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HomePosts Tagged "Prepping Survival"

Oh, if I only had a million dollars I could purchase everything I think I could need if the grid went down for good. I tell myself that sometimes when I am driving around thinking about everything still to be done and I guess that I use that as an excuse for any shortcomings in my plan. Taking steps to be more prepared when you start to plan for a lot of contingencies can quickly start hitting the wallet and if you aren’t careful your new found hobby of urgent acquisition of survival gear and supplies can hurt your finances and possibly your relationship with your spouse.

When I compiled my list of everything I needed to have to be what I considered as fully “Prepared” it was a long list of items that cost a pretty good chunk of change. Most of us aren’t independently wealthy so the accumulation of the general understanding of the bare minimums can take a while. If you are just starting your journey towards being more prepared, the costs themselves can dissuade you or at least make you worried that you will never have enough money.

Each individual has their own idea of what being prepared looks like. For some, it may require 200 acres, a bulletproof Hummer and matching Barrett .50 sniper rifles. Being prepared can cost a small fortune, but it doesn’t have to. There are a lot of simple ways you can begin to adopt a posture of preparedness that will allow you and your family to start working towards being much more prepared without breaking the bank.

Start A Garden

Gardens can reap huge benefits with small cash outlay.

You can’t even begin to think you are prepared if you don’t have a way to feed yourself. Food is one of the most fragile infrastructure dependencies most of us have. If you purchase all of your food from a grocery store, what will you do if the doors are shut? Better yet, what will you do if because of a shortage or riot, there is no food left in the grocery stores?

Having a garden now will ensure you have a way to feed yourself that isn’t dependent upon trucks bringing food to the local supermarket chain. If you have a garden, you have a method of creating your own food supply and that can mean the difference between life and death. There are a lot of articles in our gardening section of this site, but this concept is one that each family needs to take care of now. Preparing a garden isn’t something you can do overnight. Even if you can, food takes months in most cases to mature so this crucial aspect of prepping is not something you want to wait on until the riots break out.

Why is this an affordable step you can take? Gardens can cost a good bit of money to get started, but you can build your own growing space for nothing much more than hard work and time. Provided you have the tools to turn your plot of land and prepare the soil, seeds are very cheap. Try buying 100 beet plants worth of beets at the grocery store. Buying seeds and growing your vegetables from seed is not without some trial and error, but you will be learning in the process and the final result will be more than worth it.

Purchase A few Extra days of Food

Continuing on the food theme, since that is what I think is the most fragile dependency we have most people who are prepping want to stock up on foods. This is another great idea for the same reasons as mentioned above, but if you are like our family, the grocery budget is already pretty high. Freeze-dried food isn’t as cheap as store-bought food although it has its advantages too. How can you begin to build up your food storage without taking out a small loan or selling one of your children to the Gypsies?

Rice is very cheap considering how much food you get.

Start small. First, it’s a good idea to take a breath and see what you have on hand already. I would make sure you know what is in that pantry and get rid of any foods that are expired. Cleaning out your area for food storage and devising a system to organize your food, if you don’t have one already will make it more clearly visible when you try to see what you need more of. Most people simply need more of everything so choosing items to buy isn’t really the tough part, but doing this economically can be.

I wrote a simple plan for how to purchase a 30 day supply of food for around $500 but even that can be too expensive so what can you do to ensure your family’s food security for less than the price of a new iPhone? Rice and beans! Yes, they are simple but they are about the cheapest long term storable foods you can buy. A 50-pound bag of rice is still only going to be about $20 and they have enough food for 504 servings. That can feed a family of 4 for 42 days. Granted, there won’t be a whole lot of variety in your diet and there are cooking considerations but this is a very cheap way to get a jump start on food storage without breaking the bank. Now, if you buy about 10 bags of beans at about $5 per bag, you increase your servings to well over 1000. For the longest shelf life, you want to ensure your food is sealed in 5-gallon buckets, but this right here will give you a huge leap forward in survival and it should be cheaper than a night out to dinner and a movie.

Store 25 gallons of water

Water, water everywhere, at least that is what you hope for. Water is essential to living and actually should be higher in priority than food, but I had to start somewhere. The average person needs a gallon of water each day. That doesn’t account for extreme temperatures or water loss through sweat due to physical exertion or illness. Water is also the simplest item to collect and store for just about anyone.  The good news is that most of us have already paid for the water, so we just need a way to store it.

A family of 4 will need 28 gallons of water at a minimum to last for a week. That is 28-gallon jugs, 5 and a half 5-gallon jugs or less than a quarter of a rain barrel. I would recommend having all three if possible. You can get used plastic barrels from a lot of places and there are plans all over the internet on how to build a rainwater system. This used in conjunction with storing water inside will ensure you have enough to begin thinking about other things. Start off with 28 gallons and move up to 50. If you make one rain barrel, make another for 100 gallons of water just in case.

Now, the water you collect will need to be filtered or boiled, but having it on hand will need to come first. You can’t filter what you don’t have.

Read A book

Reading is how I started down the road of prepping myself. I started reading a couple of fiction novels and then went online to investigate some of the information I read in there and that led me to other sources. You can get down all manner of rabbit holes if you sit in front of a computer long enough. With prepping blogs, survival websites and YouTube, you can essentially get a master’s degree in prepping just by sitting at your computer.

In addition to fiction, there are tons of resources you can read that cover everything from basic survival, growing gardens, homesteading skills, wild plant identification, security and on and on.

Taking a course offered by your local Red Cross chapter is another low to a no-cost way of gaining skills and information.

Make a survival plan

Making a plan doesn’t cost anything and actually it is what I would do first after reading a good bit on what you think you need to know. Like any really good plan, yours might change as your skills or resources do, but I find that it is helpful to put things down on paper. I am not a big note taker usually, but I still have the list that I wrote out back in 2008 of everything I thought I needed. Deciding whether or not you will bug out or hunker down will help refine your list as well as supplies you already have when taken into consideration of the larger set of items you need. Writing down your plans can help prompt you to add to that list when you consider items and where your family needs to make changes.

Hopefully, this gives you some ideas. Please share your own ideas for how to begin prepping in affordable ways below.

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aking steps to be more prepared when you start to plan for a lot of contingencies can quickly start hitting the wallet and if you aren’t careful your new found

One, if not the most important aspect of Emergency Preparedness to get right is developing a plan for how you will obtain water. You simply can’t live without it. You can go a long time without food, but you can’t go long without water. Our bodies are almost 75% water so staying hydrated isn’t really an option. This article will talk about some of the main considerations you have with respect to ensuring that your family is prepared in the event any disaster to have and be able to acquire water.

Why do you need Water?

Let’s start with the obvious. The average person under normal conditions needs approximately 1 gallon of water for daily use. While a portion of this is for hygiene and cooking, you don’t want to plan on less than this amount in your Survival preparations. Without water our bodies quickly become dehydrated and that can make a bad day worse very quickly. Some of the symptoms of mild to moderate dehydration are:

  • Headache
  • Irritability
  • Dizziness
  • Weakness
  • Disorientation
  • Thirst (well duh)
  • Dry skin
  • Lethargy

If you don’t get to any water after this point and head into Severe Dehydration, the symptoms get worse:

  • Severe confusion
  • Muscle cramp
  • Lack of sweating
  • Convulsions
  • Fainting
  • Heart failure
  • Dry wrinkled skin
  • Low blood pressure
  • Unconsciousness

As your body has less of the water it needs to run, the less effective you are. This can seriously hurt your group in an emergency where they are counting on you for their survival. Water is essential and we have to have a plan for having a ready supply if you want to survive.

Not all situations are normal. If you live in the desert of New Mexico, water is of course going to be a much bigger concern and harder to acquire than if you live in the hills of West Virginia. Temperature, exertion and illness all impact how much water you need per day. In a grid-down scenario you will most likely be exerting a significant amount of additional exertion than you were in your pre grid-down life.  For water, you may not have the option of turning on the tap to have it flow out into your glass. Simply getting water could be an all-day chore. Will you have to walk long distances? Will you have to carry the water yourself?

At Risk Groups

Infants, the elderly or anyone with an illness is going to be more affected by a lack of water so special consideration must be made for them.  Children who are vomiting or have diarrhea are at an immediate risk for dehydration. If you have children to consider, you need to plan for their survival as well as monitor their progress often.

The older you get, the less acute your sense of thirst is. Grandma might either genuinely not feel thirsty or could be sacrificing water to save some for others and this can’t be allowed. Mandatory water consumption will have to be enforced in certain situations. If you are thirsty, it’s too late as you are already showing signs of dehydration.

Pregnant or Breast-feeding mothers will need more water than the usual person because they are taking care of two. Mothers who are nursing will need about 13 cups of water daily as opposed to the normally recommended 8 cups for the average person.

If you live in hotter climates or in higher elevations, you will need more water also. Drier climates evaporate the moisture from your skin so you won’t feel as sweaty, but you are losing water just the same. I’m sure we have all heard the saying “it’s a dry heat” and it is, but that doesn’t mean your body is losing water. I was in Arizona one time and it was excruciatingly warm, but I wasn’t sweating. Thankfully, there were water stations everywhere and the group was all cognizant to drink water as much as possible, but in a disaster scenario, the desert doesn’t have much water. Something to consider.

Recipe for Saline Solution

If you are suffering from dehydration and there isn’t a doctor to run to or the pharmacy that you would pop into isn’t open so that you can get a resupply of Pedialyte, you can make your own hydration solution. Most normal dehydration is remedied by plain water administered until the body is properly hydrated. In the case of diarrhea or illness, hydration solutions may be needed and it’s easy to make this yourself if you have the simple ingredients below:

  • ½ teaspoon of salt
  • ½ teaspoon of baking soda
  • 3 tablespoons of sugar
  • One quart of water

Mix all of the ingredients in a container, shake well and drink up. Yum!

Storage Options

One of the more common questions is what is the best way to store water for Emergencies. As in everything, each person’s scenario is different. If you live in an apartment on the 3rd floor, your space and potentially weight considerations are going to limit what you can store. What if you are in a dorm room or worse, away from home and Zombies attack?

Let’s take the most basic scenario of you are at home, or can in a reasonable amount of time get back to your home. Wherever this is, you can comfortably store 5 days worth of water for yourself at a minimum. (5 gallons) FEMA even recommends you have enough for 72 hours. If you have 3 other people in your family, we need to store 15 additional gallons for each of you to have one gallon per day. What about pets? OK, you are already up to 20 gallons not counting fido and that doesn’t take up much space, but again, you only have one week of water. What if the disaster lasts a month? What if there is a biological outbreak and everyone is ordered by the authorities to stay in your house? What if you are under siege? Now we are talking about needing 80-100 gallons and this starts to take up space not to mention refilling this when you are out.  If you have a basement or a large unused storage room or garage, two 55 gallon drums are fairly easy to park well out of the way but a plan for refilling your supply is wise.

Apartment dwellers have additional problems but you may already have a great storage space built-in and that is your bathtub. As soon as you know you will need it, and hopefully not too late, fill your bathtub up with water. Optionally, you could purchase a water BOB which can hold up to 100 gallons and eliminates having to screen your water for hair or tub grime. Gross. Going further down the scale, you can get water out of the backs of toilets, water beds and water heaters in a pinch. As with everything else, you should make sure the water is safe to drink first. Toilets that have had chemical biscuits thrown in there might not be a good choice for drinking.

Homeowners can also store water in rain barrels that you collect off the roof. In almost every case this water will need to be disinfected, but it is a storage option that could give you at least 50 gallons of water per rain barrel and not take up any space indoors.

How to Disinfect Water

When we are discussing disinfecting water we are primarily concerned with killing any germs or bacteria that can make you sick or worse, kill you. There are a few methods available using Iodine, but that would be rare to come by in a Survival situation I think so I will cover the basics

Chlorine Bleach is probably the most common household item that you will have that can be used to disinfect your drinking water but it is a little tricky. Chlorine is affected by the temperature of the water you are treating. Always try to filter any water that may be cloudy with contaminants such as lake water first. You can use paint filters or a bandana if necessary. If the water is room temperature (meaning not cold or hot) you would add two to four drops of chlorine bleach per quart. Shake well and let the container sit for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, smell the water. It should smell like chlorine and this is
BerkeyFilternormal. If it doesn’t smell like chlorine add another drop or two and let it sit for 30 additional minutes. By drops we are talking about an eye-dropper size drop, not a dollop.

Filters are an easier method in my opinion but you don’t always have that luxury. I use a Berkey Light water filterand it couldn’t be easier. If we have a situation where I need to disinfect my water, I would simply pour the water in the top and the Berkey does the rest.Camping filters are also really good at filtering and disinfecting, but you run the risk of breaking these if you are constantly pumping water for a large group. They are great if you are mobile though and living off the land and need a lightweight portable solution.

Boiling is probably the oldest method of disinfecting water but it works! All you need is a container (preferably not plastic) and heat. Bring your water to a boil and let the water boil for a couple of minutes and that’s it. The boiling will kill any bacteria and you can drink the water. Let it cool off first…

Distillation is another option but requires more equipment than the average person will be able to acquire much less put together in an emergency situation. Another option is the SODIS method which uses UV light (sunlight) to treat water stored in clear containers. There is a lot of information about this method online and here.

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One, if not the most important aspect of Emergency Preparedness to get right is developing a plan for how you will obtain water. You simply can’t live without it. You

We all get discouraged from time to time especially when events or results we expect are right around the corner, do not happen. This makes perfect sense with a diet when for example you reach a plateau and all the rice cakes and sacrificing desserts in the world won’t take off a single additional ounce. Another example could be a skill we try to master like golf. Sometimes, no matter how much effort we put into practicing, money we blow on the latest hi tech clubs, how much sweat blood and cursing we expend on that stupid ball, nothing seems to make your score any lower. At a point, you may start to worry if this just isn’t meant to be. That you were born to be a little chunkier, that golf is a lot harder than it looks and you will never be anything remotely close to the next Tiger Woods.

Losing your motivation or interest in something can be very discouraging. What used to occupy your waking hours with such intensity can vanish quietly without as much as a second thought. For some people, prepping is like that. In the beginning, there is a sense of urgency and we scoured the internet for tips on how to grow the best garden, how to store food in plastic buckets. We research the best firearms for self-defense and start making our plan on how to be better prepared for any emergencies with the end goal of living completely off the grid on 50 acres in Idaho.  With our Bug Out Bag checklists we head to the camping section at Walmart or online to get the best survival gear and then over time notice that your expensive lifesaving gear that you had, has been sitting alone and quiet in the corner of the closet for a year.

What are you prepping for?

I have said this before on Final Prepper but I think it bears repeating and that is Prepping is not something you can ever master. This isn’t a skill that you get a certificate of completion for. There are no expert preppers out there regardless of what any blogger tells you. Prepping is a daily process of taking steps and making decisions that will improve your chances of surviving anything that life can throw at you. Prepping is a lifestyle, not a destination and if you are doing this right, you will always have something you can learn and something else to do.

Most people start out with a single point that drives them to prepare. Either it is the news reports that we hear, or dire warnings from a thousand websites, radio and internet hosts or the ads blaring from websites (mine included) about the “one weird trick” you need to have or the next “big thing” to worry about. For me, it was less specific than something like mutant zombie bikers from Mars, but I had several things that prompted my own personal journey into prepping. I quickly found out that regardless of what it is you think can happen or is likely to happen to you that would turn your world upside down; the survival requirements for everyone do not change.

In most instances. It doesn’t matter what the emergency is that you are faced with. In most survival situations, you are still going to need clean water to drink or you will die. You are going to need food or you will starve and you will need shelter and security or someone could kill you. You always run the risk of being injured or becoming ill, so a way to treat injuries or illness is also important. It doesn’t matter if this disaster you are faced with is an earthquake, an economic collapse, war, disease outbreak, revolution, depression, plague or a polar shift, global warming or alien invasion.

Preppers seem to easily become disenchanted with the whole idea of prepping if their big fear doesn’t materialize quickly. Preppers who are looking for either a government tyranny or an economic collapse are probably the worst at this; second only to people who believe whatever the latest disaster of the year is (y2K, Hale-bop comet, 2012 Mayan calendar). If you don’t see your envisioned future that you are prepping for materialize, or worse the day comes and goes and nothing happens, a lot of people feel foolish and think their prepping efforts were all a giant waste of time.

Prepping should be focused less on any event and more on situations. What if I have to leave my home and can never go back (for any reason)? What if I am unable to pay for my home anymore (maybe due to a job loss)? What if I am trapped in my home with no food (because of a winter storm)?

Does this mean you aren’t a real prepper?

It is more exciting I guess for the lack of a better word to crystallize your attention on one boogeyman or threat. It may even be easier to prepare when you have the face of what you are worried about so clearly in front of your mind, but it is a trap. If you focus your attention on one enemy, spend your energy and thought on one outcome, what will you do if something you didn’t expect happens? If you have worked yourself up for a complete and total economic collapse, but that never materializes; are you prepared to live life however you need to regardless of the economy?

Maybe that was a bad example, but I think the point should be that we have to prepare to survive. We shouldn’t be preparing for an economic collapse. We should be gaining skills to become more self-sufficient, not spending all of our time building a warehouse full of freeze dried foods. Now, I am not saying we shouldn’t take the bad realities of a possibility like an economic collapse into consideration. I am not saying that we shouldn’t store up food, but as much as possible we should be focused on what our family or we need to survive regardless of what happens. If we do have an economic collapse, you are going to need to eat and pay the bills aren’t you? If we have a global pandemic, you are still going to need to keep yourself healthy, just like you would if there was a hurricane or a flood, or an earthquake.

When you ask yourself why you are prepping or I guess when you start to question if anything you are doing is worth it. When you start to feel foolish staring at your stocked pantry and your hundreds of gallons of water, fuel, first aid supplies and survival gear stop and think. Think about how what you have done could help you and others in a thousand different ways. Think about how you will have options if the cold hand of fate comes knocking at your life one day way in the future. Don’t worry if it never does because that right there is the best outcome we could all hope for.

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We all get discouraged from time to time especially when events or results we expect are right around the corner, do not happen. This makes perfect sense with a diet