Your Post-TEOTWAWKI Diaper Insurance, by K. in Pennsylvania

After watching MacGyver as a kid I was left in a awe of how someone could create a diversion by blowing up an old abandoned shed in the middle of the woods with a  propane tank, child’s tricycle, the tire’s inner tube, three ball bearings, and a grinding wheel strategically placed near the shed window.  After he launched that “3rd and last chance” bearing, from the improvised “tricycle-sling-shot”, thru the window, striking the grinding wheel and igniting the propane filled shed…KA-BOOM!  My life was never the same…that was the start of my “improvising calling”.

My wife has graciously born the ups and downs of my “need-to-modify” mindset.  I appreciate that your site brings other improvisers to sit around the internet campfire and trade stories and real world, practical ideas.

So why I’m writing: I’m a blessed husband and proud father of two young boys. I’ve always had “how do I protect them” in the back of my mind.  So with that in mind my wife and I have been working on setting up our “emergency” stash.  A few months ago I started looking at the issue of diapers vs. “no-diapers.” This article is from a dad, to all the parents with little ones in diapers, or those anticipating future additions to the family.  The goal is to anticipate diaper changing issues in a prolonged emergency (while currently benefiting from the solution, even if the worst never happens).  I’ll explain that last statement by the end of the article.

Potential Problem

What do you do WHSHTF and there is no place to make a “disposable diaper run” to the store?  I like to call this the WTSHT-LOD scenario, where ”LOD” = Lack of Diapers.
If you think that changing diapers can be messy now; imagine no diapers, no wipes…and no place to get them…now that is a real crisis.   I can’t even imagine trying to change a poop total-diaper-blowout with some last-minute, improvised, t-shirt solution.  I don’t want my wife, nor myself for that matter, to have to be on diaper changing duty in a WTSHT-LOD scenario without a good back-up system.

Possible solution? 

Change to cloth diaper, now (or start kissing your t-shirt collection good-by)

Objection #1               But aren’t cloth diapers messy?

Reply # 2       
           
Yes…but all diapers are messy.  Cloth diapers are a bit more work, but my wife and I made the switch a year ago and figured out a system of rinsing out the poop into a bucket , then dumping the black water into the toilet.  The cloth diapers then get wash and dried like regular laundry. (I’ll go thru the details below).

Objection #2               But aren’t cloth diapers expensive?

Reply # 2

Think longer-term or call it “diaper insurance”.  We were spending around $60 a month on disposables, and decided to switch to a cloth system ($300 total). Cloth diapers paid themselves off in five months and now we’re ready if there are no disposables available. Plus they are now available for our second boy. Note: I pray we never have to run into a WTSHT-LOD scenario, but if we do, we have diaper insurance.  If it never happens, we save money.  (I wish my other insurance policies were so beneficial).

Objection #3               There are no cloth diapers available in my neck of the woods.

Reply # 3

            Do not get the Gerber brand “cloth diapers” that you might find in stores.  They are more suitable for waxing your car, changing oil or for use as a spit rag.  Using them as a true cloth diaper will only leave your child and yourself very disappointed.
            They have advanced a long way from the old-school style of cloth and pins. There are various different options out there now. We started with a www.fuzzibunz.com cloth diaper system (it uses a “pouch/layer” system to hold various absorbent layers that trap the urine and poop).  After trying that for a while my wife found www.softbums.com (it uses a “cover/layer” system where super absorbent inserts are laid onto the cover).  There are plenty of options out there, pick what works for you.  We like the Softbums (cover/layered system) because you simply change inserts and keep using the same diaper covers..  Additionally, they have a clever “adjustable cover system” (MacGyver would be proud).  The diaper cover grows with the child (saving money versus other systems that require buying bigger diaper covers as your child grows).

Note: My “review” of cloth diaper systems are limited to these two.  I’m sure there are other viable systems.  I’ve got no kickbacks or vested interests in it either. 

If you’ve gotten this far I figure you’re probably wondering: Okay, how do I make the switch?  I’ll go through that in the following paragraphs.

Note: If you happen to change over to cloth diapers don’t toss those disposables away.  They are great as a back up if the cloth diapers are in the wash/dryer.  Now that I think about it, they would be a great barter item.  While they can be bulky, disposable diapers might be the 1st thing that unprepared parents are looking for in a WTSHT-LOD scenario.

Speaking of this, can anyone shed some light with your experience on other uses of disposable diapers…improvised wound bandage?….perhaps even a desiccant (with the amount of  urine they soak up from my baby boys you could bail out a sinking battle ship or use it as a chemical spill boom. I’ve been tempted to toss them into my ammo cans and gun cabinet).

Equipment List

1.)         A long-term mind set (can’t buy in stores or on the web…but if you’re a prepper you’ve already acquired this item)
2.)         Buy a cloth diaper system (see above suggestions or surf the web for others)
3.)         5 gallon “rinsing” bucket to rinse off poop…any hardware store has these (don’t need a lid)
4.)         8 gallon “holding” bucket/container (preferably with a “pop-up” lid)
This will be used to hold rinsed diapers before being laundered.

Optional Equipment #1

             A hand-held sprayer (used to spray off poop from the diaper).  It works like the supplemental hand sprayer on some kitchen sink, but instead it attaches to the existing toilet water supply line.  Check out www.bumgenius.com or for the MacGyver out there you can probably make your own set-up with a trip to the plumbing section at you local hardware store. 
Note: I place this hand sprayer under “optional” but after I used it there was no other option.  The alternative to not using a water sprayer is to dunk the diaper directly into the toilet and agitate by hand. Which is not only messy but will leave you with seriously dry and cracked hands (bless those mothers who used to do it that way).  In a post-WTSHTF scenario you need your hands to be in good shape.  If you decide to use a cloth diaper system with the optional hand held sprayer you will still have to get your hands slightly dirty with the cleaning/wringing, but it will be much less than the dunking method.

Optional Equipment #2
            An unused hand-pump weed sprayer (like the ones found at any hardware store). Why? What if there is no water pressure?  This will provide “off-grid water pressure” in case there is no more water system and the previous toilet hand-held sprayer becomes useless.

How does our system work (with the “optional” hand held sprayer)?

  • When the diaper needs to be change for urine deposits, diapers go straight into the 8 gallon bucket and thrown into the laundry later.  These are the easy diaper changes.  If you want, you can rinse them with the hand held sprayer, although we don’t find this necessary
  • If there is a poop deposit, use a minimal amount of  toilet paper, take off as much poop as possible, and throw that combination straight into the toilet.
  • Now the fun part…Drape the messy diaper inside of the 5 gallon bucket (messy side facing the middle of the bucket)…Turn on the hand held sprayer and start firing.  Note: some poop issues are easier to clean up than others…better aim/technique will come with time…trust me.  If you’re good at the “water sprayer games” at the local fair this will be easy…almost fun. Who am I kidding? You’re spraying water at poop!  But I figure if you having to do this crappy job you might as well make a game of it.  Additionally, instead of getting the satisfaction of winning a big-blue teddy bear, you’ll win the ever incalculably valuable affection of your spouse.
  • When most, if not all, of the poop is off, wring out the cloth diaper and place in the 8 gal “holding” bucket.  When bucket gets full it’s time to do diaper laundry.

Use the black water that is left in the 5 gal “rinsing” bucket to manually flush the toilet.   Another good technique to learn: How to manually flush the toilet from a bucket (without splashing)?  Two keys to that are aim and steady, continuous follow-through.

How does our system work (without the “optional” hand held sprayer?)

  • Same as #1. 
  • This is the really messy part….instead of taking off the poop with toilet paper…you need to dunk the whole diaper with you hands and agitate until it’s all off.  Once again I seriously recommend investing in a hand sprayer.
  • Same as #4 above

Conclusion

While the cloth diaper system requires a little more labor than disposables, there are many advantages:

A.)        Most of all…you’ll have a fully funded “diaper insurance” policy that comes with a sense of peace when you encounter a WTSHT-LOD scenario

B.)        Save money verses disposables (long-term mindset)

C.)        Avoid the last-minute “honey-we’re-out-of-diapers” trip to the store

D.)        Reduce valuable storage space requirements for long-term disposables stash

Note: Even if you were able to buy a stash of disposables. How many cases of different sizes of diapers are you going to have to buy?  What if you have more than 1 child?  You might as well start building a dedicated “diaper storage shed.”  Let me know if you do, I’ll buy some stock in Pampers.

Follow-up note:  Even if you had the cash and storage space for a shed full of diapers, what would you do if you had to G.O.O.D.?  I can see it now, an SUV with a pop-up trailer filled with disposables tearing down the road with a crazed mob of diaperless parents hot on their tail.

E.)        While I would not rely on disposable diapers for my kids, I would think that in a WTSHT-LOD event, disposables (if you have the space to store them) would be a valuable barter item for non-prepared parents.

F.)        If you get the “weed-sprayer” you now have a “grid-down-proof” way of getting pressurized water for not just diaper cleaning but also for rinsing dishes, final bathing rinse in the shower and other water pressure needs.

Letter Re: Some Practical Experience in Dehydrating Vegetables

Hi Jim,
We have been dehydrating foods for a couple of years now and I thought you might like to hear how things went for us.

Green beans are dried down south and are called leather breeches. You can do a Google for recipes. Traditionally you use a sewing needle and sew a string through the green bean and then hang them to dry. We blanched the beans prior to drying in our dehydrator. After the beans were dried we wrapped a handful of the beans in a paper towel and shrink wrapped the package. The paper towel protects the plastic bag from the pointy beans.

To cook, simply soak in water overnight and cook as if you were cooking a fresh green bean. We made ours with pork hock, some shelled dried horticultural beans and potatoes. We cooked them for 12 hours in a crock pot, excellent. Be sure to freeze the beans for three days before putting them in storage because those pesky moths will hatch in them if they are around your area.

Potatoes. We recently came into some free potatoes, some will store in the root cellar but the biggest part needed worked on right away. Scrubbed them, sliced them and placed them in a salt brine for a few minutes.( this helps keep them from turning brown) then into the dehydrator for 24 hours. Dehydration rate is 5:1, for every 5 lbs of fresh potatoes you get 1 lb of dried. The next batch we’ll run through the food processor and make hash browns, then we’ll dry them like the slices. Vacuum packed, these, like the green beans will keep for years.

Tomatoes, we sun dried when there was Sun available and then finished the tomatoes pieces off in the dehydrator. We cut the tomatoes into roughly ¼” wedges and gave them a light coating of salt before setting them out. Use caution as they make a lot of juice at first , we filled a dehydrator without first air drying them in the sun first and drowned the dehydrator in tomato juice. After the wedges are dry but slightly rubbery tightly pack a jar and cover with olive oil. The olive oil keeps the oxygen off the tomatoes, we ate some from last summer last night six months later and they were great.

Eggplant, we sliced, dried and vacuum packed. After soaking in water to rehydrate we found the eggplant was every bit as good as fresh only it was slightly firmer.

We raise our own Shitake mushrooms and when we have a big bloom we will slice and dry these also. If Abigail is making soup the mushrooms will go directly into the pot without soaking first.

We really like drying foods as an addition to our other methods of food preservation; it stores in a smaller area but does require some planning when fixing meals so as to allow enough time to rehydrate. Yours, – John & Abigail Adams

Letter Re: How I Made My iPhone a Useful Survival Reference

Mr. Rawles:
I loved the letter on the iphone. In addition to what LC listed there are also ballistics calculators for the math-challenged like me. (iStrelok is free and works pretty well). One caveat to consider with the mighty smart phone is the fact that it could potentially be used to locate your location and perhaps even as a bug to listen in on conversations. One work-around is to buy an iPod Touch. You loose the phone and GPS features, but you can still carry God’s word and all your multimedia in your pocket!

Thanks again for all you do and God bless, – Red in Oklahoma

JWR Adds: For more detailed ballistics calculations, one of my favorite web sites is JBMBallistics.com. I like their ballistics calculators so much that I included a mention of the site by name in my upcoming sequel to “Patriots” . (Scheduled for release in early 2011.) I recommend developing bullet drop and wind drift tables for the standard loads for each of your centerfire rifles. Print them out on card stock, laminate them to make them weatherproof, and either tape them to your rifle’s buttstock, or carry them in each of your buttstock-mounted ammo/utility pouches.

Economics and Investing:

From GG: How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt

Tom W. wrote to mention that he liked a Real Clear Politics piece titled Big Government’s Big Shortfall.

Items from The Economatrix:

Stocks Up After EU Pledges Support for Greece

Moral Support, But No Money, EU Says to Greece

Oil Up for Fourth Day on Strong International Demand Outlook

The Fed’s “Exit Plan” is Just Another Secret Gift to Wall Street

Jason Kelly Reviews the US and European Economies

Banking and Housing Payments Devoured Middle Class Income

Stocks Fall as Bernanke Points to End of Stimulus

Trade Deficit Jumps Sharply in December

Consumers Spent Modestly in January

Oil Nears $74 as Weak Dollar Offsets High Supplies

EU Officials Wrangle Over Possible Greece Rescue

Greek Bailout Looking Increasingly Likely

British Airways Credit Downgraded by S&P

Think PIGS are in Trouble? These Seven US States Could be Headed for Something Worse

Odds ‘n Sods:

Karen H. forwarded this news item: High sugar prices will soon hit bakeries. Here at SurvivalBlog, we warned you about this as far back as May of 2009. Stock up. (But preferably with more healthy natural sweeteners like honey and stevia.)

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Bruce T. spotted this in Popular Science magazine: New Armored Wall System Assembles Like Legos, Could Replace Sandbags in Afghanistan. Somehow, I doubt that these Big Boy Legos will ever see much use outside of “Green Zone” roadblock set-ups. Let’s face it: Empty sandbags are cheap, and they fit in a backpack. It is safe to predict that sandbags will still be used for a few more centuries. They’ll just start making them from Kevlar, or goat milk spider silk, or somesuch.

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The BBC report: GPS to suffer from awakening sun; As the Sun exits its period of solar activity and the numbers of flares increase, users of sat-nav technology will face errors and outages. (A hat tip to Mac The Gadget Guy, for the link.)

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Don W. sent us an article to file under: Big City OPSEC: Police: Man with weapons cache was preparing for ‘Armageddon’. (This comes from Massachusetts, the birthplace of the American Revolution. My, how times change, and how attitudes differ, regionally. Here in the Unnamed Western State, the sheriff’s deputies would just say : “Nice gun collection”, and “Gee, what a great place to do some pistol practice, when its snowing.” (Or, if inside city limits, they’d probably just issue a stern warning.) Here is William Norman Grigg’s insightful take on this, posted over at the Lew Rockwell blog: Paramilitary Thugs Steal Private Arms Collection.

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“As things get worse the next time around, there is going to be violence. When the people realize A.) that what the government has done has been wrong, B.) it hasn’t solved the problem, C.) it has made the problems worse, you are going to see people unhappy, you are going to see social unrest, you are going to see violence, and you will probably see some more governments toppled–no question about that. That may sound like a radical statement; it’s just the way the world has always worked.” – Veteran investment guru Jim Rogers, February, 2010

Letter Re: Post-Collapse Charity OPSEC

James Wesley:
A buddy of mine and I were talking about giving out food in a post-collapse world and it occurred to us what we give out could have an impact on your operational security (OPSEC). Unless you come upon the refugees in the middle of your garden, then they’ll probably think (unless you tell them or give them reason to believe otherwise) that you are in much the same situation that they are in. The type of food you give charitably could be a message in and of itself.

Give them store-bought food standard-form (processed food that can be picked up at a regular grocery store, in #2.5 size cans) and that tells them “I have some food”

Give them store-bought food in bulk-form (#10 cans, bags of rice, grain or any of the such) and that tells them “I have a prepared stockpile of food”

Give them standard garden-fresh vegetables (carrots, lettuce, the “salad foods”) tells them “I have a small source of food”

Give them orchard-grade foods (apples, pomegranates, anything that comes from high-maintenance plants or old-growth plants, or fresh meats other than perhaps deer or common game) says “I have a large and capable food supply”

In the large scheme of things it may be more of an afterthought, but it would be one less thing to draw attention to your group. In my heart I want to help as many people as I can however I can, but my primary responsibility is my family and any others under my care. If people know you have a large source of diverse foodstuffs it makes you an all the more tempting target. Take care, – WPK

JWR Replies: As I’ve mentioned before in SurvivalBlog. in the event of a societal collapse, I plan to distribute charity anonymously, through a third party: my local church. I believe in “giving until it hurts”, but not in getting oneself hurt while trying to give.

Letter Re: My Experience in Setting Up a Community Survival Group

Jim,
In these uncertain times many of us are preparing, some for economic collapse others for a coming pandemic or EMP strike, either natural or man made. Not having the option of relocating to a more ideal area my wife and I decided a few months ago to try to stack the odds in our favor by going a little different route. We have been able to partner with other local families and friends to be each others back-up and support systems. We initially started with just three families (6 of us total) and thru careful vetting and many meetings we have now grown to almost 16 families totaling about 40 people. All of these families have demonstrated a commitment to the group and are either past preppers (Y2K) or those that really “get it”. We have been able to find just about every talent we think we may need with the exception of a physician. However, we do have a well-experienced emergency room nurse and a veterinarian.

Realizing that we are not in the best of positions we have been to each others homes and properties and have done what we believe are honest assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of each location. We have looked at location and surrounding areas, water availability, defensibility, lines of approach and egress, construction, heating and alternative energy methods, land available to till and plant. We have found that about half of the locations are too small or are too vulnerable to be of much use so those families will automatically be bunking in with others when the need comes as well as storing their supplies with those families now. As a group we have tried to identify and define what triggers we will use to implement our plans. In the case of a long slow slide to economic collapse we will have some time to sit back and monitor the situation, in the case of something major we have plans for our group to divide into three different locations in our township. We feel that this will give us the ability to not only support each other but will give us fall back positions to go to in the event we are forced out of one particular area.

This has not been an easy venture. We have had some people who would like to join that had personalities that just didn’t fit well with the rest of the group. Some people were just too radical, some lazy and argumentative, some wanted the comfort of a backup without being willing to contribute anything to the group, let alone for their own welfare. We have found that group dinners and work days have not only strengthened our bond with each other but has led to some real friendships that we may not have been able to forge. Easy, no, but worthwhile, yes. While we may not be in the best of locations we have through hard work put together a group of people and the synergy that comes along with it. One family alone in this area has no chance, but us, I think we have a fighting change of getting through the times ahead.

Thanks for all you do. K. J., – Somewhere in Ohio

Letter Re: Combination Guns for Hunting?

Jim,
In reading your article on choosing survival guns I noticed that you have a Savage Model 24F listed. Do you have any experience or opinions on the Valmet 412 ST, with barrels for 12 gauge and .30-06? I want to buy one but did not know if it would be a good choice for putting on the list for survival guns. Thank you ,- John

JWR Replies: Combination guns are quite useful for areas where you have the opportunity to do both big game and bird hunting on the same hunt. There is many a time that I’ve been out on a deer or elk hunt and wished that I had a pistol or shotgun with me to hunt grouse, especially when I’ve been walking back to my truck, late in the morning. At lest that way I wouldn’t have gone home empty -handed.

Combination guns are of course not the best guns for self-defense. But if combination guns are the approach you want to take for hunting and garden pest shooting, then the Valmet 412 is the “Cadillac” choice. Just keep in mind that for the same cost of buying one Valmet you could buy two Savage 24s–providing a wider range of calibers. For example, you could have one that is chambered .22 LR over 20 gauge, and another that is .223 over 12 gauge.

Letter Re: A Shortage of Mantles for Aladdin Kerosene Lamps

Dear Jim,
I was trying to buy an Aladdin Loxon Mantle #R-150 for my Aladdin kerosene lamp and found that all suppliers seemed to be out of stock. Even Lehman’s Hardware here in Ohio was out of stock and showing an April delivery. I spent some time searching and found some very expensive ones on eBay but that was all. I then did a search for “Aladdin mantle problems” and found a cached press release from the Aladdin company. It looks like we have a major problem for Aladdin Lamp owners. From a loyal reader, – Jay H.

JWR Replies: Hopefully this situation will be resolved soon. An aside: My parents thought that I was going overboard, when I bought three spare Aladdin wicks and a dozen spare mantles, back in 1979. In those days, an Aladdin lamp cost around $60, and spare mantles were less than $2 each. I still have a few mantles remaining from that first batch. As with most of my other Alpha Strategy tangible investments, items bought early on and stored properly have proven to be better that money in the bank!

Letter Re: How I Made My iPhone a Useful Survival Reference

James,
I depend on your invaluable books and Blog daily. I wanted to share with you and your readers my Archives Library system for when SHTF.

I have an iPhone 3Gs ( and a spare one ). I feel that this is a more readily accessible and portable device as compared to a Kindle. I have loaded with many useful applications (“apps”) for survival and references. The main apps are :

Carpenters Helper
Photo Album and iTunes (for family viewing of pictures and my DVD collection DVDs ripped at 700Kbps VBR 2 pass h.264 is pretty good and saves on space)
MotionX GPS 9.4 and more importantly the now localized maps for it. (This is for once cell phone networks are non-functional.)
Morse Decoder and Encoder (for semi-secure transmission… just increase the WPM count, the put the iphone next to the receiver and type your text and it will send our tones, at the other end you do the same with the decoder tool
Bible Reader4 – allows you to read the entire Bible offline

Most importantly, I use Evernote which is my central library for all my other reference content, from clipped content to the web, to PDF books and all my scanned household legal documents. Evernote can sync content between multiple clients to the web but nonetheless have it localized on all hosts (that means I populate evernote from my laptop, it’s replicated to their hosting site and then sync’ed to my iPhone). Note that Evernote is available for PC, Mac/iPhone, Blackberry and WindowsCE.

Interestingly, I have downloaded all the pertinent blogs and web sites of importance to it for my portable reference guides using Site Sucker and other similar apps (Note for blogs where you don’t care for the images, just download the HTML files)

I use a SOLIO for photovoltaically charging my phone

Finally I have both a Otterbox Defender Case (for day to day work) and a Otterbox Armor for when I am transporting it in heavy rain or over water.

God Bless, – LC

Letter Re: Practical Substitutes for Anvils

Dear JWR:

In article in the February 9th edition of SurvivalBlog, author JIR wrote: “There is no substitute for a good anvil. The bigger it is, the more stable it is and the more enjoyable it is to work with. But, if you need to, you can get by with using almost any heavy chunk of steel or even a big rock. My first anvil was a 16 pound sledgehammer head and it worked pretty well.”

The following three links offer descriptions and some thoughts regarding the construction of anvils from short sections of former railroad rail. Though not as suitable as a purpose-built anvil, they’ll do as a field-expedient substitute, either until something better can be obtained or arranged, or as a spare or secondary backup anvil to a ‘smith’s real workday unit.

I hope this info is of use to other potential anvil beaters! – George S.

Economics and Investing:

A link sent by SurvivalBlog’s Poet Laureate George Gordon (“GG”): Why Sovereign Debt Pain Has Only Just Started

Also from GG come this big red flag article: Greece ‘Dress Rehearsal’ for U.S. and U.K., Deutsche Bank Says

Sent by Trent: Britain faces ‘oil crunch’ within five years, Richard Branson warns

Forget The Mortgage, I’m Paying My Credit Card First! (Thanks to Coyote in northern Michigan, for the link.)

Items from The Economatrix:

Greece’s Financial Crisis Puts Future of Euro in Question

Super-wealthy Investors Move Billions Out of Greece

World Bankers Meet in Sydney as Recovery Fears Intensify

Bank Failures to Keep Rising in 2010

Obama Says Economy Turning Corner to Growth (“Turning at warp nothing, Captain.”)

Seven US States that are Worse Off than Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain

UK: Thousands to Lose Jobs as Universities Prepare to Cope with Cuts

Will We Ever Trust Wall Street Again?

Greek Ouzo Crisis Escalates into Global Margin Call as Confidence Ebbs

Odds ‘n Sods:

There are just two days left in the 25% off sale at SafeCastle on all Mountain House foods in #10 cans is in progress. They are offering free shipping to the 48 continental states! The sale ends on February 13th, so order soon!

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“Hokie” sent us this: High demand for road salt prompts rationing in Maryland and Virginia

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Just one week remains in Directive 21’s sale on the Royal Berkey water filters. Presently just $262.50, the price will revert to $275, on the 18th of February.

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More about the USDA’s plans replace the NAIS plan, posted over at the Truth Farmer blog: Easter Bunny Reports “NAIS is Dead!!!!”