Two basic laws of the Infantryman and how they apply to Preparedness…

Both of these simple rules I learned as a young Lieutenant.  On the face they are simple, but each has a larger context as it relates to prepping.  The first rule applies to water and the second involves “snivel gear” (the Army term for warm/comforting clothing).

Rule 1: Water.  I grew up in the Army before the days of the CamelBak and other hydration systems.  We had high tech devices called canteens (and no we did not carry muskets).  Each soldier regularly carried 4 quarts of water.  You had a 2 qt canteen attached to your rucksack and two 1 qt canteens on your pistol belt.  The rules for consumption were simple and commonsensical.  The first water to be consumed would be from the 2 qt on your rucksack, even though this was typically the least convenient when you were on the move.  The reason is simple. If you are separated from your pack you will still have 2 FULL canteens on your pistol belt.

Rule 2: Snivel Gear.  No matter how cold and/or how wet you become ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS maintain ONE piece of dry clothing (it could be a t-shirt, sweater, poly-pro top, etc) in your rucksack.  Again the reason is simple.  When you are suckin’…I mean REALLY suckin’…knowing that you still have a dry piece of clothing is a HUGE morale booster and gives you hope that when it gets warmer or stops raining you can change into something more comfortable.  When everything you have is wet and you are cold it is infinitesimally easier to give up and quit!

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How does Rule 1 apply to prepping?  In the simplest form it can be useful advice, but let’s consider the larger context.  Here’s a scenario. The power is out (you pick the reason) and you have the following fuels available for cooking; one 20 lb bag of charcoal, a propane grill with a full tank, 2 gallons of gas in a can for your lawn mower and 1 rick of firewood for your fire place.  Which should you use to cook with first?  My answer is none of the above!  I send my kids to the woods across the street to gather as much dead fall as they can carry home.  The reason is simple.  I save my “convenient fuels” for when I need it.  There will be a time when I HAVE to tap into my convenient preps.  The reasons could be illness, security, weather, etc.  As a result, it is important to save convenient preps. The important point is to make every effort possible to preserve your reserve.  Obviously do not take this to the extreme and die of starvation with a basement full of Mountain House #10 cans.  However, I’m not sure it’s a great idea to figure out if you can shoot a squirrel when you are out of Mac-N-Cheese and starvin’ to death.

Rule 2 involves Hope and Morale; both in my view are imperative to survival.  The point here is to pick something (and the something should fit the context of your situation) that you preserve until “the end”.  If you like “Zombie Land”…maybe it’s a box of Twinkies.  It could be a pack of cigarettes, can of food, bottle of Jim Beam…whatever.  The point is; keep something to look forward too.  This will help you maintain morale and look to the future.  If you eat all the good stuff, wear all your dry clothes, shoot up all your ammo, or spend all of your silver too early there is no future.  Quite simply, you will lose hope.

On some level these concepts are simple, but I hope it provokes some thought on how you prep and how you prioritize.

JeSter

MOBILE SURVIVALIST

The guy with a backpack heading off into the hills to survive by hunting and camping has long ago been discredited and dismissed. But it was an idea that had certain advantages. The disadvantage of course was that you would starve, freeze, get eaten by wild animals or a combination of all three. The advantage was that you saved money not needing to buy a retreat ( no small thing at today’s land prices ), you really got away from the crowds and there was a lot less competition for the available food supplies.

Down in settled country you need to trade for food, defend your crops, join a protective association and in general deal with people that don’t have your best interests in mind. Of course I would rather deal with feral people than wild critters such as lions and tigers and bears. If for no other reason than that they are a lot smaller and have no claws. It takes a certain aptitude to survive out in the wilds. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you are Grizzly Adams if you ain’t. You must deal with nature on its terms, not yours.

But if you choose to take to the mountains you become a lot safer, not from nature but at least from man. No one is going to mess with you up in the mountains or in the middle of a vast desert. Or, for that matter, in a sailboat in the ocean. You are mobile, and you are in a wilderness. Two good ways to avoid unreasonable people. Because lets face it, man is a predator and despite political correct brainwashing from our handlers, left outside of the safe confines of civilized society he will quickly kill you, then abuse your person then eat you. Perhaps in that order.

If you choose this route, again with realistic expectations of the difficulties you will encounter, you will need to make some preparations. You will need to build caches and stock supplies in the wilderness area you intend to inhabit. And besides supplies you need to build your skills. No GPS receivers, you must learn to use a map and compass. You must learn primitive wilderness skills in case your equipment is lost or stolen.

I would stash in small cans and/or PVC pipes to easily carry each cache into its location. While you are there on the weekend you can practice fire starting and snare building and other needed skills which are readily available taught in book form. You will want to stash as much as you can since you never know when the game will get scarce. Your containers should have the cheap stuff, as usual, grains and beans. A shelf stable fat such as lard or shortening, ammunition, matches, etc. Neither the caches nor hunting/trapping foraging by themselves are going to be sufficient to keep you alive and well. You will need both. Don’t start slacking on your stash containers and expect your largely untested skills to do the trick.

You want both grains and beans so as to get a complete protein in times where you can’t get animal flesh. The fats, which I would rotate no less than every five years, are going to be essential keeping you alive in the winters. Ammunition of course can’t be carried in bulk so must be stashed. Spare warm clothes such as thermals and caps and wool socks and sweaters. Matches and toothbrushes and entertainment items such as playing cards and books. Needles and thread, knives, shoelaces, iodized salt. You can’t forget those small critical items or you’ll be making dangerous visits into a settlement.

For weapons I would stick with my bolt action surplus rifle, a few knives and a pistol. You could do with just a .22 rifle and a 357 revolver. The 22 will harass humans that showed up and kill game. The revolver will be some protection against bears and other large dangerous animals. You could afford to stash thousands of rounds of 22 and several hundred revolver rounds. It is less than the ideal arsenal but it is light weight, affordable and long lasting.

In the winter you are going to need to shelter in a good cave or build yourself a small underground cabin. It is going to be cold and you are going to have to try to minimize your wood smoke. An underground shelter will allow you to survive with good clothes and no fire. And you need more than one winter shelter in case you are forced out of one. The same goes for your stashes, have more than one and in different areas. You really need to always assume the worse case scenario. It will save your life.

Don’t forget to really think this one out. Such as getting a metal thermos for “hay box cooking” to cut down on the needed cooking. Or the best longest lasting water filter. And try to have everything backed up as far as equipment. The store isn’t going to be available.

Remember, this isn’t for everyone. Know your limitations. And if we never suffer a collapse you can commit a crime and escape to the wilderness with your caches already there.

END

Today’s article is from Jim over at

http://bisonsurvivalblog.blogspot.com

Welcome Back, Its Monday and I’m taking advantage of the Government encouraged holiday today, I have the opportunity to close my office on a weekday because the Banks, Post Office and County Administration building is closed as well… Great!

Anyway, I’m going to head for the BOL… Just a quick one day trip to take a load of stuff over that needs to be stored. It’s a long drive for such a short time period but it does allow us to make sure we don’t have any issues. Roof leaks or frozen pipes are always best discovered before we arrive for a full weekend – family and friends in tow…

Oh well, you get a guest article from James Daken today and I’ll be back tomorrow. Have a great one!

Prepper

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PLAYING POOR  by James Daken -

http://www.bisonsurvivalblog.blogspot.com/

    I think another dangerous misconception, other than Yeoman farming independence, semi-autos being necessary or even smart, the possible rediscovery of another Alaskan or North Sea oil field or the advisability of staying in a big city to earn a few more bucks is thinking that you will be able to transition from an oil rich environment to a Third World peasant existence at will. Why indeed deprive yourself of life’s little luxuries if you don’t have to? You think you can go from 24/7 electricity, hot running water, a thirty year mortgage and an SUV with never ending payments to living in a tarp lined pit eating beans and walking down to the river for water beating off rabid dogs with a stick at the drop of a hat? Of course you CAN. The average human is capable of supreme feats of mental reconditioning. If forced to. So I imagine almost everyone, once forced, will eventually come to terms with primitive living conditions. But it isn’t a light switch. The process is instant physically but not mentally. There will be a price to pay by not conditioning yourself ahead of time. You will experience quite a bit of stress and that will translate to both physical illness and a mental slow down. Remember back to the most stressful event you ever had. Chances are good soon after you were actually sick. When the Handmaiden Of Lucifer divorced me, back before I began to view wives leaving as natural and inevitable, I was sick for a month with some nasty nasal infection. And I’m almost never ill. When I am it is usually in a limited manner. I also got a bunch of cavities for the first time since I was seven years old using my first allowance to take up part time residency in the candy store. And I got a really weird infection in the back of my throat that swelled so bad I couldn’t drink water. When the doctor drew out the crap with a big horse needle it was a disgusting montage of green, white and red. I have no idea what caused it. I’ve never been that sick before or after. Stress, it’s what kills you.

*

As your mind is reeling trying to cope with this change, not only do you get ill but your brain rebels. You don’t know how, but it will. At the very least you are going to experience lack of sleep which will cause lack of alertness. Just the thing when roving bands of bandits are trying to harvest your flesh for the stew pot. You probably think I’m being ridiculous, that I’m blowing things out of proportion. The ancient advice of testing yourself with a weekend without power should point out how unprepared you are and how much stress it will cause. Don’t buy extra camping gear or in any way make special provisions for the event. Just do it as is, with what you already have. And no driving the car to where there is electricity. Even if you are a super survival stud I’ll wager a family member will experience so much discomfort they will endeavor to make your life uncomfortable also. And even if you did pass with flying colors, could you test yourself in other, more uncomfortable ways? I’d wager not. You’ll make do, but the point is your stress level. Everyone advises you to get in shape. Go to a gym, eat right, etc. But they don’t tell you to practice for deprivation. Getting in shape gets you laid and releases endorphins. It isn’t exactly unpleasant. Depriving yourself is a whole other ball of wax. It used to be normal. “Cowboy Up”. If you were a Jarhead, you’ve been there. Perhaps you might be an exception, although I’d wager that the more time that passes the less easy the transition from luxury to poverty would be.

*

Living poor might not be necessary right now. But it will be. Far better to practice it now, and learn what tools will make it easier. And when it gets real, you are half way there mentally. But don’t listen to Jim, you never do anyway. I’m almost used to it.

END

Welcome to 2010… Hold on it’s going to be a wild ride! No, that isn’t my formal 2010 prediction, at least not in this limited of a form. I do think it’s going to wild but as I mentioned in my remembering Y2K post last week, I have been wrong and certainly had my timing way off.

As we get back into our regular pre-holiday rythym here at “Prepper” Nation, I’m sure we’ll have a lot to talk about. These politicans certainly aren’t going to start doing the right thing just because we started working on a new calendar or made some New Years Resolutions.

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Today, we have another article from James Dakin over at - 

http://www.bisonsurvivalblog.blogspot.com/

.22 OR PELLET GUN?

   I just mentioned pellet guns a few issues ago. I was envisioning children’s or introductory, inexpensive rifles to deal with pests. Primary given to children to learn marksmanship and stalking skills. Of course then you run into the problem about quality. A cheap rifle will not last forever and the further into a collapse scenario the more importance you must place in your grain storage and the eradication of rodents. A reader generously gave me research material and I looked a bit online to get more information. And, once again, we are confronted with the same problem as most of frugal preparedness equipment. We can’t afford the quality so we compromise and buy cheaper items. Then we have to worry about their failure. But if we try to buy all quality we end up not getting enough of the needed supplies.

   A quality pellet rifle is in the $200 to $500 range for a spring piston type. RWS-Diana is recommended. But that is more than I would spend on either a surplus bolt action thirty caliber rifle or a brand new rimfire. One solution is that if you have a good .22 just buy ammo that about matches pellet performance. If you use .22 CB longs you get very little noise, even quieter than some pellet guns. But to work the barrel needs to be 22 inches or longer. You get about an inch group at fifty yards. Unfortunately the rounds are twice the cost of .22LR. But if quiet will save your life… Or you could just build a silencer after the ATF is reduced to atomic rubble.

   The thing I dislike about the pellet guns is that ( besides the price of the gun itself ) the ammunition is less than half the cost of .22 rimfire. 1000 pellets cost $12. You can buy 1100 .22’s for twenty bucks with tax included at Wal-Mart. And the guns cost at least twice as much. I can’t see much advantage in the pellet gun except noise reduction. The range is about the same. Don’t use the .22 pellets. They are less accurate and are poorer at penetration than the .177 pellets. They are good to 40 yards compared to 65 for the .177. A rimfire .22 is good to about 100 but that usually means you need a scope. So an unscoped .22 rimfire is about as good on range as a scoped pellet gun. Something to consider if you worry about scopes breaking or failing with no replacement possible.

   If you do go with a pellet gun, and if it is a spring piston you should buy three replacement parts. A mainspring, a breech seal and a piston seal. Then your gun should last just about forever. If it is a quality gun it will last generations. Just don’t forget a repair manual. And I would think eventually, unless you have good money to really stockpile ammo, you are going to run out of pellets. I wonder if you can buy a mold? For the price, however, you could have a lot of .22 rimfire ammo. If your pellet gun cost $300 and you bought 20,000 pellets you would have spent about $550. If you bought a Marlin $99 .22 rimfire rifle ( tube fed to save on mags ) and 20,000 rounds of .22LR you would have spent fifty bucks less. Which brings us to a very good point.

   If you own a rimfire, you can kill a man easily with a hit properly placed. If you own a pellet gun you will either need to sneek up on the guy sleeping or just get really, really lucky. It will be a fluke if it happens. A rimfire will not kill them right away, so retaliation is a factor. I grant you that. But if you must defend yourself a .22LR just might do the trick whereas a pellet won’t 99 times out of a hundred. With a rimfire you can hunt below its capacity. Rodents or small game. Yes, it will destroy flesh and scare away the others unless you have a silencer. A pellet gun is suited ideally for pest control. But it will not defend you. It is like sending a .223 or a 7.62×39 to do the job of a .308 or .303 or 8mm.

   Given the high ammo cost and high gun cost I can’t recommend a pellet gun unless you are concerned past about twenty or thirty years ( or even fifty ) after your ammo starts to fail for a rimfire. The only advantages to a pellet gun are lack of noise and indestructible ammunition. But you will pay a high price for it. So what about a cheaper alternative? How about the $30 multi-pump at Wal-Mart. BB’s cost a lot less than pellets. 6,000 for about ten bucks. Not as good as a pellet and the gun is half the power. But it is one tenth the price. For pest control only, it might suffice. For small game hunting rely on your rimfire.

 

Jim

Todays Guest Article is from Jim over at Bison Survival – Enjoy!

http://bisonsurvivalblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/disposable-to-craftsmen.html

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DISPOSABLE TO CRAFTSMEN

    We live in a disposable society. Almost every tool we use. Our homes. Our transportation. Our farm land. Our relationships. Our jobs. This has mainly been the result of the Oil Age. Incredibly cheap energy made almost everything else too cheap to repair.

   Just a few short decades ago this wasn’t the case. But as Asia embraced the Oil Age, she took all of our factories, replaced the middle class tradesmen and craftsmen with legions of disposable laborers and priced us out of the market ( with the active encouragement of our corporate class ). Alvin Toffler got rich pushing the line that it was all okay, all is well, do not panic. We can all shuffle paperwork instead. To see how well that all worked out, refer to exhibit A- our financial and real estate implosion.

   If we still had oodles of oil still in the ground ready to be pumped out at almost no cost, it wouldn’t matter. The US hasn’t really had a true manufacturing economy for fifty years, we just lived off of our seed corn. It worked good for about two decades until our oil production peaked. The general trend since then has been down, masked by our Empire Legacy which allowed past accomplishments to pay the dividends that gave the illusion of prosperity. In effect, we’ve been drawing down on our principle to live well. But now, there are only a few withdrawals left before the checking account is empty and we start seeing bouncing checks.

   Now, the problem with our disposable society is not that we fill up our landfills and pollute the sky. That is bad enough, but there are more troublesome aspects. Our entire economy, our entire outlook, our means of production, all are based on disposable mentalities. In some ways that is good. It would not do to invest too much mental attachment to a home that is turning into a ghetto or soon to be twenty feet on the wrong side of high tide. The mental gymnastics necessary to uproot and move can save your sorry butt. It is seen as normal to be such gypsies, to be able to start over again. This has been the case as long as we’ve filled up the continent. But it really isn’t normal. Normal is setting down roots and fighting for your family and friends and community.

   Putting effort into improving the home and neighborhood. In other ways this is bad. Disposable relationships ( and I’m guiltier than most ) mean no stable families for children growing up. And don’t play the feminist card. I’ll wager for every abusive husband divorce allowed a women to escape from, there are ten or more ill adjusted children not helped by the need of Mom to escape a “mentally abusive” relationship.

   Rigid societies, where change was never embraced and any that did occur was over lifetimes rather than years, allowed stability and security. No, members never advanced or made things easier for themselves. But at the same time they didn’t take unnecessary risks that could have endangered their survival. It might be hard to remember that this used to be the norm, before cheap energy transformed our lives. Not that energy alone was responsible. Gunpowder itself changed most of the globe radically. But big picture, one can safely measure social change to carbon fuel use. As cheap abundant energy runs out, depopulation and a devolution back towards rigid social structures is sure to follow. If you are caught in this transformation, you are going to have to realize this sea change. You can’t fight it, but you can roll with the punches.

 

    One example of a useless fight is your home. We are still at the beginning stages of collapse. Your house is still seen as disposable. Local government won’t care how much of your life blood you’ve put into making a safe and comfortable home. They will still steal it from you and give the land to a corporation or developer if they so desire. I’m not saying you won’t lose your home to theft at other times in history. What I’m saying is that no one has a sense of permanency. Progress is still seen as a need. The whole mentality is disposable. Don’t put too much effort or treasure into your home. Look at it as a rental, and be flexible enough to move if needed. You can’t fight eminent domain, the rust-belting of a region, the approach of a ghetto, insane local property taxes, etc.

   On the other side of this coin, you need to start looking at how you are going to survive once the disposable economy is washed away. You need a craft. Not car repair, or electronics repair. An old school craft such as leather worker, barrel maker, making shoes. Weapons inventor ( not just a reloader or parts replacer but a blackpowder manufacturer or some such ). Pre-carbon fuel crafts. For a time, organic gardening will serve you well. Just keep in mind that in time farmers will go from teacher-saviors to serfs.

 

   The most vital and skilled usually end up at the lowest ladder rung after the evil buttholes are finished fighting for power. Sorry, fact of life. You might be one of the few that can craft shoes from scratch, one of the few with tools. But you might still end up as a slave. A valuable one, but still vulnerable to anothers whims. I think this is one of the few flaws about Kurt Saxon’s world view of the Apocalypse. He envisioned a nineteenth century economy. I’d say it is going to be more like pre-coal, pre-oil, pre-Civil War ( as far as slavery ). A lot from the sixteenth century with a few odd anachronisms thrown in from the pre-collapse times ( that will slowly fall apart and not be replaced, to include modern guns ).

Be prepared to discard your worldview as needed.

 

END