Homestead VS Bug Out Location, which on is better and why? Instead of trying to discuss the merits of each, why not combine the two?

Instead of trying to maintain a home in an urban area, and a remote camp, why not build a homestead and make it your Bug Out Location? This way your time and money are not divided between two separate places.

For a lot of people, living in a rural area is not an option. Their job is in the city, and that is where they need to live. There are a number of people that live in rural areas, or in small towns. Lets talk about the people who are thinking about relocating to a rural area away from town.

For this article lets focus on 5 things – food, water, shelter, security, and some other small topics that we can group together.

Food

One of the main purposes of a Homestead Bug Out Location is to be able to grow fresh food. Its one thing to have a years worth of dried beans and rice stored in mylar bags, its something totally different to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Sooner or later the #10 cans will run out, sooner or later the mylar bags will run out,,, and then what?

In my chicken coop project I learned that its going to take an estimated 6 months to get a small farm off the ground.

Its possible to work the soil, plant some radishes and have food ready to eat in a matter of 4 – 5 weeks. Radishes grow quick and the whole plant is edible. But who wants to live off radishes? Once you start talking about squash, corn, greens, potatoes and beans, you are looking at 2 – 4 months.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

The United Nations has reported that North Korea may not have enough food for its people in 2011. While food production has remained about the same, or shown slight improvement, the population has continued to grow.

So this brings up the question, what happens when a nation with history of trouble making runs out of food?

Normally, I would say that North Koreas communist buddies would help it out. But with the recent Russian crop failures, who knows whats going to happen.

Representatives from the United Nations have recently traveled to North Korea to discuss the problem.

Lets discuss food sources in a post apocalyptic world after SHTF.  Survivalist have a wide range of ideas on how to get food in a post apocalyptic world.  Some of these ideas cover everything from living a hunter-gather lifestyle, to living off of food stocks until society recovers, to farming and gardening.   Lets take a look at some of these ideas and make some comparisons.

The plans that each Survivalist has will vary widely depending on actual experience and training.  The plans range from the very well thought out and tested plans, to spur of the moment ideas.

Lets set the tone for this article – a new virus has developed that has a 90% fatality rate.  This is like what the Black Death was in 1348 – 1350, where 1/3 of Europe died.   Society has broken down to the point where no food or fuel supplies are being shipped.  People will not leave their homes except to find food – which gets more difficult to find.  Finally, people have to do “something” so they do not starve to death.

One survivalist approach is to Bug Out to the wilderness and live off the land – this is also called the “Bug Out Bag” theory.  In the event of a world wide disaster, the survivalist is going to grab their Bug Out Bag, then take their family out to the wilderness to live off the land.

This is reminiscent of prehistoric man living a hunter-gather subsistence lifestyle. There are several problems with this situation:

• There is no support chain – if you need help, your own your own.
• Very few people have the skills to live a hunter-gather lifestyle.
• People have difficulty adjusting to sudden changes in their lifestyle.
• Deforestation has destroyed a lot of native edible plants.
• A lot of wild edible plants are seasonal.
• Unsafe drinking water – people that adhere to the Bug Out Bag theory, underestimate the effects of water borne pathogens, as their primary source of water will be from streams, lakes or rivers.
• At the mercy of the weather – rain or shine, hot or cold, your just gonna have to tough it out.

To a lot of people, these points do not matter. If Homo Erectus, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and early Homo Sapiens could survive for tens of thousands of years with simple stone tools, then so can they.

Bug out bag theorist forget – once agriculture was developed, the hunter-gather lifestyle was abandoned. Why expend so much energy hunting and gathering food, when it can be grown?

[Read the rest of this entry...]

An article posted on MSN should be great concern to everyone that eats some kind of food.

Nothing but worse for Texas drought

According to that article, 97% of Texas is in a drought. Some people might be saying “so what?” Well, there is a lot to be worried about. Texas is the 2nd largest agricultural state in the nation. Everything from beef to zucchini is grown in Texas. That means, if Texas has a bad drought, and crops fail, the price of food goes up nation wide – maybe even on a global scale.

With so many people out of work, high food prices is the one thing we do not need right now.

The concern should not only on on Texas, but other states and nations.  If the crops from one state fails, the markets will have some degree of flexibility.  But, if crops fail in several states, or, if the crops fail in several nations fail across the world, things could get bad.

This is the kind of stuff that can cause panic buying.  Whether there is actually a food shortage or not, really does not really matter.  There will be people out there that go into a buying frenzy at the slightest mention of “shortage”.  The panic buying, coupled with a slight food shortage can equal a moderate to large major food shortage.

If your concerned about the future price of food, consider planting a home garden.

On a personal note, I am not too worried about the food supply, I am more worried about the panic buying like what happened in the summer of 2008.  Some large discount stores had to limit the amount of beans and rice that people could buy.  Mainly because of people buying 100 – 200 pounds of rice at a time.  There was a small shortage that turned into a moderate shortage and nation wide panic – partially due to crop failure and partially due to panic buying on a massive scale.

  While driving around East Texas, it looks like more fields are being plowed this year, as compared to 2008. Hopefully more families will be planting a garden this year.