posted on Jun, 22 2009 @ 04:05 AM
This little article will attempt to explain quick and dirty survival from the ground up. While I will be focusing more to people who live in the city
and need their gear together right away, this can scale for country folks as well.
So the first thing you need to understand is that we as humans need three things.
1.Rations
2.Protection
3.Shelter
It may seem that I am using terms that are very vague and overlap, but everything a hardcore survivalist does can be classified in one of these three
areas.
Now the second thing you need to decide before you even begin preparing, this is point three, shelter. Do you hunker down or get out of dodge? Your
preparedness hinges on your disaster plan. I have seen some people who have the resources to plan for both, but since most people do not have the
funds to do such a thing, I would advise that you plan carefully and pick only one real SHTF plan.
Once you have your SHTF plan of action, prepare, getting together anything you can afford/justify getting to help with your disaster plan. Please
understand that if you have a job worth doing, its worth doing right, don't have an evacuation plan and hunker down plan that are both half finished
when the time comes. Pick a plan of action and stick with your guns.
Lets quickly talk about protection, a baseball bat is protection, a gas mask is protection, a roof over your head protects you from the weather.
protect yourself and be ready to protect yourself. if you do not have a gun, get one, if you have one, clean it. Right now the chances of you finding
a gun and affordable ammo are almost nonexistent, you may have to settle for less than the best. If you still need a gun, you may have missed the
boat, ammo prices through the roof and shortages of many common calibers mean that target shooting may be impossible.
Be ready to protect yourself from the elements, perhaps from looters, a deadbolt or metal grating may be just as effective as a loaded gun.
Now the last thing I will discuss is rations. Water is a ration, food is a ration, vitamins are rations. To ration is to simply divvy something up
into portions of equal size.
I will discuss water first. The average adult should have 2 liters of water as an average a day. Go to the local supermarket and look at the bottles
of soda, now imagine that you will consume one each day, every day, as long as the tap isn't giving you clean water. You soon realize that for 4
adults, you will be using 28 pop bottles worth of water a week. A good solution is to have water on hand, and the ability to purify in the future. If
water service is temporary disrupted then you have clean water on hand for the short term, the ability to make your own potable(clean) water over the
long haul. In my case I am using 2 liter soda bottles because they are easy to store, stack easy, and are easy to move around. You could use anything,
milk jugs, drums, the sky is the limit but think things through and make your own decision about what suits your need.
Now one more thing about water, sanitation! You will want to clean things, and flush toilets to keep germs and disease under control, especially
with some of the possible issues in the future being biological. You can flush toilets with dirty water.(water in the tank behind the toilet gives you
a single flush but can be refilled.)
if you have a source of water around like a lake, stream, even ocean, be ready to use it to flush and rinse. Perhaps you can collect rainwater since
you don't have to filter water that goes in the commode. Would 5 gallon buckets be helpful in this need? Again, think things out and make logical
decisions to fit your own needs, not what some survival website says.
At this point you are about to throw money at the most expensive part of this game, food.
Fortunately, you can cut corners to be ready for trouble and slowly build up to a better supply.
part 2 below