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If I could, I would write an ode to the bug out bag.

A couple of days ago, I was wondering what the H would I do if that B.O.B would go missing or worse, gets damaged beyond repair? Well, in the world of prepping, a broken backpack means nothing as long as you have a couple of materials at the ready.

In today’s article, I’m going to show you a quick easy way to craft your own backpack. Apparently, this type of carrier is called a horseshoe rucksack although I cannot see any resemblance between this thing and the metal hoop that goes around the horse’s hoof.

Anyway, from a historical perspective, the horseshoe backpack was, let’s say, invented around the time of Napoleon’s military campaigns. This kind of rucksack was used by foot soldiers to carry stuff like toiletries, spare ammo, paintings or valuables.

Well, I have to admit that given its aspect, the horseshoe rucksack goes above and beyond the call of duty – it’s incredibly light, can be used to store any number of objects and, most importantly, it’s incredibly resilient.

So, without further ado, here’s how you can craft your own horseshoe rucksack.

Materials required

For this project you will need the following items:

  • Cordage (works with anything from 550 paracords to string and dental floss).
  • Heavy poncho (you can replace with light rain poncho or a rectangular piece of the tarp).
  • Everything that goes inside your B.O.B or scavenged items.

Yup, it’s that simple. Soldiers didn’t like this type of rucksack for nothing. Imagine having to spend hours crafting an intricate backpack knowing that the sarge could give the “move out” order at any moment. All done gathering all the necessary gear? Great! Find yourself a quiet spot to piece together your horseshoe backpack and get to work.

How to assemble a horseshoe backpack

Step 1. Take out your heavy rain poncho\light rain poncho\tarp and set it on the ground.

Step 2. Fold it in the middle two times. You should end up with a rectangular piece. Don’t forget to tuck away the hood.

Step 3. Place your items on one side of the backpack. Arrange them in a straight line. If you have sharp or objects with jagged edges, wrap them in pieces of cloth to protect your tarp or poncho. Keep in mind that you’ll still need to use that for other purposes like water collection or shelter-crafting.

Step 4. When you’re done arranging the objects on the tarp\poncho, grab one side and start rolling it. Remember when you were little, and your mother asked you to roll the carpet? It’s the same thing. Be careful not to let any of the objects slip.

Step 5. After rolling the tarp\poncho, take some cordage, cut a small piece, and tie one of the ends. Don’t forget to make a tight knot. You wouldn’t want to lose the stuff inside the rucksack.

Step 6. Tie the other end of the poncho\tarp roll using a small piece of cordage.

Step 7. Cut two more pieces of string and make knots along the length. Now it’s time for the strap.

Step 8. Measure a piece of string and cut it with your survival knife or sharp rock. Take one end and tie it to the string attached to the upper part of your rucksack. Finally, tie the other end to the lower part, and you’re done. It’s adventure time!

Additional considerations on the horseshoe rucksack

Technically speaking, you can craft one of these backpacks from, well, anything you have on hand – a T-Shirt, a long piece of sterile gauze, a bedsheet or whatever. However, there is a good reason behind the use of a heavy rain poncho.

First of all, by default, ponchos are waterproof or, at least, it should be if it doesn’t have any holes in it. Second, ponchos, especially army-grade ones are resistant to tearing, breaking, and warping. So, you can be sure that everything inside will be dry and very well protected.

The old horseshoe backpack has only a single caveat: it’s not suitable for carrying heavier items. If you bug out back contains stuff like AM\FM radio, personal emergency buoy, extra smartphones or whatever, you will need to find other ways to carry them with you – I would recommend a pouch made from a piece of cordage and a piece of cloth.

There’s a big difference between hiking with a regular backpack and using the horseshoe – in the first case, the overall design distributes weight equally. The same thing cannot be said about our horseshoe backpack. I should also mention the fact that hiking with that thing on for more than four hours is totally unadvisable.

If the lack of weight balance is not a major turnoff, then the strap tearing into your shoulder is. Still, I wouldn’t consider this a caveat since you can easily fix it by adding some kind of padding to the string segment resting on your shoulder.  If you still have your old backpack, use your knife to cut a piece of strap. Aim for the one with extra padding. Place it over your shoulder, and that’s it!

When tying the horseshoe rucksack, I would advise you to be extra careful around the dangling end. For extra safety, tie another piece of cordage around it.

Other Options?

In case you have to hike for a longer amount of time, the horseshoe backpack’s not exactly the best option.

For this, I would recommend building a so-called cage backpack. Instead of using your heavy poncho, construct a cage-like frame by stacking small pieces of wood. Secure them using your cordage of choice. Mount two string straps and that’s it. In addition, this type of backpack is quite useful, especially if you’re forced to hunt – you can’t really fit the game, no matter how small, inside the horseshow.

Congrats! You now know how to make a simple backpack. What’s your take on this? Hit the comments section and let me know.

Other Self-sufficiency and Preparedness solutions recommended for you:

The Lost Ways (The vital self-sufficiency lessons our great grand-fathers left us)
Survival MD (Knowledge to survive any medical crisis situation)
Backyard Liberty (Liberal’s hidden agenda: more than just your guns…)
Alive After the Fall (Build yourself the only unlimited water source you’ll ever need)
The Lost ways II (4 Important Forgotten Skills used by our Ancestors that can help you in any crisis)
The Patriot Privacy Kit (Secure your privacy in just 10 simple steps)

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Well, in the world of prepping, a broken backpack means nothing as long as you have a couple of materials at the ready.

These are two resources I came across on the web today.

The Basics of Wound Care is a booklet that you can download that goes into pretty graphic detail about identifying and treating a wide variety of wounds. If pictures of really nasty wounds cause you to get sick, you better just download this one and let somebody else read it.

Another really great book is Practical Plastic Surgery for Non-surgeons and at first I thought to myself, who is going to be augmenting breasts (yes, that is covered in the book) after the SHTF? Which in retrospect could be a barter-able skill… I am kidding.

The book does go into a lot of great information for treating wounds and injuries and is broken into chapters. If you don’t get the entire book, you can just download the individual chapters that seem most appropriate to you. I would recommend, Suturing, Basic Surgery, Gunshot Wounds and Burns.

To download the entire Plastic Surgery for Non-Surgeons book, click here.

But you can also download an individual chapter.

Let me know if you found this interesting or just a waste of time. But then, who doesn’t like some free knowledge. Just let me know what you think about the quality of information shared for free in these two books.

Hello, my name is Dr. Ralph La Guardia, I am a physician, an internist and I am also board certified in both geriatrics and bariatrics.

However, my true passion is integrative medicine, which is the combination of traditional and alternative medicine. I have taken the best treatments of both disciplines to develop a highly effective method of treating medical problems of all types. 

I am also a prepper and I have written the most complete medical guide ever written called

The Doomsday Book Of Medicine

My reason for writing this book was to fill the gap in the disaster literature for medical treatment. I read all the books on survival medicine and I am here to tell you, they are all rip offs. They are nothing more than first aid manuals, often written by authors with absolutely no medical training. I am sure their intentions were good, but the results were horrific.

These so-called medical guides were full of worthless advice like this: if you are bitten by a snake, call poison control. They tell you to stockpile your medications, try to tell your insurance company that you need a year’s worth of your diabetes or blood pressure meds, and let me know how that goes for you.

I have been in private practice for over thirty years. During that time, I read countless books and thousands of articles in obscure medical journals, looking for alternative cures. I tested what works and what doesn’t and will teach you all of it, for every medical problem from head to toe, everything from fevers to diabetes to pneumonia to snake bites.

Get this book now and begin to learn such secrets as

– What is 8 times more effective at preventing the flu than a flu vaccine?

– The antioxidant that is 6,000 x more powerful than vitamin c.

– The amino acid that not only treats anxiety and depression but also helps alleviate alcohol and drug craving.

– The common weed that is not only the perfect food but also can be used to make biofuel for your vehicles, after gasoline is no longer available.

– The common cleaning product that will not only cure your arthritis but also make your bones so rock hard that surgeons have difficulty cutting thru them.

There has never been a book like this, so easy to read and so jam packed full of life saving medical information that cannot be found anywhere else.

I give you practical advice “from the trenches” that you can find nowhere else.

For each problem, I teach you what it is, and more importantly I give you scores of ways to treat each problem without prescription pharmaceuticals, often with everyday items already in your pantry or medicine cabinet.

You can prepare for a crisis in endless ways, stockpiling food, guns and ammo and finding a secure “bugout” place that you can make impregnable, but what are you going to do if you or one of your loved ones get sick, really sick, life threatening sick … then what?

You won’t know how to diagnose what is going on, and more importantly you won’t have any idea how to treat it. You will sit there hopeless as your loved ones succumb to an illness or an injury and be totally helpless.

What are you going to do when your meds run out? How are you going to stop your child’s burning fever? How are you going to help a loved one with a severe burn, or a broken bone, or a snake bite? What are you going to do when they are coughing and cannot stop, is it flu or pneumonia? And you have no antibiotics left.

I was sick of people with good intentions getting ripped off by worthless medical guides, so I decided to do something about it and I wrote The Doomsday Book of Medicine; over 800 pages jammed full of medical information written in an easy to read format that requires absolutely no medical knowledge.

I teach you how to both diagnose and treat any medical problem you are going to encounter. And more importantly, I give you many ways to treat it. I also teach you how to make your own medical chest that you can stock with over the counter nonprescription items, so you too can treat any medical problem that you or your loved ones may find themselves in.

You don’t have to wait for a crisis to use this book

Most of my readers use it in their everyday lives to treat any medical problems that might occur. It is their “go to book” saving them time and money on costly doctor visits. Not only is this book the most complete medical guide ever written for non-medical people, it is also a manual that you can use to keep your body vigorously healthy and disease free.

I’ll teach you how to grow nutrient dense foods that will nourish your mind and body. You will learn the secrets of the soil that will make your body impregnable to disease. You will learn essential health practices, the right way to take vitamins, and why they currently aren’t working for you. You will learn the essential tools for treating most diseases you are likely to encounter.

No other book on the market today will teach you all of this as well as how to make your own wound care solutions, saline solutions, eye irrigant, natural insect repellent, sunscreen, fecal transplant solution, hydrating fluids and even toothpaste.

The Doomsday Book Of Medicine is jammed packed with over 800 pages of medical secrets that you can find nowhere else. It took me over 30 years in private practice, and endless research to find all of these cures, and now for the first time they are all presented in one easy to read format.

The Doomsday Book Of Medicine is your answer to the vital question: what are you going to do when there are no doctors or medicine available?

Other Self-sufficiency and Preparedness solutions recommended for you:

The Lost Ways (The vital self-sufficiency lessons our great grand-fathers left us)
Survival MD (Knowledge to survive any medical crisis situation)
Backyard Liberty (Liberal’s hidden agenda: more than just your guns…)
Alive After the Fall (Build yourself the only unlimited water source you’ll ever need)
The Lost ways II (4 Important Forgotten Skills used by our Ancestors that can help you in any crisis)
The Patriot Privacy Kit (Secure your privacy in just 10 simple steps)

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I was sick of people with good intentions getting ripped off by worthless medical guides, so I decided to do something about it and I wrote The Doomsday Book of

Hemp seed and hemp oil have been called the perfect food for humanity. The reason for this is that hemp oil contains all the essential fatty acids and essential amino acids your body needs. You remember essential means that they cannot be manufactured by your body and therefore are essential to get in your diet to maintain good health and functioning of your body.

In the case of hemp oil it has them all, all the fats and all twenty of the amino acids your body needs to make proteins of all types.

Hemp oil contains the perfect balance of fatty acids, with a 3:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids and is the only seed that contains this perfect balance. Fish oil also contains many essential fatty acids but frequently is contaminated with mercury and other toxins that have polluted the world’s oceans, unless you get a pharmaceutical grade fish oil such as Lovaza or Vascepa, both of which are only available by prescription.

Hemp oil also contains a very rare protein called globule edestins that is very similar to the globulin protein found in human blood plasma, which is known to help digestion. Hemp oil also contains albumin, which is the same protein found in egg whites.

The proteins in hemp are more easily digested than meat, eggs, cheeses, milk, or just about any other protein source, including soy. Hemp seeds and oil also contain GLA or gamma linolenic acid, which is very rare, and helps with breast pain and skin problems like eczema.

In fact, hemp seeds are the most nutritious seeds in the world.

In addition to the above-mentioned ingredients, hemp seeds also contain vitamins such as vitamins D and E, enzymes, and a relative lack of sugars, starches, and saturated fats, and has the highest content of unsaturated (the good ones) fatty acids found in the entire plant kingdom. For this reason many people consider hemp seeds and hemp oil to be an ideal food for your body or a Super Food by some nutritionists.

WHY YOUR HEMP OIL NEEDS TO COME FROM OUTSIDE THE U.S.A.

In the United States hemp oil cannot be processed unless the seed is killed with high temperatures. The problem with that is that high temperatures destroy the essential fatty acids by changing their composition and accelerating the destruction of the beneficial properties of hemp oil. For that reason you should look for cold-pressed oil which will by necessity have to come from outside the United States.

This is also the reason why Canada produces most of the cold-pressed hemp oil consumed in the Unites States.

By the way

  • The heat destruction of the essential fatty acids in hemp and other seed oils is the reason you should not use them for frying.
  • Also seed oils will become rancid if left exposed and not refrigerated, so always store them in your refrigerator to vastly increase their shelf life.
  • When you buy any seed oils always look for cold-pressed, which produces the highest quality oils while retaining most of their beneficial qualities. What health benefits are associated with the use of Hemp Oil?

Hemp oil has many health-enhancing qualities due to the many healthy substances it contains.

As I said earlier, the most important of the healthy substances contained in hemp oil are the essential fatty acids. Many people are confused by the health benefits of fats and think all fats are unhealthy, but nothing could be further from the truth. Without essential fatty acids life would be impossible. Your body needs fats to produce many of its structures, including most notably your brain, as well as other important substances like prostaglandins.

Prostaglandins are a group of hormone-like lipid (fat) compounds that are made from the action of enzymes on essential fatty acids.

Now that I have made your eyes glassy and have you yawning with that explanation, allow me to explain why prostaglandins are so very important for your health.

  • Prostaglandins are produced by every cell in the body except red blood cells, which speaks volumes about their importance.
  • They control inflammation, blood pressure, platelet aggregation, mediate pain in the spinal nerves, control fever, regulate kidney function, regulate intraocular (inside your eyeball) pressure, control labor, cell growth regulation, and acid secretion by the stomach.

So, if you have a lack of essential fatty acids which are needed to make prostaglandins, you will naturally have low levels of them and will lack their positive effects in your body and consequently suffer with a large number of conditions. at is why hemp oil has been reported to have so many different positive effects such as:

  1. Significantly decrease inflammation in joints and muscles, thereby helping arthritis, muscle aches, fibromyalgia.Lower blood pressure by relaxing blood vessels.
  2. Prevent platelet aggregation, which prevents clot formation and thereby strokes and heart attacks.
  3. Helps control pain.Control fevers.
  4. Help glaucoma.
  5. Help labor pain.
  6. Helps asthma by relaxation of airways.
  7. Improve circulation by relaxing the blood vessels and allowing greater blood flow.
  8. Improving immunity and thereby helping reduce infections of all types as well as cancer.
  9. Helping with skin problems like eczema, psoriasis, and acne.
  10. GI problems like ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, abdominal cramping, and constipation.

HOW TO TAKE HEMP OIL

Hemp oil is best taken without heating it, such as added to salads or other vegetables as a condiment. It can be added to vinegar, replacing olive oil and making a wonderful salad dressing that is quite tasty.

It has a nutty flavor and can be taken orally without mixing it in anything, or can be added to organic yogurt or to any food you might prefer. Depending on the severity of your medical issues, you can take up to five tablespoons a day, but I would normally recommend taking two tablespoons a day for general health maintenance. If you are eating the shelled hemp seeds, you need to take about four heaping teaspoons daily.

Hemp oil can also be applied topically if you have a skin condition of any type by rubbing it into the skin several times a day until the issue resolves. Hemp oil is a natural moisturizer and is also useful as a sunblock.

DOES HEMP OIL HAVE ANY SIDE EFFECTS?

Any substance can cause side effects if ingested, since different people react in different ways. at being said, hemp oil is very well tolerated. ere could be a little diarrhea or loose stools or abdominal cramping. Since it may affect the clotting ability of platelets, it may cause bleeding or bruising problems in patients already on Coumadin (warfarin) or other blood thinners.

OTHER USES OF HEMP OIL FOR PREPPERS

  1. Hemp oil can be used mixed with lemon oil as a wonderful varnish to finished wood.
  2. Hemp oil can be used to make candles.
  3. Hemp oil can be used as a lubricant for bicycle chains and chainsaws, etc.
  4. Hemp oil can be used as a biodiesel fuel. For we Preppers this alone may prove to be one of its greatest uses, since marijuana is so easy to grow (hence its nickname “weed”).

Growing an ample supply for medicinal and biodiesel fuel use will probably become widespread.

Those above-named benefits of hemp oil are primarily from its high content of essential fatty acids.

From a survivalist or Prepper viewpoint hemp oil answers all of our problems as far as nutrition is concerned, because here in one seed oil we are able to give our bodies all twenty of the amino acids, including the nine essential amino acids that we cannot produce ourselves, in addition to which we can get all the essential fatty acids and a host of other vitamins, minerals, and enzymes.

Due to its high nutritional content it indeed qualifies as a Super Food for our needs.

Cannabis sativa is also very easy to grow, does not require any special soils, does not need pesticides or even fertilizer and has no natural enemies that ravage it. In short, Cannabis is a weed and is very easy to grow and provides us with complete nutrition as well as a useful medicine, and, if you are so inclined, a psychoactive substance (it will get you high).

It will probably be a very useful product to have for barter due to its multiple uses, but I would venture to guess that many people will be growing it. In a survival situation Cannabis sativa will be a very useful thing to add to your medicine chest; at least keep a nice supply of the seeds handy.

Want more practical advice such as this one?

Check out Dr. Ralph La Guardia’s The Doomsday Book of Medicine.

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From a survivalist or Prepper viewpoint hemp oil answers all of our problems as far as nutrition is concerned.

The good part about getting older is you stop trying to prove anything to anyone, including yourself. All you are in the pursuit of is collecting experiences – beautiful, fragile little soap bubbles that you store in your heart, and every once in a while you pull one out and gaze at the delicate pictures it shows you. No soap? No worries. That’s what we’re here for.

There are several ways to make soap, all of which start with lye.

One of the simplest ways to make some soap is, after using a frying pan over a hardwood camp fire, take some of the ashes from the fire and sprinkle them on the fat in the pan, add some water. They will combine and make you a small batch of soap. You cannot use softwoods like pine to make lye because of their high resin content, so stick with hard woods like oak, maple, and as, for example.

Larger quantities of soap can easily be made by constructing a lye-leaching container.

To make a lye-leaching container you have to:

  • use a wooden barrel, or a plastic or a steel container. Lye has a pH of 13 and will eat through aluminum, it is a very dangerous, strongly alkaline solution.
  • Drill or punch holes in the bottom of the container to allow drainage
  • Fill the bottom of the container with a layer of gravel on top of which will be a two or three inch layer of straw or dried grass, on top of that will go your wood ashes.
  • Tamp down the ashes to compress them and make a depression in the middle of the ashes.
  • Now the top of the container has to be open so you can pour water onto the ashes and allow that water to dissolve the lye from the ash and then pass through the straw and then the gravel for a second filtration.
  • You should fill the depression with water and then wait several hours as the water slowly trickles out the bottom.

The first batch produced will be the strongest. You can get a second batch of lye by using the same barrel’s contents and passing water through it. This second pass lye has to be re-passed through the barrel to make it strong enough. The lye is then combined with animal fat to make soap; you have to keep adding enough fat to consume all the lye. ere are actual tables called saponification tables that tell you the required ratio of fat to lye. You can also use any vegetable oil instead of animal fat.

Remember, oils are just liquid fat at room temperatures.

Caution: If you get lye in your eyes you have to douse them with milk; if you get lye on your skin douse it with vinegar to neutralize it. Lye is a very caustic substance… meaning it burns like hell! Anything at either end of the pH spectrum will be dangerous…either a strong acid with a very low pH or a strong base or alkali with a very high pH. Lye has a pH of about 13, which is very strong. Lye will easily eat right through things like aluminum.

HOW TO MAKE ACTIVATED CHARCOAL

Activated charcoal can be made from charcoal you have made in your improvised oven and then it needs to be treated with acid and reheated again. From the stage of making charcoal you can also make black powder or wood alcohol or just leave it as charcoal if you want to smelt any metals, since charcoal burns much hotter than wood and thus has been used in forges since ancient times.

The best way is to start with the smallest pieces of wood, so cut up your wood as best you can. Eventually, you are going to have to grind these small pieces up into a fine powder, so it is critical to start with very small pieces of wood. A hardwood sawdust would be an ideal place to start.

Whatever you use for making the oven to burn your charcoal, it has to have two common features — it has to be able to be sealed to prevent oxygen from entering, or you will just completely burn the wood and form ash but no coal. Secondly, you need to have a vent hole, large enough to allow the volatile chemicals in the wood to escape after they have been changed into gases yet small enough to prevent oxygen from being drawn in.

You have to design a setup so your closed oven can be suspended over a fire, allowing it to heat up without the presence of oxygen, to boil off the water and eventually cook off all the volatile chemicals that are in the wood; once these two are gone you will have your carbon and ash left.

Since water boils off at about 212 F at sea level ( as you go up in altitude water will boil at a lower temperature), the first thing you will see exiting your vent hole will be steam.

  • Once you see steam coming out you should cook the wood for at least another four hours. This is not written in stone and depends on the amount of wood you have in your oven and the heat production of your fire, etc.
  • After four or five hours have passed and you think you are finished making your charcoal, remove the oven from the fire. This step is critical. You have to wait until the oven has completely cooled down before you open it, otherwise the char will burst into flame if it is hot and exposed to a sudden rush of oxygen by you opening the oven.
  • At this point you have made charcoal, and if you want to go on to make black powder or use it for smelting an ore, you are ready to do that.
  • For our purposes we need to acid-treat the charcoal and reheat it before we have made activated charcoal.
  • For an acid a good source is battery acid, which you can buy in any auto supply store. Be advised, this acid is very dangerous and has to be handled very carefully to avoid serious acid burns. You should be wearing an apron, goggles, gloves, and a mask over your nose and mouth to keep from inhaling any noxious fumes.
  • Pour the acid into a glass cooking pan, put each piece of coal into the acid bath and allow it to soak for about five minutes, then carefully remove the charcoal and drain off the excess acid and place the charcoal back into the oven.
  • Keep repeating this process until you have soaked all of the charcoal in acid.

As an alternative to battery acid, which is strong sulfuric acid, you can use hydrochloric acid which you can buy in pool supply stores as muriatic acid. It is used to clean the linings of cement swimming pools or you can find it in hardware stores. You can also use nitric acid, but that is harder to find and usually you can only get it from chemical supply stores that probably won’t sell it to you.

  • Now put all the acid-treated charcoal back into your oven
  • Reseal it and reheat it for another four or five hours until it is completely heated.
  • Just like in the earlier step, you need to allow the oven to cool down before you open it and expose it to oxygen or you will have another flash fire as the activated charcoal catches fire.
  • Carefully open up the oven, remove the charcoal and grind it up into as fine a powder as you can, and now you have made activated charcoal.

Note: for the purposes of home water purification, if you are making your own activated charcoal, coconut husks are supposedly the best material to use for this. The problem with that is, where are you going to find coconut husks unless you stockpile them now for later use, unless of course you live in a tropical area then it will not be a problem. If you do happen to live in a tropical environment with many coconuts available you should also learn how to make coconut oil which has many medicinal as well as nutritional uses.

An alternative method for making your own activated charcoal involves

  • using two steel barrels, one fifty-five gallon and one thirty-five gallon with its lid, and a few thick, long pieces of rebar.
  • Cut two one foot by one foot holes in the fifty-five gallon drum’s sides and then take the thirty-five gallon drum and drill nine or ten holes in its bottom.
  • Now fill the fifty-five gallon drum with your firewood.
  • Fill the thirty-five gallon drum with the wood you want to make into charcoal and seal it up so the only holes are those in its bottom, facing the fifty- five gallon drum fire.
  • Slide the thirty-five gallon drum onto the long rebar rods and place it on top of the fifty-five gallon drum.
  • Now, light the fifty-five gallon drum’s wood on fire.
  • Cook it as above for four or five hours and then remove the thirty-five gallon drum from the fire and allow it to properly cool and once it is cooled, open it and there is your charcoal.

The difference with this and the previous method is the gas in the thirty-five gallon drum has nowhere to go but out into the fire below, thus stoking that fire and letting it burn even hotter, so in effect you are circulating the wood gases back into the fifty-five gallon drum’s fire to make it even hotter.

There are many other methods available to you on YouTube and other websites.

Or you can just get Dr. Ralph La Guardia’s The Doomsday Book of Medicine, and have it all in one place.

Follow the link and find out more about this book. It will simply teach you how to build your own healthcare system. That means prepping for day to day problems and issues. Because becoming a final prepper takes practice. You don’t have to wait until it’s too late to open a survival book.

Get this book now if you want something to change.

Spoiler alert – it’s all about good soil. And it’s not a metaphor, even if it also works like that.

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How much do you know about activated charcoal? Well, seems like it knows a lot about you. Read here about its many medical uses.

As preppers we need to build strong bodies literally from the ground up.

This is the only way we can guarantee ourselves good, long-lasting, disease free bodies that will resist the inevitable epidemics that will sweep through a post-apocalyptic society, killing off many of the original survivors. It is also the only way we will be able to bear children who are healthy both mentally and physically, and who are better able to survive in this post-apocalyptic, nightmare world.

When I say from the ground up I mean it literally, the “dirty” secret to good health lies in the dirt or soil of our gardens, fields, and orchards. It is the only way to build healthy bodies and immune systems that will be able to resist everything thrown at them.

We are incredible machines that will build remarkably strong bodies if provided with the proper environment or terrain and all the building blocks they need. I alluded to the mistake that modern medicine is making by attacking the organisms that they feel are causing diseases. is idea of one germ causing one disease state is known as Germ theory.

Don’t mistake what I am saying. Germ theory has served us well, but in my opinion its time has come and gone.

The endless war we have waged against germs has been lost.

We have to face facts, antibiotics worked for years but now the bacteria have outsmarted us and resistance is spreading faster than new, novel antibiotics can be developed. It has been an arms race of sorts since the 1940s and we are losing it.

That leaves us with two options, double down and try as hard as we can to come up with new antibiotics, or try option two ….build healthier cells and immerse them in a healthier environment that will be able to resist infections and prevent them from ever taking hold.

Louis Pasteur was the father of Germ theory, but by the time of his death he saw its futility and on his deathbed he recanted and proclaimed, “It is the terrain that is most important.”

The terrain is the area between cells and all around them it is also known as the ECM or extracellular matrix. is is not a dead zone at all, it is the way cells get their nutrients by diffusion of nutrients between cells. Oxygen is also delivered through the terrain, waste products are removed, and cells communicate with each other through it.

Cells send messages to each other through the terrain, which also provides a structure to embed the cells into and allows the cells to adhere or stick to each other. Growth factors that control cell behavior such as hormones and other protein molecules lie within the terrain and await activation so they can control cell functions.

As you can see, this is not a glue merely holding cells together but rather it is the key to controlling cell health and in turn human health. To ignore its importance in favor of finding new ways to attack germs is utter madness.

Why do we continuously try to reinvent the wheel?

The idea that the environment or “the Terrain” the cells are immersed in predisposes cells to become sick or diseased was abandoned in favor of Germ theory almost a hundred years ago by modern medicine and unfortunately new theories take a long time to become accepted as truths.

Modern medicine is still on the attack, embracing germ theory to the exclusion of evidence to the contrary and its continual failure to permanently conquer germs with ever more toxic antibiotics. Even recent progress that has been made in studying and identifying the human microbiome (the beneficial bacteria and fungi that live and breed in our intestines) and its incredible contribution to our health and our immunity has been ignored in favor of ever stronger antibiotics that devastate these wonderful probiotics.

The evidence continues to mount in favor of the terrain, yet it is continually ignored or played down. Healthy cells produce healthy tissues and organs and healthy bodies, plain and simple. These cells require all the building blocks I mentioned above, plus the right pH (slightly alkaline), and plentiful oxygen provided by good blood flow (which also removes waste products that are acidic).

These healthy cells actually vibrate at certain frequencies, “buzzing” together, having the correct pH, well oxygenated and also the correct electrical voltage all adding up to vibrantly healthy tissue. These cells will never become infected by any germ that tries to attack them. The germs will be repelled by the electric charge and will not find a receptive environment due to the alkaline pH and will not be able to penetrate the cell membrane that is strong and healthy, in good repair and strongly vibrating, and fully able to resist any assaults.

Germs cannot overcome this collective electric charge of healthy cells which repels them, they cannot survive in an alkaline pH, and they cannot gain entry into cells that are strong and healthy. Germs need low oxygen, acidic environments to grow and reproduce and be able to spread.

They need a certain frequency of vibration to be able to enter a cell. Think of it like an FM radio dial ….if you want to listen to a certain channel, you can only gain entry to that channel at the correct frequency. The wrong frequency number on the dial and you get static and you can never pick up or enter that station. It is the same for germs; these microorganisms are alive and as living organisms they too vibrate at a certain frequency, they need cells which are “sick” and whose electrical charge and vibratory frequency are compromised enough to allow them to enter; if not, it is like searching for an FM station at the wrong frequency.

The blueprint for perfect, healthy, disease-resistant bodies is already encoded in our DNA.

We have recently discovered epigenetic (literally meaning around or outside the genes) mechanisms that in turn are the on and off signals for our genes. Many of these epigenetic influences are negative and disease- promoting, but not all.

We are rapidly learning how to better control negative epigenetic influences, and the good news is that they can be overcome.

The messengers for this epigenetic control come in the form of microRNA. We can provide our bodies with all the proper building blocks to construct the perfect body but this needs to be done in the context of the right terrain with the proper pH and also by providing microRNA to send the correct signals to our genes so they can correctly choreograph this amazing construction project.

In order to build healthy cells as I described above, you need to start in your dirt or soil; that is the “dirty” secret to good health.

Healthy soils will grow healthy plants, animals grazing on healthy plants will build healthy, strong bodies and humans eating these plants and animals will in turn become strong, robust, and very disease resistant.

In effect, to develop our own healthy terrain we need to start with healthy terrains in our gardens, fields, orchards, lakes, rivers, and pastures.

This is just an excerpt from Dr. Ralph la Guardia’s 800+ page The Doomsday Book of Medicine.

The chapter about how to build a healthy soil alone is worth the price of the whole book. It will teach how to grow nutrient dense foods that will nourish your mind and body. You will learn the secrets of the soil that will make your body impregnable to disease. You will learn essential health practices, the right way to take vitamins, and why they currently aren’t working for you. You will learn the essential tools for treating most diseases you are likely to encounter.

No other book on the market today will teach you all of this as well as how to make your own wound care solutions, saline solutions, eye irrigant, natural insect repellent, sunscreen, hydrating fluids and even toothpaste.

The Doomsday Book Of Medicine is jammed packed with over 800 pages of medical secrets that you can find nowhere else. It took me over 30 years in private practice, and endless research to find all of these cures, and now for the first time they are all presented in one easy to read format. You can read more about it here. 

Have a good one,

Charles

 

 

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When I say from the ground up I mean it literally, the “dirty” secret to good health lies in the dirt or soil of our gardens, fields, and orchards.

What Never Spoils Could Never Hurt You

Today’s tool recommendation? How about honey? Sweet…of me, I know. But I’m serious. Here’s what my honey can do.

Honey never spoils…you could eat thousand-year-old honey if you found it. Why is that, you ask?

The reason is simple …honey has amazing antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral properties…so nothing can really grow in it and hence it does not spoil. And that is one of the reasons it is so good to use on wounds. The Romans were masters of practicality…they did incredibly well with what little they had.

Physicians in the Roman army routinely slathered honey on all those nasty wounds their troops had after battles. They did not have the luxury of modern antibiotics and so they used honey and herbal treatments.

I have used honey in my practice for over twenty-five years with great success. Wound clinics routinely prescribed ridiculously expensive creams and salves for my patients, and many times with little success. I routinely intervened and told them to buy a jar of raw local honey at the farmer’s market or the local grocer. After using my honey treatment they returned to the wound clinics and repeatedly astonished the doctors and nurses there with their speedy recovery and lack of infections.

Honey and Wound Healing

Here’s the science behind honey’s amazing properties.

  • Honey is very viscous (thick) and therefore has a very strong osmotic effect (think of osmosis as gravity).
  • Honey is very osmotically active so like gravity, it has a strong pull, so it pulls or draws fluids out of the less osmotically active wound, carrying debris, dirt, and bacteria, etc. away from the wound onto the dressing.
  • That is why it is good to apply the honey directly to a wound dressing and then apply that to the wound. This way you can change the dressing each time it is soaked with fluids from the wound.
  • This osmotic effect also helps keep the wound moist, preventing premature scabbing and aiding in healing.
  • Honey also has a very strong attractive effect upon water, which it will combine with and make it unavailable to thirsty bacteria, fungi, and viruses. As the bacteria in a wound feed on the glucose in honey they will produce lactic acid. This will also prevent the foul smell of many wounds.
  • As honey gets combined with water it will produce hydrogen peroxide. This is the same substance that your body’s white blood cells produce to destroy foreign invaders. This is why hydrogen peroxide has a strong antiseptic effect. This also promotes wound healing. The hydrogen peroxide in honey is steadily produced and hence has a long-term positive effect on the wound.
  • Honey also causes the chelation of iron, thus binding it to proteins and rendering it unavailable to bacteria, which need iron to reproduce. Therefore, whenever you bind iron up and make it unavailable to bacteria, you are producing an antimicrobial effect.
  • Honey also helps promote granulation of wounds. at is the step after the production of a clot to close a wound.

Note: Granulation tissue is the yellow tissue in the base of a wound. I have found that even by nurses it is very often mistaken for pus. is is your body’s way of filling in a wound gap and allowing normal tissue to grow into that from all sides and heal a wound. You can tell the difference of it from pus because it is nice and uniform, lining a wound with the look of a thin layer of lemon pudding and without any foul smell that pus usually produces.

Honey for Burns, Skin Ulcers, and Dry Skin

Honey also works very well on burns;

  • use it the same way, covering the burned area with a large gauze soaked with honey.
  • Change it just like the wound dressing, whenever it is soaked with fluids that it has drawn out of the burn. It will prevent the major problem with burns, infection.
  • It will also produce better healing and less scarring, which can be critical in treating burns.

Honey also works very well in skin ulceration. I have treated many patients with large, deep decubitus ulcers (bed sores) and they have healed remarkably well. Honey applied to a dressing along with proper positioning of the patient to alleviate those pressure points will work wonders for patients with bed sores.

Honey has also been used to treat dry, parched, or injured skin of any type. Women as far back as Cleopatra have used raw honey for face masks and to beautify their hair and skin. The great moisturizing effect of honey on dry, ageing skin is due to its ability to attract and retain moisture in the skin without making the skin too oily. For this reason as well as raw honey’s antibacterial effects, it works very well in cases of acne.

Raw honey has been used for every conceivable kind of skin problem, including athlete’s foot.

Honey for an Upset Stomach

  • Raw honey, when combined with ginger and lemon juice, makes a very potent treatment for nausea and vomiting as well as gastric distress of any type, including ulcers.
  • Raw honey also contains large amounts of amylase which is concentrated in the pollen of flowers. Amylase is a digestive enzyme that digests starches such as bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice, thus it aids in digestion and is an excellent treatment for indigestion.

I think I made you consider at least getting some to just eat it, for now.

Question is – What Type of Honey Should You Buy?

Dr. La Guardia tell you all about it in his book; the community is already referring to it as The Bible of Survival.

Are you ready to finally make the switch from surviving to thriving?

Get this book today.

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Honey never spoils

Prepping is not something you postpone for the future. It is something you design for the present.

They say never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today. Well, why won’t think the same about prepping? This is something I keep seeing all over the community or even during conversations with other like-minded people. 

“When SHTF” I’ll do this or that.

“What gun are you planning on carrying … when SHTF?”

“When SHTF, I’ll go to my ranch/homestead/bunker/friend’s house”

These are precisely the people that end up not being ready when it counts because they keep waiting for some kind of invitation, email or notification so as to official know that as of right now, shit has indeed hit the fan. So here’s a letter you’ll never receive:

“Dear Sir, we are contacting you in regards to recent events and would like to inform you that as of right now shit has officially hit the fan. Remember where you put that survival medicine book? Get it out now. And yes, start reading the “when SHTF”chapter. You can’t find the book? What? It’s underwater? Along with your gear and food? Oh… Good luck and enjoy the end of the world!”

It just doesn’t work that way. In places where shit has very much hit the fan there’s people with this mentality. I still see if from people living in true hell holes, places like Venezuela, still talking about what they will do when it gets worse.

Get this book to prepare and act now. 

Arm yourself as well as you can now and learn how to defend yourself if you don’t already know how. Not looking after your health will get you killed SHTF or not, so get that blood test you’ve been postponing NOW, not after SHTF. Put that fire extinguisher in your car now, keep one in your kitchen now. Have a kit in your vehicle now because you can still get stranded on the road.

As rare as home invasions are around here, a while back someone broke into a neighbor’s house. His teen daughter was home alone when it happened. She locked herself in the bathroom. She called her father who was abroad at the time. Whomever broke in tried to force the door open, failed, so they took a few things quickly and left. Teach you family how to defend themselves now.

Believe me that when there’s not a drop of water coming out of the faucet, that’s not the time to go fill up that empty “water bob” you were supposed to fill … when SHTF. Have enough water for a week now. Learn to cook with your food stash now. 

Store what you eat, eat what you store so if there’s ever riots, looting, food shortages or if for whatever reason you need to dig into your food supplies there will be no hard learned lesson or adaptation period.

Whatever important change in your life or idea you have on what you would do, do it now. Trust me on this, if you can’t pull it off today, you won’t when things get worse.

Stop thinking in terms of “when SHTF” and thing of how you will act if things make a serious turn for the worse tomorrow, or right this moment. That’s just life and that’s how real SHTF, the kind that change your life in an instant, hit you when you least expect it.

You Don’t Have To Wait For a Crisis To Use This Book.

As a Prepper you automatically are someone who is realistic by nature and as such a person you surely will come to the realization that no matter how big a supply of antibiotics you have stockpiled currently, they will either run out or be compromised in some way. 

That being said, you will need alternative means of treating any infection that may arise. There are several multi use items that can be stockpiled in your home. The cheapest and most effective must be vinegar.

We could never store all the cleaners that we use on a weekly basis in quantities that would be effective for long term disaster or self-sufficiency. Instead, you can dilute and fortify vinegar to become the base of many cleaners. It can polish glass as well as disinfect.

  • Vinegar can be used to affect pests both in your home and in your garden. It can be used to take care of fleas on dogs, catch gnats and it can be added to a spray for your garden. 
  • Without any special gear, tools or even fuel, you can turn fresh food into preserved food with vinegar. Of course, a little sugar and some onion might make it even better, some salt would help. However, just vinegar will pickle foods and extend their life.
  • You can take care of bothersome moss and weeds by spraying them with vinegar. 
  • Got tools and things that have rusted or rusted together? A few soaks in vinegar can deal with that trust. Just be sure to refresh the vinegar after 8, or so hours. 
  • Vinegar can help with sore throat. You can use it with some salt as a great gargle.
  • For a long time, people drank things like balsamic vinegar after dinner as something that would help with digestion. The added acidity can help break down your food.
  • On the culinary side of things, you can use vinegar as a meat marinade that will help break down tougher cuts of meat and impart flavor.
  • If you use our method to make your own vinegar you will have a raw apple cider vinegar that contains healthy probiotics to improve things like gut health.
  • While the most popular base for tincture is alcohol, you can create tinctures for healing and natural remedies with vinegar, as well.

 

What if I told you this is just one example out of many from a 800+ page book filled with medical, herbal, and traditional treatments in one easy reference? 

Ready to take over, Dr. House? You continuous education is waiting for you here. 

 

The information in this book can be used immediately to improve your health, and expand your treatment options in many areas even if there is never a crisis event for you and your loved ones.

Get this book now. And put it into practice today.

 

P.S. – This is NOT a limited edition. Also, we are not here to scare you with stats. Just remember that your time is limited. So don’t waste it. 

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Prepping is not something you postpone for the future. It is something you design for the present.

Bear with me here. Before you start to think you mistakenly bought a gardening manual, know this; you and your family and survival group’s destiny depends on your soil. If you want to not only survive but be healthy, free of chronic diseases, infections, and reproduce healthy robust children, then you had better pay attention to what I am about to say, it all starts with your dirt.

Your soil, if properly nourished and maintained, will prove to be the “goose that laid the golden egg”, and will feed you through its plants with an unending stream of essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, protein, healthy carbohydrates, vitamins, enzymes, minerals, trace elements, and phytonutrients. God made it possible, our job is to take all of his blessings and use them as they were intended for us, return to the garden.

First of all this entire process by necessity needs to be organic, meaning no artificial fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, or fungicides of any type. No man- made chemicals are to be added to the soil at any time, recognizing that these are poisons and kill the extensive web of life contained in the soil. A soil devoid of life is worthless for nutritional purposes. In lifeless soils it is impossible to grow healthy plants.

SOIL LIFE

Healthy soil is alive and teeming with life of all kinds. Healthy soils contain large amounts of bacteria and fungi that help convert inorganic minerals (which plants cannot utilize) into organically chelated minerals that plants can readily uptake.

That is an important distinction to understand; plants and animals (including us humans) cannot absorb inorganic minerals, except for a very small amount that can be made by the intestinal bacteria.

We can, however, readily absorb organic materials, since they are usually wrapped in proteins that we can absorb; that process of enclosing the mineral in a protein or humic acid matrix is called chelation.

We absorb organic minerals and other organic compounds by eating plants that have absorbed those organic minerals and trace elements from the soil. If soils are deficient in any mineral or trace element, then it is impossible for the plants to obtain them for their needs, and in turn the animals that eat the plants, including us humans, will not be able to get the minerals and trace elements that we need to correctly construct our complex bodies.

ORGANIC MATTER AND SOIL PH

The bacteria and fungi in the soils live by virtue of the organic content of the soil; in other words they live by eating the decomposing organic matter in the soil such as decomposing plants and animals and other microorganisms. If the bacteria and fungi did not do this we would have mountains of dead and decaying plant materials.

You need to supply lots of organic material to help these microorganisms flourish. Other living organisms in the soil such as nematodes, protozoa, mites, springtails, and earthworms also need this organic material to flourish and add to the goodness of the soil.

Some excellent sources of organic matter can readily be made by composting.

As Preppers we should try never to waste any materials, including food that we do not consume, or parts of food discarded from food preparation. All the vegetable matter should be put in a compost bin or compost pile.

These do not have to be elaborate store-bought contraptions. You can easily make a compost bin as I have done with a handful of old wooden pallets and some wire.

Learn to improvise if you want to survive, learn to think outside of the box and you can come up with some wonderful, simple solutions for not only composting but many of the problems that will inevitably arise.

Another easy way to increase the organic content, especially the carbon content of soil, is by making Biochar.

Biochar is made by partially burning vegetable matter of any type then putting out the fire when it is only partially carbonized (looking like coal). This is an ancient method of fertilizing soil that was used by Native Americans to increase the fertility of their soil. It creates a finely grained, porous charcoal that is home to many soil microbes and increases both fertility and water retention capacities of soils. It is a wonderful way to convert garden and woodland waste into a valuable soil amendment.

Biochar is made when wood, bones, leaves, or manure (or any vegetable matter) is heated or burned at low temperatures in a kiln, this is done by limiting oxygen to the process and keeping the temperature below 700 F. The resulting half-burned charcoal-looking material is biochar, and is ready to be added to your soil.

Biochar like wood ash is alkaline and works best when used as a soil amendment on acidic soils. Mixing biochar with compost works best by helping to properly age the biochar and add the fertility boosting effects of compost.

As with any composting system, you cannot use meat, fats, or dairy products, which will ruin the compost and attract insects and mice and other vermin as well as stinking up your house. You can use newspaper, cardboard, fruit, vegetable matter, bread, teabags, and coffee grounds.

Soil can be improved by using a variety of readily available organic materials. As mentioned above, composting is a wonderful idea and will provide you with a steady supply of “ black gold” for your garden.

Other sources of organic materials are

  • coffee grounds (I go to my local Starbucks and they are very nice about providing buckets of their coffee grounds);
  • cover crops such as legumes, buckwheat, and cereal rye can be grown and then gently turned under and buried in the top layer of soil (it is a good policy never to leave your soil bare and open to the elements);
  • dried manure (you cannot use fresh manure, it will burn your plants).
  • Peat moss, wood chips, sawdust, grass clippings, leaf mold, and shredded and composted leaves are all wonderful sources of organic material for your garden; these all will lower your pH and make your garden more acidic.
  • You can raise your pH by the addition of crushed rocks (rock dust), ashes from your fireplace or any wood burning, bone meal, and crushed oyster shells.
  • If you live near the ocean, lakes or any body of water that can be used for fishing you can use dead fish to improve your garden soils. Salt water fish are better than fresh water but both will suffice. Bury any fish or fish parts that you are not eating into your garden; they are wonderful sources for many minerals and trace elements and have been used for centuries to enhance garden soils.
  • Dried seaweed such as kelp is also an excellent source of minerals, nutrients, and phytonutrients such as growth hormones.

The ideal pH of your garden should be between 6.5 and 6.8, which is very mildly acidic. That pH range has been found to be optimal for plants to be able to uptake minerals and other charged particles from the soil. Lower or higher pH levels result in a binding of the nutrients and results in them being unavailable for uptake by your garden plants.

Growing plants in the wrong pH will result in disaster.

Simple soil pH kits are available in any garden center and I would buy several of them to have on hand.  Most soils found east of the Mississippi river are slightly acidic in nature.

Soils that are too acidic can be sweetened by the addition of

  • powdered limestone (lime), which is alkaline and will raise the pH into your target range of 6.5 to 6.8.
  • you can also use wood ashes from your fireplace if no lime is available, which also contains potassium and many trace elements. Do not use more than 2 pounds of ashes per hundred square feet of garden (for those of you who are math-challenged, this means a ten foot by ten foot garden space, or twenty feet by five feet, etc.).
  • Another formula to use to sweeten your soil is to add 4 pounds of lime per one hundred square feet for every one point of pH below 6.5.
  • If you have alkaline soils (which are much less common) you can use sulphur on it to make it more acidic and you can also use pine needles or other acidic materials. e formula for the addition of sulphur to alkaline soils is 1 pound of sulphur per one hundred square feet per each point of pH above 7.5.

And this are just some of the ways of doing it. If you want to find out how to build a healthy soil using:

  • EARTHWORMS
  • HUMUS
  • MYCORRHIZAL FUNGI
  • MINERALS AND TRACE ELEMENTS

Get The Doomsday Book of Medicine today. Just don’t be fooled by the title.

The word doomsday only refers to its size.

Over 800 pages full of practical advice just like this one.

 

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Before you start to think you mistakenly bought a gardening manual, know this; you and your family and survival group’s destiny depends on your soil.

Editors Note: This post is from Gaye Levy. Gaye was nice enough to share this with our readers here. Backup power is one of the most fundamental preparedness items you should have at the near top of your list. This article demonstrates her and her husbands experience with one option that might work for your family.

 

When it comes to understanding electricity, my mind tends to blank out when it gets to the point where I have to determine volts, amps, amp-hours, voltage under load and other terms that are second nature to the electricity savvy.  Let me make it clear that this is not a girl thing or a guy thing.  It is simply that some of us are better at understanding how power and electricity works than others.

In all fairness, in my boating days I was quite familiar with the operation of our house batteries and the inverter.  Using this set-up, I had fresh coffee in the morning and power for my laptop.  Life was sweet.  Although that was almost ten years ago, the lessons learned were simple: don’t discharge the batteries more than 60% and don’t mess with a working electrical system unless you know what you are doing.

Given my own thick head when in comes to all things electrical, I have always considered the prospect of installing a small solar system in my home a bit daunting.  I should not have worried.

HARBOR FREIGHT TO THE RESCUE

A few months ago I was contacted by Harbor Freight and asked if I would like to try out one of their Thunderbolt Solar Kits.  This was not the time to be bashful so of course I said yes, as long as they understood there would be little or no sun in the Washington State for a month or two. Having set the stage, I was sent the following items for testing:

Thunderbolt Magnum 45 Watt Solar Panel Kit
Thunderbolt Magnum 15 Volt Solar Power Panel
Cen-Tech 750 Watt Continuous/1500 Watt Peak Power Inverter
Thunderbolt 12 Volt, 35 Amp Hour Sealed Lead Acid Battery

Harbor Freight Solar Kit (4)

So how did it go?  The first thing I did was recruit the Survival Husband to do the heavy lifting.  Then, together, we decided that we would install the solar kit on the roof of our garage which was angled just right and facing the south.  During the summer months, we should get six to seven hour of sun a day in this location.

We also agreed that climbing the roof was a task for someone younger – a lot younger – so until my brother and my electronics wizard nephew come to visit, we set things up on our upper patio and to heck with the patio furniture.

TIPS FOR INSTALLING THE THUNDERBOLT SOLAR KIT

The Thunderbolt solar kit comes complete with three 15 watt solar panels for a total of 45 watts.  It also includes all of the parts you will need:  a mounting frame, controller box, cables, connectors and even a couple of 12 volt lights that plug directly into the controller box.  Everything is included for a ground level installation.  On the other hand, a roof top installation will require some brackets – something we have not purchased yet.

The installation was simple.  We just followed the instructions in the manual and things worked.  Okay, truth be told, Shelly (the Survival Husband) does not always read manuals thoroughly so he put the frame together goofy and had to start over.  And then he could not find the power switch on the inverter and thought it was defective.  I found it, turned it on and had immediate power.

He did offer up some tips:

When assembling the frame, make sure the top bar marked front actually faces front.  Otherwise you cannot install the legs.

Harbor Freight Solar Kit (7)

There are two sizes of screws with wing nuts.  The bag with eight screws are shorter and are the screws to be used when assembling the frame.

Harbor Freight Solar Kit (8)Harbor Freight Solar Kit (9)

When attaching the three panels to the frame, it is easier to attach the middle panel first.  Other than that, just follow the instructions.

After completing the frame and panel setup, follow the directions by attaching the 3 leads from the panel to the splitter cable.  Add the extension cable and plug into the charge controller.  Next attach the battery terminals (on the battery) to the charge controller to confirm that you are receiving voltage from the solar panels.  There is a large LED display on the front of the charge controller indicating the voltage so that you will know right away if everything is working okay.

You need to use an inverter to convert the power to AC.  In that case, you need to attach the included cables from the inverter to your battery terminals.

Harbor Freight Solar Kit (12)Harbor Freight Solar Kit (14)

The controller box itself, without an inverter, has a 12V cigarette lighter socket, 5V USB, 3-6-9V DC outlets and two 12V sockets for the included light kit.  Note that the USB port is only 5 volts, okay for cell phones, Kindles and tablets such as an iPad but not for devices or electronics that require higher voltage.

The battery is not waterproof so you will need to keep it covered and protected from the elements.

The Quick Start guide is well laid out and intuitive with accurate, easy to understand diagrams.  Plus, all of the manuals are available online so that they will always be handy, even if you lose the originals.

BUT DOES IT WORK?

The first thing I tested was my crock pot.  If the grid was down and I wanted to eat but I did not want to build a fire, a working crock-pot would be a godsend.  It uses just a modest amount of steady power and can be used for soups, stews and even for baking quick breads.  I ran the crock-pot for quite some time with no problems.

Harbor Freight Solar Kit (16)        Harbor Freight Solar Kit (17)

My next test was more challenging – a hair straightening iron. If my hair iron worked, then I not only would look good, but I would be able to re-seal the Mylar bags I opened to get to my stored food items.  Again, no problem.  From there I moved to lighting and to my alkaline battery charger.  Again, everything worked perfectly and I was pleased.

Using the Harbor Freight solar system was almost to easy – definitely a set it and forget it operation although the directions indicate you should not leave a charging battery unattended.

I am not done testing yet. The way these things work is that more batteries equals more amp hours equals more current.  Or, in plain English, more battery juice means you can run more stuff for a longer period of time.  We plan to add some marine deep cycle batteries and a large watt inverter to the basic set up so we can run more stuff.  But for the basics and for now, this system works just fine.

THE FINAL WORD

This Thunderbolt Solar Kit from Harbor Freight is inexpensive if not downright cheap.  But do not let the price dissuade you.  For lighting, small appliances and laptops, this system works great.  It would be even better with a larger battery.  You do not need to be an electronics genius to set it up but if you need help, you can find it online, especially at the New World Solar/DIY Solar Energy Forum.

It is my understanding that folks have tied two or three of these systems together for even more power.  As good as that sounds, it is beyond our technical capability at this moment but we are learning and just might get to that point.

Our goal for now is the get the complete system installed on the roof and to add some additional batteries, probably the marine deep-cycle type.  We will then use the solar to kit to power all of our outdoor security lighting as well as our power tools and and everything else that we have running off of our garage and outdoor receptacles.

This does not apply to us, but I think this would be an ideal backup power source for a well.

 

What do you think? Any of this applies to your household? Let us know if this works. And how it changed your life.

This is just another effort to find the best ways to go all independent and self-sufficient. Your answers or notes are helping all of us to move forward. I hope you understand that.

God Bless.

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Among all the benefits of solar panels, the most important thing is that solar energy is a truly renewable energy source. And there's more.

I know it’s tools day, but if you think of it, so is Epsom Salt. Here’s why.

The wonders of Epsom salt have been well known for hundreds of years and, unlike other salts, has beneficial properties that can soothe the body, mind, and soul.

When applied to the skin via a hot bath or a poultice, the magnesium and sulfates in Epsom salts are readily absorbed through the skin and into the blood and distributed throughout the body. In the brain they will raise the level of serotonin in the same way Prozac and other antidepressants work, but by a different mechanism. This in turn helps elevate moods and leads to calm and relaxation.

Magnesium given at bedtime will lead to a nice, deep, restful sleep. In the cells of the body magnesium helps increase ATP, which is the substance via which the cells produce energy. It will therefore increase energy, stamina, and endurance. Magnesium will help patients who are suffering with stress lower their high levels of adrenaline and thereby decrease the irritability induced by stress. In other words, magnesium helps you chill out and be calm.

How To Use Epsom Salt in a Bath

Fill a bath tub with the hottest water you can stand without burning yourself and then stir in two or three cups of Epsom salt. You must remain in the water for at least a half hour to get the full effect. That is how long it takes for the magnesium sulfate to penetrate your skin and enter your blood.

Note: Be careful on exiting the tub, your legs will be very rubbery due to its relaxing effect. You will feel like you are Gumby! I would also do it right before bed, you will sleep like a baby. Sore feet can be soaked in a bucket with a half cup of Epsom salt, it will soothe aching feet just as it does other muscles. It will also remove foot odors and help athlete’s foot. You can eliminate calluses by using a pumice stone after soaking your feet.

Daily baths will also help lower blood pressure, help migraine headaches, and will help relieve the bronchospasm (tight airways) of asthma. The same baths will also help eliminate harmful toxins from the body. It does this by a process known as reverse osmosis, where it actually draws these toxins out of your body through your skin.

[See: If your meds need refrigeration, read this!]

Any help we can give our overworked livers in detoxifying all of the dangerous toxins that we are constantly exposed to is a big plus for your health. Your body only has a few options for dealing with toxins. It can excrete them by various means such as urine, feces, sweat, and breathing. It can package them in lipids and store them, or it can detoxify them by various biochemical means in the liver.

The longer these toxins wreak their havoc on your body the more harm they will cause. Your body is also more efficient at functioning at its peak when you are well hydrated and well-nourished with the full spectrum of minerals and trace elements, vitamins, and plants chock-full of a whole array of phytonutrients for your body.

You also need to be alkaline. Acid is not your friend; it has to be excreted by your body just like a toxin, or it has to be neutralized. Either way, it is a problem that your body has to deal with. When your body is alkaline rather than acidic, its full complement of enzymes and chemical reactions will work optimally and your body will not have to lose calcium and other minerals in an attempt to help rectify its acidity.

How To Apply Epsom Salt as a Poultice

First you need to fill a large container with Epsom salt and add water slowly to it until you have a paste-like consistency. Then soak a small towel or rag in it and wrap it around the muscle or area of the body that is in harmed from an injury. Leave it on overnight and remove it in the morning, or soak it for an hour or two.

How to Take Epsom Salt Orally

For Adults: Mix two to four level teaspoons of Epsom salt in 8 ounces of water.

For children use half this dose for ages six to twelve.

If no satisfactory bowel movements, repeat the dose in four hours. is will generally produce a very good bowel movement in thirty minutes to six hours.

Do not take Epsom salt orally if the patient has stomach pain, nausea, or vomiting or if the person is under six years old. Also do not use it in someone with renal (kidney) failure. If several doses of it do not work, or if any rectal bleeding occur, discontinue its use. Do not use Epsom salt as a laxative for more than one week’s time.

[See: Treating illness is not for physicians only. Not anymore.]

Using Epsom Salt in Your Garden

Epsom salts will help your garden by providing magnesium to plants.

If you see your plants’ leaves fading yellow, this will help them. Mix two tablespoons of Epsom salt for every gallon of water you use. You can spray it on plants as an insecticide or water plants with it and this will help your plants absorb many of the minerals and fertilizers they need to properly grow.

I also recommend adding liberal amounts of rock dust and/or Azomite to your garden soils.

Some gardeners recommend adding a half cup of Epsom salt for every 500 square feet of garden (a 25 ft. by 20 ft. garden for example). By mixing it in water and adding it to the soil in early spring, this will keep your soil nice and “sweet” or alkaline.

Some plants require more Epsom salt than others. Nut trees such as walnuts, hazelnuts, butternuts, pecans, and others use a significant amount of magnesium and thrive on its addition to their soil. Simply add two tablespoons at the base of each fruit or nut tree in spring and several times during the growing season. is will help them absorb other vital minerals and nutrients and increase their vigor and fruit set, with no harmful side effects.

Some garden plants such as tomatoes and peppers will benefit from two tablespoons of Epsom salt added to each planting hole. You can also add it liberally by adding it to water at two tablespoons per gallon of water and either water the soil or putting it in a tank sprayer and spraying it on the plant leaves themselves through which it will be absorbed readily and utilized by the plants. Later in the growing season you may notice tomato or pepper leaves fading yellow and diminished fruit set; both can be improved by additional feedings.

 

What do you think? Pretty rich right? It is only but a tiny chapter of a whooping 800+ pages book, researched and written by Dr. Ralph La Guardia. If you wish to find out more about the medical powers of epsom salt and way more others common household items that are all a prepper needs to survive when there’s no doctor around, make sure to get this book – an encyclopaedia for the modern prepper, put together over 30 years of direct experience. Get yours here!

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The wonders of Epsom salt have been well known for hundreds of years and, unlike other salts, has beneficial properties that can soothe the body, mind, and soul.

I am finally able to open my eyes. My husband is still sleeping next to me. This is already a special day. Being a doctor, he is usually, well, fighting different stages of bodies giving up on their people. So yes, I am grateful.

What time it is? Did we oversleep? Thank God is Sunday. The church bells helped. Weird to think they do it now with the push of a button. Even Father Jones makes fun of it. Not to mention the kids. Of course, my rebel daughter, going on 17, had to ask – When are they going to replace the priests with robots? And now my 4-year-old wants to go to the church today to check is Father Jones is human or not. Jesus!

Right. The kids.

I hear them going through the kitchen. Fridge door. Microwave. Music on her phone. A game on his. I told them, no phone play before breakfast. I feel like grabbing my phone and sending them a text message, but this would make them win.

Lazy Sunday mornings are the best. I need to get up. Oh, how I wish my kids would already be aware of this world. Or at least aware of themselves. They do not want to hear about prepping. That’s what happens when you take everything for granted. But their morning would look totally different if their batteries were dead. And so was the internet.

But we all know the aftermath of a blackout would be way more terrible than that.

[See: How a simple blackout can disrupt our lives.]

Sounds like a nightmare scenario, doesn’t it? It absolutely is. Yet prolonged power outages are becoming more and more frequent across the United States. Why are power outages on the rise? Because our electrical grid is weak. Weaker than you might think.

I don’t even dare to ask my kids what would they do if there was no more electricity. They would probably tell me that they would be killed by boredom, not by the different diseases that would flourish during such an event.

We got into prepping without even knowing we were doing it. Is started when my husband came home one day and said: “Perhaps it’s time for doctors to start prescribing more produce than pills.” Weird, huh? Coming from a doctor. And he was not the only one thinking this thing should change before it got out of control.

My husband has a doctor friend called Ralph. I’m kidding, he has more than just one friend. And I’m not referring to his Facebook followers. But Ralph happens to be a very respected doctor who recently published a book regarded as The Bible of Prepping According to La Guardia.

He gave us a copy. And just told my husband it was some medical research he was working on for some years now. I later found out it took him 30 years to complete. And once you see the book you’ll understand why. It is a whooping 800+ pages filled with practical advices for the common folk, prepper or not.

I say give this book the chance it deserves. And get ready to change your perspective on plants, soil, health, nutrition, and everything you think you know about prepping.

What if you would have the tools to make your life even greater? What if you could be able to survive and even thrive if suddenly, one segment of our reality would be gone? Let’s take electricity for example. My day would look totally differently without it. What about yours? What would you do if the grid went down? No terrorism, no war. Just no more power. How would you feel?

You can only get this book here. Like really.

Final Prepper is the only distributor. So, you’re in the right place.

It’s your turn now to make the right move.

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My day would look totally differently without it. What about yours? What would you do if the grid went down? No terrorism, no war. Just no more power.

In modern war, you would die like a dog, for no good reason.

Hemingway said it. And he was not far from today’s reality.

We are already at war. We are at constant war. If not with another nation, then we are at war with something else. Since we’re fighting in 7 different countries in this very moment, would you be surprised to find out that the number of fanatics hating us grows exponentially?  

So then it is logic that we will be hit when we least expect it. And where we least expect it. For we are too busy planting our seeds of democracy someplace else, while our own country turns into a demo-crazy.  

Fighting terrorism with real weapons begins to sound a little outdated right? It’s like we discovered solar power but we continue to dig for coal. We could maybe end terrorism online if we really paid attention to how things evolve outside the US. Instead of financing useless wars trying to change people that maybe don’t want to change, maybe we should invest in new technologies. Cyber terrorism is the real threat.

When we used the military, they used some planes. When we used drones, they used busses and trucks. When we close the borders they use the internet.

This is not about Putin. Or the dictator in Syria. This is about the rage of the common radicals. And you should fear people who have nothing else to lose.

We fight them abroad. But they are already here. Remember where the 9/11 hijackers trained? On US soil. Remember what airplanes they used? American. Who’s grid is going down if they succeed? Ours. We are not the only ones taking advantage of technology..

And with the help of our own technology, what they’re planning now is going to destroy our infrastructure, our power supply, and the quality of our water. Imagine how easy would be to kill an entire city if you get access to the grid. And it’s all online now.. So everything that is connected won’t start anymore. Because a blackout interrupts more than the grid.

[See: What to do when there are no doctors around.]

Hard to imagine? You better. For time is running out for all of us.

War is something people used to engage in back in the days, when they didn’t know better. When they were still burning people for not believing in God. Did anything change? How come we ask for maturity and understanding and empathy when we have none?

Do you at least care for yourself and your family?

The time has come! This is not a drill.

Want to stay alive? You need to make an effort.

[ See: How to survive a blackout on your own.]

Truth is, a blackout could happen anyways.

Our grid is older than all of us. Remember the March Venezuelan blackouts? It was like living in the Apocalypse.  And it all started because of the Guri hydroelectric plant, which serves 70% of the country. So you do the math. Three major blackouts in one month. Venezuela was crumbling.

For days and nights, unruly crowds sacked 523 stores in Maracaibo as residents stood on their porches wielding weapons to guard against looters. Dozens died in hospitals. Bodies decomposed in the morgue. And what little food remained in refrigerators rotted away as the nation went hungry.

Should we even dare to imagine what if it was us? Are you ready for such a scenario?

Prepping is not about running to the store in the day disaster starts. On the contrary. Prepping is making sure we have a Plan B, C, etc.

Learn here how to become the household healer when a simple blackout disrupts your life.

There are always solutions for the ones who chose life. 

What are you going to do about it? How prepared are you? Let me know in the comments. We can only do this thing together.

0 Comments

Prepping is not about running to the store in the day disaster starts. On the contrary. Prepping is making sure we have a Plan B, C, etc.