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Reply to: Minor prepping victory: Perennial Fruit! Posted 2 days ago

That is wonderful and so inspiring! I have just started to look into what kind of perennial edibles might grow well in my area. I am a notoriously terrible gardener but luckily I have a friend who likes to garden and is very good at it and willing to get things started for me. I’ll send him this article and see what he thinks. In a previous home I had tried growing blueberries and blackberries but the birds ate ALL of them. That is not necessarily a bad thing – I love birds – but would be problematic if I actually needed them as a food source.

Reply to: COVID at home: prepare for a severe case Posted 4 days ago

One thing a nurse I know recommends is to take your home pulse oximeter and home blood pressure monitor (if you have one) to your next medical appointment, and compare your readings with the equipment in the medical office. It’s a good way to “sanity check” the equipment. We bought some off of Amazon that seemed to align quite well with what the medical offices were reading. I would provide a link but it is showing as no longer available. It’s actually a pretty good story as I look back on it – we bought the pulse oximeter for Covid reasons, but a family member ended up having odd heart symptoms. We used the readings from the pulse oximeter (which also measured heart rate) to do a telemedicine visit with a cardiologist, who sent them to the ER. The ER readings aligned perfectly with the cheapo Amazon gadget! All’s well that ends well and the family member is fine; it was great to have the device to help decide “ER or no ER” during the pre-vaccine part of the pandemic (the blood pressure monitor played a role too – thank you, The Prepared, since because of you we had both of these on hand). The cardiologist told us the limits of the pulse oximeter for measuring heart rate but that’s beyond the scope of this reply! It’s good for what it does but is obviously not as precise as the ER equipment for heart-related things.

Reply to: COVID at home: prepare for a severe case Posted 4 days ago

Shaun, I’m so glad you made it through Covid safely. As for the oral rehydration solution, I strongly recommend you ask her physician for the best advice for that. Ulcerative colitis is very serious and the best advice will come from a physician experienced with that condition and ideally with her health specifically. With or without covid, knowing how to treat dehydration for her in any kind of emergency is vital information to have. It might even be good to have a discussion about how to have extra doses of her other meds etc. in light of supply chain problems. A family member of mine with another kind of autoimmune disorder was able to get several months’ worth of extra meds to have on hand during the pandemic from an understanding physician (she did have to pay for them out of pocket since her insurance wouldn’t help, but luckily they weren’t terribly expensive) Good luck to both of you!

Reply to: What to do if your elevator gets stuck Posted 1 week ago

I also have a family member in a wheelchair and more than once we’ve come across an elevator that is too small for BOTH of us. Always, always, ALWAYS be sure there is a phone in the elevator or that the person has a cell phone with them! I’m always worried he’ll get trapped in there with no way to communicate, but at least with me on the outside I can call for help if he doesn’t arrive at the designated floor.

Reply to: What to do if your elevator gets stuck Posted 2 weeks ago

I have been stuck in an elevator twice (the same elevator each time). I just used the call button and security came and got me out so it was inconvenient but not a huge hassle or dangerous. In many buildings the call button goes to a central call center somewhere in the world, not to anyone local. I always make sure I have my cell phone with me whenever I get on an elevator (particularly those smaller residential ones) in case, for some reason, the call button doesn’t work. In many places zoning requires that there be a phone or call box in those elevators but when people moved from landlines to cellular, a lot of placed ripped out the landlines without realizing it would affect elevators that aren’t subject to inspections. The scariest elevator experience I had was at a private office building and did not involve the actual elevator. I had been working late on a Friday and when I called the elevator to leave it NEVER came (I later learned the janitor had “hard stopped” it on a lower floor while he was cleaning). BUT, when I departed I had left my entry badge on a desk and could not get back into the main building from the elevator lobby without it. I was TRAPPED on that upper floor! There was NO way to leave the elevator lobby – security doors locked, no windows, no way to make the elevator come, no stairs. I had a brief moment of panic: No one would be back in the building until Monday, what if there was a fire and I couldn’t get out. I took a deep breath and thought. I finally remembered that I knew a guy who knew a guy who worked on that floor and after a few phone calls he came and rescued me via the stairs (and gave the janitor a talking-to. Poor janitor; I’m sure he had no idea he was trapping someone upstairs). I wrote to the health and safety officer of the building the next day and explained the problem, and they immediately installed a fire door for the elevator lobby – the kind where you press the bar for 15 seconds and an alarm sounds, but at least you can get out. It turns out the office manager for that floor had decided to put install that fully locked door on the upper elevator lobby as a way of avoiding the expense of a receptionist, and had hired a contractor to do it without checking with the building management. The contractor had no knowledge of fire codes etc. So now whenever I enter a building I check the “escape routes”! The worst ones I come across are always in Europe in hotels built in very old buildings. Many of them are absolute death traps, and the cleaning services are forever propping open any fire doors that might exist, thus rendering them useless. More than once I’ve asked to be moved to a different room because the one I was in was, essentially, at the top of a chimney. The hotel staff are never surprised. They know!

Reply to: How to survive this nasty heat wave of 110+ degrees Posted 2 weeks ago

I love the giant ice cube idea! Will start saving my plastic containers.

Reply to: Amaranth – My #1 Survival Crop Posted 2 weeks ago

I had never heard of amaranth until this thread and am grateful to everyone for teaching me about it! To my complete surprise I just found it, canned, in my local grocery. It is called “callalloo“. I’ve bought a few cans to try.

Reply to: Novel and delicious shelf-stable foods Posted 2 weeks ago

And I actually have a question/mystery about canned foods. Canned salmon – and ONLY canned salmon – seems to always come in a TAPERED can. So the bottom of the can is narrower than the top. Does anyone know WHY? It doesn’t seem to matter what brand – they always come in that odd tapered can.

Reply to: Novel and delicious shelf-stable foods Posted 2 weeks ago

Canned Ackee fruit just became available at my local grocery store. I thought it would be fun to try something new – until I read up on it! Apparently the unripe fruit is extremely poisonous, and the fruit was actually banned from the US for ~30 years and is only now being allowed for import. I decided not to risk it – how can I know whether the canned fruit was sufficiently ripe when packaged?

Reply to: How has rising gas prices influenced you? Posted 3 weeks ago

Other than the fact that everything that I buy is more expensive now because increased fuel costs are passed on through the supply chain, the only changes I made were to lower the temperature on my gas water heater, wash my clothes on cold more often, and attempt to turn off the pilot light in my gas fireplace for the summer. I say attempt because it absolutely did not work and I gave up when I realized I was more likely to blow up the house than turn off the pilot (and yes, I read every online guide and watched every YouTube. It would not turn off!). I’ll hire a professional to come clean and service the fireplace this fall and will get their expert guidance then on how to do it next summer (I did call them and they said it would be a minimum $250 charge to come out, so…….) I’ve always purchased very fuel-efficient vehicles and driven as little as possible. My dream is to live in a community with pervasive and reliable public transportation so I never need to drive (and I have lived in such communities in the past – Heaven). I’ll likely catch a lot of flak for this opinion – I already have, with my family – but I think the rising fuel prices are a good thing. They’ve always been artificially low in the US, and that makes people behave in illogical ways that were never sustainable. As Pops points out below, it was always temporary.

Reply to: Dealing with documents/important info when SHTF Posted 3 weeks ago

One thing I’ve done is to combine what is suggested above with “blocks” on my accounts. My credit is frozen – no one can open credit in my name, and the password for unfreezing THAT is not in my “master list”. I limited my financial institutions to the smallest number possible, and have set up account restrictions such that if someone tries to charge, transfer, or withdraw more than a certain amount it will be blocked unless I call the bank to pre-approve it. I can’t withdraw more than a few hundred dollars from an ATM at a time (by my choice). The accounts also have a “trusted contact” assigned to them such that if there is unusual activity on any account the trusted family contact will be notified. That way if I’m traveling, sick, or somehow otherwise incapacitated the trusted contact can intervene if someone is messing around with the funds. This has been great on many levels. It has stopped me from overspending! A few times I tried to make a large purchase and the bank stopped it. Just the act of having to call them to preauthorize it made me think twice about whether I really needed x, y, or z. It makes it easy to say no to those endless credit “come ons” at stores – since my credit is frozen, opening a new account is such a pain that I’m just not tempted. I also have my accounts set up so that if they drop below a certain balance I get a text notification, or if my credit card goes above a certain balance I also get a notification. That way if someone does hack their way into my accounts it minimizes the time between the activity and when I can lock them down. Most banks have these restrictions available but they require proactive intervention on your part; it is not automatic. It used to be that you had to call to set them up, but now most of them let you set it up online. And you’ll get a text or email if someone else tries to change those settings, too.

Reply to: Dealing with documents/important info when SHTF Posted 4 weeks ago

I recommend consulting an estate attorney in your state about the REALLY critical papers (will, powers of attorney, healthcare wishes, etc). In my case our attorney has a copy, we have the originals (which are the officially accepted ones in our state), and a trusted friend has another copy. But I have a friend who stored the originals with the attorney (most have a vault for this purpose) and he carries the copies. For the rest I have multiples where I can. For example I carry my drivers’ license in my everyday bag, my passport is in my go bag, and my passport CARD (which is a different form of ID) varies between being in my everyday bag and my car. That way I have some form of government ID always accessible. I have no idea where my social security card is but I remember my number, and I suppose if I had to I could always go back to the clerk of court to get copies of birth certificates etc. One thing our attorney told us is that we can have certain documents, like a financial power of attorney, recorded with the clerk of court in our town (I guess not all towns do this). That way if we need it in a hurry we can get a certified copy from them. The money we spent on the estate attorney was worth every penny for the peace of mind it has brought us.

Reply to: What is the best camp stove for an emergency power outage or camping? Posted 4 weeks ago

I love my Solo Stove. It can burn wood, coal, twigs, and I even bought the alcohol burner in case I want to use that. For me in an emergency there’s a 99.9% chance I can find twigs and a much smaller chance that I can get a steady supply of liquid fuels. I’ve used it several times during emergencies and it’s great (I do recommend using it at least once before an emergency, since when you desperately need coffee is not the best time to figure it out, even though it is easy) You can even make a similar one out of a #10 can – just google “how to make your own camp stove”. Since I’m rather accident prone I decided the ER visit for stitches needed from trying to make my own would override the cost difference from buying the already-made Solo!

Reply to: What does prepping look like in your area of the world? Posted 1 month ago

That WOULD be fascinating! And maybe the “out of placers” might even come up with better ideas since they’re not steeped in the culture and are less prone to “normalcy bias”.

Reply to: What does prepping look like in your area of the world? Posted 1 month ago

This is one of the reasons why I started to really focus on dried and canned food; the only reason I’d really need a generator for an extended outage was for refrigeration for food. So I decided to become adept at using food that didn’t need that. My family and friends have raved about some of the dishes I’ve served them, oblivious to the fact that they weren’t made with fresh ingredients. Sometimes I think we should have a recipe thread to share our favorite shelf-stable recipes.

Reply to: Can we as a forum bust a survival TV show myth? – Cooking an egg in toilet paper Posted 1 month ago

Not to mention that he could have just boiled the egg in a natural hot spring, since he was in Iceland. Should you wish to try that on YOUR upcoming adventure, be aware that the ground around hot springs is very fragile and if you don’t know what you’re doing you can fall in and get boiled alive yourself.

Reply to: Can we as a forum bust a survival TV show myth? – Cooking an egg in toilet paper Posted 1 month ago

I am glad you mention the lake thing. I have friends who think I am nuts for refusing to go swimming in freshwater lakes, ponds, and rivers (I’m totally cool with saltwater). One episode of giardia is all it takes, people….. https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/giardia/prevention-control.html

Reply to: Recognizing when it’s time to change how you prep Posted 1 month ago

This is beautiful: Prepping is not a static, “do it this way forever” practice. It is a part of a life that undergoes growth, change, and gradual development. Thank you for writing and sharing.

Reply to: The Big Bubba of BOBs – I made a level 3 bag based off The Prepared’s recommendations Posted 1 month ago

Very impressive setup! Thank you for sharing.

Reply to: News roundup for Fri, May 20, 2022 Posted 1 month ago

Apology accepted. And per the point below of being unable to verify names or whereabouts, I suppose that means they are practicing effective opsec. Good little piggies.

Pooping in a pail and other prepper pastimes

Best practices after a burglary – Police reports, insurance, safety, etc.