This article by Daisy Luther from The Organic Prepper is certain to be controversial among preppers because it's a counterargument against some items that many believe are crucial.
I'll throw my 2 cents in, I'm a poor boy prepper, have been since Ruby Ridge so for quite some time. As far as a gen. I don't know where the $5k came from but I'll tell you the po boy way, you can get a 12k dual fuel gen for $1200 bucks and make a suicide cable for less than $50, this is just a 240vt cable with two male ends, electric goes off you shut the main off at the pole where your electric comes in (this is vital, if you plug your gen in and that main isn't off you'll burn up your gen) plug the suicide cable to your gen and any 240 outlet in the house (dryer plug) and you're up and running. I'm using a 12k to run two houses and a shop when the electric goes down, we're conservative, no electric hot water, make coffee on the stove, but it runs the 220 well pump and my 220 air compressor that I need for work just fine. We run it on lpg and with all the tanks full have 1750 gal of that, the main reason for the gen is keeping all the freezers going and the well pump, but if the electric was gone, EMP or whatever I would start canning everything in the freezers and I have a functional windmill for potable water if things were to go really south. My gen and geiger counter are the only things I have protected with faraday. My point was you can have a gen a helluva lot cheaper than $5k
I agree about the collapsible stove I don't have one and never considered it.
I don't store water, but it's something everyone needs to consider, where's your water coming from and do you have a back up? I have my gen and well, my windmill, 5 ponds and I bought a deep well 12vt pump that's put away just in case. I probably out to get some sort of water purification system in case I was to have to use the ponds some day for drinking water. Everyone needs to really think about their water supply though.
500lbs of X, well I have over 500lbs of X also Y and Z, my reasoning is I've got a lot of family and friends that aren't prepared, I know a lot of people think "every man for himself" but I don't think that lone wolf mentality will work. If things get real bad we're going to get tribal real fast, also I consider that excess barterable material, but you can't rely on stockpiles, eventually they run out. You must be able to produce food and have some barterable skills to trade for it.
As far as the freeze dried food, that stuff is too expensive for this poor boy, if you can afford it great, but like I said, eventually it will run out, investing in some good gardening tools would be a better investment in my mind.
Liquid bleach is one of many things that I stay well stocked up on and rotated, I know it degrades over time but 50% potency after a couple of years is better than none. Like most preppers I buy things in bulk. I've never even came close to running out of toilet paper, I've always said I might resort to eating a gopher but I'll be damned if I'm going to wipe my ass with a rock.
I just glanced at that first aid list, what the hell am I gonna do with a blood pressure cuff and stethoscope? First aid is common sense sort of thing, of course you need antiseptics and bandages, but I suggest keeping one of those suture staplers around, I've used those to staple wounds, not much to it.
That's my 2 cents worth. Good luck folks, buckle up, I think we're in for a rough ride, prepare accordingly
Sorry, but as far as the 'flour/wheat berry'' thing goes, here's a tip from a 45 yr old woman who lived through the Russian depression of 91-96. "If you had flour, could bake bread, you could trade for ANYTHING as well as be armed to protect your food. To back that up, every old person I met who lived through the US's depression said the #1 skill to have was to be able to make bread. Grains are the go to food staple in every famine event.
1. I have one small generator. It'll run all day on one gallon of gas, which works great for intermittently firing up my three freezers. A whole house gen will burn gobs of gas -- which is hard to store.
2. If you're not canning your own meat you need to start. A pressure canner only costs a fraction of a freeze drier. I have shelves full of long-lasting chicken, turkey, beef, hamburger, even hotdogs in jars. You can store chili, soup, pulled pork, seafood. Side note: Walmart canned chicken is almost as cheap as canning it yourself. Other store bought canned meats are not.
I don't disagree necessarily with saying you shouldn't pour all your financial resources into one food source, but wheat, beans, and rice are a good way to stock up a lot of calories on the cheap. One thing you should do though is also stock up on lots of different spices so that you have options in how you prepare your meals. The author paints a picture that you're just going to sit down and eat rice and beans every meal. That's dumb. If you're doing it right, you should be supplementing those meals with vegetables from your garden and small game. If you say, "but I live in a big city," then your top priority should be leaving the city, not spending thousands of dollars on solar generators and mountain house MRE's.
The author makes a good point about low quality "food buckets." I bought some of those in the beginning and noticed that 30 "servings" were so called orange drink powder. It's important to find a good brand with good food, but I've found it's better to stock up on single items with a planned menu of your own.
I would like to revise and extend my remarks. A whole house generator is a big investment. However, smaller units, with a limited capacity might be needed. For example, some medicines need to be refrigerated. Some equipment needs to be operational for significant periods. Agriculturists and rural
homesteads may have a need that includes well pumps and machinery for live stock.
I agree with most of you points. My only concern is that pool-shock has other harmful chemicals in it beside bleach/chlorine. No one ever talks about those other ingredients.
Millennial Spoiler Alert: Frequent boomer terms, like "cash" are used. You can find those terms in Google Translate.
Absolutely correct on the whole home generator. Yes, you can run everything in your house. However, if the power is down for your, it's down for everyone around you, including businesses. And the digital currency scam will bring everything to stop, as well.
I always have cash on hand. At the end of the pay period, take the cash from your wallet and put it aside. Focus on the 1s, 5s and 10s at first. The reason being, your "merchant" may not be able to make change.
Do you back up your digital life on the cloud? Yeah, me neither. A backup hard drive and thumb drives in a water proof container, inside the Faraday cage. Throw in some desiccant packs you have laying around.
There are many good reasons to have a paper library. Major negatives, books are heavy, they are difficult to transport and take up a lot of space. Although most would want several books. First, last or somewhere in the middle, a Bible. Next, a road atlas. This in addition to what ever digital maps you've stored on your backup thumb/hard drive. You can "Print Screen" a lot of Google Earth data. Saving the GE images in JPG is good quality and uses less memory.
A few others include "The Survival Medicine Hand Book" and "SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition". Both can be studied in your spare time and others should read them as well. The time to learn about a sucking chest wound, is not when you're looking at a sucking chest wound, for the first time.
"Instead, I store pool shock in powdered form. You can easily mix up liquid bleach from it as you need it, it takes up far less space, and it’ll remain potent for longer." I would like to remind all, Shock comes in a plastic container. The plastic container is not going to last forever. Transfer the dry Shock into a glass jar, preferably one used to hold chemicals. Place the jar in a large plastic container.
YouTube and other streaming video sites have more information than you'll ever get through. Try this.
"How to Download YouTube Video
Google and YouTube are interested in video viewing on their website only, so they do not allow downloading the videos from the website directly. But this does not mean that it is impossible. You should just follow several simple steps to download the video from YouTube."
Another tool is "Print Friendly & PDF". It strips everything from a web page, except what you want and stores it as a PDF.
If you refuse to participate in CBDC and a digital ID, most of us will forfeit having an income. The utility companies will probably not accept gold, silver and crypto. No water! Try to find a source of water.
I'll throw my 2 cents in, I'm a poor boy prepper, have been since Ruby Ridge so for quite some time. As far as a gen. I don't know where the $5k came from but I'll tell you the po boy way, you can get a 12k dual fuel gen for $1200 bucks and make a suicide cable for less than $50, this is just a 240vt cable with two male ends, electric goes off you shut the main off at the pole where your electric comes in (this is vital, if you plug your gen in and that main isn't off you'll burn up your gen) plug the suicide cable to your gen and any 240 outlet in the house (dryer plug) and you're up and running. I'm using a 12k to run two houses and a shop when the electric goes down, we're conservative, no electric hot water, make coffee on the stove, but it runs the 220 well pump and my 220 air compressor that I need for work just fine. We run it on lpg and with all the tanks full have 1750 gal of that, the main reason for the gen is keeping all the freezers going and the well pump, but if the electric was gone, EMP or whatever I would start canning everything in the freezers and I have a functional windmill for potable water if things were to go really south. My gen and geiger counter are the only things I have protected with faraday. My point was you can have a gen a helluva lot cheaper than $5k
I agree about the collapsible stove I don't have one and never considered it.
I don't store water, but it's something everyone needs to consider, where's your water coming from and do you have a back up? I have my gen and well, my windmill, 5 ponds and I bought a deep well 12vt pump that's put away just in case. I probably out to get some sort of water purification system in case I was to have to use the ponds some day for drinking water. Everyone needs to really think about their water supply though.
500lbs of X, well I have over 500lbs of X also Y and Z, my reasoning is I've got a lot of family and friends that aren't prepared, I know a lot of people think "every man for himself" but I don't think that lone wolf mentality will work. If things get real bad we're going to get tribal real fast, also I consider that excess barterable material, but you can't rely on stockpiles, eventually they run out. You must be able to produce food and have some barterable skills to trade for it.
As far as the freeze dried food, that stuff is too expensive for this poor boy, if you can afford it great, but like I said, eventually it will run out, investing in some good gardening tools would be a better investment in my mind.
Liquid bleach is one of many things that I stay well stocked up on and rotated, I know it degrades over time but 50% potency after a couple of years is better than none. Like most preppers I buy things in bulk. I've never even came close to running out of toilet paper, I've always said I might resort to eating a gopher but I'll be damned if I'm going to wipe my ass with a rock.
I just glanced at that first aid list, what the hell am I gonna do with a blood pressure cuff and stethoscope? First aid is common sense sort of thing, of course you need antiseptics and bandages, but I suggest keeping one of those suture staplers around, I've used those to staple wounds, not much to it.
That's my 2 cents worth. Good luck folks, buckle up, I think we're in for a rough ride, prepare accordingly
Sorry, but as far as the 'flour/wheat berry'' thing goes, here's a tip from a 45 yr old woman who lived through the Russian depression of 91-96. "If you had flour, could bake bread, you could trade for ANYTHING as well as be armed to protect your food. To back that up, every old person I met who lived through the US's depression said the #1 skill to have was to be able to make bread. Grains are the go to food staple in every famine event.
"If you can afford this, more power to you."
Pun intended?
A couple things:
1. I have one small generator. It'll run all day on one gallon of gas, which works great for intermittently firing up my three freezers. A whole house gen will burn gobs of gas -- which is hard to store.
2. If you're not canning your own meat you need to start. A pressure canner only costs a fraction of a freeze drier. I have shelves full of long-lasting chicken, turkey, beef, hamburger, even hotdogs in jars. You can store chili, soup, pulled pork, seafood. Side note: Walmart canned chicken is almost as cheap as canning it yourself. Other store bought canned meats are not.
I don't disagree necessarily with saying you shouldn't pour all your financial resources into one food source, but wheat, beans, and rice are a good way to stock up a lot of calories on the cheap. One thing you should do though is also stock up on lots of different spices so that you have options in how you prepare your meals. The author paints a picture that you're just going to sit down and eat rice and beans every meal. That's dumb. If you're doing it right, you should be supplementing those meals with vegetables from your garden and small game. If you say, "but I live in a big city," then your top priority should be leaving the city, not spending thousands of dollars on solar generators and mountain house MRE's.
The author makes a good point about low quality "food buckets." I bought some of those in the beginning and noticed that 30 "servings" were so called orange drink powder. It's important to find a good brand with good food, but I've found it's better to stock up on single items with a planned menu of your own.
I would like to revise and extend my remarks. A whole house generator is a big investment. However, smaller units, with a limited capacity might be needed. For example, some medicines need to be refrigerated. Some equipment needs to be operational for significant periods. Agriculturists and rural
homesteads may have a need that includes well pumps and machinery for live stock.
I agree with most of you points. My only concern is that pool-shock has other harmful chemicals in it beside bleach/chlorine. No one ever talks about those other ingredients.
Millennial Spoiler Alert: Frequent boomer terms, like "cash" are used. You can find those terms in Google Translate.
Absolutely correct on the whole home generator. Yes, you can run everything in your house. However, if the power is down for your, it's down for everyone around you, including businesses. And the digital currency scam will bring everything to stop, as well.
I always have cash on hand. At the end of the pay period, take the cash from your wallet and put it aside. Focus on the 1s, 5s and 10s at first. The reason being, your "merchant" may not be able to make change.
Do you back up your digital life on the cloud? Yeah, me neither. A backup hard drive and thumb drives in a water proof container, inside the Faraday cage. Throw in some desiccant packs you have laying around.
There are many good reasons to have a paper library. Major negatives, books are heavy, they are difficult to transport and take up a lot of space. Although most would want several books. First, last or somewhere in the middle, a Bible. Next, a road atlas. This in addition to what ever digital maps you've stored on your backup thumb/hard drive. You can "Print Screen" a lot of Google Earth data. Saving the GE images in JPG is good quality and uses less memory.
A few others include "The Survival Medicine Hand Book" and "SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition". Both can be studied in your spare time and others should read them as well. The time to learn about a sucking chest wound, is not when you're looking at a sucking chest wound, for the first time.
"Instead, I store pool shock in powdered form. You can easily mix up liquid bleach from it as you need it, it takes up far less space, and it’ll remain potent for longer." I would like to remind all, Shock comes in a plastic container. The plastic container is not going to last forever. Transfer the dry Shock into a glass jar, preferably one used to hold chemicals. Place the jar in a large plastic container.
YouTube and other streaming video sites have more information than you'll ever get through. Try this.
"How to Download YouTube Video
Google and YouTube are interested in video viewing on their website only, so they do not allow downloading the videos from the website directly. But this does not mean that it is impossible. You should just follow several simple steps to download the video from YouTube."
Another tool is "Print Friendly & PDF". It strips everything from a web page, except what you want and stores it as a PDF.
If you refuse to participate in CBDC and a digital ID, most of us will forfeit having an income. The utility companies will probably not accept gold, silver and crypto. No water! Try to find a source of water.
Thx so very much for your advice & links, JD!