Category: Contest

A DIY Solar Water Heater – Part 1, by St. Funogas

If you had to list ten things that would be most missed in a post-TEOTWAWKI world, opening a tap and having free-flowing hot water whenever you want it would have to be near the top of the list for a lot of us. In this article I’ll present an inexpensive solar water heater (SWH) which has gotta be the most efficient for the cost. I use this on my homestead almost six months of the year and in a non-freeze situation such as a greenhouse, this could be used year-round. Even with minimal skills and hand tools, you can build …


Life Without Modern Transportation, by C.J.

We can be almost anywhere on earth within 24 hours using the various forms of modern transportation. Automobiles have greatly increased the amount of area we can cover in our daily lives, but what happens if we can’t use our vehicles anymore? The average human being can walk around 3 mph and can cover about 20 to 30 miles in a day. This of course varies by an individual’s fitness level and many other factors such as the terrain’s roughness/steepness, the weather, and the amount of load carried. Just think of it this way: it will take 2 to 3 …


Mosquito Protection and a Headlamp, by The Novice

It is said that even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then. In this second installment of the Blind Squirrel series, I would like to pass along some nutty discoveries for your amusement and edification. Mosquito Protection The area where I live is quite swampy. At certain times of the year, being outside without some sort of protection is almost unbearable. Whenever possible, I like to avoid the use of insect repellent. It feels sticky, smells stinky, and I don’t like the idea of absorbing chemicals through my skin. Fortunately, there are some other tools available that …


Your AR-15 For Hunting Deer, by Behind The Counter

Even a casual reader of SurvivalBlog over the last several years has seen a number of excellent articles on deer hunting. While deer can be a valuable supplement to food storage in more or less normal times, most of these articles have made commonsense arguments that it would be a serious mistake to plan on venison as a staple in a true TEOTWAWKI event. There are some rural parts of the Redoubt where deer may continue to be abundant at least for some time, but in the more populous Midwestern farming states, along the East Coast, and in the South, …


Shooting Drills for WTSHTF – Part 2 , by T.Z.

(Continued from Part1. This concludes the article.) Intermediate Shooting Drills Once you are accurate and consistent with static supported positions, start practicing static unsupported positions. The prone, kneeling and standing unsupported positions do not have a sandbag or table to support them (hence, unsupported positions), so you must create a stable platform with your body position in order to maintain a clear sight picture. Creating a stable platform in the prone unsupported position is executed by placing your elbows on the ground and driving the buttstock into your shoulder. Your shooting hand should be lightly gripping the handle of the …


Shooting Drills for WTSHTF – Part 1, by T.Z.

Shooting requires constant, realistic practice to hone and maintain your skills with a weapon. This is especially true when preparing for the possibility of human beings attacking you or your family. Many people shoot for target practice or hunting, but they do not train for hostile encounters. Training with firearms for prepping must be intentional and planned, not merely a recreational activity. In this article I will show how to train for hostile encounters, including drills you can do with or without ammunition. Given the enormous breadth of this subject, I will be limiting the scope of this article to …


Combating Sheep Flock Parasites – Part 2, by Mike V.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) The test is performed with the freshest stool you can get. You can corral the animal, get your gloves on and get in the rectum to get some pellets out, or any number of less stressful ways to get your sample. I just walk into the field and walk behind the sheep or lamb I want a sample from. They routinely walk away and I follow them until they get a little antsy and they will give you what you need in short order. You are not trying to spook them, just …


Combating Sheep Flock Parasites – Part 1, by Mike V.

My mother went back to school to be a social worker, and she did a project which was quite interesting. She taped (remember cassette tapes?) one of our dinner conversations and then played it back to us when her project was over. I do not remember what her point was but I do remember that three planes flew over the house and two trains went by and none of us skipped a beat with the conversation. We lived in the flight path of one of the largest airports in the world and the train tracks were right next door. I …


Becoming a Hunter – Part 3, by Remington Smith

(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.) Early in the season, in this same spot, I learned that I was truly a hunter. It was not when I took my deer because I took him from another place on our land. Instead, it was when I passed up an immature buck. That spike I mentioned earlier gave me multiple opportunities to shoot. I never did. Knowing that I had the discipline to stick with what I had deemed a mature animal gave me the confidence to continue hunting the big bucks. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, …


Becoming a Hunter – Part 2, by Remington Smith

(Continued from Part 1.) Becoming a true marksman does not come overnight. It comes over many trips to the range. I was blessed to be going into my first season of hunting already knowing of what I was capable. I had nothing to prove regarding my shooting. I have been involved in one of the Olympic pistol disciplines for seven years. Through competitive shooting I have learned many, many valuable lessons. Some of these regard shooting under stress. Others involve simply the basics of shooting taken to a competitive level. Aside from competition, my dad and I regularly shoot a …


Becoming a Hunter – Part 1, by Remington Smith

The mention of hunting will most likely bring two responses. The first of the non-hunter, sometimes anti-hunter, and that is of disgust. The other is of the hunter himself. It is one who smiles widely and tells a couple of hunting stories, however true they may be. When I was young and growing up my response would have been the first. That is not entirely my fault because most of the so-called hunters in my area think nothing of killing an immature animal, or worse yet, not being a marksman and wounding the animal. For me, wounding an animal and …


Bitcoin for Preppers, by S.C.

“Oh no, not someone else talking about Bitcoin!” That is what you’re probably thinking right now. I know Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been a hot topic of late. And there are more than enough “wanna-be” experts out there. When looking through SurvivalBlog.com, I realized that it’s been quite a while since there was a dedicated piece on cryptocurrencies. Since the technology (and the economy) is changing so rapidly, I wanted to do a primer on Bitcoin for Preppers. I’ll include Use Cases and some How-To. In this article, I’m going to make the case for Bitcoin, not as an …


Winning The War On Weeds – Part 2, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) Most of your weeds will be annuals which must grow from seed each year and tend to be easy to deal with. My handful of “good weeds” grow large, are easy to pull up even when mature, and remain supple without getting too fibrous or woody making them excellent composting plants. An example is the perilla seen in Photo 5. This is my best composting weed so I let them get large (36”) as long as they’re not obstructing any crop plants. Others in this same category are most of the tender …


Winning The War On Weeds – Part 1, by St. Funogas

We see it all the time: photos of blue-ribbon gardens with beautiful flowers and mouth-watering tomatoes, beans and squash. Everything is neat and tidy, well groomed, and not a weed in sight. People get all excited, visions of seed-catalog covers dancing in their heads, and decide they just have to start a garden so they too can have some of that fresh produce and flowers. A month later their garden more closely resembles an advertisement for Round-Up than anything they may have seen on the cover of Organic Gardening. How, oh how, do we make our gardens look like the …


My Many Fast Failures – Part 2, by M.P.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) A couple of months ago another hen went broody, and I decided to take advantage of this to have her hatch a clutch of eggs all from these hens and rooster. Her first clutch was eight eggs. I moved her and the eggs into a temporary nest, made from a cardboard box, in the cage I had used before to separate her from the flock a bit and protect her eggs from the other hens who might try to lay in that box. She was not happy about the move and repeatedly …