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News of the week 2023-07-24

Make a top-level comment for a new story/topic. Discussions about the topic should be in the replies to the top-level comment. That way things stay organized and every main comment as you scroll down is a different piece of news.

News

Interview participants

undergraduatediss - 1 month ago

Hi! I’m currently doing my undergraduate dissertation on the role of women within the prepping community. My project aims to celebrate the contribution of women and highlight their significance. I am looking for participants to interview. The interview will be held over microsoft teams and last no longer than 30 minutes. Please email me at preppin[email protected] if you are interested. Thanks so much.

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News for the Week 2023-08-21

The Prepared Support - 1 month ago

News

Some chores are better than others

RedneckContributor - 1 month ago

I’m sure we all have chores we don’t really care for. The thing I dislike the most, which I did Sunday, is cutting the bottom pasture in the heat of the summer. The feel like temp was around 110 and I was out in the full sun sitting on a hot diesel tractor. Being on a homestead, especially when the wife is off caring for her 100 year old mom & 102 year old aunt, well there are plenty of chores & lots of animals to feed.

One chore I love this time of year is taking the dogs out for a final bathroom stop before bedtime. We currently have 8 dogs living with us. This time of year is special around 8:30 at night. The sun has set but it is not yet dark. The sunset has faded to muted colors of normally salmon pink & light blues. It is still warm out but not oppressively hot. Actually, rather nice. And at this time of day, as I sit on the back patio overlooking the back of our property, waiting on & watching the dogs , I get to watch the bats perform their acrobatics as they hunt down mosquitos. They put on quite the show! Kinda like watching the bald eagles… it feeds my soul. With it seems like the whole world going to hell, it is nice to just slow down and appreciate nature. The time of evening I’m talking about:

Anyone else have some chores that you really enjoy?

Preparing for home fires

Bill N - 1 month ago

Hi all! With the recent wildfires in Maui, I realized that I never made any plans to help preserve the originals of important documents at home from a fire. While they are backed up to the cloud, I think it’s still important to save the originals if possible. I purchased a small fireproof safe (the recommended choice from the NY Times Wirecutter site; the review link is below), but I’ve noticed this doesn’t seem to be a topic covered by many prepper sites.

Anyone else have suggestions or recommendations for this issue?

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-fireproof-document-safe/

Advice

News for the Week 2023-08-14

The Prepared Support - 1 month ago

News

Grain Mills: What’s your experience and recommendations?

Pops - 1 month ago

Pretty self-explanatory. My food pantry includes whole grains because they naturally last a long time and with a little extra care, a really long time. But you need to keep them whole as the outer layer is the best packaging. Wheat berries can last 30 years based on studies done by the LDS church, but once you grind them into flour they go downhill fast.

I’ve owned a variety of mills, all but one of the antique variety. They were all small clamp-on type that eventually failed—or had failed before had even bought them LOL. I was scanning Craigslist etc every so often the last however many years looking for a better unit without any luck. Then came the pandemic and even the beer-brewer hobbyists machines and kitchen decoration items disappeared.

I want a $1,000 of course and had placed a pre-paid order for the new Green Power Mill from Lehmans that looks pretty cool. But it turns out that Lehmans has been sold and whether that, the JIT supply catastrophe or whatever, I had my money returned 6 months later when the mill still wasn’t in production. That was recently and prompted me to bite the bullet so I finally broke down and bought a modern version of the clamp on style, the Wonder Mill Junior.

It comes with both steel burrs and stone wheels and a second auger for nuts —and importantly— masa! But what is best are the drive options, it has available a power drill adapter, a large motor pulley, even a geared reduction pulley with drive gear. I opted for the bicycle sprocket attachment. I ordered one of those bicycle stands made to let you use your regular bike as an exercise cycle. I’ll get a chain locally. If I were ever needing to use this machine… and there was power of some type available, I’m confident I could rig up a motor. Most likely, in the event it is needed, the only power available will be me.

You can see in the listing that it has a square plate base rather than an integral clamp. The clamp device is mounted using machine screws. I expect to mount the mill, sans clamp, along with the bike stand on a piece of ply, probably using a hunk of 6-8″ steel plate as reinforcement under the mill. Several of my “clamp on” mills have failed at the neck due to metal fatigue, there is quite a bit of torque involved. And of course there is no way to mount a clamp style mill on most modern counters, let alone use with the bike rig I’m contemplating. Grinding more than a cup’s worth to rough flour consistently turns into work.

I’ve been dragging my feet on this purchase for a while, $400 all in for an item I’ll hopefully never use beyond simple experimenting is pretty high for my budget. The rational is, I probably have that much in stored grain and without a decent mill I’m limited to mush and sprouts.

So anyway, talk about your mills.

Gear

(Official discussion) Best mobile apps

John RameyStaff - 1 month ago

[See the full post at: Best survival apps for your phone]

Smoke hoods etc

Black Club - 2 months ago

I’ve got a few of the smoke hood type escape devices (I have one in my travel bag)

looking to change to these:

Home

have ordered one to see how bulky it is in comparison to

Smoke Hood and Fire Mask Products

Pemmican

Winston Smith - 2 months ago

I’ve made a lot of hardtack, but never Pemmican. I plan to experiment in the next few weeks. Has anyone tried making or eating it? Thanks.

News for the Week 2023-08-07

The Prepared Support - 2 months ago

News

New Source For Bug-Out Bag Items – Career Fairs

Bigwig - 2 months ago

Recently I’ve been going to a lot of career fairs in my area. Little did I know that it was a BOB bag paradise! Some of the items I’ve come across for free:

Collapsable water bottle with carabiner Drawstring backpack (good in case something happens to your regular backpack) Multi-connector charging cable Carabiner with two knives and scissors Collapsible frisbee Plastic utensils in storage tube Small hand sanitizer with carabiner Baseball cap Lanyard Lip baum Playing cards Packet of sunscreen Wipes Tide stick

I get it. Do you want your life depending on some crappy promotional material you got for free? No, but much of this stuff is not life-altering and the carabiner feels pretty solid.

Next time you want to stock you BOB, go to a job fair. You can get some swag, and you just might get a new job.

News for the week 2023-07-31

The Prepared Support - 2 months ago

A clearly-written dentistry article ideal for preppers

Bob - 2 months ago

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/cavity-filling

Good morning,

The linked article is clear, concise and each section is short enought to absorb the material.

One timely section well worth exploring is “How to get a filling at a lower cost”. Note: “dental schools.

Admittedly, I didn’t know to avoid phytic acid. Didn’t even know what it is – until reading the caption below the red kidney beans.

I’m not “inta” dentistry; just spent fortunes due to my poor quality dental hygiene … since corrected.

Depending on specifics, next to my IFAK/BOB (although bag is a vest) is a field dental kit for hygiene.

What habits have you developed related to prepping, and what habits do you wish you’d develop?

Nice_badger - 2 months ago

Being prepared for … whatever really is probably as much about small habits and routines as about gear and skills for dramatic situations. What habits have you developed that are somewhat prepping related, and which habits do you think would be good but you haven’t ingrained them so far? Did you develop habits that are somewhat harmful for you in the course of prepping?

I’ll start:

* When grocery shopping, anything I buy with a long shelf life, it’s always a handful (cans, packages) more that what we need right now

* I want to be better at this, but when riding public transport I check if and where fire extinguishers or first aid supplies are

Habits I want to develop:

* being more organized around paperwork

* routinely checking for emergency exits when inside buildings

* better situational awareness in public spaces. I think I’m decent at spotting people with aggressive vibes, but beyond that …

Fish Antibiotics for human use

TraceContributor - 2 months ago

Short version: Fish Antibiotics are currently on sale at fishmoxfishflex.com at 25% off with the code: DRBONES25 until 7/31.

Background:
I’m a big, longtime fan of Doctor Bones and Nurse Amy (Joe Alton MD, and Amy NP). They wrote the book ‘The Survival Medicine Handbook’ (the essential guide for when help is NOT on the way) and the book ‘Antibiotics and Infections Diseases’.

Dr. Alton has long preached and advocated that preppers stock, and know how to use, fish antibiotics. They are the exact same medication as the human versions, literally produced in the same facilities. He’s wrote extensively about this and made many YouTube videos (in addition to his running podcast and blogs).

I’m a former military medic and civilian paramedic and I find both of his books essential parts of our prepper medical library. We have many fish antibiotics already and we’re going to buy more.

(I’m happy to provide links, I just didn’t want this to come across like some kid of add for them – lol.)

Gear

News for the Week 2023-07-17

The Prepared Support - 2 months ago

News

Best home or neighborhood security system 2023

Eric - 2 months ago

What are the best options to detect, deter, and prevent breakins in your home or neighborhood? My neighborhood had a nighttime burglary recently (involving a car, not the house) which has raised the issue of security in my neighborhood. I’m interested in recommendations for my own home’s security, especially detection/alerting, as well as neighborhood-wide options that I could present to the HOA.

Here are some relevant previous security articles and discussions, but I suspect some of the technology has advanced in the years since these were written.

https://theprepared.com/homestead/guides/home-hardening-basics/

https://theprepared.com/gear/reviews/alarm-systems/

Please share both ideas and experiences about how to setup home or neighborhood security systems.

AdviceGearScenarios

Documentary: A Refuge of Last Resort (about Hurricane Katrina)

Bigwig - 3 months ago

Rewatched A Refuge of Last Resort and thought I would post it here. It’s a first hand account of some families that went through Hurricane Katrina at a hotel in downtown New Orleans. Having grown up in Louisiana, I’m well aware of what should be done, but not everyone has the means to accomplish this, so they take their chances. Many of these personal stories may make you think about how to prepare for these situations or how to handle them when they happen.One of the things that struck me is the hotel workers. They get paid next to nothing but they stay to endure the unknown: no power, upset guests, or worst.

Streaming on Amazon Prime, The Roku Channel (with Ads), and Tubi TV (with Ads) at the time of this posting.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0818515/

Is this still an alternative to Discord?

Jonnie PekelnyContributor - 3 months ago

Hi, folks. I’m back to prepping after a pretty long fallow period. Miss my ThePrepared peeps, but I’m having a pretty hard time with the switch to Discord for discussions. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but forums or email lists or even Facebook groups (not my first choice) work so much better for me. I can come back after a day or a week and the info hasn’t scrolled away. I can keep my discussions organized instead of all of them being in one long string. And I can come back to the useful information exchanged months or years later.

None of this seems to be an option with the TP Discord, so I’ve found myself just not going to the Discord chat very often and therefore not knowing how to plug into the community. (I do volunteer for a very busy organization that uses Slack a lot. But our Slack discussions are broken out into multiple channels and all the info in each channel stays indefinitely available. The TP Discord doesn’t seem organized like that.)

I’m glad to see that some people are still posting in this forum. So is this still an option, or are we just the remnant that’s failed to adapt to the Discord future?

News for the Week 2023-07-03

The Prepared Support - 3 months ago

News

“The Mandibles” Novel on near-term economic upheaval

NazSMD - 3 months ago

I came across an interesting novel the other day and thought it would be a great catalyst for discussion here. Called “The Mandibles”, by Lionel Shriver, it portrays an extended family dealing with the slow degradation of society after a consortium of nations band together to create a new standard currency to unseat the dollar, and the US defaults on its debt in retaliation/response. It’s not Nobel-level writing (and a mix of realism with a smattering of satire), but it’s well researched and, especially, quite plausible in the long downward spiral of events it portrays. There’s a review here that gives you a little more sense of the story:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/08/the-mandibles-lionel-shriver-review-biting-near-future-satire

I enjoyed reading it and found the projected not-so-far-off future quite plausible, as well as containing many details about possible outcomes that I’d not considered but certainly will now (more on that in comments later after I kick this thread off). It’s not about the death of civilization, but rather how people (and governments) continue to survive, though in some pretty miserable circumstances.

I think what the author proposes is probably more likely than the apocryphal scenarios some preppers focus on (though even she makes references to a hacker attack that took down the grid and internet prior to the story in this novel, and that sets up some of the societal and economic changes that exist as the novel begins; also one character is a a more recognizable type of prepper who, long before the events of the novel, bought land and pursued a self-sufficient life for reasons often discussed in these forums).

Anyway, great food for thought and for expanding thinking on what being prepared actually means, as well as on how sustainable those preps are in a longer-term societal shift.

Has anyone else here read this? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, and encourage anyone else who is curious to check it out as well.

Foraging Discovery: Apple Pectin

Barb LeeContributor - 3 months ago

Hopefully the forum can tolerate a topic that may not exactly be “survival” oriented, but we do occasionally have more “homestead-y” posts, which this probably is. In this case, the end product does actually have some health benefits that could be beneficial when the medicine kit lacks a few items. I’m just so pleased with my results I had to share somewhere, hope you all don’t mind!

For years I have known that pectin for jelly and jam making could be produced from immature apples, but my old source of information didn’t include practical instructions for using it. This year we have so many apples on our trees that they’re in danger of another catastrophic branch breakage event. Thinning the the old giants should be a priority. The subject of apple pectin from immature fruit came to mind, so I did a search and after writing down notes from six or so sources, I had a satisfactory amount of understanding to give it a try.

In order to keep this short, I’ll just say my first attempt at making strawberry jam with the home made pectin was a huge success! So now I’m in the process of putting up enough apple pectin to last for a season or two. Sometimes the trees make such a heroic effort to overproduce fruit that they produce nothing for the next couple of years. My pectin is made from Yellow Transparent and Gravenstein apples – I’m sure immature wild and crab apples would be great.

Can’t say if the do-it-yourself pectin represents a cost savings over the $4/box Sure-Jell, as it requires water and power to make the product, ditto canning it, plus canning lids if using disposable ones.

Here is an article on the health benefits/side effects for using apple pectin for ailments such as diarrhea: https://www.verywellhealth.com/the-benefits-of-apple-pectin-89599

Relying on the Red Cross

Barb LeeContributor - 3 months ago

I’m involved in a little conversation on another forum about getting prepared to bug out in case of wildfire (we have livestock, so it’s a big deal).

Every time someone directs me to contact the Red Cross to “find the resources I need” I get a little fried. They’re just trying to be helpful, but (as if I never heard of the Red Cross) I can’t figure out why they default to throwing your fate into the hands of a government subsidized “organization” instead of “I can take care of my own”.

Somewhere around here I have an article (oh! I just remembered where it is!) about what a bloated, bogged down, government funded “non-profit” the Red Cross is.

I want to yell “Ever heard of taking care of your SELF?” I know emergency agencies care for millions, but that may be just the problem. In our area, the PNW, if something like the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake ever happened, we’ve been told in no uncertain terms, that NO agency will send personnel into an area until that area is considered safe. In case of “the Big One”, that could be months or years. And affect tens of thousands, if not millions.

That reads “You’re On Your Own” to me. First line of defense is personal preparedness. I’m not that far along, but I can sure as heck bug out successfully in a wildfire scenario (at least I THINK I can!)

Just decompressing, so I don’t say something rude on that other forum.

Season 9 of the Alone premieres this Thursday May 26, 2022. Get caught up on the items used by the winners of previous seasons.

Gideon ParkerStaff - 3 months ago

Season 9 of the popular survival TV series Alone kicks off this Thursday May 26, 2022 on the History Channel. A quick summary of the show is that 10 participants are dropped off in the middle of no where and try and survive as long as possible with 10 items. Last man standing wins $500,000. Many survival TV shows are staged and may even fake some of the survival techniques shown on the show, but one thing that I like about Alone is that each participant runs their own camera gear, is truly out there on their own, and what they go through is real.

In this updated article, The Prepared breaks down down the 10 items chosen by each winner and runner up of the previous 8 seasons. Obvious spoilers in the article if you are planning on going back and watching previous seasons. What I like about this article is trying to imagine which items I would choose if placed on that show and how I would use them.

Something special that I am looking forward to in this next season is that The Prepared community member Jessie Krebs is one of the 10 participants. She has contributed to projects such as the Water Essentials course and How to use a compass and map. I will be cheering for her and wishing her the best of luck on this next season!

News