Preparing Deseret, one blogger at a time
I was recently interviewed for the Deseret News about people buying food storage after a disaster. Check out the article here: Staying prepared: How to be ready for a disaster even after the disaster
Thanks again for a great interview, and a good article. If you’re just looking into preparedness after a disaster, don’t just run out and buy some food storage because of an ad, get educated, and use your money wisely.
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has long supported CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams) in locales large and small by providing training material, grants and other support. This week they released a new set of FEMA guidelines and instructions for CERT drills and exercises. These exercises cover the gamut and include tabletop exercises, functional exercises, full scale exercises, and competitive events.
Find out more about these drills and exercises after the jump.
Continue reading “FEMA guidelines and instructions for CERT drills and exercises”
Yesterday I was linked to a BBC show on youtube that I found quite interesting. The video was a follow-up, thirty years after the filming of a show called Living in the past. The show itself was in effect a reality show, but not one designed on conflict, but the actual experience of a group living as a community in an iron age setting in England.
It’s quite interesting seeing a nice summary of their experiences, and how living a truly primitive lifestyle for 13 months changed the way they think.
Continue reading “Living in the Past: Iron Age Reality”
Recently there has been a nice uptick in news articles referencing prepper sites like ours. In just this past week, Reuters published an article about the “Subculture of preppers” that trended, especially after it was featured on the Drudge Report. The article did include well known prepper/survival resources such as James W. Rawles, editor of the oft-linked Survival Blog.
Adding to the news, our national affiliation APN (American Preppers Network) was one of the highlighted links in a Blaze article focusing on preppers as those “Stockpiling for disaster“.
Continue reading “Preppers in the News”
Part of being a good prepper is not just buying extra food, but the art of learning how to buy right. Purchasing foods especially can be an art form for knowing when to get the best prices, and best quality. For instance, it’s usually a bad idea to buy a vegetable who’s harvest is about to happen, as you know that means you are getting what’s left from last year. Your food won’t taste as good, and it won’t store as long as it’s already got a year down. Grocery stores know this, so many frugal shoppers have studied the common grocery sale cycles to understand how the manufacturers and stores are working together to move their product most efficiently. Continue reading “When to buy: Grocery Sale Cycles”
Just a quick post today. With the severe wind storms some people have found that they are not prepared for an emergency such as spending a single winter night without power. KSL posted an article this morning with some useful information on how your family can weather such an emergency.
Also, it might be a good time to refer to articles we’ve done about emergency kits, off-grid power, lighting, and heat.
Take a few minutes to read through it.
Like most preppers my family has 72 hour kits for each member of our family. We try to keep the consumable items in them rotated, work to ensure that the spare clothes in them are seasonal and fit, etc. Since my children are too young to be in school right now, I haven’t spent too much time considering how I will handle a “get home”, “bug out” or 72 hour kit for each child once they are spending a significant amount of their day in a state run education center. I also need to consider the restrictive policies in place these days regarding what is “dangerous” per current school policies. This begs the question, as a prepper, how do you handle emergency kits for young school age children when they are away from the home?
Continue reading “Emergency kits for young school age children”
Over the past year, I have noticed an increased interest in raising chickens arising all over the nation. Locally, KSL has published several articles recently about this phenomenon (see below) as has the Wall Street Journal (also below) and most prepper blogs. My family started keeping backyard chickens about four years ago and have had some good success. In this article we’ll summarize some of the benefits to raising chickens, what you’ll need to get started and some links to resources to help you out once you’ve got your flock.
I was recently perusing Utah Valley University’s web site and found an interesting course on Gold Prospecting offered through the Community Continuing Education program. Given the current high price of gold and the fact that here in Utah we really don’t need to travel far to try finding it, this seems like a great course for a Utah Prepper.
Only 5 percent of the world’s gold has been discovered. With gold currently trading at over $1500 an ounce, panning for gold has made a real comeback. Learn new methods of panning gold that you can use 12 months of the year. Fee includes prospecting equipment you take home with you. No early registration discount. CEUs: 0.15 Hours: 1.50
At $39 this seems like a bargain for an evening of instruction on what could be a fun and profitable hobby. Here is a Link to the course. I hope to see you there!
Looking back on my list of things that I’ve “meant to blog” for a long time, I found a link I needed to share. A friend of mine, and longtime follower of this blog, Erin McNew wrote an article for Yahoo’s Associated Content site about food storage. I will of course take this chance to tease her for cheating on me, and posting to a different site, especially one that won’t allow for me to repost the content. However I may tease though, It’s a great article written to explain to people how storing food is a sensible way to save money. Something that most “preppers” understand, especially people usually interested in this blog. However oftentimes people who wouldn’t normally figure themselves to be preppers, can still at least get back to some of the basics of previous generations.
Check out Erin’s article Saving Money by Storing Food for a nice introduction that could be very helpful in getting friends/neighbors/family to think a little more about adding to their food storage plans.
There is an interesting example of Winter survival in the news today courtesy of KSL.
While these young men made an initial mistake that got them lost, they managed to remain calm and focused on survival. Creating a snow cave, starting a fire, etc. are all useful skills and as this example clearly shows can help to keep you alive.
Another aspect of preparedness is learning from our mistakes and other’s examples. In this case, if they had their avalanche beacon and some other gear, (perhaps some EDC items, or an emergency kit) they would have been located much sooner or not been lost in the first place, and been more comfortable while waiting for rescue.
Read the article and absorb any information you can so you can use that information if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.
A recent article in the Lifestyle section over at the Mormon Times titled “Food storage includes more than just food” includes some quotes taken from an interview conducted with me the other day. While the newspaper is targeting members of the LDS faith, the article itself is applicable to anybody. Many people get caught up in simply having a certain number of calories, and not thinking about the other aspects of preparedness. This article does a good job of addressing this and stresses adopting a well rounded approach to preparedness. Although our readers may have more of a prepper mindset than the audience of the Mormon Times, you still may find some good information there. Click the link above to read the article.