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We will be taking a break from the normal schedule here at GunsAmerica until the week before SHOT Show in January, so I thought it would be nice to share with you some of the subjects and products that I am working on for the coming year. If you haven’t read this column all along [...]

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
-Mark Twain

Hand Crank Sewing Machines on Ebay Hand Crank for Belt Drive Machines $13.95 Hand Crank and Spoked Wheel $24.95 This week I would like to introduce an incredible invention to a few of you called the hand crank sewing machine. Sure, it was invented over 100 years ago, but they are no less amazing today. [...]

Are you a hero? I’m just asking because as much as I hate it, I probably am. It is so stupid from a survival perspective to rush in to the face of a disaster to help people, but the reality is, most of us reading this column are going to do it. So if you believe that there will be an event of some sort to distract the sheep away from who caused this mess, it might help to buy some trauma bandages and learn how to clean wounds now. There is no worse feeling than wanting to help but not being able to do so because you lack the proper tools. It also sucks for the people who would be trying to help of course. You can pull off your shirt, rip it, tie it as a tourniquet, then use a stick to tighten it. But after a couple of those, helping people naked is just asking for trouble. You could use their shirt duh, but how hard is it to get a shirt off of someone screaming in pain? Wouldn’t it be better to get a few tourniquets in advance?

How important are survival communications? From a prepping budget perspective, I’ve asked that question a lot. And unfortunately, as with many subjects I’ve covered, there is a ton of misinformation out there about the subject. When you buy a “survival radio,” like the ones with the little solar panel and hand crank, you are buying a multi-band receiver, and you’ll pay more depending on how many bands you want. A basic radio, some even under $20, will be AM/FM, and most of them also have the NOAA weather channel, which is 162.4 mhz. Pay a little more and you may get some of the Ham radio bands, but you will seldom hear any traffic on those bands, because the included whip antenna is not made for those frequencies. Police, fire, airplane, and a hots of other frequencies that would be nice to monitor in a survival situation are not in those radios. Getting all of those frequencies, until now, has been very expensive. This article is about a newer type of radio called “Software Defined Radio,” or SDR-RTL, and it changes everything.

I forget which zombie movie it is, maybe World War Z? One of the characters says something to the effect that if you stay put in one place, you die. That may be true of real zombies, but that will not be true of the zombies who surround us and who aren’t preparing for the collapse. For the most part, people are decent. And though they may be confused by the fog that their anti-depressants and reality TV put them in, when they finally figure out that one day late was too late, they are going to try to run to where they think they can be saved. That may be a rumor of where a FEMA truck is supposed to show up with food and water. That may be a distant relative that must be able to help them. Ultimately what it means is that the streets will be full of people seeking to get out, or just to find resources, and the street is where you don’t want to be for a long time. But survival is boring, and the food is bland. These are some tips that I thought of that make a lot of sense if you are compiling a bare bones prepper/survival list. They aren’t too expensive and they will add a certain “quality” to life that is 100% better than just surviving.

Food is the one thing you don’t have to tell anyone to prep for when it comes to long term survival. Everyone knows you have to eat. But the misconceptions come when you compare the differences between “homesteading” and “prepping.” A traditional healthy American home keeps a good-sized pantry of food historically, though this practice has fallen away in recent times of plenty. A homestead-style pantry contains either home or store-canned food, along with some basic grains and rice and flour. Homesteading isn’t prepping for the breakdown of society. Neither is planning for one month of Mylar packet survival meals, or even one year of meals. As I said in the first installment of this series, you really have to decide to be one of the crazies, then do the best you can.