I bought a copy snd will check it out. Up for trying it if we get a TP group together. 

A very thoughtful summary – thanks, Chance. As a fellow light/ultralight hiker I have nothing substantive to add; great job. And, as others have already seconded, regularly using your gear is so important; you build and refine skills, learn what works and what doesn’t, and become ever more unburdoned—freer to fully enjoy your time in nature. 

You probably already know the basics – store wine with corks on its side and try to keep it at a consistent cool temperature; heat will accelerate its degradation. Certain wines (especially reds with more tannins or sweet or fortified wines) will age better than other varieties. Most inexpensive to moderately priced wines these days don’t require aging and can be enjoyed any time. Consuming it as part of your rotating pantry sounds great – enjoy!

Love the video! We get great blue herons (which are huge, and have a very loud call) and night herons all the time by our boat in San Francisco. Here’s a night heron there:

Hi Chance – as you dig deeper I think you’ll find that more thought has been given to this topic on this site than you noted at first glance (though all contributions and improvements you can make would be welcomed). I’m a light-to-ultralight backpacker and definitely salute the principles of reducing weight (within reason for purpose and durability) and choosing multi-purpose gear whenever possible. Skill, knowledge and technique also can be leveraged to reduce weight.  There are so many good sites and forums out there, but one I recommend is backpackinglight.com (full disclosure: I tested gear and edited for them a decade or so ago). They back up their recommendations with evidence-based testing and lots of real world experience. 

I found this an informative and sobering read: https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2022/03/what-the-science-says-could-humans-survive-a-nuclear-war-between-nato-and-russia/ Basically, even a limited nuclear exchange (say, between India and Pakistan) would have devastating effects on climate and food production.  As others have said, the luckiest might be those who are vaporized in the initial strikes. Survival is possible but it will be a long and bleak recovery. 

Hard to predict anything with certainty, but it’s very likely Putin will install a pro-Russia puppet government in Ukraine and pull the entire country back into the Russian sphere. I don’t see anyone here claiming there will be any imminent grab in the Baltics, and that would trigger far greater conflict. I’d have my eyes on China right now; is this enough of a diversion for them to move to take back Taiwan? Interesting times, for sure…however this plays out, it’s going to increase fuel prices here and in Europe and cause further economic chaos.

I’ve had a Mavic Air for a few years and have thought about this use also, though I’ve never tested it specifically for that. I’ll say why my experiences have left me skeptical, though. I had visions of doing some nature videography and possibly using the drone for scouting ahead from a sailboat, but the reality is that it has a pretty short flight time (which has dramatically lessened as the batteries have aged), and controlling it via a phone doesn’t give you the best detail (versus, say, transferring the video to a laptop and viewing it after the fact on a large screen; perhaps it’s possible to use a tablet in real time as well but the controller is not physically designed for that). Also, it’s easy to crash it in windy conditions (I’ve not even bothered with the sailboat, though I have seen some folks doing it on YouTube with some success but also more than one drone lost to the deep), and I’ve had it come crashing down when it runs out of battery even though it’s supposed to return to base before that. Finally, I’ve had the Geofencing stop me more than once, including on our own property at a ski area that’s technically on Forest Service land. So, for real-time reconnaissance I’d say not just that this isn’t the best drone—perhaps there are better choices—but taking into account possibly being shot at during unrest, the possibility of jamming, the geofencing issues, and real-time details being hard to see on a tiny phone screen, perhaps it’s not the most realistic mission. At best, maybe I’d consider it as a Hail Mary pass to assess conditions nearby (and even then, if there were fires or mobs nearby, hopefully I would have bugged out long before). I have successfully used it for inspecting our roof and high-up siding after winter snow and ice, though! (Again, reviewing footage later on the laptop to spot missing shingles, etc., versus trying to spot details while flying with a phone.) It’s a fun toy…maybe someone with a fancier drone will post a different opinion. PS—they’re also the opposite of stealth; noisy, intrusive, and ultimately could lead someone back to you if they observe it returning, unless you sacrifice it landing elsewhere as a diversion.

Love this thread (and many related ones that have come up recently such as estate planning, and backpacking and other activities as practice). I have to make some serious updates and changes this year for several reasons, and things I’ve read here and elsewhere have helped me focus and prioritize. Also, in the past couple of years events here in California have showed me that my preps are not completely up to snuff, nor reliable, nor always relevant (we’ve experienced extensive smoke, short-notice extended power shutoffs by our state monopoly utility company, comms failures rippling through to us due to cable and cell companies not having adequate battery backups for their services during the extended power outages, just to name a few!) I thought I was well prepared, and by some standards I was, but it’s not enough. So, time to address that and more. Over the years I’ve gotten lots of training in various pursuits that have some relevance to bigger-picture prep: to name just a few, I’m an instrument-rated private pilot; I’m certified as a bareboat skipper for sailing; I was certified as a Wilderness First Responder, and I got a HAM license. I’ve done countless backpacking and camping trips, flown and driven across country and into Canada, sailed in many locations, and traveled extensively with the “one bag” philosophy—all good practice for some skills and tools I might choose to avail myself of in various scenarios. In addition to my car, I have a pop-up tent trailer and a sailboat, and I also have a great deal of equipment, gathered over years of outdoor activities, aviation, and beyond, so there’s very little I need to acquire at this point. What I need to do is to go through, winnow, then update and organize the equipment I have (restocking the perishables as needed, including first aid and food supplies). I’m still weighing the idea of dedicated emergency gear, but for now will focus on making sure the camping gear and trailer, and the sailboat and all of its provisioning, are useful both for current recreational use as well as for projected emergency scenarios. I’ve created some modular kits in the past but will update and improve those with all of this in mind. The sailboat needs some repairs that are necessary and prudent if it is to be reliable even for recreation, so I have to weigh doing that versus perhaps selling it to free up capital. Equally urgent, I need to get my finances and estate planning in order (great advice on that in another thread). I have a son who will still be with me at home for several years, and though I plan to be around for many decades more, I need to make sure he’s set up well on multiple fronts. With Covid and all the other insanity in the world, nothing is guaranteed. I additionally intend to focus more on fitness and skills; I’ve let my fitness slide some during Covid and it’s time to reclaim that (I live near easy access to outdoor recreation, and also have exercise equipment at home), plus continue to share those activities—and the importance of keeping in shape—with my son. I also need to set up better comms to assure voice and internet capabilities during failures and outages (I have all the things I need, but they need to be better organized and tested. Slightly longer-term, I’m keeping an eye out for the right place to get a longer-term home, ideally with some land. I enjoy urban and suburban conveniences so I’m not sure yet exactly where and how that plays out, and geopolitics plays a role in that decision as well. Anyway, that’s already a lot of goals for 2022! They’d be easy to postpone, but events over the past few years have really made it clear that these goals are important and timely, and there’s never a good time to postpone things to. Thanks for the great discussions here.

Hi all—just wanted to say that I’m still chipping away at the book and will have a review posted soon. Thanks for the chance to read this (very interesting material).

Copy received, already well into the first chapter. Thanks for including me—review to follow once I’m done. First-pass feedback: I think it’s going to be an excellent read, and of course highly relevant to this community; can’t wait to finish it. Minor quibble: print quality is not excellent, and type in many graphics is rendered unreadable by the combination of tiny text and coarse print resolution (example below).

Thanks for doing this – I’d love to be considered for a copy and review. I can provide more background privately but I’ve written and edited for online and print publications (including writing reviews) and also contracted for DoD via DARPA, so this is definitely an interesting topic (and author) on several levels. 

They do charge a monthly fee—they have a range of plans, and you can also put the plan on hold when you’re not using it (don’t know the financial calculation on that, perhaps it makes sense if it’s offline for more than a month or two). It’s less than most cell plans, but still definitely a consideration especially as an additional monthly expenditure. For me it’s worth it (I do the basic plan and just keep it running, and I have the older unit that’s larger and also has a display screen with mapping, so it has multiple uses).

Thanks for the reminder about this site—I’ve not visited it for years. I happen to know the author from another group I’ve been a part of for almost two decades, and he’s the real deal (and definitely an interesting and quirky personality, as RS notes). I appreciate the “life goes on” section, which I don’t remember reading before; good food for thought. He also now has a full page of links to both PDF and Word versions of all of his lists and plans, which is a great resource to download and make your own. I plan on doing that with updates for some of our unique concerns here (Northern CA, so: wildfires, smoke, frequent power outages (some due to storms, some due to PG&E proactively shutting down lines to reduce fire risk), earthquakes…sheesh; maybe it’s time for us to move somewhere else!)

Lots of great suggestions here (+1 on car and boot traction, head lamp, jumper cables, flares or super-bright flashlight, and more). Tire cables are fine for emergency use—that’s what we had for our low-clearance wheel well vehicles until we found these, which are even more low clearance: https://autosock.us/snow-socks-guide/ (However, I can’t believe how expensive they’ve become; ouch! Also they’re allowed in most, but not all, jurisdictions.) We have all-weather snow-rated tires on everything so we’ve not had occasion to use chains/cables for a long time; snow tires are even better if you can afford to keep a set and live where you’ll be mostly on snow and ice for a good chunk of the season. The ham radio is fine—but as I just noted in another thread, the satellite communication devices now available (Garmin InReach, ACR Bivy Stick, etc.) are superior for almost all use cases (other than voice communication). You can send and receive texts and emails (with or without your smartphone), and also send out an SOS, with coverage pretty much everywhere on the globe at this point. Nothing wrong with carrying the ham radio, but if and when you’re able, I highly recommend a satellite communicator.

Another option I now always carry with me is a Garmin InReach. It has satellite service pretty much anywhere and can send and receive text messages and SOS either directly or through a linked smartphone app. I have Yaesu radios and a license, and those are fun to play with and interesting to consider for longer-term disaster communications, but the InReach (and similar devices such as the ACR Bivy Stick or Spot messenger) are much more direct and likely to reach someone in an emergency. (And for checking in with family, which I’ve done many times, for example when out camping with my son, just to let them know we’re ok, or to advise of a delay or change of plans.)

So, how do you discern “real” experts from the not so real ones, particularly when looking forward? That seems to be the crux of much of this discussion, and an important skill for all of us to hone. My bets generally are on proper scientific process and evidence-based reasoning. Looking at biases and external influences is important too (and indeed already part of the formal scientific process, with those meant to be disclosed in any published study).  Perfect? Free from error or bias or intentional fakery? Certainly not, but way more transparent and assessable than most politicians, social media posts, and speculation. 

To Redneck and everyone else contributing—this has to be one of the best threads ever! It’s so nice to see someone genuinely living this way, in touch with their land and the skills needed to keep it thriving. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and skills and experiences…