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Prepping can be expensive. I get it. I’ve been at this a long time and have had just as many struggles in coming up with the money to pay for my own preps as anyone. That’s why I’m always looking for a bargain. If I can find a way to buy the things I need cheaper, I’ll take it. For that reason, I stop in at any interesting garage sales I can find.

Now, I’ve got to say that I’m not an avid garage sale fan. I can’t spend my whole Saturday going from garage sale to garage sale, getting all excited about the bargains I find. I’m more of the casual garage-saler, who stops in at one every once in a while.

But that’s why I like flea markets. Going to a flea market is like going to a couple hundred garage sales, all together in one place. That’s a whole lot more efficient, because you can park, walk through, make your purchase and be gone. I’m sure most women would think I’m nuts for my attitude; but hey, it works for me. If they want to spend their entire day Saturday at garage sales, that’s fine; I’ll spend mine doing other things.

Even so, I had never gone to the local flea market with the purpose of just seeing what I could find to help out my prepping. Usually when I go, I’m looking for a particular item, like something I need for the house. So, while I have had great results getting chandeliers and faucets at the flea market, I really didn’t know how well I would do looking for prepping gear.

That seemed like a good idea to me, so after stuffing my wallet with a few hundred dollars, I headed off to my local flea market, to see what I could find.

A Word of Caution

Before talking about what I found, let me give you a word or two of caution. I don’t know how things are where you live; but here, the vendors at flea markets aren’t known as great paragons of virtue. Many of them use the flea market as their primary source of income, and they aren’t too particular about where their products come from. Rumor has it that a lot of the “new” merchandise at the flea markets around here really is new, because it was shoplifted. That’s especially true of clothing.

I don’t know if that rumor is true or not and I haven’t tried to find out. I merely mention it as a point for you to consider. Some of the new items I found were offered for what seemed to be less than wholesale rates. That makes it real easy to believe the rumors. So if that’s an issue for you, you might want to reconsider, before going to your local flea market.

But with that out of the way, here’s what I found:

Machete – $5.00

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

One of the very first things I found was a machete. You may not be all that familiar with the machete as a survival tool, but I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico, where it is a very common tool. The machete can replace a hatchet, saw and shovel in your bug out bag and do so with less weight. This machete in particular had a very aggressive saw blade on the back edge, making it even better for cutting wood than just hacking at it. For $5.00, with the sheathe, it was a great deal.

One thing you’ve got to know about machetes though, is that they are all made of fairly soft steel. So, I don’t care how expensive a one you buy, you’re going to have to sharpen it regularly. Part of that is that the blade is not made of typical knife steel to keep it flexible. So just keep that in mind.

This same vendor (and a few others I saw which had machetes) also had a wide assortment of hand tools at excellent prices. While I’m sure they weren’t professional grade tools, if you don’t have a good collection of hand tools already, this is a cheap way to get them.

Carabineers – $2.00

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

It seems that carabineers are everywhere these days. I found a couple of big ones, the kind that are marketed for carrying bags from the grocery store, complete with padded handle. They usually go for about $8.00, but I was able to pick these up for $2.00, about a fourth the price.

There are also some rather nice snap links shown in the bottom of that picture. While not as useful as the carabineers, they were only 50₵ each, a great price.

Chickens – $10

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

Here’s one that I wasn’t expecting to find; chickens. Now, these aren’t your ordinary cook-em-for-dinner chickens, otherwise known as “fryers;” these are “layers” who are ready to give you eggs every day. The average layer will give you eggs two days out of three, so having a half-dozen layers will ensure that each member of a family of four gets at least one egg per day. That might not be as satisfying as eating a steak, but at least it would put some protein in your diet.

One of the nice things about raising chickens is that they’ll eat literally anything. If you have a problem with insect infestations in your backyard, don’t worry about it; the chickens will find those insects quite appetizing and take care of them. But they’ll eat your backyard right down to the dirt, including your garden, if you let them.

Blankets – $5 – $8

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

One lady there had a table where she was selling blankets. Now, that might not seem like much of a prepping tool, but if you live in the northern part of the country, you might want to stock up. If the power goes out and you don’t have heat in your home, you’re going to want to stack those blankets up on the beds, in order to keep warm. That’s the way our ancestors did it and it will work for us as well.

Lawn Mowers – $100

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

One guy was selling a couple of brand new lawn mowers for $100 each. I’m not familiar with this brand, but I liked the price. Granted, I don’t expect to be cutting my lawn if the brown stuff hits the rotary air movement device, but you can take the blade off of one of these, and turn it into a generator real quick. That makes it worth the money.

A little bit later I found another guy selling lawn mowers. This time they were Toro mowers, which is a well-known brand. But he wanted a bit more for them, at $150 a piece. Still a pretty good price.

Chainsaw – $80

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

This was a good find; a slightly used Ryobi chain saw. He had a couple others, but this was the only one with a name brand that is widely recognized. If you’re going to be burning wood to keep your home heated, you’re going to need a chain saw. For $80, you can’t beat this, even though it’s only got a 14 inch bar and chain.

Granted, there are other chainsaws out there with larger engines and longer chains. I’ve got one. But I also paid a whole lot more money for it. I didn’t buy this one, but I had the feeling I could have talked him down a bit on the price.

Bike & Wagon – $30 each

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

Here are a couple of things I was really hoping to find at the flea market; a bicycle and something to use as a cart. The bike might just become our prime means of transportation, should something happen to take down the grid. We can’t go back to horses and wagons, because there aren’t enough horses to go around. On the other hand, bikes are used world-wide as a primary means of transportation. They can also be used to transport goods, loading the bike up like a pack mule and pushing it along.

The wagon is great for moving things around your garden or can be hooked up to the back of the bike as a makeshift trailer. This one is nice, because it has wood sides, allowing it to carry more. I was hoping to find one of the larger ones that are sold for gardening, but I didn’t see one; so I’ll settle for this.

Generators – $200 each

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

Remember what I said about not being sure of the honesty of the vendors? Well, this is a case in point. These are two brand-new Ryobi 6500 generators. They’re an older model that’s not in the stores anymore, but it’s clear by looking at their condition, they haven’t been used at all. At only $200 each, these are about $400 – $600 less than the new ones in the stores. I’ll have to say, this was the best deal that I found.

Yard and Garden Tools – $5 each

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

There were a number of guys there selling tools. Most were cheap hand tools. But I saw two guys who had a nice collection of yard and garden tools. Some of these are refurbished used tools, some homemade (especially the hoes) and others are new. Regardless, they were all going to $5 each; a great price. All seemed to be rugged enough to stand up, without breaking.

Barbecue Grill – $50

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

I don’t know about your part of the country, but where I live, barbecue is a big thing. Owning a commercially made barbecue grill isn’t the way to go. Anyone who owns one of those, just proves themselves to be an amateur griller. The real grill pros have homemade ones, whether they made them themselves or bought one that someone else made.

I’m not sure how he could make this for the price he was selling it for. It’s made out of some sort of a tank, possibly an old propane tank. Nevertheless, it’s a great grill and rather typical of the ones in this area. That expanded steel grill surface isn’t going to sag after it gets hot and the steel body of the grill isn’t going to burn through. This will serve as an excellent survival stove, when the gas goes out.

Fishing Rods – $15

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

I was actually surprised that I didn’t see more fishing gear. Only two vendors had fishing rods and each only had two for sale. Nevertheless, these would be ideal for fishing the surf down at the beach or fishing off a pier. You might want something a bit lighter if you’re fishing in the Colorado Rockies.

Produce – Varied Prices

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

If you’re into canning, and what prepper isn’t, then the flea market may just be the place to pick up bushels of produce for canning. What’s available is going to vary by season; but it’s going to be priced a whole lot lower than the grocery store. Those avocados, for example, were four for a buck. Buying produce in bulk at the flea market is a great way to get enough to make canning more practical.

Knives – $10

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

This wasn’t the best deal I saw, but it was still worth it. If we’re going to be hunting for eve a portion of our food, then we’d better have the right sort of cutlery for preparing it; something that few people think about. Most of us are so used to having a butcher prepare our kills; but that won’t happen if the grid is down or another serious disaster occurs.

I’ve seen cheaper meat cleavers than this; but then, they were so cheap that I wouldn’t want to own them. These seemed pretty well made and I think they would do the trick. Like machetes, the steel used in meat cleavers is a bit softer than what you find in other cutlery. That’s so that it doesn’t chip and break when you use it to cut through bones.

Personal Hygiene Supplies – $2

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

While not a tool, I did find a couple of tables where they were selling personal hygiene supplies for considerably less than you can buy them anywhere else. I know for a fact that a couple of those brands are rather costly, although there are cheap ones mixed in as well. The nice thing here, is that you can stock up for cheap.

Mexican Pharmaceuticals – Various Prices

What Prepping Tools I Bought At The Yard Sale

I don’t know if you can get them there, but here we have ready access to the Mexican pharmaceutical industry. Now, I have to say, this is probably illegal as all get out; but the prices are incredible. On the average, the prices here were about 20% or less of what you’d pay for the American equivalent. I’ve used Mexican pharmaceuticals for years and found them to be quite good.

The one thing here is that you have to know what you’re looking for. I doubt you recognize any of the names on the packages, because those are the Mexican trade names. But the package also has the generic name for the drug, usually right below the trade name. It is similar enough to the American generic name (usually with just an A or an O added at the end), that you can easily tell what’s what.

There’s a blue box of “Ibuprofieno” in the lower right-hand corner. That’s 400 mg Ibuprofen, double the strength of the Ibuprofen you buy at your favorite pharmacy. The package next to it, Wermy is for dealing with intestinal parasites. I also saw antibiotics and other common medicines which would be good to have on hand in an emergency.

What I Didn’t Find

While I found a lot of really great things in my trip to the flea market; there were a few things I was expecting to find, which I was surprised that I didn’t find. I suspect that I would find them if I went to the other flea market in the area, which is bigger or even if I went on another day, so I wouldn’t give up hope, just because I didn’t find them on this trip.

  • Camping gear (I know I’ve seen this before at flea markets)
  • Cast-iron cookware
  • Candles (to melt down and make survival candles out of
  • Five-gallon buckets
  • Coats (I know they have those at the other flea market)
  • Canning jars
  • Oil-burning lamps
  • Old sewing machine (to convert to pedal operation)
  • Car batteries (for battery backup system)
  • Backpacks (for bug out bags)

Nevertheless, the one thing I did prove to myself is that you can find some really great prepping gear at the local flea market, if you’re willing to take the time to push your way through the crowds. As I had suspected, this was much more efficient than going to garage sales, as I was able to check out a lot of stuff in one place, saving myself all the time of driving from one garage sale to the next.

Prepping can be expensive. I get it. I’ve been at this a long time and have had just as many struggles in coming up with the money to pay for

The most powerful thing about being in the wilderness is the idea that there is zero concern about your wellbeing. Whether you live or die or get eaten alive by a black bear the leaves still dance in the wind and the squirrels still jump from limb to limb.

In today’s world we have become so accustomed to a world that is truly concerned about the condition of others. It’s a beautiful thing but can often times leave us unprepared for the reality of our adventure

More people are hitting the woods now than ever before. There is a movement towards adventure and exploration.

My theory is that people are so inundated with the electronic world that nature is providing a decompression. Our minds are tangled in diodes and Ethernet cables but forests give us the chance to disconnect.

People get lost in the woods. People need shelter to survive in the unforgiving environment that is nature.

This article will offer up three very easy shelters to put together. These shelters are all made using tarps and emergency blankets. They will offer you solutions a survival situation where you will need shelter.

Emergency Blanket Shelter

All of these shelters will require paracord and some form of anchor i.e. rocks, bricks, stakes or something along those lines.

1 shelter

You will want to start this shelter with two good and sturdy trees. Check the area for any dead trees that could fall onto your shelter. That would mean certain death and we are talking about survival here, right? Tie a strong knot and assure that your line is taut between the two trees as this will hold up your emergency blanket.

1-2 shelter

You will want your line to be about 2 feet off the ground which will allow you enough room to anchor the blanket to the floor of your location.

1-3 shelter

Once you have the line tied and taut unpack your emergency blanket. The desire will be to width wise over the cord as that will appear to provide you a larger shelter area. These emergency blankets are not big enough for this. You will want to fold it over the cord lengthwise and anchor it with some sort of weight or stakes. I prefer weight for these thin blankets because they tear easily and that creates issues with stakes.

If you have two emergency blankets you will have a very comfortable shelter. Using just one is very minimalist but this will keep you dry and conserve heat which is the point of all shelters. That said this shelter will not hold up to high winds. The material is simply not durable enough. It is also a great shelter for storing clothes, food or other things you want to stay dry as well.

Poncho Shelter

The poncho shelter is part of standard operating procedure in the military. This is a step up from the previously discuss shelter. For many of us when we travel we do so with a poncho or two in the car or in the bag. This shelter will also require some paracord and anchors as well. The material is much stronger and will stand up better to the elements.

Begin by using the same setup as mentioned above. We want two sturdy trees and a safe area to overnight. When you setup your paracord this time, however, make sure instead of a taut line that runs parallel with the ground you want the line to be tied and slope down slightly. I have also seen these shelters built with sticks using an A frame design. Since we are talking quick and shelters I would rather use the paracord method.

2 shelter

Once you drape the poncho over your line your will need to anchor the four corners of your shelter. For the wider front opening of this shelter you will want stakes or sticks sharpened down to be such. The front of this shelter will want to slide down as it will be sloped. Your stakes will keep that from happening. The back of the tent could also be staked or anchor weighted.
This shelter is time tested. It’s in the manuals of our military and has proven itself to be the most powerful quick shelter you can make from a poncho. You can store your belongings and yourself inside one of these and be comfortable. Of course my advice is the same as above. Carry two ponchos and you will have even more to work with.

The “JW” Tree Trunk Shelter

This is my answer to a quick shelter using a tarp. I wanted to offer something very easy here that could be used as shelter and as concealment. It will require a large tarp without holes. The best tarp would be colored brown or camo. I used this blue tarp because it was a good size and at arm length. It also helps you to differentiate from where the tree end and tarp begins very easily.

3 shelter

You need to find a tree with a low hanging branch like the one you see here.

Wrap the tarp around the tree and tight a tight knot in both ends that meet at the branch. This branch will keep the tarp up and basically hold the shelter up. If you find the right tree this will be an easy step.

3-3

The tree will essentially work as a tent pole in the center of your shelter. Depending on the size of your tarp this could be a very comfortable shelter. You will want to inspect the base of your tree for things like ant nests. It would be terrible to setup your shelter only to find out through the night that you are covered in carpenter ants.

Wrap your tarp around to meet the other side. The holes in the tarp can be sewn together by using a piece of paracord. I will sew them around the top and leave the bottom open. Then shape the bottom of your tarp to resemble the root system of a tree.Make sure the shelter tapers out the way a tree’s base would in nature. Once you have achieved the perfect shape anchor the bottom of your shelter in several places.

3-2 shelter

Now imagine this image with a brown or camo tarp. In the dark of night you could walk right by this thing and not even realize it was a shelter.

My intent was to create a shelter that would blend in with nature. This shelter does just that and with the proper use of color would be nearly indistinguishable at a distance even in daylight.

MOD: You will want to wrap a few lengths of paracord around the top of the shelter just below where the knot is tied. This will keep the rain out. Otherwise it will let moisture in.

Fire, Water, and Shelter are the basics of survival and I hope you give some of these quick shelters a go on your next trip out into the wilderness. Like I said they may not be a Coleman but if you find yourself in a pinch these shelters will greatly increase the likelihood of your survival and hopefully provide you with a decent night’s sleep.

The most powerful thing about being in the wilderness is the idea that there is zero concern about your wellbeing. Whether you live or die or get eaten alive by

Anyone who’s done more than glance at this site will know that we take the threat of an EMP attack very seriously. It deserves it. Unless there’s a major nuclear war, or an extinction-level event on the magnitude of a giant asteroid hitting the planet or the Yellowstone supervolcano finally blowing its top, a properly executed EMP would inflict more damage on the USA than anything else you could imagine.

So, considering how destructive an EMP attack would be, you would expect the government to be working hard to protect us against one. After all, if there’s a legitimate reason for governments to exist in the first place, this is it – protecting the American people from a threat that could kill most of us and change the survivors’ way of life forever. If governments at all levels, from your town selectmen up to the White House, have time to mess around with gender-free restrooms and arranging welfare payments for illegal aliens, surely that means they’re well on top of the important stuff like protecting us from an EMP?

No. Dead wrong. The fact is that, despite the massive damage an EMP attack would inflict on the USA, our government has done almost nothing to protect us against it. They haven’t invested the money in hardening key infrastructure or preparing to recover from an attack. They haven’t put anyone in charge of making those preparations. They haven’t even told the American people the full extent of the threat.R

All Talk, No Action

In fact, all that’s really happened is that, round about the turn of the century, Congress set up the snappily named Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, usually known as the EMP Commission. Nothing much happened and the commission basically faded away, unlike the threat, but in November 2015 the National Defense Authorization Act re-established the EMP Commission and funded it through to June 2017.

It’s fair to say that the government hasn’t thrown its full weight behind the EMP Commission. In fact although there were enough funds to keep it running past June 2017, the DoD withdraw most of its support when the original funding date passed, leaving the Commission to do the best it could on its own. Luckily the Commission had some dedicated people on board, including experts on intelligence, communications, electronics and nuclear weapons. They include a retired USAF general, several ex-professors from national nuclear laboratories and a former director of the CIA; this isn’t just a handful of political talking heads.

How Bad Is It Anyway?

Last July the EMP Commission released a report on the USA’s preparedness for EMP attack, and it makes grim reading. The government has been warned for years about the potential consequences of an EMP; but there’s been almost no action on any of the recommendations. Some of the worst problems identified were:

  • There has been no effort to expand backup electricity sources for the national grid. The technology exists to build large battery backups that can keep essential services running until repairs can begin – in fact these backups are actually being installed in Australia right now. They’re not being installed in the USA, even though the manufacturer is Tesla, a US company. Battery backups can’t replace power stations even for a short time, but they can provide enough power to assist repair workers.
  • If there are repair workers, of course. The Commission found that there are very few people with the skills to repair or rebuild the power grid after an EMP. There are still homes in Puerto Rico without power almost a year after Hurricane Maria hit, and the main reason for that is a shortage of technicians who can repair the damage. If we struggle to repair downed power lines and water-damaged transformers on one territory, how will we cope when the entire grid has been damaged by EMP? Unless more technicians are trained in a hurry the lights could be off for a very long time.
  • We have almost no ability to “black start” the grid – get it up and running again after a total blackout. Most procedures for repairing and restarting damaged sections of the grid rely on having power available from the rest of it. As it stands, even if sections of the grid can be repaired quickly we might not be able to get them running again.
  • There’s been almost no attempt made to harden power stations, transformers or even power cables against EMP. The North American power grid isn’t in great shape. It’s at risk from natural events like a coronal mass ejection; in 1989 a fairly small CME knocked out power across the whole of Quebec and parts of New Jersey. In its current state, the grid would be devastated by an EMP attack.
  • Nobody has overall responsibility for EMP defense. That means even if government departments and agencies to start preparing for an attack, their work won’t be coordinated. That wastes taxpayers’ money, which is bad enough – but it also risks leaving gaps in preparedness that could undermine the whole thing. The Commission has asked the government to appoint someone to coordinate planning for EMP defense. It hasn’t happened.
  • The DoD is withholding information from the public. Commissioner Peter Pry says seven key reports on EMP, containing information that would help the American people understand and prepare to survive the threat, are still classified; Pry blames holdovers from the Obama administration for the failure to publish this vital data.

So Now What?

It’s not all bad news, of course. The EMP Commission has praised President Trump’s Executive Order 13800, aimed at protecting the electrical grid and other networks against cyber attack. Commissioner Pry is urging the administration to include EMP as one of the threats covered by the EO, as it’s on the same spectrum as cyber warfare – an attack on infrastructure, not directly against the American people.

However, even if the government finally starts to listen to advice and steps up their preparations for an EMP attack, it’s going to be years before they accomplish anything. Upgrading the grid to a pint where it can be quickly reactivated after an EMP could take 15 years or more. Hardening computer networks would be quicker, but computers aren’t a lot of use without power to run them. There are hostile countries that could attack us with EMP now, and there will be a lot more by the time the government gets anything done – even if it starts now.

The ugly truth is that it’s going to be a long time, if ever, before our politicians do anything useful to protect us against electromagnetic pulse weapons. If you want to survive an EMP event, you’re going to have to take action yourself. That means being ready to do without electronics – and electricity itself – as much as possible, and ensuring you have a robust power supply and EMP protection for the gadgets you do need. It would be a lot better if the government invested in a grid and generation system robust enough to withstand an EMP, or at least be quickly restarted after one. But they’re not doing that, so as usual we’re on our own.

Anyone who’s done more than glance at this site will know that we take the threat of an EMP attack very seriously. It deserves it. Unless there’s a major nuclear

In the words of John R. Lott, Jr., “More Guns, Less Crime.” I first meet Mr. Lott in 2000 when he came to testify against the Glendenning “smart gun” legislation. I presented him as an expert witness to counter every aspect of the former Maryland Governor’s initiative to restrict firearm ownership from law-abiding taxpayers.

One of the first things I learned that year is everything in the legislature is orchestrated. Everything. And the conductor is not We the People. In spite of the solid facts economist, Lott put forth, Glendenning’s legislation passed. The bill signing took place in the State House Rotunda in Annapolis with the then POTUS Bill Clinton in attendance.

THE DEBATE

There was no doubt the bills would leave the House and Senate judiciary committees un-amended. This was the Governor’s “Legislative Package” for that year and he’d be damned if it would be changed in any way during the committee process. Democrats had their marching orders and if they fell short, sanctions included not having a leadership role or benefiting by other preferential treatment of the majority “leadership.”

Politics is the epitome of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” On the surface, it can appear to be adult negotiation all in the best interest of We the People. However, it is not at all. There are so many individual agendas it is nearly impossible to repeal any laws. Consequently, the “power” that permeates through the hallowed halls of the Maryland General Assembly does not have “to the people” as a tagline. Unfortunately, our elected officials soon forget their elected position is a responsibility and not power.

Under the historic, stained glass dome crafted by Tiffany and presented to the people of Maryland in 1902, in the round Joint Hearing room, the Senate and the House judicial committees convened to hear the second reader testimony from citizens. During the joint committee debates, pro-second legislators argued for days against any and all legislation that was against our United States Constitution to no avail.

We did everything we could to slip in an amendment to the extent Glendenning sent his goons in to monitor the committee room. Lurking in the back, they would serve as a stark reminder to the Democrat members to accept no amendment. So regardless of the evidence presented to curtail the myths of “evil” guns, there was no way the minority would ever win.

The hearings on these bills lasted well into the night with 100’s of “average” law-abiding, taxpayers and experts such as John Lott, Jr. showing every reason gun control is not in our best interests. The presence also put pressure on the chairman to move things along to minimalize any risk of an amendment. It was in preparation of the Third Reader floor battle that it became apparent my purpose was to don my armor every day, dodge knives, and throw grenades. We would never win against the liberal gun grabbers but our voices would be heard.

FOR WEEKS leading up to the “third reader” debate, every time Glendenning had a news conference, I was there. I would stand directly across from him, stare him down, and hope the media would report my rebuttal to everything he said.

I became his worst nightmare to the point where one day we were walking across Lawyers Mall from opposite directions; he from the State House and me from my office in the House Office building. As our eyes met, he began to turn around but then quickly walked into the Legislative Services building. I felt a bit victorious; as it was apparent, the commie gun grabber did not like me and dreaded crossing my path.

On the third reading, the majority Democrat party gave us, however reluctantly, the opportunity to voice the opposition. They really were quite aggravated that the Rules required it. In their minds, it was a done deal and a waste of their time to hear otherwise. At one point, during my debate, the majority leader at the time John Adam Hurson, a delegate from Montgomery County was forced to come back to the floor from the legislative lounge, take his microphone, and debate this Freshman Delegate from Carroll County.

In the end, unfortunately, it was a basic party-line vote albeit for a few Dems who were pro-gun. And I promise they were only given a pass on the vote because it was wrapped up and so they still could “save face” with their gun community constituents, win reelection, and return to help keep the Dem majority power.

The anti-second amendment legislation passed.

STATS v. FACTS

In the “third edition” book, “More Guns, Less Crime,” Lott presents the results of his unbiased factual analysis of crime data for every county – 307 counties in all – in the United States spanning a 29-year period from 1977 to 2005 (1st edition through 1998). The facts revealed show very clearly a few things.

First, the very areas where firearms are desperately needed for protection are the areas the government hits first when seeking to restrict our right to bear arms. Therefore, the inner cities where there are many law-abiding, taxpayers are the center target. Then the government will use the stats of injuries, deaths by guns including gang-related incidents as well as deaths of “kids”/juveniles under age 18 and sometimes they will include stats for under 21 in an effort to distort the facts. The Center for Disease Control also will skew the numbers in their favor.

This is by design so that they can use the murder, gang-related stats to further the agenda. We all know that in areas where we have gun-free zones or laws that prohibit the good guy from firearm ownership are going to help produce, not prevent crime.

It is incomprehensible THAT those who are anti-God-given rights:

1- Cannot see the demise of a free nation with every restriction to our God-given right. It is incomprehensible that they want to restrict honest Americans and in essence with these “pretended laws” make an innocent into a criminal.

2- Always want to blame the inanimate object and not the criminal for the illegal use. Someone needs to tell the gun grabbers hands that firearms are not sold with hands and fingers attached.

Dr. Lott’s, study also shows where there are fewer laws on firearms, crimes is not as prevalent. Of course, that only makes sense when no one is armed there is a better chance of a crime being committed. That is why gun-free zone laws are rotten. It makes everyone a sitting duck when no one in the gun-free area is armed and have no way of protecting self and/or others from some criminal who wants to hurt someone.
When we have no gun-free areas, and there is a possibility that a good guy with a gun may be present, the risk to the criminal is higher, and so the crime potential decreases.

GOOD GUYS with guns save lives

The stories the Mainstream media never disseminate happen all the time. At least 6,850 times a day, a life is saved because a good guy somewhere had a gun, and was at the right place at the right time, according to Gary Kleck. A criminologist, Professor Kleck does not work for nor compensated by either side of the gun debate. His book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America reveal that each year armed good guys lawfully kill 1500-2800 criminals.

Just this past June, an armed citizen shot and injured a crazed shooter in Lyman, S.C. According to police and witnesses, the shooter was in an argument that turned heated and he shot three people in front of a nightclub. Prevented from further harm to others by the good guy’s bullet.

Other such incidents:

September 11, 2016: Shawnee Kansas a woman was attacked in a parking lot, and two good guys came to assist. One had a gun and he shot the attacker.

September 7, 2016: Richland County, S.C. a clerk responses to an armed robber with the barrel of a firearm in his face. The robber fled.

September 2014 in Oklahoma, Alton Nolen of Moore beheaded a co-worker at Vaughan Foods. Mark Vaughan, a reserve sheriff’s deputy and the company’s chief operating officer, who used his personal firearm to wound, halted his rampage.

Shortly after her husband died in 2012, an 18¬-year-¬old mother saved the life of herself and her baby in Blanchard, Oklahoma. There, a knife-wielding intruder was attempting to enter Sarah McKinley’s mobile home. She fired and killed him. The additional intruder fled the scene…

In 2007, a former cop and volunteer security worker, Jeanne Assam, saved the day at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Thousands of people were exiting from Sunday mass that day as the shooter opened fire. However, Assam ran toward the line of fire, killing the shooter and saving countless lives.

And even as those type of incidents continue, the gun-grabbers continue to win with more and more restrictions on our rights. In my time, the Glendenning “Smart Gun” legislation was the…

…BEGINNING OF THE END

The night before the day that legislation was signed, I sobbed with a broken heart. As I sat in the old Maryland Inn treaty of Paris bar the same area where patriots including Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson convened and schemed the succession from King George III, I told my tales of that battle to whoever would listen.

I warned everyone I saw that night to buy guns now because the extinction has begun. The battle had left me weary. I wept for a Nation under siege. I prayed for more strength and I heard Ben Franklin repeatedly say “A Republic if you can keep it.”

On signing day, I awoke to the sound of a rotating mast of rotor blades from a helicopter batting through the skies over the harbor of downtown Annapolis. It was making its way to the Naval Academy for landing. Clinton was aboard. He would then be driven to Maryland’s historic statehouse.

My eyes swollen shut from all night crying, I still managed to go to the window and give the finger to whoever was in the whirlybird. I was sick to my stomach and my heart. I saw no pleasure in the irony that General Washington resigned his commission as Commander in Chief marking the end of the Revolutionary War and the slap to his face with the signing of the Glendenning anti 2A legislation.

This is what we have; a political system filled with gangsters who believe they always know what is best for us, politicians who continue to say one thing and do another. Elected officials who only work to further the One World Order agenda snub facts, like those presented via the hard work of Dr. Lott, and Gary Kleck. The only way to conquer a free society is by disarmament. Any legislation that goes against our God-given rights should be damned. It is the duty of every patriot to nullify these pretended laws.

 

In the words of John R. Lott, Jr., “More Guns, Less Crime.” I first meet Mr. Lott in 2000 when he came to testify against the Glendenning “smart gun” legislation.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. – George Orwell, “1984”, part 3, chapter 3,

Tyranny:

1 : oppressive power  especially : oppressive power exerted by government

4 : an oppressive, harsh, or unjust act a tyrannical act

It is a fact the election of Donald Trump exposed certain undeniable realities in the United States for those willing to see. Perhaps first and foremost of the various revelations is the bona fide existence of The Collective. Also known as the Uniparty or The Establishment, The Collective is comprised of the following:  The Democratic Party, Republicans in Name Only (RINOs), Neo-conservatives (Neocons), the Mainstream Media, the Corporatocracy, globalists, elite bankers and unelected government bureaucrats and officials; also often referred to as The Deep State or Military Industrial Complex.

All of these entities have attained singularity through the decades while, for the most part, retaining some “plausible deniability” of their collusive connectivity prior to the 2016 Presidential Election. But now the veil has been lifted. As The Collective has unified in polar opposition against everything Trump, so has its immorality and lawlessness been additionally exposed; like nude streetwalkers performing dirty tricks in broad daylight on busy corners.

Over the past half century, if not before, The Collective has politicized, and weaponized, everything it could subvert.  From the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to the courts, from professional football to late night comedy, from Hollywood to advertising, from social media to education, from race to gender, to sex. Especially sex; and in ways seemingly derived from the nightmares of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley.

Paradoxically, however, it is more often the values of conservatives only that are called into account. The Collective will string up blacks like Clarence Thomas via high-tech lynchings and bully free-thinking Afro-Americans like Kanye West, Candace Owens, and Stacy Dash by labeling them “Uncle Toms”. The Collective will pass judgement on conservative Supreme Court nominees with no evidence beyond slander and innuendo. In fact, it is The Collective desiring One World Under Them, which wields Orwellian Newspeak terminology such as racistmisogynisthomophobicxenophobe, and Islamophobia, like the proverbial pitchforks and torches.

The Collective sows the politics of personal destruction in order to reap the whirlwinds of division. It shills rancor and broken dreams in order to form a new reality in its own image. A world where timeless moral principles are set aside for (they claim) the good of all.

Notwithstanding, The Collective’s new religion is as phony as Michael Avenatti’s concern for clients.

Now social media companies have purged “thought criminals” on their respective platforms, even as the rogue special counsel investigator, Robert Mueller, has exploited imaginary crimes in order to conceal actual government corruption and, likely, treason. The Collective preaches the tolerance of transgender men in the bathrooms of our daughters and wives while actively bullying and defaming those they consider as dissidents. Falsehoods from contrived, and illegal, government “leaks” are published and broadcast as being true while real facts are slandered as “fake news”.

A PUBLIC THAT CAN NO LONGER DISTINGUISH BETWEEN TRUTH AND FICTION IS LEFT TO INTERPRET REALITY THROUGH ILLUSION. RANDOM FACTS OR OBSCURE BITS OF DATA AND TRIVIA ARE USED EITHER TO BOLSTER ILLUSION AND GIVE IT CREDIBILITY, OR DISCARDED IF THEY INTERFERE WITH THE MESSAGE…

WHEN OPINIONS CANNOT BE DISTINGUISHED FROM FACTS, WHEN THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL STANDARD TO DETERMINE TRUTH IN LAW, IN SCIENCE, IN SCHOLARSHIP, OR IN REPORTING THE EVENTS OF THE DAY, WHEN THE MOST VALUED SKILL IS THE ABILITY TO ENTERTAIN, THE WORLD BECOMES A PLACE WHERE LIES BECOME TRUE, WHERE PEOPLE CAN BELIEVE WHAT THEY WANT TO BELIEVE. THIS IS THE REAL DANGER OF PSEUDO-EVENTS AND PSEUDO-EVENTS ARE FAR MORE PERNICIOUS THAN STEREOTYPES. THEY DO NOT EXPLAIN REALITY, AS STEREOTYPES ATTEMPT TO, BUT REPLACE REALITY. PSEUDO-EVENTS REDEFINE REALITY BY THE PARAMETERS SET BY THEIR CREATORS. THESE CREATORS, WHO MAKE MASSIVE PROFITS SELLING ILLUSIONS, HAVE A VESTED INTEREST IN MAINTAINING THE POWER STRUCTURES THEY CONTROL.

– HEDGES, CHRIS (2009). “EMPIRE OF ILLUSION”, NATION BOOKS, NEW YORK, NY, 2009, PAGE 51

Kabuki Theater? Or Political Darwinism? Either way, conservatives lose political ground whenever they swallow the moral premises of The Collective. This is because The Collective utilizes deception to conceal their actual motives while simultaneously gaslighting and blackmailing conservatives by means of conservative values.

In a manufactured reality, pseudo-events are designed to create consensus in order to manipulate outcomes. In other words, The Collective spins illusion by means of narrative.

In the gun control and immigration debates, for example, The Collective doesn’t really care for “the children”. In truth, they use “the children” as a means to consolidate political power. Certainly, The Collective weaponizes the morality of conservatives against said conservatives; and whenever the twisted virtue of The Collective is accepted, the new global religion expands.

Consider the Kavanaugh debacle. Underlying all of the Supreme Court nomination theater, the desire of those opposing the judge is simply this: To project a woman’s right to choose. Whether or not Kavanaugh is actually a threat to that right is beyond the point. He is perceived as a threat to “Roe v. Wade” by his opponents. This means a man’s reputation has now been slandered, and without any real evidence, in order to protect a woman’s right to abort her fetus at will.

At the same time, it’s quite possible The Collective has staged the Kavanaugh production in order to further decimate America’s institutions in pursuit of global objectives.

You win, they win. You lose, they win.

Dirty politics are merely a subset of politics; and politics define Man’s relations with Man. If the U.S. Constitution was set-up to facilitate political, economic, and religious freedom – then wouldn’t an ideal system designed to control the masses, tear down these same conceptions?

And how would such a system take hold? Perhaps by combining opposites through a twisted sort of immoral ecumenicalism: law plus corruptionandrogynyrace and gender divisions by means of political correctnessslanderaccusations, and lies – and all for the purposes of a new global singularity.

It’s no surprise how The Collective confounds the logical. It loudly laments children being separated from their parents at the border AND Judge Kavanaugh for threatening the freedom of mothers who choose separation in the womb. If old-fashioned virtues such as logic, reason, morality, and law, no longer apply in politics today, then progress now simply requires faith; or, rather, what people believe. Even so, who says the theological premises currently conveyed by The Collective should be accepted at all? They do. That’s who.

Unfortunately, in all circumstances electronically programmed, or manufactured, the consensus remains real nevertheless.

Therefore, the actual enemy of common sense and decency currently, is not only The Collective, but moreso those who support The Collective with their votes, and by believing its liesinnuendoaccusations, and slander. Therein also lies the dialectical dilemma of the mushy-minded middle; including Republican Senators like Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski:  As The Collective descends further into criminalitycorruption, and dishonor, these blind centrists now lament the lack of “cooperation” and “compromise” in America.

TURNING AND TURNING IN THE WIDENING GYRE

THE FALCON CANNOT HEAR THE FALCONER;

THINGS FALL APART; THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD;

MERE ANARCHY IS LOOSED UPON THE WORLD,

THE BLOOD-DIMMED TIDE IS LOOSED, AND EVERYWHERE

THE CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE IS DROWNED;

THE BEST LACK ALL CONVICTION, WHILE THE WORST

ARE FULL OF PASSIONATE INTENSITY.

– YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER (1920). “THE SECOND COMING”.

Only one of the bimodal goalposts has significantly moved over the past six decades, yet the lukewarm lament the widening gyre and blame both teams. In the long term, these people cannot save the nation.

So is it all just politics, or reality television? The differences, of course, are in the consequences. Reality can never be denied for long and this is reality: We’ve passed the point of no return. America is circling the drain. All of her institutions are under attack currently and, barring any great and unforeseen circumstances, won’t survive. In order to truly drain the swamp, a lot of people would have to die. Conversely, so, too, must others be removed prior to the establishment of the New Faith.

Therefore, a larger question remains:  Who dies and who survives?

The Russian investigation has decimated the trust of fifty-percent of the country in the voting system. The credibility of the FBI and Department of Justice (DoJ) has been destroyed in the eyes of the other fifty percent. Half of America hates Trump as Congress now experiences abysmal approval ratings. Most recently, the Kavanaugh affair has acted as a splitting maul in a country of felled trees; while the Supreme Court nomination process, and likely the Court itself, now falls to the sound of “timber”.

Is it that simple? As easy as left and righthe saidshe said, and black and white? Either way, there are no participation trophies awarded in Political Darwinism. Many on the right are playing the voting game while The Collective establishes its new religion. In truth, The Collective will sacrifice everything you have and blame you all the way down. Be assured it is their plan because compromise is no longer an option. The Rubicon has been crossed and there are those who will die to defend their New World Order. How about you?

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. – George Orwell, “1984”, part 3, chapter 3, Tyranny: 1

Today we’re talking about Trisodium Phosphate in Cereal.

What’s that, you ask? Let’s find out.

Just the other day, one of my friends tagged me in a Facebook video that REALLY caught my attention.

The video was of a guy walking through the store talking about how there is paint thinner in Cereal!

Yes, he meant it.  He was pointing to the ingredients list on a cereal box and showing where it listed “TSP” or “Trisodium Phosphate” as an ingredient, and then he walked over another section of the store and showed how TSP is paint thinner.

YIKES! Paint thinner in cereal?

It sounds like one of those crazy alarmist conspiracy stories about how the government and big corporations are out to kill us by gradually poisoning us to death, doesn’t it?

Like the FDA banning supplements, Raw Milk Raids on Farms, or even the FDA being OK with us eating arsenic?!

Well, I’m here to tell you the truth about yet another theory….that there is trisodium phosphate in cereal.

I Love (as in LOVE) Breakfast Cereal

Make that “loved.”

First of all, let me tell you that I used to LOVE breakfast cereal.

I was so broke when I was in college. I literally lived off of almost no money and always shopped off of the bargain produce shelves and just made do. Whenever I would come home on break, it was just amazing being able to go into the kitchen and eat all kinds of things I couldn’t afford when I was as school.

And a big part of that was–cereal!

I would run to the kitchen and indulge in whatever was there, but I ALWAYS (much to my mother’s chagrin) made a bee line for the breakfast cereal.

And I ate a lot of it.

But since then, times have changed. I’ve had to revamp my diet (and my family’s diet too) due to issues with gut health issues, and so now breakfast cereal isn’t in our home any longer–with very few exceptions.

I guess I really do still LOVE breakfast cereal, but it doesn’t love me back.

Even if you don’t eat breakfast cereal, and have moved on to healthier choices like this Cream of Rice Cereal or Buckwheat Granola…or even something like this Dairy-free Quiche), or if you are eating more natural versions, this is about more than just breakfast cereal.  

Paint Thinner / Trisodium Phosphate in Cereal

TSP is Trisodium Phosphate.

And you can find it in some breakfast cereals.

It’s something that the FDA has approved to be used in your food.

Just so ya’ know, I don’t think something is fine just because the FDA says it is.  And I don’t just assume that just little bit of TSP is OK just like a little bit of asbestos in our food is OK. The FDA seems to think that supplements should be banned too.

Um….not OK.

Because you might just be getting more than a little. And who wants a lot of Trisodium Phosphate in their cereal? Not this girl. No thank you.

So let’s walk through this step by step.

What is TSP / Trisodium Phosphate?

Is TSP paint thinner?

Well contrary to what  the guy in the grocery store in the video that I saw said, it’s not–but it is an active ingredient in paint thinner.

Trisodium phosphate (TSP) is an industrial cleaning product. It’s used as a degreasing agent, mildew remover and lead abating agent and is also used to clean interior and exterior walls before painting. According to Snopes (I write about them later, it’s pH is”comparable to bleach”.

YUCK.

Maybe I should retitle this post “Is There BLEACH in Your CEREAL?!”

Because of its alkalinizing cleaning properties, TSP was used in dishwashing soap and laundry detergent until it was phased out in 2011 after the EPA found it was harmful to the environment. The Clean Water Act, published by the EPA, lists TSP as a “Hazardous Substance” while the Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends to “Avoid All Contact.” The CDC lists these TSP ingestion symptoms: abdominal pain, burning sensation, shock, or collapse.

Doesn’t sound too good.

Why is there Trisodium Phosphate in Food?

TSP is most commonly used to reduce the acidic nature of foods, especially breakfast cereals, as it modifies cereal color and aids in the cereal’s flow through the extruder. Other uses are:

  • Added to meat to retain moisture during storage and cooking.
  • Acts as a leavening agent to “fluff up” foods like cakes, breads and baked goods.
  • Added to cheese to help keep its shape and melting properties.

TSP is also used as an antimicrobial cleaner for washing produce. Poultry is dipped in a TSP solution to potentially kill off bacteria.

Basically, TSP gives food a nice texture so it can withstand sitting on the grocery store shelf for months until you pick it up and take it home.

That’s one reason to not buy food that can sit on the shelf for a long long time and still look great.  Food shouldn’t be able to do that, you know?

Should You Avoid Trisodium Phosphate in Food?

Studies have shown that ingesting high levels of phosphate (the major mineral in TSP) can cause:

  • kidney damage
  • soft tissue calcification and
  • removal of calcium from bones.
  • Chronic high levels of phosphate intake can result in osteopenia and ultimately osteoporosis.
  • TSP also irritates the stomach and intestinal lining as well as reduces lactic acid in muscles.

I, for one, do not want kidney damage, soft tissue calcification, removal of calcium from my bones (hello osteoporosis?!?!?), or irritated stomach and intestinal lining.

But how much is too much?

And is there a too much???

What Foods Commonly Contain TSP?

Breakfast cereals seem to be the products that most commonly contain TSP. However, you may also see Sodium Phosphate, Disodium Phosphate or Tripotassium Phosphate on the label instead of just the typical Trisodium Phosphate.

These also can cause the same health problems as TSP so you really need to keep your eyes open.

So many products might contain TSP. Here’s a list of common offenders.

  • Breakfast Cereals*
  • Lunchmeat
  • Ham
  • Other processed meats
  • Processed cheese
  • Cheese sauces
  • Rice syrup
  • Canned soups
  • Cake mixes
  • Bread
  • Pizza dough
  • Other baked goods
  • Toothpastes for adults, kids and babies
  • Mouthwash
  • Hair coloring and bleaching products

* Some cereals have either trisodium or tripotassium phosphate (TPP). TPP is just as harmful as TSP.

Note–the items on these lists are ALL processed foods.  So if you are eating a whole foods diet, then you shouldn’t be ingesting that much paint thinner :).

HOWEVER, note that there are some personal care products on the list as well.

It’s SO important to not only think about what you are eating, but what you are putting on your body.

These posts on Heavy Metals in Cosmetics and Haircare Ingredients to Avoid and the Dangers of Fragrances show that there is way more than just TSP and TPP to worry about when it comes to toxins in your personal care products.

How Much TSP is Safe In Food?

There is LOADS of conflicting information about what a “safe” level of TSP is in food. Some say that the FDA says that 70 mg of TSP is the most TSP that one should ingest per day.

Then other articles state that the FDA has approved 70 mg/kg of body weight as the maximum tolerable limit of TSP that a person should ingest per day. (For a 150 lb person, this translates to 4,772 mg/day).

So that’s a lot of TSP.

Actually, the precise amount of TSP in cereal isn’t known, but the FDA “thinks” it’s safe enough for manufacturers to decide on their own. This is the same FDA that shuts down probiotic companies because they claim to have a health benefit and that thinks arsenic in chicken is OK.  Remember, the FDA has plenty of drugs that were approved and were later found to have terrible health effects.

Do you see my concern? It doesn’t sound that scientifically based if they don’t even know what they are talking about. What is a reasonable risk if you can’t even find any info about how much is in there or how much is safe? What do you think?

What I do know, is that I would prefer to just not eat this.

So no thanks to 70 mg or 1 mg. I just would rather not eat it.

With all of the sources of Trisodium Phosphate in food, if you are eating a lot of processed food and using conventional personal care products, you have no idea if we’re ingesting more than the maximum tolerable limit. So just to be safe, stay away from all foods containing TSP.

The Toxicity Burden Lie

It’s important to remember that the toxic burden on our bodies isn’t just about one ingredient.It makes NO sense to say “the FDA says that X amount of TSP is safe and the X amount of BHT is safe and that X amount of arsenic in chicken is safe” and just go about your merry way eating paint thinner, Cancer-causing BHT and arsenic-laced chicken day in and day out.When thinking about the toxic load that these products have on our bodies, you need to think about them in conjunction with each other. You are not JUST eating TSP, you are eating TSP, BHT, and arsenic, while you are spraying artificial fragrance on your body and injecting yourself with vaccines that have all kinds of suspect additives in them.It all adds up to a toxic burden that can cause all kinds of health problems including autism, eczema, autoimmune disease, cancer, allergies, and more.

Snopes’ Take on Trisodium Phosphate in Cereal

So likely you are familiar with Snopes. This couple has basically set themselves up as, and is highly regarded as, experts on all things. Snopes writes posts on all kinds of things from political issues, historical events, and even, yes–paint thinner in cereal.

If you’re looking on the internet to see if Trisodium Phosphate in Breakfast Cereal is a big deal or not, you will find that Snopes says–No. Trisodium Phosphate in Breakfast Cereal is just no biggie.

They acknowledge that TSP is used as a paint thinner but they claim that just because something is used for something that seems caustic like thinning paint, doesn’t mean it’s toxic. They then compare TSP to sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), stating that if you’re OK eating baking soda (and most of us are), then you should be OK eating TSP.

Well, the only problem is that baking soda and TSP are not the same thing and one of them is more dangerous than the other. (sources: 1, 2, 3)

And as I mentioned, Snopes says that TSP’s pH is like bleach. So just because they rank the paint thinner claim as false, that doesn’t mean that I want this in my cereal, amiright?

Conclusion

Even if we all agree that TSP is FINE (and I’m not so sure that it is), most cereals and processed foods are still NOT fine in my book.

Most breakfast cereals are full of:

  • sugar
  • white flour of some sort
  • preservatives (some even have that uber toxic, cancer-causing BHA and BHT in them. Just no thanks.)

And it’s all extruded at very high pressure to make cute shapes ala Lucky Charms, Froot Loops, Cocoa Puffs, etc. Fun to eat, but there is damage done to the grains at those high temperatures and pressures so that they cause lots of inflammation in you when you eat them.

Yes, Cheerios (or, fill in the blank with any other traditional breakfast cereal) are JUNK!

And processed foods are basically almost all in the same camp. Doesn’t mean we don’t occasionally enjoy some organic crackers or chips, etc., but that is for sure the exception and not the rule.

While this TSP in cereal / TSP in food maybe isn’t a BIG issue, it’s an issue.

Since I wasn’t able to find real documentation anywhere about how much Trisodium Phosphate in food is really supposed to be OK to ingest, I think it’s best to avoid it.

Today we’re talking about Trisodium Phosphate in Cereal. What’s that, you ask? Let’s find out. Just the other day, one of my friends tagged me in a Facebook video that REALLY caught

With the state of the world today, it’s likely that you’ve begun to see some changes in your neighborhood. If you’ve witnessed increased activity in your area at night or an increase in “strangers” that seem to be visiting your neighborhood at various times of the day and night, it may be time to step up security.  Luckily, there are some quick things to improve your home security that you can do gradually or in phases, without breaking the bank to do it.

#1. Use Your Locks…

…that are already in place to keep would be intruders out. You’d be surprised how many thieves will simply move on to the next home if doors at your house are locked.

#2. Beef It Up…

by swapping the standard short screws in your locks and door frames with longer less easy to compromise screws. This reinforces your existing locks quickly and easily. When feasible invest in a metal frame and metal door.

#3. Leave the Light On…

…outside to make it more difficult for would be thieves to sneak around your yard and get close to your house, shed, or garage without being spotted.

#4. Keep Your Mouth and FB Status Shut.

You’d be surprised how many would be thieves and other criminals monitor social media and eavesdrop at local businesses to find out who will be out of town, when, and for how long. Be careful who you brag to about that next vacation or your latest big purchase, it could cost you everything.

 #5. Security System Warning Sign…

…may not do much to deter intruders once SHTF but up until then, just getting a decal for your window or sign in the yard can be enough to make would be robbers think twice.

#6. Home Automation…

…via light bulbs, smart curtains, and other tricks to make it appear like you are home when you are out of the house.

#7. Keep a Clear Line of Sight…

…between your house and the neighbors on each side as well as the street by trimming bushes and hedges down below eye level. This not only lets you see what’s out there but makes it more likely a neighbor or passerby will intervene if they see something going down at your house.

#8. Take Advantage of Technology.

Whether it’s a simple game trail camera in the backyard or a more sophisticated security camera, installing cameras around your home lets you see if someone is casing your home and sends a clear signal to thieves that you are watching.

#9. Make Getting In Harder.

Reinforce sliding doors and all entry doors with floor locks and put window stops on the windows to make it that much harder for intruders to get inside. Sure they can break glass but that’s noisy and they risk attracting the attention of your neighbor or waking you. Add safety glass window film to windows. Most thieves will take the path of least resistance.

#10. Build Your Network.

You don’t have to share all your secrets with your neighbors but keeping in occasional touch with them and playing nice can make them more likely to give you a heads up when they see someone lurking about your house.

beware of dog sign

#11. Capitalize on Cynophobia.

Many people have a fear of dogs. It won’t work on all thieves but you can capitalize on this by putting up a beware of dog sign and some other little things in plain sight such as dog toys, a huge dog bone, and a food bowl or dog chain by your back door.

#12. Install a driveway gate and keep it locked.

Don’t allow people access to your property unless you can verify their identity, especially in times of crisis.

#13. Hang something noisy over doorways at night…

…to give you a heads up if someone is getting in and possibly startle them enough to make them run the other way. Anything that will make noise such as bells that brush the top of the doors when they open will work. The downside is you have to remember to drop them down low enough each night before bed and hook them up in the morning or listen to them any time someone goes in or out.

#14. Make Use of a secure indoor safe…

…for valuables, documents, and weapons. If someone does get in when you aren’t home, don’t make it easy for them to get your most valuable items.

motion detector

#15. Use solar powered lights or solar powered motion sensors…

…to keep your outside lighting working for you even when the power is out. Power outages are an opportune time for people to try to break in, don’t make it easy for them.

#16. Use unfriendly plants and other landscaping around the perimeter of your home that will deter intruders…

…and even those who are just curious. Thorny plants or flowers, impenetrable hedges, and even a lattice with vining or climbing plants can deter unwanted company from coming onto your property.

#17. Don’t hide your spare key in the usual places

Any thief with experience and even most new thieves know that people hide spare keys under the welcome mat, above the door, or in a fake rock or other item near the door. Don’t use these usual hiding spots.

Use an item that blends into the surroundings that is away from the door where thieves won’t think to look. On the side of the house beneath your bedroom window or behind the shed or the barn will be less obvious. Better yet use a key vault with a code like real estate agents do.

#18. Have important mail sent to a PO Box rather than to your home mailbox…

…to keep your most critical mail safe. I doubt even SHTF can stop the U.S. postal service so better safe than sorry.

#19. Eliminate hiding places around your home

Cut back shrubs and trees or bushes near or under your windows and around your doors or along the driveway.

#20. Identify and gradually fortify a safe room or area

No matter what security measures you take, there is always the chance that you will fail and an intruder will get into your home. Once this happens your best bet is a safe room or area that you’ve fortified in advance.

#21. Use decoy supplies and weapons

Most thieves won’t know in advance if you have weapons or supplies. They’ll take what they see or can find easily and be happy with that. If you leave an old gun and small bills where it can be easily found, you may trick the thieves into thinking that’s all there is and they won’t look further.

#22. Email a list of serial numbers and photos of appliances, electronics and other assets to yourself every three months.

If things are stolen during non-SHTF times, you’ll have something to start from for insurance purposes.

#23. Close It Up

Don’t leave your garage door open during the daylight hours for everyone to see the great toys and other things you have that they may want. You’d be surprised how often thieves decide their targets by cruising through and checking out open garage doors.

#24. Keep your vehicles locked up

This includes your car, motorcycle, ATV, boat, or RV. You’d be surprised how often vehicles are ransacked simply because the thief found it unlocked.

#25. Stay Alert and Learn Self-Defense

Two of the best ways to improve security around your home are to stay alert to your surroundings and learn self-defense. Both of these skills may mean be the reason you get to keep your life in some situations and can certainly help deter a would-be thief.

With the state of the world today, it’s likely that you’ve begun to see some changes in your neighborhood. If you’ve witnessed increased activity in your area at night or

When SHTF, the first things most people will focus on is trying to find food and water. But if you’re a prepper you know that while water is critically important to your long-term survival, the ability to stay warm and to heat yourself post-SHTF can mean the difference between life and death.

Frostbite and hypothermia can set in very quickly, in less than five minutes on cold days when the wind is blowing, and even in moderate weather if you are wet.

So, one of the major things that preppers need to plan for when SHTF is how to stay warm in your home or other shelter and how to heat yourself if you are stranded outdoors unexpectedly for any length of time. In fact, knowing and planning for ways to heat yourself and stay warm is important even for short-term emergencies like a power outage.

Ways to Keep Your Body Warm

Understanding how to stay warm is critical to being able to heat yourself post-SHTF. The best ways to keep your body warm is to prevent heat loss as much as possible.

1. Conduction

Prevent the direct transfer of heat from your body by using a sleeping bag if you are outdoors or a pad of thick blankets or thick layer of dry debris between you and the cold ground. Anything you can put down between you and the ground or use to raise yourself up off the ground will help to slow your loss of body heat and will keep you warmer.

2. Convection – Cover Up

Body heat is lost when air moves over exposed skin, also called wind chill. We all know that if you are outside it’s a good idea to have gloves, a scarf, and insulated boots in the colder climates. If your mother was anything like mine, she told you to cover your head because she was convinced that you lose most of your body heat through the top of your head.

This old wives’ tale has actually been proven false in recent years. In truth, you lose the same amount of heat through the top of your head as from any other body part with a similar area of exposed skin.

But even though you don’t lose most of your body heat through your head, you can still have a body heat loss of up to 10% by leaving your head exposed. So, in addition to covering other body parts, covering your head with a hat, blanket, or scarf, can help you retain body heat and therefore stay warmer.

If you find yourself in a survival situation without layers, or if you are still cold, you can use a heat reflecting blanket such as a space blanket or even paper, newspaper, or any kind of dry debris such as grass or leaves to stop wind from getting through your clothing to your skin if you have nothing else.

3. Radiation – Layers to Trap Air

Another good way to heat yourself post-SHTF is to always wear layers of clothing. Layers help to trap the heat your body dissipates naturally.

The middle layer serves as extra insulation. It needs to be something that moist air can pass through. Fleece, down, even wool are great options for the middle layer. The outer layer is the shell and should be both breathable and waterproof.

Nalgene Bottle filled with boiling water and slipped inside an old wool sock will keep a bed warm for up to 10-12 hours. You can also heat bricks or rocks in a fire or stove and put them under your blankets near your feet and they will radiate heat.

Share Body Heat

If you have at least one other person in your survival group, you can cuddle up to share body heat. If there are more than two of you, put those most vulnerable to the cold between the others, those in the middle of a body heat sandwich are the warmest.

4. Evaporation

One of the best ways to heat yourself post-SHTF is to control the amount of heat that evaporates from your body. Evaporative loss happens when we get too sweaty.

This is why when using clothing layers, the layer closest to your skin should be something that breathes and wicks away moisture, such as merino wool or a synthetic blend. Any kind of barrier, such when mom used to put plastic bags over your sock feet, will limit the heat loss by evaporation.

Hand Warmers or Body Warmers

If you’ve planned ahead and included a few air activated hand warmers or even body warmers in your bug out bag, you can use these to help stave off the cold and heat yourself in a survival situation.

If you didn’t plan ahead, you can even make your own hand warmers by filling pockets of insulating material such as fleece or flannel with grains of rice and heating them for five minutes on the top of a wood stove.

Keep Moving

If you’ve spent any amount of time outdoors, you probably know that you feel warmer when you are moving then when you are sitting still. This is because heat is generated by muscular work. To put it simply, movement causes your body to produce heat. So another way to heat yourself post-SHTF is to keep moving as much as possible.

Ways to Heat Your Home or Space

5. Permanent and semi-permanent fixtures


Fixtures installed in advance, such as a fireplace, can be used to heat your home post-SHTF well. But if you have the option to choose, go for a something like a wood burning stove, wood-fired cookstove, or even a rocket stove heater, or a potbelly stove.

These can not only be used to heat your home more efficiently than a fireplace, but they can also be used more easily to cook food and heat hot water in a long-term SHTF situation. Get a stove that can use a variety of fuels including wood, peat, coal, and even used vegetable oil so you can use whatever is available to you.

Additional things you can do in advance of a SHTF situation include ventless gas wall heaters such as the Thermablaster or stormproof furnace units like the Empire Blue Flame which kicks on if you lose your main heat source. If your home has southern exposure, you can install a solar room with a collector and solar powered fan.

In an outdoor space, a campfire, Swedish log fire, fire pit, Kotatsu (Japanese fire table) or chimenea can provide warmth for those around it. The type of outdoor fire you use will largely depend on whether you plan ahead and whether you are on the move or have the luxury of bugging in.

6. Portable Heaters


Many people are familiar with kerosene heaters. These do not require electricity but instead use kerosene fuel to operate. The larger ones are 23,000 BTUs and will be great for larger spaces. For those with smaller spaces or who are on a budget, the smaller 10,000 BTU heaters work well and uses less fuel. Make sure you buy and install battery powered CO2 detectors if possible and use plenty of ventilation.

Another option for a portable heater are the Mr. Buddy and Little Buddy propane heaters. These run using propane tanks from 1 pound to 40 pounds. The larger heater has connections for two tanks, the smaller has one connection. The reflector model screws directly to a 20-pound tank. You can find old tanks at flea markets or yard sales or even abandoned in a SHTF situation. Just one pound of propane will operate the heater for 5-6 hours on the low setting.

The portable Frontier Stove or Traveller Stove are two other ways to heat yourself. These can be used outdoors or even inside a tent or yurt with the proper fire safety precautions.

7. Lanterns


Obviously, propane lanterns, oil lamps, or kerosene Lamps are not designed to be used for heat. But they can give off a small amount of heat that can raise the temperature in their immediate area if you need to heat yourself post-SHTF in a survival type situation. Using lanterns for heat inside an enclosed space or for an extended period of time should be a last resort option and is not recommended due to safety issues.

8. Stop Drafts and Slow Heat Loss


One of the biggest ways to stay warm in your home and heat yourself is to stop drafts coming in and stop heat going out.

● Insulated Window Treatments

● Bubble Wrap on Windows

● Caulking around windows

● Use a draft blocker or towel on bottom of exterior doors.

● Add weather stripping around doors

● Install storm doors

● Use plastic window film for windows and sliding glass doors

9.Eat the Right Foods

Believe it or not, there are certain foods you can eat that will kickstart the thermogenesis process in your body. As you digest certain foods your body begins to produce energy. When the mitochondria get involved in digestion, heat is produced.

So, one of the ways to “heat yourself” is to eat root vegetables such as kale, potatoes, cabbage, and sweet potatoes, or carrots, which are more effective in raising internal heat as you digest them.

Other foods that help raise internal body temperature include peanuts, brown rice, coconut oil, and fresh ginger. Hot peppers increase circulation and can raise body temperature slightly.

Warm meals may provide immediate short-term temperature increase and possibly stop the shivers long enough for you to make a more substantial meal, but it won’t last near as long as eating raw vegetables.

Final Words
The best way to heat yourself post-SHTF of course is to plan ahead as much as possible so that you have a heat source that doesn’t require electricity and is sustainable for a longer-term period. But it never hurts to be prepared with the knowledge of some of the other methods to raise your body temperature. If you get caught without a backup heat source or if you have to bug out, the odds will be more in your favor.

When SHTF, the first things most people will focus on is trying to find food and water. But if you’re a prepper you know that while water is critically important

Let me start this post by saying that, while I am a gun enthusiast who believes in the right of the people to keep and bear arms, I do NOT condone the use of guns in the senseless killing of innocent people. And that’s the only way I can think of to describe what school shootings are; senseless killings of innocent people. Horrible tragedies that take the lives of innocents, devastate families and send communities reeling. There is no excuse for that kind of slaughter. No excuse. But there IS a reason for it. A reason behind it. And it has nothing to do with guns.

Instead of wringing our hands and posting anti-gun rants on social media, we need to understand what motivates a kid to plan and execute mass murder. Parents need to be talking to their kids. What is their school day like? Who are their classmates, and how do they treat each other? What does it feel like to be in school today? We, as parents and families and friends and neighbors need to look up from our televisions and smartphones and pay attention. We need to be more aware. We need to get to the root of WHY a kid would want to brutalize his school. How does a child get to the point where he wants to exterminate his classmates? How does he get there without his parents and family taking note? We need to talk to each other.

We need to listen to each other.

School shooters aren’t born, they’re made. And as long as we continue to ignore abuse and mental illness in schools, blame guns for gun-related violence, and make school shooters famous, we will continue to have school shootings. It’s as simple as that.

After the most recent school shooting, a well-meaning co-worker came to me and spent ten minutes trying to convince me that I didn’t need to own a fully automatic assault rifle. She did the hand motions demonstrating the cycling of a new round into a bolt-action rifle and told me that I should buy a hunting rifle that takes much longer to shoot. That I should only own a shotgun if I wanted to hunt ducks. And that a pistol makes more sense for home defense than an assault rifle. I didn’t waste a whole lot of time arguing with her. I just said that I don’t own a fully automatic assault rifle. That I already own all of the other firearms that she spoke of. And that I don’t use any of them to hunt ducks.

The truth is, I took the easy way out. I should have steered the conversation to the WHY of school shootings. I should have asked her to think about what might be driving kids to mass murder — social isolation and peer persecution, for example — but I already knew from the previous conversation with her that my efforts would be fruitless. Because school shootings involve guns. And when it comes to guns, she simply doesn’t think. She gets all whipped up into a lather about how guns are the evil of our society, but she can’t tell me why. Because she’s a willing disciple of today’s news and entertainment media, and the politicians who use it to control the masses.

It used to be The Church that controlled the people, from the throne and the pulpit. For many centuries — millennia — societies were ruled by religion. Even here in the U.S., with the separation of church and state, for most of our nation’s lifespan, our communities have been governed by Sunday sermon. But it’s not that way anymore. These days it’s The Media that pulls our strings. Hollywood movies, tv news shows, sitcoms, soap operas, cop shows, and an ever-expanding chunk of the worldwide interwebs influence and direct and control our thought. Those things shepherd us. The Media is the new church. And my coworker takes its communion religiously.

So I took the easy way out. Because I’ve learned there is little I can say to sway her from her Media Catechism. Voicing my opinion only results in her defensive regurgitation of anti-gun rhetoric. And since most of the media sermons after a school shooting revolve around guns and gun control, she has plenty to regurgitate. She really believes that guns are at fault. She really believes that new laws must be made to protect children attending public schools. She really believes that the NRA is evil. She really believes that AR stands for Assault Rifle (it does not). And she believes all of this because The Media tells her so.

♪ Guns are ba-ad, this I know, ♪
♪ for The Media tells me so. ♪

The Media tells us so. Over and over and over again. Every time we turn around. Guns are bad. Especially if they start with A and end with R. After a school shooting, you can bet there will be TV reporters who have never handled a firearm brandishing ARs in front of tv cameras and preaching that no one outside of the military should own such a deadly weapon. They are simply too ignorant to know better. So is the majority of their audience, surfing from channel to channel and refreshing CNN’s homepage every five minutes to feed on the latest juicy details.

Our hunger for spectacle propels these shooters. And every school shooting it gets worse. The media frenzy is a fast-lane to fame for the tortured, isolated, angry child who wants to go out in a blaze of glory because he’s so beaten down that his life isn’t worth suffering through anymore.

It sickens me. The whole news media spectacle of exploitation and sensationalism masquerading as news coverage of school shootings is painful to watch. We shouldn’t even be there. For most of us, thankfully, the tragedy doesn’t apply. It’s not our loss, our grief, our agony. We are only spectators to the horrific happenings of a community limited to those of genuine affiliation with that school. The rest of us should give space and respect to those who are suffering through the horror. Let those who know them, and love them, take care of them. The rest of us should stop using their misfortune as our entertainment.

Offer sympathy. Offer support. And stay out of the way.

If we really want to help, if we really want to prevent school shootings from happening in the future, we need to start addressing the problems that brought these shooters to such an enraged state. Their emotional and mental breakdown is the real issue. And in all but the most extreme cases, that can be prevented. Let’s talk — and listen — to our kids. Parents, families, friends, and neighbors. Let’s rebuild community. Let’s rebirth social responsibility. Let’s put aside our distractions and get to know each other again.

Because school shooters aren’t born. They’re made.

Let me start this post by saying that, while I am a gun enthusiast who believes in the right of the people to keep and bear arms, I do NOT

Although modern emergency infrastructure can handle most small emergencies, the system can quickly break down when faced with large-scale natural disasters and human-induced catastrophic events. The result can be a loss of most basic services that our daily lives rely on – running water, access to food at the store, emergency medical and fire services, and communication networks. When you are left without these elements that hold our society together, having a plan in place for protecting yourself and your family can be the difference between surviving through the catastrophe and not.

One of the most important things you will need to decide ahead of or at the outset of any disaster is whether you will bug in vs bug out – shelter in place or evacuate. While there are times when bugging out is necessary, and potentially advantageous, bugging in is the preferred choice in most cases. Critically, bugging in requires a significant amount of preparation work in order to ensure you will have everything you need to survive when the time comes. This is where a bugging in checklist can come in handy – knowing what you need to prepare for and how you will organize your shelter can go a long way towards helping you and your family move efficiently and safely when the time comes.

This guide will help you prepare that checklist by covering everything you need to consider in your bugging in plan. From choosing, organizing, and securing a shelter hub, to ensuring access to food and water, to preparing backup plans when bugging out becomes a necessary choice, this guide will help prepare you and your family to bug in during a major emergency.


5 Reasons why Preppers Should Bug In First?

Within the prepping community, a huge amount of attention and resources are geared towards bugging out. However, bugging out should only be the survival mode of choice when bugging in is untenable. The reason is that there are numerous advantages to bugging in.

1) Built-in shelter

One of the major advantages to bugging in during an emergency is that you already have one of the essential survival components built into your plan – shelter. Compared to sleeping outside, even in a tent, your home is dry, insulated, and relatively spacious. Your home can also be much more secure than sleeping outside since the doors and windows can be locked and even boarded against potential intruders. Plus, in the worst-case scenario of someone entering your home, you and your family will be familiar with escape routes and hiding places to help you stay safe.

2) Neighborhood community

Another advantage to sticking around your home is that you have a built-in community. Chances are high that you will recognize your neighbors, which allows you to begin discriminating between people who you expect outside your home and potential intruders. In addition, if you have neighbors who are also bugging in, you can band together to share information and resources – and even develop a rotating neighborhood watch to provide collective security.

3) Local knowledge

Knowing your local surroundings – your town and region – can also be an important advantage in the event that you need to venture outside your home. Scavenging for food, water, gasoline, or other supplies will be much simpler if you have an idea of where stores and potentially abandoned homes are located. Plus, in the event that you do need to bug out after days or weeks of sheltering in place, you will have an idea of what roads lead where, where lesser-known trails are located, and what the topography of the region is like.

4) Supplies

When bugging out, you are limited to the supplies you can carry on your back. In contrast, bugging in allows you to stockpile essentially limitless amounts of food and water – which you’ll also use less of since you will not need to expend energy moving around with heavy packs. Additionally, your home is likely to be filled with potentially useful tools and supplies that you would never be able to include in a bug out bag. Having access to a diversity of household items opens up possibilities for improvising solutions as problems arise.

5) Being found

Although it might not be a priority at the outset of an emergency, being found – by friends, families, and emergency responders – can be critical as a disaster winds down. Typically, your home is the first place that people will go looking for you to reconnect or to provide emergency aid.


8 Steps to Prepare to Bug In

Preparations for bugging in need to begin long before an emergency. Your family should have a plan, discussed ahead of time, that describes where everyone will meet and what they will bring with them. In addition, your bug in hub should be pre-stocked with non-perishable food and at least several days’ worth of water, as well as basic emergency supplies like a portable radio, medical kit, and a flashlight.

As soon as you receive warning of an emergency, it is time to put your bug in plan into action. Check first for official emergency communications over your radio or, if they are still functioning, your television or phone. If there is an evacuation notice for your area and you are still able to leave, follow it – this is a situation when bugging in has been determined by authorities to be more dangerous than bugging out. Otherwise, as long as there is still electricity and running water, begin charging all battery-powered electronics, fill your bathtubs with water (these work best), and gather your family in your bug in the hub.

1) Choosing and Organizing Your Shelter

One of the most basic elements to your bug in checklist should be where in your home you will be bugging in. Keeping your entire house running in an emergency is not only an inefficient use of limited resources but also reduces your security. Choose a single room or a set of connected rooms that will serve as your hub throughout the disaster period – this hub will be where your efforts to maintain heating, light, and sanitation will be focused.

Your bug in hub should be an above-ground room – on an upper floor if your area is prone to flooding – that can be fully enclosed by doors and has few or no windows. The room should be large enough to comfortably fit your entire family, along with sleeping bags and daily food and water supplies. The room that you choose should also be able to accommodate a non-electric heater. While a living room with a fireplace can be a good choice for some emergencies, any disaster involving airborne chemicals or radiological debris will require a room that can be more easily sealed off from the outside world.

If your hub room has a closet, this is an ideal space to store food and water, as well as any other emergency supplies you will need with you while bugging in. Otherwise, keep one to two days’ worth of food and water in your hub room at a time and use an adjoining room for your larger stockpile of emergency supplies. Ideally, these supplies should be stockpiled and kept in the hub room well ahead of a disaster and your family should know to use them only in case of an emergency.

2) Ensuring Access to Water

Water is one of the most difficult parts of any survival plan since it is heavy and bulky, while at the same time going without it for as little as three days will be fatal. The availability of water sources will depend in large part on the nature of the emergency happening outside, so the most versatile plan for ensuring access to water is simply to stockpile it in your house ahead of time. A good rule of thumb is to store one gallon of water per person per day, which can be used for both drinking and sanitation.

Although you can purchase bottled water ahead of an emergency, purchasing tens of gallons of water can quickly become expensive. Instead, simply fill specifically designed water storage containers and develop a plan to rotate the water about every 6 months (as recommended by FEMA).

Another option for storing large volumes of water is to install a rain barrel. Although this approach takes more time up front, collecting rainwater is one of the best ways to keep regenerating your water supplies while you are bugging in. Note that rainwater will need to be chemically treated or filtered before drinking it, so you will need to keep water purification supplies in your emergency kit.

3) Planning for Emergency Food Supplies

While your family can go longer without food than without water, planning for how you will feed multiple people while sheltering through a disaster is an important part of your bugging in plan. Since you are not likely to have access to your normal kitchen appliances, keep your food plan simple and rely primarily on non-perishable ingredients that store well for long periods.

Freeze dried foods and backpack meals are all excellent food choices if you have access to hot water. This is a major reason to keep a backpacking stove (good option) and plenty of stove fuel with your emergency supplies. Coffee, tea, and hot chocolate can provide a welcome morale boost and help keep your body warm when it gets cold in your shelter hub.

When possible, start out by eating whatever perishable food you were keeping in your refrigerator, freezer, and pantry. This will help lengthen the overall time your food supplies will last, as well as put food that will otherwise spoil to good use.

4) Keeping Your Shelter Warm and Lit

Without electricity, whichever room your family is sheltering in will be without heat and without overhead lights. However, coming prepared with a non-electric heater and portable lights can make your hub significantly more comfortable and save you from burning through excess calories to keep yourself warm.

If the room you are sheltering in has a fireplace and you have wood to burn, using an open fire to heat your shelter is a viable option. However, purchasing a propane- or kerosene-burning heater offers much more versatility and heating efficiency (but make sure there is a way to vent the heater appropriately). Both propane and kerosene are easily obtained ahead of a disaster and store for years without going stale. As a rule of thumb, plan on storing enough fuel to run your heater for at least 30 hours – the best way to determine how much fuel this requires is to run the heater ahead of time, which also allows you to ensure that it is powerful enough to heat the entire room.

Once you have a heat source, the next step in keeping your shelter warm will be to insulate it. First, seal off your bug in room as much as possible and minimize the number of times that people are entering and exiting the room. Use blankets and towels to seal cracks underneath doors and drape them over windows – in addition to closing the blinds – to add insulation.

In order to reduce heat loss from your own body, it is essential to wear multiple layers of clothing – when possible, you should wear as much clothing as it takes to feel warm. Common areas of heat loss from the body are the feet, neck, and head, so be sure to include socks, a scarf, and a thick hat in your outfit. Also, make sure that everyone in your family has heavy blankets or a warm sleeping bag at night. Knowing where all of these items are in your house before a disaster strikes – or simply storing them in your designated shelter room – is a critical part of your emergency preparedness plan.

Having a portable lighting solution for your shelter room will also make your entire experience easier and more comfortable, as well as reduce the chance of getting injured from stumbling around in the dark. Each person in your family should have a flashlight or headlamp, while you can keep a bright camping lantern in your emergency supplies to provide a central light for the room. While candles can add both light and warmth to your shelter room, note that they also pose a potential fire hazard.

5) Dealing with Sanitation

Sanitation is not usually at the top of the list of concerns in a wide-ranging disaster, but when the septic system stops working it can suddenly be a serious issue. Unfortunately, without running water or power to the pumps that keep septic systems flowing, disposing of human waste from your house can be much more difficult than simply flushing the toilet.

The solution is relatively simple if your house has an individual septic system with its own septic tank in the yard. In this case, you can simply use water (ideally, water from the bathtubs that you filled before the water stopped running) to manually refill your toilet’s tank, then flush as normal. This solution also works if you are certain your town’s municipal septic line is operating, although there is no way to tell without potentially allowing sewage to back-flow into your home if the main septic line is not being pumped.

If it is possible to go outside, then digging a latrine is also an option. For individual use, you will want to dig a hole that is at least six inches deep – although if multiple people will be using this hole for days on end, you will want to go much deeper than that. Be sure to dig your hole at least 200 feet from any water sources.

Unfortunately, going outside won’t be possible in most emergency situations, so you need to deal with waste inside your home when flushing isn’t an option. Remove as much water as you can from the toilet, then line it with two black garbage bags (one inside the other, in case of a rip) and use the toilet seat to keep the bags open. After using the toilet, add cat litter to the bag to reduce the odor. When the bag is about two-thirds filled, add a small amount of bleach if you have it, close the bag securely, and then place it into a garbage can or into your garage to deal with after the emergency is over.

6) Securing Your Shelter

In a prolonged disaster situation, security against looters and desperate people is a real concern. While it is not necessary to go overboard with security, it is important to stay vigilant and take precautions to not attract attention to your home. It is typically good practice to keep lights off at night and to ensure the windows are blacked out when moving around with flashlights so as not to attract attention from people passing by at night. In addition, if you have neighbors who also sheltered in place, talk to them about whether they have seen unexpected people in your neighborhood and consider working together to establish a night watch for the neighborhood. While you do not want to damage your home, consider ways to give your home the appearance of having been ransacked already can also dissuade potential intruders from thinking there are things worth stealing inside. A messy appearance during a disaster will blend in more than a nicely maintained exterior.

7) Raising Morale and Fitness

The importance of keeping morale up while weathering a disaster cannot be understated since your outlook drastically affects your ingenuity when solving problems and your ability to think clearly as the situation evolves. Adding foods that are a treat for you and your family, as well as a deck of cards or a board game, into your emergency stores can go a long way towards keeping spirits up. In addition, keeping busy with specific goals like finding additional food and water or bulking up your shelter’s security can give everyone a sense of purpose.

Staying fit is also an important consideration, especially if you will be limited to staying within your shelter room for days on end. Maintaining fitness not only increases morale but can also be important to your survival if you need to bug out or defend your shelter. There is a wide range of cardiovascular and muscle-building exercises that can be done without any specialized equipment and using only your body weight that will help you stay in good shape.

8) Having a Backup Bug Out Plan

Even after you have committed to bugging in, and even if you have plenty of supplies to last your family for weeks to come, it is important to remain prepared to bug out in case the situation outside your shelter changes. Check out this Guide to Bugging Out here. If an intruder gets into your home or the disaster escalates to a point where sheltering in place is no longer safe, you will need to be able to take a limited set of supplies and escape quickly. This backup bug out plan may or may not be the same as your original bug out plan since it is likely that your car will no longer start or that roads are impassable. Having a portable radio or another method of receiving communications from the outside world can go a long way towards making the decision to bug out or remain in place and help inform your plan in case bugging out is required.


Bugging In Should Be Your First Choice

When a disaster strikes, bugging in is often a safer and more comfortable option for you and your family than bugging out. Although your home may lose most of its modern amenities without electricity, running water, or heat, simply having a shelter pre-stocked with emergency supplies can make a huge difference in weathering a catastrophe. However, bugging in requires careful planning ahead of time to ensure that you have the supplies you need, where you need them. Hopefully, our guide gets things started for you and your family to prepare for bugging in!

Although modern emergency infrastructure can handle most small emergencies, the system can quickly break down when faced with large-scale natural disasters and human-induced catastrophic events. The result can be a loss

The decision to go and live off the grid is one of the biggest life decisions that you can possibly make, and one of the most important choices that you will have to make as part of that decision is where you will choose to go off the grid. However, many people don’t know the best places to live off the grid.

You can’t just choose any random location to live off the grid and go there. Some places and some states as we shall soon see are far better than others.

In the upcoming sections, we will discuss the top qualities of the best places to live off the grid so you will know what to look for, and then we will outline and discuss the top five best states to live off the grid and the reasons why. To wrap up, we’ll discuss the worst states to live off the grid in as well.

Top Qualities of the Best Places To Live Off The Grid

As was noted above, not everywhere or anywhere is a good place to live off the grid. You really need to be selective about where you choose to go.

When choosing the best place to live off the grid for you, here are the top qualities and features that you will want to look for:

NO POLLUTION

First, the area that you choose cannot be polluted in any way whatsoever. This means no living in close vicinity to farms, drilling operations, factories, mining operations, waste/garbage disposal facilities, or nuclear power plants.

To be on the safe side, make sure that you live at least two hundred miles from any of those listed above locations.

WATER ACCESS

Without water access, how can you expect to be self-sufficient? This is why it is absolutely imperative that your off-grid location have access to clean water.

This means it could have access to a running river, stream, or lake (a running source of water would be preferable), or it could have a water well so you can access water underground.

In addition, while it’s not a requirement, it would undeniably be nice to live in an area that receives at least some rainfall each year and to have a rainfall catchment system in place.

MINIMAL REGULATIONS

The less zoning laws and regulations there are in your area, the better. This is simply because there are fewer hoops to jump through to live off the grid, and you’ll pay less money to the state and local government as well. For this reason, choosing a city and county/city with low taxes and regulations would be vastly preferable. This is also important if you are wanting to go off the grid with no money.

ACCESS TO ROADS

Just because you’re living off the grid doesn’t mean you can’t have access to roads. In fact, you will want access to roads should you ever be forced to head into town for an emergency.

Access to roads also plays a major factor in the price of a piece of property. An otherwise nice piece of property with no access to roads would be priced much more cheaply than the same or similar piece of property with road access. Nonetheless, it probably won’t be worth it to you to pay less for road access.

If you ever need to quickly head into town for emergencies, or if you need to evacuate from your home in the event of a major disaster, access to maintained public roads will be essential. So this is important to consider in the case that you ever have to bug out.

AWAY FROM COASTAL AREAS

Coastal areas are simply vulnerable to too many things: hurricanes, earthquakes (if you live on the west coast), and yes, to military invasion. This is why setting up a homestead on the west coast or the east coast of the United States will not be the wisest move, and you will instead want to select a place that’s more inland.

The Top 5 Best States For Off-Grid Living

Next, we will talk about the top five best states for off-grid living. One thing to take note of is that there is no perfect place to live off the grid. Each of these states we are about to cover have disadvantages, but fortunately, their advantages outweigh them.

Ultimately, these states are the best places to live off the grid:

ALASKA

As the largest state in the union, Alaska is a very popular destination for those desiring to live off the grid. And not only is Alaska the largest state, it’s also beautiful and jam-packed with resources.

That being said, Alaska does have some downsides. It gets very cold during the winter, and furthermore, it takes much longer for things to ship in. This means that in a major disaster, Alaska may become completely cut off from being resupplied.

That being said, Alaska is also a state almost intended only for off gridders to live in. Taxes are very low, with the lowest tax burden in the United States, and with only twenty-five different municipalities charging a property tax.

Homeschooling is also fully legal, with the only requirement being that parents need to notify the state that they are homeschooling their children (no inspections or state given tests are required).

There are also no restrictions on firearm ownership or gardening, another major plus for those who desire to live off the grid.

IDAHO

Idaho is perhaps the most overlooked state in the country to live off the grid. Like Alaska, it’s a very fiscally conservative state with minimal taxes and regulations.

But even more importantly, Idaho has a cost of living that is far less than that of Alaska (which is the highest in the nation). The land is sparse and inexpensive in contrast to other states.

Furthermore, the geography in Idaho is also quite diverse, ranging from high mountain ranges in the northern panhandle to deserts, grasslands, and scrublands in the southern region.

Natural resources such as fish, wild game, agricultural land, and timber are also in great abundance.

MISSOURI

If you were hoping for your off-grid homestead to be in the Midwest, you’ll want to give strong consideration to Missouri.

Why? Because Missouri is one of the few states that actually encourages its citizens to live off the grid. This may be surprising because Missouri is rarely a state that people think of when they think about homesteading.

To this end, there are very lax laws when it comes to guns, homeschooling, farm animals, and gardening. Another major plus is that the cost of living in Missouri is also low, and as long as you live in the rural regions of the state (which is the vast majority of the area), there are no zoning or building codes, which is awesome for anyone who wants to live off the grid.

The temperature here is mild, with an average temperature of fifty degrees Fahrenheit, humid summers, and reasonable amounts of snow and rain each year.

NEVADA

When people think of Nevada, two things tend to come to mind: deserts and Las Vegas.

Despite this, Nevada is still one of the best places to live off the grid. For one thing, it has a very large and active off-grid community, even more so than Arizona and New Mexico (two more popular destinations for an off-grid living). Finding other people who live off the grid in Nevada will be very easy.

With practically unlimited amounts of sunlight, solar powering your home in Nevada will be incredibly easy. The land throughout the state is also very cheap, and regulations are surprisingly minimal (despite it being far from the most conservative state in the Union).

The only real issue to contend with is water. After all, almost the entirety of the state is a desert. The best solution will be to dig your own water well on your property, as well as to have a rainwater catchment set up for when it does rain.

But overall, so long as you don’t mind the sunny heat and living in a desert, Nevada truly is one of the best places to go off the grid.

TENNESSEE

Wanting to go to the southeast to live off the grid? Here’s a word of advice: check out Tennessee.

There are very few states in the southern United States that experience all four seasons, but Tennessee is one of them. Summers are hot and humid, while winters are usually below freezing.

But as for why Tennessee is one of the best places to live off the grid, there are several reasons: the cost to buy and own property is low, the tax and regulatory burden are very minimal, there are very minimal rules when it comes to gardening and homesteading, and gun laws are lax. Routinely, Tennessee is ranked as one of the freest states in the entire country.

Tennessee also has the luxury of having excellent agricultural land, which is a major plus for anyone who wants to be self-sufficient. The soil is very rich, and you’ll have access to fresh water as it runs down from the truly scenic Appalachian mountains. As a whole, the population in the rural areas tends to be very self-sufficiency minded as well.

The Top 5 Worst States To Live Off The Grid

Alright, now that we’ve talked about the top five best places to live off the grid, what about the top five worst.

We won’t spend as much detail talking about these states as last time, but to quickly run through them, the top five WORST states to set up on an off-grid homestead on will be, in alphabetical order:

  1. California
  2. Florida
  3. Hawaii
  4. Illinois
  5. New York

Each of these states, with the exception of Florida, suffers from some of the highest taxation and regulations in the country (their populations have actually been decreasing as a result).

But they each present unique challenges aside from that. For instance, even though it doesn’t have incredibly high taxes or regulations, the cost of real estate in Florida is inexplicably high and it also has a high crime rate, in addition to a sinkhole problem.

California is in a major earthquake zone and right on the Pacific coastline as well. Hawaii is cut off from the mainland, which means in a major disaster, you’ll basically be stuck on there until things return to normal (or if they return to normal). Hawaii also has one of the highest costs of living in the United States.

Can you set up an off the grid homestead in those states if you want to? Absolutely. Just know that you’ll be taking more risks if you do, you’ll have to pay more in taxes in fees, and you won’t have as much freedom when it comes to guns, homesteading, gardening, farming, or homeschooling.

Conclusion

Again, there is no single perfect place to go live off the grid. But certain places and states are definitely better than others.

The top five states that we have discussed in this article are not the only states that you should consider living off the grid. In fact, you can technically live off the grid in virtually any state that you want to.

But the five states that we have discussed here today all share many things in common: they are economically free, taxes and regulations are minimal, the property is cheap, the people tend to be very self-sufficient minded folks, homeschooling laws are lax, firearms laws are limited, and sometimes even encourage off-grid living.

There will be negative aspects of each state to contend with, but for the most part, these five should be the first five that you consider.

The decision to go and live off the grid is one of the biggest life decisions that you can possibly make, and one of the most important choices that you