In my opinion, the average Joe should think about increasing their level of preparedness. Up here in Alaska, preparedness is just a way of life. For the gold miner that goes into the wild to seek their small fortune, they must stockpile months of food, fuel and other supplies for the time they will be on their own. The rural folks such as myself must use summer as a time to prepare land, home, and animals for the next 6 months of winter. This means stocking up on supplies like candles, batteries, water, and food that is shelf-stable and easy to make in the event of not having power. In Alaska, prepping is not a four-letter word but rather a healthy way of life that promotes independence and peace of mind. I believe the average Joe and Jane everywhere else would benefit from such lessons.
LIGHTING
Lighting options outside the grid is a big deal for anyone. Not only will it be convenient to have secondary lighting sources in the event of a power outage, but many of these lighting options are just plain sensible for your power bill as well. First thing I recommend to anyone is to invest a little money in some solar lights for the outside of their house. This could be floodlights, spotlights, or just light panel lights attached to the building to help be a night light for taking out the garbage or going to work early in the morning. Solar lighting can even be beneficial inside if you are able to install solar tunnel lighting in certain rooms that you frequent. This will give you 24 hours of light, but just be aware that they will be brightest when the sun is brightest. At night is when the little solar-powered LED light takes over to act like an overhead night light.
Candles are a mainstay of my household for several reasons. First off, they can burn for hours, they can be improvised, and they can help keep the mood calm for people and pets. The other option is having lamps, but those tend to put off a lot of soot, can be a bit bulky, and if knocked over, can be quite dangerous. Getting a bunch of tealight candles is a good start to getting a self-contained short term lighting solution for your house. But feel free to use candles often, even if there is not an outage. Firstly, it will get you used to using them for lighting and you will learn how to efficiently light up a room. Second, candles are tiny little fires which seems to have a soothing and calming effect for us humans.
Lastly, I will mention some battery-powered products. First things first is you should have several, yes several, handheld flashlights throughout the house. You can literally go online and buy a bulk pack of flashlights of any color, size, and power source for between $10 and $30. I always recommend having a flashlight that has enough output to light up a room and to be able to run for hours. Look into getting magnetic lights like ones found at auto shops and home departments for attaching to appliances. These generally have a good output and battery life. The key to battery preservation is to only use light when you need it. That means shine on your path, memorize it, turn off the light, walk that path, and then turn on the light again. Use it only when it is absolutely necessary or you will run out of battery from frivolous lighting.
Lights that plug into an outlet and act as night lights when the grid is on and flashlights when it is down is invaluable. They can be very helpful in certain high traffic areas like living rooms, kitchens, halls, etc. The cool thing is they are quite bright and often can be switched between lamp mode and spotlight mode with a button. This is function at its finest because you have something that helps you out when the power is on and off. This means it is not just a separate investment in the “just in case” category.
Lighting options outside the grid is a big deal for anyone. Not only will it be convenient to have secondary lighting sources in the event of a power outage, but many of these lighting options are just plain sensible for your power bill as well. First thing I recommend to anyone is to invest a little money in some solar lights for the outside of their house. This could be floodlights, spotlights, or just light panel lights attached to the building to help be a night light for taking out the garbage or going to work early in the morning. Solar lighting can even be beneficial inside if you are able to install solar tunnel lighting in certain rooms that you frequent. This will give you 24 hours of light, but just be aware that they will be brightest when the sun is brightest. At night is when the little solar-powered LED light takes over to act like an overhead night light.
Candles are a mainstay of my household for several reasons. First off, they can burn for hours, they can be improvised, and they can help keep the mood calm for people and pets. The other option is having lamps, but those tend to put off a lot of soot, can be a bit bulky, and if knocked over, can be quite dangerous. Getting a bunch of tealight candles is a good start to getting a self-contained short term lighting solution for your house. But feel free to use candles often, even if there is not an outage. Firstly, it will get you used to using them for lighting and you will learn how to efficiently light up a room. Second, candles are tiny little fires which seems to have a soothing and calming effect for us humans.
Lastly, I will mention some battery-powered products. First things first is you should have several, yes several, handheld flashlights throughout the house. You can literally go online and buy a bulk pack of flashlights of any color, size, and power source for between $10 and $30. I always recommend having a flashlight that has enough output to light up a room and to be able to run for hours. Look into getting magnetic lights like ones found at auto shops and home departments for attaching to appliances. These generally have a good output and battery life. The key to battery preservation is to only use light when you need it. That means shine on your path, memorize it, turn off the light, walk that path, and then turn on the light again. Use it only when it is absolutely necessary or you will run out of battery from frivolous lighting.
Lights that plug into an outlet and act as night lights when the grid is on and flashlights when it is down is invaluable. They can be very helpful in certain high traffic areas like living rooms, kitchens, halls, etc. The cool thing is they are quite bright and often can be switched between lamp mode and spotlight mode with a button. This is function at its finest because you have something that helps you out when the power is on and off. This means it is not just a separate investment in the “just in case” category.
SECURITY CONCERNS
Security should be on everyone’s’ mind. Whether you are some high-end military operator or bank manager living in a gated community, security should be on your mind. It is highly recommended that you conduct an assessment of your community and surrounding neighborhoods in order to gauge the threats in the area and prepare a set of deterrents and preventative measures. For example, if you conduct a threat assessment and it says your community is susceptible to have vehicle thefts and vehicle break-ins, perhaps you should put your vehicles in a garage, cover them up, or at the least put them within range of a motion sensing floodlight and camera that has good resolution. I have learned this kind of lesson the hard way that you want to not only have a good resolution on your cameras, but also to not let your valuables stray too far from your house.
If you find that home invasions are rare, I would still recommend having a plan for that as well. Have a plan to barricade in a room with your family until the police arrive or the trespassers make the fatal mistake of forcing their way into the room. I would suggest that you investigate the laws in your area that pertain to the use of firearms or other weapons for self-defense. I have been in apartments and neighborhoods that prohibit the discharge of firearms even in a defense capacity, so do your research so you know what you can and can’t do. The last thing you want is to be the one in court defending yourself for defending yourself with a firearm instead of something else. You won’t be saying to hell with the consequences when you get raked over the coals in civil court and your character is demolished by the media. But hey, your life your rules.
Lastly, when it comes to guns and ammo, I recommend you not go too crazy with purchasing ammo unless you are using it often enough to justify a large purchase. I am all for having ammo on hand to last me for a few months, but having thousands and thousands of rounds when you don’t even shoot once a month is going a bit overboard. Your wallet your rules, but don’t complain when you have all that ammo and no way of filtering/purifying water. You should consider the possibility of your house being targeted by a group of miscreants. If that were to happen, how are you going to bail with food, water and thousands of rounds of ammo? Perhaps you could cache some ammo around, but that seems a bit impractical for most people. I am not against stocking up on ammo and having a few thousand rounds, but I am against these Fudds who shoot only once a year and then buy all the ammo just to try and sell it off after the political climate dies down. That is stuck on stupid material. Also, if you are saving thousands of rounds for when it gets bad, how long do you really think you are going to last in a gunfight when there are no rules? You are either going to die before you get one hundred rounds out, or you are going to be shooting less because you are frequently having to run so you aren’t shot, overrun, or surrounded. Lone wolf dies alone if it doesn’t adopt nomadic habits and avoid conflict.
Security should be on everyone’s’ mind. Whether you are some high-end military operator or bank manager living in a gated community, security should be on your mind. It is highly recommended that you conduct an assessment of your community and surrounding neighborhoods in order to gauge the threats in the area and prepare a set of deterrents and preventative measures. For example, if you conduct a threat assessment and it says your community is susceptible to have vehicle thefts and vehicle break-ins, perhaps you should put your vehicles in a garage, cover them up, or at the least put them within range of a motion sensing floodlight and camera that has good resolution. I have learned this kind of lesson the hard way that you want to not only have a good resolution on your cameras, but also to not let your valuables stray too far from your house.
If you find that home invasions are rare, I would still recommend having a plan for that as well. Have a plan to barricade in a room with your family until the police arrive or the trespassers make the fatal mistake of forcing their way into the room. I would suggest that you investigate the laws in your area that pertain to the use of firearms or other weapons for self-defense. I have been in apartments and neighborhoods that prohibit the discharge of firearms even in a defense capacity, so do your research so you know what you can and can’t do. The last thing you want is to be the one in court defending yourself for defending yourself with a firearm instead of something else. You won’t be saying to hell with the consequences when you get raked over the coals in civil court and your character is demolished by the media. But hey, your life your rules.
Lastly, when it comes to guns and ammo, I recommend you not go too crazy with purchasing ammo unless you are using it often enough to justify a large purchase. I am all for having ammo on hand to last me for a few months, but having thousands and thousands of rounds when you don’t even shoot once a month is going a bit overboard. Your wallet your rules, but don’t complain when you have all that ammo and no way of filtering/purifying water. You should consider the possibility of your house being targeted by a group of miscreants. If that were to happen, how are you going to bail with food, water and thousands of rounds of ammo? Perhaps you could cache some ammo around, but that seems a bit impractical for most people. I am not against stocking up on ammo and having a few thousand rounds, but I am against these Fudds who shoot only once a year and then buy all the ammo just to try and sell it off after the political climate dies down. That is stuck on stupid material. Also, if you are saving thousands of rounds for when it gets bad, how long do you really think you are going to last in a gunfight when there are no rules? You are either going to die before you get one hundred rounds out, or you are going to be shooting less because you are frequently having to run so you aren’t shot, overrun, or surrounded. Lone wolf dies alone if it doesn’t adopt nomadic habits and avoid conflict.
FOOD & WATER STORAGE
As with my ammo rant, I think there is a line between being prepared and being obsessively paranoid. For instance, I have a 25LB bag of flour and a 25LB bag of rice, and a few dozen cans of food in order to hold myself over for a month or two if stores go dry like they did during this COVID obsession. Where I raise an eyebrow is when people buy enough food for years of consumption and then don’t even touch it. Or how about the people that buy pallets of MREs? I have a couple cases myself for road trips and making field reviews on YouTube, but not for being a sole source of sustenance. As I said before, you can do what you want, but there is a line between prepared and paranoid in my experience. I have bought a lot of food in the moment before I got more experience on what works and what doesn’t.
As far as food storage goes, if you want to have an apocalypse stash, I recommend you have things that will last. Store jerky, canned goods, hardtack, etc. Don’t store things that will take a lot to prepare. For hardtack, you just break it into crumbles and boil it in some water and whatever else you can find and you have a nutritious soup. Plus, it is the best way to get your flour to last practically forever.
As far as water is concerned, it can go stale after a time and canned or bottled/bagged water is not as shelf stable as a lot of people may think. I remember people in my unit got sick in Afghanistan from drinking the bottled water that had sat in the sun for a few days. Even if you don’t have the sun beating on your stash or the designated container, it is only a matter of time before the containers start leaching chemicals and start shedding their degrading cells into the water. Even purified water is a living substance to some degree, and therefore you have to preserve the PH and balance it. That is why it is very hard for companies to guarantee water freshness past a year or so. On the other hand, I highly encourage people to collect rainwater for keeping their plants and crops alive during dry spells.
As with my ammo rant, I think there is a line between being prepared and being obsessively paranoid. For instance, I have a 25LB bag of flour and a 25LB bag of rice, and a few dozen cans of food in order to hold myself over for a month or two if stores go dry like they did during this COVID obsession. Where I raise an eyebrow is when people buy enough food for years of consumption and then don’t even touch it. Or how about the people that buy pallets of MREs? I have a couple cases myself for road trips and making field reviews on YouTube, but not for being a sole source of sustenance. As I said before, you can do what you want, but there is a line between prepared and paranoid in my experience. I have bought a lot of food in the moment before I got more experience on what works and what doesn’t.
As far as food storage goes, if you want to have an apocalypse stash, I recommend you have things that will last. Store jerky, canned goods, hardtack, etc. Don’t store things that will take a lot to prepare. For hardtack, you just break it into crumbles and boil it in some water and whatever else you can find and you have a nutritious soup. Plus, it is the best way to get your flour to last practically forever.
As far as water is concerned, it can go stale after a time and canned or bottled/bagged water is not as shelf stable as a lot of people may think. I remember people in my unit got sick in Afghanistan from drinking the bottled water that had sat in the sun for a few days. Even if you don’t have the sun beating on your stash or the designated container, it is only a matter of time before the containers start leaching chemicals and start shedding their degrading cells into the water. Even purified water is a living substance to some degree, and therefore you have to preserve the PH and balance it. That is why it is very hard for companies to guarantee water freshness past a year or so. On the other hand, I highly encourage people to collect rainwater for keeping their plants and crops alive during dry spells.
PREPPING PRIMER
Politicians have served the community as some of the best sellers of guns/ammo, food, and other prepping supplies. There is always some sort of political threat or travesty around the corner that puts a fire under peoples butts to get to the store and buy all the stuff they can charge on a card. This is temporarily great for the local economies, but the impact is harsh. Shipping issues due to a strained supply chain and people who go without because they just simply can’t afford to buy enough to wait out all the craziness. There is a butterfly effect to people not being prepared ahead of time for rough times. Fortunately for us in Alaska, it is fairly common for people to fill their freezers and pantries because you never know if the logistics train will stop on day and leave you hungry for weeks at a time. I would advise everyone reading this to start buying a little more canned food and an extra bag of flour or rice at least monthly. Think about the things that will keep you fed and happy if the power went out for days and you were stuck at home for a couple weeks. It’d be nice not to have to rely on people, so perhaps the recent COVID obsession should serve as a hint for you to start prepping in a sensible manner. It is your best insurance policy, in my opinion.
Politicians have served the community as some of the best sellers of guns/ammo, food, and other prepping supplies. There is always some sort of political threat or travesty around the corner that puts a fire under peoples butts to get to the store and buy all the stuff they can charge on a card. This is temporarily great for the local economies, but the impact is harsh. Shipping issues due to a strained supply chain and people who go without because they just simply can’t afford to buy enough to wait out all the craziness. There is a butterfly effect to people not being prepared ahead of time for rough times. Fortunately for us in Alaska, it is fairly common for people to fill their freezers and pantries because you never know if the logistics train will stop on day and leave you hungry for weeks at a time. I would advise everyone reading this to start buying a little more canned food and an extra bag of flour or rice at least monthly. Think about the things that will keep you fed and happy if the power went out for days and you were stuck at home for a couple weeks. It’d be nice not to have to rely on people, so perhaps the recent COVID obsession should serve as a hint for you to start prepping in a sensible manner. It is your best insurance policy, in my opinion.
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