Posts Tagged ‘prepping’

Building up your preps $25 at a time

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

I think that especially when you’re just starting out prepping, it can seem like small amounts of money don’t matter. But those small amounts can add up over weeks and months and you can build your preps little by little. $25 might seem like a relatively insignificant amount of money, but here’s what you can get for $25 or less each:

25 lbs. of frozen carrots at Walmart (which I dehydrate and store in mason jars)

or…

17 lbs. of frozen spinach at Walmart

or…

50 lbs. of rice at Sam’s Club (with about $9 leftover)

or…

30 lbs. of dry beans at Sam’s Club

or…

18 cans of canned mackerel at Walmart

or…

6 packages of 30-count half-liter bottles of water from Sam’s Club for storage

or…

7 cans of Cafe Bustelo coffee at Walmart (my only addiction–gotta have my coffee)

or…

100 Winchester 9mm FMJ rounds at Walmart

or…

an extra magazine for my Kel-Tec PF9 (with about $7 leftover)

or…

a 400-count bottle of naproxen at Sam’s Club (with about $8 leftover)

or…

10 paperback Bibles (because man doesn’t live by bread alone)

And you can fill in the list with other items you want or need in your preps as well. But the next time you’re tempted to drop $25 for a week’s worth of fast-food meals, stop and think about how far $25 can go in helping you build up your preps. It can probably go a lot farther than you think.

Just 24 pounds of carrots until vacation

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Sometimes when it comes to prepping, we can get overwhelmed if we start looking at the big picture rather than the day-by-day goals right in front of us. One of my long-term goals is to have a year’s worth of food for several people in several different locations just in case relocation becomes a necessity and/or the opportunity arises for anonymous charity. But this week I’m only going to worry about dehydrating the 24 pounds of carrots left in my freezer (well, technically, I’ve got 8 pounds of frozen carrots thawing at the moment, and 16 pounds of carrots still in the freezer — I just finished dehydrating another 8 pounds). Then I’m going on vacation so I can stock up on a little rest. ;)

Some people might experience brain freeze if I were to tell them that I’ve dehydrated 64 pounds of carrots in a little over two months. “64 POUNDS OF CARROTS?? How long did THAT take???” (Actual total dehydration time was just over four days, not counting time to thaw the carrots.) But just like tackling any other big task, baby steps are the key. You can’t eat an elephant in one bite — but you CAN eat that elephant one bite at a time until you finish it.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed as you try to tackle your prepping goals, step back and focus on just one facet of the big picture and work on that one thing until it’s done. Then work on the next thing. Or if you’re like me and tend to multitask, work on several things a little at a time until you finish one, then another, then another. And with steady, diligent effort, you’ll get there. One. Step. At. A. Time.

My goal for the week is fairly small: Dehydrate 8 pounds of frozen carrots on each of the next three days (1 pound per tray in two 4-tray Nesco dehydrators), then can ‘em up, label them and then it’s vacation time. What are your prepping goals for the day? For the week? For the month? What can you do to break down your bigger goals into smaller pieces so you can get them done? Like I said above, I understand that prepping can seem like a huge task that you’ll NEVER accomplish because there’s SO MUCH to be done! But baby steps will get you where you want to go, and probably much more quickly than you expect.

What do you want or need to do right now in your prepping? What small thing can you do this moment that will get you one little step closer to that goal?

Don’t lose your common sense while prepping

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

At my fiancee’s insistence I watched the show “Wife Swap” with her last night (the show was better than I expected and not like the name sounds), and actually I was intrigued when I heard that one of the families on tonight’s episode was obsessed with 2012. Unfortunately, that family IMO gives a bad name to those of us who are trying not to leave our common sense behind as we stock up and prepare for pretty rough times ahead. The parents made their kids come home immediately after school every day “just in case something happens.” They wouldn’t let the kids participate in sports because 2012-oriented tasks were much more important and made them participate in regular hazmat-suit drills in the backyard. They even had a dry-erase marker board in the kitchen counting down the number of days until 12-21-12!! These people really didn’t seem to have much of a connection to what was right in front of their faces. I mean, sure, they have their survival food stash (which looked like cases of MREs) under the stairs, but really, making your kids wear “survival packs” with them everywhere they go?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nearly a year’s worth of food on hand for both me and my fiancee (trying to add a month’s worth of food every two weeks), I’ve got a steadily growing ammo stash (need more range time, though) and I hang out online with really smart people at GIM and a couple other sites and read stories on a couple dozen news sites a day to try to read between the “official” news stories and see what’s really happening, but c’mon, what are the odds of a particular family in a particular neighborhood needing hazmat suits for the entire family on any given day? You’re more likely to encounter hungry, angry mobs ransacking houses for food in most SHTF situations that I can imagine, because most people like to eat every day.

Until this past year, there was a Cold War-era stash of VX nerve gas at a military depot about 40 miles away from where I live. In the event of a VX leak (not to worry, all the VX at that location has now been neutralized), residents in close proximity to the depot received an automated warning and were expected to have enough time to seal up the doors and windows in their residences with, I’m guessing, plastic sheeting or other such material. But being 40 miles downwind, there would either be a lot of dead people between my house and that depot by the time the VX reached me, or the gas would dissipate into a dilute-enough concentration that it wouldn’t be an issue outside of the immediate area of the depot. I can’t imagine what any one family imagines it might encounter that it needs hazmat suits and drills for their entire family…unless they all had bad bean burritos for dinner.

But seriously, that family on TV tonight really give a bad name for those of us who haven’t lost our common sense and are trying to prepare for the most likely SHTF scenarios based upon our life situations. Since my fiancee is disabled, I’m not in a position to bug-out except in the most extreme circumstances, so we’re going to keep prepping and keep stocking up right here while keeping our jobs and not losing our minds.

I’ll try to find a link for the episode, if it’s been posted online yet.

EDIT: I almost forgot another very important detail–this family had bought everything on credit and didn’t plan to keep on paying after, of course, the world ends in 2012. WHAT KIND OF PREPPERS BUY EVERYTHING ON CREDIT????

Are you just planning to prep? Or are you actually prepping?

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

It just occurred to me that I hadn’t posted anything new on here in well over three weeks. Quite frankly, I’ve been so busy prepping that I haven’t had time to write. But how many of you are so busy PLANNING to prep that you don’t actually get around to prepping?

In the past few weeks I’ve dehydrated about 40 lbs. of carrots, added about 10 lbs. of spices to my pantry stash and found out that blueberries can be rather tricky to dehydrate. (More on that in a future post.) I’ve also added a couple more cases of canned mackerel to my storage pantry and am about to place a large order (probably more than 50 lbs.) for dehydrated banana chips which I can order more cheaply than I can make them myself.

Are you planning to prep? Or are you actually prepping? What are you waiting for?

How NOT to prepare for TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It)

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

I cringed when I saw the story Doomsday safe-haven offered under Mojave Desert on the AP wire last week, partly because this sort of slick marketing ignores the fact that most disasters, including but not limited to nuclear war, probably won’t happen when we expect it — not that anyone among us usually sits around taking bets on when nuclear war will happen. But what dismayed me even more is the huge disservice that this slick marketing job is doing for those of us who are trying to take common-sense preparations for hard times (and encouraging others to do the same) while not acting like TEOTWAWKI is imminent — it MIGHT BE imminent, but most of us who are prepping are doing so while going on with LAWKI — life as we know it.

Under the slick slogan “You can’t predict, but you can prepare,” entrepreneur Robert Vicino promises that for a scant $50,000, people can ride out the Apocalypse in a fancified bunker under the Mojave Desert. Take a look at some of the over-the-top accommodations:

At first glance, I can’t help but think of the show “The Simple Life” — how the heck are the kind of people who have more money than common sense (assuming as I am that most people willing to drop $50K think they can just buy their way out of nuclear war or other such scenarios) going to do the grunt work needed to rebuild after TSHTF if they aren’t willing or equipped to deal with what’s going on above ground in the first place?

And you gotta love the rhetorical question “Where would you go with 3 days’ notice?”

Think back to how most travel in general and all air traffic and commerce in particular ground to a halt on 9/11. If we have a major — REALLY major — SHTF situation like, oh, maybe nuclear war, it’s going to make 9/11 look like a Sunday School picnic. And I’m guessing that at that point, all bets are off that anyone will get anywhere on anything even remotely resembling a “normal” schedule.

But the REAL problem with putting all your eggs in one bunker is that it gives yet-unprepared or still-asleep sheeple a false idea or seven about what SHOULD be done to prepare for uncertain times. Most of us who are prepping aren’t digging elaborate bunkers in our backyards (for one thing, it might violate zoning regulations — see this article), but we are stocking up on food, water, medication and other necessities of life while preparing for uncertain times.

For those of you who are already prepping, keep on doing what you’re doing and don’t lose your common sense. For those of you who haven’t yet started prepping, start taking steps right where you’re at to prepare your people and your preps, and bug out only if and when TEOTWAWKI comes to your hometown. And don’t worry about the Mojave. People looking for safety in a bunker under the desert just have their heads in the sand.

Don’t wipe out your toilet paper supply!

Friday, May 14th, 2010

The idea of stocking up — REALLY stocking up — on toilet paper probably seems ridiculous past a certain level of inventory. After all, storage space is valuable, so how much do we need to stock of just one product? Well, that’s all fine and dandy when it comes to substituting one product for another nearly equal product, but the one thing you really can’t live without is toilet paper. And as anyone realizes when they sit down on the toilet only to find that there’s no paper, if you don’t have it, you-know-what can really hit the fan.

And the lack of toilet paper can, um, wipe out public health as we know it.

There are any number of jokes that could be made about toilet paper or the lack thereof, but suffice to say that not having it becomes an emergency to the person who doesn’t have it. Multiply that times, oh, 6.5 billion people and you have a public health emergency. Even if you have a working sewer system after TSHTF, pretty soon the lack of paper can be pretty dicey. Multiply that personal SHTF situation by millions of people and you have a public health emergency.

“But stores NEVER run out of toilet paper…do they??”

Many of you who are old enough probably remember the bogus toilet paper shortage that Johnny Carson joked about in 1973. The next day, according to reports, stores across the country were stripped clean of toilet paper amid worries of an impending shortage. A few nights later Carson retracted his statement, but it still took weeks for the supply of toilet paper to return to normal on store shelves.

At this moment I have about 120 rolls of toilet paper on hand — probably more than a year’s worth for the average person under normal circumstances — and by “normal circumstances,” I mean a lack of extra toilet paper usage that comes about through, let’s say, intestinal distress. Or long-term guests. Or just plain forgetting to buy more. Or the cat learned how to paw open the cabinet where the toilet paper was stored and turned the paper into confetti. (All of these scenarios have happened to me; don’t think they can’t happen to you.) All it takes for things to hit the crapper is for the so-called “just in time” inventory supply lines to be interrupted to bring about problems keeping grocery items on the shelves. I can (maybe) do without coffee for a day or two if something catastrophic has occurred and there’s no chance of my being able to buy coffee. (But I’ve planned ahead and stocked up, just in case.) But I really can’t imagine what would happen if I run out of toilet paper. The health problems that can arise from contact with fecal matter are even worse than the contact with fecal matter itself.

(If you like being around fecal matter in the first place, you have much bigger problems than just a lack of toilet paper. And almost as much common sense as public-health expert and singer Sheryl Crow, who said people should be restricted in how much toilet paper they are allowed to use.)

To badly mangle a quote by the great patriot Thomas Jefferson, who had his share of SHTF situations, we hold these truths to be self-evident that not all toilet paper is created equal. Just because you have two equal-size packages of toilet paper doesn’t at all mean that you’ll get equal benefit from them. Let me illustrate:

Exhibit No. 1 is the POM 40-roll case of Quality Bath Tissue from Sam’s Club:

Exhibit No. 2 is the Member’s Mark 36-roll package (well, technically it’s 4 9-roll packages in a larger outer-wrapped package) of Ultra Premium Bath Tissue, also from Sam’s Club:

Can you tell which brand is which?

A case of POM as of this writing is 18.88 for 40 rolls, or 47.2 cents per roll; a multipack of the Member’s Mark TP is 14.98 for 36 rolls, or 41.6 cents per roll. So you should get the Member’s Mark TP, right?

Not so fast there, pilgrim. Look at the small print:

Each roll of POM has 450 2-ply 4-by-4.5-inch sheets:

But each roll of the Member’s Mark has less than half of that — a mere 200 sheets per roll!!

Technically, you’re saving 5.6 cents per roll when you buy the Member’s Mark TP. But your savings goes down the crapper because you get less than half of the TP surface area from the Member’s Mark than from the POM. But even more unsettling than the higher per-sheet cost of the Member’s Mark TP is that you use it up more quickly and can deplete your toilet paper supply much faster than you might expect.

And that would be a very, very bad thing.

Plan ahead. Stock up. Pronto. Because your life depends on it.

Three cases of POM toilet paper take up less space than that big-screen TV you made room for. And I don’t think you’ll care about the TV when nature calls and you’re out of paper. And as you sit there at some point looking at the last empty cardboard tube on the roll with no paper left in the house, I’m pretty sure nothing else will matter. Anyone who says you can have too much toilet paper is just full of crap.

Stubborn and starving

Monday, March 15th, 2010

I’m simultaneously amused and dismayed at some of the comments at the bottom of this article by people who think that those of us who are stocking up on months, even years worth of food and other necessities of life are paranoid nutjobs with no connection to the real world.

And y’know, I think they’re exactly right.

Why be prudent now when the government can provide for us later?

Why scrimp and save and buy things that are useful when buying that Chinese-made plasma-screen TV will do more to stimulate the (Chinese) economy?

Why buy extra food and build up a substantial reserve pantry when we can rest assured that, no matter what, food will ALWAYS be available at the grocery store? (except when snowstorms, strikes, food riots, crop failures or other disasters strike)

Dang that I didn’t buy food when I should’ve stocked up, because the wife and kids are hungry right now and not too happy that we bought a much bigger house than we could afford on an adjustable-rate mortgage, and now our payments have skyrocketed, we owe more than the market value of the house and my industry is laying off people like blood gushing from a trauma patient.

Each one of us has choices as to how we spend the money we earn. It’s just that some people choose to spend money on really stupid things.

I’m having a hard time understanding what’s stupid, paranoid or disconnected from the real world when it comes to having a year’s worth of food for myself and my family. Is our collective memory as a society so short that we forget that little over 100 years ago, most families had at least several months worth of food in their pantry or at least easily obtainable in their communities? But now most of us are so far removed from the source of our food that if something — it could be multiple things — interrupts the supply chain that fills our grocery stores, we could be days…maybe weeks??…without food or other items. If having several months worth of food on hand made sense 100 years ago, how has it somehow become a ridiculous idea today?

Or to look at it another way, what good is it to have a 24-hour grocery store nearby if their shelves are empty? SOMEBODY obviously bought food and emptied the shelves, so why weren’t you among them?

Because they’re open 24/7. You didn’t “need” to go to the grocery store when you should’ve gone, just in case. Now you’re hungry.

But because the store is open 24/7, I’m sure they’ll have something on the shelves.

Eventually.

Whenever.

Well, there’s always Dumpster-diving.

Or you could stock up now while you still can.

What’s your excuse?

Why should I stock up on stuff if people will just steal it anyway?

Monday, March 8th, 2010

I’ve read this argument far too many times, that stocking up on food, ammo, precious metals or anything else probably isn’t worth it because people could come in and steal your stuff — so why stock up in the first place?

So let’s take this thought one step further.

If I stock up on food or anything else to help sustain me and my family in the event of a long-term economic downturn, the possibility exists that whatever I’ve stocked up on could be stolen. But I could also be mugged on my way home from work, carjacked while stopped at a red light or robbed at an ATM. So should I stop going to work, driving or using an ATM?

Or should I just wait for the government to take care of me and protect me in any and every situation?

Most Americans are well-aware of the federal and state governments’ stellar job in coordinating “relief” efforts after Hurricane Katrina. Quite to the contrary, it was an absolute disaster. Coordination among relief agencies and organizations was overlapping or nonexistent, food and other necessities were in short supply and those people who either couldn’t or wouldn’t leave the affected areas severely strained the available resources.

Oh yeah, then there’s another annoying little detail that seems to come up a lot these days: Congressional budget analysts are predicting nearly trillion-dollar deficits each year for at least the next decade. TRILLION. One thousand billion. In red ink. Every year.

And I’m thinking about trusting these bozos to take care of me when they not only can’t get stuff to the right places when the stuff needs to get there, but they’re spending themselves off a cliff at terminal velocity??

It’s like those ghastly videos around the Internet showing skydivers whose parachutes didn’t open. The fall didn’t kill them — hitting the earth at 180 miles per hour did. These people looked like the epitome of perfect health until the point of impact. But the impact ruined their day. Having a properly packed backup parachute would’ve been a good thing before it was too late.

Your food storage, water storage, precious metals and personal protection are your backup chute. YOUR food. YOUR water. YOUR PMs. YOUR personal protection.

Not the FEMA rations, trucks of potable water (if there are any) and absolutely no personal protection if you wait for the government to “take care of you.” And if you didn’t bother with the first three items, you probably didn’t buy any precious metals in the first place.

“He looks so natural!”

Depending on who the deceased is at a funeral, I’m either mildly amused or somewhat disturbed…sometimes both…to hear someone proclaim that the dearly departed “looks so natural.” We’ve seen pictures of the 50-year-old who looks 15 years younger because they’ve taken care of their body, exercised and done other things that promote good health. Then there’s the other 50-year-old who looks like he’s about 70 because he’s been chain-smoking for decades and lives on a steady diet of Mickey D’s. I wouldn’t trust the chain-smoking McConnoisseur to give me advice on how to live a healthy life. Yet too many of us implicitly trust that the government will take care of us if disaster happens. So we do nothing. And hope our parachute will open in time.

I don’t remember putting on a parachu…KERSPLAT!!

Which brings me back to my first point.

The worst-case scenario isn’t that you prepare for emergencies by stocking up on food, water, personal protection and everything else and then have people break in and steal everything — if you’re well-prepared, you’ll have your preps well-hidden and you’ll have protection to defend yourself, your family and your property. The WORST-CASE scenario is waiting on the government to help you.

So what if you prepare, only to have someone break in and steal everything?

But what if nobody breaks in? What if everything you’ve stocked up and stored for yourself and your family is well-protected and stays right where you put it?

Then you have the things you’ll need for your and your family’s well-being in the event of possibly long-term crises.

Do you have life insurance so your family will be provided for in case of your death? Do you have car insurance in case something happens to your vehicle? Do you have health insurance to help cover medical expenses in case of illness? If so, then what’s your excuse for not stocking up on food, water, personal protection and other vital necessities in the midst of economic turmoil, high unemployment, political uncertainty, natural disasters and other situations you can’t predict?

Your well-being is in your hands. Don’t wait for your terminally ill, bankrupt Uncle Sam to take care of it for you.