Best $3 you'll spend this week
 

Get this book, preferably the Kindle version as there are oodles of hyperlinks --> Prepping for a Suburban or Rural Community: Building a Civil Defense Plan for a Long-Term Catastrophe [Kindle Edition]. It's only $2.99.

There is some discussion of the usual stuff: defense, food, yadda yadd but only vague recommendations...very little is concrete à la "get clean water like this" or "set up your farms like that." The real focus is on organizing your community now to mitigate future disasters. Figure out what works for your circumstances and environment. Set up a structure now. Have plans to more easily establish a post-disaster polity and maintain rule of law if the worst happens.

We've followed a lot of his advice, establishing committees for water, fuel, sanitation, medical care, scrounging, law, defense, Amish relations (ISYN) etc. But the real gold nugget is his detailed advice on establishing a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Tax exempt, as in charitable donations to the organization are fully deductible. Some money is going to have to be spent on this stuff, and the tax-exempt status takes out some of the sting. It's a pain in the butt, but worth it in the end.

And you know that surplus military gear that Uncle Sugar is spreading around on the LEOs? Well State and local organizations can apply for grants and materiel if they have their ducks in a row and decent relations with the State and County governments. Hesco barriers, sandbags, diesel generators, fuel filters and groomers, medical consumables, storage racks and shelving, fuel storage blivets...there are lots of goodies out there. You're gonna need a lawyer or a paralegal with OCD though...tons of paperwork.

Anywho, the book is highly recommended, more for the tone and philosophy than concrete prep advice.

PS - A kid on the water committee (working on his Eagle Scout--they still do that out here) is standardizing a way to increase the yield of filtered water from 8 gals/day up to 60 gals per day using 2 x 5 gal buckets, a ceramic filter, a Schroeder valve, and a bicycle pump. He didn't invent the method, the plans are on the Interwebs, but sourcing enough materials for a community, negotiating prices, creating clear construction and maintenance instructions, purchasing and storing the bits and pieces--it's a big job. How many filters are needed for a community our size? Where are the filters to be emplaced? What are the manpower requirements to run these? What's the 5-year plan when the filters are worn out? It really goes to show how the author of this book is right...it will take a lot of folks pulling together to save a town if the worst goes down.

PPS - we can see weeks in a row where the high temp never gets above 0F. The heating committee is working on a plan to turn water heater tanks into efficient volcano wood stoves. What tools, skills, materials are needed for the job? What do we need to stockpile? What will likely be available in local stores if we prevent looting? Stovepipe costs an absolute bomb! What are safe alternatives?

You get the drift.

Link to the seminal book on rocket mass heaters, still the most highly ranked book on the subject at Amazon. As far as I can tell, it's a legit distro of the pdf (per a couple of forums on the subject). The author claims to cut firewood requirements from 4 cords per winter down to 2/3 cord. All for $50 in salvaged parts and a weekend's effort. I'm looking hard at this.

The pdf opens onto a couple of blank pages. Scroll down a bit...it's there.

Rocket Mass Heaters

.

Guy next door planted 3 trial acres of potatoes and they're all harvested...a little late. He averaged 22,000 pounds of spuds per acre. State average is 34k lbs/acre, so we have a ways to go. We also ruined about 10-15% when harvesting but that's why you practice when everyone is still smiling. Wastage will drop a lot with hand-harvesting. We're learning the crop now because we'd be replacing some soybeans with potatoes if we were feeding a horde.

Seems like a lot of taters but when you figure 440 50lb sacks per acre into 1000 mouths it goes fast. When potatoes were the staple food of the Irish they ate on average 6.5 lbs per day along with a quart of milk. (Spuds + milk is nutritionally complete.) So those 60,000 lbs of spuds would support only 25 people for a year, assuming they could also get a quart of whole milk per day as well.

Also, that's a lot of burlap sacks. Storage would have to be distributed, as no one has the time or money to build enough root cellar space to store a mountain of spuds. A dark closet would be fine, given the temps most folks will likely be able to attain in the winter.

We're rotating the spuds to some of my marginal sandy land next year and trying some turnips, parsnips, onions, and neeps on his test plot.

Radio reliability
 

Sirs,

On the off-chance you may not have already heard of this elsewhere, some of the cheap radios are beginning to show symptoms indicating memory reliability issues. Although attractive at first glance, they may not be the bargain they appear to be.
Some details concerning the issues here:
http://hamgear.wordpress.com/2014/01...bility-issues/

Might be worth considering smaller Vertex, Icom, Kenwood VHF portables instead.
Personally I use an Icom IC-F30GT, 256 channels, narrow band with all VHF statewide LE, FD, MED and the majority of ham repeaters for NorCal, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Similar models also safe for use in explosive atmospheres.

Respectfully,
Volunteer

That report is pretty weak IMO. Not saying the anecdotal report isn't true, or that Chinese QC can't be spotty, but the comments are instructive.

I have a Yaesu HT. It's nice and I like that it's waterproof. But the HT I carry around the farm is my cheap-ass UV-5R. When I use it, I use it a lot. No problems so far in over a year. Does everything the Yaesu does and if it gets lost/trashed I won't lose any sleep.

Like everything, it depends on your use case. For what you seems to be using them for, a more expensive HT makes sense. For me, not so much. Yaesu/Icom are nice but when you can buy six UV-5Rs for the cost of one Japanese HT? No way. These things are hammers to me. You can put 20 x Baofeng 888-S with chargers and twenty spare batteries in a garbage can for less than $400. They all worked when I programmed them, but if a few are dead if I ever need to pass them out I won't be bothered.

I also have a case of Yugo SKS I bought when they were going for $84 apiece. Same idea. Would I rather have ten quality ARs? Well, yeah! Too pricey though. What is the patrol coverage of five, 2-man teams armed with SKSs and a cheap HT for each team (that only needs to hit our simplex repeater anyway) vs one guy with a nice BCM M4gery and an ICOM? No comparison.

"Quantity has a quality all its own."

Good to see a ham posting here. I'm not slamming you or your post. Keep an eye on the issue and let us know what develops.

I'm still looking into rocket mass heaters and found the following summary page. Some good stuff here. It's nice to see some plans using standard HVAC duct and fittings. I'm all for expedient and scrounged materials, but if the SHTF there's going to be a lot of unused ductwork from forced-air furnaces waiting to be repurposed.


Good rocket mass heater collection

.

I went through the car kits last weekend just to check everything out, replace old protein bars, etc. I was surprised to find that all four butane lighters had totally frozen strikers wheels, rendering them useless. Trying to break them free by running the striker along the pavement just abraded a flat spot on each wheel. These weren't Bics but were Costco specials. Took the striker assembly off of a couple of them but couldn't identify the problem. I always worried about leaks, not the striker.

Both of the AA Maglite Mini LEDs were dead as well, one with a leaked battery and the other with I assume the same problem but the end cap was seized to the point I couldn't get it off using a Leatherman.

To round things out, mice had chewed into one pack and eaten all of the energy bars.

I too, have found a mixed bag with the bulk cheapo lighters. I have also had the flints in the Spark-Lites dissolve into powder as well.

For the money, Maglites are better replaced with whatever cheap Chinese LED you can find on Amazon. Buy several and test them out before you put them in the kits. You can save on batteries and add a couple of spares with the change, if Surefires are not in the budget.

Mice are a bitch. Mason jars or Nalgene bottles, maybe?

TR

I've had good luck with these. You can catch them on sale at home depot for $15. Four settings (low, high, strobe and off). Standard AAA batteries (3) for power. Hard metal case similar to maglite. I've got them everywhere in the house and car. I've had and used them for about 2 years now and haven't had a failure. At $5-7 per light, they are a good bargain. I'm linking to Amazon for the description, but they are cheaper to buy through local purchase.

http://smile.amazon.com/Duracell-Dur.../dp/B00D3Y3JEE

Thanks for the recommendation. I have to pass on these because they don't use AA batteries. I made a hard and fast rule a while back: if it doesn't run on AAs I don't buy it. That extends to flashlights, scanners, handheld transceivers, etc. I still have only Surefires/CR123 as weapon lights because I haven't bought any lately. Any new ones would likely employ AAs.

AA batteries have made a quantum leap. Look at the new Energizer Ultimate Lithiums: lightweight, 15 year shelf life, 3-8 times the standard lithium run times (they say 9x) depending on the application, and a good discharge profile. They're currently expensive but prices are already coming down. For everyday use I have buckets of 2700 mAH rechargeables and the means to charge them when the nightlight won't work.

TR - yep, I tried out a couple of the Chinese 1 x AA flashlights that use the Cree seconds. Found one I liked and bought 20 when they were 3 bucks a pop. Haven't had a problem with the two I use regularly but it's always a Guangdong crapshoot. The car kits are going to get one of those to go along with the headlamp.

Crisis Application Group or CAG
 

Anyone know the guys running this? thinghttp://www.crisisapplicationgroup.com/

They say they are former QPs and offer some training. Seems interesting.

Two things
 

I'm in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with travel often meaning driving on lowly traveled roads which go through long stretches of non-populated areas with a lot of areas that have no cell phone reception. I have put together for each member of my family a survival kit that will sustain life very comfortably for 2-3 days, regardless of temperature, and sustain life less comfortably for at least a week.

Cold weather gear is an important item to have available at least half of the year here. I vacuum seal cold weather clothing for storage in each family member's emergency bag, which stays in their vehicle year-round. The clothing takes up SIGNIFICANTLY less room vacuum sealed.

You have to be careful of the type of insulation the garment has if you are going to vacuum seal it, as some insulations can require 24 hours or more of time before the insulation regains its loft, particularly down.

Thinsulate works just fine for warmth right out of the vacuum seal packages, however.

In the survival bags for each family member, I have individual vacuum sealed bags with polypro tops and bottoms, fleece tops and bottoms, polypro balaclavas, thinsulate watch caps, thinsulate gloves, fleece and wool socks, and water and wind proof Frog Tog tops and bottoms.

Each family member also has an arctic weight Wiggy's sleeping bag, which is also vacuum sealed to reduce bulk, in their vehicle. Wiggy's offers vacuum sealing as an option when purchasing bags. The bulk of the bag is reduced by at least a factor of 5 when vacuum sealed. I have had good luck buying pre-owned vacuum sealed Wiggy's bags from Ebay, which saves some coin over buying new.

Between the cold weather clothing and the sleeping bag, each family member should be able to shelter in place and maintain adequate body warmth for extended periods of time in weather as cold as -60 F, colder by double than anything ever experienced here in the past 25 years.

Water storage in a climate with -20 t0 -30 degrees F for a few weeks at a time and months of temperatures below 32 F can be difficult. I have found that the SOS emergency water packets, which are 4.227 oz mylar water bags, maintain integrity down to -30 for prolonged periods, can be unfrozen fairly quickly if placed against the body, are small enough to allow them to be packed around larger items in a bag, or in
small void spaces in a vehicle, and are still usable after going through months of sitting inside of a hot car in the summer. Each family member's survival bag has at least 1/2 of a gallon of water in it.

Each bag also has the other requisite survival kit items: redundant firestarting methods, tinder, a good knife, a multitool, a folding camp saw, a small first aid kit, a water filtration unit with the instructions laminated to prevent against water damage, an MSR Dragonfly camp stove with instructions laminated, portable pot for cooking or snow melting for water, food (lifeboat rations/MRE's/Mountain House), whistle, signal mirror, mil-spec strobe light, road flares, etc.

The bags are a little too large and much too heavy to be considered humpable by any of my family members, but that doesn't matter and is partially by design, as the training I have given to each family member is to stay with their vehicle under all circumstances that allow it.

One additional item I have purchased for each family member is an emergency PLB for each person. They are supposed to be stored in the vehicle when not on their person, and be activated if no help has arrived in 18 hours. I have had an older ACR electronics PLB for a number of years and put it to use once, which saved my ass. The older models were on the bulky side, which made carrying it a little difficult.

The newer models have come way down on size and weight however. The ResQLink+ units, which include GPS locating to within meters of the device, 24 hour broadcast ability, and a built in strobe light, are now small and light enough to fit in any shirt pocket, and cost less than $250.

If James Kim, who along with his family ended up stranded in southern Oregon in 2006 and who died walking for help, had had a PLB in his posession, they could have had help inside of 2 hours and the whole saga and death of Mr. Kim would have been a non-event.

Solar power
 

I didn't know NC was #3 in use of solar power. You Green Berets may or may not be tied in to that energy.


I searched but couldn't find much, probably cuz I'm dumb.

What is the best, most durable (waterproof), under $500 solar panel system for charging auto/12V batteries?

Thanks. Love y'all.

Wow. For $500 you can power an RV. I have a $150 set up from Harbor Freight (may be more or less now) for our travel trailer. Again, it runs the whole trailer except the air conditioner. For just charging you are probably good under $100.

RV(dot)net is a good resource for information on stuff like this.

Pat