Category: Storage Spaces

Letter Re: Preventing Steel Food Cans from Rusting in High-Moisture Environments

Hello James and Memsahib! Greetings and prayers for you both. In the Saturday August 8th blog there was a report of damage to underground storage food, with cans rusting. When we traveled for years on our sailboat we varnished our canned goods to prevent rusting. We removed the labels, wrote the contents of the can with a permanent marker, then varnished each can. We never had a can rust with this protection. Our cans were exposed to salt air and an occasional dousing from bilge water. B.B. thought that waxing his cans would help. That may work but any contact …


Two Letters Re: Advice on Storing Precious Metals

Sir, Our prayers for you and your family continue daily. My grandfather has six 12″x12″ square wooden posts on his farm house’s front porch. Each one has held various caches for over 55 years and no one has ever been aware. It was not until 20 years ago that I was painting the posts and felt the need to replace a split board that he let me in on the secret. By the way, if a cache needed changing, it was usually done every few year as the posts were scraped, primed and painted along with the porch. For almost …


A Vault Full of Hedges: Tangibles, Tangibles, Tangibles!

My gun vault down in Jim’s Amazing Secret Bunker of Redundant Redundancy (JASBORR) is now full. It is a large vault (a Zanotti ZA-III modular six-footer) but it isn’t big enough. For more than 30 years, I’ve been accumulating barterable tangibles: guns, full capacity magazines, precious metals, optics, and knives. Each of these represents a fairly compact and liquid asset. They all have practical uses, although the coins and ingots are more of a medium of exchange rather than something intrinsically useful in and of themselves. (Oh, I suppose the silver could be melted down, cast into bullets, and put …


Letter Re: Wringers for Hand Washing Clothes

JWR: For those who are planning to wash clothes in case of power outage or loss of delivered water I have two suggestions. First is the wringer to get excess water out of washed clothes. Use an industrial mop wringer, such as the kind available through Lowe’s stores. It is made of heavy duty industrial plastic, and, of course, is dual use. Wring out your mops or your clothes. It is less expensive than a traditional roller type wringer. Second, for washing clothes in small batches you might consider a foot moved (adapted to hand crank on rollers) drum cement …


Letter Re: TEOTWAWKI, Right Next Door

Jim: Last Sunday night my family drove home to the sight of a pillar of smoke that looked like it was coming directly from where my house should be. It turned out to be the next door neighbor’s home. The blessing is that no one was home, so no one got hurt. The downside is that no one was home so everything owned was lost. I mean everything – clothes, food, water pump, furniture, bedding, cash on hand, tools, toys, games, appliances, equipment, books – everything. The Red Cross put the family in a hotel for a few days. But …


Two Letters Re: Prefabricated Garden Sheds as Instant Shelters and Storage Spaces for Retreats

JWR: Just a comment on the bit about the sheds for bug-out retreats. I have designed plans for a number of such shed sizes, as well as living quarters for larger barns. A couple things to mention, one, is that if you do a sloped shed roof on your shed instead of a peaked roof…from the air, it looks like a loafing shed for your critters, this is in case it is in a more rural farm like area, instead of timber country. Another thing, the window problem: On our barn (which we are building living quarters in right now) …


Letter Re: Prefabricated Garden Sheds as Instant Shelters and Storage Spaces for Retreats

This article is not intended to promote the Tuff Shed brand per se. Any of Tuff Shed’s products can be built from scratch. This is just one way to obtain “instant” shelter at a reasonable price. Tuff Sheds come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. For the sake of this discussion I will limit myself to the rather plain-looking Tall Ranch Tuff Shed model because, unless you happen to be short of stature, you will probably need a tall shed. In Portland, Oregon the Tall Ranch model is available in sizes ranging from 6’x6’ to 16’x24’. This idea …


Pest Prevention and Control Measures for Food Storage, by Elk H.

Something you may not have given much thought about in your planning for long term food storage is Pest Control. All the hard work, preparedness and money spent on stockpiling and storing food can be quickly ruined by pests. You need to protect your investment. As a former exterminator I have seen my share of these pests and can share my experience and knowledge of control measures. While some of these measures are just ordinary common sense, we all know that common sense isn’t all that common. A few things to consider: Most infestations come home from the store with …


The Information Junkie, by Dan H.

I’ve been working on getting prepared for about 20 years now. During that time, I’ve collected a large amount of information. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of information out there, and to this day I’m still collecting. I currently have four sets of encyclopedias (including 1947 and 1954 editions). I have a fairly good library of books that encompasses a wide variety of topics and, of course, I have lots of information from the Internet. First, I’d like to tell you why I collect it (and why you should too) and then the “what and how”. One reason why …


Letter Re: Lessons Learned by the Victim of a Home Burglary

Jim, I’m writing you today after our rural home/retreat was broken into while we were at work. I thought it would never happen to me, Oh, was I so very wrong. First things first, thank you for convincing me to purchase a safe and after reading the suggestion many times in you blog I eventually bolted it down. This is the only thing that saved me from losing the safe and all of its contents. The Sheriff told me of another burglary where the didn’t have his very large (“they can’t move it–its too heavy”) safe bolted down and they …


Letter Re: Successfully Trolling Craig’s List

Mr. Rawles, At the risk of turning on my local competition to the positive aspects of the free section of Craig’s List, I thought I would mention a few of the things I’ve picked up in the past couple of weeks. These include: A new round oak dining table and four oak chairs Three boxes of canning jars with lids A commercial fishing net (40′ x 60′), to be used for keeping birds and other critters out of the garden 36 Concrete cinder blocks (approximate value $130) Remington electric chain saw (yes, it works!) 30+ wooden pallets (can be used …


The 19th Century Home Retrofit, by Y. Cornelius

By now most SurvivalBlog readers have gone about your preparations for your ideal home or retreat cabin, all storage food and tools acquired, fuel stored, generators ready, PV panels carefully concealed and hooked up to the battery bank. You and your family or group are ready to handle the coming collapse, but are you really? Are you ready to do without? Without that generator when the fuel runs out, or a critical piece is worn out and a new one cannot be had? At some point your supplies will be used up, storage fuel consumed and there may not be …


Some Thoughts on the Survival Vehicle, by OddShot

I recently had the opportunity to read JWR’s novel “Patriots” . As a former professional automobile mechanic with 25+ years of experience and having a similar history building, restoring and racing British sports cars (MGBs), I became intrigued with a certain aspect of his book: the preparation of a “survival vehicle.” This is intended to be a vehicle rugged enough, durable enough, and simple enough to be an important part of anyone’s survival program. My first consideration was to define this vehicle. Next, I set out to list a number of modifications to this vehicle that would increase it’s simplicity, …


Burying a Shipping Container or CONEX, by Danny Papa

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Back during the first Gulf War we used excess shipping containers for underground storage and protection. Out first few attempts to make use of these containers met with disaster. Although they will support a huge amount of weight, in the range of 400,000 pounds directly on top, It must be place directly over the load-bearing corners. The sides and top are vulnerable to flexing, if they flex they can and will collapse. With all of this in mind let’s go through how to bury one the right way, so that it will be ready and usable when the time comes. …


Letter Re: The Impact of FDIC Insurance Rate Increases on Small Banks

Mr. Rawles, We live in mostly rural northeastern Oklahoma. Our local newspaper just printed an informative editorial about FDIC changes which result in huge fee increases for member bank. Here is an excerpt from the editorial Oklahoma banks paying price for bailouts: “Imagine paying $500 per year for your car insurance and then being told it had gone up to $4,000 even though you have been a perfect driver with no accidents, no moving violations. That’s the magnitude of premium increases local bankers are facing. The local banks I spoke to had no part in the sub-prime loan implosion and …