Preppers

After the Apocalypse: What Will You Do Then?

Many Preppers get into the lifestyle of prepping, trying to solve a problem. The individuals and scenarios each person has in mind while contemplating their own unique problem are a different as any can be, but the problem usually is the same. We are all trying to avoid suffering needlessly when we don’t have to. Preparedness can be summed up simply in my opinion. It is the act of taking proactive measures to mitigate the risks to life of disasters. We prepare so that if something bad happens we can be ready to stop it, to avoid it or to live through it. The “IT” is different for each of us. Everyone has their own version of something bad but many preparedness supplies can address the needs of numerous bad scenarios because at the end of the day, prepping is all about staying alive.

Frequently, as we begin planning for those bad scenarios, we envision all manner of horrible problems that we could face with our family. Perhaps the direst and most drastic vision we can collectively focus on is some form of Apocalypse. This is the worst movie plot imaginable, a Mad Max world where it is literally Hell on Earth and survival is pictured as every man for himself. The Road and Book of Eli and dozens of other prepper movies paint the picture so well of a bleak, dangerous landscape. The apocalypse is usually planet-wide and can be the result from many potential factors but the actual definition of what an apocalypse is varies according to every person’s interpretation. Without splitting hairs, we can likely all agree that an apocalypse is the worst prepping problem that any of us can imagine facing.

Some call it TEOTWAWKI and that is a good acronym, but can we have a true apocalypse without it being ‘The End of the World as We Know it’? Could most of the life on earth be wiped out or lost due to calamity without the world coming to an end? Maybe I am taking it too literally in this context, but I am not planning for the end of the world. If that happens, we will all be gone anyway.

But an apocalypse is something that you could still live through, right? At least that is what many of us seem to be prepping for. What could life be like after the apocalypse and why do so many preppers need to adjust your thinking about the probable facts of life we all plan on living through.

So you lived through the Apocalypse, now what?

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Let me start out by saying that I may be just as guilty of thinking the way I am going to address here as anyone else and frequently, my thoughts on prepping tend to evolve or shift with something in the news. I have been known to write on the same subject from a couple, maybe contrasting viewpoints and I just chalk that up to some of the duties of writing a prepping blog and learning like so many others as I go. I don’t have too many prepper ideas that are set in stone and have been known to change my thinking occasionally.

Case in point is this one. Most of my preps to date have been what we should realistically categorize as short-term preparations. I have an amount of food stored up and the means to grow my own going forward if the conditions are favorable, but I am not guaranteed food forever. I have water stored up to last me through short-term emergencies and methods to collect and treat additional water in virtually limitless capacity provided it rains, but that doesn’t guaranty I will always have water. I have shelter options, a suitable amount of weapons and ammo stored, first aid supplies and medicine enough to last a while and knowledge in the form of books to teach myself or others a plethora of skills should I choose to read them, but all of those things guarantee nothing. I have prepping supplies but what does all that mean?

You may be thinking that all these supplies I have are meaningless if they are swept away in a house fire and you would be right. You may be saying to yourself, well that just proves that stuff is irrelevant; skills are what you need to focus on for survival and I can see that argument too, but everything above assumes that the situation will never change.

Life will keep moving after the Apocalypse

Preppers seem to be planning for these big problems in our lives that we can foresee coming down the road. I have talked openly about an Economic Collapse but I still think that even globally that would not be something we could say was an apocalyptic event. Whatever event you think could bring on that Mad Max scenario, war, famine, plaque, global warming, solar flares, earthquakes, meteor strikes, our preparations are at best going to last a short while. If you are amazingly prepared and also very fortunate, maybe you will live a couple of years after the unknown event has wiped out most of society. But what then?

Too often I talk to commenters and even other prepping bloggers who seem to have the thought that all we have to do is live through the initial chaos of our apocalypse problem and then we will be free to live out our lives in peace. As if we just need to survive the initial die off and then everyone left will be the ones ‘who were prepared’. Do we assume that the ones who were prepared will be free to just go back to farming our land? I don’t see this happening in history at all and even if it does, the initial period will likely not be months or years but decades. Are you prepared to survive on your freeze-dried food for that long?

Do we assume that the ones who were prepared will be free to just go back to farming our land?

Two thoughts I have on this are that first of all, it won’t just be the ones who were prepared that survive. It will be those who want to survive that live and many preppers will die just as quickly as those who weren’t prepared at all. Give me a desperate individual with nothing to lose and put them up against a scared neophyte with a basement full of supplies who believes in their own superiority without any practical training and expertise and I would bet on the desperate individual every time. The most well-armed ‘prepper’ in the world is nothing without the will to shoot when necessary and the good fortune not to be shot in the back first.

The second thought is that people throughout time have formed communities and eventually those communities need more resources. When they need more resources, that usually means that they have to expand their territory. If someone is in the way, there could be conflict. Where there is conflict, usually people die. Life in the apocalypse won’t be any different. Eventually you will need to form up with a larger group unless you are living in the trees or a cave somewhere. You can’t expect to just while your days away in peace and happiness growing a small garden and tending to your livestock while your solar power generator charges each day and allows you to watch your DVD collection that was stored alongside the DVD player in your Faraday cage forever.

Prepping isn’t a permanent solution

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Preppers sometimes seem to have the attitude (and again, I have been slightly guilty of this myself on occasion) that we will by nature of our preparedness survive longer than anyone else. Perhaps that may be and many steps of preparedness certainly place us in a better position to do so in most situations, but nothing is guaranteed in life.

Prepping in my mind gives us an incredible advantage that many people don’t have, but it isn’t a superhero suit. Our prepping supplies don’t imbue on us any magical charm that will keep bad things from happening and even if we do outlive most people we are simply back to square one in a new game. When it comes to anything resembling apocalypse, your preparations if you are lucky will allow you to live for a while longer, but there won’t be any rest at that time. You will just advance to the next round and hope your planning, skills and preparations can continue giving you advantages over the next person.

As preppers, we need to be equally concerned about the other side of the disaster, not just making it through it when we are talking about Apocalypse. We need to plan not only on surviving, but rebuilding. What remains to be rebuilt will depend on the disaster I guess. In an apocalypse, it will probably be everything from our local level on up. This could take a huge amount of time and even if we make it to some rebuilding period, life as we knew it won’t ever be the same. We should all look at our prepping supplies, skills, plans and strategies as tools we hope to use to get us to that place where we have another opportunity to survive.

Prepping is a great lifestyle to practice and it has benefits from simple run of the mill problems to end of the world as we know it scenarios, but it is not a solution in and of itself. Prepping gives you a leg up, but you still have a part to play. There will still be difficulties even if you do make it through and knowing that going in may better prepare you when you come out the other side. Hope I see you all there.

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Many Preppers get into the lifestyle of prepping, trying to solve a problem. The individuals and scenarios each person has in mind while contemplating their own unique problem are a

Get Home Scenario

You are at work. You are 60 miles from your home and have one major obstacle (river) in between your house and work. Your work location is an office cubicle with a couple of file cabinets and a desk in a mid-sized city and you work on the second floor of the building. Your home is on 8 acres in a rural location about 30 miles outside of the closest urban built up area and there is a major city about 1 hour away that does not affect your routes home but can become an issue if the overall situation worsens. Choose any crisis situation, EMP, Civil Disturbance, Riots, Major Natural Disaster or total collapse. It does not really matter what happens, but you need to get home as fast as you can due to the deteriorating situation. The power is out at your office and people begin panicking.

You gather your level 2 kit (Get Home Bag) from under your desk. Double check that you have your Level 1 kit (EDC) on your person and you make your way to your Toyota 4Runner out in the employee parking lot. It is on the ground level of a parking garage attached to your building. You arrive at your vehicle and place your GHB (Level 2) behind your seat on the floor. You open the back of your vehicle and get some water and food to place up in front for the drive home which you think will be longer due to the traffic and detours. You also do a quick visual check of your Level 4 kit (Vehicle) you have in a small action packer container. Also, inside your rear cargo area is a tool kit with repair items for tires, hoses etc. Including an air compressor, extra tie downs (ratchet straps and 1 inch tubular nylon), a case of bottle water, another smaller container (food) with protein bars, tuna fish packets, etc. You added some tools to your kit in the last few weeks, a set of bolt cutters (small and large) and a Stanley fat max utility bar. On the back of your SUV you have a spare tire with 1 x 5 gallon fuel can.

Your Get Home Scenario Begins

As you start your SUV and prepare to drive out of the parking garage you realize that everyone is trying to exit and there is a small traffic jam on the first floor. You adjust your planned exit to use the entrance instead and it looks like some already have done the same since the drop arm barrier is broken off. You exit the garage and begin to take the most unused side streets to make your way north out of the city. Lucky for you it is not too far until you will have a couple of route options for the drive home. Since you planned your routes based off your Area Study you did when you moved out in the country, you are prepared. You have your Garmin GPS working along with a good city map and compass to keep you going in the right direction as you make detours to avoid being stuck in congestion. You decide to take a risk and use an unknown alleyway between two tall buildings. You take it cautiously, as it makes a left hand turn and you realize that the way is blocked by a 7 foot wooden fence just short of an empty side street. You stop and cut the engine, look and listen for a few minutes. Exit your vehicle, you get out your Fatmax utility bar and a folding handsaw, move to the fence. You pry off the 1 x 6 sturdy boards that make up the fence and cut the cross 2×4’s and the 4×4 post supporting them. You don’t want to pound on them to attract unwanted individuals or ram through it with your vehicle and maybe damaging your radiator. You know the width of your SUV and in 5-10 minutes of prying and cutting you have an opening. You exit the alleyway onto this side street which is on the outskirts of the city but you still need to go north to get closer to home.

You look at your map and make a decision to get away from the city as soon as possible but it will take you a little out of your way from your planned routes. So you adjust your plan accordingly. You need to make a security halt and do a good map check, so the first chance you find a concealed location in the country you take an old logging road that is overgrown and pull off into the trees. Again you look and listen after you turn off you SUV. You get out and do a quick look around your immediate area. Now you need to plan another route to one of your planned routes home. You noticed there is a power line easement that will lead you to the rail road tracks and the train bridge that crosses that river on your primary route. Good, so now you take a look at your vehicle to make it is good, tires, no leaks etc. While drinking some water and eating a protein bar you make marks on your map as reference points. You then take a quick look down the logging road where you came and are going to make sure no one is there, then start your SUV and head north to that power line easement.

As you come closer to the easement you decide to drive slower and through the woods to enter the easement not at a known junction just in case people are in that area. As you are driving through the pinewoods you hear an audible pop and stop. You noticed that you have a puncture in your tire now. It is a solid stick poking into the sidewall near the tread. You shut off the engine and look and listen. You get out the air compressor and tire kit and plug the hole with 2 large plugs. You add air to the tire and continue on your way. Since the easement can be a natural line of drift for people walking or even driving like yourself, you take precautions by stopping before this danger area and taking a look. It looks clear and you are hoping most people are still stuck in the city or on the roads. You drive more aggressively along the established dirt road along the power lines. This road has been used by the power company’s maintenance vehicles so it is some what maintained. You notice you have to cross a hardball paved road up ahead, so you take the necessary security precautions. But as you approach the paved road on foot, you noticed it has a cable across the dirt road on both sides of the hardball road. This cable is attached to wooden posts and prevents you from easily bypassing it. So when you return to your vehicle you get out your large bolt cutters and have them ready. You cut the cables on both sides of the paved road before you cross it with your SUV. You again drive aggressively to make as much distance you can from that paved road.

You approach the railroad tracks cautiously and move up to where you can see the train bridge. You use your binoculars to see the other side and notice it is identical to this side. No obstacles to prevent you from driving across it. You scan the area for people or threats. None, so you adjust your vehicle straddling the left track and drive across the bridge. Once on the other side you look in your rear view mirror and noticed some movement in the trees behind you. All of a sudden your back window is shattered as you hear several gun shots. You drop off the tracks onto the side of the railroad embankment to avoid more rounds. You see an opening in the trees on your side of the tracks and noticed it is another dirt road. You immediately turn left onto it and drive fast to put distance between you and the ambushers. You also try to maintain your location on the GPS and map. It seems you are now in one of the many state game lands that stretch between your work and home.

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Your vehicle is having issues and you realize your fuel is almost empty. So you turn off the dirt road and pull up in a security halt and take a look at it. You come to the conclusion that a round pierced your fuel tank. As you look through your Level 4 gear and repair tools you realize you don’t have a plastic fuel tank repair kit yet. So you begin to improvise a plug out one of the thick branches, but no luck. You take in your situation by determining your location and the distance to home. You realize it should take you until tomorrow night to get home if you have to walk. So you begin to prioritize your gear/kit. You have your Level 1, your Level 2 (GHB) and your Level 4 (vehicle). You know need to take items from your Level 4 kit to augment your Level 1 and 2 Kit. You adjust the items in your GHB to accommodate the extra items from the Level 4. Primarily food and water, then Medical and Technical. You also take into account that there is a threat to your rear and want to make sure you have the extra mags for your EDC pistol. As you are getting this all together, you hear noises and movement back on the road where you turned off. So you expedite your departure from your vehicle. You move out quietly but rapidly to continue to put distance between you and the ambushers. You regret leaving your vehicle and some gear back there to be found but your family is the priority and you have extra gear at the house.

As you move, you look for a good defensible hole up site to work out your routes. You find a thickly vegetated knoll above a draw you just crossed and decide to hole up here for a short rest. As you look at your Garmin Etrex you pulled out of your GHB and the USGS Topo maps you packed in it, you calculate you have little over 30 kilometers to home. You know you can walk 4 MPH on dirt roads with 50 lbs, so if you did this walk accordingly, it would take you 5 hours on a straight line. But this is not on a road and it is not a straight path. When you include the possible threats and known threats you have to reduce your speed, move slower, take more security halts, use different directions, etc. You look at the time and it will be about to be dusk or EENT (Early Evening Nautical Twilight). As you plan the route, you know you can stay off any roads and natural lines of drift from here on out. You determine you should be home after dark tomorrow night. You check your signal devices in your GHB, you have a section of VS-17 Panel, a strobe light with IR cover, GMRS radio with extra batteries, Red lens flashlight and your cell phone. You already made your initial text to the wife when you departed from work. She received it and marked the time you departed. Knowing your plan and how long it should take to drive, she would expect you to be home in a couple of hours. But that is not going to happen. You try another text to update on your movement plans, but no signal. You are too far to use the GMRS so you turn them off and save the batteries. She knows to begin checking the cell phone and radio on the hour for 15 minutes once you fail to make your arrival time. You continue to move toward home.

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You pick up and move out to the north avoiding all danger areas as much as possible. For the first couple of legs you do extensive counter tracking to make sure the ambushers do not follow your route. It is pretty dark tonight since the illumination is low. The moon is waxing so it will increase each night. You planned your route using as many hand rails as possible. Making sure you establish a good attack point and backstop for your RON positions. You arrive at your first RON position just after midnight, it took you about 6 hours to move almost 4 miles closer to home. You moved at a tactical pace of 1 kph through the woods under the cover of darkness. You hole up for the night and plan on moving out before first light. You have about 16 more miles to get home and you want to get there in just as many hours. At a pace of 1 kph you know you won’t be able to make that distance in 16 hours, so you plan on moving at a faster pace for part of your movement tomorrow.

It is 4 a.m. And you are ready to move out before it gets light. You replenished your water last night from a small creek about 300 meters from your hole up site. You travel the rest of the day without any more problems from people or terrain. You managed to gain time on your route by using handrails along a railroad track that was heading in your direction. You made sure you stayed off the tracks a good 100 meters but maintained visual of it as you moved rapidly through easy terrain with less under brush. It is getting dark now and you know you are a few miles from your house. So you stop in a security halt and try to establish communications with your wife, your cell is not working still so you give the GMRS a try. You broadcast a couple of times at the top of the hour. You wait and hear her respond and you let her know how far you are out, from what direction you are coming and that you will give here a night-time signal for link up. She acknowledges it all. As you approach the clearing that is behind your house, you observe it for anything unusual. Seeing it is clear, you turn on your radio and establish common again with her. Your primary night-time signal, an IR strobe light for her to acknowledge. You have one set of NVGs and she has them at the house. You wait for her to acknowledge what she sees. But nothing….So you switch to the Alternate, a red lens flash light with 3 flashes. She sees that and comes across the radio with what she sees. You confirm and you arrive at your door. After the greetings, you realize you never taught your wife how to turn on the NVGs. But she defiantly knew the alternate signals.

Conclusion: As I try to detail in this scenario, you must have a flexible plan. Be prepared to change and adjust it according to the situation. Your kit levels aid you in maintaining the flexibility and ability to adjust and resupply on the go. Continue to maintain forward progress and avoid having to double back unless you have no other choice. You are dealing with time, distance and contingencies so having a good PACE plan to help you is crucial. The other part I try to emphasis is not everything goes according to your plan. If you rely on other people in your plan, make sure they know and understand it thoroughly. When it comes to special equipment, make sure everyone knows how to use it. Las note I want to make, ensure you cover all possibilities with your vehicle. Now some things you won’t be able to fix, but leaks, hoses, fan belts, etc are fixable on the road if you have the right things on hand.

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You are at work. You are 60 miles from your home and have one major obstacle (river) in between your house and work. Your work location is an office cubicle

SHTF Survival Options – Indoor Gardening

As a prepper you may have stockpiled all sorts of food items, and you probably know how to grow your own food crops. You may be so skilled at gardening that you have an abundance of fresh vegetables in the summer, and you preserve much of what you grow for winter consumption. Congratulations, you’re well prepared, but have you given any thought to fresh vegetables in the winter months? You probably haven’t, because you can get those fresh (sort-of-fresh), from your local grocery store. In a SHTF situation, you may not be able to get those sort-of-fresh items. You can forget about having a crisp tomato slice, fresh lettuce, or a crunchy carrot, just to name a few of the things you’ll have to do without.

If you have a south-facing window, or better yet, a sun-room, indoor gardening can be the solution. Where window space is limited, you’ll have to decide which crops to grow, and which you can do without. Personally, I’m a tomato nut, and I love the heirloom varieties. I’m fortunate to have a sun-room, where I can grow full-size plants. If you’re not so fortunate, and love tomatoes, don’t despair. Dwarf tomato plants might be the answer. Red Robin is one such dwarf plant. It can be grown in a small container, and is about 14 inches tall when fully-grown. Each plant produces clusters of cherry-size tomatoes (about 1 inch in diameter). For a tall window, consider a PVC tubing frame and wood planks for shelves. The goal is to place as many plants as possible in direct contact with the sun when window space is limited. Plants placed farther from the window will not get adequate sunlight. You can supplement artificial light for sunlight, but I’m assuming a grid-down situation where alternative electricity is limited or non-existent.

If you’re able to provide artificial light, light in the warm spectrum (3000k), encourages flowering, while light in the cool spectrum (4100k), is best for vegetative growth. If you don’t want to mix bulbs of various k-ratings, then 5000k bulbs would be a good choice. A bulb with a k-rating of 5000 is considered one that simulates natural sunlight. Do not use incandescent bulbs, as their k-rating is in the neighborhood of 1200. Most of their energy is used to create heat. A fluorescent tube may be the best choice, since it can cover several plants at the same time. Place the light source as close to the top of the plant as possible. It’s helpful to be able to move the light source, or the plants, up or down to facilitate all stages of plant growth. Providing adequate light to tall plants can be a real challenge. Some growers deal with that problem by creating a “wall of light”, but then we’re getting into an electrical consumption issue. Perhaps the best solution in a grid-down situation is dwarf plants, where many can be placed next to a window, or where one fluorescent tube will cover a row of plants. The use of mirrors or aluminum foil to reflect natural or artificial light is also beneficial.

Indoor Kitchen Gardening: Turn Your Home Into a Year-round Vegetable Garden – Microgreens – Sprouts – Herbs – Mushrooms – Tomatoes, Peppers & More

For each type of plant, you’ll have to make sure that the conditions are right. Tomatoes, for example, like cool nights followed by warm days. The soil must be warm, but cannot exceed 76 degrees, or the plant will not set fruit. I start seeds in cups, with holes in the bottom, and later transplant them into larger containers. I use good quality potting soil, and I sterilize it before use. I prefer to allow water to soak in from the bottom, rather than watering at the base of the plant. Watering at the base of the plant can cause a fungal condition known as damping off. I like to simulate outdoor conditions as much as possible, including the use of an oscillating fan now and then. The air flow not only helps with pollination, it puts a strain on the stems, helping them to grow strong. Humidity in your growing area should be 50 per cent or less, to avoid fungal problems. With tomatoes, you don’t need bees or other insects for pollination. A breeze from a fan, or shaking the stems containing the flowers will do the job. I spray the leaves now and then with water, to simulate the cleaning effect of rain.

Perhaps the most difficult part of winter growing will be controlling the temperature. If the grid is down, providing heat may be a problem. Hopefully, you’ve given some thought to the solar electric system I described in a previous article “Living Comfortably When the SHTF”. You’ll need to determine how to provide enough heat, without exceeding the electricity-producing capacity of your system. An ordinary space heater would consume too much electricity. My solution is a rectangular box, eight inches tall, with 2 sixty-watt light bulbs inside. I’ve connected the light bulbs in series, not parallel. The bulbs burn dimmer, but the energy consumption is reduced to only 30 watts. I use a heat-deflector inside the box, and the amount of heat produced is surprising. You might also consider a dimmer switch and incandescent bulbs, for an adjustable heat source. Holes in the side of the box provide an air inlet. Holes in the top of the box facilitate the delivery of warm air to the plants. I place the container plants on top of the box, on a series of shelves. I’ve also enclosed the plants and heater in plastic, to keep the warm air in. On warm days I remove the plastic. But remember, plants need carbon dioxide. A well-sealed growing enclosure may result in a carbon dioxide deficiency. Night time temperature drops (not below 50 degrees), are actually very good for the plant. Learn about growing condition requirements for each of the plant types you intend to grow, and for each cycle of growth. For many plants, the temperature requirements are not as critical as they are with tomatoes. A digital thermometer is a good tool for an indoor gardener. Periodically check the soil temperature. A moisture meter is another useful tool.

Caution: If you decide to make the heating device I described above, don’t neglect safety. Run-off water from over-watering your plants may create a shock hazard.

I mentioned Red Robin earlier, and I’ve had great success with that, but perhaps you want a larger plant, one that will give you a decent-sized tomato slice. Larger fruit comes from larger plants. If you have the room, consider Sub Arctic Maxi, New Big Dwarf, or Sophie’s Choice. These can be grown in containers, and are not as large as garden-variety tomato plants. I mentioned Sub-Arctic Maxi not only because of the size of the fruit, but also because of its ability to grow and set fruit in cool conditions. I’ve grown Sophie’s Choice tomatoes measuring in excess of 2 ½ inches. Seeds are available through on-line sources.

Red Robin can be successfully grown in a 6 inch or 8 inch diameter container, but the larger varieties would benefit from a 12 inch or larger container. Production will suffer if you under-size the container. It’s more difficult to keep up with watering, and staking can be a problem, when the container size is too small.

Build your own DIY Greenhouse

Tip: When growing tomatoes in containers it may be tempting to over-fertilize. After all, if a little is good, a lot must be better, right? Wrong! Too much nitrogen will result in lush plants, with little or no fruit. Be sure to get the right fertilizer, and follow the instructions. I prefer a kelp, or kelp/fish-based product. I also like to use humus, the result of composting, as a soil additive. I use “compost tea”, as a sort of “home-made” organic fertilizer. To make compost tea, fill a large container with finished compost. Add water, and let it stand overnight. Strain the liquid, and it’s ready to use.

Tip: Plants tend to bend toward the sun. Rotate plants occasionally to keep them growing straight.

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To be perfectly honest, growing tomatoes in the winter months is not worth the effort in my opinion, because I can simply buy them from my neighborhood grocery store. But imagine a situation where all of your vegetables come from cans. Imagine day after day of canned food, all winter long. From that perspective, indoor gardening makes sense to me. I decided not to wait until the SHTF to see if indoor growing was possible. After a few missteps, I succeeded. I now have everything I need, most importantly the knowledge, to succeed at indoor gardening. My efforts included saving seeds from successful indoor crops, because those are the seeds best suited to indoor growing. Along the way I learned about the amazing health benefits of wheatgrass, and how easy it is to grow indoors. If you don’t care to grow anything else I’ve mentioned, you should still consider wheatgrass.

If you usually start an outdoor garden with plants bought at Wal-Mart or your local hardware store, you may not have that option in a SHTF situation. In that case, you’ll need to start your garden from seeds. For many plant varieties, starting seeds indoors is beneficial. I hope you find the techniques I’ve described here helpful in that endeavor.

Once everything is in place, indoor gardening is not hard, or time consuming, but success or failure depends on how well you understand, and follow the rules. If you do the research, it’s likely that you’ll find more negative comments than positive, but remember this: Articles are often written by great writers who happen to be poor gardeners. Just because someone else is unable to successfully grow tomatoes indoors, doesn’t mean that you can’t do it. When I read an article about gardening, I ask myself “does this appear to be written by someone who has actually tried, or by someone who is book-smart”? I’ll trust the one who’s actually tried, every time.

In the event that this article is well-received, I’ll consider a “Part 2”, providing more depth, and covering topics not discussed here, including common problems and solutions. How to grow the best-tasting tomatoes is also something worth writing about.

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As a prepper you may have stockpiled all sorts of food items, and you probably know how to grow your own food crops. You may be so skilled at gardening

EDC During SHTF and Why “Tacticool” Might Just Get You Killed: Part I

In the first video clip, Eddie Murphy as Detective Axel Foley spots two men entering the club wearing long black trench coats, which is seemingly an unassuming choice of clothing aside from one fact which the erstwhile detective points out: it’s June and a long black trench coat wouldn’t be a typical clothing choice for the hot Beverly Hills sun (which is where the movie is set).

WARNING: The first video clip is NSFW; it is a scene in a strip club and there is some objectionable language and risqué imagery in it; to minimize this, stop watching at the 1:30 mark, as the point I intend to make with the video has been demonstrated by that time in the clip. If you find the clip wholly objectionable, I would advise you to skip it and watch only the second clip, which will still demonstrate the point I want to make without any such issues.

In the second clip, CIA assassin Jason Bourne notices that another potential CIA “asset” is there to track him down and probably kill him. When his girlfriend Marie asks him how he could possibly know that simply by looking at the man, he says that “everything about him is just wrong.” He enumerates what is “wrong” about the man relative to the location and culture that they are in; that in Goa, India (where the scene is set), where few people drive cars, this man has a car, and a nice one. In Goa, India, where there are few Westerners and few wearing Western clothing, this man, a Westerner, is wearing Western clothing (albeit very low-key and suitable for the weather) and sunglasses, which VERY few in Goa will wear.

The second clip is fairly clean, but involves some close-up goriness if you watch it to the end. To eliminate that, stop watching at the 1:15 mark, as the point I intend to make with the clip has been made by that time in the clip. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Now, what relevance does this have to a prepper/survivalist who is going to go through an SHTF scenario? I would argue that, while few non-prepper/survivalists will have the observational acumen of a detective or a CIA operative, the “traditional” perspectives and attitudes on prepping/survivalism leave PLENTY of room for hordes of desperate and opportunistic non-preppers/survivalists to take advantage of the observational oversights that preppers/survivalists are prone to. What do I mean by this exactly? Well, I have observed that there are two primary viewpoints that preppers/survivalists hold that non-preppers/survivalists would take advantage of.

These main thoughts are either:

‘my community has fallen apart and we are living in a WROL (Without Rule of Law) world. I’m most likely going to be the best armored/most well-armed person still left in town and I’m gonna bug-in anyways, so I can just jaunt down Main Street all decked out in my LBE/tac vest with ammo and everything on, an AR in my hands, a 9mm strapped to my waist or leg, and a big knife and maybe a tomahawk tucked in my belt and if any mugger wants to mess with me, well, they’ll regret it,’ or
‘I’m bugging out and no one knows where my BOL (Bug-Out Location) is, so I can go on minding my own when I get there, doing my daily chores with my AR strapped over my shoulder and my 9mm and a knife in my belt and no one will be the wiser and if anyone DOES want to mess with me and mine, they’re gonna wish they hadn’t!’

Now, while noble-sounding, this line of thinking actually makes one very vulnerable because of the tendency of preppers/survivalists towards the practice of “tacticool,” that is to say, the practice of preppers and survivalists decking themselves out in the most top-of-the-line mil-spec-oriented gear and assume that it’s a good idea to walk around with it about town, leave it in your car for anyone in your car to see, and take pictures of it to put on social media. Whether you realize it or not, people are developing ideas and perceptions about the gear that they see you photographing, carrying, and/or wearing. Given the relatively “stable” nature of the present day, those thoughts are more likely to be something like ‘Oh, that’s a cool bag. I wonder where he/she got it. Hmm…I wonder what he/she puts in it.’ However, if you change the circumstances and put people in a catastrophic SHTF scenario and they see your gear, I’m willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that their thoughts are more likely to be something like ‘they have stuff, they’re prepared, GET THEM!’ Just as the car and sunglasses and the trench coats made individuals stand out in the video clips, so to will that piece of tacticool gear make you stand out and more than likely make you a target for the desperate and unprepared.

While I could probably find myriad examples of the proverbial tacticool gear, I will focus primarily on three examples, to which I have already alluded to, and the correlating problems with each in a SHTF scenario: the tactical vest, the tactical pack, and weapons.

The Tactical Vest

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UTG 547 Law Enforcement Tactical Vest

The inherent problem with the tactical vest is that it says as much as you DON’T want it to say as it does what you DO want it to say. Ostensibly, what you want a tactical vest to say is, ‘I’m ready for whatever combative situation comes my way, and I’m a tough nut to crack. Don’t mess with me!’ However, what it ALSO says is, ‘I have stuff and I’m ready for a fight.’ Now, on the surface, this may not seem like a terrible message to telegraph, but one has to also think about the implications of the messages that he or she advertently AND inadvertently telegraphs. While you may wish to telegraph a message of strength, you must also consider just to what degree you can back up that message. Anybody seeing you and taking note of the messages you send with your tactical vest may very well just decide to ‘up the game’ with more firepower than you have or more hostiles than you can reliably defend against. How many can you reliably defend yourself against? 3? 4? 6? More? What if you are traveling or living with others, others who may not themselves be armed or know how to fight?

Now, considering all of the tactical variables that one has to think of if there is an inadvertent ‘invite’ to a confrontation, would it not be wiser to keep a lower profile and avoid unnecessary confrontation altogether, a means which could be achieved by avoiding the tacticool piece of equipment that is the tactical vest? I leave it to you to decide.

The Tactical Pack

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5.11 Tactical Rush 12 Back Pack

Anyone who has been in the prepper/survivalist circle for any reasonable amount of time has probably already been made aware of the risk that is the tactical bag. The primary disadvantage of the tactical bag is just that, that it looks tactical, or more appropriately, tacticool. The major problem with that tacticool look is that, in this day and age, people take one look at it and IMMEDIATELY are prone to think, ‘prepper.’

While that MOLLE-bedecked pack gives you a warm fuzzy feeling that you’re ‘ready,’ it also tells that opportunistic vulture who wasn’t ready for SHTF, ‘Oh look, one of those prepper, survivalist nuts. Hey, this person’s bound to have some great stuff that I can use. Let’s just knock them off and take their stuff.’ It’s not whether you can take that person (or that person’s buddies if they’re there), but whether you can afford to have that person (or other people later on) have that impression of you and continuously have that kind of ‘target’ on your back. Can you? I leave that to you to decide.

Tactical Weapons

The last item that I want to focus on briefly is weapons. Now admittedly, weapons are a much more manageable element of EDC during SHTF because you can choose how you carry weapons, either concealed or open-carry. However, things may not be as clear-cut as walking down the street with your sidearm strapped to your thigh like you’re the new sheriff in town. Now, at this point I think more than any other in this article, I’m sure that there are plenty of readers who are thinking (maybe even mouthing to their computer screens) ‘this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of, you can’t go out with NO WEAPONS! You can’t got out without ANY show of defense! You can’t make yourself a target like that!’

You’re right, but I am NOT advocating going out weaponless; I am merely warning against going out kitted out like you’re ready to win World War Three all by yourself. As mentioned above, that only encourages would-be thieves to up their game against you, wait until the right moment, then take you out when they have that tactical superiority. I would put it to these readers: would it be better to face one or two people who run into you on the street who think that you might be an easy mark being that you are not well-armed, only to be shocked and surprised in an alley when you pull concealed weapons on them, or to show your hand from the beginning with the tacticool look with all sorts of weaponry, only to find yourself visited later by seven or eight equally well-armed individuals who have chosen the place or circumstances of a potential fight which will put you at a disadvantage?

Another consideration is what condition any semblance of ‘law enforcement’ exists in the SHTF scenario. Again, I think that the common assumption that it will just be a WROL situation and that everyone will be free to open-carry as they please. I would suggest that this will not be the case…at least not everywhere. Whether it be still by elected officials or by vigilante gang, I would contend that in many places, some semblance of ‘law’ will still exist. As such, rules about certain types of weapons and certain types of carry of weapons needs to be considered. If you get your weapons confiscated for open-carry where it will not be allowed, then what good did all that weaponry do you?

So then, I bet that the first logical question rolling off of the minds you, the reader, is something like, ‘so if I’m not gonna wear a tac vest and I’m not gonna carry a tactical bag and I’m not gonna be carrying a bunch of obvious weapons on my person, then just what the heck am I gonna do with all my gear, and where the heck am I gonna put it?!’

Well, in part 2 of this piece, which I will be cranking out soon, I will address those issues!

The video clips below can illustrate several different points which will be important to the prepper/survivalist community, but the point that I want to focus on in this article is that of appearances during a potential SHTF event.

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In the first video clip, Eddie Murphy as Detective Axel Foley spots two men entering the club wearing long black trench coats, which is seemingly an unassuming choice of clothing

Thoughts About Prepping from an Ole Fart

Let me earn the right to have you read my article, by telling you a little about myself.

I am a 75-year-old grandpa of five Wonderful Grandkids. Born, January 17, 1941 as a great-grandson and grandson of pioneers who came west by covered wagon in 1875. I was raised on the family homestead, located on the Palouse Plateau, just north of Moscow, Idaho. The Palouse has some of the richest farmland in the U.S.

My parents and grandparents lived through the Great Depression as people of the soil, meaning we were essentially early grid joiners who used the land for our livelihood. Electricity was established in 1936, phone service, (crank phones.) approximately 1938. No refrigerators or ice boxes or super markets or, or. The closest town, Garfield, Washington, was 6 miles away over twisty, curvy, muddy or dusty dirt roads; with huge mud holes in spring and fall. We were often snowed in for weeks at a time in winter.

Everything we ate had to be grown and preserved off the farm, during the summer. All repairs had to be done on sight, using material at hand, because a trip to town was a half day affair. The closest farm machinery dealer was 9 miles away in Palouse, Washington. I have a degree in Architecture from the University of Idaho; although I spent all of my work life as a test technician in research and development, working for a major truck manufacturer.

When You think of prepping, what is Your mind-set? Do You think of something that might happen maybe in the future? Is the, “Boogeyman,” going to come and steal all of Your stuff?

Prepping is a state of mind

For me Prepping is a state of mind: being prepared for today and tomorrow, and maybe for the future. Look at Your situation right where You are right now and ask Yourself a few questions. You could maybe divide the questions into categories: Man-caused; economic or maybe war – or Natural; earthquake or weather or even cosmic.

If I couldn’t work, how would I live? Do I have enough set aside to get through until I could work? How and what will I eat? Drink? Keep warm? Is my living situation secure? My cousin sells used trailers and motor homes. He sells 3 to 4 units a week to homeless people. My Bride and I just returned from a trip, traveling up the California coast. I didn’t count, but I bet we must have seen 50 to 75 vehicles parked off out-of-the-way, dusty, covered windows; people living in them. Since 2008, millions have lost their work and can’t find a replacement job.

What skills do I have? Can I repair a broken whatever? Can I find out how to repair a broken whatever? How do I find out? Where do I look? I am not suggesting You become a brain surgeon, but I do think spending a little time sitting at the dining room table maybe disassembling a simple hair dryer you purchased or picked up at a garage sale is a great practice. Maybe going on to Google and seeing if You can find information on the process. Learning what tools are needed.

Ask Yourself any question about any situation.. Am I ready? If not, how can I get ready??

You see, it is a mindset.. It is putting Yourself mentally in a situation and seeing if You measure up. It is deciding to spend some time in research, study and practice, instead of whatever society deems necessary for Your attention; whether it’s sports, entertainment or politics, or, or.. If You tell Yourself, I don’t do that, or I can’t do that;; then You will probably become part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

We live in the age of information, but that information is only useful, if You internalize it to the point to where You can call on it and use it if necessary.

The next big earthquake might hit right in the middle of the 3rd quarter… are You ready?

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Let me earn the right to have you read my article, by telling you a little about myself. I am a 75-year-old grandpa of five Wonderful Grandkids. Born, January 17, 1941

Prepping for a Winter Crisis! – Blizzard of ’77

When you live in an area of North America that is prone to blizzards, you must take it seriously and prepare accordingly. The Blizzard of ’77 is a prime example of why you should be prepared. We live in Southern Ontario, and it crippled this area and Western New York state. Although I did not live through it first hand – my entire family did! Their stories have shaped my desire to be prepared in case this was to ever happen again. These stories were passed down to me through parents, coworkers and grandparents, as I was not born yet.

The Blizzard began the last week of January, 1977. My dad said they closed his high school as soon as the blizzard was in full swing. He recalls walking home on top of the snow and passing by peoples’ chimneys. That’s how high off the ground he was from the accumulated snow. He told me he was actually one of the lucky ones. He heard later that in neighboring towns they didn’t close the schools early enough and children were stuck there for days! Everyone’s power was out for days, and the stores were wiped clean within hours of the first day.

A coworker told me she was stuck in her house with her baby that was less than a year old, and she ran out of milk. There was absolutely nothing she could do about it. Other people tell me they were stuck in their vehicles in the freezing cold, no one could get to them. There were no cell phones at this time. You were stuck there until someone found you. If you left your car, you risked freezing to death in the elements. All of Southern Ontario and Western New York was declared as a ‘state of emergency’ by the government. Police, Fire and Armed forces were called in to help from neighboring communities to supply food, water and medical aid. My Grandmother’s friend tells the story of her whole family huddling in the kitchen with the gas stove lit for warmth. They shut all the doors and hung blankets in open doorways just to keep the heat in the room they were in.

When a crisis like this hits, emergency services are limited. There is only so much they can do when there is 5-8 feet of snow on the ground. If they can’t get to you, they can’t help you! This is why it is so important to have emergency supplies at home and in your vehicle. It could save your life. You have to take the safety of your family into your own hands, and be prepared for winter. At the bare minimum you should have a candle and lighter, a blanket, a few food items, a flare, basic first aid kit and a supply of water in your vehicle at all times. Some people also like to have sidewalk salt/sand on hand, as well as a collapsible shovel… you may just be able to dig yourself out if you have the right tools. I have personally had to use the salt/shovel combo many times!

My parents told me that the people who had generators and snowmobiles were the best off, and they were actually helping with the rescue mission of getting others out of their buried cars. It was the only suitable mode of transportation during the storm. The cars were completely buried in the snow, you could not even see the tops of them. My family witnessed people driving right over top of buried vehicles.

If you live in an area prone to any type of storm you should have a generator and gasoline stored away, at the very least. Living without power, when you are not accustomed to it, is not fun!

People nicknamed the Blizzard of ’77, The White Death. Many people died from freezing to death in their cars, having heart attacks from shoveling snow etc. People had frostbite on their hands and feet from being out shoveling for hours so that they could actually get out of their houses. Most people don’t think of snow storms as being deadly like hurricanes and tornadoes, but they can be if they are severe enough! It is imperative to have stored food, water & medical supplies in your house in case you are snowed in and cannot leave! You may not only lose power, your water may be turned off, or you may have to deal with pipes bursting. So be sure to have an adequate amount of water to see you and your family through several days. There are actually articles on this site that help you figure out how much water and food to store for the size of your family. It is not that expensive to stock up on a few survival necessities, and you will be so thankful that you did if you ever faced a natural disaster.

Some of the bare necessities may include, but are not limited to:

Extra blankets
Food that is easily prepared if you have no electricity
Water
Medical Supplies to treat wounds
Extra pet food
Baby Supplies (if you have one) Diapers, Food, Formula
Tools
Generator/Gasoline
Flash Lights
Candles and Lighter
Games/Toys to pass the time
Shovels and Salt
Snow blower (especially if you are over 50) the combination of heavy lifting and extreme cold is very hard on the heart, many people die every year in the North from Heart Attacks while shoveling snow.
Snow gear – Hats, Gloves, Scarf, Boots, Winter Coat, Snow Pants and even snow shoes if you can get them
Seasoned, chopped wood if you have a fireplace

If you happen to be stranded outside when the snow storm hits try to find the closest building for warmth. If you do not have that option there are many videos on YouTube that instruct you how to stay alive in a blizzard. They are informative and practical.

One of the most important parts of prepping for a natural disaster of any kind is having the knowledge and skills to carry you through hard times. It is also important to never have the attitude that ‘oh that will never happen to me.’ A natural disaster can strike anywhere, any time. Mother Nature does not discriminate.

Hope this helps someone prep a bit for the coming winter! It will be here before we know it!

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When you live in an area of North America that is prone to blizzards, you must take it seriously and prepare accordingly. The Blizzard of ’77 is a prime example

The Preparedness Wheel: At-A-Glance Balance Check for Readiness

There’s a little tool called a health wheel I learned about as a victim’s advocate forever ago. Another variant is called a wellness wheel. They’re not complete and total bunk since they can help keep our lives more balanced, but the real reason I bring them up is that as soon as I saw one, I immediately thought of the preparedness application. It’s not about the mental and emotional health. It’s about the balance. When wheels are balanced, we roll much more smoothly through life’s up and downs. Converting a wellness wheel to a preparedness wheel gives us an easy visual of where we’ve concentrated our efforts and if the rest of our preparedness needs and goals are in balance.

Anybody who’s dealt with a broken wagon wheel or a bent or flat bike, cart, or dolly tire can tell you how much harder they are to deal with. In preparedness, leaving one wedge of our wheel empty while another bulges can have serious implications – like watching crops and gardens we were counting on fail for lack of the pest control we usually buy, or having whole bedrooms of firearms and ammo but watching them disappear because we had a lack of smoke detectors and fire control mechanisms.

wellness-wheel

Health & Wellness or Happiness wheels can be found in many formats, but all were designed to help people self-assess the balance in their lives. The same can be applied to preparedness to ensure we aren’t overly concentrating on one aspect while ignoring another.

Working in stages isn’t a new concept. Tweaking a health or happiness wheel into a Preparedness Wheel just allows us to visualize our progress, increasing the chances that we truly are well prepared for the small stages, and haven’t wasted time, money and space for lack of focus on another area
Potential categories for our Preparedness Wheel include:

food
water
hygiene
security/home/property defense
self-defense
cooking
heating
lighting
cooling
refrigeration
food preservation
generator(s)/power
fire prevention & control
evacuation/Bug Out
home repair & maintenance
childbirth or child growth
medical & first aid
vehicle repair & maintenance
flood control
garden seeds/tools/supplies
livestock & feed/meds
pet supplies
entertainment & recreation.

Some of them lend to being grouped together for easy comparison. Some have less direct impact on each other. Some things like basic tools might cross between categories and thus rate their own wedge. Whether we want to only track physical items or want to include training and skills development is just one of the ways we can tailor a wheel to our own uses.

preparednesswheel

We can tailor our wheel however we want – to include only supplies, or the skills we’ll need to use them. We can also create separate wheels for all phases of preparedness – like the skills we want to acquire – so we can visualize our progress.

One of the reasons we’d use a preparedness wheel instead of just a list is that it allows at-a-glance progress evaluation, like other pie charts. That means the items on it do need to be measurable. Those measures can take place in our heads, however, or on a list. If I wanted to include a wheel for my dairy produce use, I might start with an add-a-dollop yogurt or cheese, and my progression toward 100% might be harder, more difficult, longer-storing cheeses made from powders or homemade rennet.

Customize your preparedness wheel to the best fit for you

Modifications to this are endless. There are reams of variants of the health and wellness wheel it’s taken from – no reason our spinoff can’t be the same. Go wild.

Make your preparedness wheel four or six primary wedges if inclined, and have other wheels that represent each of those categories in more detail.

For example, I could call it food & water, security, health & hygiene, and interactions. Then I could have a wheel of however many wedges to represent things like: stored foods in days or weeks or by pound, livestock and their various produce, livestock feed, my garden and crop seeds, tools and equipment, my stored water, various water treatments, and the sustainability/backups for my water plan(s). I’d have another wedge to represent each of my other categories as well.

At some point, just making a checklist or Excel/Access doc for the nitty gritty is going to be easier, but you can use those to generate charts as well for visualization and balance in preparedness. For example, my goal is to have no more than 20% of my dry grains be represented by either wheat or corn. As I add various grains and potatoes to my “starches/calorie base” category, I can run a chart to see where I stand with each of my types to keep to those levels.

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We can use any number of wedges that we’re comfortable with to develop our own preparedness wheels.

Use a clock template to create twelve wedges quickly and easily. Instead of dividing each wedge into ten to create a percentage, make it twelve there, too, to represent a month of total needs in that category.

Dividing by weeks or months can be especially beneficial in keeping us balanced when it comes to food and the ability to prepare our foods. I will say it as often as I can: It does me no good to have 1-3-6-12-18-36 months of beans, grains, and pasta, 2 weeks of water, and 10K rounds of ammo (unless I also have a well or walkable-distance water source). I can just soak and use passive solar to turn a lot of grains and pastas into something consumable, but there are some things (kidney beans) that really do need to simmer, and if part of my plan is eating my hares or chooks or the abounding small game I’ve bet my survival on, I have to be able to cook them. A trash can of charcoal, a couple of five-pound fuel tanks, five gallons of lamp kerosene, and a shoebox of candles is not going to get me too far, especially if that’s also my heating and lighting fuels.

I also have to be able to have clean enough hands not to be giving myself diseases and having my hard-earned supplies running right through be, and to be able to treat myself should that misfortune occur.

The flip side of that, however, is to keep our wheel from overbalancing the other way, and some of that comes from honest self-assessment. Do I honestly have enough food that I need to cook to invest in timber axes and saws? Do I have enough water to merit diving that way?

Honest self-assessment is vital to how we assign priority even in the food and fuels example listed.

tools

If I have acres of woods for a family of four, firewood and the tools to collect it are a worthwhile investment.

If I have acres of woods for a family of four, firewood and the tools to collect it are a worthwhile investment. If I live in a suburb with condos on the other side of a 40-foot-deep stretch of woods, I might want to hold off on turning myself into Paul Bunyan and plan for more foods that don’t have to be cooked at all, because others are going to knock on my door or take my wood pile or tools. If I have my target 20 acres but it’s grass pasture and flat farm, with only tendrils of woods and thickets between me and the next and a few fruit and shade trees near each house, I might invest in propane, charcoal and salvage wood instead of planning to compete with the neighbors for those tendrils and trees.

The wheel lets us keep that balance between our food and cooking fuels, just like other aspects of preparedness.

Big Benefits for Beginners

Going the other way, especially for beginners, consider letting the progressive rings or tick marks represent days and make it 7-14. Then make another where the levels represent weeks. Take a relatively quiet day and set a weekly time to fill it in. Sometimes actually seeing the progress helps not only with balance, but with motivation. Beginners – especially those who feel locked in by jobs and living spaces – sometimes feel totally overwhelmed or even worse, inadequate or incapable of ever reaching the levels of the people they’re reading posts and comments from. There’s no reason for that and this version of a pie chart can help mitigate it by making sure that the comparison most at the forefront is against a reasonable goal.

Read More: Prepping 101 – A Step By Step Plan for How to get Started Prepping

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to strive for sustainability, the perfect homestead the perfect distance from the perfect small but accepting and tight-knit community in the perfect climate. However, no Olympian ever popped out of a womb ready to challenge for the gold. They wormed, they crawled, they toddled, they walked, they ran, and then they kept running and training until they were running their trials and winning on the national stage.

We work in increments, ideally in balanced increments, and eventually we get there.

When the Balance Gets Badly Off

Some things just aren’t going to work for a weekly or monthly wedge, which is where having our targets written down and using the percentage-based measure comes into play. The wheel is not intended to suggest that there should be a one-for-one stockpiling of aspirin, canned beans, candles, tarps, ammo, and bandages, and that’s where filling in a wheel with percentages can help. Even so, there are priorities that shift.

beans-bandaids

Beans, Bullets and BandAids….

I want my wheel to roll smoothly. I have this goal for a full companion animal and human dental and surgical suite, biohazard containment, and decon setup. Percentagewise, my goals might be in the neighborhood of $5-10K and nearly at zombie-ready at 60 percent. However, if 60 percent of, say, my food storage, is only 4 months … Would I be better served just to be able to handle standard first aid, sprains, a loose filling, stomach illnesses, everybody in the house to have a 10-day flu, and allergies, and applying the budget to becoming more financially resilient or bringing in the equipment/supplies to decrease my irrigation needs?

A lot of medical is like that, even beyond the fact that post-surgery dressing and bandage needs are enormous. Another common category that doesn’t always work out well purely by percentage is ammo and security.

Security is much like medical. There are some things we are each going to decide are far more important than the wife’s tampons for another month or a week of doggy chow. Other things … maybe not so much.

Firearms and ammo, however, we might assess a higher priority because we can’t manufacture them ourselves, and expect that they’ll disappear from stores way, way, way faster than plumbing connections for water barrels, chickens at the Human Society/ASPCA, baking soda, socks, or hammers and roofing paper.

Those are cases where we might be better served by assigning an outside priority rating. We’d like X amount of food, Y amount of water, and Z amount of other items before we increase our ammo stockpiles or pick up backup parts for something. We make note elsewhere, or we can assign a bare-minimum level to compare to the rest of our chart instead of our ultimate goal.

Exceptions to Balance

There are some exceptions to balance, as mentioned. Another exception is personal or family crises. These include things like injury, job loss, and big bills. They also include the loss of power or water during daily life.

Those are times when we could easily foresee grabbing some paper plates and a few small solar chargers so Moms can still have music while she makes dinner and phones can stay charged, and where we might have two weeks or three months of groceries without also planning to have enough water and fuels to cook, clean, and wash up before and after those meals.

Our goals for those aren’t quite as far reaching as a hurricane evac with four dogs, three kids and two horses where we’ve made arrangements to camp at a farm 150 miles inland, or any of the major events various preppers foresee. They might exist as a separate lists, since we’re not looking at being as utterly dependent on ourselves and our supplies as a big event. Since it doesn’t take as long to reach those goal (or involve as much memory of what we do and don’t have yet) there might not be as much benefit to a visual tool like the wheel.

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There’s a little tool called a health wheel I learned about as a victim’s advocate forever ago. Another variant is called a wellness wheel. They’re not complete and total bunk

Stock Your Bunker: Common Necessities You May Have Overlooked

While many want to avoid the pitfalls that come with Murphy’s Law, not many know the origin of the famed mid-20th century adage.

As the story goes, Capt. Edward A. Murphy prevented a potentially devastating mistake from happening at Edwards Air Force Base by a technician and muttered, “If there was a wrong way to do something, the technician in question would find a way to do it.” This utterance has evolved into the adage many of us know today: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” At the completion of the project, the project manager attributed its success to “avoiding Murphy’s Law.”

In a sense, all prepping and survival work is an attempt at avoiding Murphy’s Law, and to successfully circumvent the ever present threat of what can go wrong, you have to stay two steps ahead in planning.

When stocking your hideout bunker, anticipate every need that may arise in a state of emergency or natural disaster. Every good prepper knows you will need food, water and first-aid supplies, so let’s skip ahead to some of the supplies you may not have considered to help you counter Murphy’s Law. What you do now before an emergency happens to stock your bunker or even your home could help you survive.

Potassium Iodide Tablets

A rather frustrating aspect of prepping for a full-on disaster is that you really don’t know what type of disaster may be coming your way. In the event of nuclear fallout, it’s crucial to have a plan for surviving radioactivity. Explosions from a nuclear source generate massive amounts of radioactive iodine. In this scenario, potassium iodide tablets may be your only hope.

The Secure Home – If you want to build your own bunker, this is a great resource.

Upon learning of the explosion, take one of these tablets immediately, as they can protect your thyroid from radioactive iodine, which causes cancer. Once radioactive iodine is airborne, you run the risk of inhaling or ingesting it. But if you consume the tablets before or immediately after exposure, your thyroid will be flooded with potassium iodide, thereby reducing the risk of your thyroid absorbing the toxic element.

The tablets are fairly in expensive and can be purchased over the counter at any drug store or online.

Five-Gallon Buckets

If the disaster at hand is not nuclear, there are still items for survival you may have overlooked. Sure, it’s gross to think about, but where exactly do you plan on going to the bathroom in a bunker? Chances are you won’t have any indoor plumbing, but all members of your survival party will eventually have to go “see a man about a horse.”

Five-gallon buckets have other uses for storage and transport, but no other purpose is of as much importance as substituting for a toilet. Be sure you also have trash bags on hand to line the bucket in order to minimize the mess when it comes time to empty the latrine.

You can find them at your local hardware store.

Old tires have a lot of uses if you are creative.

Spare Tires

Not only are heavy-duty tires necessary to keep your wheels in motion, but they also have many applications within the bunker as well. Tires can easily be fashioned into tables and chairs, and can serve as an excellent material for barricading doors. If the stack of tires is thick enough, it can withstand or ricochet certain shells in the event of an attack. Stock up early from an online retailer like tirebuyer.com.

Don’t let Murphy’s Law take you by surprise. If anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, then be sure you have the supplies you need to deal with it. As another popular adage goes, “Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.”

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While many want to avoid the pitfalls that come with Murphy’s Law, not many know the origin of the famed mid-20th century adage. As the story goes, Capt. Edward A. Murphy

What Are You Afraid Of?

What are you afraid of? These are the words that I hear often from friends, strangers and the media. What was once normal has become “absurd” and self-reliance is now seen as “fringe” behavior that either needs to be legislated out of existence or shunned in public. In some cases prepping is a sign of radicalism that needs to be viewed as potentially deviant social behavior.

There are many reasons to prepare and the motivating factors behind each individual’s decision process change with the event or scenario you are preparing or “prepping” for. There are those who are planning for an EMP attack that would wipe out all or part of our electric grid, others for a global pandemic or a currency collapse. Some families are preparing for more organic threats like hurricanes or snow storms or even something as relatively normal as the loss of a job. Regardless of the reason, the logic behind preparing is sound. Maybe some of the scenarios to prepare for are a little far-fetched in terms of probability – but the main goal, to be prepared to take care of yourself and your family – is valid, logical and in this day and age rare. When did it become crazy to want to be able to protect and care for your family if something bad happens?

As I write this the world appears to be not so slowly trudging toward events that could dramatically affect our lives for generations. Our world economy is in shambles and the pieces are lying in a pile on the edge of a metaphorical cliff while the “experts” speak of recovery. Governments are seizing power and reducing liberties in the name of safety. Our health is in jeopardy with viruses, genetically modified food and resistant bacteria. How could anyone not be at least a little concerned with what the future holds or think from time to time about where we are headed? I believe that each person has a gut instinct or an awareness of what is happening around them. Some are more in tune with this awareness and others are choosing to block it out entirely.

For me, this awareness for lack of a better word started to become more prominent around 2008. There was no event that triggered any type of awakening but a lifetime (still relatively short) of seeing events in my life certainly influenced me. My personal history didn’t have anything catastrophic in it, but I was aware of tragedies – even just natural occurrences that ripped lives apart. I wasn’t concerned in the least about Y2K, but I did hold my breath just for a second at midnight on Jan 1, 2000. Earthquakes, Tornadoes and Hurricanes are easy to ignore if you don’t live in areas prone to that type of calamity but it does make you wonder. Ice storms and floods seem to cause similar havoc so you can understand in most cases the perspective of someone you know who has been affected by some type of event that disrupted their lives completely.

What if a hurricane Katrina type of event happened where I live? What if an ice storm cut power to our house for three weeks? What if I lost my job? What if there was a gas-shortage or a trucking strike and I couldn’t get food from the grocery store? What if my bank closed and all of my money was tied up and unavailable to me?

When I started to think about things in this way as the “What if?” type of scenario I looked around at my own personal situation and realized just how in trouble we would be if anything like this happened. We had no spare cash. Our food in the pantry would probably last a week if we were lucky and in the end it wouldn’t be the best meals we could think of. Spaghetti sauce and Black olives anyone? We didn’t have any backup power, no backup heat, and no stored water. We did have a gas fireplace, but what if the gas went out or the lines were broken? We routinely ran our tanks in the cars down to E and we didn’t have any money on hand not to mention our savings weren’t really that significant either. Loss of a job would quickly get us in a bind.

So I started doing research and beginning to list all of the things I would need to be completely prepared for whatever happened. I started reading blogs and books from one side of the spectrum to the other. From people who discussed growing a few tomato plants to full on bomb shelter plans with castles and moats (my own personal favorite). There is so much information and opinion out there to digest. Like others, I started to buy a little more food and water, obtain firearms and make plans for how to protect my family just in case something happened. We have come a long way since 2009 but we have a ton more that we need to do. Nobody can prepare for everything but covering as many of the bases as possible will help you out more than it hurts.

My hope for this blog is two-fold. I want to inform and inspire people to prepare for whatever you feel is most pertinent to your situation. I also want to help people learn from my mistakes and trials and learn from your stories as well. Every day we will be posting news, articles, reviews and advice on Prepping. I hope to be able to cover all of the topics with enough variety and a little humor so that finalprepper.com will become a resource you visit daily. Thank you for visiting and I look forward to starting down this road with you.

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What are you afraid of? These are the words that I hear often from friends, strangers and the media. What was once normal has become “absurd” and self-reliance is now

Why Preppers Need To Make Rugged Individualism Popular Again

When we think of rugged individualism, we might think of men like John Wayne in old-time Westerns or we might think of places like Fort Worth, Texas, where the idea of rugged individualism was a way of life for the cowboys who lived there. What has happened to the American psyche? Why has the idea of rugged individualism, a strong mind, and a noble character become unfashionable? Today our politicians whine about how bad things are because the very infrastructure of the country that built the first modern transcontinental railroads in the world is crumbling faster than we can raise the money to put it all together again.

Today, we seldom think of the fictional courage of John Wayne or the real life mental strength of the hardcore men who drove cattle in the state of Texas. John Wayne has faded into a parody of the cheesy plot lines of early Westerns and while Fort Worth is still called a cow-town by tourists and locals, it’s best known as a place where Hispanic and Latino youth habitually abuse illicit drugs. Here is how Greenhouse, an AAC facility, describes Fort Worth:

“The rate at which this demographic abuses illicit drugs is high, especially among youths — Fort Worth’s most at-risk demographic. Between 2008 and 2011, past-year rates of illicit drug use among Hispanic and Latino teens rose by 20 percent, with marijuana use alone rising by 25 percent and ecstasy use by 36 percent.”

What America needs to be great again is not more disingenuous promises of reform made from political platforms or more media spin about how certain nations, ethnic groups, or religious persuasions are out to get us. What it needs is mental strength, rugged individualism, backbone, and character.

The Importance of Mental Strength

How important is it to be mentally strong in the face of disaster? How should you as a prepper overcome the things that hold you back like addiction and mental illness? What does it take to build your character before you hit a crisis? These are questions we seldom ask ourselves. If there should be an economic meltdown tomorrow because the national debt is $19.3 trillion and European Banks are in deep trouble, it is a collective return to character building alone that will help us maintain morale in a crisis.

When you are courageous, you realize that waiting will only make the situation worse, that now is the best time to take action, and that you are the best person to resolve the pressing calamity.

The 3Cs of Mental Toughness

Mental toughness can’t simply be defined as machismo, which is more an act than an actuality. It’s much more complex, perhaps a combination of courage, confidence, and commitment.

Courage – No one is born courageous. It’s not a gene some of us inherit and that others miss out on. Instead, it’s a learned behavior. Courage is taking proactive action despite shaking in our boots. Courage is the assumption of inner strength from facing the reality of difficult circumstances before you. It’s about reaching within even when the situation seems hopeless.

A well-known image of courage comes from Shakespeare’s King Henry V. When the young English king was addressing his small army of knights and archers to stand up against the overwhelming number of heavily armored, battle-seasoned French knights at the battle of Agincourt, he advised them to “Imitate the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.”

When you are courageous, you don’t run and you don’t hide. Instead, you face the situation without panic because you believe you can do what needs to be done as soon as possible. When you are courageous, you realize that waiting will only make the situation worse, that now is the best time to take action, and that you are the best person to resolve the pressing calamity. Although you still feel fear, you don’t let it stop you. Instead, you use it to strengthen your resolve. You don’t crumble in the face of obstacles, but feel resolute in the face of a challenge.

Building confidence doesn’t happen as a giant leap of faith in yourself, it happens in small steps.

Confidence – Confidence does not come naturally to us. Throughout our lives, we have been criticized far more often than encouraged. This is why confidence is more like a muscle than an innate tendency. We build confidence by taking small steps in the right direction. Small steps may seem trivial at the time you do them, but they will help you make incremental improvements. Small steps lead to small successes. These tiny victories build up, slowly creating a permanent change in your self-appraisal.

Building confidence doesn’t happen as a giant leap of faith in yourself, it happens in small steps. These small steps are tangible. These small steps are like each sure-footed ascent up a steep mountain. Each small step eradicates a chunk of self-doubt while each act of courage and commitment eradicates a piece of irrational trepidation. It’s wise to celebrate each step to lock it into your memory.

Commitment – Without commitment, nothing happens; with it, anything is possible. Enough said.

If America is to save itself from chaos, it has to stop listening to talking heads who merely express canned political agendas. Instead, it has to reach back into its deep past to a time when courage, confidence, and commitment were a way of life. You as leaders in your family and community will be forced to take action one day. To step out of your comfort zone and act. No one knows now the time, place or situation you will be faced with, but we are all pretty much assured that day is coming. Are you ready?

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When we think of rugged individualism, we might think of men like John Wayne in old-time Westerns or we might think of places like Fort Worth, Texas, where the idea

Adventure Travel and Operational Deployment Equipment List

I am always being asked for my advice about what equipment should be taken on trips to out-of-the-way places. My initial response is to take as little as possible. The more you know, the less you need right? With the below items you should be able to operate for extended periods of time. The below items should fit into a medium size day sack that should be able to carried onto a plane.

Items like pocket knives etc. would need to go checked or found at location. This is a guide and not all these items will be required on all trips, do your threat assessments and plan all trips properly before you travel.

Operational Deployment Equipment List – Personal kit

$500.00 USD minimum in cash, small bills, to be split up, water proofed and concealed in various locations on your person. Same for credit and bank cards.
Communications, will cell phones work, can you get local phones/chips? Remember chargers!
Day Pack and fanny pack/belt pouch
Watch
Pocket knife & multi-tool (unable to take as carry-on luggage)
Personal first aid kit: tampons, gauze, duct tape, bobby/safety pins and antiseptic cream.
Water bottles + purification tabs (water can be boiled in steel alloy bottles!)
Bug juice + sun block
Maps (water proofed) and compass
At least one Flashlight + spare batteries (headlamps are great alternatives)
Lighter
Personal water filter
Bogota lock picks, lock shims & diamond/needle files
Para cord
Duct tape
Wash kit: tooth-brush + paste, soap, razor
Sewing kit
Smoke signals + flares (unable to take as carry-on luggage)
Blanket (poncho liner)
Poncho (for shelter and use as a rain coat)
Note book and pens and post-it notes
Laptop
Camera/Video
Emergency power, batteries or solar etc.
2 X extra pants (quick drying) and long sleeve t-shirts (under-armor type, Wal-Mart brand works, consider colors, do you want to be seen or not!)
At least 2 X pairs of extra socks
Boots (broken-in), flip-flops
Gloves and Balaclava (if tactical)
Weapons if legal and required
Local laws on use of force

Additional Considerations

Sources of food and water
Accommodation and electricity
Laundry service
Where can you change currency
Additional operational equipment

Emergency Vehicle Kit

Gas containers
Tube to siphon gas
Fix-a-Flat X 2 and/or tire plugs
Tire plug kit
Portable air compressor (Tire inflator)
Jump leads (Jumper cables)
Tow rope

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I am always being asked for my advice about what equipment should be taken on trips to out-of-the-way places. My initial response is to take as little as possible. The

The Best Way Home: SHTF Route Planning

Imagine it’s 1:15 on a Thursday afternoon. You and some friends at work have recently returned from lunch and you are settling back into work. As you are going about your daily responsibilities, the Emergency Broadcast System starts to blare over a coworker’s radio. Normally you would ignore this, but you also get an Emergency alert message on your smartphone. Funny, you could swear you had disabled those but it says that there has been a terrorist attack in Los Angeles and urges calm and promises more information soon. You start walking out of your office towards the break-room and notice everyone crowded around the TV when the power goes out. Looking down, you notice your phone isn’t working either.

Making for the nearest window, you notice that vehicles on the road have stopped, seemingly right in their tracks. Could this be an EMP? Not wanting to overreact, you take the stairs and walk out to the parking lot. You try your key fob but that doesn’t work either so you use your key. A quick check of the ignition and you realize your car isn’t going anywhere either. Slowly your co-workers validate the same with their cars and you start looking at the possibility that you will have to walk back home. Unfortunately for you, you work 72 miles away from home.

It’s one of the more common problems us preppers try to figure out. What is the best way home as quickly and safely as possible when SHTF and you are far away? I had a reader ask me the following question:

My husband works 75 miles from home. My greatest fear is that disaster or SHTF will happen while he is at work. I would like to start planning for how he might get home, but don’t know how to begin figuring out what is the best route. Most posts (here and elsewhere) on the subject are about get home bags and what equipment to have with you, but not so much about planning the actual route, other than to stay off major highways. Would like to hear the pros and cons of sticking to roadways, crossing private property, what type of maps to consult, etc. – Zendelle

I always appreciate questions from our readers and I will try to give my thoughts about this subject as I have considered this myself. So without any further ado…

What is the best way home during a SHTF event?

There are so many factors that come into play when you are talking about a situation like this. How far away are you? What is the weather like? What region will you be traveling through? Are you in an urban environment or rural? What type of shape are you in? Do you have other people, like children you have to consider? Are your two youngest in school or daycare? What type of clothing and footwear are you wearing? What time of day are you starting out?

Each person is unique and our situations are also unique so there are no firm and set rules for anything but I have given this some thought. At one point in my life I commuted 90 minutes each way to work. It was 77 miles’ door to door and getting home in that type of scenario I mentioned above would be no picnic for anyone. To be really prepared, you have to imagine walking home in the heat of summer or the bitter cold of winter.

For this hypothetical, we will assume that there really has been some type of national catastrophe. Maybe an EMP attack from a rogue nation or terrorist cell has disrupted all modern electrical appliances. Virtually everything electric has shut down and you have precious little time, a couple of days tops to make it back home to your family before the chaos really starts.

road

To be really prepared, you have to imagine walking home in the heat of summer or the bitter cold of winter.

Before you take the first step: What gear do you need to consider?

I know our reader mentioned that most people only talk about Get Home Bags when this topic comes up but it is worth spending a few sentences here on how best to equip yourself before this even happens.

Get Home Bag – Having a get home bag in your car will be an important step in the right direction so to speak. I won’t get into what you should pack in your get home bag, but we do cover all of that in several articles on the subject. You can read our post about putting together your Get Home Bag.
Proper Footwear – Flip flops belong at the pool people! My children are guilty of this too, but if you are forced to walk home, what are you going to wish you had on your feet? Sturdy footwear like hiking boots or at least good athletic shoes should be one consideration.
Dress for the elements – Dress like you will be spending all day outside not sitting in a cubicle. Regardless of the season, have appropriate clothing on that will protect you from the elements, especially if you are going to be further than an hour’s walking time from home.
Food/Water/Shelter – You should have at a minimum, a container that will hold water, a way to filter water, some form of emergency shelter and food. You don’t need a four-course meal to survive, but something to keep your energy up. Think power bars or protein bars. Survival rations work too and won’t go bad in the car.
Protection – Do you have some protection from two-legged animals? I always have a personal firearm, but Tasers and bear spray are options too that are better than nothing.
Maps – And the knowledge of how to read them. These can be simple street maps, you don’t have to have topo maps of the entire region. You can grab the road atlas out of your car before you head out.

Planning your route and the alternate route home

For the commuter who drives to work, I would imagine that each of you have already mapped out the most efficient route to your place of business that you use virtually every single day. We get into a routine because we found a way that works. It’s usually the most direct, fastest way to get where you need to go. I even go into autopilot some days on the weekend and start driving my work route even when I am not going that direction. These habits can be a good thing in one respect.

specialreports

each of you have already mapped out the most efficient route to your place of business that you use virtually every single day

Commuters who use trains or buses follow a similar route. The trains go into central spokes normally that would mimic a commute via car. None of us should really worry about the normal route we take back home as long as we know the roads we would take if public or personal transportation was down. With few exceptions, the highway system is going to be the quickest way we can get back to our home city. Highways level out hills and go around natural obstacles. However, what if the route you normally follow has been blocked? What if you travel through less savory parts of town that you wouldn’t normally want to be walking down the street?

Identify your primary, secondary and tertiary routes home – In my case, working 77 miles from home, I was likely looking at 2 to 3 days of hiking to make it back assuming I did not encounter anything that made me need to alter my course. Most of my commute was interstate highway so I would have simply followed that route. However, if that didn’t work out, I could cut back on a smaller highway that would have taken me on a much more rural track to the South back home.

Depending on how people were reacting you could run into rioting or looting in some areas. I would have been walking on the highway through several major population centers that might be best avoided. I don’t think I would ever cut across someone’s property unless there were strong benefits and low risks that I perceived from doing so. Going cross-country, without the benefit of a road can slow you down and may even bring on injury more quickly as you could have to navigate natural obstacles like streams, dense underbrush, rocks, etc. The last thing you want to do is injure your self and make walking more difficult or even impossible while you try to shave 20 minutes off your trip.

alternateroute

Having more than one route back home can help you avoid dangerous areas.

Rather than having a specific route I am taking, I would consult the maps I store in my car to decide which ways I would alternate if needed. I would go to the south of the major urban areas if I sensed any danger but I would still be staying on paved roads that were common thoroughfares.

Pros and Cons of various routes

In the example above, does your normal route take you through urban areas you would rather avoid? Has the disaster already started to make people act irrationally? I think that most of us even in the scenario I described above will be able to count on average people thinking that nothing is wrong. The power will come back on because it always does. Food will still be available and there will still be items on store shelves. You should be home way ahead of any actual panic, but sometimes it’s better to be safe than sorry with your route. I don’t think anyone would be barricading streets the first or even third day after the lights go out.

Are you carrying three days’ worth of water on you or are their sources you can tap into along the way. Assuming you have cash on hand you will likely be able to purchase it from stores who are likely still in operation as the Normalcy bias takes over for most.

What factors do the weather play?

Adverse weather could seriously impede your progress. Walking on snow or ice or even extreme heat would sap your energy and could cause injuries. You first have to plan for those extremes if they are common to your area.

If you are facing a walk home and you live in the deserts of the Southwest, you could be forced to walk only at night when the temperatures are cooler and find shade to rest during the day. You understand the weather factors that could influence a trip like this so you have to plan accordingly.

For most of us, walking home is not incredibly difficult with a decent fitness level and some simple preparation. We may never be forced to use our get home bags, but it makes sense to prepare now like we do. You will be more able to react quickly and make the right decisions if you do.

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Imagine it’s 1:15 on a Thursday afternoon. You and some friends at work have recently returned from lunch and you are settling back into work. As you are going about

So you lived through the Apocalypse, now what?

Life will keep moving after the Apocalypse

Prepping isn’t a permanent solution

Your Get Home Scenario Begins

The Tactical Vest

The Tactical Pack

Tactical Weapons

Prepping is a state of mind

Customize your preparedness wheel to the best fit for you

Big Benefits for Beginners

When the Balance Gets Badly Off

Exceptions to Balance

The Importance of Mental Strength

The 3Cs of Mental Toughness

Operational Deployment Equipment List – Personal kit

Additional Considerations

Emergency Vehicle Kit

What is the best way home during a SHTF event?

Before you take the first step: What gear do you need to consider?

Planning your route and the alternate route home

Pros and Cons of various routes

What factors do the weather play?

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