Posted on 12/07/2008 8:09:30 AM PST by Sen Jack S. Fogbound
The unleaded gas of today will last at least a year with no problem.
Coleman also now makes an LED lantern that will run for 18 hours continuously on 4 D batteries.
I’m repeating this because it is well worth it.
Everyone interested in being prepared - Check this thread!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2133221/posts
That's not true but, this is:
A 2,000-Year-Old Palm Tree Comes To Life
14 Jun 2005
Israeli researchers have germinated a date palm from 2,000-year-old seeds, in a bid to find new medicines to benefit future generations.
Dr. Sarah Sallon, of the Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, in collaboration with botanist Dr. Elaine Solowey, of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura, have succeeded in growing a date palm seedling from seeds 2,000 years old.
The ancient seeds were found 30 years ago during archeological excavations at the mountain fortress of Masada, where Jewish rebels chose suicide over capture by Roman legions in the year 73. Radio-carbon dating shows the seeds to be some 2,000 years old, placing them during or just before the Masada revolt. These are reportedly the oldest seeds ever brought back to life.
[snip]
After 9-11, we made plans to get from Denver to upstate NY. Thank God we never had to go, but it was nice to know we could go somewhere.
I would add one more thing we did after 9-11. We put a list of all contact information of all family members together and distributed it to all. It includes aunts and uncles, cousins etc, even if we only see them at weddings and funerals. It is updated annually for cell phone changes and moves.
Thanks! Yes, LED’s are fantastic. There are LED retrofit kits for Maglight flashlights. Good output, but many many times the battery life. And, no filament to break if dropped. Typical LED life is tens of thousands of hours.
http://www.fcs.uga.edu/pubs/current/FDNS-E-34-1.html
(LOng term food storage)
I discovered while doing some class planning (I'm a certified disaster recovery dude & teach a few classes a year) that
Dried food has a 12 to 15 week lead time, IF they will take your order (Rainy Day, NitroPak,, etc)
Oregon Freeze dried foods (Mountain house) no longer will sell #10 cans of food “to the general public” - I confirmed that one personally - they would not comment on WHY, just that they WON”T. Odd to say the least.
You might consider restaurant supply sources for bulk vegis and potatoes etc.
Oh, and the NZ canned cheese is wonderful
Merry Christmas to all and to all a....stay awake and be prepared!
My recommendation is get to know some of your neighbors, and have a plan to be prepared to hunker down together.
Safety in numbers, heck, somebodies got to be on the lookout when the others sleep.
I personally think if there was a major disruption, after about a week things would get ugly... real ugly.
But I don’t suspect that phase would last more than two weeks or so, because by then, most freeloading types would be dead, starved or killed or died from cholera or whatever.
I also don’t think that there is a way there could really be an “effective” martial law. We recently heard announcements that 20,000 troops were going to be stationed here for domestic disturbances.
Heck, it would probably take 500 troops PER CITY BLOCK if there was an emergency situation.
So - every man for himself!
Also helps if you know any veterans near you. I’ve already had discussions with a couple people who are near me. They are all armed and know how to use them.
We’ve figured out how many meals we could get from (not for) our dog and cat. The fish are just too small.
True.
However, in the grocery store, the bags of dried beans, peas, soup mixes, etc., are inexpensive. You can find great buys in some of the discount stores that have food sections.
For ex: I just picked up a bag of 'Vegi Soup Mix" - dried split peas, lentils, barley and, in addition, pasta bits made of whole wheat, spinach, tomato, celery, onion, beets and garlic. Now how complete is that!
Directions are to mix with water, but I use chicken broth. And for the best and far cheapest broths, the broth paste that professional chefs have used for decades is now on the shelves for the public's use. It's called "Better Than Bullion" and comes in small glass jars - easy to store and rotate, It comes in several flavors from chicken and beef to mushroom, vegetable, clam, lobster...one jar of this paste will make GALLONS of broth for pennies compared to a can of broth for a buck.
If you had little else than these dried mixes, you could survive quite well. Add jars of preserves (NOT JELLY) and peanut butter...and SPAM ;o),..and you'll be pretty well off, nutritionally...and not much space needed for storage. Start with the bare essentials.
I grew up on my grandparents north woods farm in the late 30's-40's. They always had a years supply of food - in the same way people have for thousands of years: gardens, cold cellars, canned goods, fruit trees/bushes, butter/milk/beef/pork in the barn, eggs/chickens in the coop, meats/fish in the woods/waters. Own wood for heat, kerosene lamps, own water supply.
If we had a 'depression' half as serious as the BIG one, we would be in much worse condition as now, everyone is dependent on that thin wire to the road and the grocery store.
The more people that have an emergency supply, the easier we can weather a storm - nature made or man made.
Fill your lamps and trim the wicks. He/she who doesn't should not depend on those who do - or all go down. That's what the parable teaches us.
I agree w/you, AuntB. When I was in grad school, the other students would laugh at my 72 hour preparedness plan. 'We're in the city, what's going to happen?' Well, what can happen is that you get sick and can't go out to get food (and none of your broke grad school friends can buy any for you). Or that the power goes off. Or that the weather makes it difficult for you to get out.
Now that winter has begun here in corn country, we've just stocked up for at least a month, longer if I don't make 'meals' and we just eat what's here w/o getting fancy about it. This doesn't count the water and food stored in the basement. It can snow, it can ice, but we'll have food and fireplace logs. The one thing I don't have is a generator, but I'm working on that.
There are some here for as low as $12.50 each.
Thanks for the input, I'll be ordering one for myself and one as a Christmas present.
This is another good idea. I keep an old phone but haven't been able to convince others (as they've all given up their land lines, a mistake, I think) to do the same.
“So, if someone is living in a 450 square foot “studio” apartment in Encino — where should he store this?”
I think along the lines of learning new shopping habits, buy your cupboard items like tuna, chili, canned corn, flour, rice, pasta, canned fruit, etc. based on shelf life and rotate them efficiently, learning to keep a 90 to 120 day supply of easily eatable and prepared foods (opening cans,and boiling rice if the stove works). You might want to purchase a 3’ by 6’ cabinet for extra storage and put it where ever it fits, even the bedroom.
In a closet, a stack of four five gallon buckets of professionally stored (nitrogen sealed, etc.) rice and pinto beans or powdered eggs and such if you can afford the better stuff, would not take up much space but it would let you have a foot up on a truly desperate survival situation.
A water filter, LED flashlights, a deck of cards, an old backpack and you are way ahead of the game. Being prepared is a personal standard, someone in a tiny apartment can still give themselves a very large buffer zone from immediate dire straits pretty easily.
My fear is an EMP attack that wipes out all electricity, including car starters. If that happens... I mapped a route to the nearest reservoir 6 miles away, but I could only carry so much and like I said, it's Los Angeles. The streets would be teaming with zombies. I'm imagining living in my attic for weeks and weeks, waiting for the majority of the population to die off. It's a real nightmare scenario.
http://www.geocities.com/loralmc/cures.html#Burns_
Yeah. Me and a dozen of my buddies. Armed. You don't need food. You need guns. The people with the guns get the food. The people hunkered in their homes get robbed or burned to the ground.
The real survivors are those who don't need a house to survive.
You should read a book called the Blizzard of 1888. I was especially interested in it because my grandmother was born the same week although she was born in Indian Territory and not on the East coast where it hit. They said that the people in the cities ran out of food right away but the people in the countryside did fine.
Check the pawn shops for generators. Alot of people have been pawning items they don’t use much because things are a bit tight.
And if you see one at a pawn shop you like, MAKE SURE they fire it up and test it for you, and NEVER pay the listed price, they will almost always take a reasonable offer.
Hmm. Learn something new every day. I don't use bar soaps because they make a mess, but it's easy enough to buy a couple of bars to keep for an emergency.
I would recommend that this be posted once a week for awhile.
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