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Episode-1057- Zero to Prepared – Fast, Simple and Low Cost- Part 2 — 20 Comments

  1. On Dec. 24th my girl friend and I wanted to camp out at our site where we are bulding our home. The idea was to build a fire in the fire pit we brought with us and test out some of our preps. We foraged for wood and I got practice building a fire. After getting the fire going we made some dinner on the propane stove and made smores on the fire pit. We had to retreat into the house at nightfall since cold rainy weather blew in. I used Steve Harris’ idea of using an electric blanket to keep warm and got a crash course in operating my generator. We woke up the next morning to 44F degree weather and had a very quick cup of coffee before packing up everything in the truck and heading back home. We wanted to get everything back before the real rain hit.

    We knew it was going to be cold and rainy. We got some great practice and good experience. I found some holes in my preps and appreciated the backups that I had. It’s good to get to basics and these podcasts help to reinforce that. Now I just need to get over to the 13 skills website! Thanks Jack for the work you do, it encourages me.

  2. If you build a fireplace or have a wood stove add an external air source right to
    the unit. In a pinch, you can open the ash drop and open the ash removal below on the outside. This will allow a path way for air. I guess you could put a spacer under the window and run some flex hose to the base of the fireplace too.

  3. With all the below zero weather this week, the water feeding my well froze in the ground before it even reached the well. I had plenty stored in the house so that wasn’t too much of a problem. I heated water on my wood stove for bathing and washing dishes. One thing I found was handy was a spray bottle with soapy water for quick hand washes and a spray bottle with plain water for rinsing hands or veggies or whatever. And, yes, you can bathe in a black 4 inch deep feed tub.

  4. I was listening today and heard you talking about getting a headlamp or clip-on light for a ball cap and I thought I should share this story, embarrassing as it is to me.

    I live in Alaska. On my moose hunt 2 years ago, I took a trail to the left of a tree my buddy was in with the intent of hiking a 400-500 yard half-circle perimeter around the area he was hunting so I could either get some animals moving his way or get one myself that he may have spooked. This was about 3pm.

    Around 6pm I realized that I was not in familiar looking territory as the type of trees was changing and I could no longer hear anything I was used to (occasional 4 wheelers on the trail, the river), nor could I see the mountains on the other side of the trail to guide me back. Luckily I had cell coverage and he did too. I asked him to listen for my shot and tell me where I was located. I muted the phone, fired a round from my revolver, and then unmuted. He had me at least a half-mile to 3/4 mile to his right, but I had started to his left and never thought I’d get that far away from him. Still, I had my bearings and headed for the trail.

    At 7:00pm I knew I was lost. I was in 12′ trees as thick as could be, but they were all saplings so I couldn’t climb them to see the mountains. I had no cell coverage for a call, but I was able to text. It was then that I noticed my cell battery was almost dead. (It had been searching for signal all day.)

    I quickly texted him and told him to have another guy drive my wheeler back to camp and that I was lost and only had 20 minutes of daylight left. Once I got into the real woods, it was already dark. We agreed that I would shut off my phone, hike towards where I thought the trail was for 30 minutes, and then switch back on and try him. When I switched it back on, I had the 10% warning so I called quickly and got him for about 20 seconds before I lost signal. I gave a shot, he said it sounded farther away now (not good) and then I lost him. When I got data, I stopped and texted. We had time to agree via text that he’d head back down the trail to a spot and fire a shot every 5-10 minutes to give me a bearing. Shortly after, the phone died. That was about 7:45.

    By 8:00pm, I was in the woods, it was pitch black, and getting cold. I had a pack with me, but I was out of water and only had an MRE left. I had a lighter, but it wasn’t much good and I needed it for emergency. I literally could not see where I was stepping or my hand in front of my face. I was walking into tree limbs and stepping in water. I could have walked right into a pond and never seen it.

    I heard him shoot and tried to head towards him, but because I couldn’t see and didn’t have a flashlight, it was impossible to head straight towards him in any way. I decided to make camp for the night and head back out at dawn, partly due to not being able to see, partly due to the fact that we were in an area heavily populated with grizzlies (they bunt moose too) and I was hearing things behind me that I could not see.

    As I dug through my pack to get the lighter, I came upon an LED clip for my cap and my dog training whistle that I left in the pack from weeks before. As I was out of pistol ammo from firing back and forth with him, and down to 4 rounds for the rifle, I didn’t want to fire any more rounds. The whistle would work when I got close, but the light saved my butt.

    I clipped the light on to my cap and headed for his shots. At 11:15pm, I was close enough to hear him revving his chainsaw (he ran out of ammo) so I blasted the whistle and finally saw his ATV lights at 11:20.

    I was somewhat unprepared and really stupid to get lost like that, but that little light saved my butt and allowed me to keep both hands free in a situation where I really needed them available to hold the rifle and move branches.

    Needless to say, I highly recommend them!

    • Thanks for sharing that, it is better to learn from mistakes made by other then to suffer through them yourself.

  5. Jack, What is the name of the product you mentioned which turns “on” when the electricty goes out? Thx!

  6. For anyone who regularly wears a ball cap, Panther Vison offers a great led-lighted cap, among other lighting options. It’s a quality cap that can be washed a few times (remove the batteries), available in several colors and camo. I get mine from Lowes for about $20.

  7. can you burn crap? If for some reason the toilet quits working can i put my crap in a burn barrel with some trash, maybe some scrounged up wood and burn it?

  8. I burn horse manure all the time. I wait until its dry, stack into a fire pit, douse with lighter fluid and light.

    It’s not a good idea to cook dinner over it though.

    So I imagine you could burn your own crap but you’d probably need to dry it out in the sun for a few days. Lay it out on your patio or whatever. Scoop up after a week. Move to fire pit. Light.

    Make another fire (not fueled by crap) for dinner.

  9. @Steve and Johnson-
    What you guys were discussing got me thinking of people in nearly-aboriginal areas, or extremely depressed areas. They regularly use animal dung as fuel for fires. They go out and harvest it on purpose to use for fires. (Dried in the sun.)
    It’s just biomass. It’s not going to smell nice (and it’ll smell worse if it’s not dried completely) but people have been cooking over it for thousands of years.

  10. This is my version of the maxim “One is none, Two is one, and Three is a guarantee.”

    One is none, Two is one, and Three’ll be ideal.

  11. What was the door security system that was mentioned? Also, would that 3M product work well on a sliding glass door?

  12. Thanks Jack. Anyone know about this product? http://ezarmor.com/
    My front door has those decorative side windows. I reinforced the glass with “unbreakable” plastic lexan but think this might help too.

  13. I was listening to this episode last night, wearing a head torch while hosing down our front garden ahead of wildfire activity expected over the next couple of days. Like Jack was saying, I also tend to buy extra torches and things when I see them on special (the head torch I was wearing was $6 or something). One thing to note with those really cheap aluminium LED torches (the type that run on three AAA batteries) is that they usually have pretty poor solder joints in them, and one fall on a firm surface can break the circuit and stop them working.

  14. I just got around listening to this GREAT episode.

    One thing I would want to mention, when you start talking about what happened OVERNIGHT with the gun availability and pricing because of the great Obama gun scare of 2013 happening with the FOOD SUPPLY…

    Do you recall — I want to say it was about 3 years ago +/- there was this big story all over the news about the supply of RICE in the world being dried up and to expect exorbitant prices, and shortages, etc?

    I also recall that all of the grocery stores and the wholesalers were CLEANED OUT INSTANTLY of RICE.

    I know I made sure to pick up a few heavy bags and froze them (gotta kill the pantry moths before storing it long term FYI), while that whole thing was going down, and THAT ended up being a “false alarm” — but right when those stories were all over the news, rice VANISHED.

    As a marketing professional, the easiest way to sell out of stock is to scare people into thinking the supply will be gone forever if they don’t. That’s why you see all those stupid “SEEN ON TV” commercials yelling at you “ACT NOW SUPPLY IS LIMITED — or BE ONE OF THE FIRST 10 CALLERS (when they are giving the deal to EVERYONE who calls regardless).”