Category: Contest

Building a Garden Dome to Increase Food Security, by K.R.

The pandemic has interrupted supply chains worldwide. Combine this with rising fuel costs, government crackdowns on fertilizer use, and suspiciously frequent fires at food processing plants, and people start talking about reductions in our society’s ability to produce enough food. While it is helpful to be able to store food, real food security comes from being able to grow enough food on your own indefinitely– in all situations. In this climate, and with inflation heating up, my wife and I felt that the best tangible investment we could make was to increase our ability to grow food. We already have …


Stretching Your Dollars, by Elli O.

Inflation is high. In fact, it has reached at least a 40-year high (depending on who you listen to) and shows no sign of slowing down. Mortgage interest rates are at a 20-year high. More households than ever before are struggling to pay for groceries, medical treatment, housing, and gasoline. Since our influence on the problem of inflation is next to non-existent, then we need to focus on some simple but basic solutions to being frugal. Stretching our dollars until the next payday is our goal! My husband says that I am frugal to the point of being miserly! But …


Making Your Own Sauerkraut – Part 2, by E.P.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) My grandmother used open ceramic crocks to make sauerkraut. The problem is that they, like the Gartopf style ceramic crocks, are quite expensive compared to glass jars, so I bought several used crocks to try. It is hard to seal open crocks adequately to provide the anaerobic environment necessary to make sauerkraut without having to regularly skim off the spoilage that forms at the top of the crock. I tried using a piece of lexan sealed to the top of the crock with silicone glue, drilling a hole in the lexan to …


Making Your Own Sauerkraut – Part 1, by E.P.

I have been making sauerkraut for many years. My grandmother (my mother’s mother) was German, and used to make it many years ago. Unfortunately, she never taught me how to do it, so I had to learn how to do it on my own. Fortunately, I found a really excellent book, Making Sauerkraut and Pickled Vegetables at Home, by Klaus Kaufmann and Annelies Schoneck. This book not only explains how to do it, providing many different recipes but also explains the science behind the fermentation process. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in making sauerkraut. The basic …


Revisiting the Rule of Threes, by J.M.

If you’ve been involved in prepping for any length of time or even just done some research on the subject, you’ve probably come across some variation of the Rule of 3s. I’ve seen it expressed a lot of different ways, but the most common version goes something like this: You can survive 3 minutes without oxygen or with severe bleeding You can survive 3 hours without a stable core body temperature You can survive 3 days without water You can survive 3 weeks without food The rule makes a great starting point for planning your preparations, but I’ve found that …


Advanced Field Telephone Techniques – Part 2, by Tunnel Rabbit

Remotely Operating Transceivers Via Field Phones If one could potentially be DFed, then we should operate a transceiver remotely, and should do for this purpose at a distance of no less than 500 meters away from a base station. 500 meters was once the standard for an adequately small enough area that was considered as a good ‘fix’ on a location identified by using radio direction-finding techniques in the 1990s. It was an area size small enough for an effective artillery bombardment.  Drones can be used to pinpoint a location, yet there can be user error.  There are ways to …


Advanced Field Telephone Techniques – Part 1, by Tunnel Rabbit

The odds of survival for those attempting to defend themselves in a Mad Max kind of world, or less dangerous environment, are higher if we have a solid communications plan.  The amount of time and effort applied to establishing easy-to-use, and redundant communications is a critical investment that could pay dividends in many ways. As always, I’d rather have too much of a critically essential, rather than not enough. And surprisingly, the cost could be less than that of an HF transceiver.  I could do without an HF transceiver as those whom are closest in proximity will be far more …


Long-Term Storage of Gasoline Fuels – Part 2, by Tunnel Rabbit

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) Fuel Restoration Techniques These suggestions are appropriate as means of ‘last resort’ in an attempt improve a degraded fuel. Another advantage of storing Avgas is that we can blend it with other gasolines to bring up the octane level and to dilute the degraded automotive gas. Dilution is the solution. The combination of non-ethanol unleaded premium and Avgas 101LL can restore the depleted octane level of the automotive gasoline (Mogas) that has lost its octane rating over a one-year or much longer period of time. This blend can bring it back closer …


Long-Term Storage of Gasoline Fuels – Part 1, by Tunnel Rabbit

In this article, I will discuss Avgas, Mogas, White Gas, Fuel Restoration Tips, Fuel Storage, and some Cold Weather Tips. Introduction When it comes the various internal combustion engines, we must conserve and preserve fuels for as long as it is feasible. In the cold northern climates, keeping a chainsaw running is a serious concern. We can use ‘work around’ solutions, or methods, in other words, expediant techniques to improve and use old fuel stock, as our fuel supply will necessarily be limited in a partial or total collapse situation. We must necessarily reduce the demand and our expectations, and …


My Ten-Day Test-My-Preps Adventure – Part 4, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 3. This concludes the article) SOLAR PANELS In this section I’ll cover something I haven’t seen discussed in any of the books and articles I’ve read on solar panels so don’t skip over this next part. I hope by the end of this that some will be convinced they’re a very good idea for now as well as a post-SHTF lifestyle. They’re relatively inexpensive and easy to install with a DIY approach. With solar panels our life can proceed as usual in so many different areas which will make our transition to TEOTWAWKI simpler. Not only will …


My Ten-Day Test-My-Preps Adventure – Part 3, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 2.) Day Four It was completely overcast by 06:30. Yes! I can fully test my solar panel output. Freezer temps before the morning solar-panel electricity came on: 24°F. I can deal with that if it never gets any warmer during the test, and it didn’t. This on/off freezer method could potentially work year-round so let the SHTF when it wants. As the days get shorter and less solar power is available, seasonal temperatures also get cooler making it easier for the freezer to keep up in my unheated shop. This will be an interesting comparison test for …


My Ten-Day Test-My-Preps Adventure – Part 2, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 1.) I started a to-do list for when the test is over. It started with: Can 12 quarts or more of water. Figure out how much water the plumbing pressure tank holds from 50 psi down to 0 psi Many others, mentioned below. I went to bed that night at 21:30. In the fifteen seconds it took for me to fall asleep, a quick thought passed through my head: How nice it was to have complete darkness, able to see all the stars out of my loft window with no little lights from the television and DVD …


My Ten-Day Test-My-Preps Adventure – Part 1, by St. Funogas

With today’s world events, I’ve moved from “remote possibility” to “high probability” that we’ll soon see some major changes in our country and world that most folks can’t even imagine today. I’m not alone in thinking at some point there is a good possibility today’s events could lead into a major war for the U.S. We’ll be fighting some real armies, not a bunch of boys with old rifles riding ponies, as we did in Afghanistan. How hard would it be for enemy with Special Forces-type teams to take out our national power grid without even dropping any bombs? We …


Volunteering With RAM, by Dan D. in Arizona

A Brief Introduction In 1994 I picked up a copy of Wired magazine and there was a full-page image of Marc Thorpe showing a radio-controlled tank with a chainsaw mounted to the top. It was an advertisement for the first Robot Wars event (which then became the BattleBots television show that you are likely familiar with). I thought “I was made for this!” and then went on to compete and win a number of trophies. Not bad for a software engineer. Last year, I was browsing DVDs at a thrift shop in town and stumbled across a Remote Area Medical …


For the Want of a Horseshoe Nail, by 3AD Scout

There is a very old poem, with many variations about for the want of a nail. Basically, the poem goes like this: “For the want of a nail the shoe was lost For the want of a shoe the horse was lost For the want of the horse the rider was lost For the want of the rider the battle was lost For the want of the battle the kingdom was lost And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” On occasion, I get to teach disaster logistics and I use this poem to get students to understand the …