Calm Before the Storm

Calm Before the Storm

Everyone is always calm before the storm hits, but when there’s a storm on the way, most people freak out. They load up on water, batteries, flashlight, and canned foods. But, what about the home? If you’re the type of person who likes to be fully prepared, here’s what you need to know about protecting your fortress.

Clean Out Your Gutters and Downspouts

Clean out your gutters and downspouts, because this is where water will back up and cause flooding right at the foundation of your home. Once you’ve had a thorough cleaning, it might be time to consider shielded gutters, which will resist leaves and other debris. They will keep your gutters clean, while also allowing rainwater to safely drain away.

Inspect Your Roof and Skylights

Ferguson Roofing Company contractors can inspect your roof and skylights. And, you should probably have it done every year or at least every other year. Skylights are notorious for leaking, so pay extra special attention to them. Gravity often forces the seal on internal glass packs to fail.

Because these glass packs use metal spacer systems, and because heat is constantly rising out of the home, it’s also not uncommon for skylights to fail in the fall, winter, and spring, when the outdoor temperatures may be significantly warmer than the indoor temperatures. The heat coming from the attic will cause the metal and glass to shift and expand, while the cold air coming from above will cause the glass and spacer to want to contract. The result is seal failure of the glass pack.

Replacing skylights with newer systems using “warm edge spacer” technology might help reduce the risk or incidence of failure, but there are usually no guarantees. So, all other things being equal, buy the most expensive skylight you can afford, and make sure the company backs the product with a warranty – lifetime, if possible.

Roofing materials wear out, so you should have them periodically inspected, especially after a storm, which can reduce the roof shingles’ useful lifespan. Butterflying, torn, or missing shingles should be replaced immediately.

Moisture that works its way under the shingles, and is allowed to sit, will rot out the decking underneath, which will then need to be replaced.

Test Smoke Detectors At Least Once Every 6 Months

Test your smoke alarm at least once every 6 months. As long as the batteries are working, you should be fine. However, you may want to test it with a little smoke. If you don’t smoke, buy a pack of cigarettes or some incense.

Light up, and wave the smoke in front of the detector. If it goes off, it’s working. If it doesn’t, it’s time to replace the device or check the batteries.

Prune Back Trees and Shrubs

Prune back trees and shrubs so that they are not blocking windows or hanging over your roof – especially large trees with branches that could break off and crash through your roof, damaging it.

Check Weather Stripping

Check weather stripping on all doors and windows. Weather stripping is usually not something that will fail quickly and catastrophically. It usually fails over time, wearing down from years of use. Rubber on the seals may rot or dry out, become moldy, or develop micro-tears. Replace any damaged weather stripping, and seal all doors and windows as needed.

Get a Soil Study Done, and Have Your Foundation Checked

Bring in a soil engineer and have the soil tested for porosity. Then, check your foundation. This will help you better understand the risks of flooding in your foundation. Flooding can cause foundation and structural damage, which is expensive to repair. The engineer will be able to give you guidelines to prevent damage and fix any problems you’re having now with flooding.

Stock Up On Survival Food

Canned food is OK, but dehydrated survival food is real food, and it won’t make you feel like you’re eating out of a can. Plus, not all canned foods are “balanced” in the sense that you’re not always getting balanced nutrition.

Most people don’t worry about this because they don’t expect to be out of power for more than a day or two. But, even if power is restored within 24 hours, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to go to the store during that time.

If roads are blocked off, or if there is some other reason that supplies can’t be brought in to your area, then you will want to have food that only needs to be re-hydrated and constitutes a full, balanced meal.

It might be a step or two more complex than canned foods, but you’ll probably enjoy it more and be better prepared if you go this route.

Of course, you will also need to buy a water filter capable of filtering non-potable water – water that may contain viruses, bacteria, and other critters you wouldn’t want to ingest.

These filters aren’t sold in your average grocery store. They are, however, available in camping and sporting goods stores, online, and through various “prepper” and survivalist-themed stores.

3 Considerations to Build an In-House Safe Room

Oklahoma is considered one of the most notorious states for tornado activity, yet basements are rare in the Sooner State.

NPR reported in 2013 that less than one percent of homes in the southern part of the state have basements. Freeze lines, water tables and higher construction costs impede builders from including basements regardless of obvious need. Most Arizona, Florida and Louisiana homes also lack basements, as do newer constructions in California.

Whether it’s a violent act of nature, government manipulation or nuclear disaster, a safe room is essential to protect your family. You neither need to dig a deep hole on your property nor add a room to your existing home to make this happen. There’s already an area in your home that you can use for this purpose.

Location

• The primary advantage of retrofitting your current home with a safe room is that it gives all occupants immediate access to it when disaster strikes. It’s also less expensive than building an external, above-ground room.
• Pre-fab shelters (typically 5×10 for three people) run upward of $8,000 installed. But if you’re willing to spend that much, it’s best to just fortify an existing room in your home. A safe room cannot have windows. Once windows break out of a house during tornadoes or hurricanes, it’s a matter of minutes before the air pressure destroys everything inside and out. It’s also preferable to build a safe room somewhere that does not touch outside walls.
• Large walk-in closets and bathrooms on ground levels are the best places to build when basements aren’t available. The door to enter the room should be graded for exteriors and have a deadbolt.

Construction Requirements

• There is no such thing as a 100 percent “safe” room, unless it’s a fortress-type dwelling that can withstand missiles. But FEMA publishes step-by-step, detailed, up-to-date instructions on how to build International Code Council (ICC) 500-compliant safe rooms that anyone can download for free.
• Building a safe room in your home comes down to feasibility and need. Those living in areas prone to tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes and the like are good safe room candidates. There’s also the potential of martial law, wartime regulations or some other SHTF scenario that makes safe rooms a necessity. But these latter types of safe rooms are more like in-house bunkers.
• Survivalists and so-called preppers stock safe rooms with non-perishable foods, water, weapons and everything else needed to survive societal breakdown. Some even install multi-camera surveillance systems to see exactly what’s going on outside the room and around the perimeter. Construction of your safe room comes down to personal needs and preferences.

Funding

• Costs will ultimately dictate whether a safe room is realistic for most families. There are several federal grant options you may qualify for depending on locale and risk assessments. Alabama and Minnesota have their own hazard mitigation grant programs for both individual families and communities. Check with your state’s hazard mitigation officer for details on local programs and to determine eligibility.

Happy Thanksgiving

Disinfecting Cleaning Solutions From Scratch

Commercial disinfectant products consist of many chemicals that may cause allergic reactions, vomiting, respiratory problems, irritation of skin, and may pollute the air in your home. Moreover they are expensive. You need to take care for you and your family’s health. There is no need of unpleasant situations because of a cleaning product. So the safer method is to make a cleaning detergents by yourself. They are made by cheap products such as vinegar, baking soda, water and etc. and are strong competition to those that are bought from the shop.

You do not need to disinfect every room and every day, but disinfection is a necessity in the bathroom and the kitchen. Here are some DIY disinfecting cleaning solutions from scratch to keep it naturally.

If you want to kill the germs off the surfaces in your home, especially in the kitchen and bathroom, here is a recipe for a home-made disinfecting cleaner.

Ingredients:

• Half cup of white vinegar
• One tsp baking soda
• Ten drops of tea tree oil
• Spray bottle

Direction: Mix them in a clean spray bottle with 400-500 ml of hot water. When you spray on the surfaces, let the liquid sit for ten minutes and then wipe it off. You can say goodbye to the germs.

Here is a another recipe for disinfectant that is most commonly used for the bathroom. What do you need?

• Clean an old spray bottle
• Half cup of both white vinegar and vodka
• Ten drops of both lavender and lemon essential oils
• Half cup of hot water

You can spray any surface of the bathroom and let the DIY product sit for about ten minutes. If you want to do it the right way, use different microfibre cloth for sink, mirror, shower, tub and toilet. There will be no germs.

Another way to deal with the germs is this recipe for disinfecting. Mix in a bucket…

• Three quarters cup of chlorine bleach
• 1 tsp laundry powdered cleaner
• Gallon of hot water

Leave the liquid for a little more than five minutes. After that you can rinse and wipe off the surfaces with a sponge or a microfibre cloth. You can disinfect, deodorize and clean tubs, sinks, showers, porcelain, ceramics, chairs, diaper pails, tables, garbage cans, fridges. Do not use it on trim or aluminum surfaces.

For the next recipe you will need:

• 2 tablespoons of borax
• Three cups of hot water
• Four spoons of white vinegar
• Spray bottle

Shake the substances. Now you have a powerful disinfectant and every single germ will be eliminated. When you spray on surfaces, leave the product for 5-10 minutes. Then rinse carefully and dry it.

Another easy and natural way to disinfect the bathroom and the kitchen is by mixing equal parts of water and rubbing alcohol. Spray wherever it is required and leave it for seven-eight minutes. Then rinse and wipe off with a cloth. Notice that you need to clean the surfaces first, and then to disinfect them. It is a part of the cleaning process, not the cleaning process itself.

Using natural products is much more safer and does not cause health problems. They are as effective as the commercial ones, but less dangerous and cheaper. Keeping you and your family safe is your main purpose. Disinfection is essential and necessary, but it does not need to be chemical and toxic. Killing germs in the eco-friendly way is the better way for you and your beloved.

Ezra Taft Benson Talks About The Last Days

How Small Businesses Should be Prepared for Natural Disasters

Different geographic regions are more prone to certain types of natural disasters. For example, earthquakes are a continual threat for West Coasters, while hurricanes are a staple for East Coasters. In the Midwest and South regions, tornadoes and hurricanes are all too frequent. Drought, flooding and forest fires also wreak havoc across the country from time to time. 

As a small business owner, it is your responsibility to prepare your business, your staff and yourself for the possibility that a natural disaster could impact your company. This post identifies the key things to take care of now – before disaster strikes – and how to respond once the disaster has passed.

Maintain Appropriate and Adequate Insurance

First things first – it is critical to maintain the right type and adequate amounts of insurance. You will need insurance to protect your property and inventory. If your area is prone to specific types of natural disaster – for example, flooding, you will want to carry insurance for this as well.

And if your business is interrupted by the disaster, business interruption insurance will help your company stay afloat while it cannot operate.

Ensure Sufficient Emergency Supplies and Rations on the Premises

Sometimes natural disaster strikes so suddenly there is no time to evacuate. If this is the case, you will need to develop an emergency response plan that includes the possibility of remaining with your staff on the property until it is safe to leave. 

So here you will want to stock up on emergency food and water, extra paper goods, first aid supplies, batteries and flashlights, blankets and other supplies to tide you over until the danger passes.

If there is time to evacuate, then you will need to have a plan in place for how to alert employees and direct them to exit the premises safely. This should include a facility map so it is clear where exits are located and the fastest route to reach them. If you have staff at multiple sites, you will need to develop and routinely practice your emergency notification system to be sure it works properly at all locations, and ensure they have accurate posted facility maps with exit directions as well.

Have a Post-Disaster Cleanup and Recovery Plan in Place

Even if you have comprehensive insurance coverage in place, it can still take some time after a natural disaster to have the insurer complete their assessment and issue your claims funds. In the interim, you will want to have your own plan to initiate post-disaster cleanup and recovery so you can get your business up and running once again.

Your first step will be to ensure the property is safe and habitable for staff and customers to return to. For example, you will need carpet cleaners to clean and disinfect water-impacted carpeting, fans and air spray to air out and freshen a damp interior, brooms and mops to clean floors, new filters to replace waterlogged ones, paper goods and cleaner sprays to disinfect surfaces and a list of local repair facilities where you can find materials to replace damaged or broken glass, wood and bricking.

You will also want to keep a file folder with warranty and insurance information for both your property itself and individual components that may need to be repaired or replaced. By knowing in advance what you will have to pay for out of pocket and what may be covered by a warranty or insurance claim, you can put aside some funds each month towards a “natural disaster emergency fund” you can use if the need ever arises.

Planning for the possibility of a natural disaster may take a bit of time away from your day-to-day business operations now, but you and your staff will appreciate your advance preparations in the event your company is affected by a natural disaster in the future.

Ted Koppel Is Buying Freeze-Dried Food For The Day When A Cyberattack Takes Out The Power Grid

Most Americans have absolutely no idea how incredibly vulnerable our electrical grid is, but Ted Koppel does.  For many years, Koppel was the level-headed host of Nightline on ABC, but now he is issuing a very chilling warning to America.  For more than a year, he investigated potential threats to our power grid, and he has detailed what he discovered in a new book entitled “Lights Out“.  He is convinced that a massive cyberattack could take down our entire electrical grid for an extended period of time, and he was horrified to learn that the Department of Homeland Security really doesn’t have a plan for how to deal with this kind of a scenario.

What Koppel found out during the course of his investigation freaked him out so much that he actually decided to buy freeze-dried food for himself, his children, and even his grandchildren.  The following comes from CBS News…

In “Lights Out,” Koppel paints a grim picture of a paralyzing power outage in the form of an all-out cyberattack on the nation’s electrical grid.

“It’s frightening,” Koppel said. “I mean, it is frightening enough that my wife and I decided we were going to buy enough freeze-dried food for all of our kids and their kids.”

Koppel believes that Russia, China and Iran already have the ability to conduct such attacks.  And actually, the truth is that many other nations such as North Korea have been rapidly developing the capability to conduct such operations as well.

It is only a matter of time until we see absolutely massive cyberattacks unleashed against national power grids, and the United States is the most likely target.  Unfortunately for us, our government has done very little to prepare for this eventuality.  Here is more from CBS News…

Koppel says the one agency that would be ready to counter a cyberattack such as this is the Department of Homeland Security. But are they ready?

“No,” he said. “I’ve talked to every former Secretary of Homeland Security, and they all acknowledge there is no plan.”

And the current Secretary, Jeh Johnson, didn’t offer much guidance to Koppel, either: “I kept asking ‘What’s the plan?’ Why wait until disaster strikes? Why not tell ’em? Do you have a plan?’ And he just sort of pointed up at a shelf filled with white binders and he said, ‘Look, I’m sure there’s something up there somewhere.'”

But we have been warned.  In fact, just recently there was a major congressional hearing about this.  At that hearing, one member of Congress explained that there is a significant attack on our power grid once every four days…

Such attacks hit the nation’s electric grid once every four days, according to estimates, Rep. Randy Weber, a Texas Republican, said at the House Subcommittee on Research and Technology hearing. The session was focused on better protecting the nation’s power grid and identifying its vulnerability to cyberattacks.

“In over 300 cases of significant cyber and physical attacks since 2011, suspects have never been identified,” Weber said.

And of course it isn’t just a cyberattack that we need to be concerned about.  As I wrote about just over a month ago, a giant electromagnetic pulse either from the sun or from a weapon could fry our grid at any time as well.

Perhaps this is not something that you are making preparations for personally, but the White House sure is.  According to the Houston Chronicle, the White House just released a plan that details how it would respond to an EMP event…

The White House Thursday released a contingency plan for about the most terrifying scenario possible: a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that wipes out the power grid

Just imagine no more cell phones, Internet, credit cards, gas pumps, running water, electric lights or industry in a single fateful moment.

It could come from a solar flare that sends ultra-high-energy particles cascading toward the earth, frying every electrical transformer they encounter. So the White House, in conjunction with 24 other federal agencies, published a “National Space Weather Strategy” and accompany action plan, outlining a response if such a disaster were to occur.

I don’t know if any of us can really imagine how crazy things would get if the lights went out and never came back on.  We have all become so incredibly dependent on computers, cell phones, televisions, ATMs, heating and cooling systems, credit card readers, gas pumps, cash registers, refrigerators, hospital equipment etc.  What would life be like if suddenly we couldn’t use any of those things anymore?

At some point there will be a massive power grid failure.  It is just a matter of time.  And as space weather consultant John Kappenman recently told Gizmodo, when it happens power might not be restored for months or even years…

“If you take electricity away, either immediately or within a short period of time, you’ll suffer the failure of all critical infrastructure,” Kappenman said. This includes things like water, sewage treatment, gas stations, banks and hospitals. “One of the concerns that we have is that in the worst case scenarios, we could be looking at weeks, months, maybe even years before restoration of the grid.”

That’s why preppers are taking a longer view. “I have a five year supply of food for employees and family,” a source who requested anonymity told Gizmodo. This individual says he’s rigged up a 12.5 kW solar array in the “remote wilderness,” complete with “power outlets and water spigots about every 50 feet” to support a small fleet of RV trailers for the long haul. Other preppers agree that a multi-year food and water supply is crucial. Some are also stockpiling large quantities of medications (“five year supplies of meds can be obtained from Asia without prescriptions,” one source told Gizmodo).

21 Facts About The Explosive Growth Of Poverty In America That Will Blow Your Mind

What you are about to see is more evidence that the growth of poverty in the United States is wildly out of control.  It turns out that there is a tremendous amount of suffering in “the wealthiest nation on the planet”, and it is getting worse with each passing year.  During this election season, politicians of all stripes are running around telling all of us how great we are, but is that really true?  As you will see below, poverty is reaching unprecedented levels in this country, and the middle class is steadily dying.  There aren’t enough good jobs to go around, dependence on the government has never been greater, and it is our children that are being hit the hardest.  If we have this many people living on the edge of despair now, while times are “good”, what are things going to look like when our economy really starts falling apart?  The following are 21 facts about the explosive growth of poverty in America that will blow your mind…

#1 The U.S. Census Bureau says that nearly 47 million Americans are living in poverty right now.

#2 Other numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau are also very disturbing.  For example, in 2007 about one out of every eight children in America was on food stamps.  Today, that number is one out of every five.

#3 According to Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, the authors of a new book entitled “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America“, there are 1.5 million “ultrapoor” households in the United States that live on less than two dollars a day.  That number has doubled since 1996.

#4 46 million Americans use food banks each year, and lines start forming at some U.S. food banks as early as 6:30 in the morning because people want to get something before the food supplies run out.

#5 The number of homeless children in the U.S. has increased by 60 percentover the past six years.

#6 According to Poverty USA, 1.6 million American children slept in a homeless shelter or some other form of emergency housing last year.

#7 Police in New York City have identified 80 separate homeless encampments in the city, and the homeless crisis there has gotten so bad that it is being described as an “epidemic”.

#8 If you can believe it, more than half of all students in our public schools are poor enough to qualify for school lunch subsidies.

#9 According to a Census Bureau report that was released a while back, 65 percent of all children in the U.S. are living in a home that receives some form of aid from the federal government.

#10 According to a report that was published by UNICEF, almost one-third of all children in this country “live in households with an income below 60 percent of the national median income”.

#11 When it comes to child poverty, the United States ranks 36th out of the 41 “wealthy nations” that UNICEF looked at.

#12 The number of Americans that are living in concentrated areas of high poverty has doubled since the year 2000.

#13 An astounding 45 percent of all African-American children in the United States live in areas of “concentrated poverty”.

#14 40.9 percent of all children in the United States that are being raised by a single parent are living in poverty.

#15 An astounding 48.8 percent of all 25-year-old Americans still live at home with their parents.

#16 There are simply not enough good jobs to go around anymore.  It may be hard to believe, but 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.

#17 There are 7.9 million working age Americans that are “officially unemployed” right now and another 94.7 million working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force”.  When you add those two numbers together, you get a grand total of 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

#18 Owning a home has traditionally been a signal that you belong to the middle class.  That is why it is so alarming that the rate of homeownership in the United States has been falling for eight years in a row.

#19 According to a recent Pew survey, approximately 70 percent of all Americans believe that “debt is a necessity in their lives”.

#20 At this point, 25 percent of all Americans have a negative net worth.  That means that the value of what they owe is greater than the value of everything that they own.

#21 The top 0.1 percent of all American families have about as much wealthas the bottom 90 percent of all American families combined.

DIY Health Options Keep the Doctor Away

There was a time when doctors had their patients’ best interests at heart. You could count on getting an honest – and, for the most part, accurate – diagnosis based on your symptoms, as well as an effective treatment plan.

Hopefully you still have a doctor like that, but in reality, there are too many people in the medical profession these days whose jobs depend on making money for their employers. As a result, far too many expensive tests are ordered and far too many unnecessary drugs are prescribed.

Even if doctors know that natural and healthy alternatives would be better for you, you won’t necessarily hear about them. They and the pharmaceutical companies have no qualms about draining your resources while weakening your system with potentially harmful drugs.

The single most important thing we can do to combat this problem is to discover and use alternative health options. This starts with staying as healthy as possible in the first place. Make natural, common sense decisions, including…

• Eat plenty of raw fruits and vegetables every day.

• Make sure you get plenty of Vitamin D for your bones and blood vessels, and B vitamins for breathing issues including asthma and wheezing.

• Eat walnuts to help lower your cholesterol, relieve your arthritis and battle depression.

• Drink coconut water for asymptomatic infections and take iodine for your thyroid and your circulation.

• Drink a little red wine for your heart and eat blueberries to stabilize your blood sugar levels.

• Drink apple cider vinegar and honey. In a 10-ounce glass of cold water, stir in two tablespoons of raw apple cider vinegar and two tablespoons of raw wildflower honey. Drink it as is or heat it up and drink it as a tea.

Because moods can affect how we feel physically, it’s also important to use natural means to remain as upbeat as possible. For mild depression, try some of these natural remedies:

• Consume fish oil and Vitamin D. Both are directly tied to emotional health. Eat fatty, cold-water fish, such as salmon. Also, get 30 minutes of sun on your face and arms daily.
• Eat more protein and fat, and less carbs and sugar. Sugar can lead to chronic inflammation and suppress healthy proteins. Focus on organic, animal-based foods, fruits, vegetables and nuts.
• Consume herbs. Two herbs that have been shown to have beneficial effects on mood are Rhodiola (Rhodiola rosea) and St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum).
• Fast now and then. Fasting for a day or at least skipping a meal here and there helps your body digest and eliminate cellular debris. It’s a good way to clean out your system and elevate your mood.
• Exercise. Patients with depression improve as much as those treated with medication when they stick to an exercise program, according to studies.
• Laugh. Laughing lowers cortisol, the hormone associated with stress. The effect can continue hours after you’re finished laughing.

Field Cooking Gear (Video & Transcription)

“Welcome back YouTube. This is Shane here with another episode of Lonewolf Survival. So, what we are gonna talk to you now about is, you’ve seen us cooking in the field before and everybody says what a connoisseur I am. So, what we want to show you is some of the stuff that we use and actually take with us that you can use in your kit. Whether it be in your bug out bag, whether it be in your larger sack, maybe you’re going for some mid to long term sustainability. We use the same stuff every time. I don’t carry a lot of cooking gear with me. I’m an iron skillet cook. That is what we primarily do 95% of everything that we eat when we’re out in the field. So I’m just gonna kind of go over a few of the things that we carry and some of the products out there and then once again, its up to you. What ever your needs are. If it’s over night, if it’s your BOB, if your using Sterno stove or something like that or if it’s on the larger scale and you’ve got a larger pack and you want to use a propane or butane stove”.

“So the first thing I want to talk about right now is the, I’m actually cooking with a Coleman butane stove and the butane canisters are rated for roughly 16 hours of cooking. Depending on the heat you’re using, the benefit of the butane stove is as you can see, I’m on a plastic table right here and I’ve got aluminum foil down for the splatter because remember, survival doesn’t have to be nasty and I don’t want to have to clean all this up later. There is no heat coming from under the unit here. It is very cool to the touch. Just generate as much surface heat as some of the other stoves would. It’s a single burner compact unit. Easy to ignite. Really good little unit.”

“So, some of the cookware we use, everything is iron skillet, these are seasoned. We put them on the fire pit, on the stove top.  I carry two iron skillets. Some of the cookware, we like stainless steel, utensils, spoons, spatula, larger spatula. Now I use this if I am actually cooking on the fire so I don’t have to get in so close. Set of forks, set of plastic spoons. Hole (slotted) and without. Plastic spatula. That’s pretty much all of the utensils I use for whatever we are doing out here. Some of the other things I use that we have talked about before is the stainless steel. The Stanley stainless steel because it’s easy clean up and it’s really good. I can boil water and disinfectant and I know I don’t have any potential bacteria contaminates. So we’ve got stainless steel pot here, we got one of the Stanley pots here like I’ve showed you before. Stanley pot comes with bowls and actually has a set of plastic utensils on the inside. It has a set of plastic utensils that clips in to two bowls, two lids. That’s a really nice set. Of course my Stanley cup so I can make my coffee in. Got two cups in here. So we don’t carry a lot of gear with us. I don’t need a lot of gear for this stuff. Most things we do is over a fire anyways. As far as eating utensils. Plastic spork. Coleman makes them. You can get them at Walmart. It’s like six bucks for a pack of 8 of them. Use these things over and over until you wind them down to a nub. Then the Coleman camp plates. Two bucks a piece. These things are great. We beat these things to pieces.”

“And that’s pretty much all I use when we are out in the field and we’re cooking. My two skillets. I’m gonna flip my burgers while I’m talking. We don’t use a lot of seasoning in the field. I’ve got a small bag I keep most of my seasons in. I do carry and always try to have with me, even in my large bag, y’all have seen me before. I’m a follower of PAM. Nothing sticks to Pam, even the lid wont stay on. The multi spice, with the salt and the pepper and the curry and the garlic. Of course everything is better with A1. I put A1 in my eggs for God’s sake.”

“So that is pretty much all we work with. You don’t need a lot of stuff. You don’t need a 72 piece cook ware vision set. Normally I don’t have a steak for it anyway. I carry stuff in my bag. So a few iron skillets or if you wanna use a dutch oven, a couple stainless steel pots. Whatever application you’re using, a set of Sterno stoves or something like that. You want to choose what you’re gonna be preparing. We don’t carry a lot of meat and stuff with us. Just the bare minimum to get us through whatever operation we’re doing. So when you’re setting your cook kits up there is a lot of really good ones out there. The military stainless mess kits. I can cook in a canteen cook, I can cook in my Stanley cook cup. Soups or noodles, things like that. Make sure that whatever food or provisions you’re bringing with you for whatever your mission is, make sure that you have adequate containers and cookware and source to take care for preparing that. Oh and the last thing that I always preach to is to make sure you keep a clean area. Don’t throw food around. Don’t throw trash down. You don’t want animals, bears, coyotes, cougars, mountain lions, or wherever you’re at. Bugs. You don’t want these animals coming in, you don’t want to bring insects in. Like I said hygiene and cleanliness is important. I preach it all the time and will continue to preach to you until you get it. Survival, prepping, camping, it doesn’t have to be nasty ok?”

“So, as always, I’m Shane with Lonewolf Survival. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and thanks for watching.”

Preparing Your Emergency Storage

Emergency survival preparation can vary a lot from situation to situation, depending on what is being prepared for, and who is doing the preparing. There are some essentials that work across the board, however, and there are also many unique items that can help any situation out. Read on for five unique items that would make any emergency situation safer and easier for you and your family.

Zip Ties and Cable Ties

• Incredibly useful and hardy ties primarily used by electricians for securing cables together, zip/cable ties can perform in so many other ways. They are excellent fasteners and although they can only be used once, they last pretty much permanently, and can stand up to the elements. You can use them to build shelter out of a tarp with grommets, or to secure stakes and poles together. They are an excellent, small, and lightweight thing to throw into your repair kit.

 Survival Bandana 

• Another unique item with many uses. Survival Bandanas can be used not only on your head for warmth or as protection from sunburn, they can be worn around the neck for warmth or as a sweatband in the heat. They can also, however, be used in a medical situation as a bandage or cleaning implement, or as a sling or tourniquet. Highly versatile, keeping several around your kit are a must-have.

Washboard

• Regardless of how dire the emergency that you might end up in is, you will need to at some point keep clean. It is important in the psychological aspect of staying human. Washboards are surprisingly effective at cleaning even the toughest stains. They are inexpensive, lightweight, and easy to use and keep around.

Feminine Products

• These are excellent for wound management. Even the military uses them to treat and clean bullet wounds. Tampons fit into a bullet wound and expand as they absorb blood to fill the hole and keep it plugged until it can be treated properly. Pads can help staunch heavy bleeding. Keep several in your extended medical kit, and stockpile more than a few to have when in need. (Editor’s Note: I highly recommend using Olaes or Israeli Bandages in you kits so you are able to treat all wounds with proper dressing. Tampons are good in an emergency but they are not sterilized.)

UV Water Purification Pen

• This is an item that is a relatively recent addition to camping/outdoors/survival situations because of its modernity. It is highly useful and compact “pen” with a light bulb inside, which when immersed into water, purifies it through the action of UV light which kills all bacteria and viruses. Water is vital for survival, and this pen is the perfect addition (either as primary or back-up water purification system) to ensure that you and your loved ones have enough drinking water. While this high-quality product can be costly to your wallet, search online for the product and consider using available Brownells coupons at Discountrue.com to help you save money.

Emergency situations can only be manageable with proper thought given to preparation. By obtaining these items, you will be more prepared than the average person to meet the struggles of emergency survival.