Discussions
Reply to: What shortages/price hikes are you all anticipating? Posted 2 months ago
Reply to: How would those who live in a city survive without trucks? Posted 2 months ago

Agree about supply chains. In fact, in a lot of ways rural supply chains are more precarious. I live on the outskirts of a major city, we have roads, ports, airports, and rail lines. If some of that infrastructure is unusable, we still have other options. Also, although high gas prices increase the cost of shipping and thus the goods I buy, I rarely need to drive as I can walk, bike, and use public transit. On the other hand, my parents who live in a more rural area, have to drive a few miles just to get rid of their trash/recycling, and 20 or 30 miles for groceries.  Oil is a finite resource, and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I’m less gloomy about peak oil than I was some years ago. A solar/wind/hydro/battery/long distance transmission electric grid is a solved problem from a technical and economic perspective, we just need more of it, and it’s scaling fast. Electric cars are also a solved problem from a technical perspective; they’re still somewhat more expensive, but getting cheaper as they scale. Electric freight trucks are still in development, but there don’t seem to be major technical barriers to using basically the same tech as electric cars. Electric air and sea freight are still pie in the sky, but that may just mean we do a lot less intercontinental trade in the future, which is not civilization ending.  Of course, just because there are workable solutions doesn’t mean we can’t still screw up the energy transition. But ten years ago I wasn’t even sure there was a way out of getting crushed by peak oil, so I’m less pessimistic than I used to be about that. Re: urban yuck, I also have an aversive reaction sometimes to images like that, but on the other hand think how much environmental destruction would happen if each of those people wanted two to ten acres in the country. 

Reply to: Securing crypto passwords in physical steel with the Keystone Tablet Plus Posted February 9, 2022
Reply to: It’s time for our annual environmental charity donation. Where should we donate? Posted January 19, 2022
Reply to: Double dipping: camping and prepping Posted January 5, 2022

I have a very simple solution; on the rare occasion I go camping, I take the dual-use supplies out of my bug out bag and use them. Or I take out the supplies I DON’T want for camping, add some other stuff, and use the whole bag. When I get home I make sure to put everything back. If I went camping more often I might want duplicate supplies, but it doesn’t take much time to swap back and forth and long as you put it all away properly when you get home.  I second practicing with your tools. Camping is not necessarily a good analog for bugging out, but it is similar in that most thing are harder to use in the backcountry than they are in your living room.  I do keep a few duplicates of things (vs. bug out bag) in the car kit, but the car kit is mostly different stuff than the bug-out bag. And I might only have one or the other.  This perma-kit idea saves time and energy if you camp constantly, which very few of us realistically do. They mentioned camping 90 nights a year? I probably average 1 or 2. 

Reply to: Request for gear review – Gloves Posted January 5, 2022

I like the Youngstown kevlar lined gloves for heavy duty jobs and bike riding. Kevlar lining is important to me because it makes it much less likely I will leave skin on the road if I get into a bad slide and put my hands down for stability. Putting your hands down in a bike crash is not a good idea, but you’re on automatic when something that bad happens.  The kevlar lining has also been nice when working with sharp saws, splintery wood etc; I ride with the new pair and use the old, beat-up pair for heavy duty jobs.  Protection is very good, the winter version of the kevlar lined gloves is reasonably warm (although I was riding today in 30 something degree weather and my fingers did get quite cold). The main downside is a significant loss of dexterity when the gloves are new; as you break them in the dexterity improves. 

Reply to: Seeking ideas for prepper related challenges/experiments Posted January 2, 2022

A bit off topic, but I would love to read a post/thread about your month living off wild food. I’m a decent forager, but I doubt I’ve ever foraged more than maybe 1/4 of my food for a few days.  Considering the things you’ve already done, I suspect you’ve done a mock bugout already, but if you haven’t, that’s a common prepper practice exercise. Try getting to a rally point or your vacation house or your friend’s house or wherever you are likely to go, with no support from civilization: First, drive there with your supplies packed up in your car, and get there without stopping for gas, food, water etc. Probably pretty easy, but it helps you practice loading out the car etc. for an emergency. Then try to get there on motorcycle, bicycle, or whatever your plan ‘B’ is. Takes longer, you can’t pack as much, more challenging. You might have to camp overnight in some random patch of woods.  Then try to get there on foot (hardest). 

Reply to: Grain Mills: What’s your experience and recommendations? Posted October 12, 2021
Reply to: Josh’s Farm Update: July 2021 Posted July 5, 2021
Reply to: What do you think about a modular bug out bag? Posted June 10, 2021
Reply to: Thorn bushes for fencing Posted May 1, 2021
Reply to: Learn about scissors and why they are important prepping tools Posted April 21, 2021
Reply to: Preppers and climate change Posted April 12, 2021
Reply to: The prepping items that we regret buying and why Posted March 21, 2021

Cold steel ‘Bushman’ knife. I had just started prepping, and I thought how versatile it was that the knife had a hollow handle and could be made into a spear. Previously, I’d only used cooking knives. As I gradually learned a bit more about ‘woodsy’ skills, and practiced a little (I’m still not very good), I found that the Bushman knife was wildly impractical; too heavy, weighted weirdly, hard to store (I made a sheath, it kept cutting it’s way out of it because of the curve). Now I keep a couple of Mora knives around instead; they have rubberized grip and don’t slide out of your hands, the shape of the handle keeps your hand from sliding up over the blade, they are light and well-balanced, easy to sharpen, and come with a great, lightweight, durable, well-fitted plastic sheath.  The other one that comes to mind was also a knife. I had read how great the British hacking knife (used in construction) was because it has a soft spine and can be safety used to baton, wood, also hefty enough to serve as a sort of a hatchet. Well, I practiced with it, removing invasive vines and brush, and I almost cut my thumb off! Admittedly, I was chopping too close to my other hand, but with a chopper that small, I had to do so in order to get any force. After that scare, walking home blood dripping from the gash in my thumbnail, I later tested the other thing it was ‘great’ at and found that the spine was so soft it deformed if you used it to baton wood. I recycled that POS and bought a few folding saws until I found one that fit my hands nicely (Bahco Laplander). Not totally satisfied with that one, but even if you’re exhausted and getting sloppy, it’s hard to hurt yourself more than a minor cut. And, with a 7″ blade, if you’re patient enough and have the grip strength, you can cut though 6.5″ branches!

Reply to: Preppers and climate change Posted February 25, 2021
Reply to: Preppers and climate change Posted February 25, 2021

For some reason, it’s very difficult to find newer information on American per-capita carbon footprint than circa 2010. That being said, I think the (unfortunately stale) data backs me up: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/cooler-smarter-geek-out-data https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/when-it-comes-carbon-footprints-location-and-lifestyle-matter If you take a look at the Union of Concerned Scientists article, of the 28% chunk of per-capita emissions they call ‘transportation’, it’s 92% car, 8% plane. If you add up driving and home energy use, you’re already at almost 60% of total per-capita emissions. Drastically reduce both of those things and you’ve cut your personal emissions by about half. On the other hand, even if you stopped flying entirely, that’s a rounding error, unless you are an extreme outlier who takes hundreds of flights per year for work or something.  Of course, in practice, we should do everything we can to reduce our emissions on all fronts, but start with the low-hanging fruit. I will also admit that I’m getting pretty frustrated with people who buy recycled paper towels and shut the taps off when they brush their teeth, then dust off their hands and say ‘well, I’m doing my part’, while ignoring the elephants in the room.  I agree that in the long run our lifestyles will have to radically change, but if we can at least make a good start now, it may help us change in a more smooth and gradual way rather that the sudden sharp stops we survivalists worry about. 

Reply to: Preppers and climate change Posted February 23, 2021

Your are referring to EROI; Energy Returned on (energy) Invested.  This is an important and often overlooked statistic for any energy source. One of the reasons ethanol fueled cars are not a great solution is that the EROI is close to 1; it takes about as much energy to grow and process the ethanol as you get from burning it.  Back in the bad old days, shallow well light sweet crude oil might have had an EROI of more like 100. Wind and solar are more around 10 or 20 which is often better than the last-ditch low quality resources they are scraping oil out of these days, such as tar sands, deepwater offshore drilling etc.  Considered in terms of payback period for a solar power system, it’s just a couple of years; here’s a reference for that: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/03/solar-power-can-pay-easily/ I don’t know what the energy payback period is on using batteries vs. burning gas. I’m not even sure how to calculate that, honestly. Nonetheless, when you consider the truly massive emissions drop from switching from a gas car to EV, there’s a lot of space there in your energy/carbon budget for batteries; I can’t imagine that the additional energy to add batteries to the car takes very long to pay off. 

Reply to: Preppers and climate change Posted February 23, 2021

For most middle class Americans, the following are the three largest and most impactful ways to reduce your personal carbon footprint: 1. Get solar for your house: This basically knocks out your carbon footprint from personal electricity use. Yes, I know there is an energy cost to solar panels ect, but switching to all-renewable power eliminates the large majority of emissions from your electricity use. Note that it’s often better to set up solar in your yard or build a solar carport etc. vs. putting the panels over your roof where they are harder to access for maintenance and have to be moved when you repair your roof. If you are in one of the very few parts of the country with insufficient insolation for practical solar power (Alaska?) consider small-scale wind or hydro. If you add a battery system to your solar, you also got a fantastic prep for grid outages.  2. Get an electric car: Many people don’t realize how much of their energy budget (and carbon footprint) goes to moving a several thousand pound metal box 30+ miles a day. Even if you plug your car into the grid, it will still be lower emissions than a gas car. Combine it with your solar system and it’s entirely renewably powered. Again, this is a great prep since you can keep driving even if there’s no gas and/or the grid is down. 3. Don’t have kids: Yup, I just grabbed the third rail of environmentalism. There’s no denying the math though; our civilization’s footprint is the per-capita footprint times the number of people. Fewer, people means less impact. So, in addition to reducing the per-capita footprint, we need to think about reducing the number of people. Instead of bringing more kids into an overpopulated world, consider fostering, adopting, or just helping your (harried, overloaded, trying to balance kids and a career) friends and relatives take care of theirs. If you really must have your own biological children, have one instead of two or three.  Other actions like recycling, eating less meat, re-using containers etc. are good, but they have a much smaller impact. For a typical middle-class American, solar plus an electric car can cut your carbon footprint by something like half, without effecting your lifestyle much. Do those other things if you can, but they’re not primary.  If you can’t afford home solar and an electric car, you can get almost as much impact while saving money; live in a small apartment/condo (which will use something like 1/5 as much electricity as a single family home), and use a bike/ebike/electric scooter instead of a car. 

Reply to: My BOB is heavy and not even fully stocked Posted December 20, 2020

So I don’t have much room to talk, as my BOB is almost 40 lbs. But if I were you, I’d cut the paratinder. That’s an object that’s trying to be two different things, and probably isn’t very good at either. You could also probably cut some weight by replacing cotton shirt etc. with lightweight hiking type clothes that are just as warm or warmer. Echoing what others have said, I would also definitely cut out the book and replace the tarp with a  lighter, stronger nylon one. Between all those things, you could probably save 3 or 4 lbs, which would be enough for a warm sleeping bag to put under your tarp at night (do you need a tent if you have a tarp?).  If possible, I highly suggest taking your gear camping to get some real-world testing. Also, take it on a road trip (after Covid is done), since you would likely be bugging out to a hotel or stay with family etc. That may reveal that some gear is much less useful/necessary than you thought.  Two other suggestions: 1. De-prioritize some items in advance. I know if I have to go a long ways on foot with my bag, I will drop about 3 lbs of tools and other gear right off the bat. If you bag is very well organized, it not only makes it easy to find things to use, it makes it easy to find the irrelevant items for this particular situation and get rid of them. 2. A bugout that involves having to hike the AT for 300 miles is pretty unlikely. So don’t beat yourself up too much about how heavy your bag is. 

Reply to: A giant waxed cheese wheel is the apocalypse prep you didn’t know you needed Posted October 22, 2020
Load more...
Bike trailers
7
21
Posted September 11, 2020
Safety Goggles for Protesting
9
21
Posted July 22, 2020
Knowing who has what skills
8
20
Posted May 29, 2020
Reply to: What shortages/price hikes are you all anticipating? Posted 2 months ago
Reply to: How would those who live in a city survive without trucks? Posted 2 months ago

Agree about supply chains. In fact, in a lot of ways rural supply chains are more precarious. I live on the outskirts of a major city, we have roads, ports, airports, and rail lines. If some of that infrastructure is unusable, we still have other options. Also, although high gas prices increase the cost of shipping and thus the goods I buy, I rarely need to drive as I can walk, bike, and use public transit. On the other hand, my parents who live in a more rural area, have to drive a few miles just to get rid of their trash/recycling, and 20 or 30 miles for groceries.  Oil is a finite resource, and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I’m less gloomy about peak oil than I was some years ago. A solar/wind/hydro/battery/long distance transmission electric grid is a solved problem from a technical and economic perspective, we just need more of it, and it’s scaling fast. Electric cars are also a solved problem from a technical perspective; they’re still somewhat more expensive, but getting cheaper as they scale. Electric freight trucks are still in development, but there don’t seem to be major technical barriers to using basically the same tech as electric cars. Electric air and sea freight are still pie in the sky, but that may just mean we do a lot less intercontinental trade in the future, which is not civilization ending.  Of course, just because there are workable solutions doesn’t mean we can’t still screw up the energy transition. But ten years ago I wasn’t even sure there was a way out of getting crushed by peak oil, so I’m less pessimistic than I used to be about that. Re: urban yuck, I also have an aversive reaction sometimes to images like that, but on the other hand think how much environmental destruction would happen if each of those people wanted two to ten acres in the country. 

Reply to: Securing crypto passwords in physical steel with the Keystone Tablet Plus Posted February 9, 2022
Reply to: It’s time for our annual environmental charity donation. Where should we donate? Posted January 19, 2022
Reply to: Double dipping: camping and prepping Posted January 5, 2022

I have a very simple solution; on the rare occasion I go camping, I take the dual-use supplies out of my bug out bag and use them. Or I take out the supplies I DON’T want for camping, add some other stuff, and use the whole bag. When I get home I make sure to put everything back. If I went camping more often I might want duplicate supplies, but it doesn’t take much time to swap back and forth and long as you put it all away properly when you get home.  I second practicing with your tools. Camping is not necessarily a good analog for bugging out, but it is similar in that most thing are harder to use in the backcountry than they are in your living room.  I do keep a few duplicates of things (vs. bug out bag) in the car kit, but the car kit is mostly different stuff than the bug-out bag. And I might only have one or the other.  This perma-kit idea saves time and energy if you camp constantly, which very few of us realistically do. They mentioned camping 90 nights a year? I probably average 1 or 2. 

Reply to: Request for gear review – Gloves Posted January 5, 2022

I like the Youngstown kevlar lined gloves for heavy duty jobs and bike riding. Kevlar lining is important to me because it makes it much less likely I will leave skin on the road if I get into a bad slide and put my hands down for stability. Putting your hands down in a bike crash is not a good idea, but you’re on automatic when something that bad happens.  The kevlar lining has also been nice when working with sharp saws, splintery wood etc; I ride with the new pair and use the old, beat-up pair for heavy duty jobs.  Protection is very good, the winter version of the kevlar lined gloves is reasonably warm (although I was riding today in 30 something degree weather and my fingers did get quite cold). The main downside is a significant loss of dexterity when the gloves are new; as you break them in the dexterity improves. 

Reply to: Seeking ideas for prepper related challenges/experiments Posted January 2, 2022

A bit off topic, but I would love to read a post/thread about your month living off wild food. I’m a decent forager, but I doubt I’ve ever foraged more than maybe 1/4 of my food for a few days.  Considering the things you’ve already done, I suspect you’ve done a mock bugout already, but if you haven’t, that’s a common prepper practice exercise. Try getting to a rally point or your vacation house or your friend’s house or wherever you are likely to go, with no support from civilization: First, drive there with your supplies packed up in your car, and get there without stopping for gas, food, water etc. Probably pretty easy, but it helps you practice loading out the car etc. for an emergency. Then try to get there on motorcycle, bicycle, or whatever your plan ‘B’ is. Takes longer, you can’t pack as much, more challenging. You might have to camp overnight in some random patch of woods.  Then try to get there on foot (hardest). 

Reply to: Grain Mills: What’s your experience and recommendations? Posted October 12, 2021
Reply to: Josh’s Farm Update: July 2021 Posted July 5, 2021
Reply to: What do you think about a modular bug out bag? Posted June 10, 2021
Reply to: Thorn bushes for fencing Posted May 1, 2021
Reply to: Learn about scissors and why they are important prepping tools Posted April 21, 2021
Reply to: Preppers and climate change Posted April 12, 2021
Reply to: The prepping items that we regret buying and why Posted March 21, 2021

Cold steel ‘Bushman’ knife. I had just started prepping, and I thought how versatile it was that the knife had a hollow handle and could be made into a spear. Previously, I’d only used cooking knives. As I gradually learned a bit more about ‘woodsy’ skills, and practiced a little (I’m still not very good), I found that the Bushman knife was wildly impractical; too heavy, weighted weirdly, hard to store (I made a sheath, it kept cutting it’s way out of it because of the curve). Now I keep a couple of Mora knives around instead; they have rubberized grip and don’t slide out of your hands, the shape of the handle keeps your hand from sliding up over the blade, they are light and well-balanced, easy to sharpen, and come with a great, lightweight, durable, well-fitted plastic sheath.  The other one that comes to mind was also a knife. I had read how great the British hacking knife (used in construction) was because it has a soft spine and can be safety used to baton, wood, also hefty enough to serve as a sort of a hatchet. Well, I practiced with it, removing invasive vines and brush, and I almost cut my thumb off! Admittedly, I was chopping too close to my other hand, but with a chopper that small, I had to do so in order to get any force. After that scare, walking home blood dripping from the gash in my thumbnail, I later tested the other thing it was ‘great’ at and found that the spine was so soft it deformed if you used it to baton wood. I recycled that POS and bought a few folding saws until I found one that fit my hands nicely (Bahco Laplander). Not totally satisfied with that one, but even if you’re exhausted and getting sloppy, it’s hard to hurt yourself more than a minor cut. And, with a 7″ blade, if you’re patient enough and have the grip strength, you can cut though 6.5″ branches!

Reply to: Preppers and climate change Posted February 25, 2021
Reply to: Preppers and climate change Posted February 25, 2021

For some reason, it’s very difficult to find newer information on American per-capita carbon footprint than circa 2010. That being said, I think the (unfortunately stale) data backs me up: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/cooler-smarter-geek-out-data https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/when-it-comes-carbon-footprints-location-and-lifestyle-matter If you take a look at the Union of Concerned Scientists article, of the 28% chunk of per-capita emissions they call ‘transportation’, it’s 92% car, 8% plane. If you add up driving and home energy use, you’re already at almost 60% of total per-capita emissions. Drastically reduce both of those things and you’ve cut your personal emissions by about half. On the other hand, even if you stopped flying entirely, that’s a rounding error, unless you are an extreme outlier who takes hundreds of flights per year for work or something.  Of course, in practice, we should do everything we can to reduce our emissions on all fronts, but start with the low-hanging fruit. I will also admit that I’m getting pretty frustrated with people who buy recycled paper towels and shut the taps off when they brush their teeth, then dust off their hands and say ‘well, I’m doing my part’, while ignoring the elephants in the room.  I agree that in the long run our lifestyles will have to radically change, but if we can at least make a good start now, it may help us change in a more smooth and gradual way rather that the sudden sharp stops we survivalists worry about. 

Reply to: Preppers and climate change Posted February 23, 2021

Your are referring to EROI; Energy Returned on (energy) Invested.  This is an important and often overlooked statistic for any energy source. One of the reasons ethanol fueled cars are not a great solution is that the EROI is close to 1; it takes about as much energy to grow and process the ethanol as you get from burning it.  Back in the bad old days, shallow well light sweet crude oil might have had an EROI of more like 100. Wind and solar are more around 10 or 20 which is often better than the last-ditch low quality resources they are scraping oil out of these days, such as tar sands, deepwater offshore drilling etc.  Considered in terms of payback period for a solar power system, it’s just a couple of years; here’s a reference for that: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/03/solar-power-can-pay-easily/ I don’t know what the energy payback period is on using batteries vs. burning gas. I’m not even sure how to calculate that, honestly. Nonetheless, when you consider the truly massive emissions drop from switching from a gas car to EV, there’s a lot of space there in your energy/carbon budget for batteries; I can’t imagine that the additional energy to add batteries to the car takes very long to pay off. 

Reply to: Preppers and climate change Posted February 23, 2021

For most middle class Americans, the following are the three largest and most impactful ways to reduce your personal carbon footprint: 1. Get solar for your house: This basically knocks out your carbon footprint from personal electricity use. Yes, I know there is an energy cost to solar panels ect, but switching to all-renewable power eliminates the large majority of emissions from your electricity use. Note that it’s often better to set up solar in your yard or build a solar carport etc. vs. putting the panels over your roof where they are harder to access for maintenance and have to be moved when you repair your roof. If you are in one of the very few parts of the country with insufficient insolation for practical solar power (Alaska?) consider small-scale wind or hydro. If you add a battery system to your solar, you also got a fantastic prep for grid outages.  2. Get an electric car: Many people don’t realize how much of their energy budget (and carbon footprint) goes to moving a several thousand pound metal box 30+ miles a day. Even if you plug your car into the grid, it will still be lower emissions than a gas car. Combine it with your solar system and it’s entirely renewably powered. Again, this is a great prep since you can keep driving even if there’s no gas and/or the grid is down. 3. Don’t have kids: Yup, I just grabbed the third rail of environmentalism. There’s no denying the math though; our civilization’s footprint is the per-capita footprint times the number of people. Fewer, people means less impact. So, in addition to reducing the per-capita footprint, we need to think about reducing the number of people. Instead of bringing more kids into an overpopulated world, consider fostering, adopting, or just helping your (harried, overloaded, trying to balance kids and a career) friends and relatives take care of theirs. If you really must have your own biological children, have one instead of two or three.  Other actions like recycling, eating less meat, re-using containers etc. are good, but they have a much smaller impact. For a typical middle-class American, solar plus an electric car can cut your carbon footprint by something like half, without effecting your lifestyle much. Do those other things if you can, but they’re not primary.  If you can’t afford home solar and an electric car, you can get almost as much impact while saving money; live in a small apartment/condo (which will use something like 1/5 as much electricity as a single family home), and use a bike/ebike/electric scooter instead of a car. 

Reply to: My BOB is heavy and not even fully stocked Posted December 20, 2020

So I don’t have much room to talk, as my BOB is almost 40 lbs. But if I were you, I’d cut the paratinder. That’s an object that’s trying to be two different things, and probably isn’t very good at either. You could also probably cut some weight by replacing cotton shirt etc. with lightweight hiking type clothes that are just as warm or warmer. Echoing what others have said, I would also definitely cut out the book and replace the tarp with a  lighter, stronger nylon one. Between all those things, you could probably save 3 or 4 lbs, which would be enough for a warm sleeping bag to put under your tarp at night (do you need a tent if you have a tarp?).  If possible, I highly suggest taking your gear camping to get some real-world testing. Also, take it on a road trip (after Covid is done), since you would likely be bugging out to a hotel or stay with family etc. That may reveal that some gear is much less useful/necessary than you thought.  Two other suggestions: 1. De-prioritize some items in advance. I know if I have to go a long ways on foot with my bag, I will drop about 3 lbs of tools and other gear right off the bat. If you bag is very well organized, it not only makes it easy to find things to use, it makes it easy to find the irrelevant items for this particular situation and get rid of them. 2. A bugout that involves having to hike the AT for 300 miles is pretty unlikely. So don’t beat yourself up too much about how heavy your bag is. 

Reply to: A giant waxed cheese wheel is the apocalypse prep you didn’t know you needed Posted October 22, 2020
Load more...