“It’s in the Water”

As a person who has been prepping seriously for about 15 years I can tell you Water is probably one of the most overlooked and under-prepared for items in a household. So many folks stock up on ways to DISINFECT their water but not on actually storing the DRINKING water itself. 

This article recommends stocking a gallon of water per person and pets for 3 Days. Speaking from experience, I can tell you a Gallon per day is the MINIMUM and depends on your environment and specific situation. Where I live, that means 103 degrees with 90% humidity in the summer. Also, In the last two disasters we lived through, Hurricane Rita and Ike, our water was out for an average of 17 days due to flood water contamination. So adding this all together, I stock at least 2 Gallons per person and animal for a minimum of 2 weeks or more. That means if you are an “average” family of 4 with a dog and a cat, that would equal 12 gallons per day (Six Total x 2 Gallons Each) x 14 days= 168 gallons of drinking water stored.

I would also HIGHLY recommend making two things NOW:

• High output gravity water filter (size depends on number of people in home)
• Method to Catch and Store Rain Water

 

 

Seven Things you Need to Know about your Drinking Water

Current events in Flint, Michigan remind us all that the drinking water we take for granted is not always as safe as everyone assumes. Here are seven things everyone should know.

1. Every year in the United States there are an average of 19.5 million casesof waterborne illnesses from drinking water. Most of these are non-life threatening, but that is not an insignificant number.
2. Boiling water can protect you from microbial contamination in your drinking water, but it will concentrate contamination from nitrates or lead, making those types of contamination even more dangerous. Be sure to follow notices from your local health authorities regarding boiling your drinking water.
3. Drinking water treatment facilities typically have seven to 14 days for water purification chemicals on site. If there were to be a disruption in trucking(natural disaster, civil unrest, zombie apocalypse), drinking water reserves would be exhausted within 14–28 days.
4. From 1995 to 2000, the United States spent $50 billion on capital investments to fund water quality improvements. The EPA calculates that if we do not increase the current level of funding, there will be a significant gap in funding needed to maintain drinking water infrastructure by 2017. The tragic events of Flint, Michigan could be more common in years to come.
5.   The average American household uses 90 gallons of water per day. Contrast with with the average European 53 gallons per day, and the average Sub-Saharan household uses 3–5 gallons.
6. A human can only survive approximately three days without clean drinking water.
7. Considering all these factors, it is prudent to be prepared in case something happens. It is recommended that you have at least one gallon of water per person in your household per day, maintaining at least a three day supply. Don’t forget your pets either.

Read the Original Article at Medium

The Best 110 DIY Tips Ever from Popular Mechanics

Know Your Stuff: The 110 Best DIY Tips Ever from Popular Mechanics

For Popular Mechanics‘ 110th anniversary, we decided to do something special: We dived into our archives to find the 110 best, handiest, and most helpful tips ever printed in PM. It’s more than a century of DIY wisdom. (You can read the introduction to the project here.)

Stay Alert, Stay Armed, Stay Handy and Stay Dangerous!!

Tradecraft: How to Pick a Lock

The reason you have stumbled upon this guide is likely to answer these two questions:

1. Is it difficult to learn how to pick a lock?
2. How do I learn this craft of lock picking?

In regards to the first question, learning how to pick a lock is in fact a very simple skill to acquire. There is a common misconception that learning how to pick a lock is inherently difficult and requires hours upon hours of sitting quietly in a candle lit room with nothing but a set of lock picks, gobs of patience, and a lock to pick. Furthermore, that you must achieve some Zen like focus to have any success at lock picking. But it is in fact quite the opposite. The basic concepts and techniques of lock picking can learned and applied within hours. It can also be practiced in any environment in which both hands are free, such as watching TV. This all being said, lock picking is still a skill and like any skill, mastery requires patience and practice.

So how do go about learning this craft of lockpicking? The first step of acquiring any new skill is learn the basic theory and techniques behind it. The purpose of this guide is to teach you the very fundamentals of lock picking and written for the absolute beginner. With this guide you will learn how locks work and how to pick them. Furthermore, upon completion of this guide you will have the knowledge to tackle any pin and tumbler lock that stands in your way. With that lets get started!

Quick Navigation:

1. Introduction to Lock Picking
2. Legality Of Lock Picking
3. How A Pin Tumbler Lock Works
4. Flaws Are Good: Manufacturing Tolerances
5. Tools Required
6. The Tension Wrench
7. Picking A Lock: Single Pin Picking
8. Picking A Lock: Raking

Introduction To Lock Picking

So what exactly is lock picking? A professional locksmith could define lock picking as the art of examining and then manipulating the internal components of a lock with the goal of disengaging the lock mechanism without using the original key. But to the layman, this mumbo jumbo can simply be translated as the act of bumping a few metal pins up and out-of-the-way so they no longer block the lock from turning.

There are many different types of locks utilized today, but all are based on fairly simple concepts. For the purpose of this guide we will be focusing on the most basic and most commonly used lock today, the pin tumbler lock. This type of lock is what you will find on deadbolts, door knobs, or in most padlocks and is exceedingly simple in its design.

Legality Of Lock Picking

Lock picking for the most part is allowed when you have permission by the owner to pick that particular lock or, of course, if you own the lock. In addition, most governments require that intent to actually commit a crime is required. So in most places owning lock picks is not illegal, only using them for ill intent is. In the United States for example, only four states have determined that owning lock picks itself is showing intent to commit a crime and is therefore illegal to own them. These states are Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia. In every other state it is perfectly legal to own and utilize a set of lock picks. For more information on the legality of lock picking in your country check out lockwiki.com.

How a Pin Tumbler Lock Works

Throughout this guide we will be referring to the most common type of lock, the basic pin tumbler lock. The first step in learning how to pick a lock is to actually understand exactly how the lock itself functions and to do so we must first gander at its anatomy.

The simple pin and tumbler lock has five main components. The housing, the plug, driver pins, key pins, and springs. The housing is what contains the entirety of the of lock and hold everything together. The plug is where the key insert is located and contains a line of holes in which the key pins and driver pins are located and held down by the springs.

 

The most important concept to take away from the anatomy of the tumbler lock is what lock pickers refer to as the “shear line.” This line is the area between the plug and the housing and is the reason why the lock won’t turn without a key. When the key is placed into the cylinder, it pushes the key pins flush with the shear line  causing the driver pins to exit the plug. When the gap between the key pins and driver pins is exactly that of the shear line we can then rotate the plug and disengage the lock.

 

Take a look at this 20 second video demonstrating all of this at work.

This is the basis of pin and tumbler lock picking, to mimic the key by bumping every pin flush with the shear line and then rotating the plug. But why is it that we can do this in the first place and how is it that we can keep every pin at the shear line without the constant pressure of a key? The answer is simply “flaws.”

Flaws Are Good: Manufacturing Tolerances

Nothing is perfect. Nothing can be produced without its flaws or some variation from its ideal design. Everything is designed with a tolerance in mind. It is because of these flaws in production that we are able to manipulate and bypass locks. In the case of the tumbler lock, we have only but to look at the plug.

During production of the plug, holes are drilled to hold the key pins. Ideally these holes would all run down the true center-line of the plug and would be in perfect alignment with each other hole. But again nothing is perfect. Each hole drilled has some variation from both the true center-line and from each other hole. The quality of the lock greatly depends upon the quality and care that is put into drilling these holes. Cheaper locks will generally have a greater variation between holes than that of higher quality locks. In any case, this variation can be as slight as a thousandth of an inch and it’s because of this tiny distortion that we gain our ability to pick locks.

Read the Remainder at Art of Lockpicking

 

 

Best AK-47 Stock Kits and Videos

By Thomas Conroy

USA--(Ammoland.com)- The AK-47 is like vodka in some ways. Straightforward, elemental, and dependable.

It seems completely uncomplicated, especially compared to its counterparts developed in the decadent, capitalist West by and for the bourgeoisie who – as recently decried by a certain American Socialist – actually want 23 types of deodorant and 18 types of sneakers.

The Avtomat Kalashnikova, despite all its rugged, proletarian people’s glory, does have some shortcomings. Sometimes the buttstock, designed for peasant conscripts nourished mostly on borscht and Marxist dialectics, is simply too short for us overfed Western Imperialist running dog lackeys.

Not only can the buttstock on some imported variants of the AK, both -47 and -74, be a bit undersized for Amerikan shooters, we spoiled, decadent, counter-revolutionaries also want to be able to adjust the stock to fit more than one person, or even help us use electronic sights and scopes more efficiently.

And let’s face it, the factory-original stock is sometimes a bit plain when it comes to looks, sort of like Russian salo – salt-cured pork fat, sliced thin and served raw on bread.

Not surprisingly, Western Imperialist industry has produced a host of replacement stocks for the Avtomat, obviously a pathetic attempt to commodify and corrupt Mikhail Kalashnikov’s brainchild from the simple tool of the people into something better suited for the degenerate tastes of a pampered Capitalist pig like me.

So, Comrade, if you already claim kulak-like ownership of an AK of some sort, and you actually want to change the stock for some Imperialist reason, here is a list of 5 popular replacement stocks to consider.

Read the Remainder at Ammo-Land

 

The Top 8 Deadly Myths About Survivalism

When it comes to material about Survival on this blog, I like the more practical, down-to-earth stuff like this, which not surprisingly is getting harder and harder to find as more of the “snake oil” survivalist come out of the woodwork . Trust me when I say this folks: Common sense goes a long way in a lotta things..the problem being in today’s world is Common Sense is Not So Common anymore! Use your head, Stay Practical, Stay Realistic and you will have a better shot than 75% of the people out there, trust me.

Our survivalism story, in a nutshell

Hi! I’m Sheila.

For the last several years, our family, my husband Dan, our son Jesse and I, have been living what some may call the “survivalist” lifestyle.  Actually, we live  the off-grid (so far off the grid that there is no land line and no cell phone service available), self-sufficient life.  We’re not here to get away from the world for a few days while chaos happens and calms down. We don’t think that’s what will happen, anyway.  We’re here because we have chosen to separate ourselves from the rat race, the system, and not be swept away in the tide of what we see as society running amok.  This is not a temporary lifestyle to us. It’s a wonderfully peaceful, sometimes difficult and always rewarding life. Regardless of what does or doesn’t happen, “out there”, this is how we choose to live.

We were basically city folk all our lives, but over the past 20-plus years, we formulated, clarified and then realized our vision to make the transformation to our current lifestyle.   We understand the fear and panic many are now feeling in contemplating  making a lifestyle change within a short time because they are observing events around them that require such a drastic move.

Once we moved to our current location in New Mexico, we chose to lease parts of our land to form a small community of like-minded, people (I would rather call it, “like-spirited”) to help each other make it through what we believe is coming down the pike soon.  In that search for the right people (who we eventually did find) we met many types of self-proclaimed, “survivalists,” most of whom were in reality, “survival tourists.” Our son coined this phrase to describe those who only wanted to investigate survivalism just deeply enough to find reasons they couldn’t/shouldn’t do it. (“Phew, I almost had to wash my dishes by hand!”).

Read the Remainder at The Survival Mom