Category: Contest

How to Make a Rope Out of Plastic Bags, by Zac T.

Here’s a little about me. I am a graduate student striving towards my Master’s in Public Health, which means I spend most of my time studying infectious diseases, what food people need during emergencies, and how to fight bioterrorism. When I am not pondering these problems, I enjoy backpacking, lifting weights, and growing bell peppers. You wander from aisle to aisle, flashlight in hand, down what used to be your local tool supply store. When the first case showed up over the mountain about three months ago, most of the stores in town were looted pretty heavily. This place is …


Taking Care of Your Feet When the SHTF, by J.C.

One January when I was a Boy Scout, my troop and I went camping in Missouri to participate in an event known as “Trappers’ Rendezvous,” an annual gathering of around 6,000 Boy Scouts to trade (almost) anything, from folding knives and rabbit pelts to books and video games. This was an experience I’m very grateful to have had, as I learned not only a lot about bartering (something every serious survivalist should learn) but also a lot about caring for my extremities in cold weather. The thing about Missouri in the winter is…it’s cold! Now that I live in Colorado, …


Slimming Down, by Dan from Alaska

No, this is not an article on weight loss, though it should be; I need to take off a bunch of pounds. It’s more about how I readjusted my lifestyle and budget after a loss of a paycheck. Both my wife and I have been working steadily since our teens, and I consider us to not be rich, per se, but in the comfortably middle class. We have been married for the past 10 years, and we both met each other at work. That is when I first heard the moniker, DINK– Dual Income No Kids. As I stated, we …


Survival To Go, by JMD – Part 2

In my checked bag, when flying, I put a small zippered case that contains: A Gerber Folding Sheath Knife, which is a good trade-off between size/weight and capability. I’ve found that most people (LEOs in particular) tend to be a lot less suspicious of folding knives than fixed-blade ones. A Boker Plus Credit Card Knife. I put this in my pocket if I’m going out for an evening and I can’t bring my EDC kit, because it’s completely unobtrusive in a front pocket. It’s not necessarily the most robust knife in the world, but it’s the same size as a …


Survival To Go, by JMD – Part 1

Many of us have invested in learning the skills, stockpiling the tools and supplies, and hiding the caches necessary to survive in the event of a major disaster that impacts our local area, but the reality is that these types of events happen around the world on a daily basis. While skills are useful anywhere and anytime, the best stores and caches are useless if you’re hundreds or even thousands of miles away when a disaster strikes in your current location! While developing my survival strategy, I realized that I had a major gap– I travel a lot on business, …


Kids Can Earn Their Keep, by T.B.

There are so many things to consider when making your plans for when we arrive at TEOTWAWKI that it seems overwhelming at times. One of my own concerns is being able to take care of my grandchildren. My wife and I have five grandchildren (soon to be six) that live close enough that we would be expecting them to join us in the event of an economic or societal collapse. Thinking about that possibility has motivated me to stock up on books, games, crafts, toys, and so forth in order to keep them entertained and maybe a little distracted while …


Ebola Unafraid: A Preliminary Ebola Treatment Protocol, by ShepherdFarmerGeek – Part 2

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PROPOSED EBOLA TREATMENT PROTOCOL Disclaimer: There are many foods and supplements with antiviral properties; some of them are common (Garlic[2]), some of them are exotic (Star Anise[3]). What I’ve tried to do with the recommendations below is focus on the most common and highly recommended. Nobody knows what will work against Ebola, so try your own favorites to see what you can tolerate when ill. None of this is “medical advice” for purposes of federal obfuscation and interference. Consult your doctor, who will have no idea what to do. The information below is not exhaustive; it is not authoritative; and …


Ebola Unafraid: A Preliminary Ebola Treatment Protocol, by ShepherdFarmerGeek – Part 1

In a few days my former-Navy-nurse daughter will fly out to help stand up a brand new 100-bed treatment facility for the International Rescue Committee in Liberia. Ebola is not a theoretical threat anymore. Now it’s personal. My daughter has always loved being in the thick of things and has been fascinated with Ebola since childhood. Now, in just a matter of days, she will walk into a room filled with sick and dying Ebola patients, and all her training, grit, and compassion will be tested. She will eventually come home on a rotation and be under medical isolation here, …


Meat Prices Soar While Deer Populations Explode, by KAW

This headline could sum up a multitude of news reports over the last few years. Droughts and severe winters have left the United States beef herd size at a 63-year low. In response, beef prices have increased steadily with hamburger topping $4 a pound this year. Pork prices have jumped due to porcine epidemic diarrhea that has killed millions of baby pigs. Inflation, a growing human population, and a higher demand for meat in emerging economies also contribute to ever-increasing meat prices. Ironically, America’s deer herd has exploded in the last 30 years. The deer population in North America when the Europeans …


Relocating To A Safer Place, While The Opportunity Still Exists, by MWA

For many reasons, my wife and I, along with our four children, left behind the city life in Florida two years ago. Crime, ranging from home invasions and break-ins to vehicle vandalism and car-jackings, which had spilled outward from the inner city into the suburbs where we owned a home, was increasingly being caught in the crosshairs of criminals. Mobs of rioting teenagers were occurring on the weekends at the local malls. If you were a female, alone, it was not safe to go grocery shopping at night. Locally, the public high schools, where our children were planning to attend …


Identifying and Protecting Yourself and Your Family Against Hazardous Chemical Materials Incidents, by a Marine in Missouri – Part 2

There are many different levels of protection out there. Military gear is specifically designed for CWAs. There are three general levels of protective equipment– level A, level B, and level C. Military gear is somewhere in between level B and C because it is designed for specific chemicals. Level A gear is fully encapsulated, typically a chemical-resistant plastic suit with a Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) or provided air through a pressurized air system and a hose. This provides both splash and total vapor protection. However, the downfalls to this nearly complete protection are: It is cumbersome to wear, Depending …


Identifying and Protecting Yourself and Your Family Against Hazardous Chemical Material Incidents, by a Marine in Missouri – Part 1

We live in a society that depends on hazardous materials to create the technological wonders and comforts we expect for everyday life. Whether you take your kids to a swimming pool or drink any sort of city water, you knowingly or unknowingly depend on large amounts of chlorine to ensure the water is safe. Anywhere there is a mechanic shop there are chemicals required to lubricate, clean, and repair materials; some of those chemicals are potentially dangerous or deadly. As you drive down the highway you see thousands of semi-trucks carting loads of materials that could be more deadly than …


Survival is Attractive, by L.M.

As a young, single female, I guess I’m probably the furthest in most eyes from the typical profile of a self-sustaining person who prepares for anything. I am a 26 year old regular girl with no military family or background. I never really liked camping or the outdoors, and I don’t even live in an overly remote or homestead-type community. I grew up just like most every other girl– cheering, having sleep-overs, and generally being as naïve as most girls are, unfortunately. I’m not unusually strong or unique; I’m just a girly girl. I’ve always shopped and been focused on …


Five Things You Need To Do To Be Prepared To Defend Yourself, Family, and Home, by E.W.

Buy weapons, not just guns. You’ve heard the expression “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. This applies to the realm of tools for defending yourself, your family, home, and neighborhood. Put simply, you need to buy weapons and not just guns. Then, you need to know how to use them. Simply purchasing a battle carbine or several different firearms and a bunch of ammunition is not a complete approach to the solution of personal defense. It may be a good start, but there’s more to this whole thing. One way to think of this is geographically. Battle conditions …


Emergency Prepping, Sustainability, and the Idea of Adapting in Advance, by F.J. – Part 2

Prepping is a great cultural example of the observations that led bio-cultural anthropologists to a hypothesis that suggests human brains are hardwired to use past experience and present observations to make projections of hypothetical future scenarios following a basic “if–then” logical model. Those practices, which are inherent in all of us, form the basis of storytelling— an art form that humans alone have the capacity to practice. They say it’s an evolutionary trait we adapted to guide our decision making, since the days of our primitive ancestors, through all those stages of change that hadn’t happened yet, or were only …