Midrange planning and supplies update

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I am finally getting caught up on the midrange planning and supply situation, that had been languishing due to work demands and other things. As you recall I had gone through the old stocks from 2005/6, and pitched anything that was not a classic “dry goods” item or known to have a very long shelf life. I focused on basic staples like flour, corn meal, salt, spices and extracts, oil, sugar, etc. I determined that these all keep fairly well if kept in Ziploc bags and plastic tubs, and at a reasonable temp. 5-6 years is about it, most of it passed the smell test but the cost just isn’t a factor. I filled a grocery cart for $220, if you had to do it from scratch (I had a few things on hand) maybe $300. I’m pleasantly surprised by the total volume of the supplies, they fit in a fairly small area and will last about 3 months or more depending on how lean I can go. The day to day stuff I have on hand (non-prep)  will last at least a month, then there’s a month or two of freeze dried. I’ll add a month of MREs, and the long-term grains which will put it past 6 months easy.

I’m looking around at it, and thinking how tough it would be to store a year’s worth. You could, but it gets expensive and takes up a lot of room. My idea is to have enough on hand to weather any immediate emergency, then start growing things if the situation seems like it will go longer than a few months.  6 months allows me time to get past winter and get plants going. Yeah it’d be nice to have more but I’m just not doing that.

Cookin’ with gas….

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Finally got around to testing out my heating and cooking gear. 

burnerThis is a Harbor Freight single propane burner, it’s the shizz. Nicely made, perfect flame etc. I used this one long ago to make coffee, but on a 12 oz bottle versus the 15 lb cylinder. The hose to the right I got at Home Depot, it has a regulator with the gas flare fitting. Gotta have that…

This is the main cooking surface, you can get fancy and go two burner but I’m not Paula Deen. It will also kick out a fair amount of heat if it gets chilly or you are too lazy or cheap to buy a Heater Buddy.

This is the oven.

oven

I got it at St.Pauls Mercantile, along with other cool third-world stuff. This little oven is so awesome, it got to 500 degrees before I realized it and will run at 325 at the very lowest stove simmer setting. Note the oven sits on top the HF burner, it’s not one piece. It’s 10×11″x13″ internally, and will hold quite a bit if you get pans that fit. Normal loaf pans may be too big to put 4 in at once, so you have to make sure to measure them before buying. Same thing with cookie sheets.

Shot of the internal temp and burner, the front thermometer is for amusement only.

temp

The Butterfly Kerosene stove

flame2

Also available at St. Pauls, so cool! You fill the tank with K1 (diesel would probably work in a bind), let the wick soak, and light it off. It burned a lot cleaner than the heaters I’ve owned, nice blue flame with no yellow tail. As with the oven, will put out a ton of heat and will get a pot roiling quickly at full tilt. You can adjust the flame a lot, and use it as a heater. The beauty of this is the fuel, 5 gallons of K1 will go a long way so pound for pound this is the way to fly. It does smell, and will smoke like a bitch when you fire it up and shut it off due to the way the chimney heats up and cools off. All kero burners do that, so nothing new there. What impressed me was the simplicity of the design and how well it worked, there’s something to be said for one moving part. One caveat: the burner ring has to be level or the flame will not be equal nor will it get very hot:

flame1

Notice how I cleverly ignored the big font in the instructions about making sure it’s level. I though it was referring the tank, but it’s the burner. The liquid K1 needs to fill the wick evenly, if it’s slightly off kilter the wick will run dry on one side and then not make enough heat to vaporize the fuel.

Heater Buddy

heaterAnother cool item, it’s a small ceramic element heater that can run from a 12 oz bottle or a tank. This is a non-regulated adaptor hose, it has a male bottle thread on the heater end.  Small, efficient, and flexible. Even has a pilot light.

All in all a very satisfying afternoon, things actually worked as expected and I have “Operation Eagle Toast” behind me.

Mid-term emergency planning

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We’ve discussed short term planning and prep in a previous post, the next phase begins roughly 20-30 days after the event and lasts until you can achieve sustainability. Recall that the short-term will be covered by a relatively moderate amount of preparation and supplies, augmented by whatever you have on hand or can grab prior to the depletion of local stores. That will represent the last link to normal and familiar existence, after that runs out you will need to shift to a much more labor intensive routine. Most of us take advantage of prepared foods and many modern conveniences, none of which will exist. There are a number of categories to consider:

  • Heating
  • Power
  • Cooking
  • Water
  • Food
  • Sanitation
  • Self-defense
  • Shelter
  • Fuel
  • Transportation
  • Human interaction

It’s sort of a “OK I made it this far, now what?” scenario.  Up to that point, chances are it will seem like a camping trip or the aftermath of a hurricane; not a lot of work just consuming supplies. The next phase will need to last long enough to get things ramped up to allow existing on what you can grow and collect in and around your dwelling.  That’s the Day366 idea, maybe it’s Day183 but same principal. At some point, no matter how much stuff you hoard you will run out. That will be primarily food related items, the rest is less critical and beyond the scope of this blog. To a large extent, other things will become available as people move on (both figuratively and literally). For instance, say 5 months later you need some nails. The local Home Depot will probably have lots of them, you can’t eat nails and they are useless to looters.

I’m going to cover the last item of my list first, Human Interaction. This might be the most important one, since your survival could depend on who shows up at your place.

Human Interactions

There’s a new movie out called “American Blackout”, I don’t plan on watching it but the plot revolves around a cyber-attack on the power grid. It covers the first 10 days, but I’m not sure if it assumes the blackout lasts longer than that. This made me think (again) about how people would respond in a crisis, and how my planning would be affected.  Frankly, I have a very tough time imagining what others will do. We all tend to assume people will behave in a certain fashion, either like us, helpless incompetents, or as criminals.  That’s the sense I get visiting prep sites, maybe that’s correct but no idea, really. I’m going to try to be open-minded and think this one through.

Neighbors

These folks are, by virtue of proximity and familiarity, going to be the first to come a ‘knocking.  I expect them to be out and about and seeking help and information from the start of the crisis, it’s only natural but begs the question of how to respond.  On one hand, if outsiders cause trouble you may want to band together for protection. On the other, chances are they will only drain what limited resources you have and expect you to help even if you can’t. My position is to offer guidance, information (you may be the only link to the outside), and assistance defending against outsiders.  Say nothing about what you have, that will create a terrible problem later. I’d like to be able to function as Farmer Bob and feed the subdivision, but that’s not practical. So, the only reasonable path is to defer food requests and make them find it themselves. I could probably provide clean drinking water, assuming they bring it to me for filtering and treatment. I could also give them a few seeds, if they can plant and maintain a garden.  You have to force people to shift for themselves, otherwise they will do nothing and expect to be taken care of. Sound harsh, but there’s no other way to handle it.  It’s the old saying about teaching someone to fish rather than giving them one…

The exception to this is block defense, if strangers begin roaming and looting houses you may need to form a team to repel them. I suppose it would be like a tiny version of the Minutemen, those who own firearms respond to the call. That assumes your neighbors are not royally pissed off at you and/or are the ones doing the looting.

What I’d really like to do is organize the nearby homes, pool resources, and get cranking on the gardening/farming/wood cutting/improvising.  Whether or not I can convince people to follow that is a big question, but they’d have few options.   Beats me if this is feasible, or it breaks down and we end up in Mad Max mode after all.

Outsiders

This is the land of pure speculation. I’m not sure if too many outsiders would show up, given the difficulty of travel and resupply. If they did, I would stay quiet and wait until they left. If they caused trouble, warn then dispatch. I don’t see how you could tolerate any form of looting, that defeats the whole purpose of prepping and would cause you to lose everything you worked so hard to put in place.  ‘Nuff said there.  One complication would be cops and armed forces, if they started commandeering private property under some bullshit law it would put you in a real bind. I could just see the local doughnut eaters trying this, although I doubt it would be successful. If the armed forces do it, maybe better equipped but still facing resistance from heavily armed homeowners. Same approach, hide then attack if they persist.

Food

Learning from my storage experiments, here’s what I recommend as the food options:

  1. Freeze dried entrees, veggies, fruits. This stuff is reasonably priced, stores for up to 25 years, and has enough variety to prevent food monotony. How much is up to you, but I suggest at a minimum three meals a day per person for 3 months. This, added to the short term stock plus things I list later, should get you to the 6 month or beyond mark. http://www.beprepared.com is a good source of these items, I’ve been very happy with them.
  2. Freeze dried basics. You will want to augment the entrees with some staples, like potatoes, soy protein meat substitutes, powdered eggs, powdered milk/butter/sour cream/tomato paste, etc. These allow you add in simple sides and also make things like pasta sauce from long term stores. This will stretch out your entrée selection and use things like rice, beans, and pasta in normal dishes rather than prison camp fare.  What’s for breakfast? Beans. Lunch? Beans. Dinner? Get ready….RICE! Yay!  Need to avoid that trap. http://www.rainydayfoods.com/ is a good source for all this.
  3. Grocery Store items. You don’t need to buy everything in sealed cans, here’s a sample of what can be safely stored in Ziplock bags and boxes:
    1. Pasta.
    2. Rice
    3. Baking powder
    4. Yeast
    5. Salt
    6. Sugar
    7. Spices
    8. Cocoa
    9. Dry soup mix
    10. Potato flakes
    11. Canned meat. Note: this needs to be stored separately, rotated and checked. The cans do corrode and the result is a disaster.
  4. Grains and legumes. Sold as a kit by BePrepared, contains a years supply of misc grains. Highly recommended, but note requires a grain mill for the wheat and oats.
  5. Oils. I’m still working on this, but so far the leading candidate is coconut oil. It’s almost fully saturated, is a solid below 75 F, and is said to keep for 6+ years if kept cool, dark, and unopened.  Plain corn oil is OK if you check it, but this is a work in progress.  BTW you MUST have some kind of fats and oils in your diet, plan on looking like the Olsen twins without it.
  6. Powdered drink mix, coffee.  This falls under the monotony rule, it is said that drinking just plain water leads to dehydration, esp. with kids.  Packets and jars of Koolaid and chocolate milk store well and are easy to make.

Heating and Cooking

Really the same thing, you probably will be using the same item as a heat source and for cooking. The best approach is a propane burner, this can be run indoors with no smoke. Downside is the need to stockpile gas, but some quick ciphering leads you to about 8-10 15 lb cylinders as a minimum. That’s not bad at all, and highly recommended. Using a Coleman camp oven on top the burner gives you a small volume stove.

Alternately, you can purchase a cheap wood stove and pop for the Lehman’s Amish oven. This is a lot more hassle, you have to run a chimney, cut and season wood, and will create a giant signal that says “go here to pillage”.  It’s totally non-stealthy, and really belongs in the Day366 section but thought I’d mention it.

Stay tuned for more when I get motivated to finish this post….

Solar storms, the electric grid, and nuclear fuel storage

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Add this one to the natural disaster category. I’ve mentioned EMP, and stated it’s unlikely as a reason for the grid to go down but there’s actually a far more plausible scenario. If the sun spits out a giant flare, it can create a large EMP-like effect on long electrical conductors. There’s no fast rise time pulse that frappes solid state devices, but it generates similar magnitude low frequency currents. These can cause core saturation in the large HV utlity transformers, which causes them to overheat and self-destruct. This has actually happened in recent memory, and caused some major damage and outages even with the moderate levels of solar flux seen in those events.

I say moderate because there are truly massive flares that occur every 500 years or so, with lesser ones every 100. The biggest on record was the Carrington Event in 1859, this caused telegraph lines to fail and catch on fire. Another one occurred in 1921, with less magnitude but with many power system failures. Utilities are installing neutral resistors to stop the transformer failures, but in a large event the transmission lines may fail. And, having large sections of the grid down will tend to bring all the local generators down with it, since they are all interconnected. The system isn’t designed to operate in “island” mode, there’s a lot of load sharing and synchronization between all the elements. There have been cases of a single HV line going down, and taking large areas off line for days (even with no damage). It takes that long to get everything reconnected. If multiple areas are off or at partial capacity, it may take weeks or longer to get power back. Turning off power for weeks would be the worst thing to ever occur in this country, things would just grind to a stop. Think about the lack of food storage, working hospitals, fuel and water pumping, banking/finance, lighting, etc. It wouldn’t even have to be for that long, many people would be in trouble within hours. That would be bad enough, but it gets better…

It’s a little known fact that all nuclear power plants store depleted fuel rod assemblies on site. These assemblies are highly radioactive and give off lots of heat, so the utilities store them in concrete pools filled with water.  The water is needed for shielding, and most importantly to prevent the rods from getting so hot they melt and burn. The pools are packed well past capacity due to the cancelling of the Yucca storage facility, so a loss of water pumping would cause the water to boil off in a matter of days. In theory each plant has a way to add water via diesel pumps, but if this isn’t done you get a radiation leak from the meltdown in the pool. Interestingly, the storage pools are not covered with a concrete dome, they are usually metal roofed commercial buildings. So, a fire would cause the facility to vent radioactive smoke in a long plume downwind of the site.   Sort of like Chernobyl. Depending on all the variables like wind speed, direction, how much fuel was stored, how long the operator was able to add water, you could get a really horrible situation repeated N times across the country.

I can’t find out much about how likely this is, there’s very little information about how the NRC plans to add water in the event of a grid collapse. They seem to spend all their energy downplaying the likelihood of the grid shutting off, while not mentioning how to avoid it or the outcome.  So add Gieger counters, dosimeters, and sandbags to the planning list.  If you get stuck in an area downwind of a nuke site, things may be hot so it’s best to have some sort of shelter.  

I’m mostly pondering the grid outage, not so much the poly Cherynobyl. If you stop and think, it seems like something that could happen due to the lack of backups. But, maybe I’m overly pessimistic. As I’ve said, people are pretty resourceful but it could be a while to recover from that. It supports the idea of having a 2-4 week reserve, and some electric backup.

Results for 8 year storage of various items

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I just checked on some stuff I had stored way back in 2005, some of it was supposed to be rotated out at 4 years but some didn’t have a hard use by date. I haven’t gotten to opening some individual containers and checking, just visuals and observations. So far one negative result and the rest positive, but this is all new to me. Keep in mind this was a pack and forget, and I suspect most people are going to be lax on checking up on the cache. Here’s the summary:

Gasoline

Win. This was the big surprise, put 10 gallons in my truck and it ran fine. No discernible difference between that and pump gas. Usually stale gas gets dark yellow, and reeks like old paint. This was a little yellower than fresh, but smelled the same. The trick was to store it in plastic, and keep it cool. I figured it would be dead, but no.

Canned goods aka No Soup For You

Fail. Canned soup rusted from the inside out, and weeped on all the other cans, rusting them too. It was either the tomato or the chicken noodle, I guess the salt or acid affected the can coating. Based on that, I recommend no canned soup or any canned goods with liquids go into the supply. Canned vegetable and soups are all readily available as dry mixes or dehydrated, there’s really no point in cans. Jars probably have the same problem due to the metal lids. I might make exceptions for canned meats, but I am not sure about the specifics. You’ll have to wait another 5 years for that….

Dry goods

Win. Everything looked great, zero issues on inspection. No mold/weevils/splotching/rusty cans etc. The sugar was still granular, no caking (fully expected a solid concrete like mass in the bag).

Vegetable oil

Win, to my eye. Still nice and clear, have yet to crack one open and sniff. I may try to send a sample to a lab if it’s not too spendy. Supposedly when ooil goes bad it gets rancid and smelly, and tastes like shit. No way I will actually eat it.

Peanut butter

Win, conditional. Same as the oil, looked fabulous. Will sniff and then send for a test.

Storage conditions

My storage area is cool, but not really that dry. I put everything in big storage bins, then used big ziplocks inside that for most things. I have some cans that were boxed, those got bagged and taped but I think I need a better seal. I recommend ziplocking EVERYTHING, and tossing in a dessicant packet. That way you know for sure it’s sealed.

 

Realistic preparedness plans, some guidelines and specific information

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So after all the introduction and argle bargle, here’s the start of the relevant material. I’m writing this for the person who may not know much about the subject, may be they are interested but not sure where to start or even if it’s practical. If you are already deeply involved with it, it may be of limited usefulness but might expose some gaps in your own plans.

How to begin

I recommend starting small, with a specific length of “off grid” time in mind. This is the whole idea of prepping (I hate that word but it’s terse), if something happens how can you and your loved ones survive if not be comfortable. When I started, I picked the following goals:

  •  30 days
  • 3 months
  • 6 months
  • One year

I have since added “indefinitely” to the list, it’s the Day366 thing but a much more intense and long-term exercise. It may be good to add two weeks on the front, this is a more realistic time frame for common emergencies and doesn’t require the same level of effort and expense.  Let’s walk though that first….

TWO WEEKS

We will assume a standard scenario for most of the timelines, i.e. you’ve lost electrical power, utilities, access to most if not all outside facilities. This one doesn’t include any self-defense, as 2 weeks will likely not lead to unrest.

Water

You will need one gallon per person per day, so 14 gallons each.  Family of four, just under 60 gallons. Distilled water is a buck a gallon, cheap and keeps a long time. Buy these 4 at a time, and cache them in a cool place. You can stack 3×3 or 4×4 in a small area, 4-5 high on plywood and bricks so there’s 36-125 gallons. This one is non-negotiable, you can exist without a lot of things but water ain’t one of them.  Notice I’m not recommending a purifier, too expensive and a hassle to dick with collection. You can supplement your cache with the hot water and toilet tanks, they contain clean water but will probably have some sediment. Use that for washing or a reserve. The hot water tank will have a drain at the bottom, just open the valve and gravity will force it out. Toilet tank (not the bowl!) is accessed by lifting off the lid, dip it out.

Food

I recently read the average family has just two days of food on hand. Judging by the duct cleaning young-uns comments on our modest pantry, I’d say that’s about right. My parents went through the Depression, and always had plenty on had. They weren’t hoarders, just of a different time when food wasn’t readily available. You will need 3 square meals a day, per person, plus snacks. This food will not be low-cal. It needs to have lots of calories and protein, and be tasty so everyone feels like eating. No one wants crap food in a highly stressed environment, just ask combat vets.

Speaking of vets, one very easy way to meet this need is to buy MREs. Uncle Sammy spent a lot of money and time on these, and they are the shit in an emergency. I’ve eaten  aircrew versions, they were pre-MRE but had lots of the same stuff. They were great, I’m not a food snob and think people like to bitch about the grub no matter what.  If you are wise, just buy MREs from a reputable supply house and you are done. Kinda spendy but if you store them in a cool area they last 8-12+ years. They are also a building block of the longer term plans, those incorporate MREs as variety to the stored food and grains. And, you can get the chemical heaters that make the entrees hot without flame. VERY HARD TO BEAT.

Other food options

If MREs just can’t be had, be prepared to spend a lot of time and space on the alternative, plus rotating stock to avoid spoilage. And, you will need ways to prepare said food. Keep this in mind, the last thing you want is to have to run an oven all day to eat. Everyone is different, but here’s some ideas of what and what not to buy:

Yes

  • Peanut butter
  • Pilot crackers
  • Jelly
  • Canned meats
  • Chili
  • Cereal, esp granola
  • Mac n cheese (the fattening, in a cup kind). Requires boiling water but not pots full.
  • Ramen noodles
  • Any “add boiling” water foods, including freeze dried. Those really belong in the longer-term category but will work fine.
  • Instant drink mix
  • Powdered milk.

No

  • Canned soup. Salty and heavy as hell, needs a stove, and no nutritional value.
  • Pasta, flour, cake mix, or anything needing cooking.

So if you want to be cheap, eating will not be much fun. Kinda like real life.

Cooking

Notice how you needed boiling water for most foods? You might also need it for other things, like coffee and tea or to sterilize water. A heat source is needed, here’s some options:

  • Jet Boil. This company makes climbing stoves, these have an insulated chimney that can boils 16 ounces of water in a minute. Pretty much the bomb for freeze dried grub and hot water. Uses little cans of butane, very light and portable. Spendy but like MREs, hard to top.
  • Harbor Freight or Coleman burner. A single gas burner, runs on small propane bottles. Less than Jet Boil, heavier and bigger, sprays BTUs everywhere. Can double as a small furnace, which is tres handy.
  • Kindling burner. A glorified camp fire in a can, uses wood so fuel isn’t a problem. Outdoors only, not really recommended.

Heat

Heat Buddy. Runs on the same small propane bottles as the stoves, will keep you from freezing. Anything else is seriously not recommended, for the price this is the way to go.

Fuel

Either cases of the small propane bottles, or 1-2 cylinders. The bottles are a whole lot less to carry, and don’t need complex adapters and hoses. Get enough to last the whole time, both cooking and heating. You can follow the consumption rates listed in the instructions to add up the amount needed.

Light

You don’t need to go nuts with this, although I have found just a flashlight really blows for illumination.  Coleman and others make nice dual fluorescent lanterns, they take a wad of D-cells and can be run off 12 volts. I’d consider that a minimum, along with a few LED flashlights. Stepping up from here is a regular lamp, using CFLs. They use 7-8 watts, but need an inverter and battery bank. This option feels more normal, you can read and do regular activities with that much light.

Power

A couple of options here:

  • Dry cells. This assumes you run everything from AAA-D cells. Not a bad choice, just make sure you buy lots of name brand cells and keep them current.  You are limited to lanterns and portables.
  • Deep cycle or SLA battery with an inverter. Ahh, now we are talking.  Costs a lot more, but can be set up to run larger loads like a lamp or laptop. I won’t digress on the details, but expect to spend 300 bucks for a decent setup. More than that for a small solar array to charge it. This may not be practical for the 2 week’er, but electricity is sooooo nice.

Sanitation

You will need the following:

  • Toilet paper
  • Paper towels
  • Plastic ware, cups
  • Soap. Good old Ivory bars, nothing fancy
  • Two buckets. One to wash up, one to..you  know.
  • HD trash bags
  • Feminine hygiene accoutrements
  • Disposable razors
  • Travel shampoos
  • Kleenex

OK, I think that’s everything. If you have everything on the list, you are good to go for the duration barring any medical crisis.

The irony of Newtown

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I had been thinking about getting some high cap 22 clips, and checked Cabela’s to see if they had stock. Zero. Why? The recent dustup about assult weapons and high capacity magazines. Apparently the threat of these items being outlawed has resulted in the near-total cleanout of all larger mags and assault weapons, and a lot of ammunition.  People are backlogged to buy them, so we have the Law of Unintended Consequences giving us far more of the very thing we didn’t want. By we I mean the current administration and the anti-gun people. I personally think they are of little use but irrelevant to mass shootings. 10 rounds at a whack and an extended mag lever means one could bang out shots more or less continuously, doubtful the slight pause wouild allow anyone to take down the gunman.

It’s just annoying how the real problem got lost, which is no guards at schools and allowing mentally ill people to acquire firearms.  Now there’s going to be a LOT of AR-15s in circulation that would otherwise gone unmade and unsold….just what we needed.

 

Observations on Hurricane Sandy

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This is sort of stale news, but watching the aftermatch of Hurricane Sandy was a reminder of what would happen in any widespread disaster. I was struck by the lack of standyby power, fuel, food, and heating supplies. It got fairly cold after the storm, lots of people had no heat and had to leave the area to avoid freezing. As I’ve pointed out, heat is electrically operated in most places and would not function without power, even if the natural gas was still on.  Gasoline either ran out or was unavailable from the pumps (no power), so people had trouble getting out. Telecom was mostly inoperative, payphones became a very valuable commodity, and in some cases the only comms left standing.

It points up the need to be standalone self-sufficient for at least a month, to weather something like this. It’s not some abstraction, it’s reality and Sandy was proof of that. These events are fairly common, so it pays to be ready IMO.

“The Book of Eli” movie review as related to disaster prep

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I recently watched the “Book of Eli”, it came on after another movie I wanted to see. I normally wouldn’t have bothered (too depressing) but the opening scenes caught my attention. It was actually pretty good as entertainment, but not at all realistic IMO. I won’t detail the entire film, but it’s abount a guy who is carrying a Bible from somewhere in the interior of the US to the West Coast, after a generic apocalypse.  There a a few things I thought were accurate:

  • Water was the number one commodity. It was all about filling up that canteen, which is pretty much what combat troops with no supply tail do.
  • Footwear is number three. No transpo, means hoofing it everywhere. Eli was all about scrounging better boots, again a prime factor for infantry guys.
  • Hygiene was number four. Shampoo and soap was the gold of the future, which again jibes with most veteran accounts of being on the line and dreaming of getting clean. I feel nasty after a day or two, weeks and months I can’t imagine.

What was silly:

  • Bandits living in the middle of nowhere after 31 years of anarchy.
  • Victims of said bandits oblivious to danger, including unmuffled motorcyles.
  • Viable 31+ year old batteries, bullet primers and powder, vehicle tires, and gasoline.
  • Road Warrior as a lifestyle. I am pretty sure people would hang all miscreants on sight, it would be all about cooperation and not lone wolf tactics. Makes for a good film action I guess.
  • The strangely sociable prepper cannibals with no prepared firing positions or defensive fortifications.  Surely they would have expected trouble and sandbagged a room or two, and kept a lookout for intruders. I enjoyed how the bad guys DROVE UP, got out of their vehicles, then engaged in a dialog with the heavily armed occupants while casually setting up a Gatling gun. Huh? 4 people inside, please pick off all standing right away BEFORE WE ALL GET WAXED!  I especially enjoyed Denzel’s line “..I expect they are up to no good.” Yeah no kidding, Mr. Wizard.

Planning for the long term

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I see this as something most people get wrong (including me). We can all get by for a short time, but what about when things get really bad? Imagine you are stuck on your property for the duration, nothing coming in.  That’s a bitch, surviving for more than a year with little to no outside supply is really difficult to imagine let along accomplish.  The problem from what I see is we tend to be overoptimistic and weirdly selective about what’s needed.  I’ve seen a lot of women preppers with pantries bulging with canned food but no way to cook it, or ways to obtain clean drinking water. I’ll throw out a few examples of things that get overlooked:

  • Water collection. Absolutely the top priority, no water = end of the line. Imagine your bugging in at home, and there’s no city water. How do you get enough to drink? Assume the average adult needs 1 gallon per day minimum, not counting sanitation. Maybe there’s four of you, we’re now up to 4-5 gallons PER DAY.  It doesn’t rain enough in most places to yield this much on a regular basis, so some way to store it is an absolute must. How much? Probably a month or more, so 150 gallons. That’s three big drums, that you have to keep full.  What if it doesn’t rain for a while? Double that.
  • Water filtration and treatment.  When you open the tap, that water has been cleaned 9 ways to Sunday. Whatever you manage to collect needs to have bacteria and contaminants removed, even rain from the gutters (bird droppings, dirt, etc). Ever design a water treatment plant? Me neither. You may have to get water from some nasty sources in a pinch, so rain is actually a best-case option.
  • Heat. This is a big one. Not just heat to keep from freezing (who doesn’t live where the temp gets below 32?), but to boil water and cook. Most survival supplies need to be rehydrated, and you will likely need to cook things to supplement your diet. Bread, rice, beans, etc.
  • Light.  Even cavemen had light, you need some illumination to work after dark or to see where you are going. Not candles or oil lanterns, but an LED lamp or flashlight.
  • Electric power. EVERYTHING runs on electricity. Lamps, electric power tools, hair clippers, mixers, radios, things that are tough to find hand power equivalents for.
  • Fuel. Gasoline, LP gas, Kerosene. If you need to move via the road system, or run a generator you need gas. Kerosene runs stoves and heaters, and can be used in diesel engines.   LP gas for safe room heat and cooking.

This is just the major items, lack thereof could be lethal. BTW I’m leaving food as a separate category. There’s a bunch of other things that aren’t vital to life, but would make things damned unpleasant without them:

  • Toilet paper.
  • Soaps. Body, shampoo, laundry detergent, dish soap.
  • Toothpaste and floss.
  • Tubs and buckets. Where are you going to clean dishes, utensils, clothes, and your own nasty self?
  • Shavers.
  • Bleach. Vital to disinfecting water and other things as needed.
  • Matches. How were you going to light that burner? Flint?
  • Clothesline. I still haven’t bought this….gotta hang the wet stuff to dry.
  • Paper towels.