Check the Self Reliance in the Valley website for the next Expo data.
What are we prepping for? Let your intuition be your guide. Some worst case scenarios:
- Financial collapse: no banking, no credit cards, no government assistance programs. Changes could be slow or sudden.
- Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) weapon or Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) from our sun: If the pulse is strong, electronic devices, including automobile computers, could be permanently damaged. The electric grid could be down for years.
- Civil unrest, civil war, War III (economic war is currently under way).
- False flag events.
- Grocery stores closed, many people without food.
- Weather events.
- Earthquakes.
- Fracking and ground water contamination. Wherever there is a pipeline, fracking for corporate profit may be only one well paid politician away.
- Quarantines, Ebola, marshal law. How long will your current provisions last?
- Wood may be the only plentiful fuel available for a while.
- Schedule, duration and severity of future event is unknown.
Help:
- What resources are you willing to share? Make a list.
- What resources will you require? Make a list.
- Who will help you with your needs? Do you expect government to provide for your needs?
- Why is community so valuable?
Priorities: Water, shelter and food. Which is #1?
Water (If you don’t have clean water, in 3 days many will need nothing else)
- 3 days without clean water and only the athletic and healthy will be able to function, although function poorly.
- If you have access to a clean spring or well, you are very fortunate.
- How far must you travel to a water source?
- How much can you carry? Do you have suitable containers available?
- Water access: manual pump or inexpensive well bucket? (video) (video)
- Filters: Sawyer Point One (rated for 1 million gallons)(video), Big Berkey (video), Berkey Sport (video), Life Straw (video), etc. (Filters are an absolute necessity)
Economics
- Barter: What has value during a collapse? Food? Precious metals? Barter items?
- If grocery stores are closed long term, who would trade a can of beans for a gold coin?
- Real Economic News – Jim Sinclair, Greg Hunter, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
- Debt leads to slavery, by design.
- Staying put or leaving? If leaving, better to be 6 hours early than 6 seconds too late.
- Cities are a trap.
- Building new, away from the cities? Off grid cabin? Walk-in basement with South facing glass?
- Camping trailer? Tiny house on wheels? Compare the investment.
- Small is good. No mortgage. Energy efficient.
- Do you have a bug out plan? Bug out bag (BOB) (videos)? Get home bag (GHB) (videos)
- If you are bugging out, where are your bug out supplies? Already positioned at your destination or traveling with you?
- Will you show up somewhere, asking for refuge without bringing your own food and other needed resources?
Communities:
- Benefits – security in numbers, shared skill set, support.
- Are you willing to defend your family and others who depend on your support?
- Challenges – group decisions, how to handle dysfunctional behavior?
- Learn how to support each other. Maybe the reason why we are here.
- Wood stove (Absolute necessity)
- Stationary propane wall without electric blower. Choose direct vent, outside vent, inside vent.
- Mr. Heater Big Buddy 18,000 BTU (Unlike electricity, propane can be inexpensively stored.).
- Oil filled electric radiator (if electricity is available).
Food Production
- Small scale gardens: Square Foot Gardening (video), Earth Boxes (video), 5 gallon buckets (video) (video) (video), sprouting, (video) (video)
- Gardening learning curve is very long. Experienced help and a soil test are absolute necessities.
- Chickens
- Start composting now. Stock up on growing medium while you can.
- Stock up on non-hybrid seeds. Start saving seeds, some for you and some to share.
- Gardening tools – A garden trowel is the only tool required for working a Square Foot Garden, Earthbox or Global Bucket. No fossil fuel required.
Stocking Up Food – Where to go shopping
- Local grocery store or favorite health food store. Purchase cans, dehydrated items. Fresh and frozen vegetables can be dehydrated at home.
- East Coast Preppers (10 miles from Charlottesville VA, Be Prepared (Emergency Essentials), Honeyville (Freeze dried food, dehydrated food and more.)
- Farmer’s Markets for fresh produce for dehydration or canning.
- Cosco
- Sam’s Club
- Don’t forget the dog
Preserving Food
- Refrigeration: propane, solar, electricity.
- Food dehydration at home: Nesco Snackmaster, Excalibur 9 Tray (All require electricity)
- What foods can be dehydrated? All vegetables except lettuce, all fruit, lean meat.
- Frozen foods do not require blanching or other preparation
- No higher than 125 degrees F for vegetables to avoid “case hardening”
- 12 hours usually enough time
- It is impossible to over dry dehydrated foods
- Dehydrating meat requires a significantly higher temperature
- Solar food dehydrators (videos)
- Pressure canning and hot water canning are alternatives.
Commercial Packaging
- Super Pails (Mylar bags (oxygen removed) inside 5 or 6 gallon buckets) are better purchased locally to save freight charges .
- #10 cans of ready to eat meals, veggies, fruits and more.
- Complete meals in small Mylar bags for 1 or 2 people. Just add boiling water and wait 10 minutes.
Home Packaging and repackaging larger containers once opened – container options. Food must be vacuum packed.
- Mason jars (inexpensive, heavy, subject to breakage)
- P.E.T.E. Jars (more expensive than Mason jars; no breakage; light weight).
- Mylar bags. (Vacuum packed plastic bags are somewhat porous and not a good option for long term storage.)
- Electricity required if using a Foodsaver vacuum sealer.
Vacuum packing – repacking opened containers. The enemies of food storage are moisture, oxygen, heat and sunlight.
- Pump-N-Seal (video)
- Ziplock pump
- Oxygen absorbers
- homemade check valves by Judy of the Woods
- Foodsaver (while electricity is available). CAUTION – Plastic bags are not for long term storage. Workaround: Double bag. Put a Mylar bag inside a Foodsaver bag. Use the Foodsaver to vacuum pack and seal the larger Foodsaver bag. Then heat seal the Mylar bag inside the Foodsaver bag.
- Jar sealers, wide mouth and regular (video) (video)
Cooking
- Outdoor fuels: wood, charcoal, solar. IMPORTANT – In a long term grid down situation, wood may be the only fuel available. All other fuels need to be stocked up before the SHTF.
- Indoor fuels: propane, alcohol, butane, Sterno. The gas line anti-freeze Heet in the yellow container is one of many sources of alcohol. (video)
- Starting a fire without matches or a lighter.
- Portable stoves
- Solar ovens (video)
- Saving energy, cooking in a Thermos or hot box
- Instructional videos for dehydrated foods: Tammy (Dehydrate2Store.com), Chef Tess
- Avoid food fatigue by using a variety of seasoning. Make the same food taste different.
Cookbooks for preppers. Check out the reviews on Amazon.com.
- Natural Meals In Minutes
- Country Beans (How to Cook Beans in 3 Minutes)
- The Prepper’s Cookbook
- Quick Wholesome Foods (video included)
- The Meals In A Jar Handbook: Gourmet Food Storage Made Easy by Stephanie Peterson (Chef Tess).
- The Ultimate Dehydrator Cook Box by Tammy Gangloff
Cook stove fuel options
- Outdoor fuels: wood, charcoal. IMPORTANT – In a long term grid down situation, wood may be the only fuel available. All other fuels need to be stocked up before the SHTF.
- Solar (Only on CLEAR days)
- Indoor fuels: propane, alcohol, butane, Sterno. IMPORTANT – Must be stocked before the SHTF.
Cooking accessories
- Coleman oven
- Dutch oven (video) Can be used on a campfire or on a Volcano stove fired by charcoal, propane or wood.
- Charcoal starter (video)
- Magnesium fire starters: Blast Match, Mora knife with fire steel
- Cotton balls and petroleum jelly (video)
Helping neighbors and travelers with inexpensive care packages. Just add boiling water, stir and wait.
- Rolled oats (oatmeal), raisins, dehydrated apples, dehydrated milk, all in one package.
- Beans and rice. Precooked beans are faster.
- Dehydrated soups.
Composting (or Sawdust) toilet (only needed if you have both water and food)
- If you are using a septic system, how far are you willing to haul water to flush?
- Sawdust Toilet and compost bins
- Sunmar Non Electric (NE) composting toilet. Nice but expensive.
- Use sawdust or peat moss to cover deposits. Why? It will not stink.
Prepping on a tiny budget
- Hand tools for a garden.
- Seeds (not hybrid)
- Pick up an extra item at each trip to the grocery store: canned soup, dehydrated soup, dehydrated items, oatmeal, rice, beans, canned food, etc.
- Water filter
- Advance planning very important before communications get interrupted. Make sure all family members know the meet up plan in the event of a sudden emergency while the adults are at work and the children are in school. Have a plan and a contingency plan.
- If cell phone towers remain operational, have a way to charge your phone if the electric grid goes down.
- Cell phones will be the first communication devices to fail.
- If cell phone towers remain operational, have an alternate way to charge your phone if the electric grid goes down.
- Governments have turned off cell phones towers in the past.
- EMP, charging, privacy issues, intentionally turned off
- Amateur radio, FRS, CB – last to fail. Solar charger is needed. Get an Amateur Radio Technician license.
- If you must watch TV or read mainstream news, recognize:
- The news is something someone else wants you to believe.
- The news is frequently a scripted and edited distraction, not the unvarnished truth.
- Did the government mandate digital TV because they wanted you to have a better picture? Is there another reason?
Solar Energy for the home
- Propane appliances: refrigerator, cook stove, space heating, clothes dryer
- Lifestye changes and lessons learned while living in my first solar powered home.
- Lessons from Cuba Lessons learned from Cuba’s peak oil experience.
- Generator backup: gasoline or propane?
Preserving assets
- Nothing is safe while hidden in the home. Location diversity can be very important.
- Mylar bury bag for non-food items. Inside dimensions approximately 63″ x 11″, $14 at East Coast Food Storage.
- Fiat money, durable goods, food, precious metals.
- Solar powered patio lights. Bring inside at dark. Recharge outside during the day. Inexpensive solar powered lighting.
- Olive oil lamp kit. Spill safe. (video)
Health
- Stock up on soap, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, Clorox. During grid down, minor emergencies can rapidly become major emergencies.
- Research Sodium Chlorite (MMS) (video) (video)
- First aid kits and training
- Alternative Health Care
- Composting toilet
- When there is no toilet paper
- Clothes washing – plunger and bucket
- Where There is No Doctor
- Where There is No Dentist
Transportation
- Where are you planning to go during a grid down situation? Traveling could be very dangerous.
- Do you have a bicycle for local travel?
- Be part of a community (neighbors, family or tribe).
- Bear spray (more capacity) vs pepper spray (less capacity), both a dispersed fog, very limited range.
- Wasp and hornet killer, exits in a narrow stream, long range.
- Non lethal methods
- If you choose to own a firearm, get quality training and practice. Know your local laws.
Solutions
- Knowledge
- Youtube, internet searches. Incredibly valuable resources.
- Research – How does a poor Mexican live? What skill sets do they have that we don’t.
- Discussions with friends. Brainstorm.
- Contact Bob Snow for free group tours of East Coast Food Storage. Smallest tour is 6 people. Best tour is 10 to 12 – max 17
- East Coast Food Storage is planning free evening classes. Contact Bob Snow for the topics and schedule.
- Security
- Do not share information with people who are not in your trusted local community.
- Items hidden inside your home are not safe from thieves.
- Do not hide everything in one place.
- How far are you willing to go to protect your children, family, close friends or yourself? Decide now.
- Community
- Prepare to help your neighbors and your family.
- Skill diversity is important. No one has all the skills and knowledge.
- Mental preparedness
- Biggest stumbling blocks are denial and fear.
- Follow *your* intuition.
- Relax. Stay calm. Take action.