Copyright, Legal Notice and Disclaimer

Transcription

PREPPING FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR by Dave Steen – 2015 Edition
Copyright, Legal Notice and Disclaimer:
Please note that much of this publication is based on personal experience and anecdotal
evidence. Although the author and publisher have made every reasonable attempt to
achieve complete accuracy of the content in this Guide, they assume no responsibility for
errors or omissions. Also, you should use this information as you see fit, and at your own
risk. Your particular situation may not be exactly suited to the examples illustrated here;
in fact, it’s likely that they won’t be the same, and you should adjust your use of the
information and recommendations accordingly.
Any trademarks, service marks, product names or named features are assumed to be the
property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied
endorsement if we use one of these terms.
No part of this publication shall be reproduced, transmitted or resold in whole or in part in
any form, without the prior written consent of the author. All trademarks and registered
trademarks appearing in “PREPPING FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR” are the property of
their respective owners. The owner of this eBook is permitted to print one hardcopy of this
eBook for personal use. This rule has been established to prevent unauthorized production
and distribution of this eBook.
Finally, use your head. Nothing in this Guide is intended to replace common sense, legal,
medical or other professional advice, and is meant to inform and entertain the reader. So
have fun with “PREPPING FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR”, and get your stuff done.
Copyright © 2014 Dave Steen, PreppingPlans.com. All rights reserved worldwide.
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Contents
But I Can't Afford to Prep…...................................................................................... 8
Making Prepping Cheap(er) ................................................................................. 10
Budgeting Your Prepping ..................................................................................... 12
Realistic Preparedness Planning ...................................................................... 15
Starting Point - What do You Have ....................................................................... 19
For Bugging In ....................................................................................................... 21
For Bugging Out .................................................................................................. 22
Do a Home Survey .............................................................................................. 22
Repurposing Items for Survival ........................................................................ 23
Repurposing Trash for Survival ........................................................................ 29
Aluminum Can Heater...................................................................................... 30
Repurposed Car Parts........................................................................................ 32
More Repurposed Trash ................................................................................... 34
What "Junk" Does Your Extended Family Have?....................................... 36
Scavenging..................................................................................................................... 40
Best Places to Look ................................................................................................. 44
What Can You Expect to Find? .......................................................................... 47
One Person's Trash is Another Person's Treasure .................................... 49
Don't Forget Garage Sales & Flea Markets .................................................... 52
Prepping at a Discount .............................................................................................. 58
Stockpiling at a Discount ..................................................................................... 60
Selective Stockpiling......................................................................................... 62
Sales ......................................................................................................................... 63
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Coupons .................................................................................................................. 64
Buying in Bulk...................................................................................................... 67
Craig's List & eBay .............................................................................................. 69
Discount Water.......................................................................................................... 71
Getting Good Survival Equipment Cheap ..................................................... 74
Avoid Packaged Deals ...................................................................................... 79
Making Versus Buying ...................................................................................... 81
Grow Your Own Food ............................................................................................ 83
Preserving Your Own Food............................................................................. 86
Survival at a Discount................................................................................................ 90
Building Your Own Survival Retreat on the Cheap .................................... 91
Start with the Land ............................................................................................ 92
Your Survival Shelter ........................................................................................ 94
Modifications to Go with Your Shelter ...................................................... 95
Getting a Bug Out Vehicle at a Discount ....................................................... 96
Making Your Home Defensible - on the Cheap .......................................... 98
Guns & Ammo .................................................................................................... 102
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.
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Introduction
A
nyone who has even looked at prepping quickly comes to the
conclusion that being a prepper is expensive. With most
families living from paycheck to paycheck, the idea of buying
extra food to put away for a rainy day seems like the impossible dream.
This problem has caused many people to turn their backs on prepping,
deciding instead that they would take their chances on the
government taking care of them.
I've got some bad news for those people; the government doesn't have
a very good track record in helping people out in an emergency. Every
time there's a natural disaster, the sitting president makes a speech,
telling the affected people that the government is committing millions
of dollars to their aid. But when it comes down to it, very little of that
money actually gets into the hands of the people who need it. For that
matter, not many supplies bought with that money seems to get into
the needy people's hands either.
When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, wiping out New Orleans, President
Bush promised aid to the people of New Orleans. Yet many of them
were without electricity for weeks and scrounging for food in
dumpsters for a couple of months. It seems like the people who got the
most help were those that decided to abandon New Orleans.
The same thing happened in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy hit the New
Jersey seashore. People's homes were destroyed, they didn't have
electricity and food supplies didn't get where they were needed. Oh, we
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didn't see it on the news, but that's because Obama was in office, and
the liberal media didn't want to make him look bad. But things were
just as bad for the people of New Jersey as they were for those who
survived Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
While they knew Hurricane Sandy was coming for over a week, FEMA
did almost nothing to prepare for it. They didn't even start issuing
requests for bid on emergency supplies until three days after the
storm. Something is just not right about that. They should have had the
supplies sitting in warehouses and loaded on trucks, just waiting for
the word as to where to take those supplies.
In fact FEMA's reputation has become so bad that when tornadoes
destroyed a town in Illinois, in November 2013, they didn't accept
FEMA's help. They actually had the gall to turn it down. Of course, they
had received enough help from churches and other charitable
organizations that by the time FEMA's trucks rolled into town, they
didn't even have any place to put the supplies that the government had
brought. Those government agents said, "We're from the government,
we're here to help." And the people responded, "No thanks, we don't
need your help."
It seems the biggest thing that the government is able to bring to these
situations is a lot of red tape. Government agencies show up at the
scene, set up their offices and invite the already battered people to
receive another battering at the hand of official bureaucrats. That's not
the help they need.
So, if you are one of those people who are expecting the government to
bail you out in the case of a disaster, I wish you luck. Personally, I don't
have that much confidence in them. Not only do I not have confidence
in their ability to help, but that they have my best interests at heart. I
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guess I'd just have to say that I'd be looking for the puppet strings
attached to any help that the federal government offered me.
But I Can't Afford to Prep…
First of all, if you're one of the people who's saying they can't afford to
prep, I think you might be looking at it from the wrong side of the
equation. Maybe your budget says you can't afford to prep, but life is
saying that you can't afford not to. Prepping is like insurance. It's
something that we do, so that when bad things happen, we're ready for
them.
Now, maybe you're one of the people who doesn't have insurance. I
was for years. I literally couldn't afford any sort of life or health
insurance financially. Actually, under Obamacare, I still can't afford
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health insurance. But I've got an ace up my sleeve there. I live close to
Mexico and I can go there for my medical needs and save a bundle.
You see, the reality is that disasters happen. Look at the hurricanes
and tornadoes that ravage our country every year. That's been going on
throughout history. So have wars and the effect of those wars. People
have suffered over and over again, simply because they weren't
prepared.
In the day and age where we live we live constantly under a terrorist
threat. Maybe there isn't much chance of Mexico invading us, but there
is a huge chance of a major terrorist attack, perhaps something like
taking down the power grid or poisoning our water supplies.
Something that would affect large a large percentage of our population,
spread all across the country.
The idea of prepping really isn't new. If we went back to the time of our
great-grandparents, we'd find that they were all preppers. They lived
their lives in preparation for a disaster, knowing that one would
eventually come their way. That's where the Thanksgiving celebration
came from. The Pilgrims were celebrating the fact that they were
prepared to survive the winter, unlike the year before.
I realize that prepping may seem like a financial impossibility, but
that's not true. Preppers aren't rich folks who are using their excess to
build themselves some extra security. Oh, there might be one or two
who qualify as being wealthy, but the average prepper is your middle
class Joe. He struggles to make ends meet every month, just like you
do; but he still finds a few bucks to buy some extra supplies and makes
some equipment so that he's ready to take care of his family when an
emergency comes.
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Preppers are people who learn to do with what they've got. They are
probably some of the most inventive and imaginative people you'll find
today. Since they can't afford everything they'd like to have in order to
be prepared, they make it themselves. That saves them a bundle, right
there.
Making Prepping Cheap(er)
The trick isn't how much money you have to work with, it's what you
do with that money. With proper planning, a bit of imagination and
some elbow grease, you'll find that prepping isn't going to cost you as
much as you thought it would. Shoot, the only money my wife and I
have spent on it came from our tax returns, and we're pretty well set up
for any disaster.
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The truth of the matter is that you can make prepping as cheap or
expensive as you want. There are people who spend a fortune buying
the perfect bug-out vehicle or building themselves a survival retreat in
the woods. There are also those who turn their existing vehicle into an
amazing bug-out vehicle and their bug-out retreat consists of a
homemade yurt. A lot depends upon you and what you're willing to do
to help your family survive.
The same goes for stockpiling supplies. You can go out and spend a
fortune buying prepackaged MREs (meals, ready to eat - military field
rations) or you can build a stockpile of beans and rice and plan on
living off of that. While some fancy survival food may be more exciting
and might even taste better, beans and rice will keep you alive.
Don't try giving me that stuff about you don't know how either. You
know enough to buy this book. That's a good starting point. You know,
we all start out not knowing how. Then, we learn along the way. So
what if you don't know anything about carpentry or gardening or
canning your own food, you can learn. In fact, learning those new skills
will be somewhat of an adventure; you'll enjoy it.
In this book, I'm going to share with you the strategies that I've learned
for making prepping cheaper. Look, I'm not a wealthy guy. Oh, I make
enough to pay the bills, but that's about it. I can't afford to drive new
cars and my wife doesn't buy fancy clothes; but we've got enough.
More than that, we're prepared.
You see, prepping doesn't have to cost a fortune. Nor do you have to do
everything all at once. Most of us start out that way, thinking that we
have to do everything right now. But nobody can do that. Instead, we
need to take it one step at a time, down the road on a new adventure
called prepping. Each step we take will get us closer to the goal, but
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we'll never reach the end of the road. But the more important part is
that each step we take will make it easier on our families when
disaster strikes and it's our city that is on the news reports.
Just stick with me. You'll find that you can afford to be a prepper. Not
only that, but you'll find that it's going to cost you less that you thought
it would. That's what I'm here for, to show you how to do it on much
less money than you thought possible.
So, let's get down to the nitty gritty.
Budgeting Your Prepping
Let's talk money. While I can show you lots of ways to save money on
your prepping, you are going to need to spend something. The question
here is how much are you going to be able to spend. Typically, when
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people talk about budgeting to add something new into their lives, they
start with the cost of the item. We're not going to do that; we're going to
start with determining how much you can spend. Then, we'll look at
how to fit your prepping into that budget.
The reason why we're doing it this way is that the actual cost of
prepping is an open ended question. Every step of the way you're going
to make decisions which will have an effect on the ultimate cost. So, by
starting with how much you can afford to spend, it will help with
determining what you can do and how quickly you can do it.
As you're doing this, keep in mind that there is no perfect answer in
the world of prepping. You shouldn't make your decisions based on
what "everyone" is doing or on what "someone" told you to do. You
have to find what works for you and your family and do that. So, when
someone tells you that you "have to have" a 4 x 4 truck, you can
honestly tell them that's not part of your plan. Their plan may include
that truck, but yours doesn't have to.
So, determine what you think you can reasonably expect to invest into
prepping. What unnecessary expenses can you eliminate? What can
you do without? What could you do differently, that would save you
money that you could use for prepping?
Be realistic about this. Some people set out to make adjustments to
their budgets which are about as realistic as their New Year's
resolutions. You don't want to do that. If you do, you'll simply be
shooting yourself in the foot. It would be better to budget less and be
sure that you can actually do it, than to budget more and not fulfill your
obligations to yourself.
Once you've settled on a prepping budget, make it a habit to take that
money out of your monthly income and set it aside. I've found through
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the years that if I leave money in my general account, which is
supposed to be used for a specific purposes, that money tends to
disappear on miscellaneous expenses. It's better to get that money out
of your general operating fund and put it elsewhere, even if it's into an
envelope. That way, you know it's set aside for prepping.
Don't spend more than that amount on your monthly prepping. If you
have an envelope that's your prepping fund then that's the money you
have available. I don't care how good a sale it is, if you don't have that
money in your prepping fund, don't run out and get it. Instead, make a
reasoned decision as to whether or not you can afford to get it. If not,
that's okay; another sale will come along.
Another source of funds you might consider using for prepping is any
windfalls you receive. My wife and I have taken our income tax returns
for the last few years and set that aside as prepping funds. While there
are other things which we would have liked to spend that money on,
we're committed enough to prepping, that we decided that the money
should be spent there, rather than on those other things.
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Realistic Preparedness
Planning
It's very easy to get pie eyed about all your wonderful plans to get
prepared for any and every disaster and forget that prepping has to fit
into the rest of your life as well. When you look at some of the things
that other people do, it's easy to get jealous of them or convince
yourself that you need the same thing. This is especially true if you
watch Doomsday Prepper or spend much time surfing the web, looking
at the world's best bug out vehicles and survival shelters.
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You have to realize that Doomsday Preppers is television. While the
people on the show may be real people and may actually be doing the
things you see on the show, it's being sensationalized. The producers
of that show are looking for people who will provide good
entertainment. So, they look for the ones who are doing something
crazy, something wild or who just have taken one aspect of prepping to
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the extreme. That show doesn't represent the average prepper in the
least.
I remember seeing a video ad for an armored car made in South Africa
and saying to myself "I want one." However, that armored car was a
cool quarter million dollars. While I think it would be cool to have one, I
realize that there's no way I can afford it.
Okay, that's an obvious no-go, because of
cost. But what about seeing a piece of
property for only $20,000, which would
make a great place to build a bug out
shelter? That might be a whole lot more
tempting; enough so that I might punch
the numbers and try to figure out where
I could fit it into the budget. But that
doesn't mean I should. If I've got to buy
that property on credit, I'm better off
putting my money into paying off my
home, so that it can't be taken away
from me.
I remember hearing about one family
who had ten years of food stockpiled
and was still working on stockpiling
more. While on one hand I can say,
"Hooray for them," on the other I have to
wonder about their plans. Do they really
expect to have to live off of their stockpile for ten years or more? If they
think they'll have to support themselves for that long, why aren't they
developing a homestead which will provide all their food?
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It's easy to get off on one extreme or another. That's what you want to
avoid. Develop a balanced approach to prepping, so that you'll have
enough of everything to get you through. Don't ignore one area for
another and don't think you've got to have the best of something, just
because you saw it.
Having said that, I will say there's something to be said for quality.
When it comes to critical survival gear, you want to make sure that you
buy quality. Your life and the lives of your family are depending upon
that gear, so you want to have things you can count on to work and not
to fail. Make your selections carefully; even if that means that you've
got to take a little more time on them. Better to spend that time, than to
have some critical piece of equipment fail at the wrong moment.
Another important thing to watch out for is the news. You'll hear a new
crisis every month, that's likely to send the world into a tailspin. The
17
natural reaction to those is to say to yourself, "I've got to run to the
store and make my last minute purchases." Watch out for that. That
disaster may not hit and if it does, it may not be anywhere near as bad
as people are predicting.
I remember when I started looking at the possibility of the country
suffering a financial collapse. It
seemed like there was something
in the news about once a month,
which made it look like the
collapse was eminent. But here we
are, and as of yet, we haven't had
that collapse. I won't say it isn't
coming, but so far, we've got our
collective financial heads above
water.
Don't succumb to the fear
mongering that's going on in the news and on the internet. Let it
motivate you to continue prepping, but no more. You don't have to rush
out every time it looks like something is about to go wrong and empty
your bank account, even if it feels like you have to.
Now, there are exceptions to that, just like there are to everything else
in life. If the next Hurricane Katrina or Sandy are heading your way,
you might want to get ready for them. But don't do it if it looks like it's
going to make landfall a state away. If it hits them, you're probably
going to be safe; so don't worry about their problem. Yours is coming
soon enough.
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When Money Becomes Worthless
What Are You Going
To Use To Buy Food?
You may not realize it, but this happens over and over again. Right
here, in the US.
When Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, stores were closed for
weeks, so you couldn’t buy a thing, no matter how much money you
had.
The same goes for Hurricane Sandy, less than 3 years ago. And what
about the floods that hit Colorado in 2013, destroying the entire area in
a split second?
These disasters are proof that there’s no need for a crippling financial
crisis to make American dollars worthless overnight.
In fact, it takes as little as a heavy storm to make money completely
useless for a whole week.
A major crisis could freeze your area for months...
So tell me this:
What happens with your family when the dirt behind your house
becomes more valuable than your lifetime savings?
How will you get food, water, clothes, power or medicines for your
family when you can’t pay with money?
If you suddenly feel the urge to go stockpile some more, I understand.
But hear this:
No Matter How Much You Stockpile
THIS Will Always Put Your Family
Into Danger
You cannot foresee what happens during a disaster. But what I know
from over 30 decades of experience is that you can’t predict
EVERYTHING your family needs.
There is always something you don’t have that you will desperately
need to save someone’s life.
I’ve been in that situation and I got what I wanted using a survival
principle that only a handful of people master nowadays.
It’s called survival bartering. I’m sure you heard about it before and
perhaps you’ve already started to look into it.
But I warn you:
Here’s The #1 Barter Mistake
You Need To Avoid At All Cost
Survival bartering has NOTHING to do with regular bartering.
Haggling for tomatoes or exchanging goods on Craig’s list is miles
away from the jungle of survival bartering.
One tiny mistake can not only ruin your transaction, but you can lose
everything you have: your home, your loved ones and your own life.
I wrote a detailed step-by-step guide on this topic, because most
survivalists (regardless of their experience) don’t realize how crucial it
is to master this skill.
The guide is called Bartering in Times of Survival and it’s designed as a
set of crystal-clear instructions that anyone can follow, even if they’ve
never even exchanged baseball cards when they were kids.
It’s a fail-proof bartering system that will get you through any
transaction safe and sound... and most important, it will get you
ANYTHING you want (no matter how hard you’d think it is to find it)
Here’s what you’ll discover inside:
• The crucial step you need to take NOW to prepare for bartering in
times of crisis (ignore it and it may cost you your entire stockpile!)
• The deadly mistake you need to avoid at all cost when you’re
bartering for a life-saving item (even it may seem like the most
natural thing to do!)
• The secret technique of bartering an item you don’t even need for
something you desperately want (I broke this method into actionable
steps, to make sure you get anything you need right on the spot)
• The three weirdest items you need to start stockpiling NOW (make
sure you hide them well until the very last second, they are
EXTREMELY wanted during disasters)
• 27 trade goods people will look for desperately (and will give you
ANYTHING you want for them, guaranteed!)
• How to store your barter goods far away from starving looters (even
if they come sniffing around your house day-in, day-out!)
• Over 20 skills you can barter all throughout the crisis, even if it lasts
for YEARS (you’ll find at least 7 you had NO idea you can barter so
easily)
• The one item you ALWAYS need to have with you while bartering
(just showing it to your bartering partner can instantly change things
in your favor)
• How to deal with dangerous desperate people when you’ve got the
only thing they need to survive (follow these instructions to the letter
or you may get seriously hurt!)
• The safest place to barter your valuable items and the one place you
need to stay away from at all cost (you wouldn’t think of this one if
your life depended on it)
• PLUS over 30 more techniques and inside tricks that I’ve personally
tested in the aftermath of disasters and crises
GET THIS
SPECIAL
OFFER NOW!
19
Starting Point What do You Have
L
et's start out with a little good news. You're probably more
prepared than you think. Now, I know that goes against
everything you've been hearing, and I'm not trying to say that
you don't need to prep; but hear me out. You probably have a lot of
things in your home, which can serve you well in a crisis situation,
whether we're talking about a natural disaster or a total breakdown of
society.
Maybe the things you have aren't the latest and greatest in survival
technology; but when it comes down to it, we're talking survival, not
style. Nobody awards style points on whether you have the fanciest
tomahawk or the best survival knife. The only points that are awarded
in this game are you live or you die; your family lives or your family
dies. That's a whole lot more important than any imaginary goal of
"looking like" the perfect prepper.
Prepping has two basic components: bugging in and bugging out.
Bugging in consists of staying in place, perhaps locking yourselves in
and surviving in your home. For most cases, this is actually a better
option than bugging out. Bugging out means leaving your home, either
to go to a prepared survival retreat, go to a government run facility (not
a good idea) or live in the wilderness.
Every prepper should be prepared to both bug in and bug out. Basically,
unless you have a survival retreat in the wilderness that you've
20
prepared, you're going to be better off in most circumstances by
staying home and using your home as a survival shelter. However,
there may come a time when your home is no longer safe; in that case,
you need to be ready to bug out and get your family to a safer place.
What types of things would make your home unsafe? Some types of
natural disasters, like a major hurricane, flood or earthquake, an out of
control fire, massive amounts of fighting in the streets or your home
having been attacked, with the expectation that the attackers will be
back in force.
In those types of cases you want to make a decision as to what will
provide you with the greatest chance of survival. For that matter, you
always want to base a stay or go decision on what gives you the
greatest chances of survival. If things aren't looking too good at home,
then by all means put your bug out plan into effect and get out of there
while you still can.
For Bugging In
When it comes to bugging in, your home should provide you with a lot
of the equipment you need to survive. In a worst-case scenario, it's still
going to provide you with shelter; even if all the utilities are out. You'll
need to find ways of getting drinkable water, heating and cooking; but
at least you'll have shelter.
You probably already have an alternate means of cooking in your
home. Almost everyone has a barbecue grille. That's my number one
choice for cooking in a grid down situation. Even if you run out of
propane (assuming you have a propane grille), you can still use that
grille with charcoal or wood. You might even have an alternative
means of heating, as well. Many homes have fireplaces and wood
21
burning stoves in them. Some people buy kerosene heaters for
additional heat in their home. These are the same things you would
use for heating your home when bugging in.
For Bugging Out
When it comes time to think about bugging out, you see lots of writers
(myself included) talking about all sorts of fancy survival equipment.
But if you have any camping gear, you probably have most of what you
need. It might not be as lightweight as some of the gear that survival
experts are recommending, but it will work.
As for a bug out vehicle, you can throw away most of what people say.
You really don't need a 4x4 pickup with tires big enough to drive over
anyone else on the roads. You need something that will get you out of
town. So, start with what you have, rather than what you'd like to have.
Do a Home Survey
Go around your home and make a survey of what you have which can
be useful in a survival situation. Pay special attention to things you
have stashed away in attics, basements, garages and rented storage
spaces. Chances are, you'll find things you forgot you had, which will
be useful as part of your prepping.
You might find some things which you would rather not use, due to
their age or condition, but list them anyway. The fact that you have it
means that you can put off buying a new one, making that a lower
priority. That will allow you to spend your limited budget on other
things; and then, when you have the money, you can replace it.
22
Repurposing Items for
Survival
Many things which aren't normally considered survival gear can easily
be repurposed for survival. Quite literally, this is only limited by your
imagination. Anything from old newspapers to an old fishing rod can
suddenly become survival equipment, if you are thinking along the
lines of survival.
The key to repurposing items is to look at the item not as what it is, but
as what it could be. Another way of doing that is to look at the form,
23
rather than the function. When you look at the item's function, you
limit your thinking to the function that the device is designed for.
However, when you look at its form, you begin to see other possibilities.
Let me give you a simple example that I am currently using. We have a
couple of dogs, so we need to stockpile dog food, just like we stockpile
food for our family. Basically, that means that we have a couple
hundred pounds of dry dog food on hand at all times. Okay, so where
do you keep that, so that the mice and cockroaches don't get into it?
You can't just leave it in the bag, or you'll be feeding pests that you'd
rather not feed.
Our city went to the new large trash cans, which the city provided to
each home. When that happened, I no longer had any use for the
venerable galvanized cans that I had been using. So, I cleaned them up,
knocked out a few dings, and repurposed them to be storage bins for
our dog food. Between the two of them, I can easily store almost 300
pounds of dry dog food, enough to keep our doggies munching for over
a year.
Had I used plastic bins or trash cans, the pests could have eaten
through them to get to the dog food inside. But I have yet to see a
rodent or insect that can eat metal. So, until they come along, I've got a
system I can count on.
Remember, we want to repurpose items to take care of our needs for
both bugging out and bugging in. That may mean that the item has to
be reworked a bit, in order to make it useable for its new purpose.
That's okay, just as long as you can make it work. Like I said before,
nobody is awarding style points.
We were hit by a hail storm a couple of years ago. Since the whole area
was hit, roofing contractors couldn't get to people's homes quick
24
enough, to put in their new roofs. So, they sent a couple of guys out to
temporarily cover the roofs with tarps. By the time they got to fixing
my roof, the tarp was just about in tatters. They threw it away and I
quickly rescued it.
While the tarp was really a mess, there were a few sections of it which
were still in good shape. We cut those sections out and found that they
were big enough to make rain ponchos out of for the grandkids. So now
I've got several extra rain ponchos sitting around, in case my
grandkids end up bugging in with me.
There are countless examples of ways in
which you can repurpose items for
survival purposes. I could literally write a
book just talking about those. But let me
just give you a few examples to help you
get your imagination in gear. From there,
I'll leave it up to you:
“Imagination is
an instrument
of survival”
Rogier van der Heide
 A stroller, especially the kind used for jogging, can be used to
carry five gallon buckets to the local pond or creek for water,
when there's no gas for the car and the water is out. If the wheels
are big enough, it can also be used to carry additional supply bags
in a bug out.
 Old car batteries can be used as part of a battery backup system,
rather than being thrown out. While they might not provide
enough power to run through an inverter to power your
refrigerator, they can still be used to charge cell phones and other
five volt devices.
 Never throw away old pants; instead, cut the legs off of them and
sew the cut ends together. Velcro can be added to the other end
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to make bags for storing emergency equipment. You can also use
them, without the Velcro, as sandbags. Just tie the open end after
filling them.
 Drier lint makes great tinder for fire starting.
 Old newspapers can be easily converted into fireplace logs for
heating your home. Throw away the magazine sections, or keep
them separate to use as tinder. Save leaves as well, and mix them
with the newspapers to increase the amount of firewood you
have.
 Dust masks can be used as medical masks to prevent the spread
of infection. Just spray the outside of the mask with some sort of
disinfectant to kill the germs and keep them from going through.
 Never throw out limbs that you cut off your trees. That's free
firewood, just waiting for you to cut and split it.
 Old bathtubs, washing machine tubs, plastic storage containers
without lids and tires all make great raised bed planters for your
vegetable garden.
 Coffee grounds, eggshells, scraps of leftover fish and urine are all
great fertilizers for your garden. Dilute the urine in water, so that
the mineral content isn't concentrated too high in one area.
 If you are raising chickens, you should never have a problem with
throwing away leftovers. Chickens will eat literally anything and
metabolize it well.
 An old large screen television (the old projector type) will provide
a large Fresnel lens, which can be used to make a solar cooker.
(see the companion report for instructions)
26
 An old satellite antenna, from back when they were five to six
feet in diameter, will make another type of solar cooker.
 The motor can be salvaged off of an old lawnmower to make a
generator.
 Adding some handles and the wheels off an old bicycle that the
kids have outgrown to a plastic bin can make it into a fairly
efficient wheelbarrow or a cart to pull behind you when bugging
out on foot.
 The swimming pool the kids aren't using any more can be set
back up in the backyard as a water storage tank for emergency
water supplies.
 Almost anything that's fairly sturdy can be converted into some
type of weapon, especially melee weapons.
 Those bushes you wanted to get rid of can become a hedge to
protect your property. (I'll tell you more about this later)
 Glass jars can be used to store food, safe from insects and
rodents. You can also make survival candles in them.
 Oil you drain from the car when it's time for an oil change can be
stored and used in an oil heater to heat your garage or your home
in an emergency.
 Glass bottles can be broken and saved. In a crisis situation, the
broken glass can be scattered in your front yard as a booby trap
for anyone who tries to sneak up on your home.
 Any suitcase or duffel bag can be converted into a bug out bag.
Rig up some straps to carry it on your back or some wheels so
that you can drag it behind you.
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 Cheap aluminum cookware and plastic plates, which you might
not want to use in the kitchen are ideal cookware for a bug out
bag; they are lightweight and don't break easily.
 The bags that comforters and blankets come in are ideal for
storing clothing in for bugging out.
 Samples of personal hygiene products which you receive in the
mail are excellent for packing in bug out bags. They are compact
and usually good enough for a few day's use. Same with the ones
you find in hotel bathrooms, if you're the type that collects those.
 Don't throw away old cell phones. Even if you don't have service
any more, you can still use that phone to call 911 in an
emergency.
 Any spare building materials you find can be useful for building
something to help you survive. They can also be helpful for
repairing your home in the aftermath of a disaster.
 Old blankets, towels and rugs can be used as rugs to insulate
your feet from the floor on those cold winter days.
 Old blankets can also be used as curtains, to insulate windows
and help keep the heat inside your home, where you need it.
 Plastic soda bottles can be cut into long strings, which can be
used anywhere you need cordage.
There are a lot of other things you can do with plastic soda
bottles, including making buildings out of them and a small boat,
in case you need to cross a river.
 Any old tube type electronics should be saved as is, as they
would be about the only electronics working after an EMP.
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 Medicine bottles have long been used to store a variety of things.
They are ideal for storing fishing gear, first aid supplies, spices
and fire starters for your bug out bag.
As you can see, there are a lot of different things that you might have
around the house, which can easily become part of your survival preps.
Don't limit yourself in your thinking, see how creative you can be and
what you can find to use.
Repurposing Trash for
Survival
We all throw away countless items every day. While some of that is
truly garbage that we need to get rid of, there's a lot that's not totally
useless. Oh, it might not be useful for its original purpose any more, but
it can still be repurposed for use in a survival situation.
The truth is that we're conditioned by society to throw things away
and replace them. That's fine and dandy if you have lots of money; but
most of us don't really have lots of money. We live paycheck to
29
paycheck and try to fit out prepping in between. So, we need to learn
ways of becoming more frugal with what we have, getting more
mileage out of it.
A few of the ideas we talked about in the last section are actually
repurposing trash, more than they are repurposing useful things. There
aren't too many uses for old newspapers, at least not unless you have
kids who like to do a lot of finger painting. Making fuel for your
fireplace is a great way of repurposing that trash.
Like the repurposing we were talking about in the last section, this
takes imagination. We have to be able to see what there is in that item
which might still be useful. Take aluminum cans for example. If you
are a beer drinker or have a beer drinker in your home, you probably
throw away a dozen or more beer cans per week. Maybe you don't feel
there are enough of them to sell them as scrap metal, but it would be
nice to be able to get some use out of them.
Aluminum Can Heater
Okay, so let's use some of those aluminum cans. How about making a
passive solar heater for your home out of them? This is a simple
project which can help keep your home warmer in a grid down
situation. Aluminum is one of the best heat conductors there is, third
behind copper and silver. So, you can easily make a heat exchanger out
of those beer cans, as a way to help heat your home. Don't try this with
vegetable cans or soup cans, as those aren't aluminum cans, so it won't
work anywhere near as well.
To do this, you need to cut the bottoms and tops of the cans out and
connect them together, making a long aluminum tube. You'll want to
fit it in a south facing window of your home, so make each row of cans
30
just long enough to fit there. There are several ways you can attach the
cans together, but the best is to glue them. Make sure you cut the ends
of cans at the top and bottom of the stack open as well, leaving a tube.
Once you have enough tubes, glue them together, forming a flat bank
of tubes the size of your window. This should be painted black to
increase the amount of sunlight that it absorbs and converts to heat.
Mount the dry heat exchanger in the window, as close to the glass as
possible.
Since the ends of the tubes are open, the heat exchanger will work by
natural convection. Cooler air will enter through the bottom of the
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tubes. As it is heated, it will travel upwards, eventually leaving the tops
of the tubes as warmed air. While it would be nice to have that warm
air come out at the bottom, that's physics; we can't really change it.
Repurposed Car Parts
Things that are getting thrown away because they don't work often
contain a plethora of useful parts. My daughter's car finally gave up the
ghost, after several years of mistreatment and forgotten oil changes. It
had served her well and we were getting ready to take it to the scrap
yard and sell it as scrap metal. To do so, I was required to remove the
battery and the fuel tank.
Car batteries are useful things, I immediately integrated that one into
my battery backup system, even though it wasn't a deep cycle battery. I
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figure even if it does go out from deep cycling, I'm still getting more
use out of it before it does.
I pulled the stereo and speakers out of the car as well. I didn't even
need to repurpose those. They're mounted in my garage, providing me
a source of music while I'm working in my workshop.
The gas tank wasn't quite as easy to repurpose. I mean, what do you do
with a car gas tank? I couldn't take it to the dump, because it still had
gas fumes in it and the shape of a gas tank is specific to a particular
model car. So, instead of getting rid of it, I decided to use it... as a gas
tank. I now have a 20 gallon gas tank sitting on a stand in my shed,
filled with gasoline for use in an emergency.
There are many other useful parts in a car as well. Alternators are
useful for making your own generators and wind turbines (although I
prefer a slower turning motor for that). The side mirrors make good
security mirrors. Pulleys can be used for wind generators and other
devices. Even tires can be used for a number of things. Before getting
rid of anything like a car, it's a good idea to look through it closely, in
order to see what there is that you can use. A few minutes with a
wrench could save you money down the road.
So, what types of things might you want to strip off that car? Well, how
about:
 Battery
 Alternator - can be used for power generation
 Starter - if you take the bendix and solenoid off, the motor alone
is useful
 Mirrors - good for security
 Pulleys - for making various devices
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 Tires - for use on other vehicles, as planters in your garden and
even as fuel for the fire
 Wire - can be used as cordage or for other projects where you
need wire
 Electrical connectors - automotive connectors are some of the
best around, due to their need for being waterproof
 Hardware - a lot of nuts and bolts are used which have the
washers included, those are useful, as you can't find them
anywhere
 Radio/tape deck
 Anything you've added on to the vehicle; you can always put it
on another one
Besides all this, make sure you clean out the trunk and glove box
thoroughly. Many people buy accessories, tools and other useful
devices and then leave them in the car when they sell or scrap it, just
because they didn't check things closely.
More Repurposed Trash
I don't know how much I've salvaged out of the trash through the
years. Many things which can no longer be used for their original
purpose are excellent for other purposes.
Furniture can provide some useful parts, if you're throwing it away. We
had an old mattress that we had to replace. It was one of those with air
bladders inside it, and the bladders sprung a leak. With the way the
leak was, we couldn't repair it and use it in the bed, but we could repair
the leak in one of the air bladders for other things. We scavenged
everything we could out of that bed.
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 The repairable bladder is now an air mattress for sleeping on the
floor. If we have to bug in and have extra people with us or just
visitors in the house, we now have one more bed.
 With a little bit of modification the air pump is now our air pump
for all air mattresses in the house; we have enough to make it if
we have another family bugging in with us.
 A piece of the unrepairable bladder has now become a waterproof
cover for my bug out bag.
 One sheet of foam rubber has now become our ground pad for
sleeping on in a bug out.
 Another piece of foam became the upholstery on a chaise lounge
that I built (okay, that's not part of our prepping).
Even simple things from the trash can be used for new purposes. Some
heavy-duty plastic bags that merchandise was packaged in have
become waterproof bags for storing clothing and food in my bug out
bag. I'm a firm believer in having lots of bags in my bug out bag, as they
can be used to store or carry other things.
Recently we were faced with the risk of Ebola. Like many other
preppers, I bought some bio-hazard suits, masks, goggles and shoe
covers. I wasn't happy with the shoe covers though, as I saw that if one
walked outside in them, they'd wear through rather quickly.
My wife was cleaning out some things and threw away several pairs of
sandals. That gave me an opportunity to make my shoe covers better. I
cut up the sandals, to get the soles from them. Then I glued them to the
shoe covers, increasing their durability by a couple of orders of
magnitude.
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What "Junk" Does Your
Extended Family Have, that
You Can Repurpose?
If you're anything like me, your extended family probably thinks you're
a little bit crazy for your interest in prepping and survival. In my case,
they're used to me being that crazy, as I've been this way since I was a
teen. In your case, it might be something newer. Either way, their
attitude can work to your benefit, if you're willing to put up with their
ridicule.
36
You shouldn't limit your repurposing of items to just what you have
available at your home; take advantage of your family as well. Make an
opportunity to visit their basement or attic and see what they might
have sitting around, which you can add to your survival gear. Many
times they'll have things they will be glad to get rid of, but aren't
interested enough in getting rid of them to put forth the effort
necessary to get them out to the curb for the trash man.
This is especially true of large, difficult to move items. An old satellite
antenna may still be decorating their backyard, simply because they're
too lazy to unbolt it and haul it to the dump. The same can be said for
piles of branches, extra building material from their last home
improvement project or the old lawnmower they replaced three years
ago.
Offering to get rid of those items for them can make you look like a
good guy, while giving you free access to things that you can use. You
want to be careful about this though and make sure that what you're
getting is worth your effort. Once you've done this a time or two, they
may start thinking of you as their personal trash hauling service. So
don't be afraid to say "no," you can always claim that you're just too
busy to take care of it.
Another useful thing you can offer to do, which will work to your
benefit, is to prune their trees or cut down a dead tree. Most people
have to pay to have that done, so your offer will sound to them like free
money. But what it really is, is free firewood for you.
I know people who heat their homes by cutting down trees. Not only do
they cut down their family members' trees, but anyone else who has a
tree that needs to come down. They'll come and cut it down, hauling
off the trunk and branches, and bundling the smaller branches for the
37
trash truck to take away. Every year they cut down enough trees to
heat their home through the next winter and it doesn't cost them a
thing, except a few Saturdays that they were going to waste anyway.
Speaking of your family, don't forget to ask them to quit throwing out
their newspapers or anything else that could be of use to you. If you're
collecting newspapers to make firewood out of, then the more the
merrier. Likewise for a number of other things you may be saving from
your own trash. If it's useable from your trash, it'll probably be useable
from theirs as well.
38
39
Scavenging
S
o far, all we've looked at is what we can repurpose from what we
have and what our extended family has. But there's a whole
wide world out there of things which can be used to help you
prepare for and survive a disaster.
You need to start keeping your eyes open for whatever you might find;
still using that mentality of looking at how you can use it, rather than
what it's intended to be. There are items all over which can be
repurposed for your survival needs. At times, those items may just
about slap you in the face, they're so obvious. Other times, you'll have
to look a little farther.
I was dropping my daughter off at school one day and drove by a dozen
milk crates, neatly stacked by the side of an empty road. They weren't
in front of someone's house, or I might have thought they belonged to
that family. They were sitting in front of a large empty lot. After
dropping my daughter off I went back there and took another look. As
near as I could tell, those milk crates didn't have an owner and they
hadn't just fallen off the back of a truck. So now they're in my garage,
being used to store prepping supplies.
I need to talk about something here. When we get into the area of
scavenging, we can easily get into some shaky moral ground. Now, I
don't know where you stand morally and I'm not going to try and tell
40
you what to do. I just want you to think about what you're going to do
and what you're willing to do, before the time comes.
Personally, I won't take something that belongs to someone else. In the
case of those milk crates, it didn't look like they had an owner. I don't
even think they were waiting there to be picked up, as that was the
only time I saw them there in over a year of driving by the same
location.
When the brown stuff hits the rotary air movement device, I might end
up changing my tune on that. Survival is a whole other ballgame. But I
hope that I will be able to stick by my guns and do what I think is the
right thing. Taking something that someone else needs in order to
survive doesn't seem to me like the right thing, even if it mean that I
suffer for not having it.
On the other hand, when survival time comes, anything that is
abandoned will be fair game, as far as I can see. So, while I won't take
something that could make a difference in someone else's survival,
that won't stop me from taking something that I need to survive, when
it seems that there is nobody else that claims it.
I'm not talking about looting here. I have no plans for stealing a big
screen television, just because I can. I'm talking about the necessities
for survival. If I find a big screen TV, I imagine I'll just leave it where I
found it. But if I find some food or fuel that doesn't seem to have an
owner, I'm sure I'll be able to put it to use.
Now that that's out of the way, scavenging means to search for and
collect anything usable from discarded waste. So, when we start
scavenging, what we're really doing is to take other people's trash and
turn it to good use. That can be things that they've formally put in the
41
garbage or things that they have decided they no longer have any need
for.
You don't have to wait until things are actually in the garbage to
scavenge. Often, you can find things that people or companies no
longer need and ask them if you can have them. I wouldn't take them
without asking, as that could be construed as stealing. But if they say
yes, then it's time to take it home.
I used to work for a medical equipment company. They received some
chemicals in plastic-lined cardboard barrels. The lining was something
like a big bag, except it was much thicker than any bag you've ever
seen. The chemicals in the bag were a saline solution with minerals
added. Those barrels were regularly discarded, through a recycling
company that came to pick them up. I asked and was granted
permission to take eight of them home. After cleaning them out
thoroughly, I've filled them with clean water (and a touch of chlorine
bleach) as part of my clean water stockpile.
You have to be careful with something like that, because most
chemical compounds can be very dangerous. In this case, I knew what
was in the barrels and knew that I could clean them out effectively
with just water. Otherwise, I wouldn't be using them to store my water
in.
Another similar example are the plastic buckets which most preppers
use for storing dry foods. Those food grade buckets are about five
bucks a piece. While that's not a lot, buying enough of them to
stockpile your food can add up. However, the same sorts of food grade
buckets are used for shipping industrial foods. Most restaurant and
bakeries throw them away regularly.
42
So, all you have to do is make friends with the manager of some local
restaurant or bakery and ask if they will save those buckets for you.
While you will have to clean them up before using them, that will be
cheaper than going out and buying them.
How about firewood? I know I keep coming back to that, but it's an
important prepping supply to stockpile. We've already talked about
cutting up branches from pruning your trees and making fireplace logs
out of newspaper, but there are lots of other places you can get
firewood from. Literally anywhere that has scrap wood is a great target,
such as:
 Storms - If you are gathering the tree branches that come off your
own trees, what about other people's trees. It seem like after any
serious storm, there are a bunch of tree limbs lying on the sides
of the road. Grab your truck and trailer and go pick them up. You
probably won't even have to ask anyone and will be seen as a
good, community minded citizen.
 Old pallets - There are always lots of places getting rid of old
pallets, especially broken ones. Resellers want the good ones, but
they can't be bothered with the others. Check around your area,
looking for someplace that has a stack of old pallets. Chances are
you can talk them out of them, just for hauling them off.
 Sawmills - Today's sawmills convert trees into standard sizes of
dimensional lumber. That means they create a lot of scrap as
well. Some sawmills convert the scrap into wood chips for use in
making particleboard, but many smaller ones don't have that
capability. For them, getting rid of the scraps is a cost they don't
want to bear. Offer to haul some off and they'll probably jump at
43
it. While you're at it, grab a few bags of sawdust to use for tinder
as well.
 Construction sites - Many construction projects require cutting
down existing trees. Once again, getting rid of those trees is a
cost for the construction company. Offering to haul off those
trees could make you their best friend.
Don't forget neighbors who are cutting down or pruning their trees
either. That's another good source of wood, and you don't even have to
go very far to get it.
Best Places to Look
You'll have to do some exploring to find the best places to look for
scavenging in your area. This varies quite a bit, depending on the part
44
of the country you're in, the relative affluence of the area and the type
of industry you have available. Some types of industry naturally
produce a lot of scrap which is useful for other purposes.
Nevertheless, there are certain types of places which seem to be
overall better than others. They are either consistently better because
of the affluence of the people throwing things away there or because of
the amount of scrap they produce.
The fine art of dumpster diving is your friend as a scavenger. You can
find all types of things in dumpsters; some of which is quite valuable
and others that can be used to make equipment for prepping. You want
to be careful when dumpster diving though, as there is also a fairly
good chance of finding things that can hurt you. Broken glass is not a
fun thing to encounter in a dumpster.
The absolute best dumpsters to dive in are college dorm dumpsters,
when school lets out and the students are heading home for the
summer. Many will have bought things through the year to make their
dorm stay more comfortable. Unfortunately for them, those things may
not fit into their car for the trip home. Since they are college students,
most of them don't think far enough in advance to plan on doing
something else with their stuff, so they throw it away.
You can find microwave ovens, lamps, bookshelves and other pieces of
furniture in those dumpsters. My favorite is finding area rugs, a very
common item that never goes home with them. Those are great for
extra insulation on the floor when the power is out.
Store dumpsters can be good as well. Stores throw away all kinds of
things, especially things that are broken. Some stores will throw away
returned merchandise that doesn't work, rather than bothering to send
it back. If you're good at repairing things, you can get a lot that way.
45
Broken display cases are great to find, as they have large pieces of
glass. That glass can be used for making solar panels.
Following the store idea, if a store goes out of business or moves, make
sure that you check out their dumpster. Many businesses will throw
things away that are perfectly good, simply because they have no
intention of putting the effort into moving them. The same goes for
just about any sort of business, from an insurance office to a factory.
Moving time is a great time to get rid of things and many use it that
way.
Of course, families that are moving do the same thing. They start by
having a garage sale and then move on to throwing away whatever
they didn't sell. Many of those things are useful or can be converted
into something useful.
Construction sites can be a treasure trove of materials. However, you
want to be careful about that and check with the contractor before
taking anything. They might have a scrap pile on site, because they
have a need for that scrap. So by taking it, you would be stealing from
them. I'd say there's about a 50/50 chance they won't need that scrap
or at least not need some of it, giving you a good supply of useful
materials to haul off.
Food isn't something that you want to find in a dumpster or that is
being disposed of. However, some restaurants regularly throw away
their leftovers, rather than saving them for the next day. Getting in
good with a restaurant may give you the opportunity to garner some
food for canning. Just be sure to can it right away, before it loses any
more of its freshness.
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What Can You Expect to
Find?
Other than firewood, you're going to be able to find more equipment
than supplies. Or, maybe I should say you're going to find things that
you can repurpose and make into survival equipment. Many things
which are no longer useful to businesses and individuals can be
extremely useful to the prepper who is also a do-it-yourselfer.
Don't expect to find food this way, although you might make an
occasional find. Even so, be very careful with any food you find, so that
you don't end up sick. Cooking foods to an internal temperature of
47
170oF or over will do a good job of killing any pathogens, making those
foods safe to eat.
Two categories of things have stood out to me in my own scavenging
efforts. The first one is containers. Restaurants, bakeries and industrial
facilities throw away an amazing number of containers. While they
may not all be useful to your prepping efforts, some will. The trick is to
find the ones you can use and leave the rest.
The other category of things I've had very good luck scavenging is
materials for making my various pieces of survival equipment. I have
two different solar ovens, one made from a parabolic satellite antenna
and the other from a Fresnel lens, both of which I'll be showing you
how to make in the companion book on How to Make Your Own
Survival Equipment. The materials for both of those were absolutely
free; things I picked up while scavenging.
If you have the capability of doing any metalworking, either by welding
or by blacksmithing, you can find an almost endless supply of scrap
metal to make things out of. Much of it will be thin metal sheeting, but
that is still useful. Home appliances, like washers and refrigerators
provide quite a bit of sheet metal when you tear them apart.
Scavenging the coil from the back of a refrigerator is great as well.
With one, you can make a solar hot water system.
Building materials can be available as well, although that can be a bit
spotty. I found a home where they were replacing all the windows and
made a deal to haul the old aluminum ones off. That saved me a bundle
when I was building my own solar panels.
I'll be showing you how to make solar panels in the bonus book, "How
to Make Your Own Survival Equipment." This is a great way of saving
48
money on solar, as you can build them for about half of what it costs to
buy them.
One Man's Trash Is Another
Man's Treasure
The old saying of "one man's trash is another man's treasure" is
probably no more true anywhere, than it is in prepping. Many things
that are ordinarily considered trash are highly useful to us preppers;
either in their original form or repurposed into something useful in a
crisis situation.
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We've already talked about repurposing some things that could be
considered trash, such as using old jars, glass bottles and even plastic
soda bottles. However, one of my favorites is newspapers. Most
preppers intend to heat their home and cook with wood in the event of
a disaster. However, there is no reason to spend money buying regular
firewood, when you can do the same thing with fireplace logs made of
newspaper.
It doesn't even matter if you don't get the newspaper delivered to your
home. There are probably several people in your block who regularly
receive the newspaper, if not daily, then at least on Sundays. You can
ask them to stack up their newspapers for you and give one of your
kids the job of collecting them from all the neighbors once a week.
Turned into fireplace logs, you can make those newspapers go a long
way.
Strangely enough, people don't mind if you steal their trash. They do
mind however, if you make a mess digging through their trash and
don't clean it up. So, if you're going to go dumpster diving around the
neighborhood, make sure that you do so neatly.
I knew a guy in upstate New York who made his living that way. Every
morning, before the roosters could even think about crowing or the
trash men could fire up their trucks, he was out and about in his pickup
truck. He knew the trash pickup schedule and so knew which areas to
hit every day. From there, he narrowed it down to the larger, richer
houses. He'd check out everyone's garbage before the trash men
arrived, scavenging anything he thought would be useful.
For his definition, useful meant anything he could fix up and repair for
sale in his booth at the flea market. He was able to find enough things
that people were throwing away, that his booth, which was fairly large,
50
was always well stocked. At times, he'd find two of the same item
broken in different trash cans and put them together to make one good
one. At other times, he'd find things with minor problems he could fix.
At still other times, he found perfectly good items which were thrown
away simply because their previous owners didn't want them
anymore.
America is a land of consumers. We probably throw away more than
any other country in the world. With that in mind, it's no wonder that
he was able to find enough to sell in the garbage, that he was able to
make a living. We can take advantage of that same bad habit to find
things which will be useful to our prepping efforts.
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Some of the items I mentioned in the last chapter for repurposing are
clearly items to look for in the trash. I mentioned two different solar
cookers which could be made from things you can find in the trash.
Maybe you don't have those items in your trash, but someone will.
Another useful thing to look for in the trash is building materials. If
someone in your town is having some remodeling work done, there's a
good chance that there will be lots of useful building materials in their
51
trash. I'm not talking about things to remodel your home, but materials
you can use to make other useful things. Windows are a prime
example of this; pretty much any window gives you a good starting
point for making solar panels. Besides the solar cells themselves, the
glass is the most expensive part of making those.
You don't have to limit yourself to residential garbage either. As I
mentioned a few pages back, commercial dumpsters can be a great
place to look for useful things. Just be careful while doing it and don't
try going by yourself. I had a friend who went alone once and ended up
stuck inside a large dumpster for three hours before someone from the
store came out. He sure was embarrassed when they helped him out of
their trash dumpster.
Don't Forget Garage Sales
& Flea Markets
Most of the places we've talked about up to this point are places where
you can get things for free. Oh, there might be a few cases where you
have to pay a little, but we're trying to keep the cost down. Even so, at
some point you're going to have to move away from free and into
spending something. The biggest reason for doing the free routine, as
far as I'm concerned, is to save as much of your budget as possible for
the things you can't get free.
As we move into the realm of paying something, let's start out with
places that aren't going to cost us much. Specifically, I'm thinking
about garage sales and flea markets. Now, there are always people who
are trying to make a buck off their garage sale and there are always
52
garage sales that just have pure junk. But there are also lots of good
garage sales where the items are still usable and selling for a really
cheap price.
Of course, if you expect to get anything good at a garage sale, you'd
better be early. There are professional garage salers out there who get
to the sales at the crack of dawn, while the people are still setting up.
You'll have to beat them if you want the good stuff.
Of the two, garage sales are usually a better deal than flea markets.
That's mostly because many of the people at the flea market treat their
booth as a business. You can always tell these people by their wellstocked booths. Most of them are regulars, who have put some work
into making their booth into a business location, albeit rather rustic.
They might have more, but they tend to charge more also. The best
53
deals at the flea market are the people out in the fringes, who are just
there selling for the day.
There are a number of things I regularly look for at garage sales:
 Candles - Candles are great for emergency lighting, but they can
be a bit expensive. I only buy candles at garage sales, where I
typically pay a quarter for a fairly large candle (3" x 5"). I take
those and melt them down, pouring them into spaghetti sauce
jars for use as emergency candle. To get more light out of them, I
put multiple wicks in each candle.
 Canning jars - There's no reason to go out and pay full price for
canning jars. If you go to enough garage sales, you can find lots of
them. People try canning for a while and then give up on it.
Eventually, they sell the jars for a pittance.
 Camping equipment - This is the place to find a lot of your bug
out equipment. I've bought equipment that wasn't really what I
wanted, and then passed it on to others at a profit when I found
what I really wanted.
This can give you a great opportunity to practice your bartering
skills. When the financial collapse comes, you can expect that
people will be using bartering to get what they need; so bartering
is actually a great survival skill to know. If you're properly
prepared going into a crisis, you can do extremely well with
bartering. I'm putting another book together on this, which will
teach you how to prepare for bartering and how to barter with the
desperate people you'll find in that situation.
54
 Storage - Although hard to find, every once in a while there will
be someone selling some metal shelving units for storage. That's
better than buying new ones.
 Clothes - A lot of people shop garage sales for clothing anyway.
This is especially good for people who need rugged clothes for
survival, but don't wear that type of clothes on a daily basis. You
can save money and still have what you need. You can also use
this to buy clothes in larger sizes for your kids, so that you will
have clothes for them to grow into during a crisis.
 Bicycles - In a grid down situation I think that bicycles will
become the favored means of transportation. A couple of used
bikes might make things a whole lot easier if you don't already
have them.
 Stroller/Bike trailer - I talked about this earlier, as something to
repurpose for bugging out on foot. Maybe you don't have one, but
you can find it at a garage sale; that's just about as good.
 Building materials - Windows, studs, plywood, doors and other
building materials can be found at garage sales at times. While
not as good as free, this can be another source for materials for
building your own survival equipment.
I'm writing a companion book for this one, which you should
have received when you purchased this one. That book will show
you how to make your own survival equipment for less than you
can buy it. There are several projects I've done, which have saved
me a lot of money and I'll be passing on to you how you can save
money on those as well.
55
 Lawnmowers - Old lawnmowers seem to move from garage sale
to garage sale. While the ones at garage sales usually don't work
all that good, the engines can be rebuilt. That provides you with
an engine for a generator or some other piece of equipment
where you need power, such as powering a pump for your well.
The most common problem with these lawn mowers is the
carburetor. If you can repair the carburetor, you've got a good
engine.
 Tools - While you don't find many tools at garage sales, they are
one of the best sources for axes, shovels, wheelbarrows and other
large tools.
 Generators - There are still people who bought a generator for
Y2K and have it sitting in their garage, with no plans for using it.
If you find one, you can pick it up cheap.
As you can see, there's plenty of good prepping equipment floating
around at garage sales, if you keep your eyes open. If you or your
spouse like going to garage sales anyway, then all you have to do is add
these items to your list.
A flea market can be an even better source, from an efficiency point of
view. Often, the people on the fringes, who aren't regular sellers, will
still have good stocks of the same types of items that you can find at
garage sales. I know a contractor who goes to the flea market about
once a month to get rid of leftover materials from jobs. Several times,
he has brought full house sets of windows that he replaced, as well as
carpets and doors.
56
The Hidden Weak Spot In Your House
That Turns It Into
An Instant Target
Have you ever seen a looter attack happen right before your eyes?
Or an angry mob smashing a car into pieces, screaming like animals?
An armed burglar taking over a home in broad daylight?
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Everything I had previously read and prepared for from survival books
and trainings… it all crashed down like a house of cards when I saw the
real deal.
During hurricane Sandy, I had the chance to discover a reality that
turned my stomach upside down.
I said “chance”, yes, because after all…
My family got out of the post-disaster meltdown safe and sound,
healthy and protected...
And finally... I got to see as clear as daylight all the cracks in my home
security plan that I would have never ever figured out otherwise.
Here’s Why Your Home
Security System Needs
Your Immediate Attention
If you think your home and your family are protected right now...
... Then you’re making the worst mistake a survivalist can make (a
mistake that I admit making myself, but thank God, I was able to fix it
on time).
Taking a false sense of security for reality... when you’re actually
leaving your home and your family completely vulnerable to looters
and burglars.
You may not see the cracks in your system, but they certainly will.
And trust me... you don’t want to find out how flawed your protection is
during a disaster or crisis.
When desperate looters are sniffing around your house, you need to be
100% sure there is NO WAY they get into your home.
And I’m going to help you with that right now.
After I discovered the most hidden weak spots that most survivalists
(even experienced ones) leave completely uncovered, I created the
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It contains all my observations from the attacks I’ve witnessed PLUS
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Here are just some of the exclusive secrets you’ll find inside:
 The 14 weakest spots and 5 blind areas in your home that
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 How to build a layered defense system that would make even
the best guarded fortress in history look like a playground
(there is one insane layer I came up with that guarantees you
24/7 security)
 The insane technique that makes your front door so
unbreakable, it would take a looter years to figure it out
 The one place in your home so concealed that not even the
most experienced thief can find! Once you discover it, you can
hide anything you want: guns, valuables, money…
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it’s the surefire method to keep your family away from danger
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57
Prepping
at a Discount
T
here's free and then there's cheap. We've been kind of working
our way up the ladder from cheap to slightly more expensive.
Since you can't get everything free, or even at garage sale
prices, the idea is to get as much as you can at those prices, so that you
can leave your money for buying the things you have to buy in a store.
Even then, when buying things in a store, you obviously want to get the
best deal you possibly can. Fortunately, you have one important thing,
which can help you tremendously in saving money. That's patience.
Buying prepping supplies doesn't have the same urgency that buying
the week's groceries does. So, you can wait until you find the best
possible deal, saving yourself money.
The real trick is figuring out how to get those good deals. I don't care if
you're talking about buying food or buying gasoline, you want to get
the best prices you can, so that your money can go farther. Like I just
said, patience helps with that; patience to wait for a good price,
patience to compare prices and patience to search out sources for
items which are cheap enough to be worth getting.
In the first chapter we talked about budgeting for prepping. At that
time, I recommended setting aside your prepping funds in an envelope,
58
separate from your normal operating funds. The idea is that you don't
want to spend that money on other things. There's another idea behind
that though too; that's to save the money until you find a deal that's
worth spending your prepping money on, and then buying a bunch of
it. By saving that money, you'll have enough to buy a bunch of it.
While there are some things in our prepping stockpile which we
bought at full retail price, I'd have to say that they are things that never
go on sale. We are very careful about this. We don't buy things at full
retail, until we've exhausted all other options.
Some things, like spices, never go on sale. Those are the types of things
that we buy at full retail. But other things, like canned chicken or beans
can go on sale at any time. When they do, we buy as much as we think
we can reasonably use in our prepping stockpile.
This means that our prepping stockpile is a little out of balance, but
that's okay. When we calculate how many months of food we have, we
base it on how many months we have of everything. While there might
be 180 cans of chicken in the storage room, there are only 24 cans of
spaghetti sauce. So, when we are figuring out how many months of
food we have, we base it on the spaghetti sauce. The extra chicken is
just that, extra. When we buy more spaghetti sauce, it will be counted
in the inventory.
Actually, we do count it in inventory, but that's just to keep track of it.
What we don't count it in is the calculations for how many months’
worth of food we have. To us, how many months means how many
months of a varied, complete diet. We'll still eat that extra chicken in
an emergency, but probably not until we've gone through our X number
of months of full diet.
59
Stockpiling at a Discount
Since the biggest part of survival stockpiling is food, we're going to
concentrate on food. However, many of these same practices work just
the same for most other prepping supplies as they do for food. A sale is
a sale, whether you're talking about canned corn or band aids.
Food is the one thing that you're going to have trouble finding either
free or at garage sales. That's not to say that those opportunities don't
present themselves once in a while, but they are rather rare. So, you're
going to have to do the best you can, more or less within the limits of
normal shopping. Even so, there are a lot of strategies which you can
use to get the most bang for your buck.
60
One idea you have to get firmly established in your mind is that this is
survival stockpiling and not everyday stockpiling. There's a distinct
difference between the two, especially in the area of food. When we
moved out of our motorhome and into the house that we bought, we
started stockpiling (it wasn't possible in the motorhome). This was
something new to my wife, so we had a few growing pains. We were
used to normally having a month or more of food in the house, so she
just expanded on the idea. Unfortunately, that didn't work.
You see, many of the things we normally buy aren't going to last longterm, no matter what you do to them. If that's the case, there's no sense
buying them. Well, my wife bought some things which weren't going to
last and sure enough they didn't. We ended up throwing them away.
Many people say, "Stockpile what your family will eat." I regret to
inform you, that's not going to work. Most of what your family will eat
can't stay edible through long-term storage. What you're going to have
to do is stockpile what you need to survive and your family is just
going to have to get used to eating it. I assure you, once they get
hungry enough, they'll eat it.
When you're in survival mode, you have to concern yourself about
nutrition, more than taste. The foods you stock have to provide your
family with the necessary nutrition to go on. While that might not taste
as good, it will keep them alive. You can improve the flavor by
stockpiling seasonings and using them liberally to altar the foods that
you have stockpiled. In fact, I'd say that seasonings are a very
important part of your survival food stockpile.
61
Selective Stockpiling
If you look at your normal grocery bill, you're going to find that there
are certain things which are very expensive, such as meats and
breakfast cereals. Unless you have a larger budget than I do, you're
going to have to be selective about how much of these items you
stockpile for emergencies. While it would be nice to have enough meat
on hand to feed your family steaks every night for a year, you just
aren't going to be able to.
If all you're looking at is cost, you can build a prepping food stockpile
very cheaply. I've seen people who have built a year's worth of food
stockpile for under $300. Their diet was going to be mostly rice and
beans, but they would be eating. It might not be the best diet nutrition
wise, but they would be eating. They'd have enough calories to keep
them alive and working, although they probably would have lost some
weight in the process.
That's a bit extreme in my opinion. I prefer a little more variety in my
diet. I merely mention it to you to show you what is possible.
When I say selective stockpiling, what I'm referring to is cutting some
things out of your diet, in order to reduce the total cost of your food
purchases. More than anything, this means cutting out meats and
prepared foods or at least cutting down on them. In reality, neither of
those are going to last anyway, so there's no reason to worry about
stockpiling them.
Meats are important for the protein which we get from them. However,
beans are a good source of protein as well, along with some sorts of
grains. You can get by without meat if you have to, you really can. I
hate saying that, because I'm a meat lover, but it's true.
62
Focus on foods which will provide a lot of nutrition for the money
spent. You're going to need a lot of energy for the physical labor you'll
be doing, so buy foods that are high in calories. You're also going to
have to prepare your own food, rather than depending on anything
being prepared for you. Baked goods, which are always an important
source of energy, are going to have to come out of your own dutch
oven.
You can always add in other foods when you get your stockpile built
up. Dried meats and jerky may not be as satisfying as a fresh steak, but
they will be wonderful additions to your survival diet. Unfortunately,
these are expensive additions. However, by building up your main
stockpile first and then adding them in later, you can build your
stockpile more rapidly.
Sales
I mentioned sales earlier. I'm a big fan of sales, especially sales where I
can buy things for more than 25% off. Stores will have these sales from
time to time, just to get people in. We check the newspaper every week
for them, looking for things that we need to add to our prepping
stockpile. If the sale is good enough, we might buy several cases of the
item.
For example, Target stores has a sale every few months on their
canned spaghetti sauce for $1.00. We happen to like that sauce and at
that price, it's hard to pass up. So, every time they put it on sale, we go
and buy another four cases of it (that's 96 jars, to save you the math).
We got a great deal on toilet paper once. For some reason, there was
this great sale on a particular brand of toilet paper at Wal-Mart. There
was no limit, so we stocked up. We now have a year and a half worth of
63
toilet paper stashed away in our prepping supplies. They even brought
cases out of the back room for us, so that we could buy full cases.
Some stores put limits on their really good sale items. From their
viewpoint, the idea is to get customers into the store. I honor that and
don't buy more than the quantity they say... at least not at one time.
However, we have been known to go to the store and have every family
member go through a different checkout with the limit of the item.
Then we leave the store and go to another one of the same chain to
repeat the purchase. While that doesn't exactly meet the spirit of what
they are trying to do, it does meet their rules.
We once bought a dozen 25 pound turkeys that way. One of the
supermarkets where we lived had a Thanksgiving sale on turkey for
less than half the normal price. So, we took advantage of that sale and
bought some turkeys. Some we ate and some we converted to jerky.
A lot of preppers don't exercise their patience and wait for these sales.
They just go out and buy it at full retail; as if they have to buy it right
then or they'll never get it. I can understand the feeling of urgency that
can come at times; but I have learned to control it. If you have a
month's worth of food in the house, there really isn't any reason to
allow yourself to feel pressured while you're trying to buy the rest of a
year's worth.
Coupons
Coupons are the preppers friend. You can get some amazing deals by
starting to clip coupons and use them. We've been couponers for years
and it has served us well.
Many manufacturers use coupons as part of their marketing strategy
for introducing a new item or boosting the sales on an old one which
64
seems to have lost some of its luster. Either way, these coupons can
add up to a considerable pile of money.
The best places to find coupons are in the Sunday paper, mailers that
come to your home and in ladies magazines. Most people only look to
see if there are coupons for the brands they use, but that really doesn't
help you much. What you want to do is look for the coupons that are
for anything you can use. Forget about brand; is the item useful to you
in a survival situation?
You can also find a lot of coupons online. Many manufacturers post
their coupons on their website, so that you can print them. In addition,
there are couponing clubs, organizations and even businesses that
pass them around. The businesses do it for the manufacturers, being
paid to distribute their coupons. Sign up for these and they'll send you
all the coupons that come their way. There are even couponing lists on
65
Facebook, which talk about where you can find more coupons to
download.
Sometimes people will have coupons that they bring to the grocery
store and then decide not to use. Those often end up in the trash, but
some people post them on the community bulletin board. If your
supermarket has one of those, make a point of checking it on your way
in, to find any useful coupons that someone left behind.
Remember, when we're in survival mode, it's not about what we like;
it's about what we need. So what if the sanitary napkins you got the
coupon for aren't your favorite brand. At least they're sanitary napkins.
I'm sure that just about any woman would agree that having the wrong
brand is better than not having anything at all.
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The same goes for just about anything that companies put out coupons
for. There are a lot of coupons for personal hygiene products out there,
as well as for food. Actually, the ones for personal hygiene items are
often better than the ones for food, offering a bigger discount.
66
Always make a final price check when buying with coupons. Let's say
you're buying a bottle of shampoo. Shampoo prices are all over the
map. So, you might have a $2.00 off coupon for some new brand of
shampoo, but the bottle is $6.95. If your normal shampoo is only $2.95,
that coupon isn't saving you any money. Better to wait for a sale on
your favorite.
If you're going to get into couponing seriously, you need to have some
way of organizing your coupons. There are several clever little gadgets
for this available in the local dollar store or big box store. Just make
sure you buy one that's big enough for your needs. A small one will
become overfilled quickly.
Buying in Bulk
Another great savings device that I've used as regularly as I can is to
buy in bulk. Many products are cheaper when you buy them in large
quantities, than when you buy them in smaller ones. You can prove
this on any trip to the grocery store. Just look at the various sizes of
one product that are offered for sale. You will see that the cost per
ounce on the larger packages is less than the cost per ounce on the
smaller ones.
Now, carry that thought to the next level. What happens if you want to
buy very large packages, say 50 pound packages of the item? The price
becomes considerably cheaper. You see, part of the cost of any product
is the cost of packaging. That doesn't just mean the physical package
itself, but also the labor or machine time it takes to load the product
into the package and seal it. So, the more elegant and complicated the
packaging, the more you are paying for it.
67
Bulk products are usually sold in very simple packages. It actually
takes less labor or machine time to load the product into those simple
packages, because the measurement is easier to do. The package itself
is also cheaper, because it isn't printed in full color. All that contributes
to making the product cheaper.
Recently, I decided we need to add 50 pounds of salt to our prepping
stockpile. We had enough salt for seasoning our food, but I wanted salt
that I could use for preserving meats during a time of crisis. So I told
my wife to pick up some large bags of salt, not having any idea of what
they would cost. It turns out, they cost $4 each, for 25 pound bags.
Considering that a normal one pound package of salt costs about a
dollar, that was quite a bargain.
The trick here is finding places that sell products in bulk. Costco and
Sam's Club are two of the best known for this. While they don't sell
everything in bulk, they do sell a number of products that way. For
those which really aren't in bulk, they're at
least in large packages.
Another excellent source of bulk foods is to
look at restaurant food supply companies,
like Sysco. Sysco isn't by any means the only
restaurant supply company around, but they
are the biggest. In order to buy from these
companies you either have to find their retail
outlet or make a big enough order that they
are willing to add you to their delivery route. But if you're buying in
bulk, you'll probably have a big enough order to make it worth their
while.
68
There may be other bulk sources in your area. When we were living in
Denver a number of years ago, there was a food auction in the city.
They bought partially damaged shipments that couldn't be delivered
and sold them off. We would go there once in a while to see what they
were auctioning off. Typically, we could buy food products from them
for about a quarter of the normal retail price. Of course, we had to buy
them by the case to do that, but that's what we wanted to do anyway.
When I was growing up, my
parents signed up for a food
delivery service that allowed
us to buy in bulk. They would
deliver food to us once every
six months, based upon our orders. Other than perishables, that food
would last us the six months. It was considerably cheaper than retail,
because we were buying by case lots.
Let me give you a quick example of this. An 18 oz. box of Cheerios
cereal normally sells for about $3.69 and comes in a case of 12 boxes.
But instead of paying $44.28 for 12 boxes, we'd buy that same case for
$33.21. That gave us a net savings of 25%.
Craig's List & eBay
When looking for a good deal, don't limit your thinking. There are a
number of online sources, which can provide you with a wealth of
opportunities to find food and other supplies at a discount.
Ever since Craig's List first came out, it has been an excellent source of
a wide variety of things. Craig's List has become the classified ads of
today, with the added benefit that it's free, so people list a lot more than
they would in the newspaper.
69
You can find useful equipment, tools,
building materials and even food on
Craig's List. The structure of it is broad
enough to cover just about anything. I just
saw a free donkey on there the other day. Unfortunately, I don't have
any place to keep a donkey.
The trick to working with Craig's List is to check it regularly for the
things you are looking for. Many things move quickly, so you want to
make sure that you spot them as soon as possible. You also want to
make sure that you jump on things you find as quickly as possible,
before someone else can grab them. I've lost a number of opportunities
by waiting till the next day to call.
The one thing you have to be careful about with Craig's List is that any
food you buy isn't tainted. You want to check a sample when you get it
home, just to make sure that nothing has been done to it and it hasn't
spoiled.
Likewise, eBay is an excellent source for just about anything you can
think of. There are a good mix of companies selling on eBay, as well as
individuals. Some of those companies are in China, which means that
they offer some incredibly good prices.
The thing you have to watch out for on eBay is that you know what you
are buying. Some items, especially those from China, aren't quite as
good as they appear. Remember, if it looks too good to be true, it
probably is. But with that precaution in mind, you can find lots of
survival equipment and supplies at incredibly good prices.
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Discount Water
Before we get into food, let me talk about water for a minute. Many
people stockpile water in gallons or bottles that they buy at the grocery
store. That's the expensive way to go about it. If you're paying a buck a
gallon for water, or even more for bottles, you're going to spend a lot of
money on just water; money you need for other things.
There are several ways in which you can get water for less than a buck.
To start with, you could just use tap water. If your tap water is good
enough for you to drink now, then it should be good enough for you to
drink in a survival situation. The only problem might be ensuring that
nothing grows in it. But you can take care of that problem the same
way the city does, by adding chlorine bleach to the water.
Eight drops of normal chlorine bleach, like the type used to whiten
clothes, per gallon, will purify any water from microscopic pathogens.
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You need pure bleach, not the scented type and not the "color safe'
kind. So, if you're stockpiling tap water for use in a survival situation,
check your water every six months or so, if it tastes like something is
growing in it, add eight drops of bleach per gallon of water.
This is easier if your water is stored in large containers, rather than in
small ones. Fifty-five gallon drums work out nicely, if you can
scavenge them. Since 20 drops equals one cubic centimeter, a 55 gallon
drum would need 22cc of bleach.
Another good, free container for your water storage is plastic milk jugs.
Most families with kids go through a fair amount of milk. Well then,
start saving those jugs and cleaning them out. There's no sense in
paying for a gallon of water in a plastic jug, when you can get the jug
for free and put your own water in it.
Maybe you don't want to save tap water because the tap water in your
area doesn't taste good. I can understand that. Where I live, the water
has so many minerals in it, that it tastes like you have to chew on it.
Nobody drinks the tap water; we all drink purified water instead.
To get our purified water, we take five gallon jugs to the corner selfservice water purifying center and fill them with purified water.
According to the sign on the place, the water goes through something
like 11 steps of purification, including reverse osmosis and UV
radiation. Nothing can be living in that water, nor can there be many
free-floating minerals in it.
That water costs 25 cents per gallon, a whole lot cheaper than the
gallons in the grocery store. All we have to do is take our five gallon
jugs back home and dump the water into the 55 gallon drums, filling
them up.
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Another possibility for
cheap water is to filter your
own. I have a Sawyer water
filter as part of my prepping
equipment. It was a bit
pricey, but I was glad to pay
the price, considering that it's a
hollow fiber filter. That means that
it's back-flushable, so it will never clog
up or wear out. The manufacturer
guarantees it for 1,000,000 gallons; more water
than I expect to need.
So, with that filter, I filter my own water for storage. That
gives me high quality water at a very minimal price. Even though it's
not rated for taking the minerals out of the water, it takes a lot of them
out, making the tap water drinkable
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73
Getting Good Survival
Equipment Cheap
It doesn't take long shopping for survival equipment to realize how
expensive it can be. Backpacking equipment that is used for bug out
bags, solar panels, water filters and all the rest all come with a nice
74
high price tag. If you start adding up the cost, it seems like there will be
no way that you will ever be able to afford it all.
Hold on a minute. There are lots of other preppers out there who aren't
in any better financial situation than you are who have managed to
afford it. If they can do it, you can too. You just need to find the ways
that they managed to save money.
The first thing you've got to realize is that there's a lot of hype
associated with the prepping movement. While the actual movement
itself is made up of people who take what they're doing seriously, there
are those on the fringes who are only there to make a buck off the
situation. While many provide excellent products and services to the
prepping and survival community, not everything they offer is at the
best price or even what you really need.
You've got to learn to filter out the hype and grab hold of the truth. Let
me give you one key secret to doing that. Think about it logically. Most
of the survival techniques that serious survivalists use have lasted as
long as they have, because they are logical solutions to a problem. In
fact, most of survival can really be summed up as doing what is logical
to protect your life.
There are lots of great things out there which will help you and there
are things that don't really do all that much for you. Take the
tomahawk for example. Tomahawks are pretty popular for some
reason. Maybe it has something to do with thinking back to the
American Indian, for whom the tomahawk was an essential weapon.
Since they were such excellent survivalists, it would seem that their
example is one worth emulating.
Okay, so what does a tomahawk do for you? If you're in a fight, you can
use it as either a thrown weapon or as a melee weapon. If you're setting
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up camp, you can use it to chop firewood, as well as cut poles and
branches to make a shelter. End of list. That's it. There's nothing else
you can do with one.
I like tomahawks. I think they're really cool. But you know something?
If I let things get to the point where the only weapon I have left to
defend myself with is a tomahawk, I've clearly done something wrong.
My life is about at the point where it doesn't matter if I win or lose that
fight; I'm going to be dead within days. That's the stark reality of the
situation.
As for the other use of a tomahawk, using it as a hatchet, why should I
pay two or three times as much for a tomahawk, in order to use it as a
hatchet, than I would pay for a hatchet? Just because some survival
guru likes to show off how well he can throw his? I'll bet I can shoot my
pistol better than he can throw his tomahawk; and it's much easier to
reload my pistol.
You see? This is what I mean about hype. I don't have a tomahawk,
because I can't justify in my mind where having one will truly help me
stay alive. Instead, I have a combination hatchet, hammer and pry bar
that I paid $3.97 for on an introductory offer for. I just checked and it's
now priced at $9.88. That tool not only can cut my wood (and yes, I've
used it for that), it can also drive in my tent stakes and help me break
into things if I have to do any scavenging. It's not pretty, it's not trendy,
but it's functional.
Oh, you don't just have to worry about the hype you're hearing from
others, you also need to watch out for the hype that's in your own
mind. That's actually the more dangerous hype, because you already
believe it. I've even fallen for that one.
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When President Obama started talking about gun control after the
Sandy Hook shooting, I got to thinking. What would happen to my
survival plans if they really did manage to take our guns away? So, I
started looking at other weapons options. I've always liked the
crossbow, so I decided to buy a crossbow. I found one on sale and
bought it.
Now that I have a crossbow, I've realized that buying it was a mistake.
Don't take me wrong, the crossbow is a wonderful weapon. Other than
the weight, I'd much rather use it to hunt for wild game than a
compound bow. Not only does it have greater range and more velocity,
but it's got a scope on it, making it very easy to shoot it accurately. But,
a crossbow is basically a one-shot weapon. Reloading takes so long
that there's no way you can get a second shot, either at a fleeing deer
or an approaching attacker.
Like I said, I fell for my own hype.
Anything that is the "latest and greatest" in any market is likely to be
more hype than substance. Prepping and survival is no different. While
some new ideas are absolutely excellent, you really need to carefully
evaluate them in the light of your survival plans, in order to determine
whether they will help you survive or just cost you money.
I spend a lot of time and money buying products to test out. It goes
with the territory for me, since I advise so many other people of what
they should do as part of their prepping. This gives me a lot of
opportunity to see what's out there; and while I'll have to say that there
are some incredible new products out there, there are also many which
I'm convinced I can do without.
I've noticed that many times the old products are cheaper than the
new ones. That's a normal occurrence in business, as the product has
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to pay for the research and development costs that went into it. The
result is that when there is a choice between buying the "latest and
greatest" and buying the old, dull, drab one, the new one tends to cost
more.
Let me give you an example. My bug out bag
contains two sets of three-piece stainless steel
backpacking cutlery. There's nothing fancy
about it, but it's functional. Recently,
someone sent me a brand new,
just released "survival spork" to
look at. This beautifully designed
and crafted tool not only gave
me something to eat with, but had a built-in bottle opener, three
different sized wrenches and a carabiner. It was impressive to behold.
Okay, so I looked at that and thought about my old-fashioned stainless
steel set. This combined a fork and a spoon together, eliminating one
utensil. I really didn't need the knife in that other set, as I always carry
a knife with me. Then I got thinking about the other "extras" that the
new spork offered me. First, there's the bottle opener. Hmm. I don't
carry bottles into the wilderness with me, so what would I ever use that
for. Then there are the wrenches. I don't carry anything that needs a
wrench either. So, what would I use those for?
You see, while that fancy new device was fancy and new, it really
didn't do much for me. Oh, and it was twice the price of my old set. So,
where's the profit in buying it? It's not like I'm going to be out there
trying to impress other survivalists with my equipment.
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Avoid Packaged Deals
Everyone likes getting a deal. That's what we've been talking about. But
not all deals are what they seem. You've got to be careful, because
some people will offer you something that purports to be a deal, but
really isn't. This is just as true with prepping equipment and supplies
as it is with anything else.
Take prepackaged survival food for example; you buy a five gallon
bucket and it's got all your meals for three days, plug fire starters and
other survival gear. Sounds like a good deal; at least until you start
checking prices. Then you start seeing how good that deal really is.
Now don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that all prepackaged survival
foods are a rip-off. There are a number of companies which make
excellent packaged survival food. But it's definitely not the cheapest
route you can take. In almost every case, it will end up costing you
considerably more than if you buy normal food and package it for
survival yourself.
Another prime example is packaged bug out bags. I've seen some really
nice packaged bug out bags out there. But there are two basic problems
with most of them. One is that you're paying someone else to put it
together for you. The other is that many manufacturers cut corners
and give you low quality equipment. Those that don't lower quality
charge a pretty penny for their products.
You can almost always save money by putting your own package
together. Besides, their package may not have everything you need, as
well as having things that you don't need. So, you end up paying for
survival equipment that you aren't going to use and buying additional
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equipment that you feel you need. That's kind of like paying for it
twice.
Just like the game show "Let's Make a Deal" the key is knowing what
stuff is worth. If you're not sure, then get online and look for the
individual items, adding them up. That will tell you if you're getting a
good deal or not.
Whatever you do, don't buy a package deal that has things in it that you
aren't going to use. That's just wasted money. Or, let me put it a
different way. Let's say there's a package deal with four survival tools,
three of which you really want. Then look at the price of the package as
if those three tools were all that were in it; if it's a good deal for the
three, then go ahead and get it.
One great way of saving money
is to buy survival gear that serves
multiple purposes. This can also save
you space and weight in your bug out bag.
Remember the hatchet I mentioned before? In one tool,
I've got a hatchet, hammer and pry bar. That saves me
from having to buy those other tools. I saw another tool that might be
just a bit better. It's an emergency tool kit, which contains a camp
shovel, hatchet, hammer, knife and saw all in one. The same handle is
used, and the heads are changed. That one tool would save a lot of
money over buying separate tools, as well as saving weight and space.
Remember, any package is somebody else's idea of what you need.
That may sound great when you start out and aren't really sure of what
you need, but once you learn a bit, it may not seem so good. Use
patience again and wait to buy until you're sure of what you need.
Ultimately, that will save you money.
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Making Versus Buying
There are a lot of things which can be considered survival equipment
which are quite expensive. Take solar panels, for example. If you want
to go "off-grid" or want to be ready with your own off-grid power in
case of a grid down situation, you're probably going to install at least
some solar panels. That can be pretty expensive. While those
commercial solar panels may work great, they probably won't work
any better than ones you make yourself. So, you can save a lot of
money, making your own solar panels.
I make a lot of my own equipment. Granted, there are a lot of things I
can't make; but when I can, I like to do so. I've got a pretty good
workshop set up in my garage and I use it to make my own survival
equipment, when it is practical to do so.
Of course, not everything is cheaper when you make it yourself. I made
myself an AR-15 once, and probably spent more money on it than I
would have if I bought it in the gun store. Granted, I got just what I
wanted, but still, I spent a fair chunk of change. Had I gone for a
commercially manufactured AR-15 I may not have gotten exactly the
combination of features that I wanted, but I would have had a good AR15 and saved some money.
There are some things you just can't buy and pretty much have to
make them yourself. I wanted a pull-along cart to use as a trailer for
carrying a second and third bag, while bugging out. It had to be light
enough to pull along behind me while walking, but strong enough to
hold about 100 pounds. It also had to be balanced on one wheel. Finally,
I wanted the handles to attach to my belt for pulling it, but extend
beyond the belt to hold onto and balance it. Obviously, this wasn't
something that I could find in the local flea market. So, I made one.
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Making things like that not only saves you money, but can provide you
with better equipment than you would have otherwise. Besides, every
skill you learn for making your own survival equipment will probably
help you survive if there is any sort of a general collapse of society. The
learning experience has value too.
Some things you may need are labor-intensive, such as a well. If you
get a contractor to give you a price for drilling a well, you'll probably
find that it costs several thousand dollars. Ouch! I drilled my own,
bringing the whole project cost down to about $1,000. That's not cheap,
but it's a lot cheaper than my other options.
If you don't know how to make something, it's a great time to learn
how. My garage is my workshop. I have tools for carpentry, mechanics,
electronic repair, welding, some light machining, plumbing and
electrical. How did I learn how to use all that? I experimented, that's
how. When I needed something done, I grabbed a book or looked it up
on the internet. Then, instead of paying someone else to do it, I bought
the tools and did it myself.
Tools are expensive, but in the long run, you save money doing it
yourself. Then you've got the tools and knowhow to do it the next time.
The second time around you'll be able to do it better and faster.
Skills, like home repair skills are valuable skills to have in the case of a
disaster. Not only can you use them for yourself and your family, but
you can use them to make money. In the case of a financial collapse,
the people who are going to have the most options for providing for
their families are those with the most diverse skill set. You can always
turn those skills into a business and support your family.
82
Grow Your Own Food
Since stockpiling food is one of the biggest prepping areas there are;
therefore, it's an important area to save money on. We've talked a lot
about ways to save money on buying food, but we really haven't talked
about growing your own. If you want to save money on food, you really
need to consider this.
I really don't want to try to tell you how to grow your own food in this
book, but I do want to give you some ideas to think about. While there
is some initial investment in growing your own food, you can save
enough over time to make it worthwhile. Not only that, but if there is a
crisis, you'll be ready to produce some of your own food, making your
prepping stockpile last longer.
83
Actually, getting a vegetable garden stared isn't as easy as most people
think. It takes a good year to get your soil in good shape. So don't really
expect to harvest a lot that first year. But the work you put into it that
first year will make it so that the second year you can start to see some
good harvests.
Where I live, the weather is very hot, so we've had a bit of a challenge
getting our garden going. Nevertheless, we now have 60 feet of raised
beds planted with a wide variety of vegetables, as well as some herbs
to use as seasonings. We are using some of what we harvest and
canning the rest.
There really isn't space in this book to share all the secrets I've learned
about getting a vegetable garden going; so I've decided to write a
separate short book about them, which you should have received as a
bonus book, along with this one. That book won't tell you everything
there ever was to know about gardening, but it will tell you the hard
lessons I've learned in how to make it successful.
Raised beds provide several advantages, such as keeping the garden
separate from the rest of the backyard and raising it up to make it
easier to reach without bending over as far. Our soil wasn't all that
good, so by building a raised bed, I was able to bring in some good soil.
Actually, I brought in some good soil and some compost as well and
mixed the two together. That gave me some excellent soil to work
with.
It seems you can pack your garden space tighter with raised beds, so
you can actually get more plants into the same amount of space. We
put in some trellises as well, so that we could pick cucumbers and
other fruits up off the ground and attach them to the trellis. That saves
us space to plant more.
84
Another thing you might want to consider, although it is fairly
expensive, is putting in soaker hoses or drippers for watering. I
invested in an automatic timer, so that I don't even have to worry
about watering my garden; it gets watered in the middle of the night,
when I'm asleep.
Home grown vegetables are fresher than the ones you get in the
grocery store. That makes them better when they're canned than what
you can buy. So, between saving money on the cost of the produce and
getting better quality canned goods to boot, you end up winning both
coming and going.
Don't limit your thinking to just vegetables. Depending on where you
live in the country, you can probably grow some sorts of fruit as well.
Canned fruits are just as good as canned vegetables and can add to
your stockpile. Fruits can be canned as well, which might work out to
be cheaper and easier to store than canned fruits are.
Once you get your vegetable garden going, it's time to start thinking
about some protein. There are several options you can think about
here, but the most common one is chicken. Chickens are rather easy to
grow, grow quickly, will eat literally anything and one of the most
common forms of animal protein on the planet. You can cook chicken
in a variety of different ways, as well as canning it for survival use.
Canned chicken can be used in just about any recipe that regular
chicken is used in.
Chicken isn't the only option for animal protein, it's just the most
common. Rabbits are another excellent option. Like chickens, they
reproduce and grow quickly and can be fed predominantly off of
scraps. You might also want to consider raising goats, if you can grow
them where you live or even some sort of fish.
85
Preserving Your Own Food
If you're going to start growing your own food for your survival
stockpile, then you'll need to be able to preserve it as well. Everything
I've mentioned can be canned, making canning the most universal
means of food preservation. You can also dry quite a bit of it, if you
have a food dehydrator.
Jars for canning can often be found at garage sales. We've rarely
bought any new canning jars, instead buying them used and saving
money. If you buy them used, all you need to buy new are the lids,
which are rather cheap to buy. The jars themselves can be used over
and over again, as long as you don't break them. However, if the edges
of the jars get chipped, they won't seal properly anymore.
Dehydrating food requires having a food dehydrator. We used to have a
cheap dehydrator, but it never worked well. It worked via a heat coil at
the bottom, so it heated and dried the food unevenly. We've since
replaced it with a larger, high quality food dehydrator. This one has
nine racks and a blower for the heating element. That makes is so that
the heat is distributed evenly throughout the cabinet, drying all the
food the same amount at the same time.
While we bought one of the best home food processors around, capable
of dehydrating about five pounds of thinly sliced beef at a time, it really
wasn't all that expensive. We found one on eBay, so were able to save
money on it.
The dehydrator we ended up buying was the Excaliber #3900B. This
particular model has a plastic case, nine trays and a temperature
control. They have other, more expensive models which add a timer or
have aluminum cases. However, we couldn't see where we would need
86
those options. So, instead of paying for options we didn't need, we
settled for this one.
Many different types of foods can be dehydrated. We've used ours
mostly for meat, but we have done some fruits and vegetables as well.
Meat and vegetables that have been dehydrated can be reconstituted
in soup.
87
One of the easiest ways to store food that has been dehydrated is to
vacuum pack it. You can buy small vacuum packers, such as the Seal a
Meal and make compact, airtight packages of your food. Food that is
dehydrated and then vacuum packed will last for a long time.
While caning and dehydrating are the main means of food
preservation used by preppers, they aren't the only ones. You can
smoke meats, pickle foods, make your own cured meats and even
make salt fish, a process that has been done for centuries. Make sure
that you do a variety of different techniques, so that you can have
variety in your survival diet.
88
Here’s Why Your Survival Plan May Hurt
Your Kids, Your Parents
Or Your Sick Spouse
Let’s not go around the bush.
This is a very serious issue, and yet most survivalists never address it.
Because they’re afraid to tell it like it is.
Family survival can sometimes be a burden.
There’s nothing “politically incorrect” about it. It’s the harsh reality.
When you have a baby or small children, your survival efforts suddenly
get ten times more complicated… and pricier.
And when you have elderly, sick or disabled people in your care during
times of crisis… all your survival planning starts to look like a battle
plan for WWIII.
Here’s How ALL Special-Needs Survival Plans
Can Get You And Your Loved
Ones Severely Injured
They all lack one crucial aspect: The YOU factor.
They lack selfishness. And in survival, selfishness is the only thing
that will help you save the helpless.
Designing your survival plan around the needs of your kids, your
parents or your sick spouse is honorable… yet completely wrong.
When you have a person with special needs in the family, what you
need to think of is how YOU can help them – punctually – when a
disaster hits.
That means that every single measure you take to protect them has to
have you in the center.
No Matter What:
Do Not Fall Into THIS Trap
If you took a deep breath of relief thinking “Well, it’s so much easier to
think about me than others”, brace yourself.
It’s much harder to plan than you may think.
Like most survivalists, you probably started prepping for the sake and
well-being of your family.
Most of your survival efforts revolve around their needs and wants.
So it can be very difficult to put your own strengths and skills in a
perfect balance with the special needs your family may have.
And that’s why I’m here to help.
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you won’t need any prescription)
• How to stockpile for people with special needs without shelling
out half your pay-check at the store (follow my guidelines and
you’ll cover everything they need, no matter what happens)
• 15 priceless skills seniors can barter for anything your family
may need (these skills are so rare, they’re worth a goldmine!)
• How to delegate responsibilities to kids, the elderly and the
disabled so you can focus on the more demanding tasks
(including your oved ones will help them feel useful and valued,
as well)
• How to adapt your survival plan to your child’s growth (without
spending money on 5 different sets of clothes and baby food)
• 11 survival tasks your kids can perfectly perform on their own
(without putting them in danger one second)
• 3 ways dogs can help your family during life and death
situations (and you won’t even have to waste time on special
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• The one thing you NEED to keep in mind when bugging out with
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89
Survival
at a Discount
W
hen it comes down to survival time, there are some things
that are just out and out expensive. If you want a bunker out
in the wilderness somewhere, that's going to be expensive.
Maybe that's why most preppers don't have one. Nevertheless, there
are a lot of things we can do to make such a dream at least somewhat
of a reality. Maybe it won't be an underground bunker with blastproof
doors, but there are ways of making a bug out retreat for very little
money.
Like most things, the secret to saving money on survival is using your
imagination, thinking outside the box and finding ways to repurpose
things so that you can use them for what you need to. While that may
not be easy, it's at least an enjoyable mental challenge, one that you
can win in a vast number of different ways.
The trick here is to understand the difference between what you
should do yourself and what you really need to buy commercially.
There are just some things that it isn't all that safe to make yourself.
Nevertheless, there are enough things that you can do yourself, to save
yourself a bundle.
90
Building Your Own Survival
Retreat on the Cheap
Since we were just talking about a survival retreat, let's talk about how
we can make one on the cheap. I've never run the numbers, but it
seems to me that if someone wanted to build a true underground
bunker out in the woods, they'd spend a lot of money. Between land,
excavation, building the bunker and putting in utilities, there's a lot of
work required. That work ends up being expensive.
Oh, by the way, before we go any farther, if you've been thinking of
building a bunker out of a shipping container, forget it. Shipping
containers are strong on the corners, where they are designed to carry
91
the weight. The floors are strong enough to support the weight of
what's inside them. But the roof and walls, which would have to carry
the overburden of the dirt that the bunker is buried under, aren't all
that strong at all. Unless you reinforced them, your shipping container
would probably end up with a buckled roof or walls.
Okay, so we're not going to use a container. Let me also suggest that
we forget about an underground bunker too. The only reason to build
an underground bunker is if you are trying to protect yourself from
bombs. Bunkers are excellent for that. But I don't see a nuclear war on
the horizon, so I can't see a real reason why I need a bunker.
That doesn't mean that we don't still need some sort of shelter out in
the woods somewhere, which we can retreat to in times of trouble. For
that matter, it might be nice to be able to retreat to it without times of
trouble, just to get away from home.
Start with the Land
To start with, we need some land. Unless you already own 20 acres of
woody hillside somewhere, you probably don't have that. "But land is
expensive," you're probably thinking; at least expensive land is
expensive. Then there's cheap land, that's usually rather cheap.
Start with taking a good look at who you know that lives out in the
country. Do you have family members or friends who own a farm or
live out in the middle of nowhere? If you do, maybe you can work out a
deal with them to put your survival retreat on their property. I'd start
there, before I started looking at buying some land. Besides, working
together with others to form a survival team can really improve your
chances at survival.
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If you can't find anyone who has land you can put your survival retreat
on, then you're going to have to buy some land. Before you stop
reading, let me tell you how you can do that. There is land which is
known as "junk land." It's considered junk, because it doesn't have any
commercial value. There's really no way to use this land, because of its
location, its composition and its lack of utilities. It's not even usable for
agricultural use. However, it would probably work out fine for your
survival retreat.
You're not going to find junk land listed
for sale in any real estate multi-listing.
People who own it are usually resigned to
keeping it, simply because they can't see
any other option. So, it just sits there.
About the only way you can buy junk
land, is to advertise that you're looking
for junk land.
Wanted: Junk land in
such-and-such an area.
Not over $1,000 per acre.
Looking for up to 5 acres.
Please call 000-000-0000
if you have any land
you'd like to sell, which
meets this description.
I need to warn you, you'll get a lot of calls from real estate agents and
people who have land that they want to sell for more than you're
willing to pay. Just be patient; hopefully you'll get some calls from
people who have junk land that they are willing to sell.
A couple of things you should keep in mind, when looking at this land:
 You're going to need access to the land. So, if the land doesn't
have a road to it (it probably won't), you'll need permission to
drive through some rancher's pasture to get to it. Make sure that
such permission is in writing and included as part of the deal.
 You're going to need access to water. There won't be any on your
property, so you need to make sure that you can get to
somewhere that you can gather water to bring back to your
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property. Keep in mind that you may not be able to use your truck
to get that water, so you want it to be fairly close. Of course, if you
can harvest enough rainwater, you won't have this problem.
 You need a flat spot where you can put your survival shelter. It
has to be someplace where you can drive to it, towing a trailer.
 The land has to be safe to live on. That means you don't want any
crumbling cliff or old hazardous material dump site. Hopefully,
the ground will be good enough to plant in, so that you can raise a
vegetable garden. You may or may not have trees.
Your Survival Shelter
The cheapest way to put a survival shelter on your land is to build
yourself a cabin out of all scavenged materials. However, that's going
to take a lot of time and a lot of effort; both in finding the materials and
in building the shelter.
Instead of putting all that effort into building a survival shelter, I'd start
shopping for an old used travel trailer. It will have everything you need,
with all the furnishings built-in. If you're patient, you can find some of
the older ones rather cheap, especially if you're willing to do some
repairs to it.
One of the nice things about a trailer like this is that it saves you a lot
of time, even if you do have to repair it. It's also the kind of thing that
won't look out of place sitting on a couple of acres of junk land
somewhere. People are likely to think it's there for herding cattle or as
a hunting retreat and not think anything of it.
While it is possible to break into a travel trailer, it's really not all that
easy. They also don't look like they have anything of value in them. So,
hopefully nobody will bother it. However, you probably will want some
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additional storage on your site, either attached to your trailer or as a
separate structure. You might want to consider adding a shipping
container for this. Even a small shipping container (20 feet long) will
hold a lot of food and supplies.
Modifications to Go with Your Shelter
Travel trailers are designed to be used in a campground. Even though
many have generators, you don't want to use a generator for the
majority of your power. A generator is a very expensive way of
generating electricity.
Adding wind or solar power to your trailer can go a long way towards
making it more comfortable. You'll be able to use the lights, run the
refrigerator, pump water and plug in a laptop computer. The
refrigerator will run off of propane, like the stove, so it only needs
electricity for the control circuitry. However, you will want to have
some extra propane tanks to keep you running.
The trailer will have three water tanks; clean, grey and black. The clean
water tank will provide you with enough water to last a few days, if you
only take sponge baths. So, you'll need some other water tank for
storing enough water to keep you going. You'll also need some sort of
mobile water tank for bringing water back to your property.
The grey water tank can be used for watering your garden, making
more use of that water. Grey water is from the sinks and shower. Black
water is from your toilet and needs to be disposed of. You'll need to dig
a hole somewhere to use as a septic tank and put a cover over it. Make
sure that it is a good distance downhill from your trailer, so that you
don't need to smell it. You'll need to run some plastic pipe down to it
for drainage.
95
You don't want to leave the drain for the black water tank open, but
rather open it when it's time to dump it. If you don't keep some water
in the tank, the solids will turn into concrete in there.
One other modification you might want to consider, especially if you
live anywhere in the south, is to build a roof over your trailer to shade
it. This will help with keeping it less hot in the summertime. You can
extend the roof to form a shaded area alongside the trailer, allowing
you to have a shady outdoors living area as well.
Getting a Bug Out Vehicle
at a Discount
If you're going to have a bug out shelter, you're going to need some way
of getting there. For most people, this means a truck. You don't have to
have a truck, but you're probably going to have to go off road to get
there, so a truck will be easier. Besides, you're going to need a truck to
get the trailer onto your property.
If you've looked at the price of trucks lately, you probably found it as
scary as I did. Trucks aren't cheap. Even a ten year old truck can be
pretty darn expensive. However, once you get past that point, they start
getting reasonable.
I've been looking to buy a truck, so I'm going to share with you what I'm
planning on doing. I've set myself a budget of $5,000 for this, and for
that money I want to have a truck that I can count on for the next 10
years or more. Sounds impossible, right?
The first thing I'm doing is shopping for a truck. I want to buy a fullsized truck with an extended cab. I don't want the crew cab, because I
96
still want a full-sized bed for hauling stuff. I'm also not looking for fourwheel-drive, as there are very few situations where I would actually
need it. I don't have to worry much about snow or mud.
I expect to spend no more than $2,500 on the truck itself. For that, I
want a truck that is in good condition, although I really don't care if it
has a ding or two. It needs to be complete (no missing tailgate or
mirrors) and I'm planning on checking it over to make sure that it is in
good mechanical condition. I also want it to be rust-free, which
shouldn't be a problem where I live.
Once I get the truck, I'm going to replace the engine. I should be able to
get a rebuilt short block for about $1,000. Add in another $300 for the
miscellaneous parts I'll need for totally changing out the engine and
another $200 for a new starter motor, alternator and engine mounts.
I've now spent $4,000 and I have an old, but descent truck, without rust,
that has an essentially new engine in it.
That still leaves me $1,000 to work with. If the truck really needs it, I'll
get an el-chepo paint job on it, but I'd rather keep it from looking too
new. I don't want it to attract attention. I'll also either put in heavy-duty
seat covers or replace the existing seats with some good ones from the
junk yard. Anything else I can find wrong will be repaired and I'll build
a brush guard for the front end.
So, for five grand, I'll basically have a functionally new truck, even if it
doesn't look like one. It won't be a truck that will attract attention, but
rather a "stealth truck." However, it will get me and my trailer to my
junk land, so that I can set up my survival retreat. It will haul supplies
and lumber out there. It will even work to go and fill up a tank of water
to bring back to keep my retreat's water tank filled; and I expect that if I
97
maintain it properly, it will last me the ten years I expect it to; I'm
pretty good at getting a lot of years out of my vehicles.
Like I said, this is a project that I'm planning on doing, not one that I've
already done. I'm looking around for an appropriate truck right now.
When I find it, I'll be starting the work. Since I can't show you pictures
now and give you a detailed write-up of everything that I'm going to do,
I'll do that later. When I get it done, I'll be sending you a free bonus
showing you exactly how I went about this project.
Making Your Home
Defensible - on the Cheap
Home defense is a major concern to most preppers. The idea behind
that concern is that there are a lot of unprepared people, at least some
of whom have bought into the wealth redistribution of socialism.
Those people will be hungry and desperate after a disaster. Rather than
98
do something to help themselves, these people will then gang together
to attack those who have made the sacrifice to prepare. Oh, they might
beg first, but when they are refused, they'll attack.
If such a situation were to occur, and it is likely that it would in any
scenario where there was a general breakdown of the supply lines or
breakdown of society, the need to defend your home would become
paramount. Those who couldn't defend their homes would stand a very
good chance of ending up losing everything, maybe even their lives.
Just look at the Ferguson riots if you don't believe me. Burning
buildings, looting stores, overturning vehicles and general violence all
over a Grand Jury verdict they didn't like. If people will go to those
extremes, just because they don't like something, what will they do if
they become desperate?
Home defense consists of two basic parts; passive defenses and active
defenses. Passive defenses consist of things you do to make it harder
for someone to break into your home, such as putting deadbolts on
your doors. Active measures are things you do yourself, such as
shooting anyone who kicks down that dead-bolted door. An effective
home defense must comprise both of these elements.
Passive defenses really can't stop anyone from breaking into your
home. That deadbolt on your door? A good swift kick with a booted foot
will break the deadbolt through the door jamb, opening your door.
Locking your windows? That can be fixed with a rock. For that matter,
locking a sliding glass door and doing all the "tricks" to make it more
secure can easily be rectified by a rock as well. As the saying goes,
"Locks only keep honest people honest."
If you want to make your home truly secure, you must go way beyond
deadbolts and screws in the sliding glass door track. You need a
99
layered defense to slow and deter attackers, while setting them up for
an ambush. Then, when they make it past enough of your passive
defenses to make it clear that they intend to attack, you need a
defensive plan which will allow you and your family to fight them
effectively.
I used the word "ambush" intentionally in that last paragraph. If you're
outnumbered by attackers, about the only way you can be assured of a
victory is to ambush them. Now, you've got to be careful here, because
while the law allows killing in self-defense, it doesn't allow preemptive
strikes. Even though such an attack would indicate a state of
lawlessness, you have to assume that the law will be reestablished and
that the lace panty crowd will then be looking to prosecute anyone
who has succeeded in defending themselves.
With that in mind, your ambush has to be created a bit differently than
most ambushes are. You can't do a full-blown military ambush where
you surprise the enemy and try to take them out before they can take
you out. Rather, you have to set up your ambush so that you are in a
good fighting position and they are not. Then, you have to wait for
them to start the attack.
That requires a combination of making sure that they can't break into
your home, while making sure that they are where you want them to
be, so that they are under your guns. That's what your passive defenses
have to do for you.
While it would be nice to have a ten foot tall cement wall to protect
your home, it really wouldn't be all that effective. I said a moment ago
that passive defenses can't stop an attacker. That cement wall is
nothing more than passive defenses. All they need to defeat it is a
ladder. Besides, having that wall would probably give everyone the idea
100
that there's something behind it that's worth protecting. If they need
food, they'll convince themselves that you have it and the wall is to
protect it.
So if your passive defenses can't stop an attacker, you might as well
use them to shape the battle. In other words, use them to get the bad
guys into that position where they are under your guns. You do that by
providing them with one easy path to take, while making it difficult to
enter your property in any other way.
One easy and inexpensive way to do this is with hedges. That's right,
bushes planted in a row. Have you ever tried to get through a hedge?
It's not easy, especially if the hedge has thorns. So if you plant a hedge
around the front of your property and allow it to grow high enough and
thick enough to make it hard to get through, you can pretty much
count on any attackers looking for another way to get onto your
property.
The trick here is to leave your front walkway as an easy access to your
home. That way, you are getting the attackers to go where you want
them. Then, when they do, you challenge them, before they can get to
your front door and start their attack. Now, they're under your guns, out
in the open, while you're under cover.
A good noisy dog helps with this too. Dogs are natural burglar alarms,
barking at anyone who comes onto your property. Some will even start
barking when someone gets near your property. So, get a dog or two
and use them as part of your defensive plan. Then you train your
family to take it serious anytime the dogs bark. Practice getting
everyone armed and into their defensive positions as quickly as
possible, when the dogs start barking. When the time comes, the
101
combination of the two will put you in a position of being ready to repel
all attackers.
Developing a home defensive plan is rather complex, but it's not
something that you would have trouble doing yourself, if you apply a
few basic principles and use a few tricks to harden your home against
attack. If you want more information on this topic, check out my book,
"Home Security Playbook." In it, I give you a full rundown on how to
build your own passive defenses, as well as how to train yourself and
your family to defend your home when that attack does come.
Oh, and the best thing about my Home Security Playbook is that I stick
with the idea of doing it yourself and doing it on the cheap. So, you
won't have to spend a fortune to create your home defenses.
Guns & Ammo
I used the phrase "under your guns" a couple of times there. That was
intentional. At some point in time, you're going to have to face these
people and fight them. Don't even think you're going to talk your way
out of it. You won't be able to convince them of anything, even if you're
telling them the truth. You'll be forced to take up arms in the defense of
your home and family.
I realize that thought might be distasteful to some people, but it's true.
Unarmed people are victims. Oh, maybe you've never been a victim
before, but that doesn't mean that you won't be a victim during a
disaster. Before, you had the police to offer you at least some
protection. During a crisis, you probably won't even have that.
So, if you're going to avoid being a victim, you've got to make any
potential attackers think that attacking you will be too expensive to
102
make it worthwhile. In other words,
they'll have to believe that
attacking you will get them killed.
That's where your guns come in.
You'll need to have some guns to
fight them with. I don't want to get
into a lot of detail right here, but I
do want to mention a couple of
things on how to save money on
your guns.
Let me give you a secret here; the
guns you have aren't as important
as how well you can use them. A
lot of people spend a lot of money
buying guns, but never take the time to practice enough to become an
expert. Any gun, in the hands of an expert, is more effective than an
excellent gun in the hands of an amateur.
First of all, avoid buying the cheapest around. The cheapest guns are
usually the ones with the most problems. If you stick to the major
manufacturers, you should be all right. All of their guns are built to a
very good standard.
Secondly, a shotgun will give you more bang for the buck than a pistol
will (pun intended). Shotguns are less expensive than handguns, easier
to fire and do more damage. So, if you have to choose one gun, make it
a shotgun.
Thirdly, buy used. Gun prices have been high the last couple of years,
even for used guns. However, you can still save some money by buying
used guns. When you do, make sure that you cycle the gun and snap
103
off a few shots of dry fire (without rounds loaded in the gun) to make
sure it works. Open up the chamber and look for damage. The two most
critical and most fragile things here are the firing pin and the
extractor.
WHY GUNS MEAN FALSE
PROTECTION...
This guy almost got himself killed because he thought he was
protected by his guns. Here's the shocking story that will make
you think twice if you are confident that your guns will save you.
See more...
Click Here
The firing pin is hidden when you look in the chamber. There will be a
small hole in the back of the chamber, centered on the hole in the
barrel (the chamber). That's where the firing pin is located. Look to see
that there is no damage around the hole, especially damage that has
elongated it to one side. That indicates damage to the firing pin.
The extractor is what removes the spent casing after firing. It is a small
hook, which catches on the rim on the back end of the cartridge. These
break sometimes, which means they won't pull out the spent round.
The gun will try to chamber a new round while the old one is still there
and jam. Look to see that the hook is there and not broken off.
One other thing you should check is the barrel. Put a piece of white
paper inside the chamber, so that it will reflect light down the barrel
104
and look down the barrel from the muzzle end, Before you do this,
double check that the gun is unloaded. Look for any pitting on the
inside of the barrel. If it's pitted, you don't want to buy it. The rifling
(spiral grooves cut in the inside of the barrel to make the bullet spin,
should be intact, with sharp looking edges.
As for caliber, that depends upon you. I'd avoid a .22 caliber, unless
you're looking at something to shoot small game with. As a defensive
weapon, they aren't very effective. Yes, you can kill someone with one,
if you hit them in the right place, but if you merely graze them, it
doesn't have as much effect.
Generally speaking, you want to use the largest caliber gun you're
comfortable shooting. That gives you the most energy transfer to the
target as well as the most damage.
Okay, so what about ammo? Many people will try to tell you that you
need 1,000 rounds of ammo for every gun you own. While that might be
nice to have, it's rather expensive. Besides, I seriously doubt you'll
actually go through that much ammo, unless ammunition
manufacturing stops altogether and you are hunting for your food for
years.
Infantry soldiers carry 320 rounds of ammo as their basic load. That's
what they are expected to fire in a day's worth of fighting. For pistols,
they carry four magazines worth. So, for a Glock that holds 17 rounds,
they'd carry 68 rounds. That's it.
If you have a couple of basic loads, you've probably got all the ammo
you need for defending your home. If you have to fight that much,
you're better off bugging out, than you are staying at home.
105
On top of what you need for
defense, you also want to add
on ammo for hunting and
target practice. Actually, it's
the target practice that gives
people that 1,000 rounds
figure. You can go through a
lot of ammo trying to become
proficient with a gun.
Images Copyright Attribution
https://www.flickr.com/photos/spleeness/8221147169/in/photostream/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/epublicist/8666678070/
106

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