Author: phil801

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Notes from Peter Schiff Speaking in Utah

Last night, Peter Schiff spoke to an audience of about 250 people here in Utah.  The event was put on by the local Campaign For Liberty.  As always, he had some extremely interesting things to say and I was very glad I was able to go listen to him, it was a very informative night.

I took notes the entire time – he spoke for over 2 hours – and tried to get down the things I thought were important, educational and/or revelatory as quickly and as accurately as I could.  For this post, I’m going to basically paste in my notes and add some contextual commentary to some of them. Continue reading “Notes from Peter Schiff Speaking in Utah”

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Starting a Fire with Steel Wool

Continuing my Heat and Light Series, today we’re going to look at an alternative way to start a fire – with Steel Wool and Batteries.  Like I’ve said in previous posts in this series, this is probably something that every old Boy Scout and every long time Prepper already knows.  The point of this series is to get back to basics and cover things that new Preppers will need to get up to speed on – and to remind some of you about the skills and knowledge you have that you may have forgotten.  :) Continue reading “Starting a Fire with Steel Wool”

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Hypothermia – Signs and Symptoms and Treatment

More about Winter Vehicle Preparedness Info.

To With more than half the country being inundated by massive snow and ice storms and much of the rest of the country having below freezing temperatures, people are at a very high risk for Hypothermia.  Knowing what Hypothermia is and how to treat it not only prepares you to help yourself but most importantly, to help others.  I’ve consulted several resources to try to put together a very comprehensive overview of Hypothermia.  Those resources include the Mayo Clinic, my EMT Training Manuals, the CDC Guidelines for Hypothermia and the State of Alaska Cold Injuries Guidelines (Alaska knows more about Hypothermia than anybody, their standards are what we use here for Search and Rescue). Continue reading “Hypothermia – Signs and Symptoms and Treatment”

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How to Make an Emergency Stove from Common Materials

The next installment in our Heat and Light series is Making a simple Emergency Stove from Household Materials.  This stove is capable of boiling water in less than 10 minutes and is very easy to use and re-use.  The materials required to make it can commonly be found in the home and should be stored in your preps.  Required are: Paraffin Wax, cardboard and a couple tin cans. Continue reading “How to Make an Emergency Stove from Common Materials”

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Making Fire Starting Wafer Candles

The next project in my Heat and Light series is Making Fire Starting Wafers out of reclaimed materials mostly available at home.  These wafer candles don’t have the same burn time (but it’s plenty long enough to get a fire going) as the egg carton candles but they have a much smaller footprint.  This project will again be familiar to most Boy Scouts and long term Preppers and Outdoorsmen.  However, the purpose of this series is to get back to basics and review how to generate light and heat with common household projects. As has been mentioned in the comments on the other posts in this series, you can use old candles or other wax sources instead of the new bars of paraffin I use in the demonstration.

Continue reading “Making Fire Starting Wafer Candles”

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Making Fire Starting Candles

Continuing my series on Light and Heat, today I’m going to talk about making Fire Starting Candles.  There are a variety of ways to do this, today we’re going to cover using cardboard egg cartons and dryer lint or cotton balls.  This particular project will likely already be familiar to experienced Preppers and Boy Scouts.  This post is aimed at those new to prepping who have never been exposed to this kind of thing.

Being able to start a fire is absolutely critical in many potential situations.  It can literally mean the difference between life and death.  Knowing many ways to be able to start a fire is an essential survival skill, practicing and maintaining those skills is just as essential.  Continue reading “Making Fire Starting Candles”

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Making Tallow Candles

One of the things that frustrates me in Preparedness is that many of the texts and resources out there don’t adequately cover “Pioneer Skills”.  That is to say, they present material lists and instructions that include things that are only available via modern-day manufacturing methods.  Often times what I’m looking for is how do I make something out of nothing – nothing being the great abundance that nature provides us with!  This is very true when it comes to activities like candle, cheese and soap making.  I want to know how to do it in a true collapse or long term survival scenario. Continue reading “Making Tallow Candles”

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Discount on Utah Concealed Carry Permits

If you’ve been waiting/wanting to get your Utah Concealed Carry License, here’s a great opportunity for you!

During my hiatus from blogging regularly (which has come to an end by the way, expect to see a lot more from me) I spent a lot of time in training.  I learned lots of new skills and got certified in several things.  One of those was becoming certified to teach the Utah Concealed Carry License course.  Continue reading “Discount on Utah Concealed Carry Permits”

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Online Urban Survival Training

This post is an advertisement for a new business that I am building.   If you’re interested in Survival Training, especially Urban Survival, please read through this and see if you’re interested.  The goal of my new company is to work with Survival Schools and Survival Experts to provide new ways for top-notch expert training to get to those of us who can’t quite afford the premium prices.  I welcome any feedback on this idea/business plan as well.

As a bonus to our Prepper Network readers and friends, use the code “prepper” to get 10% off the class!

_______________________________

18 FEB 2010
INFORMATION MEMORANDUM
FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION – TIME SENSITIVE
SPECIAL NOTICE FROM THE SURVIVAL TRAINING CENTER (WWW.SURVIVALTRAININGCENTER.COM)
DISTRIBUTION LIMITED TO STUDS, SPECIALISTS AND A SELECT FEW INSANE DUDES
CLASS DATES: 25 FEB 2010 – 27 FEB 2010

Continue reading “Online Urban Survival Training”

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Preparedness Christmas: 25% off on Sanitation Preps

TioletBag 500x500

Coupon Code: prepxmas

How are your Sanitation Preps?  Do you have a bucket toilet lid sitting around?  Or one of those portable toilets?  That’s what I had until recently.  A few weeks ago I learned about a set of sanitation products that, when used together, provide preppers with a toilet solution that equals no mess, low smell and biodegrades all your waste for you!  Through a set of fortuitous events, I was in a position to arrange a group buy of 25% off all of their products and offer it to all preppers for Christmas.

Their system is called the GottaGo Toilet system.  It’s basically a cardboard disposable (after about 100 uses) emergency toilet that uses biodegradable bags and a microbial sand.  Once you’ve filled up a bag you can dig a hole and bury the bag – yes, bury it – within 30 – 90 days it will be completely broken down.  You can also burn your toilet once you’re done with it.  Basically you can go on a family campout and have everyone use this toilet system and not have to carry any of it home to dispose of it. Continue reading “Preparedness Christmas: 25% off on Sanitation Preps”

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Financial Preparedness – MUST be built in GOOD times!

CashGold-main_FullEveryone knows times are not good and although we’re told they’re getting better – they clearly seem to be getting worse.  I’ve recently had an experience that has severely highlighted financial preparedness for me, I’d like to share the lessons I’ve learned in the hope that others can avoid my current situation – allow me to give you some background:

The company I’ve been working for was financially stable – strong even – several months ago.  We weren’t worried about the economic crunch and were certain we’d move through it.  My wife and I had a financial reserve that we were actively growing, but not aggressively.  Certainly not as aggressively as we could have been.  In fact, we had become fairly complacent in adding to it.  While our long term food storage was fully stocked, we live off our 3 month supply and rotate through it – replenishing monthly or so.

Continue reading “Financial Preparedness – MUST be built in GOOD times!”

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Survival Movie Review: 2012

2012 Roland Emmerich PosterLast night a few prepper friends and I went to the midnight opening show of the new survival/TEOTWAWKI movie 2012. I wasn’t sure what to expect as I had already heard that they had blown it or that it was really bad. But I figured even a bad movie can be enjoyed (through mocking) if you’ve got a group of friends with you!

2012 really has very little to do with survival. You won’t walk out of it with ideas or inspiration of things to add to your preps. In fact, the scenario that the movie presents is pretty much total un-survivable destruction regardless of who or where you are. It is however a bit about surviving based on your wits with 20 gallons of luck!

Continue reading “Survival Movie Review: 2012”