Safecastle Royal Buyers Club—The Premier Crisis Preparedness Buyers Club in the World
SurvivalistBoards.com is the most dynamic preparedness-related forum on the internet today, in my opinion. I’m sure many of you agree.
I’m Vic–owner of one of the fastest growing crisis-preparedness companies in the business, Safecastle LLC. I just want to say I am excited to become a supporting part of this online community. We’ve been around a good long time and we are recognized far and wide as providing some of the very best products and value anywhere in the preparedness marketplace. We stand behind our products and with our customers all the way.
Joining up with Kev and all the rest of you, we wanted to make a nice statement about our commitment. As such, I decided to go big in this March Giveaway, with retail value of Safecastle prizes awarded exceeding $6000.
Here’s the deal …
A total of 363 prize winners, some of the prizes include:
Free Lifetime Safecastle Royal Buyers Club Memberships–10 awarded each day thru the month of March (value $29 each)
$50 Safecastle Royal Gift Certificates Katadyn Vario water filters — $90 value each
Bury ‘Em Tubes — choice of 6M, 6S, or 6L– value $175-200 each
Voltaic Converter Solar Backpack—value $207
9-Tray Excalibur Dehydrator, 3900 Model, black–value $275
Four Cases of Storage food–winner’s choice (one case for each of four winners)–each case, value of up to $325
Quik-Pak Foldable Bike Trailer—value $350
QUEST Mission Rigs–value $400 each Country Living Grain Mill–$456 value
Follow this link and get the full details on how to enter the March Safecastle Survival Gear Giveway.
Bugging out of a major city sounds a lot easier then it actually is. Chances are the gas stations are going to be empty, and the roads are going to be packed. One of the keys to getting out a city safely, is to either leave early or leave late. But either way, try to get ahead of, or behind the mad rush.
Fuel/Gasoline – having enough fuel to get out will be the first problem. At the first sign of trouble, people are going to make a mad rush to the gas stations and fill up not only their cars and trucks, but every gas can they have. As a hurricane is approaching the Gulf Coast, its not uncommon to see people filling up 55 gallon drums of gasoline.
Maps – the stores will be sold out before you get there. Next time you see a road map of your area go ahead and pick a couple up. Keep a couple of different maps in each car/truck that you own.
Food and water along the bug out route – a lot of people pack clothes, toys, DVD players, even TV’s and other non survival items instead of food and water. Have enough food and water for everyone for at least 4 days. Go ahead and invest some money into some good quality ice chest, like some 5 day extreme Igloo ice chest.
Having a place to go – Most people leave, and have no clue where they are going. Most find themselves out of money and sleeping in their cars rather quickly. Months after the disaster is over, people will still be paying off the credit cards from the hotels and buying food.
Bring tents, sleeping bags, blankets and pillows – If you and your family are unable to find a hotel/motel then maybe you can camp in a state / national park – hey its better then nothing. Sometimes churches outside the affected areas will setup shelters. To make things feel more at home, bring your own blankets and pillows. Shelters may not have enough blankets for everyone, so its good to have your own.
Have a way to cook – bring a portable grill. Even if you have to use twigs and sticks from a road side park, its still a way to cook. A portable grill and the hot meals it provides can be a real morale booster. A single burner stove does not take up a lot of room, and it can provide a good hot meal.
Keep a couple of frozen one gallon bottles of water in the deep freezer. These can take a day or two to thaw out and will keep your food cold longer then a bag of ice. Plus you can drink the water once it thaws. Having your own ice will be nice when the stores are sold out.
Hand sanitizer and toilet paper – bring plenty of both. Chances are the rest areas along the route will be out of toilet paper and soap.
Why should Survivalist worry about water filters? Because when the city water supply stops, the water in the local lakes and streams may not be safe to drink. Most survivalist have stockpiled water, and that is fine – there is nothing wrong with stockpiling water. But you need some kind of solution for after your stockpiles of water run out. A lot of people might say “I’ll just dig a well if I need water” – ok, lets get back to reality. Most of people are not going to dig a well overnight.
Here is short list of waterborne diseases and parasites:
Cryptosporidium
Cholera
E. Coli
Dysentery
Salmonellosis
Polio
Legionnaires’ disease
The first filter for us to look at is the Royal Berkey. The Royal Berkey water filter is made out of 304 stainless steel, has a capacity of approximately 3.25 Gallons, and has 2 filters (with each filter being able to filter an estimated 3,000 gallons of water).
Assembly of the Royal Berkey is pretty easy, and only takes about 10 – 15 minutes. The thing with stainless steel, you can leave it stored at a retreat for years, and not worry about mice or rats chewing holes through it. One of the problems with storing items at a retreat is rats and mice will chew into it. I have no idea how much food has been ruined at the camp because of rodents.
The next filter to take a look at is the Berkey Light water filter. Instead of being made out of stainless like the Royal Berkey, this one is made out of plastic, Plastic has its advantages, such as being light and easy to transport.
One disadvantage to plastic, rodents can chew holes through it. So if you have a problem with rodents at the retreat, then you might want to go with stainless.
Lets talk about handcrank flashlights for a little bit. This topic might have been discussed a lot, but its good to have a refresher.
Over the past few years I have been trying to stock up on those hand crank flashlights and lanterns. But instead of having a bunch of them at my home (which I do), I have been bringing some of them to “the camp”.
When my family and I go to the camp, sometimes its after dark when we get there. After we arrive, I will grab a flashlight to go turn on the propane. I do not want to have to worry about dead batteries in the flashlight.
There have been a few time that thunder storms have knocked out power at the camp. I do not like looking around for extra batteries in the dark – especially when we have mouse traps set out.
Its very convent to grab a flashlight, shake or give it a couple of twist, and you have instant light.
Here is one of the issues, it might be 2 – 4 months between trips to the camp. That gives the batteries in the flashlights a long time to go dead.
Also, if you leave those cheap batteries in your flashlights -the ones that leak acid – your gear can be ruined before you know it. Just the other day I found an AM/FM radio that the batteries had leaked in and ruined the device. The radio was a cheap one, so its not a lot of money lost, but it is a piece of equipment that will need to be replaced.
I have heard of long term storage batteries, ones that you can keep stored for decades,,,, but why? I see no real reason to invest in stuff like that. They are going to go dead after you put them in the flashlight anyway.
The crank flashlights make good hand outs to the kids. If the light gets set down and the batteries go dead, just give it a few shakes or twist. This past weekend while on a camping trip with my daughter, I gave her a twist flashlight to keep in her tent with her. I told her to twist the end to charge it up, and she was like “ok, no problem.”
On the topic of books and having a library of survival related books:
Books never die
Books never get sick
Books are ageless
Books never get mad
Books never talk back
Books never pick a fight
Books never get hungry
Books never complain
Books never get tired
My grandfather passed away in May of 2007. One of the things I received was his book collection. Its more books then a lot of people hope to read in their lifetime. Most of the books are history books – American Civil War, Texas history and Native American History. I’am not at home right now, so I can not give an “exact” list.
One book from my grandfathers collection that I’am reading right now is “The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston”. The part I’am in is just after Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto, and stephen F Austin has died because of some illness.
The book before that was “Caesar: Life of a Colossus” by Adrian Goldsworthy. Through this book I learned that the lust for gold, money and power are timeless. Its amazing what people and governments will do for money. Whether its invading another country to steal its resources, to killing political opponents – the violence that mankind inflicts upon itself never ceases to amaze me.
The book before that was “Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer”
A video I put together about books and planning for an outbreak of infectious disease. While looking through my youtube video collection, I realized that I do not have any videos about books besides the plague. So I’am going to have to fix that problem.
To some survivalist, collecting gear is like collecting stamps, or collecting coins – we can always find a way to justify buying something new. For some people its boots, backpacks, a compass, hats, gloves, sleeping bags,,,, you get the picture.
I guess my gear fetish is backpacks, I just like having the right pack for the job. Whether its a day hike, over night camping trip, 8 mile hike in 100 degree heat,,, its nice to have the right pack to carry the gear.
For over 10 years my daypack, overnight hot weather pack was a simple Jansport cloth backpack – very much like a school book bag. When more gear was needed, I would carry my medium or large ALICE pack. ne thing seemed certain – the larger the pack, the more gear someone is to carry. So having a large pack is not always a good thing. After my gear selection outgrew the medium ALICE, I bought a large ALICE pack.
In 2009 I received a couple of packs from Maxpedition, and they quickly became my favorite packs. The Jansport pack that served me well for years was tossed to the side in favor of a Maxpedition Falcon II Pygmy.
My current backpack list includes:
Jansport cloth backpack
Camelbak Raider
Maxpedition Proteus Versipack
Maxpedition Falcon II Pygmy
Maxpedition Condor II
Maxpedition Vulture II
Medium ALICE
Large ALICE
Large MOLLE
Kelty Big Bend
Post your comments in the gear fetish thread of the forums.
There are several questions that are repeated on the forums, one of them being about MRE shelf life. On the bottom of the case of MREs, there should be a red sticker – with a 2 red circles inside of a red square.
Both of these two red circles should be a different shade of red, the closer the two reds are, the sooner you need to open one MRE out of that case and see if its still good.
On the bottom of the case, there should be two dates – a manufacture date and a test date. However, some cases will use a different form such as “1068″. In this case, the first number “1″ stands for the year (2001) and the next three numbers indicate which day of the year (365 days in a year) it was packed. So “068″ would be day 68 of the year 2001…or March 9, 2001.
MRE’s are VERY sensitive to temperature. One day over 100 degrees takes about one month off the shelf life. Store the MRE’s in the coolest part of your house, maybe a closet or a basement.
This article is being posted as a topic for discussion, more then anything else. In the freezer we have:
Top shelf:
Seed storage box
Deer sausage
Deer hamburger
Beans – frozen to kill weevils
Rice
2nd shelf:
long package on the top is 3 racks of baby back ribs.
Pork chops
Deer hamburger
Door:
frozen coke bottle has catfish in it
Red bag in front of coke bottle has wild berry seeds in it.
more deer sausage
Not in the picture:
Bottom shelf full of deer meat – hamburger and sausage, more beans and rice.
The seed storage box in the top right hand corner is full of squash, corn, beans, peas, okra, radishes, watermelons,,, and all kinds of other types of seeds.
The beans are rice are being frozen for at least 2 weeks to kill any weevils. From the freezer the bags are spread out on the kitchen table, allowed to thaw, and then moved into storage boxes.
When the power goes off, we cook the meat first. When the meat runs out, then we will start cooking the beans are rice.
Post your comments in the freezer picture thread of the forum.
If your family has to evacuate – who is your common contact person? In other words, if your brothers family, your mom and dad, and your family has to evacuate, who is outside the affected area that can relay messages?
There is no use in everyone calling everyone else and telling them where they are at. Call one person, update your situation and location. Then, that one person can relay everyone else’s messages. Then, if someone wants to get the updates, they can call that one person to check in.
One thing to consider is that during a disaster (such as a hurricane), phone lines will be overloaded. The fewer phone calls you have to make, the better.
Besides phone calls, other forms of communications are text messages, emails, instant messenger programs, and social networking sites.
Maybe create your family a community page on a social networking site – then share the username and password with the other family members. Instead of having to call several family units, post an update to your social networking page. This can give the families a central point to share information. Most modern cell phones are built in browsers. As long as the cell phone can connect to the internet, hopefully everyone can post situation updates.
My family has 3 different people in 3 different areas of the nation we can use. These three people live in Washington state, California and Georgia. We also have our personal pages on facebook and myspace.
After hurricane Rita passed through, there were stories going around of peoples generators going off in the middle of the night, by the time they got outside all they saw was the tail lights of the truck leaving with their genny in the bed.
Do not let this happen to you.
When you buy your genny, also buy about 20 feet of chain and two locks. My genny was chained to an oak tree about 3 feet in diameter.
Then my truck was backed up to the genny so no one could see it from the road. Use your trucks or cars to block the view of people passing by.
Take the wheels off your genny. Do not make it any easier for the thieves.
Keep your genny in the back yard, or where ever you might have a fence up.
If you have a fenced back yard, put locks on the gate.
Do not keep your genny in the garage while running – fumes will still get into the house.
I built a portable shed about 4 feet tall, 4 feet wide and about 3 feet deep out of debris from the hurricane – three sides were closed, one side was open. This helped keep the genny out of thew weather and helped dampen the sound of the motor running. Now that the genny in stored in the shed, I turned that portable three sided shed into a wood shed for my bar-be-que pit.
Something you should not do – do not keep your generator in your house, do not keep it in your garage,,, of anywhere else that it can not vent the exhaust fumes.
After Hurricane Rita, there was a story going around of a family that was running the generator in their apartment. Out of 5 family members, only one was not killed by the exhaust fumes. Do not become a victim by your own hands.
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