Author: phil801

Posted on

Survival Food: How to Make Parched Corn

Dried corn ready to be parched
Dried corn ready to be parched

Corn – You can boil it, toast it, roast it, parch it, eat it raw, grill it, steam it, stew it, cream it, grind it, feed humans or animals with it.  You can eat it fresh, freeze it, can it,  dry it, drink it or burn it in your vehicle.  It’s a diverse food that can serve a prepper well if they know what to do with it.

Parched corn was eaten regularly by American Indians warriors and hunters as an extremely lightweight, high energy trail food long before European explorers showed up and was a typical food or treat for the pioneers as well.  It is the original “trail snack” and can also be ground up for stews or soups.

Continue reading “Survival Food: How to Make Parched Corn”

Posted on

Book Bomb – How to Survive the End of the Word as We Know it

A couple days ago we inadvertently advertised that it was Book Bomb day for Rawles new book How to survive the End of the Word as We Know it.  It is actually today .   Sorry about that – we got some wires crossed!

James Wesley Rawles, Author of the renowned survivalblog, as well as the novel Patriots (which we reviewed here before) has a new book coming out shortly.  It’s been available for pre-order for a little bit now, but everybody was requested to wait until today (9/25/09) to actually place pre-orders.  This makes a big difference to companies such as amazon, which use the purchase velocity in their rankings.

From JWR today:

Today is “Book Bomb” Day for my new book, “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times”. My goal for the Book Bomb is a surge of orders is that will drive the book’s Amazon sales rank into the top 50, overall. (When I last checked, it was at #160.) Many thanks for waiting to order until today!!

Here’s a link to order How to survive the End of the Word as We Know it from Amazon – order today and help show that Prepping is cool!

Posted on

A Liberal’s View of Preppers

gunsI’m writing this in response to a blog post by a liberal blogger that appears to live in Oregon and calls Barney Frank her hero!

She recently blogged that:

“Preppers Scare the Crap Out of Me”

In a post which is loaded with prejudice, falsehoods, slander and other good stuff.   I’m writing this response for a couple reasons.  First, to try to explore the thoughts and mindset of those who are dead-set against being prepared for hard times.  Second, to look at some of the falsehoods presented in her post.  Third, to rant a bit about crazy people who believe that everything is peachy in the world.

Continue reading “A Liberal’s View of Preppers”

Posted on

Bug Out Vehicle Project

RVOutsideLeft sm

The Bug Out Vehicle (BOV) is an essential part of every preppers inventory.  It is the means by which, should we find ourselves in a SHTF scenario, you will get you and your family to safety.  It should be able to not only provide reliable transportation for the family, but to haul all the gear you plan to take with you.  Alternatively it can also provide shelter, depending on your needs and how you see yourself bugging out.

Continue reading “Bug Out Vehicle Project”

Posted on

Lightning Safety and Preparedness

“When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!”

National Lightning Safety Awareness Week 21-27 June 2009

This week is National Lightning Safety week so let’s take a few minutes to talk about lightning and how it affects preppers.  There isn’t much you can do to prep for lightning to hit you, if that happens you better be right with God.  But what about lightning hitting near you – your home, your neighborhood, etc. The biggest impact of a lightning strike for us is usually the power being out.  It turns out that there are plenty of things you can do to try to encourage lightning to not hit you.

There are an estimated 25 million cloud-to-ground lightning flashes each year in the U.S.   So far in 2009, there have been 15 fatalities due to lightning. On average, there are 400 people hit by lightning each year, resulting in about 80 deaths.

Continue reading “Lightning Safety and Preparedness”

Posted on

Survival Book Review: One Second After

I’ve just finished reading One Second After
by William R. Forstchen – I received it two days ago – I couldn’t put it down.  This is an excellent book that I fully recommend every Survivalist/Prepper/Anyone Else read.  Seriously, this book is one of those that will help to open people’s eyes to just how fragile we are and just how stinkin’ hard it is going to be to survive TEOTWAWKI.

The book is based on an EMP event and most of the things in it are pretty close to all the research I’ve seen on EMPs.  The survival story is quite well researched and explored as well.  The book covers the time period from when an EMP event occurs to one year later and includes several of the same type of survival scenarios we read in Patriots.  The great thing about this book is that it makes you think broadly about survival and just how prepared you really are for it.  Reading it made me think of some areas where I can improve my preps but also made me feel that I was well prepared in several areas.  The saddest part of this book is the realization of just how bad it will be for the wholly unprepared, which is a large majority of our population.

Continue reading “Survival Book Review: One Second After”

Posted on

Evacuation/Emergency Combat Readiness

Paris rioters in 2008
Paris rioters in 2008

This is the seventh installment of the Evacuation Preparedness Kit Series.  The first post, on Evac Prep Basics is here, and the second post, which introduces the Evac Prep Master List is here.  The third post, and the first post on the list review is here.  This post will cover Combat Readiness.

Contrary to the belief of some, being a Prepper is NOT synonymous with being well armed and ready to protect yourself and your preps in a violent situation.  However, this article is specifically about being prepared to defend yourself, your family and your preps if it comes down to it.

History shows us that when things go bad we can expect riots, looters, roving gangs of marauders and plenty of random acts of armed violence.  We have witnessed this just this week with the riots in Iran that ended in violence.  Or we can look at the looting during Hurricane Katrina, rioting and looting during the L.A. Rodney King riots, the French riots (pictured above) and several others.

Continue reading “Evacuation/Emergency Combat Readiness”

Posted on

Evacuation Kits – 72 Hour Kits/BOBs/G.O.O.D. Bag Management

72 Hour Kits - Serenity

This is the sixth installment of the Evacuation Preparedness Kit Series.  The first post, on Evac Prep Basics is here, and the second post, which introduces the Evac Prep Master List is here.  The third post, and the first post on the list review is here.  This post will cover 72 Hour Kit management.

It seems that every time I inventory my preps I find things that are missing.  It’s usually something like that one time when my wife needed to send a couple water bottles to school and the easiest thing to grab was a couple out of a 72 Hour Kit, then we forgot to replace it.  Or you needed some batteries, or a flashlight, or whatever.  When something can’t be found, it’s hard to not say “Oh, there’s one in the preps somewhere”.   Every time it happens there is always good intent to replace the removed item right away – and invariably it is forgotten about.

Continue reading “Evacuation Kits – 72 Hour Kits/BOBs/G.O.O.D. Bag Management”

Posted on

It’s Offical – we’re in a Pandemic – Link Roundup

Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO)  officially declared a Level 6 Pandemic.

There is a lot of good information out there about Pandemic Preparedness.  We’ve written several carefully researched articles about Pandemic Preparedness and in order to make them more convenient to our readers, we’ve put together a glossary to try to make finding that information easier.  If you know of any pages that have a lot of valuable information on H1N1 (Swine Flu), Pandemic Preparedness or Quarantines, please leave us a link so we can add it to our list.

Continue reading “It’s Offical – we’re in a Pandemic – Link Roundup”

Posted on

Survivalist Blog Carnival

We’re part of this and fully support it – we recommend checking out all the awesome posts in this carnival! (the rest of this post is a re-post from the carnival)

Welcome to the first Survival and Disaster Preparedness Blog Carnival. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to submit their work. I had a lot of fun looking over all the entries and learned a thing or two in the process!

Continue reading “Survivalist Blog Carnival”

Posted on

As my Garden Grows – So do my weeds!

corn1My new garden is nearly a quarter acre, I had forgotten just how many weeds show up in a brand new garden!

I’ve been gardening all my life – my Father got his Masters Degree in Agronomy and for as long as I can remember he has kept a very large garden, large enough to feed his family of 9.  Growing up we spent each spring building hills for the garden and planting, summers were spent weeding and maintaining and fall was always a huge harvest that the entire family participated in.

Continue reading “As my Garden Grows – So do my weeds!”

Posted on

Evacuation Preparedness List Review part 3

This is the fifth installment of the Evacuation Preparedness Kit Series.  The first post, on Evac Prep Basics is here, and the second post, which introduces the Evac Prep Master List is here.  The third post, and the first post on the list review is here.  This post will pick up where we previously left off in reviewing the categories on the Master List.

Continue reading “Evacuation Preparedness List Review part 3”