Utah Preppers

December 17, 2008December 18, 2008

Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 2 of 3, Gear Supplements

This is the second post in this series, the first – Prepping your Vehicle – can be found here.

Winter vehicle emergencies can be pretty harsh. If you breakdown, wreck or slide off the freeway that’s one thing, help should be there soon.

But, if you’re on the road less traveled and it’s late at night and something happens, you could be stuck there for a while. If for some reason you can’t start your vehicle in that situation, you have about 20 minutes before it starts getting cold in your car. You already have an emergency kit in your vehicle, right? Just in case you don’t, we’ll be covering that in a later post. But, from here we’ll assume you’ve got a basic 72 hour survival kit in your vehicle. These are some things you should add to it for the winter:

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December 16, 2008

Mylar Bag Wrapup – Issues with Mylar Bags

This will wrap up our series on Mylar Bag Food Storage. You can catch the previous posts here: a How-To Pictorial on Storing Food in Mylar Bags and Alternative Ideas for Mylar Bags.

This post will talk about some of the experiences, techniques and tips that readers and others have provided us.

MaKettle10 provides us with this info:

In a study done with mylar bags and mice, it took the mice about 15 seconds to sense the food was there, and get into the bag to start eating it. Good idea you have to put the mylar bags into the big plastic storage bins. I’d never store them in cardboard boxes for extended, long-term storage.

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December 16, 2008December 18, 2008

Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 1 of 3, Prepping Your Vehicle

Here in Utah, Winter is finally upon us! This generally means we get to share the road with a bunch of inexperienced snow drivers who think it’s safer, not more dangerous, to drive 15 miles an hour on the freeway. Hopefully, all those people will read this post and we’ll fix the I15 problem right here and now! Yeah right. But for you, dear reader, I offer some advice on how to prep your vehicle for winter, what to stash in your vehicle and some driving tips. Hopefully you’ll have some sage advice to add to this in the comments. This is the first of 3 posts in this series.

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December 15, 2008December 15, 2008

Burning The Midnight Oil

No literally, I’m writing this late at night, and wondering just how many people have really given thought to how they will see at night. Whether you are preparing for a couple days of power outages due to an event such as an ice-storm, or some longer-term emergency, it’s not feasible to expect that you can run a generator 24/7 in order to still be able to flick the lights.

While our ancestors did keep better time with the sun, there was still a need for light outside of what the sun provided, and we all know you can’t store *enough* batteries for every need. In this situation, many people will immediately fall back to the use of candles as a primary source of light. While candles are useful, there is a better answer. Candles tend to release a lot of smoke which will leave soot over time, they are an open flame, which is dangerous, and are very subject to drafts. The better answer for indoor lighting of course is the lamp, which from ancient time, in many cultures has provided simple, clean, and efficient lighting to humanity. Continue reading “Burning The Midnight Oil”

December 15, 2008December 15, 2008

Making Preparedness a Family Activity

One of the best ways to prepare and to get your family on board with preparing for an emergency is to include them in your preparations. This may seem a daunting task, but as Phil801 has shown us with his eight children, it can be done. Just look at some of his How-To posts to see evidence of them helping out.

For some of us though, we may just be starting out, or we may not have our family on board with what may be for some a significant lifestyle change. Fortunately, the LDS church which has always urged preparedness from its members has had the foresight to put together a series of family friendly preparedness activities which are perfect for those families just starting out.

You can access the activity list and lesson plans here.

December 13, 2008December 13, 2008

Water storage and purification

I am aware of at least one individual on Utah Preppers that had doubts about this article ever seeing the light of day. Catching up on honey-do lists (building 2 can rotation systems, etc.) and everyday life was keeping me busier than I would have liked. Besides, seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered in water (well, except for Utah), so what’s the big deal?

The truth of it is, without water, your chances of surviving an extended emergency are greatly diminished.

“Humans can survive 3 days on average without water — less when it is very hot or one is very active (as opposed to weeks without food). A single day without water significantly reduces bodily and mental performance.” – Wikibooks – Outdoor Survival/Water

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December 12, 2008December 12, 2008

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! dscn0599

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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December 12, 2008December 12, 2008

one-quarter cup

Over on “Food Storage… A Necessary Adventure”, there is a recent post called Have you seen a 1/4 cup lately.

It put a few things into perspective for me. Of course you should go read the post, but the basic rundown for me was that the minimum amount of food for longer term survival comes in the form of 1/4 cup of rice, and another 1/4 cup of beans, in dried form. How much is a quarter cup, really? We all have measuring cups that size, go check it out. It is really little.

This should give us all some hope for the possibility of storing enough for ourselves. A 25lb bag each of beans and rice gives just over 300 days of *minimal* sustenance! Not only does that show us how easy it can be to get started, but as the poster notes, that also gives us a great understanding of how we can provide some charity in the worst of situations. I know I plan the food for my family, and in the worst of cases, I would need to focus on keeping those resources for my family. But inside we all want to help others. Even if we’re not giving much, just a quarter-cup of dried beans and rice can keep a person alive. Understanding that from our side makes it easier to share.

Now you need to learn how to make the best use *of* that little amount.

December 11, 2008December 12, 2008

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!

December 10, 2008December 10, 2008

The British called, they want their guns back.

Real world modern and historic data have shown that government efforts to suppress gun ownership negatively affects law abiding citizens while having little to no affect on criminals or the criminal use of firearms. Citizens of England and Australia have come to that realization, perhaps too late.

Listening to these people talk about the incremental way that their rights were first infringed upon, then completely taken away reminds me of a famous quote by Martin Niemöller:

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.”

As liberty loving Americans we need to stand up for not only our Rights but the Rights of others.

December 9, 2008December 16, 2008

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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