Continue reading “Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 1 of 3, Prepping Your Vehicle”
Food Storage – Flavorings: Have you stocked up?
In a TEOTWAWKI situation very little will be available in the way of treats or delicious flavorings. Have you thought about making some preps to be able to provide a flavorful break from the bland day to day eating of rice, wheat and beans for over a year? More than just being able to provide something yummy to yourself and your family, good sweets will likely be a sought after barter item. The simplest treat to make and sell/barter would be hard tack candy. There are few ingredients to hard tack, we’ll get to those in a second. The most important ingredient in hard tack is flavoring!
Now I want to digress for a minute and talk about Vanilla Flavor. Vanilla extract is a VERY time and labor intensive product to make. In fact, it is the second most expensive spice in the world next to saffron. The majority of the worlds vanilla comes from Madagascar – and it’s being destroyed! 80% of Madagascar’s Vanilla farms are currently being killed off by a deadly fungus! This most likely means that the already expensive flavor is going to skyrocket in price. Vanilla is one of the most common flavorings – it is used in baking all kinds of products and is also commonly added to powdered milk to enhance the flavor.
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Organizing the First Utah Preppers Meetup
We’ve been thinking about this for a bit, now it’s time to put it to the test – Who amongst us would be interested in having a prepper meetup? The first one would be informal, a meet and greet, there we would decide what kind of format we wanted future meetups to take. Future meetups might have presenters on a prep topic, could be a lead discussion, demonstration of certain technique, prep poetry reading – whatever. Although this will be sponsored by Utah Preppers, we want to invite other regional bloggers on prepping to come along and invite their readership as well.
We’ve had some interest expressed now we would like to measure it. We’re thinking after the holidays, so some time in January. We’ll never get a consensus on the night to do it, but what would be better? Tues/Wed/Fri? We’ll try to let the majority rule here :) So here are the options: Jan 13, 16 or 22.
Please let us know if you’re interested and what date would work better for you!
Alternative Storage Techniques using Mylar Bags
We recently covered the step-by-step process of storing food in Mylar Bags and went over some of the advantages of them, key of which is protection from air and moisture. It’s pretty clear that you can store most any dry food in Mylar Bags, but what else can be stored in them? A Mylar Bag is an easily portable, strong, waterproof bag – there are lots of things you can store in them! Here are a few ideas (we welcome any other ideas!):
- Cough Drops – wintering TEOTWAWKI will probably lead to a cough or two, better be prepared for it! We purchased 20 bags of 50 cough drops each from the dollar store. Each Mylar Bag received 2 big handfuls of drops. The normal shelf life of a Halls cough drop is 2 years. I think I’ve probably at least doubled that by storing them this way.
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How To: Adventures in Food Storage with Mylar Bags
There are several options available to us for long term storage of bulk food – 5 gallon buckets, #10 cans and Mylar Bags are some of the most popular. In this post we’ll be going over the advantages and disadvantages of Mylar Bags and how to use a Mylar Bag Sealer. Specifically, we’re going to show how to turn all of this:
Into This:
Continue reading “How To: Adventures in Food Storage with Mylar Bags”
The post where we go all Doom and Gloom
I suspect that most readers of this blog are more intelligent than the average reality show addicted, talking head worshiping American
that thinks that everything going on in the world and economy right now is just a hiccup that will go away in the spring. You know, the ones that we preppers are pretty sure we’re going to have to fight off from killing us and stealing our preps WTSHTF. But, just in case any of you are slightly toeing the line with the popular hero-worshiping of the Socialistic head of the ‘Office of the President Elect’ thinking somehow he’s going to Change anything but his mind, or that somehow he’s going to bring Hope to the country – I bring you this.
There are very few mainstream articles being published right now that are presenting a realistic top-down view of the entire situation with the economy. The quotes I’m going to present to you here are from mainstream publications but the key point of them is that these are quotes from high level analysts and executives in widely respected financial companies who are remarking that things are bad, very bad and they are going to get much worse.
The following snippets are from this excellent article from Bloomberg:
Home Canning – In #10 Cans
I came across this great post today on the Safely Gathered In blog about canning your own food at home in #10 cans. The blog itself is well written and provides a lot of really great info about Food Storage and Emergency Preparedness. They have weekly posts on Tuesdays that guide you in purchases to build up your 72 hour kits and food storage. If you have a hard time deciding what you need to purchase, or you feel overwhelmed by everything you need to buy to be prepared, these kind of guides are invaluable!
Today they have a great write-up on canning food you’ve purchased in #10 cans. They have several pictures that walk you through the process of using a canner at home to dry pack food you’ve purchased at the store. This can be wheat, rice, pasta, sugar, salt, or any other dry food you can buy in bulk.
You can vote AGAINST Gun Control RIGHT NOW!
This is important and will take you less than two minutes – and you don’t have to speak to a single person!
IMPORTANT – PLEASE VOTE ON GUN CONTROL BY PHONE AS DIRECTED BELOW ASAP! – TELL THEM YOU OPPOSE GUN CONTROL.
Subject: Gun control in Cook County, Illinois
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008
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What have you done to Prep Today?
This is a habit I got myself into a long time ago. It’s a fairly simple principle – if you do at LEAST one small thing to prep every single day, it will all add up very quickly! Following this principle, I make sure that every day I’ve done something to prep. It might be as simple as fill a 2 liter bottle with water or doing a quick visual inventory and making a mental checklist of what I need to pick up at the store soon. Other (funner) days it’s something much more complex like stocking up on medical supplies, buying another gas can, filling it and putting it with the others.
Preparing for a Nuclear Attack: Determining YOUR Scenario
This is the second in a series of posts that will go over preparation for a Nuclear Attack. The first can be found here.
Determining YOUR Scenario
In our opening post we provided some background information on what can be expected in the event of a Nuclear Attack. While one isolated Nuclear Incident by terrorists or some other force is what we can hope for, as preppers we must prepare for the worst possible scenario, a real WTSHTF type of event. For this discussion that means a full scale Nuclear Attack perpetrated by at least one foreign country against us. This scenario means multiple bombs hitting us, potentially in the hundreds. After all, if they’re gonna throw one at us, why not unleash them all and finish the job? That’s what we have to assume we’re prepping for.
Continue reading “Preparing for a Nuclear Attack: Determining YOUR Scenario”
Preparing for a Nuclear Attack: Some Background
This is the first in a series of posts that will go over preparation for a Nuclear Attack.
Why a series on Nuclear Prep?
Some of you might be up on this stuff but for the most part, when the Cold War went away so did major fear of nukes and as far as I know, a LOT of the information about a potential nuclear attack and how to prep for it and survive it was forgotten. It seems that a lot of people are almost too scared to actually confront the possibility, better to bury their head in the sand and pretend it just won’t happen than to study it and learn how to be prepared for it.
Continue reading “Preparing for a Nuclear Attack: Some Background”
Preparedness Christmas: Stocking Stuffer Ideas
This will be the first of a couple themed posts around having a “Preparedness Christmas”. With world and U.S. conditions being what they are, if you’re like me the last thing you can stomach right now is the idea of spending a bunch of money on silly toys and other frivolous items that will be either lost or destroyed (and somewhat unappreciated) within a week or so of Christmas. Christmas gift giving is a great time to think about sharing the security and comfort of being prepared with the rest of your family.
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