Prepping 101

I would never suggest anyone bring a sword to a gunfight, but I think that a good quality sword should have it’s place in your preparations for the breakdown of our civil world.

The most shameful way to make money is by taking advantage of someone who doesn’t know any better. In the prepper and survival world, that equals almost everyone in the market. Because no matter much you would normally research a purchase before making it, almost all of us rush out and buy “survival food” before just about anything else. I did that myself, and even sent some to friends and relatives. But after a little research, I figured out that survival food is a scam.

I think there is a huge difference between long term “bug-in” survival preparations, and short term “bug-out” survival preparations. Depending on your situation, bug-out might be your only option. As I explained in my bugout pack article, most of what you carry should be food. And though cooking may seem like a luxury for a survival situation, you’ll find that most inexpensive and calorie dense foods need to be cooked. You don’t want to carry a lot of water, when you can pick up water and cook dry food on the road. That means you should also carry a stove, and that stove needs to be light, efficient with fuel, and it should be able to cook your food in a reasonable amount of time. In my travels for this column I have covered a number of great cooking options, but this week I’d like to share my newest discovery that all of those qualities considered, I think might be the best for urban bug-out.

Sometimes for this column, I have to admit that I put things off that give me trouble. Such is the case for the Alladin Lamp. No, it’s not about the genie silly. If you have never looked into off grid living, probably you have never encountered what is considered the most elegant of kerosene lamps, but they are pretty nifty. You would think the Alladin is a pressure lamp, running on propane, but it is not. That white light comes from regular old kerosene, and it will likewise run just about any lamp oil, and even diesel fuel, with no appreciable loss, or that much of a smell in my experience.

Some survival topics seem to be a little more “out there” than others, and one of those is definitely canning food in steel cans, otherwise known as tin cans.

I’ve recently learned something new that I think I should share with you. It is survival computing. In general I am not a big fan of power inverters, and I think you should run as much off of 12 volts as possible, but there are a lot of benefits to having a laptop available, and phones and tablets are priceless if you have kids. I’m also going to cover a $25 low voltage/low amperage computer solution that is currently being used to build perimeter security systems, remote listening posts, and even balloon lifted radio relay antennas. This is pretty cool stuff.

The most difficult part of writing this column has been to condense down everything I have learned into small, bite sized chunks, but when it comes to radiation, I think I have failed. Everyone wants to talk about nuclear bombs and EMP strikes, but getting someone to pay attention to what happens next is nearly impossible. Radiation, whether it be fallout from those initial nuclear strikes that may or may not happen, or from the nuclear plants that will melt down shortly after **whatever** burns down our current reality, will be a part of survival. If you are unprepared for it, you are going to die. I don’t see how I can make it more simple.

This week I’m returning to the subject of beekeeping, because the last one didn’t go as I had planned. If you watched the videos for that article, it turned out that one of my hives had gotten extremely aggressive, and I’m sure it turned a lot of people off to beekeeping. In this video I am rewinding to the beginning, where most people start, by “installing” package bees into a brood box. As you can see, I am bare armed in the video, and up until I discovered that one of my hives had become aggressive, I had worked my bees exclusively with bare arms. And that includes removing frames and extracting honey.

Some of you long time readers here may remember that I found a killer deal on a copy of a 100 round Beta C-Mag at the height of the Sandy Hook gun boom in 2013. It was at the Sportsman’s Guide. Other sporting goods retailers were price gouging and SG was selling that mag for what was at the time less than suggested retail price. I thought it was pretty cool. These days that mag is even $50 cheaper, but that isn’t the point of this article. I’m on the SG mailing list now, and just sitting around today I opened their current flyer and found a few prepping products that I have actually reviewed, at really low prices, and a couple I haven’t, but that I know are also really great deals. I’m going to be light on this column for a few weeks because my kids are out of school for Passover, so I figured I would just share this information, and give you my coupon code. ;)