Category: Retreat Logistics

Winter Survival- Part 3, by R.C.

In Your Home In the first two parts of this series, we talked about how to survive on foot and in your vehicle in winter weather conditions. In this third part, we will discuss some plans to survive in your home during a cold weather event. The two worst fears for many of people who read this blog is that “the event” happpens in the winter and the grid goes down. The easy answer would be, I’ll get in my car, use mass transit, or fly somewhere that’s warm. During this past storm, we saw the shut down of all …


Pat Cascio’s Product Review: Beyond Locks – Door Security

For much of my life I’ve been involved in law enforcement, security, K-9 security, private investigations, and security consulting in one form or another. It’s been a fairly diverse and exciting career, to be sure. I’m hardly ever bored on most days. I still do some security consulting these days and training, mainly in the firearms field, as time permits. For a guy who is supposed to be at the very least semi-retired, I find myself busier than I care to be most days. I don’t know what happened to my retirement dreams of hunting, fishing, and sitting on the …


Making a “Last Run” When the SHTF- Part 1, by GMJ

The last-minute grocery and emergency supply shopping run is part of prepper mythology. Whether or not it makes sense to do a “last run” shopping trip is very controversial in the prepper community and has both positive and negative aspects. Whether or not to do so requires considerable forethought and mental preparation. I know some preppers are horrified by the idea of intentionally utilizing a last run to top-off or expand supplies. It’s great to be able to hunker down with a mug of hot buttered rum in front of the fireplace and watch the snow come down or snuggle …


Letter Re: How To Title Retreat Property, An Overlooked Item in Your Planning, by John in the Ozarks

HJL John in the O is right on. It is important to make it hard to track you down. He talks about insurance in a figurative sense. My day job is independent insurance agent. In the literal sense it is important in insurance for names to match. Not named? Then there’s no coverage. Find an agent that preps, confide in that agent, and get the coverage right. No one ever comes to me looking for one of my clients, particularly lawyers. Even if the insurance company is not paying attention to details, handling a check with the wrong name on …


How To Title Retreat Property, An Overlooked Item in Your Planning, by John in the Ozarks

I have spent the last eight years building and stocking my full-time retreat. Our family has had a terrific timing putting this together. One thing has happened beyond our control. The area we are located in has grown substantially. Our population has increased substantially, and we have also been slotted to receive Syrian refugees. I have come to the realization that It is simply going to be too hard to depend on this location as my only retreat. So after due diligence and the help of Survival Realty, I have purchased a secondary retreat in a totally different region of …


Change Your Clocks and Change Your Batteries, Water, Et Cetera, by R.C.

This time of year we must change our clocks, fall back or spring forward. As a retired firefighter and EMT, I take this seriously. If your smoke detectors are over 10 years old, please change the unit. This twice a year rotation also offers us a chance to rotate other items we have stored in our preps. It is important to have someone verify that you have rotated your stocks, like a group check off or a family weekend project. Fuel First is the gasoline. Every six months you can dump the 5-gallon containers into your truck. Luckily, I had …


Our Family’s Journey to Preparing For an Extended Grid Down Event- Part 1, by Old Man

To paraphrase an old saying, prepping is not a destination but a journey, or rather it’s a lifestyle. In this article I would like to share some highlights of our family’s journey to preparing for an extended grid down event, including what we found works and didn’t work for us. Hopefully, this might help some folks avoid the mistakes we made and stir some ideas for others. When I was a youngster, I joined the Boy Scouts. It was there that I was first bit by the prepping bug. I took to the Boy Scouts motto of “Be Prepared” like …


Internet Auction Sites for Preppers, by B.F.

I suspect most of us who are interested in self-reliance are preparing on a budget. While it would be great to order a year’s worth of food at a time, and rotate them by donating them to the local food bank, that is just not practical for most of us. Likewise with equipment, tools and other survival needs. It would be easy to just go to Amazon and order whatever we want, but I for one will need to wait until I win the lottery first. The Internet is full of places you can buy supplies, tools, food and anything …


Letter Re: The Harsh Truth About Bugging Out of Cities

Mr. Editor: Regarding the recent discussion of the “Golden Horde” concept (in Patrice Lewis’s guest article The Harsh Truth About Bugging Out of Cities) — it seems that a review of the history of Germany’s 30 Years’ War (from 1618 to 1648) would be in order. You may recall how Wallenstein rejected the idea of a 40,000-man army, demanding 100,000. Austria protested that such a large army would be too expensive. The reply was, that the larger army would finance itself [through what was euphemistically called “foraging”, on a tactical scale, and “plunder” on a strategic scale], while the smaller …


Letter: A Filing Methods For Digital Libraries

Dear Editor: This e-mail is offered as an addition to other discussions in SurvivalBlog of this subject, such as, Preserving a Digital Library. Having messed around with computers since the early 1970s and, having lived through multiple computers on multiple versions of operating systems, I settled on a simple filing system for digital content that I save. As an engineer, I love to invent things but I don’t like reinventing wheels when there are so many about that can be used for my purposes. My filing system is exactly that – a re-purposing of an existing filing system invented in …


The Harsh Truth About Bugging Out of Cities, by Patrice Lewis

A common concern among rural people in a grid-down situation is the concept of marauding urbanites swarming through the countryside looting and pillaging — the so-called Golden Horde. I addressed this issue on my blog a few months ago when a reader noted, “You can hide yourself, but not your garden. Are you going to take your beef herd into your house with you? In any long-term crisis situation, your cattle and garden will be indefensible and therefore gone in a matter of months. You cannot protect them from a determined large, armed group.” This reader respectfully listed what he …


A Budget Disaster Response Kit, by R.S.

Opinions regarding civilian possession and use of firearms within our nation vary widely. Many citizens (including most preppers) consider them to be a vital component of personal security while others view them as a scourge upon our country producing thousands of deaths every year. However, among those in the latter camp (at least among my acquaintances) I have noticed a number who have begun to view firearms as a necessary evil in the face of increasing lawlessness and savagery. They still do not like the idea of possessing firearms but have become convinced they must do so as a form …


Reality Checks for a Grid Down Scenario, By Blueleader

I sometimes hear misguided individuals who repeat the statement going around that if the grid goes down we will be thrown back to the days before electricity: The 1880s. The prevalent thought is that folks back then did fine so it wouldn’t be so bad for us to simply revert to that level of technology. Well, what if we examine your day in a post grid failure scenario? Here is a reality check for you to consider: Let us say you get up ‘the day after’ and you’re cold. Bummer. Well, in the 1880s if you got up and you …


Letter: Using What Others Throw Away

Dear SurvivalBlog Editors and Readers,The last few days have shown me the wastefulness of others but have given me opportunities to gain from it. I now have apples, corn, and pork sausage that I didn’t plan on getting. Here is what happened: My own apple tree only produced seven apples, because the blossoms were destroyed during a storm. But a friend has a tree in her yard, but didn’t want the apples. She offered them to me. I picked ten five-gallon buckets full of apples. I am now canning applesauce and pie filling. My neighbors chopped silage, which leaves a …


The Aging Prepper, by R.H.

If you are reading this article, then you are aging. Obviously, the only way to escape aging is to pass on to the “other world”. So assuming that you are not reading this while comfortably seated in a recliner in the Happy Hunting Ground, let us have a discussion of aging and how it relates to the activity of prepping. First, aging usually brings forth some diminished mental and physical abilities. Those past the age of say forty have probably noticed changes in eyesight and perhaps lessened strength and endurance. Balance and reflexes are probably not as keen as they …