The Preparedness Articles Category
Buying some more survival gear
This past weekend my wife and I made a trip to Bridge City Texas to visit with my parents. While we were in Bridge City, my wife and I spent the night at La Quinta Inn & Suites, which is where the old Sparkle Paradise used to be. The hotel is in a perfect location. Not only does it back up to a pond for your fishing enjoyment, but the twin bridges are viewable from the hotel for a picturesque nighttime scene.
My wife and I arrived at La Quinta, at which time I realized that I did not think about bringing anything to fish with. So off to wal-mart we went. I have been wanting to pick up an open face reel, so I bought a Shakespeare E-Z Cast Low Profile Baitcast Reel with 6 foot rod and a couple of lures. As luck would have it, I did not catch anything but a bunch of mosquito bites.
Saturday morning my wife and I got up, went by mom and dads house for a little bit, said out hellos and then went to Academy Sports and Outdoors in Port Arthur. At Academy I bought some circle hooks, some 60 pound nylon coated wire for making homemade leaders, some #4 circle hooks, 6 boxes 223 monarch ammo, 2 boxes 7.62×39 monarch ammo and a box of Remington 150 grain 308 for deer hunting.
After making a stop to buy some survival gear, my wife and I went to Tinsel Town in Beaumont for the 12:15 showing of Captain America. I thought the movie was pretty good. Maybe not an A+ movie, but not a C rating either. We sat through the credits to get a peak at the Avengers, all I have to say is “wow”.
Weak points in survival plans
A couple of weeks ago a buddy of mine and his wife dropped by my house for a little while. As most conversations do, we turned towards the topic of survivalism, and trying to find weak points in a survival plan.
Lets say there is some kind of long term SHTF survival situation, a new disease breaks out, long term civil unrest, climate change; besides insurance (no insult intended towards my buddy), I think the weak points for just about everyone will be are medical needs, safe drinking water and food production.
Medicine – Lets take my wife for example, she developed high blood pressure, and has been on high blood pressure maintenance medicine for almost 20 years. Running out of medicine could have a negative impact on her long term health. Then there are the people on heart medicine, anti-depressants,,,,,, just a whole slough of meds.
Safe drinking water – life as we know it can not exist without safe drinking water, and that is all there is to it. Water borne infections can kill off communities with little or no advance warning. One of the number one killers in the world today is unsafe drinking water.
Now for a video about buying canned goods.
Food bag for a bug out bag
For years, and I mean for years I have kept a food bag in my bug out / camping bag. For the most part the food bag contains a single burner stove for a bug out bag, pot for cooking, eating utensils, lighter and matches for the stove and for building a camp fire, hand sanitizer,,,, and other odds and ends.
The purpose of a Bug Out Bag is if you and your family have to leave home in an emergency, the bag provides a few days of supplies for each person. Lets say there is a chemical leak near your house and your family has to evacuate. Everyone grabs their bag, and heads to a shelter or friends house.
My main bug out bag use to be a large ALICE pack. But a year ago I bought a large MOLLE pack with internal sleep system, which is currently my main bag. To add a little more room to the pack, 2 sustainment pouches were added.
Lets talk about this food bag in a little more detail.
The main bag is made of a brown cloth, has a drawstring at the top, when empty laying flat on a table, the bag measures 18 inches tall, 15 inches wide and has a 7X9 rectangle bottom. In a bag this size, someone should easily be able to carry at least 3 days worth of dehydrated food.
Thoughts on the AR-15 AK-47 and FN/FAL
As I am sitting here thinking about buying another rifle, my thoughts keep turning back to the AR-15. Even though the AK-47 is a little cheaper, its the reliability, cheap ammo, light weight of the weapon, availability of the ammo, shootability,,,,, that keeps me coming back to the AR.
In a SHTF situation, and I had to hand a rifle to my wife, son or daughter, how well would they be able to handle the rifle? That is just one of the many questions I have to ask myself.
In this article we are going to be looking at 3 of the most popular SHTF rifles and battle rifles in the world: the AK-47, AR-15 and the FN/FAL. The AK shoots the 7.62×39, the AR shoots the 223/5.56mm and the FN/FAL shoots the 308 Winchester / 7.62NATO round. These rifles were picked because they have a reputation of being reliable in just about all combat situations and they have been battle proven in several conflicts.
Lets start from the very beginning:
Inserting a magazine
Quest for the ultimate survival rifle
For years, and I mean for “years”, my survival rifle list went something like this – Marlin 336 in 30-30, AR-15, Ruger mini-14, Ruger mini-30, AK-47, Ruger 10/22 and the Marlin model 60. The problem with that list, all of the rifles are short and medium caliber. The largest caliber rifle would have been the marlin 336 in 30-30 or the AK-47 in 7.62×39.
In my opinion, no survival rifle collection is complete without at least a rifle in the 308 Winchester and 30-06 range. When push comes to shove, a survivalist needs a rifle with some knock down power. In north America, the 308 and 30-06 are capable of taking just about any animal, except for the most dangerous grizzly or polar bear. For most applications – whitetail deer, hogs, prong horn, coyote, mule deer,,,,,, the 308 and 30-06 can fit the bill.
So where does this leave us? We could go with a bolt action rifle like the Remington model 700, Weatherby Vanguard or the Ruger model 70. But for a long term SHTF survival situation, I would like something with a detachable magazine.
Bolt actions rifles aside, this leaves us with the M1A, PTR-91, and the FN/FAL.
Instead of going into a lot of detail about each rifle, long story short, I decided to go with a DS Arms SA58 FN/FAL in 308 Winchester.
To help answer the quest, I posted a thread in the forum – best 308 survival rifle.
Cleaning up the bug out location
Today started out around 8 am with a shower, breakfast bar, and a monster energy drink. From there my wife and I went to the local wal-mart, step daughters house, rented a carpet cleaner, sonic for a cheese burger, and the local feed and fertilizer store.
From the feed store, we went to the camp to meet up with my parents and some other family members. After arriving at the camp, we cleaned out a spot for my uncles RV. My uncle and my aunt got on the hunting lease with my family, so their going to be parking their RV at my parents place. We had one person on a Craftsman chainsaw, one person on a pole saw, and 3 people pulling limbs out of the way.
Some of my observations:
Stockpiling fishing supplies for SHTF
As I have said in several forum post about stockpiling survival gear for SHTF, I think fishing supplies should be at the top of the list. That is, unless you live in a desert or hundreds of miles from a water source. In some kind of long term SHTF survival situation, fishing could be an important food source. The better prepared you are to utilize fish as a food source, the better your chances for success.
On the way home from work today, my wife and I stopped by Ward’s Outdoor Supply in Jasper Texas. The store is snuggled in the corner of an Exxon gas station at the northeast corner of Hwy 96 and Hwy 190. To be honest, when I entered the store, I was not expected much, but I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I was very surprised at the wide selection of fishing supplies that Ward’s had in stock.
This is what I picked up:
Bucket for trotlines and noodles
A few weeks ago I posted an article about fishing with juglines after SHTF. One of the problems is organizing the noodles and trot lines so they are easy to deploy. In an effort to keep everything together, I bought a 5 gallon bucket. The bucket provided a way to keep the noodles and trot line string together, but it lacked compartments for holding hooks, weights, swivels and leader material. This problem was fixed on Fathers Day.
On Fathers day my Grand kids picked me out a lid for my 5 gallon bucket. The lid is made by Plano, its 2 sided, has 6 compartments in the top tray, and the tray is removable for access to a storage compartment. The compartments are large enough for hooks, weights, swivels,,,, anything that you might need for setting up a jugline or trot line.
Along with the trotline and jugline material for catfishing, I am going to include some supplies for perch fishing, and maybe some stuff for catfishing.
How to organize a tackle box
Last night I was going through my tackle box trying to get it a little better organized. The problem was that I had hooks and weights spread out over different section of the tackle box. The top of the box is mostly lures and a few weights and hooks. With the bottom of the box being an assortment of different hooks, weights and other supplies.
After looking through my tackle for a little while, I realized that I fish for about 3 different types of fish – perch, bass and catfish.
For perch I use split weight and small hooks. To organize my tackle box for perch fishing gear, I bought a small double sided container. On one side of the container goes hooks, on the other side goes split weights.
For bass fishing I use artificial bait, like worms and lizards. A bottom section of my tackle box is dedicated to artificial worms, on top of the worm is a small double sided container like what I keep the perch fishing stuff in. In this container hooks go on one side and weights go on the other side. Unlike the round split weights for perch fishing, the weights used for bass fishing are oblong split weights used for making a texas rig so the bait does not get hung up in the weeds.
For catfish I use a little bit larger hooks and some teardrop weights. A loop is tied in the fishing line, the end of the loop is inserted through the wire on the weight, then wrapper around the end of the weight. This makes the weight easy to take on and off the line.
Missing gear from bug out location
You know what really sucks, is when your trying to stockpile survival gear at the bug out location, and stuff keeps coming up missing. Awhile back the liner of my parka went missing, pair of cold weather gloves, shotgun shells, and now some lithium batteries and a LED flashlight are missing.
Its not that someone is breaking into the location and stealing the stuff, I think its more along the lines of someone “borrowing” the supplies and not bringing it back or replacing it.
Over the past 15+ years, I have been making it a point to keep certain types of survival gear at the bug out location. Whether its blankets, flashlights, knives, ammo, first aid supplies, water filter, hand tools, eating utensils,,,,,, I like to keep a general stockpile of gear at the camp. I don’t know how much time and money has been invested over the past decade alone to make sure we have plenty of survival gear for some kind of SHTF situation.
Now for a video about a bug out exercise on Labor Day of 2010. Labor day was used to test my families bug out plans.
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