Built this last night going to build a few more pretty handy light for emergencies or just camping just a mason jar {wide mouth pint} and a burner kit soldered it together in about 20 minutes time
Posted on 09/07/2012 8:09:12 AM PDT by Kartographer
Weekly Preppers' Thread to post progress, good buys, DIY projects, advice and ideas
Preppers’ PING!!
I can’t get prepper support from my wife but, I drilled a water well by hand and put in a hand pump and keep a garden going.
First aid supplies: http://www.first-aid-product.com
Excellent prices and they are the company most other companies use for first aid supply.
Here are a couple of 5 gallon bucket projects-http://www.hourofthetime.com/1-LF/Hour_Of_The_Time_08282012-Bucket_water_filter.pdf-andhttp://www.hourofthetime.com/1-LF/Hour_Of_The_Time_08292012-5_Gallon_Bucket_Hydroelectric_Build%20Manual.pdf
/johnny
How did you drill by hand? I cannot imagine doing that here, but we have bad clay soil.
Emotional preparation is severely lacking in America.
People first need to acknowledge the depth of our problems and accept the fact that salvation is not just an election away.
Said to go to a professional who deals with the filtration necessary to make caught water potable, but the investment is worth it... he hasn't used any other water source in 20 years, and even in drought, his reservoir has never gotten below 50%.
She's stoked, so I'll go along. :)
I often get asked questions about various 30-60-90 and more food kits, buckets of prepared food that store for years as a quick and easy way to be prepared.
Now I’ve not tried the food in very many of these kits and so I can’t really say if the food is good or bad, but here’s the problem as I see with these prepared meal kits. Say you have a 60 day kit that comes with 10 different dinners six of each dinners A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J and since you never tasted their food the odds are that say there will be that there will be 2 to 3 of there meal you really like 4 or 5 that are ok, 1 or 2 you can choke down if you have too and another 1 or 2 you wouldn’t feed your dog!
That means two things one you run the good chance that twenty percent or more of your storage you won’t eat and two after a while what you have left is mostly stuff you don’t like and won’t eat unless forced and that will get OLD very fast.
Me I think that you are better off storing 100% things you know you will eat and in as much a variety as possible. That’s my thoughts.
10 Morale Boosters for Any Worst Case Scenario
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2011/11/20/8-morale-boosters-for-any-worst-case-scenario/
Well written if I do say so myself. ;-)
Couple of new bits of info that I’ve come across lately:
Buffet divests half his holdings in municipal bond insurance (in anticipation of more city bankruptcies).
Check your 401k for a “cash option”. If it doesn’t have one, chances are the “safest” offering will be heavy in gov’t treasury bonds, a backdoor nationalizing of your 401k.
I see having grown up poor and fugal as a great advantage.
Thanks
What part of Texas are you in and how far down did you sink that well? I've seen those motorized drill rigs in the back of magazines and wondered if it would be worthwhile.
If I were to drill one, I'd have to hide the wellhead inside a Rubbermaid garden shed or something.
Serving MREs to troops, I would see some guys toss most of the calories because they wouldn't eat the entree.
/johnny
True, but filthy rich has it's advantages. ;)
/johnny
Bookmarked.
I reworked the garden here to squeeze in another row and everything is coming up nicely. Before throwing out some 15 year old black beans and red peas, I put some in the ground but it doesn’t look promising. If not, there’s some yellow wax beans that’ll go in there. It’s been too hot for things to produce much this summer but it adds a bit to the table, However, the main reason for the garden is to learn what plant varieties work or don’t work getting a step up on when/if it does hit the fan.
I too am interested in how you drilled a well by hand.
bfl
True. You can always go back to being poor if you want but hard to do vice versa.
If the SHTF...I live in a rural subdivision and have a bug out location about 30 miles away in the Front Range NW of Denver.
If we have to relo to the bug out site which has natural water supply and acreage around the house, what is the best way to move our supplies of food and hardware?
Do you prepack things in 5gal buckets and plastic tote boxes? We have an SUV and car that we can pack.
Our first plan would be to shelter in place and only relo if water and electricity was cut off.
Thoughts?
Check out “After Armageddon” on the History Channel (a special, not a series). Some good info, but richest in showing the non-prepper mentality some realistic scenarios. Plus if one is trying to convince a reticent better half, or family, there is just enough realism to ease the point home.
Presume most folks here are actually “taking steps.” In the case of the family depicted in the show, they were woefully unprepared both mentally and logistically. It sort of shows how they grow up.......
Stay alert
In that case, I won’t pick the “safe” option. No point in investing in overrated junk bonds.
Prepping for poison oak. I’m looking at buying a property that has patches of poison oak on it. Back when I lived in Oregon I came down with a case and found some homeopathic pills that worked great. So I just ordered some, but the instructions say start taking them after exposure and itching starts. I’ve read on the net that you can eat the leaves and become immune. Others say don’t eat the leaves. I figure these pills might run out after SHTF. Anyone have experience with the eating of leaves? thanks.
I’m thinking, unless it’s a chem/bio attack, that it would be good to simply bug out when there’s word that we’ll default on some of our debt or the European economy is collapsing or some nasty virus is spreading in the city. By the time your utilities are cut off, everyone might be jamming the roads trying to get out.
Don’t eat the leaves. Ingesting all that urushiol oil could cause your body to blow up like a balloon and put you in a hospital, which for all I know, you may not be able to get to from your bugout location.
Can you add me to the ping list?
Never ate the leaves. Funny thing when I was a kid we go camping everyone got posin ivy excepted me and my Dad, but a few years a go I was cleaning up a over grown yard of a rental we were living in at the time and I got case of Posin Oak that I had to got to the doctor for. Go figure.
Does anybody have a list of equivalent doses for antibiotics that you can buy over the counter from veterinary supply houses? For example, if I buy penecillin for horses how much wold I have to cut it down to be a dosage acceptable for people?
I'll tell you what I would do, Kartographer surely might do differently.
Right now, I'd put half or more of the storage at BO location. Then, if SHTF, right then I'd take the rest and head for BO location and stay there (instead of house), to see what happened.
I wouldn't stay at the house at all if SHTF because you might not be able to get to BO location later and having water at BO location makes it the place to be fast. You are taking a gamble on water if you stay at house. I wouldn't do that.
Marcella is right, you need to stock your BOL. You don’t know how much time you have to bug out and like always you will forget things! Also make sure of your route to your BOL and look for ‘pinch points’ and ways around them! And don’t just map them out DRIVE them. Maps don’t always show all!
Here’s what I did. You will know the mg of the tablets you get. Stick the name of the drug in “search” and there will be multiple medical sites that give you the dose to take for various problems. Print that off and keep it with the pills.
It sounds like your bug out location is close to where I live!
I once used bovine antiboitics for my cat, the bottle had the dose-per-weight, so I used that to do the math. That gives you a more accurate dose anyway, since, for example, a 250-pound body builder would need a different dose than a 90-pound middle school nerd.
“Does anybody have a list of equivalent doses for antibiotics that you can buy over the counter from veterinary supply houses?”
You can’t buy antibiotics for dogs over the counter now - have to have prescription. Not sure that is true for horses. You can still buy antibiotics for fish which are made by the same companies that make human antibiotics. I have the name of a web fish place that sells them all. Let me know if you want that. It was the only place I found Cipro.
As I wrote in another message to you, put the name of the drug in search for medial websites that give the dosage for various problems.
Grumblings of QE3 are becoming more and more likely. Just one more step of making the SHTF scenario more plausible.
/johnny
ping
“The instructor lives in Driftwood, TX and was telling how he has a 6,000 gallon rain water catchment with filtration system that he uses for all of his household needs.”
When I lived in New Zealand, anyone outside a major city used a catchment, including us. We never had a problem (but NZ is rainy) and we drank tap water. As a prepper, if I could, I’d have one now.
To everyone that ask about my hand drilling a well. I found a 8” post hole auger that used a 3/4 black pipe as the stem.
It had a pipe tee at the top with a wooden handle 3 feet long through it. I used this auger and twisted it to a depth of 22 feet by adding 3/4 pipe sections to it as it got deeper. With this auger, you have to lift it out every 6 inches or so to empty it so it’s a lot of work. with a hand pump your limited to about 25 feet of draw. I found some 4” pvc perforated well casing and placed it in the hole and filled in around it with pea gravel. I hit a gravel seam and water at 14 feet where I live. I can only pump about 10 gallons but it refills in a few hours. I water my garden with it and I think it will be enough to live on if need be. I sealed the top with a 5 gallon bucket filled with cement with the 4” caseing through the bottom of the bucket filled with cement and mounted the pump on top. I wired rebar in the bucket before filling it with cement. when the cement was dry, I cut off the plastic bucket.
I would get some of those big, flag plastic containers such as can be found at Walmart, etc. Those will stack better than buckets. The plastic buckets are really for storing food ... and I would still use those for food.
Thought I’d PING you over here, there’s some good discourse on the Weekly Thread!
Please add me to your ping list. Thanks!
Built this last night going to build a few more pretty handy light for emergencies or just camping just a mason jar {wide mouth pint} and a burner kit soldered it together in about 20 minutes time
Make your own Lanterns with mason jars and this adapter a #2 lantern kit and a glass chimney and you can make a lantern like i made above for about 8 bucks !
Nice work. SHTF trade good/skill for sure.
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