Prepping 101: Creating A Working Inventory For Living in Dangerous Times

Not a bad primer to help get your mind in the right direction when it comes to preparing for when the Hammer drops. Remember, in Prepping, just like in Firearms and Combat Training, it is Software before Hardware. The Mind is the Ultimate Weapon, all else is Supplemental. -SF

I have been reading the excellent book, Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood, by Barbara Demick, and thinking about other places like Ukraine, Egypt, Venezuela, Syria, Argentina, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, Chile, Haiti, France, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Russia, Libya, Israel, Liberia, Yemen, Mexico, and my home state of Texas.  This has caused the paranoid part of me, a part that is apparently immune to normalcy bias, to consider how one might spend some spare money and time, apart from buying sovereign bonds and attending DSK’s quarterly sex parties, to prepare for TEOTWAWKI as experienced by the people in the aforementioned nations.  What follows is not a shopping list, but rather a list of questions to assist in creating a working inventory of mind, body, and equipment for living in dangerous or uncertain times.  These are mostly things one would want to get squared away while one has time for consideration, before one’s life, or another’s life, depends on it.
 

Mind

Whom do I love?

What do I love?

What do I have to live for?

What am I willing to die for?

What are my mental assets?

What are my mental liabilities?

What is my single biggest knowledge gap?

What are my natural rights?

What are the top three habits that make up my character?

Whom can I really trust?

Who are my mortal enemies?  Why?  What can I do about it?

What skills do I have to earn a living?

What special tools do these skills require?

Do I know how to beg…effectively?

Do I know how to barter…effectively?

How good of a liar am I…really?

Do I know how to use a compass and map?

What is the highest point in my county?

Do I know how to make a fire…without making much smoke?

Do I know how to hunt, fish, butcher, and prepare meat?

Do I know how to gather, grow, store, and prepare food?

Do I know how to change a tire, swap a battery, and jump-start a vehicle?

Do I know how to sail a boat?

Do I know how to use a two-way radio that is not a cell phone?

When and where am I safe to be in condition white?

What is my reactionary gap at day and at night?

How do I respond to a reset of my OODA Loop?

How can I reset someone else’s OODA Loop, and how much time does that give me?

What does it feel like to get punched in the face, and how does it affect me?

Do I really know how to defend myself with a knife?  For example, where are the three primary arterial targets?

Do I really know how to defend myself with a pistol?  For example, how confident am I that I can draw my pistol and in less than 1.5 seconds hit the brain of a man wearing body armor and standing two meters away?

Do I really know how to use my rifle?  For example, can I hit a man twice in the chest at two meters, in less than 1.5 seconds, while moving?  What about once in the chest, at 250 meters, with my first shot, and while I am sitting on the ground?

Do I know CPR?

Do I know how to make and apply a pressure bandage?

Do I know how to treat a sucking chest wound?

Do I know how to apply a tourniquet?

Do family, friends, and I know our neighborhood, out-of-town, and out-of-state rally points?

What is the first and last name of my twenty closest neighbors (geographically)?

What is the name and cell phone number of my county sheriff?

What is the name of the commander of my local militia?

What exactly do I do if I see the flash of light from a nuclear device?

Do I know the location of several local bomb and fallout shelters?

 

Body

How well, relative to others, am I able to see and hear, with or without aid?

Am I able to run for my life for more than a minute?

Do I have the strength to manage my own body weight?  For example, can I pull myself up over a six-foot wall?

Am I able to control my appetites, or do my appetites control me?

Am I chemically dependent?

Am I fit enough to perform sexually?

Am I able to swim 500+ meters?

Am I able to fight off everyday infection and illness, and to heal my own minor wounds?

Am I physically able to defend myself without a weapon?

Am I physically able to repeatedly manipulate and engage my pistol and rifle?

Am I able to carry myself, my pack, and my weapon up, down, across, over, around, and through obstacles for many miles?

 

Equipment

Do I have multiple pairs of Rx glasses and hearing aids if needed?

Do I have a good light and spare batteries or fuel?

Do I have a good pair of shoes that I can put on and walk to the next town without blisters?

Do I have warm and durable outdoor clothing in muted colors?

Is my vehicle in good condition with a spare tire, tools, water, siphon, fuel container, and flares?

Do I have a bicycle, boat, aircraft, or animal (with appropriate kit) that will carry me, and my gear, hundreds of miles?

Is my dog obedient and does he or she warn me of danger?

Do I have at the ready a Get Back Home Pack (aka Evacuation Pack, aka Bug Out Bag, aka Assault Pack, aka 3 Day Pack, aka Survival Pack)?

Do I have portable, widely recognized, and durable assets such as gold coins?

Do I have a reliable and portable method to obtain clean drinking water?

Do I have a good compass and appropriate maps?

Do I have some sort of telescopic magnification?

Do I have a first aid kit?

Do I have a two-way radio that is not a cell phone?

Do I have a knife that is high quality and a small sharpening stone?

Do I have a sidearm, ammunition, gun belt, holster, spare magazines, and magazine carriers?

Do I have a rifle, ammunition, sling, spare magazines, magazine carriers, spare firing pin, and range card?

Do I have body armor and a kevlar helmet?  Or will I be relying on bread?

Do I have a “spare” set of identification?

Do I have a mask, balaclava, or disguise?

Do I have at least a month’s cache of food?

Do I have ammunition cached?

Do I have books cached?

Do I have TamiFlu cached?

 

There are many more, I am sure, but I hope this at least spurs a lively discussion.

Peace!

Read the Original Article at Zero Hedge

 

Stories of Survival: 20 Hours Alone in the Water in the Gulf of Mexico

Bill Durden was on a roll. He’d just caught two good-sized groupers and tossed his line back into the water when he felt it snag on the bottom of his boat. The engine, he realized, wasn’t in neutral. Durden gave the rod a good tug. It yanked him right back, pulling him straight out of his flip flops, off the back of the boat, and into the Gulf of Mexico—25 miles from shore.

As Durden broke through to the surface—gasping for air—he watched his unmanned boat orbit around him on a path that moved further and further away. Locking his eyes on the white hull, he tried to swim back to it as quickly as possible. But between the motor, which was still running at three or four knots, and the wind, it was hopeless. Within minutes, it was gone.

His heart started to race as he spun around looking for something other than blue. There was no land in sight. No boats, either. He didn’t have a life vest. His long-sleeved yellow t-shirt hung heavy on his arms and the equatorial sun beat down on his face.

The gravity of his predicament hit him immediately.

“I was like, ‘This is a bad, bad situation,'” he says.

It was June 1, the first day of grouper season, and just hours earlier, Durden, a 60-year-old FedEx pilot, had untied his 22-foot Grady-White from a dock behind his house to go out trolling. Down from Reno to spend a couple of weeks at his vacation home on Homosassa River, just north of Tampa, Florida, he wanted to take advantage of the clear, beautiful afternoon.

It would be 20 hours until Durden got out of the water.

Read the Remainder at Esquire

Developing The “Ice-Cube Tray” Mentality

By Hammerhead

 

Technology can be likened to a fantastic drug.

When you have it and are USING it, you feel awesome and alive. It helps you through your day. It entertains you. It helps you organize and be more efficient. It connects you to the things you care about. In short, it helps you cope with the world around you. But like any drug, if you take it often enough and long enough, you become addicted, and it is no longer a WANT, it is a NEED. For most people. being addicted to technology is not something they really think about. Like most addicts, each day blurs into the rest so long as technology is there to help them through it.

Where trouble comes into paradise is when these same people transfer this “tech addict” mentality into the prepping world. I think you know what I am talking about, but let me expound a bit further. I once saw this article in some hipster magazine while waiting on a haircut. It talked about “Prepping” and What things you should have in your “SHTF” Bag. Now I quickly realized that most of the people who read these rags would not know a “SHTF” Bag or “Bug-Out” Bag if it slapped them in the face and winked at them, but being the consummate pessimist that I am, I continued on with the article, mostly to amuse myself, if the truth be told.

This one guy from the Northwest had a fairly respectable laundry list of items; waterproof matches, water filtration straws, Small Trauma Kit, Protein Bars, etc… The other cat was from some crime ridden Eastern Seaboard metropolis. His kit contained two items: a Lantern that ran on (4) D Batteries that could “recharge his cell phone” and a windproof lighter. That was it. When asked why so few things in his kit the guy responded “If I can recharge my cell phone I have apps on there like a flashlight and GPS, plus I can just Google some DIY website to find out how to do the rest….” The guy was friggin’ serious. I actually flipped to the end of the article to see if this was some kind of joke, but NO, it was no joke! It was a real article! I let out a hearty laugh right there in the barber shop; this was just too much!

There are so many things with this guy’s thinking I honestly would not know where to start, and I am not going to waste your time listing them anyway. The essence of it is this: People that are addicted to technology think the solution when confronted with a problem (any problem) is to simply get the technology “working again.” Re-charge the cell phone but never mind the cell towers and internet are DOWN. What good is a GPS without access to the GPS Satellites? What good is Googling “How to build a Spindle Rod” without DSL? What good is calling 911 when even the emergency towers are down? Yeah I could open up the whole EMP can of worms, but I won’t for sake of brevity.

The Long and short of it is this: WE ALL, regardless of our Geographic location or State of Prepper Readiness need to find ways in our everyday lives to lessen our dependence on technology one step at a time. One of the ways I have found is what I call the “Ice Cube Tray Mentality”. Why do I call it that? The first time it came to me was when I was filling up ice trays. Yes, Ice Trays. Those things you can buy 4 for One Dollar at the “Dollar Store” (Just be sure and wash them before use). Why Ice Trays? Because some time ago me and the better half decided to simplify our lives and we started with the basics. Why buy a $3,000 “Smart” refrigerator that may be able to tell you when you are low on eggs but can also act of both a locator beacon and audio bug for whoever wants to take the time to hack it?

Add to this that when the thing breaks down (typically 1 month after the warranty goes out) you basically have to have a computer tech that works for $300 bucks an hour come fix it because the thing runs off a CPU. Why not just go with a simple bare bones $350 Refrigerator. No it has no “Smart” Chip and the color scheme is limited to Black, White or Stainless if you are lucky. The one we got does not even have an ice maker. But the beauty of it is this: The Less Moving Parts means Less Chance of the thing breaking down! We bought this one over 10 years ago and it is still humming today. We did have to buy a few more ice trays though. That set me back all of $2.00. I have found 6 ice trays are the perfect number for my house, if you fill them up each time you use them you will always have a nice, big bucket of ice waiting on you! Simple. Easy. Practical.

Once you feel comfortable with that, move on to the next step. And the Next. Until you are as free from technology as you feel comfortable.

So there it is, The Ice Cube Tray Mentality. Apply it to Every area of your Life and Take it in steps. go at a pace that is comfortable and you will start confronting one of the big hurdles that 21st Century man will have to conquer once the lights go out in Georgia. For Good.

Stay Alert, Stay Armed and Stay Dangerous!

 

 

Inspirational: 7 Extreme Survival Stories

From being stranded in the heart of Antartica to three men forced to go further in outer space than any human being has ever gone before, our picks for the most amazing stories of people who pushed the far edges of endurance.

 

The Robertson Family

For 38 days, the Robertson family was lost at sea. Patriarch Dougal Robertson, a British dairy farmer, just wanted to take his family on a boat trip for the “university of life,” as his son called it. On January 27, 1971, Dougal, his wife, and their four children set out on a wooden schooner called the Lucette, heading to parts unknown.

Douglas, the eldest son, told the BBC his father had made few preparations for the trip, though he had been in the British merchant navy. For 17 months at sea, the family faired well, sailing from port-to-port and seeing the world. But on June 15, 1972, the family encountered a group of killer whales off the coast of the Galapagos Islands.

The whales attacked the boat, splintering it and severely damaging it. The ship was taking in water. All they had was a lifeboat and a small dinghy, and just six days worth of food. They survived on rainwater and hunted turtles, adrift at sea, hoping to ride Pacific currents to the middle of the ocean, which would then push them toward the Americas.

After 16 days, the raft was no longer usable, so the family their one inexperienced crew member fled to a dinghy. It was a 10 foot boat far over capacity, but they managed to cling on until they were discovered by Japanese fishermen on July 23, 1972.

Harrison Okene

On May 28, 2013, divers in the wreckage of the Jacson-4 were attempting a triage of the vessel, which 100 feet down off the coast of Nigeria after capsizing. What they didn’t expect to find was a survivor.

Harrison Okene was the ship’s cook. He was in the latrine when the boat capsized, and tried to reach an emergency exit hatch but failed. The boat began to fill with water with Okene trapped inside. Eventually, he found himself trapped with a four square foot bubble of air.

After three days, he had given up hope. Then he heard a knock. It was the hammer of the divers working on the surface of the ship. Eventually, diving gear was brought to him and he was brought to a decompression chamber, where he had to spend two days. He had been at depths that should have killed him in a situation that took the lives of everyone else on board.

Unsurprisingly, he vowed never to go out to sea again.

Endurance Expedition

Ernest Shackleton had braved the south pole once, and we was ready to face it head on again in 1914, setting out with a group of 28 men. They hoped to make it all the way across the continent, arriving to a waiting ship at the other side. Instead, they became hopelessly trapped in the ice as their ship, the Endurance, fell apart.

Eventually, supplies began to dwindle, and the men took to their lifeboats, floating to an island that took 14 days in bitter Antarctic Seas to reach. From there, they had to mount another expedition to South Georgia Island, the nearest inhabited island, nearly 1,000 miles from their original starting point.

Despite multiple hardships, all 28 men on the mission survived, though some of the dogs weren’t so lucky (and were eaten as food supplies ran low.) Not as fortunate was the ship waiting on the other side of Antartica, the Ross Sea Party, which experienced three deaths.

Read About the Remaining 4 Other Stories at Popular Mechanics 

Brush-Up on Your History: History’s Most Infamous Act of Mass Cannibalism

On February 19, 1847, the first rescue party reached 45 pioneers stuck in the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains of northeast California. They’d been stranded there with virtually no food or supplies for four months, and lost 36 companions, many of whom they ate in order to stay alive.

You’ve likely heard of the Donner party and understand that phrase simply to mean cannibalism, even if you don’t know the how and the why. But the initial journey into the mountains was also rife with struggle and misfortune.

170 years later, the thing that lingers in the mind is how avoidable it all seems in retrospect. No one misstep or misfortune was catastrophic at face value, but, beginning with their arrival at their departure point just one week late, things began adding up slowly and unnoticeably in the background. In the words of journalist Ethan Rarick (author of Desperate Passage, a book on the subject):

“It’s the cumulative nature of it—when you begin to add it [their lateness in arriving at their departure point] to the next little problem and the next little problem, and then it begins to snowball and it becomes a big problem.”

First, they arrived late to their departure point. Then, scheming adventurer Lansford Hastings and self-interested entrepreneur Jim Bridger persuaded them to take the former’s direct but dangerous Hastings Cutoff route (which passed Bridger’s supply fort) instead of the more established Oregon Trail.

Meanwhile, a fellow pioneer’s letter, stating that the Donner party should avoid the dangerous Hastings Cutoff, didn’t actually find its way into the hands of the party. By the time they were on the Hastings route, Hastings himself promised and failed to personally guide the party through some dangerous terrain.

Throughout, there was infighting, group splintering, and misuse of supplies. Finally, on November 4, a massive snowstorm started and didn’t stop for eight days. Their fate was sealed.

Read the Remainder at All that Is Interesting