Is your family prepared for a lengthy period of martial law or civil war without power or water?
During such times, the difference between a helpless family and one that thrives can be a matter of $100 worth of supplies, a bit more if you don't already own a gun.
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Buy a gun and learn how to use it ~ here's a great guide for cheap and reliable guns. If you can't afford a gun then buy a long-handled hammer or an aluminum baseball bat.
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Have an agreed meeting place for your loved ones if the mobile phone network fails.
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You can make a first aid survival kit for about $35 if you buy all of this stuff separately and it will be superior to most $300 kits! Most hardcore preppers and medical students will throw a conniption fit over cutting corners for medical supplies, but having the basics is far better than nothing at all!
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Bottled water lasts forever and large water containers can be filled from river or rainwater. Refer to this official CDC guide for using bleach to treat contaminated water. A standard bottle of bleach will treat up to 4,500 gallons of water or 12 years supply for one person. Add food coloring to treated water so there's never any confusion. LifeStraw Family cost $69 and will purify 4,755 gallons / three years of water needs for a family of five - see this demonstration video. Adults need about a gallon of water per day. These are also possible sources of emergency water.
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Do you have long-life rations? You don't need fancy stuff - just food with long expiry dates that you'll use anyway. These non-perishable foods will last forever if stored correctly... just make sure you have a non-powered can opener! Dehydrated beans and rice make a perfect meal that can be prepared only with water and without heat.
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Do you have plenty of extra blankets to keep warm on cold nights if the power is out? Don't forget about your old camping sleeping bags which are great when it's cold!
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Are you stocked-up on meds that your family depend on, such as diabetic medication or heart pills? If not, get extra - you'll use it so the peace of mind won't cost you a cent. If anyone frowns at you, tell your doctor you lost the last script and tell your chemist you're stocking up for a 3 month vacation in India. Pet stores sell fish and bird antibiotics with precisely the same ingredients as human antibiotics.
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Do you have candles, matches, stove-lighters and a couple of $5 LED hand-crank torches? Tealight candles can provide eight hours of light and costs about 20 cents each. Your family's morale will be boosted if they aren't forced to sit in total darkness. Put tealights in a glass for safety. Solar powered Christmas lights are cheap and effective too - leave 'em outside to charge and bring them in at night. Removing the stems from solar garden lights and keeping them near windows to charge during the day is effective too.
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Do you have a full BBQ gas tank and a cooker to fit it? You can connect a small camping stove to a large 20 Lb propane tank using an adapter cable that'll provide 70 hours of cooking at maximum heat. This video explains how.
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Hand-crank or solar USB rechargers for your iPhone or hand-crank or solar radio will allow you to listen to President Trump's emergency broadcasts if the power is out. Ear-buds will extend the length of the battery charge but not all emergency radios have headphone jacks. WARNING: "cheap" USB chargers likely won't work with the newer smartphones because despite providing 5 volt, newer smartphones require a full ampere of charge which the cheaper USB rechargers don't provide.
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Children need structure. Cheap iPhone speakers and a USB recharger can provide your family with thousands of hours of entertainment. Fill your iPod with award-wining audio-books, short-stories and podcasts your family will enjoy. My sons love science fiction and creepy stories, so I downloaded 10,000 hours of Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM shows, Doctor Who audio-books and classics short stories. Your kids will LOVE an hour of candlelit classic storytelling before bedtime! Board games are also awesome if there's enough light.
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Isolationism isn't ideal because your community will wonder what resources you are hiding. Conceal what you have but remain informed by being socially active. Wait in line for humanitarian supplies as if you are starving and have nothing (worth stealing).
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Finally, don't allow apocalyptic scenarios to dissuade you from sensible prepping. Water and power failure is far more likely than civil war which is more likely than nuclear holocaust. Start small by preparing for two weeks without food, water and power and expand when you're ready. Also remember to buy extra toilet paper, toothbrushes and feminine hygiene products!
These are just some of the bare basics that will dramatically increase your family's ability to survive.
Top 5 reasons you should get a rocket stove now (ecozoom versa review)
100 Days Worth of Food for $100: LASTS 25 YEARS!
Here's a fantastic bush-craft video on how to start a fire using a ferrocerium rod.
Here's a fantastic bush-craft video on how to cook a simple stew.
Propane goes though an adapter hose, not a cable.
I have a little brass adapter that I use to fill the 1lb bottles from 20lb tank. Doesn't fill them all the way, only about half but even 1/2lb lasts weeks on the two burner camp stove and it's a much smaller bomb to keep indoors. I also have a couple adapter hoses but they have check valves so they can't be used for refilling small bottles.
Do you have winter where you live? Got heat?
We heat strictly with wood already and our wood stove has a flat top that we can cook on. I keep two years of firewood on hand. I built an offset smoker last year and we can cook a shitload of food for a little wood.(and a lot of time)
We lived off grid for 5 years while we were looking for land and then clearing the land we finally found for house, barn, garden, electric easement etc so we're already used to living primitive. We've got a solar panel setup but need new batteries for it. The old ones lasted for 10 years. The cabin is still lit mostly with 12vdc LED lighting.
Our land is right up against a National Forest and we have maybe a dozen neighbors within a 5 mile radius and I'm friendly with all of them. We're 100 miles from a major city and are in hill country. No hordes of city zombies will be walking here. My buddy up the road is a prepper. We have a survivalist community a few miles away. I've met one of the guys but I need to get to know him/them better. Might be a place to go if things get real bad. Strength in numbers. We moved here from the very diverse Ctrl FL. Nearest town now is 18 miles away with 13 of it being gravel road. I haven't heard a foreign language or a siren in years. We're surrounded by Springs including one a few hundred feet down the road that is certified drinkable. At one time, they were going to set it up for a bottled water operation. We're also surrounded by Churches.
Store what you eat and eat what you store. (rotate stock)
Every couple dozen years, we get ice storms here. We can easily be stuck here for 2-3 weeks due to 2-6 inches of ice coating everything, including the ground/roads. That's what I prep for as far as short term.
I also am prepping for when/if the dems take over again and implement climate change policy/socialism and basics become unaffordable.(or they simply collapse the USA - their real goal - so they can have their global socialist/communist utopia) Soros believes the Chinese model of communism would be best.
Planting fruit trees, gardening, got laying hens, getting a couple of Dexter cows and Kunekune pigs this coming year. My WWII era parents always had a garden. During WWII, most people had a garden called a Victory Garden.
Our laying hens are considered dual purpose breeds, eggs and meat but they're not a broody type of breed. I want to get some Buff Orpington which are also dual purpose and do tend to go broody.(desire to sit on eggs, hatch them and raise baby birds) I do have an incubator and it wouldn't take much power to run it in the summer.
Dexters are dual/triple purpose animals, meat, milk and for pulling, like little Oxen. They're 1/3 the size of the big commercial meat/dairy breeds.(we're surrounded by beef cattle farms)
Kunekune are a NZ breed of pigs that the Maori people kept as edible pets. They're the only true pasture pig that can live off of grass.
We live in a "tiny house"(cabin) right now but I'll be building a passive solar house in the next few years. Hard to cut firewood when gas is $100/gallon or becomes unobtainium.
I've got a spot picked out for a root cellar and will probably have it all dug by Spring. I'm also building a high tunnel to extend the growing season. The plastic covering is good for 4 years and I'll always keep a spare or two.
I'm also prepping for something else with all this. Retirement. I always worked for small companies that didn't have 401k and I didn't do anything independently towards retirement(dumass) so me and the wife will be living off of Social Security before too long. I'm in my mid 50s and she's mid 40s. My son's autistic to the point that he'll never be able to work a job so I'm trying to make things as self sustainable as possible here for us and eventually him when we're gone. The property is big enough to build another house for my daughter so I'm hoping she'll stick around and watch over him a bit but that will be her decision.
People out here are already pretty self reliant. Half of them built their own houses and most work on their own vehicles. More than half of the people in my five mile radius grow a garden every year. Several hundred cattle in the same area. Everyone hunts. We all know who the useless eaters are. We'll get by.
Cities and suburbs will be rape, pillage and plunder and lots of infectious disease.
<<I have a little brass adapter that I use to fill the 1lb bottles from 20lb tank. Doesn't fill them all the way, only about half but even 1/2lb lasts weeks on the two burner camp stove and it's a much smaller bomb to keep indoors.
I've blown up a bunch of those 1lb bottles in blow logs, and I can tell you that the ones that are full don't blow up very well. The ones that are half full or less are usually the best. If you try to test my theory, make sure you're not close, because those things make a big explosion.