Notes for Friday – October 17, 2014

Today, we present another entry for Round 55 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The $12,000+ worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate, good for any one, two, or three course (a $1,195 value),
  2. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  3. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper with a hammer forged, chromlined barrel and a hardcase to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR type rifle to have quick change barrel which can be assembled in less then 1 minute without the use of any tools and a compact carry capability in a hard case or 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  4. Gun Mag Warehouseis providing 30 DMPS AR-15 .223/5.56 30 Round Gray Mil Spec w/ Magpul Follower Magazines (a value of $448.95) and a Gun Mag Warehouse T-Shirt. An equivalent prize will be awarded for residents in states with magazine restrictions.
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $300 gift certificate from CJL Enterprize, for any of their military surplus gear,
  7. A 9-Tray Excalibur Food Dehydrator from Safecastle.com (a $300 value),
  8. A $300 gift certificate from Freeze Dry Guy,
  9. A $250 gift certificate from Sunflower Ammo,
  10. KellyKettleUSA.com is donating both an AquaBrick water filtration kit and a Stainless Medium Scout Kelly Kettle Complete Kit with a combined retail value of $304,
  11. TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $300 gift certificate.
  12. Two cases of meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value),

Second Prize:

  1. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  2. A FloJak EarthStraw “Code Red” 100-foot well pump system (a $500 value), courtesy of FloJak.com,
  3. Acorn Supplies is donating a Deluxe Food Storage Survival Kit with a retail value of $350,
  4. The Ark Instituteis donating a non-GMO, non-hybrid vegetable seed package–enough for two families of four, seed storage materials, a CD-ROM of Geri Guidetti’s book “Build Your Ark! How to Prepare for Self Reliance in Uncertain Times”, and two bottles of Potassium Iodate– a $325 retail value,
  5. $300 worth of ammo from Patriot Firearms and Munitions. (They also offer a 10% discount for all SurvivalBlog readers with coupon code SVB10P),
  6. A $250 gift card from Emergency Essentials,
  7. Twenty Five books, of the winners choice, of any books published by PrepperPress.com (a $270 value),
  8. TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $150 gift certificate,
  9. Organized Prepper is providing a $500 gift certificate, and
  10. RepackBoxis providing a $300 gift certificate to their site.

Third Prize:

  1. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  2. A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
  3. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  4. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security,
  5. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances,
  6. Ambra Le Roy Medical Products in North Carolina is donating a bundle of their traditional wound care and first aid supplies, with a value of $208, and
  7. APEX Gun Parts is donating a $250 purchase credit, and
  8. SurvivalBased.com is donating a $500 gift certificate to their store.
  9. Montie Gearis donating a Y-Shot Slingshot and a Locking Rifle Rack. (a $379 value).

Round 55 ends on November 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

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 and memorized them, but these bookleggers are a small, persecuted minority. So, predictably, the book hating majority, who proudly call themselves “Simpletons,” lock their progeny into a centuries-long dark age.

Imagine yourself as a booklegger. Imagine you wish to preserve the best of our culture, after a horrific event devastates our world. If you wait until after such an event, you won’t have much of a choice about which books to save; you’ll have to save what you have or what you can find. Now imagine you wish to prepare to preserve the greatest books of western culture. What should you start with?

There are some apparently easy answers to that question. First, you might want to start by downloading a ton of books onto some kind of electronic device. That’s a great idea. Do that. However, I’d prefer to have some paper copies around, just in case the Kindle quits working.

So here’s another easy answer: you could just buy a set of the “Great Books of the Western World,” and consider yourself sorted. However, for a couple of reasons, that’s actually not the best approach. First, sets like this include an awful lot of chaff. Do you really need a volume of Hegel’s writings or Freud’s? Do those books really belong on a list of must saves? I’m skeptical. Second, and more important, all that chaff comes along with a lot of wheat. Put together, they fill up 60 volumes. That’s 60 large, heavy, volumes. I am assuming that we want a somewhat more compact collection of books. We want to find the best, we want to leave out the not-best, and we want it all to be fairly mobile. It won’t fit in your pocket, but fitting into one box would be nice.

So let me make my question a little tougher to answer. The question was: what should you start with? Let’s say you can stash 15 books in one smallish box. So what about those 15 books?

When you narrow things down like this, I think you’ll find an interesting phenomenon. When you must pare things down to the absolute essentials, five books will jump out as non-negotiables. After those first five, we’ll find ourselves hip deep in controversy, and nobody out there will agree with all of my other choices. However, the first five are virtually incontrovertible.

The Bible. There is nothing more to say about this one.

Then, include Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. This is a cheat, because these are two books, but they can be found bound together in one volume. Get one. It’ll be big, and it belongs in your box. Homer’s great works were probably written seven or eight hundred years before Christ, and they lay at the heart of Greek culture for centuries.

Plato’s Complete Works. This is another big, fat volume. Plato lived from 427-347 BC. He was a follower of Socrates, and when I say “follower,” I mean that literally. He followed Socrates around and listened to him. Socrates was not a teacher in the ordinary sense, and so had no students. However, many young men, including Plato, liked to hear him argue with the leaders of the day. After Socrates’s execution, however, Plato did settle down. He began a school called the Academy, whose most famous alumnus was Aristotle. It has been said that all of western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato. Even if that’s a bit of an exaggeration, Plato’s thought is fundamental to western culture. Get this book.

Dante’s Divine Comedy. This was written early in the 14th century AD. It is historically significant for many reasons; among them, the fact that it was one of the first important works published in an Italian dialect, but that’s not why the book belongs on this list. It belongs here for its beauty, (you must find a good translation—try Allen Mandelbaum’s), as well as for the way it provides a poetic summation of the Christian vision. Dante is often said to have reproduced St. Thomas Aquinas’s theological treatise Summa Theologiae in verse. Whether that’s correct or not, this poem belongs in the box.

Shakespeare’s Complete Works. This is yet another big, fat volume. It’s impossible to pretend you have a grip on western culture, without having seen Hamlet, Othello,*****check name to see if “and company” is part of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” name or not. I don’t recall that being the case, but I want to be correct here. I think he’s using “company” to refer to the remaining Shakespearean works within the volume.**** A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and company.

As I said, those first few books seem non-negotiable. The remainder of this list will be much more controversial. That’s fine, of course; you should argue and object, and then fill up your box as seems best to you. However, at the very least, the remainder of the books I mention here are very much worth considering, and they’ll go in my box.

Plutarch’s Lives Again. The complete set will be a fairly large volume, but it’s worth it. Plutarch wrote his series of parallel lives late in the first century AD. When it comes to getting a basic grip on the ancient world, there’s nothing else like them. Actually, there’s one thing like them, in my view: Shakespeare’s historical plays. If you put the two together, you can develop a fairly thorough picture of the history of the ancient world. It’s true that both the lives and the plays are kind of hit-or-miss in terms of exact historical accuracy, but that’s fine. As Jimmy Stewart put it, when legend becomes fact, print the legend.

The Rule of St. Benedict. Now here’s a slim volume for once! Perhaps you can get a copy bound together with The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict, by Pope St. Gregory the Great. St. Benedict wrote his Rule early in the 6th century. The Rule stands at the head of the European civilization of the middle ages, establishing the rules for the monasteries that preserved the best of ancient civilizations after that culture collapsed under its own weight. A humane document with much to teach everyone, not only about our past, but about how to direct our present lives and aim for our future lives.

The Imitation of Christ has been translated into more languages than any book apart from the Bible, and it is widely considered the most-read devotional book after the Bible. Criticisms of its spirituality aside (both from within Catholicism and from outside of it), the work is so extraordinarily influential that it cannot be ignored. Its authorship was disputed for a long time, but the best evidence seems to show that it was written by Thomas a Kempis, who probably wrote it in the early 15th century.

St. Augustine’s City of God is, again, so influential on all that comes after it, that in order to understand our world, we must know this book. The Bishop of Hippo wrote his masterwork in the early 5th century. St. Augustine had been a Platonistic-leaning philosopher before his conversion to Christianity, and much of Plato’s influence can be discerned in this work. However, here St. Augustine gathers what is best in Greek philosophy and puts it in the service of the Gospel. He attacks and undermines the paganism of his day and shows how Christianity views and orders the world.

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, like the Divine Comedy, were published in a vernacular language—in this case, an early form of English—in the 14th century. They present a delightful, earthy look at 14th century life. While I do not think of Chaucer as a master on the level of Dante or Shakespeare, his work is such a lively compendium of wildly divergent stories that for its variety and humor it deserves a place in the box.

The novel, as a literary form, is so familiar to us these days that it might not occur to us that it’s really fairly new. Certainly, none of the authors I have mentioned so far on the list ever penned a novel. In fact, it is sometimes said that Cervantes’s Don Quixote, published early in the 17th century, is the first novel. Whether that’s true, I cannot say for sure. I can say, however, that it’s a novel I’ll put in my box. Apart from its huge literary influence, the characters and story are just written into the western mind.

Now we come to more recent writings. Here, things will be even more controversial. For me, there’s no hesitation over any of the next three choices.

First,David Copperfield. The later works of Charles Dickens—Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times—are much more “serious” than his early works—Nicholas Nickleby, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist. So those later works are, I think, often considered to be greater or more important. Well, whether that’s true I cannot say for sure. But I can say that David Copperfield falls near the halfway point in Dickens’s career, and might be seen as a kind of transition between his early and late periods, and somehow magically manages to capture the comic abandon of the early works, and the gravity and profound insight of the later works. And there are no characters in the world of fiction who can compare with the awesome Micawber.

When Fyodor Dostoevsky was still a relatively young man, he was arrested for politically subversive activities and condemned to death. As the firing squad prepared to fire, a letter from the Czar was delivered, sparing the lives of Dostoevsky and his fellow “conspirators” and exiling them to Siberia. Eventually, Dostoevsky was able to return to Russia and of course became the greatest of the Russian novelists. The Brothers Karamazov is his best work, and although it is dark and often chilling, it has a place in the box.

There is no work of fiction that I love more than The Lord of the Rings. Though it is generally published in a 3-book set, it really is just one book. If you want to press me on the “15 books” thing, you can find it published in a one-volume version. If you wonder whether it really belongs in a list like this, I would simply say there was virtually nothing out there that could compete with Homer’s great myths, until the writing of The Lord of the Rings. It is epic in every way.

We’re trying to preserve the best of western culture, but the books I’ve picked are disparate. There’s no unified vision. How does someone take those books and see how the western vision fits together? I close my list, then, with one book that depicts a worldview, a philosophy. GK Chesterton’s Saint Thomas Aquinas lays out the great core of western culture by way of a fascinating study of its most towering intellect.

So there are the 15 books I recommend.

You might be wondering why are there no science books? Why not On the Origin of Species? Why no Freud? I have left out the science books for two reasons. First, the great science books, like Darwin’s, are not really great books, even if they include great ideas. Second, the history of science is a whole different thing from the history of western culture. You can be a cutting-edge scientist without knowing much of anything about Galileo or Darwin, provided you know the contemporary shape of your field. It’s not like that with the western canon, where you simply cannot be well versed in the greatness of our civilization if you don’t know its giants of the past. It follows from this that if we wish to preserve our scientific knowledge through difficult times, the wisest course would be to pick the most up-to-date information. We would also be well advised to recollect older, perhaps more easily recoverable technologies; the metallurgy behind blacksmithing, for example, would be more likely to be important to us than the metallurgy behind microchips. Still, that’s a matter that simply falls outside of the scope of what I’m doing here.

You might also wonder why I’ve included no modern or contemporary politics or history? Why not include the “Federalist Papers” or The Wealth of Nations? Why not Machiavelli’s The Prince? The answer here is simply that in my list I’m going for foundational rather than derivative or recent. There’s no doubt that The Prince is important, as is Das Kapital, for that matter, and if I had a bigger box, I would think seriously about including works like these. If you disagree with my priorities, adjust your boxes accordingly. My only interest here is in trying to help us think through the important matter of saving the best our culture has produced.

Leter Re: A Few Thoughts on Water Storage

Editor,

After reading a recent article on SurvivalBlog about keeping stored water clean, I thought I’d mention my experience with that. While living in the Colorado mountains, my water source was from a short stream running from a spring. This filtered water was pumped into a 1,000-gallon tank in my basement. All surface water is subject to some contamination, but in all the years it was used it never gave me any problems. I finally had it tested, and the bacteria count was some 50 times what was allowed. After that test, I figured I was living on borrowed time and decided to do something about it. After some research and having used it on my hot tub, I decided on an ozone system. The advantage of ozone is there is no chemical added to the water. Ozone is just oxygen with an extra oxygen atom temporarily attached to the normal O2 molecule. This acts like a super oxidizer that kills any living particle it encounters in the water tank. This includes bacteria, viruses, and various spores, like Giardia. Ozone then reverts within a second or two to a normal oxygen molecule and bubbles out of the tank.

The day after installation, a test of my water in the 1,000-gallon tank showed a zero bacteria count. Besides effectiveness and no chemicals added to your water supply, an ozone system is dead easy to build and install. It consists of a box the size of a shoebox with a UV light in it. The UV light generates ozone from the air. A small plastic tube leads from the box to a venturi and the discharge of a submersible pump, the kind used in small water features. Little Giant is one make. The pump is the size of a fist and inexpensive to buy and run. The venturi is a little plastic fitting that costs a couple of dollars. As ozone is safe for fish, aquarium pet stores often carry all this as does Amazon. As the pump circulates water, it pulls air from the light box, bringing ozone with it. Here are a couple of cautions:

  • The time of ozone contact with the water is crucial so this system works with unpressurized tanks and not inline pipes.
  • Using it just when filling a tank or leaving the water sit for years won’t work well either. There is no residual chemical to clean any water added after the system is shut off. That water will not be cleaned.
  • If your tank continually fills and empties, like a my cistern, the ozone needs to run continuously. Obviously, this system uses electricity, although very little.
  • If you simply store water, then a periodic run would suffice. Your water management after SHFT would have to take this into account.
  • Ozone as mentioned is a very good oxidizer and will rust any metal near the tank Things like metal shelves, tools, or guns should be kept in another room.
  • Any ozone that escapes your tank will also kill fungus and mold in and around the tank, which is good but sleeping in the same room might not be a great idea.

Other than that I can’t think of why anyone would not use ozone. – Expat

Odds ‘n Sods:

So, you like that flashlight app on your phone? Snoopwall Flashlight Apps Threat Assessment Report. – P.M.

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Growing concerns over ‘in the air’ transmission of Ebola. – P.S.

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An interesting site that may help you plan a bug-out route.http://hazmat.globalincidentmap.com/map.php. – JFJ

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CDC considers adding names of health workers monitored for Ebola to no-fly list. – T.P.

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The Pompous Prognostications Of “Permanently High Plateau” Prophets. J.W.

Notes for Thursday, October 16, 2014

Today, we present another entry for Round 55 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The $12,000+ worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate, good for any one, two, or three course (a $1,195 value),
  2. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  3. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper with a hammer forged, chromlined barrel and a hardcase to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR type rifle to have quick change barrel which can be assembled in less then 1 minute without the use of any tools and a compact carry capability in a hard case or 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  4. Gun Mag Warehouseis providing 30 DMPS AR-15 .223/5.56 30 Round Gray Mil Spec w/ Magpul Follower Magazines (a value of $448.95) and a Gun Mag Warehouse T-Shirt. An equivalent prize will be awarded for residents in states with magazine restrictions.
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $300 gift certificate from CJL Enterprize, for any of their military surplus gear,
  7. A 9-Tray Excalibur Food Dehydrator from Safecastle.com (a $300 value),
  8. A $300 gift certificate from Freeze Dry Guy,
  9. A $250 gift certificate from Sunflower Ammo,
  10. KellyKettleUSA.com is donating both an AquaBrick water filtration kit and a Stainless Medium Scout Kelly Kettle Complete Kit with a combined retail value of $304,
  11. TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $300 gift certificate.
  12. Two cases of meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value),

Second Prize:

  1. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  2. A FloJak EarthStraw “Code Red” 100-foot well pump system (a $500 value), courtesy of FloJak.com,
  3. Acorn Supplies is donating a Deluxe Food Storage Survival Kit with a retail value of $350,
  4. The Ark Instituteis donating a non-GMO, non-hybrid vegetable seed package–enough for two families of four, seed storage materials, a CD-ROM of Geri Guidetti’s book “Build Your Ark! How to Prepare for Self Reliance in Uncertain Times”, and two bottles of Potassium Iodate– a $325 retail value,
  5. $300 worth of ammo from Patriot Firearms and Munitions. (They also offer a 10% discount for all SurvivalBlog readers with coupon code SVB10P),
  6. A $250 gift card from Emergency Essentials,
  7. Twenty Five books, of the winners choice, of any books published by PrepperPress.com (a $270 value),
  8. TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $150 gift certificate,
  9. Organized Prepper is providing a $500 gift certificate, and
  10. RepackBoxis providing a $300 gift certificate to their site.

Third Prize:

  1. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  2. A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
  3. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  4. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security,
  5. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances,
  6. Ambra Le Roy Medical Products in North Carolina is donating a bundle of their traditional wound care and first aid supplies, with a value of $208, and
  7. APEX Gun Parts is donating a $250 purchase credit, and
  8. SurvivalBased.com is donating a $500 gift certificate to their store.
  9. Montie Gearis donating a Y-Shot Slingshot and a Locking Rifle Rack. (a $379 value).

Round 55 ends on November 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Post-Civilization Smithing, by THS

If I had to choose one tool or piece of gear for survival, a knife would be on the top of my list. A knife can be used to make fires, shelters, weapons, traps, and most of the things needed for survival. With a few tools and some practice, anyone can have a workable knife (or chisel, hook, hinge, or any number of other tools and hardware) in a few hours of work. Besides the usefulness of the self-fashioned tool, it will bring a great amount of satisfaction and pride. The skill of blacksmithing will also put you in a very important position, should circumstances be reverted to post-civilization conditions. Your skill and handiwork will be in high demand.

Heating the Steel

Of first concern is having a way to heat the steel. There are various options. For fuel, the most common options are wood, coal, or propane. Wood is better in charcoal form, but it can be used as is. Its primary advantage is availability; you can pretty much find it anywhere, and it can easily be made into charcoal. Coal isn’t so easy to find, but if you have a source near you, it makes an excellent fuel. Propane would be the hardest to find in a survival situation, but there are many propane tanks and bottles around, and it might be a good option.

Charcoal can be made very easily. There are some excellent websites on building a charcoal retort– a simple arrangement using 55-gallon, steel drums. I personally use a very basic method. I buried half of a 55 gallon steel drum in the ground. I start a fire in it and load it with wood, even piling it up over the top. Through experience, I’ve learned to cover it at the appropriate time, which I will explain. After all of the wood has been burning sufficiently, I cover it with a piece of thin sheet metal. Then I seal the edges of the lid with some dirt. After twelve hours or more I uncover it, and if my timing was right everything is charcoal, with no unburnt wood and very little ash. I have a friend who takes the embers from his fireplace or wood stove, when he’s cleaning it out, and just douses them with water. Over time, he collects all the charcoal he needs this way. Indigenous peoples have perfected a method of covering a dry fallen log with dirt and lighting it on fire. Eventually, the entire log turns to charcoal. The key is to balance burning off the volatiles and cutting off the oxygen supply.

If you use wood or coal, you’ll want it in small chunks, golf ball-sized or smaller, especially with coal. As I mentioned earlier, wood is much more efficient as charcoal, but you can start the fire with wood and after much of it converts to charcoal, start working with your metal. I have done this before, and it can be a little challenging with all of the smoke and flames, but it does work. However, you must realize that just burning the charcoal or coal as a regular fire will not produce the needed temperatures to adequately heat up the steel for smithing. You’ll need some way to feed oxygen to the fire so it gets hot enough, using a device known as a bellows or blower. We’re going to assume there is no electricity available. There are instructions available online for making a bellows-style blower with leather and wood. There are also plans to make box blowers out of wood, and blowers with barrels and water. You can make blowers with whole animal skins. I even saw a video of African smiths using old cement sacks as their bellows, and they worked perfectly.

My favorite option is the hand crank cast iron blower that was once common across America, often associated with the Buffalo brand. These old blowers can be found on sites like eBay, but they are usually quite expensive since they are sought after items. With some patience and searching, they can be found at reasonable prices or even for free. First you have to know what you’re looking for. Go online and see what they look like. Then start keeping an eye out for them. Sometimes they’re decorating a yard or a store front. Sometimes, they can be found at yard sales or antique shops. There are many other possible places you might discover a blower, but make sure it isn’t completely frozen with rust, especially if you’re shelling out some money for it.

Once you get your hand crank blower, you’ll need to make yourself a forge. This can be done in various ways. The “Tim Lively forge” is popular. Basically, it’s a galvanized steel basin with a hole-filled, steel pipe air tube in the bottom. The basin is lined with adobe clay, leaving the holes in the air tube exposed in the bottom, and the blower is attached to the tube where it comes out of the forge. Do an Internet search on this, and you’ll see how simple it is. Other options are the brake drum forge or any simple forge one can weld together with scrap metal. Of course, if you’re going to weld together a forge, you would need to make it now, while electricity is available. The most primitive option is to just dig a small pit or make the forge walls with clay or adobe or even bricks or sheets of iron. Use a steel pipe for the air supply, coming in at the bottom of your forge, where the base of the fire will be, and attach your blower to the other end. This simple setup is common throughout third-world countries. The same forge can be used for both coal or charcoal.

I think it’s best to get set up for both coal/charcoal and propane. My propane setup is very basic, and it was both easy and fairly cheap to make. For a propane forge you’ll want an adjustable regulator. The regulators that come with barbecue grills are not adjustable and won’t work, at least not very well. I got mine at a plumbing supply store. I was also given some larger more industrial-sized ones with big dials on them, but I haven’t tried using them, and they’re just sitting in a box. The regulator is the most expensive item, but you’ll only need to buy it once, and it’s not really that expensive. With the regulator, get enough gas hose to go from your propane bottle to your forge, a few feet. Next is the burner itself. I did an Internet search, and there are a surprising number of different designs made out of cheap basic plumbing parts. I tried a couple and settled on one I liked. I’ll probably do more experimenting when I have time to try out some of the other styles. Make sure you look up plans for a Venturi-style burner and not the forced or blown air style, which requires a blower and electricity.

Building a Forge Body

You’ll also need a forge body. Mine is a large coffee can lined with ceramic wool. You can get ceramic wool at a pottery or ceramic supply store. You can cut it with scissors, but you should avoid breathing in the dust from it. Cut a piece that will fit around the inside of your coffee can, or whatever you’re using. While the ceramic wool is amazingly, completely fire- and heat-proof, it’s best to line the inside of the wool in your forge body with refractory cement, or even clay slip– a slurry made of clay and water. This will increase the durability of the forge, especially since you’ll be putting lots of metal in it. You’ll need a bracket of some sort to hold the burner in position, so it shoots its flame into the forge body. My setup is very simple, and I have the burner held to a simple frame with a hose clamp. While it does take some planning and work, it’s very satisfying to make and use a forge you made yourself.

Obtaining Steel

Once you have your forge all set up and ready to go, it’s time to think about steel. In a survival or post-apocalyptic situation, excellent steel for knife and tool making should be readily available. I am constantly on the lookout for it and have amassed enough to last me well past my lifetime, but it’s always fun to try new and different types. Plus scavenging is just addictive, so I’m always on the lookout for more.

What you want to do is get in your mind the way steel is made and used. Steel for many structural applications is what’s called mild carbon steel. It only has a small amount of carbon added to it. Carbon, when added to iron, is what makes steel, and it is what gives it its ability to resist bending, as well as taking on and retaining hardness. When you think of a knife or tool edge, low carbon will take a sharp edge, but it won’t retain it when you start using it. High carbon will take an edge and then keep that edge for a long time.

There is a simple test you can perform as you start to learn the different types of steel. Take an old file and put it up to a running bench grinder. Make sure it’s sufficiently dark to see the sparks well. Observe the pattern of the sparks produced. They are complex and full of little fireworks-like bursts. That is an indication of high carbon. Now take a piece of angle iron or steel plumbing pipe and do the same. You’ll notice a much more simple spark pattern, with smaller and simpler fireworks bursts. That is due to its lack of carbon. A few common sources of high carbon steel are old tools, like lug wrenches, old files, car springs, saw blades, and even bed frames.

Forging and Quenching

With your source of heat ready and some steel collected, you’re ready to start forging. Try to avoid overheating the steel. Heat it up to a good bright cherry red to forge it. When you overheat it, the steel starts to shoot off little sparks and disintegrate. The part that is burning is losing its carbon content, and should just be scrapped at that point.

After you’ve shaped your implement, you can do some filing or sanding on it if you want to. It’s better to do it at this time rather than after you harden and temper it, because the steel is still in a softer state that is easier to work. If you want to do this, make sure you let the steel cool off gradually in the air rather than sticking it in a bucket of water to cool it off. Plunging it into water will harden it and may even crack it.

Now it’s time to harden and temper your tool, so it will take and hold a good edge. Stresses have been building up in the piece as you’ve been hammering it, so I like to heat it up in the forge to a dull red and then pull it out, letting it air cool until it’s black, doing this about three times. To harden the piece you’re going to heat it up to red hot and then plunge it into a quenchant, which will cool it off quickly and harden it. Water can be used, but you’ll have to experiment with it because it is such a severe quenchant that it will often crack your steel, ruining your work. The Japanese cover their knives and tools for quenching with a thin layer of watery clay, letting it dry, and then quenching in water. This is a better way to do it, but even then you may need to pull it back out before it completely cools. You would have to experiment, and they say that a soft water such as rain water is best.

A preferred quenchant is oil. This is much easier on the steel, because it cools it off more slowly. Various oils can be used, but each one cools the steel faster or slower, depending on the oil type and its make up. You want to cool the steel off as quickly as possible without cracking it. This results in the hardest state possible, which gives the best edge. A common oil that is also fairly fast is canola oil. That is what I use. It is best to warm up the oil first. I will heat up a railroad spike and put it in the oil to get it up to about 120 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit. In a survival situation, I imagine old motor oil would be readily available, and while not optimal it will definitely do the job.

Heat your piece of steel up to red hot. If you have a solid metal magnet, you can test the steel as it rises in temperature; you’ll know it’s ready when it loses its magnetism. You have to be careful when judging by colors. It’s best to do this in low lighting. If there is a lot of light, the piece will actually be much hotter than what the colors seem to indicate. Quenching the steel in a state that is too hot will result in satisfactory hardness but also large grain size. Steel is composed of grains, kind of like the grains of minerals in a rock, and you want as fine a grain as possible. Finer grain structure results in superior edge-holding potential. Higher heats in the forge result in larger grain structure, which is bad for edge holding.

This might be getting a bit complicated, but it’s not that big a deal. If you just jump in and start smithing, you will learn as you go. Even an inferior quality knife or tool is far better than something made from copper or bronze, which was being used at one time to keep civilizations going.

Tempering

Quench your piece, going quickly from the forge to the quenching fluid. Hold it in there for about thirty seconds and then pull it out. Next comes tempering. The steel is in a very unstable and fragile state right now. It’s glass-like and too hard to be of practical use. If you were to drop it on a hard surface, it would shatter. That is why you need to temper it. Tempering is accomplished at about 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Fortunately, steel produces different oxidizing colors, as it rises in temperature. Probably a good way to do this at first is to have a scrap chunk of steel that you have heated up in the forge; use something heavier with some heat-holding ability. Take your piece that you have just quenched and hardened and, using some sandpaper or a sharpening stone or anything sufficiently abrasive, shine one side of it. This can be done quickly and doesn’t have to be pretty or perfect. You just need to see some steel surface.

Pull out the scrap chunk of steel you heated up in the forge and lay your piece against it. Try to just put the thickest part, like the spine of a knife blade, against the hot steel, letting the edge hang off, pointing away from the hot steel. Keep a close eye on the shiny part. Before too long you will see some light yellow color creeping across the surface. If you were to leave this, it would eventually turn a darker yellow, then brown, then purple, then dark, blue, light blue, and finally gray blue. Ideally, you want the edge to be a dark yellow to brown color. Move the piece around so the color you want is as evenly spread as possible along the edge. For instance, if the yellow starts to darken faster toward the point of a blade you are tempering, move the point farther away from the source of tempering heat to slow down the tempering process in that area. You may have to reheat the scrap piece you are using as a heat source. Take it slowly, especially as you are learning.

Tempering can be done directly in the fire of the forge, but this requires experience. In a non-survival situation, I use an oven, so I can make sure I have a consistent and measurable heat. When you actually use the knife or tool, you will be able to tell whether you tempered it enough or not. If it chips and breaks in use, you didn’t temper it enough. If it get dull easily, you tempered it too much.

Now your piece is ready to be finished. You can sand it, or do whatever else you want to achieve a desirable appearance. Mount a handle on the tang, put the final edge on it, and you’re ready to use it.

Letter Re: Scot’s Product Review: CMMG .22 LR Conversion for AR-15

Scot,

Regarding the review, I have used an Attichison kit since the mid-70’s. (Yes, my first AR was bought over the counter in ’71, serial number under 20,000.) I have been satisfied with performance and accuracy. The CMMG is nearly identical so far I can tell on cursory examination, and I sold probably hundreds in retail and can’t recall any being returned or complained about. They save money, provide opportunity to train in places where .223 might prove problematic, and overall perform as they ought. I must confess to taking out a huge Norwegian Wharf Rat in my home in San Francisco’s Castro Market district back about ’77 using what was then called CCI Zimmerpatronen aka CB cap in a .22 LR casing. (This way it would manually feed through a .22 LR magazine), however with only a primed rim casing powering it and with the AR gas system absorbing some of the gas, the rat was dispatched and removed before the wife folding towels only 10 feet away entered the room, never having heard a thing. Someone in a restrictive urban environment could enjoy regular target practice in a residence basement using only a phone book for a backstop should they get the powderless CB .22’s in a long rifle case, of which several manufacturers are now producing.

The singularly most important consideration in using the conversion kit as such, a conversion kit, and after returning to using the .223/556 is that aside from residue accumulating in the gas system, usually blown out with the first round of .223, is that there is a slight residual dusting of lead and carbon that leaks around the chamber insert that builds up in the chamber to the point that if converted back to .223 without an absolutely thorough cleaning with a wire chamber brush and inspecting to assure all is removed, you risk destruction of the upper receiver. A friend here in Idaho fired zillions of .22LR in his M16 and then converted it back to .223; round #1 destroyed the upper but thankfully not the lower.

Enjoy using these kits, but I would prefer using a dedicated .22 LR upper, but the kit works great, so long as A CHAMBER FLAG is employed as mentioned in the article, AND a strict cleaning regimen is employed when converting back and forth from .223 to .22 and vice versa. – AHT

Odds ‘n Sods:

Shutdown: A Single Ebola Patient Has Overwhelmed The System: Dallas Hospital Forced To Close Emergency Room. – H.L.

o o o

Tiny Box Promises To Keep You Anonymous On The Internet. – G.P.

o o o

When Holding An Orphaned Baby Can Mean Contracting Ebola. – T.P.

o o o

America’s Ebola crisis is made worse by the people in charge. Dr. Thomas Frieden was Mayor Bloomberg’s Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene from 2002–2009 and enforced the mayor’s trans-fat, 16-ounce soda, smoking, and salt bans.

CDC Director Tom Frieden faces rising tide of criticism[CNN] – M.A.

o o o

Nurses’ Union: Ebola Patient Left In Open Area Of ER For Hours. – P.M.

Notes for Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Today, we present another entry for Round 55 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The $12,000+ worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate, good for any one, two, or three course (a $1,195 value),
  2. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  3. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper with a hammer forged, chromlined barrel and a hardcase to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR type rifle to have quick change barrel which can be assembled in less then 1 minute without the use of any tools and a compact carry capability in a hard case or 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  4. Gun Mag Warehouseis providing 30 DMPS AR-15 .223/5.56 30 Round Gray Mil Spec w/ Magpul Follower Magazines (a value of $448.95) and a Gun Mag Warehouse T-Shirt. An equivalent prize will be awarded for residents in states with magazine restrictions.
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $300 gift certificate from CJL Enterprize, for any of their military surplus gear,
  7. A 9-Tray Excalibur Food Dehydrator from Safecastle.com (a $300 value),
  8. A $300 gift certificate from Freeze Dry Guy,
  9. A $250 gift certificate from Sunflower Ammo,
  10. KellyKettleUSA.com is donating both an AquaBrick water filtration kit and a Stainless Medium Scout Kelly Kettle Complete Kit with a combined retail value of $304,
  11. TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $300 gift certificate.
  12. Two cases of meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value),

Second Prize:

  1. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  2. A FloJak EarthStraw “Code Red” 100-foot well pump system (a $500 value), courtesy of FloJak.com,
  3. Acorn Supplies is donating a Deluxe Food Storage Survival Kit with a retail value of $350,
  4. The Ark Instituteis donating a non-GMO, non-hybrid vegetable seed package–enough for two families of four, seed storage materials, a CD-ROM of Geri Guidetti’s book “Build Your Ark! How to Prepare for Self Reliance in Uncertain Times”, and two bottles of Potassium Iodate– a $325 retail value,
  5. $300 worth of ammo from Patriot Firearms and Munitions. (They also offer a 10% discount for all SurvivalBlog readers with coupon code SVB10P),
  6. A $250 gift card from Emergency Essentials,
  7. Twenty Five books, of the winners choice, of any books published by PrepperPress.com (a $270 value),
  8. TexasgiBrass.com is providing a $150 gift certificate,
  9. Organized Prepper is providing a $500 gift certificate, and
  10. RepackBoxis providing a $300 gift certificate to their site.

Third Prize:

  1. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  2. A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard, and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206,
  3. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  4. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security,
  5. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances,
  6. Ambra Le Roy Medical Products in North Carolina is donating a bundle of their traditional wound care and first aid supplies, with a value of $208, and
  7. APEX Gun Parts is donating a $250 purchase credit, and
  8. SurvivalBased.com is donating a $500 gift certificate to their store.
  9. Montie Gearis donating a Y-Shot Slingshot and a Locking Rifle Rack. (a $379 value).

Round 55 ends on November 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

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 a few months and am a huge fan. I’m far from where I want to be, as far as preparedness, but I’m confident I’ll get there.

I believe that every “prepper” or survival enthusiast has had their own personal “wakeup call”, be it a major/minor event, epiphany, or experience that motivated them to begin preparing for the worst. For me, that wakeup call came in October 2012, when I spent four days on SAD (State Active Duty) while my unit was activated during Hurricane Sandy. I’ll say right up front that from a “boots on ground” perspective, my participation in the relief efforts was pretty minimal. I didn’t pull anyone from a swollen river or man a checkpoint. I spent my time doing eight-hour rotations in our company’s TOC (Tactical Operations Center), assisting the staff by answering phones, producing a rest plan, coordinating movements, updating status boards, and yes, getting coffee. (The Dunkin Donuts down the street remained open through the entire storm, and God bless them for it.) This position allowed me to view the entire operation on a more strategic level, and it is having that perspective that allows me to write this article today.

I thought that by detailing my experiences as a Guardsman during an actual time of emergency, I might be able to provide some insight as to the Guard’s role in future, perhaps more catastrophic events, as well as illustrate the logistical issues that come along with activating even a single National Guard unit for emergency service. How would such knowledge be useful to you? Honestly, maybe it won’t be useful. Prepping and self-sufficiency go hand in hand; as you prep, you consciously or subconsciously condition yourself and your loved ones to stock, train, and prepare as though you will be on your own when the SHTF. So in all likelihood, many who read this are probably already in the mindset of depending on no one but yourself to get through hard times (as you should be). If that’s the case, I hope at the very least this article will provide readers with a point of view they don’t normally get to see and provide a dose of reality to those few readers that may still be prepping just enough to ensure they’ll survive until the “cavalry” shows up.

October 2012

The hurricane grew in strength as it made its way north, and the forecast was bad enough that I pretty much knew I was going to be called, especially once the governor declared a state of emergency. I first received a text message two days before Sandy was to hit our area from my commander, a Major (at the time I was attached to our battalion staff element and worked directly for the S-3, or Operations Officer) to be prepared to go when he called, so I packed my rucksack with enough gear to sustain me for 72 hours (old habits die hard) and waited. About a half day before the really bad weather was due to hit us, I got the promised phone call and got in my car to leave.

Lesson #1: Getting the word out will take time. First, the command team for that particular unit will need to contact everyone and get them to a centralized rally point. In our case, it was our own armory. That in itself will take several hours. The Commander or First Sergeant will notify the rest of the senior leadership, who in turn will ensure that the message gets passed down the chain of command to the lowest level. Phone trees are complicated and take time to put into action. Even if phone lines and cell towers are still functioning (and that could be a big if, depending on the situation), figure on at least an hour before Private Joe Snuffy gets the word that he needs to come in.

The drive down was pretty uneventful; it was raining pretty steadily, but the roads were more or less empty. I realized I was lucky in that regard, because although my route only took me on a major highway for about ten minutes of my hour-long trip, it would have been enough to stop me dead in my tracks had traffic been bad enough. The driving ban hadn’t yet gone into effect.

Lesson #2: Units won’t just materialize out of nowhere, and it may take most soldiers a while to get anywhere during an emergency. Everyone who is able (in my unit, first responders and others needed by their specific towns were excluded from the call-up) will need to pack up and make their way to the meeting point. Again, depending on the situation, that could prove difficult or impossible. National Guardsmen are not limited to certain units, based on their state of residence. A soldier living in New York, for example, could find himself drilling in Massachusetts or Connecticut, based on his MOS (Military Occupational Specialty), or may voluntarily switch units due to a possibility for promotion not available in his current situation. The result is that most National Guard units have members that travel a considerable distance to come to drill. I currently drive 90 minutes to my armory every month, and that is without traffic and in good weather. I have several alternate routes I could utilize if need be, but only one does not involve traveling on a major highway or interstate. In some situations, such as a severe weather event, soldiers traveling to their respective units may be aided by a driving ban or restriction put in place by state government, which (in theory) will clear major roadways of all traffic minus emergency vehicles and other essential personnel. In a situation where mass panic or unrest has caused the public to attempt to evacuate/flee en masse, however, the roads will be a mess, and travel times will increase exponentially.

I got to my home station, signed in, filled out some paperwork, and waited for further orders. Pretty soon my commander told us that HHC (Headquarters & Headquarters Company), minus the battalion staff element, was going to move by bus to meet up with one of our companies in a town about 90 minutes away and work with them for the time being, and that I would be going with them. This necessity to move the unit introduced a whole new set of challenges.

Lesson #3: Military movements are complicated endeavors that take time. Hopefully, the situation will be such that operations can be conducted from the initial meeting location. If not, like in my case, there will have to be a plan to move soldiers, equipment, and supplies from the home station to wherever higher authority has ordered the unit to go. That means buses or transport trucks, either of which will require drivers that possess a valid military driver’s license and are qualified to drive that specific vehicle. (For example, my license states I am qualified to drive any number of Humvee variants but not a bus or truck.) The vehicles will have to be drawn from the motor pool, signed for, checked for maintenance issues, and fueled as necessary. As with any military operation, accountability of personnel and equipment will be crucial, so manifests will have to be drawn up for each vehicle. All of this, even if conducted hastily, will take time.

We arrived at our destination later that night. We were sharing the armory with an infantry company that called this their home station. Inside we grabbed cots and set them up in a locker room upstairs. Then we dropped our personal gear and began getting organized, based on the tasks we had been given as a unit.

Orders from higher said we were to standby in the armory until the worst of the storm had passed, and then we were to be prepared to conduct search and rescue operations. For us, this meant splitting up into various high-water rescue teams, which basically consisted of an LMTV (Light Medium Tactical Vehicle) and 6-10 soldiers armed with ropes, life jackets, and other equipment. To the best of my knowledge, these teams were never utilized; a small number of Air National Guardsmen arrived the same day we did and were given that same mission. Our next assignment ended up being our main effort for the time we were activated. We were located just a short drive from a major city with a less-than-stellar reputation when the lights were on. Once the power went out, things got even worse. We were ordered to, in conjunction with local law enforcement assets in that city, send presence patrols through various neighborhoods, establish checkpoints, and generally keep the peace until things returned to normal. I guess the thinking was that having a police car, a Humvee, and a couple of armed soldiers/LEOs at each checkpoint would help people feel more secure or, at the very least, discourage would-be troublemakers.

Lesson #4: It’s going to pay to blend in. I recently saw an episode of a certain show on the National Geographic channel that featured a prepper who stated his bug-out kit was modeled after military and SWAT-style equipment. It included a black tactical vest, various knives, and all black clothing, complete with bandana. His reasoning was that this look made him appear tough and, thus, would prevent civilians from messing with him in a SHTF scenario. This man certainly isn’t alone in his opinions; I see plenty of bug-out vests and kits that consist mainly of a plate carrier capable of carrying twelve AR mags, a sidearm, and all other varieties of tactical gear. However, all of these people seem to be ignoring a very pragmatic aspect of bugging out in any type of emergency; law enforcement, the military, or some mix of both will almost certainly be out in force. They’ll be performing a multitude of tasks, depending on the situation, but first and foremost in their minds, as it always is, will be security, both for themselves and the civilian population. With that in mind, how do you think you’ll be received when you come within sight of a manned checkpoint looking like Rambo and wearing a vest covered in knives and other dangerous tools? Or worse, how will you be perceived wearing a plate carrier and carrying an AR? It may sound harsh, but bug-out kits like those described above strike me as no more than the products of people with too much time and money on their hands, and active imaginations. The practice of buying and fawning over all this equipment is satisfying to them and their egos, but I think they’d be in for the worst kind of wake-up call in a real-life emergency. Urban preppers will have to consider this more than those who may be able to bug-out via more secluded routes (people in the suburbs or rural areas), as your location in a city pretty much guarantees that, unless you get out way ahead of the pack, you’ll be coming across a lot of people headed the same way you are, and there will be a lot of men in uniform with guns trying to keep the peace. Be prepared, by all means, but don’t do so in a way that will make you a target when the time comes for the real deal.

Things settled into more or less of a routine after the first day or so. Platoons would rotate into the city for checkpoint duty, and come back to the armory to rest and refuel. We in the TOC would keep track of who was where and monitor reports coming in from the city. This cycle continued until the entire unit was released from State Active Duty about a week and a half later. Whether or not the “show of force” strategy worked is up for debate; what I do know is that our guys in the city and the police force there were kept very busy in the first three or four days following the storm. On the one hand, there weren’t any (or at least I didn’t hear any reports of) instances of rioting or unruly crowds. People seemed content to hunker down in their homes and try to stay out of sight until things calmed down. Even if crowd violence was virtually non-existent, there were still enough individuals engaging in criminal activity to keep things busy. We had reports of shootings, stabbings, and other violent acts, which were dealt with by the police. I was surprised (but shouldn’t have been) to find that, at least from the news we were receiving, the most common crime committed during that first week seemed to be generator theft.

Lesson #5: Secure your generator(s)! Granted, not everyone’s plan involves the use of one, but should you decide to utilize one or more generators to power your home, bug-out, or bug-in location during a SHTF situation, make sure you secure it. Bigger and heavier units will obviously be harder to just walk off with, but regardless of your generator’s size, take the time to ensure that no one will be making off with it. A simple Google search will turn up lots of great suggestions on how to accomplish this, so I won’t go too in depth. Suffice it to say that simply plugging in a generator and leaving it outside to run is not your best plan of action; the responsibility of securing your home and its contents is yours and yours alone. Once something is stolen, it’s likely that you won’t see it again. Chain that generator if you want to keep it.

The generator example provides an excellent segue to…

Lesson #6: The National Guard won’t be making house calls. Regardless of the situation, we’re going to be busy. We’ll be keeping the roads open and safe. We’ll be conducting search and rescue operations if need be, and air assets might be flying in supplies and/or evacuating the wounded. We’ll be augmenting local law enforcement manning checkpoints and responding to civil disturbances. Depending on weather conditions, we may be shoveling hospitals and other essential areas out from under snow drifts, filling sandbags, or building fire breaks. On top of all that, we’ll need to maintain our own readiness by sleeping, eating, and getting “off the line” for a few hours at a time.

It’s true that the National Guard probably won’t be alone in responding to crises; agencies like FEMA, the Red Cross, and local law enforcement are just a few of the groups that would be there as well. All are designed to offer aid and assistance in times of emergency, but consider this– we were stretched thin during Sandy. Those pallets of bottled water and MREs we handed out were gone in a flash. We had pretty much the entire state mobilized for a storm that did its worst in the coastal areas and left the interior largely untouched (besides the prolonged power outages). Now consider the combined strength of all those agencies in your state, and your National Guard, and compare it to the overall population of your state. (Google is your friend on this one.) I’m no math whiz, but you should be coming up with a pretty small number.

With all of that in mind, how much priority do you think you will be given as an individual? Sandy was bad, obviously, but it could have been even worse, and it kept everyone involved in the relief effort extremely busy. I was lucky to be part of a group released after four days, but elements of my unit stayed on location for almost a week and a half following the storm. Even small-scale emergencies have the potential to affect thousands of people, easily stretching emergency preparedness resources very thin in a very short amount of time. The bottom line is that in any situation serious enough to warrant you implementing all or part of your survival/bug-in/bug-out plan (or whatever you choose to call it), odds are there will be far more people asking for help than offering it. The theft of your generator is going to be item #4,357 on a list of 10,000 things and complaints the police or National Guard will have to deal with during a disaster.

My biggest lesson, learned from my time on State Active Duty, was undoubtedly…

Lesson #7: Any event involving multiple state and federal agencies, including the National Guard, is going to have a lot of moving parts and a lot of red tape to cut through. During my rotations in the TOC, I witnessed firsthand the issues that plagued us as we tried first to get ourselves organized and then to coordinate our relief efforts with local law enforcement and other state agencies, and the resulting amount of time that elapsed before we were actually able to carry out the mission we had been assigned was staggering. Decisions had to pass through so many levels of command that even the smallest issues took hours to resolve. Who owned what vehicles, who was authorized to perform what mission, and so on. Did the infantry fall under us, or did we fall under the infantry? Colonel So-and-So said to be prepared to do this, but Major So-and-So said something completely different. The Major is in our chain of command, but the Colonel outranks him. At one point, we began packing up completely in preparation to move our command center to a nearby school on the orders of some higher up, though a move that never happened. Frustration abounded, and at times tempers flared. I, along with other non-essential personnel, was asked more than once to leave the room to allow for some spirited “discussions” amongst other members of the unit.

It was also a huge deal when we requested to carry our weapons during presence patrols. I think a lot of people figure that the Guard is authorized to lock and load whenever they think it is necessary. I can understand why they think that we’re a military organization, and our weapons and magazines are kept at our own armories. However, the fact of the matter is that arming Guardsmen during a state emergency so that they can keep order amongst the civilian population is a major decision with potentially huge consequences if something were to go wrong, and it was a decision that went all the way to the top of the chain of command; generals were arguing with other generals on this one. Meanwhile, events in the city we had been assigned to patrol continued to unfold, whether we were prepared to meet them or not.

Conclusion

As a military organization, the National Guard is unique in the sense that we perform dual Federal and State missions simultaneously; that is, we are expected to maintain a state of readiness that allows us to be called to active service for overseas missions, combat or otherwise, as well as be prepared to support state missions during times of emergency. Given the high operational tempo over the past twelve years due to the War on Terror, it is no surprise that the “emergency preparedness” mission has, by and large, taken a back seat to preparing National Guardsmen to go to war.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, however, and less National Guard units deploying overseas, we as a force will no doubt be attempting to play catch-up with regards to readiness in case of state activation, just as we are already cracking down on garrison-related issues, like grooming standards, tattoos, and physical fitness. Indeed, during my writing of this article, I received an email inviting me to attend a two-day course being put on by my state’s Emergency Management Agency to train Guardsmen on our Incident Command System, which is initiated in times of emergency. Such training is a step in the right direction, to be sure, but getting prepared will take time, and there is no guarantee that a SHTF scenario will wait for us to be ready.

Even if the National Guard as a whole is given adequate time to bring its emergency preparedness training up to speed, and establish SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for a variety of emergency situations, the basic process of activating Guardsman and getting them to a state of readiness outlined above will remain the same, as will the obstacles we will face. The fact of the matter is that, regardless of the situation, the Guard’s effectiveness will always be limited to some extent by logistical and administrative concerns, as well as the unique set of threats and challenges presented by every emergency. As the article describes, we had a fair amount of difficulties during Sandy. What drove me to begin prepping wasn’t so much the memory of those difficulties, however. It was the “what-if” factor of what I experienced. Yes, things were bad, but what if the storm had been worse? What if cell towers had been inoperable? What if the level of civil unrest had been greater in the city we patrolled?

The realization of how much worse things could have been keeps me dedicated to this lifestyle, and it is the memory of these and other “what-ifs” that serve as constant reminders as to why I prep.

Letter: Product Review: Harvest Right Freeze Dryer

Hugh,

Based on the strength and thoroughness of your review, we bought a machine and just processed our first batch. It is everything you said it was. Thanks for the great review and helpful info. – M.W.

Hugh Replies:I’m glad that review helped you. We have been running ours full bore since the review and have accumulated quite the batch of freeze dried foods that are both standard fare and those that cannot be purchased. It has made an amazing impact on our prepping. Everything from garden herbs to full meals work well. Basically, if you can freeze it, you can freeze dry it (except for butter, which we haven’t tried again yet).