Thread: BASIC LIST / SUGGESTED ITEMS FOR LONG TERM SURVIVAL

Flash Signal Mirror http://www.amazon.com/Rescue-Signal-Adv ... B000WXX0I4

AfroPrepper's March Food Preps

Friday, April 1, 2011

AfroPrepper's March Food Preps. Good video on some good deals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYV-FErE ... r_embedded



http://www.americanpreppersnetwork.com/

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Creating a Home Evacuation Plan - Part 2

We've talked about the importance of creating a physical map of your home and making sure that each member of your family understands how your plan will work.

The next step in creating an effective home evacuation plan is to practice your plan on a regular basis. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, "children as young as three years old can follow a fire escape plan they have practiced often. Yet, many families don't have detailed escape plans, and those that do usually don't practice them."

Some important steps to include while practicing your home evacuation plan are:

* Involve everyone. It is important for everyone in the family to learn how to escape. You may even want to teach your children how to escape out of windows in case the door is unavailable to exit. A good fire escape ladder is essential if your exit is through a second story window. http://beprepared.com/product.asp?pn=ML ... sid=ppblog


Fire Escape Ladder

* Consider arranging the furniture in each room to make it easier to escape. A dresser or nightstand placed under a window could make escaping out of a basement much easier.

* Place your 72-hour kits strategically near an exit so they are easy to grab in a hurry. When you practice, assign certain family members to be in charge of grabbing emergency kits. http://beprepared.com/category.asp_Q_c_E_121&sid=ppblog


3-Day Emergency Kit

* Practice turning off utilities (gas valves, water, etc.). A gas wrench is a useful tool to make sure you have on hand. http://beprepared.com/product.asp_Q_pn_ ... sid=ppblog Caution: Don't really turn off the gas when practicing. If you do, the gas company will have to come out and turn it on again.



Practice other life-saving habits such as always leaving a pair of shoes, gloves and a flashlight or lightstick at each person's bedside.


Leather Gloves

* Practice with time in mind. Try running through your disaster plan at least 4 times each year and adjust your plan according to the changing ages of family members.

In part three, we will be talking about a few more tips to keep in mind as you are creating your home evacuation plan.

Click here for part one of the Creating a Home Evacuation Plan series. http://preparednesspantry.blogspot.com/ ... art-1.html

http://preparednesspantry.blogspot.com/ ... -2_31.html

Can I Use Bleach To Purify My Water?

At The Ready Store, we often get this question. Many believe that household bleach is good for purifying water. Here is the best answer we can provide.

Household bleach is not manufactured with human consumption in mind. The chemicals are much higher than what would be considered safe for human consumption. Having said that, if you dont have anything else, using bleach may be better than nothing.

Its not recommended to use straight Bleach to purify your stored water. It would be much better to purchase a water treatment that won’t harm you when consuming. The water treatment we carry would purify the stored water up to 5 years so you dont need to worry about changing it out or over contaminating the water with bleach.

Whenever you use a product in a different way than it was intended you put yourself at risk. We dont recommend using household bleach to purify your water. Its important that you try to keep your family as safe as possible. Using household bleach would be a last resort effort. But that is contrary to the idea of being prepared! If you are preparing for the worst, you might as well get the real thing and not use dangerous alternatives.

http://www.thereadystore.com/uncategori ... ify-water/

http://www.bugoutsurvival.com/

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Alternate Transportation
4 comments

Today's post over on Notes from the bunker, Biking Season Approaches, reminded me that I've been meaning to say something about bicycles here for awhile. This article makes some good points about the utility of bicycles in a post-SHTF scenario, and I covered them briefly in Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It's Too Late. http://www.amazon.com/Bug-Out-Complete- ... ive=392969 My current book project, Bug Out Vehicles and Shelters: Build and Outfit Your Life-Saving Escape, http://www.amazon.com/Bug-Out-Vehicles- ... ive=392969 will have an entire chapter devoted to using bicycles as bug-out vehicles, including how to set them up for the purpose and how to get the engine (your body) fit for the task.

Whether you ever need to actually use a bicycle to bug-out or not, riding one is a good idea for many reasons, $4.00 per gallon or higher gas being one, as that post points out. Another excellent reason is for the physical fitness, which you need no matter what your survival plans are. I read this just as I got in from a two and a half-hour ride today. I've been trying to put in at least three good rides per week to make up for all the time I'm having to spend at the keyboard working on these book projects. In my last post, I mentioned an overnight trip on my KLR 650 dual-sport motorcycle. Here is a photo taken just today of my other favorite two-wheeled transportation during a break in today's ride.



This one is a Schwinn Voyager that I purchased new in 1994, along with a full set of front and rear Cannondale panniers. This was one of the last quality Schwinn touring bikes sold here when they were still making them with high-quality lugged Chro-Moly steel frames and decent components. The Voyager was specifically designed for loaded touring, with relaxed geometry, a triple chain ring for a wide range of gearing, and brazed-on eyelets for front and rear racks and three water bottle cages. Despite its age, this bicycle has been utterly reliable for many thousands of miles and has the right blend of comfort and speed to make long, unloaded training rides enjoyable as well. Schwinn no longer makes a bike like this, but if I had to replace it today, viable touring options with similar build quality would be the Trek 520, Surly Long Haul Trucker, or perhaps the REI Novara Safari.

A touring bike like this can really eat up the miles day after day, as long as you are in decent shape to ride it. While many other types of bicycles, including mountain bikes can be set up for touring or for bug-out vehicles, I prefer the road touring designs as they make it easier to maintain a decent average speed, especially in hilly or mountainous terrain. Most touring bikes can be fitted with wider, semi-knobby tires for use on gravel or other rough surfaces. The extra-strong, but flexible Chro-Moly frame absorbs shocks from bumps well, and holds up to carrying heavy loads. I'll post another photo of this one with the luggage attached next time I load it up. It will easily carry as much or more as you could carry in the largest backpack, yet do so at a speed that allows one to travel 40 to 100 or more miles per day, depending on terrain, fitness, weather, etc.

For a good overview on some things to consider when choosing a bicycle, here's an article that covers the basics of the many different types, as well as some points on frame construction materials: Bicycle Recommendation Short List http://www.nordicgroup.us/bikerec/


http://www.bugoutsurvival.com/2011/03/a ... ation.html

http://thesurvivalmom.com/

Survivalist GOP Congressman: You Should Probably Avoid Cities

4.01.2011

Mother Jones: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/03/sur ... -all-costs

Mother Jones: "Maryland GOP Rep. Roscoe Bartlett is a child of the Great Depression, Nancy Pelosi's date to this year's State of the Union, and a member of the House Tea Party Caucus. As Alexander Carpenter points out, he's also something of a survivalist:

In a series of clips from a documentary called Urban Danger available on YouTube and 3AngelsTUBE, Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD)...shares his fear of impending threats to America and advocates that people move out of urban areas...

In the context of his surmising about the threat of living in urban areas, Bartlett states in the video that there are two strains of smallpox, one is the U.S. and one in the 'Soviet Union'.

You can watch the documentary online here. Urban Danger's official site takes pains to note that the film is not 'survivalist,' but rather a guide to 'finding practical solutions to problems we face today.'

Those problems, however, are dire: One speaker warns that American cities are about to experience something 'a lot worse than what happened in New Orleans,' suggesting that the situation could be Biblical in nature; the congressman, for his part, floats the possibility of of biological warfare, alleging that terrorists may have already obtained the aforementioned Soviet smallpox. 'A storm is coming, relentless in its fury,' the narrator explains. 'Are we prepared to fight it?'..."

Video: Urban Danger Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGE1omIa ... r_embedded



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBiTr...eature=related



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGJHw...eature=related



http://www.backwoodssurvivalblog.com/20 ... bably.html

Satellite Dish Solar Cooker Demonstration http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U220eTxH ... r_embedded

The Frugal Dad

9 Ways to Prepare for Food Inflation

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Jason (Frugal Dad)
53 comments

If you’ve been to the grocery store lately, you’ve no doubt discovered that the price of most foods has increased significantly. There’s plenty of blame to go around: increased commodity prices due to increased demand, increased oil prices, devaluation of our dollar, and on and on.
Whatever the reason, increased food prices are putting a major dent in our household budget. Since we can’t do much about the prices, we have to look for other ways to reduce (or at least keep even) our overall food expense.

Food is a unique budget category in that normally when you are struggling with less income and/or increased costs, the natural inclination is to turn to cheaper alternatives. Unfortunately, as many people are discovering, when it comes to food this means an unhealthy diet.
Think of the cheapest foods at your local grocer – they are likely cheap pastas and boxed processed foods (Ramen noodles, mac and cheese, packages of potato flakes sold as “instant mashed potatoes,” etc). While these foods will do in a pinch, they aren’t exactly healthy staples to build the basis of a clean diet.

Nine Ways to Reduce Your Grocery Budget

1. Plan to shop every two weeks. Make room in your pantry (and your budget) to shop for enough food to last two weeks. The more often you see the inside of a store, the more likely you will give into temptation and deviate from your list.
2. Buy in-season produce. The simple laws of supply and demand tell us that things that are plentiful should be a little cheaper. Of course, the opposite is true if a particular produce item is not plentiful in your area, because it has to be shipped in from another part of the country (or world), and those increased costs to transport are passed along to you, the consumer.
3. Eat less. This one seems obvious, but to someone like me raised on three squares (big squares) a day, the idea of skipping a meal or two seems foreign. However, here lately I’ve been trying to eat only when hungry, not when the clock says 8:00, 12:00 and 6:00.
4. Grow your own vegetables. The last couple years we’ve experimented with square foot gardening. This year, we plan to expand on the idea and grow a variety of vegetables in garden boxes in our backyard. We also planted fruit trees last fall that will hopefully yield fresh fruits in the years to come.
5. Compare unit costs, not product packaging and creative pricing. Remember bigger isn’t always cheaper, and neither are the 10/$10 deals. I recently stocked up on a few items included in a 10/$10 sale and the next week the store returned the item to their normal price…$0.88.
6. Consider swapping beans or eggs for meats when looking for a protein source. Like any good carnivore, I like to build a meal around a good meat. Unfortunately, this can get expensive. Here lately, we’ve been enjoying eating “breakfast” for dinner – with scrambled eggs as the main course. Beans also provide a nice source of protein and can augment a smaller amount of meat in dishes like tacos and chili to bulk up the recipe with out increasing the cost per meal.
7. Avoid the “junk food” aisle. Nothing good comes from this aisle. Soft drinks, chips, snack cakes, and cookies are simply empty calories. And they are expensive when you consider you can’t plan a meal around them. Your waistline won’t miss this aisle, either. Now, this is an area where I need to take my own advice!
8. Eat leftovers. One of the most effective ways to lower your cost per meal is to simply stretch your prepared foods across more meals. In fact, I have found that meals like spaghetti, soups, and meatloaf actually taste better the next night.
9. Freeze the extras. If you are short on freezer space, consider a second freezer to stock up on meats and vegetables when on sale, or to freeze leftovers of your favorite meals. My wife makes a huge batch of soup and freezes the portions we don’t eat the first two days for later consumption. Weeks later, on a particularly hectic day, we’ll toss the frozen soup in a crock pot to thoroughly reheat and enjoy an easy meal.
These tips probably make sense in any environment, but are particularly important in the face of rising food costs, high unemployment and a time of high economic uncertainty. I highly recommend taking the time now to streamline your food budget and use some of the savings to build a pantry of stockpiled food.

Best case scenario, your pantry will provide cheaper food than is currently available in the store. Worst case scenario, your pantry will provide food if there isn’t any in the store. It’s my hope that we never face the latter scenario, but I’d rather be prepared just in case.
How are you dealing with increased food costs?


This entry was posted in Food and tagged budget, Food, groceries, inflation by Jason (Frugal Dad). Bookmark the permalink.

http://frugaldad.com/2011/01/18/prep...ood-inflation/