Category: Reader-Written Contributed Article

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 …


Emergency Prepping, Sustainability, and the Idea of Adapting in Advance, by F.J. – Part 1

“We are an exceptional model of the human race. We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves. We no longer raise our young. We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon. We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us. We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived, but when the lights are off we are helpless. We cannot move without traffic signals. We must attend classes in order to learn by rote, numbered steps …


Preserving Western Culture After TEOTWAWKI, by Professor P

Walter Miller’s sci-fi masterpiece, A Canticle for Leibowitz, envisions a nuclear apocalypse that wipes out the 20th century world, leaving the few survivors in a pretty hard core TEOTWAWKI situation. Many of the survivors blame the technological horror on human learning, rather than on human sinfulness, and band together to destroy all remnants of western culture. They burn books, and they burn the people who try to preserve them, including Isaac Leibowitz– a major “booklegger”. Leibowitz had organized a group of men into a new monastic order that smuggled books to the relative safety of their monastery, where they copied …


A National Guardsman’s Experiences During Hurricane Sandy, by FDO

I’ll give you a little background about me. I was born, raised, and am currently living in New England. I have a B.A. in History and have just begun work on my M.A. in the same field of study. This past June marked four years in the National Guard, and I received my commission as a Field Artillery officer (13A) in 2013. Currently, I serve as a Battery Fire Direction Officer and am a graduate of Field Artillery Basic Officer Leader’s Course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and the U.S. Army’s Air Assault School. I have been reading the blog for …


Something’s Coming, Are You Ready?, by B.L.

[Editors Note: It is important to note that many of the claims of this article are supposition and not fact. Remember that while conspiracy theories are often intriguing and you can bet you are not getting the whole story from standard media, Occam’s Razor is more often than not the right way to go.] Have you ever felt like something was about to happen, but you couldn’t quite explain what it is? Have you just had a suspicion or maybe uneasiness that something was about to happen? I guess you can say my old Army intelligence service, from some 41 …


Surviving Kidney Dialysis in a Down-Grid Scenario, by G.C.

The power-grid goes down two hours before you are scheduled to begin your next round of hemodialysis at a clinic thirty-five miles away. Using the Ham radio, you discover through your III Percent communications network that all power is down across the southern sector. There is little hope of it being restored in the foreseeable future. The clinic should have a back-up generator in place, so (other than an inconvenience) your treatment should go ahead as planned. You lock the place down, turn on the alarms, and then you and the wife head for the clinic. As usual, when you …


Bugging Out With Children, by T.L.

The day that we found out I was pregnant was a happy and joy-filled day. Never once did it cross our minds that a few years down the road, we would fear for the lives of our children and their futures. The world in which we live in is a scary place. The economy is always in peril, the government continues to become more unstable, and it seems we are always one step away from some catastrophic worldly event or the threat of scientific experiments gone wrong, causing a man-made apocalypse. Whatever the case may be, we live in constant …


A Few Thoughts on Water Storage, by N.P.

I’d like to discuss a few ideas about water storage and describe what I’ve decided to do in our situation. My background, since most of this is my opinion, is that I work as the chemist (meaning I manage the water treatment systems) in a large power plant, hold the highest drinking water license possible in the state where I live, and am a degreed microbiologist. I’ve dealt with various water treatment systems for awhile. I don’t claim to know everything, but I do think that I’ve learned some things, and I hope to pass along a few ideas and …


Solo Prepping, by Scott

I live alone. No, I’m not a hermit, curmudgeon, recluse, or ogre. I simply choose to live alone, and if normality as we know it dissolves, I am prepared to survive alone. As a typical working stiff, I spend the majority of the daylight hours at work. My office is 34 miles away from my home. If things suddenly take a turn for the worse while I am at work, I will have to make it back alone across those 34 miles to get home. Home is where most of my preps are stored. Home is where I am most …


Little Things WILL Become Big Things, and Food Will Be Everything!, by L.T.

When everything falls apart there are plenty of plans for “bugging out”, “bugging in”, and so forth. Whatever path you choose, things won’t return to normal soon and quite possibly never. Much has been written on beans, band aids, and bullets, but there will also be a huge demand for little things that we take for granted. Of course, there will be an even bigger demand for fresh food. Decent food is a major issue; you can’t live forever on storage foods, and most people can’t live forever in the woods. The following is information from our experiences to help …


Building Skills While Paying the Bills: Carving Time to Hone, by Scouter Dad JEB

The Greek philosopher Aristotle– teacher of Alexander the Great (a title given later in life and probably not while he was a student)– is quoted as saying, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” This statement applies in many areas in life, but perhaps it rings most true with the prepper/survivalist community. As a budding prepper/survivalist with three young children, the most valued commodity in our family is time. Hours of dedication spent skipping lunch breaks at the corporate office to stay employed, followed by the children’s after-school activities, make time for …


How to Build a Defensible Single Family Retreat, by M.S.

My parents were part of the “Back-To-The-Land” movement in the 1970’s, so I am no stranger to the principles and techniques underlying today’s prepper movement. Cutting ten cords of wood to heat our northern Minnesota home, by hand with an axe and a crosscut saw, was part of my formative years. Raising chickens; living in the deep woods, which were especially deep during the year that my father moved us to a camp in northern Ontario that could only be reached by float plane with the nearest neighbor 60 miles away and only accessible to us by snowmobile in the …


Single Mom Prepares, by M.B.

I am a single mom with a ten year old daughter, a Christian Constitutionalist, and a prepper. I grew up very poor, both physically and emotionally. However, my grandmother gave me a tremendous spiritual foundation for which I am forever grateful. Life is about making choices– choosing to put one foot in front of the next and keep going, regardless of the circumstance; choosing to prepare for whatever comes; and choosing to trust in and follow God in all ways. Establishing a Mindset to Survive The first eighteen years of my life reads like a bad dime store novel. It …


Some Notes on Remaining Humble, by Marine in Missouri

One of the many great lessons I have read over and over in this blog is that practice makes perfect. This can apply to any skill set one wishes to consider. I would like to stress the word “read” in the last sentence; reading does not equate to learning, and often in our human hubris we decide that if we think about it, we know it. I think one of the most potent sins the father of lies enjoys tempting us with is the sin of pride. Without going on a diatribe of theological concepts on pride (and I’ve heard …


Beekeeping for Long-term Self Sufficiency, by T.D.

Several years ago I was introduced to a book called Passport to Survival written by Esther Dickey. This book elaborates on how you can provide for all the essential nutritional needs for you and your family with just four basic ingredients– wheat, powdered milk, honey, and salt. As I thought about these four items, I realized that I had it within my power to provide for one of these four items without much change in my lifestyle and without an excess of effort. I live in the city, so growing more than just a few handfuls of wheat in my …