This past weekend I decided it was time to organize the ammunition at the Bug Out Location. We had ammo stored in 3,,, 4 different locations, which made taking inventory a pain in the rear end.
My wife cleared off a wire shelf so I could bring it to the camp ...
A few days ago I asked the SurvivalistBoards Facebook group a question, "Name one thing a first aid kit is not complete without." Some of the answers were helpful, and some were not what I expected.
I would like to thank all of the subscribers for helping out with this list.
Anti-bacterial ...
The past 2 days have been spent working on my truck, and working on some jug lines for an upcoming camping trip. When I started thinking about how much time and effort I put into getting the juglines ready, I was a little set back.
After talking to my wife, I ...
Deer season is here, instead of grabbing a pack, throwing some random gear in and heading out to the woods, lets take a look at some items that should be considered. The way I look at it, your pack needs to contain everything you need to track a wounded deer, ...
In this article we are going to be looking at making noodles to catch catfish. This type of rig may not be legal in all areas, so check the local laws before you do anything.
Buy some noodles from the local china-mart. The noodles might be seasonal, and should be ...
People living along the ocean, or salt water barriers might get a kick out of this. It seems that MIT has developed a portable solar powered solar desalination unit. Besides, MIT, IBM along with some people from Saudi Arabia are also working on a solar powered desalination unit.
The small version of the MIT desalination unit is supposed to be able to produce 80 gallons of drinking water every 24 hours. The larger version has an estimated cost of $8,000 and will produce an estimated 1,000 gallons of water everyday.
The desalination plant in Al Khafji, Saudi Arabia hopes to use solar power to produce 7.9 million gallons of water daily. Which would be enough water for 100,000 people.
Solar powered desalination would be ideal for people living along the coastal regions, and people who live along rivers, canals and bayous up to 20 – 30 miles inland. During high tide, salt water pushes its way inland, making the water brackish. Brackish water is a combination of fresh water and salt water. It has just enough salt water in it to make it unsafe to safe to drink by livestock, pets or humans.
During some kind of SHTF situation, being able to use a solar powered desalination unit would be ideal.
Currently desalination units use large amounts of natural gas or electricity to make sea water safe to drink. Since a large portion of electricity comes from coal fired plants, desalination contributes to environmental issues – such as mercury in our lakes, streams and fish. Breaking the bonds of conventional electricity would make desalination a lot more eco friendly.
There is a thread on the forum that is talking about MREs, and it got me to thinking:
MREs are a good grab and go meal -what could be easier then just grabbing a full meal, stuffing it in your backpack, and your ready to go. The outside package is pretty tough and puncture resistant. MREs are the kind of thing that you can cram into the bottom of your pack, and you don’t have to worry about them leaking, or getting a hole poked in them.
MREs are high in calories and have a high sodium content. As an example, the Spaghetti with meat sauce has 810mg of sodium. If your in the military and having to hump your pack 25 miles at a time, or in good physical shape, 810mg of sodium might seem like nothing. But for people with underlying health conditions, overweight, high blood pressure, 810mg for 1 meal can be a lot of sodium.
Their high price and their suitability to high temperatures makes me add them to my “do not stockpile” list. I like to keep 4 or 5 cases on hand. Currently I think I have about 9 cases,,,, something like that.
When you bought a house, did you have to take out a loan?
When you bought a car or truck, did you have to take out a loan?
When you paid your electric bill, did you use a credit card?
When you bought groceries, did you use a credit card?
When you rented a movie, did you use a credit card?
When you went to the movies, did you use a credit card?
When you bought gas for your truck or car, did you use a credit card?
When you bought clothes, did you use a credit card?
When you went to the doctor, did you use a credit card to pay your co-pay?
Did you use a credit card to pay off medical bills?
Did you pay cash for your breakfast, or did you use a credit card?
Did you put christmas on a credit card, or did you pay cash?
California has been under an epidemic of Whooping Cough, and has been so for several months. There have been 5,658 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases and nine babies have died.
This is the highest epidemic of whooping cough since the 1959s.
Current rate of illness 14.5 per 100,000 people
1959 rate of illness 16.1 per 100,000 people
The majority of the children hospitalized with whooping cough have been Hispanic. It was not noted whether the Hispanics were legal immigrants or illegal immigrants.
Some type of disaster has rolled through – lets say there has been a hurricane, the power has been knocked out and its going to be off for a week or so. How are you going to cook your food? You have some ribs, chicken or steaks in the freezer, but no way to cook it.
You walk out your front door and see your neighbor with his pull behind bar-b-q pit cooking some food. Smoke is coming out of the stack, and he looks like his is turning over some ribs, is that sausage you see and some pork chops? Then the thought runs through your head, “will my neighbor let me cook on his pit?”
The above description happened after Hurricane Rita and Ike passed through southeast Texas.
On Thursday, October 14, 2010 my wife and I made a trip to Houston to take care of some business. While we were in Houston, my wife and I went to a book store where I bought a book about life in a medieval village. One of the chapters of the book talks about how villages are laid out, and how 1 certain village had 2 communal ovens for baking bread. Instead of each villagers house having its own bread oven, the community had communal ovens setup.
After my experiences with a couple of hurricanes and letting my neighbors use my pit, combined with the information of how people used communal ovens in medieval times, it seems to me that people coming together to cook food will be a natural thing to do.
I’am pretty sure that 30,000 years ago, people sat around a camp fire, cooked their horse meat, or mastodon meat, shared stories and helped each other feel safe in a world of danger.
Cooking together, eating together, and forming a community is just what humans do. We are herd animals that enjoy each others company.
There is no reason to feel that post SHTF that anything is going to be different. Whether it was 30,000 years ago, 700 years ago, or tomorrow, people will come together to cook and share food.
5. Fuel – when SHTF, your going to need a way to get out of town. Whether its a forest fire, hurricane, chemical spill,,,, keep enough gas in your tank to get away from the affected zone.
When a hurricane rolls trough the southern states, one of the first things to dry up is gasoline. People start filling their tanks up, the lines get long, and gas stations run out of gas.
4. Non-spoilable foods – this is any kind of food that does not need to be kept frozen or cold. There are so many options out there, this list could be a mile long – mountain house foods, #10 cans, family sized cans, any type of can goods, peanut butter, honey, freeze dried foods, food stored in mylar bags, dehydrated foods.
The government recommends to have at least 3 days worth of food per person. I suggest that families have more like 1 – 4 weeks worth of food stockpiled.
3. Water – whether its to bug out with, or to drink when the city water goes off, having some kind of stockpiled water is nice to have.
People can live for 3 weeks without food, but only 3 days without water. Its for this reason that water is listed before food.
When its time to stockpile seeds for my survivalist garden, I usually get my heirloom seeds locally. There are 2 feed and fertilizer stores here in town that sell seeds – all kinds of seeds. Instead of getting seeds in packets, the stores get their seeds in burlap bags, and then sell the seed by the ounce. I like to go to the stores, talk to the people there, see find out what are the best types of plants to grow in my area, and go from there. The local stores usually know what will be in short supply before spring gets here. They will put their orders in several months ahead of time, and the distributor will tell them what may not be in stock. This information is then distributed to the local gardener faster then you can get it through the nation news.
Most of the time, the people working in the feed store are pretty knowledgeable about the different types of seeds they have in stock, whats heirloom / open pollinated and whats hybrid. All you have to do is ask. One of the local stores usually has 5 or 6 types of corn in stock – field corn, sweet corn, G90,,,,,. So might pick up 1/4 – 1/2 pound of corn one year, then the next year pick up a different type of corn.
Also, while your at the store, be sure to ask about the local pest, and what people do about them.
My wife and I went home for lunch, turned on the TV, and there was this lady who was talking about items everyone should keep in their car. 1 thing she listed was a digital tire pressure gauge. She went on to talk about how nobody uses those $1 stem pressure gauges. About this time, I started thinking “lady, do you even own a car or truck?” 1 thing about those old style stem tire gauges compared to a newer digital one – the battery will never go dead. Usually, when I put something in my truck or my wifes SUV, it might stay in there for months before its used.
1. Hand crank cell phone charger – one of the big drawbacks to modern technology, they require power. Cells phones make calling people easy, but the phone has to be charged. This is where a hand crank cell phone charger comes in – it makes sure you have a working phone when you need it.
2. Hand crank flashlight – over time batteries will slowly lose their charge, so to make sure that your flashlight is working when you need it, eliminate the batteries.
3. Can of fix-a-flat and air compressor – Maybe it will be enough for you to get to a gas station.
5. Non-digital, old style air gauge with a stem, they do not use batteries like the new digital ones.
6. Couple of reflective triangles – these reflect the head lights of other cars and make your car easier to see at night.
7. Space blanket – their lightweight, compact and reflect a good bit of your body heat.
8. Tow strap / tow chain – a strap works better because it gives a little bit. Also, there is a chance of the chain breaking and flying back and hitting someone. A few months ago there was a man killed in Jasper, Texas because the tow chain broke when he was trying to pull a truck out of a mud hole. The chain broke, it flew back and hit the guy in the head, killing him instantly.
9. Map – as silly as it sounds, a lot of people do not have a map in their truck / car.
10. Bungee cords / tie down straps – if you own a truck, you never know when you might have to tie something down.
11. First kit
12. Fire extinguisher
13. Tissue / toilet paper – not only are they good for when you need to leave a crap in the woods, tissue is good for starting fires and taking care of minor wounds.
14. Hand sanitizer- good for cleaning your hands and taking care of minor wounds.
My wife got the text message last night at around 2:30am – we have a very dear friend of the family whos mother passed away last night from lung cancer. She was around 46 years old, and she had been a heavy smoker for years. She leaves behind a couple of children, and a couple of very young grand kids. The grand kids are only about 1 – 3 years old, not old enough to remember the time they spent with their grandmother. There will never be a chance to pass down stories, never be a chance to go to birthday parties, Christmas, no Thanksgiving,,,,, nothing but a visit to her grave from time to time.
While thinking about our friends mom, I also started thinking about my other friends that have passed away.
When my brother and I were growing up in Bridge City, Texas, we had some friends in the neighborhood that where the same age as us. There was Bret and Troy, Steven and Gene , John and David, Bobby and Mike. Steven was the same age as my brother – 2 years behind me – and Gene is my age. When I was a senior, I heard that Steven had gotten into drugs pretty bad. It was so bad that his mom and dad kicked him out and he was having to look for a place to live. Steven went to live with Bret and Troy for a little while, but the parents of Bret and Troy found Stevens drugs and was told to leave the house. From there, Steven left Bridge City and went to live with his sister in Port Arthur. That was probably one of the worst things that could have happened. From what I understand, drugs were a lot easier to find in Port Arthur then in Bridge City. This meant that Steven had easy access to all kinds of illegal drugs.
Over the past few weeks there has been a lot of talk about bullies and teens being driven to suicide because of it. While reading some of the stories and personal accounts, I think back to my own junior high and high school experience. I dont think that I was really “bullied” per say, it was more or less the typical teenager “you must conform” type of stuff.
Clothes – One day I wore a black shirt with light pink 3/4 length sleeves to school. The pink was just a light pink, almost a dark pink. Some of the other kids started calling me gay because I was a guy who wore pink. I never wore that short again.
While I was in junior high, my mom and I went shopping for some school clothes where I saw this really cool shirt with a superman logo on it. Since I liked to read superman comics, I got mom to buy the shirt for me. After the other kids ridiculed me for wearing a superman logo, I never wore the shirt again.
Music – Because I liked real Rock and Roll music instead of the pop-rock stuff, other kids in school said I smoked dope. Their mindset was, if you listened to Ozzy, Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath, you “have” to smoke dope. My music taste are something that I refuse to be moved on. Even to this day I would rather listen to some good Ozzy, Black Sabbath or Rammstein then some pop-rock wanna be a singer carp. I would rather define my own music taste then have the record companies tell me what I’am “supposed” to listen to. And I do not do any kind of illegal drugs. It was the mentality of the kids in school that bothered me the most. It was like very few of them could think outside the box. Just because a song is on the radio, does not magically make it a good song. The record companies are pushing those songs because they think money can be made – not because its a good song. There is a difference between a work of art and making money.
I think I’am gonna post a Rammstein video just for the fun of it.
People living along the ocean, or salt water barriers might get a kick out of this. It seems that MIT has developed a portable solar powered solar desalination unit. Besides, MIT, IBM along with some people from Saudi Arabia are also working on a solar powered desalination unit.
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