stanley FUBAR can get you out of a jam or be used as a weapon in a pinch.
Pry Bar – A simple pry bar can be a lifesaver. You can use it to pry open vending machines to get that lifesaving candy bar fix or do open elevator doors, stuck filing cabinets… A million uses and if you want to go all Braveheart on someone, a prybar like the Stanley FUBAR can be used as a weapon in a pinch.
Bolt Cutters – This may not be a realistic tool for some of you, but a pair of mini-bolt cutters can open doors that were previously closed. Pun intended. If you goal is to get home, maybe these aren’t needed but I can imagine a lot of potential uses depending on how bad the disaster is.
Eye Pro – You want to protect your eyes and a good pair of swimming goggles can keep you safe from the effects of Tear Gas or dust. You can even get them in pretty colors too. If that is too silly for you, there is always the high-speed ESS Military issue protective glasses. These will protect you from debris, but they aren’t sealed around your eyes. You will probably look much cooler though.
Gloves – Gloves should be available to you pretty much in every bag you have. These can be good leather gloves or something like Mechanix Gloves. They will protect your hands from cuts, heat and abuse.
Small Roll of Duct Tape – Do I really have to say why? Don’t pack a whole roll because you don’t need that weight. Just wrap your water bottle or a lighter a few times for back up repair capability.
Headlamp – A good bright headlamp, beats a flashlight every time for hands free sight when it’s dark.
Bandanna/Shemgah – These can be used for bandages, face-masks or protection from the elements.
Loud Whistle – A simple whistle is great for getting the attention of anyone you want to find you, like a rescue team if you are trapped.
Sticky Notes and Permanent Marker – Useful for leaving notes for people letting them know where you are or where you are going.
USB Battery Charger – This adds some weight but if your phones are still working, this will allow you to recharge your phone without the benefit of an electric socket. Even a small 3300mAh USB Battery charger can fully recharge your smart phone.
Maps of your city – Yes maps. What if you can’t take your normal route home? What if you are forced to go around due to a giant fire? Having even a simple map will allow you to chart out an alternate route if you are forced to. Another option mentioned on another post was to take screenshots of your city or route in Google Earth and store them on your phone as a reference.
What bag are you going to carry your Urban Survival Kit in?
So you have all of this gear stocked and ready. It could go in the bottom of your locker at work or in a desk draw, but you need something to carry it all in. There are a million bags out there and you should select a bag for your urban survival kit that not only gives you room for your gear but is comfortable, able to withstand a little abuse and blends in to the rest of the crowd so you aren’t targeted for your belongings.
Here are a few sample bags that should do the job nicely. Make sure the bag you choose fits and is comfortable to you.
5.11 Rush 24
The 5.11 bag is my get home bag that remains in my vehicle. If I can access my truck but am unable to drive to safety, I will use this bag and transfer any gear if needed. These are incredibly tough bags but do look tactical which is certainly by design. I have seen many guys rocking these bags though so I don’t think you would get too many looks if you brought this to work.
Rush 24 by 5.11 Tactical
Black Diamond Bullet 16 Backpack
Versatility in a sleek, trim pack, the Black Diamond Bullet 16 panel-loader is an excellent rig for off-trail or high-mileage scrambles which would serve you equally well in an urban environment.
CamelBak Cloud Walker 18
The Cloud Walker 18 hiking pack sports a clean, technical aesthetic with features designed to keep all your gear organized. The main compartment is accessed via an asymmetrical zipper that enables easy access and prevents cargo from spilling out when fully open. In addition to the 2 liter Antidote Reservoir you get two mesh side pockets for keeping essentials close at hand.
Osprey Axis Daypack
Osprey makes excellent bags and I have this pack’s older brother, the Atmos AG as my bug out bag/hiking bag. Excellent quality.
Tactical Taylor Urban Operator Pack
The Urban Operator has a large main compartment, medium-sized front pocket with an admin organizer. Fits most laptop computers up to 17″, water bottle pocket and contoured padded shoulder straps. 1,836 Ci volume. It’s a little tactical looking but nothing too out of the ordinary nowadays.
So there are my thoughts on some good urban survival kit items. What do you have in your bag? Do you commute to work in a large city? What are your plans if disaster strikes?
The remembering of the events on 9/11/2001 that killed thousands is just barely in our rear-view mirror. This day fortunately passed without any incident. That day in our past saw
A urban survival kit can give you the survival items you need to make it out of the city fast.
In a disaster or crisis you could find yourself running for your life. Will you have the gear you need?
Rush 24 by 5.11 Tactical
So there are my thoughts on some good urban survival kit items. What do you have in your bag? Do you commute to work in a large city? What are your plans if disaster strikes?