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Prepping for and Surviving an Airplane Crash

plane-crash-2Yesterday’s incident of a crash landing on the Hudson River where there was a 100% survival rate got me thinking about airplane crash survival and prep.  Apparently several others were thinking about it too, there are several articles out in the last (less than) 24 hours about surviving a plane crash.  Hopefully I can provide a useful summary and some fresh thought on this topic.

The NTSB released a study of plane crash statistics and survivability in 2001 they analyzed data for crashes from 1983 to 2000.  I’ll be summarizing and referring to it frequently, the entire report can be found here.  I was surprised to find that, overall, plane crashes are indeed survivable.  Just as with surviving a nuclear war, I had assumed or thought I knew (without any research at all) that if a plane crashes you’re pretty much dead.  With that foregone conclusion, I had not really looked into it at all.  Here’s a quick shot of data from the NTSB study regarding crashes in a year and the number of survivors from those crashes: Continue reading “Prepping for and Surviving an Airplane Crash”

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On Junk Silver or Silver Coins or Bullion Coins and Bartering

dimes_smlI’m trying to get this all figured out, it’s kind of confusing! Junk Silver, Silver Coins, Bullion Coins, Pre-1965 Coins – it turns out they all pretty much mean the same thing! Hard-Core TEOTWAWKI Preppers know that pre-1965 silver coins are made up of actual silver and have good potential barter power. That bartering capability comes from the fact that the U.S. Mint has guaranteed the amount of silver in these coins so they have a known value. Bullion Coins are generally considered the easiest way to have known values of precious metals – hence their potential barter usage. So far this is fairly common knowledge, but there is a lot more to know in order to do this properly – and I’m trying to get it all figured out.

Continue reading “On Junk Silver or Silver Coins or Bullion Coins and Bartering”

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SOS Sportster Solar Oven

I ordered a Solar Oven Society Sportster Oven with optional reflectors on a Monday and it arrived on my door step a precisely one week later. My neighbor has a Global Sun Oven, but hasn’t used it. Not having any experience with this subject, and not knowing anyone who had used one, I performed some research online.

One of the best reviews I read was by Cook’s Illustrated based on the number of models, the breadth of tests and overall quality of the written review. My wife swears by their advice and their reviews are generally spot on, so I ended up going with the model they recommended most highly. I’ll freely admit that it didn’t hurt that the oven was similarly priced with its closest competitors but also included two pots, a water pasteurization indicator and a cookbook.

A post reviewing the performance of this model (SOS Sportster Solar Oven) as well as a comparison with the Global Sun Oven is on my list of projects. If all goes well, I will be able to perform those tests this coming Saturday.

So without further ado, Unboxing the Solar Oven Society Sportster Solar Oven:
Continue reading “SOS Sportster Solar Oven”

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Keeping your data safe

This post is a followup to the recent post on backing up your data on flash drives.  As stated, keeping your important data safe is extremely important.  imagesKeeping a copy with you, and in a remote location is required practice for me.  But keeping your data safe is much more than just keeping a copy of your data around in case of hardware failure, fire, or evacuation.  You need to actually protect the data itself.

Nowadays, people should be familiar with the concept of Identity Theft, and the threat it poses in your everyday life.  With even basic information about you, a fraudster can cause huge problems to you, now imagine if they picked up a nice little flash drive that had copies of everything from birth certificates to bank statements?  Of course you should be very careful with your nice little key fob, but you’re probably careful with keys and wallet too, and how many people lose those? Continue reading “Keeping your data safe”

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Gardening: Getting Ready for the Season

pottingsoilAll the authors on this site are avid gardeners and like any gathering of gardeners, we all have different approaches, best practices and preferences. This planting season will be the first one that we’ve had this site running so you can expect a lot of posts from us on our gardens! Each of us will be writing posts showing you how we grow our gardens and we’ll hopefully have some great guest author posts as well.

The New Year brings many exciting opportunities – one of the most exciting for me is the opportunity to start a fresh new garden! It’s hard to sit patiently by and wait for Spring to kick Old Man Winter’s behind so we can get out there and start turning the ground and planting. The best way to pass the time is to strategize: Are you going to plant more or different crops from last year? What plants would you like to put in? How will you lay out the garden? Are you going to use the same gardening approach as last year, or try something new?

Continue reading “Gardening: Getting Ready for the Season”

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Backing up your computer and preserving your files

flashdrive2The fantastic Food Storage Made Easy blog has a great post out on how to set up a regular backup process for your computer. They recommend using my favorite backup company, Mozy – a Utah based company that was started by a friend of mine and was acquired about a year ago. Check out their post here. If you don’t yet have a backup plan setup, I highly recommend reading their post and following their advice!

Like Preppers are inclined to do, I want to take their post further down the Rabbit Hole. Continue reading “Backing up your computer and preserving your files”

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Vision Prep – storing eyeglasses

nerdyguy02If you’re like me and can’t quite make out that big E on the eye chart from 5 feet away without vision correction or even if you’re not quite that bad, this post is for you. Probably everyone that wears vision correction has thought about having a backup, but what about 5 backups? One backup is great for if you break or lose your glasses/contacts, that’s a great prep to have. But what if we’re in a TEOTWAWKI situation and you can’t get new glasses at all for a very long time? It costs a lot to get replacement glasses and it’s a huge investment – usually – now enter Zenni Optical.

Continue reading “Vision Prep – storing eyeglasses”

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Dry-pack Christmas

For Christmas this year, we decided to forgo gifts and add to our dry-pack food supply. With access to a dry-pack canner through the local unit of my Church, I decided the most cost effective and efficient route this time would be to buy in bulk and do the canning myself at home. I purchased all of the food and supplies from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Home Storage Center in Sandy.

We were able to get everything we wanted except wheat which they were out of until the first of the year. I will be going back in a few weeks to finish off that part of the order. I did learn exactly how much will fit in a 4Runner, although I had more than the traditional blind-spot to worry about on the drive home. For this round, I canned rice, sugar, pinto beans, black beans, white beans, potato flakes, dry milk, dried onions, apple slices, and both quick and regular oats. Continue reading “Dry-pack Christmas”

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Inauguration Day = Utah Preppers First Meetup!

We’ve been discussing this for a while and even took a poll here on the site – Tuesday night was considered to be the best night to get together so with that in mind we’re going to do it – on Inauguration Day!

This will be a very informal meetup – we just want to get together, meet some local preppers and hang out for a bit. Hopefully we’ll have a good discussion about what we should do for future meetups – there are several possibilities there. We’re going to meet in the upstairs restaurant at Cabelas in Lehi at 6:00 pm on Tuesday January 20th, 2009. Hope to see you there!

Summation:

Utah Preppers Meetup

Cabelas, Lehi in the restaraunt

Jan 20th, 6:00 pm – whenever.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention, let us know in the comments if you plan on coming!  It would be nice to have an idea of what to expect.

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Prepping for Prepping

Prepping – it’s an endless activity that has few rewards, and those rewards often are not close in payout to the amount of time and effort that went into them. The interim rewards in prepping include not having to run to the store constantly to keep your food stocked. When you’re a Prepper your grocery store is in your own house, going to an actual store is akin to going to a warehouse to get resupplied. The other reward is great personal satisfaction and comfort in knowing that you are ready for anything – well, almost ready – there’s ALWAYS something else that can be done. The big payoff rarely comes for a Prepper – and that is when things get bad enough that you’re able to make it through it solely because you were prepped. This lifestyle, with it’s small rewards and rare big payoff, can be tiring – even overwhelming at times.

Continue reading “Prepping for Prepping”

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New Author: Wade

Hello, I’m Wade. I am an avid outdoorsman. I respect and honor nature. I like to keep things simple. I take great pride in the size of my annual REI dividend. I love gardening, cooking, backpacking, mountain biking, road cycling, snowshoeing, and photography. I enjoy working with my hands, being self-sufficient, and solving problems. I am a graphic artist, interaction designer, and software engineer.

I grew up in Utah and currently reside in Lehi with my gorgeous wife and children. I am a member of the North Temple Group where I work as an interaction designer and user advocate for web applications. I also started and administer the Utah PHP Users Group, the Utah Graphic Artists Forum, and the Utah Apple Users Group.

I’ve always considered myself to be fairly prepared. But as of a few months ago, I don’t any more. I have a lot of work to get done. The change in opinion comes from a change in perspective. I spent a week over the holidays filling 340 ten pound cans in my garage. I had a lot of time to think. I thought about how few people are prepared—whether by choice, ignorance, or because they are unable. I enjoyed the good feeling inside (that came with knowing I had another twelve months of food tucked away) for a bit but then started asking myself a lot of questions.

I realized that I was not prepared. Generally, when people talk about being prepared, they talk about having the necessary supplies to sustain their current lifestyle through a temporary emergency (whether that be a natural disaster or simply a personal financial hiccup). There is a difference between having supplies and being prepared though. Having supplies is important, but being prepared is more important. We might have stored wheat but do we know how to cook it? What am I going to do once my storage runs out? Do I know how to hunt? If I am able to kill an animal, how am I going to store it? If I run out of water, do I know how to dig a well? Once my propane runs out how am I going to cook? Where am I going to go to the bathroom? How am I going to heat my house? Can I grow a garden? Am I prepared to protect my family?

I believe the greatest weakness of our current society is that people have very few skills. We purchase everything we need and rely on technology to sustain us. If Walmart was gone tomorrow, what would people do? Even if we choose to not live a self-reliant lifestyle, I believe it foolish to not have the skills to provide for ourselves and families if we needed to. I have a to-do list that I am putting together of things that I need to learn. I need to learn how to store food short term without refrigeration. I need to build a root cellar. I need to learn how to hunt. I’d like to buy a wood burning stove. I need a solution for waste disposal. How do you milk a cow? How do you make candles? How do you make soap? People talk about a year’s supply of food all the time, but what about toilet paper?

I am excited to be included as an author with the others here and look forward to hearing about your adventures and preparedness efforts as well.