HomePosts Tagged "Doomsday Preppers"

A ghillie suit is something I have been meaning to buy forever. When it comes to camouflage for hunting or sneaking up on people, there isn’t much better if you are using this the right way, but I never pulled the trigger so to speak on any of the pre-made varieties I have come across. I was watching Doomsday Preppers last night and one of the small nuggets of usefulness I was able to pull out of last nights show was how to make a ghillie suit yourself.

The steps below are fairly easy and we even found a video that shows you everything you need. If you don’t want to do this yourself though and still prefer to buy a ghillie suit already assembled, you can do that instead and get into the woods faster. Either way, a ghillie suit is a great addition to your prepping supplies if staying hidden is important.

 

Commercial two-dimensional camouflage is great for blending into a variety of backgrounds, but it does nothing to offset your most game-spooking signature: your silhouette. Veteran hiders—military snipers, undercover surveillants, and hard-core hunters among them—rely on 3-D camouflage, entire suits made of billowy material that blurs their outline and allows them to disappear in plain sight. These suits are derived from those created by early Scottish game keepers, called ghillies. Make your own in one day with an old jacket, burlap, netting, dental floss, sewing needles, and glue.

Materials you will need:

  1. Used set of Camoflauge BDU’s
  2. Jute or burlap strips
  3. Netting
  4. Shoe Goo or Zip Ties

Step 1 – Add the Netting

The perfect base is a used BDU uniform jacket, available at military surplus stores. Buy a roll of replacement fishing net and cut it into strips at least two squares wide. Using dental floss, sew these strips down the sleeves and the front of the jacket, leaving 6 to 8 inches between strips. Then seal the stitches with shoe glue.

Add the netting

Step 2 – Ready the Burlap

A traditional ghillie suit is covered by strands of burlap. You can get material from bulk coffee bags, but any burlap bag or roll of netting will work. You need between 4 and 8 pounds of material for each suit.

 

If you can’t find burlap, buy braided jute twine in natural colors and separate each braid into individual fibers.

Ready the Burlap

Step 3 – Separate the Strands

Unraveling the burlap or jute material into individual strands is the most time-­consuming part of making the suit. Cut strips of burlap and then unravel the cross-linked fibers and separate them into strands of equal length. The longer strands will go on the sleeves and the front of the suit. Shorter strands will overlap down the back.

Separate the strands

Step 4 – Tie in the Burlap

Now you’re ready to tie the strands of burlap or jute into the netting. Take 10 to 15 strands and fold the bunch in half, then push the loop under each vertical square of netting. Draw the hanging ends of the bunch through the loop and pull tight. Start at the bottom and work upward, ensuring that each row overlaps the one beneath it.

Tie In the burlap

There are also a ton of videos on YouTube about how to make a ghillie suit and this one is pretty basic, but shows the steps nicely and you get to enjoy a rocking song to go with it.


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A ghillie suit is something I have been meaning to buy forever. When it comes to camouflage for hunting or sneaking up on people, there isn’t much better if you

I believe that each of us has an inner voice. Call it what you will; instinct, hunch, feeling, foresight, or intuition they are all the same. It is a compelling force within us that we feel on an almost imperceptible level when you are quiet and your mind starts to ponder things you normally don’t give a second thought. This inner voice or instinct might be ignored or blamed away on bad tacos but for me and a lot of other people out there, our inner voice is telling us that we need to start getting prepared.

For me, my inner voice or ‘gut feeling’ as I typically call it started acting up around 2007. I don’t know why exactly and I haven’t over-analyzed it, to be honest. For me, I simply started feeling like I needed to take steps to prepare my family. There wasn’t a specific event I was worried about, just a general feeling, perhaps brought on by some realization of how fragile our society is. It was around this time that I really began to research how to start prepping and the journey I started back in 2007 continues to this day.

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If you are new to prepping, you must have millions of questions. I know I did and in the beginning, I scoured the internet for prepping websites, survival books and information from a wide array of sources that led me to a lot of insights and some great recommendations. I try to share what I have learned on the Final Prepper every day but even for me, there is no finish line. I am still working on prepping just like millions of other people. Today I want to share some advice for the person who is beginning their own journey and has questions on how to start prepping.

Do you know why you want to start prepping?

Prepping is a word that has only fairly recently become known around the world and it is usually associated with a negative connotation. TV shows like Doomsday Preppers and Doomsday Castle have both helped and hurt the idea of prepping in various degrees but I believe overall most people see the benefits of Prepping and can separate the bizarre actions of some from the common-sense process of prepping itself. Prepping to me is simply taking steps to prepare yourself and your family to better weather disasters. Why do we need to do anything in the first place? Isn’t that what the police and the fire department and government are for?

If you are here on this website, I am sure the answer to that question is obvious. If you have paid any attention to the events of just the last few years there are numerous examples of disasters that caught people off guard where neither the police, nor the National Guard, nor FEMA were able to help in a way that was fast and effective enough to save everyone or to end suffering. The cold hard truth is that in a disaster situation, you are better off relying on yourself than anyone else. Police can become overwhelmed, bureaucracies always have more important things to worry about and the needs of the individual (you) are not first on the priority list. In short, when something bad happens, you need a plan to deal with events if help doesn’t arrive. Relying on anyone in a professional capacity to save you is foolish and it can get you killed. You know that its time for you to get started prepping.

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Start with the basics of getting prepared

There are many types of disasters that can strike. You only have to look at the news to see earthquakes, fires, riots, mudslides, hurricanes, wars, drought and the list goes on and on. Some people want to prepare for a specific event like a tornado and at first, that may seem like the most logical place to start, but what if you are prepared for a tornado and a flood comes instead? What if you are worried about a forest fire, but there is an earthquake? What if you are all set for a hurricane, but an EMP wipes out the electric grid?

There are things you can do to prepare for any event and I recommend you start with these 4 basic necessities. These 4 things are needed for life no matter what happens and if you take care of the four essentials, you will be ahead of 98% of the population.

Food – It’s very simple to know what you need. You need to store as much food as your family needs to eat for the duration of any disaster. Ideally, this would be food that doesn’t require refrigeration like canned or dehydrated food. If your budget allows you to purchase freeze-dried food, this is the simplest option and you can easily store several months’ worth of food under your bed in nice plastic containers. Even though it is the easiest, it isn’t the cheapest and a wiser strategy is to slowly just buy more of what your family already eats. This way, with a good rotation system you always have an abundance of fresh food your family likes. The freeze-dried food is pretty decent, but nothing like fresh food.

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Water – Another easy one. Water is necessary for life and you need a gallon per day for each family member. If you have 4 people in your house you would need 120 gallons of water to last a month. Ideally, you would back this up with a good filtration system like a Big Berkey water filter. Don’t believe you need that much water? Just look at the residents of Charleston WV a few months back or more recently Toledo who were told not to drink their water for weeks. Could you wait that out? Store water now while you have it and it’s plentiful.

Shelter – This is simply a way to keep out of the elements. If you have a home and it isn’t blown away you have shelter, but what if the power is off in the summer or the heat is out in the winter. Make sure you have plans to keep warm and cool. Sleeping bags work great in the winter, but summer there are fewer options. Unless you want to build your own swamp cooler.

Security – Disasters bring out the worst in people, but it doesn’t take a disaster to bring violence to your town. Just recently riots broke out over the shooting death of a teen. Riots break out all the time over sports games. Imagine if the power is out and the grocery store shelves are bare and people are hungry. Make sure you have a way to protect your family from people who either want what you have or simply want to burn and destroy things. I recommend legal firearms for responsible adults.

Research additional topics

What is your learning style? I guess more accurately, what can you use for motivation or ideas? I have been able to pull ideas out of a lot of different places. At the beginning as I was learning how to start prepping, I frequented numerous prepping websites and we have a great list of prepper sites on our resources page. Let me know if you’re interested.

I also bought books. The Doomsday Book of Medicine is the most complete medical guide ever written for non-medical people, it is also a manual that you can use to keep your body vigorously healthy and disease-free. No other book on the market today will teach you all of this, as well as how to make your own wound care solutions, saline solutions, eye irrigant, natural insect repellent, sunscreen, hydrating fluids, and even toothpaste. There has never been a book like this, so easy to read and so full of life saving medical information that cannot be found anywhere else.

Movies are another source of ideas and inspiration although you do have to have a certain tolerance or affection for the end of the world movies. I love them but my wife isn’t a big fan so I have to judiciously watch these. If you are looking for a good prepper movie, you can try the Best Prepper movie list and see if you can find something you haven’t seen before. I have even found movies do a better job of convincing people to prepare in some cases than all the factual arguments you can muster.

What Next?

Once you have the basics under control, there are tons of other areas where you can specialize for lack of a better word. The pages of the Final Prepper are filled with information around various threats, methods and strategies and all the pages are searchable and downloadable.  You can learn about how to pack your bug out bags, vehicle survival kits and even prepper gear reviews. If you have any questions, just comment in the articles and I am sure someone will help you out with ideas and share their experience. Good luck on your journey and keep listening to that inner voice.


Other self-sufficiency and preparedness solutions recommended for you:

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Liberal’s hidden agenda: more than just your guns

Build yourself the only unlimited water source you’ll ever need

4 Important Forgotten Skills used by our Ancestors that can help you in any crisis

Secure your privacy in just 10 simple steps

I believe that each of us has an inner voice. Call it what you will; instinct, hunch, feeling, foresight, or intuition they are all the same. It is a compelling

One of the concerns of anyone who is preparing for a SHTF scenario if you are being honest is the dark side of human nature. You can have all of the supplies you ever need; you could have a fully stocked pantry with enough food to feed your family for 10 years, enough ammo to conduct a 21 gun salute every minute of the day for the next 5 years and it could all be taken from you in a minute by desperate individuals who care nothing for you or your family. When hard times come, the true survival instinct kicks in at some point and that is when some of the biggest evils happen and you might find yourself defending your life. When it is desperate and it’s either you or them, most people will side with themselves and do whatever is necessary to take anything you have if what you have can help them.

We discussed the concept of Marauders in a couple of posts here on the Final Prepper and while I think the shining example of an idiot used in Doomsday Preppers was not something I would be overly concerned with (the person, not the scenario) the threat itself is very real. That is one of the reasons we talk about security for your home, maintaining an active Situational Awareness and how society can break down when there is no rule of law. History is full of too many examples of good people being killed for senseless reasons, and ignoring the very real threat that this could happen to you isn’t going to make it go away.

One of our readers is from Australia and they commented on a post I wrote a while back about the top 5 guns you need to get your hands on. The comment was essentially, that since there are no guns in Australia, this person has nothing to worry about and I don’t believe that is true. If you have no guns, you have even less of a chance of protecting yourself from bad guys that do, but lets assume for a second that Australia really had no guns whatsoever. Do you really believe that the absence of firearms is going to guarantee your safety? Tell that to the people in Nigeria who were killed with Machetes. A lack of guns doesn’t mean everything is peace, love and singing. This isn’t new and it violence won’t stop no matter what law you pass or what right you take away from people. If someone wants you dead bad enough, you are dead. That is unless you can stop them.

Guns aren’t the only way to kill a person.

Now, that is one problem, not having some means of protection, but the bigger problem is that dark and sinister element I talked about in the first paragraph. No matter what happens, if society devolves to the point of desperation people will do desperate things. There will not be any negotiating with someone who is starving if they have a plan, superior numbers and firepower. There will be people coming to take what you have and you will be lucky if this happens that nothing worse than theft occurs.

No amount of planning can prevent people out there from trying to steal what they need in order to live. You can plan all of the charity in the world, but eventually it will come down to what you need to feed your family. The line will be drawn somewhere, maybe your stocked, solar-powered retreat that they want. If you have anything at all you will be a target for people like this.

One of the concerns of anyone who is preparing for a SHTF scenario if you are being honest is the dark side of human nature. You can have all of

If you watch Doomsday Preppers like me you probably saw this episode that showcased two Preppers. The difference for me it was that I have actually heard of two of the preppers on the show. Rick Austin is the author of the Secret Garden of Survival: How to Grow a Camouflaged Food Forest which is an excellent introduction and thought starter on the concepts of Permaculture guilds and how they can be incorporated into the Prepper garden plan. He frequently speaks at conferences and self-reliance expos. Along with Rick was his wife (and this was news to me) Survivor Jane who has her own survival blog, started the #preppertalk hashtag on Twitter and speaks at Prepper Conferences also.

The show spent the first part of their episode focused on Rick’s camouflaged food forest that he has grown on his secluded property in the Appalachian mountains. I was already familiar with the concepts but seeing his home and surrounding lush permaculture garden was interesting and got me thinking about this subject all over again.

The brilliant aspect of this from the standpoint of preppers is that unlike a garden, the camouflaged food forest requires less maintenance, less water, no chemicals and best of all, doesn’t look like a garden. This could be especially helpful if we have some EMP event like Rick and Jane were prepping for. One fear of a massive EMP strike is that there is no longer any power for long periods of time. With this is the potential for vehicles to no longer work, gas pumps and pretty much any other electronic devices unless they are heavily shielded. If this happens, trucks won’t be rolling to deliver food.  Food shortages lead to food riots which lead to people scouring yards looking for food. Gardens will make an easy target in the right season. If your main food source is hidden in what looks like an overgrown patch of plants, you will be more likely to have your secret garden overlooked.

What are Permaculture Guilds?

I found this great article below on the Never Ending Food website that describes the process and concepts nicely. I also recommend getting Rick’s book the Secret Garden of Survival for some great photographs and practical application advice. It is much cheaper on Kindle now. You can also visit Rick’s site and read the first chapter online for free.

Diagram of a permaculture guild.

Permaculture is based on natural systems like those that we see in forests.  In a forest system, there are multiple layers of vegetation growing together in a very diverse setting.  We see many types of trees, shrubs, plants, insects, animals, and various other things all living together in a system that continually strengthens itself.  All of these components of a natural ecosystem serve a function (or several functions) that support each other like the strands of a web.  One strand on its own may be weak, but the combination of all the strands together add to the overall strength and usefulness of the web.In order to mimic these natural systems and to provide for human needs (i.e. food, building supplies, fuel, fibers, etc.) we must learn to identify and work with the various functions of our natural resources.  This is where the concept of the “Permaculture Guild” comes from.  A guild is usually defined as an association of people working toward a common goal.  In Permaculture, a guild is a grouping a plants, animals, insects, and other natural components that also work together to help ensure their survival.  Instead of planting gardens, Permaculture teaches us how to “build guilds”.  Instead of teaching about specific plants, we teach about the plant’s functions.  This is why Permaculture can work throughout the whole world.  It is a guide for design rather than a “how-to” type of agriculture.  (For more information on Permaculture Design, click here.)A good Permaculture guild generally has seven components:

Food for us

When building a guild we need to think about maximizing the health and nutritional benefits that we will be getting from our systems.  In order to eat a diversity of foods we need to plant a diversity of foods.  In Malawi this should be based on our 6 food groups. This means including fruits, vegetables, staples, legumes & nuts, fats, and even animals.  With good planning, we should be able to receive foods from all of the 6 food groups throughout the entire year.

Food for the soil

All plants need nutrients to grow, just like we do.  One of the main nutrients that plants use for growth is call nitrogen.  An easy way to get nitrogen into the soil is by planting legumes (i.e. beans, peas, groundnuts, leguminous trees, etc).  All legumes are considered “nitrogen-fixers” and are able to take nitrogen from the air and convert it to a usable form in the soil.  Using legumes actually helps to ”feed” the plants that they are growing near.  The leaves and other organic matter from legumes may also be added to compost to increase the nitrogen content.   Any organic matter that is added back to the soil will eventually help to act as food for the soil  This includes: leaves, kitchen scraps, market resources, decaying matter, compost, compost tea, mulch, manure, etc.

Diggers/Miners

Deep rooted plants, such as trees, will reach deep into the earth’s soil (like a miner) and bring minerals up to the surface.  These deep rooted plants also act as diggers to break open the soil, make it soft, and allow for air & water to be easily absorbed.  Some diggers also take the form of root crops that can be used as staple foods. Examples of diggers include: cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, Irish potatoes, trees and other deep rooted plants, etc.  Diggers can even be insects and animals that burrow through the soil such as: ants, termites, worms, beetles, mice, etc.

Groundcover

These protect the soil from the sun, help to hold moisture, and help to keep “weeds” (good plants in the wrong place) down. There are many types of groundcovers available in Malawi.  These include: sweet potato vines, pumpkin, cucumbers (minkaka, zinkhananga, fwifwi, etc), and anything else that will vine or spread across the soil.  Mulch is also a form of groundcover.

Climbers

Climbers help to maximize food production, especially in areas where land resources may be scarce or limited.  In most forest sytems you will generally see examples of climbers, because nature uses all of its layers to their fullest potential.  Examples of climbers that you can use in Malawi include: beans, passion fruit (magalagadeya), loofa (chinkupule), air potatoes, cucumbers (zipwete, minkhaka), etc.

Supporters

These are stronger items that support the climbers and make the most of our space.  Supporters can be living things like trees, bushes, stalks such as a maize or sunflower, or they can be non-living things like houses, bathing areas, outdoor toilets,  walls, fences, etc.  The main thing to be careful of is choosing the right supporter for the right climber.  Some climbers are very aggressive and can bring down a fence, or take over a tree.  If you put a passion fruit vine into a mango tree, you may not end up with any mangoes.  This is where thinking ahead and planning become very important.

Protectors

Any thing that helps to protect your guild is a protector.  In terms of protecting your guild from damaging insects, strong smelling plants can be very useful.  Things like onions, chives, spices, lemon grass, and pungent flowers can help to repel insects and even confuse them making it difficult for them to find their food.  Natural predators can also be very helpful in controling the insect problems in a guild.  Beneficial animals and insects such as frogs, birds, lizards, praying mantis, ladybugs, etc should be attracted to the garden with various types of habitat and plants that they prefer.  You can even protect from larger animals like goats and people by using things with thorns or sharp ends.  Some living fences that we have seen are even more effective than the razor wire that many people put along their fences.

If you watch Doomsday Preppers like me you probably saw this episode that showcased two Preppers. The difference for me it was that I have actually heard of two of the