Category: Food Storage & Cooking

From Zero to Prepared in Five Years, by Jon the Marine

At the young age of 17 and a half after having completed High School earlier than most of my peers and with parental consent, I joined the United States Marine Corps. The date was June of 1999. The next four years of my life would be interesting, exciting, dangerous, and eye opening. Quickly making me leave the naive boyhood I had then, and realizing what a dark place most of the world really is. At the end of my four year commitment, I returned home from a year deployment in Afghanistan, and chose to discharge honourably once my contract was …


Three Letters Re: Four Great Preparedness Myths

Dear Mr. Rawles, I read with a great deal of interest Dan B.’s piece on the Four Great Preparedness Myths, and although I have to agree with points 3 and 4, I have to take issue with the first two in his list. He says that “no one who has actually tried to defend themselves against a large group of determined assailants actually thinks it can be done”. Yes, no one person can defend themselves against a horde of attackers very long. But a group of ten or more, if they prepare themselves mentally, logistically and above all spiritually, can …


Pregnancy and Nutrition in Hard Times, E.C. in Alabama

As a mother of a toddler with one on the way, and a former medical student and “birth junkie,” I’m very interested in the plight of the pregnant woman and newborn child in Third World nations (i.e. women with no access to higher-level medical attention) and in TEOTWAWKI scenarios.  Pregnancy is a vulnerable time in a woman’s life, and her nutrition is paramount. Of course, quitting any noxious habits, like smoking, drinking, and drugs of addiction, is crucial. Beyond that, good nutrition is the best prenatal care mother and child can get. The modern pharmaceutical industry would have you believe …


Five Letters Re: Four Great Preparedness Myths

Jim, I enjoyed the letter by Dan B. on preparedness myths. I couldn’t agree more with his opinions and in particular with Myth #1 “You can defend yourself against the horde” I have no combat experience but I am a student of Sun Tzu’s military treatise “The Art of War” The principals and logic therein demonstrate that a wise prepper will be as prepared as possible to defend oneself but will use all means available of avoiding the direct conflict with so vast a number of enemies (other than surrender of course) One would employ deception, concealment, positioning etc. I …


Four Great Preparedness Myths, by Dan B.

I subscribe to the RSS feeds of a number of blogs about survival, including Rawles’ (top of the line!), and I subscribe to numerous firearms-related blogs and message boards. I also periodically meet people who are interested in survival issues in my non-electronic life. All preppers are trying to prepare for a particular situation, and their preparations reflect their beliefs about what that situation will be like. Unfortunately, many of those beliefs are false, and those false beliefs seem to be brought about by four myths, which I thought I would describe. The strange thing about these myths is that …


Letter Re: The Basics of Starting to Prepare

Long term survival means you need a three part system. You need (1) Water, (2) Food, and (3) Security. most people only prep for two of the three or one of the three. I know too many “preppers” that say “all that I need is my AR-15 and a ton of ammo”, but the issue with that is obvious. you will have to turn into a bad guy and steal or kill for the other two. I also know guys who say ” will hoard a 90-day supply of food and water, and my neighbors will help me keep my …


Letter Re: The Importance of Food Storage

Dear Friends, Most of you are preparing, Great. Some of you are thinking of preparing, but find it hard to believe tough times could happen in the near future as this never happened before in our life. We all have insurance for our homes and/or automobiles that we pay for in premiums year after year, after year. Please think of food storage as insurance. Come what may, be it disruptions in “just in time” inventory at the local food chain, civil strife, or inflation. Food storage will pay great dividends for you and your family. Please read the following and …


Survival Rations and Food Security, by J.I.R.

I think we can all agree that a deep larder is good insurance for bad times. There is some variation on how we approach this topic, but we probably all have a lot in common. I would like to present my approach to food storage to give your readers (perhaps) a new perspective. Some of them may have inadequate plans for feeding their families. First, I have to admit that I am probably not as well prepared as a lot of readers and that my preparations could easily be improved if I were less lazy or worried more. I don’t …


Letter Re: Thoughts on Practical Self-Sufficiency

Hello Jim: For supper tonight we are having a meal made with ingredients that I gathered from our place, with the exception of the meat which was purchased. I put a smoked ham hock in the crock pot over night. I also soaked some leather breeches (dried green beans) and some horticultural beans over night. These were added to the crock pot this morning along with a couple of hands full of ramps that I had dug yesterday and a couple of hands full of dandelion greens that Abigail had picked last week. Lastly some red potatoes from our garden …


Letter Re: The UAE’s Planned Three Month Food Stockpile

Jim, In response to the recently-linked article about the UAE’s planned food stockpile: Having worked in Dubai and Abu Dhabi off and on for the last five years I can tell you that during the best of times the food supply is iffy at best. When you go to the market you might get one item one day and not see it again for a year. And I am not talking about seasonal or exotic items — trying to get the same type of flour twice in a row is a task in and of itself. And try to tell …


Practical Steps to Preparing a Family for TEOTWAWKI, by Mitch D.

Author’s Background I live in Northeastern Minnesota with my wife and four children ages: four to seven.  I teach and am a sports coach at the local high school in town (population 1,200).  We live two hours away from any type of big city, which in our case is Duluth, Minnesota (population 85,000).  My wife is a stay-at-home mom.  Three years ago, we built a new house four miles outside of town on 15 acres that my parents gave us.  Combined, we make just over $56,000 a year.  In just this past year, my wife and I have started making …


Two Letters Re: Constructing a Permanent Underground Cache

I want to thank JIR for his article and the efforts he went through showing us how to construct and supply underground caches. I just wanted to suggest an alternative to the custom made containers by using a 300 gallon spherical below ground septic tank. They are made of watertight plastic with a o-ring sealed lid and weigh around 110 pounds. (See the Tank Depot web site.) The rough size of the tank is 54″ in diameter and 51 inches tall with a 20 inch manhole cover. You would also only dig 118 cubic feet for a 5 foot diameter …


Constructing a Permanent Underground Cache, by JIR

If you are concerned about hiding a large amount of goods from looters, neighbors or other busybodies, remember that no indoor hiding place is likely to survive a determined search. If your home is the only place you have food and provisions, you may be forced to fight against very long odds to try to keep it. If you are forced to abandon your home in the middle of the night or burned out by looters, you might appreciate having a store of food and other gear in a safe, undetectable location where you can recover it. You might want …


A Practical, Full Spectrum Suburban Survival Plan, by JIR

Survival planning can be overwhelming and a lot of the advice you get is not practical or compatible with our lifestyles. A lot of us choose, or are forced to live in the crowded East Coast far too close to cities to survive TEOTWAWKI. I dare say, a lot of SurvivalBlog readers live in suburbs just outside medium to large population centers. Many of us have jobs that don’t migrate to small towns and would face a substantial loss of income if we moved away from our livelihoods. Some of us like our current lives and feel that hunkering down …


The Broke Survivalist, A Learning Experience, by Vaerity

I’m hoping that by sharing my experience, I can provide information that can help others in similar situations. When uninformed people think of a “survivalist”, I am most definitely not what comes to mind. I’m a twenty-four year old female, who wears makeup, has several pairs of comfortable (thrift store) designer jeans and a Creative Writing education from Johns Hopkins University. I have four cats, and live in a tiny inexpensive apartment in North Carolina. However, little do they know, my education hasn’t simply been gained from traditional schooling. About two years ago, I found that it was getting much …