Category: Food Storage & Cooking

Still Prepping After All These Years, by Tony T.

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I have written this to encourage others that may be getting weary with the never-ending labors of preparation. I have divided this into four parts: 1. Learning from my family. 2. Adjusting to my own family. 3. Persevering through the years 4. Where we are now. Learning From My Family I’ll start by describing my father and his family. I was raised in a family that by modern standards would be considered preppers, at least by some. Prepping is not universally defined, to my knowledge. Be that as it may, I say we were preppers, but were unaware. It started …


Southern California Prepper, by M.J.

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I’ve been a longtime SurvivalBlog reader. I’m glad to say that I’ve learned a lot from reading the blog. Herewith are my two cents: I’m sick of city life. I’m sick of the endless traffic jams. I’m sick of the endless laws, rules, and political correctness. Yet I’m still here; I am not ready to move at this time. The main reason is getting more job experience. I’ve only been in the IT business for about a year and there is still much for me to learn. I’d like to learn more so that I can be more employable wherever …


Solutions to Post-Event Problems, by Old Bobbert

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Post-event situations can be surprisingly difficult to discuss. Let’s first cover more positive and productive word usage. We can all readily agree that there is nothing positive, enabling, or uplifting about the acronym WTSHTF. The Editor of this blog euphemistically uses “When the Schumer Hits The Fan”, in defining it.  But we all know what these letters really stand for, and that is often felt to be negative or low class language. Moving up in the world of solution communications, we can instead choose to say or write “Event.” Our newly adopted word (much more expressive) can convey a disaster …


Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 4, by T.R.

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(Continued from Part 3.) Later that morning/early afternoon, we sat down at the kitchen table (having brewed a pot of coffee on the spare camp stove from the basement according to our “A” plan) and talked through this. We needed a balance of water, fuel, gear/shelter, food and safety/security. Optimizing the mix of these five items (plus cash and valuables) and optimizing how to pack them efficiently with some degree of access to the right items in what order took significantly longer than either of us expected when a filter criteria of “not coming back” was inserted vs “we are …


Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 3, by T.R.

(Continued from Part 2.) Some background: I still work almost full time, but portions of the year are full throttle 60+ hour weeks and other blocks are much lighter, with my husband retired from the military. We wanted a vacation in terms of scenery and wildlife and we wanted to test our plans across a number of elements. To appropriately field test our plans with a degree of stress testing that would replicate a certain amount of tension present in real threat condition whilst isolating certain elements one at a time to calibrate parts of our plan in a systematic …


Build the Plan vs. Test the Plan – Part 2, by T.R.

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(Continued From Part 1.) During 2018, I made a dot chart counting how many days fit into each category A, B, C and D in terms of readiness and then converted the “dots” into a percentage of time for the year. As a corollary, if things are leaning environmentally towards TEOTWAWKI, then we would already be limiting our “D” types of trips away from home and/or starting to pursue our exit via our “B” plan scenario. If things look particularly grim but quasi-temporary, then we would limit our “C” scenarios to avoid leaving home for long blocks of time and …


SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt

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This weekly column features news stories and event announcements from around the American Redoubt region. (Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and Wyoming.) Much of the region is also more commonly known as The Inland Northwest. We also mention companies of interest to preppers and survivalists that are located in the Redoubt region. Today, we focus on Cougar Gold canned cheese from the Washington State University Creamery. (See the Washington section.) Region-Wide Top 10 Drives in the Northern Rockies o o o 2019’s Most Patriotic States in America. Predictable results for the Redoubt states.  Oregon and Washington surely would have …


It is Planting Time – Part 2, by L.R.

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PART 2 In Part 1, my goal was to share with you the value in raising a home vegetable garden, especially if you consider food resupply in a grid down situation. Hopefully, I encouraged you to seriously think about raising your own food and to get started with learning valuable gardening skills. I also wanted you to be realistic in meeting your gardening goals and not to expect perfection especially with your first gardening efforts. In Part 2, I’d like to share some perspective on what vegetables you may want to plant and consider options on how to preserve your …


Preparedness Lessons from the 1930s – Part 2, by J. E.

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(Continued from Part 1. This part concludes the article.) Twice a year the cabin was emptied of everything. The walls, floors, and ceilings were scrubbed with lye soap and a bristle brush. All the belongings were also cleaned before they came back into the house. This was pest control and it was needed until DDT became available. Even then, bedbugs, lice, ticks and other creepy crawlies were a fact of life and were controlled by brute force. Failure to do so left you in misery and maybe ill. Foods were stored in bug proof containers. The most popular was fifteen …


Preparedness Lessons from the 1930s – Part 1, by J. E.

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It’s one or two years after an EMP attack and you are safely tucked away in your retreat somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Your storage foods have mostly been used and your high tech electronics is useless. The really bad stuff is mostly past. Now it’s try to stay fed and alive and pray that civilization as you know it is coming back. You’re going to have to work your environment to live. Ever wonder what life might be like to Homestead? What would it really be like to have no running water, electricity, sewer, newspaper or Internet? No …


Our Path Towards Preparation, by SBC

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On our curious and sometimes convoluted path towards being prepared for TEOTWAWKI, I have sometimes impressed, often confounded and occasionally amused myself and family with our brilliance and stupidity. Here follows the outline of the story of our adventure in the hope that it will inspire or amuse or warn you and help your own journey be a bit easier and the load a bit lighter. We began our journey after Hurricane Katrina when FEMA so effectively demonstrated how inadequate the federal support system was dealing with large scale disasters. So what began as a ah-ha moment of “perhaps we …


Coping Without Fresh Meat, by S.A.

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Introductory Note: This article is not a recipe submission. It’s a feature article about how to cope without abundant fresh meat. It’s first-hand, based on a lifetime of experiences, all tried and tested over the years. I’ve divided it into three parts. Please read through to the end. Needless to say, “Your Mileage May Vary” and please eat sensibly and pay attention to calories, sufficient protein and fat and carbohydrates intake. Likewise, do not ignore adequate vitamin and mineral requirements (RDAs). I’m not a doctor, and no medical advice is implied. – S.A. PART 1 WHEN MEAT IS SCARCE Who …


Spices for Long Term Storage, by Upper Midwesterner

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This isn’t going to be just another food storage article. For excellent advice on that subject, start by exploring  the SurvivalBlog archives and the LDS web site. But there’s a related topic that I felt was worthy of discussion. It wasn’t that long ago that .22 rimfire ammo disappeared from shelves, and conversations about PMAGs in stock sounded pretty similar to claims about Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster – utterances viewed by most listeners with great skepticism. We live in a ‘just in time’-supplied world, where almost anything can quickly affect the price – or the availability – of …


Siege Stoves, by Pat Cascio

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Have you ever been out camping, hunting, or hiking, and you had a desire for a nice fresh-brewed cup of coffee, but you didn’t want to make a campfire to brew it? How about a nice warm meal, and I don’t mean taking an MRE and putting it in the heater pouch to heat it up. Yeah, me too. And, most of the time, there isn’t a need for a campfire if you want to cook something or make some fresh coffee. Consider getting a Siege Stove. Those are what I’m reviewing today. I was never a Boy Scout, but …


The Myth of Stored Food, by Pete Thorsen

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Many preppers think if they merely store food then they are done–that they have saved their family. And that might be true if they experience a natural disaster in their area which does not allow shopping for a week or so. They have their stored food and just use that during the emergency. Later–if they remember they buy replacements for the food they used–they made their family much more comfortable during that emergency by having that stored food. Plus one for the prepper family. But what about a long term nationwide disaster? What if it is a total economic collapse, …