The Preparedness and Survival Site

Part 2 in a series of posts contributed by forum member Cutter.

As Jesus said, “Man cannot live by bread alone…” He was talking about Spiritual things, but it is true here too.  Man also needs water.

Water is fairly easy and inexpensive to stock.  There are a few tricks to make it less expensive yet.

One person needs at least 2 quarts of water a day to survive and stay healthy.  This assumes only drinking water and little to no exertion.  It also assumes moderate temperatures.  In my experience, 2 gallons of water per day per person is a good minimum rule.  This allows a full gallon for drinking if necessary and another full gallon for cooking and occasional bathing.  A person can get by on less, but it is less fun to do so.

So on to the storage.  Your home provides you with a fair amount of water storage as built.  Assuming a normally sized tank type water heater, you have around 30 gallons of water stored right there, perhaps as much as 50 gallons.  At 30 gallons, it is enough for 2 people for a week at the 2 gallon / person / day rate.  With careful use, combined cooking, and shared water for the occasional sponge bath, it could be stretched to 2 weeks.  That is just the water heater.

Now consider the water lines.  The combined water lines in the average home will contain enough water to add maybe 1-2 days to your water supply.  The trick is to shut the house water system off from the municipal supply lines.  If you do not, you could get contamination from the municipal supply or worse yet, an opening in the line could drain your entire system, including the water heater contents, back into the system.

Now let’s discuss dedicated hard storage.  There is the option of commercially purchased water tanks.  These range from 5 and 7 gallon containers to thousands of gallons in above ground, buried, or vehicle or trailer mounted tanks.  Prices for these vary according to size and quality.   There is also the option of using a food grade, 5 gallon bucket.  They must be food grade.  Drywall and paint buckets are made with plastic compounds that can leech chemicals into your water.  This is not a good thing.  Pickle and icing buckets are the most common.  They can also be used to safely store foodstuffs.

All of the above choices are good ones but have drawbacks.  Food grade buckets can be had from restaurants or saved from bulk food purchases.  They can also be bought new.  Sometimes they are hard to come by used.  The other containers mentioned above can be purchased, but they do cost money.  This is not exactly in keeping with the shoestring budget idea of these articles.  There is also a question of portability if you have to bug out.  Even 5 gallons of water is really, really heavy if you have to travel on foot while carrying a 5 gallon container.

There is another option.  I use 2-litre bottles.  If you buy soft drinks (and most people do), buy them in 2-litres.  When the soft drink is gone, wash them and refill with water.  Full, they provide 2.1 quarts each.  Therefore, 3 of them will hold enough water for drinking and cooking even with moderate exertion.  Four will cover just over the 2 gallon per person per day guideline.

They also transport and store well.  Tie two together and sling them over your neck or the top of your pack.  You are now carrying enough drinking water for one day of hard walking.  You can stack them on their sides in a closet and easily have two weeks to one month of water on hand.  Throw a board across the top of the stack and you have a shoe shelf (no sense in wasting space).  They freeze well even if filled all the way to the top, so you can keep some of your water as ice.  This comes in especially handy in power outage situations as it can extend the storage life of frozen and refrigerated foods.

Not all of your water has to be safe to drink.  No matter how bad things get, you will want and need to wash both your clothes and yourself regularly.  You will have to keep your cooking and eating utensils clean.  Regular washing keeps clothing serviceable longer.  Clean bodies and cooking and eating utensils are absolutely necessary for good health.  Eating out of dirty dishes is a good way to come down with a terrible case of food poisoning (as if there is such a thing as a good case of food poisoning).  An unwashed body is a certain way to contract infection.  Pets do not have as much vulnerability with regard to food or water as humans.

Rainwater and melted snow and ice in their seasons are a source of water that can be useful and is free.  You only have to catch and contain it.  Again, there are many options in containers.  The inexpensive options are trash cans, trash bags, tarps and plastic sheeting.  Trash cans are self explanatory.  Keep the lids on unless it is raining (or snowing) or when you are actively harvesting water from them.  This keeps things like leaves out of them and keeps down mosquitoes.  Mosquitoes carry disease, will come to and reproduce in standing water (making it unsafe for any purpose), and at best will make your life miserable.  Always use trash cans that have been purchased and reserved for this purpose only.

Trash bags can be set up on a framework to catch and hold water in much the same way as cans.  When not catching or dispensing water, they should be tied closed for the same reasons as covering cans.  They can also be used to transport and store water from sources away from your home base.  They can also be used to line trash cans that have been used for trash in order to contain the water and still be safe for use.  This is not a perfect solution and should be used only if absolutely necessary.

Tarps and plastic sheeting can be laid out on the ground to catch water.  By raising the edges all around with anything available, you create a kind of temporary pond that can catch and hold a great deal of water.  Draped in the open bed of a standard 8 foot pickup bed, they can hold between 350 and 500 gallons of water, if the suspension can hold it.  Three hundred fifty gallons of water weighs almost 2 tons!  Five hundred weighs almost 3 tons.  Bear it in mind when making arrangements to catch and store large quantities of water.  These containment ponds too should be covered when not in use.

If you have warning of impending need of stored water, these techniques can be used to stockpile water from municipal sources while it is still safe.  In long term situations, they give the ability to acquire additional water.  Boiling or filtering can make this water safe for consumption if need be.

Another way of producing safe drinking water for long term situations or when stored water is for some reason unavailable is the solar still.  Dig a hole about 2 feet wide by around a foot deep where it will be in full, direct sun for as much of the day as possible.  In the bottom center of the hole, place a container such as a bowl.  Put the end of a piece of tubing into the bottom of the container (surgical tubing works best, but aquarium tubing will work safely).  Run the other end of the tube a few feet outside of the hole.  Lay a clear piece of plastic loosely over the hole with the tubing extending a few feet beyond it.  Place some of the dirt from the hole all around the edges of the plastic.  Do not cover any part of the plastic directly over the hole with dirt.  Place a stone or some sort of small weight on the plastic over the center of the container in the hole.  This should cause the center of the plastic to drop an inch or two into the hole.  The dip should be higher than the rim of the container.

As the sun shines, water will condense on the inside of the plastic from the earth.  It will run to the lowest point and drip into the hole.  This water is at least marginally safe to drink.  It is distilled by the sun’s heat.  Draw the water out through the tube so you don’t have to dismantle and rebuild the thing every time you draw water from it.  To extend its service life, uncover and lift one corner of the plastic enough to expose the edge of the hole.  Pour your used wash water into the hole.  Then replace he plastic and dirt.  The sun’s heat will draw the water out of the earth while leaving contaminates behind.  I have even heard that urine can be added to the hole in the same way and the water in it recovered.  I do not recommend this.  In addition to finding it disgusting, I am not convinced of the safety of this practice.  If you have to resort to distilling urine for sufficient water, it is time and past time to bug out to a better water source.

One of these stills will not produce a lot of water, but will produce some.  Nothing says that you can’t build more than one if you have the material.  The siphon tube is optional and is included for convenience.  Without it, you will have to tear down the still and rebuild it each time you harvest water.

One more note on stored water.  It should be rotated at least every six months or filtered before use.  Any water drained from a water heater or boiler should be filtered.  It ensures safety and improves taste.  For people who don’t like water (like me), drink mixes, coffee, tea, or whatever flavoring you prefer will help the taste and keep you drinking like you should.

Good luck and stay thirsty (but not too thirsty) my friends.

Part 1 of a series of articles contributed by forum member Cutter.

In this section, we will talk about food.  All those LTS foods are great and handy but people have been surviving problems large and small for millennia without them.  Something else to consider is that it can be a real shock to the system to abruptly change your diet.  The last thing you need is for your body to rebel against dinner in the middle of a crisis.

What is the work around?  The stuff you eat every day.  Canned goods are heavy but they keep well with minimal care and are much less expensive.  Make out your grocery list and then double the quantities.  The catch is that you must make sure that you buy your list first.  After your grocery list is filled, start over in the store and start buying the double portion.  Stop when you get close to or hit your money limit.  Anything you can’t buy that trip, be sure to carry over to your next shopping list.  You will run out of room before you run out of groceries to put away in an amazingly short period of time.  Watch the sales.  If something you normally pay $.69 a can for is on sale at 3 for $1, you end up getting an extra unit and still saving $.38.  This kind of buying puts you ahead of your progress curve in a hurry while at the same time stretching your prep budget.

Plant a garden even if it is only a couple of buckets of dirt on the patio with a couple of tomato plants.  When they start putting food on your table, take the money you would have spent to buy that produce and purchase other, storable foods.  Speaking from experience, your garden will grow in size from year to year.  You just won’t be able to resist planting “just one more thing.”

With the gardening, another opportunity presents itself.  If you plant enough, it should produce more than you can eat.  Process and store it.  Freezing is good.  Canning and dehydrating is better.  I am expanding into the canning and dehydrating this year myself.  If you freeze foods, try freezing them in water.  It keeps freezer burn from developing.  Nothing is more irritating than to find out the 2 bushels of green beans you froze in perfect quart bags are so freezer burned that they are almost inedible.  Now imagine it is 20 pounds of beef.  Freezing in water works great for fish.  I have eaten fish that was frozen up to seven years earlier.  It tasted almost as good as if it were caught that morning.

You could also get bitten by the flea market bug and sell your excess at a farmer’s market or flea market.  Shoot, set up a table in your yard on Saturday and have a garden yard sale.  You could also trade with neighbors that grow things you don’t.  That arrangement works out well for everybody if you can pull it together.  I grow corn.  I am the only one in the neighborhood that grows it.  For some reason, I seem to be the only one that can get it to produce.  None of us can figure out why.  Everybody around here likes corn, so I grow a lot of it.  For my trouble, I don’t have to grow the cucumbers and squash I like but still get them.

Try hunting and fishing.  If you don’t like it, stop doing it.  On the other hand, if you do like it, you can add a goodly amount of meat and fish to your diet and stores at a bargain price.  The real bonus is two-fold.  You have a new hobby or hobbies you enjoy and the meat and fish you harvest are generally lean and free of all the chemicals that store bought meats have added to them whose names you probably can’t pronounce.

Buy in bulk.  Generally, bulk packed foods cost less per a given unit than convenience sizes.  This is due to less packaging and processing cost.  Bulk buying works especially well for meats.  You pay for a butcher or meatpacking plant to make those nice steaks in the cute Styrofoam packaging.  Instead of that, buy a roast and cut it to your liking.  This works even better if you buy on sale.  I do all our beef and pork this way.  We have very little waste from servings that are too big and we get good cuts of meat.  I do buy processed chicken breasts just because I’m the only one in the house that likes dark meat.  I even buy these in family packs.

If you want or need to break down bulk buys into smaller lots, save some of the containers.  Five gallon, food grade buckets are perfect for caching if you do that sort of thing and are safe for storing drinking water.  They come in handy in the garden as both carriers and planters.  Plastic grocery bags are great to have on hand if you sell or trade your excess produce.  People buy more when they can easily carry more to the car.  As a bonus, you are being green by recycling the bags in a non-conventional way.

Don’t forget to rotate your stocks.  Long Term Storage (LTS) food is just that.  It is designed and packaged to sit on a shelf for years on end with little or no care.  The foods we have talked about here, with the exception of unprocessed fresh foods, will keep for a long time but will go bad.  Use it from the oldest to the newest and continue to do so when you reach the levels you want to maintain.  I have found that marking the date when it was put into storage in a conspicuous place on the container helps greatly.  I use my stores from top to bottom, front to back.  I add to my stores from bottom to top, back to front.  It requires some moving and re stacking of goods as I use and restock but is worth the time and effort.

With all of this, there is one thing you must remember.  Save up enough money to go out to a restaurant at least once a month.  Let somebody else do the cooking and cleaning up once in a while.  Or at least do something just for fun.  It is a good reward for all the hard work you do to save money and helps you to avoid getting discouraged.

Good luck and good eating!

This is the prelude to a series of posts contributed by forum member Cutter. The remaining parts of this series will be posted in the coming days.

OK, you’re here, so you must know that you really should prepare for difficult times, but all those goodies and nifty gadgets you read about on all the forums and websites are expensive!  This collection of articles will discuss some ideas to help you get around some of that expense and absorb what you can’t work around without a second mortgage.  Hopefully, they will help you prioritize your plans and acquisitions in such a way that you will avoid frustration, make steady progress, and not break the bank.

Let’s start with an overview of the sort of things that need to be provided for.  The most basic needs for life are food & water, shelter (including clothing), and safety…in that order.  These should be the first things addressed in any preparedness program.  That is not to say that other needs and wants cannot be addressed at the same time.  It is only to say that these three things are the most basic and most necessary.  These should receive priority in the early stages of a preparedness plan.  As it happens, these are often among the easiest things to address.

The second part of preparedness is as cheap as free can be.  It is tied into the plans involving all the other things and can be the hardest part of any preparedness program.  This is the part where you decide what you want your life to look like after the balloon goes up, what you want your future to develop into, and what you must, can’t, will, and won’t do to achieve it.

From there, we progress to those things that we need to enhance and augment our ability to satisfy our basic needs and our wants.  These are the items that will allow us to not only survive, but to thrive.  There are some tangibles like tools and materials, but also some intangible ones like skills, training, and knowledge.  This part of a preparedness program includes things that vary from the cheap or free to the relatively expensive, from the easy to the difficult to obtain.  Even if the price is high, these items and abilities are worth the money, at any price.

The fourth part of preparedness is our wants.  These are the things we would like to have, the things that make surviving easier and more bearable.  These are the “toys”, if you will, that will make the aftermath something like enjoyable every now and then.  These things are not always necessary.  Their necessity depends upon your plans.  Even then, some of these considerations are nice in normal times and would be considered real luxuries when and after the balloon goes up.  These are the things that will help keep you sane and remember why you wanted to survive in the first place.  In other cases, they will help you achieve the life you want in the aftermath.

The last part of a preparedness program is maintenance.  The best plan and most complete preparations will do you no good if you don’t keep them current.  Many things do have a shelf life.  Food is only one of those things.  Equipment must be maintained if you want it to work when you need it.  Skills need to be practiced if you are to keep them sharp.  Knowledge can always be increased.  No matter how much you know, it won’t be enough.  More is always, always better.  Training, simply put, is the repetition and improvement of skills.  The more you train, the more likely you are to be able to put your skills to use without the need to think consciously about those skills.  Correctly executed actions that essentially bypass conscious thought can make all the difference.  In a couple of areas, it can literally mean the difference between life and death.

It is my hope that with the help of these articles, you will have a good idea of what needs to be done in your program and how to go about doing it.  I know what it is to work with limited funds.  I know the financial hardships even a simple preparedness program can impose upon those working with limited funds.  I also have a thorough understanding of the rewards a well executed preparedness plan can provide.  Even early on, when your plan is far from done, it can make all the difference if bad turns to worse.  It is my goal in these articles to help all I can to minimize the hardships and maximize the rewards for you by explaining some of the things that have worked for me and others.

Good luck and happy prepping!

More and more articles are coming out in the press about people that are making the change and deciding that they should take direct responsibility for the well-being of themselves and their families.  Newsweek is the latest to feature an article on what they are calling “preppers”, and they have a very interesting take on the movement that has been steadily growing.

And while they may not envision themselves as Kevin Costner in Waterworld—in fact, many preppers go out of their way to avoid the stereotypes that come along with the “survivalist” label—they’ve made a clear-eyed calculation about the risks at hand and aren’t waiting around for anybody else to fix them.

This is goodness, this is what this site and others like it have been promoting all along. It does not have to be full on nuclear warfare, biological warfare, or a 2km asteroid hitting the earth, most of what should be focused on are the immediate threats to you and your family. These days that means being unemployed, natural disasters, economic disruptions, etc. There is a long list of things that can go wrong that have nothing to do with the end of the world.

Some preppers fear the complete breakdown of society, while others simply want to stock up on extra granola bars and lighter fluid in case of a blackout or a storm. Hard-core survivalists might think of preppers as soft; “Eventually, the Chef Boyardee is going to run out,” jokes Cody Lundin, the founder of the Aboriginal Living Skills School, a survival camp based out of his home in Prescott, Az. But prepping, says Martin, is just a new word for a very old way of life. “You don’t have to have a survival retreat loaded with guns secluded in the wilderness to be a prepper,” adds David Hill Sr., 54, a former jet mechanic who runs the Web site WhatisaPrepper from his home in rural West Virginia. “There are many people who live in urban and suburban areas who don’t own guns who also identify themselves as preppers.“

The last sentence is one to note, this is important. This means that the mentality of taking care of you and yours is starting to sink in. Yes, the entitlement crowd will always be out there, TV raised them to expect everything to be neatly wrapped and delivered at their beck and call. But, the fact that more “average” people are changing their perceptions to align with the known fact that  “you need to be able to take care of yourself” is a very heartening thing to see.

FEMA’s new head under Obama, Craig Fugate, has encouraged Americans to get in touch with their inner survivalist. “I encourage all Americans to take some simple steps to make their families more prepared, such as developing a family communications plan,” he tells NEWSWEEK. His organization recently launched a “Resolve to be Ready” campaign suggesting that Americans to make preparedness part of their New Year’s resolutions. “I think what people have come to realize is that [organizations like ours] can’t always be everywhere we need to be as quickly as we need to be,” says Jonathan Aiken, a spokesman for the American Red Cross. “So I think the messaging has changed, from FEMA on down, that in the event of an emergency, people need to be prepared to take care of themselves for a couple of days until the rest of us can come out and get to you.”

This is good, trends like this need to continue. One of the things that helped to get the US through the Great Depression was the fact that the US Government encouraged the population to do everything that they could to ensure that everything was used as efficiently as possible, to plant gardens, and do many other things to be self supporting. It was considered a Patriotic Duty to help yourselves and thus help your country. We need that mentality again, Katrina was a perfect example of how things should not be. While there is no single point that can be assigned, rather blame needs to be equally distributed amongst all parties. None were prepared for something like that, the few that lived in the area that were did rather well, those that were not, and did not evacuate as instructed, suffered horribly.

In the end, what it all boils down to, at least for the preppers, is self-reliance—a concept as old as the human race itself. As survival blogger Joe Solomon pointed out in a recent column, during the Victory Gardens of WWII, Americans managed to grow 40 percent of all the vegetables they needed to survive. “My mother’s parents had a 10-acre garden, and my grandfather worked at the dairy farm next door,” says Hill, the former jet mechanic. “They worked by raising their own food, they had their own chickens, they canned vegetables, and my grandfather fed a family of 12 like that.” But in the modern world, he says, many of those skills are easily forgotten. Today, our food comes from dozens of different sources. Most of us aren’t quite sure how electricity gets from the wires to our stoves. We use debit cards to buy a can of tuna and we wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to filter contaminated water. We are residents of the new millennium; we simply haven’t needed to prepare.

The skills referenced above are not just “easily” forgotten, they have been forgotten in most cases. This is a scary reality, modern society has done an excellent job of un-teaching some of the most important skills that one can have individually. The “just in time” infrastructure that almost everybody relies on only reinforces that there is not a need for the core skills that built this country, it’s dead wrong. If we don’t need those core skills now, we will sooner or later.

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The original Newsweek article that the quotes were taken from can be found here: Newsweek – Survivalism Lite

Video that accompanied this article: Survivalism 101

This article is courtesy of Cutter, one of our forum members:

For better or worse, I am the de facto leader of my unofficial, informal Mutual Assistance Group (MAG). I say unofficial and informal because that is what it is. For all of my efforts, my extended family, including my in-laws and the couple of friends involved simply won’t get fully involved. I say de facto because I am the “go to guy” for answers and help when there are questions or problems they can’t answer or solve themselves. I say for better or worse because while I have the skills and knowledge to pull them through, I never asked for or wanted the position. However, the responsibility has been thrust upon me and I will do my utmost to wear the mantle of leadership well, out of simple love and loyalty.

My wife is a believer in the prepper lifestyle and becoming more so every day. She is of great help to me now and will be indispensable if the big balloon ever goes up. We have talked often of our extended families and what will become of them in that event. I worry less about my side because, while they don’t embrace the prepper lifestyle, they do exhibit certain qualities inherent in preppers. They do plan ahead for some of the eventualities associated with really bad times. It is my wife’s family that gives us both pause. They are very much the “trust somebody else to take care of me” sort.

When we were talking about our preps and rules of engagement, for lack of a better way of stating it, she actually asked me, “But what about my family?”. She knows, as I do, that they will bring little or nothing to the table but will expect to be taken in…and taken care of. She was afraid (and rightfully so) that I would turn them away, by force if necessary. So, here we were, talking about preparing for bad times and we found ourselves in a real dilemma. Do we take them in or turn them out? Will it drive a wedge between us if things go wrong with them either way.

In the end, we hit upon a compromise. I agreed that the only right thing to do would be to take them in and give them some time to adjust and prove themselves. I agreed to this with the provision that on Day 1, they would be told what was expected of them, what the consequences would be, and how much time they had to play with. It fell out that each one of the group has exactly 30 days from the day they show up to pitch in with anything that needs to be done that is within their ability. After that, if they don’t contribute in a meaningful way to the benefit of the group and themselves, they are out, by force if necessary.

It was difficult for me to hold such a hard line on this. I did not want to. You see, family is everything to my way of thinking. On the other hand, I have other family to think about if bad ever goes to worse. I cannot unduly risk the well being of my wife or the other members of our MAG for the benefit of a few who won’t ever earn their place. It took me a long time to come to grips with my stand on the issue. It took even longer for my wife. In the end, after many heartfelt and difficult discussions, she realized and accepted that it would be as emotionally difficult for me to turn these loved ones away as it would be for her to allow it. She came to understand that if it ever comes to pass, they will have done it to themselves after wasting every opportunity to avoid it. Lastly, she came to understand that I would move Heaven and Earth to find any possible way to avoid turning them out to their fate, so long as it did not endanger the rest.

As preppers, we are obliged to give great consideration to what becomes of those we care about. Inevitably, some of those we care about will not have given any thought to caring for themselves. What’s more, as preppers we will inevitably be thrust into leadership positions if ever bad turns to worse. Those leadership positions come with truly hellish choices and responsibilities. Our decisions could make the difference between suffering and lack of it, between life and death. Those decisions will inevitably test our loyalties and try our souls. We will find ourselves forced to choose between any number of equal options…and all equally bad.

For now, we have the luxury of time. We can do the soul searching now to make an informed choice. We can put by the resources to provide for our loved ones who won’t do it themselves in order to give them a fighting chance. We cannot however, make limitless provision. At some point, those whom we help must help themselves. If they don’t, they will endanger us and everyone else relying on our leadership to pull them through. Unless you have nearly unlimited wealth, you cannot afford to provide everything forever. If things stay bad enough for long enough, you are going to have to re-supply. When that time comes, you are going to need all the help you can get to do it.

Now, before an emergency arises, is the time to make those difficult decisions and set those conditions. If you make a decision out of the blue, in the moment of crisis, you are probably going to make the wrong decision. Unfortunately, you will probably not be the only one paying the price for your mistake.

Home security is always a very broad topic to cover, there are endless gadgets and products out there for just about every need. But there are some very basic things that you can do to make your home more secure for little to no money out of pocket.

As a standard disclaimer, I do have to say that if someone really wants to get in your house, they will, plain and simple. The real trick is to thwart your basic thief that is looking for targets of opportunity where the reward is much greater than the risk of being caught.

Site Survey
One of the best things that you can start with is doing a external site survey of your home, this is where you put on your evil black hat and try to look at your home the way that a thief would. How would you break in? You are going to want to be aware of the location of your home when you are doing this, in a rural area a thief will probably be much more willing to smash a window to gain entry if they feel that the neighbors are far enough away that they won’t hear it.

Start by looking for places that would provide the easiest entry points, usually these are sliding glass or French doors. Next would be the windows and garage door (if you have one), does your family have the good habit of locking the windows every time they close them? Speaking of windows, what can you see through them that might give a thief extra incentive to break in? Opaque window coverings are your friend, even something as simple as a set of shears will still let in the light and keep people from seeing in at the same time.

Entry doors can be an attractive target if they are hidden from view, most residential construction does not have properly installed locksets that can withstand much of a beating before giving in.

Look around the yard, did you leave anything out that could help a thief break into your home? Even basic gardening tools make handy pry bars in a pinch. Also look for items in the yard that would potentially attract a thief to look more closely at your home, or maybe you have a bad habit of leaving your garage door open when you are working in the yard (consider it a showroom of your tools and other goods stored there that a passerby can easily scope out without drawing attention to themselves).

When you are walking around your house, think really hard how you would break into it if you had to. The ideas that you come up with are the ones that you need to address.

Sliding Glass and French Doors
These are the absolute biggest offenders besides doors or windows that were left unlocked. Some sliding doors can easily be lifted off their tracks and removed, while this is more of a vulnerability for older sliders, the technique can easily be thwarted by installing a pin that passes through the frame of the door, into the sliding portion, and out to the opposite site of the frame. Pins like these are standard on most new sliders straight from the factory, for doors that are not equipped with them there are inexpensive kits available at almost any hardware store. Just throwing a stick in the interior track doesn’t cut it, although, it is a good secondary tactic in conjunction with the pin.

French doors are a little harder to address, the very nature of these doors make them vulnerable to attack. These types of doors are designed for their looks rather than security. My opinion, one of these types of doors should never be installed as an exterior door, yes they can be secured to “almost” the same level as a standard door, but not close enough for my taste. Here is a link to an article on securing these types of doors: How to Secure a French Door

Windows
Most modern double pane windows have fairly decent sash lock on them, but it never hurts to augment them with the track locks that slip over the track and tighten down. The track locks are especially good when it comes to areas where you really need to leave a window or two cracked during warmer weather, the track lock also acts as a stop that prevents the window from being opened any further than you intend it to be (2 inches or less is best).

If you have older single pane aluminum windows, the track locks will also work. Older wooden sash windows should be secured by drilling into the upper window frame so a pin can be inserted that keeps the window from being opened if the normal twist lock on the sash is jimmied.

A final note on windows, just because they are on a second story does not mean that they are not vulnerable. If there is any roof from the first story below them, assume that someone can climb up there. If there is not, still assume that someone can climb up there.

Entry Doors
There are a myriad of fixes and upgrades out there, but one of the easiest and most effective ones can be done quickly by almost any homeowner (or renter for that matter). The screws that hold the strike plates in place for the handle and deadbolt are always the weakest point. Replace the factory provided screws with good quality screws that are 3-4 inches, this will allow the screws to securely bite into the framing around the door itself.

Exterior doors should always be good quality solid core doors that are a minimum of 1 ¾ inches in thickness, 2 ¼ inch thick doors offer more protection. Depending on your location, steel clad exterior doors may be a very good option to exercise. For exterior doors that have decorative windows that would allow a thief to reach in and unlock the deadbolt, make sure that you use a double cylinder deadbolt that requires a key to open from the inside as well.

Security Systems
They are nice, and they are expensive. Most outfits will install one for you for next to nothing, it’s the monitoring contract that will kill you in the long run. The alternative is to either install one yourself, or install a convincing fake panel that is visible from outside the house. Sometimes it’s just about the mere thought that they may be dealing with an alarm that will send them to an easier target.

If you have your heart set on a security system, make sure that you shop around carefully before signing on the dotted line of that contract. Also make sure that you research the reputation of the equipment that they are going to be installing, how long does the backup battery last, cellular backup, etc. If you do opt for a security system, its best to consider one that also covers fire as well.

Oh, and finally on this subject, don’t forget the fines from your local police department that you will receive for false alarms that they respond to.

Summary
No matter what security measures you put in place, they can be blown to the four winds by other family members that do not stick to the protocol of keeping things locked up. And, as a reminder they can be equally thwarted by a determined thief. In the end it really boils down to the old axiom of “a lock only keeps an honest man honest”.

These are just some thoughts to get you thinking in the right direction when it comes to the security of your home, it is not all inclusive, nor is it intended to be. I am merely passing on my experience as a home owner and the things that I have looked at when it comes to the security of my home.

As with all things in life: Your Mileage May Vary.

Out of all the people that are reading this, and own a generator, how many actually make sure that they start, run and load their generator on a regular basis? Probably not that many. When you consider the important role that you are expecting this critical piece of equipment to play in the event that you actually need to rely on it, you need to take the proper steps to make sure that it is always in top condition.

Just starting and running the motor does not ensure that the generator will actually produce electricity (whoa, déjà vu’ I know I have said this one before). Loading the generator head itself is critical to keeping the generator functioning properly. Whether it means engaging the engaging the transfer switch to run the house, or just plugging in a couple of high load space heaters on each leg, the generator needs to be run under load to keep it functioning properly.

Besides Just Running it, Don’t Forget the Really Important Things

Things like changing the oil, cleaning or replacing the air filter, checking the coolant level, etc. Many generators have died premature deaths due to the fact that people have not performed the basic maintenance that is required, it does take some time to perform, but the time spent is well worth it when your generator faithfully starts in even the worst weather.

Make sure that you read the manual carefully and stick to the maintenance schedule that is described by the manufacturer, not doing so can leave you in the dark when you need the light the most.

Special Considerations for Some Generators

Just like cars, generators can become especially finicky when it comes to cold weather, especially diesel units. Two major problems can affect them when the weather goes cold, the first is just being a real pain in the *ss to start, and the second is gelling of the diesel.

The first problem can be cured easily with a block heater or something as simple as a 60W light bulb being placed inside the generator housing under the oil pan to keep the chill off.

The second problem can be solved by making sure that proper additives are placed in the fuel to prevent gelling. There are several good products on the market that were created specifically to combat the problem of the fuel turning to jelly when the temps dip down really low.

Heat Issues

Besides lack of care, small generators that are not water cooled also die early deaths due to heat. I have read many articles and write ups from people that are seeking to mute the noise that small generators make, usually by using some type of enclosure to attenuate the noise. This is a really bad idea, when you keep in the noise you are also keeping in the heat. Sure, there are silent generators that are out there, but the enclosures were carefully designed to keep in the noise and remove the heat.

The sad fact is that if you want a quiet generator, you are going to have to spend the money to buy one that was designed to be quiet. Attempting to engineer a solution on your own will usually, but not always, lead to the premature failure of the generator due to overheating. My recommendation, don’t try it unless you are an expert in the field.

In summary

Run your generator on a regular basis, under load conditions
Change the oil and filter (if applicable) per the manufacturer’s instructions
Change / Clean the air filter regularly
Make sure that you have the appropriate additives for your fuel

Doing these things will go a long way towards ensuring that you have reliable power when the commercial grid is down.

There are a lot of folks out there that are finally moving towards having some form of long term storage foods in their home, the most common question is what foods to store. The place to really start is with the basic staple foods that have kept humanity alive in tough times for thousands of years.

Before getting into the details of types of food to store, proper storage methods need to be discussed first. Storing your long term foods improperly is just as bad as not storing anything at all.

Storage Methods

By far the most popular method for storing dry foods is using 5 gallon buckets that have mylar liners that food is placed in with a couple of oxygen absorbers before the liner is heat sealed closed. Using this method the mylar protects the food, and the bucket protects the mylar from damage. Sorbent Systems is a good source for both the mylar bags and the oxygen absorbers (http://www.sorbentsystems.com/mylar.html).

Here is a good two part series on storing foods using 5 gallon buckets and mylar liners:

Smaller quantities of dry goods can also be stored using half gallon sized mason jars and the jar sealing attachment with a FoodSaver. This is actually perfect for things like potato flakes, pasta, flour and other items that are routinely used in the kitchen. Using the FoodSaver jar sealing attachment allows you to immediately re-seal the jar after you have removed the amount of the contents that you needed.

What to Store

This is but a short list of the items that you can easily store in 5 gallon buckets with mylar liners, if the buckets are kept in a cool, dry, place the storage life is many years. We have recently opened buckets that were packed this way in 1998 and the food inside was perfectly good.

• Wheat
• Rice (White, brown rice does not store well)
• Flour
• Beans (several varieties)
• Lentils
• Peas
• Perl Barley
• Pasta / Noodles
• Oatmeal
• Cornmeal
• Salt
• Sugar (White and Brown)
• Powdered Milk (This will need to be rotated out more frequently)
• Potato Flakes

This is just a start, just about any dried foods can be stored in this manner. For items that do not consume as much space (spices, seasonings, etc.) you can use smaller 1 gallon buckets with mylar liners.

The calendar is getting ready to tick over to a new year in just days, what are your plans for the New Year? There are small signs that the economy is starting to recover, but they are small and there are still a record number of people out of work. One of the best things that I can suggest for all reading this is to take all the measures that you have taken to get by in the leaner times that this year brought and make them permanent changes to your lifestyle.

Most people that I know have been cutting some serious corners this year to make sure that what comes in day to day can actually cover all the bases that they need to cover. And, make no mistake; the problems with the economy are far from over. The US will be recovering from this debacle for years to come.

If the last two years haven’t proven anything else, they have proven that the population of the United States needs to be much more resilient against the bumps in the road that the economy can throw at us. These are lessons that were learned by those that lived through the Great Depression, and then sadly forgotten over the last two generations. During the Great Depression the term “reduce, reuse, recycle” was not known, but it sure was practiced, almost nothing went to waste that still had a use.

As a population we have been living well beyond our means for far to long, the latest major economic downturn was driven in a large part by that excess. Credit does have a place in our lives, but it should be a minor part rather than the primary purchasing method. Too many people did not read the fine print when they hurried to sign the contracts for homes that they really couldn’t afford. Easy credit for homes and cars was nothing more than a shell game that dealt a huge blow to the very system that created and promoted it, when the interest became too much to bear by those that signed on the dotted line the house of cards started caving in.

Sadly, history does repeat itself, and is doomed to again sometime in the future. For the most part my family squeezed by without a large impact, but that was because we chose not to travel the road to ruin in the first place. The financial responsibility that was taught to me by my parents stuck pretty well, and I hope that the lessons that you learned over the past couple of years will heavily influence what you choose to teach your children when it comes to personal finances.

Personal preparedness and sustainable living practices are the keys to success for this nation, these things are not hard to integrate into one’s life (chances are that you recently have to some extent) and they are things that you can do that are very rewarding as well. It may take some effort to cultivate a small garden; even folks in urban settings can do it, or do something else to lessen your daily dependence on the retail system. America has a proud heritage of doing what it takes on an individual level to survive and prosper, this heritage and drive is what can pull this nation back from the brink.

Every New Year is a sort of fresh start that we can make the best of, what are you planning?

This is a wonderful piece of insight from Wendy Dewitt. Yes, it is targeted at a Mormon audience, but that makes little difference since it is applicable to everyone.

Top 10 Reasons I don’t Have My Food Storage

10. My neighbors have a TWO year supply! No, they don’t. They don’t have any food. Did you know that 85% of the members of the church don’t have any food storage at all? If your idea of food storage is to eat someone else’s food………..this is a really bad plan.

9. I’ve paid tithing for 20 years…the church can give me a little food. Many members believe that when the times get hard, the church is going to come through like Joseph in Egypt. Absolutely not true. All the church storehouses and welfare farms across the country would only feed 4% of the members of the church. The church has been asking YOU to store food for 75 years. They’re NOT storing food for you. Thus, another bad plan.

8. I’m moving in with my children / parents! Really….that’s just a bad plan all by itself. But it points out that most members don’t have a year’s supply because they’re PLANNING on eating someone else’s food! Of course, since no one HAS any food, we have yet another bad plan.

7. I have a year’s supply…and the bullets to go with it! I’ve heard time and again, “How dumb is that to go to all the time and expense of getting food…just to have some guy with a gun come and shoot my family to take it away?” Here’s a better question. Are you afraid of the guy with the gun? Or are you more afraid of BECOMING the guy with the gun? What would you do if your children were starving to death? Would you lie? Cheat? Steal? Would you shoot your neighbor for his food? I guarantee….if you were watching your child starving to death, you would do anything you had to to keep them alive. If you don’t have your year’s supply, you are putting yourself in danger of losing not only your temporal salvation, but your spiritual salvation as well.

So far, all the reasons we don’t have our food storage involve eating someone else’s food. Please, don’t put your family’s temporal salvation in other people’s hands. No one is storing food for you. Not your neighbors, not the government…not even the church.

#6. The boat and the 4 wheelers are taking up all my storage space! (priorities!)

#5. 3 letters….Y2K. Ok, that’s 2 letters and a number….but they’re always making way too much out of everything! This is never going to happen!” (Every prophecy that has ever been given WILL happen.)

#4. If anything DOES happen, the government will be here within hours! (insert laughter) Did you know the government has been telling us that we need to have food storage? They’re actually CALLING it food storage! We now have the government telling us to store food, water, medicines…whatever we will need to be able to stay in our homes for several months.

#3. I can’t afford scrap booking AND food storage. The average food storage can cost as little as a dollar a day. We live in the richest society in the history of the world, and while there are cases where money may be a problem, most of the time it is a matter of priorities. We have chosen bigger homes, nicer cars, more tv’s, computers, vacations …everything is more important than our food storage. If I asked, “Who has a cell phone?” most of you would say yes. You pay at least $30 a month to have a cell phone….that’s about a dollar a day…the cost of one year’s supply of food for your child. Is your cell phone really more important than your child’s temporal salvation? You have to make food storage a priority.

2. I’m waiting for the cannery to sell Papa John’s dehydrated pizza! Food storage has always had a stigma attached to it. If it’s not wheat, beans and powdered milk, it’s not food storage. With the system I use, food storage can be sweet and sour chicken, tamale pie, chile and cornbread, beef stew, shepherd’s pie, minestrone…even chocolate chip cookies! Your imagination (and your pocketbook) are the only limitations you have.

And the #1 reason why I don’t have my year’s supply of food? A year?? I thought it was 72 hours!!

You KNOW you should have your food storage. You WANT to have it, but it can be so overwhelming! How much do I buy? Where do I store it? How do I cook it? It seems like an impossible task…. but it’s not. It doesn’t matter if you use my system or just start buying extra food, the important thing is to do something. Good luck in your efforts! Wendy DeWitt

Source: http://everythingunderthesunblog.blogspot.com/