Category: Links

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A New Toy

I will never hide the fact that I am a geek, a gadget geek in the scope of this post.  I love playing with various “toys” and trying to find the perfect tools for whatever need I have.

Image Taken Straight From ThinkGeek

So this week, one of the shiny things to catch my attention is found over on the ThinkGeek Gadgets site, It’s a key-sized multi-tool, for a decent price.  Now I’ve checked out lots of ‘key’ tools the past few years.From constantly watching for a chance at picking up an Atwood Ti, to usually crappy quality key-tools that are way too clunky to want to carry on my limited keychain.  Previously I was leaning towards the Gerber Artifact (via ThinkGeek:
Gerber Artifact Pocket Keychain Tool) (Which I still wouldn’t mind, for sure).  It’s a nice tool, but still isn’t quite the same idea of this.  While the artifact tries to be another knife, this tool attempts to be all the various non-blade tools from your swiss-army knife.

This however beats out those crappy ones (not the atwoods though, of course).  It’s thin, not wider than a normal key.  Nor is it bulky, sticking out wrong.  It has several helpful functions which are actually labeled to help jog the memory.  It’s the perfect choice when I don’t want to carry my swiss army style knife, but would rather keep a single blade on me.  I don’t lose access to the common tools this way.  Hey, it’s probably safe to take on a plane too!.

Also well thought out, is that it actually wraps onto your existing keys, so it covers the sharper edges, and doesn’t rip up your pocket so much.

Link: Keychain Multi-Tool

Alternatives:
Utili-Key 6-in-1 ToolThese keys always seem like they would open up in my pocket at the wrong time :(

Gerber Artifact Pocket Keychain ToolThe artifact, cool, but not sure about that blade.  Like the pry-bar aspect.

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Preparedness on People’s Minds

Today’s edition of the Deseret News carries a story about the subject of preparedness being on people’s minds in increased fashion.

A recent poll of New York City residents found that about half are now thinking about preparedness, compared with 18 percent who were considering it in 2004. And increasingly there are associations of and websites for so-called “preppers.”

Earthquakes and economic meltdowns have made the need more “believable,” said Emergency Essentials co-owner Don Pectol, who has seen an uptick in interest in emergency preparedness.

The problem, Pectol notes, is that money and time are both tight. While desire is higher, it might not be as easy to accomplish in this economy. And those who are not at all prepared for an emergency feel like “they’re being asked to eat an elephant.”

It’s our hope at Utah Preppers that we can make the subject of preparedness easier, more affordable, and more realistic for those who understand its importance. It’s been a slow Spring around here since we’ve all been busy, but expect things to pick up over the next few weeks and months as we share some important information on how you and your family can better be prepared for the future.

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Are you a victory canner?

Victory Canner Poster

I came across this post in my feed reader this morning, and Jayce and I thought it was worth sharing. These are posters from WWII to encourage victory gardens and canning.

What were victory gardens? Back in World Wars 1 and 2, citizens of various countries were encouraged to do a variety of things to help out military efforts. This ranged from buying war bonds to saving scrap metal to growing gardens at home in order to ease the strain on the public food supply. Because certain foods were rationed, these gardens provided families with extra fresh food during warm months, and home-canned foods when it got colder.

Nowadays, home gardening is seen by many as more of a hobby. But a little bit of time and effort can pay off in big ways. Not only will you be able to enjoy fresh, ripe veggies that weren’t picked green and then ripened during delivery, you can avoid a variety of issues inherent with the globalization of the food supply. Price fluctuations, E. Coli and salmonella scares, Genetically Modified seeds, and just plain shifty practices by manufacturers will be of little concern to you.

Of course, if another world war breaks out, the experienced home gardener will be ready long before anyone else.

World War II Canning and Gardening Posters via Kabaju

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Instructables Paracord Contest

One of our favorite DIY sites, Instructables.com is hosting a Paracord Contest. The grand prize is a Leatherman with a custom laser etched message of your choice. Paracord is one of the best gotta-have-some-with-you preparedness items. The inner strands can be used for fishing line while the outer shell on its own provides a strong shell for wrapping or weaving other objects. Really, the possibilities are endless.

Have a look at the Instructables Paracord Contest here.

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Social Preppers

Interested in a little more discussion with the preppers here, and elsewhere?  In our association with the American Preppers Network, you now have several ways to interact with other people that like to talk preparedness.

Forum

For people interested in forum discussions, we have two available places to talk.  The APN forums will allow you communicate with the other utahpreppers, as well as other state prepper groups.  Also available is the new LDS Preppers, a similar concept but geared for the LDS readers.  By keeping with the rest of the groups, you can participate not only in the Utah discussions, but also any other regions, or specialty topics you wish.  It’s a great resource to communicate with other preppers, without having having to come out of your well-stocked mountain retreat (ok, a little humor there).  If you need to understand a little bit more about what a forum is, check out the wikipedia description.

Chat

If you like real time discussions, you can now join us in our chat rooms.  These chats are accessible to computer novice, as well as the geeks among us.  For the novice, you can easily go HERE and join the chat rooms in your browser (no software to install).  Just click the link, and you will be prompted for a nickname to use, then it’ll log you in and you will have a page to  There are several rooms available, the most important ones being the #preppers, and the #utahpreppers rooms.  Chat rooms are an ‘always-open’ type of room where you can go in and interact in real-time.  Just clicking that link will open a page with a small bar on the top that lists which rooms you can listen in (just click on one to see the activity in that room).  On the right hand side will be a list of people currently in the room, and at the bottom, you can type in a message, and just hit enter for everyone to get it.

For the Geeks, we’re all using the rizon IRC network, and you may use any IRC client (such as XChat, WeeChat, or others) to connect.

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Solar Cooking Challenge and Special Price

A while back, I did a post detailing the unboxing of my Solar Oven Society Sportster solar oven. I’ve been meaning to do a post where I showed how easy it is to use, but haven’t been able to get around to it.

My wife and I have been using the oven pretty frequently and are very pleased with it. When we first got it, we did a side by side comparison of it and my neighbor’s Global Sun Oven which costs just a bit more. Without getting into too many details, I think that the build quality of the Global is better, which translates to faster heat up times. The Sportster oven on the other hand is a bit larger and can handle two small pots where the Global is restricted to just one. Since a meal often consists of more than one dish, cooked in a different pot, this can be a real concern.
Continue reading “Solar Cooking Challenge and Special Price”

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Shelf Reliance: Free On Friday

Our friends over at Shelf Reliance are having a giveaway that they would like people to know about.  Now I am slightly loathe to tell folks about it, since hey, I want to win.  But it’s only fair to share right?  So over on the Shelf Reliance blog they have a post with all the details, some of which I’ll copy here:

“Shelf Reliance is giving away a Harvest 72″ food rotation system! Visit the Shelf Reliance blog at http://www.shelfreliance.com/blog/ to enter. The Harvest 72″ is valued at $459.99 and can hold up to 600 cans, making it perfect for a healthy food storage supply. The winner will be announced on Friday, June 26th, so hurry to the blog for your chance to win!” Continue reading “Shelf Reliance: Free On Friday”

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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”

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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”

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Gardening In Utah

Recently I had a small message in my inbox that came in via the contact form here on the blog.  It was somebody named Alex mentioning that he had a blog we might be interested in.  A quick check showed that he was right, VegeNag is a blog about vegetable gardening in Utah.  I know I’m always looking for all the help I can get, so it’s nice to have somebody that can give advice that is local and knowledgeable about our specific soil conditions and other factors.

He is adding on quite a few useful articles on things he is doing to help plants grow around here, and has many useful links directly to useful locations such as the Utah State Extensions which provide very useful on agriculture, horticulture, insects, in short everything you might need to know about growing anything in your own county.

It looks like in the future he is planning on expanding his blog to also give alerts for when you need to take certain actions in your garden according to our climate.  And if we’ve learned anything this spring, it’s that a little help in knowing the real planting/safe dates can really help (I still can’t believe I got snow again today!)

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Prepping example on 18 Kids and Counting 4/7 on TLC

Tomorrow night, April 7th TLC will be showing a new episode of 18 Kids and Counting.

In case you aren’t familiar with the show, here is a brief description of this reality show. Michele and Jim Bob Duggar are the parents of a traditional Christian family. After 20 years of marriage, they have had 18 children with only one set of twins. They manage to afford this large family by being frugal, wisely investing the money they do have in money making properties and businesses and always paying cash for all their purchases. If they don’t have enough money to buy something, they save and buy it later or do without. All of their children are also home schooled.

What does this have to do with prepping? Continue reading “Prepping example on 18 Kids and Counting 4/7 on TLC”