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In previous posts I have discussed home security concepts and how you could take steps to make your home more secure. Ideally, these steps would be ones we could all take to strengthen our home’s defenses but the sad truth is that most of us our modern home fabrication caters to aesthetics and not strength. We like light and windows too much and our homes while relatively strong are mostly built on frames that can easily be bashed in without too much effort and a sledge-hammer. Yes, I know they have plywood on the outside, but if I can drive my car through the wall, it isn’t too stout is it?

My wife and I like to play this game where we have won the lottery and we are discussing the first thing we will buy. Usually, at the top of the list is a new home far away in a remote stretch of wilderness. Since this is pure fantasy – mostly because we might buy one lottery ticket a year- the sky is the limit with construction. It is during these conversations that the stark difference between my idea of a dream home and my wife’s come into focus. For example, she wants a lot of big windows to check out our fantastic view of the hundreds of acres we will own. I tell her that we can’t have big windows because we have to think of security. Instead I suggest that if we have the large picture windows, we also install roll down hurricane proof metal shutters that would come down and secure all the windows from any damage. Yes, I know this is like something out of Batman, but Hey! I won the lottery in my mind.

Needless to say these conversations never go anywhere and no we haven’t won the lottery so I have to take all my defensive problems back to my current reality house instead of hiring some miracle contractors with an unlimited budget to solve it for me. But why do I need super Batman strength security in the first place?

What am I worried about?

I do not live in a “bad neighborhood” but you always want a home that you feel safe in regardless of the situation outside. Usually this is from the prospect of someone breaking in and stealing what you have or just plain busting down the door to do you harm. Our homes like I mentioned above are all easily breached with some basic tools, brute force or a little time. Heck, it only takes a rock to bust in a window and people can walk on in. A stiff boot will work on most doors the first try and that is if they are locked in the first place.

I think of regular home security problems when there are police and electricity and food on the grocery store shelves. I also think about home security when none of those things are present. If you have a grid-down collapse scenario your home most likely won’t stand up to a couple of determined people for long if they go unchallenged. It is times like this that unless you have a walled fortress you need to consider adding some resources to your defense plan. You could hire those contractors I mentioned to start retrofitting your castle with those handy hurricane shutters but that is impractical. It is much wiser to revert to the Neighborhood watch on steroids.

What is the neighborhood watch on steroids you ask? You have heard of the neighborhood watch before and some of you may even have this in your neighborhood. I remember that we had a home in our neighborhood that was broken into several years back and all of our neighbors got together at a meeting to discuss forming a neighborhood watch. We had a police officer come in and talk briefly about what we should and should not do and we all received small flimsy signs to put in our yard that said words to the effect of “This neighborhood is protected by neighborhood watch”. I think there was one lady who volunteered to roam the streets but that is about the last I heard of it and once the flimsy sign rusted and faded it found its way into my trash can.

If you have a true collapse and you and your neighbor’s feel that they need to defend their homes it is better to join together and combine forces so that you can protect more homes at once. It is also more likely that several people watching over things will be more of a deterrent than a single older retiree walking her dog at night. This is another situation where it all depends on the disaster that has happened. If you are talking about a late summer storm that drops some trees on power lines and you have the resulting loss of power for a few days, the neighborhood watch on steroids probably doesn’t need to get activated.

If you have something more long-term and serious like a hurricane that robs power for several weeks and damages homes or displaces people that neighborhood watch might be necessary to prevent looting. Thinking more long-term and dire than even a hurricane; if the police are unable to come to your aid, there is widespread looting, theft, panic and chaos – you should already have a plan for keeping your neighborhood safe from intruders. All of your able-bodied neighbors should be on board with joining the neighborhood watch if that happens. The more people you have watching, the safer you will be but the disaster will dictate what is necessary or prudent to expect in the way of escalation of force.

Defending the Neighborhood

Who are the people you could expect to pose threats to your neighbors in a grid down or Without Rule of Law scenario? I think it depends on the length of the crisis almost completely. If the crisis or disaster is relatively short-lived and some semblance of order is returned this problem will go away. The more prolonged or serious the crisis is and the more desperate or bold the people will become.

Looters – This will be the first wave and it is completely normal to see people looting over just about any event these days. There was looting in Ferguson that materialized out of protests, but the looting I am referring to would be more like what we saw after Hurricane Sandy. After the storm had passed, people were found rummaging through homes that had been evacuated due to the alerts. With nobody there to stop them, these opportunists simply had their run of many homes. I even heard some reports that looters would dress up as utility workers so they would look legitimate, but that may have only been rumors. Even if it was, I can see people trying it.

Desperate People/Nomads – After the looters have gone or when the subject of what people are looking for turns to necessities instead of flat screen TV’s I think people displaced from their homes would be the next group. We talk about the Golden horde moving out of the major cities and into surrounding communities and I think this is something we could easily see with the right disaster. Hundreds of thousands of people from New York alone could disgorge from the city if they had some form of terrorist attack or outbreak. When people are forced to flee so fast they can’t take any supplies, they will be left with what is on their backs. Even if you had a great Bug Out Bag, how much food are you taking with you? What will you do when the food is gone but the emergency isn’t over yet? These people will be looking for food and supplies and they may be walking through your neighborhood.

Bands of criminals – I think this is only likely in the most severe form of disaster after we have a long absence of law and order. Groups of thugs will join together for survival and once they do, they will start roaming outward to gain the same thing that others will be looking for;  items they need or want in order to live. If you are still in your home and you haven’t bugged out to your secret walled complex with rolling metal shutters in the middle of the forest, they could find your neighborhood. These people pose the greatest threat in my opinion because they will most likely be armed and will have experience with assaulting homes and people. This will be a larger organized group that has survived long enough to know a thing or two and the will require the most force and tactics to deal with effectively.

I plan to expand this topic to cover tactical ideas, strategies and supply considerations in upcoming posts that will all be linked and I’ll talk about how you to transition from no plan at all to a neighborhood watch on steroids. Have you given any thoughts to your neighborhood security? Do you plan to join your own Neighborhood Watch on Steroids?

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In previous posts I have discussed home security concepts and how you could take steps to make your home more secure. Ideally, these steps would be ones we could all

Have you ever known someone who has a glum outlook on life? Maybe that isn’t the right term, how about fatalistic? I have some people in my life that I call ‘Eeyores’ from Winnie the Pooh. I don’t really call them that but you know what I mean by the term. Eeyore on the surface seems depressed and resigned to whatever fate brings his way. Rather than object to any of his circumstances, Eeyore says “its ok. I’ll learn to live without it” in a very somber tone that sounds as if he is half asleep.

What in the world am I talking about a cartoon character for? There are so many people who have the same attitude when it comes to great tragedies or crisis. If you try to talk to them about Prepping so that they are better able to weather any type of calamity, they will sometimes answer that they would “rather die” than live in a world that you describe. It is amazing to me that so many people would simply die rather than try to live and struggle to survive.

Even animals instinctively want to live and will go on living as best they can until they breathe their last breath. Oh sure, I know someone is going to send me videos of depressed monkeys or something but as a general rule, animals don’t know how to do anything other than try to survive. Why are humans so much more willing to give up when faced with adversity? What is it about crisis or the threat of a bumpy road enough to make some people throw their hands up in the air and simply quit?

What makes someone quit?

I’ll state right now that I am no Psychiatrist, but we have all faced periods in our life when we quit something. It could be as simple as a diet, an exercise program or smoking. It could be we quit running when we hit a wall – the key is that all of us have quit doing something. We are all quitters, well technically speaking. Becoming a Prepper doesn’t mean that you will never quit. It doesn’t mean that you won’t at some point in the future meet an obstacle you can’t overcome or confront a situation that offers you no chance at winning. Being a prepper simply means that you are joining the fight and you are going to give it your best shot.

Extrinsic motivation occurs when we are motivated to perform a behavior or engage in an activity in order to earn a reward or avoid a punishment. The opposite of Extrinsic is Intrinsic Motivation. Intrinsic Motivation involves engaging in a behavior because it is personally rewarding; essentially, performing an activity for its own sake rather than the desire for some external reward. This is where I look at both of those terms and see how prepping falls into both camps.
If my hypothetical TEOTWAWKI event is a global economic collapse that thrusts the entire world into something worse than the great depression, I would have an Extrinsic Motivation to avoid going broke, to find a job, to provide for my family. By the same token, I would feel personally rewarded if I was able to survive during a depression while still taking care of my family. Whether the motivating force is external or internal I still am motivated to some action.

Do the people who sit there, who might even be members of your own family and say they would rather die than go through another depression know something you don’t? Unless they lived through the first great depression I doubt it. Even if they did live through the first one, their age might be a huge factor in whether they had the strength to live through a hypothetical second great depression in the first place. No, what about perfectly healthy people who right now say they would rather die than go through something like that? What makes them tick? Why would anyone quit before they ever started trying?

You have to have hope

I think that there are so many people out there who very simply don’t have hope. For whatever reason – maybe they had a bad childhood, or someone has let them down too many times or maybe everything they have tried hasn’t worked out. Some people just don’t have any hope in themselves. They don’t believe they have whatever it takes to make it through tough times. Either that or they know right now that they hate more than anything pain and discomfort and would rather end it all than go through something horrible.

One of my fears and I am sure it is shared by every parent is that something would happen to one of my children in a SHTF event. I take prepping personally because it is one thing if your child dies tragically in a freak accident; it is another if they die because you didn’t do something right. Prepping for me is a never ending act of trying to take advantage of anything I can so that I am able to provide for my family should a crisis visit our street. I don’t know what will happen, but I know that whatever I can do to protect my family I will. That is my hope that they will all be safe. My hope is that I will have made the right preparations or that I am attuned to what is going on well enough to see danger approaching and take the right steps. My hope is that we are lucky. My intrinsic motivation is that my family, myself included live no matter what we face.

Could we all end up with some crisis that takes lives on a scale so epic it completely eclipses the horror of all the great tragedies in the past combined? Maybe, but that can happen regardless of what I do. My hope is that everything I am prepping for now will make things better regardless. Maybe when it is all said and done I will die during or because of the event I am trying to prep for. That’s OK because we all die eventually but I’m not going without a fight. It isn’t like I want to die; I want to live for a very long time. I would even want to live through some great tragedy even if, God forbid some of my family did not. Like I always say, I never hope to find out.

Preppers are motivated by external events to protect their internal interests. The simple act of prepping means you have hope. When I talk about prepping for some event, those Eeyores will say how I have some pessimistic view of the future. “Why do you always think something bad is going to happen”? I don’t want anything bad to happen, but it does. You can’t stop bad things from happening and the answer isn’t to give up. Prepping is all about believing that you can make it through. Prepping shows that you have hope that the skills and steps you are making now will help you later. Prepping isn’t pessimistic worrying about the future. Prepping is an act of defiance against potential tragedy, it is looking rough days in the face and saying “I’m not afraid of you”.

Will anything bad happen like the global economic depression I mentioned or wars, famine or disease? I don’t know. I honestly hope they do not, but I am going to prep like they are. My family deserves that and they are my motivation and hope.

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Have you ever known someone who has a glum outlook on life? Maybe that isn’t the right term, how about fatalistic? I have some people in my life that I

If you have not seen or heard of MRE’s (Meal Ready to Eat) by now, I have to wonder where you have been. MRE’s are a military staple that has naturally bled over into the preparedness market because of their long storage life and simplicity. For the uninitiated, MRE’s are what our soldiers eat when they are away from base. MRE’s come from a long history of military food options that are meant to fill bellies and provide energy in a near bomb proof package that can be thrown in the back of a connex for 5 years and not go bad. Taste and consistency are usually the casualties in this type of scenario.

MRE’s are utilitarian and I have said it before, if you are expecting gourmet out of something with those requirements you will be in for a big surprise. Other bloggers have complained about how unhealthy the meals are and how the taste leaves something to be desired. While that may be true in a sense, again these weren’t designed to win any foodie contests; their only mission is keeping you alive. These are not fresh ingredients you grew in your garden or purchased at the local Whole Foods, these are survival rations.

When I was in the Army, these were usually given out as lunch. Hot breakfast and dinner were usually offered any time we were away from our regular mess hall so we didn’t technically live on MRE’s but ate more than enough to develop favorites. I had tried them all and some were definitely better than others. I have had my fair share of MRE’s in various locations all over the world. Did they taste better than anything else, no but they were filling.

XMRE Meals

The XMRE 1300XT is designed to provide 1300 calories in one meal. It is the same idea as any other MRE but with a little more calories. Like all MRE’s, the idea that makes these meals such a good choice for the military also makes them worthy of consideration for preppers, so I was happy to give it a try.

I opened the box and saw a lot of new menu choices that I had never tried before:

  • Shredded Beef in barbeque Sauce
  • Chilli and Macaroni
  • Cheese Tortellini
  • Chicken Pesto Pasta
  • Southwest Style Beef in Black Bean Sauce

I don’t think any of these menu items were available when I was in the service, but the idea is the same. In every MRE you get the following:

  • entrée: Variety of beef, chicken or vegetarian entrees.
  • Cracker/Bread: Regular or vegetable crackers, snack bread or flour tortillas.
  • Snacks : Nut raisin mix, dry fruit mix, corn nuggets or others
  • Spreads/Sauce: Peanut butter, Cheese spreads, fruit jellies, fruit jams or others.
  • Dessert :  Puddings, pound cakes, wet packed fruit, dessert cookies, dairy shakes or other portion-controlled packs.
  • Fruit Flavored Beverage: Single or assorted fruit flavored drink mixes or others available.
  • Instant coffee: Single serve instant coffee.
  • Spoon: Single serve instant coffee.
  • Napkin: 11 ¾ x 12 ¾ brown napkin.
  • Beverage Bag: Hot beverage bag included in each meal.
  • Condiment Kit: Includes salt and pepper, non-dairy creamer and sugar.
  • Moist Towelette: Towelette with sanitizing soap solution. Which comes in handy if you are like me and get food all over your fingers.
  • Optional Flameless Heater: One MRE military type flame-less meal/ration heater – for each XMRE complete meal kit.

I decided to go hiking on a local trail with my survival dog and try the XMRE out for lunch. I took the Shredded Beef with barbeque Sauce and for those counting calories, the nutrition information is printed nicely on the back of every bag.

XMRE Nutrition information clearly displayed for those of you in a SHTF situation worried about your figure.

After we walked along for a little bit in the snow I found what I thought was a good place to stop and eat lunch. I poured the contents of the XMRE out and remembered that it is better to do this on level ground. Oh, how the mind forgets when you get older. I took out the Ration heater and got ready to warm my meal up. We didn’t have heaters when I was in the army, we relied on fires or the engine block of our 5-ton trucks to keep food warm. The last ration heater I tried took a couple of minutes to get warm, but not the heater from XRME. It started smoking almost immediately and was definitely doing a good job. My meal was nice and toasty in no time which if you think about a Bug out scenario could be an advantage. No fire would mean you could escape detection more easily.

MRE’s are pre-cooked so all you really need to do is open the bag and start eating.

I tried the cracker and jelly but prefer Peanut butter or cheese on a hard cracker. It just seems to go better, but both were just as good as any MRE cracker I had ever eaten. Mine tend to crumble in my hands and this was no exception. My dog helped me finish off some of that part.

Next I moved on to something I hadn’t tried in an MRE before and that was Roasted Corn Nuggets. This was just like corn nuts and provided a nice crunchy appetizer before the main meal.

Corn Nuggets were a tasty surprise.

After I had finished the cracker and corn nuggets, I was ready for the shredded beef. Opening the bag I saw exactly what I expected to see. It wasn’t pretty (is shredded beef ever?) but it tasted pretty good. My dog kept a very watchful eye to make sure that I didn’t drop any.

Don’t let it out of your sight!

The last item I tried was the cookie. Again, something I never had in the MRE’s of old. We had things like fruit loaf, which wasn’t too bad, but this cookie was pretty big and it tasted good too. Maybe I was hungrier than I thought or my standards were low.

Big cookie for dessert.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised with my XMRE meal. The food all tasted fresh for an MRE if that makes sense. Everything tasted good and even the moist towelette bath I had to take to get all of the barbecue sauce off my face was nice. When I was done I threw all my trash in the handy-dandy bag and we got back on the trail.

What is an MRE good for?

Going back to my earlier remarks about MRE’s. They are not what I would feed my children every day if I had options. These meals are made to stay fresh and stable for years so you have to understand there are some chemicals in here. I choose to look at these for what I believe are their strengths. Exceptionally long storage life – usually about 5 years in the right conditions. They require no cooking. They come with all the utensils you need to eat, wash up and have a cup of coffee afterward. They are dead simple.

I have a few boxes of MRE’s in my home because they augment my food stores. While they don’t form the majority of my food supply, I think they have a place. If disaster happens and I want to eat a quick meal without cooking anything, I have the MRE. If I need to go out away from home for a day or two, MRE. If I want to offer some charity to someone, MRE.

Are MRE’s a good choice for you? Only you can answer that question, but I am pleased with the quality of XMRE and would recommend them to anyone. You can purchase these online at Amazon and for more information you can view their website.

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If you have not seen or heard of MRE’s (Meal Ready to Eat) by now, I have to wonder where you have been. MRE’s are a military staple that has

Pop quiz. If you had to leave your neighborhood and the route you normally take was blocked would you have an alternate way out? What if the alternate was blocked? What if all roads out of your neighborhood were blocked by military check-points? Would you have a backup escape route or would you be trapped staring at the lights ahead wishing you had made it out sooner?

Most days when I am driving home from work my mind is on autopilot. I make the turns I normally make, engage my turn signal at the proper time and generally drive the correct speed without even looking at the gauge on my dash. I do this not because I am a robot, but because I have done this so many times the actions are ingrained into my muscle memory. I am sure it is this way for many of you who drive to work every day.

But have you ever stopped to think of your escape routes during an emergency? What if the normal paths you take aren’t available? What if you aren’t even able to take your vehicle? Does your bug out plan allow you to get creative or are you hoping for the best? For those of us who live in more rural/suburban settings, driving our vehicles everywhere is almost taken for granted. We rarely get out and explore the world outside of these paved streets but knowing what is out there could be the key to your survival if you find yourself depending on alternate route options. Knowing your area by foot could save your life in the right circumstances.

Going off-road

Knowing the roads out of your neighborhood is pretty simple and I would bet that most of us have that down already but could you go off-road if the way was blocked? Could you cut across a field or through the back of a neighbor’s yard to get out to another road? Have you ever considered that at all? In a recent post I mentioned the need for a bug out vehicle that had the capability to go off-road and this is a good example where that could be necessary. Maybe it isn’t the road out of your neighborhood, but it is a major road that you would normally take to get out-of-town and it is blocked. A line of cars stretches before you and you can see a roadblock ahead. What do you do now?

Ideally you would have considered all of this well in advance. I routinely go for walks through my neighborhood. Usually I stick to the roads, but there are also trails near where I live so me and the survival dog will check those out from time to time. I live on the outskirts of a decent sized city right in the middle of too many and too few people. A few miles in either direction puts me solidly into rural farmland or the congestion of downtown.

I know the best option is to move but I am where I am for now so my prepping so far has been looking at ways I can avoid getting stuck in a trap should something block our access out.

A creek might make vehicle traffic impossible but it is an alternate way out on foot.

Identify any natural boundaries that could block you in

The area I live in has mild hills around. There is a pretty good-sized creek on my southern border that I would be able to cross on foot if needed, but I also know areas where the banks are low enough to allow a properly equipped 4 wheeler to cross also. Getting across the creek is one obstacle that could give me an alternate way out if all the other methods were blocked.

In addition to the creek I have property between me and all of the major roads. Some of this property is fenced, but bolt cutters would allow me to cut through any fence if needed. Once on the other side of the fence, I could follow woods through other yards to come out well down the road, potentially avoiding the road block. There are other routes that could take me through public land where radio towers are mounted, possibly down power line right-of-ways to make alternate tracks out of the area.

None of this is rocket surgery it just takes the normal plans we might make when we are preparing our families for some evacuation need and takes them a step further. Each of us can get out of our car and spend a couple of hours every month or so surveying our neighborhood. Maybe you don’t have creeks and woods to worry about; perhaps your neighborhood is alleys and blocks of large buildings. There will still be options if you are looking the right way.

When was the last time you took a closer look at your immediate surroundings? Do you know who has fences in their yard and who doesn’t? Do you know who is rarely home or who leaves their trash cans by the road for a couple of days after pick-up? Do you know the area around your neighborhood from an aerial perspective? Google Earth or even Google maps is a great way to pretend you have your own drone and you are conducting surveillance of your territory. Start in on your property and zoom or pan out to see details you might have missed driving by. This information could give you options when it looks like there are none.

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Pop quiz. If you had to leave your neighborhood and the route you normally take was blocked would you have an alternate way out? What if the alternate was blocked?

 

Communication is imperative in survival situations. This article attempts to cover some of the basic pros and cons of various forms of communication and introduce the reader to some additions that should prove helpful in crisis and bug-out situations.

TWO WAY RADIOS: can come in handy when a group is out of direct visual range, they are simple to use and relatively lightweight. However, they can also give away your position. Not only are they noisy but the messages can be intercepted, and interference created.

Uniden Submersible 50 Mile FRS/GMRS Two-Way Radios with Charging Kit – Dark Grey

CB RADIOS: are a favorite for long distance truck drivers and can be used over short distances to converse when two way walkie talkies may not be an option. They can be mobile (in a vehicle) or stationary. Anyone on the same channel can hear the discussion, so definitely keep that in mind. Use coded messages, preferably phrases that sound like normal conversation, to ascertain if any allies are in your vicinity.

Uniden 40-Channel CB Radio

HAM RADIOS: are not as common as two way radios and CBs. They are more complicated to use, and in many areas you need special licenses to operate one with any significant level of power. They provide some added security because they are less likely to be used by amateurs. They are also a good way to transmit Morse Code. In a SHTF situation, where current regulations are no longer regarded, these will allow you to contact others across much greater distances.

Baofeng UV5RA Ham Two Way Radio

HAND SIGNALS: have long been used by military forces to quietly communicate in tactical situations. This is both a benefit and a drawback. They only work if you are in formation and everyone has a clear line of sight. Many people already know some of the gestures, and for those that don’t, there are countless YouTube videos that demonstrate them and their meaning. Therefore, if you are inadvertently seen, you are also relaying your exact moves to the onlooker, potentially compromising the location of the rest of your team. A way out of this problem might be to create some variations that only your group is aware of. A particular motion that alerts your team that you have been seen, followed by whatever signal you want the opposition to think you are going to do next. This may work if you already have an agreed upon protocol for the scenario. Another option might be to completely switch them around, and create some of your own. Additionally, if you have a group of ten people, and only fully trust five, these unknown signs can be used to indicate when it is time to desert the others.

MORSE CODE: is one of the best forms of communication. Although the code itself is universal, the language you use is not. If anyone intercepts a message of “frog legs” they probably won’t know that the meaning might be to stay away from the pond, it has been compromised. The messages can be transmitted over airways, by light signals, or even in writing, or in the arrangements of rocks and sticks along a path. The real disadvantage of Morse is the level of difficulty. Learning the code is not for the faint of heart, or the memory impaired. I recommend creating short acronyms and memorizing them. BLB=bug out location B. NGC= no go, the area has been compromised etc.

SMOKE SIGNALS: can be a good way to advertise your location, if that is what you want to do. The color of the smoke, and the frequency and pattern of puffs can also be used to relay messages, but again, this only works if you don’t mind letting everyone know where you are.

COLORS: such as flags, can be used in lieu of hand signals when traveling in formation. Ribbons, paint, and chalk can be used to mark trees, buildings, or other landmarks as needed. Marking bags and gear by color can also be useful in case you quickly have to decide what to grab.

ANIMAL CALLS: are an alternative that can work well in a rural setting. Invaders may mistake them for the real thing, and/or be unfamiliar to the patterns of the native animal calls. In this manner you can effectively send basic messages across hostile territory without detection. Be sure your pattern is different enough from native species that you don’t misinterpret a real duck call as a message from your other party.

BOOBY TRAPS: that alert you to intruders are always a good idea. Some can be set up in such a way as to be widely seen. I’ve read of people who attach a charge to their trip wires that can set off a small firework. Marauders do not always have the intention of a hostile takeover, and there may be other bands of unpleasant characters wandering the area. Now everyone knows the location of the prowler. If you are forced to camp out and build a fire, keeping some black powder and smoke bombs on your person can be helpful. If your camp is ambushed, quickly throwing both into the fire creates a wall of smoke and flares, thus producing a useful diversion as well as an audible distress signal.

GRAFFITI: is a common sight in most urban areas, as it has long been used by misfits and gangs for marking territory (hence the name “tagging”). Knowing the meanings of certain tags can be useful. Having symbols of your own is also beneficial. In a situation where graffiti is popping up everywhere, a simple character hidden in a midst of urban art can communicate to the others in your party. Avoid using words or marks that are too obvious or easily counterfeited to avoid being led into a trap by imposters.

Hobo code.

HOBO CODE: is the simple pictographs etched into old telephone poles and drawn on buildings and railroad ties that vagrants who hopped trains utilized to identify if there were camps nearby or known friendlies/hostiles in the area. Many train station museums have examples of these signs and their meanings. Not many people are familiar with it, giving it a certain appeal. If you do attract actual wanderers, be sure you are set to deal with either hostility or recruiting them into your ranks. This is a possibility for those who have a loose association with other preppers and are only interested in full collaboration during an invasion or other ‘worst case scenario’. If you have such a set of connections, than learning this code will help these smaller cells find each other and form a more cohesive resistance.

RENDEZVOUS: points or another plan of action for when contact is lost should be a central element of all communication plans. Everyone in your group (be it your family or your entire neighborhood) needs to know how to reach one another in an emergency, what the signal or code means, and what to do if they lose contact. Practice makes perfect.

This is only a preliminary list, and is not meant to be all inclusive. It is important to assess your individual circumstances when developing your plan. Take into consideration which methods you have easy access to and can rely on.

Happy Prepping!

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  Communication is imperative in survival situations. This article attempts to cover some of the basic pros and cons of various forms of communication and introduce the reader to some additions

 

It’s that time of year again; time to over eat and over drink, and wonder where on Earth 2016 went? So I write out small lists each year at this time and hope to focus on them. For literally nearly twenty years I wrote “get a degree” before getting one so it works but you still have to act on it. At my age time (52 or 364 in dog years) speeds up and the SHTF becomes harder and harder to physically deal with and life is busy so who has time for SHTF? Anyway the Government will save me or I will die in the nuclear fire-ball so why bother? Still, assuming you, like me, find these common arguments against prepping to be illogical then maybe you can add some good prepping resolutions for me in the comments?

Resolution One – Make sure I prioritize skills over toys

My Meetup Group is a decent source of fun, free, and often prepping activities. Lots of hikes to do and who knows I am loading the ruck with weight as bug out or bug back practice?

This one is hard for me as I work too much (two full-time jobs) but bills need paying, career needs growing, and I do not have much time. I have health care covered but everything else is weak. Some really are weak. What to do? I have bought a planner for 2017. I am going to find things to do and go and do them. My Meetup Group is a decent source of fun, free, and often prepping activities. Lots of hikes to do and who knows I am loading the ruck with weight as bug out or bug back practice? Good to use the legs and shoes and clothes outdoors. Not much foraging until later on in the year but I plan to take full advantage of these hikes and free skills meet ups. Groupon often has decent cheap day events in martial arts, archery, and even survival. I have used both these sites before and really need to do this more often. There are many great people in my area offering great skills. Even actual prepping groups offer free meetups to learn and try skills. The Ontario Preppers Network is a solid and well led organization in my area yet I am always working weekends so never have attended. That has to change I think!

Resolution Two – Organize My Preps

I do go through my bug out and get home bags frequently but in all honestly most of my none food preps are shoved in a cupboard. In the Summer I laid everything out in the basement and saw huge gaps I was utterly unaware of. I bundle the extra hard gear and tools into a tote box and buried that at my cottage on the next trip. That reduced my prepping supplies nicely and has given me a lot of useful things in the ground at the cottage. If the forest burns down I will still have those tools and gear and frankly they were just lying in a cupboard so win, win.

Having gear stored in one location is nice, but not always possible.

Still I do not use excel sheets or compulsively label and organize so this area will be a challenge. I need a bunch of decent tote boxes and to devote a day to sorting and storing the remaining gear. As I said I am not a list person so a permanent marker will be used to write the contents on the lids. This should work.

Resolution Three – Finish the Winterization Project

Being close to moose country it is easy to get decent winter clothing at reasonable prices and is vital as a prep. I’d say it is the key part of shelter up here in southern Canada as physical shelters might not be that warm in January. I have focused on it in 2016 and I am happy yet the gaps remain. I do not have decent boots only one pair of okay ones. I do not have decent trousers just okay ones. Worse I realized my girlfriend’s survival clothing it not decent at all. This has to be fixed and fixed quickly.

My hope is to go to the cottage next winter and leave the power off and even snow camp next to it to really try out the gear.

I will soon have a three-layered ground system for myself and my girlfriend to sleep on and the sleeping bags, liners, and wool blankets seem decent. My hope is to go to the cottage next winter and leave the power off and even snow camp next to it to really try out the gear. Minimally I intend at least one overnight in February by myself to try this system out.

Resolution Four – Food Prepping beyond One Year’s Supply

Some things people find easy and for me food prepping is the one area I am good at. I label, bag, and store great foods, in good variety, and can eat them all and create okay meals. As a new prepper in 2015 I realized the few tins of baked beans I stored under the stairs in the UK in 1980 for the nuclear war with Russia would no longer given me much psychological comfort. I read and thought and saw that the 72 hours (one to two weeks) the Canadian Government recommends would be of little use in a major regional or national SHTF. By adding to the groceries and using cardboard boxes we soon got to six months and I am happy to say now have a further six months in buckets with small Mylar bags inside them.

What I want is a ten year supply for two people.

Still this is not the supply I actually want. What I want is a ten-year supply for two people. For me trying to survive a nuclear war and resultant nuclear winter is worth the attempt. That should cover most SHTF scenarios. So I am at 10% of my goal here and I am not leaping into prepackaged survival foods to finish it. As a vegan for the last six years (I knew you’d ask lol) I understand the importance of variety and minimal processing. This will be worked on in six months amounts. 12 five gallon buckets are about six months’ supply for the two of us. By year’s end I’d like at least at three-year supply but I’d like five years’ worth.

Ball Mason Wide Mouth Pint Jars with Lids and Bands

Gardening is something we have been doing for the last five years and really enjoying it. A third raised garden is planned in the spring and a lot of five gallon buckets are getting buried in that one. Tarps, nails, and cords need to be bought and boxed to rapidly secure the soil in the three raised gardens from external elements in SHTF. We will continue to experiment with seed varieties and planting times.

Sprouting will continue but I am finding after five years the mason jars and lid grills are looking a bit done in. It will be time to add to that supply in the spring when I order sprouting seeds which are mainly stored. I order twice a year. Sure many seeds will dead in SHTF but even a few viable ones can be sprouted, eaten, and even planted. As I add to the store every year I am content to have some expire but will keep them and see if I can grow something in SHTF.

Seed saving started in 2016 and we are going to continue that in 2017. Black walnut processing also started in 2016 but the squirrels got every one of them as they dried out. I now have net bags to suspend from the ceiling and anti-squirrel coverings!

Resolution Five – Get More Personal Security

For me this means personal strength and endurance needs to get back to near the levels they were in 2007. Then I had been a sub three hour marathoner for years and had raced over one hundred ultra-marathons even wining a few smaller ones. Since then I have gone to seed and added about 60lbs (I am a fat vegan 5’10” and 228lbs). 2017 is the time to fix that as I think I am over my burn out. Start small and keep going. My body needs to be sharper than my mind and I do not think starting an exercise regime in SHTF is smart.

For me this means personal strength and endurance needs to get back to near the levels they were in 2007.

Complete building my long bow kit and practice it. Consider a machined bow as well. Get more arrows and heads and learn more about archery in general.

Go and buy wood boards and cut them to size to cover the insides and outsides of the down stairs windows. Label, store, and have them ready to nail up in SHTF. Overall I consider this to be a major concern and one that I have simply been ignoring.

Keep talking to and enjoying my neighbors as they might well be a very valuable resource for me in many scenarios.

Resolution Six – Fun stuff

You have to have fun, right? We are focusing our summer on making sure we can both attend the Annual Preppers Meet  as I attended on my own last year and found it a lot of fun and met a lot of interesting people. If things work out we can go dog free to the cottage for a week and kayak and camp around Haliburton as I have always wanted to trip along Canoe Lake. Take the BioLite on the next unpressured dog walk into the forests around us and brew some tea. Get the girlfriend to build and light a few fires as she is fire phobic. Stay open; keep reading Final Prepper; and watching YouTube when on night shifts. Use my hands rather than my mind at every opportunity and generally focus on my weaknesses more than playing to my strengths.

Have a great New Year

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  It’s that time of year again; time to over eat and over drink, and wonder where on Earth 2016 went? So I write out small lists each year at this

Morgan Carter made it back home to his family in Florida after the collapse in Going Home, the first book in this four part series called “the Survivalist Series” and we now get to see how this story finally ends. Forsaking Home is the last novel I believe in a really great story about Morgan Carter, his family, friends and a few military operators in a post-collapse world. We reviewed the first book in the series, Going Home in December and when I was offered another chance to review the latest in the series I was naturally interested.

Forsaking Home – A Novel

Forsaking Home like all the other novels in this series falls squarely into a category I call Prepper fiction. Prepper fiction usually has a few key components; a disaster, a hero and someone they care for, a bad guy and a lot of discussion around how the hero navigates life after the disaster. Prepper fiction for me is incredibly interesting because it provides a narrative around events that I think are possible and highlights how the author envisions certain scenarios playing out. Naturally, I as a blogger who writes about all things Prepping get to distill the author’s story through my own filter and take elements out that make sense, discount items that I feel aren’t realistic and more or less get to watch someone war-game potential disasters under the guise of a good read.

The key element that I think everything else hangs off of is always some form of catastrophe that precipitates a collapse of society. You have to have a big event to put people in these dire circumstances and set up the conflict that our hero has to deal with. In this series, the catastrophe was an EMP. The EMP that disables Morgan’s car is never fully explained although it is alluded that this may not have been something that caught our government completely off guard. Cue the ominous music.

Forsaking Home brings us back to Morgan and his group at the cabins by the river. We learned at the end of the previous book that Morgan and Thad’s traveling buddy Jess who joined them on the first book’s trek through Florida immediately after the collapse is now in a DHS Resettlement (FEMA) camp and Sarge and his buddies plan to change that scenario quickly.

A. American’s characters in these books are very believable and the story moves along nicely. There aren’t any unrealistic scenarios with gun-fights and ninja back-flip moves against overwhelming force. A. American seems to be very interested in sharing his experience in the form of tips and tricks that almost anyone can use if we are faced with a similar situation. There is a larger story that has plenty of action, but interspersed throughout the novels are mini how-tos on everything from making squirrel snares, cooking gators and frogs to fishing. While I love huge gun-fights, they are obviously sensational and Forsaking Home seems to give you just enough action while at the same time relaying information to the Prepper they can file away for later recall. Knowing how to set snares for example could save your life.

There is only one type of incident in the book that some might consider macho and I won’t give it away except to say that Morgan is faced with a threat that must be dealt with. In a society like they have in Forsaking Home, where there is no law enforcement, Morgan’s reaction is quick and violent. If I were in the same scenario, I would have done the same thing. Rather than make a larger spectacle than is needed, A. American deals with the subject quickly and without a lot of posing, preaching or drama and I think that is how it should be.

In conclusion, I enjoyed the entire series and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Prepper Fiction. The story is wrapped up nicely at the end and for me, the whole read was very satisfying.

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Morgan Carter made it back home to his family in Florida after the collapse in Going Home, the first book in this four part series called “the Survivalist Series” and