Want to see what intel and experience Free Republic has to offer. I know the well is indeed deep with this crowd, you guys are practically professors....
pinging the resident expert.
It will have to be secure, safe and ready while not in use. It will have to be accessable and not too difficult to get to when needed. It will have to be defensible, sometimes difficult while you’re all alone in a remote outpost.
Trustworthy friends and family.
There’s no greater weapon than a man who has your back and a whole network of people doing the same is orders of magnitude greater.
Is that enough for now on shelter?
A good water source. And 6-12 months worth of long-term storage food. Maybe a few chickens and/or goats.
www.survivalblog.com
1. Plentiful Nearby Food Supplies - common consensus is 1 year on hand. Unless you already know how to raise food don’t think its gonna be easy.
2. Lots of Land - depends, how much can you protect?
3. Shelters - anything specific about the shelter other than insulation, wood heat, and wind power with back up generators? generators are noisy and require gas. What will you do when gas runs out? I vote for solar with battery banks if you get enough sun.
4. Guns? - and more guns. A minimum of four, handgun, .22 rifle, shotgun, and hunting rifle. Possibly also a ar-15 type.
5. Ammo? - several thousand rounds for each gun, plus spare parts.
6. Tools? - yes
7. Sanitation? - If you eat then you are gonna need this. Improper handling of sanitation kills a lot of people.
All of these are deep subjects by themselves.
Play the game Oregon Trail a few times before you start buying stuff. Seriously.
Pray to God and go to survivalblog.com.
Medicine, herbs some basic medical info. Some of those field books are pretty good. Like where there is no doctor and where there is no dentist. First aid kit.
Also make sure if you can, to have extra to barter with and to share.
Water is the most important thing...you can do on little or no rations for weeks but go a few days without water and you are dead...invest in securing a steady supply and have filters, filtration kits, decontamination kits and whatever else you will need to secure your short, medium and long term needs...
I guess you could buy a Mel Tappan book, it would not be a bad start. You probably need to define specifically what type of apocolypse you expect.
Travel to some remote areas out west in states like Idaho and Montana. Make friends with some of the locals and pick their brains. The Salmon River valley in Idaho would be a good reference point.
Those folks live self-sufficiency out of necessity and you could learn a lot from them.
That being said, if society collapses to the point where we need to retreat and live off the land, I doubt any of us would be long for this world. Centuries of reliance on aggressive and advanced medical treatments have left us with inadequate immune systems.
PING!!!
Bolt holes are places to go for very short term periods. Survival requires a community with a plan. If you’re thinking of hiding out for five years, might as well just stay in the city and take your chances there.
A small rural community gives you more options and more chances of actually surviving anything serious.
BUT, that wasn’t what you were asking about. You were asking about what’s best for your bolt hole.
I’d strongly suggest getting and practicing with a slingshot, as well as buying and practicing with traps and snares. No need to expend your ammo supply which might be needed for far more dangerous creatures than what’s in the local food chain, and it doesn’t attract as much attention. A few solar panels and a battery can provide silent light, and cans of white fuel are extremely easy to store, transport, and use for cooking and heating without giving away much in position.
Grain and spice storage is extremely easy and well documented on the net, and it sounds like the water supply isn’t an issue. All in all, my biggest suggestion is give the most care to solutions that require little to no effort to use and maintain. An electric light powered by batteries charged with a solar panel eliminates replacing mantels, refilling fuel tanks and exhausting gasses. A tank filled by a small pump over a period of days beats hauling buckets of water. A trap provides fresh food without requiring hunting.
A digital reader and a few hours spent on the project Gutenberg can give months worth of reading materials, and requires little energy to recharge.
Last, but never least, is getting a ham license and becoming familiar with how to use the radios. You’ll need a method of communication that can survive degradation in service and you’d be communicating with a group who is more often than not intelligent and level headed.
Do you want a home bunker, or one outside the city?
Where will you be when the SHTF?
If everybody is evacuating the city, how will YOU get through?
Are you planning for 3 weeks, 3 months, or 3 years?
How you plan depends on the scenario you’re defending against.
I say do the best you can preparing your home, because you’re better off defending what you have than trying to move it, or stockpile another location.
If you’re lucky enough to have a plan B outside the city, good for you.
Survival preparation can be fairly involved, when you start getting down to the details. First and foremost, you need to outline the four “emergency” situations you need to prepare for.
1. At home/short term: You stay in your home, but the essentials are in short and unreliable supply. Usually consider up to two weeks.
2. At home/long term: Same as above, but the supply of essentials is less reliable and the duration longer. Anything over two weeks.
3. Evacuate your home/short term. The situation requires you to pack up and leave. You will be leaving for up to two weeks.
4. Evacuate your home/long term. Same as 3, but you have to leave for over two weeks, plan for up to one year.
Once you break your plan down above, you need to fill out the details for each scenario.
You need one gallon of water per person per day. Not all of this needs to be potable, some will be for hygiene. But if you can plan on one gallon of potable water per person per day, you should be all right.
Three meals per day per person. Make sure you plan on food that everyone likes and eats already. Do NOT “plan to ration.” Plan on eating and drinking what you need every day. Rationing is for when your plan is inadequate. Don’t plan inadequately. Be sure the meals are balanced nutritionally, and have not expired. Be sure to take into account any food allergies.
Medicine. Store enough medicine to get through the emergency. Bear in mind that some medicines require refrigeration. This makes it tough, and is one of the more difficult aspects of long-term survival preparation.
First aid. Have a good supply of the basics.
Defense. You don’t need an arsenal. You need a shotgun, a rifle, a powerful handgun. What you need is a fair amount of ammo. .22s are very good because 100 rounds can fit easily in your pocket. If you’re good with a .22, you can take a lot of game.
Transportation. One of the chief concerns among survivalists right now is what the full effects of an EMP detonation will be. Some say it will shut down anything with any type of micro-circuitry, which includes automobiles with any type of computer or digital controls. Others say it won’t be that bad, that a car may sputter, may stall, but will start again. I’m still researching this issue. However, the safest bet is to have a sizable, 4x4 built 1972 or earlier. Computers were introduced after 72. If you go this route, make sure it does not have electronic ignition. If the worst-case-scenario happens after an EMP, you’ll need to have all computer/micro-circuitry parts backed up and stored in a faraday cage. Before you “but out,” you’ll have to replace all such parts.
I lived in Seattle for 10 years. The North Cascades are a good destination. I wouldn’t target anywhere from Snoqualmie Pass to Stevens Pass. When the SHTF, a lot of Seassholes will head out to that area. If they ban together, they will loot you, despite their peace signs. You need to get far enough away that it is difficult for a large group of people to reach you collectively with any ability to loot you.
As others have said, be sure to have a good water filter if you have to evacuate. Go to REI and get plenty of the two-bottle water treatment kits, a portable filter with back up filter replacements.
Also, don’t forget you’ll need a way to cook. For short-term, fuel-based stoves will work fine. Get the type that use multiple fuels. You get a jet for “white fuel” Coleman’s fuel, etc. You get another jet for other fuel types (gasoline, kerosene, etc.). Bear in mind this requires fuel. So part of your survival gear should include extra five-gallon containers of gasoline.
Sounds like a lot? It is. That’s why you’ll need a roof-rack on your bug-out vehicle and, if possible, some sort of a trailer. But keep in mind you may not be able to that trailer too far off road.
before you buy that remote piece of land you might want to read this book.
If you don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, there really isn’t anywhere safe to run off too.
Secondly, any state barring constitutional carry should automatically be off the list.
Third, a church family is the best shelter in which to both receive grace, and to give grace to others that need Christ.
Packing off and running for the hills is not really a Christian response. We need to be marching towards the drums of war.